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 GENESIS. 
 
 / 
 
 FRANZ DELITZSCII, D.D., 
 
 LEIPZIG. 
 
 STransIatetJ '^^a 
 SOPHIA TAYLOE. 
 
 VOL. 11. 
 
 SCRIBNEE & WELFORD, 
 748 AND 745 BROADWAY, 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 1889. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE TOLEDOTH OF TERAH, XL 27-XXV. 11— 
 
 continual. 
 
 PROMISE OF AN HEIR AND THE PROMISE OF THE LAND 
 CONFIRMED BY A COVENANT, CH. XV. 
 
 Two solemn revelations open in ch. xv. the second section of 
 the life of Abraham. The narrative falls into two halves. It 
 is impossible to regard all from beginning to end as occurring 
 in vision. Eor (1) if one revelation takes place at night, or 
 at least with a transposition to night, the other is made in 
 the day, and indeed at eventide, the sun being at ver. 12 
 about to set, and at ver. 17 actually set. And (2) the account 
 of Abraham's believing reception of the promise of a posterity 
 numerous as the stars of heaven ver. 6 separates what pre- 
 ceded from what follows, which though it appears from the 
 vi'X ")CX"'l, 7a, to have immediately succeeded, has yet its own 
 special introduction. Dillmann here carries analysis even 
 farther beyond the bounds of the discernible than Wellhausen 
 does. The safest criterion from Gen. i. to Ex. vi., and one 
 which must only be relinquished for cogent reasons, is the 
 Divine names. The use of these is in both halves of ch. xv. 
 the same. In both rrin'' is the prevailing one, and with it 
 occurs once in each nin'' ""ins, to be read according to the 
 punctuation Ci'^ripx ""yix, a combination of Divine names which, 
 thus written, is unusual. This nin"" "'iix, here twice used, 
 gives to this historical picture in its two departments, as to 
 the prophetic image, Isa. 1. 4-9, where it is four times used, 
 its own peculiar stamp ; and as this nin"" "iJlN is only found 
 
 VOL. II. A 
 
2 GENESIS XV, 1. 
 
 elsewhere in the Pentateuch at Dent. iii. 24, ix. 26, it may 
 be conchided that it is Jahvistic. Dilhuann has in his 5 th 
 edition dehberately omitted his former view, that mn^ had 
 been added by B to the original ""jis of B (xx. 4, but there 
 in the address). Equally weak is also Wellhausen's assertion 
 {Composition dcs Hcxatciiclis, i 413), that ""jx and Ur Kasdim 
 are not Jahvistic." Ur Kasdim is not Jahvistic, if it is here 
 denied to J, which is but an arbitrary assertion and not a 
 proof (see on xi, 31); and '•js* in the formula nin'' •>:»< is so 
 stereotyped (see on vi. 17) as to be common to every Penta- 
 teuchal source ; it is Deuteronomic, xxix. 5, and also Jahvistic, 
 Gen. xxviii. 13. The reference, too, xxiv. 7, to the covenant 
 promise, xv. 18, and the list of the ten nations, xv. 19 sq., 
 point to J as the narrator. The latter is indeed unique in 
 this completeness, though still most akin to the list of seven, 
 Deut. vii, 1 ; comp. Josh. iii. 10, which also closes with ^dhti. 
 Nevertheless, ch. xv. is not throughout by J, ver. 2 being 
 undoubtedly derived from another source, probably from E. 
 Also in consideration of ''"}'^>i^i7 as a synecdochical designation 
 of the ancient population of Canaan, which is one of the 
 tokens of the older Elohist, it may obviously be assumed that 
 the narrative of the covenant sacrifice with its explanation 
 was originally found in E, and derived in its present form 
 from JE. Dillmann's opinion, that B inserted the glance at 
 the future, vv. 12-16, "from his own resources," must be 
 rejected, if only because the Divine directions stand in 
 symbolic relation to the disclosures which follow them. It 
 cannot be inferred either from t^i^n (see the Introd. to ch. xiv.) 
 or from nnm nn-ba, which occurs only once more in the 
 Pentateuch, xxv. 8, that Q had any share in fashioning the 
 material of the narrative. 
 
 A Divine revelation is made to Abraham, which is con- 
 nected with the conflict he has just victoriously waged, ver. 1 : 
 After these events the word of Jahvcli came to Ahram in a 
 vision, thus : Fear not, Abram : I am thy shield, thy revxird is 
 
GENESIS XV. 2. 3 
 
 very great. The parenthetical formula n>ixn D"'"i2'nn nns (here 
 and xxii. 1, 20, xxxix. 7, xl. 1, xlviii. 1) states tliat what is 
 to be related followed what preceded after the lapse of some 
 undefined time. The revelation f^jri^?, which is confined to 
 no time of the day, is a step higher than oipna. Abram is to 
 have no fear in the midst of his strange and hostile surround- 
 ing, for Jahveh is his shield (the consolatory figure is repeated, 
 Deut. xxxiii. 29). Luther translates farther: and (I am) thy 
 very great reward. But God does not give Himself to him 
 as a reward (comp. Wisd. v. 15, ev Kvplw 6 fx,La9o<i avrcov), 
 but promises him one, and that very great, — only so can 
 Abram's answer be understood, ver. 2 : And Ahrani said, 
 Jahveh, Lord of all, what ivilt Tliou give me, since I depart 
 childless, and the inheritor of my house is Damascus (is) Eliczcr. 
 A contrasted adverbial sentence begins, as at xviii. 13, with 
 ^ribxi. "Depart" is certainly meant, as at xxv. 32, 2 Cliron. 
 xxi. 20, Ps. xxxix. 14, and frequently, of death. "^y^V in itself 
 means "alone," "lonely," here childless, like Lev. xx. 20 sq. 
 "With Abram all the fulness of the Divine blessing falls into 
 the background in presence of his childlessness at that time ; a 
 man who is not his own flesh and blood having every prospect 
 of being his heir. The unusual pt?p is used to symphonize 
 with P'f^"^. ■ The evident intention protects p:^*b^ (xin) from 
 the suspicion of being a gloss (Hitzig, Tuch, Olshausen). The 
 LXX. has tlie unmeaning vio^ MaaeK; Syr. Targ. Jer. IL 
 prefer leaving out the not understood p'j'D ; others, apparently 
 deriving it, according to the formation i"i??, from pp'^}, " to run 
 about busily," translate : son of my household business (Onk. 
 Targ. Jer. I. Samar. Theod.) = my steward, for which we should 
 rather have expected p'^^ ?y?, or: filius procuratoris domus 
 meoe (Jer. comp. Luth.), but PP'O in this concrete sense is, 
 though possible, improbable. The verb pt^o, cXu*a! (related to 
 ^K'o), which, as stem of p*^p, is nearest, means, to draw to one- 
 self, to seize, to take posse^sion_ of, as is evident from P^P?, 
 Zeph. ii. 9 ; and P.^'^'if is the correct expression for one who 
 
4 GENESIS XV. 2. 
 
 has the reversion or right of taking possession. Thus the 
 inheritor of my house is "^.J^''^'.^ Pj^?"^. Lagarde views pb'DT as 
 a prefixed apposition in the sense of the Arabic ^Jkj^ll ^A^iJ 
 (according to Kamus, one is nimble with his hands), but this 
 would yield a eulogy of Eliezer, not an allusion to his 
 position. Dillmann, in accordance with Ew. § 286c, places 
 the two words in genitival relation : the son of possession of 
 my house is Damascus of Eliezer ; but the subject aimed at is 
 surely not the town, but the person whose rightful home it is. 
 If however the narrator intended to say : Eliezer who is of 
 Damascus (Ges. Lehrgeh. p. 648), pb'DT iry^^s would be required 
 in the reverse order (like 2 Sam. xxiii. 24 ; comp. on Prov. 
 XXX. 1). There is thus notliing left but to take ity^x as the 
 more closely defining permutative of pb'DT : the inheritor of 
 my house is Damascus is Eliezer, It is just because the 
 latter is aimed at that it is not said pL"'n"n3, as might have 
 been expected if pC'OT had been the main subject.^ The sense 
 is clear : Damascus will inherit me, i.e. in the person of Eliezer, 
 viz. (comp, 1 Chron. ii. 34 sq,) the Damascene, The Moslem 
 tradition calls Abram's servant exactly ^J!L^d, Diinask, regards 
 him according to the Arabic view as an Abyssinian, and says 
 that he built Damascus and called it after his own name 
 {DMZ. xvi, 701 sq.). Profane history is acquainted with a 
 sojourn of Abram at Damascus on his journey from Chaldea 
 to Canaan. Justinus the epitomizer of Trogus names Abrani 
 as one of the ancient kings of Damascus (xxxvi. 2) ; and 
 Nicolaus Damascenus (in Josephus, Ant. i. 7, comp. Fragm., 
 ed. Orclli, p, 114) says in B. iv, of his Universal History that 
 "Abram, a foreigner who had come thither with an army 
 from the so-called land of Chaldea above Babylon, ruled in 
 Damascus. Xot long afterwards he went forth and trans- 
 planted himself hence (Damascus) with his people to the land 
 
 1 The view that p{J>Ol XIH is a marginal gloss to pb'O, which has got into 
 the text (see Driver in the Expositor, vii. 6), makes the words the result of 
 an incompreheusible silliness. 
 
GENESIS XV. 3-5. 5 
 
 now called Judrea, then Canaan, where his descendants became 
 very numerous." " The name of Abram," adds Josephus, " is 
 still held in great honour in Damascus, and a village owing its 
 origin to him is shown and called Abram's dwelling {'A^pdfj.ov 
 oiKijat^;)." Perhaps Berzat-el-Chalil, " the marriage tent of 
 Abraham," is meant, a village which lies one league north of 
 Damascus, where the ravine of the Wadi Macrabd opens into 
 the 'GiUa, and where the memorial day of the patriarch's 
 wedding, a popular festival of the Damascenes, is annually 
 kept in spring (Wetzstein in DMZ. xxii. 105), so vivid is still 
 the remembrance of Abram in and around Damascus. He is 
 the most renowned of all the great men of antiquity in the 
 mouths of the Bedouin tribes of the neighbourhood, who, if 
 asked concerning their religion, call themselves Din Ibrd Mm. 
 Ver. 2 is followed by the same saying of Abraham in a more 
 comprehensible form, ver. 3 : And AhraJiam said : Behold, 
 to me hast Thou given no seed : and, lo, the son of my house 
 is my heir. No hereditary claim existed, but Abram had, 
 as is seen from vv. 2 and 3, destined the inheritance to 
 his tried and faithful servant, in case he should die childless. 
 The promise of God however raises him above this grievous 
 force of circumstances, ver. 4 : And, behold, the loord of Jahvch 
 to him, saying: This man shall not be thine heir, but he that shall 
 go forth out of thine oivn body, he shall be thine heir. Instead 
 of ''<?''.], we have here •^S'?"!, which presents an object to the 
 mind, and instead of T^7!jP, xxxv. 11, D^yo only used of the 
 M'ife in the more recent custom of the language (xxv. 23), 
 but here, as in 2 Sam. vii. 12, xvi. 11, of the husband: 
 Tcytsp. The ecstatic condition of Abram is to be conceived of 
 as continuing, ver. 5 : And He led him into the open air, and 
 said : Look towards heaven, and count the stars, if thou canst 
 count them. And He said to him : So shcdl thy seed he, 
 numerous as the stars of heaven (xxii. 17, xxvi. 4; Ex, 
 xxxii. 13; comp. the fulfilment, Deut. x. 22). Demeanour 
 of Abram with regard to this promise, so paradoxical in 
 
6 GENESIS XV. 6. 
 
 itself, ver. 6 : And Abram helieved in Jahveh ; and He reckoned 
 it to him for rigJiteousncss. The conclusion of tlie first 
 portion of the narrative, as ver. 18 sqq. is of the second. 
 The per/, states in ver. 6 the basis, as the Imperf. conscc. does 
 the fact of the imputation (comp. on i. 2). The verb \'^^, of 
 whose various use we may take a survey even within the 
 Pentateuch, means to be firm, certain, whence "^^i^x, Ex. xvii. 
 12, in its first physical meaning firmness and ri^^. = J^^os 
 (adverbially P^, n:aK and Ci3lpi<), truth as firmness and 
 certainty, transitively: to secure, to support, whence '■'^9?» 
 pillar, as that which supports, and JP^<, a nurse, as he who 
 supports, holds in leading strings, has care of. The JViph. 
 means in a temporal sense to be wearisome, Deut. xxviii. 59 ; 
 in a local sense, to be firm, unchangeable, see Isa. vii. 9, 
 1 Sam. ii. 35, and frequently; then to be certified, to be 
 verified, to be proved true, xlii. 20, by man or God: to 
 show oneself trustworthy, partic. genuine, faithful, Num. xii. 
 
 7 ; Deut. vii. 9. As l^*?.? signifies faithful, Tnaro'?, the Hiph. 
 r'??;?n signifies to trust, iriaTeveiv, the cherishing and mani- 
 festing a frame or disposition, which is certain of its object 
 and relies upon it ; with ? of the person or thing, Ex. iv. 
 
 8 sq., whose testimony is believingly accepted (comp. Lane 
 under ^^^T) ; with 3 of the person or thing, Deut. xxviii. 
 66, which is believingly rested on as a firm foundation, a 
 certain warrant. Both constructions are met with to designate 
 the attitude towards God. 'rh TDSn, Deut. ix. 23, but more 
 frequently 'r\2 pnsn, xv. 6; Ex. xiv. 31; comp. iv. 31, xix. 
 9; Num. xiv. 11, xx. 12; Deut. i. 32. The LXX. 
 translates here, koI iiricrTevcrev "A^pafju tu> ©eu) ; one of the 
 New Testament phrases, iricrTeiiecv et? or iirl rov ©eov, eVt 
 or iv Tc3 ©eft), would have been more in conformity with the 
 text. For 'nn ptDSn denotes the faith, not as assensus, but 
 according to the fiducia or acquiescentia in which it is 
 perfected. ''We are not merely told that Abram believed the 
 testimony of Him who promised, but that he relied upon 
 
GENESIS XV. 7, 8. 7 
 
 His person, and believingly rested in or upon Him. Jaliveh 
 reckoned it, this faith, to him (which is the proper meaning 
 of a'J^'n, c— '-u*=^, here with f of the person, like Ps. xxxii. 2) 
 as righteousness (i^i^l^*, comp. i^i^l^'^, Ps. cvi. 31, according 
 to which the LXX. has Kal iXoyiadr] avTu> eh ZcKatoo-vvrjv, 
 like Ptom. iv. 3 ; Gal, iii. 6 ; Jas. ii. 23). No external 
 legal work whatever, but faith justified Abram before God, 
 while as yet uncircumcised — a prechristian Scripture testi- 
 mony that not in the way of law, but in the way of the 
 promise which brings him salvation, does man attain to a 
 righteousness valid before God, and that this righteousness, 
 far from being self-effected, is as to its foundation a righteous- 
 ness imputed in faith, which grasps the salvation offered in 
 Christ. The promise too, here made to Abram, has truly 
 Christ for its object {siib innumerahili ilia posteritate latebat 
 Chrisiits, as Hunnius remarks) ; the faith in which he receives 
 it, is faith in the promised seed, and Jahveh, in whom Abram 
 believingly rests, is God the Picdeemer. But that this faith 
 is meant to be regarded as the motive power of a new life, 
 is shown l)y the passage, Ps. cvi. 31, which bears the same 
 relation to Gen. xv. 6 that St. James does to St. Paul. 
 From the righteousness of faith proceeds a righteousness of 
 life, which, for the sake of the source whence it comes, is, 
 like faith itself, reckoned by God as '^P,"jy. 
 
 According to the law, " To him that hath shall be given," 
 tlie faith of Abram is rewarded with a renewed promise 
 of the possession of the land, ver. 7 : A^id He said to him : 
 I am Jahveh that led thee out of Ur-Casdim, to give thee this 
 land to take possession of it. This self-testimony of Jahveh is 
 the preliminary stage to that of Ex. xx. 2 — the one conditions 
 and demands the other. It sounds Jahvistico-Deuteronomic. 
 It is then no relapse to unbelief, no fit of weak faith, 
 when Abram says, ver. 8 : Lord of all, Jahveh, ivhcrchj 
 shall I know that I shall possess it ? On ns3^ with euphonic 
 Dagesh, see Ewald, § 2436; and on yT, with a of the means, 
 
8 GENESIS XV. 9-11. 
 
 comp. xlii. 33; Ps. xli. 12; Job xii. 9. It is a question, 
 like Gideon's, Judg. vi. 36 sq., and Hezekiali's, 2 Kings xx. 8, 
 not of doubt, but of supplication. God does not leave this 
 justifiable desire of faith un gran ted, ver. 9 : And He said to 
 him : Take to thee a heifer of three years old, and a she-goat 
 of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle 
 dove and a young 2^igcon. The ^:»rt?'^. Puhal ^'p'f P means here, 
 having reached three, i.e. three years. So most ancient trans- 
 lators (LXX. Sara., Targ. jer., Syr. Jer.) ; comp. also 1 Sam. 
 i. 24, eV /J-6cr^(p Tpieji^ovTL, where LXX. Syr. read ^ih^^'Q "IS3. 
 In spite of the various modes of expression, Isa. xv. 5, Judg. 
 vi. 25, Ex. xii. 5 and elsewhere, no other meaning is possible, 
 neither : having reached the third part of full maturity (which 
 D'pL^'P, Baha mezia 68a, as a Denominative from t^'vt:', a third 
 of full maturity, means), nor : tripled {i.e. three calves, like 
 Onkelos), nor : divided into thirds, for Abram divided them not 
 into thirds, but halves, ver. 10 : And he took to him all these, 
 and divided them in the midst, and laid the piece of each 
 over against the other, and the hirds he divided not. On 
 iiris tr''X, each, its pieces the piece of each, see on ix. 5. 
 "lisV is as collective as at Ps. viii. 9, cxlviii. 1 ; Ezek. 
 xxxix. 4. They are the five clean sacrificial animals accord- 
 ing to the future sacrificial ritual, which Abram is to take ; 
 his leaving the turtle and the dove undivided is also in 
 conformity with it (Lev. i. 17). Prom his laying the Q''"]^? 
 opposite each other, it may be inferred that he also laid the 
 turtle dove opposite the pigeon, so that four portions lay on 
 each side. This arrangement was to subserve a Divine 
 purpose, the attainment of which was however endangered, 
 ver, 11 : And the hirds of prey came dovm upon the carcases, 
 hut Ahram drove them away. He knows not what purpose 
 that which has been thus brought is to serve, but he seeks 
 to preserve it uninjured for a purpose which he hopes to 
 learn. And now preparation is made for the revelation 
 about to be connected with the sacrifice thus lying ready. 
 
GENESIS XV. 12-10. 9 
 
 A'^er. 12 : The sun was just about to go down, and a dec}! 
 sleep lefell Abram, and, lo, terror, great darhncss settled 
 upon him. On the construction ^S:b \T\ see Ges. § 132, 
 note 1: •^pi."'.^ is deep sleep, ii. 21, here a violent plunging 
 of the natural life of perception and thought into uncon- 
 sciousness and inactivity, a cessation and, as it were, a 
 casting into slumber of the ordinary activity of the mind 
 and senses, for the purpose of unsealing the inner eye. The 
 LXX. here, as also ii. 21, has eWracrt?. The succession 
 of accents in '"[V"ij ^j^PD H;-^''^ is the same as at vi. 9. The 
 awful and great darkness is supernatural, for it falls only on 
 Abram, and indeed before sunset. After everything earthly 
 has been rendered invisible to him, God lights up the future, 
 vv. 13-16: And lie said to Ahram : Tlicu art to know, that 
 thy seed shcdl he a stranger in a land not belonging to them, 
 and they shcdl serve them, and they shcdl oppress them four 
 hundred years. And again the nation, u-hom they shall serve, 
 shall be Judged by me, and afterwards they shcdl depart uith 
 great possessions. And thou shall go to thy fathers in 2'^cace, 
 and be buried at a good age. And in the fourth generation 
 they shcdl return hither, for the iniquity of the Aniorites is 
 not yet full. The strange land, viz. Egypt, is first expressly 
 named to Jacob. The subject of cnpyi is the descendants 
 of Abram : they are to serve the inhabitants of the strange 
 land (nny, with an ace, like xxix. 15 ; Ex. xxi. 6 ; Dcut. xx. 
 11). The LXX. has wrongly koI BovXwaovaiv avTov<;, they 
 shall enslave them (thy descendants), which would be 'ilrVl 
 D3. The Divine retribution begins with DJI. The expression 
 Ti^nbx-^x Ninn is like Ps. xlix. 19, and differs from xxv. 8. 
 Tliis is the first time in Holy Scripture that we meet 
 with the word Ci!?^, which (comiug from V b'^) means release, 
 deliverance from care and want, and therefore peace, in the 
 sense of both contentment and satisfaction. ^V*?"! ii"il is 
 an ace. of time (comp. xvi. 4&). The LXX. correctly has : 
 rerdp-rj he ^evea. The synecdochic designation of the 
 
10 GENESIS XV. 13-16. 
 
 inhabitants of the Promised Land as l^i^j^ is a different one 
 from that at xii. 6, xiii. 7. Thus the sojourn in Egypt is to 
 last -400 years, so that nii (as in Nestor, yeved, ii. 1. 250) is 
 a seculum of 100 years — a round number, instead of which 
 we find, Ex. xii. 40 [Q), the more accurate statement, 430 
 years, with which the genealogy, Ex. vi. 16 sqq., apparently 
 agrees. For the 137 years of Levi, the 133 of Kehath, 
 the 137 of Amram, and the 80 of Moses at the exodus, un- 
 doubtedly the representatives of the four generations, give above 
 400 years, but only if they are added together without regard 
 to synchronism. \Hence the LXX. already reckons. Ex, xii. 40, 
 in the 430 the sojourn in Canaan._J) This is the view handed 
 down in the synagogue {e.g. Pcsikta de Bab Cahana, ed. Buber, 
 47&; Mechilta Parasha, X2, c. 14), and thence among the 
 Syrians, from which also St. Paul proceeds. Gal. iii. 17. For 
 if we reckon the 25 years from Abraham's entrance into 
 Canaan, and the first promises given him to the birth of 
 Isaac, the 60 years from Isaac's birth to that of Jacob, the 
 130 thence to Jacob's going into Egypt, together 215 years, 
 with the 215 years of the Egyptian sojourn, they come to 
 430 years. The genealogy, Ex. vi. 16 sqq., with the numbers 
 of the years of life of Levi, Kehath, and Amram, which to- 
 gether amount to 407 years, prove at least that a generation 
 might at that period be reckoned at 120 (in round numbers 
 100) years; and we must at any rate estimate a generation 
 according to the numbers in Ex. xii. 40, and not lessen the 
 numbers to suit it. This is however a problem, the discus- 
 sion of which belongs to Ex. vi. 16 sqq. or Ex. xii. 40, and 
 not to our passage. The revelation here made to Abraham 
 is both in its special and general meaning a new disclosure : 
 he learns that the race, of which he is destined to become the 
 ancestor, is to go through suffering to glory — henceforth a 
 law in the history of redemption (comp. Luke xxiv. 26 ; Acts 
 xiv. 22). What preceded this revelation now appears in the 
 symbolical liglit thrown upon it thereby. The three years of 
 
GENESIS XV. 17. 11 
 
 age of the heifer, the goat and the ram impress upon what is 
 in question the stamp of holiness, for three is the number of 
 God in His nature (comp. the number seven, Judg. vi. 25). 
 The carcases of the animals lying opposite each other in fours 
 allude to the four seasons ; the birds of prey rushing down 
 like harpies upon the pieces (comp. Virgil, JEn. iii. 244 sqq.) 
 to the nations hostile to the Lord's people (comp. Deut. xxviii. 
 40) ; and the awful darkness presents an anticipation and 
 prefiguration of the fact that the light of glory will arise only 
 from the dark background of previous suffering. But before 
 God manifests Himself in perceptible majesty, it gets yet 
 darker within and without, ver. 17 : And it came to pass, the 
 sun vxnt down and deep darkness tooh plaee, and hchold a 
 smolcing furnace and a flaming torch loMcli passed Ictwcen these 
 Ijicccs. The name of the sun, generally masculine, is here as 
 elsewhere, only, Nah. iii. 17, Isa. xlv. 6, Mai. iii. 20, femi- 
 nine. AVhat follows "tT'I, is fashioned according to the 
 scheme of contemporaneousness, like xxvii. 30, comp, vii. 6 ; 
 the two perfects coincide, the state of the case is essentially 
 the same at 12a (Driver, §1G5). With sunset the darkness 
 of night set in (HM for nn^n^ according to Ges. § 147, note 2), 
 then between the parts of the sacrifice there passed an 
 appearance as of a smoking furnace (l^^'y, adj. = \^'V), i.e. (the 
 point of comparison being only the cylindrical form ^) of a 
 pillar of smoke and a flaming torch rising up from it. It is 
 Jahveh, whose glory is in its manifestation a shining light 
 from a dark background, who has ordained for all His 
 creatures darkness as the substratum of light, and who also 
 permits His people to attain to light in no other way than 
 through darkness. Thus manifesting Himself, He confirms 
 
 * See on tann-Ar, Assjt. tinuru, Friedr. Delitzsch, Proleg. 146 ; D. H. Miiller 
 in the Wiener Zeitachrift filr die Kunde des Morgenlandes, i. 23 sq. ; and lor 
 confirmation of the fundamental meaning there accepted, " hollow, concave 
 vessel," Wetzstein in the Transactions of the Anthropological Society, 1882, p. 
 467. A detailed history of the word is given by llud. Dvorak in the Zdlschrij't 
 fur Ktilschrift-forschung, 1882, but with the inadmissible result, that it is a 
 word derived from the Persian. 
 
12 GENESIS XV. 18 21. 
 
 what He had promised, vv. 18-21 : On that day Jahveh 
 made a covenant with Ahram, saying : To thy seed I give this 
 land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river 
 Euphrates — the Kenite and Kenizzite and Kadmonite, and the 
 Hittite and Pcrizzite and the Bephaim, and the Emorite and 
 Canaanite and Girgashite and Jebusite. The perfect ""Ji^n: ap- 
 plies, as at i. 29, ix. 2 sq., to what is determined; elsewhere 
 as at XX. 16, to M'hat is performed at the time of speaking. 
 It is nowhere else promised that the land of Israel is to reach 
 to Egypt, hence the D."'']>''? li]? here, and the Trora/io? AIjvittov, 
 Judith i. 9, is the Ci;'"}>*p bnJ (naJial Musur in Asurbanipal's 
 account of the war) often named as the southern boundary of 
 Palestine, the Wddi el- Arts, which, now as a shallow brook, 
 now as a rushing torrent, runs through the entire northern 
 portion of the Siuaitic peninsula, and falls into the Mediter- 
 ranean near the village cl-Aris, the ancient 'PivoKoXovpa, the 
 " nose-docked town " (from KoXovpo^, dock-tailed, then docked 
 in general = «o\o/3c9) of the Ethiopian conqueror 'AKTiadpr]^, 
 Diodor. i. 60. The appellation of this boundary stream as 
 n\iva "sSWU^ 1 Chron. xiii. 5, comp. 1 Kings viii. 65, Josh, 
 xiii. 3, may arise from its having been erroneously regarded 
 as the most westerly portion of the net of channels of the 
 Nile, though it might also, as Ebers admits, have been so called 
 as the fust Egyptian water met with in coming from Palestine. 
 On the names of the Euphrates, see on ii. 14. The nations 
 cited are exactly ten. The Kenites dwelling in the farthest 
 south-east, whose name corresponds with al-Kain, a branch 
 of the Arabian tribe Kodaa {DMZ, xl. 181), the likewise 
 southern Kenizzites (comp. on xxxvi. 15) and the Ivadmo- 
 uites, i.e. as it seems the Arabs dwelling farthest to the 
 north-east, are first mentioned. Beginning thus from the 
 border of the land, the enumeration proceeds in a zigzag from 
 south to north to express absolute perfection, whose symbol is 
 the number ten. Instead of the ten, six nations are named, 
 Ex. iii. 8, 17, xxiii. 23, Deut. xx. 17 ; and seven, Deut. vii. 1, 
 
GENESIS XV. 18-21. 13 
 
 Josh. iii. 10. In both instances the 'yp, '??p, 'py, and n'5<3i. 
 here enumerated are omitted. The number seven is com- 
 pleted by the here unmentioned ""in. Where only six are 
 named, the ^'^'p} reckoned among the seven are wantincj. 
 
 The transaction here designated by n^-13 ma consists in 
 the engagement, ver. 18, comp. 7, and its pledge. This trans- 
 action has always been regarded (see e.g. the Targums) as the 
 entering into a covenant by means of a covenant sacrifice ; 
 and not incorrectly, although neither a covenant proper is 
 entered into nor a sacrifice proper offered. There is no proper 
 entering into a covenant; for God grants and confirms a pro- 
 mise to Abram, on which account it is Ho only Avho passes 
 between the portions of the sacrifice. Hence it is not a 
 covenant in the sense of a pactio, but of a sponsio. n"'"i2 ma 
 is also elsewhere used, both of the promises of God to man, 
 Ex. xxxiv. 10 (also ma alone, 2 Chron. vii. 18 ; comp. Hag. 
 ii. 5), and of the promises of man to God, Ezra x. 3. Xor is a 
 proper sacrifice offered, for this laying of the pieces (Q'''}!^2 or 
 C"}!?) is not the same as the laying of the portions of the 
 sacrifice upon the altar. Xor is it said that the fire of Jahveh 
 consumed them (comp. Judg. vi. 21; 1 Kings xviii. 38) ; hence 
 the expression of Josephus, Ant. i. 10. 3, dvcriav 7rpoa<p€pet, tm 
 ©eft), is unsuitable. On the other hand, it is still a sacrificial 
 transaction, to which, indeed, although the central mark of a 
 sacrifice — the oUatio — does not apply, its fundamental mark 
 — the sacratio — does, for it is for the purpose of worship that 
 Abram slays the animals and lays the pieces. Hence the 
 animals slain and divided into pieces on the occasion of 
 entering into covenants are also called in Latin and Greek 
 lepeta and Jiostice, and the oath combined with this rite is 
 designated in Demosthenes as ofxvvvai, kuO' lepwv or Kad' iepwv 
 rekeioiv, in Pausanias as opKov ScBovac iirl rofxicov (comp. 
 Hesych. s.v. rc/xia), although the pieces of the animals M'ere 
 neither burnt in honour of God nor partially eaten, but buried 
 or thrown into water, and the eating of them, as affected by 
 
1 4 GENESIS XV, 18-21. 
 
 the curse, interdicted. Accordingly we find in this case the 
 performance of what the word rinn (from n'nii=S')3, to cut) 
 originally means, and what the phrases ri"'"i3 n"}3 (Aram. D^p "i_T3), 
 opKia reixveiv, fcedus ferire, i.e. ferienda hostia, facere fcedus 
 fcomp. Pers. peimdn htcriden, to cut an alliance, Turkish kahini 
 hjmalc, to cut in pieces = to conclude a marriage settlement) 
 properly state. God accommodates Himself, says Ephrem 
 {0pp. vol. i. p. 1G2), in this transaction to the custom of the 
 Chaldeans, for it was their solemn usage to pass torch in hand 
 between the divided carcases of the animals, laid opposite each 
 other in an appointed order, and so to inaugurate the cove- 
 nants they entered into. They thus imprecated upon them- 
 selves a like death with these animals (comp. Bc'^oTo/xeli', 
 Luke xii. 46) in case they transgressed the covenant. Comp. 
 Liv. ix. 5 : ut cum ita Jupiter feriat qucmcuhnodum a fetialihus 
 2)oi'cns fcriatur ; xxi. 45 : {Dii) ita madarent, quemadmodum 
 ipse mactasset agnum, and also the ancient oath, per Jovem 
 lapidcm, in which the swearer held a stone in his hand, and 
 (according to Paulus Diaconus) said : Si sciens folio, turn me, 
 Dispiter salva livhe arccque lonis ejiciat uti ego hunc lapidem. 
 Here, where it is Jahveh who binds Himself by a covenant, 
 self-imprecation seems out of the question. But it is just 
 this which is essential in this custom, and that this was the 
 case in Israel also is shown by Jer. xxxiv. 18, where Jahveh 
 gives this reference to the rT'ian "iny. The passing of Jahveh 
 between the pieces is an act of deepest condescension, to the 
 same effect as His elsewhere swearing by Himself, xxii. 16, 
 or by His life, Deut. xxxii. 40, or still more anthropomorphi- 
 cally by His soul, Amos vi. 8 ; Jer. li. 14. It is thus that 
 the occurrence is also viewed by St. Luke, Acts vii. 17, in his 
 reproduction of the speech of Stephen. Jahveh condescends 
 so deeply that He may testify to Abram as palpably, impres- 
 sively, and memorably as possible, to aixeraOeTOv Tri<i ^ov\i]<f 
 avrov (Heb. vi. 1 7). But the deeper His condescension, the 
 more majestic is His appearance. God's manner of manifest- 
 
GENESIS XVI. 1-4. 15 
 
 ing Himself in His intercourse with the patriarchs is on other 
 occasions more gentle and familiar. Here it is purposely more 
 sublimely terrible than elsewhere. 
 
 THE EVENTS PRECEDING THE BIUTH OF ISHMAEL, CH. XVI. 
 
 The second portion of the second section, ch. xvi., which 
 relates the birth of Ishmael, shows ns once more how every- 
 thing Avent on in the family of Abram contrary to human 
 thoughts and ways. Sarai remains barren after the covenant 
 as before. She rashly gives up the hope of being called to 
 take part in the realization of the promise, and associates her 
 Egyptian maid with Abram, by whom the latter becomes the 
 mother of Ishmael. The narrator is J ; but ver. 3 shows itself 
 to be from Q, and the birth of Ishmael, ver. 15 sq., also is 
 related in words from Q, because this source had in this case 
 the advantage of greater accuracy. 
 
 A verse stating the circumstances precedes and is then 
 followed by the facts aimed at in the historical manner, vv. 1-4; 
 And So.rai, Abram' s wife, hare him no child : and she had an 
 Egyptian maid, ivhose name ivas Hagar. And Sarai said to 
 Abram: Behold, now, Jakveh has restrained me, that I shoidd 
 not bare. Go in, I pray thee, to my maid, perhaps I may obtain 
 children from her. And Sarai, Abranis ivife, took the Egyr)tian 
 Hagar, her maid, after the lapse of ten years since Abram' s 
 dwelling in the land of Canaan, and gave her to Abram her 
 husband to wife. And he went in unto Hagar, and she con- 
 ceived, and when she perceived that she had conceived, her mistress 
 became little in her eyes, la is not a repetition of xi. 30 : the 
 barrenness of Sarai continued in Canaan also. I^robably 
 Hagar was one of the female slaves bestowed upon Abram 
 by Pharaoh, ch. xii. 16. The historic nature of the name is 
 supported by the national name of the Ci"''!Jn (°''^''')^l'). Being 
 Sarai's handmaid, she was, as is still the custom, entirely at 
 her mistress's disposal. Sarai resigns her to Abram to use 
 
16 GEKESIS XVI. 5, 6. 
 
 lier as J^p'^ [i.e. t^'J?'? ^'^'^), that she may herself be built 
 up, i.e. obtain children by her (xxx. 3 ; comp. 1 Pet. ii. 5). 
 The idea is a different one from when, with reference to the 
 cottage or arbour set up for the nuptials of a newly-married 
 pair {DMZ. xxxii. 153), it is said of the man in relation 
 
 to tlie woman in Arabic I^aLz ^a.', or in Bedouin diction 
 
 v^-vii {JM.S-- The family is represented as a house, procreation 
 as building-, and becoming a mother as being built up. He 
 who begets is called in Assyrian Mni, " my father," abu 
 hdnija ; she who begets hdnitu, and that which is begotten 
 hiniltu or oicibnitu. The original form of 13 is hanj ( .;, accord- 
 ing to Arabic grammarians = JS), as that of XV is 'a-s/' 
 
 (l^.: =y^zz). p^ ^^i3 to a woman is the same as l^ J.r5-u\ he 
 went in unto her, viz. into the marriage chamber. Abram 
 consents to Sarai's request, D^"^■'?^^ r^T C'ijsnp (Mai. ii. 15). The 
 intention was good, but also nothing farther. Ten years had 
 then elapsed since Abram settled in Canaan (n??^? without 
 the tone on the first syllable, because it subordinates genitiv- 
 ally the following subject). When Hagar found that she had 
 conceived she felt herself raised above her former position, 
 and behaved herself as if she had taken Sarai's place, her 
 mistress, to whom she was indebted for her new position, 
 being henceforth little accounted of by her. ''i?J?5, impf. Kal, 
 with a of the intransitive, yy has an accented ultima, comp., 
 on the contrary, y^'.l; the accentuation vacillates, Ges. § 67, 
 note 3. Sarai now complains of the arrogant conduct of the 
 concubine, and so requites it that she flees, vv. 5, 6 : And 
 Sarai said to Abram : My suffering ivrong is thy faidt. 
 I gave my 7naid info thy bosom, and now that she sees she has 
 conceived, I am little in her eyes — Jahveh judge between me and 
 thee. And Abram said to Sarai : Behold, thy maid is in thy 
 l')owcr, do to her as seems good to thee. And Sarai dealt 
 hardly with her, and she Jled from her. With T'^J' ''P^D Sarai 
 
GENESIS XVI. 7. 17 
 
 makes her husband responsible for the injury she suffers 
 (comp. Jer. li. 35), and appeals to the judgment of God. 'n''?.''^^ 
 has a super-punctuated second Yod, because P^, with the sullix 
 of the second person, elsewhere has always the singular form. 
 Abram saw his closest relation disturbed, and left it to Sarai to 
 deal according to her own judgment with her slave, who was 
 indeed entirely at her disposal. Hie se Abram ostendit, says 
 Augustine, non amatorem servum, sed genitorem liberum. Sarai 
 abundantly requited Hagar's arrogance by unkind treatment ; 
 and Hagar, who found the situation unendurable, took flight. 
 Her name, "iJi^. corresponds (we know not whether accidentally 
 or intentionally) with this fact. For hajara (whence the ' 
 
 name Hi jra and the evotic j^^ ^% union and separation) *- 
 means to break off intercourse with any one, to separate 
 oneself, to depart, in opposition to which m2 has the mean- 
 ing of to flee from the perverse, the crooked (comp. n''"!?, 
 cross-piece of timber) direction entered upon. 
 
 What a number of mishaps ensued from this course of 
 action, which endeavoured arbitrarily to bring about the 
 fulfilment of the Divine promise instead of patiently waiting 
 for it ! God's faithfulness to His covenant however turned 
 all into blessing, ver. 7 : And the angel of Jahteh found her 
 hy the fountain of water in the wilderness, hy the fountain on 
 the way to "Sur. Hagar was purposing to flee to Egypt by 
 the way of Beersheba. She made use of the road at all 
 times the most frequented : the way to "i^m^, a place no longer 
 ascertainable (xx. 1) in iVi:' "inirp (Ex. xv. 22), i.e. (according 
 to Saadia) in the desert region of el 'Gifdr (jlijsjl), from five 
 to seven days' journey long, between the south-west of 
 Philistia and the north-east of Egypt, reaching as far south 
 as beyond Kulzum (Suez), and including the Tih Icni Isrdil 
 (the wilderness of Pharan). The angel of Jahveh there 
 appears to her. This is the first time we meet with this 
 kind of revelation of God by means of an angel. How are 
 we to understand it ? 
 
 VOL. II. B 
 
18 GENESIS XVI. 7. 
 
 Is the angel of God God Himself, making Himself visible 
 as an angel, or only an angel of whom God makes use as 
 the Oman of His self-manifestation ? The anfjel is called 
 explicitly nin"" (xviii. 33; Judg. vi. 14; Zech. i. 13, iii. 2, 
 and frequently), D'Ti^x and i?x (xxxii. 25 sqq. ; Hos. xii. 5, 
 comp. 4), and designates Himself as the God of salvation 
 (xxxi. 13; Ex. iii. 2, 6 sqq.). On the other hand, the very 
 
 name ^xt^D (from ix^, cJi Ci!^> Aeth. la'dJca, to cause to go, 
 to bid go, hence : sending, properly, as the Arabs rightly 
 
 interpret their CJJU, the accessory, and presumably the root- 
 
 form of cJL<, n. vcrh. ahstr., then one sent) already leads to 
 the personal distinction of the sender (xxiv. 7 ; Ex. xxxiii. 2 ; 
 Num. XX. 16) and the sent. We have here then a problem 
 with important pros and cons. The ancient synagogue regards 
 the angel of God as a created angel, calls him piDCD, mctaior, 
 as he who marches before and is the pioneer of Israel, and 
 explains his speaking as though he were Jahveh Himself by 
 Ex. xxiii. 21, according to which "his name is as the name 
 of his Lord" {Sanhedrin 38^). The ancient Church, on the 
 contrary, sees in this angel the appearance of the Son of God, 
 the Logos, in the form of an angel. Tlavrl BfjXov — says 
 Basil, adv. Eunom. ii. 18 — on evOa koI dyyeXof; koL ©eo<i 6 
 avTO<; TrpocrrjyopeveTai o fjiovoyev)]^; icm BrjXovfievo'i, This 
 prevailing ancient ecclesiastical view found welcome support 
 in Isa. ix. 5, LXX. (/jLeyaXr)^ /SouA.?}? ciyyeXo'^), and Isa. 
 Ixiii. 9, LXX. {ov irpia^vi ov8e ayyeXo'i, aXA,' avroq). On 
 the other hand, the view that the angel of God is everywhere 
 a created angel, is found in the ancient Church only in the 
 Clementines (Rom. xx. 7, in the closing portion made known 
 by means of Dressel). It is also found in Augustine, Jerome, 
 Gregory the Great, most decidedly in Theodore and Theodoret, 
 and more recently in Grotius, Clericus, and Calixtus. This 
 view has now for a long time been discredited, because 
 Jewish expositors since the IVIiddle Ages (see Levi b. Gerson 
 
GENESIS XVI. 7. 19 
 
 on Gen. xvi. V) have maintained the creaturehood of the 
 angel of Jahveh in an antichristian, and Socinians in an 
 antitrinitarian interest. More recently however Steudel has 
 been the first to attempt its complete establishment, and 
 V. Hofmann, Banmgarten and Kohler {Comm. on Zcchariah., 
 1861) are on the same side. The history (xviii.— xix. 28) 
 will show that the LOED is conceived of as being in each of 
 the three angels there appearing ; that not one is, in preference 
 to the others, Jahveh Himself in visible manifestation, but 
 that all three are so, though in different manners, according 
 to the will of God, who is using them as His organs, hence 
 that all three are finite spirits made visible (Philo, 0pp. ii. 1 7 : 
 lepai Kol Oelat (pvaei^, vTroSiuKovoi fcal vTrap-^ot rov irpciirov 
 ©£ou, so too Josephus and the Talmud, Mczta 865). Where 
 then the 'n "]S^D appears, it will not be Jahveh Himself, but 
 the angel (^'j^P^l', xlviii. 16), or an angel (is^D without an 
 art.. Ex, xxiii. 20, xxxiii. 2; Num. xx. 16; Hos. xii. 5) 
 in whom Jahveh is and of whom He makes use as His 
 organ. That the angel of Jahveh can, without being Jahveh 
 Himself, call himself and let himself be called Jahveh, 
 takes place, according to Bcraclwth ver. 5, h\y ini^C'w^ ^320 
 ini03 mx, i.e. because the delegated is equal to the delegator. 
 With this may be compared that in the Iliad, 18. 170 sqq. 
 Iris, the messenger of Juno, speaks as though she were 
 herself Juno, and Talthybios, 4. 204, as though he were 
 the person who sends him ; and further, that in Herodot. 
 i. 212, the messenger of Tomyris speaks to Cyrus as 
 though he were Tomyris himself; Psameuit, Herod, iii. 14, 
 to the messenger of Cambyses, as though he were Cambyses ; 
 Cyrus, in Xenoph. Cyrop. 3. 3. § 56, to the ambassador of 
 Cyaxares, as though the latter were in his presence. We 
 Lave too, in Zech. ii. 12 sqq., a remarkable example of the 
 words of Jahveh and His angel being intermixed, and at 
 Ptev. xxii. 6 sqq. a New Testament parallel entirely corre- 
 sponding to the manner of the 'n ^sbo. Here the very same 
 
20 GENESIS XVI. 7. 
 
 angel, who elsewhere distinguishes himself in the most 
 decided manner from God and His Christ (xxii. 9), says : IBov 
 ep^o/jiai ra^v. The angel of Jahveh, speaking from him- 
 self, prays to Jahveh, Zech. 1. 12 : How long wilt Thou not 
 have mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah ? And at 
 Zech. iii. 2 he says to Satan : Jahveh rebuke thee ! which, 
 according to Jude 9, is only said by one who ov roX/xd Kpiaiv 
 iTrevejKeiv ^Xaa(prjfA,la<i (see Ivohler on Zech. p. 60). When 
 then he says to Moses, Ex. iii. 6 : I am the God of thy 
 fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it is the 
 invisible God who is speaking from him who is His organ. 
 This is how the New Testament regards it. For Stephen, 
 Acts vii. 30, calls the angel who appeared to Moses in the 
 burning bush dyyeXo'i Kvpiov, or, according to A. B. C. S., 
 merely ayye\o<;, and he cannot have thought of the angel, of 
 M'hom he says, ver. 38, that he spake with Moses on Mount 
 Sinai, as a Divine Being, since he says, ver. 53 : eXajSere 
 vofiov €t9 Siaraya^ ayyiXfov, with which also St. Paul agrees. 
 Gal. iii. 19 and Heb. ii. 2. The law is, as distinguished 
 from the direct revelation of God in Christ Jesus, SiarayeU 
 Bt' dyyeXcov, is Bi ayyeXcop XaXr)6el<i X0709 — these New 
 Testament statements are absolutely opposed to the identi- 
 fication of the angel of Jahveh and the Logos. Equally 
 unfavourable to this view is it, that the author of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, xiii. 2, where he alludes to Gen. xviii 19, 
 would certainly have expressed himself differently if he had 
 regarded one of the three angels as directly God (a fact to 
 which Augustine appeals, de civ. xvi. 29). Also, that in the two 
 first chaps, of St. Matthew's Gospel, the parallelism of which 
 with the Pentateuchal primitive histories is unraistakeable, 
 the Old Testament angel of Jahveh is transformed into 
 ayyeXo'i Kvpiov (an angel of the Lord). Hence the New 
 Testament Scriptures are on our side if we say, that Jahveh 
 manifests Himself in the IX^D, in a manner which prefigures 
 and prepares the way for the incarnation, by means of a 
 
GENESIS XVI. 7. 21 
 
 finite spirit, which becomes visible. The angel of Jahveh 
 is Jahveh's D"'J3, and yet he is not.^ He is VJQ, Deut. iv. 37, 
 but V3Q ^^5r?, Isa. Ixiii. 9. He is not that direct Presence of 
 God which mortals cannot look upon, and therefore Manoah's 
 fear proved groundless, when he feared he should die because 
 he had seen God, Judg. xiii. 21 sqq. The angel of Jahveh 
 is an angel in whom Jahveh lets His face be seen (xxxii. 
 31) ; but this is brought to pass by means of a created being, 
 for no man can see it directly without dying, Ex. xxxiii. 20. 
 He is, as i^li?? Vr^ in the unique passage, Ex. xxiii. 20-22, 
 declares, the medium and mediator of God's self-manifestation, 
 but not God manifest Himself. The angelophanies of God 
 were a prefiguration of His Christophany. Hence the 
 mediator of the new covenant is called, Mah iii. 1, ^^5?'? 
 nnnn (comp. Isa. xlii. 6, xlix. 8, and also Heb. iii. 1). He 
 is called tlms, not as the incarnate angel of Jahveh, but as 
 the man in whom Jahveh fulfils the covenant, for the 
 realization of which He was preparing the way by appearing 
 in His angel. It is significant that in our passage the angel 
 of Jahveh appears first, not to Abram, but to Hagar, and 
 indeed after the concluding of the covenant, ch. xv. If he 
 were the God of the revelation Himself, his appearance 
 would have been no new event, since Jahveh had not only 
 spoken, but also appeared (xii. 7) to Abram before, ch. xv. 
 If, on the contrary, the appearance by the means of the angel 
 is a new and peculiar manner of revelation, this explains the 
 fact of its not taking place till after the conclusion of that 
 covenant, the purpose of which it was appointed to serve, 
 by being a means of that gradual realization of its promise 
 which was now commencing. 
 
 Hagar is resting by a fountain when he finds her; '"^^'yPM, 
 like 1 Chron. xx. 2, for <}—. A fountain is called TV, as though 
 
 1 The section, Ex. xxxii. 30-xxxir. 10, can no more than Ex. xiv. 19 be 
 
 turned to account in ascertaining what is the idea of the 'n "]S?D, without 
 critical analysis. 
 
22 GENESIS XVI. 8-12. 
 
 it were a weeping eye of earth, in Spanish Arabicizecl as ojo de 
 agua. Shakespeare, in the Winter NigMs Tale, compares a 
 beautiful landscape to a female face, and the surface of the 
 water to its eyes. Here at the fountain the angel sends 
 Hagar back to her mistress, vv. 8, 9 : And he said : Hagar, 
 Sarai's maid, ivlicnce earnest thou and whither goest thou ? 
 She said : I flee 'before Sarai, my mistress. And the angel 
 of Jahveh said to her : Beturn to thy mistress, and how thyself 
 under her hands. Upon this condition he promises her, 
 again taking the initiative, an innumerable posterity, ver. 10: 
 And the angel of Jahveh said to her: I will increase, yea 
 increase thy seed, and it shall not he ahle to he numhered for 
 multitude. Then taking the initiative for the third time, he 
 promises her the son through whom the promise made to 
 Abram, xv. 5, shall find a reflected fulfilment in her case, on 
 the ground of her belonging to the patriarch's family, vv. 
 11, 12: And the angel of Jahveh said to her: Behold, thou 
 art 2^fi-'gnant, and shall hear a son, and shall call his name 
 Jisma'el; for Jahveh hath heard thy afllietion. And he shall 
 he a wild ass of a man; his hand shall he against every one, 
 and the hand of every one against him. And he shall divell 
 eastward of all his hrcthren. Together with the participial 
 adj. nnn^ as at xxxviii. 24 and frequently, comp. 2 Sam. 
 xi. 5, stands Ji^l?, the unaltered root-form of Tnb'', as at 
 Judg. xiii. 5, 7 ; comp. on the contrary, xvii. 19 ; Isa, vii. 4. 
 Elsewhere also in J, from iv. 1 onwards, the mother appears 
 as the giver of the name, as the father does in Q, from v. 3 
 onwards. In the reason for the name ''i^J'O'J^'; we have nin* 
 instead of the more obvious n\n^s, xxi. 17. The genitival 
 combination D'tx N"iS), a wild ass of human species, is like ?''?3 
 D*]i?, a fool of human species, i.e. one conspicuous in it as 
 such, Prov. XV. 20. This image of the t<"^3, Arab. /em, the 
 beautiful and swift animal which when grown cannot be 
 caught, described Job xxxix. 5-8, brings vividly before us 
 the unbounded love of freedom of the hardy and frugal 
 
GENESIS XVI. 13. 23 
 
 Bedouin, who despises the life of cities, and roves about, 
 spear in hand, in the desert on his camel (dehil), or subse- 
 quently on liis horse. The words 'iJi b^b^Vn^ it describe an 
 incessant war of attack and defence, as an Arabic poet 
 says: I have fraternized with war; if I do not stir up the 
 war myself, I am the shield of him who stirs it up.' 
 The words '"iJi '?.f-^)3 (like xxiii. 19, xxv. 18) state the 
 eastern dwelling-place of the Ishmaelites among those of 
 the Abrahamites: the peninsula between the Tigris, the 
 isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea, which became the cradle 
 of wandering hordes for the tropical latitudes of North 
 Africa and South Asia, an active human fountain whose 
 streams have flowed for millenniums far and wide, eastward 
 and westward, conquering the nations from the Ebro to the 
 Oxus, and remaining themselves invincible. Hagar rightly 
 recognises in tlie angel who had thus placed before her 
 eyes the future of her son, the Presence of Jahveh, ver. 13: 
 And she called the name of Jahveh who spake to her: Oh, 
 Thov, God of sight; for she said: Have I here also looked 
 after him that secth me ? She calls him ''^5"^. ?ii, God of 
 seeing, i.e. the All-seeing, whose all-seeing eye the helpless 
 and forsaken does not escape, even in the remotest corner 
 of the wilderness ; for — as she says — have I here (Q>1, 
 elsewhere hue, Ex. iii. 5, here hie), even here in the wilder- 
 ness, far from the patriarch's home, looked after him who 
 is seeing me (who has seen me ?). "'fr?'"! is generally, but 
 wrongly, taken fnr a pausal form of ''^57•, which must have 
 l)een ""i^^, with the tone on the penultima, like '''f^, from 
 ^")^, Ezek. xxvii. 17, found at Job vii. 8 (see Baer) as a 
 various reading, but as a masoretically authenticated one, only 
 at 1 Sam. xvi. 12. And ''n\^"i is usually understood, as 
 already by Onkelos, in the sense of vidcns = vivus (like opeoov 
 or SeSopK(o<; — ^mu) mansi, which would have required '^^51^ 
 or HNi ^JS*, or better, as Wellh. {Prolcg. 2nd edit. p. 339, 
 
 ' Sdiwarzlose, Lie Wcifcn der alten Araber (1S86), p. 34. 
 
24 GENESIS XVI, 14. 
 
 note 2) reads, according to Judg. vi. 22, xiii. 22, Ex. xxxiii. 
 20 : V^] '^'^1. But this ""nxj makes "•«-) ''inx inexplicable, 
 which cannot mean " after my seeing " (so already Gcsch. 
 344), for which "•riij^i "'"inx is the expression required. Hence 
 ''SI "•"inx must be taken together, nnx in a local sense, like 
 Isa. xxxvii. 22, and the "looking after" in the sense of 
 Ex. xxxiii. 23. Jahveh appeared to her in His angel. 
 While he was speaking to her he saw her, but it was not 
 granted her to look him in the face ; however, as he was 
 disappearing, she could look after him, whose gracious 
 Providence had not overlooked her in her misery. The 
 fountain also received a name from the occurrence, ver. 14: 
 Therefore the well was called Beer lachai rot; it lies between 
 Kades and. Bered. It was in remembrance of Hagar's 
 experience a sacred place, xxiv. 62, xxv. 11. The \> in the 
 name is the Lamed of dedication, like Isa. viii. 1. If WXi, 
 13&, could mean viviis mansi, the explanation, " He who sees 
 me is (remains) alive," might commend itself; but then God 
 or the angel would be the speaker, which is inconceivable. 
 Hence it is, on the contrary : the well of the Living One, my 
 beholder, i.e. who sees me (like Job viii. 8, instead of V^^ 
 Isa. xxix. 15, or ''J^5^, Isa. xlvii. 10). Onkelos, with real 
 correctness, has : Well of the angel of the Living One (^'^)''<P 
 ^P'i?), who made himself visible to me. For *^'1[^ and "^"^^ the 
 Syriac has : between npn and mj n^3, Onkelos : between Dpi and 
 N"ijn (which in him, ver. 7 = "iVJ^, Targ. Jerus. : between Dpi and 
 n^ilbn (Elusa) ; the Targums elsewhere render Kadesh-Barnea 
 by (nx^n) ni!''a Dpi. The problematic situation of Kadesli was 
 spoken of at xiv. 7. John Eowlands, whose observations H, 
 Cla y Tru mbull found on the spot to be perfectly trustworthy, 
 discovered Hagar's well, or at least that which is now esteemed 
 
 such, at Muweilih (,^L'»^, the name of the black camel, which 
 
 is esteemed the best), a place still provided with water, south 
 of Beersheba. It is a chief station on the caravan road from 
 
GENESIS XVIT. 25 
 
 P>eersLeba along the 'Gebcl es-Sur which runs from north to 
 south, and is comhiued by Eowlands with -wS'. Tlie Bedouins 
 not only connect the well of Muweilih, but also a rocky 
 dwelling in the neighbourhood, with Hagar, perhaps because 
 .sriA and ,.sn.:s- (rock) seem to them as much combined as in 
 tlie Text. Eec. of Gal. iv. 25. It is certainly this very well 
 of which Jerome says : hodieque Agar 2ndeus dcmonstratur. 
 Here the fu£!itive Hagar seems to have had that manifestation 
 of God by which she was directed to return to Abram's 
 house. She also ' showed herself obedient, and became the 
 mother of Ishmael, vv. 15, 16 : And Hagar hare Ahram a 
 son : and Ahram called the name of his son, whom Hagar hare, 
 Jihna'el. And Ahram was eighty-six years old when Hagar 
 hare Jismael to Ahram. That what the angel had predicted 
 came to pass is told by J also, but the Eedactor preferred to 
 reproduce it as found in Q. The birth of Ishmael took place 
 in Abram's eighty-sixth year, for he was seventy-five years old 
 at his entry into Canaan, and ten years (ver. 4) together with 
 the time of Hagar's pregnancy had elapsed. Abram has now 
 a son, but is he the seed which the promises of God have in 
 view ? This question Abram cannot himself answer. He 
 must often have asked it of God, till at last he received the 
 answer related ch. xvii. 
 
 THE SIGN OF THE COVENANT, THE CHANGE OF NAME, AND THE 
 PROMISE OF THE BIRTH OF ISAAC, CH. XVII. 
 
 The third section of Abram's life begins with ch. xvii., a 
 portion characteristic of Q. Elohim seals His covenant with 
 Abram, giving him the name of promise, Abraham, and insti- 
 tuting circumcision as the sign of the covenant (1-14). Sarai 
 also receives the name of promise, Sarah, and is now distinctly 
 designated as the mother of Isaac, who, while to Ishmael also 
 are awarded abundant blessings, is to receive the one all-sur- 
 
26 GENESIS XVII. 
 
 passing blessing, that God will make with him and with his 
 seed an everlasting covenant (15—22). Elohim, who has since 
 the Fall been enthroned far from men, and since the Flood far 
 from the earth, having reascended, Abraham in his ninety-ninth 
 year, and in Ishmael's thirteenth, circumcises himself, his son 
 and his whole household (23-27). Thus this first portion of 
 the third section, which corresponds with and continues the first 
 portion of the second section, falls into three strictly distinct 
 divisions. This strophic artistically rounded off design, with its 
 terminating exclamations, its frequent repetitions like strokes 
 upon the same nail, the Divine names D^^^x and ''Tc^ ^;x, the 
 whole systemof favourite expressions grouped about these names 
 and always found with them (n-inx, jj?_33 px, nnrp, iMn not 
 "i^j, JT'-ia D''pn and nna jn: not nnn m!), ^?]"^3, '^^'"''■'r', ^^P '^^^, 
 Dnjp, cipa-njpp^ n'-syn Ninn e'san nn-iDJi, rhsu mnx^ and fT'in"^ 
 thSv, n;rn Di'[i Ci>*y3, nnni nis), in short all and everything bears 
 the mark of Q, who here gives completely in its historical 
 place an important portion of the Thorah, which is after- 
 wards taken for granted in the Codex, Lev. xii. 3, witliout 
 farther explanation. Elsewhere too he refers to this funda- 
 mental confirmation of the covenant, Ex. vi. 3 sq., and when 
 xvii. 16 sq. is compared with xviii. 10—15, shows himself to 
 be an independent and separate narrator, rinn is repeated 
 thirteen times, whence an ancient eulogy of circumcision 
 {Nedarim oil), comp. Bcrachoth 48&) says: im^:::' n^"'D n^nj 
 
 There has been much contention as to whether a custom 
 existing elsewhere was transferred by Divine sanction to the 
 race of the promise, or whether the origin of all circumcision 
 is to be traced back to its Divine sanction for Abram. The 
 circumcision of boys of thirteen, already existing among the 
 Arabic Ishmaelites before Moliammed (Joseph. Ant. i. 12. 2), 
 refers itself to the patriarch as a component part of the Din 
 Ibrahim (the religion of Abraham). There is however, besides 
 these two possibilities, still a third. When Herodotus testifies 
 
\ 
 
 GENESIS XVI r. 27 
 
 to the customariness of circumcision among the Colchians, 
 Egyptians and ^Ethiopians, among the Syrians at the rivers 
 Thermodon and Parthenios, among the Phcenicians and 
 Macronians, and remarks that the Palestinian Syrians and 
 the Phoenicians confess to having learnt it from the Egyptians, 
 as tlie Syriars at the Thermodon and Parthenios do to having 
 it from the Colchians (ii. 104): its dissemination by way of 
 imitation among this circle of nations (to which belong also, 
 according to Liodorus, iii. 32, the Troglodytes, and apparently, 
 according to Jer, ix. 25, Edom, Ammon and Moab) is indeed 
 still conceivable ; and we may assume, with Ewald, that the 
 still existing custom among the Ethiopian Christians, the 
 negroes of the Congo, etc., is the remnant of an ancient 
 African view of the matter which started from the valley 
 of the Nile. But we also meet with circumcision in America 
 among many Indian tribes, e.g. the Salivas, the Guamos, the 
 Otamocos on the Orinoco, who circumcise infants of both 
 sexes on the eighth day after birth, as also among the inhabi- 
 tants of Yucatan and the Mexicans (see Martins, Indlancr 
 Siidamer ilea's, p. 582 sq.). It has likewise been found in the 
 South Sea Islands, e.r/. in the Fiji Islands, in a manner similar 
 to the Jewish, and among the most southerly negro tribes, e.g. 
 the Damaras (Owaherero) in tropical South . Africa, whose 
 chiefs, we are told by Francis Galton, slew half a dozen 
 oxen on a circumcision day, as on a day of festivity. Here 
 we cannot imagine any connection with either the Abrahamic 
 or the ancient Egyptian circumcision, unless we were, with the 
 crack-brained author of the Palaeorama (1868), to transfer the 
 primitive history of mankind from Asia to America, and let it be 
 played out originally in the latter, and only imitatively in the 
 former. The case is the same with heathen circumcision as 
 with heathen sacrifice. As sacrifice arose from the feeling of 
 the need of an atonement, so did circumcision from the feeling 
 of the impurity of human nature. This too is the point of 
 sight under which it is placed in Israel. The uncircumcised 
 
28 GENESIS XVII. 
 
 is esteemed as ^t?^, the foreskin np-iy as <^^^^ JKar i^., on 
 which account hereditary spiritual uncleanness is! figuratively- 
 called (Lev. xxvi. 41; Deut. x. 16, xxx. 6 and frequently) 
 np^J? of the heart, while circumcision is regarded iis the taking 
 away of nsrpD (whence it is in Arabic simply ■ called tuhur 
 or tathir, purification), and as the first of all covenant duties 
 for every member of the holy nation, Ex. xix. 6 .; comp. Num. 
 xvi. 3. The uncircumcised appeared not merely as one 
 ^«tanding outside the holy covenant, but also a^ one naturally 
 unclean (comp. Ex. xii. 48 with Lev. vii. 20). The natural 
 and ethical prerequisites of circumcision are however implied 
 in each other. The reason for circumcision appearing as a 
 requirement of bodily purity, is to be found in the fact that 
 human natural life culminates in the intercourse of the sexes, 
 and therefore its carnalization culminates in the flesh Kar i^. 
 ("ib'B, Lev. XV. 2 ; Ezek. xvi. 26), that there is the chief seat 
 of both moral and natural impurity, and that there sin prevails 
 most unrestrictedly and is transmitted in ever new combina- 
 tions from parents to children. Hence also the injunction 
 that the child is to be circumcised on the eighth day after 
 birth (ver. 12 ; Lev. xii. 3), for both the male child and she 
 who bare him are in a state of uncleanness for seven days, 
 and the child is not to be subjected to circumcision till after 
 separation for the embryonal aliment. To the physico-ethic 
 prerequisites of circumcision is also added the historical, viz. 
 that a nation of redemption is to be begotten, that it may 
 become the redemption of the nations. There is therefore no 
 place of human nature which could be more in need of a sign 
 of the Divine approval than the place of generation. Circum- 
 cision is intended to show that God approves of generatiou, 
 notwithstanding the sinful corruption which has taken posses- 
 sion of it, and purposes to use it in that work of redemption 
 to which history is tending. The circumcised man is to know 
 himself to be a member of a tribal and national society, with 
 which God has entered into an eternal covenant, upon the 
 
GENESIS XVII. 29 
 
 ground of promises which have for their contents the redemp- 
 tion of mankind, and whose generations form a genealogical 
 chain issuing in the redemption of the world. Circumcision 
 is to remind him of the covenant into which he has entered 
 with God, and of the high calling in which he has a share, is 
 to be to him a perpetual reminder, warning not to obstruct in 
 rude immoral lust his power of generation, and also, in its 
 natural use, not to forget its impurity and need of sanctifica- 
 tion. So far circumcision certainly is also, as Philo says, a 
 sign of the rj^ovoiv eKTO/xr] at Karayorireuovac Bidvoiav. It told 
 the man that he had Jahveh for his bridegroom, to whom he 
 was betrothed by the blood of circumcision, Ex. iv. 25; hence not 
 only the Jews, but the Ishmaelites and the Moslems in general, 
 call the day of circumcision the circumcision marriage, and 
 celebrate it with the solemnity of a wedding. Still circum- 
 cision is no sacrament in the New Testament sense, and 
 differs from baptism in this respect also, that it is no initiatory , 
 rite properly so called. It is not circumcision which makes 
 the Israelite an Israelite, i.e. a member of the Israelite Church. 
 He is this by birth. For in the Old Testament the nation 
 and the Church are one and the same. Every ^Nnb*^ p belongs 
 as such to the PXib'^ ^'Hi?, for God has placed Israel in cove- 
 nant relation to Himself, and in virtue of this position the 
 nation is at the same time a religious community. This 
 covenant relation involves however covenant obligations, 
 which again have as their correlative covenant promises. 
 The first of all these covenant obligations is the np'^p. The 
 reception of circumcision is for the born Israelite the fulfil- 
 ment of his first covenant obligation. The born Israelite does 
 not thereby become a member of the 'n ?ni?, but proves him- 
 self to be such. The case is however different with the 
 Gentile. He can in no other manner enter the community 
 of the covenant than by submitting to the first covenant 
 obligation, the n^"'P, by which he at the same time takes upon 
 himself all the duties of a born Israelite, and receives all his 
 
30 GENESIS XVII. 
 
 privileges and benefits. Circumcision, wliich is to the born 
 Israelite only the seal of the relation in which the seed of 
 Abraham is placed toward Jahveh, is to the non-Israelite the 
 rite of admission, which qualifies him henceforth to keep the 
 Passover with Israel (Ex. xii. 43—49), and so incorporates 
 him into Israel that there is no difference between the 
 circumcised "iji and the nnT5< (Ex. xiL 48). So far then as it 
 compensates in the case of the non-Israelite for birth among 
 the covenant people, and in that of the Israelite is a seal of 
 that birth. Circumcision and Baptism may certainly be com- 
 pared as means of grace, incorporating into the Church, 
 They are also similar, in that both are a recasting of an 
 already existing rite of purification, for the sacrament of 
 Baptism is in conformity with the anj rh^2l2 (the baptism of 
 proselytes), and at all events with that of John the Baptist. 
 In other respects however they essentially differ. Circum- 
 cision impresses an outward characteristic. Baptism an inward 
 one. Circumcision places a man in relation, by way of pro- 
 mise, to the coming redemption ; Baptism, by way of imparta- 
 tion, to the redemption that is come. Circumcision is for the 
 seed of Abraham, and only secondarily for those who enter it ; 
 Baptism is for the whole human race without national preroga- 
 tive, and also without distinction of sex. Circumcision is a sign 
 in the flesh ; Baptism is a spiritual transaction, which is but 
 transitorily represented in the earthly element of water, irepnoixr) 
 a'^eLpoTTOL'qTo^, Col. ii. 11. For the Old Testament Church is 
 the visible organism of a nation ; the New Testament Church 
 is, on the contrary, the body of Christ, i.e. the invisible organism 
 which the Lord, who is the Spirit, has produced for Himself. 
 It is the vocation of the New Testament Church to carry on 
 the development of that spiritual life which is its true nature, 
 and to procure for it an ever more and more commanding, 
 sanctifying influence upon the natural, both within and 
 without her body ; it is, on the other hand, the vocation of 
 the Old Testament Church more and more to internalize and 
 
GENESIS XVII. 1. 31 
 
 spiritualize the sanctified natural life wliicli is its true nature. 
 The tendency of the New Testament Church is from within 
 outwards, from the centre to the circumference, from the 
 world to come to this world, to raise the latter to the former. 
 The tendency of the Old Testament Cliurch, on the contrary, 
 is from without inwards, from the circumference to the centre, 
 from this world to that which is to come. 
 
 The name 'n just appears, ver. 1, for the purpose of con- 
 necting ch. xvii. with ch. xvi. (comp., on the other hand, 
 XXXV. 11) : Ahram was ninety and nine years old when Jalivch 
 appeared to Ahram, and said to him : I am El ^Saddai : walk 
 before me, and he spotless. It was then twenty-four years after 
 his migration, thirteen after the Lirth of Ishmael, and at least 
 fourteen after the entering into covenant of ch. xv., when 
 Jahveh appeared to him to seal the covenant by the institu- 
 tion of a sign. The divine name "''^^ is, according to ancient 
 interpretation, the same as '''^ ^T^, He who is self-sufficing — ^ 
 the All-Suflticient iKavo'^ ( = atiT«/3/<:779), which can in no respect 
 be accepted. ISTeither is it an original plural : potentes mei 
 (Noldeke), the form being opposed to this interpretation, and 
 no trace appearing of the position of the word in the address ; 
 but it is from ^T^ (according to the form ""an), which, from the 
 root 11 paning of making fast or tight, i.e. knotting, barring, 
 
 ba .leading, contained in the Arabic Jw, advances to that of 
 powerful intervention, and not from a synonymous nnc', which 
 the usage of the Hebrew language does not exhibit, nor from 
 a synonymous iw, whence '^p, the powerful, the Lord, plur. 
 Dnc', Friedr. Delitzsch thinks differently,^ and would refer 
 this Divine name to the Assyrian kidil, to be high. But even 
 supposing that the proper name i^^<"''!!y' is to be explained 
 according to the Assyrian sade uru, the rise of the morning 
 (="inti'n nipy), which is very tempting, and granting also that 
 
 • See liis Prolerjomena, p. 95 sq. It is worthj' of notice that the LXX. trans- 
 lates >1C' ^X, xvii. 1, by merely a 0so; nou, xxviii. 3, i Qiit fiou, Ex. vi. 3, ewe 
 
 i/v alTuv, and Ps. Ixviii. 15, tcv swau^av/ov. 
 
 i^ 
 
32 GENESIS XVII, 1. 
 
 /the form "''^^, not ''^^, can be referred to a verb ^^, we find 
 ^ the meaning, " the All-Powerful," far more sensible than tlie 
 meaning, " the All-elevated," for which the Hebrew has a 
 whole series of other words, as li^^y, D"i (Dno) n^y^ 2ab>3. The 
 most ancient feeling for language derived ''"^C^' from ^^t^>, as 
 may be inferred from Joel i. 15, and the former meaning is 
 in any case more helpful to the understanding of Ex. vi. 2 sq. 
 than the latter. The Divine names, D\"ibs, nD* bn, nins are the 
 sicrns-manual of three decrees of Divine revelation and Divine 
 knowledge. > n^^^x is the God who so made nature that it 
 exists, and so preserves it that it consists. ""ID ^S is the God 
 who so constrains nature that it does His will, and so subdues 
 it that it bows to and subserves grace. ^^ nin"" is the God who 
 carries out the purposes of grace in the midst of nature, and 
 at last puts a new creation of grace in the place of nature. 
 n''rhii is the God who created the soil of nature. "'1^ ba 
 (explained by Ibn Ezra and Kimchi : r]:Ybvi^ nDnj;on nV3Q, by 
 Nachmani: ni^ron-ns mvj', He who breaks through the in- 
 Jluxus sidcrum, and therefore the course of nature) is the God 
 who omnipotently ploughs it and scatters therein the seed of 
 promise, mn'' is the God who brings this seed of promise tQ 
 its flower and fruit. Hence the covenant with Noah and the 
 ISToachid^e was made in the name W'rh^ ; for this covt- " it is 
 by its very nature a renewal and guarantee of the oral ' of 
 creation, which had been broken through by the Flood ; t'he 
 covenant with the patriarchs in the name nc' i^X, for it is b^ 
 its nature the subdual of corrupted and perishable nature ant^ 
 the foundation of the marvellous work of grace ; and the 
 covenant with Israel in the name nirr", for it is in its nature 
 the completion of this work of grace and its carrying on to 
 the climax of its perfection, to which nin"' ^pN, when occurring 
 in the history of the patriarchs (xv. 7, xxviii. 13), prophetic 
 cally points. The times of the patriarchs are the period of 
 El-Sbaddai. Their characteristic is the violence done to the 
 natural to make it subserve the purposes of salvation. The 
 
GENESIS XVIT, 2-5. 33 
 
 ethic prerequisites of tliis new state are, with respect to 
 Abram, a walk with constant regard to God and a disposi- 
 tion entirely devoted to Him {^''^^, see on vi. 9). Thereupon 
 God offers, ver. 2 : So vAll I make my covenant letvjeen me and 
 thee, and icill increase thee heyond measure, properly with 
 weight, weight i.e. in the most important and intense manner. 
 The phrase rvi2 jn: (here as at ix. 12; Num. xxv. 1 2) 
 designates the covenant as a gracious free offer of God. The 
 impression made upon Abram by the appearance and word 
 of God, ver. 3a ; And Ahram fell upon his face. Continua- 
 tion of what God will perform in accordance with His 
 covenant and change of Abram's name, 3&— 5 : And MoMm 
 talked vnth Mm, saying: As for me, hcJiold, my covenant toitli 
 thee, and thou art to heeome the father of a multitude of nations. 
 And no longer shall thy name he' called Ahram ; hut thy name 
 shall he Abraham, for the father of a multitude of nations have 
 I appointed thee. V^ here, like ''23NI at xxiv. 27, stands first, in 
 an absolute sense, correlatively with ^^^\ ver. 9. Because 
 the covenant implies something that is to be, ^''^ni. may be 
 used in continuation, in the sense of " thou art to become." 
 The 1 before n^n] after a preceding ^ has, as at xlii. 10, the 
 meaning of "QN '•3. The accusative of the object is found 
 with passives as at 5«, also at iv. 18, and frequently, it is an 
 ordinary construction, pis^ instead of ''3??? is said with refer- 
 ence to the name ^v""]?!;:?, in which ^X, as also elsewhere e.g. 
 Diptrax (with Di7K'''as), is the form of combination. |ion (from 
 non, to roar, to rush), which symphonizes with the last 
 syllable of Qv"!?^, is purposely chosen instead of ^Dip, xxxv. 11, 
 xlviii. 4, xxviii. 3. And while, where this promise is made 
 to Jacob xxviii. 3 (DMpy hr\\h), xxxv. 11 (D^ia ^r]^:), and to 
 Joseph xlviii. 4 (Q''^y ^^??), D"'»y (d"'13) is meant of the 
 national tribes to which the sons of Jacob should grow, we 
 must here, where as nowhere else D^^a li^H is used, under- 
 stand not Israel alone, but all the nations of whom Abraham 
 
 became the ancestor : the Arab tribes descended from him 
 VOL. n. . , I c 
 
34 GENESIS XVII. 6-11. 
 
 through Hagar and Keturah and the Edomites. The quota- 
 tion too (Eom. iv. 17) presupposes that the promise extends 
 beyond Israel — tlie apostle placing it in the light of xii. 3, 
 and understanding it spiritually. The name D";3X means 
 exalted father, or, the father is exalted, which certainly is to 
 be understood as a word of acknowledgment with respect 
 to God, like ns''^X, God is a father, nTy"'a^<, the father is a 
 support, and the like (see Nestle, Eigcnnamcn, pp. 182-188). 
 By the change to Dm2X, the acknowledgment of God on the 
 part of him who is named becomes God's acknowledgment 
 of him. For Cin"i3X means — and this is certainly the best 
 explanation — father of a QD1 (~P^-C)j o^ ^ rushing, i.e. a 
 
 noisy, multitude (Arab. Anj ; comp, Isa. xvii. 12, 13) ; nor is 
 
 it perhaps accidental that a n, the fundamental letter of nin"", is 
 interwoven in it. After the name of the patriarch is made the 
 prophetic cipher of his high destiny, the promise is further « 
 unfolded and repeated in grander terms than ever before,! 
 vv. 6-8 : And I will make thee exceedingly fruitful ocyond 
 oneasure, and appoint thee to he nations, and Icings shall come 
 forth from thee. And I will cstaUish my covenant hcfivecn me 
 and thee and thy seed after thee, according to their generations, 
 for an everlasting covenant, to he a God to thee and to thy seed 
 after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, 
 the land of thy pilgrimage, the ivhole land of Canaan, for an ever- 
 lasting possession, and I will he their oum God. This fact to which 
 the promise returns is the climax of the covenant: God promises 
 Himself, with all that He is and purposes and can effect, to the 
 descendants of Abraham. Henceforth the narrative no longer 
 speaks of the patriarch as Ahram, but as Abraham. 
 
 The Divine address having now reached the goal so 
 admirably prepared for, begins again, vv. 9-11 : Elohim. said 
 also to Abraham : And as for thee, thou shall observe my 
 covenant, thou and thy descendants after thee, according to their 
 generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall observe, between 
 
GENESIS XVII. 0-14. 35 
 
 7ne and ijou and thy seed after tlicc : Every male among yuw 
 shall he circumcised. Ye shall circumcise the flesh of your 
 foreskin, and it shall he the sign of a covenant hetwccn me and 
 you. The obverse to V^j!, Aa, f olIows_in tjija j^J?j$V-tIiou, on" 
 thy part. Si" nnn WpT\ means at one time the making, at 
 another the confirmation, of a covenant, so does JTina mean 
 at one time a covenant promise, at another, as here, a 
 covenant obligation or condition. To circumcise (comp. on 
 the notion. Job xxiv. 24) is called ?!?9 (V ^o, perhaps related 
 to 10, from the drawing backwards and forwards of the cut- 
 ting instrument), Niph. ^tp}, whence Dnpo3 = Dri?p3 (with an 
 accus. of the object, as is also the case with the passive at 
 vv. 5, 14, 24), not from a verb ^^}, which does not exist in 
 this sense, and probably also the impf ??3"' (Ps. xxxvii. 2 ; 
 Job xiv. 2, xviii. 16); or ^i» (post-biblical Pn^), Niph. biSJ 
 (according to the post-biblical formation, ji'^?, >i5»*3, pifJ, Luzz. 
 Gramm. § 521), whence the imperatively used inf. ahs. biEH^ 
 10&. The mode of performance is now more particularly 
 defined, the law of circumcision specialized, vv. 12-14: And 
 eight clays old shall every male he circumcised according to your 
 generations: the home-horn and the hought with money of all 
 strangers, who do not helong to thy seed. Circumcised, yea, 
 circumcised shall he thy home-horn and he that is houglit with 
 thy money, and my covenant shall he in your flesh for an 
 everloMing covenant. And an uncircumciscd one, a male, who 
 is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin — this soul shall 
 he extirpated from his felloio- countrymen, my covenant has he 
 hroken. Circumcision is to be performed on a child when he 
 is eight days old, in which injunction seven days are reckoned, 
 according to Lev. xii., for purification from the uncleanness 
 which adheres to the child as well as to the mother directly 
 after birth. It is also to be performed on every slave of the 
 patriarchal family, whether vernae or mancijna, so that the 
 family may be esteemed a nnity which is neither accidental 
 nor one merely serving the earthly. Especially must this be 
 
36 GENESIS XVII. 15, 16. 
 
 the case with the nation developing in this family, into which 
 all who are susceptible of salvation in the heathen world are 
 to be incorporated by circumcision as subsequently by baptism. 
 Extirpation ('"innsj"!) from the national society is to be the lot 
 of the uncircumcised. The same threat is found with the 
 command to observe the Sabbath, there including the capital ' 
 punishment to be inflicted by the congregation, Ex. xxxi. 14, 
 comp. also xxxv. 2, Num. xv. 32-36 ; its proper meaning 
 however is the being snatched away by direct Divine judg- 
 ment, according to tradition the premature and childless death 
 of one who is uncircumcised and of full age. In this threat 
 of the so-called Carath, >}''^V^ (for which Ex. xxxi. 14 has 
 iTJsy 37j5p) is interchanged with the synonymous bx"ib"D^ Ex. 
 xii. 15, Num. xix. 13, or bxib'^ myo Ex. xii. 19, Num. 
 xvi. 9. The plural n"'Sj; does not assume that the singular 
 oy may signify a single fellow-countryman (as the post-biblical 
 ••13 means also a single heathen) ; QV means the people as a 
 whole, and C^V the parts of the whole nation (tribes, families 
 and individuals, Dyn V.?, Lev. xix. 18, comp. 16). The 
 reason "iS^i 'T'''"'?"'^^ implies that it is not dcfedus, but con- 
 temtus, which incurs the penalty of the Carath ; on the pausal 
 .^nan like 'j?!?, Isa. xviii. 5, see Ges. § 67, note 6. 
 
 The Divine address begins again. Sarai's name, which 
 she brought with her from her heathen ancestral home, is 
 also to be transformed, in accordance with the new times 
 rich in promise, Vv^hich were to begin with Abraham, vv. 
 15, 16: And Ulohim said to Ahraliam: Sarai thy wife — 
 tliou sJialt not call her name Sarai, for Sarah shall her name 
 he. And I will hlcss her and also give thee a son of her, 
 and will hless her and she shall become nations. Kings of 
 nations shall arise from her. The fundamental letter of 
 the name nin'' is entwined in the name of the ancestress 
 also of that promised seed, which is the germ and star of 
 the promised future. The warlike ("'li^', LXX. Hdpa, from 
 mb', to struggle, to fight, with " the old feminine suffix. 
 
GENESIS XVII. 17-21. 37 
 
 which still occurs iii the Syriac as ai, and is written i 
 ill the Arabic, e in the Ethiopic," DMZ. xl. 183) becomes 
 a princess (n"ib', fern, of li?', prince, LXX. Xappa, with 
 double /5 as a compensation for the length of tlie a; 
 Assyr. larratic, fem. of mrric, according to Friedr. Delitzsch,^ 
 from sardru, to rise brilliantly, to beam forth). She is to 
 become 2'i3, the twelve tribes of Israel, and the multitude 
 of the heathen spiritually incorporated therein being traced 
 back to her. The promise now included Sarah also in its 
 miraculous circle. Impression made upon Abraham by the 
 glorious yet paradoxical announcement, ver. 17 : And 
 AbraJiam fell upon his face and laiighcd, and he said in 
 his heart : Shall a child he horn to one a hundred years old, 
 or shall Sarah — shadl one that is ninety years old hear ? 
 The succession of interrogative particles n ' ' DN1 * " n is more 
 emphatic than at Num. xi. 12, 22, and the Dagesh in 
 i^pn is like xviii. 21, xxxvii. 32. His desire concerning 
 the son whom he already has, ver. 18: And AhraJtam said 
 to God : Would that Ishmael might live in Thy sight ! That 
 he might only remain an object of God's loving care ! (Prov. 
 iv. 3). This shall suffice him ; he ventures to ask and to 
 hope for nothing higher. God's answer to the petition which 
 thus evades His promise, vv. 19—21: And God said: Nay, 
 hut Sarah thy wife shall surely hear thee a son, and thou 
 shall call his name Isaac, and I establish my covenant loith 
 him for an everlasting covenant, with his seed after hiyi. 
 And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee : Behold, I have blessed 
 him and made hint fruitful and increased him exceedingly ; 
 twelve ijrinces shall he beget; and I have apiiointed him for 
 a greoi nation. But my covenant I establish with Isaac, 
 ivhom Sarah shall hear unto thee about tins time in the next 
 year. The particle ?^^? (apparently from V ^3, whence also 
 ''?, ^^'^j to be powerful =^jo^c?i^cr, vcro) introduces a counter- 
 assurance, and then an assurance in general (comp. Eruhin 
 
 ^ See the satisfactory proof in Lis Prolajomcna, p. 92, 
 
38 GENESIS XVIL 22-27. 
 
 2Qb, bm ]^b nON*, tliej answered : certainly). The S of 
 7Xy»t^'v^ is that of reference, as at xix, 21, xlii. 9; corop. 
 Isa. xxxii. lb. On the twelve D''^5''b'3 of Ishmael, see 
 XXV. 12-16. Ishmael also is abundantly blessed, but the 
 covenant surpassing all that is earthly is made with Isaac, 
 who will be born about this time, n"]!^^'^ '^t^'^j ^^ the year 
 next following, properly that coming behind the present ; 
 comp, oTTiaOev, afterwards = future (see this referred to, 
 xxi. 2). The name Jishah (laugher) is to be the con- 
 tinuous expression of the impression made upon Abraham 
 by the promise. Its matter was so immensely great that he 
 fell in adoration on the earth, so immensely paradoxical that 
 he could but involuntarily laugh. Contrast is the essence of 
 the ridiculous. What "•nc' i?x does, takes nature captive to 
 the obedience of grace, and reason to the obedience of faith. 
 
 Cessation of the Divine address, ver. 22 : And when He 
 had ended His speaking ivith him, Elohim went up leaving 
 Abraham. Jerome also marks the period thus : ut dcsiit 
 loqiii cum eo, etc. 22« being logically an accessory sentence, 
 the subject C:"'n7X is reserved for the principal sentence, 
 by'l can signify that God went away from Abraham, withdrew 
 from him (comp. Ex. xxxiii. 1) ; but the parallel passage, 
 XXXV. 13, shows that ascension to heaven is intended, — the 
 heavenly one then had descended, for since the Fall God is 
 far from man, and since the Flood the place of His throne 
 has been super-terrestrial. Abraham now executes the order 
 of Him who has disappeared, vv. 23-27: And Abraham 
 took Ishmael his son and all his servants born in his 
 house and bought, every male among the 2^cople of Abraham's 
 house, and circumcised the flesh of their forcshin on the same 
 day, as Elohim had said unto him. And Abraham ivas 
 ninety - nine years old when the flesh of his foreskin ivas 
 circumcised. And Ishmael his son was seventeen years old 
 when the flesh of his foreskin ivas circumcised. On one and 
 the same day was Abraham circumcised and Ishmael his son. 
 
GENESIS XVIII., XIX. 39 
 
 And all the people of his house, the home-horn and those bought of 
 a stranger, ivcrc circumcised ivith him. The n of ''^^^^, 23a, 
 is partitive, like vii, 21, xxiii. 18, and like the p of ?3p, 
 121) ; while, on the other hand, nxp, 27a, according to Lev. 
 xxvii. 24, comp. Gen. x.xiii. 20 (=TP, xxxiii. 19), belongs 
 to riJpjp, Dvy in biblical Hebrew serves to denote naturally 
 lifeless, as t^'23 does a naturally living being, hence eo ipso 
 die, codem die. On account of the great importance of 
 circumcision, the obligation of which is presupposed in 
 subsequent legislation, its performance is related as circum- 
 stantially and accurately as possible. 
 
 THE HEAVENLY MESSENGERS AT MAIIRE AND SODOM, 
 CHS. XVIII.-XIX. 
 
 1. Renewed promise of a son hy Sarah, xviii. 1-15. 
 
 The Elohistic introduction, ch. xvii., which, by relating the 
 inauguration of a new period for Sarah and Abraham, at 
 the same time prepares for the birth of the son of promise, 
 is followed by the second portion of the third section of 
 Abraham's life, chs. xviii.-xix. In this the angelic visits in 
 the grove of Mamre and in Sodom, together with the 
 promises in the former case and the infliction of judgment 
 in the latter which accompanied them, are, with the excep- 
 tion of xix. 29, narrated throughout by that master of the 
 epic art, J. He is at once recognisable by the flowing, 
 vivid and graphic mode of statement which both enters 
 into details and stedfastly pursues its conscious object, by 
 the Divine name rm\ together with ijis', by the promise that 
 the nations shall be blessed in the seed of the patriarchs, 
 xviii. 18, comp. xii, 3, and by certain favourite expressions, 
 such as i<,2-n3n xviii. 27, 31, xix. 2, 7, 19, 20 comp. xii. 
 11 ; |?'?y "'3 xviii. 5, xix. 8 comp. xxxiii. 10, xxxviii. 
 26; Num. x. 31, xiv. 43; n^ ns? xviii. 13 comp. xxv. 
 
40 GENESIS XVIII. 1-3. 
 
 22, 32, xxxiii. 15, The style touches closely upon the 
 Deuterouomic, e.g. in the frequent energetic imperfect form 
 in iln, xviii. 28-32, and in the 7^? contracted from npx, xix. 
 8, 25 comp. xxvi. 3, 4, Deut. iv. 42, vii. 22, xix. 11 
 (elsewhere only once in the Law of Holiness, Lev. xviii. 27 
 and 1 Chron. xx. 8). The first part of this historical picture, 
 extending from xviii. 1 to xix. 28 (29), and continuing in 
 the appendix, xix. 30 sqq., viz. xviii. 1-16, is (within the 
 extant composition of extracts from sources), as it were, the 
 continuous historical development of xvii. 21. Por the 
 promise, which forms the central point of xviii. 1-1 G, is not 
 very differently expressed, vv. 10 and 14. Hence it was 
 not long after the institution of circumcision that the heavenly 
 visitants made their appearance. Theophanies increase in 
 frequency in proportion as that great event in the history of 
 redemption, the birth of Isaac, draws near. 
 
 What follows is in accordance with its nature introduced 
 as an appearance of Jahveh, ver. 1 : And Jahveh cqjpearccl 
 to Mm ly the tercljintlis of Mamre, as he was sitting at the 
 door of the tent in the heat of the day. The grove of Mamre 
 has continued to be the abode of Abraham since xiii. 18, 
 xiv. 13. bT\^r\ nns is, like 10&, the accus. of the place. 
 He was sitting outside in the shadow of the tent, when 
 suddenly a surprising sight appeared, ver. 2 : And he lifted 
 lip his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men standing at a short 
 distance from him. He saiu and ran to meet them, and towed 
 himself to the earth. The impression of the uncaused is 
 enhanced by the expression n^ni. To remain standing was^ 
 according to custom, an unassuming appeal to hospitality. 
 V^y over against him is equivalent to at some, but not at 
 a great distance from him. The invitation and its accept- 
 ance, vv. 3- 5 : And he said : Lord, if novj I have found 
 graee in Thine eyes, pass not aivay from Thy servant. Let a 
 little water he fetehed and wash your feet and rest binder the 
 tree. And L will bring a piece of I read, and strengthen ye 
 
GENESIS XVm. 6-8. 41 
 
 your heart, after that ye may go farther, for therefore are ye 
 come to your servant ! — Tliey said : So do as thou hast said. 
 With the expression of the condition is blended in NJ"QX, the 
 wish that it may be so; so too at xxiv. 42, xxxiii. 10, xlvii. 
 29, 1. 4; Ex. xxxiii. 13, xxxiv. 9; compare the simple CX 
 Num. xxxii. 5, xi. 15. The washing of the feet was, 
 especially when sandals were worn, the first kind office 
 rendered to travellers on their reception (e.g. in the N", T. 
 1 Tim. V. 19, vLTTTeiv tou? Tro'Sa?), and before they were 
 entertained. \V^V means here to rest thoroughly by 
 leaning and propping oneself. To recline at table was 
 not an ancient Semitic custom. C^n/'^? sounds modest ; 
 courtesy makes little of its own doings. Food and drink 
 were, according to the ancient view, the strengthening of 
 the heart, Judg. xix. 5, 1 Kings xiii. V, cornp. Acts xiv. 17. 
 ">nx is here an adv. as at x. 18, xxiv. 55, Num. xxxi. 2 and 
 frequently. Therefore — thinks Abraham — it has so fallen 
 out, that I might have the opportunity of showing kindness 
 to you; |3"^y ""S, as at xix. 8, xxxiii. 10, xxxviii. 26, Num. 
 X. 31, xiv. 43, comp. J.3~^y "^^^ Job xxxiv. 27, not everywhere 
 tlie same as ''p \p'^V or "iC'N:-}3-^y : therefore that = because, but 
 so conceived as it reads : for this purpose. The three men 
 then accept the kindly persuasive invitation. ^1'^\ as at 
 xix. 21, has not a pausal Kametz. Abraham's hospitable pre- 
 parations, vv. 6—8 : And Abraham hastened into the tent to 
 Sarah and said : Feteh ([uieldy three Sedh of fine meal, knead, 
 and make cakes. And Abraham ran to the herd and took a 
 calf tender and good and gave to the servant, and he hasted to 
 dress it. And he took lutter and milk and the calf ivhich he 
 had dressed, and 'placed it before them, while he stood by them 
 under the tree, and they ate. The tone in >^\[}^^ (according to 
 Baer's text) is upon the ultima, but in xxiv. 67 upon the 
 penultima.^ nijy (from Jiy, to curve, to round) is a usual dish 
 
 1 But see FrensdorfTs edit, of the Darche ha-Nikkud of Moses Punctator 
 (1S77), pp. 21 and xxxiii. 
 
42 GENESIS XVIIL 9-12. 
 
 of hospitality, which the Bedouin women prepare rapidly and 
 even while riding upon the camel ; the addition of three nsp 
 (Aram. ^5n^?» Assyr. sutu), hence | = 1 ephah, was super- 
 abundant for three men, comp. Ex. xvi. 16. Butter and 
 milk served, according to Bedouin custom, for the basting 
 of the meat ; the traditional explanation of Ex. xxiii. 1 9 
 and elsewhere rejects this. It was also a requirement of 
 fjood manners that Abraham should not sit with his honoured 
 guests, but remain standing and awaiting their commands. The 
 narrative — says Lane {Sitf.cn unci Gcbrduclie, ii. 116) — con- 
 tains a perfect description of the manner in which a Bedouin 
 Sheikh of the present day entertains a traveller arriving at 
 his tent. And General Daumas {Die Pferde dcr Sahara, p. 
 195) says : "A stranger appears before the Duar, he remains 
 at some distance and says, Dcif rdbU, i.e. a guest sent by the 
 Lord. The effect is magical, all spring up, hasten towards 
 him, and bring him into the tent . . . the master of the tent 
 keeps him company all day long . . . there is never the 
 impertinent question : Whence comest thou, or whither goest 
 thou ? " 
 
 Now follows, ver. 9 sqq., the conversation at table. The 
 guests beginning it, ver. 9 : And they said to him : Wliere is 
 Sarah thy ivife ? And he said : There in the tent. The fact 
 that V^x has VX super-punctuated may point to a various 
 reading i^, and is favourable to the view that a model copy is 
 the basis of the Masoretic text. The promise and its impres- 
 sion upon Sarah, vv. 10-12 : And he said: Ecturn, yea return 
 will I to thee about the time when it revives, and, lo, Sarah thy 
 wife has a son ; hut Sarah heard it in the door of the tent, and 
 this ivas behind him. And Abraham and Sarah were old, well 
 striclcen in age ; the rules, after the manner of women, had ceased 
 ivith Sarah. And Sarah laughed ivithin herself, saying : After 
 I am worn with age shoidd I have 2^^casure now, when my lord 
 is old ? The definition of time, n^'D ^J^|, means at the reviving 
 time, or rather, since "^JD is without an article, at the time 
 
GENESIS XVIII. 13-15. 43 
 
 when it revives, Ges. § 109. 2h ; comp. the synonymous 
 expression irepnrkojjLevov ivtavrov, 1 Sam. i. 20. X^i^l, 10b, 
 refers to the door, according to others (LXX.) to Sarah, which 
 is contrary to the traditional text. The door was behind him 
 who gave the promise, hence she heard without being seen by 
 hhn. 2^L,"33 is the monthly purification (comp. xxxi. 35, 
 LXX. translates classically ra jvvaLKela), which is the con- 
 dition of the power of conception. These so-called rules had 
 long been discontinued in the case of Sarah, hence what had 
 been promised made her laugh. On the Perf. v'nni'n (should 
 it yet be to me), see on xxi. 7. Her calling her husband 
 "'P"'X is quoted in her praise, 1 Pet. iii. 6. Her laughter 
 however was that of contemptuous doubt, the laughter of 
 Abraham that of delighted astonishment. He needed to have 
 his faith encouraged, she to be brought back to the humility 
 of faith, vv. 13, 14: And Jahvch said to Abraham: Why 
 then did Sarah laugh, thinlcing : Shoidd I also really bear, 
 when I am old ? Is anything unattainable for Jahveh ? At 
 the set time I return to thee, at the time when it revives, and 
 Sarah has a son. With Cjp5< fis', " in very truth " (reality), 
 comp. D5P^5 ?!«, "yea certainly," Job xxxiv. 12, xix. 4. ^<.c3^ is 
 a synonym to i>'3\ xi. 6. Instead of '^j'^'p,^ like xxi v. 50, 
 1 Sam. i. 20, Hahn and Theile have here erroneously 
 nirT'p. Sarah's vain evasion, ver. 1 5 : And Sarah denied, say- 
 ing : I laughed not : for she was afraid. But he said : Nay, thou, 
 didst indeed laugh. Matter of great and eternal importance 
 is here related in plain and childlike words. Brought back 
 to the humility of faith. Sarah received indeed the strength 
 
 ^ The writing ni'lT'O ( = ''3'"IX0 with audible x) follows the Masoretic rule, 
 
 D''i30 "^y^ (X'^'IfD) p'^a^ n*i^'0, t'-e. ;&Ioses led (Israel) forth, and Caleb led 
 (him) in, i.e. grammatically : the letters o, ^, n make the X of ^31X audible; 
 3, h> 3. on the contrary, make it quiescent, e.g. nin^3 (witb Metheg of the 
 counter-tone) and also nilT'l = ^inxi • The vox memorialis, which includes also 
 the 1, is D^yj 13 ^3, all in Him is mysterious, i.e. grammatically: the pre- 
 fixes 3, p, 3, 1 have after them a latent (quiescent) }<• 
 
44 GENESIS XVIIl. 15. 
 
 of the naturally impossible, eVei Triarov I'jjija-aTo tov iirayeiX- 
 Xa/xevov (Heb. xi. 11). The fulfilment itself was the repeated 
 appearance of Jaliveh after the space of a year, for the God of 
 the promise was Himself present to effect its fulfilment. 
 
 Dillmann is of opinion, with Knobel, that the three were 
 Jahveh and two angels, and besides, regards the ''^"^^^, 3a, as 
 erroneous, because premature. But it is just this ""J^^? which 
 leads to the true meaning of the narrator. It is not the case 
 that one of the three angels is the appearance of Jahveh, but 
 that there are three heavenly messengers, in whom Jahveh 
 manifests Himself, three by reason of the threefold nature of 
 their vocation, which is not to promise only, but also to punish 
 and to deliver. Because however the message of grace to 
 Abraham is a higher one than the messages of judgment and 
 of mercy to Lot, the two are subordinate to the one, and 
 Jahveh is specially present to Abraham in the one, whom he 
 recognises as above the other two and addresses as ''/"i^?, Lord 
 of all (:^'^p according to the Masora, in distinction from 
 "•Jli?, my lords), because He has made upon him the impres- 
 sion of a being in whom God is, and whom he is to receive 
 as God Himself. A Greek legend tells of a similar event to 
 that related in chs. xviii. and xix, : Jupiter, Mercury and 
 Neptune visit an old man of the name of Hyrieus, in the 
 Boeotian town of Tanagra, he prepares a meal for them, and 
 at his request obtains, though hitherto childless, a son, Orion, 
 Ovid, Fast v. 494 sqq. ; Palccph. ch. v. And then — as a 
 pendant to ch. xix. — Jupiter and Mercury are travelling in the 
 form of men ; no one will receive them but Philemon and 
 Baucis, an old and childless couple, wherefore the gods deliver 
 them, taking them away with them to a mountain, and trans- 
 forming the inhospitable neighbourhood of the hospitable cot- 
 tage into a pool, and the cottage into a temple, Ovid, Metavi. 
 viii. 611-724. Here the three and then the two angels 
 become respectively three and then two Gods ; but Abraham 
 recognises in the three and especially in the one, and Lot in 
 
GENESIS XVIir. 15. 45 
 
 the two, the presence of the one God. They treat them never- 
 theless as human travellers, for the Godhead in them is con- 
 cealed, and only manifest to the eye of tlie spirit. Josephiis, 
 Ant. i. 11. 2, explains their eating as mere appearance: oc Be 
 Bo^av avro) irapea'X^ov iaOiovTcov. So too Philo (02)p. ii. 18) : 
 Tepdariov ical to jjli] Treivcovra^; ireivcovrcov kol /xj) ea6L0VTa<; 
 iadiovrwv irapex^iv (pavraalav, and also the Targum, Talmud 
 3Iczia S6h, Midrash, Tob. xii. 19, Ephr. Procop. and most of 
 the Fathers. It must however be differently explained, 
 whether we hold that the human form in which they appeared 
 was only a symbolization of their invisible being, or that it 
 was, as Tertullian, adv. Marc. iii. 9, asserts : non putaiiva caro, 
 sed verce et solidce sidtstantim humancc. In the first case they 
 ate, " as we say of fire that it consumes everything " (Justin, 
 dial c. Tr. c. 34) ; in the other they ate, as the risen Christ 
 did, of whom Augustine says : Quod manducavit, potestatis fu.it, 
 non egestatis. Aliter absorhet terra aquam sitiens, aliter solis 
 radius candens : ilia indigentid, iste potentid. The intercourse 
 of Jahveh with the patriarch was just at this time more 
 humanely intimate than ever, because the birth of Isaac, the 
 great type of the human appearance of God in Christ, was the 
 subject of the message. At the beginning of the period of 
 the v6fxo<;, which brought to consciousness the infinite distance 
 between the Holy God and the sinful creature, Moses heard 
 from the burning bush the call : " Draw not nigh hither : put 
 off thy shoes from thy feet ! " Ex. iii. 5. The patriarchal 
 period is more evangelical, as the time before the law it is a 
 pattern of the time after the law. 
 
 2. Abrahams transaction loith God concerning Sodom and 
 Gomorrah, xviii. 16 sqq. 
 
 This second part of the Jahvistic portion, chs. xviii.-xix., 
 forms a transition to what follows, as the first part was a 
 connection with what preceded. It prepares' for the history 
 
46 GENESIS XVIII. 16-19. 
 
 of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Departure of 
 the three, ver. 1 6 : And the men rose up from thence, and looked 
 toward Sodom, and Ahraham went with them, to accompany 
 them. According to an interesting tradition (Jer. Ep. cviiL 
 ad Eustochium), he accompanied them as far as the site of the 
 subsequent Caphar-berucha, whence the solitvdinem ac terras 
 Sodomce may be perceived; '''^^'^V, like xix. 28, Num. xxi. 20, 
 xxiii. 28. Eesolution of Jahveh, vv. 17-19: And Jahveh 
 said : Shall I hide from Ahraham what I am alout to do, since 
 Ahraham shall surely hceome a great and mighty nation, and 
 all the nations of the earth shall he Messed in him ? For I hnevj 
 him, that he will command his children and his household 
 after him, that they hecp the way of Jahveh, to do justice and 
 judgment ; that Jahveh may hring upon Ahraham what He has 
 spoken of him. He knew_liim,^.e. Jlechose him in preventing 
 love (J;^^ like Amos iii. 2, and New Testament r^ivcaaKeLv). 
 The purpose of that loving communion with Himself to which 
 
 He has admitted him follows in ifws; )y»^ (iya=nnnp, ^x,<). 
 He is to inculcate upon the present, and indirectly upon the 
 future members of his family, the religion of Jahveh ('n "^yi, 
 like Ps. xix. 10, 'n nxn^), that they may practise n^m ni^n^ (so 
 here and Ps. xxxiii. 5 ; Prov. xxi. 3 ; comp. Deut. xxxiii. 21, 
 instead of the more customary T\\>'r^'\ LJDK'o), so that JahveK 
 may realize to him what He has promised in respect of his 
 great vocation in the redemptive history. The LXX., as also 
 the Syr,, adds to airo A^paa/j,, tov TratSo? fxov (''iny), for 
 which Philo has tov <pL\ov jxov (comp. Jas. ii. 23). There is 
 scarcely a passage where this '''j^V (xxvi. 24) or ""^nN* (Isa. 
 xli. 8, 2 Chron. xx. 7) would be more in place than just 
 here. Abraham is the friend of God, — an appellation which 
 has become among Moslems a surname to his name, cdll Jj^^, 
 the insinuate, i.e. the intimate of God, or merely Jj^l^t)> 
 whence also Hebron is called Bcit-cl-chalil or El-chalil, and 
 from a friend we keep nothing secret. Hence Jahveh dis- 
 
GENESIS XVIII. 20-22. 47 
 
 closes to him the judgment which He purposes to inflict, vv. 
 20, 21 : Tlicn Jahvch said: The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah 
 is lecome really great, and their sin really very heavy. I will 
 however go doivn and see if they have altogether done according to 
 the cry concerning it, which has come to me; or if not, I will in- 
 vestigate. The circumstantializing perfect nox nin"'i is followed 
 by the principal fact, viz. the communication, with mn'' los'*"). 
 The cry of Sodom is the cry for punishment which comes up 
 thence demanding it. The assuring ''3 (the case is such tliat 
 then = rcvcra) stands elsewhere also in the middle of the 
 sentence, xli. 32; Ps. cxviii. 10-12, cxxviii. 2. "3") is 
 Milcl, and therefore 3rd pr. ; comp. on the other hand, Hos. 
 ix. 7. He will go down to see the state of the case (quite 
 like xi. 5), viz. into the valley of the Jordan district, will in 
 the lonii-sufferinn; of His wrath see whether their behaviour 
 entirely corresponds with the cry for vengeance which has 
 proceeded from it. The Atlmach, ver. 21, is rightly placed, the 
 second member of the disjunctive question being made inde- 
 pendent by a verb of its own. The PascJc between n?3 | vc^ 
 shows that n?3 here is to be imderstood, not as in the 
 phrase i^/^ nb'y^ "to put an end to," but as at Ex. xi. 1, as an 
 adverb in the meaning of omnino. ^^~\} is, according to the 
 penultimate tone, not a particip. but a finitum, hence n (^r\) 
 has, as at xlvi. 27, Job ii. 11 (comp. Ges. § 109), the value of 
 a relatively used demonstrative pronoun, just as al (cdli) and 
 hal (Judli), with the meaning " that which," are quite common 
 {DMZ. xxii. 124) in the Bedouin speech and in the book 
 
 language also, e.g. dj |^J_,v!l, is qui acccptus hahctur, may be 
 
 said. The departure for Sodom, ver. 22 : And the men turned 
 thence, and went toward Sodom, and Abraham remained still 
 standing before Jahveh. A parallel verse to ver. IG ; there 
 all three are going farther, here two (xix. 1). But it is 
 Jahveh who betakes Himself to Sodom in the two, while, on 
 the other hand. He remains behind, Abraham continues stand- 
 
48 GENESIS XVIII. 23-2fi. 
 
 ing before the one in whom Jahveh specially manifests Him- 
 self to him, and through whose angelic-human form he rightly 
 discerns the LOED. According to tradition, 22& is a ppn 
 D''"iDlD, corrcctio scribarum (see my Commentary on Hcibakhuk, 
 pp. 206-208, and Perles' Biogra'plde Salomds h. Adcretk, 
 1863, jop. 2b— nb), and was originally Dm^N ^js!? noj? iniy ninn, 
 which seemed unworthy of God, ''JD^ loy being the usual 
 expression for standing to serve. The originality however 
 of the existing reading is defended by xix. 27. The two 
 others departed, while Abraham still retained the third, and 
 in him Jahveh. 
 
 To Him he turns with intercession for Sodom, vv. 23-25 : 
 And Ahraham drciu near, and said : Wilt Thou then utterly cut 
 off the righteous ivith the vjicked ? Perhaps there are fifty 
 righteous in the city, vjilt Thou really cut off and not forgive 
 the place for the fifty righteous sake that are therein ? Far he 
 it from Thee to do thus, to kill the righteous ivith the wicked, so 
 that it shoidd happen to the righteous as to the uncked that he 
 far from Thee. Shoidd not the Judge of all the earth do right ? 
 The particle 5]^, ver. 23 sq., means etiajn, not as at iii. 1 in the 
 
 sense of adco, but of revera (Saad. Ujvij). Nirj with r*, like Xum. 
 
 xix. 19 and frequently, means to grant acceptance and forbear- 
 ance, i.e. forgiveness. In ^'^1'^ P"""!?^?, 3 is conceived of as a 
 noun, like the Latin instar : in such correlative repetition of 
 the objects to be compared, it may either precede, as here, 
 comp. xliv. 18, Hag. ii. 3, or follow. '^? nppn means, as is 
 shown by the Targumico-Talmudic "H^ ^^^^^ P^D, to the unholy 
 ad profanum ; b'hn in this sense is permitted for use, shown 
 licitiLs by J.;>>i.s>- ; "^r^C however is not a feminine with a 
 retraction of the tone, for the penultimate accentuation is not 
 found only before the monosyllabic ^b, but elsewhere also, 
 e.g. xliv. 7, before ^"''3?-^^- The question, 25&, is like that at 
 Eom. iii. 3. Jahveh agrees, ver. 26 : And Jahveh said: If I 
 find in Sodom fifty righteous witldn the city, I ivill forgive the 
 
GENESIS XVIII. 27-33. 49 
 
 vjJwle place for their sake. Abraham reduces the number by 
 five, vv. 27, 28: And Abraham, answered and said: Behold 
 now, I have taken upon me to speak to the Lord, who am 
 hut dust and ashes. Ferhaps there may lack five of the fifty 
 righteous : wilt Thou destroy the whole city for lack of five ? He 
 said : I will not destroy it if I find there forty -five. The ''p'^ 
 interchanging here and vv. 3 1, 32, as at xviii. 3, with 7V\r\\ belong 
 to the pxni nSp, i-c- the 134 true (really written) '':nx. The 
 pair of words "is^^j "iS^ symphonize like i*]'^"! lii^, "J^.j] P^, and 
 the like. On the construction of tlie verb "ion with the ace. 
 of what is lacking, comp. Ges. § 138. 3. i^^pn?, 28a, is equi- 
 valent to ^t'\2n "i=i3y3, for the sake of so few less as five. He 
 again reduces the number by five, ver. 29 : And he continued to 
 speak to Him, and said : Perhaps forty will he found there. He 
 said : I vnll not do it for the forty's sake. He grows bolder, 
 and deducts ten, ver. ^0 -. He said : Let not the Lord he angry 
 tJmt I speo.k: pcrha^js thirty may he found there. And He 
 said : I vnll not do it if I find thirty there. On f nnn he 
 grows hot, he falls into the heat (of anger), see iv. 5. On the 
 cohortative iT]?!^!, see Ges. § 128. 2. From thirty down to 
 twenty, ver. 31: And he said: Behold now, I have taken 
 upon me to spieak to the Lord: perhaps there shall he found 
 twenty there. He said : I will not destroy it for the twenty's 
 sake. From twenty down to ten, ver. 32 : Ajid he said: Let 
 not the Lord he angry that I speak yet hut this once: Perhaps 
 ten will he found there. And He said : I will not destroy it for 
 the ten's sake. Immediately after this promise Jahveh dis- 
 appears, ver. 33 : And Jahveh locnt away, ivhen He had finished 
 speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place. 
 It is the syntactic scheme of the coincident, like vii. 6. 
 Jahveh departed (not to Sodom, as Wellhausen, expunging \J'^, 
 xix. 1, thinks), i.e. He withdrew from the further importunity 
 of the bold petitioner, and the latter, perceiving the limit thus 
 placed, returned to the grove of Mamre. 
 
 This intercession of Abraham, which, with increasing 
 VOL. IL D 
 
50 GENESIS XVIII. 33. 
 
 boldness six times takes advantage of concession, is some- 
 what singular. While however it excites laughter in a 
 Voltaire, and while Hausrath and Gesenius find impressed 
 upon it the stamp of the Jewish " trading spirit " (see 
 Geiger's Jildische Zeitschr. x. p. 15 7), it moved a Lavater to 
 admiration. " As for the whole dialogue, — I exclaim as 
 publicly as I can, — where in all the world is its equal in 
 greatness and simplicity to be found ! " It is, to begin with, 
 highly significant that Abraham does not intercede specially 
 for his relatives in Sodom ; that he believes in the existence 
 of righteous persons among the heathen therein ; that his 
 intercession proceeds from the assumption that man as 
 such is his neighbour ; that it applies to the cities of those 
 seven nationalities on which the Mosaic law inflicts unspar- 
 ing extermination (Deut. vii. 2, xx. 16). The subsequent 
 different measurement of the duty of Israelites towards fellow- 
 countrymen and foreigners did not as yet exist ; religion 
 had not yet assumed its temporary intermediate and national 
 form. And what depths of Divine condescension, what heights 
 of human faith do we here meet with ! Accompanied, indeed, 
 by a boldness which New Testament piety does not sanction 
 with respect to God. The intimacy borders on irreverence. 
 Even the Son of man finds the t'Xeco? aoi of Peter (Matt. xvi. 
 22) unbearable, and how could we, in presence of the actual 
 experience that war and calamities carry off, as Job ix. 22 
 says, both the righteous and the wicked, appeal to God's 
 justice for the contrary ? We must lay our hand upon our 
 mouth, hoping for a solution in another world of the enigmas 
 of this. Old Testament piety is still affected by a residuum 
 of polytheism, the gods of which were more human than 
 Divine. The reduction too of the numbers from fifty to ten 
 is more childish than child-like, but Jahveh condescends to 
 this childish avaiBeia (Luke xi. 8) of bargaining intercession. 
 All answers to prayer depend upon such condescension. For 
 when God created free beings. He at the same time granted the 
 
GENESIS XIX. 1, 2. 51 
 
 possibility of allowing His actions to be determined by their 
 conduct, and of permitting their prayer, i.e. their invocation 
 of His goodness and mercy, to influence Him. The bold 
 familiarity of the intercessor reduced to ten the number of 
 the righteous, for whose sake Sodom was to be spared. But 
 ten were not found. His intercession did not however fall to 
 the ground. Four were found, Lot, his wife and his two 
 daughters — these did not suffice to be the means of savinfr 
 Sodom, but they were themselves not destroyed with the 
 wicked, but delivered. 
 
 3. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah hy fire, and the 
 deliverance of Lot, xix. 1-29. 
 
 In accordance with Deut. xxix. 22, the prophets frequently 
 refer to the matter of this third part of the second portion by 
 holding up, as a warning to the people of God, the fate of 
 Sodom and the other cities (Amos iv. 11; Hos. xi. 8 ; Isa. i. 
 9 sq., iii. 9 and elsewhere), just as the " days of Gibeah " 
 (Judg. xix.) are also remembered for a like purpose (Hos. 
 ix. 9). Arrival of the two Divine messengers, ver. 1 : And 
 the two angels came to Sodom at evening, as Lot was sitting in 
 the gate of Sodom. And Lot, perceiving them, rose up to meet 
 them, and lowed himself down with his face towards the earth. 
 The gate is usually in the nearer East a vaulted entrance, 
 with large recesses on both sides. It was here, beneath or 
 near the gate, that people assembled either for business 
 purposes, or to discuss, in larger or smaller circles, the affairs 
 of the town (xxxiv. 10; Deut. xxi. 19). It was here that 
 Lot was sitting, and when he saw the angels coming he rose 
 up and went to meet them, greeting them no less reverently 
 than Abraham had done, ver. 2 : And he said : Behold now, 
 my lords, turn aside, I pray, into your servant's house, and stay 
 the night and wash your feet and rise up early and go your 
 way. But they said : Nay, we will spend the night in the 
 
52 GENESIS XIX. S-5. 
 
 street. Only here is ^3"n3n written instead of ^J"'"'^'?. And 
 only here do we incidentally find ''y"'^? with Pathach, which 
 the Masora distinguishes as ^n, kolvov, from ""^'i^? as ^~}'p. 
 Lot's spiritual vision is weaker than Abraham's, he greets the 
 men with only the courteous " my lords ; " he does not at first 
 recognise them as angels, nor as the LORD, who was mani- 
 festing Himself in them. He invites them in the kindest 
 manner, but they refuse, just as Jesus (Luke xxiv. 28) 
 seemed at first about to refuse the disciples at Emmaus. 
 Their nay (Ven. ircofjidXa) is n^, wiitten with emphatic 
 Dagesh, as at 1 Sam. viii. 19, 1 Kings xi. 22. At last they 
 yield to his solicitation, ver. 3 : And he urged them much, 
 and they turned in unto him and entered his house, and he 
 fre'pared a meal and hakcd siveet cahes, and they ate. Sweet 
 cakes, riiSD (from )*i'D, to suck in and out), are unleavened 
 cakes, which would be the sooner ready. But before the 
 guests retired, the sin of Sodom is manifested, vv. 4, 5 : 
 They had not yet lain dovm, when the 'peoi^le of the city, the 
 people of Sodom, surrounded the house, from the hoy to the old 
 man, the whole jpeo'ple from the utmost end. And they called 
 to Lot and said to him : Where are the men which came to 
 thee this niyht ? hring them out to its, we ivill liiow them. 
 The construction of C)"[.p is like ii. 5, and, in a like connection, 
 Josh. ii. 8. Instead of ^nvpyi • • n^'pp, xlvii. 21, from one 
 end to the other, we have here and Jer. Ii. 31 i^^'i^p, from 
 the end, i.e. of the city in its whole extent. Without respect 
 to hospitality, they say shamelessly what they desire : onxt^n 
 nriD iib n'rin^ Isa. iii. 9. The travellers are young and 
 beautiful (Mark xvi. 5), the inhabitants of Sodom desire to 
 " know " them, Judg. xix. 2 2 ; their unnatural lust, according 
 to Eom. i. 27 a curse of heathenism, according to Jude 7 a 
 copy of demoniacal error, according to the Mosaic law (Lev. 
 xviii. 22, XX. 13) a "^^yin to be punished with death (named 
 by Ezekiel, xvi. 49 sq., as the worst among the sins of Sodom), 
 wears no mask, no aesthetic nimbus, as in Greece. Lot now 
 
GENESIS XIX. 6-a. 53 
 
 tries his utmost to save liis guests, vv. 6-8 : A7id Lot locnt 
 out to them to the entrance and shut the door behind him. 
 And lie said: Pray, brethren, do not so wiehedly. Behold, I 
 have two daughters ivho as yet have known no man. I ivill 
 bring them out to you, and do ye to them as seems good to you, 
 only to these men do nothing, for therefore have they come under 
 the shadow of my roof. The formation "^nnsn is like ^'f^P, 
 Judg. iv. 10, the former from nna, the latter from t^'^i?. ^^^ 
 for n^ixrij here 8&, as at 25a, xxvi. 3 sq., Lev. xviii. 27, 
 Deut. iv. 42, vii. 22, xix. 11, and elsewhere only at 1 Chron. 
 XX. 8, is no archaism; the Arabic uld, Ethiop. e^/a, Aram. 
 ilUn, illeeh, showing that this demonstrative originally ter- 
 ininated with a vowel (perhaps illai). |3"?y ''3 (see xviii. 5) 
 is said of the purpose of their becoming guests, viz. to be 
 protected. Lot acts like the old man in Gibeah of Benjamin, 
 Judg. xix. 23 sq. ; he is willing to sacrifice his duty as a 
 father to the duty of hospitality, and commits the sin of 
 desiring to prevent one sin by another. But this also is of 
 no avail, ver. 9 : But they said : Stand bach ! And they 
 said : This one came to sojourn, and is plaijing the judge : 
 now will ive deal luorse with thee than loith them ! And 
 they pressed upon the man, upon Lot, and came near to break 
 the door. The exclamation nxbn C'a has the meaning of move 
 away ! '^^r\} (comp. the verb, Micah iv. 7) has the tone upon 
 the penult. ; it is the locative of ^C which directs to a distance. 
 They threaten Lot, the one man, who is enjoying among them 
 the rights of hospitality, and yet . . . {imperf. consee. of the 
 contrasting context, the paradoxical result, like xxxii. 31 ; 
 Prov. XXX. 25-27; Job ii. 3). The iiif. intens. to 123^=1 
 emphasizes this troublesome censorious behaviour as incessant 
 (Ges. § 131. 3&). To take, with Hupfeld, the n of "inxn 
 interrogatively, like Num. xvi. 22, Neh. vi. 11, comp. Judg. 
 xii. 5, and also Cinxn^ Deut. xx. 19, is not advisable, the 
 determinative of nnx (this one) being indispensable. The 
 nny is conclusive: they will consequently deal worse with 
 
54 GENESIS XIX. 10-14. 
 
 him than with his proUg6s. The permutative combination 
 LJi73 K'''S2 is like Tj?n linn * • DIIDD, xviii. 26. They prepare 
 to break the door, when Lot's guests become his protectors, 
 vv. 10, 11 : And the iiun stretched out their hand and tooh 
 Lot in unto them, into the house, and shut to the door. And 
 the men who were at the entrance of the house, they struch with 
 blindness, from the least unto the greatest, and they wearied 
 themselves to find the entrance. Instead of the more usual 
 jiiJV?, Zech. xii. 4, Deut. xxviii. 28, we here have ^''Tlf??, 
 from 113 p, to make blind, a Shaphel — the original causative 
 
 form — with "iji.? =jy, to blind. Summons to Lot to escape 
 
 with his family, vv. 12, 13 : And the men said to Lot : Whom 
 hast thou here ? Son-in-lavj, and thy sons and daughters, 
 and all that belongs to thee in the city, bring them out of 
 the place : for loe are about to destroy this place, because 
 the cry concerning them is become great before the face of 
 Jahveh, and JahvcJi has sent us to destroy it. The suffix 
 of DnpV.-> (to be understood like xviii. 20 sq., Clamat ad 
 ccelum vox sanguinis ct Sodomorum) refers to the inhabit- 
 ants, and the suffix of i^nnc'p to the city. inn is pur- 
 posely an indefinite collective singular. Lot finds no 
 audience with his sons-in-law, ver. 14: And Lot loent out, 
 and spake to his sons-in-law, ivlio had taken his daughters, 
 and said: Get you up, go out of this place, for Jahveh 
 is about to destroy the city, — but he ivas as one wlio 
 mocked in the eyes of his sons - in - kau. The LXX. and 
 Targ. Jer. I. have correctly : Tou<i elXrj(pora<i Ta<i 6vyaT€pa<i 
 avrov, not : qui acccpturi crant filias ejus (Jerome), for iu 
 ver. 15 the two daughters, still at home, are distinguished 
 from those who were married ; and the two saved with Lot 
 have not, ver. 30 sq., to lament the loss of bridegrooms. 
 Those offered to the Sodomites were still his virgin and, as 
 may be also inferred from ver. 8, his unbetrothed daughters. 
 In li^V ^^ip the V has the emphatic Dagesh to ensure its clear 
 
GENESIS. XIX. 16, 17. 55 
 
 pronimciation between two u sounds (corap. Ex. xii. 3 1 ; 
 Deut. ii. 24). This carelessness, when destruction was close 
 at hand, is referred to Luke xvii. 28. Even Lot does not 
 follow his preservers with the gratitude of a joyful faith, 
 vv. 16, 17: And as soon as the dawn began, the angels 
 urged Lot to hasten, saying : Arise, take thy wife, and 
 thy two daughters, which are here, that thou he not consumed 
 in the iniquity of the city. But he lingered; then the men 
 seized his hand and the hand of his wife and of his two 
 daughters, hy reason of the forbearance of Jahvch ruling over 
 him, and led him out, and let go of him outside the city. 
 While the biblical 3 is always merely a preposition, i^s serves 
 here like "i^'??? as a conjunction, which its analogous forma- 
 tion from 3 and "lO^riD permits, comp. Isa. xxvi. 18; Ps. 
 Iviii. 8. The daughters still in the parental house are called 
 nixvpan iu distinction from those already married, as is ex- 
 plained Bereschith rcibla c. 50, and in Ephrem. The angels 
 urge Lot to hasten, but he delays : he is no Abraham, and it 
 is not gladly, but with inward reluctance, that he leaves the 
 beautiful city and his home in it. The angels are obliged to 
 bring him and his family out by force, and this takes place 
 rbv 'n n^onii. Olshausen would prefer rhmii, but in the 
 Psalms also l"lDn3, xxv. 7, and I^Dna, xxxi: 17, are inter- 
 changed. They do not let go of him (D"*?!!, different in use 
 from C^jn) till he is outside the city. Here Jahveh, speaking 
 by the angels, invites him to save himself by hastening 
 straight onward, ver. 1 7 : And it came to pass luhcn they (the 
 angels) had led them (Lot and his family) forth, He (Jahveh) 
 said : Escajpe for thy life, looh not behind thee, stay not in all 
 the plain ; escape to the mountain, that thou be not consumed. 
 Jahveh is in the two angels, as in the three : they are all 
 three messengers, i.e. organs of God present in them (as the 
 apostles were messengers and organs of Christ present in 
 them). Without looking backwards (o-arrPN instead of tlie 
 more regular l33ri"7X), he is to seek to place himself in safety 
 
56 GENESIS XIX. 18-22. 
 
 by reaching the (subsequently Moabite) mountains. But 
 here too he shows how weak and defective is his faith and 
 obedience, vv. 18-20: And Lot said: Lord, not so. 
 Behold now, Tliy servant hath found grace in Thy sight, and 
 Thoib hast magnified Thy favour, lohich Thou hast showed to me 
 to preserve my soid alive ; and L eannot escape to the mountain, 
 misfortune might overtake me, and I die. Behold noiv, this city 
 is near to flee thither, and it is indeed hut small : let me escape 
 thither — it is indeed so small — that my soul may live. The 
 deprecative ?>? strengthened by ^^3 (Ruth i. 13) is followed 
 by tNvo sentences, each commencing with i^p^.^n, and appar- 
 ently marking two premisses, the first of which, ver. 19, gives, 
 as a reason for the request, the mercy of God and the impo- 
 tence of the suppliant, the second, 20a, the sniallness of the 
 thing requested, and then by fc?3~nupr3X the conclusion. Lot 
 now knows that it is Jahveh Himself who has snatched him 
 as a brand from the burning ; he no longer says '•^"'X, but 
 ''3'is* ; yet even with this nearness of God to him and care of 
 God for him, he does not attain to entire obedience : the 
 mountain is too far for him ; he fears lest the approaching 
 catastrophe should catch him ("'Ji^li'iri, with uniting vowel a, 
 like xxix. 32; Ges. § 60, note 2); he would rather flee to 
 the small town which is near, and whose insignificance might 
 excite compassion. Jahveh agrees, vv. 21, 22 : And He said 
 to him : See, L favour thee in this also, not to destroy the city of 
 which thou hast spoken. Hasten to escape thither, for I can do 
 noticing till thou art come thither — therefore the name of the 
 city was called So'ar. The phrase '•jD ^5b'3 means to let the 
 presence, appearance, or person of any one make an impres- 
 sion and find access. The b of i^"=J? is that of reference, 
 "•sen has 3, according to the Masora, like isjja, Ex. xii. 27. 
 *inp is an adverbial infinitive, like Ps. Ixix. 18. The city was 
 that regarded by Lot as "iVVP, a trifle, a small matter, and 
 hence called "^t^ (smallness), at the south-eastern entrance of 
 the then valley of Siddim. The crusaders found it still 
 
GENESIS XIX. 23-25. 57 
 
 existing under the name of Segor {J.^ or jh.y LXX. X'r\'^u>p), 
 
 pleasantly situated among palm-trees, girato lacu a 'parte, 
 aiLstrali, hence, after going round the southern end of the 
 Dead Sea on its eastern side, where it lay, not as Irby- 
 Mangles and Eobinson suppose, upon the peninsula jutting 
 far into the southern half of the sea from the east, but, as 
 Wetzstein has pointed out, on the south-eastern end, in that 
 part of the Arabah which is now called 'Gor es Sdficli. The 
 catastrophe, vv. 23-25 : Tlie sun was risen upon the earth, and 
 Lot was come to Soar. Then Jahveh rained doiim upon Sodom 
 and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jahveh from heaven. 
 And He overthrew those cities and all the plain, and all the 
 inhabitants of the cities and that wliich grew on the ground. 
 By sunrise Lot had already arrived at Zoar. n"ivV has in 
 Eaer an accented local ah, but Heidenheim accentuates this 
 word like '^/il^*'^ according to Moses Punctator as 3Iild. 
 The causative 'T'ti^n has for its object rain proper, ii. 5 ; hail, 
 Ex. ix. 18, manna, Ex. xvi. 4, here C'Xi n"'";£| (for which we 
 have iT'iSil £;'^^, Ps. xi. 6; Ezek. xxxviii. 22). ^an, in the 
 sense of evertere, refers not only to cities but to men (as at 
 Prov. xii. 7 ; Isa. i. V) and plants. Brimstone and fire came 
 through the intervention of God present in His angels from 
 (nsp, like Micah v. 6) Him who is enthroned in heaven. 
 The statement distinguishes still more decidedly than Hos. 
 i. 7, Zech. X. 12, 2 Tim. i. 18, the supermundane and the 
 historically manifested God. But we should be more correct 
 to say that the mundane presence of God in the angels was 
 a prefiguration of tlie ij)avepo}6r] iv aapKL, than to agree with 
 Justin, Eusebius, and the Council of Sirmium, which decreed, 
 after these authorities: Fhiit Dei filius a Deo patre. Xot only 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, but Admah and Zeboiim, the two other 
 cities of the Pentapolis (xiv. 2), as we are told, Deut. xxix. 23 
 (the fundamental passage for Hos. xi. 8), or, as it is here said, 
 the whole plain, Zoar alone excepted, perished by fire and 
 
58 GENESIS XIX. 26-28. 
 
 brimstone — a catastrophe to which Strabo, Tacitus, and 
 Solinus Polyliistor also testify, and which, in the subsequent 
 literature down to the Apocalypse, is often both alluded to 
 and directly mentioned {e.g. Ps. xi. 6). Pate of Lot's wife, 
 ver. 26 : And his wife looked hack from hehind him, and became 
 a pillar of salt. She was following him and, whether from 
 affection, compassion, or curiosity, looking about behind her, 
 and became, in consequence of this disregard of the Divine 
 command, a prey to the catastrophe. She was covered with 
 a saline incrustation and changed, as it were, into a statue of 
 salt. In the time of the author of the Book of Wisdom 
 this crW]\r} aXo9, Wisd. x. 7 (comp. Clement, ad Cor. c. xi.), 
 was still pointed out. Josephus (Ant. i. 11. 4) declares 
 that he had seen it : laroprjKa avr^v, en >yap Kal vvv 
 Siufievei. A poem among the works of Tertullian (ed. Oehler, 
 ii. 773) relates of it, that when it is mutilated it completes 
 itself again, which Irenseus (iv. 31. 3, 33. 9) explains typi- 
 cally. These are legends which have their very obvious rise 
 in the partly cylindrical, partly pyramidal cones of salt still 
 found, in consequence of the winter rains, on the salt-mine 
 track, Hagar Usdum, which extends not far from the eastern 
 shore of the Dead Sea, two leagues and a half towards its 
 southern extremity (see Tuch, Quwstio de Flav. Josephi loco 
 B. J., iv. 8. 2, 1860). What is related in ver. 26 however 
 is regarded as history in the New Testament also (Luke 
 xvii. 32, comp. ix. 62). The disappearance of Eurydice when 
 Orpheus, contrary to the command of Proserpine, looks round 
 at her when brought from Hades before arriving at their 
 native land, as related in the Greek legend, is somewhat 
 similar. AVhat Abraham had to behold next morning, vv. 
 27, 28 : And Ahraham got iip early in the morning to the place 
 where, he, had stood in the presence of Jahveh, and looked toward 
 the face of Sodom and Gomorrah and toward the wliole face of 
 the country of the plain, and 'beheld, and, la, the vapour of the 
 land went up as the vapour of the furnace. Instead of Y^'V, 
 
GENESIS XIX. 29. 59 
 
 smoke (Ex. xix. 18), we have here the less usual litD'p 
 
 (Arab. J^), steam or vapour (Ps. cxix. 83) ; comp. Wis'l. 
 
 X. 7, KaTTvi^o/xevrj ■^epao^, and Brocardus : mare mortuum est 
 sewpcr fumans et tcncbrosum sicut os viferni, ut oculis meis vidi, 
 oh tetrum vaporem inde fumantcm. So far the account of J, 
 to which is now joined the sketch of Q, ver. 29 : And it came 
 to 2MSS, when Ulohim destroyed the cities of the plain, then 
 Mohim remembered Abraham and led Lot out of the overthrotv, 
 when He overthrew the cities in which Lot had chvelt. Thus Lot 
 was delivered for the sake of Abraham, and indeed for the 
 sake of his intercession. " In which " is the same as in one 
 of which, like Judg. xii. 7. Instead of "^psn, occurring hero 
 only, 'i33nip is the Deuteronomico-prophetic word. 
 
 The Dead Sea, as it appears at present, has no kind of 
 odour ; its water is clear as crystal, and has in fair weather the 
 blue colour of heaven like other seas. Flights of birds are 
 frequently seen passing over its waters. It nevertheless gives 
 an impression of awe. Neither fish nor other living creatures 
 are hidden in its bosom, those who enter it with the current 
 from the Jordan dying immediately, and its lonely shores are 
 entirely devoid of vegetation. The atmosphere over its waters 
 is purest at night, but never quite pure. If it is agitated by 
 a storm, the spray that is driven about covers everything with 
 an incrustation of salt. Liquid bitumen is not found, but the 
 Moses and Asphalt stone so frequent on the coast lead to the 
 conclusion, that a great bed of asj)halt forms the bottom of the 
 sea. After the earthquake of 1837, which destroyed Tiberias, 
 a mass of asphalt the size of a house appeared upon the sur- 
 face, it was driven on to firm ground on the western side 
 not far from Usdum, and furnished the Arabs with 150 ctr. 
 of asphalt.^ The length of this unique waste of waters 
 amounts to 40, and its average breadth to 8 miles ; at its 
 
 1 See Zinckcn, Fossile Kohlen vnd KohIenu-a.iserstqfe, 1884, pp. 327-331 
 {Bituminose Schichten und Emanationen Pcddstina's). 
 
60 GENESIS XIX. 29. 
 
 southern extremity its whole breadth is fordable. According 
 to Symond's measurement it lies 1231 feet, while the Sea of 
 Tiberias is only 308 feet below the surface of the Mediter- 
 lanean. As Moore found the bottom to be in some places 
 1700 feet deep, it reaches to almost 3000 feet beneath the 
 surface of the Mediterranean. The Lake of Achen in Tyrol, 
 and especially Lake Baikal in Asiatic Russia, are far deeper, 
 but their situation is incomparably less deep, that of the 
 Dead Sea being one of the deepest depressions on the surface 
 of the globe. The view advocated by great authorities (Ritter, 
 V. Schubert, Daubeny, J. B. Both), that the Jordan, the Dead 
 Sea and the Gulf of Akaba origiually formed one connected 
 waterway, has been proved untenable by more recent investi- 
 gations (Russegger, Robinson, Thornton, Fraas). The land 
 between the Arabian Gulf and the Dead Sea rises to a height 
 of 2100 feet above the level of the sea, and it can be geologi- 
 cally proved that the Wadi Arabah has undergone no elevation 
 since the existence of the present basins. Lartet, who accom- 
 panied the Duke de Luynes, arrived at the result that the 
 Dead Sea had at all times been a basin for the deposits 
 which fell on its declivities, and that its surface was at the 
 end of the Tertiary period 100 metres higher than at present; 
 but that volcanic catastrophes subsequently took place at the 
 east and north-east in the form of effusions of basalt, and that 
 hot mineral springs, bituminous eruptions and earthquakes 
 were, in historic times, the last forces which shaped the basin 
 of the Dead Sea. Fallmerayer too (1853) is of opinion 
 that the southern part of the Dead Sea, between the great 
 peninsula jutting in on its eastern side and the hill of lava, 
 ashes and salt, 'Gcbel Usdum, was originally the dry land of 
 the plain of Siddim, and was covered with water in con- 
 sequence of a catastrophe. He thinks that the Dead Sea 
 has advanced, and has volcanically overwhelmed tracts of 
 land, which formerly lay beyond its reach, and in the enjoy- 
 ment of sunlight. That where to-day are the bare peninsula 
 
GENESIS XIX. 29. CI 
 
 and the Dardanelle current, there was once the termination 
 and southern boundary of the Dead Sea. And that the 
 formerly flourishing and abundantly watered Vale of Siddini, 
 the Lectonia (ii. 14, 283 sq.) of Canaan, of which only the great 
 Delta in Southern 'Gor remains besides its extremely irregular 
 borders on the east and west, extended from this natural 
 enclosure to the wall of hills across the Wadi Arabah. With 
 this agrees also the result arrived at by Capt. Lynch, who 
 undertook in 1848 an expedition to the Dead Sea in two 
 boats, one of iron, the other of copper, which were brought 
 thither over land. It was ascertained that the bed of the 
 sea forms two sunken plains, one from 1000 to 1200, the 
 other on an average only 13 feet below the surface. This 
 shallower southern part, as may now be considered almost 
 settled, would thus have to be regarded as the submerged 
 Vale of Siddim. Fritz Noetling however judges otherwise in 
 the three articles on the Dead Sea which he has published in 
 the Berliner TagcUatt, Aug. 188G. He denies that there is 
 any kind of connection between a catastrophe in the time of 
 Abraham and this body of water which has always existed in 
 the deepest part of the Ghor, regards the Wadi Zerka as the 
 only conceivable place of the site of Sodom and Gomorrah, 
 and is convinced that the volcanic action in the region of the 
 Dead Sea w^as still operative when the district had already 
 almost exactly its present relief; for "the most recent streams 
 of lava have flowed down from the plateau into the valleys, 
 which were already hollowed out to their present depth." 
 It is however evident from the circumstance that the stream of 
 lava that has descended from the Attarus mountain chain appears 
 to be sawn through the midst by the never resting water of the 
 Wadi in such wise that its two portions adhere to both sides 
 of the slopes of the valley in the form of terraces, that this 
 last outburst of volcanic force in Palestine took place in the 
 Alluvial period thousands of years previously. The narrator 
 certainly does not tell us in ch. xix. that the cities were 
 
62 GENESIS XIX. 30-32. 
 
 submerged in the sea which arose in consequence of the 
 fiery judgment, only xiv. 3 seems to proceed from this view. 
 
 4. The incestuous generation of Moab and Ben-Ammi, 
 xix. 30-38. 
 
 The second portion of the third section of Abraham's life 
 closes with xix. 30-38. What is here related is closely 
 linked with xix. 1—28, and there is no valid ground against 
 our admitting that it is still J who here continues the 
 narrative. The distinction of age by '^"l.''^2 and 'T7''VV occurs 
 also with him at xxix. 26, and VT]). T\\>n at vii. 3. It is he also 
 who relates how the hero of the Flood committed himself 
 ix. 2 sqq., after having stood such a test of his faith ; and if 
 the histories of Abraham, Gideon, David and other models of 
 faith terminate with a fall from their ideal height, this is 
 the less amazing in the case of Lot. 
 
 He moved from Zoar, and dwelt in a cave in the mountain, 
 vv. 30-32 : And Lot v^ent up out of Soar, and dwelt in the 
 mountain, and his two daughters icith him. And the first-horn 
 said to the younger : Our father is old, and there is no onan in 
 the land to come in unto us according to the manner of all the 
 world. Up, ive will give our father wine to drink, and we loill 
 lie with him and will propagate the race from our father. 
 When invited to escape to the (Moabite) mountain. Lot had 
 requested permission to flee to Zoar ; but it was just there 
 that he now felt himself insecure and departed thence to 
 the mountain, whither he had formerly desired not to go. 
 There was this former nomad compelled by poverty and fear 
 to become a dweller in a cave ("TJ^'?? with the article of the 
 species, unless it has the meaning of the definite cave known 
 as the birthplace of the two nations). The two daughters of 
 Lot, called by Mas'udi, Zewi and 'Arva, are those who were 
 still unmarried at the catastrophe. In the absence of all 
 prospect of marriage, the younger is persuaded by the elder to 
 
GENESIS XIX. 33-36. 03 
 
 the desperate resolve of lying with their father after they have 
 made him drunk; )*"^xn~73 'i\'r} is here the usual human manner 
 of sexual intercourse, as the husband in the Jewish marriage 
 articles promises : ^^V>^"^? "'!^'^? I'""^^ ^^'^ ^^^^- Not as if they 
 supposed that the Divine judgment had extirpated all men (so 
 e.ff. Irenrcus, iv. 31. 2) ; but that they felt themselves so branded 
 as the remnants of an accursed city, that they feared that their 
 family must die out with themselves who were without husbands 
 and their aged father. It was not lust, but the wish to keep 
 their race from perishing, that impelled them. The means was 
 however worthy of Sodom, and Lot became the blind instrument 
 of an infamy punishable by the subsequent law with death by 
 fire. He is, as F. G. v. Moser designates him, a memorable 
 example of an impure man, or, to speak more correctly (comp. 
 2 Pet. ii. 7), of a very frail righteous man. The proposal 
 carried out, vv. 33-36: And they gave their father wine to 
 drinic that same night, and the first-horn came and lay with her 
 father, arid he knew neither her lying down nor her rising 
 up. And it came to ixtss the day after, that the first-horn 
 said to the younger : Behold, I lay last night with my father, 
 we will give Mm ivine to drink this night also, and come 
 thou, lie with him, and we will lyroixigate the race hy our 
 father. And they gave their father wine to drink that night 
 also, and the younger arose and lay with him, and he 
 knew neither of her lying down nor of her rising ii'p. And the 
 two daughters of Lot were with child hy their father. On two 
 successive nights Lot became the blind instrument of a desire 
 which obtained its satisfaction in a sinful manner. t<l'"i ^^^7?, 
 ver. 33, for i<^"in TO'b'2^ ver. 35, is in itself the more possible 
 (xxxviii. 21 ; Ps. xii. 8), and here, as at xxx. 16, xxxii. 23, 
 1 Sam. xix. 10, the preferable expression by reason of the 
 hiatus, rnnrsp^ thus pointed, may be contracted from nnnxso, 
 like the Aramrean Ni^n'pi* ; but *in^ comes from nriD, to be 
 in front, commonly used in the Assyrian and meaning the 
 approaching day, which forms, as it were, the front of the 
 
64 GENESIS XIX. 37, 38. 
 
 present line of time. On tJ'DX, the previous evening, the 
 evening (the night, the day before), from nj:'o, to graze, to 
 touch (said of the sun sinking on the horizon), here, ver. 34, 
 used as an accus. of time : to pass the night, i.e. the past 
 night, see Fleischer on -Tob xxx. ?>. With the writing, ^rp^'^i!!, 
 comp. Ges. § 47, note 3. V^l has 3 of the object, like Ps. 
 xxxi. 8; Job xii. 9, xxxv. 15. Tlie formation '"^^str is like 
 Dl^n Amos ii. 6, with nnao, Ex. xxi. 8 ; Ewald, § 225d The 
 wine and evil lust combine to plunge Lot, not indeed into 
 absolutely passive unconsciousness, but into animal insensi- 
 bility, in which he surrendered himself without moral con- 
 sideration to mere blind instinct. The point over the second 
 1 of nmpai is said, according to the opinion of the Midrash, to 
 indicate j;t« nroipm yn* vh naD'j'ac' {Nazir 23a), which Jerome 
 also relates, but it certainly has only critical and not actual 
 significance. Birth of the children, vv. 37, 38 : And the first- 
 horn hare a son, and called his name Moah, he is the father of 
 Moab to this dxiy. And the younger she too hare a son, and called 
 his name Ben- Ammi, he is the father of the Bene-Ammon to 
 this day. In consequence of their crafty incest they became 
 the ancestresses of two nations, of the Moabites, who took 
 possession of the dwellings of the Emim, and of the Ammon- 
 ites, who took possession of the dwellings of the Zamzum- 
 mim, Deut. ii. 9-21. The LXX. adds to the naming of 
 Moab : Xejovcra 'Ek rov irarpo'i fiov. That Moab means 
 begotten by my father is clear, and according to i^"'?^'^, vv. 
 32, 34, and li}''?^'?, ver. 36, it seems to be equivalent to 3xp. 
 But it is also possible that it may be equivalent to ^^ "*?, aqua 
 2Mtris (io=''iD, from nio, dijluere, fiuidum esse, like ''ia, from ni3), 
 for semen patris (comp. Num. xxiv. 7, Prov. v. 16, also Isa. 
 xlviii. 1, according to the extant text, though there ^y^fp may 
 be intended for ''tap), to which ''03, Kcri i03, Isa. xxv. 1 0, seems 
 to allude. The name ""PJ?"!? means, according to the narrative, 
 the son of parents of the same stock ; litsv, the belonging to a 
 nation (ahs. then concr.), is related to ^V as po^^' is to D^n*. 
 
GENESIS XX. 65 
 
 The peo|)le is called P^'J "".^s, for which poy is first used at a 
 later period of the language (Ps. Ixxxiii. 8, comp. 1 Sam. xi. 
 11, Heb. with LXX.). 
 
 Lot is not again mentioned, nor even his death. His history- 
 terminates the collateral line of Haran, and at the same time 
 relates the origin of two nations interwoven in the history of 
 Israel. De Wette, Tuch, Ewald, Ivnobel, Bohmer, and Dill- 
 maun see in this narrative the invention of Israelite national 
 hatred. But how should this be the root of the legend, when 
 their descent from Lot is reckoned an honour to the Moabites 
 and Ammonites, Deut. ii. 9, 19, and Israel is directed to 
 leave unmolested the land awarded to them as t^i'p '•33, and 
 consequently congeners ? It was not till they had behaved in 
 an unbrotherly manner to Israel, that they were excluded from 
 the congregation of the Lord, — on no other grounds but just 
 this unbrotherly conduct, Deut. xxiii. 4 sq. And if lewdness 
 (Num. XXV.) and want of natural feeling (e.g. 2 Kings iii. 26 sq.) 
 subsequently appear to be fundamental in the character 
 and cultus of both nations, we are at least equally justified in 
 assuming that these their hereditary sins are derived from their 
 origin, as that the legend fashioned their origin accordingly. 
 
 sakah's pkeservation at the coukt of abimelech, CH. XX. 
 
 The long Jahvistic section in four parts is now followed by 
 an Elohistic one, relating how the honour of Sarah, which had 
 been endangered by her being taken into the harem of Abime- 
 lech, was preserved. This narrative is a pendant to the 
 Elohistic narrative, xii. 10 sqq., where it is the harem of 
 Pharaoh into which Sarah is carried off. "Whether the two 
 histories are two forms of the same legend or not, the narra- 
 tors are at all events different. If Q is however regarded as 
 the narrator of ch. xx., it is but a shallow inference to esteem 
 him as such from the use of the Divine name D\-i^x. Ilgen 
 
 (Urkunden dcs Jcrusakmer Tempelarchivs, 1798) already 
 VOL. II. • E 
 
66 GENESIS XX. 1. 
 
 distinguished two Elohists, and the same perception dawned 
 quite independently upon Hupfeld (Quellen, 1853), especially 
 with regard to ch. xx. Apart from D^n^x (n), which is besides 
 exchanged, ver, 4, for ''p^., there is nothing which absolutely 
 leads to Q, the tone of the language being more closely related 
 to that of J {e.g. y^rh pxn, xx. 15, xiii. 9 ; "Jp^n D2C'^i, xx. 8, 
 xix. 27 ; ■>?"=)'^J', XX. 11, xii. 17; cy ion ni;'y, xx. 13, xix. 19 ; 
 pi, XX. 11, xix. 8), but also characteristically differing from 
 it {e.g. "^^ipN, XX. 12, com p. CJrpx, xviii. 13 ; D'^n^x with a plural 
 of the predicate, xx. 13, like xxxv. 7, the ninox peculiar to 
 him, XX. 7, with the usual rihsc', xx. 14). It is also here only 
 that Abraham is called s^"??, xx. 7 (comp. Ps. cv. 15), and the 
 mediatorial position implied in this notion appears here in an 
 instructive and ancient light ; the direction of Abimelech to 
 the intercession of the patriarch recalls Job xlii. 8. It was 
 in E that B found this narrative, which he here inserts retro- 
 spectively and not in its original place, as e.g. the Synoptists 
 bring in the purification of the Temple, which took place in 
 the first Jerusalem Passover, in the third. 
 
 Abraham's departure to the south, ver. 1 ; And Ahraliam 
 departed thence to the land of the south, and dwelt hetiveen 
 Kades and Sur. He leaves IMamre and its curse-stricken 
 neighbourhood and journeys 3i.3n n^nx ; so here instead of 
 napan, xii. 9, xiii. 1, with He loeale to the connecting form, 
 like xxiv. 67, xxviii. 2, xliii. 17, xlvi. 1 ; Ew. § 2165. The 
 southern part of Canaan, the subsequent territory of the tribes 
 of Judah, Benjamin and Simeon, is divided by the features of 
 the country into four distinctly separate parts. The moun- 
 tainous (■'v'C') or high land, on whose western slope lies a hilly 
 district which gradually sinks into a plain {>\^^'y), forms the 
 centre ; while towards the east the wilderness O^ip) iuclines 
 towards the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea, to the south the 
 South-land (2i3, Josh. xv. 21) forms in several plainly marked 
 terraces a spur of the mountains towards the Petrsean peninsula. 
 It was here that Abraham sojourned in the district between 
 
GENESIS XX. 2-5. C7 
 
 Kadesli and Sliur (where was, according to xvi. V, 14, the 
 well of Hagar), wandering occasionally from these his head- 
 quarters to Gerar south of Gaza (see on xxvi. 17). Here in 
 the south-west of Canaan already dwelt the Philistines ; for 
 though the narrator both here and xxi. 22-34 calls Abimelech 
 only king of Gerar, and not, as the narrator in ch. xxvi., king of 
 the Philistines, yet this is not to be regarded as his abstinence 
 from a non-historical anticipation (Bertheau, Kn.) ; it was an 
 actual tradition that the Philistines had settled on this coast 
 long before Israel became a nation (Hitzig, Philist. p. 146). 
 Unlike as the Philistines of the patriarchal age are to those 
 of the times of the Judges, Ewald refers to the unmistake- 
 able similarity of the proper names, especially ^^P'r??, accord- 
 ing to P. Haupt, not = Ahimalki but Ahimilki, father of the 
 council, and masculine proper names in aih, as WX and r\yi. 
 Abraham fares in this pre-!Mosaic I'hilistine kingdom as 
 according to ch. xii. he had done in Egypt, ver. 2 : And 
 Abraham said of SaraJi his ivife : She is my sister, and 
 Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. He did not 
 say it to her, but to others of her, ^'X like ?, 135, Obad. ver. 1, 
 comp. Ps. ii. 7, xli. 6. In the position which is given to the 
 history by Ii, we should have to admit that Abimelech was not 
 concerned for sensual enjoyment, but that he desired to ally him- 
 self as brother-in-law to Abraham the wealthy nomad prince. 
 But this time also Elohim interposes in her behalf, vv. 3-5 : 
 And Elohim came to Abimelech in a dream of the night, and 
 said unto him: Behold, tlwu must die because of the woman 
 ichom thou hast taken, since she is the -wife of a husband. And 
 Abimelech had not come near her, and he said: Lord God, wilt 
 Thou destroy also a rightcoiis nation ? Did he not say unto me : 
 She is my sister ? and did not she herself also say : Re is my 
 brother? In the integrity of my heart and the cleanness of my 
 hands have I done this.. We may hesitate as to whether 
 HTjin here and xxxL 24, 1 Kin^s iii. 5, is meant for an ace. of 
 time or a dependent gen. ; the accentuation assumes the latter. 
 
68 GENESIS XX. 6, 7. 
 
 and indeed correctly (Targ. i*v''pl so'?n3). A dream, as the 
 experience of one who is asleep, is the lowest grade of revela- 
 tion, hence Elohim comes to Abimelech and Laban in a dream 
 of the night ; but Jacob also, xxviii. 12, xxxi. 11, and Joseph, 
 xxxvii. 5, receive Divine disclosures Dl^nn (different from the 
 vision of the night, xlvi, 2). It is E who delights in relating 
 these Divine revelations by night. A married woman is 
 called pyii ripy2, as at Deut. xxii. 22, in post - biblical ter- 
 minology tr''X nti'N. Death is placed before the king as 
 certainly at hand by en tc moriturum. He was then (accord- 
 ing to vv. 7, 17) sick like Hezekiah, Isa. xxxviii. 1, and even 
 on that account he had not come near her (Isa. viii. 3). ^J"'*^ 
 here, as at xix. 18, is one of ^'s points of contact with J. 
 The original text was perhaps p'''^.^ ^^i!, at all events "'ij, if it here 
 meant an individual heathen (Targ. Jer. ]''Ot:y "i3), would have 
 to be regarded, as by Geiger, Ursclir. 365, as a later insertion; 
 ••ij however is like Dy (comp. on xvii. 14), an elastic notion, 
 Abimelech is generalizing, which as king he had a right to do. 
 The question is similar to xviii. 23, but there it is ^^5, adco, 
 here ^"^.j o^ca, Ew. § 354a; a nation which is nevertheless 
 righteous. In Nin-Drx\n'i, N\n and the double-gendered xin 
 stand incorrectly together. ""Dab'Qria, in the innocence of 
 my heart, is the usual expression, not ^3? Dnn. " Cleanness 
 of hands," as in the phrase " to wash the hands in ivpj," 
 Ps. xxvi. 6, Ixxiii. 13. Abimelech's exculpation admitted, 
 vv. 6, 7 : And God said to him in a dream : I also know that 
 tliou hast done this in the integrity of thine heart, and I also 
 withheld thee from guilt toivards me ; therefore have I not suffered 
 thee to touch her. And noiv give tack the man's wife, for he is 
 a 2y'>^ophet and will pray for thee, and thou shalt live ; hut if 
 thou do not give her hack, knoio that thou shcdt die, thou, and all 
 thine. On the form itDHD, see Ges. § 75, note 21c; and with 
 the construction with (, comp. e.g. Ps. li. 6. pi with an accus. 
 and ? means either authorization, or as here and xxxi. 7, 
 making possible, permitting. God commands the king under a 
 
GENESIS XX. 8-13. G9 
 
 fresh threat at once to restore Abraham's wife, for he is a X'?3, 
 Such is the term applied to one who makes known, proclaims, 
 speaks, viz. of God and Divine mysteries, xviii. 17-19, and not 
 the authorized, the inspired, the God-counselled, or any other 
 kind of passive meaning, but like TpC', ^"'IJ, ''\^, the intensive 
 of the 2^0-^'i- (fci-, ^^s shown in Fleischer's excursus to the former 
 edition of this commentary. The Assyrian, which presents for 
 nahil the general meaning to call, to name, to reckon, does 
 not alter it. From the fact that Abraham as k"'33 is an accept- 
 able petitioner, an interceding mediator, we see that according 
 to the scriptural view the official characteristic of the prophet 
 presupposes the general one of "piety and personal association 
 with God (Wisd. vii. 27; 2 Pet. i. 21 comp. iii. 2).^ The 
 imper. iTn*! is not equivalent to i^l^^], it declares, like Prov. 
 iv. 4 and elsewhere, as well the means as the end intended. 
 The God-fearing heathen monarch accepted the reproof of 
 God, but not without taking Abraham to task, vv. 8-10: 
 And Abimelcch rose iip early in the morning and called cdl his 
 servants and told them all these things atidihli/ ; and the men 
 were much, afraid. And Ahimcleeh called Abraham and said 
 to him : What hast thou done unto us ? and ivherein have I 
 hecn guiltij against thee, that thou hast brought on me and on my 
 hlngdom a great guilt ? Deeds which ought not' to be done, hast 
 thou done to one. And Abimelcch said to Abraham : What 
 scnvest thou, that thou hast done this thing ? To speak ^;T^?^ of 
 another means not confidential, but (comp. e.g. xxiii. 10) audible 
 and unreserved communication. With 96 (what ought not 
 to be done) comp. xxxiv. 7, and with ^''^5■^ na, Ps. xxxvii. 37. 
 God's prophet thus put to shame seeks to excuse himself, 
 vv. 11-13: A7id Abraham said: Because I thoiight. Surely 
 there is no fear of God in this place, and they will hill me for my 
 ivife's saJce. And she is besides really my sister, the daughter of 
 
 1 Kuenen {Einl. § 13, nete 20) thinks that the designation of Abraham as 
 N''33 points to the century in which the prophets undertook the sjiiritual guid- 
 ance of the people and were honoured as the confidants of the Deity, au in- 
 ference on the ground of self-made history and devoid of internal necessity. 
 
70 GENESIS XX. 14-16. 
 
 my father, hut not the daughter ofm.y mother, and she 'became my 
 wife. And it came to pass, when Elohim led me forth from my 
 fathers house, that I said to her : This is thy favour which thou 
 onayst show me ; wherever we come, say of me : He is my hrother. 
 ■•3, 11a, gives the reason for the understood sentence: I did 
 it, comp. xxvii. 20, xxxi. 31, Ex. i. 19, like the understood 
 "thou shalt" at Ex, iii. 12. PI is restrictive, then, because 
 M'hat is simply thus and not otherwise is certainly the case, 
 affirmative (as also at Num. xx. 19 ; Ps. xxxii. 6). By the state- 
 ment of Abraham that Sarah is his half-sister (ofioirdTpio^), 
 what preceded at xi. 29, xii. 13, is incontestably completed. 
 What he says too as to the time of his agreement with Sarah 
 is easily reconcilable with xii. 11. Nor is it strange that he 
 should speak of his wanderings according to outward appear- 
 ance, reserving to himself their motive and purpose. Hence 
 too D'TiPX \"is iiynn may be an accommodation to heathen modes 
 of thought and speech, but Israelite piety does not elsewhere 
 shun to speak of the one God in the plural, e.g. xxxv. 7 ; 
 2 Sam. vii. 23; Josh. xxiv. 19; Ps. Iviii. 12; 1 Sam. 
 xvii. 26. Dipsn-ba-bx stands for mpan-^n, attracted by 
 what follows (comp. with respect to the art., Ex. xx. 24). 
 Abimelech's obedience and generosity, vv. 14, 15: And 
 Ahimelcch took sheep and oxen and men-servants and maid- 
 servants and gave them to Ahrahajii, and restored to him Sarah 
 his wife. And Ahimelech said : Behold, my land is open to 
 thee ; dwell where it seems good to thee. He also compensates 
 Sarah, ver. 1 6 : And to Sarah he said : Behold, I give a 
 thousand shekels of silver to thy hrother : hehold, let this he to 
 thee a covering of the eyes for all those with thee, and in the 
 2)resence of all, then art thou righted. The thousand silver 
 shekels (Ges. § 120, note 2) are not the money's worth 
 of the presents given for appeasing Abraham, ver. 14, but a 
 special present, the purpose of which referred personally 
 to Sarah, delivered to Abraham himself. It is clear 
 what is meant by ^)TV. '^''°? : a covering of the eyes, which 
 
GENESIS XX. 16. 7l 
 
 renders one blind to what has hajipened (comp. Job ix. 24), 
 and makes it as tliougb it had not happened (comp. xxxii. 21). 
 The only question is whether it was Sarah or those around 
 her whose eyes the present was to cover. Dillni. explains 
 it with Hofmann {Schrifihciocis, 2nd edit, i, 233): let it be 
 to thee a covering of the eyes for all wdio constitute thy 
 surrounding, that they may no more sec dishonour in thee. 
 Then 'H^, as dat. commocli, would precede the dative of 
 destination, /bp, which is improbable, and D^J""!? niDD has 
 indeed the meaning of a propitiatory present, and as sucli 
 befits Sarah, on which account h'^h cannot be equivalent to 
 ^^h ; hence 1^ is, on the contrary, the dative of destination, 
 and b'^h the dative of relation : with relation to all or for 
 all who are with thee. AVe translate further : and in the 
 presence of all — then {\ cqwcl., like xxii. 4, then he lifted up) 
 art thou proved (Passive to n''?i!^. Job xiii. 15, xix. 5), i.e. 
 to be one to whom a propitiation is due. According to the 
 most obvious view, rin3i:j"! Is equivalent to J^in^iJl ; the Dagesh 
 lenc is however lacking, as indeed it would be also at xxx. 15, 
 if nnph were there equivalent to ^^?_^\. The punctuators 
 however always place Dagesh lenc in such formations, e.g. ^V^^ 
 for ^V^'f, 1 Kings i, 11 and frequently, and distinguish the 
 second pers. T^^'^)., xvi, 11, from the third pers. nxni^i^ by the 
 added Sbeva (nccording to which Olsh. § 35&, must be 
 corrected). They therefore took ^naiJl as a participle, but 
 scarcely like Gesenius {Thes. p. 700, 592): and she was con- 
 victed (of her fault), since not shame, but the preservation 
 of her honour is awarded to Sarah ; but nnsiJl stands ellipti- 
 cally for nx nnaiJi (comp. xxiv. 30 ; Hab. ii. 10 ; Ps. vii. 10, 
 xxii. 29, Iv. 20; Isa. xxix. 8, xl. 19), unless we prefer with 
 Dillmann to point it ^^'^p\ (comp. Konig, Lchrgch. i. 423). 
 By a truly royal extra present, Abimelech makes amends for 
 the wrong done to Sarah, inasmuch as he thereby manifests 
 a respectful acknowledgment of the marital relation against 
 which he had unconsciously almost offended. Abraham 
 
72 GENESIS XX. 17, 18. 
 
 accepts the money, because it was meant in all seriousness 
 as an atonement. His prayer is heard, ver. 17 : Aiid 
 Ahraham prayed to God, and Eloliim healed Abimelech and 
 his ivife and his maid-servants, and they tare children. We 
 have here J^i'"!^" instead of i^nS'J', the notion of service 
 adhering more to "^nstr than to nox, 1 Sam. xxv. 41 — the 
 n in this plural formation, for which the Arab, is amavdt, is a 
 compensation for an original 1. The Arabic diminutive umajja 
 (little maid) gave a name to the dynasty of the Umajjades. 
 We here first learn that Abimelech and the women of his 
 house were visited with sickness, according to which np^l 
 seems to include Abimelech, and hence to be meant, as at 
 Hos. ix. 16, of the power of procreation as well as of birth. 
 Yer. 18 too may be understood of a hindrance to both 
 conception and bringing forth. Yer. 1 8 : For Jahvch had 
 fast closed every womh of the house of A himelech for the sake 
 of Sarah, the wife of Ahraham. The additional clause rightly 
 originates from the fact, that the sickness and recovery of the 
 women took place in the short period of time between the 
 carrying off and the release of Sarah. Those who were preg- 
 nant had to lament the absence of travail pains, or their lack 
 of result; the Dmn (lya) ~\)iV comprises both, when as here 
 it means incapacity of giving birth, Isa. Ixvi. 9, and not as 
 at xvi. 2, comp. xxix. 31, xxx. 22, incapacity of conception. 
 It is here construed with ^^3, as in a like sense with -i3d, 
 1 Sam. i. 6. i?'^"^y is found in both U, ver. 11, and J, xii. 
 17, xliii. 18. Yer. 18 might in itself %vell be a free 
 exegetical addition; but the diction gives it, like xxii. 15-18, 
 the appearance of conformity to the source. 
 
 BIRTH OF ISAAC AND EXPULSION OF ISHMAEL, CH. XXI. 1-21. 
 
 This fourth portion of the third section of Abraham's life 
 is divided into two parts, the first of which, xxi. 1-5, relates 
 the birth of Isaac, the second, xxi. 9-21, the expulsion of 
 
GENESIS XXI. 1-3. 73 
 
 Islmiael from the parental house. Apart from the paren- 
 thesis, ver. 1, the first part, xxi. 1-5, is essentially from Q: 
 it falls back upon ch. xvii., and forms one whole witli it. 
 The second part, xxi. 6-21, is, on the other hand, from U, 
 in ver. 6, the counterpart to xviii. 12, and from /, in 
 vv.' 9-21, the counterpart to ch. xvi. The diction of this 
 older Elohist nearly approaches the Jahvistico-Deuteronomic. 
 Thus the likewise Jahvistic formula "ii?33 D^t^'^1 is here 
 repeated, ver. 14, as at xx. 8; and n'liX'i'y, vv. 11, 25, is 
 not less Jahvistic, xxvi. 32. The noun n»x, w. 10, 12, 13, 
 is moreover so very Deuteronomic, that ^^~^ occurs with it 
 only once, xxviii, 68, in Deuteronomy. 
 
 The occurrence in Gerar, according to the order here 
 preserved, took place in the year which had been fixed, 
 xviii. 10, 14, to elapse until the birth of Isaac. Yer. 1 
 points back to this promise given in ]\Iamre : And Jahvch 
 visited Sarah as He had said, and Jahvch did unto Sarah 
 as He had spohen. The structure of the verse is like ii. 5«, 
 and its contents are, as it were, the obverse of xx. 18. We 
 have to give up the perception of the origin of these two 
 verses ; enough that they form a transition from an extract 
 from E to one from Q, for in ver. 2 follows the text of Q : 
 And Sarah conceived, and hare Abraham a son in his old 
 age, at the ap^pointcd time which Elohim had said. Following 
 ch. xvii. 19, 21, the reference back to xvii. 21 strikes one 
 immediately. According to xxv. 7, Abraham attained the 
 age of 175, hence at Isaac's birth he had still a long life 
 before him, and yet he was in C'ppT (only found besides here, 
 xxxvii. 3, xliv. 20), and was, looking backwards, well stricken 
 in years. He gives to his new-born son the name prescribed, 
 xvii. 14, ver. 3 : And Abraham ccdled the name of his son 
 who ivas horn to him, whom Sarah hare him, Isaac. It is 
 impossible that '^r'isn, thus written with Pathach, should be 
 a participle, it is 3 pers., the article standing for itfJ^, as at 
 xviii. 21, xlvi. 27. The circumcision of Isaac as prescribed, 
 
74 GENESIS XXI. 4-7. 
 
 xvii. 1 2, ver. 4 : And Ahraham circumcised Ms son Isaac 
 when he was eight days old, as Ulohim commanded him. 
 Abraham's age at the time, ver. 5 : And Abraham was one 
 hundred years old when his son Isaac ivas horn. This refers 
 back to xvii. 17. The construction of the Passive with ris 
 (here and ver. 8, comp. on iv. 18) is, in the Pentateuch, no 
 indication of a source. The extract from ^ now begins 
 with an historical statement of the motive for the name of 
 Isaac, ver. 6: And Sarah said: Elohim has prepared 
 laughter for me; every one wlio hears it will laugh at me. 
 The Pentateuch always has prri, and never pnb', for to laugh. 
 As at xvii. 17 (comp. Ps. exxvi. 2), it is the laughter of 
 joyful surprise that is intended, but here not unmingled 
 with some feeling of shame. In ''r'"PD>*\ as in ^^pnn^ Jer. 
 xxii. 15, the union of the syllables is loosened, Ges. § 10, 
 note 2. Sarah is in a state of solemn maternal rapture, 
 hence her words have a poetic elevation and arrangement. 
 As ver. 6 is a distich, ver. 7 is a tristich : She said also : 
 Jllio ivould have said to Ahraham: Sarah shall give children 
 such ! For I have home him a son in his old age. Tuch 
 translates : Who will announce to Abraham : Sarah is giving 
 children suck ! and takes the words as a call to take the 
 joyful news to the father. But then instead of ^^^ we 
 should expect I"'?!!, and instead of ^P^y[} rather riprn^ and 
 instead of Ci''3n the more definite i?. In Num. xxiii. 10, 
 Lam. iii. 37, also ''P, with a perfect following, means: who 
 has done, i.e. ever ventured or been able to do. So here : 
 Who has ever said to Abraham, for which we should say : 
 Who would have said (and yet it is so) ; comp. on this use 
 of the perfect in questions, xviii. 12, Num. xxiii. 10, Judg. 
 ix. 9 sq., 2 Kings xx. 9 (where "^Pi^ means ivcritne), Ps. 
 xi. 3, Job xii. 9, Zech. iv. 10 {quis contemserit). Only with 
 this meaning is the general plur. C^S (comp. i.ns, xix. 29, as 
 also Isa. xxxvii. 3, 1 Sam. xvii. 43) in place. The expres- 
 sion is brief, well turned and choice (pJ!P, a poetic Aramaism, 
 
GENESIS XXL 8, 9. To 
 
 occurs in the Pentateucli only here). Festival at weaning, 
 ver. 8 : And the child grev), and was weaned: and Ahrahani 
 prepared a great feast on the day of Isaac's weaning. This 
 took place in his second or third year, a child being, in the 
 East, often nourished by its mother or wet-nurse till its third 
 year (1 Sam. i. 23 sqq. ; 2 Mace. vii. 27). To be weaned is 
 called b»3n, from ^^i, related to "i^3, JL^ ; from the funda- 
 mental meaning " to fill, to complete," may be explained 
 all the meanings : to perform = to do actually, to develop 
 fully = to ripen, Mjjh. to be suckled to the end = to be 
 weaned. The announcement, the birth, the weaning of the 
 child — all furnish matter for varied and joyful laughter ; 
 pnv'; means one who laughs, who has abundant joy. Our 
 Lord (John viii. 56) expresses the deepest cause of this joy. 
 Sarah the wife of the one, by becoming the mother of Isaac, 
 became the mother of Israel, Isa. li. 1 sq., comp. Mai. ii. 15, 
 Ezek. xxxiii. 24, and by becoming the mother of Israel, the 
 ancestress, and thus indirectly the mother of the Messiah, 
 who has flesh and blood from Isaac through Israel, and in 
 whom Abraham became a blessing to all nations. Hence 
 at Verdun the birth and circumcision of Isaac and the birth 
 and circumcision of Christ are correctly placed together on 
 the altar ; while above is the announcement of Isaac on the 
 same line as the salutation of the angel. The ancient synagogal 
 Haggadah, that Isaac was born on the night of the Passover, 
 that night of redemption, also fits in to this historical chain. 
 St. Paul, Gal. iv., equally regards what is further related, 
 xxi. 9-21, as typical and allegorical history. Ishmael behaves 
 insolently to his brother, ver. 9 : And Sarah saw the son of 
 Hagar the Egyptian, icliom she lore to Abraham, mocking. 
 The masoretically testified reading is PjlVP, with a small 
 Pathach, i.e. Segol in pause, comp. pn>7, Ex. xxxii. 6 ; ^nn";, 
 Deut. xxxii. 11, and the pausal transition of "^V into "i^. The 
 word does not here mean innocent joking, but insolent rude- 
 ness (comp. xxxix. 14 ; Ezek. xxiii. 32, synon. Jl??, r?>y). The 
 
lb GENESIS XXI. 10-13. 
 
 contemptuous attested in word and deed, wliich Isaac suffered 
 from Ishmael, is regarded by the apostle as a prophecy 
 of the persecution which the believing Church of Christ 
 suffers from the bondmen of the law given in the desert of 
 Sinai, and thus in the Hagarene land. Hofmann closely 
 connects ver. 9 with 8 : At the festival of Isaac's weaning, 
 Ishmael, instead of sharing in the joy of the family, was 
 mocking at the son of his father. Sarah's demand, ver. 10 : 
 And she said to AhraJiam: Cast out this hond-ivoman and her 
 son ; for the son of this hond-nwrnan shall not he heir loiih riiy 
 son, with Isaac. This request vexed Abraham, but God bade 
 him comply with it, vv. 11-13 : The thing appca.rcd very dis- 
 ])lcasing to Abraham because of his son. But Elohim said to 
 Abraham: Let it not be displeasing to thee because of the boy 
 and because of thy bond-maid ; in all that Sarah says to thee, 
 hearken to her words ; for through Isaox shall thy seed be named. 
 And also the son of the bond-maid ivill I make a nation, because 
 he is thy seed. Sarah's request, in which proud contempt was 
 mingled with just displeasure, was very repugnant to Abraham, 
 not indeed on account of Hagar, who was and continued 
 nothing more to him than his wife's bond -maid, but on 
 account of his son whom she had borne, and whom he loved 
 as his own flesh and blood (ri'liX'^y, on account of the turns, 
 conditions, circumstances; comp. JU»-^, from JU-, to turn, an 
 ancient ''on account of" occurring outside the Pentateueli 
 only Josh. xiv. 6, Judg. vi. 7, Jer. iii. 8, comp. the corrupt 
 passage, 2 Sam. xiii. 16). God however requires of him the 
 denial of his natural feeling, basing this denial on the promise 
 ynt '^p xnj?"! pnvi^ ""S, and making it easier by the promise that 
 He would also make the son of the bond-maid the ancestor 
 of a nation, even him (a retrospective pron. like xlvii. 21), 
 because he is his seed. Three explanations of this iv ^laaaK 
 K\7j97]a£Tai (70i aTrepfia (Eora. ix. 7 ; Heb. xi. 18) are possible : 
 after Isaac's name shall thy seed be called (v. Hofm., comp. 
 Ges. § 154. 3a), or: in, through, from Isaac shall seed be 
 
GENESIS XXI. U. 77 
 
 called into existence for thee (Drechsler), or : in Isaac, through 
 him shall it happen, that a seed of Abraham is spoken of 
 (Bleek), or more accurately: through him shall a seed be 
 bestowed on thee, who shall bear thy name, and propagate 
 the blessings connected with it in a direct line (Kn. Dillm.). 
 Since with the first view we should have expected Cti'B, Isa. 
 xliii. 7, xlviii. 1, and moreover the nation of the promise is 
 only once, Amos vii. 9, called P^'^\, and since i<1\^ has indeed 
 the meaning "to call into existence," Isa. xli. 4, Eom. iv. 17, 
 but never so without an addition, the third view must be 
 preferred. In Isaac shall the nation, which is and is called 
 the genuine seed of Abraham (Isa. xli. 8), have its point of 
 departure. Abraham understands this in a vision of the 
 night, or a dream, for he acts in the morning according 
 to the Divine direction, ver. 14: Then Ahraharn arose early 
 in the morning, and tooh hrcacl and a shin with water, and gave 
 it to Ilagar, laid it ivpon her nech, and the hoy, and sent her 
 av'ay. And she went and wandered in the wilderness of Bcersiha' . 
 He obeyed the voice of God, much as his attachment to the 
 child and his mother, and his compassion for both, strove 
 against it. Ishmael having been at Isaac's birth, xvii. 25, 
 thirteen years of age, must now have been fourteen, and yet 
 Abraham puts him together with the bread and water upon 
 Hagar's neck. So indeed according to the LXX., koI iirWrjKev 
 eVt TOP &fiov avrri<i ro Trathlov, which Dillm. looks upon as the 
 original wording. But even supposing that E was not as aware 
 of the age of Ishmael as Q was, why should he have looked 
 upon him as a little child to be carried by his mother ? why 
 should l.?*^"^^"!, governed by llii*!!, be a harmonistic correction ? 
 The state of the case is in reality similar to rp''J3TiS'i, xliii. 15. 
 Hagar no more took Ishmael astride upon her neck than his 
 brothers took Benjamin in their hand like the money ; ^^, 
 like -'3'^, xviii. 14, is the perf. of the accessory action (Driver, 
 § 163). V^"^), is impf. Kcd from nyn, not yjJn. From Ilagar's 
 wandering in the wilderness, afterwards called that of Beiir- 
 
78 GENESIS XXI. 15-18. 
 
 sheba, we may infer that Abraham at that time resided in 
 the Negeb. Nor does it follow from vv. 15, 16 that the 
 narrator regarded Ishmael as a little child : And the water in 
 the skin was spent, then she cast the child under one of the shrubs, 
 and went and sat over against, about a bow-shot off ; for she said : 
 Let me not look upon the death of the child — therefore she sat 
 over against and lifted up her voice and wept. The appellation 
 'yy], (comp. iv. 23 ; 1 Kings xii. 8 ; Dan. i. 4; Eccles. iv. 13) 
 leaves the age undecided. To cast is like Matt. xv. 30 (comp. 
 to cast into prison, Jer. xxxviii. 6), to lay down hastily, here 
 said of the sudden resolve of hopeless resignation. The store 
 of water was spent, and Ishmael in a state of extreme exhaus- 
 tion was unable to drag on any farther, and she laid him 
 down under a Dn"'r. The branchy woody perennial desert 
 plant which furnishes the usual fuel, and in the shade of 
 which a scanty vegetation exists in the hot season, is still called 
 ^jJ^. Under such a shrub she laid him, that he might at 
 least die in the shade, and sat down over against \in|?P? V^y} 
 T\'^'[>, at the distance of shootings of the bow (Gen. like Jer. iv. 
 29), i.e. according to the usual comparatio decurtata. : as far as 
 bow-shots are accustomed to carry, from nm, original form 
 in9, Pilcl nino, like ninc>, Ges. § 75, note 18. Maternal love 
 was not able to look upon the death of the child (2 ns"i, said 
 of compassionate beholding, as at xliv. 34, xxix. 32; Num. 
 xi. 15), but at the same time could not lose sight of him. A 
 voice of comfort then resounded from heaven, vv. 17, 18: 
 Then Elohim heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of Elohim 
 called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her : What aileth thee, 
 Hagar ? fear not, for Elohim has heard the voice of the boy 
 lohere he is. Arise, lift up the boy and hold him with firin 
 hand ; for I will make him a great nation. God heard (as the 
 name ^syot:'' signifies) ; He who had entered into covenant 
 with Abraham, even the Angel of the covenant, proclaimed 
 from heaven words of comfort and encouragement to the 
 mother, uf N^in iC'Na, where (= "^^ Cii?p3^ 2 Sam. xv. 21) 
 
GENESIS XXI. 10-21. V9 
 
 he now is (in so helpless a state). With ^3 "'ip^ri'!' is here 
 placed "^1^"^^*, which elsewhere has to he supplied, ex quo 
 manifcstum est, as Jerome remarks, cum qiii tcnctur non oneri 
 matri fuisse, scd comitcm. The immediate help, ver. 19 : Tlioi 
 Elohim opened her eyes, and she saw a spring of water, and went 
 and filled the shin ivith icatcr and gave the hoy drink. Else- 
 where (as at xxvi, 15) "iX3 means a well dug hy human hands, 
 here a spring that might be seen, Assyr. heru (differing from 
 "ii3="iN3, cistern, i.e. a receptacle for rain water, Assyr. hunt), 
 as at xiv. 10, with "i^n^ the bitumen spring.^ A spring from 
 which water was flowing appeared before her eyes, which had 
 become enlightened, and with it she refreshed the exhausted 
 boy. How it afterwards fared with Ishmael, vv. 20, 21 : 
 And Elohim was ivith the hoy, and he greio up, and dwelt in the 
 ivilderness and hccame an archer. And he dwelt in the wilderness 
 of Pharan, and his mother took him a wife out of the land of 
 Egypt. Entrance into adolescence is meant by ?^3*1. The 
 sentence concerning the vocation may be translated : growing 
 up, he became an archer ; nn'i^ from nn"i, to increase = to grow, 
 
 comp. on Prov. xxviii. 28; Arab, bj- to grow up (whence 
 
 c_?„ according to the spirit of the Arabic: educator, guardian, 
 master). In the Mishnic too nnn means the youth (plur. 
 C^'i), according to which E. Chananel and other ancient 
 expositors (see Abulwalid's Lexicon) and the Targ. translate 
 j^jTG'p s^a"i^ juvenis sagittarins. But it is better to take '^?*"i as 
 the more general word, which is more particularly explained 
 by nu'i^^ a caster (shooter), viz. an archer, a permutative com- 
 bination as at xiii. 8 ; 1 Kings i. 2, v. 29 ; Ges. § 113. The 
 LXX. too took nm in the sense of 33"i, to shoot (like xlix. 23 ; 
 Ps. xviii. 15 ; Job xvi. 13), translating the two words together 
 To^oTT^?, and hence read Jy^'\>, nah in the same sense as non 
 ^')-\>,, according to which Onkelos also translates (as Gr. Yen. 
 
 ' See my article on the song of the well, Num. xxi. 17 sqq., in LutharJt's 
 Zeitschr. 1882, pp. 449-451. 
 
80 GENESIS XXI. 22, 23. 
 
 does, ^dWcov To^ft)), and for which Hitzig on Jer. iv. 29, 
 Hupf. on Ps. Ixxviii. 9, Kn. Olsh. Dillm. decide. p*^3 "in*in is 
 the name of the entire desert plateau, bounded on the west by 
 'Gehel Heidi and 'Geleh, on the east by the Edom country, on 
 the north by tlie southern mountains of Judtea, on the south 
 by el- Till proper, whicli here as a whole extending far and 
 wide is opposed to the V^f "l^53 "ilinrp. Hagar, herself an 
 Egyptian, representing herein the father (xxxiv. 4, xxxviii. 6), 
 took for her son a wife from Egypt. 
 
 TEEATY BETWEEN ABKAHAM AND ABIMELECH, CH, XXI. 22-34. 
 
 The fifth part of the third section of the life of Abraham 
 (xxi. 22—34) relates the solemn conclusion of a treaty between 
 Abimelech and Abraham. The narrator is F, the same who 
 related Sarah's preservation in Gerar, and the expulsion of 
 Ishmael and his mother ; the scene is everywhere the south 
 country, with the neighbouring Gerar and the great wilderness 
 opening somewhat farther southwards. The diction of the 
 narrator here too has points of contact with J, it contains 
 specially classical expressions. The conclusion of the covenant 
 (denoted by n''"i3 m3, only used by J and U, never by Q) is 
 represented with the same archasological preciseness as the 
 history of the redemption by the Goel in ch. iv. of the book 
 of Euth. Only at the end does B complete and frame the 
 narrative of H by an extract from J. The desire and pro- 
 posal of Abimelech, vv. 22, 23 : And it came to pass at that 
 time, that Abimelech spake, and Phicol, the captain of his host, 
 to Abraham thus : Elohim is with thee in all that thou doest. 
 Now then sivear unto me by Elohim, on the spot, that thoio ivilt 
 not be faithless to me, nor to my offspring and posterity, that 
 the same kindness that I have shoivn thee, thou wilt shoiv to me 
 and to the country in which thou sojourncst as a guest. A 
 friendly relation, introduced by Abimelech, already exists ; 
 the question is concerning its establishment for all future 
 
GENESIS XXr. 25-30. 81 
 
 time, riiicol accompanies Abimelecli, to be present as a 
 
 witness. The LXX. adds, from the Jahvistic counterpart 
 
 (xxvi. 26), the name of ^l^^. The appellations of the 
 
 king and his official are Canaanite, as are also the Philistine 
 
 names of the cuneiform inscriptions, "an locative of the 
 
 demonstrative [}, urges an immediate compliance. *13?J p are 
 
 a pair of words alliterating like an acrostic, found elsewhere 
 
 only Job xviii. 19 ; Isa. xiv. 22. Abraham consents, ver. 24 : 
 
 Then Ahraham said: I sivcar. "^JX added to V^ti'X (with the 
 
 original i instead of e, like ^^'^'^, Judg. xvi. 26, together 
 
 with IV^'^, Ezek. xx. 38) is as emphatic an expression as 
 
 2 Kings vi. 2 ; Prov. xxiv. 32. He swears, yet not without a 
 
 "but," ver, 25 : And Ahraham reproved Ahimclech on accoimf, 
 
 of the well of water, tvhich the servants of Ahimclech had 
 
 taken aivay. The article points to some definite well, for an 
 
 indefinite one would have been called D''Q "iN*n (xxi. 19). 
 
 The king declares that he has had no part in this unjust 
 
 appropriation of Abraham's property, ver, 26 : Tl ten Ahimclech 
 
 said : I Jcnoia not who has done this, and neither hast thou told 
 
 it to me, nor have I heard it except to-day. The perf. npiiri, 
 
 25«, relates in a preparatory manner to this declaration of 
 
 Abimelecli (in which the correlatives, ncque . . , ncque, are as 
 
 explicit as e.g. at Num. xxiii, 25). This was satisfactory, ver, 27 : 
 
 And Ahraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Ahimelceh, 
 
 and they hoth mcide a covenant. Abraham however causes 
 
 the acknowledgment of his property in the well, which had 
 
 been disputed, to be confirmed by a special formality, which 
 
 forms, as it were, an additional article of the covenant. This 
 
 formality is symbolical and needs explanation, vv. 28-30 : 
 
 And Ahraham placed seven lambs of the flock apart. Then 
 
 Ahimelceh said to Ahraham : What mean the seven lamhs which 
 
 thou hast set apart ? He said : Because thou shalt take the 
 
 seven lamhs from my hand, that it may he a witness for me that 
 
 I have digged this tvell. " Seven lambs of the flock " — this is 
 
 one of the cases where, as at 2 Sam. xii. 30, Ps. cxiii. 9, 
 VOL. II. F 
 
82 GENESIS XXI. 31. 
 
 comp. on Cant. i. 115, the article is connected "with the gen. 
 only. In the question : what are {i.e. mean), etc., nan is not 
 an adv. of locality as at 23a, but like nisn (Zech. i. 9), an 
 expression of the copula (Ew. § 297&). The i^^"^??, inter- 
 changing with IlI"^??, is an emphatic form, like ni?3, xlii. 36 ; 
 Prov. xxxi. 29 = 1^?^, comp. n3nj)3=in*^3, l Kings vii. 37. On 
 the absence of the article in n"'33 y3t^'"nNlJ see Ges. § 117, 
 note 2. The testimony given by Abimelech by his acceptance 
 of the seven lambs is like an oath, for seven is the number of 
 God as manifesting Himself; and to swear J?3L*b is the same 
 as to seven oneself, i.e. to submit the truth of a statement to 
 the Divine inspection. Hence seven things, as e.g. among the 
 Arabs, seven stones smeared with the blood of the covenant- 
 makers, and lying between them (Herod, iii. 8), are therefore 
 in treaties the symbolical instruments of sanction in the 
 name of God, or take the place of an oath for confirmation. 
 Generally speaking, a gift, which one of the contracting 
 parties accepts from the other, makes the contract the more 
 binding. So in Homer, //. xix. 243-246, where Agamemnon, 
 after swearing reconciliation with Achilles, sends also seven 
 three-footed kettles and seven women to Briseis ; and similarly 
 also Gen. xxxiii. 8-15. The name given to the place on 
 account of the occurrence, ver. 31 : Therefore the place vms 
 called Beer-" Si^ha , for there they hoth sivore. N^P, as at xi. 9, 
 xvi. 14, has the most general subject. The name means the 
 seven-well, or, what is indirectly the same, the well of the oath. 
 After a similar covenant between Isaac and Abimelech, the 
 servants of Isaac find a well, which they call ^^?^\ and from 
 it the name of the city is said to have been also called 
 yntt' "IS3 (xxvi. 32 sq.). Eobinson actually found there not 
 one but two deep wells of clear, excellent water, still called 
 
 «_juJl .AJ (i. 337-341), which means, in Arabic custom of 
 language, either the lion's well or also the well of impreca- 
 
 tion, for ^a*J1 is a synonym of Ix-^^ " the curse " [DMZ. 
 
GENESIS XXI. 32-34. 83 
 
 xxii. 177). The extra V^^ (Josh. xix. 2) has perhaps a 
 similar relation to V?'^""i5<3 as 1?1D, Xv)(up, has to 03^' 
 (Xeapolis), and is thus the locality of Isaac's well, named as 
 the annex of Beersheba, as Sychar is of Jacob's well Con- 
 clusion of the narrative, vv. 32-34 : And they made a covenant 
 in Beer-^Seha ; and Abimelech and Phicol, the captain of his 
 host, rose up and returned to the land of the Philistines. And 
 he planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-'^S6ha, and there called upon 
 the name of Jahveh the eternal God. And Ahraham sojourned 
 a long time in the land of the Philistines. Matter not 
 appertaining to the narrative of E is here blended with it. 
 According to J" it is assumed, ver, 34 (xxvi. 1, 26), that Gerar 
 was in Philistia and Beersheba, beyond the Philistine district. 
 Both the treaties were without effect upon subsequent history. 
 We nowhere find a trace that the Philistine nation remem- 
 bered them, and Israel was directed to expel the Philistines 
 from the land of promise, — a direction indeed which they did 
 not carry into effect. But what is related, ver. 33 and xxvi. 25, 
 from J made Beersheba, for all future time, a place of sacred 
 remembrance which false worship turned to profit (Amos v. 5, 
 viii. 14). Abraham there planted b'C'^ (as the Tamarix orien- 
 talis, abundant in Egypt, Petroea and Palestine, is called), comp. 
 those in Gibeah, 1 Sam. xxii, 6, and Jabesh, 1 Sam. xxxi, 13. 
 The statement that he there called upon and proclaimed the 
 name of Jahveh belongs to the series, iv. 26, xii. 8, xiii. 4, 
 xxi. 33, xxvi. 25 ; comp. viii. 20, xii. 7, xiii. 18, xxxiii. 20, 
 XXXV. 7. The additional name o7S]} px developes what the name 
 f^^j}"!. declares, which hence designates, not Him who brings into 
 existence, but the existing One, or Him to whom absolute 
 existence belongs. Jahveh as such is D^iy ba, who in His 
 power is always equal to Himself. Such He proved Himself to 
 Abraham, ever and again meeting his weakness by His own 
 faithfulness. Hence Abraham dedicates to Him a tamarisk. Its 
 durable wood and evergeen foliage is a symbol of His eternity.^ 
 ^ Trumbull in his Blod Covenant (New York 1885) takes this tamarisk, as 
 
8-i GENESIS XXII. 1-19. 
 
 But hardly had the countenance of the Eternal been thus 
 favourable to the patriarch than it was again overcast with 
 clouds, and this time of the very darkest. For it seemed as 
 though he were to lose the son of promise who, as ver. 34 gives 
 us to understand by way of transition, had grown up in Philistia. 
 
 THE SACPJFICE UPON MORIAII, CH. XXII. 1-19. 
 
 This first portion of the fourth section of the life of 
 Abraham corresponds with those of the call, of the covenant 
 sacrifice, of the institution of circumcision, which open the 
 three preceding sections. The father of the faithful is now 
 perfected. The obedience of faith drew Abraham into a 
 strange land ; by the humility of faith he gave way to his 
 nephew Lot; strong in faith, he fought four kings of the 
 heathen with three hundred and eighteen men ; firm in faith, 
 he rested in the word of promise, notwithstanding all the 
 opposition of reason and nature ; bold in faith, he entreated 
 the preservation of Sodom under increasingly lowered con- 
 ditions ; joyful in faith, he received, named and circumcised 
 the son of promise ; with the loyalty of faith he submitted at 
 the bidding of God to the will of Sarah and expelled Hagar 
 and Ishmael ; and with the gratitude of faith he planted a 
 tamarisk to the ever faithful God in the place where Abimelech 
 had sued for his friendship and accepted his present, — now his 
 faith was to be put to the severest test to prove itself victori- 
 ous, and to be rewarded accordingly. Analysis leads to the 
 incontestable results, that the narrative as to the warp of its 
 fabric is from E with insertions from J, but that it was not J 
 who worked up the account of E, but R who completed it 
 from J, especially by taking from J the second angelic voice 
 (vv. 15-18), the naming of the place with its explanation 
 
 also the terebinths of Mamre, as covenant trees, and, starting from the assump- 
 tion that the fundamental rite of ancient covenanting (n''"l3 T\~\^) con- 
 sisted in a mutual mingling of blood, thinks besides that they were smeared 
 •vvilh the blood of the covenant. 
 
GENESIS XXII. 1,2. 8 5 
 
 (ver. 14), and calling the angel of God (who could not well bo 
 called at one time n'^nba ixba and at another mn'' ix^ro), both 
 at vv. 11 and 15, mn*' ']i6D. It cannot however be main- 
 tained that the goal of the journey was not already called p.^ 
 nnisn in U, especially as it is not necessary to regard Moriah 
 as containing the Divine name n\ Not only does the Divine 
 name DTi^xCn) point to E as the original narrator, but also the 
 mode of statement (Q3^''1 after a Divine revelation by night, 
 xxii. 1-3, comp. xxi. 12—14; the voice of the angel from 
 heaven, xxii. 11, comp. xxi. 17 ; the ram seen upon looking 
 up, xxii. 13, comp. xxi. 19) and also the mode of expression 
 in nowise to be verified in Q, but in many instances found 
 elsewhere in B {e.g. the local nb, xxii. 5, xxxi. 37) or akin to 
 J (comp. n»-,XD, xxii. 12, with xxxix. 6, 9, 23). 
 
 The narrative begins with the same acolouthic formula as 
 XV. 1 : It came to pass after these events, God, testing Ahraham, 
 said unto him : Ahraham! And he said: Behold, here lam. 
 The sentence i^^^ ^'^^^J}\ is not an apodosis proper, but a state- 
 ment of the circumstances of the apodosis which follows with 
 nps^l (comp. without i, xl. 1). Abraham had in the midst of 
 his Canaanite surrounding the practice of sacrificing children 
 before his eyes. He saw how the heathen surrendered their 
 dearest to appease the deity and render him propitious. 
 Hence the question might easily arise within : Wouldst thou 
 be able to do the like to please thy God ? Justice is done to 
 the words " God tested him " when we thus psychologically 
 account for the testing becoming a temptation. The tempta- 
 tion had its origin in him, and it became a test when God 
 received it into His plan and gave it a pre-descried goal. God 
 desired thus to try him that he might stand the test. He 
 calls Abraham by name, who answers with willing attention, 
 v.?'?. Now follows the hard demand, ver. 2 : He said : Take 
 iky son, thine only one ivhom thou lovest, Isaac, and go to the 
 land of Moriah and offer him there as a hurnt-offering vpon 
 one of the mountains that 1 will tell thee. The obj. is made 
 
86 GENESIS XXII. 3. 
 
 prominent by a threefold '^i^. Isaac is called his only son not 
 as the only one after the expulsion of Ishmael, but as the only 
 one of his one proper marriage (Pro v. iv. 3, Cant. vi. 0). LXX. 
 rbv dyaTrrjrov {i.e. HT'T'), but this is stated by ri3nS"iK'X, whom 
 thou lovest as the long desired, the gift of God, endowed with 
 the glorious promises of God. Of the inward conflict, which 
 this command called forth in Abraham, wo. read not a word. 
 He fought it out to victory, he remained firm in faith, of 
 which Luther says : fides conciliat co7itraria ncc est otiosa 
 qualitas, sed virtus ejus est mortem occid^e, infcrnum damnare, 
 esse pcccato 2^c.ccatum, diabolo diaholum, adeo ut mors non sit 
 mors, etiamsi omniiivi sensus testetur adcsse inortem. The " Land 
 of Moriah " occurs only here, but " Mount Moriah " (nniisn -in) 
 is, as the testimony of 2 Chron. iii. 1 confirmed upon internal 
 grounds says, the height upon which was the threshing-floor 
 of Oman, the subsequent temple mount.^ Prepared for the 
 worst, Abraham starts with Isaac on the morning after this 
 revelation at night, ver. 3. Then Abraham arose early in the 
 morning, and saddled his ass and tooh his two young men vntli 
 him and Isaac his son, and clave wood for the hurnt-offcring and 
 arose and ivent to thei)lace that God had told him. By the two 
 D'^'^yj whom he took with him are said, by the T^rg. Jer. Pirlce 
 de-Ralhi Eliczer, ch. 31, and by the Midrash in general, to be 
 meant Ishmael and Eliezer ; but we are not justified in 
 assuming Ishmael's return to his father's house after ch. xxi., 
 without such express testimony as xxv. 9, and Eliezer's age 
 (comp. xxiv. 2 with xv. 2) and Ishmael's position in the 
 family would prevent either of them being called lyj. The 
 distance from Beersheba to Jerusalem by way of Hebron 
 amounts to about 38 miles, and still when the traveller 
 arrives on the third day at Mar Elias he is all at once sur- 
 
 ' Kuenen {Einl. § 13, note 29) thinks, with Wellh. and Dillm., that JE (who 
 worked up the two into a whole) put Moriah iu the place of another Ephrainiite 
 local name for the sake of transposing Abraham's act of faith to Jerusalem ; 
 but to what purpose is this roundabout way, why not rather suppose that the 
 chronicler erroneously indicated the name Moriah ? 
 
GENESIS XXII. 4-10. 87 
 
 prised by the siglit of the temple-mount; hence it is with 
 topographical fidelity that we are further told, vv. 4, 5 : Oti 
 the third day Ahraham lifted tip his eyes, and saio the place afar 
 of. Then Abraham said to his young men : Stay here with the 
 ass, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship and return 
 to you. Worship — he is certainly going to perform in a devout, 
 submissive frame of mind an act of worship to God ; return 
 — so say in him both nature and faith, but with very different 
 meanings, ver. 6 : Then Ahraham took the wood for the hurnt- 
 offering, and laid it on Isaac his son, and took in his hand the 
 fire and the, knife, and they went hoth together. Upon this 
 hardest path that ever father went with his child, Isaac at last 
 breaks the long silence, vv. 7, 8 : Then Isaac spake to Abraham 
 his father, and said : My father ! and he said : Here am I, my 
 son. And he said : Behold the fire and the loood ; but lohere is 
 the lamb for the burnt-offering ? Abraham said : Mohim luill 
 provide Himself the lamb for the burnt-offering, and they went 
 both together. Isaac, by way of gradually venturing upon a 
 question, says : ''3N*. To this now heartrending word Abraham 
 replies : V? ''^P.'?- After the deeply stirred father had uttered 
 this word of affection, Isaac further asks about the lamb for 
 the sacrifice. This question agitates his paternal heart to its 
 inmost depth ; but master through faith of even the strongest 
 emotions of nature, he finds the right answer, an answer inspired 
 by forbearing love and foreboding hope : God will provide Him- 
 self the sacrificial lamb (nx") like nsy, Job xv. 22), and they 
 went both together — the third stage of the journey, upon which 
 each step was a fresh martyrdom for Abraham, and required 
 a fresh victory. The simply yet deeply-felt and touching 
 delineation recalls the last journey of Elijah and Elisha, 
 2 Kings ii. 1-8. Arrival at the mountain, vv. 9, 10 : And 
 they came to the place zuhich God had told him, and Abraham 
 built there the altar, and laid the wood in order, and bound 
 Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar uiwn the v)Ood. And 
 Abralmm stretched out his Jiand, and took the knife to slay 
 
6 8 GENESIS XXII, 11-14. 
 
 Ms son. The narrative accompanies Abraham's victoriously 
 advancing act of obedient faith step by step to the climax of 
 the fatal moment. Isaac, whose fundamental characteristic is 
 quiet endurance, lies without resistance like a lamb upon the 
 I)ile of wood, and Abraham has already raised the knife for 
 the deadly stroke. Then suddenly the angel of Jahveh lights 
 lip tlie thick darkness that has gathered over the enigma of this 
 history, vv. 11, 12: Then the angel of Jahveh called to him, 
 from heaven, and said : Abraham, Abraham ! And he said . 
 Here am I. And he said : Stretch not out thy hand against 
 the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that thou 
 fearest Elohim, and hast not withheld thy son, thy only one, 
 from me. Isaac, after Abraham had not spared him {J\^!^, 
 to keep back = ^e/Secr^at, Eom. viii. 32), was as good as 
 already sacrificed. Abraham is proved to be one who fears 
 Cod above all things, and obeys Him absolutely (Jas. ii. 21-23, 
 comp. Heb. xi. 17-19). The animal provided by God fur 
 sacrifice, ver. 13 : And Abraham lifted wp his eyes, and saw, 
 and behold, a ram in the rear had entangled itself in the thicket 
 with its horns; then Abraham went and took the ram and offered 
 him as a burnt-offering w the 2^l(<-ce of his son. Ganneau 
 tries to make the ram ^V'^ into a stag !?JJ? ; but it is not Isaac 
 but Jephthah's daughter who resembles Iphigenia, of whom 
 a stag takes the place. The reading nnx b''X, Kpio<i eh (LXX. 
 Samar. Syr. Targums, Book of Jubilees, Gr. Ven.), preferred by 
 Olshausen and Ewald, tells nothing, while the local "in^^ (here 
 as at Ps. Ixviii. 26, an adverb, and of like meaning as when 
 used as a preposition, Ex. iii. 1) states why the animal had 
 hitherto remained unperceived. The MSS. vacillate between 
 the finite TnX3 and the part. Tn^?3. ; the noun sentence is more 
 graphic. They also vacillate between 'H??? or (which better 
 suits the plur. ""J???) 'H???. Naming of the memorable place, 
 ver. 14: Then Abraham called the name of that 'place 
 Jahveh sees, so that it is said to this day : Upon the mountain 
 Jahveh is seen, not as it is accented, upon the mountain of 
 
GENESIS XXII. 14. 89 
 
 Jahveh (with the genitive attraction of the subject, as at 
 V. Ih) there is He seen (a Icind of elliptical relative sentence 
 scarcely to be authenticated). " Jahveh sees " is meant like 
 xvi. 13 and like " Jahveh hears " in i'Si'DC'"' (xxi. 17): He 
 sees to it, interposing in extreme necessity. But nsv cannot 
 be the passive of nxn in this meaning, for the i\%A. in 
 the sense of provideri is unauihenticated, and when in the 
 course of the history this mountain is spoken of, nx~): always 
 means either the appearing (self-manifestation) of God or the 
 appearing of men before Kim. Nevertheless "1;:"^?, " so that " 
 (as at xiii. IG, corap. x. 9), presupposes an internal connection 
 of the words customary to this day (which besides form only 
 a fragment of a sentence; comp. x. 9 ; Num. xxi. 14 sq.) wiLli 
 the saying of Abraham. Nor is this connection difficult to 
 discover; the rii^^l of Jahveh coincided in the case of Abraham 
 as in that of Hagar, xvi. 13, xxi. 17, with ^i^^■^^ ; He saw to it 
 by taking upon Himself to see, i.e. to interpose. This ver. 1 4 
 sounds like a voice from very ancient times, and not as if the 
 word nnb were to be explained by it, which moreover cannot 
 be explained from ^l ~?:^19, something givei". to see (Ex. xxv. 40) 
 = appearing of Jah, without phonetic difficulty ; we expect 
 H'sno (comp. "^'^^I^) and the article ^'^I'^sn, which also the 
 chronicler, 2 Chron. iii. 1, still maintains is strange (for the 
 case is different in Ps. cxviii. 5) ; the word seems rather to 
 rank with nnn^n, l Chron. iv. 18, than with n;^2X0, Jer. ii. 31. 
 In any case ver. 14 does not read as if the naming, ver. 2, 
 could be regarded as conscious anticipation. Nor do any of the 
 ancient translators express the Divine name in nno, not even 
 Symmachus, who translates rfjq oTnaala^; the Jewish Targums 
 translate NJn^iDT NV'ix, Land of worship, the Samaritan Targum 
 nnnn ins, and the Samar. Arab.: the chosen land. Differently 
 again, and not worth mentioning, the LXX. and Syriac. 
 
 The narrative apparently terminates with ver. 14. What- 
 ever may be the case with this ver. 14, it is evident why it 
 seems to stand more appropriately here (nearer to vv. 8 and 1 3) 
 
90 GENESIS XXII. 15-19. 
 
 tliaii after the repeated promise which now follows, vv. 15-18 : 
 A7id the angel of Jahvch called to Abraham a second time from 
 heaven, and said : By myself have I sworn, a saying of Jahveh, 
 that because thou hast done this and not withheld thy son, thine 
 only one — that I icill bless, yea bless thee, and increase, yea increase 
 thy posterity like the stars of heaven, and like the sand which is 
 on the sea-shore ; and thy seed shall take possession of the gate of 
 their enemies : And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be 
 blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice. Not an addition by 
 B, but from J" (comp. xii. 1-3, xxiv. 60, also on ">C'S 2\>V, xxvi. 
 5) — a point of unprecedented lustre in the Old Testament, for 
 Jahveh here swears what He promises, as He does nowhere 
 else in His intercourse with the patriarchs (comp. the passages 
 referring to it, xxiv. 7, Ex. xxxii. 13, Luke i. 73, Acts vii. 17) 
 and for the first time in the sacred history ; for His promise 
 that there should no more be so universal a deluge is indeed 
 like an oath in value, Isa. liv. 9, but is not one in words. He 
 swears by Himself, because He can swear by no greater, Heb. 
 vi. 13, engages Himself by means of His own Person (n used 
 in swearing of the means of corroboration). The exalted 
 'i"TDS3, unusual as introducing Divine declarations in the 
 primitive history, is the subsequent formula of attestation in 
 prophecy (in the Pentateuch it occurs again only Num. xi v. 2 8, 
 not even Deut. xxxii.). The resumption too of ""^ (that) at ver. 
 17 is very emphatic. Thus the form as well as the contents 
 is exuberant, for the victor of Moriah is higher than the victor 
 of Dan. Abraham conquered himself and offered up Isaac. 
 He won him back as ancestor of an innumerable world, sub- 
 duing people, possessing the gate of their enemies, and a seed 
 blessed to be a blessing to all nations. Thus gloriously 
 recompensed does the patriarch depart, ver. 19 : And Abraham 
 returned to his young men, and they arose and went together 
 to Bcer-'St^a'. 
 
 The change of the Divine name is occasioned by the 
 account being composed from B and J, and is in its present 
 
GENESIS XXII. 19. 91 
 
 state (which it has not attained without the interposition of 
 H in ver, 11) significant. The God who commands Abraham 
 to sacrifice Isaac is called n\"i^s(n), and the Divine appear- 
 ance, which forbids the sacrifice, mn'' "lif^D. He who requires 
 from Abraham the surrender of Isaac is God the Creator, who 
 has power over life and death, and hence power also to take 
 back what He has given ; but it is Jahveh in His angel who 
 forbids the fulfilment of the extreme act, for the son of 
 promise cannot perish without the promise, and therewith 
 God's truthfulness and His counsel of salvation also coming to 
 nought. In fact, the God who requires Abraham to sacrifice 
 his only son after the manner of the Canaanites (2 Kings iii. 
 27; Jer. xix. 5), is only apparently the true God. The 
 demand was indeed only made to prove that Abraham was 
 not behind the heathen in the self-denying surrender of his 
 dearest to his God, and that when the demand had been 
 complied with in spirit, the external fulfilment might be 
 rejected. Schelling exaggerates the contrast when he thinks 
 that the same evil principle, which misled other nations to 
 human sacrifices, is here called D^^bx. The Thorah knows of 
 human sacrifice, and indeed of the sacrifice of a man's own 
 children (sons or daughters, and especially the first-born), only 
 as an abomination of Moloch- worship (Lev. xviii. 21, xx. 1-5 ; 
 comp. Baudissin's Jahveh et Moloch, 1874, and Schlottmann's 
 article, " Moloch," in Ehiem). Jephthah's vow was like that 
 of Idomeneus on his return from Troy, heathen, Israelite and 
 Canaanite popular notions coinciding at that period. The 
 true Israel possessed in the transaction with Abraham an ever 
 valid Divine protest against human sacrifice, and abhorred it. 
 The ram in the thicket, which Abraham offered in the place 
 of Isaac, is the prototype of animal sacrifice, which is here 
 sanctioned upon the same mountain on which, during the 
 entire Old Testament period, the typical blood of animal 
 sacrifice was to be shed, while in the times of apostasy the 
 abomination of human sacrifice, branded by the prophets, was 
 
92 GENESIS XXII. 20-24. 
 
 continued in the valley of Ben^-Hinnom below. The proto- 
 type is however at the same time a type : quis illo (ariete) 
 Jigurahatur — asks Augustine {Civ. xvi. 32) — nisi Christus 
 Jesus, antcquam immolardur, spinis Judaicis coronatus ? Isaac 
 was only offered up iv irapaBoKy (Heb. xi. 17-19), is pre- 
 eminently the abiding parable of the son of Abraham and Son 
 of God, who bore His cross of wood and was really sacrificed 
 thereon, Christi in vidimam concessi a jpatre, lignum passionis 
 Slice hajulantis (Tertulliau, adv. Judccos, c. 10). Isaac carried 
 the wood, says also the Midrash {Pcsikta rdbbatlii, 54a), like 
 a man who takes up his cross (n^^i"). The love of Abraham, 
 loving God above all else and depriving himself of what was 
 dearest for Him, serves the Church as a figure of the super- 
 abundant love of God, who spared not His only-begotten Son, 
 but, Piom. viii. 32, so loved the world that He gave Him up 
 to death, John iii. 16. Hence ancient ecclesiastical art took 
 delight in representing the sacrifice of Isaac especially upon 
 sarcophagi. Quis piduram Abraham ccrncns d gladium pueri ccr- 
 vicihus immincntem — asks Gregory the Great in a letter to the 
 Emperor Leo the Isaurian — non compungitur d collacrimatur ? 
 
 THE NEWS OF NAHOR'S FAMILY, CH. XXII. 20-24. 
 
 The special object of the second portion of the fourth 
 section of Abraham's life, xxii. 20 sqq., is Eebecca ; she is 
 therein as " the rose among thorns." For it contains intelli- 
 gence concerning the progeny of ISTahor, his brother, which 
 in the difficulties of intercourse then existing arrived thus 
 opportunely. It is J who, in the genealogy of the Cainites, 
 and in that part of the ethnographical table which is to be 
 referred to him, usesnis^ of the father ; the xin-DJ too of vv, 20 
 and 24 is like iv. 4, 22, 26, x. 21 ; and though the deriva- 
 tion of )'iy and D"iS here is not necessarily in opposition 
 to x. 22 sq., yet it is more probable that intelligence which 
 sounds so differently should be from a different than from the 
 
GENESIS XXII. 20-24. 93 
 
 same hand. Hence Eiidde (pp. 2 2 0-2 2 G) will be right when 
 he says that it is /, who here follows up the history of the 
 temptation related by him, by what prepares for the history 
 of Isaac's marriage which he is about to relate. 
 
 A connecting verse, ver. 20 : And it came to pass after these 
 occurrences that it loas told to Ahraham thtis : Behold Milcah, 
 she also has home sons to thy brother Nahor. Eight sons of 
 Nahor, the brother of Abraham, by Milcah, are now enume- 
 rated and finally summed up with 'iJl n^st r\pzj (rh^ for rh)^ry^ 
 as fixed as ^l, Judg. vi. 14, comp. Josh. ix. 13). 1, py, the 
 first-born, who, according to x. 23 (which see), was the son of 
 Aram and, according to xxxvi. 28, the grandson of Seir the 
 Horite. Combining thus, we must distinguish within the old 
 Aramrean py a younger Xahorite branch, and perhaps also 
 a Seirite ingredient. 2. Ti3. In the book of Job a fourth 
 opponent appears in the person of Elihu the Buzite (xxxii 1). 
 Jeremiah seems, xxv. 23, to reckon the Buzites among the 
 shorn Arabic wandering tribes ; and the Asarhaddon-Prisms 
 mention, after the section treating of Arabia, a land Bdzvj and 
 a land ^«5:2<, coinciding in sound witli the iTn here named, 22a 
 (Paradics, p. 306 sq.). 3. D"^>^ ''?^? '''^^^i?, i.e. certainly: the 
 ancestor of a younger branch of the Aramfpan people, x. 22. 
 4. 1t,"3, by no means the ancestor of the ancient Chaldajans, 
 after whom D"''^'^'? "ilX is named, xi. 28, but of a Nahorite tribe 
 mingled with them. 5. ijn, the cuneiform Hazu, perhaps 
 Xa^t'jVT), according to Arrian in Steph. Byz., a satrapy on the 
 Euphrates in Mesopotamia. In Strabo, xvi. 73G, a satrapy of 
 Assyria between Kalachene and Adiabene bears this name ; 
 perhaps these two Xa^/jvr] are one and the same. 6. t^^r^?. 
 As a masculine name, ic^n^D is Nabata^an, BMZ. xiv. 440. 
 7. ^p\ 8. ^^^ri3, which has always been a personal, and not 
 a tribal or a local name. This Bethuel, called besides, as well 
 as Laban, ^^nsn in js and Q, begat {'t>1) ^?^^^., the future wife 
 of the son of promise. To these eight sons of Nahor, four 
 more are added, ver. 24 : And his concubine, and her name 
 
94 GENESIS XXIIL 
 
 was Beumah, she also hare . . . The i of n^C'l is not that of 
 the apodosis : and his concubine, whose name was Eeumah 
 (which cannot be proved as syntactically possible from Ps. 
 cxv. 7 ; Prov. xxiii. 24), but the relation is as follows : As 
 to his concubine (xxiv, 29) of the name of Eeumah, she also 
 bare, Ges. § 129, note 1. The children of Nahorby Pteumah : 
 1, n3D. Places according in sound with this name, and 
 geographically appropriate, are nn30, one of the cities of 
 Hadadezer, 1 Chron. xviii. 8 (for which 2 Sam. viii. 8, ^jpn), 
 and Thsebata in north-western Mesopotamia, in Plin. vi. 30, 
 compared by Kn., also Ge^rjOd, according to Arrian in Steph. 
 Byz. ; but according to Tab. Peut. xi., south of Nisibis. 2. Dn3. 
 3. ti'nri. Kn. mentions '^Ta/);;^a9, north-west of Nisibis, in Pro- 
 copius, de (xdif. ii. 4, but as not quite geographically appro- 
 priate. The name means the sea-dog {jjlioca), in Assyr. the 
 wether (see Priedr. Delitzsch, Proleg. 77). 4. ^^V^, the ancestor 
 of nayo D~|X, 1 Chron. xix. 6, of an Aramsean tribe settled 
 ifk'qaLov opou^ ^Aepficov, Euseb. and Jerome in the Onomasticon 
 under MaxaOL n3j?sn n^n ^3X (2 Sam. xx. 15 and frequently 
 without an article), i.e. Abel in Beth-Ma'acha is Abil, a little to 
 the south-west of Banias. There are together twelve sons of 
 Kahor, and their relative numbers are the same as in the case of 
 the twelve sons of Jacob: eight by the wife Milcah, as in Jacob's 
 eight by Leah and Eachel; four by the concubine Eeumah, as 
 in Jacob's four by Bilhah and Zilpah. Another parallel to the 
 twelve sons of Jacob are the twelve D''X''b'3 of Ishmael. To 
 find at once an artificial schematism in such circumstances 
 would be rashness ; accidental coincidences are often curious, 
 and history itself brings much surprising schematism to pass. 
 
 DEATH OF SAEAH, AND PURCHASE OF THE CAVE OF MACHPELAH, 
 
 CH. XXIII. 
 
 From this poijit onwards there follow only the last 
 experiences, testamentary dispositions and arrangements of 
 
GENESIS XXIII. 1, 2. 95 
 
 Abraham, and first in the third part of the section, the account, 
 ch. xxiii,, of Sarah's death, and of the acquisition of a family 
 grave in the cave of Machpelah. Q, who delights in formulas 
 and schemes, who is fond of an almost strophic arrangement, 
 even when the matter is not of a nature to be tabulated, and 
 who, in order to inculcate firmly what he testifies, does not 
 shun tautological repetitions, is immediately recognisable as 
 the narrator. Here in ch. xxiii. he works up matter especially 
 adapted to his style of historical composition, not only with 
 legal accuracy, but at the same time with such vivid direct- 
 ness, that we are transposed into the life of the period with 
 its forms of courtesy and mode of dealing. It is to him that 
 we are indebted for this authentic narrative concerning the 
 acquisition of the cave of Machpelah (comp. his intentional 
 references thereto, xxv. 9 sq., xlix. 29—32, 1. 13), which is 
 characteristic of his mode of statement, not only by the use 
 of certain favourite words (such as '"iJO^> '"'i'?'?) na-'in) and turns 
 (such as the distributive ?, ver. 10, and 3, ver. 18), but also 
 by a peculiar kind of historiographic art, which knows how to 
 produce great pictures and impressions with the simplest 
 means. 
 
 The portion is divided into two parts. The first two 
 verses relate the death of Sarah and the mourning of 
 Abraham, vv. 1, 2 : A7id the life of Sarah amounted to a 
 hundred and ttventy-seven years — the years of the life of Sarah. 
 And Sarah died in Kirjath Aria', whieh is Hebron, in the land 
 of Canaan, and Abraham came to moui'n for Sarah and to 
 weep for her. As Sarah was ninety (xvii. 17) at the birth of 
 Isaac, he must have been thirty-seven when his mother died 
 (comp. xxv. 20), so that at least twenty years elapsed between 
 the occurrence on Moriah and the death of Sarah. Hence we 
 cannot be surprised to find Abraham, whom we left, xxii. 
 19, in Beersheba, again in Hebron. Hebron lay to tlie 
 north-east of Beersheba, about two-thirds of the distance 
 thence to Jerusalem. The narrator first calls the town 
 
96 GENESIS XXIII. I, 2. 
 
 ynnx n^ip^ and then explains this by P^n, just as at xxxv. 
 27; while, on the other hand, it is found without the older 
 name at xiii. 18, xxxvii. 11. The name Kirjath-arba' is the 
 more ancient. Arba', according to Josh. xiv. 15, xv. 13, 
 xxi, 11 comp. Judg. i. 10, was the name of a ruler of the 
 ancient city who belonged to the primitive gigantic popula- 
 tion. The city was, according to Num. xiii. 22, built seven 
 years before Zoan (Tanis) in Egypt. The name might also 
 mean the four-town, i.e. the town of four quarters, which to 
 this day would be a suitable one (see Furrer's art. " Hebron," 
 in the B ihcl lexicon) ; and when it is called, xxv. 27, ^*T''ip 
 ymxn^ this meaning seems really to be combined with it. 
 Since Caleb, in order to get possession of it, had to drive 
 out this race of Anakim (Josh. xiv. 12 sqq.), while in 
 Abraham's time these anything but barbarous Hethites, who, 
 with other Phenician tribes dwelt in a wider circuit upon 
 the mountains of Judah, were lords of the city,^ it must 
 liave often changed both masters and names. Sarah died 
 here in Hebron, and Abraham went into the inner part of 
 the tent, to the corpse of his wife, to mourn for her C??, Lat. 
 plangere aliquem, Heb. with h of him to whom the ijlanctus 
 or 6prjvo<; applies, once "'ps?, 2 Sam. iii. 31 : before the dead, 
 when carried to the grave) and to weep for her (i^J^s??, with 
 small dageshed a, as also the d, Ps. xl. 15, and generally the 
 aspirate after ^ are mostly dageshed, but with exceptions such as 
 
 1 It need not be brought to bear against credibility of the Hethites of 
 Hebron, that Q is the most recent of the Pentateuchal sources, for in the 
 Jehovistic history also {JE) THin is everywhere an element of the population 
 of the Holy Land, whether ten nations (xv. 19-21) or six (Ex. iii. 8, 17, xxiii. 
 23, xxxiv. 11) or live (Ex. xiii. 15), or not reckoning Amalek, four (Num. xiii. 
 29) are named. And M'here in Deuteronomy seven nations are named, vii. 1 
 (comp. Josh. xxiv. 11), or six, xx. 17, TlPin stand fii-st. The historical 
 authenticity of a southern branch of the Hethites is justly maintained by W. 
 Wright, The Empire of the Hittites (1884, 2nd edit. 1886), by Frederick Brown 
 in his article the "Hittites," in the Presbyterian Review, 1886, pp. 277-303, 
 as well as by Sayce, Alte Denhmdler, p. 110. An allusion to the northern 
 Hittite land (Josh. i. 4) is found Judg. i. 26 (comp. xi. 3, where LXX. S reads 
 in the first passage ^"inn, and in the second "•nnn). In Egyptian documents, 
 Kadesh on the Orontes, and in Assyrian, Carchemish, is the Hethite centre. 
 
GENESIS XXIII. 3-6. 97 
 
 Jer. i. 10, xlvii. 4). It is purposely that the narrator adds 
 iy:3 )'7.^?3. It was in the Land of Promise that Sarah the 
 ancestress of Israel died. The Old Testament does not 
 relate with such intensity of purpose the termination of any 
 other woman's life — for Sarah is historically the most 
 important woman of the ancient covenant, she is the mother 
 of the seed of promise, and in him of all believers, 1 Pet. iii. 
 6, ?;? iyevjjdrjTe reKva, she is the Old Testament Mary. In her 
 unclouded faith Mary stands far above Sarah, and yet Scripture 
 is silent concerning her age and death. This happens because 
 he whom Sarah bore is not greater than herself, but Mary 
 bore a son, before whose glory her own personality vanishes. 
 
 After Sarah's ■ death, Abraham applies to the Hethites for 
 a burying-place, vv. 3, 4 : Aoid Abraham lifted up himself 
 from the face of his dead and spoke thus to the sons of Heth : 
 A stranger and a sojourner am I among you, give me a 
 burying-place ivith you, that I may bury my dead out of 
 my sight. What now takes place is, as F. C. v. Moser 
 remarks, a delightful scene of courtesy, simplicity, kind- 
 heartedness, naivete, humility, modesty, magnanimity, not 
 without some shadow of ambition and of the kind of 
 expectation entertained, when in a bargain everything is 
 ventured upon the kind - heartedness of the buyer. To 
 bury is called "i?i^, which, as the Syriac shows, means as 
 a synonym of "i?^* cumulare, tuimdare, and hence points to 
 humatio not cremdtio as the most ancient mode of burying. 
 Abraham calls his dead no not nno, because in the case of a 
 corpse the distinction of sex is, as henceforth without im- 
 portance, in the background. Answer of the Hethites, vv, 
 5, 6 : Then the sons of Heth anstvercd Abraham, saying to 
 him : Hear us, my lord, a prince of God art thou among us, 
 in the choicest of our sepulchres bury thy dead, none of us will 
 withhold from thee his burying-place to bury thy dead. Here, 
 as also ver. 14, the Sb after "ib^b seems with the LXX. drawn 
 to the next verse, and to need to be read there according to 
 
 VOL. II. G 
 
98 GENESIS XXIII. 7-11. 
 
 ver. 13, I^.Vpp' 1'', "hear us, we pray," though the comhination 
 ib ibsb is according to Lev, xi. 1 allowable, and on the other 
 side ^^ with the imp. unusual (comp. on the contrary xvii. 
 18, XXX. 34). This construction is escaped by correcting 
 with LXX. Samar. i^ into iib after 11a (nay, my lord, hear 
 us) ; but this ^b with the imp. is defended by ver. 13, it 
 gives to the invitation a touch of desire, as the enclitic W 
 does to the petition. Instead of the first ^riD, Bereshith rabha 
 c. 58 assumes the reading yntD. Touched and encouraged 
 by so respectful and kind a reception, Abraham combines 
 with his thanks a definite request, vv. 7-9 : Thc7i Ahraham 
 rose and hoived himself doion hcfore the 'people of the land, the 
 sons of Heth. And he talked icith them, saying : If it is 
 your will to receive my dead into a grave out of my sight, 
 hear me, and entreat for me Ephron the son of Sohar, that 
 he may give me the cave of Machpclah, which hclongs to him, 
 which is in the end of his field ; for its full money let him 
 give it me in the midst of you for a possession of a hurying- 
 place. The Hethites, as the prevailing population of Hebron 
 and its neighbourlipod are called, " the people of the land," 
 just as at Josh. i. 4 all Canaan is called per synccdochen T}^ 
 D''rinn. " Full money " is equivalent to the sum corresponding 
 to the value of the piece of land, 1 Chr. xxi. 22. To express 
 without saying so how readily and quickly this was done, the 
 narrator at once introduces Ephron himself as speaking, vv. 10, 
 11 : And Ephron was sitting in the midst of the children of 
 Heth, and Ephron the Hethite answered aloud hefore the sons of 
 Heth, so many of them as went in to the gate of his toimi, saying : 
 Nay, my loixl, hear me, the field give I thee and the cave that is 
 in it, to thee I give it hefore the eyes of my fellow-countrymen, 
 I give it thee to hury thy dead. To read N? for the first 
 word of ver. 11 (2 Sam. xviii. 12 comp. 1 Sam. xiv. 30) 
 is not so necessary as at 1 Sam. xiii. 13;^ for Maurer's 
 
 1 See K. Kohler's art. on "KP in Geiger's Jud. Zeitschrtft, vi. 
 21 sqq. 
 
GENESIS XXIII. 12-15. 99 
 
 remark that N^ rustici quid hahet is refuted by the fact, that 
 the refusal of the purchase money is in itself a courtesy 
 great in proportion as the refusal is a decided one. It is a 
 solemn deed of gift which Ephron performs, but which 
 Abraham 'declines, vv. 12, 13: Then Ahrahaiii bowed himself 
 down in the presence of the people of the land, and spoke to 
 Ephron in the hearing of the people of the land, saying : If 
 thou on thy part woiddst only hear me ! I give the price 
 of the field, take it of me, and I will hury my dead 
 there. Showing reverence before all the people to the 
 chief of the city, and even exceeding him in expressions 
 of courteous urgency, he answers that he will accept his 
 offer, yet ^5< with the earnest desire and only under the 
 condition, that he will allow himself to be duly requited. 
 DX is the optative and ^i^ its intensifying permutative. 
 Hitzig's explanation of the nriX"DS " if thou agreest " is 
 tempting, but the usage of the language nowhere shows the 
 Kal of nis (to agree), but only the Xiph. The combination 
 of the two optative particles with the imperative is indeed 
 rare, on which account LXX., Samar., Onkelos read y i^nx DX 
 (if thou wishest me well). It cannot be supported by Job 
 xxxiv^ 1 6 (where ^^2 is to be accented as a subst.), still we 
 think that it must be regarded as possible on the ground of 
 our passage. Ephron now delicately gives Abraham to under- 
 stand at what rate he values the land, while apparently 
 persisting in his refusal, vv. 14, 15 : Tlicn Uphro7i answered, 
 saying to him : My lord, hear me — a piece of land of four 
 hundred shekels of silver between me and thee, what is it ? 
 And bury thy dead ! The bargain which is here made between 
 Ephron and Abraham, is to this very day repeated in that 
 country. In Damascus, when a purchaser makes a lower 
 offer than can be accepted, he is answered : "What, is it a 
 matter of money between us ? Take it for nothing, friend, as 
 a present from me (Jicdije minni) ; don't feel under any kind 
 of constraint! {BMZ. xi. 505). Dieterici {Bcisebildcr, 2. 
 
100 GENESIS XXIII. 16. 
 
 1G8 sq.) had a similar experience in Hebron: "In our 
 excursions we had noticed a fine grey horse belonging to 
 the Quarantine inspector. Mr. Blaine, my fellow-traveller, 
 had appeared to wish to buy the animal. It now made its 
 appearance at our tents. We inquired the price, and our 
 astonishment may be conceived, when the dirty Turk offered 
 us the animal as a present. Mr, Blaine declared that he by 
 no means intended to take it as a present, when the Turk 
 replied: What then are five purses (£25 sterling) to thee?" 
 Similar experiences take place every day in Egypt (Lane, 
 ii, 150). Abraham well understood the meaning of this 
 figurative turn of speech, ver. 1 6 : But Abraliam understood 
 Ephron, and Abraham weighed to Ephron the money, tvhich he had 
 stated in the audience oj the sons of Heth : four hundred shelccls 
 of silver current with the merchant. The mercantile expression 
 nnisp "iD'y exactly corresponds with 1>U- qui jpeut passer, ho7ine 
 d, recevoir frequent upon coins, DMZ. xxxiii. 356 (comp. also 
 
 •.■^mxA! current coins, from J»<:U to trade together, to do busi- 
 ness). Jerome translates, probata; mondce puhlicm. Money 
 coined and certified by authority did not as yet exist, but 
 even then merchants may have furnished the bars of gold and 
 silver with a mark to signify that they were of full weight, 
 as we are told of the Phenicians {Rhetor. Gr. xiii. p. 180, 
 ed. Aid.), that they irpMroi '^apaKrfjpa e/daWov upon weighed 
 metal. The normal weight of the heavy (sacred or royal) 
 shekel (-'i^^' from -'i?'^' p)cnderc) amounted according to Jewish 
 tradition to 3 2 medium barleycorns, with which the weight of 
 the Maccabsean shekel (about 218 English grains, and so a little 
 short of the half-ounce avoirdupois) tolerably agrees. If with 
 Cavedoni, Numismatica biblica 1850, we admit that the shekel 
 is to be reckoned as in the Mosaic law and in subsequent com- 
 merce, the price would be high (nearly £525), which the Eabbis 
 explain as the result of Ephron's covetousness (see Zunz, Ziir 
 Ziteratur, p. 138), but still not be incredible. For Jacob's 
 
GENESIS XXIII. 17-20. 101 
 
 piece of ground at Shechem cost one Imndred i^^'t^'i?, xxxiii. 19, 
 and the site upon which Samaria was built two 123 of silver, 
 1 Kings xvi. 24, i.e. six hundred heavy shekels. Close of the 
 transaction, vv. 17—20 : So the field of Ephron which was in 
 , Machpelah, which was hefore Ilamre, the field and the cave therein 
 and all the trees that were in the fidd, that were in its border 
 round about, remained to Abraham as a pitrchascd possession in 
 the presence of the sons of Ilcth, according as each ivent into 
 the gate of his city. And after this Abrahayn buried Sarah his 
 wife in the cave of the field of Machpclah, which is before Mamre : 
 the same is Hebron, in tlie land of Canaan. And so the field 
 and tlie cave therein remained to Abraham as a burying 2}lctce 
 on the 'part of the sons of Hcth. The Silluh divides the one 
 connected sentence vv. 17, 18, into two, as e.g. also Ex. 
 vi. 28, 29, Num. xxxii. 3, 4 (see Arnheim, Hcbr. Grammatik, 
 § 254, because it would have been too long if inter- 
 punctuated as one). Di^Jl of remaining as a lawful possession, 
 as at Lev. xxv. 30, xxvii. 19. "^^spp is throughout not the 
 name of the cave, but of the district in which was the field 
 with the cave in it. The occasion of its being so called is 
 obscure. A Cod. Focock. in Kennicott and a Spanish one 
 offered for sale at the Viennese Universal Exhibition 1882 
 by Prof. Garcia Blanco of Madrid, have at ver. 9 the reading 
 TV^ipr} ni]}0^ certainly an error of transcription, but nevertheless 
 a remarkable curiosity. 
 
 The first lauded property of the patriarchs was a grave. 
 Such was the sole possession which they purchased from the 
 world, and the only permanent one they found here below. 
 Abraham buys a grave in Canaan; he buys and will not 
 accept it as a gift, that he may not appear to take from man 
 what God has promised to give him (Iren. xxxii. 2). And 
 what he purchases is a grave, just because he will rest when 
 dead in the land in which as a living man he as yet has 
 no possession, because he is certain through faith that the 
 promise cannot deceive. In virtue of that promise, which 
 
102 GENESIS XXIII. 17-20. 
 
 will be fulfilled to his posterity, the land of Canaan is holy 
 ground. In this grave were Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and 
 Eebekah buried, there Jacob buried Leah, there did Jacob 
 desire to rest after death, and there was his corpse actually 
 laid. There rested the ancestors and ancestresses of the tribes 
 of Israel,^ confessors even in death of faith in the promise. 
 This burying place became the 2JU')ictum scdicns of the promised 
 possession of the land. It is with a purpose that its 
 honourable acquisition for the ancestors of Israel is so accu- 
 rately described. It was the tie which continued to bind the 
 descendants of Abraham in Egypt to the Land of Promise : it 
 magnetically attracted their aspirations thither, and when they 
 entered Canaan they were to know where the ashes of their 
 fathers were reposing, and that they were themselves called 
 to inherit the promise, trusting in which their fathers had 
 been buried in Canaan. 
 
 When the city of Hebron is now approached from the 
 north by the high road, the supposed district of Mamre passed, 
 and the last mountain peak gone round, the view suddenly 
 opens of the deep-lying valley of Hebron ( Wady-cl-Chaltl), in the 
 foreground of which the city spreads out to the right, and the 
 fortified and palatial buildings of the mosque of Ibrahim with 
 its two minarets to the left. This Haram (sanctuary) with its 
 lofty external walls of not less than from fifty to sixty feet 
 high, the lower part of which, built in peculiar pilaster style of 
 colossal blocks of stone, belongs to the most ancient remains 
 of buildings in Palestine, conceals beneath the floor of its 
 interior and beneath its court the cave of ]\Iachpelah. The 
 visit paid by the Prince of AVales and his suite to the Haram 
 April 7, 1862, placed it beyond doubt that the shrines of the 
 patriarchs, which are found variously adorned in recesses in 
 the walls, are only Cenotaphs. At the corner of the shrine 
 of Abraham how^ever is a circular opening, about 8 inches in 
 
 1 According to Joseplius [Ant. ii. 8. 2, Bell. iv. 9. 7), tlie eleven patriarchs 
 of the tribes, whose graves (including Joseph's) another legend transports to 
 Sichem. On Acts vii. 16, see my Hebr. N. T. 
 
GENESIS XXIV. 103 
 
 diameter, with an edge built up a foot high ending in a deep 
 obscure space, and through which a burning lamp is usually let 
 down into the burying place by means of a chain. The Crown 
 Prince of Prussia and Capt. v. Jasmund looked down into it 
 Nov. 18G9, long enough to let them perceive all the details 
 of this space measuring 40 feet square. It appeared empty, 
 the floor polished by hand, the walls formed from the rock 
 itself without masonry, and at the one end of the cave was 
 seen a low grated opening, which seemed to lead to a second 
 cave (LXX. npSDO to a-TryjXaiov rb BlttXovv). The Haram, a 
 building consisting of parts of very different dates (see 
 Baedeker's Palestine, 2nd edit. p. 172 sq.), lies on the south- 
 western slope of the mountain Gedhirc. But the cave, accord- 
 ing to vv. 17-19, lay ""JS^ or "'^^■^J? of Mamre, i.e. opposite 
 Mamre, and indeed in a southerly direction (comp. Josh, 
 xviii. 14). Hence, as Consul Eosen rightly infers, Mamre 
 must have lain on the eastern declivity of the height Eumeidi, 
 a spur of the Kuppe Natr (recalling "ipV) near to the remark- 
 able well 'Ain el-'Gedid. The terebinths of the patriarchal 
 time have indeed disappeared, but these were pinnn xiii. 1 8 ; 
 and though the town was formerly of greater extent than at 
 present, yet its situation must not be transposed to such a 
 distance as by the tradition concerning Mamre (see on 
 ch. xiii. towards the end). 
 
 THE MARRIAGE OF ISAAC, CH. XXIV. 
 
 The fourth portion (ch. xxiv.) relates a further arrangement 
 on the part of Abraham, in view of his own death, viz. the 
 marriage of Isaac, which was prepared for both by the glance 
 at the Xahorite descent of Picbekah, xxii. 20-24 (./), and the 
 blank left in Abraham's family by the departure of Sarah, 
 ch. xxiii. {Q). It is self-intelligible that the statement, that 
 Isaac married a wife of his father's Aramaic kindred, would 
 not be omitted in either of the three chief sources of Genesis. 
 
104 GENESIS XXIV. 1-8. 
 
 It is evidently Q wlio expressly makes it xxv. 20, and pro- 
 bably U who mentions Eebekah's nurse by name and honours 
 her memory, xxxv. 8. But nowhere did the history of this 
 marriage offer itself in such detail to the redactor as in J; 
 for it is to him that we are indebted for the charming idyll, 
 the captivatiug picture of the wooing and bringing home of 
 Eebekah in ch. xxiv. Everything here bears the mark of his 
 pen : God is called mn>, the birthplace of Eebekah Dp.n? ai« 
 (not D">^? P.? as in Q, e.g. xxv. 20), the sum of all good, 
 ^^^). ■'?r' (vv. 27, 49, comjp. xxxii. 11, xlvii. 29). Towards 
 the end are found a few words which seem to lead to E, 
 such as 3J3n px ver. 62 (comp. xx. 1, elsewhere only 
 Num. xiii. 29, Josh. xv. 19, Judg. i. 15), and nr^n ver. 65 
 (comp. only again xxxvii. 19); but vv. 62-65 cannot be 
 referred to JE, without admitting that U relates the story 
 as fully as J, which is improbable. We take ch. xxiv. as the 
 sole work of J. The recapitulation of the servant falls under 
 the same point of sight as Pharaoh's recapitulation of his two 
 dreams — ancient epic delights in such repetitions. The ethic 
 and psychologic sentiment of this history has been appre- 
 ciated by no one so much as by F. C. v. Moser in his Doctor 
 Leiclemit, 
 
 It begins, ver. 1 : Abraham was now an old man, vjell 
 stricken in age, and Jahveh had blessed Abraham in every- 
 thing. His great age (the same expression as xviii. 11, /) 
 obliged him, and his prosperity encouraged him, to think of 
 Isaac's marrying and of the transmission of his blessing to 
 his remoter descendants, vv. 2—8 : Then Abraham said to his 
 servant, the eldest of his house, ivho ruled over all that was his : 
 Put thy hand, I 'pray thee, under my thigh. And I ivill make 
 thee swear by Jahveh, the God of heaven and the God of earth, 
 that thou take not a wife for my son of the daughters of the 
 Canaanite, in ivhose neighbourhood I dwell. But to my coiintry 
 and to my home shall thou go and take a wife for my son 
 Isaac. And his servant said to him : Fei'haps the woman ivill 
 
GENESIS XXIV. 2-8. 105 
 
 not he willing to follow me into this land — must I then take 
 hack thy son into the land whence thou earnest ? And Ahraham 
 said unto him : Bcivare that thou take not lack my son thither. 
 Jahveh, the God of heaven, who took mc away from my failier's 
 house and from my oivn country, and who spake to me and 
 swore to me, saying : To thy seed will I give this land. He 
 will send His angel Icfore thee, and thou shall take a wife for 
 my son from thence. But if the woman he not willing to follow 
 thee, then art thou free of this my oath, only thou shall not take 
 hack my son thither. Parallels to this in both style and 
 matter from J, are the mode of swearing, xlix. 29 ; the 
 reference to God as God of heaven and earth, xiv. 19, 22, 
 ••Ji'JDn n"i32 vv. 3, 37 (not )y]D n"i33 xxviii. 1, 6, 8, xxxvi 2, Q) ; 
 ••inx and Tn^lD vv. 4, 7, like xii. 1, xxxi. 3, xxxii. 10. 
 Isaac's wife must be one corresponding with his Divine call- 
 ing, and therefore not one of the daughters of the Canaanite 
 (comp. on the matter, Ex. xxiv. 16, Deut. vii, 3 sq.), though 
 such a marriage, externally regarded, opened up all manner of 
 favourable prospects. ISTor must Isaac return to Arama^a, 
 whence the God of redemption brought Abraham, he is not 
 to leave the district into which God has transposed his 
 father and himself; on the contrary, his future wife must 
 come to it. But if none can be found, or if the one found 
 is unwilling to leave her home ? About this Abraham is not 
 anxious. He leaves the future of his son absolutely to the 
 direction of Jahveh, and appoints the eldest retainer of his 
 house to be the wooer — certainly the Eliezer mentioned 
 XV. 2 {E), who, since sixty years have now elapsed, was 
 himself an old man. He is to take a so-called bodily oath, 
 by putting his hand under Abraham's thigh. By placing his 
 hand IT" nnn of Abraham, he binds himself upon the basis 
 of the covenant of circumcision. If the woman will not 
 follow him, the wooer, to the land of promise, he shall be 
 
 released (^[53 Niph), free or quit CiPJ like ^ DMZ. xxii. 129) 
 
106 GENESIS XXIY 9-14. 
 
 from the obligation imposed on liim by his oath (njJintJ', for 
 which ver. 41 "^/^ = Arab, alwa, with unchangeable a, 
 
 comp. ^\ conj. iv. from ^\ to swear). The servant swears, 
 
 sets out upon his journey, and on his arrival prays for God's 
 decision, vv. 9— 14 : Then the servant put his hand under the 
 thigh of his master Abraham and swore to him concerning this 
 thing. And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his 
 master, and departed with all hinds of precious things of his 
 master's in his hand — he arose and went to Aram of the two 
 rivers, to the city of Nahor. And he made his camels kneel 
 down outside the city hy the well of water at evening time, at 
 the time when the water-drawers come out. And he said: 
 Jahveh, God of my master Abraham, let it happen favourably 
 for me this day, cmd show kindness to my master Abraham ! 
 Behold, I stand at the fountain of water, and the daughters of 
 the inhabitants of the city are coming out to draw water. Let 
 it then thus happen ; the damsel to whom I shall say : Let doivn, 
 I pray thee, thy pitcher that I may drink, and she shall say : 
 Drink, and L will also water thy camels — this one Thou hast 
 appointed for Thy servant, for Isaac, and thereby shall I knoio 
 that Thou hast shoived kindness to my master. The journey of 
 Hazael, 2 Kings viii. 9, was similarly supplied. D)"]"?.,^. I^l^ 
 (ancient Egyp. Neheren, Nehcrina, Naharina) is the country 
 between the Euphrates and Tigris (in the strict sense ex- 
 clusive of Babylonia), called since Alexander 77 MecroTrorayu-ta, 
 that is, Xvpia, the land north of the great desert, which the 
 
 Arabians call the i>j ',:?-. Tr\\>r\ means here, as at xxvii. 20, 
 
 to cause to meet, to let happen, viz. what one has in mind. 
 ~i;'3n (from nr3, to shoot forth, to shake out, of the fruit of the 
 body, therefore one not long since born) is in the Pentateuch 
 and in this exclusively, double-gendered. ^I"^.}]^ is written 
 only Deut. xxii. 19, everywhere else it is the Keri to "ij?jn, 
 which is pointed as fern. iT'ain, 145 (LXX. ■^Tol/xaaa<i), is 
 meant of pointing out by means of an act, here with b as 
 
GENESIS XXIV. 15-21. 107 
 
 appointed fi)r the son of Abraham, nn does not refer to the 
 maiden, but is a neutral fem. as at xv. 6, 8. Guidance of her 
 who had been prayed for, vv. 15-21 : And it came to pass: 
 he had not yet ceased speaking, lo, RcbclMh came forth, who was 
 horn to Bethuel the son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, ivith her 
 jntchcr on her shoulder. And the damsel was very fair to 
 look on, a virgin, and no man had knoivn her — she went down 
 to the fountain, filled her pitcher and came up. And the 
 servant ran to meet her and said : Let me, I p)ray thee, drink 
 a little icater from thy pitcher. And she said: Drink, my 
 lord, and let doion qidckly the pitcher upon her hand, and 
 gave him to dj^ink. And ivhen she had given him enoxigh 
 to drink, she said: I tvill draw also for thy camels, till they 
 have drunk enough. And she quickly cmp)tied her 'pitcher into 
 the trough and ran again to the well to draiv, and drew for all 
 his camels. And the man locked ivonderingly at her, holding 
 his peace, to know whether Jahveh had prospered his journey 
 or not. The name "^i^^i means a tie, a band (Lat. copula), i.e. 
 a coUar for coupling to and coupling together. A maiden 
 is called npinn (Assyr. hatultic, fem. of batnlu, a youth), 
 certainly from ?n2 JJj to separate, reflective tdbattcda, to 
 keep oneself in modest consecrated retirement, from her 
 characteristic of maidenly remoteness from marriage, and 'i^py 
 
 (ver. 43), from rhv = *ii- to be marriageable, \/ Ji to swell, 
 
 from the characteristic of nearness to marriage by reason of 
 maturity. The Talmud (Jehamoth 61h) is correct in infening 
 from the addition nj?T_ xS L*'"'X1, 16a, that nhni does not in 
 itself imply the characteristic of virgin purity, but only states 
 age and condition (niyj n^N nfjinn ps*)- The servant beholds 
 with astonishment, and regards with investigation the quick 
 and welcome alacrity of the maiden to serve him and to 
 anticipate his wants. Knobel and Dillmann take nsnrn as 
 equivalent in meaning to nync'n, but the analogy of C?^ir,L"n 
 and 'l'?^'? rather favours the derivation from nst' desolate, 
 
108 GENESIS XXIV. 22-27. 
 
 then also like the Aramaic ^^'^\ ^>^^, i^H^p, to be confused, 
 to wonder ; on the connective form of the participle before p 
 comp. Ps. Ixiv. 9. The maiden answers perfectly to the moral 
 test, she indefatigably fetches water from the deep well, to 
 which, according to ver. 16, she went down and fetched water 
 for the man and his cattle ; hence it was a spring enclosed by 
 a wall with steps leading down to it (Burckhardt, Syrien, 
 p. 232), and is therefore alternately called Ci'''2n "is^3 and 
 D^DH pj? ; note how T\r\U, which has itself no Hiphil, borrows 
 one from npc'. Preliminary requital and inquiry, vv. 22, 23 : 
 And it came to pass after the camels had drunh enough, 
 then the man took a gold nose-ring, a half shekel in locight ; 
 and two Iracclcts for her hands ten shekels of gold in 
 weight. Then he said : TVJiose daughter art thou ? tell me, 
 I pray thee ! Is there room in thy father's house to lodge 
 us in? He makes her a present of a nose-ring (ver. 22, comp. 
 47, Ezek. xvi. 12, and on the other hand Gen. xxxv. 4, 
 where du means an ear-ring) weighing a Vpji, i.e. half a shekel 
 of gold, no very great weight in itself, but great for this 
 ornament, which was fastened to one of the nostrils. The 
 nose-ring was in use from Egypt to India, and is still so among 
 the Arabs as a betrothal gift. He also gave her a pair of 
 bracelets of ten shekels of gold. S^T is the ace. of nearer 
 definition to nib'jj (erg. bi)^), like ^y^ in njc' nsp, xvii. 17, 
 xxiii. 1. Answer of the maiden, vv. 24, 25 : A7id she said to 
 him : I am the daughter of Bcthuel, the son of Milcah, ivhom 
 she lore to Nahor. And she said farther to him : We have both 
 straw and provender enough, also room to lodge in. She calls 
 herself, with a circumstantiality which betrays self-conscious- 
 ness, the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah (comp. on the 
 inverted position of the genit. apposition, ii. 195, xiv. 12) the 
 wife of Nahor, and represents her home in as hospitable a 
 light as possible. The pious servant first of all gives thanks 
 to God, vv. 26, 27 : And the man lowed and fell down hefore 
 Jahveh. And he said: Blessed he Jahveh, the God of my 
 
GENESIS XXIV. 28-33. 109 
 
 master Ahraliam, who has not withdrawn His mercy and truth 
 from my master — me, yea me has Jahvch led hj the right ivay to 
 the house of my masters hrothcr. Bowing (viz. of the head, *iP1i^) 
 and falling down appear in combination at xliii. 28 {J) also. 
 non is free love, and riox truth, sincerity, faithfulness, binding 
 itself to what love has promised. "'3i>5 stands as nom. ahs. 
 eniphaticall)% first like nnx xlix. 8, Deut. xviii. 14. T}/}!^ is, as 
 ver. 4^ shows (comp. on Job xxxi. 7), equal to, by the right way. 
 Eebekah's intelligence and its impression upon Laban, vv. 
 28—31 : And the maiden ran and told her mothers house aceord- 
 ing to these tilings. And Rehehah had a hrotlicr, of the name of 
 Lahan, and Laban ran to the man outside at the fountain. And 
 it came to pass, when he saw the nose-ring and the bracelets on the 
 hands of his sister, and when he heard the loords of Rebehah his 
 sister saying : Thus spahe the man to me, then he came to the 
 man, and lo, he was standing by the camels at the fountain. And 
 he said : Come in, thou blessed of Jahvch, wherefore standest thou 
 v:ithout ? and I, I have made room in the house, and a place for 
 the camels. As the text stands, the mood of the sequence 
 ^7'.L oOb, declares the effect from the cause by a retrogressive 
 movement of thought, but probably the sentence : and Laban 
 ran to the man outside at the fountain, has been removed from 
 its original place before ^^^,'!!, 30& (Ilg. Dillm.). Instead of nkna 
 the Samaritan has ins"i3 ; this is not necessary as far as the 
 style is concerned. "ipV stands briefly for "loj? Nin, see on Ps. 
 vii. 10. The entrance and zeal of the servant, vv. 32, 33: 
 And the man came into the house, and lie unloaded the camels 
 and gave straw and provender to the camels, and water to ivash 
 Ids feet and the men's feet that were with him. And meat was 
 set before him to eat, but he said : I will not eat till I have said 
 what is incumbent on me. And he said : Speak on ! In ver. 
 32 Laban is the subject to nris;"i and iJ^il], the change of sub- 
 ject disappears if we read N3*l (Jerome introduxit), but then 
 c^'xr.-nx might be expected. The object of his journey is 
 asked by no one, for this would be contrary to Eastern 
 
110 GENESIS XXIV. S4-49. 
 
 hospitality, ■wliich does not permit such a question at least 
 till after a meal. The Kcri runs passively Q^'l (there was 
 placed), not D't^'i'l, as mistakenly in recent editions — the Chethib 
 is Db'''*l (one placed, like 1. 26, comp. Isa. viii. 4), to be read 
 as written, 1. 26, from Db\ which is not authenticated else- 
 where, but verbs ''S^ like 2D\ ']b\ ^'y (=ti'i3, to be ashamed), offer 
 metaplastic forms. The servant will eat nothing till he has 
 said what is incumbent on him to say. The subject to "i^^^^! 
 33& is Laban, who represents the family of Bethuel. The 
 two verses 32, 33 are a specimen of the carelessness of the 
 Oriental style, which leaves only too much to be supplied by the 
 reader, vv. 34-49 : And Jie said : I am the servant of Abraham. 
 And Jahveh has abundantly blessed my master, so that he has 
 become great, and has given him shcejy and oxen, and silver and 
 gold, and servants and maidens, and camels and asses. And 
 Sarah, my masters wife, bare my master a son after she was 
 old, and he has given him all that was his. And my master 
 made me swear thus : Thou shall not taJce a wife for my son 
 of the daughters of the Canaanite, in ivhose land I dwell. Nay, 
 to my father s house shall thou go, and to my kindred, and take 
 a wife for my son. And I said to my master : Perhaps the 
 woman will not follow me. Then he said to me : Jahveh, before 
 whom I have walked, will send His angel with thee, and will 
 prosper thy way, that thou mayest take a wife for my son 
 from my kindred and from my father's house. Then shall thou 
 be clear of my oath, if thou go hence to my kindred ; and if 
 they loill not give thee, thou shall be clear of my oath. So 
 I came this day to the fountain and said : Oh Jahveh, God of 
 my master Abraham : Oh that thou now mayest prosper tKe vmy 
 that I go. Behold, I stand by the fountain of water, and let it 
 happen: the maiden who comes out to drav), and I say to her: 
 Give me, I pray thee^ a little water to drink from thy pitcher, 
 and sJie says to me, Both drink thou and I will draw for thy 
 camels — let her be the wife whom Jahveh has appointed for my 
 nmster's son. I had not yet ceased to speak in my heart, when 
 
GENESIS XXIV. 50, 51. Ill 
 
 lo, EebcTcdh came out uith the intchcr upon her shoulder and 
 went down to the ivcll and drew, and I said to her : Give mc, 
 I fray thee, to drink! Then she hastened and took her pitcher 
 down from her, and said : Drink, and I will give drink to thy 
 camels also; and I drank, and she gave drink to the camels also. 
 Then I asked her and said : Whose daughter art thou ? SJie 
 said : TJie daughter of Bcthuel, the son of Nahor, whom Milcah 
 hare to him. Tlien I imt the ring upon her nose, and the 
 bracelets upon her hands. And I lowed myself and fell down 
 hefore Jahveh, and Messed Jahvch the God of my master Abraham, 
 who had led me by the right way, to take the daughter of my 
 master's brother for his son. And now, if ye be willing to show 
 kindness and truth to my master, tell me ; bid if not, tell me, 
 that I may turn to the right hand or to the left. The form of 
 the oath is purposely omitted at ver. 37. When the servant 
 says, 36&, that Abraham has given all that he has to Isaac, 
 this is meant of his resolution to do so (comp. Isa. liii. 9), 
 which is carried into execution, xxv. 5. The nVdx 38a is 
 that of the oath (Ps. cxxxi. 2, Jer. xxii. 6), which thence 
 after a previous denial means, " no, but," Ezek. iii. 6 (comp. 
 Mark iv. 22, according to the reading eav ft?) ^avepwOy), 
 stronger than "QN ""S (the reading of the Samar.). xr'^L^'^■n^♦ 42&, 
 means " if thou really art, as I wish," etc., comp. ^'J"2S xviii. 3 
 (see there), i^/ ''^* 45a, as at viii. 21 — he had then brought 
 his desire before God with the silent voice of the heart. 
 " Brother," 48&, is more accurately brother's son, as at xiv. 16, 
 xxix. 12. In ver. 49, npNl Tpn stands for the manifestation of 
 kindness and the faithful undissimulating dealing of men with 
 each other. The consent, vv. 50, 51 : Tlien ansuxrcd Laban 
 and Bcthuel, and said: From Jahveh does this thing proceed, 
 we cannot say unto thee evil or good. Behold, JRcbckah is at thy 
 disposal, take her and go, and let her be a wife to thy masters 
 son, as Jahveh has spoken. Eebekah had not yet seen the man 
 for whom she was wooed, neither is she asked whether she is 
 willing to be his. Nor is it even her father, but her brother, 
 
112 GENESIS XXIV. 62-58. 
 
 who has the first word respecting her. This is the result of 
 polygamy; in the history of Dinah also, it is the brothers who 
 act independently of the father; " not evil or good " (here as at 
 xxxi. 24) is equivalent to "absolutely nothing," and ""isb, to 
 be some one's (here as at xiii. 9, xx. 15), is equal to being at 
 his free disposal. They give Eebehah to him, with the 
 acknowledgment that Dominus locutus est. The servant then 
 thanks God for the issue of his wooing, and now empties before 
 them the far from exhausted store of presents which he had 
 brought with him, vv. 52, 53 : And it came to pass, when 
 the servant of Abraham heard their words, he fell on the earth 
 hefore Jaliveh. And the servant brought forth silver vessels 
 and gold vessels and garments, and gave them to Rehehah, 
 and he gave costly ^^^^cseiits to her brother and to her mother. 
 The first gifts are 1^0 (xxxiv. 12) of the bridegroom for the 
 confirmation of the betrothal, the so-called eSva or eeSva in 
 
 Homer, and the others (ni2^ip from njn a:^^ to be precious, 
 
 costly, Lth.: jewels, which is not unfitting, especially 2 Chron. 
 xxi. 3) come under the point of view of the "^[P to be paid to 
 the relatives of the bride (xxxiv. 12), see Eiehm's RW. under 
 Uhe, § 4. The servant presses for departure, vv. 54-58: 
 The7i they ate and drank, he and the mer^ who were with him, 
 and spent the night, and tvhen he rose up in the morning he 
 said : Send me away to my master. And her brother and her 
 mother said : Let the maiden stay with us a few days, perhaps 
 ten, then let her dejjart. But he said to thern^ : Detain me not, 
 since Jahveh has prospered my way, send me away that I may 
 go to my master. They said : We will call the maiden and 
 inquire at her mouth. And they called Eebehah and said to 
 her : Wilt thou go with this man ? And she said : I ivill go. 
 The statement of time '^S'OV ix 0""^^ means some days (as at Isa. 
 Ixv. 20, elsewhere: a long time, iv. 3, xl. 4), or even (or 
 rather) ten (a decade of days). The Samar. has B'ln "IX D^tt\ 
 Eebekah's bashful but decided brief answer ^^^ settles the 
 
GENESIS XXIY. 5fi-G5. 113 
 
 immediate commencement of the journey. The dismissal^ 
 vv. 59-Gl : Then they sent away Behehah their sister and her 
 nurse, and Abrahams servant and his people. And they Messed 
 Ecbekah and said to her : Our sister, heeome thou thousaiids of 
 myriads, and may thy seed possess the gate of their enemies ! 
 And Rehehah arose and her maids, and rode vpon the camels and 
 follovxd the man ; so the servant took Rchekah and went auny. 
 cnhx npniTiN* is said according to the rule a potiori, the 
 rektiou to Laban being generalized. The nurse (Deborah, 
 XXXV. 8) remained, according to ancient custom (in Homer also), 
 a member of the family and the immediate attendant upon 
 her former nursling. The blessing, with which Eebekah is 
 dismissed, proceeds from the frame of mind to which the 
 i'amily of Xahor had been raised by intercourse with the 
 servant of Abraham. The Talmudic tractate nba begins by 
 drawing from our passage, in agreement with Euth iv. 11 sq., 
 the conclusion, that " a bride, whether a virgin or a widow, 
 witliout a previous blessing is interdicted to her husband like 
 one unclean." ^^''nhxi has Zakeph gaclol, which always stands 
 alone without a servant, and is less separative than the pre- 
 ceding Zakeph katon (nb). The imperative "'IH is vocalized 
 
 like ''.n Ezek. xvi. 6. The combination n33-i ^pW is like ""^^ 
 rs Ex. xxxii. 28, and nj? ni33"! Ps. iii. 7 (Ges. § 120. 2); 
 the genitive is a generic designation of what is enume- 
 rated. "With riN between the vocative and imperative, 
 comp. Jer. ii. 31 ; the pronoun is intended with the distinct- 
 ness which is expressed in the vocative. The wish 60^* 
 is almost identical with xxii. 17 («/). There we have V2\s*, 
 here the poetical VNpb, as also ni^-i is the older and more 
 refined word for i^l (=ni3-) = n^an). The arrival of the 
 travelling company and the first meeting of the betrothed, 
 vv. 62-65 : And Isaac was just coming from the way to the well 
 Lahaj Roi, for he dwelt in the land of the south, — for Isaac had 
 
 gone out into the field towards evening to indulge in his thoughts, 
 VOL. II. H 
 
114 GENESIS XXIV. 62-G5. 
 
 — and he lifted up his eyes, and hehold, there were camels coming. 
 And Behekah lifted up her eyes and saw Isaac, and she alighted 
 from the camel. And she said to the servant : JMio is that 
 man ivho is coming to meet us in the field ? The servant said : 
 It is my master; then she took the veil and covered herself 
 The structure of the sentence vv. 62, C3 is clumsy: first a 
 sentence preparatory to the main fact with the perfect N3, 
 then an explanatory sentence of condition with 3t?^'V i^'in'i, then 
 following this sentence of condition a parenthetical sentence 
 more nearly explaining this accessory fact Na, and now the 
 main fact with I';"'!? Nb'*!. It is assumed that Abraham was 
 then still dwelling at Beersheba, xxii. 19, south of which lay 
 Hagar's well in the well-watered Wadi cl-Miiweilih, where 
 Isaac dwelt after the death of Abraham, xxv, 11. Maimonides 
 already remarks, that it is here purposely not said "t^?30 Nii,^ 
 because it would then appear as though he already had his 
 dwelling there. It cannot however be meant that he was 
 just returning from a visit to Hagar's well, for this was too 
 far distant from Beersheba for an evening walk (G3a), but 
 that he was coming from an evening walk in the direction of 
 this his favourite place, a place hallowed as it had been by a 
 manifestation of God: Ni3p = NUpo 1 Kings viii. 65, comp. 
 ^^i37 XXXV. 16, ^'^ Num. xiii. 21. It was in the twilight 
 {pr\V ni3D7, as it began to be evening, comp. Deut. xxiii. 12, 
 Ex. xiv. 27) that he went into the open air D^'^*7, to meditate. 
 So most ancient translators, taking 'j^-V'^O'V'? Ps. cxix. 148, 
 either in the meaning meditari (LXX. Aq. Symm. Vulg.) or 
 directly (comp. Ps. cii. 1) orarc (Talmud, Targums Sam. Saad. 
 Luth. Kimchi, Gr. Yen.), in opposition to w^hich Syr. translates 
 
 oA^m^nV to take exercise, as though it were t^vj?, as 
 Gesenius desires to read. This is one of the passages on which 
 the obligation of the Minchah-prayer is based. Isaac is of 
 a quietly enduring, contemplative disposition, and it is in con- 
 
 1 To read thus, rejecting the NH (de Lagarde, Olsh.), is an old proposal ; see 
 the Ltmberger Zeitschri/t p^nn Jahrg. iii. (1856) p. 93. 
 
GENESIS XXIV. G6, G7. 115 
 
 formity with this his character that he should go in the direc- 
 tion of Hagar's well (xvi, 13 sq.), to think over the matter of 
 his marriage in silent soliloquy before the Lord. Here the 
 looks of those who were betrothed by God's guidance meet. 
 Rebekah (according to Eastern notions of courtesy in the 
 presence of one who is to be met with reverence) quickly 
 alights from her camel Qp^, as at 2 Kings v. 21, of intentionally 
 falling, i.e. swinging oneself down, LXX. KareTrrjBrjaep, a stronger 
 word for this manifestation of respect than TlJ; 1 Sam. xxv. 
 23, and 13^ Josh. xv. 18, Targums r!3"'3"inx, she bowed, sank 
 down, let herself slip off), and to make herself certain, asks 
 the name of the man (i^tpn as only one more, xxxvii. 19)^ 
 who is coming towards them ; and when she hears that it is 
 Isaac, she modestly takes her veil. ^''J/'V (from ^T^ (— c*J to lay 
 together, to fold, to make double or more) is, according to 
 Abenezra, of like meaning with *T'*1") (by which it is translated 
 in Targ. Jer.), and the latter of like meaning with the Arab. 
 
 ]j ; the LXX. translates both here and Cant. v. 7 depia-rpov 
 (Jer. jmIHuvi), a light summer wrap which covers the body 
 and especially the head, the veil or hooded inantle, which is 
 mentioned by Tertullian, dc vclandis virg. ch. 17, Jerome, 
 ad Eustoch. ep. 22, and elsewhere, as an Arabic feminine 
 garment (see Lagarde, Semitica, p. 24 sq.). It is of similar kind 
 with the white linen wrapping shawl, with which Syrian women 
 cover themselves out of doors (j\}^)> not the face-veil which 
 
 forms a separate piece of clothing («J;^) ; for this muffling 
 of Moslem women is a later custom, which Muhammed bor- 
 rowed from the court of the Sassanidic. Eebekah, drawiug her 
 mantle over her face, covered herself (nupsit), as Sulamith in 
 Canticles, who as a bride wears the bridal veil '"io>*. Bringing 
 home of the bride, vv. 66, 67 : And the servant told Isaac all 
 the tilings that lie had done. And Isaac hrought her into the 
 
 ^ la the Samaritan usage of language the sense of brilliant {illiistris) is com- 
 bined with n6n (DMZ. xxxix. 196). 
 
116 GENESIS XXV. 1-11. 
 
 tent of Sarah Ids mother, and he took Echel-ah and she hecame 
 his wife, and he loved her and was comforted for the loss of his 
 mother. The history started at ver. 1 sqq. from Abraham, but 
 does not return to him ; we do not however miss this if we look 
 at XXV. 1—1 1, in which c/certainly has a share, and if Abraham's 
 remarriage followed the marriage of Isaac. In cases where 
 the widowed father remarries, the affection of the son cleaves 
 the more ardently to the deceased mother, iisx m^b npnsn jg 
 less unusual than r^H^i^ Josh. vii. 21 (both times with Katepli 
 instead of silent Sheva, comp. n333 xiii. 14); for the justification 
 and explanation of this combination of the determinate substan- 
 tive with the genitivally conceived proper name, see Ges. 22 nd 
 ed. § 111. 2. There is no grammatical necessity for regarding 
 i?3K nnb' as a gloss (Wellh. Dillm, Nold.), and the assumption 
 that in the mind of the narrator of ch. xxiv. Abraham had mean- 
 time died, is not so certain as to make us accept the notion 
 that V3K ^inx originally stood in the place of i»X '^nx (Wellh. 
 Kuen.), or that the whole sentence 67& is a recent addition 
 (Dillm.). With this " after his mother," i.e. after he had lost 
 her, comp. ""^SP, "before me," i.e. before I came, xxx. 30. The 
 grief of Isaac for the loss of his mother was alleviated, when a 
 much loved wife filled up the void made by the death of Sarah. 
 
 abeaham's descendants by ketueah, and his death, 
 
 CH. XXV. 1-11. 
 (Parallel with 1 Chron. i. 32, 33.) 
 
 A fifth portion, xxv. 1-11, relates Abraham's remarriage 
 and death, partly according to J, partly according to Q. Vv. 
 1-4 keep to the manner of the Jahvistic element of the ethno- 
 graphical table {lb'' for T'^in, and the summary 4& quite like 
 X. 29&) ; m^ and pT are traced back otherwise than in Q 
 X. 7. In 5-7 this genealogical portion is continued. In 
 ver. 5 we recognise the autlior of xxiv. 36. On the other 
 hand, 7-1 la bears as distinctly as possible the impress of Q, 
 
GENESIS XXV. 1. 117 
 
 ■\vlio also refers in xlix. 31 sq. to what is here related, 
 nn ''i3, which occurs eight times in eh. xxiii., and besides in 
 XXV. 10, xlix, 32 (for which J nses the collective ''^Hl'), is 
 peculiar to him. In 11Z> (the dwelling of Isaac at Lahaj Eoi) 
 ver. 6 proceeds in accordance with xxiv. 67. The picture 
 thus composed from two documents is nevertheless a single 
 one. For it is no contradiction, c.rj., that according to ver. 6 
 only Isaac is with Abraham, and that according to ver. 9 Isaac 
 and Ishmael together bury him ; Ishmael having hastened 
 thither on the intelligence of his father's death. 
 
 Abraham's remarriage, ver. 1 : And Abraliam again took a 
 ^vife, and her name ivas Kcturah. According to the statements 
 xxiii. 1, XXV. 7, comp. xvii. 17, Abraham had still a life of 
 about forty years before him. The construction is like 
 xxxviii. 5, and both in matter and diction resembles xvi. 3, 
 where Hagar also is called Abraham's n^'x. Keturah however 
 is not a secondary wife during the lifetime of his wife. Augus- 
 tine, de civ. Dei, 16. 34, justly lays stress upon this against the 
 opponents of the sccundoi nuptim. She is indeed also called, 
 ver. 6, comp. 1 Chron. i. 32, t^'J^'S ; she does not stand on the 
 same level as Sarah, who as the mother of the son of promise 
 stands alone. But in other respects no blot attaches to the 
 second marriage. The relation too to Keturah contributes to 
 the fulfilment of the word of promise, which appointed Abraham, 
 xxii. 4 sq., to be the father of a multitude of nations. The 
 sons and grandsons of Abraham by Keturah form however no 
 special nil^n ; they are but offshoots of the tree whose growth 
 is depicted in Genesis. The list, which in opposition to the 
 account of Kleodemus " the prophet " in Joseph. Ant. i. 1 5 gives 
 an impression of its historical truth, contains in part at least 
 names of Arab tribes still recognisable. These must long 
 ago have become such, when Israel was in course of develop- 
 ment at a distance.^ The Arabic Kenealo£[ies know indeed 
 
 ' See Wetzstein's article on Northern Arabia and the Syrian desert in 
 Kohuer's Zeitschr. fur Allgcm. Erdkunde, Annual issue xviii. 1865. 
 
118 GENESIS XXV. 2. 
 
 nothing of a great kindred of tribes descended from Keturali, 
 and Sprenger even fathers npon the genealogist the absurdity 
 of making Arabs, with whom he was acquainted as dealers in 
 spices, sons of a Keturah (miDp = JTibp, frankincense). But 
 \j^ is actually alleged to be the name of a tribe in the 
 
 neighbourhood of Mecca (comp. also J^ the present name of 
 the peninsula of Bahrein). Direct descendants of Abraham 
 by Keturah, ver. 2 : And she hare him I'J'fT/ Knobel com- 
 pares Za(3pdiJb in PtoL, the royal city of the Kinaedokolpites 
 (i"jjL<31 DMZ. xxii. 663), Grotius the Arab tribe of the 
 Zamarcni in Pliny 6. 32. § 158. The KaaaaviTat, dwelling 
 south of tlie Kinaedokolpites on the Ptcd Sea, have nothing 
 to do with Tf p', for these are the Gassanidse ^'wi. {DMZ. 
 xxii. 668); Arab genealogists give \J^\ as the name of 
 
 a portion of the ancient population of Yemen {DMZ. x. 31). 
 The name of the AVadi Meddn near the ruins of the town 
 Dedan accords with l^p, and the name of the town Madjan 
 {MaStrjv/] in Joseph. Ant. ii. 11. 1), five days' journey 
 
 south of Aila, with T^p. f^\Xo and ^^;A^ were the names of 
 an ancient Arabian god (see Hitz. on Prov. vi. 19). Ptolemy 
 mentions a MaBtd/xa in the north of Arabia felix, vi. 7. 27, 
 and Mohlava (= ;no) in the west of Arabia felix on the east 
 coast of the ^lanitic Gulf, vi. 7. 2. clio_j-ij Sjaubachuin in 
 'Gebal, whose name, meaning thicket, saltus, became famous 
 in the times of the Crusades, has nothing to do with ?^p\ (see 
 on xxxvi. 20). nVki^ can scarcely be combined with the tribe 
 
 ^l:^\j^\ es-Sejd'iha, eastward of Aila, and by no means with 
 HaKKUia, Ptol. V. 15. 26, which is on the contrary to be con- 
 nected with the ''SaJcka \JiJL above Duma and Tcmd in East- 
 Hauran, nor with the two villages of the name of SVidn (with 
 
 1 On the phonetic law, according to which the LXX. reads Za^/J^av for pOT> 
 Ma//.[ipn for X1I0O, 'Afilipa/u, for DIDJ?, etc., see Flecker, Scripture Onomatology 
 (London 1883), pp. 26-28. 
 
GENESIS XXV. 3, 4. 119 
 
 (jm), one of which lies in the NuJcra one league north of 
 l/mm Weled, the other in south Golan. Friedr. Delitzsch has 
 shown {Paradics, p. 297 sq., and the "Essay on the Land of 
 Uz," Zeitschr. fiir Kcilschriftforschiing, 1885), in cuneiform 
 inscriptions, a land of Suhu, which lay at all events north of 
 Hauran, and north-eastwards of the great Palmyra road, and 
 also a land JashiiJc, coinciding phonetically with p'^^\. The 
 Jokshanidie, oa : And Joksan begat ^Sehd and Dcddn. The 
 tracing of i^^^ and \y\ to m3 x. 7, is not incompatible with 
 their Semitic derivation here and x. 28 (see on these two 
 passages). The LXX. in Isa. Jer. Ezek. writes for jm AatSdv, 
 
 similar in sound with the name of the ruins of the town j^\ j^j jjl 
 (Jakut ii. p. SPI, line 3) on the borders of the Bclka towards 
 Higaz, according to Wetzst. at the eastern foot of the Hisma 
 mountain chain, where is also found a valley of Meddn sloping 
 towards the east ; farther off lies Dciden, Syr. Didhi, the name 
 of one of the islands of Bahrein, The tribes descending from 
 Dedan, oh : And the sons of Dcddn were D"i3ti*x, of whom no 
 trace is elsewhere found, for "iit^\s Ezek. xxvii. 23 is Assyria, 
 and ^1V<>'Sn 2 Sam. ii. 9 probably an error of transcription. The 
 
 tribes t,J^ and f,j^\ may perhaps be combined with the DK'ID^ 
 
 and Q^^N7, unless their names are to be regarded, as by Eenan, 
 as mutilated from D"'C''iD^ and W'avh {DMZ. xx. 175, xxiii. 298). 
 Eamification of IMidian, ver. 4 : And the sons of Midian : ns-jr^ 
 according to Isa. Ix. 6, a trading tribe bringing gold and 
 frankincense from Sheba; isy, with which Wetzstein compares 
 
 jLz a district in the 'Alia, i.e. the highland between the 
 Tihama range and the Aban, after which this part of Arabia 
 was called ^j: j^i:, the Ncjd of 'Ofr; "H^n, which harmonizes 
 in sound with the district Ilandlcia compared by Ivnobel and 
 Wetzstein (Burckhardt, Arabien, p. 690 sq., comp. Eitter, Erd- 
 kunde, xiii. 451), three days' journey north of Medina, where 
 Ibrahim Pasha had a standing camp on account of its abund- 
 
120 GENESIS XXV. 5-7. 
 
 ance of water ; Vy^X and •^V'^'c^, about which there is nothing 
 to say but that j;T'ax and bis^T occur as Himjaritic personal 
 names {DMZ. xxvii. 648), as yrcc^ and xc'l^ do as Nabatseau 
 {DMZ. xviii. 447). It cannot be wondered that some of these 
 ancient names should, in consequence of the many migrations, 
 intermingling and wars of the Arabic tribes, have been lost 
 without leaving a trace behind. 
 
 Abraham makes Isaac heir of all, and gives gifts to the 
 sons of the concubines, vv. 5,6: And Abraham, gave all that 
 he had to Isaac. And to the sons of the conc2ihines luhom 
 Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts and sent them away from 
 Isaac Ms son during his lifetime castivard into the east 
 country. He gave all that he possessed to Isaac, i.e. as 
 at xxiv. 36: he promised it to him, and gave it to his 
 management. The concubines are Hagar and Keturah, we 
 know of no others. t^'JP'B (jrdWa^, ^;e^^e>r, or according to 
 an old writing pcelex) occurred in J at xxii. 24. "The 
 east country " is Arabia in the widest sense, in the first 
 place Arabia dcscrta and petra^a, and then farther southwards 
 the whole Arabian peninsula. It is not without reason 
 that we have here, ver. 6, the apparently superfluous V ^3"iiy3. 
 The Mosaic law and ancient Hebrew custom know only of 
 a so-called intestate hereditary right, i.e. one independent of 
 the testamentary disposition of the testator, and regulated 
 according to the degree of lineal hereditary succession. If 
 then Abraham desired not to let the sons of his concubines 
 depart empty, he was obliged to provide for them by gifts 
 during his lifetime. The history of Abraham's life now 
 comes to an end, ver. 7 : And this is the amoiint of the 
 years of Abraham's life ivhich he lived: a hundred and five 
 and seventy years. The marriage of Keturah took place in 
 the fourth decade, before the end of this 'long life (subse- 
 quent to the 137th year), which on reckoning up extended 
 to about fifteen years beyond the birth of the twin children, 
 but which, as in the case of Terah, is here auticipatively 
 
GENESIS XXV. 8-10. 121 
 
 finished off. His death, ver. 8 : Ajid Ahraliam expiral and 
 died in a good old age, old and full, and %vas gathered to 
 his iKople. The promise xv. 15 was fulfilled. In the 
 case of Isaac, whose death resembled that of his father, 
 we find XXXV. 29 instead of V^if' the fuller expression 
 Wty ynl", like ijlcnus vitce and satur ac 2ylcmis rcrum in 
 Lucretius. On D''sy=Dy ""ill see on xvii. 14. ^P^'.l has always 
 in this phrase, when it appears in the form of the imp. 
 conscc, the tone drawn hack (notwithstanding the Tiphcha), 
 ver. 17, XXXV. 29, xlix. 33, Deut. xxxii. 50, comp. on the 
 other hand Num. xx. 24, xxxi. 2. This qos^i yin is, accord- 
 ing to Bathra 16&, the special expression for the death of 
 the pious. For as the fulness of life of the patriarchs 
 denotes a desire for another world, where they will be 
 delivered from the tribulations of this, so is union with 
 the fathers not a union merely of corpses but of persons. 
 That death does not, as might appear from iii. 19, put an 
 end to the individual continuity of man, is a notion univer- 
 sally diffused in the world of nations, — a notion originating 
 from and justified by the fact, that not only wrath but 
 mercy was proclaimed to fallen man. Believers however 
 knew more than this, but only by the inference drawn by 
 faith from the premisses of the Divine promise, and breaking 
 through the comfortless notion of Hades. Kara ircariv 
 uirkOavov ovrot iravre';, Heb. xi. 13. They were united in 
 faith to Jaliveh, as He the ever-living One united Himself 
 to them by His word and placed Himself in a mutual 
 relation to them, which could never cease. Thus also did 
 Abraham depart from this world, after he had already long 
 departed from its history, and had spent in the quiet of his 
 home decades of which history tells us nothing. His burying, 
 vv. 9, 10 : And Isaac and Ishmacl his sons hurled him in 
 the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of 
 Sohar the Hethite, which is before Mamre, the field which 
 Abraham bought of the sons of Heth. There was Abraham, 
 
122 GENESIS XXV. 11. 
 
 huried, and Sarah his wife. Isaac and Islimael, who after 
 Isaac ranks highest among the sons of Abraham, buried him. 
 It is not thence to be inferred that Ishmael was at that 
 time still in his father's house. The blessiug of Abraham 
 as regards this world is now transferred to Isaac, ver. 11a; 
 And it came to ]3ass after Abraham's death, that Mohim blessed 
 Isaac his son. Thus is fulfilled the covenant promise, xvii. 
 21. Thus far Q; 11& is added from J: And Isaac dwelt 
 by the well Lahai-rot. His dwelling by Hagar's well was 
 certainly not without the influence of the answer to prayer 
 there received and never to be forgotten. Beersheba had 
 hitherto been the common residence of himself and his 
 father, xxii. 19. Later on in the evening of his life we 
 find him at Mamre, xxxv. 27 {Q). The life of the patriarch 
 was a pilgrimage without a settled dwelling-place. 
 
VII. 
 THE TOLEDOTH OF ISHMAEL, XXV. 12-18. 
 
 (Parallel passage, 1 Chron. i. 28-31.) 
 
 Before the history of the seed of promise can go on with- 
 out interruption, the history of Ishmael must be finished off in 
 accordance with the method of the fundamental document (Q). 
 This is now done, ver. 12 : And these are the generations of 
 Ishmael the son of Ahraluim, whom Hagar the EgTjptian, 
 Sarah's maid, bore to Abraham, This general title is 
 particularized, ver, 13a: And these are the names of the 
 sons of Ishmael, hy their names, according to their generations. 
 Before DriintJ'3, these sous of Ishmael must be supplied in 
 thought. They are now specified according to their names 
 and sequence. There were twelve of them according to 
 the promise xvii. 20, corresponding with the twelve tribes 
 of Israel. The blessing of Ishmael, who was also the seed 
 of Abraham and, differing herein from the sons of Keturah, 
 received Divine promises, made chs. xvii. and xxi. in the 
 name D^n^x, and ch. xvi. in the name nins is a reflection of 
 the blessing of Israel. The first-born of Ishmael was, accord- 
 ing to 13&, n^33. Nebajoth and Kedar are mentioned 
 together not only Isa. Ix. 7, but also Plin. h. n. 6. 32 
 {Nabatcei et Cedrei) ; Kaiddr and Ndhit (Ndbt) written with 
 fj^ are known also to Arabic and Armenian historians 
 (Hiibschraann, Zur Gesch. Armeniens, 1865, p. 12) as, 
 according to biblical precedent, descendants of Ishmael 
 
 or also of Madian. Along with this occurs La3 (Gentilic 
 
124 GENESIS XXV. 13. 
 
 Ujj, plur. of the nation in its manifold totality, ^\jjn genea- 
 logically traced back to ^^ i.e. ^^ x. 23, or otherwise, as the 
 name of the Aramaean population of Egypt as far as the 
 Tigris (comp. 1 Mace. v. 24 sq., ix. 35), and especially of 
 the districts between the Euphrates and the Tigris. It is 
 on this account that Quatremere in his lUmoire sur les 
 NcibaUens, with the concurrence of Causin, Eitter and 
 Steinschneider (see his additions to Brecher's Die Besch- 
 ncidung, p. 1 1 sq.), rejects the combination of the Nabatseans 
 with the Ishmaelite nr33. Schrader also {KAT. 147, 414) 
 distinguishes the north Arabian Ndbaitai from the Baby- 
 lonio-Aramaean Ndbatu, while Winer, Kless (in Pauli's BE. 
 vol. i. 377 sqq.), Krehl {Bdirjion der voi^islam. Arab. 1863, 
 p. 51), Blau {BMZ. xvii. 51) and Noldeke {D3IZ. xxxiii. 
 322 sq.) adhere to the connection of the Nabatsean £223 
 with the biblical nvm The manner of writing the name 
 varies ; upon the coins of ISTabatoean kings inn: and it333 are 
 interchanged (see Levy in JDMZ. xiv. 317), and in the 
 Targum and Talmud the forms D2J, nna, nilJ and even 
 ns3 are found together (see Geiger, id. xv. 413). The 
 Assyrian inscriptions write the name in all its forms with 
 t (nahaitu, adj. gentil. nabaitai), not with t (Friedr. Delitzsch, 
 Baradics, 29 G sq.). The supposed ancient Nabattean waitings 
 derived from Babylonia, to which Chwolson (1859) gave 
 credence, are, as is now acknowledged, the fabrication of 
 Ibn-Wahsija, who says he translated them iuto Arabic. The 
 name of the Nabata^ans is in these writings one of much 
 further reach, including also the Chaldseans, Syrians, and 
 Canaanites, and has hence neither certainty nor outline. It is 
 on the contrary certain that in the first century B.C., and down 
 to the time of Trajan, the Nabatseans w^ere a prominent and 
 civilised people whose realm extended from the ^lanitic 
 Gulf to the land east of Jordan, past Belka as far as 
 Hauran, — written memorials of this people are found 
 
GENESIS XXV. 13. 125 
 
 from Egypt to Babylonia, but Arabia retmea is the chief 
 mine for thein. The supposed ancient Nabatoean writings 
 might, if they contained any ancient germ, coincide with this 
 period of Nabata^an civilisation, with which was combined 
 the flourishing period of Christianity in Arabia Petrtea 
 (see my Kirchlichcs Chronikon dcs pctr. Arahicns, Luth. Zcit- 
 sclir. 1840, iv. 41. 1); and whether" this civilisation had its 
 starting-point in Babylonia or Arabia, the one is quite as com- 
 patible as the other with the Ishmaelite origin of the mp ^J3, nor 
 is tlie Aramaic language of the inscriptions and forms of incan- 
 tation contrary to this origin. "We know indeed but little 
 of pre-Islamite Arabic and its dialects. But the few remains 
 which have been preserved, e.g. the cry Malclian, with which, 
 according to Laurentius Lydus {de mcnsihus, iv. 75), a Saracen 
 is said to have pierced the Emperor Julian, recognised by the 
 purple, in the Persian "War, make it probable that idioms lying 
 midway between the Aramaic and Arabic with which we are 
 acquainted, were in existence. The Aramaic idiom of the 
 Sinaitic inscriptions is moreover of a strongly Arabic tinge 
 {DMZ. xiv. 379). The nomadic people mentioned together 
 with Kedar in the times of the Israelite kings must have 
 been as yet politically insignificant, for they are not men- 
 tioned in the history of the kings, though this mention might 
 be expected in such connections as 2 Chron. xvii. 11,xxl 16, 
 Ps. Ixxxiii. 7. Petra appears as an Edomite town, and in 
 the Syro - Ephraimitic war Eeziu made Ailat an Aramsean 
 colony. But what objection is there to accepting the notion 
 that Ishmaelite wandering tribes may have been subsequently 
 swallowed up in the renowned civilised nation of the 
 Ndbatcei, who constructed their marvellous buildings upon 
 the ancient Seirite mountains, but were despised by the Arabs 
 as townsmen and pikemen, and not acknowledged as their 
 equals because of their settled habits and industry ? — Ishmael's 
 second son is "i^i?. This people of north-western Arabia, 
 frequently mentioned in the Old Testament as nomads dwell- 
 
126 GENESIS XXV. 13. 
 
 ing in tents and as good bowmen, was already known to Pliny 
 (5. 11) as the Ccdrci. Kedarenes dwelt eastward of the 
 Nabatteans in the desert beyond Babylonia (Isa. xlii 11, 
 Ps. cxx. 5). They had disappeared in the first period of 
 
 Islam. Jefeth on Cant. i. 5 substitutes [J^t/ the tribe of 
 
 Muhammed. The third son of Ishmael is ''^??1J>*, according to 
 Friedr. Delitzsch {Paraclies, 301 sq.) the north Arabian tribe 
 of Idiha'il. — The fourth son is Db'ap, and the fifth V^p^'P, 
 names which occur together also in the genealogy of the tribe 
 of Simeon (1 Chron. iv. 25). The name of the Maiaaifiavetq 
 somewhat north- east of Medina, Ptol. vi. 7, 21 (comp. DMZ. 
 xxii. 672), and cl-Misimjc in Legah, the name of the largest 
 town in the mid-Syrian volcanic region, sound like J^'^V'P, but 
 actual connection is doubtful in both cases. The sixth son 
 nnn, probably Aov[xa6a, Aov[xe6a in Ptolem. and Steph. Byz., 
 
 Domatha in Plin., the present JaastI ^.•cjJ in the lowest 
 
 depression of the Syrian land of Niifud, the so-called G6f 
 whence proceeds the question to the prophet, Isa. xxi. 11, is 
 about forty leagues north of Teinid. The seventh son N^'P 
 sounds like the Maaavol, Ptol. v. 19. 2, north-east of Duma. 
 An Assyrian inscription in Priedr. Delitzsch {Paradies, 302) 
 mentions a Masai (from SC'O ?) who surprised the Nabatoeans 
 {Nibaaiti) after the Assyrians had withdrawn. The name of 
 the country ncd is also probably concealed in Pro v. xxxi. 1, 
 XXX. 1, which see. — On the eighth son ^in (as according to the 
 Masora 1 Chron. i. 30 is also to be written, with which 
 agree the LXX. Sam. Jos., and according to which Targ. Jer. 
 translates ^'^'^yS) there is nothing to be said. The ninth 
 son S<^''J[^ does not correspond with m^j »Jo in the neighbour- 
 hood of the Persian Gulf (0at/xot in Ptol.), but with the 
 
 trading tribe of ^'^"'^ P.^ ( U-vj" Assyr. Tem\b, upon the 
 borders of the Negd and the Syrian desert). Job vi. 19, Isa. 
 xxi. 14, mentioned in Jer. xxv. 23 between Dedan and Buz, 
 
GENESIS XXV. 13. 127 
 
 and not to be confused with the Idumn?an l^^"^, xxxvi. 42, 
 though it almost seems as if i^"*^ mentioned Jer. xlix, 7 sq., 
 Ezek. XXV. 13, together with Dedan were equivalent to t^O^n. 
 Arabian geographers give the name of Teman to the southern 
 half of the Negd, but are acquainted also with a Tetrrean 
 Teman in northern 'Alia called J^^ jj (j^.-0" the ruins of 
 Teman. Wetzstein has also brouglit to our knowledge still exist- 
 ing trans-Hauranian localities called Tenia and Diana. There 
 is also found in East Hauran, three and a half leagues south of 
 Tema, a still stately town of BiJtzdn. Nevertheless the places 
 here named are more probably to be sought in the Xegd than 
 in East Hauran. — The tenth and eleventh sons are '^'^'^\ and 
 w'''D3, both mentioned by the Chronicler, 1 Chron. v. 18-22, in 
 conjunction with ^^i^, whose name has been preserved in the 
 
 Hauranian Nudebe ( ^UjjJ ) in the Wadi d-hiitm, and with the 
 ^'^''l^'I', 'i-^- ^Aypatoi or 'Aype€<;, whose capital was .<sji (Ethiop. 
 and Himjar. hagar town), in Plin. li. n. 6. 32 Hegra on the 
 Persian Gulf ; they there appear as involved in war with their 
 neighbours the trans-Jordanic tribes of Israel. Of t;"'Si we 
 know nothing else. The I'l^''. however, according to Strabo, 
 are the plundering 'Irovpatot dwelling on Lebanon and the 
 Hauran chain {Itura:i sagittarii in Cicero, FJiilij:)]}. 2. 44) ; 
 the inhabitants of the highest part and of the eastern slope 
 of the Druse mountain chain in Hauran are perhaps their 
 descendants. — The name too of the twelfth son ^^"^P is not 
 
 T : J" 
 
 elsewhere to be pointed out, for D"!]!^ \J3 mentioned with 
 Midian and Amalek Judg. vi. 3, with Moab and Amnion 
 Isa. xi. 14, Ezek. xxv. 4, 10, is a collective name; but 
 XapaK7)voi, which certainly means the men of the East, appears 
 originally, like "^^IP!., as a separate tribe upon the Sinaitic 
 peninsula or elsewhere. We need not be surprised to seek in 
 vain for most of these names in "VYiistenfeld's and Sprenger's 
 lists, for even the great tribes, who made a figure in the 
 beginning of the history of Islam, have now disappeared 
 
128 GEXESIS XXV. 16, 17. 
 
 together with their names. Closing summary, ver. 16 : These 
 are the sons of IshmacI, and these are their navies in their settle- 
 ments and their encamiwients, twelve 'princes according to their 
 nations, ritex is found also in Q at Num. xxv. 15, where Arabs 
 are spoken of, as the word for nations. Two kinds of dwelling- 
 places are here distinguished, first S''"!>'D, the special name for 
 the groups of houses placed within the steppe, and enclosed ou 
 every side for fear of surprise, — as described by Burckhardt 
 (translated by Gesenius, p. 1043) among the villages of the 
 Gof — from "iVC to enclose, comp.Jliir»-,^rs- and especially ^,*ii»-, 
 to live in a courtyard walled round {liadar, haddr, hacldra) ; 
 here as at Lev. xxv. 31, and to this day with the obliteration 
 of the characteristic " walled round," the general name for a 
 settled abode (with houses of plaster or stone) in contrast 
 with wandering and tents. Then rii"i"'p (from n^D, comp. 
 
 jU? \^) encampment (identical in meaning with ciJl-x^ sirdt 
 
 andj|.J dudr), i.e. cucvlIqx groups (comp. ^Jr, jjj circle, cir- 
 cumference) of pitched tents (haircloth tents, iccdjar). The 
 first appellation of the kind of dwelling designates the 
 stationary, the second the wandering sons of Ishmael. Dura- 
 tion of Ishmael's lifetime, ver. 17 : And this is the amount of 
 the years of Ishmael: a hundred and seven and thirty years, and 
 he departed and died, and was gathered to his people. Dwelling- 
 places of the Ishmaelites, ver. 18 : They divelt from, Havilah 
 to "SCir, luhich is hcfore Egypt as far as towards Assyria, east- 
 wards of all his hrethren came he to dicell. The topographical 
 "•^a'Py denotes a position which so covers the front of any 
 place, that it may be seen thence before arriving at it. In 
 itself it tells us nothing of the quarter, comp. Josh. xv. 8 
 " westwards ; " xviii. 4 " southwards," but standing alone it 
 has here, as at xvi. 12, the meaning of eastwards (comp. Deut. 
 xxxii. 49, 1 Sam. xv. 7, 1 Kings xi. 7, Zech. xiv. 4, comp. 
 Num. xxi. 11). The ^?3 usual elsewhere of the territory 
 devolving to any one, means here, as at Judg. vii. 1 2, to settle. 
 
GENESIS XXV. 18. 129 
 
 Luther translates after the Vulgate : coram 0.^3~7y as at xi. 28) 
 cunctis fratribus suis dbiit. But ''?J is used of falling in war, 
 
 and not like the Arabic js>. exactly in the meaning of dying ; 
 and the prediction xvi. 12, the fulfilment of which is the 
 point in question, shows that it is here synonymous with I?'^. 
 Luther explains it in the Enarrationes more correctly : ten-am 
 occuparunt, but with a mistaken interpretation of bsi after 
 Dv"'?? (invaders) instead of settlement (com p. xxiv. 64). The 
 ^pj}. here coincides locally with the Joktanite Havilah x. 29, 
 the country of the XavXoTalot mentioned between the 
 Nabatffians and Agrajans by Eratosthenes in Strabo, xvi. 4. 2. 
 Between this Havilah on the Persian Gulf and the desert of 
 Shur lying towards Egypt, the Ishmaelites spread themselves 
 over the Sinaitic peninsula and the trans-Jordanic deserts of 
 the Higaz and Negd, as well as further up Mesopotamia 
 nniu's ^S3 in the direction of Assyria, i.e. as far as the lands 
 under Assyrian sway. Comparing indeed 1 Sam. xxvii. 8, the 
 suspicion is aroused that nnVtTS ^X3 is a recent gloss which 
 erroneously interprets the iic^, — what it states is however 
 correct as to matter (Dillm.), and the sentence ^s: vns b^ ^JD"^y, 
 to which Wellh, also objects {Composition, i. p. 410), is quite 
 unassailable. But it is possible that ver. 18 is an addition 
 from J, in which its original place was perhaps after ver. 6. 
 
 VOL. IL 
 
VIII. 
 THE TOLEDOTH OF ISAAC, XXV. 19-XXXV. 29. 
 
 THE TIIEEE PEPtlODS OF THE HISTORY OF ISAAC. 
 
 We have already had preliminary information concerning 
 Isaac, but his proper history according to the view and plan 
 of Genesis commences here. It is opened by R with matter 
 derived from Q, who furnishes its scaffold and framework, 
 vv. 19, 20 : And these are the generations of Isaac, the son of 
 Abraham ; Abraham begat Isaac. And Isaac was forty years 
 old when lie took to wife Mchckah, the daughter of Bethucl the 
 Aramaean from Taddan Aram, the sister of laban the Ara- 
 maean. The n'lpin of Isaac assume that he is an independent 
 commencement. And this he became after obtaining a wife 
 in Eebekah from CiX H?. Here for the first time we meet 
 with this name of the Aramaean plain, occurring elsewhere only 
 in Q and never out of Genesis. It is perhaps (comp. Spiegel, 
 Urdnische Alterthumshunde, i. 289) of a narrower meaning 
 than the Jahvistic D^inJ I3']X, and denotes those plains of the 
 immense fruitful campi Jllesopotamice (Curtius, iii. 2. 3, 
 V. 1. 15) in which lay Harran and Edessa {Urhoi). The 
 
 M'ord n? (^o^'^) ^^ °^ 1^^® ^°*^^ "^^^^ ^*^^ ^^® broad desert 
 plain, and properly means the extended level ; in Aramaic 
 and Arabic it is transferred to the oxen yoked to the plough 
 and to the plough itself {DMZ. xxviii. 623). But even in 
 these tongues its original meaning- of plain, field, cultivated 
 land (Gr. TreSiov, which however means trodden ground), 
 
GENESIS XXY. IP, 20. 131 
 
 «- 
 
 whence J\si as the designation of the landowner is derived, 
 has been maintained as a local name {DMZ. xxix. 433). 
 Hos. xii. 12 lias r^-^}^ for n? (com p. Shabhath 118& ^nb'=nv^'). 
 Isaac's marriage with llebekah, who came from this Araratea, 
 remained childless for twenty years ; it was not till fifteen 
 years before the death of Abraham (not after that event, as 
 Josephus, confusing the historiographic with the historic 
 sequence, thinks) that Eebehah bore children, and that the new 
 beginning appointed to take place with Isaac made an advance. 
 The Toledoth of Isaac are divided into three sections : the first 
 extends from the birth of the twin children amidst marvellous 
 circumstances to the sending away of Jacob to Harran, xxv. 21 
 to xxviii. 9 ; the second begins with Jacob's dream of the 
 heavenly ladder on his way to Harran, and reaches to his 
 final peaceable departure from Laban, xxviii. 10 to xxxii. 1 ; 
 the third begins with the miraculous experiences of Jacob 
 during his return, at ]\Iahanaim and Peniel, and terminates 
 with the death of Isaac, xxxii. 2 to xxxv. 29. The history 
 of Isaac differs from that of Abraham by the chief personage 
 not being as in the latter the patriarch himself, but his son 
 Jacob. Isaac is the middle, the entirely secondary and rather 
 passive than active member of the patriarchal triad. The 
 usual course of the historical process is, that the middle is 
 weaker than the beginning and end, the fundamental figure 
 of its rhythmic movement is the amphimacer — o-' . And 
 thus also does the patriarchal history advance to its goal 
 Wliat is told us of Isaac is comparatively little, and we see 
 Abraham's history repeated in parvo. Isaac is blessed for 
 Abraham's sake, and he himself blesses with the blessing of 
 Abraham, while in the respect shown him by Abimelech, in 
 the long barrenness of his wife, in her exposure to danger by 
 his faithless policy, in his two dissimilar children, in his 
 domestic vexations — in all these he is the copy of Abraham ; 
 even the wells which he digs are those of Abraham which 
 have been stopped up by the Philistines, and the names he 
 
132 GENESIS XXV. 21. 
 
 gives them are the old ones renewed. He is the most passive 
 of the three patriarchs. 
 
 THE TWIN CHILDREN AND ESAU S FIRST SALE OF HIS BIRTHRIGHT 
 TO JACOB, CH. XXV. 21-34. 
 
 The patriarchal history hegan with the separation of Abra- 
 ham the Shemite from the mass of the nations ; it continued 
 with the separation of the son of promise from Abraliam's 
 other progeny ; it closes with a fresh separation made between 
 the twin sons of Isaac. The birth of these twin sons and 
 their separation by Divine choice and then by their own 
 decision is related in the first section of the life of Isaac, 
 XXV. 21-34, in which vv. 21-23 may be certainly dis- 
 tinguished as derived from J, and 26& as from Q. In the 
 rest the analysis is uncertain, for it is not necessary to assume 
 that 1'ba purposes to give another occasion for the name Ciinx, 
 and xxvii. 35 sq. an explanation of the name 2pv;i in contra- 
 diction to ver. 26, both according to E in distinction from J. 
 Neither is it necessary to regard Eebekah's exposure to 
 danger by reason of her beauty, xxvi. 6—11, as occurring 
 before she became a mother. 
 
 Isaac's prayer for the blessing of children, ver. 21 : And 
 Isaac 'prayed to Jahvch in respect of his vjife, for she was 
 ha7'ren. And Jahveh uas entreated hy him : Eclchah his wife 
 conceived. He prayed iJ^B'S nab?, i,e. as at xxx. 38, with respect 
 to her from np2 ,^^3 ^^^f^c oculos in aliqna re. The verb "iny 
 properly means to burn incense (Syr. Arab. "iuy="iDp ^), which 
 meaning is favoured by Ezek. viii. 11, where "inj? means the 
 scent (of the cloud of incense) — the Arab. _\i retreating from 
 this original meaning, is more generally : to bring sacrifices, 
 not merely with an object (Jdkut, iii. p. 912, Z. 13), but also 
 absolutely (id. p. 913, line 2), as also "'iriy Zeph. iii. 10 means 
 my worshippers (by sacrifice and prayer) — the transition from 
 adolcre to sacrifcari (comp. Oveiv) and then to colej'c (comp. 
 
GENESIS XXV. 22, 23. 133 
 
 clCuJ), and farther to ^irccari, is natural. The Niph. inVi! is a 
 synonym of n^^vp., to let oneself be entreated. The Talmud 
 and Midrasli combine "inj? with inn in the meaning of to 
 engrave = to penetrate, for which the Arabic is appealed 
 to (see Pcsilda de Edb Cahana 1G2&, ed. Buber) ; another 
 Haggadic meaning is found in Buxtorf, Lex. Talinud. col. 
 1687. Apparent menace to maternal hopes, ver. 22 : And 
 tlie children thrust each other within her, then she said : If it 
 he thus, for what purpose am I? And she went to inquire of 
 Jahveh. The thrusts within seem to her indications not of 
 the favour but of the wrath of God. Hence she complains 
 and inquires : Why (corap. xxvii. 4G) do I live at all ? n?^^ 
 in its first meaning ad quid, cui rei, as e.g. at Amos v. 18. 
 Eebekah is of a sensitive, sanguine disposition, as prompt in 
 action as she is easily discouraged; she maintains however 
 amidst all her changes of emotion a direct regard to God and 
 to His promise. So too here : she goes to some holy place 
 consecrated by revelation and by the worship of God tihnp 
 'rrns ad petendum Domini oraculum, and receives comfort and 
 information, ver. 23 : Jahveh said to her: 
 
 Two nations are in thy icomb, 
 
 And two peoples shall be separated from thy lowelsj 
 
 And a nation overcomes a nation, 
 
 And the elder will serve the younger. 
 
 The poetic form of this tetrastich is unmistakeable. "VVe here 
 see how akin propliecy is to poetry. In xxiv. 60 we had 
 the poetry of the n^ii, here the poetry of the nsni The 
 answer corresponds as to its tenour with the paradoxical 
 character of the patriarchal period. After the long barren- 
 ness of Eebekah, which made the life of Isaac an enigma, is 
 removed, the mark of an inversion of natural order is im- 
 pressed upon Eebekah's children even in their mother's 
 womb. God's thoughts, which are far above men's thonglits, 
 are here ordering everything. Birth of the twins, vv. 2J:-26 : 
 11^671 then her days vxre fulfilled to he delivered, hchold there 
 
134 GENESIS XXV. 24-27. 
 
 were tivins in her womb. And the first came forth ruddy 
 quite like a hairy garment, and they called his name Esau. 
 Afterwards his brother came forth, his hand holding to Esaiis 
 heel, and his name was called Jaakoh, and Isaac icas sixty 
 years old at their hirth. The twins are here called DOin, 
 contracted from D''!pisri xxxviii. 27, comp. ©(o/xaq = NOin, 
 The first-born appeared ''?i?2ix, i.e. with flesh of a red- 
 brown colour (comp. 1 Sam. xvi. 12, xvii. 42), and quite 
 '^^'^! n"?.?.^? (Zech. xiii. 4 comp. Heb. xi. 37), i.e. as to 
 his whole body like a mantle (from 1*1X ami^lum esse) 
 covered with hairs (from "iyb> horrcrc, to bristle, comp. hirtus, 
 hirsutus, rough), an anomalous luxuriance of hair (Hyper- 
 trichosis), which sometimes occurs in the newly born, here, 
 as was also the darker colour of the skin, a prognostic of 
 bodily strength and fierceness. In "^Vi^ here and xxvii. 
 11, 23, there may be an allusion to the national name IT^', 
 but no actual line of connection is drawn. The second 
 born made his appearance holding the heel of his brother, 
 with his hand held above his head. We are not told that it 
 was thus in his mother's womb (a position of twins hardly 
 possible), but that he followed his brother with this movement 
 of the hand. They called (^^T'l) the one VC'V, the hairy, the 
 other they called {^y^"}. as at xxxv. 8, xxxviii. 29 sq.) 3py!, 
 the heel-holder, i.e. the crafty (comp. Hos. xii. 4). Eeifmann, 
 referring to the interchange of y and 3 in Galilean-Samaritan, 
 explains %'V as " the covered over," from nb'y = np3 ; but the 
 
 Arabic ^J>s.\ hirsutus^ makes the existence of a verb nc'y (^'^V)> 
 to be hairy, probable, w^hence is formed Vu'y after the forma- 
 tion 33j;, like ">"]!?. and 331. Isaac was sixty years old, and 
 had L'juce been married twenty years, when they were born 
 (Dnx rrh'2. without a subject: at their birth, Ew. § 304a, comp. 
 nip^nn, when one bears, iv. 18). The different characters of 
 the two brothers, ver. 2 7 : And the hoys greiv, and Esau was a 
 
 ^ Notwithstanding the anomalous change of b' and ^Jlj (Aramaic n), see 
 rieischer on Levy's Neuhtbr. WB. iii. 732. 
 
GENESIS XXV. 28-30. 135 
 
 vnan skilled in hunting, a man of the field, hut Jacob an amiable 
 man, dioelling in tents. Esau appears also as a sportsman 
 under the name of Ova-coo^; in riiocnician legends. DJJi t^^N 
 is here not so much the praise of piety, as the designation of 
 natural temperament : a perfect and, because love is the bond 
 of perfectness, a kind and amiable man (comp. the ancient 
 Arab. ^\j, used of loving devotion), not wandering about as 
 a hunter in the open field, but dwelling in tents as a shep- 
 herd (iv, 20). Eelation of their parents to them, ver. 28: 
 And Isaac loved Esau, because he relished venison, and Rebekah 
 loved Jacob. The former was the favourite of Isaac because 
 venison was in his mouth, i.e. because he often ate and liked 
 it ; the latter was the favourite of Eebekah, who was better 
 pleased with his quiet, gentle and thoughtful disposition, than 
 with the boisterous, wild, clumsy Esau. The fatal lentil 
 pottage, vv. 29, 30 : And Jacob sod iwttage, then came Esau 
 from the field and he ivas faint. And Esau said to Jacob : Oh 
 let me swallow of the red, the red there, for I am faint — therefore 
 his name was called Edam. Another motive for the name Dn?^ 
 (the red-brown) was perhaps hinted at in V^^l^ ; the designa- 
 tion is expressly based only upon onx, that red, i.e. yellow- 
 brown lentil pottage ^olvckIBiov. Elsewhere too, e.g. among 
 the Arabs (comp. Abulfeda's hist, antcislamica and Wetzstein's 
 inscriptions in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy, 1863, 
 pp. 335-337), innumerable names have a similarly accidental 
 origin,^ and he who finds it impossible that the fortunes of a 
 nation should for a thousand years be connected with a dish 
 of lentils, if he will only look into the history of the world, 
 and especially of the East, will not look in vain for parallels. 
 Lentils (adas) are and were a favourite dish in Syria and 
 Egypt ; besides Esau was hungry, so that the appetizing meal 
 ('T'lJ, a noun formed from the verb ■'7, Hij^h. 'T'?[', with the 
 
 ^ If a Bedouin girl is born at night, she is called Lcla ; if wlien snow is falling, 
 she is called Thelga ; if her mother's eye encountered at her birth a swarm of 
 ants, she is called Nimla, etc. 
 
136 GENESIS XXV. 31-34. 
 
 preformative na common in Assyrian, and witli the retention 
 of the characteristic middle sound), pleasant to sight and 
 smell, was a trial to his self-denial, to which he was unequal. 
 Jacob profits by his moment of weakness, vv. 31—33 : Then 
 Jacob said : Sell me first of all thy hirthright ! And Esau said : 
 Behold, I am about to die, and of what use is the hirthright to 
 me ? And Jacob said : Then first swear to me, and he swore to 
 him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. The hardly translateable 
 Di»3 means just now, first of all, before all else, comp. 1 Sam. 
 ii. 16, 1 Kings i. 51, xxii. 5. Esau consents to the bargain, 
 profanely preferring (Heb. xii. 16) the palpable and present 
 to the unseen and future. Jacob's cheap payment, ver. 34: 
 And Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil 'pottage, he ate and 
 dranh and rose up and went away, and Esau despised his birth- 
 right, i.e. he thought no more about it, till he saw too late 
 how foolishly he had acted. The nnbs generally consists in 
 the right to the larger portion of the inheritance, xlviii. 19, 
 xlix. 3, Deut. xxi. 17, but we do not see Jacob afterwards 
 lay claim to anything of the kind. In this instance it is the 
 claim to the cnnas ri3"i3 in the sense of xxviii. 4, and the 
 princely and priestly prerogative involved in it, for which 
 Jacob is concerned. " Before the tabernacle was erected " — 
 says the Mishna Scbachim xiv. 4 — " the Bamoth (local sanctu- 
 aries) were permitted, and the Abodah (the priestly office) was 
 with the first-born ; but after the erection of the tabernacle 
 (the central sanctuary) the Bamoth were forbidden and the 
 Abodah was with the Cohanim." Jerome thus correctly 
 reports as Jewish tradition, hwc (viz. the saccrdotium) esse 
 primogenita qnm Esau frairi suo vendiderit Jacob. In a word : 
 the first-born is the head of the patriarchal family, and the 
 right of the first-born includes the representative privileges 
 derived from this exalted position. Esau's forfeiture of these 
 privileges is, according to Eom. ix. (comp. Mai. i. 2 sq.), a 
 work of free Divine election, but not without being at the 
 same time, as this narrative shows, the result of Esau's 
 
GENESIS XXVI. 137 
 
 voluntary self-degradation. As Ishmael had no claim to tlie 
 blessing of the first-born, because begotten KaTo, adpKa, so does 
 Esau, though not begotten Kara adpKa, forfeit the blessing of 
 the first-born, because minded Kara adpica. The unbrotherly 
 artifice of Jacob is indeed also sinful, and we see this one sin 
 ju'cduce first the sin of deceiving his aged father, before whom 
 Jacob did not venture to assert his purchased claim to the 
 blessing, and then penal consequences of every kind. By 
 reason however of the fundamental tendency of his mind 
 towards the promised blessing, Jacob is the more pleasing to 
 God of the two brothers ; hence his sin itself must contribute 
 to the realization of the Divine counsel, and his dishonour 
 to the glorification of Divine crrace. 
 
 VARIED CONFIRMATION OF THE PROMISE TO ISAAC, CIT. XXVI. 
 
 The second portion, ch. xxvi., tells us of Isaac's joys and 
 sorrows during the period of his Philistine sojourn, and thereby 
 gives us a picture of his life in general — a life bearing the 
 relation of a copy to that of Abraham, but also made illustrious 
 by appearances of God (vv. 2, 24), and thus maintained at the 
 patriarchal level. The narrator is J, in whose work this mosaic 
 of matters concerning Isaac perliaps preceded the birth of the 
 twin children. This narrator is announced by the Divine 
 name mn\ the continuations of the promise that the nations 
 shall be blessed in the seed of the patriarch, 4&, comp. xxii. 18, 
 the series 'n O'li'^ i<ip"'l in ver. 25, and by other particuLars. 
 Both diction and matter however point in many respects to 
 ^, c.^. nili* vV 32a, and the mention of Phicol with Abimelech 
 ver. 26 comp. xxi. 22, hence the source may more correctly 
 be designated as JE {i.e. J with matter from E worked into 
 it). In vv. 1-6 Dillmann thinks he can even separate from 
 each other the elements belonging respectively to J and E. 
 Undoubtedly ver. 5 in this passage is from the hand of the 
 
138 GENESIS XXVI. 1-6. 
 
 Deuteronomist. It has a special connection with the closing 
 portion, xxvi. 34 sq. 1. Eenewal of the pkomise inGeeak, 
 xxvi. 1-6 : And there arose a famine in the land, Reside the 
 former one, lohich arose in the days of Abraham, and Isaac 
 went unto Abimclech, king of Gerar. And Jahvch appeared 
 unto him and said : Go not down into Egypt, remain in the 
 land that I vnll tell thee. Sojourn in this land, and I will he 
 with thee and bless thee, for to thee and to thy seed ivill I give all 
 these lands and fulfil the oath ivhich I swore to thy father 
 Abraham, and I ivill increase thy seed as the stars of heaven, 
 and ivill give to thy seed all these lands, and in thy seed shall 
 all the nations of the earth bless themselves, for a reward that 
 Abraham obeyed my bidding and observed my precept, my com- 
 mandments, my statutes and my instructions. Tlien Isaac dwelt 
 in Gerar. xii. 10 is referred to by 'l31 l?fP (in meaning = 
 I'p nn^) ; the narrator as here is there J, the reference however 
 is surely an addition of Eb. The facts related resemble each 
 other as to matter. The famine directs Isaac's as well as 
 Abraham's view to Egypt, the granary of the Holy Land in 
 sucli cases, and he journeys on the road thither first to Gerar 
 (three leagues south of Gaza in the broad and deep 'Gurf 
 el- Gerar where Eowlands discovered ruins). This district was 
 still governed by a king who had been on friendly terms with 
 Abraham, ch. xx. 21, 22 sqq., and who bears here the title 
 n^riC'^3 Tjpp which was missing in the text of E. Arrived in 
 Gerar, Isaac receives Divine direction to pursue his journey 
 towards Egypt no farther, but to remain (p^) in the land 
 which God points out to him : he is to sojourn in the land 
 where he now is, viz. Philistia (niiu, the standing' word for the 
 sojourning of the patriarchs in Canaan and Philistia) ; at the 
 same time the fulfilment of the oath by which God confirmed 
 His promises to Abraham upon Moriah is assured to him, and 
 indeed for the sake of Abraham's obedience. The relation both 
 in diction and matter to xxii, 15-18 is unmistakeable. But 
 there is in vv. 2-5 many a token of the interposition of a 
 
GENESIS XXVI. 7-11. 139 
 
 more recent liand.^ The expression ^xn niv^Nri~73"nx, i_e. 
 Canaan proper with the neighbouring lands, is peculiar (comp. 
 bxTj"; nii'-ix in 1 Chron. xiii. 2, 2 Chron. xi. 23); ^^^ is here 
 no archaism, but an abbreviation of the original ^^'^ (see on 
 xix. 8). The combination "'nhini ""riipn \ni>'jp has a Deuteronomic 
 ring (the plur. ninin however occurs only Ex. xvi. 28, xviii. 
 16, 20, Lev. xxvi, 46, and not in Deuteronomy), Abraham's 
 performance of the obedience due to God being thus divided 
 according to the language of subsequent legislation. 2. Prk- 
 
 SERVATION OF THE PATRIARCH'S WIFE IN GeRAR, XXvi. 7-11. 
 
 It is conceivable that what is here related may have taken 
 place in the period preceding the birth of the twin children, 
 and may be introduced here retrospectively in an appropriate 
 connection. But this is unnecessary, for it is found now as 
 formerly that a woman m^iybe still seductively beautiful, even 
 after she has borne children. Her cowardly exposure, ver. 7 : 
 And the people of the place asked him concerning his wife, and he 
 said : She is my sister, for he feared when he thought : Let not 
 ptcople of this place Tcill me for the sake of Behekah, for she is 
 fair to look on. The h after ^x*J^ is that of relation, and there- 
 fore of the object of the inquiry, as at xxxii. 30, xliii. 7, comp. 
 ^N and ^ after -iCN xx. 2, 1 3, where also b]} (on account of), ver. 
 3, is equally used as here and at ver. 9. He who was untruth- 
 ful through fear of man is put to shame, vv. 8-11 : And it 
 came to pass when a long time had passed there with him, that 
 Ahimeleeh, king of the Philistines, looked through the window, and 
 he saw and behold Isaac was caressing with Behekah his wife. 
 Then Ahimeleeh called Isaac and said : She is certainly thy wife, 
 and how canst thou say she is thy sister ? And Isaac said to him : 
 Because I thought : Let me not die on her account. Then said 
 Ahimeleeh : What hast thou done unto us ? In a little one of 
 the iKople might have lain ivith thy wife, and thou ivoiddst have 
 brought guilt upon us. And Ahimeleeh commanded the people 
 
 1 So already Hitzig, Begriffder Kritik (1831), p. 169 sq. ; comp. £uenen,£'in{. 
 (1837) § 13, note 31. 
 
140 GENESIS XXVI. 12. 
 
 thus : Whosoever toucheth this man or his wife shall die the 
 death. The juxtaposition of pnvo pn^"" sounds like a play 
 upon tlie words : Isaac isaacahat cum Bebecca h. e. hlandiebatur 
 uxori. In distinction from one - sided playing with 3 pnv 
 nx p^^: means exchanging jests, caresses. Ver. 9 is parallel with 
 XX. 9. ^'•^i' quomodo is here equal to quo jure. With 3?^ t3j;03 
 pcene conculuissct comp. Ps. Ixxiii. 2, xciv. 17, cxix. 87, Prov. 
 V. 14. ^i^^[}\ has the tone on the itlt., like ^^i 22a and nm 
 Isa. xi. 2, on account of the else scarcely audible j; which 
 follows. Isaac, in consequence of saying that Eebekah was his 
 sister, has an experience essentially the same as that of Abraham 
 in Egypt and afterwards in this very place Gerar. xxvi. 7-11 
 also resembles ch. xx. in mode of delineation and tone of lan- 
 guage. These events were nevertheless regarded by the ancients 
 as different (comp. Ps. cv. 14 with chs. xii. and xx. ; cv. 15 with 
 xxvi. 11), indeed they are also characteristically distinguished 
 from each other by the fact, that Jahveh does not suffer Pie- 
 bekah's exposure to danger by the fault of Isaac to go so far as 
 in the case of Sarah's by the fault of Abraham. The Philistine 
 king being here as in ch. xx. called "H^^""?^ suggests the con- 
 jecture, that this was a general name of Philistine as n'yia was 
 
 of Egyptian, iX^^^ (piur. ^.ijiUi:) of Jamanite, and Lucumo of 
 
 Etrurian kings (comp. 1 Sam. xxi. 11 with Ps. xxxiv. 1) ; 
 nevertheless it may perhaps be the same Abimelech as at 
 ch. XX., though about eighty years had elapsed. The same 
 chaste and God-fearing behaviour speaks for tlie sameness of 
 person, while the thought that he might himself have appro- 
 propriated Eebekah being entirely absent from him, speaks 
 for his meantime much advanced old age. 3. Isaac's 
 
 INCREASED POSSESSIONS, WHICH BECOME OBJECTIONABLE IN 
 
 Gerar, xxvi. 12-17. Success of Isaac's Philistinian agricul- 
 ture, ver. 1 2 : And Isaac sowed m that land and gained^ in the 
 same year a hundredfold, and Jahveh blessed him. He obtained, 
 gained (as Ni'» means) in that same year, which followed the year 
 
GENESIS XXVr. 13-17. 141 
 
 of famine, 2""!^^' nxn a liimdredfolJ, i.e. according to Luke viii. 8 
 Kapirtv eKaTovraTrXacrcova, as at present occurs only in the 
 " red earth " (the lava soil) of Hauran. "VVe see from this 
 union of agricultural with nomadic life (comp. xxxvii. 7), not 
 as yet found in the history of Abraham, that Isaac, encouraged 
 by the Divine promise, had set firm foot in the land. It was 
 not till their sojourn in Egypt that tillage and the rearing of 
 cattle became equally pursuits of the Israelites, and not till 
 after the Exodus that the former obtained the upper hand. 
 Isaac's increased prosperity excites envy, vv. 13, 14 : Ajid the 
 man became great and became continually greater, till he became 
 very great. And he possessed herds of small cattle and herds of 
 oxen and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him. 
 Instead of the inf. ahsol. -'i''^'! 2 Sam, v. 1 (comp. above, viii. 
 3, 5) we have here -'1^1 3rd praet. like 1 Sam. ii. 26 in accord- 
 ance with Josh. vi. 13, Isa. xxxi. 5, or also the participial adj. 
 in accordance with Judg. iv. 24, 2 Sam. xvi. 5. Q"'''?p?3 is 
 always without an article in the Pentateuch ; '*i"^?y besides here 
 occurs only in the imitative passage Job i. 3. Consequences of 
 this envy, vv. 15—17 : And all the wells, which the servants of his 
 father had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philis- 
 tines stopped up and filled them with earth. Then Abimelcch 
 said to Isaac : Go forth from us, for thou, art become too mighty 
 for us. Then Isaac departed thence and encamped in the valley 
 of Gerar, and dwelt there. The verbs referring to the fem. plur. 
 rinX3 have the suffix ixm instead of un, the former being used 
 for both genders. Ewald 2495, 3. The style of expres- 
 sion of ver. 15 places its statement in a circumstantializing 
 relation to ver. 16. The self-help of his people gives occasion 
 to the demand of the king, that Isaac should depart from the 
 district of Gerar. Such well-digging on the part of Abraham 
 is spoken of xxi. 25-31. It is in accordance with the character 
 of the enduring Isaac, that he willingly submits and leaves the 
 district of the town of Gerar, taking up his abode in the valley 
 of Gerar. Here iv T€pdpoi<i iv tw ')(^£ifidp'p(p, Constantine, 
 
142 GENESIS XXVI. 18-22. 
 
 according to Sozomenus, vi. 32, erected a monastery. 4. Isaac's 
 
 RESTORED AND NEWLY DISCOVERED WELLS, XXVi. 18-22. 
 
 Eedigging of the stopped up wells, ver. 18 : Aoid Isaac dug 
 again the loells of water, ivhich they had digged in the days of 
 his father Abraham and the Philistines had stopped up after 
 Abraham's death, and called them by names like the names by 
 which his father had called them. Thus the self-help of the 
 Philistines had not been limited to the district of Gerar. The 
 conjunctive form of the plural of ">i?3 was at xiv. 10 ni"iX3, 
 here and Deut. x. 6 rihX3 like the chief form. The subjects of 
 ^"icn are the 1"'3X ''"]3y 15a. The newly discovered spring, vv. 
 19, 20 : And the servants of Isaac ivcre digging in the valley 
 and found there a spring of living water. Then the herdmen of 
 Gerar strove ivith the herdmen of Isaac, saying: The water belongs 
 to us; therefore he called the name of the spring 'Esck, bcccmse they 
 had contended loith him. Isaac's people discovered a vein of 
 water, which was not difficult to lead upwards and lay hold 
 on (see my discussion on such desert springs in Luthardt's 
 Zcitschr. 1882, p. 454 sq.). P'^'I^ means contention; the verb 
 pC'j? (post-biblical poy) seems related to ^:^'y asfaccssere to facere. 
 A second new well, ver. 21 : Ajid they dug another ivcll and 
 they strove about that also, then he called its name Sitna, i.e. 
 enmity. A third new well, ver. 22 : And he departed thence 
 and dug another well, and about this they strove not, then he 
 called its name Echoboth and said : Truly noio hath Jahveh 
 made room for us, and we may increase in the land. A Wadi 
 Huhaibe was found by Robinson south-west of Elusa (Chalasa) 
 with extensive ruins of a town of like name upon a hill ; he 
 came from Euhaibe to Chalasa and found there also a Wadi 
 "Sutein pointing to the well i^^^'^. The name ninrn means 
 distances, spaces for free movement, in opposition to rih^ augus- 
 tiae. ■•? in stating the reason for the name is not merely oVt 
 recitativum, to which like the Aramaic ''1 e.g. Dan. ii. 25, it has 
 been certainly diluted, but means, with a transition from the 
 reason-giving meaning to the confirmatory: truly, indeed, like e.g. 
 
GENESIS XXVI. 23-2!). 143 
 
 xxix. 33, Ex. iii. 12, iv. 25, and in the connection HPiy ""S, truly 
 
 now, xxix. 32, especially in the apodosis of a hypothetical 
 
 prodosis : truly then, so . . . now, xxxi. 42, xliii, 10, Job 
 
 iii. 13, with the preterite or with the imperf. as at Job vi. 3, 
 
 viii. G, xiii. 19, comp. TX~''3 Job xi. 15, according to the nature 
 
 of the prodosis. 5. Isaac's departure fhom the valley of 
 
 Gerar and abode at Beersheba, xxvi. 23-25 : And he went 
 
 vp thence to Bcersela. And Jahvch appeared to him that same 
 
 night and said : I am the God of Abraham, fear not, for I am 
 
 with thee and will hless thee and multiply thy seed for my servant 
 
 Abraham's saJce. Then he huilt there an altar and proclaimed 
 
 the name of Jahveh and 'pitched his tent there, and there Isaac's 
 
 servant bored a well. In Beersheba (12 leagues south-west of 
 
 Hebron), where, according to the present composition of 
 
 Genesis, Abraham had dwelt for a long period between his two 
 
 sojourns in Hebron, ch. xviii.— xix. 23, are the promises made 
 
 to his father confirmed to Isaac. He there built an altar, 
 
 lield solemn acts of worship and there stretched (DtJ^'O'i) his 
 
 tent : his servants also bored a well in the neighbourhood of 
 
 his new quarters. On the distinction of the synonyms -iDn 
 
 and ma see my discussion in Luthardt's Zcitschr. 1882, p. 
 
 452. G. Abimelech's covenant with Isaac, xxvi. 26-33. 
 
 This event of Isaac's life bears a striking resemblance with 
 
 what is related in the life of Abraham, xxi. 22 sqq. What is 
 
 here related by /is strikingly like what was there related by E. 
 
 When about to enter into a covenant with Isaac, Abimelech 
 
 is here as there accompanied by Phicol, vv. 26-29: And 
 
 Abimelech ivent to him from Gerar, and AJmzzat his friend and 
 
 Phicol his captain of the host. Then Isaac said to them : Wliy 
 
 are ye come to me, since ye hate me and have driven me from 
 
 you ? They said : We saw plainly that Jahveh is tvith thee, 
 
 and we thought : Let there now he an oath betwixt us and 
 
 thee and ive will make a covenant ivith thee, that tho7i unit 
 
 do us no evil, as we have not molested thee and as we have 
 
 done unto thee nothing hut good and have sent thee aivay 
 
144 GENESIS XXVI. 30-33. 
 
 in peace — tlioii art novj the hlessed of Jahvch. The king has 
 with him, beside Phicol, Ahuzzath (with the original fem. 
 ending like ri;;p3, ri^b'3 34& and the like) his friend, i.e. coun- 
 sellor ; the name " friend " may here already designate not 
 merely a personal but an official relation, as subsequently at 
 the Persian and Eoman imperial courts (perhaps also in Egypt, 
 if according to A. Geiger UroXe/iaio? = ''n!?n"a the brother, i.e. 
 friend, comp. on xli. 43). Here as at xxi. 22 they acknow- 
 ledge and bear testimony to the patriarch, that Jahveh is 
 with him (ixn 28a = ni<-i, as iL\n xx. 6=Non, see Ges. § 75, 
 note 2). The declaration on oath for which they apply 
 to the patriarch, and the reason for so doing, are similar to 
 xxi. 22 sq. (nJ'X as a syn. of nna, like Pent. xxix. 11, 13, 
 comp. Ezek. xvi. 59). ^''^'V'^ has here Tsci-e in the final 
 syllable as in only three other passages, Josh. vii. 9 with 
 Tiplichah and therefore in half pause, 2 Sam. xiii. 12 and Jer. 
 xl. 16, perhaps to guard against the confusion of the first 
 syllable of the second word with the last of the first, see 
 on Isa, Ixiv. 3. The consonance nny nriK is like '''^V '^xi Ps. 
 xl. 18 and frequently. The conclusion of the covenant, vv. 
 30, 31 : Then he made them a feast and they ate and drank. 
 And they arose iq:) hctimes in the morning and stcore to one 
 another, and Isaae aceompanied. them, and they departed from 
 him in 'pcaee. There is nothing said of a covenant repast at 
 xxi. 23, it finds its parallel at xxxi. 54, but here as there the 
 name of the subsequent Peersheba originates on the occasion of 
 the covenant by reason of a well standing in connection with it, 
 vv. 32, 33 : And it came to pass on the same day that Isaac's 
 servants came and made report to him with inspect to the ivell 
 which they had digged, and said to him : We have found water. 
 Then he called it ^SiVah, therefore the city is called Beersch'a 
 to this day. The well with the boring of which Isaac's people 
 were occupied (ver. 25) soon after his settlement at Beersheba 
 is here intended. They now announce to him their success, 
 and the covenant just concluded with Abimelech gives occasion 
 
GENESIS XXVI. 31, 35. 145 
 
 to Isaac to name this well '"IV^V*. An oath is called a sevenin;:; 
 as being an asseveration by seven things, as shown by tlie 
 narrative concerning the origin of the name of the town of 
 Beersheba, xxi. 28-31, taken from E, while the one now before 
 us is from J. The similarity of the two histories does not 
 of itself stamp the one as a cojjy of the other (comp. on the 
 contrary e.g. Judg. ix. in relation to Gen. xix.). There are 
 many indications, as we saw on xxi. 31, that Beersheba had 
 its name with relation to two treaties with Abimelech con- 
 cerning two wells, the one made by Abraham, the other 
 by Isaac, and names with two similar historical connections 
 also occur elsewhere. At ver. 18 also we find Isaac preferring 
 to renew the old names of the wells. It is indeed difficult, 
 i.e. chronologically difficult, to separate the two stories, because 
 Phicol again appears with Abimelech, whom one may think 
 of at ch. xxi. as still very young; Jacobus Edessenus takes 
 the king and the captain of the host for grandsons of the 
 same names. 7. Esau's marriages, xxvi. 34 sq. : And Esau 
 icas forty years old, then he tooh to wife Jchudith the davyhtcr of 
 Bceri the Hittite and Basmath the daughter of Eton the Hittitc. 
 And they vjere a grief of heart to Isaac a.nd Rehehah, properly 
 a bitterness of spirit (iTib = morra Prov. xiv. 10), i.e. a cause 
 of bitterness of feeling. In the nnbin of Esau ch. xxxvi. their 
 names and those of their fathers, as also that of Esau's third 
 wife, xxviii. 9, are given somewhat differently from those in 
 our present Jehovistic portion, without however their identity 
 being lost. It is striking that n"'*iin"| (a patronymic from 
 iTi^n"" praise) appears here (against xxxvi. 2) so early as a 
 Canaanite name. Tlie formation nob'3 here and xxxvi. 3 
 (comp. above WS and xxviii. 9 n^np) is an ancient principal 
 form of the feminine. The terminations i^j-^, 'i-^, a^ 
 represent three successive periods of the language {DMZ. xvi. 
 160). The most obvious explanation of the difference between 
 xxvi. 34 sq., xxviii. 9 and xxxvi. would be to adopt the view 
 that the narrator is here J and there Q. There is much to 
 VOL. II. K 
 
146 GENESIS XXVII. 
 
 favour this : tlie marriage of Esau in his fortieth year is similar 
 to Isaac's in his fortieth year, the exclamation of Eebekah 
 xxvii. 46& to her exclamation xxv. 22a, and nn nin might 
 also have been once written by J, especially as in the passage 
 xxviii. 1-8, which is in any case Qs, iV^S nm is said for it. 
 But xxviii. 8 cannot be separated from xxviii. 9 of which it 
 is the premiss, and 'i''t:^:~7V xxviii. 9 points back to xxvi. 34 sq., 
 so that in fact xxvi. 34 sq., xxvii. 46, xxviii. 1-9 must be 
 attributed to the same author and hence to Q. Consequently 
 the wives' names are here given according to the wording of 
 the text of Q, and the fact that they nevertheless run differ- 
 ently in the Toledoth of Esau, which is as to its foundation 
 derived from Q, obliges us to adopt the view that B there 
 inserted them from another source, in accordance with his 
 principle of preserving two differing traditions and not violently 
 reconciling them. In the mosaic ch. xxvi., ver. 34 sq. forms, in 
 the present form of the composition, the concluding portion. 
 Through all these seven short histories from the first forty 
 years of the independent story of Isaac's life, there runs like 
 a thread the purpose of showing how Isaac also, though less 
 sreat in action than in endurance, nevertheless came under the 
 blessing and protection of Jahveh, honourably through all com- 
 plications, and rose to more and more wealth and respect. His 
 life is an echo of the life of Abraham. All its vibrations 
 arise from the powerful impulses given in the life of Abraham. 
 Nevertheless the son of promise is not unworthy of his father. 
 He manifests in " elasticity of endurance " (Kurtz) a special 
 greatness, which has been transmitted as an ineradicably 
 tenacious vital faculty to the nation descended from him. 
 
 JACOB OBTAINS BY CEAFT THE BLESSING OF THE FIRST-BOKN, 
 CH. XXVII. 1-40. 
 
 This third portion also gives us an equally double-sided 
 picture of Isaac : he shows himself weak, passive and pliable 
 
GENESIS XXVII. 1-4. 147 
 
 in the hands of men, but elevated and inwardly profound, 
 and at last obedient to God alone and strong in Him. The 
 narrative is composed of the accounts of J and E worked 
 into each other and completed from each other by B. This 
 is seen from the two ^i^?!!^"'.^ one of which 23Z* follows the 
 testing by touch, the other 27a the testing by smell ; from 
 the two equivalent '•n''"! 30a; from ver. 34 sq. in relation to 
 vv. 36-38 with the twice told outburst of grief on the part 
 of Esau ; from the reiterated " until thy brother's fury turn 
 away," 445, 45a. The aged father makes preparations for the 
 blessing of the first-born, vv. 1-4 : And it came to pass, when 
 Isaac was old and Ids eyes had hecome dull of sight, that he 
 called Esau Ms elder son and said to him: My son! And he 
 said: Here am I. He said: Behold lam old, I know not the 
 day of my death. Tahe then, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy 
 quiver and thy hoio, and go out into the field and hunt me 
 venison, and make me a savoury dish such as I love, and hring 
 it me, that I may eat, that my soid may hlcss thee before I die. 
 The occurrence falls, according to xxv. 26, xxvi, 34, in a 
 period when Isaac had already passed his 100th and his sons 
 their 40th year. The principal sentence introduced by ^^ii is 
 continued with K"^i^'\ The i^njjf. cons, designates his dulness 
 of sight as a result of his having grown old. The IP of riixiQ is 
 the negative (away from seeing), like xvi. 2, xxiii, 6. vlii is the 
 quiver (n^V^) with a shoulder-belt, a7ra^7e7p., forming together 
 with the bow the usual hunting equipment (Isa. vii. 24). 
 For ^>* the Chethih has HTV commonly used in the general 
 meaning of diet, but here quite appropriate as a nomen 
 unitatis. The weak side of Isaac's preference for Esau is 
 here betrayed, in that he desires the dish of game, which he 
 is fond of (^i^X vv. 4, 9, 14), not only for the sake of enjoying 
 it, but that his son may, before he blesses him as a father, 
 show the willing obedience of child-like affection. In Arabic 
 a present is plainly called tdbarruk as the means of obtain- 
 ing a blessing. Hereupon Eebekah urges Jacob to obtain 
 
148 GENESIS XXVII. 5-13. 
 
 liis father's blessing, by bringing him a spurious dish 
 of savoury meat, vv. 5-10 : And Rehchah heard ivlun Isaac 
 spake to Esau his son, and Esau went to the field to Mint for 
 venison, to hring it. And Behekah said to Jacob her son : 
 Behold, I have heard thy father speak unto Esau thus : Bring 
 me venison and make me a savoury dish, that I may eat, and I 
 will hless thee before Jahveh, before my death. And now, my 
 son, hear^ken to my voice in what I bid thee do. Go now to the 
 fiock and fetch me thence two young goat-kids, and I icill make of 
 them a savoury dish for thy father such as he loveth. And thou 
 shall bring it to thy father, that he may eat, and bless thee 
 before his death. It is not without emphatic meaning tliat 
 Esau is called Isaac's, and Jacob Eebekah's sou. Instead of 
 N^an^ the LXX. has suitably V3N^ (for his father), but the 
 former cannot be criticized either as to matter, see vv. 4, 7, 
 nor as to syntax (on account of the missing suffix, comp. 31a, 
 Jer. xli. 5). '"^ ""i?? 7a is important and not pleonastic. 
 Kebekah knows that it is done in the presence of Jahveh, 
 and therefore with divine reality, with prophetic power. 
 The h of "'t:'t57 8b is not that of the norm but that of 
 reference, Ges. § 123. 2. V.l? from ^']3 is inflected just 
 like V.n^' from "'n? (Backe). Jacob's objection appeased, 
 vv. 11—13: Then Jacob said to Bcbekah his mother: Behold, 
 Esau is a hairy man and I am a smooth man, perhaps my 
 father luill feel me, and I shall seem to him a mocker and bring 
 iipon myself a curse and not a blessing. And his mother said to 
 him : I take thy curse upon me, my son ; only hearken to my 
 voice and go fetch {them) me. V'^V'^'^P does not mean " a 
 deceiver," but contempt is here combined with the deceit, the 
 kind of deceit being like a joke played upon an aged father. 
 Jacob fears, if detected, to bring upon himself a curse and not a 
 blessing. Eebekah however replies decidedly : Let the curse 
 thou meetest lie upon me, I will bear it and its consequences 
 — a proof that, notwithstanding the impure means by which 
 she incurred guilt, she yet leaned upon the word of promise, 
 
GENESIS XXVII, 14-23. 149 
 
 and now when tins was threatened with frustration, was 
 willing at any cost to promote its fulfilment. Preparation for 
 the deception thus planned, vv. 14-17 : Then Rcbekah tooh the 
 garments of Esau her elder son, the costly ones, ivhieh she 'kci)t 
 in the house, and clothed Jacob her younger son. And the sJcins of 
 tJie kids she 'put upon his hands and upon the smooth of his ncclc, 
 and gave the savoury dish and the bread vjhich she had prepared 
 into the hand of Jacob her son. nn may, according to 2 Chron. 
 XX. 25, be repeated, as the governing word before ri'^'PHj] 
 (garments of the desired one, i.e. such as are the object of desire), 
 or we may, according to Lev. vi. 20 (where ^^|i is construed 
 as a fern.), take it as an adj. (Eeggio : gli ahiti piit, prcziosi). 
 n^nn means at home, within ^\}^'^, which however is not so 
 usual, as the opposite of '^'!J.^'? (xxxiv. 5) would be more 
 accurate. Vim is the inflected form of the dual which does 
 not occur in the principal form, and means the fore and hind 
 parts of tlie neck. Jacob begins to carry out the plot, vv. 
 18-20: And he came to his fcdher and said : ^fy father, and 
 he said : Here am I, \oho art thou, my son ? Then Jacob said 
 unto his father : I am Esau, thy first-born, I have done as thou 
 saidst unto me; rise up then, sit and eat of my venison, that thy 
 sold may bless me. And Isaac said to his son : How hast thou 
 found it so quickly, my son ? And he said : Because Jahveh 
 thy God favoured me. The construction ^'^p? ^"TP is like 
 xxvi. 18, xxxi. 27. Ges. § 142. 2. On ^:a^ r^yr) see on xxiv. 12. 
 The test by feeling, vv. 21-23: Then Isaac said to Jacob: 
 Come near, I fray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether 
 thou there be my son Esau or not. Then Jacob came near to 
 Isaac his father, and he felt hhn and said : Tlie voice is Jacob's 
 voice and the hands Esau's hands, and he discerned him not, for 
 his hands were hairy as his brotlicr Esau's hands, so he blessed 
 him. The interrogative n in nri»<n has Pathach, as also Judg. 
 vi. 13 must be pointed. HT nrij^ nieans, thou whom I have 
 there before me. 'i'^?!'.2'l is in the present connection an 
 anticipation of the result, since we are told farther on how he 
 
150 GENESIS XXVII, 24-29. 
 
 proceeded to bless him, and in what words. Isaac makes a 
 further trial, takes the offered meat and, confirmed by the 
 smell of the garments that Esau is before him, prepares to 
 bless him, vv. 24— 27a: And he said: Art thou there, my son 
 Esau ? And he said : I am. And he said : Bring it here 
 to me, that I may cat of my son's venison, that my soul may 
 Ness thee. Then he brought it near to him and he ate, and he 
 hr ought him wine and he drank. Then his father Isaac said to 
 him. Come near, I jpray thee, my son, and kiss me. Then he came 
 near and kissed him, and he smelled the smell of his garments 
 and llcssed him and said. Perplexed by the voice, which was 
 not that of Esau, Isaac asks again wliether it is Esau who is 
 standing before him, and Jacob affirms it with emboldened 
 composure. The psychologic aciiteness and rigid objectivity 
 of the narrative are admirable. The deceived father eats and 
 drinks, and inaugurates his son for the blessing with a kiss of 
 grateful affection ('"'i^P.''] with -: under a non-guttural after ^ as 
 at ii. 1 2 and frequently, from P*^'3 with p according to an ancient 
 original construction). While kissing him he smells the odour 
 of his garments. They were the garments of Esau the sports- 
 man, saturated with the odour of the luxuriant vegetation of 
 the field. The deception was thus perfect, and Isaac blesses 
 him and says : 
 
 276 See : The smell of my son is as the smell of a field 
 Which Jahveh has blessed, 
 
 28 And GOD will give thee of the deiv of heaven 
 And of the fatness of the earth, 
 
 And corn and wine in plenty. 
 
 29 Peoples shall serve thee 
 
 And nations boio down to thee. 
 
 Be lord over thy brethren, 
 
 And thy mother's sons shall bow doicn to thee. 
 
 Cursed be they that curse thee, 
 
 And blessed be they that bless thee ! 
 
 The odour of the garments gives rise to the first thought of 
 the blessing, it is the God-blessed Paradisaic plains of the 
 Promised Land that appear before the mind's eye of Isaac, and 
 
GENESIS XXVII. 27-2D. 151 
 
 his son seems to him to be scented witli the perfume of this 
 his inheritance (Hos. xiv. 7). It is true that God the Creator 
 is also called nin"" {e.g. Ps. civ. 16), but here where we find 
 ver. 28 wrh^r^ used, the reason for the change is, that the 
 plains of Canaan, which are blessed by the God of the history 
 of redemption, are the subject of thought. Heaven and earth 
 are to dispense their mingled powers, the former its dew, the 
 latter the soil of its most fruitful tracts, to produce an abund- 
 ance of the noblest products, corn (edible grain) and wine. 
 Although ''30p')p has a non-dageshed Shin, it is nevertheless, 
 as also it is here and there pointed, the same as ".^pti''?, parallel 
 with bm, comp. DkJ^p XXV. 23, ^'^'^'^ for D'riU'P Jonali iv. 11, 
 perhaps also V"i30p=V-i3?3n Deut. xviii. 8. "'.^Oi;' is a plural to 
 be referred not to 1^^ but to \0'C'=]ipu (whence Q'?^*^ loca 
 jnnguid), and formed like D"'ji??ip, nippn — "a^L'-b with a formative 
 Mem would not indeed be inadmissible, but has the parallelism 
 against it both here and ver. 29. After pointing to a land 
 loaded with abundant blessings by Jahveh, the blessing rises 
 to the future position in tlie world of him whom it con- 
 cerns. It passes far beyond the limits of the person of Jacob and 
 the immediate future, gives to him who receives it and to his 
 seed supremacy and exaltation above the nations both kindred 
 and remote, and makes the relation of God to them con- 
 ditional on the relation they take up to him and to his seed. 
 It is the blessing of Abraham transmitted from Abraham to 
 Isaac (xii. 7 and elsewhere xx. 1 7, xii. 3), which Isaac by the 
 spirit of prophecy and in poetic diction here bestows upon his 
 son. "^^33 after the formation of the Aramaic 2Mrt. 2)ass. occurs 
 only here (comp. the ref. 37a). The Chctliih "innC'M is rightly 
 interpreted by the Kcri : it is, as at xliii. 28, an incorrectly 
 defective writing. As ^^W and D'»xb are interchangeable 
 words without any difference of conception, so too do T'nx and 
 1'?^ \^ri coincide, comp. Ps. 1. 20, Ixix. 9, while on the other 
 hand Lev. xviii. 9, Cant. i. 6 speak without parallehsm of 
 step-brothers and sisters. Tlie construction of the plural in 
 
152 GENESIS XXVII. 30-33. 
 
 29& with the sing, of the predicate is individualizing or dis- 
 tributive ; it is repeated ISTum. xxiv. 9, comp. e.g. Zech. xi. 5, 
 Ges. § 146. 4. The evohition of thought advancing in 
 parallelism, the first smooth then impetuous rhythm, the 
 expressions (the more unusual nx"i for ^^J}, n^7 ^^^'^''y '^••!?: ^^^ 
 r^'^T^., like i^.l^ Job xxxvii. 6 and '1.^ Isa. xvi. 4, "i'3a) and 
 thoughts — everything is here poetical. The aged patriarch 
 once more renews his youth and hovers on the wings of 
 prophecy over the new era which commences with his son. 
 
 Esau now arrives, Isaac sees through the deception under 
 which he has suffered, but declares the blessing imparted to 
 be irrevocable, vv. 30—33: And it came to i^ass ivlicn Isaac 
 had finished Messing Jacob, and it came to pass ivhen Jacob had 
 only just gone out away from Isaac his father, that his brother 
 Esau came from his hunting. And he also 'prepared a savoury 
 dish and brought it to his father, and said to his father : Let 
 my father arise and eat of his son's venison, that thy soul may 
 bless me. Then Isaac his father said to him: Who art thou? 
 And he said : I am thy son, thy first-born, Esau. Then Isaac 
 was terrified with an exceeding great terror and said : Who 
 then ivas it that took venison and brought it me, and I have 
 eaten of all before thou earnest, and blessed him — blessed also 
 shall he be! It is unmistakeable that in 30a two different 
 expressions of one and the same thing are joined together, 
 the first from J, who uses with preference the phrase p np3 
 (xviii. 33, xxiv. 15, 19, xxii. 45, xliii. 2), the other therefore 
 certainly from E (Dillm.), who must also have written 305, 
 for the two sentences stand in mutual relation according to 
 the scheme of the contemporaneous (comp. on vii. 6), which 
 here (comp. on the contrary 2 Kings xx. 4) strengthens the 
 expression of the exactly coincident to the inf. intens. which 
 adds vix exierat Ew. 312« (comp. 314(7), ""n^.!! introduces the 
 two facts as simultaneous (Driver, § .165). Undeceived to 
 his great terror, Isaac would immediately ask himself, 
 whether what had been done were not a sinful trifling 
 
GENESIS XXVII. rA-38. 153 
 
 "vvitli God's blessing, and the conviction would also forth- 
 with be pressed upon him, that it was the operation of 
 God which had repressed his doubt as to whether he, who 
 was to be blessed, were before him ; and as it was now 
 Jacob and not Esau, he would see his love for Esau, who had 
 lost all higher consecration, condemned. To retract the blessing 
 of Jacob seems to him impossible, for while blessing he had 
 surrendered himself as an instrument without will into the 
 hands of the Almighty and All - knowing, and is therefore 
 obliged to acknowledge the indestructible objective power of 
 his blessing : I blessed him (in3"ini<l, most editions errone- 
 ously inanzxi), also he will remain blessed ; DJ (Samar. D3i) 
 stands first, but belongs according to the sense to ""tT' (comp. 
 1 Sam. xxviii. 20 and on Job ii. 10). Isaac remembers the 
 saying of God xxv. 23, which with the intimacy of his 
 marital relation could not have been hidden from him, and 
 perceives that Divine Providence has obliged him against his 
 will to fulfil it to Jacob. Hitzig with the concurrence of 
 Olshausen corrects : '''"i^l * 'H^is 22, but that would say : I have 
 also truly blessed him, and it is a pity to miss the expres- 
 sion of unchangeableness. It is more possible that "tT'I is 
 with LXX. Samar. to be inserted before ver. 34, though it is 
 perhaps omitted for the same reason as at xliv. 3, comp. 
 XV. 17. With a violent outburst of grief Esau entreats his 
 father to give him also a blessin", ver. 34 : When Esau heard the 
 words of his father he raised a cry, exceeding loudly and hittcrh/, 
 and said to his father : Bless me also, I pray thee, my father ! 
 On ''^>?"Q3, also me (like nris-fix, also thee, Prov. xxii. 19), see 
 Ges. § 121. 3. The '^^'^i. V,?1t is repeated 38a after Isaac 
 has more expressly declared the irrevocability of the blessing 
 bestowed, vv. 35—38: Then he said: Thy Irothcr came ivith 
 craft and took away thy Ucssing. And he said: Is it that he 
 is called Jacob (overreacher) and he has now twice overreached, 
 me ? My hirthright he took away, and hchold, he has nx)VJ taken 
 OAcay my Messing, hast thou reserved no Messing for me ? Then 
 
154 GENESIS XXVII. 39,40. 
 
 Isaac ansioered and said : Behold, I have ajypomted him thy 
 master and have given to him all his hrethrcn for servants, and 
 tvith corn and wine have I sustained him, and what in all the 
 world shall I do for thee, my son ? Esau said to his father : 
 Is this Messing thy only one, my father ? Bless me also, I pray 
 thee, my father ! And Esau lifted up his voice and wept. 
 He can produce no change of mind in his father, fieravoia^ 
 TQiTov ovx evpev, Heb. xii. 17. The question with "'^i) (Job 
 vi. 22) stands here, as at xxix. 15, in a paratactic double 
 sentence, which by transposing the period runs thus : Is it 
 because he bears this name now twice come thus to pass ? 
 The denominative npy means to hold the heel in order to get 
 before ; the text. rec. followed by Ben-Asher has '•J^pP!! from 
 3pJ?^ Jer. ix. 3, Ben-Naphtali ^J?py.'l with a helping Pathach. 
 The verb ^rDD is at 37a combined with a double accusative as 
 at Ps. li, 14, as is also "Jip at Judg. xix. 5. The writing 
 i^^i> for ^? (only here in the Pentateuch) is like the writings 
 iii. 9, Ex. xiii. 16. ^^is^ in the interrogative sentence stands 
 either after the interrogative word ver. 33, or after the 
 prominent word of the interrogative sentence, comp. Ex. 
 xxxiii. 16, Job ix. 24, xxiv. 25. The vocalization ^^1^\1 with 
 Khateph is similar to i^P^!^^ 28b. Isaac, acceding to Esau's 
 impetuous request, bestows upon him also a 'blessing, which is 
 however only a shadow of Jacob's blessing, and at the same 
 time brings upon this latter blessing a cloud reproving the 
 impurity of the means by which it had been obtained, 
 ver. 3 9 : A7id Isaac his father answered and said to him : 
 
 Behold, far from the fat plains of the earth shall be thy dwelling. 
 And far from the deiv of heaven above, 
 40 And by thy sword shall thou live 
 And serve thy brother. 
 But by restlessly struggling 
 Tliou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck. 
 
 The first question of all is, whether the two p have a par- 
 titive meaning (Meissner in luth. Zeitschr. 1862) as in the 
 blessing pronounced upon Jacob, ver. 28 (where it is at least 
 
GENESIS XXVII. 39, 40. 10 
 
 assured to the IP of ^tsp), or a privative (Keil, Dillm. and 
 others). For that the o of 'JD^jid is not a formative letter, as 
 might be thought from the present punctuation (cornp. on the 
 contrary 28a and the Targuras on our passage), is here shown 
 still more plainly than at ver. 28 by the parallel ^an. It is 
 indeed true that, since Isaac desires to bestow a blessing upon 
 Esau, there is no necessity for his denying him a fruitful land ; 
 Esau's servitude in opposition to Jacob's lordship is a dark 
 shadow enough in this supplementary blessing. But there 
 are besides linguistic and actual reasons against the partitive, 
 and for the negative meaning. (1) The mountainous country 
 of the Edomites is, as Seetzen says, perhaps the most barren 
 and desert in the world (on which account Tyc' can hardly, 
 with reference to its natural condition, be equivalent with the 
 Arab. jcL'^}\ " the overgrown "). Eobinson describes the hills 
 in the west of the Arabah as entirely unfruitful, the Arabah 
 itself is the most dreadful stony desert to be met with, the 
 plateau east of Wadi Musa bears the aspect of being hardly 
 worth cultivation. Burckhardt, who passed through this 
 mountainous district from Maan in a south-westerly direc- 
 tion, following the course of the Wadi Gharundd, found it 
 entirely barren, and the declivity, which was composed of 
 bare chalk and sandstone, utterly devoid of vegetation. The 
 fact that the mountainous country about Petra and elsewhere 
 has been transformed by skill and industry, especially by 
 means of terrace-building and artificial irrigation, into a land 
 of hanging gardens, cannot be used, as by Pusey {Minor 
 Prophets, p. 144), in favour of the partitive sense of the !'?. The 
 land and soil of Iduma^a were for the most part unfruitful, 
 and in the blessing the reference to the country concerned 
 not the results of cultivation but the natural conditions. 
 And (2) it is in opposition to ver. 37 that Isaac, after declar- 
 ing that he has already bestowed upon Jacob the blessing of 
 superabundance of the fruits of the earth, should begin the 
 blessing of Esau in like terms with that of Jacob. But (3) 
 
156 GENESIS XXV II. 39, 40. 
 
 we have also in Mai. i. 3 : Esau have I hated, and made his 
 '■inountains a desert and his inheritance desolate tracks, so far as 
 WQ, understand the prophet as St. Paul does Eom. ix. 13 (see 
 Kohler on the passage), an ancient testimony to the privative 
 meaning. Desolation is the lot to which the land of Edoni 
 is again and again doomed in virtue of Isaac's history-making 
 word of prophecy, though art may, as we still see by the ruins of 
 the valley of Petra, have transformed it. The more elevated style 
 of writing prefers the pregnant use of p in the sense of absque 
 (2 Sam. i. 22, Job xi. 15, xix. 26, xxi. 9, Isa. xxii. 3), and 
 with respect to the dilogy (de and then absque) xl. 13, 19 sq. 
 may be compared. The words : far from the dew of heaven 
 above (PJ?'? elsewhere a prep., here an adv. as at xlix. 25, 
 Ps. 1. 4), have their natural truth in the many ravines and 
 depressions of the Idumsean mountains, which are inaccessible 
 to the fertilizing dew. Edom is truly " a dweller in the clefts 
 of the rock," Obad. ver. 3 (Jer. xlix. 16). Thus the land of 
 Esau will be, as Isaac predicts, a sharp contrast to the land 
 of Jacob. For this very reason the peaceful pursuit of 
 agriculture will not be his source of maintenance, but upon 
 his sword (^V of the means of support as at Deut. viii. 3, comp. 
 Isa. xxxviii. 16) will he live. Here first does the statement 
 concerning Esau take a favourable turn. "^!f^-? compares, like 
 Num. xxvii, 14, the cause and result. The Hiph. T"in (from 
 nn j|i) means wandering hither and thither, roaming about, 
 hence : leading an unrestrained, roving, freebooter kind of life. 
 Dillra., according to the Arabico-Ethiopic but (comp. Niildeke, 
 DMZ. xxxviii. 539 sq.) contrary to the Hebrew use of 
 language, renders : when thou shalt strive, exert thyself.^ 
 The fundamental meaning of the verb P']S is to break, frangere, 
 which here has the special meaning to break off, as elsewhere 
 to break loose = to free oneself and to break to pieces = to 
 
 1 The Etlnopic text of the Book of Jubilees vacillates, as Dillmann has shown 
 in his contributions from the Book of Jubilees to the criticism of the text of the 
 Pentateuch (delivered in the Royal Prussian Academy of the "West, March 1, 1883), 
 between the Masoretic reading T'lD and the Samar. "nXD s» mwjnus foetus funis. 
 
GENESIS XXVII. Sn, 10. 157 
 
 criisli. It is not freedom from tlie rule of Israel tliat is 
 promised to Edom, but restless and not unsuccessful straggles 
 for freedom. Edom became indeed a 6opv^o)he<i koX aruKTov 
 €0vo<i aei re jxerewpov irpt'; to, KLvrjfxara kuI /j-era^oXal^; 
 X^^^pov (Joseph. Bell. 4. 4. 1), and his relation to Israel was a 
 ceaseless interchange of subjection, rebellion and resubjection. 
 An afterpiece of this change was still shown in the time of the 
 IJoman Empire : it continued an ineffaceable obscuration of 
 the blessing of Jacob, that it was an Iduma3an dynasty and 
 the admission of the Edomites into Jerusalem when threatened 
 by the Eomans, which was the downfall of the Jewish State. 
 Thus were strictly fulfilled the blessings of Isaac upon 
 Jacob and Esau which he spoke irLarec irepl ixeXkovrcov, Heb. 
 xi. 20. Modern criticism indeed carps at this, and says the 
 author who wrote xxvii. 40 knew, according to its judgment, 
 not only of David's conquest of the Edomites, but also of 
 their revolt against Solomon and their subjection by Jehoram 
 of Judah. For such criticism denies the truth and reality of 
 prediction, and the entire patriarchal history is according to 
 its notions national history in the form of legendary family 
 history. Our standpoint is fundamentally' different ; we 
 believe in the power of a believing, prayerful blessing, when 
 the energy of an intellect, which has sunk itself in God's 
 word of promise and counsel of grace, and of a will whose 
 strength is derived from the fulness of God, are therein 
 comprised. There is in Isaac's blessing an efficacy which is 
 far-reaching, a magic which fashions the future, God and his 
 ego are therein one (comp. ver. 37 with Jer. i. 10 and other 
 passages). Isaac himself knows this (see ver. 37), and 
 Rebekah together with Jacob knew it. Both therefore 
 think that they must at the decisive moment take care that 
 God's promise shall not fall to the ground. But God has no 
 need of creature help to make His faithfulness stand. Hence, 
 though Jacob continues to be the possessor of the blessnng as, 
 in accordance with the counsel and promise of God, he was 
 
158 GENESIS XXVII. 30, 40. 
 
 to be (Ptom. ix. 10-13), yet the Divine judgment falls upon 
 him and upon every member of his family in proportion as 
 they have been sharers in his transgression, Isaac is punished 
 for his preference for Esau, a preference determined not accord- 
 ing to the ascertained will of God, but according to natural 
 affection, by the deception which he undergoes. Esau is 
 punished for profanely despising the bles':)ing of the first- 
 born by its loss. Eebekah is punished for her contrivance 
 of the fraud by separation from her favourite son, whom she 
 never saw again, while the life of Jacob was, from the time 
 when he confirmed himself in the possession of the sinfully 
 purchased birthright by sinfully and surreptitiously acquiring 
 the blesshig, one long chain of hardships, disappointments, 
 strifes and anxieties, which made him fully feel how he had 
 sinned against his brother and father. The Fathers down to 
 the Middle Ages see in the part Jacob played in ch. xxvii. an 
 acting according to Divine impulse, and, after mystically im- 
 porting into ch. xxvii., as already into xxv. 2.3, all manner of 
 typical references to New Testament matter, pass sentence on 
 Jacob's fraud in accordance with the precedent of Augustine : 
 non est mcndacium scd viystcrium. It was Duns Scotus 
 (j- 1308), the Doctor suhtilis, and after him Nicolaus de Lyra, 
 the Doctor planus, who first recognised its moral reprehensible- 
 ness, but still without a right perception of the Divine side of 
 the oocurrence.' The scriptural account itself abstains from 
 all comment — but the history of aftertimes passes the severest 
 criticism upon Jacob's conduct. The government of God 
 which can make even sin subserve its purposes, soars so high 
 above this tangled web that, without infringing human freedom, 
 nothing comes to pass but what He has foreseen and pre- 
 determined. 
 
 ' See Petrus HiJtzl, Jakob unci Esau, Typ'ik und Kastiisiik, 1881, an instruc- 
 tive monograph, which gives the history of opinion on this occurrence and 
 intelligently seeks to iind the right medium between the patristic 7ion est 
 ■mendacium sed mysterium and the rationalistic noti est mysttrium sed 
 mendackan. 
 
genesis xxvii. 41-45. 159 
 
 Jacob's flight to hakan, ch. xxyii. 4i-xxviii. 9. 
 
 The fourth portion, xxvii. 41 to xxviii. 9, relates the flight 
 or dismissal of Jacob to Haran. Esau is meditating assassina- 
 tion, ver. 41 : And Esau laid snares against Jacob, because of 
 the blessing whereivith his father had blessed him, and Esau 
 said in his heart : The days of mourning for my father are near, 
 then will I slay my brother Jacob. Luther (like Bedarschi 
 in his Synonymik) takes '•ax as the gen. of the suliject : that 
 my father must bear sorrow (viz. on account of Jacob when he, 
 Esau, shall have avenged himself on him), but the gen. follow- 
 ing upon ?2X (p^^) always designates the object. The prudent 
 mother proposes to her favourite to escape the vengeance of 
 his brother by fleeing to his uncle in Haran, vv. 42-45 : 
 And the words of Esau, her elder son, were told to Bebehah, then 
 she sent and called her younger son Jacob and said to him : 
 Behold, Esau thy brother will comfort himself on thee to hill thee. 
 And noio, my son, hearken to my voice and arise, flee to Laban 
 my h'other to Haran, and tarry with him some time, until thy 
 brothers fury turn away from thee, until thy brother's v^rath 
 turn away and he forget ivJiat thou hast done to him, then will 
 I send and fetch thee the^ice — lohy should I be deprived of you both 
 in one day ? The Hithpa. on^nn means here (as a weaker power 
 of Dl^^nn parallel to the Niph. onp Isa. i. 24) to procure oneself 
 comfort, rest, satisfaction ; the participial construction declares 
 that Esau is purposing this. Eebekah mitigatingly says ?;yu.e/)a<f 
 TiVa9 (LXX. comp. xxix. 20) for the purpose of thus gaining 
 him over to her plan. On 72'^ with the accusative see Ges. 
 § 183. 3. Both would be lost at the same time, Jacob by means 
 of Esau, Esau in accordance with ix. 6 by the execution of the 
 penalty against the murderer, or even that as a murderer he 
 would not at all events be able again to enter the presence of 
 his parents. The varying expression in 44&, 45a (comp. xxxi. 
 18) points to extracts from different sources. But that Jacob 
 may not depart unaccompanied by his father's blessing, Rebekah 
 
160 GENESIS XXVII. 46-XXYIII. 5. 
 
 expresses to the latter her vexation at her Hittite daughters-in- 
 law (xxvi. 34, Q), and urges him to send Jacob away, to seek 
 a wife in another country, ver. 46 : Ajid Behekah said to 
 Isaac : I am wearij of my life, hccause of the daugliters of 
 Heth ; if Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Hcth, like these 
 of the daughters of the land, of what use is my life ? The text is 
 compounded from Q (of whom T\n n"i33 and nn JT'Ja are cha- 
 racteristic) and J" (comp. xxv. 22). There were certainly good 
 grounds for Eebekah's displeasure at Hittite daugliters-in-law, 
 and hence her wish in respect of Jacob was justified. It was 
 therefore from no lack of independence that Isaac felt the 
 same desire, though it showed his natural weakness that he 
 did not in this respect act of his own accord, but on the 
 instigation of his wife, who, with her excessive sensitiveness, 
 understands the art of turning her husband which way she 
 chooses. Isaac calls Jacob and sends him with his blessing 
 to Arama^a, to marry there, xxviii. 1—5 : Tlicn Isaae called 
 Jacob and blessed him, and commanded him and said to him : 
 Thou shall not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, 
 go to Paxldan Aram, to the house of Bethuel, thy mother's father, 
 and take thee from thence a wife of the daughters of Laban, thy 
 another's brother. And. God Almighty will bless thee and make 
 thee fruitful and multiply thee, and thou shcdt become a company 
 of nations. And He will give thee the blessing of Abraham, to 
 thee and to thy seed tvith thee, to 2J0Ssess the land of thy sojourn- 
 ings, which God gave to Abraham. Thus Isaac sent Jacob away, 
 and he ivent to Paddan Aram to Laban, the son of Bcthucl the 
 Aramcean, the brother of Bebekah, the mother of Esau and Jacob. 
 Characteristic tokens of the style of Q are here plentiful : nija 
 |y33 (like xxxvi. 2, for which / has ^JJ?p3n n^n xxiv. 3, 37), 
 D"?-'? n? (see the introduction to the history of Isaac), ^"^^ ??? 
 with D'nbs, nn-ini n-isn^ onjrp ps* (xvii. 8) and D'pv bnp certainly 
 not to be restricted to the tribes of Israel (xxxv. 11, xlviii. 4). 
 The Scgol of D"J*5 rij^s follows a well-known euphonic law, 
 because the original form ri3"nQ and the orthophonic Gaja in the 
 
GENESIS XXVIII. 6-9. IGl 
 
 final syllable ah are intended to prevent this from being lost 
 owing to the ^? following, comp. ^D3n ^33 xliv. 2, '^">V'i'"i'i^''? 
 xi. 25. ^J^l^? 4:1} has a subjective suflix as at xix. 21. 
 Bethnel is particularly designated as the father and Laban as 
 the brother of Eebekah, and herself as tlie mother of Jacob 
 and Esau, to facilitate the survey of the impending extension of 
 family relationship, and at ver. 5 the fact that Jacob willingly 
 obeyed the paternal behest is, according to tlie present arrange- 
 ment of the historical matter, summarily anticipated, as at 
 xxvii. 23 the fact that Isaac blessed him. Hosea is referring 
 to what is related xxvii. 43, xxviii. 5, when he says, xii. 13 : 
 ^1^ i^Ty' ^PF. ^~!?!!!. Esau now takes example and tries on his 
 part to do what is agreeable to his parents, vv. 6-9 : When 
 Esau saiu that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him aicaij to 
 Faddan Aram, to talce him a wife from thence, and that while 
 blessing him he gave him a charge, saying : Thou shcdt not tal<e 
 a wife of the daughters of Canaan, and that Jacob had hearkened 
 to the voice of his father and mother and had gone to Faddan 
 Aram ; then Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan ivere 
 displeasing to his father Isaac, and Esau ivent to Ishmacl 
 and took unto his wives Mahcdath, the daughter of Ishmael, 
 the son of Abraham; the sister of Nebajoih, to be his wife. 
 Esau shows himself good-natured, but with limited perception 
 and through jealousy of Jacob, hence not from pure motives. 
 When it is said that he went P^V?^"'.'''?, Ishmael himself (like 
 Ephraim himself at 1 Chron. vii. 22) seems intended, and this 
 is possible, if with Dillmann we infer from xxvi. 34 sq., 
 xxvii. 46, that Jacob migrated to Arama^a between his fortieth 
 and fiftieth years, for Ishmael was, according to xxv. 17, 137 
 years old, and Jacob's forty-fifth year coincides with Ishmael's 
 119th year (comp. xvii. 24 sq., xxi. 5, xxv. 26). But if, in a 
 lawfully harmonistic manner, we take xlvii. 9, xli, 46, xlv. 6, 
 XXX. 22-26, xxix. 27 into the reckoning, Jacob was seventy- 
 seven at his migration into Syria (Kohler, Gcsch. i. 135), and 
 this leads us beyond the limits of Ishmael's life, so that ^ysoir* 
 
 VOL. II. L 
 
1G2 GENESIS XX VIII. 10-22. 
 
 here, like e.g. n^3 Josh. xiv. 14, can only be meant of the family 
 of Ishmael. Esau's third wife was called Mahalath (for which 
 we have, xxxvi. 2, Basmath). She is said to he the sister of 
 the first-born of her brothers, who is named instead of all the 
 rest, XXV. 13, as Miriam is always called the sister of Aaron. 
 
 JACOB'S DKEAM ON THE EOAD TO MESOPOTAMIA, 
 CH. XXVIII. 10-22. 
 
 Jacob's journey, which he had already begun xxviii. 5, is 
 now more particularly described with a retrospective glance at 
 its commencement. There its goal was called D"iN nns, here 
 n3"nn. Mosaic stones from J and E are added to the narra- 
 tive of Q. Jacob becomes from henceforth the motive-principle 
 of the history of Isaac, the second section of which begins 
 at xxviii, 10. The portion xxviii. 10 sqq. relates the divine 
 manifestation, which Jacob experienced on the soil of Luz, 
 afterwards Bethel, after some few days' journey, and by which 
 the blessing bestowed was solemnly confirmed to him by God 
 Himself. We have here the first dream revelation in the life 
 of the patriarchs (not reckoning the dream of Abimelech, ch. 
 XX., nor that of Laban afterwards). Henceforward this mode 
 of revelation becomes more frequent. Such experiences were 
 however no everyday matter in their lives. Jacob was now 
 far past forty years old, and the whole history of his life has 
 only five Divine revelations to show, two ^^^ri^ xxviii. 12 
 and xlvi. 2, two with "'^S^'l xxxi. 3, xxxv. 1, one with K"]'.! 
 XXXV. 9. It is E who delights in narrating Divine mani- 
 festations in the night. Those portions in xxviii. 10 sqq., 
 in which God is called D\'i^x, belong with their contexts to 
 him ; hence ver. 12, with 11, vv. 17-22 are his, while on the 
 contrary vv. 13-16 show themselves to be J's by the Divine 
 name mn\ the promise of the blessing of the nations in the 
 seed of the patriarch and other particulars. Both narrators 
 give accounts of a Divine manifestation by night at Luz- 
 
GENESIS XXVIII. 10-12. 163 
 
 Bethel (so that both must have fiirnislied what is snid at 
 ver. 19): E giving prominence to the dream, J" (wliom in 
 opposition to Dillm. Kuen. and others we recognise also 
 at xxii. 14-18) to the words of God; R has combined 
 these two accounts as supplementing each other. Starting- 
 point and goal of Jacob's journey, ver. 10: And Jacob 
 departed from Bcersheha and went to llaran. A counterpart 
 to xxviii. 5. Beersheba had been since xxvi. 23 his father's 
 place of abode. This verse joins on to xxvii. 44, and is 
 tliere followed by completions from Q. Now begins the text 
 from E, vv. 11, 12 : Then he lighted upon a place and passed the 
 night their., for the sun was set, and he took one of the stones of 
 the place, made it his pilloiv, and lay doum to sleep in that place. 
 21icn he dreamed, and behold, a ladder vxis set up upon the earth 
 and its top reached to heaven, and behold angels of Elohvni 
 ascending and descending upon it. He lighted upon a certain 
 place (nip's?, comp. certi homines, i.e. certain in the abstract but 
 not to be more particularly designated), probably a hill-top 
 inviting for its pleasantness and safety, and then prepared his 
 night's quarters by making one (ver. 18) of the stones of 
 the place his pillow. 1'"'^^?-? for ^'O'^'^^l^ (comp. nii'^no for 
 nii'ripo) is the usual extensive plural for parts of body and 
 space, the principal form to be accepted for which is n*^'^"?.P, 
 nc\sno (comp. D^^n'^'^^'i^ Jer. xiii. 18, from npx*"ip, Bottch. § 695). 
 There upon his hard pillow sleeps Jacob, banished from his 
 home, about to encounter an uncertain future, purposely fleeing 
 from the company of mankind in a foreign land, solitary and 
 without a roof over his head. He is there comforted by a 
 divinely-effected dream. The nsn (three including 13a) are 
 finger-posts of childlike astonishment at the glorious appear- 
 ance which the participles describe, as from a post of 
 observation. The ladder is an image of the invisible, but 
 actual and unceasing connection in which God, by the ministry 
 of His angels, stands with the earth, in this instance with 
 Jacob, who is now where the ladder has its earthly standing 
 
164 GENESIS XXVIII. 13-16. 
 
 place ; in his behalf are the angels of God " ascending and 
 descending upon it " (the same expression as Prov. xxx. 4, 
 John i. 52), to fetch and receive commands, to bring them 
 down and execute them. Before the happy dreamer can 
 inquire of one of the angels, he hears the word of Jahveh, and 
 thereupon awakes, vv. 13-16: And hchold Jahveh stood 
 beside him and said : I am Jahveh, the God of Abraham thy 
 father and the God of Isaac ; the lanel ivhcrcon thou liest, to 
 thee taill I give it and to thy seed. And thy seed shall he as 
 the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread to ivest and east and 
 north and south, and cdl the families of the earth shall he hlessed 
 in thee. And behold, I am ivith thee and will keep thee whitherso- 
 ever thou gocst, and will bring thee hack to this land, for I will 
 not leave thee, till I have performed what I have told thee. 
 Then Jaeob awoke from his sleep and said: Surely Jahveh is 
 piresent in this place and I knew it not. In the present con- 
 nection it seems as if Ivy 13a must be referred to the ladder 
 (LXX. Targums, Jerome) : there, where the ladder reached to 
 heaven, God Himself was present to the dreamer; but bv 35rp 
 means everywhere in «/ standing beside, xviii. 2, xlv. 1, and 
 this is also its meaning Amos ix. 1. Jahveh there stood at his 
 side (Eashi : •nnc'^), and His word is added to the silent image. 
 The God, w^hom angels and all powers serve, will fulfil to 
 Jacob the great promises, xii. Sh, xiii. 14-17, and not take 
 from him His special protection until He has first (QX it*''J? IV 
 without obliteration of the conditional meaning of D5< as at 
 Num. xxxii. 17, Isa. vi. 11, comp. Q5;5 ny xxiv. 19, Euth ii. 
 21, and see on xxxviii. 9) fulfilled what He has promised to 
 him. "When Jacob awakes from sleep he says : Truly (i?{< only 
 again in the Pent. Ex. ii. 14) Jahveh is in this place; con- 
 trary to expectation, he has learned that this too, far from the 
 holy places of his family, is a place of Jahveh's gracious 
 presence, that He has gone with him into this strange land, 
 that he may not be, like Ishmael, a broken-off branch. Now 
 follows the exclamation of Jacob on what he beheld, from 
 
GENESIS XXVIII. 17, 18. 165 
 
 Ey ver. 1 7 : And he was afraid and said : How aivfid is this 
 iplace ! this is none other than a house of God, and this is the gate 
 of heaven. He has here Lad a glimpse of the government of 
 God and of the supersensuous world (Wisd. x. 10); it is as 
 though this were the abode of God and of His good spirits, 
 as though this were the gate of heaven, by which they enter 
 and depart. It is now related what Jacob did the next 
 morning, ver. 1 8 : And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and 
 took the stone whieli he hxid made his pillow, and set it up for 
 a memorial pillar, and poured oil upon it. He consecrates the 
 stone as a memorial, as the foundation of a sanctuary ; for 
 the pure, golden, gently penetrating oil is a symbol of con- 
 secration. This setting up and consecration of memorial 
 stones (comp. xxxi. 45, Ex. xxiv. 4, 1 Sam. vii. 11) recalls the 
 heathen worship of anointed stones and baetylia (\i6ol XiirapoL 
 d\r]\i/x/xivoc, lapidcs uncti, luhricati, unguine dclihuti) which 
 had spread from India throughout the whole East as far as 
 Greece and Eome, where Cybele was worshipped in the black 
 stone from Pessinus ; this heathen custom is the idolatrous 
 form of the patriarchal custom which exists to this very day 
 (August. Cm xvi, 39).-^ The baetylia were especially meteoric 
 stones, which were traced to this or that god, and held to be 
 pervaded by deity, at least those which chiefly received the 
 names ^aiTv\.oc, ^airvXia, hetyli were such {Photii Bibl. i. p. 
 348, ed. Bekker ; Plinii h. n. xxxvii. 9, comp. Orelli on Sanchun. 
 p. 30 sq.), a name which may have been occasioned by the 
 fetish-like degenerate veneration of the memorial stone at 
 Bethel (comp. the fate of Gideon's ephod, Judg. viii. 27). 
 Dietrich however (in Grimmel's article, de lajmlum cidtu ajmd 
 Patriarchas qucesito, Marburg 1853) refers it, in the meaning 
 of amulet, to the verb ?^^ to make ineffectual. In Carthage 
 they were called, according to Pausanias, x. 24, and Priscian, 
 
 * Dr. Alex. Robb (now of Jamaica) told nie of such a stone in U-u-^t on tlio 
 Old Calabar river in "Western Africa, worshipped by the negro tribe there as 
 fallen from heaven and bestowed upon their ancestors by the God of heaven 
 (whom they called A-ldsi), to be their tutelary deity. 
 
166 GENESIS XXVIII. 19-22. 
 
 V. 3, 18, ahhadires = ')mi pS. The Thorah forbids, because of 
 their heathen abuse, any erection of nia^fO Lev. xxvi. 1, Deut. 
 xvi. 22, and commands the overthrow of such as exist, Ex. 
 xxiii. 24, xxxiv. 13, Deut. xii. 3. The prophets rebuke the 
 degeneration of the custom (Hos. x. 1 sq. comp. iii. 4), without 
 finding it reprehensible in itself (Isa. xix, 19). Change of 
 name of this patriarchal place of revelation, ver. 1 9 : And he 
 called the name of that place Bethel, on the contrary Lnz was its 
 name formerly. Jacob called the place where he had set up 
 the nnv?:), '?xn"'n (written in the MSS. sometimes as one word, 
 sometimes as two) ; whereas the town was called n^ formerly 
 (Dp^Nl elsewhere xlviii. 19, Ex. ix. 6, Num. xiv. 21 in a rhe- 
 torical, here in a historical connection, originally a noun, Assyr. 
 Slamu, in which the meaning : before, opposite, shows the radical 
 meaning, comp. '^33). This is not however to be so under- 
 stood, as though the ancient Luz and the more recent Bethel 
 were absolutely the same, but so that the ancient Luz (xlviii. 3) 
 gradually retreated and disappeared before Bethel, which lay 
 near it. Josh. xvi. 2. The appellation buD^l xii. 8, xiii. 3 is antici- 
 pative. The ruins still bear the name of Bcitin. It lies forty- 
 five minutes from el-Bireh (Beiiroth) and three hours by horse 
 from Jerusalem, on the declivity of a hill between two valleys, 
 which still, as in the days of Abraham, affords the most excellent 
 pasturage, but belongs to the holy places which have fallen into 
 oblivion. Jacob's vow, vv. 20-22 : And Jacob made a vow and 
 said : If Elohim vjill he with me and keep me upon this way that 
 I go, and give me bread to cat and clothing to put on, and I come 
 hack in safety to my fathers house, then shall Jahvch be my God, 
 and this stone which I have set up as a memorial pillar shall be 
 a house of Elohim, and of all which thou shalt give me I will give 
 a tithe to thee. The apodosis begins at 21& ; then will he have 
 Jahveh, and him alone, for his God, without turning to other 
 gods. This fundamental oath sounds like an echo of the 
 promise xvii. 8, comp. Ex. vi. 7 and frequently. The words 
 of God flow forth 22b in an address to God. We here meet 
 
GENESIS XXIX. 1. 1G7 
 
 for the second time since xiv. 20 in the primitive history with 
 the custom of giving a tithe to God ; it is common to almost 
 all antiquity, the legislation Lev. xxvii. 30-33 and farther on 
 does but regulate what already existed. How ver. 22 was 
 fulfilled, we partly learn in ch. xxxv. Bethel became already 
 in patriarchal times a place of sacrifice, and in the times of 
 tlie Judges the sanctuary, Judg. xx. 18, 1 Sam. x. 3, with the 
 ark of the covenant, Judg. xx. 18, stood here for a long period 
 upon Mount Ephraim. The Divine name DTi^x in vv. 12, 17 
 is of itself no certain token of a source : the matter there 
 in question is indeed a glance into the world of spirits, and 
 also the origin of the local name f'XD"'!. But the case is 
 different with n'^rh^ 20b and with Dvn^sb "b nin> ^^^"l 21 J. In 
 the report of the vow J seems to be blended with U, or it 
 may have been taken as it stands from JE. Jacob will on 
 his return to his home be determined by his experience of 
 Divine assistance to choose Jahveh for his God for ever, to 
 make the stone whicli he has set up the foundation-stone of 
 a house of God, and to tithe, i.e. to apply to the purpose of 
 Divine worship, every blessing bestowed on him. 
 
 Jacob's two marriages in haran, ch. xxi.\'. i-so. 
 
 The second portion, xxix. 1-30, which continues Jacob's 
 experiences in a strange country and first his involuntary 
 double marriage in Haran, is compounded, like ch. xxvii., 
 from J and U worked into each other. In the first half J", in 
 the second E predominates, in ver. 1 5 the transition is made 
 from J to E (Dillm.). But no Divine name occurs, and strik- 
 ing characteristics are lacking. In the second half nnsy> is 
 found, where according to the usual diction of E we sliould 
 expect n;2S, and the distinction of age by nTiaa and nTj?i' is 
 elsewhere only found in J (xix. 30-38). 
 
 Ver. 1 is peculiar : And Jacob lifted up his feet and vxnt 
 to the land of the sons of the East. Encouraged by what he had 
 
168 GENESIS XXIX. 2-12. 
 
 heard and seen in his night dream, he continues his journey 
 refreshed and cheered ^']ii?"''33 n^nx, ix. to Arabia deserta, 
 which reached as far as Euphrates including Mesopotamia 
 lying beyond that river. In J'xxviii. 10 his destination was 
 called n:nn^ in Q xxviii. 2 0"^^? n^'nQ, here we have the third 
 and most general designation, as Dillraann conjectures from 
 E, but according to xxv. 6 more probably from J, to whom 
 what follows, at least as far as ver. 15, belongs. The meeting 
 with Eachel, vv. 2-12 : And he, looked and behold a vjell was 
 in the field, and, lo, three JlocTcs of sheep lying beside it, for out 
 of that well they used to water the flochs, and the stone at the 
 mouth of the well vms great. And thither were all the flochs 
 gathered, and they rolled the stone from the mouth of the well 
 and watered the flocJcs, and brought the stone again to the mouth 
 of the well, to its plaee. Then said Jaeob to them : My brethren, 
 whence are ye ? And they said : Of Haran are we. And he 
 said to them : Knoio ye Laban, Nahor's son ? And they said : 
 We know him. Then he said to them : Is it well ivith him ? 
 And they said: It is well, and behold, Rachel his daughter is 
 coming even now with the sheep. And he said : It is indeed 
 still high in the day, nor is it yet time to drive in the cattle ; 
 water the sheep and go hence and feed them ! And they said : 
 We cannot, till all the flocks are gathered together, then they roll 
 away the stone from the mouth of the ivcll and. water the sheep. 
 While he was yet speaking with tliem, Rachel came with the sheep, 
 which belonged to her father, for she was a shepherdess. And it 
 came to pass, ivhcn Jacob saio Rachel, the daughter of Laban his 
 mothers brother, and the sheep of Laban his mothers brother, that 
 Jaeob vjcnt near and rolled away the stone from the mouth of the 
 well and watered the sheep of Laban his mother's brother. And 
 Jacob kissed Rachel and lifted up his voice and %vc2Jt. And Jacob 
 told Rachel that he was her fathers relative, and that he was 
 Rebekah's son — and she ran and told her father. The imperf. 
 Ipy'^ 2a is, like ii. 6, meant of custom in the past, and continues 
 here as there in the perfect, Ges. § 127. 4&, Driver § 113. 4/3. 
 
GENESIS XXIX. 13, 14. 1G9 
 
 npina is the prcJicate and iX3ri "•S'py a completion of the 
 subject, comp. Job xxxvii. 22b, Micah vi. 12b; for it is the 
 greatness, not the position that is emphasized. Laban is called 
 by Jacob oa iin3~|3. Bethuel, of whom Laban was directly the 
 son, is strikingly kept in the background in the history of 
 Isaac's marriage also, ch. xxiv. Jacob inquires concerning the 
 welfare of Laban : i? QiX'n (comp. xliii. 27 sq.) ; they are able 
 to give him the information desired, and point to Eachel, who 
 was just approaching with her flock (nS3 participle) ; and when 
 he invites them, the day being yet great, i.e. still far from 
 passing into the evening, when the cattle have to be put in 
 the stall, to water the flock, they excuse themselves by saying 
 that the rolling away of the stone requires the united strength 
 of all the shepherds. While he is thus talking with them 
 Eachel arrives (nX3 preterite like xxvii. 30), bringing the 
 flock which is her father's (p il;'X like xl. 5), that it may 
 be watered with the other flocks ; and Jacob then rolls 
 away alone the great stone from the mouth of the well. 
 Such gigantic strength was given him by tlie affection of 
 blood relationship (as is prominently shown by the threefold 
 itSK "ns), and at the same time by a presentiment of love, for 
 his father's words xxviii. 2 were ever ringing in his ears. 
 Hence various feelings were combined in the kiss and in the 
 tears that followed, ver. 11. Laban also now hastens to the 
 scene and gladly welcomes his nephew, vv. 13, 14: And it 
 came to pass when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob, Ms sister's 
 son, that he ran to meet him and emhraced him and kissed him 
 and brought him into his house, and he told Laban all these 
 things. Then Laban said to him : Surely thou art my Jlcsh 
 and bone, and he abode with him a month of days. The 
 genitive after J?pt^' (e.g. Isa. xxiii. 5) and »ij?in*j' (e.g. 2 Sam. 
 iv. 4) is (except perhaps Isa. liii. 1) always objective. Laban, 
 when he hears the news of Jacob's arrival, runs to meet his 
 brother, ie. nephew (nx like ver. 12), spreads out his hands to 
 embrace him (p P3n as at xlviii. 10), overwhelms him with 
 
170 GENESIS XXIX. 15-20. 
 
 kisses (as is meant by ptrp as distinguished from Pr'J ver. 11), 
 and brings him, as being indeed his flesh and bone (as at ii. 23), 
 into his house, where Jacob relates to him " all these things," 
 i.e. his arrival at his journey's end and the providential meet- 
 ing at the well. It is affection which makes Laban so speedy 
 and so kindly, but also, no less than at xxiv. 29, a selfish 
 and calculating eye to the future. He knows however how 
 to hide his intentions under the appearance of the greatest 
 unselfishness. So Jacob remains D''P^ t^'^n (xli. 1, Num. 
 xi. 20 sq. and frequently) a month of days, i.e. a full month, 
 during which Laban perceives of what service Jacob, tlie 
 experienced shepherd, can be to him. His compact with 
 Jacob, who serves him seven years for Eachel, vv. 15-20: 
 Then said Lalan to Jacob : Is it hccause thoic art my kinsman 
 that thou sliouldest serve me for nought ? Tell me, what shall he 
 thy wages ? And Laban had two daughters, the name of the 
 elder loas Liah and the name of the younger Eahel. And the 
 eyes of Leah were weak, but Eachcl vxis beautifid of form and 
 fair to look on. And Jacob loved Rachel and said: I will 
 serve thee seven years for Bachel thy younger daughter. Then 
 said Laban : It is better that I should give her to thee, than that 
 I should give her to another man ; abide with me. TJicn Jacob 
 served seven years for Bachel, and they toere in his eyes as a 
 few days, because of his love for her. The sentence beginning 
 with ^3n (as at xxvii. 36) as inwardly organized runs thus: 
 Should I, because thou art my kinsman, require from thee 
 gratuitous service ? Laban had two daughters (two, and not 
 one only, as we here learn for the first time), of whom the 
 
 younger Eachel (^nn j^ ewe lamb) was beautiful in face 
 
 and figure; the elder, Leah (nS7 'i\i wild cow, a kind of 
 antelope ^), had on the contrary weak eyes (LXX. rightly •. 
 aaOeveh, Vulgate wrongly : Ui^pis ocidis), hence she lacked 
 an important feature of female beauty. Jacob offers to 
 ^ See Job, 2ud edit. p. 507, comp. Zimmern, Bahyl. Busspsalmen, p. 20. 
 
GENESIS XXIX. 21-30. 171 
 
 serve seven years for Eacliel ; Laban plays the agi-eeable 
 and accepts the offer. The hand of a cousin is to this very 
 day among the Arabs due to her cousin in preference to any 
 other wooer, and husband and wife generally address each other, 
 jd hint 'ammt and jil ihn 'ammt, i.e. oh my female cousin, my 
 male cousin. The seven years passed by to Jacob like a few 
 days, "the other days lighted by hope disappeared as one 
 day," as Camoens paraphrases it in his 29th Sonnet. One 
 might have thought that they would rather have appeared 
 long to him. Both are true : amoi' paucos dies ccstimat 
 ;plurimos affective, 7ion autcm ajjpixciative (Calov.). Laban's 
 deception and excuse, and Jacob's second seven years' service, 
 vv. 21-30: Thcji Jacob said to Laban: Give me my wife, for 
 my time is fulfilled, that I may go in unto her. And Laban 
 assembled all the people of the place and gave a feast. And it 
 came to pass in the evening, that lie took Leah his daughter 
 and brought her to him, and he ivcnt in unto her. And Laban 
 gave Zilpah, his handmaid, to his daughter Leah for her hand- 
 maid. And it came to pass in the morning, behold it was Leah, 
 and he said to Laban : What hast thou done to me ? Bid not 
 L serve with thee for Rachel ? And why hast thou deceived me ? 
 Then Laban said : Lt is not the custom so to do in our place, 
 to give the younger before the first-born. Stay out the week of 
 this one, and we ivill give thee this also for a service which thou 
 shall serve with me seven other years. And Jacob did so and. 
 fulfilled Ids week, then he gave him his daughter Rachel to wife. 
 And Laban gave to his daughter Rachel, Bilhah, his handmaid, 
 to be her handmaid. And he went in also unto Rachel, and he 
 loved Rachel more than Leah, and he served with him seven 
 more years. When the seven years were over, Jacob demands 
 his wife (nnn before a following x with the tone upon the ult.), 
 for such she is already in virtue of the marriage contract, and 
 when the marriage feast ('"'^^"■P), i.e. the first and special day 
 of the marriage festivities, is over, he experiences, while 
 intoxicated and blinded by love, a deception similar to that 
 
172 GENESIS XXIX. 21-30. 
 
 which he had played upon his father. Instead of Eachel, 
 Leah (veiled, corap. xxiv. 6 5) is brought to him. Laban gives 
 her Zilpah for her handmaid, which particular, as well as his 
 giving Bilhah to Eachel, ver. 29, added in a manner which 
 interrupts the connection, seems inserted from Q. When he 
 reproaches Laban with this fraud, which was no less shameful 
 an injustice to Eachel than to himself, Laban excuses himself 
 by appealing to a custom of the country (nb'y"'"N7 comp. 
 xxxiv. 7) not to marry the younger daughter before the 
 elder — a custom stubbornly adhered to also in India and in 
 the old imperial towns of Germany. He offers however to 
 give him Eachel also after the lapse of the seven days' 
 (nxf y2p^ marriage festivities, viz. Leah's (Judg. xiv. 12, 
 Tobit xi. 18, the duration down to the present time of a 
 marriage among the Syro-Palestinian peasants, the Nestorians, 
 etc.), if he will promise to serve him seven years more. It 
 was the custom only to give a daughter in marriage for a 
 price pL"^), but Laban bargains with his daughters like 
 wares, without any regard to relationship, and it is of 
 this that they complain, xxxi. 15. Jacob agrees and receives 
 Eachel also. Both daughters have only one handmaid each, 
 Eebekah had more, xxiv. 61, but Laban was avaricious. 
 Jacob has now two wives instead of one, one more, one less 
 beloved. Of the two 135 ver. 30 the second in conjunction 
 with IP means adco magis qiiam, but no other example for 
 this use of Di with p can be adduced, LXX. Jerome leave it 
 unexpressed, Dillm. expunges it. Thus is Jacob the deceiver 
 deceived by Laban. And this same Jacob, who, as Hosea says 
 xii. 1 3, served for a wife and for a wife (n^N3 with 3 of the 
 reward as at ver. 18), kept sheep, became the ancestor of the 
 nation which, as Hosea goes on to say, was led by a prophet out 
 of Egypt and by a prophet was preserved. It is to this double, 
 and, according to the subsequent law (Lev. xviii. 18), detestable 
 double marriage, that the people of the law owed their origin. 
 TheThorah relates it without concealment and without palliation. 
 
GENESIS XXIX. 32, 33. 1V3 
 
 BIRTH OF THE ELEVEN SONS OF JACOB, CII. XXIX. 31-XXX. 24. 
 
 The third portion, xxix, 31-xxx. 24, leads us straight to 
 the origins of Israel, and transports us, so to speak, into the 
 midst of Israel's natal hours. The birth of these ancestors of 
 Israel was found in both J and E, related in the respective 
 manner of each ; the narrative as we now have it is a com- 
 bination of these two sources. They may be distinguished by 
 the change of the Divine names both in the mouth of the 
 women, e.g. xxix. 32, xxx. 6, and of the narrator himself, e.g. 
 xxix. 31, xxx. 17. Here and there two explanations of a 
 name stand side by side, xxx. 20, and we see from the change 
 of the Divine names, that one is taken from / and the other 
 from E, xxx. 23, 24. The statements concerning the hand- 
 maids, xxx. 4a, 96, join on to xxix. 24, 29, and look like woof- 
 threads from Q. Eachel is the more youthful and blooming 
 of the two sisters, and the best beloved of Jacob ; but Eachel 
 remains childless, whereas Leah, the less beloved (ver. 30) 
 and comparatively hated (nxi3b> as at Deut, xxi. 15), is blessed 
 with children. DHT nna LXX. avol'yeLv ttjv /xrjrpav is the 
 opposite of on"!. "iJp 1 Sam. i. 5, Job iii. 10. Jacob's first 
 son Eeuben, by Leah, ver. 3 2 : Zcah conceived and hare a 
 son and called his name Reuhen, for she said : Surely Jahveh 
 hath beheld my affliction, for now will my hnsland love me. 
 The name means : See, a son ! It is an exclamation of joyful 
 surprise. ""S is, as at xxvi, 22, explicative, confirmative, 
 assertive. ? "^^i means to behold with heartfelt interest, as 
 at 1 Sam. i. 11, Vs. cvi. 44, comp. above xxi. 16. The impf 
 *J3ns'' has the connecting vowel a as at xix. 19. Jacob's 
 second son Simeon, by Leah, ver. 33 : And she conceived again 
 and hare a son, and said : Surely Jahveh has heard thai I am 
 hated and hath given me this also, therefore she ccdled him 
 ^Sim'on. The transition from the explicative to the assertive, 
 from the confirmative to the affirmative meaning of "2 is here 
 evident, the name means : hearing. Jacob's third son Levi, by 
 
1.74 GENESIS XXIX. 34-XXX. 6. 
 
 Leah, ver. 34 : And she again conceived and 'bare a son, and 
 said: Now this time will my husband he attached to me, for 
 I have home him three sons, therefore she called his name Levi. 
 For iiy^ (they called, like xi. 9, xix. 22, xxv. 30) LXX. 
 Samar. Syriac reproduce the expected ^^IP^. The name means 
 the attached, from an assumed v annexation socictas formed 
 according to the formation 13. Jacob's fourth son Judah by 
 Leah, ver. 3 5 : And site conceived again and hare a son, and said : 
 This time I praise Jahvch. Instead of nriy 325 and Dysn nny 
 34(X (like HT r\'nv 1 Kings xvii. 24), wo, have here, as also 
 in J ii. 24, cyan The name nnin^_ is formed after the 
 analogy of the passive to nnin"; Neh. xi. 17 (comp. the forms 
 Ps. xxviii. 7, xlv. 18), and means (since n— as a masculine 
 termination arising from n— cannot be proved) the being 
 praised (Joseph. ev^aptaTla, Jerome confessio), hence as a proper 
 name one who is the subject of praise. After these four 
 births a pause takes place with Leah. Eachel is vexed to 
 death that she has no children — the modest desire of husband 
 and wife for the blessing of children is a characteristic of 
 virtuous marriage. Her grief was just, but it made her 
 nnjust towards her husband, xxx. 1, 2 : When Rachel saw that 
 she hare Jacob no children, Rachel was envious of her sister and 
 said to Jacob : Give me children, or I die. Then was Jacob 
 wroth with Rachel and said : Am I instead of Elohim, who has 
 denied thee the fruit of the womb ? It is a childish demand 
 which she makes of her husband (comp. with this nan the 
 nn nn with reference to Cinn "ly'y Prov. xxx. 15 sq.), to which 
 he cannot but answer indignantly : Am I in the place of 
 God ? (to be explained as 1. 1 9 must, according to 2 Kings 
 V. 7). Jacob's fifth son Dan by Bilhah, Piachel's handmaid, 
 vv. 3-6 : And she said : Behold my handmaid Bilhah, go in 
 unto her, that she may bear children upon my knees, and I also 
 onay obtain children by her. And she gave to him Bilhah her 
 handmaid to wife, and Jacob went in unfo her. And Bilhah 
 conceived and bare Jacob a son. Then Rachel said : Elohim 
 
GENESIS XXX. 7, 8. l7.J 
 
 has clone me justice and also hearkened to my voiee and 
 hath given me a son, therefore she called his name Dan. The 
 Divine name wrhn leads to E, and so also does nos which 
 is characteristic of this writer. It is here however inter- 
 changed with nn2tr, perhaps through the regard of li to the 
 text of other sources. The person upon whose knees a 
 new-born babe is laid (1. 23, comp. Job iii. 12) owns it as 
 liis own child. On np; to be built up (not a denominative : 
 to become possessed of children) see xvi. 2. The name PJ cor- 
 responds to the Latin vindex, defender, advocate. She calls him 
 thus, because Elohim has taken her under His protection, has 
 lieard her prayer and taken from her the undeserved reproach 
 of childlessness. Jacob's sixth son Xaphtali, the second by 
 Bilhah, Eachel's handmaid, vv. 7, 8 : And Bilhah,Baehel's maid, 
 again conceived and hare Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said : 
 Wrestlings of Elohim have I ivrestled ^vith my sister and have 
 also prevailed; so she called his name JVajjldali. The name 
 signifies that which has been the object of the struggle, that 
 which has been obtained by wrestling. The ^''<P^. Y'^p^ are 
 the prayerful wrestlings of tempted faith. A wrestling with 
 Leah, but in truth witli God Himself, who seemed to have 
 bestowed His favour upon her only, or perhaps more generally: 
 struggles such as only a higher Being is able to sustain, super- 
 luiman struggles, DTi^X being thus not gen. ohjccti but suhjccti. 
 Hengstenberg and Drechsler define the notion yet differently : 
 struggles whose issue bears the character of a sentence of 
 God ; the idea of a Divine sentence of the concursus specialis- 
 simi prevailing from xxx. 1—23 being also the reason for the 
 use of D"'n^j5 here instead of mn\ The change of the Divine 
 name is however caused by that of the source of the extracts. 
 It was intentionally that the author of Genesis interwove 
 both Divine names into the origins of Israel, and it is cer- 
 tainly not accidental that the name nin'' is impressed upon 
 the first four births, and the name DTi^x upon the seven others. 
 We are to be impressed with the fact, that the covenant 
 
L76 GENESIS XXX. 9-13. 
 
 faithfulness of Jahveli and the wonder-working power of 
 Eloliim concurred in laying the foundation of Israel. Jacob's 
 seventh son Gad, by Zilpah, Leah's handmaid, vv. 9-11 : 
 TVJien Leah saw that she had ceased from hearing, she took Zilpah, 
 her handmaid, and gave her to Jacob to wife. And Zilpah, 
 Leah's handmaid, hare Jacob a son. Then Leah said : Good 
 fortune ! and called his name Gad. She called him "13 pro- 
 pitious star, saying (according to the Chcthib) : *iJ|i with 
 fortune ! (LXX. iv tv-^tj), i.e. for my happiness, or (according 
 to the Kert which takes n as an abbreviation of i<n) : "ij ^^? 
 which the Targums and Syr. explain : fortune is come. It is 
 true that the Keri may be also explained (according to xlix. 
 ] 9) : there come troops (Venet. r^Kei. crrpdrevfjia), viz. troops of 
 children. But '^3=^^3 is not to be authenticated in this 
 imwarlike meaning, and the mythological appellation of fortune 
 (Arab, gcdd), in accordance with 13 ^V^ (Josh. xi. 17, xii. 7, 
 comp. Isa. Ixv. 11), cannot seem strange in the mouth of an 
 Aramsean woman. In later times, the commencement of 
 which cannot be determined, the notion of the li bv2 was 
 united to the planet Jupiter, as that of the mn*iry 13 (on 
 Carthag. III. in Gesenius' Monumenta) to tlie planet Venus. 
 The Turanian name of Jupiter on inscriptions is Lubat guttav 
 (guttam). Jacob's eighth son Asher, his second son by Zilpah, 
 Leah's handmaid, vv. 12, 13: And Zilpah, Leah's handmaid, 
 hare a second son to Jacob. Then Leah said : Happy me ! for 
 the daughters will call out Happy art thou ! so she called his 
 name Aser. The name means the happy one (from l*^'k^="iK';^ 
 .^: whence jusr, happiness) — thus Leah called him saying 
 ni;''K3 Happy me ! (which by altering this strange 3 in accord- 
 ance with the preceding 133 may also be read ''"]f'fr53=^if ^ ^?). 
 "3 is followed, as frequently, e.g. Isa. Ix. 1, by the perf. of 
 certainty, and ni^n is in poetic fashion without the article 
 (LXX. al <yvvalKe<i, comp. Mary's magnifieat, Luke i. 48). It 
 now again becomes Leah's turn to bear, notwithstanding the 
 love-apples obtained by Eachel, vv. 14-16 : And Reuben went 
 
GENESIS XXX. U-16. 177 
 
 in the days of ichcat harvest and found mandrakes in the field 
 and brought them to Leah, his mother ; then Rachel said to 
 Leah : Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes. And she 
 said to her : Ls it too little that thou hast taken my hiishand from 
 me, to take also my sons mandrakes ? Then Rachel said : Let 
 him then lie with thee this night for thy sons mandrakes. When 
 then Jacob came home from the field at even, Leah went to meet 
 him and said : Thou must come in unto me, for I have hired 
 thee, yea hired thee, for my son's mandrakes. The LXX. correctly 
 translates D'^NliT [x,rjka fiavSpayopcov ; ''l^'n (in accordance with 
 the formation vv) from nil (2^^"^), ancient Egyptian fZM(Za,fZi«Zz«(, 
 dudio (see Brugsch, ^Dic neue Weltordnung, etc. 1881, p. 38), is 
 the mandragora autumnalis which blossoms in November at the 
 commencement of the wiuter rain. It comes from the Persian 
 merdum gidh, man-plant, Aram, and Arab, jabruh, by which 
 the Targums (comp. Sanhcdrin 99&) and the Syriac translate 
 it, or also Ivffdh, by which Saad. renders it. Its flowers of 
 purple inclining to dark blue become in May and June 
 (Cant. vii. 14), or what is the same, in the days of wheat 
 harvest, yellowish green apples, about the size of a nutmeg, of 
 a particularly pungent odour (Arab, tuffdh esseitdn or tuffah 
 el-megnUn or laid el-ginn, daemons' eggs). The mandragora is 
 a plant frequently found in Palestine and also in Aramaja, its 
 fruit and root are esteemed as a means of promoting fertility 
 and as an Aphrodisiacum in general, on which account it is 
 
 figuratively called ^LJl J^>i (servant of love's salute), and 
 
 is glossed by JJj\ jlLc (lovers' herb).^ Circe used the 
 root in her charmed potions, and TIamilcar brought upon 
 his adversaries the Libyans the sleep of intoxication, by 
 means of wine in which this root was mingled. But the 
 perfect plant, drawn out uninjured, with its root reaching from 
 
 ^ See Wetzsteiii's Excursus on the Dudaim in Comm. zum Hoherdiede, pp. 
 439-445, and James Neil's (formerly ]>astor of Christ Church, Ji-rusalem) article 
 on the same subject (with an illustration) in the Jervish Intelligence, 18S6, pp. 
 194-196. 
 
 VOL, n. M 
 
178 GENESIS XXX. 17-20. 
 
 three to four feet and sometimes deeper, with its egg-like 
 fruits in their leafy nests, was reckoned particularly valuable 
 and effectual. Of such kind were the Dudaim which Eeuben 
 brought with him from the field. "When Eachel begs for 
 them, with a purpose which she has no need to express, 
 Leah gives her an indignant refusal, rinp? (not rinip? or ^^P^) is, 
 as the Targums also take it, vif. consir.: ut prcerciJiura sis. 
 Eachel however obtains the mandrakes by renouncing her 
 husband for the next night, i^^n nTpH (instead of ii'^^\}) as at 
 xix. 33. Since Eachel however remains barren notwith- 
 standing the mandrakes, it is again shown that an incalculable 
 power presides over the history of the patriarchs. Jacob's 
 ninth and Leah's fifth son, Issachar, vv. 1*7, 18: Then Eloliim 
 hearkened unto Leah, and she conceived and lore Jacob a fifth 
 son. And Leah said : Elohim hath given me my hire, because I 
 have given my handmaid unto my husband, and she called his 
 name Jissachar. The Textus rec. points i^l^'b^';, while accord- 
 ing to Ben-Asher "•^fe'l, its Keri, is perpetuum, against which Ben- 
 Naphtali read 13^'^''. affert prcemium, or according to Baer read 
 just like Ben-Asher, but wrote "^^j^'^^.; Moses b. Mochah read, 
 according to Jer. xxxi. 16, 2 Cbron. xv. 7, "'^b'l^'l est 'prccmium, 
 see Pinsker, Zur Gesch. dcs Karaismus, p. 98 sq. Leah 
 regards this son as a reward ("''t?'X="iC'K nnn or '^'^'^, "'^^y? like 
 xxxiv. 27, xxxi. 49) of her self-denial, not, as Josephus takes 
 it (= e'/c ixiaOov fyevofxevo^), as a compensation for the man- 
 drakes. Jacob's tenth and Leah's sixth son, Zebulun, vv, 
 19-20 : And Leah conceived again and bore a sixth son to 
 Jacob. Then Leah said: Elohim hath endowed me with a 
 good dowry ; this time my husband will esteem me, for L have 
 borne him six sons, so she ccdled his name Zebulun. The mean- 
 ing, to present, is assured to the verb 13T by the Aram, and 
 Arab. ; it occurs only here, but all the more numerous are the 
 proper names formed from it (see the Lexicon). Can there 
 be here two interpretations by different narrators, one of 
 whom assumes that ri?3T is formed from nar ? Scarcely, 
 
GENESIS XXX. 22-24. lV9 
 
 for he would see in the name only an allusion to nar, and 
 would then be responsible for the interpretation. At all 
 events, the name is explained first from its consonance with 
 lyt and then from blf as its stem -word. Certainly fs^r has 
 been understood in the meaning to dwell, which is by no 
 means assured to it ; verbs of dwelling (inhabiting) of course 
 take the accus. (e.g. also iij Ps. v. 5), but " he will inhabit 
 me," for " he will hold to me " (Jerome mecum erit), is an im- 
 probable expression. The Assyrian offers for h^l the more 
 suitable meaning to raise up, to elevate, with which the 
 LXX. alpeTLu /xe, i.e. according to Hesychius irpori/zoTepav /x-e 
 i57?;o-eTat, may be brought into connection and to which ?^3T (a 
 thing erected = dwelling-place) may fitly be referred (Guyard, 
 Friedr. Del.) ; the opposition of Halevy is here of no avail. 
 Birth of a daughter to Jacob by Leah, ver. 2 1 : And afterwards 
 she hore a daughter and called her name Dinah. Dinah, who 
 was not Jacob's only daughter, xxxvii. 35, xlvi. 7, could not 
 be left unmentioned because of ch. xxxiv., but is, as being a 
 daughter, dismissed in few words (corap. iv. 22, Num. xxvi. 
 46). Jacob's eleventh and Eachel's first son, Joseph, w. 
 22-24 : Then Elohiin rememhered Rachel, and Elohim hearkened 
 unto her and opened her woiiib. And she conceived and hore 
 a son, and said : Elohim hath taken away my reproach. And 
 she called his name Joseph, saying : May Jahveh add unto me 
 another son. At last God remembered Eachel also (like 1 Sam. 
 i. 19), and granted her so long seemingly unheard petition. 
 The name of her first own son is interpreted by E " Taker 
 away " (viz. of the reproach) of childlessness (like Isa. iv. 1 of 
 celibacy), by J " increaser," as the first who is the precursor 
 of a second. The addition is characterized by "iDsi?, which 
 occurs nowhere else in the giving of names. 
 
 The passing notice of Dinah, Leah's daughter, has its appro- 
 priate place after the six sons of Leah, without our having 
 to infer therefrom that her birth took place before that of 
 Joseph. The first four births of sons (Eeuben, Simeon, 
 
180 GENESIS XXX. 22-24. 
 
 Levi and Judah) by Leah happen in the first four years 
 of the second seven years, the two by BUhah, Rachel's 
 handmaid, in the fourth to the fifth. During the fiftli year 
 Leah is in vain expecting the blessing of children, and at last, 
 after the example of Eachel, gives Zilpah to her husband, and 
 she bears to him Gad and Asher from the sixth to the middle 
 of the seventh year. Meantime Leah is again blessed with 
 children, and brings forth Issachar at the end of the seventh 
 year of the now elapsed second seven years, Zebulun in the 
 first of the last six years (of the twenty, xxxi. 38), and Dinah 
 in the second of the six. Eachel however bore a son, as is 
 evident from ver. 25, at the end of the second seven years; 
 hence the birth of Joseph took place between the births of 
 Issachar and Zebulun (not before that of Issachar, as Astruc, 
 Conjectures, p. 396 sq., thinks), and probably in the last month 
 of this seventh year (comp. Demetrius in Euseb. Procp.iy:. 21). 
 Unless we place two of Leah's births in the six years (xxxi. 41) 
 after the two seven years, Leah must have borne seven children 
 within the seven years, during which a considerable interval 
 of vain expectation elajosed. Kurtz accepts this, limiting the 
 period during which Leah was certain that a cessation had 
 taken place to "a few months." But at xxxvii. 35, xlvi. 7, 
 daughters of Jacob are mentioned, concerning whose births 
 nothing is said, and elsewhere in Genesis homogeneous events 
 are, as here in the case of the children with which Jacob's two 
 marriages were blessed in Aramsea, taken together as though 
 continuous, the distribution of the succession of time, as here 
 of the 7 + 7 + 6 years, being left to the reader. 
 
 NEW COMPACT FOR SERVICE BETWEEN JACOB AND LABAN, 
 XXX. 25-XXXI. 3. 
 
 When Eachel after long yearning became a mother, the 
 second seven years of service had elapsed ; the fourth portion, 
 XXX. 25 to xxxi. 3 (from /, though with here and there a 
 
GENESIS XXX. 25-34. 181 
 
 glance at E), now relates how a new compact for service 
 between Jacob and Laban came to pass, and how Jacob, 
 during this new service, attained great wealth in cattle 
 through an artifice blessed by God. Jacob presses for his 
 dismissal, and Laban for Jacob's stay, 25—30 : And it came to 
 pass when Eachel had home Joseph, that Jacoh said to Lahan : 
 Send me away, that I may go to my own place and to my 
 country. Give me my ivives and children, for whom I have 
 served thee, that I may go; for thou knoivcst my service which I 
 have clone for thee. Then Lahan said to him : Oh, if I have 
 found favour in thine eyes — / / have well marked that Jahveh 
 hath hlessed me for thy sake. Then he said : Decide thy wages, 
 and I will give it. And he said to him : Thou knowest hoio I 
 have served thee, and. ivhat thy cattle have hecome with me. For 
 a little, which thou hadst hefore my time, has spread into a multi- 
 tude, and Jahveh hath hlessed thee where I turned my foot, and 
 now, when shall I wm-k also for my own house t The apodosis 
 to X^'DJ? 2*1 a, must be completed according to xviii. 3 : so let 
 thy purpose be — a courteous oh not so ! (comp. xix. 18 sq.). 
 tJ'n3 is a heathen expression for inquiring into the future by 
 means of magic, and then means in general divinare, to per- 
 ceive, to remark (xliv. 15). The two idnm with the same 
 subject (Laban) in vv. 27, 28 show that B, wherever it is 
 possible, reproduces the words of his authorities unaltered. 
 We translate Dyo 30« "a little," for "the little" is called 
 ^^'9'), e.g. Deut. vii. 7. "We have already had fiD, to spread, 
 in J"xxviii. 14. v^lp, at my foot, is equivalent to: blessing 
 followed wherever I went (comp. Job xviii. 11 ; Isa, xli. 2 ; 
 Hab. iii. 5). ^ nu'V a pregnant expression : to act, to work, to 
 take trouble for any one. New compact between Jacob and 
 Laban, vv. 31-34: Then he said: What shall I give thee? 
 And Jacoh said : Thoit shall give me nothing, if thon wilt grant 
 me this thing : I will again tend thy flock and take it under 
 my care. I luill to-day go through all thy flock, taking out from 
 it every speckled and spotted one and every Hack one among the 
 
182 GENESIS XXX. 31-34. 
 
 lambs, and the speckled and spotted among the goats, and that 
 shall he my hire. And on the morrow, when thou shalt inspect 
 viy hire, my own righteousness shall testify against me hefore 
 thee : every one that is not speckled and sjyotted among the goats 
 and black among the larabs, let that with me be reckoned stolen. 
 Then Laban said : Well, let it be according to thy ivord ! 
 Jacob lets himself be prevailed upon again to tend and keep 
 Laban's flock under a certain condition (ip*^ as at Hos. xii. 13. 
 Comp. on the explanatory, surpassing compensation of the one 
 notion by the other, Ps. xv, 4). The transaction is carried on 
 with the same conventional forms of Oriental courtesy, as that 
 in ch. xxiii. between Abraham and the Hethites. The sheep 
 are in that country almost all white (Cant. iv. 2), only a few, 
 chiefly rams, black, the goats for the most part if not black 
 (Cant. iv. Ih) of a dark colour, and only very seldom white or 
 spotted with white. Hence it is apparently a very small 
 wage for which Jacob stipulates, when he claims all the 
 speckled, spotted and black among the sheep (C?^'? for the 
 later ^V??, a Pentateuchal form occurring also in Lev. Num. 
 and Deut.), and all the speckled and spotted among the goats, 
 which are now and henceforth may be produced in Laban's 
 flock. This is the sense of ver. 32 sq. After the preceding 
 ihyx, "ipn cannot, as Tuch, Baumg., Kn. understand it, be im- 
 perative, it is infin. absol. Consequently '•'i^'p' ^1^\ cannot, as 
 Tuch, Baumg., Kurtz and already Luther take it, mean : and 
 all that in future happens to be of an abnormal colour in the 
 now normal coloured flock shall be my hire ; nab n^ni aims at 
 the present, but in such wise that all that may in the future 
 happen to be of abnormal colour is at the same time stipulated 
 for. It is in accordance with this that ver. 33 must be 
 explained : my own rectitude shall, when thou shalt to-morrow 
 and henceforth make investigation concerning that which is 
 claimed by me, testify against me (3 njy everywhere else, also 
 1 Sam. xii. 3, and therefore certainly here too used of witness 
 against or accusation). Luther 1545 with the LXX. and 
 
GENESIS XXX. 35, 36. 183 
 
 Jerome rightly understands the D^ni in the sense of — i'j'ki, 
 Din "li^N, for Jacob claims for himself the black sheep as 
 those of abnormal colour ; hence it is not the black, but those 
 that are not black, that are to be regarded as stolen by him. 
 Laban gladly consents, ver. 34 : Yea (jn as in the jMishna 
 diction) Id it he {^b as at xvii. 18) according to thj vjord. It 
 might now be thought that Jacob would undertake the separa- 
 tion, instead of which Laban undertakes it himself, vv. 35, 36 : 
 Then on the same day he removed the striped and spotted rams, 
 and all the speckled and spotted goats, all upon which was any 
 white, and every Uach one among the lamhs, and gave them into 
 the hands of his sons. And he put a distance of three days' 
 journey hetween himself and Jacob, and Jacob fed the rest of 
 Ldban's flocks. Laban himself separates the unusual coloured 
 cattle, especially the rams ^'''^\^ (which is certainly not made 
 prominent without intention), and delivers these separated 
 and unusually coloured cattle to his sons (comp. xxxi. 1), 
 for Laban's own flock, consisting now of only normal 
 coloured cattle, was pastured by Jacob. He then orders a 
 separation of three days' journey {i.e. about 3x7 hours) be- 
 tween the two flocks, in order to prevent any copulation 
 between the normal and abnormal coloured cattle. We cannot 
 here escape the impression, that the accounts of two authori- 
 ties are here worked into each other ; nevertheless, the narra- 
 tive, as we have it, must be capable in the mind of R of being 
 drawn together into one harmonious picture. Hence we shall 
 have to conceive that Laban, in order to guard against 
 any diminution, himself undertook the separation, and for 
 the same reason delivered what belonged to Jacob to his 
 (Laban's) sons, and entrusted what was his to Jacob. It 
 is strange indeed that ver. 32 is left in the wording 
 which leaves unexpressed Jacob's meaning, that what is 
 produced of an abnormal colour in the future is also to 
 belong to him. But that this is Jacob's meaning is 
 presupposed, as the furtlier course of the narrative shows. 
 
184 GENESIS XXX. 37-40. 
 
 In order to obtain within the one coloured flock of Laban the 
 greatest possible number of abnormal coloured births, Jacob 
 in his inventive policy makes use of two artifices. The first 
 stratagem, vv. 37-40: Then Jacob took fresh rods of storax, 
 almond, and plane trees, and jpeeled thereon white stripes, laying 
 hare the white that was on the rods. And he placed the rods, 
 which he had peeled, in the gutters, in the VMter troughs, where 
 the cattle came to drink, over against the cattle, and it was 
 pairing time when they came to drink. And the cattle mated 
 among the rods, and the cattle brought forth striped, speckled, and 
 spotted. And Jacob separated the lambs and turned the faces 
 of the flocks toward the striped and all the black among Laban's 
 flocks, and made droves apart, and put them not to LabarCs cattle. 
 Of the three kinds of trees njnp is the storax tree {styrax 
 officinalis, from l^p in accordance with the formation niS'X = ''3a7 
 
 J^,jJ on account of the fragrant milk leben thickening to a gum 
 which flows from its wounded bark) — not the white poplar, 
 which is called ^^ |5q_k. {BMZ. xvi. 588); n? the almond 
 tree (the more Aramaico- Arabic name for 1p^ amygdala, whose 
 
 fruit is called almonds, or almond nuts, nuces, Arab. ;^ loz), and 
 )i?2"iy the plane {platanus oricntalis, from DIV denudare, because 
 the smooth bark of the tree comes off every year and leaves 
 it bare). In the fresh sticks of these trees he peeled white 
 stripes (niSys peeled places) by exposing the white (^ib'tiD adv. 
 Ace. for ^Ji'n decorticando), and placed (i"?:" in distinction from 
 ^''sn of temporary placing) the parti-colour "sd sticks in or near 
 the troughs C'^Dni (perhaps from J xxiv. 20), which is ex- 
 plained by C^n riinpkJ' (plur. of T\pp with the n taken root- 
 wise as in riinD3). ;xkn n^bp belongs to the remote J?;*! as yith 
 33a to the remote U'nnjyi, unless the meaning is, that the 
 animals stood while drinking on both sides of the trough 
 opposite each other, so that n:Dn>l is meant of the instinct 
 excited by the help of this position. This "^JpO'i instead of 
 
GENESIS XXX. 41, 42. 185 
 
 ^^^PO?!'? (from Dnn, as at 1 Sam. vi. 12, Dan. viii. 22) is one of 
 the tliree forms designated by the Masora as Dirjmx p!)D, hyljrid 
 words. Thus they mated Oon'.'i=i'2n^l from D'pn, though it also 
 might he im}')/. Kal from Onj for I^l]^*.?, according to a similar 
 change of sound, as at Ps. li. 7, comp. Judg. v. 28, for ion>"i) 
 among the rods, and this produced unusual coloured animals 
 among the lambs. Then Jacob separated these unusual 
 coloured lambs and kids from the normal coloured animals 
 belonging to Laban, and so led the latter that their faces were 
 turned to the parti-coloured, so as to obtain continually fresh 
 additions from the flock of Laban. Hence it must have been 
 arranged, at least at the first, that from the first separation 
 (ver. 35 sq.) to a second and final one, the flocks of Laban 
 should remain together under the care of Jacob. For other- 
 wise it cannot be explained that Laban should so easily have 
 connived at the normal and abnormal coloured cattle remain- 
 ing together and not from time to time have continued the 
 separation made at the beginning, that he should even have 
 looked on quietly, when Jacob formed separate flocks of the 
 parti-coloured cattle obtained by stratagem, for the purpose of 
 overlooking his property, and at the same time of obtaining 
 continually fresh increase by turning the faces of the one- 
 coloured animals towards the numerous parti-coloured ones. 
 If instead of 7^ we are with Kn. to read ?3, according to the 
 Targums and Saad., it is to be explained : he placed in 
 the sight of the sheep all the striped and dark -coloured 
 animals (so that they had always had the latter in their sight). 
 But this is of no avail. It cannot be mistaken that the 
 words irT"! to \:h IS^'2 in ver. 40 import an alien element into 
 the narrative ; they give the impression of being an insertion, 
 the contents of which are opposed to what precedes (the 
 separation) and follows (the formation of separate parti- 
 coloured flocks). The second stratagem, vv. 41, 42 : And it 
 came to pass, whenever the strong sheep conceived, then Jacob used 
 to lay the rods in the gutters before the eyes of the sheep, that 
 
186 GENESIS XXX. 41, 42. 
 
 tlicy might mate among the rods. And ivhen the sheep were 
 feeble he laid them not therein, and thus the feeble became 
 Laban's and the strong Jacob's. The apodosis begins with Dbn 
 not D"^'*!!, because it was not a single but a repeated act. The 
 strong animals are called nh^J'pon (42& cnL'-'i^n), the compact, 
 
 i.e. the full, the sturdy (comp, ^n, 7i^3, ^J=Engl. strength), 
 
 and the feeble '^''Slf^l'i}, from fjDy, to wrap and to weaken ; the 
 Hiph. P]''Dj;n means, as intrinsically transitive, to show weakness. 
 The form i^^^n;;^ is Piel (xxxi. 10) from Dn\ with the suffix 
 enna instead of an = ahun. Only during the mating of the 
 strong sheep did he put in the sticks, that they might con- 
 ceive among them, and not when, on the contrary, the sheep 
 were in a feeble condition, i.e. when in consequence of bad 
 pasture the rams and ewes were less strong. This means, 
 perhaps, that he laid them there in summer (according to 
 Varro and Pliny : a tertio Idus 3Iajas in X Calend. Aug., with 
 us in July and the first half of August), so that the strong 
 (unusual coloured) winter lambs became his, but not in 
 autumn (Pliny : postea concepti invalidi), so that the weaker 
 (usual coloured) spring lambs were left to Laban. Lutlier on 
 the contrary : Also wurden die Spctlinge Labans, aber die 
 Fruelinge Jacobs, according to which Jacob must have carried 
 out his artifice from towards the end of September till October, 
 when the lambs would be brought forth in ]\Iarch and April. 
 The text itself gives no kind of indication as to whether 
 Jacob had in view the winter or the spring lambing. For the 
 rest it is a well-known fact that what is presented to the 
 senses of the pregnant animal is imitated in the formation of 
 the offspring, and that in no animal has the imagination of 
 the mother such influence upon the offspring as in the sheep ; 
 on which account sheep-breeders, to obtain white sheep, make 
 use of a like means with Jacob, by placing something white 
 in the drinking troughs of the sheep, giving them troughs 
 made of quite white stone, or hanging up white cloths in their 
 
GENESIS XXX. 43-XXXI. 3. 187 
 
 stalls, just as horse-breeders, to obtain a fine breed, hang up 
 representations of fine horses before their foaling mares 
 (Friedreich, Zar Bihcl, 1, 36-41). Jacob's increasing pro- 
 sperity, ver, 43 : Thus the man increased exceedingly, and 
 obtained many sheep, and maid-servants and men-servants, and 
 camels and asses. At ver. 30, and at xxviii. 14, also p3 of 
 the person is found in J; comp. notwithstanding the 'li^'? '^^<p 
 (elsewhere only in Q, vii. 19), the Jahvistic parallels in matter 
 and style, xii. 16. nia"] jNV does not mean: many flocks, but 
 many heads of sheep and goats, comp. e.g. Num. xxxi. 32. 
 Jacob's prosperity increased immensely, but (as is further 
 narrated according to J) it was now also time that he should 
 quit the place, xxxi. 1-3 : A7id he heard the words of Lahans 
 sons, that they said : Jacob has taken to himself all that was our 
 fathers, and of our father s property has got for himself all this 
 wealth. And Jacob beheld the countenance of Laban, and it was 
 no more towards him as yesterday and before yesterday. And 
 Jahveh said to Jacob : Bcturn to the land of thy fathers and to 
 thy home, and I ivill be ivith thee. Jacob's brothers-in-law hav- 
 ing been, contrary to Oriental custom, still silent individuals at 
 their sisters' marriages, were still quite little fourteen years ago, 
 and perhaps not born twenty years ago; now however they are 
 grown np (xxx. 35) and of age. ^133 weight, means both a great 
 quantity (of wealth only here in the Pent., but comp. xiii. 2) and 
 an imposing appearance (gravitas, gloria), nb'y to obtain, to 
 gain, as at xii. 5. iSi'N after ^.^3, as at Lam. iv. 16. On ^i?^'^ 
 see on xii. 1, and compare the reference to it xxxii. 10. 
 
 Jacob's flight and final peaceable departuke from 
 laban, cii. xxxi. 4-xxxii. 1. 
 
 The fifth and last portion of the first section of Isaac's life 
 now follows, not of Jacob's, for Isaac is still alive and rules 
 the history, which Jacob only stirs. The close of the former 
 portion, xxx. 4 3 -xxxi. 1-3, bore the stamp of J, but now the 
 
188 GENESIS XXXI. 4-13, 
 
 text of E is resumed and prevails, xxxi. 4-xxxii, 1, though 
 other elements, especially parallels in matter from J and in 
 ver. 18 from Q, are perceived to be worked into it. The 
 different source is already betrayed by the behaviour of 
 Laban, and Jacob's prosperity, notwithstanding, being some- 
 what differently represented here and in ch. xxx. 
 
 Jacob summons Eachel and Leah to the field and lays 
 before them the motives of his resolution to return home, 
 vv. 4-9 : Then Jacob sent and called Eaclicl and Leah to the 
 field unto his fiock, and said unto them : I see the countenance 
 of your father, that it is not towards me as yesterday and hefore 
 yesterday, hut the God of my fathers was with me. And you 
 know that with my whole power I have served your father. But 
 your father has deceived me and changed my hire ten times ; hut 
 Elohim has not allouxd him to do me harm. If he said : The 
 speckled shall he thy hire, then the whole fiock hare speckled ; and 
 if he said : The striped shall he thy hire, then all the fiock hare 
 striped. And so Elohim has taken away the fiocks of your 
 father and has given them unto one. Expressions peculiar to 
 E are nnbb'O (=i3b*) here and ver. 41, xxix. 15, and D''Jb mb'J^ 
 here and ver. 41, ten (= many) times, instead of the synonym- 
 ous D''pyQ nx'j^. n^rixi instead of \^'^\ which occurs besides 
 only three times in Ezekiel, is also worthy of notice (Assyr. 
 attina). The use of gender is here also shown to be im- 
 perfectly developed : p"'?^? with respect to the wives being 
 exchanged 9h for D.9''?^^ It is from E that it is here told 
 that Laban did not keep to his agreement with Jacob, but 
 fooled him (^nn Hijjhil of 7?^, Ew. § 1 2 7d) by ever and again 
 changing the hire allotted him, but without profiting thereby, 
 because God frustrated his selfish intention. Continuation of 
 Jacob's address to his wives, vv. 10-13 : And it came to pass 
 at the pairing time of the cattle, that I lifted up mine eyes and 
 saw in a dream, and hehold, the rams which leaped upon the sheep 
 were striped, speckled and dappled. And the angel of God said 
 to me in a dream : Jacob ! And I said : Here am I. And he 
 
GENESIS XXXI. 14-16. 189 
 
 said : Lift tip thine eyes and sec : All the rams which leap on 
 the sheep are striped, speckled and dappled ; for I have seen all 
 that Lcihan docth to thee. I am the God of Bethel, where thou 
 anointcdst a pillar, where thou vowedst a vow unto me — now 
 arise go out of this land and return to the land of thy home. 
 What appeared in the former portion to have been obtained 
 by Jacob's artifice, is here represented as the blessing of 
 Elohim. That the Divine direction, now to return home, 
 closely follows in the dream-vision upon the image of the leap- 
 ing upon the cattle of unusual coloured rams, aud thus took 
 place at the end of the six years (Dillm.), is perhaps based only 
 on the circumstance, that what was objectively related in E 
 is here taken up retrospectively in Jacob's address. Jacob 
 should and must at last have been inwardly conscious, that 
 after all it had been God's providence and not his own artifice 
 which had protected him against Laban and made him so 
 wealthy, that, as Antonio says in Shakespeare, it was " a thing 
 not in his power to bring to pass, but swayed and fashioned 
 by the hand of Heaven." The variegated animals are here 
 called, ver. 12, D^'^pV banded — which appeared already xxx. 35 
 D""np3 spotted and D^'n'in dappled (here for the first time), from 
 113 = *^< varicgare, syn. with D"'5<7tp xxx, 32, 33, 35 in J". 
 The manifestation at Bethel to which ver. 13 refers is that 
 related xxviii. 12, 17-19. The demonstrative prominence 
 of the first member of the st. constr. in ^^^''•^ ^^'^ is like '^^^n 
 iitJ'X Isa. xxxvi. 8, and in cases like 2 Kings xxiii, 17, where 
 apposition cannot be supposed instead of annexation ; comp. 
 b2i rhv^n upon the pillar of the Jehavmelek of Gebal, " the 
 Ba'alat of Byblos." The two wives approve of Jacob's pro- 
 posal ; their father has alienated their hearts also by his 
 unkindness and covetousness, vv. 14-16: Then Jlachcl ivith 
 Leah answered, and they said to him : Have ive yet a portion 
 and inheritance in the house of our father? Are we not 
 esteemed hy him as strangers ? for he has sold v.s, and has even 
 quite devoured the price paid for us. Nay, all the wealth 
 
190 GENESIS XXXI. 17-21. 
 
 which Elohim has taken from our father belongs to us and our 
 children ; now then, whatever Elohim has told thee, do ! Laban 
 sold his daughters for the price of fourteen years' service, 
 without giving them, as a marriage portion, anytliing that 
 Jacob's services had procured for him. He has abundantly 
 profited by this ^D3 paid to him as "'D'^ ; "^l with the inf. 
 absol. like xlvi. 4 (and 1 Sam, xxiv. 12, if we are to read 
 there with Hupfeld nkn) increases the emphasis. ''? 16a 
 confirms and strengthens, see xxix. 32 sq. They can with a 
 good conscience look upon what Jacob has, by the blessing of 
 God, obtained for himself during his time of service, as their 
 marriage portions, which have been extorted from him. They 
 are contented that he should prepare for departure. The 
 return home, vv. 17-21 : Then Jaeob arose and set his sons 
 and his wives upon the camels, and carried away all his cattle 
 and all his property ivhich he had made his own, the cattle of 
 his getting, which he had made his ovjn in Paddan Aram, to go 
 hack to Isaac his father in the land of Canaan. And Ldban 
 was gone to shear his flock, then Rachel stole the teraphim of her 
 father. And Jacob stole the heart of Laban the Aramaean, in 
 that he made no communication to him, for he meant to flee. So 
 he jled, and all that belonged to him ; he arose and passed over 
 the river, and set his face toward the mountains of Gil' ad. In 
 ver. 18 the text of E from itJ'blTixl onwards is illustrated 
 from Q, comp. xii. 5, xxxvi. 6, xlvi. 6. When this happened 
 Laban had gone sheep-shearing, which, as must be inferred 
 from ver. 27, was then as later (xxxviii. 12 sq., 2 Sam. 
 xiii. 23 sq.) celebrated as a rustic festival, and would with such 
 large flocks as Laban's last above a week. Eachel made use 
 of her father's absence to steal his CS'J'ii (a Pluraletantum like 
 penates, sometimes an actual plural as here, comp. xxxv. 2, some- 
 times an intensive one, as at 1 Sam. xix. 13, like ^''P^, ^y^} : 
 the tutelary gods or god of his house, properly dispenser of 
 
 prosperity, from tiin, uJ J, uJ.-aj" to be opulent, to live well, 
 
GENESIS XXXI. 22-25. 101 
 
 whence ^y, prosperity, superfluity, as the Penates have their 
 
 name from the jJcnus, the domestic store-chambers, as protect- 
 ing and filling them).^ Eachel, like iEneas, took the teraphim 
 penatigcr (Ovid, Md. xv. 450) with her, but in an unlawful 
 manner, not for the purpose of withdrawing her father from 
 these idols (Ephrem and others), but to take with her the fortune 
 of the house. For Laban was, as he is called xxxi. 20 and also 
 elsewhere in E and Q, "'ts'l^f, and therefore, as thus hinted, if not 
 wholly, still half a heathen. The verb 23J with :h, or just the 
 Ace. of the person, ver. 27, means, like Kkiineiv voov and 
 KKeineiv tlvo,, to deprive any one of the knowledge of anything, 
 to delude him ; the original meaning of 3:j is to bring 
 aside, which acquires the more special meaning of removing 
 (purloining), or also, as at 2 Sam. xv. 6, of tempting. Jacob 
 deceived Laban in that (fjj?, Samar. ny) he did not tell him 
 beforehand that he was about to depart (v? with the verh. fin. 
 as at Job xli. 18, Hos. viii. 7, ix. 16, Chcthih Isa. xiv. 6 ; Ew. 
 § 322a); he let nothing be perceived, for he intended to 
 depart secretly {clam se suhchcdurus erat, for D13 properly 
 means to flee, mn, on the contrary, to depart, to withdraw). 
 So Jacob with all that was his passed over the river (which 
 can only mean the Euphrates), and thence proceeded in the 
 direction of the mountains of Gilead. Pursuit, warning and 
 overtaking, vv. 22—25: And it was told Laban on the third 
 day that Jacob had departed. And he took his hrcthren with 
 him and pursued after him seven days' journey, and overtook him 
 in the mountain of Gilead. And Elohim came to Laban the 
 Aramaean in a dream at night, and said to him : Take heed that 
 thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad. And Lahan came 
 up with Jacob ; and Jacob had pitched his tent in the mountain, 
 and Laban with his brethren pitched in the mountain of 
 
 ^ Ad. Neubauer in The Acxidemy, 1S86, Xo. 756, conjectures a connection 
 between D'*XS"1 ^md D'Qin ; but the teraphim do not appear to be adored manes 
 (ancestral sjiirits), and the existent verbal stem fjlD excludes the deri\'ation 
 from nS")- 
 
192 GENESIS XXXI. 26-30. 
 
 Git ad. The point of departure was according to all informants 
 Plaran. If Gilead could not be thence reached in a seven 
 days' march, and not by a nomad with his flocks in from ten 
 to twelve, E and J must bear the responsibility ; the conjecture 
 that E placed Laban's dwelling nearer to Gilead (Dillm.) being 
 unjustified. Since however 23& ('iJl P?1!1) belongs in all 
 probability to E and ver. 25 ('lil iti^'l) to J, the conjecture is 
 suggested that there was in the text of / a more particular 
 designation of Jacob's halting-place than li^s, which was left 
 out by B because of 23& (Dillm,). The mountain chain of 
 Gilead is divided into a northern and southern half, separated 
 by the ravine of the Jabbok. The meeting took place before 
 the subsequent passage of the Jabbok by Jacob, hence some- 
 where in the hill country 'Aglun between the Jarmuk and 
 the Jabbok. The kindred of Laban are called his brethren, as 
 e.g. 2 Sam. xix. 13. Laban is directed to behave to Jacob in 
 an entirely passive manner, i.e. not to meet him in a hostile 
 spirit. What now follows is not meant to be regarded as 
 a transgression of the Divine admonition on the part of 
 Laban. 
 
 The eloquent reproof, vv. 26-30, is limited to bitter 
 reproaches, in which paternal affection and hypocrisy are 
 intermingled : Then Lahan said to Jacob : What hast thou 
 done ? that thou hast stolen my heart and carried away my 
 daughters as captives of the sword. Why didst thou depart so 
 secretly and deceive mc and hast told me nothing, so I might have 
 sent thee away luith mirth and with songs, ivith tdbrct and with 
 harp, and hast not let me kiss my sons and my daughters — 
 thus hast thou done foolishly. It was in my power to do thee ho.rm, 
 hut the God of your father spake to me in the past night saying : 
 Take heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or ill. And now 
 thou wentest forth tcneontrollably because thou sorely longest for thy 
 father's house — why hast thou stolen my gods ? The apodosis 
 to ')> i;iian-xSi logically begins with ^n^-t^'si. 2 7b. The LXX. 
 apparently read v\ kuI el, but comp. a similar apodosis after 
 
GENESIS XXXI. 31-35. 193 
 
 i6 at Vs. Iv. 13, Job ix. 32 sq., xxxii. 22. On 'i:i ^"^V*?, 
 comp. 1 Sam. xviii. 6 and LXX. 2 Sam. vi. 5. ^'^'^">y or 
 even the inf. ahs. i^'i? might (according to the beginning of 
 ver. 27) follow i^'^r'??? ; we find however the inf. cunstr. 
 without ? (Ges. § 131. 4, note 2), which in E is written 
 also 1. 20 and even with a suffix Ex. xviii. 18 y"V (comp. 
 nx"i xlviii. 11). b^ in the phrase: it is, or: it is not '''T^ ^^??, 
 means power (from hx, whence also n^ip^x Ps. xxii. 20), pro- 
 perly the powerful matter, or (since 7^?, Assyr. ilu, seems to 
 have only a tone-long e and originally a short i) perhaps reach, 
 especially reach of power (according to Lagarde, from n?s, like 
 t2p from HDD). He could avenge himself, but " the God of 
 your father," he says, i.e. the God of Isaac, who is now the 
 head of the family to Jacob's wives also, warned me ^'^^ in 
 the preceding night ; we already read this word conceived of 
 adverbially as an Ace. xix. 34 (where see), and it occurs again 
 only here in ver. 42 and Job xxx. 3, 2 Kings ix. 26, while 
 the Assyr. freely uses musu (plur. muMti), late evening, night, 
 as a noun. The strengthening inf. intcns. "^^^ and ^|C33 (to long 
 for, here : to long back, as in the Bedouin c-i*-^, DMZ. xxii. 
 158) are psychologically significant. The n^l'i. looks towards 
 the inquiring n^7 ; we should say, transposing the sentence: 
 now then, why, if sore home -sickness irresistibly impelled 
 thee, hast thou stolen my gods ? Jacob's excuse and pro- 
 test, vv. 31, 32 : Then Jacob answered and said: Because I 
 was afraid; for I thovght, lest tlwu sliculdst perhaps even rob 
 from me thy daughters. With ivhom thou shalt find thy gods, 
 he shall not live ; in the i^rcsenee of our brethren, look strictly 
 to what is found with me and taJce it to thee ! — Jacob knew not 
 that Eachel had stolen them. Instead of i^V " ' "i.^'^f (xliv. 9 sq.), is 
 apud quern, we here read ^^"Ni DJ?, apud quern (is vivere desinat). 
 n^ni has rightly scgolta ; for li'^nx ^J3 refers not to the execution, 
 but to the inspection, which is to be made before the eyes 
 of all the persons belonging to them both. Eachel's stratagem 
 prevents the discovery of her theft, vv. 33-35: Then Laban 
 VOL. II. N 
 
194 GENESIS XXXI. 36-42. 
 
 ivent into Jacob's tent and into Lcalis tent and into the tent of 
 the two handmaids and found nothing, and having come out of 
 Leah's tent he went into EachcVs tent. Now Eachcl had taken 
 the teraphim and put them into the saddle of the camel and was 
 sitting upon them, and Zahan felt about all the tent and found 
 nothing. And she said to her father : Let not my lord he 
 angry that L cannot rise up before thee, for it is with me 
 according to the tnanncr of ivomen — so he sought hut found not 
 the tera2')him. Thus Eachel, whose turn came next to Leah, 
 and with whom the narrative now tarries longer (the hand- 
 maids being here, where the historic course of Genesis is 
 reflected in parvo, despatched extra ordinem), was able to 
 deceive her father, by putting the teraphim into the saddle 
 of the camel and then sitting upon it. On ninox, plur, 
 of n^x^ see on xx. 17. The saddle is called "i? from its 
 (basket -shaped) roundness. Luther, misunderstanding the 
 stramenta of Jerome (after (Tdy^aTa of the LXX.), translates 
 die strew der Kamcl. She excuses herself from rising before 
 her father (''.^Sp, like Lev. xix. 32) because of her condition. 
 The stratagem w^as cunningly devised, for even though Laban 
 might not have esteemed it unclean and unfitting to touch 
 the seat on which she sat (see Lev. xv. 22), how could he 
 have thought it possible that a woman in her circumstances 
 should be sitting upon his gods ! Thus Laban stands dis- 
 comfited, and the right of casting reproach is all at once 
 transferred to Jacob, who upbraids him with the injustice 
 of this hostile pursuit, and with all the faithful, unselfish and 
 hard service which he has rendered him, vv. 36-42 : TJien 
 Jacob icas angry and chode with Laban ; Jacob ansivcred and 
 said to Laban : TVliat is my offence, what is my sin, that thou 
 hast pursued after me ? Thou hast felt about all my stuff, 
 ivhat hast thou found of cdl thy household stiff? Set it here 
 in the presence of thy and of my brethren, let them judge between 
 us two. Jn the twenty years that L have been loith thee, thy 
 ewes and thy she-goats have not cast their young, and the rams 
 
GENESIS XXXI. 3G-42. 195 
 
 of thy floch have I not eaten. That icliich ivas torn I Irovyht 
 not home to thee, I myself replaced it, of my hand thou didst 
 require it, that which ivas stolen by day and stolen hy niyhf. 
 Where I ivas hy day, the heat consiimed me and the frost by 
 night, and sleep fled from my eyes. Twenty years have I spent 
 in thine house ; fourteen years I served thee for thy two danyhters 
 and six years for thy flock, and ten times least thou changed my 
 hire. Unless the God of my father, the God of Abraham and 
 the fear of Isaac, had been for me, surely then thou ivoiddest 
 have sent me away empty — my affliction and the labour of my 
 hands hath Elohim seen and decided yesternight. In ver. 36 
 ^nxtsn np is to be written with Pathach before n, as at Job 
 xxi. 21. The phrase ''ins \>T\ to pursue violently, is repeated 
 1 Sam. xvii. 53. That the mother sheep did not drop their 
 lambs (miscarry ^"^^ 38«), shows that he had treated them 
 gently (comp. xxxiii. 13), and that God had blessed his care- 
 fulness. In ver. 39 ^^tsn, LXX. airoTivvveiv, has the same 
 meaning as D?^ Ex. xxii. 12; "^Stsns for ^sstans is formed as 
 from ntpn=Kt3n The twice repeated ''T^^}} has the connective 
 i, which here as everywhere, with the exception of Lam. i. 1, 
 Hos. X. 11, has the tone on the idt. ; the T ought to stand 
 at n^Lins, for nrj'pan '•T'O points onward to what was lost and 
 Jacob had to answer for. The verb 1"!^ (related to n^j iv. 12) 
 appears only here, ver. 40, in the Pentateuch. "My sleep" 
 '•njc' is that which is fitting and should be allowed me 
 (Isa. xxi. 4). According to the statement of time in ver. 41, 
 the birtlis of Jacob's eleven sons, with that of Dinah and 
 certain other daughters, takes place in the last 7 + 6 years of 
 his Aramrean sojourn, see above xxx. 24. The speech of Jacob 
 has, by reason of the strong emotion and self-conscious eleva- 
 tion expressed therein, both rhythmic movement and poetic 
 form. Its truth, and especially its close, cuts Laban to the 
 heart, ^n? fear is here equal to the object of fear (o-e/Sa<? = 
 a-e^aafia). '^^^"''3 with the praet. begins the apodosis of a 
 hypothetical prodosis referring to the past, as at Num. xxii. 
 
196 GENESIS XXXI. 43-48. 
 
 29, 33, 1 Sam. xiv. 30, comp. ^3 1 Sam. xxv. 34, 2 Sam. ii. 27. 
 Laban disarmed offers reconciliation and to enter into an agree- 
 ment, vv. 43, 44: Then Lciban answered and said to Jacob: 
 The daughters are my daughters and the children are my children, 
 and the floclcs my fiochs, and all that thou seest is mine ; hut 
 for my daughters, — what shall I this day do, or for their 
 children whom tJicy have home ? Come then, we will make a 
 covenant, I and thou, and it shall he for a witness hetween me 
 and thee. The subject to n^i^l cannot be JT'-ia, which is fern., 
 but a neuter, " it," viz. the present occurrence. Jacob incor- 
 porates and fixes this IV in a monumental form, ver. 45 : Then 
 Jacob tooh a stone and set it up for a memorial 'pillar. Thus 
 it stood in E, but now J" is further added to E, vv. 46-48: 
 And Jacob said to his brethren : Gather stones ; and they tooh 
 stones and made a heap, and ale there upon the heap. Laban 
 called it Jegar sahadutha, and Jacob called it Gated. And 
 iMban said : This heap is loitncss between me and thee this day, 
 therefore he ccdled its name Gated. The heap served, as is 
 summarily remarked beforehand 4G& (comp. the anticipations 
 xxvii. 33, xxviii. 5), as a table for a common covenant repast 
 (comp. xxvi. 30), and is called by Laban xnnnb> ir (which is 
 both East and West Aramaic), by Jacob "tV^a, the heap of 
 witness. These are the only two DiJnn n"'-im in the Thorah, as 
 the tractate Sofrim i. 1 expresses it. In the Jerus. Talmud 
 {Sota vii. 2) and elsewhere this language is called ''DilD, o-vpia-ri 
 
 {DMZ. xxv. 128 sq.). The verbs ^^^> l^p^ j^^ and n^y have 
 
 •the fundamental meaning of making firm, the verb "^T. that of 
 heaping together, t).^? that of rolling. Thus the appellations 
 are pretty nearly identical. It was formerly inferred (Bochart, 
 Huet, le Clerc, Astruc and others) from this passage that 
 Abraham brought with him from Ur Casdim the Aramaic 
 language and exchanged it in Canaan for the ;y3D nsb* (Isa. xix. 
 18). The case, on the contrary, is that the Terahites, who 
 remained in Mesopotamia, there became acquainted, during the 
 
GENESIS XXXI. 49. 107 
 
 1 80 years which elapsed from between Abraham's migration into 
 Canaan and this occurrence on the mountain of Gilead, with 
 the Aramaic speech of the country, but that in the family of 
 Terah the Babylonio- Assyrian, which differed less than the 
 Aramaic from the tongue of the Canaanites who had migrated 
 tlience (from the Erythraean Sea), was spoken. Hence a 
 change of language cannot be spoken of in the same manner 
 in the case of Abraham as in that of his kindred in Haran 
 (Konig, Lchrgd). § 4. 2), — In 48& the style betokens the hand 
 of J ; the same formula xi. 9, xix. 22, xxv. 30 (.xxix. 34, where 
 however the reading may be "^^"IP), shows that ^1?^ is to be 
 understood with the most general subject (they called), and at 
 the same time indicates that ver. 47, where Jacob is said to 
 have given the name, was written by another hand, viz. E. 
 That we have here materials offered by different sources 
 worked up together, is also shown by the connection, ver. 49, 
 not fitting in with what preceded: And Mispah, for lie said : 
 May Jahveh v:atch between me and thcc, tchcn we are out of sUjld 
 of one another, nsyipni has no other connection than with the 
 preceding : therefore he called the heap of stones "iVc?, and 
 this place of the meeting of Jacob and Laban was called nsvjon, 
 because (itJ'^, as at xxx. 18, Deut. iii. 24) he (Laban) said — 
 the words of Laban are taken from his speech in J, and n£V»m 
 "tox "ir'S seems to be an addition by R. The well-known 
 Mizpah in the mountains of Gilead, the residence of Jeplitha 
 (Judg. xi. 34), the subsequent Gadite city of refuge, cannot 
 here be intended, for the Mizpah in question lay in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Jabbok (see Miihlau under Mizpah-Mizpeh 
 in Riehm's HW.), which Jacob did not pass over till after the 
 reconciliation with Laban. The Samar. reads nT^'^rni (in the 
 Samar. Targ. nnf^vpi), which Wellh. turns to account for the 
 analysis of sources ; but the explanation 'iJi iros iD'N* and nsvcm 
 are surely derived from the same hand, and nnVDni cannot 
 be equivalent with ns^iVrm, these words having different verbal 
 stems and expressing different notions. The exclamation 
 
198 GENESIS XXXI. 50-53. 
 
 of Laban '1J1 ^T., with which iv. 14 can hardly be compared, 
 because dissimilar, is continued, ver. 50, in words from H: 
 If thou sJialt ill-use my daughters, and if thou shalt take wives 
 beside my daughters, it is not a man that is ivith us — hehold, 
 Mohim is witness lietivecn me and thee. In order not to be 
 betrayed into a false analysis, it must be observed that the 
 covenant obligation, which Laban here imposes upon Jacob, is 
 a different one from that in ver. 51 sq. Here the only matter 
 is that Jacob shall be a faithful and considerate husband to 
 Laban's daughters. With regard to the Divine names in ver. 
 49 sq., they testify to both J and E. The appeal to God, as 
 surety of the covenant, does not come into collision with the 
 memorial of the covenant. Another covenant obligation, 
 whose acceptance the memorial is to recall to future ages, 
 consists in this, that the boundary of which it is the mark is 
 not to be passed with hostile intention, 51— 53a; And Lahan 
 said unto Jacob : Behold this heap of stones and hehold this 
 pillar, ivhich I have set wj) hctivcen one and thee. Let this heap 
 he witness, and let this pillar he witness: neither will I pass over 
 this heap unto thee, neither shalt thou pass over this heap nor 
 this pillar unto me, for ill. The God of Abraham and the God 
 of Nahor judge between us, the God of their father ! The 
 express threefold juxtaposition of the two monuments looks 
 like the comprising together of two accounts, in one of which 
 the nnvjD and in the other the bi was prominent. ''?K"DS — 
 nns'DX answer to the correlative sive . . . sive, as a.t Ex. xix. 13; 
 the DX of the oath is not intended, for n^ dx is an affirmative 
 oath. "'J?''")^ is to be understood according to Job xxxviii. 6 
 and 'i"'^. in the name of Jerusalem. The D^"'?^? '''?y^ coming in 
 afterwards in a supplementary manner, and hence as a later 
 addition, is not meant to signify " the gods of their father," 
 but, on the contrary, makes the God of Terah, as a higher unity 
 and as a bond of union between the two parties, predominant 
 to the God of Abraham and Nahor. Jacob however does not 
 enter into this syncretistic view of Laban, ver. 536; Then 
 
GENESIS XXXI. 54-XXXII. 1. 199 
 
 Jacob swore hy the fear of his father Isaac. He swears l»y tlie 
 God reverently adored by his father. The narrator, as at ver. 42, 
 is E. What was anticipatively related from J, ver. 46, now 
 follows in the more detailed form in which it is found in E, 
 ver. 54 : And Jacob offered, a sacrifice upon the mountain and 
 called his brethren to eat bread, and they ate bread and remained 
 all night in the mountain. This was the covenant-repast as at 
 xxvi. 30, where however we are not told, as here and xlvi. 1, 
 that there was an offering of the flesh. Elsewhere on the 
 contrary we meet indeed with altars in the patriarchal history, 
 but, except in the sacrifice at Moriah, without mention of 
 sacrifices offered thereon. Kext morning a peaceful departure 
 takes place, xxxii. 1 : Early in the morning Laban rose up and 
 kissed his S071S and daughters and blessed them, and Laban 
 returned to his ^j?«cc. Though lb sounds like xviii. 33 (but 
 comp. also Num. xxiv. 25), the account of E still continues. 
 Laban in caressing his children does what, according to xxxi. 
 28, he had desired to do. 
 
 THE ANGELIC VISION, THE NIGHT AT PENIEL, AND THE UNEX- 
 PECTEDLY KIND BEHAVIOUIi OF ESAU, XXXII. 2-XXXIII. 17. 
 
 The third section of the Toledoth of Isaac, derived from E 
 and J, begins with xxxii. 2. A narrative portion from J 
 closes with |/J1 xxxii. 14rt, and one from E with i^ N^'ii xxxii. 
 22&. "What was first related in the words of J is repeated 
 ver. 23 sq. in the words of E, to whom we are indebted for 
 the narrative of the conflict at the Jabbok. The Divine name 
 cn^K however appears both at xxxii 29 (where the subject 
 gives occasion for it) and at xxxiii. 5, 11 in a Jahvistic con- 
 text (comp. e.g. also xxviii. 21), it is of itself no decisive criterion 
 against J, to Vv^hom Wellh. ascribes vv. 23-33. Driver also 
 {Critical Notes, 1887, p. 41) thinks it probable that 24-32 is 
 derived from J. So too Kuenen, to whom the history of 
 Jacob's conflict at Jabbok seems to bear the stamp of the " pre- 
 
200 GENESIS XXXII. 2-6. 
 
 prophetic" traditions of the Hexateuch {Einl. § 13, note 23). 
 It is evident that the answer to the question, whether J or Q 
 is the narrator, remains an uncertain and purely subjective one. 
 The connection of the family, to whom the promise is given, 
 with Paddan Aram is thus peacefully dissolved, and the pro- 
 gress of the sacred history, turned quite away from this its 
 mother country, advances henceforth towards Egypt, where 
 the family was to grow into a nation. Accompanied by the 
 blessing of Laban, Jacob continues his journey, vv. 2, 3 : 
 And Jacob ivcnt on Ids way and angels of Eloliim met him, and 
 Jacob said ivlien he saio them : This is God's host, and he ccdled 
 the name of that place Mahanaim. Angels of God, in whom 
 he recognises a host of God given him as an escort, meet 
 him (comp. 1 Chron. xii. 22), and he names the place after the 
 angelic host added to his own, or perhaps after the protectors 
 of his previous and future journeys, Q.'^n^ (two camps) — the 
 name of a subsequent Levite city, in the territory of the 
 tribe of Gad, north of the Jabbok. Here, according to a 
 statement of Estori ha - Parchi, recently confirmed by Eli 
 Smith, is still found between Jabbok and Jarmuch ("iliDii 
 by Talmudic and Arabic corruption from 'lepofxa^), upon a 
 mountain terrace above the two- branched Wadi Jabes, a 
 place called (iut:^.^! Mahne. Hitzig and Kneucker place Maha- 
 naim farther northwards in the Jordan valley, where the 
 Jarmuch flows into the Jordan, but where not a trace of the 
 ancient name is to be found. The name D;nD is inscribed 
 upon the Karnak tablet of the march of Shishak ; the termina- 
 tion ajbn might, as in Dw"n^ and the like (comp. Kohler, 
 Gesch. ii. 176), be a diphthongally formed am (Wellh.), but 
 the name is in the Bible always written D^l^no, and the Dual 
 represents more aptly than the singular, the meaning and aim 
 of what is related. Jacob's message to Esau, vv. 4-6 : And 
 Jacob sent messengers before him. to his brother Esau, to the land 
 of Seir, the field of Edom. And he commanded them saying : 
 Speak thus to my lord, to Esau : Thus saith thy servant Jacob : 
 
GENESIS XXXII. 7-0. 201 
 
 / have sojourned vnth Laban and stayed till note, and I have 
 oxen and asses, Jloclcs and men-servants and maid- servants, and 
 I have sent to tell my lord, to find grace in thy sight. Esau 
 then was already dwelling in "lU'^f* )">N*, though its final occu- 
 pation and possession, related xxxvi. G— 8 from Q, and accord- 
 ing to which it is here anticipatively called CHS nnb (comp. 
 xxxvi. 6), did not take place till afterwards. A third name 
 of the country in Targ. Jer. and Saniar. is rhii ps the 
 Gebalene (Gcldl = mountains), jr.rpsn is in the favourite 
 imp/, energicum of the Jahvistico-Deuteronomic style. The 
 imperfect form "inx (^'T'^lif;^) is syncopated like 3ns Prov. 
 viii. 17. The historical tense nnp'j'si (as at Ezra viii. 16, Neh. 
 vi. 3, 8) has the intensive ah>, which enhances the vividness of 
 the notion of the verb and occurs four times in the Pentateuch, 
 .Ges. § xlix. 2 ; Driver, § 72. nit^ used here collectively, and 
 whose plural occurs but once, Hos. xii. 12, is without example 
 elsewhere. Eeport of the messengers and Jacob's pre- 
 cautionary measures, vv. 7-9 : Tlie messengers returned to 
 Jacob saying : We came to thy brother to Esau, and he also is 
 cojning to meet thee, and four hundred men with him. Then 
 Jacob was greatly afraid and was distressed, and he divided 
 the people that was with him and the fiocl's and the herds 
 and the camels, into two companies, and said: If Esau 
 comes to the one company and smites it, then the comj^any that 
 is left will escape. The circumstance that Esau has such a 
 host for offence and defence, is explained by his having to 
 maintain himself in Mount Seir, upon which he has set his 
 mind, against the not yet subjugated and supplanted Horite 
 aborigines. The reader is left as much in the dark as to 
 Esau's purpose and disposition, as Jacob was. This advance, 
 which caused Jacob so much fear, did not manifest any change 
 of mind since xxvii. 41. The angelic manifestation at IMaha- 
 nain still hovers before him, but the threatening reality is 
 again encamped between him and this consolatory picture. 
 Preparing for the worst, he divides his people and flocks into 
 
202 GENESIS XXXII. 10-14. 
 
 two companies, that if Esau slioiild smite the one (p^^"^ first 
 fern, as at Ps. xxvii. 3, then mas. as at Zech. xiv. 15) the 
 other i"'9^-^7'^j *'-^- to an escape, i.e. will be an escaped and 
 preserved one. Nothing indicates a reference by this divi- 
 sion to the Dual D)3no (Dillm.). Jacob does not however 
 rest satisfied with this prudent arrangement, but by believing 
 prayer grasps through the dark future the promise of God, 
 vv. 10-13 : And Jacob said: God of my father Ahraham and 
 God of my father Isaac, Jahveh, who saidst unto me : Return to 
 thy country and to thy home and Iioill do thee good — I am less 
 than all the favours and all the truth ichich Thou hast showed 
 to Thy servant, for with my staff passed I over this Jordan, and 
 now I am become two companies. Deliver me from the hand of 
 my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, lest he come 
 and smite me, the mother vnth tJie children. And Thou didst 
 say : I will surely do thee good and will maJce thy seed like the 
 sand of the sea, ivhich cannot be numbered for multitude. The 
 comparative p of ?3? '"^^'^r^ ver. 11, denoting distance, does not 
 refer to incapacity of requital, but to unworthiness of reception. 
 The ncn is in Dnon (only here in the Pent.) resolved into its 
 manifestations ; ntDX (the faithfulness or truth which keeps its 
 promises) did not admit of such a plural. " The mother 
 with the children" is, as at Hos. x. 14, a proverbial expres- 
 sion in accordance with Deut. xxii. 6 (^y, as at Ex. xxxv. 22, 
 comp. on Ps. xvi. 2). The prayer is of one cast, Tuch thinks 
 it unsuitable in the narrator, to make Jacob call upon God to 
 keep His word. But to keep to His word the God who keeps 
 His word, is the way of all true prayer. Upon what else can 
 Jacob rely but upon the promise of God, and how else can he 
 do so but by praying ? With such prayer did Jacob chase 
 away his fear, lAa : And he lodged there that night. There, 
 viz. where he had received the message and undertaken the 
 division into two companies. Since no C^V'!!! follows, what is 
 further related must be thought of as taking place during the 
 night season, and this is also confirmed by ver, 23. What 
 
GENESIS XXXII. U-22. 203 
 
 lies between 14a and 1'2h appears to be from E, but the 
 analysis is not certain and is moreover unimportant. Pre- 
 parations for appeasing Esau, 14&-22 : And he took of what 
 he had in his possession a present for Esau his brother. Two 
 hundred she-goats and twenty M-goats, two hundred ewes and 
 tvjenty rams, thirty milch camels with their foals, thirty cows 
 and ten hulls, twenty she-asscs and ten foals, and delivered it into 
 the hand of his servants in single separate droves, and said to his 
 servants : Pass over before me and leave a space between drove and 
 drove. And he commanded the first, saying : When Esau my 
 hrothcr mectcth thee and asJccth thee, saying : TVhose art thou 
 and whither goest thou, and to whom do these before thee belong ? 
 Then say : To thy servant Jacob, it is a present sent to my lord 
 Esau, and behold he also is himself behind ^(s. And he com- 
 manded also the second, also the third, also all who followed the 
 droves, saying: Just so shall ye speak to Esau, when ye meet 
 him. And ye shall say : Also behold thy servant Jacob is 
 behind us ; for he thought : I will apipcase his face by the 
 present, that goes before me, and afterwards see his face, perhaps 
 he ivill accept my face. So the present ivcnt over before him, 
 while he passed that night in the company. " What had come 
 to his hand " is to be explained according to it- |xv the flock 
 of his possession, Ps. xcv. 7. The proportion of ten to one in 
 the selection of male and female animals is like 2 Chron, 
 xvii. 11; comp. Varro, c/c re rust. ii. 3. The abbreviation 
 n^yV] (for C'^^yi) is like ivf? Job iv. 2. The verb t^js 18a 
 (a syn. of vjd) only occurs again in the Pent, at xxxiii. 8, Ex. 
 
 iv. 24, 27; in T^j^l 18b from t^^p^ a secondary form of t^'aa^ 
 
 1 Sam. xxv. 20, the close of the first syllable is dissolved, 
 comp. Cant. viii. 2, where Ben-Aslier reads 1^]}}^ and Ben- 
 Naphtali ^p'!^??. In like manner is C3X|^'b3 modified from 
 D3XyD3, the original combination of syllables being dissolved. 
 The verb 1S3, i^iXaaKeaOai, which, when the sinner is spoken 
 of in relation to God, never has God or His wrath as its 
 
204 GENESIS XXXII, 23-26. 
 
 object (see the ground of the exposition in the Comm. on Heb. 
 ii. 17), has here 21h the accus. of the person offended, and at 
 Prov. xvi. 14 the accusative of the wrath. The Saniar. 
 Targum here translates ''SD'X and vi. 14 ''ac'm, and hence 
 assumes both here and there a like original meaning for 
 -iD3. To accept the face of any one 21& (comp. xix. 21) is 
 equivalent to favouring his person and interests, receiving 
 him favourably. The night of 226 is the same as that of 
 14a. That extracts from different sources are discharged into 
 these statements is apparent from vv. 2.3, 24, where the two 
 sources are seen flowing side by side : A^id he arose up in that 
 night and took his two vnves and his two handmaids and his 
 eleven children, and passed over the ford of Jaliboh. And he 
 took them and hrourjht them over the stream, and Irought over 
 what hclonged to him. On Kin rhhl " in that night," comp. 
 xix. 33, XXX. 16. Instead of i?"^C'^<"n^« the Samar. has 
 1^ "iC'K b'2 riN, which is involuntarily substituted for the 
 pregnant briefer expression. Though 1'"ip\ not VJZi^ is used, 
 Dinah is left unnoticed. The Jabbok is not the Jarmuch 
 (Ew.), nor mentioned by mistake in its stead (Hitz.), but (if 
 we take 'Gebel-Aglun as the place of the meeting with Laban) 
 the eastern affluent of the Jordan (now called ez-Zerkd on 
 account of its clear blue waters), into which it flows about 1^ 
 leagues south-west of the place where it issues from the 
 mountains. The Syrian caravan road leads to the ford of its 
 upper course ; traces of ancient buildings project half-hidden 
 from the rushes and thickets of oleander ; the district and the 
 region about the banks of the ford testify that ancient 
 civilisation was there active. 
 
 When Jacob was now again alone on the northern bank, 
 he had to undergo a long and difficult conflict, ver. 25 : And 
 Jacob remained hchind alone, and a man wrestled with him till 
 the break of day. What is here related, ver. 2 5 sqq., gave, 
 in the opinion of the narrator, its name to the stream, for it is 
 surely intentionally that he uses the Niph. P^xp, not elsewhere 
 
GENESIS XXXII. 2r,-29. 205 
 
 occurring (from pia radically related to p2n to hold fast to, to 
 close with one another), hardly a denominative, from p^^ dust: 
 to make oneself dusty (LXX eTToKaiev, comp. TraX.?; ^= pollen, 
 imlvis, o-vyKoviovadai), Hence P'^l is not in his mind equivalent 
 to p'y, from Pi?3 cvacnans aquas, but to P^^,!, according to the kind 
 of syncope in «a^^ Job xxxv. 11, ^ij^i 2 Sam. xxii. 40. Tlie 
 Samar. has in the Heb. text pnn"'l, in the Targ. C'CJNI : he 
 effected contact, i.e. a violent struggling embrace {ApJicl of 
 C't^J contrcdare, no denominative from cmj clod. Job vii. 5, as 
 Ges. in the Thesaurus assumes). Straining of the hip of him 
 vi^ho was not to be prevailed against, ver. 26: And when he 
 saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the socket of 
 his hip ; then was the socket ofJacoVs hip strained, as he wrestled 
 with him. The unnamed sees that lie ^^ ^'^\ ^ (comp. Ps. 
 cxxix. 2), properly, that he is not equal, not superior to him, 
 and he therefore gives him a blow on the socket of the hip, 
 
 so as to strain it (J-'P^!! from PP', «J;j to fall, to fall out, to 
 
 occur, LXX ivdpK7]<7€v, torpuit, from vapKuco, which does not 
 exactly correspond, but rather luxari), the sinew of the hip 
 undergoing during the wrestling so violent a strain, that 
 Jacob was lamed in consequence. Tiie wrestling having 
 lasted long enough, without Jacob being conquered, the 
 unnamed says, 2 7a: Zct me go, for the day hrcahdh. But 
 Jacob, divining and feeling that it is a Divine Being whose 
 attack he has had to sustain, keeps hold of the man and cries 
 out, according to Hos. xii. 5, with tears and supplications, 21h: 
 I loill not let thee go unless thou hless me. Then the marvel- 
 lous Being says to him, ver. 28 ; What is thy name? And he 
 said: Jacob. The question is only preparatory to the com- 
 munication which follows, ver. 29 : Thy name shall no longer he 
 called Jacohy hut Israel ; for thou hast fought u-ith Elohivi and 
 with men, and hast prevailed. Instead of the more usual ^'}<?^, 
 xvii. 5, xxxv. 10, we here read 1p^5^ In ^''V^^. Esau and Laban 
 are thought of. In ^y the Hoi)h. of b"i3 gives the imperfect 
 
206 GENESIS XXXII. 29-33. 
 
 form ^3^J^5, properly, ca;pax f actus es. The verb mb' to contend, 
 
 is connected with the Arabic ^ Ji, I., III., IX. (different from 
 
 the V "IK' to put in a row, se7rre, and it;', Heb. and Babylonio- 
 Assyr. : to rule). Ancient translators all render rmb like the 
 LXX evia'xyaa'i, they did not understand the distinction 
 between the verbs rrw to contend and "i"lK' to rule (comp. ""t^^l 
 Hos. xii. 5 : he fought, from li.ti' = Tr\\i,\ and on the other 
 hand '^'^'^\ Isa. xxxii. 1, they will rule) ; but Luth. correctly: 
 For thou hast fought with God and with men. After this 
 oracular saying, Jacob, on his part, also desires to know the 
 name of the wondrous and, as he now the more certainly 
 knows, Divine Being, with whom he has to do, vv. 29, 30 : 
 Thp.n Jacob asked and said : Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. 
 And he said : Wherefore askcst thou after my name ? He gives 
 no answer, and yet answers : And he blessed him there. It is 
 the same mn'' isb^ who replies to the same question from 
 Manoah, Judg. xiii. 18 : Wherefore askest thou after my 
 name, which is Wonderful (ys N^n^) ? His name is not cpm- 
 prehensible for mortals, but the fact of blessing tells Jacob 
 plainly enough Who is before him, viz. the Almighty Himself 
 in His is^D. His blessing has shed light upon the darkness 
 of Jacob's soul. It was night there, but light appeared during 
 the conflict, and now it is full bright day within and without, 
 ver. 31 : Then Jacob called the name of ihejjlace Pemel ; for " / 
 have seen Elohirn face to face, and my life was preserved." The 
 name ??;?''?3 (or ^^'^'^^ with the connective sound H, like 1^3^ inp) 
 means, as the LXX translates it, elho<i ©eov. He has seen 
 God and yet (contrary to the rule, Ex. xxxiii. 2 0) is preserved ; 
 the impf. consec. here denotes a result contrary to expectation, 
 as at xix. 9, xlix. 24; Driver, § 74/3. When Jacob now goes 
 farther southwards with his family, ver. 32 : The sun rose upon 
 him, as he ivent over Penuel, and he halted iipon his hip. A 
 popular custom recalling this circumstance, ver. 33 : Therefore 
 the children of Israel eat not of the sinew of the hip, which is in 
 
GENESIS XXXiri. 1-3. 207 
 
 the socket of the hip, because he touched it. Even here the suhj. 
 continues unnamed, as a mystery not to be unveiled. This 
 
 sinew (jiervios ischiadicus) lias the name nL*'3n Ti^ \^j]\ is., 
 
 as the torpifying or paralysing one, i.e. the one which causes 
 such a condition, whether momentarily or permanently (see 
 
 Ges. Thes.y. 921&); the Arab. 1*a*j, which. of itself already 
 means the nerve of the hip, shows that ni:,':n is r/cn. appositionis. 
 The straining, stretching, or crushing of this nerve would result 
 in paralysis. The ntoTiB' (an allusion to ritual slaughter) under- 
 stands by it the internal sinew of the so-called hindquarter, 
 including the external, and the ramifications of both. 
 
 The meeting of the brothers now follows, xxx. 1-16. 
 Esau approaches, and Jacob prepares for the worst, vv. 1—3 : 
 And Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold Esau came, 
 and with him four hundred men. And he divided the children 
 unto Leah and Rachel and unto the two handmaids. And he 
 placed the handmaids and their children foremost, and Leah 
 and her children behind, and Rachel and Joseph last. And 
 he himself went before them and bowed himself seven times to 
 the earth, till he came near to his brother. The verb nvn to 
 divide, had at xxxii. 18 the meaning of separating, here 16 of 
 sharing ; he shared the children to their mothers, so that in 
 the long train, the handmaids with their children went first, 
 then followed Leah with hers, while Eachel with her only child 
 Joseph closed the procession. Thus at the passage of the 
 Jabbok he reunited the divided companies, and still so mis- 
 trusted Esau, as to place the members of his family at a 
 distance from him, proportioned to the degree of responsibility 
 in which he stands to them ; nor has he really any reason for 
 not mistrusting him, and at all events nothing can release him 
 from the care for their safety, which his family have a right to 
 expect. He puts himself at the head of the train, and on ap- 
 proaching his brother bows reverentially before him seven times. 
 The '^J)n|!)^''?, TrpocTKvv'qai'i, fully performed, took place with 
 
208 GENESIS XXXIII. 4-7. 
 
 nvix D''DX, Gen. xix. 1, comp, 1 Sam. xxv. 23, 2 Sam. i. 2, 
 hence, as is traditionally explained, with D v?"]l D)T, ^^^^S), exten- 
 sion of the hands and feet ; or only suggestively by bending, 
 as one about to prostrate himself (comp. 1 Sam. xx. 41). At 
 all events Jacob meets his brother with such superabundant 
 courtesy, as we nowhere else meet with in sacred history. 
 It was politic but not hypocritical. He had truly sinned 
 against him, and ought to feel ashamed. The external 
 was the expression of the internal self-humiliation which 
 he experienced, in remembering his fault. Esau makes less 
 ceremony, for he has a comparatively better, and none too 
 tender a conscience ; he has let fall his resolve to slay Jacob. 
 The freebooter life awarded him by his father, by which he 
 too may be in his fashion powerful, pleases him. And now 
 that the passion of revenge has spent itself, the brotherly 
 affection, which was never extinct, is rekindled at the sight 
 of Jacob, ver. 4 : Then Esau ran to meet him and embraced him, 
 and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept. The six 
 points over 'I'^i?^'! have the value of a critical o/3eXo9, on which 
 account this word is missing in many MSS. of the LXX. The 
 Midrash however takes them as a mark of interrogation, which 
 casts a doubt on the sincerity of this kissing, and would rather 
 read 'inDti'''1 (he bit him) ; but this is against Esau's character. 
 As all kinds of shadows pass across the piety of the son of 
 promise, so on the other hand is the energetic son of nature 
 capable of noble impulses and emotions. The Divine grace, 
 which ruled in the paternal house, had not been without 
 influence upon him also. He inquires after the women and 
 children in Jacob's retinue, who all salute him with the utmost 
 reverence, vv. 5—7 : And he lifted up Ms eyes and saw the 
 women and the children, and he said : How arc these related to 
 thee ? And he said : They are the children tvhich Elohim has 
 graciously given thy servant. And the handmaids drew nQar, 
 they and their children, and they hoived themselves. And Leah 
 also dreio near and her children, and. they hoived themselves. 
 
GENESIS XXXIII. 8-11. 209 
 
 And last drew near Joseph and Haehel, and they hoived them- 
 selves. Here, as at ver. 11, Jacob calls the God who has so 
 richly blessed him D^"lb^^ and that in the midst of the 
 Jahvistic text ; it almost seems as if he purposely suppressed 
 tlie name which God bears as the God of the history of re- 
 demption. Esau then inquires concerning the company which 
 he had met — he had already heard from the shepherds that 
 it was a present for himself, but this he ignores, vv. 8-11 : 
 Then he said : What meanest thou lij this company tohich I have 
 met ? And he said : That I may find grace in the sight of my 
 lord. Then Esau said: I have abundance, my brother, keep 
 what is thine! But Jacob said: Nay, I pray thee, if I have 
 found favour in tliy sight, receive ony present from my hand, for 
 for this cause have I seen thy face, as the seeing of the face of 
 Elohim, and thou hast received me kindly. Take then, I pray 
 Hhee, my blessing, which is brought to thee, for Elohim has dealt 
 graciously unth me and I have all. And he urged him. Then 
 he took it. In the question 8a, ''P stands by attraction (as at 
 Judg. xiii. 17) for no (xxxii. 28) ; it relates to the now united 
 five droves (xxxii. 15 sq.). Esau declines the present; omit- 
 ting the title of my lord used by Jacob, he says : 2T v"u'\ 
 i.e. not only enough (""."=1), but more than enougli. Jacob 
 however requests its acceptance : ^^^"nx expresses condition 
 with the addition of request, as at xviii. 3, xxx. 27 ; the ex- 
 pression of the request follows in ^'^\h\, according to Ges. 
 § 126, note 1. On I3"br'3 (where '? IS-^PV might be expected) 
 see on xviii. 5, here : because occasion and opportunity were 
 offered me to bring thee a gift of homage, therefore have I 
 seen thy face 0"'?^^ '.^3 ^l^"}?. If Jacob here means to say, 
 that as great a happiness has been bestowed upon him as if 
 he had seen the face of God, this would certainly be " odious 
 humility" (Kn.). But it must be explained in accordance 
 with such passages as 1 Sam. xxix. 9, 2 Sam. xiv. 17. 
 Jacob means to say that elohimish (we should say heavenly) 
 kindness looks upon him from Esau's face, nor could he think 
 VOL. II. 
 
210 GENESIS XXXIII. 12-15. 
 
 otherwise ; for he must have recognised in the disposition of 
 his hrother, thus changed against all expectation, the work of 
 the God who hears prayer and disposes the hearts of men 
 (comp. xxxi. 24 with Ps. xxxiii. 15), and so liave seen in his, 
 a reflection of the Divine kindness. DTi^X and not nin^ was 
 here too in J the Divine name appropriate to the meaning. 
 Dillm. agrees withWellh. that in 10& another meaning of the 
 name i5X''33 is indicated, than that given in E, xxxii. 31. Jacob 
 calls the present expressing his wish for a blessing ""n?")?, my 
 blessing. ^^^^i" is equivalent to nx2^n ; atli = ath, is the 
 
 original feminine termination ; comp. the forms of verbs \!b 
 Deut. xxxi. 29, Isa. vii. 14, Jer. xliv. 33, Ps. cxviii. 23, and 
 
 of verbs nS where it is less frequent. Lev. xxv, 21, xxvi. 34; 
 Ges. § 74, 75, note 1. ''^3n is contracted from "'J^^n, A second 
 reason is added with ''?'!, as at 1 Sam. xix. 4, Isa. Ixv. 16. 
 Esau had said : I have abundance ; Jacob can, in the con- 
 sciousness that Jahveh is his God, without hyperbole outvie 
 him and say : I have all. By thus pressing Esau he induces 
 him to accept the present. Then Esau remembers the onward 
 journey and offers to escort him, but this Jacob declines, 
 vv. 12—15 : Then lie, said : Let its journey and go onwards, and 
 I will go in 2^'>'csence of thee. And he said to him : My lord 
 hnoweth that the children are tender, and the flocks and herds 
 are upon me as giving suck, and if they are overdriven one day, 
 all the sheep will die. Let my lord, I pray thee, go lefore his 
 servant, and I ivill move forwards at my ease according to the 
 pace of the cattle that is hefore me, and according to the pace of 
 the. children until I come to my lord to Seir. Then said Esau : 
 Let me, L pray thee, -place with thee a portion of the people that 
 are ivith me ; hut he said : Wherefore ! Let me find favour in 
 the sight of my lord ! Esau will precede If^p Jacob, so that 
 the latter having him in sight may be sure of protection. But 
 Jacob declines ; he does not yet feel that this would be safe, 
 is the remark of Kn. But could he who wrestled with God 
 
GENESIS XXXIII. IG, 17. 211 
 
 have so soon become again a designer and a coward ? No ; 
 the vocation of which Jacob is conscious, by reason of the 
 blessing of the first-born, obliges him, like Abraham in the 
 presence of the five kings, just now to maintain his indepen- 
 dence in the presence of Esau, and not to involve himself in 
 any fresh obligation to him. Besides, the reasons for whicli 
 he deprecates his escort are no empty pretence, for he does 
 not desire that Esau should accommodate himself to the diffi- 
 culties of his advance, and he is unable to accommodate 
 himself to the warlike pace of Esau and his people, being 
 obliged for the sake of the children and flocks to avoid over- 
 exertion : vV nipy lactantcs (as at Isa, xl.ll, not ladcntcs, because 
 properly sustcntantcs, see on Ps. viii. 3) suijcr me, i.e. make 
 special care incumbent on me, because in the condition of 
 giving suck, and should any one overdrive them {lun for ??/?, 
 as at xxvi. 15 and always), etc., — the usual hypothetical con- 
 struction with the Perf. in both prodosis and apodosis, xlii. 38, 
 xliv. 29, comp. xxxi. 30, Ex. xvi. 21 ; Ges. § 155. 4a. The 
 '? of ''Jpsp and ?yp is that of measure ; "^^spp here means pro- 
 perty = cattle, as perhaps also at 1 Sam. xv. 9, comp. iKCuliiim, 
 peainia, property consisting in cattle. Jacob's destination is 
 Hebron, thence he seems to purpose visiting his brother in 
 Seir : he deceives him by deceiving himself. Esau proposes 
 to leave at least some of his people with him as an escort, but 
 this too Jacob courteously deprecates as unnecessary. They 
 consequently separate and depart in different directions, vv. 
 IC, 17 : Therefore Esau returned on his icay that day to Scir. 
 And J acoh journeyed to Succoth and huilt himself a house and 
 made hooths for his cattle, therefore he called the name of the. 
 'place Suceoth. The uninterrupted prosecution of his journey 
 was not possible to Jacob, his household required forbearance 
 and rest : only necessity makes this trans- Jordauic sojourn 
 comprehensible. Jerome in his Quaestiones on this passage 
 remarks : Soehoth usque hodie civitas trans Jordanem in parte 
 Scythojpokos. There is actually still a place, ci-'^L-, south of 
 
212 GENESIS XXXIII. 16, 17. 
 
 Beisan (=:Bethsean = Scythopolis), "upon a low bluff at the 
 end of the ridge above the Wddi el-Mdlih " (Robinson in DMZ. 
 vii. 1, p. 59). This Succoih lies in parte Scythopoleos, but not 
 trans Jordancm. There must however have been also a Suc- 
 coth on the other side of Jordan, which Jacob, coming from 
 Mesopotamia by ]\Tahanaim and Peniel and crossing over Jordan 
 to Sichem, would pass. Sichem is emphatically called, xxxiii. 1 8, 
 the first Canaanite town, i.e. the first place in the country 
 west of Jordan which he reached. A Succoth situate trans 
 Jordancm is also required: (1) Because a Gadite Succoth is 
 named with Beth - Nimra and other east - Jordanic places, 
 and this must have been, even on this account, on the left 
 bank of Jordan, because the tribe of Gad had no possessions 
 on its western side. (2) Because Gideon, Judg. viii. 4-8, 
 having passed over Jordan, comes to Succoth and thence to 
 Penuel. If then the Succoth, between which and Zarthan 
 Solomon had the temple-vessels cast, lay in the neighbourhood 
 of Scythopolis, 1 Kings iv. 12, upon the western side, so that 
 we must distinguish between an eastern and a western 
 Succoth, both P^V3 Josh. xiii. 27, Ps. Ix. 8, there must 
 beyond all doubt have been one east of Jordan, and this is 
 Jacob's Succoth. Kiepert's maps transpose it close to the 
 left bank of Jordan above the Wadi Jabis ; but then Jacob 
 must have gone northwards and thus have twice passed the 
 Jabbok, which may be admitted, although the narrative does 
 not say so. It is more probable however that this Succoth 
 on the left bank lay between the Jabbok and the high road, 
 which leads from Salt in Gilead to Sichem (Kohler, Gcsch. i. 
 147; Keil, Dillm.). Ver. 17 also bears in the N-Ji? ja-^j; 
 (therefore he called) the mark of J (comp. xi. 9, xvi. 14, xix. 
 22, xxv. 30,1. 11). 
 
 Before proceeding farther, we would once more review the 
 wonderful experiences of Jacob at Mahanaim and Peniel. At 
 Mahauaim, on the threshold of the Land of Promise, is 
 fulfilled to him what he had dreamed at Bethel, when on 
 
GENESIS XXXIII. 16, 17. 213 
 
 the point of lecaving it. What he here experienced, is thus in 
 the mind of the narrator no second dream-vision. The host 
 of God has invisible reality outside himself (a reality made 
 for the moment visible), as indeed already follows from its 
 being appointed to protect him. Are we to judge otherwise 
 concerning the occurrence at Peniel ? It is for the most part 
 transposed, as already by Eusebius (in the Eclogcc proph.), to 
 the sphere of the dream or ecstasy. " A mystic obscurity " — 
 says Krummacher in his Paragrcqjlicn zio dcr licil. Gesch. 1818 
 — " rests upon this appearing, which is with peculiar simplicity 
 represented not as a dream-vision, which it indisputably was, 
 but as an historical event, and as such it may with full justice 
 be esteemed, for does only the material, and that which is an 
 object of sight and touch, belong to history, and is that which 
 can neither be laid hold of nor comprehended excluded from 
 it ? " And Hengstenberg : " In an external conflict and 
 struggle, victory is not obtained by prayer and tears as by 
 Jacob, according to Hos. xii. 4 sq." Umbreit {Studicn u. 
 Kritiken, 1848) passes the final sentence: "If we tr}'- to 
 explain the passage literally, darkness settles upon it, and we 
 see no gleam of light, except the rising sun." Certainly the 
 occurrence here related belongs not to outward and visible 
 history, but to the spiritual life ; but it is not on that account 
 purely subjective. The Being with M'hom he contended was 
 not present only to Jacob's imagination, it was not merely an 
 attack caused by his own conscience, but an attack objectively 
 real by God Himself. The in^d (Hos. xii. 5) had not indeed 
 flesh and bone, he opposed force to force in virtue of the power, 
 which the spirit has over the material, just as our spirit also, 
 though it has not flesh and bone, sets this in motion as it 
 chooses. But that Jacob conquers God in the Divine man, is 
 possible, because it is only with a certain measure of His 
 omnipotence that God opposes him. And why does he 
 wrestle with Jacob in this hostile manner ? Because, as now 
 comes clearly to light in view of the meeting with Esau, his 
 
214 GENESIS XXXIII. 16, 17. 
 
 possession of tlie blessing is not unspotted by sin. It is for 
 this reason that he is attacked, and that not merely by his 
 own conscience, which testifies against this sin, but by God 
 Himself, who makes him feel it. But the faith in the depth 
 of Jacob's heart breaks through sin and weakness and attack, 
 grasps the mercy of his Adversary notwithstanding His hostile 
 demeanour, and wrings anew from Him that blessing, threatened 
 with annihilation, which he now obtains purified from dross, 
 sanctified, transfigured as a Divine gift, a gift of grace. The 
 straining of his hip was a reminder that his natural strength 
 was nothing. AYhat made Jacob invincible was, as the Divine 
 touch proved, not his hip (Ps. cxlvii. 1 0), but his faith. It was 
 by this that he anew obtained the blessing, wdiich he had till 
 now possessed as the acquisition of his carnal subtlety. For the 
 blessing of the first-born, out of which he tricked Esau, could 
 neither be the basis of a birthright valid before God, nor the root 
 from which the holy nation was to grow. It becomes this in this 
 conflict, in which Jacob re-obtains it as the prize of his victorious 
 faith,and from which he comes forth with the new name of ^xib', 
 which (of like meaning as it seems with '^^"J'^') does not directly 
 signify the fighter of God, i.e. figliter with God (for, as Nestle, 
 Eigcnnamcn, pp. 30-63, has shown, bx is, in all personal names 
 compounded with i^x, intended as subject, not as object), but 
 " God fights," yet so that this, by reason of the occasion, 
 acquires the meaning of one with whom God fought and who 
 thus had to fight with God ; thus e.g. pn)'^ means the laugher, 
 but according to its meaning is the designation of him who 
 was the object of laughter; also P3!I ( = pbx''_) means the 
 wTestler, but designates the stream where the wrestling took 
 place. Thus Jacob is called ^xiiy as the man fought with by 
 God, but connotatively as the man who sustained the fight with 
 God. This name he henceforth bears, especially in J, but in 
 none of the sources so exclusively as Abram and Sarai bear 
 those of cmas and mb' after they were given them by God, 
 xvii. 5, 15. For these two names designate the transition 
 
GENESIS XXXIII. 18-20. 215 
 
 into a new and ever-continuing position effected and appointed 
 by the Divine will and promise, and therefore entirely abolish 
 the former names. Eut the name biir\\T denotes a spiritual 
 demeanour determined by faith, beside which the natural, 
 determined by flesh and blood, was henceforth to go on in 
 Jacob's life. Jacob-Israel is herein the prototype of the 
 nation descended from him. 
 
 THE SOJOUEN IN SICHEM. SIMEON AND LEVl's VENGEANCE FOR 
 THE DISHONOURING OF DINAH, CJI. XXXIII. 18-XXXIV. 
 
 The second portion of the third section of the Toledoth of 
 Isaac, xxxiii. 18 to xxxiv., relates to the atrocity perpetrated 
 by Simeon and Levi upon the Sichemites. Vv. 18-20 form 
 the transition : And Jacob came in peace to the city of ''Scchem 
 which is in the land of Canaan, upon his journey from Paddan 
 Aram, and he encamped hcfore the city. And he hought the 
 piece of ground, where he Imd pitched Ms tent, at the hand of 
 the sons of Hamor, the father of ^Sechem, for a hundred ICsltah. 
 And he erected there an altar and called it " El God of Israel" 
 The LXX, Syr. Euseb. Jerome take D?^ as the name of a 
 place, and SCdim is actually the name of a village situated on 
 a rocky eminence east of Nablus, certainly that near which 
 John baptized, John iii. 23, and from which the valley of 
 Salem, Judith iv. 4, had its name. But then Q2C^ T'j; would 
 be in opposition to this ^f, which is inadmissible (for that 
 a daughter city should be called T*]; of the mother city is 
 without authentication) ; hence of the two meanings : in Salem 
 and in pace (see Eonsch, Buch dcr JuUldcn, pp. 141-143), 
 which the Leptogenesis places together, D^tr has here the 
 
 latter (whence Saadia translates : he came U!Lj to the city 
 of 2S^abulus); dV^' is equivalent to Di^tJ' xliii. 27 (as the 
 Hebraeo-Sam. reads : vjala ja'aJcob salom ir eskem), or Oiby'a, 
 in safety, he came to the city of Shechem as it was promised 
 him, xxviii. 15, comp. 21. The territory of Sichem (situate, 
 
216 GENESIS XXXIII. 18-20. 
 
 as iws pxn nc^x states, in Canaan proper on the right of the 
 Jordan) is already mentioned in Abraham's time, xii. 6 ; the 
 then still new city was regarded as founded by Chamor, a 
 Hivite prince, and called after his son (Judg. ix. 28, com p. 
 Josh. xxiv. 32). That father and son are called Asinus and 
 Humerus recalls the blessing of Issachar, xlix. 14 sq., though 
 the ancient position of Sichem upon the " shoulder " of 
 Gerizim makes the allusion doubtful. In any case there is 
 no need to refer the name "iiDH to an ass honoured as a deity 
 {DMZ. xl. 156). Nor need we be astonished to find the D"''!'?, 
 who dwelt in the period after Moses from the Antilebanon to 
 Hamath, Josh. xi. 3, Judg. iii. 3, here in the midst of Canaan, 
 where they formed a small kingdom, as in Gibeon, J03I1. 
 ix. 11, 19, they formed a small republic; Mount Ephraim 
 may have been their original abode, whence they were 
 subsequently driven northwards until they disappeared after 
 the time of Solomon (1 Kings ix. 20). In the neighbour- 
 hood 0.?2i"nx as at xix. 13, Lev. iv. 6) of this Sichem Jacob 
 encamped and bought the piece of ground on which he 
 pitched his tent, from the ruling family of the D3t^' "'3K "ivon-^:3 
 (comp. Judg. ix. 28), for one hundred Ivesitah (to which Josh, 
 xxiv. 32 refers), as Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah 
 from the Hethites for four hundred shekels, xxiii. 16 (both 
 which purchases are entangled into one, Acts vii. 16). 
 LXX, Onkelos, the Targ. Job xxiv. 11 and Jerome translate 
 r\]y't'\> by SS"i^n lamb (comp. Samar. NSilj; and with it the Syr. 
 [Siiy money) — a meaning which n'Li'b'p must, according to 
 Gen. Hatha c. 79, have really had in the common tongue. 
 R. Akiba however relates (Bosch ha-Shanah 26a) that in 
 Africa (certainly among the Carthaginians) he heard a coin 
 
 called r!D''bp, which is not improbable, k^uis being applied to 
 
 all sorts of designations of quantity. We are not obliged with 
 Cavedoni to understand nti'b'p of an uncoined piece of silver 
 of the value of a lamb, or with Poole of a weight in the shape 
 
GENESIS XXXIII. 18-20. 217 
 
 of a lamb (sucli weights occur iiidceJ among the Egyptians, 
 Assyrians, and also among the Persians, in the forms of lions, 
 dogs, and geese), but ni2^b'p means directly a weighed piece of 
 metal, and one indeed, as shown by xxiii. 16, Job xlii. 11, of 
 considerably higher value than the ^i^*^', but not more par- 
 ticularly definable (comp. Madden, Hutory of Jewish Coinage, 
 1864, p. 6 sq.). The piece of ground, acquired at this price 
 by Jacob, was the plain extending at the east end of the 
 narrow valley between Ebal and Gerizim, where Jacob's well 
 and Joseph's grave, from one to two hundred paces north of 
 the latter, are still shown (Josh. xxiv. 32). Upon this piece 
 of purchased ground Jacob erects an altar, not a "^^sp, for the 
 circumstance that 2"^'? is used, xxxv. 14, 20, for the erection of 
 a pillar, does not prove that here too naro was substituted for 
 an original na^'c belonging to 3i*|;l (Wellh. Dillm.). He calls 
 the altar ''^yf 1 "'i?^^^ ^^. Having returned in safety from a 
 strange country, he again settles in Canaan, and according to 
 his vow thankfully acknowledges the God whom he calls 
 b>^, and who appeared to him in Bethel, xxxi. 13, as Ids God, 
 the God of Israel (see xxxii. 25 sqq.). The name bsnb^ Ti^^x b^ 
 as the name of the altar is meant, as it were, of its inscrip- 
 tion. In the Mosaic period ^5<"ib'^ \"i^s ^S was changed into 
 hvr\^ Nibs nin^ Ex. xxxiv. 23, the favourite name for God in 
 the book of Joshua. 
 
 From DIN pjrp ixbii xxxiii. 18« it is seen that B is here 
 speaking in words from Q, to whom belongs also ver, 19, the 
 counterpart to the purchase in Hebron, ch. xxiii., while on 
 the other hand ver, 20, the counterpart to Ex. xvii. 15, may 
 be derived from E. In the history of the vengeance taken on 
 Shechem for the dishonouring of Dinah, which now follows in 
 ch, xxxiv,, and which the unconnectedly inserted notice xxx, 21 
 had in view, Q and J are the chief narrators. The accounts 
 of both as met with by it essentially agreed. In both cir- 
 cumcision was made a condition to the Shechemites, after 
 Dinah had in both been carried of and dishonoured by the 
 
218 GENESIS XXXIV. 1, 2. 
 
 young prince, but most anxiously demanded by liim in 
 marriage — in both she is taken, and is again taken back, 
 2h, m, 265. In vv. 1-2, 4, 6, 8-10, 14-18, 20-24, Q 
 is unmistakeable ; the demand of circumcision is repeated, 
 151), 221), in the same words as in xvii. 10, and the transac- 
 tion at Shechem is similar to that at Hebron, eh. xxiii. (comp. 
 the twofold iT'y nyti' ""X^i'-^D ver. 24, and the twofold ^3 
 IT'y "lyLJ' ""xa xxiii. 10, 18). Just as evident is J's mode of 
 statement at vv. 3, 5, 7, 11-12, 19, 25-26, 30-31. Cer- 
 tainly the term N'St? for dishonouring is authenticated else- 
 where only in the Priest Codex and Ezekiel, but the formula 
 f'XiC''3 nL"y rhi: is Deuteronomic, Deut. xxii. 21, and "iy3=mj;3 
 (which in the Pent, occurs only once, Deut. xxii. 19) is each 
 of the twenty-one times (in Gen. xxiv. 14, 16, xxviii. 55, 57, 
 xxxiv. 3a, Sh, 12) Jahvistic or Deuteronomic. In Q Hamor, 
 in J Shechem is the chief speaker, which is easily fitted 
 together; it is clearly seen from vv. 8—10 (Q) and 11-12 
 (J), how the two accounts are placed side by side to complete 
 each other. The case of the abruptly commencing portion, 
 vv. 27-29 (with ver. 13), is peculiar; this like xlviii. 21 
 seems to come from B, who has related the conquest of 
 Shechem only according to its external aspect, as a deed of arms 
 by the sons of Jacob. This apportioning of sources seems 
 to me more than probable, while Dillm. thinks otherwise, and 
 Kuenen makes a different analysis. Evidence and agree- 
 ment are here scarcely attainable. 
 
 Dinah visits the city from the new dwelling-place of her 
 father, ver. 1 : Then Dinah, the daughter of Leah whom she 
 hare to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. It is 
 Q who thus begins : " Daughters of the land," like xxvii. 46, 
 comp. " people of the land," xxiii. 12. The son of the prince 
 of the land is captivated by her beauty, keeps her with him 
 and dishonours her, ver. 2 : And "Scehem the son of Hamor the 
 Hivite, the ])rince of the land, saw her, took her, lay ivith her and 
 humiliated her. Cajetanus (Thomas de Vio) already remarks 
 
GENESIS XXXIV. 3-7. 219 
 
 iu his Conim. on Genesis: Multis annis post rediium Jacdbi 
 ex Mesopotamia peractis hoc accidit ct ad minus ajjparct quod 
 anni fluxerunt decern, ut ct Dina essct oiuhilis ct Simeon et Levi 
 ad helium di^positi. Sucli is also the view of Bonfr^re, 
 Petavius and Hengstenberg (Auth. 2. 352 sq.). Dinah was 
 then, as also Demetrius in Euseb. Frcep. ix. 2 1 computes, in 
 her sixteenth year, i.e. assuming that she was born in tlie 
 second seven years of the Aramsean sojourn. According 
 however to the after calculation, given ch. xxx., she was in 
 lier fourteenth, Simeon in his twenty-first, and Levi in his 
 twentieth year. It may be objected against both these state- 
 ments of Dinah's age, that the time from Jacob's return to the 
 selling of Joseph, which took place after Jacob's entrance 
 into his father's house, amounts to only eleven years (from 
 Joseph's sixth to his seventeenth year), and that one year is 
 too short for the occurrence in ch. xxxv. But much can 
 liappen in a year ; we must therefore adhere to the view, that 
 Dinah's dishonour falls in the tenth year after the return to 
 Canaan. Is '"^nx with ^PrV- the ace. of the object ? Accord- 
 ing to xxvi. 10, xxxv, 22, Lev. xv. 18, 24 and other passages 
 it seems so, and the Keri !^3?3i^"l Deut. xxviii. 30, assumes 
 that this pregnant construction of nac* (y\nii instead of the 
 expected l^^V) is possible, nay usual. In Dinah's case matters 
 were different from Thamar's, whom Amnou, after the satis- 
 faction of his passion, hated as much as he had loved, vv. 3,4: 
 And his soul clave unto Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and he 
 loved the damsel and spake to the heart of the damsel. And 
 ^Scchcm said to Hamor : Get me this damsel to wife. The 
 young seducer only loved her whom he had seduced the more, 
 soothed her with pleasant prospects of the future, and actually 
 entreated his father to take him the damsel for a wife ; for 
 the marriage of children was, according to ancient domestic 
 arrangement, the business of parents (xxiv., xxi. 21). Jacob 
 hears what has happened, the sons of Jacob hear it, and mean- 
 time the wooer arrives, vv. 5-7 : And Jacob heard that he had 
 
220 GENESIS XXXIV. 8-10. 
 
 dishonoured Dinah his daughter, and his sons were with the 
 cattle in the field, and Jacob held his iieace until they came. 
 And Hamor, the father of ^SecJiem, came out unto Jacob, to com- 
 mune with him. But the sons of Jacob came in from the field 
 when tliey heard it, and the men felt grieved, and were very 
 wroth, that he had wrought folly in Israel in lying vnth JacoVs 
 daughter, which thing ougld not to be done. The dishonour of 
 a sister was a matter which touched the brothers even more 
 closely than the father. The expression 7&, there being as 
 yet no people of Israel, sounds anachronistic, like Deut. xxii. 
 21, Judg. XX. lU, 2 Sam. xiii. 12 sqq., Jer. xxix. 23 ; but it 
 is only so to a certain extent, since the family of Jacob with 
 its dependants had already the semblance of a family develop- 
 ing into a nation (comp. xxxv. 6). np33 riu'y is the standing 
 expression for carnal transgressions, which are more accurately 
 called iTft, Judg. xx. 6, and ?9^; n^n3 because the man who 
 follows his carnal impulses in opposition to nature, honour and 
 decency, is a paragon of folly. The potential ntf^'^- means 
 here: so should it not be done, as at xx. 9, Lev. iv. 27 (comp. 
 xxix. 26 : so it is not wont to be done). Hamor now comes 
 and woos for his son, vv. 8-10 : Then Hamor spolce to thcvi 
 thus : The soul of my son "Sechem is bound to your daughter ; I 
 pray you, give her to him to wife. And make ye alliances with 
 us, give your daughters to us and take our dcnighters to you. 
 And dwell with lis — the land shall be open before you, dicell in 
 and pass through it and settle therein. " Your daugliters " 
 zeugmatically include the brothers, who are here especially 
 concerned. I3rix after " make ye alliances," cannot be meant as 
 an ace. but stands for li^X (1 Xings iii. 1), for which also 
 133 or 3/ would be allowable, "ino combined with the ace. 
 like vv. eundi, is here meant of passing through the land as '^^'^ 
 (xxiii. 16), hence of liberty to trade (different from xlii. 34). 
 TnN3 to settle is, like 'ijt'^, an expression of the Elohistic style, 
 xlvii. 27, Num. xxxii. 30, Josh. xxii. 9, 19. The old prince 
 is ready to fraternize with Jacob, but the young prince also. 
 
GENESIS XXXIV. 11-18. 221 
 
 without waiting for Jacob's answer, places in the balance 
 words, with which his love for Dinah inspires him, vv. 11, 12 : 
 And ^Scchem said to her father and her brothers : Let me find 
 grace in yonr eyes, and what you shall say to me I will give. 
 Lay iipon me a very high price and dowry, and I will give what- 
 ever you say — only give me the damsel to icifc. He will agree 
 to everything to the highest "ino bride-purchase money (Arab. 
 mahr, Syr. mahra) and the largest ]^^ bridal present (Gen. 
 Eabba : pis K"i3, 7rapd(f)epva, according to a common inaccurate 
 use of this word of the gift of the husband to the wife, comp. 
 Ex. xxii. 15 sq. LXX), if they will only give him the maiden 
 to wife. It sounded extremely flattering to Jacob and his 
 sons that their flesh and blood should be so highly esteemed. 
 But if they had consented to the offer of Hamor, the family 
 of Jacob would by blending with the heathen have forfeited 
 their redemptive vocation ; and if the brothers of Dinah had 
 let the matter be settled with money, they would have defiled 
 their more than princely nobility and sacrificed their moral 
 feeling to Mammon. This they refuse to do, and appear 
 thereby morally great ; but their moral greatness is blackened, 
 by passion making them inventive and inspiring them with a 
 plan of revenge, which, unless God had presided over this 
 entanglement of good and evil, might easily have proved the 
 destruction of the sacred family, vv. 13-18 : Then the sons of 
 Jacob answered ^Sechem with guile, and said, because he had 
 dishonoured Dinah their sister. And they said to them : We 
 cannot do this to give our sister to one that is uncircumcised, for 
 that is to us disgraceful. Only on this condition ivill ive consent 
 unto you, if ye become as we are, that you let every male among 
 you be circumcised. Then will we give our daughters to you, 
 and ivill take your daughters to us, and we will dwell with you 
 and become one people. And their words were acceptable in the 
 eyes of Hamdr, and in the eyes of ^Scehem the son of Hamdr. 
 The sons of Jacob answered '"iplP? and said, because, etc. 
 In any case ntrx (as at ver. 27= ji'"") introduces the reason for 
 
222 GENESIS XXXIV. 19. 
 
 their concealed plan of vengeance, and we must either read 
 here, transposing the words, HDinn linT'l (Olsh. Schrad. Dillna.), 
 or, which is less probable : i|i"^ means here to act from behind, 
 a Piel meaning of -O to be or go backward (trans, to lead, 
 to bring backward), proved for the Hebrew also by 1"'^ (see on 
 Ps. xxxviii. 2), and shown to be at least possible by 2 Chron. 
 xxii. 10, where '^T!.''.'!, assuming the integrity of the text, has 
 the meaning of murderous destruction. They cannot give 
 their sister to one who is uncircumcised, because that (the 
 state of uncircumcision) is a disgrace with them ; but riNfii 
 for this, i.e. this act on their part, they will consent unto 
 them (niX3 from nix, not imperf. Kal like t^i3\ but iviperf. 
 
 Niph. to agree about anything, allied to nnx, ji, used in 
 
 post-biblical diction as a participle : agreeing to, suitably) 
 if they (the Hivites) become as they (the Jacobites) are, 
 pisnp by all the males among them submitting to circumcision ; 
 then will they give to them their sister (l^nJl, per/, conscc. 
 according to Ges. § 126. 6, note 1), and unite themselves 
 with tliem as one people. Shechem hastens to fulfil the 
 condition, ver. 19 : And the young man deferred not to do 
 the thing, for he had delight in JacoVs daughter, and he was 
 the most honoured in all the house of his father. The con- 
 dition did not displease the two wooers. Shechem really 
 loved Dinah, besides circumcision was the custom of most of 
 the Canaanites and Egyptians, while heathen worship required 
 far greater mutilations ; the thousands of Eoman proselytes 
 who, according to Cicero, ^?'o Flacco, c. 28, filled Italy, show 
 how much more compliant antiquity was in this respect than 
 modern times would be. The account as at present constructed 
 here at once remarks that the young man, whose example 
 would go far, because he was the most respected member of 
 his family, made no delay ("in?? for inx, like !>??). The 
 different sources betray themselves by the circumstance, that in 
 ver. 20 both first return home, and he would hardly undergo 
 
GENESIS XXXIV. 20-24. 22:> 
 
 the operation previously. The princely pair now proclaim in 
 the city, and indeed in the gate (the Oriental forum), the 
 treaty entered into, vv. 20-24: Tlicn came Hamor and his 
 son "Scchcni to the gate of their city and spake thus to the men of 
 their city : These men are friendly with us, and they will dwell 
 in the land and go through it ; and the land, hchold it lies before 
 them spacious towards the right hand and the left : we will 
 take their danghters to us for wives, and we tcill give them our 
 daughters. Only under this condition will the men consent 
 unto us, to dwell icith us, to become one people, that we circum- 
 cise every male among us, as they are eirciuneised. Their cattle 
 and their property and all their beasts of burden, vnll not this 
 be ours? Let us only consent to them, that they may dwell 
 with us. Then to Hamdr and his son "Seehem hearkened all 
 that went out to the gate of his city, and all the males were 
 circumcised, all that went out to the gate of his city. DX' 
 xxxiii. 18 means to be in safety, here, to be in good relation, 
 to stand on a peaceful friendly footing with (ns, comp. DV 
 1 Kings viii. 61 and frequently). They give to Jacob and 
 his family the praise of being thoroughly well-meaning people. 
 Besides, the laud is of such spacious extent (Ps. civ. 25) that 
 they may go about in it, without becoming inconvenient ; 
 they next declare the certainly unwelcome condition which is 
 to cost the Shechemites blood (Qv'^?, partic. of tlie Niph. which 
 like the praet. runs through the whole scale of vowels : "i3J, D^3, 
 pja?), but at the same time somewhat sweeten it by adding 
 that their cattle, beasts of burden, and property in general 
 (to be explained according to xxxvi. 6, Num. xxxii. 2G) 
 may be looked upon by them, the Hivites, as their own, or 
 may in the end become theirs. This recommendation of the 
 treaty, which Jacob and his family indeed must not hear of, 
 although it was only a rhetorical artifice, inclined the 
 Shechemites to consent, for self-interest is the dnor to all 
 hearts, and all who went out to the gate of Shechem's citv 
 (xxiii. 10, 18) submitted to circumcision. The operation of 
 
224 GENESIS XXXIV. 25, 26. 
 
 circumcision is however no slight matter ; it may, if unskilfully 
 or incautiously performed, become dangerous through haemor- 
 rhage, caries, etc. Adults have therefore to lie in bed and keep 
 quiet for three days, while frequently healing does not take 
 place till from tliirty-five to forty days. Hence, on the third, 
 the critical day, the men of Shechem were all down (comp. 
 Josh. V. 8), and thus fell victims to a sudden and malicious 
 attack, vv. 25, 26 : Ajid if came to pass on the third day, when 
 they were sore, that the two sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, the 
 brothers of Dinah, took each his sivord and surprised the careless 
 city, and hilled every male. And Hamor and his son "Scchcm 
 they killed with the edge of the sword, and took Dinah out of 
 "Sechem's house and departed. They came upon the city npn, 
 not as Luther, thiirstiglich, i.e. rashly, confidcntcr, but to be 
 referred to the city : in a condition free from care (comp. 
 Ezek. XXX. 9), struck down every male, and especially the 
 two princes, according to (/cara) the edge of the sword, i.e. 
 letting this, which is conceived of as a mouth that devours, 
 have its way. It was Simeon and Levi, the " two sons of 
 Jacob," M'ho carried out this sudden assassination, which their 
 father disowned shortly before his death, xlix. 5-7. In vv. 
 2 7-2 9 however, the other sons of Jacob are also participators : 
 The sons of Jacob fell upon the slain and plundered the city, 
 because he liad dishonoured Dinah their sister. Their sheep 
 and oxen and asses, and what was in the city and what was in 
 the field, they took aioay. And all their property and all their 
 children and seines they carried away captive, and plundered all 
 that was in the house. The beginning is abrupt (comp. on 
 the other hand 7«) and 1^2.2. TC'S'^D nxi drags behind, just as 
 lia'T'l does in ver. 13; the refrain-like "because he had dis- 
 honoured (her)," common to vv. 13 and 27, proves that vv. 
 13, 27-29 are taken from a special source, which, turning' 
 away from the moral aspect of the matter, relates the conquest 
 of Shechem, in the sense of xlviii. 2 2, as a deed of arms on the 
 part of the whole family of Jacob. The two nsi 286 may be 
 
GENESIS XXXIV. 30, 31. 225 
 
 conceived corrclatively like Num. ix. l-l, tlie ) of nxi 29/^ 
 perhaps in the sense of etiam ; but probably as in ver. 1:5 
 (read n^ion n^nn), so here too, a displacement of the text 
 may have occurred, and the original text may have run : nxi 
 1Tn"'l ISC' ^22 "ir'S ^3 (comp. Obad. ver. 11, 2 Chron. xxi. 17). 
 Now follows the continuation from J, which joins on to ver. 
 26, vv. 30, 31 : Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi: Ye have 
 irouhled me, to make me to stinh among the inhabitants of the 
 land, the Canaanitcs and FlLcrizitcs, and yet I am a numerable 
 2)cople, and if they gather together against me, they will smite me, 
 and I shall be destroyed, land my house. The verb "i^y to shake 
 together, conturbare, is found in the Jahvistic style also at 
 Josh. vi. 18, vii. 25. t^^^^^n to make evil, especially of evil 
 odour, here with the accus. of the person, Ex. v. 2 1 with the 
 accus. 12^''?."^"'^. " Canaanites and Pherizites " as the popu- 
 lation of the country also at xiii. 7. "ISPP ''^o numerable = 
 few people, is Jahvistico-Deuteronomic (Deut. iv. 27) ; *1PV*? 
 (and ''^P^''?) is a frequent word in Deut. (occurring elsewhere in 
 the peroration of the law of holiness, Lev. xxvi. 30). Jacob 
 laments the fatal deed, but they (Simeon and Levi) justify it, ver. 
 3 1 : But they said: Shoidd one treat our sister as a harlot ? The 
 verb nb'y tractarc, as at Lev. xvi. 15 and frequently. "^^ifpH 
 has 3 ra2)h. as at xxvii. 38, Job xv. 8, xxii. 13, and Gaja 
 before the Pathach in distinction from the article, it is 
 uncertain whether with t majusculam, comp. Frensdorff, 
 Ochla-vx-Ochla, p. 88. Simeon and Levi have the last word, 
 but Jacob speaks the last of all in his testamentary sayings. 
 The most sinful part of it was, their degrading the sacred 
 sign of the covenant to so base a means of malice. And 
 yet it was a noble germ which exploded so sinfully. The 
 Divine righteousness, which fashioned the subsequent history, 
 turned this also to account. The energetic moral purity, 
 which the two tribes display in these their beginnings, was 
 sanctified by grace and profited all Israel. When this is 
 considered, the view of the vengeance of Simeon and Levi, 
 
 VOL. II. P 
 
226 GENESIS XXXV. 1-8. 
 
 which underlies xxxiv. 27-29, xxxv. 5, xlviii, 22, and accord- 
 ing to which this warlike occurrence was perhaps related in 
 the 'n nion^D 'd Num. xxi. 14, will be found explicable. 
 The unbending strictness, with which the history abstains 
 from interposing any judgment or reflections, is admirable. 
 
 THE LAST EVENTS OF ISAAC's LIFE, CH. XXXV. 
 
 The third and last section of the Toledoth of Isaac ends 
 with the third portion, ch. xxxv. The contents of this chapter 
 are as miscellaneous as Old Testament biographies in general, 
 as also Arabic biographies, are wont to be towards their close. 
 From Succoth Jacob went to the district of Shechem, every 
 station bringing him nearer to his father's home. Between 
 his arrival in Canaan however and his entrance into that 
 home an interval of several years, during which he lived at a 
 distance from his aged father, took place. 1. Eeturn to 
 Bethel and death of Debokah, xxxv. 1-8, from E, without 
 interpolations being (as by Dillm.) denied to him. The reason 
 for his long sojourn in Shechem is unknown to us. An inner 
 voice now directs the patriarch to leave the neighbourhood of 
 Shechem, which had been so cruelly devastated, and to go to 
 Bethel, where upon his flight he had had the encouraging 
 dream-vision of the ladder reaching to heaven : And Eloliim 
 said to Jacob : Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there, and build 
 there an altar to the God that appeared to thee, ivhen thou 
 fieddest from the face of thy brother Esau. Then Jacob said to 
 Ms household and to all that were with Mm: Put away the strange 
 gods ivhich you have among you, and purify yourselves and 
 change your garments. And ive will arise and go up to Bethel, 
 and. I ivill erect an altar there to the God who heard me in the 
 day of my distress, and was icith me in the ivay that I luent. 
 Then they gave to Jacob all the strange gods which were in their 
 hand, and the rings which were in their cars, and Jacob bitried 
 them unde/r the terebinth lohich ivas in Shechem. And they 
 
GENESIS XXXV. 1-8. 227 
 
 journeyed, and a terror of Elohim, was upon the cities that were 
 round about thcrn, and they did not pursue the sons of Jaeoh. 
 So Jacob came to Luz, v)hich is in the land of Canaan, the same 
 is Bethel, he and all the people that ivere with him. And he built 
 there an altar and called the place El Bethel, for there God 
 manifested Himself to him, when he ficd before his brother. 
 There Deborah, BebeJcah's nurse, died and was buried beloia Bethel 
 under the oak, and they called its name the oak of weeping. 
 Before starting on the journey to Bethel, by which he obeyed 
 the behest of God, and at the same time fulfilled a promise 
 formerly made to Him, Jacob bids those belonging to both his 
 narrower and wider family circle, to put away tlieir " gods of 
 the strange land " ("i^3, original form ntkar, like ^^V, "^V'^), 
 which had been long enough tolerated from his too indulgent 
 affection for his wives, and to make fit preparation for visiting 
 the holy place (Ex. xix. 14 sq.). There in Bethel is he to 
 dwell, there is he, in conformity with his vow, to make this 
 place a house of God, i.e. a place of worship, xxviii. 22, to 
 build an altar to the God who heard him in the day of distress 
 (conip. the saying Ps. xx. 2, which perhaps .alludes to this 
 passage of Genesis), and was with him on his way to the 
 strange country. Then they gave to the patriarch all the 
 strange gods (among which were Rachel's teraphim) ; they 
 gave him also their earrings (which served as amulets or 
 charms, Targums N*?''7ij' ; comp. talisman =TeXe(T/ia), and he 
 buried these things, which would profane the holy place, 
 '^^^'} ^^^, ill Shechem. The LXX adds Kal airoiXea-ev avra eaxi 
 Tr]<; a7]fjL€pov r]fM€pa<i. The place overshadowed by this tere- 
 binth consecrated by Jacob, and perhaps already by Abram 
 (xii. 6, comp. Deut. xi. 30), was in Joshua's time (Josh, 
 xxiv. 26, where it is pointed ^f^^, comp. on the other hand 
 Judg. ix. 6) esteemed as a 'n t^^i?p, and Joshua there erected 
 the memorial stone of the oath of covenant faithfulness to 
 Jahveh here taken by the elders of the people. The ancient 
 patriarchal injunction : i^.?'] ''i?^?!^"^*? ''"'^Pv', is purposely re- 
 
228 GENESIS XXXV. 1-8. 
 
 peated in Joshua's address, xxiv. 23. Yer. 5, whicli joins on 
 to xxiv. 27-29 and furnishes an indispensable explanation, 
 explains how it was that Jacob could thus quietly prepare for 
 and take his journey, and hence must not (with Dillm.) be 
 denied to E as an insertion of B (the redactor). " A terror of 
 Elohim," D^nSx nnn (comp. 2 Chron. xx. 29, Zech. xiv. 14). 
 i.e. one more than natural (according to heathen expression : 
 iravLKov Seifia), fell upon the cities round about, none ventured 
 to pursue the sons of Jacob, who had smitten and plundered 
 Shechem ; and so Jacob arrived with all his household, which, 
 especially now, when the women and children taken prisoners 
 from Shechem were added to it, was so numerous that they 
 could be called a Dy at Luz " in the land of Canaan " (comp. 
 xlviii. 3). It is not strange (even though 6a were not ^'s), but 
 of deliberate purpose, that Bethel, the station which became so 
 important on the outward journey, is here on the return journey, 
 when it acquired new importance, so circumstantially designated, 
 as at xxviii. 19, by both its new and its ancient name. He 
 builds there an altar, and now calls the place of the altar, as 
 formerly the whole spacious part in front of Luz, ^'^^''2 7^ 
 (comp. xxxiii. 20), in remembrance of the former Divine 
 manifestation on his flight from Esau (comp. on the plural of 
 the verb combined with D'''?^^^'^ xx. 13). This is the fifth 
 altar in the patriarchal history, Abraham erected one in the 
 neighbourhood of Bethel, xii. 8, comp. xiii. 4, and one in 
 Mamre near Hebron, xiii. 8 ; Isaac one in Beersheba, xxvi. 2 5 ; 
 Jacob one in Shechem, xxxiii. 20, and one here in Bethel, — it 
 is nowhere said that sacrifice was offered on these altars ; they 
 seem to be regarded by the narrator as places of devotion, not 
 of sacrifice. Eebekah's nurse, who had followed her mistress 
 to Canaan, xxiv. 59 (J"), called, as we here first learn, Deborah, 
 was then found among the followers of Jacob who journeyed 
 with him ; a circumstance for which we can imagine many 
 reasons, but only by means of worthless conjectures. Being 
 now of advanced age, she died at Bethel, and was buried 
 
GENESIS XXXV. 9-15. 229 
 
 lielow Bethel, under the oak, which received the name of 
 ni32 p?S oalc of ivccping, or oak of mourning ('^■^i??5, as at xxv. 
 26), probably the very tree which is called irji^"^. ipri Judg. 
 iv. 5, perhaps also one and the same with "ii3n psi l Sam. 
 X. 3. This Deborah must have been a faithful nurse and 
 family friend, since the house of Jacob so lamented her, and 
 both legend and history found her worthy of such perpetua- 
 tion. If, according to heathen legend, the nurse of Dionysos 
 (nin3, jBa«;^o9 ?) is buried in Scythopolis (Plin. h. n. 5. 18), 
 and there is a grave of Silenos in the land of the Hebrews 
 (Pausan. Eliaca, c. 24), with which J. D. Michaelis already 
 combined xxxv. 4, these are, like the name and cultus of the 
 Bactylia, distorted echoes of what is here related. 2. The 
 
 IIENE^VAL OF THE HONOURABLE NAME OF ISKAEL, VV. 9-1 5 : 
 
 Ami Elohim appeared to Jacob again on his return from Paddan 
 Aram and blessed him. And Eloldm said to him : Thy name 
 is Jacob, thy name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel 
 shall thy name be. And Elohim said to him : I am El Shaddai, 
 be fruitful and multiply, a nation and a company of nations 
 shcdl arise from thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins. 
 And the land, ivhich I have given to Abraham and Isaac, to thee 
 ivill I give it, and to thy seed after thee will 1 give the land. 
 And Elohim went iip from him at the place where He had 
 spolccn to him. And Jacob set up a p)illar at the place where 
 He had spohcn to him, a pillar of stone, and he poured thereon 
 a drink-offering and poured oil thereon. And Jacob called the 
 place, where Elohim had spoken to him. Bethel. Elohim appears 
 again (liy by 72 as a retrospect at xxviii. 11 sqq.) to Jacob 
 when returned from Aramcea (D"]f? pi?), gives him the name of 
 Israel, and renews to him the promises given to Abraham, 
 ch. xvii., that D^ia bT\\A ''Si, a whole nation, nay a multitude of 
 nations, shall arise from him, and kings proceed from his loins 
 0"'>Vr'p, as at 1 Kings viii. 19, 2 Chron. vi, 9, for which else- 
 where V^.. ^^\ xlvi. 26, Ex. i. 5, never \^n9), and that He will 
 give to him and to his seed the land promised to the fathers 
 
230 GENESIS XXXV. 9-15. 
 
 (P.'fv'"^^ at the beginning and close of the verses, comp. the 
 palindrome, ii. 2, vi. 9, xiii. 6, Lev. xxv. 41, Dent, xxxii. 43, 
 and comp. on this figure, Jesaia, p. 408), calling Himself as 
 He did, ch. xvii. (but never with respect to Isaac), ''T^ b^, 
 Elohim then goes up (bvi] just as at xvii. 22), and Jacob erects 
 upon the spot, where this revelation was vouchsafed, a stone 
 memorial pillar, pours out upon it a drink-offering, probably 
 of wine (comp. Ex. xxx. 9), pours oil upon it, and calls the 
 place ''^O''?- This is the second time that the bestowal of 
 this name is related, comp. xxviii. 19 (not the third time, 
 since the name of the altar place bxiT'a ha ver. 7 presupposes 
 that the local name f'sri"'! already existed). Both these 
 occurrences, the change of Jacob's name and the erection of 
 a memorial pillar, have already been related by U, the former 
 xxxii. 25 sqq., the latter xxviii. 18. Here the manner of Q 
 is unmistakeable, though not unmixed.^ The manifestation 
 which Jacob experienced on his return journey from Aramtea 
 is here comprised in one entire picture, and the erection of 
 the pillar with the bestowal of the name Bethel is postponed in 
 the same manner that the Synoptists retrospectively transpose 
 the purification of the temple by Jesus, which took place at 
 the first Passover, to the last. A libation is here added to the 
 anointing of the memorial stone with oil, perhaps to make this 
 consecration symbolically an expression of thankful joy. 
 Jacob himself looks back, xlviii. 3 sq., to this appearing of 
 God in Bethel. It is easily conceivable in the position which 
 it occupies. Jacob has now again arrived at Bethel, whence 
 he started ; for what other purpose has God directed him to 
 Bethel but to crown him, at this closing point of his history, 
 as at its commencement, with promises of blessing ? 3. Birth 
 OF Benjamin and death of Kachel, vv. 16-20: And they 
 
 ^ According to Kuenen {Eml. § 13, note 4), the account of P^ ( = Q) is enlarged 
 by R i'rom JE, and Hosea is based upon J. It is certain that Hos. xii. 5, who 
 there follows the course of events, intends none other than this very theophany 
 in Bethel (not xxviii. 11 sqq.), and that his reference cannot be utilized for the 
 date of Q. 
 
GENESIS XXXV. 16-20. 231 
 
 journeyed from Bethel, and there was still a kihrah of land unto 
 Ephrath, then Eachcl travailed and had hard lahour. And it 
 came to pass, when she was in such hard lahour, that the mid- 
 wife said to Jier : Fear not, for this time too thou shall have a 
 son. When then her soul was departing — for she died — she 
 called his name Ben-oni, hut his father called him Benjamin. 
 And Eachcl died and was buried in the ivay to Ephrath, the 
 same is Bethlehem. And Jacob erected a pillar upon her grave, 
 the same is the pillar of Eachcrs grave to this clay. With 
 respect to the source of this portion, one thing is certain, viz. 
 that 1*76 leads us to infer that it is from the same writer as 
 XXX. 24, therefore from J, and also from the same as xlviii. 7 
 (which see). The noun ni:i2 (also Assyr.) is a measure of 
 length from the stem "i?3 (whence also 132 long ago), and 
 cannot be more closely defined ; the Onkelos - Targ., which 
 translates *^J^"}X 2n3 (properly a yoke or acre of land, from 
 
 2"1? fc^^l) to plough), gives a precedent for a transposition of 
 
 sound ; the word means in general a considerable length, and 
 probably, as may be inferred from this passage together with 
 2 Kings V. 19, an hour's journey, so that the Persian FarsaJch 
 or Farsang, Trapaad<y'y7)<i (Syr., Arab., Samar. Tavus), which 
 according to Talmudic estimates amounts to four miles 
 {milliaria), according to Arabic estimate to 12,004 ells, 
 corresponds. Jacob was as near as this to Bethlehem when 
 Uachel was seized with travail pains and had hard labour 
 {Piel HDp, here the intensive of the Kal : to be very hard, 
 to have great difficulty, Hiph. as really transitive, to inflict 
 or suffer hardship). The midwife (comp. xxxviii. 28) en- 
 courages her. When Joseph was born, liachel bad wished 
 for another son, xxx. 24. She must now, in this hard birth- 
 time, brace herself for the fulfilment of her wish. But she 
 dies (^n» finitum, as also xlviii. 7), and while dying names 
 her new - born son 'piX'l? " son of my sorrow ; " H.X, from 
 pis to breathe, whence it means sometimes emptiness in a 
 
232 GENESIS XXXV. lfi-20. 
 
 physical and etliic sense, sometimes exertion of strength, 
 painful effort, and especially hard labour in childbirth (comp. 
 Isa. xlii. 14). Jacob however called him pip^i? (always 
 according to the Kcri and 1 Sam. ix. 1 one word, and 
 with i in the first syllable as more homogeneous with the 
 following "•, comp. Arab. ihn = hwj, here wdth "• in the last 
 syllable, but mostly written defectively JP^??) " son of pro- 
 sperity," whether because this son was born in the time 
 of his prosperous independence, or because he completed 
 the fortunate number of twelve sons. The ridit side is, 
 according to both Eastern and "Western notions, the lucky 
 side (D3fZ. xxi. 601-604). It is true that there is no 
 further authentication of the meaning fortune, power, pro- 
 sperity (like ^.Jv»j) for T^], but much that is unauthenticated 
 
 is elsewhere found in proper names. The ancient interpretation 
 Jilius dierum is rejected by Jerome, while he himself explains 
 Jtlius dextcrcc hoc est mrtutis. " Son of the south " is more 
 suitable (Ps. Ixxxix. 13), in distinction from those born in 
 Aramsea (Arab. Sclidm, the left = northern) (llashi) ; but 
 Canaan nowhere bears this name. Jacob buried his beloved 
 wife on the way to Ephrath-Bethlehem, and erected upon her 
 grave a aTijK/q, of which the narrator says that it is to be 
 seen " to this day." A chapel is now built over Eachel's 
 grave, which the road from Jerusalem to Betlilehem, two 
 leagues to the south, passes. It lies to the right, about 300 
 paces from the road, in a small hollow under a group of olive- 
 trees. It is only half a league thence to Bethlehem ; the 
 burying- place and the birth-place \vould certainly not be 
 exactly the same (with which xlviii. 7 is also compatible). 
 1 Sam. X. 2 however is in apparent contradiction with this 
 specification of the place, which in the time of Jesus was 
 thus and no otherwise understood, Matt. ii. 16—18. Then. 
 V. Lengerke, Kn. Graf, Hitz. Dillm. and others (see the 
 articles " Eachel " in Eiehm's HW., and Eyssel, Untersuchungcn 
 
GENESIS XXXV. l.;-20. 233 
 
 iihcr Muha, 1887, p. 247) get rid of the contradiction by 
 expunging Dn^ n^z KM here and at xlviii. 7 as incorrect 
 glosses, and placing Ephrath in the territory of Benjamin, 
 between the Piamah of Samuel and the Gibeali of Saul. But 
 at 1 Sam. x. 2 we have n>7V where, according to this hypo- 
 thesis, we should have expected max ; the " less known " ^ 
 Benjamite Ephrath having been invented purely in the 
 interests of criticism (Kohler, Gcsch. i. loO); and it is an 
 incorrect inference from ]\Iicah iv. 8 (see Caspari, Miclia, 
 p. 151), that the station '17J^"'''^.J'? ver. 21, leads us only to 
 the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, and not quite to that of 
 Bethlehem. The tower of the flocks (for the protection of 
 the flocks, comp. 2 Kings xviii. 8, 2 Chron. xxvi. 10) is in 
 the neiglibourhood of Bethlehem, where tradition also, since 
 the time of Jerome, though uncertain as to the exact locality, 
 places it, 20 minutes east of the city (Tobler, Bdhlchan, 
 p. 255 sqq.), and n"i?fr? (with Jle local "^niSN, the usual form 
 out of Genesis, Euth iv. 11, Micah v. 1) is Bethlehem (as is 
 also evident from 1 Chron. iv. 4), the native city of David ; it 
 shares the name •^C'l?? only perhaps with Kirjath-Jearim (see 
 on Ps. cxxxii, 6), which however lay out of the route of both 
 Jacob and Saul, assuming that Eamah of Samuel is one with 
 Eamathajim Zopliim = Ilamah of Benjamin, tlie position of 
 which, two leagues north of Jerusalem, is now occupied by 
 the village er-Bdm, situate upon a cone-shaped hill east of 
 the road to Nablus. Keil combines 1 Sam. x. 2 with the 
 elsewhere testified situation of Bachel's grave, by supposing 
 that the city, 1 Sam. ix. 6, wdiere Saul finds Samuel, is not 
 Eamah (Ptamathajim Zophim). But this is very improbable, 
 f]iv j'^X ver. 5 pointing to the Eamah or double Piamah, dis- 
 tinguished from other Pamahs by the additional name D'SiV. 
 The contradiction in question between 1 Sam. x. 2 and Gen. 
 XXXV. 20, xlviii. 7, must be acknowledged, for in 1 Sam. x. 2 
 Ptachel's grave is transposed into the territory of Benjamin, 
 1 So Eugen Hermann, Prolegomena zur Gesch. Sauls (1886), p. 38. 
 
234 GENESIS XXXV. 21, 22. 
 
 and this never extended so far southwards as the neigh- 
 bourhood of Bethlehem, where, according to Gen. id., Eachel 
 was buried. Jer. xxxi. 15 is also favourable to the local 
 definition of 1 Sam. x. 2, according to which Samuel sends 
 Saul back to Gibeah (now Tidcil el-FiU, Bean hill). For he 
 makes there Eachel, the ancestress of the tribes of Joseph and 
 Benjamin, rise from her grave at Ptamah and lift up her 
 voice in lamentation over the depopulated land of her 
 children. HOT is that Bamah of Benjamin, where the exiles 
 of Judah and Benjamin assembled after the catastrophe of 
 Jerusalem (Jer. xl. 1). Thus no other expedient is left, than 
 to admit the existence of two traditions concerning the 
 burial-place of Ptachel, one of which placed it at the borders 
 of Benjamin, the other in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, 
 which indeed bore the name of '"I'^lr? ^[^ ^^''? (Micah v. 1), 
 or simply n"]SN! from the district in which it lies. Eachel 
 died in about the 50th year of her age, at latest in the 
 106th year of Jacob's, so that Benjamin would be at the 
 time of the migration into Egypt at least 24 years old. 
 4. Jacob's fuether joueney, and Eeuben's disgraceful act, 
 vv. 21, 22a: And Israel journeyed and pitched Ms tent beyond 
 the tower of the fiocks. And it came to pass, when Israel dwelt 
 in that land, that Reitben went in and lay with Bilhah, his 
 fathers conciibine, and Israel heard of it. Jacob may have 
 tarried some considerable time at the station beyond Migdal 
 'Eder, though not so long as at Shechem. ib'J'n has a dageshed 
 i contrary to rule (see on Ps. xL 15). Eeuben here carnally 
 transgresses against Bilhah, the t;'JT3 (see on xxii. 24) of his 
 father. On Eeuben's incestuous act nothing further is said 
 but, in preparation for xlix. 4, that Israel heard of it. In this 
 portion, vv. 21, 22a, the threefold repetition of ^sib^ (after 
 Spy* had preceded at 20a) is striking; so also is the abrupt 
 b'^-\\y'' I'DC'""! for which the space in the middle of the verse 
 (p"iD2 j;^'»j?3 NpDS) makes as it were a break ; after it a 
 Pethuche (s), just as at Deut. ii. 8 a Sethuine (d), begins in 
 
GENESIS XXXV. 22-29. 235 
 
 the middle of the verse (see Buxtorf, Lex. Talm. under 
 NlDVie).^ The LXX fills up the space by koI irovqpov i(f>dvr} 
 ivcoTTcov avTov (comp. on iv. 8). These nispDD, of which 
 three occur in the Pentateuch and twenty-eight from Joshua 
 to Ezekiel (most of them in the books of Samuel), are men- 
 tioned in neither the Talmud nor Midrash, and hence seem to 
 be an arrangement of the post-Talmudic Masoretes, which 
 was however only imperfectly carried out. 22a is doubly 
 accentuated : ?^?")^''! has Athnach and also Silluk, according 
 as from nhm to huDi^'' is read as a half or as a whole and com- 
 pleted verse. Those who read ver. 22 by themselves con- 
 clude it with ^xib% but those who read it in public hasten 
 past its objectionable contents, and conclude with "^^'V D'^iK' 
 (see Heidenheim m loco, and Geiger, Urschrift, 372 sq.). 
 5. List of the sons of Jacob, according to their mothers, 
 vv. 22J-26 (parallel with 1 Chron. ii. 1, 2): So then the sons 
 of Jacob were twelve. The impf. consec. joins on to the 
 account concerning the second son of Jacob by Eachel. 
 Hereupon follow the twelve, according to their mothers, and 
 within this division, according to their ages (in accordance 
 with chs. xxix. and xxx.). The list closes, 26&; These are the 
 sons of Jacob, which were born to him in Paddan Aram ('ip.'' 
 instead of ^'^T'.. xxxvi. 5, according to Ges. 143. lb). This, 
 strictly speaking, applies only to tlie eleven, and not to 
 Benjamin ; but it is referred to him also as completing the 
 number twelve, and as supplementing the eleven ; besides, he 
 too was born, not in the house of his grandfather, but on the 
 home journey from Aramsea. The list is from Q. It would 
 be too improbable to suppose that he regarded Benjamin also 
 as born in Haran, 6. Jacob's arrival at his father's 
 house, and the death of the latter, vv. 27-29 : And 
 
 ' This halving of the verse before VnM is ancient. R. Chaninah b. Gamliel 
 was listening in the synagogue of Cabul to the Methurgeman, who was about to 
 translate 22a, and called out to him : Stop, only translate pinX, if- the second 
 half! Meijilla 25d. The Orientals however placed Silluk with Soph pasuk 
 after pX"li/'^ yDw"1 (see Baer's edit, of the five Megilloth, p. v.). 
 
236 GENESIS XXXV. 27-29. 
 
 Jacob came to Isaac his father, to Maiiirc of Kirjath-Arha, the 
 same is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac sojourned; and 
 the time of Isaacs life amounted to one hundred and evjlUy 
 years. And Isaac dcixirted and died, and loas gathered to 
 his people old and fidl of days, and his sons Esau and Jacob 
 buried him. Continuation from Q. Isaac at this time dwelt 
 in Elone Mamre, near the city V"^"^^^, i.e. of the Anakite 
 chieftain of that name (comp. p^VJ} Num. xiii. 22 and fre- 
 quently, nsin 2 Sam. xxi. 16 and frequently), the subsequent 
 Hebron, which (already dedicated by Abraham, xiii. 18) 
 remained a place of worship down to the time of the kings 
 (2 Sam. XV. 7). The name Hebron was the usual one in 
 the time of the narrator (comp. Josh. xiv. 15, Judg. i. 10). 
 City of Arba' was the more ancient name, Mamre that of the 
 site of the terebinths upon its territory (comp. xxiii. 19 with 
 xiii. 18). It is strange that Jacob should not till now have 
 come to Mamre. Could he have been a decade in Canaan 
 without seeing his aged father ? Certainly not. But it was 
 now that he first came to him to dwell entirely with him. 
 Did Jacob and his mother ever meet again ? Pressel thinks 
 so, but the silence of the narrative favours Grossrau's view : ^ 
 " Eebekah had indeed hoped that, when Esau's wrath was 
 mitigated, she should be able to send for her favourite son ; 
 but no message of this sort reached Jacob, and when he 
 returned through his own resolve, Eebekah was buried." 
 The Toledoth of Isaac are now closed at ver. 28 sq. This 
 was not as yet the chronological place for recounting Isaac's 
 death ; for if we admit the dates not derived from Q in the 
 history of Joseph into the chronological web of Q, the 
 followinfc relations of time result. Jacob having been born 
 in Isaac's 60th year, xxv. 26, and Isaac living, as we are 
 here told, to be 180, Jacob would be 120 when his father 
 died; and as Jacob was 130 years old when he was pre- 
 
 ^ In his Commentary on Genesis (1887), p. 262 sq., in wliich he tries to show- 
 that Genesis was written by one autlior, Moses. 
 
GENESIS XXXV. 27-2D. 237 
 
 sented to Pharaoh, xlvii. 19, Isaac died only 10 years 
 before the migration into Egypt. And since from 9 to 
 10 years (the 7 fruitful and 2 of the barren years) elapsed 
 between Joseph's elevation in his oOth year, xli. 4G, and 
 the migration, Isaac did not die till about the period of 
 Joseph's elevation. Besides, since at Joseph's elevation in 
 his 30 th year 13 years had elapsed since he was sold in 
 his I7th year, Isaac was, when Joseph disappeared, 167 
 years old. Hence he shared for 13 years the grief of his son 
 Jacob for the loss of Joseph, and his life ended in tbe deep 
 unilluminated darkness of this sorrow. The history buries 
 him thus early in order to pass on over his grave to the new 
 great turn in the history of Israel. Hitherto the history 
 of Jacob has been always subordinated to the history of Isaac, 
 from which Jacob starts and to which he returns. But now 
 that he has become the father of twelve sons, from whom the 
 twelve-tribed nation of Israel descends, his own independent 
 Toledoth may begin. The history of the patriarchs outlives 
 itself by losing itself in an old age of scarcely any historical 
 importance. But for the patriarchs theniselves it was of 
 the greatest importance. They became thereby full of years. 
 They longed to have done with this world, they longed 
 therefore for the other world. The other world was night 
 to them, for the sun of the New Testament Easter morn 
 had not yet risen, but the star of the name of Jahveh shed 
 a light for them also upon the other world. The ^pN'l 
 V»y~bx (here said ver. 29 of Isaac, xxv. 8 of Abraham, xlix. 
 33 of Jacob) tells us more than that their corpses were 
 gathered to the corpses of their people. Their souls were 
 associated with the souls of their people in Hades, and 
 because heaven would be no heaven without God (Ps. Ixxiii. 
 25), so too was Hades no hell fur those who had God in their 
 hearts. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE TOLEDOTH OF ESAU, XXXVI. 
 
 (Parallel witli 1 Chron. i. 35 sqq. } 
 
 Esau and Jacob joined hands once more over the corpse of 
 tlieir father. Thence their ways separated without ever 
 again meeting. Hence Esau is finished off in this ninth and 
 last but one chief division of Genesis. The Toledoth of Esau 
 precede Jacob's as, xxv. 12 sqq., those of Ishmael preceded 
 Isaac's. The historiographic course of Genesis is not how- 
 ever the only motive for this arrangement. It has besides 
 this the historical motive, that the development of the 
 branches broken off from the good olive tree, and growing 
 up independently, far outstripped the development of this 
 good olive tree itself. Just as secular greatness in general 
 grows up far more rapidly than spiritual greatness, so did 
 Ishmael and Edom become nations long before Israel. It is 
 on this account also that the Toledoth of Esau precede those 
 of Jacob. The important genealogico - ethnographic section 
 is " a model of the manner and method in which Q was 
 accustomed to produce the material he had in hand, these 
 being elsewhere obscured by the rending asunder of his 
 portions " (Dillm.). Nevertheless, although the systematic 
 arrangement of the portion has come down to us undis- 
 turbed, the interposing hand of the redactor may be 
 discerned — (1) in that the title, nilbn n^JSl ver. 1, is 
 repeated at ver. 9 ; it is very probable that, in the text of 
 Q, xxxvi. Q-8a (as far as T^yu^ inn) and xxxvii. 1 originally 
 stood after xxxv. 29. The redactor so expanded the intro- 
 
 238 
 
GENESIS XXXYI. 1-8. 239 
 
 ductiou which followed the title, ver, 1, that its repetition 
 after the expanded introduction seemed to him necessary. 
 (2) The names of Esau's three wives differing from xxvi. 34, 
 xxviii. 9, are owing to his interposition. It is a matter of 
 hesitation whether the names, as contained in the historical 
 work of Q, have been preserved there or here in ch. xxxvi. 
 The hand of R having elsewhere interposed within vv. 2-8, 
 the names here may also be derived from another source. 
 Then, having once given the preference above Q to this 
 other source, the three names would have to be altered 
 accordingly throughout vv. 10-18. On certain other passages, 
 whose origination from Q is open to question, we shall speak 
 in their respective places. 
 
 Title, ver. 1 : And these are the generations of Esau, the 
 same is Edom. For nnx Xin we have ver. 43 D"nx ""JS ; in Q, 
 as far as we know him, no cause is stated why Edom became 
 a proper name of Esau. The title is now, in the first place, 
 followed by an introductory passage. 1. xxxvi. 1-8 (parallel 
 with 1 Chron. i. 35). The first beginnings of the eace 
 DESCENDED FRO]\r EsAU : Esau took to him ivives of the daughters 
 of Canaan : 'Adah, daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Oholihamah, 
 daughter of 'Anah, granddaughter of Sih'on the Hivite, and 
 Bdsmaih, IshmaeVs daughter, the sister of JSfehajoth. And 'Adah 
 hare to Esau Eliphaz, and Bdsmath hare Eeuel. And Oholi- 
 hamah hare Je'us and Jalam and Korah — these are the sons of 
 Esau, ivhich tvere horn to him in the land of Canaan. Tlien 
 Esau tooh his wives and his sons and his daughters and all the 
 soids of his house and his cattle and all his hcasts, and all his 
 possessions, which he had made his oiun in the land of Canaan, 
 and ivent into a land . . . away from Jacob his hrother. For 
 their suhstance vxis too great for them to dwell together, and the 
 land of their sojournin^s as strangers was not able to hear them, 
 because of their cattle. So Esau dwelt in Mount Seir ; Esau 
 the same is Edom. This Dinx xin ic'y takes lb up again and 
 gives us reason to expect that what lies between the two will 
 
240 GENESIS XXXVI. 1-8. 
 
 show signs of the revising hand. The perf. ^\b is related as a 
 circumstantializing premiss to the main fact 'iJl "i.^l^i, and is in 
 itself (like VV iv. 1) only Pluperf. vt^ith reference to this, but here 
 it is at the same time such with reference to what has already 
 been related. The name of the country after l"].^"-'^ ver. 6 is 
 omitted: iTi^ (Syr.) not onx, for "^W pi< (ver. 30, xxxii. 4) 
 is with respect to Diix pi< (ver. 16 sq., xxi. 31) the narrower 
 notion : the former in its strictest sense is the hill country 
 in the south of Judah westward of the Arabah (now inhabited 
 
 by the Azazira), while the latter includes also the chain ( JIats. 
 and iJl-iJl) stretching on the eastern side of the Arabah from 
 
 the Dead Sea to the ^lanitic Gulf (Kn. Dillm.). Tlie LXX, 
 Sam. correct the defective }*"ix into |yj3 )*isjd, Avhich tells 
 nothing. There, according to JE, Esau already dwelt in 
 Mount Seir, at Jacob's return from Aramcea, xxxii. 4, xxxiii. 
 14, 15. It is here in Q, ver. G sq. (comp. with the expression, 
 xii. 5, xxxiv. 23, xiii. 6), that the separation after the return is 
 first carried out. The names of the three wives differ in ver. 
 2 sq., and xxvi. 34, xxviii. 9 : (1) '^nn pbx-nn nny, for which 
 at xxvi. 34 we have nrx'n ; (2) ^?nn pyny-n? nu-nn n^T^ns'. 
 "•^inn here is, as ver. 24, together with 20, shows, an error of 
 transcription for ''")n['. The name of this second wife is given, 
 xxvi. 34, as ^rinn nxn-nn n^n^n^^. The Gentilic appellation 
 Tinn (instead of nnn) may be taken as the most general 
 designation of the heathen population dwelling around the 
 family of Isaac ; for not onl}^ at xxviii. 1, comp. xxvii. 46, but 
 here also, the two wives are called 1^33 ni33. Only an ingenuity 
 leaning upon any random support will combine ''1^1 and 
 1^3]^ (Hengst.), though Oholibamah is, notwithstanding 2 oh, 
 really the daughter of 'Anah, the well discoverer. For the 
 appellation py?V"n3 makes her the grand-daughter (Luther, 
 oicffe = neptis) of Zibeon, and so the daughter of the Anah men- 
 tioned, not at ver. 24, but at ver. 25. The combination of two 
 na, one meaning daughter, the other grand-daughter, is striking ; 
 
GENESIS XXXVI. 0-14. 241 
 
 it is however repeated ver. 14, and is found yet a third time 
 ver. 39, so that it has to be regarded as linguistically possible ; 
 but ancient translators (here in ver. 2, LXX, Samar. Pesh.) 
 all incline to the exchange of n3 for p. And how about nmn' 
 instead of n»3''S"ix ? The difference is here so great, that 
 Ewald regards Judith the Hethite and Oholibamah the Horite 
 as two different persons ; but it is too unanimously testified 
 that Esau had three, not four wives. Hengstenberg appeals to 
 the fact that in the East women often change their names at 
 marriage; and Kurtz also explains the difference of the names by 
 " the great fluctuation especially in female names in the East." 
 Perhaps it is with reference to this double name nD2^i)ns =n''miT, 
 that Ezekiel ch. xxiii. calls the kingdom of Judah Oholibah; 
 for it may be supposed that the text of the Pentateuch in the 
 time of Ezekiel already contained these irreconcilable state- 
 ments concerning Oholibamah. (3) ?Xi;Ct:""n3 nipb'3 is called 
 xxviii. 9 npno. The Samar. leaves the names my and nr^a"''^nK 
 unaltered, but changes n^i^l here throughout ch. xxxvi. into 
 nbno. It may be said that Easmath bore besides the name 
 n^no, or that this (from vH, synon. '''jy jewels) was the sur- 
 name of 'Adah. Still, however we may reconcile and combine, 
 there still remains a discrepancy, M'hich must be set to the 
 account of the non-concurrence of historical tradition in this 
 respect, and we owe it to the redactor that this has been 
 preserved undiluted. After a repetition of the title, ver. 9, 
 in which, in accordance with the tendency of these Toledoth 
 towards national history, we have DHN ^3S in place of the 
 Dins Nin of ver. 1, and which is linked to ver. 8, and what 
 precedes by Tyb> ina, the next passage, 2. xxxvi. 9-14 
 (parallel with 1 Chrou. i. 36, 37) treats of the tiiuee main 
 BRANCHES OF THE Edomites. The names of the sons and 
 grandsons of Esau are here personal names, about to become 
 the names of tribes, hence the repetitions from No. 1. The 
 two wives, who bore but one son each, form as many tribes 
 as they had grandsons ; from Oholibamah, on the contrary, 
 
 VOL. 11. Q 
 
242 GENESIS XXXVI. 15-19. 
 
 proceeded three tribes after her three sons. In ver. 12 PPpy is 
 designated as the son of Eliphaz by Timna', a Horite concubine. 
 Is he then to be regarded as the ancestor of the Amalekites ? 
 But these already, xiv. 7, appear as lords of the northern 
 portion of the Tilt between the Negeb and Egypt, and at Num. 
 xxiv. 20 they are called as the most primitive, or also (comp. 
 Amos vi. 1) as the chief nation D^ia JT'p'S'i, as at 1 Sam. xxvii. 8, 
 with reference to the land of Shur (i.e. the desert El-Gifdr) 
 towards Egypt D^Jiyo "iL-s: pxn nni-'^. The Arabic legend also, 
 the historical value of which cannot however be estimated 
 very highly, refers the eponymous ancestor of the ' Am&lilM, 
 whom it calls 'Imldlc (Amldlc) or 'TniUk, to another Semitic 
 origin, and transposes their rule from Jemen to Syria to times 
 so ancient, that their name may be a general designation of 
 the people of primitive antiquity. Hengstenberg, on the con- 
 trary, following Josephus, who. Ant. ii. 2. 1, calls ^A/j,a\r]KiTti; 
 a portion of Idumaea, adheres to the view that the entire 
 Amalekite nation is here referred to an Edomite origin 
 {Authentic des Pent. ii. 302 sqq.). The truth probably lies 
 in the middle. An Edomite tribe proceeding from Timna', 
 the concubine of Esau, which mingled with the Amalekites, 
 and brought within the Edomite circle of peoples, the name 
 of that ancient people is here called Amalek. Eor " the rem- 
 nant of the Amalekites that escaped," whom the Simeonites 
 destroyed at some undefined time before the Babylonian exile, 
 1 Chron. iv. 42 sq., dwelt in Mount Seir (see Noldeke, Uclcr 
 die Amalekiter, 1864, comp. D3IZ. xxiii. 297). The Chronicler, 
 1 Chron. i. 36, seems to reckon y^pn and p'2^V among the sons 
 of Eliphaz, but p^DDj/'l J?;nni 36& only range there as figures of 
 what is related Gen. xxxvi. 12. 3. xxxvi. 15-19. The D^ai^x 
 DESCENDED FROM Edom. This is the special appellation of the 
 Edomite (and Horite) phylarchs or chieftains, which is trans- 
 ferred to the Jewish only by Zechariah (ix. 7, xii. 5 sq.) : it is 
 a denomin. from ^p^ Micah v. 1, thousandhood (comp. ^Ar. 
 tribe, family), or more generally (from ^b^ to join oneself) 
 
GENESIS XXXVI. 15-10. 243 
 
 society. The form (comp. 1^3 n, Cinn) does not agree with 
 taking the word as meaning tribe (Kn.) or canton (DJfZ. 
 xii. 315-317), as it has everywhere a personal meaning 
 (e.g. Ex. XV. 15). Of Esau's five sons, those of Adah 
 (Eliphaz) and Basmath (EeuL-l) are fathers of seven and four 
 D'^Di^S, the three sons of Oholibamah being directly such, thus 
 making fourteen chiefs of tribes, nnp fjipx ver. 16 however 
 has come in from ver. IvS, and should, as by the Samar., 1)0 
 expunged : there then remain thirteen, not twelve. Their 
 number becomes twelve if, with Dillm., we expunge P.?py. ^^i^, 
 with which 12a also falls away as an insertion. Amalek is 
 indeed descended from neither of the tlirce legitimate wives ; 
 hence, when this is considered, the Wii'hii descending from 
 these are actually twelve. I^''? (Obad. ver. 9, Amos i. 12, Jer. 
 xlix. 7, 20, Hab. iii. 3) became the name of a district and town 
 (ver. 42) in north-eastern Idumtea ; Jerome places a town 
 Gacfidv, qwinque millihus, from Petra (Ritter, xiv. 128 sq.). 
 
 isy ('pi* in Chron.) recalls .LviLJl the name of a village and 
 of a rivulet flowing into the Dead Sea, southwards from which 
 Gebalene (JUr>-), ie. northern Idumtca, is entered (Patter, 
 xiv. 1031). This rivulet is also called el-Ku7'dhi, yvith. which 
 Kn. compares nip ; but the important town _ J, in the 
 
 Wadi el-Kora, is more likely (Wetzstein, Nordarahim nnd der 
 syr. Wilstc, p. 123). More uncertain is the comparison of 
 V^pJji as a local name, ver. 40, with Thamana of the Notitia 
 dignitatum. This is certainly the same as Theman or Thamara 
 (see on xiv. 7). There is nothing to be said of "lOix (w. 
 11, 15), DW3 (vv. 11, 16), nm (vv. 13, 17), nnr {id\ hd-j^ [id) 
 and "ij? {id?). f?p too (vv. 1 1, 1 5, 42) is unknown as an Edomite 
 tribe. Othniel is called M\r\1, and Caleb, who gave to him, 
 his younger brother, his daughter to wife, bears the surname 
 ■•^^i^n, and a race dwelling in the south of Canaan are called 
 Kenizzites, xv. 19, their geographical proximity favouring a 
 
244 GENESIS XXXVI. 20-28. 
 
 historical connection with the Edomite r:ip. The middle term 
 njpn x\', 19 is however to us indefinable. The last words, 
 dinx xin 195, have wandered from their right place after Vii'y 
 (comp. Sh and the displacements xiv. 12, ii. 19). 4. xxxvi, 
 20-28 (parallel, 1 Chron. i. 38-42). Suevey of the descend- 
 ants OF Seir the Hoeite, the ancestor of the D''in, TpcoyXo^vrai, 
 the aborigines of the mountainous country abounding in caves, 
 who were extirpated by the Edomites, see Deut. ii. 12, 22, 
 (comp. the descriptions Job chs. xxiv., xxx., which perhaps 
 relate to a gipsy-like decayed remnant of the Horites), and 
 on the other hand Gen. xiv. 6, where they appear as still an 
 independent people in possession of their Mount Seir. Seven 
 sons of Seir are named, and the sons of these, together with 
 two daughters, who are expressly mentioned : Timna', the 
 " sister of Lotan," and so the daughter of Seir, who, according 
 to 12«, was, as the concubine of Eliphaz the son of Esau, the 
 mother of Amalek ; and Oholibamah, " daughter of 'Anah," 
 who, according to ver. 20, was the sister of Zibeon, and not, 
 as ver. 2 requires (where the second ni must mean grand- 
 daughter), his daughter, for Oholibamah is surely the there 
 named wife of Esau. We have here a rude discrepancy. At 
 2 5 &, Oholibamah is brought before us as the daughter of 'Anah 
 the son of Seir, while according to ver. 2 she is the daughter 
 of 'Anah sou of Zibeon, and thus of another and subsequent 
 'Anah. But to expunge 25&, as an erroneous gloss, on this 
 account (Kn.) is surely unnecessary; the statement should stand 
 at the end of ver. 24, and has thence erroneously come into 
 ver. 2 5. It is an easier accommodation which makes njy and pt^'1 
 the names of both sons and grandsons of Seir (Dison the son of 
 'Anah, 'Anah the son of Zibeon) ; the recurrence of the names 
 is not strange ; Tuch conjectures that the two grandsons of Seir 
 are also cited in ver. 20 sq. as his sons, because they formed 
 independent tribes with chiefs of their own. 24& says of 
 'Anah the grandson of Seir, that this is the 'Anah who, when 
 he was feeding the asses of Zibeon his father, found the D"*?*! 
 
GENESIS XXXVI. 20—28. 245 
 
 in the wilderness. Luther translates : ivho found mules in 
 tJie toilderncss, this being the ancient Jewish meaning, accord- 
 ing to the consonance of tjfiiovoi and ■)]fiiav, whence it would 
 designate hybrids from a stallion and a female ass, or from a 
 male ass and a mare — midorcni nova contra naturam animalia, 
 which Jerome refers to as an old Jewish view : " the race of 
 Esau," says a Midrash, " was not only itself given to illegal 
 connections, but also seduced the animals to them." But it 
 speaks against this interpretation — (1) that t<J>p used thus by 
 itself can only be meant of a local finding ; (2) that 'Anah 
 was feeding asses and not horses also ; (3) that mongrels of 
 both are elsewhere called ^"'P^ (Aram. N'3"!^3). Still less 
 tenable is the identification of D"'D'' with the race of the 
 D"'O^X, as Samar. and Onkelos translate and Ephrem explains 
 it (Lagarde, Orientalia, ii. p. 58). C"©"; are probably liot 
 springs (akin perhaps to DV, Assyr. H-mu, ini-mu, day, named 
 
 according to nvn on), whence the Syrian translates \ ^ Vr> 
 (Diodor. of Tarsus : ir'q'yrjv), perhaps the sulphur springs of 
 Kalirrhoe (the ancient Lesa*, x. 19) below the Zerka Macin, 
 about two leagues on the eastern side of • the Dead Sea. 
 Here a warm spring flows in the ground, and receiving from 
 several parts an increase of seething water, deposits abundance 
 of sulphur. In favour of this meaning of U'ty' (LXX. lafieiv) 
 is Jerome's information, that this is also in the Punic the 
 word for aqua^ caldce (if he does not confuse D''0^ with D^^n, 
 
 Arab. i::jUU^), as are also the wording and situation of wliat 
 is related. The addition that 'Anah was just then keeping his 
 father's asses, may point out that the animals themselves 
 contributed to the discovery, as the whirlpool at Carlsbad is 
 said to have been discovered by a hunting dog of Charles the 
 Fourth, who, while chasing a stag, got into a hot spring, and 
 attracted the huntsmen by his howling. In ver. 24a we 
 must, with LXX, Sam. Syr. and 1 Chron. i. 40, read H's? 
 instead of n'S^ (unless perhaps a preceding name has fallen 
 
246 GENESIS XXXVI. 2a. 
 
 out), and ]f'''^, 26a must be corrected, as in Chron., to f^"'^, (LXX, 
 Pesh. Jer.). The ancient Semitic worship of animals inferred 
 by Kobertson Smith, in his article, " Animal Worship and 
 Animal Tribes " {Joitrnal of Pliilology, ix. 75 sqq.), from certain 
 names of animals in this register of the descendants of Seir, 
 is rightly rejected by Dillm. and Xoldeke as not demonstrable. 
 The name ^^^^ has been transmitted in SjjTia Sobal (Judith 
 iii. 1, according to the Vulgate and Luther), corresponding 
 with the name of the third province kept by the crusaders 
 below Arabia sccunda, viz, 'GcMl below Kerck. The fortress 
 3Io7is rcgalis, founded by Baldwin, and surrounded by a forest 
 of olive trees, is also called Sobal, or more correctly (see on 
 XXV. 2) Sobak (thicket, as a bishopric : Saltus hieraticus). The 
 
 Arab tribes ^^l^^^> ^S\.^»~ {i^-^^^*^)) ic^^^ ^^^^l U^-.'^ (com- 
 pared by Kn.) are similar in sound to 1)^^, I'^pn |3'^'K, |b'^"n (1^''"^) 
 (the dwelling-places of these tribes are not against this com- 
 parison), and Menochia of the Not. dign. and the district 
 of Movvv)(^idTi<i westward of Petra in Ptol. with nnJD. }pir 
 recalls the \\>V^_ \^3, after whom a wilderness station is named, 
 Num. xxxiii. 31, Deut. x. 6 ; p^? the Areni in Plin. vi. 32. 
 But that {'U', named with 1"^^? 28& as a son of Dishan, should 
 have given his name to the {T^V'}) Y^V Tl^, has against it x. 2 3, 
 xxii. 2 1 ; this J'^ij? being certainly an individual of no further 
 significance of the Horite race ^ conquered by the Edomites. 
 The other names also defy national and provincial explana- 
 tion. 5. xxxvi. 29 sqq. The seven Horite princely 
 
 RACES FORMED FROM THE SEVEN SONS OF SeIR. These are 
 
 runs this concluding sentence in the style of Q (while the 
 anticipation 21h seems inserted from a more recent hand) — 
 the chiefs of the Ilorites Dn''£i?sp as their (the Horites') chiefs in 
 the land of Seir are each called (the 7 is that of the relation of 
 the individual to the whole and of the whole to the individual, 
 frequent in enumerations). Perhaps the vocalization 0.'?'*Sp^? 
 
 1 An is, as in Horite proper names, a favourite ending in the inscriptions 
 brought from Tema by Euting. See the Oxford Studia BiblicO, (1885), p. 214. 
 
GENESIS XXXVI. 31-3?. 247 
 
 (Dillm.) would better correspond with the intention of the 
 author. 6. xxxvi. 31-39 (parallel with 1 Chron. i. 43-50, 
 conip. the apocryphal close of the book of Job in LXX). The 
 
 EIGHT KINGS OF EdOM DOWN TO THE TIME OF THE NARRATOH. 
 
 The title, ver. 31 : And these are the Icings that reigned in tlic land 
 of Edom he fore there reigned a king over the children of Israel. 
 It does not necessarily follow from this, that the writer lived 
 till the time of the Israelite kingdom/ though it looks like it ; 
 and it cannot be denied that the author of the historical 
 work beginning with X"i3 ri'D'Sin represents, as compared 
 with J", E and D, a more recent stage in the development of 
 IMosaism, and thus has the commencement of Israelite kins- 
 ship far behind him. It is however still a question, whether 
 in this list of kings he transposes himself to the standpoint of 
 the time of Moses, or whether he brings it down to the 
 beginning of the Israelite kingdom {i.e. to Saul-David) ; for 
 that he brings it down to his own actual present is excluded 
 both by the brevity of the list, which contains only eight 
 kings, and by the fact that the independence of Edom and the 
 continuance of its native sovereignty ceased with Saul and 
 David. The author of these Toledoth is the same, who delights 
 to record the promises of kings arising from the patriarchal 
 race (xxxv. 11, xvii. 6, IG); he expressly notices that 
 Edom became a monarchy earlier than Israel, that the shoot 
 which was cut off sooner attained such maturity, inde- 
 pendence and consistency, than the seed of the promise. 
 In these Toledoth he has hitherto been going backwards, 
 to describe the Idumoean hill country according to its former 
 inhabitants ; he now goes forward and brings the history of 
 Edom to a certain point None of the eight kings is 
 the son of his predecessor, their places of origin are also 
 different. Hence Edom was an elective monarchy ; the chiefs 
 
 1 In this matter I agree with E. C. Bissell in his important work, The 
 Pentateuch, its Origin and Structure (New York 1885), p. 141, especially as I, 
 like himself, regard the law of the king iu Deut. xviL as ancient Mosaic. 
 
248 GENESIS XXXVI. 31-39. 
 
 of the trihes were, according to Isa. xxxiv, 12, the electors, 
 and the dignity of the csi^n was hereditary in noble 
 families. The name of the first king liV?"!? ^7'^ sounds 
 provokingly like the name of the seer "^ii??"!! ^W ? 5 ^^^ 
 native city was i^^na^ (LXX Aevva/3a), a local name which 
 cannot be pointed ont as Edomite, but which is testified to 
 as occurring in the neighbouring lands. Kuenen notes 
 besides Aava^d in Palmyrian Syria (in Ptol. and in Assera. 
 Bibl. Or. iii. 2), Aavd^-q in Babylonia (in Zosimus, Hist. 
 iii. 27), Dannaia and Dannaha in Moab (by Jerome 
 on this passage testified in Lagarde's Onom. 114 sq.). 
 The second king is ^1)'^. ^^i"" of niya ; according to the LXX 
 (at the close of the translation of the book of Job, comp. Jul. 
 Africanus in Eouth, Rdiquiw, ii. 154 sq.). Job is said to 
 be one and the same with this Jobab ben Zerah (ben Ee 'liel), 
 — an untenable conjecture, although there may be some 
 relationship between the names 33i\ ^i"" xlvi. 13, Jula, ^I6^a<; 
 (the name of a Mauritanian king) and Si"':'. The native place 
 of King Jobab, •rjV?, has been rediscovered as a village with 
 ruins under the diminutive name cl-Busaire in 'Gebal (different 
 from the similarly named ancient town in Auranitis, cele- 
 brated in ecclesiastical history, viz. Hauran, the birthplace of 
 the Emperor Philip the Arabian). The third king is C^'H of 
 the "'?9''5l' p.?, the province of Teman in the northern part of 
 Edom. The fourth king is "i*]?"!? TlH, who is more particularly 
 designated as he who smote Midian in the field of Modb, 
 whence Hengst. rightly infers that the time of his sovereignty 
 is not to be placed far after the Mosaic period ; for after 
 Gideon, the Midianites almost disappear from history (comp. 
 Kautzsch, art. " Midian " in Eiehm's HIV.), and it is improbable 
 that the field of Moab should have been a place of battle 
 between the Midianites and Moabites in later post-Mosaic 
 
 history. Kn. combines the ridge of hills Ajjya on the east 
 side of Moab (Burckhardt, Syr. 638) with ri'iy the birthplace 
 
GENESIS XXXVI. 31 -G9. 249 
 
 of Iladad. The fifth king is '^^^"\ of the otherwise unknown 
 nj^nbo^ which apparently signifies place of Sorek vines. The 
 sixth king, b^iX'f , would be a foreigner if iri^r], in the name of 
 his native town insn nuh"), liad to be understood of the 
 p]uphrates ; but a smaller river (2 Kings v. 12), a canal 
 (Ezek. i. 3), and even non-perennial Wadi (see on xv. 18) 
 may also be called a "irii, and an Idumoean Rdbotlm is men- 
 tioned by Eusebius, Jerome, and the Nutitia dign. as still 
 existing in their time. The seventh king is Ijn pyn (which 
 is equivalent to the Punic H'?''?r', Ilannibal), his father was 
 called i'33y (again a name of an animal) ; there is no state- 
 ment of his birthplace. Of the eighth king, on the contrary, 
 the city, wife, wife's mother, and grandmother are given, 
 without nojl being added, as though he were still living when 
 this list was written. His name is "^y}.. In the text of 
 Chronicles it is like that of the fourth king, "^y}, just as the 
 LXX 1 Kings xi. 14 writes "Ahep for Tin of the Hebrew 
 text. *nn Ahah, not "inn AZep (Justin : Adores), is an 
 Aramaic, and therefore not an Iduma^an name of God (see 
 Zeitsclirift fur KeilschriftforschiLiig, ii. 165 sq., 365). A 
 proper name "nn (ornament) perhaps existed beside it, or 
 owes its existence simply to the misunderstood mn. The 
 native city of the last-named king was 'Va, for which the 
 LXX gives ^oyccp, therefore lU'S, which accords in sound 
 with the Edomite ruins FmLcira (Ritter, xiv. 995). This 
 eighth king has nothing to do with the Hadad of the time 
 of Solomon ; for though the latter was an Edomite of royal 
 blood, he married a daughter of Pharaoh, and was never 
 king of Edom (1 Kings xi. 14—22). It might rather be 
 supposed that the last-named was that king of Edom, of 
 whom Moses in vain requested permission to pass through 
 his land, Xum. xx. 14. And there is nothing against the 
 view that Q is liere communicating a document, whose original 
 author was a contemporary of Moses and survived to the 
 entry into the promised land. Now follows — 7. xxxvi. 40 sqq. 
 
250 GENESIS XXXVI. 40. 
 
 (parallel witli 1 Chron. i. 51 sqq.) A list of the Edomite 
 CDiPSj according to their families, according to their places, with 
 their names. To what purpose is this second list ? "We had 
 above, vv. 15-19, the names of fourteen (thirteen) Edomite 
 D''3"i^S, here the names of eleven, among which only two (tjp 
 and pTi) agree with the former. The Chronicler introduces 
 the list with the words : Tlien Hadad died and, etc., which 
 sounds as if after Hadad's (Hadar's) death the kingship 
 became extinct, and the old tribal constitution, with its 
 hereditary aristocracy, went on (Bertheau). In any case 
 this list gives, without respect to the kingdom, a survey of 
 the districts into which the land was divided in the time of 
 its author ; the former list was historico-genealogical, this is 
 geographico-statistical (Dillm.). The title, in which the chief 
 tone falls upon Dnbppp, is in the style of Q, who however 
 took this list of districts, as well as the list of kings, from an 
 ancient source. The chiefs of T:p and I^'^ti' occurred also in the 
 other list. The concubine of Eliphaz is called y?piji, and 
 nDn"':?nx the daughter of 'Anah is the Horite wife of Esau, vv. 
 
 T T • r: IT o _ » 
 
 2, 14, 3 8, 25 ; njpy (for which in Cbron. n^^b) is one and the 
 same name as )W, one of the grandsons of Seir, 23a. The 
 remaining six names are new. Nothing worth saying can be 
 told concerning T\r}\, ^^'''^J'? and ^yV, for which the LXX 
 has Za^cotv. In P''3 (jb^s), on the contrary, we at once 
 recognise that encampment of Israel where Moses set iip 
 the brazen serpent, Num. xxi. 9 sq., comp. xxxiii. 42 sq., 
 celebrated, under various Greek and Latin forms of the 
 name, for its mines, to which, during the Diocletian persecu- 
 tion, a multitude of Christians, to whom the dedication 
 of the Apology of Origen is addressed by Pamphilus, were 
 sent for penal servitude {ad mris metalla qncp sunt apud 
 Phoenum Falcestince damnati). After the fifth century it 
 became the seat of a bishopric, not quite two leagues 
 distant from Dedan. According to Jerome, npx is certainly 
 no other than Elath, or, as it is called, xiv. 6, P^i^Q b"^. 
 
GENESIS XXXYII. 1. 251 
 
 "lyap is not Petra (Kn.), -wliich is called i'pp, 2 Kings 
 xix. 7 : the LXX has for it Ma^ap, ou wh.icli Eusebius 
 (Lagarde, Onom. 277) makes the credible remark, ert Kal 
 vvv KcofiT} fi€jiaTri Ma/3aapd eVt t?}? r€^a\r)vP]<i, viraKOvovaa 
 TT) Uerpa. The list of chiefs and districts closes with the 
 subscription : These are the chiefs of Edom, according to their 
 dwellings in the land of their possession, while the concluding 
 endorsement, this is Esau, tlie father of Edom, looks back at 
 the whole many-membered Toledoth — this great nation that 
 dwelt in the land of the Horites, with its chiefs and kings, 
 proceeded from him. 
 
 The register of the race of Esau-Edom is now followed by 
 a verse, which joins No. 9 of the Toledoth with No. 10, 
 xxxvii. 1 : And Jacob dwelt in the land of the pilgrimage of 
 his father, in the land of Canaan. Esau, as formerly Lot, 
 vacated it, and thus was fulfilled the purpose and promise of 
 God (xvii. 8). If this verse had originally stood after xxxvi. 
 8, it would have begun 3*^^ '^?T\ As it at present stands, it 
 points back to it, for the purpose of forming the transition 
 from the one Toledoth to the other. 
 
THE TOLEDOTH OF JACOB, XXXVII.-L. 
 
 That the title : Tluse are the generations of Jacob, should be 
 followed by : Joseph icas seventeen years old, and was feeding 
 the flock ivith Ids hrethren, seemed so strange to ancient 
 expositors, that they felt obliged to regard this superscrip- 
 tion as the subscription of xxxv. 23-26, and as referring 
 thereto past the parenthetical portion ch. xxxvi. A Lapide 
 however closely approximates to the right state of the case, 
 when he says : Quasi dicat : deijiceps enarraho posteros Jacohi 
 eo7'umque casus, eventa ct gesta, maxime Joscjyhi. The nilbn 
 npj;'' are, according to their proper notion, the history of Jacob 
 in his sons, not merely in Joseph, though chiefly in him. 
 It is utterly contrary to the meaning of the title to regard 
 chs. xxxvii.-l. as the history of Joseph, for then ch. xxxviii. 
 would be a disturbing episode, wliich it by no means is. 
 The matter is, on the contrary, divided as in the \>r\"^'' m^in 
 (xxv. 19). There Jacob, here Joseph, is the active principle 
 of the history that follows. The twelve sons of Jacob are 
 the seed-corn of Israel. Egypt is the foreign land, where a 
 nation is to develop and come to maturity from the twelve. 
 To precede liis family thither, and there to prepare a shelter 
 for Israel during its development, was Joseph's high vocation. 
 Sold into Egypt, he makes a path to Egypt for the house of 
 Jacob; and the same land, in wliich he grew to man's estate, 
 was imprisoned and attained high rank, became for his 
 family the land of their ripening into a nation, and of their 
 deliverance. The history of Joseph is so far the opening of 
 
 262 
 
GENESIS XXXVII.- L. 253 
 
 the history of Israel, and a type of the path of the Church 
 and the Church's Head from humiliation to exaltation, from 
 bondage to freedom, from suffering to glor}'. The treatment 
 lie received from his brethren, turned by the message of God 
 to their safety and that of the nation descending from them, 
 is a type of the treatment Christ received from His people, 
 which the counsel of God turned to the world's salvation, and 
 will at last turn to the salvation of Israel. 
 
 The Toledoth of Jacob, which include the history of 
 Joseph, are divided into four sections. The first section 
 reaches from the selling of Joseph into Egypt to his eleva- 
 tion, chs. xxxvii.— \li. ; tlie second, from the first appearance of 
 his bretl\ren before him to his declaration of himself, chs. 
 xlii.-xlv. ; the third, from the migration of the house of Israel 
 to Egypt to their prosperous settlement and increase in Goshen, 
 chs. xlvi.-xlvii. 27; the fourth, from Jacob's entreaty to Joseph 
 to bury him in Canaan to the burial of Jacob and death of 
 Joseph, chs. xlvii. 28-1. The beginnings of these sections 
 (xxxvii. 1, xlii. 1, xlvi. 1, xlvii. 28) show that Jacob still rules 
 the history, though, with the exception of ch. xxxviii., there is 
 none in which Joseph's name is not the more prominent. 
 
 " The sources from which R (the redactor) composed this 
 last division of Genesis are, for the first two sections, almost 
 exclusively B (M^) and C {J). The plan and the greater 
 part of the execution of this noble, almost dramatically 
 arranged history of Joseph is from B. But B has also 
 delighted in adopting and artistically working into it matter 
 from C, whose narrative was on the whole similar though in 
 particulars different, and in parts more excitingly told and 
 with more didactic insight. Not till xlvi.-l. is A {Q ov El ^) 
 again made much use of, and there the three sources flow on to- 
 gether." We cannot deny our concurrence witli the net results 
 of the analysis thus formulated by Dillmann, although we must 
 acknowledge our own inability to follow in detail his acute 
 and almost clairvoyant disentanglement of the various threads. 
 
254 GENESIS XXXVIL 2. 
 
 There is more for us than for him which is beyond the limits 
 of the kuowable, as will be at once shown in the restraint 
 we have felt obliged to impose upon ourselves in our analysis 
 of ch. xxxvii. It is however undeniable that the redactor, 
 without glossing over their differences, has here combined 
 different accounts into one. In the one account Joseph is, 
 according to the proposal of Eeuben, cast into a pit, from 
 which he intends to deliver him, but a passing caravan draws 
 him out of it and takes him to Egypt. In the other account 
 it is Judah who counsels against the slaying of a brother 
 and causes him to be sold to a passing caravan. In the one 
 account these merchants are called ^''^yp or Q\^J1P 28a, 36, 
 and in the other ^'^i^VO'f. 25, 27, 28&. But whether they 
 are two different accounts, according to one of which Joseph 
 was hated by his brethren for his tale-bearing, and according 
 to the other for his dreams, is to us questionable. We shall 
 not however conceal in this matter what speaks in favour of 
 a working up together of different accounts, which do not by 
 their matter exclude each other. 
 
 JOSEPH SOLD INTO EGYPT, CH. XXXVII. 
 
 The first verse wants nothing of internal unity, xxxvii 2 : 
 {These are the generations of Jacob :) Joseph, heiyig seventeen 
 years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren ; and he was a 
 young servant with the sons of Bilhah and with the sons of 
 Ziljpah, and he brought evil report of them to their father. The 
 syntactic state of the three sentences is essentially the same 
 as i. 2, 3 ; the perf. sentence with the noun sentence ruled by 
 it precedes and circumstantializes the main fact ^?'!!, at which 
 the period aims. There is also a close connection in matter. 
 It is first said generally that Joseph, being seventeen years 
 old, was feeding the flock with his brothers (for |xsa is obj., 
 nyi being, after the manner of verbs of ruling, construed as at 
 1 Sam. xvi. 11, xvii. 34); the brothers here are without 
 
GENESIS XXXVII, 3. 255 
 
 distinction tlie sons of his father's two wives and two 
 concubines. Then this statement is particularized by say- 
 ing, that he was given to the sons of Bilhah (Dan and 
 Naphtali) and to the sons of Zilpah (Gad and Asher) as a ii'3 
 (nx as a preposition being here repeated). Nothing can be 
 done with the meaning youth ; any one's nyj is, according to 
 the custom of the language, his young servant, Judg. vii. 10, 
 ix. 54, xix. 13.^ nn^ is not so indifferent a word as report, 
 but means (from 221 to sneak, Assyr. and xVram. to lay in 
 wait, to harass) slander, scandal. ^V^^ ^^r^., which might 
 mean the slanderous conduct of the brothers, is purposely not 
 said ; the more appositional co-ordination of the indefinite nyt 
 (as at xliii. 14, Ezek xxxiv. 12, Ps. cxliii. 10, Ges. § 111. 2h, 
 comp. my commentary on the Psalms on 2 Sam. xxii. 33) 
 suggests rather taking the brothers as object. That Jacob 
 should let his comparatively more remote sons be thus 
 secretly overlooked by Joseph, was the consequence of his 
 affection for him, ver. 3 : And Israel loved Joseph cibove all 
 Ms sons, for he teas Ijorn to him in old age, and he made him a 
 garment reaching far doivn. The narrator, who after xxxv. 10 
 intelligently interchanges the names ^sib'"" and npi'S is J. 
 Benjamin as still very young is left out of consideration ; but 
 Joseph had been born seventeen years before, after the two 
 Aramaean septennaries, when Jacob, who was of full age when 
 he migrated to Aramaea, had already entered the age of the 
 D'';i?T. On T\yr\2 see on iii. 21. A Ci'DQ nam is one reaching to 
 the end of the arms and down to the feet, the ends of the legs : 
 for 1) DQ Dan. v. 5, 24 is the more exact designation of the 
 hand as distinguished from the arm, and ^".^P^ Ezek. xlvii. 3 
 (from D2X = DSX = DQ) mean the extremities, viz. the lower 
 {pyyi '•DDN), hence (with respect to the skeleton) the ankles, 
 which agrees with D^EQ T\yr\3 ; it is called a ')(tTcov KapircoTo'^ 
 
 ' Unless 'lil nsSr ""iaTlX followed, "lyj NIHI might be taken, as b}- Rosin 
 (Juhehchrift on Ziuiz's 90th birthday, 1SS4), as a preliminary adverbial 
 sentence (comp. xviii. 8, xxiii. 10) : when he was still young he br(iUf,'ht . . . 
 thus giving a retrosiiective motive for the sale in his seventeenth year. 
 
256 GENESIS XXXVII. 4-7 
 
 (LXX, Aq. 2 Sam. xiii. IS), i.e. reaching down to the wrist 
 (^Kapiro'i '^eipo'i), and also darpajaXeioi; (Aq. here), i.e. talaris 
 (from tali), reaching to the ankles, hence a '^^^crcov iroSr^pr]'; and 
 at the same time ■^(^eipiBcoTO'i (provided with sleeves).^ Tlie 
 D''D3 nana is, according to 2 Sam. xiii. 18, a kind of ^H'P, and 
 is there mentioned as the distinguishing costume of the un- 
 married daughters of a king. This preference for the favourite 
 dislocated the brotherly relation, ver. 4 : TImi his brothers saiv 
 that his father loved him more than his brothers, and they hated 
 him, and cotdd not say peace to him, i.e. could not address liim 
 ("13^, as at Num. xxvi. 3, with an accus. of the obj.) with the 
 wish '^7 QiT-" (prosperity be to thee !), hence they did not control 
 themselves so as to give him a friendly greeting (comp. bxc^ 
 niW^ xliii. 27, Ex. xviii. 7, i.e. "^b DiSc'n, to put the question : 
 Is it well with thee ?). 
 
 We are now told how Joseph increased the hatred of his 
 brothers by relating his dreams to them, ver. 5 : And Joseph 
 dreamed a dream and told it to his brethren, then they hated 
 him yet the more. If vv. 5—11 are, as it appears, derived from 
 another narrator, it is the redactor who links together the 
 extracts from the two sources by the words, " then they hated 
 him yet the more." This increase of hatred, on this fresh 
 account, does not of itself exclude that which existed because 
 of his father's preference. I cannot see that 56 is here un- 
 suitable (Dillm.), the whole verse being related, as its theme, 
 to what follows (like ii. 8 to ii. 9-15), The first dream, 
 vv. 6, 7: And he said to tlicm: Hear, I pray yon, the dream 
 that I have dreamed : And lo, ive were binding sheaves in the 
 midst of the field, and, behold, my sheaf arose and also stood up, 
 a7id, behold, your sheaves stood round about and bowed themselves 
 before my sheaf. Two nsni are found in one verse, xxix. 2, 
 
 1 lu tlio Mislmic and Syriac D3 nieans not extremity but surface (see Men- 
 
 achoth i. 2 : he has to stretch out his finger Tf' DS ?]} to the whole extent of 
 the hand, i.e. without curving or doubling) ; Miihlau-Volk in Ges. Lex. 10th 
 edit., seek to deduce the meanings cut off (terminate) and extend from the same 
 root. 
 
GENESIS XXXVII. 8-11 257 
 
 here there are tlirce. The name for sheaf ns3x occurs only 
 here and Ps. cxxvi. 6, and the denominate oVii only here. 
 The dream of Joseph shows that his father, like his grand- 
 father (xxvi. 12), combined agriculture and the rearing of 
 cattle. Eeception of the relation of the dream, ver. 8 : Then 
 his hrethrcn said to him : Shalt thou indeed he Icing over us, or 
 shalt thou hccome our ruler, and they hated him still more for 
 his dreams and his u'ords, i.e. on account of the arrogant 
 tenor of such dreams and the insulting candour with which 
 he related them. As Joseph had as yet told them but one 
 dream, the plural I'nbXn is striking ; it must be understood as 
 the categorical plur., but leaves room for tlie conjecture that 
 8b (and therefore 5& also, as results retrospectively) did not 
 belong to the text of the excerpted sources. The second dream 
 and its reception by his brethren and his father, vv. 9-11 : 
 And he dreamed yet a dream and told it to his Irethren. lie 
 said: Behold I have dreamed again, and lo, the sun and the 
 moon and the eleven stars cast themselves down before me. And 
 he told it to his father and his b7xthren ; then his father rebuked 
 him and said to him : What is this dream that thou hast 
 dreamed — shall we, I and thy mother and thy brethren, indeed 
 come to boio ourselves doimi to the earth before thee ? And his 
 brethren envied him, but his father kept the thing in mind. The 
 sentence vnxp inx nsp^i is, in respect of the ^"'?^"^>< "i?P!l 
 Vnx"7X1 which follows in ver. 10, not only superfluous, but 
 interrupting ; accordingly the LXX takes koX Sii]y)jaaTo avro 
 Tftj irarpl Kal rot? aSeX^ot? avrov into ver. 9 and expunges 
 it in ver. 10. In any case this second isdm (without inx) 
 belongs to the original text, comp, 13^ 5a. By the eleven 
 stars may certainly be meant eleven of the stars of the 
 Zodiac (nvj^), for Joseph does not say ""ti'yn nns*, because he 
 thinks of himself as the twelfth. The sun is Jacob-Israel, the 
 eleven stars the eleven brethren, and the moon the dead but 
 unforgotten and unlost Eachel. The dreams were images of 
 the future elevation of Joseph over the whole house of Jacob. 
 
 VOL. II. B 
 
258 GENESIS XXXVII. ]2-t4. 
 
 They came frcra Joseph's deeply gifted prepentient mind 
 {BiUische Psychol, p. 280 sq.) not without God, but the counsel 
 of God was still concealed from human eyes. Hence this second 
 dream brings upon the dreamer quite a harsh rebuke from his 
 father. But while the brethren persevered in their suspicious 
 jealousy, Jacob, without his affection for him being diminished, 
 kept the thing in memory, "i^ti'^ LXX Stenjprjae, like avven'jpei 
 Luke ii. 19. 
 
 When then Joseph was on a certain occasion sent by his 
 father to a distance to see after his brethren, they resolved, as 
 soon as they saw him, to get rid of their hated brother by 
 violence, vv. 12-18. It is at once perceived by the name 
 !?Xib'"' that J is here the narrator, vv. 12 — 14: Then his 
 hrdhrcn ivcnt to feed their fathers sheep in Sichcmi. And 
 Israel said to Joseph : Do not thy brethren feed the flock in 
 Sichem ? Up then, I will send thee to them ! He said to him : 
 Here am I. And he said to him : Go noio, see after the welfare 
 of thy hrcthren and the ivclfare of the floch, and briny me hack 
 ivord. So he sent him forth from the rale of Hehron to Sichem. 
 When Jacob migrated to Aramaea, it was done from his 
 father's house in Beersheba ; and when after a long period he 
 returned by indirect journeys to his father's house, it was in 
 Hebron, one of the few cities of the Holy Laud which are 
 situate in valleys. It seems strange that the sons of Jacob 
 and their flocks should have gone so far north as the district of 
 Shechem, the city which, since it was so murderously attacked 
 by Simeon and Levi, was at strife with his family. The 
 enmity of the Shechemites must have been in some manner 
 appeased between the sojourn of Jacob in Shechem and in 
 Hebron.^ hj< 12& is over-punctuated, and as to style might be 
 dispensed with (comp. e.y. Isa. Ixi. 5 with Ezek. xxxiv. 8). 
 Joseph willingly consents to his father's proposal to send him 
 
 1 Kuenen {Einl. § 13, note 7) conjectures that R with respect to P^ substituted 
 Hebron for some other city. But the burial of the three patriarchs in Mach- 
 pelah near Hebron is not a mere view of P^, but a national tradition, with 
 which 1. 5 is only apparently in contradiction. 
 
GENESIS XXXVII. I0-I8. 259 
 
 to Shechem (where we may imagine the brothers feeding their 
 flocks in the plain of Machnah on the west of the city), 
 to inquire after their welfare and that of the flochs 
 (mf welfare, then ambiguous, like taldudo). He accord- 
 ingly goes to Shechem, in the neighbourhood of which 
 however he seeks in vain for his brothers, vv. 15-17: 
 And a man met him, and heliold Tie was wandering in 
 the field, and the man ashed him saying : Wliat secJcest 
 thou ? And he said : I am seeking my brethren ; tell Tue, I 'pray 
 thee, ichere they are feeding. And the man said: They have 
 departed hence, for I heard them say : We will go to Dothajin. 
 Then Joseph ivent after his brethren and met them in Dothan. 
 The classic style prefers to leave subjects and objects unex- 
 pressed, where they can be dispensed with. So here we 
 have nj;'h nsni without N^n, nnpx ^rip^C' for D^nV'Ptf' (Samar.), 
 comp. 4« T?.!l he told (it), 10« "i£p'^l he related (it), 21a V^f"), 
 |31S") and Eeuben heard (it). A similar instance already, 
 vi. 19, and here a little farther on, 21a, 256, 27 &, 32a. The 
 question runs : What seekest thou ? for the inquirer does not 
 yet know that Joseph is seeking persons. . The form of the 
 name Tjy^ interchanging with inM is like TPJ^V, ^Y^"^'^\, P.l'?*^*', 
 no Dual, but a diphthongal pronunciation of the termination 
 an {drri)} the Greek writing AcoOaei'fi, or what is the same, 
 AcoOat/j, in the LXX, and Judith iv. 6, vii. 3. viii. 3 repro- 
 duces D^nM ; the name AwTala, id. iii. 10, is the same helleuized. 
 Tell Dothdn, a beautiful hill, at the southern foot of which 
 bubbles forth a spring, about five leagues north of Sabastija 
 (Samaria), as Eusebius and Jerome already state, west of 
 'Gennin, and westward (see Biideker, p. 237) of the road 
 leading from Nabulus to 'Gennin, still marks the situation of 
 the place. Seeing Joseph at a distance, the brothers agree to 
 get rid of him, ver. 1 8 : Tliey saw him afar off, and before he 
 came near to them, they rtiade him the object of a crafty plot to 
 
 1 See Wellhauseu, Composition des Htxateuchs, on Gen. xxxii. 1-3 (D^Jno) ; 
 comp. Merx' Archiv, iiL 352. 
 
260 GENESIS XXXVII. 10-22. 
 
 hill him. Thus is ^35^n conceived with an accusative object 
 instead of with i3 Ps. cv. 25: "they treated him craftily" 
 would not do full justice to the notion. If it is E who refers, 
 vv. 5-11, the hatred of the brothers to Joseph's dreams, it is 
 from him also that vv. 19, 20 are derived. And they said 
 one to another : Behold, this dreamer conuth ! And now up, let us 
 kill him and cast him into a 'pit and say : A wild beast has torn 
 him to pieces ; and we shall see what luill become of his dreams. 
 The H;)!! enhanced to HT^i^ ^ occurs in /, besides here only at 
 xxiv. 65. The combination niroSnn hv^ is without an analogous 
 example in the Pentateuch. ni2 (^'i^D is the pit as distinguished 
 from ii?? the well. The nx-i3 is just as scornful as nxij ;yp^ 
 Isa. V. 19. When they have killed him and left his corpse to 
 decay in a pit, they think it will then be seen how ridiculous 
 were his high-flown dreams. But here too man's sin and 
 God's plan are found to work together. The elevation dreamed 
 of by Joseph becomes the means of his brethren's downfall, 
 to become subsequently that of their uprising. God makes 
 sin itself subservient to His plan, and thus a co-operating 
 factor in the coming deliverance. 
 
 Postponement of the murder by Eeuben, vv. 21, 22 : And 
 Beuben heard it and delivered him out of their hand, and said : 
 We will not take his life. For Reuben said to them : Do not 
 shed blood, cast him into this pit, ivhich is in the wilderness, and 
 do not lay hand upon him — (this he said) — that he might 
 deliver him out of their hand and restore him to his father. 
 Ver. 21 is, like ver. 5, an anticipative summary of what follows. 
 Instead of iC'23 nzin he smites the life of such an one (Lev. 
 xxiv. 17 sq.), K'd: ^nan with two accusatives (Ges. § 139, note), 
 he smites his life, i.e. kills him (Deut. xix. 6 and frequently), 
 is also used. It cannot be discerned from the style whether 
 ver. 2 1 sq. is derived from J or F. But that their different 
 accounts are farther on combined is seen from the merchants 
 who took Joseph with them to Egypt being twice called 
 ^ The Samar. translates : the splendid (excellent) dreamer, comp. on xxiv. 65. 
 
GENESIS XXXVII. 23-27. 261 
 
 Ishmaelites (vv. 25, 2Sh) and twice Midianites (vv. 28a, 3G); in 
 ver. 28 the excerpts from the two sources strike sharply against 
 each other. One source (U) related that Eeuben dissuaded 
 them from killing Joseph and advised them to cast him into a 
 pit and to leave him to his fate, intending to take him out 
 secretly and to help him to escape to Hebron. But that when 
 after some time he came to look after him, he had disappeared ; 
 some passing Midianite merchants having drawn him out and 
 carried him away, as Joseph himself says, xl. 15 : I was 
 secretly stolen out of the land of the Ibrim. The redactor 
 gave the preference to the narrative of J, according to which 
 Judah advised not to kill but to sell him to the Ishmaelites, 
 subordinating to it and arranging in it what he derived from U. 
 Next follows the casting into the pit, related in U and J, vv. 
 23, 24 : And it came to pass ivlien Joseph was come to Ms h'eilircn, 
 that they took off from Joseph his garment, the (jarment reaching 
 far doivn which he had on, and took him and cast him into the 
 2nt ; and the piit icas empty, there was no water in it. They 
 strip him of his long tunic ('2''^'?'? M'ith two accusatives, like 
 C"'3pn Ges. § 139. 1), because they mean to .make it by and by 
 the means of diverting suspicion from themselves. Like 
 Joseph, Jeremiah also was cast into a pit wherein was no 
 water, but Jeremiah sank in mire, Jer. xxxviii. 6. By the 
 advice of Judah he is sold, vv. 25-27 : And they sat down to 
 eat food ; then they lifted np their eyes and saw, and hehold a 
 travelling company of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead ivith their 
 camels laden with tragaeanth and lalsam and ladanum, upon 
 the way to carry it doivn to Egypt. Then Judah said to his 
 hrethren : What profit have we that we slay our brother and 
 conceal his blood ? Up, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and 
 let not our hand he wpon him, for he is our brother, oiir flesh — 
 and his brethren hearkened (to it). The IMidianites (who 
 according to xxv. 2 are only a collateral tribe of the Ishmael- 
 ites proper) are called Ishmaelites, Judg. viii. 24, whence it 
 appears that this had become a general designation of the 
 
262 GENESIS XXXVIl. 28. 
 
 desert tribes, who are elsewhere called ^''^IV or (from hadu, 
 desert) Bedouins, nnnk (fem. from nnk a traveller, plur. 
 ninnx Isa. xxi. 13, or, as if it were a fem. from n"]N'^ niniN Job 
 vi. 19) means that which is travelling, viz. a travelling com- 
 pany, called in Persian Jcarwdn. The caravan, which came 
 within sight of Jacob's sons as they were resting and eating, 
 was from Gilead, and its camels were carrying spices, which 
 were then as now the chief articles of import of the Arabico- 
 Egyptian caravan trade. nxb3 is tragacanth or tragant (see this 
 article in Eiehm's HW.), the resinous gum of the Astragalus 
 qummifer and many other Palestinian kinds of astragali, "'"i^ 
 (according to the formations W, ''N"|) is not real balsam from the 
 balsam tree, but (see Mastix in Eiehm) the gum of the Fistacia 
 lentiscus,i.e. the mastix tree, to'^ is ladanum, i.e. the aromatic gum 
 (Xrjhavov, Xdhavov) of the Cistus crcticus (XriZo<i, X^jSov). The 
 caravan had crossed over Jordan at Beisan, as is still done, and 
 was taking the high road which led from Beisan and Zer in to 
 Eamleh and Egypt, and entered west of 'Gennin the plain in 
 which Dothan lies. Judah advised his brothers to sell Joseph to 
 these travelling Ishmaelites, opposing, as Abravanel remarks, 
 three reasons against depriving him of life. This murder would 
 be criminal fratricide (^^7.^? ''^''0?, an appositional connection ac- 
 cording to Ges. § 113) ; and as it would bring them no profit 
 — not even the satisfaction of revenge, since they would have 
 to conceal the deed — there was no object to gain by it. His 
 proposal found approval. E is now the narrator, 28 a, and 
 joins on to Eeuben's counsel, who was purposing to deliver 
 Joseph : Then there passed ly Midianite merchants, and they 
 drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit. It is the meaning of 
 E that the Midianites drew him up, but of the composition, as 
 we have it, that the brothers did this, as the caravan was 
 approaching, so that what now follows from J joins on to 
 28a without contradicting it. 285 ; And they sold Joseph to 
 the Ishmaelites for tiventy pieces of silver, and they brought Joseph 
 to Egypt. We must supply ?\^}^ or Qvi^'f (Lev. xxvii. 3, 
 
GENESIS XXXVII. 29-35. 2G3 
 
 2 Kings XV. 20). The average price of a slave was, according 
 to Ex. xxi. 32, thirty shekels. A slave afterwards cost just 
 as much (120 drachma =30 tetradrachmic shekels) in the 
 market of Alexandria (Joseph. A)it. xii. 2. 3), — the Midianites 
 would of course make a profit by the transaction. Eeuben's 
 consternation, according to £, vv. 29, 30 : TJioi Beiiben came 
 hack to the pit, and helwld Joseph was not in the pit ; and he rent 
 his garments and returned to his brethren, and said : The hoy is 
 not there, and I — whitlwr shall I go 1 ! He, the most respon- 
 sible, because the eldest of the brothers, desired to rescue 
 Joseph (22Z>, comp. xlii. 22), and now he sees to his horror 
 that the expedient, by which he had thought to effect this, 
 lias turned out to Joseph's ruin. Henceforth the narratives 
 of J and E concur. The text has chiefly the tone of J ; the 
 Midianites again raeutioned at the close are a sure token of 
 E. The sending of the blood-stained garment, vv. 31, 32 : 
 And they took Joseph's garment, and killed a he-goat, and dip'ped 
 the garment in the hlood. And they sent away the garment that 
 reached far down, and hronght it to their father and said : This 
 have we found; see now carefully v:hether it he thy sons garment 
 or not ? A similar ""isi^ of testing observation is found xxxviii. 
 25, xxxi. 32. The n of ri:h3n is the interrogative, which before 
 a consonant with Sheva cannot be other than ^, and this 
 either with a Metheg like i^^lTpn xxxiv. 31, or as here (comp. 
 Ges. § 100. 4) with a following Dagesh. When the aged 
 father sees the bloody garment of his favourite son, he immedi- 
 ately comes to the conclusion contemplated by the brethren, 
 and mourns for him as one dead, vv. 33-35 : And he looked 
 carefully and said : My son's coat ! A wild hcast has devoured 
 him. Joseph is torn, yea torn to 'pieces. And Jacob rent his 
 clothes, and piit sackcloth ahout his loins, and mourned long 
 for his son. And all his sons and daughters arose to comfort 
 him, but lie, refused to be comforted, and said : Nay, I will go 
 down to the world beneath mourning for my son. So his father 
 wept for him. That Joseph is torn to pieces is designated as 
 
264 GENESIS XXXVII. 36. 
 
 a fact by ^ib, and as quite beyond doubt by the inf. intens. 
 ei"-i9 {Kal according to Ges. § 131. 3, note 2). In xliv. 28 
 ■^^^ is added as a still further enhancement. Instead of 
 "inJ3 J?"ip, we have here vri>»b' yip, as at xliv. 13, a variation 
 critically unimportant. Jacob grounds his rejection of the 
 consolation of his sons and daughters (comp. above, p. 180) 
 on l?.^?"''?. It is here and farther on in the history of Joseph, 
 xlii. 38, xliv. 29, 31, that the fcm. noun Sheol {masc. only 
 Job xxvi. 6, but then with a preceding predicate) is mentioned 
 for the first time in the 0. T. ^^^^, from ^N•t^'=i?J;:^', bli^ V h>z\ 
 J-j, to be slack, languid, to hang down, to sink down, means 
 the hollow (see on Isa. v. 14, and xl. 12, l^y^ib), and corre- 
 sponds with tian, the deep, the Egyptian name for the sub- 
 terranean world. The later usage of the language may have 
 thought of the verb h\X^ to summon, and, as seems to follow 
 from Prov. xxx. 15 sq., Isa. v. 14, Hab. ii. 5, have under- 
 stood bis:r of the place to which all terrestrial beings 
 are summoned.^ Thither is Joseph gone, thither, where 
 human existence continues in a shadowy manner, will 
 Jacob follow him ; till then there is no more com- 
 fort or joy for him. 73X is equivalent to ii^,^? xlii. 38, 
 xliv. 31; P?^nn 34& also means not merely mourning attire, 
 but especially the grief of mourning (Num. xiv. 39). The 
 sale of Joseph into Egypt, according to E, ver. 36 : And the 
 Midianitcs sold Jiim into Egypt, to Potiphar, a court offi,cicd of 
 rharaoh, a captain of the guard. ^VH'? ^^^ ^^'® ^^^^ called 
 C'p'jjp, which, according to xxv. 2, is the name of a tribe 
 nearly akin to Midian. So too iS"'tpi3 here and at xxxix. 1 
 is the shorter form of the name VIS ''pis xli. 45, xlvi. 20 ; 
 
 ^ The name of this world below is in Ass}'rian sudhi (written su-dlu, as if it 
 meant the powerful city) ; the verb .?a'dlu means to question, to decide, to rule, 
 and according to the Assyrian usage of language, the notion of a requisitionary 
 summoning power for piXtJ' is the result. The best word for it is the world 
 beneath, for hell is equivalent to yi'ma. Luther himself felt this, when he ex- 
 changed " Holle " (hell) in Gen. xxxvii. 35, xlii. 38, xliv. 29, 31 (as he sixty- 
 seven times translates SiNC), for " Grube " (pit). See Kamphausen's article on 
 the subject in Zimraermann's Theol. Literaturhlatt, 1872, Nos. 6, 7. 
 
GENESIS XXXVII. 36. 265 
 
 LXX JTfcTe0/c»j}9 or /lej^re^pr;? (see LagarJe, Genesis, p. 20). 
 The name (compounded from jj-d-c-ph-ra) he who (ct = cni) 
 is the {e = em) sun -god's/ compare the names IIer€aix?]v, 
 IleTeixTrafievTT]';, UeVecr t9 and the shorter DOS (belonging to 
 the goddess Muth). The sun-god is called Pa or Pt], with 
 the aspirated article Memphitic ^pt]. Dno, gelding (eunuch), 
 which is also Babylonian and Himyaritic, means likewise by an 
 obliteration of the fundamental meaning, a courtier in general, 
 as the Arab. <»c>l^ means contrariwise first, a servant and then 
 u eunuch. " Slayer" in the official title ^'natpn "ib is not equal 
 to butcher (Luth. in Comm. prciefecto Icinioriim) or cook (LXX 
 dp')(^ifj.d<yeLpo<i), but the executioners (comp. nnD Ezek. xxi. 15, 
 Lam. ii. 21), the inflictors of capital punishment, were so 
 called (Jer. magistro milituiii), Potiphar was captain of the 
 bodyguard, who as such had to execute capital punishment on 
 the condemned, like Nebuzaradan and Arioch, who bore tlie 
 same title at the Chaldnean court. It was on this account that 
 the State prison was under his supervision,^ xl, 3 sq. In the 
 time of Herodotus Pharaoh's bodyguard consisted of 1000 
 Hermotybians and 1000 Kalasirians, wlio were dismissed 
 daily, so that the whole army might enjoy the advantages of 
 the prolitable service at the court. At the time however that 
 Joseph came to Egypt, the military class was not yet organized. 
 The sale of Joseph took place in his seventeenth year, for 
 this statement of his age xxxvii. 2 is certainly intended as the 
 chronological setting of what is afterwards related. Joseph 
 was born, xxx. 25, after the second 7 years of the Meso- 
 potamian service had elapsed. This lasted 20 years, xxxi. 
 38 ; but granting that it is consistent with xxx. 25 to 
 delay Joseph's birth to the sixth year after the 7 + 7, yet it 
 
 ^ The name Ra means, according to Brugsch, "the maker of existence" {qui 
 facit esse), viz. to the perception of the senses ; see the article on the Egyptian 
 religion by Victor v. Strauss and Torney in the Conserv. Monatsschr. Aug. 1882. 
 
 - See the illustration of the white castle of Memphis (after the mosaic of 
 Praeneste) in Cunningham Geikie's instructive Hours tvith the Bible, vol. i. 
 (1881) p. 461. 
 
266 GENESIS XXXVII. 36. 
 
 could not possibly have been in the twentieth year, for Joseph 
 at the return to Canaan was, according to xxxiii. 7, no loDger 
 a suckling. But supposing hiin to have been born after the 
 7 + 7 years, he would have been at the return a boy of 6. 
 There would thus be 11 years between Jacob's return and 
 Joseph's disappearance, during the far greater part of which 
 Jacob would be not yet with his father, but at Succoth, 
 Shechem, and in the district of Bethlehem. If then Jacob 
 arrived at Haran in his seventieth year, we must raise these 
 11 years from the return of Jacob to the selling of 
 Joseph to 17, for the 130 years of Jacob on his appearance 
 before Pharaoh (xlvii. 9) can only be obtained by adding 
 together the 70 years of Jacob when he migrated to Meso- 
 potamia, the 20 years of his sojourn there, 17 years from his 
 return to Joseph's disappearance, 13 years thence to his 
 elevation, and 10 years thence to the migration into Egypt. 
 But if Joseph were 6 years old at his father's return to 
 Canaan and 17 at his own disappearance, it is impossible to 
 admit 17 years between the return and this disappearance. 
 Hence Jacob at his arrival in Haran cannot have been 70, but 
 76 (see Demetrius' statement in Euseb. Frccjp. ix. 21), and so 
 90 when Joseph was born, 107 when he disappeared, 120 at 
 his elevation, and 130 at the migration to Egypt (130 = 76 + 
 14 + 17 + 13 + 10). Jacob's 107th year would be the 167th 
 of Isaac, who lived to be 180. Hence the selling of Joseph hap- 
 pened only in appearance after Isaac's death. It was not in 
 reality, but only to history, that he died long before that event. 
 It is historiographic art to break off in the history of 
 Joseph at xxxvii. 36. We thus get to experience with him 
 the comfortless darkness of the two decades, during which 
 hopeless and sorrowful longing was gnawing at the heart 
 of the aged father, and the secret curse of deadly sin deceit- 
 fully concealed was weighing on the souls of his children. 
 Meantime another history is related, which seems, but is not 
 an episode. Eor the superscription of this long tenth part 
 
GENESIS XXXVIII. 1, 2. 2G7 
 
 of Genesis is not t)Di'' nn^in but apy nn^^n, and the con- 
 tents of cli. xxxviii. are of no less importance than the 
 history of Joseph to the history of Jacob, nay, are even in 
 causal connection with it. For the impulse to a new move- 
 ment in conformity with the promise, which the history of 
 the line of promise received in Joseph, found its occasion in 
 the danger, manifest from ch. xxxviii., it was in, of settling 
 itself in a manner contrary to the promise ; and when it came 
 to pass that the now separating paths of Jacob's family 
 attained in his lost but re-found son to the unity of a new 
 turning-point and goal, we need to learn how the family of 
 Judali, which migrated with the rest into Egypt, and was to 
 be the chief and ruling tribe, originated. 
 
 THE TWIN" CHILDREN OF TAMAR AND JUDAH, CH. XXXVIII. 
 
 It is with a vague ^^^^'L' ^V.^ that what follows, at least 
 what next follows, is inserted during the period in which 
 Joseph disappeared, and was regarded as lost, ver. 1 : And it 
 came to pass at tJiat time that Judah ivent down from his 
 hrcthrcn and turned in to a man of Adidlam, of the name of 
 Hirah. The hill country of Judah is thought of as the 
 point of departure in *i^*l; it was there that Jacob dwelt in 
 Hebron, aud that Judah and his brethren lived. 'AduUam, 
 whose king is mentioned Josh. xii. 15, lay in the plain of 
 Judah, Josh. xv. 35, north-west of Hebron, probably (see 
 Biideker, p. 212) one league south of Socho (^Snvjcke). 
 Here dwelt a Canaanite named nvn (which may mean 
 " freedom," like ri^"in, Syr. hirutha), to whom (iy, as at 1 Sam. 
 ix. 9) Judali turned; U*! dcvcrtit, like ver. 16. It is un- 
 necessary to understand I2'l in this passage according to 
 xii. 8, and to complete it by vHX. Here in Adullam Judah 
 married, ver. 2 : And Judah saw there the daughter of a 
 Canaanite man, whose name was "Sua, and tool: her and went 
 in unto her. Having made a heathen his colleague, Judah 
 
268 GENESIS XXXVIII. 3-10. 
 
 went farther, and made a heathen woman his wife (as, 
 according to xlvi. 10, did Simeon, as well as Ishmael and 
 Esau). She was the daughter of a Canaanite named Vy^, 
 and therefore not belonging to the little town of Adullam. 
 We leave conjectural explanations of this name and of those 
 which follow to the dictionaries. Judah's three sons by the 
 daughter of Shua, vv. 3—5 : A7id she conceived and hare a 
 son, and he called Ms name 'Er. And she conceived again and 
 hare a son, and called his name Onan. And she yet again 
 hare a son, and called his name Sela, and he ivas at Chezih 
 xvhen she hare him. 1 Chron. ii. 3 sq. is a compendium of 
 what is related here and to the end of the chapter. 3^3 is 
 one with ^''??^, Micah i 14, in the plain of Judah, Josh. xv. 
 44, differing from the north-Palestinian 3''t^^5 (Ecdippa, now 
 Zlh), Josh. xix. 29. That Chezib is the birthplace of the 
 ''p^iJ'n ^l^3L^'0 (Num. xxvi. 20) seems also pointed out by ''l-"ji!? 
 N3Tb, 1 Chron. iv. 20, belonging to this branch of the tribe of 
 Judah. Instead of the syntactically striking n\ni, the LXX has 
 avTTi Be Tjv, hence x''n'i. ^^i?'.! Zh, along with two ^"y^^)., is also 
 strange. The Samar. and Targ. Jer. read snpni all three times. 
 The marriage of Er and his early death, vv. 6, 7 : And Judah 
 took for his first-horn 'Er, a wife, of the name of Tamar. 
 And 'Er, Judah's first-horn, was evil in the eyes of Jahveh, 
 and Jahveh sleiu him. Tamar (whose name means the 
 palm, a common ancient figure for a woman of slender 
 figure and for imposing female beauty) was undoubtedly a 
 heathen, and indeed of unknown descent. Her husband, 
 without leaving issue, died an early death as the penalty of 
 his wickedness. The sin of Onan, vv. 8—10 : Then Judah 
 said to Onan : Go in iLnto thy hrothers wife, and enter into 
 a hr other -in-law' s marriage with her, and raise up seed to 
 thy hrother. But Onan knew that the seed wotdd not he his, 
 and it came to ^"^^^ whenever he ivent in unto his hrothers 
 wife, he destroyed it to the ground, lest he shoidd give seed to 
 his hrother. And wJiat Jie did ivas evil in the sight of 
 
GENESIS XXXVIII. U, 12. 269 
 
 Jahveli, and he slew him. What here appears as a custom 
 became subsequently Mosaic law, viz. that when brothers 
 dwell together, and one of them dies witliout leaving a son, 
 her husband's brother (D3^ levir) shall be 03^0, i.e. enter into 
 husband's brother (levirate) marriage with the widow, and 
 her first-born shall bear the name of the deceased, that his 
 name may not become extinct in Israel, Deut. xxv. 5 sq. 
 Onan agreed to his father's demand, but through coveting 
 the inheritance and out of malice ^ prevented its purpose. ^1^\ 
 is purposely said 9&, and not '''T."!, because not a single but 
 a repeated occurrence is intended, as at Num. xxi. 9, Judg. 
 vi. 3 (comp. XXX. 41) ; D5<, followed by a perf., has here 
 as there a temporal signification, and the meaning of 
 quotiescunquc (comp. Ps. xli. 7). The expression to destroy 
 to the ground is like Judg. xx. 21, 25. The inf. inp for 
 nn occurs again in the Pentateuch, ISTum. xx. 21. After 
 the premature death of Onan also, Judah consoles his 
 daughter-in-law with the prospect of Shelah, ver. 1 1 : Then 
 Judah said to Tamar his daughtcv-in-law : Jicmcmi as a 
 vridow in thy fathers house, until my son ^Selah is grown 
 up. For he thought : lest he also die like his hrothers. And 
 Tamar went and remained in her father s house. That a 
 childless widow should return to her father's house (Lev. 
 xxii. 13) has been at all times a natural custom. Thither 
 does Judah direct his daughter-in-law, giving her hopes of 
 marriage with his youngest son, who was not yet of marriage- 
 able age, but attracts her thither with this prospect, because 
 he fears that marriage with her would be as fatal to Shelah 
 as to Er and Onan. Meantime Judah also becomes a 
 widower, and an opportunity arises for the carrying out 
 of a crafty design by Tamar, ver. 12: And after a long 
 time had passed, Shut's daughter, the wife of Judah, died; 
 and when Judah Jmd ended his Tnourning, he icent up to his 
 sheep-shearers, he and Hirah the Adidlamitc, his companion, 
 
 ^ N? in 17 t?? ""S has the emphatic Dagesb, as also at xix. 2. 
 
270 GENESIS XXXVIII. 13, 14. 
 
 to Timnah. In loh it is Judah himself who is said, like 
 Laban, xxxi. 19, to shear his sheep. It was an act performed 
 in the presence and under the oversight of the owner of the 
 flock, and was, like the vintage, a festival given by him to 
 his servants (1 Sam. xxv. 11), to which guests also were 
 invited (2 Sam. xiii. 23-27). Thus Judali here takes 
 Hirah, his companion, with him. The LXX and Jerome 
 read 'inyn^ which ver. 20 may seem to favour. There are 
 three Timnahs (for which now Tibncli) ; that here meant is 
 the one mentioned Josh. xv. 57, together with Gibeah, in the 
 hill country of Judah (see Miihlau in Eiehm), between Socho 
 (jSuioeJx) and Beth-shemesh {'Ai7i ^^Scms), the Tibneh of the 
 12th route in Biideker, p. 212. ^V, not of the place, but of 
 the persons to whom they went up, is here combined, as at 
 Josh. ii. 8, with rh]}. Tamar hears of it, disguises herself, 
 and places herself on the road to Timnah, vv. 13, 14: 
 And it ivas told Tamar, saying : Behold, thy father-in-law 
 goeth up to Timnah to shear his sheejy. Then she put off her 
 widows garments, and covered herself ivith a veil and disguised 
 herself, and so sat at the entrance of 'Unajim, which is on the 
 luay to Timnah ; for she saiv that ^Sela was grown up, and yet 
 she was not given to him to wife. fW xxxi. 19 is here ex- 
 changed for the infinitive form w. And instead of D3nni xxiv. 
 65, we have here the active : she made a covering of her veil 
 (as at Deut. xxii. 12, in opposition to which w^e find Jon. 
 iii. 6 : he spread sackcloth) in order not to be recognised as his 
 daughter-in-law. ^?yn^l is not meant of ornaments (n^iT n"*^ 
 Prov. vii. 10) (LXX, Onk. Syr.), but of disguising after the 
 manner of a harlot (like n^tpy Cant. i. 7). She intended to 
 appear, according to Canaanite custom, as a ^f"}.? (Assyr. 
 Icadistu), i.e. one exposing herself in honour of Astarte, the 
 goddess of love, and in this, according to ver. 21 sq., she suc- 
 ceeded. She seated herself at the entry of the village (hence 
 nna not '^V'^) 'Enajim, in order to escape by stratagem the dis- 
 grace of childlessness : non temporalis usum libidinis requisivit 
 
GENESIS XXXVIII. 15-18. 271 
 
 scd sv£ccssionis gratiain concupivit (Ambrose). As |ri'"n (Q^'"i) and 
 pnM (Dl'ni) are interchanged, so is D''^''^ one with D3''yn in tlie 
 plain of Jndah, Josh. xv. 34 (comp. here ver. 21 D'':''i'3), 
 Ancient translators (Targums, Syr. Jer. Saad.), the LXX 
 excepted (Alvdv), ignore that cry (two fountains) is here the 
 name of a town. li. Chanan in Jallcut, § 145, already 
 correctly appeals to Josh. xv. 34. Judah sees her and is 
 seized with carnal lust, vv. 15, IG : Then JudaJi saw her and 
 took her for a harlot, for she had covered her faec. And he 
 turned aside to her in the way and said: Come then, I will 
 come in unto tJiee. For he knew not that she was his dau'jhter- 
 in-laio. And she said : Wliat wilt thoic give me that thou 
 maycst come in unto me ? His not recognising her as his 
 daughter-in-law arose from her being veiled, and his taking 
 her for a harlot from her disguise and her sitting on the 
 watch. Then he turned aside to her (nt23 as e.g. Num. xx. 
 17, and really like ^IS Hos. iv. 14) '^I'ilD'^^'i' wliere she was 
 sitting by the way; LXX, e^eKkive 8e 7rpo9 avTrju ttjv 686v, 
 *]mn as accus. of the more particular definition which Lagarde 
 and Olsh. prefer. As the price of her • compliance, she 
 requires a kid ; and as he cannot give her this at once, a 
 pledge, vv. 17, 18 : And he said : I will send thee a kid from 
 the flock ; and she replied : If thou give me a pledge till thou 
 send it. And he said : What pledge shall I give thee ? And 
 she said : Thy signet ring and thy cord and thy staff that is in 
 thy hand. And he gave it to her ajid went in unto her, and she 
 conceived by him. She requires as a price a kid, the favourite 
 sacrificial animal of Heta^ri in the worship of the goddess of 
 love (see Movers, Fhonizier, i. 680); and as P";y, a pledge (in 
 Greek and Latin a word borrowed from the Semitic), three 
 articles closely connected with his person, and therefore making 
 him the more certainly recognisable. Judah's signet ring cnin 
 is the only possible but still uncertain trace of the use of 
 writing in the patriarchal history ; the verb nna does not 
 occur in Genesis, and nnn in itself means only to close, to 
 
272 GENESIS XXXVIII. 19-24. 
 
 close up. The signet ring was worn on the breast (Cant. 
 viii. 6) on a cord (/V^), a multiple one (whence ver. 25 DY''ri2n, 
 comp. nntDy of a multiple crown, Zech. vi. 11). The travel- 
 ling or walking staff is here called noo as distinguished from 
 the natural stick bpjp xxx. 37, xxxii. 11 (only accidentally 
 sounding like haculum). " Every Babylonian — says Hero- 
 dotus, i. 195 — wears a signet ring and a staff cut by hand, 
 and on every staff is something set upon the top, an apple, 
 or a rose, or a lily, or an eagle, or something of the kind, for 
 no one may carry a staff without a sign." The Jahvist 
 testifies that this custom prevailed in Canaan also. Tamar 
 now resumes her widow's garments, and the harlot, whom 
 Judah causes to be sought for, is nowhere to be found, vv. 
 19-23 : And she arose, and went away and 2^ut off her veil 
 from her, and she put on the garments of her widoiohood. And 
 Judah sent the kid through his friend the Adidlamitc, to fetch 
 the pledge from the woman's hand, and he found her not. Then 
 he asked the men of her plaee, saying : Where is the hierodule 
 that was at 'Enajim hy the way ? But they said : There is no 
 hierodule here. And he returned to Judah and said : I have 
 not found her ; and also the people of the i^lace said : There is 
 no hierodule here. Then Judah said : Let her keep it, that we 
 may not he a laughing-stock ; I sent indeed the kid and thou 
 hast not found her. The connection i<"'n ^^t^"^j5^ is like 5<in ^y^^ 
 xix. 33, comp. Judg. vi. 14, nt ^nb and ""^p nr Ps. Ixviii. 9. 
 Instead of the usual njii [e,g, also xlviii. 9), njn is only once 
 written, 1 Sam. xxi. 10. Jerome aptly translates np'npn by 
 haheat sibi. It is apparent from Judah's unwillingness to let 
 what he has done be known, that he was ashamed of it. When 
 Tamar's condition was manifest, she was condemned to be 
 burned, ver. 24 : And it came to pass after about three months, 
 that it was told Judah saying : Thy daughter-in-law Tamar 
 has played the harlot, and also she is with child in consequence 
 of her harlotry. And Judah said : Bring her forth and let her 
 he lurncd. The D of c6tJ'P is not preformative (according 
 
GENESIS XXXVIII. 2o, 26. 273 
 
 to the formation ""innrp, "liop) but prepositional : after three 
 months, hence the same as t^'7t^'p ; the constructive ^b^ stands 
 here with a masc. as at Lev. xxv. 21 with a fern. It also 
 sometimes occurs elsewhere that 3 stands before a word 
 provided with a preposition; see Lev. xxvi. 37, 1 Sam. xiv. 
 14, Isa. i. 26 and 1 Sam. x. 27, where we must read with 
 the LXX i^7.np3 "a mouth later," instead of C'nnoa. ^}i^ 
 does not here stand first in the announcement, but before the 
 adjective '"TJi^, the point of gravity of the announcement (comp. 
 on the contrary xxii. 20). Judah as the head of the family 
 pronounces the sentence of death, as Laban does x:; li. 32. 
 Tamar being to a certain extent the betrothed of Shelah, who 
 had not expressly resigned her, lier yielding to another man was 
 regarded as the unfaithfulness of a bride or a wife ; but the 
 punishment of death by burning pronounced upon her is not 
 in accordance with the Mosaic penal law, which inflicts this 
 penalty only upon carnal intercourse with a mother and daughter 
 at the same time, and upon unchastity in the daughter of a 
 priest. Lev. xx. 14, xxi. 9. The capital punishment to be 
 inflicted upon the unfaithful wife is left undetermined, Deut. 
 xxii 22, but seems, like that of the newly-married woman 
 found to be deflowered and of the betrothed, who was proved 
 unfaithful, Deut. xxii. 20 sq., 23 sq., to have consisted in 
 stoning, and to have been, according to Ezek. xvi. 40, so also 
 understood, comp. John viii. 5. Judah's profound confusion, 
 vv. 25, 26 : She is hroughi forth, and at the same time she sent 
 to her father-in-law saying : Of a man, to luhom these things 
 "belong, am I v:ilh child ; and she said : Look carefully, I i^ray 
 thee, to ivhoni the signet ring and the cord and the staff belong. 
 Then Judah acknouicdgcd and said : She is more righteous than 
 I, for because (that it thus happens) / gave her not to my son 
 Shelah. And he contimLcd not to know her again. The con- 
 struction 2oa serves to express what is contemporaneously 
 done or experienced by the same subject, just as at 1 Sam. 
 ix. 11 ; comp. the same scheme with a difierent subject in the 
 
 VOL. II. fl 
 
274 GENESIS XXXVIII. 27-29. 
 
 account of the flood, vii. 6. On \'^~bv ''3, when we rather 
 expect "•? isr^y, see on xviii. 5. It is noble of Tamar not 
 to disgrace Judah publicly, and rather to go to death 
 than at once to name him. Judah acknowledges the three 
 pledges as his, and, struck by conscience, confesses that 
 he is himself to blame for this result of the matter.^ 
 This public confession of his fault (comp. as to the ex- 
 pression that of King Saul, 1 Sam. xxiv. 18) is the 
 first good trait that is related of Judah. There was no 
 need for saying that now she was not burned, though there 
 was for telling us that Judah left her in future unmolested. 
 Tamar's twins by Judah, vv. 27-29 : And it came to pass at 
 the time of her delivei^y, and hehold, twins were in her womh ; 
 and it came to ^oass, ivhen she travailed, a hand came to sight ; 
 then the midwife took and hound upon Ms hand a scarlet thread, 
 saying : This came forth first. And it came to pass as he drew 
 hack his hand, and hehold, his brother came out, and she said : 
 How hast thou on thy part torn a rent! and they called his 
 name Peres. And afterwards came his hrothcr forth, on whose 
 hand was the scarlet thread, so they called his Zerah. The 
 time of travail and the delivery itself, as the result, are dis- 
 tinguished. Whether \^'^'\ is conceived of with an indefinite 
 personal subject : then he (it) stretched out a hand (Dillm.), 
 which the retrospective il^'t'y 28& seems to favour, or imper- 
 sonally, then there was, i.e. appeared, a hand, is questionable ; 
 the possibility of this impersonal comprehension is apparent 
 from Job xxxvii. 10, Prov. xiii. 10 (in opposition to which 
 Prov. X. 24 may have to be read, as by Hitzig, jri.^). It is 
 unnecessary to read with Driver {Heh. Tenses, § 135. 6, note 2) 
 2"'C'n3 instead of ^'^'P? ; ^''^''?r' as a definition of time : as he 
 was in the act of drawing his hand back, is defended by 
 nnnbs as it (the vine) was in the act of sprouting, xl. 10: 
 n"':^'D^=TK'0 inVna with a not of comparison but of time; in 
 
 ^ Because this is to his honour, this history is not only read in Hebrew, but 
 also translated by the Methurgeman Megilla 256. 
 
GENESIS XXXVIII. 27-29. 275 
 
 post-biblical Hebrew this use of the participle instead of the 
 finitum is of frequent occurrence, e.g. Shahhath ii. 5 Dn3 = Dnr'3 
 when he spares (comp. Eashi on the passage, and also Geiger, 
 SpracJie der Mischnah, § 24. 2), or: 3 is Ccqjh vcritatis intro- 
 ducing the predicate : then he was (showed himself as) draw- 
 ing back his hand. A piece of wool dyed, not purple but 
 scarlet, with the dye of the cochineal gall-insect coccus cacti, is 
 here called V?'. Without some such external identification 
 as that employed by Tamar's midwife, there is really no 
 certain token by which, after delivery has been completed, 
 the first-born can be recognised. This time however it was 
 of no avail, the turning of the one thus marked leaving space for 
 the twin brother to come forth first. Jerome correctly takes 
 ^vj? in the exclamation of the midwife in the sense ol propter 
 te (comp. XX. 3); pQ is not meant of ruptura perinaci, but only 
 of a breaking through by means of push upon push ; the 
 accentuation seems to take ps r>V as a sentence by itself, 
 as at xvi. 5 : upon thee lies the fault of the breach (Heidenh. 
 Eeggio) — but what follows upon no must be taken together 
 as an exclamation of puzzled astonishment. • The name n"]T as 
 well as ps refers to something memorable from birth, the 
 " brightness " alludes to the bright-coloured string ; nnr, a 
 reference to the word crimson, Aram. ''linT, "•"ilinr (Ptashbam, 
 Heiden. and others), Assyr. zartr = zahrir. Instead of ^"^i?^? 
 with the most general subject : they called, the Samar. Targ. 
 Jer. I. and Syr. give both times ^I'v!^).. 
 
 It was thus, as this historic picture taken entirely from J 
 relates, that the beginnings of the tribe of Judah were formed 
 by a wondrous co-operation of human sin and Divine appoint- 
 ment. Perez, Zerah and Shelah are the three ancestors of the 
 three chief families of the tribe of Judah at the departure 
 from Egypt, Num. xxvi. 20. Through Perez, Tamar was 
 the ancestress of the first and of the second David. How 
 homely are the pictures of the ancestors of Israel ! There is 
 almost more shadow than lis;ht in them. National ambition 
 
276 GENESIS XXXIX 
 
 played no part in, or with tliem. Not a trace of mythic 
 idealization is to be seen. The ancestors of Israel do not 
 appear as demi-gods. Their elevation consists in their con- 
 quering, in virtue of the measure of grace bestowed upon 
 them, or, if they succumb, in their ever rising again. Their 
 faults are the foil of their greatness with respect to the 
 history of redemption. Even Tamar with all her errors was, 
 through her wisdom, tenderness and noble-mindedness, a saint 
 according to the Old Testament standard. 
 
 At the selling of Joseph in Dothan, Judah had apparently 
 not yet separated from his brethren. Hence it must have 
 been after this event that he made common cause with 
 Hirah the Adullamite. Between Joseph's disappearance and 
 the migration of the family of Jacob to Egypt, there are, as 
 we saw on ver. 3 7, some twenty years. Within these two-and- 
 twenty years or so, was the history of Judah and Tamar played 
 out. When at xlvi.l2 two sons of Perez, one of the twin brothers, 
 are named among those who came into Egypt, these are great- 
 grandsons of Jacob, who, though born in Egypt, are regarded 
 as coming into Egypt in their fathers (see on xlvi. 8 sqq.). 
 
 JOSEPH IN POTIPHAR'S HOUSE AND IN PPJSON, CH, XXXIX. 
 
 The history of Jacob in his son Judah, related ch. 
 xxxviii., is now followed by the continuation of his history 
 in his son Joseph. Different hands were not to be discerned 
 in ch. xxxviii., all was by J (C), even without the intervention 
 of the redactor. Ch. xxxix., on the contrary, though through- 
 out from J, — apart from xlix. 18 it is the only section of 
 Joseph's history in which the Divine name nin^ appears, and 
 that seven times, — has not remained in the same manner 
 intact. It may be assumed, but cannot be suihciently proved, 
 that E {B) is here and there blended with J {(J) ; the hand 
 of R is however at once apparent in ver. 1, where the history 
 of Joseph is again taken up from the point at which it had 
 
GENESIS XXXIX. 1-5. 277 
 
 arrived at xxxvii. 36 : And Joseph was brought dovm to Egypt ; 
 and Potiphar, a court official of Pharaoh, cap)tain of the guard, 
 an Egyptian man, bought him of the hand of the Ishmaclitcs who 
 had brought him down thither. *T]i*l is not used in continua- 
 tion, for what is related is out of connection with ch. xxxviii. 
 The more particular designation of the " Egyptian man," 
 according to his name and dignity, is inserted by R from 
 E in accordance with xxxvii. 36 ; for this writer gave the 
 name and title of the master to whom the " Midianites " sold 
 Joseph, while J merely says that he who bought Joseph from 
 the " Ishmaelites " was an " Egyptian man," a distinguished 
 person and a man of property, as appears from the account 
 which follows. He made a profitable purchase ; Joseph 
 had good fortune, and brought it to his master, vv, 2-5 : 
 And Jahveh was icith Joseph, and he was a prosperous man, 
 and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. And his 
 master saw that Jahveh was xvith him, and that all that 
 he undertook Jahveh caused to prosper in his hand. And 
 Joseph found favoiir in his eyes and served him, and he made 
 him overseer over his house, and put all- that belonged to 
 him in his hand. And it came to pass from tJie time that 
 he made him overseer over his house and all that belonged to 
 him, that Jahveh blessed the house of the Egyptian for Joseph's 
 sake, and the blessing of Jahveh was shown in all that belonged 
 to him, in the hotise and in the field. The second '•pl'l 2b is 
 striking, but it is, as ver. 20 shows, the style of J, as the 
 expression of continuance in the given condition ; xl. 4& is 
 by reason of the definition of time added to vn""!, not quite 
 analogous. It was according to i^N nin^ 2>a that we explained 
 nin''"nK, iv. 1, of helpful support. The Egyptian master saw 
 that Jahveh (equivalent in J to n\i^N) was with him, made 
 him his first servant, and placed everything under his eye and 
 care. ^''"'^'^."^2, all belonging to him, is possible, Ges. § 123, 
 3a, but the elliptical expression might rather be expected 
 after the full one in vv. 5, 8. W?;? with a perf. following 
 
278 GENESIS XXXIX. 6, 7. 
 
 occurs in J" at Ex. v. 23, ix. 24; 7??? too is Jalivistic 
 (xii. 13, XXX. 27), and elsewhere in the Pentateuch only 
 Deuteronomic (Deut. i. 37, xv. 10, xviii. 12). Tpf^n, praejiccre, 
 is construed alternately with n (comp. Jer. xli. 18) and ^j? 
 (comp. xli. 34). It is regular that the predicate ''i}]] in the 
 gemis potius should precede the subject 'n ^3"!?^ Ges. § 147a, 
 especially in the case of \T'i, which corresponds with the neuter 
 " there was, there was shown." Joseph possessed his master's 
 fullest confidence, and was a man of goodly appearance, ver. 6 : 
 And he Ic/t all that he had in Joseph's hand, and ivith him he 
 troubled himself ahout nothing hut the bread tlmt he ate ; and 
 Joseph was beautiful in form and beautiful in appcaranee. 
 (p) 7i<t 2tj; to leave (to confide) to any one, is said, Job xxxix. 
 11, 14, comp. Isa. x. 3, here with T? of him to whom some 
 property is entrusted. W5? refers to Joseph. He let him take 
 care for everything that another could take care for, so that 
 nothing was left but his eating, which it was self-evident he 
 nnist himself care for. The young superintendent of his 
 house was factotum, he was handsome in form (growth) and 
 appearance (countenance, complexion, hair) ; the narrator 
 distinguishes in the same manner i^^n and ns"io xxix. 17. 
 In the Moslem legend he is esteemed from this time forward 
 as the ideal of youthful male beauty ; in Persian figurative 
 language he is called mcthi KanCin, the moon of Canaan. His 
 master's wife falls passionately in love with him, ver. 7 : And 
 it came to pass after these things, that his master's wife raised 
 her eyes to Joseph and said : Lie ivith me, I pray thee. On 
 bs ti)TV t<b':, Assyr. nasH ind ana, see the discussion in 
 Luthardt's Zeitschr. 1882, p. 125, and Friedr. Delitzsch, 
 Prolegomena,'^. 48. She cast upon him love glances; 7^^ has 
 
 the same root as J^j the association of love. There have 
 
 been at all times and in all nations such women with 
 adulterous lusts, De Eoug^ has given a similar history from 
 the papyrus d'Orbiney, which is written in hieratic characters 
 
GENESIS XXXIX. 8-12. 279 
 
 (Ticvuc arcMologiqiic, 9 th year).^ Joseph however had no ear for 
 her unchaste proposal, vv. 8, 9 : BiU he refused, and said unto his 
 masters v:ife : Beliold, my master cares with me for nothing in the 
 house, and all tliai belongs to him lias lie given into my hand. He 
 is not greater in this house than I, and lie has ivithholdcn nothing 
 from me hut only thee, because thou art his tvife, and how should 
 I do such great wickedness and sin against God I The relator 
 does not say nnx vo, but, which better expresses the act of 
 self-control, W?'^, (Pieggio). After the preceding vb, no 8a 
 means quidquam, as at Prov. ix. 13; the more emphatic 
 expression for it is riD^SJp 9a (the French ;poini). If we had 
 r^ instead of ^33''Nt 9«, this would state : there is none greater 
 in this house than I ; ^^.^"'X has a personal subject : he is not 
 greater in this house than I, i,e. he has placed me on a level 
 with himself (comp. on Eccles. vi. 2, where the case is similar). 
 The confirming ""^'^^3 (quoniam, since) occurs in the Pentateuch 
 only here and ver. 23. That which is repugnant is also 
 rejected with 'iI''^? at xliv. 8, 34, Ps. cxxxvii, 4. Joseph recog- 
 nises the inviolability of marriage, and recoils from such faith- 
 less ingratitude towards his master. A last but unsuccessful 
 attempt to seduce him, vv. 10-12 : A7id it came to pass, as 
 she persuaded Joseph day by day and lie hearlccned not to her, to 
 lie by her, or to be with her, then it came to pass, about tlie same 
 time, that he came in to do his work, and tliere were none of the 
 men of the house within, that she caught him by the garment 
 saying : Lie with me ; but he left his garment in her hand and 
 fled and went out. H^V ^'^'"'J? used in the sexual meaning of 
 GwekOelv, avvelvai, avvovcria, is perhaps from E, where what 
 the woman desired might have been so expressed. Besides 
 n^n DV3 L 20, nrn Di'ns occurs elsewhere also, e.g. Deut. 
 vi. 24, comp, ii. 30 : about this day, i.e. this time. His not 
 snatching the garment out of her hands arose from respect, 
 
 ^ In the Moslem legend it has grown into the sentimental loves of Jusuf and 
 Sukilia ; see the Hungarian work of E. Neumann, A Mohammedan Jozef-moiida 
 (Buda-Pesth 1881). 
 
280 GENESIS XXXIX. 13-19. 
 
 and his fleeing was a flight from temptation, lest he should 
 succumb to it. "^n^?!? 11a being meant of the inner part of 
 the house, nv^nn must certainly be understood not of the street 
 outside the house, but of the more external part of the house 
 itself; nevertheless, since i"i?? is meant of the upper garment, 
 we may also think of flight into the open air. The revenge 
 of the rejected, vv. 13-15 : And it came to pass, when she saw 
 that he had left his garment in her hand and Jled out, that she 
 called the men of the house and said to them thus : See, he has 
 hrought in unto us a Hebrew man to m.och us; he came in 
 unto me to lie with me, and I cried out loith a loud voice. And 
 it came to pass, when he heard that I lifted up my voice and 
 cried out, that he left his garment with me and fed and went 
 out That she does not give the man his proper name, but 
 says " he," is a characteristic trait. A " Hebrew man " was, 
 according to xliii. 32, xlvi. 34, no epitheton ornans in anti- 
 Semitic Egypt. In 12^ she comprises herself and the house- 
 hold, especially the females ; " he " seems, by having brought 
 this foreigner into the house, to have intended to risk their 
 honour. It is with the design of not betraying the true state 
 of affairs that she does not say : he left his garment ''']\'^, 
 but vV^. Having thus gained over the household, who would 
 certainly not be inclined towards the favoured foreigner and 
 strict overseer, she preserves the means of proof for the 
 purpose of exciting her husband against Joseph, vv. 16-19 : 
 And she let his garment lie hy her until his master came 
 in, and she spake to him just such words, saying : The 
 Hebrew slave, ivhom thou hroughtcst to us, came in unto me 
 to mock me. And it came to pass, ivhen I lifted up my voice 
 and cried, that he left his garment near me and fled out. 
 And it came to pass, lohen the master heard the words of his 
 own wife, which she spake to him, saying : Such and such things 
 did thy slave unto one, that his wrath was kindled. The 
 narrator transfers himself to the standpoint of the wife, when 
 he says : she waited till his (Joseph's) master came, not : till 
 
GENESIS XXXIX. 20-23. 281 
 
 her husband and still less her lord came, for petticoat govern- 
 ment was indigenous in Egypt, Diodor. i. 27. n?xn D''"}3'n3 
 11 a, pointing backwards, as at xxiv. 28, xliv. 7, means "such 
 words ; " here, according to the context, what was said having 
 Ijeen already repeated, "just such words." In 19a the use is 
 somewhat different, the formula there meaning " such things," 
 as at 1 Sam. ii. 23 ; in Hebrew diction the notions word and 
 thing are both included in 121. Joseph's master was angry ; 
 the marriage laws of Egypt were, as Diodor. i. 78 says, severe ; 
 he did not however inflict their heaviest penalty on Joseph ; 
 his anger would certainly be more excited by the vexatious 
 nature of the occurrence, since he would hardly regard his wife 
 as truth itself, ver. 20 : And Joseph's master took him and put 
 him into the p^iblic prison, the place where the Icing's prisoners 
 v:ere imprisoned, and he remained there in the prison, properly 
 the house of the enclosure (-innn JT'n, as Hebraeo-Sam. reads), 
 not: of confinement (as though "inD="iJD, ^^fs>--> whence sign, 
 dungeon) ; the prison-house is thus called as being a fortress 
 surrounded with a wall (Syr. sahretha) — a designation which 
 occurs (instead of li^^] JT'a or D''7iDxn JT'a) only in the history 
 of Joseph and in J. According to this narrator, Joseph's 
 master is a wealthy private man, who is left unnamed, and 
 he consigns Joseph to prison from his own house ; while 
 according to E he, viz. Potiphar, is captain of the body- 
 guard and has his official residence in the State prison. The 
 addition D^"iiDX 7]^»3n (^TP^) '"iiDi<"it:''x {=uv -l:^•x . . xl. 3, as at 
 XXXV. 13, comp. on Dipp Ges. § 11 G. 2) helps to accommodate 
 the two accounts. Joseph's prosperity in the prison, vv. 
 21-23 : And Jahveh ivas with Joseph and shoiced him favour, 
 and worked him favour in the eyes of the keeper of the prison. 
 And the captain of the prison delivered into Joseph's hand all 
 the prisoners that were in the public prison, and everything that 
 had to he done there was done hy him. The captain of the 
 prison looked after nothing in his hand, because Jahveh was 
 with him, and whatever he undertook Jahveh made to prosper. 
 
282 GENESIS XL. 
 
 The expression 'TV,'^ ^3n ]n'i is like Ex. iii. 21, xi. 3, xii. 36. 
 To Q"'i^'y must be added in thought the most general subject, 
 as at Isa. xxxii. 12 (Driver, Hehxw Tenses, § 135. 6) : every- 
 thing that they had to do there, he did, i.e. it was done by his 
 orders and under his supervision. The enhancement n^iN0"p3 
 is found only here ; nx"i with the accusative means to see after 
 anything, to make it one's business : the captain did not 
 trouble himself about anything that was in his (Joseph's) 
 hand, he left him a free hand, he trusted him blindly. 
 The concluding words are, as it were, like the refrain to 
 ver. 2 sq. 
 
 THE DEEAJVIS OF THE TWO STATE PRISONERS, AND JOSEPH S 
 INTERPRETATION, CH. XL. 
 
 From ch. xx., the model portion for E {B), onwards, this 
 narrator appears pre-eminently as the writer, from whom 
 proceeds an account of the impulse given to the course of 
 history by dreams. This already makes it probable that the 
 narrative, which now follows, is chiefly derived from this 
 source. To this leads also, in relation to xxxvii. 28a (down 
 to "nnrrp), the statement of Joseph, " I was stolen out of the 
 land of the Hebrews," and the statement found in xl. 3 in its 
 variation from J {(J), who makes Joseph's master deliver him 
 up to the "luEi^ ri''3, outside his house. But apart from the 
 harmonistic additions in vv. 3, 5, 15, according to which 
 Joseph was put in the prison before the two officers of 
 Pharaoh, J may be recognised by the style at xl. 1, comp. 
 xxii. 1 and xl. 10 rinnb3, comp. xxxviii. 29. It seems to be 
 J himself who is here relating after E. 
 
 Here for the first time we meet with the intervention of 
 the king of Egypt in the history, and the question arises, 
 whether this Pharaoh belongs to a national Egyptian dynasty, 
 or to one of the three Hyksos dynasties — the first having 
 the names of six kings — which, according to Manetho, pre- 
 
GENESIS XL. 283 
 
 ceded the eighteen native dynasties. The Ilyksos — says an 
 extract in Josephus, c. Ap. 1. 14, from Manetho's Egyptian 
 history — invading Egypt from the East, subjected it, ruled it 
 for 511 years, and receiving free egress, after being at length 
 conquered by Misphragmuthosis and besieged by his son 
 Tethmosis in Avaris (the border fortress erected in the east 
 against the Assyrians), marched through the desert towards 
 Syria, and, not daring to advance as far as Syria from fear of 
 the Assyrians, who then ruled over Asia, founded Jerusalem 
 in Judaea. The name TKHfl^, says Josephus, means, accord- 
 ing to Manetho, ^aat\et<i 7roifiev€<i, or, according to another 
 copy of the historical work, al-^fiaXcoroL irotixeve^. Both 
 explanations are linguistically legitimate, for sasu is the 
 hieroglyphic name of a brave pastoral people involved in 
 many ways with Egypt, and Ids means in Koptic (as in the 
 common tongue) shepherd, while hah (often with the addition 
 of the vowel a, and often also with the determinative of a 
 sitting figure of a king) means in the monumental language 
 prince (chief), and written with other hieroglyphics it means 
 also prisoner {DMZ. xxxL 453), like the Koptic hole, to sur- 
 round ; heh, surrounded. Julius Africauus has, instead of 511 
 years for the total duration of the three Hyksos dynasties 
 (the first of which is stated by Josephus to have lasted 
 259 years 10 months), 284 + 518 + 151, hence nearly 1000 
 years. Another fragment in Josephus, c. Ap. i. 26 sq., relates 
 that the lepers of Egypt being removed by Amenophis to the 
 city of Avaris, where the Hyksos, driven away by Tethmosis, 
 had dwelt 393 years before, rose up, under the Heliopolitan 
 priest Osarsiph, afterwards called Moses, against the king, and 
 after practising, with the help of the Solymitan Hyksos, whose 
 aid they had invoked, all kinds of cruelties and abominable 
 profanations of holy things, were at last, after the thirteen pre- 
 dicted years of their rule over Egypt had expired, expelled from 
 Egypt to the borders of Syria by Amenophis, wlio had fled 
 from them to Ethiopia and his son Sethon-Eamses. Manetho 
 
284 GENESIS XL. 
 
 himself says (as Josephus twice brings forward) tliat this 
 secoud narrative is derived not from original Egyptian sources, 
 but e'/c T&jy dSecr7rcT&)9 fjivdoXoyovfjiivcov. Other authors give still 
 more confused accounts : Chreremon (Joseph. c.Ap. 1. 32), that 
 the unclean, who were expelled from the country by Ameno- 
 phis, led by Tisithen- Moses and Peteseph- Joseph, joined 
 themselves with those in Pelusiura, and forced Amenophis to 
 flee to Ethiopia, until his son Eamesses drove them, the Jews, 
 to Syria. Lysimachus {id. 34), that under the Egyptian king 
 Bokchoris, the lepers and those who had scabies among the 
 Jewish people were drowned, and that the rest of this un- 
 godly multitude, being cast out into the wilderness, went 
 on to 'Iep6(Tv\a (city of the sacrilegious), afterwards called 
 'lepocroXvfxa, burning and plundering on the way. Justin 
 {Rist. xxxvi. 2, comp. Fompeji Trogi Fragm. ed. Bialowsky, 
 p. 32), who takes Moses for the son of Joseph, says : Acgyptii 
 guum scahiem et vitiliginem paterentur, responso moniti eum cum 
 cegris, ne pcstis ad plurcs serperet, terminis Acgypti pellunt. 
 Bxvx, igitur exsidum f actus sacra Acgyptiorum fiirto alstidit, qucc 
 repctcntcs armis Acgyptii domum rcdire tempcstatibus compulsi 
 sunt ; Tacitus [ITist. v. 2) : Stint qui tradunt, Assyrios con- 
 venas, indignuni agrorum piopidum, parte Acgypti potitos mox 
 propdas urhcs Hchracasquc terras ct propria Syriae coluissc. 
 Hence w^e are obviously to regard the Hyksos and Israelites 
 as one people. Josephus boasts of their being his ancestors. 
 H. Grotius, Herm. Witsius, Basnage, Perizonius and others are 
 on his side. Hofmann in an article " Unter welcher Dynastie 
 haben die Israeliten ^gypten verlassen " (in Studien u. 
 Kritikcn, 1839), and in his letter to Bockh on Egyptian and 
 Israelite chronology (1847), has tried to show, that the Hyksos 
 were the Israelites, transformed by Egyptian vanity into a 
 conquering nation. But many ancient investigators, such as 
 Cuneeus, Scaliger, Pezronius, Bochart, Marsham, Jas. Usher, 
 Frider. Spanhemius, already perceived that this view was un- 
 tenable ; and now the view of Ewald, that the Hyksos were 
 
GENESIS XL. 285 
 
 Hebrew tribes who penetrated into Egypt before the Israelite 
 migration, may be regarded as generally prevailing. Tiie 
 papyrus Sallier I. (in Ebers, pp. 204-206) confirms this 
 episode of foreign usurpation. The worship of Sutcch (Set), 
 which has since prevailed, and the horse which has since 
 become native in Egypt, are characteristic. But while the 
 combination of the Hyksos with Israel has failed, it is on the 
 other hand almost universally acknowledged, that the lepers 
 who, according to Manetho's second account, dwelt for a time 
 with the Hyksos, were the Israelites. This view also has 
 ancient advocates, and reaches back — as may be inferred from 
 the narrative of Hecatoeus of Abdera in Diodor. xL 3, comp. 
 xxxiv. (ed. Bekk.) — to the early time of the Ptolemies. Schiller 
 in his Scndung Mosis states it, but without considering that 
 the dark colour of the tradition must be for the most part laid 
 to the account of Egyptian national hatred. We have accord- 
 ingly to distinguish between two expulsions of foreigners from 
 Egypt : the casting off of the yoke of Phcenician or Arabic 
 conquering invaders by a sovereign of the I7th or 18th 
 Dynasty, according to Wiedemann, Amosis. (Ahmes), father 
 of Amenophis I., and the Israelite exodus, represented as the 
 removal from the country of' a people who defiled it, under 
 IMenephthes (Merneptah, lower Egyptian Merncphtah), son of 
 Ramses II. Miamun of the 19 th Dynasty. The capital of 
 the kingdom in the time of this pair of rulers was Thebes in 
 Upper Egypt, the home of the dynasty ; but they resided in 
 Tanis, the ancient capital of the Hyksos in the eastern Delta, 
 the chief place of the worship of Set, after whom the father 
 of Ramses II. was called Seti. The period of the Hyksos was 
 then long past. But was the king under whom Joseph came 
 into Egypt one of the Hyksos or not ? Greek chronographists 
 and Barhebraeus call him Apophis (Apepi), a king of the 
 loth Manethonian, the 1st Hyksos Dynasty. Wiedemann 
 in his Egyptian history, 1884, advocates the view that the 
 Pharaoh of Joseph was a Hyksos, but a later one than this 
 
286 GENESIS XL. 
 
 first Apepi. So too Dillm., who says that Joseph's elevation 
 took place in the Hyksos period, not in the time of their first 
 impetuous eruption, but when they had become Egyptianized.^ 
 But apart from the fact that the rule of the Hyksos is a still 
 indefinable, confused and indistinct matter {DMZ. xxxix. 148), 
 the view, that the Hyksos ruled in Egypt from Joseph to Moses, 
 is opposed by the one grave objection, that the people of Egypt, 
 to whom Israel was in bondage, appears throughout the Old 
 Testament Scriptures as a foreign, and by no means kindred 
 race, and that the aim of the migration of the house of Jacob 
 to Egypt, viz. to grow up into a nation far from the danger 
 of intermixture, excludes identity of origin. 
 
 It is striking that in the first account of Manetho in 
 Josephus, the first king whom tlie Hyksos elected from 
 among them is called Salatis (as also ^acrrjt;, a(f ov koI 6 
 ^atTr]<i vofji6<;, regarded by Afric, Euseb. and the school of 
 Plato as an objectionable various reading), and that at 
 xlii. 6 it is said of Joseph (the all but sovereign of Egypt, 
 see Artapanus in Euseb. Fraep. ix. 23) : tS^^K'n SU f\DV^ 
 pxn-py. These and other combinations, as 'TKam and 
 n;po ^t:'"3S xlvi. 34 (xlvii. 6), "A/3api<; or Avapt<i (Hyksos 
 fortress) and D''"1?V "'"'i' (xl. 15), are however but igncs fatui. 
 How very much we are groping in the dark with respect to 
 the organization of the Hyksos sovereignty, and Israel's 
 sojourn in and exodus from Egypt, is shown by Kohler's 
 examination of the matter in his History of the Old Testa- 
 ment, i. 237-245. He finally considers it most probable 
 that the migration of Israel must be placed before the 
 invasion of the Hyksos, the Hyksos rule limited to a period 
 of between two and three hundred years, and the exodus 
 dated after the expulsion of the Hyksos, perhaps the middle 
 of the 18 th Dynasty. 
 
 ^ V. Strauss-Torney in his article, " Israel von Joseph bis Mose nach agyp. 
 Quellen," in the Conserv. Monatsschrift for 1880. places the immigration in the 
 year 1944/3 under the Hyksos-Pharaoh Archies (Aseth). 
 
GENESIS XL, 1-4. 287 
 
 Offences of riiaraoh's cup-bearer and baker bring tlieni 
 both into the prison with Joseph, vv. 1—3 : And it came to 
 2mss after these things, the cup-hearer and laker of the king 
 of Egypt offended their lord the king of Egypt, and Pharaoh 
 vjos loroth with his two courtiers, ivith the chief of the cup- 
 hearers and the chief of the hakers, and he gave them into 
 the custody of the house of the chief of the hody-guard in the 
 prison, the place where Joseph was imprisoned. The cir- 
 cumstantiality of the narrative shows that two accounts are 
 here interwoven, with a careful preservation of their words, 
 notwithstanding the tautology thence arising. The main 
 fact which follows in ^'ifp^ is introduced by ''n^l ; the accessory 
 fact precedes in the circumstantializing perf. ^^pn, as at 
 Ex. xvi. 22, Deut. ix. 11 sq., Jer. xxxvi. 16, Ezek, i. 1, 
 though l^^t^n may also, according to the scheme xiv. 1 (see 
 there), be regarded as the main fact at which ""nil aims. 
 pjVp is the usual word for the anger of high-placed personages, 
 e.g. Esth. i. 21, 1 Sam. xxix. 4. The Kametz of D^np (see on 
 xxxvii. 36) is treated as immutable in Vp''ip as in ''p^ip, 
 Esth. ii. 21, corap. '')f"'")3 Dan. xi. 14, and on the other 
 hand as mutable in ''D^IP 7a (as in onp^ xxxvii. 36, comp. 
 r"}S Isa. XXXV. 9). The captain of the body-guard (execu- 
 tioners) dwelt, as w^e are here told, in the prison building, 
 which was under his charge, and he gave the two aristocratic 
 prisoners to his slave Joseph to wait upon, ver. 4 : And the 
 captain of the guard gave them into the charge of Joseph, loho 
 ministered to them, and they remained some time in custody. 
 As the accounts are before us for their mutual completion, 
 the "inon n^a nc' xxxix. 21-23 is the subordinate officer of 
 the chief commander of the executive, and the latter, the 
 master of Joseph, disposes, in virtue of his right of possession, 
 of those consigned to prison, and placed under the oversight 
 of the keeper. Whether and in what connection the imprison- 
 ment of Joseph himself was related by E, must be left 
 unsettled. D''p^ designates a lengthy period, as an indefinite 
 
288 GENESIS XL. 5-8. 
 
 number of days, iv. 3, Neli. i. 4, Dan. viii. 27, comp. 1 Sam. 
 xxix. 3. We now see how Josepli preserved his undaunted 
 character in a prison also, and how, as the reward of his 
 fidehty, the wisdom of a prophetic spirit was implanted in 
 his pure soul (Wisd. i. 4). He finds his two fellow-prisoners 
 depressed on account of their dreams, which they are unable 
 to interpret, and gets them to relate them, vv. 5—8 : Aoid 
 both dreamed a dream, each his dream in one and the same 
 night, each according to the interpretatio7i of his dream, the 
 cup-bearer and the haker of the king of Egypt, who were 
 imprisoned in the prison. And Joseph ivent in unto them 
 in the morning, and saw them, and behold they were sad. 
 llien he ashed the courtiers of Pharaoh, which were with him 
 in the custody of his master, saying : Why are your coun- 
 tenances sad to-day ? And they said to him : We have 
 dreamed a dream, and tlicre is no one to interpret it to us; 
 and Joseph said to them : Are not interpretations God's ^ 
 Tell it, I pray you, to me. It is seeking for difficulties 
 where there are none to take on^JC' Dipn genitively, somnium 
 amborum (Eeggio) ; Cii?n^ formed according to "li'^H, '^i^i, "liNU*^ 
 is not a connective form, but is here the ace. object governed 
 by ^»?nn (an accessory form to l^r'O!^ Ges. § 63. 2) ; 
 jiina (explanation interpretation from nns, Xi) combines the 
 notions of interpretation and meaning. Their saying : we 
 have dreamed a dream (not : dreams), seems to proceed from 
 their thinking that their dreams, which they had related to 
 each other, were essentially identical. And with the com- 
 plaint ink s: iribi is certainly combined the afterthought, 
 that as prisoners they could not apply to the Q"'?^"!'^- Joseph 
 however directs them from men to God, " interpretations are 
 God's," i.e. His affair and gift, and by requesting them to 
 tell them to him, he puts it before them as possible that 
 God will not withhold from him the ability which comes 
 from Him alone. Here too the circumstantial character of 
 the narrative manifests different hands. The dream of the 
 
GENESIS XL. 9-15. 289 
 
 cup-bearer, vv. 9-11: And the chief of the cup-hearers told 
 Joseph his dream, and said : In my dream, behold I had a 
 vine before me. And in the vine were three branches, and 
 while it was sprouting, its blossom also already shot forth, its 
 clusters of blossom ripened to grapes. And PharaolCs cup 
 was in my hand, and I took the grapes and ptrcsscd them, 
 and handed the cup into Pharaoh's hand. On nrn_b3 for 
 nnnb nnrnSj see on xxxviii. 29. Sprouting, blooming and 
 ripening coincided in a manner significant of the immediate 
 fulfilment of what the dream imagery indicated, i^)*? sounds 
 like an inflection of X^., which in the meaning blossom is 
 warranted by Mishnic Hebrew (see Levy), but the construction 
 with nnpy shows that it is intended as an abbreviated 
 nm*:, as at '^SS Prov. vii, 8 = ^ri33; see on the abbreviation 
 with an added suffix the comm. on Ps. xxvii. 5 (4th edit. p. 
 260). Viticulture, said to be derived from Osiris, was, as is 
 evident from Ps. Ixxviii. 47, cv. 33, comp. Num. xx. 5, already 
 well known in Egypt from the times of the ancient kingdom, 
 and the statement of Herodotus, ii. 77, must be limited 
 accordingly. Strabo, Athenaeus and Pliny describe the 
 various wines and wine lands of Egypt. Nor is it true 
 that, in the time of Psammetichus only, new must was drunk 
 and fermented wine forbidden. Plutarch, dc Iside, c. vi., tells 
 us the contrary. The people drank wine without restriction ; 
 the kings, as being also priests, only so much as the sacred 
 writings allowed, but after Psammetichus this restriction 
 ceased. The ancient monuments show us all kinds of 
 utensils used in wine - making, busy grape - treaders, sleepy 
 tipplers, even drunken women {DMZ. xxx. 407). Ebers sees 
 in the pressed juice of the grape, which the cup-bearer hands 
 to the king, a kind of cooling drink; this feature in the picture 
 however has in itself no significance, but naturally resulted 
 from the entire symbolism of the dream. Joseph's interpre- 
 tation, vv. 12-15: Then Joseph said unto him: This is its 
 
 interpretation : The three branches arc three days. In yet three 
 VOL. IL T 
 
290 GENESIS XL. 12-15. 
 
 days luill Pharaoh lift up thine head and restore thee to thine 
 office, and thou shalt give Pharaoh's cup into Ids hand according 
 to the former manner, when thou tvast his cup-hearer. Only 
 niayest thou keep me in thy rememhranee when it is ivell with 
 thee, and do kindness, I ]jray thee, to me, and make mention of 
 me to Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house. For Iivas stolen 
 aivay out of the land of the Hehrews, and here also have I done 
 nothing that they should put me into the dungeon. " To lift up 
 the head of any one " is also used at 2 Kings xxv. 27 of release 
 from prison and rehabilitation ; in Assyr. also ullu resu = to 
 bring to honour (Friedr. Delitzsch, Prolcg. 155). it:*X, which 
 xxxix. 20 meant "where" of place, here means " when " of 
 time, as e.g. also at 2 Sam. xix. 25. The restriction with 
 "□X "'3 (always with the QX makkephed, except in the three 
 passages, xv. 4, Num. xxxv. 33, Neh. ii. 2, where ''D has 
 Makkeph) is like fiovov ha Gal. ii. 10. nx '•3 is here also, as 
 at Micah vi. 8, Job xlii. 8, the confirmation of an implied 
 negative sentence : I ask of thee nothing but that thou mayest 
 (only that thou mayest). Driver, § 119S, stumbles at this 
 modal sense of the perfect ; but if something future has pre- 
 ceded, the perfect following ds ""^ shares in the reference to 
 the future, without dn ^3 interrupting the otherwise regular 
 consecutio temporum, 2 Sam. v. 6 (where we must translate 
 imo abigent te), 2 Kings xxiii. 9. Hence the alteration of ''3 
 into IS (Wellh. Driver) is syntactically unnecessary and not 
 really preferable ; for with this verumtamen si memineris " "i3T 
 is placed under conditions, while Joseph evidently means to 
 entreat it " (Dillm.). He calls the land of Canaan D'l^i''^ V}^, 
 so as at the same time to state his nationality. He was able to 
 call it this as the land where Abraham the Ibri (xiv. 13) and 
 his descendants had dwelt.^ And though he says he was stolen 
 away (after xxxvii. 28a), not sold (xxxvii. 28?>), he was still 
 the victim of a crime which his brothers perpetrated on him ; 
 
 1 See Herm. Witsius' (+ 1708) remarks on the subject in S. J. Curtis' 
 ' Sketches," Bihliotheca sacra, 1885, p. 318 sq. 
 
GENESIS XL. 16-10. 291 
 
 but concerning this he is purposely silent. In the account of 
 his brothers' revenge, ch. xxxvii., the stone-lined rain-water 
 pit, into which Joseph was cast, was called "ii3 by both narrators. 
 Such pits were elsewhere also used as dungeons, on which 
 account ^n became, as here, the general name for a dungeon 
 or a vault serving as a prison. 
 
 The dream of the baker, vv, 16, 17: A^id tJie chief baker 
 saw that the interpretation was good, he said to Joseph : I too in 
 my dream — and behold three baskets of white bread upon my 
 head, and in the uppermost basket all kinds of food of PJiaraoh's 
 bakers work, and the birds ate it out of the basket upon my head. 
 He means to say : I also saw a like thing in my dream, but 
 immediately starts off to relate this like thing. To carry 
 a basket on the head was the custom of Egyptian men 
 (Herod, ii. 35), especially, as the monuments show, of 
 bakers.^ Onkelos mistakenly translates ""in ''?p as ^ini ppp^ 
 baskets of the nobility, i.e. with fine bread ; Eashi and others : 
 broken baskets, baskets with holes in them ; but ''in is 
 an adj. rel. (from "i^n^ akin to i^in "nn candere, and tlien 
 
 candium esse) and means like ^J^^ white or fine flour and 
 bread made of it (comp. ''lin white cloth, Isa. xix. 9, and _> .^ 
 silk as dazzlingly white). Targ. Jer. correctly has X,^i?? N^ss, 
 and so already has the Jerus. Gemara to Beza ii. G. The p 
 of 7hD is partitive, like vi. 2, Joseph's interpretation, vv. 
 18, 19 : Then Joseph answered and said: This is its interpre- 
 tation : TJie three baskets are three days. In yet three days will 
 Pharaoh lift up thy head from thee and hang thee on a tree, and 
 the birds shall eat thy flesh from off thee. As in the quasi- 
 blessing of Esau ""iDC'D is ambiguously repeated from 
 the blessing of Jacob, xxvii. 39, comp. xxviii., so here 
 ^•J'xn"nx KU^"' has the sense of auferet caput tuum, while when 
 said of the cup-bearer it meant efferet. Beheading was an 
 
 1 See the chapter on bread-baking in Woenig's PJlanzen im alien JEgy^ite, 
 1886, pp. 174-180. 
 
292 GENESIS XL. 20-23. 
 
 ordinary capital punishment, and the hanging of the corpse 
 upon a tree (stake) an enhancement of the punishment (in 
 use also according to the Mosaic penal law, Deut. xxi. 22 sq.). 
 That Joseph did not keep back so crushing an interpretation, 
 is a proof on the one hand of his Divine certainty, and on 
 the other of the courage which was combined with his truth- 
 fulness ; in any case, he would feel that it was well for the 
 unhappy man to be prepared for the worst. 
 
 The fulfilment of the interpretations, vv. 20-23 : And it 
 came to pass on the third day, Pharaoh's hirthday, that he 
 made a feast for all his servants, and lifted up the head of the 
 chief of the cup-hearers and of the chief of the lakers among his 
 servants. He restored the chief of the cup-hearers to his office of 
 cup-hearer, and he gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand. And the 
 chief of the haJcers he hanged, as Joseph had interpreted. And the 
 cliief of the cup-hearers did not rcmcmhcr Joseph — he forgot him. 
 The LXX rightly has 7]/j,epa ^eviaew^ ^apaco, and Targ. Jer. I. 
 ^y^D^ Kp^35 DI'' ; the vif Hoph. ri7.?7, which means tlie having 
 been born (different from the inf. Niph. l?^^n, e.g. Hos. ii. 5, 
 the being born), is as at Ezek. xvi. 5, comp. 4, combined with 
 an accus. object. That the king's birthday was kept as a 
 holiday in Egypt, is confirmed, at least for the Ptolemaic 
 period, by the bilingual tables of Eosetta and Canopus. Eashi 
 understands c'xi xb'J 20& according to Ex. xxx. 12: he counted 
 over his servants, and among them the two also. Then there 
 would be an addition to the two meanings of tollere caput the 
 third of rcccnsere, which is improbable ; the Targ. Jer. correctly 
 renders it : he raised (Opii) the heads of the two in different 
 manners. "^P^^ 2 la does not as apartic. mean the cup-bearer, 
 but his office (i5 13a). When the cup-bearer was reinstated 
 in his office, his ingratitude made him have no effectual 
 remembrance of Joseph, so that he really forgot him. 
 
GENESIS XLI. 1-4. 293 
 
 PIIARAOIl'S DREAMS AND JOSEni's ELEVATION, CII. XLI. 
 
 The chief source from which this narrative is obtained is 
 the same as the preceding. E {B) may be recognised by such 
 expressions as nriD and jiiriQ, which occur exclusively in these 
 portions of the history of Joseph, and if? office, xl. 13, xli, 13, 
 as also by the form ^^If^P xli. 21 {E elsewhere also, xxx. 41, 
 xxi. 29, xxxi. 6, xlii. 36, indulging in such emphatic pro- 
 longations), and the Divine name D\"ibs xli. 15 sq. (where / 
 would have suitably had nin''), but especially by the particular, 
 that Joseph is here called the servant appointed by the 
 captain of the guard for the two State prisoners. As J" would 
 certainly also relate the elevation of Joseph through the verifi- 
 cation of his interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams, the question 
 arises whether many traces of a parallel text of J may not be 
 more easily explained by the view, that we have before us the 
 narrative according to E, as reproduced by J, than by suj^posing 
 that B interpolated the text of E with additions from J. 
 
 Pharaoh's first dream, vv. 1-4 : And it came to 2')ass after 
 tivo full years, and Bharaoh dreamed, and behold he stood hy 
 the Nile. And, behold, there came out of the Nile seven kine, 
 beaidiful of form and fat of flesh, and they fed in the reed grass. 
 And behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the Nile, 
 ill-favoured and lean of flesh, and stood beside the Jcine on the 
 brink of the Nile. And the ill-favoured and leaii-fleshed kine 
 devoured the seven kine beautifid of form and fat of flesh. 
 The structure of the sentence is the same as at xlii. 35, comp. 
 XV. 17, xxix. 25; the apodosis begins with narrt, and nj?-i^i 
 D?n is a preceding adverbial sentence (Driver, § 78). *i^y is 
 left after nSiT without the subject being expressed, as at xxiv. 
 30, comp. ^vr\ mn xxxvii. 15 (Driver, § 135. G). To ^)ny^ 
 is added as the accus. of more exact definition D'PJ (Ges. 
 118. 3): two years of days are two full years, like D'^) ti'in 
 xxix. 14, a full month, "ix";, as the name of the Nile, may be 
 an assimilated Egyptian word, in itself it is however Semitic, 
 
29-i GENESIS XLI. 5-8. 
 
 and used as much of the Tigris (Dan. xii. 5 sq.) as of the 
 Nile, and even of mine-shafts (see Friedr. Delitzsch, Hebrew 
 Language, p. 25). ^nx, on the contrary, is an indigenous 
 Egyptian word : achu from ach, redupl. acliacli to become green, 
 LXX a'x^i (with the more recent final i), which must have 
 been so much transferred into Egyptian Greek that T\T\V Isa. 
 xix. 17 is translated by to a')(^L to '^copov, on which Jerome 
 remarks : qiiid hie sermo significaret, audivi ah u^gyptiis, hoc 
 nomine 07nne quod in palude viride nascitur appcUari. In- 
 stead of nipT the Samar. has mp"i, like the Masoretic text of 
 ver. 19 sq., 27; ri^?'^ brought down, thinned, is a third synonym. 
 The designation of the brink of the Nile by nab> is no poetic 
 image ; nsb' means not only the edge of the mouth (the lips), 
 but the rim of anything, that whereby it comes in friction 
 or into contact with other things (see on the root on iii. 15). 
 Pharaoh's second dream, vv. 5-7 : And he slept and dreamed 
 a second time, and hehold, seven ears of corn came up upon one 
 stalk fat and well-favoured. And behold, seven ears, thiii and 
 blasted by the east wind, sprang up after them. And the thin 
 ears stvalloived up the seven fat and full ears — the?i Pharaoh 
 aivolce, and behold it was a dream. The — in ^Vt^^' from ^ly3l^' 
 is like that in iJ^i^n from 3pn Num. xxiii. 25. The adj. N^13 
 healthy, strong, fat, is also applicable to ears, which can 
 indeed be sickly and shrivel ; such a sickness is the blight 
 np'it^ (P^"^,^*), mostly caused in Egypt by the dreaded Chamsin, 
 blowing from the south-eastern desert districts. The swallow- 
 ing up of the first ears by the second is not really meant, for 
 "tlie absolutely irrepresentable cannot be dreamed" (Heidenh.) : 
 the seven lean ears shot up above the others and so concealed 
 them, that they had, as it were, vanished. Vain interrogation 
 of native scholars, ver. 8 : And it came to pass in the morning 
 that his spirit ivas troubled, and he sent and called all the 
 scribes of Egypt and all the wise men therein. And Pharaoh 
 told them his dream, and no one was able to interpret them (the 
 two dreams) to Pharaoh. In the similar history of Nebu- 
 
GENESIS XLI. 9-13 295 
 
 chadnezzar's dream, the Niiihal 2l?Eri;! Dan, ii. 3 precedes 
 the Hithpael ^yanrii with a similar recession of the tone. 
 Pharaoh sends for all the Q'''?P"in and all the wise men of 
 Egypt. He did what Ptolemy, according to Tacitus, Hist. iv. 
 83, did in a similar case: sacerdotibus Acgyptiorum, quibus 
 mos talia intellegere, nodurnos visus apcrit. Q'^'t'^"!'] (from the 
 non-occurring sing. Db")!]) is a Semitic word formed perhaps 
 in consonance with an Egyptian one, a secondary formation 
 from ti'in pen, mode of writing, a writing, Isa. viii. 1. The 
 LXX translates it i^rjyrjraL, i.e. according to Hesycliius: o I ire pi 
 lepoov Koi Siocrr}fM6ia>v i^riyovfievot. lepo'ypafifjiaT€2<; would be 
 more suitable. Egypt was familiar with Llanticism of every kind. 
 The plur. ^niN, referring back to iDpn-riN, looks almost like a 
 hint that the native scholars looked upon the essentially one 
 dream as two different dreams, and were thereby led astray. 
 Eeference of the chief cup-bearer to Joseph, vv. 9-13: Then 
 tJie chief of the cup-hearers spoke to Pharaoh saying : I reviemhcr 
 my sins this day. Pharaoh was angry ivith his servants and 
 gave me into custody of the house of the captain of the guard, 
 me and the chief of ilie bakers. Then we dreamed a dream in 
 one and the same night, I and he, we dreamed each after the 
 interpretation of his dream. And there was there with us a 
 young Hebrew man, a slave of the captain of the guard ; to him 
 toe told it, and he interpreted to us our dreams, according to the 
 dream of each he interpreted. And it came to pass, as he had 
 interpreted to ^is, so it happened ; me he reinstated in my office, 
 and him he hanged. The combination nx "iliT is neither here 
 nor at Ex. ii. 1, iii. 22 an accusatival one; ns is a preposition, 
 as at xlii. 30, xxiii. 8. The LXX rightly renders ti]v afxap- 
 rlav jxov avafiLiivrjo-Kuy a-ijfiepov, not: I bring it to mention, but 
 (as at xL 14) I bring it to remembrance ; but he says ''n*^^ (not 
 ""^PO), respectfully magnifying and not diminishing the offence, 
 which had incurred the anger of Pharaoli. Instead of the first 
 ■•nx, the LXX, Samar. have the preferable onx. The genit. 
 combination in the custody of the ... is repeated from 
 
296 GENESIS XLI. 14-lG. 
 
 xl. 3. The intensive ah with the 1 'pl. impf. nippnsi, which 
 makes the historical statement only the more emphatic, finds 
 its equal in ^^V^l, Ps, xc. 10, and elsewhere occurs almost 
 only in the 1 sing., e.g. xxxii. 6, E\v. § 232^. io^ns &^_ 
 is, according to the scheme discussed in rem. on ix. 5, equi- 
 valent to t^"'^^ C)6n3, as ii'i?'"''^? ^^'i^ xlii. 25 is the same as in 
 the sack of each. Joseph's appearance before Pharaoh, vv. 
 14-16 : And Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they dis- 
 missed him cpaicldy from prison ; he shaved himself and changed 
 his garments and came hefore Pharaoh, and Pharaoh said to 
 Joseph : I have dreamed a dream, and no one can interpret it, 
 hut I have, heard say of thee, that thou hearest a dream to (at 
 once) interpret it. Then Joseph answered Pharaoh saying : It 
 belongs not to me, God will answer ivliat will profit Pharaoh. 
 The prison is here called nia, as at xL 15. The LXX has utto 
 rou 6)(vpdi)fxaTo^, i.e. according to xl. 14, xxxix. 20 n"'2iTp. The 
 unnamed subject of invi^'l is as frequently (e.g. Zecli. iii. 5, 
 comp. Luke xii. 20) the attendants: they quickly dismiss 
 (not fetch) Joseph, and, being free for his departure to the 
 palace, he shaves himself (n?a reflexive, like )V] to wash one- 
 self) and changes his garments ; for to shave off all hair from 
 the body, was in Egypt a main article of cleanliness and 
 purity ; and that no one should appear before a king in his 
 work-day garments, is self-understood. With respect to shav- 
 ing, Joseph had as yet had no reason for conforming to 
 Egyptian custom. 'T'?y de te, as at 1 Kings x. 6 : The king 
 has heard say concerning Joseph, that he only needs to hear 
 a dream, to be able at once to interpret it. He however refers 
 the king, as he did (xl. 8) the two prisoners, from human 
 intervention to God. '^'"1)1^^ xli. 44 without the cxcepto te ; 
 thus the ""^V- ? forms a thought of itself : without me = I can 
 do nothing at all (like I may (take) nothing at all, xiv. 24). 
 God alone is able to do it, and He can give the power ; He will 
 give as an answer (to me who inquire of Him) the welfare of 
 Pharaoh, i.e. what shall be for his welfare. This sounds hope- 
 
GENESIS XLI. 17-32. 297 
 
 fill, though it does not prejudge. Pharaoh again repeats his 
 double dream, vv. 17-24: Aiid Pharaoh said to Josepli: In 
 my dream, behold I stood on the brink of the Nile. And behold 
 seven Icine rose up out of the Nile fat of flesh and beautiful of 
 form and fed in the reed-yrass. And behold seven other kine 
 rose up after them, poor and very ill-favoured, and fallen away 
 in flesh. I have not seen their like for badness in all the land of 
 Hgypt. And the fallen away and ill-favoured kine ate up the 
 seven first fat kine. And tlwy went into their indde, and it 
 could not be seen that they had gone into their inside, and their 
 appearance was ill-favoured as at the beginning — then I awoke. 
 And I saw in my dream, and behold, seven cars shot up on one 
 stalk, full and fair to see, and behold seven ears tvithered, thin 
 and blasted by the cast wind. And the thin ears swallowed up 
 the seven good cars — / told it to the scribes, and none of them 
 could give me an coplanation. In such repetitions Hebrew 
 authors, and even poets in their refrains (see Fscdms, 4th edit. 
 p. 350), delight in small variations instead of literal identity. 
 So e.g. xxiv. 42-47 with relation to xxiv. 11-24. It is a 
 needless conjecture that the variations are worked in from the 
 parallel text of J (Dillm.). In Pharaoh's repetition of his 
 double dream the adjectives rii?^, nipi and niDj>' as well as the 
 greater detail, 195, 21a, are new. On the sing. Ii?'''^'!^ 21a, 
 see Ges. § 9.3. 3, note 3. And on D'7?nx 23&, instead of the 
 more correct i'!}^7n^, comp. xxxi. 9, xxxii. IG, and ^"i/?*i xx. 17. 
 Joseph's interpretation, vv. 25-32: Then Joseph said to 
 Pharaoh: The dream of Pharaoh is one ; what God intends to do 
 he has announced to Pharaoh. The seven well-favoured kine are 
 seven years, and the seven ivcll-favourcd ears are seven years. The 
 dream is one. And the seven lean and ill-favoured kine, which 
 came up after the former, are seven years, and the ears empty 
 and blasted by the cast wind will be seven years of famine. 
 This is the word that I said unto Pharaoh : IVliat God intends 
 to do He has shoion unto Pharaoh. Behold, seven years are 
 approaching, a great plenty in the ivhole land of Egypt. And 
 
298 GENESIS XLI. 33-36. 
 
 seven years of famine shall arise after them, and the plenty is 
 forgotten in the land of J^gypt, and the famine will consume the 
 land. And the plenty will not he notieed in the land by reason 
 of the famine folloioing, heeause it is very grievous. And in 
 respect of this that the dream was tivice repeated to Pharaoh, 
 (this happened) because the thing is settled loith God, and God 
 will speedily bring it to pass. Osiris was to the Egyptians the 
 God of the Nile, whose symhol was the bull (Died. i. 51), 
 and Isis-Hathor the goddess of the fertile and all-nourishing 
 earth, whose symbol, the cow (]\Iacrobius, Saturn, i. 19), was 
 also that of the moon and the lunar year — hence the inter- 
 pretation of the kine by fruitful or unfruitful years, according 
 to the favour or disfavour of the Nile, was an obvious one ; 
 but it needed Joseph's divinely attested insight into the future, 
 to answer not only for this apparently obvious and simple in- 
 terpretation, but also for the results of fourteen years. On the 
 determinated adj. with the undeterminated chief notion in V^^ 
 nbbn n'la 26a, see on i. 31. Instead of HipT the second seven 
 ears are called 27& nip"]ri (the opposite of riispp) ; Dip"! is only 
 said of the kine. In the remark that the seven empty ears are 
 seven years of famine, i.e. will be proved to mean such, the 
 centre of gravity in the meaning of the two dreams is antici- 
 patively alluded to. The " word " ("i^'^'I', comp. Acts xv. 6 in 
 Luther's, and in our Hebrew translation) 28a is what he said 
 25&. Dip " arise" (oriri), said of years, is a kind of personifying 
 transference of the diction of Ex. i. 8. As the swallowing up 
 is alluded toby nBC':"!, so by I'l^^^'i^^"! is it signified that nothing 
 of the seven fat morsels was perceived in the seven lean kine ; 
 the famine will be so great that the stores will visibly dis- 
 appear. The elliptical brevity in ver. 32 is like xxxvii. 22 
 (E). ^V introduces that to which respect is had, as at 
 Euth iv. 7 (comp. p xvii. 20), and ""S confirms the said state 
 of matters (comp. on xviii. 20). Joseph's counsel, vv. 
 33-36 : And nmo let Pharaoh look for a prudent and wise 
 man and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh set 
 
GENESIS XLI. 37-10. 299 
 
 to tvorJc and appoint overseers over the land, and talce tip a 
 fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven years of plenty. 
 And let them gather all the food of these coming good years 
 and heap up corn under the hand of Pharaoh in the cities, 
 and let them, keep it. And the food shall he for a store for 
 the land for the seven years of famine which will come upon 
 the land of Egypt, that the land he not ruined throiigh the 
 famine. The jussive ^*^.1 has, according to the Masora, the 
 tone upon the ultima (Kouig, p. 5G1), and has on that 
 account Tsere instead of Segol in the last syllable, as 
 Abenezra expressly states in his two Grammars. In 34a we 
 must not explain : constituat Pharao et praefieiat praefcctos 
 (Dillm.), which is tautological ; Ges. rightly compares the 
 Latin fac scrihas, the object of nbT is what is afterwards 
 specified, or also : nb>y has in itself the completed sense of 
 acting or setting to work; 1 Kings viii. 32, comp. Ps. 
 xxii. 32, is similar. Pharaoh should take during the seven 
 fruitful years the fifth part of tlie entire harvest, by means of 
 commissioners, and store up this corn (i?) under Pharaoh's 
 hand, i.e. in royal magazines, that the store of food thus laid 
 up (''i?^) may save the land from starvation during the years 
 of famine. The verbal copiousness of ver. 3 5 may arise from 
 the two accounts being here compressed into one, as in vv. 
 48, 49 (comp. xxvii. 44 sq., xxxi. 18). Elevation of Joseph 
 to be the highest official in the land, vv. 37-40 : And the 
 thin^g was good in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of all 
 his servants. And Pharaoh said to his servants: Shall we 
 find a man like this, in whom is the spirit of God I And 
 Pharaoh said to Joseph : Since God has showed thee all this, 
 there is none prudent and ivise as thou. Thou shall he over my 
 house, and according to thy hidding shall all my p'coplc he ruled, 
 only hy the throne will I he greater than thou. Arnheim trans- 
 lates 38a "will there be found;" but we have not >^>'P'n, nor 
 is KVoa the parte. Niph., for "will found be = exists" would be 
 expressed in ancient Hebrew by ^'^J] ; Pashi already correctly 
 
300 GENESIS XLI. 41, 42. 
 
 gives : should we fiud, if we should go and seek for. To 
 translate AOa "upon thy mouth shall all my people kiss" 
 (Ges. Kn.), is impracticable ; for though p2^2 to kiss = to do 
 homage, is now also corroborated by the Assyrian, the kiss of 
 homage is a kissing of the foot, not the mouth, for which 
 ''Kip~?3 would certainly be an intolerable subj., and besides we 
 find in Biblical Hebrew ip'f J or V pt^'3 (he kissed him), but 
 not VD ^y pu^':. pu: means to join, especially mouth to mouth, 
 i.e. to kiss, but also to fit to (whence the armour a man puts 
 on is called p5^'J), and here (but not at Ps. ii. 12) with an 
 internal obj. : disponere (res suas), to submit to (comp. Ji3 
 
 (i^ij) ; hence T'S'^V like xlv. 21. t'E'Sn is the accus. of more 
 exact definition, according to Ges. § 118. 3. Honours are 
 heaped on Joseph, and first the insignia of his of6.ce are be- 
 stowed, vv. 41, 42 : And Pharaoh said to Joseph : Behold, I 
 have placed thee over the xuhole land of Egypt. Then Fharaoh 
 took off his signet ring from his hand andp)ut it on the hand of 
 Joseph, and he clothed him in lyssus garments and put the gold 
 chain on his neck. Ver. 41 was not absolutely needed after 
 ver. 40, and may have been taken from the parallel source, 
 but stands here as the solemn act of institution, following 
 the declaration of Pharaoh's will (see on ''JiinJ 1. 29). r\y2Q 
 like oni'"', Arab, chdtim, means the signet ring, which is 
 confirmed as Egyptian by impressions from the signets of 
 the Pharaohs, Cheops, Horus, Sabaco. t^'t^'"'''^Jn are garments 
 of cotton (there were cotton plantations in ancient Egypt, see 
 Ebers, Lurch Gosen zum Sinai, 2nd edit. pp. 490-492), or 
 also fine white cotton - like linen ; for t^'?f', ancient Egypt. 
 schenti, means both ; while pa, ancient Egyptian piek, is the 
 proper word for fine linen. Priestly garments, by which 
 Joseph is here distinguished, might not be of woollen, but 
 mi"ht be of either cotton or linen.^ ^n^n nm (T-aT from 
 
 ^ The white head-gear usual among the wandering tribes is now called 
 (jili, properly the fine white cotton texture, of which it consists [DMZ, 
 xxxii, 161). 
 
GENESIS XLI. 43, 44. 301 
 
 *73"i, kj ., V 31 to fix closely) is the gold chain usual as an official 
 distinction, a mark, according to Elian and Diodorus, of the 
 dignity of a judge, but here of like significance with the 
 " golden collar " occurring on the monuments as a reward. 
 Joseph is presented to the people as the highest representa- 
 tive of the king, who appoints him an almost absolute ruler 
 with himself, vv. 43, 44 : And he made him ride in his second 
 chariot, and they cried before him: Abrcch ; and he 'plttccd him 
 over the whole land of Egypt. And Pharaoh said to Joseph : 
 I am Pharaoh, and without thee shall no one lift up hand or 
 foot in the whole land of Egypt. As •^.V^P'!' "v}'^ is the second 
 priest of highest rank after the t;'ti"")n pa^ so is nasiD 
 nj^^jn the next State chariot to the exclusively royal one. 
 The call to show profound respect expressed in "n?3X^ is 
 satisfactorily explained as an Egyptian cry assimilated to the 
 Hebrew : " Cast thyself down ! " The Coptic ahork, imper. 
 of lor, to cast down, with the suffix of the 2nd pers., means 
 this (Benfey, Vcrhalt. der dg. Spraehe znm sevi. Sprachstamm, 
 p. 302 sq.). In Hebrew ^")3S is to be understood as the 
 inf. ahs. Hiph. of y\2 (comp. Ci''3v"^ Jer. xxv. 3), whence 
 Jose b. Dormaskith in Sifri {Q^a, ed. Friedmann) explains 
 it by D''3"ia^, and Jerome translates : clamante praecone ut 
 omnes coram eo genu flceterent} The Targum and Midrash, 
 on the contrary, explain innx as a compound from 3K and 
 li pater tcner (highly respected though young), which must 
 be left out of consideration, or from 2X and 'i]"» piater regis 
 (see Eashi on this passage), which is in itself permissible, 
 
 ^ In Macropodius' Josephtis, sacra fahula, the herald ThalthyLius goes 
 through the city with Joseph and proclaims : ^urripa Koir/^ov regis edicfo hunc 
 jubeo vocarier Genuque flexo jEgyptiis ah omnibus adorarier ; see v. Weilen, 
 Der agyptische Joseph im Drama des XVI. Jahrh. 1887. The view quoted 
 by Kohlcr {Gesch. i. 156) from the Speaker's Commentary, that "]")2S means 
 the same as the Hebrew K3"ncbS has, notwithstanding its Egyptologic demon- 
 
 strabilitj', this first of all against it, that it does away with the kinship of 
 meaning between the original word and its Hebraized form (comp. my Jesurun, 
 p. 107 sq.). Still farther ofif is v. Strauss-Torncy's explanation: "he who 
 opens knowledge." 
 
302 ■ GENESIS XLI. 45. 
 
 " father of the king " being actually the title which Joseph 
 gives himself, xlv. 85, and having other Oriental analogues 
 as the title of the highest official at the side of the king. 
 Apparently however it cannot be adopted, because y^ = rex 
 {Baba hatJira 4a i<3n nn N^ xan i6, " not king and not king's 
 son") is a borrowed Jewish word derived from the Latin. 
 But Friedr. Delitzsch points out in his Hchreiu Language, 
 p. 26 sq., that aharaJcku is in Assyrian the appellation of the 
 highest dignitary in the kingdom, and is ideogrammatically 
 explained by " friend of the king ; " even the goddess who is 
 the supreme protectress of a sanctuary is called aharahkatu. 
 Since neither a Hebrew nor an Egyptian medium is per- 
 ceptible for the use of this Assyrian word,^ itself inexplicable 
 in Assyrian, some curious chance must certainly have had 
 a hand in the matter.^ The inf. ahs. pn3l continues the 
 Jinitum in an adverbially subordinate manner as at Isa. 
 xxxvii. 19, Ex. viii. 11, Lev. xxv. 14, Judg. vii. 19, Hagg. 
 i. 6, Zech. iii. 4, xii. 10, Eccles. iv. 2. In ver. 44 is repeated 
 what was already virtually stated at ver. 40, viz. that Pharaoh 
 is king, but that Joseph is to be ruler. Joseph's change of 
 name and marriage, ver. 45 : And Pharaoh called Joseph's 
 name Sdphnath Paneah, and gave him 2.snat, daughter of 
 Potiphera the priest of On, to wife, and Joseph went out over the 
 land of Egypt. The LXX paraphrases the name WovOofi- 
 (pavijx, which, as Jerome testifies, and as is, with the exception 
 of one letter, confirmed by the Coptic, means salvator mundi, 
 p-sot-om-ph-eneh (from sot, sole salvation,, and cneh age, world), 
 but the nasal iJ-sont, instead of p-sot, thus remains unexplained. 
 It seems therefore more obvious ta regard njys as the 
 Egyptian anh life, provided with the article (whence the 
 temple quarter of Memphis was called p)-ta-anh, the world 
 of life), and with Eosellini, Lepsius, Ormsby and others, to 
 
 ' The opposition of HaMvy in Recherches Bihliques, No. vi. p. 24, must still 
 let the fact stand that abarakku aud abarrakkatu are, in Assyrian^ the names 
 of high dignity. 
 
 2 See the Assyrian Diciionary, pp. 68-70. 
 
GENESIS XLI. 45. 303 
 
 explain the name as compounded of s6nt to support, to pre- 
 serve, and anh, "support {sustcntator) of life" (n:EV=n;j;L;). 
 Josephus, Ant. ii. 6. 1, by explaining the name KpvirTwv 
 €vpeT7)<i reproduces the impression made by the Hebraized 
 word upon Jewish ears (see Bcrcsliith rahhah, c. 90); the 
 Jewish Pajtanim use n^ys as a four-lettered verb, with the 
 meaning to uncover, to reveal (DMZ. xxxvi. 402). Tlie 
 name of ri:pN (LXX 'Aaeved) apparently means one belong- 
 ing to the goddess Ncith, the Egyptian Athene ; Brugsch, 
 Gcsch. p. 248, identifies it with Snat {Sant), a female name 
 frequent in the ancient and middle kingdom. On the name 
 of her father V)^ '"DiQ (one dedicated to the god Ea), we have 
 already spoken at xxxvii. 36. He was a priest in }n (jix), 
 which the LXX rightly translate 'HXLov7r6Xi<; in the liistory 
 of Joseph ; they also thus render the synonymous P.5< Ezek. 
 xxx. 1 7 ; while, on the contrary, the Coelesyrian |ix (Helio- 
 polis) is paraphrased as "^Slv. In ancient Egyptian it was 
 called Ayi (Ami), or more precisely Amimhit, Anu of the 
 north, in Coptic Un or On, which means light, according to 
 Cyrill on Hos. v. 8 ^X^o? ; the sacred name of the city was 
 ta-Ea or pa-Ea, house of the sun (as at Jer. xliii. 13 IT'S 
 ^'?^'!?, comp. on Isa. xix. 18). The worship of the sun was 
 the most ancient form of the Egyptian religion ; Amon-Ea 
 was called, subsequently to Ahmes I., the king of the gods.^ 
 Joseph, the husband of the priest of the sun's daughter, has 
 now become an Egyptian to the Egyptians, the favourite son of 
 Jacob a ruler of the heathen ; he is admitted into the priestly 
 caste, to which the kings of Egypt also belonged, or into 
 which they had to be admitted, if descended from the 
 military caste. Thus raised to be ruler of the land, he 
 
 ^ See Krummel, Die Religion der alien yEgypter, 18S3, p. 19 sq. One of the 
 obelisks, which stood in front of the temple of the sun, the most ancient, 
 erected by King Osirtases I., is still there ; of the two others, which bear the 
 names of Tutmes III., Ramses II., and Seti II., one now adorns the Thames 
 Embankment in London, the other the public park in New York. See J. Leslie 
 Porter's Efji/pt, Phtjsiccd mid Historical, 1885, p. 18 sq. 
 
304 GENESIS XLI. 46-49. 
 
 went out over the land of Egypt, bv i^T as at Ps. Ixxx. 6. 
 This is now told once more in the words of another narrator, 
 ver. 46 : And Joseph was thirty years old when he stood 
 before Pharaoh hing of Egypt; and Joseph iccnt out from 
 'before Pharaoh and went through the whole land of Egypt. 
 The combination Dll^'^P '^?9 '^^"!- occurs only here in Genesis, 
 and is next met with Ex. vi. 11, and farther on in Q {A). 
 To this narrator belongs the statement of age at xxxvii. 2, and 
 consequently here also : hence from twelve to thirteen years 
 elapsed between Joseph's sale and elevation. The tone of 
 diction 46« is like that of xlvii. 7, and 46& like that of 
 xlvii. 10. Joseph's arrangements during the seven fruitful 
 years, vv. 47-49 : And the land bore in the seven years of 
 plenty by handfds. And he gathered all the food of the 
 seven years, wliich were in the land of Egypt, and laid up 
 the food in the cities, the food of the ground round about any 
 city he laid up in that city. And Joseph heaped up corn as 
 the sand of the sea, exceeding much, so that he left off nurnber- 
 ing, for it teas beyond oiumhcring. The noun J'PP, with its 
 derivative ]"op, is native in the Minchah law, Lev. ii. 2 
 and onwards ; the former means the hand forming a 
 hollow for grasping, the latter to take away a handful (mani- 
 jndum or pugillum). Consequently CypiPP (with an adverbial 
 ^ in the sense of the Greek Kara or avd, E\v. § 21 7c?) here 
 means, in such abundance that the whole hand was always 
 needed for taking what offered itself, not : in bundles, 
 Tnanipidatim (Ges.), which does not give the notion of great 
 abundance ; but, if the expression may be allowed, in full- 
 handed manner. In ver. 48 the undeterminated D'Jt?' i'??^ is 
 intolerable ; it cannot mean per septem annos, for b^^ (without 
 an article) points to a genitival relation, so that we have to 
 write according to ver. 35 Q''?kfO J-'^'^', or, since this does not else- 
 where occur thus without an addition, V'y^'^ ''Jl^' Vy^' (as at ver. 
 53). The LXX, Sam. take over V3b> into the relative sentence: 
 ra /Bpco/xara rcov kirra erwv iv oU rjv i) evdrjvla (yat^n n\n) ev rfj 
 
GENESIS XLI. 60-52. 305 
 
 yp AlyvTTTOv. Hcidenh., Eeggio and others understand r^i?'! 
 and ']^^] with the most general subject: they collected, they put; 
 but that we have ^pi^ in ver. 49 and not already ver. 48, just 
 shows that the narrative is not of one cast. Joseph collected 
 the whole produce of cereal food (p^ii, viz. i?, comp. ver. 35) 
 of the seven fruitful years, by placing granaries ^ in the 
 cities for the harvest within their territories, and the corn 
 to be stowed up was very much, like the sand of the sea (a 
 usual hyperbole, xxii. 17, xxxii. 13), so that he left off 
 keeping account of it, because of its enormous quantity. 
 Joseph's sons by Asnath, vv. 50-52 : Aiid there were tiuo 
 sons 'born to Joseph before the coming of the year of famine, 
 v:]iich Asnath, daughter of Fotiphera, priest of On, hare him. 
 And Joseph called the name of the first-horn Ilanasseh, for 
 " Ulohim has made me forget all my trouble, and all of my 
 fathers house." And the name of the second he called 
 Ephraim, for " Elohim hath made me fruitful in the land 
 of my affliction" The passive ''?!', with a plural subject 
 following, is like x. 25 (</), comp. xxxv. 26 (0, and the more 
 particular statement with i'^''*? {qxLos, quem, quam) without 
 pronouns referring backwards, like xvi. 15, xxv. 12, xxxiv. 
 1 (Q). The year of famine is self-evidently the first of the 
 seven. The Aramaico- Arabic form ''^^^ for "'?u'J (comp. '\\>']?. 
 Num. xxiv. 17 for "ii?.1i?) is chosen because of its consonance 
 with the name ; ^^'^ is a causative Piel, like 0^? Job xxxiii. 20. 
 pn"' Ps. cxix. 49, Hu^jo he who brings into for^etfulness, i.e. 
 his former sorrows, and also the fate of his family, which had 
 formerly caused him great anxiety." D^IS^j^ means double 
 fruitfulness, the Dual being used in Egyptian also in a super- 
 lative sense, e.g. double - Jbis = Jbis kut e'f., comp. Qn^l:^' 
 
 ^ ni33DO Ex. i. 11, from 'flD to take care of; see FrieJr. Delitzsch, Proleg. 
 
 p. 186. 
 
 * In a bilingual Cypriote inscription (in the possession of Colonel \\''arren^, 
 the erector of the dedicated image is called in the Phoenician text DH^D, in the 
 Cyprio-Gieek Mavao-o-*;,-, which is certainly a confusion caused by the kindred 
 meaning. 
 
 VOL. II, U 
 
306 GENESIS XLI, 53-55. 
 
 double dawn, 1 Chron. viii. 8, and the allusion to the meaning 
 of the name Ephraim, Hos. xiii. 15. 
 
 It is strange, remarks Kn., that Joseph, who so affectionately 
 loved and was equally beloved by his father, did not give him 
 early notice of his safety and exaltation, but let a number of 
 years pass by without doing so, and then only found occasion 
 for this communication on the arrival of his brethren. This 
 obvious objection is met by the consideration, that the news 
 would have destroyed the peace of his father's family, so he 
 went on trusting in God, who could bring all to a happy issue. 
 In the first place his prophetic interpretation had to be con- 
 firmed by the result. This now took place, vv. 53—55 : And 
 the seven years of 'plenty that ivas in the land of Egypt came to 
 an end. And the seven years of famine Icgan to come, as Joseph 
 had said, and there was famine, in all lands, hut in the land of 
 Egypt there was hread. And the whole land of Egypt was 
 famished, and the people cried to Pharaoh for hread. And 
 Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians : Go to Joseph ; what he 
 saith to you do. In ver. 48^ vn is used with respect to D''?t" ; 
 here n^n in conjunction with V2iyr\, There was bread in Egypt, 
 i.e. in the granaries ; and when, after the consumption of 
 private stores, the general scarcity was felt there also, Pharaoh 
 referred those who supplicated his help to Joseph, who now 
 opened the granaries and sold to natives and foreigners the 
 corn there stored up, vv. 56, 57: And the famine extended 
 over all the face of the land : and Joseph opened all the store- 
 houses and sold to the Egyptians, and the famine prevailed in 
 the land of Egypt. And the whole popidatio7i of the earth came 
 to Egypt, to Joseph, to huy, for the famine prevailed in all the 
 earth. Ver. 56 ought to end with : ^^'nypp (Dillm.) ; it treats 
 throughout of Egypt. The famine increased there, and at the 
 same time in all the neighbouring countries. Dr'S "'^'^~''?"^?, 
 all places wherein was found ; the subj. is missing, just as 
 when n^^:' xlix. 1 means : he whose is. Both phrases are as 
 to style impossible. The Samar. adds in (corn), but we also 
 
GENESIS XLII, 1-4. 307 
 
 want niiV'.sn ; perhaps nni "iC'X is corrupted from -13 nii^is, 
 whence the LXX has TraVra? rov<; airo/SoXcova'i. The verb 
 ')2'y is a clcnom. from 1?"^' food, perhaps as that which breaks 
 hunger and thirst (Ps. civ. 11), according to Fleischer on 
 I'rov. xi. 26 what is crushed, ground, and means in Kal to 
 
 buy food (comp. ^ib to buy, from j ; m^n . i"_x,c corn), 1111)11. 
 to sell food (comp. I?T to buy, Pa. to sell) ; in 5CZ^ however 
 Kal is used with the meaning of Hijih. Notwithstanding 
 this sale the famine increased ; the i^wpf. cons. Pl.nrii has a con- 
 trastive meaning as at xix. 9 (comp. the pc?/. cons. Judg. 
 xiii. 13). On the hyperbole pxn-?3 "all the world," see on 
 vii. 19. ^DV"7X is intended to be drawn to ^^^2. Such a 
 common famine of Egypt and the neighbouring countries has 
 often occurred, e.g. in the years 1064 and 1199 of our era. 
 The monuments also testify to such years of famine (Brugsch, 
 Histoire cV Egypte, i. p. 56). The danger was all the greater 
 in presence of the condition of the canal and irrigation system 
 of Lower Egypt. Strabo relates, that before the times of the 
 Prefect Petronius, famine broke out in Egypt, through neglect 
 of the waterworks, when the ISTile rose only eight ells, and 
 that eleven ells were needed for a specially good year, while 
 he so managed, that ten ells only were needed for the best of 
 harvests, and that eight caused no scarcity. 
 
 THE FIRST JOURNEY OF JOSEPH'S BRETHREN TO EGYPT WITHOUT 
 BENJAMIN, CII. XLII. 
 
 With ch. xlii. begins the second section of the Toledoth of 
 Jacob, extending from the first appearance of the brothers to 
 Joseph's discovery of himself, ch. xlv. The chief narrator in 
 ch. xliL is E ; see on ver. 38. Departure to Egyj^t to fetch 
 provisions, vv. 1-4 : And Jacob saw tliat there uris food in 
 Egy2^t. Then Jacob said to his sons : Whg look ye one npon 
 another? And he said: Behold, I have heaixl that tlicre is 
 food in Egypt ; go down thither and buy us thence food, that 
 
308 GENESIS XLII. 5-8. 
 
 we may live and not die. Then Joseph's hrethren, ten of them, 
 went down to buy corn from Egypt. But Benjamin, Joseph's 
 hrother, Jacoh sent not ivith them, for he said : Zest peradven- 
 ture mischief befall him ! The Hiihpahcl nxinn IJ is a 
 reflexive of reciprocal meaning (comp. on ii. 25): to look at 
 each other in a helpless, inactive manner. n"'n to live, ver. 
 2 J, is as frequently (xliii. 8, Num. iv. 19) equivalent to 
 remain alive. The brethren of Joseph to the number of 
 ten go down to the land of the Nile valley. So many go 
 that they may get the more and to bring away the more. 
 mb'j?n is not said ; the translation above follows the accen- 
 tuation. In ^3S"ip^ 4& X"ip = mp contingere, as at ver. 38, 
 xlix. 1, Ex. i. 10, Lev. x. 19; comp., on the contrary, 
 Gen. xliv. 29. Jacob from apprehension keeps back his 
 youngest, and now also his only son by EacheL The ten now 
 appear before Joseph, and are recognised by him, but he is 
 not recognised by them, vv. 5-8 : So the sons of Israel came 
 to buy among those that came, for the famine was in the land of 
 Canaan. And Joseph, he ivas the governor over the land, he it 
 was who sold food to all the people of the land. Then came the 
 brethren of Joseph and prostrated themselves before him, u'ith the 
 face to the earth. And Josej)h saw his hrethren and knew them, 
 but he made himself strange towards them and spoJce roughly to 
 them, and said to them : Whence come ye ? They said : From 
 the land of Canaan, to buy food. Joseph hnciv his hrethren, but 
 they hncw him not. They appeared before Joseph among the 
 many whom a like necessity drove to Egypt, and fell down 
 before him with their faces to the earth ; for lie was the ^Y'? 
 (a word occurring elsewhere only in Ezek. and Eccles., and in 
 Aramaic in Dan. and Ezra) over the land and director of the 
 sale of corn. " The author," remarks Kn., " delights in testify- 
 ing that Joseph was the lord or ruler of Egypt (vv. 30, 35, 
 xlv. 8 sq. 26, xli. 40, 44), and it almost seems as if the 
 legend of the Hyksos were transferred in the Hebrew tra- 
 dition to the Hebrews. ^''Y^ is the same word as Scdatis 
 
GENESIS XLII, 9-17. 309 
 
 or Salitis, the name of the first ruler of the Ilyksos in Egypt 
 (Joseph, c. Apion. i. 14 ; Euseb. Clir. Arm. i. p. 224)." Joseph 
 at once recognised his brethren, and remembered his dreams 
 with respect to them : the sheaves and stars bowing down to 
 him were vividly present to him ; but they did not recognise 
 their brother, whom they had not seen for about twenty years, 
 and who had meantime grown up, become Egyptianized, and 
 raised to an incredible elevation. He also studiously dis- 
 sembled before them (i?3 to fix one's eyes upon, to look 
 keenly at, which might mean both recognition and non- 
 recognition, whence the Hithpahd is both to make oneself 
 known, Prov, xx. 11, and to make oneself unknown, like the 
 Niph. Prov. xxvi. 24), spoke to them T\yz'^ harshly as to 
 matter and tone, and let them, who said they came from 
 Canaan and yet did not look like Canaanites, feel the Egyptian 
 mistrust of foreigners, Joseph accuses them of being spies, 
 and insists upon testing the truth of their exculpation by their 
 sending for their youngest brother, vv, 9-17: Then Joseph 
 remembered his dreams ivhich he dreamed concerning them, and 
 said unto them : Ye are spies, to see the nakedness of the land 
 are ye come. And they said: Nay, my lord, hut to huy food 
 are thy servants come. We are all sons of one man, we are 
 honest men, thy servants have never been spies. And he said to 
 them : Nay, surely to see the nakedness of the land arc ye come. 
 And they said : Tvjelve brethren, sons of one man in the land of 
 Canaan are ive thy servants, and behold the youngest is at tlie 
 time with our father, and one is not. Then said Joseph to 
 them : That is it which I sjJcike to you saying : Ye are spies. 
 Hereby shall ye be jJroved, that ye, as truly as Pharaoh lives, 
 shall not go hence, unless your younger brother comes hither. 
 Send one of you, that he may fetch your brother ; but ye shall 
 be imiorisoncd, that your words may be proved, whether there 
 be truth with you or not, by the life of Pliaraoh ! surely ye are 
 spies. And lie put them in ward three days. He calls them 
 1^ ^r.P, those who go about for the purpose of espionage, a 
 
310 GENESIS XLII. 9-17. 
 
 more ignoble word tlian C^.J^ (those who go about for the 
 purpose of reconnoitring). They deny it; the i of '^"''!'.r-^,'!., as at 
 xvii. 5b = ''^1 elsewhere ("D^^ ""3). Tlie form ^3n3 occurs again 
 in the Pent, only Ex. xvi. 7, 8, Num. xxxii. 32, and out of 
 it 2 Sam. xvii. 12, Lam. iii. 42. They bring to his considera- 
 tion, that a father would not expose so many of his children 
 at the same time to the danger of acting as spies. Joseph 
 however insists that they have come to see the nakedness of 
 the land (the order of the words is here such as it frequently is 
 in interrogation, Judg. ix. 48, Zech. ii. 4, ISTeh. ii. 12). In ver. 
 13 it should be yiiv l3n:N D^nx iby D^Jt^' (comp. ver. 32), the 
 order of the words is inverted in a scarcely possible manner, 
 or else a separative must be placed at yii]} : Twelve of them 
 are thy servants, brethren are we. Pi^n (of Benjamin) is a 
 relative designation of age : naiu minor (minimus). To say np 
 he is dead instead of 133''S (like v. 24), goes against their heart 
 and conscience. Joseph does not allow his accusation to be as 
 yet silenced, 14& '•mn "it^x xin hoc (neutrally, as at xx. 16) 
 est quod dixi ; what they say of their two missing brothers 
 strengthens the suspicion, to which he is giving feigned 
 expression. By what he at once adds will he test them 
 
 (ina according to ^.s^^, properly to try by rubbing, especially 
 
 on the touch-stone), he swears to them by the life of Pharaoh 
 (Pharaoh lives = as truly as Pliaraoh lives, ''H an abbreviated 
 ■'H, as at Lev. xxv. 36) that they shall not be at liberty to depart 
 unless they procure at once their pretended youngest brother ; 
 if they do not do this, they are, as he again asserts by the life 
 of Pharaoh, really C"? Ew. § 330&) spies. Hereupon, in 
 order to make them compliant, he puts them in prison for 
 three days (fjDS, like Isa. xxiv. 22 and elsewhere). The 
 purpose of his behaviour to them is not, to make them atone 
 for a time for the injustice they did him, but to find out, before 
 he becomes to them an actual proof of Divine mercy, whetlier 
 they regard themselves as deserving of Divine punishment for 
 
GENESIS XLII. 18-22. 311 
 
 the crime they committed against hiii), and to convince him- 
 self, before he grants them his own forgiveness, that the other 
 son of Eachel has not experienced like injustice at their 
 liands. How faithfully is the constraint delineated, which 
 Joseph imposes on himself by speaking so roughly, and by 
 concealing bis fellowsliip with them in tlie worship of one 
 God under the oath by the life of Pharaoh ! One feels how 
 much his words contradict the feelings of his heart. On the 
 third day he gives a milder form to the test to be applied, 
 vv. 18-20 : And Josei^h said to them on the third day : This 
 do and live, I fear God : If yc are honest men, let one of your 
 hrothers remain in the hoiise of your 'prison, hut go ye, carry 
 food for the famine of your houses, and hring your youngest 
 hrother to me, so shall your words he verified, and ye shall not 
 die — and they did thus. On the two imperatives : This do and 
 live! see Ges. § 130. 2, and on in^^ CSN^X (comp. xliii. 14) 
 instead of nnxn (as at ver. 33), Ges. § 111. 2h. The other 
 nine are to take home the corn of the famine of their houses, 
 i.e. for the famine (Gen. of purpose as in IPiT "iDD Isa. 
 XXX. 23) of their families, and to return with their youngest 
 brother, that so their words may be verified and they 
 may escape death (death by starvation, not the })enal 
 infliction of death, to which the pretended harshness 
 of Joseph nowhere rises) ; for he fears God and will not 
 punish on mere suspicion. The brethren see the chastening 
 hand of God in what they are experiencing, vv. 21, 22: 
 And they said one to another: Truly we are expiating 07i 
 account of our hrother, the distress of ichose sotil ice saw, tvhcn 
 he entreated us and we did 7iot hear, therefore has this distress 
 hefallen us. And Beuhen ansv>ered them saying : Bid I not 
 speak to you saying : Do not sin against the hoy, hut you did 
 not hear me, hehold therefore is his hlood avenged. From ver. 
 21 onwards follows the more particular narration of what 
 was summarily anticipated in p'^it-'Tl ver. 20. While still 
 standing before the unknown Joseph, they say to each other, 
 
312 GENESIS XLII. 23-28. 
 
 that they are expiating the crime which they so unmercifally 
 committed against their brother; b2^ truly, as at xvii. 19, 
 Dtyx making expiation, paying (Ezra x. 19), elsewhere 
 worthy of penance. Eeuben who, as was related in ch. 
 xxxvii. from U, had saved Joseph's life, who was not 
 present when he was sold, and must therefore have thought 
 him dead rather than still alive, answers that he had said to 
 them in vain : Do not sin O^^^nn with a helping Segol 
 for 'iJ^pnri) against the boy, and that now evidently his 
 blood is required, i.e. from those who laid violent hands 
 npon him (ix. 5). Joseph hears it and weeps, vv. 23, 24: 
 And they knew 7iot that Joseph understood it, for the interpreter 
 was betvjeen them. And he turned himself from them and wept ; 
 then he returned to them and talked with them, and took from 
 them Simeon and hound him hefore their eyes. They did not 
 know, while they were thus talking together, that Joseph 
 nnderstood them, for }'''?!?'!' with the art., the interpreter usual 
 in such cases, was between them (ni3''3, like xxvi. 28); but 
 he well understood all, and withdrew a little from them 
 and wept. Painful remembrance of the past, thankfulness 
 for God's gracious dealings, unextinguished brotherly affection 
 and joy at the penitent confession he had just heard — these 
 were the emotions which found vent in tears. Then returning 
 to them, he agreed with them that Simeon (purposely not 
 Eeuben, but the next oldest) should remain behind, and had 
 him bound before their eyes. His provident dismissal of 
 them combined with a fresh test, vv. 25-28: Then Joseph 
 commanded, and their vessels loere filled tvith corn, and he had 
 every mans money put again into his sack, and provender given 
 them for the journey, and so it ivas done to them. And they 
 laded their food upon their asses and departed. And one 
 opened his sack to give his ass provender at the resting-'place, and 
 saw his money, and hehold it lay up>per7nost in his sack. And 
 he said to his brethren : My money is restored, and hehold there 
 it is in my sack — then their heart failed them, and they said 
 
GENESIS XLir. 29-31. 313 
 
 trcmVling one to another: What hath Elohim done to vs? 
 ii)^^b might follow upon l^'^l 25a, but the two possible con- 
 structions are intermixed. Dv?, ^'\?^ and ninri?:N (which latter 
 is the prevailing one in ch. xliii. sq.) are interchanged as the 
 appellation of their baggage. The mistakeable '^Vl] 2 oh, for 
 which after ^^^.^P^l we should rather expect li^'J^'l, is strange. 
 Tims they laded their asses with their corn and departed. 
 There were then already caravansaries or khans (the former 
 from the Pers. ^l.--, the latter from the Pers. ^ or <!uU-, 
 which both mean domus and especially diversormm), i.e. sheds 
 or cart-houses erected on the desert road. Into such a fo^ 
 (as at Ex. iv. 24 = D'n-iK jibn Jer. ix. 1) they entered. But 
 when one of them opened his sack to give his ass provender, 
 he found therein his money. This he told and showed it to his 
 brethren (nsn ni]^ as at xxxviii. 24) — then their courage failed 
 them, and turning trembling to each other (?X T}n^ a similar 
 constr. pregnane to xliii, 33, Jer. xxxvi. 16) they acknow- 
 ledge, that the chastening hand of God is at work in the 
 matter. It is obvious that the others also opened -their 
 sacks — perhaps the source which is here accommodated to ver. 
 35 said so (Wellh. Dillm.). They return and relate their 
 experiences, vv. 29—34: And they came to Jacob their father to 
 the land of Canaan, and told him all that hadhapijencd to them, 
 so.ying : The man, the lord of the land, s'pake roughly to us and 
 took lis for spies of the country. And lue said to him : We are 
 honest men, we loere never spies. We are twelve brethren, sons 
 of our father, one is not, and the youngest is now with our 
 father in the land of Canaan. And the man, the lord of the 
 land, said to us : Hereby shall I knovj that ye are honest men, 
 leave one of your brctlircn with me and take (corn) for the need 
 of your houses and depart. And bring your youngest brother to 
 me, so shall I knovj that ye are no spies, hut honest men ; I will 
 give you, your brother and ye may go through the land. On 
 their return to their father, they related to him all that had 
 happened to them, and stated that everything now depended 
 
314 GENESIS XLII. 35-38. 
 
 upon their bringing Benjamin with them. 3 1^*1 ver. 30 means 
 placing on a level ; Ben-Naphtali here read DvJiTps, but the 
 text, rcc, which follows Ben-Asher, has Dv3"ia3 ; the former 
 reading is favoured by 1 Kings x. 2 7. In 33& we must read 
 with the LXX D3n^3 \)2V^ 13{^ nsi (as at 195), for that ;nyi 
 may mean the needs of huuger cannot be inferred from 
 passages like Neh, ix. 15, Ps. Ixix. 22, Ixxviii. 29. In 34a 
 the second ""S has regularly the meaning of imo. "iriD 345 with 
 an accus. as at xxxiv. 10, 21: to go through. A startling 
 surprise, ver. 3 5 : And it came to 2^<^ss : they emptied their 
 sacks, and hehold every man's bundle of money was in his sack ; 
 and they sato their hundles of money, they and their father, and 
 they were afraid. The discovery of one at the nightly resting- 
 place was now repeated in the case of all. On iEp3""ii"iV c^''tf = 
 ^''^ Fip3""in>*, see on ix. 5. 'iSIH and ^^<■J"'!'!l is an obvious and 
 frequent play upon the sound. The complaint of Jacob, ver. 
 3 6 : Then Jaeob their father said unto them : Me have ye 
 bereaved of children; Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and 
 ye would take Benjamin away ; all comes ^ipon me. The 
 perf. Drir?^ refers to Joseph, Simeon, and in anticipation of 
 the worst to Benjamin. n:p3 for I?3, as at Prov, xxxi. 29, 
 comp. the forms xxi. 29, Ex. xxxv. 26. Eeuben's voluntary 
 pledge, ver. 37 : Then Reuhen spake to his father saying : My 
 two sons shall thou kill, if I do not bring him home to thee ; trust 
 him to me, and I will bring him back. He offers his two sons 
 as a pledge (at the migration to Egypt he had four). " Give 
 him to my hand," i.e. entrust him to me (as at 1 Sam. xvii. 22). 
 Jacob however has no ear for this, ver. 3 8 : He said : My son 
 shall not go doiun with you, for his brother is dead, and he alone 
 is left ; and if mischief befall him by the way that you go, you 
 ivould bring down my grey hairs with sorroiv to the grave. 
 The complaint is repeated, evidently from, the same source, at 
 xliv. 29-31, and certainly from the same source as the similar 
 complaint at xxxvii. 35, viz. from J. It is evident how the 
 first journey to Egypt terminated in J, from the repetition 
 
GENESIS XLIir, 1-5. 315 
 
 xliii. 3-7, xliv. 20-2G, whence Wellh. and Dillm. conclude that 
 the retention of Simeon as a- hostage was not mentioned in the 
 Jahvistic account. The account in eh. xlii. is as to its main 
 features from E, but with insertions from J, to whom ver. 38 
 certainly belongs. If this verse is taken as an answer to Reuben's 
 offer, as it stands here, the circumstance of Jacob's omission 
 of all mention of Simeon furnishes of itself no critical conclu- 
 sion, — it is explained by his preference for the son of Rachel; the 
 one threatened loss banishes every other from his consciousness. 
 
 SECOND JOURNEY OF JOSEPH'S BRETHREN WITH BENJAMIN TO 
 EGYPT, CH. XLIII. 
 
 This portion of the narrative gives from first to last the 
 impression of being from J. Supposing that this narrator did 
 not mention the retention of Simeon as a hostatre, vv. 14, 
 23& appear as insertions from E (Dillm.). For the rest, all is 
 of one cast and a genuine model of tlie Jahvistic style. Not 
 very long time elapses before a fresh purchase of corn becomes 
 a pressing necessity, vv. 1, 2 : And the famine was sore in the 
 land. And it came to 'pass, ivlien they had consumed the corn 
 vjhich they had hronght from Egypt, their father said, unto them : 
 Go again, hvy us a little food. Everything corresponds as to 
 style with J: *i?3 like e.g. xii. 10 ; p n?3 like xviii. 33, xxiv. 
 15 and elsewhere ; t^yo (a little), like xviii. 4, xxiv. 17, 43 — a 
 little food, for however much they might get, it will be but little 
 in proportion to the need. Judah declares that they are willing 
 to go, but not without Benjamin, vv. 3—5 : And Judah spake 
 to him, saying : Tlie man p)rotcsted, yea pirotcsted to us saying: 
 Ye shall not see my face, unless your brother he with you. If 
 thou wilt consent to send our brother with us, toe will go clown 
 and buy thee food ; but if thou wilt not consent, we will not go 
 down, for the man said unto us: Ye shall not see my face, unless 
 your brother he icith you. The man (this ^''^'i} used of Joseph 
 is repeated in a striking manner farther on, and he is generally 
 
316 GENESIS XLIII. 6-10. 
 
 called c'^xn and □"c^jsn), says Judali, expressly declared (niy to 
 repeat, Hiph. to say again and again) that he would not 
 suffer them to appear before him unless (^^"^ mostly procter, 
 here mst, as at Ex, xxii. 19) Benjamin were with them. 
 Judah, from forbearance for his aged father, gives the mildest 
 statement of what Joseph had said. Jacob's reproach, the 
 justification of the brethren, and Judah's pledge, vv. 6-10: 
 Tlun Israel said : Mlicrrfore have you done me this evil, to 
 inform the man whether you had yet a brother ? Bat they said : 
 The man inquired, yea inquired after lis and our family sayiny : 
 Is your father yet alive ? Have ye another brother ? And we 
 told him according to these words — could we then know that he 
 would say : Bring your brother down ? And Judah said to 
 Israel his father : Send the hoy with me, and ive will arise and 
 depart, that we may live and not die, both we and thou and our 
 children. I will be surety for him, of my hand shalt thou 
 require him ; if I bring him not to thee again and set him before 
 thee, I will be guilty before thee for ever. For if we had not 
 delayed, we should have already returned tiuice. The reproachful 
 no? has the tone upon the ultima, by reason of the following 
 aspirate. The interrogative n stands 6& ("whether yet ") in an 
 indirect question, as at viii. 8. They answered him as they 
 were obliged to do, according to his questions (^^''^V, as at Ex. 
 xxxiv. 27, Lev. xxvii. 8, 18, Num. xxvi. 56, Deut. xvii. 10). 
 With 7& comp. Jer. xiii. 12; yni has here a past meaning 
 by reason of the historical connection. In ver. 8 sqq. Judah 
 again entreats his father, in consideration of the starvation 
 with which they are threatened, to send Benjamin with them ; 
 he will be surety for him, and will, if he does not bring him 
 back, bear the guilt of it all his life Crixum, as at 1 Kings 
 i. 21). nrij;-"'3 (surely then) stands in the apodosis of the 
 conditional sentence as at xxxi. 42, Num. xxii. 29, 33, 
 1 Sam, xiv. 30, Job iii. 13. With this last saying Judah 
 cuts the knot asunder. Israel submits to the inevitable, but 
 at once knows also how to gain composure in God and to act 
 
GENESIS XLIII. 11-14. 317 
 
 wisely under the circumstances, vv. 11-14: Then their 
 father Israel said unto them : If there is nothing else, then do 
 this. Take of the cutting of the land in your vessels, and take 
 it doum for a 2^^'cscnt to the man, a little halsam and a little 
 honey, tragacanth and ladanum, 2}istaehio nuts and almonds. 
 And taJce double money in your hand, also the money returned 
 ill the top of your sacks take hack in your hand, perhaps it was 
 an oversight. And take your brother and arise, go back to the 
 man. And God Almighty give you mercy before the man, that 
 he may release to you your other brother and Benjamin ; but as 
 for me, let me be childless if I am to he so ! t^i2?<, though stand- 
 ing with the conditional sentence, logically belongs to the 
 imperative, comp. xxvii. 37, Job ix. 24, xxiv. 25. It is 
 remarkable that pb is never used in ch, xliii., and that ni^Jiipj? 
 always (six times) stands instead. I'lX'^ ^T^-IP is generally 
 translated : Of the prize, i.e. the choicest productions of the 
 country ; so highly poetic an expression is however the more 
 strange, since the ancient custom of the language always uses 
 -iOT and its derivatives exclusively with reference to Divine 
 worship, and only T'ty in a wider sense (see Malbim on Ps. 
 ci. 1) — hence J^'J'pt from ipT to pluck off the portion = produce, 
 will here mean that which is cut off before the harvest =: 
 
 catting. Dillm. compares the Arab.^^ (fruits, LXX airo 
 TO)v Kapirwv t^9 7>'}9), Dav. H. Miiller (in Ges. Lex. 10th edit., 
 p. 983) the Aramaic y^j mirari, hence mirabilia (syn. Arab. 
 'agdib). On ''"'V, nxb:, \5b see xxxvii. 25, where these three 
 spices are mentioned as caravan wares. They are also to take 
 
 with tliem t;'?T = ^j^i^, Van to be compressed, thickened, 
 
 grape syrup, i.e. must, boiled down to a third of its quantity, 
 of which three hundred camel loads are still annually sent to 
 Egypt from the neighbourhood of Hebron. ^*^P^ pistaccio 
 nuts, as Samar. Eashi, Tavus translate, the almond-like fruit of 
 the Pistacia vera, Talm. "^^^^3, ^^^'P^S, LXX repe^ivdov, cer- 
 tainly with the same meaning, since boin, Ai-ab. loim, in the 
 
318 GENESIS XLIII. 15-17. 
 
 later usage of language designated both Fistacia terehinthus 
 and Fistacia vera, and ^^"^.P!^ almonds, the fruit of the Amyg- 
 dalus communis, which was more rare in Egypt. They were 
 moreover to take double money with them, that which was 
 required for new purchases, and that first purchase money, 
 which certainly had come back to them only through an over- 
 sight (riLj'^iJsn according to the Masora with Pathach instead of 
 Kametz). The combination ^?.^V ^P? is appositional, as at Ex. 
 xvi, 22 ; comp. ^?.?"'"'.5yP ver. 15, the double in money (ace. of 
 the more exact definition, Ges. § 118. 3), as at Deut. xv. 18, 
 Jer. xvii. 18. Jacob's speech continues to ver. 14, as might be 
 expected ; but perhaps here the expression of resignation, as it 
 was found in U (comp. xlii. 36), is preferred. The other brother, 
 "inx DDN's: for "^nsn, as at xlii. 19, comp. 33, is Simeon, who was 
 left as a hostage. The concluding words are the expression of 
 submission to the unalterable, comp. Esth. iv. 1 6 with 2 Kings 
 viii. 4. Ges. § 126. 5, elsewhere an expression of the aimless, 
 2 Sam. XV. 20, 1 Sam. xxiii. 13, or of the boundless, Zech. x. 8. 
 "Pp^^ has a pausal a from o as in T^% ^'^^l and Ti? for TjJ xlix. 3, 
 fpD\ for ^I'-IlD: xlix. 27, Ew. § 93. 3, comp. Hitzig on Isa. 
 lix. 17. Journey and arrival, ver. 15 : And the men took 
 this present, and doidtle money toolc they in their hand, and 
 Benjamin, and they arose and loent doivn to Egypt and stood 
 hefore Joseph. With PP'??""?!] comp. xxi. 14 'i.^,*^""?] ; Ben- 
 jamin was then somewhat over twenty years of age. When 
 Joseph saw him and was thus convinced that the brothers had 
 done him no violence, he prepared a solemn reception for them, 
 vv. 16, 17 : Wlie7i Joseph saiv Benjamin with them, he said to the 
 steward of his house : Bring the men into the house and slay cattle 
 and make ready, for the men shall dine with me at noon. And 
 the man did as Joseph had said, and brought the men into Joseph's 
 house. Instead of nntp nnip we have nnn nhl2 dissimilarly 
 vocalized. Meat formed in Egypt also a main element of 
 food at both priestly and royal tables (Herod, ii. 37, 77). 
 Their fear when brought in, and how it was allayed, vv. 
 
GENESIS XLIII. 18-25. 319 
 
 18-25: Then the men were afraid, when they were Irought 
 into Joseph's house, and said : Because of the money that was 
 returned in our saeks the former time are ive brought in, that 
 they may roll upon tts and attack ^ls and take us for slaves, 
 together with our asses. And they came near to the man that 
 was placed over Joseph's house and spoke to him, at the entry 
 of the house, and said : Oh, my lord, we came doivn once before 
 to buy corn. And it came to pass, when we came to the resting- 
 place and opened our sacks, behold the money of each was at the 
 top of his sack, our money according to its weight ; noio loe bring 
 it back in our hand. And other money have we brought with 
 us in our hand, to buy corn; we do not know who put our 
 money in our sacks. And he said: Be of good courage, fear 
 not, your and your fathers God has given you treasure 
 in your sacks, your money came to rue. And he brought out 
 Simeon to them. And the man brought the men into Joseph's 
 house and gave them ivater, and they washed their feet, and he 
 gave their asses p)rovender. And they made ready the present, 
 before Joseph came at noon, for they had heard that they should 
 eat with him. By n^nn tliey mean tlieir first (previous) 
 Egyptian journey. Instead of 3C'>?^ri 12& we here Lave 
 -t^''^, which better expresses that the How is to them un- 
 known aud incomprehensible. Because they fear to be treated 
 as embezzlers of others' property (the accusation of being 
 spies is out of question), they seek to prevent what they fear, 
 by explaining the state of affairs to the steward at the door 
 of the house, which they so dread to enter. At the place 
 of halting for the night, they discovered to their terror the 
 purchase money returned in their corn-sacks (for these must, 
 xlii. 27 sq., be completed according to the meaning of J ; 
 comp., on the other hand, xlii. 35). The steward discreetly 
 gives a wise and kind answer : Peace be to you, i.e. lay aside 
 your care and anxiety, I had your money quite right, hence 
 what you found is a treasure given you by your God {ph'^ 
 23? in the 0. T. always expresses encouragement and con- 
 
320 GENESIS XLIII. 26-31. 
 
 gratulation, in later Hebrew, as in Aram, and Arab., greet- 
 ing). He then brought Simeon out to them, led them into 
 Joseph's house, and showed himself ready to serve them in 
 various ways. They were now expecting Joseph, with whom, 
 as they heard and also believed, they were to dine at noon, 
 and they laid out their present to the best advantage (outside 
 in the hall). The meeting before the repast, vv. 26-31 : 
 When Joseph came home, they hroiight him the 'present, which 
 they had hrought with them, into the house, and cast them- 
 selves doivn to the ground. And Joseph ashed them of their 
 vjelfare, and said : Is your aged father, of whom you spake, well, 
 is he still alive ? They said : Thy servant, our father, is well, 
 he is still alive ; and they hoivcd and made oheisanee. And he 
 lifted up his eyes and saw Benjamin his hrother, his mother's 
 son, and said : Is this your youngest hrother of whom ye spake ? 
 And he said : Elohim he gracious to thee, my son ! — Tlicn 
 Joseph made haste, for his affection was kindled for his hrother, 
 and he was forced to lucep, and he went into the inner room and 
 wept there. Then he washed his face, came out, restrained him- 
 self and said : Set on the meal ! The present which was Q"|^3 
 v/as, according to xxiv. 10, xxxv. 4, what they had brought 
 with them, and this they made ready for presentation. 'is''3''l 
 has Mappik in the N that it may be plainly pronounced as a 
 consonant; this occurs also Lev. xxiii. 17, Job xxxiii. 21, 
 Ezra viii. 18, Olsh. § Z2d. The reverential salutation is 
 designated as at xviii. 2, xix. 1 and frequently, and is at 286 
 combined with ^lip'l as at xxiv. 26, 48. When he sees 
 Benjamin, his brother by the same mother, he makes inquiry, 
 but without waiting for an answer greets him with a hearty : 
 "Elohim be gracious to thee, my son " ("^in^ like Isa. xxx. 19 
 for ^3n^, Ew. § 251<^). He was obliged, while thus speaking, 
 to hasten, for — such is the literal meaning of 30« — his 
 bowels 1''?-^7-> LXX eyKara (evrepa), here equivalent to organs 
 of feeling = feelings (as at 1 Kings iii. 26, Prov. xii. 10, 
 comp. Isa. Ixiii. 15, Syr. rahne = airXdyxi^a 2 Mace, ix. 
 
GENESIS XLIII. 32-34. 321 
 
 5 sq.), were glowing (for which Syr. oX-t i.e. i^j'?jn3 or li^bljnx 
 they rolled themselves, DMZ. xxvi. 800, but see on Job iii. 5), 
 i.e. he was overpowered by sympathetic affection and "he sought 
 to weep," i.e. felt an irresistible impulse to do so (comp. a similar 
 active expression for strong emotion, Isa. xiii. 8«), and went 
 
 rrinnn into a chamber (iin, ,jk^ from "i^n to retire, to hide) and 
 
 there gave vent to his tears. Then he washed his face, came 
 back again, and, controlling his feelings, commanded the 
 repast to be served. The feast, and the preference shown 
 thereat to Benjamin, vv. 32-34: And they set on for him 
 apart and for them apart, and for the Egyptians loho ate loith 
 him apart, for the Egyptians cannot eat with the Hebrews, for 
 that is esteemed an abomination hy the Egyptians. And they 
 Slit Ifore him, the first-born according to his birthright and 
 the younger according to his youth, so that they looked one at 
 another astonished. And they took messes to them from him, 
 and Benjamin's mess loas five times greater than that of any of 
 them, and they drank and were full in his company. Joseph, 
 as the illustrious head of the priestly order, was served 
 apart, and the sons of Jacob and the Egyptians who ate 
 vvitli them apart, because Egyptians could not, i.e. might 
 not, eat with Hebrews ; this |v3V ^<? (the form of the impf. 
 encrgicum having slipped in) is Jahvistico-Deuteronomic, sp 
 bsin, used of moral impossibility, running through the whole 
 of Deut. : xii. 17, xvi. 5, xvii. 15, xxi. 16, xxii. 3, 19, 29, 
 xxiv. 4, comp. Ex. xix. 23. t^in refers to eating with 
 foreigners in general, which ancient Egypt repudiated both 
 from superstition and national pride, Diodor. Sic. i. 67, even 
 their knives, forks, and crockery were avoided as defiled 
 through their participation of sacred animals, Herod, ii. 41, 
 comp. Ex. viii. 22, much more eating in common with the 
 shepherd people of the Hebrews. Thus then they sat before 
 him arranged from the first-born down to the youngest, 
 exactly according to their respective ages, at which they 
 
 VOL. II. X 
 
322 GENESIS XLIV. 
 
 looked at each other with the greatest astonishment (b^ ^pj^ 
 like ^^ T^n xlii. 28). nixb'D is meant of messes for guests 
 of honour, whom the entertainer pointed out. i^^*}. " they 
 bore," has an unnamed subject, as is usual where the 
 servants in waiting are intended {e.g. xxiv. 33 in J, in 
 opposition to which b'yi they did, xlii. 25, which may be from 
 U). Benjamin's mess was five times greater (comp. the 
 occurrence of this number with respect to Egyptian matters, 
 xli. 34, xlv. 22, xlvii. 2, 24, Isa. xix. 18) than the mess of 
 any of the others, just as the kings in Sparta were served with 
 double portions, but ov'^ Xva SiTrXdata KaTa(f)d<yoiev (Xen. de 
 rep. Laced, xv. 4). The brothers drank and were drunk (to be 
 understood in the sense of Hagg. i. 6), iisy feeling themselves 
 at ease in his presence. The anxiety of conscience, which they 
 experienced at the sight of the strange Egyptian lord, was now 
 lost in a heartfelt delight, which was to them as inexplicable. 
 But Joseph, the unknown and yet so well known, who has 
 the key to the mystery, delights himself in the intoxicating 
 rapture of these dearest of all guests, whom the LOED has 
 brought him, and praises that wonderful leading of God, the 
 glory of which beams upon him from their happy faces. 
 
 THE LAST TEST, CH. XLIV. 
 
 Yet one last trial is inflicted by Joseph upon his brethren. 
 He has convinced himself that they have not done external 
 violence to Benjamin as they did to himself, but he desires 
 to be finally assured that the hardness of heart and want of 
 feeling, which had formerly plunged their father into the 
 deepest grief for his child have now passed away, and that a 
 similar deed is impossible to them. The pastor-like spiritual 
 wisdom with which he masters his natural feelings, to tread 
 with them the way of God, is admirable. The mode of 
 delineation is like that of ch. xliii. ; J is unmistakeable, and 
 his text is here without admixture. 
 
GENESIS XLIV. 1-6. 
 
 5^ •) *? 
 
 The bretliren are dismissed with full sacks and with 
 Joseph's Clip, vv. 1-3 : And he commanded the stcicard of his 
 house saying : Fill the sacks of the men with food, as much as 
 ihey can carry, and put every mans money at the top in his 
 sack. And my eup, my silver cup, place at the top in the sack 
 of the youngest, and his corn money ! And he did according to 
 the saying of Joseph, lohieh he spake. The morning became 
 light and the men vjcre sent away, they and their asses. In 
 this portion of the narrative also nnripx is used throughout 
 for pb', and ^3X (here and ver. 25, as at xliii. 2, 20, 22) for 
 "13; the energetic imperfect form |v3V, as at xliii. 32, is also 
 characteristic of J. What is aimed at is to accuse them of 
 theft. The superabundance of what they get for their 
 money will stamp the theft of the silver cup as all the more 
 glaring a crime. An eventual abandonment of Benjamin was 
 deprived of all shadow of justification, by the fact that 
 property not belonging to them was found in the sacks of 
 all. The juxtaposition : the morning became light (lix Ges. 
 § 72, note 1) and the men are sent away is similar to xix. 
 23 in J"; it is the syntactic scheme of the contemporaneous 
 which we already met with in Q, vii. 6. The pursuit and 
 accusation, vv. 4-6 : They were just gone out of the city and 
 were not yet far off, when Joseph said to the steivard of his house : 
 Up, follow after the men, and when thou hast overtaken them, 
 say to them : Wlicrcfore have ye returned good for evil ? Is 
 not this it, out of lohich my lord drinketh, and hy tvhich he is 
 accustomed to predict ? An evil deed have ye done therein. 
 He overtook them and said these words to them, ^a is likewise 
 the scheme of the contemporaneous. The city is left 
 unnamed ; it would have been Zo'an (Tanis) if the Hyksos had 
 then been ruling in Egypt, which, as we have seen on ch. xl., 
 is improbable. Hence we shall have to regard it as Memphis, 
 as Kn. also thinks, though as the supposed capital of the 
 Hyksos. HT 5« refers to the cup ; he purposely does not add 
 rp-T', he is certain of the fact of the theft, and takes it for 
 
324 GENESIS XLIV. 7-13. 
 
 granted that they will know what is in question. On 3 nr\'\y 
 to drink in = to drink out of anything, see Ges. 154. oa. 
 By the second in is meant, that by looking into this cup he 
 was accustomed to investigate mysteries (t^'nj divinarc olwvi- 
 ^eo-^at, as the LXX translates here and xxx. 27). In Egypt, 
 the land of soothsaying and magic (Isa. xix. 3, Kiddushin 
 49Z/), hydromancy, i.e. predicting from the appearances pre- 
 sented by the liquid contents of a goblet {KvXiKOfiavreLO), a 
 dish (XevKavo/iavTeia), or some other vessel, either alone or 
 with something thrown into it, was customary. The cup, 
 which is described to the men as Joseph's favourite cup and 
 as a sacred vessel, is called T?? from its calyx-shaped form ; it 
 was a Ki/3a)pLov like the Egyptian goblets which narrowed 
 downwards (Athcn. xi. p. 477, comp. DUhjmus Chalcenter. ed. 
 Schmidt, p. 75). Their offer, and the terrible and surprising 
 discovery, vv. 7—13: And tlicy send to him: Wliercfore 
 speaheth my lord such things? Far he it from thy servants to 
 do such a ihiny ! Wc brought hack to thee from the land of 
 Canaan money which we found (d the top of our sacks, how 
 ."ihoidd we then steal silver or gold out of thy lord's Jwuse ? With 
 whomsoever of thy servants it is found, let him die, and let us 
 also he henceforth hondmcn to my lord. Tlien he said : Now 
 then, as ye have said, so let it he : he with whom it is foitnd 
 shall he my hondman, and ye sliall he free of punishment. 
 Then they hastened and let down each his sack upon the ground, 
 and opened each his sack. And he searched; he hegan at the eldest 
 and ended at the youngest, and the cup was found in Benjamin's 
 sack. Then they rent their garments, and each laded his ass, and 
 they returned to the city. Earlier Jahvistic portions furnish 
 parallel expressions to all and everything here, e.g. to the 
 repudiating ^''X xxxix. 9. We should expect ^D3'!i (Samar.) 
 instead of ^D3 at 8a, but it is not necessary (comp. the trans- 
 lation above). In 10a D2 is placed first, though it logically 
 belongs to a following member of the sentence as at 1 Sam. 
 xii. IG, Hos. vi. 11, Zech. ix. 11, Job ii. 10. Joseph's 
 
GENESIS XLIV. 14-34. 32 D 
 
 steward does not wish to be so liarsli, but to deal more 
 gentl}'. With ready alacrity tliey assisted him in the search, 
 Mhicli he effected according to their ages, and they may 
 have been already triumphing, that tlieir innocence was mani- 
 fested, when the cup was at last found in Benjamin's sack. 
 Then they rent their garments, reloaded their asses, and in- 
 stead of leaving Benjamin behind as a bondman, return to tlie 
 city. On their arrival they all desired to share the fate of 
 Benjamin, vv. 14-17: Tlicn JudaJi and his brethren ivcnt 
 into Joseph's house, and he was still there, and they fell hefure 
 him on the ground. And Josrjih said unto them : What 
 deed is this that ye have done ? Did ye not hioiv that sueh 
 a man as I can divine? And Judah said: What shall 
 ■ice say to my lord, what shall vjc speak, or how shall we 
 clear ourselves? God hath laid hold of the iniquity of thy 
 servants, and ux are noiv bondmen to my lord, both ive and 
 he in whose hand the cup ivas found. But lie said : Far be it 
 from me to do thus. The man in ivhose hand the cvp was 
 found, let him be my bondman, and as for you, go up henec 
 in peace to your father I Judah is placed foremost, because 
 he had become surety for Benjamin. They find Josepli, who 
 was expecting tliem, in a state of anxious suspense, still in the 
 house. He addresses them harsldy : they might surely have 
 known that a man like himself would know how to find out 
 what is concealed and would soon discover their deed. Judali 
 does not contradict the accusation, the proof is overwhelming. 
 He sees therein the hand of God, who is thus laying hold 
 of and visiting upon them the still unavenged crime they 
 committed against their brother. Josepli however does not 
 admit that they ought all to become his bondmen, he will 
 only retain Benjamin, the really guilty one, and the rest shall 
 return to Canaan DiPC'p (with ? of condition, which forms 
 an adverbial notion) peacefully, i.e. unmolested (1 Sam. 
 i. 17, XX. 42). Judah's remonstrance, vv. 18-34: Then 
 Judah drcuj near and said : Oh, my lord, let thy servant, I 
 
326 GENESIS XLIV. 18-34. 
 
 'pray thee, speak a ivord in my lord's cars, and let not thine 
 anger hum against thy servant, for thou oM equal with Pharaoh. 
 My lord asked his servants saying : Have ye yet a father or a 
 hr other? And we said to my lord: We have an aged father 
 and a young child horn to him in his old age, tvhose brother is 
 dead, and he oidy is left of his mother, and his father loveth 
 him. And thou saidst to thy servants : Bring him doion to 
 me, that I may set mine eyes upon him. And we answered 
 my lord : The hoy cannot leave his father, for if he shoidd 
 leave him — his father ivould die. But thou saidst to thy ser- 
 va7its : Unless your youngest hrotlier come down tvith you, ye 
 shall see my face no more. And it came to pass, when ive had 
 gone up to thy servant, our father, ive told him the worels of my 
 lord. When then our father said : Go again, huy us a little 
 food, we said : We cannot go doivn ; if our youngest hrotlier is 
 ivith us, then ivill tve go doivn, for we may not see the mans 
 face except our youngest brother be with us. Then thy servant, 
 my father, said unto us : Ye know that my wife hare me two. 
 The one went away from me, and I said : Certainly he is torn 
 to pieces, and I have not seen him since. Now ye will take this 
 one also from before my face, and if an accident befall him, ye 
 ivill have brought doivn my grey hairs with unhappincss to the 
 grave. When then I come to thy servant, my father, and the 
 boy is not ivith us, seeing his soid is linked to the boy's soul, it 
 will come to pass, when he sees that the boy is not there, he imll 
 die, and thy servants ivill have h^ought doivn the grey hairs of thy 
 servant, our father, with sorrow to the grave. For thy servant 
 bro7ight away the boy from his father and became surety, saying: 
 If I bring him not back to thee, I will hear the blame to my 
 father for life. Therefore let thy servant remain instead of the 
 boy as bondman to my lord, but let the boy go up with his 
 brethren. For how could I go to my father, except the boy be 
 with me ? Oh no, I cannot see the sorrow that will come upon 
 my father. We have already had, xliii. 20, the courteous ''S 
 with which Judah begins. He desires to speak ''.^I!^^ of the 
 
GENESIS XLV. 327 
 
 great lord, i.e. directly (without an interpreter) and audibly 
 (comp. 1. 4, but also xx. 8 and xxiii. IG). Thou and Pharaoli 
 — he says — are equal one to another (3~3, as at xviii. 25). 
 ^""^i?? Vl 2 Off is equivalent to D"'jpT'p xxxvii. 3 (comp. on 
 iv. 23), and the added ]^?^ does not describe Benjamin as 
 a little child, but as still in the bloom of youth (and born in 
 his father's old age, comp. 1 Kings iii. 7, 2 Chron. xiii. 7). 
 By V^V V'^ '"^P'^'^l 21J Judah explains tlie desire to see 
 Benjamin as one of gracious intention (comp. Jer. xxxix. 12, 
 xl. 4). TjX 28a is affirmative, as at xxix. 14. ny"j3 29& or pj^a 
 Sib, xlii. 38, to go down to Sheol, is the opposite of Di/'K^'a 
 XV. 15. The emotionally repudiative I? 346 with the chief 
 sentence understood is similar to xxxviii. 11, xlii. 4. — Judah's 
 words are those of a heart which makes its owner eloquent, 
 words subdued by wise moderation and overmastering grief, but 
 manly and bold from a deeply-stirred feeling of duty, enhanced 
 by the consciousness of his former guilt. Before him stands 
 the lord of Egypt, whose heart he is trying to pierce; behind 
 him are his prostrate brethren, all of whom he is representing. 
 Judah was the most eloquent among his brethren. It was his 
 eloquence that at last induced his father to entrust Benjamin 
 to him, xliii. 8-10; he, by whose advice Joseph had been 
 sold as a slave, condemns himself to slavery, for the sake of 
 saving Benjamin. The change of disposition in his brethren 
 has now been sufficiently tested, and a continuance of the 
 restraint, which Joseph has put upon himself, is no longer 
 possible. The force of both the pain and the rapture of love 
 can no longer endure restriction. The moment for the most 
 touching and sacred scene of recognition — a turning-point full 
 of important results in the history of Israel — has arrived. 
 
 THE RECOGNITION, CII. XLV. 
 
 The chief narrator seems here also to be J, his account 
 being however completed from £. The passage vv. 17-23 
 
328 GENESIS XLV. 
 
 is tliat which is the most certainly derived from the hitter. 
 The Divine name D\n^x (D\n^N'n) decides nothing, for only at 
 xlvi. 2 does U, and at xxxix. 2, 3, 5, 21, 23 does J" announce 
 himself by the former, calling the God who presides over tlie 
 history of Joseph D\n';x, and the latter calling Him n"in\ Joseph 
 himself never calls Him nirT* (not even in ch. xxxix.), but 
 six times DM^^xn and nine times DTi^s. Pharaoh also, the 
 brethren and Jacob call God h'^rh^ (n) with or without the 
 article ; and what is striking, Jacob, in a text derived from J, 
 xlviii. 20, even calls the God in whose name he is blessing DTii'X. 
 Nor is ^xib'^ for npy any safe criterion. Certainly this name 
 makes us think in the first place of J^ (p. 225) ; but E also 
 calls the sons of Jacob ijNib"' "'Jl at xlii. 5, xlvi, 5, and here 
 ver. 21. In ch. xlviii. the names are interchamred both in the 
 
 O 
 
 jDarts taken from E and those taken from J, and is it then 
 J, who at XXXV. 21 sq. says ^S"ib'^ three times in one breath? 
 
 Joseph has hitherto suppressed his feelings, for the sake of 
 carrying out the plan of simulation which he had devised. 
 His object is now attained. He has convinced himself that 
 Benjamin is still alive, and has not become like himself a 
 victim of his brothers' envy. He has taken a deep look into 
 his brothers' hearts and has found them changed for the better. 
 He has heard them, and above all Eeuben (the comparatively 
 least guilty, yet still as an accessory not innocent), repent and 
 bewail the crime committed against himself, which is now 
 visited upon them. Their tender affection for their aged 
 father, and their loyalty towards the only remaining son of 
 Eachel, have been made manifest by Judah's speech. They 
 cannot but regard Benjamin as the guilty one, who has by 
 theft plunged them all into misery ; but they do not load him 
 with reproaches, they do not regard themselves as released 
 from the promise given concerning him to their father, they 
 take the blame upon themselves as for their common act. 
 Their conduct under this last test is the clear reflection of 
 their wakeful conscience, of their converted heart. At the 
 
GENESIS XLY. 1-3. 329 
 
 same time he loolcs into the whole depth of his miserably 
 deceived father's mourning of now twenty-two years' duration 
 for himself, his lost son. By sympathy he is sharing the 
 anxiety which that fatlicr is now certainly undergoing about 
 Benjamin. Any longer continuance of the seeming callousness, 
 which he has not even been able to maintain without inter- 
 mingling in it various marks of kindness, would be the greatest 
 self-torture, and is indeed in the overwhelming rush of emo- 
 tion utterly impossible, vcr. la: Then Joseph could no longer 
 restrain liimself hefore all them that stood hefore him, and he 
 cried : Make every one go out from me ! At the first sight of 
 Benjamin it already became difficult to him to restrain him- 
 self (xliii. 31), but he did it because of the bystanders 
 (7J? 3i*:, as at xxiii. 2 and also xxviii. 13) ; he now commands 
 them to retire, their presence being, as is shown by vPp, an 
 intolerable burden. He is thus left alone, and as the narrator, 
 with profound consciousness of the significance of this scene 
 in the redemptive history, adds, ver. Ih : And there stood no 
 one v:iih him, while Joseph made himself known to his brethren. 
 The Ilithpa. I'^.^nn only again at Num. xii. G, properly to 
 make oneself known, comp. ?^.3nn to make oneself great. It 
 was a transaction so tender and sacred, that the presence of 
 an observer could not but be regarded as a profanation, a 
 mutual outpouring of hearts, M'hich, beside God, Who knows 
 all things, no one ought to hear, and indeed no one was capable 
 of understanding, ver. 2 : Then he hurst out into loud weeping, 
 and the Egyptians heard it, and the house of Fharewh heard it. 
 The Egyptians (D;"i>*p=nnv?pri) outside heard it, and the news 
 that some extraordinary occurrence must have happened soon 
 reached Pharaoh's palace. His first word is, ver. 3a ; / am 
 Joseph, and his next : Is my father yet cdive ? He has already 
 often heard that he was alive and has himself already asked 
 it, but it is the first and greatest need of his heart again to 
 assure himself of it. But his brethren — continues the narrator, 
 ver. oh — could not answer him,for they vxre dismayed before him. 
 
o30 GENESIS XLV. 4-13. 
 
 Then Joseph said to them, ver. Aa : Come nearer to me, I pray 
 you, and they came nearer. And he said further, vv. 4&-13 : / 
 am, Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt; and now trouhle 
 not yourselves, think not that you must he angry toith yourselves 
 that you sold me hither, for Elohim sent me hither hcforc you to 
 preserve life. For there have now been two years of famine in 
 the land, and there come yet five years, in luhich shall he neither 
 ploughing nor harvest. So then Elohim sent me before you to 
 2')rescrve you a remnant in the earth and to spare your life for 
 a great escape. Now then — it is not you that sent me hither, 
 but God, and He has made me a father to Fharaoh^ and lord 
 of all his house, and rider over the tohole land of Egypt. Go vp 
 quickly to my father and say unto him : Thus saith thy son 
 Joseph : Elohim hath made me lord of all Egypt, come down to 
 me, tarry not. And thou shall divell in the land of Goshen 
 and shall he near me, thou and thy cliildren and thy children's 
 children and thy cattle and cdl that is thine. And I will 
 nourish thee there, for there are yet to he five years of famine, 
 that thou niayest not come to poverty, and thy household and all 
 that is thine. And behold your eyes see, and the eyes of my 
 brother Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speahcth unto you. 
 Atid tell my father all my honour in Egypt, and all that you 
 have seen, and hasten, bring my father hither to me. On 
 ■irix . . "iC'X (rehative of the 1st pers.) see Ges. § 123, note 1. 
 Dnnan corresponds with J'& description of the procedure, 
 according to which Joseph was sold by Judah's advice, 
 xxxvii. 26, 27, 28?^, comp. (according to E) xl. loa. The 
 peculiar ".^'J/? nin 5a also belongs to the style of J at 
 xxxi. 35, besides which a similar example to ^I'^JP' ^l is also 
 found at xxxi. 38, 41. The phrase rinsc' Dlb* 7a is like 
 2 Sam. xiv. 7. The riVDilr which follows is combined with 
 
 ^ The Codex of R. Meir and that which was, as the Midrash on Genesis of 
 Mose-ha-Darshan (in MSS. at Prague) says, preserved in the Severus synagogue 
 at Home, read liere ''Jl^'''1, i.e. as it is explained ''^[•"1 (and he lent me to 
 
 Pharaoh tliat I should be a father to him), an incredible various reading (see A. 
 Epstein in Gratz's Monatsschrift, xxxiv.). 
 
GENESIS XLV. M, 15. 331 
 
 csp in tlie sense of n^^np nnp Ezra ix. 8 sq. : to you for a 
 great escape (comp. xxxii. 9 in J and the Assyr. baldlii to 
 live, properly to escape, to be preserved). They are the 
 notions ri^"l*?t^ and ^072, which subsequently attained so great 
 importance in prophecy, which here appear by way of prelude 
 in the mouth of Joseph, the type of Christ, the preserver of 
 his famil}^, and in it of the future nation (see Hoelemann in 
 the Sachs. Kirchcn- u. Schulhlatt, 1873, No, 14). "Father to 
 Pharaoh " is the title of the highest dignitary, who as first 
 councillor is always near the king, comp. on ^l^x xli. 43. 
 X'b here corresponds with t27'^ in E, xlii. 6. Dwelling in 
 Goshen (see concerning this district of Lower Egypt, situate at 
 at all events on the east of the Nile, on xlvii. 27 ; the LXX 
 translates in this passage eV 7.^ Feaefju ^Apa(3ia<i), and therefore 
 on the soil of Pharaoh's kingdom, Jacob is near his son, and 
 incomparably easier to be reached, than at that time in 
 Canaan. There he will nourish his family (?3p?, as at xlvii. 
 12, 1. 21) and protect them from poverty in the years of 
 famine which are still to come {^'^Ji^ transformed from 
 \yi''=mi hardly: taken possession of = to be without posses- 
 sion). "Your eyes see" sounds Deuteronomic, Deut. iii. 21, 
 iv. 3, xi. 7, xxviii. 3 2, which is not strange in the Jahvistic 
 style. Three times does Joseph (vv. 7, 8, 9) bring it forward 
 to comfort them, that what they did, had been of God's disposing 
 for their own good. What a thoroughly noble heart it was, that 
 he opened to his brethren ! When he had thus poured forth 
 his heart, vv. 14, 15 : He fell upon his brother Benjamins neck 
 and wept, and Benjamin wept on his neck. And he kissed all 
 his brethren and wept on them, and after this his brethren talked 
 with him. That 2n\^y has not a causal (as c.ff. at Lam. i. 16) 
 but a local meaning is shown by the preceding " on his neck." 
 It is not to be seen why ver. 15 should be from B (Dillm.), 
 and not, like ver. 14, from J'" (comp. xlvi. 29, xxxiii. 4). It 
 was now that the brothers first ventured to approach him, the 
 string of their tongues is now loosened, and they are able to 
 
332 I GENESIS XLV, 3G-20. 
 
 talk with him. The sacred history maintains in the history 
 of Joseph all its greatness ; here especially, in the scene of the 
 recognition, all is nature, all spirit and all art ; every word is 
 as it were bathed in tears of sympathy, in the heart's blood of 
 love, in the wine of rapture. Never, says Klopstock, liave few 
 words expressed more noble passion. The foil however of 
 this history, so beautiful in itself, is the Antitype, Who sheds 
 over it His glorifying light. For after the Jewish nation 
 delivers Jesus into the hands of the Gentiles, the anti- 
 typical history of this fraternal treachery also discharges 
 itself into adorable depths of the wisdom and knowledge of 
 God. Ad hoc cnim — remark Augustine, IJabanus Maurus 
 and others on this subject — Christus a Judais traditus est 
 gentibus, tanquam Joseph uEgyptiis a fratribus, nt ct rcliquice 
 Israel salvev Jicrenf. 
 
 Tlie intelligence of the arrival of Joseph's brethren, which 
 soon reached the palace, made a favourable impression upon 
 Pharaoh, and therefore of course upon the court officials, 
 ver. 16 : And the report iccis heard in Pharaoh's house, saying : 
 Joseph's brethren are come ! And it was pleasing in the eyes of 
 Pharaoh and in the eyes of his servants. The interposition of 
 this information was needed by what follows in ver. 17 ; hence 
 the narrator is not necessarily another than in ver. 2, but 
 still J (com]3. •'yya 3D^ xli. 37). The command of Pharaoh, 
 vv. 1 7-20 : And Pharaoh said unto Joseph: Say to thy brethren : 
 This do : lade your beasts and go hence to Canaan. And take your 
 father and your families and eome to me,eind I ivill givcyou the 
 best of the land of Egypt, and eat the fat of the land. Now thou 
 art commanded (to say to them) : This do ye : take you out of 
 the land of Egypt waggons for your little ones and your luives, 
 and set your father upon one and come ! And let not your 
 eyes rest regretfully upon your stuff, for the best of the land of 
 Egypt is yours. It was an act of gratitude for the king to 
 invite the family of Joseph to Egypt ; this free and honourable 
 invitation implied the right of Israel to leave it also without 
 
GENESIS XLV. 21-24. 333 
 
 obstruction. There is not a word of tbis invitation in xlvi. 
 28 sqq. ; but this involves no contradiction, the n^attor tliere 
 in question being the securing their possession of the Land of 
 Goshen, by reference to their occupation of sheplierds ; never- 
 theless since xlv. 28 sqq. is from J, xlv. 17-20 may be from 
 B. |j;d to load, is aiza^ I^IP- (comp. ^V DDy in J xliv. 13). 
 i'y3 occurs also in the book of tlie covenant, Ex. xxii. 1, and 
 elsewhere only Xum. xx. 4, 8, 11, Ps. Ixxviii. 48, Arab. „v.^j 
 camels, as the chief element of property in cattle {DMZ. xxx, 
 G74). On ^^^3-137 comp. Isa. xxii. 15, Ezek. iii. 4; on the 
 a^D interchanged with 3pn of the land, 2 Kings viii. 9 (differing, 
 as Dillm. remarks, from f^^^ 3ui*p the best part of the land) ; 
 and on chri"7S Cpry Deut. vii. IG and frequently, it is an 
 expression native to Deut. within the Pentateuch. After '■'J^*?.^ 
 we must with the Syr. supply "n'nx'PN nbX; but according to 
 the LXX Jer. nn^iv was incorrectly written for cnk n;is 
 (Dillm.). Execution of the royal command, and supplies for 
 the journey, vv. 21-23: And the sons of Jacob did so, and 
 Joseph gave them uxicjgons according to the command of Pharaoh, 
 and gave them provision for the journey. To all of them he 
 gave each man ncio raiment, and to Benjamin three hundred 
 pieces of silver and five neio suits of raiment. And to his 
 father he sent on this manner, ten asses laden with the good 
 things of Egypt, and ten she-asses laden ivith corn and bread 
 and victuals for his father upon the journey. Ancient Egypt 
 was rich in vehicles and horses for both warlike and peaceful 
 purposes, comp. 1. 9 with Isa. xxxvi. 9. Tbfi'C riispn changes 
 
 of raiment, then like <?w>o new garments in general, as at Judg. 
 
 xiv. 12 sq., comp. ver. 19 and frequently. Instead of nsf3 we 
 have everywhere else rixf3 with a foretone Kametz ; the mean- 
 ing is the same, not like the LXX, Vulg.: as many changes 
 of raiment, but so many presents, viz. the following. The 
 dismissal, ver. 24: ^So he sent his brethren avmy and they 
 departed, and he said to them : Fall not out on the icay, viz. as 
 
334 GENESIS XLV. 25-28. 
 
 to the share of one above another in the injustice committed 
 which had now to be confessed to their father, or from envy 
 at the preference of one above anotlier. The LXX and all 
 ancient translations correctly give firj opyi^eaOe, while on 
 the other hand the explanation : Tremble not, i.e. be of good 
 cheer on the way, gives here a superfluous and moreover an 
 inaptly expressed thought. The arrival, the announcement and 
 the impression made, vv. 25-28 : And they went wp out of 
 Egypt and came to the land of Canaan, to Jacob their father. 
 And they told him saying : Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor 
 over the ivhole land of Egyjot ; and his heart was numhcd, for he 
 helieved them not. And they told him all the words of Joseph, 
 which he had said tmto them, and he saw the waggons which 
 Joseph had sent, then the spirit of Jacob their father revived. 
 And Israel said : Enough, Joseph my son is still alive. I will 
 go and see him before I die. With ^Pl the announcement turns 
 into an oratio obliqua. ^2? iD^l does not mean : his heart re- 
 mained cold (Kn. Arnh. Keil), but it became cold, it stared 
 at the fabulous narrative without being able to grasp it as 
 true. But when he recognised, in the words and conduct of 
 Joseph as they were related to him, the image of his son, and 
 when the waggons, which were before him, brought to his 
 eyes his rank and wealth, lie exclaimed, esteeming rank, wealth 
 and presents as nothing : Enough (briefly, as at 2 Sara. xxiv. 
 16, 1 Kings xix. 4 for v^l), my son Joseph is alive, and faith 
 and love renewing his youth : I will go and see him before I 
 die. Jacob believed not — then the spirit of Jacob their 
 father revived and Israel said — what a judicious change of 
 name ! The feeble old man says : I will go and see him, as 
 if he needed the aid of no one in going to Egypt. Joseph is 
 the one thought in which he is absorbed. This one thought 
 he follows like a magnet, turning neither to the right hand 
 nor the left. But this Jacob to whom the spirit of his youth 
 thus returns is Israel. It is the nation of that name whose 
 migration to Egypt and its birth there is decided by this '"'pp'*. 
 
GENESIS XLVI. 1-4. 335 
 
 THE REMOVAL OF ISRAEL TO GOSHEN IN EGYPT, CII, XLVI. 
 
 Here begins that third section of the Toledoth of Jacob 
 which extends from the migration to Egypt to the pro- 
 sperous sojourn and increase in Goshen, ch. xlvi.-xlvii. 27. 
 1. Eemoval of t[ie family OF Jacob, xlvi. 1-7. This is the 
 first of the three portions of which ch. xlvi. is composed. 
 The account down to ver. 5 is by E, and its amplification, ver. 
 6 sq., by Q. That / has a share in ver. 1 sq. is inferred from 
 Beersheba being, according to E, the dwelling-place of Jacob, 
 and not merely the intermediate station. But this assumption 
 cannot be proved (comp. on xxxvii. 14). Ih is also similar 
 to xxxi. 54, and 2a to xx. 3. In vv. 3-5 indeed the tokens 
 of E are incomparably more abundant ; in the first place, ver. 5, 
 comp. xlv. 19 (where at the same time 21a showed that ^sib'' 
 for 2\>T is no decisive sign against him), and 36, comp. xxi. 13. 
 Parallels are also furnished in E to conspicuous particulars 
 of style, while, on the other hand, ver. 6 sq. is a transition to 
 the following catalogue of names similar in style to the second 
 Elohist. The departure, ver. 1 : And Israel deimrted with all 
 that lie had and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices to the 
 God of his father Isaac, Travelling from Hebron, xxxvii. 14, 
 in the direction of Egypt, Jacob arrives at Beersheba {^y<^ 
 y?tif, comp. xxviii. 2), where were the tamarisk planted by 
 Abraham, xxi. 33, and the altar of Isaac, xxvi. 25. There 
 he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac (according 
 to xxxi. 54, sacrifices with a sacrificial repast, the only 
 passage, apart from ch. xxxi., where the patriarchs appear 
 as sacrificing), just when he was, certainly not without 
 a deep feeling of melancholy mingled with his joy, about 
 to leave the Land of Promise. Manifestation of God in 
 Beersheba, vv. 2-4 : And Elohim spake to Israel in a 
 vision of the night, and said : Jacob ! Jacob ! And lie said : 
 Here am I. Then lie said : I am El, the God of thy father, 
 fear not to (jo down into Egypt, for I will there make thee a 
 
336 GENESIS XLVI. 5-7. 
 
 great nation. As for me, I will go down loith thee to Egypt, 
 and I will also hring thee up again, and Joseph shall close thine 
 eyes. The plur. rik"i^ is the intensive plur. expressive of 
 grandeur and importance. The inf. ITI"! stands midway be- 
 tween rinn and '"i*]"?., according to ^V\ ^"y., the ancient original 
 form ridat, and npy'Da is like ''i^^^"^?, xxxi. 15, both in E, 
 corap. ^J<, Isa. XXXV. 2, and on the inf. ahs. of Kal with 
 Hiph., Ges. § 131, note 2. However high Joseph might stand 
 in Pharaoh's favour, Egypt was still a foreign land, and it 
 would not be without apprehension that Jacob would con- 
 template his own and his descendants' future. His heart 
 would cleave to Canaan, which was his native land by 
 nature and his true home by promise. Hence it is that 
 the Divine encouragement vouchsafed him takes the form 
 of an assurance, that he does not go to Egypt alone, nor 
 without hope of return. Thus reassured he continues his 
 journey, ver. 5 : And Jacob rose up from Beershcba, and the 
 sons of Israel took their father and their little ones and their 
 wives in the waggons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him. 
 In an Egyptian painting there is a representation of an 
 Ethiopian princess returning to Thebes, the capital, in a 
 waggon, under a sunshade attached to it, with her servant 
 guiding the two cows harnessed to it. The body of the 
 vehicle, resting on two wheels, is only just large enough for 
 two persons, as are also the frequently depicted state chariots 
 and war chariots ('"'^t'I^ ^^d 33"i, Egypt, markabuta). The 
 waggons which Joseph sent were, on the contrary, certainly 
 four-wheeled conveyances, like that of the chamberlain, 
 Acts viii., who, though surely not without servants, yet 
 asked Philip the deacon to sit beside him. In such waggons 
 drawn by oxen did the women and children of the patri- 
 archal family travel with their aged father. The cattle were 
 driven, and the rest of their goods packed upon asses and 
 camels. Thus they came to Egypt, vv. 6, 7 : And they took 
 their cattle and their goods, which they had gotten in the land 
 
GENESIS XLVr. fi-7. 337 
 
 of Canaan, and came to Egypt, Jacob and all his seed with 
 
 him. His sons and his sons' S07is with him, and his daughters 
 
 and his sons' daughters and all his seed brought he with him 
 
 to Egypt. It is the same kind of statement as at xii. 5, xxxi. 
 
 18, xxxvi. 6, comp. also on W5< vii. 7, 13, and other passages. 
 
 Here follows the second of the three portions of which 
 
 eh. xlvi. consists : 2. A catalogue of the names of those 
 
 WHO migrated to Egypt, vv. 8-27. Kuenen {Einl. § G, 
 
 note 1) regards this as a piece of patchwork put together 
 
 from Num. xxvi. In our opinion its author is Q, who is 
 
 characterized Loth by D"ix pQ and i^T. "'5<V' (ver. 26 as at 
 
 Ex. i. 5, comp. Gen. xxxv. 11, elsewhere only at Judg. 
 
 viii. 30); nor is "nx l?vi ver. 20 against him, for he thus 
 
 writes at Num. xxvi. 60 ; also (as the Jahvist does, iv. 18) 
 
 R may have interposed here and there, but nothing can 
 
 with certainty be shown to be of liis insertion, except the 
 
 relative sentence in ver. 20, and that not from its contents, 
 
 but from the syntactic harshness of the annexation. The 
 
 words VJ3^ 2\>T are the title and theme of the table, which 
 
 is arranged, as it were, in four columns. Jacob stands at 
 
 the head, and his sons are classified according to his four 
 
 wives, Leah, Zilpah, Eachel, Bilhah ; all is clear, it is only 
 
 strange, but not doubtful, that in ver. 15 Jacob is reckoned 
 
 in with the HK^ ""Jn (with these, because his seed began with 
 
 them), instead of being added to them. Under Leah stand 
 
 Eeuben with four sons = 5 ; Simeon with six = 7 ; Levi 
 
 with three = 4 ; Judah with five sons, of whom 'Er and 
 
 Onan are, as is remarked, omitted, as having died in Canaan, 
 
 and two grandsons, as a compensation for the two sons who 
 
 died childless = 6 ; Issachar with four sons = 5 ; Zebulun 
 
 with three = 4 ; and Dinah (who, having fallen, remained 
 
 single, and moreover did not become a mother). She is 
 
 hence mentioned alone, and is included in the computation 
 
 as being also the eldest of the daughters, ver. 7. Thus we 
 
 have 5 + 7 + 4 + 6 + 5 + 4+1 = 32, but with Jacob, 33. 
 
 VOL. IL Y 
 
338 GENESIS XLVL 27. 
 
 Under Zilpah stand Gad with seven sons = 8 ; Asber with 
 four sons, a daughter (Serah, who, like Dinah, is enumerated 
 for a special reason) and two grandsons = 8. Hence 16. 
 Under Eachel, Jacob's wife Kar i^. : Joseph with two sons 
 = 3; Benjamin with ten = 11, consequently 14. Under 
 Bilhah : Dan with one son = 2 ; ISTaphtali with four = 5, 
 consequently 7. These together (3 3 + 16 + 14 + V) make 
 70 souls. The catalogue however reckons at first, ver. 26, 
 only 6 6 descendants of Jacob (who " came forth out of his 
 loins," comp. xxiv. 2), leaving out of the computation Jacob 
 and Joseph with the two sons of the latter, whom the family 
 that migrated to Egypt found there. If however Jacob and 
 Joseph, with Ephraim and Manasseh, are added, there are 70.^ 
 And Joseph's sale into Egypt being, as he himself regarded it, 
 xlv. 2, only a sending thither beforehand, the account is quite 
 right when it says finally, ver. 2 75 ; All the souls of the house 
 of Jacob which came into Egijpt ip^'-^'^-'^^'^ "i^'^, see Ges. 
 § 109) loere seventy. The same number is given Ex. i. 5, 
 Deut. X. 22. The LXX however, conip. Acts vii. 14, reckons 
 e^So/xTjKovTaTrevTe, counting, in accordance with its enlarge- 
 ment of ver. 20 (which omits i?? the son of Ephraim, 
 Num. xxvi. 35), three grandsons and two great-grandsons 
 of Joseph, and at last, ver. 27, by the addition of 9 Josephites 
 to the 66 descendants of Jacob makes the number 75. 
 
 So far all is clear. But taking the statement literally, 
 that the sixty-seven — for this is their number including Jacob 
 and excluding Joseph with Manasseh and Ephraim — came to 
 Egypt, difficult questions arise. Since there are only about 
 two -and -twenty years between the sale of Joseph and the 
 migration of Jacob,^ and the birth of Judah's twin children 
 
 ^ According to ancient Jewish explanation tlie meaning is, that when they 
 came into Egypt, by inckiding among them Joseph and his two sons and 
 Jochebed who were born X^IIB' ""^3 («.e. at the wall of Sesostris at the eastern 
 boundary of Egypt), there were 70 of them ; see Targ. Jer. and Rashi on 
 xlvi. 26, and Briill's Jahrbucher/ur jild. Lit. u. Gesch. 1883, p. 100 sq. 
 
 ^ Kanzleirat Paret, in his work on The Era of the World, 1880, p. 24, in 
 
GENESIS XLVr. 27. 339 
 
 takes place after the former event, Perez, wlio, acconliii^' to 
 ver. 12, came to Egypt with Hezron and Hamul, must liave 
 been born and already have begotten two sons within these 
 twenty-two years. This is not impossible, but with regard to 
 patriarchal custom improbable. A greater difficulty arises from 
 the fact of ten sons being awarded to Benjamin (according to the 
 LXX : three sons with five grandsons and a great-grandson). 
 Benjamin appears indeed in the preceding history not as a 
 boy in the ordinary sense of the word, but at all events as 
 still a young man. His birth took place, as we saw, p. 234, 
 in the 106th year of Jacob (tlie last before Joseph's disappear- 
 ance), and perhaps some years earlier. Hence, at the time of 
 the migration he was perhaps twenty-four years old (according 
 to Demetrius in Eus. Pracp. ix., twenty-one eVwy Krj), and as 
 such might as well be called "iV^ as Joseph when nearly 
 thirty, xli. 12, comp. xlvi. ; Absalom is also called "ij?j 
 2 Sam. xvii. 32, and Solomon, 1 Kings iii. 7, calls himself 
 IDp "iJ?J, while at xiv. 24 nnyj are men fit for war. But this 
 was an age at which, even if he is made, .as by Grossrau, a 
 polygamist, he could hardly have already had, and certainly 
 according to the impression made by the preceding narrative 
 had not had, ten sons. Nor is this indeed the meaning of the 
 list. The rude contrast said to exist between A (Q) and C 
 (J), by the former making Benjamin a man above thirty, and 
 the latter representing him as a young boy, is improbable in 
 itself, and is done away with by the obvious view (Hengstb., 
 Eeinke and others), that those grandsons of Jacob, who were 
 not born till after the migration, are regarded as members of 
 his family, who came into Egypt in their fathers. The expres- 
 
 whicli he relies for chs. v. and xi. on the numbers of the LXX, thinks that tlie 
 sojourn in Egypt amounted to 400 years, to 430 if we date it i'rom Joseph's 
 arrival there ; for that from Joseph's sale to the settlement of the family of 
 Jacob in Egypt there elapsed 30 years. But the statements, xxxvii. 2, xli. 4G, 
 xlv. 11, give 13-|-7-|-2 years, which cannot be extended to 30. Paret is how- 
 ever right in saying that 215 years are insufficient for the number of the peojile 
 assumed, Ex. xii. 37, comp. Kuhlcr, OO'ch. i. 164 sq. 
 
340 GENESIS XLVI. 27. 
 
 sion of the catalogue is consequently cautious, it does not say 
 3pr-ny but 2pT^ (2pV'-n'2b) 26a, 27h. "This view," objects 
 Kn., " is inadmissible ; the narrator reminds lis only in the 
 case of Manasseh and Ephraim that they were born in Egypt ; 
 he makes this remark repeatedly, and hence with special 
 purpose (vv. 20, 27, Ex. i.)." But the remark with respect 
 to Manasseh and Ephraim distinguishes these two, as found in 
 Egypt, from those who migrated thither. That many of those 
 named were not born to their fathers till after the latter had 
 come to Egypt, is not contrary to either the object or meaning 
 of the list. From xlii. 37 (U) we know that Reuben had two 
 sons at the time of the second journey to Egypt, but the list 
 reckons four as coming to Egypt with their father. AVe see 
 by the counterpart, Num. xxvi., what the author was con- 
 cerned about : he desired to show that the roots of the 
 subsequent nation were transplanted to Egypt in the family 
 of Jacob ; he names the ancestors of the families, who were at 
 the time of the exodus the most notable and numerous (as 
 many as five were then already extinct). In such enumera- 
 tions the power of the idea over the materials is shown. 
 The sacred historians enclose their materials in the frame of 
 significant numbers. Ten is the number of the finished 
 whole, upon which is impressed the characteristic of sacred- 
 ness by multiplication with seven, the number of disclosed 
 unity, and especially of the Divine glory. The number 70 
 (= 7 X 10) stamps the little band of emigrants (Deut. xxvi. 5) 
 as the holy seed of the people of God. 
 
 The list of names, Num. xxvi., differs in many respects 
 from that of Gen. xlvi. The LXX modifies the latter by 
 the former. Two of the sons of Benjamin appear. Num. xxvi., 
 as his grandsons. And ten names of the same persons there 
 differ more or less. The deviating pairs of names are either 
 two different names of the same meaning, as in^ and nnr, 2V 
 (from 2'ix = L_;T) and y^'^^l, or slightly differing forms of the 
 same name, as ^X^^O" and ^?<^03, I^DV and P^V, 'liib* and "liiN, 
 
GENESIS XL VI. 28. 341 
 
 D^an and DSin, or the abbreviated and the full name, as '^x 
 and CiTnx^ or apparently various readings of the tradition, as 
 |3i-S and ^rx, D^srD and DE^SC', D^'n and omc'.^ Other differ- 
 ences are found in the lists of the Chronicler, and especially 
 in the portion 1 Chron. vii. 14-29 conip. Num. xxvi. 28-37, 
 which carries on the genealogical table of the descendants of 
 Joseph beyond Gen. xlvi. (comp. xlviii. 6). 
 
 After the list, xlvi. 8-27, whose contents and object extend 
 beyond the immediate present, the narrative is again taken 
 up, and the third of the three portions of ch. xlvi. now follows. 
 3. The meeti:s!G and reception in Goshen. The narrator is 
 /, as is at once perceived by the prominence given to Judah. 
 Judah sent before, ver. 28 : And Judah he sent hefore him to 
 Joseph, to (jive information hefore him to Goshen, and they came 
 to the land of Goshen. Instead of ThSrh the LXX, Sam. Syr. 
 read nixing, which Wellh. Dillm. pronounce to be Ni;pli. : that 
 he (Joseph) might appear before him (Jacob). It is indeed 
 fitly said, 296, of Joseph, the ruler of Egypt, that he appeared 
 before (showed himself to) his father ; but the lower cannot 
 without discourtesy and irreverence send word to the higher 
 to appear before him. The translation too of Arnheim and 
 others : that he might show the way to Goshen before him, is 
 impossible ; for that would only have meaning and purpose if 
 Jacob and his family had gone directly after him, which is 
 excluded by n_^K', The purpose of sending the energetic and 
 fluent Judah was, that he might take information to Goshen 
 of the approaching arrival of the family. Both 1\:SP refer to 
 Jacob ; the second includes the obj. of min : information 
 before him, is that of his speedy following (comp. Ex. 
 XXXV. 34 : to instruct, to give information). Luther too 
 
 ^ If Alfred Jeremias, Die Bahyhmisch-aKsyr. Vorstdlungen vom Lebcn nacli 
 (km Tode (1887), p. 123, is in the right, when he says that Zion is called 7X^"1X 
 Isa. xxix. 1 sq., with reference to the Babylonio-Assyrian Arahl, which on the 
 one side is the seat of God (comp. Ps. xlviii. 3), and on the other conceals 
 within it the world beneath, the proper name ^^X"lX (here and Num. xxvi. 17) 
 
 might be compared with the Greek proiier name 'oxuftTios. 
 
342 GENESIS XLVI. 29, 30. 
 
 gives this explanatiou of the ambiguous words : iit doccat 
 Juda ct signified fratri Joseph adventare patrem, d hortetur 
 cum ut vcniat in Goscn ; the LXX, taking the commission of 
 Judah as an announcement to Joseph, translates with more 
 exact designation of the place of meeting : rov Be 'lovSa 
 airecTTeCKev e/xirpoaOev avrov irpo^ 'Icoay^cf) crvvavrrjaac avTu> 
 KaO' 'HpwMv TToXiv et9 yyjv 'Pa/xeaay. The Memphitic trans- 
 lation has: "at Petom the city in the land of Eamses." The 
 excavations of E. Naville (1883) in Tell el-Maskhuta make 
 it overwhelmingly probable, that it was not the store-city 
 Eamses, but Pithom (i.e. the place of the god Tuen) that was 
 situate there. The inscription EPO CASTPtA upon a stone, 
 which was found in a wall of the Eoman settlement hard by 
 the ruins of Pithom, speaks in favour of Hero (Heroonpolis) 
 being a more recent city near Pithom/ It may well be 
 supposed that the meeting between Jacob and Joseph took 
 place here, the latter coming from IMemphis for the purpose. 
 On the arrival of Jacob and his family, Joseph hastens 
 to welcome his father, ver. 29 : And Joseph made ready his 
 chariot, and went iip to meet his father to Goshen, and he 
 a2}peared hefore him and fell njwii his neck, and wept on his 
 neck a long time. The n^y, generally used of tlie journey from 
 tlie valley of the Nile to Canaan, stands here for that from 
 the interior of Egypt towards the wilderness ; and the t^n'?^ 
 elsewhere only used of Divine appearances, corresponds with 
 the VTinn with respect to the brethren. The high-pitched 
 expression serves to designate the solemnity of the meeting. 
 He who falls upon his neck seems to be Joseph, but perhaps 
 it is Jacob (Eeggio), after Joseph had made himself known 
 to his uncertain and anxious father (conip. the change of sub- 
 ject, Ps. Ixxii. 15). niy (from my, jU rcdirc) means, as at Euth 
 i. 14, Eccles. vii. 28, again and again, repeatedly and con- 
 tinually. The aged father's overwhelming joy, ver. 30 : Then 
 
 1 See Dillmann's article on "Pithom, Hero, Klysma," in the Report of the 
 Royal Academy of Sciences, xxxix., 1885. 
 
GENESIS XLVI. 31-34. 343 
 
 Israel said to Joseph : JVoiu let me die, since I have seen thy 
 face, that thou art yet alive. A similar DVsn as at ii. 23, 
 xxix. 34, XXX. 20, at the attainment of a wish. Advice to 
 the newly-arrived, vv. 31-34 : And Joseph said to his brethren 
 and to his father's house : I will go up and tell Pharaoh, and 
 vjill say to him : My brethren and my father s house, ivhich were 
 in the land of Canaan, are come to me. And the men are shep- 
 herds, for they have ahvays been hccpcrs of cattle, and they have 
 brought with them their Jioeks and their herds and all that they 
 have. When then Pharaoh shall call you and ash you, What 
 is your occupation ? say : Thy servants have been keepers of 
 cattle from our youth up till noiv, ive as our fathers — that ye 
 may divcll in the land of Goshen, for every shepherd is an 
 abomination to the Egyptians. The last words also form part 
 of Joseph's address. Kn. lays stress upon |XV, in distinction 
 from "ip3, for sheep and goats were not among the Egyptians 
 customary sacrificial animals, because their flesh did not forni 
 part of the priestly and royal diet, and loecause woollen fabrics 
 were esteemed unclean by the priests and not used for the 
 apparel of the dead. But the conclusion, that shepherds and 
 goatherds were therefore "^^yin in a high degree to the 
 Egyptians, is not confirmed. Only swineherds were such 
 (Herod, ii. 47), and they were nevertheless reckoned together 
 with cowherds among the seven castes (Herod, ii. 164), both 
 together forming the herd caste (Diod. i. 74). The name 
 ^ovKokoL is only an appellation a piotiori, for pictures of goat- 
 keeping and sheep-tending appear on the monuments, together 
 with representations of cattle- rearing, while among the herds 
 appear together with asses and horned cattle, also sheep and 
 rams, goats and he-goats by thousands ; goats, wethers and 
 he-goats are being driven over the newly-sown fields, to tread 
 the seed-corn into the soil ; and the flesh of sheep and goats 
 is customary and favourite food. In xlvii. 17 not only 
 horned cattle, but also flocks of small cattle, are mentioned, 
 together with horses and asses, as property of the Egyptians. 
 
344 GENESIS XLVII. 1-27. 
 
 Hence the statement of Joseph can only be a strong expression 
 for the depreciation of the shepherd caste as the lowest, and 
 not for the depreciation of non-Egyptian nomads (Dillm.), 
 for the reason 346 sounds unlimited (comp. on the contrary 
 xliii. 32). Graul in his Travels, ii. 171, remarks, that the 
 shepherds and goatherds on the monuments are depicted 
 accordingly — they are all long, lean, haggard, sickly and 
 almost ghost-like forms, recalling the famished appearance of 
 those Indian castes who are similarly contrasted with the 
 well-fed appearance of the agricultural Brahmanic state. 
 Joseph hopes that Pharaoh, when he learns their occupation, 
 will the more readily allow them to dwell in Goshen, far away 
 from the centre of the country, that fertile district which his 
 brotherly affection intended for them (xlv. 10), while Pharaoh 
 had only offered in general terras to give up to them " the 
 best of the land" (xlv. 18, 20). At the same time Joseph's 
 wisdom sought to prevent his brethren from coming to the 
 court and having too much inclination for, and contact with 
 the Egyptians ; he took care for this beforehand, by affixing to 
 them a vitium originis (v. Moser). 
 
 THE SETTLEMENT OF ISEAEL IN EGYPT, AND THEIR PROSPEROUS 
 AND CONTINUED EXISTENCE THERE DURING THE EXTREMITY 
 OF THE FAMINE, CH. XLVII. 1-27. 
 
 The narrator from ver. 1 onwards is J, but B seems from 
 Yv. 5-11 to have kept to Q; 3p"'p 6a, 11a, occurs again 
 indeed only in the Book of the Covenant, Ex. xxii. 4, and 
 DpPyi n? is without further confirmation in the Hebrew 
 text. The LXX has it once more, xlvi. 28, in a Jahvistic 
 connection. If however Q has a share in the composition, 
 vv. 5—11 almost entirely, and ver. 27, belong to him. Only J 
 and E have claims to the rest, without its being possible to 
 effect any certain division. 
 
 Joseph now announces to Pharaoh the arrival of his family, 
 
GENESIS XLVII. 1-6. 345 
 
 ver. 1 : And Joseph came and told Pharaoh, and said : My 
 father and my brethren and their sheep and their oxen and all 
 that they leave are come from the land of Canaan, and behold 
 they are in the land of Goshen. He tlius did as he had told 
 his brethren, xlvi. 31 sqq., he would, when he also instructed 
 them how to behave towards Pharaoh. The audience and the 
 king's decision, vv, 2-6 : And out of the body of his brethren 
 he took five men and 2}^'csented them unto Pharaoh. And 
 Pharaoh said tinto his brethren : What is your occupation ? 
 And they said to Pharaoh: Thy servants arc shepherds, both 
 we and our fathers. And they said to Pharaoh: To sojourn as 
 strangers in the land are we come, for there is no pasture for 
 thy servants flocks, for the famine is sore in the land of Canaan, 
 so thy servants icish to dwell in the land of Goshen. And 
 Pharaoh spake unto Joseph saying : Thy father and thy 
 brethren are come to thee. The land of Egypt is before thee, 
 in the best of the land make thy father and thy brethren to 
 dwell ; let them dvjell in the land of Goshen, and if thou kmnvest 
 that there are able men among them, place them as chief herds- 
 men over my property. In 2a n)>p'P (with p raphattcm) as at 
 Ezek. xxxiii. 2 and nivpo 1 Kings xii. 31, has still its un- 
 diluted original meaning : out of the collective whole (this is 
 conceived of as the circumference, comp. xix. 4) ; rivptp for the 
 meaning : a part (some), is in use both in the Talmud and 
 already at Neh. vii. 70, Dan. i. 2. On the number five, see 
 on xliii. 34. It is characteristic of the Egyptian custom and 
 way of looking at things, that the first question which, as 
 Joseph had expected (xlvi. 33), is put to them by Pharaoh, 
 relates to their occupation. They answer, ver. 3 sq., truth- 
 fully and discreetly according to Joseph's directions. nj;'"i is a 
 generic singular, Ges. § 147c, but certainly a mere error of 
 transcription for "'J|'"i, Pharaoh grants their request to be 
 allowed to dwell in Goslien, by authorizing Joseph to settle 
 his relatives wherever he chooses, in the best part of the land, 
 therefore in Goshen as they desire it, and directs him, if he 
 
346 GENESIS XLVII. 7-10. 
 
 knows of competent men among them, to make them chief 
 keepers of the royal cattle (which were consequently in 
 Goshen as the best pasture land). The audience of the five 
 not taking place in Joseph's presence, the information 
 given by Pharaoh to Joseph contains nothing inappropriate, 
 hortatory being easily transposed into recapitulatory speech. 
 It is however evident from the text of the LXX, a text 
 apparently as they found and not as they arbitrarily corrected 
 it (Wellh. Dillm. Kuen.), that in the Hebrew text two 
 accounts are interwoven, that of J and that of Q, who has 
 been continuing from xlvi. 27 (Dillm.). That Q also related 
 the presentation of Jacob to Pharaoh, results even of itself 
 from the analysis of vv. 5-11, and is confirmed by the LXX, 
 in which ver. 5 of the Hebrew text is preceded by : rfkOov 
 Se 619 At<yvTrrov nTpo<; ^Icocnjcf) ^laKwjS Kal ol viol avrov Koi 
 I'jKovae ^apao) ^a(TtXev<; AI^vtttov koc eiTre ^apaoi 'irp6<i 
 'Io}a7](p kt\. Jacob presented to Pharaoh by Joseph, vv. 
 7-10 : The7i Joseph hrought his father and set him before 
 Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to 
 Jacob : Hoio many are the clays of the yea.rs of thy life ? And 
 Jacob said to Pharaoh : The days of the years of my pilgrimage 
 are a hundred and thirty years ; few and evil have been the days 
 of the yeai's of my life, and have not attained to the days of the 
 years of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. And 
 Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out from before Pharaoh. 
 Not till after the brethren had given account to the king of 
 the external concerns of the family, because Jacob was him- 
 self too old and infirm to act independently in this new turn 
 of domestic affairs, did Joseph bring in his father also. The 
 aged Jacob greets the king with a blessing. When the latter 
 asks him how old he is, he calls the hundred and thirty years 
 of his life t:j?p, for Abraham lived to be one hundred and 
 seventy and Isaac one hundred and eighty years old (xxv. 7, 
 XXXV. 28), and he feels himself, as the perf. l^'^^n Np shows, 
 near the end. He had moreover a right to mention the 
 
GENESIS XLVir. 11-14. o47 
 
 O'V'J lie had experienced ; for hard work, long and profound 
 grief and also much self-inflicted misery lay behind him. 
 He regards his own and his father's unsettled homeless earthly 
 life as a pilgrimage, compared with the rest beyond, which, 
 because hidden with God, is his true home, Heb. xi. 13-16, 
 comp. JPs. cxix. 19, 54, xxxix. 13, 1 Cliron. xxix. 15. The 
 narrator is silent as to what further questions on the part of 
 Pharaoh followed this answer ; he only tells us that Jacob 
 departed blessing Pharaoh, as he had also thus greeted him. 
 The settlement, ver. 11 : And Joseph settled Ids father and his 
 brethren and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in 
 the best of the land, in the land of Ramses, as Pharaoh had 
 commanded. The land of Goshen is here called DDOj;"i pK, 
 for which, Ex. i. 11, the Dppy"i is vocalized in pause as a tri- 
 syllable ; the appellation of the eastern pasture land alternates 
 in the Hebrew text, and hence furnishes to analysis no cha- 
 racteristic of a source. 
 
 The settlement takes place during the seven years of 
 famine, which furnish the outer frame of the narrative. The 
 narrator (it is uncertain which) finishes this off, to return to 
 the closing period of tlie scarcity, ver. 12 : And Joseph pjro- 
 vided his father and his brethren and all his fathom's Jionse 
 with bread, in proportion to the children. The verb ?3?3 is, 
 according to Ew. § 2835, combined with a double ace, and 
 t)t3n "'D'^ means properly in proportion to the little ones (who 
 would eat most, and whom one would be most unwilling to 
 see wanting), hence according to the size of each family. 
 "What is now related, vv. 13-26, is no interpolated episode, 
 but shows us the influential activity of Joseph in Egypt at its 
 culminating point. The famine increased, and all the ready 
 money came into the royal treasury, vv. 13, 14: And 
 there was no bread in all the land, for the famine was exceed- 
 ing sore, and the land of Egypt ivas exhausted and the land of 
 Canaan by reason of the famine. And Joseph collected all the 
 money that was found in the land of Egypt and in the land 
 
348 GENESIS XLVII. 15-20. 
 
 of Canaan for the food which they bought, and Joseph hrought 
 the money into PharaoKs house. All the store of money 
 in both countries came into the State treasury, which stood 
 at the king's disposal. Egypt and Canaan were both quite 
 exhausted by reason of the continuance of the famine : ^^\ 
 from '^C?~'^?t' whence differing in form i^!]? Pro v. xxxi. 18, 
 syn. 3X7 Zech. xiv. 18, where v. Hofmann acutely conjectures 
 that i^?^,^! or nnxp") was the original : thus it (Egypt) was 
 utterly dried up. As those who were famished could pay no 
 more money, Joseph takes the cattle, which they possess, as 
 payment, vv. 15—17: *Sc> the money failed out of the land of 
 Egypt and the land of Canaan ; then came all the Egyptians to 
 Joseph saying : Give us bread, for why should ive die in thy 
 presence ? our money is at an end. And Joseph said. : Give 
 your cattle, and I ivill give you for the value of your cattle, if 
 the money is at an end. And they brought their cattle to Joseph, 
 and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for the horses and for 
 the cattle of the flocks and the cattle of the herds and for the 
 asses, and satisfied them with bread for the vcdue of all their 
 cattle that year. D3S used here and at Ps. Ixxvii. 9, Isa. xvi. 
 4, xxix. 20, is without further confirmation in the Pentateuch. 
 !?n? used here 17& in the sense to appease, to quiet, proceeds 
 from the meaning to rest, to lie down, which Friedr. Delitzsch 
 (in the Athenaeum, 1883, p. 569 sq., and often since) has 
 shown to be the root-meaning of bn:, Assyr. nahdlu, synon, 
 of ndliu and rabdsit, accordincf to v>'hich 2 Chron. xxxii. 22 is 
 also explained, without our needing to read Qp? ^^% hence : 
 he satisfied them with bread. The further offer to which 
 they are compelled by want next year, vv, 18-20 : And that 
 year ended, and they came to him in the second year and said 
 to him : We cannot conceal from my loi'd, but (must tell) that 
 our money and possession in cattle is go7ie to my lord, there is 
 nothing left in the sight of my lord bid our bodies and our land. 
 Why should we die before thine eyes, both we and our land ? 
 Buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land ivill be 
 
GENESIS XLVII. 21. 349 
 
 slaves to Pharaoh, and give us seed, that we may live and not 
 die, and thai the land may not lie icaste. And Joseph bought 
 all the cidtivatcd land of Egyiit for Pharaoh, for the Egyptians 
 sold ea,ch man his field, because the famine compelled ihein ; so 
 the land became Pharaolis. The peculiar expression '^}^'^ Cinni 
 has its equal only at Ps. cii. 28. ''J"'^< is used as Monsieur is, 
 though several are speaking. "D^? ^3 is not to be separated : 
 " that as . . ." it is the usual " but," to be explained by means 
 of an ellipsis {e.g. after solemn affirmations, 2 Sam. xv. 21, 
 1 Kings XX. 6, 2 Kings v. 20). They offer themselves and 
 their lands as payment ; the latter to become crown property, 
 themselves bondmen ; H'la (everywhere else corpse) here as at 
 Dan. X. 6, Ezek. i. 11, 23, ISTeli. ix. 37. To die and to become 
 slaves is by a zeugma referred also to the land, as the latter 
 expression is at xliii. 18 to the asses. The intrans. Kal form 
 D^'n from Qp*f is found also Ezek. xii. 1 9, xix. 7. We translate 
 ver. 21 according to the LXX : And he made the people bond- 
 men from one end of the realm of Egypt to the other. Such is 
 the thought which we expect according to ver. 20, viz. that 
 Joseph made the people themselves vassals to Pharaoh. TLe 
 LXX answers to this expectation, and like the Sam. and 
 Hebr. Sam. translates : Kal rov Xaov KareSovXcoaaTo avrw et? 
 7rat8a<f. Hence it must have read (comp. also Jerome): Dyrrnsi 
 D"'n3y^ int< Tnyn, i.e. according to a like causative meaning of 
 the Hiphil, as at Jer. xvii. 4 : and he made him (viz. Pharaoh) 
 enslave the people to slaves; Houbigant, Kn. Dillm. Pieuss, 
 Kamph. {Jcnaer LZ. 1876, p. 170) find this reading correct, 
 and in fact it entirely obviates the difficulties of the Masoretic 
 text. The latter can mean nothing else, than that Joseph 
 translocated the agricultural population from one end of the 
 kingdom to the other, ""^^vn to cause to depart from one 
 place to another. The translocation took place for the 
 sake of removing from the soil those whose property it liad 
 hitherto been, and of thus avoiding future disturbances. But 
 what is the meaninf? of CiV? ? According to Onk. Eosenm. 
 
350 GENESIS XLVII. 22-26. 
 
 Ges. Tiich, Eeggio : from one city to another ("I'^V? 'T'V'? 2 Chron. 
 XXX. 10); but Dnyn'bs, which we expect instead of ^^']Vb, if it 
 is to be a statement of the place whither, could not have this 
 meaning. Perhaps Dny^ of the Masoretic text is to be under- 
 stood distributively : according to each city (like ^'^n? every 
 fifth, 26a, comp. Josh. vii. 14), and what is meant is, that he 
 divided the whole people among those towns in which the 
 granaries at that time were, and which were also subsequently 
 to form the centres of appointed districts, vofiol (comp. xli, 48). 
 But however it may be explained, the expression is too scanty 
 and inexplicit — the authentic text is that reproduced by the 
 LXX. Exemption of the landed property of the priests, 
 ver. 2 2 : Only the land of the priests bought he not, for the 
 priests had an appointed 'portion from Pharaoh, and ate their 
 appointed portion, v'hich Pharaoh gave them, therefore they sold 
 not their land. The lands of the priests were inalienable ; nor 
 did they need to alienate them, since they were besides pro- 
 tected from famine ; ^h a legal appointment, something legally 
 appointed, here both times in the latter concrete sense, as at 
 Ps. Ixxxi. 4 and Prov. xxxi. 15. Taxation of the people, 
 vv. 23—26: And Joseph said to the people: Behold, I have 
 bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh ; here is seed 
 for you, and sow ye the land. And it shall come to pass at the 
 ingatlicrings that ye shall render a fifth to Pharaoh, and four 
 parts shall belong to you for the sowing cf the field, and for your 
 food, and that of your households and children. And they said : 
 Thou hast saved our lives, let us fi7id grace in the eyes of my 
 lord, and we icill be bondmen to Pharaoh. And Joseph made 
 it a law to this day in the land of Egypt, that to the amount of 
 a fifth should belong to Pharaoh, only the land of the priests, 
 that alone became not Pharaoh's. The demonstrative i^fl 23& 
 occurs again only Dan. ii. 43, Ezek. xvi. 43, comp. Nn Dan. 
 iii. 25. The n of nsiariB is the temporal, at the ingatherings, 
 i.e. as often as the harvest is gathered and brought home. We 
 already had n'T in the meaning "parts" at xliii. 34 (five parts 
 
GENESIS XLVII. 23-26. 351 
 
 = five times), '"^n^* 26a refers neutrally to what has been 
 just related, and to this Joseph gave the character of a fixed 
 ordinance. The soil of Egypt was, from this time onwards, 
 partly royal domain and partly the property of the priestly 
 caste. According to Diodor. i. 73, it was divided into three 
 parts, the third belonging to the warrior caste. According 
 also to Herodotus (ii. 168), it was among the privileges 
 (yipea) of the warriors to have their own share of landed 
 property, every warrior receiving for his own twelve excellent 
 apovpai exempt from taxation. The Scripture narrative how- 
 ever tells us nothing of the exemption from taxation and 
 landed property of the soldiers, because this appointment was 
 of later origin ; it was cancelled by Sethos the priest of 
 Hephaestos, when he came to the throne (Herod, ii. 141). We 
 cannot expect a remembrance that it was through Joseph 
 that all the land in Egypt became the property of the crown, 
 from those who report according to the statements of Egyp- 
 tians. According to Herod, ii. 109, Diodor. i. 73, it was 
 ^ea(oaTpt,<; {^ea6coaL<i) who divided the country into thirty- 
 six vofxot, and made it over by square measurements to the 
 Egyptians for a yearly tribute (comp. Artapanus in Euseb. 
 Fraep. 9. 23). That a certain allowance of provisions was, as 
 the scriptural report declares, given by the king to the priests, 
 and that this obviated the alienation of their lands in the years 
 of famine, was an ordinance v/hich may have been afterwards 
 annulled, because their landed property more than sufiiciently 
 supplied their wants. Diodorus at least (i. 73) reports, that 
 the Egyptian priests defray the expenses of the national 
 offerings and support themselves and their servants out of 
 the revenues of tlieir lands. Herodotus also says (ii. 37) that 
 the priests have no need to use their private property (rcLv 
 oUrjicov) for their support, but that their sacred bread is baked 
 for them, and that each ikKdara)) has daily a quantity of goose 
 and beef for his consumption, that grape wine is also given 
 them, viz. the produce of the farming of the order — that each 
 
352 GENESIS XL VII. 27. 
 
 lives very well, and at the expense of the community. The 
 proceedings of Joseph preserved, in the first place, the interest 
 of the king and respected the privileges of the priests, but 
 abolished the free peasant class. It is left to the readers to 
 pass their moral and politico-economical verdict upon them. 
 Joseph undoubtedly had in view no less the good of the 
 country than that of the king, when changing the dispro- 
 portionately divided landed property into uniform parcels of 
 copyhold liable to rent. Besides, the tribute of a fifth was, 
 with the astonishing fertility of Egypt, a very tolerable burden. 
 Nevertheless G. B. Niebuhr is in the right when he says, 
 that the history of Joseph is a dangerous model for crafty 
 ministers. Nor can Ebrard and others be contradicted when 
 they assert, that in Joseph's financial speculation, as well as 
 in Jacob's bargaining for the birthright, one of the unamiable 
 sides of Semitic (Jewish) hereditary peculiarity comes to light. 
 
 Ver. 27 now returns to the family of Jacob in Goshen, of 
 whom we certainly have to think as not exempted from the 
 fee levied upon the whole country : And Israel divelt in the 
 land of Egyjot, in the land of Goshen ; ayid they settled therein, 
 and they were fruitful and multiplied. The close, especially 
 211), is in the style of Q (xxxiv. 10, xxxv. 11). 
 
 We have now arrived at the place for discussing more 
 particularly, than has hitherto been done at xlvi. 28, the 
 province of Goshen (LXX Teaefx, Artapanus in Euseb. Kaiadv, 
 Keaadv). It is to be sought for in Lower Egypt on the east 
 side of the Nile. Its eastern boundary was the desert of 
 Arabia-Petraea leading towards Philistia (Ex. xiii. 17, comp. 
 1 Chron. vii. 21), on which account the LXX translate, xlv. 
 10, xlvi. 34, FeaefM 'Apa^La<;. On the west it extended as 
 far as the Nile, for the Israelites had abundance of fish. Num. 
 xi. 5. Which part of the Nile w^as its western boundary will 
 be determined, according as the question. Which was then the 
 royal city ? is answered. For Goshen was not very far from 
 this, since Joseph there had his family near him, xlv. 10, 
 
GENESIS XLVII. 27. 353 
 
 and there was easy and rapid intercourse between Goslien 
 and Joseph's dwelling-place, xlvi. 28, xlviii. 1 sq. Num. xiii. 
 22, conip. Ps. Ixxviii. 12, 43, is appealed to, to show that 
 Tanis ly'v was then the capital (Bochart, Ilgst. Baumg. Kurtz) ; 
 but this testimony holds good only for the time of ]\Ioses, not 
 for the time of Josei)h. In his time Memphis (on the left 
 bank of the Xile south of the subsequent Cairo),^ Hebr. Cjb or 
 5)3 (see on Isa. xix, 13), founded, according to Herodotus, ii. 99, 
 before Menes, was tlie royal city with its famed Ptah-temple, 
 which stood where are now found the monuments, and among 
 them the Colossus Ilamses (the Sesostris Colossus of the 
 ancients) at Mitrahine. Philo also thinks of Memphis. In or 
 near to Goshen lay, at the time of the exodus, the cities ons 
 and Dppy"i, magazine - cities," provisioned fortresses, in the 
 building of which the Israelites were compulsorily employed, 
 Ex. i. 11. Goshen is at xlvii. 11 anticipatively called P^ 
 DDrpyi (Targ. Jer. rp^^^an xyix), from Ptamses, the place of 
 assembly and departure at the time of the exodus, Ex. xii. 
 37, Num. xxxiii, 5. Pithom is Uarovfio^, past which flowed, 
 according to Herod, ii. 158, the canal from the Pelusian 
 branch of the Nile to the Ptcd Sea (irapa ndrovixov rrjv 
 'Apa^tav ttoXlv) ; it was a city dedicated to the god Tuni, 
 the ruins of which, as E. Naville has shown (see on xlvi. 29), 
 are concealed in the Tell el-Maskhuta ; while, on the other 
 hand, Lepsius' and others take this for the situation of 
 Eamses (Pa-Iiamses-Miamun), and transfer Pa-Tum to the 
 neighbourhood of the Tell Abu Sulcinan. In any case Goshen 
 lay to the west of the Wadi Tumilat, which originally be- 
 longed to the desert, and the cities of Pithom and Ramses 
 about denote the line of the southern boundary of Goshen. 
 
 1 See A. Wiedeniaun's essay, "The Age of Memi>liis," in the Biblieo-Archieo- 
 logical Proceedings, 1887, pp. 184-190. 
 
 - Magazine is the Arabic .,;^^, ni33DD '*'}V are cities witli stone houses, 
 
 li> : : • •• T 
 
 whence the people are provided for (from pD to provide for, Friedr. Delitzsoh, 
 Proleg. 186). 
 ^ Ztitschr. fiir 'i<j. Sprache u. AUertliumakunde, 1883. 
 VOL. II. Z 
 
354 GENESIS XLVII. 27. 
 
 Its eastern boundary was, according to Ebers, the Isthmus of 
 Suez and the line of fortifications that protected the country 
 against its eastern neighbours. Of the western boundary the 
 extreme southern point was the city of Heliopolis, the northern 
 that of Tanis. On the north it was terminated by the Menzale 
 lake and the marsh of Pelusium. Hence it would reach west- 
 ward as far as the Tanitic branch of the Nile. But perhaps 
 it did not extend so far either westward or northward ; it may 
 have been bounded on the west and north by the Pelusian 
 branch of the Nile ; and Fakus (according to Ebers/ Pa [_Pha\ 
 Kos = )"?f'3) have been its northern point. The district thus 
 bounded comprised both desert and cultivated land. At present 
 the Pelusian branch of the Nile is quite choked up with sand, 
 and the country is less frequently covered by the Nile, but the 
 region of Bubastos, as far as the entrance of the AVadi Tumilat, 
 and for the greater part the latter itself, the Wadi Sebabiar 
 and other districts, are still capable of cultivation, while there 
 are some which are like luxuriant gardens. The region, 
 
 whose name partly coincides with Goshen, a,'ji^A]l ^,^1 (the 
 eastern district), is still one of the most fertile and lucrative 
 provinces. Its capital is Bclhis, according to which Makrizi 
 determines the western boundary of Goshen. North-east of 
 it lies Sadir (between Abbasie and Chasbi), by which Saad., 
 the Arabic translators and Samar. render IIJ'J ; in the neigh- 
 bourhood of this Sadir, Arab tribes were settled, as Makrizi 
 {Ueber die in Acg. cingcwandcrtcn Stdmme, ed. by Wiistenfeld, 
 p. 39 sqq.) states, like Israel in ancient times.^ Of the whole 
 period between the 130th and 147th years of Jacob's life 
 
 1 See his Durcli Gosen zwm Sinai, 2nd edit. p. 519, and "Historical Truths 
 of Israel's Sojourn in Egypt," in the Sunday School Times, 1887, No. 18 (in 
 which he always identities Rameses, for the building of which the 'Aperu are 
 dragging bricks, with Tanis, and the ^Ajjtru with D"'"l3y). 
 
 - We leave out of consideration the view, which Cope Whitehouse, in the 
 Proceedings of the Biblico- Archaeological Association, 1885-86, seeks, after the 
 precedent of Jablonski (in the Pantheon Aegyj^itiorum), with great confidence 
 whimsically to confirm, that Goshen was Fajiim, with the adjacent districts 
 of the Nile valley, in a northern direction towards Gizeh and Heliopolis. 
 
GENESIS XLVir. 28-31. 355 
 
 nothing further is told us, than that Israel settled and in- 
 creased in this district. 
 
 TESTAMENTARY DISPOSITIONS OF JACOB, 
 CH. XLVII. 28-XLVIII. 
 
 From this sketchy remark, in which the threads of the 
 history of Israel are again taken up, the narrator proceeds to 
 the testamentary dispositions of Jacob. The fourth section of 
 the Toledoth of Jacob commences here. Jacob has become 
 much older since his entry into Egypt, and feels that his 
 death is near, vv. 28-31 : A^id Jacob lived in the land of 
 Egypt seventeen years, so that the days of Jaeoh, the years of his 
 life, amoimted to one hundred and forty-seven years. And the 
 days of Israel drew nigh to death, and he called his son Joseph 
 and said to him : If I have found grace in thine eyes, put, I 
 pray thee, thy hand under my thigh and deal kindly and truly 
 ivith me : Bury me not in Egypt, hut let me lie with my fatliers, 
 amd take me out of Egypt and hury me in their burying -place 
 — and he said : I loill do according to thy word. Ayid he 
 said : Swear unto me ; and he swore to him, and Israel stretched 
 himself upon the head of the bed. Apart from ver. 28, we 
 have the text of J, according to whom Jacob's wish and 
 intention with respect to his burying is related ; the direction 
 is here given to Joseph and repeated to the twelve, xlix. 
 29-32, according to the text of Q. How Jahvistic the style 
 is, is shown by parallels such as " the days draw nigh to 
 death," Deut. xxxi. 14 ; >5^"2X xviii. 3 and frequently, the kind 
 and manner of the corporeal oath, as at xxiv. 2 ; nosi ipn 
 xxiv. 49, xxxii. 11 ; "to lie with (pV) the fathers," as at Deut. 
 xxxi. 16, and in the kindred Deuteronomistic remarks in the 
 book of Kings, 1 Kings ii. 10. Jacob desires Joseph to put his 
 hand under his thigh, and thus to assure him on the ground 
 of the covenant of circumcision made with Abraham, the actual 
 proof of faithful love, that he will not bury him in Egypt, but 
 
356 GENESIS XLVII. 28-31. 
 
 with his fathers in Canaan (1. 4) — in the promised land, which 
 is appointed to he the place of the promised redemption. 
 Joseph swears. His aged father had sat up in his bed for 
 the purpose. And after Joseph has sworn, Israel (for so 
 is he called at this solemn moment) stretches himself upon 
 the n^^n t^'Kh. To rise from the bed, sitting up in which he 
 had talked with Joseph, and cast himself upon the ground, 
 to thank God for the proof of His mercy involved in 
 Joseph's sworn promise, was not possible to him, because 
 of the infirmity of age. Hence he imitates the '^^J!^|!i^''? 
 by turning himself (like David, 1 Kings i. 47) in the bed, 
 and stretches himself towards its top, worshipping with his 
 face downwards, Vulg. adoravit Deum convcrsus ad leduli 
 caimt Cohmer, on the contrary : he bowed himself at the 
 head of the bed in the direction towards its foot. According 
 to a different vocalization, LXX (Syr. It., comp. Heb. xi. 21) : 
 irpoareKvvqaev 'laparjX iirl to uKpov tov pd/3Sov (nt^^H) avrov 
 = avTov, as Rabanus Maurus remarks. According to this 
 reading he made use of the staff, with which he had walked 
 all his life (xxxii. 11), to raise himself in the bed, and now 
 worshipped upon it, while calling to mind God's help during 
 his pilgrimage and its end in another world. This passage, 
 xlvii. 28-31, is the first portion from the last days of Jacob. 
 The second, ch. xlviii., relates his adoption and blessing of 
 his two grandsons. The narrative as we have it accredits 
 itself as a mosaic from all three sources : vv. 3-6 (7) is 
 from Q, all the rest from JB, but so that notwithstanding 
 editorial intervention, the portions respectively derived from 
 J and U can still be distinguished. Following Dillm. and 
 Budde (art. on Gen. xlviii. 7 and the adjoining sections in 
 Stade's Zeitschr. iii. 5 6 sqq.), we separate them as follows : 
 J, 1 sq. 8 sq. 13 sq. 17-19 ; U, 10-12, 15 sq. 20, 21 sq. ; 
 Kuenen claims for U, vv. 1 sq. 8-12, 15 sq. 20-22. In the 
 introduction to ch. xlv. we already stated, that here in ch. 
 xlviii. neither bxib'"' (for apy) nor DNnfjN (for which we expect 
 
GENESIS XLVlir. l-C 357 
 
 nvT ver. 20) is a certain token of a source. What is decisive 
 both here and elsewhere is, that the two threads of the 
 narrative, which B (perhaps already the redactor of JB) 
 intertwined, can be separated. The case of ver. 7 is peculiar. 
 Budde brings forward the conjecture, that in xlix. 31 S"ii"nxi 
 originally stood also after nx^Tix, that a redactor expunged 
 this, and for it inserted the wording of xlviii. 7 from xxxv. 
 16a, 19. The conjecture is supported by the expedient, 
 that according to Q Rachel also was buried in the cave of 
 Machpelah. But we are certainly told that Eachel died on 
 the journey from Aramaea to Canaan, was buried in the 
 neighbourhood of Ephrath, and by no means at Hebron ; and 
 her death being the consequence of the birth of Benjamin, 
 xxxv. 26, must be accommodated to this. If xlviii. 7 is really 
 a " lost post," it must have become such some other way. 
 
 The aged and bed-ridden patriarch carried out this con- 
 firmation by oath of his desire, xlvii. 29, in anticipation of 
 his approaching death. He is now actually ill, the end 
 seems imminent, and Joseph is summoned, vv. 1, 2 : And 
 it came to pass after these things, ivhen Joscjph was told, Behold, 
 thy father is sieJc, and he took his two sons with him, Manasseh 
 and Ephraim. And ivhcn they told Jacob, and said : Behold, thy 
 son Joseph has come to thee, and Israel strengthened himself and 
 sat up in led. Both "ip^^'l and "i.2!j! have the most general subject, 
 as at xliii. 34, and, according to the extant text, xlii. 25 also.* 
 The interchange of the names 2pj;^ and ^xib'"' is not everywhere 
 so significant as here. Jacob lies down sick, Israel draws him- 
 self up. On the arrival of Joseph, Jacob begins to speak of the 
 blessing and the promises of God, by reason of which he 
 raises Joseph's two sons, as though they were his own, to the 
 station of ancestors of two independent tribes in the nation 
 descending from him, vv. 3-6 : And Jacob said to Joseph : 
 
 ' Jewish expositors in such cases explain ^l2X''^ = 1^3X11 "ltt5<'1> '"I'l this cor- 
 responds with the spirit of Semitic speech (see Driver in the Expositor, 18S7, 
 p. 260). 
 
358 GENESIS XLVIII. 7. 
 
 El "Saddaj appeared to me and blessed me in Liiz in the land 
 of Canaan, and said, to me : Behold, I make thee fruitful and 
 numerous, and tnake thee a company of peoples, and give this 
 land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession. Now 
 then, thy two sons, v)hich were horn to thee in the land of Egypt, 
 hefore I came to thee to Egypt, are mine, Ephraim and Man- 
 asseh shall he mine like Ecuhen and Simeon. And thy seed, 
 which thou hast begotten after them, shall be thine, after the 
 name of their brethren shall they he called in their inheritance. 
 The manifestation of God, to which Jacob looks back, is that 
 which was vouchsafed to him in Luz-Bethel after his return 
 from Aramaea, xxxv. 6 sq., 9—15 ; the wording of the promise, 
 however, is more closely in unison with that given to him 
 when going to Aramaea, xxviii. 3 sq. The placing of Ephraim 
 first, in opposition to their succession in age, ver. 1, comp. 
 xli. 50-52, is done in accordance with the express declaration 
 of purpose which follows farther on. Jacob places Ephraim 
 and Manasseh on a level with his own first and second born 
 sons as independent heads of tribes, while, on the contrary, 
 Joseph's other sons form no separate tribes, but are to be 
 reckoned as belonging to the tribes of their brethren. Jacob's 
 speech is interrupted by a reference to Rachel, Joseph's 
 mother, ver. 7 : And as for me — lohen I came from Paddcm, 
 Rachel died from me in the land of Canaan, in the way, a 
 kibra of land before Ephrath, and I buried her there on the 
 way to Ephrath, ivhich is Bethlehem. In the presence of 
 Joseph, the remembrance of his never-forgotten wife thrills 
 powerfully through him. It is as though he wanted to lead 
 Joseph to his mother's grave, and there to give him or receive 
 from him a promise. His regarding Ephraim and Manasseh, 
 who were by birth natives of Egypt, as his immediate sons 
 by Eachel, also redounds to the honour of this prematurely 
 lost wife. It is essentially thus that Kn. also explains the 
 apparently uncaused, and in any case abrupt close of Jacob's 
 speech. Budde sees in ver. 7 as thus explained " a senti- 
 
GENESIS XLVIir. 8-12. 359 
 
 mentally dramatic picture " which was not to be expected in a 
 historical book, and least of all in Q. But even if it is less 
 coloured up, the fact still remains that it is in Joseph's 
 presence that the remembrance of Eachel forces itself upon 
 the patriarch, and that the reason for his self-interruption is 
 to be sought for in i<"i*1 8a, while, on the contrary, in ^'s own 
 text the request to bury him with his fathers in the cave of 
 Machpelah, xlix. 29-32, is joined on to xlviii. 7 (Nold. Dillra.). 
 Omitting in thought the introduction commencing '131 iv;'i 
 xlix. 29a, which was induced by the interstratification of 
 xlviii. 8— xlix. 28, the ''3X1 here fitly continues the V^ there: 
 he buried Eachel in Ephrath, but yet desires to rest with his 
 fathers in Hebron. vV nnp implies that he possessed her, and 
 that by dying she was torn from him ; i"^? alone for mx pa 
 occurs nowhere else, but why should not this abbreviation 
 be possible ? nnb JT'n Nin, on the contrary, is a gloss, but in 
 itself not a false one, taken over from xxxv. 19 (see on this 
 passage). The patriarch, who was almost blind, interrupts 
 himself, now first perceiving that he is not with Joseph only, 
 vv. 8, 9 : And Israel heheld JosejjJis sons and said : Who arc 
 these? And Joseph said to his father : They arc my sons who?/ 1, 
 Elohim hath given me here. And he said : Bring them hither 
 to me that I may bless them. The narrator is J : nf3 hoc loco, 
 as at xxxviii. 21 sq., Ex. xxiv. 14. '^P!)?^,'!. has in Baer pausal 
 Segol according to the Masora (as at ^^T, Deut. xxxii. 11), 
 against which Tsere is witnessed for by Num. vi. 27. 
 His grandsons brought to Jacob, embraced by him, and led 
 away, vv. 10-12: A7id the eyes of Israel were dim from age, 
 he coidd not sec, and he hrought them nearer to him, and he 
 kissed them and embraced tlicm.. And Israel said to Joseph : 
 I did not think to see thy face again, and behold Elohim Itath 
 given me to see thy seed also. Then Joscpli led them away from, 
 his knees and bowed himself in his presence to the earth. The 
 patriarch had sat up in the bed as one about to rise, so that 
 he could take the two between his knees, kiss them, and press 
 
360 GENESIS XLVIII. 13, 14. 
 
 them to his heart (P^J and p^n with a Dat. as at xxix. 13), 
 from which it by no means follows, that the narrator thought 
 of them as little children ; they were youths, but still under 
 age and under the guidance of their fatlier. The inf. constr. 
 nx-i is like nb'i? equally used for rmv, xxxi. 28, 1. 20, Ges. 
 § 75, note 2. P?3 elsewhere to decide, to judge, has here the 
 more general signification of thinking, and the 1 sing. perf. is 
 in the pausal form ^riP73, occurring in only four verbs, see 
 Koenig, Lehrgeh. i. 189. It is questionable whether ^Bxp refers 
 to Joseph, so as to be equivalent, as at Num. xxii. 31, to D'SN 
 elsewhere {e.g. xlii. 6), or to Jacob, and is so equivalent to 
 VJSp, which is, according to 1 Sam. xxv. 23, comp. 2 Sam. 
 xviii. 28, not less permissible, and seems to me preferable. 
 The LXX has koX irpoa-eKvvrjaav avra. (not avrov as in 
 Lagarde, 1883). The prostration is here the reverent expres- 
 sion of Joseph's thankfulness to Jacob for the affection shown 
 towards his two sons. In the present combination of the 
 extracts from different sources, the thankfulness is at the same 
 time a request. For he leads them back to his father, who 
 blesses them, giving to the younger the preference above the 
 elder, vv. 13, 14: Then Joseph took the hvo, Ephraim in his 
 right hand to Israel's left, and Manassch in his left hand to 
 Israel's right, and hrought them near to him. Then Israel 
 stretched out his right hand and laid it tipon the head of 
 Ephraim, althongh he was the younger, and his left upon the 
 head of Manasseh : he crossed his hands ; for Manasseh was the 
 first-horn. The perf. ^^b' stands syntactically (as at Qi?' xxi. 14), 
 wliere the part, would also be allowable. Luther translates like 
 Onk. Saad. Grsec.-A^en. : and did thus wittingly with his hands ; 
 on the other hand, the tradition of both the Greek and Latin 
 Churches takes this laying on of hands of Jacob as being in 
 its correct translation : he entwined, i.e. crossed them, one of 
 the most ancient types of the cross, LXX evaXKa^, and 
 similarly Syr. Targ. II. Ar.-Samar. Tavus Vulg., from ^3b^ 
 complicare = ^dE' ( J^) in -'^'f ^ C''^-'?) a plait, a cluster of 
 
GENESIS XLVIII. i:,, IG. 3G1 
 
 grapes. This is the first blessing by laying on of hands 
 recorded in Holy Scripture. By means of laying on his hands, 
 he who performs this places himself in a relation of mutual 
 action with him who is the subject of it. This act is, according 
 to its most obvious purpose, the vehicle by which something is 
 conveyed and received. AVith hands laid on crosswise, Jacob, 
 whose wish coincides with the counsel of God, now proceeds 
 in the power of faith to bless Joseph in his children, vv. 
 15, 16: And he Messed Joseph, and said : The God in ivhose 
 presence my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who 
 hatJh tended me as a shepherd since my existence to this day, the 
 angel who redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads, and let my name 
 and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac be named 
 through them, and let them increase in midtitude in the midst of 
 the land. The picture of God as a shepherd is suggested to 
 Jacob by his own pastoral vocation ; we meet with it again in 
 the psalms of David, and especially of Asaph. The expres- 
 sion '"iTn Di'n-ny niyo recurs in the section on Balaam, Num. 
 xxii. 30. 0113 16a would not be meant differently from 
 xxi. 12, hence in the sense of a secondary cause (comp. ix. 6«). 
 Ephraim and Manasseh, by becoming independent tribes, pro- 
 pagate the names of their three ancestors, with the promises 
 attached to these names. Targ. II. takes the two □"'n^sn voca- 
 tively and : " the angel . . . bless . . . " as the supplication, 
 but certainly 'H?.^''. is the common predicate of the complex 
 notion which forms the subject. The subject, whose blessing 
 is desired, is a threefold one ; but as results from the omis- 
 sion of the conjunctive i, which was to be expected at 
 least in the third place with '^'Jr'^C, and from the singular pre- 
 dicate (to which Novatian, de trinit. ch. xv., already draws 
 attention), a single one ; the "H^^^ also is thought of as Dcus de 
 Deo: it is God revealing Himself in the appearance of an angel, 
 God the liedeemer who at last, as God in Christ, fulfils media- 
 torially the counsel of redemption. When however Jacob in 
 the act of blessing lays his right hand on Ephraim's head, 
 
362 GENESIS XLVIII. 17-22. 
 
 this appears to Joseph an unconscious mistake, vv. 17-19: 
 And when Joseph saw that his father laid his i^ight hand on the 
 head of Ephraim, it was displeasing in his eyes, and he laid 
 hold of his father s hand to remove it from the head of Ephraim 
 to the head of Manassch. And Joseph said to his father : Not 
 so, my father, for this is the first-horn, la.y thy rigid hand upon 
 his head. But his father refused, and said : I knoio, my son, 
 I knovj ; he also shall hecoiiie a 2^cop)le, and he also shall hecomc 
 great ; hut his younger brother wUl he greater than he, and his 
 seed will hceome a fulness of nations. On i^'^P!' "I^ hand of his 
 right side, comp. Vs. cxxi. 5, and on "jr^n of grasping and 
 holding the hands, Ex. xvii. 12. Jacob refuses to change his 
 liands ; he knows well, viz. that Manasseh, not Ephraim, is the 
 first-born, but the latter will be more powerful tban he. This 
 was not fulfilled in the immediate future, for at the numbering, 
 Num. XX vi. 34, Manasseh was 20,000 above Ephraim. Subse- 
 quently however, together with the retention of the name bi^-\\ir', 
 Ephraim gave his name to the whole kingdom, and was from 
 the time of the Judges the greatest of the tribes in power and 
 extent. In D^ian fc<po the determinate adheres to the second 
 member of the st. constr. (as at xvi. 7, see on this matter 
 remarks on ix. 20), and D'^U refers, as at xxxv. 11 (comp. D''oy 
 xxviii. 3, xlviii. 4), to tlie tribes of Israel ; D^ia jinn xvii. 5 
 has a wider meaning, and indeed that of to TrXrjpcofia tmv 
 eOvoiv, Eom. xi. 25. The blessing continued, ver. 20 : And 
 he hlessed them that day, saying: With thee shall Israel hlcss, 
 saying: Elohimmake thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh — he set 
 Ephraim hefore Manasseh. The speech is addressed to Joseph, 
 who is thus abundantly blessed in Ephraim and Manasseh. 
 The blessedness of both became proverbial (comp. on xii. 3, and 
 the cursing formula, Jer. xxix. 21 sq.). The last word of bless- 
 ing to Joseph, vv. 21, 22 : And Israel said to Joseph, Behold, 
 I die, hut Elohim will he with you and hring you hack to the 
 land of your fathers. And I have given to thee one tract of land 
 above thy hrethren, ivhich I took from the Emorite icith my sword 
 
GENESIS XLVIII. 21, 21. 363 
 
 and my how. By 03^' ridge of land, is at all events meant 
 a part of the Canaanite mountainous district ; "inx is the more 
 quickly uttered form of word, which in closely connected speech 
 occurs also elsewhere, and very frequently in this numeral, e.g. 
 2 Sam. xvii. 22, without a relation of annexation (see Philippi 
 on the Status construdus, p. 59). On the use of bv in ^'''^^'''y 
 " beyond thy brethren," see on Ps. xvi. 2. '''P^^'} here as at 
 XV. 16 is the favourite general name in /for the population 
 of Canaan (comp. Ezek. xvi. 3). But — and this is the main 
 question requiring an answer — what is meant by Tinp^ ? Jacob 
 — says Tuch — looking prophetically forward over four centuries 
 and beholding as present the state of things after the conquest 
 of tlie Promised Land, rightly says, as the representative of 
 his descendants, 'iJI ''^'??_^ "i?^'^ in the per/, projjh. " Neverthe- 
 less," he continues, " the unusual expression D3C is chosen for 
 the very probable purpose of playing upon the name of the 
 well-known place of the same name [so Jerome : inilcre allusit 
 ad nometi]. For Sicheni was really situate in the portion of 
 Joseph, Josh. xxi. 21, and was specially consecrated to his 
 memory by the fact that his bones were buried there, Josh, 
 xxiv. 32, in the field purchased by Jacob, xxxiii. 19." We 
 could not in our retrospective view of ch. xxxiv., and especially 
 xxxiv. 25 sq., comp. xxxv. 5, help remarking, that the ven- 
 geance of the sons of Jacob upon Sichem had a bright side, on 
 wliich it was represented by E, and to this xlviii. 21 sq. also 
 refers. Sichem seems indeed to have prematurely become a 
 town with a predominantly Israelite population, an " ancient 
 tribal possession." ^ But in the intention of this composition 
 of extracts from sources, as it has come down to us, and 
 in which xlviii. 2 2 and xlix. 5-7 are in all but direct 
 contact, Tinp^ cannot be so understood as to make Jacob 
 appropriate to himself on its brighter side the deed of arms 
 of his sons. MrpS must be conceived of — as by Tuch — as 
 spoken in the power of a prophetic self-consciousness raised 
 
 ^ See A. Eckstein, Ge^ch. u. Bed. der Stadt Sichem (1886), p. 18 sq. 
 
 / 
 
364 GENESIS XLIX. 1, 2. 
 
 above itself. Kueneu's former conjecture "ainn ab (not with 
 my sword, but by means of honourable purchase) is very 
 tempting, as it removes all difficulty. 
 
 JACOB S PEOPHETIC SAYINGS CONCERNING HIS TWELVE SONS, 
 CH. XLIX. 
 
 The third portion, ch. xlix., carries on the history of Jacob's 
 last days and records his last words. These have been called, 
 and not incorrectly, the blessing of Jacob, for xlix. 28 refers 
 back to them. They are however introduced at ver. 1 as a 
 prophecy, and are indeed both : words of prophecy as dis- 
 closures made by God concerning the future history of 
 redemption ; words of blessing as wishes strong through faith, 
 and bringing within themselves the energy for their accom- 
 plishment. In lofty words, which already indicate his solemn 
 frame of mind, the patriarch summons all his sons (Joseph 
 included), vv. 1, 2: And Jacob called his sons and said: 
 Assemble yourselves, that I may announce to you what loill 
 befall you at the end of the days. Come together and hear, ye 
 sons of Jacob, and hearken to Israel your father, mp (to 
 befall), xxiv. 12, xxvii. 20, xlii. 29, xliv. 29, is also exchanged 
 for Nip at xlii. 4, 38. From the standpoint of the present, 
 the future may be regarded either as that which lies before 
 us, which is coming (nvn^n Isa. xli. 23, xliv. 7, 2"'N3n Isa. 
 xxvii. 6), or also as that which lies after us (Greek ra ottlo-co), 
 whose development is still kept back, and will come after the 
 present course of time, will succeed it (Orelli, Uebr. Synonyma 
 der Zeit u. Ewigkeit, p. 14), hence as n"'"irix (Assyr. adverbially 
 ahrdtas the future), which as the opposite of the beginning of 
 time means the end of time (the last time), or as the opposite 
 of the present, the time following (the time to come). It has 
 this latter meaning, e.g., at Jer. xxiii. 20 and also Deut. xxxi. 
 29, though it there already designates not the time to come 
 in general, but in an eschatological sense, like iv va-repoa 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 1, 2. 365 
 
 Kaipok, 1 Tim. iv. 1. Mostly however D"'p»n nnnx denotes the 
 final futnre, the extreme end, but this not merely as the last 
 epoch at the end of the course of time, but as that final 
 period, lying entirely beyond the present course of develop- 
 ment, which will bring the work of God to its full and final 
 realization. In such wise also, that the notion varies in 
 proportion to the stage of development, to which the work of 
 God has advanced in the present, and to the horizon of the 
 present thereby given, and the range of vision thereby deter- 
 mined. For in the prophetic prospect, the final redemption is 
 ever combined with the promised event of the immediate 
 future ; both advance in close union even when they do not 
 perceptibly coincide, and the progress of the expected redemp- 
 tion is such, that it is by this immediate future, when it is 
 realized and shows itself to be only a portion of that work of 
 God which is in a process of development, that the fulfilment 
 of the glorious and most glorious, which is yet in arrear, is 
 pledged, and a deeper understanding of it brought about. 
 Thus the view of Jacob, who is borne by the spirit of prophecy 
 beyond the sojourn in Egypt, is fixed upon the promised 
 possession of Canaan by the nation of the twelve tribes. To 
 him this stands in the foreground of the D^D\n nnns ; it is the 
 watchword of his hopes ; all that follows stands on a line with 
 this one fundamental hope, as in a picture painted without 
 perspective. It is just in this circumstance that we have a 
 strong proof that no mere recent fiction is before us. At a 
 period which evidently and palpably was not as yet tlie 
 promised end of the days, no one would have put into 
 Jacob's mouth a prophecy concerning it as the end of the 
 days ; while, on the other hand, he could not, according to 
 the tenor of the promises made to the patriarchs, but con- 
 centrate all his expectation of redemption in the promised 
 possession of the land. By the criticism, indeed, which either 
 denies miracles, whether in the spiritual life or in history, or 
 as much as possible attributes thera to natural causes, these 
 
360 GENESIS XLIX. 1, 2. 
 
 prophetic sayings will be a 'priori regarded as a vaticinia post 
 eventum, or as Hupfeld expresses it, as a prophetic myth. 
 Ewald insists upon the "truth which since 1828 he has 
 publicly taught, and which will always force itself upon every 
 better mind, that these sayings belong to the time of Samson " 
 (Jahrh. 5. 238). Anger and Dillm. also make the time of 
 the Judges their horizon. But we may with good reason 
 regard the parallels in the Song of Deborah (Judg. ch. v.) 
 as well considered and effective references, while borrowings 
 of this kind would make the author of Gen. xlix. 3-27 
 show a poverty of thought which he by no means manifests. 
 Hupfeld and others still now deeply depreciate ch. xlix. And 
 Kuenen (Finl. § 13, note 16) agrees with Eenan and Land in 
 regarding these as sayings of different periods here worked 
 up into a whole. If everything is regarded as prediction 
 invented from after events, it must be indeed looked upon 
 as such patchwork. We too might deal with such criteria, 
 but are kept from so doing by our inmost convictions. 
 Neither in the Old Testament nor the New, is the non- 
 reality of historical or spiritual miracles the necessary con- 
 sequence of critical analysis. But if prophecy is no delusion, 
 testamentary words of a prophetic character might be expected 
 from the departing ancestor of the chosen people ; and if his 
 discourse to his sons consisted of single sayings applying to 
 individuals, it is quite comprehensible that these sayings, and 
 consequently the blessing which was composed of them, should 
 have remained in the memory and on the lips of the twelve 
 tribes. And when and for what purpose should this blessing 
 have been invented ? The saying concerning Eeuben affixes on 
 him a blot, for the preservation of which subsequent history 
 furnished no reason. The saying concerning Simeon and 
 Levi is depreciative and reproving in a manner only con- 
 ceivable from the pre-Mosaic standpoint. The saying con- 
 cerning Zebulun contemplates an extent of the territory of 
 his tribe, which was not realized either in the time of Joshua 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 3. 3G7 
 
 or uuder the Kings. And the saying concerning Issachar 
 gives a picture of this tribe differing from the Song of Deborah, 
 Judg. V. 15a. So too can ver. 23 also be understood without 
 being a reflection of Syrian warfare. 
 
 The patriarch knew his chihlren, knew the circumstances 
 of their birth, knew the dispositions they had manifested, 
 and was therefore naturally capable, so to speak, of casting 
 their nativity.^ And his blessing bears throughout the 
 mark of the date claimed for it, and of that spontaneity, 
 both human and Divine, which distinguishes the pro- 
 phecy of the redemptive history from heathen Manticism. 
 For all such prophecy is of an ethic nature, and for that 
 reason no deluding spell ; the history is the product of the 
 interaction of God and man, and hence something different 
 sometimes comes forth from what prophecy had predicted by 
 promise and threat. 
 
 It cannot be determined from which of the three main 
 sources of the Pentateuch the redactor has taken this 
 prophetic portion. In itself, and especially by reason of mn^ 
 ver. 18, it suggests our regarding J as the source; but the 
 framework, vv. 1 and 28, leads to Q, who is not absolutely 
 excluded either by mn'' ver. 18 nor by ver. 28& (see there). 
 
 The first saying, xlix. 3 sq., passes sentence upon Eeuben 
 and determines his future. In every genealogical table of 
 the twelve, from xxxv. 23 to 1 Chron. v. 1, Eeuben stands 
 first, as the first-born among the sons of Jacob ; hence, looking 
 back with joy and sorrow to his Aramaean servitude, he greets 
 him: 'pi5< ^^'^'^1}._ '^^ '"^^'"^ '^^? l?''^"!' liaihcn, my first-horn, thou, 
 my might and the first-fruits of my strength. He is the 
 product of Jacob's full manly strength, and the first offspring 
 
 ^ Such is the assumption, correct in itself, upon which Heinr. Hosier, in his 
 work. Die jiidische StmnrnverscJiiedenheit, 1884, defends the authenticity of 
 Jacob's blessing, with much profound insight, which is however ovei'grown with 
 oddities. So too does Diestel, Der Scjen Jakobs, 1853, who thinks that the 
 sayings are connected with the position and conduct of the twelve during the 
 sojourn in Egypt. 
 
368 GENESIS XLIX. 4. 
 
 of his generative power after a long and unspotted celibacy 
 (jix JT'C'Xi, as in legislative prose, Deut. xxi. 17, comp. Ps. 
 Ixxviii. 51, cv. 36). And how Reuben towers as the first- 
 born above his brethren ! He is TS? ^n'''l Dxb' "in"', |;re-cmmc7tce 
 (properly superabundance) m dignity and pre-eminence in 
 povjer (TV, not an adjective, but, as the order and parallelism 
 show, the pausal form of r"y, comp. xliii, 14), i.e. precedence, 
 both in respect and power, is due to him above his brethren, 
 a position excelling theirs in both respects. But Reuben has 
 deprived himself of his privilege : "iriin~?x D)B3 thb^ Boiling 
 over like ivater, tliou must have no pre-eminence, i.e. not as 
 boiling over, or because thou art such. The words n'*03 rns 
 are a descriptive and, at the same time, a confirmative apposi- 
 tion of the subj., which is more probable than taking it 
 vocatively (Oh, boiling over like water !) or making it form a 
 noun sentence by itself (viz. a boiling over of water is come 
 to pass). The Hebraeo - Sam. obliterates the plasticism of 
 poetic diction by changing thq into nrns, whence most 
 ancient translators, except Symm., render it according to 
 the reading v7r€p^ea-a<;, and Graec. Ven. kov^o<; o)? vdi(op. 
 The moral nature of Reuben is notified in a rapid picture, his 
 characteristic is passion, like bubbling up, boiling water (rns, 
 not siibsilire, of which also Targ. Jer. Deut. xxxii. 15 is no 
 
 confirmation, but hullire, fervcre, not related to td, •• to spring 
 up, but, on the contrary, a shade of the V ns to breathe, to blow, 
 comp. T^J J^-* ^° swell, of the inflation of pride). The 
 Samar. translates, in accordance with the orifjinal meauinfr, 
 ^J'j'?"!''? (from J^rn^nnn), also Symm., whose V7rep^eaa<; is a 
 participle giving the reason (which Field exchanges for the 
 less apt virepe^eaa'i), the LXX more freely : i^v^pia-a<;, in the 
 sense of Ezek. xlvii. 5 i^v/Spi^ev to uScop = D''»n ISJ. Because 
 he indulges his sensuality, he incurs the loss of precedence, 
 and the reason is now more particularly stated : For thou 
 didst go up to the bed of thy father, then didst thou defile, i.e. 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 3. 369 
 
 didst perpetrate a deed, defiling tliat which should have been 
 sacred to thee — the verb J^Pi"? is left without an object, this OV^^*', 
 for which, according to 1 Chron. v. 1, the Chronicler read 7^^"!, 
 ])lur. like ''??V"P Cles. § 108. 2, note 2) bemg made the object 
 of an independent sentence (comp, a like case with the subj. 
 Ps. Ixxii. 176). Deeply annoyed, Jacob turns from this 
 criminal encroachment of Ileuben upon the rights of his 
 father and chief, xxxv. 22, as from an intolerable sight, and 
 speaking to himself says only, with hollow voice, npi? ^j;?,^"; : he 
 went up to my bed ! The first blessing is thus limited to 
 lieuben's not being expelled from the number of the twelve^ 
 l»ut in other respects it is clianged into the curse of degradation. 
 According to Deut. xxi. 17 (the passage in which ijs n""J'X"i 
 occurs), a double portion of the inheritance was the due to tlie 
 lirst-born, and he was naturally the representative of the family 
 and had precedence among his brethren. The deep and important 
 results obtained by the birthright, are shown in the history of 
 Esau and Jacob. Reuben thus loses not merely the property, 
 but the rank of the first-born — he loses that position in the 
 national and redemptive history which properly belonged to 
 him. We are told 1 Cliron. v. 1 sq., to whom Picuben's 
 ])rivileges were transferred : Joseph received the n"ib3, i.e. the 
 double portion of the inheritance, but the princely position 
 went to Judali. Jerome, together with the Targums and 
 ]\Iidrash, reckons not only rcgnum and liccreditas, but also 
 saccrdolimn, among the privileges of the first-born, and hence 
 translates (being herein Luther's predecessor) : prior in donis 
 major in imperio. But 1 Chron. v, 1 sq. shows that only 
 regnum and haereditas are here under consideration. It was by 
 the providential leading of God, whose plan hovers over all 
 free human action, that the double inheritance was transferred 
 from the first-born of Leah to tlie first-born of Eachel. I'.ut 
 that what was here brought to pass by God's righteous govern- 
 ment, may not be imitated by human caprice, the Thorah, Deut. 
 xxi. 15-17, forbids the preference of the first-born son of the 
 
 VOL. II. 2 A 
 
370 GENESIS XLIX. 5. 
 
 beloved wife before that of the liated one. The blessing of 
 Moses, Dent, xxxiii. 6, takes up the words of Jacob concern- 
 ing Eeuben so far as to promise him indeed continuance, but 
 (since there is no necessity for making '''7"'1 = '''?''.~''^1 with Ges. 
 Baunig. Graf and others) fewness of numbers and general 
 insignificance. This history fulfilled. That Reuben had at 
 the second numbering, ISTum. xxvi. 7, wlien compared with tlie 
 first. Num. i. 21, suffered the loss of 3000 men, cannot, in 
 view of the still more considerable losses of other tribes, 
 come into consideration ; but the fact, that in the time of the 
 Kings from David onward only a Moabito-Ammonite and no 
 longer a Eeubenite region east of Jordan is spoken of, cer- 
 tainly does. The tribe of lleuben had not wholly died out, 
 1 Chron. v. 6, but liad become quite powerless, and had 
 already so entirely vanished from the sight of Isaiah, that his 
 elegiac lamentation, ch. xv. sq., has only Moab as such for its 
 subject, without any regard to his lieubenite fellow-country- 
 men. History knows nothing of the deeds of this tribe 
 beyond the victories of the Eeubenites and Gadites over 
 Sihon king of the Amorites, and a victorious campaign 
 against the Hagarens in the time of King Saul, 1 Chron. v. 
 8-10, 18-22. In post-Mosaic times its national importance 
 soon sank to nothing, no judge, king, or prophet being desig- 
 nated as a Iieubenite. 
 
 Now follow the second and third sons of Leah, ver. 5 : 
 ^T"^ "'!•''! HJ'P^ Simeon and Levi are brothers. Brothers in the 
 fullest sense of the word, not merely of the same parents, but 
 of the same nature, as was shown by the treacherous and 
 cruel vengeance which in common they inflicted on the 
 Shechemites : cn'^nhao Dpn '•73 instruments of violence are their 
 simighter vjcajjons. The Hebraeo-Sam. and perhaps Onkelos 
 also read ^?3 for ''b^ : their slaughter weapons have executed 
 violence. It was DDn, i.e. a deed of violence by the stronger 
 against the weaker and unarmed ; for, that they might be 
 able to take vengeance upon them, they first rendered the 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 5. 371 
 
 Sliechemites incapable of defending themselves. The meaning 
 murderous weapons is in any case the most obvious for 
 DnTiiDD ; the Midrash {Bercshith rahba, c. 99 and elsewhere) 
 remarks, that in Greek nmn swords, are called pT3D, i.e. 
 fjbci^aipai (Goth, mclja, from the \/ jj-uk to pierce, Lat. mac-tare), 
 with which Donaldson also {Jasluir, pp. 128, 19G) regards it 
 as one and the same word " changed by Greek mercenaries 
 of David (1 Chron. xi. 3G, Kavpo^ 6 fia-^aipoi^opos)" into 
 Hebrew. But "^I^P is no more fid^aipa than the Assyr. 
 pilakkua is the Greek ireXeKVi ; it comes from i"]3 (after the 
 formations -^I^P, JTipp, 'T[i?P), which means to dig (for which 
 
 usually n"]3) and to round (comp. 133 ="13")^, Arab. < properly 
 
 of the ricochetting ball l ^), both meanings being combined in 
 
 that of a round digging or boring out, so that it might also 
 be used of the weapon which bores a round gaping wound, 
 like ii?J and ii^3 Ps. xxii. 17, comp. thereon,]), 233 of the 
 Comm., according to the LXX, Pesh. ; the verbs opvaaeiv and 
 fodcrc (Jiastd) — stimulo fodcre hovem is even said — also admit 
 the sense of piercing. Tuch, Baumg. explain otherwise : 
 twistings, from iis^ which however means to round and not to 
 twist ; de Dieu, Schultens, Maurer : intrigues, from "i3p := Cc, 
 without any support in Hebrew diction ; Kn. Luzzatto, Merx 
 and others : marriage contracts, after the Syr. •«-^^o dc^j^onsare 
 (with reference to xxxiv. 15 sq.) ; but then v3 is not suitable. 
 Schrijter gives another meaning {DMZ. xxiv. 525) : their signs 
 of recognition, from -i33 (so that the punctuation would have to 
 be DH^nnsn). It would be better to explain with Targ. 11. III. 
 Syr.: their nature indoles, but Ezek. xvi. 3 (comp. also Isa. li. 1) 
 is not sufficient to prove this meaning for the word, and Don 'h'2 
 shows itself to be the predicate, not the subj. The meaning 
 instrument of piercing is the most certain. Dillm. denies 
 to the verb tiD the meaning to pierce, and would rather 
 understand a curved instrument, from mn to be round, hence 
 something of a sabre. Perhaps the Assyrian, in which iia in 
 
372 GENESIS XLIX. fi. 
 
 the meaning to cut, to hew, to fell, is a syn. (Friedr. Delitzsch, 
 Proleg. 121), gives the decisive casting vote. Jacob, who 
 had already, xxxiv. 30, made Litter complaints of the deed of 
 Simeon and Levi, here on his death-bed repudiates all share in it, 
 ver. 6a; Into their council, my soul, come thou not ; with their 
 assembly, my honour, he thou not united. On ^iD, see on Ps. 
 XXV. 14 : it means compression, constipatio, in the sense of con- 
 centrated closeness, impervious to light, and consequently both 
 the secret meeting and the secret matter. in^ is imp/. Kal of 
 in^, and ""1^3 here as at Ps. vii. 6, xvi. 9, xxx. 13, Ivii. 9, 
 cviii. 2, used of the soul as the glory of man, the Divine 
 image, is as the name of the ^o\\\ feminine, as is also e.g. |is^ 
 as the name of the wind, and ^.p? as that of a fetter. On 
 the misconception or intentional setting aside of nun, the 
 name of the soul, by ancient translators, see Geiger, Urschrift, 
 p. 319. lieason for this repudiation, ver. Q>h : For in their 
 wrath they slcio men, and in their sclf-vnll they maimed oxen. 
 Unrestrained self-will, which disregards truth and justice, is 
 here, as at Dan. viii. 4 and frequently, called P^T On the 
 exegetical and historical connection of the translation svffo- 
 derunt murum. (y,^) in Jerome, see Piirst in DMZ. xxxv. 
 p. 132 sq. The LXX, as it already lay before the Itala, has 
 dire/cretvav dvOpcoTTovi and ivevpoKoir-qcrav ravpov, hence "lit'', 
 not T,C' (as Onk. Aq. Symm. : Tel^o'?). According to Herder 
 and others, '\Su is said here to mean figuratively (as at Deut. 
 xxxiii. 1 7) the same as C^'N : they slew the princes of Shecheni 
 together with the people like defenceless animals, whose 
 sinews had been cut, and Peuss thinks it possible that ~\\^ is 
 an imnge of the male population maimed by circumcision. 
 Since however, according to xxxiv. 27-29, they took pos- 
 session of the flocks and herds, and cared more for vengeance 
 than for booty, "lit^* ^'^\^V is meant in its literal sense : they cut 
 the knee tendons (LXX eveupoKoinjaav) of the oxen, whom 
 they either could not or would not bring away, for the purpose 
 of laming them and making them useless, which is also called 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 7. 373 
 
 in Arab. Is.. This treacherous and cruel act of vengeance 
 though indicted on Canaanites, is pronounced by Jacob to be 
 a sin worthy of condemnation, ver. 7 : Cu,rsed is ilieir anger, 
 which was so fierce, and their vsrath, which was so cruel. 1 
 icill divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel. The 
 predicates TV and ni^'j? (unbending and inexorable) are also inter- 
 changed, Cant. viii. C. The Hebraeo-Sam. (which the other 
 Samaritan texts follow) has here changed ins into inx 
 (="11111 praiseworthy) and Dmay into nm3n (their association) 
 to get rid of the curse {DMZ. xx. lGO-162); the prayer of 
 Judith also in ch. ix. (see thereon Fritzsche) begins by 
 praising the righteous retribution executed by her ancestor 
 Simeon (with Levi). The patriarch solemnly repudiates all 
 share in this massacre. The punishment of Simeon and 
 Levi is division and dispersion. Their fierce resentment is 
 deprived of the support of an independent territory, and their 
 despotic violence of a prerequisite of political power. The 
 cities of Simeon lay as a powerless and almost nameless 
 enclosure within the territory of the tribe of Judah (Josh. 
 xix. 1-9, ch. XV.), and when the descendants of Simeon found 
 their dwelling-places no longer sufficient, they emigrated in 
 two companies and conquered dwelling-places and pasture 
 lands outside the Holy Land (I Chron. iv. 38 sqq.). Simeon 
 is left quite unmentioned in the blessing of Moses, Deut. 
 xxxiii., and disappears almost entirely after the disruption 
 of the kingdom.^ Levi received no territory of his own, the 
 Levites being scattered among all the tribes, within which the 
 law. Num. xxxv. 1-8, allotted to them forty-eight cities. Sub- 
 sequently this scattering became a means of the clerical voca- 
 tion of the tribe of Levi, here it appears as the punishment of 
 a brutal fanaticism. Tliis penal sentence on the two brothers 
 is a proof of the great antiquity of the blessing. The blessing 
 
 1 The Midraslx X'^'in says : bn*l^'a DSV^:' X^l l^D vh n^rOVH N^ pyJSti' 
 ni3^1 py, with reference to Num. xxv. 14 ; see Epsteiu, Bdlriiije zur jiid. 
 
 AUerthumskunde (1887), p. 24. 
 
o / 4 GENESIS XLIX. 8. 
 
 of Moses, Deut. xxxiii., is silent concerning Simeon, and speaks 
 quite otherwise of Levi. The difference between the two 
 periods at once strikes the eye. 
 
 No blessing without a shadow has attached to tlie first 
 three sons ; an unobscured blessing now comes with so much 
 tlie greater intensity upon Judah, the fourth son of Leah. 
 The Samar. Targum tries as much as possible to turn the 
 blessing of Judah into an insult {DMZ. xxx. 348). It is 
 indeed true that Judah 's previous life had not been unspotted ; 
 he sinned against Joseph, he sinned with Tama r, but these 
 sins are now expiated, and they bore within them reasons in 
 mitigation of their guilt. For it was^^Judah who wanted to 
 sell Joseph rat her than to shedjiis Jilood ; it was he whose 
 nobleness of mind towards his father and brethren made him 
 so irresistibly eloquent before Joseph ; and though not in- 
 accessible to sensual teinptation, he was, as the transaction 
 with Tamar shows, of an heroic character ennobled by the 
 fear of God. To him is transferred the princely dignity of 
 the first-born, which Eeuben liad forfeited (1 Chron. v. 2). 
 His name, according to xxiv. 35, signifies the being praised ; 
 this nomen Jacob takes hold of as an omen and explains it as 
 a prognostic of Judah's future, ver. 8 : Judah — thcc shall tliy 
 'brethren praise : thy hand upon the neck of thine enemies ! thy 
 father s sons hoio down 'before thcc. The p)crs. pro. stands first 
 as nom. ahs., as e.g. at Deut. xviii. 14?^, comp. ""^iX xxiv. 2 7 
 (Ges. § 145. 2). Judah will be the ever victorious; his 
 enemies flee, but they do not escape him, he grasps them by 
 the throat (Job xvi. 12). His heroism procures him the 
 homage and respect of his brethren, and that not only of his 
 five bretln-en by the same mother (see on xxvii. 29), but of 
 all the sons of their common father. Judah obtains this 
 exaltation above his brethren by the lion-like nature wliich 
 God bestows upon him : 'P^y^TV r]^';^^ n^a a lions whelp is Jad.ah. 
 Jacob has now before him the person of Judah, the ancestor 
 of the lion tribe, hence he compares him to a young lion. 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 9, 10. 375 
 
 But Lis view is imniediately transferred to the tribe iu tlie 
 lull strength of its maturity : from tlic jprcy, my son, hast thou 
 gone up — he stoops down, lie couches like a lion and like a lioness, 
 ivho would rouse him up ? Jacob in spirit beholds his son as 
 having become that to which he is destined. On j*n"i see on 
 iv. 7. Scripture is rich in names and images of lions, fur it was 
 then easy to become by personal observation acquainted with 
 the lion, which has now almost disappeared from the lauds of 
 the sacred history. As a lion, which after he has obtained 
 his prey goes up (p7V in its first meaning, not as at Isa. liii. 2, 
 Ezek. xix. 3, in the sense of growing up) from the forest 
 dwelling to the forest mountain to his den (Eccles. iv. 8, comp. 
 opealrpo^o'^, the epithet given to the lion in Homer), so does 
 Judah return from all his conflicts to his dwelling-place; there 
 he couches in proud repose like a lion and like a lioness (who is 
 still fiercer in defence of her young), who would venture to stir 
 liini up and to occasion fresh conflicts ? The historical great- 
 ness of Judah is now further described, the image of the lion 
 being laid aside, ver. 10: The sceptre shall not depart from 
 Judah and the leaders staff from hetween 1 lis feet, until he comes 
 to Shiloh, and to him devolves the ohcdienee of the peoples. The 
 LXX, Targum Samar. Saad. Gr. Ven. and the ancients in 
 general understand Pi?.np personally of a leader in peace or 
 war, as at Judg. v. 15 and elsewhere, and as ^t:T^ 2 Sam. vii. 7 
 (=a-Kr)TrTovxoL) is perhaps meant; and "lyJl p2rp is accordingly 
 used as atDeut. xxviii. 57 of the coming forth from the maternal 
 womb (comp. the euphemisms, Isa. vii. 20, xxxvi. 12, and 
 Homer's TTLTrreiv fiera iroaal yuvaiKo^;, II. 19. 110 =to be born), 
 hence a ruler from the maternal womb of Judah, a not impos- 
 sible expression, Judah being conceived of not as an individual 
 but as a tribe, which at once bears and begets. Luther other- 
 wise : noch ein mcister vo7i scinen Fiisscn, in which Pipno is (as in 
 lauvjiver of the English A.V.) understood, according to ^~)^^ of 
 the Targums, with reference to the circumstance that serihce 
 inter pedes regum aid magistratuum sub illis scdere solcnt. 
 
376 GENESIS XLIX. 10. 
 
 The Mecklenburg KirchenUatt, 1885, p. 5: the territory 
 upon which he walks — an impossible rendering, for the 
 ground is not between, but under the feet. Considering that 
 ppriD has no less frequently the meaning ruler's staff, suggested 
 by the parallel t:3^ (N"um. xxi. 18, Ps. Ix. 9), than the personal 
 meaning ruler ; secondly, that a long staff held by the upper 
 end is the insigniuui of the Assyrian kings, and that the 
 Persian king represented in a sitting posture upon the monu- 
 ments of Persepolis holds it between his feet ; and thirdly, that 
 the choice of more dignified expressions than the objection- 
 able IvJ"] pSQ (especially so as a declaration concerning an 
 ancestor) were furnished by the language (see xlvi. 2G, xxxv. 
 11, Jer. xxxiii. 26, Ps. cxxxii. 11), on which account the 
 Hebraeo-Samar. writes v^:t pan (from his banners), it must be 
 explained : Judah will ever bear the sceptre, and the ruler's 
 staff ever rest between his feet. Ever — for that ver. 10 
 awards the princely position to Judah, not merely for a period 
 but for ever, is already required by the character of the saying 
 as purely one of blessing. It is not meant that Judah shall 
 bear the sceptre till the new turn of things and then lose it, 
 or as the passage is already exj)lained by Justin, Apol. i. 32, and 
 in the Clementine Horn. iii. 49, and is still explained, e.g. by 
 P. T, Bassett, Grossrau and others, that the Messiah will come 
 at a time when the sceptre has departed from Judah, i.e. when 
 the Jewish people have fallen into subjection to the heathen, 
 which, according to Verbrugge (1730), was definitively ful- 
 filled by the issue of the revolution under Hadrian. In an 
 Advent festival play by Hans Sachs (written Dec. 8, 1730) 
 it is by this saying interpreted in this sense, that the Jewish 
 Eabbi is finally overcome by the Christian doctor. But ny 
 in this blessing cannot possibly be such an exclusive " till." 
 Nor, on the other hand, is there any reason for translating 
 with Ilitzig {Bibl. Thcologie, p. 153), G. Baur and others: "as 
 long as he shall come to Shiloh," for though t;' ny (Cant. i. 
 12) and "ly seq. mfin. (Ex. xxxiii. 22, Judg. iii. 26, Jon. iv. 2, 
 
_ y 
 
 GENESIS XLIX. 10. 377 
 
 comp. 2 Kings ix. 22) may mean "as long as," yet 'd nj; nowhere 
 expresses limited duration, but the terminus ad quern. Still 
 less do we need, with an ancient MS. in Pinsker {Zur GcscJi. 
 dcs Karaismus, p. Bp), to draw iy to what precedes with 
 Athnach instead of Jcthih (not ... for ever, for he will 
 come . . . ), but ''3""iy with the im]-)/. following has the same 
 temporal sense as "i^^t^ ny " until that " (elsewhere followed by 
 a per/, of gradative meaning, xxvi. 13, xli. 49, 2 Sam. xxiii. 
 10, 2 Chron. xxvi. 15), and here denotes the turning-point 
 to which Judah's greatness lasts, not then to cease, but to be 
 enlarged to sovereignty over the peoples, comp. on this use of 
 *iy xxvi. 13, xxviii. 15, Ps. ex. 1, cxii. 8. €co<i Matt. v. 18. 
 nni?^ is neither equivalent to 'ijipn (LXX, Syr. Vulg.) nor to 
 the Talmudic 'i^r^i? assem1;ly (both Arabic translations), but as 
 
 at Prov. XXX. 17, obedience, from ^J^l <^. (for which also 
 
 ~i^J ^t, whence the 7iom. pcrs. np^^ the obedient, the pious) ; 
 here, as at Prov. xxx. 17 with Dagcsh dirimcns, a connective 
 
 form, not of nni^';^ but nnp^ {'^^»), like ^"p? the approach and 
 n-;^': (parallel ^-1C^^•) the watch, Ps. cxli. 3. D^GV might mean 
 the Israelitish tribes, as at Deut. xxxiii. 3, llos. x. 14 and 
 frequently. But the leadership of the tribes was already 
 awarded to Judah in \y\ iid"' vh, find the question as to 
 whether he would maintain this with respect to the peoples 
 around was pressing ; hence CJ^y will not have the meaning 
 of Deut. xxxiii. 3, but of Deut. xxx. 17. But if the nations 
 of the world are intended, this suggests taking n>'^ (such is 
 the Masoretic writing, see Prensdorff, Masora magna, p. 322 sq., 
 besides which however npa' and 'h^ occur in MSS.) as a name 
 of the Messiah. Jacob has before him in his sons the twelve- y 
 tribed nation. A nation however needs a single leader. Tiiis 
 suggests taking nb'w' personally. The king of the latter days 
 exalted above the heathen misht be meant as at Num. 
 xxiv. 1 5 sqq. ; moreover, the Messianic interpretation of nb-tr 
 has the recommendation of being ancient {Sanhcdriii 086). 
 
3V8 GENESIS XLIX. 10. 
 
 But it rests in its traditional form upon an explanation of the 
 word which cannot be accepted. When the Samar. texts 
 write n^L*', and Onkelos, Targ. Jer. II. Syr., whom Aphraates, 
 Ephrem, Bar - Hebrreus (see his Scholia published by 11. 
 Schroter in DMZ. xxiv.) and Saadia follow, translate : donee 
 vcniat Mcssias ciijus est rcgmnn, Aquila and Symmachus 
 (comp. Constitut. apost. 6. 11): m airoKenaL (whom it is 
 reserved for and belongs to, viz. i) /daatXela), Peshitto : is cujus 
 illud (sc. rcfjnum) est, all these proceed upon the assumption 
 that n^^L^ (the Masor. reading) or nbc' (an ancient variation) 
 is equivalent to i^''^' = i-' "il;'X. The translation also of the LXX 
 (Theod.), eco? av eXOj) rd diroKeifMeva aurw (continuing ; koI 
 avTo^ irpoaSoKia eOvoov), proceeds from the reading n?'^^ only 
 it does not directly make the person of the Messiah the subject, 
 on which account Justin, Dial. c. 120, would willingly stamp 
 the (I diroKenaL of Aq. and Symm. as the original reading of 
 the Alexandrine translation. Eusebius {Eclog. loropli) rightly 
 explains ew? av KOfiLarjTac (according to the context, not the 
 Messiah, but Judah through Him) tt/^ Kara rcov o\wv 
 ^aaCkeiav. With n^'iT = X? "lU'S agrees the saying of Ezek^ 
 xxi, 32, where the utter destruction of the royal crown, which 
 had been so shamefully desecrated in Zedekiah, is predicted 
 vnnj^ ^SC'sn i^'"i*^''>? ^<3"^V, i.c till He comes to whom the 
 government belongs, and on whom Jahveh bestows it. But 
 this i'? "lt?'^? of Ezekiel (LXX w Kad)]Kei,, strangely without any 
 rendering of t:sc*an) is certainly only such a modihcation or 
 bending of rh''^ as Jeremiah also frequently allows himself 
 when borrowing older passages of Scripture. For it is im- 
 possible that rh'^'Cf should be equal to i^^', and the same must 
 be said of rh'\y also, for, not to mention that nb=i^ cannot be 
 authenticated, t5'="i^N; as the first letter of a proper or quasi- 
 proper name is also unexampled, and i?'f (for which we 
 should at least expect with reference to Dnc' or ppno, ^i'"! ^?'f ) 
 cannot of itself mean the same as i^D' ni^bon'C' ''D " he to whom 
 the kingdom is due." Wellhausen indeed (Gescli. p. 375) 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 10. 
 
 379 
 
 manages to help the n>e' to become a subject l»y cxpun.i^ing 
 lSi and then translating : till He comes to whom the obedience 
 of the nations is due — this is however no untying, but a cutting 
 in twaiii of the knot. Stade {Gcsch. p. IGO) further enhances 
 still more the violence practised, by the conjecture that ver. 
 10 is a post-exilic addition. Another ancient view (Targ. Jer. 
 J. Jepheth, Abulw. Kimchi ^), which derives rh'"'^ from b"w*, 
 like nh^v from i^V, and this ^y from hrc^^hh^ (whence the 
 Talraudic h'h^\ Arab. Ja1-j foetus, young) and ^^^' (whence 
 n^^^tJ' afterbirth), must, if for nothing else, be rejected because 
 this designation of the Messiah (according to Jos. Kinichi and 
 Dav. Costelli in his II Mcssia, 1874: of King David) as the 
 son of Judah, would be among all possible designations the 
 most ignoble. Comparatively more attractive is the sol ution \/ 
 i^ 'tr (to whom the consecrated offerings of the nations belong, 
 ^^ccording to Ps. Ixviii. 29, in the Midrash Ld-ach toh on the 
 passage) and Lagarde's ^^'':^'=nVx^ "his prayed for or longed 
 for one;" while, on the contrary, Jei'ome's donee veniat qui 
 mittendus est is a bold quidproqiio. There is no need of such 
 byways and ventures for understanding n^''t;' of the Messiah. 
 If n^''::' is a proper name, it designates the Messiah as the bearer 
 or bringer of rest, and is synonymous with ir^^p*, which accord- 
 ing to 1 Chron. xxii. 9 is equal to nm^o &^, and the Samar. 
 translator of the Pent, into Arabic (Abu-Sa'id) actually trans- 
 lates rht\ ^l^l--, referring the prediction to Solomon. So too 
 Donaldson : Halenms vatcm Salomoncum, sui tcmporis lauda - 
 torem. Luther explains somewhat differently, and refer- 
 ring to ibw' prosperity and welfare, translates : de7' licit, as 
 " one who prospers, who freely carries out his plan ; " but 
 the meaning : the peaceful, peaceful kingdom, peacemaker, 
 
 1 So too Samuel ben Cliolni in the Arab. Comm. of Israelsohn (Tetersburg 
 1886) on Gen. ehs. xli.-l. : n^ti* = aLJ. ijJ. (^lis son and descendant). 
 Tliis Gaon does not mention the exphmatiou i"^^ at all. Paulus Cassel 
 {Messianische Stellen, 1885) even explains : scion, from rh^'^n)^- 
 
380 GENESIS XLIX. 10. 
 
 certainly a more appropriate name for the Messiah, is a far 
 more obvious one. For at Micah v. 4 He is called Qw, as at 
 Eph. ii. 14 elprjVT], Isa. ix. 5 DiX'~"ib', and at Zech. ix. 9 sq. he 
 comes to Zion as the King of Peace. The ending would then 
 be the same as in the proper names iT". ili^ >^fy:>^ and others, 
 whose oh or 6 is weakened from 6yi, and though nx' cannot be 
 
 ' O T T 
 
 regarded as the verb lying at the root (from which the noun 
 must have been pvtJ', or if we compare liT'? ciro^P ~\\W\> ni-^'C', 
 ''i7^tJ'=''i?w'), yet hvd, synonymous with ^Y^, can, and this means 
 to hang down loosely, to be unstrung, to rest, whence '"iVc* as 
 a proper name means a quiet, homelike place, inviting to rest 
 (comp. iT72 Josh. XV. 51, from P''2), or a peaceable happy person 
 bringing peace and happiness, without our needing to have 
 recourse to Eodiger's expedient, that rb^U (LXX Judg. xxi. 12 
 and frequently HrjXwfM with ^r)\(o) is weakened from Di^K'. 
 At all events it is a proper name, for a nomcn ajrpcll. n^-L", 
 with the meaning of rest or place of rest, would be unique as 
 to formation; even nMnx Prov. xxvii. 20 {Chcthib), as a name 
 of Hades, being rather a n. ^jr. than a n. appdl. The language 
 has the nouns y'^^ (not n|pc^") nw USh'd nmjo, with the meaning 
 of rest. To take it as an appellative : till rest comes (Neum. 
 Hofm. Pieuss), or : till he comes to the resting-place, seems with 
 such a store of synonyms inadmissible. 
 
 But the n^''C' of our passage is no air. jeyp., and the first 
 question of all must be, what ni^^c' or, as it is everywhere else 
 written, ^^^ (S^^p) means elsewhere. It is there the name of 
 an Ephraimite town in the country on this side Jordan (hence 
 ;n3 jnN;3 nc'X ribi^ Josh. xxii. 9, xxi. 2, Judg. xxi. 12), the 
 ruins of which are still to be seen, in conformity with the 
 statement Judg. xxi. 19, "on the north of Bethel, on the east 
 side of the road that goes up from Bethel to Shechem, on the 
 south of Lebonah (Lubban)." They still bear the name of 
 Selun {^(.Xovv in Josh.^), and lie upon a bare height above 
 the village Turmus Aja, which is situate on a plateau enclosed 
 ^ See G. Bbttger, To-pograpldsch-hist. Lex. zu Josephus (1879), p. 231. 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 10. 381 
 
 on all sides by lulls. When the name of this town is used 
 as an accus. of direction, it is said just as here n?C' N13 Josh, 
 xviii. 9, 1 Sam. iv. 12, nbi:^ N''3n Judg. xxi. 12, 1 Sam. i. 24, 
 nhz' n^D' 1 Sam. iv. 4, rh^ i^n 1 Kings xiv. 2, 4. The next 
 tiling tlien surely is to see whether " till he (Judah) comes to 
 Shiloh " gives a meaning agreeable to the context and to 
 liistory. It has been objected against this geographical com- 
 prehension of n^E^, which has been preferred by Herder and 
 since him by many others, that the name Shiloh did not 
 originate till Joshua's time, and that the place was formerly 
 called n^xri (Hgst.), or that nyj' njsn^ in the meaning of 
 " meeting at the resting-place," was the full name then given 
 it (Hofm.) ; but the Taanath Shiloh of Josh. vi. G, in Euseb. 
 and Jer, Thanaih {Thcnath), now Ain Tdiiak, is a north- 
 eastern border town of the territory of Ephraim, differing 
 from Shiloh. It was the name of a place already existing, 
 which Jacob made, as he did the names of his sons, an omen 
 of the future. Why should he, who had resided for a period 
 near Shechem, not have known of this mid-Palestinian Shiloh ? 
 At ver. 13 he names n''V, and at ch. xlviii. uses the word 
 D3*^' district, with an allusion to Shechem, just as he here uses 
 the word rh'''^ not without consciousness of its meaninji of 
 place of rest. But the question is — (1) Did Judah maintain 
 this stated supremacy among the tribes till the twelve-tribed 
 nation assembled at Shiloh ? and (2) Was Shiloh the turning- 
 point from Judah's tribal to his national sovereignty ? With 
 respect to the first question, it is not against an affirmative 
 answer, that, first Moses, a Levite, and then Joshua, an 
 Ephraimite, were the leaders of the people on their march to 
 Canaan — for Moses and Joshua were what they were not by 
 reason of their descent from this or that tribe, but in virtue 
 of the Divine choice personally resting on them ; and the 
 question here is as to the relation of tlie tribes to each other. 
 Nor is it any contradiction, that Reuben, Gad and half of 
 Manasseh marclied before ('Id!^) Israel (Xum. xxxii 17, Deut. 
 
382 GENESIS XLIX. 10. 
 
 iii. 18 and frequently) — for they marched before the other 
 tribes, but not at their head. The primacy of the tribe of 
 Judah among the tribes was really that which Jacob pre- 
 dicted. At the first numbering of the people in the wilder- 
 ness of Sinai, Judah appears as the most numerous of all the 
 tribes, Num. i., and at the second in the plains of Moab 
 he had, notwithstanding the judgments meantime inflicted, 
 increased, Num. xxvi. In the order of encampment he is 
 the first tribe of the three, who form the front of the square 
 encamped about the sanctuary, and hence the bearer of the 
 first of the four chief standards, Num. ii, ; and when the 
 signal for starting was given, the three tribes (Judah, Issachar 
 and Zebulun), which together were called the camp of Judah, 
 were the first to move. Num. x., comp. ii. 9. Judah also 
 maintained this position during the wars of conquest under 
 Joshua ; for when the conquered country was divided, it was 
 Judah who in Gilgal received first of all the tribes his 
 hereditary territory. Josh. xv. The camp was then trans- 
 ferred to Shiloh in the heart of the country. Here the tribes 
 assembled, Judah at their head ; here the sanctuary was set 
 up and the division of the land completed. This coming to 
 Shiloh undoubtedly forms the boundary between two periods 
 of Israel's history. We only need to read how the assembling 
 of the people at Shiloh is related, Josh, xviii. 1 : " And the 
 whole congregation of the sons of Israel assembled themselves 
 together at Shiloh, and set up the tent of meeting there, and 
 the land was suhducd before them." Is not the coming to 
 Shiloh here held up as a deeply cut mark in the history of 
 Israel ? Then was fulfilled what Moses had in his blessing 
 entreated for the tribe of Judah, Deut. xxxiii. 7 : " May 
 Jahveh hear the cry of Judah and bring him home to his 
 people — his hands contended for himself, and thou art his help 
 against his oppressors " (see the Targums and Volck on this 
 passage). The coming to Shiloh, till which Judah had not 
 ceased to stand at the head of the tribes, was the commence- 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 10. 383 
 
 nient of the settlement and possession ; rh'^iy became wliat its 
 name denoted, the resting-phxce of Israel, comp. Josh. xxi. 42, 
 XX. 4 with xviii. 1,^ The second question is, wliether after 
 Judah, the t:: (1 Chron. v. 2) of tlic tribes, had come as a 
 victor to Shiloh the cny nnp'' liji was fulfilled. This too is con- 
 firmed, if only we do not forget that Jacob's prediction, like 
 all prophecy, has regard to the climax of the time following 
 and overlooks the interval which elapses. It is not necessary, 
 in order to regard the prophecy as fulfilled, that the tribe of 
 Judah should, after Shiloh became the head and centre of 
 the tribes, have always maintained and exercised its princely 
 rights ; it is sufficient that the time of the Judges shows 
 single fulfilments of the prophecy. For wlien Joshua 
 was dead, the tribe of Judah was called to take the preced- 
 ence in the war against the Canaanites, Judg. i. 1 sq., and 
 afterwards in tlie war against Benjamin, Judg. xx, 18 ; and 
 when the people submitted to that rule of individual judges 
 imposed upon them by circumstances, it was Othniel, of the 
 tribe of Judah, who was the first of the series, Judg. iii. 9. 
 Besides, did not Judah, after being, during the disorganized 
 period of the Judges, kept back from its dignity as the cliief 
 tribe, become the royal tribe of Israel ? Elohim chose not the 
 tribe of Ephraim, as it is said Ps. Ixxviii., but chose the tribe of 
 Judah, the hill of Zion which He loved. David and Solomon, 
 tlirough whom the victorious conflicts and peaceable sway 
 promised to him were gloriously fulfilled, were of the tribe of 
 Judah. What Israel experienced under David and Solomon 
 was not indeed as yet the period of final and unfading glory. 
 
 1 Driver, in the Ejcposi/or, 18S5, vol. vii., and in liis excf;etical studies on 
 Gen. xlix. 10 in the Cambrldrje Journal of PhUoloyy, vol. xiv., thinks liiniself 
 obliged to understand t03tJ' in its strict meaning of "a royal sceptre" (but 
 comp. Num. xxi. 18), and therefore finally aci[uiesces in the explanation 
 according to the LXX : till His (Him appointed to Ilim by promise) shall come 
 (wliich Briggs also follows in his Messianic Prophecy, 1886). We are thankful 
 for the information, that the explanation quoiisque veniat Silo of Seb. Munster's 
 translation (153-1) and that of Herder, after the precedent of W. G. Teller (1766), 
 are in circulation. 
 
384 GENESIS XLIX. 11, 
 
 V>iit did not tlie kingship of Jadah, given Him according to 
 promise, become the tree from which Jesus Christ, the pre- 
 dicted Zemach, grew ? TIpohrfKou 'yap on e^ 'lovSa avare- 
 ToXKev 6 Kvpio<i t)fjb(jov, Ileb. vii. 14. In Him Judah is for 
 ever the Adored, the Victor, the King, the universal liuler. 
 For though it is true that tlie super-terrestrial existence of the 
 exalted Eedeemer, as such, is one which is also super-national, 
 yet the earthly history, from which He proceeded and rose on 
 high, was not thereby undone. Even in heaven the seer, who 
 was transported thither, was comforted by one of the elders 
 before the throne with the words : Weep not ; behold, the Lion 
 of the tribe of Judah hath overcome, Kev. v. 5. 
 I i~ Thus the prophecy has Christ as the goal of its fulfil- 
 
 ment ; it is jMessianic without our needing to understand rh'U^ 
 personally. Judah is the subj. of X3% and remains such in ver. 
 1 1 sq., which describes the full blessing of Judah's peaceable 
 possession, when he shall have come to Shiloli : Binding his 
 foal unto the tine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine, he 
 luashcs Ids raimcni in wine and his mantle in tlie blood of the 
 graiM. His eyes dark with tvinc, and his teeth ivhite with milk. 
 Judah binds witliout concern (in Judah they bind) the wuld 
 foal to a tree bearing good fruit instead of a stake — the fruit- 
 fulness of the land is so great that there is no anxiety to 
 prevent damage. '''}pj|^ with the ancient and almost always 
 accented connective sound, stands before a word with a 
 prepos., as at Ex. xv. 6, Ps. cxi. 5, Obad. 3, Isa. xxii. 6, 
 Micah vii. 14, Lam. i. 1, Ps. cxxiii. 1 and frequently, and "'j^ 
 has the same connective sound as the first member of the 
 
 stat. constr. as at xxxi. 39. Besides i^.v, ■\Ji.i, ^Pi.t!'? desig- 
 nates a special kind of good wine from the light red colour 
 of its grapes, or rather of their juice. For light red is in 
 Syria and Palestine the colour of the so-called white wine, 
 while the red wine is black vino ncro. On tlie perf. lib as 
 expressing the abstract present, see Ges. § 126. 3. nhiD is 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 11. 385 
 
 contracted from nraip, from nip to wrap round, not maimed, 
 from nmD3 as the Samaritans read. Tlie connective form 
 jpi' follows the analogy of ^3S Ps. xxxv. 14, Olsh. § 1676. 
 Then — for this is the meaning of these images — beo'ins a 
 time of happy and prosperous peace. The disquietude of 
 battle will then be at an end. Judah rides upon the animal 
 of peace, and the land is full of vines, the seed of peace 
 (Zech. viii. 12), and abounds in wine. The eyes of Judah then 
 no longer flash with eagerness for the battle, but are dimly 
 dark Cl^'^pn adj. after the formation 'I'nv^!, from i'^n J.C^, 
 lUCU- to be firm and close, then to bo dark (Assyr. akdhi^)) 
 
 with wine, and his teeth white with milk, his mouth being 
 full of this childlike and rural nourishment. To understand 
 the two p comparatively : his eyes have a darker fire than 
 wine, and his teeth are whiter than milk, gives a trait more 
 adapted to Canticles than to this conte.xt. Judah has finished 
 his conflicts, and now enjoys in confident peace the abundance 
 of his land. The territory of Judah was favourable for tiie 
 culture of the vine (Josh. i. 7 sqq., iv. 18, 2 Chron. xxvi. 10), 
 especially the hilly district of Hebron and Engedi (Num. 
 xiii. 23 sq., Cant. i. 14), and not less so for cattle-breeding, 
 especially the excellent pasture land at Carmel and near 
 Tekoa (1 Sain. xxv. 2, Amos i. 2, 2 Chron. xxvi. 10). And 
 such a simple, idyllic, peaceful life was indeed, during the 
 period of the Judges, the happy lot of Judah above all the 
 other tribes. In the times of David and Solomon all Israel 
 shared in the prosperity of Judah, 1 Kings v. 5. But with 
 Solomon it came to an end. The Ephrainiite Siiiloh was not 
 yet the turning-point to true and lasting prosperity. Hence 
 vv. 10, 11 are also eschatologic. The promise of peace 
 bestowed upon Judah, was first fulfilled in Him who entered 
 rejoicing Zion riding upon an ass and spake i)eace to the 
 nations, and not perfectly and enduringly in Ilim, till not only 
 
 ^ See Friedr. Delitzsch in Zimmcrn, Bahyl. Bu'<spsal. p. 115. 
 VOL. II. 2 B 
 
386 GENESIS XLIX. 13. 
 
 He Himself, in whom the history of Judah is recapitulated, 
 shall have entered into the /caraTravcrt? of the other world, 
 but shall also have fetched His Church into that Kardiravai,^ 
 of the other world, which is the heavenly counterpart of the 
 rh''^ of this world and of the full enjoyment of earthly peace. 
 The prophecy sounds as if it were national, temporal, earthly ; 
 but viewed in the history of its fulfilment, it discloses 
 relations and facts of a spiritual, eternal and heavenly 
 nature. 
 
 If the succession of birth were observed, Dan and Naphtali, 
 the two sons of Bilhah, and then Gad and Asher, the two 
 sons of Zilpah, sliould follow Judah. Instead of this, the four 
 already named sons of Leah (Eeuben, Simeon, Levi and 
 Judah) are followed by her two other sons, and in such- 
 wise that, as in the blessing of Moses, the sixth, Zebulun, 
 precedes the fifth, Issachar. The blessing pronounced upon 
 Zebulun, ver. 13 : Zebulun — near to the coast of the sea shall 
 he dwell, yea he, near to the coast of the shi2)s, and his side 
 leans on Sidon. The Nini occurring three times in cli. xlix. is 
 justified at ver. 19, and to a certain extent at ver. 20, by tlie 
 contrast ; here it is only a corroborative idemque ; this rather 
 pleonastic than emphatic use of the personal pronoun recalls 
 tlie style of Hosea. The territory of Zebulun at its western 
 extension never directly reached the Mediterranean (see Josh, 
 xix. 10-16), nor did that of Asher to whom the C??!! ^ini? 
 Judg. V. 17 is, in accordance with Josh. xix. 20, transferred. 
 It was shut in on the north in the direction towards Sidon and 
 on the west towards the Mediterranean by Asher. Thus the 
 fulfilment did not come up to either the wish or the prophecy, 
 as e.g. Acco and Sidon also, which were allotted to the tribe 
 of Asher, remained in the possession of the Cauaanites, Judg. 
 i. 13, Josh. xix. 28, Besides hv the reading ny (Targ. Jer. 
 Samar. and Codices) is also found. The plur. Q""'?' does not 
 refer to the western sea and to the sea of Kinnereth, but 
 means (comp. Gen. i. 10) the main sea, as is evident from 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 14, 15. 387 
 
 Judg. V. 15. In what sense his position with respect to tlio 
 main sea is a blessing to Zebulun is indicated in ri'px f\)n. It 
 is through his nearness to the sea that he becomes a pro- 
 sperous tribe, rejoicing in the blessings of marine commerce ; 
 a tribe which, as Deut. xxxiii. 19 says of him and of his 
 neighbouring brother Issachar, sucks the accumulated abund- 
 ance of the seas and the hidden treasures, which are carried 
 from the sandy coast into the interior. 
 
 Zebulun is followed by his elder brother. Tlie saying 
 concerning Issachar, ver. 14 : Issachar is a hon// ass, strctcliiiuf 
 liimself hetiijcen the shcepfolds. Geiger's conjecture Diii "^lon 
 (an ass of burden of foreigners), approved by Schroter and 
 Olsh., does not give the meaning put upon it, for wliich 
 we should on the contrary have expected instead of Dn:i, 
 nni or nn33 ; nor is it true that D13 ilJ^n means an emaciated 
 ass, the expression points to a strong-boned ass. 0."'^?*^^'!!, 
 the square sheepfold, is an image of the country within 
 which Issachar, contented with material advantages and 
 enjoyments, and indifferent to tlie honours of victory and 
 independence, quietly employs and takes care of himself, 
 ver. 15 : He saiu rest that it ivas good and the land that it toas 
 pleasant, and homed his shoidder to the hurdcn and became a 
 serving tash-iuorhcr. Instead of the neutral 31D (good, or : 
 a good) the Samar. needlessly corrects naio. The phrase " to 
 become iri'yDD/' ix. a serving (task-working) tributary, is 
 Ibund also in historic prose, Josh. xvi. 10, 1 Kings ix. 21. 
 The bright side of the saying is, that Issachar will bcconje a 
 robust and hardy race, and receive a pleasant country, inviting 
 to comfortable repose (according to Josh. Bell. iii. ?>. 2 also, rhv 
 rfKiara yP)'; (ptkoTrovov, the attractive Lower Galilee with the 
 lovely and fertile plain of Jezre'el) (the Midrash understands 
 by D'^yj, Nain in the west of the so-called Lesser llermon). 
 The dark side, that he is no freedom-loving N^si, but a willingly 
 labouring li^H, who, through his tendency to gain and comfort, 
 will rather submit to the yoke of foreign sway, than risk his 
 
383 GENESIS XLIX, 16, 17. 
 
 profits and possessions by warlike eflbrts.^ Eitter finds here 
 described the occupation of the nomadic tribes in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Phcenicia, who furnished the Phoenicians with 
 their caravan horses, and were their carriers ; for the territory 
 of Issachar, to which belonged the great plain of Jezre'el 
 towards Beisan, lay on the high caravan road between 
 rhoenicia and the Jordan, leading to Arabia and Damascus 
 {Erdkunde, xvi. 19). At all events the yoke upon the neck 
 (Isa. X. 27) is no blessing, and 1?^ DO? iTn to be bound to 
 villeinage, to be, as it were, taxable in labour, does not 
 become Israel, the nation called to free dominion, 1 Kings 
 ix. 22, comp. Prov. xii. 24, but the Canaanites, upon whom 
 was inflicted the curse of bondage, Josh. xvi. 10, 1 Kings 
 ix. 20 sq., and the enemies of Israel in general, so far as they 
 are not utterly extirpated, Deut. xx. 11. 
 
 After the six sons of Leah comes the turn of the sons of 
 the handmaid, whose sons were born before Eachel's own 
 sons, and first of Dan whose nomcn Jacob makes an omen of 
 his future, ver. 16 : Dan shall judge his people as one of the 
 tribes of Israel. By '^V is meant Israel, as at Deut. xxxiii. 7, 
 he will defend this as an independent tribe, without being lost 
 among the other tribes ; on the contrary, he will stand up with 
 them for the rights and honour of the nation notwithstanding 
 his smallness, for what he lacks in power he will compensate 
 for by stratagem, ver. 17 : Dan is a serpent in the icay and a 
 horned snake in the path, u-hieh bites the necks of the horse, and 
 he that rideth it fallcth bacJcwards. The 1 of bB\] is, as fre- 
 quently, consecutive without being conversive. i33T can 
 scarcely mean the carriage driver (L. Geiger), but in its direct 
 
 1 The Avar-ass imleed stands in Aiciliic (( i^^l\ A/*>- i^-V-^". xxxvi. 272) 
 
 on a level with the war-horse, so that not only the notion of endurance but also 
 
 that of eagerness for battle is combined, e.g. in the surname i"jl:sall il.K5»- 
 
 " the ass of Mesopotamia," borne by the Chalif Mcrwan II. {DMZ. xxxiv. 
 735). On the other hand, the stupidity of the ass is proverbial in the East 
 also(Z)i/Z. xL 2G6sq.). 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 18. 389 
 
 reference to d^D, as also at Ex. xv. 1, the lider cquo vchentcm. 
 ib'S^ii' (from cid'lT to rub the ground, to creep) is according to 
 .Jerome cerastes {Kepdar7)<i), i.e. the horned viper. This vi])er 
 has the brownish yellow colour of the sand, from which it 
 protrudes its knot-like antennas, and inflicts its deadly bite 
 on any one treading on it unawares (Diod. 2. 49, 20. 42, 
 riin. 8. 23, Solinus, p. 136, ed. Mommsen) ; it is called in 
 
 •41' J 
 
 Arabic i^sXo (the horned) or (according to Curt Vogel in 
 Vom Fcls zum Mecr, 1881, November) ^Ul Leffdh (the striker, 
 
 i.e. biter). The territory of Dan lay between Judah and 
 Ephraim, and only attained in some degree its requisite size 
 by the relinquishment of some of their cities by these two 
 tribes. Dan was nevertheless an independent tribe like any 
 other, and held his own against Canaanites and Philistines, 
 with whom he was by his bold craftiness involved in constant 
 strife. This trait of character in Dan shows itself in the 
 expedition described ch, xviii., and reaches its climax in the 
 romantic chivalry of Samson. The patriarch, beholding the 
 nation that descends from him imperilled by obstinate conflict 
 with the nations of the world, and the future salvation 
 threatened together with it, looks up in prayer to Jahveh, 
 ver. 18: / hope for Thy salvedion, Jahveh! The name of 
 Jahveh does not exclude the possibility of Jacob's blessing 
 being derived from Q or E. Jacob's end is indeed the threshold 
 of the Mosaic period, the sign manual of wliich is this name. 
 In no case is ver. 18 a heterogeneous insertion (J. D. Mich. 
 Vatke). It is just the prophetic glance of the seer at the 
 history of the tribe of Dan, which he beholds involved in 
 obstinate and enduring conflict with the Philistines, so far his 
 superiors in numbers and military power, which is changed 
 into an upward glance to the God of salvation. The meaning 
 of nirf "'n'"ip "inyv^^ cannot well be better developed than in the 
 Jer. Targum : " Yet not to the redemption wrought by Gideon, 
 the son of Joash, does my soul look, for it is temporal ; not 
 
390 GENESIS XLIX. 19, 20. 
 
 to the redemption wrought by Samson, the son of Manoah, is 
 my longing directed, for it is transitory ; but to the redemption 
 which Thou hast promised to bring to Thy people, the seed of 
 Israel, through Thy word. To Thy redemption, Jahveh, to 
 the redemption of the Messiah, the Son of David, who will 
 one day redeem Israel and bring him back from exile, to that 
 redemption is my sight and my desire directed, for Thy 
 redemption is an everlasting redemption." The patriarch 
 expects the full and final redemption of Israel from all hostile 
 powers, not from man, but from an act of Jahveh Himself. 
 
 Then having, as it were, obtained from Jahveh's fulness 
 new power and matter for blessing, he turns to Gad, his first 
 son by Zilpah, ver. 19 : Gad — a icarlikc throng shall press 
 'Upon him, and he shall i)rcss V2')07i their heel. The verb *nj 
 (nj), witli whicli the name "12 is here brought into combination, 
 means to cut into, to press upon, to attack in a hostile manner 
 (with an ace. following as at Tlab. iii. 16, or ^V as at Ps. 
 xliv. 21). Gad had to dwell beyond Jordan and there 
 to endure much from the Ammonites, half of whose territory 
 was taken possession of by him (Josh. xiii. 24-28), and 
 from the marauding desert tribes in general, but faithful to 
 
 his name he will victoriously resist their raids (c-Jl.ji), put- 
 ting the hostile troop to flight, following on their heels and 
 slaying the fugitives. Saying concerning Asher, Jacob's 
 second son by Zilpah, ver. 20 : From Asher comes fat, his 
 bread, and he yields roycd dairities. To understand " from 
 Asher (i.e. as to what comes from Asher) — his bread is fat " is 
 forced ; '^^[^^ is in apposition to i^^P^' : fat, fat food as his daily 
 nourishment. But all these sayings begin with the mere name 
 of the person to be blessed ; and we must, with Scheid, Bleek, 
 Kn. Olsh. take over the o of -i::'n» to npv {^^?V. their, the 
 oppressors' heels), so that the sa3'ing may begin more smoothly: 
 Asher — fat is his bread. On Nini see on ver. 13. The pro- 
 duce of his soil is so abundant, that besides feeding on the 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 21. 391 
 
 fat himself, lie furnishes kings with the dainties of their 
 tables. n^oij' is meant to recall l^*^, according to Deut. 
 xxxiii. 24, Asher dips his foot iu oil. His territory in the 
 low lands of Carmel along the coast of the Mediterranean 
 (Judg. V. 17) up to the more mountainous districts of Sidon, 
 was one of the most fertile of lands, and yielded excellent 
 corn, wine and oil. Saying concerning JSTaphtali, Jacoh's 
 second son by Bilhah, ver. 21 : Najjhtali is a land let loose, 
 one who is the hringcr forth of goodly words. Two things are 
 here allotted to Naphtali : unrestrained agility of movement and 
 the gift of refined and agreeable speech. The former alludes to 
 the independent possession of a mountainous district, in which 
 he ranges unfettered, and the latter marks him as the poetic 
 and eloquent tribe of Israel ; of this however no evidence 
 can be produced except that the song of Deborah, Judg. v., 
 is introduced as the song of Deborah and of liarak the 
 Naphtalite — by the commendation " Naphtali upon the high 
 jilaces of the field," ver. 18, it enters into relation with the 
 l)lessing of Jacob, nmpp' np'X means a hind let loose, left to 
 itself (comp. 31TI? Deut, xxxii. 36), roaming about at will ; the 
 point of comparison is not, as in the image of the gazelle 
 2 Sam. ii. 18, 1 Chron. xii. 8, swiftness, but as at Hab. iii. 19, 
 the happy state of freedom. Hence ancient translators 
 (Targ. III. Syr. Saad. Pers.) have incorrectly allowed them- 
 selves to be led by nni^L" to the notion of a messenger, and to 
 make the image represent Naphtali's successful qualifica- 
 tion for the vocation of a messenger. The LXX reads differ- 
 ently and translates : a)9 crTeA.e;^o? dveifiivov, eVtStSoi'? iu tw 
 yevvrifxaTt kuX\.o<;, i.e. like a tall stem supplying beauty in the 
 iruit. It cannot be certainly determined upon what wording 
 of the text this is founded : crTe\e;^09 seems to be a general- 
 izing rendering of rh''ii (although this is translated repe^ivdo<; 
 XXXV. 4 and <jTeX€'^o<i is more closely defined Job xxix. 18 : 
 ioairep crTeiVe^o? ^olvlko^), and eV tcZ '^e.vv!)\xarL points rather 
 to nD3 than to '"^'P'^ (Wipfel). In no case can aTeXe^o^i 
 
392 GENESIS XLIX. 22. 
 
 avetfjueuov mean virgultum rcsolutum (Jer.) or truncus ex quo 
 virgidta (^Xaarrifiara) 'prodcunt (Schleusner), but on the 
 contrary stirps procera (from dvcevai, to cause to grow). Hence 
 Bochart, Lowth, Herder, Ew. Olsh. Dillm. read and trans- 
 late : Naphtali is a slender terebinth, one who bears a 
 pleasant crown ; for iSTaphtali's territory — as Hofmann explains 
 the image — rises from the Lake of Gennesareth to Mount 
 Lebanon ; the roots of the terebinth rest by the lake, pleasant 
 cities are the branches which it casts forth, and Mount 
 Lebanon, to which it extends like an arch, is its crown. The 
 Masoretic text however has the testimony of Targums and the 
 Samar. in its favour ; besides, with this figure we should 
 expect J^.^Jj^n^ and moreover ^^^'^ in the meaning of stretched, 
 slender, is uncorroborated and linguistically improbable. 
 
 The sayings concerning the sons of the handmaids close 
 with Naphtali. Tiiey began witli Bilhah's son Dan and 
 terminate witli her son Naphtali, Zilpah's two sons, Gad and 
 Asher, standing between them. IJachel's own sons, Joseph, 
 born in Aramaea, and Benjamin, born on the way to Ephrath, 
 form the conclusion (xlviii. 7). Joseph is the deliverer, the 
 stay, the pride of his family ; it has really come to pass that the 
 sun, moon and stars, i.e. his father, mother and brethren, bow 
 down before him ; the blessing pronounced upon him flows 
 from the fulness of grateful love, and is therefore the most 
 comprehensive of all, vv. 22-26. The image, with which it 
 begins, is perhaps occasioned by the name DHr^, ver. 22 : 
 The son of a fruit-tree is Josepih, the son of a friiii-trce hy a 
 fountain, whose branches run ^ipon the wall, or if we esteem 
 the chief point of the comparison to be not support and 
 shelter by means of a prop, but productive power and eleva- 
 tion : over the wall. Both " up " and " over" are implied in yV. 
 The absence of Makkepli cannot be the reason that |2 and 
 13 are pointed with Tsere, for the word with MaJipach, e.g. at 
 xvii. 1 7, is equally pointed i^ without Makkeph ; the point- 
 ing takes 1 2 as a plur., rii33 branch, as fem., and n'i3=n^3 (with 
 
GENKSIS XLIX. 2.", 21. 303 
 
 dth for ath as in riby Lev. xxv. 21, ri")-pT and the like) as an 
 adj. to it (Targ. riashliam : a growing son, rtaslii : a noble 
 son), which is linguistically impossible. The connection is 
 genitival (hence n~^"I?), son of a fruit-tree (^nnb, Isa. xvii. G, 
 of the olive tree, usually of the vine). In India also daughters 
 and branches are interchangeable words (Roberts, Oriental 
 Illustrations, p. 55). Aeschylus, Ocd. Col. 701, calls the 
 olive tree 7raiBoTp6(f)o<; with respect to its fruits. The sing. 
 •^7^^ comprises in a whole the branches, which are compared 
 to daughters (comp. Zech. vi. 14, John i. 20). We can 
 hardly entertain the notion that irc' is in some way con- 
 nected with -\yc' a bullock, the emblem, according to Deut. 
 xxxiii. 17, of Joseph {DMZ. xxiv. 539, see Volck, Scgcn 
 Mose's, on this passage). On the other hand, Ps. Ixxx. 16 is 
 not out of relation ; for Ps. Ixxx. is, as it were, a commentary 
 on the comparison of Joseph to a young vine. Who is to 
 be understood by the rns the fruit-tree, whether Pachel or 
 Jacob or all Israel, is not the question ; ms p is a per- 
 ceptibly indivisible image. Luth. translates : J)ie TocJifer 
 tretten ein her im Ecgiment (of the daughter cities of the 
 two tribes of Joseph), which, even if it were "lib' instead of 
 "rx^, would be linguistically impossible. What now follows 
 is no retrospect to the past experiences of Joseph, the warlike 
 imagery being inappropriate to express Joseph's victory over 
 the persecutions he endured both at home and in Egypt. The 
 historical tenses express something future, which is present 
 to the mind of the patriarch as an accomplished fact, vv. 
 23, 24: The archers sorely 2'>ursuc him and shoot at him and 
 make icar vpon him. But his how rcmaius in firmness and the 
 arms of his hands move nimhly hj the hands of the Miyhty One 
 of Jacob, from thence, the shepherd, the stone of Israel. The 
 LXX, Sam. translate ^13")) from 3n to make war, but ^^^i 
 from ^ii"), a VV mid. 0. like nt Isa. i. G, and i!3h Job xxiv. 24, 
 Ges. § 67, note 1, is more significant, in'^^ is equivalent 
 to in*N Dip^3 at a place of firmness, from which he neither 
 
394 GENESIS XLIX. 23, 24. 
 
 swerves nor falls. HB is the same as the Arab. -^ to he 
 
 nimble, active. His arms are called the " arms of his hands," 
 as ruling his hands and imparting to them elasticity and 
 energy (comp. Ps. xliv. 3). Luther already remarks on vy3 
 C'Sfn : ]io8 viros sagittao^um intclligo non tribum Juda, ut alii. 
 tolunt (the Midrash understands it, according to Ts. cxx. 3, 
 of his slanderous brethren) scd Syros, qui vchemcnter afflixerunt 
 hoc rcgnum et fucrunt insigncs sagittarii ; we have indeed to 
 think chiefly, but not exclusively, of the Syrians. In "i''3S '"Tp 
 'i^l 2'pi[,!, '"'^"'^ is inconvenient. Olsh. approves of Lagarde's con- 
 jecture nc'b. As the words stand, the p of '•T'n designates 
 the cause or source of this invincible defence : from the 
 hands of the 3pj;> T3N (a Divine name occurring also in Isa. 
 and Ps. cxxxii.), these hands strengthening and supporting his 
 (Joseph's) hands. The terms that follow are permutative : 
 from thence (D^'P, i.e. from God, like ^'^ Eccles. iii. 17, with 
 God, hence, according to the meaning, avwOev) : the shepherd 
 (xlviii. 15, comp. the eclio of this Ps. Ixxx. 1), the stone (1?^', 
 as elsewhere n^iv ; the immoveable foundation and protection) 
 of Israel. The Syr. reads DG'p, according to which Oettli * 
 proposes : ^^yf "•. "1"'^^' nj;'-i ct'p, but this Cit:'"p (from the name = 
 the disclosed fulness of strength) is without analogy, and 
 ^NiD"" }3X as a bold variation leaning on bs'ib'^ "iiv (2 Sam. 
 xxiii. 3, comp. Isa. viii. 14) must be esteemed possible. Luther 
 translates : aus jenen (the Josephite tribes) siyid komcn Hirtcn 
 und Stcinc in Israel, i.e. great rulers and prophets. But the 
 rulers of a people are called shields, pillars and the like, not 
 stones. The moderns see in 2pj;^ "I'^x, which they translate 
 the " ox of Jacob," an after influence of the ancient Semitic 
 worship of the ox, as in ^xib"* px of the ancient Semitic 
 worship of stone fetishes or baetylia, but the appellations are 
 in no need of such intervention by the history of religions. 
 Ancient Jewish explanations already attempt to make h^'iv px 
 
 ^ Theol. Zeilschr. aus d. Schuxiz von FrieJr. Weili, 1885, p. 147 sqf[. 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 25, 2i>. 395 
 
 dependent as an ol)j. on nyn; so does Dilhnann, wlio, reading nj;\ 
 explains 'with Herd. E\v. : Shepherd of the stone of Israel, 
 which would be equivalent to the God of Bethel — very 
 improbable, since "'iil- ?;? ought in this sense to stand instead 
 of the misleading ni'h. The blessing now turns from the 
 descriptive to the supplicatory tone, the p, referring to the 
 cause in the former sentence, still at first continuing, ver. 25 : 
 By the God of thy father — may He help thee — and with Shaddai 
 — viay He bless thee, ivith hlessinys of heaven above, blessings of 
 the deejy conehing beneath, blessings of the breast and of the ivomb. 
 It is unnecessary, either with E\v. § 351a, Dillm. and others, to 
 alter, according to the LXX, Syr. Sam. Vulg., the nt^i, used as 
 at iv. 1, V. 24, into b^\ or, with Kn., into nxp, or to take it 
 under the after inlluence of the IP (comp. Isa. xlviii. 9, 14, 
 xlix. 7, and perhaps liii. 8) in the sense of rixp^ ; for " by the 
 God of thy father " and "with Shaddai" (used instead of ^^^ bs 
 only again in the I'ent. in the sayings of Btdaam) continues 
 the thought of whence and in whose fellowship the bow and 
 arms of Joseph would be so invincibly strong ; piTI is 
 developed in the ace. which follows (comp. ver. 28). The 
 combination ^Vp cypc' is like xxvii. 39, Ps. 1. 4. Puiin and 
 dew from above, springs and moisture from beneath, shall 
 shed their fertilizing powers on Joseph's territory, and his 
 cattle shall never fail in productiveness and abundance of 
 milk. It is superabundance which Jacob desires for Joseph, 
 ver. 26 : The blessings of thy father tower above the blessings of 
 my 'parents even to the boundary of the everlasting hills, may they 
 come upon the head of Joseph and npon the crown of the illustri- 
 ous among his brethren. The LXX already combines ny nin, 
 and the Sam. translates ^V^ /Tl'^^^ ^'^^ '>'\'\'Q=TJ nn) ; a 
 varying translation of Targ. III. combines parents and 
 hills in "•iin (" above the blessings with which Abraham and 
 Isaac, who were like tlie hills ^^J"]''^? Tr'^OP'l, were blessed"); 
 and Piashbam, like S. J. liapoport (on Freund's Hiilfsbuch, 
 1866), takes 'T^ as a collective plural like 'lin ^£VJ'n in the 
 
396 GENESIS XLIX. 26. 
 
 meaning hills. Since however hor appears elsewhere only in 
 proper names as a dialectic form, we must adopt the view 
 that ""lin is either softened or miswritten from ^'}'}^_ (as perhaps 
 ''-m Ps. xcii. 12 is from "•"^'^t^). That ly nin is meant for 
 " everlasting hills " (Ges. Win. Tuch, Kn. Dillm. and others) 
 is certainly, as supported by Deut, xxxiii. 15, comp. Hab. 
 iii. 6, very probable. In the text as we have it C'lin means 
 parentes, in which sense it is common in post-biblical and 
 also in biblical Hebrew, as niin mother (Cant. iii. 4, Hos. 
 ii. 7) shows (comp. Arab, ummdni, probably both mothers = 
 parents) ; and '^)'^'^, which elsewhere means concupisccyitia 
 (from nis), may be taken in the sense of terminus (from njs 
 Num. xxxiv. 10 = n>{n Num. xxxiv. 7 sq., nw l Sara. xxi. 14, 
 Ezek. ix. 4). According to this traditional text, the patriarch 
 intends to say, that he so far surpasses the blessings bestowed 
 on him by his parents, in his blessings of Joseph, that the 
 latter tower above the former like the highest summits of the 
 everlasting hills — but wherein did this superabundance con- 
 sist ? Here the answer is wanting. But if we read ny '•-nn, 
 mxn deprived of the prep, nj; will now mean not the boundary 
 mark, but as the parallel word to nb"i2, will (without our 
 needing, with Olsh., to correct it to the equally plural niX3n) 
 mean the charm, i.e. the charming endowment " of the ever- 
 lasting hills " with all that is beautiful, enjoyable and useful, 
 a meaning confirmed by Deut. xxxiii. 15 (Q^iy my2J 1^12^^), 
 and the sense will be, that the blessings which Jacob inherited 
 far exceeded the bestowal of an elevated and excellent hill- 
 country, M'hich is also confirmed by xxvii. 2 7-29. Eeuss 
 rightly says : La MnMidion morale du patriarche vaut encore 
 mieux que la Mn4diction materiellc de la nature. In this view 
 ^"133 is understood historically, while in the Masoretic reading 
 he who blesses would mean tliat he is now grasping at a 
 blessing beyond what he himself received. Thus, however 
 we explain it, the blessings implored upon the head of 
 Joseph, on the crown of the ">\I3 among his brethren, are 
 
GENESIS XLIX. 27. 397 
 
 superabundant, t'x^p and not t;'X"i3 is purposely said, because 
 C'N13 (or rXT!5j;) is the usual expression for the coming down 
 of a curse upon the head of some one, and euro for the 
 coming down of a blessing (Deut. xxxiii. IG, Trov. x. G^ 
 
 xi. 2G). ">V? means separated (from it:, ,j,;), and the ques- 
 tion is, whether Joseph is here and at Deut. xxxiii. IG said to 
 separate from his brethren (Onk. Pers. Gr.-Ven.) on account 
 of his chastity and self-denial, and thus a Nazir in the 
 moral sense (Jer. Saad. Ar.-Sara. Luth.), or on account of his 
 acquired power and elevation in Egypt, and thus as a 
 dedicated one = prince (Targ. 11. and III. LXX), unless the 
 word in this sense is perhaps combined with 1.T3 diadem 
 (Sam. Syr. Arnheim). As the transference of this word to 
 the moral region in general is not to be proved, nnj desi<^- 
 nates Joseph as elevated to princely rank, and as by means 
 of Ephraim and Manasseh the inheritor of this precedence in 
 power and dignity. 
 
 After this long saying concerning the blessing of Joseph, in 
 which grateful affection struggles for utterance, follows all the 
 more briefly the saying concerning Benjamin, Joseph's own 
 brother and the second son of Rachel, ver. 27 : Bcnjaviin — a 
 wolf that tears, in the viorning he devours the prey and in the 
 evening he divides the spoil The comparison with the raven- 
 ing wolf has apparently a touch of moral criticism, as that of 
 Issachar with the bony ass has a touch of irony. The LXX 
 translates \vKo<i dpira^; but ^19 ^^es not properly mean rapere, 
 h\xt carpcre, and according to the context decerpcrc (viii. 11) 
 or discerpere (xxxvii. 33). ^79 ''^^ Num. xxxiii. 2-1 may be 
 also said instead of "ly ^3X, for what has been torn or is bein" 
 torn (bitten) is called n'?.^- The Eathers (since Tertullian) 
 have dreamt in a contrast between 27a and 21b, but mornin'^ 
 and evening together give the notion of incessant victorious 
 spoiling. What a warlike tribe Benjamin became is shown 
 in the time of the Judges by his participation in the contest 
 
398 GENESIS XLIX. 28. 
 
 for freedom under Deborah, Judg. v. 14, and by bis war 
 with all the other tribes, waged indeed in an unrighteous 
 cause, Judg. ch. xx. sq. Ehud the judge may also be regarded 
 as an example of tlie warlike character of this small tribe, but 
 above all King Saul, who everywhere appears surrounded by 
 his brave and armed tribe (1 Chron. viii. 40, xii. 2, comp. 
 2 Chron. xiv. 7, xvii. 17) and accompanied by his heroic son 
 Jonathan, and whose victorious deeds had in the history of 
 Israel the significance of a pioneer's. 
 
 All these arc the tribes of Israel, says ver. 28 retrospectively, 
 tiDclve, and this is what their father spohe unto them and blessed 
 them, eaeh with what was conformahle tcith his blessing he blessed 
 them. The interpunctuation of 28a is correct, "^'fV ^^p,^ is 
 brought in afterwards, "together twelve." In 28b the circum- 
 stantial expression " with what was conformable with his bless- 
 ing" appears strange, perhaps "iti's is corrupted from t:^''^ (Olsh.) : 
 man by man according to his blessing (that appertaining to 
 him), compare the erroneous "l:^'X corrected in the Iveri, 2 Sam. 
 xxiii. 21, Num. xxi. 30. This closing verse is in the style of 
 Q (comp. i. 27, Num. i. 44). That it excludes Q as the 
 narrator of the twelve sayings (Kn. Dillm.) is without founda- 
 tion — the retrospect assumes that the sayings concerning 
 Reuben, Simeon and Levi conceal blessings behind the form 
 of curses. There are twelve tribes, not thirteen, for the 
 double tribe of Joseph is reckoned as one, as at Deut. xxvii. 
 12, comp. xxxiii. 13. More frequently however, e.g. Num. 
 ch. i. sq., xiii., Ezek. xlvii. 13, xlviii. 4 sq., Ephraim and 
 Manasseh are counted as two tribes, and the number twelve 
 maintained, by the tribe of Levi, which as the priestly tribe 
 was scattered among all the rest without separate territory, 
 solid unity, or political importance, being left unmentioned 
 and unrepresented. There are however other computations 
 which seem strange. In the blessing of Moses, Deut. xxxiii., 
 Simeon is passed over, and the number twelve made up by 
 the double tribe of Joseph counting as two and Levi being 
 
GENESIS XL;X. 20-33. 399 
 
 expressly reckoned. And in the prophecy of Ahijali, 1 Kings 
 ch. xi., where the one tribe which is left to the house of David 
 is the tribe of Jiidah, the ten tribes are thus made up, Levi is 
 left out of consideration, and Benjamin, which partly by territory 
 and entirely by inclination belonged to the northern kingdom, 
 is added (Kohler, Gcsch. ii. 457) to Ephraim, Manasseh, 
 Issachar, Zebulun, Naphtali, Asher, Gad, lieuben and Dan ; 
 the tribe of Simeon, which never had a settled territory and 
 remained without political independence, being left out of the 
 computation. The number twelve in like manner results in 
 the Apocalypse ch. vii., but here Simeon is specified, and on 
 the other hand Dan is enigmatically passed over. Everywhere 
 twelve remains undiminished and unexceeded as the sign 
 manual of the covenant people. 
 
 Jacob's last request and his departure, vv. 29-33 : And Ice 
 charged them, and said to them : I shall soon he gathered to 
 my peoijle, hury me with my fathers in the cave which is in the 
 field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave which is in the field of 
 ^fachjJclah, ivhieh is in front of Mamre in the land of Canaan, 
 icliich Alraham bought together with the field from Fjjhron the 
 Hittite for a possession of a hurying-place. There they buried 
 Abraham and Sarah his wife, there they buried Isaac and Ecbckah 
 his wife, and there I buried Leah. — T lie field bought and the cave 
 therein from the sons of lleth. And, xohen Jacob made an end 
 of charging his sons, he dreio his feet into the bed and dcpiarted, 
 and icas gathered to his p)copIc. The sentence 'lil "3p i^'X, in 
 which "Tlti'nTix is antecedently intended, is defended from the 
 suspicion of being a gloss by I. 12 where it is repeated; but 
 ver. 32, which joins with nothing, is a marginal note in 
 explanation of "the cave with the field" ?jOh which has been 
 admitted into the text; it shows at the same time that all the 
 three nc'X in ver. 30 are meant to refer to the cave. It is 
 here expressly said that Isaac, Rebekah and Leah had been 
 buried in the cave of Macphelah. He must renounce lying 
 near Eachel, because the neighbourhood of her grave was still 
 
4 00 GENESIS L. 1-3. 
 
 in the bands of the Canaanites. His drawins? his feet into 
 the bed refers back to xlviii. 2, although his sitting up, as 
 there mentioned, need not necessarily be conceived as con- 
 tinuing beyond xlix. 1. On "I'sy'pN pids''i see on xxv. 8. He 
 died in full consciousness, without a struggle, comforted by 
 the hope of the salvation of Jahveh, willingly passing into 
 another world to join his fellow-ancestors of that people for 
 whom he knows this salvation of Jahveh was intended, and 
 hiding in him his personality, as that of which he could not 
 be deprived. It is intentionally that the brief nn""! is omitted, 
 the last moments of the ancestor of Israel are kept back 
 as long as possible, the reader is to see and feel that he 
 departs from this world in a manner consistent with his piety 
 and dignity. We already know from xlvii. 28 the length of 
 his life in this world. 
 
 THE BURIAL OF JACOB AND DEATH OF JOSEPH, CH. L. 
 
 It is evident from the junction of 12 sq. with xlix. 29 sqq. 
 {Q) and of ver. 4 ('iJl ^?T1)-11 with xlvii. 29 sqq. («/), as well 
 as from the similar kind of statement in vv. 19, 23 and xxx. 
 2 sq. {E), that R has here brought together the three main 
 sources, but no certain separation into J and E can be carried 
 out, especially since judgment is divided as to xxxiii. 18-20, 
 and the use of the Divine name here (comp. the introd. to 
 ch. xlv.) affords no support. In the closing portion too, ver. 
 1 5 sqq., which is by general acknowledgment traced to E, 
 much is also found which is Jahvistico-Deuteronomic, and 
 which we could not set to the account of 7?. 
 
 Joseph with the corpse of his father, ver. 1 : And Joficph 
 fdl vpon Ids father s face, and ivept upon lain and Jdssed him. 
 Thus was fulfilled the promise, xlvi. 4. The embalming, 
 vv. 2, 3 : A7id Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, 
 to embalm his father, and the physicians embalmed Israel. 
 And forty days were passed thereat, for so long is the time of 
 
GENESIS L. 4-6. 401 
 
 embalming accustomed to last, and tlie Egyptians mourned for 
 him seventy days. The physicians (LXX ivTa(pia(Trai = 
 rapfx^MTat) are called Joseph's W12]}, not because they belonged 
 to a caste subordinate to him, the priest (for a caste of 
 physicians was probably first found under Psammetichus), 
 but because physicians in his private service are intended; 
 moreover it was the subordinate priestly class of the pastophori 
 (Egypt, the Kolchyti) who, being according to Clem. Alex. 
 in possession of the last six (medical) of the forty-two so- 
 called Hermetic books, performed the embalming and burial 
 of corpses and the worship of the dead in the grave chapels. 
 These executed the embalming (^''^P.^H) in the customary forty 
 days, and the Egyptians mourned for the dead seventy days 
 (these forty included). Diodor. i. 91 reckons more than 
 forty days for embalming (another reading is thirty) ; Herodot. 
 ii. 86, 88 exactly seventy; the shortest delay, if the greatest 
 possible haste was made, would have been forty. The corpse 
 was opened by an incision in the side, the intestines and the 
 brain were taken out and separately preserved in vessels 
 (canopi). The drying (mummyizing ^) of the body was pro- 
 moted by the insertion of bituminous material, it was wrapped 
 in numerous bandages and layers of byssus or linen, and, after 
 remaining seventy days in the house of those to whom it 
 belonged, was enclosed in a coffin and buried. 
 
 Pharaoh's permission to bury the dead out of the country 
 obtained, vv. 4-6 : When the days of mourning for him were 
 passed, Joscjyh spoke to the house of Pharaoh saying : If I have 
 found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of 
 Pharaoh saying : My father m^ie me swear, saying : Behold, I 
 die — in my grave which I have digged for myself in the land of 
 Canaan, there shall thou hury me. And now I woidd go up 
 and hury my father and return again. And Pharaoh said : 
 
 ^ The word " mummy," in use since the thirteenth century, is derived from the 
 Persian mAm, wax, and travelled back to the Persian in the foreign form m&mia 
 = fi.i>vfiU as the name of a medical remedy. 
 
 VOL. II. 2 C 
 
402 GENESIS L. 7-11. 
 
 Go up and hury thy father as he made thee swear. The form 
 n^;3 (with nw3 xxxv. 8) is like ^'3'^ Num. xxi. 29. Joseph 
 does not himself go at once to Pharaoh, but, desiring to go 
 out of the country with all his family and a great retinue, he 
 first seeks, for the sake of avoiding malicious insinuations, to 
 dispose Pharaoh's surroundings to favour his request. Besides, 
 etiquette forbade him, a mourner (and therefore unshorn and 
 unadorned), to appear in his own person before the king. 
 That Joseph makes his father describe the grave in which he 
 desired to be buried as prepared by himself, is an abbreviation 
 suited to the brevity of the communication. The verb mD 
 means to dig, and according to Deut. ii. 6, also to bury, whence 
 the Syr. Ai o j translates {em%), but a grave being spoken of " I 
 digged " (LXX, Targ. Jer. Jerome, Gr. Ven.) is according to the 
 custom of the language the more obvious, and is confirmed by 
 2 Chron. xvi. 14. The king and the court did not need to 
 be acquainted with details, and Onk. correctly renders the 
 word by n^iprix (I have prepared), which is what is meant. 
 The escort and mourning solemnity, vv. 7-11 : Then Joseph 
 went up to hury his father, and tvith him went tip all the 
 servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house and all tJie elders 
 of the land of Egypt. And the whole house of Joseph and 
 his brethren and the house of his father, only their little ones 
 and their flocks and herds they left in the land of Goshen. 
 And there went up ivith him both chariots and horsemen, and 
 the host was a very imposing one. Wlien they were come to the 
 threshing-floor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, they made 
 there a great and very imposing mourning solemnity, and he 
 ordered a mourning of seven days for his father. And when 
 the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning 
 in the threshing-floor of Atad, they said : This is a great mourn- 
 ing of the Egijptians, therefore they called the name of it Abel- 
 Mizraim, which is beyond Jordan. The principal courtiers 
 and state officials journeyed with him, to show the last respect 
 to the father of the chief ruler of Egypt C.^i?^ is here a name 
 
GENESIS L. 7-11. 403 
 
 of dignity, as at xxiv. 2). Chariots and horsemen (comp, 
 Ex. xiv. 9, XV. 19, and above on xii. 16) enhanced the pomp 
 and served as escort. It was a very great, i.e. imposing i^.^nD. 
 They took the indirect route through the wilderness round 
 the Dead Sea, because they desired, without touching upon 
 Philistia and Idumea, to shorten as much as possible the 
 passage through foreign and mistrustful states. They halted 
 in Goren-Atad (^^^5 a thorn pdf^vo<i, as Dioscorides explains it, 
 and pa gathering-place, viz. of the corn for threshing) beyond 
 Jordan, and Joseph there ordered a seven days' mourning for 
 his father. The place was afterwards called, in allusion, as 
 the narrator thinks, to this mourning (^???) of the Egyptians, 
 ^P-yP ^?^, the plain of the Egyptians. V. Eaumer, Eitter, Kn. 
 and others are indeed of opinion that this Goren-Atad is said 
 to have lain n")*n "i3yn from the point of view of the funeral 
 procession, and so on the west side of Jordan, as required by 
 the statement of Jerome : Area Atad locus trans Jordanem, 
 in quo planxerunt quondam Jacob, tertio ah Hicrico lapide, 
 duohus milihus ah Jordane, qui nunc vocatur Betagla, quod 
 interprctatur locus gyri, eo qiiod ibi more plangcntium cir- 
 cumierint in funere Jacob. The trans Jordanem here can 
 only be a quotation from this passage, for the distance stated 
 points to the western side, where was the ancient '^/fi'^"n"'3, 
 situate on the southern boundary of Benjamin toward Judah, 
 whose position has been ascertained by the discovery of the 
 well and castle of Hagla f of a league south - east of 
 Jericho and 1^^ leagues from the Dead Sea. Not equally 
 certain however is the identity asserted by Jerome of Area 
 Atad and Betagla (n^jn-JT'zi) in his possible indeed, but in 
 this instance far-fetched interpretation of nbin (which means 
 partridge), by ggriis (circular motion). This might be 
 reconcilable with ver. 10, where \i-\''n -\2V2 may proceed 
 from the view - point of the funeral procession, but not 
 with ver. 11, according to which pi^n naya "icx DnvD ^3X, 
 the plain of Egypt on the other side of Jordan, became 
 
404 GENESIS L. 12-15. 
 
 the usual name of the locality (X"ip J3"?y, as at xxxiii. 17). 
 Hence we must regard Goren Atad or Abel Mizraim as some 
 place unknown on the east of Jordan, to which the attention 
 of the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the country (on this 
 side), which was the goal of the journey, was attracted by the 
 unusual mourning solemnity performed by so many dis- 
 tinguished foreigners. Conclusion of the funeral journey 
 from Q, vv. 12, 13 : And his sons did to him as he had com- 
 manded them, and his sons brought him to the land of Canaan 
 and buried him in the cave of the field of Maclipclah, which 
 Abraham bought together ivith the field for a possession of a 
 burying-plaee of Ephron the nittite before Mamre. From the 
 floor of Atad the procession passed over Jordan by the most 
 southerly of its three fords, situate below the sea of Tiberias 
 (the upper of which was at Beisan, the middle one from 
 Nablus to Salt, the lower at Gilgal), to bring the patriarch, in 
 accordance with his last will, to Canaan, and they buried him 
 there in the hereditary grave, which undisputedly belonged 
 to him. The abrupt VJ3 12a shows that the brief narrative 
 in Q was thus continued in adjunction to xlix. 33. The 
 blending with JE, as it is before us, states, what is besides 
 obvious, that the transference of Jacob to Hebron was per- 
 formed by his sons alone, the Egyptian retinue being left 
 behind. 
 
 Eeturn from the burial, ver. 14 : And Joseph returned to 
 Egypt, he and his brethren and all that went up with him to 
 bury his father, after he had buried his father. It is the text 
 of J, in which Joseph, as was according to xlvii. 30 sq, to be 
 expected, is the chief figure in the burying. The anxiety of 
 the brethren, ver. 1 5 : IVhcn then Joseph's brethren saw that 
 their father was dead, they said : If now Jose:ph should treat us 
 as enemies and should requite us all the evil which we did to 
 him ! The narrative here proceeds according to E with 
 assistance from J. It is a hypothetical sentence in the tone 
 of an exclamation (here beginning with ^ as Ps. xxvii with 
 
GENESIS L. lC-21. 405 
 
 N.fv), in which is latent the apodosis : what would then 
 become of us ? Deputation of intermediaries to Joseph, 
 vv. 16, 17: And they sent a message to Joseph saying : Thy 
 father commanded hefore his death saying : Tlivs speah ye to 
 Joseph: Forgive, I pray thee, the crime of thy hrethren and their 
 sin, for they did evil to thee, and now, we pray thee, forgive the 
 crime of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph 
 wept when they spake to him. Certainly their father would 
 not once only, but often, have impressed upon them this duty 
 in the case of his death, and at the same time have allayed 
 their anxiety by such counsel. There is no need for sup- 
 posing that this was expressly related in either E or JE. 
 
 N=)X has Pazer on the tone syllable and Munach on the pen- 
 ultima instead of the countertone Metheg ; in Ex. xxxii. 3 1 
 also (the only passage of the Pent, where it occurs in J 
 besides here) it has emphatic double accentuation (Konig, 
 Lehrgel). i. 678 sq.). On Nb'3 with a dative obj. comp. xviii. 
 24, 26. In the n^P. which follows is inserted the foundation 
 for their request, viz. the oneness of his and their God. It 
 was with tears that Joseph received their message, and they 
 now come themselves, vv. 18-21 : Then went also his hrethren 
 and fell down hefore him and said : Behold, we will he thy slaves. 
 But Joseph said to them : Fear not, for am I in the p)lace of 
 Elohim .? You meant irideed evil against me, hut Elohim meant 
 it for good, to do as it is this day, to ^?resc?'rc a great nation 
 alive. Nov) then fear ye not : I — / ivill nourish you and your 
 family. Thus he comforted them and spoke to their heart. 
 The question '^^^ ^^O^.i!? ^iI'Dn meant at xxx. 2 : have I the 
 power, here: have I the right, to interpose in God's dispen- 
 sation, and both times : am I not bound to submit to God ? 
 The form of the iif. constr. nb'y is like '"'i^'l xlviii. 11, comp. 
 nni xlvi. 3. The promise 'l3"i -5???^ sounds, if we compare xlv. 
 11, xlvii. 12, as if the famine were still continuing, but what 
 had occurred once might occur again, even if not for so great 
 
406 GENESIS L. 22-20. 
 
 a length of time ; hence it is unnecessary to ascribe to ^ a 
 different chronology (Kn. Dillm.) ; besides, the narrator here 
 may just as well be J as E, for it is not certain that xlv. 7 is 
 from E, comp. nvnn^ xix. 19, nynj; Num. xxi. 6, 3^"by "13T 
 xxxiv. 3, and n^n Di>3 Deut. ii. 30, iv. 20 and frequently, 
 for the style of J, especially here, is the nascent style 
 of B. Eemainder of Joseph's life, his last will and his 
 burying, vv. 22—26 : And Joseph remained in EgTjpt, he and 
 the house of his father, and Joseph lived an hundred and ten 
 years, and Joseph saw the sons of Ephraim of the third genera- 
 tion ; the sons also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were horn 
 tqjon Joseph's knees. And Joseph said to his hrethren : I die, 
 and Elohim will certainly visit you and hring you up out of 
 this land into the land which He sware to Abraham, Isaac and 
 Jacob. And Joseph took oath of the sons of Israel saying : 
 Elohim will visit, yea visit you, and ye shall bring up my bones 
 hence. And Joseph died an hundred and ten years old, and 
 they embalmed him, and they put him in a coffin in Egypt. 
 The sons of Machir, the son of Manasseh (Num. xxvi. 28 sq.), 
 are the great-grandsons of Joseph, hence Q*P'?^ \^? do not 
 mean children of the third generation to the exclusion of the 
 ancestor, i.e. great-great-grandsons (=D''J?in), but great-grand- 
 sons, so that Ci''"^w is not a proper but an appositional genitive 
 (Tuch, Kn. Dillm.). The question, why it is not also stated 
 through which of the sons of Ephraim (Num. xxvi. 35) it was 
 that Joseph became a great-grandfather,^ is settled by the 
 circumstance, that none of the sons of Ephraim were equal in 
 historical importance to Machir, the son of Manasseh (see 
 Num. xxxii. 39 sq., Deut. iii. 15). To be born on any one's 
 knees is equivalent to being received into his or her bosom 
 with paternal or maternal joy (xxx. 3). On the fulfilment of 
 what Joseph caused to be promised to him with an oath, see 
 Ex. xiii. 9, Josh. xxiv. 32. After ^t^^n^l with the unnamed 
 
 ^ Started and answered in a needlessly circuitous manner in Lion Gomperz' 
 Nachgelassenen Schrifien (Wien, Lijipe 1S87). 
 
GENESIS L. 22- 2f5. 407 
 
 subject of the persons employed (see on xli. 14), the sing. 
 D^"|il with a similarly general subject is harsh (comp. however 
 xliii. 34, xlviii. 1 sq.), and a Ke^-i D^TI would have been still 
 better applied here than at xxiv. 33 (Konig, Lchrgch. i. 
 435 sq.). He was embalmed and laid Qn^»•rpn ;iiN3. A 
 
 stone coffin is still called J\j^^ ( J^l ), in Bedouin Jj, which 
 
 also occurs, written wis, in Hauranian inscriptions {DMZ. 
 xxii. 264). It is here, as the article shows, the sarcophagus 
 in common use in Egypt, which might consist, like that of 
 Mycerinus discovered in the third pyramid, of the wood of the 
 ficus sycomoonis, but was mostly of stone, frequently of porphyry, 
 from the porphyry quarries still to be seen of the oasis of 
 Bethin in the Sinaitic peninsula. The Haggada (in the Talmud, 
 Midrash and Targum) turns it into a metal coffin, which was 
 sunk in the Nile for its greater security.^ 
 
 Ci^jon — with this statement, in itself self-comprehensible, 
 in its connection with the whole subject significant, the first 
 book of the Thorah closes. Israel is still in Egypt, and is 
 there in full process of growth into a nation, waiting to 
 be brought thence according to promise. "When it became 
 free from bondage and entered Canaan there entered with 
 it, as the Talmud frequently reiterates, two niJliN, the 
 ark of the ever-living One and the coffin of the dead 
 Joseph. The latter was now standing ready for conveyance, 
 and Jacob, the father of twelve tribes, was already buried in 
 the Promised Land. The impulse of faith was in those days 
 towards Canaan. Canaan was then the present form of the 
 blessing of salvation. Itself of an earthly nature, it acquired 
 as the promised gift of grace, a spiritual and to a certain extent 
 a heavenly character. Buried there, the patriarchs believed 
 that they rested in the love of God. Marching thither, Israel 
 hoped to enter into the peace and glory of God. 
 
 ^ See J. H. Bondi, Dem, hebrdisch-phonizischen Sprachziceige angehoriije 
 Lehnworter in hieroglyphischen und hicratischen Texten (18S6), pp. 120-128. 
 
408 GENESIS L. 22-26. 
 
 The primitive history began with the formation of the 
 heavens and the earth from the original chaos, the patriarchal 
 history with the bringing forth of Abraham from the chaos of 
 the heathen world. The primitive history ended in the 
 Semites as well as the Japhethites and Hamites being sunk 
 in heathenism ; the patriarchal history ends in the deliverer 
 and preserver of the house of Jacob being placed in his coffin. 
 This " coffin in Egypt " is the coffin of all the spiritual joy of 
 Israel in Egypt. The deep silence of history settles like 
 a dark night upon the succeeding centuries. During these 
 Israel has no redemptive, but only a secular history, until at 
 last the hour of deliverance strikes, and the dumb tongue of 
 history again begins to speak. 
 
 END OF VOLUME II. 
 
 4> 
 
Date Due 
 
BS1235.D356V.2 
 
 A new commentary on Genesis 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library