THE UNITY OF THE BOOK
OF GENESIS
BY
WILLIAM HENRY GREEN, D.D., LL.D.
PROFESSOR
OF ORIENTAL AND OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE IN
THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1895
COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
[Digitally prepared by Dr. Ted Hildebrandt
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
PREFACE
ALL tradition, from whatever source it is
derived,
whether inspired
or uninspired, unanimously affirms that
the first
five books of the Bible were written by one man
and that man
was Moses. There is no counter-testimony
in any
quarter. From the predominant character
of their
contents
these books are commonly called the Law.
All
the statutes
contained in them are expressly declared to
have been
written by Moses or to have been given by the
LORD to
Moses. And if the entire law is his, the
history,
which is
plainly preparatory for, or subsidiary to, the
law, must be
his likewise.
The Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch
has, how-
ever, been
challenged in modern times in the name of
the higher
criticism on two distinct and independent
grounds. One is that of the document hypothesis in its
various
forms and modifications, which occupies itself
with the
narrative portion of the Pentateuch, and on
the ground
of literary criteria claims that this is not the
product of
anyone writer, but that it has been compiled
from
different documents, which are clearly distinguish-
able in
diction, style, conception, plan, and design, and
which belong
to widely separated ages. The other is
that of the
development hypothesis, which has attached
itself to
the preceding, but deals characteristically with a
different portion
of the Pentateuch and employs a differ-
ent style of
argument. Its field of operation is the
laws,
which it
claims were not and could not have been given by
Moses, nor
at anyone period in the history of
vi PREFACE
It professes
to trace the growth of this legislation from
simple and
primitive forms to those which are more
complex and
which imply a later and more developed
civilization. And it confidently affirms that these laws
could not
have been committed to writing in their pres-
ent form for
many centuries after the age of Moses.
These hypotheses are discussed in a
general way in my
"Higher
Criticism of the Pentateuch," where the fallacy
and
inconclusiveness of the reasoning by which they are
defended and
the falsity of the conclusions deduced from
them are
exposed. In order to a complete
refutation of
these
hypotheses it is necessary to show still further by
a detailed
examination their inapplicability to, and in-
compatibility
with, the phenomena of the Pentateuch,
and that, so
far from solving the question of its origin,
they are
destitute of any real basis; they find no support
in the
Pentateuch itself, but are simply the creations of
learned
ingenuity and a lively imagination.
The present treatise occupies itself
exclusively with
the document
hypothesis, and aims to prove that the
book of
Genesis is not a compilation from different docu-
ments, but
is the continuous work of a single writer.
The
demonstration that this hypothesis has no foothold
in Genesis
effectually overturns it for the rest of the
Pentateuch,
or, if the critics please, the Hexateuch.
It
took its
rise in Genesis; the most plausible arguments
in its favor
are drawn from that book; and the verdict
rendered by
that book substantially settles the case for
those that
follow. It is on the basis of the
assumption
that it is
firmly established in Genesis that it is carried
through the
Hexateuch. If that assumption is proved
to be false,
the hypothesis collapses entirely.
What is here proposed is a critical study of Genesis
from
beginning to end, chapter by chapter and section
by
section. The history of critical opinion
is given in
PREFACE
vii
full in the
more important passages, and is throughout
traced
sufficiently to place before the reader the various
views that
have been entertained, together with the
grounds
adduced on their behalf. Pains have been
taken
to carefully
collate and frankly state whatever has been
urged in
defence of the hypothesis by its ablest and
most eminent
advocates on each successive passage; and
this is then
subjected to a thorough and candid exami-
nation. The reader will thus be put in possession of
the
reasons for
and against it to the best of the writer's abil-
ity, and can
form his own conclusion. The writer,
while
aiming at
entire fairness in presenting both sides of the
argument,
does not conceal his own assured conviction
of the
overwhelming preponderance in favor of the faith
of ages and
against the divisive hypothesis of modern
times.
As the alleged criteria of the different
documents are
most fully
and clearly stated by Dr. Dillmann, his pres-
entation of
them is followed throughout the book, unless
where some
other authority is expressly mentioned.
To avoid constant circumlocution P, J, E,
and D are
frequently
spoken of as though they were the real en-
tities that
the critics declare them to be, and passages
are said to
belong to one or the other because critics so
affirm. Such language adopted for brevity must not be
understood
as an admission that the documents so called
ever
existed.
In replying to the objections of Bishop
Colenso in
1863 the
author ventured the suggestion that he might
at some
future time prepare a work on the criticism of
the
Pentateuch. Since that time the
positions then
taken by
leading critics have been abandoned by them-
selves, and
their whole conception of the origin and con-
stitution of
the Pentateuch has been revolutionized.
The complex character of the Pentateuchal
question
viii PREFACE
and the
tedious minuteness required in its thorough ex-
amination
doubtless supply the reason why so many
critics are
content with repeating or building upon the
conclusions
of their predecessors without investigating
for
themselves the soundness of the basis on which these
conclusions
rest. The author frankly confesses for
him-
self that,
while he felt at every point the weakness and
unsatisfactory
character of the arguments of the divisive
critics, he
was long deterred by the complexity of the
task from
undertaking to prepare such a treatise as the
nature of
the case required. He might have
continued
still to
shrink from it but for the proposal, in 1888,
by his
friend Dr. W. R. Harper, of an amicable dis-
cussion of
the subject in the columns of the Hebraica.
The kindly
proposal was accepted, though with some
hesitation
lest the cause whose defence was thus under-
taken might
suffer from unskilful advocacy. It
seemed,
however, to
involve less responsibility and to be a less
onerous
undertaking to engage in such a discussion,
piecemeal,
in the columns of a quarterly journal, at
the
solicitation of a friend, than to set myself to the
preparation
of a work on the entire subject of my own
motion. The discussion thus begun was continued at
intervals,
step by step, through the whole of the narrative
portion of
the Pentateuch. Though convinced at the
outset of
the unsoundness in the main of the arguments
urged on
behalf of the critical partition of the Penta-
teuch by its
principal defenders, I did not know but
there might
be some fire where there was so much
smoke, and
some possible foundation for the positive
assertions
in which the critics are so prone to indulge.
The
discussion was accordingly begun with no absolute
prepossession
on my part for or against the existence of
Pentateuchal
documents. One thing was clear to my
mind from
the beginning, that the Pentateuch as inspired
PREFACE ix
of God was a
true and trustworthy record; everything
else was
left to be determined by the evidence which it
should
supply. As the discussion proceeded I
found my-
self unable
to discover sufficient reason anywhere for the
assumption
that the Pentateuch was a compilation from
pre-existing
documents; and by the time that my task
was
completed I had settled down in the assured belief
that the
so-called documents were a chimera, and that
the
much-vaunted discovery of Astruc was no discovery
at all, but
an ignis fatuus which has misled critics ever
since into a
long and weary and fruitless search through
fog and
mire, that might better be abandoned for a
forward
march on terra firma.
The discussion in the Hebraica
prepared the way for
the volume
now offered to the public, in which the
attempt is
made to treat the question with more thor-
oughness
than was possible in the limitations necessarily
imposed in a
crowded quarterly. The ground there
traversed
has been carefully re-examined and explored
at afresh in
the light shed upon it by the ablest minds on
either side
of the controversy. The prominence ac-
corded to
German scholars is due to the fact that the
have been
the chief laborers in the field. The
various
partition
hypotheses, after Astruc's conjecture, as he
himself
termed it, had pointed out the way, have been
originated
and elaborated by German scholars. And if
they have
failed to put them upon a solid basis, it is but
from no lack
of learning, ingenuity, or perseverance, but
much from
the inherent weakness of the cause.
It is hoped that this volume may prove a
serviceable
text-book
for the study of criticism; that it may meet
the wants of
theological students and ministers who de-
sire to
acquaint themselves thoroughly with a subject of
such
prominence and importance; and that it may like-
wise prove
helpful to intelligent laymen who, omitting
x PREFACE
the
discussion of Hebrew words that are necessarily in-
troduced,
may be led by it to a better understanding of
the book of
Genesis in its connection and the mutual
relation of
its several parts, and be helped in the solu-
tion of
difficulties and the removal of objections.
It
stands on
the common ground, dear alike to all who re-
gard the
Pentateuch as the word of God through Moses,
whether Jew
or Christian, Catholic or Protestant, clergy-
man or
layman. If by the divine blessing it
shall be
made to
contribute in any measure to the elucidation or
defence of
this part of Holy Scripture, or to the confir-
mation of the
faith of any, or to the relief of such as
may have
been perplexed or troubled by anxious doubts
or
misgivings, the author will be profoundly grateful to
Him to whom
all praise is due.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
THE BOOK OF
GENESIS, 1
The creation of the heavens and the
earth (Gen. i. 1-ii. 3),
words indicative of P, 4.
I
THE
GENERATIONS OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH (CH. II. 4-IV.) 7
Primitive state and fall of man (ch. ii.
4-iii. 24), 7; false critical
methods, 7; no duplicate account of the
creation,
9; no discrepancies, 20; words and phrases
indicative of J,
29 ; mutual relation of this and the
preceding section, 33.
Cain and Abel--Cain's descendants (ch. iv.),
36; marks of J, 39.
II
THE
GENERATIONS OF ADAM (CH. V. 1- VI. 8), 42
Adam to Noah (ch. v.), 42; the Cainite
and Sethite gen-
ealogies, 43; duplicate statements, 47;
primeval chronology,
49; marks of P, 50. The Sons of God and the Daughters of
Men (ch. vi. 1-8), 51; marks of J, 61.
III
THE
GENERATIONS OF NOAR (CH. VI. 9-IX. 29), 65
The flood (ch. vi. 9-ix. 17), 65; the
critical partition of
ch. vi. 5-ix. 17, 66; J not continuous, 71;
P not contin-
uous, 78; no superfluous repetitions, 83 ;
the divine names,
88; no discrepancies, 90; difference of
diction, 94; marks
of P, 96; marks of J, 116; numerical
correspondence, 121;
the Assyrian flood tablets? 122, Noah after the flood (ch.
ix. 18-29), 127.
xii CONTNETS
IV
PAGE
THE
GENERATIONS 0F THE SONS 0F NOAH. (CH. X. l-XI. 9), 131
Origin of
nations (ch. x.), 131 ; marks of P, 141 ; marks
of J, 143.
V
THE
GENERATIONS 0F SHEM (CH. XI. 10-26), 146
Shem to Abram (ch. xi. 10-26), 146.
VI
THE
GENERATIONS OF TERAH (Cx. XI. 27-XXV. 11), 148
Preliminary remarks, 148; the divine
names, 151; the crit-
ical partition, 154; no discrepancies,
161. The family of
Terah (ch. xi. 27-32), 168. The call of Abram and his jour-
neys (ch.
xii.), 171; critical partition of vs. 1-9, 172; marks
of P, 175;
marks of J, 181. Abram in
182; marks
of J, 185. Separation from
grounds of
partition, 186; marks of P, 192; marks of J, 193.
Abram's
rescue of
nant of
Jehovah (ch. xv.), 202. Birth of Ishmael
(ch. xvi.),
208; marks of
P, 213; marks of J, 215. Covenant sealed
by Abraham
(ch. xvii.), 217; style of P, 226; marks of P,
231. Visit to Abraham and destruction of
1-xix. 28),
236; marks of J, 240.
38), 246;
marks of J, 250. Abraham with Abimelech,
king
of Gerar
(ch. xx.), 250; critical embarrassment, 250; diction
of ch. xx.,
252; not referable to a distinct document, 254;
marks of E,
259. Birth of Isaac and dismissal of
Ishmael (ch.
xxi. 1-21),
262; critical perplexity, 262; division impossible,
266 ; marks
of P, 269; marks of J, 269; marks of E, 270.
Abraham at
276. Sacrifice of Isaac (ch. xxii. 1-19), 277; the
critical par-
tition, 278;
marks of E, 286; marks of R, 288; no proof of
separate
documents, 290. Family of Nahor (ch.
xxii. 20-24),
291; marks
of J, 292. Death and burial of Sarah
(ch. xxiii.),
293; marks
of P, 296. Marriage of Isaac (ch.
xxiv.), 298;
marks of J,
304. Conclusion of Abraham's life (ch.
xxv.
1-11), 307;
marks of P, 310.
CONTENTS xiii
VII
Page
THE
GENERATIONS OF ISHMAEL (CH. XXV. 12-18), 312
Marks of P, 313.
VIII
THE
GENERATIONS OF IsAAC (CH. XXV. 19-XXXV.), 314
Esau and Jacob (ch. xxv. 19-34), 314;
marks of P, 320;
marks of J, 321. Isaac in Gerar and
1-33), 322; marks of J, 326. Jacob's blessing and depart-
ure (ch. xxvi. 34-xxviii. 9), 328; marks of
P, 332; marks of
of J, 333; marks of E, 333. Jacob's dream (ch. xxviii.
10-22), 335; marks of J, 341; marks of E,
342. Jacob in
marks of J. 353; marks of E, 354. Jacob's return from
362; the covenant of Laban and Jacob, 365;
the divine
names, 369; marks of P, 370; marks of E,
370. Meeting
of Jacob and Esau (ch. xxxii. 4-xxxiii. 17),
372; Jacob
wrestling with the angel, 377; no proof of a
parallel narra-
tive, 380; the divine names, 380; marks of
J, 381. The
rape of Dinah (ch. xxxiii 18-xxxiv.), 382;
Jacob's arrival
in Shechem, 383; critical difficulties, 386;
divergence of the
critics, 388; not composite, 398; marks of
P, 402; marks
of J, 403.
Jacob at
404.
Jacob at
of partition irrelevant, 411; conclusion of
the section, 412.
IX
THE
GENERATIONS OF ESAtJ (CH. XXXVI.-XXXVII.1), 415
Opinions of critics, 415; unity of the
chapter, 417 ; no dis-
crepancies, 420; no anachronism, 425.
X
THE
GENERATIONS OF JACOB (CR. XXXVII. 2-L.), 430
The unity of plan, 430; lack of
continuity in the docu-
ments, 434;
the divine names, 434; diction and style, 435.
Joseph sold
into
xiv CONTENTS
PAGE
among critics, 437; grounds of partition,
447; marks of J,
450.
The narrative of Judah and Tamar (ch. xxxviii), 452;
no lack of order, 452; no anachronism, 454;
marks of J,
455.
Joseph is cast into prison (ch. xxxix.), 457; no dis-
crepancies, 457; the divine names, 459;
marks of J, 462.
Dreams of the butler and baker (ch. xl.),
463; no discrep-
ancy, 464; no anachronism, 466; diction,
467. Pharaoh's
dreams (ch. xli.), 467; grounds of
partition, 468. Journeys
of Jacob's sons to
ancy, 475; the divine names, 482; marks of J
and E, 483.
Joseph makes himself known (ch. xlv.), 487;
marks of E,
491.
Removal to
498; marks of E, 498; marks of P, 498. Settlement in
of J, 502.
Joseph's arrangements in
504; marks of E, 506; marks of J, 507; marks
of P, 509. Jacob
charges Joseph and adopts his sons (ch.
xlvii. 28-xlviii.
22), 510; marks of P, 518; marks of E, 518;
marks of J,
519.
Jacob's blessing and death (ch. xlix.), 519; no vati-
cinium post eventum, 521; marks of P,
526. The burial of
Jacob and death of Joseph (ch.l.), 526;
marks of J, 529;
marks of E, 530.
CONCLUSION, 531
Grounds of partition, 531; repetitions
and discrepancies,
532; the divine names, 538; diction, style,
and conception,
548; continuity of Genesis, 554; chasms in
the documents,
556; when and where produced, 560. Summary of the argu-
ment, 571.
INDEX.
I. THE DIVINE NAMES, 573
II. STYLE,
CONCEPTION AND THE RELATION OF PASSAGES, 573
III.
CHARACTERISTIC WORDS AND PHRASES, 574
IV. THE
ENGLISH EQUIVALENTS, 579
WORKS REFERRED TO IN THIS
VOLUME
*** These
works are here arranged in the order of their publication.
The reader
can thus see at a glance where each belongs in the history of
critical
opinion.
Matthew
Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible, First Edition, 1683.
Astruc,
Conjectures sur leg Memoires Originaux, dont il paroit, que
Moyse s'est servi pour composer le Livre
de la Genese, 1753.
Harmer,
Observations on Divers Passages of Scripture, Second Edi-
tion, 1776.
Ilgen, Die
Urkunden des ersten Buchs von Moses in ihrer Urgestalt,
1798.
Vater,
Commentar uber den Pentateuch, Theil i, ii., 1802; Theil iii,
1805.
Eichhorn,
Einleitung in das Alte Testament, Dritte Ausgabe, 1803;
Vierte Ausgabe, 1823.
DeWette,
Beitrage zur Einleitung in das Alte Testament, Erstes Band-
chen, 1806; Zweiter Band, 1807.
Ewald, Die
Komposition der Genesis kritisch untersucht, 1823.
Gramberg,
Libri Geneseos Secundum Fontes rite dignoscendos Adum-
bratio nova, 1828.
F. H. Ranke,
Untersuchungen fiber den Pentateuch aus dem Gebiete
der hoheren Kritik, Erster Band, 1831;
Zweiter Band, 1840.
Hengstenberg,
Die Authentie des Pentateuches, Erster Band, 1836;
Zweiter Band, 1839.
Movers.
Review of von Bohlen's Genesis in Zeitschrift fur Philosophie
und Katholische Theologie, 1836.
Havernick,
Handbuch der historish-kritischen Einleitung in das Alte
Testament, Erster Theil, Zweite Abtheilung,
1837.
Tuch,
Kommentar uber die Genesis, 1838; Zweite Aufiage, 1871.
Stahelin,
Kritische Untersuchungen uber den Pentateuch, die Bucher
Josua, Richter, Samuels, und del Konige,
1843.
Kurtz, Die
Einheit der Genesis, 1846.
Winer,
Biblisches Realworterbuch, Dritte Aufiage, 1847.
Ewald,
Jahrbucher del Biblischen Wissenchaft for 1851-52.
xvi WORKS REFERRED TO IN THIS VOLUME
Knobel, Die
Genesis, 1852.
Delitzsch,
Die Genesis, 1852, Dritte Ausgabe, 1860; Vierte Ausgabe,
1872.
Neuer Commentar uber die Genesis, 1887.
Kurtz,
Geschichte des Alten Bundes, Erster Band, Zweite Aufiage, 1853.
Hupfeld, Die
Quellen der Genesis und die Art ihrer Zusammensetzung,
1853.
Robinson,
Biblical Researches in
gions, 1856.
Bohmer, Das
Erste Buch der Thora, Ubersetzung seiner drei Quellen-
schriften und der Redactionszusatze mit
kritischen, exegetischen,
historischen Erorterungen, 1862.
Noldeke,
Untersuchungen zur Kritik des Alten Testaments, 1869. Merx,
Article on Dinah in Schenkel's
Bibel-Lexikon, 1869.
Schrader,
Editor of the "eighth thoroughly improved, greatly en-
larged and in part wholly transformed
edition" of DeWette's
Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen
Einleitung in die kanonischen
und apokryphischen Bucher des Alten
Testaments, 1869.
Kayser, Das
vorexilische Buch der Urgeschichte Israels und seine
Erweiterungen, ein Beitrag zur
Pentateuch-kritik, 1874.
George Smith,
Translation of the flood tablets in his Assyrian Dis-
coveries, 1875; the Chaldean Account of
Genesis, 1876; and Records
of the Past, vol. vii., 1876.
Wellhausen,
Die Composition des Hexateuchs, in the Jahrbticher fur
Deutsche Theologie, 1876-1877; republished
in Skizzen und
Vorarbeiten, Zweites Heft, 1885; and again
in Die Composition des
Hexateuchs und der hist orischen Bucher
des .Alten Testa. ments,
1889.
Kuenen, The
Religion of Israel to the Fall of the Jewish State, trans-
lated by A. H. May, vol. i, 1874.
Dillmann,
Die Genesis, first edition published as the third edition of
Knobel's Commentary, 1875; second edition
(Knobel's fourth),
1882; third edition (Knobel's fifth),
1886.
Wellhausen,
Geschichte Israels, 1878, republished as Prolegomena zur
Geschichte
Oort, The
Bible for Learners, English translation, 1878.
Colenso, The
Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined,
Part Vii., 1879.
Reuss, Die
Geschichte der Heiligen Schriften Alten Testaments, 1881.
Haupt, Der
keilinschriftliche Sintfluthbericht, in Schrader's Die Keil-
inschriften und das Alte Testament, 1883.
WORKS REFERRED TO IN TH1S VOLUME xvii
Budde, Die
Biblische Urgeschichte (Gen. i-xii 5), 1883.
Kuenen, An
Historico-critical Inquiry into the Origin and Composi-
tion of the Hexateuch. Translated by P. H.
Wicksteed, 1886.
Vatke,
Historisch-kritische Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 1886.
Stade,
Geschichte des Volkes
Kittel,
Geschichte der Hebraer, 1888.
Harper, The
Pentateuchal Question, in the Hebraica for 1888-1892.
Kautzsch und
Socin, Die Genesis mit ausserer Unterscheidung der
Quellenschriften, 1888; Zweite Aufiage,
1891. Reproduced in
English as Genesis Printed in Colors,
showing the original sources
from which it is supposed to have been
compiled, with an intro-
duction by E. C. Bissell.
Cornill,
Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 1891.
Driver, An
Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 1891.
Strack, Die
Genesis, 1892.
Kuenen,
Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Biblischen Wissenchaft.
Aus dem Hollandischen ubersetzt von K.
Budde, 1894.
THE UNITY OF THE BOOK OF
GENESIS
THE BOOK OF GENESIS
THE history opens with an introductory
section (ch.
i.-ii. 3),
which declares how God in the beginning created
the heavens
and the earth as the theatre upon which it
was to be
transacted. This is followed by ten
sections
of unequal
length, which make up the rest of the book
of Genesis,
and are introduced by titles of a uniform
pattern. These titles are as follows:
1. Gen. ii. 4. These are the generations of the heaven
and of the
earth.
2. Gen. v. 1. This is the book of the generations of
Adam.
3. Gen. vi. 9. These are the generations of Noah.
4.
Gen. x. 1. These are the
generations of the sons of
Noah.
5. Gen. xi. 10. These are the generations of Shem.
6.
Gen. xi. 27. These are the generations
of Terah.
7. Gen. xxv. 12. These are the generations of Ish-
mael.
8. Gen. xxv. 19. These are the generations of Isaac.
9. Gen. xxxvi. 1. These are the generations of Esau.1
10. Gen. xxxvii. 2. These are the generations of
Jacob.
1 Repeated, ver. 9, for a
reason to be explained when that
chapter
comes under consideration.
2 THE BOOK OF
GENESIS
These titles are designed to emphasize and
render
more
prominent and palpable an important feature of
the book,
the genealogical character of its history.
This
results from
its main design, which is to trace the line of
descent of
the chosen race from the beginning to the
point where
it was ready to expand to a great nation,
whose future
organization was already foreshadowed, its
tribes being
represented in the twelve sons of Jacob, and
its tribal
divisions in their children. The
genealogies
contained in
the book are not merely incidental or sub-
ordinate,
but essential, and the real basis of the whole.
They are not
to be regarded as addenda to the narrative,
scraps of
information introduced into it; they constitute
the skeleton
or framework of the history itself. They
are not
separate productions culled from different sources,
and here
inserted by the author as he found them.
From
whatever
quarters the materials may have been obtained
they were
cast into their present form by the writer him-
self, as is
evident from the uniformity of the construc-
tion of those
relating to the chosen race on the one hand,
and those of
alien races on the other, together with the
unbroken
continuity of the former. These exhibit at
once the
kinship of
all being of
one blood and sprung from one common
stock, and
their separation from the rest of mankind for
a special
divine purpose, God's gracious choice of them
to be his
peculiar people until the time should arrive
for
spreading the blessing of Abraham over all the
earth.
There is, accordingly, a regular series of
genealogies of
like
structure, or rather one continuous genealogy extend-
ing from
Adam to the family of Jacob. This is
inter-
rupted or
suspended from time to time, as occasion re-
quires, for
the sake of introducing or incorporating facts
of the
history at particular points where they belong;
THE BOOK OF GENESIS 3
after which
it is resumed again precisely at the same
point, and
proceeds regularly as before until it reaches
its utmost
limit, thus embracing the entire history with-
in
itself. Thus, for example, the genealogy
in ch. v.
states in
identically recurring formulae the age of each
parent at
the birth of his child, the number of years that
he lived
subsequently, and the length of his entire life.
But when the
name of Noah is reached, the record is,
ver. 32,
"And Noah was five hundred years old; and
Noah begat
Shem, Ham, and Japheth," three sons being
mentioned
instead of one, as was uniformly the case be-
fore. And here the genealogy abruptly terminates
with-
out the
further statements that analogy would lead us
to expect,
how long Noah lived after the birth of his
children,
and how many years he lived in all. This
is
not the end
of a genealogical fragment, disconnected from
all that
follows. It is merely interrupted for a
time in
order to
introduce the account of the deluge, which so
intimately
concerned Noah and his three sons; after
which the
missing members are supplied, and the series
resumed in
substantially the same form as before (ix. 28,
29). Again, the genealogy continued in xi. 10 sqq.
breaks
off (ver.
26) precisely as it had done before, by stating
the age of a
father at the birth of his three sons.
"And
Terah lived
seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and
and the fact
of his death being postponed to ver. 32, in
all the
order to introduce some facts respecting Terah and par-
ticularly
respecting his sons, which had an important
bearing on
the subsequent history. And the entire
life
of Abraham
is fitted into the next link of the genealogy:
his age at
the birth of his son Isaac (xxi. 5), whom he
begat (xxv.
19), and his full age at the time of his death
(xxv. 7, 8).
4 THE BOOK OF GENESIS
THE CREATION
OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH
(CH. I. 1-II. 3).
The critics assign this opening section
of Genesis to P,
because of
its unvarying use of Elohim, as well as on the
ground of
its style and diction. They also include
in
this section
ii. 4a, which they regard as a summary state-
ment of its
contents. This and the alleged
difference of
style
between this section and the next can best be con-
sidered
hereafter. For the present it will be
sufficient to
give
attention to the diction. Dr. Dillmann
adduces the
following
words and expressions as indicative of P:
Nymi
kind,
species (vs. 11,
12, 21,24, 25); Cr,xAhA ty>aHa beast of the
earth (vs. 24, 25, 30); CrawA creep, swarm, bring forth abun-
dantly, and Wm,r, moving creature
(vs. 20, 21); WmarA creep,
and Wm,r, creeping thing (vs. 21, 24-26, 28, 30); wbaKA
subdue
(ver. 28); hlak;xA
food (ver. 30); hv,q;mi gathering together, col-
lection (ver. 10); hbArAv; hrAPA be fruitful and multiply (vs. 22,
28) hbAqen;U rkAzA male and female (ver. 27); lyDib;hi divide (vs.
4, 6, 7, 14,
18); tUmD; likeness (ver. 26). .
The distribution of these words in the
Hexateuch is instructive.
That which
is rendered "likeness" occurs
besides in
it only Gen. v. 1, 3, where it is used with ex-
press allusion
to i. 26. "Subdue" occurs
besides in the
Hexateuch
only Num. xxxii. 22, 29 (a chapter in which,
according to
the critics, the documents P, J, and E are
intermingled,
and both of these verses contain what are
reckoned
indications of JE), and Josh. xviii. 1, an iso-
lated verse
in a JE paragraph. The rest of these
words
and phrases
occur nowhere else in Genesis, unless it be
in the
account of the flood. And the reason why most
Q of them
are to be found there is obvious. The
different
classes of
land animals brought into being at the creation
perished in
the flood, and it is natural that they should
be mentioned
in both cases; like mention is also made
THE CREATION (CH. I. 1-II. 3) 5
of
"food" as necessary to life; the perpetuation of the
species
leads to the reference to the sexes. The
full
phrase, as
used in Gen. i. "Be fruitful and multiply and
fill,"
or "replenish," only occurs again (ix. 1), in the
blessing
pronounced upon mankind after the flood, which
was as
appropriate as after the creation; the phrase "Be
fruitful and
multiply" occurs besides only in application
to Abraham
and his descendants, where it is equally in
place. Such of these words as occur elsewhere are
found
only in the
ritual law. "Food" and
"kind" and differ-
ent sorts of
animals are, as a matter of course, spoken of,
where
direction is given in respect to what mayor may
not be
eaten; and sex in like manner in prescribing the
animals to
be offered in sacrifice, or the purifications at the
birth of
children, or the rite of circumcision.
"Divide"
does not
occur in the narrative of the flood, but is found
again in the
ritual law with reference to the distinctions
there made
in regard to clean and unclean, holy and un-
holy or
common, or separating to special functions or
purposes, or
to cleavage in sacrifice. The word
translated
"gathering
together" is found but twice in the Hexateuch
apart from
Gen. i., viz., Ex. vii. 19, Lev. xi. 36, where
collections
of water are referred to, and nowhere else in
this sense
in the entire Old Testament.
It is manifest from the foregoing that
the occurrence
of these
words is determined, not by the predilection of
a particular
writer, but by the subject which calls for
their
employment. They belong not to the
characteris-
tics of a
document, but are the common property of all
who use the
language, and may be found whenever there
is occasion
to describe the object denoted by them.
Their
absence from all the paragraphs or clauses as-
signed by
the critics to J or E is to be accounted for
precisely as
their absence from every paragraph of P but
those
designated above.
6 THE BOOK OF GENESIS
For a more detailed account of the usage
of the words
common to
the creation and flood, see under ch. vi.-ix.,
Marks of P.
Elohim is plainly the appropriate name for
God
throughout
this section, which regards the Most High as
working in
nature and in the world at large. True,
the
creative act
may be ascribed to Jehovah (Ex. xx. 11),
when the
thought to be conveyed is that
who brought
him out of the
ator of the
world; but when the announcement to be
made simply
is that the world had a divine creator, Elo-
him is the
proper term, and is hence constantly used in
the account
of the creation.
I
THE GENERATIONS OF THE HEAVENS AND THE
EARTH (CH. II. 4-IV.)
THE question to be considered is, Do
these chapters
continue the
narrative begun in the preceding section, or
do they
introduce a new and independent narrative from
an
altogether different source? The critics
allege that
they stand
in no relation to what goes before, that a new
beginning is
here made, and that this account is taken
from another
document, that of J. It is said that the
second
chapter of Genesis cannot have been written by
the author
of the fu'st chapter; for (1) it is a second ac-
count of the
creation, and is superfluous for that reason;
(2) it
differs from the first account, and is irreconcilable
with it; (3)
the diction and style are different.
FALSE CRITICAL METHODS
The critics here bring into operation at
the outset two
vicious
methods, which characterize their whole course
of procedure
and are the most potent instruments which
they employ
in effecting the partition of the text.
The first is the arbitrary assumption that
two different
parts of a
narrative, relating to matters which are quite
distinct,
are variant accounts of the same thing.
It is
very easy to
take two narratives or two parts of the
same
narrative, which have certain points in common
8 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
but which
really describe different transactions, and lay
them
alongside of one another and point out the lack of
correspondence
between them. The artifice of the crit-
ics consists
in their identifying distinct things, and then
every
divergence of the one from the other is claimed
as evidence
that these are variant traditions, and that
these
discrepant accounts cannot be by the same author;
they must
have been taken from different documents.
Whereas,
there is no mystery in the case and no occa-
sion for any
such extraordinary conclusion. The
simple
fact is that
the writer has finished one part of his story
and has
proceeded to another; and, as might be ex-
pected, he
does not detail over again what he had just
detailed
before.
The second of the vicious methods, which
is continu-
ally
practised by the divisive critics and is one of their
most
effective weapons, also finds exemplification in the
chapters now
under consideration. It is their
constant
effort to
create a discordance where none really exists.
Passages are
sundered from their context, which eluci-
date and
determine their meaning, and then any form of
expression
which admits of a signification at variance
with what is
stated elsewhere is seized upon and pressed
to the
utmost and urged as a proof of diverse representa-
tions,
requiring the assumption of different documents;
when, if it
were only allowed to bear its natural sense in
the
connection in which it stands, all appearance of dis-
crepancy
will disappear. There is nothing for
which
the critics
seem to have such an aversion as a harmoniz-
ing
interpretation; and very naturally, for it annuls all
their
work. And yet it is the plain dictate of
common
sense that
the different parts of the same instrument
should be
interpreted in harmony, provided the language
employed
will in fairness admit of such an interpreta-
tion.
The simple observance of this obvious
rule, together
with the
principle before referred to, that things which
are really
distinct should be treated as distinct, will not
only relieve
all the critical doubts and perplexities rela-
tive to the
chapters now before us, but the great major-
ity of those
which are raised in the rest of Genesis and
author; of
the Pentateuch as well.
NO DUPLICATE ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION
That the second chapter does not contain
another ac-
count of the
creation additional to that in the first can
be readily
shown.
And in the first place it does not profess
to be an ac-
count of the
creation, but something additional to and of
their
different from it. It is in express terms declared to be
a L in the
sequel of the narrative of the creation. The second sec-
tion is
introduced by a special descriptive title (ver. 4a) :
"These
are the generations of the heavens and of the
earth when
they were created." It is very
important to
understand
the precise meaning of these words and the
purpose for
which they are introduced. There has
been
much dispute
both as to the proper connection of this
clause and
how it is to be understood.
Is it a subscription to the preceding
section, setting
forth its
contents? Or is it introductory to the
following
section and
descriptive of its contents? It can be
shown
beyond
question that it is the heading of the section that
follows, and
is here introduced to announce its subject.
The formula "These are the
generations," etc., occurs
ten times in
the book of Genesis, and in every instance
but the
present indisputably as the title of the section to
which it is
prefixed. The history is parcelled
into" the
generations
of Adam" (v. 1), "the generations of Noah "
(vi. 9),
"the generations of the sons of Noah" (x. 1),
10 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
"the
generations of Shem" (xi. 10),
"the generations of
Terah"
(ri. 27), and so on to the end of the book.
Each of these titles introduces a new
section of the
history,
longer or shorter as the case may be, and an-
nounces the
subject treated in that section. The
book
of Genesis
after the first or preliminary chapter is thus,
in the plan
of its author, divided into ten distinct sections,
to each of
which he has given a separate heading of this
uniform
pattern. They are called
"generations" be-
cause the,
framework of the entire history is a genealogy,
which is
traced in a direct line from Adam to Jacob and
his
posterity. All the facts that are
related and the
statements
made are introduced between the links of this
genealogy. The line of descent is arrested at the proper
point, the
narratives belonging there are inserted, and
then the
line of descent is taken up again just where it
left off and
proceeds as before. Divergent lines are
traced, as
occasion arises, to a sufficient distance, and are
then
dropped, the writer uniformly reverting to the main
line of
descent, that of the chosen race, which is his prin-
cipal
theme. This being the constant plan of
the book
this
formula, which in every other instance is the title
of the
section to which it is prefixed, must be the same
in this case
likewise. It is the heading of the
second
section, and
can be nothing else.
This conclusion is not only demanded by
the uniform
analogy of
the entire series of similar titles but by other
considerations
likewise:
1.
It is confirmed by the identical structure of the im-
mediately
following clause here and in v. 1, where the
connection
is unquestioned. "In the day of
Jehovah
Elohim's
making earth and heaven," follows the title
"the
generations of the heaven and of the earth," in pre-
cise
conformity with "in the day of Elohim's creating
Adam,"
after the title "the generations of Adam."
2.
If ii. 4a is a subscription to the preceding section,
then ii.
4b-iv. 26 is the only portion of the book without
a title,
while i. 1-ii. 3 will have two titles, one which is
entirely
appropriate at the beginning (i. 1), and one which
is
altogether unsuitable at the end.
3.
On the divisive hypothesis the additional incongru-
ity results,
that when the section ascribed to J (ii. 4b-ch.
iv.) is
excluded, and the connection restored, as it origi-
nally
existed in P, ii. 4a will be immediately followed by
v. 1, and
thus two titles will have stood in direct juxta-
position.
Now what does the generations of the
heavens and of
the earth
mean? It has sometimes been interpreted
to
mean an
account of the origin of the heavens and of the
earth, such
as we find in ch. i., to which it is then claimed
that this
must be attached as explanatory of the contents
of that
chapter. But neither the words
themselves nor
their usage
elsewhere will admit of this interpretation.
"The book of the generations of Adam
" (v. 1) is a list
of the
descendants of Adam. "The
generations of Noah"
(vi. 9)
records the history of Noah's family.
"The gener-
ations of
the sons of Noah" (x. 1) and "the generations
of
Shem" (xi. 10), trace the various lines of their descend-
ants. And so it is uniformly. "The generations of A
or B"
do not detail his ancestry or his origin, but either
give the
history of his immediate family or the continu-
ous line of
his descendants. And this the proper
signifi-
cation of
the Hebrew word so rendered necessarily de-
mands. It denotes "generations" in the
sense of that
which is
generated or begotten, the offspring of a pro-
genitor.
Accordingly this title, "the
generations of the heaven
and the
earth," must announce as the subject of the sec-
tion which
it introduces not an account of the way in
which the
heaven and the earth were themselves brought
12 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
into being,
but an account of the offspring of heaven and
earth; in
other words, of man who is the child of both
worlds, his
body formed of the dust of the earth, his soul
of heavenly
origin, inbreathed by God himself. And
so
the sections
proceed regularly. First, Gen. i. 1, "In
the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth," the
title
announcing that the theme of the first chapter is
the
creation. Then ii. 4, "The generations of the heav-
ens and the
earth," announcing that the theme of what
follows is
the offspring of heaven and earth, or the his-
tory of Adam
and his family. Then v. 1, "The
genera-
tions of
Adam," in which his descendants are traced to
Noah and his
sons. Then vi. 4," The generations
of
Noah,"
or the history of Noah's family, and so on to the
end of the
book.
But here we are met by Dr. Dillmann and
other lead-
ing
advocates of the divisive hypothesis, who say, It is
true that
"the generations of the heavens and the earth"
denote that
which has sprung from the heavens and the
earth; but
this is the title of ch. i. nevertheless, which
records how
grass and trees and animals and man came
forth from
the earth, and the sun, moon, and stars made
their
appearance in the heavens. This must,
therefore,
originally
have stood at the beginning of ch. i., and it has
been
transposed to its present position by the redactor.
This shows
what a useful person the redactor is in the
service of
the critics. Here is a clause which is
seriously
in their way
where it stands at present. It rivets
the
second
chapter to the first in more ways than one.
It
declares
positively that ch. ii. is not a parallel account of
the creation
taken from another source, but is a sequel
to the narrative
of the creation already given in ch. i.
Moreover,
this formula, which the critics tell us is one of
the marks of
the document P, to which the first chapter
is alleged
to belong, as distinguished from the document
J, to which
the section before us is referred, and whose
words are
the words of P and not of J, is here found at-
tached to
the wrong document, thus annulling in certain
marked
respects their favorite argument from diction and
style. It is an obstacle to be gotten rid of,
therefore, at
all
hazards. The aid of the redactor is
accordingly
called in,
and the disturbing clause is spirited away to a
safe
distance and located at the beginning of the first
chapter,
instead of the beginning of the second section,
where it
actually stands.
Only it is unfortunate that the redactor
is of no avail
in the
present instance. The clause in question
never
could have
been the title of ch. i. It is obvious
that the
heavens and
the earth must first be brought into exist-
ence before
the generations of the heavens and the earth
can be
spoken of, just as Adam and Noah must precede
the
generations of Adam and the generations of Noah.
Besides, it
would be altogether inappropriate as a title of
ch. i. The firmament and the heavenly bodies, the
seas
and the dry
land, the work of the first four days, are
identical
with the heavens and the earth, not their off-
spring. The creating and shaping of the material uni-
verse cannot
with propriety be included under the "gen-
erations"
of the heavens and the earth, and the writer of
the chapter
could never have expressed its purport in
such
terms. And even the vegetable and animal
prod-
ucts, which
by creative fiat were made to issue from the
earth on the
third, fifth, and sixth days, were wholly of
an earthly,
not a heavenly, mould. And the title, if
un-
derstood of
such products, would stand in no relation to
the
subsequent titles of the book. Grass and
trees and
animals
supply no stepping-stone to the next title, the
Generations
of Adam. It is only Adam himself that
can
do
this. It is not until ver. 26 that the
creation of man
is
reached. And man in ch. i. is considered
simply in his
14 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
place in the
general scheme of created things. He is
in-
troduced
into the world; but there is no record of what
befell him
or his family, such as we are authorized to ex-
pect, such
as is in fact given in ii. 4b-iv. 26.
Every sim-
ilar title
in Genesis is followed either by a history of the
immediate
offspring or by successive generations of de-
scendants.
The clause which we have been considering
is an ob-
stacle to
the partition of the first two chapters which it
has not been
possible to remove by any critical device.
It plainly
declares the subject of the second section to
be not the
creation of the world, but the formation of
man and the
first stage of human history.
It remains to be added that an examination
of the
second
section itself will show that it does not in point
of fact
contain a fresh account of the creation.
The
opening
words, "In the day that Jehovah God made the
earth and
the heavens," do not introduce an account of
making earth
arid heaven, but presuppose it as having
already
taken place, and the writer proceeds to indicate
the
condition of things when it was done and what fol-
lowed
subsequently. No mention is made of the
forma-
tion of the
earth or the production of the dry land; none
of the sea
and its occupants; none of the firmament or of
the sun,
moon, and stars; none of covering the earth with
its varied
vegetation, but only of planting a garden in
When
banished from
the field
"(iii. 18), whose existence is thus assumed, but
whose
production is only spoken of in ch. i.
These par-
ticulars
could not be omitted from an account of the crea-
tion. To say, as is done by Dr. Dillmann, that they
may
originally
have been contained in ch. ii., but were omitted
by R because
they were treated sufficiently in ch. i., is to
make an
assumption without a particle of evidence,
which
amounts simply to a confession that ch. ii. is not
what it
would have been if the writer had intended to
give a
narrative of the creation, and that its omissions
are with
definite reference to the contents of ch. i.
In
other words,
ch. ii. has no claim to be regarded as a sep-
arate and
complete account of the creation; and it has
not been
prepared independently of ch. i., but is design-
edly
supplementary to it.
Chapter ii. has thus far been considered
negatively,
and it has
been shown what it is not. It is not a
second
account of
the creation; and it has not been prepared in-
dependently
of ch. i. and without regard to the contents
of that
first chapter. It is now in order to
state posi-
tively what
ch. ii. actually is. It is evidently
through-
out
preliminary to ch. iii., the narrative of the fall. In
order to
make this intelligible it was necessary to ex-
plain (1),
the two constituents of man's nature, his body
formed of
the dust of the ground, and the breath of life
imparted
directly by God himself (ver. 7). It was
neces-
sary that
this should be known, that the reader might
comprehend
on the one hand the potential immortality
set within
his reach, and on the other the sentence ac-
tually
incurred that dust must return to dust (iii. 19).
(2) The
locality, which was the scene of the temptation
and fall,
the garden of Eden, with its tree of life and the
tree of the
knowledge of good and evil (vs.8-17).
(3)
The actors,
Adam and Eve, in their superiority to the
rest of the
creation, and their relation to each other (vs.
18-25). These particulars could not have been incor-
porated in
ch. i. without marring its symmetry.
That
deals with
the creation of the world at large.
Every-
thing is on
a universal scale. And to introduce a
de-
tailed
description of the garden of Eden, with its arrange-
ments and
man's position in it, would have been quite
inappropriate. The plan and purpose of ch. i. made it
16 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
necessary to
reserve this for the following section, and
it is
accordingly given in ch. ii.
It follows from what has been said that
all compari-
sons made,
or contrasts drawn, between ch. i. and ch. ii.
on the
assumption that they are separate and indepen-
dent
accounts of the same transaction are necessarily fal-
lacious. In the one the scene embraces the whole world
with all
that it contains. In the other it is
limited to the
garden of
Eden, which is fitted up for the habitation of
the first
human pair. The first advances by a
succession
of almighty
fiats from the initial production of inanimate
matter to
the culmination of the whole grand process in
the creation
of man in the image of God. The second
deals
exclusively with the primitive state of man, which
is minutely
explained with a special view to the tempta-
tion and
fall; all is on the plane of individual life and
moves
steadily forward to that first transgression by
which man
lost his original holiness and communion
with
God. The second chapter is thus in no
sense par-
allel to the
first, but is its natural sequel. It is
the suc-
ceeding
scene in the sacred history, the next act; so to
speak, in
the divine drama which is here transacting.
It
introduces
the reader to a new and distinct stage in the
unfolding of
that plan of God which it is the purpose of
the book of
Genesis to record.
With such marked differences in the
design and the
contents of
the two chapters, it follows, of course, that each
has a
character of its own distinct from the other.
It is
very easy to
set one over against the other and to point
out their
distinctive qualities. But the
dissimilar feat-
ures, which
so readily offer themselves to the observer,
result
directly and necessarily from the diversity of the
subjects
respectively treated in each, and require no as-
sumption of
the idiosyncrasies of different writers or the
peculiarities
of separate documents to account for them.
Thus, for example, if it be said with Dr.
Harper (" He-
braica,"
vol. i., pp. 25-27) that ch. i. is " generic," dealing
with species
and classes, and ch. ii. is "individual," how
could they
be otherwise, considering their respective
themes? One records the formation of the world as a
whole, and
of the various orders of beings that are
in it; the
other deals specifically with the first human
pair.
If it be said that the first chapter is
"systematic,"
"chronological,"
and "scientific," the reason is that the
nature of
its subject brings these features into marked
prominence. When the work of six successive days is
to be
stated, each advancing upon the preceding by reg-
ular
gradations, and together embracing all the various
ranks of
created things, the subject itself prescribes the
mode of
treatment adapted to it, which must be system-
atic,
chronological, and scientific, if the theme proposed
is to be
clearly and satisfactorily presented.
But why
should a
writer who shows his capacity for the classifi-
cation of
genera and species where his subject demands
it, lug in
his scientific terms or methods where no such
classification
is called for? If he has pursued a
chrono-
logical
method in ch. i., where the subject divides itself
into
successive periods, what is to hinder his adoption of
a topical
method in chs. ii. and iii., where he groups the
various
incidents and particulars with masterly skill, and
all leads as
directly up to the catastrophe of the fall as
in ch. i.
all marches steadily forward to the Sabbath-day
of
rest? There is as clear evidence of
system in the
logical
order of the narration in chs. ii. and iii. as in the
chronological
order of ch. i. And there is the same
graphic
power and masterly presentation in the grand
and majestic
tableaux of ch. i. as in the simple and
touching
scenes so delicately depicted in chs. ii. and iii.
When it is
said that ch. ii. is "picturesque and poet-
18 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
ical,"
it may "be said with equal propriety that ch. i. is
sublimely
poetical. The scenes are drawn in bold
relief,
and stand as
vividly before the reader as anything in the
chapters
that follow; only the scenes themselves are of a
different
description. One gives the impression of
im-
mensity and
power and vast terrestrial changes; the
other of
beauty and pathos and the development of per-
sonal
character. Cannot the same writer handle diverse
themes? And if he do, must he not be expected to
treat
each in he
way appropriate to itself ?
It is claimed that ch. i. deals in
"stereotyped"
phrases and
is "verbose and repetitious," while the
style of
chs. ii. and iii. is "free and flowing." This
again is due
to the nature of the subjects with which
they
respectively deal. Ch. i. is monumental,
conducted
on a scale
of vastness and magnificence, and its charac-
ters are
massive and unyielding as if carved in granite.
Chs. ii. and
iii. deal with plastic forms of quiet beauty,
the charms
of paradise, the fateful experiences of Adam
and
Eve. In the onward progress of creation
all is con-
ducted by
the word of omnipotence, to which the result
precisely
corresponds. To mark this correspondence
in
the most
emphatic manner, the command is issued in
explicit
terms; and the answering result, which exactly
matches it,
is described in identical language. There
are,
besides,
certain constant and abiding features, which
characterize
the creative work from first to last, and
which abide
the same in the midst of all the majestic
changes
which are going forward. There is the
regu-
lar
recurrence of each creative day, of the daily putting
forth of
almighty power, of God's approval of his work
which
perfectly represents the divine idea, the name
given to
indicate its character, the blessing bestowed to
enable it to
accomplish its end. To mark all this in
the
most
emphatic manner, the identical phrases are re-
peated
throughout from first to last. The
solemn and
impressive
monotone, which thus runs through the
whole,
heightens the grandeur of the description, and is
suggestive
of that divine serenity which steadily and un-
deviatingly
moves onward in its appointed course, while
the
ponderous periods aptly befit the massive objects
with which
they deal. There is no call for such a
style
in simple narrative
like ch. ii., where it would be utterly
out of place
and stilted in the extreme. That the
char-
acteristics
which have been referred to are due to the
subject of
ch. i., and not to some imaginary peculiarity
of the
writer, is plain, even if the critical partition of
Genesis were
accepted. For the narratives, which the
critics
assign to the same document as ch. i., differ as
widely from
it as ch. ii. does.
In like manner Dr. Dillmann urges, in
proof of a di-
versity of
writers, that the author of ch. i. "restricts
himself to
the great facts without entering in an explan-
atory way
into particular details," and that he uses "a
ceremonious,
solemn, formal style of writing," as dis-
tinguished
from the "evenness" of chs. ii. and iii. This
is
sufficiently answered in what has been already said.
The
difference arises from the nature of the subject, not
from the
habit of the writer. As Dr. Dillmann himself
justly
says: "The author in writing was
fully conscious
of the
unique loftiness of his subject; there is not a
word too
much, yet all is clear and well defined; no-
where is
there anything artificial and far-fetched; only
once in an
appropriate place he allows himself to rise to
elevated
poetic speech (ver. 27); even the expressions
savoring of
a remote antiquity, which he here and there
employs (vs.
2, 24), have evidently come down to him
with the
matter from the olden time, and serve admi-
rably to
enhance the impression of exalted dignity."
It is said that ch. i. proceeds from the
lower to the
20 GENERATIONS OF REA VEN AND EARTH
higher,
ending with man; while, on the contrary, ch. ii.
begins with
the highest, viz., with man, and proceeds to
the lower
forms of life. But as ch. ii. continues
the his-
tory begun
in ch. i., it naturally starts where ch. i. ends,
that is to
say, with the creation of man, especially as the
whole object
of the chapter is to depict his primitive
condition.
These various contrasts between ch. i.
and ii. explain
themselves at
once, as has now been shown from the di-
versity of
theme. They could only be supposed to
lend
support to
the critical hypothesis of different documents
on the false
assumption that the theme of both chapters
was the
same.
NO DISCREPANCIES.
While each of these chapters pursues
consistently and
steadily its
own proper aim, they have certain points of
contact, in
which it is to be remarked that the second
chapter
supplements the first, but there is no discrep-
ancy between
them. In fact it is as inconsistent with
the
document
hypothesis as it is with that of unity of
authorship
to suppose that we have here two divergent
stories of
the creation. The redactor does not
place
them side by
side, as two varying accounts, which he
makes no attempt
to reconcile, but lays before his read-
ers
precisely as he found them. There is no
intimation
that they
are alternatives, one or the other of which may
be accepted
at pleasure. On the contrary, chs. i.
and ii.
are recorded
as equally true and to be credited alike.
The
inference cannot reasonably be avoided that the re-
dactor, if
there was one, saw no inconsistency in these
narratives. Elsewhere the critics tell us he has
corrected
divergent
accounts into harmony. He could have
seen
no need of
correction here, for he has made none.
The
case is
supposable indeed that some minute and subtle
inconsistency
may have escaped his notice. But there
can be no
open or glaring inconsistency, or he would
have
detected and removed it, or at least remarked upon
it. To suppose otherwise is to charge him with
defi-
ciency in
ordinary intelligence.
The first chapter continues the narrative
of the crea-
tion until
the crowning-piece was put upon the work by
making man
in the image of God, and giving him, as
God's
vicegerent, dominion over all in this lower world.
To prepare
the way for the history of the temptation and
fall, which
comes next in order, it was needful to give
further
particulars respecting man's primitive condition,
which it
would have been incongruous to include in the
general
account of the creation of the world in ch. i.
These are
accordingly supplied in ch. ii.
One of these particulars is his location
in the garden
of
way to the
description of this garden, the writer reminds
his readers,
in precise conformity with ch. i., that when
heaven and
earth were first made the latter contained
nothing for
the subsistence of man. Ch. ii. 4, 5
should be
rendered,
"In the day that Jehovah God made earth and
heaven no
bush of the field was yet in the earth, and no
herb of the
field had yet sprung up." There was
neither
bush nor
herb to serve man for food. The threefold
classification
of i. 11, 12--grass, herb, and tree--is not
repeated
here, for grass was the food of beasts, and there-
fore not to
the purpose. "Bush" is used
rather than
"tree,"
to make the negative stronger. There was
not
only no
tree, there was not even a bush.
Subsequently
trees (ii.
9) and herbs (iii. 18) are named, as the plants
yielding
food for human use, just as in i. 29.
The suggestion that in ch. i. both trees
and herbs are
assigned to
man as his food from the beginning, while in
22 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
chs.
ii., iii. he eats the fruit of trees in
condemned to
eat herbs after his fall (iii. 18), overlooks
the real
point of contrast, which is not between trees and
herbs, but
between the trees of the garden and the herb
of the
field, between the tillage of paradise and gaining
his bread by
the sweat of his face from a reluctant soil
bringing
forth thistles and thorns. Only trees
are ex-
pressly
spoken of in
of
obedience, and another the pledge of immortal life;
but there is
no more reason for denying the existence of
esculent
herbs in paradise than for assuming that there
were no
fruit-trees outside of it.
The form of expression, "In the day
that Jehovah
God made
earth and heaven," has given occasion to cavil,
as though
that was here assigned to one day, which ch. i.
divides
between the second and third creative days.
It
might as
well be said that Num. iii. 1, "In the day that
Jehovah
spake unto Moses in
all the
revelations given to Moses at Sinai were made
within the
compass of a single day; or that " the day of
adversity
"means a period of twenty-four hours.
The
use of
"day," in the general sense of "time" is too fa-
miliar to
require further comment.
The reason given for the absence of
food-bearing
plants is
twofold; there was no rain to moisten the
earth, and
no man to till the ground.1
There is no vari-
ance, here
with ch. i. The suggestion that if the
land
had just
emerged from the water, rain would not be
1 My friend, Dr. C. M. Mead, of Hartford
Theological Seminary,
in casual
conversation on this subject suggested what, if my memory
serves me,
was also maintained by Ebrard in a little tract on Natural
Science and
the Bible, issued several years since, that the last clause
of ii. 5 is
not connected with that which immediately precedes.
"There
was no plant (for there had been no rain), and there was no
man." Upon this construction there is not even the semblance
of an
intimation
that man existed before plants.
needed,
leaves out of view that according to i. 9, 10, the
separation
of land and water was complete, and the earth
was dry
land, before any plants appeared upon its sur-
face. A well-watered garden with ever-flowing
streams
was to be
the abode of man; in anticipation of this it
was natural
to refer to the need of rain. And there
is
no
implication that man was made prior to the existence
of
vegetation, contrary to i. 12, 27. For
1. Ch. ii. alleges nothing respecting the
relative prior-
ity of man
or plants. It does not deal with the
general
vegetation
of the globe any further than to carry us back
to a time
when it did not exist. Of its actual
production
ch. ii. says
nothing. Its positive statement is
restricted
to the trees
of the garden of Eden (vs. 8, 9), and we are
nowhere
informed that these were brought into being at
the same
time with vegetation elsewhere. Nothing
is
said of the
origin of grass and herbs, or of trees, outside
of
says: "One would expect that in what follows,
either
before or
after ver. 7, mention should be made of the
production
of the vegetable world, and completing the
formation of
the world itself. But there is nothing
of
the
sort. There can hardly have been such a
gap orig-
inally; it
rather appears that something has been omitted
by R, either
because it seemed a needless repetition after
ch. i., or
disagreed with ch. i." The passage
does not ful-
fil the
critics' expectation, for the simple reason that the
writer had
no such intention as they impute to him.
He
is not
giving another account of the creation.
He is
merely going
to speak of the garden of Eden; and that
is all he
does.
2. The existence of man is stated to be a
condition of
that of
plants designed for human use, not as an ante-
cedent but
as a concomitant. His tillage is
requisite (ii.
5), not to
their production but to their subsequent care
24 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
and
cultivation. Jehovah planted the garden
and made
the trees
grow in it, and then set man to till it, ver. 15,
where the
same verb is used as in ver. 5.
3.
The order of statement is plainly not that of time,
but of
association in thought. Ver. 7, man is
formed;
ver. 8, the
garden is planted and man put in it; ver. 9,
trees are
made to spring up there; ver. 15, man is taken
and put in
it. We cannot suppose the writer's
meaning
to be that
man was made before there was any place in
which to put
him, and that he was kept in suspense until
the garden
was planted; that he was then put there be-
fore the
trees that were to supply him with food had
sprung up;
and that after the trees were in readiness he
was put
there a second time. It is easy to
deduce the
most
preposterous conclusions from a writer's words by
imputing to
them a sense which he never intended. In
order to
pave the way for an account of the primitive
paradise, he
had spoken of the earth as originally desti-
tute of any
plants on which man might subsist, the ex-
istence of
such plants being conditioned on that of man
himself. This naturally leads him to speak, first, of
the
formation of
man (ver. 7); then of the garden in which
he was put
(ver. 8). A more particular description
of the
garden is
then given (vs.9-14), and the narrative is again
resumed by
repeating that man was placed there (ver. 15).
As there was
plainly no intention to note the strict
chronological
succession of events, it cannot in fairness
be inferred
from the order of the narrative that man was
made prior
to the trees and plants of
1The critics' assumption that vs. 10-15 is an interpolation, inasmuch
as the
description of the garden is a departure from strict narrative
which is
afterward resumed, as well as Budde's notion (Biblische Ur-
geschichte,
pp. 48 sqq.) that the tree of life is to be erased from ver. 9
and
elsewhere, as not belonging to the narrative originally, deserve
notice only
as illustrating the perfectly arbitrary standard of genuine-
ness which
is set up.
that he
preceded those of the world at large, of which
nothing is
here said.
But what cannot be accomplished by the
order of the
narrative
some critics propose to effect by means of a
grammatical
construction. They put vs. 5, 6, in a
paren-
thesis, and
link ver. 4 directly to ver. 7, and read thus:
Ver.4, In
the day that Jehovah God made the earth and
the heavens
(ver. 5, Now no bush of the field was yet in
the earth,
and no herb of the field had yet sprung up;
for Jehovah
God had not caused it to rain upon the earth,
and there
was not a man to till the ground. Ver.
6, And
there went
up vapor from the earth, and watered the
whole face
of the ground). Ver. 7, Then Jehovah God
formed man,
etc. The meaning will then be: "In the day
that Jehovah
God made earth and heaven, Jehovah God
formed man
of the dust of the ground, while no bush of
the field
was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field
had yet
sprung up." But apart from the fact
that the
assumption
of so long a parenthesis is of very doubtful
propriety in
Hebrew construction generally, it is abso-
lutely
impossible here. Ver. 5 states a twofold
reason
why there
were no plants adapted to human use; there
had been no
rain and there was no man to use them.
The first of
these conditions is supplied in ver. 6, vapor
rises, and
falling in rain waters the ground; the second, in
ver. 7, man
is made; vs. 6 and 7 must accordingly
stand in
like relation to ver. 5, so that ver. 6 cannot be
included in
the parenthesis and ver. 7 be linked back to
ver. 4.
Furthermore, ch. ii. does not contradict
ch. i. in re-
spect to the
order of the creation of man and of the
lower
animals. The allegation that it does
rests upon the
assumption
that the Hebrew tense here used necessarily
implies a
sequence in the order of time, which is not
correct. The record is (ver. 19), "And out of the
ground
26 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
Jehovah God
formed all the beasts of the field, and all
the fowls of
heaven, and brought them to Adam."
Ac-
cording to
Hebrew usage this need not mean that the
formation of
the birds and the beasts was subsequent to
all that is
previously recorded in the chapter, or that they
were then
first formed with the view of providing a suit-
able
companion for Adam. And when the scope
of the
passage is
duly considered it will be seen that this can-
not be its
meaning.
It is a significant fact that Dr.
Delitzsch, who is an
adherent of
the document hypothesis, and can be sus-
pected of no
bias against it, and who in all the former
editions of
his "Commentary on Genesis" found ch. i.
and ch. ii
at variance on this point, in the, last edition,
embodying
his most matured views, affirms that there is
no
discrepancy whatever, that "et formavit . . . et
adduxit ==
et cum form asset adduxit," and that this is
both possible
in point of style and consonant to the
mode of
writing in the Bible history.
The English rendering which best suggests
the rela-
tion of the
clauses is, "Jehovah God having formed out
of the
ground every beast of the field, and every fowl of
heaven,
brought them unto the man." The
Hebrew
phrase
suggests that forming the animals preceded their
being
brought to the man, but need not suggest anything
whatever as
to the relation of time between their forma-
tion and
what had been mentioned just before in the nar-
rative. In numberless passages in the English version
of the Bible
similar expressions are paraphrased in order
to express
this subordination of the first verb to the
second. Thus in Gen. iii. 6 the Hebrew reads,
"And
the woman saw
that the tree was good for food, . . .
and she took
of the fruit thereof," for which the English
version
correctly substitutes, "And when
the woman saw
. . . she
took." It might with equal
propriety be
PRIMITIVE
STATE OF MAN (CH. ii. 4-III. 24) 27
rendered,
"The woman seeing that the tree was good for
food . . .
took of the fruit thereof. "
Dr. Dillmann admits that the tense here
used might
antedate
what immediately precedes, but insists that ver.
18, "I will make him an help meet for
him," implies that
the animals
were now made as well as brought to Adam.
But to
suppose that the beasts and birds were made in
execution of
this divine purpose is not only a grotesque
conception
in itself, but involves the incongruity that the
LORD'S first
attempts were failures. If there are
critics
who account
this "the natural interpretation," it is in
the face of
the whole Israelitish conception of God as
expressed by
every writer in the Old Testament.
serve that
God's original purpose, as here announced, is
not I will
make him a companion of some sort, or such a
companion as
he may be willing to have, but I will make
him an help
meet for him, or, more exactly rendered, a
help
corresponding to him, a precise counterpart to him-
self. The beasts were brought to Adam not as the
com-
panion
intended for him, but "to see what he would call
them," i.e.,
to let them make their impression on him and
thus awaken
in his mind a sense both of his need of com-
panionship
and of their unfitness for the purpose.
When
this had
been accomplished Eve was made. The ani-
mals are
here regarded simply with a view to this end.
If the
writer were describing the creation of the inferior
animals as
such, he would speak of all the orders of liv-
ing things,
not neglecting reptiles and aquatic animals.
The LORD made the birds and beasts and
brought them
to
Adam. The main point is that they were
brought to
Adam. It was of no consequence, so far as the imme-
diate
purpose of the narrative is concerned, when they
were made,
whether before Adam or after, and the mere
order of
statement cannot in fairness be pressed as
though it
determined the order of time in this particu-
28 GENERATIONS
OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
lar. If, however, this is insisted upon, and we
are told
that
according to the "natural interpretation" of this
passage it
teaches that the birds and beasts were not
made until
after Adam, then it must be said that the
same sort of
"natural interpretation" will create absurd-
ities and
contradictions in many other passages beside.
Thus in Gen.
xxiv. 64, 65, "Rebekah saw Isaac and light-
ed off the
camel, and she said to the servant, What man
is this, and
the servant said, It is my master."
Here, if
the order of
statement is made the order of time, Re-
bekah
alighted, out of respect to her future husband, be-
fore she had
inquired and learned who the man was that
she
saw. So Ex. iv. 31, "And the people
believed and
they heard,
. . . and they bowed their heads and wor-
shipped." According to this the people believed the
words of
Moses and Aaron before they heard them.
It
is said of
the men sent by Joshua to spy out
(Josh. ii.
22), "They came unto the mountain
and abode
there three
days until the pursuers were returned; and
the pursuers
sought them and found them not."
From
which it
appears that the pursuers returned from their
unsuccessful
search before their search was begun.
The
old prophet
in
who came
from
went
he? And his sons saw what way the man of
God
went." Here "saw" is plainly equivalent to
"had seen,"
since the
man had left some time before. Isa. xxxvii.
2-5,
Hezekiah sent Eliakim and others to Isaiah, and
they said
unto him, Thus saith Hezekiah so and so:
and the
servants of Hezekiah came to Isaiah and Isaiah
said unto
them, etc. That is, they told Isaiah
what they
had been
bidden to say before they came to him.
Deut.
xxxi.
9, "And Moses wrote this law and
delivered it
unto the
priests," i. e., he delivered to them the law
which he had
written; the delivery of the law was subse-
quent to the
address to Joshua (vers. 7, 8), but not the
writing of
it.
Now, any candid man may judge whether
declining to
accept a
principle of interpretation which leads to such
absurd
results can be called wresting Scripture from its
natural
sense? If not, then no suspicion of
wresting
Scripture
language can possibly attach to the assertion
that there
is not a shadow of contrariety between ch. i.
and ch. ii.
in respect to the order of creation.
It is clear that the alleged
inconsistencies do not exist
in the
record but are of the critics' own making.
It is
surprising
that they do not see that in their eagerness to
create
discrepancies in evidence of a diversity of writers
they are
cutting away the ground beneath their own
feet. Glaring discrepancies might consist with the
frag-
mentary but
not with the documentary hypothesis. The
manner in
which these documents are supposed to be
woven
together demands a high degree of skill and intel-
ligence in
the redactor; and to allege at the same time
that
"he did not have insight sufficient to enable him to
see that he
was all the time committing grave blunders"
is
self-contradictory.
In the diction of these chapters Dillmann
notes the
following
words and phrases as indicative of J :
1. hWAfA make or rcayA form, instead of xrABA create, as in ch. i.
But
"make" is used ten times in the first section, and of
the same
things as "create," cf. i. 1 with vs. 7, 8; i. 26
with ver.
27; i.21 with ver. 25, ii. 3. In ch. i.
the promi-
nent thought
is that of the immediate exercise of divine
almighty
power, hence, ver. 1, "God created the heaven
and the
earth;" ver. 21, "created whales and winged fowl;"
ver. 27,
"created man," so v. i. 2; "all which God created"
ii. 3; and
these are all the P passages in which the word
occurs. Ch. ii. directs attention to the material, of
which
the bodies
were composed; hence, ver. 7, "formed man
30 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
of
dust;" ver. 19, "formed beasts out of the ground." In
Isa. xliii.
1; xlv. 7, 12, 18, "create," "form," and "make "
are used
together, and in the same sentence, of God's
creative
agency. "Form" occurs nowhere
in the Hexa-
teuch except
in this chapter; in the only other instance
in which the
creation of man is alluded to in a paragraph
assigned to
J, Gen. vi. 7 the word "create" is used; it
likewise
occurs in Ex. xxxiv. 10; Num. xvi. 30 J.
And if
the absence
of "form" from the rest of J has no signifi-
cance, why
is there any in its absence from P?
2. hd,W.Aha tY.aHa beast of the field (ii.19, 20; iii. 1, 14) instead
of Cr,xAhA
ty>aHa beast
of the earth, as i. 24,
25; also hd,W.Aha HayWi
bush of the
field (ii.
5), hc,W.Ah
bW,fe herb
of the field (ii. 5;
iii.
18). The open field is here in tacit contrast with
the en-
closed and
cultivated garden; cr. iii. 18.
"Beast of the
field"
is the ordinary phrase throughout the Bible.
But
when
terrestrial are contrasted with aquatic animals
(i. 21, 22),
and especially when the whole broad earth
is spoken
of, they are naturally called "beasts of the earth."
3. MraPaha this
time, now (ii. 23). See chs. xviii.,
xix.
Marks of J,
No.9.
4. rIbfEBa because (iii. 17). See chs.
vi.-ix., Marks of J,
No. 17.
5. yTil;bil; not to (iii. 11). See chs. xvii.,
xix., Marks of
J, No. 14.
6. txz.o hma what
is this (iii. 13). See ch. xii.
10-22,
Marks of J,
No.7.
7.
NObc,Afi sorrow, toil (iii 16, 17); it occurs
but once
besides in
the Old Testament (v. 29), and with express
allusion to
this passage.
8. wreGe drive out
(iii. 24). See ch. xxi. 1-21, Marks of
E, No.5.
9. lOql;
fmawA
hearken unto the voice (iii. 17). See ch.
xvi., Marks
of J, No. 8.
10. hBAr;hi hBAr;ha greatly multiply (iii. 16). See ch. xvi.,
Marks of J,
No. 10.
Jehovah is distinctively the God of
revelation and of
redemption;
hence in this section, where God's grace to
man is the
prominent thought, his care and favor be-
stowed upon
him in his original estate, the primal prom-
ise of mercy
after the fall, and the goodness mingled with
severity
which marked the whole ordering of his condi-
tion
subsequently, that salutary course of discipline which
was
instituted with a view to gracious ends, Jehovah is
appropriately
used. At the same time, to make it plain
that Jehovah
is not a different or inferior deity, but that
the God of
grace is one with God the Creator, Jehovah
Elohim are
here combined. In the interview of Eve
with
the serpent
(iii. 1-5), however, Elohim is used, as is cus-
tomary when
aliens speak or are spoken to. This
shows
that these
names are used discriminatingly, and that the
employment
of one or the other is regulated not by the
mere habit
of different writers, but by their suitableness
to the
subject-matter.
It is alleged that a different conception
of God is pre-
sented in
this section from that which is found in the
preceding. "Jehovah forms men and beasts, breathes
the
breath of
life into man's nostrils, builds a rib into a woman,
plants a garden, takes a man and puts
him into it, brings
the beasts
to the man, walks in the cool of the day, speaks
(iii. 22) as
though he were jealous of the man."
But as
Elohim and
Jehovah are words of different signification
and
represent the Most High under different aspects of
his being,
they must when used correctly and with regard
to their
proper meaning be associated with different con-
ceptions of
God, This does not argue a diversity of
writers, but
simply that the divine name has each time
been
selected in accordance with the idea to be expressed,
Elohim is the more general designation of
God as the
32 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
Creator and
providential Governor of the world and of
all
mankind. Jehovah is his personal name,
and that by
which he has
made himself known when entering into
close
relations with men, and particularly the chosen race,
as the God
of revelation and grace. The intimacy
thus
established
between the Creator and the creature involves
a
condescension to man and placing himself in accord
with man,
which requires anthropomorphisms for its ex-
pression and
can be made intelligible in no other way.
There is not
the slightest inconsistency between the an-
thropomorphisms
of chs. ii., iii., and the lofty conceptions
of ch. i.,
and no ground whatever for assuming that they
are the
ideas of distinct writers. They abound
alike in the
Prophets and
in the Psalms, where they are freely in-
termingled
in their devout utterances. With one
breath
the Psalmist
speaks of God as knowing the secrets of the
heart (xliv.
22), and with the next calls upon him, "Awake,
why sleepest
thou?" (ver. 24). Ps. cxxxix. links
with the
most exalted
description in human language of the omni-
presence and
omniscience of the infinite God the prayer,
(ver. 23),
"Search me and know my heart," as though it
was
necessary for the Most High to make a careful in-
vestigation
in order to ascertain what is hidden there.
It should be observed further that the
preceding sec-
tion, with
all its grandeur and simplicity, has its anthro-
pomorphisms
likewise. Each creative fiat is uttered
in human
language (i. 3, 6 sqq.). God
"called the light
MOy"
(i. 5), giving Hebrew names to that and various other
objects. He "saw the light that it was good"
(i. 4), thus
inspecting
the work of each day and pronouncing upon
its
quality. He uttered a formula of
blessing upon the
various
orders of living things (i. 22, 28). He
deliberated
with himself
prior to the creation of man (i. 26).
Man
was made
"in the image of God," an expression which
has been
wrested to imply a material form. Time
was
spent upon
the work, and this was divided into six suc-
cessive
days, like so many working periods of men.
When the
work ,vas done, God rested on the seventh
day (ii. 2);
and thus the week was completed, another
human
measure of time. All this is
anthropomorphic.
He who would
speak intelligibly to finite comprehension
of the
infinite God must use anthropomorphisms.
The
difference
is not of kind, but of degree.
MUTUAL
RELATION OF THIS AND THE PRECEDING SECTION.
The inter-relation between these sections
is such as to
show that
they cannot be, as the critics claim, from sep-
arate and
independent documents.
1.
The distribution of the matter gives evidence of pre-
arrangement
and cannot be purely accidental. The
crea-
tion of the
world, heaven, earth, and sea, with all that
they
contain, is described in ch. i., and is assumed in ch.
ii. The latter simply gives details, which were
necessa-
rily passed
over in the plan of the former, respecting the
separate
formation of man and woman and fitting up the
garden for
their habitation. Ch. ii. 19 is the only
ap-
parent
exception to the specific and limited character of
this
section. But even this is no real
exception, since it
is obvious,
as has already been shown, that the formation
of the
beasts and birds is only incidentally mentioned as
subordinate
to the principal statement, and the one of
chief
importance in the connection that God brought
them to Adam
to receive their names. Again, God gave
names to
certain things in ch. i.; Adam gave names to
others in
chs. ii., iii.; and these are precisely adjusted to
one another,
neither duplicating nor omitting any.
God
gave names
to day and night, heaven, earth, and seas (i.
5, 8, 10),
and to Adam (v. 1). Adam gave names to
the
inferior
animals (ii. 20), and to Eve (ii. 23 ; iii. 20).
34 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
2. The title ii. 4a has been shown to belong to
this
section, and
contains explicit reference to the preceding
of which
this is declared to be the sequel. And
in the
body of the
section there are numerous allusions to, or
coincidences
with, the preceding or other so-called P sec-
tions. If the construction of i. 1 adopted by
Dillmann
be correct,
there is a striking similarity in structure be-
tween i. 1,
2 P, and ii.. 4b, 5 J, "in the beginning when
God created,
etc., the earth was waste and void," corre-
sponding to
" in the day that Jehovah God made, etc., no
bush of the
field was yet in the earth." J ii. 4b strikingly
resembles P
v. 1b in the form of expression; so do i. 4a
P and vi. 2a
J; i. 31a, vi. 12a P and viii.13b J; Cr,x,
earth,
without the
article, i. 24 P, as ii. 4 J. The
paronomasia
UhbovA UhTo (i.2),
Ubr;U
UrP; (i. 22,28) P recalls in
J MdAxA
. . .
hmAdAxE (ii.
7), wyxi... hw>Axi (ver. 23), dnAvA fnA (iv.14), rp,xevA rpAfA
(xviii.
27). The first person plural used of God
(i. 26
P),
notwithstanding the strictness of Hebrew monotheism
has its
counterpart in J, iii. 22; xi. 7. The
use of hWAfA
made (iii. 1 J) in reference to the beasts,
instead of rcayA
formed, as ii. 19 J, is a reminiscence of i. 25
P. XXXXX
cherubim (iii. 24 J) occurs in the Pentateuch
besides only
in P.
3.
The repeated occurrence of Jehovah Elohim
throughout
chs. ii., iii. is with evident reference to ch. i.
This
combination of divine names occurs nowhere else
with such
regularity and frequency, though it is found
in a few
other passages, e.g., Ex. n. 30; 2 Sam. vii. 22,
25; 1 Chron.
xvii. 16, 17; Jon. iv. 6; cf. 1 Sam. vi. 20.
This
relieves it from. Dr. Harper's charge1
of being "an
un-Hebraic
expression," and refutes the notion of Hup-
feld2
that it is adopted here without reference to ch. i.,
because as
the full name of God it was appropriate to
the state of
paradise; from which there was a descent to
1 Hebraica, vol. i., p.
23. 2 Quellen der Genesis,
p. 124.
Jehovah
alone after the fall; that of Reuss1 that it is
indicative
of a special document distinct from both P
and J, and
that of Budde2 that it arose from the com-
bination of
two documents, one of which used the name
Jehovah and
the other Elohim. In every other
passage,
in which it
is found, it denotes that Jehovah the God of
must have
the same meaning here; it can only be in-
tended to
suggest that Jehovah, now first introduced, is
identical
with Elohim before spoken of in ch. i.
This
is admitted
by the critics generally, who seek, however, to
evade the
natural inference of the common authorship of
both
sections by the assumption, which has no other
basis than
the hypothesis that it is adduced to support,
that Elohim
was inserted by R.
And while it is plain that chs. ii., iii.
is thus adjusted to
ch. i., it
is no less clear that i. 1-ii. 3 anticipates what is
to follow,
and purposely prepares the way for it.
1.
The emphasis with which it is repeated at the close
of each
creative act, "and God saw that it was good" (i.
4, 10, 12,
etc.), and affirmed at the end of the whole, "be-
hold, it was
very good" (ver. 31), would be unmeaning
except as a
designed preliminary to the reverse which
was shortly
to follow in the fall (ch. iii.). And
this,
moreover, is
necessary to explain the otherwise unac-
countable
declaration (vi. 11 P), that "the earth was cor-
rupt before
God," the mystery of which is unrelieved by
anything
that P contains.
2. Ch. ii. 3 is evidently preliminary to
the fourth com-
mandment
(Ex. xx. 8-11), which again in its terms dis-
tinctly
refers back to i. l-ii. 3. The ten
commandments
in Ex. xx.
are by the critics referred to E, with which,
according to
Dillmann, J was acquainted. He must,
1
Geschichte der heiligen Schriften d. A. T., p. 257.
2
Biblische Urgeschichte, pp. 233, 234.
36 GENERATIOINS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
therefore,
have known and believed that the world was
created in
six days, and can have written nothing in
Gen.
ii., iii. inconsistent with this
belief. This can only
be evaded by
alleging that the commandments are not
preserved in
Ex. xx. in their genuine original form.
Dill-
mann disputes
Ex. xx. 11, because a different reason is
given for
observing the Sabbath in Deut. v. 15.
But Ex.
xx. is the
authentic transcript, while Deut. v. is a repro-
duction with
hortatory modifications. This Dillmanna
admits in
other instances; but Delitzsch very properly
contends
that this is no exception. The rejection
of the
verse is
simply the usual device of the critics for dispos-
ing of
whatever contravenes their hypothesis.
Instead
of adapting
their hypothesis to the phenomena presented
by the text,
they insist upon remodelling the text into
accordance
with their hypothesis. The advantage of
this method
is that the critic can thus triumphantly es-
tablish
whatever be sets out to prove.
CAIN AND ABEL--CAIN'S DESCENDANTS (CH.
IV.).
It is said that vs. 17-24 is at variance
with the rest of
the chapter,
and with the J document generally in re-
spect both
to the life of Cain and the fact of the deluge.
It is hence
claimed that extracts from separate documents
have here
been combined.
While Cain is represented in vs. 11, 14, as condemned
for the
murder of his brother to be a fugitive and a wan-
derer in the
earth, it is affirmed that, according to ver. 17,
he led a
settled life and built a city. But (1)
it then re-
mains to be
accounted for, if these stories are in such
direct
antagonism, that R could have put them to-
gether
without explanation or remark, as though he per-
ceived no
conflict between them and had no idea that his
readers
would suspect any. (2) The fact is that
Cain was
CAIN AND ABEL (CH. IV.) 37
expelled
from the seat of God's presence, the society of
man, and
cultivated land, to the wild steppes of the land
of Nod (so
called from dnA wanderer, in his sentence),
equivalent
to the nomad region. The Hebrew word for
city is in
usage broad enough to cover a nomadic encamp-
ment (Num.
xiii. 19; 2 Kin. xvii. 9). The dread
lest his
murder might
be avenged (ver. 14), betrayed itself afresh
in his
constructing such a defence for himself and his
family,
which subsequently may have grown from these
small
beginnings1 into much larger proportions. The
builders of
the first huts on the site of
said to have
laid the foundations of the city. (3)
Cain
had
previously been a "tiller of the ground." That he
continued to
be an agriculturist is certainly not stated in
the text and
is in fact inconsistent with it. The
arts de-
veloped by
his descendants are those of nomads, viz.,
pasturage,
music, and metallurgy, but not the cultivation
of the soil. Jabal was "the father of such as dwell
in
tents and
have cattle," in a very different sense from that
in which
Abel was a "keeper of sheep" at his paternal
home. (4) The explicit reference in iv. 24, where
Lamech
speaks of
Cain being avenged sevenfold, to the pledge
which the
LORD had given him in ver. 15, shows very
plainly that
both belong to the same continuous narra-
tive. Dillmann can find no escape from this but
either
by putting
the cart before the horse and supposing the
allusion to be
the other way, and that ver. 15 was shaped
into
conformity with ver. 24, or else by ejecting ver. 15a
from the
text as an addition by R. Budde ("Biblische
Urgeschichte,"
pp. 184", 185) strangely imagines that the
language of
Lamech gave rise to the story of Cain's
murder.
1Observe the form of statement in the Hebrew, which is significant,
hn,bo yhiy;va "he was building a city," as a work in progress, not
"he
built
it," as though it were completed by him.
38 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
A still more surprising inference from vs.
17-24 is that
the writer
knew nothing of the interruption of human
history by
the deluge. This inference hangs by a
very
slender
thread. As the invention of various arts
is here
traced to
the sons of Lamech in the line of Cain, the
conclusion
is drawn that as the arts have been perpetu-
ated, so
must the race have been that invented them;
which is an
evident non sequitur. As though
an art in-
vented by
one race of men could not be adopted by an-
other race,
and the knowledge of it be kept alive though
the original
inventors had passed away. That the race
of Cain was
extinct seems to be implied by the fact that
the
genealogy breaks off as it does, without being con-
tinued, like
every other genealogy in Genesis, to tribes or
persons
existing in the writer's own day.
Wellhausen in-
trepidly
suggests that Cain is a collective name for the
Kenites, as
in Num. xxiv. 22, who are thus traced up to
the origin
of mankind; a piece of historical criticism akin
to that
which finds an allusion to
gold of
Parvaim" (2 Chron. iii. 6), since Parvaim is the
dual of
Wellhausen maintains that this section, in
which the
arts of
building cities, care of cattle, music, and metal-
lurgy are
traced to the godless descendants of Cain is a
sequel to
the narrative of the fall in chs. ii., iii., in which
the tree of
knowledge bears forbidden fruit. The
com-
mon idea in
both, he claims, is that knowledge is peril-
ous, and
Jehovah jealously restrains man from its posses-
sion;
advancing civilization betokens growing corruption.
These two
sections, pervaded by this idea, he sunders
from the J
of the rest of Genesis, and supposes that they
belong to
some antecedent document, J', which J has here
incorporated
in his own production. Dillmann agrees
with him
that the first half of ch. iv., containing the
story of
Cain and Abel, is by a different writer from the
CAIN AND ABEL (CH. IV.) 39
second half
of the chapter, containing the account of
Cain's
descendants; but insists that it is the former and
not the
latter which is by the author of the narrative of
the fall and
is its continuation. And he points in
evi-
dence of
this to ver. 7b, which is repeated from iii. 16b;
the mention
of
trace the
growth of sin, the beginning of which is de-
scribed in
ch. iii., and the sameness of the diction as
shown in a
number of words and expressions common
to vs. 1-16
and chs. ii., iii., as well as other passages re-
ferred to
J. On the other hand, Budde
("Biblische
Urgeschichte,"
pp. 220, 221) points out coincidences
in
expression between vs. 17-24 and various J passages.
Whereupon
Dillmann concludes that if any significance
is to be
attached to, these coincidences, the author of chs.
ii., iii.
may himself have introduced vs. 17-24 from its
original
source into his own document, regardless of the
discrepancy
in ver. 17, not so much with a view to the
invention of
arts as the development of crime as shown
in Lamech's
impious speech. As it has already been
shown that
there is no inconsistency between ver. 17 and
the
preceding verses, the entire critical structure based on
that
assumption collapses. Dillmann is right in link-
ing chs.
ii., iii. with iv. 1-16, and Wellhausen in linking
those
chapters with vs. 17-24. And there is
but one
author for
the whole.
MARKS OF J.
Dillmann finds the following points in
common between
chs. ii.,
iii., and the diction of vs. 1-16.
1. hmAdAxE ground (vs. 2, 3,
10, 12). See ch. xxviii. 10-
22, Marks of
J, No.4.
2. hd,WA field (ver.8). See chs. ii., iii., Marks of J, No.2.
This word is
by no means peculiar to J. It occurs re-
40 GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
peatedly
also in P, e.g., xxiii. 9, 11, 13, 17, 19, 20, and
often
elsewhere.
3. hmAdAxEhA dbafA till the ground (vs. 2, 12, as ii. 5; ill. 23).
As the
phrase occurs nowhere else in the Hexateuch, its
absence from
P sections is to be explained in the same
manner as
its absence from all the rest of those that are
assigned to
J. No alignment for a diversity of
documents
can be
derived from it.
4.
wreGe drive
out (ver. 14, as ill. 24). See ch.
xxi. 1-21,
Marks of E,
No.5.
5.
yTil;bil; not to
(ver. 15, as iii. 11). See chs. xviii.,
xix.,
Marks of J,
No. 14.
6.
hTAxa rUrxA thou art cursed (ver. 11, as iii. 14).
This
verb is
always referred either to J, E, or D, there being
no occasion
for its employment in any of the passages as-
cribed to P.
7.
The questions asked by the LORD (vs. 9, 10) are
similar to
those in iii. 9, 13. These various
points of
similarity
between vs. 1-16 and chs. ii., iii. create a strong
presumption
that they are from the same writer, as Dill-
mann urges,
but afford no proof that he is distinct from
the author
of the passages referred to P.
He also finds the following expressions
in vs. 1-16,
which recur
in J passages elsewhere:
8. JysiOh
in the adverbial sense again
(vs. 2,12). This
is uniformly
referred to J or E, except in Lev. xxvi. 18.
9. Ol
hrAHA be angry (vs. 5, 6). See chs. xviii., xix., Marks
of J, No.
30. 10.
10. hp, hcAPA open the mouth (ver. 11). This occurs but
twice
besides in the Hexateuch (Num. xvi. 30, J; Deut.
xi. 6 D).
Budde finds the following indications of
J in vs. 17-
24.
11. dlayA beget (ver. 18). See
chs. vi.-ix., Marks of P, No.
20; also
under ch. x.
CAIN AND ABEL (CH. IV.) 41
12.
xvhi MGa (ver.
22), she also. See ch. xxii.
20-24,
Marks of J,
No.3.
13.
vyHixA Mwev; (ver. 21) and his brother's name, as x. 25.
These are
the only two instances in the Hexateuch in
which a
second son is introduced by this particular for-
mula.
The divine names are appropriately
used. It is to Je-
hovah, who
had given her the promise of offspring, that
Eve
gratefully ascribes the bestowment of her first child
(ver.
1). To Jehovah offerings are brought by
Cain and
Abel (vs. 3,
4). It is Jehovah, who condescendingly
re-
monstrates
with Cain and explains to him the defect in
his offering
and how it may be remedied (vs. 6, 7).
It is
Jehovah
again, the defender of his own people, who ar-
raigns Cain
for his awful crime, and while sparing his
guilty life banishes
him from his presence (vs. 9-16). It
is Jehovah
upon whose name the pious race of Seth and
Enosh
devoutly call, iv. 26.
It might at first sight appear surprising
that Eve, who
had
recognized the grace of Jehovah in the birth of Cain,
should speak
of Seth as coming to her from Elohim (ver.
25). But there is a reason for this. The good gift of
God is set
in contrast with the evil deed of man.
"Elo-
him hath
appointed me another seed instead of Abel;
for Cain
slew him." It is to be observed
that Elohim
here occurs
in a J section; so that the critics themselves
must admit
that it is discriminatingly used, and that there
is a special
propriety in its employment.
II
THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM (CH. V. I-VI. 8)
ADAM TO N0AH (CH. V.)
THOSE who insist upon regarding the entire
antedilu-
vian history
of the, Bible as mythical, and on a par with
the early
myths of heathen nations, labor, though with
small
success, to find ancient parallels to the genealogy
contained in
this chapter. The nearest approach to it
is
the ten
antediluvian kings of Chaldean story with reigns
on an
average of 43,000 years each, as reported by Berosus.
Whether
Lenormant is correct or not in giving them an as-
tronomical
interpretation, their names plainly stand in
no relation
to the names in this Scriptural list.
The
sole point
of resemblance is in the number ten; and this
is vague
enough. Others have sought to find
meanings
in the names
mentioned in this chapter, which might
suggest the
idea which lay at the basis of the genealogy
and account
for its formation. They are interpreted
by
Boettcher1
as indicative of the successive stages by which
the human
race advanced in civilization; by Ewald2 as
in part at
least the names of various deities; and by
Knobel as
representing the Western Asiatics, while the
descendants
of Cain denote the Chinese and other popu-
lations of
the intent
of the sacred historian it simply traces the line
of descent
from Adam to Noah in the pious line of Seth.
1Exegetisch-kritische Aehrenlese, pp. 4. 5.
2Geschichte
ADAM TO NOAH (CH. V.) 43
Budde's
inference from the names Jared (descent) and
Methuselah
(man of weapon) that while the first five in
the line
were good men, the last five, with the exception
of Enoch and
Noah, were wicked, rests on purely fanci-
ful
interpretations of the names.
The longevity attributed to the
antediluvians has been
declared to
be inconsistent with physiological laws; but
in our
ignorance of the extent to which the conditions
affecting
human life may have been modified, such an as-
sertion is
unwarranted.
THE CAINITE AND SETHITE GENEALOGIES.
There is a remarkable similarity in the
names of the
descendants
of Seth in ch. v. and those of Cain, iv.17,
18, as shown
in the following lists:
Adam Adam
Seth
Enosh
Kenan Cain
Mahalalel Enoch
Jared Irad
Enoch Mehujael
Methuselah Methushael
Lamech Lamech
Noah
The six names in each column, beginning
with Kenan
or Cain, are
strikingly alike; and if Mahalalel be trans-
posed with
Enoch, they will follow each other in the
same
identical order. It is natural to
conclude that this
cannot be
altogether casual. Buttmann2
inferred that
these are
variants of one and the same genealogy as pre-
served in
two related but hostile tribes. In its
original
intent it
enumerated the early ancestors of the human
1Biblische Urgeschichte, p.
96. 2Mythologus, i., pp.
170-172.
44 THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM
race sprung
from its first progenitor, who in one form of
the myth was
called Adam and in the other Enosh, each
having the
same signification (man). The two were
sub-
sequently
harmonized by making Enosh the grandson of
Adam. The names differed sufficiently for the race
of
Seth to
regard the Cainite tradition as distinct from
their own
and descriptive of a godless race, and so Cain
was held to
be the ancestor not of all mankind, but of
this hated
tribe.
The majority of critics accept this
identification of the
two
genealogies, and have drawn other consequences
from
it. Dillmann contended that the redactor
has trans-
posed the
story of Cain and Abel (iv. 1-16) from its true
position
later in the history. Cain was not the
Son of
Adam, but
belongs where Kenan stands in the geneal-
ogy (v. 9),
with whom he is identical; or, as he has mod-
ified his
opinion in the latest edition of his "Commen-
tary,"
Cain and. Abel were not the only sons of Adam, but
were born
subsequent to Seth. He thinks it strange
that the
distinction between tillers of the ground and
keepers of
sheep, and between bloody and unbloody offer-
ings, should
be found in the first children of primeval
man; and
that the advance from the first sin to fratri-
cide should
be made so soon. This only shows that
his
opinion
differs from that of the author of the narrative.
He appeals
also to the words of Cain (iv. 14), "Every
one that
findeth me shall slay me," which imply a consid-
erable population;
but he forgets how greatly the de-
scendants of
Adam may have multiplied by the time that
he attained
his one hundred and thirtieth year (v. 3, cf.
iv.
25). Wellhausen goes so far as to
identify Abel with
Jabal (iv.
20), "the father pf such as have cattle." But--
1. That Wellhausen's wild conjecture
expressly contra-
dicts the
statements of the history is obvious.
And it
requires not
a little critical manipulation to carry through
ADAM TO NOAH (CH. V.) 45
the
hypothesis of Dillmann. In iv. 25 the
word "again,"
in the first
clause, and the whole of the last clause after
the word fraz,
seed, viz., "another instead of Abel, for
Cain
slew
him," must be thrown out of the text as an interpo-
lation by
R. The statement (iv. 1) that Cain was
the son
of Adam and
Eve must be gotten out of the way, if he is
to be made
the same as Kenan the son of Enosh (v. 9).
And R must
have reversed the order of the statements in the
chapter for
no very intelligible reason.
2.
The distinctness of these genealogies is expressly
affirmed. That in iv. 17, 18, J, professes to record
the
descendants
of Cain after his murder of Abel and his re-
moval to the
the
descendants of Seth, a different son of Adam.
The
critics
cannot consistently claim that this is merely a
variant
representation by J and P of what is in fact the
same thing,
but which R has erroneously set down as
two quite
separate lines of descent. For by their
own
hypothesis J
(iv. 25, 26) traces the line "Adam,
Seth,
Enosh"
precisely as is done by P (v. 3-6); and v. 29 is
attributed
to J as another fragment of the same line.
From this
the critics infer that the document J must have
contained a
complete genealogy from Adam to Noah par-
allel to
that of P, though the greater portion of it has
been omitted
by R as superfluous repetition. Now
these
broken and
scattered links of J utter the same voice with
the full
record of P, that Noah and his father Lamech
were descended
not from Cain but from Seth. Both
these
genealogies in substantially their present form
were,
therefore, according to the critics contained in the
document of
J, who in this followed the sources whence
he derived
his history. This is a confession that
the
same writer
can have recorded them both; consequently
their
presence in the existing text of Genesis affords no
argument for
critical partition. The unity of Genesis
is
46 THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM
not affected
by the alleged conversion of one genealogy
into two,
which on the critics' own theory must have oc-
curred, if
at all, in the course of its oral transmission
prior to the
writing of the book of Genesis, or even of
the document
J, which is held to be one of its oldest
constituents.
And in regard to this it would appear that
a sweeping
conclusion
is drawn from very slender premises.
Sup-
pose that we
are unable to account for the coincidence
of names,
does it follow that the persons represented by
them never
existed? Delitzsch directs attention to the fact
that but two
names are the same in the entire series,
viz., Enoch
and Lamech: and in both cases statements
are made
which show that the persons are quite dis-
tinct. The first of these names means initiation
or con-
secration, and might very well be applied in the
former
sense to the
first son of Cain born in exile, as subse-
quently to
the first-born of Reuben (Gen. xlvi. 9), and in
the latter
sense to that holy man who walked with God
and was not,
for God took him. The meaning of the
name Lamech
is unknown; but the identification of the
persons so
called is forbidden by the speeches preserved
from them,
which reflect totally diverse characters.
Cain
and Kenan,
Irad and Jared are distinct not merely in
their form
but in their radical letters and probable sig-
nification.
So is the second and determining member in
the compound
names Methushael and Methuselah. Ma-
halalel,
praise of God, which stands over against Mehu-
jael,
smitten of God, may suggest that the descendants of
Cain have
names with a bad meaning and those of Seth
have names
with a good meaning.
The meaning of most of these ancient names
cannot
now be
ascertained. Several of them do not
appear to
be
Hebrew. And it is doubtful whether even
those
which
simulate Hebrew forms may not be merely modi-
ADAM TO NOAH (CH. V.) 47
fications of
some unknown original to adapt them better
to the
Hebrew ear. It is not surprising if
these parallel
lists of
unintelligible names should undergo changes in
their
transmission through long centuries, and if they
should,
whether with or without design, be gradually con-
formed to
one another. The disposition to produce
like-
sounding
contrasts, as in Isa v. 7 FPAw;mi ... hPAW;mi,
hqAdAc; . . . hqAfAc;, or by slight modifications as of Beel-
zebub into
Beelzebul, or Shechem into Sychar, to give a
different
turn to the meaning of words, may easily have
been
operative. The LXX. has two more names
alike in
both lists
than the Hebrew, which indicates a tendency
in such
cases to come into a closer approximation in the
course of
repeated transcription. The Mohammedan
names for
Cain and Abel are Kabil and Habil; see
Koran, note
to ch. v. 30.
DUPLICATE STATEMENTS.
Dillmann thinks that the composite
character of the
book of
Genesis is shown more plainly in the duplicate
mention of
the birth of Seth and Enosh (iv. 25,26 ; v. 3-
6) than
anywhere else. Why should the same
writer
thus repeat
himself? The supplementary critics, as
Tuch,
held that J
inserted iv. 25, 26, in order to effect the tran-
sition from
the preceding account of Cain and his de-
scendants to
that of the line of Seth. The more
recent
critics
follow Hupfeld, who regarded these verses, as to-
gether with
v. 29, the remnants of J's genealogy from
Adam to Noah
parallel to that of P in ch. v. R, while
omitting the
greater portion as superfluous repetition, saw
fit to
retain these three verses because of the additional
information
which they convey. He inserted v. 29 in
the body of
P's genealogy, but preserved iv. 25, 26 dis-
tinct. Now it is difficult to see why the same
motive, be
48 THE
GENERATIONS OF ADAM
it what it
might, which could determine R not to blend
iv. 25, 26
with the corresponding verses of ch. v. as is
done with v.
29, might not be similarly influential with
the original
writer. Some reasons for such a separate
statement
naturally offer themselves.
1.
These closing verses of ch. iv. are necessary to the
proper
understanding of ch. v. While the
insertion of those
statements
in this chapter would have been confus-
ing and
would have marred its symmetry, it was impor-
tant to set
v. 3 in its true light in relation to iv. 1, 2.
The critics
say that they are contradictory, since they
infer from
v. 3 that according to P Seth was the first
child of
Adam. But this is not necessarily
implied any
more than
Ex. ii. 1, 2 implies that Moses was the oldest
child of his
parents, though ver. 4 declares the contrari-
not to speak
of Ex. vii. 7. To make the matter
perfectly
plain to the
reader, iv. 25 distinctly states that Seth was
born after
the murder of Abel. And then iv. 26 was
added to
indicate the character of the godly race of Seth
in contrast
with the ungodly race of Cain, and thus pre-
pare the way
for the sparing of Noah and his house
when the
rest of mankind perished in the flood.
2.
Another reason for putting these statements at the
close of ch.
iv. grows out of the original plan of the book
of Genesis
and its division into successive sections each
in a manner
complete in itself and introduced by its own
special
title. The section ii. 4---ch. iv. had
recorded a
constant
descent from bad to worse, the sin of our first
parents,
their expulsion from paradise, the murder of
Abel, Cain's
descendants reaching in Lamech the climax
of boastful
and unrestrained violence. That the
section
might not be
suffered to end in unrelieved gloom a
brighter
outlook is added at the close, precisely as is
done at the
end of the next section in vi. 8. Seth
is
substituted
for Abel, whom Cain slew, and instead of
ADAM TO NOAH (CH. V.) 49
piety
perishing with murdered Abel it reaches a new de-
velopment in
the days of Enosh.
The whole arrangement bears evidence of
adaptation
and careful
thought, and is suggestive of one author, not
the
combination of separate compositions prepared with
no reference
to each other.
A further indication of the same sort,
implying the
original
unity of these chapters, is their correspondence
with the
general plan of Genesis in respect to genealo-
gies. Uniformly the divergent lines are first
traced be-
fore
proceeding with the principal line of descent leading
to the
chosen people. In ch. x. the various
nations of
mankind
sprung from the three sons of Noah; then (xi.
10 sqq.) the
line from Shem to Abram. Nahor's
descend-
ants (xxii.
20 sqq.), those of Keturah (xxv. 1 sqq.), and of
Ishmael (vs.
13 sqq.), before those of Isaac (vs. 19 sqq.).
Those of
Esau (xxxvi. 1 sqq.) before those of Jacob
(xxxvii. 2
sqq.). In like manner the degenerate and
God-
forsaken
race of Cain is traced (iv. 17 sqq.) before
proceeding
with that of Seth (ch. v.).
PRIMEVAL CHRONOLOGY.
It should be remarked here that no
computation
of time is
ever built in the Bible upon this or any other
genealogy. There is no summation of the years from
Adam to
Noah, or from Noah to Abraham, as there is of
the abode in
the exodus
to the building of the temple (l Kin. vi. 1).
And as the
received chronologies and the generally ac-
cepted date
of the flood and of the creation of the world
are derived
from computations based on these genealo-
gies, it
ought to be remembered that this is a very pre-
carious mode
of reckoning. This genealogy could only
afford a
safe estimate of time on the assumption that no
50 THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM
links are
missing and that every name in the line of descent
has been
recorded. But this we have no right to
take
for granted. The analogy of other biblical genealogies
is decidedly
against it. Very commonly unimportant
names are
omitted; sometimes several consecutive names
are dropped
together. No one has a right, therefore,
to
denominate a
primeval chronology so constructed the
biblical
chronology and set it in opposition to the de-
ductions of
science, and thence conclude that there is a
conflict
between the Bible and science. See the
article
on this
subject in the Bibliotheca Sacra for April, 1890.
MARKS OF P.
Dillmann finds the following indications of
P in this
chapter.
1.
The back reference from -vs. 1-3 to i. 26-28. But
it is linked
to the same extent and in precisely the same
manner with
J sections. The genealogy is traced
(ver.
32) to Noah
and his three sons, all of whom are similarly
named in ix.
18 J; ver. 29 refers back to iii. 17 J.
The
critics say
that ver. 29 is an insertion by R. They
say
so because
their hypothesis requires it and for no other
reason. It might just as well be said that R inserted
vs. 1, 2,
and modified ver. 3. Both passages stand
on
the same
footing, and should be dealt with in the same
way.
2.
The formality and precision of statement. This is
the uniform
style of the genealogies leading to the chosen
race as
distinguished from those belonging to the diver-
gent lines,
whether attributed to P or J.
3. tlol;OT generations (ver. 1). See chs. vi.-ix., Marks
of P; No. 1.
4. tUmD;
likeness (vs. 1, 3). See ch. i. 1-ii. 3.
5. Ml,c, image
(ver. 3). This word occurs here and
SONS OF GOD
AND DAUGHTERS OF MEN (VI.1-8) 51
ix. 6, with
specific allusion to i. 26, 27; and besides in
the
Hexateuch only Num. xxxiii. 52 J.
6. hbAqen;U rkAzA male and female (ver. 2).
See chs. vi.-ix.,
Marks of P,
No. 12.
7. dyliOh beget (vs. 3 sqq.).
See chs. vi.-ix., Marks of P,
No. 20.
8. Myhilox<-tx, j`l.ehat;hi walk with God (vs.
22, 24).
This phrase
occurs besides vi. 9 P, and nowhere else in
the Old
Testament. The nearest approach to it is
walk
before God (xvii. 1 P; xxiv. 40 J; xlviii. 15
E).
The assertion that according to this
writer "this first
age of the
world was still a time of rest and primitive
perfection,
into which corruption did not penetrate till
toward its
close" (vi. 9 sqq.), is gratuitous and un-
founded. It has no basis whatever in the sacred
text.
The
universal corruption described in vi. 11, 12; finds its
only
explanation in the fall of man (ch. iii.), and the sub-
sequent
development and spread of evil (ch. iv.; vi. 1-8),
and proves
conclusively that these passages cannot be
separated
and assigned to distinct sources.
The names of God are appropriately used
in this chap-
ter. Elohim is rendered necessary in ver. 1 by its
refer-
ence to i.
27, and Jehovah in v. 29 by its reference to
iii.
17. Elohim is required in vs. 22, 24,
since walking
with God is
a general designation of piety as contrasted
with what is
earthly and sensual.
THE SONS OF
GOD AND THE DAUGHTERS OF MEN
(CH. VI. 1-8)
In
regard to the paragraph Gen. vi. 1-8, the most re-
cent critics
have fallen back upon the position taken up
by
fragmentists, such as Vater, who affirmed that it was
not only
disconnected with the genealogy in ch. v.,
which
precedes, and with the account of the Hood which
52 THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM
succeeds it
(vi. 9 sqq.), but that it falls apart itself into
two
unrelated paragraphs (vs. 1-4) concerning the pri-
meval
giants, J', and (vs. 5-8) the divine purpose to
destroy the
world and save Noah, J.
But the fact is that there is the most
intimate connec-
tion
throughout, and this passage can neither itself be
split into
fragments nor sundered from the context in
which it
stands. The genealogy in ch. v. conducts
the
line of
descent by regular steps from Adam to Noah,
pausing here
because there was something to record
about Noah
before proceeding further, and departing
from the
analogy of the rest of the chapter by naming
three sons
of Noah instead of one, as in the case of every
preceding
patriarch, because they were all concerned in
what was to
follow. The closing verse of ch. v. is
thus
directly
preparatory for the account of the deluge which
comes
after. Further, this verse contains the
statement
of Noah's
age at the birth of his children, but the length
of his
subsequent life and the duration of the whole,
which had
been regularly given in the case of preceding
patriarchs,
are here wanting. These are, however,
sup-
plied (vii.
6) by the statement of Noah's age at the com-
ing of the
flood, and then, after the account of the deluge
had been
given and all that was to be said further about
Noah, there
follows in the identical forms of the geneal-
ogy (ch. v.)
the time that Noah lived after the flood and
the total of
his years (ix. 28, 29). This is a clear
indica-
tion that
this genealogy, instead of being broken off and
terminated
at the close of ch. v., is simply enlarged by
the
insertion of the narrative of the deluge, which is in-
corporated
within it. After this the divergent
lines of
descent are
introduced (ch. x.), and then the main gene-
alogy is
resumed, and proceeds (xi. 10-26) until it
reaches the
name of Abram, when it pauses, or rather is
enlarged
again, to receive the history of the patriarchs.
SONS OF GOD
AND DAUGHTERS OF MEN (VI.1-8) 53
Again, vi. 1-8 is formally linked to what
precedes in
the original
Hebrew by Vav Consecutive, and by the
statement of
men's beginning to multiply on the face of
the earth,
which sums up the substance of ch. v. in a
few words,
the expansion of the race being indicated by
the
statement repeated in the case of each patriarch,
"He
begat sons and daughters." It is
further appropri-
ate to the
connection as preparing the way for what fol-
lows, by explaining
the universality of the corruption
which was
the moral cause of the flood. This is
the
subject of
vs. 1-4, which is accordingly intimately re-
lated to vs.
5-8, and leads directly to it, making that
clear which
would otherwise be quite unaccountable.
The sons of God (vs. 2, 4) are not angels
nor demi-
gods,1
whose intermarriage with the daughters of men
brought
forth a race of monsters or superhuman beings.
1.
This purely mythological conceit was foisted upon
the passage
in certain apocryphal books like the book
of Enoch;
also by Philo and Josephus, who were misled
by the
analogy of ancient heathen fables. But
it was
repelled by
the great body of Jewish and Christian in-
terpreters
from the earliest periods, though it has been
taken up
again by a number of modern scholars. It
is
assumed by
them that a transgression of angels is here
spoken of,
though the existence of angels has not been
before
mentioned nor in any way referred to in the pre-
vious part
of the book of Genesis. This view has no
sanction
whatever in Scripture. Jude, vs. 6, 7,
and 2
1The Targums and some other
Jewish authorities understand by
"sons
of God " nobles, men of high rank or official station, who in Ps.
lxxxii. 6
are denominated "sons of the Most High"; and by "daugh-
ters of
men" women of inferior position, as in Ps. xlix. 2; lxii.9,
Mdx ynb are
contrasted with wyx rnb as
men of low degree with men
of high
degree. But no such contrast is
suggested here; and the in-
termarriage
of different classes in society is nowhere represented as dis-
pleasing to
God or provoking the divine judgment.
54 THE GENERATIOINS OF ADAM
Pet. ii. 4
have been tortured into sustaining it; but they
contain no
reference to this passage whatever. And
there is no
analogy anywhere in the Bible for the adop-
tion by the
sacred writers of mythological notions in
general, or
for the idea in particular of the intermarriage
of angels
and men. Sexual relations are nowhere in
Scripture
attributed to superior beings. There is
no
suggestion
that angels are married or are given in mar-
riage; the
contrary is expressly declared (Matt. xxii. 30).
Male and
female deities have no place in the Bible, ex-
cept as a
heathen notion which is uniformly reprobated.
The Hebrew
language does not even possess a word for
"goddess." The whole conception of sexual life, as con-
nected with
God or angels, is absolutely foreign to He-
brew
thought, and for that reason cannot be supposed to
be
countenanced here.
2.
The sole foundation for this mistaken interpreta-
tion is the
allegation that "sons of God" must, accord-
ing to
Scriptural usage, mean "angels;" which, how-
ever, is not
the case. Even if that were the more
-usual
and obvious
interpretation of the phrase, which it is not,
the
connection in which it stands would compel us to
seek a
different meaning for it here, if that were possible,
and one
which would be compatible with marriage.
Sons of
God" Myhilox<hA yneB; is a poetic designation of
angels
occurring three times in the book of Job (i. 6 ; ii.
1; xxxviii.
7) and a like expression Mylixe
yneB; is found
twice in the
Psalms in the same sense (xxix. 1; lxxxix.
6). Daniel iii. 25, NyhilAx< rBa "son of the gods," has
also
been
appealed to; but this has nothing to do with the
case, as it
is the language of Nebuchadnezzar, and repre-
sents a
genuine heathen conception. Angels are
no-
where so
called in the Pentateuch, nor anywhere in the
Bible but in
the few passages already referred to.
3.
On the contrary, "sons of God " is a familiar des-
SONS OF GOD
AND DAUGHTERS OF MEN (VI.1-8) 55
ignation of
the chosen race, the worshippers of the true
God. Moses
is instructed to say to Pharaoh (Ex. iv.
22), Thus
saith Jehovah, Israel is my son: let my son
go. So Deut. xiv. 1, Ye are the sons of Jehovah
your
God. In the Song of Moses (Deut. xxxii.) this idea
of
sonship
occurs repeatedly. Ver. 5, They have
dealt
corruptly
with him, they are not his sons. Ver. 6,
Is
Jehovah not
thy father? Ver. 18, He is called the
Rock
that begat
thee, the God that gave thee birth: and the
people are
called (ver. 19) his sons and his daughters.
Hos. i. 10,
Ye are the sons of the living God; xi. 1, Is-
rael is
called God's son. Isaiah in repeated
passages
speaks of the
people as God's sons (Isa. i. 2; xliii. 6 ;
xlv.
11). In Jer. xxxi. 20 the LORD calls
Ephraim his
dear son,
his favorite child. In Ps. lxxiii. 15
the pious
are called
"the generation of God's children."
And, on
the other
hand, the worshippers of false gods are called
their
children. Thus (Num. xxi. 29) the people
of Moab
are spoken
of as the sons and daughters of Chemosh.
Mal. ii. 11,
an Israelite who had taken a foreign wife is
said to have
married the daughter of a strange god.
It
is in entire
accord with this Biblical usage that the pious
race, who
adhered to the true worship of God, are called
the sons of
God in contrast with the descendants of
Cain, who
had gone out from the presence of Jehovah,
and
abandoned the seat of his worship entirely.
4.
And this brings the verses before us into corre-
spondence
with numerous other passages of the Penta-
teuch in its
practical aim. The law of Moses again
and
again
forbids intermarriage with the Canaanites lest they
should contaminate
Israel and seduce them to idolatry.
The book of
Genesis inculcates the same lesson when it
depicts
Abraham's concern about the marriage of Isaac
(xxiv. 3,
4), and that of Isaac and Rebekah about the
marriage of
Jacob (xxvii. 46 ; xxviii. 1, 2), the distress
56 THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM
which Esau's
marriage caused his parents (xxvi. 34, 35;
xxviii.
6-8), and the trials of Jacob's family at Shechem
(ch.
xxxiy). If the verses before us point
out the ruin-
ous
consequences of the intermarriage of the godly race
with the
ungodly, it furthers an aim which the writer of
Genesis and
of the Pentateuch evidently had greatly at
heart. A warning not to intermarry with angels would
be
altogether unmeaning.
5.
This explanation of how it came to pass that the
pious
portion of the race were infected with the uni-
versal
degeneracy is not only appropriate in the connec-
tioni but is
necessary to account for the universality of
the
following judgment, which is repeatedly and largely
insisted upon. This is an integral and essential part of
the
narrative, the omission of which would leave an un-
filled
chasm. The primal source of human
corruption
had been
germinally shown in the fall (ch. iii.); the
degeneracy
of the Cainites had been traced (ch. iv.).
Nothing but
good, however, had thus far been said of the
race of Seth
(iv. 26; v. 22, 24, 29). That this pious
race
were
themselves involved in the degeneracy which had
overtaken
the rest of mankind, is here stated for the first
time. But this is necessary to explain why the
whole
race of man,
with the exception of a single family, should
be doomed to
destruction.
6.
The explanation now given is further confirmed by
ver. 3,
where sentence is passed for the offence described
in the
preceding verse. In what the offence
consisted,
if the sons
of God were angels, is not very obvious.
It
is not
illicit intercourse which is described; the terms
used denote
lawful marriage. But if it was wrong for
the angels
to marry women, the angels surely were the
chief
offenders; and yet no penalty is denounced upon
angels. The divine sentence falls exclusively upon
men.
There is
such an obvious incongruity in this that
SONS OF GOD
AND DAUGHTERS OF MEN (VI.1-8) 57
Budde1
insists that ver. 3 is an interpolation and does not
belong in
this connection, but has been transferred from
the account
of the fall of our first parents. The incon-
gruity that
is alleged, however, does not show the verse
to be an
interpolation, but simply that the mythological
sense which
has been given to the passage is false.
7.
The word Nephilim, occurring ver. 4, has given rise
to the
strange deduction that this passage originally
stood in no
connection with the account of the flood;
that the
author of it in fact knew of no such event.
The
only
foundation for this inference is that the same word
is found
again in N urn. xiii. 33, in the evil report of the
spies
respecting Canaan. If the Nephilim here
spoken
of were
still in existence in the days of Moses, how could
there have
been a catastrophe in the interval which swept
away all
mankind except the family of Noah? But
this
rests upon
the unproved assumption that the Nephilim
of the book
of Numbers were lineal descendants of those
of
Genesis. And on this uncertain basis the
author or
compiler of
Genesis is charged with the absurdity of in-
troducing a
passage as preliminary to the deluge, which
by its very
terms implies that no deluge had taken place.
Could he
have so grossly mistaken its meaning? Or
is
it not
possible that modern critics may have put a wrong
interpretation
on these isolated verses? The mere fact
that the
same term, "Nephilim," is applied both to ante-
diluvians
and to Canaanites is a very slender premise on
which to
base so extraordinary a conclusion. The
word
is obscure
in its meaning and its derivation. It is
more
probably an
appellative or descriptive term than a gen-
tile
noun. The LXX. translates it
"giants;" other old
Greek
versions render it "assailants " or " violent men."
It does not
occur again in the narrative of the conquest
of Canaan,
as though it were the proper name of a tribe,
1 Biblische Urgeschichte, p.
30.
58 THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM
but only in
the report of the spies, whose excited imagi-
nation could
best express the terror inspired by these
men of great
stature and powerful frame by saying that
they were
the old giants revived.
It is further to be observed that the
Nephilim are not
said to have
sprung from the union of the sons of God
with the
daughters of men. The statement is that
the
Nephilim
were in the earth prior to these intermarriages,
and also
after these intermarriages had taken place.
But
it is not
said that they were in any case the fruit of such
marriages.
The critics, however, tell us that though this
is not
expressly stated, it is implied. This is
by no
means
necessarily so. But Suppose it to be
granted; the
mythological
interpretation is an impossibility neverthe-
less. The idea that the Nephilim were a superhuman
race sprung
from the union of angels with the daughters
of men is
completely nullified by the explicit declaration
that the
Nephilim existed before such marriages took
place as
well as after. No new species of
creature can
be intended,
therefore, whose origin is traced to the in-
termarriage
of different orders of beings.
8. It is objected that "the daughters
of men" must
have the
same universal sense in ver. 2 as in ver. 1; and
that the
contrast of "the sons of God" with "the daugh-
ters of
men" shows that different orders of being are
here
referred to. But this contrast works precisely the other
way. It has been already shown that in Scripture
lan-
guage the
sons of God are his chosen people--the God-
fearing
race. In contrast with them "the
daughters of
men"
are necessarily limited to the rest of mankind, the
ungodly
mass. Abundant illustrations can be
given of
the
restriction put upon universal terms by their context.
In Jer.
xxxii. 20 God is said to have set signs and won-
ders in the
land of Egypt, in Israel, and among men.
It
is said of
the wicked (Ps. lxxiii. 5), "They are, not in
SONS OF GOD
AND DAUGHTERS OF MEN (VI.I-8) 59
trouble as
men; neither are they plagued like men."
In
Judg. xvi.
17, Samson says: "If I be shaven I shall be-
come weak
and be like all men." No one has
ever in-
ferred from
these passages that Egypt and Israel, the
wicked and
Samson, belonged to some other race of be-
ings because
they are set in contrast with "men."
The
universal
term is restricted by its connection; and hence
the English
version properly inserts the word "other "
and reads
"other men."1 A
precisely parallel case may
be found in
the sentence pronounced upon the serpent
(Gen. iii.
15), "I will put enmity between thee and the
woman, and
between thy seed and her seed." The
seed
of the woman
interpreted by the following verse and
taken in its
unlimited sense would denote all her de-
scendants. But the contrast with the seed of the serpent
necessarily
limits it to those of her race who have not
fallen under
the power of evil, and of whom alone it can
be said that
they shall bruise the serpent's head.
9.
Whatever interpretation be put upon doubtful ex-
pressions in
ver. 3, it plainly intimates the divine pur-
pose to
inflict some penalty affecting the life of the whole
human
race. "His days shall be an hundred
and twenty
years,"
if spoken of the generation then living, would
mean that
they should not survive that limit; if of suc-
cessive generations
of men, that this should henceforth
be the term
of human life. The former is demanded by
1Professor Strack (Comment. on Genesis, p. 21.) refers likewise to
several
other passages in which general terms are limited by the con-
nection, e.g.,
Gen. xiv. 16, "the women and the people," i.e., the rest
of the
people; or in which the same expression is used first in a uni-
versal and
then in a restricted sense. In Judg.
xix. 30 "the children of
Israel
"means the entire people, but in the immediately following
verses (xx.
1-3) all except Benjamin. In 1 Sam.
xiii. 6 "the people "
first means
the whole, then a portion, and in ver. 7, "all the people "
means the
rest of the people. So Lev. viii. 15, "the blood " and
"the"
(rest of the) "blood." Compare
Ex. xxix. 12; Lev. iv. 7, 18,
25, 30, 34.
60 THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM
the
context. The latter is preferred by,
critics whose
uniform
usage is to interpret at variance with the context,
if
possible. It is here absolutely without
support.
There is no
suggestion anywhere that the duration of
human life
was ever fixed at one hundred and twenty
years. It is contradicted by all that is recorded of
the
ages of
subsequent patriarchs from Noah to Jacob.
This verse,
then, explicitly points to a catastrophe, in
which that
whole generation should be involved, and
which should
take place in one hundred and twenty years.
10.
Finally, it is to be remarked that the argument
for
diversity of writers is not here rested in any measure
upon
differences of diction and style. The
attempt which
is made in
this connection to analyze one of the so-called
Pentateuchal
documents still further into primitive and
secondary
portions, and to assign vi. 1-4, with a few other
brief
passages, to J', in distinction from J", is stoutly re-
sisted by
Dr. Dillmann,1 who says, "Aim, the writer's
style and
linguistic peculiarities are alike throughout the
alleged
older and more recent J passages; and one can-
not see how
the later writer could succeed in imitating
the
primitive document in so deceptive a manner; more-
over, the
differences between the passages of the
alleged
primitive document are actually much greater than be-
tween it and
that which is alleged to be secondary."
Budde,2
too, has pointed out in detail the exact conform-
ity of vi.
1, 2, in all its clauses and expressions, to the
language of
other passages, which are ascribed by the
critics to
the document J.
This passage has been considered thus at
length in
1Die Biieher Ntimeri, Deuteronomium
und Josua, P. 632, so, too,
Genesis, p.
89, and yet on p. 117 he not very consistently concludes that
vs. 1-4 is a
paragraph from a more ancient document which J has incor-
porated into
his work, and has modified the style of vs. 1, 2, into con-
formity with
his own.
2 Biblische Urgeschichte, p. 6.
SONS OF GOD
AND DAUGHTERS OF MEN (VI.1-8) 61
order to
show how futile is the critical allegation that
the opening
verses of ch. vi. are imbued with mytho-
logical
ideas, and have been inserted here from some un-
known
document, and made to bear a sense at variance
with their
original and proper meaning. We have
before
seen how
groundless is the assertion that iv. 17-24 im-
plies that
there had been no deluge. Neither is
there
any such
implication in xi. 1-9. The further
conclusion
that these
passages are isolated extracts from a common
source,
which knew nothing of any such catastrophe,
falls of
itself.
MARKS OF J.
Dillmann finds the following indications
of J in vs. 1,
2, 5-8.
1. Jehovah. The divine names will be considered
separately.
2. lHehe begin, also in P (Num. xvii. 11, 12) (E. V. xvi.
46, 47).
3. hmAdAxEhA yneP;-lfa on the face of the ground. Though
hmAdAxE is
made a criterion of J, and its presence in a pas-
sage is held
to warrant its reference to J, it nevertheless
occurs in P
(Gen. i. 25; vi. 20; ix. 2). And it is
only by
critical
artifice that hmAdAxE yneP; (viii. 13b) is excluded from
P, though it
is enclosed between vs. 13a, 14, which are
both
attributed to P, and it is the direct continuation of
13a, and is
in structure conformed to vi. 12, P. The
occurrence
of Cr,x, in 13a and of hmAdAxE
in 13b does not
justify the
assumption of different sources any more than
the same change
in vii. 3, 4, or in viii. 7, 8; see also vs.
9, 11, where
no one dreams of a difference of sources.
4. MdAxAhA
Though Adam is used as a proper noun in
P, it is
also treated as a common noun, and as such has
the article
in i. 27; vii. 21; ix. 5, 6.
5. bOF
in a physical
sense. So in P (Gen. i. 4; xxv. 8 ;
62 THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM
Lev. xx-vii.
102 129 14, 33; Num. xiv. 7; xxx-vi. 6).
If it is
not applied
to personal beauty in P, the simple reason is
that the
critics do not assign to P any passage in which
this idea is
expressed.
6. rc,ye
imagination.
This word occurs but three times
in the
Hexateuch (Gen. vi. 5; -viii. 21; Deut. xxxi. 21),
and is
uniformly by the critics referred to J.
7. qra only. This word,
which occurs repeatedly in J,
E, and D,
does not chance to be found in the passages
attributed
to P.
8.
bc.efaq;hi to be
grieved. This verb is here found in a
J passage
(vi. 6). It occurs twice besides in the
Hexa-
teuch, once
in the same (Hithpael) form (xxxiv. 7), and
once in a
different species (Niphal) (xlv. 5). The
critics
claim them
all for J, but in so doing have to resort to a
somewhat
violent procedure. Ch. xxxiv. 7 is in a
P con-
nection, the
preceding verse and the following verses
be-
ing given to
P; but ver. 7 has this J word, an E phrase,
"which
ought not to be done " (cf. xx. 9), and a D phrase,
"wrought
folly in Israel " (Deut. xxii. 21), a combination
which is
readily explained on the assumption of the unity
of the
Pentateuch, but on the principles of the divisive
critics is
sufficiently puzzling. So without more
ado the
refractory
verse is cut out of the connection to which it
manifestly
belongs, and the entire conglomerate is made
over to J.
Gen. xlv. 5 is in an E connection, and con-
tains what
are regarded as E characteristics, but is split
in two in
order to give this verb to J.
9.
hHAmA blot out, destroy. See under chs. vi.-ix., Marks
of P, No. 19.
10. NHe xcAmA find favor. It is
not surprising that this
expression,
which naturally has its place chiefly in narra-
tive
sections, does not occur in P, to which only occa-
sional
scraps of ordinary narrative are assigned.
And
yet it
requires some nice critical surgery to limit it to J.
SONS OF GOD
AND DAUGHTERS OF MEN (VI.1-8) 63
Gen. xxxiv.
11 is in a P connection. Shechem there
con-
tinues the
entreaty begun by his father (vs. 8-10, P), and
the sons of
Jacob make reply to Shechem as well as to his
father (vs.
13-18, P). Nevertheless this verse is
sundered
from its
connection and given to J on account of this very
phrase.
11. "Human feelings attributed to
God" (vi. 6, 8).
Elohim is
the general term for God, and describes him
as the
creator of the world and its universal governor,
while
Jehovah is his personal name, and that by which
he has made
himself known as the God of a gracious rev-
elation. Hence divine acts of condescension to men and
of
self-manifestation are more naturally associated with
the name
Jehovah; whence it follows that anthropo-
pathies and
anthropomorphisms occur chiefly in Jehovah
sections. But there is no inconsistency between the
ideas which
these are intended to suggest and the most
spiritual
and exalted notions of the Most High.
The
loftiest
conceptions of God are, throughout the Scriptures,
freely
combined with anthropomorphic representations.
His infinite
condescension is no prejudice to his supreme
exaltation. These are not different ideas of God sepa-
ately
entertained by different writers, but different as-
pects of the
divine Being which enter alike into every
true
conception of him. The writer of 1 Sam.
xv. 35
does not
hesitate to say, "Jehovah repented," though he
had said but
a few verses before (ver. 29), "he is not a
man that he
should repent." The prophet Amos
de-
scribes
Jehovah's majestic greatness in lofty terms (v. 8),
and yet
speaks of his repenting (vii. 3), and of his smelling
the odors of
Israel's offerings (v. 21).
"Jehovah smelled
a sweet
savour" (Gen. viii. 21, J), is identical in thought
and language
with the constant phrase of the ritual, "a
sweet savour
unto Jehovah" (Lev. i. 13, P; cf. Lev. xxvi.
31). There is, accordingly, no incompatibility
between
64 THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM
the
representations of God as Jehovah and as Elohim.
These
supplement and complete each other, and there is
not the
slightest reason for imputing them to the variant
conceptions
of distinct writers.
Jehovah is used in vs. 3, 5-8 because the
reference is
to his plan
of grace and salvation, which the growing
wickedness
of men threatened to defeat: in order to pre-
vent this
frustration of his purpose he determines to de-
stroy the
entire human race with the exception of right-
eous
Noah. Elohim is used in ver. 2, because
of the
contrast
between the human and the dime, those of
an earthly
and those of a heavenly mind--between the
daughters of
men and the sons of God.
III
THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH (CH. VI. 9-IX. 29)
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17)
IN the passages hitherto examined the
portions referred
respectively
to P and J have been separate sections; and
an
ostensible ground of partition has been found in the
alternation
of divine names, in difference of subject, or in the
varied
treatment of the same theme. But now and
henceforward
P and J are supposed to be blended in
what has
every appearance of being one consistent and
continuous
narrative. And great critical tact and
skill
are needed
to separate what has been so intimately
joined
together. Nevertheless the narrative of
the deluge
is counted
one of the firmest supports of the divisive hy-
pothesis. It is affirmed that--
1.
When properly disentangled chs. vi.-ix. will be
found to
contain two entirely distinct accounts of the
deluge, each
complete in itself, and that these differ irrec-
oncilably in
several respects.
2.
There are repetitions which show that two different
accounts
have been put together.
3.
The alternation of divine names in successive para-
graphs shows
that these have proceeded from different
writers.
4.
The same thing can be inferred from diversities of
language and
style.
66 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
THE CRITICAL
PARTITION OF GEN. VI. 5-IX. 17.
The Prophetic Narrator, J, in Italic.
The Priestly Writer, P, in Roman.
The Redactor in Brackets.
VI. 5. And the LORD saw that the
wickedness of man
was great in
the earth, and that every imagination of the
thoughts of
his heart was only evil continually. 6.
And it
repented the
LORD that he had made man on the earth,
and it
grieved him at his heart. 7. And the LORD said,
I will blot
out man whom I have created from the face of
the ground
[both man and beast, and creeping thing, and
fowl of the
heaven]; for it repenteth me that I have
made
them. 8. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the
LORD.
9. THESE ARE THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH:
Noah was a righteous man, perfect in his-
generations:
Noah walked
with God. 10. And Noah begat three sons,
Shem, Ham,
and Japheth. 11. And the earth was cor-
rupt before
God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12. And God saw the earth, and, behold, it was
corrupt;
for all
flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13.
And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is
come before
me; for the earth is filled with violence
through
them; and behold, I will destroy them with the
earth. 14.
Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms
shalt thou
make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and
without with
pitch. 15. And this is how thou shalt
make
it: the
length of the ark three hundred cubits, the breadth
of it fifty
cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
16.
A light
shalt thou make to the ark, and to a cubit shalt
thou finish
it upward; and the door of the ark shalt thou
THE FLOOD (CH. VI.9-IX. 17) 67
set in the
side thereof; with lower, second, and third
stories
shalt thou make it. 17. And I, behold, I
do bring
the flood of
waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh,
wherein is
the breath of life, from under heaven; every
thing that
is in the earth shall die. 18. But I
will estab-
lish my
covenant with thee; and thou shalt come into
the ark,
thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy son's
wives with
thee. 19. And of every living thing of all
flesh, two
of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark; to
keep them
alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
20. Of the fowl after their kind, and of the
cattle after
their kind,
of every creeping thing of the ground after
his kind,
two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep
them
alive. 21. And take thou unto thee of all food that
is eaten,
and gather it to thee; and it shall be for food
for thee and
for them. 22. Thus did Noah; according
to all that
God commanded him, so did he.
VII. 1. And the LORD said unto Noah,
Come thou and
all thy
house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous
before me in
this generation. 2. Of every clean beast
thou
shalt take
to thee seven and seven, the male and his female
and of the
beasts that are not clean two, the male and his
female: 3.
also of the fowl of the heaven, seven and seven,
male and
female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the
earth. 4. For
yet seven days, and I will cause it to
rain upon
the earth forty days and forty nights; and every
living thing
that I have made will I destroy from off the
face of the
ground. 5. And Noah did according to all that
the LORD
commanded him. 6. And
Noah was six hundred
years old
when the flood of waters was upon the earth.
7. And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife,
and his
sons' wives
with him, into the ark, because of the waters of
the
flood. 8. [Of clean beasts, and of
beasts that are not
clean, and
of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon
the
ground 9. there went in two and two, unto Noah into
68 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
the ark,
male and female, as God commanded Noah].
10.
And it came
to pass after the seven days, that the waters of
the flood
were upon the earth. 11. In
the six hundredth
year of
Noah's life, in the second month, on the seven-
teenth day
of the month, on the same day were all the
fountains of
the great deep broken up, and the windows
of heaven
were opened. 12. And the rain was upon the
earth forty
days and forty nights. 13. In
the selfsame day
entered
Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the
sons of
Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of
his sons
with them, into the ark; 14. they, and every
beast after
his kind, and all the cattle after their kind,
and every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth
after his
kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird
of every
sort. 15. And they went in unto Noah into the
ark, two and
two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of
life. 16.
And they that went in, went in male and female
of all
flesh, as God commanded him: and the LORD shut
him in. 17.
And the flood was forty days upon the earth;
and the
waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was
lift up
above the earth. 18. And the waters prevailed,
and
increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went
upon the
face of the waters. 19. And the waters pre-
vailed
exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high
mountains,
that were under the whole heaven, were
covered. 20.
Fifteen cubits upward did the waters pre-
vail; and
the mountains were covered. 21. And all
flesh died
that moved upon the earth, both fowl, and
cattle, and
beast, and every creeping thing that creepeth
upon the
earth, and every man. 22. All in
whose nostrils
was the
breath of the spirit of life, of all that was in the
dry land,
died. 23. And every living thing was destroyed
which was
upon the face of the ground [both man, and
cattle, and
creeping thing, and fowl of the heaven]; and
they were
destroyed from the earth: and Noah only was
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 69
left, and
they that were with him in the ark. 24. And the
waters
prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty
days.
VIII. 1. And God remembered Noah, and
every living
thing, and
all the cattle that were with him in the ark:
and God made
a wind to pass over the earth, and the
waters
assuaged; 2. the fountains also of the
deep and
the windows
of heaven were stopped, and the rain from
heaven was
restrained; 3. and the waters returned
from
off the earth
continually: and after the end of an hundred
and fifty
days the waters decreased. 4. And the ark
rested in
the seventh month, on the seventeenth day
of the
month, upon the mountains of Ararat.
5. And the
waters
decreased continually until the tenth month: in
the tenth
month, on the first day of the month, were the
tops of the
mountains seen. 6. And it came to
pass at the
end of forty
days, that Noah opened the window of the ark
which he had
made: 7.
and he sent forth the raven, and it
went forth
to and fro, until the waters were dried up from
off the
earth. 8. And he sent forth the dove
from him, to see
if the
waters were abated from off the face of the ground;
9. but the
dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and
she returned
unto him to the ark, for the waters were on the
face of the
whole earth: and he put forth his hand,
and
took her,
and brought her in unto him into the ark.
10. And
he stayed
yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the
dove out of
the ark; 11. and the dove came in to
him, at
eventide;
and, lo, in her mouth an olive leaf pluckt off: so
Noah knew
that the waters were abated from off the earth.
12. And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent
forth the
dove; and
she returned not again unto him any more. 13.
And it came
to pass in the six hundred and first year, in
the first
month, the first day of the month, the waters
were dried
up from off the earth; and Noah removed the
covering of
the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the
70 THE
GENERATIONS OF NOAH
ground was
dried. 14.
And in the second month, on the
seven and
twentieth day of the month, was the earth dry.
15.
And God spake unto Noah, saying,
16. Go forth of
the ark,
thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons'
wives with
thee. 17. Bring forth with thee every living
thing that
is with thee of all flesh, both fowl, and cattle,
and every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth;
that they
may breed abundantly in the earth, and be
fruitful,
and multiply upon the earth. 18. And Noah
went forth,
and his sons, and his wife, and his sons'
wives with
him: 19.
every beast, every creeping thing,
and every
fowl, whatsoever moveth upon the earth,
after their
families, went forth out of the ark. 20. And
Noah builded
an altar unto the LORD; and took of every
clean beast,
and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-
offerings on
the altar. 21. And the LORD smelled the
sweet
savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not
again curse
the ground any more for man's sake, for that
the
imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth;
neither will
I again smite any more every thing living, as I
have
done. 22. While the earth remaineth, seed-time and
harvest, and
cold and heat, and summer and winter, and
day and
night shall not cease.
IX. 1.
And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said
unto them,
Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth.
2. And the fear of you and the dread of you
shall be
upon every
beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of
the heaven,
even all that moveth upon the ground, and
all the
fishes of the sea; into your hand are they de-
livered. 3.
Every moving thing that liveth shall be food
for you; as
the green herb have I given you all.
4. But
flesh with
the life thereof, the blood thereof, shall ye
not
eat. 5.
And surely your blood of your lives will I
require; at
the hand of every beast will I require it, and
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 71
at the hand
of man; at the hand of every man's brother
will I
require the life of man. 6. Whoso sheddeth man's
blood, by
man shall his blood be shed: for in the
image
of God made
he man. 7. And you, be ye fruitful, and
multiply;
bring forth abundantly in the earth, and mul-
tiply
therein.
8.
And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him,
saying, 9. And
I, behold, I establish my covenant
with you,
and with your seed after you: 10. and with
every living
creature that is with you, the fowl, the
cattle, and
every beast of the earth with you; of all that
go out of
the ark, even every beast of the earth.
11.
And I will
establish my covenant with you; neither
shall all
flesh be cut off any more by the waters of the
flood;
neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy
the
earth. 12. And God said, This is the token of the
covenant
which I make between me and you and every
living
creature that is with you, for perpetual genera-
tions: 13. my
bow have I set in the cloud, and it shall
be for a
token of a covenant between me and the earth.
14. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a
cloud over
the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, 15. and
I will
remember my covenant, which is between me and
you and
every living creature of all flesh; and the waters
shall no more
become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16.
And the bow
shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon
it, that I
may remember the everlasting covenant between
God and
every living creature of all flesh that is upon
the
earth. 17. And God said unto Noah, This is the
token of the
covenant, which I have established between
me and all
flesh that is upon the earth.
J NOT CONTINUOUS.
Let us now examine the portion of the
narrative which
is assigned
to J, and see whether it gives a complete ac-
72 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
count of the
flood, with no breaks or interruptions.
It
begins with
vi. 5-8. We read in ver. 8, "But
Noah
found grace
in the eyes of the LORD." This
implies that
the reader
had already been made acquainted with Noah.
And so he
had in the scriptural account, which details
his ancestry
in ch. v.; but this is given by the critics to P.
No previous
mention of Noah, or allusion to him is made
in the
sections attributed to J; yet here he is spoken
of as a
well-known personage. Evidently
something is
wanting in J
corresponding to what has been abstracted
from
preceding chapters and assigned to P.
The critics
endeavor to
escape this difficulty by alleging that v. 29,
in which
Noah is mentioned, belongs to J. But in
doing
so they
violate their own test. It is one of
their criteria
for
distinguishing these documents that in J the mother
gives name
to the child, but in P the father; see Dillmann
on Gen.
x-vi. 11. Consequently, on their own
principles,
"And he
(Lamech) called his name Noah" must belong
to P; and
not to J. In ver. 7 we are told that the
redac-
tor has
inserted the second clause, "both man and beast,
and
creeping, thing, and fowl of the heaven," because such
detailed
enumerations are foreign to J's supposed style.
This is a
confession that the text in its present form can-
not on
critical principles be assigned to J. It
does not
suit the
hypothesis, but must be amended into conform-
ity -with
the hypothesis. In other words, the
hypothesis
must here be
supported by an inference drawn from
the
hypothesis. But this clause, though
unwelcome to the
critics,
cannot be omitted from the verse, for the plural
pronoun
"them" at the end of it refers to these particu-
lars in this
second clause, not merely to "man" in the
first
clause, which would call for a pronoun in the singu-
lar; see
"his heart," ver. 5.
If, however, we take ver. 7 as the critics
have corrected
it leaving,
out the second clause then it declares that the
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 73
LORD said,
not to Noah but to himself, i.e., he resolved,
that he
would destroy man, no mention being made of
the way in
which this was to be effected, nor whether the
inferior
creatures would be involved. J then
springs at
once to vii.
1, where "the LORD said to Noah, Come thou
and all thy
house into the ark;" though there is no
previous
allusion in J to the fact that Noah had a family,
or that
there was an ark, or any occasion for there being
an ark. To be sure, all this has been explained
before;
vi. 10
speaks of Noah's three sons, and vs. 13-22 tell
how God told
Noah of the coming flood and bid him
build an ark
for the safety of his house and the various
species of
living things, and that Noah did so. But
all
this is
assigned to P; there is not a word of it in J.
Clearly
there is something missing in J; and just that is
missing
which has been abstracted from the previous
narrative
and given by the critics to P.
In vs. 7-10 we have J's account of Noah's
entry into
the
ark. But ver. 9, we are told, has been
manipulated
by the
redactor. The words "there went in
two and
two,"
"male and female" and "God" are characteristics
of P. Here again the text is not in accord with the
hy-
pothesis; a
number of P's words and expressions are in
a J
paragraph, and it must be the fault of the redactor.
But this is
not all. There is not a verse in the
para-
graph which
is just as it should be, if the critics are
right. The detailed enumeration, "Noah and his
sons,
and his
wife, and his sons' wives" (ver. 7), instead of
simply Noah
and all his house, as ver. 1, is foreign to J;
so in ver.
8, "beasts and fowls and every thing that creep-
eth,"
instead of "every living thing," as ver. 4; and
"waters
of the flood"1 (vs. 7, 10) refer back to P's
1Noldeke says that the agreement of J and P is very remarkable in
the words lUBma flood, hbATe ark, and Hano Noah. Budde and Dillmann
try to
escape the admission that ver. 7. J, refers back to ver. 6, P, by
arbitrarily
transposing ver. 10 so as to stand before ver. 7.
74 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
phrase, vi.
17; vii. 6. It is said that the redactor
"ap-
parently
designed to bring the style a little more closely
into harmony
with that of P." But why he should
be so
concerned
just here to alter expressions which he leaves
unchanged
elsewhere, does not appear. And it is
par-
ticularly
surprising that he should of his own motion
introduce
what the critics consider a discrepancy into
J's
account. How could he make J appear to
say in vs.
8, 9,
"of clean beasts and of beasts that are not clean
. . . there
went in two and two unto Noah into the
ark,"
in open contradiction, as the critics allege, with what
he had said
just before in ver. 2,1 that clean beasts were
to go in
seven and seven, and of beasts not clean two?
And yet we
are told that the documents "are woven to-
gether in a
highly artistic/manner," and the redactor's
work is
"admirably" done. If this is
so, he must have
been an
intelligent person and could not have made
grossly
contradictory statements within the compass of a
few lines
without perceiving it. He certainly
could have
seen nothing
of the sort here, or he would not gratui-
tously have
inserted a discrepancy in the text of his own
accord,
which was not there in the document from which
he was
copying. And if he did not see it,
perhaps there
is no
contradiction after all. It may be that
the critics
are mistaken
in fancying that there is one. And in
point of
fact there is no discrepancy between the general
statement
that two of every species, a male and a female,
entered the
ark and the more particular declaration that
there were
seven of every species of clean beasts and two
of those
that were not clean. If, then, the
redactor is in
harmony with
J (vii. 2, 3), there is no discrepancy be-
tween J
(vii. 2, 3) and P (vi. 19 ; vii. 15).
1 Kayser, p. 8, enlarges the
text of vii. 3, to restore it to what he con-
ceives to be
its primitive form. So, too, he modifies
the text of vii. 7-9
into what he
considers its primitive form. The fact
that it is not as he
would
reconstruct it, shows the falsity of his critical presuppositions.
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 75
In what follows, the semblance of
continuity can only
be made out
for J by means of scattered sentences and
clauses torn
from their connection in an arbitrary man-
ner. Thus J proceeds to ver. 12, and then skips to
16b:
"And
the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty
nights . . .
and the LORD shut him in." It is
nat-
ural to ask
why the LORD waited forty days before he
shut the
door of the ark behind Noah. It is
obvious
that the
last clause of ver. 16 has no proper connection
with ver.
12, to which the critics attach it. It
plainly
belongs
where it stands in the text. The
severance of
ver. 16
annuls the significant and evidently intended
contrast of
the two divine names in this verse, to the
significance
of which Delitzsch calls attention, thus dis-
crediting
the basis of the critical analysis, which he nev-
ertheless
accepts. Animals of every species went
into
the ark, as
Elohim, the God of creation and providence
directed,
mindful of the preservation of what he had
made;
Jehovah, the guardian of his people, shut Noah in.
The rise of the waters of the flood is
depicted in vs.
17-20 in
four successive stages. The critics
arbitrarily
sunder one
of these (ver. 17) from the rest, and assign it
to J. The destruction accomplished by the flood is
simi-
larly
described in three successive statements of grow-
ing
intensity (vs. 21-23). Two of these are
parted from
the
remaining one and given to J (vs. 22, 23).
The next clause of J is viii. 2b,
"and the rain from
heaven was
restrained." Just before we read in
vii. 24,
"the
waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty
days." The critics find a discrepancy between this
and vii.
4, 12,
according to which it rained forty days.
The intel
ligent
redactor has been at fault here again.
He has in-
serted this
clause respecting the stopping of the rain in
the wrong
place. It should have preceded vii. 24,
instead
of following
it. But we may shelter ourselves behind
76 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
him once
more. If he saw no impropriety in
putting
this clause
where he did, perhaps there was none. He
may not thus
have brought J into conflict with himself
after
all. If it had been said that the rain
from heaven
was not
restrained after one hundred and fifty days had
passed,
there would, indeed, have been a discrepancy.
But where is
the discrepancy in saying that it had
stopped?
The last clause of viii. 2 is separated
from the first,
one being
given to J, and the other to P. But this
is
severing
what of necessity belongs together. We
find
the same
combination here as in vii. 11, 12, where the
sources of
the flood are described, and the critics split
them asunder
after the same fashion. These sources
were two,
viz.: the rushing in of the waters of
the ocean
upon the
land, and the torrents descending from the sky.
The tenses
of the Hebrew verbs at once indicate to the
reader that
the bursting forth of the fountains of the
great deep
and the opening of the windows of heaven
are separate
items, while the fall of the rain is a sequence
of that
which just preceded. The opening of the
win-
dows of
heaven prepares the way for the downpour, but
is not the
downpour itself. The thought is not
complete
until the
actual fall of rain is added. Comp. Mal.
iii. 10.
The opening
of the windows of heaven cannot, therefore,
be attributed
to one writer and the rain to another; both
belong
indissolubly together. The same is the
case with
viii. 2; the
last clause is inseparable from the first.
And
besides,
"the rain from heaven" is evidently contrasted
with
"the fountains of the deep," so that the two clauses
of the verse
are bound together thus again. And ver.
3a
cannot be
separated from ver. 2. The latter states
that
the sources
of the flood had ceased; but this would not,
of itself
account for the subsidence of the water.
The
stopping of
the fountains of the deep and of the windows
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 77
of heaven
are purely negative to this must, be added the
positive
flowing off of the water, if the flood was to be
reduced. To sever this clause from P and give it to J,
as is done
by the critics, leaves P's statement inadequate
and
incomplete. And the phraseology used
shows the
same thing;
"the water returned;"
whither? certainly
not to
heaven (2b), but to the deep (2a), from which the
great body
of them had come. So that if the word
"re-
turned"
is to have anything like its proper force, ver. 3a
is tied to
2a, and cannot be severed from it as the critics
propose.
Then the sending out of the birds (vs.
6-12) is given
to J. In vs. 13, 14, the drying of the earth is
stated in
two stages;
one of these (ver. 13b) is arbitrarily given to
J, and the
other (ver. 14) to P. J makes no
allusion to
Noah's
leaving the ark, which is another serious break
in his
narrative. This is spoken of, indeed, in
the
Scripture
account (vs. 15-19); but it is given to P.
So
that here
again we miss in J precisely what has been ab-
stracted by
the critics and attributed to the other docu-
ment. J's account concludes with Noah's sacrifice
(vs.
20-22).
Instead, therefore, of a complete account
with no in-
terruptions,
we find in the portion assigned to J several
important
gaps created purely by the critical partition;
other chasms
scantily bridged by scattered clauses torn
from their
context, in which they are indispensable, or
attached to
passages where they are inappropriate; ex-
pressions
which by critical rules cannot belong to J, and
require the
assumption, which has no other basis than
the
exigencies of the hypothesis, that the text has been
manipulated
by the redactor; and discrpancies, so called,
which are
wholly due to the redactor's gratuitous inter-
ference.
78 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
P NOT CONTINUOUS
Let us now see how it is with P. The first paragraph
assigned to
him is vi. 9-22. We here read (vs. 11,
12),
"And
God saw the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt;"
and so
corrupt that he was determined to destroy it.
The
form of
expression here is with manifest allusion to i.31,
where P had
said, "And God saw every thing that he had
made, and,
behold, it was very good." The
existing state
of things is
plainly set in designed contrast to the state-
ment made at
the creation. But not a word of explana-
tion is
offered to account for this dreadful change.
It is
indeed
explained sufficiently in the Scripture narrative.
The
intervening chapters tell us of the fall, of the grow-
ing
degeneracy of the ungodly race of Cain, of the infec-
tion even of
the godly race by intermarriage with the rest.
But all this
is by the critics attributed to J; there is
nothing of
the kind in P. Plainly something is
missing
here; and
just that is missing which the critics have
transferred
to another document.
P then proceeds to tell that Noah was
instructed to
build the
ark, which he did, and records his age at the
coming of
the flood (vii 6, 11), and his entry with some
of all
living things into the ark (vs. 13-16).
The sacred writer labors to produce a
vivid impression
of the
enormous rise of the waters of the flood by de-
scribing it
in four successive stages until it reached the
prodigious
altitude which it actually attained.
First
(ver. 17),
the water rose sufficiently to float the ark.
Then (ver.
18) it rose very much higher still, and the ark
mounted
aloft upon its surface. Next (ver. 19),
it at-
tained such
a height as to cover all the high mountains
within the
entire horizon. Finally (ver. 20), it
reached
its maximum,
fifteen cubits above the mountain-tops.
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 79
This regular
gradation is broken apart by the critics,
who assign
the first or lowest stage to J, and the other
three stages
to P, thus giving to each a truncated de-
scription,
which when put together match precisely and
supply just
what before was wanting in each. Is this
a lucky
accident, or has not this entire description eman-
ated from
one mind?
The sacred writer seeks again to give
adequate expres-
sion to the
destruction wrought by the flood by three
successive
statements of increasing strength. First
(ver.
21), he
declares with emphatic particularity that all flesh
died, fowl
and cattle and beast and creeping thing and
man. Then (ver. 22), in the most universal terms,
"All
in whose
nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, of all
that was in
the dry land, died." Finally (ver.
23), universal
and
particular terms are combined, and the most forcible
expression
for complete destruction added in contrast
with the
sole survivors: "And every living thing was
wiped out
which was upon the face of the ground, both
man and
cattle and creeping thing and fowl of the
heaven; and
they were wiped out from the earth; and
Noah only
was left, and they that were with him in the
ark." Disregarding these climactic periods, which
are
heaped
together in order to intensify the contrast of the
last clause,
the critics give the first of the sentences to
P, thus
sundering it completely from what follows, the
result of
which is to make P affirm, in the most absolute
manner, the
universality of the destruction without so
much as a
single survivor. The next two verses are
given to J
in spite of the enumeration of particulars in
ver. 23,
"both man and cattle and creeping thing and
fowl of the
heaven," which, according to critical princi-
ples, is
foreign to his style, and must be thrown out of
the text as
an insertion by the redactor. The
passage
does not
correspond with the hypothesis, and is hence
80 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
corrected
into conformity with it. And yet this
clause,
which is
objectionable to the critics and which they pro-
pose to
eliminate, is one of the features of the verse
which adapts
it to the climactic position that it occupies.
It has before been shown that viii. 2, 3,
cannot be par-
titioned as
the critics propose; and that the severance
of vs. 2b,
3, as an insertion from J, would leave P's
statement
incomplete.
The narrative then proceeds after the same
analogy to
describe the
subsidence of the flood. And it may be
proper to
note that the seven stages of the decline of the
water
precisely correspond with the four stages of its
rise added
to the three statements of its wide-spread deso-
lation. First (viii. 1), a wind passed over the
earth,
J which
served to reduce the volume of the water.
Sec-
ondly (vs.
2-4), the sources of the flood had ceased, and
the water
flowed off to such an extent that the ark rested
on the
mountains of Ararat. Thirdly (ver. 5),
the water
still
further decreased and the tops of the mountains ap-
peared. Fourthly (vs. 6-9), as the water continued to
sink, a dove
was sent forth after forty days, but the
flood was
still at such a height that no resting-place
could be
found. Fifthly (vs. 10, 11), after seven
days
more the
water had abated sufficiently for trees to
emerge, as
was shown by the olive leaf plucked off by the
dove. Sixthly (ver. 12), the dove was sent out and
re-
tuned no
more. Seventh, and finally (ver. 13),
the day
is noted on
which Noah discovered that the water was
dried up
from off the earth. This regular gradation
is
spoiled by
the critics, who assign (vs. 6-12) the mission of
the birds,
to J; the consequence of which is that P
springs at
once from ver. 5, the first appearance of the
mountain-tops,
to ver. 13, where the waters were dried
up from off
the earth.
The prominence given to the sending out
of the birds
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 81
in the
Chaldean account of the deluge, which is univer-
sally
confessed to stand in an intimate relation to that
in Genesis,
further shows that any narrative of the flood
would be
incomplete if this were not included.
Least
of all can
this be questioned by those who maintain that
the Hebrew
narrative was borrowed from the Chaldean.
The paragraph respecting the birds (viii.
6-12) is quite
devoid of
any critical marks allying it to one or the other
of the
documents, as is apparent from the history of its
treatment. From Astruc and Eichhorn to the supple-
mentary
critics Tuch and Knobel, it was almost uni-
formly
assigned to P. Stahelin is uncertain
about it.
Reuss
regards it as the sole surviving remnant of a third
account of
the flood, distinct from the other two.
Hup-
feld gives
(ver. 7) the raven to J, and (vs. 8-12) the dove
to P. Friedrich Delitzsch reverses the matter, and
gives
the raven to
P and the dove to J. Kayser, Wellhausen,
Kuenen,
Dillmann, and others assign the whole to J, in
which they
were preceded by the eccentric Ilgen.
The
motive which
at present inclines the majority to J, ap-
pears to be
twofold. Such a graphic incident is
thought
to befit the
more "picturesque" narrator, and this is the
most
striking parallel with the cuneiform tablets, with
which J is
held to stand in the closest relation.
Both an
argument and
an inference are supplied from these two
points of
view of a somewhat circular character.
It is as-
signed to J
because he is picturesque and allied to the
tablets; and
being so assigned proves him to be pictu-
resque and
allied to the tablets. One cannot but
feel
that if the
critics had anything to gain by so, doing, they
might with
equal ease have imputed to the writer of this
paragraph an
alleged characteristic of P, and said that
his style
was "stereotyped," and abounding in "regular
formulas"
and the "repetition of like phrases," thus:
"And he
sent forth the raven" (ver. 7); cf. "and he
82 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
sent forth
the dove" (ver. 8); "and he stayed yet other
seven days
and sent forth the dove" (twice, vs. 10, 12);
"waters
were abated from off the face of the ground"
(twice, vs.
8, 11), cf. also ver. 9; "to him into the ark"
(twice, ver.
9); "going and returning," (twice (in Heb.),
vs. 3, 7),
cf. ver. 5.
The drying of the ground is likewise
stated in two
successive
stages. First (ver. 13), the surface was
so far
dried that
the water had disappeared. Then (ver.
14),
the earth
was dry. These are, as before stated,
divided
by the
critics between J and P.
P proceeds to tell of Noah's leaving the
ark (vs. 15-
19). But he records no act of worship or
thanksgiving
for this
great deliverance. Yet he had spoken of
Noah
as a
righteous man, who walked with God (vi. 9).
In
fact,
throughout the entire patriarchal history P never
mentions an
altar or sacrifice or any act of worship.
These are,
indeed, spoken of repeatedly in the sacred
history; but
they are invariably referred to other docu-
ments, never
to P. And yet P, according to the
critics,
is the
priestly writer, who is especially interested in rit-
ual worship
and in ceremonial matters. It is he who
re-
cords the
institution of the Sabbath (ii. 3), and of cir-
cumcision
(xvii. 10), and the prohibition of eating blood
(ix. 4); and
he never relates anything derogatory to the
patriarchs,
but always exalts them as model men of God.
Is it
conceivable that he should have omitted to mention
that Noah
devoutly praised God for his merciful inter-
position on
his behalf? Surely there has been an
omis-
sion here;
and the more evidently so, as a sacrifice is so
prominent a
feature in the Chaldean account of the del-
uge.
It thus appears also that there are
serious chasms in
P's account
likewise, that the symmetry of the narrative
is spoiled
in repeated instances by the proposed parti-
THE
FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 83
tion, and
that passages are rent from their connection
and assigned
to J, which are indispensable in the con-
text in
which they stand.
NO SUPERFLUOUS REPETITIONS.
It is further claimed that there are
repetitions which
betray the
composite character of the narrative, and show
that it has
been made up by combining two separate ac-
counts. But this is a mistake; there are no
superfluous
repetitions
to warrant such a conclusion. We are
pointed
in the first
instance to the opening verses. It is
said
that vi. 5-7
contains J's account of the wickedness of
man and of
the LORD'S purpose to destroy the race; then
follows, in
vs. 11-13, P's account of the very same thing;
but a slight
consideration of the circumstances will make
it appear
that the critics' conclusion is altogether unwar-
ranted. The title (vi. 9), "These are the
generations of
Noah,"
marks the beginning of a new section of the his-
tory, and
indicates its subject to be the fortunes of Noah's
family. In entering upon this topic the writer first
ex-
plains the
situation with the view of placing distinctly
before the
minds of his readers at the outset the causes
of what was
about to take place. He commences by
stating the
character of Noah (ver. 9b 1), which explains
the intimation
in ver. 8 of the special favor shown to him.
He then
recapitulates some statements previously made,
which are
necessary to the understanding of the follow-
ing
narrative. He speaks of Noah's three
sons (ver. 10),
though they
had been named in identical terms in v. 32,
which the
critics likewise refer to P; no one thinks of
1Kayser (p. 8) says: "Noah
was a righteous man and perfect in his
generations,"
belongs to J (see vii. 1); "Noah walked with God" to P,
(v 21). Other critics quietly ignore this identity of
expressions, and
give the
entire verse, which manifestly belongs together, to P.
84 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
a difference
of writers because of this repetition.
He
further
speaks of the universal corruption (vs. 11, 12);
this had
already been mentioned at the close of the pre-
ceding
section (ver. 5) as a sequence from facts previously
stated.1 But it lay so at the basis of what was to be
re-
corded in
this new section that it is mentioned here again,
And there is
no more reason for suspecting a diversity of
writers than
there is in ver. 10, which all acknowledge to
be by the
same writer as v. 32. It is just such a
recapit-
ulation as
any writer might be expected to make under
the
circumstances. On the other hand, ver. 13
is not a
repetition
of the statement made in ver. 7, but is an ad-
vance upon
it. In ver. 7 mention is made of the
LORD'S
purpose to
destroy man; in ver. 13 this purpose is com-
municated to
Noah, which is quite another thing.
In vs. 18-20, while directing Noah to
build the ark.
God tells
him the purpose for which it was to be made,
and that he
was to take with him into it some of every
species of
living things in order to keep them alive.
After the
ark had been built, and the time for sending
the flood
drew nigh, the LORD bade Noah to go into it
with his
family and with some of every species of ani-
mals (vii.
1-3). But there is no superfluous
repetition
here. Two distinct divine communications were made
at different
times, and each is reported in its proper
place.
The critics, however, lay great stress
upon the fact that
the entry
into the ark is twice recorded; vs. 7-92, they;
tell us, is
J's account, and vs. 13-16 that of P.
But this,
too, is a
mistake; there is nothing here requiring the
1Noldeke (p. 16) remarks that
other sections (v. 1; x. 1, and xi. 27)
in like
manner begin with the repetition of what had been before
stated.
2Schrader and Dillmann give vs.
8, 9, to R; Noldeke gives vs. 7-9
to R as his
elaboration of the originally brief words of the Jehovist.
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 85
supposition
of distinct documents. It has been
before
shown that
vs. 7-9 cannot by critical rules be referred to
J, without a
reconstruction of the text in each individual
verse. But besides this it is to be noted that ver.
6 gives
a general
statement of Noah's age at the coming of the
flood; he
was then six hundred years old. In ver.
11
this is
stated again with more particularity, in order to
indicate the
precise day on which the flood began, viz.,
the six
hundredth year of Noah's life, the second month,
the
seventeenth day of the month. The critics do not
find this
repetition incompatible with the sameness of
the writer;
vs. 6 and 11 are both alike referred by them
to P. In precisely the same manner, with the view
of
exhibiting
the precision of the divine arrangements, the
sacred
writer points out the fact in vs. 13-16 that Noah
and all his
company entered the ark on the self-same day
on which the
flood broke forth; and the emphasis which
he puts upon
this thought appears from the particularity
of detail
and the iteration in these verses. Now
why
should this
repetition for this evident purpose be any
more
suggestive of a diversity of writers than the like
repetition
in regard to Noah's age?
The critics are embarrassed here by their
own hypoth-
esis. Different views have been entertained in
respect to
the relation
of J and P. According to some critics J
and
P each wrote
a separate and independent document, and
these, after
circulating singly for a time, were at length
combined by
a redactor. These are known as docu-
mentary
critics. Others have held that J did not
write
a complete
document of his own, but simply edited an
enlarged
edition of P. The document P was made
the
basis, to
which J simply made additions, supplementing
it here and
there as he had occasion. These are
known
as
supplementary critics.
In the case befol'e us the documentary
make this point
86 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
against the
supplementary critics, that no editor in sup-
plementing a
pre-existing work, would introduce of his
own motion
what was already in almost identical terms
in the work
before him. Such a superfluous
repetition
could only
be accounted for by supposing that a redactor
was
combining two works, for each of which he had a
great
reverence, so that he was reluctant to omit any-
thing that
either of them contained. Thus it came
to
pass that
after copying a statement from one of his
sources he
finds the same thing stated likewise in the
other, and
copies it also. This has a plausible
sound.
It certainly
silences the' supplementary critics. But
there are
two insuperable difficulties in the way of ac-
cepting the
solution which the documentary critics offer.
1. Judged by their own critical rules the
compiler has
not
preserved what was peculiar to J in vs. 7-10, but has
conformed it
throughout to the style of P. 2. In other
cases he has
not shown a similar care to preserve all the
contents of
his Sources. Why has he not given a
dupli-
cate account
of the building of the ark, or of the exit
from it, as
well as of the entry into it? The
obvious
reason is
that in the former there was no coincidence
in time to emphasize,
as there was in the latter. Hence
the emphatic
repetition in the one, whereas there was no
occasion for
it in the others.
It has before been shown that the
statements respect-
ing the rise
of the waters, their destructiveness, and their
subsequent
fall cannot be parcelled between different
writers; and
that the attempt to find two parallel accounts
of these
particulars by J and by P is not successful.
The
verses and
clauses which are given to J cannot be sun-
dered from
the context in which they stand.
Moreover,
the
description of successive stages is not identical repe-
tition, and
as such suggestive of distinct documents.
And if it
were, four statements of the rise of the waters,
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 87
three of
their destructive effects, and seven of their fall,
cannot be
distributed between two documents without
leaving
repetitions in each. More than two
documents
are
necessary, if each repetition is indicative of a sepa-
rate
writer. The critical argument is in this
case plainly
self-destructive.
It should also be observed that like
repetitions are
found in
other cases which the critics quietly ignore, and
never think
of tracing to a diversity of documents.
Thus
the
corruption and violence prevailing in the earth is stated
four times
in as many successive clauses (vi. 11, 12); the
entry of all
living things into the ark with Noah is re-
peated three
times (vii. 14-16), where Dillmann remarks,
"It is
as though the author, moved by the momentous
character of
the day, could not do enough to satisfy him-
self in the
detailed portraiture of the transaction."
God's
establishment
of his covenant with Noah is twice stated,
(ix. 9, 11);
and the bow in the cloud as the token of the
covenant is
mentioned again and again (ix. 12-17).
In
all these
cases the critics recognize but one writer.
So,
too, the
triple mention of the names of Noah's sons (v. 32;
vi. 10; x.
1) is given to P; the fourth mention of the
same (ix.
18) being assigned to J. A rule which
plays
fast and
loose in this manner at the pleasure of the op-
erator, is a
very insecure dependence.
It has also been claimed that Noah's
sacrifice and the
LORD'S
resolve not to destroy all living things again (viii.
20-22), are
parallel to God's blessing Noah, and his cove-
nant not to
send another universal flood (ix. 1-17); and
that the
former is the account of J, and the latter that of
P respecting
the same thing. But these are not the same;
one is the
sequel of the other; viii. 21, 22 states the di-
vine
purpose, that "the LORD said in his heart;" in ix.
1-17 this
purpose is made known to Noah.
The examination of the narrative of the
flood thus
88 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
shows that
so far from everything being duplicated,
nothing is
duplicated from first to last except the entry
into the
ark, and that for a special reason not suggestive
of two
documents but excluding them.
THE DIVINE NAMES
It is still further urged that the
alternation of divine
names in
successive paragraphs of this narrative gives
evidence of
its composite character. It is affirmed
that
this
requires the assumption of two different writers, who
were in the
habit of using different terms in speaking of
the Most
High. One (P) always spoke of him as
"God"
(Heb.,
Elohim); the other (J) as LORD (Heb., Jehovah),
The
narrative, as we possess it, has been made up from
the
combination of the accounts in these two documents;
and hence
the blending of these two names, as they are
here
found. But this is a superficial and
mechanical ex-
planation of
what is really due to a different and more
satisfactory
cause.
There are two aspects, under which the
flood can be
contemplated,
and two points of view from which its
place and
function in the sacred history can be regarded.
It may be
looked upon as the act of the Creator, destroy-
ing the work
of his hands because it had become corrupt
and so
perverted from its original intent, and at the same
time
providing for the perpetuation of the several species
of living
things. Or, on the other hand, it may be con-
sidered in
its relation to the work of redemption.
The
wickedness
of man threatened to put an end to the scheme
of grace and
salvation; in order to prevent his merciful
designs from
being thwarted thus, the Most High re-
solved to
destroy the ungodly race, and rescue the one
surviving
pious family to be the seed of a new race,
among whom
true religion might be nurtured until it
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 89
should
ultimately fill the whole earth. The
sacred writer
has both
these aspects of this great catastrophe in
mind, and he
suggests them to his readers by the alter-
nate use of
the divine names. When he has regard to
the divine
government and providential care, as mani-
fested in
it, he speaks of it as the act of Elohim.
When
he has
regard to his special guardianship over the pious,
or to aught
that concerns divine worship, he uses the
sacred name
Jehovah.
Thus it is Elohim who sees with
displeasure the dis-
order
introduced by the corruption of mankind, and
makes known
his purpose to destroy them, but institutes
measures for
preserving the various species of animals
by means of
an ark to be built for this end (vi. 9-22).
It is Elohim
agreeably to whose command creatures of
both sexes
went in unto Noah into the ark (vii. 9, 16).
It is Elohim
who remembered Noah and every living
thing that
was with him in the ark, and who made a wind
pass over
the earth to assuage the waters (viii. 1).
It is
Elohim who
bade Noah go forth of the ark, and bring
forth with
him every living thing that they may mul-
tiply upon
the earth (viii. 15-17). It is Elohim
who
blessed Noah
and his sons, as he had blessed man at his
creation (i.
28), bidding them Be fruitful, and multiply,
and
replenish the earth (ix. 1). It is
Elohim who estab-
lished his
covenant with Noah and with every living
creature,
pledging that there should be no flood in future
to destroy
all flesh (ix. 8-17).
On the other hand, it is Jehovah (E. V.,
the LoRD), in
whose eyes
Noah found grace (vi. 8), and who was re-
solved to
put a sudden end to the downward progress of
growing
wickedness which infected every imagination of
the thoughts
of man's heart and threatened to banish
piety from
the earth (vs. 5-7). It is Jehovah who
bade
righteous
Noah come with all his house into the ark,
90 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
and take
with him animals fit for sacrifice in larger
numbers than
the rest (vii. 1-3). It is Jehovah who
shut
Noah in,
after he had entered the ark (ver. 16), though in
the very
same verse it is Elohim who commanded that
the beasts
of both sexes should enter in. It is
Jehovah
to whom Noah
builds an altar and offers sacrifice, and
who
graciously accepts the offering (vs. 20, 21).
It thus appears that the divine names are
discrimi-
natingly
employed throughout the entire narrative; there
are no
superfluous repetitions, suggestive of a combina-
tion of
distinct documents; there are serious gaps and
halting-places
in each of the accounts, into which the
critics
propose to divide the history of the deluge; and
in numerous
instances the partition attempted is imprac-
ticable
because it would sunder what is plainly indivis-
ible. It is further noteworthy that there is no
pretence
of basing
the critical partition of these chapters on di-
versity of
diction. The scattered clauses assigned
to J.
which have
already been shown to be inseparable from
their
contexts, have not even this poor pretext in their
favor. In fact ,there is scarcely more than three or
four
words or
phrases in all that is attributed to J in the entire
narrative of
the deluge which is claimed elsewhere as
characteristic
of that document; while there are several
phrases and
forms of speech, as has been already pointed
out that are
elsewhere held to be characteristic of P, not
to speak of
the word "create" (vi. 7), which in ch. i. is
made a mark
of P in distinction from J.
NO DISCREPANCIES
The attempt is made to create a variance
between vi.
5 and ver.
12 by alleging that J attributes the flood to
the
wickedness of man, but P to the corruption of "all
flesh,"
meaning thereby the entire animal creation as well
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 91
as man; and
when P speaks of the earth being filled
with
violence he refers not merely to human deeds
of violence
and crime, but also to the rapacity and ferocity
of beasts
which prey upon weaker animals instead of feed-
ing upon the
herbage allowed them at their creation (i.
30). But the term "all flesh" has a
wider or narrower
meaning as
determined by the connection. When it is
said (vii.
21) that "all flesh died" in the flood, men and
animals are
both intended. But vii. 15, "two
and two of
all flesh
went in unto Noah into the ark," has reference
to animals
only. And in such phrases as "God
of the
spirits of
all flesh" (Num. xvi. 22; xxvii. 16 ; cf. Jer. xxxii.
27);
"who is there of all flesh that hath heard the voice
of the
living God? "(Deut. v. 23, E. V. 26); "all flesh shall
see the
glory of the LORD" (Isa. xl. 5); "I will pour out
my Spirit
upon all flesh" (Joel iii. 1, E. V. ii. 28); cf.
also Ps.
lvi. 5 (4); lxv. 3 (2) ; cxlv. 21; Isa. lxvi. 16, 24;
Ezek. xxi.
10 (E. V. 5); Zech. ii. 13, the reference is to all
mankind. This is also evidently the case in Gen. vi.
12,
"all
flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth;" for
moral
character and responsibility can only be affirmed
of man, not
of the inferior animals.
It has before been shown that there is no
discrepancy
between the
general direction (vi. 19 P), to take a pair of
each kind of
animals into the ark in order to preserve
alive the
various species, and the more specific require-
ment, when
the time arrived for entering the ark, that
clean beasts
should be taken by sevens and the unclean
by twos
(vii. 2 J). If it had been said that
only two
should be
taken of each kind, the case would have been
different. J also relapses into the general form of
state-
ment (vii. 9);
or if the critics prefer, R does so, which
amounts to
the same thing, as by the hypothesis he had
J's previous
statement before him. There is no
contra-
diction here
any more than there is between the general
92 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
and the more
exact statement of Noah's age in vii. 6 and
11.
In vii. 10 the Hood came seven days, not
after Noah
entered the
ark, but after the announcement, vs. 1-4; so
that there
is no conflict with vii. 13.
It is alleged that there is a serious
variance between
J and P in
respect to the duration of the flood.
Ac-
cording to P
(vii. 11) it began on the seventeenth day
of the
second month, and ended on the twenty-seventh
day of the
second month of the following year (viii. 13,
14). According to J (vii. 12) it rained forty
days, at
the end of
which (viii. 6-12) Noah sent forth birds at
the
intervals of three successive periods of seven days,
whereupon
(ver. 13b) the face of the ground was dried;
the flood
only lasted, therefore, sixty-one days, or, if the
forty days
of viii. 6 are additional to the forty of vii. 12,
it lasted
one hundred and one days, instead of a year and
ten days as
reckoned by P.
The fallacy of all this is obvious. It is simply pa-
rading a
part as though it were the whole.
"At the end
of forty
days Noah opened the window of the ark" (viii.
6). Forty days from what? The critics are in doubt
whether to
reckon from the beginning or the end of the
forty days'
rain. What, then, is to be thought of
the
intelligence
of R in compiling this narrative? As
this
verse stands
it is not possible to reckon otherwise than
from the
first day of the tenth month (viii. 5).
Adding
to this the
three periods of seven days, it appears that
the dove was
sent out for the last time on the first day of
the twelfth
month. After another month Noah removes
the covering
of the ark, and in a month and twenty-seven
days more he
leaves the ark entirely. All is thus in per-
fect
harmony.
The inference of the critics is, besides,
quite unfounded
upon their
own principles. By their own concession
J
THE FLOOD (CH. VI, 9-IX, 17) 93
is not
complete. His genealogy from Adam to
Noah is
only
preserved in part, His account of building the ark
and of
Noah's leaving it have been omitted, R not judg-
ing it
necessary to repeat from J what he had already
inserted
from P. Whence, then, this sudden
confidence
that no
numbers originally in J have been omitted, not-
withstanding
the fact that such an assumption gives to
his
statements a meaning that they cannot now have, sets
them in
opposition to otherwise uncontradicted state-
ments of P,
and convicts R of incapacity or worse?
J list here the perplexity of the critics
in respect to
vii. 17a is
instructive. "The flood was forty
days upon
the
earth," is given entire by Dillmann to J, by Kuenen
to R, and
with the exception of the words "forty days,"
by Kautzsch
and Socin to P; also by Hupfeld to P with-
out
exception, only he insists that the " forty days " must
be
understood differently from J in vii. 4; Budde gives
it to P, but
strikes the "forty days " out of the text, and
reads
"the flood of waters was upon the earth." All is
with the
design of bringing J and P into conflict regard-
ing the
duration of the flood; so that is effected they are
not
particular about the mode of accomplishing it.
The conjecture that still another
estimate of the dura-
tion of the
flood is intimated in vii. 24, and that the one
hundred and
fifty days of its increase imply the same
length of
time for its decrease, so that it must have
lasted just
three hundred days (see Dillmann, "Genesis,"
p. 130) is a
pure figment with no foundation whatever
in the
Biblical narrative. The statement is not
that the
flood continued
to increase for one hundred and fifty
days, but
that having previously reached its full height
it continued
at its maximum until that time, reckoned
from its
beginning, and then decreased for seven months
and ten
days, when the earth was dry.
94 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
DIFFERENCE OF DICTION
It is further contended, however, that
there are certain
characteristics
peculiar to each of these so-called docu-
ments, which
distinguish them from one another in dic-
tion, style,
mode of conception, and range of ideas; and
that these
are so marked and constant as to prove diver-
sity of
origin. These are most fully and
succinctly
stated by
Dillmann,l who has enlarged and corrected the
collection
diligently gathered by Knobel. He gives
the
following
distinctive marks for the recognition of P in
chs.
vi.-ix.: (1) The title, vi. 9. (2) Reckoning by the
years of
Noah's life. (3) The exact statements of
time
respecting
the course of the flood. (4) The
measure-
ments of the
ark. (5) Weaving in a law, ix. 1-7, and
its
referring
back to i. 27 seq. (6) The covenant and
its
sign, ix. 8
sqq. (7) Diffuseness and constantly
recurring
formulae. (8) The antique description of the sources of
the flood,
vii. 11; viii. 2; recalling i. 6-8. (9)
The
image of
God, ix. 6. (10) The mode of speaking
of,
Noah's
family, vi. 18; vii. 7, 13; viii. 16, 18 (on the
contrary,
vii. 1). (11) rWABA-lKA vi. 12 seq., 17, 19; vii. 15 seq.,
21; viii.
17; ix. 11, 15-17. (12) hbAqen;U
rkAzA vi. 19; vii.
9, 16. (13) Mh,yteHoP;w;mil; viii. 19.
(14) hWAfA
NKe
vi. 22. (15)
hbArAv; hrAPA viii.17; ix. 1, 7. (16) tyriB; Myqihe or NtanA
vi. 18;
ix. 9, 11
seq., 17. (17) You and your seed after
you, ix. 9.
(18) fvaGA vi. 17; vii. 21. (19) tyHiw;Hi and tHewi (not hHAmA)
vi. 13, 17;
xi. 11, 15. (20) dyliOh vi. 10.
(21) hlAk;xA vi.
21; ix.
3. (22) CrawA wild beast, vii. 14, 21; viii. 1, 17, 19;
ix. 2,
5. (23) Nymi vi. 20; vii. 14. (24) Mc,f, self-same, vii.
13. (25) CrawA and Cr,w, vii. 21; viii. 17; ix. 7. (26) wmarA
and Wm,r, vi. 20; vii. 14, 21; viii. 17, 19; ix. 2
seq. (see vi
7; vii.' 8,
23). (27) dxom; dxom; vii. 19.
(28) B; used dis-
tributively,
vii. 21; viii. 17; ix. 10, 15 seq.
1 Commentary on
Genesis.
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17)
95
This certainly has the appearance of a
very formidable
list. But such lists may prove very delusive. It should
be
remembered that no piece of composition can be so
divided that
precisely the same words and phrases and
ideas shall
occur in each of the parts, and that neither
shall
contain any that are not to be found in the other.
If any such
piece should be divided at random, and an
elaborate
and exhaustive search be instituted to discover
what there
was in one of the parts that was missing in
the other,
and vice versa, no doubt long lists could be
made out of
what might be called the characteristic pe-
culiarities
of each part. Nevertheless, these would
not
have the
slightest significance, and would have no ten-
dency to
prove that these sundered parts ever had a sepa-
rate and
independent existence and were the primal sources
from which
the composition in question was derived.
More especially is this the case when the
partition is
made on the
basis of certain assumed characteristic dif-
ferences. It is assumed at the start, we may suppose,
that a given
production is a composite one, formed by
the
combination of two pre-existing documents.
Two
sections
respectively assigned to these documents are
then
compared, and the resulting differences noted as
severally
characteristic of one or the other. The
docu-
ments are
then made out in detail by the persistent ap-
plication of
the criteria thus furnished. Every para-
graph,
sentence, or clause, in which any of the one class
of
characteristics is to be found, is regularly and consist-
ently
assigned to the one document, and with like regu-
larity and
consistency all, in which any of the other c1ass.
of
characteristics appear, is referred to the other docu-
ment, the
number of the criteria growing as the work
proceeds. When now the process is completed, each
document
will be found to have the assumed series of
characteristics
for the simple reason that it was through-
96 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
out constructed
by the critic himself upon that pattern.
He is
arguing in a circle, which of course returns upon
itself. He proves the documents by the criteria, and
the criteria
by the documents; and these match as far
as they do
because they have been adjusted to one an-
other with
the utmost care. But the correspondence
may be
factitious after all. It may show the
ingenuity
of the
operator, without establishing the objective real-
ity of his
conclusions. The documents which he
fancies
that he has
discovered may be purely a creation of his
own, and
never have had an independent existence.
MARKS OF P
We shall now examine the alleged marks of
P seriatim
with the
view of discovering what significance is to be
attached to
them.
1. The title (vi. 9). (a). A like title, "These are the
generations,"
etc., occurs besides in Gen. ii. 4; v. 1; x.
1; xi. 10,
27; xxv. 12, 19; xxxvi. 1, 9; xxxvii. 2; Num.
iii. 1, and
once out of the Pentateuch in imitation of the
phrase as
there used.
(b).
The word " generations "
tvdlt
occurs, apart from
the titles
just cited, Gen. x. 32; xxv. 13; Ex. vi. 16, 19;
xxviii. 10;
Num. i. 20-42, and out of the Pentateuch,
Ruth iv. 18;
1 Chron. v. 7; vii. 2, 4, 9; viii. 28; ix. 9,
34; xxvi.
31.
These titles are so far from lending any
support to the
hypothesis
that they can only be classed as belonging
to P on the
prior assumption of the truth of the hypothe-
sis. That in Gen. ii. 4 is assigned to P, not by
reason of
its
environment, but notwithstanding the fact that it is
the title of
a J section, to which it is assumed that it has
been
transferred from a former imaginary position at the
beginning of
ch. i., for which it is not suitable and where
THE FLOOD (OR. VI. 9-IX. 17) 97
it could never
have stood. In xxxvii. 2 it introduces a
section
composed of alternate paragraphs of J and E, in
which there
is not a single sentence from P until xli. 46,
and then not
another till xlvi. 6. In xxv. 19 it is
followed
by long
passages from J, interspersed with paragraphs
from E, and
with scarcely anything from P. Ch.
xxxvi.
9 stands at
the head of a section about which the critics
are divided;
some refer it to P, others in large part to R
or to
JE. The natural inference would seem to
be that
these
titles, prefixed alike to J and to P sections, were
suggestive
of the common authorship of those sections,
or at least
that the titles proceeded from him to whom
Genesis owes
its present form, be he author or com-
piler. Hence Kayser 1 says, " he formula 'These
are the
generations,'
which is commonly regarded as Elohistic,
belongs just
as well to the other document." And
again,
"This
formula, with which the history of Esau or of the
Esauids
(xxxvi. 9), as well as the history of Jacob (xxxvii.
2) begins,
is not exclusively Elohistic. The
Jehovist uses
it here as
in xxv. 19, in order to commence a new section
after the
death of a patriarch." And the
other passages,
in which the
word tdlvt
is found, look in the
same direc-
tion. Gen. x. 32 occurs at the close of what is
consid-
ered a J
section of a genealogy. Ex. vi. 16, 19
is in a
genealogy
which Kayser assigns to R, which in the
judgment of
Wellhausen and Kuenen does not belong to
P, but is a
later interpolation, and which Dillmann merely
refers to P
on the general ground that genealogies as a
rule are to
be so referred; while nevertheless he claims
that the
entire context has been seriously manipulated.
Gen. xxv. 13
is in a genealogy which is referred to P on
the same
general ground, but is embedded in a J context.
It would
seem, consequently, that there is no very solid
ground for
the claim that this word is peculiar to P.
1 Das
Vorexilische Buch, pp. 8, 28.
98 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
2. "Reckoning by the years of Noah's
life."
The arbitrary character of the critical
rule that state-
ments of age
are to be referred to P appears from the
fact that in
repeated instances this is done in defiance of
the
context. Thus Isaac's age at his
marriage and at the
birth of his
children is cut out of a J context (xxv. 20,
26); so that
of Joseph when feeding the flock with his
brethren
(xxxvii. 2), and when he stood before Pharaoh
(xli. 46),
and the length of time that Jacob lived in Egypt
and his age
at his death (xlvii. 28) are all severed from a
foreign
context, either J or E. Moreover, the
age of Jo-
seph (Gen. 1. 26), of Caleb (Josh. xiv. 7,
10), and of
Joshua
(Josh. xxiv. 29) is by common critical consent at-
tributed to
E.
3. "The exact statements of time
respecting the course
of the
flood."
(a) P reckons one hundred and fifty days
until the
flood began
to subside (vii. 24; viii. 3). But time
is
noted with
similar exactness in passages referred to the
other
documents. Thus in J seven days until
the rain
was to
begin, forty days that it was to continue (vii. 4,
10, 12);
after forty days Noah opened the window of the
ark (viii.
6); after seven days he sent forth a dove (vs.
10, 12);
three months (xxxviii. 24); in E twelve years
(Gen. xiv.
4, 5) (so Dillmann); seven years (xxix. 20, 27,
30) ;
twenty, fourteen, and six years (xxxi. 38, 41); two
years (xli.
1); seven years (xli. 48, 54); two and five
years (xlv.
6).
(b) P notes the month and the day which
marked
certain
stages of the flood (vii. 11; viii. 4, 5, 13, 14).
But nothing
sufficiently momentous to call for such nota-
tion occurs
in the rest of Genesis, whether in JE or in
P
sections. And in the remainder of the
Hexateuch it is
limited to
two things, viz., the annual sacred seasons as
described in
detail in the ritual law, and for that reason
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 99
assigned to
P, and the most signal occurrences in the
march of
Israel from Egypt to Canaan. Thus the
month
and day of
their leaving Egypt are indicated (Num.
xxxiii. 3);
of the first gift of manna (Ex. xvi. 1); of the
arrival at
and departure from Sinai (Ex. xix. 1 ; Num. x.
11); of
setting up the sacred tabernacle (Ex. xl. 2, 17); of
numbering
the people and organizing the host (Num.
i. 1, 18);
of the return to Kadesh in the last year of the
wandering
(Num. xx. 1); of the death of Aaron (Num.
xxxiii. 38);
of Moses's final exposition of the law (Deut.
i. 3); and
of the passage of the Jordan just when the pre-
dicted term
of wandering was complete (Josh. iv. 19).
These are
all assigned to P in spite of the fact that Ex.
xix. 1; Num.
xx. 1; Deut. i. 3; Josh. iv. 19 are not in a
P context;
yet they are severed from their connection
and
attributed to P because of the prior assumption that
"he
alone reckons by months and days."
4. "The measurements of the
ark."
There is but
one other structure of which measures are
given in the
Pentateuch, viz., the tabernacle and its ves-
sels. And the reason why such: detailed statements are
made
respecting them is not because P had a fancy for
recording
measures, but because these structures were
built by
divine direction and on a divine plan which was
minutely
followed. And this is not the
peculiarity of a
particular
writer, for the author of Kings and the prophet
Ezekiel
detail in like manner the measures of the temple.
5. "Weaving in a law, ix. 1-7, and
its referring back;
to i. 27
seq."
But the same thing occurs in passages
assigned to the
other
so-called documents; thus in J, the law of mar-
riage is
woven into ii. 23, 24; that of levirate marriage,
xxxviii. 8;
intermarriage with Canaanites disapproved,
xxiv. 3, and
the institution of sacrifice, ch. iv., viii. 20, 21;
in E the
payment of tithes, xiv. 20 (referred to E by
100 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
Dillmann),
xxviii. 22. And if the reference of ix.
6 to i.
27 links it
to P, the reference of xxvii. 45 J to ix. 6 links
it equally
to J, and is thus suggestive of the common ori-
gin of what
the critics consider separate documents.
6. "The covenant and its sign (ix. 8
sqq)."
Three covenants with their appointed signs
are spoken
of in the
Old Testament, viz.: The covenant with Noah
and the
rainbow as its sign, the covenant with Abraham
and his seed
and circumcision as its sign (xvii. 10, 11),
and the
covenant with Israel and the sabbath as its sign
(Ex. xxxi.
13-17). These are all referred to P, and
no
sections of
P but these three make mention of a cove-
nant
sign. If now the absence of this
expression from all
the rest of
the P sections does not imply difference of
authorship,
why should such a significance be attributed
to its
absence from the J sections? But in fact
both the
name and the
thing are found in sections attributed to J.
Thus Gen.
xv. 18, Jehovah made a covenant with Abra-
ham granting
him the land of Canaan; and as he asked
for
something (ver. 8) whereby he might know that he
should
inherit it, a symbol of the divine presence, fire
and smoke,
passed between the pieces of the slaughtered
victims, as
was customary for contracting parties among
men (Jer.
xxxiv. 18, 19). The word
"sign" does not oc-
cur in the
passage, but Dillmann ("Commentary" in loc.)
correctly
calls this "the sign by which the covenant en-
gagement was
concluded." In Ex. iii. 12 E God
gives
Moses a sign
of his divine commission to deliver Israel.
In Ex.
iv. J he gives him a series of signs to
confirm the
faith of the
people in the same. The critics assign
to P,
with the
exception of a few refractory clauses, Ex. xxxi.
12-17, which
makes the sabbath the sign of God's cov-
enant with
Israel. And they avow as one of their
chief
reasons for
doing so (Dillmann in loc.), that P must have
recorded the
sign of the Mosaic covenant as he did those
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 101
of the
covenants with Noah and Abraham. And
yet they
attribute
the entire account of the contracting of the
Mosaic
covenant (Ex. xxiv. 1-11) to JE, thus separating
what
manifestly belongs together. How can P
report the
sign of the
Mosaic covenant, if he has said nothing of
such a
covenant being formed?
7. "Diffuseness and constantly
recurring formulae."
But the emphatic iteration of the
historian, who would
impress his
readers with the magnitude of the world-
wide
desolation wrought by the flood, is not to be con-
founded with
the aimless diffuseness of a wordy writer.
The
enlargement upon special features and the repeti-
tions are
due to the vastness of the theme, not to need-
less
verbosity. Thus Delitzsch commenting
upon vii.
17-20
says: "The description is a model
of majestic
simplicity,
of exalted beauty with no artificial expedients.
. . . The
tautologies of the account, as it lies before
us, picture
the frightful monotomy of the illimitable
watery
surface, and the refuge floating securely above it,
though
encompassed by the terrors of death."
And
Dillmann
says of vii. 16, in which the author repeats for
the third
time the entry into the ark, "It is as if
the author,
moved by the momentous character of the day,
could not do
enough in the way of detailed portraiture of
the
event." These surely are not
unmeaning platitudes.
8.
"The antique description of the sources of the
flood (vii.
11, viii. 2), reminding one of i. 6-8."
The expression "windows of heaven"
occurs twice in
the account
of the flood, and nowhere else in the Hexa-
teuch. In both passages it is associated with rain,
which
is only
sundered from it by the arbitrary partition of the
critics; and
the form of the verb used in both implies
that the
rain was consequent upon the opening of those
windows, and
the stoppage of the rain upon closing them. I
There is not
the slightest suggestion of two different con-
102 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
ceptions,
whether the windows of heaven be interpreted
as literal
sluices through which the waters of a supernal
ocean
poured, or as a figurative representation of delug-
ing rains
proceeding from the clouds, which are spoken
of as waters
above the firmament. And that waters
from
the great
deep were united with torrents from the sky in
producing
the flood can be no ground of literary parti-
tion, while
it is in exact accord with geologic phenomena.
9.
"The image of God (ix. 6)."
This expression is here used with explicit
allusion to i.
26, 27,
where it occurs in the account of the creation of
man; and it
is found nowhere else in the Old Testament.
This cannot
surely be urged as a characteristic of the
writer.
10.
"The mode of speaking of Noah's family, vi. 18 ;
vii. 7, 13;
viii. 16, 18, as opposed to vii. 1."
But why should diversity of authorship be
inferred be-
cause vi. 18
has "Thou and thy sons, and thy wife, and
thy sons'
wives with thee," and vii. 1, "Thou and all thy
house,"
any more than from xlv. 10, "Thou and thy
children,
and thy children's children, and thy flocks, and
thy herds,
and all that thou hast," while ver. 11 has
"Thou
and thy house, and all that thou hast," which
plainly
belong together, and are by the critics commonly
assigned to
E. Wellhausen, indeed, ascribes xlv. 10,
with its
detailed enumeration, to J, thus precisely re-
versing the
characteristic brevity imputed to J in vii. 1.
Moreover,
the detailed statement of Noah's family occurs
(vii. 7) in
a passage alleged to contain J's account of the
entry into the
ark, and in connection with expressions
claimed to
be characteristic of J, "waters of the flood,"
"clean
beasts and beasts that are not clean;" so that
the critics
find it necessary to resort to the evasion that
the text has
been manipulated by R, who substituted the
present
reading for the presumed original, "Noah and
THE FLOOD (CR. VI. 9-IX. 17) 103
his
house." And if slight variations in
the form of ex-
pression are
to be made the pretext for assuming a di-
versity of
writers, it is to be observed that vii. 13 is pe-
culiar in
giving the names of Noah's sons and the number
of their
wives, and viii. 16 in mentioning the wife before
the
sons. Must these verses be referred to a
distinct
author on
this account?
11. rWAbA-lKA all flesh (vi. 12 seq., 17, 19; vii. 15 seq.,
21; viii.
17; ix. 11, 15-17).
This expression occurs thirteen times in
the passages
just recited
in the account of the flood, to indicate the
universality
of corruption and death and the measures
for
preserving the various species of living things. As
there was no
occasion to use it elsewhere in Genesis, it
occurs
besides neither in P nor in J sections.
It is
found three
times in Lev. xvii. 14, "blood the life of all
flesh,"
which Dillmann says ("Commentary," p. 535) is
a mixed
passage, and he adds that " all flesh " is no sure
proof of
P. It further occurs in Num. xvi. 22;
xxvii. 16,
"God of
the spirits of all flesh;" and in a law of the
consecration
of the first-born of all animals (N um. xviii.
15), and
nowhere else in the Hexateuch. J
passages offer
no
substitute for it, and do not employ it for the simple
reason that
they have no occasion to express the same
idea. It is further found repeatedly in other books
of
the Bible,
so that it is no peculiar possession of P.
12. hbAqen;U rkAzA male and female (vi. 19; Vii. 9, 16).
These words can only be expected where
there is some
reason for
referring to the distinction of sex.
They are
found
together (i. 27; v. 2) where the creation of man is
spoken of,
and (vi. 19; vii. 3, 9, 16) in the measures for
the
preservation of the various species at the time of the
flood, but
nowhere else in Genesis. They are also
found
together in
the ritual laws respecting sacrifice, (Lev. iii.
1, 6); childbirth
(Lev. xii. 7) ; uncleanness (Lev. xv. 33;
104 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
Num. v. 3);
vows (Lev. xxvii. 3-7); and nowhere else in
the
Hexateuch except Deut. iv. 16 referring to objects
of
idolatrous worship. And it is almost
exclusively in
ritual
connections that the words indicative of sex are
used at all,
even separately. Thus male occurs in
Gene-
sis only in
relation to circumcision (Gen. xvii. 10, 12,14,
23; xxxiv.
15, 22, 24, 25); and besides in a like connec-
tion in Ex.
xii. 48, P; Josh. v. 4, R. It is further
found in
the
Hexateuch in relation to sacrifice (Ex. xii. 5; Lev. i.
3, 10; iv.
23; xxii. 19); hallowing the first-born (Ex.
xiii. 12,
15, J; Deut. xv. 19, D); directions concerning
the
priests. (Lev. vi. 11 (E. V., 18), 22
(E. V., 29); vii.
6; Num.
xviii. 10); childbirth (Lev. xii. 2); copulation
(Lev. xviii.
22; xx. 13, J, so Dillmann; Num. xxxi. 17,
18, 35); the
census (Num. i. 2, 20, 22; ch. iii.; xxvi. 62;
Josh. xvii.
2, JE, except only the word males, so Dill-
mann); and
war (Num. xxxi. 7, 17). Female
occurs sep-
arately in
connection with sacrifice (Lev. iv. 28, 32; v.
6);
childbirth (Lev. xii. 5); and war (N um. xxxi. 15).
As the
creation, flood (for the most part), and ritual law
are assigned
to P, it is not surprising that nearly all the
allusions to
sex are in the sections and paragraphs at-
tributed to
P. And yet in the limited references which
J is
supposed to make to matters that admit of an allu-
sion to sex,
the word male finds entrance there also.
It
is alleged
that J uses a different phrase, OTw;xiv; wyxi man
and his wife (vii. 2), instead of male and female. Never-
theless,
male and female likewise occur (vii. 3, 9) in para-
graphs
assigned to J. The critics say that
these words
were
inserted by R, the only evidence of which is that
they are at
variance with critical assumptions. And
why R should
have been concerned to insert them here,
and not in
vii. 2, does not appear.
13. Mh,yteHoP;w;mil; according to their families (viii.
19.)
This particular form of expression occurs
once of the
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 105
various
species of animals that came forth from the ark.
With that
exception it is limited to genealogies, viz.,
of the sons
of Noah (Gen. x. 5, 20, 31); of Esau (Gen.
xxxvi. 40);
and of the Levites (Ex. vi. 17, 25); the cen-
sus of the
tribes (Num. i.-iv., xxvi.); and the division of
Canaan (Num.
xxxiii. 54; Josh. xiii., sqq). As these
are
for the most
part given to P by rule, the word is chiefly
found in P
sections as a matter of course. Yet it
is
classed as
belonging to P in x. 20, 31, though the pre-
ceding
genealogy to which it relates is given to J.
The
word itself
is found in J (Gen. xii. 3; xxviii. 14 ; Josh. vi.
23, JE); and
with the same preposition, "according to
your
families" (Ex. xii. 21, J); "according to his fami-
lies"
(Num. xi. 10, JE).
14. hWAfA NKe so did he (vi. 22).
This is part of an emphatic declaration
that the divine
directions
were punctually obeyed. Such statements
are
mostly found
in connection with the ritual, and naturally
have their
place in P, to which ritual passages are regu-
larly
assigned. In Ex. xii. 28 it is preceded
and followed
by a J
context, with the former of which it is intimately
united, to
which it evidently refers, and from which its
meaning is
derived. And yet it is torn from this con-
nection and
linked with a distant P paragraph solely and
avowedly
because it contains the formula in question.
It
occurs but
once in the book of Genesis, where it describes
the
exactness with which Noah heeded the injunctions
given him.
The expression in vii. 5 J is less full, but this
is no
indication that it is from a different source.
The
emphatic
formula connected with the general statement
in Ex.
xxxix. 32 is preceded, and that in Ex. xl. 16 is
followed, by
numerous particular statements with a
briefer
formula, but no one suspects a difference of au-
thorship on
this account.
15. hbArAv; hrAkA be
fruitful and multiply (viii. 17; ix.1,7).
106 THE
GENERATIONS OF NOAH
This phrase occurs ten times in Genesis
and once in
Exodus, and
in all of them is referred to P. This
looks
like a
strong case at first sight, but all its seeming
strength is
dissipated upon examination. The phrase
is
an emphatic
combination designed to express exuberant
fertility;
and its meaning is repeatedly heightened by the
addition of
other synonymous words, or of intensifying
adverbs.1 It is used in the Pentateuch of three things,
and of these
only. 1.
The blessing of fruitfulness pro-
nounced upon
animals and men at their creation (Gen. i.
22, 28) and
after the flood (viii. 17; ix. 1, 7).
2. The prom-
ise to the
patriarchs of the multiplication of their descend-
ants. 3. The
actual multiplication of the children of Israel
in Egypt
(Gen. xlvii. 27; Ex. i. 7). Since the
entire account
of the
creation and almost all of the account of the flood
are given to
P, the blessings then pronounced take the
same
direction as a matter of course. Of the
two state-
ments of the
multiplication of the Israelites in Egypt, Gen.
xlvii. 27
stands in a J context, and Ex. i. 7 in an E con-
text; and
both are sundered from their proper connection
and referred
to P principally on account of the phrase
in question.
In the blessing upon Abraham and his
descendants in
Gen. xvii.,
these two verbs are first used separately--
"multiply,"
ver. 2, "make fruitful," ver. 6, and then both
are combined
in ver. 20. This climactic promise of
off-
spring to
Abraham after long years of waiting and when
every
natural expectation had vanished, was confirmed
by the
announcement that it came from the Almighty
God (ver.
1), who was able to fulfil what nature could
1 Gen. i. 22, 28 ; ix. 1. vxlmv
vbrv vrp.
viii. 17.
vbrv vrpv . . .
vcrwv
ix. 7.
vbrv . .
. vcrw
vbrv vrp
xlvii. 27. dxm vbryv
vrpyv
Ex. i. 7. dxm dxmb vmcfyv vbryv vcrwyv vrp..
THE FLOOD (OR. VI. 9-IX. 17) 107
not
accomplish.1 This promise was
repeated with ex-
plicit
allusion to this occasion by Isaac to Jacob, xxviii.
3, by God
himself to Jacob, xxxv. 11, by Jacob to Jo-
seph,
xlviii. 3, 4. In all these cases the
emphatic words
of the
original promise, "Almighty God," "be fruitful,"
"multiply,"
are repeated together. These are
uniformly
assigned to
P, not because of the connection in which
they stand,
but because of the critical assumption that
these words
are characteristic of P, and must always be
attributed
to him. These comprise all the instances
in
the
Hexateuch, in which "be fruitful" and "multiply"
occur
together, except Lev. xxvi. 9, which Driver assigns
to another
than P, and Dillmann gives to J.
16. tyriB; Myqihe or NtanA , establish or ordain a covenant
(vi. 18; ix.
9, 11 seq., 17).
These expressions are said to be
characteristic of P,
while J
habitually uses instead tyriB; traKA conclude a cove-
nant.
The fact is that there is a difference in the signifi-
cation of
these terms, which should be noted, and which
is the true
and sufficient explanation of their usage, with-
out the need
of having recourse to the proclivities of dis-
tinct
writers. The first two expressions are used exclu-
sively of
God as instituting covenants with men; establish
(lit.
"cause to stand ") indicates the permanence and sta-
bility of
the arrangement divinely made; ordain (lit.
"give"),
suggests its divine appointment or bestowment.
These are
applied to two covenants granted in perpetu-
ity, that to
Noah (establish, vi. 8; ix. 9, 11, 17; ordain,
E. V.
"make," ix. 12) and to Abraham (establish., xvii. 7,
19, 21; Ex.
vi. 4; ordain, E. V. "make," Gen. xvii. 2);
and ordain,
E. V. "give," is once besides applied to the
covenant of
a perpetual priesthood granted to Phinehas
1 Gen. xvii. 1, 2. dxm dxm jtvx hbrxv . . .ydw lx ynx.
ver. 6. dxm dxmb jtx . . . ytrphv
ver. 20.
dxm dxmb vtx . . . ytybrhv vtx ytyrphv.
108 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
(Num. xxv.
12). Conclude (lit. "cut," E.
V. "make")
according to
its original signification alludes to the sac-
rificial
rites attending the ratification of a covenant, and
the cutting
of the victim asunder for the contracting par-
ties to pass
between the separated pieces (Jer. xxxiv. 18,
19). It properly refers, therefore, to the act of
conclud-
ing a
covenant, with predominant allusion, in some in-
stances at
least, to the accompanying ceremonies.
It is
accordingly
used--
a.
Of covenants between men; thus between Abraham
and
Abimelech (Gen. xxi. 27, 32 E), Isaac and Abime-
lech (xxvi.
28 J), Laban and Jacob (xxxi. 44 E), Israel and
Canaanites
(Ex. xxiii. 32 E; xxxiv. 12, 15 J; Deut. vii. 2 D;
Josh. ix. 6
sqq. E), Joshua and Israel (Josh. xxiv. 25 E).
b.
Of the covenants of God with men, when the attention
is directed
to the ratification rather than to the perpetu-
ity of the
covenant. It Occurs once of God's
covenant
with Abraham
on the occasion of its formal ratification
in
condescension to the customs of men, when a symbol
of the
Divine Being, by whom the engagement was made,
passed
between the parts of the slaughtered victims (Gen.
xv. 18
J). But when the climax was reached and
the faith
of childless
Abraham had been sufficiently tried, the
covenant
conveying the land of Canaan was more explic-
itly
unfolded as a covenant, in which the Almighty God
pledged
himself to be a God unto him and to his seed; a
covenant
that was not merely entered into, but declared
to be
everlasting, and the stronger word establish is hence-
forth used
in relation to it (Gen. xvii. 7). Conclude
(lit.
"but")
is invariably used of God's covenant with Israel,
ratified by
sacrifice (Ex. xxiv. 8 J), and solemnly renewed
(Ex. xxxiv.
10, 27 J; Deut. iv. 23; v. 2, 3; ix. 9; xxviii.
69 (E. V.
xxix. 1); xxix. 11, 13, 24 (E. V. vs. 12, 14, 25);
xxxi.
16). Establish is never used in speaking
of this
covenant
with Israel, as of that with Abraham, because
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 109
the element
of perpetuity and inviolability was wanting.
It was liable
to be broken. It was once actually
ruptured
by the crime
of the golden calf and again by their rebel-
lion, when
the spies brought an evil report of the prom-
ised land
and they were in consequence condemned to
die in the
wilderness. The people were ever afresh
re-
minded that
its persistence was conditioned on their own
fidelity. Only once in the Pentateuch is its
perpetuation
set before
them as a blessing of the future;1 if they will
walk in the
LORD'S statutes, he will establish his covenant
with them
(Lev. xxvi. 3, 9.J, Dillm.). It is quite
likely,
however,
that the phrase is here used in the secondary
sense of
performing or fulfilling, as it is in relation to the
covenant
with Abraham in Deut. viii. 18. The
occurrence
of what is
claimed as a P phrase in J and D shows that it
is not the
peculiar property of anyone of the so-called
Hexateuchal
documents. And the superficial exegesis
which finds
here only an unmeaning difference of usage
in different
writers overlooks the profound significance
which
underlies the constant employment of these sev-
eral terms.
17. " You and your seed after
you" (ix. 9).
This or the like phrase, with a simple
change of the
pronoun, is
uniformly ascribed to P. It occurs in
the
promise to
Noah (ix. 9); Abraham (xvii. 7 bis, 8, 9, 10,
19) ; Jacob
(xxxv. 12); repeated by Jacob to Joseph (xlviii.
4); the
injunction to Aaron (Ex. xxviii. 43), and the prom-
ise to
Phinehas (Num. xxv. 13). But the
expression is not
uniform even
in passages assigned to P, e.g., "to thee and
to thy seed
With thee" (Gen. xviii. 4; Num. xviii. 19);
"to him
and to his seed throughout their generations" (Ex.
xxx.
21). Why then should a slight additional
variation
1 And once besides in the Old
Testament (Ezek. xvi, 60, 62), where,
however, it
is based not on the fidelity of the people, but on the pre-
venient
grace of God.
110 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
in three
additional passages be thought to indicate a dif-
ferent
author? viz., "to thee and to thy
seed for ever"
(Gen. xiii.
15 J); "unto thee and unto thy seed" (xxvi. 3
R.; xxviii.
13 J); especially as one author in Deuteronomy
uses all
these phrases; "Unto them and to their seed
after
them" (i. 8); "Unto them and to their seed" (xi.
9);
"thee and thy seed forever" (xxviii. 46).
18.
fvaGA die,
expire, for which
J is said to use tUm (vi.
17; vii.
21).
This word is only found in poetry except
in the Hexa-
euch, where
it is an emphatic word, only used of the
death of
venerated patriarchs or of great catastrophes.
It occurs
twice in relation to those that perished in the
flood (vi.
17; vii. 21); also of those who were cut off by
divine
judgment for the rebellion of Korah (Num. xvii.
27, 28, E.
V. vs. 12, 13; xx. 3 bis), or the trespass of Achan
(Josh. xxii.
20). It is used in connection with tUm
died,
of the death
of Abraham (Gen. xxv. 8), Ishmael (ver. 17),
Isaac (xxxv.
29), and with the equivalent phrase, "was
gathered to
his people," of Jacob (xlix. 33); also of Aaron
(Num. xx.
29), where the preceding verse has tvm.
The critics improperly sunder Gen. vii.
22, which has
tvm,
from its connection with ver. 21, which has fvg, as-
signing the
former for this reason to J and the latter to
P; although
ver. 22 directly continues ver. 21, and is a
comprehensive
restatement in brief, added with the view
of giving
stronger expression to the thought. Num.
xx.
3b is cut
out of an E connection, and referred to P on ac-
count of
this word fvg,
though the similar passage, Num.
xiv. 37,
shows that it belongs where it stands.
This
word could
not be expected in the passages assigned
to J, since
they record no death in all the Hexateuch
except those
of Haran (Gen. xi. 28), the wife of Judah
(xxxviii.
12), and a king of Egypt (Ex. ii. 23); in all
which the
word tvm is appropriately used. The passages
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 111
assigned to
P in like manner use tvm of
the antediluvi-
ans (Gen.
v.), Terah (xi. 32), Sarah (xxiii. 2), the kings of
Edom (xxxvi.
33-39 so Dillmann), Nadab and Abihu (Lev.
x. 2), and
several times besides as an emphatic addition
to fvg.
There is in all this no difference of usage what-
ever, and
certainly nothing to suggest diversity of author-
ship.
19. tyHw;hi and tHewo
destroy, not hHAmA blot out, J
(vi.
13, 17; ix.
11, 15).
What is here claimed as a P word occurs
but once in
P outside of
the account of the flood (Gen. xix. 29);
while it
occurs repeatedly in J (Piel form, Gen. xiii. 10;
xix. 13;
xxxviii. 9; Ex. xxxii. 7 ; Deut. xxxii. 5); and in
E (Piel, Ex.
xxi. 26; N urn. xxxii. 15 ; Josh. xxii. 33), in
J (Hiphil,
Gen. xviii. 28, 31, 32; xix. 13, 14; Ex. xii. 23).
And the
alleged J word hHAmA occurs
four times in the
narrative of
the flood (vi. 7 ; vii. 4, 23 bis) ; and five times
besides in
the Hexateuch, twice in J (Ex. xxxii. 32, 33);
twice in E
(Ex. xvii. 14); and once in P (Num. v. 23).
The writer
is led to use tHw in
vi. 13, 17 because of the
twofold
signification of the word, which may have respect
to character
or condition and may mean "to corrupt" or
"to
destroy." All flesh had corrupted
their way, where-
fore God was
resolved to destroy them. In vii. 23 hHAmA,
though
referred to J, is in connection with the enumera-
tion of "man, beast, creeping thing, and fowl of
heaven,"
which is
reckoned a characteristic of P, and can only be
accounted
for by the assumption that it has been inserted
by R.
20.
dyliOh beget (vi. 10), for which J is said to use dlayA.
As is remarked by Dillmann ("
Commentary on Gen.," v.
3), dyliOh
said of the father, belongs to greater
precision
of
style. Hence this is uniformly used in
the direct line
of the
genealogies leading to the chosen race, which are
drawn up
with special fulness and formality (Gen. v.; vi.
112 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
10; xi. 10
sqq.; xxv. 19; Num. xxvi. 29, 58). And dly is
as uniformly
used of the side lines, thus iv. 18 (in the
line of
Cain), x. 8, 13, 15, 24, 26 (line of Ham, and that
of Shem
outside of the chosen race), xxii. 23 (Bethuel),
xxv. 3
(Keturah). The only apparent exceptions
are
not really
such; in x. 24 Arpachshad, Shelah, Eber head
a divergent
line proceeding with Joktan (cf. xi. 12-17).
In xi. 27
Haran begat (dylvh)
Lot, but this is included in
the
genealogy with Abraham, just as (xi. 26) Terah begat
(dylvh) three sons, and Noah (v. 32 ; vi. 10)
begat (dylvh)
three sons,
these being included in a genealogy of the
direct
line. In xvii. 20 the promise that
Ishmael shall
beget ( dylvy) twelve princes is not in a genealogy,
and
besides, it
is part of a promise to Abraham. The
varia-
tion, which
the critics attribute to distinct writers, is sim-
ply the
carrying out of a consistent and uniform plan by
the same
writer. Besides, it is only by critical
legerde-
main that dly is restricted to J. Gen. xxii. 23 is referred
to J
notwithstanding the allusion by P in xxv. 20, which
makes it
necessary to assume that P had stated the same
thing in
some other passage now lost. This
carries with
it xxii. 20,
whose allusion to xi. 29 requires the latter to
be torn from
its connection and referred to J. And in
xxv. 3 dly alternates with ynbv, which is made a criterion
of P in ch.
x.; comp. also xlvi. 9 sqq.; Ex. vi. 15 sqq.
21.
hlAk;xA eating (E. V. food, vi. 21; ix. 3).
Delitzsch (Commentary on Gen., vi. 21)
says, "lkox<l, to
eat, and
lkAxEmal; for
food," and
quotes with approval from
Driver,
"a thing is given lkox<l, on a particular occasion,
it is
given lcAxEma for a continuance." It is said that J
uses lcAxEma as its equivalent; but lcAxEma and hlAk;xA occur
together in
Gen. vi. 21 P, where the difference is plainly
shown; hlAk;xA denotes that which is eaten, hlAc;xA the act of
eating; hlAk;xA
occurs seven times in
the Hexateuch. In
each
instance some particular article of food is prescribed
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 113
for constant
eating; and these are the only passages in
which this
is done. In Gen. i. 29, 30, to man and
beast
at the
creation; vi. 21 to Noah and those that were with
him in the
ark during the flood; ix. 3 to man after the
flood; Ex.
xvi. 15 to Israel manna during their abode in
the
wilderness; Lev. xi. 39 to Israel animal food allowed
by the law;
xxv. 6 to man and beast during the sabbat-
ical year.
As all these verses are assigned to P,
and these com-
prise all
the passages of this description, it is not sur-
prising that
hlkx
does not occur in
J. But some nice
critical
work is required to effect this. Ex. xvi. 15 has
to be split
in two; its first clause is said to belong to J,
but its last
clause is attributed to P because of this very
word (so
Dillmann). Kayser ("Das
Vorexilische Buch,"
p. 76)
refers Lev. xxv. 1-7 to another than P; Kuenen
("Hexateuch,"
p. 286) refers it to P', who is distinguished
from P, or
as he prefers to call him, P", the author of
"the
historico-legislative work extending from the cre-
ation to the
settlement in Canaan" (p. 288).
22. hy.AHa wild beast (vii. 14, 21 ; viii. 1, 17, 19; ix. 2,
5).
There is no difference in this between the
passages re-
spectively
assigned to the so-called documents. hy.AHa
beast is distinguished from hmAHeB;
cattle in P (i. 24, 25;
vii. 14, 21;
viii. 1; ix. 10), but so it is in J (ii. 20). In
i. 30; viii.
19; ix. 2, 5 P, it is used in a more compre-
hensive
sense and includes domestic animals precisely as
it does in
ii. 19 J. In vi. 20 P hmAHeB;
cattle is used in
a like
comprehensive sense and embraces all quadrupeds
as in vii. 2
J. In the rest of Genesis and of the
Hexa-
teuch, while
hyH
beast occurs in the sense of wild
beasts
in Gen.
xxxvii. 20, 33 JE, Ex. xxiii. 29 E, Dent. vii. 22
D, it is
nowhere used in this sense in P, to which it is
conceded
that Lev. xvii. 13; xxv. 7; xxvi. 6, 22, do not
properly
belong; and in Num. xxxv. 3 P, where beasts
114 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
are
distinguished from cattle, it is nevertheless plain that
domesticated
animals are meant.
23. Nymi kind (vi.
20; vii. 14).
This word is only used when there is
occasion to refer
to various
species of living things, as in the account of
the creation
(Gen. i., ten times), and of the preservation
of animals m
the ark (vi. 20, four times; vii. 14, four
times), and
in the law respecting clean and unclean ani-
mals (Lev.
xi., nine times; Deut. xiv., four times).
It
occurs but
once besides m the entire Old Testament
(Ezek.
xlvii. 10), where reference is made to the various
species of
fish. As the creation, the flood (in
large part),
and the ritual
law are assigned to P, and there is no oc-
casion to
use the word elsewhere, it cannot be expected
in passages
attributed to J; not even in vii. 2, 3, 8,
where
attention is drawn to the distinction maintained
between
clean and unclean rather than the variety of
species
preserved, which is sufficiently insisted upon vi.
20 and vii.
14.
24. Mc,f, self-same
(vii. 13).
This is an emphatic form of speech, which
was but
sparingly
used, and limited to important epochs whose
exact time
is thus signalized. It marks two
momentous
days in the
history, that on which Noah entered into the
ark (Gen.
vii. 13), and that on which Moses the leader
and
legislator of Israel went up Mount Nebo to die
(Deut.
xxxii. 48). With these exceptions it
occurs mainly
in ritual
connections. It is used twice in
connection with
the original
institution of circumcision in the family of
Abraham
(Gen. xvii. 23, 26); three times in connection
with the
institution of the passover on the day that the
LORD brought
Israel out of Egypt (Ex. xii. 17, 41, 51);
and five
times in Lev. xxiii., the chapter ordaining the
sacred
festivals, to mark severally the day on which the
sheaf of the
first-fruits was presented m the passover
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 115
week (ver.
14), which is emphasized afresh on the ob-
servance of
the first passover in Canaan (Josh. v. 11);
also the day
on which the two wave loaves were brought
at the feast
of weeks (ver. 21); and with triple repeti-
tion the
great day of atonement (vs. 28-30).
Since ritual
passages are
regularly assigned to P, and the two em-
phatic
moments in the history calling for the use of this
expression
have likewise been given to him, it might not
seem
surprising if it had been absolutely limited to P.
And yet it
is found once in an admitted JE section
(Josh. x.
27), showing that it can have place in these sec-
tions as
well as others, if there is occasion for its em-
ployment.
25.
CrawA creep or swarm, and Cr,w,
creeping or swarming
things (vii. 21; viii. 17; ix. 7).
Cr,w, creeping things occurs among other species of ani-
mals at the
creation (i. 20), in the flood (vii. 21), and in
the ritual
law as a source of defilement (Lev. v. 2; xxii.
5), or
prohibited as food (Lev. xi., ten times; Deut. xiv.
19); and it
is found nowhere else in the Old Testament.
The verb Crw is used with its cognate noun at the
creation (i.
20, 21), and flood (vii. 21), and in the law of
unclean
meats (Lev. xi. 29, 41, 42, 43, 46); and in the
sense of
swarming or great fertility in the blessings pro-
nounced upon
animals and men after the flood (viii. 17;
ix. 7); the
immense multiplication of the children of Is-
rael in
Egypt (Ex. i.7); and the production of countless
frogs (Ex.
vii. 28, E. V. viii. 3, repeated Ps. cv. 30);
and it is
used but once besides in the entire Old Testa-
ment. In the creation, flood, and ritual law it is
given
to P as a
matter of course; but it occurs in J in Ex. vii.
28; and in
Ex. i. 7 it is only saved for P by cutting it
out of an E
connection.
26.
WmarA creep and Wm,r, creeping thing.
These words occur in the account of the
creation (i.
116 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
21, 24, 25,
26, 28, 30); and the flood (vi. 20; vii. 14, 21,
23; viii.
17, 19; cr. 2, 3) P; also vi. 7; vii. 8, 23, in a J
connection;
in the ritual law respecting clean and un-
clean beasts
(Lev. xi. 44, 46 P; xx. 25 J) (so Dillmann);
and in the
prohibition of making an image of anything
for worship
(Deut. iv. 18); and in but three passages be-
sides in the
Old Testament (Ps. 1m. 35; civ. 20; Ezek.
xxxviii.
20). Their signification limits their
occurrence
to a class
of passages that are mostly assigned to P,
though the
noun is likewise found in D, and both noun
and verb are
only excluded from J by critical legerde-
main.
27.
dxom; dxom; exceedingly
(vii. 19).
This duplicated intensive adverb is
referred to P also
(Ex. i. 7; N
um. xiv. 7), and with a preposition prefixed
(Gen. xvii.
2, 6, 20). But it is admitted to belong
to J
(Gen. xxx.
43).
28.
B; used
distributively (vii. 21; viii. 17; ix. 10, 15
seq.).
But it occurs in JE likewise (Ex. x. 15).
It appears from the above examination of
these words
and phrases
that they are for the most part found in the
other
so-called documents as well as in P; when they are
limited to P
or preponderate there, it is due not to the
writer's
peculiarity, but to the nature of the subject, and
in many
cases to critical artifice.
MARKS OF J
The following are alleged to be
indications of J :
1.
"Distinction of clean and unclean beasts (vii. 2, 8),
mention of
altar and sacrifice" (viii. 20, 21; comp. iv.
3, 4).
For the reason given under Ch. vi. 1-8,
Marks of J, No.
11, it was
as Jehovah chiefly that God was worshipped, that
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 117
prayer was
addressed to him, and offerings made to him.
Hence it is
almost exclusively in Jehovah sections that
mention is
made of altars and sacrifices; and the dis-
tinction of
clean and unclean beasts here made had rela-
tion to
sacrifice.
The notion of the critics that, according
to P, sacrifice
was first
introduced by Moses at Sinai, is utterly prepos-
terous and
altogether unwarranted. It is
preposterous
to suppose
that the pious patriarchs, who were honored
with special
divine communications and were in favor
with God,
engaged in no acts of worship. And it is
wholly
without warrant, for there is no suggestion of any
such idea in
the paragraphs assigned to P. This is
one
of those
perverse conclusions which are drawn from the
absolute
severance of what belongs together, and can
only be
properly understood in combination. The
prev-
alent
absence of allusion to sacrifice in passages where
God is spoken
of as Elohim simply arises from the cir-
cumstance
that Jehovah is the proper name to use in
such a
connection.
2.
"Prominence given to the inherent sinfulness of
men"
(viii. 21).
Jehovah's gracious revelation has for its
object the re-
coveryof men
from sin and their restoration to the di-
vine
favor. Now, since the disease and the
remedy go
together, it
is quite appropriate that human sin should
be chiefly
portrayed in Jehovah sections.
3. OTwxiv;
wyxi a man and
his wife, applied to
beasts, "a
male and his
female " (vii. 2), used instead of " male and
female." See above, Marks of P, No. 12.
As these terms are nowhere else applied to
the lower
animals in
J, it is not strange that they are not so ap-
plied in P
sections. But a fairly parallel case
occurs in
Ex. xxvi. 3,
5, 6, 17 P, where terms strictly denoting
human beings
receive a wider application, curtains and
118 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
tenons being
said to be coupled, "a woman. to her sis-
ter, i.e.,
one to another, as it is in Ex. XXXVI. 10, 12, 13,
22. Moreover, in Gen. viii. 19 hHpwm is used to denote
species in
animals, while Nym is
always used in this sense
elsewhere. Yet both are alike referred to P by the crit-
ics. With what consistency, then, can a difference
of
writers be
inferred from the fact that vtwxv wyx is
used
in one verse
(vii. 2) instead of hbqnv
rkz?
4. MymiyAl; in days or at the completion of days (vii. 4, 10).
This
expression occurs nowhere else in the Hexateuch
in this
sense; but the preposition is similarly used (xvii.
21 P; see
Dillmann on Gen. iii. 8, to which he refers
vii. 4 as a
parallel).
5. OBli-lx, at or unto his heart (vi. 6; viii. 21).
Nowhere else in the Hexateuch.
6. rUbfEBa because of (viii. 21).
This occurs only in narrative passages,
viz., 15 times in
Genesis, 7
times in the first twenty chapters of Exodus,
and nowhere
else in the Hexateuch. It is 3 times at-
tributed to
R (Ex. ix. 14, 16 bis); and with this excep-
tion the passages
in which it is found are divided be-
tween J and
E, to whom the great bulk of the narrative
in the
Hexateuch is ascribed.
7. yH-lKA every living thing (viii. 21; iii. 20), contrary
to vi. 19
P, yHaha-lKA all the living things.
These words do not occur together again in
the Hexa-
teuch,
whether with the article or without it.
The inser-
tion or
omission of the article in such a phrase is a very
slender
ground on which to base the assertion of a dif-
ference of
writers, especially as its insertion in vi. 19 ap-
pears to be
due to the qualifying, expression that follows,
"all
the living things of all flesh."
8. hcAp;nA was overspread (ix. 19).
Dillmann says that P writes drap;ni
(x. 5, 32); and then
he annuls
the force of his remark by adding, "not quite
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 119
in the same
sense." If the sense is not the same, why
should not
the word be different?
Dillmann further calls attention to the
fact that differ-
ent
expressions are used for the same thing in different
parts of the
narrative of the flood. Thus:
9. P, in vi. 16, speaks of rhaco a light; but
J (viii. 6) of
NOl.Ha a
window in the ark.
There is some obscurity in the description
of the for-
mer which
makes its precise construction doubtful
Dillmann
thinks that it was an opening a cubit wide, ex-
tending the
entire length of all the four sides of the ark
just beneath
the roof, for the admission of light and air,
and only
interrupted by the beams which supported the
roof. The window was a latticed opening, whose
shape
and
dimensions are not given. There is
nothing to for-
bid its
exact correspondence and identity with the open-
ing before
mentioned. And there is nothing strange
in
the use of
one term to describe it when considered sim-
ply as
intended for the admission of light, and another
term when
reference is made to the lattice which Noah
had occasion
to unfasten.
10. MUqy; living substance (vii. 4, 23).
This is. found but once besides in the
Old Testament
(Deut. xi.
6). In both the former passages it is
given to
J,
notwithstanding the mixed state of the text, as the
critics
regard it, in ver. 23. It there stands
in combina-
tion with
"man, cattle, creeping things, and fowl of the
heaven,"
and "who were with him," both which are ac-
counted
marks of P.
11. lqa lightened or abated (viii. 8, 11).
As this word is nowhere else used in a
like sense by J
it is not
strange that it does not occur in P. And
as two
different
words are employed (viii. 1, 3) to express a sim-
ilar
thought, both being referred by the critics to the
same writer,
why should the use of a third word bearing
120 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
an analogous
sense compel us to think of a different writer altogether?
12. hy.AHi (Piel) keep alive (vii. 3) J, while (vi. 19, 20) P
has hyAH,h< (Hiphil).
But this can be no indication of a
diversity of writers,
for both
forms occur repeatedly in passages assigned
to J
elsewhere; thus Piel, Gen. xii. 12; xix. 32, 34;
Hiphil, xix.
19; xlvii. 25. Both occur in the same
con-
nection
(Num. xxxi. 15, 18) and are referred to the same
writer. The Hiphil is but once again referred to P
(Josh. ix.
20), and the Piel, which occurs in the same
connection
(ver. 15), is only given to another by a crit-
ical
dissection of the verse. The Piel and
Hiphil of this
verb are
used indiscriminately as those of tHawA
are, which
are both
given to P; see above, Marks of P, No. 19.
13. lUBm.aha yme waters of the flood (vii. 7, 10; not so vi.
17).
The attempt to create a distinction
between the so-
called
documents in the mode of speaking of the flood is
not
successful. When the flood is first
mentioned the
unusual
word lUBma is defined by the added phrase
"waters
upon the earth" (vi. 17; vii. 6 P).
We then
read (vii.
7, 10 J) of "waters of the flood," and the same
in ix. 11
P. Then (vii. 17 J) of "the
flood" simply,
and so in
ix. 15, 28 P.
It thus appears that the so-called
characteristics of J
are no
characteristics at all. They are for the
most part
words or
phrases of rare occurrence, several of them be-
ing found
nowhere else, and they cannot therefore be ad-
duced as
belonging to the writer's ordinary style.
And
there is not
a single instance that is suggestive of a di-
versity of
documents.
The critical arguments for the severance
of this narra-
tive thus
collapse entirely upon examination. And
yet
this is
accounted one of the most plausible cases of crit-
THE FLOOD (CH. vI.1 9-IX. 17) 121
ical
partition. As it fails here, so it does
everywhere
throughout
the Pentateuch. The evidences of unity of
authorship
are everywhere too strong to be overcome
by the
devices which the critics employ for the purpose.
NUMERICAL CORRESPONDENCE.
The attempt has been made to discover
numerical
correspondences
in the duration of the flood, but with-
out any
marked success. The rains began on the
17th
day of the
2d month, and on the 27th day of the 2d
month in the
following year the earth was again dry
(viii.
14). If the reckoning was by lunar years
of 354
days, this
would amount precisely to a solar year of 365
days. But this was plainly not the case, since the
5
months to
the resting of the ark (viii. 4; comp. vii. 11)
amounted to
150 days (vii. 24). Five lunar months
would yield
but 147 days. Evidently the reckoning is
by months of
30 days. If the year consisted of twelve
such months,
the flood lasted 371 days; if 5 intercalary
days were
added, as in the ancient Egyptian year, the
flood lasted
376 days. As neither of these sums
corre-
spond with
any customary division of time, critics have
claimed that
the text has been remodelled by a later
hand, and a
conflicting computation inserted, according
to which the
flood lasted 300 days, rising to its height in
150 days
(vii. 24), and subsiding for an equal term. To
be sure the
period of subsidence is nowhere so reckoned,
but the
critics suppose that it must have been intended,
since 75
days, one-half of this term, elapsed between the
resting of
the ark on the 17th of the 7th month (viii. 4),
and the
appearance of the tops of the mountains on the
1st of the
10th month (ver. 5). But it was 4 months
and
26 days
after this before the earth was sufficiently dry
for Noah to
leave the ark. There is no conflict of
state-
122 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
ment,
therefore, and no need of remodelling the text.
The writer
was more concerned for the historical truth
of his
statement than for a numerical correspondence,
such as the
critics are so eager to discover, and which
the LXX.
sought to introduce by changing 17th to 27th
in vii. 11,
thus making the flood continue exactly a year.
THE ASSYRIAN FLOOD TABLETS.
The Babylonian account of the flood, as reported
by
Berosus, has
long been known to bear a striking similar-
ity to the
narrative in Genesis. This has been
recently
confirmed,
and our knowledge of the relation between
them
materially increased by the discovery of the cunei-
form flood
tablets belonging to the library of Assurbani-
pal, and
copied from a much older Babylonish original.
The
coincidences between the Babylonish and the He-
brew account
are so pervading and remarkable as clearly
to establish
a community of origin; while, on the other
hand, the
divergences are so numerous and so serious as
to make it
evident that neither has been directly copied
from the
other. The suggestion of Friedrich Delitzsch
and of
Haupt, that the story was first adopted by the
Jews at the
time of the Babylonish captivity, is very
justly
repelled by Schrader and Dillmann on two dis-
tinct
grounds. 1. "It is utterly
insupposable that the
Jews should
have appropriated from their foes, the Bab-
ylonians, a
local tradition altogether foreign to them-
selves
originally, and saturated by the most silly polythe-
ism." 2.
Its inseparable connection with portions of the
Pentateuch
which are demonstrably pre-exilic. The
manifest
allusions of the earlier prophets to passages in
the
Pentateuch, which all divisive critics agree to refer
to J, make
it impossible to assign that so-called document
to a later
period than the seventh or eighth century be-
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 123
fore
Christ. Beyond all question the story of
the flood
was known to
the Jews at that time, and formed a part
of their
sacred tradition. The fact that Noah is
not ex-
plicitly
mentioned in the subsequent Scriptures until Isa.
liv. 9
(which the critics pronounce exilic) and Ezek. xiv.
14, 20, as a
purely negative testimony is of no force
against the
positive proof above adduced. Dr.
Dillmann
shows the
futility of the argument from that source by
adducing the
parallel case of the nal'rative of the fall
(Gen. iii.
),1 which is nowhere else alluded to in the Old
Testament. Kuenen, Schrader and others maintain that
the account
of the flood was first brought from Assyria
or Babylonia
in the seventh or eighth century before
Christ. But, as Dillman urges, why should the Jews
have
accepted
this foreign story, so variant in many particulars
from their
own style of thought, and enshrined it in the
place which
it occupies in their sacred traditions and the
line of
their ancestry, if it was altogether unknown to
them
before? And why, he asks, should it be
imagined
that the
story of the flood never spread to surrounding
nations
until so late a period as this? And if
to other
nations, why
not to Israel? The readiness with which
high
antiquity is conceded to the productions and beliefs
of other
nations, often on the most slender grounds, while
the opposite
propensity is manifested in the case of Is-
rael, and
everything assigned to the latest possible period,
is, to say
the least, very singular and is not very credit-
able to
scholarly impartiality and fair dealing.
The well-attested fact of the migration
of Abraham,
or the
ancestors of Israel, from U r of the Chaldees,
gives a
point of connection which on any theory of the
relation of
these narratives satisfactorily explains both
their
agreement and their divergence. Whether
Abra-
ham derived
his knowledge of the flood from traditions
1The critics themselves refer J
to the eighth century B.C.
124 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
current in
the region of Ur, which were purged of their
polytheistic
taint by his own purer faith and that of his
descendents,
or whether, as I believe, a truer account
free from
mythological conceit was transmitted to him in
the line of
a pious ancestry, we need not now inquire.
But on
either view of the case an obvious solution of the
whole
matter, and one against which no serious objec-
tion can be
urged, is that Abraham brought with him to
Canaan
substantially that conception of primeval history
which
subsequently formed part of the faith of his de-
scendants. There is not the slightest reason for the as-
sumption
that this was a post-Mosaic addition to Israel's
creed.
The only further question with which we
are at pres-
ent
concerned, is as to the bearing of the flood tablets
upon
critical partition. The patent fact is
that they
stand in
equal relation to the entire Hebrew narrative as
an undivided
whole, with no suggestion of any such
line of
partition as the critics undertake to draw in it,
but both
having a like affinity for, and exhibiting a like
divergence
from, all that lies on either side of the line, or
what the
critics severally denominate J and P.
The Chaldean account agrees, in the first
place, with
what is
affirmed in P and J paragraphs alike, that there
was a great
flood, divinely sent, which destroyed all men
and animals
except those saved in a single vessel with
one man, to
whom the coming of the catastrophe had
been
disclosed, and who had gathered into this vessel
different
species of tame and wild beasts, and the mem-
bers of his
own family. The Chaldean account adds
his
relatives,
and male and female servants, together with his
valuables
and a pilot. Assurance is given in both
ac-
counts that
mankind should not be again destroyed by a
flood; the
Chaldean adds that other forms of judgment
might take
its place, as wild beasts, famine, and pesti-
THE FLOOD (CH. VI. 9-IX. 17) 125
lence. There is an intimation near the close of the
Chal-
dean account
that the flood was sent because men had
offended
Bel, one of the gods; but no prominence is
given, as in
the Hebrew, to the thought that it was a
righteous
retribution. It is ascribed rather to
the hasty
temper of
Bel, which was censured by the other gods.
And the
deliverance was not due to the righteousness of
any that
were saved. Bel was indignant that any
escaped
the
destruction which he had intended for the entire race,
and was only
calmed by the remonstrance of other
deities.
There are special points of agreement
between the
Chaldean
account and the paragraphs assigned to P,
viz., that
the patriarch was divinely directed to build the
vessel, and
that of prescribed dimensions, length, breadth,
and height
(though the measures are not the same), to
pitch it
within and without with bitumen, and to stock
it with
provisions; that he entered it on the very day
that the
flood came, or the day before; that the great
deep as well
as the heavens supplied the waters of the
flood; that
the ark rested on a mountain, though the lo-
cality is
not the same.1
There are also special points of agreement
between the
Chaldean
account and. the paragraphs assigned to J, viz.,
the mention
of a covering to the ark, of the shutting of
the door (by
Jehovah in the Hebrew, by the patriarch
himself in
the Chaldean); of the duration of the storm
(though the
time stated is different, in the Hebrew forty
days and
forty nights, in the Cha1dean six days and six or
perhaps
seven nights); of the opening of a window (in
the Hebrew
after, in the Chaldean before, the resting of
the ark); of
the sending forth of birds to ascertain
1 Dr. Haupt at one time understood the
tablets to state in addition that
a celestial
bow was displayed after the occupants of the ark had landed.
But he has
since abandoned this translation as incorrect.
126 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
whether the
flood had ceased (in the Chaldean seven
days, in the
Hebrew forty days after the resting of the
ark; in the
Chaldean a dove, a swallow, and a raven, each
immediately
upon the return of its predecessor, the last
not
returning at all; in the Hebrew a raven, which did not
return, then
a dove, thrice at intervals of seven days, first
returning as
it went, the second time with a fresh olive
leaf, the
third time not returning); and after disembark-
ing, of the
erection of an altar and offering sacrifice,
whose sweet
savor was agreeable to the divinity (in the
Chaldean the
gods gathered like flies about the sweet
odor). The Chaldean makes no mention of the distinc-
tion of
clean and Unclean beasts recognized in the He-
brew.
The Chaldean account departs entirely
from the He-
brew in
representing the patriarch as apprehending the
ridicule of
the people if he should build the ship (ac-
cording to a
probable understanding of it), and pleading
that such a
ship had never before been constructed, and
in
portraying his distress at beholding the scene of deso-
lation; also
in representing the gods as terrified by the
flood and in
the whole polytheistic setting of the story,
and in the
translation of the patriarch and his wife to
dwell among
the gods.
This common relation of the Chaldean
account to the
Hebrew
narrative as a whole testifies strongly to its
unity, and
to the arbitrary character of the partition
made by the
critics.
See the translations of the flood tablets
by George
Smith, the
discoverer of them, in his "Assyrian Discov-
eries,"
1875; "Chaldean Account of Genesis," 1876;
"Records
of the Past," vol. vii.; also by Dr. Paul Haupt
in
Schrader's "Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament,"
and by Dr.
John D. Davis in the Presbyterian Review
for July,
1889, and in his Genesis and Semitic Tradition.
NOAH AFTER THE FLOOD (CH. IX. 18-29) 127
NOAH AFTER THE FLOOD (CH. IX. 18-29).
The critics assign the concluding verses
of this para-
graph (vs.
28, 29) to P. They evidently refer back
to
the
statement of Noah's age at the time of the flood (vii.
6), and
complete the record of Noah's life begun in v. 32
in the exact
terms of the preceding genealogy. They
are
thus linked
at once with the narrative of the flood and
with ch. v.,
and must be by the same author. We have,
however,
seen no evidence in these sections of a narrator
P as
distinguished from J, and none is suggested in the
verses
before us. It is at any rate a
remarkable circum-
stance, if
Genesis is compiled from different documents,
all of which
must have mentioned the death of each of
the
patriarchs whose lives they recorded, that the fact of
their death
is invariably taken from P, and never from J,
even when,
as in the present instance, a J section imme-
diately
precedes.
The opening verses of the paragraph
(vs.18, 19) are as-
signed to J,
who had previously spoken of the sons of
Noah (vii.
7) as entering with him into the ark, but had
not
mentioned their names, while these have been be-
fore stated
by P (v. 32; vi. 10; vii. 13, and again in x.l).
But if the
same writer could repeat their names four
times, there
is no very evident reason why he might not
do so once
more, or why the fifth repetition must neces-
sarily imply
a different writer. The critics tell us
that
vs. 18, 19
were in J introductory to the table of nations
as given in
that document, and were immediately fol-
lowed by it,
though, as they divide ch. x., J only records
the
descendants of two sons of Noah, Ham and Shem,
but none of
Japheth; and ver. 18b "Ham is the father
of
Canaan," plainly shows them to be preparatory to
the
narrative in vs. 20-27, a conclusion which can
128 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
only be
escaped by rejecting this clause as an interpola-
tion.
Verse 20 is understood to trace the origin
of the art of
agriculture,
and especially the culture of the vine, to
Noah. It is hence conjectured that vs. 20-27 is a
frag-
ment from an
ancient document, to which iv. 17-24 con-
taining a
record of the origin of other arts is likewise re-
ferred, and
from which J is supposed to have again
drawn. While in the preceding narrative Noah's sons
are spoken
of as married, it is alleged that here they are
represented
as children and occupying the same tent with
himself. But this is pure invention; there is no such
declaration
or implication in anything that is said.
Ham
is here
called Noah's youngest son (ver. 24); this is held
to imply in
J a different conception of their relative ages
from that of
P, who always names them in the order
Shem, Ham,
and Japheth. But they stand in the same
order in ix.
18, which is attributed to J. If it be
said
that R has
in this instance changed J's order to make it
conform to
that of P, the question arises why he did not
likewise
correct ver. 24 for the same reason. The
fact is
that the
order of their names is not determined by their
respective
ages but by an entirely different reason.
Shem as the
ancestor of the chosen race is placed first,
as Abram is
for the like cause in xi. 26. Ham, as
the an-
cestor of
nations standing in a nearer relation to the He-
brews than
the descendants of Japheth, comes next,
and Japheth
last. In ch. x. the order is precisely
re-
versed. The table of nations begins with those sprung
from Japheth
as the most remote; Ham follows, then
Shem, the
series thus drawing gradually nearer to the
chosen race,
whose direct genealogy is reserved for xi.
10 sqq.
In ix. 20-27 an ancient prophecy from
the mouth of
Noah, in
which the names of Shem, Japheth, and Canaan
NOAH AFTER THE FLOOD (CH. IX. 18-29) 129
appear, is
recorded together with the circumstances
under which
it was delivered.
Cursed be Canaan;
A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
Blessed be Jehovah the God of Shem .
And let Canaan be his servant.
God enlarge Japheth,
And let him dwell in the tents of Shem;
And let Canaan be his servant.
The critics
think the circumstances improbable; there-
fore they
pronounce them untrue. Noah, they say,
is
here, ver.
20, a "husbandman, a role quite distinct from
that of a
navigator," which he sustains elsewhere; the
remark seems
to imply that he should have been culti-
vating the
soil during the flood, or should continue to
sail about
in the ark after the flood was over. The crit-
ics can see
no reason "Thy sentence should have been
pronounced
upon Canaan for the shameful deed of his
father;
therefore they conclude that there was no reason,
and that it
was not done. As though it were not the
keenest of
inflictions upon a father to be punished in his
child; and
as though the law of heredity, the propaga-
tion of
character, and the perpetuation of the evil conse-
quences of
transgression generation after generation, were
not among
the most patent and familiar facts, of which
the
beastliness of the Canaanites and their merited doom
afford a
signal illustration. And now if they may
change
the text of
the narrative on the pretext of conforming it
to the
prophecy, and so make Shem, Japheth, and Canaan
the three
sons of Noah, they can bring it into conflict
with every
other statement on the subject in the history;
whence they
infer that this has been extracted from a
document J',
at variance with both J and P. Or if
they
may reverse
the process and insert Ham instead of
Canaan in
the prophecy, they can show that it was not
130 THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH
fulfilled. Or if they may put a belittling
interpretation
upon the prophecy,
and restrict it to tribes inhabiting
Palestine,
Shem denoting Israel and Japheth the Philis-
tines in
contrast with the Canaanites, as is done by Well-
hausen, they
can show how the meaning can be perverted
by giving
arbitrary senses to words at variance with their
well-known
and invariable signification. By this
time
they have
shown that something is absurd. They
think
that it is
this venerable prophecy, whose profound and
far-reaching
meaning, whose appropriateness in a book
intended for
Israel about to enter on the conquest of
Canaan, and
whose exact fulfilment have been univer-
sally
recognized. Most persons will think that
the ab-
surdity is
in the critical treatment of the passage.
Delitzsch says, in his
"Commentary" upon Gen. ix.
18b,
"And Ham is the father of Canaan:"
"This clause
is now
mostly regarded as an addition by the redactor,
since the
conclusion is drawn from the curse upon
Canaan that
in the original form of the narrative it was
Canaan who
sinned against Noah (Dillmann and others).
Some go
farther and maintain that in its original shape the
three sons
of Noah were not Shem, Ham, and Japheth,
but Shem,
Japheth, and Canaan (Wellhausen). From
this Budde,
by means of critical operations, which tran-
scend our
horizon, obtains the result that the following
narrative
originally stood after xi. 9, and began,
'There
went forth
also from Babel Noah, the son of Jabal, he
and his wife
and his three sons, Shem; Japheth, and
Canaan, and
he came to Aram-naharaim and abode there.'
So, as he
supposes, wrote J', who, as Wellhausen and
Kuenen also
assume, knew nothing of a deluge. We
here see a
specimen of what emulation in the art of sev-
ering can
accomplish."
IV
THE GENERATIONS OF THE SONS OF NOAH (CH.
X. 1-
XI. 9)
ORIGIN OF NATIONS (CH. X.)
THE generations of the sons of Noah (ch.
x. 1-xi. 9)
record the
dispersion of mankind over the earth; and
the
generations of Shem (xi. 10-26) trace the line of de-
scent to
Abram. This completes the preliminary
por-
tion of the
history of Genesis, inasmuch as it fills up the
interval
between the flood and the birth of Abram, with
whom the
history of the chosen race properly begins.
These
sections are intimately related to one another, as
well as
closely connected both with what precedes and
what
follows. The genealogical table in ch.
x. exhibits
the
filiation and relationship of the several nations of
antiquity,
and is intimately united with the antecedent
history of
Noah's family. Ch. x. 1 contains an
explicit
reference to
the flood, the narrative of which had just
been
concluded, and proposes to state the descendants
of the three
sons of Noah, that were born to them after
the flood.
The way for it had been prepared by God's
blessing
Noah and his sons (ix. 1, 7), and bidding them
multiply and
replenish the earth; as well as by the
statement
(ix. 19) that of the three sons of Noah was the
whole earth
overspread. Thus introduced, a detailed
account is
given of the particular nations sprung from
them, which
did thus overspread the earth (x. 32).
Then
follows (xi.
1-9) a narrative of the occurrences at Babel,
132 THE
GENERATIONS OF THE SONS 0F NOAH
which led to
their being scattered over the earth, of
which
intimations had already been given (x. 10, 25).
This table of the nations of mankind has
its appro-
priate place
in the sacred history. It is inserted
just
here for a
double reason: 1. To make a distinct
declara-
tion at the
outset of their kinship to the chosen race,
with which the
history is henceforth more particularly to
occupy
itself. All are sprung from the same
ancestry,
and all are
ultimately to share in the blessing to come
upon all the
families of mankind through the seed of
Abraham
(xii. 3). This conception of the universal
brotherhood
of man is peculiar to the Hebrew Script-
ures, and is
as remote as possible from that which was
generally
entertained by ancient nations, who looked
upon
foreigners as barbarians and enemies. 2.
They
are thus in
accordance with the uniform plan of the
book
formally dismissed from the sacred history, which
proceeds at
once in accordance with the intimation given
(ix. 26, 27)
to devote itself to the consideration of the
chosen seed
by tracing the descent of Abram from Shem;
precisely as
(iv. 17 sqq.) the descendants of Cain were
recorded
before leaving them to trace the line of descent
through Seth
(ch. v.), and as in the various instances
that follow
the divergent lines are first indicated before
proceeding
with the direct and principal line.
The speciality with which the Canaanitish
tribes are
noted and
their residences specified (x. 15--19) is also ob-
servable,
since this is intimately linked with the general
purpose of
the books of Moses, and with the occasion
upon which
they were written.
Noldeke, in common, as he says, with the
majority of
critics,
assigns ch. x. to P, with the exception of a few in-
sertions by
R, viz., vs. 8-11, relating to Nimrod and
Asshur, ver.
21, and some words in vs. 19 and 25.
Kay-
ser gives
the entire chapter to J, as is done likewise by
ORIGIN OF NATIONS I (CH. X.) 133
Tuch,
Hupfeld, and others, in imitation of Astruc and
Eichhorn;
and claims that vs. 8-1 1and 21 are properly
connected as
they stand. Movers1 divides
the chapter,
giving vs.
8-19, 21, 24-30, to J, and the rest to P; in
this he is
followed by Wellhausen (who gives ver. 24 and
a clause in
ver. 14 to R), Dillmann (who gives R, in ad-
dition, ver.
9, and some words in ver. 19), and most re-
cent
critics.2
This partition is altogether
arbitrary. It is princi-
pally based
upon a variation in the form of expression
in different
verses of the chapter. Those verses in
which
the line of
descent is traced by the phrase" the sons
of,"
are assigned to P; the remaining verses, which use
the word dlAyA
begat or l; dl.ayu were
born to, are attributed to
J. But--
1. The genealogies assigned by the critics
to P are not
uniform in
this particular; thus while the P sections of this
chapter have
"the sons of," ch. v. and xi. 10-26 have
dylvh begat; nor do the different parts of the same
genealogy
invariably preserve the same uniform style
(Gen. xlvi.,
see ver. 20; Ex. vi. 14 sqq., see vs. 20, 23, 25).
There is no
propriety, therefore, in making the lack of
absolute
uniformity here the pretext for critical division.
2.
The same diversity of expressions as in ch. x. re-
curs in
other genealogies, which no critic thinks of par-
celling
between distinct sources on that account.
Thus
xxv. 1-4 is
attributed to J, although ver. 3a has dlayA
begat, and vs. 3b, 4, "the sons
of." In xlvi. 8-27 "the
sons
of" and l; dl.ayu were born to,
occur not only in the
same
indivisible genealogy, but in the same verses (vs.
22,
27). And were born to l; dl,UAy.iva 3 occurs in a P verse
1 Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und
Katholische Theologie, Heft 18,
1836, p.
102.
2 Schrader divides it between J and E.
3 The Niphal future of this verb
corresponds to the Pual preterite.
Comp. iv.
18, 26; xlvi. 20, 27; 2 Sam. iii. 2, 5.
134 THE GENERATIONS 0F THE SONS OF NOAH
in the
genealogy before us (x. 1). The attempt
has been
made to
evade this by dividing the verse and assigning
ver. 1a to
P, and ver. 1b to J. But Dillmann says
of
this
arbitrary sundering of the sentence:
"No reason
can be seen
why ver. 1b should be not from P, but a
continuation
of ix. 18a J."
3.
The proposed partition of this chapter is impracti-
cable for a
double reason. (1) The incompleteness of
the portion
ascribed to J, and (2) the mutual depend-
ence of what
is respectively given to J and to P. The
critics are
compelled to give J a share in this chapter,
both in
order to justify the intimation given in that doc-
ument (ix.
18, 19), "of the three sons of Noah was the
whole earth
overspre_ad," and to find something by which
to bridge
the chasm from Noah to Abram, who when first
introduced
in J (xi. 29), is spoken of as though he were
already
known. And yet the portion attributed to J
fails to
meet the requirements of the case, since it does
not fulfil
the expectations legitimately created in either
of these
respects. As a statement of the descendants of
Noah, it
begins abruptly, and is fragmentary in its charac-
ter. Kautzsch imagines that ix. 18, 19 has been trans-
posed by the
redactor, and that it originally stood at the
head of the
genealogical table in J, and was connected
with x.
1b. This groundless conjecture is an
attempt to
supply an
appropriate beginning to J which is mani-
festly
lacking. Moreover, it contains no
mention of the
descendants
of Japheth, which must have been included
in any
conspectus of those who were sprung from the
sons of
Noah; see also x. 21 J. And further,
there is no
introductory
statement connecting the descendants of
Ham, vs. 8
sqq., with Ham himself. These gaps are
all
created by
the partition, and result from sundering what
belongs
together. What is thus obviously missing
in J
lies before
us in what the critics have arbitrarily sepa-
ORIGIN OF NATIONS (CH. X.) 135
rated from
it and given to P. And what has been
given
to J is
needed to make up the deficiencies thus created in
P. P tells us of Mizraim and Canaan, sons of
Ham,
but we must
look to J for the names of their descend-
ants. Evidently these belong together.
It is claimed that what is missing from
J's account
may have
been contained in that document originally
and omitted
by R, because already stated with sufficient
fulness in
the extracts taken from P. It is easy to
spec-
ulate on what
might have been. But the fact is that
the gaps in
J are adequately supplied in the text as it
stands at
present. The assumption that another
parallel
account of
the very same things ever existed as a part of
the document
J is based on the prior assumption of the
separate
existence of that document as a complete and
independent
production. An inference from a hypothe-
sis lends no
support to that hypothesis, but depends
upon it, and
is only valid after the hypothesis has first
been
established.
On the ground of the correspondence
between ver. 25
and xi. 16,
Wellhausen claims that the former bears wit-
ness to the
existence of a genealogy in J parallel to xi.
10-26, which
traces the descent of Abram from Shem.
This is
coupled with the assertion that x. 24 is an inser-
tion by R
with the view of harmonizing J's account with
that of P
(xi. 10-14); and that the line from Shem to
Abram in J,
embraced but seven names (Arpachshad,
Shelah, and
Probably Nahor,l the father of Terah, being
omitted) as
against ten in P (comp. the six names from
Adam to
Lamech in iv. 17, 18 J, and the nine in ch. v.
P, with one
to be added to each series for Noah, as Well-
hausen
conjectures). But this is baseless
speculation in
all its
parts. For x. 24 is indispensable in its
place, and
cannot have
been interpolated by R. In x. 21, Shem
is
1So
Wellhausen, Prolegomena, p. 330.
136 THE GENERATIONS OF THE SONS OF NOAH
called
"the father of all the children of Eber," i.e., the
Hebrews as
well as other tribes and nations sprung from
the same
stock, vs. 26-29. But the links of
descent from
Shem to Eber
are first given in ver. 24. Budde1
proposes
to remove
this difficulty by altering the text of x. 21 to
"Shem
the father of Eber," as the only expedient by which
it can be
made "a serviceable link in a J genealogy." The
need of so
violent a remedy exposes the falsity of the as-
sumption
which requires it. Ver. 24 is a
necessary con-
stituent of
the text, and cannot have been a later addition
to it. And then the dependence of vs. 24, 25 upon
ver. 22,
and their
substantial identity with xi. 10-16, forbid the
notion of
their being independent genealogies extracted
from
distinct sources. The abbreviated form
of the for-
mer, and the
use of dly instead
of dylvh begat, are not sug-
gestive of
diversity of authorship, but ordinary charac-
teristics of
the side lines in distinction from the direct
genealogy of
the chosen race. Moreover, x. 25 is not
a
relic of
what was originally a complete genealogy from
Shem to
Abram, the remainder having been omitted by
R as a
needless parallel to that in ch. xi. It
belongs in
the line of
descent of the tribes named in vs. 26-29,
which
diverged from that of the chosen race with the
birth of
Peleg, so named because "in his days was the
earth
divided." Mention is here made of
Peleg with al-
lusion to
the narrative of the dispersion of the nations,
which is to
follow in the next chapter, and as a link of
connection
binding the two chapters together. .
Nor can ver. 21 be sundered from ver. 22
and assigned
to a
distinct document. The absence of the
conjunction
v; and, from the beginning of ver. 22 shows that
it stands
in the same
relation to ver. 21 as ver. 2 to ver. 1; while
the v; and, of ver. 21 links the paragraph containing the
descendants
of Shem to the preceding, as in ver. 6 the
1
Urgeschichte, p; 221, note.
ORIGIN OF NATIONSI (CH. X.) 137
descendants
of Ham. Driver appeals to xvh
Mg to him
also, as iv. 22, 26; xix. 38;. xxii. 20, 24,
and the father of,
as
characteristics of J. But the father
of occurs also in
a P
genealogy (xxxvi. 9, 43 P, as IV. 20, 21; xix. 37, 38
xxii. 21 J);
and though there does not chance to have
been any
occasion for connecting Mg with
xvh in a P sec-
tion, it
occurs with other pronouns, e.g., Ex. vii. 11;
Lev. xxvi.
24; Num. xviii. 28.
Nor is there any good reason for regarding
vs. 8-12 as
a later
addition to this chapter,1 or as unsuited because
of its
individual character to a place in this table of na-
tions. If this were so, it would be a bar to the
proposed
critical
partition, for it would be as foreign to that por-
tion of the
chapter which is imputed to J, as to that of
P. It is introduced in order to connect the
Babel to be
spoken of in
the next chapter with a descendant of Cush;
but there is
no need on this account of assuming with
Dillmann
that it should properly follow xi. 1-9.
It is
agreeable to
the usage of the author of the Pentateuch
to insert in
genealogical tables allusions to persons or
events of
note, especially those that have been mentioned
previously
or are to figure afterwards, e.g., v. 29; x. 25;
xxii. 23;
xxxvi. 6-8, 24; xlvi. 12; Ex. vi. 20, 23, 25;
Num. xxvi.
9-11, 33.
It is further urged in proof of the
blending of separate
sources that
diverse origins are attributed to the same
people; thus
Havilah and Sheba according to ver. 7 (P)
are
descended from Cush the son of Ham, but according
to vs. 28,
29 (J) from Joktan in the line of Shem; ac-
cording to
ver. 22 (P) Lud sprang from Shem, but ac-
cording to
ver. 13. (J) from Mizraim the son of
Ham;
1 Dillmann urges that Nimrod is
not named in ver. 7 among the sons
of Cush; but
they are nations, while he is an individual, and is a son
not in the
sense of an immediate descendant, but as Jesus was a son of
David, and
David a son of Abraham (Matt. i. 1).
138 THE GENERATIONS OF THE SONS OF NOAH
Aram is said
to be descended from Shem, and U z from
Aram, vs.
22, 23 (P), but, xxii. 21 (J) Uz and
Aram are
traced to
Nahor, the brother of Abraham, and, xxxvi. 28
(R), Uz is
included among the descendants of Seir; Dedan,
ver. 7, is
included among the descendants of Cush the
son of Ham,
but, xxv. 3, among those of Abraham by
Keturah. It is claimed that these variant representa-
tions must
have proceeded from different writers.
This is,
however, by
no means a necessary inference. For--
(1) The critics themselves do not adhere
to this rule;
Sheba (x.
28) was descended from Joktan, but (xxv. 3)
from Abraham
by Keturah, yet the critics refer both these
passages to
J.
(2) The apparent difficulty admits of a
ready solution
in one or
other of two ways. The same Dame may
have
been borne
by distinct peoples. Thus Asshur (x. 22)
was
descended
from Shem; and yet Asshurim are mentioned
(xxv. 3)
among those that sprang from Abraham by
Keturah. Here it is obviously incredible that the
author
could have
meant to identify this obscure tribe with the
great
Assyrian nation, and to represent the latter as de-
scended from
Abraham. Dillmann acknowledges that
the Ludim
(x. 13), who are not only here but by the
prophets
(Jer. xlvi. 9; Ezek. xxvii. 10; xxx. 5) associ-
ated with
the Egyptians and other African peoples, are
quite
distinct from Lud (x. 22), the Lydians of Asia
Minor. These are not to be confounded any more than
the Trojans
of ancient times with their modern hame-
sakes in the
State of New York, or the Indians of Amer-
ica with
those of southeastern Asia. .
(3) Or tribes may be of mixed origin, and
so are
properly
traceable to different lines of descent.
Thus
Dillmann1
says of Sheba: "It is a matter of
course that
a people
with such an extended trade had stations and
1 Genesis, 5th edition, p. 182.
ORIGIN OF NATIONS (CH. X.) 139
connections
everywhere, on the sea and on caravan
routes, and
came to be mingled with their associates, so
that they
could be variously connected genealogically."
And
Delitzsch, commenting on x. 7, says to the same
purport of
Sheba and Dedan: "Arab tribes of Semitic
origin are
so called in ver. 28; xxv. 3; but there is no
reason for
denying an older Cushite stock in each of
these Arab
trading peoples." In like manner,
in expla-
nation of
the double origin of Havilah, he says:
"It is
an
acknowledged fact that migrations of Cushites and
Arabs took
place to and fro across the Arabian Gulf."
The mention of the same name in different
lines of de-
scent
accordingly involves no discrepancy in the cases
named, and
no diversity of writers. If different
tribes
bearing the
same name are of diverse origin, or if the
same tribe
is partly of one race and partly of another,
one writer
surely could tell the tale as well as two.
This table of the generations of the sons
of Noah con-
tains just
70 names, not reckoning Nimrod (ver. 8),
which is the
name of a person, viz.: 14 descendants of Ja-
pheth + 30
of Ham + 26 of Shem == 70. This was also
the number
of Jacob's family when they went down into
Egypt (Gen.
xlvi. 27; Ex. i. 5; Deut. x. 22), a number
perpetuated
in the permanent constitution of Israel with
its 57
families 1 + 13 tribes, as well as in the representa-
tive body of
seventy elders (Ex. xxiv. 1, 9; Num. xi. 16,
24,
25). The families of Israel are thus set
in numerical
relation to
the families of mankind, which are to be
blessed
through their instrumentality (Gen. xii 3). This
correspondence
seems to be intimated. in Deut. xxxii. 8:
"When
the Most High gave to the nations their inheri-
tance, when
he separated the children of men, he set the
bounds of
the peoples according to the number of the
children of
Israel." It is frequently remarked
upon by
1 Num. xxvi., not reckoning the Levitical families.
140 THE GENERATIONS OF THE SONS OF NOAH
the rabbins,
as in the following passage from the book of
Zohar:1 "Seventy souls went down with Jacob into
Egypt, that
they might restore the seventy families dis-
persed by
the confusion of tongues." It is
scarcely sup-
posable that
the seventy names in Gen. x. can be for-
tuitous.2 And if it was intentional, the unity of the
chapter is a
necessary conclusion; for it is only in the
chapter as a
whole, not in its severed portions, that
the number
70 appears. This further excludes the
ar-
bitrary
conjectures, which have nothing whatever to
recommend
them, that the clause, "whence went forth
the
Philistines" (ver. 14), and the names of the Canaan-
itish tribes
(vs. 16-18a, so Wellhausen, Kautzsch), are
later
additions to the text.
The high antiquity of this table is
attested by the fact
that several
names familiar in later times find no place
in it. Thus, while Sidon is mentioned (vs. 15, 19),
there
is no
allusion to Tyre, which by the time of David had
already
outstripped it; nor do such names occur as
Arabians
(Isa. xxi. 13), or Minni (Jer. Ii. 27), or Persians.
The tribes
of Moab, Ammon, Ishmael, Edom, Amalek, as
well as
those sprung from Keturah and from Nahor, are
1 Quoted by Lightfoot, Heb. Exercit. on
Luke iii. 36.
2 Furst (Geschichte der biblischen
Literatur, i., p. 7) and Noldeke
(Untersuchungen
zur Kritik des Alten Testaments, p. 17) call attention
to the fact
that the descendants of Terah's three sons--Abraham, Nahor,
and
Haran-likewise amount to 70. From
Abraham the 12 tribes of
Israel; 16
of Edom (Gen. xxxvi.), viz., 5 sons (vs. 4, 5) + 11 grandsons
(vs. 15-17);
12 of Ishmael (Gen. xvii. 20; xxv. 13-16); 16 of Keturah
(Gen. xxv.
1-4) ; from Nahor, 12 (Gen. xxii. 20-24); from Haran, the
2 sons of
Lot (Gen. xix 36-38). Total, 12 + 16 + 12 + 16 + 12 + 2 =
70. Such a repetition of this number, which, even
where it is not ob-
vious upon
the surface, yet underlies the entire scheme of the geneal-
ogies of
this book, adds its evidence to the significance attached to it
by the
writer; and it supplies a fresh link to bind together in unity its
component
parts, and to show that they have all proceeded from the
same hand,
and that they cannot be distributed between P, J, and R,
as is done
by the critics.
ORIGIN OF NATIONS (CH. X.) 141
not included
in this table, because their descent is to be
stated
subsequently. The genealogies of Genesis
thus
complete one
another, and thereby evidence themselves
to
constitute together one general scheme, and to be
from the
same hand and not referable to distinct sources,
as the
critics affirm. Aboriginal races, like
the Emim,
Anakim,
Rephaim, Horim, Zamzummim, and Avim
(Deut. ii.),
which had almost or quite disappeared in the
time of
Moses, are of course omitted.
The strange conceit of Wellhausen, and
adopted from
him by
Budde, Stade, and E. Meyer, that the three sons
of Noah
primarily, denoted three different populations
which
tenanted Palestine-Israel, the Canaanites, and the
Philistines--and
only at a later time came to be regarded
as the
progenitors of all mankind, is very justly and em-
phatically
set aside by Dillmann as "so utterly devoid
of any
foundation in fact that it is not worth while to
enter upon
it."
MARKS OF P.
The
linguistic marks of P in ch. x., according to Dill-
mann are:
1. The title "these are the
generations;" but this is not
restricted
to P sections.
2. "The concluding formula, vs. 5,
20, 31, 32;" but the
J genealogy
(xxv. 4) has one likewise.
3. "Its verbosity," which simply
emphasizes four par-
ticulars in
order to indicate that this is a genealogy
not of
individual men, but of nations, with their families
or tribal
divisions, speaking various tongues and occupy-
ing
different countries, and there are numerous passages
attributed
to J in which particulars are similarly enu-
merated in
detail, e.g., vii. 7, 23 ; xv. 19-21, where this ad-
mission is
only escaped by assuming interpolations by
142 THE GENERATIONS OF THE SONS OF NOAH
R., xii. 16;
xxvi. 13, 14; xxx. 32-35, 39, 43; xxxii. 6, 8
(A. V. vs.
5, 7).
4. "Mtvhpwml after their families," this word occurs
eighty times
in the Hexateuch, and in a slightly altered
orthography Mhytvhpwml, twice more; and it is in every
instance
referred to P. This sounds like a very
sig-
nificant
statement; but as soon as the facts in the case
are examined
it appears that it has no bearing what-
ever upon
the question of a diversity of documents.
With one
single exception it is exclusively found in
connection
with the genealogies of nations or tribes
(Gen. x. 5,
20, 31; xxxvi. 40; Ex. vi. 17,25), or the cen-
sus of the
tribes of Israel (Num. i., iii., iv., xxvi.), or the
distribution
of the promised land among the several
tribes
(Josh. xiii., xv.-xix., xxi.). And the
great body of all
such
material is given to P. Its occurrence,
therefore,
is directly
traceable to the subject-matter, not to the pe-
culiarity of
a particular writer. The one exception
is
Gen. viii.
18, where the various species of animals that
came forth
from the ark are figuratively denominated
"families." The same form of the word, with the same
preposition,
in an identical meaning, occurs likewise in J,
only with a
different suffix; Mkythpwml Ex. xii.
21;
vythpwml Num.
xi. 10; or with the article instead,
tvHpwml Josh.
vii. 14. Apart from genealogies, the
census and
the apportionment of the land, or laws relat-
ing to it,
as Num. xxvii. 1-11 ; xxxvi., and Lev. xxv. (the
return to
family possessions in the jubilee), the word
hHpwm is
exclusively found in J, Gen. xii. 3; xxviii. 14;
xxiv. 38,
40, 41; Lev. xx. 5 (J according to Dillrnann);
Josh. vi.
23; vii~ 14, 17.
5.
"The prep. b in
vs. 5, 20, 32," which is certainly
a very
slender string to hang an argument for diversity
of
authorship upon. See ch. vi.-ix. Marks
of P, No.
28.
TOWER OF BABEL (CH. XI. 1-9) 143
MARKS OF J.
The marks of J, besides those already
explained, are:
1. "vcpn (ver. 18 as ix. 19) instead of vdrpn P (x. 5,
32);"
but, as Dillmann on ix. 19 admits, the words are
not used in
precisely the same sense. The former
means
to be
dispersed or spread abroad; the latter to be divided,
suggesting
the idea of distinctness or separation.
More-
over, the
word, which is here represented to belong to P,
in
distinction from J, elsewhere is found almost exclu-
sively in J,
viz.: Gen. ii. 10; xiii. 9, 14; xxv. 23; xxx.
40; Deut.
xxxii. 8; and but once in P (Gen. xiii. 11),
where it is
cut out of a J connection by a critical ma-
noeuvre.
2. "hkxb as thou comest (used as an adverb)" (vs. 19
bis, 30);
this occurs but twice elsewhere (xiii. 10 J, and
xxv. 18,
which the critics regard as a gloss).
Such cri-
teria are of
no account.
TOWER
OF BABEL (CH. XI. 1-9).
It is alleged that xi. 1-9 cannot be from
the same
author as
ch. x., because they represent quite different
conceptions
of the cause which led to the dispersion of
mankind over
the earth; one traces it to the simple mul-
tiplication
of the race, the other to an immediate divine
intervention. Hence Noldeke assigns ch. x. to P and
xi. 1-9 to
J; Wellhausen, who finds both P and J in ch.
x.,
attributes xi. 1-9 to J', supposed to be an earlier
stratum in
the document J. But the explicit
allusions
to Babel and
to the dispersion which took place there, in
x. 10, 25,
shows that this transaction was before the mind
of the
writer of ch. x. And there is not the slightest in-
consistency
between the two passages. The writer sim-
144 THE GENERATIONS OF THE SONS OF NOAH
ply proceeds
in ch. xi. to detail in its proper place an
additional
fact connected with the peopling of the earth.
It is further urged that there is in xi.
1-9 no mention
of Noah's
three sons and their descendants as in ch. x.,
but simply
of the population of the earth as a unit.
To
which
Dillmann very properly replies:
"The sons, grand-
sons, etc.,
of Noah can very well be regarded as in the
first
instance united in one place and forming the entire
population
of the earth, until God constrained them to
disperse." He also enters a caveat against a misconcep-
tion of the
real meaning of what is here narrated:
"The
author does
not say that the manifold languages of men
now came
into existence ready made on the instant; he
only fixes a
point of time at which the divergence of na-
tions and
languages began. Still less is he
responsible
for the
conceit of the later Jews and of the church fathers,
that Hebrew
was the original language from which the
others branched
off in consequence of this confusion."
Jehovah is the only divine name that
occurs in this
section, and
it is in each instance appropriately used.
The builders
at Babel are frustrated in their ambitious
design by
Jehovah (xi. 5, 6, 8, 9), in the interest of his
purpose of
mercy to the world. The massing of the
race
together and concentrating them in what must have
become one
vast ungodly power was thwarted by scatter-
ing them
over the earth. In x. 9 Nimrod is twice
spoken
of as
"a mighty hunter before Jehovah" (comp. vi. 11).
Both the
character of the chapter in general, and the con-
nection of
this verse with that which precedes and fol-
lows, show
that Nimrod is here described not as a hunter
of wild
beasts, but as a conqueror and oppressor of men,l
and the
founder of a great empire. And Jehovah
is ob-
1 Dillmann refuses to admit this sense, so
obviously demanded by the
context, to
be the one originally intended, and is obliged in consequence
to regard
ver. 9 as an interpolation.
TOWER OF BABEL (CH. XI. 1-9) 145
servant of
all his schemes of conquest, ready to limit and
control them
in the interest of that divine kingdom
which it is
his purpose to introduce among men.
MARKS OF J.
1. "hpw lip
(vs. 1, 6, 7, 9), instead of Nvwl tongue (x. 5,
20,
31)." But while "lip" may
be used for "a lan-
guage"
in the singular, the plural is always expressed
by"
tongues." Thus Isa. xix. 18,
"the lip or language
of
Canaan," but Isa. lxvi. 18, "all nations and tongues;"
Zech. viii.
23, "all tongues of the nations," but Zeph.
iii. 9,
"a pure lip or language."
Moreover, if the same
writer can
use both "lip " and "tongue " in this sense
in the same
sentence, as Isa. xxviii. 11; xxxiii. 19;
Ezek. iii.
5, 6, why not on successive pages?
2.
"Jehovah comes down from heaven" (vs. 5, 7);
but in xvii.
22; xxxv. 13, passages attributed to P, it is
said that
God went up after speaking with Abraham and
with Jacob,
which implies a previous descent.
3.
"The etymology" (ver. 9).
But allusions to the sig-
nificance of
names are likewise found in P (Gen. xvii. 5,
17, 19,
20). It should further be observed here
that the
sacred
writer is not to be understood as giving the real
derivation
of the word Babel, but simply as noting the
very
significant sense suggested by it to a Hebrew ear.
It was an
instance of a nomen et omen. Cf.
John ix. 7,
where no one
imagines the evangelist's meaning to be
that the
pool of Siloam derived its name from the cir-
cumstance
which he relates.
V
THE GENERATIONS OF SHEM (CH. XI. 10-26)
SHEM TO ABRAM (CH. XI. 10-26)
THE table of descent from Shem to Abram
is evi-
dently
constructed upon a uniform plan with that in
ch. v. from
Adam to Noah, giving not a bare list of
names as in
ch. x. and in the side lines generally, but
stating the
age of the father at the birth of the son
through whom
the line is continued; then the length of
his life
after the birth of his son, with the mention of his
begetting
sons and daughters; and after running through
nearly the
same number of links (one ten, the other
nine), they
alike terminate with a father who has three
sons, that
are all named together without indicating the
intervals
between their birth. The only difference
in
their
structure is that ch. v. sums up the years of the
life of each
patriarch, while ch. xi. does not. A
close
connection
is thus established between the genealogy in
ch. v. and
that in ch. xi., showing that xi. 10-26 could
not have
constituted a genealogical fragment by itself.
It is
manifestly the continuation of the genealogy in ch.
v., and yet
it could not have been joined directly to it
without the
sections which now intervene; as though
what was
once a continuous genealogy had been sun-
dered, and
chs. vi.-n. 9 inserted between the severed.
parts. The last verse of ch. v. does not complete
the
statements
about Noah in the regular form consistently
pursued
throughout the genealogy, so that the next term
SHEM TO ABRAM (CH. XI. 10-26) 147
in the
genealogy might be expected immediately to follow.
It both
states more and less than had been regularly
stated in
each of the preceding terms. More, in
that it
mentions
three sons instead of one, leading us to expect
that
something is to be said about all three; this is a
preparation,
therefore, for the narrative of the flood,
with which
they are concerned, and also for the table of
the
descendants of each given in ch. x. This
verse also
states less
than was customary in all preceding cases;
for while it
gives the age of Noah at the birth of his
sons, it
does not state how long he lived subsequently,
nor the
entire length of his life. These missing
state-
ments are
found in what follows by combining vii. 6, 11,
with ix. 28,
29. Ch. xi. 10 also implies the
preceding
narrative of
the flood; and vs. 10-26 completes the ac-
count of the
descendants of Shem, which x. 21-31 (see
particularly
ver. 25) only gives in part. At xi. 26
the
genealogy is
again enlarged in the same way to intro-
duce the
history that follows.
VI
THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH (CH. XI. 27-XXV.
11)
PRELIMINARY REMARKS
THE sixth section, which extends from the
birth to the
death of
Abraham, is called the Generations of Terah,
and begins
with a restatement of his three sons, precisely
as the
fourth section is entitled the "Generations of
Noah,"
and begins with a restatement of his three sons.
As this
latter section describes the fortunes of Noah,
Shem, Ham,
and Japheth, so that now before us is occu-
pied with
what is to be told respecting Terah, Abram,
Nahor, and
Haran. The life of Abram, who is the
prin-
cipal figure
in this portion of the sacred narrative, was
for some
time united with that of Lot, the son of Haran,
and Abram's
son Isaac married Rebekah, the grand-
daughter of
Nahor.
The call of Abraham (xii. 1) is related to
the promise
to Shem (ix.
26), as its initial fulfilment. In
Abraham's
life all
revolves about the promised land and the prom-
ised
seed. He is to go to a land that the
LORD will
show him,
and become the father of a great people, and
all the
families of the earth shall be blessed in him.
As
soon as he
arrives in Canaan, the LORD tells him that
this is the
land and that his seed shall possess it.
Both
of these
particulars are further defined and confirmed in
what
follows. He has scarcely arrived in
Canaan before
he is
obliged to leave it in consequence of a famine (xii.
10 sqq.),
and go to Egypt. This is a trial of his
faith
PRELIMINARY REMARKS 149
in the
future possession of the land. Then
follows the
risk of
losing Sarah, which was a trial of his faith in the
promised
seed. The peril is averted by divine
interfer-
ence, and
enriched he returns with Lot to the land of
promise. Lot separates from him (xiii. 5 sqq.), though
without
leaving Canaan, when a more definite promise
is made of
giving all the land to Abram and his seed
(vs.
14,15). The land is invaded, and Lot
taken captive;
Abram
pursues and chastises the invaders, rescues his
nephew, and
is blessed by Melchizedek, king of Salem
and priest
of the Most High God (ch. xiv.).
Meanwhile Sarah has no son, and the
prospect is that
Eliezer will
be Abram's heir (xv. 2 seq.). But he is
as-
sured that
it is not merely one born in his house, but
a son of his
own body who shall be his heir, and whose
posterity
shall be as numerous as the stars of heaven,
(vs.
4-6). A prospect of the future of his
seed is shown
him. And the LORD by a visible token ratifies a
cove-
nant with
Abram to give his seed the land, and definitely
designates
its dimensions (vs. 7-21). The promise
of the
land has now
reached its utmost solemnity and precision.
Years pass
on, and Sarah abandons all hope of having
children,
and gives her maid to her husband; she bears
him Ishmael
(ch. xvi.). At length, twenty-four years
after
Abram's arrival in Canaan, the LORD appears to
him again as
the Almighty God, and engages that Sarah,
notwithstanding
her advanced age, should have a son the
very next
year, and that her child, and not Ishmael, should
be the
promised seed. In view of this he was on
his part
to enter
into covenant with God by the rite of circumci-
sion, as God
had already formally entered into cove-
nant with
him (ch. xvii.). Both the contracting
parties
having thus
sealed the engagement, it is finally con-
cluded by a
meal, of which the LORD partakes in human
form in the
tent of Abraham. And the confidential
in-
150 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
timacy to
which the latter is admitted is further shown
by the
communication to him of the divine purpose re-
specting
Sodom (ch. xviii.). Then follows (ch.
xix.) the
destruction
of Sodom and Lot's deliverance, and the
parentage of
Moab and Ammon, tribes related to Israel
and in their
vicinity during the forty years' wandering,
respecting
which there were special requirements in the
law
presupposing this genealogical statement (Deut. ii.
9, 19); so
that the history of Lot is preliminary to these
injunctions. At the court of Abimelech Sarah is once
more
imperilled, and is divinely delivered (ch. xx.). Isaac
is born;
Ishmael must give way to him, and goes with
his mother
to the wilderness of Paran (xxi. 1-21).
God's
blessing
upon Abraham is recognized by Abimelech, who
solicits his
friendship (xxi. 22 sqq.).
Then comes Abraham's last and sorest trial in
respect
to his
son. He is bidden to offer him up to God
on the
altar (ch.
xxii.). In the act of obedience his hand
is
stayed,
Isaac is restored to him, and all the promises
previously
made to him are repeated in their fullest
form, and
confirmed by the new solemnity of an oath.
The period
of trial is now over. The successful
endur-
ance of this
severest test of his faith marks the culmina-
tion of
Abraham's life, which henceforth flows peacefully
and quietly
to its close. The account of Nahor's
family
(vs. 20-24)
paves the way for the subsequent narrative
of Isaac's
marriage. We then read of Sarah's death,
and
of the
formalities connected with the purchase of a bur-
ial-place
(ch. xxiii.), the first possession in the promised
land where
Sarah and Abraham were to lie, thus even in
death
attesting their faith in this sure inheritance.
Then
Rebekah is
brought to be the wife of Isaac (ch. xxiv.).
This is
followed by the marriage of Keturah, and the
names of her sons; and finally Abraham's death
and
burial (xxv.
1-11).
THE DIVINE NAMES 151
THE DIVINE NAMES.
Throughout this section the divine names
are used
with evident
discrimination. The name Jehovah is used
in ch.
xii.-xvi.; Elohim does not occur until ch. xvii.,
where it is
found repeatedly, and, with the exception of
ver. 1,
exclusively. It is Jehovah the God of
the chosen
race who
bids Abram leave his kindred and his father's
house (xii.
1-4), with the promise to multiply his seed
and to give
him Canaan (xii. 2, 7; xiii.14-17); to whom
Abram
erected altars in this land and paid his worship
(xii. 7, 8 ;
xiii. 4, 18); who guarded Sarah, Abram's wife
(xii. 17);
who noted and would punish the guilty occu-
pants of the
promised land (xiii. 10, 13; xv. 16); to
whom Abram
appealed as the universal sovereign (xiv.
22), while
to Melchizedek he was not Jehovah but El
Elyon, God
most High (vs. 18-20); who appeared to
Abram (xii.
7), spake to him (xii. 1, 4, 7; xiii. 14; ch.
xv.), and
covenanted with him (xv. 18); whom Sarah
recognized
as directing all that affected her (xvi. 2, 5);
who cared
for Hagar as a member of Abram's family
(xvi. 7
sqq.), though in the mouth of this Egyptian maid
(xvi. 13),
as well as in the name of her son (xvi. 11, 15),
we fuid not
Jehovah but El.
It may be asked, why is it not still
Jehovah, the God
of the
chosen race, who in ch. xvii. enters into covenant
with Abraham
and establishes circumcision as the seal of
that
covenant and the perpetual badge of the covenant
people? It is Jehovah who appears to Abram and
forms this
solemn engagement with him, as is expressly
declared,
ver. 1. In doing so he announces himself as
the Almighty
God, and the reason for this is obvious.
The promise
of a numerous seed made to Abram at the
outset had
been repeated from time to time for four and
152 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
twenty long
years, and there had been as yet no indica-
tion of its
fulfilment. Meanwhile in his advancing
age
and that of
Sarah all natural hope of offspring had van-
ished. The time has now come when his persistent
faith
shall be
rewarded. Nature has failed, but the
divine
omnipotence
is all-sufficient. Isaac shall be born
the
next
year. The emphasis here laid on God's
almighty
power is
indicated by El Shaddai, God Almighty (ver.
1), followed
by Elohim, the title of the God of creation,
throughout
the interview and to the end of the chapter.
It is Jehovah again in ch. xviii. who in
condescending
grace
concludes the covenant transaction with Abram by
becoming his
guest, and in the familiarity of friendship
admits him
to his counsel respecting Sodom and accepts
his
intercession on its behalf; and who still further (xix.
1-28)
executes the purpose which he had disclosed to
Abraham, of
purging his Own land of gross offenders
(cf. xiii.
13; xv. 16; xviii. 20, 21). Here the critics claim
that xix. 9
is a fresh account of the destruction of Sodom
and the
rescue of Lot, which instead of relating in detail,
as in the
previous part of the chapter, despatches all in
a single
sentence, using Elohim of the very same matter
in regard to
which Jehovah had been before employed
throughout.
B ut--
1.
This verse, instead of relating the overthrow of
Sodom,
presupposes this event as known and already
narrated,
and proceeds to declare what took place when
it
occurred. The direct course of the
narrative had been
interrupted
(vs. 27, 28) to mention Abraham's early
visit to the
scene of his former intercession, and what he
there
beheld. Then in returning to his
narrative the
writer sums
up in a single sentence what he had already
related, and
proceeds to say what further became of Lot.1
1 Thus Gen. ii.1 recapitulates the work
of the six days (ch. i), in
order to
connect with it the rest of the seventh day (ii. 2, 3) ; xxxix. 1,
THE DIVINE NAMES 153
2. The reason for the change in the divine
name is
now
apparent. In the paragraph which begins
with this
verse and
extends to the end of the chapter; the writer is
speaking of
Lot, now and hencefotth completely severed
from
Abraham, and removed beyond the boundaries of
the promised
land, the ancestol'" of Moab and Ammon, to
whom God is
not Jehovah but Elohim, as to all outside of
the chosen
race.
In like manner in the affair of Abimelech,
king of Ge-
rar, a
Gentile prince (ch. xx.), Elohim is the proper word,
and is
accordingly used throughout, both in God's deal-
ings with
Abimelech (vs. 3, 6, 17), and in what Abraham
says to him
(vs. 11, 13). Only in ver. 18, where the
writer
introduces a statement of his own that the inflic-
tion there
spoken of was for the protection of Abraham's
wife,
Jehovah is introduced precisely as in the similar
case, xii.
17.
The birth of Isaac recalled alike the
pledge of al-
mighty
intervention and the gracious promise of Abra-
ham's God;
hence the use of Jehovah in xxi. 1, with
special
reference to xviii. 10, 14, and of Elohim in vs. 2,
4, 6,1
with reference to xvii. 10, 19, 21. In
the narrative
of the
dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael (v.s. 9-21) Elohim
is used
throughout, because they are now finally severed
from the
family of Abraham; whereas in xvi. 7-13, while
Hagar still
belonged to his family, it is the angel of Jeho-
vah who
finds her in the wilderness; and sends her back to
her
mistress. In Abimelech's visit to
Abraham he nat-
after the
digression of ch. xxxviii., sums up the narrative of xxxvii.
28-36, on
returning to the history of Joseph; so Ex. vi. 28-30, for a like
reason,
repeats vs. 10-12; Ex. xii. 51 repeats ver. 41 ; Judg. iii. 4, cf.
ver. 1; xxi.
8, cf. ver. 5 ; 1 Kin. vi. 37, cf.. ver. 1.
1Cf. with ver. 6 in its allusion to God's
almighty intervention in con-
trast with
natural causes, Eve's language at the birth of Seth (iv. 25),
with Elohim
in what the critics consider a J section because of the im-
plied
contrast between God and man.
154 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
urally
speaks of Elohim (xxi. 22, 23), whereas in Abra-
ham's act of
worship he calls on the name of Jehovah
(ver.
33). In ch. xxii. it is ~Iohim who puts
Abraham to
trial by the
command to offer up Isaac; it is Jehovah
who stays
his hand. God the creator has the
undoubted
right to
demand of his creature the dearest and the best;
but the God
of Abraham, the God of revelation and sal-
vation
accepts the spiritual surrender and spares the
child. In ch. xxiii. Elohim occurs but once, and
very
properly in
the mouth of the children of Heth (ver. 6).
Jehovah
guided Abraham's servant in his search for a
wife for
Isaac (ch. xxiv.), and this in so conspicuous a
manner that
even Laban and Bethuell recognize the hand
of Jehovah,
the God of Abraham in the whole affair (vs.
50, 51), and
address the servant as "blessed of Jehovah"
(ver.
31). In xxv. 11, "after the death
of Abraham Elo-
him blessed
his son Isaac." Jehovah, as the
guardian and
benefactor
of the chosen race, would certainly have been
appropriate
here. And yet Elohim is appropriate
like-
wise, as
suggestive of the general divine beneficence and
providential
goodness, which bestowed upon Isaac abun-
dant
external prosperity. Such bounty is by no means
limited in
its exercise to the chosen race.
THE CRITICAL PARTITION.
The constant regard to the distinctive
meaning of the
divine
names, as this has now been exhibited, must be
due to the
intention of the writer. It cannot be
the ac-
cidental
result of the combination of separate Elohist
and Jehovist
documents. Nevertheless the critics un-
1 So the heathen mariners call upon the
name of Jonah's God in the
tempest,
which they recognize as sent by him.
They cry unto Jehovah
and fear
Jehovah (Jon. i. 14, 16), though they had previously "cried
every man
unto his god," ver. 5.
THE CRITICAL PARTITION 155
dertake to
parcel the contents of this section between
P, J, and E;
and in so doing present us with three mu-
tilated and
incoherent narratives instead of the one
closely
connected and continuous narrative which we have
already
traced in the text as it lies before us.
The only paragraphs of any length ascribed
to P are
chs. xvii.
and xxiii., the former recording the covenant of
circumcision,
the latter the death of Sarah and the pur-
chase of the
cave of Machpelah. But ch. xvii. is closely
linked to
both the preceding and the following history.
Thus it
appears from xvii. 8 that Abraham is in Canaan;
and from vs.
18-20 that he has a son Ishmael, who is not
the child of
Sarah, and that Sarah is shortly to have a
son of her
own. And the Elohim verse (xix. 29)
speaks
of Lot, to
whom Abraham was attached, and who dwelt
in the
cities of the plain. The facts thus
alluded to are
all recorded
in full in the accompanying narrative, of
which ch.
xvii. and xix. 29 are thus shown to form com-
ponent
parts. But the critics seek to detach
them from
the body of
the narrative by singling out scattered verses
here and
there, rent from their proper connection, suffi-
cient to
cover these allusions, and stringing them to-
gether so as
to create an appearance of continuity for P
here, as is
done for J in the account of the deluge.
It
should be
borne in mind that there is no evidence what-
ever that
the hypothetical narrative thus produced ever
had a
separate existence but that which is found in the
vague
critical criteria, which we shall examine shortly.
The skeleton
life of Abraham that is ascribed to P is
devoid of
all real interest or significance. It is
stripped
of
everything indicative of character.
There is in it no
exercise nor
trial of faith; no act of piety, or generosity,
or courage;
no divine purpose; no providential dealing
with him, no
divine communication made to him, except
on one
single occasion four and twenty years after he
156 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
had entered
Canaan. The life of the father of the
faith-
ful, so rich
in the most important spiritual lessons, is re-
duced to a
jejune and barren annalistic record.
This
the critics
not only admit, but insist upon; they tell us
it is the
fault of P. He has no taste for
narrative; he
has no
historic sense, and no interest in history, but
only for
legal facts and institutions, dates and figures,
and
unmeaning lists of names. It is not
disputed that
such a
writer is abstractly possible or conceivable;
whether
there is proof of his actual existence will be
considered
hereafter. All that is proposed at present is
to state the
critics' own conception of the matter. The
document of
P in the section now before us, apart from
ch. xvii.
and xxiii., consists of these few scraps.
xi. 27.
Now these are the generations of Terah.
Terah begat
Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran
begat Lot.
31. And Terah took Abram his son, and
Lot the son
of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his
daughter-in-law,
his son Abram's wife; and they went
forth with
them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the
land of
Canaan; and they came unto Haran and dwelt
there. 32.
And the days of Terah were two hundred
and five
years: and Terah died in Haran. xii. 4b.
And
Abram was seventy
and five years old when he departed
out of
Haran. 5. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and
Lot his
brother's son, and all their substance that they
had
gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in
Haran; and
they went forth to go into the land of Ca-
naan; and
into the land of Canaan they came. xiii. 6.
And the land
was not able to bear them, that they might
dwell
together: for their substance was great, so that
they could
not dwell together. 11b. And they separated
themselves
the one from the other. 12a. Abram dwelled
in the land
of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of
the
Plain. xvi. la. Now Sarai Abram's wife bare him
THE CRITICAL PARITION 157
no
children. 3. And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar the
Egyptian,
her handmaid, after Abram had dwelt ten
years in the
land of Canaan, and gave her to Abram her
husband to
be hi~ wife. 15. And Hagar bare Abram a
son: and
Abram called the name of his son; whom Ha-
gar bare,
Ishmael. 16. And Abram was fourscore and
six years
old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram.
(Here
follows ch. xvii. in P.)
xix. 29.
And it came to pass, when God destroyed the
cities of
the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and
sent Lot out
of the midst of the overthrow, when he
overthrew the
cities in which Lot dwelt.1
xxi. lb. And
[the LORD]
did unto Sarah as he had spoken 2b. at
the
set time of
which God had spoken to him. 3. And
Abraham
called the name of his son that was born to him,
whom Sarah
bare to him, Isaac. 4. And Abraham cir-
cumcised his
son Isaac when he was eight days old, as
God had
commanded him. 5. And Abraham was an
hundred
years old when his son Isaac was born unto
him. (Here follows ch. xxiii. in Pr)
xxv. 7.
And these are the days of the years of Abra-
ham's life
which he lived, an hundred threescore and fif-
teen
years. 8. And Abraham gave up the ghost, and died
in a good
old age, an old man, and full of years; and was
gathered to
his people. 9. And Isaac and Ishmael his
sons buried
him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of
Ephron the
son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before
Mamre; 10.
the field which Abraham purchased of the
children of
Heth: there was Abraham buried, and
Sarah his
wife. 11a. And it came to pass after the
death of
Abraham that God blessed Isaac his son.
Wellhausen ("Prolegomena," p.
333) thus characterizes
1 In order to find any tolerable connection
for this verse it is neces-
sary to
suppose that it originally stood immediately after xiii. 12a, and
has been
transposed by R to its present position.
158 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
the document
P: "The individuality of the
several nar-
ratives is
not merely modified but absolutely destroyed
by the aim
of the whole. The complex whole leading
up to the
law of Moses is everything; the individual
members
signify nothing. The entire material
thus also
itself
becomes a perfect vacuity; apart from covenant-
making it
consists only in genealogy and chronology."
This being
the sort of material that is attributed to P, in
distinction
from J and E, to whom the narrative pas-
sages are
ascribed, a ready explanation is at once sug-
gested of
the difference of style and diction, upon which
such stress
is laid as though it indicated diversity of
authorship.
Wellhausen also calls attention to another
fact of no
small
importance ("Prolegomena," p. 311), that "the his-
torical
thread of P runs completely parallel to the history
of JE. Only thus has it been possible to incorporate
these two
writings into one another, as they lie before us
at present
in the Pentateuch." He further
shows in detail
(p. 336)
that this coincidence in the arrangement of the
materials,
which prevails elsewhere, characterizes "also
the
patriarchal history; the outline is the same in P and
JE." This intimate and pervading relation leads to
the
inevitable
conclusion that these cannot be altogether in-
dependent
documents. Thus he says (p. 356):
"What
is offered
us in P is the quintescence of the tradition, not,
in an oral
but in an already written form. And the
written
shape of the preliminary history which is used
is JE's
narrative book. The arrangement which is
there
given to the
popular legends1 is here made the core of
1 In Wellhausen's esteem the sacred history before Abraham is all
myth. The patriarchal history is legend, containing
elements of truth.
"No
historical knowledge about the patriarchs is to be gained here,
but only
about the time in which the stories about them arose in the
people of
Israel; this later time is here, in its internal and external
THE CRITICAL PARTITION 159
the
narrative; the plan, which is there hidden under its
detailed
treatment, comes out here shalp and distinctly
marked,
while agreeing throughout, as the main. matter
of the
whole."
A correspondence so remarkable and
continuous as to
permit the
documents to be dovetailed together in the
manner
alleged by the critics, certainly makes their inde-
endent
origin quite insupposable. One of two
things
must be
true. Either one of these documents must
have
taken its
shape from the other, or both have alike taken
their shape
from one common source. Dillmann admits
J's
dependence upon E, but denies that of P upon JE,
alleging
that their apparent coincidence in the arrange-
ment of
material is due to R, who in combining the docu-
ments made P
the basis, and transposed the contents of
JE to
correspond with it. These transpositions
are merely
conjectural,
however, and are of no weight beside the
palpable
fact of the identical order manifest in these
supposed
documents, as they lie embedded in the text
before
us. The majority of the critics accept
the former
of the
alternatives above stated, that of the dependence
of one
document upon the other. The advocates
of the
features,
unconsciously projected back into a hoary antiquity, and mir-
rors itself
there as a transfigured fancy picture " (p. 336). While thus
converting
the lives of the patriarchs into tribal or national occur-
rences of a
later period, he is puzzled what to do with Abraham."
Abraham is
certainly not the name of a people like Isaac and Lot; he
is on the
whole rather incomprehensible. Naturally
we cannot on this
account
regard him in this connection as a historical person; he might
rather be a
free creation involuntarily conceived.
He is likely the
most recent
figure in this company, and probably only prefixed to his son
Isaac at a
tolerably late period" (p. 337).
Unbelieving critics, as a rule,
take the
same view of the unhistorical character of Genesis, and critics
of every
shade of belief, who accept the date currently assigned to J
and E, in so
doing adopt a conclusion based on the assumption that the
stories
respecting the patriarchs are not records of actual fact, but the
inventions
of a later period.
160 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
old
supplementary hypothesis held that J was in posses-
sion of P,
and made it the basis of his work.
Wellhau-
sen and they
that follow his lead allege that P was in
possession
of JE, and shaped his production by it.
The
other
alternative, however, affords quite as ready an ex-
planation of
the evident relationship. If the
Pentateuch
is the
original, and the so-called documents are its sev-
ered parts,
both their agreement in the general, and the
seeming discrepancies
which the critics fancy that they
discover,
will be fully accounted for. Which of
these
alternatives
is the true one may be left undecided for the
present.
The narratives ascribed to E in this
section are dis-
connected
anecdotes, in which persons figure who do not
belong to
the chosen race; as foreign princes with whom
Abraham is
brought into contact (ch. xiv., so Dillmann;
xx. ; xxi.
22-32), or Hagar and Ishmael in their final de-
parture from
his house (xxi. 8-21), and a portion of ch.
xxii.
relating to the sacrifice of Isaac. Here
it is obvious
that the
character of the passages themselves explains
the use of
Elohim in them; so that this does not require
the
assumption of a separate writer, who occupied him-
self
exclusively with recording incidents connected with
foreigners,
and one solitary demand of the Creator, not
suffered to
be carried into execution, but designed to be
a supreme
test of Abraham's faith and obedience.
All
these
incidents have their place and fitness in the life of
the
patriarch as a whole, but sundered from the rest and
taken by
themselves they lose their chief significance
and
value. It is not even pretended that
they constitute
a complete
life of Abraham, or a connected and continuous
narrative of
any sort. They form only a fragmentary
account,
with no proper beginning, no mutual connection,
and no
governing idea. Only two direct divine
commu-
nications to
Abraham are recorded, one (xxi. 12), direct-
NO DISCREPANCIES 161
ing him to
dismiss Ishmael, and the other (xxii. 1), to sac-
rifice
Isaac. Neither of these can be properly
understood
in their
isolation; and the latter especially becomes in-
telligible
only as the crowning act of that long-continued
course of
divine discipline and training by which Abra-
ham was
fitted for his unique position as the father and
exemplar of
the chosen people of God. There is
nothing
in these
so-called E paragraphs to suggest that they were
ever grouped
together in a separate document. And it
is safe to
say that such a notion would never have en-
tered the
mind of anyone, who was not committed to a
hypothesis
which required it.
The main body of this section, all of it
in fact except
the portions
severed from it for P, and for E, for reasons
explained above,
is given to J. The predominant use of
Jehovah in
this portion of the history is, however, plainly
due to its
theme, and creates no presumption that there
was a
separate writer whose characteristic habit it was
to employ
it.
NO
DISCREPANCIES.
It is alleged that there are
discrepancies in the state-
ments of P,
J, and E, and that the same persons and
events are
conceived and represented differently.
This
charge is
based upon the fallacy of making the part
equal to the
whole, or of identifying things which are dis-
tinct. These alleged discrepancies are used as
arguments
for the
critical partition, when they are simply the conse-
quences of
sundering that which, taken in connection, is
entirely
harmonious.
Thus, 1. by splitting the account of
Abram's migration
a variant
representation is produced of his original home,
which
according to P was in Ur of the Chaldees (xi. 31),
while J is
said to locate it in Haran (xii. 1; xxiv. 4, 7,
10). And yet xv. 7, which is in a J connection,
and has
162 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
the style
and diction of J, expressly declares that Jeho-
vah brought
Abram from Ur of the Chaldees.1 But crit-
ics have an
easy way of ridding themselves of testimony
which is not
to their mind. This unwelcome verse, on
the sole
ground of its annulling a discrepancy which
they wish to
create, is summarily declared to be an in-
terpolation
by R with a view to harmonizing the con-
flicting
sources. The statement of P (xi. 31)
clears up
the whole
matter; Abram went first from Ur to Haran,
and thence
to Canaan. But this does not satisfy Well-
hausen, who
suspects that it is only an effort on the part
of P to
harmonize variant traditions. "If
this doubling
the point of
departure did not originate from the purpose
of making a
connection with JE, there is no such thing
as
harmonizing,"2 or as he puts it in his first edition,3
"I do
not know what harmonizing means."
The critics
may be
allowed to settle between themselves whether
it was R or
P that did the harmonizing where there
was nothing
that needed to be harmonized.4
2. The charge that in J (xii. 1-4a) Abram
went, to
Canaan by
divine direction, but in P (vs. 4b, 5), of his own
motion, is
made out by rending asunder a statement
1 See Budde: Urgeschichte, p. 439.
2 Prolegomena, p. 331.
3 Geschichte Israels, p. 325, note.
4 The expression tdlvm
Crx (xxiv. 7; xxxi, 13) is
used interchange-
ably with tdlvmv Crx (xxiv. 4 ; xxxi. 3). If
upon the critics' own hy-
pothesis R
saw no difficulty in the latter being used of Haran (xii, 1),
just after
Abram's migration thither from Ur had been spoken of, why
should any
difficulty arise from J's employing both these equivalent
expressions
of Haran likewise? It is plain from xii.
1 that they can-
not be
restricted to "land of nativity" in the strict sense, but are
properly
employed also of Abraham"s second home, the land of his
kindred. See Delitzsch on Gen. xii. 1. Budde (Urgeschichte, p. 441),
who equally
with Dillmann and Wellhausen imagines a contradiction
in the case,
finds it to lie not between P and J, but between the two
supposed
constituents of the latter document, J" which makes Ur
Abram's
original home, and J' which makes it Haran.
NO DISCREPANCIES 163
which is
entirely harmonious, and setting its divided
parts in
opposition.
3.
It is said that in J the promise is made to Abram
of a land, a
numerous seed, and a blessing to all nations
of the earth
(xii. 1-3; xviii. 18; xxii. 17, 18); but in P
(xvii. 4-8),
simply of a land and a numerous seed, without
any
intimation of a blessing to extend beyond his own
descendants. But this is simply expecting a complete
statement in
one which is designedly partial. In the
original
promise and in the renewal of it upon two occa-
sions of
special solemnity, one when the LORD signified
his approval
of Abraham's unfaltering faith by coming as
his guest in
human form, and again as a reward of his
most signal
act of obedience, the blessing is set before
him in its
most ample sweep. But during all the
inter-
vening
period of long expectancy of his promised child
the divine
communications made to him from time to
time were
designed to keep alive his faith in that particu-
lar promise,
whose fulfilment was so long delayed; hence
mention is
merely made of his numerous seed, and of the
land which
they were to occupy, alike in xiii. 14-17; xv.
5- 7, 18,
which the critics assign to J, and in xvii. 4-8,
which they
give to P.
4.
It is claimed that according to J (xii. 7, 8; xiii. 4,
18), and E
(xxii. 13), sacrificial worship existed in the
times of the
patriarchs; while P makes no allusion to it
until the
time of Moses, by whom in his opinion it was
first
introduced. But this is attributing to
distinct docu-
ments
embodying different conceptions of the patriarchal
period that
which simply results from the distinction
between the
divine names Elohim and Jehovah. This
distinction
is ignored by the critics, and these names
treated as
though they were practically identical, when in
fact they
represent the divine being under different as-
pects. It. is not Elohim, God in his general
relation to
164 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
the world,
but Jehovah, as he has made himself known
to his own
people, who is the object of their worship.
Hence Abram
built altars to Jehovah (xii. 7; xiii. 4, 18),
and called
on the name of Jehovah (rii. 8; xxi. 33); and
all passages
in which the word Jehovah appears are for
that reason
uniformly ascribed to J. Their absence
from
P is due to
the principle which governs the partition,
not to some
peculiar notion as to the origin of sacrifice.
In xxii. 1 E
it was Elohim, not Jehovah, who bids
Abram offer
up Isaac, because the Creator might rightful-
ly demand of
his creature the surrender of that which he
had given
him. But this was only intended as a
test of
obedience. Jehovah did not desire the sacrifice of the
child. Accordingly the angel of Jehovah restrained
Abram's
hand; and the ram providentially provided
was offered
up instead of his son (ver. 13).
Wellhausen ("Prolegomena," p.
359) remarks upon the
absurdity of
the conception which the critics have sought
to fasten
upon the imaginary author of the document P,
that
"religion was at first naturalistic, then became some-
what more
positive by jumps, and finally altogether posi-
tive in the
year 1500 B.C. How is it possible to see
historical
fidelity in the representation that the patriarchs
could
slaughter but not sacrifice; that first the sabbath
was
introduced, then the rainbow, then circumcision, and
finally,
under Moses, sacrificial worship?"
The ridicule
here
directed against P really falls upon the critics
themselves,
who are the sole authors of this glaring ab-
surdity.
5.
In P (xiii. 6) Abram and Lot separate for want of
room simply,
while in J (ver. 7a) it is because of the
strife of
their herdmen. But this is merely
objecting
that the
part is not equal to the whole. The
story is
arbitrarily
split in two. The lack of room which
leads
to the
strife is given to P; the strife which results from
NO DISCREPANCIES 165
the lack of
room to J. Each part implies the other
and
is
incomplete without it.
6.
J (xii. 13, 19) tells of Abram's prevarication about
Sarai (so E
xx. 2); Sarai's quarrel with Hagar (xvi. 6),
(so E xxi.
10); and Lot's incest (xix. 30 sqq.); while P nev-
er mentions
anything discreditable to the patriarchs.
J
speaks of
angels (xvi. 7-11; xix. 1,15; xxiv. 7,40); so E
(xxi. 17 ;
xxii. 11); P never does. J tells of a divine com-
munication
in a vision (xv. 1), and E in a dream (xx. 3,
J 6); P
mentions neither. According to P Abram
dwelt in
Mamre or the
region of Hebron (xxiii. 2; xxxv. 27); ac-
cording to E
in Gerar (xx. 1), and Beersheba (xxi. 31).
P tells of
his purchase of the cave of Machpelah as a
burial-place
and that Sarah was buried there (ch. xxiii.),
and Abraham
himself (xxv. 9), and subsequently Isaac
and Rebekah,
and Jacob and Leah (xlix. 31; 1. 13); but
E and J make
no allusion to any such place of common
burial. There is no real discrepancy in any of these
cases. The apparent variance is created solely by
the
partition
and cannot be adduced in support of that upon
which it is
itself dependent.
7. It
is said that different versions are given of the de-
liverance of
Lot from the overthrow of Sodom. In P
(xix. 29) he
is saved for Abraham's sake; in J (xviii. 23)
because of
his own righteous character. In P he was
sent out of
the midst of the overthrow, implying that
time and
opportunity were afforded for escape after the
destruction
had begun; in J the destruction did not
come upon
the city until after Lot had left it (xix. 22-
24). The apparent variance is created by sundering
re-
lated
verses, and then putting an interpretation upon
them which
their connection forbids. Even on the
crit-
ical
hypothesis of different documents, the true meaning
of each must
be preserved in their combination, if R is
to be
trusted. God's remembering Abraham (xix. 29)
166 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
and
delivering Lot, is a plain allusion to the intercession
of the
former (xviii. 23), and its meaning is determined
by it. God s sending Lot out of the midst of the
over-
throw, when
he overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt,
is a summary
statement by way of resumption of what
had been
narrated (xix. 15-25), and it must be under-
stood
accordingly.
8.
According to xvii. 24, 25; xxi. 5, P, Ishmael was
fourteen
years old when Isaac was born; yet it is said
that (xxi.
14-20) E represents him after this as a young
child
needing to be carried by his mother. But
the al-
leged
inconsistency is due to misinterpretation.
The
LXX. has
(xxi. 14), "and he put the child on her
shoulder;"
and Tuch so interprets the Hebrew. Dill-
mann,
however, admits that this is not the meaning of
the existing
Hebrew text, in which "putting it on her
shoulder"
is parenthetic, and refers only to the bread
and bottle
of water, while "the child" is dependent on
the previous
clause, "gave unto Hagar."
Delitzsch
points out a
similar construction of the words "and
Benjamin,"
in Gen. xliii. 15. Dillmann's conjecture
that
the reading
of the LXX. is the original one, and that the
Hebrew has
been altered for the sake of harmonizing, is
gratuitous
and unfounded. Neither does "she
cast the
child under
one of the shrubs" (ver. 15) imply that he
was an
infant; Delitzsch compares Jer. xxxviii. 6, where
Jeremiah was
cast into a dungeon, and Matt. xv. 30,
many were cast
at Jesus's feet to be healed. Nor is
there
any such
implication in the direction to Hagar to "lift
up the lad
" (vel". 18), who was faint and sick, nor in the
statement
(ver. 20) that he "grew," which simply means
that he
advanced to manhood.
9. The
statement that Sarai was so fair as to attract
the
attention of Pharaoh, to the peril of her husband's life
(xii. 11, 15
J), is said to be incompatible with xii. 4b (cf.
NO DISCREPANCIES 167
xvii. 17 P),
according to which she was at that time up-
wards of
sixty-five years of age. And it is said
to be still
more
incongruous that she should have attracted Abim-
elech (xx. 2
sqq. E), when (xvii. 17 P) she was more
than ninety
years old. The only point of any
consequence
in this
discussion is not what modern critics may think
of the
probability or possibility of what is here narrated,
but whether
the sacred historian credited it. On the
hypothesis
of the critics, R believed it and recorded it.
What
possible ground can they have for assuming that J
and E had
less faith than R in what is here told of the
marvellous
beauty and attractiveness of the ancestress of
the
nation? If the entire narrative could be
put to-
gether by R,
and related by him with no suspicion of
discord, the
same thing could just as well have been
done by one
original writer. It may be added, if it
will
in any
measure relieve the minds of doubting critics, that
Abimelech is
not said to have been taken with Sarah's
beauty. He may have thought an alliance with "a
mighty
prince" (xxiii. 6) like Abraham desirable, even
if Sarah's
personal charms were not what they had once
been. And when Abraham lived to the age of one hun-
dred and
seventy-five, who can say how well a lady of
ninety may
have borne her years?
10.
It is said that J and P differ in their conception
of God; J's
representation is anthropomorphic, that of
P is more
exalted and spiritual. But the two
aspects of
God's being,
his supreme exaltation and his gracious
condescension,
are not mutually exclusive or conflicting,
but mutually
supplementary. Both must be combined
in any
correct apprehension of his nature and his relation
to man. These are not to be sundered, as though they
were
distinct conceptions of separate minds.
They are
found
together throughout the Bible. Since
Elohim is
used of God
as the creator and in his relation to the
168 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
world at
large, while Jehovah is the name by which he
made himself
known to his chosen people, his chief acts
of
condescending grace naturally appear in connection
with the
latter. It is Jehovah who adopts the
forms of
men in
covenanting with Abram (xv. 17), and who enters
into
familiar intercourse with him (xviii. 1 sqq.).
And
yet the
manifestation of Jehovah's presence in smoke
and flame
(xv. 17 J) has a precise parallel in P in the
cloud and
fire above the tabernacle which guided Israel
through the
desert (Ex. xl. 36 -38; Num. ix. 15 sqq.).
Jehovah
appeared to Abram three times-twice in J (xii.
7; xviii.
1); once in P (xvii. 1), where the critics say
that the
text should be Elohim. Jehovah spake
repeat-
edly to
Abram, and on one occasion to Hagar (xvi. 13);
so did God
in P to Abram (ch. xvii.), to Noah (vi. 13;
viii. 15),
and to the first human pair (i. 28). If
it is
speaking
after the manner of men when Jehovah speaks
of going
down to Sodom to see how they have done
(xviii. 21),
it is no less so when Elohim tests the obedi-
ence of
Abraham (xxii. 1), a passage which the critics as-
sign to
another than P; but in P God went up from
Abraham
(xvii. 22), which implies that he had come
down to
speak with him.
We now proceed to consider the critical
partition of
this section
in detail.
THE FAMILY OF TERAH (CH. XI. 27-32).
The critics have had no little perplexity
in disposing
of this
paragraph. In consequence of its
intimate rela-
tion to ch.
xii., Astruc assigned it to J; Eichhorn, though
with some
hesitation, gave it to P. The majority
of
critics
thenceforward attributed it to the latter document.
Dillmann did
the same in his first edition of Genesis; in
his second
edition he followed Wellhausen in referring
THE FAMILY OF TERAH (CH. XI. 27-32) 169
ver. 29 to J
and the rest to P, ver. 30 being supposed to
belong
originally at the beginning of ch. xvi., and to
have been
transferred thence by R; in his third edition
he followed
Budde and Hupfeld in assigning vs. 27, 31,
32, to P,
and vs. 28-30 to J. The critical
embarrassment
arises from
the circumstance that while all parts of the
paragraph
are knit together in inseparable unity, they
are at the
same time linked to what precedes and follows
with an
entire disregard of the critical severance, being
bound alike
to passages referred to P and to J.
Thus,
ver. 27
repeats the last words off the preceding genealogy,
as is done
at the opening of al new section (vi. 10; xxv.
19); and
ver. 32 sums up the life of Terah in the terms
of the
genealogy of ch. v., as is ,done in the case of Noah
(ix.
29). It is clear that vs. 27, 32, are
from the same
hand as the
genealogies of chs. v. and xi., which they con-
tinue and
complete; they are accordingly held to belong
to P. So is ver. 31, whose phraseology is identical
with
that of xii.
5, which the critics for reasons to be consid-
ered
hereafter find it convenient to refer to P, though it
is cut out
of a J connection, to which it manifestly be-
longs.
On the other hand, according to the latest
conclusions
of the
critics, vs. 28-30 belong to J; ver. 28 since
"land
of his
nativity" is reckoned a J phrase; ver. 29 because
it is
preliminary to xxii. 20 sqq. J, although xxv. 20 P
requires the
assumption that P must here or elsewhere
have given a
similar account of Rebekah's descent from
Bethuel and
Nahor, which R has not preserved; ver. 30
because it
would be premature in P before ch. xvi.,
whereas it
is appropriate in J as preliminary to chs. xii.,
xiii., and
especially xv. 2, 3. And yet this
paragraph
cannot be
torn asunder as the critics propose. For
vs.
28, 29
presuppose ver. 27, and are abrupt and unex-
plained
without it; and ver. 31 implies the previous
170 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
statement of
Abram's marriage (ver. 29), and needs ver.
28 to
explain why Lot went with Terah without his
father; and
ver. 30 follows naturally and properly after
ver. 29 with
the mention of a fact at the outset, upon
which the
life of Abraham so largely turned.
Moreover,
the portion
assigned to J (vs. 28-30) is not only without
any proper
beginning, but severed from ver. 31 fails to
explain the
fact assumed in ch. xxiv. J, that Abram's
former home
was in Mesopotamia and that other de-
scendants of
Terah were settled there. How the home
of Abram's
ancestors came to be in Ur of the Chaldees
(xi. 31),
when the ark landed on the mountains of Ara-
rat (viii. 4
P), and Terah's descendants are subsequently
found in
Haran and Canaan, is a puzzle in P. This
has
led Dillmann
and others to fancy that Ur of the Chaldees
lay in
Mesopotamia, in spite of its name and its posi-
tive
monumental identification, or else that it has been
interpolated
in this verse by R. The puzzle is
entirely
of the
critics' own creation. The missing link,
which
explains the
course of migration, is found in xi. 1-9,
which is
attributed to J; and the whole trouble arises
from
sundering this from P, in which it is indispensa-
ble. Dillmann's assertion that if Ur lay in
Chaldea, this
must have
been inserted in ver. 31 by R in order to con-
nect it with
xi. 1-9, simply amounts to a confession of
the real
nexus in the case, introduced not by R but by
the original
writer.
Still further, the occurrence of "Ur
of the Chaldees,"
both in ver.
28 J and in ver. 31 P, annihilates, on the
critics' own
showing, the alleged discrepancy between
these imaginary
documents as to Abram's original home,
the fallacy
of which has been remarked upon before.
It
is here
bolstered up by assuming that these words do
not properly
belong in ver. 28, but have been inserted by
R.
CALL OF
ABRAM AND HIS JOUJNEYS (CR. XII.) 171
THE CALL OF
ABRAM AND HIS JOURNEYS (CH. XII.).
The critics endeavor to make a show of
continuity for
P in the
history of Abraham, as has before been stated,
by picking
out a sentence here and there from chs. xii.-
xvi.,
sundering it from its connection and transferring it
to P, while
the body of these chapters is given to J.
But they
have no better reason, and are no more suc-
cessful in
this than in their attempt to establish the con-
tinuity of J
in the narrative of the flood. In order
to
bridge the
chasm from ch. xi. to ch. xvii., six verses and
parts of
three others, referring to the principal events
that had
taken place in the interval, are rent from their
proper
context and claimed for P, viz., Abram's removal
from Haran
to the land of Canaan (xii. 4b, 5); his sep-
aration from
Lot (xiii. 6, 11b, 12a); his connection with
Hagar (xvi.
1, 3); and the birth of Ishmael (vs. 15, 16).
These verses
and clauses fit perfectly in their context,
and no one
would ever dream that they had been in-
serted from
another document, but for the necessity laid
upon the
critics to discover something that could be at-
tributed to
P, which might explain the situation in ch.
xvii., viz.,
Abraham's presence in Canaan (ver. 8); his
son Ishmael
(vs. 18, 20), born thirteen years before (ver.
25), though
Sarah had no child (vs. 17, 19); as well as
Lot's abode
in the cities of the Plain (xix. 29).
But
notwithstanding
this urgent motive, Ilgen (1798) is, so
far as I
know, the only critic prior to Hupfeld (1853)
who could
find any indication of P in chs. xiii., xv., xvi.
Astruc,
Eichhorn, Gramberg, Stahelin, Delitzsch (1st
edition),
and even Vater, with his fragmentary procliv-
ities, were
equally unable to sunder anything from ch.
xii. Tuch (1838) suggested doubtfully in his
exposition,
though with
more confidence in the introduction to his
172 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
"Commentary,"
that xii. 5 belonged to P on a ground
which
subsequent critics have annulled, viz., its resem-
blance to
xxxvi. 6 and xlvi. 6, which are in a context re-
ferred by
him to P, but denied by others to be his.1
The critics divide this chapter as
follows: J, xii. 1-4a,
6-9, 10-20;
P, vs. 4b, 5. Knobel refers vs. 6, Sa,
9, to
P; Schrader
to E; Kittel also to E, though ascribing
vs. 6-9 in
its present form to J. Wellhausen and Kue-
nen make
ver. 9 an insertion by R, Schrader, Well-
hausen,
Kuenen regard vs. 10-20 as a later addition to
J; Dillmann,
Kittel, as belonging to J, but transposed
from their
original position after ch. xiii.
THE CALL OF ABRAM (CR. XII. 1-9).
P's account of Abram's removal from Haran
begins
abruptly
(xii.4b), and in a manner that implies that
something is
missing. The statement that "Abram
was
seventy and
five years old when he departed out of
Haran,"
presupposes that this departure had been al-
ready
mentioned. And so in fact it is in what
immedi-
1 An apt illustration is here afforded of
the facility with which critics,
by slightly
shifting the lines of division, can serve the purpose which
they have in
view, or can alter the complexion of the alleged docu-
ments with
which they are dealing. Tuch (Genesis,
p. xliii, note) was
inclined to
assign xii. 5, 6, 8; xiii. 18 to P. This
would account for
the place of
Sarah's death and burial (xxiii. 2, 19), which otherwise
there is
nothing in P to explain. Knobel reaches
a like result by giv-
ing P xii.
4b, 5, 6, 8a, 9. The connection in J was
thus broken, but
that was no
objection on the supplementary hypothesis, of which they
were
advocates, that J was not an independent document, but con-
sisted of
sections and paragraphs added to P. Schrader gives vs. 6a,
8a, 9, to E,
on the ground that one from the northern kingdom, as he is
assumed to
be, would feel more interest in associating Abram with She-
chem and
Bethel, than J from the kingdom of Judah.
Dillmann ob-
jects that
6b and 8b cannot be separated from 6a and Sa, an objection
equally
valid, as is shown in the text, against his own removal of ver.
5, which is
a necessary link between ver. 4 and ver. 6.
THE CALL OF ABRAM (CH. XII.
1-9) 173
ately
precedes (vs. 1-4a). But this, we are
told, belongs
to J. So that it is necessary to assume that the
prelim-
inary part
of P's narrative has been omitted, and these
verses from
J substituted for it. The attempt has
been
made to
confirm this by alleging that a special title,
"These
are the generations of Abram," must originally
have stood
at the beginning of Abram's life 1 in P, as in
the case of
Isaac (xxv. 19), and Jacob (xxxvii. 2), since a
separate
section must have been devoted to this greatest
of the
patriarchs, instead of including him under "the
generations
of Terah," who is of much less account, and
whose life
is brought to a formal close in the preceding
chapter (xi.
32); but that R, in replacing the opening
words of P
by those of J, dropped the title of the former
as
well. Plausible as this may sound, it is
clearly a mis-
take. For--
1.
Even if such a substitution had been made, it would
not account
for the omission of the title, had it been ap-
propriate
and originally stood there; for like titles occur
at the head
of sections which are wholly J's (ii. 4), or in
whose
opening chapters there is not a single sentence
from P
(xxxvii. 2).
2.
The proper title of this section is "the generations "
not of Abram
but "of Terah," since it deals not only with
Abram but
other descendants of Terah as well, who are
accordingly
for this reason introduced to the reader at
the outset (xi.
27, 29), viz., Lot, who journeyed with
Abram to
Canaan, and Nahor, whose descendants are re-
cited
without a separate title (xxii. 20-24), preparatory
to the
marriage of Isaac into this family of his kin-
dred (ch.
xxiv.). Bruston suggests that these last
should
have had a
special title, "the generations of Nahor,"
1So Knobel, Wellhausen,
Dillmann, and others, following a sugges-
tion of
Ewald in his review of Delitzsch on Genesis in his Jahrblicher d.
Bibl.
Wissenschaft for 1851-52, p. 40.
174 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
and been
inserted at the close of ch. xi. No
doubt the
author might
have disposed his matter differently, and
included it
under different titles, if he had seen fit to
do so. But the question is not what he might have
done,
nor what in
the opinion of the critics he ought to have
done, but
what he actually did.
3.
While it is true that in several instances the sections
of Genesis
terminate with the death of the person named
in the
title, this is not necessarily nor invariably the
case, e.g.,
the generations of Adam (ch. v.). "The gener-
ations of
Terah" are not occupied with the life of Terah,
which is
only the starting-point. The aim of the
section
is to trace
the fortunes of the three families sprung from
him, so far
as they came within the proper scope of the
sacred
history. The limitation of this section
to xi. 27-
32 makes it
altogether unmeaning. It becomes still
more
glaringly so on the critical hypothesis that vs. 28-
30 are from
a different document J, and do not belong to
the section
in its original form in P; a view of which
Dillmann
justly said, in his first edition, one can then see
no reason
for a Terah section at all.
4.
The generations of Abram would be an unsuitable
designation
of a history, the emphasis and interest of
which for
several successive chapters turns upon the pa-
triarch's
childlessness.
5.
That this entire section is, in the intention of the
author,
included under the title "the generations of Te-
rah,"
not of Abram, further appears from the opening
of the next
section (xxv. 19), where the genealogy is
linked
directly with xi. 27, 32, by beginning "Abraham
begat
Isaac."
No title has been dropped, therefore, from
the begin-
ning of ch.
xii.; consequently no presumption can be
drawn from
that source in favor of different narrators.
It may be
added that as xii. 4b requires 4a to make it in-
THE CALL OF ABRAM (CH. XII. 1-9) 175
telligible,
and this is indissolubly bound to vs. 1-3, so
xii. 1 is
linked as firmly with the preceding chapter.
J's
account
cannot have begun with ch. xii. Dillmann (1st ed.),
nor with xi.
29 Dillmann (2nd), not with xi. 28 Dillmann
(3rd) , for
in each case Abram is introduced abruptly
and without
explanation; and xi. 27 P is required to
precede
them. Thus P is linked with J, and J
with P,
each
dependent on the other to supply the needed ex-
planation of
what it contains, neither complete without
the other,
both fitting accurately together and precisely
filling each
other's gaps. Is this harmonious
production
a piece of
patchwork? Can extracts from wholly
inde-
pendent
documents be made to match in this manner,
however
skilfully arranged? And how do those
repeated
omissions,
now from one document, now from the other,
which must
of necessity be assumed by the advocates of
the current
critical hypothesis, comport with what is al-
leged of the
conduct of R elsewhere, his concern to pre-
serve the
briefest and most scanty statements of his
sources,
even when they add nothing to fuller narratives
drawn from
elsewhere, the insertion being detected by its
being a
superfluous and unmeaning duplication? (Cf.
vii. 7-9
with vs. 13-16; ix. 18, 19; xiii. 6, lIb, 12a; xix.
29.)
MARKS OF P.
The reference of xii. 4b, 5, to P is
argued by Hupfeld
and others
on the following grounds :
(1) Because ver. 5 repeats 4a. But--
a.
This is no mere identical and superfluous repetition.
A general
statement of obedience to the divine command
(ver. 4a) is
followed by a more particular account of
what was
done in accordance with it (ver.5).
Nothing is
more common
in the Hebrew historians than brief sum-
maries of
this sort followed by fuller and more specific
176 THE GENERARTIONS OF TERAH
details,
where no one imagines that there is a diversity
of
writers. So Gen. vii. 5, 7 sqq.; xxxvii.
5-8; xli. 45c,
46b; xlii.
19, 20c, 24c, 26 sqq.; Judg. iv. 15c, 17; 1 Sam.
xvii. 49,
50; 2 Sam. xv. 16a, 17; 2 Kin. xi. 16c, 20b.
b.
Verse 5 is indispensable to make the connection
between vs.
4a and 6. In 4a Abram goes forth, it is
not
said
whither. In ver. 6 he is already in
Canaan and
passing
through it. It is presupposed that he
had ar-
rived there,
and that the name of the country has been
made known
to the reader and need not be repeated.
But the
missing statements on these points are only
found in
ver. 5.
(2) xii. 5b is parallel to xi. 31b, and
evidently its con-
tinuation.
This is unhesitatingly admitted, and is quite
consistent
with the
unity of the book, of which it is a natural se-
quence.
(3) Verse 5 has words and phrases peculiar
to P. The
following
instances are adduced, viz.:
1. Hqa.y.iv took, as in xi. 31;
xxxvi. 6; xlvi. 6. But it is
used in
precisely the same manner in J (xxiv. 51; xxxii.
23, 24 (E.
V., vs. 22, 23); xliii. 13; xlvii. 2); and in E.
(xx. 14;
xxii. 3; xlv. 18, 19).
2. wUcr;
substance, goods, and
wcarA to
get, gather, are
claimed as
undoubted characteristics of P, but, as it
would
appear, on very slender grounds. The
verb and
noun occur
together in four passages (Gen. xii. 5; xxxi.
18; xxxvi.
6, 7; xlvi. 6); and the noun alone in six other
places in
Genesis, and twice besides in the rest of the
Pentateuch. The critics themselves refer it six times to
another than
P (Gen. xiv. 11, 12, 16, 21; xv. 14; Num.
xvi.
32). Once, and once only, it stands in a
context by
common
consent referred to P (Num. xxxv. 3). In
every
other
instance the verse or paragraph in which it is
found is cut
out of a J or E context, or one of disputed
THE CALL OF ABRAM (CH. XII. 1-9) 177
origin, and
is assigned to P mainly because of this very
word which
is arbitrarily assumed to belong to him.
3.
wp,n, person,
is not peculiar to P, as appears from its
occurrence
in Gen. ii. 7; xiv. 21 ; Deut. x. 22; xxiv. 7;
xxvii. 25;
Josh. x. 28-39; xi. 11; not to speak of Gen.
xlvi. 15-27,
which several eminent critics ascribe to
another than
P. Dillmann ("Genesis," p. 230) remarks
that
"it was scarcely possible to avoid using wp,n, for per-
sons of both
sexes, free and slave," and (" Exodus, Leviti-
cus,"
p. 535) that it is not a certain indication of P.
4. NfanaK;
Cr,x, land of
Canaan, is classed
as character-
istic of P;
but it occurs repeatedly in both J and E, viz.:
xlii. 5, 7,
13, 29, 32; xliv. 8; xlv. 17, 25 ; xlvi. 31; xlvii. 1,
4, 13, 14,
15; 1. 5, where, as Dillmann remarks, it stands
in contrast
with the land of Egypt. In like manner
it is
used in the
passages now in question to designate the land
promised to
Abram (xvii. 8), in contrast with Haran from
which he
came (xii. 5; xvi. 3), and with the cities of the
plain
selected by Lot (xiii. 12).
5.
It appears, accordingly, that these words, whether
regarded
singly or collectively, afford no indication of P
as
distinguished from the other so-called documents.
There is,
however, a striking resemblance in the phrase-
ology of
xii. 5; xxxi. 18; xxxvi. 6; xlvi. 6; which cre-
ates a
strong presumption, if not a certainty, that these
verses are
all from the same hand. The critics
refer them
all alike to
P; but they do so in spite of the fact that
xii. 5 is in
a J context, xxxi. 18 and xlvi. 6, in an E con-
text, and
that of xxxvi. 6 is disputed. Their
assignment
to P is
altogether arbitrary. They are made to
sustain
each other
in this, while there is no reason for sundering
anyone of
them from the connection in which it stands,
and
attributing it to a different document, but the mere
will of the
critics. Words descriptive of the
possessions
of the
patriarchs are naturally grouped together when
178 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
mention is
made of their migrations. But the only
rea-
son for
alleging these words to be characteristic of P is
that these
migrations are assigned to him in the arbi-
trary manner
already described. The critics have
them-
selves
created the criterion, to which they then confi-
dently point
in justification of the partition which they
have made.
(4)
This statement could not have been lacking in P.
This is a
frank avowal of the motive by which the
critics are
actuated in rending ver. 5 from its connection.
It is
necessary in order to make out an appearance of
continuity
for this supposititious document. Instead
of
an argument
for the hypothesis it is simply a confession
of the
straits to which it is reduced.
(5)
The mention of Abram's age in ver. 4b is held to
be a
sufficient reason for ascribing it to P.
a.
It is a purely arbitrary assumption that dates and
statements
of men's ages are to be referred to P, even
when, as in
the present instance, the context in which
they are
embedded is derived by the critics from some
other
document. A particularly glaring case
occurs in
xli. 46,
where Joseph's age when he stood before Pharaoh
is assigned
to P, though there is nothing in that docu-
ment to
which to attach it. It is easy to
manufacture a
criterion of
this sort, and carry it relentlessly through,
and then
point to the tact that all the dates are to be
found in P
in evidence of the correctness of the rule.
They are
there for the simple reason that this is where
the critics
have put them. It has no further
significance
if the
various statements of the ages of the patriarchs,
when put
together, yield a consistent chronology;1 this is
1 It may be observed here that there is no
conflict in the chronology
between xii.
4b and xi. 32; though, if there were, this would be no
argument for
a diversity of writers, since in the esteem of the critics
both belong
to the same document. Abram left Haran
many years be-
THE CALL OF ABRAM (CR. XII. 1-9) 179
no excuse
for critical surgery, but is only one indication
more that
the book of Genesis is woven together too
firmly to be
rent asunder, except by a violence which will
destroy the
fabric. Inconsistently enough, where a
dif-
ferent
motive operates, the critics allow that E recorded
Joseph's age
(Gen. 1. 22, 26), and that of Joshua (Josh.
xxiv. 29) in
which P, as a native of Judah, is presumed
to have less
interest; and even that of Caleb of the tribe
of Judah
(Josh. xiv. 7, 10), which occurs in a connection
that
constrains them to refer it to E.
b.
4b presupposes 4a. It is not a
statement that
Abram went
forth from Haran, but a declaration of his
age at the
time, implying that the fact of his having done
so had been
already mentioned; and for this reason it
cannot
connect with xi. 31, as the critics propose, where
no such
affirmation is made.
(6)
According to vs. 4b, 5, Abram simply continues the
migration to
Canaan begun by his father (xi. 31), acting
from the
same impulse, and from natural motives but
without any
divine call; whereas ver. 1 represents his
journey as
undertaken at the divine command, Abram
not knowing
whither he was to go.
But there is no diversity of
representation implying
that these
verses have been drawn from diverse sources.
On the
contrary they are mutually supplementary.
The
movement
initiated by Terah to find more desirable
quarters was
carried out by Abram at Jehovah's bid-
ding, who
guided him to the land to which his father had
originally
intended to go. And with this the
statement
fore Terah's
death. Only the writer, according to his uniform method,
completes
Terah's life before proceeding to that of Abram (cf. xxv. 7;
xxxv.
29). The Samaritan text, in order to
relieve this imaginary diffi-
culty,
reduces the age of Terah from two hundred and five to one hun-
dred and
forty-five years. Acts vii. 4 follows
the order of the narrative.
not that of
time.
180 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
of xv. 7 is
in full accord. Jehovah providentially
led
Abram to
accompany Terah to Haran, and then by an
immediate
call brought him to Canaan. The divine
call
which is
expressed in ver. 1 is implied in 4b, according
to which
Abram leaves Haran in the lifetime of his
father. Why should he leave Terah behind him if they
were
migrating under one common impulse?
Knobel assigns vs. 6, 8a, i 9, also to P;
to which Dill-
mann objects
that P shows no interest in connecting the
patriarchs
with the holy places of later times, though he
excepts
xxxv. 9 from this remark. Schrader
refers 6a,
8a, 9, to E,
who, as a North-Israelite, inclined to link
Abram with
Shechem and Bethel. With this Dillmann
and Kittel
concur so far as to regard E as the source from
which J, as
the author of vrs. 6-9, drew the mention of
these
localities. This is based upon the
notion that the
recorded
lives of the patriarchs are not the recital of ac-
tual events,
but a reflection of the ideas or later times,
and that the
places where they are said to have dwelt or
worshipped
are so designated because of local sanctua-
ries
established there in subsequent ages, to which credit
was attached
by stories that they had been hallowed by
the presence
of their ancestors. All speculations
about
authorship
which spring from this false conception of
the
patriarchal history, are, of course, entirely baseless.
Meanwhile the unity of the entire
paragraph (vs. 1.-9)
is
obyious. Verse 8b presupposes 8a, and
cannot be sep-
arated from
it; 8a presupposes ver. 6, and this in its turn
ver. 5,
which defines the land referred to and mentions
the arrival
there, which is implied, but not stated, in ver.
6. Again, 4b presupposes 4a, and this vs.
1-3. The
grant of the
land in ver. 7, notwithstanding its present
occupancy by
others (6b), is with express reference to the
promise in
ver. 1. And ver. 9 is the natural
continua-
tion of the
marches in vs. 6, 8. All is thus
concatenated
THE CALL OF ABRAM (CH. XII. 1-9) 181
together in
a manner to defy critical severance. On the
assumption
that vs. 10-20 is an interpolation, it has been
argued that
ver. 9 was inserted by R as a connective.
This
inference is by no means necessary, even if the as-
sumption
were correct; but it falls as a matter of course
if the
latter is shown to be untrue, which will be done
presently.
MARKS OF J.
Dillmann finds the following criteria of
the document
J in
vs.l-4a, 6-9, viz.: 1, The divine
call; 2, divine wor-
ship; 3, hvhy Jehovah;
4, hmAdAxEhA tOHP;wmi-lKA all the fam-
ilies of the
earth; 5, b; j`rabini be blessed in; 6,
ll.eqi
curse.
It has been
before shown that there is a reason for the
occurrence
of the name Jehovah here and elsewhere in
the life of
Abram quite independent of the question of
documents;
also that patriarchal worship is as a rule
connected
with that name; and there is an equally ob-
vious reason
why the call of Abram should likewise be
similarly
connected. It will be observed that the
lin-
guistic
criteria alleged are all limited to one verse (ver.
3). The phrase, "all the families of the
earth," occurs
but once
besides in the Pentateuch (xxviii. 14), where
the same
promise is repeated to Jacob. The other
repe-
titions of
this promise are by the critics referred to R
(xviii. 18;
xxii. 18; xxvi. 4), and there the equivalent ex-
pression Cr,xAhA
yyeOG lKo all the
nations of the earth, is
used.
The Niphal
of j`riBA to bless,
occurs but three times in the
Old
Testament, each time in this same promise (xii. 3;
xxviii. 14
J; and xviii. 18 R). Since these
expressions
are limited
to this one promise, and occur in J but once
in addition
to the verse now before us, they cannot be
classed as
indications of the existence of a separate doc-
ument so
called. Moreover, the promise of a
blessing
to all
nations was given three times to Abram on occa-
182 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
sions of
special note (xii. 3; xviii. 18; xxii. 18), once to
Isaac (xxvi.
4), and once to Jacob (xxviii. 14); on all other
occasions in
J (xii. 7; xiii. 15, 16; xv. 5, 7, 18), or P,
(xvii. 4-8;
xxviii. 3, 4; xxxv. 11, 12) attention is especially
directed to
the gift of Canaan and of a numerous poster-
ity without
any mention of their relation to the would at
large. And the limitation in these instances is not
sug-
gestive of
the peculiarity of a particular document, but
grows out of
the circumstances of each case. That the
phrases now
in question could have no place in these re-
stricted
promises is obvious. Neither their
occurrence
nor their
omission can afford a plea for a diversity of
documents. It remains to be added that while the pre-
cise
combinations and forms above adduced do not occur
in P, for
the reason now given, the words themselves are
found in
passages ascribed to P; thus hHAPAw;mi family,
very
frequently, and even in application to the nations
of mankind
(x. 5, 20, 31, 32); hmAdAxE earth (i. 25; vi. 20;
ix. 2); j`reBe bless (Gen i. 22, 28; ii. 3; v. 2; ix. 1, etc.).
One word remains of the alleged
characteristics of J,
ll.eqi curse, which is as little to the purpose as the
preced-
ing. Apart from Gen. xii. 3 it occurs but once in
J
(viii. 21);
four times in P (Lev. xxiv. 11, 14, 15, 23);
once in E
(Josh. xxiv. 9) ; once in D (Deut. xxiii. 5, E.
V., ver. 4);
twice in the Book of the Covenant (Ex. xxi.
17; xxii.
27, E. V., ver. 28); three times in the Holiness
Laws (Lev.
xix. 14; xx. 9 bis).
ABRAM IN EGYPT (VS. 10-20).
Three instances are recorded in which the
wives of
the
patriarchs attracted the attention of monarchs, and
through the
prevarication of their husbands were
brought into
peril, from which by God's providence
they were
delivered, viz.: Sarai at the court of
Pharaoh
ABRAM IN EGYPT (CH. XII. 10-20) 183
in Egypt
(xii. 10-20); and again with Abimelech, king
of Gerar
(ch. xx.); and Rebekah before another king of
the same
name (xxvi. 6-11). These are to the
critics va-
riant accounts
of the same event, or different forms of
the same
legend. Knobel regards ch. xx. as the
original
narrative,
and chs. xii. and xxvi. as later modifications of
the
legend. Kuenen ("Hexateuch,"
p. 252) says that a
saga, of
which Isaac was originally the subject, has here
and in ch.
xx. been transferred to Abram. Delitzsch
ventures no
positive affirmation, but seems in doubt
whether some
duplication or transposition may not have
taken
place. "It is enough," he
says, "for us to know
that the three
histories are three traditions contained in
ancient
sources, that the redactor deserves our thanks
for not
suppressing one in favor of the others, and that
all these
attest God's grace and faithfulness, which ren-
der the
interference of human weakness and sin with
his plan of
grace harmless, and even tributary to its suc-
cessful
issue." But the value of the
religious lesson is de-
pendent on
the reality of the occurrence. Is this a
Jew-
ish notion
of God embodied in a fiction, or is it a fact in
which God
has himself revealed his character? A
dis-
trust of
well-accredited facts because of a certain meas-
ure of
similitude to other facts would throw history into
confusion. Must we regard the battles of Bull Run,
fought in
successive years on the same spot, and termi-
nating the
same way, but in different periods of the war
and under
different commanders, as variant and conflict-
ing accounts
of some one transaction that can no longer
be
accurately identified? Why might not
Abram repeat
in Gerar
what he had done in Egypt, when it was under-
stood
between him and Sarai that they were to pass for
brother and
sister in "every place " to which they
should come
(xx. 13)? And why may not Isaac, whose
life was so
largely patterned after that of his father, have
184 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
been misled
into an imitation of his error in this in-
stance?
Wellhausen claims that vs. 10-20 is a
later addition to
the text of
J, because Lot was not with Abram in Egypt,
though
according to J he was with him both before (ver.
4a) and
after (xiii. 5); and Abram was at the very same
place in
xiii. 4 as in xii. 8, from which it may be inferred
that he had
not meanwhile changed his position.
Dill-
mann thinks
that the true place of this narrative in J
was after
the separation of Abram and Lot (ch. xiii.), and
that it was
transposed by R to remove it further from ch.
xx. But the visit to Egypt is confirmed by xxvi.
1, 2;
the presence
of Lot there by the express statement, "Lot
with
him" (xiii. 1); and Abram is explicitly said to have
retraced his
steps to the point from which he had started
(vs. 3,
4). These positive confirmations are by
a stroke
of the
critics' pen ejected from the text, and attributed to
R, for no
imaginable reason but that they nullify a base-
less
critical conjecture. Lot's name does not
occur in
xii. 10-20,
because Abram was the principal party and
there was
nothing to record respecting Lot. For
the
same reason
he is not mentioned in vs. 6-9, nor Aner,
Eshcol, and
Mamre, in xiv. 14-23 (cf. vs. 13, 24); nor
Nahor in xi.
31, whose migration to Haran can only be
inferred
from allusions subsequently made (xxiv. 10).
It
may also be
remarked that xvi. 1 lends an incidental
confirmation
to xii. 16; Pharaoh's gift to Abram ex-
plains the
presence of an Egyptian maid in his house-
hold.
Dillmann notes a few words and phrases in
this para-
graph as
indicative of J. These and others of the
same
sort noted
in other cases are of no account for two rea-
sons. Inasmuch as the bulk of the narrative is
given to
J or E, and
only scattered scraps to P, the great major-
ity of words
appropriate to narrative will, of course, be
SEPARATION FROM LOT (CH.
XIII.) 185
found in J
or E, and comparatively few in P.
Besides,
several of
the words adduced occur but rarely even in
J, and
cannot, therefore, with any propriety be held to
be
characteristic of his style. If their
absence from a
large
proportion of the paragraphs of J does not prove
these to be
from a different pen, how can their absence
from the
paragraphs of P be urged in proof of a diversity
of
documents, especially if there was no occasion to use
them?
MARKS OF J.
1. hvhy Jehovah,
explained already.
2. l;
byFyhe treated well, ver. 16, only once besides in J
(Num. x.
32), and twice in E (Ex. i. 20; Josh. xxiv. 20);
in the same
sense with a different preposition Gen.
xxxii. 10,
13, E. V., vs. 9, 12 J; without a preposition
Lev. v.4 P.
3. xnA I pray thee
(ver. 13), often in J and E, but once
at least in
P (Gen. xxxiv. 8), perhaps also Num. xx. 10
(so Noldeke
and SchI'ader).
4. xnA-hn.ehi behold now (ver. 11; xvi. 2; xviii. 27, 31; xix.
2, 8, 19,
20; xxvii. 2 J).
5. rUbfEBa
for the sake of (vs. 13, 16), always
referred to
J, E, or
R. See ch. vi.-ix., Marks of J, No.6.
6. rUbfEBa
because of
(ver. 13), only twice besides in J (xxx.
27 ; xxxix.
5); in D (Deut. i. 37; xv. 10; xviii. 12); all in the
Hexateuch.
7. tAyWifA
txz.o-hma what
is this that thou hast done
(ver. 18;
Gen. iii.13;
xxvi. 10; Ex. xiv. 11 J; Gen. xxix. 25; xlii.
28; Ex. xiv.
5 E); once without a verb (Ex. xiii. 14 J).
SEPARATION FROM LOT (CR. XIII.).
The critics divide this chapter thus:
J, vs. 1-5., 7-11a, 12b-18; P, vs. 6, 11b, 12a.
186 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
Knobel assigns to P, vs. 3a,6, 10a,c, 12.
18a. \
Schrader parcels the portion of J between
J and E
thus:
J, vs. 1, 4, 7b, l0b, 13-17, 18b; E, vs.
2, 3, 5, 7a, 8-
10a, 11a,
12b, 18a.
Wellhausen gives to R vs. 1, 3, 4, and
regards vs. 14-
17 as a
later addition to J.
Dillmann gives R the words, "and Lot
with him," in
ver. 1,
together with vs. 3, 4.
GROUNDS OF PARTITION.
The manipulation of the text attributed to
R by Well-
hausen and
Dillmann simply means that it is incompatible
with their
notions respecting xi. 10-20. Verses 1,
3, 4 de-
scribe
Abram's return from Egypt with his wife and Lot,
and his
proceeding by successive stages to the point
from which
he had set out. This shows conclusively
that
he had
visited Egypt, and had visited it at that time,
as recorded
in the preceding chapter. Wellhausen, to
whom the
Egyptian episode is a later fabrication, is
obliged to
rid himself of vs. 1, 3, 4, altogether.
Dill-
mann, in
whose view it occurred after Abram's separa-
tion from
Lot, is also compelled to reject vs. 3, 4, but he
allows ver.
1 to stand as the conclusion of the narrative
in its
original position, only without the words "and Lot
with
him," which would wreck his whole assumption. It
is then
claimed that vs. 2, 5, connect directly with xii. 8.
That such a factitious connection is
possible proves
nothing as
to the original constitution of the text.
It
warrants no
suspicion that the omitted portions do not
properly
belong in their present position.
Paragraphs
and sections
can be dropped from any narrative or from
any piece of
composition that ever was written without
destroying
its apparent continuity. This is
particularly
SEPARATION FROM LOT (CH. XIII.) 187
the case
with an episode like the present, which, though it
has its
importance and appropriateness in its place, might
be thrown
out without disturbing the general current of
the history.
The fact is that the connection is perfect
as it stands,
and there is
not the slightest reason for calling in the
aid of R
except to patch up an unfounded critical con-
jecture. Abram returns (ver. 1) with his wife and pos-
sessions
from Egypt to the southern district of Palestine
through which
he had passed on his way to Egypt (xii.
9). The presence of Lot with him, to which there
was
no occasion
to allude before, is now mentioned as pre-
paratory to
the separation which was shortly to take
place, and
to which the whole narrative is now tending.
The riches
of Abram (ver. 2), who advances to his former
position in
the land by stated marches (vs. 3, 4:), (the ex-
pression is
suggestive of the progress of a large company
or caravan),
and the flocks and herds of Lot (ver. 5),
picture the
situation. Then follows in ver. 6
precisely
what might
be expected--the land was incapable of sup-
porting them
together. The result was strife between
their
respective herdmen (ver. 7a), and the difficulty was
aggravated
(ver. 7b) by the presence of the native in-
habitants
who tenanted the region.
The exigencies of the divisive hypothesis
make it nec-
essary to
find material for P as well as J in this chapter.
In xix. 29,
which is referred to P, it appears that Lot
had parted
from Abram, and the reader must have been
made aware
of the fact. In order to find such a
state-
ment in P
the critics propose to rend ver. 6 from the
closely
concatenated paragraph just reviewed. In
justi-
fication of
this it is urged.
1.
Verse 6 is superfluous beside the detailed account
of the
separation (vs. 7 sqq.) and is somewhat inconsis-
tent with it
in tracing the separation to the general rea-
188 THE GENERARTIONS OF TERAH
son of the
greatness of their possessions instead of its
special occasion
the strife of the herdmen; and its last
clause goes
beyond what immediately follows and extends
to the
separation itself (ver. 12). But--
a.
This disregards the frequent usage of Hebrew
writers to
state first in a summary manner what is subse-
quently
unfolded in detail. Thus, Judg. xx. 35,
36a, pre-
cedes the
more particular recital, vs. 36b-46; 1 Kin. v. 9
is expanded
in vs. 10-14 (E. V., iv. 29 in vs.30-34); vi.
14 in vs.
15-36; xi. 3b in vs.4-8; 2 Kin. xxi. 2 in vs. 3-9.
See other
examples of a like nature given above under
xii. 5.
b.
Verse 6 is neither superfluous beside ver. 7, nor in-
consistent
with it. It explains the occasion of the
strife
that
followed. And it is important as showing
that a
peaceful
separation was the only available remedy.
The
strife did
not spring from petty or accidental causes,
which were
capable of adjustment. It was inherent
in
the
situation. The land could not furnish
pasture and
wells enough
for their superabundant flocks. Collision
was
inevitable if they remained together. By
erasing
ver. 6 this
real and pressing necessity disappears.
It is
to this that
the statements respecting the largeness of
the
possessions of both Abram and Lot were meant to
lead up (vs.
2, 5). It is this which is emphasized by
the
reference to
the Canaanite and the Perizzite (ver. 7),
which has no
meaning otherwise. Ver. 6 is thus essen-
tial in the
connection, and cannot have belonged to an-
other
document.
2.
Its close correspondence with xxxvi. 7.
The expressions in the two passages are
almost identi-
cal, which
speaks strongly for their common authorship.
And this
cannot be too strongly affirmed and insisted
upon in the
interest of the unity of the book. This
is
no argument
for diversity of documents, and no proof
SEPARATION FROM LOT (CH.
XIII.) 189
that ver. 6
belongs to any other than its present context.
By an
arbitrary dictum of the critics the four principal
passages
recording the migrations of the patriarchs (xii.
5; xxxi. 18;
xxxvi. 6, 7; xlvi. 6), which are all of one
stamp and
evidence themselves to be from the same
hand, are
referred to a document distinct from the con-
text in
which they stand, and their prominent words are
classed as
criteria of that document. This is then
made
a base of
operations for forcing other passages out of
their proper
connection, and thus building up this sup-
posititious
document. But the argument partakes too
much of the
character of a vicious circle to be convinc-
ing.
The remainder of the chapter is bound as
closely to-
gether as is
that portion already considered.
Recogniz-
ing the real
occasion of the strife, and the only practicable
mode of
terminating or avoiding it, Abram (vs. 8, 9)
proposes a
separation and generously offers his younger
kinsman his
choice of any part of the land. Lot
chose
in
consequence the fertile plain of the Jordan (vs. 10, 11).
Thus they
separated, Abram dwelling in the land
of Canaan,
and Lot in the cities of the plain, moving his
tent as far
as Sodom (ver. 12). The wickedness of
this
city is then
remarked upon (ver. 13), to give an intima-
tion of its
approaching doom and of the issue of Lot's
unwise
choice.
Under the same pressure as before, the
critics here pro-
pose to
sunder vs. 11b, 12a from its context and give it
to P. In favor of this it is urged--
1.
Verse 11b is unnecessary after 11a; and 12a repre-
sents Lot as
having a fixed abode, while according to 11a
and 12b he
led the wandering life of a nomad in tents.
But--a. After the mention of Lot's removal eastward
it
was still
important to state distinctly that this effected a
separation
between him and Abram. This is the very
190 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
point of the
narrative, as is indicated by the triple repe-
tition of
the word; in ver. 9, "separate thyself," ver. 14,
"after
that Lot was separated," ver. 11, "and they sepa-
rated." This last cannot be severed from the other
two.
With all the
emphasis thrown upon the fact of separation
the critics
would have us suppose that while it was pro-
posed by
Abram (ver. 9), and mention is made of what
occurred
after it had taken place (ver. 14), the act of sep-
arating was
not itself noted; and that the record of sep-
aration in
the text, with its evident allusion to Abram's
proposal, is
a fragment from a different document.
b.
The structure of the sentences forbids the partition
made by the
critics. The repetition of Lot, as the
sub-
ject of the
second verb in ver. 11, can only be explained
by its being
contrasted with Abram's remaining behind
in Canaan;
ver. 12a is, therefore, necessary to complete
the
construction. Kautzsch and Socin concede
as much
when they
say that J must have had such a clause but
R omitted it
in order to adopt that of P. Still
further,
in ver. 14
Jehovah precedes the verb of which it is the
subject. This is also due to contrast with ver. 12,
where
the same
phenomenon twice appears. What Abram
did,
and Lot did,
and Jehovah did, stand in manifest rela-
tion; and
ver. 12 cannot accordingly be separated from
ver. 14 as
an interjected fragment from a different docu-
ment.
c.
As to the alleged diversity in Lot's mode of life, it
is plain
that R, or whoever gave the text its present form,
saw none, or
he would not have joined mutually incon-
sistent
clauses without explanation. And such
diversity,
if it
existed, would prove inconvenient to the critics; for
in ch.
xix. (J) Lot is not leading a tent life,
but dwelling
in one of
the cities of the plain, in accordance with what
they here
assign to P, but conflicting with what they as-
sign to
J. And in ver. 18 the same two verbs are
com-
SEPARATION FROM LOT 191
bined in
relation to Abram, which are used of Lot in
ver. 12a and
b, and are here set in opposition by the
critics. Where is the difficulty in assuming, as both
xiii. 6, 12a
(P), and xiii. 12b, ch. xix. (J) require, that Lot
took up his
quarters in one of the cities, while those in
charge of
his flocks lived in tents on the plain?
2.
"Cities of the plain" (xiii. 12) corresponds with
the
expression in xix. 29 P, as against xiii. 10, 11, "the
plain of
Jordan," and 12b, "Sodom," expressions of J.
But a purely factitious difference is
created here by
arbitrarily
dividing a sentence, and giving part to one
document and
part to another. "The plain of
Jordan"
differs from
"Sodom" as much as the latter differs from
the
"cities of the plain;" so that if the latter can be
urged in
proof of diversity of authorship, the former may
likewise;
and it would follow that what the critics here
assign to J
should be partitioned between different writ-
ers. "The plain of Jordan" only occurs
xiii. 10, 11;
elsewhere it
is simply "the plain," alike in xix. 17, 25,
28, assigned
to J, and in xiii. 12, xix. 29, assigned to P.
Moreover,
according to J (xiii. 10; xix. 24, 25, 28; cf. x.
19), there
was more than one city in the plain, so that P's
phrase is
completely justified.l
3.
The verses assigned to P (vs. 6, 11b, 12a) have
words and
phrases peculiar to that document. But
the
futility of
this plea is obvious on the slightest examina-
tion.
1"It is alleged that one
narrator calls the cities about the Jordan 'the
cities of
the plain,' and the other 'all the plain of Jordan.' But the
latter
cannot of itself denote those cities, but only the great plain by
the
Jordan. Therefore it stands (xiii.
10,1.1) quite properly of the land
which Lot
chose as well watered, whilst with equal propriety Lot dwells
in the
cities of the plain (xiii. 12), and these cities are destroyed by God
(xix.
29)."--Ewald, Komposition d. Genesis, pp. 118, 119.
192 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
MARKS OF P
Dillmann specifies the following:
1. wUkr; substance. See word
No.2, under xii. 5.
2. xWAnA to bear
(ver. 6), is claimed for P, by which can
only be
meant that it occurs once, though only once, in
a precisely
similar connection-xxxvi. 7--a verse arbitra-
rily
ascribed to P. The verb itself occurs
repeatedly
in J and
E. It is used in the sense of
"bearing" in J
(Gen. iv.
13; vii. 17; Num. xi. 14; xiv. 33), and in E (Ex.
xviii. 22).
3. bwayA to dwell (vs.
6, 12), is also claimed for P,
whereas it
occurs repeatedly in J and E, not only in
other
applications, but with express reference to the
patriarchs
in Canaan: J, xiii. 18; xix. 30 (Lot);
xxv.
11b; xxvi.
6, 17; E, xx. 1, 15; xxii. 19; xxxv. 1.
4. NfanaK; Cr,x, land of Canaan (ver. 12). See word No.4,
under xii.
5.
5. rKAKiha
yrefA cities of
the plain only occurs
xiii. 12; xix.
29; cf. ver.
25. See above.
The assertion that xix. 29 has been
transposed from its
proper
position, and that it was originally attached to
xiii. 12a,
is altogether groundless, and merely betrays the
embarrassment
created by sundering it from the connec-
tion in
which it stands, and to which, as we shall see
hereafter,
it is firmly bound both by its matter and form,
the change
in the divine name being for a sufficient rea-
son and not
suggestive of a different writer.
The significance of Lot's separating from
Abram ap-
pears from
the enlarged promise, of which it furnishes
the
occasion, of all the land to him and to his seed forever,
and the
multiplication of his seed as the dust of the earth
(vs.14-17). The thoroughly arbitrary manner in which
the critics
deal with the text, rejecting from it whatever
SEPARATION FROM LOT (CH. XIII.) 193
does not
correspond with their preconceived notions, may
be
illustrated by Wellhausen's treatment of this passage.
He says:1
"Grounds of a general nature, which will con-
vince few,
move me to regard xiii. 14-17 as a later addi-
tion. It is not the habit of J to let God speak so
without
ceremony to
the patriarchs; he is always particular to nar-
rate a
theophany in a place precisely indicated, which is
then
hallowed by this appearing for all time."
To this
Dillmann
very properly replies that xii. 1 is of itself suf-
ficient to
show that God does not always speak to Abram
in
theophanies in the passages assigned to J; besides
the place in
which the present communication was made
is
designated (xiii. 3, 4). It may be added
further, that
the notion
of Wellhausen and other critics that the stories
of divine
manifestations to the patriarchs originated in
the local
sanctuaries of later times, inverts the order of
cause and
effect. It was not the sanctity attached
to
certain
spots by the Israelites which gave rise to the
stories of
the theophanies; but it was the fact of these
theophanies
and the sacred associations thence resulting
which led to
the establishment of illegitimate worship in
these places
in after-ages.
MARKS OF J
This chapter, exclusive of the verses
referred to P and
R, is
claimed for J on two grounds, viz.:
(1) Its allusions to other J passages,
e.g., "garden of
the
LORD," ver. 10 to chs. ii., iii.; the wickedness of
Sodom, ver.
13 to ch. xix.
But apart from the fact that these J
passages did not
themselves
belong to an independent document, the chap-
ter is
likewise linked to so-called P passages; to xix. 29
P, which
implies Lot's separation from Abram and his re-
1Composition
d. Hexateuchs, p. 23.
194 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
moval to the
cities of the plain here recorded. The
attempt
is indeed
made to evade this by slicing vs. 6, 11 b, 12a, from
the rest of
the narrative; but this has been shown to be
impracticable. Also to xxiii. 2, 19; xxxv. 27 P, which
imply the
record in xiii. 18, that Abram made his home
in "Mamre
which is in Hebron."
(2) The occurrence in vs. 8, 9, 14-17, of
words and ex-
pressions
which are used in J elsewhere.
1. xnA I pray thee (vs.
8, 9, 14). See under ch. xii. 10-
20, Marks of
J, No.3.
2. Nymiyhe go to the right, lyxim;W;hi
go to the left (ver. 9);
these verbs
occur nowhere else in the Pentateuch; the con-
trast of
right and left occurs Gen. xxiv. 49; Num. xxii.
26 J; Num.
xx. 17 E; Ex. xiv. 22, 29 P; and repeatedly in
Deuteronomy;
also in Josh. i. 7; xxiii. 6, which Dill-
mann refers
to D.
3.
Vs. 14-17 belong to the progressive series of prom-
ises given
by Jehovah to Abram, and naturally deal in
the same or
equivalent phrases. Thus the four points
of
the compass,
N., S., E., W., as in a like connection, xxviii.
14, where,
however, Wellhausen suspects a different
writer
because the order is W., E., N., S.; "thy seed
as the dust
of the earth," as xxviii. 14; "not to be count-
ed," as
xv. 5; xxxii. 13 (E. V., 12); Num. xxiii. 10.
But words and phrases reckoned peculiar to
P are also
found in the
J portion of this chapter.
vyfAs.Amal; on his journeys (ver. 3); both the word and the
form are
said to be characteristic of P; this form of the
word occurs
exclusively in P (Ex. xvii. 1; xl. 36, 38;
Num. x. 6,
12; xxxiii. 2); a like use of the same prepo-
sition and a
suffix with other nouns is held to be a mark
of P in Gen.
viii. 19; x. 5, 20, 31, 32; fs.Ama
is found be-
sides in P,
in other constructions, in Num. x. 2, 28; xxxiii.
1; but
nowhere else in the Old Testament except Deut.
x. 11.
ABRAM S RESCUE OF LOT (CH. XIV.) 195
drap;ni to be separated (vs. 9, 14), was claimed as a mark
of P in
distinction from J in Gen. x. 5, 32.
"The land is before thee" (ver.
9) has its only paral-
lels in
xxxiv. 10; xlvii. 6 (P), and xx. 15 (E).
"The Canaanite was then in the
land" (xii. 6), and
"The
Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the
land"
(xiii. 7), are not later glosses, since they are closely
connected
with the paragraphs in which they stand, as
has been
already shown; nor are they indications of the
post-Mosaic
origin of the narrative. They contain no
implication
that the Canaanites and Perizzites had passed
away. It is quite as natural to say, "The Canaanites
were then in
the land as they still are," as to say, "The
Canaanites
were then in the land, but are there no
longer."
The proof already given of the unity and
continuity of
this chapter
renders it unnecessary to examine in detail
Knobel's
enlargement of P or Schrader's subdivision of
J. These are of interest only as showing the
facility
with which
documents can be subdivided or the lines of
partition
changed.
ABRAM'S RESCUE OF LOT (CH. XIV.)
Astruc set the example of referring ch.
xiv. to another
source than
the principal documents of Genesis, as he
did every
passage which concerned foreign tribes or
nations. The critics complain that it is disconnected
and out of
harmony with what precedes and follows
in its
representation of Abram, but without good rea-
son. The dignity of his position corresponds with
the
statements
elsewhere made. The greatness of Abram's
retinue is
remarked (xii. 5, 16; xiii. 6, 7). The
children
of Heth
treat him as a mighty prince or a prince of God
(xxiii.
6). The king of the Philistines and the
general
196 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
of his army
court his alliance (xxi. 22 sqq.). It is
in per-
fect accord
with this that he is here said to have mus-
tered three
hundred and eighteen trained men (ver. 14;
cf.
xx:xiii.l); that he was confederate with native princes
(ver. 13);
that as the head of a clan, in contrast with
other tribes
or nations, he is called Abram the Hebrew
(ver. 13;
of. 1 Sam. xiii. 3, 7; xiv. 21). This
appellation
is justified
by the situation and does not require Ewald's
assumption
that the narrative is from a Canaanitish orig-
inal. His generous regard for Lot (ver. 14), his
magna-
nimity and
disinterestedness (vs. 21-24), agree with xiii.
8, 9. His life had been peaceful hitherto, but he
adapts
himself to
this new emergency. The land had been
given him
with new emphasis in all its length and
breadth
(xiii. 15, 17), and it is quite in place that he
should act
as its champion and defender from invasion
and
pillage. The exhortation and the
military emblem
(xv. 1) seem
to be suggested by his late conflict.
The critics find their chief perplexity,
however, in the
fact that
this chapter is related to all the documents, and
cannot be
brought into harmony with any one. It
has
the
diffuseness and particularity of P in vs. 8, 9, the P
words wUkr; goods
(vs. 11, 12, 16, 21), wp,n,
soul for per-
sons (ver.
21), OtyBe ydeyliy; born in the house (ver. 14), as
xvii. 12,
13, 23, 27; Lev. xxii. 11; calls Lot Abram's
brother's
son (ver. 12), as xi. 27,31; xii. 5. At
the same
time it has
the J words hvhy Jehovah (ver 22), txraq;li
to
meet (ver. 17), j`UrBA blessed (vs. 19, 20); brings Abram
into
connection with Salem or Jerusalem, the future site
of the
temple, to whose priest he pays tithes (vs. 18-20),
(which is
held to be indicative of J, who is reputed to be-
long to
Judah); calls Lot Abram's brother (ver. 14),
as xiii. 8;
speaks of him as dwelling in Sodom (ver. 12),
as xiii.
12b; and Abram as dwelling by the oaks of
Mamre
(ver.13), as xiii. 18; connects Admah and Zeboiim
ABRAM'S RESCUE OF LOT (CH. XIV.) 197
with Sodom
and Gomorrah (vs. 2, 8), as x. 19, and Zoar,
as xix. 23,
while yet Sodom and Gomorrah are accorded
the
precedence (vs. 10, 11), and particularly Sodom (vs.
17, 21, 22),
as xiii. 10; xviii. 20, 26; ch. xix.
With all
this it has
several words which occur nowhere else in the
Pentateuch; NOyl;f,
lxe God Most
High (vs. 18-20,
22); NGemi
to deliver (vel~. 20); ryW.if<h,
to make rich (ver. 23); or in
the Old
Testament Cr,xAvA MyimawA hneqo possessor of heaven
and earth (vs. 19, 22); tyrib; ylefEBa confederate
(ver. 13);
j`yniHA trained (ver. 14); qyrihe drew out said of men (ver. 14);
also several
antique or peculiar names of places: Bela
for Zoar
(vs. 2, 8), vale of Siddim (vs. 3, 8, 10), Ashte-
roth-karnaim
(ver. 5), Zuzim, probably for Zamzummim
(ver. 5), El
Paran (ver. 6), En-mishpat for Kadesh (ver. 7),
Hazazon-tamar
for Engedi (ver. 7), vale of Shaveh for
the King's
Vale (ver. 17), Salem for Jerusalem (ver. 18).
Such unusual
words and names are thought to point to
E; so the
alliance with native princes (ver. 13), as xxi.
32, and the
warlike achievement (ver.15), as xlviii. 22, as
well as the
E words ydafAl;Bi nothing for me
(ver. 24), the
Amorite instead of Canaanite (vs. 7, 13), as Num.
xxi.
21; Josh.
xxiv. 8, 12; likewise FyliPA escaped.
(ver. 13), and
dramA rebelled (ver. 4), which Schrader reckons peculiar
to
E, but
Dillmann does not.
Noldeke undertakes to prove the narrative
to be alto-
gether
fictitious, and several of the names to be the in-
vention of
the writer. He adopts the Rabbinical
conceit
that Bera,
king of Sodom, is from fra evil; and Birsha,
king of
Gomorrah, from fwar, wickedness; and he appears
to approve
the Samaritan conversion of Shemeber, king
of Zeboiim,
into Shemebed, whose name has perished,
though he
shrinks from resolving Shinab, king of Admah,
with the
Jerusalem Targum into bxA xneW father-hater.
The object
of the story he conceives to be to glorify
Abram as a
conqueror. From the allusions to it in
Ps.
198 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
lxxvi. 3, E.
V. 2 (Salem), cx. (Melchizedek), Hos. xi. 8 (NGemi
deliver, Admah, Zeboiim), he infers that it could
not have
been written
later than 800 B.C. Kuenen
("Hexateuch,"
p. 324) also
makes it absolutely unhistorical, intended in
vs. 18-20
"to glorify the priesthood of Jerusalem and to
justify
their claiming tithes," and borrowed by the final
redactor of
the Pentateuch from "a postexilian version
of Abram's
life, a midrash." Monumental
evidence has,
however,
established the historical character of the names
Arioch,
Ellasar, Chedorlaomer,l and, perhaps, Amraphel,2
as well as
of invasions and conquests stretching westward
at that
early date. To evade this, E. Meyer
propounded
the
extraordinary hypothesis that a writer in the exile
became
acquainted with the names of these ancient
kings, and
invented this story which brought Abram
into contact
with them.
It is thus settled beyond reasonable
contradiction that
this chapter
stands on historic ground. Its
postexilic
origin is
accordingly impossible. This is an
effectual
bar to
Wellhausen's proposed solution of its eclectic rela-
tion to the
several documents, and especially its use of
the diction
of P, by assuming that "it must have been
produced not
by J, E, or P, but by a redactor subse-
quent to
them all; and in his view P is itself postexilic.
The
definiteness and precision of its statements, coupled
with the
unusual number of ancient names requiring ex-
planation,
which are here grouped together, compel to
the
assumption that this belongs to a very early date.
Dillmann
attributes it to E, the explanatory glosses hav-
ing been
added by a later hand. This obliges him
to
explain away
the marks of P and J as interpolations, or
as of no
significance, and to reject vs. 17-20 as no part
of the
original narrative. Knobel refers it to
an ancient
1 Schrader: Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament.
2 Hommel, quoted by Delitzsch.
ABRAM'S RESCUE OF LOT (CH. XIV.) 199
source, of
which J availed himself, and to which he added
the
necessary explanations by introducing modern names
where the
older ones had become unintelligible. To
this
Delitzsch
gives his assent. This accounts for the
ar-
chaic names
and expressions and for the marks of J, which
the chapter
contains; but it leaves without explanation
the marks of
P, which, though emphasized elsewhere, must
here be
treated as of no account or set aside as later ad-
ditions to
the text. The natural and obvious
explanation
of the whole
matter, to which the critics determinedly shut
their eyes,
is that these alleged criteria of distinct docu-
ments are
not such, after all, but are freely used as occa-
sion
requires by one and the same Writer, and in the
same piece
of composition.
Dillmann rejects for no other reason than
that they
contravene
his hypothesis vs. 17-20, Jehovah in ver.
22, and
"Admah and Zeboiim" in x. 19, as later, addi-
tions to the
text, and claims that the allusions to ch. xiii.
imply
acquaintance with that chapter,1 but not that ch.
xiv. is by
the same author; whereas the use of the
phrase
"the vale of Siddim" (vs. 3, 8, 10), instead of
"the
plain of Jordan," as xiii. 10, 11, shows them to be
by different
writers. But the vale of Siddim is not
iden-
tical with
the plain of the Jordan; it is (ver. 3) expressly
declared to
be only that part of it which was subse-
quently
covered by the "Salt Sea," that is, the Dead
Sea. The expression used is different because the
object
to be
denoted was different. No inference can
be drawn
from it,
consequently, against the presumption of iden-
tity of
authorship created by the connection of the nar-
rative, the
agreement as to the situation and the charac-
1As he holds that E is older
than J, E could not in his opinion have
referred to
J. He is obliged, therefore, to assume
that the allusions to
ch. xiii.
were no part of ch. xiv. originally, but are later additions to
its text.
200 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
ter of
Abram, the correspondence of diction, and the
direct
allusions.
The P words are waived aside in a similar
manner.
"Born
in his house" (ver. 14) is pronounced a later ad-
dition. Such fulness of detail in any but ritual and
legal
matters is
said not to accord with P's usage elsewhere,
and the
style of the chapter is not his; which simply
means that
the critics have arbitrarily partitioned the
text of the
Pentateuch between what is ritual and legal
on the one
hand and narrative on the other, as though
no writer
could produce more than one species of com-
position,
and the diversity of style due to a difference of
matter were
proof of distinct authors. wUkr;
goods, and
wp,n, soul, in the sense of "person,"
which are elsewhere
declared to
be such evident marks of P as to stamp a
verse as
his, though in a J connection, are here passed
over
lightly, as though they had no such significance.
Thus
Delitzsch says that "wUkr; is no
specific criterion;
it is found
in xv. 14, a promise recorded by J or E (DilI-
mann says
R), and at any rate not by P, and it expresses
an idea for
which the Biblical language has no other
word." And Dillmann says: "One could hardly help
using wp,n,
for persons of both
sexes, free and slave." If,
then, these
are the proper words and the only words to
express a
given meaning, such as any ordinary speaker
or writer
might upon occasion have to employ, how can
they
possibly be classed as characteristic of one docu-
ment rather
than another? And if not here, neither
can they be
elsewhere. But it is said that ver. 13
says.
"the
oaks of Mamre," as xiii. 18; xviii. 1; while P inva-
riably says
simply, "Mamre." So he does
(xxiii. 17, 19;
xxv.9; xlix.
30; 1. 13) when speaking, not of the residence
of Abram,
but of the location of the cave of Machpelah
"before
Mamre," and (xxxv. 27) when speaking of Jacob's
coming
"to Mamre, to Kiriath-arba (the same is He-
ABRAM'S RESCUE OF LOT (CH. XIV.) 201
bron), where
Abraham and Isaac sojourned." The
exact
spot where
Abram dwelt was "by the oaks of Mamre;"
but when the
district so named is referred to in general,
as a matter
of course the oaks are not spoken of.
This
surely is no
indication of different writers.
In recording this very significant event
in the life of
the great
patriarch the writer has taken pains to preserve
the names of
localities, and, as it would appear, to some
extent, the
use of terms as they were at the time referred
to,
introducing in a supplementary way the more modern
names by
which they had been superseded, or some ex-
planatory
phrase when necessary for the sake of clear-
ness, as vs.
2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 15, 17. In one instance
he uses
a name
current in his own time proleptically, perhaps for
the reason
that no other expressed his meaning so exactly.
Thus he says
(vs. 5-7) that the invaders smote the Re-
phaim, and
Zuzim, and Emim, and Horites, and Amorites,
and
"the country of the Amalekites."
His meaning is here
carefully
guarded by the altered form of expression.
They
smote not
the Amalekites, who derived their name from
the grandson
of Esau (xxxvi. 12), and accordingly were
not in
existence in the time of Abram, but the region
subsequently
occupied by them.
At first sight it might appear as though
"Dan" (ver.
14) was to
be similarly explained. It is natural to
think
of the Dan
so frequently mentioned in the later Script-
ures, which
first received this name .after the occupation
of Canaan
(Judg. xviii. 29; Josh. xix. 47), having pre-
viously been
called Laish. And on this ground it has
been urged
that this could not have been written by Mo-
ses. But--
1.
It seems extremely improbable that the analogy of
the entire
chapter, which on this interpretation would re-
quire
"Laish, the same is Dan," should be violated in
this one
instance without any intimation of it, the origi-
202 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
nal name
being discarded, and the recent one not added
to it by way
of explanation, but substituted for it.
It is
more in
keeping with the general tenor of the chapter to
suppose that
it was not the Dan-Laish of later times,
which was
intended, but a place so called in the time of
Abram,
perhaps named from this very event, in which
God
maintained the righteous cause of his servant (Dan
= judge; see
xv. 14), and possibly perpetuated in the
Dan-jaan of
2 Sam. xxiv. 6, cf. also Deut. xxxiv. 1.
2.
If the Dan of later times is here meant, the strong
probability
is that the older name was in the original
text, and in
the course of transcription one more familiar
was
substituted for it. The proofs of Mosaic
authorship
are too
numerous and strong to be outweighed by a triv-
ialty like
this. Critics whose hypothesis requires
the
assumption
of textual changes of the most serious nature
cannot
consistently deny that there may be occasion for
a slight
correction here.
PROMISE AND COVENANT OF JEHOVAH (CH.
XV.)
Most of the earlier critics refer the
whole of this chap-
ter to J.
Knobel attributed both ch. xiv. and xv. to what
he called
the Kriegsbuch, or Book of Wars, one of the
sources from
which he imagined that J drew his materials.
Wellhausen,
and others since, undertake the partition of the
chapter, and
base it on certain alleged incongruities
which have
no real existence. It is charged that--
1.
There is a discrepancy in respect to time. Accord-
ing to ver.
5, it is in the night and the stars are visible;
but vs. 7-11
imply that it is in the day; in ver. 12a, the
sun is
setting, and ver. 17, it has gone down.
But it is not easy to see how anyone can
imagine a
difficulty
here. The transaction described required
time.
The vision
(ver. 1) occurred in the night or in the early
THE COVENANT OF JEHOVAH (CH. XV.) 203
morning,
when the stars still appeared in the sky (ver.5).
A fresh
communication was made to Abram (vs. 7 sqq.),
which,
whether it followed the preceding immediately or
after an
interval, contained directions that could only be
executed in
the daytime. Five animals were to be
taken
and slain,
properly prepared and divided, and the parts
suitably
adjusted. This would occupy a portion of
the
day, and
during the remainder of it he guarded the pieces
from the
birds of prey. Then came sunset with the
pro-
phetic
disclosure (vs. 12-16), and finally darkness with
the symbolic
ratification of the covenant. The
narrative is
consistent
throughout and develops regularly from
first to
last.
2.
A vision is announced in ver. 1, but it cannot pos-
sibly be
continued through the chapter.
Knobel thinks that the vision does not
begin till ver.
12, and ends
with ver. 16. This is plainly a mistake;
the
communication in ver. 1 is expressly said to have
been made in
a vision. Whether all the communications
in the
chapter were similarly made, and only vs. 10, 11
belong to
Abram's ordinary state, or whether the vision
is limited
to vs. 1-6, as Wellhausen supposes, it may be
difficult to
determine, and it is of no account as nothing
is dependent
on the mode in which the revelation was
given.
3.
Ver. 8 is inconsistent with ver. 6.
In the latter
Abram is
said to have believed the LORD; and yet he
asks in the
former for a visible token of the truth of
God's word.
But this request does not indicate doubt
or distrust,
but rather a
desire for a more complete assurance and a
fresh
confirmation of his faith in the fulfilment of prom-
ises so far
transcending all natural expectation.
On the grounds above stated Wellhausen
assigns vs.
1-6 to E;
and vs. 7-12,17,18, to J, ver. 7 having been
204 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
modified, a
clause inserted in ver. 12, and vs. 13-16 be-
ing no part
of the original text, but added in the first in-
stance after
vs. 17, 18, and then transposed to its present
position;
vs. 19-21 being also a later addition.
He
urges that
the clause, "a deep sleep fell upon Abram,"
does not
belong to ver. 12, for, though congruous to vs.
13-16, it is
not so to vs. 17, 18, a consideration which
might have
led him to see that those verses are in their
proper
place, and the only incongruity is one of his own
creating.
The revelation by "vision (ver. 1)
is, on critical princi-
ples,
referred to E (though hz,HEma vision, occurs besides in
the
Pentateuch only in Num. xxiv. 4, 16 J); and this is
supposed to
be confirmed by the naming of Eliezer (ver.
2), whereas
J does not give his name (xxiv. 2 sqq.-the
identity of
the persons being commonly assumed); also
by the phrase,
"after these things" (ver. 1), which occurs
in E, xxii.
1 ; xl. 1 ; xlviii. 1, but also in J, xxii. 20, xxxix.
7, and even
in P, Josh. xxiv. 29, unless it is confessed that
P is not
alone in stating ages. The only escape
from this
dilemma is
by the absurd division of Schrader, who in the
verse last
named assigns "and it came to pass after these
things"
to E, and all the rest to P. Jehovah
occurs four
times in the
first six verses, though by critical rules E
ought always
to say Elohim, never Jehovah. It is
neces-
sary,
therefore, to assume that R has changed those names.
There are
also some of P's expressions ynixE (not ykinoxA J);
MyDiW;Ka rUx Ur of the Ohaldees (ver. 7), wkur; goods (ver.14),
hbAOf hbAyWeB; in a good old age (ver. 15; see xxv. 8), not to
speak of the
chronological statement, ver. 13. Hence
it
is again
necessary to assume that the verses that contain
them have
been either altered or inserted by R, whose
office it is
to rectify whatever is at variance with the hy-
pothesis.
"Come forth out of thy bowels," Myfime (ver.4),
sounds like
a variation upon "come forth out of thy
THE COVENANT OF JEHOVAH (CH. XV.) 205
loins,"
a phrase which P uses in two forms (xxxv. 11,
MycilAHE;
xlvi. 26; Ex. i. 5, j`reyA),
and he might easily be sup-
posed to add
a third. At any rate no phrase at all
ap-
proaching it
is elsewhere referred to E; xxv. 23 is as-
signed to
J. The animals (ver. 9) are precisely
those
admissible
for sacrifice under the ritual law (P), and not
dividing the
birds accords with Lev. i. 17. "The
word
of Jehovah
came" (vs. 1, 4) is a phrase familiar in the
prophets,
but occurring nowhere else in the Pentateuch;
it certainly
cannot be claimed, therefore, as character-
istic of
E. The inhabitants of the land are
called Amor-
ites (ver.
16), while J calls them Canaanites and Periz-
rites (xii.
6, xiii. 7); but if this is the mark of a different
writer, how
could R, who designates them as in ver. 16,
have
likewise written vs. 19-21?
Dillmann in his 1st edition (Knobel's 3d)
ascribed the
entire
chapter to R, who had introduced expressions of
P as well as
of J, and based his narrative partly on E, a
combination
which could not well be disposed of from
the critical
point of view in any other way. In his
2d
edition
(Knobel's 4th) he rids himself of most of the P
elements by
assigning vs. 7, 12-16, to R, and then gives
vs. 3, 5, 6,
to J, and vs. 1, 2, 4, 8, 9-11, 17, 18, to E, and
vs. 19-21
either to E or R. By the portion given
to J
his partition
has an advantage over that of Wellhausen.
Abram's
childlessness and the promise of offspring with-
out naming
the mother (vs. 3, 5) prepares the way for
the affair
of Hagar (ch. xvi.), in which E is supposed to
have no
share. And according to Ex. xxxii. 13,
J, God
had promised
Abraham to multiply his seed as the stars of
heaven. This emblem occurs three times in Genesis
(xv. 5;
xxii. 17; xxvi. 4). By common critical
consent
the last two
are by R, who ,vas posterior to J. On
critical
grounds,
therefore, the reference could only be to xv. 5,
so that this
must have belonged to J and not to E. This
206 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
partition
is, however, impracticable, for it is at variance
with the
divine names; it assigns vs. 17, 18, to E in spite
of xxiv. 7,
J, which directly refers to it; it sunders ver.
4 from ver.
3, to which it is the immediate response; it
connects
ver. 8 with ver. 4, though they relate to mat-
ters as
distinct as the birth of his child and the posses-
sion of
Canaan. In order to link them together
he al-
ters the
text of ver. 8 without the slightest authority from
hn.Aw,rAyxi I shall inherit it, to yniwerAyyi he shall be my heir, thus
changing its
subject entirely. But his own comment on
ver. 18
refutes his emendation and with it his critical
division of
the chapter. Ver. 18 remarks expressly
that
by the
transaction from ver. 9 onward God concluded a
covenant
with Abram in relation to the future possession
of the
land. This, then, is what the sign for
which he
asked in
ver. 8 was to certify, and not that Abram's own
child should
be his heir. Ver. 8 cannot therefore
con-
nect with
ver. 4, but relates to a different subject.
Ac-
cordingly it
is not surprising that in his 3d edition
(Knobel's
5th) Dillmann abandons his previous scheme,
and after
reviewing what others have attempted in the
same line
with no better success, pronounces it imprac-
ticable to
separate E and J in this chapter. He im-
agines that
J made use of a narrative of E, in drawing
up this
account of a covenant with Abram, which was
subsequently
modified by R, and enlarged by him or by
others at a
still later time. All this rather than
confess,
what this
confusion of documents really shows, that the
alleged
criteria of J, E, and P are not marks of distinct
writers, but
are employed by one and the same writer as
he has
occasion.
Budde undertook to make a partition in
accordance
with the
divine names; and regarding, as his predeces-
sors had
done, vs. 12-16, 19-21, as later additions, he
gave to J
vs. 1, 2a, 3b, 4, 6-11, 17, 18, and to E vs. 3a, 2b,
THE COVENANT OF JEHOVAH (CH. XV.) 207
5. He thus admits that "after these
things" (ver. 1) is
not a
criterion of E, that Ur of the Chaldees is Abram's
original
home in J (ver. 7) as well as in P, that there is
no
contrariety between ver. 6 and ver. 8; but because of
the
imaginary conflict in time between ver. 17 and ver. 5
he gives the
latter to E in spite of Ex. xxxii. 13, and he
makes a
singular medley of vs. 2, 3. Each verse
is split
in two, the
first clause of ver. 2 is linked with the last of
ver. 3, and
the intervening clauses are referred in an in-
verted order
to a distinct document.
Kautzsch and Socin follow Budde for the
most part,
but are not
prepared to accept his juggling with vs. 1-3,
which they
refer to JE without attempting to indicate
what belongs
to each. Kittel tries to help the matter
by
giving ver.
2 to E and ver. 3 to J, but it is in defiance of
Jehovah in
ver. 2. So that there is no resource but
to
adopt the
explanation of Dillmann in his first edition
that the
author himself interprets in ver. 3 the somewhat
antiquated
and obscure expressions of ver. 2. The
repe-
tition of
the thought has not arisen from the blending of
two
documents, but from the writer's desire to render an
ancient and
remarkable phrase here employed more in-
telligible
to his readers.
Delitzsch very properly contends that vs.
12-16 cannot
be an
addition by R, because it is intimately related to
vs. 9-11, of
which it gives a symbolic explanation; and
it is
besides preliminary to a proper understanding of the
promise in
ver. 18. Kittel also asserts the unity
and
continuity
of vs. 7-18, but needlessly assumes that it
originally
stood in a different connection.
The enumeration of ten nations in Canaan
is peculiar
to vs.
19-21, other passages naming seven, six, or fewer
still. But as Delitzsch rightly maintains, this is
no rea-
son for
disputing its originality here.
There is, after all, no break in this
chapter. Two dis-
208 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
tinct
promises are made in it; but they are closely
related, and
are in fact interwoven throughout the patri-
archal
history. And the conspicuous failure of
the
critics to
effect an analysis makes the evidence of its
unity more
signal and complete. Driver only
ventures
the vague
remark: "Ch. xv. shows signs of
composition;
but the
criteria are indecisive, and no generally accepted
analysis has
been offered." It is plain enough
that no
partition of
the chapter has been found possible. The
signs of its
composite character are hard to discover.
Its lack of
conformity to anyone of the so-called docu-
ments
discredits those documents, not the unity of the
chapter.
BIRTH OF ISHMAEL (CH. XVI.)
The motive by which the critics are
influenced in
giving a
fraction of this chapter to P is thus frankly ac-
knowledged
by Dillmann, who says: "Inasmuch as
the
existence of
Ishmael is presupposed by P in xvii 18 sqq.,
he must
previously have mentioned his birth."
The con-
sistency of
the hypothesis demands it. And yet,
though
Ilgen (1798)
had anticipated the division of the chapter
now
currently adopted, Tuch (1838) and Stahelin (1843)
still gave
the whole to J. In P, according to the
former
(p.
lxiv.), "we only learn incidentally
in xxi. 9 (which he
gave to P,
but recent critics to E), that Ishmael was the
son of an
Egyptian maid." And all that the
latter can
say1
is, "It is possible that P may have related some-
thing about
the barrenness of Sarah, about Hagar, and
the birth of
Ishmael, which was dropped because J's
fuller
narrative was put in its place."
Hupfeld's anal-
ysis,
adopted from Ilgen, is now commonly followed, viz.:
P xvi. 1 (?), 3, 15, 16; J, vs. 2, 4-14.
The critics are puzzled as to the
disposition to be made
1
Kritische Untersuchungen, p. 46.
BIRTH OF ISHMAEL (CH. XVI.) 209
of ver.
1. Knobel and Dillmann (3d) give it to
P;
Kautzsch
follows Schrader in giving la to P, and 1b to
J; Dillmann
(1st and 2d) agrees with Wellhausen that
the whole
verse is J's; Hupfeld seems uncertain.
On
the one hand
it is urged that "Sarai, Abram's wife,"
"Abram
her husband," "Hagar the Egyptian, her hand-
maid"
(ver. 3), needlessly repeat what is contained in
ver. 1; and
that these verses must, therefore, be from
different
sources. But, on the other hand, ver. 3
neces-
sarily
presupposes a previous mention of Hagar and of
Sarai's
childlessness, such as is found in ver. 1, and the
identity of
expressions favors sameness of authorship
rather than
the reverse, so that they must belong to-
gether. Sarai's relation to Abram is not here
mentioned
for the
first time in either document, as the critics divide
them (P, xi.
31; xii. 5; J, xi. 29; xii. 11, 17). It
is not
stated,
then, for the sake of acquainting the reader with
a fact not
before known. But it is reiterated and
dwelt
upon at this
juncture, that it may be kept before the
mind in
order to a proper understanding of the situation.
That Hagar
was an handmaid of Sarai and an Egyptian
is also
important for the correct comprehension of the
subsequent
history. Hence it is not only repeated
here
but
elsewhere in all the documents, as the critics regard
them (J, xvi.
8; E, xxi. 9; P, xxv. 12). There is,
accord-
ingly, no
escape from the admission of repetitions by the
same writer
but by the indefinite multiplication of doc-
uments. The triple statement (xvi. 15, 16) that Hagar
bare Ishmael
is not due to some supposed diffuseness of
style on the
part of P, but emphasizes the fact that he
was not
Sarai's child.
But if ver. 1 is accorded to P, because
presupposed in
ver. 3 then
the narrative in J evidently lacks its begin-
ning. It has no suitable introduction, and the
references
to Sarai's
handmaid (ver. 2), and to Hagar (ver. 4), imply ,
210 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
that she had
been spoken of before. Even splitting
ver.
1 between
the documents will not mend the matter for,
as Kautzch
admits, "By the reception of ver. la from P,
the
beginning of J's text is cut away."
Wellhausen tries
to evade
this difficulty by assuming that xi. 30 originally
stood at the
beginning of this chapter, and belonged to
P. But such a transposition is unwarranted, a
statement
of Sarai's
childlessness, such as is found in xi. 30, is ap-
propriate at
the beginning of Abram's history, is needed
to set the
initial promise (xii. 2) in its proper light, is a
necessary
antecedent to xv. 2, and would not at any rate
be a
sufficient introduction to xvi. 3, where Hagar, her
nationality,
and her relation to Sarai are presupposed as
already
known. That xvi. la repeats xi. 30 is
not sug-
gestive of
distinct documents any more than similar rep-
etitions
which abound elsewhere.1 The
trial of Abram's
faith lay
largely in this that notwithstanding the repeated
promises of
a numerous offspring, Sarai continued child-
less. It was this which led to the expedient here
de-
tailed. It was proper, therefore, that this fact,
though
mentioned
before, should be repeated in this place.
And ver. 3 is not superfluous after ver.
2. Sarai first
proposed the
thing to Abram, and obtained his con-
sent; she
then took measures to give effect to her scheme.
By sundering
these verses P is made to say that Sarai
1 Compare 1 Sam. i. 3 and iv. 4; ii. 11,
18, iii. 1; ii. 21b, 26, iii. 19;
xiii. 15b,
xiv. 2b; xvi. 6-11, xvii. 13, 14; xvii. 2, 19; xxv. 1,
xxviii. 3: 2
Sam. ii. 11, v. 5 ; iii. 21c, 22c; xiv. 24, 28; 1 Kin. xiv.
21c, 31b ;
xv. 16, 32; 2 Kin. i. 1, iii. 5; viii. 29, ix. 15, 16. These
examples, as
well as many of those previously given are adopted from an
early
publication of Ewald, his Komposition der Genesis, 1823, which is
still worthy
of attentive perusal, and in which he argues more wisely than
in his later
speculations. There is much truth in his
suggestion that
many of the
critical objections to the unity of Genesis arise from apply-
ing to it
modern and occidental standards, and disregarding the usages
of Hebrew
historiography and that of the ancient Orient generally.
BIRTH OF ISHMAEL (CH. XVI.) 211
imposed her
maid upon Abram without having spoken
to him on
the subject or gained this consent.
Neither is
verse 3
superfluous before ve se 4. Sarai first
surren-
ders her
maid to Abram, he then treats her as his wife.
All proceeds
in regular order as stated in the text.
This
is not
overloaded, and there is nothing to suggest the
intrusion of
foreign matter in the narrative.
The dates (vs. 3, 16) do not indicate
another writer
than the
author of the rest of the chapter, except on the
arbitrary
assumption that the latter could not mention
dates. Nor is there any significance in the
circumstance
that in ver.
15 it is the father, whereas in ver. 11 it is
the mother,
who gives name to the child. It has been
alleged that
the former is characteristic of P, the latter
of J. But this rule does not, hold. J makes Seth (iv.
26), Judah
(xxxviii. 3), and Moses (Ex. ii. 22), name their
children. And of so little account is it to which
parent
this act is
referred, that in iv.1 25, 26, J, they alternate
in
successive verses, and in xxxv. 18, E, both occur in
the same
verse and in respect to the same child, while in
xxv. 25, 26;
xxix. 34; xxxviii. 29, 30 (all J), the naming
is ascribed
to neither, but spoken of indefinitely.
The closing verses are, moreover,
essential to the in-
tegrity of
the chapter. If they be sundered from it
and
given to P,
the result will be that while J records Sarai's
anxiety to
have children by her maid, Abram's assent to
her wishes,
Hagar's pregnancy, and the angel's promise
of a son,
whom he names and characterizes, yet the point
of the whole
narrative is never reached. J makes no
mention of
the birth of Hagar's child. So that his
story,
as the
critics furnish it to us, has neither beginning nor
end. We are left to presume that it once had these
missing
parts, corresponding to what the critics have
cut away,
but that R removed them to make room for
statements
to the same effect from P. But this pre-
212 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
sumption is
only an inference from the hypothesis, and
cannot
consequently' be adduced in support of the hy-
pothesis,
which, if it is to stand, must rest on other
ground than
conjecture. The natural inference from
the
facts, as
they lie before us, is that the beginning and the
ending,
which we possess in the text, are the proper
complements
of the narrative, in which they are found,
and are
component and inseparable portions of it.
There is not
the shadow of a proof that other equivalents
ever
existed, for which those now existing were substi-
tuted. And why R should have made such a substi-
tution, as
the critics allege, does not appear, especially
as at other
times he is represented to be so careful to
preserve
every scrap from his sources, as to insert what is
deemed
superfluous, interrupts the connection and adds
nothing to
what had been said before.
Wellhausen, followed by Kautzsch, regards
vs. 8-10,
and Kuenen
and Kittel, vs. 9, 10, as an insertion by R.
If these
verses were ejected a seeming conflict can be
created with
P (vs. 15, 16; xvii. 23 sqq.) and E (xxi.
9 sqq.), and
it can be made to appear as though Ishmael
was born in
the desert and not in Abram's house. Well-
hausen urges
the triple address of the angel to Hagar in
proof of the
composite character of the passage; but
even on his
view of the matter R introduces the angel as
speaking to
her twice with nothing intervening. The
formula of address
is repeated thrice in order to mark
the
distinctness of the three communications which he
makes to
her. Dillmann very appropriately cites
as par-
allels xvii.
3, 9, 15; xxxv. 10, 11; and he argues that it
would be a
strange hearing of her affliction if the angel
had left her
helpless in the wilderness; a1so that the
verses
assigned to R are identical in style and diction
with the
context in which they stand. Besides the
promise of
numberless offspring, ver. 10 is linked with
BIRTH OF ISRMAEL (CH. XVI.) 213
xv. 5, of
which it is a partial fulfilment. And
the allega-
tion that J
differed from E and P as to the place of
Ishmael's
birth would be improbable in itself, even on
the divisive
hypothesis, unless sustained by positive
statements,
which are not pretended in the present in-
stance. It is, moreover, expressly contradicted by
xxv.
6 J
(Dillmann, 1st and 2d), tough referred to R on
frivolous
grounds in. Dillmann 3d; if Abram sent
Ish-
mael away,
his mother did not finally leave Abram's
house before
Ishmael's birth.
The flight of Hagar in this chapter has
been said to
be only a
variant of her dismissal (ch. xxi.), and both but
legends
based on the signification of her name (rgAHA per-
haps = flight;
cf. hegira), which are altogether unfounded
assumptions.
MARKS OF P
The following are noted by Dillmann as
marks of P:
1.
Exact statements of time, viz.:
Abram ten years in
Canaan (ver.
3); eighty-six years old (ver. 16).
But--
a.
Such statements are not confined to P, as the crit-
ics
themselves divide the documents. Thus J,
periods
of seven and
forty days in the flood (vii. 4, 10, 12;
viii. 6, 10,
12); four hundred years' affliction (xv. 13;
Del., Kit.);
forty years in the Wilderness (Num. xiv. 33,
xxxii.
13). E, twelve years' service,
thirteenth year rebel-
lion,
fourteenth year invasion (xiv. 4, 5, Dill.); Jacob
serving
twice seven years (xxix. 20, 30); twenty years of
service,
fourteen and six (xxxi. 38, 41); Joseph seven-
teen years
old (xxxvii. 2); at the end of two years (xli. 1)
the same
phrase as xvi. 3; seven years of plenty,
seven of
famine (xli. 29, 30, 47, 48, 53, 54) ; two years
and five
(xlv. 6, 11); Joseph, one hundred and ten years
old (1. 22,
26) ; Caleb forty years old at sending of spies,
214 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
eighty-five
years old forty-five years later (Josh. xiv. 7,
10); Joshua
one hundred and ten years old (xxiv. 29).
b.
This repeated mention of ages and of definite
periods of
time in passages attributed to JE shows that
these cannot
be made a criterion of P; and that they
afford no
justification for severing verses in which they
occur from
their proper connection on the plea that they
are thereby
proved to be insertions from P. Such
pas-
sages as
xii. 4; xvi. 3, 16 ; xxv. 20 ; xli. 46; xlvii. 28, must
accordingly
be held to belong to the context in which
they are
found, and from which they are sundered by
the
arbitrary test which has now been shown to be in-
valid. It is contended that these verses form part
of a
chronological
scheme traceable throughout the Penta-
teuch, all
the parts of which must of necessity be as-
signed to
the same writer. This is readily
admitted;
but the
conclusion to be drawn from it is the reverse of
that deduced
by the critics. It is not that these
pas-
sages are to
be rent from the context to which they
naturally
and properly belong, and attributed to P; but
that the
sections in which they are found have a common
author with
all those other sections in which the same
scheme
appears. And as this scheme runs through
P, J,
and E
sections alike, it binds all indissolubly together as
the product
of one mind.
2. HqalA
took,
3. bwayA dwelt, and 4. NfanaK; Cr,x, land of
Canaan (ver. 3) are not peculiar to P, as was
shown under
ch. xii. 5,
Nos. 1. and 4; ch. xiii., Marks of P, No.3.
5. hw.Axi wife, applied to a concubine, is adduced by
Dillmann as
indicative of P, with a reference in his 1st
edition to
xxv. 1, in which Keturah is so called, and
which is
there referred to P, but in both his subsequent
editions to
E. In xxx. 4.a, 9b, the same term is
applied to
Bilhah and
Zilpah; Dillmann says that these clauses
"could
possibly have been originally derived" from P.
BIRTH OF ISHMAEL (CH. XVI.) 215
But if so
they are entirely isolated in a JE context.
On
such a
showing the proof that tills is characteristic of P
is rather
meagre.
It will be observed that of the words
said to be indic-
ative of P
in the scraps attributed to him in ch. xii.-xvi.
not one
occurs in any preceding P section, and but one
occurs
exclusively in P, viz., "cities of the plain," which is
found in but
two places and each time in a verse rent
from its
proper connection.
MARKS OF J
The following are said to be indications
of J:
1.
The angel (ver. 7 sqq.).
There are two reasons why
"angel" does not occur in
P. a.
This is used as a criterion in determining the doc-
uments. The presence of this word in an Elohim pas-
sage is of itself
held to indicate that it belongs not to P
but to
E. b.
The bulk of the history is divided between
J and E, and
only such a residuum assigned to P as
affords no
occasion for an angel to appear.
2.
The notion in ver. 13 that it was dangerous to see
God. But--
a.
This is based on a wrong interpretation of the
verse. Hagar does not speak of her seeing God, but
of
his seeing
her; not of her continuing to live after this
divine
vision, but of the ever-living One who had watched
over her in
her distress. It stands in no relation,
there-
fore, to the
truth taught in Ex. xxxiii. 20, "No man shall
see me and
live."
b.
Even if this verse had the meaning attributed to it,
the absence
of this idea from sections ascribed to P is
as readily
explained as its absence from other J sections
in which God
appears to men or speaks with them with-
out allusion
being made to danger thus incurred.
216 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
3.
The unfavorable representation of Hagar and Ish-
mael. That this is found in J and not in P is
simply the
result of
the partition. Nothing is conceded to P
but
the bare
statement of Hagar's union with Abram and
Ishmael's
birth. Everything indicative of
character is
assigned to
J or E. There is no variant
representation
in P. Abram's affection for Ishmael (xvii. 18 P)
agrees
with xxi. 11
E.
4.
The etymologies in vs. 11, 13, 14.
But the like are found in P xvii. 5, 17,
19, 20.
5.
The difference between ver. 11 and 15 in respect to
the person
naming the child.
It has already been shown (p. 211) that
this affords no
criterion
for distinguishing different documents.
6. hvhy Jehovah; already explained, see page 151.
7. xnA-hnehi behold now (ver. 2); see ch. xii. 10-20, Marks
of J, No.4.
8. lOpl; fmawA hearkened to the voice (ver. 2), occurs in
but two
passages besides in J (Gen. iii. 17; Ex. iv. 8, 9).
It is found
likewise in E (Ex. iii. 18; xv. 26; xviii. 24).
Commonly
this verb has a different construction in J, as
it has in P.
9. rcafA restrained
(ver. 2), occurs but once besides in
the
Pentateuch in a similar connection (xx. 18), which
the critics
refer to R. The word is found three
times in
P (Num.
xvii. 13, 15, E. V., xvi. 48, 50; xxv. 8), but,
nowhere else
in J.
10.
hB,r;xa hBAr;ha I will greatly multiply (ver. 10), and
but twice
besides in the Hexateuch (iii.16 J, and xxii.
17 R, who
according to Dillmann has made a free addi-
tion of his
own). In Ex. xxxii. 13 J, hB,r;xa is without the
infinitive,
though based upon Gen. xxii. 16, 17. How
J
could quote
R, who by the hypothesis was subsequent to
his time, it
is not easy to say. But if J uses this
com-
bination in
two places, and failed to employ it when
COVENANT
SEALED BY ABRAHAM (XVII.) 217
there was
such an obvious reason for his doing so, what
is there
surprising in its absence from P, who, moreover,
does use the
infinitive absolute with the finite verb in
other
cases? e.g. Ex. xxxi. 14, 15 ; Lev. vii.
24; x. 18; xx.
2, 27; xxiv.
16, 17; xxvii. 29; Num. xv. 35; xxvi. 65;
xxxv. 16-18,
21, 31.
11.
brome rpes.Ayi xlo shall not bel numbered
for multitude
(ver.
10). This phrase occurs [but once
besides in the
Hexateuch
(xxxii. 13, E. V., 12).
12.
ylaUx it
may be (ver. 2),
besides in J (xviii. 24, 28,
29, 32;
xxiv. 5, 39; Ex. xxxii. 30; Num. xxii. 33; Josh.
ix. 7); in E
(Gen. xxvii. 12; xxxii. 21, E. V. ver. 20;
Num. xxii.
6, 11; xxiii. 27; Josh. xiv. 12). It
would not
be surprising
if this word did not chance to occur in the
very limited
amount of narrative accorded to P; still it
is found in
Josh. xxii. 24, which Hollenberg and Well-
hausen refer
to that document.
COVENANT SEALED BY ABRAHAM (CH. XVII.)
This chapter cannot be sundered from
what precedes
and follows
as an extract from an entirely independent
document, as
is done by the critics, who assign it to P.
It is most
intimately related to the whole narrative of
which it is
a part. Its explicit allusion to
antecedent
events
obliges the critics to link it with statements of
their
occurrence, and thus by means of scattered and
disjointed
sentences to make out for P a show of continu-
ity. With how little reason and success this is
done, we
have already
seen. But even if the analysis which
they
propose were
better supported, it does not meet the case.
It is not
sufficient that there should be a bald mention
of Abram's
arrival in Canaan and of the birth of Ishmael.
The
significance of these facts in the life of Abram, and
the entire
course of training to which be had been sub-
218 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
jected, as
this is set forth, in the whole antecedent nar-
rative, are
necessary preliminaries to this chapter.
Its form
cannot be
accounted for nor its contents be under-
stood
without it.
The one leading idea in the life of Abram
is the trial
of his
faith, that it might be perfected and exhibited,
and that he
might become the father of the faithful.
Jehovah bade
him leave his country and his father's
house,
promising to give him possession of a land and to
make of him
a great nation; and this though the land
was already
occupied by Canaanites and his wife was
childless. His faith was soon tried by a grievous famine
which
obliged him to leave the land and go down to
Egypt, where
a new trial awaited him in the peril of los-
ing
Sarai. She was rescued by divine
interference and
he was
restored to Canaan enriched, but the promised
seed was not
born. In the long waiting he began to
ap-
prehend that
his steward, Eliezer, would be his heir.
But the
promise was made more definite that he should
have a child
of his own body, not merely a son by adop-
tion, and
that his offspring should be as numerous as the
stars. And to confirm his faith in his future
possession
of the land,
Jehovah entered into a formal covenant with
him, sealing
the engagement by a visible symbol of the
divine
presence. Ten weary years had "Torn
away, and
still Sarai
had no child. At her suggestion he took
Hagar,
thinking thus to obtain the promised son.
Ish-
mael was
born and had reached his thirteenth year when
the promise
was made more definite still, and the an-
nouncement
was given that his long-deferred hope was
now to be
fulfilled. Not his handmaid but his
wife, not
Hagar but
Sarai, should be the mother of the promised
seed. The covenant, which had already been ratified
on
one side,
must now be ratified on the other.
Abraham
is required
to signify his faith in the divine announce-
COVENANT
SEALED BY ABRAHAM (XVII.) 219
ment, and to
bind himself and his household in covenant
with God by
the seal of circumcision, and this in antici-
pation of
Isaac's birth. This final ratification
of the
covenant is
followed by Jehovah's condescending to the
usages of
men, and celebrating the completion of this
transaction
by coming in human form to feast with
Abraham at
the door of his tent, where the promise is
repeated in
the hearing of Sarah. Jehovah also makes
a confidential
communication of his purpose to Abraham,
and admits
him on the footing of this newly confirmed
friendship
to the intimacy of persistent and prevalent
intercession.
If ever a narrative bore in itself the
evidence of invio-
lable unity,
in which every part fits precisely in its place
in the plan
of the whole, and is indissolubly linked with
every other,
all breathing one spirit, contributing to one
end, working
out one common design, to which each and
every item
is indispensable, and defying all attempts to
rend it
asunder, this is the case with the life of Abraham
as recorded
in the book of Genesis. Though it is
told
with a
charming simplicity and apparent artlessness,
the divine
purpose rules in the whole, and rivets all
together
with hooks of steel which no critical art can
sever.
We are asked to believe that all this
close correspond-
ence and
evident adjustment of the several parts is but
the result
of a lucky accident. Two, or rather
three,
documents,
written quite independently of each other,
with
entirely distinct aims and frequently at variance in
their
details, have happened to be so constructed that
extracts
taken from them could be dovetailed together
and yield
all the evidence of a consistently constructed,
regularly
developing scheme, which reaches its most
pathetic
climax when the faithful patriarch proves his
obedience in
the last and sharpest trial of all by taking
220 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
the knife to
slay his son, and the approving voice from
heaven stays
his hand, and confirms the promises previ-
ously given
by the unheard-of solemnity of the oath of
Jehovah
swearing by himself.
Is it a supposable thing that ch. xvii.
has been ex-
tracted from
a document, which, as the critics tell us,
knows
nothing of any previous divine communication
made to
Abraham? which, on the contrary, represents
him as
having migrated to Canaan of his own motion,
and from no
divine impulse, no promises having been
made to him,
and no measures taken to discipline his
faith? So viewed it no longer has the emphasis of
being
preceded by
a series of promises of growing definiteness
and
clearness, which gradually lead up to it, but is abso-
lutely not
only the first, but the only revelation which
God makes to
Abraham his whole life long. The chap-
ter is then
an enigma, and its most significant features
lose their
point.
Why is it stated (ver. 1) that Abram was
ninety-nine
years
old? In itself that is an altogether
unimportant
detail. And so are the facts which P is supposed to
have
registered (xii. 5), that Abram was seventy-five years
old when he
departed out of Haran, and (xvi. 16) that
he was
eighty-six years old when Ishmael was born,
provided all
the intervening years were, as the critics
suppose them
to have been in this document, absolutely
blank, with
no promise from God, no expectancy, no
event of any
kind-mere empty years devoid of all signif-
icance. But if these have been years of anxious
waiting
for the
fulfilment of a promise yet unaccomplished, of
hope long
deferred yet not abandoned, and the affair of
Hagar was
the rash expedient of despondency from long
delay, then
we see the significance of these long terms of
years. They are no longer barren, but play an impor-
tant part in
the discipline of Abram, and the develop-
COVENANT
SEALED BY ABRAHAM (XVII.) 221
ment of his
character. They are full of meaning in
the
history of
his life, which would not stand out before us
in the light
that it does if they had not been recorded.
And why does Jehovah reveal himself (ver.
1) as God
Almighty? The critics rob this of all its significance
by
making it
merely the customary patriarchal denomina-
tion of the
Most High. But why does this name appear
here for the
first time? And why in the subsequent
em-
ployment of
it in Genesis is there an almost invariable
reference to
this occasion and to the promises here
made? Why this appeal to the divine omnipotence,
en-
hancing the
sense of the magnitude of the promise, and
of the might
involved in bringing it to pass? Consid-
ered as the
first utterance of the promise to Abram, the
simple word
of the Most High should be sufficient to
awaken faith
in a believing soul, as in xii. 1-4. And
it
would seem
superfluous to precede it by an affirmation
of his
almighty power. But if the promise had
been
made long
years before, and repeated from time to time,
while yet no
sign of its accomplishment appeared, and
every
natural prospect had vanished, and there was
danger that
faith so long vainly expectant might weaken
or utterly
die, unless attention was explicitly directed to
the
limitless strength of him by whom the promise was
given, then
there was a gracious and most important end
to be
answered by this form of the divine communica-
tion, and we
can see why Jehovah's first word to Abram
on this
occasion should be, "I am God Almighty."
And why is the divine name
"Elohim," (God), thence-
forward used
throughout the chapter? The critics
strip
this of all
its meaning by referring it to the habit of a
writer, who
with unvarying uniformity made use of
Elohim as
far as Ex. vi. 2, while chs. xii.-xvi., with
their
constant use of "Jehovah" (LORD), are traced to a
different
source. But this brings them into
collision
222 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
If with the
first verse of ch. xvii., where it is said that
"Jehovah
appeared to Abram." Here they aver
that R
has meddled
with the text, and substituted "Jehovah ",
for
"Elohim," which upon their hypothesis this writer
must have
said. And this in spite of the identity
of the
expression
with xii. 7 and xviii. 1, which vouch for its
originality
in xvii. 1; and that there is no variant in
MSS. or
versions to afford even a seeming pretext for
this purely
conjectural change of text. Meanwhile
the
real and
obvious significance of the name Elohim in this
connection
is overlooked, by which the reader is re-
minded
throughout the interview of the character in
which the
LORD here announced himself. Nature has
failed and
is incompetent. But Jehovah the God of
Abram is
also Elohim, the omnipotent Creator, pledging
that which
transcends the powers of nature.
And why is there such iteration and
reiteration in the
promise of
offspring to Abram (vs. 2-8), with such em-
phatic
expressions and such enlargement of its scope be-
yond any
preceding instance? I "will
multiply thee
exceedingly"
(ver. 2); "thou shalt be a father of many
nations"
(ver. 4), (not merely "a great nation," as xii. 2);
and this
emphasized (ver. 5) by a change of name from
Abram to
Abraham, "for a father of many nations have
made
thee. And I will make thee exceeding
fruitful,
and I will
make nations of thee, and kings shall come
out of
thee" (ver. 6) ; and "thee and thy seed after thee"
is thrice
repeated (vs. 7, 8). Here the critics
see nothing
but verbose
diffuseness of the writer of this chapter, who
is thus
supposed to be distinguished from the author of
ch.
xii.-xvi. This is all that can be said,
on the critical
hypothesis
that this is the first and only occasion on
which this
promise is made to Abram. But this is to
miss the
very point and meaning of the entire passage.
By this
emphatic reiteration God would reassure Abram
COVENANT
SEALED BY ABRAHAM (XVII.) 223
after the
vain expectation of four and twenty weary years,
lift him out
of his despondency, and give him to under-
stand that
God had by no means forgotten his promise,
but it
should be most certainly fulfilled and on a most
liberal
scale.
And why is this subject recurred to again
(vs. 15, 16,
19, 21),
with explicit and repeated mention of Sarai as
the mother
of the promised child, and her name, too,
changed in
pledge of the event to Sarah, indicating that
she was to
be the mother of nations and that kings
should be of
her? This is mere superfluous verbiage
on
the critical
hypothesis. But it is full of meaning,
if
these words
are uttered at the end of a long series of dis-
appointments,
by which Abram had been tempted to
misconstrue
the promise which had been made him, and
to think
first of Eliezer as his heir, and then of Hagar as
the mother
of his child. Now to put an end to all
pos-
sible
misconception, and to remove all doubts arising
from Sarah's
advanced age and long-continued barren-
ness, he is
emphatically assured that she and no other
shall be the
mother of the promised seed.
And why in the midst of these assurances
does Abra-
ham
interject the petition (ver. 18),
"O that Ishmael
might live
before thee"? The critics see
simply an ex-
pression of
concern for Ishmael. But the connection
plainly
shows that after the fruitless expectation of years
Abraham had
at length resigned himself to, the belief
that Ishmael
was the only child that he could ever have,
that Sarah's
age and his own made any further hope im-
possible,
and all that he could reasonably anticipate was
that his
race should be perpetuated in Ishmael.
Hence
the emphasis
with which the declaration is made, that
not Ishmael,
but Sarah's son Isaac, to be born at this
set time in
the next year, was the child contemplated in
the promise.
224 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
And why is circumcision introduced just
here as the
sign of
God's covenant with Abraham? The critics
say
that this
covenant is here spoken of as a new thing, with
the
implication that the writer knew nothing of the pre-
vious
ratification of the covenant in xv. 17, 18.
But this
is a wholly
unwarranted inference. The covenant was
in
the first
instance ratified by the LORD as one of the con-
tracting
parties, a visible symbol of the divine presence
passing
between the pieces of the slaughtered animals.
The time has
now arrived for it to be ratified by Abra-
ham as the
other party to the covenant. And it is
highly
significant
as a final test of the patriarch's faith, which
had been so
sorely tried before, that, antecedent to the
accomplishment
of the promise, he is required by this rite
to signify
his confidence in that for which he had so
long and so
vainly waited, and which now seemed to be
counter to
every natural expectation.
The entire chapter in every part thus
presupposes and
is shaped by
the antecedent experience of Abraham as
recorded in
chs. xii.-xvi. Severed from that its
details
have no
significance, and merely reflect the extraordi-
nary
diffuseness and peculiar verbal preferences of the
writer. And by sheer accident his fondness for
numeri-
cal
statements, his employment of an antiquated title for
the Supreme
Being, his habit of using Elohim, his verbose
diffuseness,
and his disposition to dwell upon ritual mat-
ters yield
precisely the emphasis and the form needed to
crown the
whole series of promises of ever-growing ful-
ness and
precision, recorded by another writer, of whom
P knew
nothing, and whose views he did not share; they
are
precisely what was needed in a last reassuring utter-
ance to one,
whom hope deferred had tempted to misin-
terpret
former declarations, or to grow despondent in re-
spect to
their fulfilment. It requires all the
credulity of
an
antisupernatural critic to accept such a conclusion.
COVENANT
SEALED BY ABRAHAM (XVII.) 225
And further, ch. xviii. is just as
unintelligible without
ch. xvii.,
as the latter is apart from the chapters that pre-
cede it. The transaction there recorded is without a
par-
allel in
Scripture. It cannot be dismissed as
only another
instance of
J's extraordinary anthropomorphisms, or put
on a
parallel with heathen myths. There is
nothing like
it elsewhere
in J. Its remarkable and solitary
character
implies a
very unusual occasion. The occasion was
in
fact
absolutely unique. It was the final
solemnization of
the covenant
transacted between God and Abraham as
the father
of the chosen race, and which had now been
separately
ratified by each of the parties. It was
the
starting-point
of that scheme of grace by which a people
was
separated from the rest of the world to be for the
time the
depositary of God's truth and ordinances with
a view to
the ultimate salvation of the world. The
near-
est
Scripture parallel is that in which Jehovah, who here
covenanted
with Abraham, renewed his covenant with his
descendants,
increased to a nation, at Mount Sinai (Ex.
xxiv. 7, 8),
which was followed by a sacred meal in which
the
representatives of the people ate and drank in the
immediate
presence of the God of Israel visibly mani-
fested
before them (vs. 9-11). So here Jehovah
in hu-
man form,
came to the tent of Abraham, and ate of his
food in
token of the friendly intimacy established, as
men who had
covenanted were in the habit of eating to-
gether in
recognition of their oneness and their amicable
relations
(xxxi. 44, 46). Put this unique act of
conde-
scension in
connection with the unique relation between
God and man
just consummated, and all is plain. Sun-
der it with
the critics from the immediately preceding
transaction,
and the peculiarity of this visit to Abra-
ham has no
meaning and is without an object. The
section next
preceding in J is the story of Hagar,
which
suggests no explanation of this extraordinary
226 THE GENERATI0NS OF TERAH
visit.1 This is another instance from the critics'
point of
view of the
combination of unrelated writings chancing
to impart a
profound significance to what in its original
position was
unmeaning, not to say grotesque. The
evi-
dently
inseparable connection of this whole narrative sup-
plies an
argument of unity, which every one who reads it
can
appreciate, and which cannot be set aside by any
amount of
critical reasoning from microscopic details.
STYLE OF P
It is claimed by the critics that this
chapter affords a
striking
illustration of the difference between P and J in
the
treatment of their respective themes.
Thus Dr.
Harper2
says that P is "systematic. Just as
the story
of creation
led up to the announcement of the Sabbath,
and the
story of the deluge culminated in a covenant
with Noah
and the law of bloodshed, so this section
brings us to
the covenant with Abraham and the institu-
tion of
circumcision." On the other hand,
he affirms3
that J has
"no particular system; while the covenant
between
Yahweh and Abram is recorded, it is neither
the climax
nor the all-important fact of the narrative.
It is
connected with no institution; and the promise
made then is
only one of many repeatedly made by
Yahweh in
his familiar intercourse with the patriarchs."
But in actual fact there is as clear and
abundant evi-
1Nor is it explained by the
covenant in ch. xv., which De Wette
(Beitrage,
ii. p. 77) affirms to be another form of the "myth" in ch. xvii.
An interval
of years is presupposed by ch. xvi., which must necessarily
follow ch
xv. and precede ch xviii. In ch. xv. God
gives to Abraham
a pledge and
assurance of his own engagement It is only when, as the
counterpart
to this, Abram, in ch. xvii., testifies his faith in God and adds
his seal to
the covenant that the way is prepared for the covenant meal in ch. xviii.
2 Hebraica, v., 4, p. 244. 3Ibid., p. 247.
COVENANT SEALED BY ABRAHAM (XVII.) 227
dence of
"system" in that portion of the record which
is
attributed to J, as in that which is ascribed to P, as
the most
cursory examination is sufficient to show.
The call of Abraham opens the third period
of the
world's
history, for which, as it appears in J, the way
was
prepared, and the necessity demonstrated (if God's
plan of
grace was not to be suffered to fail), by the dis-
astrous
issue of both the preceding periods.
Mankind
descending
from Adam became hopelessly corrupt, and
was swept
away by the deluge, from which righteous
Noah was
spared to be the head of a new race.
Impiety
prevailed
again after the flood, and mankind were scat-
tered over
the face of the earth. But God's purpose
of
mercy was
not abandoned. He selected Abraham to be
the head of
a chosen nation within which true religion
might be
perpetuated for the ultimate benefit of the
world. We are thus brought by successive steps to
the
base on
which the entire body of Old-Testament institu-
tions
repose.
The antecedent history moves on toward
this divine
scheme of
restriction in order to a safe and final diffusion
in various
distinct though related lines. Thus the
suc-
cessive
stages of iniquity depicted by J converge upon
this
issue. The fall of our first parents;
the crime of
Cain; the
ungodliness of his descendants--reaching its
acme in
Lamech; the degeneracy of the pious race of
Seth,
induced by intermarriage with the race of Cain--
the sons of
God with the daughters of men--thus point-
ing a lesson
of which Genesis and the Pentateuch are
full, viz.,
the criminality and the peril of the chosen seed
allying
themselves with the ungodly around them, the
need and the
duty of keeping themselves distinct. And
after the
world had been purged by the flood, the impious
and arrogant
combination at Babel, frustrated by imme-
diate divine
interference, revealed the continuance of the
228 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
old leaven,
and pointed the argument for some new expe-
dient to
prevent the extinction of all goodness.
Add to this the gradual unfolding of the
promise in J
as set forth
in each of these great periods. The seed
of the woman
shall bruise the serpent's head.
Jehovah,
the God of
Shem, in whose tents Japheth shall dwell.
Abraham and
his seed a blessing to all the families of
the earth.
Also the regular dropping of side lines
in J, and follow-
ing the main
line so as to converge upon Abraham, thus
indicating
the distinctness of the chosen race and at the
same time
their relationship to the whole body of man-
kind. Thus the line of descent from Cain is traced
and
then laid
aside in order to pursue that of Seth, which the
critics tell
us J must have continued down to Noah,
though only
fragments remain (iv. 25, 26; v. 29).
Then
the sons of
Noah are traced and dropped in J's portion of
ch. x., and
only that of Shem continued in the direction
of
Terah. Then in Terah's family Lot's
descendants are
named (xix.
37, 38), and Nahor's (xxii. 20 sqq.), so in like
manner the
child of Hagar, and the children of Keturah,
and the twin
brother of Jacob. These are successively
set aside,
and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob left in sole
possession
of the promise.
Again, the promises to the patriarchs in J
are not idle
repetitions
of the same identical substance. They
rise
by regular
gradations in respect to both the matters to
which they
relate-the promised land and the promised
seed. Jehovah first (xii. 1), bade Abram go to a
land
that he
would show him. After he reached Canaan
it
was made
specific (ver. 7), "Unto thy seed will I give
this
land." After Lot had parted from
him the terms
are made
universal; "All the land that thou seest, north,
south, east,
and west, to thee will I give it and to thy
seed
forever" (xiii. 14, 15). Then in
Jehovah's covenant
COVENANT
SEALED BY ABRAHAM (XVII.) 229
with Abram
(ch.xv.), this promise reaches its climax.
Its
certainty is
confirmed by the divine pledge symbolically
given. The time of the gift is defined (vs. 13-16),
and
the limits
of the territory are particularly specified (vs.
18-21). The promise has become a formal engagement
of the
utmost solemnity; what was at first vague and
indefinite
has attained to the utmost precision, both as to
the extent
of the grant and the time of its bestowment.
Nevertheless it is true that the covenant
transaction
in ch. xv.
is not in every point of view the climax.
It
rather marks
an important stage in an advancing series
traced by
J. Jehovah spake to Abram before
he left his
father's
house (xii. 1), as he had 1 done to Noah (vii. 1), to
Adam (iii.
17), and to Cain (iv. 6). But when Abram
en-
tered Canaan
an advance was made upon all antecedent
revelations. Jehovah appeared to him (xii. 7). A step
was taken
beyond this in ch. xv., when Jehovah ratified
a covenant
with Abram by a visible token of his presence.
Then, when
Abram (ch. xvii.),1 obedient to divine
direction,
ratified the covenant on his part by the seal of
circumcision,
the climax was reached (ch. xviii.) in the
unequalled
condescension of a manifestation unique in
the whole
Old Testament. Jehovah in human form
par-
takes of a
covenant meal as Abraham's guest, acquaints
him with the
divine counsels, and admits him to the
greatest
intimacy. And so far from this being
"con-
nected with
no institution," it is the basis of the whole
future
constitution of Israel as the people of God (xviii.
19), and the
foundation of its national counterpart en-
acted at
Sinai.
The successive trials of Abraham's faith
in J again
form a
graduated series, culminating in the sacrifice of
Isaac; see
pp. 149, 150.
And the promises to Abraham respecting his
offspring
1This P chapter is thus a
necessary link in this J series.
230 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
exhibit a
corresponding progression. The LORD first en-
gaged (xii.
2) to make of him a great nation, and (xiii. 16) to
make his
seed as the dust of the earth. After
years of vain
expectation
.Abraham begins to suspect that he shall have
no offspring
of his own, but that an inmate of his house
shall be his
heir; whereupon the LORD assures him he
shall have a
child of his own body (xv. 3, 4). But
Sarah
was barren;
so at her instance he forms an intimacy with
Hagar, and hopes
that Ishmael may prove to be the ex-
pected seed
(xvi. 2). He is then informed that the
child
of the
bondwoman is not the promised heir, but that
Sarah his
wife shall have a son (xviii. 10). After
Isaac is
born he is
tried once more by being bidden to offer him
up as a
sacrifice; and when his faith endured this final
test the
promise of a numerous and victorious seed that
shall bless
the world was renewed in ampler terms than
before and
is confirmed by the new sanction of an oath
(xxii.
15-18).1
With all this evidence of a developing plan
and of
methodical
arrangement it surely cannot be said that J
has "no
particular system."
The style of P in this chapter and
elsewhere is said to
be
distinguished from that of J in being " stereotyped,"2
and marked
by the recurrence of the same unvarying
phrases. The repetition charged is largely for the
sake
of
emphasis. And it is characteristic of
Hebrew writers
generally
that they take little pains to vary their ex-
pressions. If the same thought is to be conveyed, it is
mostly done
in the same or like terms. It is not difficult
1This is an embarrassing
chapter for the critics as we shall see. The
great
majority have assumed that an account by J and another by E are
here
blended. The present tendency is, with
Dillman, to substitute for
J free
additions by R; in which case an independent production by a
different
writer, with an appendix by another still fits as admirably
into J's
scheme as though it had been prepared with special reference
to it. 2
Ibid., p. 245.
COVENANT
SEALED BY ABRAHAM (XVII.) 231
to produce
an equal number of identical phrases in J.
Thus,
"lift up the eyes" (xiii. 10, 14); "unto thy seed
will I give
this land" (xii. 7 ; xv. 18) ; "there he builded
till altar
unto Jehovah" (xii. 7, 8, xiii. 18) ; "he called on
the name of
Jehovah" (xii. 8; xiii. 4); "the Canaanite
then in the
land" (xii. 6; xiii. 7); "between me and
thee"
(xiii. 8 ; xvi. 5).
P is said to be "verbose and
repetitious." But the
repetitions
adduced are all for the sake of emphasizing
what was of
great consequence in the view of the writer.
So "the
land of Canaan," twice (xii. 5b), as Abram's ob-
jective
point, and to mark the contrast with a former un-
filled
project (xi. 31); Ishmael born of the handmaid not
the wife,
thrice (xvi. 15, 16); and particularly in ch. xvii.
Like
repetitions can be pointed out in J, e.g., "Jehovah
appeared to
him," twice (xii. 7); "Bethel on the west" (ver.
8) repeats
what had just been said; "famine in the land,"
twice (ver.
10); the last clause of ver. 14 adds nothing to
that which
immediately precedes; xiii. 3b, 4a repeats xii.
8 with great
minuteness; "to thee will I give it," twice
(xiii. 15,
17); "and the angel of Jehovah said," thrice
(xvi. 9, 10,
11).
MARKS OF P
Dillmann finds the following criteria of
P in this
chapter.
1.
Back references to it in later P passages (xxi. 2, 4;
xxviii. 4;
xxxv. 12; Ex. ii. 24; vi. 3, 4; Lev. xii. 3).
But--
a.
The most of these occur in brief paragraphs, which
are ascribed
to P mainly because of these very refer-
ences, and
are enclosed in sections attributed to other
documents.
b.
Its relation to other P passages and common author-
ship with
them is not only admitted but insisted on as
232 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
involved in
the unity of the entire Pentateuch. It
is
only denied
that these are by a different author from the
J passages,
of which these references afford no proof.
c.
It has already been shown that ch. xvii. is insepar-
ably
connected with the so-called J section, ch. xii.-xvi.;
xviii. 14 J
refers back to xvii. 21 (dfeOm.la at
the set time);
"Abraham"
(xviii. 6 J), "Sarah" (ver.9 J), and so thence-
forward
regularly, in both J and E passages, is with ex-
plicit
reference to the change of name (xvii. 5,15 P).
The
critics seek
to evade this plain indication of unity by
gratuitously
assuming that R has systematically altered
the text
throughout to conform to this passage.1
2.
The promise of nations (vs. 4, 5, 16), of kings (vs.6,
16), and
princes (ver. 20).
a.
This is an advance upon the promise (xii. 2) to make
of Abram a
great nation; and its form is determined by
the new
names given to Abraham (father of multitude)
find Sarah
(princess). Other promises which speak
of
nations
(xxviii. 3; xlviii. 4) and kings (xxxv. 11) descended
from the
patriarchs borrow their expressions from this
passage, and
are uttered with evident allusion to it.
In
like manner
in xlviii. 19 J, the future superiority of
Ephraim over
Manasseh is expressed by saying that the
latter
should become a people and be great, but the
former
should become nations, what is here said of Abra-
ham being
applied to one of his descendants.
b.
The promise of princes to spring from Ishmael is
only found
in this one place (ver. 20), and it answers
precisely to
its fulfilment (xxv. 16).
3.
The statements of time (vs. 1, 17, 24, 25).
These are arbitrarily referred to P by
rule even in the
1Hupfeld (Quellen, p. 198)
thinks that R changed the names to con-
form with P,
not in the following, but in the preceding chapters, the
forms
"Abram" and "Sarai," which were peculiar to P, being intro-
duced by R
likewise into J in ch. xi. 29-xvi.
COVENANT
SEALED BY ABRAHAM (CH. XVII.) 233
midst of
sections or paragraphs ascribed to other docu-
ments. Nevertheless in repeated instances the
critics
find
themselves compelled to admit that such statements
are not
peculiar to P. And this is equivalent to
an ad-
mission that
they cannot be made a criterion of this
document. See Chapter xvi., Marks of P, No.1.
4.
The similarity of the covenant with that described
in ix. 9
sqq.
The resemblance is in phrases indicating
its perpetuity,
"establish
my covenant," "thee and thy seed after thee;"
and in
appointing a token of the covenant, the rainbow
and
circumcision. This identity of terms
results from
the like
nature of the transactions.
5.
The great redundancy of the style.
It has already been shown that what the
critics con-
sider an
idle multiplication of words is in fact such a re-
peated
asseveration as was appropriate in the situation and
demanded by
it.
6.
El Shaddai (ver. 1), Elohim (ver. 3 sqq.).
The significance of these names in the
connection has
been pointed
out. The divine omnipotence is here
pledged to
accomplish what was beyond the powers of
nature. El Shaddai also occurs in E xliii. 14, and
Shaddai in J
xlix. 25; Num. xxiv. 4, 16.
7. hz.AHuxE possession (ver. 8).
This is the only word used
in this
sense in the first four books of the Pentateuch,
except hwArAOm
(Ex. vi. 8, P), and hlAHEna inheritance, which
is also
given to P whenever reference is made to the oc-
cupation of
Canaan, with the single exception of Ex. xv.
17 in the
Song of Moses. Another synonym, hw.Aruy;
pos-
session, nowhere occurs in the books above named,
but is
limited to
Deut. ii. and iii. and three verses in Joshua.
If now hz.AHuxE
is the proper word to
express the idea in-
tended, and
all the passages from Genesis to Numbers
in which
this idea is found, are given to P, never to J or
234 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
E, how can
it be otherwise than that it should be found
exclusively in P? And yet the critics
are not unanimous
in making it
altogether peculiar to P; it occurs repeat-
edly in Lev.
xxv. (not P, Well,); also in Num. xxxii. 5,
22 (J,
Schrad., Kays. ; JE, Well.; ver. 5 J, Dill.); Josh.
xxi. 12 (not
P, Dill.); xxii 4 (Jt Schrad., Kays.; D,Well.,
Dill.). Dillmann accounts for the presence of this
word
in Josh.
xxii. 4 by the magisterial assertion, "Mk,t;z.aHuxE Cr,x,
a phrase of
P has been substituted by Rd or some later
hand for Mk,t;w.aruy;
Cr,x, .
8. Myrigum;
sojournings (ver. 8).
The phrase "land of
sojournings"
occurs four times besides with explicit ref-
erence to
this passage (xxviii. 1; xxx.vi. 7; xxxvii. 1; Ex.
vi. 4); and
"sojournings" without "land" in Gen. xlvii. 9.
All these
passages are referred to P. The
corresponding
verb rUG
is, however, used of the
sojournings of the pa-
triarchs
alike in each of the so-called documents (P, xxxv.
27; Ex. vi.
4; J, Gen. xxi. 34; ~xvi. 3; E, xx. 1; xri. 23).
9. hnAq;mi purchase (vs. 12, 13,1 23, 27). The
expression
"purchase
of silver," or "bought with money," occurs but
once outside
of this chapter, viz.: Ex. xii. 44. The
word
itself also
occurs Gen. xxiii. 18; Lev. xxv. 16, 51; xxvii.
22. These are all referred to P. But as this was the only
word to
express the idea, its employment was a matter of
necessity
and not peculiar to a particular document.
10. dyliOh beget (ver. 20). This is
distinguished from
dlayA in
the same sense, not by the usage of distinct doc-
uments, but
the employment of the former as the more
dignified
and formal in the direct line of descent from
Adam to
Israel, and the latter in the divergent line.
See
on ch.
vi.-ix., Marks of P, No. 20. The present
instance
is only a
seeming exception; the use of dyliOh is
due to the
fact that
Ishmael is here contemplated in his relation to
Abraham, and
the promise to Ishmael here made is in-
cluded in
the promise to Abraham.
COVENANT
SEALED BY ABRAHAM (CH. XVII.) 235
11. xyWinA prince (ver.
20). This word is referred by
Dillmann to
P, except in Ex. xxii. 27 (E. V., 28) E.
This
is made a
criterion of P, and verses and clauses contain-
ing it are
persistently attributed to this document even
at the
expense of dividing sentences, as is done Gen.
xxxiv. 2a
(but Schrad., J; Well., not P, J nor E; Kuen., R),
Num. xvi. 2;
xxxii. 2b (but Well., JE, Kuen., R); Josh.
ix. 15 is
split into three parts, and assigned to as many
different
sources.
12.
rkAne-NB, stranger (vs.
12, 27), but twice in the Hexa-
teuch
outside of this chapter, viz.: Ex. xii. 43 P; Lev.
xxii. 25,
not P (Well.); rkAne
elsewhere in the
Hexateuch
only in J,
Deut. xxxi. 16; xxxii. 12; or E, Gen. xxxv. 2,
4; Josh.
xxiv. 20, 23.
13.
Mc,f, self-same (vs. 23,26). See Gen. vi.-ix., Marks
of P, No.
24.
14. rkAzA-lKA every male (vs.
10,12, 23). See Gen. vi.-ix.,
Marks of P,
No. 12.
15. hbArAv; hrAPA be
fruitful and multiply (ver. 20). See
Gen.
vi.-ix., Marks of P, No. 15.
16. tyriB;
NtanA and Myqihe establish or ordain a covenant
(vs. 2, 7,
19, 21), do., No.16.
17.
Expressions compounded with MlAOf eternity, per-
petuity.
Such expressions are found in each of the
so-called doc-
uments,
whenever perpetuity or indefinite duration is to be
affirmed of
any subject. Thus, "everlasting
God" (Gen.
xxi. 33 J);
"everlasting hills" (Gen. xlix. 26 J; Deut.
xxxiii. 15
E); "heap for ever" (Deut. xiii. 16 D; Josh.
viii. 28
Rd); "servant for ever" (Deut. xv. 17 D);
"days
of old" (Deut. xxxii. 7 J); "everlasting arms"
(Deut. xxxiii.
27 E). Such combinations are most fre-
quent in the
ritual law, all of which is assigned to P;
legal
phrases are therefore to be expected in this doc-
ument and in
no other. Thus, "statute for
ever"
236 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
(MlAOf
tq.aHu) twenty-one
times, (MlAOf qHo)
eleven times;
"everlasting
priesthood" twice; "perpetual covenant"
(Ex. xxxi.
16; Lev. xxiv. 8; Num. xviii. 19); "perpetual
possession"
(Lev. xxv. 34). Exclusive of the ritual
law
the only
expressions of the kind in P are those which
declare the
perpetuity of God's covenant with Noah
(Gen. n. 12,
16), and Abraham (xvii. 7, 13, 19), and
of the
possession of Canaan (xvii. 8; xlviii. 4).
There is
nothing in
this surely to indicate diversity of authorship.
18.
Thou and thy seed after thee.
See Gen. vi.-ix.,
Marks of P,
No. 17.
19. Mtrodol; throughout their generations (vs. 7, 9, 12).
This phrase,
with the pronoun "their" or "your," is
used
exclusively in ritual connections to denote the per-
petuity of the
institutions referred to. Since ritual
mat-
ters are
regularly ascribed to P, this phrase is neces-
sarily found
only in that document.
20.
xvhiha wp,n.,ha htAr;k;niv; That soul shall be cut off (ver.
14), a
technical legal phrase, not to be expected except in
legal
sections.
21. NfanaK; Cr,x, land of Canaan (ver. 8).
See ch. xii.,
Marks of P,
No. 4.
22. dmom; dxom; exceedingly (vs. 2, 6, 20). See ch. vi.-ix.,
Marks of P,
No. 27.
VISIT TO
ABRAHAM AND DESTRUCTION OF SODOM
(CH. XVIII. 1-XIX. 28).
This narrative of Jehovah's visit to
Abraham, and of
J the
subsequent destruction of Sodom, is by the critics
referred to
J. Wellhausen and Kuenen regard xviii.
17-
19, and vs.
22b-33a, as late additions by another hand.
The intimate
relation of ch. xviii. to the preceding has
already been
exhibited. It is the final solemnity
con-
nected with
the concluding of the covenant to which
VISIT TO
ABRAHAM, ETC. (XVIII. I-XIX. 28) 237
Abraham gave
his adhesion in ch. xvii., which acceptance
by him is
accordingly here presupposed. The reason
for
the change
in the divine names as also been stated, the
thought of
God's Almighty power ruling in ch. xvii., as
his gracious
condescension does in ch. xviii., see p. 152.
The from of expression in xviii. 1 further shows that
it connects
with what immediatelly precedes; "unto him"
finds its
explanation in "Abraham," who is distinctly
mentioned
xvii. 26, and who is the prominent subject
throughout
the whole of ch. xvii. But there is
nothing
with which
to link it in xvi. 7-14, the paragraph which
it
immediately follows in J, as the text is partitioned by
the critics.
The critics allege that xviii. 9-15 is a
different account
of the
promise of Isaac's birth already given (xvii. 15-21).
But this is
obviously not the case. The latter was
made
to Abraham,
the former was for the benefit of Sarah.
That they
alike receive the announcement with a measure
of
incredulity, based on the advanced age of both; that
each laughs
at what to the natural reason seemed so pre-
posterous,
which the writer notes with allusion to the
meaning of
the name of Isaac; that the interval before
the birth is
stated in almost identical terms, but little
time having
elapsed between the two promises, is alto-
gether
natural and suggestive of one writer and one con-
tinuous
narrative, not of two separate stories relative to
the same
event. The LORD promises to return to
Sarah
(xviii. 14)
not after the birth of her child in a visit which
J is
imagined to have recorded, and R has not preserved,
but he
visited her in giving her Isaac (xxi. 1).
Kuenen reaches his conclusion that xviii.
17-19, 22b-
33a, are
interpolations of a late date in the following
manner:1
"Ch. xii. 3, where 'the families of the land'
are
mentioned, is certainly more primitive than xviii. 18,
1
Hexateuch, p. 246.
238 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
where 'the
peoples of the earth' are substituted.
The
latter
formula stands (Gen. xviii. 17-19), in a context
that sounds
almost Deuteronomic, and may therefore be
brought down
with high probability to the seventh cen-
tury (cf.
Jer. iii. 17; iv. 2; xii. 15-17; xxxiii. 9).
In the
immediate
neighborhood of these verses stands the peri-
cope (vs. 22b-33a),
the these of which, viz., the righteous-
ness of
Yahwe in connection with the lot of individuals,
appears
again to point to the seventh century, in which,
at all
events, it was dealt with by the Deuteronomist (vii.
9,10; xxiv.
16); Jeremiah (xvii. 14-18; xviii. 19-23; xxxi.
29, 30), and
Habakkuk (i. 12 sqq.). While the passage
testifies to
continued theological reflection, its soteriology
finds an
echo in Gen. xv. 5, 6, which is parallel not with
Isaiah vii.
9b, but with Hab. ii. 4b."
The
allegation that these ideas savor of a later age is
pure
assumption. Gen. xii. 3 speaks not of
"the families
of the
land" of Canaan, but of "all the families of the
earth,"
which is precisely identical with "all the nations
of the
earth" in xviii. 18. The doctrine
of a world-wide
redemption
is rooted in that of the unity of the human
race, and
the relationship established between all nations
by their
descent from a common stock (ch. x.), and in the
primal
promise of a victory by the seed of the woman
over the
destroyer (iii. 15). It is a simple
unfolding of
what is
involved in these earliest disclosures, when the
temporary
limitation of God's special blessing to Abra-
ham and his
descendants is in the very first announce-
ment made to
him declared to be in order to pave the
way for a
blessing to all the families of mankind.
This
was not a
doctrine reserved for the age of Jeremiah.
Moreover, as
Dillmann suggests: "Men had reflected on
the
righteousness and mercy of God before Jeremiah, e.g.,
Gen. xx. 4,
and on the possibility of intercession for the
guilty,
e.g., xx. 7, 17; Ex. xxxii. 11 sqq.; besides, God's
VISIT TO
ABRAHAM, ETC. (XVIII. 1-XIX. 28) 239
disclosure
to Abraham (xviii. 2p, 21) is altogether aimless
and disconnected
without vs. 17-19 and 23 sqq." And
the
supreme
importance of faith and obedience was well
understood
before it was formulated by Habakkuk, e.g.,
Ex. iv. 5,
31; xiv. 31; Num. xiv. 11.
This is but a specimen of the attempt that
is made to
impose an
arbitrary scheme of the development of relig-
ious thought
upon the writings of the Old Testament.
Such a
scheme is devised at the pleasure of the critic. It
is then used
as a standard for the determination of the
age of books
or of paragraphs and sections, which are
distributed
irrespective of their true position according
as they
correspond with one period or another of this
imaginary
scheme.
Wellhausen tries to prove the existence
of interpola-
tions by a
different process. He says that ynixE (ver. 17),
and rw,xE Nfamal; vyTif;day; I have known him to the end that
(ver. 19),
are suspicious, and vs. 17-19 are allied in con-
tents to
xiii. 14-17 and xxii. 15-18, which he likewise
pronounces
spurious. But ynixE occurs, besides, in J xxiv.
45; xxvii.
8, 32; xxviii. 13; xxxiii. 14; xxxiv. 30; xlv.
4; and an
unusual construction cannot for that sole rea-
son be
summarily ejected from the text, unless no writer
can use a
phrase which he does not employ more than
once. The resemblance of this passage to others,
whose
genuineness
there is no good reason for suspecting, in-
stead of
discrediting it, tends rather to their mutual con-
firmation.
In regard to vs. 22b-33a, there is not
even the pretext
of a
diversity of diction or style. It is
claimed that ver.
22a connects
well with 33b; "the men went toward
Sodom, . . .
and Abraham returned unto his place."
But the fact
that the omission of the intervening verses
would create
no evident break in the connection is no
proof of
interpolation, as other critics here confess.
240 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
Abraham's
awe (vs. 27, 30-3 ) is not inconsistent with
the
attentions shown to his divine guest (vs. 2 sqq.). It
is true that
the men include Jehovah (vs. 2, 16); but
this is not
the case (ver. 22) where he is expressly dis-
tinguished
from them. The genuineness of the
passage is
besides
vouched for by vs. 20 21, which are designed to
prepare the
way for the interview that follows; by the
explicit
allusion, xix. 27 to xiii. 22b, and the scene that
follows; by
the number "two" (xix. 1), which implies
that one had
remained behind (xviii. 2); by "angels"
(xix. 1,
15), indicating that they were Jehovah's messen-
gers (see
ver. 13), not Jehovah himself; and by the use
of the
singular alternating with the plural (xviii. 3, 4, 9,
10), showing
that one of the three was the superior, was,
in fact,
Jehovah (vs. 13, 17, 20, 22), and this feature does
not reappear
after xviii. 22 until xix. 17-22, at which
point it is
thus intimated that Jehovah rejoins them.
The
assertion that J never uses the plural "angels " is
disproved by
this very passage.
MARKS OF J
The following grounds are alleged for
assigning this
section to J
:
1.
"The same. beauty and transparency of description,
the same
vividness of portraiture, the same depth and
fulness of
thought, the same naive and popular anthro-
pomorphism
as in ii. 4-iii. 24; xi. 1-9, shows the writer
to be the
same."
The correspondence in style and character
is freely
admitted,
and the identity of authorship affirmed.
Like
qualities
are to be expected in compositions by the same
author when
the subject admits of similar treatment.
But a
different style befits majestic scenes such as the
creation, in
ch. i., or those of awful grandeur, as the flood
VISIT TO
ABRAHAM, ETC. (XVIII. 1-XIX. 28)
241
(ch.
vi.-ix.), or the monotonous recital of a genealogy, as
ch. v., or
the technical enactments of ritual, or when the
omnipotence
of God is to be emphasized (ch. xvii.)
rather, than
his condescension. Unless it is
contended
that the
author of these chapters could not write upon
themes of a
different description, his productions may
be expected
to exhibit a diversity of style corresponding
to the
variety of matters with which he deals.
2. The back reference, xviii. 18 to xii.
2, 3.
The reference is obvious, but no more so
than the use
of
"Abraham" and "Sarah" throughout ch. xviii. to
xvii. 5, 15;
or xviii. 14 to xvii. 21; or xviii. 11, 12, to
xvii. 17; or
the transaction in ch. xviii. to the ratifica-
tion of the
covenant on the part of Abraham in ch. xvii.,
which it
presupposes.
3.
Jehovah. See page 152.
4. ynAdoxE my Lord,
xviii. 3, 27, 30-32; xix. 18.
Apart from these chapters this word occurs in J, Ex.
iv. 10, 13;
xxxiv. 9; Josh. vii. 7, 8; E, Gen. xx. 4; Ex.
xv. 17; JE,
Gen. xv. 2, 8; disputed, Ex. v. 22 J (Well.),
E (Dill.);
R, Num. xiv. 17; D, Deut. iii. 24; ix. 26.
All
in Hex.
5. FyBihi look, xix. 17, 26. Not referred
to J in any
other place;
JE, Gen. xv. 5 ; E, Ex. iii. 6 ; xxxiii. 8 ; Num.
xii. 8; xxi.
9; xxiii. 21. All in Hex.
6. JqawA look forth xviii.
16; xix. 28; once besides in J,
xxvi. 8; JE,
Ex. xiv. 24; doubtful, Num. xxi. 20; R, Num.
xxiii.
28. All in Hex.
7. hqAfAc; cry, xviii. 21; xix. 13; besides in J, Ex. xi. 6;
xii. 30; E,
Gen. xxvii. 34; Ex. iii. 7, 9; xxii. 23 (Well.,
R). All in Hex.
8. hlAliHA far be it,
xviii. 25; besides in J, xliv. 7, 17; E,
Josh. xxiv.
16; R, Josh. xxii. 29. All in Hex.
9. MfaPaha this time, xviii. 32. This word occurs repeat-
edly in
passages assigned to J. in the singular denoting
242 THE GENERATI0NS OF TERAH
this time or
this once; !in the dual meaning twice; and
in the
plural with different numerals, e.g., viz., three times,
Ex. xxxiv.
23, 24; Num. xxiv. 10; seven times, Gen.
xxxiii. 3;
Josh. vi. 4, 15. In passages assigned to
P
once, twice,
and three times do not chance to occur, but
only seven
times, Lev. iv. 6, 17, and repeatedly; and ten
times, Num.
xiv. 22; the very same word being employed
as in J
passages. If, then, this, word is to be
classed as a
criterion of
J, it can only be on the assumption that while
P knew how
to say seven times and ten times, he did
not know how
to say this time or this once.
10.
xnA-hn.ehi behold
now, xviii. 27, 31; xix. 2, 8, 19, 20.
See ch. xii.
10-20, Marks of J, No.4.
11. rUbfEBa for the sake of, xviii. 26, 29, 31, 32. See ch.
xii. 10-20,
Marks of J, No.5.
12.
rcaPA urge,
press, xix. 3, 9;
but once besides in Hex.
xxxiii. 11
J.
13. Mr,F, before, xix. 4; besides in J, ii. 5; xxiv. 15, 45;
Ex. ix. 30;
x. 7; xii. 34; Josh. ii. 8; JE Josh. iii. 1.
With
the prep. B; it occurs in J, Gen. xxxvii. 18; xiv. 28;
Deut.
xxxi. 21;
but also in E, Gen. xxvii. 4, 33; xli. 50; Ex. i.
19; and in
P, Lev. xiv. 36.
14. yTil;bil; not to, xix. 21; besides in J, iii. 11; iv. 15;
xxxviii. 9;.
Ex. viii. 18, 25 (E. V., vs. 22, 29); ix. 17;
Lev. xviii.
30; xxvi. 15; Num. xxxii. 9; but also E, Ex.
xx. 20;
Josh. xxii. 25; D, Deut. iv. 21; viii. 11; xvii.
12, 20;
Josh. xxiii. 6; and P, Lev. xx. 4 (so Noldeke;
R, Dill.),
Num. ix. 7 (Dill. worked over, and this word
alleged in
proof).
15. ylaUx
peradventure, xviii. 24, 28-32. See ch. xvi.,
Marks of J,
No. 12.
16. txraq;li to meet,
xviii. 2; xix. 1; repeatedly in J, E,
and D; Num.
xxxi. 13, according to Dillmann, consists of
"genuine
phrases" of P, with the sole exception of this
one word.
VISIT TO
ABRAHAM, ETC. (XVIII. l-XIX. 28)
243
17. hz., hm.AlA wherefore, xviii. 13; besides in J, xxv. 22,
32; xxxii.
30 (E. V., ver. 29); xxxiii. 15; Num. xi. 20;
Josh. vii.
10; JE, Num. xiv. 41; Ex. v. 22 is referred P
by Dillmann
to E, and by Wellhausen to J. All in
Hex.
18. NKe-lfa yKi for therefore, xviii. 5; xix. 8; but four times
besides in
Hex., all of which are referred to J, viz., xxxiii.
10; xxxviii.
26; Num. x. 31; xiv. 43.
19.
Jxa also, xviii. 13, 23, 24; but once besides in
J,
viz., iii.
1; Dillmann also refers to this document, Lev.
xxvi., in
which this word occurs several times (vs. 16, 24,
28, 39-44),
but in this he differs from other critics; it is
besides
found in JE, Num. xvi. 14; E, Deut. xxxiii. 3, 20;
and D, Deut.
ii. 11; xv. 17; xxxi. 27.
20.
qra only, xix. 8; repeatedly in J, E, and D. See
ch. vi. 1-8,
Marks of J, No.7.
21.
xnA I pray, xviii. 3, 4, 21, 30, 32; xix.
2, 7, 18, 20,
etc. See ch. xii. 10-20, Marks of J, No.3.
22.
Forms in NU. These occur repeatedly in J, E, and
D; but
emphatic forms suited to earnest address or
vigorous
assertion are scarcely to be expected in the class
of passages
that are assigned to P. Nevertheless we
find
NUfG;p;yi (Josh.
xvii. 10 P) in a simple statement of tribal
boundaries. This is in a P context, and the verb is
reckoned a P
word.
23.
lxe for hl.,xe these, xix. 8, 25;
six times besides in
Hex.; Rd,
xxvi. 3, 4; D, Deut. iv. 42; vii. 22; xix. 11;
also in Lev.
xviii. 27, which Dillmann supposes to have
been
extracted from J, but other critics refer it to a dif-
ferent
source.
24. Thy servant for I,
xviii. 3, 5.; xix. 2, 19; several
times in J,
but also in E, xxxii. 21 (E. V., ver. 20); xxxiii.
5; and D,
Deut. iii. 24; not in P for the reason that no
passages are
assigned to this document in which this con-
struction
would be possible.
25. cr,xAhA yyeOG lKo all the nations of the earth (xviii. 18).
244 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
This
expression is found in but three other passages in
the
Hexateuch, no one of which is referred to J, viz., in
xxii. 18;
xxvi. 4 R; and Deut. xxviii. 1 D. The
same
idea of the
universality of the blessing through the patri-
archs and
their seed occurs xii. 3; xxviii. 14 J, where it
is expressed
by the phrase; hmAdAxEhA tHoP;w;mi lKo all the fam-
ilies of the
ground. The promise to Abraham is in three
instances
extended to three particulars--the land of Ca-
naan, a
numerous seed, and a blessing to all nations (xii.
3; xviii.
18; xxii. 18); and in three instances limited to
the first
two (xiii. 14-17; ch. xv.; ch. xvii.).
This promise
to Abraham
is repeated to his successors, both in its full,
xxvi. 4 (to
Isaac), xxviii. 13, 14 (to Jacob), and in its re-
stricted
form, xxviii. 3, 4 (Isaac to Jacob), xxxv. 11, 12
(God to
Jacob), xlviii. 3, 4 (Jacob to Joseph), the lan-
guage of
these last three passages being borrowed from
ch. xvii.,
with explicit reference to the culminating and
emphatic utterance
there made. There is no suggestion
in this of
two separate documents or sources, since the
promise is
uttered in its restricted form alike by Jehovah
(J) and by
God Almighty (P). And the simple reason
why the bill
form is only found in J is that whenever
the name God
Almighty is linked with this promise it
is with a
definite reference to ch. xvii., and it is accord-
ingly shaped
into conformity with this model; see No
Discrepancies,
No.3, page 163.
26. rq,BoBa MyKiw;hi rise
up early in the morning (xix. 2, 27).
This verb,
which is almost always prolonged into the full
phrase,
occUrs eight times in J, and eleven times in E,
not
reckoning Josh. iii. 1 JE,which it has been found
impracticable
to separate. It does not occur in P, be-
cause the
passages assigned to this document offer no
occasion for
its use.
27. hcAr;xa hvAHETaw;hi bowed himself to the earth, (xviii. 2,
xix.
1). The only other passages in the
Hexateuch in
VISIT TO
ABRAHAM, ETC. (XVIII. 1-XIX. 28) 245
which this
phrase occurs are xxiv. 52; xxxiii. 3; xlii. 6;
xliii. 26 J;
xxxvii. 10; xlviii. 12 E; but the verb occurs
repeatedly
in both J and E without being followed by
hcAr;xa to
the earth. The absence of hcAr;xa in the two in-
stances in
which this verb is found in a section assigned
to P (xxiii.
7, 12) is therefore not peculiar, and is not
suggestive
of a different source, especially as its omis-
sion is
plainly due to the presence of Cr,xAhA in the same
clause. Comp. Ex. xxxiv. 8; Josh. v. 14 J, where it
is
omitted
because of hcAr;xa
in the preceding clause.
28. NHe xcAmA find favor (xviii. 3; xix. 19) always in
J;
not in any
paragraph of P. See ch. vi. 1-8, No. 10.
29. dx,H, hWAfA show kindness
(xix. 19); besides in the
Hex.
xxiv.12, 14, 49; xxxii. 11 (E. V., ver. 10); xlvii. 29;
Josh. ii.
12, 14 J; Gen. xx. 13; ro. 23; xl. 14; Ex. xx.
6 E; Dt. V.
10 D. Not in P.
30.
hrAHA burn, without
Jxa anger, meaning to be angry
(xviii. 30,
32); besides in J only, iv. 5, 6; xxxiv. 7; but
also in E,
xxxi. 35, 36; xxxiv. 7; xlv. 5; Num. xvi. 15.
More
frequently with Jxa both
in J and E; thus Gen.
xxxix. 19;
xliv. 18; Ex. iv. 14; xxxii. 10, 11, 19, 22; Num.
xxii. 22,
27; xxiv. 10; xxxii. 10, 13; Dt. xxxi. 17 J; Gen.
xxx. 2; Ex.
xxii. 23; Num. xi. 1, 10, 33; xii. 9; xxv. 3 E.
It can,
therefore, be no mark of diversity of authorship
that hrAHA
in Josh. vii. 1, the
single instance in which it
occurs in a
paragraph assigned to P, is accompanied by
Jxa.
31.
The disjunctive question (xviii. 21); but disjunc-
tive
questions are not peculiar to J. They
are found in
P as well, e.g.,
xvii. 17.
32. Mymiy.ABa xBA advanced in days (xviii. 11); this expres-
sion occurs
but once besides in J (xxiv. 1). It is
found,
also, Josh.
xiii. 1 bis; xxiii. 1, 2, where it is referred to D.
33. "The relation of this narrative to
P's account in
xix. 29.
246 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
But xix. 29 is not another account of the
overthrow of
the cities
of the plain, which is to be referred to another
writer. It simply reverts to the subject of the
overthrow
as
previously related, in order to introduce further state-
ments
respecting Lot.
34. "The difference between xviii. 12
and xvii 17."
These are
not variant explanations of the origin of the
name of
Isaac, as though one writer derived it from the
laughter of
Abraham, another from that of Sarah before
Isaac's
birth, and still a third from the laughter of Sarah
after his
birth (xxi. 6). These allusions to the
signifi-
cance of the
name on different occasions are quite con-
sistent with
one another, and with a common authorship.
LOT'S INCEST (CH. XIX. 29-38)
The critics generally attribute vs. 30-38
to J, and ver.
29 to P,
alleging that this verse is not connected either
with what
precedes or follows, but is a separate and in-
dependent
account of the destruction of the cities of the
plain. Kayser, however, substantially concedes the
whole case
when he says that ver. 29 "seems like a con-
densation of
an account by P of Sodom's overthrow,
which has
been omitted by the redactor."
Plainly this
is not a
recital, but the summary of a recital elsewhere
given. And the narrative, which Kayser misses, is
just
that which
is to be found in the previous part of the
chapter, but
which the critics assign to a different docu-
ment. Nevertheless this verse is tied to what
precedes,
not only by
its subject-matter, but by its language.
Dillmann
claims that it contains five of P's "character-
istic
expressions," viz. Elohim, remembered (as viii. 1),
tHW destroyed
(as vi. 17; ix. 11, 15), cities of the plain (as
xiii. 12), in
which Lot dwelt (not "in one of which;" this
sense is,
however, justified by the passage to which he
LOT'S INCEST (CH. XIX. 29-38) 247
himself refers,
viii. 4, as well as by similar examples,
xxi. 7;
Judg. xii. 7; 1 Sam. xvii. 43; 2 Chron. xvi. 14;
Job xxi.
32). But in fact the diction of this
verse is too
closely
allied to the antecedent narrative to admit of
being
sundered from it: tHw destroy,
as xix. 13 ; xiii. 10;
jph overthrow,
as vs. 21, 25; cities of the plain, see ver.
25; in
which Lot dwelt is a plain allusion to xiii. 12,
which the
critics for this reason cut out of its connec-
tion and
assign to P. But, as has been previously
shown,
it is
indissolubly attached to the context in which it
stands. That Abram continued to dwell in Canaan,
while Lot
dwelt elsewhere, is the very point of the whole
narrative,
which is further emphasized in the promise
which
immediately follows (xiii. 14-17).
"God remem-
bered" affords a good illustration of
critical methods; xxx.
22 is
parcelled between P, E, and J, though the words
"and
God remembered Rachel" are the only ones in the
entire
chapter which are attributed to P. God's
remem-
bering
Abraham plainly refers back, not to his covenant
with Abraham
in ch. xvii. (P), but to Abraham's interces-
sion (xviii.
23-32, J). That no variant
representation is
made,
whether of the reason of Lot's deliverance or of
the
circumstances attending it, was shown, p. 165, No
Discrepancies,
No.7.
Moreover, it is impossible to find a
suitable connection
for ver. 29
in P. It is manifestly incongruous to
attach
it to the
end of ch. xvii., which on the partition hypothe-
sis it
immediately follows. It is customary to
adopt
Hupfeld's
gratuitous assumption that it has been trans-
posed from
its original position after xiii. 12.
But
apart from
the fact that this is building hypothesis upon
hypothesis,
this verse could never have stood there.
It
is not a
declaration that God destroyed the cities of the
plain, but
that when he destroyed them he did what is
here
stated. This implies a previous account
of the de-
248 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
struction,
or at least a mention of it. But no such
mention is
to be found anywhere in P. The verse
con-
sequently
belongs where it stands.
While ver. 29 is thus a recapitulation of
the preceding
narrative,
it is not added to it for the sake of rounding it
up to a
conclusion, as Delitzsch1 formerly maintained.
Astruc and
Eichhorn correctly regarded it as an intro-
duction to
the following paragraph (vs. 30-38), after the
brief
digression (vs. 27, 28). And this
accounts for the
use of
Elohim. Lot had thus far been considered
as
under the
sheltering protection of Abraham, and so of
the God of
Abraham. The last link of connection is
now
severed. Lot passes quite beyond the
limits of the
holy land,
and henceforth stands in no relation whatever
to Abraham
or to Abraham's God. He is reduced to the
footing of
an alien, and God is Elohim to him as to other
Gentiles.
(See pp. 152, 153.)
Noldeke claims for P, in addition to ver.
29, the
clause in
ver. 30, "he dwelt in the mountain," and ap-
peals to
xiii. 12 (see Marks of J, No.3, under ch. xiii.);
xxxvi.
8. Other critics, however, decline in
this instance
to abide by
a test which they apply elsewhere.
Ilgen referred vs. 30-38 to the Second
Elohist, and
Boehmer to
the redactor, on the ground that the author
of the
preceding narrative, in which Lot is represented
as a
righteous person, could not have related this shame-
ful
story. But the sacred writers do not
conceal the
weaknesses
or the sins of even the best of men; not
Abraham's
prevarication, nor Jacob's duplicity, nor
Noah's
intoxication. The peril in which Lot was
in-
volving
himself by his inconsiderate choice of a resi-
dence is
estimated at the outset (xiii. 12, 13); that he
did not
wholly escape the infection of Sodom is shown
(xix. 8);
preparation is thus made for the infamy here
1In
the second and third editions of his Genesis.
LOT'S INCEST (CH. XIX.
29-38) 249
disclosed. That this paragraph is a continuation of the
preceding
narrative is further apparent from the points
of
connection between them. Lot's being in
Zoar (ver.
30)
corresponds with ver. 23; his going to dwell in the
mountain
with ver. 17; the mention of the two daugh-
ters (vs. 5,
16) implies that something further was to
be related
respecting them; the absence of his wife is
accounted
for by her having perished (ver. 26). In
fact,
the only
imaginable reason why Lot is mentioned in the
history at
all is that he was the ancestor of Moab and
Ammon. This concluding paragraph of the chapter is
accordingly
indispensable to both documents, is equally
linked with
both, and binds both together in a common
unity.
The critical division renders P's mention
of Lot alto-
gether
nugatory. P particularly records his
parentage
and his
relation to Abram (xi. 27); his accompanying
Terah and
Abram from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran
(ver. 31);
his going thence with Abram to Canaan (xii.
5); his
large property and retinue (xiii. 6); his parting
from Abram
and dwelling in the cities of the plain (vs.
11, 12); the
deliverance granted him for Abram's sake
when God
destroyed these cities (xix. 29). And
there
he
disappears. The very point and purpose
of the whole
narrative is
not reached,1 viz.: That from
Lot sprang the
tribes of
Moab and Ammon, which are thus, in accord-
ance with
the uniform plan of Genesis, removed like Ish-
mael, the
descendants of Keturah, and Esau, beyond the
limits of
the promised land, that it may remain in the
undisturbed
possession of the chosen race, The missing
paragraph
containing the key to the significance of Lot
1
Wellhausen remarks (Composition des Hexateuchs. p. 15): "Nol-
deke calls
attention to a break in Q (P); he must without doubt have
connected
the two nations of Moab and Ammon with Lot, who in and
of himself
has no significance."
250 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
(xix. 30-38)
is ascribed to J; but his account, too, is
mutilated,
if not at the end, at the beginning. Lot
is
suddenly
introduced (xii. 4a), with no intimation who he
was, and no
previous mention of him.
MARKS OF J
The following alleged marks of J
evidently afford no
indication
of the existence of distinct documents.
1. hrAykiB; first-born (vs. 31, 33, 34, 37), occurs but once
besides in
Hex., viz.: Gen. xxix. 26, which is cut out of
an E context
and assigned to J purely on account of this
and the
following word.
2. hrAyfic; younger (vs. 31, 34, 35, 38), occurs besides in
J, xxv. 23;
xliii. 33; in xxix. 26, xl viii. 14, Josh. vi.
26 it occurs
in mixed contexts, and is referred to J
purely on
account of this word.
3. fraz, hy.AHi preserve seed (vs. 32,34). See ch. vi.-ix.,
Marks of J,
No. 12.
The charge that this story is a product
of national an-
tipathy, and
originated in the conflicts of a later period,
will only be
credited by those who for other reasons dis-
trust the
truth of the narratives of Genesis. That
a na-
tion sprung
from such a source should practise debasing
orgies (N
um. xxv. 1-3) is not surprising.
ABRAHAM WITH
ABIMELECH, KING OF GERAR
(CH. XX.)
CRITICAL EMBARRASSMENT
The divisive hypothesis encountered an
obstacle in
this chapter
by which it was seriously embarrassed, and
which
finally led to the overthrow of its earlier forms.
The more
minute and thorough the analysis was made,
the more
apparent it became that neither the document
ABRAHAM IN GERAR (CH. XX.) 251
hypothesis,
as at first proposed, nor the supplement
hypothesis,
was capable of being applied to this chapter
or to the
subsequent portion of Genesis. The
alterna-
tion of the
divine names, Elohim and Jehovah, in suc-
cessive
sections, had been the starting-point of the hy-
pothesis,
and was relied upon as the palpable evidence
of its
reality. Two writers, the Elohist and
the Jeho-
vist, were
supposed to be thus clearly indicated.
The
characteristic
diction and style of each was made out
by a
diligent comparison of the sections respectively at-
tributed to
them. All went on swimmingly at the be-
ginning,
fresh criteria being gathered as the work pro-
ceeded.
But unfortunately neither this chapter nor
those that
follow can
be brought into harmony with the conclusions
thus far
reached. The words associated with
Elohim in
the account
of the creation (Gen. i.) and of the flood (vi.-
ix.), have
disappeared entirely, or only reappear in Gen-
esis for the
most part in Jehovah sections; and Elohim
in ch. xx.
and henceforth is associated with the diction
and the
style held to be characteristic of the Jehovist.
The natural
inference is that the critics have been too
hasty in
their conclusions. They have made
deductions
from
premises which do not warrant them, and which
are
nullified by a more extended examination of the
facts. They have mistaken the lofty style used in
de-
scribing
grand creative acts or the vocabulary employed
in setting
forth the universal catastrophe of the deluge
for the
fixed habit of an Elohist writer, and set it over
against the
graceful style of ordinary narrative in the
early
Jehovist sections. But in this chapter
and in the
rest of
Genesis whenever Elohim occurs in narrative
sections,
the stately periods of the account of the crea-
tion and the
vocabulary of the creation and the flood are
dropped, and
terms appropriate to the common affairs of
252 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
life and the
ordinary course of human events are em-
ployed by
the Elohist precisely as they are by the Je-
hovist.
Elohim occurs throughout this chapter (vs.
3, 6, 11,
13, 17),
except in the last verse (ver. 18) where Jehovah
is
used. But the words and phrases are
those which are
held to be
characteristic of the Jehovist.
DICTION OF CHAPTER XX.
1. fsanA to journey
(ver. 1), is the standing expression in
J for .the
journeying of the patriarchs (xii. 9; xiii. 11;
xxxiii. 12,
17).
2. bg,n.,ha Cr,x, the land of the south (ver. 1), occurs three
times in the
Hexateuch, and but once besides in the
whole Old
Testament, viz.: Gen. xxiv. 62; Josh. xv. 19
J; Num.
xiii. 29, in a context where J and E are, in the
opinion of
the critics, confusedly mingled, and this verse,
or a part of
it, is assigned to E simply and avowedly be-
cause of
this one expression. bg,n.,ha, the south, whether as a
part of the
country or as a point of the compass, is men-
tioned
nowhere else in Genesis except in J (xii. 9; xiii.
1, 3, 14;
xxiv. 62; xxviii. 14).
3. Kadesh
and Shur (ver. 1) are mentioned by J (xvi.
7, 14); so
is Gerar subsequently as the abode of Isaac
(xxvi. 1),
who habitually repeated what his father had
done.
4. ynAdoxE Lord (ver. 4), as xviii. 3, 27, 30-32 J. See
ch. xviii.,
xix., Marks of J, No.4.
5. xybinA prophet
(ver. 7). This term is nowhere else
applied to
Abraham in the Hexateuch, but the same
thought is
expressed in xviii. 17 sqq. J, where Jehovah
makes him
his confidant.
6. tUmTA tOm thou shalt surely die (ver. 7), as ii. 17; iii.
ABRAHAM IN GERAR (CH. XX.) 253
7. rq,BoBa rise early in the morning (ver. 8), as
xix. 2, 27;
xxvi. 31 J. See ch. xviii., xix., Marks
of J,
No. 26.
8. tAyWifA what hast thou done
(ver. 9), as iii. 13; iv.
10; xii. 18;
xxvi. 10 J. See ch. xii. 10-20, Marks of
J,
No.7.
9. hW,fAye xlo ought not to be done (ver. 9), as
xxxiv. 7 J.
10.
qra only,
surely (ver. 11),
as vi. 5; xix. 8; xxiv. 8,
etc., J. See
ch. vi. 1-8, Marks of J, No. 7.
11. rbaD;-lfa for the sake of (ver, 11), as xii. 17 J.
12.
hnAm;xA indeed (ver. 12), only besides in the Old Tes-
tament Josh.
vii. 20 J.
13.
ds,H, hWAfA show kindness
(ver. 13), as xix. 19 ; xxiv.
12, 14, 49
J. See ch. xviii., xix., Marks of J, No.
29.
14. hHAp;wi maid-servant (ver. 14), as xii. 16; xvi. 2;
xxiv. 35 J.
15.
j~yn,pAl; ycir;xa my land is before thee (ver. 15), as xiii.
9; xxxiv.
10; comp. xxiv. 51 J.
16. HaykiOh to set right (ver.
16), as xxiv. 14, 44; Lev.
xix. 17 J
(so Dillmann). See ch. xxi. 22-34, Marks
of E,
No.7.
Knobel sought to adapt the supplement
hypothesis
to this
state of facts by assuming that J, to whom he as-
signs this
chapter, here and in other like passages drew
his
materials from a written source, which was in the
habit of
using the divine name Elohim; and that ver.
18 was
independently added by J himself.
Hupfeld
abandoned
the supplement hypothesis altogether, and
claimed that
this and all similar passages belonged to
a third
document, E, distinct from P and J, but which
resembled P
in making use of Elohim, and resembled J
in style and
diction. This is now the popular method
among the
critics of getting over the difficulty, ver. 18
being
commonly attributed to the redactor. It
is, how-
ever, only
an evasion, and an impossible evasion; for
254 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
this chapter
cannot belong to a document distinct from
the
preceding narrative, to which it is indissolubly linked.
NOT REFERABLE TO A DISTINCT DOCUMENT
Dillmann, indeed, maintains that "it
must originally
have stood
in a different connection, and have been put
here by
R." And the reason urged is that
the narrative
is
inconsistent with the age ascribed to Sarah.
"Accord-
ing to xvii.
17 P, Sarah is ninety years old, according
to xviii.
11, 12 J, she is advanced in years and past child-
bearing in
the course of nature; so that she cannot pos-
sibly have
still been attractive to strangers."
This has
already been
fully answered in the preliminary remarks
to this
general section, under the head of No Discrep-
ancies,
No.9. In the longevity of the patriarchs
Sa-
rah may not
have been devoid of personal charms even
at the age
of ninety; or Abimelech may have been
prompted by
the desire to form a connection with Abra-
ham, who was
the head of a powerful clan. And, at any
rate, no
arg1lffient can thence be drawn for a diversity of
documents. Why may not the original writer have be-
lieved what,
on the critics' own hypothesis, it is manifest
that R
believed?
He further argues that this chapter can
neither be
from P nor
from J. Not from P, according to whom
Abraham
dwelt in Hebron (xxiii. 2, 19; xxv. 9; xxxv. 27),
and there is
no trace of his dwelling in Gerar or Beersheba;
and not from
J, since he has the parallel narrative, xii.
10-20. But there is no inconsistency between this
chap-
ter and the
passages referred by the critics to P and to
J; and no
reason why it could not have been written by
the common
author of those passages. That Abraham
was at Hebron
at the time of Sarah's death creates no
presumption
that he had not been at Gerar at the time
ABRAHAM IN GERAR (CH. XX.) 255
of this
occurrence thirty-seven years before.
And accord-
ing to the
critical partition of the text, Abraham's abode
in Hebron is
spoken of not by P only, but by J as well
(xiii. 18).
The incident related in this chapter bears
a striking re-
semblance to
that in xii. 10-20. The critics assume
that
such an
affair could occur but once, and hence conclude
that these
can only be variant accounts of the same oc-
currence by
two different writers. It is obvious,
however,
that upon
the critical hypothesis R regarded them as dis-
tinct
events, differing in time, place, and several particu-
lars. And it is difficult to see why the original
writer
may not have
been of the same mind, and inseryed both
in his
narrative. There aloe numerous
indications that
this was
really the case. It is distinctly
declared (ver.
13) that
Abraham had concerted with Sarah to have her
pass as his
sister in more than one place; and the men-
tion of such
an arrangement would be unmeaning if it
had not been
actually carried into effect. The
brevity of
the
statement in ver. 2 leaves the conduct of both Abra-
ham and
Abimelech unexplained, and is an implied ref-
erence to a
previous narrative of the same sort in which
the motives
of the actors are more fully stated. The
writer
assumes that his readers will understand the situ-
tion from
the like instance before related, and so thinks
it
unnecessary to go into particulars. "From thence"
(ver. 1) is
an explicit reference to a locality mentioned
before,
which can only be "the oaks of Mamre" (xviii. 1
J), i.e.,
Hebron (xiii. 18 J, xxiii. 19 P). In
xxi. 32,
which is
universally confessed to be a continuation of
the
narrative in ch. xx., and by the same hand, Abraham
is in
Beersheba, just as he is in the following verse (xxi.
33 J), and
his presence there is nowhere else explained.
And in ver.
34 J speaks of his sojourn in the land of the
Philistines,
where he was sojourning in ch. xx., for Gerar
256 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
(vs. 1, 2)
was the capital the Philistine territory; the
king of
Gerar was the king of the Philistines (xxvi. 1).
The
nocturnal revelation (vs. 3, 6) has its parallels in
J (xxvi. 24;
xxviii. 16), and in a section marked by
"Jehovah,"
though its reference to J' is arbitrarily dis-
puted (xv.
1, 12, seq.). The language of Abimelech
(vs.
9, 10)
recalls that of Pharaoh (xii. 18); and Abraham's
reply, ver.
11, resembles i. 12. The representation
of
the moral
character of the people (ver. 11) corresponds
with xv.
16. There is no discrepancy between ver.
12
and xi. 29
(J) or 31 (P). As Abraham's wife, Sarah
was
Terah's
daughter-in-law; the mention of the fact that she
was also his
daughter was purposely reserved for this
place, that
the difficulty might not be solved before it
had
arisen. "God caused me to
wander" (ver. 13) cor-
responds
precisely with xii. 1, the injunction to go to a
land not yet
disclosed. Abraham's intercession
(ver.17)
for
Abimelech is like that for Sodom (xviii. 23 sqq.).
The transaction here recored also falls
precisely into
line with
both the antecedent and subsequent history
of Abraham,
which is just 4 continued succession of tri-
als for
testing and enhancing his faith in the promise of
God,
increasing in intensity until the climax is reached,
and a period
put to them all in ch. xxii. And it fits
ex-
actly into
the situation, coming as it does after the defi-
nite promise
of xvii. 19, 21 and its gracious renewal at
that visit
of unequalled condescension (xviii. 10), but be-
fore the
conception and birth of the promised child (xxi.
2). All is now put in peril by the threatened
loss of Sarah,
which yet
was averted by immediate divine interference.
This was one
more step in that discipline with which the
patriarch's
life was filled, and that experience of almighty
guardianship
by which he was trained to implicit confi-
dence in,
and obedience to, the word of a covenant-keep-
ing God, and
thus fitted for the unique position of the
ABRAHAM IN GERAR (CH XX.) 257
father of
the faithful and the head of the chosen race
(xviii. 18,
19).
The contention that ch. xx. requires more
time than
can be
allowed in the interval between ch. xviii. and xxi.
rests upon a
misinterpretation of vs. 17, 18, as though
the
infliction there spoken of was sterility, which could
only become
apparent after the lapse of a considerable pe-
riod. But Abimelech needed to be healed as well as
his
wife and
maid-servants, and he had thus been hindered
from
approaching Sarah (ver. 6). The
affection accord-
ingly was
one that prevented sexual intercourse, and so
was an
obstacle to conception and birth.1
1 Ilgen (Urkunden, p. 413) infers that
Sarah must have remained in
Abimelech's
palace at least two years. And Vater
adds that room can-
not be found
before ch. xxi. for all that took place in ch. xviii.-xx. To
this latter
suggestion Ewald very properly replies "that the author no-
where says
that the affair of Lot's daughters (xix. 29-38) took place at
this time;
he merely attaches it to the story of Sodom, as that was a
convenient
place." His treatment of the
occurrence at Gerar in the
same
connection is so admirable that it may be repeated here. I quote
from his
maiden publication (Die Komposition der Genesis kritisch un-
tersucht.
1823, p. 228 sqq.). "Abraham is
still (i.e., in ch. xix.) at the
oaks of
Mamre, as the writer had first stated (xiii. 18), and then referred
back to this
statement (xiv. 13, and xviii. 1). Now
he removes to Ge-
rar, and
although the expression from thence' (xx. 1) does not de-
fine the
starting-point of his journey, it refers to what preceded, and the
direction
from Mamre to Gerar is so plainly indicated by the added
word 'the
south,' that it is an adequate substitute for the name 'oaks
of
Mamre.' Abraham says of his wife at the
outset 'she is my sister'
(ver.
2). In and of itself this is quite
unintelligible; and a Hebrew
narrator
would certainly have told this more plainly, if he had not on
a like
occasion stated in more detail what moved Abraham to it (xii. 11-
13). Was it necessary now to repeat this
here? The rapidity with
which he
hastens on to the fact itself shows what he presupposes in
the
reader. But while in the first event of
the kind (ch. xii.), in Egypt,
the narrator
briefly mentions Pharaoh's gifts and plagues, he sets forth
in more
detail the cause of Abraham's conduct.
The reader might cer-
tainly be
surprised that the same thing could happen twice to Abraham
The narrator
is conscious of this; and in order to remove every doubt
of this
sort, which might so easily arise, he lets Abraham clear up the
258 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
The identity of language, the intimate
connection of
this passage
with the context in which it stands, and the
direct
allusions to previous portions of the narrative
demonstrate
that this chapter cannot belong to a distinct
and
independent document, but is a continuation of the
preceding. And the fact that Elohim in an ordinary
historical
narrative is associated with precisely the same
style and
diction that is found in Jehovah passages an-
nuls the
alleged marks of discrimination urged by critics
in previous
portions of Genesis, which are thus shown
to be due to
a difference, not of writer but of theme.
This chapter
not only affords no argument for a third
document E,
but renders decisive testimony against it,
and against
the hypothesis of documents in general.
Elohim is used throughout this chapter because Abim-
elech, who
is prominent in it is a Gentile. It is
no
objection to
this that Abimelech uses the name "Je-
hovah"
in speaking to Isaac (xxvi. 28, 29); for he there
means
specifically Isaac's God, who had so signally
blessed him;
just as in Ex. xviii., although Elohim is
prevailingly
used in describing Jethro's visit to Moses,
puzzle in
what he says to Abimelech (vs. 11-13).
Thus the narrator
himself
meets every objection that could be made, and by the words
'when God
caused me to wander from my father's house' (ver. 13),
he looks
back so plainly over all thus far related, and at the same time
indicates so
exactly the time when he first thought of passing his wife
off as his
sister everywhere in foreign lands, that this can only be ex-
plained from
the previous narrative in ch. xii.
Moreover, the circum-
stances are
different in the two narratives. Here Abimelech makes
Abraham a
variety of presents after he understood the affair; there
Pharaoh
before he understood it. Here God himself appears, there he
simply
punishes. Here Abraham is called a
prophet (ver. 7), as he
could not
have been at once denominated when God had but just called
him. The circumstances, the issue, and the
description differ in many
respects,
and thus attest that this story is quite distinct from the former
one." In a foot-note Ewald makes light of the
objection from Sarah's
age, and
appeals to similar instances, which I have no means of verifying.
ABRAHAM IN GERAR (CH. XX.) 259
Jehovah is
employed in vs. 911, where Jethro refers
specifically
to the God of Israel in distinction from all
other
gods. And in the book of Jonah the
mariners,
who had
vainly cried each to his god to quell the
storm (i.
5), turned at length to the God of Jonah and
prayed to
and worshipped Jehovah (vs. 14, 16).
Elohim
is construed
as a plural in xx. 3, in accommodation to
pagan ideas
and forms of speech and not as a character-
istic of E;
cf. Ex. xxxii. 4; 1 Sam. iv. 8; for in passages
assigned to
E the same construction ordinarily prevails
as is usual
elsewhere. The plural is used in Gen.
xxxv. 7
because a
vision of both God and angels is referred to;
Ex. xxii. 8
(E. V., ver. 9) is in a code of laws, which in
the opinion
of the critics was not written by E, but copied
by him into
his document; Deut. v. 23 (E. V. ver. 26) is
referred to
D; and in Josh. xxiv. 19 the plural construc-
tion of
Elohim occurs in conjunction with the name Je-
hovah. The use of this construction warrants no
imputa-
tion upon
the strictness of the monotheism of E; for like
constructions
occur in the most rigorously monotheistic
contexts,
e.g., Deut. v. 23 (26); 12 Sam. vii. 22, 23; Jer.
xxiii. 36;
cf. in P, Gen. i. 26, and in J, xi. 7.
"Jehovah" in xx. 18 is not
traceable to a different
writer,
whether J (Knobel, Kayser) or R, as Hupfeld and
most critics
assume. It is Jehovah's interference on
behalf of
Abraham's wife that is there described.
The
name is,
therefore, strictly appropriate.
MARKS OF E
1.
hmAxA maid-servant ( ver. 17) occurs besides in pas-
sages
referred to E (xxi. 10, 1, 13; xxx. 3; xxxi. 33;
Ex. ii. 5);
in the fourth commandment (Ex. xx. 10) and
in the
Covenant Code, suppose by the critics not to
be the work
of E (Ex. xxi. 7, 2 , 26, 27, 32; xxiii. 12);
260 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
also in P
(Lev. xxv. 6, 44 bis); and several times in
Deuteronomy. Notwithstanding the fact that this word
is by no
means peculiar to E, it is claimed that E uses it
instead
of hHApwi which is employed by J and P.
But
hhAp;wi occurs
in E (Gen. xx. 14; xxx. 18), and it is only
by the
questionable device of cutting a clause out of an
E context
and assigning it to P or J, that the admission
is escaped
that E uses it also in xxix. 24, 29; xxx. 4, 7.
Both words
occur in this chapter, and are discriminat-
ingly
used. hmAxA maid-servant, as a concubine of Abime-
lech (ver.
17), is clearly distinguished from hhAp;wi woman-
servant, given for bond-service to Abraham (ver.
14).
That the
former is a less servile term than the latter
plainly
appears also from 1 Sam. xxv. 41. This distinc-
tion is
clearly stated by Ilgen (p. 399), who renders them
respectively
"maid" and "slave."
The assertion that
tHopAw; (ver.
14) is a textual error, or that the clause "men-
servants and
women-servants" is an addition by R, is
altogether
groundless.
2. bbAle (for ble) heart
(vs. 5, 6); besides in E (xxxi. 26;
Ex. xiv. 5;
Josh. xiv. .7; xxiv. 23); in J (Lev. xix. 17,
xxvi. 36,
41, so Dill.; Num. xv. 39; Josh. vii. 5); D
(Josh. v.1;
~xii. 5; xxiii. 14); Rd (Josh. ii.11).
3. ll.ePat;hi to
pray (vs. 7, 17); besides in Hexateuch,
only Num.
xi. 2; xxi. 7 E; Deut. ix. 20, 26 D.
4. MOlHE dream (vs.
3, 6); besides in E (xxxi. 10, 11,
24; xxxvii.
5, 6, 8, 9 bis, 10, 19, 20 ; xl. 5 bis, 8, 9 bis,
16; xli. 7,
8, 11 bis, 12, 15 bis, 17, 22, 25, 26, 32; xlii.
9) ; in J
(Num. xii. 6; so Dillmann). The
occurrence of
Elohim in
connection with the mention of dreams is due
not to the
peculiarity of a writer (E), but to the nature
of the
case. No dreams are mentioned in the
Hexa-
teuch, but
those which are prophetic. When God re-
vealed
himself to those not of the chosen race, of course
Elohim and
not Jehovah would be used, and the method
ABRAHAM IN GERAR (CH. XX.) 261
was
uniformly by dreams, as the lowest form of divine
communication;
thus to Abimelech (xx. 3, 6); Laban
(xxxi. 24);
the butler and bake of Pharaoh (xl. 5 sqq.);
and Pharaoh
himself (xli. 1 sq.). So also to Jacob,
when on the
point of leaving Canaan for Paddan-aram
(xxviii.
12); or for Egypt (xlvi.); and in Paddan-aram
(xxxi. 11);
and to Joseph in his childhood (xxxvii. 5
sqq.). Elohim does not occur in the narrative of Jo-
seph's
dreams; nevertheless these are by the critics re-
ferred to E
under the rule that all dreams must be given
to E, a rule
which sufficiently explains why no dreams
are to be
found in J. But J likewise speaks of
Jehovah
revealing
himself to Isaac at night (xxvi. 24); to Jacob
in his sleep
(xxviii. 16); and similarly to Abram (xv. 1,
12,
13). The futility of the critical
attempts to refer
these
communications made to Abram to E and R, has
already been
shown. The revelation to Abram (xv. 1)
is
called a
vision, a higher form of divine communication
than a
dream, just as that to Jacob (xlvi. 2) is called by
E. That no divine dreams are granted to Gentiles
in J
paragraphs
is for the sufficient reason that Elohim is
necessarily
used in such a connection. If God speaks
directly to
men in J, so he does in E to Abraham (xxi.
12; xxii.
1); and to Jacob (xxxv. 1), without its being
said that it
was in a dream. In P, according to the
di-
vision made
by the critics, God reveals himself but twice
in the
entire patriarchal period--once to Abraham (ch.
xvii.), and
once to Jacob (xxxv. 9), in spite of the explicit
mention made
(Ex. ii. 24; vi. 3 P) that he had appeared
to Isaac and
covenanted with him; which is a positive
proof that
their division is at fault. It has been
said
that
according to E God appears neither formally nor
visibly, but
only in dreams. And yet, if we may
believe
Dillmann, it
is E who records God's wrestling with Jacob
(xxxii.
24-31). And he adds that. Wellhausen's "argu-
262 THE GENERATIONS 0F TERAH
ments to the
contrary prove nothing or rest on mere
postulates."
5. lx, rmaxA (ver. 2), or l;
rmaxA (ver. 13) say
concerning. No
other
example is adduced from the Hexateuch.
In Num.
xxiii. 23,
referred to in Ewald's "Hebrew Grammar," §
217, c, the
expression has not this sense, and is besides
attributed
by Wellhausen to J.
6. NOyq.Ani
innocency (ver. 5); nowhere else in the Hexa-
teuch.
BIRTH OF
ISAAC AND DISMISSAL OF ISHMAEL
(CH. XXI. 1-21)
CRITICAL PERPLEXITY
The opening verses of this chapter have
given some
trouble to
the critics, and have been very variously ap-
portioned. Astruc and Eichhorn were content to follow
the
indications of the divine names throughout, and so
assigned the
first verse and the last two verses of the
chapter to
J, and all the rest to P. As, however,
ver. 1
is
intimately related to ver. 2, Gramberg assigned it also
to P,
assuming that "Jehovah" in each clause had orig-
inally been
"Elohim," and that the verse was an apt
specimen of
P's diffuseness. Knobel separated the
two
clauses of ver.
1, and gave the first to J, being thus able
to retain
the Jehovah of that clause, while contending
that in the
second clause it had been substituted for
Elohim; P's
portion of the chapter was limited by him
to vs. 1b-5,
all the remainder being transferred to J,
who here, as
in ch. xx., was supposed to have made use
of an
earlier source characterized by its employment of
Elohim. Hupfeld converted this earlier source into an
independent
document E, assigning to it vs. 6, 9-32, and
giving vs.
7, 8, to J. Noldeke pointed out that vynAquz;li in
his old age, ver. 2 (P) was identical with the
expression
in ver. 7
(J), and that consequently it must have been
BIRTH OF ISAAC, ETC. (CH. XXI. 1-21) 263
inserted
there by R. But neither is hrAhA
conceived re-
garded as a
word belonging to P; hence Wellhausen in-
sisted on
limiting P's portion of the chapter to vs. 2b-5,
and giving
ver. 1 to R, who thus effected the transition
from the
subject of the preceding chapter to the account
of the birth
of Isaac. The consequence of this is
that
the
paragraph referred to P begins in the middle of a
sentence,
and that J does not record the birth of Isaac
at all. Dillmann, in the last edition of his Genesis,
seeks
to remedy
these incongruities b the artificial process of
splitting
the first and second verses in two, and uniting
their
alternate clauses, thus giving to J vs. la, 2a, 7; to
P 1b, 2b-5;
and to E vs. 6, 8- 21. Budde 1
carries the
splitting
process still further by dividing ver. 6 in two,
and transposing
its second clause to the end of ver. 7.
But even
thus he lags behind Ilgen in the work of dis-
integration,
who long ago divided ver. 7 as well as ver. 6
between J
and E. But in no one of these methods of
partition
does E make mention of the birth of Isaac.
Boehmer
endeavors to relieve this difficulty, and to allow
each
document a share in this announcement 2 by assign-
ing to J vs.
1, 2b, 7; to P vs. 2a, c, 4, 5; and to E vs. 3,
6, 8.
But all this critical toil is as fruitless
as it is unneces-
sary. The whole passage is so closely bound
together as
neither to
require nor to permit partition.
"Jehovah"
in each
clause of ver. 1 forbids the assignment of both or
either to an
Elohist writer without an arbitrary change
of text, which,
instead of contributing to the support of
the
hypothesis, is an inference from the hypothesis.
Moreover,
this verse is not a doublet, as the critics claim,
suggestive
of two distinct sources. It is no
unmeaning
1Urgeschichte, pp. 215, 224.
2Ilgen accomplished the same
thing after a fashion by giving E ver.
la, J 1b,
and P ver. 2.
264 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
repetition,
but an emphatic asseveration, in which the
second
clause is an advance upon the first. It
is first
stated that
Jehovah visited Sarah as he had said (see
xviii. 10);
then the purpose for which he visited her is
added, viz.,
to fulfil the promise previously given. The
mention of a
divine visitation is usually followed by an
explicit
statement of its design; so Gen. 1. 24; Ex. iii.
16, 17;
xxxii. 34; and in these cases no one suspects dif-
ferent
writers. Delitzsch remarks that the
structure of
ver. 1 is
identical with that of ii. 5a.
Wellhausen denies that the author of ch.
xviii. could
have had any
share in this account of Isaac's birth, be-
cause
according to xviii. 10, 14, Jehovah promised to re-
visit Sarah
in Hebron; but the fact is that no locality
is mentioned
there. Dillmann insists that according
to
both J and P
Isaac must have been born in Hebron, as
they knew
nothing of the journey to the south in ch.
xx. (E); a
discrepancy which, like most of those discov-
ered by the
critics, is of their own manufacture, and does
not exist in
the text as it lies before us.
The critics are here in a dilemma which
has perplexed
them not a
little. If ver. 2a is given to P as by
Dillmann
(2nd), J
makes no mention of Isaac's birth, which is the
event to
which every promise from ch. xii. onward had
pointed, and
for which all the history of Abraham up to
this time
had been preparatory. If it is given to
J as by
Dillmann
(3rd), P goes on to speak of the naming of the
child and
his circumcision without having told of his birth.
And even if
"Jehovah" in ver. 1b be changed to "Elohim"
to
accommodate the critics, and this be given to P, he
still merely
says that God fulfilled his promise to Sarah
without
saying what that promise was. It is easy
to say
that Isaac's
birth was mentioned in both documents, but
R has only
preserved one account of it. But there
is no
proof that
such a duplicate statement ever existed. The
THE BIRTH OF
ISAAC, ETC. (CH. XXI. 1-21) 265
critics'
assertion that it did brings no support to their
hypothesis,
for it is itself unsupported, and is a mere in-
ference from
the hypothesis which it is adduced to sus-
tain. And it is an inference which imputes the most
extraordinary
and unaccountable inconsistency to the re-
dactor. In ver. 1 he is supposed to have brought
together two
clauses identical in signification, one or the
other of
which is therefore quite superfluous, because he
found them
in different documents and felt bound to re-
tain
them. He retains xix. 29 from P, though
in the
opinion of
the critics it adds nothing to what he had al-
ready
related in full from J. He records
Noah's entry
into the ark
twice, once from J and then from P, thus
overloading
his narrative in these and other conspicuous
instances
with identical repetitions for no other reason
than because
the same thing was recorded in each of his
sources. Why does he not do the same in this matter
which is
evidently regarded in both documents as of the
greatest
moment?
"Sarah bore a son at the set time of
which God had
spoken to
him" (ver. 2) is a plain allusion to xvii. 19a,
21; the name
Isaac (ver. 3) to xvii. 19; his being circum-
cised the
eighth day (ver. 4) to xvii. 12; the age of Abra-
ham (ver. 5)
to xvii. 1, 24. The repetition of "Sarah"
four times
in vs. 1-3, and the reiteration of the statement
that she was
the mother of the child are not due to
the diffuse
style of the writer, but to the emphasis laid
upon the
fact, as in ch. xvii. The name
"Elohim" (vs.
2, 4, 6) is
adopted from ch. xvii., which is so prominently
referred
to. The promise was made and was now
ful-
filled by
Jehovah in the character of God Almighty (xvii.
1); the
event was, and was understood by both Abraham
and Sarah to
be, not the product of natural causes, but
of divine
omnipotent intervention.
The contention that ver. 6 contains a new
explanation
266 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
of the name
of Isaac, or as Ilgen and Budde will have it,
two separate
explanations of it, differing from those in
xvii. 17 P
and xviii. 12 J, and that it must on this ac-
count be
referred to a third writer, E, is unfounded.
These
several allusions to he significance of the name
are entirely
harmonious and are not suggestive of a di-
versity of
writers. Abraham's and Sarah's laugh of
in-
credulity is
exchanged for a laugh of joy. Nor does
the
additional
utterance of Sarah (ver. 7), though distinct
from the
preceding (ver. 6), and separately introduced by
the words
"And she said," require or justify the as-
sumption
that this is from a other document any more
than the
three utterances of the angel of Jehovah to
Hagar (xvi.
9-11), which few of the critics think of sun-
dering.
DIVISION
IMPOSSIBLE
Hupfeld claims that the narrative of the
expulsion of
Hagar and
Ishmael (vs. 9-21), which is assigned to E,
stands in no
relation to the account of Isaac's birth,
which he
divides between J an P. But besides the
ob-
vious
intimate connection between the two events, the
narratives
are bound together by ver. 8, which Hupfeld
correctly
attaches to what precedes as its proper se-
quence, and
other critics with equal propriety attach to
what follows
as indicating its occasion. It was at
the
feast to
celebrate the weaning of Isaac that Ishmael
made himself
so obnoxious as t be sent away.
The critics allege that vs. 8-2 is a
variant of xvi. 4-14
by a
different writer, but without the slightest reason.
The two
events are quite distinct, and each is appropriate
in its
place. In ch. xvi. Hagar I was treated
harshly be-
cause of her
contemptuous behavior toward her mistress
before the
birth of Ishmael, and ran away of her own
accord, but
was sent back by an angel. In this place
THE BIRTH OF
ISAAC, ETC. (CH. XXI. 1-21) 267
Hagar and
Ishmael were finally dismissed by Abraham,
and an angel
appeared to succor them in their distress.
That
"Jehovah" is used throughout the former passage,
and
"Elohim" in this, is due not to a difference of
writers but
of situation. There Hagar was regarded
as a
member of
Abraham's household, and as such still under
Jehovah's
protection. Here she and Ishmael are
finally
separated
from the patriarch and his family, and are
henceforth
disconnected from the chosen race.
Elohim
is,
therefore, used with Ishmael as with Lot after he was
finally cut
off from proximity to, and all connection with,
Abraham
(xix. 29 sq q. ).
The attempt to create a discrepancy in
respect to the
age of
Ishmael is not successful. It is claimed
that
while
Ishmael, according to xvi. 16; xxi. 5, was at least
sixteen
years old, he is in this narrative represented as
a young
child needing to be carried. Dillmann
effects
this result
by accepting the erroneous rendering of ver.
14 by the
LXX. in place of the Hebrew text, as Ilgen
had done
before him, and reading "put the child on her
shoulder,"
which, according to the text as it stands, was
not
done. This, as Jerome long since
remarked, would
bring this
verse into variance with ver. 18, where Hagar
is bidden to
lift up the sick boy and hold him with her
hand. Ex quo manifestum est, eum qui tenetur non
oneri
matri
fuisse, sed comitem. To hold him by the hand is
a very
different thing from carrying him.
It is also inconsistent with vet. 9, where
qHecam;
cannot
denote the
innocent laughter of a young child. It
is in-
conceivable
that the writer could have intended to charge
Sarah with
being so seriously provoked by such a cause.
It must mean
"mocking," and was so understood (Gal.
iv. 29); but
this is the act of a boy of some age.
See
above, No
Discrepancies, No.8, page 166.
Vater remarks upon this passage, "We
have no reason
268 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
indeed to
presuppose a connection in the accounts of dif-
ferent
fragments, but neither have we any reason to seek
contradictions
where there are none." The fragment
hypothesis,
in the interest of which Vater wrote, is now
universally
abandoned in consequence of the abundant
proofs of a
close connection between all parts of the
Pentateuch,
which it persistently denied. But the
preva-
lent
disposition of the divisive critics" to seek contradic-
tions where
there are none," in order to justify their as-
sumption of
different documents is really destructive of
their own
hypothesis; for it imputes an incredible blind-
ness to the
redactor who could combine such glaring
contradictions
in what he offers to his readers as a con-
sistent and
credible history.
In ver. 16 Hagar is said to have lifted up
her voice and
wept. Whereupon it is immediately added (ver. 17),
And God
heard the voice of the lad. This has
been re-
garded as an
incongruity, implying a diversity of writers
(Knobel), or
an error in the text (LXX., the child lifted
up his voice
and wept). But every writer can presume
upon the
intelligence of his readers to supply what is so
evident as
not to require mention. The cries of the
child
were natural
under the circumstances, and are here im-
plied,
though not expressly stated. And as
Dillmann
suggests,
the repetition of the words, "she sat over against
him"
(ver. 16b), can only be, for the purpose of intro-
ducing a
clause of which Hagar is the subject.
Dillmann observes that the name of the
child is not
mentioned
throughout the paragraph (vs. 9-21), and con-
jectures
that E must have said after vs. 17, 18, that the
child was
called Ishmael God hears, because God had
then heard
his voice; and that R omitted it. It is
re-
markable how
often the divisive hypothesis leads the
critics to
the belief that something ought to be in the
text which
is not there. There has been no omission
THE BIRTH OF ISAAC, ETC. (CH. XXI. 1-21) 269
here. The name does not occur in vs. 19-21 any more
than in the
preceding verses. The naming of the
child
and the
reason of it had already been stated (xvi. 11, 15);
and the
allusion to its significat on (xxi. 17), like that in
xvii. 20, is
suggestive not of different writers but rather
of all
emanating from one common source.
MARKS OF P
Dillmann assigns to P, vs. 1b, 2b-5,
"on account of the
back
reference of vs. 2b and 4 to ch. xvii.," which is freely
admitted;
"the statement of age, ver. 4," but see ch. xii.
1-9, Marks of P No. (5); "the diffuseness,
ver. 3, "there
is here,
however, no needless superfluity of words, but
only
emphatic repetition, as above explained, and but
one instance
of alleged characteristic diction, viz.:
1. "The form txam;
ver. 5, " the
construct state of hxAme
a hundred.
The fact is that both forms of this numeral
occur
repeatedly in passages assigned to P, to which, as
a rule,
statements of age and enumerations are attributed.
This number
occurs in J but twice, vi. 3 (120 years), xxvi.
12 (100
measures), and in E of but three things, Joseph's
age, I. 22,
26 (110 years), Joshua's age, Josh. xxiv. 29
(110 years),
and the price of a field at Shechem, Gen.
xxxiii. 19;
Josh. xxiv. 32 (100 kesitas); in each of these
cases the
absolute form hxAme chances
to be used. But
the same
form is also found in like cases in P, e.g., Gen.
xvii. 17
(100 years); xxiii. 1 (12 years); Deut. xxxiv. 7
(120 years),
and in a large proportion of those instances
in which the
numeral is attached to weights or measures.
There is not
the slightest reason, therefore, for assuming
a diversity
of usage in respect to this word.
MARKS OF J
Dillmann says, "J, too, as is
natural, narrated the birth
of Isaac in
what he wrote, but R has adopted nothing
270 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
from his
account, except vs. la, 2a, 7; at least it is quite
inconceivable
that ver. 1a could have been added along-
side of 1b
by R of his own motion and without finding it
in J; in vs,
2b and 7 vynAquz;li in his old age,
points to J,
and ver. 7
is a doublet of ver. 6." He also
urges the
back
reference in ver. 1a to xviii. 10 sqq. (which is not
disputed),
and that dqaPA visited
is decisive against the au-
thorship of
P, who says instead rkazA remembered.
But it has been shown above that there is
no super-
fluous
repetition in ver. 1; and that there is no reason
for assuming
that vs. 6 and 7 are by different writers.
And the
words here adduced supply no argument for
critical
partition.
1. dqaPA visited
(ver., 1), occurs in this sense besides in
E (1. 24,
25; Ex, iii, 16; iv. 31; xiii. 19; xx. 5; Num.
xvi. 29); in
R (Num. xiv, 18); in J (Ex, xxxii. 34; xxxiv.
7; and,
according to Dillmann, Lev. xviii, 25).
It is
not easy to
see on what grounds this last verse is denied
to P. It stands in what he considers a mixed
passage of
J and P, and
between two verses which he gives to P,
and why it
is separated from them does not appear.
And rkazA remembered (said of God), is not
an expression
peculiar to
P. It occurs in verses attributed to P
(Gen.
viii. 1 ;
ix. 15, 16 ; xix. 29 ; xxx. 22; Ex, n. 24; vi. 5); but
also in J
(Ex, xxxii. 13; Lev. xxvi. 42, 45, so Dillmann).
And in Gen,
xxx, 22 the clause containing it is cut out of
a J and E
connection on account of this word alone.
2. Myniquz; old age (vs. 2, 7), occurs but twice besides,
viz., xliv.
20 J, and xxxvii. 3, about which critics are di-
vided: Knobel gives it to P; Kuenen and Wellhausen
to E; and
Dillmann to J.
MARKS OF E
To E is assigned vs. 6, 8-21, and it is
contended that
"in
spite of Elohim this is not from P, whom the ap-
THE BIRTH OF ISAAC, ETC. (CH. XXI. 1-21) 271
appearance
of the divine angel (ver. 17) does not suit." The
reason of
the absence of angels from P is that the critical
lines of
partition exclude this document from the body of
the
narrative, and the occurrence of the word 'angel' in a
paragraph is
held to be sufficient to prove that it is not
from P. "Nor the explanation of the name of
Isaac;"
but this has
already been shown to be consistent with
that of ch.
xvii. "Nor the sending away of
Hagar and
Ishmael;"
it is alleged that this is inconsistent with the
presence of
Ishmael at his father's burial (xxv. 9 P).
But it is
manifest that he might easily return on such an
occasion and
for such a purpose. It is besides
expressly
stated in
that immediate connection (xxv. 6) that all the
sons of
Abraham's concubines were thus dismissed dur-
ing his
lifetime. And whatever disposition the
critics
may choose
to make of this verse, the redactor must
have thought
it to be in harmony with the statement im-
mediately
after, that "his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried
him." "Nor the age of Ishmael at the
time;" but it
has been
shown that there is no discrepancy in regard
to it. "Expressions like God was with him
(ver. 20),
hearken unto
the voice of (ver. 12), rose
up early in the
morning (ver. 14), it was grievous in his eyes
(vs. 11, 12),
wreGe cast
out (ver. 10), dl,y,
child (vs. 8, 14 sqq.), are for-
eign to
P." The simple explanation of the
absence of
these and
other familiar words and phrases from P is
that only
the most stinted share in the narrative por-
tion of the
Pentateuch is accorded to P, while the great
bulk of it
is divided between J and E. And these
expressions
are as freely used in J as in E. They
are not the
peculiar characteristic of anyone writer, but
are the
common possession of all who use the lan-
guage.
1. God was with him (ver. 20); in J
(xxvi. 24, 28;
xxviii. 15;
xxxix. 2, 21).
272 THE
GENERATIONS OF TERAH
2. lOqB; fmawA hearken unto the voice of (ver. 12); in J
(xxvii. 8,
43; Ex. iv. 1 ; Num. xxi. 3).
3. rq,BoBa Mykiw;hi rose up early in the morning (ver. 14).
See ch.
xviii. 1-xix. 28, Marks of J, No. 26.
4. yneyfeB; ffarA to be grievous in the eyes (vs. 11, 12); in
J (xxxviii.
7, 10; xlviii. 17; Num. xxii. 34; xxxii. 13);
and once in
P (Gen. xxviii. 8).
5. wreGe cast out (ver. 10);
in J (iii. 24; iv. 14; Ex. ii.
17; xii. 39;
xxxiv. 11; Lev. xxi. 7, 14 (so Dillmann);
Num. xxii.
11).
6. dl,y, child (vs.
8, 14 sqq.); in J (iv. 23; xxxii. 23,
E. V. ver.
22; xxxiii. 1 sqq.; xliv. 20). It is
noticeable
that dl,y,
child, and
rfana lad, are here used interchangea-
bly of
Ishmael; the former, vs. 14, 15, 16; the latter, vs.
12, 17 bis,
18, 19, 20. Knobel regarded the former
as
the language
of J, and the latter as that of the older
source from
which he supposed him to have drawn this
narrative. On the assumption of this double authorship
he likewise
explained the twofold mention of Ishmael's
abode in vs.
20 and 21. Other critics refer the whole
of
vs. 8-21 to
E, and thus admit that the use of two differ-
ent terms to
express the same thing is not necessarily an
indication
of different writers. The doublet in vs.
20,
21, is also
passed over in silence as void of significance.1
It is argued
that this paragraph must be referred to an
author
distinct from J on account of "the divine name;"
but it has
been shown that the employment of Elohim
here accords
with biblical usage. "The variant explana-
tion of the
name of Isaac, ver. 6;" but this has been
shown to be
in harmony with xviii. 12, 1.3, as well as
xvii. 17,
19. "And above all, that vs. 9-21 is a variant
of the story
about Hagar and Ishmael told by J in ch.
1 Hupfeld (Quellen, p. 30) doubtfully
conjectures that ver. 21 belongs
to P, and
has been transferred by R from its original position after xxv.
12. I am not aware that any other critic has
adopted this view.
ABRAHAM AT
BEERSHEBA (CH. XXI. 22-34) 273
xvi.;"
but this is not the case; they are distinct occur-
rences. The additional proofs offered for its
reference
to a writer
E, distinct from J an I P, are equally nugatory.
These are:
7. "The locality in the Neghebh
(South), cf. xx. 1;"
but ver. 33
J, Abraham is in that region, of which the
paragraphs
assigned to E afford the only explanation.
8. tm,He bottle vs. 14, 15, 19; nowhere else in the Hexa-
teuch; but
once besides in the Old Testament.
9. hHAFA to shoot
(ver.16); nowhere else in the Old Tes-
tament.
10.
tw,q, hbero archer (ver. 20); nowhere else in the
Old
Testament. This is, moreover, a needless departure both
from the
Massoretic points and the usual meaning of the
words. The text has tw.Aqa hb,ro as he grew up, an archer.
11. hmAxA maid-servant (vs.
10, 12, 13). See ch. xx.,
Marks of E,
No.1. Hagar, who had been Sarah's bond-
maid, hHap;wi, is now, as Abraham's concubine, regarded
as
in a less
servile position, and is hence called an hmAxA.
See Diction
of ch. xx., No. 14.
12. yOgl; MUW, make a nation (vs. 13, 18) ; only besides in
the
Hexateuch xlvi. 3, referred by Dillmann to E, but by
Kautzsch to
R; the same construction occurs in J xlvii.
26, qHol;
MUW make a
statute.
13. qHer;ha afar off (ver. 16); also in J (Ex. viii.. 24, E.
V. ver. 28).
14.
hdoOx lfa on account of
(ver. 11); also in J (xxvi.
32); in
Josh. xiv. 6 it occurs in the same clause with an
expression
of P; apart from Gen. xxi. it occurs in but
three
passages that are referred to E (Ex. xviii. 8; Num.
xii. 1;
xiii. 24).
ABRAHAM AT BEERSHEBA (CR. XXI. 22-34)
This paragraph records the covenant
between Abime-
lech and
Abraham at Beersheba. Hupfeld here gives
vs.
274 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
22-32 to E,
and vs. 33, 34 t J, because of Elohim in vs.
22, 23, and
Jehovah in ver. 33. But ver. 33 cannot
be
separated
from what precedes; for the subject of the
verbs in
this verse is not expressed and must be derived
from the
foregoing verses, and Abraham's presence in
Beersheba is
not explained by anything that has pre-
ceded in J,
but only by the antecedent narrative, which
is
attributed to a different document.
Kayser seeks to
evade these
difficulties by assuming that E's narrative
was inserted
by J in his document, to which he then at-
taches vs.
33, 34. But this has found no favor with
other
critics,
because it annuls their chief argument for a writer
E in this
passage distinct from J, viz., that derived from
the alleged
J parallel in xxvi. 26-33. Wellhausen
tries
to compass
the same end in a different way, but one
equally
ineffectual. He gives ver. 33 to E; but
this
makes it
necessary for him to alter the text by expunging
the name
"Jehovah," and even then the phrase "call on
the
name" of God remains, which is a stereotype J ex-
pression. Hupfeld insists that ver. 34 contradicts ver.
32, and
cannot, therefore, be assigned to the same author.
In ver. 34
Beersheba was in the land of the Philistines;
in ver. 32
it was not. He struggles to overcome the
difficulties
of the situation by still another method, that
of
transposing the text. He transfers xxii.
19b, "And
Abraham
dwelt," or, as he renders it, "settled in Beer-
sheba,"
to this place, thus according for J's speaking
of him as in
this locality. He then transposes ver.
33
with ver.
34, and so finds a subject for the verbs in
the
former. The arbitrary character of these
changes of
the text,
for which no reason can be given except the ex-
igencies of
the hypothesis, sufficiently condemns them.
Wellhausen fancies that he discovers a
discrepancy
between ver.
22 and ver. 32b, in virtue of which he
claims that
the latter cannot be by the author of the pre-
ABRAHAM AT
BEERSHEEA (CH. XXI. 22-34) 275
ceding
narrative, but must be attributed to R.
In ver.
32b
Abimelech dwelt at some distance from Abraham;
in ver. 22
they lived presumably in the same place, for
they held an
interview without anything being said of
Abimelech's
having come away from home for this pur-
pose. As if the reader had not already been
informed
(xx. 2) that
the royal residence was at Gerar, while this
transaction
is expressly said to have taken place at Beer-
sheba (ver.
31). And in numberless instances facts
are
implied
without being expressly mentioned. God
healed
Abimelech
and his wife and his maid-servants (xx. 17),
though it
had not been previously stated that they were
sick. God heard the voice of Ishmael (xxi. 17),
though
it had not
been before said that he had made a sound.
It is
implied (ver. 25), though not explicitly declared,
that
Abimelech restored the well to Abraham which his
servants had
violently taken away.
Dillmann gives both ver. 32b and ver. 34
to R, thus
disregarding
Hupfeld's notion that they are mutually in-
consistent
and must be referred to distinct sources.
The
occurrence
of the expression "land of the Philistines"
in these
verses, which is not found before in ch. xx. or
xxi., is no
reason for sundering them from the preceding
narrative;
for Gerar, where Abimelech resided, and of
which he was
king (xx. 2), was a Philistine city (xxvi. 1).
It was quite
natural, therefore, to speak of Abimelech's
return to
Gerar as a return to the land of the Philistines.
And as
Beersheba lay in the same region it could also
be described
as in the land of the Philistines.
Dillmann had a more controlling reason,
however, than
these
superficial trifles, for referring ver. 34 to R. It
is evidently
preparatory for ch. xxii. Abraham's long
sojourn
there explains how Isaac, whose birth is recorded
xxi. 2,
could be spoken of as he is in xxii. 6.
But it
would
conflict with the hypothesis to allow a verse of
276 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
J to be
introductory to a narrative of E. Hence
it is
cut out of
its connection and attributed to R. But
the
actual and
obvious fact is that this verse is a link of con-
nection,
binding together what precedes and what follows
as the
product of the same pen.
The divine names in this paragraph are in
strict ac-
cordance
with ordinary Bible usage, and supply no rea-
son for
suspecting a diversity of documents.
Thus we
find Elohim
in the interview with the Gentile king,
Abimelech;
but when Abraham offers worship he calls
on the name
of Jehovah.
MARKS
OF E
It is alleged that the diction is not that
of P, which,
considering
the slight amount of narrative given to that
document, is
not surprising. But the words adduced in
proof are
all found in J.
1. ds,H, hWAfA show kindness (ver. 23). See ch. xviii., xix.,
Marks of J,
No. 29.
2. tyriB; traKA make a covenant (vs. 27, 32). See ch. vi.-
ix., Marks
of P, No. 16.
3. rUbfEBa in order that (ver. 30); in J (iii. 17; viii. 21;
xii. 13, 16;
xviii. 26, 29, 31, 32; xxvi. 24; xlvi. 34; Ex. xiii.
8); in E
(Ex. xix. 9); JE (Gen. xxvii. 4,10, 19, 31; Ex. xx.
20 bis); R
(Ex. ix. 14, 16 bis). See ch. vi.-ix.,
Marks of
J, No.6; ch.
xii. 10-20, Marks of J; No.5.
4. yTil;Bi except (ver. 26). See ch. xviii.,
xix., Marks of J,
No. 14.
5. hn.Ahe here (ver. 23); in J (xlv. 5, 13; Josh. viii. 20);
in E (Gen.
xlii. 15; xlv. 8; Josh. xviii. 6); JE (Josh. ii.
2; ill. 9; R
(Gen. xv. 16).
6. Elohim (vs. 22, 23); explained above.
7. HaykiOh reproved
(ver. 25); in J (xxiv. 14, 44; Lev.
xix. 17, so
Dillmann); in E (Gen. xx. 16; xxxi. 37, 42 ).
SACRIFICE OF ISAAC (CH. XXII. 1-19) 277
8. God is with thee (ver. 22). See
ch. xxi. 1-21, Marks
of E, No.1.
9.
tdoOx lfa because of
(ver. 5). See ch. xxi. 1-21,
Marks of E,
No. 14.
10.
dk,n,vA Nyni o offspring and posterity (ver. 23); neither
word occurs
again in the Hexateuch; they are found but
twice
besides in the Old Testament, viz., Job xviii. 19;
Isa. xiv.
22.
"The connection" of this
paragraph" with ch. xx. in
respect of
place and persons" is freely admitted; but
there is in
this no argument for critical partition.
Nor
does the
similar occurrence in the life of Isaac (xxvi.
26-33)
warrant the inference that these are variant ac-
counts of
the same transaction recorded by different
writers.
The statement "they made a
covenant" (ver. 27b), is
repeated
(ver. 32a), but no critic suspects a doublet or
assigns them
to distinct documents.
SACRIFICE
OF ISAAC (CH. XXII. 1-19)
The narrative of the offering up of Isaac
is closely
linked
together in every part. It is identical
throughout
in style and
language; it is an appropriate sequel to all
that has
gone before. There is not the slightest
reason for
partitioning
this passage between different writers except
the
occurrence in it of both Elohim and Jehovah.
This is
accordingly
made the ground of critical severance; and
yet these
divine names interpose an obstacle to division
which it has
been found impossible to remove. The
names, which
are "the only pretext for division, must first
be altered
into conformity with the critical scheme be-
fore any
division is practicable. The mechanical
theory,
which
undertakes to account for the alternation of these
names by the
peculiar habit of different writers, and
278 THE GENERATJONS OF TERAH
which loses
sight of the distinctive meaning and usage of
the names
themselves, is here completely baffled.
THE CRITICAL PARTITION
The first attempt at division was that of
Astruc and
Eichhorn,
who assigned vs. 1-10 to the Elohist, and vs.
11-19 to the
Jehovist; which made it necessary to as-
sume that
Elohim (ver. 12) had been altered from Je-
hovah.
But the Elohist account cannot end with
vera 10,
where
Abraham takes the knife to slay his son.
The ac-
tion is thus
broken off in the midst, and the verses that
follow are
needed to complete it. These following
verses
are also
linked to what precedes by the expressions used:
"Now I
know that thou fearest God" (ver. 12) states
the result
of the trial (ver. 1). "Thy son,
thine only
son"
(ver. 12), repeats the identical language or ver. 2.
And ver. 19,
"Abraham returned to his young men," is
an express
allusion to his promise made to them (ver. 5).
Accordingly Tuch proposed to give the
Elohist vs. 1-
13, 19, and
to the Jehovist vs. 14-18. Hupfeld
(Quel-
len, p. 55)
adopts the same division; only he insists that
the Elohist
of this chapter, as of ch. xx., xxi., is to be dis-
tinguished
from the Elohist or the earlier chapters of
Genesis. In this he is followed by subsequent critics
who agree
that it is E and not P. Elohim is here
found
in
connection with the diction and style of J, with the
lEwald, Komposition d. Genesis,
pp. 74, 75, shows in detail that the
divine names
are in each instance appropriately chosen, and remarks
that the
adherents of the divisive hypothesis have a much more diffi-
cult task to
perform in rending asunder what is so closely knit together.
He then
proceeds to say, "Nevertheless two different writers are assumed
for no other
reason than the constraint of the divine names.
And as even
thus the
word Elohim (ver. 12) still makes difficulty, it must fall
under the
rigor of consistent criticism to make way for another name."
SACRIFICE OF ISAAC (XXII. 1-19) 279
mention of
sacrifice, and with "refined and profound"
religious
ideas, "like the profound theological passage on
the origin
of sin and evil ch. ii., iii." Thus
it threat-
ened to
annihilate every distinction between P and J,
which the
critics have been at such pains to establish, and
to destroy
the very foundations of the divisive hypothe-
sis. The suggestion of a second Elohist was
therefore
eagerly
welcomed as the only ode of averting so dire a
catastrophe.
But whether it be P or E, the divine
names still prove
refractory,
and will not fit into the improved division.
Jehovah
(ver. 11) must, in spite of the exact parallel in
ver. 15, be
converted into Elohim. It is also
necessary
to get rid
of "Moriah," the manifestation or appearing
of Jehovah (ver. 2), a proper name, of which Jehovah
is
one of the
constituents. Tuch proposes to substitute
for
it "the
land of Moreh," in the neighborhood of Shechem
(xii.
6). Wellhausen objects that
"Moreh" was not a
land, but a
place, and conjectures instead "land of the
Hamorites"
(a designation of his own manufacture),
"where
Shechem lay" (see xxxiii. 18, 19), and pleads the
Samaritan
tradition that Mount Gerizim was the scene of
the
sacrifice of Isaac.1 Dillmann
shows that Shechem was
too remote,2
and offers another equally unfounded con-
jectural
emendation, "land of the Amorite."
But the
text is in
no need of correction. It is only the
perplex-
ity of the
critics which demands it, in order to bring it
into
conformity with their hypothesis.
1 Stade calls the sacrifice of
Isaac "a Shechemite saga," Geschichte
Israel, page
583.
2
According to Robinson's itinerary Shechem was thirty-six hours
forty-five
minutes distant from Bee rsheb a, and could not have been
reached on
the third day (ver. 4), as Abraham had all his preparations
to make
before starting. The distance to Mount
Moriah was twenty- two
hours
fifteen minutes, which corresponds to the requirements of the
narrative.
280 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
"Moriah"
in all probability took its name from this
incident in
the life of Abraham. In later times
David
selected it
to be the site of the future temple, because of
a divine
manifestation made to him upon this same spot
(2 Chron.
iii. 1). There is a congruity in this
coinci-
dence that
was no doubt in the divine intention when
Abraham was
directed to this particular summit, which
was in after
ages to be the appointed place of sacrifice,
and which
was in close proximity to the place where, in
the fulness
of time, the one effectual sacrifice here prefig-
ured of
God's own and only Son was to be offered.
But
this chapter
gives us no reason to suppose that its au-
thor was
aware that the mountain thus hallowed by the
angelic
appearance was to gather additional sacredness
whether from
the erection of the temple or from the sub-
lime
transaction on Calvary. Much less is there
the
slightest
ground for assuming that after the temple had
been built
the word "Moriah" was inserted into the
text of this
chapter in order to connect the sacrifice of
Isaac with
the temple mountain. This is certified
to be
the true
original reading by ver. 8, where "God will pro-
vide"
is a plain allusion to the name. It is
used by
prolepsis in
ver. 2, as Horeb is called "the mountain of
God "
(Ex. iii. 1), because of the divine descent upon it
at the
subsequent giving of the law. If a later
writer
had meant to
identify the scene of Abraham's trial with
the location
of the temple, he would doubtless have used
the word
"Zion," in which it was comprehended, and
which was
its ordinary name. The indefiniteness of
the
language in
ver. 2 is also observable. The mountain
was
not known to
Abraham, but would be pointed out to him.
And the name
"Moriah" is applied not only to the sum-
mit, but to
the region in which it stood. There is
no
subsequent
trace of such a usage.
"Moriah " (ver. 2) and "God
will provide" (ver. 8) in-
SACRIFICE OF ISAAC (CH. XXII. 1-19) 281
evitably
carry with them ver. 14, whose last clause, "in
the mount
where Jehovah appears," gives the explana-
tion of the
name, and to whose allusive "Jehovah-jireh,"
Jehovah will
provide, ver. 8 is
reparatory. This verse
must
accordingly be attached to the preceding.
Dr.
Driver
admits this by assigning to E vs. 1-14, 19, in
spite of the
twice repeated "Jehovah "in ver. 14. "Je-
hovah"
occurs six times in this chapter, either separate-
ly or in
composition. If with Dr. Driver's assent
four of
these are
given to E, how can the other two supply an
argument for
separating vs. 15-18 from the rest of the
chapter and
giving them to a different document?
Moreover, vs. 15-18 are inseparable from
what pre-
cedes. "The second time" (vet. 15), which
the critics
arbitrarily
erase, is an explicit reference to ver. 11.
"The
angel of
Jehovah" is introduced in both verses in identi-
cal
terms." Thou hast not withheld thy
son, thine only
son"
(ver. 12), recurs again ver. 16 (see also ver. 2).
And these
closing verses are essential" to the narrative
and an
indispensable part of it, since without them it is
not brought
to a fitting termination. At every
crisis in
his life,
and especially after every marked exercise of
faith, a
blessing is freshly pronounced upon Abraham.
When in
obedience to the divine command he left his
home and
kindred and came to Canaan, Jehovah ap-
peared to
him and promised him this land (xii. 7).
After
he had shown
his generosity in parting from Lot, the
same promise
was renewed in fuller form (xiii. 14-17).
After his
brave rescue of Lot from a pillaging foe, he
was blessed
of Melchizedek (xiv. 19, 20). His faith
in
Jehovah's
promise of seed, made to him in his despond-
ency (xv.
6), is rewarded by a covenant engagement (vs.
18-21). When confiding in God's assurance that the
long-delayed
promise should be fulfilled at the set time
in the next
year, he accepted the rite of circumcision (ch.
282 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
xvii.),
Jehovah visited him in his tent on the roost confi-
dential
terms (ch. xviii.). And it would be most
extraor-
dinary if
the most conspicuous manifestation of his faith
and
obedience, put to the severest test, and this trium-
phantly
borne, were to pass without signal recognition
and
reward. The situation calls for just
what we actu-
ally find in
vs. 15-18, a renewal of the promises in then
amplest
form, Jehovah by a voice from heaven confirm-
ing them by
the added solemnity of an oath.
The question here arises how and by whom
the differ-
ent
constituents, which in the opinion of the critics are
here
combined, have been put together in their present
form. According to the fundamental assumptions of
the critical
hypothesis E could not have used the name
"Jehovah." It is necessary, therefore, to suppose that
the portion
assigned to him is not now as he must have
written it,
but has been altered by another. Noldeke
infers that
E has both here and elsewhere been worked
over by
J. But this would annul one of the chief
argu-
ments for
the existence of E distinct from J, based upon
alleged
discrepancies between their respective narratives;
and
Wellhausen interposes an objection on this ground.
Dillmann
adds that if J had made these alterations in E,
he would not
have suffered Elohim to remain. In the
ear-
liest
edition of his "Commentary" Dillmann maintained
that there
were two independent accounts of this trans-
action by E
and by J, and that R incorporated into E's
account from
that of J the mention of Moriah, the name
Jehovah, and
the added verses at the end. But the
author of
these closing verses must have bad those that
precede
before him, for there are identical expressions in
both. In subsequent editions Dillmann receded from
this
position and insisted that the changes and additions
are to be
ascribed to R, and were made by him of his
own motion
and not borrowed from an antecedent source.
SACRIFICE OF ISAAC ( CH. XXII. 1-19) 283
But then
what R has inserted is indistinguishable from
J in matter
and style; and the same is true of what E
has written,
with the sole exception of the divine names.
So that it
might appear as though the agnostic position
long ago
taken by Gramberg ,as the safest one for the
critics in
dealing with this chapter, viz. : that the docu-
ments are so
blended that it is impossible to effect a par-
tition, and
"no one can tell what belongs to the Elohist,
what to the
Jehovist, and what to the redactor."
In fact some of the critics 1ean strongly
toward the
admission of
the unity of t is narrative. Hupfeld
("Quellen,"
p. 178) speaks of it as "a complete and ar-
ticulated
whole," that would, every case be the loser
by any
omission; and he adds, "I cannot conceal the fact
that the
entire narrative seems to me to bear the stamp
of the
Jehovist; and certainly one would never think of the
Elohist, but
for the name Elohim (prop., ha-Elohim),
which here
(as in part in the historyof Joseph) is not
supported by
the internal phenomena and embarrasses
criticism." Knobel gives the entire passage to J, and
opens the
way to a correct understanding of it by calling
attention to
the fact, remarked upon before by Hengsten-
berg and
others, that the change of divine names occurs
at the
crisis of the narrative. It is Elohim
who tries the
faith of
Abraham (vs. 1-10); it is Jehovah who stays the
patriarch's
hand and blesses him (vs. 11-18). Knobel
says,
"Apart from Elohim nothing in this narrative re-
minds us of
the Elohist; on the contrary everything
speaks for
the Jehovist . . . . On account of the
divine name
Elohim (vs. 1, 3, 8, 9), one might suppose
1Ilgen splinters this passage
in a very remarkable way, splitting
verses,
duplicating phrases, giving some particulars to E, and others to
J, and thus
tries to make out two separate narratives of the transaction.
No one, even
of those who are most prone to adopt similar methods
elsewhere,
has thought fit to follow him here.
284 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
that the
author was here giving a story taken from an
older
source, as in ch. xx., xxi. But the
passage contains
no other
traces of it; and we, therefore, have to assume
that the
Jehovist here uses Elohim so long as there is
reference to
a human sacrifice, and only introduces Je-
hovah (ver.
11) after setting aside such a sacrifice,
which was
foreign to the religion of Jehovah."
And he
refers to.
iii. 1, 3, 5 as an illustrative passage, where in J
Elohim is
used in the conversation of Eve and the ser-
pent.
The real significance of the divine names
as here used
is stated in
a more satisfactory manner by Delitzsch.
He accepts
Hupfeld's critical division, but destroys the
basis on
which it rests by showing that Elohim and Je-
hovah are
here used with a strict regard to their proper
meaning, so
that they do not afford the slightest ground
for assuming
a diversity of writers. Delitzsch says,
"The
God who bids Abraham sacrifice Isaac is called
(ha-)
Elohim, and the divine manifestation, which pre-
vents the
sacrifice, the angel of Jehovah. He who
de-
mands from
Abraham the surrender of Isaac is God the
creator, who
has power over life and death, and therefore
the power to
take back what he has given. But Jehovah
in his angel
prevents the execution of it at the last ex-
treme; for
the son of the promise cannot perish without
the promise
of God perishing also, and with it his truth-
fulness and
the realization of his purpose of salvation."
The Creator
is the sovereign Lord of all. He has the
right to
demand that the dearest and the best shall be
surrendered
to him. It was not that he from nothing
is
or can be
hid, might ascertain the strength of Abraham's
faith, that
this test was imposed upon him, but for Abra-
ham's own
sake, that his faith might be confirmed and
strengthened
by this heroic exercise of it, and that the
latent power
of it might be exhibited to himself and
SACRIFICE OF ISAAC (CH. XXII. 1-19) 285
others. Would Abraham give up his beloved Isaac at
God's
bidding, the child for whom he had so long hoped
and waited,
the child of promise, and on whom all the
other
promises made to him were suspended?
Would
he yield him
up to God with the same submission with
which the
heathen around him sacrificed their children
to their
cruel deities? But Abraham's God
abhorred
the bloody
sacrifice of the first-born. It was the
spir-
itual
surrender alone that he required. But
that must
be
unambiguously expressed in an outward act, that ad-
mitted of no
pretence and no evasion. It was a
terrible
test, safe
only in a divine hand, capable of intervening,
as he did
intervene, and as it was his purpose from the
first to
intervene, as soon as the spiritual end of the trial
was
accomplished.
And herein lay, as Delitzsch further
observes, "an
eternally
valid divine protest against human sacrifice,"
while
"the ram in the thorn bush, which Abraham offered
instead of
Isaac, is the prototype of the animal sacrifices,
which are
here sanctioned on the same mountain, on
which the
blood of the typical animal sacrifices was to
flow during
the entire period of the Old Testament."
Dillmann's
suggestion, that "the reminiscence here still
plainly
glimmers through that the Hebrews once stood
in respect
to child-sacrifice on a like plane with the other
Shemites and
Canaanites," is a gross and utterly un-
founded
misrepresentation. The lesson of the
narrative
is precisely
the reverse, that while God put Abraham's
faith and
obedience to the severest test, he did not re-
quire the
sacrifice of his child. It was only in
later and
degenerate
ages that such sacrifices were known among
the Hebrews,
being borrowed from the surrounding
heathen like
other idolatrous abominations.
The Elohim of ver. 12 does not invalidate
the explana-
tion above
given of the divine names occurring in this
286 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
passage. As was long since shown by Ewald, Elohim is
here the
proper word. "Both names of God can
be used
with the
word 'fear,' but with the distinction that 'the
fear of
Jehovah' respects Jehovah as opposed to strange
gods (1 Sam.
xii.,24; Ps. cxv. 10,11; cxxxv. 20); while
'the fear of
God' only expresses submission to God or
piety in
general, as 2 Sam. xxiii. 3; Gen. xx. 11.
The
latter is
evidently demanded here, when the angel says
to Abraham
that he is God-fearing and submissive to the
divine
will. The 'fear of Jehovah' would have
implied
that Abraham
had been tempted to idolatry; but it was
only his
steadfast submission to God that was tested."
MARK
S OF E
Dillmann claims that this narrative was not
originally
drawn up by
J, "although in the language there are va-
rious things
(allerlei) that remind of him," but by E, as
shown by--
1.
"The prevailing use of Elohim or ha-Elohim";
this is
explained above.
2. "The revelation in a vision at
night (ver. 1)"; but
so also in
J. See ch. xx., Marks of E, No.4.
3. "The call and answer (vs. 1, 7,
11)"; twice besides
in E (xxxi.
11; xlvi. 2). In all other passages
there is a
great
diversity of critical opinion; xxvii. 1, 18, is by most
critics
referred to J, but by Wellhausen and Dillmann to
E, simply
and solely on account of this very form of
speech,
while the context is assigned to JE as incapable
of separation;
xxxvii. 13 stands in a mixed JE context,
which
Kautzsch cannot unravel, while Wellhausen and
Cornill cut
out the clause containing this "phrase and as-
sign it to E
on this account; Ex. iii. 4b is cut out of a J
context by
Wellhausen on account of this phrase and
given to E;
it is also assigned to E by Dillmann, who
gives ver.
4a to J.
SACRIFICE OF ISAAC (CH. XXII. 1-19) 287
4. "The angel calling out of heaven
(ver. 11)." In
one instance
and one only "the angel of Elohim" is said
to have
called out of heaven (xxi. 17)."
The angel of Je-
hovah"
does the same (xxii. 11, 15), which but for criti-
cal
legerdemain belong to J. Angels come
down to earth
in E
(xxviii. 12) and meet Jacob on his way (xxxii. 2, E.
V. ver. 1);
one spoke to him in a dream (xxxi. 11) with-
out any
suggestion of the voice coming out of heaven. It
cannot be
reckoned a peculiarity of E, therefore, that
angels
callout of heaven.
5. " hKo in a local sense (ver. 5)"; so in E
(xxxi. 37;
Num. xxiii.
15). It occurs besides in this Sense in
two
other places
in the Hexateuch, one of which (Ex. ii. 12) is
referred to
J by Wellhausen, and the other (Num. xi. 31)
by
Kuenen. hKo dfa the same combination as in Gen. xxii.
5, occurs
twice besides in the Hexateuch, in both in-
stances in a
temporal sense; of these Ex. Vii. 16 is re-
ferred to J
by Cornill, and Josh. xvii. 14 by Kuenen.
6. "dyHiyA only, vs. 2, 12"; also ver. 16 R (other critics
J); nowhere
else in the Hexateuch.
That Isaac is here called Abraham's
"only" son im-
plies the
previous narrative of the dismissal of Ishmael
(xxi. 14
sqq.); the providential disclosure of the ram to
Abraham
(ver. 13) resembles that of the well to Hagar
(xxi. 19);
and the return to Beersheba (ver. 19) is based
upon xxi.
31, 32 (but also ver. 33 J). But while
this nar-
rative is
thus linked with passages ascribed by the critics
to E, it is
no less indissolubly tied to those which are
attributed
to J. This final trial of Abraham's
faith is a
fitting
climax to the series of trials previously recorded
by J. And vs. 15-18, whose necessary connection
with
the previous
part of the chapter, both in matter and in the
form of its
expressions, has already been exhibited, re-
peats with
special emphasis promises elsewhere ascribed
to J,
preserving both their language and their figurative
288 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
form. "I will bless thee," as xii. 2;
"multiply thy seed
as the stars
of the heaven," as xv. 5; xxvi. 4; "and the
sand which
is upon the sea-shore," as xiii. 16; xxxii. 13
(E. V. ver.
12); "thy seed shall possess the gate of his
enemies
" as xxiv. 60; "in thy seed shall all the nations
of the earth
be blessed," as xii. 3; "xviii. 18; xxvi. 4;
"because
thou hast obeyed my voice," as xviii. 19;
xxvi. 5.
MARKS OF R
Dillmann repeats Hitzig's objection that
vs. 15-18
cannot be by
E, the reputed author of the previous part
of the
chapter, because this second communication by
the angel
instead of being a continuation of ver. 12 is
added
afterward in a supplementary manner. But
this
carping
criticism betrays a lack of appreciation of a feat-
ure of the
narrative which adds to its beauty and im-
pressiveness
regarded merely from a rhetorical point of
view. There is no reason why the angel might not
speak
twice, as
well as once. It was enough at first to
arrest
the
patriarch's hand and approve his obedience.
The
promise of
Jehovah, attested by a solemn oath, most fitly
concludes
the scene after Abraham had completed his
act of
worship by offering the ram. If this
order had
been
reversed, and the action continued after the angel
had spoken,
attention would have been diverted from
that which
now crowns the whole, and upon which chief
stress is
laid.
It is further charged that--
1. yTif;Baw;ni yBi by myself have I sworn (ver. 16), is a
formula that
belongs to a later time, e.g., Isa. xIv. 23;
Jer. xxii.
5; xlix. 13. But that God did thus
confirm
his promise
to Abraham by an oath is abundantly at-
tested (Gen.
xxiv. 7; xxvi. 3; 1. 24; Ex. xxxiii. 1;
Num.
SACRIFICE OF ISAAC (CH. XXII. 1-19) 289
xx:xii. 11;
Deut. i. 8, etc.). And that this was an
oath
by himself
is expressly affirmed (Ex. xxxii. .13).
An
equivalent
asseveration by his own life is also attributed
to Jehovah
in the Pentateuch (Num. xiv. 21, 28; Deut.
xxxi. 40).
2.
hvhy Mxun; saith Jehovah
(ver. 16), is also said to be a
prophetic
formula of a later period. But the
phrase oc-
curs again
(Num. xiv. 28). And Mxun;
occurs besides in
the
prophecies of Balaam (Num. xxiv. 3, 4, 15, 16), where
its
antiquity is vouched for by the obvious imitations in
2 Sam.
xxiii. 1; Prov. xxx. 1.
3. rw,xE Nfaya because
(ver. 16); besides in the Hexateuch
Deut. i. 36;
Josh. xiv. 14. Nfaya occurs also Num. xi. 20 J;
Lev. xxvi.
43 J worked over (so Dillmann); and Num.
xx. 12,
which Wellhausen assigns to P, and Dillmann also
to P, except
only the clause containing this word, which
he refers to
R.
4. rw,xE bq,fe because
(ver. 18); but once besides in the
Hexateuch
xxvi. 5. bq,fe occurs also Num. xiv. 24; Deut.
vii. 12;
viii. 20. The employment of these
unusual con-
junctions,
as of the emphatic absolute infinitives in
ver. 17, is
due, as Dillmann correctly observes, to the
solemn and
impressive character of this angelic utter-
ance.
5. j`reBAt;hi bless one's self, i. e., seek and obtain a blessing
(ver.
18). This reflexive form of the verb
occur's twice
in the
promise of a blessing upon all nations through
Abraham and
his seed, viz., here and xxvi. 4; the passive
form j`rab;ni
be blessed, is used instead three times, viz.,
xii. 3;
xviii. 18; xxviii. 14. The sense is
substantially
the
same. j`rab;ni is found nowhere else in
the Old Testa-
ment. j`reBAt;hi occurs besides, Deut. xxix. 18 (E. V. ver.
19); Ps.
lxxii. 17; Isa. lxv. 16; Jer. iv.2.
There is noth-
ing to
indicate that one form is of later origin than the
other.
290 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
NO PROOF OF SEPARATE DOCUMENTS
The diction of these verses cannot prove
them to be of
later date
than the rest of the chapter. There is
no oc-
casion,
therefore, to call in the aid of R in their produc-
tion. And neither in this chapter nor in those that
pre-
cede is there
any just ground for assuming the existence
of a writer
E, distinct from J. Their diction is
indistin-
guishable. The divine names are used discriminatingly
throughout,
and afford no criterion of diverse authorship.
And the attempt to establish a
distinctive diction for
P cannot be
called successful. Of all the so-called
char-
acteristic P
words and phrases of the creation and flood
Elohim is
almost the only one that occurs henceforth in
P paragraphs
in Genesis. There is not a word in the
entire
section of the Generations of Terah, which the
critics
regard as peculiar to P, that is found in antece-
dent
chapters with the exception of a very few expressions
in ch.
xvii., and these are chiefly due to the fact that
God's
covenant with Abraham naturally calls for the use
of the same
terms as his covenant with Noah. And
those
which are
ascribed to P in this section either do not re-
appear in
Genesis, or are found as well in J and E with
rare
exceptions, which contain their explanation in them-
selves. It has been previously shown that the
differences
existing
between the Elohist and Jehovist paragraphs in
the
ante-patriarchal portion of Genesis are not such as to
imply
distinct authors, but are readily explicable from the
1 In addition to the proofs already given
that the alleged diversities
are not
really such, note the following coincidences between what is
ascribed to
E in this chapter and what is referred to J elsewhere.
hsn
(ver. 1) as Ex. xvi. 4; xn (ver. 2) as xii. 13; xviii. 30; jl jl (ver.
2) as xii.
1; jylx rmx rwx (ver. 2) as xxvi 2, cf. xii. 1; rqbb Mykwh
(ver. 3) as
xix. 27.
FAMILY OF NAHOR (CH. XXII. 20-24)
291
matter of
these paragraphs respectively, and from the spe-
cial meaning
and usage of the divine names Elohim and
Jehovah. The same thing is yet more emphatically true
of that
portion of Genesis which we are now considering.
The
difference of diction that is here alleged between P
and J is
wholly factitious, being created by two features
of the
critical partition, viz. the scanty fragments of the
narrative
attributed to P, and the peculiar character of
the only two
paragraphs of any length (chs. xvii. and
xxiii.)
which are accorded to him. As only
diminutive
portions of
the narrative are awarded to P, it is not to
be expected
that these will contain the full vocabulary
of the bulk
of the narratives, which is shared between
the other
documents. That numerous words and
phrases
occur in J
and E, which are not to be found in P, thus
arises out
of the inequality in the apportionment.
And
when to the
difference in quantity is added the difference
in the
nature of the material assigned to P on the one
hand, and to
J and E on the other, all the diversity of
diction is
fully accounted for. And the entire
critical
superstructure
of separate documents which has been
built upon
it crumbles into nothing.
It may at least be safely affirmed that
no evidence of
the
existence of such documents has been brought to
light in
that part of Genesis which has thus far been
considered. And this is the portion of the book in which
the divisive
hypothesis has been supposed to be most
strongly
entrenched. It must find its
justification here,
if it can do
so anywhere.
FAMILY OF NAHOR (CH. XXII. 20-24)
Tuch, Noldeke, and Knobel refer these
verses, which
contain a
list of the children of Nahor, to P; Wellhausen
gives them
to E; Hupfeld and Dillmann to J, which last
292 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
is now the
current critical opinion. The
determining
consideration
is that the mention of Rebekah, the
only
daughter named of any of the twelve sons (ver. 23),
is evidently
designed to prepare the way for the narra-
tive of
Isaac's marriage in ch. xxiv., which is assigned to
J. Only those women have a place in the
genealogies,
of whom
there is occasion to speak in the subsequent his-
tory. And xxii. 23 is distinctly referred to in
xxiv. 15,
24. Accordingly, the E phrase at the beginning,
"and it
came to pass
after these things," as xxii. 1 ; xl. 1; xlviii.
1, is either
quietly ignored, as by Dillmann, or attributed
to R,_as by
Kautzsch. The diffuseness shown in the
repetition
(ver. 23b) of what had already been stated
(ver. 20b),
which is elsewhere reckoned a characteristic
of P, is
also ignored. The assertion that P would
have
prefixed the
title, "These are the generations of Nahor,"
overlooks
the fact that Nahor, like Abraham, belonged to
the family
of Terah, and all that appertained to both fell
properly
under the "Generations of Terah."
The men-
tion of
Milcah (ver. 20), refers back to xi. 29, where her
marriage to
Nahor is stated in preparation for this very
passage. It is this which compelled the critics to
claim
xi. 29 for
J, thus sundering it from xi. 27 P, to which it
is
indissolubly bound.
MARKS
OF J
1. dlayA begat
(ver. 23). See ch. vi.-ix., Marks of P,
No.
20.
2. wb,l,yPi concubine
(ver. 24) ; besides in the Hexateuch
xxv. 6;
xxxv. 22a; xxxvi. 12; and in each instance at-
ttributed to
R.
3. xvhi MGa she also (vs. 20, 24); in J, besides, iv. 4, 26;
x. 21;
xxvii. 31; xxxviii. 10, 11; xlviii. 19; in E xxxii.
19 (E. V.
ver. 18). MGa does not chance to occur with this
DEATH AND
BURIAL OF SARAH (CH. XXIII.) 293
particular
pronoun in the passages assigned to P, but it
is used in
the same manner with: other personal pronouns
(Ex. vi. 5;
vii. 11 ; Num. xviii. 3, 28 P). See
under ch.
x., page
137.
4. h.mAw;U
and her name, i.e., whose name was (ver. 24),
claimed by
Wellhausen, but not by Dillmann, as a crite-
rion of J;
besides, in J, xvi. 1b; xxiv. 29; xxv. 1;
xxxviii. 1,
2, 6; in JE, Josh. ii. 1. This is the
uniform
way
throughout the historical books of the Old Testa-
ment of
introducing the name of a person who has just
been
mentioned, and cannot be regarded as peculiar to
anyone
writer.
That precisely twelve sons of Nahor are
here enumer-
ated, ''as
of Ishmael, Israel, and Edom," as is correctly
explained by
Dillmann, "does not rest upon a transfer of
Israelitish relations
to those of kindred stock (so Knobel),
nor upon the
mere systematizing of the writer (so Nol-
deke), but
upon the usages of these peoples," which were
in point of
fact severally divided into just twelve tribes.
In regard to the alleged variant descent
of Aram and
Uz (ver. 21,
cf. x. 22, 23), see under ch. x. pp. 137-139.
DEATH AND BURIAL OF SARAH (CH. XXIII.)
The land of Canaan had been promised. to
Abraham
and his seed
for their permanent possession, xii. 7; xiii.
15 ; xv. 18;
xvii. 8; but he had now for more than sixty
years been a
wanderer and a sojourner, with no absolute
ownership of
any portion of the soil. Hence the
stress
laid in this
chapter upon the purchase of the field and
cave of
Machpelah, the first spot of ground to which he
obtained a
legal title. The transaction was
conducted
with
punctilious regard to all the necessary formalities,
and these
are recited in detail; all which evidences not
the diffuse
style of a particular writer P, but the impor-
294 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
tance which
was attached to the rights thus conveyed.
The securing
of this burial-place was properly regarded
as a first
instalment and a pledge of the final fulfilment
of the
divine promise, and as indicative of Abraham's
implicit
faith in that promise. The subsequent
refer-
ences to it
are also made with a formality and a studied
repetition
of the language here employed, which show
how
significant it was held ~o be, and how it both nur-
tured and
served to give expression to the faith of the
patriarchs,
and particularly of Jacob, after he had re-
moved to
Egypt (xxv. 9, 10; xlix. 29-32; 1. 13).
For
the same
reason it is twice emphatically repeated in ch.
xxiii. that
this was "in the land of Canaan" (vs. 2, 19).
And, as
Havernick suggests, the consequence attributed
in these
various passages to the possession of a burial-
place
implies that the record was made prior to the ac-
tual
occupation of Canaan by the Israelites, after which
it ceased to
be of special interest, and is never again re-
ferred to.
Noldeke imagines a discrepancy with Gen.
xxxiii. 19,
Josh. xxiv.
32 E, according to which passages "Jacob
makes the
first acquisition of land at Shechem by pur-
chase." The discrepancy is a sheer creation of the
critic.
Although
Jacob's purchase was sufficiently memorable
to be deemed
worthy of special record, there is no inti-
mation that
it was the first territorial acquisition of the
patriarchs.
Eichhorn1 remarks upon this
transaction: "In Meso-
potamia,
where no Canaanites traded, gold and silver
were still
rare in Jacob's time; everything was acquired
by exchange,
and Jacob gives twenty years of service as
a herdsman
in exchange for two wives, servants, maid-
servants,
and flocks. On the other hand, in
Canaan, in
the
neighborhood of the Phoenicians, who had in their
1 Einleitung in das Alte
Testament, 3d edit., 1803, vol. ii., p. 373.
DEATH AND
BURIAL OF SARAH (CH. XXIII.) 295
hands the
trade of the world, barter was no longer in
vogue in the
time of Abraham, but silver was used as
pretium
eminens, not,
however, in coins of different de-
nominations,
but by weight (ver. 16). Yet in Jacob's
time the
Phoenicians probably had rude coins (xxxiii. 19).
. . .
Abraham buys the cave of Machpelah in the
presence of
witnesses, and counts upon remaining in un-
disturbed
possession of the field, just as in Homer the
Greeks and
Trojans count assuredly upon the fulfilment
of the
treaty which has been concluded, because both
armies were
present at the oral agreement."
"Abraham came to mourn for
Sarah" (ver. 2), should
perhaps be
rendered "went in" to her tent (cf. xviii.
6). Some, however, understand it to mean that he
came
from
Beersheba, and find here a link of connection with
xxii. 19,
and suppose in ver. 4, "a sojourner," an allu-
sion to xxi.
34, "he sojourned in the land of the Phil-
istines."
The single occurrence of Elohim in ch.
xxiii. (ver. 6),
in the mouth
of the children of Heth is so entirely in
accordance
with Hebrew usage that no individual pecu-
liarity of a
particular writer can be inferred from it.
Chs. xvii. and xxiii. severally relate to
the two chief
promises
made to Abraham, and from time to time re-
peated,
viz., his future seed and the land of Canaan.
One
records the
ordaining of circumcision; the other the ac-
quisition of
the first possession in the land. Both
are
thoroughly
germane to the entire history, and give no
indication
of being interpolated additions. The stress
laid upon
each, and the legal precision natural in insti-
tuting the
rite and in describing the deed of purchase
give to
these chapters an appearance of formal repetition,
which does
not belong to such portions of ordinary nar-
rative as
are ascribed to P. This peculiar
material re-
quires, of
course, a fitting style and diction, and sufficiently
296 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
accounts for
any divergence in this respect from other
paragraphs.l
MARKS OF P
1.
"The chronological statement" (ver. 1). See ch.
xvi., Marks
of P, No.1.
2.
"The aim of the narrative, the juristic punctilious-
ness and
formality of the record." It has
been shown
that the
narrative is closely related to the antecedent his-
tory, and is
precisely in line with the promises to Abra-
ham, which
are the burden of the whole; also that the
minute
exactness of the record corresponds with the
character of
the transaction. It does not appear why
the same
historian, who describes other events in the life
of Abraham,
cannot include this likewise in his narra-
tive, and in
doing so cannot adapt his style to the nature
of the
subject.
3.
"Children of Heth" (vs. 3, etc.). This is an obvi-
ous
reference to x. 15 J, where the tribe or tribal ances-
tor is
called Heth.
4. "Machpelah" (vs. 9, 17, 19),
only mentioned else-
where as the
burial-place of patriarchs and with explicit
reference to
this passage (xxv. 9; xlix. 30; 1. 13).
Since
all the
passages in which this cave is spoken of are re-
ferred to P,
there is no opportunity for this world to oc-
cur in J or
E.
5. yy.eH ynew; years of the life of (ver. 1); as this phrase
is only used
when stating the age of a person, and such
passages are
by rule referred to P, it cannot be expected
in J or E.
1 Observe
how even Wellhausen (Compo d. Hex., p. 168), in con-
tending that
Lev. xxvi. is by the author of chs. xvii.-xxv., insists that
"the
differences of language are sufficiently explained by the distinct
character of
the material; hitherto laws in dry style suited to the sub-
ject, now
prophecy in poetic and impassioned discourse."
DEATH AND
BURIAL OF SARAH (CH. XXIII.) 297
6. hz.AHuxE possession (vs. 4, 9, 20). See ch. xvii., Marks
of P, No.7.
7. bwAOT
sojourner (ver. 4); nowhere else in Genesis.
Only besides
in legal sections (Ex. rii. 45 ; Lev. xxii. 10 ;
xxv. 6, 23,
35, 40, 45, 47; Num. xxxv. 15), and, therefore,
necessarily
limited to the document to which such sec-
tions are
given.
8. xyWinA
prince (ver. 6). See ch. xvii., Marks of P, No.
11.
9. MUq
be made sure (vs. 17, 20~; so in P (Lev. xxv. 30;
xxvii. 14,
17, 19; Num. xxx. 5-13, E. V., ys.4-12).
The
word is here
used in the legal sense of a contract, deci-
sion, or
vow, standing, i.e., enduring or being valid.
This
particular
application of the word can only be expected
where the
legal validity of such arrangements is spoken
of. It is, however, substantially the same sense
as in
Josh. ii. 11
JE, remain; vii. 12, 13 J, stand firm; and in
the
causative form, ratify or establish (Gen. xxvi. 3 R
(Dillmann)
or J (other critics); Lev. xxvi. 9 J (so Dill-
mann); Num.
xxiii. 19 E).
10.
lx, fmaWA hearken unto (ver. 16) ; so in J (xvi. 11;
xxxix. 10;
xlix. 2) ; in E(xxi. 17; xxx. 17).
11.
hnAq;mi possession (ver. 18). See ch. xvii., Marks of
P, No.9.
12.
NfanaK; Cr,x, land of Canaan (vs.
2, 19). See ch. xii. 5,
Marks of P,
No.4. Great stress is laid upon the fact
that it was
in the land of Canaan that Sarah died and
was buried,
and that the spot purchased by Abraham and
formally
deeded to him was in that land.
13. "Back references to what is
related here in xxv. 9,
10; xlix. 29
sqq.; 1. 13." These are freely
admitted and
are proofs
of a close relation between those passages and
this
chapter, but do not imply that they belong to a dif-
ferent
document from other intervening passages.
It will be observed how little there is
that is distinc-
298 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
tive in the
diction of ch. xxiii. to connect it with other P
sections in
Genesis.
MARRIAGE OF ISAAC (CH. XXIV.)
In xxv. 20 P alludes to Isaac's marriage
to Rebekah,
daughter of
Bethuel and sister of Laban, in a manner im-
plying
previous mention of these parties and of this
event. Precisely the account thus called for is to
be
found in ch.
xxiv. and the preliminary genealogy (xxii.
20-24), both
which, however, the critics assign to J.
This makes
it necessary for them to assume that a similar
narrative was
contained in P, but R has thought proper
to omit
it. It is easy to make conjectural
assumptions
with the
view of evading or explaining away facts at va-
riance' with
the divisive hypothesis; only it should be
borne in
mind that these assumptions lend no support to
the
hypothesis. They are simply inferences
based upon
the
hypothesis. And the necessity of
multiplying such
assumptions
betrays the weakness of the cause that re-
quires them.
J has Aram-naharaim once only (x:riv.
10), while P
has
Paddan-aram (xxv. 20 and elsewhere); but apart
from the
fact that these names may not be precise
equivalents,
as Dillmann admits, this is no more a rea-
son for
suspecting diversity of authorship than when J
uses two
different designations of the same place:1 xxiv.
1 It would argue no diversity of writers
if, in an account of the land-
ing of the
pilgrims, we should read upon one page that they reached
the coast of
America, and on the next that they disembarked in New
England. In the first mention of the region the more
general term
Aram-naharaim
is employed, but ever after Paddan-aram, as indicating
more
precisely where Haran lay; and Haran Occurs in P (xi. 31; xii. 5)
as well as
in J and E. "Haran is a town
situated in Paddan-aram;
but a nomad
rarely lives shut up in a town. The
whole land is his,
and he and
his flocks traverse it far and wide. The
names of the town
MARRIAGE OF ISAAC (CH. XXIV.) 299
10,
"city of Nahor," and xxvii. 43, "Haran;" or uses
hfAUbw; for
oath, xxiv. 8,
but hlAxA, ver. 41. Nor can any
significance
be attached to the circumstance that J says
"daughters
of the Canaanites" (xxiv. 3, 37), and P,
"daughters
of Canaan" (xxviii. 1, 6, 8; xxxvi. 2), inas-
much as J
himself varies the expression again (xxxiv. 1)
to
"daughters of the land." And
according to Well-
hausen P
calls the same persons "daughters of Hittites"
(xxvi. 34),
and "daughters of Heth" (xxvii. 46).
On the
other hand,
it is observable as one of the numberless in-
dications of
unity that the same care to avoid intermar-
riages with
the Canaanites is shown in ch. xxiv. as in
xxviii. 1-9,
which the critics on this very ground assign
to a
different document.
Verse 67 alludes to Sarah's death, recorded
in ch. xxiii.
P. But as on critical principles one document
cannot
refer to
what is contained in another, Dillmann erases
the mention
of Sarah here as a later gloss. The
allega-
tion that
the words "his mother Sarah," in the first
clause of
this verse, are inadmissible in Hebrew con-
struction is
refuted by numerous examples of the same
sort, e.g.,
Gen. xrn. 13 ; Josh. iii. 11; J udg. viii. 11; xvi.
14; and if
they were, this would not affect the reading
in the last
clause of the verse. Wellhausen, more
bravely
still, proposes
to substitute "father" for "mother," as
and of the
land can accordingly be interchanged without indicating a
difference
of style'. But Genesis itself distinguishes yet more narrowly
between
these names. When Jacob goes from home,
he always goes to
Haran,
because he expects to find the family residing in the town
(xxvii 43;
xxviii. 10). And when he comes before
the gates of the
town (xxix.
4), and asks those who come out, is he not compelled to ask
for
Haran? It is true that the name of the
laud to which Jacob is go-
ing also
occurs (xxviii. 2, 5, 6, 7), but only in contrast with the land of
Ishmael
(ver. 9). But when Jacob journeys back
again to Canaan he
always
leaves, not Haran, but Paddan-aram; for he takes his flight, not
from the
town, but from the land, where he was pasturing the flocks
far and
wide."--Ewald, Komp. d. Gen., pp. 109, 110.
300 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
the last
word of ver. 67. He tells us that Abraham must
have died
before the servant's return, only R has omitted
the account
of his death. And thus by the clever
device
of
reconstructing the text a twofold advantage is gained.
A
troublesome allusion is escaped and a flat contradic-
tion created
between J and P, for according to the latter
(xxv. 7, 20)
Abraham lived thirty-five years after Isaac's
marriage. Kautzsch is not content with this simple
emendation,
but undertakes to correct the narrative
more at
large upon the basis suggested by Wellhausen.
He tells us
that after ver. 61a there followed the an-
nouncement
that the servant on his return found Abra-
ham dead;
and consequently, ver. 61a, "the servant took
Rebekah and
went his way (ver. 62), in the land of the
South, and
came to Isaac; for he dwelt in the wilderness
of
Beer-lahai-roi." There is, he
assures us, but one other
possibility,
viz., that ver. 62 may have read, "Isaac
was
come" from the wilderness of Beer-lahai-roi to the
burial of
Abraham." One thing is evident, if
the critics
are right
the text is wrong; but if the text is right, how
is it with
the critics?
In ver. 61 Knobel fancies that the second
clause does
not
naturally follow the first, and that this indicates two
blended
accounts. And as the servant brings
Rebekah,
not to
Abraham, who had sent him, but to Isaac, and calls
Isaac his
master (ver. 65), instead of his master's son, as
vs. 44, 48,
51, the inference is drawn that in the older
narrative,
of which there is a fragment in vs. 61-6.7, it
was Isaac,
not Abraham, who deputed the servant upon
his
errand. And in his opinion this
discovery is cor-
roborated by
some "very peculiar expressions" in these
verses, of
which other critics who have no end to be
answered by
them take no note. It surely is not
strange
that a bride
should be taken at once to her husband;
nor that the
servant should call Isaac his master, since
MARRIAGE OF ISAAC (CH. XXIV.) 301
he was
Abraham's heir, now in mature age, and in
charge of
all his father's possessions, especially when
speaking to
Rebekah. It was equally natural, when,
treating
with her father and brother in the name of
Isaac's
father, that he should speak, of Isaac as his mas-
ter's son.
In his first edition Dillmann accepted
Knobel's dis-
covery of a
variant account of the mission of the servant,
and
attributed vs. 62-67 to E. But in
subsequent edi-
tions he
discarded it in favor of Hupfeld's ("Quellen," p.
145) and
Wellhausen's version of the story, that Abra-
ham was at
the point of death when he sent the servant,
and actually
died before the servant's return. In
con-
formity with
this it, is assumed that in J xxv. 1-6, l1b
preceded ch.
xxiv.; in defence of which it is urged that
the
statement by the servant (ver. 36), that Abraham had
given all
that he had unto Isaac is based upon xxv. 5,
and Isaac's
dwelling at Beer-lahai-roi (xxv. l1b) is pre-
supposed in
xxiv. 62. But the servant might state a
fact from
his own knowledge, which there had been no
suitable
occasion to mention as yet in the course of the
history. And the sacred historian makes no formal
mention of
the dwelling-place of Isaac until he has re-
corded the
death of Abraham (xxv. 8, 11), precisely as
he records
the death of Isaac (xxxv. 29) before the like
formal
mention of the abode of Esau (xxxvi. 6) and of
Jacob
(xxxvii. 1). The critics say that R
transposed
xxv. 1-6,
l1b, from its original position in order to re-
move the
conflict between J and P as to the time of
Abraham's
death. The fact is that the critics
arbitrarily,
assume this
transposition, and fix the time of Abraham's
death at
their own liking for the mere purpose of creat-
ing a
variance between ch. xxiv. and ch. xxv. which does
not really
exist, and thence deducing an argument for dis-
tinct
documents. It certainly does not
prepossess one
302 THE GENERATIONS 0F TERAH
in favor of
a cause that it should be necessary to resort
to such
measures in its support.
Knobel imagines that he detects a
discrepancy of
another sort
between J and P, in relation, not to the
time of
Abraham's death, but that of Sarah.
According
to J, or the
older narrative which he here follows, Isaac
was
comforted after his mother's death by his marriage
with Rebekah
(ver. 67). But "according to P he
was,
thirty-six
or thirty-seven years old when Sarah died (xvii.
17; xxi. 5;
xxiii. 1), and forty when he was married (xxv.
20). He must, therefore, have mourned about four
years. But thirty and seventy days were prolonged
terms of
mourning (1. 3; Num. xx. 29; Deut. xxi. 13;
xxxiv.
8). J, therefore, put Sarah's death
later, or
Isaac's
marriage earlier than P." As if the
duration of
the grief of
a loving son for the loss of his mother was
to be
measured by customary social formalities.
Dillmann scents a doublet in ver. 29b, cf.
30b, but as
he can make
no use of it, he lets it pass, only insisting
that 29b has
been transposed from its original position
after
30a. But there is no textual error, and
there has
been no
transposition. These verses simply
illustrate
the in
artificial style of Hebrew narrative.
The general
statement is
made first, 29b, that Laban ran out unto
the man unto
the well; further particulars are added
afterward
(ver. 30), it was when he saw the ring and
bracelets
that had been given his sister and heard her
words that
he came out and found the man standing by
the
well. Or one aspect of a transaction is
stated first,
and then
followed by another; first (61a) what Rebekah
did, she and
her damsels followed the man; then (61b)
what the
servant did, he took Rebekah and went his
way. Such seeming repetitions abound in the
historical
writings of
the Old Testament.1 And they
afford an op-
1 See xxii.
3b, 4; xxvi. 1b 6; xxviii. 5, 10, xxix. 1; Ex. iv. 20, gen.
MARRIAGE OF ISAAC (CH. XXIV.) 303
portunity,
of which the critics avail themselves in nu-
merous
instances in constructing their imaginary dupli-
cate
narratives. The general statement is set
over
against the
detailed particulars, or one partial statement
over against
the other, as though each had an indepen-
dent origin.
The repetitions of the chapter should
also be noted;
vs. 37-41
repeat vs. 3-8 almost verbatim; compare also
vs. 42-44
with vs. 12-14; vs. 45, 46, with vs. 15-20; vs.
47, 48, with
vs. 23-27. J here exceeds the
repetitious-
ness
elsewhere reckoned a peculiarity of P.
Such repe-
titions are
also seized upon, where they can be made
available,
as evidences of duplicate narratives.
Thus,
when Moses
reports to the people (Ex. ch. xii., xiii.) the
directions
given him respecting the passover, the feast of
unleavened
bread, and the hallowing of the first-born, as
the servant
here repeats to Bethuel and Laban the charge
received
from Abraham, and the incidents which had
been before
related, the critics find material for two doc-
uments by
giving to one what the LORD says to Moses,
and to the
other what Moses in consequence says to the
people.
As it is the God of Abraham that is
throughout spo-
ken of,
Jehovah is appropriately used in this chapter.
It is by
Jehovah that Abraham requires his servant to
swear that
he will not take a Canaanitish wife for Isaac
(ver.
3). It is to the guidance of Jehovah
that he com-
mits his
servant on his important errand (ver. 7).
It is
Jehovah, the
God of his master Abraham, whom the ser-
vant invokes
(ver. 12), and whom he recognizes as hav-
ing made his
journey prosperous (vs. 21, 26, 27, etc.), so
eral
statement; 21-29, particulars of the journey; 2 Sam. vi. 12b, 13-
17; 1 Kin.
vi. 14, general statement; vs. 15-36, details pf the construc-
tion; 2
Chron; xxiv. 10, 11; similar illustrations may be found in the
New
Testament, e.g., Acts vii. 58a, 59.
304 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
that Laban,
to whom Rebekah had made report, at once
addressed
him as "the blessed of Jehovah;" and when
the servant
had given his account of the whole matter,
Laban and
Bethuel1 acknowledged "the thing proceedeth
from
Jehovah" (vs. 50, 51). In
recognition of Jehovah's
supreme
control Abraham adds the epithet (vs. 3, 7),
"the
God of heaven," an expression only found besides
in
postexilic writings (2 Chron. xxxvi. 23; Ezr. i. 2; Neh.
i. 4, 5; ii.
4, 20), with the single exception of Jon. i. 9,
which some
critics would not count an exception. If
this had
chanced to occur in P, it would have been
urged in
proof of the late origin of that document.
But
as it is in
J it is quietly ignored, which is an indication
of the
little weight that critics themselves attribute to
considerations
of this nature, unless they have some end
to answer by
them.
MARKS OF J
It is said that J is here distinguished
from E by his
not naming
Abraham's chief servant, whom E calls Eli-
ezer (xv.
2), nor Rebekah's nurse (ver. 59), whom E calls
Deborah
(xxxv. 8), and makes her come to Canaan with
Jacob at a
much later time. But this mark of
distinc-
tion is
precisely reversed in the case of Ishmael, whom J
names (xvi.
11), and E does not (xxi. 9-21). It is
also
nullified by
the fact that neither J nor E act uniformly
in this
respect in relation to the same persons.
J gives
the names of
Moses's wife and son (Ex. ii. 21, 22), but in
1 Kautzsch proposes to expunge "Bethuel" from the text in
ver. 50,
because he
is not also mentioned in ver. 53. But
upon this Knobel
remarks: "Rebekah's brother Laban takes part in
the decision (Dill-
mann adds;
'and even the first part'). He was
entitled to do so by the
custom of
brothers assuming the charge of their sister (xxxiv. 5, 11, 25;
Judg. xxi.
22; 2 Sam. xiii. 22)."
MARRIAGE OF ISAAC (CH. XXIV.)
305
iv. 20 does
not. E does not name Moses's sister, ii.
4,
but does,
Num. xii. 1; he gives the name of Moses's wife
and sons
(xviii. 2-4), but does not name the son (iv. 25),
nor the wife
(Num. xii. 1), provided Zipporah is there
meant. And Gen. xxxv. 8 speaks of the death of Debo-
rah, but
gives no intimation how or when she came to
Canaan. This cannot, therefore, be accepted as a cri-
terion of
distinct documents.
When it is said that the high art shown in
the recital
points to
the narrator of ch. xviii., xix., and the lofty con-
ception of
marriage to the author of ii. 23 sqq., no objec-
tion need be
made, unless it is implied that this narra-
tor could
not adapt his style to subjects requiring legal
precision,
nor record genealogies, dates, and the like; or
that lower
views of marriage are expressed elsewhere in
this book.
The following words and expressions are
adduced as ! indicative of J:
1. The angel of Jehovah (vs. 7,
40). See ch. xvi.,
Marks of J,
No.1.
2. The servant of Jehovah (ver.
14). This expression,
wherever it
occurs in the Hexateuch, is by Dillmann re-
ferred to J,
D, or Rd, even where the verse in which it
occurs is
attributed to E, as Num. xii. 7,8; xiv. 24; Josh.
xiv. 7;
xxiv. 29. It occurs in P Lev. xxv. 42,
55.
3. Aram-naharaim
(ver. 10). Explained above, p. 298.
4. Daughters
of the Canaanites (ver. 3).
Explained
above, p.
299.
5. Mymiy.Aba
xBA advanced in
days (ver.
1). See ch. xviii.,
xix., Marks
of J, No. 32.
6. tm,xEv,
ds,H, kindness and
truth (vs.. 27,
49); occurs be-
sides in the
Hexateuch xxxii. 11 (E. V., ver. 10); xlvii.
29; Ex.
xxxiv. 6; Josh. ii. 14 J.
7. ds,H,
hWAfA show
kindness (vs. 12,
14, 49). See ch.
xviii.,
xix., Marks of J, No. 29.
306 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
8. ylaUx
peradventure (vs. 5, 39). See ch. xvi., Marks
of J, No.
12.
9. qra
only (ver. 8). See ch. vi. 1-8, Marks of J, No. 7.
10.
xnA I
pray thee (vs. 2, 12, 14, 17, 23, 42, 43, 45).
See ch. xii.
10-20, Marks of J, No.3.
11.
wye with
a suffix (vs. 42, 49). This particle
occurs
with a
suffix but three times besides in the Hexateuch,
viz., xliii.
4 J; and twice in Deuteronomy, Deut. xiii. 4;
xxix. 14.
12.
txraq;li CUr run to meet
(ver. 17). See ch. xviii., xix.,
Marks of J,
No. 16, ch. xxix., xxx., No.2.
13.
hx,r;ma tbaFo fair to look upon (ver. 16); but once be-
sides in the
Hexateuch, xxvi. 7 J. See ch. vi. 1-8,
Marks
of J,
No.5. In xii. 11 a different phrase hx,r;ma tpay; is
used to
express the same idea; but no critic thinks of
referring it
to a different document in consequence.
14.
fdayA know (euphemism) (ver. 16). In J iv. 1,17, 25;
xix. 8;
xxxviii. 26; in P Num. xxxi. 17, 18, 35; all in
the
Hexateuch.
15.
hrAq;hi send
good speed (ver. 12);
only twice besides
in the
Hexateuch, viz., in J xxvii. 20; in P Num. xxxv. 11.
16.
Haylic;hi make prosperous (vs. 21, 40, 42, 56); be-
sides in the
Hexateuch xxxix. 2, 3, 23 J (E and R
Kautzsch);
Josh. i. 8 D.
17.
OBli-lx, rB,Di speak in his heart (ver. 45); but once be-
sides in the
Hexateuch in this sense, viii. 21 J; with a
different
preposition B; xxvii~
41, referred to J solely on
account of
this phrase; xvii. 17 P; Deut. vii. 17; viii.
17; ix. 4;
xviii. 21 D. :! ,:'
18.
xneW hating (for byexo enemy)
(ver. 60); besides in E
Ex. i. 10;
xXiii. 5; several times in D; but not in J ex-
cept Lev.
xxvi. 17, which Dillmann is alone in referring,
to that
document.
19. rfawa-tx, wrayA possess the gatge (ver. 60); but once be-
sides in the
Hexateuch xxii. 17 R
CONCLUSION
OF ABRAHAM'S LIFE (XXV. 1-11) 307
20. hvAHETaw;hiv; bow the head and worship (vs. 26, 48);
five times
besides in the Hexateuch; all referred to J.
21. hcAr;xa hvAHETaw;hi bow himself to the earth (ver. 52).
See ch.
xviii., xix., Marks ofJ, No. 27.
Here, as elsewhere, such words as occur
with any fre-
quency are
found in E as well as in J; several of them
likewise in
P, notwithstanding the small amount of nar-
rative which
is assigned to this document.
CONCLUSION OF ABRAHAM'S LIFE (CH. xxv. 1-11)
The divisive critics unanimously refer vs.
7-11a to P
but there is
no unanimity among them in regard to the
disposition
to be made of the other verses of this section.
They are not
agreed whether vs. 1-4, which record the
sons of
Keturah, belong to P, J, or E. Astruc
was at
least
consistent in referring all genealogies of nations and
tribes
outside of the chosen race to a document or docu-
ments
distinct from P and J. Noldeke is
equally con-
sistent in
ascribing all the genealogies in Genesis to P,
and finding
some remarkable numerical correspondences,
which tend
to confirm his view. But there is no
consist-
ency in
referring Keturah's descendants to one document
(J or E) and
Ishmael's to another (P), though they are
combined
together and a common disposition made of
both in ver.
6. The various genealogies of this book
are
inserted
upon a uniform plan, which binds them all to-
gether, and
shows that they must all be attributed to the
same
source. In addition to the direct line
which is
traced from
Adam to the twelve sons of Jacob, the heads
respectively
of the several tribes of Israel, all the lateral
lines of
descent are introduced, each in its proper place,
and then
dropped, thus indicating at once their relation
to, and
their separateness from, the chosen race.
"And Abraham took another wife"
(lit., added and
308 THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH
took a wife,
ver. 1) contains an implied reference to
Sarah's
death, alluded to in the immediate]y preceding
verse (xxiv.
67), and recorded in ch. xxiii. P.
Dillmann
would be
inclined to refer this verse to the author of ch.
xxiii., were
it not that P nowhere else uses the word
"added."
But as that is the customary way of
saying
in Hebrew
that a person did again what he had done be-
fore, it is
difficult to see why any Hebrew writer might
not use the
word if he had occasion.
As Abraham reached the age of one hundred
and sev-
enty-five
(ver. 7), there is no difficulty in his marriage
with Keturah
standing where it does, after the death of
Sarah and
the marriage of Isaac. The critics, who
Sun-
der P from J
and E, and insist that the narratives of the
latter have
no connection with the chronology of the
former, seek
a discrepancy here, and claim that in JE
the marriage
with Keturah must have preceded the birth
of
Isaac. But the advanced age of Abraham
and Sarah,
in
consequence of which offspring could not be expected
in the
ordinary course of nature, is as plain in P (xvii.
17) as in JE
(xviii. 11-14; xxi. 7). But the promise
(xvii. 4-6)
that Abraham should be exceedingly fruitful
and the
father of many nations, looks beyond the birth
of Isaac,
and finds its fulfilment in other descendants as
well. This, like most other alleged discrepancies,
is
found not in
the text itself, but in arbitrary critical as-
sumptions.
The supplementary critics, who conceived
of J as en-
larging P by
additions of his own, had no difficulty in
letting P
have xxv. 5, though xxiv.36b was J's.
But if
J is an
independent document, the identity of the verses
makes it
necessary to attribute both to the same source,
and xxv. 5
must belong to J. This statement that
"Abraham
gave all that he had unto Isaac," would seem
to carry
with it the counter-statement of what became of
CONCLUSION
OF ABRAHAM'S LIFE (XXV. 1-11) 309
his other
children. So Dillmann argued in the
first and
second
editions of his "Genesis," and referred ver. 6 to
J
likewise. And if J spoke in this verse
of Abraham's
"concubines,"
he must have given an account of Keturah
as well as
of Hagar, and accordingly have been the
author of
vs. 1-4. But on the other hand, ver. 1
calls her
a
"wife," and ver. 6 a " concubine;" to prevent this im-
aginary
conflict he first assumed that vs. 1-4 was from P,
but worked
over by R into conformity with J; then that
it was
impossible to decide from which source vs. 1-4
was taken;
and finally, in his third edition, he gives ver.
6 to R, and
vs. 1-4 to E, though why E should be so
interested
in this particular genealogy, when he gives no
other, is
not clear. This looks like a shift to
get rid of
a
troublesome paragraph, which is assigned to E, not be-
cause of any
particular affinity with that document, but
it must go
somewhere, and there seems to be no other pla-
ce to put
it. Keturah is called a wife just as
Hagar
is (xvi. 3),
without at all designing to put either of them
on a par
with Sarah; so that there is no inconsistency in
their being
likewise called concubines, and no need of
assuming a
different writer on this account. Ver.
11 is
of necessity
assigned to P; but its last clause speaks of
Isaac's
dwelling by Beer-lahai-roi, which is a plain allu-
sion to xvi.
14; xxiv. 62 J; hence the offending clause
must be
exscinded or transferred to another context and
attached to
J. Thus the whole section is chopped
into
bits, and
parcelled among the several documents and the
redactor,
though it is consistent and continuous through-
out and
linked to what precedes as a fulfilment of the
promise made
to Abraham (xvii. 4, 5, P). But if P
were
allowed to
have ver. 6, an opportunity would be missed
of creating
an apparent divergence by inferring from ver.
9 what is
not in it, that Ishmael continued to live with his
father to
the time of his death, contrary to xxi. 14-21 E.
310 THE GENERATIONS 0F TERAH
In ver. 11 it is stated that "after
the death of Abraham
Elohim
blessed Isaac, his son." Jehovah as
the guar-
dian and
benefactor of the chosen race would certainly
have been
appropriate here. And yet Elohim is
appro-
priate
likewise as suggestive of the general divine benef-
icence,
which bestowed upon Isaac abundant external
prosperity. There is no reason accordingly for assum-
ing that the
word is suggestive of the peculiarity of a
particular
writer.
MARKS OF P (IN vs. 7-11a)
1.
Age of Abraham, ver. 7. See ch.
vi.-ix., Marks of
P, No.2, ch.
xvi., No.1.
2.
"The statement that Ishmael was still with Abra-
ham (ver.
9)." No such statement is here made
or im-
plied. Ishmael's presence at Abraham's burial is not
inconsistent
with his residence elsewhere (xxi. 21); so
that this
affords no ground for assuming a diversity of
documents.
3.
"The cave of Machpelah (ver. 9), the diffuseness of,
the style
(vs. 9, 10), the children of Heth (ver. 10)."
The
expressions in these verses are borrowed from ch.
xxiii., the
formality and precision of the language indi-
cating the
stress laid upon this first acquisition of prop-
erty in
Canaan.
4.
fvaGA give
up the ghost. See ch. vi.-ix., Marks of P,
No. 18.
5.
vym.Afa-lx, Jsax<n, was gathered unto his people, a phrase
used only of
the death of the following venerated men,
viz.: Abraham
(xxv. 8); Ishmael (ver. 17); Isaac (xxxv.
29); Jacob
(xlix. 29, 33); Aaron (Num. xx. 24, 26, ellip-
sis), and
Moses (Num. xxvii. 13; xxxi. 2; Deut. xxxii.
50). These are all referred to P for the reason
that the
records of
the deaths of patriarchs are as a rule referred
CONCLUSION
OF ABRAHAM'S LIFE (XXV. 1-11) 311
to him. The formula henceforth used of the death of
patriarchs
is in the full form adopted here, "gave up
the ghost
and died, and was gathered to his people" (xxv.
8, 17; xxxv.
29; xlix. 33). This formula is not used
in
the case of
any other whose death is recorded by P;
yet no
critic infers a difference of writers on this ac-
count. The same thought is expressed in words spoken
by the LORD
to Abraham (xv. 15), "go to thy fathers,"
assigned by
the critics to JE, but joined as here with the
phrase,
"in a good old age," which speaks for the iden-
tity of the
writers. Dillmann can only account for
the
coincidence
by the interference of R in ch. xv.
6. yy.eHa
ynew; ymey; days of the
years of the life
(ver. 7). See
ch. xxiii.,
Marks of P, No.5. .
7.
"The back reference of xlix. 31 P to ver. 10; " this
is freely
admitted to be from the same writer; but this
implies no
admission that other parts of Genesis are
from a
different hand.
The descent attributed to Sheba and Dedan
(ver. 3),
involves no
discrepancy either with x. 7 P, or x. 28 J.
See under
ch. x., pp. 137-139.
For the use of ,,~ beget, in lateral
genealogies, see ch.
vi.-ix.,
Marks of P, No. 20. The critics make
this a
mark of J,
yet here it occurs with yneb;U and
the sons of
(vs. 3, 4),
which in ch. x. they make a mark of P.
"All these were the children of
Keturah " (ver. 4; cf. x.
29b; ix.
19), has been urged in proof of the authorship
of J; but
the same formula occurs in P xlvi. 15, 18, 22,
25.
VII
THE
GENERATIONS OF ISHMAEL (CH. XXV. 12-18)
THIS section is related alike to passages
assigned by
the critics
to P, J, and E; hence the diversity of opinion
among them as
to its origin. It is generally agreed
that
the title
(ver. 12a), ver. 16b "twelve princes" descended
from Ishmael
in fulfilment of xvii. 20 P, and ver. 17
with the
phrases of ver. 8, must be from P. But
ver.
12b repeats
xxi. 9 E (Dillmann compares xvi. 3, 15 P);
the mention
of the territory occupied by the tribes de-
scended from
Ishmael (ver. 18), is after the analogy of x.
19, 30, J;
"he abode in the presence of all his brethren"
(ver. 18b),
is in fulfilment of xvi. 12 J, and adopts its lan-
guage. Accordingly Hupfeld gives vs. 13-16a, 18, to
J.
Kayser gives
ver. 16b likewise to J, and seems inclined
to follow
Boehmer in ascribing ver. 12 to him also, in-
asmuch as
the title, "These are the generations of Ish-
mael,"
could hardly have been used to introduce ver. 17,
which is all
that remains for P. "It is not so
well made
out,"
he says, ''as is commonly assumed, that this title
belongs to P
and not to J." Dillmann, on the
other
hand, feels
the difficulty of having a separate P title
prefixed to
but one or two verses, and claims the entire
section for
P except ver. 18. The first clause of
this
verse he
attributes to J, and attaches to ver. 6; the last
clause he
regards as a gloss based upon xvi. 12, because
the singular
number is used, while the preceding clause
has the
plural. But no such conclusion is
warranted by
this change
of number, the reason for which is obvious.
ISHMAEL'S DESCENDANTS (CH. XXV. 12-18) 313
To make the
reference perfectly distinct, the fulfilment
is stated in
the very terms of the prediction. The
region
occupied by Ishmael's descendants is stated in
the first
clause; thus, as had been foretold, Ishmael
abode in the
presence of all his brethren. There is
no
need of
assuming a gloss and no need of transposing the
verse; no
one would ever have thought of doing either,
except in
the interest of the divisive hypothesis.
All is
appropriate
and harmonious as it stands.
MARKS OF P
1.
The title (ver.12). See ch.
vi.-ix., Marks of P,
No.1, ch.
xvi. No.1.
2.
The statement of age (ver. 17).
See ch. vi.-ix.,
Marks of P,
No.2.
3.
The formulas of ver. 17. See ch.
xxv. 1-11, Marks
of P, No.5.
4.
The mention of the first-born (ver. 13, as xxxv. 23
P). This is no discriminating test, for it occurs
(x. 15,
xxii. 21) in
genealogies attributed to J.
5.
The "twelve princes" (ver. 16; cf. xvii. 20). This
and other
correspondences point to the common author-
ship of
related passages, but afford no ground for the
belief that
other passages are from a different source.
The territory described in ver. 18 as the
home of the
Ishmaelites,
"from Havilah unto Shur, that is before
Egypt,"
is that in which Saul found the Amalekites (1
Sam. xv.
7). This is a fresh indication of the
blending
of these
roving tribes, of which we have already seen
evidence in
the occurrence of the same tribal name in
different
genealogies, e.g. "Sheba and Dedan (xxv. 3 and
x. 7, 28),
and which is further evidenced by the inter-
change of
different tribal names in application to, the
same parties
(Gen. xxxvii. 28; Judg. viii. 1, 12, 24).
VIII
THE
GENERATIONS OF ISAAC (CH. XXV. 19-XXXV.)
This section contains the history of Isaac
and his
family from
his marriage until his death.
ESAU AND JACOB (CH. XXV. 19-34)
VATER, though an advocate of the fragment
hypothesis,
notes
("Pentateuch," i., p. 244) the precise correspond-
ence in the
arrangement of ch. xxv. and ch. xxxv.-xxxvii.,
which is
certainly indicative of unity of plan.
1, Abra-
ham's sons
by Keturah (xxv. 1-6); 2, his death and
burial by
his sons Isaac and Ishmael (vs. 7-11);
3, the
descendants
of Ishmael (vs. 12-18); 4, the history
of
Isaac's
family (vs. 19 sqq.). In like manner: 1,
Jacob's
sons by his
several wives (xxxv. 23-26); 2, Isaac's
death
and burial
by his sons Esau and Jacob (vs. 27-29);
3,
the
descendants of Esau (ch. xxxvi.); 4, the
history of
Jacob's
family (ch. xxxvii. sqq.).
It should be observed also how closely
this portion of
the history
is knit to what precedes as well as to what
follows. The life of Abraham repeats itself in that of
Isaac, in
the renewal of the same divine promises, in the
trial of
faith by a long waiting for the expected child on
whom the fulfilment
of every other promise hinged; in the
divine
intervention manifest in the birth; in the dis-
tinction
between the child of divine choice and the re-
jected
first-born; in the care taken that the marriage of
the former
should be, not with one of the surrounding
ESAU AND JACOB (CH. XXV. 19-34) 315
Canaanites,
but with one of an allied race; in Isaac's be-
traying the
same sinful weakness under temptation as his
father; and
in the divine protection and blessing which
compelled
the recognition even of monarchs. The
same
ideas are
made prominent, the same leading principles
rule
throughout the whole.
It was twenty-five years after Abraham
entered Ca-
naan before
Isaac was born (xii. 4; xxi. 5). It was
twenty years
after Isaac's marriage before the birth of
Jacob and
Esau (xxv. 20, 26). Their birth is
traced to
an immediate
divine bestowment of what was beyond all
natural
expectation. It had been promised to
Abraham
that he
should be the father of many nations; two na-
tions were
to spring from Rebekah. As Isaac was
pre-
ferred to
Ishmael, so Jacob to, Esau. And though
these
latter were
from the same mother, the divine choice was
made
apparent from the first, was independent of per-
sonal worth,
and was finally ratified, not through the un-
worthy means
taken to secure it, but in spite of them.
It was thus
plainly shown to be of divine grace, not of
human
merit. And at length, by providential
discipline,
supplanting
Jacob was changed into prevailing Israel.
Tuch, in defending the supplement
hypothesis, attrib-
uted the
whole of this paragraph (vs. 19-34) to P,
save only
vs. 21 (except the last clause), 22, 23, where
the repeated
occurrence of Jehovah betrayed the hand of
J, who
inserted in the work of P, which lay before him
and which he
was supplementing, this forecast of the fut-
ure history
of Rebekah's descendants before the chil-
dren were
born. It was inconceivable, he urged,
that a
history of
the ancestry of Israel should say nothing of
the birth of
Jacob, the progenitor of the nation, and of
his twin
brother Esau, by whom the course of Jacob's
life was so
largely influenced.
This difficulty presses the current
divisive hypothesis
316 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
in an
aggravated form, which attempts to make out three
independent
documents, without being able to maintain
the show of
continuity for any one of them. To P are
assigned
only vs. 19, 20, and the last clause of ver. 26.
He
accordingly tells how old Isaac was when he was married,
though no
previous account had been given by P of his marriage;
also how old
he was when “they were born,” presumably his
children,
though this is not said, and there is no direct mention
of their
birth such as, it is here implied, had been made.
The critics
tell us that P must have told about Isaac’s marriage
and the
birth of his sons, but R has not seen fit to preserve
that part of
his record. P then springs at once to
Esau’s
marriage at
forty years of age (xxvi. 34, 35), and Jacob’s
being sent
to Paddan-aram for a wife (xxviii. 1 sqq.),
whereupon
Esau marries again. Three disconnected
clauses
follow,
relating to persons abruptly introduced with no
intimation
that they were in any way connected with Jacob:
(xxix..
24) “And Laban gave Zilpah his handmaid
unto his
daughter
Leah for her handmaid;” (ver. 29) “And
Laban
gave to
Rachel his daughter Bil- hah his handmaid to be
her
handmaid;” (xxx. 22a) “And God remembered Rachel.”
Then (xxxi.
18) “He,” presumably Jacob, though his
name is
not mentioned, “carried away all his cattle and all his
substance which
he had gathered, the cattle of his getting,
which he had
gathered in Paddan-aram, for to go to Isaac
his father
unto the land of Canaan.” And this is
absolutely
all that P
has to say about Jacob from the time that he
left his
father’s house until his return to Canaan.
There
is no
mention of his arrival in Paddan-aram, or of any-
thing that
occurred there, only that he left it possessed
of property
and cattle with no previous allusion to his
having
acquired them. He went to Paddan-aram to
seek
a wife; but
there is no intimation whether his search
ESAU AND JACOB (CH. XXV. 19-34) 317
was
successful until several years after he had been again settled
in Canaan,
when a bald list is given of his wives and children in
connection
with the mention of Isaac’s death (xxxv. 22b-29).
Wellhausen may well call this a “skeleton
account.”
And it is
suitably characterized by Dr. Harper1 as “cold
and
lifeless, nothing but a register of deaths, births and
marriages;”
and he might have added with the princi-
pal births
and marriages left out. Is this P’s
fault or
that of the
critics? Can such scattered snatches be
re-
garded as
constituting a separate document, or even ac-
cepted as
proof that they are the remains of a separate
document,
especially when these fragments are essential
in the
context in which they are now found, and their
removal
leaves unfilled gaps behind them? And is
the
title, “The
generations of Isaac,” intended to introduce
these
disconnected fragments, or the body of the narra-
tive to
which it is prefixed? If the latter, we
have here
one more
proof that these titles to sections of the book
of Genesis
do not belong to what the critics are pleased
to call the
document P.
But after P’s portion of vs. 19-34 is
subtracted, the
critics
still find the remainder not a unit, and yet very
difficult to
disentangle. Wellhausen says that J and
E
are here and
in ch. xxvii. so involved “that a clear sep-
aration is
not to be thought of.” “Only where the
di-
vine names
supply a criterion can the double stream be
distinctly
recognized.” As in vs. 29-34 Esau sells
his
birthright
of his own accord, while in ch. xxvii. his fa-
ther’s
blessing is wrested from him by fraud, it has been
proposed to
assign these to separate documents. But,
as
Wellhausen contends, it will neither answer to give
the former
to E and the latter to J, nor to reverse this
by giving
the former to J and the latter to E. For
1 The Hebraica for July, 1889, p. 267.
318 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
Esau’s
voluntary surrender of his birthright would not
account for
Jacob’s flight from home (xxviii. 10 sqq.).
Both J and E
presuppose a hostility on the part of Esau
such as can
only be explained by what is related in ch.
xxvii. Moreover, xxvii. 36 refers back to the matter
of
the
birthright. Hence, though Wellhausen
claims that
in the oral
tradition the obtaining of the birthright
(hrkb) and of the blessing (hkrb) are mere variants, of
which he
offers no proof, he nevertheless admits that in
their
written form one is no mere substitute for the
other, but
the first is a prelude to the second.
Wellhausen proposes to give vs. 29-34 the
sale of the
birthright
to J. The contrast drawn between Esau
and
Jacob (vs.
27, 28), and the preferences of their parents
for them
respectively, are preparatory for ch. xxvii., and
presupposed
in both J and E, and must have been in
substance in
both documents. Vs. 21-23 is given to J
because of
“Jehovah;” vs. 24-26a to E, because the
allusion in
Hos. xii. 3 to Jacob taking his brother by the
heel proves
that this tradition was current in the north-
ern kingdom
of Israel, to which E is imagined to have
belonged,
and because ver. 25 suggests a different ex-
planation of
Edom from that given in ver. 30, and in ver.
26 Jacob is
explained differently from xxvii. 36 J.
But
thus J
records the conception of the children and the
prediction
respecting them, but does not speak of their
birth. It thus becomes necessary to suppose that
each
document had
originally what is contained in the other,
only R has
not seen fit to preserve it.
A continuous and closely connected
paragraph is thus
splintered
into bits to find material for three documents,
each of
which proves to be incoherent and fragmentary.
The
different allusions to the significance of the names
Edom and
Jacob afford no justification for the partition.
since they
are not variant etymologies implying different
ESAU AND JACOB (CH. XXV. 19-34) 319
conceptions
of the origin of the names and requiring the
assumption
of distinct writers.
In his second edition Dillmann adopts
substantially
the
partition of Wellhausen, though in his first he had
referred the
entire paragraph (P excepted) to E, worked
over by R,
and in his third he refers it to J, only the
word “red”
(ver. 25), and a few words in ver. 27, having
been taken
from E. From all this it may be inferred
that the
critical machinery does not work very smoothly
in this
instance.
It has been alleged that Rebekah’s going
to inquire
of Jehovah
(ver. 22) implies that there were then places
where
oracular responses were given, or seers through
whom, the
deity could be consulted. Wellhausen
pro-
poses to
transpose this paragraph after ch. xxvi., where
he finds in
vs. 23-33 the founding of a sanctuary at
Beersheba;
and he jumps to the conclusion that Rebekah
went to it
to inquire of Jehovah. Stade1
regards the in-
cident here
recorded of Rebekah as “probably a saga
respecting
the origin of the oracle at Beersheba.”
But
there is no
suggestion here or elsewhere in the patri-
archal
period of an oracle or a seer. And there
is not
the
slightest reason for supposing that either is referred
to in the
present instance, much less of assuming that
this passage
lends approval to the separatist sanctuary,
which was in
later ages established at Beersheba. Ha-
vernick
appeals to 1 Sam. xxviii. 6, which shows that
those who
“inquired of Jehovah” might be answered by
dreams as
well as by Urim and by prophets. From
the
frequency
with which prophetic dreams are mentioned
in Genesis,
and from the fact that the answer of Jehovah
was given to
Rebekah herself, it is natural to infer that
the
revelation was made to her in a dream.
They who
dispute the
reality of predictive prophecy find here a
1
Geschichte des Volkes Israel, p. 474, note.
320 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
vaticinium post eventum, and an indication of post-Mosaic
origin. But those who do not accept the premises will
not share
the conclusion.
It is argued that Isaac could not have
passed Rebekah
off as his
sister (xxvi. 7) after her children were born
and had
grown up (xxv. 27). This does not
necessarily
follow. Still, even if xxvi. 1-33 preceded xxv. 21-34
in point of
time, it would not be necessary to suppose
that the
narratives have been transposed. The
histo-
rian is not
an annalist. He may depart from the
chron-
ological
arrangement when he has good reasons for
grouping
events differently. Whatever motive the
re-
dactor may
be thought to have had for transposing these
incidents
may equally have influenced the original writer
to place
them in their present order.
The divine name is properly and discriminatingly
em-
ployed in
vs. 21-23. Jehovah was the God of Isaac
no
less than of
Abraham. It is to Jehovah that he
directs
his prayer;
it is to Jehovah that his wife applies in her
perplexity. It is Jehovah who gives to each a gracious
answer.
MARKS OF P (VS. 19, 20, 26b)
1.
The title (ver. 19). See ch.
vi.-ix., Marks of P,
No.1.
2.
Age (vs. 20, 26). See ch.
vi.-ix., Marks of P,
No.2.
3. dyliOh beget (ver. 19). See ch. vi.-ix., Marks of P,
No. 20.
4.
Paddan-aram (ver. 20); occurs besides in P xxviii.
2, 5-7;
xxxv. 9, 26; in xxxi. 18, xxxiii. 18, it is as-
signed to P
in a JE connection; in xlvi: 15 the critics
are not
agreed whether it belongs to P. See ch.
xxiv.,
Marks of J,
No.3.
5.
Bethuel, the Aramaean (ver. 20).
Bethuel the father
ESAU AND JACOB (CH. XXV. 19-34) 321
and Laban
the brother of Rebekah are here called Ara-
maeans, in
contrast with the Canaanites, with whom
Isaac was
not to ally himself; so for a like reason in
xxviii. 5 P,
though not in ver. 2 P, where the same end
is
accomplished by calling Bethuel the father and Laban
the brother
of Jacob’s mother. Laban is also called
the
Aramraean in
E (xxxi. 20, 24); and he is spoken of with-
out this
epithet in P (xlvi. 18, 2p). Moreover,
Bethuel and
Laban were
Aramreans according to J, since they
lived in
Aram-naharaim (xxiv. 10 J). The
employment
or
non-employment of the epithet Aramraean in connection
with their
names is dependent, therefore, not upon the
usage of
particular documents, but upon the sense to be
conveyed.
MARKS OF J
1. rtafA entreat (ver. 21); nowhere else in Genesis; only
besides in
the Hexateuch, Ex. viii. 4, 5, 24, 25; 26 (E.
V., vs. 8,
9, 28, 29, 30); x. 18, all which are referred
to J.
2. ryf,cA younger (ver. 23). See ch. xix. 29-38, Mal’ks of
J, No.2.
3.
“The similarity of vs. 24-26 to xxxviii. 27 sqq.” May
be an
indication of the common authorship of these pas-
sages, but
gives no proof that other passages are from a
different
author.
Dillmann claims that vs. 25 and 27 are
“overloaded”
by the
insertion of words from an assumed parallel ac-
count by
E. In proof of this he points to “red”
(ver.25),
as an
explanation of Edom, conflicting with that in ver.
30, and the
duplicate characterization of both Edom and
Jacob, ver.
27. But this “overloading” never seems
to
have dawned
upon Dillmann himself until he hit upon
this
expedient for providing at least a semblance of ma-
terial for E
in a paragraph which, as he now confesses,
322 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
“coheres
well together,” but the contents of which are
presupposed
alike in E and in J.
Dillmann remarks upon the indefinite
singular, “one
called”
(ver. 26), contrasted with the plural,
“they called”
(ver. 25),
as suggestive of a different document; but Hup-
feld points
to the frequent use of the indefinite singular
in passages
attributed to J, e.g., xi. 9; xvi. 14; xxvii. 36;
xxxiii. 17;
xxxviii. 29, 30.
ISAAC IN GERAR AND BEERSHEBA (CH. XXVI. 1-33)
This chapter (except vs. 34, 35, P), is in
the main as-
signed to J,
but unfilled gaps are thus created in both
the other
documents. We look in vain in P for a
divine
grant of the
land to Isaac, such as is referred to in xxxv.
12 P, or for
a covenant of God with him mentioned Ex.
ii. 24 P, or
for God appearing to him as he is declared
to have
done, Ex. vi. 3 1 P. These are all to be
found in
the chapter
before us, but nowhere else. These
passages
in P must,
therefore, refer to what is contained in J,
which is
contrary to the hypothesis, or it must be as-
signed here
again that P had just such an account as we
find in J,
but R has omitted it. So when E (xlvi.
1)
speaks of
Jacob coming to Beersheba and there offering
sacrifices
to the God of his father Isaac, there is a plain
allusion to
the altar which Isaac had built there (xxvi.
25). When Jacob left his father’s house for Haran,
he
went out
from Beersheba (xxviii.-10 E), implying Isaac’s
residence
there, as stated xxvi. 23, 25, but nowhere in
E. Either E alludes to J, or he must have
related the
same that is
in J, and R has not preserved it.
When we thus find throughout the book of
Genesis the
1 Jehovah’s revelation of himself (xxvi. 24) as the God of Abraham
contains a specific allusion to xvii. 1,
and was so understood by Isaac
(xxviii. 3, 4).
ISAAC IN GERAR (CH. XXVI. 1-33) 323
different
documents tied together by cross-references,
does not the
divisive hypothesis require too many auxil-
iary hypotheses
for its support? It asks us in every in-
stance to
assume that the reference is not to the passage
which is
plainly written before us, and to which it ex-
actly
corresponds, but to certain hypothetical passages
which may
once have existed, but of which there is no
other
evidence than that the exigencies of the hypothe-
sis demand
it.
A doublet is suspected in vs. 1-6. It is
said that 2b is
incompatible
with 1c and 3a. Isaac is already in the
land to
which the LORD is to tell him to go.
Accordingly
la, 2b, 6,
are assigned to E, thus: “And there was
a fam-
ine in the
land; and (God) said to (Isaac), Go not down
into Egypt;
dwell in the land which I shall tell thee; and
Isaac dwelt
in Gerar.” Then 1c, 2a, 3a, are given to
J,
thus: “And Isaac went unto Abimelech, king of the
Philistines,
unto Gerar. And Jehovah appeared unto
him and
said, Sojourn in this land, and I will be with
thee, and
will bless thee.” But the fact that by
ingenious
slicing and
piecing two seemingly complete paragraphs
can be
constructed out of one does not prove that the
latter is of
duplicate origin. The apparent lack of
continu-
ity which
gives offence to the critics in these verses is of
precisely
the same nature as that in xxiv. 29, 30, which
has been
before explained. In xxvi. 1 the mention
of
the famine
is immediately followed by the statement that
Isaac went
to Gerar to escape it. It is then added
with
more
particularity how he came to make his abode in
Gerar,
instead of passing on to Egypt after the example
of his
lather in similar circumstances (xii. 10), and accord-
ing to his
own original intention. Jehovah directed
him
to dwell in
the land that he should tell him of, which was
immediately
explained to be the land in which he then
was. The explicit allusion to the “first famine
that was
324 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
in the days
of Abraham” (1b), is stricken from the text
and referred
to R, because E had not spoken of that
famine;
whereas it simply proves the falsity of the criti-
cal
partition which assigns ver. 1a to a different docu-
ment from
xii. 10.
Vs. 3b-5 is also expunged as a later
addition to the
text for two
reasons:
1st.
In order to get rid of its testimony in favor of xxii.
15-18, which
the critics attribute to R; because if here re-
ferred to
and cited by J it must be genuine and original.
2d.
Because the legal phrases in ver. 5 are inappropri-
ate to the
times of the patriarchs.
But (1) this verse is in exact accord
with others which
show great
solicitude to make it clear that Abraham and
his seed
were chosen of Jehovah, not to be his favorites
irrespective
of character, but to found a pious, God-fear-
ing,
obedient race (xvii. 1, 2; xviii. 19).
(2) Mention is made of several divine
injunctions given
to
Abraham. He was commanded to leave his
country,
to perform
specified rites in the transaction of the cove-
nant, to
institute circumcision, to offer up Isaac.
He
was required
to exercise faith in God’s promises in spite
of long
delays and discouraging circumstances.
He ob-
served
sacrificial worship and called on the name of the
LORD. He recognized the sanctity of an oath (xiv.
22),
and dealt
generously with Lot, uprightly with the chil-
dren of Heth
and Abimelech, and in the strictest honesty
with the
king of Sodom. The direction to walk
before
God and be
perfect (xvii. 1; xxiv. 40), and his confidence
that God the
judge of all the earth would do right in re-
spect to the
righteous and the wicked (xviii. 25), imply
his
possession of a standard of rectitude.
So, although
no formal
code may have been given to Abraham, it is
not
inappropriate to speak of “commandments, statutes,
and laws,”
which he had obeyed.
ISAAC IN GERAR (CH. XXVI. 1-33) 325
(3) The heaping together of these various
terms is cer-
tainly
suggestive of the Mosaic legislation (cf. Ex. xv.
26; xvi. 28,
etc.). And what is whole natural than
that
the great
legislator, who in recording the history of their
ancestors
had prominent regard to the instruction of his
contemporaries,
should commend the obedience of Abra-
ham in terms
which would make it a fit model for them-
selves?
Isaac’s life was to such an extent an
imitation of his
father’s
that no surprise need be felt at his even copying
his faults
and pretending that his wife was his sister (vs.
7-11). A stratagem that has proved successful once
is very
likely to be
tried again.
Nor does it create any special difficulty
in respect to
the recorded
visit of Abimelech and Phicol to Isaac at
Beersheba
(vs. 26-31) that a king and general of the
same name
had covenanted at the same place with Abra-
ham (xxi.
22-32). That successive Philistine kings
should bear
the name Abimelech is no more strange
than the
Pharaohs of Egypt, or the Caesars of Rome, or
two
Napoleons emperors of France, or two presidents of
the United
States named John Adams. Phicol may for
aught that
anyone knows have been an official title, or
he may have
been the namesake of his predecessor.
That the
name Beersheba should be reimposed on this
occasion
(ver. 33) is not strange. That the
writer re-
garded it
not as a new appellation, but as fresh sanction
given to one
already in existence, is plain from his use
of it (ver.
23), and it is in precise accordance with the
general
statements (vs. 15, 18) that Isaac had renewed
the names
previously given to wells by his father.
These verses
are interpolations by R in the opinion of
the critics,
for the reason (which others may not deem
conclusive)
that J cannot be supposed to have referred
to what is
recorded in E.
326 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
The name Jehovah is evidently in place in
this chapter.
Jehovah
appears to Isaac (vs. 2, 24); and Isaac called on
the name of
Jehovah (ver. 25). Jehovah blessed him
(ver. 12)
and made room for him (ver. 22); so that even
Abimelech
recognized the fact that Isaac’s God Jehovah
was with him
(ver. 28), and blessed him (ver.29). In
xxv. 11 it
had been said that Elohim blessed him.
This
is
suggestive of the two aspects under which his out-
ward
prosperity could be regarded as the gift of his
covenant
God, or of the God of nature and of providence.
This is no
more surprising than when the Psalmist makes
his appeal
in successive clauses to the God of Israel and
the God of
the universe: (Ps. x. 12) “Arise, O Jehovah;
O Elohim,
lift up thine hand.” (Ps. xvii. 1, 6) “O
Je-
hovah,
attend unto my cry; . . . thou wilt hear me,
O Elohim.”
MARKS
OF J
1. hx,r;ma tbaOF fair to look (ver. 7).
See ch. xxiv.,
Marks of J,
No. 13.
2. Jyqiw;hi look out (ver. 8). See ch. xviii.,
xix., Marks
of J, No.6.
3. hlAxA oath (ver. 28). Besides in J xxiv. 41 bis; in P
Lev. v. 1;
Num. v. 21 bis, 23, 27; in D Deut. xxix. 11,13,
18, 19, 20
(E. V., vs. 12, 14, 19, 20, 21); xxx. 7; all in
the Hexateuch.
4. hvhy j`UrB; blessed of Jehovah (ver. 29); in the Hexa-
teuch
besides only xxiv. 31 J; a similar phrase, “blessed
of God Most
High“ xiv. 19, which is not refe17ed to J.
5. hvhy Mweb; xrAq;y.iva called upon the name of
Jehovah (ver.
25). Prayer and worship were addressed to Jehovah,
the God of
revelation and of grace. This divine
name
is the
appropriate one in such connections, and is not
traceable to
the usage of a particular document.
6. “The
peril of Rebekah (vs. 7-11), and the origin of
ISAAC IN GERAR (CH. XXVI. 1-33) 327
the name
Beersheba” (vs. 25-33) are not variant accounts
of the
transactions recorded in ch. xx. and xxi. 22-32 but
are distinct
events occurring at different times and under
other
circumstances. Even on the hypothesis of
the
critics they
were so regarded by the redactor. If
they
either were,
or were supposed to be, distinct events, there
is no reason
why they may not have been related by the
same
writer. They afford no ground,
consequently, for
the
assumption of separate documents.
Dillmann remarks that in this chapter
“much in the
form of
expression reminds of E, cf. ver. 10 and xx. 9;
ver. 28 and
xxi. 22; ver. 29 and xxi. 23; tOdxo-lf con-
cerning (ver. 32 and xxi. 11, 25); the names (ver. 26).”
He
undertakes to account for this by assuming that J had
the document
E before him and borrowed expressions
from
it. The divisive hypothesis must thus be
supported
by a fresh
hypothesis, for which there is no foundation
but the very
hypothesis which it is adduced to support.
It will be
observed that the admitted points of similarity
belong to
the narrative of Rebekah’s peril and the affair
at Beersheba. If now the author of ch. xxvi. had the cor-
responding
narrative in chs. xx., x:xi., before him as he
wrote, he
was aware that Abraham had had experiences
similar to
those which he was recording of Isaac.
And
thus the
argument of the critics for a diversity of docu-
ments is
completely nullified by their own confession.
And the only
remaining alternative is to accept the sim-
ple and
natural inference, from the correspondences “be-
tween the
narratives, that both are from the pen of the
same writer.
It is also worth noting that “digged,” in
vs. 15, 18,
32, is in
Hebrew rpaHA, but in ver. 25 it is hrAKA a
word
which occurs
nowhere else in J, and is only found in the
Hexateuch in
E, viz., Gen. 1. 5; Ex. xxi. 33; Num. xxi.
18. It thus appears that the same writer can use
two
328 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
different
words to express the same thing with no appar-
ent reason
for making the change; and this even though
in the
opinion of the critics one of the words is nowhere
else used by
him.
JACOB’S BLESSING AND DEPARTURE
(CH. XXVI.
34-XXVIII. 9)
The narrative in ch. xxvii. is
indispensable to both J
and E, as
shown alike by its connection with what pre-
cedes and
what follows. It has already been seen
that
the critics
find it necessary to assume that xxv. 21-34
belonged
alike to both of these documents, and that the
portions
extracted from one had their equivalents also in
the
other. But this paragraph was directly
preparatory
to ch.
xxvii. The pre-announcement of the
precedence of
the younger
child (ver. 23), the hairy skin of Esau (ver.
25), Esau’s
skill in hunting and Jacob’s domestic habits
(ver. 27),
Isaac’s partiality for Esau, and relish for his
venison, and
Rebekah’s preference for Jacob (ver. 28), are
mentioned
with a view to this chapter, and the sale of
the
birthright (vs. 29-34) is explicitly referred to, xxvii.
36.
In like manner, as is stated by
Wellhausen, “we have
in xxviii.
10-22 a piece from E almost complete, together
with a large
fragment from J, which proves that J con-
tained the
same narrative and in the same place (cf. ver.
15 and vs.
20, 21). It hence follows by concluding
back-
ward that
both E and J related the occasion of Jacob’s
flight,
without which it would be without a motive and
unintelligible. There must necessarily have been a his-
tory like
that in ch. xxvii. in both sources, as appears also
from ch.
xxxii.;” and, as Dillmann adds, xxxv. 3,
7, E.
While, however, it is essential to find
both J and E in
this
chapter, the critics are obliged to acknowledge that
ISAAC
BLESSES JACOB (CH. XXVI. 34-XXVIIL 9)
329
they cannot
disentangle them so as to separate the two
accounts, or
even to discover an points of difference be-
tween
them. The utmost that they can do is to
point
out several
instances of what they consider doublets, and
claim on
this account that the text is composite, though
they are
unable to resolve it into its original constitu-
ents.
It is claimed that vs. 24-27a repeats vs., 21-23; that
ver. 24,
instead of progressing from ver. 23, goes back to
ver. 21, and
ver. 23 is as far advanced as ver. 27a, each
ending, “and
he blessed him.” But this is precisely
like other
alleged doublets before reviewed. The
ulti-
mate result
is first summarily stated (ver. 23b); then
further
particulars are added (vs. 24-27a), which led up
to this
result. The paragraphs in question are
mutually
supplementary;
they are certainly not mutually exclu-
sive. The blind old patriarch, doubtful of his
son’s
identity,
first insists upon feeling him (vs. 21-23), and
obliges him
to say whether he is really Esau (ver. 24).
Then, after
partaking of what had been brought him, he
asks, as a
final test, to kiss him, that he may smell the
odor of his
raiment (ver. 27). There is in all this
no
repetition,
but a steady, onward progress to the final
issue.
It is further said that ver. 30b repeats
30a, which it
does not; it
more exactly defines the time intended.
Isaac had
ended his blessing, and Jacob had just gone
out when
Esau came in. Also that vs. 35-38 repeat
vs.
33, 34; but
the only repetition is that of Esau’s impor-
tunate
entreaty, which is as natural as it is touching.
Ver. 44b is
repeated in ver. 45a, because this was the
thing uppermost
in Rebekah’s thoughts. She repeats
and
amplifies what she had said about Esau’s fury sub-
siding, in
order to impress upon Jacob her own convic-
tion that
his brother’s rage was only temporary.
If
330 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
Jacob would
but absent himself for a few days it would
Be over, and
she would send and fetch him home again.
She is
concerned to present her project to him in the
Most
persuasive way, that he may be induced to do what
She feels to
be necessary to save his life.
In their eagerness to find material for
separate docu-
ments, or
evidence of duplicate accounts, the critics seem
to be ever
ready to sacrifice the force and beauty of the
narratives
with which they deal. They dissect them
to
the quick,
rending them into feeble or incoherent frag-
ments, or
they pare them down by the assumption of
doublets to
the baldest forms of intelligible statement,
and thus
strip them of those affecting details, which lend
them such a
charm, because so true to nature. This
in-
volves the
absurdity of assuming that two jejune or frag-
mentary
accounts, pieced mechanically together, have
produced
narratives which are not only consistent and
complete,
but full of animation and dramatic power.
An attempt is made to establish a difference
between
J and E on
the one hand, and P on the other, as to the
Reason why
Jacob went to Paddan-aram. According to
The former
(ch. Xxvii. 1-45), it is to flee from his brother,
Whom he has
enraged by defrauding him of his father’s
Blessing. According to the latter (xxvi. 34, 25;
xxviii.
1-9), that
he may not marry among the Canaanites, as
Esau had
done, to the great grief of his parents, but ob-
Tain a wife
from among his kindred. P, we are told,
Knows of no
hostility between the brothers. But all
This is
spoiled by the statement in xxviii. 7, that “Jacob
Obeyed his
father and his mother, and was gone to Paddan-
aram.” His father sent him to get a wife (xxviii.
1-9);
but his
mother (xxvii. 42-45) to escape Esau’s fury; and
there is no
incompatibility between these two objects.
In order to
gain Isaac over t her plan without acquaint-
ing him with
Esau’s murderous designs, Rebekah simply
ISAAC
BLESSES JACOB (XXVI. 34-XXVII. 9) 331
urges her
dissatisfaction with the wives of Esau, and her
apprehension
lest Jacob might contract a similar mar-
riage with
some one of the daughters of the land.
Isaac
had one
object in mind, Rebekah another. There
is
nothing for
the critics to do, therefore, but to pronounce
the
unwelcome words, "and his mother," an interpola-
tion. In order to prove their point they must first
ad-
just the
text to suit it.
But tinkering the text in a single passage
will not re-
lieve them
in the present instance. The hostility
of
Esau is
embedded in the entire narrative, and cannot be
sundered
from it. Why did Jacob go alone and
unat-
tended in
quest of a wife, without the retinue or the
costly
presents for his bride, befitting his rank and
wealth? When Abraham desired a wife for Isaac he
sent a princely
embassy to woo Rebekah, and conduct
her to her
future home. Why was Jacob's suit so
dif-
ferently
managed, although Isaac imitated Abraham in
everything
else? And why did Jacob remain away
from his
parents and his home, and from the land sacred
as the gift
of God, for so many long years till his twelve
sons were
born (xxxv. 26 P)? This is wholly unac-
counted for
except by the deadly hostility of Esau.
Even
the
fragmentary notices accorded to P of the sojourn in
Paddan-aram
thus imply that Jacob had grievously of-
fended Esau;
so that here again P either refers to what
J and E
alone recorded, or else had given a similar ac-
count of the
fraud perpetrated by Jacob, which R has
not
retained.
The name Jehovah occurs appropriately (xxvii.
7, 20)
as the God
of Isaac, in whose name and by whose au-
thority the
blessing was to be pronounced. Only in
the
blessing
itself Jehovah alternates with Elohim in the
parallelisms
of poetry (vs. 27, 28). On this ground Dill-
mann assigns
vs. 27b, 29b, to J, and vs. 28, 29a, to E.
332 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
The
consequence of which is that in J a curse is pro-
nounced upon
those who curse Jacob, and a blessing upon
those who
bless him, but not al single blessing bestowed
directly
upon Jacob himself. Kautzsch tries to
mend the
matter by a
different distribution; but in doing so he
separates
the last clause of ver. 28 from the sentence to
which it
belongs, so that "plenty of corn and wine" stands
wholly
unconnected, and, of course, unmeaning.
No criti-
cal
severance of this closely connected blessing is either
admissible
or necessary. Elohim, in ver. 28, does
not re-
quire the
assumption of a different document from the
Jehovah of
ver. 27 any more than such an assumption is
demanded by
the change of divine names in Ps. xlvii. 2,
3 (E. V.,
vs. 1, 2). The Jehovah of the blessing
is at the
same time
the God of universal nature, Elohim, who
from his
general beneficence will bestow "the dew of
heaven, and
the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn
and
wine." In taking leave of Jacob
Isaac pronounces
upon him the
blessing of Abraham (xxviii. 4); he is thus
led to
borrow the language of that signal revelation to
Abraham when
Jehovah made himself known as God
Almighty
(xvii. 1), and gave him promises with a special
emphasis,
which are here repeated. Hence the EI
Shad-
dai (ver. 3)
and Elohim (ver. 4).
MARKS OF P (XXVI. 34, 35;
XXVIII. 1-9)
1. "The unadorned character of the
narration." But
in what
respect is the statement of Esau's marriage
(xxvi. 34,
35) more "unadorned" than that of Abram
and Nahor
(xi. 29 J), or Nahor's family table (xxii. 20-24
J)? or
Isaac's charge and commission to Jacob (xxviii.
1-5), than
the precisely similar one of Abraham in re-
spect to
Isaac (xxiv. 1-10)?
2. "The chronological statement
(xxvi. 34)." See ch.
vi.- ix.,
Marks of P, No.2; ch. xvi., Marks of P, No.1.
ISAAC
BLESSES JACOB (CR. XXVI. 34-XXVilI. 9)
333
3. NfanaK;
tOnB; daughters of
Canaan (xxviii. 1,
6, 8). See
ch. XXIV.,
Marks of J, No.4.
4. MrAxE
NDaPa Paddan-aram (vs. 2, 5-7). See ch. xxv. 19-
34, Marks of
P, No.4.
5. YDawa
lxe God Almighty (ver. 3). Explained above;
see also ch.
xvii., p. 221, and Marks of P, No. 6.
6. Mym.ifa
lhaq; company of
peoples (ver.
3). See ch. xvii.,
Marks of P,
No.2.
7. Myrifum; sojournings (ver. 4).
See ch. xvii., Marks of
P, No. 8.
8.
ym.iraxEhA the Aramaean
(ver. 5). See ch. xxv. 19-34,
Marks of P,
No.5.
MARKS OF J (XXVII. 1-45)
1. hrAq;hi send good speed (ver. 20). See ch. xxiv.,
Marks of J,
No..~15.
2. hl.AKi rw,xEKa when he made an end (ver. 30); besides in
J, xviii.
33; xxiv. 22 ; xliii. 2; the same construction of hl.AKi,
not
introduced by rw,xEKa (which
is purely incidental), in
J, xxiv. 15,
19, 45; Num. xvi. 31; Josh. viii. 24; in E,
Josh. x. 20;
in P, Gen. xvii. 22; xlix. 33; Ex. xci. 18;
xxxiv. 33;
Lev. xvi. 20; Num. vii. 1; Josh. xix., 49, 51;
alleged
later stratum of P, Num. iv. 15; in Rd, Deut.
xxxi. 24; in
D, Deut. xxxii. 45; all in the Hexateuch.
3. OBliB;
rmaxA said in his heart (ver. 41). See ch. xxiv.
Marks of J,
No. 17.
4.
"The house" (ver. 15).
"J speaks of a house (not
tent) of
Isaac, as he also lets Lot live in one in Sodom
(xix. 2
sqq.), and Jacob build one at Succoth (xxxiii. 17)."
But E also
speaks of Jacob coming back to his father's
house
(xxviii. 21).
MARKS OF E
1. j`xa only (VS.
13, 30) as against qra only
(xix. 8; xxiv.
8 J). j`xa occurs besides in Genesis in E, xx. 12 ; in J, vii.
334 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
23; xviii.
32; xxvi. 9; xxix. 14; xli v. 28; in P, ix. 4, 5;
xxiii. 13;
xxxiv. 15, 22, 23. qra
occurs repeatedly in J
as
well as
E. See ch. vi. 1-8, Marks of J, No.7.
2. Mr,F,B; before (vs. 4, 33) as against
ynep;li (vs.
7, 10).
This
particle occurs in J and P as well as E.
See chs.
xviii.,
xix., Marks of J, No. 13.
3. "The form of address (vs. 1b,
18)," as in E, xxii. 1,
7, 11; xxxi.
11; xxxvii. 13; xlvi. 2; Ex. iii. 4. But
xxii. 11 is
referred to E in spite of the name Jehovah;
and there is
no propriety in sundering xxvii. 1b, 18, from
the
connection in which they stand.
4. dxom;-dfe
exceedingly (vs. 33, 34) ; nowhere else in the
Hexateuch.
It is apparent that the grounds adduced
for the parti-
tion of ch.
xxvii. between J and E are flimsy enough.
The alleged
doublets are no doublets at all; the verbal
criteria
amount to nothing. But the necessity
remains.
Both the
preceding and the subsequent history, as as-
signed
respectively to J and E, presuppose what is nar-
rated in
this chapter. The only conclusion
consistent
with the
divisive hypothesis is that it must in substance
have been
contained in both these documents. And
as
the critics
find it impossible to partition the narrative,
they are
compelled to content themselves with the at-
tempt to
discover traces of both J and E; and these
traces seem
to be hard to find. They are repeatedly
pressed by
the same difficulty in their endeavor to carry
the
hypothesis through the intractable material that yet
remains; and
they are obliged to resort to the most
questionable
expedients to compass their end.
The last verse of ch. xxvii. links it
closely to ch.
xxviii. Rebekah, impressed with Jacob's peril from
his
enraged
brother, induces Isaac to send him away to ob-
tain a wife.
It is necessary; therefore, to get rid of this
verse with
its evidence of unity, and it is accordingly at-
JACOB'S
DREAM (CH. XXVIII. 10-22) 335
tributed to
the redactor; and the rather as it tends still
farther to
combine J and P by explicit reference to P
(xxvi. 34,
35), and borrowing its expressions, "daughters
of
Heth," "daughters of the land," as xxiii. 3, xxxiv. 1,
on the one
hand, and by similarity to J on the other.
Cf.
"what
good shall my life do me," with xxv. 22, "where-
fore do I
live?"
JACOB'S DREAM (CH. XXVIII. 10-22)
In xxviii. 5, 7 the general statement is
made that
Jacob had
set out for Paddan-aram; in vs. 10-22 a
more
particular account is given of what befell him on
the
way. Jehovah appeared to him as he was
leaving
the promised
land, to assure him of divine protection
wherever he
should go, and of a safe return and especially
to renew to
him the promises made to his fathers of the
possession
of the land in all its length and breadth, and
a blessing
to all nations through his seed. Like
prom-
ises were
made in similar circumstances to Isaac (xxvi.
2-4), and to
Jacob himself, when at a later period he
was about to
go down into Egypt (xlvi. 3, 4). Cf. a
like
promise made
to Abraham, when the future sojourn of
his seed in
a foreign land was shown to him (xv. 13-18).
The general statement above mentioned is
by the critics
given to P,
and the particUlars included under it to JE.
It hence
results that though P relates (xxviii. 1-9) that
Jacob was
sent to Paddan-aram to obtain a wife, and that
he actually
set out for the purpose, he makes no mention
of anything
that occurred upon his journey thither, or of
his arrival
there, or finding his mother's relatives, or his
marriage, or
anything regarding his long residence there.
And yet
these things must have been mentioned, for they
are
presupposed in what is said elsewhere.
In xxxv. 9
P, God is
said to have appeared to Jacob again at Bethel,
336 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
implying the
previous appearance (xxviii. 12 sqq:); xxxi.
18 P, Jacob
leaves Paddan-aram with goods and cattle
acquired
there, implying a previous narrative of how he
had obtained
them; and xxxv. 23-26 P gives the names
of his wives
and the children born to him in Paddan-
aram,
implying a previous account of his marriage and
his
family. The matters thus alluded to are
fully re-
corded in
the sacred narrative, but are by the critics as-
signed to J
and E; not a syllable respecting them is to
be found in
P, though they are indispensable to the in-
tegrity of
this document. Just that is missing from
P
which the
critics have sundered from it, and transferred
to other
supposititious documents. There is here
a glar-
ing lack of
continuity in P, as well as repeated references
in P to the
contents of J and E; both of which are in-
consistent
with the hypothesis of separate and indepen-
dent
documents.
Constrained by the occurrence in this
passage of both
Elohim (vs.
12, 17 sqq.) and Jehovah" (vs. 13-16) the
critics
undertake to parcel vs. 10-22 between E and J.
Wellhausen,
followed by Kautzsch (lest edition) and
Stade,l
gives vs. 10-12, 17, 18, 20, 21a, 22, to E, and the
rest to J,
except 19b, 21b, which are assigned to R.
Ac-
cordingly E
speaks of a dream, in which Jacob saw a
ladder and
angels, but received no accompanying revela-
tion. J makes no mention of any ladder or angels,
but
only of the
appearance of Jehovah, who stood beside
Jacob and
gave him promises for the present and the
future. Thus divided, the vision which was granted to
Jacob,
according to E, had no special adaptation to his
existing
circumstances, but is supposed to be a legend
here
recorded with the view of enhancing the sacredness
of the
sanctuary that existed at Bethel in later times.
And the
point of it is that on that spot communication
1
Geschichte des Volkes Israel, p. 60.
JACOB'S DREAM (CH. XXVIII. 10-22) 337
was opened
between earth and heaven by a ladder on
which
celestial beings ascended and descended.
But while
in the
opinion of the critics the whole intent of E was to
glorify the
sanctuary at Bethel, he does not once men-
tion Bethel,
nor give any intimation where it was that
this vision
occurred. The name of the place is only
to
be found in
ver. 19a, which is attributed to J.l
Moreover, the vision of the ladder and the
angels (ver.
12) cannot
be separated from the revelation of Jehovah
which
follows (ver. 13) and interprets it (ver. 15), or rather
which is the
most essential part of the whole supernat-
ural
manifestation. In vs. 11, 12, Jacob goes
to sleep
and dreams;
in ver. 16 he awakes; this is evidently a
continuation
of the preceding and cannot be referred to
a separate
document.2 In its present
connection vylAf
upon it or above it (ver. 13) plainly
refers to the ladder
(ver.
12). To sunder it from the preceding and
insist
that it
should be rendered beside him, is gratuitously to
charge the
redactor with having falsified its meaning.
A ladder
reaching to the skies, on which angels were
ascending
and descending, might entitle the place to be
called
"the gate of heaven," but not "the house of God"
(ver. 17);
nor could it be said that God there appeared
unto Jacob
(xxxv. 1, 7, E). In his vow (vs. 20,
21a)
Jacob adopts
the very terms of the promise which Je-
1 Dillmann says, "It may be doubted
from which source ver. 19 has
been
derived; it probably belongs to both, as it cannot be dispensed
with in
either; E in particular presupposes the name Bethel as already
existing"
(xxxi 13; xxxv. 3).
2 In order to escape this difficulty Stade
ventures the suggestion: "It
may very
well be supposed that in the original connection of J the
manifestation
did not take place in a dream, so that 'And Jacob
awaked out
of his sleep,' in ver. 16, has been inserted from E. This is
a mode of
evasion to which the critics frequently resort with the view
of ridding
themselves of unwelcome clauses or words.
Here it leaves
the
following verb 'said' without a subject."
338 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
hovah had
just made (ver. 15); so that these cannot be
from
distinct documents. And ver. 21b, of
which the
critics try
to rid themselves because of its "Jehovah," is
most
appropriate where it stands, whether it continues
the
preamble,l or introduces Jacob's own pledge. Jeho-
vah had
announced himself as the God of Abraham and
of Isaac
(ver. 13), would he likewise be, as was implied
in his
promise, Jacob's God? But if this clause
be, as
the critics
will have it, an insertion from J or an addi-
tion by R,
it remains to be explained how either J or
R should
have fallen upon a characteristic phrase of P
(xvii. 7;
Ex. vi. 7; xxix. 45).
Verses 10-12 are absolutely necessary to
explain the
situation in
vs. 13-16 J; without them there is no sug-
gestion how
Jacob came to be at Bethel. But they are
equally
necessary to vs. 17, 18, E. If, however,
under
the pressure
of this latter necessity vs. 10-12 are given
to E,
another incongruity will result. The
mention of
Beersheba as
Jacob's point of departure (ver. 10) im-
plies
Isaac's residence there, as recorded by J (xxvi. 33)
but not by
E. And Haran, to which he was going,
also
points to J
(xxvii. 43; x:xix. 4); it does not occur in E.
Hence
Hupfeld, Dillmann, and Kautzsch (2d edition)
give ver. 10
to J; but then E lacks any proper beginning.
Hupfeld made
the attempt to split ver. 11 by assigning
1 Hengstenberg (Beitrage, ii., p. 370),
followed by Tuch and Baumgar.
ten, extends
the preamble to the end of ver. 21, as in the margin of the
Revised
Version, "and Jehovah will be my God, then this stone," etc.
This
corresponds with the change of tenses from preterite to future at
that point
in the sentence, and with the common meaning of the
phrase,
"to be the God of anyone," e.g., ver. 13, which is elsewhere
suggestive
of the divine regard rather than of the human obligation of
worship. Delitzsch, Knobel, and Dillmann prefer the
rendering of the
A. V. and
the text of the R. V., which is also that of the LXX. and the
Vulgate. But it is questionable whether they are not
influenced in
their
decision by the critical partition which sunders vs. 20, 21, from
ver. 13.
JACOB'S DREAM (CH. XXVIII. 10-22) 339
"he
lighted upon a certain place and took one of the
stones of
the place and put it under his head," to E, and
"he
tarried there (where?) all night because the sun was
set, and lay
down in that place to sleep," to J; but he
gave it up
as impracticable. Any division of the
pas-
sage creates
a gap in both documents, neither of which
can be
filled but by trenching upon the other.
The
whole
passage is, moreover, closely linked with ch.
xxvii.,
where we have found that a critical division is
equally
impracticable.
In order to make out the composite
character of the
passage a
doublet is claimed in vs. 16, 17.
"With the
best
endeavor to do so I have not been able to compre-
hend the point
of view from which ver. 17 can be con-
sidered
indicative of a different writer from ver. 16, un-
less it be
on the sole ground of the change of divine
names. It is surely the most natural and appropriate
exclamation
under the circumstances. Ver. 17 does
not
duplicate
ver. 16, but is its suitable sequel.
Neither is
ver. 22 a
duplicate of ver. 19. The relation is
not that
of
equivalence but of dependence. Because
God had
here
manifested his presence Jacob named the place
Bethel,
"a house of God." And if God
would verify
the promise
there given (ver. 15), Jacob pledges himself
to regard
this spot as in reality what this name denoted:
it should be
to him a house of God, and here he would
consecrate a
tenth of all to him.
Wellhausen finds indications of a
diversity of writers
in the order
in which the points of the compass are
named, J
(xxviii. 14) W., E., N., S., but R (xiii. 14) N.,
S., E., W.;
in "all the families of the earth" tHoP;w;mi
hmAdAxEhA (xii.
3; xxviii. 14 J), compared with "all the na-
tions of the
earth " Cr,xAhA yyeOG (xviii. 18 R); and in "thee
and thy
seed" (xiii. 15 R), and an implied reference to
"seed"
(xviii. 18 R) compared with "in thee" (xii. 3 J),
340 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
whence he
infers that "in thy seed"
(xxviii. 14 J) is an
addition by
R. But Dillmann and others have no diffi-
culty in
attributing all these passages alike to J, and see
no occasion
for assuming any insertion or manipulation
by R. The fact is that where distinct writers are
as-
sumed on
independent grounds there is no difficulty in
gathering up
arguments from varying words and phrases
to sustain a
predetermined conclusion; but these will be
set aside
without ceremony by the critics themselves
when they
have no end to be answered by them.
In Jacob's dream Jehovah, the God of the
chosen
race,
appeared to him (xxviii. 13, 16), in order to assure
him that
though temporarily exiled from his father's
house he
would not on that account be severed from the
God of his
father, as Ishmael had been when sent away
from
Abraham's household, and Lot when his connec-
tion with
Abraham was finally cut off by his passing be-
yond the
limit of the promised land. God was
thence-
forward
Elohim to them as to all who were aliens to the
chosen
race. But Jacob was still under the
guardianship
of Jehovah,
who would continue with him wherever he
might
go. The angels (ver. 12), however, are
not called
"angels
of Jehovah," which never occurs in the Penta-
teuch, but
"angels of Elohim," as xxxii. 2 (E. V. ver. 1),
who are thus
distinguished from messengers of men--the
Hebrew word
for "angel" properly meaning "messen-
ger." This does not mark a distinction between the
docu-
ments, as
though J knew of but one angel, "the angel of
Jehovah,"
the divine angel, while E speaks of "angels;"
for J has
"angels" in the plural (xix. 1, 15).
The place
where
Jehovah had thus revealed himself Jacob calls
"the
house of God" and "the gate of heaven," God in
contrast
with man, as heaven with earth. It was a
spot
marked by a
divine manifestation. The critical
sever-
ance will
not answer here, for, as already stated, if vs.13-
JACOB'S DREAM (CH. XXVIII. 10-22) 341
16 be
exscinded as belonging to J, the vision of angels
(ver. 12)
alone would not entitle it to be called the house
of God (ver.
17). The scene of Jehovah's appearing is
called
"Beth-El," precisely as Hannah called her child
"Samu-El,
because I have asked him of Jehovah" (1
Sam. i.
20). In Jacob's vow (vs. 20, 22) the
specifica-
tions
respect God's general providential care, and hence
he uses
Elohim, while nevertheless in a manner perplex-
ing to the
critics, who find themselves obliged to erase
the
offending clause, he recognizes Jehovah as the God
(ver. 21) to
whom he makes his appeal and gives his
pledge.
MARKS
OF J (VS. 10, 13-16, 19a)
1.
"The contents and form of the promises (vs. 13-
16)";
cf. xiii. 14, 16; xii. 3; xviii. 18., See chs. xviii.,
xix., Marks
of J, No. 25.
2. lfa bc.ani stand on or over (ver. 14); elsewhere in J,
xviii. 2;
xxiv. 13, 43; xlv. 1; Ex. xxxiii. 21; xxxiv. 2;
in E, Ex.
vii. 15; xvii. 9; xviii. 14; Num. xxiii. 6, 17.
3. CraPA break forth, spread abroad (ver. 14); elsewhere
in J, xxx.
30, 43; xxxviii. 29; Ex. xix. 22, 24; in E, Ex. i. 12.
4.
hmAdAxE ground,
earth, land (vs. 14,
15). This word is
reckoned a
criterion of J, and whenever it is practicable,
paragraphs
or clauses that contain it are for that reason
referred to
J. Nevertheless in repeated instances it
can-
not be
excluded from P and E. It is used to
denote (1)
Earth as a
material, so in J, Gen. ii. 7, 19; iii. 19; in E,
Ex. xx.
24. (2) The soil as tilled and
productive, thirty
times,
mostly in J; as no passage relating to tillage is
assigned to
P, of course there is no occasion for the use
of the word
in this sense; it is found in E, Ex. xxiii.
19. (3) The surface of the earlh, the ground, not
only in
J, but also
in P (Gen. i. 25; vi. 20; ix. 2); and in E, Ex.
342 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
iii. 5; Num.
xvi. 30, 31 (with hmAdAxE) is
given to J, and
ver. 32a
(with Cr,x,) to
E, though a continuous sentence
is thus cut
in two, and ver. 32 corresponds to ver. 30,
and records
Its fulfilment. (4) The land of Canaan,
five
times; four
of these are referred to J (Gen. xxviii. 15;
Lev. xx. 24,
so Dillmann; Num. xi. 12; xxxii. 11); and
one to E
(Ex. xx. 12); Cr,x, is
mostly used in this sense
by J as well
as by P and E. (5) The whole earth,
twice;
in J
"all the families of the earth" (Gen. xii. 3; xxviii.
14); but the
parallel passages have Cr,x, (xviii.
18 J, and
xxii. 18;
xxvi. 4 referred to R in a J connection).
See
ch. vi. 1-8,
Marks of J, No.3.
MARKS OF E (VS. 11, 12; 17, 18, 20, 21a, 22)
1. "These verses have Elohim, but P
cannot be re-
garded as
the author on account of xxxv. 9-15."
But
that is not
a variant account of the same transaction, and
as such
implying a different author. It is
expressly
stated
(xxxv. 9) to be a second divine manifestation in
this place,
thus presupposing the narrative in the passage
before us.
2. "The back references (xxxi. 13;
xxxv. 3, 7) prove
that it
belongs to E." These tend to
establish an iden-
tity of
authorship with those passages, but do not imply
that they
belong to a separate document from the rest of
the text in
which they are found. The same may be
said
of the back
reference from xxxii. 13 (E. V., ver. 12) J.
3.
B; fgaPA to
light upon (ver. 11);
elsewhere in E, xxxii.
2 (E. Y. ver.
1); in JE, Josh. ii. 16; xvii. 10; in P, Gen.
xxiii. 8;
Num. xxxv. 19, 21; Josh. xvi. 7; xix. 11, 22, 26,
27, 34.
4. rq,BoBa MyKiw;hi rose up early in the morning (ver. 18).
See chs.
xviii., xix., Marks of J, No. 26.
5. "The tithe (ver. 22)." Tithes are spoken of besides
JACOB'S DREAM (CH. XXVIII. 10-22) 343
in the
priest code (Lev. xxvii., Num. xviii.), and the Deu-
teronomic
law, and but once elsewhere in the Pentateuch
viz., Gen.
xiv. 20, which Dillmann doubtfully refers to E,
while at the
same time he holds1 with other critics that
the first
certain trace of E is in Gen. xx. The
ascription
of the
passage before us to E on this ground rests thus
on a very
slender basis. It is far more natural to
believe
that as the
patriarchal institutions supply the germs
from which
the ritual law was subsequently developed,
they are
recorded for that reason, and by the same hand
as the law
itself. The notion, which the critics
seek
to fasten on
P, that the Mosaic ritual had not even
a germinal
existence in the days of the patriarchs, is
without the
slightest foundation in the sacred record,
or in the
nature of things. It is one of the
absurdi-
ties that
grow out of sundering what properly belongs
together.
6. "The dream (ver. 12)." See ch. xx., Marks of E,
No.4.
In commenting on :xii. 8, Dillmann remarks
that there
and xiii. 4
the sacredness of Bethel is traced to Abra-
ham, while
elsewhere (xxviii. 22; xxxv. 7 sqq.) it is traced
to
Jacob. In his prefatory remarks upon the
section
now before
us, with the view apparently of removing this
fancied
divergence, he observes that in xii. 8 it was a
place near
Bethel, and not Bethel itself, that was conse-
crated by
Abraham. But the sacred writer makes no
reference
whatever to the idolatrous sanctuary subse-
quently
established at Bethel; least of all is he giving an
account of
its origin. There is no discrepancy in
differ-
ent
patriarchs successively visiting the same place and
building
altars there. These descriptions of
patriarchal
worship are
not legends to gain credit for the sanctuary;
but the
superstition of later ages founded sanctuaries in
1 Die Bucher-Num.-Jos., p. 615.
344 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
venerated
spots, where the patriarchs had worshipped,
and where
God had revealed himself to them.
JACOB IN HARAN (CHS. XXIX., XXX.)
The critics here find themselves in a
serious muddle
According to
Hupfeld ("Quellen,"p. 65) ch. xxix. bears so
evidently
the stamp of J that the opposite view, which
is perfectly
arbitrary, needs no refutation.
Wellhausen
is just as
confident that xxix. 1-30 is, with trifling excep-
tions, from
E, while Dillmann compromises the matter
by making
nearly an equal division, and giving vs. 2-15a
to J, and the
rest almost entirely to E. Hupfeld
("Quel-
len,"
p. 43) maintains that xxx. 1-24 continues J's history
without the
trace of a seam, with the same basis and
presuppositions,
the same manner and language; while
in the
judgment of Wellhausen and Dillmann it is "a
very
remarkable piece of mosaic from J and E."
The
trouble in
xxix. 1-30 is that there are no divine names;
the trouble
is increased in xxix. 31-xxx. 24 by the fact
that there
are divine names.
Dillmann claims that there is a break in
the former of
these
paragraphs at xxix. 15, inasmuch as Laban here
asks Jacob
what wages he shall pay him, though there
had been no
previous mention that Jacob had entered
Laban's
service as a shepherd, or had any thought of
doing
so. There is, of course, a transition to
a new sub-
ject, as
must be the case whenever a fresh topic is intro-
duced; but
it is by no means a violent one, since ver. 14
speaks of
Jacob's abode with Laban, and it is not a re-
mote
supposition that he made himself serviceable during
his stay
(cf. ver. 10). At any rate it fails to
justify Dill-
mann's own
division after ver. 15a, in which the subject
of a
recompense for service is already broached.
Nor is
there any
implication in vs. 16, 17, that Rachel had not
JACOB IN HARAN (CHS. XXIX., XXX.)
been
previously spoken of, from which it might be in-
ferred that
vs. 6, 9-12 are from a different document.
It had not
been before mentioned that Laban had two
daughters,
that Rachel was the younger, and that she was
more
attractive than her sister. These facts
are intro-
duced here,
since they are necessary to explain Jacob's
answer (ver.
18) to Laban's proposal.
The arguments urged to establish the
duplicate char-
acter of the
latter paragraph (xxix. 31-xxx. 24) are
chiefly--
1.
The repeated occurrence of Elohim.
2.
The different explanations given of the names Is-
sachar,
Zebulun, and Joseph.
To the first of these Hupfeld replies that
Elohim in
xxx. 2, 8 is
no criterion, because the predominant, if not
exclusive,
biblical usage requires it rather than Jehovah
in such
expressions as are there employed. And
that in
the
etymologies of the names, e.g., in vs. 6, 8, 18, 20, 23,
the general
term Elohim, as more poetic, would naturally be
preferred,
as it is in Proverbs.
Where there are two explanations of the
same name
he concedes
that something has been inserted from an-
other
source. But there seems to be little
cogency in
this
consideration. Issachar (sachar,
hire) is associated
with Leah's
hiring by mandrakes and hiring by the gift
of her maid;
Zebulun, with zabad, "endow," and zabal,
"dwell;"
Joseph, with asaph, "take away," and yasaph,
"add." These are not to be regarded as discrepant
ex-
planations
of these names, implying different views of
their origin
or of the occasion of their being given, but
simply
different allusions to the meaning or the sound of
the names,
which by no means exclude each other.
Such
allusions
are multiplied in the case of Isaac. The
name
means
"laughter;" and we are told how Abraham laughed
and Sarah
laughed incredulously when his birth was pre-
346 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
dicted, and
how God made her laugh for joy, and all her
friends
laugh with her when he was actually born.
There
is no
inconsistency in these statements, and no need of
parcelling
them among different writers. It is the
same
writer
playfully dwelling upon different aspects of a
theme which
interests him.
Dillmann thus apportions the record of the
birth of
Jacob's
children: J, xxix. 31-35 ; E, xxx. 1-3a (including
bear upon my
knees, as 1. 23
E); J, 3b (that I may be build-
ed by her), as xvi. 2; J, or rather P, 4a; J, 4b,
5; E, 6;
J, 7; E, 8;
J, 9a; P, 9b; J, 10-16; E, 17-20a; J, 20b;
J or R, 21;1
P, 22a; E, 22b; J, 22c; E, 23; J, 24.
And this in
a paragraph which bears the most abundant
and positive
evidences of unity from first to last in con-
tinuity of
theme, consistent method of treatment, cross-
references,
style, and language.
"Leah was hated" (xxix. 31), see
vs. 18, 20, 25, 30.
"Opened
her womb" (xxix. 31; xxx. 22), opposed to
"shut"
(xx. 18; xvi. 2); cf. xxx. 2. "Rachel was bar-
1 The birth of a daughter is never
mentioned unless she is to appear
in the
subsequent history (cf. xxii. 23). Dinah
(xxix. 21) is prepara-
tory to ch.
xxxiv.; and as no part of that chapter is given to E, xxx.
21 is
necessarily referred to either J or R.
So the numerous allusions
in xxix.
5,10, ,12, 13, to ch. xxiv. J, make it necessary to refer the para-
graph containing
those verses to J. The frequent
references, both for-
ward and
backward, in Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch, bind the
whole
together in inseparable unity, and oppose a formidable obstacle
to any
divisive scheme. They put an end to the
fragment hypothe-
sis, and
they compel the advocates of the document hypothesis to use
great
adroitness in so adjusting their lines of partition that it may ap-
pear as
though each document only presupposed or alluded to what is
contained in
itself. By using the utmost ingenuity
and making a per-
fectly
arbitrary partition, severing what properly belongs together and
splintering
the text ad infinitum, if need be, they manage to cover a
considerable
number of these cross-references. But in
spite of every
effort to
prevent it, the matter referred to is often in the wrong docu-
ment, and
the hypothesis can only be saved by assuming that it was
originally
in the other document likewise, but R has omitted it.
JACOB IN HARAN (CHS. XXIX., XXX.)
347
ren"
(xxix. 31); see xxx. 1, 2, 22, 23.
"Conceived and
bare a
son," "called his name," "and said" (xxix. 32), the
same
formulas with very slight variations recurring
throughout. The language of the mothers refers in
every case
to the jealousy between the wives on account
of Jacob's
preference for Rachel and Leah's fertility.
MfaPaha this time, now
(xxix. 34; xxx. 20). "My husband
will-because
I have borne him-sons" (xxix. 34; xxx.
20). "She left bearing" (xxix. 35; xxx.
9). "Again"
(xxix. 33,
34,35; xxx. 7, 19). Bilhah (xxx. 4),
Zilpah (ver.
9), cf.
xxix. 24, 29. "Fifth" (xxx. 17), "sixth" (ver.
19) son of
Leah, referring to the preceding four (xxix.
32-35). "God hearkened unto" (xxx. 17, 22);
with the
whole
paragraph cf. xxii. 22; xxxv. 23-26. In
formal-
ity of set
phrases and in repetitions it is equal to any
paragraph
attributed to P.
The critics may well infer that this
portion of the story
must have
been very strikingly alike in J and in E, if R
could thus
pass back and forth from one to the other
with no
perceptible effect upon his narrative.
The fact
is that the
paragraph is without seam, woven from the
top
throughout, and the critics have mistaken the figures
deftly
wrought into the material for patches slightly
stitched together,
and they try to rend it accordingly,
but it will
not tear. There is really nothing for
them to
do but to
cast lots for it, which of the documents shall
have
it. If the paragraph had been purposely
con-
structed
with this view, it could not more effectively
demonstrate
the futility of using the dime names and
alleged
doublets for parcelling the text of Genesis.
The critical disposition of xxx. 25-43 J
is based on the
unfounded
assumption of discrepancies between it and
xxxi. 7
sqq., 41 E, both in respect to the chronology and
the contract
between Laban and Jacob.
According to xxxi. 41, Jacob served Laban
twenty years,
348 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
fourteen for
his two daughters and six for his cattle.
But (xxx. 25
sqq.) the bargain about the cattle was made
after the
birth of Joseph, and (xxix. 20-28) Jacob was
married to
Leah and Rachel after he had already served
seven
years. Now it is alleged that he could
not have
had eleven
children in the next seven years. The fallacy
lies in
failing to observe that there were four mothers. The
narrative is
linked throughout by Vav Consecutive;
but this
does not prove that each several clause follows
its
predecessor in regular succession.l
The children are
grouped by
their mothers, and thus the order of thought
deviates
from the order of time. Rachel's
jealousy was
aroused, and
Bilhah introduced to Jacob (xxx. 1 sqq.)
before Leah
ceased bearing (xxix. 35). Leah's four
sons
were born in
rapid succession, and as soon as she found
that she was
not at once to have another (xxx. 9) she
substituted
Zilpah, and before Zilpah had her second
son she had
herself conceived her fifth (ver. 17).
Thus
her sixth
son could be born within the seven years, and
Joseph's
birth have taken place about the same time.
Dinah (ver.
21) was born afterward, and is not to be in-
cluded
within the period in question. The
alleged dis-
crepancy,
accordingly, is not proved.
How is it with the bargaining between
Laban and
Jacob? The latter charges that Laban had sought to
defraud him
by changing his wages ten times (xxxi. 7,
41), but by
God's interference this had been turned to
Jacob's
profit. On the other hand, in xxx. 31
sqq., La-
ban assented
to an arrangement which Jacob himself
proposed,
and which Jacob by a trick turned to his own
advantage. The two statements are not in conflict, but
1 Hengstenberg (Authentie des Pentateuchs,
ii., p.351) appeals to Ex.
ii. 1 where
though Moses was born after Pharaoh's cruel edict (i. 22),
the marriage
of his parents and the birth of his brother Aaron (Ex.
vii. 7) must
have preceded it.
JACOB IN
HARAN (CHS. XXIX., XXX.) 349
supplemental
to each other. Chapter xxx. describes
the
original
arrangement and Jacob's device. Chapter
xxxi.
tells how
Laban modified it from time to time with a
view to his
own interest, but his selfish plans were di-
vinely
thwarted.
The comparison of chs. xxx. and xxxi.
accordingly sup-
plies no
basis for the assumption of discrepant accounts
from
different writers. But Wellhausen
fancies a dis-
crepancy in
ch. xxx. itself, alleging that vs. 32-34 are in-
consistent
with their context. He understands these
verses to
mean that the spotted and brown cattle at that
time in the
flocks were to constitute Jacob's hire;
whereas (vs.
35, 36) they were separated from the flocks
and given
not to Jacob but to Laban's sons. The
diffi-
culty is
altogether imaginary, and is simply due to a
misinterpretation
of the brief and elliptical statement in
ver.
32. The real meaning is, as is plain
from Jacob's
opening
words in ver. 31, and as it is correctly under-
stood by
Dillmann, that the speckled and brown cattle
to be born
thereafter were to be Jacob's; and as a pre-
liminary
measure those of this description that were
then in the
flocks were set apart as Laban's.
The doublets alleged are quite trivial,
and appear at
once upon
examination to be unreal. Ver. 26a does
not
repeat 25b,
but supplements it; Jacob first asks in gen-
eral terms
to be dismissed that he may return to his home,
and then
adds, as included in his request, "Give me my
wives and my
children and let me go." Ver. 26b
is re-
peated in
ver. 29, but it is for the sake of adding ver. 30,
in which
Jacob enlarges upon what he had already said,
in order
that he may impress upon Laban the obligation
under which
he had already laid him. In ver. 31a La-
ban repeats
the offer made in ver. 28, which Jacob had
declined to
answer in the first instance, preferring to
state the
service which he had rendered, and thus give
350 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
Laban an
idea of what he was entitled to, before he
made any
demand. Dillmann himself sets aside
Well-
hausen's
suggestion that 39a is a doublet of 38b.
The
central
clause of ver. 40 is magisterially declared to be a
later
insertion, but as no reason is given, and none is
apparent, no
answer is necessary. These can scarcely
be regarded
as establishing the existence of a composite
text derived
from distinct sources.
THE
DIVINE NAMES
Two things are here observable in relation
to the di-
vine names,
and have often been remarked: that in this
portion of
Genesis, and on to the end of the book, they
occur less
frequently than before; and that Elohim largely
predominates
over Jehovah. Several considera-
tions should
be noted as bearing upon the explanation
of these
facts:
1.
Jacob was on a lower plane, religiously, than Abra-
ham and
Isaac.
2.
His life was henceforth largely spent away from the
holy land
and among those not of the chosen race.
3.
Since the relation of Jehovah to the patriarchs had
been
sufficiently established by the previous use of that
name, it
seemed less important to continue to repeat it,
and of more
consequence to guard against the notion that
the God of
the patriarchs was a mere tribal deity by re-
curring to
the general term Elohim, suggestive of his re-
lation to
the world at large.
4.
The fuller revelation of God as Jehovah in the
Mosaic age
threw that made to the patriarchs compara-
tively into
the shade; so that while in the beginning, in
contrast
with the times before Abraham, the patriarchal
age was
marked by new manifestations of Jehovah, those
granted
toward its close seemed of inferior grade in com-
parison with
the more resplendent revelations that were
JACOB IN HARAN (CHS. XXIX., XXX.) 351
to come
after, and so more fitly associated with the gen-
eral term
Elohim than the personal name Jehovah.
The solution offered by the critics is
that the materials
are
henceforth largely drawn from the document E.
But
the
hypothesis of different documents will not meet the
case. It has already been seen what confusion it
intro-
duces in the
chapters now before us. It encounters
like
perplexities
in the chapters that follow. If the
alterna-
tion of
Elohim and Jehovah is not in every instance reg-
ulated in as
marked and conspicuous a manner as hereto-
fore by the
meanings of the names, there is, nevertheless,
nothing
counter to the general usage of the rest of Script-
ure in their
employment, or that suggests the idea that
it was,
mechanically determined by the particular docu-
ment from
which any given extract chanced to be drawn.
In many
cases either name would be appropriate, and it
is at the
option of the writer to use one or the other.
And it is no
valid ground of objection to the unity of
Genesis if a
like freedom prevails there as in other
books of the
Bible, where it might often be difficult to
assign a
definite reason for the occurrence of Elohim
rather than
Jehovah, or vice versa.
The birth of Jacob's children is capable
of being
viewed in a
twofold light, as the gracious gift of Jeho-
vah, the God
of the chosen race, who watched over and
directed its
enlargement, or as blessings bestowed in the
ordinary
providence of God. Leah's first
children,
granted to
her notwithstanding the disfavor of her hus-
band, are
viewed under the former aspect (xxix. 31-35).
Those that
follow, in. ch. xxx., are regarded under the lat-
ter aspect,
viz., the children of the handmaids, sprung
from the
jealous strife of Jacob's wives; those of Leah1
1 Note Leah's lingering heathenism in her
allusions to "fortune"
(Gad) and
"good luck" (Ashera) (vs. 11-13); and Rachel's theft of
her father's
images (xxxi. 30, 34).
352 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
after she
had bargained, for her husband's presence; and
Rachel's
son, born after her long envy and impatience.
Upon his
birth she gives utterance to her hope that her
husband's
God, Jehovah, would add to her yet another.
Thus both
Elohim and Jehovah are associated with chil-
dren of both
Leah and Rachel; and Jehovah begins and
ends the
series, encircling the whole and enclosing the
providential
favors granted between these limits.
If any object that this appears to be
an artificial ar-
rangement it
can at least be said that the critics have
nothing
better to propose. The narrative of
these suc-
cessive
births is plainly one and indivisible, and cannot
be rent asunder
and convened into such a piece of patch-
work as they
are obliged to make of it. The style and
method are
the same, the language and phrases are the
same, the
narrative is continuous, each part being bound
to and
implying the others. So that even Vater,l
with
all his
predilection for the fragment hypothesis, en-
ters his
protest against subdivision here, and against the
assumption
on which it rests, that the same writer could
not use both
Elohim and Jehovah; an assumption that
is falsified
by nearly every book in the Bible.
Delitzsch
holds that
"the interchange of divine names is based
upon the
interchange of sources from which extracts are
taken,"
and then annuls the ground upon which this
opinion
rests by the admission that "the author of Gen-
esis has
intentionally woven both divine names into the
origin of
Israel, and it is probably also not accidental
that the
name Jehovah is impressed on the first four
births, and
the name Elohim on the remaining seven.
On the
whole, we are to get the impression that in laying
the
foundation of Israel Jehovah's fidelity to his prom-
ises and
Elohim's miracle-working power wrought in
combination."
1 Pentateuch, ii., p. 724.
JACOB IN HARAN (CHS. XXIX., XXX.) 353
It remains to be added that in xxx. 2,
where Jacob
says,
"Am I in God's stead," Elohim is evidently in
place from
the suggested contrast of God and man.
So
ver. 8,
where Rachel says, "with wrestlings of God have
I
wrestled," whether the genitive is that of the object,
i.e., wrestlings after God, after a token of
the divine
favor in
giving me a child, or that of the subject, i.e., di-
vine or
superhuman wrestlings. In either case
Elohim
is the
proper word. But in vs. 27, 30, Jehovah
is appro-
priate
because Laban, though not of the chosen race,
recognizes
that it was Jacob's God who had blessed him
for Jacob's
sake.
MARKS OF J
1. l;
rw,xE which belong to (xxix. 9);
besides repeated in
J, but also
in E (xxxi. 21; xxxii. 24 (E. V. ver. 23); xli.
43; xlv. 10,
11); xl. 5b, and xlvi. 1 are cut out of E con-
texts and
assigned to J.
2.
txraq;li CUr run to meet (ver.
13). This particular
expression
occurs three times besides in the Hexateuch,
and is each
time referred to J, viz., xviii. 2; xxiv. 17;
xxxiii. 4;
but both the words occur in E, and there is no
reason why
any Hebrew writer might not have used them
if he had
occasion to do so. See chs. xviii.,
xix., Marks
of J, No.
16.
3.
yriWAb;U ymic;fa my bone and my flesh (ver. 14). A like
expression
occurs in ii. 23 J, but nowhere else in the
Hexateuch. It is used, however, by other writers also
(Judg. ix.
2; 2 Sam. v. 1; xix. 13, 14, E. V., vs. 12, 13).
4.
hHAp;wi bondmaid (xxix. 24, 29; xxx. 4, 7, 9, 10, 12,
18, 43). This word is said to be characteristic of P
and
J, as
opposed to E, who uses hmAxA maid, as xxx. 3. It oc-
curs,
however, several times in these chapters in what
the critics
consider wrong connections, and the corrective
is
unhesitatingly applied by exscinding the offending
354 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
clause. Thus in xxix. 24, 29; it is found in an E
connec-
tion, and
these isolated verses are cut out and given to P,
where they
are quite unmeaning, and there is nothing
with which
to connect them. They evidently belong
where they
stand as preparatory for xxx. 4, 9. It
is a
mere evasion
to sunder these verses from their proper
context
because of the manifest reference to them and
their
repetition in identical terms in xlvi. 18, 25 P, which
is at
variance with the critics' hypothesis.
Wellhausen
erases the
word, "Rachel's handmaid" from xxxi. 7, as
an insertion
by R, because he gives the verse to E; Dill-
mann suffers
the words to stand because he assigns the
verse to
J. But both these critics agree that R
must
have
substituted hhAp;wi for
hmAxA in
xxxi. 18, which they
refer to
E. The occurrence of hmAxA maid, in
xxx. 3, is not
indicative
of a particular document E; Rachel, in offer-
ing her
bondmaid hhAp;wi to Jacob as a concubine, uses
the less
servile term. See ch. xx., Marks of E,
No.1;
xxi. 1-21,
Marks of E, No. 11.
5. NHe ytixcAmA xnA-Mxi if now I have found favor (xxx. 27).
See ch. xii.
10-20, Marks of J, No.3; ch. vi. 1-8, No. 10.
6.
llag;Bi for the
sake of (ver.
27). See ch. xii. 10-20,
Marks bf J,
No.6.
7.
CraPA break
forth, increase (vs.
30, 43). See ch.
xxviii.
10-22, Marks of J, No.3.
MARKS OF E
1. tr,Kow;ma wages
(xxix. 15). This is reckoned an E
word, though
in the Hexateuch it only occurs besides in
xxxi. 7, 41
E. It is here used interchangeably with
its
equivalent
from the same root, rcAWA, which is found alike
in E (xxx.
18; xxxi. 8 bis; Ex. ii. 9; xxii. 14; E. V., 15);
in J (xxx.
28, 32, 33); in JE (xv. 1); in P (Num. xviii.
31); and in
D (Deut. xv. 18; xxiv. 15).
JACOB IN HARAN (CHS. XXIX.. XXX.) 350
2. hlAdog; hnA.Faq; in respect to age, elder, younger (xxix. 16,
18). These words are here attributed to E in
contrast
with hrAykiB;, hrAyfic;,
which are supposed to belong to J.
But as these
latter words occur (ver. 26) in an E context,
it is
necessary to cut this verse out of its connection and
give it to J
for this reason alone. But these alleged
E
words are
nowhere else regarded as such. lOdGA
elder, is
assigned to
J (x. 21; xxvii. 15; xliv. 12); to JE (xxvii.
1, 42). NFoqA younger,
occurs in J (ix. 24; xxvii. 15; xliv.
12, 20); in
JE (xxvii. 42). If, now, upon the
critics' own
partition of
the text, J uses both pairs of words, how
can either
pair be regarded as an indication of a different
document? See ch. xix. 29-38, Marks of J, No.1, 2.
3. hx,r;ma tpayvi rxaTo tpay; fair of form and fair to look
upon (xxix. 17). The entire expression occurs but once
besides, viz.,
xxxix. 6, which is referred to J; "fair to
look
upon" occurs in J (xii. 11); in E (xli. 2,4, 18); "fair
of
form" occurs but once more in the Hexateuch, viz.,
Deut. xxi.
11D. See ch. xxiv., Marks of J, No. 13.
It will be observed that not one of these
so-called E
words or
phrases is peculiar to that document; and such
as they are,
they are all taken from xxix. 15-18. The
only other
words adduced from the entire two chapters
as belonging
to E, and suggestive of E paragraphs, are
Elohim, hmAxA maid
(xxx. 3; see above, Marks of J, No.4),
and two
expressions in xxix. 1, which occur nowhere else
in the
Hexateuch, either in J or E, viz., "lifted up his
feet " (E. V., went on his journey),
"land of the children of
the east."
It is said that this region is called Paddan-
aram by P,
and Aram-naharaim (xxiv. 10) by J, conse-
quently this
third designation must be that of E. But
if J can
call the same place Haran (xxix. 4) and the city
of Nahor
(xxiv. 10), why may he not use more than one
designation
for the region in which it stood? See
under
ch. xxiv.,
p. 298.
356 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
Dillmann points out three E words, as he
considers
them, in the
midst of a paragraph assigned to J, viz.,
MyFihAr; gutters (xxx. 38, 41), as Ex. ii. 16
E; wyiTa he-goat
(xxx. 35),
as xxxii. 15 (E. V., 14) E; dqofA
ring-streaked
(xxx. 35,
39,40), as xxxi. 8, 10, 12 E. The
adoption of E
words and
phrases by J here and frequently elsewhere,
together
with the close correspondence J between J and E
in matter
and form, which must be assumed in this chap-
ter, and in
many other passages of like character, makes
it
necessary, so Dillmann infers, to suppose that J was
in
possession of the document E, and made use of it in
preparing
his own work. Knobel and Kayser go far-
ther, and
find it unnecessary to assume the existence of
a redactor
to combine the separate documents of J and
E,
preferring to regard the combined work JE as the
production
of J who had E (or a similar source differently
named by
Knobel) before him, and incorporated such por-
tions of it
as he saw fit. Wellhausen objects that J
must
have been
entirely independent of E; for, if he drew from
E, he would
not have varied from it and contradicted it
in so many
instances. There is a measure of truth
in the
position
taken by each of these critics. If such
docu-
ments as are
attributed to J and E ever existed, there
are abundant
indications that J must have been ac-
quainted
with E. And if so, Wellhausen is right
in
holding that
he could not have been guilty of introduc-
ing such
glaring discrepancies into his own work as the
critics
profess to find there. Whether the
combination
was effected
by J or by a redactor, neither the one nor
the other
could have been so senseless as to insert palpa-
ble
contradictions in what he put forth as credible his-
tory. And in fact these alleged discrepancies and
con-
tradictions
prove upon examination not to be such, but
to be
capable of ready reconciliation. And as these sup-
ply the
principal argument for the separate existence of
RETURN FROM
HARAN (CHS. XXXI.- XXXII. 3) 357
J and E, the
main prop of this portion of the hypothesis
collapses
with their disappearance; and it becomes easy
to see how J
can use E words, and show familiarity with
the contents
of E sections, if J and E are identical.
JACOB S
RETURN FROM HARAN (CHS. XXXI.-XXXll. 3;
E. V., VER. 2)
Chapter xxxi. 1-43 is by the critics
mainly assigned to
E on account
of the repeated occurrence of Elohim,
its alleged
contrariety to ch. xxx., and the revelations in
dreams to
Jacob (vs. 11 sqq.) and Laban (ver. 24); also
the
reference in ver. 13 to xxviii. 20 sqq., which we have
no
disposition to dispute. While this
passage is as-
signed by
the critics to E, it has already been shown to
be
intimately connected with xxx. 31 sqq., with which it
is entirely
consistent, and from which the attempt is
vainly made
to sunder it.
It is claimed that while this paragraph
is for the most
part from E,
vs. 1, 3, 21b, 25, 27 are insertions from J.
But ver. 2
is not an idle repetition of ver. 1; it is addi-
tional to
it. Laban as well as his sons had become
dis-
affected
toward Jacob. In speaking to his wives
(ver. 5)
he only
mentions their father's disfavor, because this was
of supreme
consequence to himself, and made it plainly
undesirable
for him to remain longer in his service.
Both vs. 1
and 2 prepare the way for Jehovah's direction
to Jacob to
return to the land of his fathers (ver. 3),
which stands
in no special relation to ver. 1, as the
scheme of
the critics implies. Nor does ver. 3
interrupt
the
connection. It supplies the occasion of
Jacob's sum-
moning
Rachel and Leah (ver. 4); and ver. 5 explicitly
refers to
and repeats the language of both ver. 2 and ver.
3. It is true that ver. 3 has
"Jehovah," which is unwel-
come to the
critics here, but it cannot be helped.
It is
358 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
precisely
equivalent to "the God of my father" (ver. 5).
The verse is
appropriate and required where it stands,
and Jacob
adopts its very words (ver. 13) in reciting at
length to
his wives what is briefly and summarily stated
in this
verse.
The middle clause of ver. 21 is no
superfluous repeti-
tion. The account of Jacob's leaving (vs. 17, 18)
is in-
terrupted by
a necessary digression (vs. 19, 20) explain-
ing that it
was without Laban's knowledge. Verse 21a
resumes the
notice of this departure; 21b repeats the
opening
words of ver. 17 to add that he crossed the
Euphrates;
21c states the direction of his flight.
All
proceeds
regularly and naturally. On the ground
that
it would
have been impossible to reach Gilead from Ha-
ran in seven
days 1 (ver. 23), Dillmann infers that La-
ban's
residence must, in E's account, have been much
nearer to
Gilead than Haran, and that he must either
have meant
some other river than the Euphrates in ver.
21, or else
"he rose up and passed over the river" must
have been
taken from J. To which Delitzsch replies
that
Laban's home
was in Haran, according to both J and E;
so that in
any event this affords no argument for critical
partition. As to the accuracy of the statement the
histo-
rian is
responsible. It should not, however, be
forgotten
that there
is some indefiniteness in the localities.
Laban
may have
been with his sheep at some distance from
Haran (ver.
19); and the limits of Gilead are not clearly
defined.
That Laban's pursuit was successful is
summarily
stated (ver.
23b). Then further details are
given: La-
ban's dream
before he came up with Jacob (ver. 24); La-
ban's
overtaking Jacob, and the respective location of the
two parties
(ver. 25). There is no doublet here any
more
1 In his first edition Dillmann did not
seem to think this impossible,
but simply
that it would require "very vigorous" marching.
RETURN FROM
HARAN (CHS. XXXI.- XXXII. 8) 359
than there
is in the various instances of a like nature
which have
been reviewed before. Nor is ver. 27 a
doub-
let of ver.
26. If the repetition of a thought so
prom-
inent in
Laban's mind offends the critics, how is it that
they can
refer ver. 27, with its triple repetition, to a sin-
gle writer?
According to Wellhausen vs. 10, 12 is an
interpola-
tion of
uncertain origin. Dillmann, who deals
largely
in
transpositions to accomplish critical ends or to relieve
fancied
difficulties, thinks that R took them from a nar-
rative of E,
which he had omitted in its proper place,
and inserted
them here rather inappropriately in this
address of
Jacob to his wives. What motive he could
have had for
such a piece of stupidity we are not in-
formed. The genuineness of the verses is saved, but
it
is at the
expense of R's good sense. It may be,
how-
ever, that
the writer thought these verses appropriate,
whether the
critics do or not.
There is no discrepancy between the
revelation as re-
corded in
ver. 3 and as subsequently related by Jacob
(vs.
11-13). When a writer has occasion to
speak of
the same
matter in different connections three courses
are open to
him. He may narrate it both times in all
its
details, he
may narrate it fully in the first instance and
refer to it
more briefly afterward, or he may content
himself with
a brief statement at first and reserve the de-
tails until
he recurs to it again. In the directions
to
build the
tabernacle minute specifications are given
(Ex. xxv.
10-ch. xxx.); in its actual construction all the
details are
stated afresh (xxxvi. 8-ch. xxxix.), the sa-
credness of
the edifice making it essential to note the ex-
actness with
which the divine directions were carried into
effect in
every particular. Detailed directions
are given
for building
the ark (Gen. vi. 14 sqq.), but in recording
its
construction the general statement is deemed suffi-
360 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
cient that
Noah did as he was commanded (ver. 22).
Pharaoh's
dreams, because of their importance in the
history, are
twice narrated in full and almost identical
language
(Gen. xli. 1-7, 17-24). So the dream of
Laban
(xxxi. 24,
29), the story of Abraham's servant (xxiv. 3
sqq., 37
sqq.), the fiats of creation (Gen. ch. i.).
But the
dreams of
Joseph (xxxvii. 5 sqq.) and of Pharaoh's ser-
vants (xl.
5, 9 sqq.) are simply mentioned as facts and
the details
reserved until they come to be narrated by
the
dreamers.
In the instance at present before us
instead of twice
recording
the divine communication made to Jacob in all
its details,
the writer simply states at first that Jehovah
directed
Jacob to return to the land of his fathers (xxxi.
3), leaving
a more minute account of the whole matter
to be
introduced subsequently in a recital by Jacob.
It
is entirely
appropriate in the connection that the revela-
tion here
made to Jacob should concern both his rela-
tion to
Laban and his return to Canaan. The only
seeming
difficulty is created by the needless assumption
that things
are combined in it which belong to different
periods of
time; that what is said respecting the cattle
must belong
to the early period of Laban's dealings with
Jacob,1
while it is united in the same dream with the
command to
return to Canaan. The dream is
retrospec-
tive and was
intended to teach Jacob that while he had
been relying
upon his own arts to increase his compensa-
tion, the
true cause of his prosperity was to be found in
the favor of
God. And this shows why the arts of
Jacob are
detailed in ch. xxx. without allusion to the di-
1Nxc.oHa
MHeya tfe (ver. 10) denotes a season of the year, the
time of
copulation
of flocks, and should be rendered "the time when flocks
conceive,"
as a usual thing, rather than "conceived," as though the
reference
were to a definite event in the past. It is as applicable,
therefore,
to the last year of Jacob's abode with Laban as to any that
had
preceded.
RETURN FROM
HARAN (CHS. XXXI.-XXXil. 3) 361
vine agency,
the latter being alone insisted on in ch. xxxi.
It is not
that these have proceeded from distinct writers
who had
different conceptions of the transaction.
It is
simply that
the writer designed to lead his readers to the
true result
by the same route through which Jacob him-
self passed,
without any premature explanation.1 Well-
hausen
alleges that the words of the divine angel must
have begun
with the words "I am the God," etc. (ver.
13); but
this is disposed of by a reference to Ex. iii. 4-
6. Dillmann remarks that E uses droBA
grisled (xxxi. 10,
12), where J
has xUlFA speckled
(xxx. 32, 33), which sim-
ply shows,
not that there are two writers, in which case
the
identical expressions in these verses could be less
easily
accounted for, but that the writer was not aiming
at a nice
precision in regard to terms so closely akin.
Dillmann
also calls attention to the fact that in J (xxx.
-35) dqofA ring-streaked,
and dqonA speckled, are
used inter-
changeably,
while in E (xxxi. 8~10, 12) they are distin-
guished; but
that this is no ground for critical partition
is plain,
since they are similarly distinguished in J (xxx.
39).
Verse 18 (except the first clause) is
assigned to P. It
1 Kuenen, Hexateuch, p. 235, remarks upon
these passages: "Gen.
xxx. 28-43
and XXXI. 4-13 explain Jacobs great wealth by his own
cunning and
by the care of Elohim respectively. The
former is in per-
fect harmony
with the uniform representation of Jacob's character.
Can the
latter be anything but an ethico-religious improvement upon
it? For observe that the mutual agreement of the
two passages forbids
us to regard
them as independent, so that one must in any case be a
transformation
of the other." Kuenen's conclusion
that the E passage
is a later
improvement upon that of J is in direct conflict with Dill-
mann's
contention that E is the earlier document, from which J re-
peatedly
borrows. The intimate mutual relation of
the passages re-
spectively
assigned to J and E is confessed by both these critics.
Kuenen has
here mistaken a later stage in Jacob's own understanding
of the
secret of his success for a second and modified form of the trans-
action
itself.
362 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
has the
usual phrases of patriarchal removals (cf. xii. 5;
xiii. 6 ;
xxxvi. 6, 7; xlvi. 6). The resemblance
between
these verses
is certainly such as to suggest their common
origin; and
the critics refer them uniformly to P, but
upon what
ground it is difficult to see. It is at
variance
with the
connection in every individual case; xii. 5,
xiii. 6 are
torn from a J context; xxxi. 18, xlvi. 6 from an
E context,1
and the context of xxxvi. 6, 7, is disputed.
The minute
specification of particulars, alleged to be
characteristic
of P, is no greater than in xxxii. 6, 23 (E.
V. vs. 5,
22) J, xxxiv. 28, 29 R, taken perhaps from E, xlv.
10 E or
J. Of the words and phrases in these
verses said
to be
indicative of P, not one is peculiar to him.
"To go
to his
father" (ver. 18) links it with xxxv. 27 P indeed,
but equally
with xxviii. 31 E. No good reason can be
given why
these verses should not be reckoned an integral
part of the
context in which they are found. This is
particularly
so in this instance, in which the presence of
E words2
at the beginning makes it necessary to divide
the
sentence, leaving only an incomplete fragment for P,
in which
nevertheless one of these very words (hn,q;mi)
recurs, as
it does also in a like connection, xxxvi. 6.
HIATUS IN THE DOCUMENT P
But accepting the partition on the sole
dictum of the
critics, the
result is an enormous gap in P. He makes
1The supplement hypothesis,
which identified E and P, had a basis
here for the
reference of these verses to the "Grundschrift," which the
present
critical hypothesis has not.
2 hn,q;mi
cattle, is claimed for J or JE; ghanA carried away,
which re-
curs in E,
ver. 26, with explicit reference to this passage, and is found
besides in
the Hexateuch (except twice in Deut.), Ex. in. 1. ; xiv. 25 E;
Ex. x. 13
J. If to avoid mutilating the sentence
the whole verse is given
to P, the
argument from the JE use of these words elsewhere is con-
fessed to be
worthless.
RETURN FROM
HARAN (CHS. XXXI.-XXXII. 3) 363
no mention
of Jacob's arrival in Paddan-aram, or of his
residence
there, or anything that occurred during his stay
in that
region, not even of his marriage,the one sole pur-
pose for
which he went, as the critics understand P, or
of the birth
of his children, or of his accumulation of
property. There are only the disconnected and conse-
quently
unmeaning statements (xxix. 24, 29) that Laban
gave maids
to his two daughters, and (xxx. 22) that God
remembered
Rachel. But what either the daughters or
their maids
had to do with the life of Jacob does not
appear. And now Jacob is returning with cattle and
property to
which there has been no previous allusion,
and no
suggestion of how they were obtained, but no
hint that he
had a family.1 J and E supply what is lack-
ing, though
a marriage was no part of the purpose with
which,
according to them, Jacob left his home.
And
further, P
at a later time (xxxv. 22b-26) recites the names
of Jacob's
children in the order of their birth, and refers
them to
their different mothers in exact accordance with
the detailed
account in JE, which is thus presupposed.
What the
critics sunder from P is thus an essential part
of his
narrative. And it is necessary for them
to resort
again to the
assumption that P did write just such an
account as
we find in J and E, but R has not preserved
it. Nevertheless R, who has here dropped P's
entire
story at a
most important epoch, that which laid the
foundation
for the tribal division of Israel, and thus re-
duced his
narrative to incoherent fragments, elsewhere
introduces
clauses and sentences which in the judgment
of the
critics are quite superfluous repetitions of what
1 Noldeke endeavored to account for this
vast chasm in P by the
wholly
gratuitous assumption that the narrative of P was inconsistent
with that of
J and E, and R omitted it for that reason.
The supple-
ment
hypothesis, which made E and P one document, here again es-
caped this
incongruity.
364 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
had been
more fully stated before, for the mere sake of
preserving
everything contained in his sources.1
But the strangest feature of P's account,
as conceived
by the critics,
is thus clearly and succinctly stated by
Dr.
Harper: "The absence of the
theological element
is quite
conspicuous: (1) The daily life of the
patriarchs
(with the
exception of a few special and formal the-
ophanies) is
barren of all religious worship. (2)
This is
especially
noticeable in the case of Jacob; he leaves
home to seek
for the wife who is to be the mother of
Israel; he
sojourns many years in the land from which
Abram was by
special command sent away; he marries
according to
the instruction of his parents, and begets the
children who
are to become the tribes of Israel--still no
sacrifice or
offering is made to God for his providen-
tial care,
not even a prayer is addressed to the Deity.
(3) Nor does
God, on his part, descend to take part or
interest in
human affairs; He gives no encouragement to
Jacob as he
leaves home, nor does he send any word to
him to
return."2
This comes near enough to the"
unthinkable" to be a
refutation
of that critical analysis which is responsible
for such a
result. P is the priestly narrator, to
whom
the
ordinances of worship are supremely sacred, and they
absorb his
whole interest; whose history of the patri-
archs is
only preliminary and subsidiary to the law regu-
lating the
services of the sanctuary. The
patriarchs are
to him the
heroes and the models of Israel, whom, we
are told, he
is so intent upon glorifying that he reports
none of
their weaknesses, no strifes, no act of disingenu-
ousness, no
strange gods in their households, nothing
1 E.g., vii. 13-15, 17, 22, 23
: viii. 2b, 3a; xiii. 6 : xix. 29, not to speak
of the
innumerable doublets which the critics fancy that they have dis-
covered.
2Hebraica, v. 4, p. 276.
RETURN FROM
HARAN (CHS. XXXI.- XXXII. 3) 365
low or
degrading. He singles out for prominent
mention
the sabbath
(ii. 2, 3); the prohibition of eating blood (ix.
4); the
ordinance of circumcision (xvii. 10 sqq.).
God
appears to
Abraham and establishes his covenant with
him and with
his seed, with the express condition of his
walking
before him and being perfect, i.e., whole-hearted
in his
service (xvii. 1 sqq.). And yet P's
account of the
patriarchs,
as the critics furnish it to us, is almost abso-
lutely
denuded of any religious character. Is P
really so
absurd and
self-contradictory, or have the critics made a
mistake in
their partition?
THE COVENANT OF LABAN AND JACOB
The account of the covenant between Laban
and Jacob
(vs. 44-54)
is, in the opinion of the critics, a mass of
doublets and
glosses. There are two monuments, a pil-
lar (ver.
45) and a heap of stones (ver. 46); two covenant
meals (vs.
46b, 54); two names with their respective ety-
mologies
(vs. 48, 49); two (or rather three) appeals to
God to
watch, witness, and judge between them (vs. 49,
50, 53); and
the substance of the contract is stated
twice, and
in different terms (vs. 50, 52). The
symmetry
of this
statement is somewhat spoiled by the triplicity of
one of the
items. But the passage would seem to
afford
ample scope
for critical acumen. There has, however,
been great
divergence in the results that have been
reached, and
no partition that has been devised has
proved
generally satisfactory.1
Dillmann, who in the
1 Astruc, followed by Schrader, gives vs.
48-50 to the Jehovist, and
the
remainder to the Elohist. Eichhorn, and
after him Tuch, limits
the Jehovist
to ver. 49. Ilgen gives the whole
passage to the second
Elohist,
except vs. 48, 49, which he throws out of the text as a later
gloss, and
makes several transpositions in order to obtain what he con-
siders a
more suitable arrangement.
Other critics divide as follows: Knobel (Commentary): Ancient
366 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
main here
adopts the division of Wellhausen, assigns vs.
46, 48-50 to
J, who accordingly tells of the heap of
stones in
pledge that Jacob would treat his wives
as he
should, with
some dislocations, to be sure, which Dill-
mann
corrects as usual by the necessary transpositions;
the covenant
meal (ver. 46b), and the naming of the heap
(ver. 48b),
ought in his opinion to come after the engage-
ment (ver.
50). Of course R is charged with having
re-
moved these
clauses from their proper place, and no
very good
reason is given for his having done so.
E (vs.
45, 47,
51-54) records the election of a pillar as a boun-
dary between
the Hebrews on the one side and the Ara-
mreans on
the other.
But Delitzsch mars this arrangement by
calling atten-
tion to
Jehovah in ver. 49, and Elohim in ver. 50, show-
ing that
both J and E related Jacob's pledge in relation
to his
wives; also to the triple combination of the heap
and the
pillar in vs. 51, 52, showing that J and E also
united in
fixing the boundary between Laban and Jacob.
So that it
appears after all that there were not two cove-
nants, but
two stipulations in the same covenant.
Dill-
mann is
further constrained to confess that E speaks of a
Source, vs.
45, 46, 48-50, 53b. J, vs. 47, 51, 52, 53a. (Appendix):
First
Source, vs. 44, 48-50, 53, 54. Second
Source, vs. 45-47, 51, 52.
Hupfeld: E, vs. 46b, 48a, 50. J, vs. 45,
46a, 47, 51-54, 48b, 49.
Boehmer: E, vs. 44, 46, 47, 51, 52
(expunging the "pillar" twice),
53b, 54a. J,
vs. 45, 48 (And Laban said), 53a, 54b. R, vs. 48 (after
the opening
words), 49, 50.
Kittel: E, vs. 45 (substitute
"Laban" for "Jacob "), 46, 48a, 50, 53,
54. J, vs. 51, 52 (expunge the "pillar"
twice). R, vs. 48b, 49.
Vatke: E, vs. 45, 47, 48a, 50, 54. J, vs.
46, 48b, 49, 51-53.
Delitzsch: E, vs. 45, 47, 50, 53b, 54. J, vs. 46, 48,
49. JE, inex-
tricably
combined, vs. 51-53a. R, in ver.49, the words, "And Miz-
pah;
for."
Kayser gives up the partition as
impracticable, and says, "The sepa-
ration of
the two elements cannot be effected without tearing asunder the
well-ordered
connection."
RETURN FROM
HARAN (CHS. XXXI.- XXXII. 3) 367
lGa "heap"
as well as a "pillar" in ver. 52, inasmuch as
ver. 47b is
on critical principles a doublet of ver. 48b,
and E as well
as J located this scene in Mt. Gilead, and
was
concerned to find an allusion to its name in the
transaction. He clogs his admission with the assertion
that E uses lGa
in a different sense
from J, meaning a
mountain
ridge and not a heap thrown up by hand.
But
after all
the critical erasures made for the purpose this
is still
unproved. He has merely demonstrated his
de-
sire to
create a variance which does not exist.
And ver.
47, which he
assigns to E, is indissolubly linked to ver.
48 J.
We
thus have good critical authority for saying that
one and the
same writer has spoken of both the monu-
ments and of
both the contracts, involving, of course, the
double
appeal to God to watch over their fulfilment.
And from
this there is no escape but by the critical
knife, of
which Wellhausen makes free use here, as he
never fails
to do in an extremity. Verse 471
is thrown
out of the
text as a piece of "superfluous learning;" but
Dillmann
replies that E calls Laban "the Aramaean"
(vs. 20, 24),
that he likewise speaks of the "heap," in
ver. 52, and
may have given an explanation of the name
"Gilead;"2
and that the location of the place on the
1 Tuch, on the contrary, finds
in the Aramaean name in this verse an
apt parallel
to the Aramrean MrAxE
NDaPa (for which Hosea xii. 13 (E. V.
ver. 12)
substitutes the Hebrew equivalent MrAxE hdeW;), and he refers
both alike
to the same writer.
2 It is alleged that a false
explanation is given (ver. 48) of the name
"Gilead,"
which means hard or rough, not "heap of witness." It is
not
necessary, however, to suppose that it was the intention of the sa-
cred writer
to affirm that Gilead derived its name from the transaction
here
recorded. It bears that name in his
narrative before this transac-
tion took
place (vs. 21, 23, 25). His meaning
rather is that the name
which it had
long borne was particularly appropriate by reason of this
new
association, which was naturally suggested by its sound to a He-
brew ear
(cf. xxvii. 36).
368 THE
GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
boundary
between the Aramaeans and the Hebrews may
account for
the twofold denomination. "Jehovah
watch
between me
and thee when we are absent one from an-
other"
(ver. 49), is also expunged; and "Mizpah," at
the
beginning of the verse, which is a clear voucher for
the
genuineness of the doomed clause, and a name which
the
historian was at pains to link with this transaction,
as well as
Gilead and Mahanaim (xxxii. 3, E. V., ver. 2),
is by a
stroke of the pen converted into Mazzebah, and
then ejected
from the text." No man is with us;
see,
Elohim is
witness betwixt me and thee" (ver. 50), is in
like manner
declared to be an insertion by the redactor,
on the
ground that it conflicts with ver. 48, which makes
the heap the
witness; but, as Delitzsch observes, there
is obviously
no collision between these statements.
"This
heap" with its adjuncts is twice erased (vs. 51,
52a), and
"this pillar" (ver. 52b), so as to read, "Be-
hold, the
pillar, which I have set, is a witness betwixt
me and thee,
that I will not pass over this wall (not a
heap newly
cast up, but a boundary of long standing) to
thee, and
that thou shalt not pass over this wall unto
me." With the text thus cleared of obstructions,
and
altered to
suit his purpose, he has a comparatively clear
course.
It is obvious to observe further that the
two covenant
meals are a
fiction. Upon the erection of the heap
pre-
liminary
mention is made (ver. 46) of the feast held be-
side it,
which is then recorded more fully, after other de-
tails have
been given, in ver. 54. We have already
met
repeated
examples of the same kind. Delitzsch
refers
to such
parallels as xxvii. 23; xxviii. 5.
Dil1mann him-
self said
(in his first edition) of the eating together in ver.
46: "This was the covenant meal, which is
related ver.
54. It is here only referred to proleptically (as
ii. 8 and
15; xxiv.
29, 30), and it is not necessary, therefore, to as-
RETURN FROM
HARAN (CHS. XXXI.-XXXII. 3) 369
sign the
verse to a different author from vs. 53, 54, espe-
cially as
'his brethren' corresponds with vs. 32, 37."
With the doublets thus disposed of, the
analysis,
which has no
further basis, collapses entirely. The
carp-
ing
objection that acts in which both participated are (vs.
45, 46)
attributed to Jacob, and (ver. 51), claimed by La-
ban, gives
no aid nor comfort to the critics, for the dis-
crepancy,
such as it is, is between contiguous verses of the
same
document. Wellhausen on this ground
eliminates
"Jacob"
from the text of vs. 45, 46, and substitutes
"Laban." Dillmann (in his first edition) quoted with
ap-
proval
Knobel's statement, "It is self-evident that all
this was
done in common by both the leaders and their
adherents;"
and again, on ver. 51, "Laban, as the one
who proposed
the covenant, rightly prescribes to Jacob the
words to be
sworn, and attributes to himself, as the orig-
inator of it
(ver.44), the erection of the two witnesses."
The
suspicion cast upon "the God (or gods) of their
father"
(ver. 53), because the verb is interposed between
it and"
the God of Nahor," with which it is in apposition,
is a pure
question of textual criticism without further
consequences. Here again Dillmann comes to the res-
cue in his first
edition. "The God of Abraham and
the
God of Nahor
are then both designated by the apposi-
tion 'the
gods of their father,' as once worshipped by
Terah, as if
Terah's two sons had divided in the worship
of the gods
of Terah.
THE DIVINE NAMES
The
divine names are used discriminatingly through-
out. It was Jehovah (ver. 3) who bade Jacob return
to
the land of
his fathers; but in repeating this to his wives,
who were but
partially reclaimed from idolatry (xxx. 11;
xxxi. 34;
xxxv. 2, 4), he constantly uses Elohim (xxxi. 4-
370 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
13) (once,
more definitely, the God of my father, ver. 5),
as they also
do in reply (ver. 16). In like manner it
is
Elohim, who
speaks to Laban the Aramaean (ver. 24),
and of whom Jacob
speaks to Laban (ver. 42), though
both of them
recognize his identity with the God of Abra-
ham and of
Isaac (vs. 29, 42). When they covenant,
ap-
peal is made
both to Jehovah and to Elohim (vs. 49, 50)
as the God
of Abraham and the God of Nahor (ver. 53).
Jacob swears
by the Fear of his father Isaac (ver. 53),
the Being
whom his father reverently worshipped, and
whose
gracious care he had himself experienced (ver. 42).
In xxxii. 2,
3 (E. V., vs. 1, 2), "angels of Elohim," "the
host of
Elohim," are so called in distinction from mes-
sengers of
men and armies under human command; it
is a
detachment divinely sent to welcome and escort
him as he
returns to the holy land.
MARKS OF P (VER. 18)
1. wkur;
substance, and
wkarA to
gather. See ch. xii. 5,
Marks of P,
No.2.
2. NyAn;qi
getting; besides in the Hexateuch,
xxxiv. 23;
Josh. xlv. 4
P; Lev. xxii. 11, which, according to Well-
hausen, is
not in P; and. Gen. xxxvi. 6, which is cut out
of a
disputed context and given to P.
3. Paddan-aram. See ch. xxv. 19-34, Marks of P,
No.4.
4. NyanaK;
Cr,x, land of Canaan. See ch. xii. 5, Marks of
P, No.4.
5.
The diffuseness; but this is no greater than in vs.
1, 3 J, and
vs. 26, 27, 43 E. See ch. xvii., Marks of
P,
No.5.
MARKS OF E
1.
The back reference (ver. 13) to xxviii. 20 sqq., which
is readily
admitted.
RETURN FROM HARAN (CHS. XXXI.-XXXII.
3) 371
2.
The revelations in dreams (vs. 10. 11, 24). See ch.
xx., Marks
of E, No.4.
3. Teraphim (vs.19, 34, 35);
nowhere else in the Hexateuch.
4.
Laban, the Aramaean. See ch. xxv.
19-34, Marks of
P, No.5.
5.
hmAxA maid-servant (ver. 33); here used rather than
hHAp;wi because
they are spoken of not as bondmaids, but
as wives of
Jacob. See ch. xx., Marks of E, No.1.
6. bbAle heart (ver.
26). See ch. xx., Marks of E,
No.2.
7.
hKo here (ver. 37). See ch. xxii. 1-19, Marks of E,
No.5.
8.
fgaPA met (xxxii. 2, E. V., ver. 1). See ch. xxviii. 10-
22, Marks of
E, No.3.
9.
qHAc;yi dhaPa the Fear of Isaac (xxxi. 42, 53); nowhere
else; and
even dhaPa
besides, in the
Hexateuch, only in
Deut. and
Ex. xv. 16, a passage supposed to have been
borrowed
from an older document, but not written by E.
10.
Mynimo times (xxxi. 7, 41); nowhere else.
MOwlowi lOmT; before time (xxxi. 2; 5), is reckoned an E
phrase; it
occurs besides, Ex. v. 7, 8, 14; xxi. 29, 36 E;
but also Ex.
iv. 10 J; Josh. xx. 5 P. OWfE (ver. 28), a like
form of the
infinitive, occurs xlviii. 11; 1. 20; Ex. xviii.
18 E; but
also Gen. xxvi. 28; Ex. xxxii. 6 J. WPeHi
search (ver. 35) ; only besides in the Hexateuch
xliv. 12 J.
yneyfeB; rHayi burn in the eyes of, be displeasing to (ver. 35),
besides in
xlv. 5, where it is included between two J ex-
pressions in
the same clause. l;
rHayiva was wroth (ver.
36), as iv.
5 J. The use of hqalA by E (vs. 45, 46) re-
sembles what
Dillmann affirms to be characteristic of
P, xii. 5,
and elsewhere. The various words and
phrases
alleged as marks of E, in this section as else-
where, are
for the most part either limited to a single
passage, or
are also found in J. Consequently they do
372 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
not in fact
supply any argument for a document E dis-
tinct from
J.
It may further be noted that by the
confession of the
critics the
same writer may use different terms to express
the same
thought. Thus ver. 2 speaks of the
counte-
nance of
Laban being with Jacob, but ver. 5 of its be-
ing toward
him; to "set up" (a pillar) is, in ver. 45,
Myrihe, but
in xxviii. 18, 22, MyWi and
in xxxv. 20, byc.ihi;
and
"collecting stones" is expressed differently in suc-
cessive
clauses of ver. 46. Yet all these forms
of ex-
pression are
attributed alike to E.
MEETING OF JACOB AND ESAU (CH. XXXII. 41
-
XXXIII. 17)
Hupfeld is commonly acute enough in
detecting
grounds of
division, but here for once he is completely
at
fault. This entire section seemed to him2
to bear the
most
conclusive marks of unity in language, in the con-
tinuity of
the narrative, and in the close connection of
the several
parts, which mutually presuppose and are
indispensable
to each other. The interchange of divine
names,
Jehovah (xxxii. 10) and Elohim, gives him no
trouble,
since the latter occurs only where, according to
general
Hebrew usage, "Jehovah would not be appro-
priate"
(xxxii. 29, 31; xxxiii. 10), or
"Elohim is prefer-
able"
(xxxiii. 5, 11). He accordingly
attributed the
whole of
this section to J. Schrader, on the contrary,
assigns it
all to E, with the exception of vs.10-13 J, and
ver. 33,
about which he is in doubt whether it belongs to
J or is a
later gloss. In his first edition
Dillmann re-
1The last verse of ch. xxxi. in
the English version is the first verse of
ch. xxxii.
in the Hebrew, and the consequent difference in numeration is
continued
through ch. xxxii. The numbers given in
the text are those
of the
Hebrew, from which one must be deducted for the correspond-
ing verse in
the English Bible.
2 Quellen, p. 45.
JACOB AND
ESAU (CHS. XXXII. 4-XXXIlI. 17) 373
ferred
xxxii. 8 -13 to J, and vs. 23-32 to E, while the
remainder
(xxxii. 4-7, 14-22; xxxiii. 1-16) contained
so many
indications of both E and J that he felt obliged
to assume
that J had taken the substance of it from E,
and
remodelled it after his own fashion.
Such mingled
texts, in
which aloe confusedly blended what the critics
regard as
the characteristics of different documents,
simply show
how mistaken is every attempt to apportion
among
distinct writers expressions which are thus seen
to flow
freely from the same pen.
Wellhausen admits that this whole section
is closely
connected
throughout, and that it gives the impression
of having
been drawn from but a single source. "One
will surely
wonder," he adds, "at the idle acuteness
which
nevertheless succeeds here in sundering J and E."
He has
discovered a doublet, which had previously es-
caped all
eyes, and by its aid he undertakes to rend the
passage in
twain. Verse 14a is repeated ver.
22b. He
infers that
vs. 14b-22a only carries the narrative to the
point
already reached by vs. 4-13; and that conse-
quently
these two paragraphs are not consecutive as
they appear
to be, and as the nature of their contents
would seem
to imply, but are parallel accounts of the
same
transaction, drawn respectively from J and E.
In
his first
edition Dillmann was so far from agreeing with
this
position as to maintain that the night spoken of in
ver. 22 is
not the same as that in ver. 14, but is the next
ensuing. In subsequent editions, however, he follows,
as he has
unfortunately so often done, in the wake of
Wellhausen,
as though the latter had made a veritable
discovery. But even though the night is the same, the
paragraphs,
which these verses respectively conclude, are
plainly not
identical in their contents, nor can they by
possibility
be variant accounts of the same transaction.
Jacob had taken the precaution to notify
Esau of his
374 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
return, and
was informed that Esau was on his way to
meet him
with four hundred men (vs. 4-7). He was
in
consequence
greatly alarmed, not, as Tuch imagined, by
the vague
apprehension of what a horde of robber Bed-
ouins might
possibly do. This notion was advocated
by him in
the interest of the supplement hypothesis,
which
admitted but one Elohist, and supposed that he
knew nothing
of any strife between the brothers. But
it
is quite
inadmissible in the present form of the divisive
hypothesis,
according to which E and J alike record
Jacob's
fraud in obtaining his father's blessing, and
Esau's
murderous wrath in consequence. Jacob
well
knew that he
had an enraged brother to deal with, and
he feared
the worst. He shaped his measures
accord-
ingly. He first divides his flocks and herds,
together
with his
retinue, into two separate companies, that if one
should be
attacked the other might escape (vs. 8, 9).
He then
makes his earnest appeal to Jehovah, the God
of his
fathers, who had bidden him return, acknowledg-
ing his
unworthiness of past mercies, pleading the
promises
divinely made to him, and praying for deliver-
ance from
this impending peril (vs. 10-13). Upon
this
he selects a
valuable present of goats and sheep and
camels and
asses, and sends them forward in successive
droves to
placate Esau1 and announce his own coming
(vs.
14-22). These are evidently distinct
measures,
wisely
planned to avert the danger which he had so
much reason
to apprehend.
The repeated mention of the night, then
coming on,
which was
the most eventful in. Jacob's life, upon which
1 The assertion that there are two
variant conceptions of the
present to
Esau, that in ver. 14 E it is simply a token of respect, while in ver.
21b (which
Dillmann cuts out of its connection and assigns to J) it is de-
signed to
appease Esau's anger, is at variance with the uniform tenor of
the entire
passage.
JACOB AND
ESAU (CHS. XXXII. 4-XXXilI. 17) 375
so much
depended, and in which so much was done, is
by no means
surprising. Preliminary mention is made
(ver. 14) of
Jacob's lodging that night himself, while he
sent forward
the present to his brother, which is then
described in
detail with the accompanying arrangements
(vs.
14b-22a). At the close of this
description the nar-
rative, thus
interrupted, is once more resumed by repeat-
ing the
statement that Jacob "lodged that night in the
company"
(ver. 22b). This clause, as Dillmann
cor-
rectly
remarked in his first edition, is a "connecting
link"
with the following account of what further took
place that
same night, which was so momentous a crisis
not only in
respect to the peril encountered, but as the
turning-point
in the spiritual history and character of
Jacob. The repetition of this clause tends in no way
to create
the suspicion that the narrative is a composite
one; on the
contrary, it proceeds by regular and closely
related
steps, everyone of which has a direct and mani-
fest bearing
upon the final issue.
An additional evidence of duplication is
sought in the
double
allusion to the name Mahanaim, which, we are
told, E and
J understand and explain differently.
Only
it is
unfortunate for the effect of this argument that
Wellhausen
and Dilhnann cannot agree how E did un-
derstand
it. They are clear, however, that J
regarded it
as a dual,
and meant to explain it by the "two com-
panies,"
or camps, into which Jacob divided his train (vs.
8, 9, 11);
whereupon, they tell us, he must have added,
Therefore
the place was called Mahanaim." R
pru-
dently
omitted this statement because of its conflict with
ver. 3,
where the origin of the name is accounted for in
another
way. But such a mention of the name of
the
place by J.
is thought to be implied in ver. 14a, "he
lodged
there." Undoubtedly"
there" refers to a place
before
spoken of, either one actually found in the text
376 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
(xxxii. 3 E,
the wrong document for the critics), or one
that they
tell us ought to be there, though it is not.
About E's
view of the matter there is not the same agree-
ment. Wellhausen alleges that he took Mahanaim for
a
singular,
and was correct in so doing, aim being a modi-
fied form of
the local ending am, and hence in ver. 22
he writes it
as a singular, Mahane, the name being sug-
gested by
his meeting a host of angels. Dillmann
re-
gards it as
a dual in E also, suggested by the two com-
panies or
camps, that of the angels and that of Jacob.
But however
this question may be settled, different al-
lusions to
the signification of the name Mahanaim in the
same
connection are not an indication of distinct writers,
as we have
already seen repeatedly in other instances.
It is
further said that ver. 22 speaks of Jacob's com-
pany as a
unit; the writer knows nothing of its division
into two
companies as in vs. 8, 9. But in
precisely
the same way
Esau speaks (xxxiii. 8) of the five suc-
cessive
droves which he had met, being the present
which Jacob
designed for him (xxxii. 1~17) as a single
company.
Further, according to the division of the
critics, E ,
(ver. 18)
presupposes the coming of Esau announced in J
(ver. 7),
and all the arrangements made in E imply ap-
prehensions
which are only stated in J (vs. 8, 9). They
are in fact
so interwoven that they cannot be separated.
And Dillmann
finds it necessary to assume that vs. 4-7.
are
preliminary alike to E and J, though his only ground
for
suspecting their composite character is the twofold
designation
of the region (ver. 4) as "the land of Seir,
the field of
Edom." Certainly no one but a
critic intent
on doublets
could have suspected one here. Mount
Seir
had been
spoken of (xiv. 6) as the country of the Horites.
Esau had now
taken up his quarters, provisionally at
least in
what was to be his future abode and that of his
JACOB AND ESAU (CHS. XXXII. 4-XXXIII.
17) 377
descendants. This is here intimated by calling Seir by
anticipation
"the field of Edom."
But Dillmann has found another doublet,
which even
Wellhausen
had failed to see; ver. 23 is J's, and ver. 24
E's account
of crossing the Jabbok. In the former
Jacob
crosses with his family; in the latter he sends his
family
before him and himself remains behind.
And
this is
paraded as a variance, requiring two distinct
writers. Is it not as plain as day that ver. 23 is a
gen-
eral
statement of the fact that they all alike crossed the
stream,
while in ver. 24 it is stated more particularly
that he
first sent over his family, and then his goods, and
that a very
remarkable incident occurred to himself after
he was thus
left alone? Dillmann himself so
explained
it in his
first edition, his only doubt being whether Jacob
crossed with
the rest to the south bank of the Jabbok,
and was
there left behind while they moved on, or
whether he
continued for a while on the north bank
after all
had been sent over. The latter is the
common
opinion,
though the former might be consistent with the
language
used. As Penuel has not been identified,
it
may be
uncertain on which side of the stream the mys-
terious
conflict described in the following verses took
place.
JACOB'S WRESTLING WITH THE ANGEL
Here again the critics diverge. Are vs. 24-33 by J, the
author of
xxxii. 4-14a and xxxiii. 1-17? or by E,
the
author of
xxxii. 14b-22? Wellhausen says J most
de-
cidedly;
Kuenen and Driver agree with him; Dillmann
says E with
equal positiveness. Other critics follow
their liking
one way or the other. There is a
conflict of
criteria. The literary tests point one way, the matter
of
the passage
the other. Thus Wellhausen: "The whole
character of
the narrative points to J. E, who has
God
378 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
appear in
dreams, and call from heaven, and then, too,
sometimes
introduces the angel or angels as a medium,
cannot have
related such a corporeal theophany; on the
other hand
we are reminded of xv .17 seq., and of ch. xviii.,
xix.
J." Kuenen ("Hexateuch,"
p. 250) claims on the same
ground that
"it falls in far better with J's than with E's
tone of
thought." Dillmann points to Elohim
(vs. 29,
31) as
decisive for E, and claims that "Wellhausen's op-
posing
grounds prove nothing or rest on bare postu-
lates." Delitzsch says, "The name Elohim is by
itself
alone no
decisive criterion against J," thus dislodging
the very
foundation-stone of the divisive hypothesis, and
adds,
"The answer to the question whether J or E is the
narrator
remains uncertain and purely subjective."
The readiness with which the critics can
upon occa-
sion set
aside their own tests, whether derived from the
matter or
the literary form, tends to confirm the belief
that they
are of a precarious nature generally, and that
the verdict
of Delitzsch as to the subjective character of
critical
conclusions is applicable to other instances be-
sides the
present. Dr. Harper uses the following
lan-
guage in
relation to this and the preceding chapters: 1
"The
individual variations of critics, touching this sec-
tion
(xxviii. 10-xxxiii. 17), many and arbitrary as they
may be, are
due to special considerations. They are
unanimous as
to the existence of an analysis. This
sec-
tion, it is
universally admitted, is very unsatisfactory;
the
duplicates and differences relate wholly to details,
not to general
narratives, while the omissions are many
and
important. If it were necessary to rely
wholly on
this
section, no critic would claim an analysis." All crit-
ical
differences are thus sunk in one grand consensus.
"They
are unanimous as to the existence of an analysis,"
whether they
can agree upon any particular analysis or
1 Hebraica, V. iv., p. 284.
JACOB AND ESAU (CRS. XXXII. 4-XXXIII.
17) 379
not. And we have had abundant exemplification or
the
fact that
where there is a determination to effect the
partition of
a passage, notwithstanding the clearest evi-
dences of
its unity, it can always be done with reason or
without it.
In his first edition Dillmann ventured the
suggestion
that "in E this narrative (of Jacob's
wrestling with the
angel) did
not necessarily stand in any intimate connec-
tion with
the meeting of the two brothers; and at all
events its
peculiar significance as preparatory to the
meeting with
Esau, and as supplementary to the prayer
(vs. 10-13),
was first acquired by its being fitted into its
present
place by R." By thus isolating the
passage from
the
connection, from which its whole significance is de-
rived, in a
manner better suited to the fragment than
the document
hypothesis, it is easy to pervert its whole
meaning and
character, as though it stood on a level
with the
stories of heathen mythology, just as the same
thing is
done with vi. 1-4, by sundering it from all
that goes
before and that comes after. In
subsequent
editions
Dillmann regards the wrestling with the angel
as parallel
to the prayer (vs. 10-13), only he apportions
them to
different documents, and thus impairs the unity
of the
narrative.
Jacob has hitherto been relying upon his
own strength
and skill,
and has sought success by artifices of his own.
He is now
taught that his own strength is of no avail in
wrestling
with God. Disabled by the touch of his
di-
vine
antagonist he is obliged to resort to importunate
petition for
the blessing which he craved, and which he
could not do
without.
The verb "abak," wrestled
(vs. 25, 26), which occurs
nowhere
else, is here used with allusion to the name of
the stream,
Jabbok, on the bank of which it occurred,
without,
however, implying that it received this name
380 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
from this
occurrence. The double allusion to the
sig-
nificance of
the name Penuel (xxxii. 31; xxxiii. 10 1) is
adduced as
evidencing two distinct documents, which it
manifestly
does not.
NO PROOF OF A PARALLEL NARRATIVE
While xxxiii. 1-17 is referred to J,
Dillmann seeks to
show that E
must have had a similar account by point-
ing out what
he considers indications of fragments from
E, which
have been inserted by R, viz., Elohim, which
occurs
inconveniently in a J paragraph (vs. 5, 11) (but
not ver. 10,
where he says Jehovah could not be used),
the
repetition (ver. 11) of the request (ver. 10) that
Esau would
accept the present offered him (which sim-
ply
indicates Jacob's urgency), and ver. 4, where "fell
on his
neck" follows "embraced him," whereas the re-
verse would
be the natural order (the same hypercritical
argument
might be applied to Acts v. 30, "whom ye slew
and hanged
on a tree"). It can scarcely be
said that
such proofs
are of even the slightest weight.
THE DIVINE NAMES
The divine names are appropriately
used. Jacob ad-
dresses his
prayer to Jehovah (xxxii. 10). Elohim
occurs
(xxxii. 29;
31; xxxiii. 10) because of the contrast with
men,
expressed or implied, and xxxiii. 5, 11, because the
reference is
to the providential benefits of the Most
High, as
well as for the additional reason that Esau is
addressed,
who is outside of the line of the covenant.
1 The absurdities to which critical
partition, aided by a lively imag-
ination, can
lead is wel1 illustrated by Wel1hausen's discovery, based on
these
verses, that "the God in J, who
meets Jacob in Penuel, is Esau in
E," an
identification which he thinks of some importance in the his-
tory of
religion, as adding another to the list of deities.
JACOB AND ESAU (CHS. XXXII. 4-XXXIII. 17) 381
MARKS OF J
1.
The back reference in xxxii. 10 to xxviii. 13; xxxi.
3; and in
ver. 13 to xxviii. 14, the expressions being in
part
conformed to xxii. 17 (of which by the hypothesis J
could know
nothing), xvi. 10. This is not only
readily
conceded,
but affirmed.
2. tm,c<v,
ds,H, hWAfA show mercy
and truth (xxxii.
11).
See ch.
xviii., xix., Marks of J, No. 29, ch. xxiv., Marks
of J, No.6.
3. hHAp;wi
bondmaid (xxxii. 6), where this is the only
proper word;
and xxxiii. 1, 2, 6, where the reference is
to Zilpah
and Bilhah, and either hHAp;wi or hmAxA would be
appropriate. See ch. xxi. 1-21, Marks of E, No. 11, ch.
xxix., xxx.,
Marks of J, No.4.
4. txraq;li CUr run to meet
(xxxiii. 4). See ch. xxix., xxx.,
Marks of J,
No.2.
5. hcAHA divided
(xxxiii. 1; xxxii. 8); nowhere else in
J; it occurs
besides in the Hexateuch only, Ex. xxii. 35
bis E; Num.
xxxi. 27, 42 a later stratum of P.
6. yneyreB;
NHe ytixcAmA xnA-Mxi if now I have found favor
in the sight
of (xxxii. 6;
xxxiii. 8, 16). See ch. xii. 10-
20, Marks of
J, No.3; ch. vi. 1-8, Marks of J, No. 10.
No words or expressions are claimed for E
in this sec-
tion. Alleged doublets and variant conceptions are
the
only
indications of this document here adduced, and
these have
all been considered above. dl,y, child, which
is claimed
as an E word in xxi. 1-21 (see Marks of E,
No.6) occurs
here, xxxii., 23; xxxiii. 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14,
all which
are referred to J. This word is used
through-
out this
narrative because the children were quite young,
only from
six to thirteen years of age.
382 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
THE RAPE OF DINAH (CH. XXXIII. 18-XXXIV.)
This passage is a fresh puzzle for the
critics, which
they labor
to resolve in various ways, and hence there is
no little
divergence among them. The difficulty
here is
not the
chronic one of disentangling J and E, but of re-
leasing P
from the meshes in which it is involved.
It is
a notable
refutation of the common assertion that what-
ever
difficulty may attend the separation of J and E, it
is always
easy to distinguish P from them both.
And it
is a clear
illustration of the fact that, wherever part of a
narrative is
conceded to P it is interlocked with the
other
documents as closely as they are with one another.
This passage
is so linked with what precedes and follows
in the
history, there are so many references to other
passages in
it and from other passages to it, it is so allied
by forms of
expression and ideas contained in it to pas-
sages
elsewhere, and all this runs counter in so many
ways to the
prepossessions and conclusions of the critics,
as to form a
veritable labyrinth through which it requires
all their
adroitness to thread their way.
The name of God occurs but once in the
entire pas-
sage
(xxxiii. 20), so that all pretext is cut off for division
on that
ground. "EI-Elohe-Israel," the
Mighty God, the
God of
Israel, to whom Jacob dedicates the altar, is the
distinctive
name of him whom he adores. The God of
Abraham and
of Isaac has been with him, and kept him,
and provided
for him, and brought him back to the land
of his
fathers in peace, and has thus shown himself to be
the God of
Jacob (xxviii. 13, 15, 20, 21); or adopting the
new name,
indicative of the changed character of the
patriarch
(xxxii. 29), he is the God of Israel.
THE RAPE OF DINAH (CBS. XXXIII.
18-XXXIV.) 383
JACOB'S ARRIVAL IN SHECHEM
Ch. xxxiii. 18-20 completes an important
stage of Ja-
cob's
journey, begun xxxi. 17, and continued ch. xxxv.,
while it is
immediately preliminary to the incident re-
corded in
ch. xxxiv. The simple statements
contained
in these
verses, naturally as they belong together, give
no small
trouble to the critics, who are obliged to parcel
them among
the different documents.
"And Jacob came in peace to the city
of Shechem,
which is in
the land of Canaan, when he came from
Paddan-aram"
(ver. 18a), is given to P because of the
italicized
expressions; and yet it explicitly alludes to
Jacob's vow
(xxviii. 21 E), whose condition is declared
to have been
fulfilled, and hence (xxxv. 1 E) the per-
formance of
what he then stipulated is demanded.
There is no
escape from this manifest reference in one
document to
the contents of another but by striking "in
peace"
out of the text. Again, P here records
the ter-
mination of
an expedition on which he had laid great
stress at
Jacob's setting out (xxviii. 1-5), but all be-
tween these
limits is almost an absolute blank. P
has
not said one
word to indicate whether Jacob had accom-
plished the
purpose for which he went to Paddan-aram.
Still
further, Jacob's route, it is said, is purposely laid
through the
holy places, Shechem and Bethel (xxxv. 6,
15). The fact is just the reverse or what is
alleged.
The
hallowing of certain localities in later times did not
give rise to
the stories of their having been visited by
patriarchs
and being the scene of divine manifestations.
But their
association with the history of the patriarchs
imparted a
sacredness, which led to their selection as
places of
idolatrous worship. Admitting, however,
the
explanation
of the critics, why should P and J (see also
384 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
xii. 6, 8),
who belonged to "Judah, be concerned to put
honor on the
schismatical sanctuaries of northern Is-
rael?
"Shechem, which is in the land of
Canaan;" the rela-
tive clause
is not a needless expletive, due to P's cus-
tomary
verbosity. It emphasizes the fact that
Jacob has
now at
length reached the holy land, from which he had
been so long
absent. And "Luz, which is in the
land of
Canaan"
(xxxv. 6), has the same significance; the im-
plied contrast
is not with another Luz; but with another
land in
which Jacob had been ever since he was at Luz
before.
Verse 19 is repeated in Josh. xxiv. 32,
which records the
burial of
the bones of Joseph in the plot of ground here
purchased,
and by critical rules is assigned to E, who as
a
North-Israelite would be interested in this event as P
and J would
not. Jacob's ownership of land near She-
chem is
confirmed by his flocks subsequently feeding
there
(xxxvii. 12 in J, who thus seems to be aware of a
fact only
stated in E). This peaceable purchase,
how-
ever, is
alleged by Kuenen and others to be at variance
with the
violent seizure related xxxiv. 25-27, as though
this were a
conflicting account from another source of the
way in which
Jacob came into the possession of property
in that
quarter. And yet ver. 19 is plainly
preparatory
for ch.
xxxiv. Hamor is called "Shechem's
father" for
no other
reason than to introduce the reader to the prom-
inent actor
in the narrative that follows (xxxiv. 2); this
can only be
evaded by pronouncing "Shechem's father"
a spurious
addition by R. E, too (xlviii. 22), refers to a
conquest by
force of arms, which must have been addi-
tional to
the purchase; a conclusion which Wellhausen
seeks to
escape by giving ver. 19 to J (Judean though he
is), and
ascribing xxxiv. 27 not to J, but to some unknown
source. Jacob's purchase recalls that of Abraham (ch.
THE RAPE OF
DINAH (CHS. XXXIII. 18-XXXIV.) 385
xxiii. P),
and is based on the same principle of acquiring
a permanent
and a legal right to a properly in the holy
land. There is certainly as good reason to claim
that
they are by
the same author as the critics are able to
advance in
many instances in which they assume iden-
tity of
authorship as undoubted,
"El-Elohe-Israel" (ver. 20)
clearly refers back to
xxxii. 29,
the change of the patriarch's name, thus
clinching
Dillmann's conclusion that the wrestling on
the banks of
the Jabbok must on critical grounds be as-
signed to E,
whose anthropomorphism here equals that
of J. But this name (xxxiii. 20), which points to
E, is
linked with
the erection of an altar, which is commonly
distinctive
of J (xii. 7, 8, etc.). E for the most
part sets
up pillars
instead (xxviii. 18; xxxv. 14, 20). The
text
must
accordingly be adjusted to the hypothesis.
The
only
question about which there is a difference of opin-
ion is,
shall "altar" be erased and "pillar" substituted?
Or shall R
be supposed to have had two texts before
him,
"built an altar" (J), and "set up a pillar" (E),
which he has
mixed by taking the verb from E and the
noun from J.
Dillmann suspects that ver. 18b is from J,
because of
NHay.va encamped, which occurs but once besides in Genesis
(xxvi. 17
J), though in subsequent books repeatedly
both in P
and E, and yneP;-tx,
before (xix. 13, 27; Ex.
xxxiv. 23,
24 J; but also Lev. iv. 6, 17; x. 4 P; and
Gen. xxvii.
30; Ex. x. 11 E). If J relates what oc-
curred at
Shechem (ch. xxxiv.), it is certainly to be ex-
pected that
he would mention Jacob's arrival there;
hence the
eagerness of the critics to find some indica-
tions of J
in these verses. So that P, J, E, and R
are
all
represented in fragments of these three verses; and
one scarcely
knows which to admire most, the ingenuity
of a
redactor who could construct a continuous narra-
386 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
tive in this
piecemeal fashion, or that of the modern
critic who
can unravel such a tangled web.
CRITICAL DIFFICULTIES
The stress laid upon circumcision in ch.
xxxiv. by the
sons of
Jacob, recalls its institution in the family of
Abraham (ch.
xvii.), and the transactions in the public
meeting of
citizens resemble those in ch. xxiii., and there
is a
striking similarity of expressions in these chapters;
e.g.: rkAzA-lKA Mk,lA lOm.hi every male of you be circumcised
(vs. 15, 22;
cf. the identical expression, xvii. 10, 12);
rkAzA-lKA every male (vs.
24, 25 ; cf. xvii. 23); hlAr;fA foreskin,
uncircumcised (ver. 14; cf. xvii. 11, 14, 23 sqq.); xyWinA
prince (ver. 2; cf. xvii. 20; xxiii 6); UzHExAhe get you pos-
sessions (ver. 10); cf. hz.AHxE possession (xvii. 8; xxiii. 4, 9,
20); rHasA
trade (vs. 10,. 21), cf. rHeso trader (xxiii. 16);
Oryfi rfawa yxec;yo-lKA all that went out of the gate of his city
(ver. 24
bis), cf. Oryfi rfawa yxeBA lKo all that went in at the
gate of his
city (xxiii. 10,
18); xm.eFi
defile (vs. 5, 13, 27) is
a technical
term of the ritual law, and is found nowhere
else in the
Pentateuch. Knobel adds, as
characteristic
of P from
the critical stand-point: Cr,xAhA
tOnB; daughters
of the land (ver. 1);
-lx, fmawA hearken unto (vs.
17, 24);
NyAn;qi substance; hmAheB; beast (ver. 23). Dillmann
further
adds j`xa
only (vs. 15, 22, 23).
All this points to P as the author of the
chapter. But
according to
the current critical analysis P knows noth-
ing of the
various characters here introduced, nor of the
chain of
events with which this narrative is concate-
nated; and
in fact the narrative itself is altogether out of
harmony with
the spirit and tone of this document as
the critics
conceive it. It is E (xxx. 21) that
records
the birth of
Dinah,l evidently with a view to what is
1 Von Bohlen imagines a chronological
contradiction between xxx. 21
and ch.
xxxiv. He calculates that Dinah could be
"scarcely six or
THE RAPE OF
DINAH (CHS. XXXIII. 18-XXXIV.) 387
here related
of her; just as xxix. 24, 29 is preparatory
for xxx. 4,
9; xxii. 23 for xxiv. 15 sqq.; xix. 15 for vs. 30
sqq. Otherwise it would not have been mentioned
(cf.
xxrii. 23;
xxxvii. 35; xlvi. 7). It is J and E that
tell
or the sons
of Jacob (xxxiv. 7, 27; cf. xxix. 32 sqq.), and
particularly
of Simeon and Levi, own brothers of Dinah
(xxxiv.
25). It is E that tells of the change of
Jacob's
name to
Israel (xxxiv. 7; cf. xxxii. 29), and introduces
the reader
to Shechem and his father Hamor (xxxiv. 2;
cf. xxxlli.
19). It is J and E that detail the
various
trials with
which the life of Jacob was filled in one con-
tinuous
series from the time of the fraud which he prac-
tised upon
his aged father and his brother Esau, viz., his
compulsory
flight, Laban's deceiving him in his mar-
riage,
attempting to defraud him in his wages and pur-
suing him
with hostile intent on his way to Canaan, his
alarm at the
approach of Esau, and last and sorest of all,
the loss of
his favorite, Joseph. According to the
crit-
ical
partition, P makes no allusion to any of these troub-
les. They are all of one tenor and evidently
belong to-
gether, and
this disgrace of Jacob's daughter fits into its
place among
them. And we are told that it is alien
to
P to record
anything derogatory to any of the patriarchs.
seven years
old" at the time referred to in ch. xxxiv., inasmuch as she
was Leah's
seventh child, Jacob married Leah after seven years of ser-
vice, and he
remained in all twenty years with Laban.
But he over-
looks the
fact that Jacob had meanwhile resided for a considerable
time both at
Succoth (xxxiii. 17), where "he built him a house," and at
Shechem,
where (ver. 19) "he bought a parcel of ground." The length
of his stay
in these two places is not particularly stated.
But as Joseph
was born
(xxx. 25) when Jacob had served Laban fourteen years, he was
six years
old when they left Paddan-aram. Eleven
years consequently
elapsed
between the departure from Paddan-aram and what is recorded
in ch.
xxxvii. (see ver. 2). We are at entire
liberty to assume that ten
of these had
passed before ch. xxxiv, in which case Dinah would be
sixteen or
seventeen. Her youth is implied ver. 4,
where she is called
hDAl;ya.
388 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
There are
subsequent allusions also to this history in J
(xlix. 5, 6)
and in E (xxxv. 5; xlviii. 22).
DIVERGENCE OF THE CRITICS
Thus this chapter is ,strongly bound to P
on the one
hand, and to
J and E on the other, in a manner that is
not
compatible with the original separateness of these
so-called
documents. The early critics, Astruc and
Eichhorn,
accepted the unity of ch. xxxiv. without ques-
tion. Ilgen did the same, notwithstanding his
disposi-
tion to
splinter whatever seemed capable of separation.
Tuch, who
recognized no distinction between P and E,
unhesitatingly
assigned the whole of the chapter to P;
so did
Ewald, Gram berg, and Stahelin. Hupfeld,
un-
able to
dispute the unity of the chapter, gave it in the
first
instance to E, in spite of its admitted relationship to
P
("Quellen," p. 46); but on second thought he assigned
it to J
("Quellen," pp. 186 sqq.), in which Kayser and
Schrader
follow him.1
On the ground of language and the
comparison of
xlix. 5-7,
from which the inference was drawn that in the
original
form of the story Simeon and Levi were the
only actors
and no plunder was taken, Knobel supposed
that the
groundwork of the story was by P, but this was
1 In how serious a. quandary
Hupfeld found himself in regard to the
disposition
of this chapter is apparent from the manner of his argument
in reversing
his former decision. He says that the
grounds for refer-
ring it to P
are "weighty and difficult to be set aside;" on his original
assumption
that xxxiii. 19 and xxxv. 5 belong to E, he cannot conclude
otherwise in
regard to ch. xxxiv.; nevertheless xlix. 5-7 compels him
to assign it
to J, while xlviii. 22 makes it necessary to maintain that E
had here a
similar narrative which R has not preserved.
He then frees
himself from
the embarrassment created by xxxiii. 19 and xxxv. 5 by
transferring
these verses to J. In a note he offers
the conjecture, of
which others
have since availed themselves, that vs. 27-29 may be an
interpolation
or inserted from another source.
THE RAPE OF
DINAH (CHS. XXXIII. 18-XXXIV.) 389
supplemented
and enlarged by J with matter taken from
another
source.1
Dillmann made a different partition and
maintained
that the
want of agreement and coherence between the
parts is
such as to show that two separate narratives
have been
fused together by a redactor. In his
first
1The
different critical analyses of ch. xxxiv.
Knobel: Grundschrift, vs. 1-4, 6, 15-18,
20-26. Kriegsbuch, VS. 5, 7-14, 19, 27-31.
Dillmann (1st): P, vs. 1, 2a, 4, 6, 8-10,
15-18a, 20-24 (25, 26 in
part). J, vs. 2b, 3, 5, 7, 11-14, 18b, 19 (25, 26 in
part), 27-31.
Dillmann (3d): P, vs. la, 2a, 4, 6, 8-10,
15, (14)-17, 20-24. J, vs.
2b, 3, 5, 7,
11-13 (14), 19, 25*, 26, 30, 31. R, vs.
27-29.
Kittell follows Dillmann (3d).
Wellhausen: J, vs. 3, 7*, 11, 12, 19,
25*, 26, 30, 31. Unknown
Source, vs.
1*, 2*, 4-6, 8-10, 13*, 14*, 15-17, 20-24, 25*, 27-29.
Oort:
Interpolation, "deceitfully," ver. 13, vs. 27, 28.
Boehmer: J, vs. 1*, 2*, 3, 4, 6, 8-12,
13*, 14-22, 24-26a, 28-30.
R, vs. lb,
2b, 5,7, 13*J 23, 26b, 27, 31.
Delitzsch: P, vs. 1, 2, 4, 6, 8-10,
14-18, 20-24. J, vs. 3, 5, 7, 11,
12, 19, 25,
26, 30, 31. E, vs. 13, 27-29.
Colenso (Pentateuch, Part VII. Appendix,
p. 149): J, vs. 1, 2a, 3a,
4, 6, 7a,
8-13a, 14-24. D, vs. 2b, 3b, 5, 7b, 13b,
25-31.
Driver: J, vs. 2b, 3, 5, 7, 11, 12, 19,
25*, 26, 30, 31. P, vs. 1, 2a,
4, 6, 8-10,
13-18, 20-24, 25*, 27-29.
Dr. Driver, while confessing that
"the analysis is not throughout
equally
certain," adopts substantially Wellhausen's division. Only (1)
he
attributes to P, on the ground of unmistakable marks of P's style,
what
Wellhausen and Kuenen positively declare could not be his, thus
annulling
(as he has frequent occasion besides to do in the middle
books of the
Pentateuch) his often-repeated statement that P is clearly
distinguishable
from J, and even his more carefully guarded assertion
that
"in Genesis as regards the limits of P there is practically no differ-
ence of
opinion among critics."--Literature of Old Testament, p. 9.
And (2) he
somewhat inconsistently transfers ver. 5 to J, though he
thinks it to
be at variance with ver. 30: "In
ver. 30 Jacob expresses
dissatisfaction
at what his sons have done, while from ver. 5 it would
be inferred
that they had merely given effect to their father's resent-
ment." If this discrepancy is no bar to the
reference of vs. 5 and 30
to the same
document, why should the other discrepancies "inferred"
by the
critics, but which are also purely imaginary, hinder our belief in
the common
authorship of the entire chapter?
390 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
edition he
held that, according to the earlier form of the
story given
by P, Shechem, a native prince, asks the
hand of
Dinah in marriage, whereupon Jacob and his
sons promise
to consent to intermarriages between them-
selves and
the Shechemites on condition of the circum-
cision of
the latter. And the house of Jacob was
on the
point of
affiliating with the citizens of Shechem when
Simeon and
Levi, whose zeal was aroused for the purity
of their
race and to prevent its contamination by inter-
mingling
with Gentiles, frustrated the plan by assault-
ing the city
and putting Shechem and his father to
death. In a later form of the story given by J,
Jacob's
sons were
angered not at the prospect of their sister's
marriage
with a foreigner, but at her actual dishonor.
They propose
the circumcision of the Shechemites, not
sincerely as
in P, but craftily, with the design of aveng-
ing their
sister's betrayal. And the credit of punishing
the crime of
Shechem is assigned, not to Simeon and
Levi alone,
but to all the sons of Jacob.
In later editions Dillrnann modifies his
view materi-
ally by
rejecting vs. 27-29 as a later interpolation, and
transferring
vs. 25, 26 from P to J, thus no longer mak-
ing P prior
to J, and relieving P from recording a vari-
ance in the
patriarchal family. P's account is then
sim-
ply
concerned with the legal question as to the proper
procedure in
giving a daughter in marriage to a foreigner.
The answer
given is, that in order to intermarriage with
the
Shechemites they must first be circumcised.
To this
they assent
in the persuasion that the advantage will be
greatly on
their side, and that the house of Jacob, losing
its
distinctive character, will become a part of themselves
(vs.
21-24). Here the narrative breaks off
unfinished
without
disclosing the final issue. If P
approved of this
arrangement
he must, as Kuenen1 argues, "have been
1 Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 263.
THE RAPE OF
DINAH (CHS. XXXIII. IS-XXXIV.) 391
more of a
Hamorite than an Israelite, or at least neutral
in respect
to the two clans." And he
positively refuses
"to
admit the existence of such a species until another
specimen of
it is discovered." J's account on
this
scheme is
that the most honored man in Shechem (ver.
19) carried
off Dinah and dishonored her. But as his
love to her
grew, he desired her in marriage from Jacob
and his
sons, and offers any compensation in the way of
bridal
gift. The brothers, exasperated at the
disgrace of
their
sister, deceitfully make the condition the circumci-
sion of
Shechem (whether that of the other citizens of
the place
also is uncertain), and when he is disabled by
the
resulting sickness, Simeon and Levi kill him and re-
cover their
sister. Jacob blames them severely for
hav-
ing placed
him and his family in peril by their rash
deed. The redactor is responsible for confusing the
ac-
counts to
some extent, and especially for inserting the cir-
cumcision
and massacre of the Shechemites in J's ac-
count in
ver. 25; and he betrays his later stand-point by
the strong
expression, "defile their sister" (vs. 27, 13b,
5; see also
ver. 14b).
Wellhausen makes a different disposition
of several
verses and
brings out quite a different result. He
takes
his point of
departure from an alleged discrepancy be-
tween vs. 26
and 27. In vs. 25, 26, and again ver.
30, the
deed is
imputed to Simeon and Levi, but in ver. 27 to
the sons of
Jacob, i.e., the children of Israel. One
ac-
count, J's,
represented in the former of these passages,
but only
preserved in a fragmentary way, makes of it a
family
affair. Simeon and Levi avenge the wrong
done
their sister
by entering Hamor's house and killing
Shechem, when
he was off his guard, to the great offence
of
Jacob. There was no circumcision in the
case.
Shechem had
offered any dowry, however large, in order
to obtain
Dinah in marriage. We have no means of
392 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
knowing how
much was demanded; but, whatever it was,
Shechem had
promptly paid it. The other, which is
the
principal
account, deals with international relations, out
of which
perhaps the story grew. It cannot
therefore
belong to
either P or E, but is of unknown origin.
It is
an affair
between the Bne Israel and the Bne Hamor,
whose
capital was Shechem. The latter
submitted to
circumcision
with a view to a friendly alliance, and when
disabled in
consequence were treacherously massacred.
Though E is
excluded from this chapter by Wellhausen,
the evident
allusions to this history in E oblige him to
confess that
he must have had a similar narrative in this
place as the
motive for Jacob's removal from Shechem
(see xxxv.
5). It is also unfortunate for his
analysis that
ver. 25 has
to be reconstructed; for in its present form
it implies
the circumcision and affirms the assault upon
the city and
the massacre of its citizens, showing that
Simeon and
Levi had assistance. And this is
confirmed
by ver. 30,
where Jacob apprehends reprisals, not from
the
Shechemites, but from the inhabitants of the land
generally,
and also by xlix. 5, 6, which speaks of vio-
lence done
to oxen as well as men.
Oort1 held that this chapter
(freed from the interpola-
tions vs.
27, 28, and "deceitfully," ver. 13) dates from
the period
of the judges, and is explanatory of the situa-
tion
described in Judg. ix. (see ver. 28.)2 "In the form of
1 Oort's Bible for Learners,
English Translation, vol, i., p. 398.
2 This passage, by which Oort
seeks to discredit the narrative in
Gen. xxxiv.,
is, on the contrary, urged by Havernick in confirmation of
its
historical accuracy. Gaal's appeal to
the Shechemites, to "serve
the men of
Hamor, the father of Shechem," implies that the descend-
ants of Hamor
were the prominent ruling family of the place.
The
title., "father of the city of Shechem,"
suggests that Hamor was its
founder,
naming it after his son. When Abram
passed through the
place (Gen.
xii. 6) there is no intimation that there was as yet any
city. This is first mentioned in the time of Jacob;
and its recent
THE RAPE OF DINAH (CHS. XXXIII. l8-XXXIV.) 393
a family
history of the patriarchal period the narrator
has here
given us a fragment of the history of the Israel-
ite people,
or at any rate of some of the tribes. . . .
The legend
deals with one of the burning questions of
the period
of the Judges--the question whether Israelites
and
Canaanites might intermarry. The
practice was
very
advantageous to both parties, and especially to the
conquered
race; but to the Israelite of pure blood, who
looked down
with contempt upon the old inhabitants of
the place,
it was an abomination. The Canaanites
are
represented
in the legend under the person of Shechem,
the son of
Hamor, which shows that this question was
debated in
the city of Shechem, where the Hamorites, a
Hivite
tribe, were settled. This fact enables
us to bring
the legend
into connection with the history of Abimelech,
and to find
the counterparts of the zealots, Simeon and
Levi, in
Gaal and his brothers."
Kuenen, in his "Religion of
Israel," i., pp. 311, 409,
accepted
this view of Oort, though differing from him as
to the date
and analysis of the chapter and its specific
reference to
the particular occasion spoken of in Judg.
ix. Nevertheless he "fully assented to
Oort's main idea,"
that Gen.
xxxiv. "gives us historical
reminiscences from
the period
of the Judges in the form of a narrative about
the
patriarchal age." "Shechem and his father Hamor
represent in
this narrative the Canaanites, who are in-
clined to
intermarry with Israel, and who submit to the
conditions
attached to this step. Simeon and Levi
con-
sider such a
contract an abomination and feign satisfac-
tion with it
only to hinder it the more effectually.
This
narrative
already discloses the idea that the violent
measures to
which the adherents of the strictly national
tendency
were obliged to resort in order to attain their
origin and
consequent insignificance accounts for the successful attack
upon it by
Simeon and Levi and their adherents.
394 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
purpose,
were looked upon by many as questionable and
dangerous
" (ver. 30).
In an article1 published in
1880, Kuenen accepts the
analysis of
Wellhausen, and agrees with him that in J's
account
Jacob and his sons impose a heavy money for-
feit upon
Shechem and assent to his marriage with Di-
nah, which
would have taken place if Simeon and Levi,
less
yielding than the rest, had not interfered and killed
Shechem. He differs from Wellhausen in regard to the
rest of the
chapter, which in his esteem is not a sepa-
rate
account, that once existed by itself and was subse-
quently
combined with that of J by a redactor.
J's
account was
distasteful to post-exilic readers, and was
in
consequence remodelled into the form in which we
possess it
now. The Philistines are the only ones
spoken of in
pre-exlic writings as uncircumcised,2 and
they did not
belong to the original inhabitants of Ca-
naan. The idea that the Bne Hamor, or any other Ca-
naanitish
tribe, were distinguished from the family of J a-
cob by being
uncircumcised, and that they must be cir-
cumcised
prior to intermarriage with them, could not
have arisen
before the exile. The deed of Shechem is
judged with
such extreme severity, and no punishment
however
treacherous and cruel, is esteemed too great be-
cause he had
"defiled" Dinah (vs. 5, 13, 27), which is
much worse
than robbing her of her honor. The word
conjures up
that frightful phantom of post-exilic Judaism,
alliance
with foreigners (see Ezra ix., x).
Shechem's
deed, and no
less his effort to make it good, was a crime
against the
people of God to be prevented by fire and
sword. On these grounds he concludes that this
chapter
has been
remodelled, not indeed by P, who could not
1 Gesammelte Abhandlungen, pp.
255-276.
2 Judg. xiv. 3; xv. 18; 1 Sam.
xiv. 6; :xvii. 26, 36; xxxi. 4; 2 Sam.
i.20.
THE RAPE OF
DINAH (CH. XXXIII. 18- XXXIV.) 395
depart so
far from his usage as to introduce this tale of
treachery
and plunder, but by a post-exilic diaskeuast of
the school
of P, who has borrowed his style and his
ideas.
All this reasoning, as Dillmann suggests,
is of no force
to those who
do not accept Kuenen's assertion that cir-
cumcision
was regarded with indifference in pre-exilic
times. In fact he overturns it himself in his
"Hexateuch,"
p. 326, by
leaving it "an open question" whether J's ac-
count
"had itself represented the circumcision of She-
chem (not of
all the citizens) as a condition laid down
in good
faith by the sons of Jacob."
Merx1 follows Boehmer in
eliminating from the narra-
tive all
that relates to the dishonor of Dinah, the deceit
of her
brothers, and the plunder of the city as interpo-
lations. What is left is regarded as the original
story as
told by a
writer in North Israel. It is to the
effect that
Shechem
asked the hand of Dinah in honorable marriage,
giving the
required dowry and submitting likewise to the
condition of
being circumcised, together with his people.
But Simeon
and Levi treacherously fell upon them in
their
sickness and murdered them, to Jacob's great alarm.
The rest of
his sons did not participate in the deed.
He
thus saves
the honor of Dinah, but takes away all motive
for the
conduct of Simeon and Levi. The design
of the
original
narrator was to affix a stigma upon Simeon and
Levi, as
these tribes adhered to the southern kingdom
and the
worship of Jerusalem. The interpolations
of the
Judaic
redactor were apologetic. They represent
Si-
meon and
Levi as avenging the honor of their house,
while the
other tribes are also involved in the transaction
and are
solely responsible for the plunder that fol-
lowed.
In his first edition Delitzsch assigned
the entire chap-
1Schenkel's Bibel-Lexicon,
Art., Dina. I,
396 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
ter to P; he
did the same in the third and fourth edi-
tions, only
excepting vs. 27-29 as inserted from another
source, the
sons of Jacob there spoken of being identical
with Simeon
and Levi of ver. 25. In his last edition
however, he
partitions the chapter somewhat differently
from his
predecessors, and finds two accounts by P and
by J1
essentially agreeing. In both Dinah is
seduced
by the young
prince, who then earnestly desires her in
marriage;
the circumcision of the Shechemites is made
the
condition in both; in both Dinah is taken off and
brought back
again. There is, besides, a brief
passage
from E,
recording the capture and sack of Shechem sim-
ply as an
exploit of the sons of Jacob.
The critics have thus demonstrated that it
is possi-
ble to
sunder this chapter into parts, ea.ch of which taken
separately
shall yield a different narrative; and that this
can, be done
very variously, and with the most remarka-
ble
divergence in the results. Now which are
we to be-
lieve,
Dillmann, Wellhausen, Oort, Kuenen, Merx, or De-
litzsch? They each profess to give us the original
form
or forms of
the story, and no two agree. Is it not
appar-
ent that the
critical process of each is purely subjective?
The critic
makes out of the narrative just what he pleases,
selecting
such portions as suit him and discarding the
rest. The result is a mere speculative fancy,
without
the
slightest historical value. Delitzsch
correctly says,
1In defending his analysis
Delitzsch remarks that rfn=hrfn, in
each
of the
twenty-one times in which it occurs, belongs to J or D. To note
this as
characteristic of a particular writer is to affirm that It belonged
to the text
as originally written. This is
equivalent, therefore, to a re-
traction of
his opinion expressed in Luthardt's Zeitschrift for 1880, Art.
No.8, that
the use of this word as a feminine as well as xvh=xyh
is traceable
to the manipulation of the text by later diaskeuasts, instead
of being, as
it has commonly been regarded, an archaic form properly
belonging to
the original text of the passages in which it occurs and
characteristic
of the Pentateuch.
THE RAPE OF
DINAH (CH. XXXIII. 18- XXXIV.) 397
"Evidence
and agreement are here scarcely attainable."
And what is
so obvious here in this discord of the crit-
ics attaches
equally to their methods and results where
they follow
in each others tracks. The text is
decom-
posed ad
libitum into fragments of documents, and emen-
dations or
additions by various editors and redactors.
The whole
thing is regulated by the will or the precon-
ceived ideas
of the critic, and is a mere subjective crea-
tion, with only
basis enough in the literary phenomena to
give it a
faint savor of plausibility.
The abruptness of this narrative in P, who
has made
no previous
mention of any of the parties concerned, has
already been
referred to. Its incompleteness, as made
out by
Dillmann, is suggested by the question to which
no answer
can be given, what became of Dinah? It is
insupposable
that negotiations of such a character should
be carried
on to the extent indicated and no mention
made of the
issue. It seems that Dinah could not
have
married
Shechem since P speaks of her as a member of
Jacob's
family, when he went down into Egypt (xlvi. 15).
If not, why
not, since the condition on which it was de-
pendent was
fulfilled? Why is nothing further heard
of
this
circumcised community at Shechem, and of the in-
tercourse
and intermarriages here anticipated? Is
there
any
explanation of this silence, except that given in the
verses which
Dillmann has so carefully exscinded, and
of which
Kuenen justly says (" Hexateuch," p. 326), "I
cannot see
any possibility of separating these verses (27-
29) and the
corresponding expressions in vs. 5, 13 from
P's
account."
It is said in explanation of the
incompleteness of this
story in P
that it has a legal rather than a historical pur-
pose. But it is surely very inconsistent in P to
enact
such a law
as is here supposed. He informs us that
Esau's
marriage with Canaanites was a great grief to his
398 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
parents
(xxvi. 35; xxviii. 8), and that they would not
consent to
such a marriage on the part of Jacob (xxvii.
46; xxviii.
1, 6). And yet here he is supposed by
Dill-
mann to
favor a general regulation for intermarriage with
Canaanites
on condition of their being circumcised.
J's
estimate of
the Canaanites and of the peril of contam-
ination from
alliances with them agrees with P's (xxiv.
3; xiii. 13;
xv. 16; xviii. 20 seq.; ch. xix.; cf. ver. 29
P). Even on the principles of the critics
themselves it
cannot be
imagined that P here sanctions what is in di-
rect
antagonism to the positive injunctions of every code
of laws in
the Pentateuch, viz.: E, Ex. xxiii. 32, 33; J,
Ex. xxxiv.
12, 15, 16; Num. xxxiii. 52, 55, 56; Holiness
Laws, Lev.
xviii. 24, 25; xx. 22, 23; D, Deut. vii. 3; as
well as the
unanimous voice of tradition (Josh. xxiii. 12,
13; Judg.
iii. 6; 1 Kin. xi. 1, 4). And if P be
thought
to be
post-exilic, it would be more inconceivable still
(Ezra ix.,
x.; Neh. x. 30). And if he formulated
such a
law, what is
to be thought of the honesty or the loyalty
of R in
perverting it to its opposite, as is done in this
narrative?
NOT COMPOSITE
But though the critics differ so widely
in their parti-
tion of this
chapter, and though each partition that has
been
proposed is unsatisfactory, it may still be said that
there are
positive proofs of its composite character, even
though it
has not yet been successfully resolved into its
proper
component parts. The bare recital of the
proofs
offered is,
however, sufficient to show how inconclusive
and trivial
they are.
Thus it is argued that, according to vs.
4, 6, 8, Hamor
conducted
the negotiation on behalf of his son, whereas
in vs. 11,
12, Shechem is represented as himself suing for
the hand of
Dinah. Kuenen here admits the
possibility
THE RAPE OF
DINAH (CH. XXXIII. 18-XXXIV.) 399
of the very
natural explanation that "Shechem,
in vs. 11,
12,
undertakes to speak after his father; his love for Di-
nah does not
permit him to be silent; he must also on
his own part
further apply every possible pressure."
His
objection
that we would not infer from vs. 4, 8, that She-
chem was
present at the interview is of no force; for his
request that
his father would intercede on his behalf, and
the prominent
part taken by Hamor in the matter are
not
inconsistent with Shechem's accompanying him on
an errand in
which he was so deeply interested. That
Hamor and
Shechem were together at the interview is
distinctly
stated (vs. 13, 18), where the critics are obliged
to assume
that R has mixed the two accounts.
It is said that in ver. 6 P the
conference is held with
Jacob, but
in ver. 11 J with Jacob and his sons; which
only shows
that the entry of Jacob's sons (ver. 7) cannot
be sundered
from ver. 6, as is done by the critics.
While
Hamor was on
the way to see Jacob, the sons of the lat-
ter came in
from the field, so that they were all together
at the
interview. Accordingly (ver. 8), Hamor
communed
with them,
not with him, as if he spoke to Jacob alone;
and (ver.
14) "they said unto them," not he unto him;
and
"our sister," instead of "my daughter," as if Jacob
was the sole
speaker. As this does not correspond
with
the
assumption of the critics, they tell us that R must
have altered
the text here again.
It is claimed that there is a duplicate
account. Ha-
mor makes
his application (vs. 8-10), receives his answer
(vs. 15
(14)-17), and lays this (vs. 20-24) before a meet-
ing of the
citizens; again (vs. 11,12), Shechem makes the
application,
and after receiving the answer at once sub-
jects
himself (ver. 19) to the condition imposed.
But
nothing is
duplicated. There is no variant account
and
no
repetition. All proceeds regularly. Shechem (ver.
11) seconds
his father's application; the answer is made
400 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
to them both
(vs. 13-17) and pleases both (ver. 18).
Shechem is
eager to have the condition fulfilled without
delay (ver.
19), and he and his father at once bring it to
the
attention of their townsmen (vs. 20-23), who consent
and comply
with the condition (ver. 24).
It is alleged that the answer in vs.
13-17 is made to
J Hamor's
proposal in vs. 8-10 of trade and intermarriage
between the
two clans, and not to Shechem's offer (vs.
11, 12) of a
large dowry in return for the hand of Dinah.
But, in
fact, one common answer is given to both pro-
posals, each
of which is distinctly referred to. And
it is
perfectly
true to nature that Shechem should have but
one thought,
his love for Dinah, while his father pro-
poses
general amicable relations, under which the accept-
ance of his
son's suit would follow by legitimate conse-
quence.
It is charged that vs. 2b, 26b, conflict
with ver. 17b.
According to
the former, Shechem had carried off Dinah
to his own
house, from whence she was rescued by her
brothers;
but, according to the latter, she was in the pos-
session of
Jacob's family. This is a mistake. Her
brothers
declare their intention (ver. 17) to take her
away if their
demand was not complied with; to take
her, that
is, from the place where she then was, wherever
that might
be. The verb is identical with that in
ver.
26, where
they took her out of Shechem's house.
"After vs. 2b, 3, one expects the
father to be asked to
apologize to
Jacob for the offence committed; but in-
stead of
this the marriage negotiations are introduced, as
though all
were still intact and the girl was with her
parents; not
a word is said of what had taken place."
What reparation could be made but
marriage? and this
is the thing
proposed.
It is further charged as an
inconsistency that the deed
of violence
is in ver. 30 attributed to Simeon and Levi,
THE RAPE OF
DINAH (CH. XXXIII. IS-XXXIV.) 401
as vs. 25, 26,
not to the sons of Jacob generally, as vs.
27-29. Simeon and Levi were the leaders and instiga-
tors, and as
such were chiefly responsible. The
massacre
is
attributed to them; to the others only a participation
in the
subsequent plunder of the city. Why
Simeon
Levi in
particular were so prominent in the affair
is intimated
in ver. 25, where they are spoken of as
"Dinah's
brothers." As sons of Leah they
were her
own
brothers; and next to Reuben, whose weak and vac-
illating
character incapacitated him for resolute action,
they were
her oldest brothers, to whom the protection of
their sister
and the redress of her wrongs naturally de-
volved (cf.
xxiv. 50, 55, 59). Hence Jacob, after
hearing
of the
outrage (ver. 5), waits for the return of his sons
before any
steps are taken, and then he leaves the whole
matter in
their hands. The treacherous and
murderous
scheme
concocted and executed by Simeon and Levi,
with the
concurrence of the other sons (ver. 13), was
without
Jacob's knowledge and privity, and incurred his
severe
reprobation (xlix. 5-7).
Knobel remarks that in xxxiv. 30
"Jacob blames not
the
immorality of the action, but the inconsiderateness of
his sons,
which has plunged him into trouble."
But as
Hengstenberg1
observes, we see from xxxv. 5 why pre-
1 Authentie des
Pentateuches, ii., p. 535.
Hengstenberg further
points to
the fact that it is the habit of the sacred historian simply to
report the
actions of the patriarchs, without commenting upon their
moral
qua1ity, leaving this to be suggested by the providential retribu-
tion which
followed in the results of their misdeeds.
No censure is
formally
passed upon Abram's connection with Hagar; but the unhap-
piness which
sprang from it constrained him to dismiss her.
Jacob
deceived his
father and defrauded his brother, and was in his turn de-
ceived and
defrauded by Laban; twenty years of toil and enforced
absence from
home and his alarm at meeting Esau, were the fruit of
that act of
sin. Rebekah's participation in the
fraud was punished by
lifelong
separation from her favorite son.
Reuben's crime is simply
related
(xxxv. 22); judgment upon it is reserved until Jacob's dying
402 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
cisely these
words of Jacob are recorded here. Atten-
tion is
drawn to the peril of the situation in order to
bring to
view the divine protection which warded off all
dangerous
consequences.
That there is no inconsistency in the
narrative in its
present form
is substantially admitted by Kuenen, who
finds no
evidence of separate and variant documents, but
only that
the chapter has been remodelled so as to give
it a
different complexion from that which it originally
had. There may be different opinions as to the
remod-
elling,
whether it was the work of ancient diaskeuasts
or of modern
critics; but we can at least agree with
Kuenen that
the text tells a uniform story as it now
stands.
MARKS OF P
1. Diffuseness, e.g., the daughter
of Leah, which she
bore unto
Jacob (ver. 1). In what respect is there
a
greater
redundancy here than in the almost identical
repetition
xxii. 20b, 23b J?
2. xyWinA prince (ver. 2). See ch. xvii.,
Marks of P, No. 11.
3. qWaHA
to long for (ver. 8); nowhere else in the Hexa-
teuch, except
in Deuteronomy. The occurrence of qbaDA,
to cleave
unto (ver. 3),
as an equivalent is no proof of a
diversity of
writers. See ch. xxxi.-xxxii. 3, Marks
of E,
at the end.
4. zHaxno to get possessions (ver. 10); besides in P (xlvii.
27; Num. xxxii.
30; Josh. xxii. 9, 19); in E (Gen. xxii.
13) in a
different sense.
5.
rcAzA-lKA Mk,lA lOm.hi every male of you be circumcised
(vs.15, 22),
as xvii. 10, 12.
6.
rkAzA-lKA every male
(ver. 24). See ch. vi.-ix., Marks
of P, No.
12.
words in
respect to it are recorded (xlix. 3, 4).
It is precisely the same
with the
deed of Simeon and Levi.
THE RAPE 0F DINAH (CH. XXXIII. 18-XXXIV) 403
7. lx,
fmawA hearken unto (vs. 17, 24). See ch. xxiii.,
Marks of P,
No. 10.
8. NyAn;qi
substance (ver. 23). See ch. xxxi.-xxxii. 3,
Marks of P,
No.2.
9.
hmAheB; beast (ver. 23); often besides in P; but also
in J (ii.
20; iii. 14; vii. 2, 8; viii. 20, etc.).
It is associ-
ated
with hn,q;mi cattle as here, also
in P (xxxvi. 6); in a so-
called
secondary stratum in P (Num. xxxi. 9); in J (Gen.
xlvii. 18;
Ex. ix. 19; Num. xxxii. 26); nowhere else in
the
Hexateuch.
10.
j`xa only (vs. 15, 23). See ch. xxvi. 34-xxviii. 9,
Marks of E,
No.1.
11.
ryfi rfawa yxec;yo-lKA all that went out of the
gate of
the city (ver. 24), as xxiii. 10, 18.
MARKS OF J
1. qbaDA to cleave unto
(ver. 3); besides in J (ii. 24; xix.
19); in E
(xxxi. 23); in P (Num. xxxvi. 7, 9); in D (Josh.
xxii. 5 ;
xxiii. 8, 12) and several times in Dent.
2. rfn damsel (vs. 3, 12), young man (ver. 19);
the oc-
currence of hDAl;ya (ver.4) as a feminine equivalent is no
indication
of a difference of writers. See ch. xxi.
1-21,
Marks of E,
No.6.
3. bc.efat;hi to be grieved (ver. 7). See ch. vi. 1-8, Marks
of J, No.8.
4. Ol
hrAHA to be wroth (ver. 7).
See ch. xviii., xix., Marks
of J, No.
30.
5. hW,fAye
xlo NKe which ought not to be done (ver. 7);
as-
signed
besides to J (xxix. 26), but this is cut out of an E
connection;
in E (xx. 9); in P (Lev. iv. 2, 13, 22, 27;
v. 17).
6. yneyfeB; NHe xcAmA to find grace in the eyes of (ver. 11).
See ch. vi.
1-8, Marks of J, No. 10.
7. br,H,
ypil; with the edge of the sword (ver. 26);
besides
404 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
in J (Josh.
viii. 24 bis); In E (Ex. xvii. 13; Num. xxi.
24); in JE
(Josh. vi. 21; xix. 47, in a P connection); in
D (Josh. x.
28, 30, 32, 35, 37, 39; xi. 11, 12, 14) and sev-
eral times
in Deut.
8. rkafA to trouble
(ver. 30); besides in the Hexateuch
only Josh.
vi. 18 E; vii. 25 bis JE.
"Wrought folly in Israel" is
claimed as a D phrase
(Deut. xxii.
21). Knobel says: "The author here
naively
applies this
later expression to patriarchal times, when
there was as
yet no people of Israel." The
patriarch had
already
received the name of Israel, and he was the
leader of a
powerful clan, which subsequently developed
into the
nation. There is no inappropriateness in
the of
great
legislator employing here the legal phrase current
in his own
day.
JACOB AT
BETHEL, AND ISAAC'S DEATH (CH. XXXV.)
The divine names afford no ground for the
division of
this
chapter, since El and Elohim alone occur.
The rea-
son is
evident. The prominence here given to
the names
Bethel (vs.
1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 15) and Israel (ver. 10), leads to
the
quadruple repetition of El (vs. 1, 3, 7, 11), with
which Elohim
is most naturally associated (see particu-
larly vs. 7,
15, also vs. 1, 9, 10, 11, 13). Elohim
is appro-
priately used
in ver. 5 to indicate that the terror was
divinely
inspired, and did not proceed from any human
source. Eichhorn had no difficulty in admitting the
unity of the
chapter. Tuch did the same, only except-
ing the last
clause of both vs. 1 and 7, which speak of
the flight
from Esau, of which, on his hypothesis, the
Elohist knew
nothing. Ilgen1 parcelled it
between the
two
Elohists, and this is at present the prevalent fash-
1 Ilgen's division is almost
identical with that of Dillman; he gives
to E vs.
1-8, 16a, c, 17, 18, 20-22; to P vs. 9-15, 16b, 19, 23-29.
JACOB AT BETHEL (CH. XXXV.)
405
ion. Dillmann gives vs. 1-8 to E (except ver. 5 R,
ver.
6a P), vs.
9-15 to P, vs. 16-22a to R, and vs. 22b-29
to P.
JACOB AT BETHEL
Vs. 1-15 plainly form one continuous
narrative. Jacob
goes by
divine direction to Bethel and builds an altar
there,
whereupon God appears to him and blesses him.
According to
the partition proposed above, however, E
(vs. 1, 4,
7) speaks of God having appeared to Jacob in
Bethel and
answered him in his distress, plainly refer-
ring to
xxviii. 12 sqq. But as the critics
divide that
passage, E
tells of the vision of a ladder with angels; it
is only J
who tells of God appealing to Jacob and speak-
ing with
him. Hence Dillmann finds it necessary
to as-
sume that R
has here meddled with the text and adapted
it to
J. In ver. 5 the danger of pursuit, from
which they
were
protected by a terror divinely sent upon the cities
round about,
points to the deed of blood in ch. xxxiv.,
and to the
apprehension which this awakened in Jacob
(ver.
30). But as that was recorded by J, not
by E, this
verse is cut
out of its connection and assigned by Hup-
feld to J
(in spite of Elohim), and by others to R.
Ver.
6a is given
to P, because E calls the place Bethel (vs.
1, 3). That, however, was the sacred name given to
it
by Jacob;
its popular name was Luz, and its introduc-
tion here is
with allusion to xxviii. 19. The added
clause,
"which
is in the land of Canaan," is not a superfluous
appendage
due to P's diffuseness; but like the same
words in
xxxiii. 18, it calls attention to the fact that
Jacob, after
his long absence, is now again in the land to
which the
Lord had promised to bring him (xxviii. 15).
That
promise, on which Jacob's vow to revisit Bethel
was
conditioned, was now fulfilled. Why R
should find it
necessary
here to insert a clause from P in order to state
406 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
so simple a
fact as Jacob's arrival at the place, to which,
accordmg to
E, he had been directed to go, is not very
obvious. Nevertheless the consequence is that P speaks
of Jacob's
coming to Bethel, but E does not; and
"there"
(ver. 7) has nothing to refer to. The
burial of
Deborah
(ver. 8) is said to be abruptly introduced and
out of
connection with what precedes. But it
only in-
terrupts the
narrative, as the event itself interrupted the
sacred
transaction in the midst of which it occurred.
Moreover,
the mention of Rebekah's nurse in E is once
more a
reference to J (xxiv. 59), by whom alone she had
been spoken
of before, and that merely to prepare the
way for what
is here recorded. The question how she
came to be
with Jacob at this time cannot be answered
for lack of
information. The writer is not giving
her
biography,
and we have no right to expect an account
of all her
movements. After Rebekah's death it was
quite
natural that she should go to be with Rebekah's
favorite
son. The "strange gods" in
Jacob's family
(vs. 2, 4)
find their explanation in xxxi. 19, 30 sqq. E.
The name
El-bethel (ver. 7) is identical with that by
which God
announced himself to Jacob (xxxi.13 E).
P (ver. 9) speaks of God appearing to
Jacob again,
when be came
out of Paddan-aram, with definite reference
to his
having appeared to him the first time on his way
to
Paddan-aram (ver. 1 E), as related neither by P nor
by E, but by
J (xxviii. 13). The word
"again" is there-
fore
unceremoniously stricken from the text to make it
correspond
with the hypothesis. Reference is made
(ver. 12) to
God's giving the land to Isaac; no such fact
is recorded
by P, only by J or R (xxvi. 3, 4). God
ap-
pears to
Jacob (ver. 9), as in xvii. 1 P (cf. xii. 7; xviii.
1; xxvi. 2,
24 J), speaks to him in condescending terms
(vs. 10-12)
and goes up from him (ver.13), from which it
is plain
that a descent of the LORD, as in xi. 5, 7, is not
JACOB AT BETHEL (CH. XXXV.)
407
peculiar to
J. The reimposition of the names
"Israel"
(ver. 10)
and "Bethel" (ver. 15) is judged to be incredi-
ble by the
critics, and claimed as evidence of two discrep-
ant
accounts. But it gave no trouble to R,
and need not
to us. There are other like instances in the sacred
narra-
tive. It is quite as likely that the original
writer thought
such
repetitions possible and reported them accordingly,
as that the
redactor could do so. That no
explanation of
Israel is
here given is, as Dillmann confesses, because
xxxii. 29
made it unnecessary, and so it is an implied ref-
erence to
that passage in E Dillm. (or J Well., Kuen.).
Only his
critical stand-point obliges him to assume that
P must have
given an explanation, which R has omitted,
the only
evidence of which is that the hypothesis requires
it. In vs. 11, 12, God pronounces upon Jacob the
identi-
cal blessing
granted to Abraham in terms corresponding
with ch.
xvii., thus fulfilling the desire of Isaac (xxviii.
3, 4) on his
behalf. In ver. 14 (P) Jacob sets up a
pillar,
which is
esteemed a characteristic of E, as in ver. 20 E,
and pours
oil upon it, as xxviii. 18 E, and a drink-offer-
ing, in
evident contradiction to the critical notion that
according to
P offerings had no existence prior to the
Mosaic
period. Hence Kuenen
("Hexateuch," p. 327)
thinks it
necessary to attribute ver. 14 to R.
The manifold references to P, J, and E,
scattered
throughout
this closely connected paragraph (vs. 1-15),
are not
accounted for by the division proposed; and it is
impossible
to make a division that will account for them.
The common
relation of this paragraph to all the docu-
ments cannot
be explained by tearing it to shreds to
conform with
the partition elsewhere made. That par-
tition,
which is irreconcilable with this paragraph, must
be itself at
fault in sundering what, as is here shown, be-
longs
together.
408 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
THE DEATH OF RACHEL
The next paragraph (vs. 16-20) is tied to
different
documents in
a like embarrassing manner. Ch. xlviii.
7
(P) speaks
of the death and burial of Rachel at Ephrath,
in terms
nearly identical with vs. 16, 19. Ch.
xxix. 32-
xxx. 24 (J
and E) records the birth of eleven of Jacob's
sons, and
finds its complement in this account of the
birth of
Benjamin. This final paragraph, which
com-
pletes the
number of his sons, is preparatory to the re-
capitulation
(vs. 22b-26 P), in which they are arranged
according to
their respective mothers, and in the order of
their birth,
in exact correspondence with the detailed
narrative
previously given. That the child now
born is
Rachel's,
agrees with xxx. 24b J. That she loses
her
life in
giving him birth is an evident reminder of xxx. 1
E. The birth scene recalls xxv. 24-26; xxxviii.
27 sqq.
J. In ver. 18 the name is given both by the
mother as
in J and E
(see ch. xxx.), and by the father as in P (see
xvi. 15;
xxi. 3). It is alleged that P could not
have
connected
the birth of Benjamin with his mother's death
at Ephrath,
since this is in conflict with vs. 24, 26, P,
where
Jacob's twelve sons are said to have been born in
Paddan-aram. But in like manner, it is said (xlvi. 15),
that Leah
bare thirty-three sons and daughters to Jacob
in
Paddan-aram, and (ver. 18) Zilpah bare unto Jacob
sixteen. In Ex. i. 5, seventy souls are said to have
come
out of the
loins of Jacob, including Jacob himself (cf.
Gen. xlvi.
26, 27). 1 Cor. xv. 5 speaks of Christ
being
"seen
of the twelve" after his resurrection, although
Judas had
gone to his own place. R had no
difficulty in
understanding
that Jacob's sons could be spoken of in
the general
as born in Paddan-aram, though Benjamin's
birth in
Canaan had just been mentioned. Is R's
inter-
THE DEATH OF
RACHEL (CH. XXXV.) 409
pretation
less rational than that of the critics?
May not
the writer
have meant it as the redactor understood it?
Dillmann further urges that! E could not
have men-
tioned
Rachel's death at this time, since that is in con-
flict with
xxxvii. 10 E. But instead of contrariety there
is perfect
accord. As the eleven stars denoted
Joseph's
brethren,
Benjamin must have been one of them. Ra-
chel's death
is likewise implied, for had she been living,
as well as
Leah, there would have been two moons to
make
obeisance instead of one.
The reference of this paragraph to R, who
is supposed
to have
written it with reference to P, J, and E, is equiv-
alent to a
confession that it is an indivisible unit as it
now stands,
and that it was written by one cognizant of
matter to be
found in each of the documents; by one,
that is, who
gave Genesis its present form, of which the
so-called
documents are component parts, a view which
is quite
consistent with their never having had a separate
existence.
There is a difficulty in respect to the
location of Ra-
chel's
sepulchre. According to vs. 16, 19;
xlviii. 7, it
lay upon the
road from Bethel, where "there was still
some way to
come to Ephrath" or Bethlehem; this
corresponds
with its traditional site, a short distance
north of
Bethlehem. But according to 1 Sam. x. 2,
Saul
in returning
to Gibeah from Samuel, whose home was in
Ramah,
passed by Rachel's sepulchre; from which it
might be
inferred that it lay considerably further north.
Thenius,
Dillmann, and others cut the knot by rejecting
the clause
"the same is Bethlehem" (xxxv. 19; xlviii. 7),
as an
erroneous gloss, and assuming that there was a
another
Ephrath, not otherwise known, much nearer to
Bethel. But the correctness of its identification
with
Bethlehem is
confirmed by Ruth iv. 11; Mic. v. 1 (E. V.,
ver.
2). Delitzsch, in the fourth edition of
his "Gene-
410 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
sis,"
adhered to the traditional site and assumed that
Samuel
directed Saul to take" an unreasonably circuit-
ous
route" on his way homeward. In his
last edition he
conceives
that variant traditions as to the place of Ra-
chel's
burial are represented in these passages.
Kurtz1
seeks a
solution in the indefiniteness of the term trab;Ki
some way, which is of doubtful meaning, and only
occurs
once besides
(2 Kin. v. 19). He supposes it to mean
quite a long
distance, so that the place described might
be remote
from Bethlehem, and in the neighborhood of
Ramah.
Possibly, however, Dr. Robinson uncovers
the real
source of
the difficulty by suggesting that we do not
know where
it was that Saul met with Samuel. Ramah,
the home of
Samuel, is in his opinion not the Ramah of
Benjamin,
north of Jerusalem, and has not yet been cer-
tainly
identified. And he adds,2
"After all, there is
perhaps a
question lying back of this whole discussion,
viz.,
whether the city where Saul and the servant came
to Samuel
was his own city, Ramah? The name of the
city is
nowhere given; and the answer of the maidens
(1 Sam. ix.
11,12) would perhaps rather imply that
Samuel had
just arrived, possibly on one of his yearly
circuits, in
which he judged Israel in various cities (1
Sam. vii.
15-17)." If now, in the absence of
definite in-
formation on
the subject, it is permissible with Keil to
conjecture
that Saul found Samuel in some city south-
west of
Bethlehem, Rachel's sepulchre might easily be
on his way
back to Gibeah. Samuel's statement that
he
would
"find two men by Rachel's sepulchre, in the bor-
der of
Benjamin, at Zelzah," need create no embarrass-
ment, for
Benjamin's southern boundary ran through the
valley of
Hinnom, south of Jerusalem to En-rogel (Josh.
1
Geschichte des Alten Bundes, i., p. 270.
2 Biblical Researches,
ii., p. 10 (Edition of 1856).
THE DEATH OF
RACHEL (CH. XXXV.) 411
xviii. 16),
about three miles from Rachel's sepulchre,
which is
sufficiently near to justify the form of expression
used.
If, however, Samuel was at Ramah, and
this is the
same with
the Ramah north of Jerusalem, Rachel's sep-
ulchre of 1
Sam. x. 2 cannot well be that of Genesis.
But as the
bones of Joseph were transported to the in-
heritance of
the tribes descended from him (Josh. xxiv.
32), why may
not the Benjamites have erected a ceno-
taph in
their territory in honor of the mother of their
tribe?
The repetition of the word fs.ay.iva
journeyed (xxxv. 21),
marks this
as a continuation of the narrative of vs. 5 and
16; but the
critics complete the patchwork of the chap-
ter by
giving ver. 22a to J, because of the reference to it
in xlix. 4,
and ver. 21 must necessarily go with it.
And
this though
"Israel" in these verses is a plain allusion
to ver. 10
P, or xxxii. 29 E (so Dillmann); and "the
tower of
Eder" was at Bethlehem, the objective point of
vs. 16, 19,
R or P.
GROUNDS
OF PARTITION IRRELEVANT
While the entire chapter is thus closely
linked together
in all its
parts, it is observable that the critical severance
is based not
upon the contents of the chapter, whether
matter or
diction, but upon its numerous points of con-
nection with
other passages, which the critics have seen
fit to
parcel among the so-called documents. It
is an at-
tempt to
force the hypothesis through this chapter for
reasons
which lie wholly outside of itself. And
it is
still
further observable that the critics have not suc-
ceeded in
adjusting this chapter into conformity with the
partition
elsewhere. In spite of the attempt to
prevent
it, its
several sections are in repeated instances related
412 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
to other
documents than those to which the critics assign
them. These intimate bonds of relationship with
other
passages
accordingly constrain to precisely the opposite
conclusion
from that which has been claimed. They
do
not justify
the reduction of the chapter to a series of
fragments of
diverse origin in spite of its manifest unity;
but this
unity shows the falsity of that partition in other
parts of
Genesis which is irreconcilable with it.
CONCLUSION OF THE SECTION
Jacob's family is now complete, and he is
settled in
Canaan. His subordinate position as a member of the
family of
Isaac terminates here, and he is henceforth re-
garded as
the head of the chosen race, which is to bear
his name,
Israel. That division of the history
entitled
the
Generations of Isaac is accordingly concluded at
this point,
and is followed, according to the usage of the
book, first,
by the divergent line, the Generations of
Esau; and
then by the direct line, the Generations of
Jacob.
Isaac's death is mentioned at the close
of this chapter,
not because
this is its exact chronological place, but in
order to
bring this section of the history to a close be-
fore
entering upon Jacob's family life in Canaan; just
as the death
of Terah (xi. 32), and that of Abraham (xxv.
8), are
recorded in order to prepare the way for the his-
tory of
their successors. But as Terah survived
the call
of Abraham
(xii. 1, 4), and even the birth of Isaac (xxi.
5; cf. xi.
26), and as Abraham survived the birth of Ja-
cob and Esau
(xxv. 26; cf. ver. 7), so Isaac continued to
live until
Joseph had reached his thirtieth year, and was
advanced to
be the second ruler in Egypt. Jacob was
one hundred
and thirty years old when presented before
Pharaoh
(xlvii. 9), in the second year of the famine (xlv,
THE DEATH OF ISAAC (CH. XXXV.) 413
11). In the year preceding the first of plenty he
was,
therefore,
one hundred and twenty, and Joseph was
thirty (xli.
46); this was the year of Isaac's death (xxxv.
28; xxv.
26). It thus appears that Jacob was
ninety
years old
when Joseph was born; he had then been with
Laban
fourteen years (xxx. 25 sqq.; xxxi. 41).
He was
consequently
seventy-six when he left home for Paddan-
aram. Isaac was at that time one hundred and
thirty-
six, and was
old and blind, and might well say that he
"knew
not the day of his death" (xxvii. 1, 2); but it is
not said, as
has sometimes been alleged, that he was on
his deathbed
and near his end. He lived forty-four
years longer;
and there is no statement or implication
in the text
inconsistent with this.
Dillmann infers from xxvi. 34, 35; xxvii.
46; and
xxviii. 1-9,
that Jacob could only have been between
forty and
fifty when he went to Paddan-aram. But
the
facts that
Esau married at forty, that his Canaanitish
wives gave
great offence to Isaac and Rebekah, and that
this is made
a reason for Jacob's going elsewhere for a
wife, do not
warrant a conclusion as to Jacob's age at
variance
with definite data elsewhere supplied.
Esau
had been
married thirty-five years when Jacob left home.
Judged by
the present standard of human life, Jacob's
marriage
took place at a very advanced age. But
this
must be
considered in connection with patriarchal lon-
gevity. Jacob reached the age of one hundred and
forty-seven
(xlvii. 28); Isaac, one hundred and eighty
(xxxv. 28);
Abraham, one hundred and seventy-five (xxv.
7). Abraham was eighty-six years old when his
first son
Ishmael was
born (xvi. 16), and one hundred at the birth
of Isaac
(xxi. 5).
No argument for critical partition is
drawn by Dill-
mann from
the diction of this chapter. The words
com-
monly
classed as belonging to P, in vs. 11, 12, are bor-
414 THE GENERATIONS OF ISAAC
rowed from
ch. xvii., where they have already been
considered;
and those of vs. 28, 29, are identical with
xxv. 7,
8. It should be noted that for UpyliHEhav;
UrhEF.Ahi
Mk,ytelom;Wi purify yourselves and change your garments (ver.
2), Ex. xix.
10 substitutes Mylom;Wi
UsB;kiv; MTAw;Daqiv; sanctify
them and let
them wash their garments,
though both are
referred to
E. Also in the phrase come forth from
the
loins, ver. 11 has MyicalAHE while xlvi. 26; Ex. i. 5, have
though all
are referred to P. The same writer may
thus, by the
confession of the critics, use different ex-
pressions
for the same idea. Accordingly, such
differ-
ences are
not always nor necessarily an indication of dis-
tinct
documents.
IX
THE
GENERATIONS OF ESAU (CH. XXXVI.; XXXVII. 1)
OPINIONS OF CRITICS
EICHHORN1 attributed ch.
xxxvi. to an independent
source,
different from both P and J, and sought thus to
account for
its divergence from other passages in Gene-
sis,
particularly in certain proper names; he did not,
however,
dispute its unity.
Vater2 considered it a mass of
fragments. He says:
"No
reader of ch. xxxvi. can fail to see that it is made
up of many
pieces. There are six titles in it,
viz., vs. 1,
9, 15, 20,
31, 40. With each of the first three titles
there begins
a special family-tree of Esau, and the repe-
tition of
all the identical names strikes the eye at once.
The same
concluding words occur in ver.19 as those
with which
another fragment closes (ver. 8). The
piece
that begins
with ver. 31, as well as that which begins
with ver.
40, is a list of the kings of Edom; and that
from ver. 31
is expressly a list of the kings who reigned
in the land
of Edom before the Israelites had a king."
After the masterly refutation of Vater
by F. H.
Rankes it
became customary to refer the entire chapter
to P. Thus Knobel: "The Horite-Edomite tribal
list,
though not
preserved altogether unaltered (see ver. 2), is
a work of
the Elohist, who composed all the regularly
1 Einleitung in das Alte
Testament, 4th Edition, iii., p. 135.
2 Commentar uber den
Pentateuch, iii., p. 435.
3 Untersuchungen uber den
Pentateuch, i., pp. 243 sqq.
416 THE GENERATIONS OF ESAU
drawn up
genealogical tables of Genesis, and could not
omit the
Edomites, since they stood nearer to the Israel-
ites than
the other peoples descended from Terah the
father of
Abraham."
The assault upon the unity of the chapter
was, how-
ever,
renewed by Hupfeld,l who declared that "its het-
erogeneous
genealogical lists were only held together by
a
geographical conception, their relation to the land of
Edom and its
inhabitants;" that "the primitive inhab-
itants of
the country, the Horites, and the earliest Edom-
ite kings,
do not stand in the remotest relation to the
theocratic
history of the patriarchs, as traced by P; and
that even
the lines of descent from Esau cannot be from
P in their
present form." He ascribed to P
only vs. 1-
8; and even
here he maintained that the last clause in
both ver. 1
and ver. 8 is a later gloss, and that the names
of Esau's
wives (vs. 2, 3) have been corrupted into con-
formity with
the other sources, from which the rest of the
chapter was
taken by J or R. Kayser assigns vs. 1-8 to
P, the rest
to J. Wellhausen attributes vs. 6-8,
40-43
to P; vs.
31-39 are preserved unaltered from JE, and
the
remainder is derived from other sources, principally
JE, and
remodelled after the style of P.
Schrader gives
the whole,
chapter to P, except vs. 40-43. Kuenen2
adopts the
division of Wellhausen, but adds:
"The re-
sult is not
quite satisfactory, for one would have expected
more ample
information concerning the Edomites than is
contained in
vs. 40-43. Perhaps a list of Esau's
descend-
ants, which
was given at this point in P, has been super-
seded by vs.
1-5, 9-:19." So that after removing
part of
the chapter,
the critics feel the need of it or its equiva-
lent. Dillmann, followed by Delitzsch and Vatke,
re-
gards the
whole chapter as belonging to P, though modi-
fied in some
particulars by R.
1 Quelle, p. 61. 2
Hexateuch, p. 68.
ESAU'S DESCENDANTS (CH. XXXVI.) 417
It would appear, therefore, that here is
another in-
stance in
which the critics' affirmation does not hold
good, that
"whatever difficulty may attend the separation
of J and E,
the writer P, as opposed to both of them, is
always
distinct and decisive."
UNITY OF THE CHAPTER
As no name of God occurs in this chapter,
no plea for
division can
arise from this quarter. We have the au-
thority of
Dillmann for saying that the style is uniform
throughout,
and there is nothing in the language that
militates
against the unity of the chapter. In his
second
edition he
says expressly: "The fine
adjustment and ar-
rangement of
the piece speaks for the unity of the com-
position and
for P. This piece is rather a model of
the way and
manner in which he was accustomed to
present the
material that lay before him." To
the ob-
jections
that the Horites (vs. 20 sqq.), and the kings of
Edom (vs. 31
sqq.), do not fall within the author's plan
he very
properly attributes no weight whatever.
The
scheme upon
which the book of Genesis is constructed
made it
essential that an account should be given of the
descendants
of Esau; and the greater nearness of his re-
lation to
Jacob made it natural that a larger space
should be
given to them than to the descendants of Ish-
mael and of
Keturah (ch. xxv.): It had been revealed
to
Rebekah that
two nations would spring from her twin
children
(xxv. 23). This must be verified in the
case of
Esau as well
as of Jacob. If the princes sprung from
Ishmael were
enumerated, why not the chiefs and kings
of the race
of Esau? The Horites were the primitive
in-
habitants of
Mount Seir. These were subjugated and in
part
destroyed by Esau and his descendants (Deut. ii.
12, 22), who
amalgamated with the remnant, as appears
418 THE GENERATIONS OF ESAU
from the
chapter before us (ver. 2 cf. ver. 24, ver. 12 cf.
ver.
22). In order to a correct and
comprehensive view
of the Edomites
it was consequently necessary to include
the Horites,
as is here done.
The materials embraced in the chapter are,
therefore,
the proper
ones to be introduced in this place.
They
are, in
addition, clearly and systematically arranged.
There is
first a statement of Esau's immediate family (vs.
1-5), which
is summed up (ver. 5b) in the words: "These
are the sons
of Esau, which were born unto him in the
land of
Canaan," precisely corresponding to the summary
of Jacob's
family (xxxv. 26b): "These are the
sons of
Jacob, which
were born to him in Paddan-aram."
This
naturally
leads to the mention of Esau's removal from
Canaan to
Mount Seir (vs. 6-8). The paragraph
relating
to his
immediate family (vs. 1-8) is preliminary to the
section
which follows concerning the nation descended
from
him. This is indicated by the title
prefixed to
them
respectively (ver. 1): "These are
the generations
of Esau; the
same is Edom," where, as in ver. 8b, Edom
is his
personal name (cf. xxv. 30); but in ver. 9:
"These
are the
generations of Esau, the father of Edom, in
Mount
Seir," as in ver. 43b, Edom is the national name.
In tracing
the unfolding of Esau's family to a nation pre-
cisely the
same method is pursued as in the like develop-
ment of
Jacob's family in ch. xlvi., whose sons give name
to the
tribes, and their sons to the tribal divisions or fam-
ilies (cf. N
um. xxvi. 5 sqq.). So here the sons are
again
named, no
longer as individuals as in vs. 4, 5, but as
progenitors
of the nation, and their sons are given (vs.
10-14), who,
it is immediately added, were chieftains of
their
respective clans (vs. 15-19). The same
method is
next
followed with the Horites by first naming the sons
or principal
divisions, then their sons-or the subdivisions,
the national
purport of the list being again indicated by
ESAU'S DESCENDANTS (CH. XXXVI.) 419
enumerating
the sons as chieftains of their respective
clans (vs.
20-30). Since these various clans were
com-
bined into
one national organization, with a monarch at
its head, a list
is next given of the kings who had reigned
in the land
of Edom (vs. 31-39). And to this is
added
finally (vs.
40-43) a list of those who presided over the
various
districts or territorial divisions of the country,
"the
chiefs of Edom, according to their habitations in
the land of
their possession," as distinguished from the
families or
genealogical divisions before given (vs. 15-19).
The lack of
correspondence between the names in these
two
divisions, made on an entirely different principle, in-
volves no
contradiction, as is assumed by Wellhausen
and
Schrader, and is the basis of their disintegrating
analysis, in
which they reach such opposite conclusions.
And the dislocations and erasures proposed
by Brus-
ton1
are not only arbitrary, but mar the symmetry of the
chapter as
now exhibited. The omission of ver. 1,
so as
to attach
vs. 2-8 to the previous section of the history,
the
Generations of Isaac, disregards the fact that it had
been brought
to a formal close by the death and burial
of Isaac
(xxxv. 29; cf. xxv. 8-10, ix. 29), and sunder's the
record of
Esau's family from that of the nation sprung
from him,
both of which properly belong to the Genera-
tions of
Esau. And the transfer of xxxvii. 1, so
as imme-
diately to
follow xxxvi. 8, needlessly interrupts the state
-ments
concerning Esau; the verse is in its proper place
after those
statements are concluded, and just preceding
the next
section (xxxvii. 2 sqq.), to which it is prepara-
tory. Nor are vs. 20-28 to be dropped on the plea
that
vs. 20, 21
are a doublet to vs. 29, 30; they sustain pre-
cisely the
same relation to one another as vs. 15-18 to vs.
10-14, a
relation not of mutual exclusion but of co-exist-
ence, as
indicated in ver. 19. And the
correspondence of
1 As quoted by Dillmann.
420 THE GENERATIONS OF ESAU
vs. 24, 25
to ver. 2, and of ver. 22 to ver. 12, instead of
discrediting
the paragraph in which they are found, tends
to confirm
its right to a place in this chapter.
The unity and the self-consistency of the
chapter have
now been
sufficiently vindicated. We are not
concerned
to establish
its correspondence with P or anyone of the
so-called
documents, which exist only in the fancy of the
critics. And when Wellhausen objects that a remark in-
terjected in
the midst of a genealogy like that in ver. 24,
"this
is Anah who found, the hot springs in the wilder-
ness, as he
fed the asses of Zibeon his father," is without
analogy in
P, though frequent in JE, and Dillmann con-
tends, on
the other hand, that the peculiar style of P runs
through the
entire chapter; or when Wellhausen affirms
that the
allusion to kings in Israel (ver. 31) cannot pos-
sibly be
from P, and Dillmann maintains, per contra, that
P and P
alone of all the documents makes such allusions,
we must
leave the critics to settle these domestic differ-
ences
between themselves. It only remains for
us to
consider the
alleged discrepancies between this chapter
and other
parts of Genesis and alleged anachronisms
which are
supposed to be inconsistent with the author-
ship of
Moses.
NO DISCREPANCIES
It is claimed that xxxvi. 2, 3 conflicts
with xxvi. 34,
xxviii. 9,
in respect to the wives of Esau. In the
opin-
ion of
Wellhausen1 "this is the most open contradiction
in the whole
of Genesis;" and he adds, "either the en-
tire
literary criticism of the biblical historical books is
baseless and
nugatory, or these passages are from different
sources." We thank him for the word. If the divisive
criticism stakes
its all on finding a discrepancy here, its
prospects
are not very brilliant.
1 Composition des Hexateuchs, p. 49.
ESAU'S DESCENDANTS (CH. XXXVI.) 421
Esau's
wives, according to chs. xxvi., xxviii., were Ju-
dith, the
daughter of Beeri the Hittite, Basemath, the
daughter of
Elon the Hittite, and Mahalath, the daughter
of Ishmael
and the sister of Nebaioth. According to
ch.
xxxvi., they
were Adah, the daughter of Elon the Hittite,
Aholibamah,
the daughter of Anah, the daughter of Zib-
eon the
Hivite, and Basemath, Ishmael's daughter, sister
of Nebaioth.
There is a difference here in the names of
the women
and of their
fathers. Nevertheless, Noldeke finds no
difficulty
in referring all to P, and assuming that he de-
rived his
materials from discrepant authorities.
And it
is not easy
to see why the original author, be he P or
who he may,
may not have done this as well as R. But
the
discrepancy is, after all, imaginary. It
is quite in-
supposable
that R or P, or any sensible writer, could
have
inserted without comment or explanation the bald
contradiction
here alleged. That the passages in ques-
tion are not
unrelated is plain from the back reference
in xxxvi.
2a, "Esau took his wives of the daughters of
Canaan,"
to xxviii. 1, 8; and that they are not altogether
at variance
is apparent from the fact that according to
both
statements Esau had three wives; two were Canaan-
ites, one of
these being the daughter of Elon the Hittite,
and the
third was a daughter of Ishmael and sister of
Nebaioth. The other Canaanitess is said (xxvi. 34) to
have been
the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and (xxxvi.
2) the
daughter of Anah, the daughter of Zibeon the Hi-
vite. Ranke understands this to mean that Beeri was
her father
and Anah her mother, so that there is no vari-
ance between
the statements, which are mutually supple-
mentary, as
when Dinah is called (xxxiv. 1) the daughter
of Leah, and
(ver. 3) the daughter of Jacob. But this
is
incorrect,
since Anah, the parent of Aholibamah, was the
son, and not
the daughter, of Zibeon (xxxvi. 24, 25).
Two
422 THE GENERATIONS OF ESAU
solutions
here offer themselves of the apparent discrep-
ancy. It is exceedingly probable that Beeri was
another
name of
Anah, given to him, as Hengstenberg suggests,
in
consequence of his discovery of warm springs (ver. 24)
(Beer, spring;
Beeri, spring-man). Or Beeri may
have
been the son
of Anah; Aholibamah is said (ver.2) to be
the daughter
of Anah and also the daughter of Zibeon,
as Basemath
(ver. 3) is the daughter of Ishmael and the
sister of
Nebaioth); here it is plain that "daughter" in
the second
clause cannot be taken in the strict sense of
an immediate
offspring, but must have the wider mean-
ing of
descendant (cf. also ver. 39). Why not
in the
preceding
clause likewise? Why may she not have
been
the daughter
of Beeri, the granddaughter of Anah, and
the
great-granddaughter of Zibeon (6f. Matt. i. 1, and
compare Ezra
v. 1 with Zech. i. 1)? the writer preferring
to link her
name in this genealogy with her distinguished
ancestors
rather than with her own father, who may have
been of less
note. We may not have the data for
deter-
mining with
certainty which is the true solution.
But
so long as
any reasonable solution can be shown to exist,
the
difficulty cannot be pronounced insoluble.
And as her parentage is thus readily
explicable, so are
the
seemingly variant statements respecting her nation-
ality. That she is said (xxvi. 34) to be of Hittite
and
(xxxvi. 2)
of Hivite descent is not more strange than that
Zibeon is
called a Hivite (ver. 2) and a Horite (ver. 20).
The critics
commonly insist that the former is a textual
error, and
that Hivite should here be changed to Horite,
which
involves only a slight alteration in a single letter
(yfH
to yrH).
Then if (ver. 2) Esau's wife can be a daugh-
ter of
Canaan, and at the same time descended from a
Horite, what
is there in her being a Hittite to conflict
with her
Horite descent? The fact is that the
names of
the
Canaanitish tribes are not always used with rigorous
ESAU'S DESCENDANTS (CH. XXXVI.) 423
precision. Hittite (Josh. i. 4:), like Canaanite and
Amor-
ite (Gen.
xv. 16), may be used in a narrower or a wider
sense,
either of the particular tribe so designated or of
the
population of Palestine generally. And
the term
Horite is
not properly indicative of race or descent but
of a
particular style of habitation; it is equivalent to
cave-dweller. There is no evidence that the Horites
might not be
allied in whole or in part to the Hivites;
and Hittite
might be applied in a general sense to a Hi-
vite.l
The only remaining ground of objection is
that Esau's
wives bear
different names in the two passages. If
but
one was
changed, it might be thought an error of tran-
scription. But as all three are altered, it must be due
to some
common cause. Nothing, however, is more
common than
this duplication of names (cf. Gen. xvii. 5,
15; xxv. 30;
xxxv. 10, 18; xli. 45 ; Ex. ii. 18, cf. iii. 1;
Num. xiii.
16; Judg. vii. 1; 2 Kin. xxiii. 34; xxi v. 17;
Dan. i. 7,
etc.), especially at some important crisis or
change of
life. So Tabitha was also called Dorcas
(Acts
ix. 36), and
Peter Cephas, and Thomas Didymus, and
Joses
Barnabas, and Saul Paul. If a former
emperor of
the French
were called Napoleon on one page and Buo-
naparte on
another, or a late prime minister of England
were spoken
of at one time as Disraeli and at another as
Beaconsfield,
it would create no surprise. Harmer2
ob-
serves that
"the Eastern people are oftentimes known
several
names; this might arise from their having more
names than
one given them at first; or it might arise
from their
assuming a new and different name upon par-
ticular
occurrences in life. This last is most
probable,
since such a
custom continues in the East to this day;
1In like manner Amorite used
(xlviii. 22) in a general sense of the
Hivites
(xxxiv. 2).
2Observations on Divers
Passages of Scripture, vol. ii., p. 501.
424 THE GENERATIONS OF ESAU
and it
evidently was sometimes done anciently."
And
he cites in
the same connection the following from Sir
John
Chardin: "The reason why the
Israelites and
other
Eastern people are called by different names is be-
cause they
frequently change them, as they change in
point of
age, condition, or religion. This custom
has con-
tinued to
our times in the East, and is generally prac-
tised upon
changing religions; and it is pretty common
upon
changing condition. The Persians have
preserved
this custom
more than any other nation. I have seen
many
governors of provinces among them assume new
names with
their new dignity. But the example of
the
reigning
king of Persia (he began his reign in 1667, and
died in
1694) is more remarkable: the first
years of the
reign of
this prince having been unhappy, on account of
wars and
famine in many provinces, his counsellors per-
suaded him
that the name he had till then borne was
fatal, and
that the fortune of the empire would not be
changed till
he changed that name. This was done; the
prince was
crowned again under the name of Soliman;
all the
seals, all the coins, that had the name of Sefi were
broken, the
same as if the king had been dead, and an-
other had
taken possession. The women more
frequently
change their
names than the men. . . . Women that
marry again, or let themselves out anew, and slaves,
commonly
alter their names upon these changes." Esau's
wives at
their marriage left their own tribes to become
the heads of
a new race; is it strange that they should
adopt new
names?
Another alleged inconsistency relates to
the separation
of Esau and
Jacob. According to xxxii. 4 (E. V.,
ver. 3)
Esau was
already in Seir before Jacob's return from Pad-
dan-aram. But xxxvi. 6, 7 states that he removed from
Canaan from
the face of Jacob, because there was not
room for
both of them to dwell together. There is
no
ESAU'S
DESOENDANTS (CH. XXXVI.) 425
real
discrepancy here, however. Esau with a
band of
men had a
provisional residence in Mount Seir before
Jacob's
return home; but it is nowhere said that he had
entirely
abandoned Canaan and removed his family and
effects from
it. Though he had fixed his
head-quarters
for a season
in. Seir, he had no disposition to yield
Canaan or to
surrender his right to the paternal inherit-
ance to
Jacob, who had defrauded him of his father's
blessing. Hence he came out with an armed force to
obstruct his
return to the land of his fathers. It
was
only after
Jacob's fervent supplication (xxxii. 10 sqq., E.
V., vs. 9 sqq.),
and his importunate wrestling for a bless-
ing on the
bank of the Jabbok (vs. 25 sqq.), that Esau's
deadly hate
(xxvii. 41) was by divine influence changed
to fraternal
love (xxxiii. 4). He thenceforth
abandoned
his claim to
the possession of Canaan, and peaceably
withdrew
with all that he had from the land. He
re-
turned again
at the interment of his father (xxxv. 29), as
Ishmael had
done at the burying of Abraham (xxv. 9);
and then the
final separation of the brothers took place.
NO ANACHRONISM
An alleged anachronism yet remains to be
considered.
It is
confidently affirmed that Moses could not possibly
have written
vs. 31-39. Verse 31 reads, "And these are
the kings
that reigned in the land of Edom, before there
reigned any
king over the children of Israel."
The first impression upon a cursory
reading of this
verse might
naturally be that it was written after the es-
tablishment
of the monarchy in Israel. Wellhausen
con-
tends that
vs. 31-39 could not possibly have been writ-
ten by P,
"since this document keeps much too strictly
to its
archaistic stand-point for us to attribute to it the
unconcealed
reference to the period of the Israelitish
426 THE GENERATIONS OF ESAU
kings in
ver. 31." We so far agree with him
as to think
it
incredible that the writer of the Pentateuch should in
this one
instance have departed so far from the Mosaic
stand-point,
which he elsewhere steadfastly maintains
throughout,
as to have introduced here a passage which
must be dated
as late as the time of Saul or David.
And
in fact a
careful examination of the passage reveals sev-
eral
particulars calculated to modify the first cursory
impression. Eight kings of Edom are named in these
verses who
are nowhere else mentioned in the history;
and we have
no data for determining just when they
reigned. No king is succeeded by his own son. It
would seem,
therefore, to have been an elective, not an
hereditary,
monarchy. The death of the first seven
kings
is
mentioned, but not that of the eighth, whence it is
probable
that he was still reigning when this passage
was
written. This probability is enhanced by
the con-
sideration
that the writer seems to be better acquainted
with the
domestic relations of this king than of his pre-
decessors;
at least he mentions the name and lineage of
his wife,
which is not done in the case of any other.
There was a kingdom in Edom in the time
of David (1
Kin. xi.
14-17), and reference is made to Hadad "of the
king's seed
in Edom." He cannot be identified
with
Hadad (ver.
36), or with Hadar (ver. 39) of the passage
before us,
as he seems never to have reached the throne;
or if he
did, it must have been after the beginning of Sol-
omon's
reign, so that he was not one who reigned before
there was
any king in Israel. Moreover, the
expression
used shows
that the succession to the throne was then
hereditary. The kingdom consequently is not that which
is described
in the verses now under discussion; it was
on a
different basis.
There was also a king in Edom in the time
of Moses
(Num. xx.
14; cf. Judg. xi. 17), as well as in the kindred
ESAU'S DESCENDANTS (CH. XXXVI.) 427
nations of
Moab (Num. xxii. 4), Midian (xxxi. 8), and
Amalek
(xxiv. 7; cf. 1 Sam. xv. 20). We read
also at
that time of
dukes in Edom (Ex. xv. 15), showing that the
kingdom was
superinduced upon and coexisted with the
dukedoms
that are likewise spoken of in Gen. xxxvi.;
this is a
coincidence worth noting. From the death
of
Moses to the
choice of Saul as king were three hundred
and
fifty-seven years (1 Kin. vi. 1; 2 Sam. v. 4; Acts
xiii. 21;
Num. xiv. 33). Now, even supposing the
king
in the
Mosaic age to have been the first that ruled in
Edom, we
must assign to each of his successors a reign
of fifty-one
years to fill up the interval to the time of
Saul, which
is quite insupposable; and the more so as
elective
monarchs would in all probability be chosen in
mature age,
and their reigns be on the average briefer in
consequence. This list of kings does not, therefore, ex-
tend to the
reign of Saul. It cannot, consequently,
have
been written
after the establishment of the kingdom in
Israel, and
intended to enumerate all the kings that had
reigned in
Edom up to that time.
Furthermore, the fourth of these kings,
it is said (ver.
35),
"smote Midian in the field of Moab."
Midian was
in alliance
with Moab in the time of Moses (Num. xxii.
4, 7); we
are not informed that they were so subse-
quently. Israel occupied the plains of Moab before
crossing the
Jordan (Num. xxxi. 12), and were thence-
forward
adjacent to its territory. This event
was in all
probability
pre-Mosaic.
Edom was so powerful and warlike a people
in the
Mosaic age
that Israel did not venture to force a passage
through
their territory (Num. xx. 20,21). This
seems to
imply that
the kingdom had not been recently estab-
lished. The same thing may be inferred from the men-
tion of "the king's highway'" (xx. 17).
These various considerations conspire to
make it ex-
428 THE GENERATIONS OF ESAU
tremely
probable that several of these kings, at least,
were
pre-Mosaic; why not all? Why may not the
last
of the
series be the one with whom Moses had dealings,
and this be
the explanation of the fact that the series is
carried no
further? Esau's final settlement in Seir
took
place before
the death of Isaac. And Isaac died ten
years before
Jacob went down to Egypt (Gen. xxxv. 28;
xxv. 26;
xlvii. 9), and hence four hundred and forty
years before
the exodus of the children of Israel (Ex. xii.
41), or four
hundred and eighty before the death of
Moses. This affords ample time for the establishment
of the
kingdom in Edom, and the reign of eight kings.
There is
absolutely no reason in the nature of the case,
or in any known
fact, for affirming that anyone of these
kings was
post-Mosaic.
But could Moses have used the expressions
in ver.
31?1 Why not?
It had been explicitly promised to
Abraham
(xvii. 6) and to Jacob (xxxv. 11) that kings
should arise
from their seed. Balaam foretells the
exalted
dignity of the kingdom in Israel (Num. xxiv. 7).
Moses
anticipates that when the people were settled in
Canaan they
would wish to set a king over them like all
the nations
around them; and though he did not enjoin
the
establishment of a kingdom, he gave regulations re-
specting it
(Deut. xvii. 14 sqq.). That was the
common
usage of the
nations. It was the prevalent conception
of
a
well-ordered and properly administered government.
Now Jacob
inherited the blessing, and Esau did not.
It
had been
foretold that Esau, the elder, should serve Jacob,
1Astruc urges substantially the
same arguments that are presented
above to
prove that the kings of Edom here spoken of were pre-Mosaic,
but he
supposes that the king in Israel referred to was God, who be-
came their
king by formal covenant with them at Sinai (Ex. xix.), and
is so called
Deut. xxxiii. 5 (cf. Judg. viii. 22, 23; 1 Sam. viii. 7, xii
12) ; or
else Moses or Joshua, who, though they are not called kings,
were yet
invested with supreme authority under God himself.
ESAU'S
DESCENDANTS (CH. XXXVI.) 429
the younger;
that the people descended from the latter
should be
stronger than the people descended from the
former (xxv.
23); that Jacob should be lord over Esau
(xxvii.
29). Yet Esau had been a compact,
thoroughly
organized
kingdom for eight successive reigns, while Is-
rael had
just escaped from bondage, had attained to no
such
organization, had not yet had a single king.
How
could Moses
fail to note so remarkable an occurrence?
And why was
it not perfectly natural for him to have
made
precisely the statement which we here find?
Dillmann says that if the last of these
kings was a
contemporary
of Moses, the writer could not have said,
"These
are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom,
before there
reigned any king over the children of Is-
rael;"
he could only have said, "before the children of
Israel went
up out of Egypt," or "before they conquered
Canaan." This is of weight only against Dillmann's own
position. If this line of kings simply extended to
Moses's
time, as we
have seen that there is every reason to be-
lieve, no
post-Mosaic writer, and especially no one living
in or after
the time of Saul, could have made the reign
of kings in
Israel the terminus ad quem. No
one but
Moses
himself, or a writer in the Mosaic age, contrasting
the facts
thus far developed in the line of Esau and" Ja-
cob with
what had been predicted respecting them, could
have used the
language here employed. Instead of in-
dicating an
anachronism, the form of expression thus
points
directly to Moses as its authol'.
While the critics disagree respecting the
authorship of
this chapter
in general, they are unanimous in assigning
vs. 6-8 to
P, and in claiming that the characteristic ex-
pressions of
those verses, which are the ones commonly
used of
patriarchal migrations, are those of P.
How lit-
tle reason
they have for this has already been shown un-
der ch. xii.
4b, 5, Marks of P (3), No.2 and 5.
X
THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB (XXXVII. 2-L.)
THE first thirty-six chapters of Genesis
have now been
examined,
and no justification has yet been found for the
critical
hypothesis that the book is compounded from
pre-existing
documents. We proceed to inquire whether
this
hypothesis has any better support in the next and
only
remaining section of this book.
THE UNITY OF PLAN
The divisive hypothesis encounters here in
full meas-
ure the same
insuperable difficulty which meets it
throughout
the book of Genesis, and particularly in the
life of
Abraham, and the early history of Jacob.
The
unity of
plan and purpose which pervades the whole, so
that every
constituent part has its place and its function,
and nothing
can be severed from it without evident mu-
tilation,
positively forbids its being rent asunder in the
manner
proposed by the critics. If ever a
literary prod-
uct bore
upon its face the evidence of its oneness, this
is true of
the exquisite and touching story of Joseph,
which is
told with such admirable simplicity and a pathos
that is
unsurpassed, all the incidents being grouped with
the most
telling effect, until in the supreme crisis the
final
disclosure is made. No such high work of art was
ever
produced by piecing together selected fragments of
diverse
origin.
The critics tell us that the apparent
unity is due to
THE UNITY OF PLAN (CH. XXXVII. 2-L.) 431
the skill of
the redactor. But the suggestion is
alto-
gether impracticable. A writer who gathers his mate-
rials from
various sources may elaborate them in his own
mind, and so
give unity to his composition. But a re-
dactor who
limits himself to piecing together extracts
culled from
different works by distinct authors, varying
in
conceptions, method, and design, can by no possibility
produce
anything but patchwork, which will betray itself
by evident
seams, mutilated figures, and want of harmony
in the
pattern. No such incongruities can be
detected
the section
before us by the most searching examina-
tion. All that the critics affect to discover
vanish upon
a fair and
candid inspection.
Moreover, the story of Joseph, complete
as it is in it-
self, is but
one link in a uniform and connected chain,
and is of
the same general pattern with those that pre-
cede
it. With striking individual
diversities, both of
character
and experience, the lives of the several patri-
archs are,
nevertheless, cast in the same general mould.
Divine
revelations are made to Joseph at the outset, fore-
casting his
future (xxxvii. 5 sqq.), as to Abraham (xii. 1
sqq.), and
to Jacob (xxviii. 11 sqq.). Each was
sent away
from his
paternal home and subjected to a series of trials,
issuing both
in discipline of character and in ultimate
prosperity
and exaltation. And the story of Joseph
fits
precisely
into its place in the general scheme, which it is
the purpose
of Genesis to trace, by which God was pre-
paring and
training a people for himself. By a
series of
marvellous
providences, as the writer does not fail to
point out
(xlv. 5, 7; 1.20), the chosen seed was preserved
from
extinction and located within the great empire of
Egypt, as
had been already foreshown to Abraham
(xv. 13
sqq.), that they might unfold into a nation ready,
when the
proper time should arrive, to be transplanted
into Canaan.
432 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
These broad and general features, in which
the same
constructive
mind is discernible throughout, are lost
sight of by
critics who occupy themselves with petty de-
tails,
spying out doublets in every emphatic repetition or
in the
similar features of distinct events, finding occa-
sions of
offence in every transition or digression, however
natural and
appropriate, and creating variance by setting
separate
parts of the same transaction in antagonism, as
though each
were exclusive of the other, when in fact
they belong
together and are perfectly consistent; or by
dislocating
phrases and paragraphs from their true con-
nection and
imposing upon them senses foreign to their
obvious
intent. These artifices are perpetually
resorted
to by the
critics, and constitute, in fact, their stock argu-
ments, just
because they refuse to apprehend the author's
plan, and to
judge of the fitness of every particular from
his point of
view, but insist instead upon estimating
everything
from some self-devised standard of their own.
Vater, to whom the Pentateuch was a
collection of
heterogeneous
fragments, and who was ready to go to
any length
in the work of disintegration, nevertheless
says1
that the history of Joseph is "a connected whole, to
rend it
asunder would be to do violence to the narrative."
And Tuch,
who finds a double narrative throughout the
rest of
Genesis, declares that it is impossible to do so
here. "Several wrong courses have been
ventured upon,"
he says,2 "in respect to the narrator of the life
of Joseph.
Some relying
upon insecure or misunderstood criteria
have sought
to extort two divergent accounts. Others
have held
that the documents have been so worked over
that it is
impracticable to separate them with any degree
of
certainty. But we must insist upon the
close connec-
tion of the
whole recital, in which one thing carries an-
1 Commentar uber den Pentateuch, i., p. 290 ; iii., p. 435.
2 Commentar libel die Genesis, 2d edit., p. 417.
THE UNITY OF
PLAN (CH. XXXVII. 2-L) 433
other along
with it, and recognize in that which is con-
tinuously
written the work of one author."
And he adds1
respecting
ch. xxxvii.: "This section in
particular has
been
remarkably maltreated by the divisive document
and redactor
hypotheses of Ilgen and Gramberg without
bringing
forth anything but an arbitrary piece of mosaic
work, which
is shattered by the inner consistency and
connection
of the passage itself." The
posthumous edi-
tor of
Tuch's "Commentary" interposes the caveat that
"since
Hupfeld and Boehmer the unity of the history
of Joseph
can no longer be maintained." But
the fact
is that no
inconsistencies have since been pretended in
this
narrative which were not already pointed out by
Ilgen and
Gramberg. Whether the later attempts to
es-
tablish
duplicate accounts have been more successful
than those
which Tuch so pointedly condemns, we shall
inquire
presently.
The urgent motive which impels the most
recent crit-
ics to split
the history of Joseph asunder at all hazards
is thus
frankly stated by Wellhausen:2 "The principal
source for
this last section of Genesis is JE. It
is to be
presumed
that this work is here as elsewhere com-
pounded of J
and E. Our previous results urge to this
conclusion,
and would be seriously shaken if this were
not
demonstrable. I hold, therefore, that
the attempt
'to
dismember the flowing narrative of Joseph into
sources' is
not a failure,3 but
is as necessary as the de-
composition
of Genesis in general."
1 Commentar uber die Genesis,
2d edit., p. 424.
2 Composition des Hexateuch's,
p. 52.
3 The allusion is to Noldeke
(Untersuchungen, p. 32), who says "the
attempt to
dismember this flowing narrative into sources is a veritable
failure."
434 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
LACK OF CONTINUITY IN THE DOCUMENTS
If distinct documents have been combined
in this
portion of
Genesis, the critical analysis which disen-
tangles them
and restores each to its original separate-
ness might
be expected to bring forth orderly narratives,
purged of
interpolations and dislocations, with the true
connection
restored and a consequent gain to each in
significance,
harmony, and clearness. Instead of this
there is
nothing to show for P, J, or E but mutilated
fragments,
which yield no continuous or intelligible nar-
rative, but
require for their explanation and to fill their
lacunae
precisely those passages which the critical pro-
cess has
rent from them. We are expected to
assume,
with no
other evidence than that the exigencies of the
hypothesis
require it, that these P, J, and E fragments
represent
what were originally three complete docu-
ments, but
that the missing parts were removed by R.
"We now come," as Noldeke says,
"to the most dis-
tressing gap
in the whole of P." And he
undertakes to
account for
it by the gratuitous assumption that P's
account was
so decidedly contradictory to that of the
other
documents that R was obliged to omit it alto-
gether. In fact P is almost as absolute a blank in
what
follows as
it was in regard to Jacob's abode in Paddan-
aram.
THE DIVINE NAMES
The divine names here give no aid in the
matter of
critical
division. Jehovah occurs in but three of
these
fourteen
chapters, and in only eight verses, each time
with evident
appropriateness. It is found in connec-
tion with
God's dealings with the chosen race, on the
one hand his
punitive righteousness toward offenders
DICTION AND STYLE (CH. XXXVII. 2-L.) 435
(xxxviii. 7,
10), and on the other his gracious care of
Joseph,
assurances of which are heaped together at the
beginning of
his servitude in Egypt (xxxix. 2, 3, 5, 21,
23); after
this it appears but once, viz., in a pious ejacu-
lation of
the dying patriarch Jacob (xlix. 18).
Elohim
occurs
repeatedly in these chapters, and in a manner
which
Hupfeld ("Quellen," p. 178) confesses to be em-
barrassing
to the critics as contravening the requirements
of their
hypothesis. The predominance of this
name in
this section
cannot be traced to the habit of a particular
writer,
since it is supposed to be about equally shared
between J
and E. It is regulated by the
proprieties of
the situation,
with which it is always in accord. There
are three
considerations which explain the matter.
Elo-
him is
used--
1.
When Egyptians speak or are spoken to, as xli. 16,
38; and
Joseph is classed as an Egyptian while he was
unknown to
his brethren (xlii. 18; xliv. 16).
2.
Where God's general providential orderings aloe re-
ferred to
(xli. 51, 52); and especially where they are
explicitly
or implicitly contrasted with the purposes of
men (xIv.
5-9; 1. 19, 20).
3.
Where there is an appeal to God's almighty power
(xlvi. 2-4);
in this case El Shaddai may be substituted
(xliii. 14;
xlviii. 3, 4).
DICTION AND STYLE
Neither is the partition conducted on the
basis of such
literary
criteria as diction and style. Only a
few scat-
tered
scraps, amounting in all to about twenty-five
verses,l
are assigned to P, such as can be severed from
1Viz.. xxxvii. 2a; xli. 46a; xl
vi. 6. 7; xlvii. 5-11, 27b. 28; xlviii. 3-6
(7?); xlix.
la, 28b-33; 1. 12, 13, with a possible addition of xlvi. 8-27,
the
enumeration of Jacob's descendants, about which the critics are
not agreed.
436 OF JACOB
the main
body of the narrative as entering least into its
general flow
and texture. The mass of the matter, as
has
uniformly been the case since ch. xxiii., is divided
between J
and E, which by confession of the critics
can only be
distinguished with the greatest difficulty.
Whenever it
is impossible to effect a partition it is
claimed that
R must have blended the documents inex-
tricably
together. In other places a few
disconnected
clauses are
sundered from a J section and given to E, or
from an E
section and given to J; and these are claimed
as evidence
of two separate narratives. At other
times
arbitrary
grounds of distinction are invented, such as
assigning to
E all dreams ,that are mentioned, or differ-
ent
incidents of the narrative are parcelled between
them, as
though they were varying accounts of the same
thing,
whereas they are distinct items in a complete and
harmonious
whole. Genealogical tables, dates,
removals,
deaths, and
legal transactions or ritual enactments are as
a rule given
to P. Historical narratives are
attributed
to J and E,
and are divided between them not by any
definite
criteria of style, but by the artifice of imaginary
doublets or
arbitrary distinctions, leaving numerous
breaks and
unfilled gaps in their train. And in
this
halting
manner the attempt is made to establish the
1 Thus Kayser says (Das Vorexilische Buch,
p. 28): "The little frag-
ments of the
Elohist (P) inserted in Genesis from ch. xxiii. onward all
refer to
keeping the race elected in Abraham pure from admixture
with the
Canaanitish tribes, and its exclusive right to the possession of
Canaan,
which is confirmed both by narratives of acquisition of the soil
and of the
departure of the side lines of Ishmael and Esau. Sparse as
they have
thus far been found, they become still more rare in what
follows. The attempt of Tuch and Knobel, based on the
supplement
hypothesis,
to find in the history of Jacob's descendants, especially of
Joseph, a
radical portion of the so-called primary document P, has been
shown to be
untenable, since Hufeld has given the proof that the pas-
sages
referred to the first Elohist by those scholars belong to the second
Elohist,
worked over by, and inseparable from, the Jehovist."
JOSEPH SOLD INTO EGYPT (CH. XXXVII. 2-36) 437
existence of
what the critics would have us regard as
separate and
continuous documents. The method itself
is
sufficient to condemn the whole process and to show
that the
results are altogether factitious. It
could be
applied with
equal plausibility to any composition, what-
ever the
evidence of its unity.
JOSEPH SOLD INTO EGYPT--(CH. XXXVII. 2-36)
VARIANCE AMONG CRITICS
No pretext for division is here afforded
by Elohim or
Jehovah,
since no name of God occurs in this chapter.
Astruc,
Eichhorn, and Tuch regard it as a unit, and re-
fer it
without abatement to P. It has, however,
been va-
riously
divided, and it affords a good illustration of the
ease with
which a narrative embracing several incidents
can be
partitioned at the pleasure of the critic.1 Ilgen
1This chapter is partitioned by
different critics in the following man-
ner:
Ilgen: P, VB. 2, 14 (omit "and he
came to Shechem "), 18b, c, 21-
23a, b, 24,
25a, 28a, b, d, 29-31, 32b, c, 34, 36. E, vs. 3-13, 14 (last
clause). 15-18a, 19, 20, 25b-27 , 23, 28c, 32, 33, 35
; xxxix. 1.
Gramberg: P, vs. 2, 18, 21 (for
"Reuben" read " Judah"), 25-27,
28c, d ;
xxxix. 1. J, vs. 5-11, 19, 20, 22, 24, 28a, b, 29, 30, 36. Com-
mon to both,
vs. 3, 4, 12-17, 23, 31-35.
Knobel: P, vs. 2-4, 23-27, 28c, d, 31,
32a. Rechtsbuch, vs. 5-22a,
28a, b,
32b-36. J, vs. 22b, 29, 30.
Boehmer: J, VB. 2a, 3, 4, 11a, 18c,
25b-27, 28b, 32a, c, d, 33a, d,
34, 35a,
b. E, vs. 5-10, 11b, 12 (omit "in
Shechem "), 14a, b, 17c,
18a, b,
19-21, 22a, 23-25a, 28a, 29-31, 32b, 33b, c, 35c, 36. R, vs. 2b,
5b, 8b, 12
(in Shechem), 13, 14c, 15-17a, b, d, 22b, 23c, 28c, 36 (Poti-
phar).
Hupfeld: J, vs. 25b-27, 28c. E, vs. 2-25a,
28a, b, d-36.
Schrader:
J, vs. 23-27, 28c, d, 31-35. E,
vs. 2b-22, 28a, b, 29, 30,
36.
Wellhausen: J, vs. 12, 13a, b, 14-17,
19-21 (for" Reuben" read
"Judah
"), 23, 24, 25-27, 28c, 31-36. E, vs.
2b-11, 13c, 18, 22, 28a,
b, d-30.
438 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
partitions
it between the two Elohists with the following
result: P
uses the name Jacob (vs. 1, 34), represents
Joseph as habitually
with the flocks (ver. 2), wearing an
ordinary
coat (vs. 23a, 32 , 33), incurring the hatred of
his brothers
by bringing an evil report of them to his
father (ver.
2). Reuben as the first-born takes a promi-
nent part,
counsels not to kill Joseph, and is afterward
inconsolable
(vs. 21, 22, 29 30). Midianites take
Joseph
from the pit
without the knowledge of his brothers (ver.
28), and
sell him into Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of
Pharaoh
(ver. 36). E, on the contrary, uses the
name
Israel (vs,.
3, 13) and reprrsents Joseph as the son of
his fathers
old age (ver. 3) unacquainted with the flocks
(vs. 15,
16), wearing a coat of many colors (or rather a
long garment
with sleeves) (vs. 3, 23b, 32a), hated by his
brothers
because of his distinguished dress and his fa-
ther's
partiality for him (ver. 4), and hated still more for
his dreams
(vs. 5-11). Judah acts the part of the
first-
born (ver.
26); his brothers on his advice sell Joseph to
Dillmann, 1st edition: J, vs. 3, 4, 23c,
25-27, 28c, some expressions
in
32-35. J and E mixed, vs. 23, .12, 34,
35. E, the remainder.
Dillmann, 3d edition: J, vs. 2b, 3, 4,
18b, 21 (for "Reuben" read
"Judah"),
23*-27, 28c, 31*-35*. J and E mixed, vs.
23, 31,32 ("coat"
and
"long tunic" in combination), vs. 34, 35 (34b and 35b doublets).
R, vs. 5b,
8b, Israel, Shechem, and Hebron in 14, slight change in 18.
In ver. 9,
"and told it to his brethren," is an interpolation. E, rest
of the
chapter.
Kittell: J, vs. 2b, 3, 4a, 11a, 12, 113a,
14-18, 21 (for "Reuben" read
"Judah
"), 23c, 25b-27, 28c, 32, 33 (in great part), 35 (except the last
part). E, vs. 2a, c, 4b-10, l1b, 13b, 19, 20 (except
"and cast him into
one of the
pits "), 22, 23a, b, 24, 25a., 28a, b, d, 29-31, parts of 32 and
33, 34, the
last three words of 35, 36.
Kautzsch: J, vs. 3,4, 21 (for
"Reuben" read "Judah "), 23c, 25b-
27, 28c, 32,
33, 35. E, vs. 2c, 5a, 6-11, 19, 20, 22,
28a, b, d-31, 32
(first
verb), 34, 36. JE, vs. 2a, 12-18, 23a,
b, 24, 25a. R, vs. 2b, 5b,
8b, 10a.
Driver: J, vs. 12-21, 25-27, 28c,
31-35. E, vs. 2b-11, 22-24, 28a,
b, d-80, 36.
JOSEPH SOLD
INTO EGYPT ( XXXVH. 2-36) 439
the
Ishmaelites (vs. 27, 28b). His father
says that he
will go down
to Sheol mourning for his son (ver. 35).
Joseph is
sold to some Egyptian whose name is not
given
(xxxix. 1; "Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, cap-
tain of the
guard," is ejected from this verse as an intel-
polation).
De Wette1 charges Ilgen with
being arbitrary and go-
ing too far,
but agrees with him to a certain extent.
He
fancies that
there are inconsistencies in the narrative,
which can
only be relieved by the assumption that two
variant
accounts have been blended. After the
adoption
of Reuben's
proposal (ver. 23) to cast Joseph into a
pit instead
of killing him, Judah says (ver. 26), "What
profit is it
if we slay our brother?" as if they still in-
tended to
kill him. Reuben makes no objection to
Ju-
dah's
proposal to sell Joseph; and yet he is afterward
distressed
at not finding Joseph in the pit, though there
had been no
mention of his absence when the sale was
effected. This indicates that' different stories are
here
confused
together. According to one, Joseph was
cast
at Reuben's
suggestion into a pit, and subsequently
drawn out
and carried off by Midianite merchants who
were
passing. According to the other,
Joseph's brother's
had
conspired to kill him, but sold him instead to Ish-
maelites.
Gramberg distributes the chapter between P
and J,
certain
paragraphs being common to both. Both
tell
that Joseph
was his father's favorite, and had been pre-
sented by
him with a long robe, which excited his broth-
ers'
hostility. Both tell that Joseph was
sent by his
father from
Hebron to Shechem to find his brothers, who
were with
the flocks. And both describe the
deception
practised
upon Jacob, and his inconsolable grief at the
loss of
Joseph. P tells of Judah and the sale to
the
1 Beitrage zur Einleitung in das Alte
Testament, ii., pp. 142 sqq.
440 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
Ishmaelites,
and J of Reub~. and Joseph being carried
off by the
Midianites; which is the reverse of Ilgen's as-
signment,
who makes P tell of the latter and E of the
former.
Knobel, the latest and most minutely
elaborate of the
supplementary
critics, recognizes in Genesis only an
Elohist
Primary Document, P, which gives a compara-
tively
trustworthy statement of facts; and a Jehovist
Reviser, J,
who incorporates with the preceding the leg-
endary
embellishments of later times. P's
account is
that
Joseph's reporting his brothers' misdeeds and his
father's
partiality for him so exasperated his brothers,
with whom he
was feeding the flocks, that they threw
him into a
pit, and then at Judah's instance sold him to
Ishmaelites,
who took him to Egypt; after this they dip
Joseph's
coat in blood and send it to their father.
J
adds from
some other authority the prophetic dreams,
Joseph's
being sent by his father in quest of his broth-
ers, their
conspiring against him as they saw him ap-
proaching,
Reuben's proposal not to shed his blood but
to put him
in a pit (meaning, in the intent of the author-
ity from
which this was drawn, to let him perish there;
but, by
inserting ver. 22b, J converts this into a purpose
to restore
him to his father; and he further introduces
in the same
vein (vs. 29, 30) Reuben's subsequent dis-
tress at not
finding Joseph in the pit). J makes no
men-
tion of the
adoption of Reuben's proposal; but this is to
be presumed,
as Midianites pass, who draw Joseph out
of the pit
and sell him to Potiphar. Finally,
Jacob's
grief is
depicted at the sight of his son's coat, which was
sent to him.
Bohmer divides the chapter between J, E,
and R, as-
signing nothing
whatever to P. Even the title of the
section
(ver. 2a), "These are the generations of Jacob,"
which the
critics commonly claim for P, though most un-
JOSEPH SOLD
INTO EGYPT (CH. XXXVII. 2-36) 441
reasonably,
is given by him to J. A large share is
imputed
to R, in
order to cover the halting-places of the analysis, or
to carry the
principle of subdivision consistently through.
As three
reasons are assigned to the hostility of Joseph's
brothers,
viz., his evil report of their conduct, his father's
partiality,
and his dreams, and he last two are divided
between J
and E, the first (ve .2b) is given to R.
As
each
document is supposed to peak of but one ground
of
hostility, this could not be represented as augmenting
what had not
been before alluded to; hence, vs. 5b, 8b,
must have
been introduced by, R. As E never speaks
of
Shechem,l
and J would not I have the sons of Jacob
feed their
flocks where they had committed such a deed
of violence2
(xxxiv. 25-27); moreover, as Hebron was
the abode of
the patriarchs in P (xxiii. 2, xxxv. 27), but
not in J or
E, vs. 13, 14c and the words "in Shechem"
(ver. 12)
must belong to R. For a like reason the
de-
signation of
Dothan as the scene of the transaction that
follows is
not referable to J or E, hence vs. 15-17 are
given to R,
except the single clause in ver. 17c, "and Jo-
seph went
after his brethren." R inserted
ver. 22b to
1 Bohmer assigns xxxiii. 18 to
J, and xxxv. 4 to R.
2 Matthew Poole remarked upon
this: "One may rather wonder that
he durst
venture his sons and his cattle there, where that barbarous
massacre had
been committed. But those pastures being
his own (xxxiii.
19) and
convenient for his use, he did commit himself and them to that
same good
Providence which watched over him then and ever since,
and still
kept up that terror which then he sent upon them. Besides,
Jacob's sons
and servants made a considerable company, and the men
of Shechem
being universally slain, others were not very forward to
revenge
their quarrel, where there was any hazard to themselves in
such an
enterprise." It may be added that
in the time which had
since
elapsed Jacob had had opportunity to acquaint himself with the
temper of
the surrounding population and to re-establish peaceful rela-
tions with
them. It is not even necessary to
suppose with Astruc (Con-
jectures, p.
401) that the affair of Dinah took place after Joseph had
been sold
into Egypt.
442 GENERATIONS OF JACOB
make it
appear that Reuben inended to restore Joseph
to his
father, which was not his intention in the original
story. Ver. 23c must also be referred to him, since
E
could not
mention "the long robe," of which only J had
spoken (ver.
3); also ver. 28c, because it duplicates xxxix.
1. Finally, the name "Potiphar" is
struck out of ver. 36
as an
insertion by R. This is with the view of
creating
a
discrepancy between this verse and xxxix. 1.
"Poti-
phar"
is erased from the former, and "an officer of Pha-
raoh,
captain of the guard," is erased from the latter, and
then it is
claimed that these verses contain variant rep-
resentations
of the person to which Joseph was sold.
Other
critics accomplish the same end by retaining
"Potiphar,"
in ver. 36, and erasing it in xxxix. 1.
All
which shows
how easy it is to reverse a writer's positive
statements,
and create divergences where there are none
by simply
making free with the text.
Hupfeld ("Quellen," pp. 67 sqq.)
reproduces the view
of De Wette
by giving the entire chapter to E, except vs.
25b-27,
28c. The narrative is thus resolved into
two
accounts
differing in three points, viz., the name of the
brother who
saved Joseph's life, how he came to Egypt,
and the
person who bought him. According to E
Reu-
ben proposed
to put him in a pit, whence he was se-
cretly drawn
out by passing Midianites, who sold him to
Potiphar,
captain of the guard. According to J, at
Ju-
dah's
suggestion Joseph's brothers sell him to a caravan
of
Ishmaelites, of whom he was bought by an unnamed
Egyptian
(xxxix. 1). It is claimed that each
account is
complete and
separable; only in ver. 28 they are so com-
bined that
the verbs are referred to wrong subjects.
The
clause,
"and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty
pieces of
silver," is to be sundered from the rest of the
verse and
attached to ver. 27. Verse 28 will then
read.
"and
there passed, by Midianites, merchantmen; and
JOSEPH SOLD
INTO EGYPT (CH. XXXVII. 2-36) 443
they (the
Midianites) drew and lifted up Joseph out of
the pit. And they brought Joseph into
Egypt." This
connects
back with ver. 25a; it occurred while Joseph's
brothers
were sitting together taking bread. It
does not
appear from
J that Joseph was put into a pit at all.
Schrader
enlarges J's portion by adding to it (vs. 23, 24,
31-35), with
the effect of transferring the statement of
Joseph's
being put in the pit, and of his father's grief,
from E to
J. This still leaves the whole of the
narra-
tive prior
to ver. 23 with E, and nothing in J respecting
the relation
of Joseph to his brothers, until suddenly,
without a
word of explanation, they are found deliberat-
ing whether
to kill him or to sell him as a slave.
Wellhausen is too acute a critic and too
ingenious in
discovering
doublets to suffer this state of things to
continue. He remarks: 1 "Verses 12-24
are preparatory
to vs. 25
sqq., and are indispensable for both E and J.
To be sure,
no certain conclusion can be drawn from this
alone as to
its composite character, but a presumption is
created in
its favor which is confirmed by actual traces
of its being
double." Acting upon this
presumption he
sets himself
to discover the traces. It seems to him
that
"Here
am I," is not the proper answer to what Israel
says to
Joseph (ver. 13); and that ver. 18 does not fit in
between vs.
17 and 19. "They saw him afar
off" im-
plies that
he had not yet "found them;" and "they con-
spired
against him to slay him," is a parallel to ver. 20.
Verses 21
and 22 are also doublets, only instead of "Reu-
ben,"
in ver. 21 (an old suggestion of Gramberg's) we
should read
"Judah," whose proposal is to cast him into
the pit
(ver. 20), to perish, without killing him them-
selves,
while Reuben (ver. 22) has the secret purpose of
rescuing
him. From these premises he concludes
that
while J is
the principal narrator in this paragraph, as
1
Composition des Hexateuchs, p. 53.
444 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
shown by
Israel (ver. 13), Hebron (ver. 14), and verbal
suffixes passim,
nevertheless vs. 13c, 14a, 18, 22, and parts
of vs. 23,
24, in which Otxo repeatedly occurs instead of a
suffix
attached to the verb, belong to E and represent his
parallel
narrative, which has only been preserved in this
fragmentary
way.
In vs. 2b-11 he is less successful in
discovering traces
of twofold
authorship. These verses are attributed
to
E, who deals
more largely with dreams than J, and who,
moreover,
has Myniquz;
NBe son of his
old age (ver. 3 as
xxi. 2)
against Myniquz;
dl,y, child of his
old age (xliv. 20
J); tn,toK;
Mys.iPa long
tunic (ver. 3 as
VB. 23, 32) against tn,ToKu
coat, J,
and
especially has Otxo constantly
(vs. 4, 5, 8, 9) instead
of a verbal
suffix, in marked contrast with vs. 12 sqq.
"With
the sons of Bilhah," etc. (ver. 2) does not accord
accurately
with the preceding clause, and "he told it to
his father
and to his brethren" (J ver. 10) deviates from
the
statement in ver. 9; but he thinks these to be addi-
tions by a
later hand and not from J. He has,
however,
one
resource; vs. 19, 20, J, speak of Joseph's dreams,
consequently
J must have given some account of them,
though it
has not been preserved.
Dillmann proves in this instance to have
had sharper
eyes than
Wellhausen, and has found the desired doub-
lets where
the latter could discover none. To be
sure,
he
unceremoniously sets aside Wellhausen's criteria.
He gives vs.
19, 20, to E (not J) in spite of repeated ver-
bal suffixes
which he will not recognize here as a dis-
criminating
mark, in spite, too, of hz,l.Aha
which occurs
xxiv. 65 J
and nowhere else in the Old Testament; and
accordingly
he does not allow the inference that J gave a
parallel
account of the dreams. But taking the
hint
from Bohmer
he finds the coveted parallel by setting
vs. 3, 4, as
J's explanation of the hatred of Joseph, over
against that
of E in vs. 5-11. According to J, his
broth-
JOSEPH SOLD
INTO EGYPT. (CH. XXXVII. 2-36) 440
ers hated
him because he was is father's favorite; ac-
cording to
E, because of his ambitious dreams.1
J says
"they
hated him" (ver. 4) Uxn;W;y.iva; E "they envied him"
(ver.
11) Uxn;qay;va.2 To be sure xneWA hated occurs twice over
in the E
paragraph (vs. 5, 8), and with explicit reference
to ver. 4,
clearly indicating the identity of the writer.
But
if anyone
imagines that such a trifle as this can disturb
a critic's
conclusions he is much mistaken.
Dillmann
blandly says
that the unwelcome clauses were inserted
by R, and
lo! they disappear at once. The word of
a
critic is
equal to the wand of a magician. When he
says
that ver. 5b
is inappropriate where it stands because the
actual
recital of the dream follows (vs. 6, 7), Delitzsch
reminds him
that such anticipatory announcements are
quite usual,
and cites ii. 8; he might have cited ver. 28d
from this
very chapter. He sats the same of ver.
8b,
because only
one dream had yet been told, forgetting the
numerous
examples of the generic use of the plural.3
Myniquz;-NB, and Mys.iPa
tn,toK; (ver. 3)
which Wellhausen ad-
duces as
characteristic of E, become with DilImann in-
dicative of
J. Knobel remarks that ver. 7 and xxvi. 12
are the only
two passages in the Pentateuch in which
the
patriarchs are spoken of as cultivating the soil, or
1 Dillmann explains the allusion to Joseph's
mother (xxxvii. 10),
whose death
is mentioned xxxv. 19, by his favorite method of trans-
position,
assuming that the statement of her death in E really occurred
after this
time; but R, for the sake of harmonizing with P, inserted it
sooner. But it remains to be shown that Leah could
not be referred to
in this
manner after Rachel's death.
2 Kittell reverses this by connecting
ver. 4b with 2c, and ver. 11a
with 4a, and
so making E speak of Joseph's brothers hating him for his
talebearing
and his dreams, and J of their envying him on account of
his father's
partiality. This shows how easy it is
for a critic by adroitly
shifting the
lines of partition to alter the connection of clauses and
modify their
meaning.
3 Cf. Gen. viii. 4; xiii. 12; xxi. 7; Num. xxvi. 8; Judg. xii. 7 ; 1
Sam. xvii.
43; Job xvii. 1.
446 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
otherwise
than nomads; they should, therefore, be as-
cribed to
the same hand. The critics lay stress
upon a
point like
this when it suits them; otherwise they qui-
etly ignore
it. Dillmann gives ver. 7 to E; xxvi. 12
to J.
Dillmann further finds a foothold for J in
ver. 2, by
insisting
that ver. 2a and 2b are mutually exclusive, and
that the
former should be given to P or E, and the latter
to J. Delitzsch cannot see why, in point of matter,
they
may not have
proceeded from the same pen, while in
grammatical
construction i. 2, 3 offers a precise parallel.
Critics are divided in opinion as to the
share which is
to be
allowed P in xxxvii. 2. By common
consent they
assign him
the initial words, "These are the generations
of
Jacob," i.e., an account of Jacob's family from the time
that he was
recognized as the independent head of the
chosen race;
and thus we have a P title to a J and E
section. The majority also refer to him the following
clause,
"Joseph was seventeen years old," with or with-
out the rest
of the sentence, which then becomes utterly
unmeaning,
and is out of connection with anything what-
ever. The only reason for thus destroying its sense
by
severing it
from the narrative to which it belongs is the,
critical
assumption that all dates must be attributed to P.
But Noldeke
revolts at the rigorous enforcement of this
rule. He says," The mention of the youthful
age of
Joseph suits
very well in the whole connection as well as
that of his
manly age (xli. 46), and of the advanced age
which he
attained (1. 26). These numbers also
have no
connection
whatever with the chronological system of
the Primary
Document (P) any more than the twenty
years' abode
in Mesopotamia (xxxi. 38, 41)."
Well-
hausen gives
no positive opinion on the subject.
Dill-
mann
assigned this clause to E in his first edition, but
in his
second and third hesitates between P and E.
JOSEPH SOLD INTO EGYP (CH. XXXVII.
2-36) 447
In the first four editions " his
Genesis Delitzsch
could find
no evidence of a duplicate narrative in ch.
xxxvii. In his last edition he hanged his mind,
though
he was still
unable to accept Dillmann's keen analysis,
which seemed
to him to go "beyond the limits of the
knowable." He ventures no further than to assign vs.
28a, b, 29,
30, to E, and ver. 28c, d to J, and to claim
that
thenceforward the narrative of E and J are in agree-
ment, while
the text has prevailingly the coloring of J,
only
"the Midianites" in ver. 36 are a sure indication
of E.
It will not be necessary to proceed with
the recital of
other
proposed partitions, which are sufficiently indicated
in a
previous note. The critics have shown
how vari-
ously the
same narrative may be divided. And it
must
be a very
intractable material indeed that can resist the
persistent
application of such methods as they freely
employ. The fact that different versions of a story
can
be
constructed out of a narrative by an ingenious parti-
tion of its
constituent elements by no means proves its
composite
character. They may be purely
subjective,
destitute of
any historical basis, and of no more value
than any
clever trick at cross-reading.
GROUNDS OF PARTITION
Wellhausen admits that "the
connection of the matter
in ch.
xxxvii. is certainly such that it would scarcely give
occasion for
separating it into two threads, were it not
for the
conclusion (vs. 25-36)." Here it is
alleged that
there are
certain glaring inconsistencies, which cannot
be otherwise
accounted for than as the fusing together of
discordant
narratives. Four discrepancies are
charged,
which lie at
the basis of every attempt to partition the
chapter.
448 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
1.
Verses 21, 22, it was Reuben, but ver. 26 it was
Judah, who
persuaded the brothers not to put Joseph to
death.
2.
Verses 25, 27, 28, xxxix. 1, Ishmaelites, but vs.
28, 36,
Midianites, took Joseph and brought him to
Egypt.
3. According to different clauses
of ver. 28, Joseph was
carried off
secretly without the knowledge of his brothers,
or was sold
by them.
4.
Verse 36, he was sold to Potiphar, but xxxix. 1
(purged of
interpolations), to an unnamed Egyptian.
These imaginary difficnlties are of easy
solution.
As to the
first. It surely is not surprising that
two of
the brothers
should have taken an active part in the con-
sultations
respecting Joseph, nor that the same two
should be
prominent in the subsequent course of the
transactions. Reuben, as the eldest, had special respon-
sibilities
and would naturally be forward to express his
mind; while
Judah's superior force of character, like
that of
Peter among the apostle, made him prompt to
take the
lead, and there is no inconsistency in what is
attributed
to them. Reuben persuaded them not to
kill
Joseph, but
to cast him alive into a pit, cherishing the
purpose,
which he did not divulge to them, to restore
him to his
father. They accede to his proposal
intend-
ing to let
Joseph die in the I pit, or to kill him at some
future
time. To this state of mind Judah
addresses him-
self (ver.
26). The absence of Reuben, when Joseph
was
sold, is not
expressly stated, but is plainly enough im-
plied in his
despair and grief at his brother's disappear-
ance. The reply which his brother's made is not re-
corded; but
there is no implication that they were as
ignorant as
he of what had become of Joseph. That
they had a
guilt in the matter which he did not share is
distinctly
intimated (xlii. 22); he must, therefore, have
JOSEPH SOLD
INTO EGYPT. (CH. XXXVII. 2-36) 449
been fully
aware that they did something more than put
Joseph in
the pit at his suggest
As to the second point. Ishmaelites in the strict and
proper sense
were a distinct tribe from the Midianites,
and were of
different though related origin. It is,
how-
ever, a
familiar fact, which we have had occasion to observe
before, that
tribal names are no always used with defi-
nite
exactness (cf. xxxvi. 2 ; see p 422).
And there is ex-
plicit
evidence that Ishmaelites as used in a wide sense
to include
Midianites (Judg. viii. 24; cf. vii. 1 sqq. ; viii.
1
sqq.). Dillmann's objection hat this
belonged to a
later period
comes with a bad grace from one who places
the earliest
Pentateuchal documents centuries after Gid-
eon. If the invading army referred to in the
passages
above cited
could be called indifferently Midianites and
Ishmaelites,
why not this caravan of merchants? The
British
troops at the battle of Trenton in the American
revolution
were Hessians, and might be properly spoken
of under
either designation. If a historian were
to use
these terms
interchangeably in describing the engage-
ment, would
it follow that variant accounts had been con-
fusedly
mingled? The absence of the article
before
Midianites
(ver. 28) does not imply that they were dis-
tinct from
the Ishmaelites before perceived (vs. 25, 27).
They were
recognized in the distance as an Ishmaelite
caravan, but
it was not till they actually came up to them
that the
Ishmaelites were perceived to be specifically or
largely
Midianites.
As to the third point. If the first half of ver. 28 were
severed from
its connection, the words might mean that
Midianites
drew Joseph, out of the pit. But in the
con-
nection in
which it stands such a sense is simply im-
possible. And the suggestion that R had two statements
before him:
one, that Midianites drew Joseph out of the
pit without
his brothers' knowledge and carried him off
400 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
to Egypt;
the other, that his brothers drew him from
the pit and
sold him to the Ishmaelites; and that he
combined
them as we have them now, is to charge him
with inconceivable
stupidity or reckless falsification.
There can be
no manner of doubt how the author of the
book in its
present for understood the transaction.
There is no
possible suggestion of more than one mean-
ing in the
words before us. The invention of
another
sense may
illustrate the critic's wit, but it has no more
merit than
any other perversion of an author's obvious
meaning. And it derives no warrant from xl. 15; Joseph
was
"stolen away," even though his captors bought him
from those
who had no right to dispose of him.
The fourth point can be best considered
when we come
to ch.
xxxix.
MARKS OF J
Dillmann does not pretend to base the
partition of this
chapter upon
peculiarities of diction. But in the
course
of his
exposition he notes the following words as though
they were
confirmatory of it :
1.
Israel (ver. 3 J; 13 E, modified by R); Jacob (ver.
34a),
referred to E solely on account of this word.
Dillmann
undertakes to carry consistently through the
rule laid down
by Wellhausen,1 but which through the
fault of R
he admits has not been strictly observed,2 viz.,
that after
xxxv. 10 J calls the patriarch Israel, E calls him
Jacob, but
his sons the sons of Israel, while P continues
to speak of
Jacob and the sons of Jacob. Whence re-
sults this
curious circumstance: P (xxxv. 10) and E (xxxii.
29; so
Dillmann) record the, change of name to Israel,
but never
use it; J alone makes use of it, and, according
to Dillmann,
he does not record the change at all.
There is
a singular
inconsistency likewise in the conduct of R.
1
Composition des Hexateuchs, p. 59. 2
Ibid., p. 60.
JOSEPH SOLD
INTO EGYPT (CH. XXXVII. 2-36) 451
P alone
mentions the change in the names of Abraham
and Sarah
(xvii. 5, 15), but R is so concerned to have the
documents
uniform in this respect that from this point
onward he
alters these names in J and E to correspond
with P; why
does he not here in me manner bring P
and E into
correspondence with J? And it is only by
palpable
forcing, that Dillmann succeeds in uniformly as-
signing
Israel to J (see e.g., xlv. 2, 28, xlvi. 1, 2, xlvii.
27; xlviii.
2, 8, 10, 11, 14, 21). Kuenen admits
that "nu-
merous
exceptions to the rule occur." At
this period of
transition
when the family is branching out into the na-
tion these
two names seem to be used interchangeably.
If any
distinction whatever is intei:1ded, it is purely in
the writer's
point of view, who may have used the per-
sonal name
Jacob when he regarded the patriarch strictly
as an
individual, and the name Israel when he thought
of him as
the head and represen 'ative of the chosen
race.
2. Myd.iPa
tn,toK; long tunic (vs.3, 23, 32). The expression
occurs
nowhere in the Hexateuch but in this chapter.
It
is alleged that,
according to J, Joseph wore a "long
tunic,"
the special gift of his father, but according to E
only an
ordinary" tunic " tn,ToKu. But these expressions
are combined
or used interchangeably in vs. 23, 31, 32;
and they can
only be referred to distinct documents by
partitioning
closely connected clauses in an arbitrary
manner.
3. dyriOh bring down
(into Egypt) (ver. 25); besides in
J xxxix. 1;
xliii. 11, 22; xliv. 21; for which E has
xybihe
bring (ver.
28); but no difference of conception is im-
plied by
this varied phrase, since E has repeatedly
drayA
go down (into Egypt) (xlii. 2b, 3; xlv. 9; xlvi.
3, 4), as
J (xliii.
15, 20; xliv. 23, 26); xlii. 38 is sundered from
its proper
connection in E and ascribed to J; J also has
xOB come (xlvi.
31; xlvii. 1, 4; cf. xliii. 2).
452 THE GENERATIONS OF J ACOB
That varied forms of expression are
consistent with
sameness of
authorship by confession of the critics ap-
pears from
the phrase "rent his clothes," in which ver.
29 has dg,B,
and ver. 34a has hlAm;Wi yet both are referred
to E.
It is also worth not that hBADi
report (ver. 2) is re-
ferred by
Dillmann to J, though it only occurs
besides in
the
Hexateuch in Num. xiii. 32; xiv. 36, 37 P; also rB,Di
speak (ver. 4), which only occurs besides in
the Hexateuch,
with
"the accusative of the person, in Num. xxvi. 3 P; and
lKenat;hi conspire against (ve .18b). This verb
occurs but
once besides
in the Hexateuch (Num. xxv. 18 P), where
it is in the
Piel form. And Myz.ifi ryfiW; he-goat (ver. 31) is
ascribed to
E, though it is only found besides in the
Hexateuch in
the ritual law, where it occurs repeatedly
and is
uniformly ascribed to P.
THE
NARRATIVE OF JUDAH AND TAMAR(CH. XXXVIII.)
NO LACK OF ORDER
Because the narrative concerning Joseph is
interrupted
by ch.
xxxviii., De Wette1 inferred
that "we have here
a
compilation, not a continuous history by one narrator."
The charge
of displacement has been regularly repeated
ever since,
though obviously unfounded. This chapter
is entirely
germane to the subject treated, and it belongs
precisely
where it is in the author's plan. He is
pro-
fessedly
giving an account of the generations of Jacob"
(xxxvii. 2),
not the life of Joseph simply, but the history
of Jacob's
family. Joseph is necessarily thrown
into
prominence,
since the events which brought about the
removal of
the chosen race to Egypt 1vere so largely con-
nected with
him. But the incidents of this chapter
have
their
importance in the constitution of Jacob's family at
1 Beitrage, ii., p. 146.
JUDAH AND TAMAR (CH. XXXVIII.) 453
the time of
the migration to Egypt (xlvi. 12), and in the
permanent
tribal arrangements of Israel (Num. xxvi. 19
sqq.), as
explanatory of the origin of the tribal families of
Judah. The writer conducts Joseph to Egypt, where he
is sold as a
slave. There he leaves him for a while
until
these facts
in Judah's family are related, when he re-
sumes the
thread of Joseph's narrative precisely where
he left off,
and proceeds as before. It is just the
method
that the
best writers pursue in similar circumstances.
So
far from
suggesting confusion or disarrangement, it ar-
gues an
orderly well-considered plan.
Judah is said (ver. 1) to have separated
himself from
his brethren
"at that time," that is to say, shortly after
Joseph was
sold into Egypt. It is not at all
unlikely, as
Kurtz1
suggests, that the connection here is much more
intimate
than that of a simple conjunction in time.
Un-
able to endure
the sight of his father's grief (xxxvii. 35),
and goaded
by Reuben's reproaches (cf. xxxvii. 29, 30;
xlii. 22),
and the upbraidings of his own conscience, he
left his
father's house, and was thus led into a marriage
with a
Canaanitess. And the providential
retribution
followed of
successive afflictions in the loss of his sons,
in return
for the grievous loss which he had inflicted upon
his father,
and of the deterioration of his character by
contact with
impurity, and, as it would also appear, with
idolatry. The "kedesha " (vs. 21, 22) was one
who sur-
rendered
herself in the service of the goddess Astarte.
The chronological objection which has been
made to
this
narrative is as futile as that which is directed against
its
continuity. If Judah's marriage took
place soon after
Joseph was
sold, as is expressly stated, Judah was then
twenty years
old, and there is no reason why all that is
recorded in
this chapter may not have taken place within
the
twenty-two years which preceded the migration into
1
Geschichte des Alten Bundes, i., p. 277.
454 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
Egypt. It implies early marriages on the part of his
sons, but
not incredibly early.
NO ANACHRONISM.
It has still further seen objected that the
Deutero-
nomic law of
levirate marriages (Deut. xxv. 5 sqq.) is
here
represented as in force in the time of the patriarchs.
But there is
no anachronism in this. Genesis shows
that
in several
respects the 1aws of Moses embodied, or were
based upon,
patriarchal usages; while, nevertheless, the
modifications
show that there has been no transference
to a
primitive period of the customs of a later time. Un-
der the
Mosaic law one who was disinclined to marry his
brother's
widow might be formally released from the
obligation
by certain ceremonies; this is a relaxation of
the
imperative requirement set forth in this chapter.
And the
penalty of being burned, with which Tamar was
threatened,
was not that of the Mosaic law, which was
being put to
death by stoning (Deut. xxii. 21-24); in
this
Dillmann admits that there is a reminiscence of
antelegal
times. The critics claim that the
Deutero-
nomic law
belongs to the reign of Josiah, yet the levi-
rate was an
established institution in the days of the
Judges (Ruth
iv. 10). How much the argument from
silence, of
which the critics make so frequent use, amounts
to in this
case, may be inferred from the fact that such
marriages,
though their existence is thus trebly vouched
for, are
nowhere alluded to in the other Pentateuchal
codes nor in
the later history, until the times of the New
Testament
(Mat. XXII. 24).
As Perez (ver. 29) was the ancestor of
king David
(Ruth iv.
18-22), the late date of this chapter has been
argued on
the assumption that it was written to indicate
the origin
of the house of David. But if this were
so,
JUDAH AND TAMAR (CH. XXXVIII.) 455
the writer
must have adopted very unusual method of
flattering
the pride of a royal house. Nor can the Ju-
daic writer
J, to whom it is attributed, have composed it
in honor of
his tribe. How displeasing it was to na-
tional
vanity appears from the fact that the Targum con-
verts
Judah's wife from the daughter of a Canaanite into
is that of a
merchant, and later legends make Tamar a
daughter of
Melchizedek. These serious faults of
Judah
are
doubtless related with the same design as other re-
corded
blemishes of the patriarchs. They show
that the
distinction
granted to him among his brethren by mak-
ing him the
father of the royal tribe (xlix. 8), was due
not to his
personal merit, but to the gracious choice of
God. And that the discipline to which he was
subjected
corrected
and reclaimed him, a the providential dealings
of with
Jacob had a like effect upon him, may be inferred
from ver.
26, and from his noble conduct subsequently
(xliv. 16
sqq.).
Jehovah occurs three times in this
chapter (vs. 7, 10),
and it is
for this reason ascribed to J. But the
name is
of here used
not in compliance with the unmeaning habit of
the writer,
but the requirements of the passage.
Jeho-
vah as the
ruler and judge of his people is especially of-
fended by
their misdeeds. It is Jehovah
accordingly
who punished
these transgressors.
MARKS OF J
1.
Etymologies. See ch. xvi., Marks
of J, No.4.
2.
yneyfeB; fra evil in the eyes of (vs. 7, 10).1
See ch.
xxi. 1-21;
Marks of E, No.4.
1 "Evil in the eyes of Jehovah"
(vs. 7, 10) is a standing phrase, and
is found
sixty times besides in the Old Testament.
"Evil in the eyes
of
Elohim" occurs but once (1 Chron. xxi. 7), and there it is ha-Elohim
with the
article. "The eyes of Jehovah"
occurs, in addition, thirty-
456 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
3. fdayA know
(euphemistic) (ver. 26). See ch. xxiv.,
Marks of J,
No. 14.
4. ryKihi
recognize (vs 25, 26); besides in J (xx:x:vji. 32,
33); in E
(xxvii. 23; xxi. 32; Deut. xxxiii. 9. In
Gen. xlii.
7, 8
bis--the critic give ver. 7 to J, and ver. 8 to E).
5.
fare friend (vs. 12, 20); besides in J (xi. 3, 7; xv.
10;
xxxi. 49;
xliii. 33); in E (Ex. ii. 13; xi. 2; xviii. 7, 16;
xxi. 14, 18,
35; xxii. 6-10, 13, 25, E. V. vs. 7-11, 14, 26;
xxxii. 27;
xxxiii. 11); in JE (Ex. xx. 16, 17); in Holi-
ness Laws
(Lev. xix. 13, 16, 18; xx. 10); in Deuteron-
omy
twenty-one times; Josh. xx. 5 is in a P connection,
but
attributed to D.
6. hbAhA come (particle of
incitement) (ver. 16); besides
in J (xi. 3,
4, 7, xlvii. 15, 16, Deut. xxxii. 3); in E
(Gen. xxix.
21; xxx. 1 ; Ex. i. 10; Josh. xviii. 4); in Rd
(Deut. i.
13).
7. yTil;bil; not (ver. 9). See ch. xviii.,
xix., Marks of J,
No. 14.
8. NKe-lfa-yKi forasmuch as (ver. 26). See ch. xviii.,
xix., Marks
of J, No. 18.
9.
xnA I pray thee (vs. 16, 25). See ch. xii. 10-20,
Marks of J,
No.3.
It may be noted that hz,BA
here (vs. 21, 22) is referred
to J, though
everywhere else in the Pentateuch it is
ascribed to
E (xlviii. 9a; Ex. xxiv. 14; Num. xxii. 19;
xxiii. 1);
or to R (Num. xxiii. 29); so Nton;
to give (ver. 9)
is assigned
to J, though this form of the infinitive occurs
but once
besides (Num. xx. 21 E). In ver. 3 Judah
names his
child, contrary to the rule of the critics that
in J the
name is given by the mother, and in P by the
father; but
see under ch. xvi., p. 211.
one times in
different connections "the eyes of Elohim " but twice
--Num.
xxiii. 27, in the words of the heathen king Balak (who says
ha-Elohim
for he means the God of Israel); and Prov. iii. 4, where it
is
occasioned by the contrast of God and man.
LIFE OF JOSEPH CONTINUED (CH. XXXIX.) 457
JOSEPH IS CAST INTO PRISON (CH. XXXIX.)
NO DISCREPANCIES
The critical partition is here rested
partly on the
ground of
alleged discrepancies, partly on that of dic-
tion. It is said that there are varying
representations of
the
purchaser of Joseph. Was he (xxxvii. 36
E) Poti-
phar, the
eunuch or officer of Pharaoh, captain of the
guard? or
was he, as in J (ch. xxxix.), simply an Egyp-
tian, whose
name and official position, if he had any, are
unknown? He is nowhere called Potiphar in this chap-
ter except
in ver. 1, but only Joseph's master (ver. 3),
his Egyptian
master (ver. 2), or the Egyptian (ver. 5).
And nothing
is said outside of ver. 1 of his standing in
any special
relation to Pharaoh or holding any office
under the
king; but mention is made of "all that he had
in the house
and in the field" (ver. 5), implying that he
was the
owner of a landed estate. It is hence
inferred
that the
words "Potiphar, the eunuch of Pharaoh, cap-
tain of the
guard," do not properly belong to ver. 1, but
were
inserted by R to make it correspond with xxxvii.
36; and that
originally it simply read "an Egyptian,"
words which,
it is alleged, would be superfluous if his
name and
title had previously been given. But the
ar-
gument for
this erasure is destitute of force. The
name
"Potiphar"
does not occur in ch. xl., where the critics
admit that
he is intended by Joseph's master (ver. 7; see
also vs. 3,
4). Royal body-guards are not always com-
posed of
native troops, so that it may not have been a
matter of
course that their captain was an Egyptian, nor
superfluous
to mention it. Knobel thinks that this
statement is
made in contrast with the Hyksos origin
of the
monarch. Or as Delitzsch suggests, it
may em-
458 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
phasize the
fact that Joseph was not only a slave, but a
slave of a
foreigner; the Hebrew servant (vs. 14, 17) had
an Egyptian
master. But no special reason is needed
to
justify the
expression. Goliath, "from Gath,
from the
ranks of the
Philistines" is further called "the Philis-
tine"
(1 Sam. xvii. 23), throughout the chapter is
always
denominated "the Philistine," without repeating
his
name. That Potiphar had landed
possessions is
surely not
inconsistent with his being the captain of the
guard. That he was married creates no real
difficulty.
It is a
disputed point whether MyrisA is
invariably to be
taken in its
strict and primary sense of eunuch; there
are strong
reasons for believing with Delitzsch, Kurtz,
and others,
that it sometimes has simply the general
meaning of
officer or courtier. However this may
be,
Winer1
refers to Chardin, Niebuhr, and Burckhardt in
proof of the
statement that "even in the modern Orient
eunuchs have
sometimes kept a harem of their own."
There is
positively no ground, therefore, for assuming an
interpolation
in ver. 1. And the explicit statement of
that verse
annuls the critical allegation of variant stories
respecting
the person of Joseph's master. Moreover,
if
he was a
private gentleman and not an officer of the king,
how came it
to pass that his slave was put in the same
prison with
the king's prisoners, and that for an offence
usually
punished in slaves with death?
It is further said that Joseph's master is
in xxxix. 20,
21
distinguished from the keeper of the prison into
which Joseph
was put; whereas in xl. 3, 4, 7 they are
identical. But the confusion here charged upon the text
lies solely
in the mind of the interpreters. The narra-
tive is
perfectly clear and consistent. The
prison was in
the house of
Joseph's master (xI. 7), the captain of the
guard (ver.
3), who had Supreme control over it (ver. 4);
1 Biblisches Realworterbuch, Art., Verschittene.
JOSEPH CAST INTO PRISON (CH. XXXIX.) 459
and this
corresponds exactly with the representation
xxxix.
20. Under him there was a subordinate
keeper
charged with
its immediate oversight (xxxix. 21), who
was so
favorably disposed toward Joseph that he com-
mitted all
the prisoners into his hands and let him man-
age
everything in the prison (vs. 22, 23).
This is neither
identical
with, nor contradictory to, the statement (xl. 4)
that the
captain of the guard (who is uniformly distin-
guished from
his subordinate the keeper of the prison)
appointed
Joseph to attend upon two prisoners of rank
from the
royal household. It has been said indeed
that
he waited
upon them simply as Potiphar's servant, and
that (ch.
xl.) E knows nothing of Joseph's imprisonment
related by J
(ch. xxxix.); and, moreover, uses the term
rmAw;mi ward (xl. 3, 4, as well as xli. 10, E),
instead of
rhas.oha tyBe prison (xxxix.
20-23). But this result is only
reached by
expunging from the text without the slightest
warrant
every clause which directly declares the oppo-
site (xl.
3b, 5b, 15b; xli. 14; cf. xxxix. 20). Of
course,
if the
critics are allowed t doctor the text to suit them-
selves, they
can make it s whatever they please.
THE DIVINE NAMES
Wellhausen parcels the chapter between J
and E,
giving vs.
1-5, 20-23 to the former on account of the
repeated
occurrence of Jehovah, and vs. 6-19 to the
latter
because of Elohim (ver. 9), and certain other ex-
pressions
alleged to be characteristic of E. The
result
is that Joseph
is in E falsely accused of a gross crime,
but there is
no intimation how the matter issues; and in
J his
master, who had the greatest confidence in him
and was
richly blessed for his sake, puts him in prison
for no cause
whatever. And the partition is in disre-
gard of the
correspondence and manifest allusion in
460 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
OdyAB; NtanA Ol-wy,-rw,xE lkov; ver. to vs. 4, 5, also of the like
construction
of rw,xEB; because, in vs. .9 and 23.
Well-
hausen,
moreover, finds traces of E in the J sections, and
of J in the
E section. Dillmann admits the
indivisible
character of
the chapter and refers the whole of it to J;
but, as the
two following chapters are given to E, the
consequence
is that, according to J, Joseph is put in
prison and
no information given how or why he was
subsequently
released; the next that we hear of him he
is viceroy
of Egypt, with no explanation how it came to
pass. The expressions commonly attributed to E,
which
are found in
this chapter, aloe accounted for by Dillmann
as
insertions by R. This repeated
occurrence of traces
of one
document in the limits of the other, and the alle-
gation that
the documents hare in various particulars
been
modified by R, are simply confessions that the text
is not what
by the hypothesis of the critics it ought to
be. Words and phrases held to be characteristic
of J or
E in one
place are perversely found in the wrong docu-
ment in
another place. So without revising and
correct-
ing their
own previous conclusions and adjusting their
hypothesis
to the phenomena as they find them, the
critics
insist that the document itself is wrong, and that
R is to
blame for it, the only proof of which is that it is
impossible
to carry their hypothesis through otherwise.
It is
obvious that any hypothesis, however at war with
the facts of
the case, could be bolstered up by similar
expedients.
Jehovah occurs eight times in this
chapter (vs. 2, 3, 5,
21, 23), and
Elohim once (ver. 9). Ilgen gave the
whole
chapter to
E, and claimed that the original reading was
Elohim in
every case, and that Jehovah had been intro-
duced by the
error of R or of subsequent transcribers.
Gramberg
maintained that the divine names are here no
sure test of
the writer, but that the, repetitiousness, par-
JOSEPH CAST INTO PRISON (CH. XXXIX.) 461
ticularly of
vs. 2-6, 12, 13, 20-23, proves the chapter to be
the work of
P. Kuenen1
speaks of "the wordy style and
constant
repetitions by which this chapter is unfavor-
ably distinguished
from the other J pericopes." Dill-
mann gives
it all to J in spite of Elohim (ver. 9), which
J could use
in such a case as this (why not then in ch.
xx. and in
other similar instances?); in spite also of the
repetitiousness,
which is held to be a mark of P, but
which here,
and wherever else it suits the purposes of
the critics,
is explained by R's insertion of equivalent
statements
from a supposed parallel account by E; and
yet no
reason is suggested why R should so overload
these
passages with what are reckoned unmeaning addi-
tions while
omitting most important portions of each
document in
turn. The fact is that the divine names
are
appropriately used, and the emphatic repetitions are
precisely in
place. Here at the very outset--first of
Joseph's
bondage and then of his imprisonment--the
writer takes
pains to impress upon his readers, by
marked
iteration, that the presence and favor of Jeho-
vah, the
guardian of the chosen race, was with Joseph,
and gave him
success in his apparently forsaken and
helpless
condition. The unseen hand, which was
guid-
ing all in
the interest of his scheme of grace, is thus dis-
tinctly
disclosed; and this is the key to all that follows.
In ver. 9
Elohim is the proper word. Joseph is
speak-
ing to a
Gentile, to whom the name of Jehovah is un-
known; and
he refuses to commit a crime, which would
be not only
an offence against Jehovah considered in the
light of his
special relation to the chosen race, but,
against God
in that general sense in which he was known
to all
mankind.
1
Hexateuch, p. 147.
462 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
MARKS OF J
1. Haylic;hi made to prosper (vs. 2, 3, 23). See ch. xxiv.,
Marks of J,
No. 16. I
2. llag;Bi for the sake of (ver. 5).
See ch. xii. 10-20,
Marks of J,
No.6.
3. zxAme from the time that (ver. 5); besides in J Ex. iv.
10; v. 23
(in E connection worked over by R after J);
ix. 24 (a
verse divided between J and E); also in Josh.
xiv. 10 E,
worked over by Rd after D; all in the Hexa-
teuch.
4. dyriOh bring down (ver. 1).
See ch. xxxvii., Marks
of J, No.3.
5. hl.,xehA MyribAD;Ka according
to these words (vs. 17,
19);
in J
besides, xxiv. 28, xliv. 7; all in the Hexateuch.
The following expressions, regarded as
characteristic of
E, occur in
the J text of this chapter: Ver. 4, Otxo tr,wAy;va
he ministered unto him, as xl. 4; Ex. xxiv. 13; xxxiii. 11 E;
repeatedly
also in P; ver. 6, hx,r;ma hpeyvi rxato-hpey; comely
and well favored, as xxix. 17 E. ver. 7, MyribAD;ha rHaxa yhiy;va
hl.,xehA
and it came to pass after these things, as xv.1; xxii.
1; xl. 1;
xlviii. 1; Josh. xxiv. 29 E (but Gen.
xxii. 20 R);
ver.
21, yneyfeB; OnHi NTey.iva gave him favor in the
eyes of, as Ex.
iii. 21; xi.
3 E (but xii. 36 J).
There are also expressions which by
critical rules be-
long to P,
e.g., lx, fmawA hearken unto (ver. 10), which is
claimed as a
P phrase in ch. xxiii (see ch. xxiii., Marks of
P, No. 10);
and lc,xe by,
beside (vs. 10,
15, 16, 18), which
apart from
this chapter and xli. 3 E only occurs in the
Hexateuch
Lev. i. 16; vi. 3 (E. V., ver. 10); x. 12 P, and
twice in
Deuteronomy.
Varying constructions, as OtyBe-lfa Uhdeqip;y.ava (ver. 4) and
OtybaB;
Otxo dyqip;hi (ver. 5),
and of Hylch intransitive (ver.
2), but
transitive (vs. 3, 23) would be held to indicate du-
DREAMS OF
THE BUTLER AND BAKER (CH. XL.) 463
ferent
writers, if it suited the pleasure of the critics to do
so; as it is
they are quietly ignored.
DREAMS OF THE BUTLER AND BAKER (CH. XL.)
Tuch calls attention to the intimate
connection between
this chapter
and those that precede and follow.
Joseph
is here in
prison, to which the foregoing narrative brought
him. And ver. 3, where the officers who had offended
the king
were put "into the prison, the place where Jo-
seph was
bound," points directly to xxxix. 20, where
Joseph was
put "into the prison, the place where the
king's
prisoners were bound." The
statement that he
"was
stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews" (ver.
15) is only
explicable from xxxvii. 28 sqq., that he was
carried off
by the Midianite-Ishmaelites, to whom his un-
natural
brothers had sold him. His assertion
(ver. 15),
"here
also have I done nothing that they should put me;
into the
dungeon," is only intelligible from the nar-
rative in
ch. xxxix. This chapter is not only thus
tied
to that
which goes before, but also prepares the way for
ch. xli.,
where (ver. 10) the imprisonment of the chief
butler and
baker in the house of the captain of the guard
refers back
to xl. 1-3; xli. 1~-13, Joseph's interpreta-
tion of
their dreams, and their fulfilment is a brief sum-
mary of xl.
4-22; xli. 14, bringing Joseph out of the
dungeon,
corresponds to his statement (xl.15) that he was
put into the
dungeon. The chief butler s memory of
his
fault (xli.
9) recalls the fact that Joseph had asked to be
remembered
by him when he was restored to his former
position
(xl. 14), but the chief butler had forgotten him
(ver.
23). The significant dreams of the
butler and
baker (ch.
xl.), and those of Pharaoh (ch. xli.), in connec-
tion with
which Joseph figures so prominently, recall
those of his
own early childhood (xxxvii. 5-10), and
464 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
plainly
belong to the same gradually unfolding scheme.
And Joseph's
modest disclaimer of the power of inter-
pretation,
and his ascription of it solely to God (xli. 16),
simply
repeats xl. 8.
NO DISCREPANCY
Yet, notwithstanding this close
relationship of this
chapter in
all its parts with the surrounding narrative,
we are told
that the principal ground of the partition
here, by
which this chapter is given to E, is a glaring
discrepancy
between the account given by J and that by
E. According to J (ch. xxxix. as
expurgated) Joseph
was sold to
an unnamed Egyptian, and by him put in
prison on a
false charge preferred by his wife. How
he
came to be
released and to reach the high station which
he
subsequently occupied in Egypt does not appear.
According to
E (ch. xl. as expurgated) Joseph was sold
to Potiphar,
captain of the guard; Pharaoh's chief but-
ler and
baker were committed to Potiphar's custody, and
kept under
arrest, not in prison but in his house.
And
Joseph, who
was not himself under arrest, but was act-
ing simply
in the capacity of Potiphar's servant, was ap-
pointed to
wait upon them. While doing so he inter-
preted their
dreams, which were fulfilled accordingly.
It is unnecessary to say that these
variant accounts
are not in
the text, but are; purely the product of the
critics
themselves. The text must be remodelled
in or-
der to
produce them. We have already seen how
xxxix.
1 has to be
transformed in older to make it say that
Joseph was
sold, not to Potiphar but to some nameless
Egyptian. It requires even more serious tampering with
ch. xl. to
eliminate the repeated references to Joseph's
imprisonment,
and the statement that the chief butler
and baker
were put in the same prison with him.
Vs.
DREAMS OF
THE BUTLER AND BAKER (CH. XL.) 465
3b, 5b, 15b,
and a clause of xxxix. 20 (the place where
the king's
prisoners were bound), as well as of xli. 14
(and they
brought him hastily out of the dungeon), must
all be
erased by the critics before they can get rid of the
explicit
statements which directly contradict that view of
the affair
which they undertake to obtrude upon this
chapter. It is not surprising that Gramberg, in
propos-
ing these
erasures, expected his readers to be surprised
by such a
free handling of the text and perversion of its
meaning.
The charge that the clauses in question
were insertions
by R has no
other foundation than the desire to create
a
discrepancy, which is impossible without removing
them. That the prison was in the house of the captain
of the guard
(ver. 3) is in accordance with modern orien-
tal
usage. Thus Chardin says: "The Eastern prisons
are not
public buildings erected for that purpose, but a
part of the
house in which their criminal judges dwell.
As the
governor and provost of a town, or the captain of
the watch,
imprison such as are accused in their own
houses, they
set apart a canton of them for that purpose,
when they
are put into these offices, and choose for the
jailer the
most proper person they can find of their do-
mestics."1 That vs. 1, 5 have
"the butler and the baker
of the king
of Egypt," while the rest of the chapter has
"chief
butler," "chief baker," and "Pharaoh," is no good
reason for
attributing the former to R, unless on the as-
sumption
that a writer cannot occasionally vary his ex-
pressions,
especially as ver. 1 is indispensable as supply-
ing the
reason for ver. 2, .and the chief butler is likewise
simply
called" butler (ver. 13), and his office simply
"butlership"
(ver. 23).
In addition to the alleged variance
between this chap-
ter and the
preceding, which has already been consid-
1
Harmer's Observations, ii., p. 273.
466
THE GENERATIONS OF
JACOB
ered,
the following reasons are adduced for referring it
to
E: “The dreams,” singe it is arbitrarily
assumed that
all
dreams must belong to E;1 “I
was stolen away” (ver.
15),
but this is not inconsistent with his being sold by
his
brothers, who had no right to dispose of him; “the
connection
of ch. xli. with xl.,” which is freely conceded,
but
involves no discrepancy with, or separation from, ch.
xxxix. No argument is offered from language but “the
avoidance
of the verbal suffix which distinguishes E
from
J” (vs. 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 15, 17, 19); Dillmann here
quietly
ignores the fact that he refused to admit this as a
criterion
in ch. xxxvii. “And it came to pass
after these
things,”
which is allowed to remain in ver. 1, after the
rest
of the verse is erased as an insertion by R, cannot
be
a decisive mark of E in this place after having been
found
in a J section (xxxix. 7). It can
scarcely be
thought
that such arguments are of any weight in favor
of
critical partition.
NO ANACHRONISM
Nor is there an anachronism in the phrase
“land of the
Hebrews”
(ver. 15). “Abram the Hebrew” was the
head
of a powerful clan (xiv. 13, 14), recognized as such
by
native tribes of Canaan (xxiii. 6), and his friendship
sought
by the king of the Philistines (xx;i. 22, sqq.).
Isaac’s
greatness is similarly described (xxvi. 13 seq., 26
sqq.). The prince and people of Shechem were will-
ing
to submit to circumcision for the sake of friendly in-
tercourse
and trade with Jacob, and Jacob’s sons avenged
the
wrong done their sister by the destruction of the city
(ch.
xxxiv.). The Hebrews had been in Canaan
for two
centuries,
and their presence was influential and widely
known. There is nothing strange, therefore, in the
fact
1 See ch. xx., Marks of E,
No.4.
PHARAOH’S DREAMS (CH.
XLI.) 467
that
Potiphar’s wife calls Joseph a Hebrew (xxxix. 14, 17),
or
that he could speak of the country whence he came as
the land of the Hebrews.
DICTION
The one divine name in this chapter,
Elohim (ver. 8), is
doubly
appropriate. It is in an address to
Gentiles, in and
there
is an obvious contrast between man and God; interpretations
belong
to the latter, not to the former.
Knobel, who gave chs. xl., xli. to P,
notes the follow-
ing
words as characteristic of P: JcaqA
was wroth (xl. 2;
xli.
10), besides in the Hexateuch Ex. xvi. 20; Lev. x. 6,
16;
Num. xvi. 22, xxxi. 14 P; Josh. xxii. 18 R; also Deut.
i.
34; ix. 7, 8, 19, 22; the corresponding noun, Jc,q, wrath,
occurs
in the Hexateuch Num. i. 53; xvii. 11 (E. V., xvi.
46);
xviii. 5; Josh. ix. 20 P; Josh. xxii. 20 R; Deut. xxix.
27
(E. V., ver. 28). lsae basket (xl. 16-18) occurs besides
in
the Hexateuch Ex. xxix. 3, 23, 32; Lev. viii. 2, 26, 31;
Num.
vi. 15, 17, 19 P. NKe
station (xl. 13; xli. 13) occurs
besides
in the Hexateuch only in application to the base
of
the laver (Ex. xxx. 18, and repeatedly, P).
Dillmann
passes
these quietly by without remark.
PHARAOH’S DREAMS (CH. XLI.)
Tuch shows that as ch. xl. was both in
general and in
particular
preparatory for ch. xli., so this latter is indis-
pensable
for all that follows. It is here related
how Jo-
seph,
who was chosen of God for high ends, was raised
from
the prison to the office of vizier; and the rest of
the
book (ch. xlii.-xlvii.) turns upon Joseph’s services
to
the people and the king, and upon the predicted fam-
ine
which brought about the migration of Jacob and his
family
to Egypt. All this is quite
unintelligible without
468
THE GENERATION OF JACOB
the
narrative which lies, ere before us. Add
the specific
references
to ch. xl. previously pointed out, the etymolo-
gies
of the names Manasseh and Ephraim (vs. 51,52), af-
ter
the manner of ch. xxx., and the birth of these sons of
Joseph
to prepare the way for their adoption by Jacob
(ch.
xlviii.) where xlviii 5,” born before I came unto
thee
into Egypt,” plainly points back to xli. 50.
GROUNDS OF PARTITION
The following reasons are assigned by
Dillmann for
assigning
this chapter to E; The significant dreams and
the
power of interpreting them, which are of no more
weight
here than in ch. xl.; that Joseph is called “ser-
vant
to the captain of the guard “ (ver. 12), but he was
also
a prisoner (ver. 14), which is evaded after the usual
critical
fashion by erasing from the text the words “and
they
brought him hastily out of the dungeon,” as an in-
sertion
from a hypothetic parallel of J; but even then
his
shaving himself and changing his raiment are an al-
lusion
to his prison attire, or why are not the same things
mentioned
when others are presented before the king?
The
references to ch. xl. (xli. 10-,-13, cf. xl. 1 sqq.; xli
16,
cf. xl. 8), and unusual words common to both chap-
ters
(rtaPA interpret, NOrt;Pi interpretation, NKe station, qcaqA was
wroth), point to the same
author, but in no way imply
that
he was not the author of ch. xxxix. and xliii. as well.
Elohim
in vs. 16, 25, 32, 38, 39 is in language addressed
to
Pharaoh or used by him; vs. 51, 52 are the only in-
stances
in which Jehovah would with any propriety be
substituted
for it, and even there Elohim is equally ap-
propriate,
for the reference is to God’s providential bless-
ings,
such as men in general may share, rather than to
specific
favor granted to one of the chosen race.
ydefEl;Bi
apart from (vs. 16, 44), but once
besides in Genesis (xiv.
PHARAOH’S DREAMS (CH.
XLI.) 469
24,
which is referred by Dillmann to E, but by the ma-
jority
of critics to an independent source); and occurring
twice
more in the Hexateuch (Num. v. 20; Josh. xxii. 19
P). The arguments for considering this chapter a
part
of
the document E are accordingly lame and impotent
enough.
We are further informed that this chapter
is not a unit
as
it stands. It is essential for the
critics to establish, if
possible,
the existence of a parallel narrative by J, which
may
have filled the gap in that document between Jo-
seph’s
imprisonment and his elevation.
Accordingly
stress
is laid upon some slight verbal changes in repeat-
ing
Pharaoh’s dreams, especially the words added to the
description
of the lean kine ( er. 19), “such as I never
saw
in all the land of Egypt for badness,” and (ver. 21),
“when
they had eaten up the fat kine it could not be
known
that they had eaten them; but they were still ill-
favored
as at the beginning.” But if this is to
show that
J
gave a parallel account of the dreams, it annuls the
criterion,
upon which the critics steadfastly insist, that E
alone
records dreams. A vigorous search is
also made
for
so-called doublets. Wherever the writer
does not con-
tent
himself with a bald and meagre statement of what he
is
recording, but feels impelled to enlarge and dwell upon
it
in order to give his thought more adequate expression,
the
amplifications or repetitions which he employs are
seized
upon as though they; were extraneous additions
imported
into E’s original narrative by R from an im-
aginary
parallel account by J, just as a like fulness of
expression
in other passages is at the pleasure of the
critics
declared to be indicative of the verbose and rep-
etitious
style of P.
The dreams (vs. 2-7) are repeated (vs.
18-24) in al-
most
identical terms, only in a very few instances equiv-
lent
expressions are employed, viz. rxaTo
form (vs.
18,
470 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
19),
for hx,r;ma appearance (vs. 2, 3), but see xxix. 17 E;
xxxix.6
J; qra lean (ver. 19), for qDa thin (ver. 3); xlemA
full
(ver. 22),
for xyriBA fat (ver. 5), but see ver. 7.
The al-
leged
doublets are ver. 31 parallel to ver. 30b; ver. 34
hW,fEya make, parallel
to dqep;ya appoint; ver. 35b to 35a;
vs: 41, 43b,
44, to ver. 40 (Joseph's rule is stated four
times, so
that repetition cannot be escaped by parcelling
it between E
and J); ver. 49 to 48; vs. 55, 56a, to 54b
(the
universality of the famine is repeated three times, in-
cluding ver.
57b). It is also affirmed that the
following
expressions
are indicative of J: hxer;
see (ver. 41) as xxvii.
27; xxxi.
50; xxxix. 14; rPAs;mi
Nyxe yKi . . . My.AH lyHoK;
as the sand
of the sea, for it
was without number (ver 49),
as xxii. 17
R; xxxii. 13 (E. V. ver. 12) J. While it
is
claimed that
these indicate two narrators, Dillmann ad-
mits that in
several instances there are no criteria by
which to
distinguish which is E and which J. The
fur-
ther
occurrence of words in this chapter, which according
to critical
rules should belong to P, e. g., MFor;Ha magician
(vs. 8, 24),
in the Pentateuch besides only Ex. vii. 11, 22;
viii. 3, 14,
15 (E. V., vs. 7, 18, 19); ix. 11, all P;
NOdq.APi
store (ver. 36), besides in the Old Testament
only Lev.
v. 21, 23 (E.
V., vi. 2, 4) P; Cm,qo
handful (ver. 47), be-
sides in the
Old Testament only Lev. ii. 2; v. 12; vi. 8
(E. V., ver.
15), and the corresponding verb only Lev. ii.
2; v. 12;
Num. v. 26, all P, leads one to distrust crite-
ria in other
cases, which the critics can thus disregard
at pleasure.
On the whole, then, the critical partition
of chs.
xxxvii.-xli.
rests upon alleged inconsistencies in the nar-
rative,
which plainly do not exist as the text now stands,
but which
the critics themselves create by arbitrary era-
sures and
forced interpretations. The literary
proof of-
fered of the
existence of different documents is of the
scantiest
kind. There are no indications of
varying dic-
PHARAOH’S DREAMS (CH. XLI.) 471
tion
of any account. And the attempt to
bridge the
chasms
in the documents by mans of a supposed paral-
lel
narrative, from which snatches have been preserved
by
R, attributes an unaccountable procedure to him, and
falls
to pieces at once upon examination.
There are three staple arguments by which
the critics
attempt
to show that there was, in the sources from which
R
is conjectured to have drawn a second narrative par-
allel
to that in the existing text. Each of
these is built
upon
a state of facts antagonistic to the hypothesis,
which
they ingeniously seek to wrest in its favor by as-
suming
the truth of the very thing to be proved.
1.
Facts which are essential to the narrative could
not,
it is said, have failed to appear in either document;
it
must be presumed, therefore that each narrator re-
corded
them.
But the perpetual recurrence of such
serious gaps in
the
so-called documents, which the critics are by every
device
laboring to construct, tends rather to show that no
such
documents ever really ha any separate existence.
That
these gaps are due to omissions by R is pure as-
sumption,
with no foundation but the unproved hypothesis
which
it is adduced to support; an assumption, moreover,
at
variance with the conduct repeatedly attributed to R in
other
places, where to relieve other complications of the
hypothesis
he is supposed to have scrupulously preserved
unimportant
details from one of his sources, even though
they
were superfluous repetitions of what had already
been
extracted from another.
2.
When words and phrase~ which the critics regard
as
characteristic of one document are found; as they fre-
quently
are, in sections which they assign to the other,
it
is claimed that R has mixed the texts of the different
documents.
But
the obvious and natural conclusion from the fact
472
THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
referred
to is, that what are affirmed to be characteristic
words
of different documents are freely used by the same
writer. The allegation that R had anything to do with
the
matter is an assumption which has no other basis
than
the hypothesis which it is brought to support.
It
is
plain that any conceit whatever could be carried
through
successfully if every deviation from its require-
ments
was sufficiently explained by referring it to R.
3. Whenever a thought is repeated or dwelt
upon for
the
sake of giving it more emphatic expression, the
critics
scent a doublet, affirming that R has appended to
the
statement in one document the corresponding state-
ment
contained in the other.
But here again the a agency of R is pure
assumption,
based
on the hypothesis in whose interest it is alleged.
That
a writer should us more amplitude and fulness
in
describing matters of special moment is quite intelli-
gible. But why a compiler like R should encumber the
narrative
by reduplicating what he has already drawn
from
one source by the equivalent language of another,
or
why, if this is his method in the instances adduced, he
does
not consistently pursue it in others, does not appear.
Why
should he leave serious gaps in matters of real mo-
ment,
while so solicitous of preserving petty details,
which
add nothing to what has been said already?
What are so confidently paraded as traces
or indica-
tions
of some missing portion of a critical document are
accordingly
rather to be esteemed indications that the
documents
of the critics are a chimera.
On the assumption that it is peculiar to
P to record
ages
Kautzsch assigns to this document ver, 46a, “And
Joseph
was thirty years old when he stood before Pha-
raoh
king of Egypt.” Dillmann gives it the
entire verse,
as
also, though with some hesitation, the statement of
Joseph’s
age at an earlier period, in xxxvii. 2.
Isolated
JACOB’S
SONS GO TO EGYPT (CH. XLII.-XLIV.) 473
clauses
are thus rent from their connection, though there
is
nothing in P to which to a attach them, and though their
entire
significance lies in the light which they shed upon
the
intervening narrative from which they are arbitrarily
separated,
whose duration it is their province to indicate.
Dillmann
himself in his first edition contended that the
numbers
in these verses did not belong to P. And
the
critical
assumption on which his assignment rests is set
aside
by Dillmann as well as others in Gen. 1. 26; Josh.
xiv.
7, 10 ; xxiv. 29, where the record of the ages of Joseph,
Caleb,
and Joshua is attribute to E. Noldeke,
followed
by
Schrader, Kayser, Kuenen, and others, denies that
either
of the verses in question belong to P, and finds in
xlvi.
6, 7 the first extract fro that document in this sec-
tion
of Genesis. Dillmann’s suggestion that
the full
phrase,
“Pharaoh king of Egypt” (ver. 46), occurs again
(Ex.
vi. 11, 13, 27, 29; xiv. 8) is of little force, because
“Pharaoh”
alone is uniformly used in all the passages
ascribed
to P except the verses just named, where the
full
phrase is emphatically employed, as is evident from
the
iteration in Ex. vi.
JOURNEYS
OF JACOB’S SONS TO EGYPT (CH. XLII.-
XLIV.)
The critics tell us that ch. xlii., which
records the first
journey
of Jacob’s sons to Egypt, is by E, and chs. xliii.,
xliv.,
their second journey, is by J. Yet the
second jour-
ney
implies the first, and is filled throughout with nu-
merous
and explicit allusions to it. It was
(xliii. 2) after
they
had eaten up the corn already brought that their
father
urged them to go again. All then turns
upon
Joseph’s
having required them to bring Benjamin (xliii.
3-11;
cf. xlii. 15, 16, 20, 34). Jacob’s
solicitude for Ben-
jamin
is the same, xlii. 4 as ver. 38; xliv. 29.
Repeated
reference
is made to the money returned in their sacks
474
THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
(xlili.12,
15, 18-23; xliv. 8.; cf. xlii. 25, 28, 35), and to
Simeon’s
detention (xliii. 14, 23; cf. xlii. 19, 24).
Ja-
cob’s
sense of bereavement (xliii. 14) corresponds with
previous
statements (xlii. 36; xxxvii. 34, 35).
Joseph
speaks
of their father an youngest brother, of whom
they
had previously told him (xliii. 27-29; cf. xlii. 13,
32). They bow before him fulfilment of his dreams
(xliii.
26, 28; xliv. 14; cf. xxvii. 10, xlii. 6, 9).
Joseph
orders
their money to be replaced in their sacks (xliv. 1),
as
before (xlii. 25). And Judah’s touching
address to
Joseph
(xliv. 18-34) recite anew the circumstances of
their
former visit, together with their father’s grief at the
loss
of Joseph (cf. xliv. 28 with xxxvii. 33).
It is difficult
to
see how two parts of the same narrative could be more
closely
bound together.
Nevertheless it is maintained that all
these allusions
to
what took place in the former journey are not to the
record
given of it in ch. xlii., but to a quite different nar-
rative;
that a careful consideration of chs. xliii., xliv. Will
show
that they are not .the sequel of ch. xlii., but of a
parallel
account by J, which no longer exists indeed, in-
asmuch
as R did not think fit to preserve it, but which
can
be substantially reconstructed from the hints and in-
timations
in these chapters themselves, and must have
varied
from that of E in several particulars. R
is here,
as
always, the scapegoat on those head these incongrui-
ties
are laid, though no very intelligible reason can be
given
why he should have constructed this inimitable
history
in such a disjointed manner. And it is
likewise
strange
that the discrepancies between the two narratives,
so
strenuously urged by Wellhausen and Dillmann, seem
to
have escaped the usually observant eye of Hupfeld, who
makes
no mention of them. As Ilgen, DeWette,
and
Gramberg
had raised the same difficulties before, Hup-
feld’s
silence can only mean hat he did not deem them
JACOB’S
SONS GO TO EGYPT (CH. XLII.-XLIV.) 475
worth
repeating. Knobel, though ready enough
to under-
take
a critical division elsewhere, insists on the unity of
chs.
xlii.-xlv., and maintains that the charge of inconsist-
encies
is unfounded. The same judgment, one
would
think,
must be formed by any candid person.
NO DISCREPANCY
The alleged inconsistencies are the
following:
1.
In E Reuben is the speaker (xlii. 22), and it is he
who
becomes surety for Benjamin’s safe return (ver. 37).
In
J Judah is the surety for Benjamin, and takes the
lead
throughout (xliii. 3-5, 8-10; xliv. 14 sqq.).
But
these acts and offices do not exclude one another.
Why
should not more than one of Jacob’s sons have
sought
to influence him in a case of such
extreme im-
portance
to them all? If Reuben had pleaded
without
effect,
why should not Judah renew the importunity, as
the
necessity became more urgent? It is here
precisely
as
with the separate proposal of Reuben and Judah
(xxxvii.
22, 26), which, as we have seen, the critics like-
wise
seek without reason to array against each other.
Reuben’s allusion (xlii. 22) to his
interference in that in-
stance
implies that his remonstrance was not heeded, and
that
his brothers were responsible for Joseph’s death,
which
he sought to prevent. As the critics
represent the
matter,
this was not the case. At Reuben’s
instance they
put
Joseph in a pit instead of shedding his blood.
Now
if,
as the critics will have it, Midianite merchants found
him
there and carried him off in the absence of all the
brothers,
the others had no more to do with his disap-
pearance
than Reuben had. Reuben’s unresisted
charge
that
the rest were guilty of Joseph's death, in which he
himself
was not implicated, finds no explanation upon
the
critics’ version of the story. It is
only when the
476
THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
sundered
parts of the narrative are brought together, and
it
is allowed to stand in its complete and proper form,
that
Joseph was sold to the Ishmaelites at the suggestion
of
Judah, while Reuben supposed him to be still in the
pit
and hoped to return him to his father, that his words
have
any meaning. No difficulty is created by
Reuben’s
speaking
of his blood as required. The brothers
im-
agined
him to be no longer living. Judah, who
coun-
selled
the sale, speaks of him as dead (xliv. 20 cf. xlii.
32). By selling him into bondage they had, as they
thought,
procured his death.
Judah’s prominence in ch. xliv. is due
entirely to his
suretyship
for Benjamin, solicited and granted in ch.
xliii. As Benjamin was endangered by the discovery of
the
cup, it was incumbent upon him to seek to obtain
his
release.
Wellhausen contends that xlii. 38 is not
the reply to
Reuben’s
offer to be a surety (ver. 37), inasmuch as this
latter
is E’s parallel to xlii. 8-10 J, and instead of being
refused
it must in E’s account have been accepted.
He
insists
that E’s narrative is abruptly broken off at xlii.
37,
and left incomplete. The response made
to Reuben
is
not recorded; it was doubtless the same in substance
that
J reports as made to Judah (xliii. 11 sqq.).
Instead
of
this R introduces an irrelevant verse (xlii. 88), a dis-
located
fragment of J, which in its original connection
was
a reply to something quite distinct from the worlds
by
which it is here preceded. It must have
come after
the
equivalent of xliv. 26, and have stood between xliii.
2
and 3. This is simply to manufacture
facts in the face
of
the plain declarations of the text itself which leave no
doubt
as to the answers respectively given to Reuben
and
to Judah. All this confusion, where in
reality no
confusion
exists, results from the abortive attempt to
create
a parallel narrative out of nonentity.
The critics
JACOB’S
SONS GO TO EGYPT (CH. XLII.-XLIV.)
477
are
under the necessity of signing xlii, 38 to J, since
the
words “if mischief befall him ye shall bring down
my
gray hairs with sorrow to the grave “are identical
with
xliv. 29, 31, and must obviously be from the same
writer. This, however, does not demonstrate that the
verse
is out of place, but simply that chs. xlii, and xliv,
are
from one pen.
In fact the agency attributed to Reuben
and Judah
affords
a plea, not for the critical partition of these chap-
ters
but for their unity. The position
accorded to each
is
consistent throughout, and corresponds with the rep-
resentation
made of them in the blessing of Jacob in ch.
xlix. Reuben, as the first-born was charged with a
special
responsibility,
which led him to come forward at each
crisis,
while the weakness of his character rendered his
interference
ineffectual. He did not accomplish his
purpose
of rescuing Joseph. His father, whom he
had
grievously
wronged, would not trust him with Benjamin.
Judah's
bold and energetic nature fitted him to grasp the
reins
which Reuben was incompetent to hold. He
led
the
brothers in their passionate determination to rid
themselves
of Joseph and nullify his ambitious dreams.
Sobered
by the discipline of years he rose to the occa-
sion,
when a new peril threatened his father in the loss
of
his favorite Benjamin, and he assumed the leader-
ship
with an unselfish courage and a tenderness of heart
which
marked him out as one fitted to rule, and which
deservedly
won for him the position among his brothers
indicated
by his dying father. Plainly we have here
not
two
separate sagas, each glorifying a favorite son of
Jacob
but one self-consistent historical account, in which
both
appear in their proper characters.
It is further claimed that:
2.
J knows nothing of Simeon’s detention related by
E
(xlii. 19, 24). Judah nowhere alludes to
it in arguing
478
THE GENERATIONS 0F JACOB
with
his father (xliii. 3-10), when he might have urged
the
prospect of releasing Simeon as an additional reason
for
their speedy return; nor does he refer to it in his
address
to Joseph (xliv. 18-34).
But the supreme interest on both these
occasions cen-
tred
about Benjamin. Would his father consent
to let
him
go? Would Joseph allow him to return to
his
father? These were the questions quite apart from the
case
of Simeon, so that in dealing with them there was
no
occasion to allude to him. But Simeon is
directly
spoken
of twice in ch. xliii. When Jacob is
starting
them
on their return he prays (ver. 14) “God Almighty
give
you mercy before the man, that he may release unto
you
your other brother and Benjamin.” And
(ver. 23)
when
they reach the house of Joseph the steward
“brought
Simeon out unto them.” These explicit
allu-
sions
to Simeon’s imprisonment are evaded by declar-
ing
them to be interpolations from E. The
argument for
suppressing
them may be fairly stated thus: Because
Simeon
is not referred to where there is no occasion for
speaking
of him, therefore the mention which is made of
him
in the proper place cannot be an integral part of
the
text. In other words, whatever the
critics desire to
eliminate
from a passage is eliminated without further
ceremony
by declaring it spurious. If it does not
accord
with
their theory, that is enough; no other proof is nec-
essary.
Dillmann’s contention that xlii. 38 is not
the direct
reply
to ver. 37, because Simeon is not spoken of in it,
is
futile on its face; for as Reuben makes no allusion
to
him in his proposal there is no reason why Jacob
should
do so in his answer. Simeon was kept a
pris-
oner
to insure the return of the rest, having been se-
lected
doubtless because he was second in age.
Joseph
may
naturally have passed over Reuben because of the
JACOB'S
SONS GO TO EGYPT (CH. XLII.-XLIV.)
479
kindly
disposition which he had manifested toward him-
self.
3. “In ch. xlii. Joseph will, by
detaining Simeon, com-
pel
the brothers at all events to come back again with or
without
Benjamin; in chs. xliii., xliv., on the contrary,
he
forbids them to come back if Benjamin is not with
them. In ch. xlii. they are treated as spies; at
first they
are
all put into prison together, and then only set free
on
bail to bring Benjamin, an thus confirm the truth of
their
declarations. But in chs. xliii., xliv.
they do not
go
back to Egypt from the moral obligation of clearing
themselves
and releasing Simeon, but wait till the corn
is
all gone an the famine constrains them.
The charge
that
they were spies was not brought against the broth-
ers
at all according to xliii. 5-7; xliv.18 sqq.; it was not
this
which induced them, as ch. xlii.; to explain to Jo-
seph
who and whence they really were, and thus involun-
tarily
to make mention of Benjamin, but Joseph directly
asked
them, Is your father yet alive? have ye
another
brother?
and then commanded them not to come into
his
presence again without him.”
All this is only an attempt to create a
conflict where
there
is none. One part of a transaction is
set in oppo-
sition
to another equally belonging to it. One
motive is
arrayed
against another, as though they were incompati-
ble,
when both were alike operative. When
Joseph told
his
brothers that they must verify their words by Benja-
min’s
coming to be considered spies (xlii. 15, 16, 20, 34),
he
in effect told them that they should not see his face
again
unless Benjamin was with them. They
delay their
return
until the corn was till used up, because nothing
less
than imminent starvation will induce Jacob, who has
already
lost two sons, to risk the loss of his darling.
That
Joseph directly interrogated them about their father
1 Wellhausen, Comp. d.
Hexateuchs, p. 55.
480 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
and brother
is not expressly said in ch. xlii.; but as the
entire
interview is not narrated in detail, there is nothing
to forbid
it. The critics do not themselves insist
on the
absolute
conformity of related passages, unless they have
some end to
answer by it. The words of Reuben, as
re-
ported xlii.
22, are not identical with those ascribed to
him xxxvii.
22; and nothing is said in ch. xxxvii. of
Joseph's
beseeching his brothers in the anguish of his
soul, as in
xlii. 21. Jacob's sons, in rehearsing
their ex-
perience to
their father (xlii. 29-34) omit his first propo-
sition to
keep all of them but one, and their three days'
imprisonment,
and add that if they prove true they might
traffic in
the land. Judah, in relating the words
of his
father
(xliv. 27-29), does not limit himself to language
which,
according to xliii. 2 sqq., he uttered on the occa-
sion
referred to. In these instances the
critics find no
discrepancies
within the limits of the same document,
but count it
sufficient that the general sense is preserved.
If they
would interpret with equal candor elsewhere
their
imaginary difficulties would all melt away.
4.
A discrepancy is alleged regarding the money found
in the
sacks. According to xliii. 21 J the
discovery was
made at the
lodging on their way home, but according
to xlii. 35
E, after their arrival home, and in the presence
of their
father.
But there is no necessary variance
here. The state-
ment in
xlii. 27, 28 is that one of the brothers, on open-
ing his sack
at the lodging, found his money, and reported
the fact to
the rest, whereat they were greatly alarmed.
Now, the critics
argue if one opened his sack to give his
ass
provender, must not the rest have done the same,
and made the
same discovery? and especially as they
were so
agitated by the fact that one had found his money
in his sack,
would not the rest have made instant search
in
theirs? Dillmann further pleads that dHAx,hA
the one, in
JACOB'S SONS
GO T0 EGYPT (CH. XLII.-XLIV.) 481
ver. 27,
properly means the first in order, implying that
the others
subsequently did the same. And
Wellhausen
tells us that
R has omitted a clause, which must origi-
nally have
stood in these verses, "then the others also
opened their
sacks, and behold, every man's money was
in his sack,
their money in full weight." These
verses,
it is
claimed, are in exact correspondence with xliii. 21,
and belong
not to E's, but to J's, account. This
con-
jectural
reasoning and this hypothetical change of text
are of
course of no account. But if the critics
are cor-
rect in the
interpretation which they put upon these
verses, as
implying, even though they do not expressly
state, that
the discovery of his money by one led to its
discovery by
all the rest at the inn, there is not the
shadow of a
discrepancy in the entire record. This
is
in fact the
explanation adopted by Matthew Poole in
order to
harmonize the whole account. He thus
com-
ments upon
the words in ver. 27, "one of them opened
his
sack:" "And after him the rest, by his example and
information
did so, as is affirmed xliii. 21, and not de-
nied
here." And then, when they reached
home and
emptied
their sacks in the presence of their father, and
they and he
saw the bundles of money, "their fear re-
turned upon
them with more violence."
If, however, xlii. 27 is to be understood
as meaning
that only
one happened upon the discovery of his money
at the inn,
and that the others, having no occasion to
open their
sacks, since Joseph had ordered that provision
be given
them for the way (ver. 25), did not find that
theirs had
been restored till they were at their journey's
end, it will
still supply no argument for critical partition.
The
discrepancy, such as it is, lies between xlii. 27, 28,
and xliii.
22, both of which are referred to J. It
amounts
simply to
this: in reporting their discovery of the money
to Joseph's
steward the brothers do not detail the suc-
482 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
cessive
steps by which they came to a full knowledge of
the
case. The one important fact was that
they all
found their
money in their sacks. That part was
found
at one time,
and part at another, was a subordinate mat-
ter on which
no stress need be laid. So in speaking
of
the first
discovery made at the inn they include in it all
that they
afterward learned. Their statement,
though
not minutely
accurate, was yet for their purpose sub-
stantially
true.
THE
DIVINE NAMES
The divine names afford no pretext for the
partition of
these
chapters. Elohim occurs once in E (xlii.
18), and
three times
in J (xlii. 28; xliii. 29; xliv. 16).
And EI
Shaddai, God
Almighty, which is regarded as a peculiar
characteristic
of P, occurs in xliii. 14 J. R is
invoked to
relieve the
difficulty in xlii. 28 and xliii. 14; while in
xliii. 29;
xliv. 16, the critical principle is abandoned,
which traces
the occurrence of Elohim to the usage of
the
particular document in which it is found and it is
confessed
that its employment is due to the distinctive
usage of the
word itself. These names are in every
case
appropriately
used. Jacob commends his sons to the
omnipotent
care of him who alone could effectually aid
in his
helpless extremity (xliii. 14). As
Joseph was act-
ing the part
of an Egyptian, Elohim is the proper word
when he is
speaking (xlii. 18; xliii. 29), or is spoken to
(xliv. 16);
even when he refers specifically to the God of
the chosen
race he uses a periphrasis instead of employ-
ing the name
Jehovah (xliii. 23). Contrast with this
the
critical
claim in xxvi. 28, 29, that J uses Jehovah even
when
Gentiles are the speakers. In xlii. 28
the brothers,
recognizing
in what has taken place the divine ordering
as
contrasted with merely human agency, say to one an-
other, what
is this that God (Elohim) hath done to us?
JACOB'S SONS
GO T0 EGYPT (CH. XLII.-XLIV.) 483
MARKS OF J AND E
1. xOPs;mi fodder, is attributed to J, though it is the
proper word
to express this idea, and cannot be regarded
as
characterizing any particular writer. It
is used four
times in the
Hexateuch, twice in this narrative (xlii. 27,
cut out of
an E connection and given to J; xliii. 24 J),
and twice in
the story of Abraham's servant (xxiv. 25,
32, J).
2. NOlmA lodging-place, is
claimed as belonging to J. It
occurs twice
in this narrative (xlii. 27, cut out of an E
context and
given to J; xliii. 21 J), and in two passages
besides in
the Hexateuch (Ex. iv. 24; Josh. iv. 3, 8).
3. tHaTam;xa
sack, a word peculiar to this narrative, is
claimed for
J, while E's word for the same is said to be qWa.
The latter
properly denotes the coarse material from
which sacks
and the dress of mourners were made, and is
then applied
to anything made of this material. tHaTam;xa
from HtamA to expand, is
the specific term for a bag or sack.
The grain
sacks are :first mentioned xlii. 25, where the
general term
yliK;
vessel, is used together with qWa; then in
vs. 27,
28, qWa together with tHaTam;xa; in ver. 35 qWa alone,
and
thenceforward tHaTam;xa, as the proper and specific
term, is
steadfastly adhered to in the rest of the narrative
throughout
chs. xliii. and xliv. That this affords
no
argument for
sundering vs. 27, 28 from then present
connection
and assigning them to another writer is ob-
vious, since
both qWa
and tHaTm;x; occur there together;
moreover,
Elohim in the last clause of ver. 28 forbids it
being
assigned to J. Dillmann evades these
difficulties
by assuming
that these verses have been manipulated by
R, who
inserted qWa and
transposed the unwelcome clause
from its
original position after ver. 35. What
cannot a
critic prove
with the help of R?
484 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
4. rfana
lad, as Benjamin is called by J (xliii.
8; xliv.
22-34); but
E uses instead dl,y,; child
(xlii. 22 E, said of
Joseph at
the time when he was sold). J, however,
like-
wise calls
Benjamin kl,y, (xliv.
20), and uses the same
word
repeatedly elsewhere, e.g., xxxii. 23; xxxiii. 1-14
(9 times);
while E uses rfana with
equal frequency (xiv. 24;
xxi. 12-20
(6 times)); ch. xxii. (5 times), etc.
See ch. xxi.
1-21, Marks
of E, No.6.
5.
Israel (xliii. 6, 8, 14 J) ; but Jacob, xlii. 1, 4, 29, 36,
E; also sons
of Israel, xlii. 5 E. See ch.
xxxvii., Marks
of J, No.1.
6. wyxihA
the man, said of Joseph (xliii. 3, 5, 6, 7, 13,
14; xliv. 26
J), while E says Cr,xAhA
ynedoxE wyxihA the man,
the lord of
the land (xlii. 30,
33). The full phrase was
necessary at
first in order to indicate the person intend-
ed; its
constant repetition afterward would be cum-
brous. In like manner "the man who was over
Joseph's
house"
(xliii. 16, 19) is simply called "the man" (ver.
17). The plural construct ynedoxE is used in a singular
sense but
once besides in the Pentateuch (xxxix. 20),
where it is
attributed to J.
7. rhas.oha
tyBe prison, is used by J (xxxix. 20-23), while
E has rmAw;mi ward (xlii. 17, 19), as xl. 3, 4, 7; xli. 10; but
the former
also occurs in an E context (xl. 3, 5), only the
clause
containing it is cut out and assigned to J because
of this very
phrase.
8. hnAl.AKu all of them, the
prolonged form of the feminine
plural
suffix is used by E (xlii. 36), as xxi. 29; xxxi. 6; xli.
21; but J
has the same hn.Am,HEya for NmAHEya
xxx. 41.
9. hdAce provision
(xlii. 25 E), as xlv. 21 ; Josh. ix. 11;
but so J
xxvii. 3; Ex. xii. 39; all in Hexateuch except
Josh. i. 11
D.
10.
hrAcA distress (xlii. 21 bis E); but so J Deut. xxxi.
17, 21; all
in Hexateuch.
11.
rkazA remember (xlii. 9 E), as xl. 14 bis, 23; xli. 9;
JACOB'S SONS
GO TO EGYPT (CH. XLII.-XLIV.) 485
Ex. xx. 8
(?), 24; xxiii. 13; but so J Ex. xiii. 3; xxxii.
13; Lev.
xxvi. 42 (three times), 45 (?), Num. xi. 5; xv.
39, 40; P,
Gen. viii. 1; ix. 15, 16; xix. 29; xxx. 22; Ex.
ii. 24; vi.
5; Num. v. 15 (?); x. 9 (?); all in Pentateuch
except
Deuteronomy.
12. lk,xo food, is
claimed for J (xliii. 2, 4, 20, 22; xliv.
1, 25) in
distinction from rBA grain (E xli. 35, 49; xlii. 3,
25; xlv.
23); but the former occurs in E xli. 35 bis, 36,
48 bis;
xlii. 7, 10; xlvii. 24, unless the clauses contain-
ing it are
arbitrarily severed from their context.
13.
drayA go
down, and dyriOh
bring down (into Egypt), are
said to be
used by J, while E has xybihe bring. See ch.
xxxvii.,
Marks of J, No.3.
14.
dbekA heavy (xliii. 1); mostly referred by rule to J,
even when it
has to be cut out of an E connection for
the purpose,
as Gen. xli. 31; Ex. xix. 16; Num. xx. 20;
yet it is
given to E Ex. xvii. 12; viii. 18. So,
too, the
corresponding
verb is mostly assigned to J, and is in
Ex. v. 9 cut
out of an E connection for the purpose; it
is, however,
given to E Num. xxii. 15, 17, 37; and to P
Ex. xiv. 4,
17; 18; Lev. x. 3.
15. hl.AKi with l; and the infinitive made an end
(xliii. 2 J).
See ch.
xxvi. 34-xxviii. 9, Marks of J, No. 2.
16.
Ffam; a
little (xliii. 2,
11; xliv. 25 J); besides in J
xviii. 4;
mv. 17, 43; xxvi: 10; xxx. 15, 30; Josh. vii.
3; in JE
Num. xvi. 13; in E Ex. xvii. 4; xxiii. 30;
Num. xiii.
18; in P Gen. xlvii. 9; Lev. xxv. 52; Num.
xvi. 9
(worked over); xxvi. 54, 56; xxxiii. 54; xxxv. 8;
in Deut. 5
times; R Josh. xxii. 17; all in Hexateuch.
17. wye with suffix and participle (xliii. 4 J). See ch.
xxiv., Marks
of J, No. 11.
18.
h.mah;mat;hi linger
(xliii. 10 J); besides in J xix. 16;
Ex. xii. 39;
all in Hexateuch.
19.
ylaUx peradventure (ver. 12 J). See ch. xvi., Marks
of J, No.
12.
486 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
20. HtaP,
door (ver. 19 J); besides in J iv. 7; xviii.
1,
2, 10; xix.
6, 11; xxxviii. 14; Ex. xii. 22, 23; Num. xi.
10; in E Ex.
xxxiii. 8, 9, 10; Num. xii. 5; in JE Num.
xvi. 27; in
P Gen. vi. 16 and fifty-five times besides;
twice in
Deut., and once referred to Rd, viz., Josh. viii. 29.
21. hvAHETaw;hiv; bow the head and make obeisance (ver.
28 J). See ch. xxiv., Marks of J, No. 20.
22. yBi particle of entreaty (xliii. 20; xliv. 18 J); be-
sides in J
Ex. iv. 10, 13; Num. xii. 11; Josh. vii. 8; all
in
Hexateuch.
23.
hl.,xehA MyribAD;Ka according to these words (xliv. 7 J).
See ch.
xxxix., Marks of J, No.5.
24. l; hlAyliHA far be it,
followed by Nmi with the infini-
tive (xliv.
7, 17). See ch. xviii., xix., Marks of
J, No.8.
25. The ending, NU (xliv. 1, 23 J). See ch.
xviii., xix.,
Marks of J,
No. 22.
The attempt to establish a parallel
narrative to ch.
xlii. for J,
and to chs. xliii., xliv. for E, rests on very slen-
der
grounds. Snatches. of the former are
suspected in
xlii. 2a,
4b, 6, 7, 10, 27, 28, 38, and of the latter in xliii.
14,
23b. It is alleged that xlii. 2a is
superfluous beside
ver. la,
which it is not; ver. 4b is sundered from its con-
nection and
given to J because of the phrase NOsxA Un.x,rAq;yi
mischief
befall him, though
these words are found as well
in E, and
their recurrence (ver. 38; xliv. 29), instead of
being a
reason for partition, is indicative rather of the
unity of the
entire narrative; ver. 6 because of Fyl.iwa
governor, which occurs nowhere else in the
Hexateuch,
and is here
used instead of MynidoxE lord, as vs. 30, 33, E, or
lwemo ruler, as xlv. 8, 26, E; but if the same writer
can
speak of
Joseph as MynidoxE and
lwemo, why
not also as Fyl.iw,
especially
as Fyl.iwa in the opinion of Dillmann "may here
be a
technical word traditionally preserved, since it
agrees
remarkably with Salitis or Silitis, the name of the
JOSEPH MAKES
HIMSELF KNOWN (CH. XLV.) 487
first ruler
of the Hyksos in Egypt;" moreover, it is very
inconsistent
for the critics to refer ver. 6 to another than
E,
notwithstanding the plain allusion to Joseph's dreams
in the last
clause where his brothers bow themselves to
the ground
before him (cf. xxxvii. 10). "He
knew them,
but made
himself strange unto them," in ver. 7, is said to
be an
insertion from J because of the repetition in ver.
8, which,
however, is for the sake of adding a contrasted
thought, and
the removal of this clause leaves the follow-
ing words,
"spake roughly with them," unexplained, so
that
Dillmann finds it necessary to transpose them after
ver.
9a. So ver. 10 because of lk,xo food,
though this is
equally
found in E. And vs. 27, 28, 38, for reasons
already
sufficiently discussed. Furthermore,
xliii. 14, 23b,
are cut out
of their connection and given to E, because
they flatly
contradict the critical allegation that J knows
nothing of
Simeon's imprisonment and that he never
says El
Shaddai.
It will be observed that the phrase
"land of Canaan,"
previously
claimed as characteristic of P, here appears
repeatedly
in E (xlii. 5, 7, 13, 29, 32) and J (xliv. 8).
See ch. xii.
5, Marks of P, No.4.
JOSEPH MAKES HIMSELF KNOWN (CH. XLV.)
THE complications of the immediately
preceding chap-
ters, as is
correctly observed by Tuch, simply serve to
prepare the
way for the surprising denouement in ch.
xlv., which
is a sufficient proof that this chapter must be
from the
narrator of the foregoing circumstances; and
in like
manner ch. xlv. leads directly to ch. xlvi.
Never-
theless the
critics assign this chapter in the main to E,
on the
ground of alleged discrepancies with what precedes
and
follows. How, it is said, could Joseph ask
(ver. 3)
whether his
father was yet living after his own previous
488 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
inquiry
(xliii. 27, 28), and Judah's speech (xliv. 18-34), as
reported by
J? The suggestion only shows how utterly
this cold
and captious criticism is out of sympathy with
the writer,
and with the whole situation. Joseph's
heart
is bursting
with long-suppressed emotion. He had
asked about
the old man of whom they spake. He can
maintain
this distance and reserve no longer.
With the
disclosure
"I am Joseph," his first utterance follows the
bent of his
affections, "How is my father?"
Again, it is objected that Pharaoh had
bidden Joseph
bring his
father with his household to Egypt, promising
him the good
of the 1and (vs. 17, 18), yet (xlvii. 1) Jo-
seph
announces their coming to Pharaoh, as though he
had never
heard of it before; they petition (ver. 4) to be
allowed to
dwell in Goshen, and Pharaoh grants it (ver.
6), without
any allusion to his previous invitation and
promise.
But there is no implication in this last
act that the
first had
not preceded it. All proceeds quite
naturally in
the
narrative. At the first intimation of
the presence of
Joseph's
brethren Pharaoh asks them to Egypt to share
the good of
the land, assigning them no residence, and
only
offering them subsistence in this time of scarcity.
Upon their
actual arrival with their father and all their
possessions
Joseph notifies Pharaoh of the fact, and pre-
sents his
brethren to him with the request that they may
dwell in
Goshen as best suited to their occupation.
And
when this is
granted he presents his aged father to the
king. All is as consistent and natural as possible.
It is further urged that there are back
references to
this chapter
and coincidences with it in other E passages
which are
indicative of their common origin. Thus,
xlvi.
5 makes
mention of the wagons sent by Pharaoh
to bring the
wives of Joseph's brethren, and their little
ones, and
their father, agreeably to xlv. 19, 21.
Chs. xlvii.
JOSEPH MAKES
HIMSELF KNOWN (CH. XLV.) 489
12, 1. 21
allude to Joseph's promise (xlv. 11) to nourish
his father
and his household. The reference of all
that
had befallen
Joseph to the providence of God (xlv. 7, 8)
is as 1. 20;
and the exalted position assigned to Joseph
in Egypt
(xlv. 8) is as xli. 40-43.
The common authorship of these so-called
E passages
is freely
admitted. But this is no concession to
critical
partition. Precisely the same line of proof from allu-
sions and
coincidences links this chapter indissolubly to
J passages
likewise. The constitution of the
chapter is
clearly at
variance with the hypothesis of the critics,
since what
they allege to be criteria of distinct docu-
ments,
whether in language or in the contents of the
narrative,
are here inseparably blended. Their only
re-
source here,
as elsewhere, is to interpret these damaging
clauses as
insertions by R, which they accordingly cut
out of their
proper connection and assign to J as though
they were
scraps taken from a supposed parallel narra-
tive of his.
Verse 1a is given to J because of qPexat;hi refrain himself ;
only besides
in the Hexateuch xliii. 31 J; but 1b,
closely
connected with it, is assigned to E because of
fDavat;hi made himself known; only besides in the Old Tes-
tament Num.
xii. 6 E.
Verse 2 is declared superfluous in its
connection be-
side ver.
16. But it is not. The action progresses regu-
larly. Joseph's weeping was heard by those outside
(ver.
2), but the
occasion of it became known subsequently
(ver. 16).
Verse 4b, the sale of Joseph into Egypt is
in the wrong
document; of
course excision is necessary.
Verse 5 is a singular medley; no two
successive clauses
can be
assigned to the same document. The first
clause
has Ubc;fATe be grieved, J, as vi. 6; xxxiv. 7; the second
Mk,yneyfeB; rHayi (anger) burn in your eyes, only besides in the
490 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
Old
Testament xxxi. 35, E; the third, the sale of Joseph,
J; the fourth,
Elohim, E.
Verse 7a repeats 5b, but Elohim occurs in
both, com-
pelling the
critics to give both to E, and so confess that
repetition
is not proof of a doublet, or else, as Kautzsch
proposes, to
change one Elohim to Jehovah, and throw
the blame on
R. Dillmann remarks upon the construc-
tion as
unusual and difficult, which affords him a pre-
text for the
conjecture that it is a mutilated insertion
from J. It is of little consequence how it is accom-
plished, so
that a foothold is found in the verse for J.
Verse 10, Joseph's naming Goshen as their
place of
abode is
implied in xlvi. 28 J, where Jacob goes directly
thither. It is hence severed from its connection and
given to J,
in whole or in part, while its minute enumera-
tion of
particulars is such as is elsewhere held to charac-
terize P in
distinction from both J and E.
Verse 13 is assigned to J because of dyriOh bring down,
as xxxix. 1,
and because it repeats ver. 9; so ver.14, be-
cause
of yrexU;ca lfa lpanA fell upon the neck, as xxxiii. 4, xlvi.
29; while
ver. 15, a part of the same scene, is given to E.
Wellhausen
by comparison with xxxiii. 4 tries to estab-
lish a
diversity between J and E in the construction of
qw.eni kissed, a conclusion which Dillmann thinks
"weak in
Verse 19.
Mc,ywen;lev; Mk,P;Fal; for your little ones and for
your wives, is a J
phrase.
Verse 20.
sHoTA-lxa Mk,n;yfe let not your eye spare (E. V.,
regard not),
is peculiar to D; "the good of all the land
of Egypt is
yours" duplicates ver. 18.
Verse 21.
"And the children of Israel did so," is
such a
preliminary statement of what is more fully de-
tailed
afterward as the critics are in the habit of reckon-
ing a
duplicate account.
Verse 28 is the response to ver. 27; but
one verse has
JOSEPH MAKES HIMSELF KNOWN (CH. XLV.) 491
"Jacob,"
and must be assigned to E, while the other has
"Israel,"
and is given to J.
It is apparent here, as in many other
cases, that the as-
signment of
verses and clauses is simply the enforcement,
nolens
volens, of an
arbitrary determination of the critics.
No one would
dream of sundering these mutually unre-
lated scraps
from the rest of the chapter, with which they
are closely
connected, but for the application of alleged
criteria
which the critics have devised in other places
in framing
their hypothesis. These are carried
rigor-
ously
through at whatever disturbance of the connec-
tion or
havoc of the sense, because to abandon them
would be to
give up the hypothesis. The very least
that
can be said
is that this mincing work, to which the critics
find
themselves compelled to resort to so great an extent
Genesis, and
increasingly so ill the books that follow,
lends no
support to the hypothesis, but is simply a dead
weight upon
it. The hypothesis is plainly not an
out-
growth of
this and similar chapters, but is obtruded upon
them; and
the only question is how much lumber of this
sort it can
carry without signally breaking down.
Elohim occurs four times in this chapter
(vs. 5, 7, 8, 9),
in the
address of Joseph to his brothers. As he
is no
longer
acting the part of an Egyptian, he might have
spoken of
Jehovah as consulting for the welfare of the
chosen
race. But Elohim is equally appropriate,
since
the
prominent thought here and throughout the history
of Joseph is
that it is God, and not man, who guided the
course of
events (ver. 8; 1. 20).
MARKS OF E
1. bqofEya Jacob
(ver. 25). See ch. xxxvii., Marks of J,
No.1; ch.
xlii.-xliv., Marks of E, No.5.
2.
vynAyreB; hrAHA (anger) burn in one's eyes.
Only besides
xxxi. 35 E.
492 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
3. NfaFA
lade (ver. 17); nowhere else in the Old Testa-
ment.
4. hdAce provision (ver. 21). See ch. xIii.-xliv., Marks
of E, No. 9.
5.
rBA grain (ver. 23). See ch. xlii.-xliv., Marks of E,
No. 12.
REMOVAL TO EGYPT (CH. XLVI. 1-27)
Verses 1-5 are assigned to E on account of
the back J
reference in
ver. 5b to xlv. 19, 21 (but if these verses be-
long to R,
as Dillmann affirms, ver. 5b must be given to
R likewise),
and other criteria; only ver. 1a is given to J
or R because
of "Israel" and "took his journey" fs.ay..iva.
This affords
an opportunity for creating a discrepancy.
Jacob starts
in E (ver. 5) from Beersheba, in J from
some other
place, presumably from Hebron (xxxvii. 14),
and takes
Beersheba on his way. It scarcely need
be
stated that
the discrepancy is purely the result of the
critical
partition, and has no existence in the text itself.
In ver. 2
"Elohim" and "visions of the night," which
are held to
be characteristics of E,l conflict with "Israel,"
a mark of
J. The difficulty is adjusted by erasing
the
unwelcome
name and tracing its insertion to R.
Verses 6, 7 are attributed to P on account
of words
and phrases
which are claimed as peculiar to P, but on
very slight
grounds as has been previously shown.
P's
last
generally acknowledged statement2 is that, in con-
trast to
Esau's removal to Mount Seir (xxxvi. 6-8), Jacob
dwelt in the
land of Canaan (xxxvii. 1). And yet here
follows,
without a word of explanation, the removal of
1 The repetition of the name, and the
answer "Here I am," as Gen.
xxii. 11,
Ex. iii. 4, is also claimed for E; but Gen. xxii. 11 can only
be assigned
to E by manipulating the text and expunging "Jehovah."
2 Two isolated and unexplained statements
of Joseph's age, when
tending
flocks (xxxvii. 2), and when standing before Pharaoh (xli. 46),
are given to
P by some critics, and denied to him by others.
REMOVAL TO EGYPT (CH. XLVI. 1-27) 493
Jacob and
his family to Egypt; and it comes out in sub-
sequent
allusions that Joseph was already settled there
and married
into a priestly family (xlvi. 20, 27), that he
was in high
favor with Pharaoh, and it was he who gave
his father
and brethren a possession in the land of Egypt
(xlvii. 7,
11). But how all this came about P does
not
inform
us. The critics are greatly exercised to
account
for so
egregious a gap as this. Kayser suggests
that P
was
theoretical rather than historical; Noldeke that R
omitted P's
account because it was contradictory to E
and J;
others, because it agreed with theirs.
And yet
elsewhere R
is careful to preserve even the smallest
scraps of P,
though they are quite superfluous beside the
more
extended narratives of E or J, e.g., xix. 29, and if
we may
believe the critics he is not deterred by incon-
sistencies.
The list of Jacob's family (vs. 8-27) is
a critical puzzle.
It is in the
style of other genealogies attributed to P,
and has
expressions claimed as his, viz., "Paddan-aram"
(ver. 15),
"souls" (vs. 15, 18, 22, 25-27), "came out of
his
loins" (ver. 26). And yet there are
duplicates of it
in P (Ex. i.
1-5; vi. 14-25; Num. xxvi. 5 sqq.); Israel
(ver. 8) is
a mark of J, and, as Kayser affirms, it has
too many
allusions to J and E to admit of their being
explained as
interpolations. Thus (ver. 12)," Er
and
Onan died in
the land of Canaan," refers to xxxviii. 7-10
J; ver. 18,
"Zilpah, whom Laban gave to Leah," and
ver. 25,
"Bilhah, whom Laban gave unto Rachel," to xxix.
24, 291
E; vs. 20, 27, Joseph's marriage and sons to xli.
50-52 E.2 So Hupfeld attributes this list to J, Well-
1 It is with the view of
quietly evading this difficulty that Wellhausen
and Dillmann
absurdly sunder these verses from the rest of ch. xxix.,
and give
them to P.
2 Also (ver. 15) "
Dinah" refers to xxx. 21, if Kayser and Schrader
are correct
in ascribing ch. xxxiv. entire to J.
494 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
hausen to a
later writer who derived his materials from
P, or
according to Kayser, from P and J, or in the opin-
ion of
Kuenen one who was acquainted with Genesis in
its present
form, and with Num. xxvi. ("Hexateuch,"p. 68),
while Dillmann
follows Noldeke in imputing it to P, but
worked over
by R, who supplied the additions from J
and E. But such a linking together of J, E, and P as
we find in
this passage, and repeatedly in others, occurs
too
frequently to be set aside by any critical device.
These cannot
be separate and independent documents,
since their
alleged criteria are indiscriminately mingled
in the same
continuous paragraphs, and are to all ap-
pearance
freely used by the same writer.
As (ver. 8) this list professes to give
"the names of the
children of
Israel who came into Egypt," Dillmann af-
firms that
the mention of Er and Onan (ver. 12) implies
that they
were living at that time (the clause which
speaks of
their death in Canaan being, as he contends, an
interpolation
from ch. xxxviii.), and that they are in fact
counted in
making up the number thirty-three in ver. 15.
He hence
concludes that the author of this list is here at
variance
with ch. xxxviii. This is a most
extraordinary
attempt to
create a discrepancy in defiance of the plain
language of
the verse, by throwing out of the text its ex-
plicit
statement on the subject. It only shows
what ex-
travagances
can be made to result from critical partition.
Er and Onan
are not included in the summation (ver. 15).
The number
is completed by adding Jacob, who in ver.
8 is
reckoned one of "the children of Israel" (in its na-
tional
sense), and Dinah, the total embracing, as is dis-
tinctly
declared in ver.15, "daughters" as well as "sons."
To make out
his case Dillmann is obliged here again to
expunge
"daughters" from the text.
A further discrepancy is alleged in the
chronology. It
is said that
the antecedent narratives of J and E do not
REMOVAL TO EGYPT (CH. XLVI. 1-27) 495
allow time
enough for the birth of all the children named
in this list
of P. This is based on the assumption,
which
even
Wellhausen1 repels, that every individual person
named in the
list was born before the migration into Egypt.
Such an
inference might indeed be drawn from vs. 8, 26,
strictly
taken. But to press the letter of such
general state-
ments into
contradiction with the particulars embraced
under them
is in violation of the evident meaning of the
writer. So ver. 15 rigorously interpreted would make
Leah
to have
borne thirty-three children to Jacob in Paddan-
aram, one of
whom was Jacob himself. Zilpah (ver. 18)
and Bilhah
(ver. 25) bare their grandsons as well as
their
sons. Benjamin is included (xxxv. 24,
26) among
Jacob's sons
born in Paddan-aram, though his birth near
Ephrath is
recorded but a few verses before. The
nu-
merical
correspondences of the table, a total of seventy,
the
descendants of each maid precisely half those of her
mistress
(Leah 32, Zilpah 16, Rachel 14, Bilhah 7), sug-
gest design
and can scarcely be altogether accidental.
And a
comparison of Num. xxvi. leads to the belief that
regard ,vas
had to the subsequent national organization in
constructing
this table, and that its design was to in-
clude those
descendants of Jacob from whom permanent
families or
tribal divisions sprang, even if in a few in-
stances they
did not chance to have been born before
the descent
into Egypt. As a rule Jacob's sons gave
names to the
tribes, and his grandsons to the tribal di-
visions. To this, however, there were some exceptions.
Joseph's
sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, were adopted by
Jacob as his
own (xlviii. 5), and tribes were called after
them. In like manner (ver. 12), Hezron and Hamul,
1 Composition d. Hexateuchs, p.
51: "This list once and again bursts
through the
historic bounds of Genesis."
Critical consistency requires
this
admission from those who assign the numbers in xxxvii, 2 and xli,
46 to P or
this document will be in conflict with itself,
496 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
grandsons of
Judah, are included in this list as substi-
tutes for
his two deceased sons; and (ver. 21) ten sons
of Benjamin1
are enumerated, though some of those who
are here
spoken of as sons were really grandsons (Num.
xxvi. 40; 1
Chron. viii. 3, 4). And so no difficulty
is created
by the
circumstance that four sons are ascribed to Reu-
ben, ver. 9,
but only two, xlii. 37. A few names are
here
recorded of
those who were still in the loins of their
fathers
(Heb. vii. 9, 10) at the time of the migration.
It
is no
departure from the usages of Hebrew thought to
conceive of
unborn children as included in the persons
of their
parents (ver. 4b). The Septuagint goes
farther
in this
direction than the Hebrew text by inserting in
ver. 20 five
sons and grandsons of Ephraim and Manas-
seh, thus
making the total in ver. 27 seventy-five instead
of seventy;
and so in the speech of Stephen, Acts vii. 14.
The statement in ver. 27, that seventy of
Jacob's fam-
ily came
into Egypt, is repeated Deut. x. 22, which can
only be
accounted for on the Wellhausen hypothesis,
which makes
this list postexilic and Deuteronomy a prod-
uct of the
age of Josiah, by assuming that these two
identical
statements were made independently of each
other.
The
divine names in this chapter are grouped together
in the
opening verses (vs. 1-3). These verses,
though
1 It has been paraded as an
absolute inconsistency that Benjamin is in
this list
spoken of as the father of ten sons, whereas in the narrative
(xliii. 8;
xliv. 22 sqq,) he is called rfana lad; but Rehoboam is called rfana
young (2 Chron. xiii. 7) when he was upward of
forty years of age (xii.
13). The epithet NFoq.Aha the youngest,
which is applied to Benjamin
(xlii. 13,
15, 20 sqq.), denates relative, not absolute age, and has no ref-
erence to
size. Though Benjamin was tenderly
treated as the youngest
of the
family, and Jacob's darling, the sole remaining son of his favor-
ite wife, it
must not be inferred that he was still in his boyhood. Of
the ten
named in this list as sprung from him, five at least were grand-
sons, and
some of the remainder may have been born in Egypt.
REMOVAL TO EGYPT (CH. XLVI. 1-27) 497
attributed
to E; are filled with references to former J
passages,
which is at variance with every form of the di-
visive
hypothesis. The name "Israel,"
not only in ver.
la, which is
given to J, but in ver. 2, is a mark of J.
Jacob's
coming to Beersheba, and offering sacrifices there
to the God
of his father Isaac, is in evident allusion to
the altar
built there by Isaac and the divine manifesta-
tion and
promise there made to him (xxvi. 23-25 J).
And the
language which God here addresses to Jacob in
the night,
"I am the God of thy father; fear not. . . .
I will go
down with thee," is a repetition of what he said
to Isaac
likewise in the night, "I am the God of Abraham
thy father;
fear not, for I am with thee." "I will make
of thee a
great nation" (ver. 3) is a repetition of the
promise made
to Abraham (xii. 2 J). "I will go
down
with thee
into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee
up
again" (ver. 4), is the renewal of the promise made
to Jacob
himself on a like occasion before, when he was
on the point
of leaving the land of Canaan: "I
am with
thee, and
will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and
will bring
thee again into this land" (xxviii. 15 J).
This
obvious
dependence upon J passages throughout is suf-
ficient to
assure us that there can be no variance in the
use of the
divine names. And in point of fact there
is
none. "The God of Isaac" is a designation
equivalent
to Jehovah
(xxviii. 13; xxxii. 10, E. V., ver. 9 J).
And
there are
special reasons for joining with this name the
term lxehA ha-El (ver. 3), from its association with the name
"Israel,"
here significantly employed, from its allusion
to xxxv. 11,
where the promises of a multiplied offspring
and of the
gift of Canaan were made to him on his return
to this
land, which are now emphatically repeated as he
is again
about to leave it, and from its meaning the
Mighty One, with its assurance, just then especially
needed, of
omnipotent protection and blessing; and a
498 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
like
assurance is involved in Elohim (ver. 2), the God of
creation and
of universal providence.
MARKS OF J (VER. la)
1. fsanA journeyed. See Diction of ch. xx., No.1.
2. Israel.
See ch. xxxvii., Marks of J, No.1; ch. xlii.-
xliv., No.5.
MARKS OF E (vs. lb-5a)
1.
Night Vision. See ch. xx., Marks
of E, No.4.
2. yOgl; MyWi make a nation.
See ch. xxi. 1-21, Marks
of E, No.
12.
3.
hdAr; to go
down; this form
of the infinitive occurs
but once
besides in the Hexateuch, viz., hfADe
to know (Ex.
ii. 4
E). A form of so rare occurrence in this
document
cannot be
regarded as characteristic of it.
MARKS OF P
1. wUkr;
goods, wkarA
had gotten (ver. 6).
See ch. xii. 5,
Marks of P,
No.2.
2. OTxi
Ofr;za his seed
with him (vs. 6, 7)
; while equiva-
lent phrases
occur repeatedly in all the documents, this
precise form
of speech is found but twice besides in the
Hexateuch
(Gen. xxviii. 4; Num. xviii. 19 P).
3.
bqofEya Jacob. See ch. xlii.-xliv., Marks of E, No. 5.
4.
rOkB; first-born
(ver. 8). See ch. xxv. 12-18, Marks
of P, No. 4.
5.
Paddan-aram (ver. 15). See
ch. xxv. 19-34, Marks
of P, No.4.
6.
wp,n, souls (vs. 15, 18, 22, 25-27). See ch. xii. 5,
Marks of P,
No.3.
7. Okyey; yxec;yo came out of his thigh (ver. 26);
this pre-
cise form of
expression occurs in the Hexateuch but
SETTLEMENT
IN GOSHEN (XLVI. 28-XLVII. 11) 499
once besides
(Ex. i. 5 P), where it is borrowed from the
present
passage; an equivalent expression is found in
xxxv. 11
P, j~yc,lAHEme xcAyA come out of thy loins, and one
closely
related in xv. 4 J, j~yf,m.emi
xcAyA come out of
thy
bowels.
The same conception is involved when an oath
relating to
posterity (xxiv. 2 J), or to be fulfilled after the
death of him
who has imposed it (xlvii. 29 J), is taken
with the
hand under the thigh.
SETTLEMENT IN GOSHEN (CH. XLVI. 28-XLVII.
11)
Dillmann assigns xlvi. 28-xlvii. 5a, 6b,
to J; and xlvii.
5b, 6a,
7-11, to P.
It is argued that xlvi. 28 sqq. belongs to
a different
document
from the preceding, because in ver. 6 (P) Jacob
and his
family had already come into Egypt, whereas in
ver. 28 he
is still on the way thither, and sends Judah
before him
to Joseph to obtain the necessary directions
about
admission to Goshen. This, it is said,
is J's ac-
count; and according
to Wellhausen it connects directly
with ver.
5. But that belongs to E. According to the
usual method
of Hebrew writing, a summary statement of
the journey
is made at the outset (vs. 5, 6), and the de-
tails are
introduced afterward (vs. 28 sqq.).
These the
critics
erect into two separate accounts, as they are ac-
customed to
do elsewhere and with just as little reason.
Wellhausen finds a discrepancy between the
modest
request
(ver. 34 J) for the land of Goshen and the grand
offer previously
made by Pharaoh (xlv. 18 E) of the
best portion
of the land of Egypt. But, as Dillmann
ex-
plains, this
is not the meaning of Pharaoh's offer.
He
has no
thought of their taking up their abode in Egypt.
His proposal
is not to present them with a choice part
of the
country as their residence, but to supply their ne-
cessities
during the prevalence of the famine.
"The
500 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
good of the
land," which he says that he will give them,
denotes, as
is plain from vs. 20, 23; xxiv. 10; 2 Kin. viii.
9, the good
things, the best and choicest products of the
land. The sons of Jacob make an advance upon the
promise
given them by the king, when instructed by
Joseph they
ask that Goshen may be assigned to them
to dwell
in. And when in response to this request
the
king assures
them that they may dwell in Goshen, "in
the best of
the land" (xlvii. 6), he uses a different term
from that
contained in his original offer (not bUUF, but
bFAyme).
The critics allege that Pharaoh's
invitation to Joseph's
father and
brethren in ch. xlv. E is here entirely
ignored,
and their
coming is announced to the king (xlvi. 31;
xlvii. 1),
as something altogether new and unexpected;
this must,
therefore, be a variant account of the matter
as given by
J. But this is by no means the
case. Pha-
raoh had
invited them to come, and now Joseph goes to
tell him
that they have arrived. The invitation
is ac-
cepted; what
occasion was there to say more?
The attempt is also made to produce two
divergent
accounts of
the reception by Pharaoh. The critics
em-
ploy for
this purpose their customary method of making
the part
stand for the whole, and arraying successive in-
cidents
against each other as though they were variant
reports of
the same transaction. Joseph first
presents
five of his
brethren to the king that they may tell him
their
occupation and have an appropriate residence as-
signed
them. He then presents his father, causa
honoris,
for a formal
interview. This is all natural
enough. The
complaint is
made that the father, as the head of the
clan, ought
to be have been presented first. The
objec-
tor may
settle that matter with the historian, or, if he
pleases,
with R. The sons were the active members
of the
family, and the reason given in the narrative itself
SETTLEMENT
IN GOSHEN (XLVI. 28-XLVII. 11) 501
for the
order of procedure is; sufficient. How
the sons
were
deferred to in matters of importance affecting the
family is
plain from other narratives likewise (cf. xxiv.
50, 53, 55,
59; xxxiv. 5, 11, 13). Moreover, the
critics will
have it that
there was but one presentation; according
to J (vs. 2
sqq.) Joseph presented his brothers unto
Pharaoh; on
the contrary, P states (vs. 7-11) that it was
his father that
Joseph presented. The simple fact is
that he
presented both at different times, as the nar-
rative
declares; so there is no discrepancy whatever.
Hupfeld
evidently saw none, as he does not separate vs.
7-11 from
the preceding verses; neither did Delitzsch in
the first
four editions of his "Commentary."
Kayser gives ver. 11 to E, on account of
its manifest
connection
with vs. 5, 6. Wellhausen, Dillmann, and
others
reverse the argument, and give vs. 5b, 6a, to P on
account of
their correspondence in thought and expres-
sion with
ver. 11. This gives an opportunity to
claim
that J and P
use different designations for the territory
assigned to
Israel; what the former calls Goshen (vs. 4,
6b),the
latter denominates the land of Rameses (ver.11).
Yet
"the land of Rameses" is found only in this single
passage; it
is called "Goshen" in ver. 27 P, where a
critical
process is necessary to eliminate it, and, as Kay-
ser
observes, Rameses occurs in Ex. i. 11 E; xii. 37 J, as
the name of
a city, from which the surrounding region
might
readily derive its appellation; and it is admitted
that the
land of Rameses and Goshen have precisely the
same
signification.
The authority of the LXX. is here adduced
to justify
the critical
severance of vs. 5, 6. The LXX. have
here,
as so
frequently elsewhere, rearranged the text for rea-
sons of
their own, which in this instance are quite appar-
ent. In order to bring Pharaoh's answer into more
ex-
act
correspondence with the request of Joseph's brothers,
502 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
they limit
it to ver. 6b, which they attach to the opening
words of
ver. 5; and then to prepare the way for the
clauses
which have been passed over, vs. 5b, 6a are intro-
duced by the
following insertion, "And Jacob and his sons
came into
Egypt to Joseph, and Pharaoh the king of
Egypt heard
it; and Pharaoh spake to Joseph, saying."
The critics
eagerly catch at this, and claim that it supplies
a missing
portion of the original text of P. But
surely no
unbiassed
person would think of substituting this for the
Masoretic
text of these verses.
MARKS OF P
1.
The statement of age (ver. 9).
See ch. vi.-ix.,
Marks of P,
No.2; ch. xvi., No.1.
2. ynew; yy.eHa ymey; the
days of the years of the life of (vs. 8,
9). See ch. xxiii., Marks of P, No.5. The same phrase
also 2 Sam.
xix. 35 (E. V., ver. 34).
3. Myrigum; pilgrimage (ver. 9).
See ch. xvii., Marks of
P, No.8.
4. hz.AHuxE possession (ver. 11). See ch. xvii., Marks of
P, No.7.
MARKS OF J
1. vyrAxy.Aca-lfa lpanA fell
on his neck (xlvi. 29);
only besides
in J xxxiii.
4; in xlv. 14 it is cut out of an E connection
on account
of this very phrase.
2.
Israel (xlvi. 29, 30). See ch.
xxxvii., Marks of J,
No.1; ch.
xlii.-xliv., No.5.
3. MfaPaha this time, E. V., now (ver. 30).
See ch. xviii.,
xix.,
lVlarks of J,.No. 9.
4. yHa j~d;Of thou art yet alive (ver. 30). The repetition
of this and
equivalent expressions in this narrative is
due on the
one hand to Joseph's solicitude about his
father, and
on the other his father's long-continued ap-
SETTLEMENT
IN GOSHEN (XLVI. 28-XLVII. 11) 503
prehension
that Joseph was dead. It is the natural
way
of
expressing the thought, and cannot with any propriety
be classed
as the characteristic of any particular docu-
ment. It is found besides in J (xliii. 7, 27, 28),
in E
(xlv. 3,
26), and in ver. 28, which is cut out of an E con-
nection and
given to J; also in E (Ex. iv. 18); in D or
Rd. (Deut. xxxi. 27); in other books, 1 Sam. xx.
14; 2
Sam. xii.
22; xviii. 14; 1 Kin. xx. 32.
5. MyriUfn.;mi from
youth (ver.
34). The word "youth"
occurs but
once besides in the Hexateuch with this
preposition
(Gen. viii. 21 J), and but twice without it
(Lev. xxii.
13 P; Num. xxx. 4 (E. V., ver. 3)) commonly
referred to
P, though Dillmann is disposed to assign it to
a code of
laws which he denominates S. In other
books
of the Bible
"from youth" occurs repeatedly; and it is
plainly not
the peculiar property of anyone writer.
6. hbAfeOT abomination (ver. 34); in the Hexateuch be-
sides,
xliii. 32; Ex. viii. 22 (E. V., ver. 26) J; Lev. xviii.
22, 26, 27,
29, 30; xx. 13, and repeatedly in Deuteron-
omy.
7. gyc.ihi presented (xlvii. 2); besides in Hexateuch,
xxx. 38;
xxxiii. 15; xliii. 9 J; Ex. x. 24 E; Deut.
xxviii. 56
D. That
dymif<h, is
used in ver. 7 P in the
same sense
is no indication of a different document,
since it is
used likewise in J (Num. xi. 24).
8. dbeKA heavy, sore (ver. 4).
See ch. xlii.-xliv., Marks
of J, N 14.
9. rUbfEBa in order that (xlvi. 34). See xxi. 22-34,
Marks of E,
No.3.
10. MGa . . . MGa both . . . and (ver. 34); be-
sides in J
(xxiv. 25, 44; xliii. 8; xliv. 16; xlvii. 3; 1. 9);
in J, based
on E and worked over by R (xlvii. 19); an
ancient
writing inserted in J (Deut. xxxii. 25);
in E
(Gen. xxxii.
20, E. V., ver. 19, Ex. xii. 32, xviii. 18), in
P (Num.
xviii. 3).
504 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
Jacob
commissions J1;I-dah (xlvi. 28) rather than Reu-
ben, because
of the confidence inspired by his character,
which made
him an acknowledged leader among his brethren
(xlix. 8),
as Peter among the apostles. This is not the in-
tention of a
writer partial to Judah, and so a criterion of one
document in
distinction from another.
JOSEPH'S
ARRANGEMENTS IN EGYPT (CH. XLVII. 12-27)
An account is here given of the measures
adopted by
Joseph
during the famine. The only source of
supply
was the
stores of grain, which as the chief officer of the
government
he had amassed from the over-production of
the seven
years of plenty (xli. 34-36, 47-49). In
pur-
chasing
their necessary food during the years of scarcity
that
followed, the people parted first with all their money,
then with
all their cattle and beasts of burden, and finally
with their
lands.l Thus the land became the
property
of the king;
and it became the established rule in Egypt
that the
people should pay to him, as the owner of the
land, a
rental of one-fifth of its produce.
Wellhausen says that this peculiar passage
(vs. 13-26)
has no
proper connection either in E or J; he assumes
that it
originally had its place in a parallel by J to ch.
xli. Dillmann thinks that it was written as the
continu-
ation of ch.
xli., since ver. 13 connects with xli. 55, 56.
The intimate connection between this
passage and ch.
1 The LXX., followed by the Samaritan and the Vulgate, read
(ver. 21):
"He enslaved them as servants to him," i.e., Pharaoh
MydibAfEla
Otxo dybif<h,, as though after disposing of their lands
the peo-
ple sold themselves. This variant text implies that Joseph took
the
people at their word when they offered
(ver. 19) to become bond-ser-
vants to Pharaoh for the sake of
bread. It agrees also with vs. 23, 25.
The Hebrew reads, "He removed them to
cities" MyrifAl, Otxo rybif<h,,
that they might be nearer the storehouses,
and their wants more easily
supplied.
JOSEPH’S ARRANGEMENTS (CH. XLVII. 12-27) 505
xli. is
obvious, and it may be said to continue the narra-
tive of that
chapter. Chapter xli. records how Joseph
stored up
the grain during the years of plenty; and when
the years of
dearth began to come, the people went to him
to buy their
food. Then the passage before us tells
how
the people
were impoverished, as the famine continued
from year to
year, by the purchases that they were
obliged to
make. But it does not follow from this
that
it
originally formed a part of that chapter, and is now
out of its
proper place. The narrative of Joseph's
deal-
ings with
the Egyptians was interrupted in order to tell
of the
coming of his brothers, and to explain how this
resulted in
the removal of Jacob and his family to Egypt
and their
settlement there. This, in fact, is the
princi-
pal reason
why the famine was spoken of at all.
When
this recital
is ended, the unfinished subject of Joseph's
dealings
with the Egyptians is resumed and completed.
And the details here given upon this
subject are not so
much
designed to impart information about Egypt as to
exhibit by
contrast the providential care extended over
the chosen
race in this period of sore distress.
While
the
Egyptians were reduced to the greatest straits, "Jo-
seph
nourished his father, and his brethren, and all his
father's
household with bread" (ver. 12).
"And Israel
dwelt in the
land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen; and
they gat
them possessions therein, and were fruitful and
multiplied
exceedingly" (ver. 27). Verses 12
and 27,
from which
the critics propose to sunder this paragraph,
are thus
essential to a proper understanding of it; and
its proper
place is where it now stands between them.
This paragraph likewise prepares the way
for Ex. i. 8.
The
oppression of Israel by a king "who knew not Jo-
seph,"
is a manifest allusion to the service which he had
rendered to
the nation, and to the advantage which he
had secured
for the king, as here detailed.
506 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
Kayser refers vs. 12-26 to J, Schrader to
E; Dillmann
thinks that
the original account was by E, this was re-
written by
J, and then worked over by R. Verse 27
he
gives to P,
except the words "the land of Goshen;"
Kayser gives
ver. 27a to J on account of this phrase, and
27b to
P. Knobel contends that ver. 27 must
belong to
the
preceding paragraph, to which it is attached with the
view of
contrasting the condition of Israel, with the Egyp-
tians, and
that it cannot, therefore, be assigned to P,
notwithstanding
its use of P expressions; especially as
it also has
the J phrase, "land of Goshen," and it dupli-
cates the P
verse (Ex. i. 7). This blending of the
al-
leged
characteristics of different documents simply shows
that what
the critics regard as criteria of distinct writers
are freely
used by the same writer.
MARKS
OF E
1. The accurate account of Egyptian
matters, and the
analogy
between vs. 25, 26; and xli. 34. But
these afford
no
indication of the existence of distinct documents.
2. lKel;Ki nourished (ver. 12). This verb is here used
with evident
reference to its occurrence in Joseph's
promise
(xlv. 11), which he now fulfils. That
these pas-
sages are to
be attributed to the same writer is readily ad-
mitted, but
not to a writer E, distinct from the author of
xlvi. 6-xlvii.
11 which the critics divide between P and
J. According to this partition, E here records
Joseph's
fulfilment
of his promise to nourish his father and his
family in
Egypt, without having mentioned the fact that
they had
arrived in Egypt, or even that they had accepted
the
invitation to come thither.
3. qzaHA prevailed (ver. 20), as over against dbeKA sore, se-
vere (ver. 13 J). See ch.
xlii.-x1iv., No. 14. That two
different
words are used in different passages to describe
JOSEPH'S ARRANGEMENTS
(CH. XLVII. 12-27) 507
the
intensity of the famine is no indication of a diversity
of writers,
unless a writer can never vary his expressions.
MARKS OF J
1. dbeKA sore (ver. 13). See ch. Xlii.-xliv., No. 14.
2. xcAm;n.iha found (ver. 14). The participle chances to
occur but
twice besides in the Hexateuch (Gen. xix. 15
J; Deut. xx.
11 D), but the verb is of frequent occur-
rence, and
is found in all the so-called documents.
3.
MTa fail,
be spent (vs. 15,
18); besides in J Lev. xxvi.
20 (so
Dillm.); Num. xxxii. 13; Josh. iv. 10, 11; E, Num.
xiv.
33; Josh. iv. 1; v. 8;
x. 20; JE, Josh. iii. 16, 17; viii.
24; P, Lev.
xxv. 29; Num. xiv. 35; xvii. 28 (E. V., ver.
13); Deut.
xxxiv. 8; D, Deut. ii. 14, 15, 16; Rd, Deut.
xxxi. 24,
30, Josh. v. 6.
4. Horses (ver. 17). It is alleged that J speaks of
horses and
horsemen in Egypt, but E does not. This
is
said to
indicate that E was better acquainted with Egyp-
tian
affairs, as the monuments give no evidence of the ex-
istence of
horses there until after the Hyksos period;
and although
Diodorus Siculus speaks of horsemen in
the army of
Sesostris, horses would seem to have been
used only
for chariots in the first instance, and cavalry
to belong to
a later period (Isa. xxxi. 1; xxxvi. 9).
That
they have
not yet been found upon the monuments of so
early a date
is a negative testimony which is liable at
any time to
be set aside by some fresh discovery, and is
of no force
against the positive statements of the passage
J under
consideration and others like it.
Moreover, there
is no
variance between the passages attributed to J and to
E. It is observable that in the presents made by
Pha-
raoh to
Abram (xii. 16 J) mention is made of sheep and
oxen and
asses and camels, but not of horses. J,
how-
ever, speaks
(xlvi. 29) of Joseph making ready his chariot,
508 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
which
implies horses; and more explicitly (1. 9), of his
going with
chariots and horsemen to bury his father.
Dillmann remarks
that while according to E wagons
were sent
for Jacob by Pharaoh's direction (xlv. 19, 21,
27; xlvi 5),
they may have been drawn by other animals
than horses;
and at any rate he is disposed to think that
these verses
though in an E context may have been in-
serted by R.
E, however, speaks of Joseph's chariot (xli.
43). And Ex. xiv. is divided on the assumption
that vs.
6, 7, which
speak of Pharaoh's chariots, are from E, but
vs. 9, 17,
18, 23, 26, 28, which mention horsemen as well
as chariots,
are from J. The latter is supposed to
have put
a wrong
interpretation upon the words "the horse and
his
rider," in the Song of Moses (Ex. xv. 1), which is al-
leged to
refer to charioteers, not to horsemen.
This
whole theory
is spoiled, however, by Josh. xxiv. 6 E,
which
expressly says that the horsemen as well as the
chariots of
the Egyptians pursued Israel into the Red
Sea. Dr. Dillmann tries to evade this result by
saying
that
"chariots and horsemen" cannot be from E, and
must
therefore have been inserted by R.
The case then stands thus: In vs. 6, 7, of Ex. xiv.,
chariots are
spoken of without separate mention of horse-
men, though
both are joined together throughout the
rest of the
chapter. This is made a pretext for
assigning
those verses
to E in distinction from J, and inferring
that E never
speaks of horsemen. But horsemen are
spoken of
along with chariots in the E verse Josh. xxiv.
6; this
being contrary to the critic's assumption the
words are
stricken out and declared to be an interpola-
tion by
B. And this is all the ground there is
for the
alleged
variance between J and E in this particular.
5.
hc,qA end (ver. 21); besides in J, Gen. xix. 4;
xlvii.
2; Josh. ix.
16; in E, Ex. xix. 12; Num. xx. 16; xxii. 36,
41; xxiii.
13; in JE, Josh. iii. 2, 8, 15; iv. 19; in D, Dent.
JOSEPH'S
ARRANGEMENTS (CH. XLVII. 12-27) 509
xiii. 8 (E.
V., ver. 7); xiv. 28; xxviii. 49, 64; xxx. 4; in
Rd, Deut.
iv. 32; Josh. xiii. 27; in P, Gen. viii. 3b; xxiii.
9; Ex. xiii.
20; xvi. 35; xxvi. 5, 28; Num. xi. 1; xxxiii.
6, 37;
xxxiv. 3; Josh. xv. 1, 2, 5, 8, 21; xviii. 15, 16, 19;
later
addition to P, Ex. xxxvi. 12, 33.
6. qra only (vs. 22, 26). See ch. vi. 1-8, Marks of J,
No.7.
7. yneyfeB; NHe xcAmA find favor in the eyes of. See ch. vi.
1-8, Marks
of J, No. 10; ch. xviii., xix., No. 28.
8. Nxc.oha hnEq;mi possession
of flocks, rqABAha hneq;mi possession
of herds (ver. 17), hmAheB;ha
hneq;mi possession of cattle (ver.
18); only
once besides in the Pentateuch (xxvi. 14 J).
9. tdoyA parts (ver. 24); only once besides in
the Penta-
teuch in
this sense (xliii. 34 J).
The occurrence of a few unusual words in
this para-
graph need
create no difficulty as to its authorship, un-
less upon
the assumption that no writer can use a word
in one place
which he has not used elsewhere. The
fol-
lowing are
noted by Dillmann: h.halA fainted (ver. 13), but
in one
besides in the Old Testament (Prov. xxvi. 18); spexA
fail (vs.
15, 16), only besides, Ps. lxxvii. 9, Isa. xvi. 4,
xxix. 20; lhane fed (ver. 17), nowhere
else in the Old Testa-
ment in
precisely the same sense; it is found twice besides
in the
Hexateuch, where it means "to lead;"
MmewA be deso-
late (ver. 19), in the Kal form but once besides in the
Hexateuch
(Lev. xxvi. 32); xhe lo! (ver. 23), nowhere else
in the
Hexateuch, and but once besides in the Old Testa-
ment.
MARKS OF P (VER.
27)
1. "Land of Egypt" with
"land of Goshen;" but
this is no
mere superfluous repetition, and as such indi-
cative of
the blending of two separate accounts.
Israel
was settled
in the country of Egypt and the province of
Goshen.
510 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
2. zHax<n, had possessions.
See ch. xxxiv., Marks of P.,
No.4.
3. hbrAv; hrAPA were fruitful and multiplied.
See ch.
vi.-ix.,
Marks of P, No. 15.
JACOB
CHARGES JOSEPH AND ADOPTS HIS SONS
(CH. XLVII. 28-XLVIII. 22)
The critics generally agree in giving
xlvii. 28; xlviii.
3-6, to P,
and xlvii. 29-31 to J. There is less
agree-
ment in the
partition of the remainder of ch. xlviii., viz.,
whether
vs.1, 2 belong to J (Schrader), E (Wellhausen),
or 2b to J
and 1, 2a to E (Dillmann); ver. 7 to P (Hupfeld,
Wellhausen,
Dillmann), or a gloss (Schrader, Kayser);
vs. 8-22 to
E (Hupfeld, Schrader, Wellhausen); or vs. 9a,
10b, 11, 12,
15, 16, 20 (in part), 21, 22, to E, and vs. 9b,
10a, 13,
14,17-19, 20b, to J (Dillmann); Kuenen1 regards
vs. 13, 14,
17-19 as a later interpolation, and gives the
rest to E.
Hupfeld claims that there are most evident
signs of
the
diversity of the accounts at the close of Jacob's his-
tory in
respect to his final charges to his sons and his
burial. And Wellhausen adds that there is scarcely a
passage in
Genesis where the strata of the sources are so
palpable as
in the latter part of ch. xlvii. and the first of
ch.
xlviii. In xlvii. 28, he says, there is
a beginning by
P, in ver.
29 another by J, and in xlviii. 1 a third begin-
ning of the
very same history by E. But the fact is that
there is no
diversity of sources here whatever; all is
linked
together as one regularly unfolding and continu-
ous
narrative. The statement of the full age
of a patri-
arch always
immediately precedes the account of his
death; so of
Noah, ix. 29, Abraham, xxv. 7, and Isaac
xxxv.
28. In conformity with this usage the
statement
1
Hexateuch, p. 146.
ADOPTION OF
JOSEPH'S SONS(XLVII.28-XLVIII.22) 511
of Jacob's
age (xlvii. 28) is followed by the mention of
his
approaching death, in view of which he sends for
Joseph and
gives him direction respecting his burial, just
as the
mention of Joseph's age (1. 22, 23) is followed by
a similar
charge to his brethren respecting the disposition
of his body
(vs. 24, 25). Ch. xl .i. 28 is thus
plainly pre-
liminary to
vs. 29-31, which letter is not a variant ac-
count of the
same transaction as xlix. 29-32; this be-
longs to a
subsequent occasion, and to an interview of
Jacob with
all his sons and not with Joseph only.
And
the visit of
Joseph to his father in xlviii. 1 is not identi-
cal with
that described in the preceding verses, but, as is
expressly
declared, occurred later; Joseph came, not as
before, on
his fathers invitation, but of his own motion
on hearing
of his father's increased illness; and the sub-
ject of the
interview is altogether different, concerning
not Jacob's
burial but the adoption and blessing of Jo-
seph's sons.
Moreover, xlvii: 29-31 cannot be
sundered from ch.
xlviii. The opening words of xlviii. 1, "And It
came to
pass after
these things," is an explicit reference to what
immediately
precedes. The critics tell us that this
is a
formula
belonging to E; but there is nothing in E with
which to
connect it. Dillmann finds traces of E
in xlvii.
E 12-27, but
derives this paragraph in its present form
from J, and
besides, he holds that it has been transposed
from its
original position at the end of ch. xli.
Accord-
ingly the
last statement in E is xlvi. 5a, "and Jacob rose
up from
Beersheba" to go to Egypt.
And
in addition to this formal reason there is a ma-
terial one,
which is still more decisive. The effect
of
separating
ch, xlviii. from the verses that immediately
precede is
that while P and E record Jacob's adoption
of Manasseh
and Ephraim, J makes no mention of it,
and so does
not explain how they came to be included
512 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
in the
number of the tribes, as they are over after in J
as well as E
and P. Wellhausen recognizes this, and
admits that
the interview of Jacob with Joseph in xlvii.
29-31 is
incomplete; and that J must likewise have con-
tained a
parallel to ch. xlviii., only R has not seen fit to
preserve
it. Dillmann seeks to escape the same
diffi-
culty by an
elaborate dissection of ch. xlviii., in order to
obtain for J
a share of its contents. These
expedients
for
relieving a difficulty of their own creation simply
show that
these chapters cannot be separated. The
sep-
aration is
no sooner effected than they must be brought
together
again.
The necessity of finding P, J, and E in
ch. xlviii. cre-
ates a fresh
difficulty in regard to the disposal of vs. 1,
2. These verses are essential to the following
narrative;
hence they
are variously assigned by different critics, with
the effect
of leaving the account in some of the docu-
ments
without any proper introduction.
Vs. 3-6 are assigned to P because of the
evident allu-
sion to
xxxv. 10-12, and are regarded as his account of
Jacob's
adoption of the two sons of Joseph. But
the
inverted order,
"Ephraim and Manasseh" (ver 5; see
xli. 50-52;
xlvi. 20) requires for its explanation vs. 17-
19, showing
that these cannot be attributed to different;
documents. Dillmann has no resource but to assume that
R has
altered the text. The adoption and the
subse-
quent
blessing are consequently successive parts of the
transaction,
and cannot b set over against each other as
though each
was a complete and variant account of the
whole
affair.
Ver. 7 is a fresh source of perplexity to
the critics.
They cannot
imagine why Jacob should have spoken just
here of
Rachel's death and burial. Some consider
it a
later gloss;
but it is more unaccountable as an interpola-
tion than as
an original constituent of the text. For
ADOPTION OF
JOSEPH'S SONS(XLVII.28-XLVIII.22) 513
what
conceivable motive could any one have for inserting
what has no
apparent connection with the subject of the
chapter? An additional perplexity arises from the fact
that
"Paddan" (abridged from Paddan-aram) is a P word,
while the body
of the verse is evidently based upon xxxv.
16, 19,
E. This might be avoided by referring
the latter
passage to
P; but then the opportunity of creating an
apparent
discrepancy between it and xxxv. 22b-26 P
would be
lost. If P had just before said that
Benjamin
was born at
Ephrath, he could not have intended to in-
clude him in
the general statement that Jacob's sons,
were born in
Paddan-aram. In spite, however, of its
manifest
dependence upon an E passage, Wellhausen and
Dillmann
follow Noldeke in ascribing ver. 7 to P, as well
as in
assuming that in the document P it was dlrectly-
connected
with xlix. 29 sqq., and was suggested by the
thought that
Rachel alone was buried elsewhere than in
the family
burying-ground which Abraham had pur-
chased. R is credited with having transposed vs. 3-7
to
its present
position, and thus converted what was said
by Jacob in
the presence of all his sons into an address
to
Joseph. Kuenen,1 with
more critical consistency,
alleges that
the acquaintance with both P and E, which
is
presupposed in ver. 7, makes it necessary to attribute
it to R;
still, as he confesses, the question remains "how
R could have
inserted it in so inapposite a place."
From
this he
seeks relief in the attempted solution of Budde,
who never
hesitates at any extravagance of conjecture to
accomplish
his purpose. According to Budde, in P's
nar-
rative,
xlviii. 3-6 was immediately followed by xlix. 29-
33, and the
last clause of ver. 31 read, "and there I bu-
ried Leah
and Rachel." As this flatly
contradicted xxxv.
16 sqq., R
struck out the words "and Rachel," inserting
instead the
statement respecting her death and burial,
1
Hexateuch, p. 327.
514 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
which is now
found in xlviii. 7, and placed this whole
paragraph
thus modified directly after xlviii. 1, 2.
At a
later time
another redactor rearranged the text by trans-
ferring
xlix. 29-32 from the place where his predecessor
had put it
to its present position after the blessing of
Jacob (xlix.
1-28); but "xlviii. 7 was left where it was,
and thus
came to occupy its present very singular posi-
tion." All this wonderful amount of conjectural
erasure,
interpolation,
transposition, and rearrangement1 is sum-
moned to
remove a difficulty which is no difficulty at
all, except
as it is created by the critical partition.
What
was more
natural than that Jacob, in speaking to the son
of his
beloved Rachel, and recalling the divine manifes-
tation
granted to him at Luz (xxxv. 9-15), should be led
to speak of
the sorrow that befell him immediately after
in the death
of Joseph's mother (vs. 16 sqq.)?
By giving vs. 3-7 to P, on account of El
Shaddai and
other
alleged criteria, the critics make of it a discon-
nected
fragment, severed from its appropriate introduc-
tion and
from the rest of the scene in which it has its
proper
place. After this has been separated
from the
remainder of
the chapter, a further difficulty arises from
the
intermingling of heterogeneous criteria; Elohim, a
mark of E,
runs through the chapter (vs. 9,11, 15, 20, 21);
but so does
Israel, a mark of J (vs. 2b, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14,
(20), 21),
these diverse criteria meeting at times in the
same
sentence. Wellhausen makes no attempt to
divide
them, but
gives the whole to E, affirming that it every-
where shows
his peculiarities, and that henceforward R
no longer
preserves the distinction between J and E in
1 Dillmann's comment upon this proposal of Budde is, "How super-
fluous, since the alleged contradiction
was already removed by erasing
‘and Rachel’! and what an injustice to P
to introduce into it by an
emendation a contradiction to universal
tradition, in order then to let it
be harmonized by R! Such criticism would scarcely be admissible
even
in the case of profane writers.
ADOPTION OF
JOSEPH'S SONS(XLVII.28-XLVIII.22) 515
their
respective use of Israel and Jacob. But
as there is
no reason
why he should discontinue it here, if he had
observed it
at all, the admission that it is inadmissible
as a
criterion in this and the following chapters, dis-
credits its
legitimacy in those that have gone before.
Dillmann, with sturdy consistency, makes a
bold at-
tempt to
preserve both these criteria, and to partition the
chapter on
this basis. As the natural result J and
E
receive
separate portions of the narrative, which when
sundered can
be made to appear to give variant rep-
resentations
of the affair. Thus in E nothing is said
of
Jacob's
blindness; he embraces and kisses Joseph's
sons, but
blesses Joseph, placing Ephraim before Ma-
nasseh, and
giving Shechem to Joseph. In J the
prefer-
ence of
Ephraim is the central point of the representa-
tion, and
the blessing is bestowed upon Joseph's sons.
Jacob, who
is blind, crosses his hands in order to place
his right
hand on the head of Ephraim, to which Joseph
objects, but
Jacob insists.
Notwithstanding its ingenuity, however,
this partition
is not
successful. Dillmann admits that in vs.
8, 11, 21
Israel
occurs where he would have expected Jacob. In
ver. 8
"Israel beheld Joseph's
sons," showing that the
blindness of
ver. 10 J was not total, and hence not incon-
sistent with
ver. 11 E; in vs. 11, 21, "Israel said unto
Joseph"
is given to J, but as Elohim occurs in what he
says, this
is given to E. Kautzsch seeks to remedy the
matter by
assuming that R has in these instances sub-
stituted
"Israel" for" Jacob;" but why he should do
so it is
hard to see. In his last edition
Dillmann, while
retaining
his partition, admits that Israel" cannot here be
made a
criterion, since it is carried through the en-
tire
narrative. He attempts to explain it by
saying
that in this
instance "R made J the basis and only
worked in
E." A much simpler account of the
matter is
516 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
that Jacob
is used (vs. 24: 3) as the personal name; but
as the
prominent thought throughout the chapter is the
elevation of
Ephraim and Manasseh to be the heads of
separate
tribes in the national organization, the name
Israel was
especially appropriate.
And the attempt to create a distinction
between vs.
15, 16, 20,
E, and ver. 19 J, as though the blessing was
given to
Joseph in the former, but to his sons in the lat-
ter, is
altogether futile; for Joseph is blessed by invok-
ing a
blessing upon "the lads;" and the allegation that
R has
substituted "blessed them" for "blessed him" in
ver. 20 is
at variance with the contents of the verse.
In
fact, by
this partition the whole of the blessing proper is
given to E,
and only the preliminary arrangements, put-
ting the
boys in position and placing the hands on their
heads with
Joseph's disapproval and Jacob's insistence,
are reserved
for J; but these manifestly belong together,
and cannot
form two separate narratives of the trans-
action.
A duplicate narrative is inferred from the
circumstance
that Joseph
is twice said to have brought his sons to his
father (vs.
10b, 13b). But this is not a twofold
mention
of the same
act. They were first led to Jacob, who
affec-
tionately
embraced them; they were then placed in the
proper
position before him to receive his formal bless-
ing.
It is further claimed that vs.15, 16
interrupt the account
of Jacob's
crossing his hands, and that vs. 17-19 interrupt
the
continuity of the blessing; hence it is inferred that
something
has in each case been intruded from another
narrative. This simply means that the critic differs
from
the writer m
regard to the proper arrangement of the
material
which he has introduced into his narrative.
He saw fit
to continue Jacob's action as far as vs. 15, 16
before
proceeding to say in vs. 17-19 how Joseph inter-
ADOPTION OF
JOSEPH'S SONS(XLVII.28-XLVIII.22) 517
rupted
it. On the critics' hypothesis R thought
this to
be the best
disposition of the matter; why may not the
original
writer have been of this opinion?
There is no implication in ver. 11 that
this was the
first time
that Jacob had seen Joseph's sons, any more
than that it
was the first time that he had seen Joseph
himself
since his arrival in Egypt. There is no
ground,
therefore,
for assuming a discrepancy with xlvii. 28, and
hence a
diversity of writers.
Nor does ver. 22 conflict with statements
elsewhere.
The portion
or ridge (Heb., shechem), which Jacob gives
to Joseph,
and “which," he says, "I took out of the
hand of the
Amorite with my sword and with my bow,"
refers to
the capture and sack of Shechem by the sons of
Jacob
(xxxiv. 27-29), which. Jacob deprecated (ver. 30),
and strongly
condemned (xlix. 5-7), but which, neverthe-
less, was
the act of his house, or of the clan of which he
was the
responsible head; and the property acquired in
a manner
which he so sharply censures he bestows not
upon those
who participated in the deed, but upon
Joseph, as a
mark of special favor, and an earnest of his
future
inheritance in the land of promise.
Dillmann ad-
mits the
reference to, and correspondence with, the pas-
sage named
above, but claims that a diverse representa-
tion of the
transaction is given in other parts of ch.
xxxiv.,
which was shown to be unfounded when that
chapter was
under discussion. There is no need,
there-
fore, of
supposing that "took" is a prophetic preterite
(Tuch), or
that Shechem is not referred to, but some
other
district whose capture is not recorded (Kurtz), or
that the
allusion is to the land purchased at Shechem
by Jacob
(xxxiii. 19; Josh. xxiv. 32), which he may sub-
sequently
have had to defend by force of arms, or of al-
tering the
text, with Kuenen, into "not with my sword and
with my
bow," or imagining that "sword" and "bow"
518 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
are
figuratively used to d~note purchase-money as the
efficient
instrument of gaining possession.
The following divine names occur in this
section: El
Shaddai
(ver. 3), with allusion to xxxv. 11, and to the
almighty
power which pledged the fulfilment of the
promise;
Elohim (vs. 9, 11, 20), with reference to gen-
eral
providential blessings; ha-Elohim (ver. 15), "the
God before
whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did
walk, the
God, who fed me all my life long," is but a
paraphrase
of Jehovah; Elohim (ver. 21) is demanded
by the
contrast of the human with the divine; Jacob
dies, but
God the creator and governor of all will be
with his
descendants.
MARKS OF P
1.
Statement of age (xlvii. 28). See
ch. vi.-ix., Marks
of P, No.2,
ch. xvi., No.1.
2. The
days of the years pf the life of (ver 28).
See
ch. xxiii.,
Marks of P, No.5.
3.
The back reference to xxxv. 6, 9, 11; the common
authorship
of these passages is not at variance with, but
involved in,
the unity of Genesis, which we maintain.
4. yDaw
lxe God Almighty (:xlviii. 3). See ch. xxvi. 34-
xxviii. 9,
Marks of P, No.5.
5. MlAof
tz.aHuxE everlasting
possession (ver.
4). See ch.
xvii., Marks
of.P, No.7 and 17.
6.
j~yr,HExa h~fEr;za thy seed after thee (ver. 4). See ch.
vi.- ix.,
Marks of P. No, 17.
7.
dyliOh beget (ver. 6).
See ch. vi.-ix., Marks of P,
No. 20, ch.
xvii., No. 10.
8.
Paddan (ver. 7). See ch.
xxv. ~9-34, Marks of P,
No.4.
MARKS OF E
1. The
unusual form of the infinitive hxor;
(:xlviii. 11),
as OWfE (xxxi. 28), hWfE
(l. 20), with suf. UhWfE (Ex. xviii.
JACOB'S
BLESSING AND DEATH (CH. XLIX.) 519
18) E; there
are but two examples besides in the Old
Testament, hnoq;
(Prov. xvi. 16), an Otw; (Prov. xxxi. 4).
2.
j`xAl;m.aha the angel
(ver. 16). See ch. xvi., Marks of
J, No.1.
3.
ymiw; Mh,bA xreq.Ayi my name shall be called on them (ver.
16); this is
compared to xxi. 12 E, "in Isaac shall thy
seed be
called."
4. ll.ePi
thought (ver. 11); nowhere else in this sense.
5. hgADA
grow, as fishes increase (ver. 16), occurs no-
where else.
.
Such rare forms and expressions are no
indication of a
writer's
habitual style.
MARKS OF J
1. ryficA
younger (ver. 14). See xix. 29-38, Marks of J,
No.2.
2. Nxeme
refused (ver. 19); besides in J
(xxxvii. 35;
xxxix. 8;
Ex. iv. 23; vii. 14; x. 3; xvi. 28); in E (Ex.
xxii. 16 (E.
V., ver. 17); Num. xx. 21; xxii. 13,14); in D
(Deut. xxv.
7).
The majority of critics refer the verses
containing ,
these words
to E.
JACOB'S BLESSING AND DEATH (CH. XLIX.)
Dillmann and Schrader follow Knobel in
assigning to
P vs. la,
28b-33. But that Jacob's address to his
sons
(vs. 1b-28a)
cannot belong to P, notwithstanding" Shad-
dai,"
Almighty (ver. 25), is argued from Jehovah (ver.
18), from
the depreciation of Levi (ver. 7), from the
usage of
this document, which nowhere else contains a
poetical
passage, and from the lack of correspondence
between this
address and ver. 28b, "he blessed them,
everyone
according to his blessing he blessed them;"
520 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
this, it is
alleged, is quite inapplicable to what is said to
Reuben,
Simeon, and Lev (vs. 3-7), which is the reverse
of a
blessing. Nor can it belong to E, since
vs. 5-7 are
inconsistent
with xlviii. 22, and ver. 4 with the prefer-
ence shown
to Reuben in xxxvii. 21, 22, 29, 30; xlii. 22,
37; and in
xlviii. 8 sqq. Jacob blesses Joseph, but
not
his other
sons. It is accordingly referred to J
not as
composed by
him, and consequently not on grounds of
diction and
style, but as a pre-existing writing incorpo-
rated in his
work, which is thought to be corroborated by
previous
allusions to what is here said or Reuben (ver. 4,
cf. xxxv.
22), and or Simeon and Levi (vs. 5-7, cf. xxxiv.
25, 26, 30),
as well as by the prominence given to Judah
(vs. 8-12).
Arguments which are merely inferences
from the un-
proved
partition hypothesis amount to nothing, and
may be
dismissed without further remark. The
fact is
that there
is no warrant for attaching this address or the
dying Jacob
to any one of the so-called documents in
distinction
from the others. It has been inserted in
its
place by the
author or Genesis as a whole, and contains
nothing
inconsistent with any part of the book.
That
the reproofs
administered to Reuben, Simeon, and Levi
are
intimately related to the passages which record the
facts here
referred to is obvious and is freely admitted;
and there is
not a single passage which they antagonize.
The general
tenor of this final address or Jacob to his
sons is that
of blessing, and amply justifies the language
used
respecting it in ver. 28b. It should
also be ob-
served that
while Reuben is degraded from the dignity
of the
firstborn in consequence of his shameful conduct,
and Simeon
and Levi are severely censured for their
deed of
cruelty and violence, and a penalty affixed, they
are not
utterly disowned or prohibited from sharing in
the
blessings and privileges of the covenant people. It
JACOB'S BLESSING AND DEATH (CH. XLIX.) 521
has before
been shown that there is no variance between
vs. 5-7 and
xlviii. 22 (see p. 517); and that the passages
in which
Reuben is prominent do not clash with those
which give
the preference to Judah (see pp. 448, 475-
477); there
is no inconsistency in the representations
anywhere
made respecting them. The weakness and
inefficiency
of Reuben appear in perpetual contrast
with Judah's
manly vigor and strength of character;
and the
confidence which Jacob reposes in the latter,
together
with his distrust of the former, corresponds
with his
attitude toward them in this address.
NO VATICINIUM POST EVENTUM.
The critics try to fix the age of this
blessing of Jacob
on the
assumption that it is a vaticinium post eventum.
Tuch refers
it to the time of Samuel when the tribe of
Levi was in
ill-repute from the gross misconduct of the
sons of Eli
and the capture of the ark; Ewald refers it
to the time
of Samson, the famous judge from the tribe
of Dan;
Knobel to the reign of David; Reuss to the time
of David and
Solomon; Wellhausen to the period of the
schism and
the rival kingdoms of Judah and Joseph;
Stade to the
time of Ahab; Dillmann seeks to make it all
square with
the time of the Judges. But the fact is
that
it is
impracticable to find any one period when this
blessing
could have been composed with the view of
setting forth
the existing state of things. The
sceptre in
Judah found
no adequate fulfilment until the reign of
David; and
from that time forth the consideration en-
joyed by the
tribe of Levi was such that it could not
possibly
have been spoken of in the terms here em-
ployed. So that Kuenen, in despair of finding any one
date for the
entire blessing, supposes it to be made up of
brief
sayings which circulated separately in the tribes to
522 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
which they
severally related. But even this will
not solve
the
problem. For the censures passed upon
the first
three cannot
be separated from the blessing of Judah,
for which
they evidently prepare the way, as he succeeds
to the right
of primogeniture vacated by his predecessors.
The prominence
given to Judah and Joseph above their
brethren is
clearly intentional, not accidental; and sev-
eral of the
blessings would be insignificant or unmean-
ing, if
taken by themselves and disconnected from the
rest.
The structure and contents of this
blessing make it im-
possible to
explain it as a vaticinium post eventum.
What
is said
respecting Levi compels to the conclusion that it
is
pre-Mosaic. A dispersion resulting from
their priestly
rank could
not after the time of Moses be spoken of as a
sentence for
the misdeed of their ancestor. The
sentence
was
fulfilled in that the Levites had no inheritance in
Canaan, but
special habitations were assigned to them in
the
territory of the other tribes, not, however, as a degra-
dation but a
distinction. Their were the ministers of
the
sanctuary,
and the Lord was their inheritance. The
curse was
turned into a blessing. The language in
which Moses
speaks of Levi in his farewell utterance
(Deut.
xxxiii. 8-11) is as different as possible from that
before
us. The whole blessing of Jacob is only
compre-
hensible as
utterances of the dying patriarch, modified
by personal
reminiscences, by insight into the characters
of his sons,
and by their very names, with its ejaculation
of pious
faith, which looked forward to the fulfilment of
the promises
so long delayed (ver. 18); and as a forecast-
ing of the
future which met its accomplishment at sepa-
rate epochs
and in unexpected ways, and which, while
clear and
sharp in a few strongly drawn outlines, is vague
in others,
and has no such exactness in minute details as
suggests
actual historical experience. The only
instance,
JACOB'S BLESSING AND DEATH (CH. XLIX.) 523
in which the
specific location of a tribe in the land of
promise is
hinted at, is in apparent disagreement with
the
subsequent allotment under Joshua.
"Zebulun shall
dwell at the
haven of the sea; and he shall be for an
haven of
ships; and his border shall be unto Zidon"
(ver.
13). And yet Zebulun was separated from
the Sea
of Galilee
by Naphtali, and Asher lay between Zebulun
and the
Mediterranean. Fortunately the critics
are here
precluded by
their own hypothesis from discrediting the
truth of the
prophecy. Dillmann explains that
"the
boundary
between Asher and Zebulun is not strictly de-
fined (Josh.
xix. 14, 15), and therefore the possibility that
Zebulun
bordered on the Mediterranean with a strip of
land is not
excluded;" and he appeals in confirmation to
Josephus
("Antiquities," 5, 8, 22, "Jewish Wars," 3,3, 1).
It is
observable, however, that the Song of Deborah (Judg.
v. 17),
after the settlement in Canaan, in adopting expres-
sions from
the verse which we are considering, applies
them to
other tribes, whose territory lay more entirely
upon the
coast and thus speaks of Dan as abiding in
ships and Asher
as continuing on the seashore. This
suggests
what might have been expected in Gen. xlix.,
if it had
been composed after Israel's occupation of
Canaan.
The same thing appears from the language
of ver. 1,
which
announces as the theme of the prophecy what
shall take
place "in the last days." As
this expression
is found
repeatedly in the prophets, it has been urged as
an
indication that this blessing was composed or ver. 1
prefixed to
it in the prophetic period. But
"the last
days "
always denotes the ultimate future.
Jacob could
look forward
to the time when the promises made to
himself and
his fathers would be fulfilled as the ultimate
bound of his
hopes and expectations. But no one
living
at any time
that the critics may fix upon as the date of
524 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
this chapter
could have imagined that the ultimate future
was already
reached, or could describe the state of things
then
existing as what was to befall Israel in "the last
days."
All this points to the genuineness of this
blessing as
really the
utterance of Jacob, which it claims to be and
is declared
to be. Its antiquity is further
evidenced, as
is remarked
by Dillmann, by the peculiar figures em-
ployed in
vs. 4, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17, 19, 21-26, and its
many rare
expressions that I were disused in later times,
zHaPa bubbling
over, yrtiOh excel (ver. 4), hrAkem;
sword (ver 5),
qqeHom; ruler's
staff (ver.
10), tUs clothes (ver.
11), yliylik;Ha
red (ver. 12), MyitaP;wimi sheepfolds (ver. 14), NOpypiw; adder (ver.17),
HaUlwA slender (ver. 21), and much besides in
vs.
22-26. To which add the citations from it or
allusions
to it in the
Mosaic period; comp. ver. 9 and Num. xxiv.
9, xxiii.
24; vs. 13, 14, Zebulun before Issachar and sub-
sisting by
the sea, cf. Deut. xxxiii. 18, 19; vs. 25, 26, cf.
Deut.
xxxiii. 13-16.
The words, "And Jacob called unto his
sons" (ver. la),
are sundered
from their connection, and linked with vs.
28b-33 P,
because the name "Jacob "is regarded as a
mark of
P. But as this deprives the blessing of
its in-
troduction,
which is here indispensable, it is neces-
sary to
assume that it was originally prefaced by a like
statement
from the pen of J; though no reason can be
given why R
should have removed it in order to substi-
tute words
identical in signification, but belonging to a
different
place. Wellhausen avoids this senseless
trans-
position by
disregarding here, as in the preceding chap-
ter, the
alleged criterion from the name of the patri-
arch.
Jacob's charge to his sons to bury him
with his fathers
in the cave
of Machpelah (vs. 29, sqq.), is held to be a
variant
account by P of the transaction recorded by J in
JACOB'S
BLESSING AND DEATH (CH. XLIX.)
525
xlvii.
29-31, P representing that to be enjoined upon all
his sons,
which according to J was addressed to Joseph
alone. Identifying distinct events, as we have seen
from
the begining
of Genesis to the end, is a favorite artifice
of the
critics, of which they make abundant use in ef-
fecting the
partition of the text. It was natural
and ap-
propriate
that Jacob should in the first instance make
his appeal
in this matter to Joseph, who was invested
with supreme
authority, and without whose permission
it could not
be done; and when his concurrence had
been
secured, that he should further make his wish
known to all
his sons, by whom was to be carried into
effect. The emphatic iteration in vs. 29-32, as in
the
original
account of the transaction referred to (ch. xxiii.),
and the
repetition of the identical terms of the original
purchase,
shows the stress laid by the writer on this initial
acquisition
of a permanent possession in the land of Ca-
naan.
The middle clause of ver. 33, "he
gathered up his feet
into his
bed," contains a plain allusion to the previous
mention of
his bed in xlvii. 31; xlviii. 2. In
conse-
quence,
Dillmann is constrained to cut out this clause
and assign
it to J, though there is nothing in J with
which to
connect it. Budde proposes to find a
connec-
tion for it
by attributing the first clause of the verse like-
wise to J;
but in doing so it is necessary for him to
change
"commanding" into "blessing," so as to link it
with vs. 1-
27, instead of the immediately preceding
verses. All this only shows the embarrassment which
the critics
create for themselves by partitioning among
different
documents what is one indivisible narrative.
The divine names, El, God, and
Shaddai, Almighty, both
suggestive
of omnipotence, occur in ver. 25, and Jeho-
vah in ver.
18, where Jacob gives expression to his own
pious trust.
526 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
MARKS OF P (VS.
29-33)
1.
The back reference to ch. xxiii.
This is readily ad-
mitted, but
no argument can be derived from it in favor
of critical
partition.
2. fvaGA
expired (ver. 33). See ch. vi.-ix., Marks of P,
No. 18.
3. hz.AHuxE
possession (ver. 30). See ch. xvii., Marks of
P, No. 7.
4. vym.Afa-lx, Jsax<n, was gathered unto his people (ver. 33).
See ch. xxv.
1-11, Marks of P, No.5.
5. NfanaK; Cr,x, land of Canaan (ver. 30). See ch. xii. 5,
Marks of P,
No.4.
6.
The connection with 1. 12, 13.
The connection is
obvious, but
yields no proof of critical partition.
THE BURIAL
OF JACOB AND DEATH OF JOSEPH (CH. L.)
The critics are unanimous in referring vs.
12, 13 to P;
Kayser and
Schrader agree with Knobel in assigning the
remainder of
the chapter to J on the basis of an earlier
source;
Wellhausen, followed by Dillmann, attributes
vs. 4-11, 14
to J; vs. 15-26 to E; Wellhausen does not
venture to
determine the source of vs. 1-3, together with
the first
words of ver. 4; Dillmann thinks that they are
probably to
be attributed to J, who may have written on
the basis of
a previous account by E. The reason of
the
hesitation
about these opening verses is that the refer-
ence to
embalming is indicative of the same author as
in ver. 26
E, while "Israel" (ver. 2) and "fell upon his
father's
face" are esteemed marks of J.
Moreover, J
here
describes the preparations for the burial of J
without
having mentioned the fact of his death; this is
found only
in P (xlix. 33).
We are told that there are two distinct
and varying
accounts of
Jacob's interment. That, in vs. 4-11,
14, is
THE BURIAL OF JACOB (CH. L.) 527
assigned to
J, because of the explicit reference in ver. 5
to Joseph’s
solemn promise to bury his father in Ca-
naan (xlvii.
29-31); accordingly in this account Joseph
conducts the
funeral with great pomp and an immense
retinue. The other account by P (vs. 12, 13) is con-
formed to
the charge given by Jacob to all his sons
(xlix.
29-32); in it no prominence is given to Joseph,
who is not
even separately mentioned; Jacob is carried
to Canaan by
his sons, and there buried in the spot
which he had
indicated to them. But it has already
been shown
that the direction respecting his burial given
by Jacob to
Joseph, and that to all his sons, are not va-
riant
reports of the same transaction in different docu-
ments. Hence the reference to them both in this
chap-
ter affords
no argument for a diversity of sources here.
And besides,
the proposed partition is impracticable; it
simply
creates two fragments, neither of which is com-
plete
without the other. In J Joseph goes with
a great
company to
bury his father; he comes back after bury-
ing his
father; but of the actual burial nothing is said.
The only
account of that is in the verses which are cut
out and
assigned to P. Again, in P the sons of
Jacob
carry him to
Canaan and bury him, but nothing is said
of their
return to Egypt; that is only to be found in
ver. 14,
which is given to J.
It is claimed, however, that there is a
discrepancy as
to the place
of interment; but the critics are not agreed
as to what
or where this discrepancy is. Kayser, to
whom
Wellhausen gives his adherence, finds it in ver. 5,
which he
translates, "in my grave which I have bought
for me in
the land of Canaan, there shalt thou bury me."
From this he
infers that the place intended can be no
other than
the piece of ground at Shechem purchased
from the
sons of Hamor, as related by J (xxxiii. 18-20),
(other
critics refer these verses to E). And
he, goes on
528 THE GENERATIONS OF JACOB
to say that
this half-concealed contradiction in respect to
the grave of
Jacob at Shechem, or at Hebron, is the
token of a
profound difference between J and P. J,
a
native of
the northern kingdom of Israel,1 is interested
for Shechem
in Ephraim; P, who belonged to the
southern
kingdom, is strongly attached to Hebron in
Judah. As this interpretation of Kayser is
inconsistent
with xlvii.
29, 30, to which ver. 5 expressly refers, he
is obliged
to assume that these verses have been altered
by R into
conformity with xlix. 29, 30; though why he
should have
altered them and allowed ver. 5 to remain
without
change does not appear. Noldeke and
others
find the
discrepancy in ver. 10; the burial, he says,
must have
taken place where the lamentation was made.
Kautzsch
finds a doublet in ver. 10b, and insists that
three
distinct places of interment are spoken of, repre-
senting as
many variant narratives, the threshing-floor
of Atad,
Abel-mizraim, and the cave of Machpelah.
But
the
difficulty with these attempts to discover a discrep-
ancy is that
the cave of Machpelah is the only place
at which the
burial is said to have been; and with this
xlvii. 30
agrees.
A difficulty has been found in the words
"beyond
Jordan"
(ver. 11), as though they implied a very circui-
tous route
for the funeral procession, and "were contra-
dicted by
"Canaanites" in the same verse, who dwelt
west of the
Jordan. Jerome, however, identifies
Abel-
mizraim with
Beth-hoglah, in the border of Judah, and
Benjamin
(Josh., xv. 6; xviii. 19). May not
"beyond
Jordan"
mean beyond Jordan, westward, as in Deut. xi. 30,
and be an
incidental confirmation of Mosaic authorship?
Verses 15-26 are assigned to E on account
of the re-
peated
occurrence of Elohim, notwithstanding the two-
fold
statement of age (vs. 22, 26), such as is regularly else-
1
Other critics make him a citizen of Judah.
THE BURIAL OF JACOB (CH. L.) 529
where given
to P,1 and two phrases which are regarded
as characteristic
of J, "spake to their heart" (ver. 21 as
xxxiv. 3),
and "the land which he sware to Abraham, to
Isaac, and
to Jacob" (ver. 24); in the passages assigned
to E no
promise is given of the land of Canaan to any
one of the
patriarchs. The proof of unity arising
from
these
frequent cross-references from one document to
the other
can only be evaded by using the critical knife
and invoking
the agency of R.
P records the death and the interment; J
the embalm-
ing, the
funeral procession, and the return from the grave;
E the
subsequent apprehensions of Joseph's brothers
and his
generous treatment of them. And yet
these ex-
tracts from
separate works, as they are said to be, match
as perfectly
as though they had come from the same pen,
and the
continuity of the narrative is as accurately pre-
served.
Dillmann imagines that ver. 21 implies the
continuance
of the
famine, and hence infers a discrepancy between
E and P
(xlvii. 28) with respect to the time of Jacob's
death. This is built on the groundless assumption
that
Joseph could
not continue to support his brethren after
the years of
dearth were ended.
The divine names are "the God of thy
father" (ver.
17), which
is a paraphrase of Jehovah, and Elohim (vs.
19, 20, 24,
25), which is appropriate where the divine is
contrasted
with the human.
MARKS OF J
1.
Mk,yneyfeB; NHe ytixcAmA xnA Mxi if now I have found
favor
in your eyes (ver. 4).
See ch. xii. 10-20, Marks of J, No.
3; ch. vi.
1-8, No. 10; ch. xviii, xix., No. 28. 1- 2.
2. ynez;xAB;
rB,Di speak in the ears of (ver. 4); besides in J,
xliv. 18;
Deut. xxxii. 44; in J or R, Num. xiv. 28; in E,
1 Kayser and Schrader cut out ver.
22 and give it to P.
530 THE GENERATIONS OF
JACOB
Gen. xx. 8;
Ex. xi. 2; in P, Gen. xxiii. 13, 16; in D, Deut.
v. 1; Josh.
xx. 4; in Rd, Deut. xxxi. 28, 30.
3. qra
only
(ver. 8). See ch. vi. 1-8, Marks of J,
No.7.
4. bk,r,
chariots, MywirAPA horsemen (ver. 9).
See ch. xlvii.
12-27, Marks
of J, No.4.
5.
dbeKA great, grievous (vs. 9-11). See ch. xlii.-xliv.
Marks of J,
No. 14.
6.
xrAqA NKe-lfa therefore was called (ver. 11); besides in
J, xi. 9;
xvi. 14; xix. 22; xxv. 30; xxix. 34; xxxi. 48
(doublet in
E connection); xxxiii. 17; Josh. vii. 26 (JE);
but also in
E, Gen. xxi. 31; Ex. xv. 23. This phrase
is
contrasted
with and he called the name, Gen. xxxii. 3, 31
(E. V., vs.
2, 30), as though the latter was indicative of a
different
document; yet it occurs repeatedly in J, e.g.,
Gen. iii.
20; iv. 17, 26; xix. 37, 38; xxvi. 20, 21, 22, 33;
xxxviii. 3,
29, 30, Num. xi. 3.
MARKS OF E
1.
The connection of vs. 24-26 with Ex. xiii. 19; Josh.
xxiv. 32,
which is entirely consistent with the unity of
the
Pentateuch.
2. lKel;Ki
nourish
(ver. 21); only twice besides in the
Pentateuch
(xlv. 11; xlvii. 12 E). It occurs
exclusively
with
reference to Joseph's promise to nourish his father
and brethren
in Egypt. Ch. xlvii. 12 is in a context
which is
assigned to other documents; but this solitary
verse is cut
out of its connection and given to E because
of this word
and its manifest relation to xlv. 11.
See ch.
xlvii.
12-27, Marks of E, No.2.
3. hWfE
unusual form of the construct infinitive. See
ch. xlvii.
28-xlviii. 22, Marks or E, No.1.
4. ynixA Myhilox< tHatAhE am I
in the place of God
(ver. 19);
but once
besides in the Pentateuch (xxx. 2 E).
5. yKerBi-lfa upon the knees of (ver. 23); besides in the
Pentateuch
only (xxx. 3 E).
CONCLUSION
WE have now completed the critical study
of the
Book of
Genesis, and it only remains to sum up the
result of
our investigations. The question before
us
is whether
Genesis is, as tradition unanimously affirms,
a continuous
production by a single writer, or, as the
divisive
critics declare, a compilation from different doc-
uments by
different authors and belonging to different
ages.
It is to be noted at the outset that there
is no proof
whatever,
outside of the book itself, that such documents
ever
existed. And there is no suggestion
anywhere that
the
existence of such documents was ever suspected un-
til recent
times. The whole case, then, lies before
us.
Genesis is
its own witness. What testimony does it
give?
GROUNDS OF
PARTITION
Kittel presents the argument for partition
in" the fol-
lowing brief
but comprehensive manner:1
"The entire
Hexateuchal
narrative falls apart in a series of strata,
whose
individual constituents are closely connected in
language,
style, and characteristic forms of speech, while
they stand
in the most decided contrast with other nar-
ratives,
which are possibly homogeneous with them or
related to
them in their contents.
1 Geschichte der Hebraer, pp. 30, 31.
This passage is abridged by
the omission of illustrative examples,
since a much more exhaustive
statement of them will be given from
another source.
532 CONCLUSION
"In connection with this phenomenon
the further fact
appears that
many diversities and contradictions are like-
wise
observable in the narrative material. Of
a great
number of
the Hexateuchal narratives we have two or
more
accounts. Some of these repetitions, the
number
of which
could easily be swelled ad infinitum,
might pos-
sibly be explained
as intentional on the part of the ~ij
writer. At least such an explanation might answer,
did
not the
above-mentioned diversity of language almost
always go
hand in hand with the repetition of the matter.
It is thus
already made quite improbable that the repe-
tition is an
addition by the writer himself, or is a
resumption
of the thread of the narrative previously
dropped by
him. But it becomes positively
impossible
by
perceiving, what is almost always connected with it,
that the two
or more accounts of the same thing also
diverge in
their substantive matter in a number of feat-
ures that
are sometimes quite important, sometimes
rather
subordinate."
REPETITIONS AND DISOREPANCIES
Numberless repetitions with more or less
serious dis-
crepancies
and a varied diction would seem indeed to be
inconsistent
with unity of authorship. And when these
alleged
repetitions and discrepancies are massed together
in a
formidable list, as they are by Dillmann,l it natu-
rally makes
the impression that such an accumulation of
arguments
must be strong indeed; and however weak
and
inconclusive particular examples may be when viewed
singly, the
combined force of the whole must be irresisti-
ble. But arguments must be weighed and not merely
counted. It only requires a patient examination of
these
cases in
detail to show how illusive they are.
The entire
1
Die Genesis, Vorbemerkungen, pp. ix., x.
REPETITIONS AND DISCREPANCIES 533
vast array
melts into nothingness as soon as their reality
is tested.
In Dillmann's classification he adduces
wha the calls
1. "Idle repetitions." These are
either not repeti-
tions at
all, as Gen.xxi.la and 1b, where the first clause
states the
fact and the second the purpose of Jehovah's
visit to
Sarah; xlvii. 29 sqq. and xlix. 29 sqq., first Ja-
cob's
request of Joseph that he might be buried in Ca-
naan, then
his charge to all his sons to bury him there;
or the
repetition is for a sufficient reason (iv. 25, 26, and
v.
1-6),where the birth of Seth and Enosh are included.
In the
genealogy from Adam to Noah, and are likewise
mentioned
separately in order to introduce some facts
concerning
them which could not be inserted in the
genealogy
without marring its symmetry and the regu-
larity of
its structure.
2.
"Two or more accounts of the same thing, which-
might
possibly be explained by the writer's assuming
that they
were different events or wishing to note the
variation in
the traditions." These are in every
instance
distinct events,
which critics assume without reason to
be
identical, in spite of the fact that they are recorded as
distinct,
and are further shown to be distinct by differ-
ences of
time, place, and circumstances, which critics
arbitrarily
convert into the discrepancies of variant tra-
ditions. It is not different versions of the same
story
when a like
peril befalls Sarah in Egypt (xii. 10 sqq.),
and in Gerar
(xx. 1 sqq.), and at a still later time Rebekah
(xxvi. 7
sqq.); or when Hagar flees from her mistress
before the
birth of Ishmael (xvi: 6 sqq.), and she is sub-
sequently
sent away with Ishmael (xxi. 12 sqq.); or when
God ratifies
his covenant with Abraham by a visible
symbol (ch.
xv.), and it is afterward ratified by Abraham
by the seal
of circumcision (ch. xvii.) ; or when the promise
of a son by
Sarah is first made to Abraham (xvii. 15-17),
534 CONCLUSION
and then in
the hearing of Sa-rah (xviii. 9-12); or when
Jacob
obtains the blessing which his father intended for
Esau (ch.
xxvii.), and again receives a parting blessing
from his
father as he was leaving home for Paddan-aram
(xxviii.
1-5).
3.
"Variant explanations of the same name." These
are simply
allusive references to the signification of the
name made on
different occasions, which of course in-
volve no
discrepancy; or in some cases they are differ-
ent
suggestions awakened by the sound of the name,
where there
is no pretence of giving its actual derivation,
and, of
course, no ground for the charge that different
conceptions
of its etymology are involved. Thus,
with
allusion to
the name Isaac, which means laughter,
it is
related that
when his birth was predicted Abraham (xvii.
17) and
Sarah also laughed incredulously (xviii. 12), and
when he was
born Sarah said that God had made her to
laugh for
joy, and all that hear would laugh with her
(xxi.
6). So Edom, red, is associated with the
red color
of Esau at
his birth (xxv. 25), and the red pottage for
which he
sold his birthright (ver.30). So the
twofold
hire linked
with the name Issachar (xxx. 16, 18), and the
double
suggestion of Zebulun (ver. 20) and of Joseph (vs.
23, 24);
Mahanaim connected with the host of angels
xxxii. 3 (E.
V., ver. 2), and with Jacob's two bands, ver.
8 (E. V.,
7); Ishmael with God's hearing Hagar in her
affliction
(xvi. 11), and hearing the voice of the lad in his
distress
(xxi. 17); and Ferner, where Jacob saw the face
of God
(xxxii. 31 (E. V., ver. 30) and the face of Esau
(xxxiii. 10)
as one seeth the face of God.
4. "Repetitions which are mutually
exclusive, since
the thing
can only have happened once or in one way."
Thus the
creation (ch. i. and ii.); but, as has been abun-
dantly shown
(pp, 9 sqq., 20 sqq.), there is here no dupli-
cate account
and no discrepancy, The number of the
REPETITIONS AND DISCREPANCIES 535
animals in
the ark and the duration of the flood (ch. vi;
vii.); but
there is no inconsistency between the general
statement
that two of every species should be taken and
the more
particular direction to take seven of the clean
animals; and
the alleged diversity in reckoning the dura-
tion of the
flood is a pure figment of the critics with no
foundation
in the narrative itself. See p. 92. The disper-
sion of the
nations is not differently explained, as though;
that was
traced in ch. x. to the multiplication of Noah's
descendants,
which in xi. 1-9 (to which x. 25 alludes) is
ascribed to
immediate divine intervention, since neither
of these
excludes the other. There is no
discrepancy in
regard to
the origin of the name Beersheba, which was
first given
by Abraham (xxi. 31), and afterward renewed
by Isaac
(xxvi. 33), who is expressly said to have digged
again the
wells of his father, and called them by the
names which
his father had called them (ver. 18).
There
was a like
renewal of the name Israel divinely given to
Jacob
(XXXII. 29 E. V., ver. 28 and xxxv. 10), and of
Bethel
(xxviii. 19; xxxv. 15), which Jacob reconsecrated
by a solemn
rite upon his second visit, (xxxv. 1, 14), as he
had engaged
to do in memory of God’s fulfilment of the
promise
there graciously made (xxviii. 18-22).
The ref-
erence to
the conflict with the Shechemites (xlviii. 22)
differs from
the account in ch. xxxiv. simply in this, that
Jacob as the
head of the clan assumes the responsibility
of the deed
of his sons. The alleged discrepancy in
re-
gard to the
treatment of Joseph by his brothers and the
traders who
brought him to Egypt (xxxvii. 19-36) is a
sheer
invention of the critics, who have themselves created
it by an
unwarranted partition of the passage.
5.
"Other incompatible statements." The allegation
that the
reduction of human life to one hundred and
twenty years
(vi. 3) is inconsistent with chs. v.,1 xi., etc.,
1 The reference to ch. v. is a slip on the part of Dillmann, as the
lives
536 CONCLUSION
rests upon a
misinterpretation of the former passage,
which states
the limit allowed to the existing generation
before it
should be swept away by the flood, not that of
human life
in general. See pp. 59, 60. Abraham's many
sons after
Sarah's death (xxv. 1, 2) are said to be in con-
flict with
xviii. 11, 12; xvii. 17, but his previous child-
lessness is
uniformly attributed to the barrenness of
Sarah (xi.
30; xvi. 1, 2); and Dillmann himself admits
("Genesis,"
p. 303) that if Abraham lived to be one hun-
dred and
seventy-five years old (xxv. 7), it would not be
surprising
if he had children after he was one hundred and
thirty-seven
(xxiii. 1; cf. xvii. 17). Esau settled
in Seir
when Jacob
returned from Paddan-aram (xxxii. 4 sqq.,
E. V., vs. 3
sqq.) is represented to be at variance with
xxxvi.
6. But Esau's presence in Seir at that
time does
not imply
that he had already removed his family and
his
possessions from Canaan, and had abandoned his
claim upon
it in favor of Jacob. That he had no
such
intention
then is plain from the manner in which he
came to meet
Jacob (xxxiii. 1), implying a hostile pur-
pose, and at
the very least a determination to prevent,
or forcibly
intercept, his return to Canaan. Jacob so un-
derstood it
(xxxii. 12, E. Y., ver. 11); and the whole
narrative
shows that Esau's change of mind was due
to Jacob's
earnest wrestling for the divine blessing in
his alarming
situation (xxxii. 28). That Rebekah's
nurse
first came
with Jacob from Mesopotamia cannot be in-
ferred from
xxxv. 8, which therefore does not contra-
dict xxiv.
59. The general statement that Jacob's
sons
were born in
Paddan-aram (xxxv. 26) is true of all but
Benjamin,
whose birth near Ephrath had just been re-
corded (vs.
16-18); to insist upon this as a discrepancy is,
there recorded preceded the sentence in
vi. 3, and consequently would
not have been inconsistent with it, even
if it had had the meaning
which he wrongly attributes to it.
REPETITIONS AND DISCREPANCIES 537
on the
critics' own theory, to charge the redactor with a
negligence
as great as would be attributable to the original
writer on
the theory of the unity of the book. If
the lat-
ter is not
conceivable, neither is the former. The
appar-
ent
discrepancy between xxvi. 34; xxviii. 9; and xxxvi.
1 2, 3, as
to the names of Esau's wives, is capable of ready
reconciliation,
as was shown in the discussion of ch. xxxvi.
(pp. 420
sqq.). The alleged discrepancy, in
regard to
Joseph's
Egyptian master, between xxxvii. 36 and xxxix.
1; xl. 4,
does not exist (pp. 457 sqq.). In
reporting to
the steward
their discovery of the money in their sacks
(xliii. 21),
Joseph's brethren may perhaps combine with
their
partial discovery at the inn what they learned more
fully on
reaching home (xlii. 27, 35); but even this
is not
certain (pp. 479, 480). Cain's
apprehension that
he might be
slain for the murder of his brother (iv.
14, 15) is
not "enigmatical," if the possible increase of
Adam's
family in one hundred and thirty years (v. 3) be
considered;
nor his building a "city" (iv. 17), if it be
remembered
that a fortified nomadic encampment would
be so called
in Hebrew (pp. 36, 37).
6.
"The chronology does not agree with the narra-
tives." It is thought incredible that Sarah should
have
attracted
Pharaoh (xii. 11 sqq.) when sixty-five years of
age (xii. 4;
xvii. 17), or Abimelech when she was ninety
(xx. 2); but
this overlooks patriarchal longevity.
Ish-
mael is not
represented in xxi. 14 sqq. to be younger than
xvii. 24,
25; xxi. 5, 8 would make him. There is
no in-
consistency
between Isaac's apprehending that his end
was near
(xxvii. 1, 2, 7, 10, 41), and his actually living
many years
longer (xxxv. 28). It is not Rachel but
Leah
that is
meant in xxxvii. 10, so that there is no conflict
with xxxv.
19, which records Rachel's death. The
time
allowed for
the birth of Jacob's children (xxx. 25 sqq.;
xxxi. 38,
41) is short, but not too short. See p.
348. If
538 CONCLUSION
the list of
Jacob's descendants in xlvi. 8-27 contains as
is probable,
a few names of those born after the descent
into Egypt,
it is not inconsistent with the preceding his-
tory. There is no implication in 1. 21 that the
years of
famine were
still continuing, and accordingly no discrep-
ancy with
the previous account of their duration.
7. “Narratives in which certain parts do
not accord
with the
rest, e.g., xxxi. 48-50," where there is no discord
but that
created by critical manipulation; "or the end
does not
accord with the beginning, e.g., xxiv. 62-67,"
where the
discord is purely imaginary.
The contrarieties and discrepancies, of
which such
account is
made as indicative of a diversity of sources,
thus
disappear upon inspection, being mostly due to the
improper
identification of distinct events, or to a critical
partition by
which passages are severed from their con-
nection and
interpreted at variance with it.
THE DIVINE
NAMES
It is claimed, however, that the
narratives of Genesis
and of the
Pentateuch arrange themselves into continu-
ous strata,
each of which consistently preserves the same
style and
diction and general character, while differing
in a marked
degree from the others in these respects;
and that the
discrepancies which are alleged correspond
with, and
are corroborated by, these diversities of lan-
1
The ease with which narratives of unquestioned unity can be sun-
dered by the same methods that are
employed in the partition of Gene-
sis and the Pentateuch, and with the same
result of apparent discrep-
ancies between the sundered parts, is
illustrated in my Higher Criticism
of the Pentateuch, pp. 119~125. The same thing is shown in a very
effective manner, in application to an
entire book, in Romans Dissected,
by E. D. McRealsham, the pseudonym of Dr.
C. M. Mead, of Hartford
Theological Seminary.
THE DIVINE NAMES 539
guage and
ideas. It is hence inferred that Genesis must
be a
compilation from distinct documents, which can be
separated
from one another by appropriate tests, and
restored in
a good measure to their original form.
A prominent place is here given to the
criterion af-
forded by
the divine names. Certain paragraphs and
sections
make exclusive use of Elohim, while others
characteristically
employ Jehovah, when speaking of the
Supreme
Being. These are called respectively
Elohist
and Jehovist
sections, and are attributed to writers hav-
ing different
proclivities in this respect. But it has
been found
impossible to divide these sections so that
they shall
correspond with the alternation of the divine
names.
Thus, Elohim occurs in Jehovist sections,
viz.: iii. 1,
3, 5, in the
conversation of Eve with the serpent; iv. 25,
where Seth
is substituted for murdered Abel; vii. 9,
in the
Jehovist's account of Noah's entry into the ark;
ix. 27, in
the blessing upon Japheth in distinction from
Shem (ver.
26); xxxi. 50, in Laban's covenanting with
Jacob;
xxxii. 29, 31 (E. V. vs. 28, 30), Jacob's wrestling
with the
angel (so Wellhausen, Kuenen, Kautzsch);
xxxiii. 5,
10, 11, in Jacob's interview with Esau; xxxix.
9, Joseph's
reply to the solicitations of Potiphar's wife;
xliii. 29,
Joseph greeting Benjamin; xliv. 16, Judah's
confession. El Shaddai also occurs in a Jehovist section
(xliii. 14),
and Shaddai (xlix. 25), which are reckoned
characteristics
oi the Elohist.
Jehovah also occurs in paragraphs
attributed to the
Elohist,
where it is necessary to assume that it, or the
clause
containing it, has been inserted by the redactor.
Thus four
times in xv. 1, 2, 7, 8, the vision granted to
Abraham;
once in xvii. 1, where Jehovah appears to
him; again,
xx. 18, where he interferes for the protection
of Sarah;
xxi. 1b, where he fulfils his promise to Sarah;
540 CONCLUSION
xxii. 2,
Moriah, which is, compounded with an abbre-
viated form
of Jehovah, and ver. 11, the angel of Jeho-
vah; also
xxviii. 21, in Jacob's vow.
In other cases-the admission that the
divine names
occur in the
wrong document is only escaped by cutting
the clauses
that contain them out of their connection as
insertions
from another source, or by sundering passages
that
manifestly belong together. Thus the
last clause of
vii. 16 is
sundered from the rest of the verse notwith-
standing the
manifest contrast between Jehovah, who
shut Noah in
the ark, and Elohim, who gave command
for the
preservation of the inferior creatures.
In xiv.
22, Jehovah
is held to be an insertion by the redactor,
though it
represents God as known to Abraham in dis-
tinction
from what he was to Melchizedek.
Abimelech
covenants
with Abraham at Beersheba, and speaks of
God as
Elohim (xxi. 22-32); Abraham worshipping there
calls upon
Jehovah (ver. 33); but the critics ignoring
the real
reason of the change of names, regard the latter
as an
insertion from J in a narrative of the Elohist.
In
ch. xxii.
Elohim demands the sacrifice, Jehovah stays the
patriarch's
hand (pp. 284, 285); the critics attribute the
latter to a
different writer, though it is an essential part of
the
narrative. Isaac's blessing pronounced
upon Jacob
(xxvii. 27,
28) is rent asunder because Jehovah and Elo-
him occur in
successive clauses, as often elsewhere in the
parallelisms
of poetry. Jacob's dream (xxviii. 12-17)
is
partitioned
because Elohim alternates with Jehovah, so
that he
falls asleep in one document and wakes up in the
other. The continuous narrative of the birth of
Jacob's
children
(ch.. xxix., xxx.) is parcelled between the Jeho-
vist and the
Elohist in a very remarkable manner. Ch.
xxxv. 5 is
cut out of an Elohist connection solely and
avowedly
because it alludes to a preceding Jehovist nar-
rative. In xlviii. 8-11 Israel points to the Jehovist
and
THE DIVINE NAMES 541
Elohim to
the Elohist, so tHat a partition can only
be made by
confusing the entire passage. Wellhau-
sen gives it
up; but Dillmann carries it unflinchingly
through.
In fact the partition hypothesis is based
upon a per-
sistent
disregard of the real reason which governs the
employment
of the divine names, that being attributed
to the
mechanical explanation of a diversity of writers
which
results from the difference of meaning and usage
of these
names themselves. The critics themselves
are
obliged to
admit that the Jehovist uses both names as he
has
occasion. This confession completely
undermines
the
hypothesis; for it is placing the use of these names
upon another
footing than the mere habit of different
writers, and
acknowledging that there is an appropriate-
ness in
employing one rather than the other in certain
connections.
The distinction between these names is
universally
admitted, as
certified by the usage of the entire Hebrew
Bible. It is stated by Kuenen in a manner which re-
quires but
slight correction in order to solve the whole
mystery, and
to show that they afford no ground what-
ever for
assuming the existence of an Elohist and a
Jehovist. He says ("Hexateuch," p. 56),
"The original
distinction
between Yahwe and Elohim very often ac-
counts for
the use of one of these appellations in prefer-
ence to the
other." Again (p. 58, note 19), 1.
"When
the God of
Israel is placed over-against the gods of the
Gentiles,
the former is naturally described by the prop-
er name
Yahwe. 2. When Gentiles are introduced
as
speaking,
they use the word Elohim [unless they specifi-
cally mean
the God of the chosen race, when they call
him by his
proper name, Jehovah]. So, too, the
Israel-
ites, when
speaking to Gentiles. 3. Where a
contrast
between the
divine and the human is in the mind of the
542 CONCLUSION
author,
Elohim is, at any rate, the more suitable word."
[4. When God is spoken of in those general
aspects of
his being in
which he is related alike to the whole world
and to all
mankind, e.g., in creation and providence, Elo-
him is the
proper word; but when he is spoken of in his
special
relation to the chosen race as the God of revela-
tion and of
redemption, and the object of their worship,
Jehovah is
the appropriate term.]1
It has already been shown that the
critical partition of
Genesis,
though shaped with a view to adapt it to the
occurrence
of the divine names, does not in fact corre-
spond with
them, and consequently cannot afford an
adequate
explanation of them. And in the other
books
of the
Pentateuch the discrepancy is greater still.2 On
the other
hand, the simple principles above stated meet
the case
precisely. It has been shown in detail
in the
former part
of this volume that every instance in which
Elohim or
Jehovah is found in Genesis is capable of
ready
explanation. It will not be necessary
here to re-
peat at
length what was there said. It will be
sufficient
to indicate
briefly a few leading facts, which conclusively
demonstrate
that the partition hypothesis has no support
from the
divine names.
One thing which arrests attention at the
outset is the
great
predominance of the name Jehovah in three clearly
1 In the above quotation from
Kuenen "Gentiles" has been substi-
tuted for
"heathen" as better conformed to English usage. Correc-
tions and
additions are in brackets. Kuenen says
that the second
"rule
is often violated by an oversight, and the Gentiles are made to
speak of
Yahwe (Gen. xxvi. 28, 29; 1 Sam. xxix. 6; 1 Kin. v. 21, E.
V., ver.
7)." This is corrected in the
text. There is no "oversight"
in the
passages referred to, which simply suggest the proper limitation
of the
rule. Abimelech says "Jehovah"
because he means the God of
Isaac;
Achish does the same because he makes appeal to the God of
David, and
Hiram because he refers to the God of whom Solomon had
spoken in
the verses immediately preceding as "Jehovah my God."
2 See my Higher Criticism of
the Pentateuch, pp. 91-99.
THE DIVINE NAMES 543
marked
sections of the Pentateuch, viz., Gen. ii. 4-iv.;
xii.-xxvi.;
Ex. iii.-Deut. xxxiv. The explanation of
this
singular
fact lies upon the surface. These
sections
record three
successive stages in the self-revelation of
the Most
High to our first parents, to the patriarchs, to
Moses and
the children of Israel. They relate to
the
three great
epochs in the development of God's earthly
kingdom and
the unfolding of his scheme of grace.
There is
first God's manifestation of himself to man in
his
primitive estate, and again after his guilty trespass in
the primal
promise of mercy, the acceptance of Abel's
worship, the
ineffectual remonstrance with Cain, who is
finally banished
from the divine presence, while God is
acceptably
invoked in the family of Seth.
The next important step in the
establishment of God's
kingdom
among men was his special manifestation of
himself to
Abraham, who was called from the mass of
mankind to
be the head of a chosen race, among whom
true
religion might be nurtured with a view to the ulti-
mate
blessing of all the nations of the earth.
The third step in this divine plan of
salvation was
God's
manifestation of himself to Moses, and through
him to
Israel, in delivering them from the bondage of
Egypt and
organizing them as the people of God.
As Jehovah is the name appropriate to the
Most High
as the God
of revelation and of redemption, there is a
manifest
propriety in its employment, as in actual fact it
is
predominantly employed, at just these signal epochs
in which
this aspect of his being is most conspicuously
exhibited. It requires no assumption of a Jehovist
writer
to account
for what thus follows from the nature of the
case. That Jehovah should fall more into the back-
ground in
the intervals between these signal periods of
self-revelation
is also what might be expected. Yet it
does not
disappear entirely. It recurs with
sufficient
544 CONCLUSION
frequency to
remind the reader of the continuity of that
divine
purpose of salvation, which is never abandoned,
and is never
entirely merged in mere general providen-
tial
control.
As Elohim is the term by which God is
denoted in his
relation to
the world at large, in distinction from his
special
relation to his own people, it is a matter of
course that
the creation of heaven and earth and all that
they contain
is ascribed to him as Elohim (Gen. i.).
It
is equally
natural that when the world, which he had
made very
good, had become so corrupt as to frustrate
the end of
its creation, the Creator, Elohim, should in-
terfere to
arrest this degeneracy by a flood, and should
at the same
time devise measures to preserve the vari-
ous species
of living things in order to replenish the
earth once
more (vi. 11-ix. 17). Here, too, was a
case for
Jehovah's
interference likewise to preserve his plan of
grace and
salvation from utter failure by sweeping away
the corrupt
mass and preserving pious Noah and his
family from
its contamination and its ruin. Hence,
while in the
description of this catastrophe Elohim pre-
dominates,
Jehovah is introduced whenever this special
feature is
particularly alluded to (vi. 1-8; vii. 1-5, 16b;
viii.
20-22). And Jehovah interferes again to
avert the
new peril
involved in the impious attempt at Babel (xi.
1-9); and he
is not unobservant of the ambitious designs
of the
kingdom erected there (x. 8-10).
The constancy with which the name Jehovah
appears
in the life
of Abraham, from ch. xii. onward, is first inter-
rupted in
ch. xvii., where Jehovah appears in the open-
ing verse as
God Almighty, and throughout the chap-
ter is
spoken of as Elohim, to indicate that the God
of Abraham
is likewise the God of the universe. The
reason is
apparent. God had promised to make of
him
a great
nation, to give his posterity the land of Canaan,
THE DIVINE NAMES 545
and through
them to bless all the nations of the earth.
These
promises had been repeated from time to time.
Four and
twenty years had now passed of anxious wait-
ing. But the child, upon whom the fulfilment of
all
these
promises was conditioned, was not yet born.
Meanwhile in
Sarah's advancing age, and his own, all
natural hope
of offspring had vanished. Hence this
appeal
to the
divine omnipotence, which was able to accomplish
what was
above and beyond the powers of nature, in or-
der to
confirm the patriarch's faith in the promise, now
renewed and
made more specific than ever before, that
Isaac should
be born the next year. There is no need
of an
Elohist writer to account for the unvarying repeti-
tion of
Elohim in this chapter, nor for its recurrence in
xxi. 2, 4,
6, where ch. xvii. is plainly referred to.
The next occurrence of Elohim is in xix.
29, and the
reason is
again apparent. Lot is now finally
severed
from all
further connection with Abraham, and God is
henceforth
Elohim to him as to all aliens. Elohim
is
also used in
dealing with Abimelech (ch. xx.; xxi. 22, 23),
though it is
still Jehovah who interferes for the protec-
tion of
Sarah in Gerar (xx. 18), as he had previously done
in Egypt (w.
17), and Abraham continues to call on the
name of
Jehovah (xxi. 33), as in xii. 8. So when
Hagar
and Ishmael
are finally sent away from Abraham (xxi.
9-21), and
Hagar is no longer counted a member of his
household,
as she was in xvi. 7-14, God is Elohim also to
the children
of Heth (xxiii. 6). Elohim the Creator
might
rightfully
demand that the child which he had given
should be
sacrificed to him (xxii. 1-10); but Jehovah
stayed the
patriarch's hand (vs. 11 sqq.); the spiritual
surrender
was all that he required. Every instance
in
which Elohim
is used in the life of Abraham thus explains
itself; and
there is no need of having recourse to an Elo-
list writer
to account for its appearance.
546 CONCLUSION
The God of Abraham was also the God of
Isaac.
Hence the
constant recurrence of Jehovah in xxv. 19-
xxvii., with
the single exception of Elohim as a poetic
parallel in
Isaac's blessing (xxvii. 28). For
Elohim, in
xxv. 11,
xxviii. 4, see pp. 310, 332.
The name Jehovah is less prominent in the
chapters
that follow
for two reasons chiefly: 1. The manifestations
of Jehovah
and the gradual unfolding of his gracious
purposes,
which marked the early portion of the patri-
archal
period, were sufficient for that stage in the de-
velopment of
the divine plan. It was enough to repeat
the promises
already made to Abraham and Isaac. Rev-
elations
surpassing these were reserved for a later stage,
when the
time arrived to fulfil the promises now made
and for
Jehovah to make himself known to Israel by
manifestations
of his power and grace such as their
fathers had
never witnessed (Ex. vi. 3). 2. The lives of
Jacob and
Joseph, which occupy nearly all the rest of
Genesis,
were spent for the most part away from the
holy land,
amid Gentile surroundings, which made it
appropriate
to use the name Elohim.
And yet Jehovah recurs often enough to
show that his
special
relation to the chosen race is steadfastly main-
tained. Jehovah reveals himself to Jacob on his
flight
from home
(xxviii. 13 sqq.); is recognized in the first
children
born to Leah (xxix. 31-35), and in the promise
of yet
another son to Rachel (xxx. 24), to complete the
patriarch's
family; is acknowledged as the source of
blessing
even to Laban for Jacob's sake (xxx. 27, 30); and
at length
bids Jacob return to the land of his fathers
(xxxi.
3). It is Jehovah who punishes the
wicked sons
of Judah
(xxxviii. 7, 10); and who protects and blesses
Joseph in
servitude (xxxix. 2-5), and in prison (vs. 21,
23). It is Jehovah for whose salvation Jacob waits
to
the last
moment of his life (xlix. 18). The
appropriate-
THE DIVINE NAMES 547
ness of
Elohim throughout these chapters has been al-
ready shown
in the discussion of each passage in which
it occurs.
The divisive hypothesis was invented to
account for
the
alternation of Elohim and Jehovah. We
have seen
that
notwithstanding all the ingenuity expended upon it
it still
fails to accord with the actual occurrence of these
names. It further appears that it is not needed to
ex-
plain the
alternation of these names, the real reason of
which lies
in the significance of these names themselves.
It remains
to be added that it cannot render, and does
not even
pretend to render, a rational account of the em-
ployment of
these names and their remarkable distribu-
tion as this
has now been exhibited. It has nothing
to
suggest but
the proclivities of different writers.
The
Elohist is
supposed to be governed by the theory that
the name
Jehovah was unknown until the time of Moses;
he therefore
makes no previous use of it. The
Jehovist
held that it
was in use from the earliest ages and employs
it
accordingly. Each is supposed to use
that name to
which he is
addicted habitually, and without reference
to its
peculiar signification; and yet we find these names
to be
discriminatingly used throughout. How is
this to
be accounted
for? How has it come to pass that each
writer has
happened to limit himself to recording just
those
matters, which call for the use of that particular
divine name
which he is in the habit of employing,
and this,
though there is no sort of connection between
the theories
which govern their use of the divine names
and these
particular portions of the primeval or patri-
archal
history? The divisive hypothesis can
give no
reason why
the Elohist rather than the Jehovist should
have given
an account of the creation of the world
and all that
it contains; nor why the Jehovist rather than
the Elohist
should have described the beginnings of God's
548 CONCLUSION
earthly
kingdom in man's primeval condition and the mercy
shown him
after his fall; nor why the Elohist never speaks
of an altar
or sacrifice or invocation or any act of patri-
archal
worship;1 nor why Jehovah occurs without inter-
ruption in
the life of Abraham until in ch. xvii. the di-
vine
omnipotence is pledged to fulfil the oft-repeated
but
long-delayed promise; nor why Elohim regularly oc-
curs when
Gentiles are concerned, unless specific refer-
ence is made
to the God of the patriarchs. All this
is
purely
accidental on the divisive hypothesis.
But such
evident
adaptation is not the work of chance. It
can
only result
from the intelligent employment of the di-
vine names
in accordance with their proper meaning and
recognized
usage.
DICTION, STYLE, AND CONCEPTION
Kuenen2 tells us that "the
history of critical investi-
gation has
shown that far too much weight has often
been laid on
agreement in the use of the divine names.
It is well,
therefore, to utter a warning against laying an
exaggerated
stress on this one phenomenon."
"It is but
one of the
many marks which must be duly observed in
tracing the
origin and the mutual relations of the pas-
sages." It is claimed that each of these divine names
is
regularly
associated with a characteristic diction, mode
of
conception, and style of expression, which are clearly
1 The suggestion that in the
opinion of the Elohist worship was first in-
troduced by
Moses is absurd upon its face, see pp. 163 seq., 364 ; and it is
without the
slightest warrant in any Scriptural statement.
Besides it
leaves the
difficulty unsolved. There is no natural
connection between
his idea
that God was exclusively called Elohim in the patriarchal age,
and the
notion that he was never worshipped then.
How did he happen
to be
possessed of just such a notion as kept him from an inappropriate
use of
Elohim ?
2 Hexateuch, p. 61, note 29,
and p. 58.
DICTION, STYLE, AND CONCEPTION
549
indicative
of distinct writers. But upon
examination this
proves to be
altogether fallacious.
There is evidently no significance in the
fact that a
given series
of sections or paragraphs contains words and
phrases that
are not found in another series in which
there was no
occasion to employ them. And that the,
same thought
is differently expressed in two different
passages does
not necessarily prove that they are by dis-
tinct
writers. Long lists of words of this
description
are paraded
by critics as evidence of diversity of author-
ship, which
are of no force whatever; and which could
be
paralleled with perfect ease from the acknowledged
works of
well-known authors in ancient or in modern
times. Critics are never at a loss for arguments
from
diction to
sustain even the most extravagant positions.
The
plausible use that can be made of it where it is
plainly of
no account, and the frequency with which it is
disregarded
by critics themselves when it does not serve
their
purpose, shows how precarious this style of argu-
ment is, and
how important it is to guard against being
misled by
deceptive appearances.
The earlier forms of the divisive
hypothesis were
wrecked by
their inability to establish a diversity of dic-
tion between
the Elohist and the Jehovist. All sorts
of
subterfuges
were resorted to in the endeavor to account
for the fact
that in a multitude of passages they were
quite
indistinguishable. At length Hupfeld
came to the
rescue with
his suggestion, since accepted as a veritable
discovery,
that there were two Elohists, P and E, who
were alike
in their use of Elohim, but differed greatly in
every other
respect. P is supposed to contrast
strongly
with J (the
Jehovist), while it is exceeding difficult, if not
impossible,
to discriminate between E and J, except in
their use of
the divine names.
There are some things about this discovery
of Hup-
550 CONCLUSION
feld which
have a very suspicious look. In the
first
place, so
large a share of the Elohist passages is sur-
rendered to
E as to destroy all semblance of continuity
in P. It was claimed by the advocates of the
supple-
ment hypothesis
that the Elohist, though he had little
to say of
Abraham and Isaac, nevertheless gave a full
account of
the patriarch Jacob, the real founder of the
nation of
Israel. But with the exception of two
events
in the life
of Abraham, recorded in chs. xvii. and xxiii.,
nothing is
assigned to P in the entire patriarchal period
but a few
disconnected sentences, scattered here and
there, which
are detached from the narrative to which
they
belong."
Another suspicious circumstance is that P
breaks off
so near the
point where E begins. While sundry at-
tempts have
been made to discover fragments of E in
earlier
chapters of Genesis, it is generally confessed that
ch. xx. is
the first passage that can be confidently attrib-
uted to this
document. All Elohist passages prior to
ch.
xx. are said
to belong to P.; ch. xx. and all subsequent
Elohist
passages belong to E, with the sole exception of
ch. xxiii.
and a few meagre snatches found elsewhere.
This
certainly looks like rending asunder what belongs
together. And the natural conclusion would seem to be
that the
difference of diction and style between the Elo-
hist and the
Jehovist, supposed to be made out from a
comparison
of the early chapters of Genesis, is nullified
by the later
chapters in which no such difference is per-
ceptible. The critics have hastily drawn an inference
from
incomplete data, which a wider induction shows to
be unfounded
(p. 251).
Moreover, the alleged diversity of
diction and style
between P
and the other so-called documents is ade-
quately
explained by the character of the critical parti-
tion without
having recourse to the assumption of dis-
DICTION, STYLE, AND CONCEPTION 551
tinct
writers. The quantity and the quality of
what is
severally
attributed to the different documents solve the
whole
mystery. As a necessary sequence from
the scanty
portion
allotted to P compared with the amount assigned
to J and E,
and especially the peculiar character of the
matter given
to P in distinction from the others, P has
the fewest
words, and a different class of words, and a
style
adapted to the nature of its contents.
The entire
body of
ordinary narrative is shared between J and E,
while P has
only extraordinary events like the creation
and deluge,
and certain incidents which do not enter into
the texture
of the history, but constitute rather the frame-
work within
which it is adjusted, such as genealogies,
dates,
births, deaths, and migrations. This
being the
case, the
peculiarities of diction and style follow as a
matter of
course. The words and phrases and mode
of
expression
appropriate to one have no natural connection
with the
other. When the matter is similar, as in
J and
E, the
diction and style are alike. When the
matter is
different,
as in P compared with JE, the diction and
style are
altered. This is just what is to be
expected
under the
circumstances, and requires no diversity of
writers to
explain it, unless it be seriously contended
that a
historian cannot describe great catastrophes, nor
incorporate
in his work genealogies, dates, births, deaths,
migrations,
and legal enactments.
That the diversity of diction and style
observable in
P, as
compared with JE, is due to the difference in
matter, both
in amount and in character, and not to a
diversity of
writers, further appears from an inspection
of the
criteria by which they are professedly discrimi-
nated. These are specified in detail in the former
part
of this
volume under the head of Marks of P, J, and E.
The words
and phrases represented to be characteristic
of J and E
belong to the common stock of the language,
552 CONCLUSION
such as any
writer or speaker might employ upon occa-
sion, and
which are not found in P for the simple reason
that no
passage is assigned to P that calls for their em-
ployment. On the other hand, technical legal phrases
and
such special
terms as are suitable for the particular mat-
ters
attributed to P form the main stock of that docu-
ment. The formality, verboseness, and repetition
imputed
to P, as
contrasted with the easy and flowing style of J
and E, find
then' explanation in the precision due to legal
transactions
(pp. 293 seq.), the emphasis laid upon matters
of intrinsic
importance (pp.222, 230), or which the writer
would
impress upon the mind of his readers (pp. 18, 101,
209), or the
inevitable sameness of genealogies (p. 50),
compared
with the varied scenes, the changing incidents
and the
portraiture of life and character belonging to his-
torical
descriptions (pp. 240 seq.). And yet
like repeti-
tions,
detailed enumerations, stereotyped formulae, and
genealogical
tables are found upon occasion in J and E
(pp. 81,
141, 231, 292; ch. x. 8-19, 21, 24-30, and xxii.
20-24 J;
xxv. 1-4 E).
It
is further to be observed that when for any reason
P is allowed
a share in ordinary narrative, it becomes as
difficult to
discriminate between P and J as it is else-
where
between J and E; and the separation has to be
made on
other grounds than diction and style. A
nota-
ble instance
is afforded in ch. xxxiv. (pp. 388 sqq.), where
the wide
divergence of the critics shows how baseless the
partition
is.
The total absence of any reason for
regarding P as a
separate
document is yet more strikingly apparent from
the shifting
character of the criteria upon which its rec-
ognition is
made to rest. Each separate portion of
the
document
stands in this respect by itself, and out of re-
lation to
the rest. The marks insisted upon in any
one
portion are,
with few exceptions, absent from every other
DICTION, STYLE, AND CONCEPTION 553
throughout
the Book of Genesis; so that different parts of
the document
are claimed for it on wholly dissimilar
grounds. The narratives of the creation and of the
flood
have much in
common, since what was made in the former
perished in
the latter, after which the earth was again re-
peopled as
at the beginning. But only two words or
phrases
noted as characteristic of P in ch. i. recur again in
Genesis
after ch. ix. viz., rkAzA
male, in connection with circum-
cision (chs.
xvii., xxxiv:), and hbArAv;
hrAPA be fruitful
and multiply in the promises made to Abraham and his
descendants
(pp. 4, 5). After the covenant with
Abra-
ham (ch.
xvii.), which recalls that with Noah (ch. ix.), al-
most every
mark of P in the preceding part of Genesis ;
disappears
entirely (pp. 96 sqq., 141 seq.).
Scarcely a
word or
phrase that is reckoned characteristic of P in ch.
xvii. or
xxiii. is found in later chapters of Genesis, except
where the
transaction of the latter is explicitly referred
to, or the
promises of the former are repeated (pp. 231
sqq., 296
seq.). The migrations of the patriarchs
(xii. 5;
xxxi. 18;
xxxvi. 6; xlvi. 6) are evidently recorded by the
same hand;
but these are only arbitrarily referred to P
in spite of
their context (pp. 177 seq., 188 seq.).
So with
other
snatches, by which the attempt is made to preserve
the
continuity of P and cover references made elsewhere
in this
document (pp. 175 seq., 180, 187 seq., 211 seq.).
J and E are confessedly indistinguishable
in diction
and style
(pp. 252 seq., 271 sqq., 276, etc.) apart from
the use of
Jehovah by the former and Elohim by the
latter. But it has already been shown that the divine
names are
regulated by their appropriateness in the con-
nection, not
by the mere habit of different writers.
The
only
remaining ground for assuming that these were dis-
tinct
documents is alleged contrarieties and contradictions
and
so-called doublets; and these have been proved to
be imaginary
in every individual instance.
554 CONCLUSION
Attempts
have been made, "but without success, to dis-
cover a
diversity of conception between the documents.
It has been
affirmed that the anthropomorphisms of J
imply a less
exalted notion of the Supreme Being than
that of P
(pp. 31 sqq., 63, 145, 225); that according to
P
sacrificial worship was first introduced by Moses while
J speaks of
offerings made by Cain and Abel (pp. 116
seq., 163
seq.); that in J, but not in P, the blessing
through
Abraham was to extend to all the nations of the
earth (pp.
163, 244); that it is peculiar to E to record
revelations
in dreams (pp. 260 seq.) and the ministry of
angels (pp.
271, 340). The falsity of these positions
has
been shown
in the passages referred to.
It should be remembered in this discussion
that the
so-called
Pentateuchal documents do not exist in their
separate
state. We are not comparing fixed and
defi-
nite
entities, which have come down to us in their proper
form. They have been fashioned and their limits
deter-
mined by the
critics on the basis of certain alleged cri-
teria. Their correspondence with these criteria
simply
results from
the mode of their formation, and is no evi-
dence of
their reality. The argument moves in a
circle
and returns
upon itself. The documents depend upon
the
criteria, and the criteria upon the documents; and
there is no
independent proof of either.
CONTINUITY OF GENESIS
The positive and irrefragable argument for
the unity
of Genesis
is that it is a continuous and connected
whole,
written with a definite design and upon an evi-
dent plan
which is steadfastly maintained throughout.
The critics
attribute this to the skill of the redactor.
But they
impose upon him an impossible task. An
author may
draw his materials from a great variety of
CONTINUITY OF GENESIS 555
sources,
form his own conception of his subject, elabo-
rate it
after a method of his own, and thus give unity to
his
production. But a compiler, who simply
weaves to-
gether
extracts selected from separate authorities, has
not the
freedom of the author, and cannot do the same
kind of
work. He is trammelled by the nature of
his
undertaking. He cannot reconstruct his materials and
adapt them
to one another; he must accept them as he
finds
them. And now, if these authorities, as
is alleged,
were
prepared with different aims and from diverse
points of
view, if they are unlike in style and diction and
discordant
in their statements, he never could produce
the
semblance of unity in his work. The
difference of
texture
would show itself at the points of junction.
There would
inevitably be chasms, and abrupt transitions,
and a want
of harmony between the parts. Such a
work
as Genesis
could not have been produced in this way.
It is besides very plain from a
comparison of the
documents,
as the critics profess to reproduce them, that
they must
have been parallel throughout. The same
events are
treated in each, and in the same order, and in
a manner so
nearly resembling one another that they
cannot have
been altogether independent in their origin,
as the
critics themselves admit (pp. 158 sqq.).l
The text, as we possess it, is
harmonious. It is only
1 Dillmann says (Genesis, Vorbemerkungen,
p. xiii.): "In the pri-
meval
history there is both in plan and material an unmistakable rela-
tionship
between J and P (creation, primitive state, Noah's genealogical
tree, the
flood, table of nations); also in the Abraham section and on-
ward they
have some narratives in common (separation from Lot, de-
struction of
Sodom and Gomorrah, the history of Dinah, also xlvii. 1-
11; xlvii.
29 sqq., cf. xlix. 29 sqq.). But
elsewhere in the patriarchal
history,
especially that of Jacob and Joseph, J is most closely related
to E, so
much so that from ch. xxvii. onward the most of J's narratives
have their
complete parallels in E, and we must necessarily assume
the
dependence of one upon the other."
556 CONCLUSION
when it is
resolved into the so-called documents that in-
consistencies
appear. This makes it evident that these
documents
are not the originals and Genesis a compila-
tion from
them; but Genesis is the original, and the
documents
have been deduced from it. The combina-
tion of two
or three mutually inconsistent accounts will
not produce
a harmonious and symmetrical narrative.
But
severing
paragraphs and clauses from their proper
connection,
and interpreting them at variance with it
will produce
the appearance of discord and disagree-
ment.1
CHASMS IN THE DOCUMENTS
The real existence of documents in Genesis
is still
further
discredited by the numerous and serious gaps
that occur
in each of them. P records that in the
crea-
tion all was
made very good, and that at the flood the
earth was so
corrupt that God resolved to destroy it, but
says nothing
to account for the dreadful change; the
missing
explanation is only to be found in J (pp. 35, 78).
There is a
chasm in P, in the life of Abraham, between
chs. xi. and
xvii., which the critics vainly seek to bridge by
scattered
clauses torn from the connection to which they
evidently
belong (pp. 155, 171, 180, 189 seq., 209 sqq.,
217 sqq.),
as they do with regard to J in the flood (pp.
75
sqq.). P's life of Isaac consists of the
merest scraps.
Jacob goes
to Paddan-aram to get a wife, but his entire
abode there
is a blank (pp. 316 seq., 362 sqq.) that can
only be
filled up from J and E. Joseph is named
by P
among the
children of Jacob born in Paddan-aram (xxxv.
24), but not
another word is said about him2 until we
are suddenly
informed (xli. 46) that he was thirty years
1 See my Higher Criticism of
the Pentateuch, pp. 119 sqq.
2 The critics are divided
about an isolated clause in xxxvii. 2, p. 446.
CHASMS IN THE DOCUMENTS 557
old when he
stood before Pharaoh. How he came to be
in Egypt,
and what led to his elevation there can only
be learned
from other documents. The next thing
that
we are told
is that Jacob was removing to Egypt with
his entire
family (xlvi. 6, 7); here again we must look
elsewhere
for the circumstances by which this was
brought
about.
J is supposed to have traced the line of
descent from
Adam to
Noah, and from Noah to Abraham, but only
disconnected
fragments remain (pp. 47, 135 seq.); also
to have
given an account of the descendants of Noah's
sons, which
is likewise in a fragmentary state pp. 134
seq.). His account of Abraham begins abruptly (pp.
169
seq., 175),
and is without any fitting termination; in
fact he does
not record the death of any of the
patriarchs
(p.
310). E's account of Abraham consists
merely of a
few
disconnected incidents (pp. 160 seq.). J
and E are
inseparably
blended in ch. xxvii. The narrative is
in-
capable of
division, and yet is indispensable in each
document, so
that it cannot be given to one without
creating a
chasm in the other (pp. 328 sqq.). The
par-
tition of
chs. xxix. and xxx. between J and E leaves both
very
incomplete (pp. 344 sqq., 352). And in
the life of
Joseph every
passage assigned to one of these documents
creates a
break in the other.
There are also numerous cross-references
from one
document to
the contents of another, showing that they
have been improperly
sundered (pp. 33 sqq., 72 seq.,
175, 322,
331, etc.). In other cases these are
only
evaded by
splintering closely connected passages into
bits because
of the references made to them from differ-
ent
documents (pp. 169, 309, 405 sqq.).
In all these instances of a Jack of
continuity in the
docmnents
and references in one to the contents of an-
other, the
critics assume that R is at fault. The
missing
508 CONCLUSION
matter must
have been in the document originally, but
was omitted
by R because he had given an equivalent
account from
another source, which he thought it un-
necessary to
duplicate. This assumption, it is to be
ob-
served, is
simply an inference from the hypothesis which
it is
adduced to support. There is nothing to
confirm it
apart from
the prior assumption of the truth of that
hypothesis,
which is the very thing to be proved.
The
hypothesis
requires it; that is all.
These numerous breaks in the documents are
created
by the
critical partition. Just what is needed
to fill the
gap is in
the text as it now stands. But the
critics insist
that the
lack must be supplied, not by these passages
which are
here before us, and which precisely answer
every
requirement, but by some hypothetical passage
which may
once have existed, but of which there is no
proof
whatever except that the hypothesis cannot be,
maintained
without it. These auxiliary assumptions
have to be
made so frequently that nothing but the clear-
est
independent proof of the truth of the hypothesis
could enable
it to carry them. And this is utterly
want-
ing. As it is, these unfilled chasms are just so
many
proofs that
the hypothesis is untenable.
This conclusion is yet more firmly riveted
by the in-
consistent
conduct which the divisive critics are obliged
to impute to
the redactor. While omitting in turn
mat-
ters of the
greatest consequence from each of the docu-
ments, he is
supposed at other times scrupulously to re-
tain even
the minutest portion of the sources which he is
using,
though it leads to superfluous repetitions in trivial
things. This is not to be evaded by assuming
different
redactors,
who adopt different methods in their compila-
tion. The redactor who combined J and E, at the
very
time that he
was sacrificing large and important portions
of each
document alternately, is supposed to have in-
CHASMS IN THE DOCUMENTS 559
corporated
clauses or sentences from the omitted sections
in the text
of the other document, which are betrayed as
such by the
redundancy thus occasioned.1
And the re-
dactor who
combined P with JE, and at times was par-
ticular to
preserve all that he found in P, even when it
added
nothing to what had already been extracted from
J2
(pp. 83 sqq., 175, 265), at other times did not hesitate
to throwaway
the bulk of his narrative and reduce the
document to
incoherent fragments. And each of these
redactors is
supposed in a great number of cases to have
carefully
preserved the contents of his sources, notwith-
standing
their discrepancies and contradictions, while at
other times,
without any reason to account for this dif-
ference of
treatment, he freely modified them in order to
bring them
into harmony with each other.3 The redac-
tor is made
the scapegoat of the hypothesis: Every
thing that
does not square with the hypothesis is attrib-
uted to
him. And this lays upon him incompatible
de-
mands, and
imputes to him a degree of inconsistency in-
supposable
in any rational man.
1 Kuenen (Hexateuch, p. 164,
note 28) says: "The scrupulous con-
servatism of
the redaction is proclaimed loudly enough by the presence
of so many
doublets. The little additions to E and
J in Gen.
xl. sqq. are
evidently intended to smooth down the inequalities that
must
necessarily arise when fragments now of one, now of the other
narrative,
are successively taken up."
2 Kuenen (Ibid., p. 320):
"R scrupulously inserts even the minor
fragments of
P in the places that seem best to fit them when the more
detailed
notices of the older documents might have seemed to a less
zealous
disciple to have rendered them superfiuous."
3 Hence Kuenen (Hexateuch, p.
255) speaks of "the mingled rever-
ence and
freedom, so strange sometimes to our ideas, with which he
treats his
documents."
560 CONCLUSION
WHEN AND WHERE PRODUCED
In undertaking to determine the date and
origin of
the
supposititious Pentateuchal documents, the critics
begin by
denying the truth of the patriarchal history.
Kuenen tells
us:1 "The narratives of Genesis are
founded upon
a theory of the origin of nations, which
the
historical science of the present day rejects without
the
slightest hesitation. The Israelites
looked upon na-
tions or
tribes as families or large households.
The
further they
carried their thoughts back, the smaller to
their ideas
became the family, until at last they came
upon the
father of the tribe or of the whole nation, to
whom very
naturally they ascribed the same qualities as
they had
observed in the descendants. This theory
of
the origin
of nations is not the true one. Families
be-
come tribes,
and eventually nations, not only, nor even
chiefly, by
multiplying, but also, nay, principally, by
combining
with the inhabitants of some district, by the
subjection
of the weaker to the stronger, by the gradual
blending
together of sometimes very heterogeneous ele-
ments." So, too, Dillmann:2 "It is
well understood
nowadays
that all these narratives respecting the patri-
archs belong
not to strict history but to saga. That
the
proper
ancestor of no one people on earth can be histor-
ically
pointed out; that nations are not formed after the
manner of a
family, but grow together from all sorts of
materials;
that the division into twelve tribes of all the
Hebraic peoples
rests not on natural generation and
blood
relationship, but that art and design, geographical
and
political or even religious reasons, were controlling
1 Religion of Israel, vol. i.,
p. 110. The paragraph cited above is
slightly
abridged.
2 Genesis, p. 215.
WHEN AND WHERE PRODUCED 561
in it; that
the personifications of peoples, tribes, regions,
and periods,
which are universally recognized in the rep-
resentations
of Genesis as far as ch. xi., do not cease at
once with
ch. xii., but continue further, and that not
merely in
the genealogies of peoples which still follow,
is to be
unconditionally admitted."
To all this Delitzsch,l while
admitting what is said
of the
growth of other nations, very properly replies:
"The people
destined to be the bearer and mediator of
revealed
religion is, as is emphasized throughout the
Scriptures
of the Old Testament (e.g., Deut. xxxii. 6), no
mere
formation of nature; and we can conceive that
there was
something unique in the very origination of
this people,
provided of course that we acknowledge a
realm of
grace above that of nature, and consequently a
realm of the
supernatural control of God above that of
natural
law. Besides, the migration of the
Terahids is
in itself
more than simply a fact of family history.
And
a shepherd
prince like Abraham, who could, put in the
field
hundreds of servants, that must be regarded as in-
corporated
with his family, is already developing into a
tribe; at
least several prominent tribes among the South
African
Bantu people have arisen in this way from a
chief and
his adherents. And the family of Jacob,
which
emigrated to
Egypt, and only numbered seventy souls
as
blood-related kinsmen, grew into a nation, not merely
of itself,
but by the reception of all sorts of foreign ma-
terials."
To one who believes that God designed to
form a peo-
ple for
himself and for his own gracious purposes, there
is little
difficulty in believing that he selected Abraham
to be the
head of a chosen race, among whom true relig-
ion should
be preserved and perpetuated Until the time
should
arrive for its diffusion among all the nations of
1 Genesis, p. 248.
562 CONCLUSION
the
earth. Such an one can easily credit the
fact that,
the people
of Israel was .brought into being in a manner
different
from other nations, and better suited to fit them
for the
peculiar task that was to be committed to them.
Accordingly
he will see no reason to discredit the histor-
ical
character of the lives of the patriarchs as recorded
in
Genesis. The fact that the filiation of
nations is ex-
hibited in
ch. x. under the form of a genealogy does not
justify the
suspicion that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
whose
histories are related in detail, are the names not
of
individual men, but of tribal communities.
That they
were the
heads of considerable clans appears from the
narrative
itself, p. 466. The immediate object to
which
attention is
directed at present, however, is not the truth
of the
Scriptural declarations on this subject, but the
position of
the divisive critics and the process by which
they
undertake to determine the time and place in which
the
Pentateuchal documents were produced.
Apart from the wild conceits, which have
actually
found advocates,
that the patriarchs are nature myths,
or that they
represent tribal deities, the common concep-
tion of
those by whom the divisive hypothesis has been
shaped is
that they are personifications of the people of
Israel in
the earliest periods of their history, or of sepa-
rate clans
or tribes supposed to have been combined in
the
formation of that people. Thus Kuenen1
says: "Ja-
cob-Israel,
who appears in Genesis as the ancestor of
the whole
people, was originally the personification of
the tribes
which ranged themselves round Ephraim.
In
the stories
about him in Gen. xxvii.-l., Joseph, the father
of Manasseh
and Ephraim, is the chief personage."
"The
several sagas were probably of local origin.
For
example,
Isaac belongs originally to Beersheba, and
Jacob to
Bethel." "Hebron was Abrabam's territorial
1
Hexateuch, pp. 229, 227, 231, 235.
WHEN AND WHERE PRODUCED 563
cradle." Both he and Wellhausen insist that
"Isaac, not
Abraham, was
the protagonist." Abraham was the
latest
creation of
the saga, and the resemblance of his life to
that of
Isaac is accounted for by" the transference to
Abraham of
sagas concerning Isaac." Dillmann1
holds
that
"if Jacob can be understood as the personal con-
centration
of the twelve-tribe people of Israel, so also
Isaac and
Abraham as designations of historical ante-
cedent
stages of the twelve-tribe people or its related cir-
cle . . .
According to Genesis they are at the least
concentrations
of certain fragments of the Hebrew peo-
ple out of which
Israel was gradually formed."
"In the
remainder of
the Abrahamic immigration after the sunder-
ing of the
Lot-people, the Ishmaelites, and the Keturah-
ites, later
generations recognized that portion of the He-
brews which
preserved the Abrahamic character in the
greatest
purity and were their proper ancestors. . . .
Jacob-Israel
is along with Abraham the proper father of
the people
of Israel, the representative of a new Hebrew
immigration
from Mesopotamia, out of which, together
with the
Isaac-people, Israel was formed. Quite a
differ-
ent part of
Canaan is the scene of his actions, viz., the
middle
(Bethel, Shechem) and eastern portion of the land
(Mahanaim,
Peniel, Succoth).
According to Stade2 there is no
basis of truth what-
ever in the
narratives of Genesis. He says: "We
main-
tain that
the people of Israel possess no sort of certain
and
intelligible historical recollections about the events
prior to the
time of their settlement in the land west of
the
Jordan. All that subsequently existed of
recollec-
tions about
that earlier time is concentrated in the two
names, Moses
and Sinai. But what is narrated of these
names is
simply concluded back from the relations of the
1 Genesis, pp. 215, 216, 311.
2 Geschichte des Volkes Israel,
pp. 55, 128, 129, 130.
564 CONCLUSION
present; it
is nothing but saga which takes its bearings
from and is
reconstructed by these latter." "A pre-
Egyptian
abode of Israelitish families in the land west of
the Jordan
is not to be spoken of . . . This concep-
tion cannot
be honestly held in view of discovered facts,"
as he
conceives them. "The people of
Israel never
resided in
Egypt. . . . If any Hebraic clan ever
resided
there, no one knows its name. . . . The
in-
vestigations
respecting the Pharaohs, under whom Israel
migrated
into and out of Egypt, are useless trifling with
numbers and
names." "We have not the least
knowl-
edge of the
pre-Mosaic worship of God in Israel; not a
single
tradition concerning it is in existence."
Kuenenl is not so utterly
destructive. He finds the
following
basis of fact in Genesis: "There
occurred a
Semitic
migration, which issued from Arrapachitis (Ar-
pachshad, Ur
Casdim), and moved on in a southwesterly
direction. The countries to the south and east of
Canaan were
gradually occupied by these intruders, the
former
inhabitants being either expelled or subjugated;
Ammon, Moab,
Ishmael, and Edom became the ruling
nations in
those districts. In Canaan the situation
was
different. The tribes which--at first closely connected
with the
Edomites, but afterward separated from them--
had turned
their steps toward Canaan, did not find them-
selves
strong enough either to drive out, or to exact
tribute
from, the original inhabitants; they continued
their
wandering life among them, and lived upon the
whole at
peace with them. But a real settlement
was
still their
aim. When, therefore, they had become
more
numerous and
powerful through the arrival of a number
of kindred
settlers from Mesopotamia-represented in
tradition by
the army with which Jacob returns to
Canaan--they
resumed their march in the same south-
1
Religion of Israel, vol. i., pp. 114, 115.
WHEN AND WHERE PRODUCED 565
westerly
direction, until at length they took possession
of fixed
habitations in the land of Goshen on the borders
of
Egypt. It is not impossible that a
single tribe had
preceded
them thither and that they undertook the jour-
ney to
Goshen at the solicitation of that forerunner;
this would
then be the kernel of the narratives relating
to Joseph
and his exertions in favor of his brethren."1
Dillmann2 contends for a still
larger basis of truth.
In fact he
goes so far that it is surprising that he does
not go
farther, and admit with Delitzsch that the history
is at least
substantially reliable throughout. He
says:
"Is
there any reason to refuse to these patriarchal sagas
of Israel
all historical content, so much so that it has
even been
doubted or denied that their ancestors ever
were in
Canaan, and they have even been declared to be
1 This mode of manufacturing
history by substituting fanciful con-
jectures for
facts, in which the critics so freely indulge in the patri-
archal,
Mosaic, and even later periods, is well characterized in the fol-
lowing
passage from an unpublished lecture of my distinguished prede-
cessor, Dr.
Addison Alexander:
"Let ns suppose that a future critic
of our revolutionary history--
and if a
German so much the better-should insist upon the improba-
bilty that
such a revolution could have been occasioned by causes so
trifling as
the Stamp Act or the tax on tea, and should therefore repre-
sent them as
symbolical myths occasioned by the rivalry of England
and America
at a late period in the tea trade with China and by the
disputes
respecting an international copyright.
Such a writer would,
of course,
find no difficulty in going further and regarding Washington
as an
unnatural and impossible character, yet highly striking and ap-
propriate as
a genuine type of patriotic and republican virtues. It is
plain that
this ingenious child's play could be carried on ad infinitum;
and this
very facility deprives it of all force as proof that the imagi-
nary process
was a real one, or that the stream of history flows backward
from its
estuary to its source. In spite of all
sophistical refinements
the common
sense of mankind will still cleave to the lesson taught by
all analogy,
that primitive history must deal with individualities, and
that philosophical
myths can only be obtained from them by genera-
izing
combination."
2 Genesis, pp. 215, 216.
566 CONCLUSION
'tendency'
fictions of the period of the kings? . . .
Doubtless
the reflection of later persons, times, and rela-
tions is
thrown back on the saga forms of antiquity, and
the latter
become involuntarily types of the former, but
there must
first be a background for that which is more
recent to
mirror itself upon. . . . It is not
impossi-
ble even
that obscure reminiscences of actual historical
persons may
have attached themselves to them, though
naturally no
proof of it can be adduced, for extra-
biblical
testimonies are wanting. . . . A main
con-
sideration
here is that the religion founded by Moses
cannot be
historically explained without the previous
stage of a
purer faith respecting God (at least as com-
pared with
ordinary heathenism), such as according to
Genesis was
possessed by the patriarchs. . . . And
such a
higher religious culture almost necessarily pre-
supposes
personal mediators or bearers. As the
forma-
tion of
states only takes place through leading spirits or
heroes, so
too the stadia of the development of religion
are linked
to prominent persons. The patriarchal
sagas
in Genesis
represent Abraham as the head of a purer
faith
respecting God in the midst of heathen darkness,
as a man of
a mind eminently disposed toward God and
faith, who
was accustomed to hear and obey the voice
and
instruction of God in all the junctures and events of
his life,
who made advances in the knowledge of the
being and
will of God, and who grounded his family and
his
neighborhood in this higher knowledge.
We must
almost
presuppose the existence of one or more such
men, whether
they were called Abraham or somethrng
else if it
be correct that Moses could link on to the God
of his
fathers. To be sure, if one denies, as
many now
do, the work
of Moses likewise, and makes the herds-
man Amos or
Elijah the opponent of Baal the founder
of the
higher God-consciousness of Israel, that linking is
WHEN AND WHERE PRODUCED 567
no longer
needed. The whole patriarchal saga must
dis-
solve in fog
and mist on this way of regarding things."
Stade and Kuenen fix the age of the
patriarchal saga
on the basis
of their revolutionary conception of the his-
tory of
Israel. Thus Stade1
says: "Abraham as the
father of
Isaac and grandfather of Jacob presupposes the
government
of Judah over all Israel, and the complete
amalgamation
of the Edomite clan Caleb with Judah;
the
Jacob-Joseph saga presupposes the divided king-
dom." And Kuenen:2 "The sagas about
the patri-
archs . . .
presuppose the unity of the people
(which only
came into existence with and by means of
the
monarchy) as a long-accomplished fact which had
come to
dominate the whole conception of the past com-
pletely." "The welding process (i.e., of the sagas
relat-
ing to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) cannot have begun till
the national
unity was established; and it must have
reached its
ultimate completeness when the stories out
of which
Gen. xii. sqq. is worked up and compiled were
written." The conclusion is hence drawn that the Pen-
tateuchal
documents must be considerably later than the
time of
David, or even of Rehoboam. But it rests
upon
a theory of
the history of
the clearest
Scriptural statements, and has no real basis
in the few
passages which have been wrested to its sup-
port.
A more common argument of date is drawn
from the
localities
mentioned in the lives of the patriarchs, as
stition
consecrated these places, where divine communi-
cations were
made to the patriarchs, or where they erected
altars and
worshipped God; and idolatrous sanctuaries
were
established there. By a complete
inversion of the
real facts
of the case it is alleged that the narratives of reve-
1 Geschichte, p, 128, 2 Hexateuch, pp.
226, 227.
568 CONCLUSION
lations
granted to the patriarchs and of worship offered by
them are not
records of real facts, but are stories which
grew up at
these sanctuaries to enhance their credit.
The authors
of these narratives as they appear in Gene-
sis, it is
claimed, intended thereby to give sanction to
these sanctuaries
and express their approval of them.
The stern
condemnation of the worship at these sanctu-
aries by the
prophets Hosea and Amos indicates, it is
said, a
change of mind toward them on the part of the
best people
of that period. This is thought to fix
the
limit, below
which narratives commendatory of these
sanctuaries
could not have been written. It is hence
inferred
that J and E, to which the great body of the
patriarchal
narratives are referred, must have been
written
shortly before the time of Hosea and Amos.
Two questions still remain to divide the
critics in re-
spect to
these documents. One is as to their
relative
age; the
other, the part of the country in which they
were
produced. On the one hand it is argued
by Well-
hausen and
Kuenen that J must be older than E, since
it adheres
more closely to primitive popular beliefs, as
shown in its
crude anthropomorphic representations of
the
Deity. To which Dillmann replies that
like an-
thropomorphisms
are found in the prophets and in other
writings of
the Old Testament along with the most ex-
alted ideas
of God, and he adduces what he considers
abundant
proofs that the author of J was in possession
of E, and
made use of it in preparing his own history.
Wellhausen and Kuenen maintain that both J
and E
belonged to
the northern kingdom of Israel because of
the
prominence given to Joseph, the connection of Jacob
with Bethel
and Shechem, Mahanaim and Penuel, as well
as
Beersheba, which was a sanctuary reverenced in north-
ern Israel,
as appears from Amos v. 5; viii. 14.
Dillmann
concedes
that E was a North-Israelite, but claims that
WHEN AND WHERE PRODUCED 569
belonged to
the kingdom of.. Judah, inasmuch as he
speaks of
Hebron as the abode of Abraham (xiii. .18;
xviii. 1)
and of Jacob (xxxvii. 14), and gives prominence
to Judah in
the history of Joseph (xxxvii. 26 sqq.; xliii.
3 sqq. ;
xliv. 16 sqq.; xlvi. 28), as well as in ch. xxxviii.
But J also
links Abraham with Bethel and Shechem (xii.
6, 8; xiii.
3, 4), and dwells as largely as E upon the life
and dignity
of Joseph; and his account of Judah in chs.
xxxvii.,
xxxviii. is not of the most creditable sort.
The
divergence
of the critics as well as the incompatibility of
the facts of
the narratives with either theory show that
these
narratives have not been warped by tribal partiali-
ties or
jealousies; so that the argument for the residence
of their
authors in either one of the kingdoms is abortive.
And even the
attempt of Wellhausen and Kuenen to
patch up their
theory by the assumption of a Judaean
edition of
both J and E only complicates their scheme
without
improving it.
One more alleged evidence of the date of
the docu-
ments is
sought in allusions to late historical events
which, it is
claimed, are found in them, and in the style
of religious
thought and teaching by which they are char-
acterized. Thus in Noah's prediction (ix. 25-27) of the
subjugation
of Canaan by Shem, it is said that the reign
of Solomon
is presupposed; in Isaac's blessing (xxvii.
29, 39
seq.), David's victories over the Edomites, their
rebellion
under Solomon, and revolt against Jehoram the
son of
Jehoshaphat; in the covenant of Jacob and Laban
(xxxi. 44
sqq.), the wars of the Aramaeans and Israelites
for the
possession of the trans-Jordanic district; in the
promise of
kings to spring from Abraham (xvii. .16) and
Jacob (xxxv.
11), and the blessing upon Judah (xlix. 8-
10), the
reign of David is presupposed; and in xxxvi. 31
the
establishment of the kingdom in Israel.
The falsity
of the
inference de4uce4 from this last passage is shown
570 CONCLUSION
at length in
the discussion of it in the former part of this
volume, pp.
425 sqq. The covenant of Jacob and Laban
is
sufficiently explained by the circumstances of the time.
The
fulfilment of the predictions in Genesis does not
warrant the
assumption that they were written after the
event,
except to him who has no belief in the foreknowl-
edge of God
or in the possibility of his making disclos-
ures of the future.
The correspondence between the religious
ideas which
find
expression in various passages of Genesis and the
teachings of
the prophets is urged in proof that the docu-
ments J and
E must belong to the period of the prophets.
The true
course of religious development in Israel must,
however, be
gathered from a full and careful induction
of all the
facts bearing upon the subject. The
critics re-
verse the
proper order of scientific investigation when
they frame
their own theory in advance on naturalistic
presuppositions,
and then attempt to force the facts into
agreement
with it. They determine what degree of
en-
lightenment
can upon their theory be attributed to a given
period, and
then systematically exclude from that period
everything
that does not fit into their theory. The
amount and
character of the religious teaching to be
found in the
writings of Moses is the only reliable source
from which
it can be ascertained what his teachings really
were. The genuineness of his writings must be inde-
pendently
investigated in the first instance; and then we
shall be in
a position to inquire with some confidence
into the
religion of Moses. But to determine
magisteri-
ally the
limits of his teaching, and then to declare that
the writings
attributed to him cannot be genuine, and
must be
referred to an age long posterior to that in which
he lived,
because they transcend these arbitrarily assumed
limitations,
is not a legitimate method of procedure.
THE END OF THE DISCUSSION 571
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT
The argument is now finished. May it not be truly
said that
the demonstration is complete? The
grounds,
upon which
the existence of documents in Genesis is
rested, have
been severally examined and shown to be
invalid. The alleged repetitions and discrepancies
van-
ish upon
examination, being created by the critics them-
selves, and
due either to misinterpretation or the identi-
fication of
distinct events. The divine names in
repeated
instances
fail to correspond with the requirements of the
divisive
hypothesis, which is not needed to explain their
alternation,
since this is most satisfactorily accounted for
from their
own proper signification and general biblical
usage;
moreover, It does not render, and does not even
pretend to
render, a rational account of their employ-
ment and
distribution. The alleged diversity of
diction,
style, and
conception is either altogether factitious or is
due to
differences in the subject matter and not to a di-
versity of
writers. The continuity and
self-consistency
of Genesis,
contrasted with the fragmentary character
and mutual
inconsistencies of the documents, prove that
Genesis is
the original, of which the so-called documents
are but
severed parts. The role attributed to
the re-
dactor is an
impossible one, and proves him to be an un-
real
personage. And the arguments for the
late date of
the
documents and for their origin in one or other of the
divided
kingdoms are built upon perversions of the his-
tory or upon
unproved assumptions. What more is
needed to
demonstrate the utter futility of the claim that
such
documents ever existed?
In the legislative porlion of the
Pentateuch the ques-
tion turns
no longer upon literary criteria, but upon an
entirely
different principle: Are the
institutions and en-
572 CONCLUSION
actments of
the Pentateuch the growth of ages or the
product of
one age and of a single mind? It is here
that the
battle of the Mosaic authorship must be fought.
Meanwhile,
the investigations thus far conducted justify
at least a
negative conclusion. The so-called
anach-
ronisms of
the Book of Genesis have been examined,
and nothing
has been found to militate against its being
the work of
Moses. It is plainly designed to be intro-
ductory to
the law. And if that law was given by
Moses,
as has
always been believed, and as the Scripture abun-
dantly
declare, then Genesis, too, was his work.
INDEX
OF THE CRITERIA OF THE DIFFERENT DOCUMENTS
(The numbers
refer to the pages on which they are discnssed; numbers
enclosed in parentheses to numbers appearing on the page.)
I. THE DIVINE NAMES
EL, 404,
497, 525 JEHOVAH,
31,41, 51, 64, 89, 144,
El-Elohe-Israel,
382 151 sqq., 181, 259, 276, 284,
Elohim, 6,
41, 51, 64, 89, 151 303, 320, 326, 331, 340, 350,
sqq., 221, 258, 265, 276, 284, 369, 380,' 434, 455, 460, 525,
295, 310, 331, 340, 350, 369, 538 sqq.
380, 404, 435, 460, 467, 468,
482, 491, 497, 518, 538 sqq.
El Shaddai,
God Almighty, 221, SHADDAI,
Almighty, 525
233 (6), 332, 482, 518
II. STYLE, CONCEPTION, AND THE RELATION OF
PASSAGES
AGE,
statements of, P, 98 (2), CALL
and answer, E, 286 (3)
178 (5) Call,
the divine, J, 181 (1)
Altar and
sacrifice, J, 116 (1), Clean
and unclean beasts, J,
163 (4) 116 (1)
Angel, J,
215 (1) Conception,
554
Angel
calling out of heaven, E, Covenant
and its sign, P, 100 (6)
287.(4) Covenant,
similarity of, P, 333 (4)
Anthropomorphisms,
J, 31 sqq. Cross
reference, J, 193 (1)
Anthropopathies,
J, 63 (11)
Dangerous to see God, J, 215 (2)
BACK
reference, E, 342 (2), Detailed
enumeration, P, 102 (10)
370 (1) Diction,
548 sqq.
Back
reference, J, 241 (2), 381 (1) Diffuseness,
P, 101 (7), 269, 402
Back
reference, P, 50 (1), 99 (5), Discrepancies,
532 sqq.
231 (1). 269, 297 (13), 311 (7), Disjunctive question, J, 245 (31)
518 (3), 526 (1)
Beauty of
description, J, 240 (1) ETYMOLOGY,
J, 145 (3), 216 (4)
574 INDEX
FIRST-BORN
mentioned, P, 313 (4) 376, 385, 405, 464 seq., 468,
Formality,
P, 50 (2), 296 (2) 506 (2), 511, 529
Formula,
concluding (of gene- From E to
P, 406
alogies), P, 141 (2) From J to E, 159,274,
318, 325,
Formulae,
constantly recurring, 327, 356, 373, 375, 450, 459
P, 101 (7) seq., 473 seq., 478
From J to P, 15, 33 sqq., 72
HUMAN
feelings attributed to seq., 77, 134, 169 seq., 175,
God, J, 63 (11) 209 sqq., 241 (2), 250, 299, 527
From P to JE, 35 seq., 78, 82,
IMAGE of
God, P, 102 (9) 158 sqq., 171 seq., 217 sqq.,
246 seq., 249, 298, 309, 316,
JEHOVAH
comes down from 322., 330 seq., 335 seq., 363,
heaven, J, 145 (2) 383, 386 seq., 406 seq., 493,
LAW woven in
P 99 (5) 513 seq., 527
Repetitions, 532 sqq.
MEASUREMENTS,
P, 99 (4)
SINFULNESS of men, inherent, J,
NIGHT
vision, E, 286 (2) 117(2)
No sacrifice
till Moses, P, 117,163 Style, 548
sqq.
PROMISE of
blessing to all na- TIME, exact
statements of, P,
tions, J, 163 (3), 243 (25) 98 (3), 213 (1), 232 (3)
Promise of
nations, kings, and Tithe, E,
342 (5)
princes, P, 232 (2) .
UNADORNED character of the
RECKONING by
years of life, P, narrative, P, 332 (1)
98 (2) Unfavorable
representation, J,
Redundancy
of style, P, 233 (5) 216 (3)
References
expressed or implied
from one document to an- VERBOSITY, 141 (3) other:
From E to J,
160seq., 255seq., WINDOWS of
heaven, P, 101 (8)
263, 322 sqq., 337 seq., 357, Worship, J, 181 (2)
III. CHARACTERISTIC WORDS AND PHRASES
(Niphal,
Hiphil, Hithpael, and future forms of verbs are arranged
under their
first radical letter. Nouns preceded by
the article or an inseparable
preposition
are arranged in accordance with the initial letter of the noun.)
MdAxAhA J, 61
(4) ylaUx
J, 217 (12)
hmAdAxE J,
341 (4) MyDiW;Ka
RUx P, 161, 170, 204
ynAdoxE J,
241 (4) zHaxno
P, 402 (4)
INDEX 575
hz.AHuxE P,
233 (7) xybihe (to Egypt) E, 451 (3)
wyxihA J,
484 (6) yBi
J, 486 (22)
Cr,xAhA ynedoxE
wyxihA E, 484 (6) yTif;Baw;ni yBi R, 288 (1)
OTwxiv; wyxi (of beasts) J, 117 rhas.oha
tyBe J, 484 (7)
j`xa E, 333 (1) hrAykiB; J, 250 (1)
lk,xo J,
485 (12) yTil;bil;,
yTil;Bi J, 242 (14)
hbAk;xA P,
112 (21) ynifEnaK;ha
tOnB; j, 299
lxe (for hl.,xe) J, 243 (23) rkAne-NB, P,
235 (12)
hlAxA J,
326 (3) rUbfEBa
J, 118 (6); e, 276 (3)
OTxi Myhilox< E, 271 (1) rBA
E, 485 (12)
OBli-lx, J,
118 (5) xrABA
P, 29 (1)
hmAxA E,
259 (12) hvhy
j`UrB; J, 326 (4)
hnAm;xA E,
253 (12) j`reBAt;hi R, 289 (5)
OBliB; rmaxA J, 306 (17) B;
j`rab;ni J, 181 (5)
lx, or l; rmaxA E, 262 (5)
tHaTam;xa J,
483 (3) hlAdoG;
(of age) E, 355 (2)
ynixE P,
204 fvaGA
P, 110 (18)
vym.Afa-lx, Jsax<n, P, 310 (5) MGa
. . . MGa
J, 503 (10)
Jxa J,
243 (19) xvh
MGa J, 137, 292 (3)
qPexat;hi J,
489 wreGe
E, 272 (5)
hTAxa rUrxA J, 40 (6)
ym.iraxEhA P,
320 (5) qbaDA J, 403 (1)
MyirahEna-MraxE J, 298 OBli-lx,
( B;) rB,Di
J, 306 (17)
bg,n.,ha Cr,x, E, 252 (2) ynez;xAB;
rB,Di J, 529 (2)
NfanaK; Cr,x, P, 177 (4) hl.,xehA
MyriBAD;Ka J, 462 (5)
j~yn,pAl; Cr,x, E, 253 (15) hgADA E, 519 (5)
hw.Axi (of a
concubine), P, 214 (3) tUmD;
P, 4
l; rw,xE J, 353 (1) MtArodol;
P, 236 (19)
B; (distributive)
P, 116 (28) Myhilox,hA-tx,
j`l.ehat;hi P, 51 (8)
Mymiy.Aba xBA J, 245 (32) hn.Ahe (adv.) E, 276 (5)
hkAxEBo J, 143 (2) xnA
hn.ehi J, 185 (4)
llag;Bi J,
185 (6) ynin.ahi E, 334 (3)
lyDib;hi P, 4,
5
hmAheB; P,
403 (9) NUe (ending) J, 243 (22)
576 INDEX
Myniquz; J, 270 (2) l; byFyhe J, 185 (2)
rkazA E, 484 (11) HaykiOh E, 276 (7)
rkazA (of God) P, 270 (1) dlayA
(beget) J, 111 (20), 133
hbAqen;U rkAzA P, 498 (2) dl,y,
E, 272,(6), 484 (4)
OTxi Ofr;za P,
109 (17) l;
dl.ayu J, 133
Mk,yreHExa Mk,fEr;za P, 109 (17) dyliOh
P, 111 (20), 234 (10)
Nymiyhe
J, 194 (2)
qzaHA E, 506 (3) yy.eHa
ynew; ymey; P, 311 (6)
hy.Aha (wild beast) P, 113 (22) JysiOh J, 40 (8)
hy.AH< P,
120 (12) rw,xE
Nfaya R, 289 (3)
(fraz,) hy.AHi J, 120 (12) bqofEya
E, 450 (1)
Cr,xAhA ty.aHa P, 4 hx,r;ma
tpayvi rxaTo tpay; E,
355
hd,W.Aha ty.aHa J, 30 (2) (3)
MOlHE E,
260 (4) Okrey;
yxec;yo P, 498 (7)
NOl.Ha J, 119 (9) gyc.,hi (;gcayA) J, 503 (7)
Lhehe J, 61
(2) rcayA
J, 29 (1)
hlAliHA J, 241 (8) rc,ye J, 62 (6)
tm,He ; E, 273 (8) MUqy; J, 119 (10)
tm,x<v, ds,H, J, 305 (6) dyriOh,
drayA (to Egypt)
J, 451 (3)
hcAHA J, 381 (5) hdAr; (inf. of drayA) E, 489 (3)
hrAHA J,
245 (30) rfawa-tx,
wrayA J, 306 (19)
vynAyfeb; hrAHA E, 491 (2) lxerAW;yi
J, 450 (1)
qwaHA P, 402 (3) wye (with suf.) J, 306 (11)
bwayA P, 192 (3)
hx,r;ma tbaFo J, 306 (13)
bOF (physical)
J, 61 (5) dbeKA
J, 485 (14)
hHAFA E, 273 (9) wbaKA
P, 4
NfaFA E, 492 (3) hKo (local) E, 287 (5)
Mr,F, J,
242 (13) NKe-lfaa
yKi J, 243 (18)
Mr,F,B; E, 334 (2) rWABA-lKA P, 103 (11)
Cr,xAhA
yyeOG-lKA J, 243 (25)
fdayA J(euphemism)
J, 306 (14) hl.Aki
J, 333 (2)
fDavat;hi J, 489 yHaha-lKA
P, 118 (7)
tdoyA J, 509 (9) rkAzA-lKA P, 235 (14)
hbAhA (bhayA) J, 456 (6) yHa-lKA
J, 118 (7)
dyHiyA E, 287 (6) ryfi rfawa yxec;yo-lKA P, 403 (11)
INDEX 577
lKel;Ki E,
506 (2), 530 (2) xOPs;mi
J, 483 (1)
hmAdAxEhA tOHP;w;mi-lKA J, 181 (4) Ffam;
J, 485 (16)
hnAl.AKu E,
484 (8) xcAm;n.iha
J, 507 (2)
hW,fAye xlo NKe J, 403 (5) NHe
xcAmA J, 62 (10)
tyriB; traKA J, 107 (16), 276 (2) hv,q;mi
P, 4, 5
xvhiha wp,n.,ha htAr;k;niv; P, 236 hmAheB;ha
hneq;mi J, 509 (8)
(20)
rqABaha
hneq;m; J, 509 (8)
Mys.iPa tn,toK; J, 451 (2) Nxco.ha
hneq;mi J, 509 (8)
Tr,KoW;ma
E, 354 (1)
L; at J,
118 (4) rmAw;mi
E, 484 (7)
brome rpes.Ayi xlo J, 217 (11) MTOHP;w;mil;
P, 142 (4)
bbAle E,
260 (2) Mh,yteHop;w;mil;
P, 104 (13)
hz., hm.AlA J,
243 (17)
HqalA P, 176 (1) xnA J, 185 (3)
NOwlA P,
145 (1) hvhy
Mxun; R, 289 (2)
FyBihi
(FbanA) J, 241 (5)
Dxom; dxom; P,
116 (27) xybinA
E, 252 (5)
zxAme J, 462 (3) bg,n,
E, 252 (2),
273 (2)
lkAxEma J, 112 (21) dk,n,vA Nyni E, 277 (10)
Nxeme J,
519 (2) ryKihi
(rkanA
) J, 456 (4)
txam; P, 269 (1) fsanA
E, 252 (2), 273 (2)
Myrigum; P, 234 (8) MyrUfn.;mi
J, 503 (5)
h.mah;mat;hi J, 485 (18) rfana
J, 484 (4), see 272 (6)
tAyWifA txz.o-hma J, 185 (7) vyrAxUAca-lfa
lpanA J, 502 (1)
rkAzA-lKA Mk,lA lOm.hi P, 402 (5) wp,n,
P, 177 (3)
tUm J,
110 (18) lfa
bc.ani J, 341 (2)
tUmTA tOm E,
252 (6) NOyq.Ani
J, 341 (2)
hHAmA J,
111 (19) xWAnA
P, 192 (2)
lUBm.aha yme J, 120 (13) xyWinA
P, 235 (11)
Nymi P,
114 (23) tyriB;
NtanA P, 107 (16)
hlAPek;ma P,
310 (3)
j`xAl;ma J, 215 (1) sUs J, 507 (4)
NOlmA J,
483 (2)
Mynimo E,
371 (10) HmAdAxEhA
dbafA J, 40 (3)
vyfAs.Amal; P,
194 hvhy
db,f, J, 305 (2)
578 INDEX
j~D;b;fa J,
243 (24) dqaPA J, 270 (1)
dxom; dfa e,
334 (4) drap;ni
P, 118 (8), 143 (1), 195
yHa j~d;Of J, 502 (4) hbArAv; hrAPA P, 105 (15)
MlAOf (compounds
of) P 235 (17) CraPA
J, 341 (3)
rkafA J,
404 (8) MywirAPA
J, 530 (4)
tdoOx-lfa E,
530 (5) HtaP,
J, 486 (20)
yKer;Bi-lfa E,
253 (11)
rbaD;-lfa E,
253 (11) hdAce
E, 484 (9)
xrAqA NKe-lfa J, 61 (3) rhaco
P, 119 (9)
hmAdAxEhA yneP;-lfa J, 61 (3) Haylic;Hi
J, 306 (16)
bc.efat;hi J, 62
(8) Ml,c,
P, 50 (5)
NObc.Afi J, 30
(7) hrAyfic;
J, 250 (2)
Mc,f, (self-same) P, 114 (24) hrAcA E, 484 (10)
yriWAb;U ymic;fa J, 353 (3)
rcafA J,
216 (9) hvAHETaw;hiv;
ddaqA J, 307 (20)
rw,xE bq,fe R,
289 (4) Mym.ifa
lhaq; P, 333 (6)
rKaKiha yrefA P, 192 (5) MUq
(be made sure) P, 297
(9)
hd,W.Aha bW,fe J, 30 (2) tyriB;
Myqihe P, 107 (16)
hWAfA J, 29 (1) hnAFaq;
(of age) E, 355 (2)
hwfE (inf.)
E, 530 (3) lqa
J, 119 (11)
ds,H, hWAfA J,
245 (29) ll.aqi
J, 181 (6)
rtafA J,
321 (1) NyAn;qi
P, 370 (2)
hc,qA
J, 508 (5)
B; fgAPA E,
342 (3) hvhy
Mweb; xrAqA J, 326 (5)
MrAxE NDaPa P,
320 (4) ymiw;
Mh,bA xreq.Ayi E, 519 (3)
Ucponi (CUP) J, 143 (1) txraq;li J, 242 (16)
qHAc;yi dHaPa E, 371 (9) hrAq;hi
J, 306 (15)
br,H, ypil; J,
143 (1)
wgl,yPi J,
292 (2) hxor;
(infin.) E, 518 (1)
ll.ePi E, 519 (4) hB,r;xa
hBAr;ha J, 216 (10)
ll.ePat;Hi E,
260 (3) tw,q,
hbero E, 273 (10)
MfaPah J,
241 (9) hdAr;
(inf. of drayA) E, 498 (3)
hp, hcAPA J, 40
(10) txraq;li CUr J, 353 (2)
hcAp;nA (CcaPA) J, 118 (8) qHer;ha E, 273 (13)
rcaPA J,
242 (12) bk,r,
J, 530 (4)
INDEX 579
wUcr;, wkarA
P, 176 (2) rq,BoBa
MyKiw;hi J, 244 (26);
E 272
Wm,r,, WmarA
P, 115 (26) (3)
fare J,
456 (5) ryHixA
Mwev; J, 41 (13)
yneyfeB; ffarA E, 272 (4) h.mAw;U
J, 293 (4)
qra J, 62
(7) lx,
fmawA P, 297 (10)
lOqB
fmawA E, 272 (2)
lOql;
fmawA J, 216 (8)
hd,WA J, 39
(2) yy.eHa
ynew; P, 296 (5)
yOgl; MUW E,
273 (12) hHAp;wi
J, 353 (4)
hd,W.aha HayWi J, 30 (2) JqawA
J, 241 (6)
lyxim;Wihi J,
194 (2) Cr,W,, CrawA P, 115 (25)
xneW J,
306 (18) tdol;OT
P, 96 (1)
hpWA J,
145 (1) hbAfEOT
J, 503 (6)
qWa E,
483 (3) bwAOT
P, 297 (7)
hcAr;xa hvAHETw;hi (hHawA) J,
244 MTa
J, 507 (3)
hyHiw;ha, tHewa
P, 111 (19) MypirAT;
E, 371 (3)
IV. THE ENGLISH EQUIVALENTS
ABATED, J,
119 (11) Beast of
the earth, P, 4, 30 (2)
Abomination,
J, 503 (6) Beast of
the field, J, 30 (2)
Advanced in
days, J, 245 (32) Because (Nfaya), R, 289 (3)
Afar off, E,
273 (13) Because
(bq,fe), R, 289 (4)
Again, J, 40
(8) Because
of (llag;Ba), J, 185 (6)
All flesh,
P, 103 (11) Because
of (rUbfEBa), J, 118 (6)
All living
things, P, 118 (7)
All that
went out of the gate of Before,
.J, 242 (13)
the
city, P, 403 (11) Beforetime,
E, 371
Also, J, 243
(19) Beget,
J or P, 111 (20), 133, 234
Am I in the
place of God, E, (10)
530 (4) Begin,
J, 61 (2)
Angel (of
Jehovah), J, 215 (1) Behold
now, J, 185 (4)
Angry, to
be, J, 245 (30) Bethuel
the Aramrean, P, 320 (5)
Aram-naharaim,
J, 305 (3) Bless one's
self, R, 289 (5)
Archer, E,
273 (10) Blessed
of Jehovah, J, 326 (4)
Blot out, J, 111 (19)
BEAR, to, P,
192 (2) Bondmaid,
J, 353 (4)
Beast, P,
403 (9) Bone
and flesh, my, J, 353 (3)
580 INDEX
Born to,
were, J, 133 Door,
J, 486 (20)
Both. . .
and, J, 503 (10) Dream,
E, 260 (4)
Bottle, E,
273 (8) Dwell,
P, 192 (3)
Bow himself
to the, earth, J, 244
(27) EATING,
P, 112 (21)
Bow the head
and worship, J, Elder,
E, 355 (2)
307 (20) End,
J, 508 (5)
Break forth,
J, 341 (3) Enemy
J, 306 (18)
Bring down
(to
Brother's
name, and his, J, 41 (13) (17)
Burn in
one's eyes (anger) E, 491 Every
living thing, J, 118 (7)
(2) Exceedingly
(dxom;
dxom;), P, 116
Bush of the
field, J, 30 (2) (27)
Exceedingly (dxom;
dfa), E, 334
CALL upon
the name of Jehovah, (4)
J, 326 (5) Except, E, 276 (4)
Cast out, E,
272 (5) Expire,
P, 110 (18)
Chariots, J,
530 (4)
Child, E,
272 (6) FAIL,
J, 507 (3)
Children of
Heth, P, 296 (3) Fair,
J, 61 (5)
Circumcised,
every male of you Fair of
form and fair to look
be, P, 402 (5) upon, E, 355 (3)
Cleave unto,
J, 403 (1) Fair
to look upon, J, 306 (13)
Collection,
P, 4, 5 Families,
according to their, P,
Come
(incitement), J, 456 (6) 104 (13), 142 (4)
Comest, as
thou, J, 143 (2) Families
of the earth, all the, J,
Concubine,
J, 292 (2) 181 (4)
Covenant,
conclude or make, J, Far
be it, J. 241 (8)
107 (16) ; E, 276 (2) Father of, J, 137
Covenant,
establish or ordain, P, Fear
of Isaac, E, 371 (9)
107 (16) Fell
on his neck, J, 502 (1)
Create, P,
29 (1) Field,
J, 39 (2)
Creep,
creeping thing, P, 115 Find
favor, J, 62 (10)
(25, 26) First-born,
J, 250 (1)
Cry, J, 241
(7) Fodder,
J, 483 (1)
Curse, J,
181 (6) Food
(lk,xo), J, 485 (12)
Cursed art
thou, J, 40 (6) Food
(hlAk;xA), P, 112 (21)
DAUGHTERS of
the Canaanites, Forasmuch
as, J, 456 (8)
J, 305 (4) Form, to, J, 29 (1)
Days of the
years of the life, P, For
therefore, J, 243 (18)
311 (6) For
the sake of, J, 242 (11)
Destroy, P,
111 (19) Found,
J, 507 (2)
Divide, P,
4, 5 Friend,
J, 456 (5)
INDEX 581
From the
time that, J, 462 (3) JACOB,
E, 450 (1)
Fruitful,
be, and multiply, P, Journey, to J 498 (1)
105 (15) ,
KEEP alive, J, 120 (12)
GATHER, P,
176 (2). Kind
(species), P. 114 (23)
Gathered
unto his people, P, 310 Kindness
and truth, J, 305 (6)
(5) Know
(euphemism), J, 306 (14)
Gathering
together, P, 4, 5
Generations,
P, 96 (1) LABAN
the Aramrean, E, 371 (4)
Generations,
throughout their, Lad,
J, 484 (4)
P, 236 (19) Land of
Get, P, 176
(2) Land
of
Get
possessions, P, 402 (4) Land
of
Getting, P,
370 (2) Light,
a (in the ark), P, 119 (9)
Give up the
ghost, P, 310 (4) Light
upon, to, E, 342 (3)
God was with
him, E, 271 (1) Likeness,
P, 4
Goods, P,
176 (2) Lip
(language), J, 145 (1)
Go to the
right, the left, J, 194 (2) Little,
a, J, 485 (16)
Grain, E,
485 (12) Living
substance, J, 119 (10)
Grieved, to
be, J, 62 (8) Lodging-place,
J, 483 (2)
Grievous in
the eyes, E, 272 (4) Long
for, P, 402 (3)
Ground, J,
341 (4) Look,
J, 241 (5)
Ground, on
the face of the, J, Look
forth, J., 241 (6)
61 (3) Lord,
my (ynAdoxE), J, 241 (4)
Grow, E, 519
(5)
MACHPELAH, P, 296 (4)
HEARKEN to
the voice of, J, 216 Made sure, P, 297
(9)
(8); E, 272 (2) Maid-servant, E, 259 (1)
Heart, E,
260 (2) Make,
J, 29 (1)
Heart, at or
unto his, J, 118 (5) Make
a nation, E, 273 (12)
Heavy, J,
485 (14) Make
an end, J, 333 (2)
Herb of the
field, J, 30 (2) Make
himself known, E, 489
Here, E, 276
(5) Make
prosperous, J, 306 (16)
Him also,
to, J, 137 Male
and female, P, 103 (12)
Horsemen, J,
530 (4) Male
and his female, J, 117 (3)
Horses, J,
507 (4) Man,
the, J, 61 (4), 484 (6)
House, J,
333 (4) Man,
the lord of the land, E, 484
Hundred, P,
269 (1) (6)
Meet, to, J, 242 (16)
IMAGE, P, 50
(5) Multiply
greatly, J, 216 (10)
Imagination,
J, 62 (6)
In order
that, E, 276 (3) NAME,
and her, J, 293 (4)
Israel, J,
450 (1) Name
shall be called on them,
It may be,
J, 217 (12) E, 519 (3)
582 INDEX
Nations of
the earth, all the, J, Restrain,
J, 216 (9)
243 (25) Rise up early in the morning, J,
Not to be
numbered for multi- 244 (26) ; E, 272 (3)
tude, J, 217 (11) Run to meet, J, 353 (2)
Not to, J,
242 (14)
Nourished,
E, 506 (2), 530 (2) SACK,
J, 483 (3)
Saith Jehovah, R, 289 (2)
OATH, J, 326
(3) Say
concerning, E, 262 (5)
Offspring
and posterity, E, 277 Seed
with him, P, 498 (2)
(10) Self-same,
P, 114 (24)
On account
of, E, 273 (14) Send
good speed, J, 306 (15)
Only (j`xa), E, 333 (1) Servant of Jehovah, J, 305 (2)
Only (qra), J, 62 (7), She also, J, 292 (3)
Only (son),
E, 287 (6) Shoot,
to, E, 273 (9)
Open the
mouth, J, 40 (10) Show
kindness, J, 245 (29)
Overspread,
was, J, 118 (8) So did he, P,
105 (14)
Sojourner, P, 297 (7)
PADDAN-ARAM,
P, 320 (4) Sojournings,
P, 234 (8)
Parts, J,
509 (9) Sorrow,
J, 30 (7)
Peradventure,
J, 306 (8) Souls,
P, 177 (3)
Perpetuity
(compounds of), P, Speak
in his heart, J, 306 (17)
235 (17) Speak
in the ears of, J, 529 (2)
Person, P,
177 (3) Spent,
to be, J, 507 (3)
Possession,
P, 233 (7) Spread
abroad, J, 341 (3)
Possession
of cattle, J, 509 (8) Stood
on or over, J, 341 (2)
Possession
of flocks, J, 509 (8) Stranger,
P, 235 (12)
Possession
of herds, J, 509 (8) Subdue,
P, 4
Possess the
gate, J, 306 (19) Substance,
P, 176 (2)
Pray, to, E,
260 (3) Swarm,
swarming things, P, 115
Pray thee,
I, J, 185 (3) (25)
Presented,
J, 503 (7) Swear
by myself, R, 288 (1)
Press, to,
J, 242 (12)
Prevailed,
E, 506 (3) TERAPHIM,
E, 371 (3)
Prince, P,
235 (11) That
soul shall be cut off, P, 236
Prison, J,
484 (7) (20)
Provision,
E, 484 (9) Therefore
was called, J, 530 (6)
Purchase, P,
234 (9) This
time, J, 241 (9) .
Thou and thy seed after thee, P,
RECOGNIZE,
J, 456 (4) 109 (17)
Refrain
himself, J, 489 Thou
art yet alive, J, 502 (4)
Refused, J,
519 (2) Thought,
E, 519 (4)
Remember, E,
484 (11) Thy
servant, J, 243 (24)
Reprove, E,
276 (7) Till
the ground, J, 40 (3)
INDEX 583
Times, E,
371 (10) What
is this that thou hast done, Toil, J, 30 (7)
J. 185 (7)
Tongue
(language), P, 145 (1) Wherefore,
J, 243 (17)
Took, P, 176
(1) Which
belong to, J, 353 (1)
Treated
well, J, 185 (2) Which
ought not to be done, J,
Trouble, to,
J, 404 (8) 403 (5)
Tunic, E,
451 (2) Wife
(concubine), P, 214 (5)
Tunic, long,
J, 451 (2) Wild
beast, P, 113 (22)
Window (in the ark), J, 119 (9)
UPON the
knees of, E, 530 (5) With the
edge of the sword, J,
Urge, J, 242
(12) 403 (7)
YEARS of the life of, P, 296 (5)
VISIT, J,
270 (1) You
and your seed after you, P,
109 (17)
WAGES, E,
354 (1) Younger
(hrayfic;), J, 25CJ (2)
Ward, E, 484
(7) Younger
(hn.AFaq;), E, 355 (2)
Waters of
the flood, J, 120 (13) Youth,
J, 503 (5)