Genesis 20

PART THIRTY-SIX RECAPITULATION: SURVEY OF THE PATRIARCHAL AGE

From A Class-Book of Old Testament History, pp. 73-76

by G. F. Maclear, D.D. Published by Macmillan, London, 1881, now long out of print.

With the death of Joseph the Patriachal Age of Israel’s history may be said to close. The Family had now thrown out many branches and was now on the point of emerging into the Nation. At this juncture, then, it may be well to look back, and review some of the chief features of the Patriarchal Life.

1. And the first of these that claims attention is its Nomadic character. Unlike the founders of Egypt, of Babylon, of Nineveh, the Patriarchs were not the builders of cities and towns, but pilgrims and sojourners, dwellers in tents (Hebrews 11:9). But they were very different from rude hordes, like the Amalekites and other sons of the desert, abhorring any higher mode of life. Abraham was no stranger to the highest form of civilization that his age afforded. He was acquainted with Ur, with Nineveh, with Damascus, with Egypt; he had left his home in one of the chief cities of Mesopotamia, not from choice, but in consequence of a direct personal call from God. Moreover, so far from regarding his present mode of life as an ultimate end, he and Isaac and Jacob were ever looking forward to a time when it would close, when their descendants should be settled in the Land of Promise, and become a great nation, when the portable tent should give way to the city that had foundations (Hebrews 11:10; Hebrews 11:13-16; comp. Genesis 24:7; Genesis 28:4; Genesis 49:4; Genesis 50:24). Hence, from time to time, as opportunity offered, we see the wandering life freely and willingly laid aside. Lot settled in Sodom (Genesis 13:10-12); Abraham in Egypt went direct to Pharaoh’s court (Genesis 12:14); at Hebron he settled and became a prince of God in the midst of the Hittites (Genesis 23:6); Isaac not only lived near the Philistines, but occupied a house opposite the palace (Genesis 26:8), and practised agriculture (Genesis 26:12); and Joseph’s dream of the sheaves points out that this was also continued in the time of Jacob (Genesis 37:7).

2. The Family was the center of the Patriarchal commonwealth. Its head was the source of authority and jurisdiction; he possessed the power of life and death (Genesis 38:24); he united in himself the functions of chief and priest; he offered the burnt-offering; he had his armed retainers (Genesis 14:14; Genesis 48:22; Genesis 34:25; Genesis 33:1); his intercourse with his wives (for polygamy was not forbidden) was free and unrestrained; the wife’s consent was asked before wedlock (Genesis 24:57-58); love hallowed the relations of Abraham with Sarah, of Isaac with Rebekah, of Jacob with Leah and Rachel; woman, indeed, did not occupy the position since conceded to her, but her position was far from degraded, and the sanctity of the marriage-bond was defended by severe laws, which made death the punishment for adultery (Genesis 38:24). Slavery, it is true, existed, but in the tents of Abraham the slave was ever treated with consideration, and not excluded from, but made a partaker of religious privileges (Genesis 17:13). The fidelity and attachment of Eliezer the steward of Abraham’s house, the mourning for Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse (Genesis 35:8), are pleasing proofs of the peace that reigned in the Patriarchal household.

3. Civilization. The life of the Patriarchs was chiefly that of the shepherd, and their wealth consisted in their flocks and their herds. But besides practising agriculture they were not unacquainted with money and the precious metals. Abraham paid for the field of Machpelah with coin (Genesis 23:9-20), and the sons of Jacob took money with them into Egypt (Genesis 42:25; Genesis 42:35); while the gold ring and armlets presented to Rebekah by Eliezer (Genesis 24:22), the bracelet and signet ring of Judah (Genesis 38:18), the ear-rings of Rachel (Genesis 35:4), the many-coloured coat of Joseph, indicate an acquaintance with the luxuries of life.

4. Religion. While other nations were rapidly learning to deify the powers of nature, the Patriarchs believed not only in a God above and beyond nature, but in a God Personal, Omnipotent, and Holy. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was. no mere abstraction, no mere law. He could and did reveal Himself by angelic appearances, by visions, by dreams; He could console, strengthen, encourage; He could punish, rebuke, and on repentance forgive. Abraham, the Friend of God (James 2:23), intercedes with Him in behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:23-33); Isaac is warned by Him against going down into Egypt (Genesis 26:2); Jacob is consoled by Him at Bethel when setting out into the land of exile (Genesis 28:13-15), and wrestles with Him by the fords of Jabbok till the break of day (Genesis 32:24); Joseph believes in His invisible but ever-present help in prison and in a strange land, and ascribes to Him all his wisdom in the interpretation of dreams (Genesis 41:16). The Divine Promise of a great future Abraham believed under circumstances of greatest trial, and his faith was counted to him for righteousness (Romans 4:3). Moreover, the God of the Patriarchs was not a mere national or household God. His sphere of operation was not restricted to the Patriarchs and their families; He is the God of all the earth (Genesis 24:3), the God of Righteousness and Holiness. He punishes the people of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24-25); He plagues Pharaoh’s house (Genesis 12:17); He is the God of the priest-king Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18), and of the Philistine Abimelech (Genesis 20:3); He protects not only Isaac the child of promise, but the outcast Ishmael the child of the bond-woman (Genesis 21:13); He is with Joseph in prison, but He sends dreams to Pharaoh, and through Joseph He saves Egypt from famine (Genesis 50:20).

5. The Religious Worship of the Patriarchs was in keeping with the simplicity of their creed. The head of the family was also the priest of the family. Whenever Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, reached any new spot in their pilgrimage, they invariably erected an altar, generally of stone and on a high situation (Genesis 22:9; Genesis 26:25; Genesis 35:7); there they called on the name of Jehovah, there they presented their burnt sacrifice, there they offered up their prayers. Their history also proves the existence of offering covenant-sacrifices, and celebrating covenant-feasts (Genesis 15:9-18); the making and paying of vows (Gen. 28:23); the erection of memorial pillars, and the consecration of them by pouring upon them oil and wine (Genesis 28:18); the rite of circumcision (Genesis 17:10-14); and the paying of tithes (Genesis 14:20).

6. The Character of the Patriarchs is never represented as perfect; their faults are freely exposed; theirs is no ideal history. If we compare the four most eminent amongst them, we seem to trace in (i) Abraham, the faith that can remove mountains in its power and in its fulness, revealing itself in unfaltering trust and unquestioning obedience under the most trying circumstances conceivable; in (ii) Isaac, the faith that can possess itself in patience, and discharge the ordinary duties of life in quietness and waiting; in (iii) Jacob, the violent contest of faith with the flesh, the higher with the lower nature, till by hard discipline the latter is purified, and the Sup-planter becomes the Prince, the Prevailer with God; in (iv) Joseph, the fidelity and perseverance of faith, revealed not only in the patient endurance of the most grievous trials, but in energetic action, and at length crowned with victory. He unites in himself the noble trust and resolution of Abraham, with the quiet perseverance of Isaac, and the careful prudence of Jacob. He is moreover an eminent historic type of Christ, in (1) his persecution and sale by his brethren, (2) his resisting temptation, (3) his humiliation and exaltation, and (4) his dispensing to a famine-stricken people the bread of life, and (5) in the fulness of his forgiving love.

ADDENDA [Volume 3] LANGE: ON THE ANGEL OF JEHOVAH

(CDHCG, 389-390, verbatim)

Between Abram’s connection with Hagar and the next manifestation of Jehovah there are full thirteen years. But then his faith is strengthened again, and Jehovah appears to him (Genesis 17:1). The most prominent and important theophany in the life of Abram is the appearance of the three men (ch. 17). But this appearance wears its prevailing angelic form, because it is a collective appearance for Abram and Lot, and at the same time refers to the judgement upon Sodom. Hence the two angels are related to their central point as the sun-images to the sun itself, and this central point for Abram is Jehovah himself in his manifestation, but not a commissioned Angel of the Lord. Thus also this Angel visits Sarah (Genesis 21:1; compare Genesis 18:10). But the Angel appears in the history of Hagar a second time (Genesis 21:17), and this time as the Angel of God (Maleach Elohim), not as the Maleach Jehovah, for the question is not now about a return to Abram’s house, but about the independent settlement with Ishmael in the wilderness. The person who tempts Abram (Genesis 22:1) is ElohimGod as he manifests himself to the nations and their general ideas or notions, and the revelation is effected purely through the word. Now, also, in the most critical moment for Abram, the Angel of the Lord comes forward, calling down to him from heaven since there was need of a prompt message of relief. In the rest of the narrative this Angel of the Lord identifies himself throughout with Jehovah (Genesis 22:12; Genesis 22:16). To Isaac also Jehovah appears (Genesis 26:2), and the second time in the night (Genesis 26:24). He appears to Jacob in the night in a dream (Genesis 28:12-13). Thus also he appears to him as the Angel of God in a dream (Genesis 31:11), but throughout identified with Jehovah (Genesis 31:13). Jehovah commands him to return home through the word (31:3). Laban receives the word of God in a dream (Genesis 31:24). The greatest event of revelation in the life of Jacob is the grand theophany, in the night, through the vision, but the man who wrestles with him calls himself God and man (men) at the same time. According to the theory of a created angel, Jacob is not a wrestler with God (Israel), but merely a wrestler with the Angel. It is a more purely external circumstance which God uses to warn Jacob through the word to remove from Shechem (Genesis 35:1). In the second-’ peculiar manifestation of God to Jacob after his return from Mesopotamia (Genesis 35:9), we have a clear and distinct reflection of the first (Genesis 32:24). In the night-visions of Joseph, which already appear in the life of Isaac, and occur more frequently with Jacob, the form of revelation during the patriarchal period comes less distinctly into view. But then it enters again, and with new energy, in the life of Moses. The Angel of Jehovah (Exodus 3:2) is connected with the earlier revelation, and here also is identified with Jehovah and Elohim (Exodus 3:4). But he assumes a more definite form and title, as the Angel of his face, since with the Mosaic system the rejection of any deifying of the creature comes into greater prominence, and since it is impossible that the face of God should be esteemed a creature.

The reasons which are urged for the old ecclesiastical view of the Angel of the Lord, are recapitulated by Kurtz in the following order: 1. The Maleach Jehovah identifies himself with Jehovah. 2. Those to whom he appears recognize, name, and worship him as the true God. 3. He receives sacrifice and worship without any protest. 4. The biblical writers constantly speak of him as Jehovah. We add the reasons. 1. The theory of our opponents opens a wide door in the Old Testament for the deifying of the creature, which the Old Testament everywhere condemned; and the Romish worship of angels finds in it a complete justification. 2. The Socinians also gain an important argument for their rejection of the Trinity, if, instead of self-revelation of God, and of the self-distinction included in it in the Old Testament, there is merely a pure revelation through angels. As the fully developed doctrine of the Trinity cannot be found in the Old Testament, so no one can remove from the Old Testament the beginnings of that doctrine, the self-distinction of God, without removing the very substructure on which the New Testament doctrine of the Trinity rests, and without obscuring the Old Testament theology in its very centre and glory. 3. It would break the band of the organic unity between the Old and New Testaments if it could be proved that the central point in the Old Testament revelation is a creature-angel, and that the New Testament revelation passes at one bound from this form to that of the God-man. The theory of the creature-angel in its continuation through a colossal adoration of angels, points downwards to the Rabbinic and Mohammedan doctrine of angels which has established itself in opposition to the New Testament Christology, and is bound together with that exaggerated doctrine of angels in more recent times, which ever corresponds with a veiled and obscure Christology. On the other hand, it removes from the New Testament Christology its Old Testament foundation and preparation which consists in this, that the interchange between God and men is in full operation, and must therefore prefigure itself in the images of the future God-man. 4. The doctrine of angels itself loses its very heart, its justification and interpretation, if we take away from it the symbolic angel-form, which rules it, as its royal centre, i.e. that angelic form which, as a real manifestation of God, as a typical manifestation of Christ, as a manifestation of angels, has the nature and force of a symbol. But with the obliteration of the symbolic element, all the remaining symbolic and angelic images, the cherubim and seraphim, will disappear, and with the key of biblical psychology in its representation of the development of the life of the soul, to an organ of revelation, we shall lose the key to the exposition of the Old Testament itself. 5. Augustin was consistent when, with his interpretation of the Angel of Jehovah as a creature-angel, he decidedly rejects the interpretation which regards the sons of God (ch. 6)as angel-beings; for the assumption of angels who, as such, venture to identify themselves with Jehovah, and notwithstanding they are in peril, abandon themselves to lustful pleasures and a magical transformation of their nature, combines two groundless and intolerable phantoms. We hold, therefore, that Old Testament theology, in its very heart and centre, is in serious danger from these two great prejudices, as the New Testament from the two great prejudices of a mere mechanical structure of the Gospels, and of the unapostolic and yet more than apostolic brothers of the Lord. (See the defence of the old ecclesiastical view in the Commentary by Keil, also with a reference to Kahnis, de Angelo Domini diatribe, 1858. The assertion of the opposite view held by Delitzsch in his Commentary, meets here its refutation).

6. The aspect of all theophanies as visions. It is a general supposition, that divine revelation is partly through visions, or through inward miraculous sights and sounds. We must, however, bring out distinctly the fundamental position, that every theophany is at the same time vision, and every vision a theophany; but that in the one case the objective theophany and in the other the subjective vision, is the prevailing feature. The subjective vision appears in the most definite form in dream-visions, of which Adam’s sleep, and Abram’s night-horror (chs. 2 and 15.), are the first striking portents. It develops itself with great power in the lives of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and is of still greater importance in the lives of Samuel and Solomon, as also in the night-visions of Zechariah. We find them in the New Testament in the life of Joseph of Nazareth and in the history of Paul. It needs no proof to show that the manifestations of God or angels in dreams, are not outward manifestations to the natural senses. In the elements of the subjective dream-vision, veils itself, however, the existing divine manifestation. But what the dream introduces in the night-life, the seeing in imagesthat the ecstasy does in the day or ordinary waking life (see Lange: Apostolic Age). The ecstasy, as the removing of the mind into the condition of unconsciousness, or of a different consciousness, is the potential basis of the vision, the vision is the activity or effect of the ecstasy. But since the visions have historical permanence and results, it is evident that they are the intuitions of actual objective manifestations of God. Mere hallucinations of the mind lead into the house of error, spiritual visions build the historical house of God. But in this aspect we may distinguish peculiar dream-visions, night-visions of a higher form and power, momentary day-visions, apocalyptic groups or circles of visions, linked together in prophetic contemplation, and that habitual clear-sightedness as to visions which is the condition of inspiration. But that theophanies which are ever at the same time Angelophanies and Christophanies, and indeed as theophanies of the voice of God, or of the voice from heaven, of the simple appearance of angels, of their more enlarged and complete manifestations of the developed heavenly scenethat these are always conditioned through a disposition of fitness for visions, is clear from numerous passages in the Old and New Testaments (2 Kings 6:17, Daniel 10:7; John 12:28-29; John 20:10-12; Acts 9:8; Acts 12:7-12; Acts 22:9-14).

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THE ABRAHAMIC PROMISE

(by H. Christopher, The Remedial System, pp. 146-150)

The promise that God would bless the whole world through him [Abraham] had reference to Christ, the son of Abraham, through whom God would fulfill his promise of blessing the whole world through the offspring of Abraham. Whilst it was the first and chief promise made to Abraham, it was the last in fulfillment. Nearly two thousand years intervened. It was ratified and covenanted by the blood of Christ, and looked to the possession of the heavenly Canaan, and to a circumcision that cut off the heart from all that is worldly and sensual, and to a seal that became the pledge of the purchased possession, and its settlement in the heavenly Canaan, by the resurrection from the dead, when the spiritual people of God cross the Jordan of death, and take possession of the land of promise, for which even Abraham looked, when he sought a city whose maker and builder is God. This promise and its blessings have no connection with the others made to Abraham. They differ as widely as flesh and spirit, and as earth and heaven. They connect or coalesce no where. The first were but preparatory and necessary to the last. When the last appeared, the first had served their chief, if not all their, purpose. The first had chief reference to man’s body, while the last has chief reference to man’s spirit. And as the spirit of man is superimposed, as it were, upon the body, and is capable of a separate and independent existence, so was the last promise superimposed upon the first, and is capable of existing, and does exist, independently of it. Hence, the promises and the covenants by which they were ratified, connect with each other only as the flesh connects with the spirit. Between them lies an impassable gulf. There is no possible passage from the first to the last. The Jew has no rights and privileges under Christ by virtue of his being the son of Abraham according to the flesh; for the promise was; In Isaac shall thy seed be called, and he was the child of promise and of faith. The Christian is the child of promise and of faith, and hence is reckoned through Isaac as a special creation of God, and is, therefore, himself a new creation. The last creation supersedes all former ones, and by this supersession abrogates them. The adoption of the children of Abraham as the special and peculiar people of God, set aside the adoption by creation, and during the time of their adoption, the natural adoption was set aside, and the rest of mankind ignored, and treated as an uncovenanted people. So when the Christian adoption came in, the Jewish was set aside, and all the rest of mankind, not embraced in the new adoption, were ignored and treated as uncovenanted. Hence, under Christianity there is neither Jew nor Greek; neither circumcision nor uncircumcision; but all the families, nations, and races of mankind are one in Christ, in perfect fulfillment of the promise: In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

All this is necessarily true. The Remedial System is developed by differentiations which mark the boundaries of the development. The patriarch had no privileges, special and peculiar, after the calling of Abraham. By that call God isolated a part from the whole, and made this part his special care. By the new creation through Christ another isolation was made, which placed Jew and Greek on the same plane before God, and abrogated all special and peculiar rights or privileges claimed by the Jews. This is necessarily true from another consideration. The claim of the Jew rested on an explicit covenant. That covenant recognized him as the chosen of God, through a means wholly different from that by which he had recognized the patriarch, and does now recognize the Christian. This consideration or means was his birth. He was the son of Abraham according to the flesh, and entitled, consequently, only to the rights and privileges guaranteed by the covenant ordained to grant and secure these. He could claim only under the stipulated grants of his covenant. Under other and different covenants, and made with other people, he could, of course, have no claim or right whatever. His circumcision effected all it was designed to effect, and meant more than the Jew was willing to accept. It cut him off from all the rest of the world, and also from all other covenants of God, but according to the flesh. His circumcision bound him down to the provisions and obligations of that covenant, and confined him within its prescribed limits. What claim, therefore can a Jew have to the grants and blessings of a covenant that has no special reference to him whatever, and that was not made with him as a Jew? The European had as well claim equal rights with the American under the constitution of the United States. The Jew was the chosen of God only according to the flesh, and entitled only to blessings of his covenant. He is not the chosen of God according to the spirit, or the seed of Isaac according to the promise, and hence he can have no right with those who are.

There are four things necessary to make a nation the peculiar and chosen people of God, and all these obtained in the case of the descendants of Abraham according to the flesh. These things are, 1. A creation. This we have in the birth of Isaac. His conception was a miracle, and hence a creation. 2. A seal. This we have in circumcision. 3. A purchase. This we have in the deliverance of this people from Egypt. And 4. A covenant. And this we have in the covenant made before Mt. Sinai. All these are peculiar and consistent, and perfectly harmonious with all that God has promised, or has done for, the Jews. They were all equally necessary, and they follow each other as necessary results one of the other. The seal came to ratify the creation, the purchase, in demonstration of the fulfillment of the promise, and the covenant, in order that the people might also pledge themselves by covenant. By this the people became cemented and organized into a nation. As such they needed laws and institutions for their government and welfare as a people; and as the people of God, religious institutions for the various purposes which God had in view with that people. It will be observed that this covenant made with Abraham’s descendants arose under that which covenanted them as the peculiar people of God, and was, consequently, entirely Jewish. The covenant of Mt. Sinai was made with that people, and the institutions subsequently given, were given to that people, and to no other. The Jewish institution, in all its entirety, was as verily circumcised as were the people for whose benefit it was ordained. It was as completely isolated from all other religions and peoples, as were that people. Hence, it had no connection with any other, nor relation, except that of opposition. The covenant stipulated and embraced no more than did the promise under which it was made. It was a ratification, or acceptance on their part, of the stipulations of the promise. It was the covenant by which God renewed his promise to be their God, and by it the people accepted the offer, and covenanted to be the people of God. This covenant bound both parties to their pledgeGod to be their God, and them to be his obedient people. It did not, and could not stipulate and grant more than did the promise; hence, all these were temporal in their nature. This completed all that God had to provide for that people. Henceforth there was naught for either party to do, but to carry out the provisions of the covenant which formulated the promise. But this covenant was not only temporary as respects the rights, privileges, and blessings which it secured to that people; but it was also temporary in its duration. The people broke that covenant: and a covenant broken on one side, is broken on both. It was faulty in that it only contemplated and provided for man’s temporal wants. Indeed, this was the fault of the whole Jewish fabric, from the inception to the close. This was foreseen; and not only foreseen, but the whole structure was but a means to an end; a measure to give time for the preparation and institution of a better. The promise of God under which the whole Jewish structure arose, was not the first and chief promise that God made to Abraham, nor his chief purpose in calling him. This chief and greatest promise was that through him he would bless the whole human family. This promise the apostle interprets as having reference to Christ, and consequently, it was sooner or later, to take precedence of all others. It could not be annulled by any subsequent promise, unless that promise annulled, at the same time, all former ones. But this the subsequent promises did not do, as is affirmed by the people. The promise which had reference to Christ, preceded the ratification of that concerning the land several years, and antedated the covenant of circumcision twenty-four years. The covenant at Mt. Sinai followed the latter four hundred and six thereafter. So that nothing which transpired under the later promises could annul the first. The first and chief promise which contemplated spiritual blessings and a spiritual offspring through Isaac, was not ratified, fulfilled, or covenanted, for nearly two thousand years. All that has grown out of this promise has no connection with what arose under the others. It differs from them in every respect. It differed from them in the beginning. It came into the world through a different line. There were two lines of descendants in Isaac, as two promises were fulfilled in his descendants. The one line was the seed of Abraham according to the flesh, and the other the seed according to the spirit, the latter of which is reckoned the true line under the covenant of the first promise. This excludes the children according to the flesh from all rights and privileges pertaining to the children according to the spirit. As respects, therefore, their nature, rights, and privileges, the Jewish and Christian institutions differ radically and entirely; to that degree as to exclude the one wholly from the other. The creation, the circumcision or seal, the purchase, and the covenant, that made the descendants of Abraham according to the flesh the people of God, have no place nor value under the Christian institution. The latter has its own creation, seal, purchase, and covenant, all of which are spiritual and eternal, and these give the Christian no rights or privileges under the former. Hence, as respects institutions differing so completely and widely, there can be no community of rights and privileges; nor can the one flow out of the other so as to establish any genetic connection between them. As the spiritual and the eternal necessarily supersede the fleshly and temporal, so does the Jewish institution, in whole and in part, give way to the Christian. Under the latter arises a people of God as distinct from the former as spirit is from flesh. The Christian is a new creation, and all that pertains to his creation is new. Before it the Jew and Gentile stand on the same ground. Both must become the subjects of this new creation before they can be regarded as belonging to the people of God. All the claim which the Jew once preferred, goes for naught under the operation of the new creation. A new birth is just as essential for the Jew as for the Gentile. Hence, the Jew’s creation, seal, purchase, and covenant are all naught when he stands before the Christian’S. His birth of the flesh avails nothing, and neither does his circumcision, Nothing is now acceptable to God but the new creation in Christ. These things being true, all that is Jewish has passed away. The Jews are no longer the people of God. Their whole religious service has perished; and what purpose God has now with that people remains to be seen. That he has no further purpose with them in regard to the fulfillment of his promise of blessing the world through them by Christ, is evident from the fact that Christianity has superseded Judaism, and that the whole religious service of that people perished with the total destruction of their temple. Christ is the end of the law, and of all that pertained to it. It was but a pedagogue to lead the Jews to Christ; so that when he came all that was Jewish was set aside, and the pedagogue was dismissed. All now become the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek; neither bond nor free; neither male nor female; but all are one in Christ Jesus. And all who are Christ’s by virtue of the new creation, the spiritual seal, the eternal purchase, and the everlasting covenant, are the seed of Abraham, and heirs according to the promise: In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. (N. B. After hunting several years for a copy of Christopher’s book, I found it in the Dallas Christian College LibraryC. C.)

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THE EXCELLENCE OF FAITH

(Read Romans 5:1-11).

In the study of First Principles the term which first engages our attention is faith. We shall find that it occupies a prominent place in connection not only with conversion, but also with every phase of Christian activity and growth.

Faith is one of the most far-reaching words in the vocabulary of inspiration. Without faith none of the blessings of the spiritual realm would be available to man. Contrariwise, on the ground of faith, such blessings as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived (1 Corinthians 2:9), are within his power to appropriate and enjoy.

Faith is an oft-recurring word in the New Testament. Jesus had much to say about it, and the word is used repeatedly in the Epistles. Paul states expressly that we are justified by faith (Romans 5 :).

The excellence of faith is indicated in scripture by the following representations:

1. Faith is superior to things and circumstances of this material world.

When given full sway in the human heart it rises above the circumstances of life and controls them. The power of faith is described in such scriptures as Matthew 17:20, Mark 9:23; Mark 11:23, Luke 17:6. Christians of this materialistic age, in bondage as they are to the tyranny of things, are inclined to look on these sayings of the Master with more or less skepticism. The tragedy is that we have never really learned to walk by faith. We cannot testify that these sayings are true for the simple reason that we have never learned to stand on God’s promises. True, we claim to do so, and we sing Standing on the Promises, but always with mental reservations. It is only through the exercise of implicit faith that we can throw off the fetters of anxiety and fear which enslave us to this present evil world. We are willing to obey the Lord in confession and baptism, but we certainly fall far short of His teaching in regard to such everyday matters as fear, worry, forgiveness, humility, and the like. (See Matthew 5:3-12; Matthew 5:21-26; Matthew 5:38-42; Matthew 6:25-33; Matthew 7:1-5; Matthew 7:7-12, etc. Cf. 1 John 4:18) He might well say to us as to His disciples of old, O ye of little faith!

2. Faith is the ground of our justification.

Being therefore justified by faithnot by faith alone, or mere intellectual assent (the theologians have added the word alone)we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Not by faith alone, because faith apart from works (i.e., works of faith) is dead (James 2:26). The faith that is unto the saving of the soul (Hebrews 10:39) expresses itself in works of obedience, sacrifice and service (Romans 12:1-2). To walk by faith is to live by the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-25). God so loved us that He gave His only begotten Son as a propitiation for our sins (John 3:16), but we must appropriate this matchless Gift by faith. By true faith in Him we have access into this grace wherein we stand (Romans 5:2). For by grace ye have been saved through faith, and that (i.e., that salvation) not of yourselves, it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8).

3. Faith is the motivating principle of all Christian worship and service.

True worship is (1) communion of the human spirit with the Divine Spirit, (2) on the terms of the truth as revealed in scripture (John 4:24). This can be realized only through faith. Repentance is faith choosing; the confession is faith speaking; baptism is faith obeying; the Lord’s Supper is faith remembering; liberality is faith acknowledging God’s ownership; prayer is faith communing; meditation is faith pondering; and. the whole Christian life is faith serving. Therefore we are justified by faith. From the day of conversion to that of the putting, on of immortality, the actuating principle in the life of every true Christian is faith.

4. Implicit faith, along with obedience, is a necessary, condition to the answer of prayer (John 14:12-15; John 15:5-10, etc.).

(1) Acts 12:1-17. We read here that many of the early disciples were gathered together in the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, praying for Peter’s deliverance from prison. Yet they were amazed when their prayer was answered and Peter stood in their midst. Most of our praying is of this kind; it has little conviction back of it. (Matthew 21:22).

(2) The prayer of faith, i.e., the petition offered in harmony with the teaching of God’s word, will not go unanswered.

Unanswered yet? The prayer your lips have pleaded

In agony of heart these many years?

Does faith begin to fail? is hope departing?

And thing you all in vain those falling tears?

Say not the Father hath not heard your prayer,

You shall have your desire, sometime, somewhere.

Unanswered yet? Tho-’ when you first presented

This one petition at the Father’s throne,

It seemed you could not wait the time of asking

So urgent was your heart to make it known.

Tho-’ years have passed since then, do not despair;

The Lord will answer you, sometime, somewhere.

Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say -ungranted-';

Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done;

The work began when first your prayer was uttered,

And God will finish what He has begun;

If you will keep the incense burning there,

His glory you shall see, sometime, somewhere.

Unanswered yet? Faith cannot be unanswered;

Her feet are firmly planted on the Rock;

Amid the wildest storms she stands undaunted,

Nor quails before the loudest thunder-shock.

She knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer, And cries, -It shall be done, sometime, somewhere!-’ And cries, -It shall be done, sometime, somewhere!-'

5. The blessings and rewards of the gospel are all received and realized through faith.

Among these are: (1) salvation from the guilt of sin (Mark 16:16, Acts 2:38; Acts 10:43; Acts 16:31; Acts 26:18); (2) spiritual life (John 20:31; John 6:40, John 3:16; John 3:36; 1 John 5:12); (3) spiritual light (John 1:9; John 8:12; John 12:36); (4) heavenly adoption (Galatians 3:26); (5) the indwelling Spirit (John 7:39, Ephesians 1:13, Galatians 3:14); (6) justification (Romans 5:1, Galatians 2:16): (7) true righteousness (Romans 1:16-17; Romans 10:6; Romans 3:22); (8) true worship (John 4:24, Ephesians 3:12); (9) providential oversight (1 Peter 1:5); (10) eternal rest (Hebrews 4:3). In fact the inheritance of all the promises of God is to be realized through faith (Hebrews 6:12).

Conclusion: No wonder then that faith is represented to be the foundation which supports the entire pyramid of Christian virtues that true disciples build, one stone upon the other, and upon which they climb heavenward (2 Peter 1:5-7). True Christians walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Faith, hope and love, according to Paul, constitute the abiding trinity of spiritual virtues (1 Corinthians 13:13). Of these three, love is greatest; because, in the home over there, faith will have given way to spiritual knowledge, and hope to fruition, leaving only love to consummate the blissful intercourse of the redeemed with their heavenly Father (Revelation 21:1-5).

THE NATURE OF FAITH

(Read Hebrews, ch. 11, esp. Hebrews 11:1.)

The eleventh chapter of Hebrews has been called Israel’s Roll of Honor. It is the great faith chapter of the Bible. It is an inspired discourse on the subject of faith. The discourse begins properly with the last three verses of ch. 10, in which the writer speaks of a faith that is unto the saving of the soul. The subject-matter which follows, in ch. 11, is an analysis of that kind of faith, what it is, whence it is obtained, and how it operates unto salvation, as exemplified in the lives of many illustrious believers of olden times. The writer proves to be an excellent sermonizer, as we might expect in view of his having been inspired by the Spirit of God. He states his text in v. 1, and then proceeds to develop it with appropriate illustrations drawn from Old Testament history. His concluding exhortation follows, in ch. 12, Genesis 12:1-2. We shall attempt here to evaluate the teaching of this great chapter on the nature (i.e., the original and essential characteristics) of faith.

Let me repeat that the kind of faith under consideration here is the faith that works unto the saving of the soul. By some this has been called saving faith. Not that faith of itself will save any one, because it will not; but that the right kind of faith will motivate the believer to such intelligent and sincere cooperation with God, on God’s terms and according to His plan, that He may consistently save the one who so believes. It is God who pardons and saves, but always through Jesus Christ (John 14:6).

What is faith? Considering the excellence of faith, it is exceedingly important that we know what faith is. I am profoundly thankful that the Holy Spirit has not left us in darkness regarding this essential matter. Nor has he left it to our finite minds to formulate a definition. We are not compelled to go either to philosophy or to theology for a definition of faithwe have it in clear, unmistakable terms, in the Christian Scriptures.

What, then, are the essential characteristics of faith? This question is fully answered in the words of our text, as follows:

1. Faith is assurance. Assurance is defined as confidence inspired or expressed, that which produces certainty. It connotes positiveness, certainty, even boldness.

2. Faith is assurance of things hoped for. That is, faith is the foundation of hope.

(1) Authorized Version: the substance of things hoped for. The word substance means in our language the stuff, material, or matter of which anything is composed. It is used here, however, in its derivative sense. It is derived from the Latin prefix, sub (under) and the Latin participle stans (standing). Substance, then is that which stands under. Faith is that which stands under hope. Cf. Living Oracles: faith is the confidence of things hoped for. Moffatt: faith means we are confident of what we hope for. Weymouth: faith is a well-grounded assurance of that for which we hope. Goodspeed: faith means the assurance of what we hope for.

(2) Faith is the foundation of hope. This is true in every department of human activity. It is true in the business world. I visited a friend on one occasion to solicit a contribution from him for a worthy cause. Having heard my case, his reply was: I believe in your proposition, and I am sorry that I am not in a position to help just at this time. But I will do something later. I have invested a considerable sum of money in an oil well in Texas, and I am expecting returns from this investment within a few months. If you will come back about a year from this date, I will give you a substantial donation. I thanked him, and departed. About a year later I called at his office a second time, and as soon as I entered he looked at me and exclaimed: I know what you have come for, but I can-’t do anything for you. What is the trouble? I asked, didn-’t the oil well turn out satisfactorily? And in extreme disgust he said: I wish I had the money back that I sank in that hole in the ground. The first time I called he was extremely hopeful, because he believed in the enterprise in which he had invested; the second time I found him with hopes blasted, because he had lost all faith in it. Where there is no faith, there is no hope.

(3) This is also true in the social realm. In the course of time a young couple will fall in love, marry, and establish a home. The success of their undertaking will depend largely on their faith in each other. On this foundation of faith they will erect a structure of dreams and plans and hopes. But let the confidence of one in the other be destroyed and this structure will fall to the ground. Both marriage and home are erected on a foundation of faith.

(4) So, in the realm of spirit, as elsewhere, hope rests upon faith. Every act of worship and service we perform is motivated by faith. Faith underlies the pyramid of Christian virtues (2 Peter 1:5-7). And all our aspirations and hopes respecting the home over there, the inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away (1 Peter 1:4) rest on faith. In everything faith is the foundation of hope.

(5) Illustrations from the chapter (Hebrews 11). (a) Abel’s hope that his offering would be acceptable to God rested on faith, Hebrews 11:4. (1 John 3:12) (b) Enoch’s walk with God was a walk of faith, Hebrews 11:5. (c) Faith was the foundation of Noah’s hope of deliverance from impending judgment, Hebrews 11:7. (d) Abraham’s hope of attaining the far country which he was to receive for an inheritance was founded on faith, Hebrews 11:8. Also, his hope of receiving Isaac back from the dead was inspired by faith, from whence he did also in a figure receive him back, Hebrews 11:17-19. (e) Sarah’s expectation of a son, the child of promise, rested on faith, Hebrews 11:11. (f) Joseph’s hope that the children of Israel would ultimately take possession of the land of promise rested upon his faith, Hebrews 11:22. (g) The aspirations, hopes and plans of Moses for his people, and his matchless efforts in their behalf, were all inspired by his faith, Hebrews 11:24-29. In every example cited, faith is presented as the foundation of hope.

3. Faith is a conviction … A conviction is defined as a strong belief, something firmly believed. The faith which operates unto the saving of the soul is something more than a passive intellectual assent. It is a conviction. It must be a conviction, one that takes hold of the soul and determines the course of one’s life. In the light of this definition, it is obvious that faith is precisely the thing that is lacking in the modern church.

4. Faith is a conviction of things not seen, i.e., a conviction with respect to things not seen.

(1) Authorized Version: the evidence of things not seen. Moffatt: Faith means. we are convicted of what we do not see. Weymouth: a conviction of the reality of things which we do not see. Goodspeed: our conviction about things we cannot see.

(2) Note that faith is a conviction with respect to things not seen. I have never seen Paris, but I have a conviction that there is a city by that name and that it is the capital of France. My conviction is the result of satisfactory evidence. Things which are seen are matters of observation and knowledge, but things that are not seen belong to the realm of faith. God who is a Spirit (John 4:24) cannot be seen, and is therefore to be apprehended only by faith. Angels, spirit, resurrection, immortality, heaven, etc., all these realities of the unseen world are matters of faith. Faith pertains not to the things that are illusive and transitory, but to the things which are abiding. For the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18).

(3) We have never seen God, but we believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of them that seek after Him (Hebrews 11:6). We were not present to see the worlds created, but our conviction is that they were framed by the word of God (Hebrews 11:3). We have never seen Christ, our Elder Brother, but we believe in Him as the One who is abundantly able to save us from sin and mortality. We have never had a glimpse of heaven, but we believe that the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in us, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to our mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in us (Romans 8:11). Therefore we are exhorted to live by faith, to walk by faith and to die in the faith.

(4) Illustrations from the chapter (Hebrews 11). (a) Abel brought his offering to the altar with the conviction that the God whom he had never seen, but in whom he believed, would accept it, Hebrews 11:4. (b) In Noah’s heart there was an overwhelming conviction that judgment would come upon the antediluvian world because of its wickedness. Although summer and winter, and seedtime and harvest, continued to come and go as usual for one hundred and twenty years, he never faltered. Through all the trying experiences of this period of grace he retained his conviction. Because that during all these intervening years there was no evidence in nature of the impending catastrophe, it was a conviction with respect to things not seen, Hebrews 11:7. (c) Abraham left home and kindred and friends, and started on a strange journey to a land both unknown to him and unseen by him. He had no idea how far he would have to travel in order to reach it. All that moved him was a conviction with respect to the far country and a conviction that God would give it to him for an inheritance. Hebrews 11:8-12. (d) These fathers of Israel, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all died in the faith, having never received the literal fulfilment of the promises. So far as we know they all died without possessing a single acre of the land of promise save the few square feet they had purchased for a burial ground. It seems that as they continued in their pilgrimage their faith became clearer, and they began to look beyond the literal to the spiritual fulfilment of the promise, in the city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God, Hebrews 11:13-16. (e) Joseph’s conviction with respect to the exodus of his people from Egypt pertained to an event far in the future, an event not seen, Hebrews 11:22. (f) Moses, the man who saw an undying flame, chose to share ill treatment with the people of God, above the temporary enjoyment of the pleasures of sin, because he endured as seeing him who is invisible (Hebrews 11:23-29). In all these cases, faith was a conviction with respect to things not seen.

(5) As in the various cases cited from Old Testament history, so it is with respect to faith in the present dispensation and under the new covenant: (a) our faith must be something more than mere assent; (b) it must be genuine conviction in order to work unto the saving of the soul; (c) it must be conviction with respect to things not seen, viz., God, the Son of God, the Spirit of God, the future life, heaven, etc.; (d) this faith undergirds all our spiritual blessings, aspirations and hopes (1 Corinthians 2:6-10).

Conclusion: 1. This inspired definition of faith is perfect and complete. Nothing can be taken from it without weakening its import. Nothing can be added to it that would give it greater force.

2. Christian faith takes in all those convictions with respect to God, the Son of God, the Word of God, the Spirit of God, immortality, heaven, and the like; all of which are eternal realities above and beyond the realm of time and space. Like Moses, we endure as seeing him who is invisible, looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). Like Abraham, we realize that we are pilgrims and strangers upon this earth, that our present dwelling places are but the tabernacles of a night-time; and, like him, we anticipate a more glorious fulfilment of the promises than would be possible in this world of places and things (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). Our ultimate goal is that heavenly country towards which he made his pilgrimage. In the words of Emily Dickinson:

I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea, Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be. I never spoke with God, Nor visited in heaven; Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart were given.

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THE SOURCE OF FAITH

(Read Romans 10:1-17).

Having ascertained the essential nature of faith (1) the assurance of things hoped for, and (2) a conviction with respect to things not seen, we shall now turn our attention to the source of faith. Whence is the faith obtained that is unto the saving of the soul? We may find the answer to this important question by turning again to the cases cited in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews:

1. Abel, Hebrews 11:4. Whence did Abel obtain his conviction that the offering of a sacrifice of blood would be pleasing to God and would bring him God’s blessing? Evidently from the word of God. It seems obvious that God laid down the law of sacrifice as soon as man fell, in order to establish the principle that apart from shedding of blood there is no remission (Hebrews 9:22). Abel, in bringing an offering in which blood was shed, obeyed the law; Cain, in bringing the fruit of the ground, disobeyed it (1 John 3:12). This explains why Abel’s offering was accepted and Cain’s rejected.

That this institution was of divine origin is evident from several considerations: I. We learn from Hebrews 11:4, that Abel offered his sacrifice in faith. But in Romans 10:17, we are told that -faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.-’ And hence it follows that Abel could not have offered in faith without a command from God. II. It could not have been a human invention, because Reason can perceive no connection between the means and the end. It is evidently a positive and not a moral or natural institution. III. Its universality is another proof of its divine origin. Mr. Faber says that -throughout the whole world there is a notion prevalent that the gods can be appeased only by bloody sacrifices. There is no heathen people,-’ he adds, -that can specify a time when they were without sacrifice. All have had it from a time which is not reached by their genuine records. Tradition alone can be brought forward to account for its origin.-’ IV. The distinction between clean and unclean beasts even in the time of Noah (Genesis 7:2) proves also the divine origin of sacrifice. This is a distinction which is altogether positive, and which has no foundation in either reason or philosophy (Milligan, SR, 67).

2. Enoch, Hebrews 11:5.Enoch’s walk of faith was evidently inspired and directed by the word of God (Genesis 5:24).

3. Noah, Hebrews 11:7. How did Noah obtain his conviction that an overwhelming deluge would come upon the antediluvian world? How did he obtain the conviction that in the building of the ark a means of deliverance would be provided him and his family? Evidently from the word of God. God told him the flood would come in due time. God told him to build the ark and how to build it. God gave him the plans for it. God promised him deliverance through the instrumentality of the ark. And Noah believed God. His conviction was inspired not by any manifestation in nature, but solely by the word of God. See Genesis 6:13-22; Genesis 7:1-5; Genesis 8:15-17.

4. Abraham, Hebrews 11:8-19. Whence did Abraham obtain his conviction regarding the land to which he journeyed? Whence did he obtain his belief that this land would be given him for an inheritance? From the word of God. See Genesis 12:1-4; Genesis 13:14-18, etc. It was God who told him about the far country and promised it to him for an inheritance. Whence did Abraham and Sarah obtain their conviction regarding the birth of the child of promise? From the word of God (Genesis 17:15-21). Whence did Abraham obtain his conviction that God would not allow Isaac to suffer an untimely end (Hebrews 11:19)? From the word of God. Had not Isaac been miraculously conceived and born? Were not the details of the Abrahamic promise to be worked out through him? (Genesis 12:3; Genesis 13:16; Genesis 17:19, Hebrews 11:18). Cf. Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:3, Galatians 3:6, James 2:23.

5. Joseph, Hebrews 11:22. Whence did Joseph obtain his conviction that his people would leave Egypt and repossess Canaan? Evidently from God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Genesis 12:1-4; Genesis 13:14-18; Genesis 17:15-21; Genesis 26:2-5; Genesis 28:12-17).

6. Moses, Hebrews 11:22-29. From whom did Moses receive his commission to lead his people out of bondage? From whom did he receive the Law ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator (Galatians 3:19)? From God Himself. See Exodus 3:1 to Exodus 4:17, Exodus 20:1-26, Deuteronomy 5:1-33, etc. Who was his constant Guide and Protector through all those terrible marches in the wilderness? Who rained manna from heaven upon the starving people? Who guided them by means of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night? Moses constantly endured, as seeing him who is invisible.

7. Joshua, Hebrews 11:29. Whence did Joshua obtain his confidence that the walls of Jericho would fall? From Jehovah’s word. He went to God for a war program, in his extremity, and God supplied it (Joshua 6:1-20).

8. Rahab, Hebrews 11:30. Whence did Rahab obtain her belief that she should give aid and succor to the men of Joshua’s army? Evidently from her knowledge of God’s promises and judgments (John 2:9-21; John 6:22-25, James 2:25).

9. The creation, Hebrews 11:3. Whence do we obtain our belief that our physical universe was the materialization of God’s word? Our conviction that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear (i.e., that this universe was not fashioned out of pre-existing materials, as the evolutionists and materialists contend)? From the word of God. (See Psalms 33:6; Psalms 33:9; Psalms 148:5, etc. Note that the expression, God said, is found ten consecutive times in Genesis 1. Cf. also John 1:1-3, Hebrews 1:1-3, 2 Peter 3:5-8, etc.).

10. Other great heroes and heroines of faith, Hebrews 11:32-39. All received their inspiration to deeds of heroism from the attractions and impulsions of God’s word. So, then, belief cometh of hearing the divine word, as our text says. Believers in all ages endure as seeing Him who is invisible.

Conclusion: So much for the examples from Old Testament history. But what about the faith that operates unto the salvation of the soul, in the present dispensation, under the new covenant?

1. From what source do we obtain our belief that God is, and that He is a rewarder of them that seek after Him (Hebrews 11:6)? From the testimony about Him as revealed and recorded in Scripture. From the complete and perfect revelation of Him afforded us in the person and work of Jesus Christ, whom to know aright is eternal life. John 15:9-11, 1 Corinthians 2:6-16, Hebrews 1:1-3, 1 Peter 1:3-12, etc.

2. From what source do we obtain our conviction that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God? From the testimony presented in the Scriptures, particularly that of the gospel records. This is our only source of accurate information about Him, See John 17:20, John 20:30-31, Acts 15:7, Acts 17:11-12, etc. Why should me reject the testimony of these competent eye-witnesses, these men who walked and talked and supped with Him, and listen to the quibblings of half-baked professors removed from Him by a span of twenty centuries?

3. Whence do we obtain our convictions respecting the future life and its rewards and retributions? From the testimony of Scripture? From the great and exceeding precious promises of God.

4. Romans 10:17. Hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Faith does not come by feeling, nor by a direct operation of the Spirit, nor in answer to prayer, but faith does come by hearing the word of God (Romans 10:6-8, 1 Thessalonians 2:13).

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THE PILGRIMAGE OF FAITH

(Hebrews 11:1-19, esp. Hebrews 11:13)

One of the most illustrious characters of ancient times to whom our attention is called by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, is Abraham, the father of the Hebrew people.

Abraham’s life and walk were so eminently motivated by faith, that his name has gone down in sacred history as the Father of the Faithful, and as the Friend of God (Romans 4:17, Galatians 3:29, Isaiah 41:8, 2 Chronicles 20:7, James 2:23).

1. Note, in the first place, that Abraham’s whole life was a pilgrimage of faith.

(1) It was by faith that he first went out from his native home, Ur of the Chaldees. As faith comes from hearing the word of God (Romans 10:17), so he went out in response to God’s command (cf. Genesis 12:1-3). He did not go out in consequence of any urge within himself, but solely in obedience to God. By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance (Hebrews 11:8).

(2)* By faith he made his initial pilgrimage from Ur of Chaldea to the land of promise.* As faith is a conviction with respect to things not seen (Hebrews 11:1), he therefore went out not knowing whither he went (Hebrews 11:8). Commenting on this verse, Milligan says: Here we have given the fact that Abraham received a call from God; that by his call he was required to leave his home and kindred in Ur of Chaldea, and go out into a strange land; that this land, though promised to his posterity, was wholly unknown to him at the time; and that he nevertheless obeyed God, and went out of his own country, not knowing whither he went (Milligan, NTCH, in loco.)

(3) By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, etc. It would seem from this that Abraham never regarded Canaan as his home. He knew of course, by faith, that when the Canaanites should have filled up the cup of their iniquity to the full, in the fourth generation, the land would be given to his posterity for an everlasting possession, as indeed it was in the time of Joshua (Genesis 15:12-21). But until that time neither he nor his seed, he realized, had any rights or privileges there beyond what might have been accorded other strangers under like circumstances. (Cf. Acts 7:5). Hence Abraham died without owning a foot of the land other than the cave of Machpelah, which he purchased from Ephron the Hittite for a burying-ground (Genesis 23:3-20); and hence, also, neither he, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, ever established a permanent residence in the country. They were satisfied to live in movable tents, feeling assured that according to the promise, they were to fall heir to a better inheritance than any that is to be found on this earth.

(4) By faith he looked beyond the literal to the spiritual fulfilment of the promise. For he looked for the city which hath the foundations, etc. (Hebrews 11:9-10). From this and other like passages we are constrained to think that God had given the patriarchs information with regard to the heavenly country, far beyond what is now recorded in Genesis or any other part of the Old Testament. What we find there at present was written for our instruction, as well as for the benefit of the ancients (Romans 15:4). But much may have been said to them which would in no way benefit us; and which was, therefore, excluded from the Canon by Moses, Ezra and other inspired writers. The origin of sacrifice, for instance, is nowhere expressly mentioned in the Old Testament; nor is there anything said in it respecting the origin of the Patriarchal priesthood. Information, clear, full, and explicit, on all such matters, was of course needed by the ancients; but for us the more general instructions of the Bible are quite sufficient. And so, also, we think it was with respect to the heavenly country. The Patriarchs seem to have received revelations concerning it which have never been transmitted to us; for it is obvious that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, lived in constant expectation of entering it at the close of their earthly pilgrimage. They were satisfied to live here as strangers and pilgrims, knowing that they had in heaven a city having permanent foundations whose Architect and Framer is God. This city is manifestly the heavenly Jerusalem (Galatians 4:28, Hebrews 12:22; Hebrews 13:14), which for the present is located in heaven, but which will hereafter descend to the earth after the latter shall have been renovated by fire (Revelation 21). Then will be fulfilled in its full and proper sense the promise made to Abraham, that he and his seed should be the heirs of the world (Romans 4:13) (Milligan, ibid.).

In the land of fadeless day,

Lies -the city four-square-';

It shall never pass away,

And there is -no night there.-'

God shall -wipe away all tears,-'

There’s no death, no pain nor fears,

And they count not time by years,

For there is -no night there.-'

(5) By faith he anticipated the birth of the child of promise (Hebrews 11:11-12, Galatians 4:23, Genesis 17:15-21; Genesis 18:9-15; Genesis 21:1-7). The miraculous conception and birth of Isaac, typical in respect to its supernaturalness of that of Jesus, were direct fulfilments of the promise of Jehovah which Abraham believed. In this respect Abraham’s faith was even greater than Sarah’S, who, on being told, at ninety years of age and long after she had passed the age of child-bearing, that she should give birth to a son, received the announcement at first with considerable incredulity (Genesis 18:9-15).

(6) By faith he offered up Isaac on Mount Moriah, accounting that God is able to raise up, even from the dead; from whence he did also in a figure receive him back (Hebrews 11:17-19). Abraham’s faith was such that he knew that the promise of God (Genesis 17:21; Genesis 21:12) could not and would not fail, and as he could not anticipate that God would interfere, as He did, so as to prevent the immolation of his son, there was really left for him no alternative other than simply to conclude that God would restore Isaac to life. This conviction seems to be implied in the remark which he made to his servants, -Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again.-’ The word rendered come again (we will return) is in the plural number, and seems to indicate a belief on the part of Abraham, that God would immediately raise Isaac up again from the dead (Milligan, ibid.) The account of this, the severest trial and consequently the supreme manifestation of Abraham’s faith, is related in Genesis 22:1-14).

(7) Having walked in faith, he likewise died in faith, not having received the promises but having seen them and greeted them from afar, etc. What were the promises? (a) That Abraham should have a, numerous offspring (Genesis 13:16; Genesis 15:3-5; Genesis 17:2-4; Genesis 22:16); (b) that God would be a God to him and to his seed after him (Genesis 17:1-8); (c) that He would give to him and his seed an everlasting inheritance (Genesis 12:7; Genesis 13:15; Genesis 15:18-21; Genesis 17:8); (d) that through him and his seed, all the nations of the earth should be blessed (Genesis 2:3; Genesis 22:18). With respect to these four details, Abraham looked beyond their literal to their spiritual fulfilment. To each of these God attached a double significance.. They each consisted, so to speak, of two elements, one of which had reference to the carnal side of the covenant, and the other to the spiritual side; one to the type, and the other to the antitype. Thus Abraham was made the honored father of two families: to each of which an inheritance was promised, and through each of which the world was to be blessed (Milligan, ibid.). Abraham, it would seem, understood all this, understood by faith that the spiritual side of the promise would be realized through his seed, the Messiah, and consequently rejoiced to see his day, and he saw it, and was glad (John 8:56). (Cf. Galatians 4:21-31; Galatians 3:6-13, etc.) Hence, he died in faith, knowing that the promise in its various details would be worked out according to God’s eternal purpose and plan. Hence, too, by his constant life and walk of faith, he admitted that he did not seek a home on this earth, that here he considered himself merely a stranger and sojourner, that he did not expect to enter into possession of his true home until he should have reached the end of his pilgrimage and been received into a better country than this, i.e., heaven itself. Wherefore God approved and rewarded the faith of Abraham, and of Isaac and Jacob as well, by preparing for their inhabitation, and for all the redeemed of all ages, a city whose foundations had, even in their day, been laid prospectively in the blood of Jesus Christ (cf. Hebrews 12:22-24).

2. Note, in the second place, that Abraham’s pilgrimage of faith was designed to be typical of the believer’s journey.

(1) A voyage to a distant landsuch is the life of every Christian believer.

Our life is like the hurrying on the eve Before we start on some long journey bound, When fit preparing to the last we leave, Then run to every room the dwelling round, And sigh that nothing needed can be found; Yet go we must, and soon as day shall break; We snatch an hour’s repose; when loud the sound For our departure calls; we rise and take A quick and sad farewell, and go ere well awake.

(2) Here we walk by faith, and not by sight, if we are true Christians. Though in the world, we are not of the world. The worldly spirit deals with things present, but the spirit of faith anticipates the more glorious things to come. The worldly spirit is neither far-reaching nor far-sighted. Its range is bounded by the horizon of time and sense. It has no wings with which to soar into realms invisible. It is of the earth, earthly. Whence comes the manna? why gushes the water from the rock? whither guides the pillar of cloud and fire?these are questions it never asks. It knows not how to soar, how to anticipate and trust and wait, how to endure as seeing Him who is invisible, how to repose under the shadow of His wings, unmindful of the dangers of the wilderness and unalarmed by foes. But the heavenly-minded man walks by faiththat faith which is the substance of things hoped for, and a conviction with respect to things not seen. And, among all the great verities which possess his soul there is none greater, none nobler, none surer, than his conviction with respect to the saints-’ everlasting home. All the circumstances of his present journey, all the remembrances, all his reasonings, all his aspirations, point to a Better Land. By faith he sings:

There is a land of pure delight,

Where saints immortal reign,

Infinite day excludes the night,

And pleasures banish pain.

There everlasting spring abides

And never-withering flowers;

Death, like a narrow sea, divides

This heavenly land from ours.

(3) We realize that as far as this present life is concerned we are but strangers and sojourners on the earth. We dwell in tents, as did Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; in the tabernacles of a night-time. We are here today, and gone tomorrow. There is nothing that we possess here that we can really call our own. All that we shall have in the end is a few square feet of earth in which our mortal remains will be laid away to mingle with the dust. This is not sentimentaityit is plain fact. We can-’t take anything material with us into the next world, for the simple reason that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. No matter how diligently we may toil and strive to accumulate houses and lands and worldly goods, of what value will these things be when we reach the end of the road? We are pilgrims, nothing more, walking by faith in the direction of the heavenly country which we expect to reach beyond the swelling of the Jordan, the country that will truly be, Home, Sweet Home. The true Christian philosophy is expressed by Phoebe Carey in these lines:

One sweetly solemn thought

Comes to me o-’er and o-’er:

I am nearer my home today

Than I have ever been before.

Nearer my Father’s house

Where the many mansions be;

Nearer the great white throne,

Nearer the crystal sea.

Nearer the bound of life,

Where we lay our burdens down;

Nearer leaving the cross,

Nearer gaining the crown.

(4) Observation teaches us that much in this life is inequality and injustice. As far as this world alone is concerned, honesty is not always the best policy, Judas fares about as well as John, and Nero quaffs more of the wine of living than Paul. The voice of experience speaks to us that if this life is all, it is scarcely worth the living. In the words of Robert Browning:

Truly there needs be another life to come! If this be all And another life await us not for one, I say, -Tis a poor cheat, a stupid bungle, A wretched failure, I for one protest Against, and I hurl it back with scorn.

(5) Life as we live it here is largely illusion. (See F. W. Robertson, Sermons, The Illusiveness of Life). Our senses deceive us. They deceive us with respect to distance, shape, and color. That which, afar off, seems to be oval, turns out to be circular when modified by the perspective of distance; that which appears to be a speck, becomes a vast body, on nearer approach. Stand in the middle of a railroad track, and look in either direction, and the rails appear to converge; but they do not actually do so. Look at what we call the horizon and it seems that the earth and sky meet, but they do not actually, meet. The beautiful berry turns out to be bitter and poisonous; that which apparently moves is in reality at rest; that which seems to be stationary is in perpetual motion; the earth moves, but the sun, which appears to be moving, stands still. All experience here is but a correction of life’s illusionsa modification or reversal of the judgment of the senses. Our natural anticipations deceive us. Every human life starts out bright with hopes that will never be realized. These hopes may be different in nature: finer spirits may look on life as an arena for good deeds, while the more selfish regard it as a place only for personal enjoyment; but the results are usually the same. Regardless of the nature of these hopes, the majority will fail of fruition. It would seem almost a satire on life to compare the youth in the outset of his career, flushed and sanguine, with the aspect of the same man when he is nearly done, worn, sobered, covered with the dust of life, confessing that its days have been few and evil. Where is the land flowing with milk and honey? Not on this earth. With our affections it is even worse. Man’s affections are but tabernacles of Canaan, the tents of a nighttime, never the same, always changing. Where are the charms of character, the perfection and purity and truthfulness which seemed so resplendent in our friend? Association has rendered them sordid. They were only our conceptions and they proved false; hence we outgrow friendships. Life as we live it here is an unenjoyable Canaan with nothing real or substantial about it. Our expectations, resting on divine revelation, deceive us. For example, the attitude of the church with respect to the second coming of Christ. The apostles expected Him to return while they were yet here, and the early churches were vitalized by this hope of seeing the great and notable day of the Lord. John, in penning the last words of the New Testament, expressed this hope, Come, Lord Jesus. The church, throughout the centuries of the Christian era, has revived and revitalized this hope many times; in fact it has never died away. And even today, if it should turn out that we who are alive shall remain unto the coming of the Lord, we would consider ourselves fortunate indeed. However, He has not come. He will comebut not as yet. The promise, This Jesus shall so come in like manner as ye beheld him going into heaven, remains unfulfilled. What is the meaning of all this illusiveness of earthly life? Faith replies that it is not delusion, but illusion; that the non-fulfilment of the promises literally, is a pledge of their spiritual fulfilment later; that God, by their very non-realization, lures us onward and upward to nobler things. Suppose, for instance, that the spiritual side of the Abrahamic promise had been revealed to ancient Israel at first; suppose they had been informed at the outset that God’s rest is inward, that the land of promise is to be found only in the Jerusalem which is above; not material, but immaterial; not visible, but invisible. That rude, gross people, yearning after the flesh-pots of Egypt, willing to go back into slavery so only they might have enough to eat and drinkwould they have quitted Egypt on such terms? Would they have taken one step on that pilgrimage which was to find its meaning in the discipline of the ages? Nothey had to be lured on by something visible, something tangible. So we are lured on through life as upon a journey. Could man see the route before hima flat, straight road, unbroken by tree or eminence, with the sun’s heat burning down upon it, stretching out in dreamy monotonyhe could scarcely find either the inclination or the energy with which to begin his journey. It is the very uncertainty of that which is not seen, that which lies just around the bend, that keeps expectation alive. The view we think we may get from yonder summit, the landscape that may be glimpsed as the road winds around yonder knoll, hopes like these beguile the weary traveler on. So our heavenly Father leads us on, educating us day by day, and hour by hour, to walk in faith, ever holding up the seen as an incentive to the unseen. So He deals with us, luring us on by means of life’s unsatisfactory and illusive rewards, ever schooling us in the art of waiting, of enduring as seeing Him who is invisible. Canaan first; then the hope of a Redeemer; and finally the Better Land. It was in this manner that the ancient saints interpreted this mystery of the illusiveness of life. They did not regard life as a dream, nor as a bubble, nor as a delusion. Though they no doubt felt as keenly as any moralist could feel; the brokenness of its promises, yet by faith they pressed on, confessing that they were pilgrims and strangers here, that they had no continuing city, never mournfully moralizing about it, but admitting it cheerfully and even rejoicing that it was so. They felt that all was right; they knew that the promise had a deeper than material significance; so they looked for the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. They even died in faith, not having received the promises, not expecting to receive them here, but hereafter. Now observe the glorious result that comes from the indestructible power of believing and continuing on, in spite of apparent failure. The primitive Christians, for instance, believed in their day that the millennium was at hand. They had heard the apostolic warning, brief and clear, to watch. Now suppose, instead of this, they had been able to look into the future and see all the dreary pages of church history unfolded, with its heresies, its apostasy and divisions; suppose they could have known that even after two thousand years the world would scarcely know the alphabet of the Christian religion; knowing all these things, what would have become of their gigantic and heroic efforts, their sacrifices, their persecutions and their martyrdoms? With such knowledge of the future, do you suppose there ever would have been what we consider the heroism, the sacrifice, the passionate zeal of primitive Christianity? It is in this way that God leads His children on, on to realization and achievement through the illusiveness of the past; as a father educates his child, holding up the seen, all the while nurturing the thought of the unseen. Thus we shall continue to the endto that day when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ. Thus the non-fulfilment of God’s promises becomes to the man of faith an earnest of their deeper and nobler fulfilment.

(6) Finally, as in Abraham’s case, heaven is the goal of our pilgrimage. We expect to find illusion here, and we expect to find reality hereafter. We know that things here are seen and temporal, and we know, too, that the things we shall enjoy hereafter, the things that are now unseen, will be eternal. Interpreted, then, in the light of faith, life’s illusions are not disappointing; in fact nothing is disappointment if spiritually discerned. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called our God; for he hath prepared for us a city (Hebrews 11:16).

There’s a land that is fairer than day,

And by faith we can see it afar,

For the Father waits over the way,

To prepare us a dwelling-place there.

Just recently Dr. F. B. Meyer, one of England’s greatest preachers, entered into rest. Writing to a friend just three days before his death, this is what he said: Dear Friend: I have just been told, to my surprise, that my days on earth are numbered. It may be that before you receive this letter, I shall have passed within the Palace of the King. Do not trouble to write. I will meet you in the morning. Yours, with much love, F. B. Meyer. I will meet you in the morningwithin the palace of the King. This is Christian faith. This is conviction. Death isn-’t the end, it is the beginning, the beginning of greater growth, greater progress, greater service, and greater joy. As Louise Chandler Moulton has written:

At the end of Love, at the end of Life, At the end of Hope, at the end of Strife, At the end of all that we cling to so The sun is settingmust we go?

At dawn of Love, at Dawn of Life, At dawn of Peace that follows Strife, At dawn of all we long for so The sun is rising*let us go!

Conclusion:* Wherefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city. This is the promise! And God keeps His promises!

How beautiful to be with God,

When earth is fading like a dream,

And from this mist-encircled shore

To launch upon the unknown stream!

No doubt, no fear, no anxious care,

But, comforted by staff and rod,

In the faith-brightened hour of death,

How beautiful to be with God.

Beyond the partings and the pains,

Beyond the sighing and the tears,

Oh, beautiful to be with God

Through all the endless, blessed years

To see His face, to hear His voice,

To know Him better day by day,

And love Him as the flowers love light,

And serve Him as immortals may.

My sinner friend, will you not turn now, and start upon your pilgrimage of faith?

Genesis 20:1-18

PART THIRTY-THREE THE STORY OF ABRAHAM: SOJOURN IN THE NEGEB

(Genesis 20:1 to Genesis 21:34)

1. Abraham and Abimelech (Genesis 20:1-18)

1 And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the land of the South, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur; and he sojourned in Gerar. 2 And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is my sister: and Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah. 3 But God came to Abimelech in a dream of the night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, because of the woman whom thou hast taken; for she is a man’s wife. 4 Now Abimelech had not come near her: and he said, Lord, wilt thou slay even a righteous nation? 5 *Said he not himself unto me, She is my sister? and she, even she herself said, He is my brother: in the integrity of my heart and the innocency of my hands have I done this. 6 And God said unto him in the dream, Yea, I know that in the integrity of thy heart thou hast done this, and I also withheld thee from sinning against me: therefore suffered I thee not to touch her. 7 Now therefore restore the man’s wife; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou, and all that are thine.

8 And Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his servants, and told all these things in their ears: and the men were sore afraid. 9 Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said unto him, What hast thou done unto us? and wherein have I sinned against thee, that thou hast brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done. 10 And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What sawest thou, that thou hast done this thing? 11 And Abraham said, Because 1 thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife’s sake. 12 And moreover she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife: 13 and it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, that I said unto her, This is thy kindness which thou shalt show unto me: at every place whither we shall come, say of me, He is my brother. 14 And Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and men-servants and women-servants, and gave them unto Abraham, and restored him Sarah his wife. 15 And Abimelech said, Behold, my land is before thee: dwell where it pleaseth thee. 16 And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver: behold, it is for thee a covering of the eyes to all that are with thee; and in respect of all thou art righted. 17 And Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maid-servants; and they bare children. 18 For Jehovah had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.*

(1) The Negeb, Genesis 20:1, the dry, largely waterless area, which from its geographical position generally south of Judea came to be known as the south, the land of the south, etc. (cf. Genesis 10:19; Genesis 12:9; Genesis 26:1-6). (See Nelson Glueck’s great work, Rivers in the Desert). The northern boundary may be indicated by a line drawn roughly from Gaza to Beersheba, thence east directly to the Dead Sea. The southern boundary can be indicated by a line drawn from the highlands of the Sinai peninsula to the head of the Gulf of Aqabah at Eilat. (This, incidentally, is the line where the political division is drawn today). Significant economically were the copper ores in the eastern part of the Negeb and the commerce which resulted in the Arabah. Control of this industry explains the wars of Saul with the Amalekites and Edomites (1 Samuel 14:47 ff.), the victories of David over the Edomites (1 Kings 11:15 ff.), the creation of the port of Ezion-geber by Solomon, and later when these mines became too silted, the creation of a new port at Elath by Uzziah (1 Kings 9:26; 1 Kings 22:48; 2 Kings 14:22). The persistent animosity of the Edomites was motivated by the struggles to control this trade (cf. Ezekiel 25:12, and the book of Obadiah). The way of Shur crossed this area from the central highlands (really mountains) of Sinai northeastward to Judea (Genesis 16:7; Genesis 20:1; Genesis 25:18; Exodus 15:22; Numbers 33:8), the way followed by the Patriarchs (Genesis 24:62; Genesis 26:22), by Hadad the Edomite (1 Kings 11:14; 1 Kings 11:17; 1 Kings 11:21-22), and probably by Jeremiah in escaping to Egypt (Genesis 43:6-12), and later by Joseph and Mary (Matthew 2:13-15). The route was dictated by the zone of settled land in which the presence of well water was so important; hence the frequent references to its wells (Genesis 26:18-25; Joshua 15:18-19; Judges 1:13-15). See NBD, s.v.) This region, the Negeb, covers approximately one-half of the area of the state of modern Israel.

(2) Abraham’s Journey. Following the destruction of the Cities of the Plain, Abraham pulled his stakes, so to speak, and journeyed toward the land of the South. Various reasons have been suggested as to the motive for this journey, e.g., in consequence of the hostility of his neighbors (Calvin); desire to escape from the scene of such a terrible catastrophe which he had just witnessed (Calvin, Murphy); impulsion by God, to remind him that Canaan was not intended for a permanent habitation, but a constant pilgrimage (Kalisch); but most likely, it would seem, in search of pasture, as on a previous occasion (Keil); cf. Genesis 12:9-10; Genesis 13:1. Arriving in the land of the South, it seems that he ranged his herds from Kadesh on the north (also Kadesh-barnea), some seventy miles south of Hebron, to Shur, a wilderness lying at the northwest tip of the Sinai peninsula (beside one of its springs the Angel of Jehovah, it will be remembered, found Hagar: cf. Genesis 16:7-14). (A wilderness in the Palestinian country of the Biblical records meant a rather wild region of scant vegetation, except at certain seasons when rainfall provided temporary pasturage for the nomads-’ flocks (cf. Psalms 106:9, A.R.V., marginal rendering, pastureland).These wildernesses, unlike densely wooded wildernesses of our Americas, were treeless, except for palmtrees in the oases, bushes like acacia, and inferior trees like the tamarisk (Exodus 15:27, Elim; Genesis 21:33). Because of its aridity a wilderness in Scripture is sometimes called a desert.)

(3) Gerar, and the Philistines. Whatever the extent to which Abraham pastured his flocks between Kadesh and Shur, his more or less permanent tenting-ground must have been in the vicinity of Gerar, a city forty miles southeast of Gaza in the foothills of the Judean mountains (Genesis 10:19), hence interior to the coastal plain, and some distance from the route over which (by way of Gaza) invading armies invariably have moved to and fro between Egypt and Southwest Asia not only in ancient times, but even in our own century. (It should be noted that Armageddon lies on this military route, Revelation 16:16. See under Megiddo in any Bible Dictionary). Both Abraham and Isaac sojourned at Gerar (Gen., chs. 20, 21, 26), digging wells for their flocks. The city, we are told, was situated in the land of the Philistines (Genesis 21:32; Genesis 21:34; Genesis 26:1; Genesis 26:8). This designation is said to be an anachronism: it could be ascribed to a late editor, for the Philistines probably entered the land long after the time of Abraham (HSB, 35). Archaeological evidence, however, proves that this is not necessarily so. Cf. Schultz (OTS, 35): The presence of the Philistines in Canaan during patriarchal times has been considered an anachronism. The Caphtorian settlement in Canaan around 1200 B.C. represented a late migration of the Sea People who had made previous settlements over a long period of time. The Philistines had thus established themselves in smaller numbers long before 1500 B.C. In time they became amalgamated with other inhabitants of Canaan, but the name -Palestine-’ (Philistia) continues to bear witness to their presence in Canaan. Caphtorian pottery throughout southern and central Palestine, as well as literary references, testify to the superiority of the Philistines in arts and crafts, In the days of Saul they monopolized metalwork in Palestine. (The Caphtorium are said to have descended from Mizraim, Genesis 10:14, 1 Chronicles 1:12; Caphtor is identified as the land from which the Philistines came, Jeremiah 47:4, Amos 9:7.The consensus of archaeological testimony in our day almost without exception identifies these Sea Peoples as spreading out over the eastern Mediterranean world from Crete: at its height in the second millennium, Minoan Crete controlled the larger part of the Aegean Sea.) The great cities of the Philistines in Philistia of the Bible were (1) those on the coastal strip, from north to south in the order named, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Gaza; (2) those in the interior, Ekron on the north and Gath about the center and approximately west of Hebron. Gerar, though not one of the five great urban centers, was the seat of the royal iron smelting place producing iron swords, spearheads, daggers, and arrowheads (1 Samuel 13:19-22). Pottery models of iron-shod chariots have been found here. These people seem to have settled in Palestine in great numbers about the time of the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age (cf. Judges 16:21); this would have been about 1500 B.C. Archaeology now confirms the fact that groups of these Sea Peoples began arriving in waves long before this time; that in fact these smaller migratory groups were in the Near East as early as the Patriarchal Age. Excavations at Gerar and other Philistine centers began as early as the nineteen-twenties, under the direction of Phythian-Adams and Flinders Petrie: these produced remains from the time of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty, about 1600 to 1400 B.C. Recently an Israeli archaeologist, D. Alon, surveyed the site of Gerar and found evidence from potsherds that the city had enjoyed a period of prosperity during the Middle Bronze Age, the period of the Biblical patriarchs (DW: DBA, 251). Cornfeld (AtD, 72) gives a consistent account of this problem of the origin of the Philistines in the Near East, as follows: This designation [-Philistine-’] is generally regarded as anachronistic because the name Philistine was applied to a Western people (Peoples of the Sea) which had migrated from Crete and the Aegean coastlands and isles around 1200 B.C.E., and settled in the coastal regions of southern Palestine. C. H. Gordon and I. Grinz consider that these -early-’ Philistines of Gerar came from a previous migration of sea people from the Aegean and Minoan sphere, including Crete, which is called Caphtor in the Bible and Ugarit tablets, and Caphtorian is the Canaanite name for Minoan. Their earlier home was that other great cultural center of antiquity, the Aegean, which flourished throughout the 2nd millenium B.C.E., and is considered a major cradle of East Mediterranean, Near Eastern and European civilization. It has a close connection with the Hittite civilization, which stems also from an Indo-European migration into this sphere. This civilization spread by trade, navigation, and migration to Asia Minor, North Canaan (Ugarit, etc.). South Canaan (Gerar). The early Philistines who came into contact with the early Hebrews, and the Mycenaeans of proto-historic Greece, to whom the most prominent Homeric heroes belonged, were different sections of this Minoan (Caphtorian) world, By the time of the Amarna Age, or late patriarchal age, these immigrants formed an important segment of the coastal dwellers of Canaan. Vestiges of Aegeo-Minoan art, pottery, and tools abound in archaeological finds of this period. The art is remarkable for its vivacity and it injected a notable degree of liveliness into the art of the Near East, including Egypt. The most important role of Caphtor was its impact on both the classic Greeks of a later period and the early Canaanites, so that the earliest Greek, Canaanite (Ugarit) and Hebrew literatures have a common denominator in the Minoan or Caphtorian factor. We shall see that the early histories of the Hebrew and pre-Hellenic settlements and migrations on the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean, were originally interrelated in certain ways and that the classic traditions of Greece and the treasures of the Near East will illumine each other. C. H Gordon maintains that -the epic traditions of Israel starting with the patriarchal narratives are set in Palestine after the penetrations of the Indo-European Philistines from the west and the Indo-European Hittites from the north. When the Bible portrays Abraham as dealing with Hittites and Philistines, we have a correct tradition insofar as Hebrew history dawned in a partially Indo-Europeanized Palestine. This is reflected in Hebraic literature and institutions from the start.-’ The early Caphtorian migration was one of a long series that had established various Caphtorian folk on the shores of Canaan long before 1500 B.C.E. They had become Canaanitized, and apparently spoke the same language as Abraham and Isaac. They generally behaved peacefully, unlike the Philistines of a later day, who fought and molested the Israelites. They were recognized in Canaan as the masters of arts and crafts, including metallurgy (italics mineC. C.). These facts account also for the spread of the Cult of Fertility throughout the Near East. It is generally held by anthropologists that Crete was the center where this cult originated and from which it spread in every direction, through the Near East especially.

(4) Abimelech. The facts stated above give us a clearer understanding of this man who was king of the city-state of Gerar when Abraham moved into the area. The name, which means father-king, is pure Hebrew, and apparently was the common titlerather than personal nameof the kings of Gerar, as Pharaoh, for example, was of the rulers of Egypt, Agag of the kings of the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15), Caesar of the emperors of Rome (whence such later titles as Kaiser, Czar, etc.). This fact makes it entirely plausible that the Abimelech who covenanted with Isaac later (Genesis 26) was a successor to the Abimelech who had dealings with Abraham. The latter evidently sought out Abraham on the patriarch’s arrival within the region of which his capital, Gerar, was the dominant city. We must realize that the nomads of Abraham’s time were not wanderers all the time; rather, they alternated between periods of migration and periods of a more or less settled life. Because water was precious and the nomadic sheiks had to have it for their flocks, they had to hunt out the area where waterusually from wellswas available. Abraham was of this class. Cornfeld suggests that Abimelech visited Abraham somewhere in the locality, probably for the purpose of concluding a treaty of mutual protection that would safeguard his descendants from Israelite encroachments. It may well be also that he took Sarah into his harem, not especially because he was infatuated with her beauty (she was now ninety years old: cf. Genesis 17:17, Genesis 21:2) but for the very same purpose of cementing an alliance with this wealthy and influential patriarch. As a matter of fact, on comparing the motives and actions of these two men, it will strike most of us, I think, that Abraham’s conduct, generally speaking, was below the level of integrity manifested by the Philistine king. Certainly Abimelech’s role in the entire transaction supports the view stated above that these early Philistines, unlike those of later times, as a general rule behaved honorably and peacefully. Cf. Jamieson (CECG, 166): These early Philistines were a settled population, who occupied themselves for the most part in the peaceful pursuits of agriculture and keeping cattle. They were far superior in civilization and refinement to the Canaanitish tribes around them; and this polish they doubtless owed to their Egyptian origin. (This author holds that they had once been connected with the shepherd kings who ruled in lower Egypt (Deuteronomy 2:23), and had on their expulsion occupied the pasture lands which lay along its northern border. It seems, however, that their original Cretan origin has by now been firmly established.)

(5) Abimelech’s Dream (Genesis 20:3-7). Undoubtedly it was in the course of an earlier meeting between Abimelech and Abraham that the patriarch repeated the equivocation he had perpetrated previously on the Egyptian Pharaoh (cf. Genesis 12:10-20), namely, the declaration that Sarah was his sister, a declaration which Sarah herself confirmed (Genesis 20:5), as a consequence of which Abimelech took her into his harem. Whereupon, to protect the purity of the promised seed, God closed up all the wombs of house of Abimelech, that is, by preventing conception (cf. Genesis 16:2, Isaiah 66:9,1 Samuel 1:5-6), or by producing barrenness (cf. Genesis 29:31, Genesis 30:22). The reaction of Abimelech surely proves that his moral life was far above the level of the idolatrous Canaanites who occupied the land and makes it possible for us to understand why God deigned to reveal Himself to him.

The dream was the usual mode of self-revelation by which God (as Elohim) communicated with heathen. (Cf. Pharaoh’s dreams (Genesis 41:1), Nebuchadnezzar’s (Daniel 4:5), as distinguished from the visions and dreams in which Jehovah manifested His presence to His people. Cf. theophanies (visible appearances of deity) vouchsafed to Abraham (Genesis 12:7, Genesis 15:1, Genesis 18:1), and to Jacob (Genesis 28:13, Genesis 32:24), and the visions granted to Daniel (Daniel 7:1-28; Daniel 10:5-9), and to the prophets generally, which, though sometimes occurring in dreams, were yet a higher form of Divine manifestation than the dreams (PCG, 264). (Note that Pharaoh’s butler and baker (Genesis 40:8), the Midianites (Judges 7:13-15), the wife of Pilate (Matthew 27:19), experienced significant dreams,) (Cf. also the vision granted Isaiah of the Lord sitting upon a throne (Isaiah 6:1-5); Daniel’s vision of the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:9-11); the visions of the Living One, of the Door opened in heaven, of the Temple of God in heaven, and of the New Heaven and New Earth, all vouchsafed John the Beloved of the isle of Patmos (Revelation 1:18; Revelation 4:1; Revelation 11:19; Revelation 21:1), all of these together, in their various details, making up the content of the Apocalypse.) The fact that God communicated with Abimelech in a dream is sufficient evidence that the latter was in some sense a believer, one who apparently feared God; however, he must have had only a limited knowledge of God, because the dream, as stated above, was a mode employed for those standing on a lower level of revelation (EG, 582). Note the conversation which occurred by means of this dream: (1) God explains that Abimelech had done a deed worthy of death, viz., he had taken another man’s wife from her husband for his own purposes, whereas he should have honored the sanctity of the marriage bond (nothing was said about the other members of the king’s harem, but God’s silence must not be taken as approval, cf. Acts 17:30); (2) Abimelech answered by stating his fear that he, or even his subjects, however innocent in this case, might as a consequence of his sin (cf. 2 Samuel 24:17, 1 Chronicles 21:17, Jeremiah 15:4), be destroyed as the Sodomites had been destroyed; he then protested his innocence, in view of the fact that both Abraham and Sarah had represented themselves to him as brother and sister; (3) whereupon God recognized the fact of the king’s innocence and explained why he in turnas an act of benevolencehad imposed a physical affliction on him to prevent his laying hands on the mother of the Child of Promise. (4) Finally, God ordered Abimelech to restore Sarah to her husband, for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live, etc. Note (1) that Abraham was divinely declared to be a prophet, that is, an interpreter (communicator) of the will of God (Psalms 105:15, Amos 3:7, 2 Peter 1:21), one who speaks by divine afflatus (Deuteronomy 13:2; Deuteronomy 18:15-19; Judges 6:8, 1 Samuel 9:9,1 Kings 22:7) either to announce the will of God to men (Exodus 4:15; Exodus 7:1) or to intercede with God for men (Genesis 20:7; Jeremiah 7:16; Jeremiah 11:14; Jeremiah 14:11); (2) that he, Abraham, would pray for Abimelech (1 Samuel 7:5,Job 42:8); (3) that failing to make the required restitution, the king and all that were his would surely die. Whatever the nature of a revelation by means of a dream may be, it surely allows for an interchange of thoughtsquestions and answers, remarks and responses (EG, 585). This teaches us, says Leupold, that sin is sin and involves guilt, even when the perpetrator may have sinned in ignorance; such ignorance does constitute an extenuating circumstance; God acknowledges that here (EG, 586). (God has often intimated His mind in dreams: cf. Genesis 28:12; Genesis 31:24; Genesis 37:5; Genesis 40:8; Genesis 41:1; 1 Ki. 3:51; Jeremiah 23, 25, 28, 32; Daniel 2:1; Daniel 4:5).

(6) Abraham’s Explanation. Abimelech lost no time in setting things right, both in the understanding of his servants, and in the mind and heart of Abraham, protesting that the patriarch had brought on him and his kingdom near-disaster: thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done. Abraham, apparently feeling a sense of guilt, accounted for his action on three grounds: (1) he surmised that the fear of God had been lost here as elsewhere throughout Canaan (undoubtedly a reaction from the awful scenes of the divine judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah); (2) he had not spoken a verbal untruth in declaring Sarah to be his sister; she was indeed his half-sister; (3) the action had been the result of a preconcerted arrangement between Sarah and himself, agreed upon at the time their wanderings began. (The patriarch attempts no self-justification, no exculpation: he simply states the facts,) The view that Abraham’s statement in Genesis 20:12 is directly related to his statement in Genesis 20:11, is entirely plausible; that is, as if Abraham was saying, I spoke the truth about moral corruption in this place, because if the people had really been godfearing, they would have asked whether Sarah was also my wife, since one could marry his half-sister from the one father. The statement of the text indicates clearly that Sarah was her husband’s half-sister, i.e., Terah’s daughter by another wife than Abraham’s mother. On the earlier levels of the development of the human race such closer relationships of those married were often necessary and so not abhorred as they came to be later. The Mosaic law would not allow such connections; see Leviticus 18:9; Leviticus 18:11; Leviticus 20:17; Deuteronomy 27:22. Whom Terah had first married or perhaps married after he had married Abraham’s mother, we cannot determine (EG, 589-590).

(7)* Abimelech’s Response* (Genesis 20:14-16). The king carried out the divine instructions. He gave Sarah back to Abraham with a liberal present of sheep, cattle and servants, and gave the patriarch permission to dwell wherever he pleased in his, Abimelech’S, land. He gave Abraham also a thousand shekels of silver: this was usually of the character of a purchase-price for a wife; here, however, it seems to have been a compensation for injury unwittingly inflicted. To Sarah he said, It is for thee a covering of the eyes, that is, not for a veil which she was to procure for this amount, but as an atoning gift. In respect of all thou art righted: the general sense seems to be that Sarah’s honor was now fully rehabilitated.

(8)* Abraham’s Prayer* (Genesis 20:17-18). The patriarch forthwith interceded in prayer for Abimelech and his people (cf. his intercessory prayer for Sodom and Gomorrah). As a result all the members of the king’s court were now made capable of resuming their marital relations: coitus which had been temporarily suspended was now restored. This entire incident obviously was for the purpose of protecting the purity of the promised seed. In king Abimelech we meet with a totally different character from that of Pharaoh. We see in him a heathen imbued with a moral consciousness of right, and open to receive divine revelation, of which there is not the slightest trace in the king of Egypt. And Abraham, in spite of his natural weakness, and the consequent confusion which he manifested in the presence of the pious heathen, was exalted by the compassionate grace of God to the position of His own friend, so that even the heathen king, who seems to have been in the right in this instance, was compelled to bend before him and to seek the removal of the divine punishment, which had fallen upon him and his house, through the medium of his intercession. In this way God proved to the Philistine king, on the one hand, that He suffers no harm to befall His prophets (Psalms 105:15), and to Abraham on the other, that He can maintain His Covenant and secure the realization of His promise against all opposition from the sinful desires of earthly potentates. It was in this respect that the event possessed a typical significance in relation to the future attitude of Israel towards surrounding nations (BCOTP, 242, 243).

(9) Comparison of Gen 12:10-20 and Genesis 20:1-18. Alleged differences in these two narratives is taken by the analytical critics as evidence of a weaving together of two original sources, J and E. (As a matter of fact this theme of a sister-wife relationship occurs again in Genesis 26:6-11: in the first instance, involving Abraham-Pharaoh-Sarah; in the second, Abraham-Abimelech-Sarah, and in the third, Isaac-Abimelech-Rebekah). By the critics this chapter (20) is assumed to be an Elohistic document; then how account for the Jehovah of Gen 20:18? The answer is that Genesis 20:18 demonstrates the fine propriety one often encounters in relating these two names. Genesis 20:18 states Yahweh’s method of rendering the mother of the promised seed safe: the faithful covenant God in mercy watches over the mother of the child of the covenant; hence this verse is the complement essential to explaining Genesis 20:17.Other authorities explain that in Genesis 20:3, we have Elohim without the article, that is, Deity generally; but Abimelech recognizes the Lord, Adonai, i.e., God (Genesis 20:4); whereupon the historian represents Him as Elohim with the article, that is, the personal and true God, as speaking to him (Delitzsch, BCOTP, 240). Cf. Green (UBG, 251, 252): The critics have mistaken the lofty style used in describing grand creative acts or the vocabulary employed in setting forth the universal catastrophe of the deluge for the fixed habit of an Elohist writer, and set it over against the graceful style of the ordinary narrative in the early Jehovist sections. But in this chapter and in the rest of Genesis, whenever Elohim occurs in narrative sections, the stately periods of the account of the creation and the vocabulary of the creation and the flood are dropped, and terms appropriate to the common affairs of life and the ordinary course of human events are employed by the Elohist precisely as they are by the Jehovist. Elohim occurs throughout this chapter (Genesis 20:3; Genesis 20:6; Genesis 20:11-12; Genesis 20:17), except in the last verse (Genesis 20:18) where Jehovah is used. But the words and phrases are those which are held to be characteristic of the Jehovist. Thus do the critics nullify their own assured results.

Again, the question is raised by the critics, Why the specific inclusion of the elaboration by Abraham as regards his motivation in dealing with Abimelech, as distinguished from the narrative of his dealing with Pharaoh? That is to say, is there a reason for the explanation to Abimelech that his wife was in reality a half-sister in view of the fact that no such explanation was vouchsafed the king of Egypt? Obviously, there is a reason for this difference. Again, note Green (UBG, 257, n.): Abraham says of his wife at the outset, -She is my sister-’ (Genesis 20:2). In and of itself this is quite intelligible; and a Hebrew narrator would certainly have told this more plainly, if he had not on a like occasion stated in more detail what moved Abraham to it (Genesis 12:11-13). Was it necessary now to repeat it here? The rapidity with which he hastens on to the fact itself shows what he presupposes in the reader. But while in the first event of the kind (cf. 12), in Egypt, the narrator briefly mentions Pharaoh’s gifts and plagues, he sets forth in more detail the cause of Abraham’s conduct. The reader might certainly be surprised that the same thing could happen twice to Abraham. The narrator is conscious of this; and in order to remove every doubt of this sort which might so easily arise, he lets Abraham clear up the puzzle in what he says to Abimelech (Genesis 20:11-13). Thus the narrator himself meets every objection that could be made, and by the words, -when God caused me to wander from my father’s house-’ (Genesis 20:13), he looks back so plainly over all thus far related, and at the same time indicates so exactly the time when he first thought of passing his wife off as his sister, everywhere in foreign lands, that this can only be explained from the previous narrative in ch. 12.

Certainly there are similarities between this episode and those recorded in Genesis 12 and Genesis 26. However, as Leupold writes (EG, 579): It is foolish to claim the identity of the incidents on the ground that they merely represent three different forms of the original event, forms assumed while being transmitted by tradition. Critics seem to forget that life just happens to be so strange a thing that certain incidents may repeat themselves in the course of one life, or that the lives of children often constitute a strange parallel to those of their parents. Smith-Field (OTH, 79)Here the deceit which Abraham had put upon Pharaoh, by calling Sarah his sister, was acted again with the like result. The repeated occurrence of such an event, which will meet us again in the history of Isaac, can surprise no one acquainted with Oriental manners; but it would have been indeed surprising if the author of any but a genuine narrative had exposed himself to a charge so obvious as that which has been founded on its repetition. The independent truth of each story is confirmed by the natural touches of variety; such as, in the case before us, Abimelech’s keen but gentle satire in recommending Sarah to buy a veil with the thousand pieces of silver which he gave to her husband, We may also observe the traces of the knowledge of the true God among Abimelech and his servants (Genesis 20:9-11). Green (UBG, 258, n.): The circumstances are different in the two narratives. Here Abimelech makes Abraham a variety of presents after he understood the affair; there, Pharaoh before he understood it. Here God Himself appears; there He simply punishes. Here Abraham is called a prophet (Genesis 20:7), as he could not have been at once denominated when God had but just called him. The circumstances, the issue, and the description differ in many respects, and thus attest that this story is quite distinct from the former one. (Green quotes the foregoing from a work by the distinguished scholar, Ewald, Die Komposition der Genesis kritisch untersucht, 1823).

The following summarization by Leupold (EG, 579-580) of the striking differences is conclusive, it seems to the writer: Note the following six points of difference: two different places are involved, Egypt and Philistia; two different monarchs of quite different characters, one idolatrous, the other, who fears the true God; different circumstances prevail, a famine on the one hand, nomadic migration on the other; different modes of revelation are employedthe one kind surmises the truth, the other receives revelation in a dream; the patriarch’s reaction to the accusation is quite different in the two instances involvedin the first, silence; then in the second instance, a free explanation before a king of sufficient spiritual discernment; lastly, the conclusions of the two episodes are radically different from one anotherin the first instance, dismissal from the land; in the second, an invitation to stay in the land. We are compelled, therefore, to reverse the critical verdict: -it is impossible to doubt that the two are variants of the same tradition.-’ We have here two distinct, though similar, events. Haley (ADB, 26): A favorite exegetical principle adopted by some of these critics appears to be, that similar events are necessarily identical. Hence, when they read that Abraham twice equivocated concerning his wife; that Isaac imitated his example; that David was twice in peril in a certain wilderness, and twice spared Saul’s life in a cave, they instantly assume that in each case these double narratives are irreconcilable accounts of one and the same event. The absurdity of such a canon of criticism is obvious from the fact that history is full of events which more or less closely resemble one another. Take, as a well-known example the case of the two Presidents Edwards, father and son. Both were named Jonathan Edwards, and were the grandsons of clergymen. -Both were pious in their youth, were distinguished scholars, and were tutors for equal periods in the colleges where they were respectively educated. Both were settled in the ministry as successors to their maternal grandfathers, were dismissed on account of their religious opinions, and again settled in retired country towns, over congregations singularly attached to them, where they had leisure to pursue their favorite studies, and to prepare and publish their valuable works. Both were removed from these stations to become presidents of colleges, and both died shortly after their respective inaugurations; the one in the fifty-sixth, and the other in the fifty-seventh year of his age; each having preached, on the first Sabbath of the year of his death, on the text: -This year thou shalt die.-’ (From Memoir prefixed to the Words of Edwards the younger, p. 34. Cf. also 1 Samuel 23:19; 1 Samuel 26:1; 1 Samuel 24:6; 1 Samuel 26:9, with Genesis 12:19; Genesis 20:2; Genesis 26:7.) Haley (ibid, 27, n.): Observe that no one of the above cases [in Genesis] bears, in respect to points of coincidence, worthy of comparison with this unquestioned instance in modern times. Again (ibid., 317): We have elsewhere seen that distant events may bear a very close resemblance. A late rationalist concedes that -in those rude times, such a circumstance might have been repeated,-’ and that the -dissimilarities of the two cases render their identity doubtful.-’ In king Abimelech, says Keil, we meet with a totally different character from that of Pharaoh. We see in the former a heathen imbued with a moral consciousness of right, and open to receive divine revelation, of which there is not the slightest trace in the king of Egypt. The two cases were evidently quite distinct. Again: Whereas Abraham makes no reply to Pharaoh’s stinging indictment (Genesis 12:20), he has here a great deal to say to Abimelech in self-defense (Genesis 20:11-13). In passing, it should be noted that Sarah was some sixty-five years old, in the encounter with Pharaoh. As a noble nomadic princess, undoubtedly she had led a healthful life with a great measure of freedom. (Haley, ibid., 318): In contrast to the swarthy, ugly, early-faded Egyptian women, she possessed no doubt great personal attraction. In the second instance, when she was some ninety years of age, nothing is said as to her beauty. Abimelech was influenced, not by Sarah’s personal charms, but simply by a desire to -ally himself with Abraham, the rich nomad prince-’ (as Delitzsch puts it).

2. New Light on Abraham’s Deceptions

(Explanatory: I have purposely withheld, for presentation at this point, certain evidence from recent archaeological findings which throws an entirely new light on Abraham’s conduct toward Pharaoh and Abimelech, and have gone along, so to speak, with the traditional concept of Abraham’s deceptions. It must be admitted that these do not portray the patriarch in a favorable light. On the basis of this viewpoint of his motives, perhaps the best that could be said by way of extenuation is the following comment by Leupold (EG, 593): If the case in hand is to be approached from the moral angle, then it is seen to offer an illustration how even with God’s best saints susceptibility to certain sins is not overcome by a single effort. These men of God, too, had their besetting sins and prevailing weaknesses. The repetition of the fall of Abraham under very similar circumstances, instead of constituting grounds for criticism should rather be regarded as a touch entirely true to life (EG, 593). Dr. E. A. Speiser, in his excellent work on Genesis (Anchor Bible Series) presents an entirely different picture, as derived from Hurrian (Horite) customary law. The Horites evidently were a mixture of Semitic and Indo-European peoples who occupied East Central Mesopotamia. The chief center of Hurrian culture was Nuzi, which was east of the Tigris not too far southeast of Nineveh. (Another important center of archaeological findings was Mari, the center of the Amorite civilization; Mari was on the bend of the Euphrates, some distance northwest of Babylon, a region in which the city of Haran was located, which according to Genesis was the home of Abraham’s kinsmen.) The Hurrian culture was not known until 1928-1929 when the Nuzi cuneiform documents (some 20,000 in number) were discovered. As a result we know that these people had some strange customs having to do with the sister-wife relationship.

Dr. Speiser writes (ABG, Intro., 39 ff.): Among the various patriarchal themes in Genesis, there are three in particular that exhibit the same blend of uncommon features: each theme appears to involve some form of deception; each has proved to be an obstinate puzzle to countless generations of students, ancient and modern; and at the same time, each was seemingly just as much of an enigma to the Biblical writers themselves. These three are specifically; the problem of the sister-wife relationship (Abraham and Sarah), that of the transfer of the birthright and the paternal blessing (as from Esau to Jacob), and that of a father’s disposition of his household gods (images, Genesis 31:19-30). (It is the first of these problems which we deal with here; the other two will be taken up in connection with their appearance in the Scripture text.) Involved in most of these instances are the laws of inheritance, especially those involved in adoption, and certain legal phraseology in some cases. Discoveries at Nuzi have shed a flood of light on these problems. The difficulty involved, however, is that of ascertaining the extent to which Abraham was familiar with this Hurrian customary law. Traditionally, Abraham has been regarded as resorting to deception to save his skin, in the three instances in Genesis in which he is represented as introducing his wife as his sister, primarily because the twohusband and wifefelt that this half-truth and half-lie was necessary to protect them from the erotic habits of their pagan neighbors. As we have already seen, the three occurrences of this episode have been used by the critics as an argument for the composite (documentary) authorship of the Pentateuch. Now, according to the light shed on the problem in the Nuzi documents, it was the custom among those of the higher social caste there (the nobility) for a husband to adopt his wife as his sister. This was designedly for social standing. Speiser (ABG, intro., 40): In Hurrian society a wife enjoyed special standing and protection when the law recognized her simultaneously as her husband’s sister, regardles of blood ties. Such cases are attested by two separate legal documents, one dealing with the marriage and the other with the woman’s adoption as sister. This dual role conferred on the wife a superior position in society. The idea seems to have been that, under an old fratriarchal system, a sister had privileges that wives generally did not have. Hence, when Abraham said of Sarah, She is my sister, and Sarah said in turn of Abraham, He is my brother, this meant that they were, in a sense, untouchable. But, as this interpretation indicates, when they made these representations to Pharaoh, they found them of no avail. On the other hand, as this was their best defense under Hurrian law, it would seem that Abimelech was acquainted with that particular law and hence respected the position of Sarah. The same must also be true of the Abimelech who figured in the case of Isaac and Rebekah. Speiser concludes (ibid.) that in the context of the customary law involved, Abraham and Sarah were perfectly honorable in their representations.

Obviously, there are some serious objections to this general interpretation. In the first place, why were the representations made by Abraham and Sarah to the Egyptian king accepted at face value with the result that he took Sarah into his harem? It must be true, of course, that he had no such knowledge of the Hurrian law governing the case. It is said, however, that Pharaoh’s conduct must have been due to the fact that in Egypt the role of sister was not highly regarded. The difficulty with this explanation is the fact that it is not in harmony with what is known about Egyptian history and culture. (The reader is advised to read Dr. Will Durant’s great work, Our Oriental Heritage, pp. 164-170, for reliable information about these matters.) Writes Dr. Durant: Very often the king married his own sisteroccasionally his daughterto preserve the purity of the royal blood. the institution of sister-marriage spread among the people, and as late as the second century after Christ two thirds of the citizens of Arsinoe were found to be practising the custom. The words brother and sister, in Egyptian poetry, have the same significance as lover and beloved among ourselves.. -No people, ancient or modern,-’ said Max Muller, -has given women so high a legal status as did the inhabitants of the Nile Valley,-’. It is likely that this high status of woman arose from the mildly matriarchal character of Egyptian society. Not only was woman full mistress in the house, but all estates descended in the female line.. Men married their sisters not because familiarity bred romance, but because they wished to enjoy the family inheritance, etc. (pp 164-166). Obviously, then, Abraham’s device could have worked in Egypt only if the Pharaoh was familiar with Hurrian law and was willing to acknowledge it binding in his realm. But both of these conditions seem most unlikely.

Then, what about Abimelech? Was he aware of this Hurrian law, as far as Philistia was from far eastern Mesopotamia? It is possible that he could have been familiar with it. But, again, the opposite would seem to have been the truth. And again we have the difficulty of explaining why Abimelech would have been influenced by such a custom had he even known of it. As for the Genesis story, the causes and effects involved are plainly presented. The truthfulness of the Genesis accounts of these sister-wife representations is in strict harmony with the realism of the whole Bible. And finally, the application of the Hurrian law to these cases necessitates certain pre-suppositions, namely, (1) that the redactors (apparently the possibility of Mosaic authorship is ignored) were completely ignorant of the Hurrian custom; (2) that in trying to weave together alleged varied traditions of one and the same original event, they allowed unexplainable inconsistencies to creep into the Genesis text; (3) that they must have experienced considerable embarrassment in portraying the revered patriarch and his wife as practising equivocation to save their own skins; that they were prompted to introduce in each case what was known in ancient times as the deus ex machina, i.e., the obtrusion of divine judgment to produce understanding, repentance and restitution on the part of the monarchs involved. Finally, and most serious of all, not only is the possibility of Mosaic authorship ignored, but even the possibility of Divine inspirationverbal, dynamic, or even supervisoryis completely disregarded.

The facts of the matter are, from the present author’s point of view, that the narratives under consideration in Genesis are three different accounts of three different originals; and that the accounts, as they stand, are completely in line with Biblical realism. The Bible is the most realistic book in the world. It pictures life just as men have lived it in the past and as they live it now. It is pre-eminently the Book of Life. It portrays both their vices and virtues, their fears and their triumphs, their temptations and frailties as well as their victories of faith. The very first principle of Biblical interpretation is that the Bible should be allowed to mean what it says and to say what it means, without benefit of over-reaching analytical criticism or the gobbledygook of speculative theology. This is simply the application of the practical norm of calling Bible things by Bible names.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

See Genesis 21:22-24.