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among the Jews, when they were just escaped from Egyptian bondage. The writer introduces these expressions apparently for the purpose of leading his readers to comprehend his meaning by alluding to something well known among them.

This peculiarity is observable; 1. In the account of the four rivers which watered the garden of Eden:

The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold: and the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx-stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

The first three of these rivers were little known to the Israelites, even in the most civilized periods of their commonwealth they therefore required to be more fully described; but of the well known Euphrates no description was necessary. Yet in the time of Moses it may be doubted whether the Israelites were not in too ignorant and degraded a state, owing to their severe slavery in Egypt, to render the above distinction at all applicable.

2. In the description of the ark resting on Mount Ararat. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventh day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.

Now the mountains of Ararat are situated a long way to the north-east of the Holy Land, and the Israelites, having never crossed the Jordan, but dwelling in the Arabian wilderness during all the life of Moses, would not be likely to know even where Mount Ararat was to be found. But in later times, when the Jews were in correspondence with foreign nations, such a description would be intelligible and appropriate.

3. The case is somewhat the same with Damascus mentioned in GEN. xiv, 15.

And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night,

and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus.

Hobah and Damascus were equally unknown to the Israelites, when they first came out of Egypt: the situation of Hobah could not, therefore, be more clearly explained by reference to that of Damascus. The whole of Palestine lay between the Israelites and Syria, of which Damascus was the capital.

4. A similar allusion, less applicable in the time of Moses, than in an after-age, is found in Genesis ix, 18.

And the sons of Noah that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.

But the Israelites knew nothing of the Canaanites until after the death of Moses, when they were conducted by Joshua over the Jordan, and came in contact with the Canaanites, Hivites, and other nations, who at that time occupied the land of promise. If, however, we suppose the Pentateuch to have been written in a later age, when the Canaanites were too well known to the Israelites by repeated wars, the allusion to them acquires a propriety which hardly belongs to it at a time, when these people were comparatively unknown.

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5. Mention of the Ishmeelites.

GEN. xxxvii, 25-28. And they [i. e. Joseph's brethren] sat down to eat bread and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down into Egypt.

And Judah said unto his brethren, "What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood? Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmeelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh." And his brethren were content.

Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver; and they brought Joseph into Egypt.

Here the merchants, to whom Joseph is sold, are twice called Ishmeelites, and once Midianites. Bishop Patrick explains the inconsistency in the following extraordinary

manner:

Ishmeelites] They are called below Midianites. These people were near neighbours to each other; and were joined together in one company or caravan, as it is now called. It is the custom, even to this day, in the East, for merchants and others to travel through the deserts in large companies, for fear of robbers or wild beasts.

If the passage, to which these comments are annexed, occurred in one of the famous Greek or Latin historians, Livy, Thucydides, or any other, such a note would not for one instant be taken as sound criticism, because none of those able writers would be guilty of such an absurdity as applying two names, known to be distinct, to the same people, within the space of four lines. If some idle and weakly-written tale contained the inconsistency, the mode of interpreting it, which Bishop Patrick applies to the passage before us, might be passed over without notice, but, even then, more from its being of no importance, than from its soundness or its propriety. But, when we find this discrepancy in a work, which professes to be inspired, it is highly desirable that such an inconsistency or discrepancy should be cleared up. Why have none of the commentators remarked on the singular circumstance of there being Ishmaelitish merchants at all, in the time when Joseph was sold into Egypt? Ishmael was Jacob's uncle, being brother to Isaac, Jacob's father. The family of Ishmael could not have encreased to such an extent in the time of which the history treats. The mention of Ishmaelites, in the text before us, indicates that the writer lived many generations later, when Ishmaelitish merchants were well known. Still less likely is it that there were Midianitish merchants in those days; for Midian was also one of the sons of Abraham, and 54 years younger than Isaac: see GENESIS Xxv, 2. At all events the variation in the name of this tribe of merchantmen renders it impossible that Moses could have written the narrative; unless we suppose that, when he had it in his power to describe the matter accur

ately and definitely, he rather chose to relate it in such a manner as to puzzle all future ages as to its exact meaning.

6 Allusion to the Sidonians.

DEUT. iii. 9. Which Hermon the Sidonians call Sirion; and the Amorites call it Shenir.

But the Sidonians lived a long way off from the deserts of Arabia, where Moses and the Israelites wandered, and were probably unknown to them. The passage was

written by some one who not only knew the Sidonians and Amorites, but was aware that his readers knew them also, and he mentions them for the purpose of rendering his narrative more intelligible.

7 Minute account of Meribah.

NUMBERS XX, 13. This is the water of Meribah; because the children of Israel strove with the Lord, and he was sanctified in them.

This mode of specifying the place was less necessary in the time of Moses: but would be requisite if the account is to be referred to a period of time, a thousand years later than Moses; when the site of Meribah, however interesting, would otherwise have been unknown.

8 Beer.

The same observation is applicable to Beer mentioned in Numbers xxi, 16:

And from thence they went to Beer: that is the well whereof the Lord spake unto Moses, "Gather the people together, and I will give them water."

Both of these texts were written to teach the Israelites the great things which God had done for their ancestors under Moses.

9 Jericho.

NUMBERS Xxii, 1. And the children of Israel set forward, and pitched in the plains of Moab on this side Jordan by Jericho.

Jericho was but a small town; and I should think

unknown to the Israelites, before they crossed the Jordan.

10. Bedstead of Og.

Deuteronomy iii, 11. For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and five cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.

Dr Pyle (in the Family Bible) remarks on this passage:

It is probable, that either Og conveyed his iron bedstead, with other furniture of his palace, into the country of the Ammonites, to prevent their falling into the hands of the Israelites or else the Ammonites had taken it from him in some former conquest, and kept it as a monument of their victory.

Either of these cases would be probable, if it could be first proved that Moses wrote this verse, and that he knew of Og's bed being kept in Rabbath. But as Rabbath was not taken by the Israelites until the time of David, as we

read in II Sam. xii, 26,

And Joab fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and took the royal city,

it is not likely that the Israelites knew anything about the bedstead of king Og until then. In the reign of David, five hundred years had passed since Og lived, and his bedstead had consequently become an object of curiosity, like the great bed of Ware, which is still shewn in that town, though only three hundred years old. It is hardly possible that Moses knew any thing about this bedstead of king Og, afterwards so famous.

9. Variation in the name given to the priest of Midian father-in-law of Moses, and to Joshua.

It is not probable that Moses should designate his own father-in-law by three different names. Yet we find he is called in one passage Reuel, in a second Jethro, and Raguel in a third. The first passage is in Exodus, chap. ii, vv.

16-21.

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