Genesis 11

1. AND the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they 2 journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they 3 said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick 4 for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name; lest we be scattered 5 abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the 6 tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is what they begin to do: and now nothing will be 7 withholden from them, which they purpose to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound 8 their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore was the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

The same record that affirms and traces the original unity of the race, also gives us the old- est and the only account of its dispersion, its early locations, migrations and movements. We are in a track otherwise untrodden. It is but recently that we have been able fully to test the correctness and value of this ancient source of information. S. C. B.

1,2. This account of the confusion of the language of men and the dispersion of nations over the earth, is in the order of thought and of time anterior to the ethnological chart in the tenth chapter. The tenth chapter presents really the results which followed the confusion of the “lip,” as recorded in the eleventh chap- ter. The record gives us to understand that this confusion occurred during the era of Peleg, the fifth in descent from Noah. “The whole earth was of one language and one speech.” To take the Hebrew Saphah literally, “was of one lip and one stock of words.” In the previous chapter the word “tongue” is used to describe what is here expressed in two words. “One stock of words” refers to the substance and material of language, as the “one lip” refers to the mode and manner of using and connecting the matter of speech. Until this time then the original language taught Adam as we most sup- pose by inspiration had continued without change. The occasion of the change was that as certain families became enterprising, and pressed on from the original seat of the family of Noah, in the highlands of Armenia, they came to the plains of the Euphrates and the

Tigris, very fertile, and affording the means of rapid advance in wealth and population. And a determination is immediately formed to make here not only a permanent abode, but a grand centre of empire. S. R.

Man’s “evil imagination,” which remained after the flood, now took a different direction, and shows itself in an impious attempt to unite the whole of mankind in rebellion against God. The first land peopled after the flood was Shinar, Mesopotamia, or Babylonia. The two great rivers, Euphrates and Tigris, water this tract of country, which in ancient times was re- owned for its fertility, though now a barren plain. The vast plain has a gentle declension from west to east. The Euphrates, when the snow melts on the mountains, overflows its banks, and descends into the level country of Mesopotamia. From this circumstance the in- habitants were induced, at an early period in its history, to convey the water by means of canals over the whole country; so that in time it was entirely intersected by these tributaries from the Euphrates and Tigris. Herodotus speaks as an eye-witness of the astonishing fer- tility of Babylonia. Gerl.

The very greatness of the new beginning of humanity on earth evinces that the primitive man was a magnificent being even in his wicked- ness. There is no hint here of any gradual de- velopment from savagery. If not scientific and civilized in our modern sense, he was at least a being of great power both of body and mind. If he had everything to learn, man learned most rapidly. Even aside from the inspired history the researches among the earliest monuments of man’s existence reveal a degree of knowledge supposed to belong only to modern times. The skill in mechanical arts and manufactures, whether gained scientifically or not, was evidently the result of mental and bodily power of the highest order. These early men had great aims, attempted great things, and accomplished great things. Though, as we have seen in chapter 10, there are but a few words concerning their doings, yet these are stirring words. Nimrod, the mighty hunter, taking the kingdom of Babylon; settlements rapidly following it on the Upper Euphrates; cities sprang up. It was an era of city builders, empire founders. Along with the pioneer and colonizing spirit are exhibited all the tendencies to associated effort. In this respect the inspired account here is fully confirmed by all the researches of our age among those earlier monuments of human existence upon earth. S. R.—The further we ascend toward the commencement of human enterprise, the greater do we find the combination of skill and effort in the production of imposing and colossal works of art. Probably the labor bestowed on the tower of Babel—certainly that bestowed on many a structure in Egypt, pyramid, labyrinth, or temple—would suffice to build a modern city of very respectable dimensions. The truth is, for several centuries after the flood, something of the antediluvian spirit and fashion seems to have prevailed among mankind. Everything was designed and executed on a grand scale, and in the most durable style. Linds’ey.

1-9. We have here the scriptural account of the meaning of the name “Babel,” the primitive term which the Greeks converted into “Babylon,” but which remains even now attached to a portion of the ruins that mark the site of the great city, almost in its original form. It would not have been surprising if profane history had contained no notice of this matter, since it belongs to a very remote antiquity, a time anterior to records. But the fact seems to be that the Babylonians either recorded at the time, or at any rate bore in memory, the transaction. Two Greek writers, who drew their Babylonian histories from native sources, noticed the occurrence, and gave an account of it, which is in most respects very close to the biblical narrative. Alexander Polyhistor said, that “Once upon a time, when the whole race of mankind were of one language, a certain number of them set to work to build a great tower, thinking to climb up to heaven; but

God caused a wind to blow, and cast the tower down, at the same time giving to every man his own peculiar speech. On which account the city was called Babylon.” Abydenus, a somewhat later historian, treated the subject at greater length. “At this time,” he said, “the ancient race of men were so puffed up with their strength and tallness of stature, that they began to despise and condemn the gods, and labored to erect that very lofty tower, which is now called Babylon, intending thereby to scale heaven. But when the building approached the sky, behold, the gods called in the aid of the winds, and by their help overthrew the tower, and cast it to the ground. The name of the ruins is still called Babel; because until this time all men had used the same speech, but now there was sent upon them a confusion of many and diverse tongues.” These passages have long been known, and have been adduced as probable evidence that the native Babylonian records contained a notice respecting the tower of Babel and the confusion of human speech. But it is only recently that such a record has been unearthed. Among the clay tablets brought from Babylonia by Mr. George Smith, and deposited in the British Museum, is one unfortunately much mutilated, which seems clearly to have contained the Babylonian account of the matter. G. R.

3. The Babylonian soil furnished splendid architectural materials for such a purpose. There abounds a fine clay, mingled with sand, which, even sun-dried, forms a good material. But for this great work, to make it ever-during, they will burn them thoroughly. Then the pits or springs of asphalt furnish a cement which hardens into stone. It was a grand conception, even in its wickedness. S. R.—Herodotus describes the building of the walls of Babylon much as the sacred history describes this building of the tower of Babel. He says a deep fess was dug all round the city, from which the mud was taken in large bricks and burnt in furnaces. Then for mud or mortar, they used hot bitumen, and so built the walls of the city. He mentions a town called Is, with a river of the same name near it, about eight days’ journey from Babylon, where much bitumen was obtained and carried to Babylon for the building of the city. E. H. B.—It is interesting to notice how exactly what we know of early Babylonian architecture tallies with what we read in Scripture: “Let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime (or rather, bitumen) had they for mortar.” The small burnt bricks laid in bitumen are still there; not only in the tower but in the still existing ruins of the ancient palace of Babel, which was coeval with the building of the city itself. A. E.

4. There appears a threefold design. “Let us make us a name”—“whose top may reach to heaven”—“lest we be scattered abroad,"—severally evincing pride, arrogance against God, and a conspiracy to establish a universal temporal monarchy in opposition to the divine purposes. In the prediction of Noah (chap. 9 : 25), and in the benediction of Jehovah (chap. 9 : 1, 7), it was intimated that men should spread themselves abroad, and that servitude should be the lot of harm. In both ways they attempted to resist, and independently of God to carry their own will into effect. C. G. B.

The sons of Noah were to be “divided after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations.” This dispersion and these distinctions are a part of the original divine order; the fulfilment of God’s designs for the race which He had made after His own likeness. To overturn that order, to frustrate that design, the wandering tribes met on the plain of Shinar, and said (in other words), let us build a society, not upon faith in the unseen God and His covenant, but upon faith in brick walls. Let us provide securities against the divine power lest it should crush us. The plan was confounded: they left off to build the tower. The earth was overspread, though they determined that it should not be. Distinct families and nations were established, in spite of this attempt to reduce all into one indistinguishable mass. But we are told also that a Babel society was established by a mighty hunter, in whom all have recognized the beginner of the great Asiatic tyrannies. Politics rose up based upon a worship of natural powers, feared, not trusted; whose cruel purposes were to be averted by such a means as human wit and strength could devise. The rulers of these kingdoms owned no Lord of man after whose image they and their subjects were formed; they bowed to the powers which they thought they discerned in the storm, or in the darksky: powers to which they attributed their own qualities; with which they had no sympathy; whose dominion was shadowed forth in their own. Such is society according to man’s conception and arrangement of it. Society, of which self-will is the king, and animals are the subjects. But this was not God’s society. Maurice.

It should ever be borne in mind that the whole race during the space of 500 years after the flood had the opportunity to be thoroughly evangelized. They had the revelation of God to the antediluvian world, enlarged and confirmed in the covenant with Noah, the germinal gospel of Eden already springing forth and shooting up to the view of all in the sacrifices, the typical distinction of clean and unclean, the reverence for human life. They had the instruction of Noah, the great preacher of righteousness, for three hundred and fifty years; and the teaching of Shem, who had been contemporary with Lamech and Methuselah a century before the flood. And the argument could now be enforced by the recent terrors of the flood. Yet in face of all this, men set themselves to resist and defy the revelations of Jehovah. The very existence of heathenism in the world at all evinces the intense enmity of fallen humanity to the true God. If man had not been as depraved as the Scriptures represent, there need never have been any heathenism. S. R.

How do these men reckon without God! “Come, let us build;” as if there had been no stop but in their own will; as if both earth and time had been theirs. Still do all natural men build Babel; forecasting their own plots so resolutely, as if there were no power to countermand them. It is just with God that peremptory determinations seldom prosper; whereas those things which are fearfully and modestly undertaken, commonly succeed. . . . Pride ever looks at the highest: the first man would know as God; these would dwell as God; covetousness and ambition know no limits. And what if they had reached up to heaven? some hills are as high as they could hope to be, and yet are no whit the better; no place alters the condition of nature: an angel is glorious, though he be upon earth; and man is but earth, though he be above the clouds. The nearer they had been to heaven, the more subject should they have been to the violences of heaven; to thunders, lightnings, and those other higher inflammations; what had this been, but to thrust themselves into the hands of the revenger of all wicked insolencies? Bp. H.

5. The Lord came down. The interposing providence of God is here set forth in a sublime simplicity, suited to the early mind of man. 6. In like simplicity is depicted the self-willed, god-defying spirit of combination and ambition which had now budded in the imagination of man. The people is one,—one race, with one purpose. And they have all one lip. They understand one another’s mind. This is their beginning. The Lord sees in this commencement the seed of growing evil. And now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Now that they have made this notable beginning of concentration, ambition, and renown, there is nothing in this way which they will not imagine or attempt. M.

7. In allusion to the boastful language in which the builders of Babel and of its tower had in their self-confidence stated their purpose: “Go to, let us make brick,” etc., Jehovah expressed His purpose of defeating their folly, using the same words: “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language.” And by this simple means, without any outward visible interference, did the Lord arrest the grandest attempt of man’s rebellion, and by confounding their language “scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth.” “Therefore is the name of it called Babel, or confusion.” What a commentary does this history afford to the majestic declarations of the second Psalm! A. E.—He could have hindered the laying of the first stone; and might as easily have made the trench for their foundation the grave of the builders; but he loves to see what wicked men would do, and to let fools run themselves out of breath: what monument should they have had of their own madness and of his powerful interruption, if the walls had risen to no height? To stop them in the midst of their course, he meddles not with either their hands or their feet, but their tongues; not by pulling them out, not by loosing their strings, nor by making them say nothing, but by teaching them to say too much: here is nothing varied but the sound of letters; even this frustrates the work and befools the workmen: how easy it is for God ten thousand ways to correct and forestall the greatest projects of men! He that taught Adam the first words, taught them words that never were. Bp. H.

The diversity of tongues is still God’s will,—is something abiding and good: but sin was the cause of the false unity and of the separation, and severed the one body into many members; so that now the members are strange and hostile to one another. The Gospel of Christ appeared to teach men that they were all of one blood, all had one common head, all had one God as their Father; then the tongues of men, divided through pride at Babel, were united by love and humility at Zion. Gerl.—Multiplicity of language had not been given by the Holy Ghost for a blessing to the Church, if the world had not been before possessed with multiplicity of languages for a punishment: hence it is that the building of our Sion rises no faster because our tongues are divided; happy were the

Church of God if we all spake but one language. Bp. H.

The building of the tower stands as the boundary between the unity of the primitive world and the conflicting movements of diverse tribes in subsequent ages. It explains what otherwise would have remained inexplicable—a manifold diversity of language, with a singular unity of apparently original structure. The moral cause of the dispersion has been thus stated: “The unity which had hitherto bound together the human family was the community of one God, and of one divine worship. This unity did not satisfy them; inwardly they had already lost it; and therefore it was that they strove for another. There is therefore an ungodly unity which they sought to reach through such self-invented, sensual, outward means; while the very thing they feared, they predicted as their punishment.” (Delitzsch) Their purpose was defeated by the confusion of their tongues, or rather by the sudden use of three languages instead of one. The introduction of three tongues or languages would cause such confusion as would put an end to the undertaking. It would have been inconsistent with the method of the Divine government, so far as we can judge, to introduce a multitude of dialects, and make each man unintelligible to his companion; and it appears from the record itself that the confusion was orderly or regulated, for we are told anticipatively in the tenth chapter, that the descendants of Japheth, of Ham, and of Shem, were divided “after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations.” Of each of the three, successively, is the same account given. W. Fraser.

In this matter the account singularly accords with the highest results of modern comparative philology, which concludes that all languages were from one centre originally, and are all divided into three great branches. The one primitive tongue was made manifold by diversifying the law of structure without interfering with the material of which it was composed. The bases or roots of words may remain, while the etymological laws then work and form vocables. Thus from the root fer we have in Latin ferre, ferens, fert, ferebat, etc.; in Greek phere, pherein, pheron, etc., and in the Hebrew perch, paureh, etc., according to the primitive law of each language. Now, the confusion at Babel was of the “lip,” the formative laws of language, without effecting the substance. This was, of course, effective. They could no more converse together than an Englishman and a

German. As the result of this confusion, the language of the earth divided into three great stocks, from which, according to the ethnologists, all of the near three hundred languages of the earth have sprung as variations. S. R.

What the original language was, common to the race up to this point, has been much debated by learned men without arriving at uniform and satisfactory results. Whether it was, as some suppose, the veritable Hebrew tongue; or as others think, the Aramaic, i.e. the Chaldee; or whether it is utterly lost—these are the alternatives; but for the choice between them we can have no very positive data. That the Aramaic (Chaldee) tongue, closely allied to the Hebrew, held its place for ages in the valley of the Euphrates, strongly favors its claim to be, if not—the very tongue of Noah, at least of the same family. These points suggest probabilities but fall short of certainty. H. C.

There is no reason why we should think the confusion of tongues the work of a moment; for details could not be given in so short a notice. Who does not see that the early days of the human race are here given with the utmost brevity, and that the annals of many years are crowded between a few commas? It is more likely that discord was first sent among men, and that from this cause, leaving the work unfinished, they scattered into neighboring regions, and gradually wandered further and further off; and that their languages gradually changed as they were thus isolated over the face of the earth. The facts may have been brought succinctly together by Moses in his compendious narrative, but those interpreters surely err who think that they were carried out to completion by God almost as quickly as the verses themselves are read. Clerici.

8. Scattered them abroad upon the face of the earth.** The migrations of the three primitive families took place from the central regions of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria; and, by successive colonizations, established far distant communities, and various modes of society and government; the Phoenicians, Arabians, Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Libyans, southward; the Persians, Ethiopians, Indians, and Chinese, eastward; the Scythians, Celts, and Tartars, northward; and the Goths, Greeks, and Latins, even as far as the Peruvians and Mexicans of South America, and the Indian tribes of North America, westward. All these various inhabitants of the globe retain a striking affinity in the leading principles of their language, customs, and religions, however diversified in process of time from each other by local circumstances: such affinity evincing their common descent from one and the same parent stock. Hales.

Those tribes that earliest found and retained their near and permanent abodes, other things being equal, earliest developed and best retained the highest forms of life and art. Such was the case in Chaldea, Babylonia, India, with their fertile and productive plains and mighty streams, and, above all, Egypt with its marvellous position close along the banks of its matchless river of clock-work overflow, and its wonderful facilities and resources, and means of luxury, and also along the eastern and northern parts of the Mediterranean, where everything invited to commerce, to invention and production—climate, soil, minerals and harbors, especially in Phoenicia, with her two noble harbors in convenient nearness to the trade and civilization of the more ancient East and to the new products of the rising West. The tribes that drove each other through the length of Europe, through its grim forests and over its mountains, across its rushing streams, and through its winter snows, never developed the higher traits of human life till they too at last became stationary, and that was only after they had nearly extinguished what may have been the settled civilization of their earlier home. S. C. B.

Upon the dispersion, as men travelled further from their original residence into colder, more sterile or unhealthful climes, into mountainous regions, impervious forests or deserts, especially when the colonies were small and indifferently furnished with artisans and mechanics or with implements and utensils of agriculture and carpentry, in such circumstances it is easy to account for the speedy degeneracy of numerous tribes, and for their lapse into a barbarous and savage state. Thus, Northern Asia, the greater part of Africa, the islands of the Mediterranean Sea and of the ocean, Europe and America, appear to have been inhabited by rude and migratory hordes as far back as history and tradition extend; while the same history and tradition, together with Scripture, assure us that Chaldea, Assyria, Phoenicia and Egypt, perhaps India and other eastern countries, were civilized and polished from the remotest times or from the beginning. And these have proved the fountain of civilization, letters and the arts, to every other part of the globe. From the building of Babel to the period at which Egypt appears on the page of authentic history, a great and flourishing empire famed alike for wealth and power, for wisdom and science, the interval is short; the steps are few and easily marked. Lindsley.

The great law of dispersion of the nations has had a steadfast and uniform assertion in the providence of God over the nations and over His church. It is not the purpose of God to permit these universal empires under a fallen and depraved humanity. And well, indeed, for the human race that it is so. In their ambitious dreams, the Nebuchadnezzar, the Alexanders, the Cæsars, the Napoleons, have thought to defy the ordinance of separation enacted in the confusion of languages at Babel. But most notably have they failed. Nay, the Jehovah—Head of the Church—has not intrusted even His imperfectly sanctified people to exist in a universal empire, however earnestly men have struggled to actualize their ideal of an external universal empire in the world, for the spiritual government of men. True, indeed, such an ideal of universal empire figures in all the prophetic visions of Messiah. But that shall be only in an era when humanity shall be universally regenerative and under the rule of the only universal King, who is “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” The history of the Christian Church has developed the same tendency of human nature to the centralization of spiritual power, and the like checks have been interposed by Divine Providence. As soon as Christianity became corrupted and tending to apostasy, then, under the same propensity which showed itself at Babel, spiritual Babel-builders attempted to “make to themselves a name” by a universal ecclesiastical empire concentrating its power in Rome, and ever since the effort for that sort of church unity by external bonds has manifested itself. S. R.

Till very lately it used to be confidently believed that a vast mound, bearing the name of Birs Nimroud, about six miles to the southwest of the modern town Hillah, on the Euphrates, and near the site of Babylon, was the remains of the Tower of Babel. It is a huge brick mound, oblong in form, measuring above 700 yards round, and rising on one side to the height of 200 feet. But in 1854 Sir Henry Rawlinson carefully examined the Birs, and deciphered an inscription which contains its history. From it he gathered that the Birs was not situated in Babylon at all, but in Borsippa; its name was “The Stages of the Seven Spheres;” it was dedicated to Nebo or Mercury; it was repaired by Nebuchadnezzar, whose name appears on the bricks and the cylinders at the corners; but it was built by a former king. W. G. B.—Whatever its history, the ruin, Birs Nimroud, composed so largely of burnt brick laid in bitumen, commemorates the mode of construction peculiar to Babylonia. Indeed we can ascend almost to the date of this tower of Babel. For we have but to cross the Euphrates to the ruins of Mugheir—Ur of the Chaldees—to find in the basement of its temple this combination in its most primitive form. The burnt bricks are of a small size and inferior quality, laid in bitumen, facing a solid mass of sun-dried brick and forming a solid wall outside of it, ten feet in thickness. S. C. B.

On a fragment of a tablet found by the late Mr. Smith among the ruins of Nineveh is the story of the first erection of the tower. Though it is greatly mutilated, yet we can gather from its broken sentences the general outline of events. Between this fragment and the narrative in Genesis the points of agreement are: The sin of the people; their uniting to build a tower; the anger of God; he confounds their speech; the building is abandoned; the people are scattered. Babylon was thus abandoned, and it remained so for a time; but its history is again taken up in the Assyrian records, just as it is in the Bible. J. L. P.

The counterpart to this confusion of languages, and dispersion of nations, is to be found in the history of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the communication of the gift of tongues, by means of which, what contradiction and pride had severed, was once more united in love and humility. In the kingdom of God, the whole human race is to be congregated as one flock under one shepherd. C. G. B.—That was certainly a most stupendous miracle which led to the dispersion of mankind over all the countries of the world. But there was another miracle equally stupendous, and a miracle of tongues too, by which the people of all various languages were recalled to the Faith from which they had departed. By the first, God raised up barriers for the segregation of the species into distinct communities. By the second, He threw down these barriers, that the bearers of the heavenly message might range freely over the world, and gather out of all nations the family of the faithful. T. C.—In this first attempt to found a vast kingdom of this world, which God brought to naught by confounding the language of its builders and by scattering them over the face of the earth, we see a typical judgment, of which the counterpart in blessing was granted on the day of Pentecost; when, by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, another universal kingdom was to be founded, the first token of which was that gift of tongues, which pointed forward to a reunion of the nations, when the promise would be fulfilled that they should all be gathered into the tents of Shem! A. E.

It pleased God, in His own good time and manner, to realize the presumptuous design of the Babel builders, and to unite together in one central institution the scattered families of man. In the mediation of His blessed Son, He hath reared up a Tower whose top reaches to heaven, while its base is accessible to the heirs of sinful flesh and blood,—a Jacob’s ladder, whereby the communications of prayer and praise may pass upward to Him, and those of grace, mercy, and peace, may descend to His creatures. Clustering round the base of this Tower is a city which He hath founded, and which is designed to be indeed world-embracing. The members of the community thus formed are united together by strong and efficacious bonds, although such as are invisible to the eye of sense. They have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of them all, who is above all, and through all, and in them all. Daily they approach a common mercy-seat, as a refuge from sin’s condemning guilt. Daily they draw nigh to a common Throne of Grace, as a refuge from sin’s domineering power. Daily they pursue the same pilgrimage through the wilderness of this world, with the same auspices and under the same guidance. Daily God communes with them out of His living oracles, speaking to them, as their case requires, in accents of warning, encouragement, or consolation. Continually is their failing strength renewed by the bread which came down from heaven, imparted to them through a special channel ordained for its conveyance. The same hope animates, the same word guides, the same bread feeds, the same Providence directs, the same blood cleanses, the same grace quickens and consoles them. Gowburn.

Compare three well-known pictures presented by the Holy Scriptures:—

Gen. 11: The human race, as one nation, speaking one language. They attempt to preserve this unity by building a metropolitan city, where the whole race might dwell, under one government and one chief. Their leading idea was that oneness of nationality, of speech, and of

government would bind the whole race in the closest bonds of brotherhood. But God was left out of their thoughts. To stop the human plan and thwart sinful intention, God interfered by confounding their language, and the race was split up into fragments, which became the starting points of nations, and peoples, and kindreds and tongues; and men became, henceforth, Barbarians, Scythians, bond, free—anything but Brothers.

Acts 2 is the companion picture. The two should be studied side by side. That showed how men became strangers and aliens: this shows how God unites them into one family. On the Day of Pentecost visible tongues descended upon the Church of Christ, and forthwith, being filled with the Holy Ghost, each member thereof began to speak with foreign tongues “the wonderful works of God.” And the whole community was really cemented into one brotherhood, and had all things common. This indicated God’s way of uniting them: not by all dwelling in one city, or kingdom, or speaking one tongue; not by any external bond; but by giving each individual man His Holy Spirit. They may speak all the languages of the earth, but their voice is one, the leaven is one, their communion is one; all kindreds and tongues, nations and people, are being gathered together from the dispersion caused by sin.

Rev. 7: 9, 10 is the third picture. It is a scene in heaven, where all is completed which was only signified at Pentecost. The whole family are gathered together—once separated physically by seas and continents, and morally by sin. This great family is composed of the same diversities that existed on earth. They are still kindreds, and nations, and peoples, and tongues, and yet they are united—one family, all speak the same praises, all sing one song. Ask, What has made them so? Clearly not one tongue, as was attempted at Babel, but it is the possession of one spirit, which has attuned them all, and brought them into fellowship with the Father and the Son. “The Lamb is the light thereof,” and His magnetic power attracts these once-scattered units, now no longer under the centrifugal power of sin, but under the centripetal influence of the Holy Spirit. Morgan Dix.

10. THESE are the generations of Shem. Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arpach- 11 shad two years after the flood : and Shem lived after he begat Arpachshad five hundred 12 years, and begat sons and daughters. And Arpachshad lived five and thirty years, and 13 begat Shelah : and Arpachshad lived after he begat Shelah four hundred and three years, 14, 15 and begat sons and daughters. And Shelah lived thirty years, and begat Eber : and 16 Shelah lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons and 17 daughters. And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg : and Eber lived after 18 he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters. And 19 Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu : and Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred 20, 21 and nine years, and begat sons and daughters. And Reu lived two and thirty years, 22 and begat Serug : and Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred and seven years, and 23 begat sons and daughters. And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor : and Serug lived 24 after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. And Nahor lived 25 nine and twenty years, and begat Terah : and Nahor lived after he begat Terah an 26 hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters. And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran. 27 Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran ; and 28 Haran begat Lot. And Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of 29 his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees. And Abram and Nahor took them wives : the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai ; and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter 30 of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah. And Sarai was barren ; she 31 had no child. 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 32 them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan ; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years : and Terah died in Haran.

The history of Noah’s children divides itself into two branches ; the general peopling of the earth by the descendants of his three sons, and the particular line of the chosen family. The former subject is briefly dismissed, but with notices full of interest ; and the latter is pursued down to Abram, on whose migration to Canaan we again come in contact with the other races of men. P. S.—The CHRONOLOGICAL thread of sacred history is now connected with the GENE- ALOGY OF SHEM, as before the flood it had been with that of Seth. Here as before, differences of numbers occur in the Hebrew text, as com- pared with the LXX. and the Samaritan. K

10. The usual phrase, These are the genera- tions, marks the beginning of the fifth docu- ment. We now enter upon a new phase of hu- man development. The nations have gradually departed from the living God, and have fallen into polytheism and idolatry. The knowledge of the one true God is on the verge of being en- tirely lost. Nevertheless the promises, first to the race of Adam that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head, and next to the family of Noah that the Lord should be the God of Shem, were still in force. It is obvious from the latter promise that the seed of the woman is to be expected in the line of Shem.

10-26. This passage contains the pedigree of Abram from Shem. From this it appears that the sacred writer here reverts to the second year after the flood, — a point of time long before the close of the preceding narrative. Shem was the son of a hundred years, or in his hundredth year, two years after the flood, and therefore in the six hundred and third year of Noah, and con- sequently three years after Japheth. Abram was the twentieth, inclusive, from Adam, the tenth from Shem, and the seventh from Heber. M.

We have here the third genealogical table. The 1st was given in ch. 5 from Adam to Noah ; the 2d in ch. 10, the genealogy of the three sons of Noah, the descendants of Shem being traced down as far as Peleg. Now we have the line of Shem further carried down to Abraham, the father of the faithful, the ancestor of the promised seed. In ch. 10 no account is given of the length of the generations or of the duration of life; but here as before in ch. 5, both these are supplied. We mark at once the transition from the antediluvian to the postdiluvian duration of life. Noah lived 950 years, Shem only 600, Arpachshad, the firstborn of Shem after the deluge, only 438; when we come to Peleg, who seems to have been contemporary with the dispersion, life is still shorter; Peleg lived 239 years, Reu 239, Serug 230, Nahor 148. E. H. B.

Table of Hebrew and Septuagint Texts.

| | Hebrew Text. | | Septuagint. | | | — | — | — | — | — | | | Years before birth of Son. | Whole Life. | Years before birth of Son. | Whole Life. | | Shem… | 100 | 600 | 100 | 600 | | Arpachshad… | 35 | 438 | 135 | 535 | | Kalman… | | | 130 | 460 | | Shelah… | 30 | 433 | 130 | 460 | | Eber… | 34 | 434 | 131 | 464 | | Peleg… | 50 | 239 | 130 | 339 | | Reu… | 32 | 239 | 132 | 339 | | Serug… | 30 | 239 | 130 | 339 | | Nahor… | 29 | 148 | 170 | 304 | | Terah… | 70 | 205 | 70 | 200 | | Abram… | | | | |

On the whole, the predominant view has been to accept the Hebrew as the true text. But it is to be borne in mind that we have but one Hebrew manuscript as old as the year 580 A.D., and that we in no case seem to get back of a Masoretic revision; while the Septuagint represents a text which dates 250 years B.C. Whatever the decision as to relative correctness, the phenomenon must raise questions and doubts, as it shows somewhere the hand of the emendator.

When now we attempt to follow down this second line of early consanguinity, the Shemite, with its figures, we find ourselves at once dealing with several extremely difficult and complicated questions, on which in the present state of our knowledge no man can offer an absolute solution, but only suggestions which look toward a solution. These questions concern the relation of the individuals to each other in the line of succession; the length of life ascribed to them respectively; and the total duration thus indicated from the Creation to the Deluge.

Reversing the order of these questions, there meets us that of the length of time prior to the Deluge, and thereby somewhat directly the duration of man’s history on the earth, involved chiefly in this period. For the length of time from the Christian era to the birth of Abraham can be reckoned without any large range of variation—perhaps 200 or 300 years; and the period from Abraham to Noah offers us two Biblical Chronologies (Hebrew and Septuagint) admitting, to some degree, possible confirmatory or corrective collation with semi-historic events. But the previous period stands alone. No figures whatever are offered from any source except the Pentateuch. While making all allowance for possible exigencies, I do not as yet see valid reason to adopt any view of the time of man’s existence very greatly in excess, if not of Usher’s, yet of Hale’s Chronology, 5411 B.C. All definite records and distinct traditions go up to a limited distance and stop there, this side even of the date thus gained. Thus the latest and most careful authorities. Chinese investigators now find nothing solid in the antiquity of China earlier than eleven or twelve hundred B.C.; we find no Iranic civilization earlier than 1500 B.C., nor Indian earlier than 1200. The Trojan epoch does not probably reach further than 1200 to 1300 B.C., nor the subjacent cities than 2000. The latest result in regard to Phoenicia gives but the sixteenth or seventeenth century B.C. Sayce and Lenormant place the beginning of Assyria about 1500 B.C., and Smith and Lenormant the beginning of Babylon 2300 B.C. In the case of Egypt one only of the prominent Egyptologists (Mariette Bey) insists on finding no contemporaneous dynasties, but makes all successive; and his estimate of 5004 years B.C. to the accession of Menes still falls within the limits of Hale’s Chronology, while Poole’s and Wilkinson’s estimates subtract more than 2000 years from Mariette’s figures. If we accept the Biblical antediluvian narrative as it stands, all eastern history is a simple and natural phenomenon, thoroughly consistent with itself and with all known facts. And in this line a very striking coincidence is mentioned, viz.: “Taking as a basis the annual increase of population in France (which has the best statistics for the past two hundred years) at $\frac{1}{2}$ a year, six persons (say Shem, Ham, and Japheth, with their wives) would increase to 1,400,000,000 in 4211 years. But in 1863, the estimated population of the earth was 1,400,000,000, and 4211 years would carry us back from that time to 2348 B.C., the common date of the Flood.” S. C. B.

Christian apologists have shown unnecessary anxiety as to exactness in dates. The admitted elasticity or differences in Bible chronology should make us willing to grant a liberal margin. What specially concerns us is the harmony of histories. While exact dates are in their own place most valuable, they are not to supersede the cumulative evidence which the recognized harmony of profane with sacred history is bringing to the side of the Christian apologists. No one can recall the perpetually recurring depreciation of the Bible through the greater part of the last half century, on the plea that its historical statements were either mythical, or, when valid, had been written out after other histories had been published, without deep thankfulness for the striking vindication of all its statements which contemporary histories have of late been giving. W. Fraser.

26. Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.** Haran dies before his father, leaving behind him Lot, his son, Terah’s grandchild, already a grown-up lad. The 70 years assigned to Terah must consequently be his age at the birth of Haran, his first born. Abram’s birth may be inferred from chap. 12 : 4 ; according to which he was 75 years old when he departed out of Haran, where Terah died, being at the time 205 years old. Abram was 75 years old at his father’s death, and consequently he was born when his father was 130 years old. Abram’s name stands before that of his brothers for no other reason but because he was the heir of the promise. C. G. B.

Shem could tell Abram, with whom he was contemporary one hundred years, nearly what Lamech, his grandfather, had reported to him, and who lived also contemporary with Adam fifty years ; nay, what Methuselah had told Shem, after being contemporary with Adam 243 years. Thus it will be found that the first 2000 years of the world’s history is reduced to the testimony of but two of our generations—the testimony of a grandfather, through father to the son. Even as late as the birth of Isaac there stood Shem to report and testify what Lamech and Methuselah had told him from Adam. S. R.—This genealogy here ends in Abram, the friend of God, and leads further to Christ, the promised Seed, who was the Son of Abram, and from Abram the genealogy of Christ is reckoned. Put ch. 5, 11, and Matt. 1 together, and you have such an entire genealogy of Jesus Christ as cannot be produced concerning any person in the world, out of his line and at such a distance from the fountain-head. And laying these three genealogies together, we shall find that twice ten, and thrice fourteen, generations or descents passed between the first and second Adam, making it clear concerning Christ, not only that he was the Son of Abraham, but the Son of man and the Seed of the woman. H.

27-32. This passage forms the commencement of the sixth document, as is indicated by the customary phrase, These are the generations. The sense also clearly accords with this distinction ; and it accounts for the repetition of the statement, “Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.” This passage and the preceding one form the meet prelude to the history of Abram, —the one tracing his genealogy from Shem and Heber, and the other detailing his relations with the family out of which he was called. . . . God has not forsaken the fallen race. Out of Adam’s three sons he selects one to be the progenitor of the seed of the woman ; out of Noah’s three sons he again selects one ; and now out of Terah’s three is one to be selected. Among the children of this one he will choose a second one, and among his a third one before he reaches the holy family. M.

28. Ur of the Chaldees.** Mugheir, which bore the exact name of Ur or Hur, is entitled to be (at least provisionally) regarded as the city of Abram (so Professors Rawlinson, Porter, Eadie, Loftus, Ayre, etc., after Sir Henry Rawlinson). Ur or Hur, now Mugheir, or Um-Mugheir (= the bitumened, or the mother of bitumen), is one of the most ancient, if not the most ancient, of the Chaldean sites hitherto discovered. It lies on the right bank of the Euphrates, about six miles from the present course of the stream, nearly opposite the point where the EUPHRATES receives the Shat-el-Hie from the Tigris. It is now not less than 125 miles from the sea ; but there are grounds for believing that it was anciently a maritime town, but now inland from the rapid growth of the alluvium. The remains of buildings cover an oval space, 1000 yards long by 800 broad. The most remarkable building near the northern end of the ruins is a temple of the true Chaldean type, built in stages of bricks laid chiefly in bitumen, and bearing the name of Urukh, who is regarded as the earliest of the Chaldean monumental kings, B.C. 2000, or a little earlier. Ur, the capital of this monarch, retained its metropolitan character for above two centuries, and, even after it became second to Babylon, was a great city, with an especially sacred character. It is in the main a city of tombs. Dic. B.

The inscriptions which connect the name of Urukh with the cities of Niffar, Warka, Senkereh, and Mugheir, constantly speak of the last of these places as the city of Ur or Hur. This word appears to contain the essential part of the word Hurki, the moon-god, of whose worship, in early Chaldean times, this city was a principal seat. This notion is confirmed by the indirect testimony of Eupolemus, a Jewish writer of about 150 B.C., who says that Abraham was born in Camarina, a city of Babylonia, which some call Uria, i.e. a city of the Chaldeans. Now the word Camarina appears to be a Greek name, derived from an Arabic word, kamar, which means “the moon.” Thus in the two words Uria and Camarina the name of the place and its meaning appear to be brought together; and thus, if any single place is to be regarded as the site of Ur of the Chaldees, Mugheir has the strongest claim to be selected for that purpose. Mugheir was visited by the old Italian traveller Pietro della Valle, early in the seventeenth century, on his way from Basrah to Aleppo. He says that he had no idea what place he was surveying, but that the ruins consisted of large well burnt bricks, stamped and inscribed with characters unknown to him, but which appeared to be very ancient. “I carried away,” he says, “one of the bricks, and noticed that they were joined together in the building not with mortar, but with bitumen, with which these plains abound, so that the Arabs call the hill of ruins Muqejer, i.e. ‘the pitchy.’” H. W. P.

The site of Ur was discovered about twenty years ago. It is marked by a number of large mounds in which were found embedded cylinders and bricks of the oldest type, showing that this was one of the earliest cities built by the Cushite Akkadians. The Chaldeans were fire-worshippers, and Ur (which signifies “fire” or “light”) appears to have contained one of their chief temples, which, at a somewhat later period, was dedicated to the moon, the second great “light” of heaven. In Ur, and among the ruins of other early Chaldean cities, multitudes of bricks have been found, stamped with the name Urukh. This king founded many of the oldest temples in Babylonia, as his name is upon the bricks dug up from their ruins, and also upon tablets. One inscription reads: “Urukh, king of Ur, who the house of Ur built.” He built the temple of the moon at Ur; he also built the temple of the sun at Larsa (the Ellasar of Gen. 14 : 1); the temple of Venus at Erech; the temples of Bel and Beltis at Nipur (Calneh); and the temple of Sarili at Zirgulla. These facts, while they show the all-pervading and inveterate idolatry of the ancient Chaldeans, strikingly illustrate the reason assigned by Joshua for the migration of Terah and his family from Ur. Had he remained there, he and his household would have been exposed to unceasing persecution and temptation. To have adopted the worship of the true God and renounced idolatry would have been, humanly speaking, impossible in such a country and among such a people. Their worship, as stated in the inscriptions shown on their monuments, was grossly polytheistic. J. L. P.

In Shinar idolatry, which had insensibly commenced in Armenia, and proceeded till it had almost superseded the worship of the one true God, was perfected. As the human mind never tolerates any violent or sudden change in received and well-confirmed opinions, the ancient idolatry is supposed to have originated in slow and imperceptible innovations, alterations, and perversions of the pure patriarchal religion; till it became a strange and monstrous compound of Demonolatry, Sabianism, Materialism, Polytheism, and cruelty. G. T.—It is very remarkable that wherever men went, they forsook the pure worship of the true God, and instituted religious rites and practices of their own. The most lamentable thing about idolatry was, that when men began to give license to their fancy in fashioning their gods, they made them like themselves, with their own weaknesses, passions, and lusts. Instead of being elevated by fellowship with a Being of purest and noblest mould, the worshippers were debased by the contemplation of beings of low passions and propensities, whom it was regarded a duty to resemble. W. G. B.—Idolatry is the religion of sight in opposition to that of faith. Instead of the unseen Creator, man regarded that which was visible—the sun, the moon, the stars—as the cause and the ruler of all; or he assigned to everything its deity, and thus had gods many and lords many; or else he converted his heroes, real or imaginary, into gods. The worship of the heavens, the worship of nature, or the worship of man—such is heathenism and idolatry. A. E.

Abraham, the highest born of the whole Semitic stock, is described as dwelling at Ur, a large and wealthy town, the chief seaport upon the Persian Gulf, though now left far inland by the deposit of the silt brought down by the Euphrates from the highlands of Armenia. The place was originally peopled by the Accadians, a race descended from Japheth, and who are proved by the large remains of their literature to have been a wealthy, learned, and highly civilized people. The cuneiform method of writing seems to have been their invention, and clay their ordinary though not their only writing material. Papyrus was used by them at a very early date; and so common was the use of writing, that all the ordinary transactions of business were carefully recorded, and numerous tablets in our museums refer to matters of the most insignificant kind. R. P. S.

Ur was one of the most ancient cities of Chaldee, and at the time of Abram must have been one of the most splendid. The Cushite population on the Lower Tigris and Euphrates had already conquered the Accadians, and were mingled with them; to form in the course of time the race known as Babylonians. The city was then flourishing; the arts and sciences were cultivated; astronomers watched the heavens; poets composed hymns and epics, and patient scribes stamped, on soft clay tablets, the books which have in part come down to our day. For the ancient race which lived in these lands were, beyond most, given to writing and reading. There were libraries at Senkereh, Babylon, Borsippa, Cutha, Accad, Ur, Erech, Larsa, Nippur, Kalah Chergat, Calah, and Nineveh. Geikie.

The Shemitic family of languages may be divided into four groups: 1. The Southern group—Arabic, Ethiopic, etc. 2. The Aramaic group—Syriac, Chaldee, etc. 3. The Hebrew group—the Phoenician, Hebrew, etc. 4. The Assyrian and Babylonian. These languages have given us a considerable literature; they were spoken by cultivated nations of the ancient world, mediating between the great centres of primitive Turanian culture—the Euphrates and the Nile. Everything seems to indicate that they all emigrated from a common centre in the desert on the south of Babylonia, the Arabic group separating first, next the Aramaic, then the Hebrew, while the Babylonian gained ultimately the mastery of the original Accadian of Babylonia, and the Assyrian founded the great empire on the Tigris. Now the book of Genesis represents Abram as going forth from this central seat of Ur of the Chaldees, going first northward into Mesopotamia, and then emigrating to Canaan, just as we learn from other sources the Canaanites had done before him. The monuments of Ur reveal that about this time, 2000 B.C., it was the seat of a great literary development. The father of the faithful, whose origin was in that primitive seat of culture, and who lived as a chieftain of military prowess and exalted religious and moral character among the nations of Canaan, and who was received at the court of Pharaoh—that other great centre of primitive culture—on friendly terms, could not but have, to some extent at least, made himself acquainted with their literature and culture. Briggs.

Brought up amid such influences, Abram, if not a person of education, must have been a man of great intelligence; and his subsequent life proves that he also possessed unusual prudence and a superior judgment. When God’s revelation came to him, it was to an enlightened mind. His renunciation of idolatry and his adoption of the worship of the true God, were not the result of impulse, but of an intelligent, deliberate choice, under special divine guidance. S. Merrill.—No reasonable doubt can be cast upon the assertion that the difference between Abram and the Chaldees lay in his being a worshipper of one God, while they worshipped many. Nor can we find any explanation of the monotheism of Abram and his clan so simple and reasonable as that given by his possession of such histories as those contained in the earlier chapters of Genesis. R. P. S.

28. Abram’s wife was Sarai.** Abram says of Sarai, “She is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother” (Gen. 20:12). In Hebrew phrase the granddaughter is termed a daughter; and therefore this statement might be satisfied by her being the daughter of Haran. Lot is called the brother’s son and the brother of Abram (Gen. 14:12, 16). If Sarai be Haran’s daughter, Lot is Abram’s brother-in-law. This identification would also explain the introduction of Iscah into the present passage. Still the studied silence of the sacred writer in regard to the parentage of Sarai, in the present connection, tells rather in favor of her being the actual daughter of Terah by another wife, and so strictly the half-sister of Abram. For the Mosaic law afterward expressly prohibited marriage with “the daughter of a father” (Lev. 18:9). And the text does not state of Iscah, “This is Sarai,” which would accord with the manner of the sacred writer, and is actually done in the Targu a of Pseudo-Jonathan.

31. To go into the land of Canaan.** Terah was two hundred years old when he undertook the long journey to the land of Canaan; for he died at two hundred and five, when Abram was seventy-five. They came to Haran and dwelt there. Filial piety, no doubt, kept Abram watching over the last days of his venerable parents, who probably still hope to reach the land of his adoption. Hence they all abode in Haran for the remainder of the five years from the date of Abram’s call to leave his native land. And Terah died in Haran. This intimates that he would have proceeded with the others to the land of Canaan if his life had been prolonged, and likewise that they did not leave Haran until his death.

We have already seen that Abram was seventy-five years of age at the death of Terah. It follows that he was born when Terah was one hundred and thirty years old, and consequently sixty years after Haran. Abram is placed first in the list of Terah’s sons, simply on account of his personal pre-eminence as the father of the faithful and the ancestor of the promised seed; he and his brother Nahor are both much younger than Haran, are married only after his death, and one of them to his grown-up daughter Milcah; and he and his nephew Lot are meet companions in age as well as in spirit. Hence also Abram lingers in Haran, waiting to take his father with him to the land of promise, if he should revive so far as to be fit for the journey. But it was not the lot of Terah to enter the land, where he would only have been a stranger. He is removed to the better country, and by his departure contributes no doubt to deepen the faith of his son Abram, of his grandson Lot, and of his daughter-in-law Sarai. This explanation of the order of events is confirmed by the statement of Stephen: “The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran. Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Charran; and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell” (Acts 7:2-4). M.

In Haran, charmed probably by the fertility of the country, and claiming the right of a first choice, Nahor settled. We shall find his family here in the next two generations, bearing a character suited to the motive thus suggested (G. 24:10; 27:43). P. S.—Haran lies in one of the extensive plains of Mesopotamia (to the south-east of Edessa), and is specially adapted for a residence of Nomadic tribes. This accounts for the fact that the progress of the emigrants was arrested, and that Nahor remained there. K.—As far back as the Accadian epoch, the district in which Haran was built belonged to the rulers of Babylonia; Haran was, in fact, the frontier town of the empire; the name itself was an Accadian one signifying “the road.” Sayce.

It is strange to think what a great part the descendants of the Chaldean shepherd, Terah, have played in the history of the world. Those of Nahor gradually formed a great kingdom which only passed away before the rising power of Syria and the fierce attacks of Edom. The twelve tribes sprung from Ishmael scattered themselves over the vast pasture and desert regions of Arabia, Syria, Mesopotamia, the shores of the Persian Gulf, and the east of the Jordan. The sons of Keturah, in the same way, grew into similar tribes, to whom the desert solitudes have ever since been the chosen home. The Arab race, indeed, over the world, are the posterity of Nahor and Abraham. Nor have they been without their great part on the stage of the world, for it is to an Arab that more than 200,000,000 of men look to-day as the great prophet of God, and the empire they founded in the first days of Mahometanism stretched from India to the Strait of Gibraltar, and by its culture and civilization prepared the way for the revival of Letters in Western Europe. But the supreme interest of mankind centres in the Hebrew, not in the Arab descendants of Abraham. Geikie.

32. Two hundred and five years. There was an observable gradual decrease in the years of their lives; Shem reached to 600 years, which yet fell short of the age of the patriarchs before the flood; the three next came short of 500; the three next did not reach to 300; after them, we read not of any that attained to 200, but Terah; and, not many ages after this, Moses reckoned 70 or 80 to be the utmost men ordinarily arrive at: when the earth began to be replenished, men’s lives began to shorten; so that the decrease is to be imputed to the wise disposal of providence, rather than to any decay of nature. H.

Without these first eleven chapters of Genesis we should be in the deepest darkness in reference to the origin and nature of the world and of man. In these chapters we have true light on the beginning, in the prophecies on the end; in the former on the originating principle, in the latter on the issues of history; in the one on the reason or cause, in the other on the purpose of the world. Without this light, a universal history and philosophy of history are impossible. Prophecy itself has its roots in these chapters. All later revelation is founded on them. Auberlen.

by the glowing arms of the Desert on the South and East, sentinelled on the North by the rugged mountains of Lebanon, washed on the West by the Mediterranean, with scarcely a single harbor to break the line of its inhospitable coast, it lay apart from the nations, and yet in the midst of them, to be the pivot of their policy, the tempting prize of their ambition, the end for which they flourished, though they knew it not, and through its Prophets, the angel of their doom. Egypt bloomed just in time to adorn the Nomadic Hebrews with science, arts and arms. The Kingdom of Syria was strong just in time to tease, the Assyrian Empire just in time to break in pieces, for Providential ends, the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Then Babylon arose just in time to crush the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The Medo-Persian Empire, intensely hating idolatry, next rushed upon the scene just in time to bear the repentant Hebrews back to Palestine. Then Greece appeared, advancing her breast of flint to shiver the Persian lances, just in time to weave a fitting garment of language for Christian thought. Followed by iron Rome, lacing the conquered world with imperishable roads, teaching the nations law, and shutting the Temple of Janus, to await the coming of the Prince of Peace. Thus all things pointed toward this one issue. There is the unity as of a perfect drama; and the conclusion of every healthy judgment is, that it must have been designed. Rightly, then, did Augustine, thus surveying the grand procession of races and nations, pronounce the

history of the world, the history of redemption. No other philosophy of history will answer; no other solution of the problem is valid. Blind must be the student of ancient history who cannot trace in every land the footprints, and deaf his ears who cannot hear, in every century, the footfalls, of the coming Christ.

slopes and the base of the cliffs on the west shore of the Dead Sea. And 4th. That which is of most moment in the Patriarchal History, THE SOUTH, i.e. the NEGER, or SOUTH COUNTRY. This comprises “the undulating pasture country, which intervened between the HILL COUNTRY and the deserts which encompass the lower part of Palestine.” In this South Country, chiefly at Beersheba and in its wide vicinage, Abraham and Isaac lived for many years. B.