Genesis 12

1. Now the LORD said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and 2 from thy father’s house, unto the land that I will shew thee : and I will make of thee a great 3 nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great ; and be thou a blessing : and I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse : and in thee shall all the 4 families of the earth be blessed. So Abram went, as the LORD had spoken unto him ; and Lot went with him : 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 Canaan : and into the land of Canaan they came.

From this point, through forty chapters, the sacred historian leaves the history of the world to dwell on the records of three biographies. For not only is the individual life sacred to God, but those three patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—were the fathers of the chosen people. They lived peaceful and, for the most part, uneventful lives in their pastoral tents ; they were but men ; they were not sinless ; they sometimes fell into acts of meanness and deceit. But even with all their human weaknesses they were men eminently good, and their one great distinguishing feature was faith in God. It is this which, more than anything else, differen- tiates one life from another. We are helped to grasp the lesson by the striking way in which each one of them is silently contrasted with another who has his good things in this life— Abraham with Lot, Isaac with Ishmael, Jacob with Esau. Few lessons are more instructive than those which spring from drawing out this contrast in its details and in its results. But the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews points out to us the great lesson that it was faith which lit up their characters with every virtue and every grace ; it was like one sunbeam brighten- ing jewels of many colors. Farrar.

For nearly four centuries, at the briefest com- putation, the new race, saved from the flood, had been left to multiply and spread and cor- rupt itself, without anything that we know of, better than tradition, to keep alive a pure faith or the memory of God’s past dealings with man- kind. Like the four hundred years in Egypt, or the period of the Judges or the interval from Malachi to John the Baptist, these centuries formed one of those longer pauses in the suc- cession of divine communications to mankind, which have sometimes served to sharpen the ears of the few who did hearken for God’s voice, as well as to accentuate that voice when it spoke again. When this interval of silence was over, two results of it were found to mark the condi- tion of mankind. For one thing, the world was left broken up into states, tribes, and races held well apart from one another, partly by varia- tions of dialect, and partly by blood-affinities and repulsions. In the next place, a system of nature-worship, which tended rapidly to deify the chief forces and phenomena of matter, was found to have spread itself, though under vary- ing forms, over all lands. The former of these facts made the separation of a single tribe, for the purpose of being divinely educated in re- ligion, a possible step ; the latter made it a need- ful one. The time was ripe for the interposi- tion of Heaven, that in one sheltered and se- lected family at least might be unfolded an up- ward religious progress under supernatural im- pulses, to serve for a counterpoise or corrective to the downward movement everywhere else in progress. In a word, the beginnings must be made of a kingdom of God, if more and more the kingdom of fallen spirits were not to be suf- fered without challenge to engulf humanity. Dykes.

Even with the advantage on the side of right eousness gained by the terrific judgment of the Deluge, the same sinful tendencies soon began to develop themselves anew after that event ; within a few generations the miracle at Babel was necessary to confound the projects of men, combining in one vast scheme to thwart the purposes of heaven ; and even the posterity of Shem, which had some kind of general distinc- tion conferred on it in Divine things by the prophecy of Noah, was ready to be engulfed in the swelling stream of pollution. It was necessary, therefore, to adopt another course, and, for the sake of the general good of the world, to select a particular channel of blessing. This is the principle of the Divine government of which Abraham became the first living representative — individual election to special privileges, hopes, and obligations; primarily, indeed, for the behoof of those more immediately concerned, but mainly for the benefit of others, with the express object and design that the particular in this respect might become the universal. Gosse — The revelation, promise, and favor bestowed on Abraham are only vouchsafed to him in order, through him and his descendants, to pour on the whole human race the same blessing of the knowledge of God, and communion with Him. While God confines His grace to a single chosen family, He declares it is intended for all men. The first revelation to the great forefather of the Israelites shows that the Old Testament knows nothing of a Jewish national God, to whom the rest of the world is alien. Gert.

It was needful that there should be a particular nation separated from the rest of the world, to receive the types and prophecies to be given of Christ, to prepare the way for his coming; that to them might be committed the oracles of God; and that by them the history of God’s great works of creation and providence might be upheld; and that so Christ might be born of this nation; and that from hence the light of the gospel might shine forth to the rest of the world. These ends could not well be obtained, if God’s people, through all these two thousand years, had lived intermixed with the Heathen world. So that this calling of Abraham may be looked upon as a new foundation laid for the visible church of God, in a more distinct and regular state, to be upheld and built upon this foundation from henceforward, till Christ should actually come, and then through him to be propagated to all nations. So that Abraham being the person in whom this foundation is laid, is represented in scripture as though he were the father of all the church, the father of all them that believe; as it were a root whence the visible church thenceforward through Christ, Abraham’s root and offspring, rose as a tree, distinct from all other plants; of which tree Christ was the Branch of righteousness; and from which tree, after Christ came, the natural branches were broken off, and the Gentiles were grafted into the same tree. So that Abraham still remains the father of the church, or root of the tree, through Christ his seed. It is the same tree that flourishes from that small beginning, that was in Abraham’s time, and has in these days of the gospel spread its branches over a great part of the earth, and will all the whole earth in due time, and at the end of the world shall be transplanted from an earthly soil into the paradise of God. Edwards.

From the selection of one particular nation onward every revelation of God clusters around that nation, in order to prepare it so that ultimately the climax and the final aim of all revelation, the incarnation of God, might be attained in the midst of that people, and thence a salvation issue, adapted not only to that nation but also to all other nations. The basis of this history is a covenant into which God entered with that nation, and which, amid all the vicissitudes and dangers attending every human development, He preserved and directed till its final aim was attained. This covenant, whose object was a salvation which was to be accomplished, is designated the Old Covenant, in contradistinction to the New Covenant which God made with all nations, on the basis of a salvation which, in the fulness of time, had actually been accomplished. Sacred history commences with the creation of the world, while the history of the Old Covenant only begins when God entered into covenant with Abraham. The ultimate aim and the highest point of the Divine covenant activity, in all its manifestations, is the incarnation of God in Christ. The purpose of all Divine operation and co-operation in the Old Covenant is to typify it and to prepare for it. The law, the word of prophecy, the general leadings of the chosen people, and the individual leadings of its more prominent members—in fine, every miraculous interposition points toward this. The law is the mirror where the ideal of that Divine perfection, which, since the entrance of sin, can only be realized in the God-man, is reflected; prophecy is the canvas on which the hand of the divinely-enlightened seer traces the lineaments of the God-man. The whole course of this history implies a continual descending and condescending to man on the part of the Divine Being. K.

With the Life of Abraham the Mosaic history may be said to commence: all that precedes being introductory to it. If we consult the map of the countries through which Abraham passed, and consider at the same time the probable amount of the population of the earth at this period, we shall find that Abraham, in complying with the Divine command, preached the true religion to the great majority of mankind, G. T. — No other name in all history forms so conspicuous a starting-point for the developments of after time. “Abram the Hebrew” stands at the head of many a great stream of history, like the river of Eden which parted into four. Of the leading faiths of the world, there are three which cherish his name with equal veneration; and these three are the only monotheistic faiths. To the Jew, the Moslem, and the Christian alike, the prophet Abraham forms a common ancestor. Trace these three forms of belief to their fountain-head, and they meet in the tent of that ancient confessor, exiled in the dawn of the world for his faith in the unity of God. Divided in so much else, the Englishman and the Turk, the Moor and the Arab, the Catholic and the Jew, agree in deriving their spiritual, if not also their natural, descent from that primeval “friend of God.” Most literally has the promise of his new name been fulfilled. He has become a “father of many nations.” Dykes.

The stream of sacred history first of all starts with Adam as its fountain-head; and next, Noah forms a new fountain-head for the race after the flood; so now the history takes a new departure from Abraham and continues its course onward from Abraham till inspiration closes. And accordingly it will be found that through all the remaining history Abraham is the prominent name, rather than that of Adam or of Noah. For, in the subsequent books of the Bible, while there are some seven references to Adam and eight to Noah, there are more than one hundred references made to Abraham. And these are not mere historical allusions, but the references are to Abraham as the most prominent of all the actors in the covenant of grace with the Church of God. S. R.—In some fourteen or fifteen passages of the New Testament we find his place in the unfolding of revelation distinctly referred to. In several of these passages incidents of his career are carefully discussed, in order to illustrate or confirm cardinal principles of the gospel. Our Lord himself in his controversy with the Jews, Paul in his two leading theological epistles, James, and the anonymous writer to the Hebrews, all devote long passages to the exposition of Abraham’s position or of the lessons of his life. In fact, the section of the Book of Genesis in which this patriarch’s career has been recorded may be called the principal as well as the earliest seed-plot of evangelical teaching. Dykes.

How is the fact to be explained that the three greatest religions of the world, in which the unity of the Deity forms the key-note, are of Semitic origin? Mahometanism, no doubt, is a Semitic religion, and its very core is monotheism. But did Mahomet invent monotheism? Did he invent even a new name of God? Not at all. And how is it with Christianity? Did Christ come to preach faith in a new God? Did He or His disciples invent a new name of God? No. Christ came, not to destroy, but to fulfil, and the God whom He preached was the God of Abraham. And who is the God of Jeremiah, of Elijah, and of Moses? We answer again: The God of Abraham. Thus the faith in the One Living God, which seemed to require the admission of a monotheistic instinct, grafted in every member of the Semitic family, is traced back to one man; to him “in whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” And if from our earliest childhood we have looked upon Abraham, the Friend of God, with love and veneration, his venerable figure will assume still more majestic proportions, when we see in him the life-spring of that faith which was to unite all the nations of the earth, and the author of that blessing which was to come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ. And if we are asked how this one Abraham passed, through the denial of all other gods, to the knowledge of the one God, we are content to answer that it was by a special divine revelation, granted to that one man, and handed down by him to Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, to all who believe in the God of Abraham. We want to know more of that man than we do; but even with the little we know of him, he stands before us as a figure, second only to One in the whole history of the world. Max Müller.

1. Now the Lord said.** Before he left Ur Stephen tells us, what also appears most likely from the history in Genesis, that God appeared to Abram “when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran.” Cook.—Get thee out from thy country. Abraham is chosen to be the head of a new dispensation, as Noah was; but with this difference, that the world is not taken away this time, but only left to walk in their own ways. But, while the world is not taken away from Abraham the coming man, Abraham the coming man is taken away from the world. Abraham and his descendants are to be separated to the life of faith and hope and holiness, separated to “walk with God.” We shall find that God trained him by separation; by a series of separations. This is a key-thought of Abraham’s life. Gibson.—From thy kindred, thy father’s house. It was to sunder three ties,—country, kindred, and home,—and he was to go by faith. He is chosen as the founder of a new family, and a new order of things. Jacobus.

It was grace that honored him with the call. It is very important to have this fully in mind if you would understand the force of Paul’s reasoning from this case of Abraham to prove that “we are justified before God by faith only, and not from our own deservings” (Gal. 3 : 8). His argument is that to Abraham, while yet ungodly and idolatrous, God preached the gospel and promised the blessings of His grace. S. R.—He was singled out from the world’s inhabitants to begin a new order of things, which were to bear throughout the impress of God’s special grace and almighty power; and he must separate himself from the old things of nature, to be in his life the representative of God’s holiness, as in his destiny he was to be the monument of God’s power and goodness. It is this exercise of faith in Abraham which is first exhibited in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as bespeaking a mighty energy in its working. “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.” P. F.

2,3. The promise advances in six degrees upward, until in the highest the Messias is perceptible, who was to be of the race of Abraham. “I will make of thee a great nation,” both of thy bodily and spiritual seed;—“I will bless thee,” and yet he possessed not a foot of land;—“make thy name great,” and yet it behoved him to be a stranger in a strange land. Abraham’s name did become great. C. G. B.—I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; this made it a kind of a league, offensive and defensive, between God and Abram. Abram heartily espoused God’s cause, and here God promises to interest himself in his. He promises to be a Friend to his friends, to take kindnesses shown to him as done to Himself, and to recompense them accordingly. God will take care that none be losers, in the long run, by any service done for his people. He promises to appear against his enemies; there were those that hated and cursed even Abram himself; but while their causeless curses could not hurt Abram, God’s righteous curse would certainly overtake and ruin them (Num. 24 : 9). This is a good reason why we should bless them that curse us, because it is enough that God will curse them. In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed; this was the promise that crowned all the rest; for it points at the Messiah, in whom all the promises are yea and amen. H.—This promise is repeated seven times. It is the third prophecy of the Messiah, and is here attached to a single person,—then to his family,—afterward to the people that descended from them,—and finally expands itself to all the nations of the earth. C. G. B.—The wealth of blessing which lay folded up in this germ took more than two thousand years to ripen into fruit. But from the very first God left it in no doubt that when the fruit of that chosen vine should at last be ripe, it should be for all nations. In God’s great plan, whatever is narrow, elective, or individual, contemplates in the long run a wider good. God is not the God of Shem only. For a time He was Shem’s God in a peculiar sense, only that in the end both Japheth and Ham may partake in the blessing. God is not the God of Abraham alone; but He blessed Abraham in an eminent degree, that at last the blessing of Abraham might come on the nations through Jesus Christ. Dykes.

Here are two distinct covenants or blessings: the first temporal, which respects only Abram and his family; the second spiritual, which has regard to Christ and the whole world. And all future prophecies have regard to these two covenants. Ishmael, and Esau, and all the family of Abram, had a right to the blessings of the first; and all the world to the blessings of the second. The Jews indeed expect, by virtue of the last, to bear rule over the whole world; but surely this would be no great blessing to the rest of the nations of the world, whatever it might be to them. Therefore, saith Paul with respect to this promise, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus,” the promised seed in which all the families of the earth were to be happy. From this time a particular providence attended the people of Israel, his posterity by his sons Isaac and Jacob; correcting, trying, punishing, redeeming them out of the hands of their enemies, until the promised seed came. Bp. Wilson.

The expression “all families,” repeated four times, is the centre of all promises, and that round which all the others revolve. The knowledge and the love of the one, true, living God—his covenant with Him—this was the unspeakably rich blessing which Abram possessed, the source of all other benefits which he enjoyed. This blessing was through him to pass to all people. The beginning of the Great Promise which is annexed to his family declares this only with clearness—that the knowledge of God, and covenant with Him, shall one day be the possession of all nations through Abram. Geri,—Christ is the essential kernel of the promise; and the seed of Abraham, rather than Abraham himself, was to have the honor of blessing all the families of the earth. But in Abraham as the living root of all that was to follow, the whole and every part may be said to take its rise; and not only was Christ after the flesh of the seed of Abraham, but each believer in Christ is a son of Abraham, and the entire company of the redeemed shall have their place and their portion with Abraham in the kingdom of God. P. F.

Hitherto deliverance had been expected through the seed of the woman; now the circle narrows and all nations of the earth are to be blessed in Abraham’s seed. The history which commences with Abraham continues unbroken till the judgment which Titus was called to execute against the covenant-people. The giving of the law on Mount Sinai is only a high point, although the most prominent, in the history between Abraham and Christ. It is not the commencement of a new history. True, it is called a covenant, but it does not differ essentially from that with Abraham. It does not stand in the same relation to the Abrahamic as the latter to the Noachic covenant. The covenant with Noah was made with all mankind; the covenant with Abraham was made with him as the ancestor of the holy people, while that on Sinai was made with the people as the seed of Abraham. K.

4. So Abram went, as the Lord had spoken to him. It is the Divine method and law that man should co-operate with God, and that God should act by means of men who are fitting instruments; and this law implies that those who are God’s instruments possess real character of their own in correspondence with their mission. A man who throws off the chains of authority and association must be a man of extraordinary independence and strength of mind, although he does so in obedience to a Divine revelation. So the recipient of a new revelation must have self-reliance, otherwise he will not believe that he has received it; he will not be sure of it against the force of current opinions. Abraham comes before us as a person who lives in the future, whose mind is cast forward, beyond the immediate foreground of his own day, upon a very remote epoch in the history of the world, and fixed upon a remarkable event in the most distant horizon of time, the nature of which is vague and dimly known to him, but which is charged with momentous consequences, involving a change in the whole state of the world. The revelation is made to him, “In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed;” he looks onward perpetually to the accomplishment of this prediction. Our Lord himself has singled out this prophetic look of Abraham as something unexampled in clearness, certainty, and far-reaching extent. “Your father Abraham saw my day and was glad.” This was a revelation made to him indeed; but he is equal to the revelation, he embraces it and concurs in his whole power of mind with it. Mosley.

Abraham, like Paul, “confers not with flesh and blood.” He instantly believes and accepts the offer. It calls him to go out, not knowing whither he went, on the simple promise of God. There were many things to try his faith. His children were to become a great nation, and yet, though now seventy-five years old, he is childless. That he felt this difficulty, his after conduct in stumbling at it shows. S. R.—The writer of the biblical narrative occupies himself in no respect with the question, How God had spoken to Abram. God is, for him, present and an actor in the history just as much as Abram is; the intervention of God has in his eyes nothing but what is perfectly simple and natural. The same faith animates Abram; he issues forth from Chaldea and wanders through Palestine, according to the word and under the direction of the Eternal. Guizot.

Abram heard and recognized God’s voice; he bowed to his authority and went. This first recorded illustration of his faith in God and obedience made its impression upon future ages—as we may see in the words of Joshua (24:2, 3); of Nehemiah (9:7, 8); of Stephen (Acts 7:2-5); and of the writer to the Hebrews (11:8-10). H. C.—The Father of the Faithful “went out not knowing whither he went!” And every true descendant in the lineage of faith will but rejoice in that ignorance which urges him to cling the closer to his immortal Friend; which bids him gladly, for intimations which could but be obscure at best, substitute omniscience itself, and teaches him to cry, “Lord, I know but faintly what it shall be, and I ask not to know! Only assure me that Thou wilt be there.” W. A. B.

God cut him off from kindred that He might draw him closer to Himself. The emigration of a godly man at God’s call forces him to lean much on God, who becomes his only constant comrade and unfailing helper. It throws him back at each emergency upon the spiritual resources of faith, and trains into full maturity the graces of his religious nature. Inwardly, Abram could hardly have become the spiritual hero he was in later life, if he had not been forced to walk through the long trials of his exile with nothing but the unseen eternal God for his “shield,” and compelled to brood through nomeless years over the mighty thoughts which God had uttered to his faith. Dykes.

Does God give “the reason why” in the case of every command? Certainly not. Where he does not give a reason he gives in reality the best reason of all. To give a promise is to show that the reason though undisclosed is all-sufi- cient, for in the case of the All-wise a promise is the harvest of which a reason would be but the bare seed. We can understand a promise where we could not understand a reason: the reason may be too high or too recondite for our faculties; but a promise is practical, positive, literal, and if we have faith in the speaker we know that if the promise be so good the com- mand which precedes it must be founded upon a reason equally valid. In reality we have noth- ing to do with the reasons upon which God’s commands are founded. We are to walk by faith, not by sight. To have faith in God is to comprehend all reasons in one act. . . . Life is a discipline. Shrewd men want to know whither they are going before they set out on a journey; but men of higher shrewdness, men of Christian faith, often go out into enterprise and difficulty without being able to see one step before them. The watchword of the noblest, truest souls is, “We walk by faith, not by sight;” faith has a wider dominion and a more splendid future. Life is to be spiritual; not made up of things that can be counted and valued, but of ideas, convictions, impulses, and decisions that are Divine and imperishable. The world of faith is large, and rich, and brilli- ant. Those who live in it dominate over all lower worlds. J. P.

Abram was seventy and five years old when he left Haran. He was an hundred and seventy-five when in Canaan he closed his eyes. Through all that long interval had it been literally true of him, that “if he had been mindful of the country from whence he came out, he might have had opportunity to re- turn.” There was nothing to forbid a return. It was only the unfulfilled promise which held him fast. “This land will I give,” God had said. So in “this land” he waited, and wait- ing died. Dykes.

5. His brother Nahor stayed behind in the plains of Haran: to become the father of twelve Arab tribes—the Nahorites—as Abraham was to be that of twelve tribes of Hebrews. But the descendants of Nahor were to wander in Edom, on the Euphrates, and over Mesopotamia; in Bashan, and to the east of Jordan, and in North- ern Arabia, almost unknown and wholly insignificant in history, while those of Abraham were to form the people of God, and to give man- kind His Incarnate Son, the Saviour of the world. Nor is it unworthy of notice, in convec- tion with their divergent futures, that Abra- ham’s posterity alone, of all the tribes descended from Terah, abandoned the nomadic for a set- tled life. . . . That Abraham set forth at the head of a large body of tribesmen is evident, from his taking with him all his herds, and all the male and female slaves born in his tents, or whom he had bought in Haran; a multitude so large in the aggregate as to enable him, a few years later, to select from among them three hundred and eighteen men trained to the sol- dierly defence of the camp, to pursue Chedor- laomer. Gelkie.

After crossing the Euphrates, Abraham skirted the northern border of the great Syrian desert, passed through Damascus, and then followed the ancient road from that city to Egypt. W. H. —The pilgrims passed through the plain of Jezreel, which, so to speak, formed a large gate- way into the land, and then turned to the moun- tains of Ephraim. Shechem (the present Nabu- lus) lies in the beautiful and fruitful valley which divides Mounts Ebal and Gerizim; to the south, the broad plain of el-Mukhna joins this valley. K.

Into the land of Canaan they came. Palestine is a small country, but it presents great varieties of soil, climate, and water sup- ply in various districts. We have the tropical Jordan Valley and the arctic region of Upper Hermon and Lebanon. We have rich volcanic corn plains in Bashan and round Jezreel, and sandstones covered with pines and cedars, and hard limestones over which perennial streams flow between fine woods of oak and terebinth in Galilee, and yet more in Gilead. We have flat maritime plains, bounded by ever-rolling dunes, but well watered by sluggish streams from the clear springs at the mountain foot. These plains run from Carmel to Gaza, ever widening, and supporting rich harvests. We have the low chalk hills, with their luxuriant olive-yards and wells of living water, all along the eastern side of the maritime plains. Above, rise mountains 3000 to 4000 feet high, and on the north attain- ing to 10,000 feet. These are generally rugged and bare, but carefully terraced and partly cul- tivated. The vine flourishes on these higher ranges, where the frost and mist aid the strong reflection of heat from the rock to ripen the grapes. But besides these richer districts, we have the old deserts unchanged from the days of Abraham and of David; the flat marly plateau of Beersheba, where the nomads feed their flocks and herds as Isaac did before them; the desolate peaks and gorges of the Jeshimon, where the dun partridge and the brown ibex roam as they did when David hid in these fastnesses from Saul, among the “rocks of the wild goats.” The land is still as fertile as of old; still well watered in certain districts; still with a sufficient rainfall; and when a just and stable government exists (as in the Lebanon) the country still flows with oil and wine. We learn from a study of the land and of history the desolation wrought by human means in Palestine. We see that poverty and decrease of population, the decay of roads and aqueducts, the ruin of the old cisterns, the destruction of the woods, terraces, and vineyards, are the causes of the present desolation. And experience proves that, given a just and strong government in the country, Palestine might become, like Southern Italy, a garden of the world. Cander.

Not by accident did that strip of Syrian territory become the theatre of sacred events, the home of the covenant people, and the seat of divine revelation. There was no other region on the earth’s surface which could have answered so well. It unites, as no other does, the two indispensable conditions of central position and yet of isolation. To lie in the midst of the nations, at the focus and gathering-place of those mighty and cultured empires, whose rivalries ruled the politics, as their example led the civilization, of antiquity, yet at the same time be shut off from such contact with them as must of necessity prove injurious, seemed to be opposite requirements, very hard to be reconciled. To a curious extent they are reconciled in the land of promise. It lies at a corner where Asia, Africa, and Europe meet, or all but touch. The six ancient states of Babylon, Assyria, Media, Persia, Phœnicia, and Egypt stood round about it. The main lines of ancient traffic ran close past its border. Whenever, for purposes of war or trade, bodies of men sought to pass from the populous and powerful states of the north, whose centre lay along the Euphrates, to the populous and powerful states of the south, whose centre lay along the Nile, there was only one road by which they could travel. “Syria,” says Ritter, “is bounded by a great sea of sand on the east, as by a great sea of water on the west. Across that natural barrier of sea and sand, there is but one convenient highway.” Palestine is like “a bridge arching across a double sea of desert sands and of waters which the want of harbors made useless to it. It connected the Euphrates with the

Nile.” While thus set in the middle of all lands, it stood strangely apart from all. “No great highway,” says the same authority, “led through it from nation to nation; all went by it, over the roads which skirted it without traversing it; and which all found their type in the sea-line which ran from the harbors of the ancient Phœnician cities to Egypt, along a shore which was almost devoid of havens.” In fact, it was so isolated, that if its people chose they could dwell apart. On the west, a harborless coast; on the north, great mountain ranges; on the east and south, vast waterless wastes; yet alongside it, and close by its very borders, there must pass, by fatiguing and hazardous journeys, the long caravans or laden ships which carried traffic from one civilized state to another, and the cumbrous armies by which rival empires sought to crush each other. Geographically, politically, commercially, “no country is so situated in relation to three great continents and five great bodies of water; none unites such amazing contrasts,—perfect isolation and independence, with the ability to go out from this isolation and establish relations with all the greatest nations of antiquity.” Dykes.

Divine tuition, under its earlier form of mere paternal superintendence, was cut short by sin, before as yet the race had begun to be cradled. Then came that other form, the redemptive, which was at once inaugurated, and which, from then till now, has inspired and determined the whole course of human history. The Serpent-Bruiser was not yet born, was only promised, and foreshadowed by type and symbol; but the Logos economy began to work, and, like the central wheel of some gigantic machinery, sent its motion to the farthest points. Christ began to rule the world long before he entered it through the Virgin’s womb. It was he that vitalized the pious civilization of Seth. It was he that cursed the godless race of Cain, and drowned the reeking plains of Western Asia beneath the Deluge. It was he that divided the earth among the three great races that came of Noah. It was he that elected the race of Shem as the special nurse and guardian of the great religions of the world. It was he that appeared to Abraham, and evoked, through him, the Hebrew people to their stupendous destiny. From that hour, till he appeared in person to tread its mountains and its valleys, Palestine became, and remained, the central country of the globe. Diminutive in territory, embraced

None of those antique civilizations were native to the soils that nourished them. Rome took her light from Greece; Greece from Egypt; Egypt from Western Asia; and Western Asia was where the race was twice cradled, where Adam lived and died, and where the Ark rested. Each of these civilizations, it is true, had something peculiar to itself, in obedience to other laws; but they all proceeded, by natural descent, from one original; and that original was a survivor of the Deluge, the bequest of an elder, perished world, and, in its last analysis, an inspiration of God himself. The only civilizations, of much historic interest, which failed to play an important part in preparing the way for Christianity, were the Hindoo and the Chinese. Why these had nothing to do, is obvious: They stood apart, outside of the line of march. But neither were they indigenous. They both proceeded from Western Asia, shooting eastward, as the more important historic civilizations shot westward, from the central stem. As to the ordering of these events, the fact of a general Divine superintendence is hardly to be questioned. Such adaptations indicate design; and such design necessitates the inference of a competent designer. R. D. H.

6. And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem, unto the oak of Moreh. 7 And the Canaanite was then in the land. And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared 8 unto him. And he removed from thence unto the mountain on the east of Beth-el, and pitched his tent, having Beth-el on the west, and Ai on the east: and there he builded an altar 9 unto the LORD, and called upon the name of the LORD. And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South.

6. Shechem. See N. T., vol. 1, pp. 96, 98, and 100 for Sketch Maps and Illustrations. B.—The western side of the Plain of Shechem, El Mūkhna, is bounded by the abutments of two mountain ranges, running from east to west. These ranges are Ebal and Gerizim. Exactly opposite Jacob’s Well is the opening between them. A mile and a half above the well, and out of sight of the plain, is Nablous, the modern Shechem. Geographically and historically we are here in the central spot of the Holy Land. So exactly is Shechem in the centre between east and west, that the streams, which burst forth copiously from springs within its walls, run from the east gate down to the Jordan; and those which dash over the pavements, at the west end of the town, find their way through the Plain of Sharon to the Mediterranean.

For distinctness and variety of detail the view from Gerizim has no superior. Once more Hermon rose before us in spotless purity far beyond and above Tabor, Gilboa, and the lesser hills of Galilee. On our right we could trace the trans-Jordanic range from the Sea of Galilee, Bashan, Gilead, down to Moab. On the left the Mediterranean formed the horizon from Carmel perhaps to Gaza; while Joppa and Cassarea could be distinctly recognized. The southern view was shut in by the hills of Benjamin. At our feet was spread the long plain of Mūkhna, into which the vale of Shechem debouches, where Jacob pastured his flocks, and where there was ample space for the tents of Israel when gathered there by Joshua. All Central Palestine could be taken in at a glance. H. B. T.

Robinson, who entered the valley of Sychem through Mūkhna, describes it as one of the most attractive portions of Palestine. “All at once the ground sinks down to a valley running toward the west, with a soil of rich black vegetable mould. Here a scene of luxuriant and almost unparalleled verdure bursts upon our view. The whole valley was filled with gardens of vegetables and orchards of all kinds of fruits, watered by several fountains, which burst forth in various parts and flow westward in refreshing streams. It came upon us suddenly, like a scene of fairy enchantment. We saw nothing to compare with it in all Palestine.” Such then must have been the first view which Abram got of the land of promise. The plain (or rather the wood) of Moreh, where Abram settled, probably derived its name from the Canaanitish proprietor of that district. K.

A site so fair and lovely invited, like Damascus by its many waters, the earliest settlement of mankind: destined by nature to be a city, in which man, wherever he exists at all, is sure to congregate. As old as Damascus and Hebron, older than any other known city of Syria, Shechem was a city while Abram yet tarried in Chaldea. It is the artery through which all commerce between north and south must pass. The history of Shechem first dawns when Abram made his first encampment in the Land of Promise, under the terebinth of Moreh, at Shechem. “The Canaanite was then in the land,” when the Father of the Faithful, under the shade of that tree, erected the first altar ever raised in that land to the honor of Jehovah; and the pledge that his seed should possess it was renewed to him. H. B. T.

The Canaanite was in the land on the arrival of the first Hebrew immigrant. So open was the face of the country, that Abram found no hindrance to his pasturing extensive flocks both in the centre and in the south. There was plainly room for all. As yet we have to conceive of Abram as free to shift his black haircloth tents and spreading herds from spot to spot over the face of the country; and free, wherever he encamped, to erect his altar and worship the God of his fathers, as Abel worshipped, with innocent blood, the first-fruits of his simple sheep. Dykes.

7. And the Lord appeared unto Abram.** This is the first mention of a distinct appearance of the LORD to man. His voice is heard by Adam, and he is said to have spoken to Noah and to Abram; but here is a visible manifestation. Was it an angel personating God? This question has been answered by many in the affirmative. Or was it a manifestation of the Son of God, a Theophany, in some measure anticipating the Incarnation? This opinion was held by the great majority of the fathers from the very first. . . . The fact, that the name Angel of the Lord is sometimes used of a created Angel, is not proof enough that it may not be also used of Him who is called “the Angel of the covenant” (Mal. 3: 1): and the apparent identification of the Angel of God with God Himself in very many passages leads markedly to the conclusion, that God spake to man by an Angel or Messenger, and yet that that Angel or Messenger was Himself God. No man saw God at any time, but the only begotten Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, declared him. He, who was the Word of God, the voice of God to His creatures, was yet in the beginning with God, and He was God. E. H. B.

The forms which revelation takes in patriarchal history are chiefly either that of immediate inward communication, when God speaks in the soul of man without employing the medium of the senses, or that of Theophany, when, by way of revealing Himself, He assumes human form. The latter manifestation was either internal, being then a vision or a dream; or external, when He appeared in bodily form. The principal, and perhaps the only form of this second mode of Theophany, is by means of what is designated as the Angel of the Lord, in whom Jehovah appears and manifests Himself to the senses. This mode of manifestation occurs for the first time in patriarchal history. K.—If the end of the Divine ways is the realization of the perfect union between the God of love and man, His beloved creature, in one and the same person, the God-Man, then there could be no more natural or rational preparation in view of this aim, than those transitory visits or apparitions of God to the patriarchs. Later on, they will transform themselves into those glorious visions granted to the prophets, and will eventually end in the permanent Incarnation which the New Testament recounts. And this view of the apparitions of God in the life of the patriarchs may be applied to all the miracles of sacred history. They are all like so many steps on the way that leads from the calling of Abraham to the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. They are like the links of a chain of which these two events are the first and last circles. Break these and the chain will fall to pieces of itself. Consequently, all there is of superhuman in the Old Testament is implicitly contained in the incarnation and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is on the ground of the New Testament that the question of the supernatural in the Old must be settled. It is before the open grave of Jesus Christ that we must discuss concerning Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Elijah. Godel.

Unto thy seed will I give this land. The Most High unfolds his counsels and promises gradually; rewarding one degree of faith with such intimations of mercy as will beget another. He at first signified his purpose of merely showing to Abraham a distant land in which he was to sojourn. He now speaks of giving it, but not immediately to himself, but to his seed. This promise is still further amplified in chapter 15. Bush.—Behold, Abraham takes possession for that seed which he had not, which in nature he was not like to have; of that land whereof he should not have one foot, wherein his seed should not be settled for almost five hundred years after: the power of faith can prevent time, and make future things present; if we be the true sons of Abraham, we have already, while we sojourn here on earth, the possession of our land of Promise: while we seek our country, we have it. Bp. H.

And there he builded an altar unto the Lord. The first recorded act of religious worship since that of Noah on emerging from the ark—very simple in outward form and circircumstance. A few stones piled up—perhaps a green sod laid upon them; on that rude altar some produce of the earth, some firstling of the flock, offered up in sacrifice; Abram before it, bowing in lowly adoration, calling upon the name of the Lord. W. H.

Here, at the foot of Ebal and Gerizim, in the holy heart of the land, he received from God his earliest intimation that this was the destined home of his future seed—the land in search of which he had travelled so far. Under the branches of that sacred tree, which, after looking down on the cruel and impure rites of many more generations, was still to stand, a venerable landmark in the eyes of his conquering descendants, Abram reared his first rude altar to Jehovah on the soil of Canaan. It was his response to God’s word: “Unto thy seed will I give this land.” It expressed both confidence and gratitude. It was his way of taking the country in possession. Dykes.

When God appeared to him, then and there he built an altar, with an eye to the God who appeared to him. Thus he returned God’s visit, and kept up his correspondence with Heaven, as one that resolved it should not fail on his side; thus he acknowledged with thankfulness God’s kindness to him in making him that gracious visit and promise; and thus he testified his confidence in, and dependence upon, the word which God had spoken. And wherever he had a tent, God had an altar, and that an altar sanctified by prayer. For he not only minded the ceremonial part of religion, the offering of sacrifice; but he made conscience of the natural duty of seeking to his God and calling on his name, that spiritual sacrifice with which God is well pleased; he preached concerning the name of the Lord, that is, he instructed his family and neighbors in the knowledge of the true God and his holy religion. Those that would approve themselves the children of faithful Abram and would inherit the blessing of Abram, must make conscience of keeping up the solemn worship of God, particularly in their families, according to the example of Abram: the way of family worship is a good old way, is no novel invention, but the ancient usage of all the saints. H.

A grand sight that was in the heart of the old heathenism—that one man against the world almost—that solitary relic of Eden memories, green yet amid the wide desolations—that altar of a pure worship like the ark of the deluge, the sole resting-place for the foot of pilgrim piety! See that standard for the true God set up, more sublime than granite monument or obelisk.

There it stands, more than a fortress to guard that home; more than a sanctuary to kindle a devotion; an ever-speaking witness for God, the prophetic pledge that the world’s great sacrifice was yet to be offered. . . . Surely the tent and the altar should ever be conjoined. Every household should be the sanctuary of a hallowed affection, the earthly image of the family of heaven. Religion should be there, not in mere form, but in its living spirit; not as a mere outward ceremonial, but as an inspiring principle. Gillett.

Abram set up his altar along the line of his march. Blessed are they whose way is known by marks of worship. The altar is the highest seal of ownership. God will not lightly forsake his temples. This setting up of the altar shows that our spiritual life ought to be attested by outward sign and profession. Abram had the promise in his heart, yet he was not lost in religious musings and prophesyings—he built his altar and set up his testimony in the midst of his people, and made them sharers of a common worship. J. P.

8. From the vale of Shechem, which had been his first halting-place, Abram moved erelong to more open quarters on the hills to the south of it. The place is described as lying between Bethel and Ai. Bethel, as a name and as a town, is of course of later date. Between these two sites there lay then, as there lies now, a “high and beautiful plain,” which Robinson describes as “one of the finest tracts for pasturage in the whole land.” Dykes.

Bethel. The place which was afterward called Bethel by Jacob; for its first name was Luz. Beith el literally signifies the House of God. A. C. —According to Robinson, the ruins, now called Beitin, are the remains of ancient Bethel. They lie five geographical miles to the south of Shechem, two geographical miles north of Jerusalem. The agreement both of situation and of name affords decisive confirmation that Beitin is the ancient Bethel. K.—There is a gently sloping grassy valley, south-east of Bethel, where the patriarch’s flocks may have grazed; and we recognize the mountain in the little rugged hill opposite, with shapeless cairns on its top, Tell-el-Hajar, “the hill of the stones.” Ai, destroyed by Joshua, appears to have been situated on the hill above the village of Deir Duwan, a couple of miles further to the east. When Bethel is known and examined, it is almost impossible to mistake the site of Ai; and also that of Abram’s second encampment. H. B. T.

There he pitched his tent—and building an altar unto the Lord. Where Abram has a tent, there God must have an altar, as he well knows there is no safety but under the Divine protection. The house in which the worship of God is not established, cannot be considered as under the Divine protection. A. C.

By the gift or promise of One to whom all lands belong, that land was his from one end of it to the other; in actual possession he could not call a foot of it his own. To a position so unusual as this he was required to accommodate his conduct. Until it pleased God by his providence to put him in peaceable possession of the soil, Abram had to reconcile himself to seeing it in other hands. Because he owned no territory, he built no fixed dwelling. Altars he erected, but no house. To the last he would not exchange the encampment for a “city of habitation,” simply because to the last he remained, as he said, “a stranger and a sojourner” among the people of the land. Dykes.

9. Going on still toward the south. In the first verse of the next chapter we read that “he went up out of Egypt into the south.” One of the recent valuable attainments of biblical geography is the recognition of the fact that the term here rendered south is in truth a proper name, and denotes a certain territory of irregular boundaries, stretching, southward of Palestine, from the bottom of the Dead Sea across to the Mediterranean. So when Moses sent the spies from Kadesh, he did not say (Num. 13:17), “Get you up southward,” for that course would have taken them back to Egypt; but, “Get you up into the Negeb.” Chambers.—The south, as being nearer the arid desert, and further removed from the drainage of the mountains, is drier and less productive than the north. The tract below Hebron, which forms the link between the hills of Judah and the desert, was known to the ancient Hebrews by a term originally derived from its dryness, Negeb. This was THE SOUTH country. P. S.

The entire southern half of Palestine Proper, west of the Jordan, was from a very early period divided into four main regions. 1st. The largest and most familiarly known was the HILL COUNTRY; the elevated district or plateau stretching eastward to the WILDERNESS bordering the Dead Sea, and westward to the SHEFELAH, or lowland on the Mediterranean Sea. It includes Hebron and Jerusalem. 2d. The LOWLAND or SHEFELAH, a broad strip between the central highlands and the Mediterranean. 3d. The smallest is the WILDERNESS, including the

In passing from the “south country” of Judah to the “hill country” marked indeed was the change, from easy smooth tracks over gently rolling downs to rocky slippery paths, up and down narrow valleys, between naked rugged hills full of caves, dreary and now (in winter) barren. There is a wonderful reality in many of these apparently trifling expressions of Scripture, which day by day our journey brings home to the mind—“the wilderness,” “the south country,” “the hill country,” all in Judah, yet each so distinct, so characteristic in every feature. H. B. T.

10. And there was a famine in the land : and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there ; 11 for the famine was sore in the land. And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman 12 to look upon : and it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall 13 say, This is his wife : and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister : that it may be well with me for thy sake, and that my soul may live be- 14 cause of thee. And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians 15 beheld the woman that she was very fair. And the princes of Pharaoh saw her, and praised 16 her to Pharaoh : and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. And he entreated Abram well for her sake : and he had sheep, and oxen, and he-asses, and menservants, and maid- 17 servants, and she-asses, and camels. And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great 18 plagues because of Sarai Abram’s wife. And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is this 19 that thou hast done unto me ? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife ? Why saidst thou, She is my sister ? so that I took her to be my wife : now therefore behold thy wife, take 20 her, and go thy way. And Pharaoh gave men charge concerning him : and they brought him on the way, and his wife, and all that he had.

10. Famine in the land.** Soon after Abram entered Canaan, the land, for the sake of which he had forsaken fertile Mesopotamia, became unable to sustain his household, or to feed the comparatively small flocks which at that time composed his fortune. In this first serious trial, the new emigrant does not appear to have either asked or received counsel from Heaven. Dykes.

Went into Egypt. Egypt being watered by the Nile, which we now know to be fed by immense lakes that drain the vast mountain regions of the equator, often had plentiful harvests, when Syria, which was dependent upon the uncertain rains, was suffering from famine. This contrast between these two neighboring countries often comes out in the sacred narratives. J. P. T.—In Egypt, the fertility of the loamy soil depends on the annual rise of the Nile, which is fed by the rains of far-distant mountain ranges. Hence, when the land of Canaan was wasted by drought and consequent famine, Egypt was generally so productive as to be the granary of the neighboring countries. As Canaan was the brother of Mizraim, the intercourse between the two countries in which they dwelt was natural and frequent. Dry seasons and dearth of provisions seem to have been of frequent occurrence in the land of Canaan. M.

11. Was come near to enter Egypt.** When he passed the well-guarded frontier wall, a new and strange world would be around him. The vast pyramids were already ancient, for at least eight dynasties had passed away since the first had been built. Populous colonies of Semitic peoples had brought the north of the Delta into high cultivation, and filled it with busy commerce, while to the south of them the whole valley of the Nile had been united under one sceptre, and the country covered with towns, cities and villages, the former adorned by great temples and palaces, of which the ruins still excite wonder. Geikie.

Abram’s visit to Lower Egypt is the first in a long series of similar incidents in the annals of his race, of which the last was the escape thither of his divine descendant, the persecuted Infant. What a stretch of time lay between these two flights! How many centuries separate us even from the later of the two! Yet across all these millennia lies this land of mystery and superstition, like a link to bind history together. Egypt is the key to the politics of the East to-day, just as it was four thousand years ago. It was already the foremost state in the world. Peopled by the same race which in Chaldea had made such early advances in arts and polity, it already possessed a venerable history. It had sent out its colonies to the north and to the east. It was ruled by a semi-deified monarch, whose sway reposed on a compact and mighty priesthood. Its religion was a low and superstitious nature-worship, addicted to magic, and only redeemed from corruption by the clearness with which it proclaimed two great moral doctrines,—immortality, and a rigorous distribution of rewards and punishments in a future life. Dykes.

When Abram went down into Egypt the empire was already very old. Its history begins with Menes, who united the independent states of the Nile valley into a single kingdom, and established his capital at Memphis. The first six dynasties of kings represent what is called the Old Empire. It was under the monarchs of the fourth dynasty that the pyramids of Gizeh were built; and at no time during its later history did the art and culture of Egypt reach again so high a level as it did under the Old Empire. With the close of the sixth dynasty came a period of disaster and decline. When Egypt again emerged into the light of history it was under the warrior princes of the twelfth dynasty. The capital had been shifted to the new city of Thebes in the south; a new god, Amun, presided over the Egyptian deities, and the ruling class itself differed in blood and features from the men of the Old Empire. Henceforth Egyptian art was characterized by a stiff conventionality wholly unlike the freedom and vigor of the art of the early dynasties; the government became more autocratic; and the obelisk took the place of the pyramid in architecture. But the Middle Empire, as it has been termed, did not last long. Semitic invaders from Canaan and Arabia overran the country, and established their seat at Zoan or Tanis. For 511 years they held the Egyptians in bondage, though the native princes, who had taken refuge in the south, gradually acquired more and more power, until at last, under the leadership of Aahmes or Amosis, the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, they succeeded in driving the hated foreigners out. These foreigners are known to history as the Hyksos or Shepherds, Hyksos being the Egyptian hik shasu, “prince of the Shasu,” or “Beduins.” The name which they bear upon the monuments is Menti. It must have been while the Hyksos monarchs were holding their court at Zoan that Abram entered the land. He found there men of Semitic blood, like himself, and speaking a Semitic language. A welcome was assured him, and he had no need of an interpreter. But the Hyksos kings had already begun to assume Egyptian state and to adopt Egyptian customs. In place of the Semitic shalat, “ruler,” the title by which their first leaders had been known, they had borrowed the Egyptian title of Pharaoh. Pharaoh appears on the monuments as pir-na, “great house,” the palace in which the king lived being used to denote the king himself, just as in our own time the “porte” or gate of the palace has become synonymous with the Turkish Sultan. Sayce.

13. Abram “was a man of like passions with us,” and of like weaknesses. When God spoke to him he believed, and when he believed then he obeyed. But God had said nothing as yet to him about Sarai; and, in the absence of any special direction, he seems to have taken the matter into his own hands, after the manner of those times and countries. A. E.—But what a change is this! hitherto hath Sarah been Abram’s wife, now Egypt hath made her his sister: fear hath turned him from a husband to a brother; no strength of faith can exclude some doubtings: God hath said, “I will make thee a great nation;” Abram says, “The Egyptians will kill me;” he, that lived by his faith, yet shrinketh and sinneth. How vainly shall we hope to believe without fear, and to live without infirmities! Bp. H

His faith wavers, because he looks to his wife, to Egypt, and to himself, and not to God alone. He fears and trembles for the Egyptians, who, as the event shows, were quite capable of doing what he apprehends at their hands; and so he persuades Sarai to tell a lie. Sarai was in point of fact his half-sister, as appears from chap. 20 : 12. C. G. B.—The equivocation is certainly not to be justified, either on this or on the future occasion on which it was again resorted to; for though it contained a half truth, this was so employed as to render “the half truth a whole lie.” Both circumstances—his repairing to Egypt, and when there betaking to such a worldly expedient for safety—betray the imperfection of his faith, which, while strong enough to set him on this new course of separation from the world and devotedness to God, still wanted clearness of discernment and implicitness of trust sufficient to meet the unexpected difficulties that so early presented themselves in the way. The first failure stood in his seeking relief from the emergency that arose by withdrawing, without the divine sanction, to another country than that into which he had been conducted by the special providence of God. Instead of looking up for direction and support, he betook to worldly shifts and expedients, and thus became entangled in difficulties, out of which the immediate interposition of God alone could have rescued him. In this way, however, the result proved beneficial. Abram was made to feel, in the first instance, that his backsliding had reproved him; and then the merciful interposition of Heaven, rebuking even a king for his sake, taught him the lesson, that with the God of heaven upon his side, he had no need to be afraid for the outward evils that might beset him in his course. He had but to look up in faith, and get the direction or support that he needed. P. F.

15. Princes of Pharaoh.** Pharaoh was, from the earliest times to which the monuments go back, supported by powerful nobles, or “princes,” who were hereditary landed proprietors of great wealth.—Saw her and praised her to Pharaoh. A scene in a tomb at Beni Hassan clearly shows that, under the Old Empire, foreigners on their arrival in the country, especially if they came with a train of attendants, as Abraham would, were received at the frontier by the governor of the province, whose secretary took down in writing their number, and probably their description, doubtless for the purpose of forwarding a “report” to the court. Reports of this character, belonging to later times, have been found, and are among the most interesting of the ancient documents. It was regarded as especially important to apprise the monarch of all that happened upon his north-eastern frontier, where Egypt abutted upon tribes of some considerable strength, whose proceedings had to be watched with care. G. R.

Taken into Pharaoh’s house. The inadequacy of Abram’s expedient appears in the issue, which is different from what he expected. Sarai is admired for her beauty, and, being professedly single, is selected as a wife for Pharaoh; while Abram, as her brother, is munificently entertained and rewarded. Sarai was sixty-five years of age (Gen. 17 : 17) at the time when Abram describes her as a woman fair to look upon. But we are to remember that Sarai’s age corresponds with twenty-five or thirty years in modern times, as she was at this time not half the age to which men were then wont to live; that she had no family or other hardship to bring on premature decay; and that the women of Egypt were far from being distinguished for regularity of feature or freshness of complexion. M.

There is no occasion to deny, as certain apologists have unwisely done, the guilt of the patriarch’s cowardice and falsehood. It was dictated by such a timorous concern for his personal safety as implied distrust in the protection of God. It did a cruel wrong to his wife, for it exposed her to the most serious of all hazards. Dykes.

Abram came forth from a land of idolaters. He was surrounded by idolaters in Canaan, and by idolaters in Egypt, and, we may add, was himself born of idolatrous parents. And wherever idolatry abounds falsehood abounds. Aff.—As the minister of God, Abram is great and noble; as the “architect of his own fortune,” he is cowardly, selfish, and false. In our own life we know what it is to have great faith and great unbelief. Abram went out at God’s bidding, cheerfully encountering all the trials of pilgrimage in unknown places, yet he cannot trust God to take care of his wife. How little are the greatest men! Where there was great grace there should have been great courage. We are not to qualify the disgrace by talking about spots on the sun; we are to learn by the failures of other men that our own life will be called to trials which will need higher strength than merely human power. J. P.

The record here is a signal instance of the fidelity of this historian, and of how marvellously unlike all other biographies are these accounts of great men in the Scriptures, in never either holding back or apologizing for the discreditable acts of their lives. This Abraham—he of the exalted character, and the hero of the faith; he who, at the simple call and promise of God, had forsaken home and friends and country—is now described as capable of falling through unbelief. Consulting his own wisdom, now under the pressure of famine, instead of continuing to rely upon God, he places himself in the way of strong temptation, and falls. The hero becomes cowardly; the man of high integrity begins to scheme and prevaricate, till at last he stands disgraced under the rebuke of a heathen king! So we shall find throughout the record this same faithfulness of history in recording the faults of good men. And it is a further striking fact that the faults committed stand in most utter contrast with the prominent virtues by which those who fell were distinguished. It was the “faithful Abraham” who lost his confidence in God. It was the meek Moses who fell under the trial of his temper and “spoke unadvisedly with his lips.” It was the gentle, amiable “disciple whom Jesus loved” who received the rebuke of his bad spirit for desiring to call down fire from Heaven on the Samaritans. It was the bold Peter who played the coward under the questioning of a servant maid, and with others denied his Master. These records seemed designed to stain the pride of all human glory, and teach men to “glory only in the Lord.” And they admonish us to watch the points in which there is least apparent danger, and to “take heed how we stand lest we fall.” The prime fault and folly of Abram in this instance consisted in not waiting for the Divine direction in leaving the land of promise, and, of course, in not committing himself to the care of the Lord Jehovah, but trusting to his own devices after he had gotten into danger. Just here is the prime cause of the follies and faults of all good men who fall. Under the pressure of some imminent danger, for which they forget that God has provided, or under the allurement of temptation or the impulses of passion, forgetting God they undertake to be their own directors and guides, and fall. S. R.

Deceit, in order to gain a point or to avert a disaster, is to this day an inveterate habit with most Orientals; and in the best times of Israel, men otherwise of lofty character are found succumbing to this dastardly vice. The tendency evidently lay deep in the race from its first appearance. God did not select this race to be the medium of His revelations to mankind because they were by nature more noble or more generous than surrounding nations. With strong religious instincts, indeed, they were certainly endowed,—with a faculty for apprehending and surrendering themselves to the voice of the Eternal. Of this their great progenitor was the typical instance; and the characteristic descended to the race. But of those lofty virtues which actually came to bloom on Hebrew soil, the greater part were the fruit of Heaven’s culture rather than of indigenous goodness. They were products, not of nature, but of grace. Dykes.—The character of the patriarchs is represented in Scripture with undisguised truthfulness. We see in them the examples of men who sinned indeed, but struggled against sin, conquered, and grew in holiness. We see men who now and then succumbed under temptation, but in the end overcame, and were in truth men of God. Gerd.

18. Abram for his insincerity must bear in silence, and to his deep humiliation, the just reproaches of Pharaoh. God also shows him his iniquity by the injurious consequences which his attempt at deception entailed. C. G. B.—In this matter Pharaoh was a greater, a nobler man than Abram. Natural nobleness ought never to be underrated. Why begrudge to the heathen a nobleness which was as surely of God as our own Christian excellence? There are men to-day who make no profession of Christian faith: whose honor, straightforwardness, and generosity would put to shame many who claim a good standing in the Church. Yet it is not because of Christianity, but for the wand of it, that professors are humbled before men of the world; and it must be added, that men of natural elevation of temper and sentiment would attain a still intenser lustre by the possession of that life in Jesus Christ, without which all other life is either artificial or incomplete. Natural openness and honorableness of disposition must not be valued as a substitute for the renewed life which is wrought in men by God the Holy Ghost. J. P.

19,20. To him who follows God fully in simplicity of heart, everything must ultimately succeed. Had Abram and Sarai simply passed for what they were, they had incurred no danger. Neither Pharaoh nor his courtiers would have noticed the woman, had she appeared to be the wife of the stranger that came to sojourn in their land. The issue sufficiently proves this. A. C.—It deserves to be noticed, that throughout the history of the chosen race, Egypt was to them the scene of spiritual danger, of covetousness and love of riches, of worldly security, of temptation to rest on an arm of flesh, on man’s own understanding, and not on God only. All this appears from the very first, in Abram’s sojourn there, Sarai’s danger, their departure full of wealth and prosperity. E. H. B.

The Bible is remarkable for its candor and fidelity in dealing with the characters of good men. Their frailties are made as prominent as their virtues, and they appear in all respects completely human. This is one token of the Divine Mind in the book; for God knows what is in man, and God is always true. It is never profitable, as it can never be justifiable, to swerve from the truth. The attempt to deceive others degrades our own moral sense, and is likely at some time to lead to exposure, and react to our injury. It is a true proverb, that one lie leads to another; and by and by the deceiver becomes so involved in the meshes of his own falsehoods, that he cannot extricate himself, and must stand convicted of his shame. And, when one has lost the confidence of others in his word, it is very hard to regain it. There can be no sterling character where truth is wanting. J. P. T.—Though the wicked dishonor Him by their flagitious lives, yet let not His own children dishonor Him. Sins in you are worse than in others. A fault in a stranger is not so much taken notice of as a fault in a child. A spot in a black cloth is not so much observed, but a spot in scarlet every one’s eye is upon it. A sin in the wicked is not so much wondered at, it is a spot in black; but a sin in a child of God, here is a spot in scarlet; this is more visible, and brings an odium and dishonor upon the gospel. T. Watson.

There is yet another lesson here, the lesson of Divine forbearance with human infirmity. God did not cast off Abram, or send him back to Ur of the Chaldees—a man disgraced and condemned. God forbid that we should make any excuse for sin; yet there are sins that come out of weakness rather than out of love of sin for its own sake. Abram’s sin arose rather from weakness than depravity. A great fear seized him, and for the time being he foolishly took his affairs into his own hands. “Let him that is without sin cast the first stone” at Abram! It was something after all, standing between Babylonian and Egyptian idolatry—colossal and splendid—to say, There is but one God and I put my faith in him! It was a new voice in the earth. It was the first note of Christian civilization. Now it is common to avow this creed, but it went for something when a Chaldean shepherd declared it amidst polytheistic and sumptuous idolatries. When we say Abram sinned, we ought also to say that Abram was the friend of God; and if we hide ourselves under the plea of his weakness, we ought also to strive after the holiness and sublimity of his faith. J. P.

Recent explorations in Egypt, conducted mainly by Brugsch, Mariette, and Chabas, and those in Palestine, undertaken by English and American scholars, are no less interesting and important than the Assyrian researches. They illustrate every book in the Bible. Evidences of its historic accuracy are impressed on the ruins of Palestine, they are written on the tombs and temples of Egypt, and they are buried deep on sculptured stones and clay tablets, beneath the scathed mounds of Babylonia and Assyria. The touch of infidelity cannot obliterate them. J. L. P.

The learned Egyptologists of our time are laboring with enthusiasm to bring to light the records in papyri, in painting and in stone, of that ancient civilization. How comes it that this single record by Moses has been the only survivor as a living history in the hands of all men, while all these contemporary records of the same civilization have lain buried for three thousand years, to have a resurrection at last in this nineteenth century as witnesses to attest his accuracy and fidelity as a historian? Is it after all a weak superstition of ours when we claim not only that the book is God-inspired, but that the providence of God has singularly watched over a book which alone of all the learned writings of that era survived the wreck of civilization, and passed on down through ages unscathed for over three thousand years? S. R.

Through Young, Champollion, and Lepsius three systems of writing, and the changing dialects of thousands of years, have been turned from dumb monuments to speaking voices, just as through Grotefend and Birnouf and Rawlinson a half-dozen kinds of cuneiform texts, and as many separate languages, have been rescued from forgotten tombs. F. Brown (New Princeton Rev., Nov., 1886).

It is now more than forty years since Champollion, the younger, astounded the learned world by the publication of the results of his studies of Egyptian antiquities, first brought to light by the expedition of Napoleon into Egypt and removed to the royal museum in Paris, and subsequently explored on the ground by himself as the head of a learned commission, sent by the French and Tuscan Governments to Egypt, in 1828. After his death in 1832, among his scholars the subject was prosecuted with zeal: and Roselini, professor of Oriental languages and antiquities at Pisa, who had gone in 1829 with Champollion, as the representative of Tuscany, at the request of his great associate, brought out the results of their joint investigations in a volume entitled “The Monuments of Egypt and of Nubia, interpreted and illustrated—consisting of a series of treatises on the history and civil institutions of the Pharaoh dynasties, and the languages, civil history and arts of the Nile.” These investigations were subsequently followed up with great zeal by several British explorers and students—among them Dr. Young, who shares with Champollion the honor of having first indicated the right method of deciphering the hieroglyphic language, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson, a man of singular erudition and of great energy, regulated by modesty and good judgment, who published about 1841, in six volumes, the “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, including their private life, government, laws, arts, manufactures, religion and early history.” In 1842 Dr. Lepsius was sent to Egypt also by the Prussian Government, in connection with other learned men, and carried on the investigations so auspiciously begun with great energy and success. Among the results of these investigations it is reported by these learned men that they have found “paintings numerous and beautiful beyond description, as fresh and perfect as if finished only yesterday.” And these pictures, with multitudes of hieroglyphic records, thus disentombed, after lying buried near three thousand years, thus arise in this age of scepticism and rationalism to attest the authenticity of what Moses wrote three thousand years ago, and the evident accordance of his accounts of those ancient civilizations as a contemporary with them.

The marvellous discoveries in Egypt aroused general interest in the subject of those ancient civilizations, and soon expeditions were undertaken to explore the ruins on the Euphrates and Tigris, the region known anciently as Mesopotamia—“between the rivers”—because lying between the Euphrates and the Tigris. Bear in mind, here, the geographical facts that along the eastern side of the continent of Africa, nearly parallel with the Red Sea, comes the Nile from the far south, emptying into the Mediterranean about latitude 31 degrees and longitude 31 degrees, while some 15 degrees to the eastward comes down from Armenia in the north, the original seat of Noah’s family, and empties into the Persian gulf at about the same latitude the Euphrates, receiving the Tigris as a tributary near its mouth. Thus the first great empires of the earth were founded in the valleys through which ran the Euphrates and the Nile, the Assyrian and Chaldean empires north of latitude 30 degrees on the Euphrates and the empire of Egypt south 30 degrees on the Nile.

After the discoveries on the Nile, scientific exploration directed its efforts to the eastern seat of ancient empire on the Euphrates of the Tigris. The mountain-like mounds that rose from the plains of Shinar or Babylonia were excavated, and on every hand were found sculptures, basso-relievos, impressions upon bricks, the ruins of ancient buildings, and innumerable inscriptions in singular wedge-shaped letters, in this respect differing from the “hieroglyphics” or pictured words of the Egyptian inscriptions. By the persevering studies of skilful Orientalists the key has been found to the reading of these inscriptions, and thus the records of these ancient civilizations of Babylonia and Chaldea, after a sleep of near three thousand years, have had a resurrection to furnish their testimony also to the entire trustworthiness of “Moses and the prophets.” As the result of these remarkable modern discoveries, we are brought face to face with civilizations of the era of Abraham, of which for 3000 years the world has had but little conception, very much as we are brought face to face with the Roman civilization of the era of the Apostle Paul by the study of the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Among the general logical results of these discoveries is, first, an entire overthrow of the theorists who would have all civilization to be simply the last highest result of a series of developments from society in a state of savagery; and, second, a sad lesson to the materialism of our times which boasts of the marvellous advance of men toward the perfection of humanity through the advancing power of man over the powers of material nature. For “it will be shown,” says Layard, “that in Assyria, as in Egypt, the arts do not appear to have advanced after the construction of the earliest edifices with which we are acquainted, but rather to have declined. The most ancient sculptures we possess are the most correct and severe in form and show the highest degree of taste in the details.” I cite a paragraph from Rawlinson both as confirmatory of Layard, and as showing the coincidence between the picture of Abraham in Egypt, and the disentombed pictures of the ancient Egyptian civilization, in the time of the “Pharaohs of the Pyramid period,” which I take to be contemporary with Abraham or nearly so. “The scenes depicted in the sculptured tombs of this epoch show that the Egyptians had already the same habits and arts as in after times.