1. AFTER these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, 2 Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. And Abram said, O Lord God, what 3 wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and he that shall be possessor of my house is Dam- 4 mesek Eliezer? And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born 5 in my house is mine heir. And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, This 6 man shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be 7 thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell 8 the stars, if thou be able to tell them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he 9 believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness. And he said unto him, I 10 am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. 11 And he said, O Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? And he said unto 12 him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she-goat of three years old, and a ram of 13 three years old, and a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon. And he took him all these, and 14 divided them in the midst, and laid each half over against the other: but the birds divided he 15 not. And the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. 16 And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great 17 darkness fell upon him. And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a 18 stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four 19 hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall 20 they come out with great substance. But thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be 21 buried in a good old age. And in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the 22 iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full. And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, 23 and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a flaming torch that passed between these 24 pieces. In that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I 25 given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenite, 26 and the Kenizzite, and the Kadmonite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Rephaim, 27 and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Girgashite, and the Jebusite.

It has been often pointed out, and rightly, as a proof of the genuineness of the patriarchal history, that these fathers are not represented as performing miracles. The myth would certainly have adorned their honored heads with a wreath of wonders. A still stronger proof of the sacred truthfulness of this history is the fact that it begins with the mind-miracle of the faith of Abraham. No one in later ages within the old covenant times reached the height of faith that Abraham did. This faith, standing at the threshold of the old dispensation, like the life of Christ at the threshold of the new, could not be invented. It stretches, as Paul has shown (Gal. 3), across the whole old covenant history, which, as depending on it, stands beneath it, and points directly onward to Christ himself. Auberien.

Ten years had now elapsed since Abram bade farewell to his fatherland at God’s bidding, yet the hopes with which he entered Canaan seemed as far as ever from being realized. Only twice during these years had God broken silence. The voice which spoke in Haran had spoken once at Moreh on his arrival, and again near Bethel on his return from Egypt. Each successive utterance confirmed what had gone before. Each added a little definiteness to the original promise. In Haran God said: “I will show thee a land: I will make of thee a great nation.” At Moreh, both the halves of this promise became better defined: “This is the land: I will give it to thy seed.” Still more ample was the third repetition of it. Then Abram was told to search Canaan through, with the assurance that it should become his own, “in the length of it, and the breadth of it;” while the seed of promise was to be as numerous as the dust of the land beneath his feet. So much, then, and no more, had been given to the man on which to rest his confidence. How such prospects as these were to be realized had not yet been told. Of their ever being realized at all, no sign appeared. Abram was a childless man. Dykes.

Abram, a man of peaceful tastes and habits, had been roused to an unwonted course of action; but now all the recent excitement has passed away. Human regrets and fears press him down; and solemn and earnest thoughts overwhelm him. What is his reward for all the toil and labor he has undergone? Lot, whose alienated heart he had probably hoped to win by so great a service, is still as far from him as ever. For the sake of the fat pastures and well-watered lands of Sodom, he is content still to dwell among men whom he must by this time have known from experience to be “sinners before the Lord exceedingly.” Kit.

1. A signal manifestation of himself was now made to Abram by the personal WORD OF THE LORD; who announced Himself as the same God who had brought him out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give him the inheritance of the land of Canaan. Hales.—This is the first time that the expression so frequent afterward “the word of the LORD” occurs in the Bible. It has been questioned whether the “vision” was a dream or waking vision. The same word is used of Balaam, “which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling, but having his eyes open” (Num. 24 : 4, 16). The way in which Abram was led out and saw the stars, and the subsequent reality of the sacrifice, look like a waking vision, and it is not till v. 12 that he falls into a deep sleep. E. H. B.—God revealed his will: 1. By a personal appearance of Him who was afterward incarnated for the salvation of mankind. 2. By an audible voice, sometimes accompanied with emblematical appearances. 3. By visions, which took place either in the night, in ordinary sleep, or when the persons were cast into a temporary trance, by daylight, or when about their ordinary business. 4. By the ministry of angels, appearing in human bodies, and performing certain miracles to accredit their mission. 5. By the powerful agency of the Spirit of God upon the wind, giving it a strong conception, and supernatural persuasion of the truth of the things perceived by the understanding. So unequivocal were the discoveries which God made of himself, that on the minds of those to whom they were made, not one doubt was left, relative either to the truth of the subject, or that it was God himself who made the discovery. A. C.

Thy shield and reward. The true defence of the soul against fear, and her true recompense under sacrifice or loss in the path of duty, is God Himself. That He is our “shield” so long as we do His will, our “reward” for whatever His will may cost us, is the real stay of faith. To such a deep and everlasting source of support and consolation did the Almighty design to lead His desponding servant by those opening words of the new oracle: “Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” God is better than His gifts! The best portion any soul can win is to know, and love, and possess in the indestructible communion of love, Him who is the possessor of earth and heaven! Dykes.

The consideration that God himself is, and will be, a shield to his people to secure them from all destructive evils, and a shield round about them, should be sufficient to silence all their perplexing, tormenting fears. I will be thy exceeding great reward; not only thy rewarder, but thy reward. Abram had generously refused the rewards which the king of Sodom offered him, and here God comes and tells him he shall be no loser by it. The rewards of believing obedience and self-denial are exceeding great. God himself is the chosen and promised felicity of holy souls; chosen in this world, promised in a better. He is the portion of their inheritance, and their cup. H.—There are words that are welcomed as friends the very first time we hear them. They are, too, nearly always short words, words that a child can say and thus the heart needs. Look at such short words as life, love, peace, rest, faith, hope, home! Words small as drops of dew, yet holding the sun! And, wonderful in graciousness, God himself and his dear Son take up these words and claim them as their own. It is God that says, “I am thy shield;” and it is Christ that says, “I am the vine;” “I am the door;” “I am the true bread;” “I am the way, the truth, and the life;” “I am the light of the world.”

2. And Abram said, Lord God. This is the first use of these two words together, the words being Adonai JERHOVAH. The same combination occurs only twice more in the whole of the five books of Moses, and these cases are both in Deuteronomy. It is instructive to notice how great words are used in great necessities: this sacred word “shield” is used in the necessity of fear, and this holy word “Lord God” is used in the necessity of doubt and wonder. J. P.

2-6. On the four previous occasions of direct communications from God, the patriarch makes no response; no other answer comes from him than the simple trust, the prompt obedience, the ready sacrifice. It is in this fifth interview that his lips open before the Lord. To the gracious and seasonable assurance, “Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward,” his reply is, “Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?” Silence follows the strange speech, a silence broken, but not by God. “And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir.” The freedom is not repelled, nor the impatience rebuked. He is simply told that he was mistaken as to Eliezer and the heirship, and then led forth and bade to look up to that magnificent spectacle—a cloudless Eastern sky at midnight. “Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: so shall thy seed be.” Alone with God, in the deep silence of the night, gazing on that starry host, such an impression of the boundless power and love and faithfulness of Jehovah fills Abram’s spirit that all doubts dissolve; improbabilities, apparent impossibilities, disappear; he staggers no longer at the promise. It is of him at this time and in these impressive circumstances it is said, “He believed in the LORD; and He counted it to him for righteousness.” It was a pure act of faith, without any of its ordinary adjuncts. The one and only thing that he was called at the time to do was to confide. And the faith he exercised was as strong as it was pure. The Hebrew word expressing it is unique in the fulness and force of its significance—“He was supported, he was built up, he reposed as a child in its mother’s arms.” Where, in all Old Testament history, can we find an instance of simpler, purer, fuller, and more confiding trust in God? Where could Paul have found a better type and illustration of that “faith without works” by which alone the sinner is justified before God? W. H.

Abram’s repeated complaint was that which gave occasion to this promise. The great affliction that sat heavy upon Abram was the want of a child; and the complaint of this he here pours out before the Lord, and shows before him his trouble (Ps. 142: 2). Though we must never complain of God, yet we have leave to complain to him, and to be large and particular in the statement of our grievances; and it is some case to a burdened spirit to open its case to a faithful and compassionate friend; such a friend God is, whose ear is always open. H.—Abram told God his fear in plain words. He said, “I have no child; all my goods are in the hands of a steward, a true enough servant, but still not a son; what is to become of all these tokens of thy love?” and while he was talking the stars came out, throng upon throng, glowing overhead, sparkling over the distant hills, glittering in the east, throbbing like hearts on the western horizon, the singing Pleiades, the mighty Areturus and his sons, and the Milky Way, there they were, angels talking in light, servants watching the gate of the King’s city. It was in that hour that the Lord said to Abram, “Look up,” and Abram looked; and God said, “Count them, so shall thy seed be.” J. P.

6. Believed in the Lord.** The Hebrew term aman, from which comes the familiar “Amen,” so be it, signifies to be firm, fixed, stable, sure; and in the conjugation here employed, followed by in or to, to establish one’s self, or one’s faith, firmly in or toward an object, to deem, account, or make sure to one’s self, and so to leave upon, confide in, or trust to, anything as stable and steadfast. Hence as applied to the act of a believing agent in reference to divine promises, it denotes a degree of assured confidence amounting, as it were, to a creative efficacy, making to exist, substantiating, confirming the thing believed, “calling things which are not as though they were.” Thus “faith is the substance (the substantiating principle) of things hoped for;” and in this view Christ is denominated the “Amen, the faithful and true witness,” from his being the ground of the most fixed and stable confidence, whose fidelity or trustworthiness may be relied upon with unbounded assurance. The circumstances which gave so much efficacy and value to the faith of Abram are recited (Rom. 4: 18-22). Bush.—Thus has come to the birth in the breast of Abram faith in Jehovah, on his simple promise in the absence of all present performance, and in the face of all sensible hindrance. Thus faith springs solely from the seed of promise. M.

“And Abram believed?” This is the first time the word believed occurs in the Bible. Paul says of Abram that “against hope he believed in hope,” and “that he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief.” Abram hid his life and his future in this promise. He took the promise as a fulfilment; the word was to him a fact. Thus he was called out of himself, out of his own trust, out of his own resources, and his life was fostered upon God,—he by-lived, lived-by, believed, God! Appearances were against the promise. But Abram “staggered not.” Henceforward the stars had new meanings to him, as long before the rainbow had to Noah. They spoke to him of Jehovah’s presence and promised blessing. J. P.—Abram had not merely faith in the word, but trustfulness in the person of Jehovah as his Covenant-God. And from this faith in the living God sprang all the obedience of Abram. Like the rod of Aaron, his life budded and blossomed and bore fruit “within the secret place of the Most High.” A. E.

And he counted it to him for righteousness. We have here the opening germ of the great doctrine of “the LORD our righteousness,” redeeming us on the one hand from the sentence of death, and on the other to a title to eternal life. M.—The promise here made by the LORD to Abram was given to him before circumcision, while there was yet not even the germ of Levitical Law. It contained in it the promise of Christ. It elicited from Abram the great evangelical principle of faith. God promised that which was opposed to all appearance and likelihood. Abram relied on that promise. He surrendered his own wisdom to the wisdom of God, and so gave up his own will to the will of God. So he became the heir of the promises; and the internal principle of faith became to him the true principle of righteousness. It was the only righteousness possible for the feeble and the sinful; for it was a reposing on the power and the love of the Almighty and the Holy One. It was therefore reckoned to him as what may be called a passive righteousness, and at the same time it was productive in him of an active righteousness: for the soul which relies on the truth, power, and goodness of another, in the strength of that truth, power, and goodness, can itself be active in them all: taking advantage of the power and goodness relied upon, it becomes itself powerful and good and true. The Apostles naturally dwell upon this first recorded instance of faith, faith in God, implied faith in Christ, and consequent accounting of righteousness, recorded before all legal enactments, as illustrative of the great evangelical grace of faith, its power as resting on One who is all powerful, and its sanctifying energy, as containing in itself the principle of holiness and the germ of every righteous act. E. H. B.

Righteousness expresses in general the conformity of man to God’s will,—his normal relation to God. Since God’s will is elective and promissory, it consists in full surrender to elective grace and the divine word of promise. Thus it is the righteousness of faith. In this sense Abram’s faith in Jehovah was imputed to him as righteousness. O.—Righteousness is here imputed to Abram. Hence mercy and grace are extended to him; mercy taking effect in the pardon of his sin, and grace in bestowing the rewards of righteousness. That in him which is counted for righteousness is faith in Jehovah promising mercy. This is the only thing in the sinner which, while it is not righteousness, has yet a claim to be counted for such, because it brings him into union with one who is just and having salvation. It is not material what the Almighty and all-gracious promises in the first instance to him that believes in him, whether it be a land, or a seed, or any other blessing. All other blessing, temporal or eternal, will flow out of that express one, in a perpetual course of development, as the believer advances in experience, in compass of intellect, and capacity of enjoyment. Hence it is that a land involves a better land, a seed a nobler seed, a temporal an eternal good. M.

When arguing from the statement respecting the righteousness of faith in Abraham, Paul lays stress simply upon the natural impossibilities that stood in the way of God’s promise and on the implicit confidence Abraham had, notwithstanding, in the power and faithfulness of God, that He would perform what He had promised. “Therefore,” adds the apostle, “it was imputed to him for righteousness.” Therefore—because through faith he so completely lost sight of nature and self, and realized with undoubting confidence the sufficiency of the divine arm, and the certainty of its working. His faith was nothing else than the renunciation of all strength in himself, and a hanging in childlike trust upon God for what He was able and willing to do. Transfer such a faith to the field of the New Testament—bring it into contact with the manifestation of God in the person and work of Christ for the salvation of the world, and what would inevitably be its language but that of the apostle: “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ,”—“not my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is of God through faith.” P. F.

Justification by faith alone is the doctrine of the Reformers; it is older, for it is the doctrine of the Fathers; it is older than the Fathers, for it is the doctrine of the Apostles; yea, older still, it is the doctrine of the Patriarchs and Prophets. It is the marrow of revealed truth. Bp. Horsley.

7. To give thee this land.** We have here the assurance given to Abram, of the land of Canaan for an inheritance. Observe here, Abram made no complaint in this matter, as he had done for the want of a child. Those that are sure of an interest in the promised seed will see no reason to doubt of a title to the promised land. If Christ is ours, heaven is ours. Observe, again, when he believed the former promise (v. 6), then God explained and ratified this to him. To him that has (improves what he has) more shall be given. H.

Faith, even though we thereby arrogate to our own sinful selves the greatest and highest of all blessings, has no arrogance and no presumption at all in it. It is yielding a due honor to one of the divine attributes, even the attribute of truth—so that the stronger the faith, the greater is the glory we render unto God. What a precious harmony is this, that our greatest peace and God’s greatest glory are at one—that in counting Him faithful who has promised, we do that which at one and the same time most advances His honor and most tranquillizes our own fears. T. C.—We live by faith, and not by sight. We do not preach that all is disappointment—the dreary creed of sentimentalism; but we preach that nothing here is disappointment, if rightly understood. The city which hath foundations is built in the soul of man. He in whom Godlike character dwells has all the universe for his own—“All things,” saith the apostle, “are yours; whether life or death, or things present, or things to come; if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” F. W. R.

8. Lord God.** Adonai Jehovah: Adonai is the word which the Jews in reading always substitute for Jehovah. This word often occurs in the Hebrew Bible, and is rendered in our translation Lord; the same term by which the word Jehovah is expressed. But to distinguish between the two, and to show the reader when the original is Jehovah, and when Adonai, the first is always put in capitals, LORD, the latter in plain Roman characters, Lord. A. C.

Whereby shall I know? Not an expression of doubt, but of desire for the confirmation or sealing of a promise which transcended human thought and conception. Keil.—Many instances are recorded where God has been graciously pleased to give signs to his people for the confirmation of their faith, when there was not any doubt upon their minds respecting either his faithfulness or power. See Judg. 6:14-21, 36-40; 2 Kings 20:8-11. Bush.

9,10. The promise was ratified by a new COVENANT, in which Abram stood to God in the relation of the Father of the Faithful, just as Noah, in the covenant made with him, stood for all his race. The forms with which this new covenant was made are minutely related; and they agree with the customs then observed in covenants between man and man. P. S.—

The covenant with Noah was universal and unalterable. It referred to nothing higher than animal life on earth. It secured no moral or spiritual blessing. Quite a new thing happened when God was pleased to covenant for the second time,—not now with all men, but with one man and his posterity; not by mere promise on His own part, but by promise conditioned by religious trust and obedience on the part of man; not for the sake of guaranteeing to all men physical existence, but for the sake of securing to faithful men the spiritual blessing of eternal life. Dykes.

To confirm his faith Jehovah now gave to Abram a sign and a seal, which yet were such once more only to his faith. He entered into a covenant with him. For this purpose the Lord directed Abram to bring an heifer, a she goat, and a ram, each of three years old, also a turtle-dove and a young pigeon. These sacrifices were to be divided and the pieces laid one against the other, as the custom was in making a covenant, the covenanting parties always passing between them, as it were to show that now there was no longer to be division, but that what had been divided was to be considered as one between them. But here the covenant was made not, as usually, by both parties passing between the divided sacrifice, but by Jehovah alone doing so, since the covenant was that of grace, in which one party alone—God—undertook all the obligations, while the other received all the benefits. A. E.

9. Take for me.** An heifer, a goat, a ram, and two doves, Abram was bidden to select when daylight came, and to set apart for a sacrifice on God’s behalf. In these last words lay the unprecedented feature of this ceremony. Here it is not Abram or any human party, but God Himself, who by this solemn formality binds Himself to the contract. The transaction assumes the shape of a concession on the part of the high celestial Covenanter, in order that the man may “know,” as he has petitioned to know, that the word of the Eternal may be absolutely trusted. Dykes.

Every animal allowed or commanded to be sacrificed under the Mosaic law, is to be found in this list. God was now giving to Abram an epitome of that law and its sacrifices, which he intended more fully to reveal to Moses; the essence of which consisted in its sacrifices, which typified the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world. A. C.—The animals are (strikingly enough) all those which were afterward used in the Levitical sacrifices. It was thus a foreshadow of that ritual, as that was of the gospel system. Of three years old. Under the law these animals were generally offered when they were one year old; but these were, no doubt, required to be of the age of three years, because they were then full grown, in their most perfect state Bush.—It has been said that the transaction was not a real sacrifice, as there was no sprinkling of blood nor offering on an altar; but the essence of the true Hebrew sacrifice was in the slaying of the victim, for the very word (Zebach, sacrifice) signifies slaying, and it was rather with the shedding of blood than with its sprinkling that atonement was made (Heb. 11 : 22). Cook.

God himself thus condescended to become Abram’s celestial ally, his shield in every peril, and his reward for every sacrifice. It is surely a sublime thought which then for the first time entered into human experience, to color it forever. To be thus lifted into alliance with the Eternal, gives to the soul a lien, a clear, lawful hold, upon Omnipotence, if only the soul will dare, in the enthusiasm or abandonment of a childlike faith, to reckon upon the fidelity of God. When the Most High, out of His own mere mercy, volunteers to bind Himself by a promise for the future, and, having done so, stoops still further to give a pledge for the execution of that promise, then what may fairly be termed a “covenant” is established. Always, in one form or another, God binds Himself to bless the man. He takes the man’s side against his foes: or He permits the man to count upon His aid in emergencies: or He pledges Himself to compensate in higher blessings for whatever sacrifice He may meanwhile demand; or He promises inward benefits, as a pacified conscience and a pure heart. Dykes.

13. Four hundred years and more elapsed while Jacob and his family were in Egypt. Such are the terms of the prediction to Abraham: his seed to be a stranger and a servant in a land that was not theirs for four hundred years. So Stephen quotes the words again in Acts 7 : 6; while the four hundred and thirty years mentioned by Paul (Gal. 3 : 17) exactly agree with the statement in Exod. 12 : 40, 41, that such was the length of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt to a day, and are not, therefore, to be understood of the whole interval from Abraham to Moses. In spite, however, of the express assertion of the Book of Exodus, a different chronology is generally followed. For this the Septuagint led the way by rendering Exod. 12 : 40 as follows:—“The sojourning of the sons of Israel, which they sojourned in the land of Egypt (and in the land of Canaan), they and their fathers, was 430 years.” But every scholar knows that the authors of the Septuagint had very strange ideas about the duties of translators, and altered the text without scruple whenever they thought they had a reason for it. Here their reason was that they hoped to avoid a difficulty. First it is said that Amram’s wife was Jochebed, “a daughter of Levi, whom one bare to Levi in Egypt” (Num. 26 : 59). This, of course, only means that she was a Levite, and the impersonal manner in which the Hebrew says “whom one bare to Levi,” is a confirmation of this. Levi plainly is the tribe of Levi, and not the patriarch. Literally understood, it makes Amram not merely marry his aunt, but an aunt of the respectable age of eighty-five at the least; while it further gives Moses no fewer than 8600 first cousins (Num. 3 : 28). Such are the results of tampering with the text of Scripture. To this we add a second similar reason. The genealogies generally give only four generations in Egypt. Thus—Levi, Kohath, Amram, Moses (Ex. 6 : 16-20). So again, Judah, Zerah, Zabdi, Carmi, whose son, Achan, in Joshua’s time, stole some of the spoil of Jericho (Josh. 7 : 1). But these genealogies are merely compendiums, in which apparently, as a rule, one name is given for a century. They were legal documents, showing who was the representative of each branch of the families of the high chiefs of pure blood. Fortunately we have one full genealogy of no less a person than Joshua, and we find (1 Chron. 7 : 23-27) that this great prince of Ephraim was the twefih in descent from Joseph. One such genealogy settles the question; for we can account for the shorter forms, but not for the longer one. In fact, no one who studies the family histories given at the beginning of Chronicles can doubt that they are legal and technical formulae, representing rank and property, and not necessarily relationship. Nothing is more possible than that names are omitted in the genealogy even of David; and, in short, the chronology based upon these genealogies is as worthless as that based on Gen. 5. It is using these documents for a purpose for which they never were intended, and no amount of them would weigh against the plain assertion that the Israelites were in Egypt for a period of four hundred and thirty years, and that there were twelve generations between Joseph and Joshua. R. P. S.—The 400 years is plainly mentioned as a round sum; it was afterward more precisely and historically defined as 430 (Ex. 12 : 40, 41). From the juxtaposition of the 400 years and the fourth generation in the words to Abraham, the one must be understood as nearly equivalent to the other, and the period must consequently be regarded as that of the actual residence of the children of Israel in Egypt, from the descent of Jacob—not, as many after the Septuagint, from the time of Abraham. For the shortest genealogies exhibit four generations between that period and the exodus. Looking at the genealogical table of Levi (Ex 6:16 sq.), 120 years might not unfairly be taken as an average lifetime or generation; so that three of these complete, and a part of the fourth, would easily make 430. In Gal. 3:17 the law is spoken of as only 430 years after the covenant with Abraham; but the apostle merely refers to the known historical period, and regards the first formation of the covenant with Abraham as all one with its final ratification with Jacob. P. F.

14. And also that nation, etc.** How remarkably was this promise fulfilled, in the redemption of Israel from its bondage, in the plagues and destruction of the Egyptians, and in the immense wealth which the Israelites brought out of Egypt! Not a more circumstantial or literally fulfilled promise is to be found in the sacred writings. A. C.

15. Go to thy fathers.** This implies that the fathers, though dead, still exist. To go from one place to another implies, not annihilation, but the continuance of existence. The doctrine of the soul’s perpetual existence is here intimated. Abram died in peace and happiness, one hundred and fifteen years before the descent into Egypt. M.—The death of Abraham is predicted in one of those remarkable phrases which seem to prove that the Hebrews were not unacquainted with the doctrine of immortality. Here the return of the soul to the eternal abode of the fathers is, with some distinctness, separated from the interment of the body: that both cannot be identical is evident; for while Abraham was entombed in Canaan, all his forefathers died and were buried in Mesopotamia; and the reunion of the spirits is in some passages expressed still more clearly by the term being “gathered to the fathers” after the fact of the death itself had been stated, and with a separate allusion to the act of sepulture (ch. 25:8, 9; 49:29, 33; Num. 20:24, 26; 31:2). Kalisch.

16. Iniquity of the Amorites.** The Amorites, the most powerful people in Canaan, are here put for the Canaanites in general. Their state of moral corruption is abundantly manifest in the early chapters of Genesis; and in the divine foreknowledge it was seen that they would add sin to sin, and so at length be destroyed by the divine vengeance. Still the long-suffering of God waited for them, giving time for repentance. Cook.—Here is Abram expressly told that, personally, he shall have no part in the enjoyment of the promised blessing, and that he will partake of it only in his descendants. The Amorites, who are here mentioned as being the most distinguished of the Canaanitish nations, are still an object of the Divine mercy: their measure must be first full,—the day of grace must have passed, before God punishes. Gert.—Israel cannot be possessed of Canaan, till the Amorites be dispossessed; and they are not yet ripe for ruin. The righteous God has determined that they shall not be cut off, till they have persisted in sin so long, and arrived at such a pitch of wickedness, that there may appear some equitable proportion between their sin and their ruin; and therefore till it come to that, the seed of Abram must be kept out of possession. The measure of sin fills gradually: those that continue impenitent in wicked ways are treasuring up unto themselves wrath. Some people’s measure of sin fills slowly. H.

17. When it was dark, behold a flaming torch.** Abram awoke. The sun had set. Darkness of the starry night, a night without moon, fell upon the slaughtered sacrifices, and the solitary, awe-struck watcher. Then at last came, in the solemn stillness and silence that hushed all the camp, the awful act of ratification. For the first time since man left the gates of Eden, there appeared the glory of God—that luminous symbol of the divine presence with which the children of Abram were afterward to become familiar. What Moses was to witness as a burning but unconsumed bush, and the tribes as a pillar of cloud enwrapping fire, appeared now to Abram as a furnace with red flame at the heart of it, but sending up into the night a dense and lurid column of smoke. In the thick darkness this strange apparition glided along the narrow lane which divided the portions of the sacrifice; and thus, before the eyes of His human friend and ally, it pleased Jehovah in His condescension to bind Himself forever, as a man does, to the promises of His grace. Dykes.

For the first time THE GLORY OF THE LORD (the Shechinah) appears in a symbol similar to that which was afterward seen by Moses in the burning bush, by the Israelites during their passage through the wilderness in the pillar of cloud and of fire, and in the tabernacle in the cloud above the mercy seat. As at a later period it was hid by the bush and by the cloud, so here it appears enveloped in a furnace (of the kind, more common in the East, shaped like a cylinder, at the upper opening of which fire, enveloped by smoke, bursts forth). It is the symbol of the gracious presence of God.

We read here for the first time of a COVENANT into which God enters with Abram. All that had preceded, all the demands, promises, and leadings on the part of God, and all the obedience, faith, self renunciation, and self-reliance on the part of Abram, were only preliminary steps. But even the covenant now made is only partial, and requires completion. It is only partial, inasmuch as God only, and not Abram also, enters into and binds Himself by it. For only God and not Abram passed between the pieces of the sacrifice. By formally and solemnly entering into covenant, God gives Abram a pledge that His promise might be implicitly relied on, and at the same time a token to support his faith. For these purposes it is quite sufficient that God alone ratifies the covenant, nor does He yet require Abram solemnly to undertake the covenant obligations devolving on him. It is only afterward, when, on the ground of the engagement which God had in this covenant undertaken, the faith of Abram had become strong, and when the birth of the promised seed was nigh at hand, that giving and asking, on the part of God, go hand in hand, and that He calls upon the patriarch to ratify the covenant by solemnly undertaking its obligations. This takes place in the covenant of circumcision (chap. 17). Hence these two events condition and supplement each other. K.

18. The river of Egypt. “Sihor” and “the river of Egypt” are the same. And it appears from Jer. 2 : 18 that Sihor was the Nile. The Hebrew name, “Sihor,” signifies “black,” it is an apt epithet of the Nile, bringing down, with its flood, from Abyssinia, a rich, black, loamy sand, which fertilizes the lower Egypt. In the Ethiopian, Egyptian, Greek, and Hindoo languages, the Nile is distinguished by appellations, all of which signify “black.” Hales.—From the river of Egypt (the Nile) . . . the river Euphrates. These two streams are here used as representative of the two great world-powers between which Israel should dwell. It is thus a prediction that the descendants of Abram should have an independent existence by the side of these two great empires, and that no nation should have any permanent sway between them and these two empires. So that their dominion may be said to reach from the Euphrates to the Nile. These two rivers are, moreover, constantly referred to in the later

Scriptures, as the extreme boundaries of Israel. In its best days, the Israelitish dominion reached, to all intents, to Egypt, since all or nearly all the intervening powers were subject to David and Solomon. Gosman.

It is estimated that the Bible contains the names of four thousand persons and places distributed through all the early ages, and over the surface of the whole earth as known to the ancients. Many of these persons and places have not been identified. But whenever a cylinder or tablet has been dug up, bearing one of these perished names, or the site of a buried city has been discovered, in no one instance has the testimony of Scripture been invalidated. We openly challenge and defy the unbeliever to produce, out of all the lands of the Bible, one dead man’s name who is a myth, or one old ruin misplaced, aye, one out of the four thousand. In the controversy now waged over what the Bible says of the history, manners, customs and traditions of Egypt, Syria, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Palestine, Phoenicia, Greece, and Rome, the enemy will be defeated at every turn. He is already fairly driven off the field in Egypt, and wherever he attempts to make a stand over the whole vast region from Thebes to Mosul, the witnesses for the truth will spring up out of the earth and lay siege to his encampment. That entire domain, “from the river of Egypt to that great river, the river Euphrates,” was given by covenant to Abraham and his seed for an everlasting possession. We, his spiritual seed, will in due time make good our title to it all; “for the inheritance is ours and the redemption is ours.” E. P. Humphrey.

The Old Testament Covenant.

The chief burden and central thought of the Old Testament is the plan of redemption adopted by Jehovah to be inaugurated and developed by means of a covenant with his own peculiar people. The covenant between Jehovah and his people is the pivot around which all the other thoughts and facts of the Old Testament circle, and in relation to which they find their importance and mission. Manifestly Old Testament theology has no profounder theme than the elucidation of the character and nature of this covenant, and its bearing and influence upon the whole spiritual, religious, and social life of those who lived under it, as also its connection with the covenant of the New Testament as established by Christ.

The notion is not infrequently expressed, and still more frequently implied, that the basis of the Old Testament covenant is Mosaism; or, in other words, that the principle of righteousness in the old dispensation was a righteousness through the works of the law; and that the faithful, in order to be just before the Lord within this covenant, would have to earn this distinction by obedience. This view proceeds from the premises that Mosaism is identical with the Old Covenant and the Old Covenant with Mosaism. No error could do greater violence to the essence and spirit of the covenant than this identification. Mosaism is not the Old Covenant, nor is the Old Covenant the same as Mosaism. The error of identifying the two is that of making obedience to the law of Mount Sinai the basis of righteousness and justification in the pre-Christian dispensation. Paul (Rom. 4; Gal. 3: 6-14) appeals to the earlier revelation and history of God’s kingdom on earth, to prove that the true righteousness before the Lord is the righteousness by faith alone. He adduces the accounts given by the Old Testament of those two men who were undeniably the best representatives of the spirit and character of the covenant between God and Israel, — namely, Abraham, the father of the faithful, and David, the man after God’s own heart; and he shows that, according to these accounts, they were justified before God not on account of any obedience to the laws, but because they had faith in the promises of God. In other words, their righteousness was one of faith, and not one of works. He cites the words of Gen. 15: 6 as conclusive in Abraham’s case; and he quotes David’s own words in Ps. 32: 1, 2, to show that the great singer of the Old Covenant puts his trust and hope in God alone. The rest of the chapter (Rom. 4) is devoted to an elucidation, on the basis of Old Testament citations, of Abraham’s case, and the apostle draws his conclusion in verse 22: “And therefore it (i.e., his faith) was imputed to him for righteousness.” Abraham, then, the historical head, and, as acknowledged by revelation and the author of revelation, the most faithful exponent of the Old Testament covenant, was justified because he had faith in the promises of God. He is, argues Paul on scriptural basis, as is also David, a convincing proof, that, also under the old dispensation, acceptance before God, or, what is the same, righteousness and justification, was based not upon merit or worth, but upon faith and grace alone. Even after the law, he argues in Gal. 3, there were no changes in the covenant relation between God and his people, and all later generations of Abraham’s children must be justified before God as was their father Abraham, — namely, by faith in the promises of redemption through Christ. Like all things in God’s nature and God’s kingdom, the covenant with Abraham was a growth. In chapter 17, which records events at least fourteen years later than those of chapter 15, the second stage of this covenant is depicted and, beside the re-announcement of the fundamental principles of the covenant, its sign, namely circumcision, is revealed to the patriarch, as also the theocratic line of descent established through Isaac, the promised son of Abraham and Sarah. In that chapter (v. 1) Abraham’s covenant duty is put in these words, “Walk before me and be thou perfect,” an injunction which presupposes and embraces in its compliance the confidence of faith which had been counted to Abraham as righteousness, and expresses rather the outward proof of the inward faith. Naturally this covenant relation is not developed in Abraham’s case as it is in the time of the prophets, or under the new dispensation; but the cardinal principles and truths are there: it is a covenant of faith. The accounts in Genesis show how, in the cases of both Isaac and Jacob, the same covenant with the same conditions continued, with very little, if any, advance beyond the stage it had already reached, externally and internally, in the person of Abraham. As long as the covenant relation was an individual and a family relation its primitive status did not change, nor were the fundamental ideas developed by further revelations. We are not informed by the sacred records that the later patriarchs were further instructed as to the character and nature of this faith in God’s providential guidance, nor that any higher theological or ethical truths in this connection were made known to them. Schodde.

The history of the Old Covenant passes, from its commencement to its termination, through six stages. In the first stage it is only a family-history. During that period we are successively made acquainted with each of the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The twelve sons of the latter form the basis of the national development. In the second stage these twelve tribes grow into a people, which under Moses attains independence and receives its laws and worship. Under Joshua it conquers its country, while during the time of the Judges the covenant is to be further developed on the basis of what had already been obtained. The third stage commences with the institution of royalty. By the side of the royal office, and as a counterpoise and corrective to it, the prophetical office is instituted, which is no longer confined to iso-

lated appearances, but remains a continuous institution. The separation of the one commonwealth into two monarchies divides this period into two sections. The fourth stage comprises the exile and return. Prophetism survives the catastrophe of the exile, so as to rearrange and to revive the relations of the people who returned to their country, and to open the way for a further development. The fifth stage, or the time of expectation, commences with the ces-

sation of prophecy, and is intended to prepare a place for that salvation which is now to be immediately expected. Lastly, the sixth stage comprises the time of the fulfilment, when salvation is to be exhibited in Christ. The covenant-people reject the salvation so presented, the Old Covenant terminates in judgment against the covenant-people, but prophecy still holds out to them hopes and prospects for the future. K.