in localities where red sandstone prevails, and whose soil bears the colour of the rock from which its basis is formed. The red sandstones of the mountains of Esau would thus lend their hues to the very atmosphere itself, and the whole region would be acknowledged to be "red" -Edom. The pottage cooked by Jacob was "pottage of lentiles." The colour of the food shows that the red variety of lentil was used. The lentil Fig. 99. Lentil (Ervum lens). (Ervum lens) is a species of vetch (Vicia), used for food on the continent of Europe, and especially in Egypt and Asia Minor. It bears some resemblance to our common vetch or tare (Vicia sativa), but much more to some of the wild varieties, and is to be gathered in its wild. state in situations like those in our own land "Where purple tassels of the tangling vetch With bitter sweet and bryony inweave, And the dew fills the silver bindweed's cups." The botanical place of the lentil, and its use as food, are pointed out and illustrated under 2 Samuel xxiii. 11, which see. GENESIS XXVI. T Beer Lahai-roi, Isaac, while following a life, half pastoral half agricultural, was overtaken, as his father had been, by a famine. Like Abraham, he was about to go down to Egypt for the preservation of his household, "but the Lord appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt." Isaac halted at Gerar in Philistia. Abimelech and Phicol are introduced as respectively king and chief captain. It is not at all likely that the men were the same as those with whom Abraham had met. Abimelech was the king's title, Phicol that of the commander of his armies. Nearly seventy years must have passed since Abraham visited Gerar. This famine is noted as the second in patriarchal times. "There was a famine in the land beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham." This, however, was only one of a series that came on that land afterwards. Indeed the physical features and climatal condition of Palestine, made it then as now peculiarly liable to such visitations. Nor does it detract from the glory of the sovereignty of God in these famines, to appreciate very fully second and natural causes in their immediate production. Drought, excess of rain, or scarcity of dew, are as much his ministers as the lightening flash, the earthquake, or the burning fire which, as in the case of the cities of the plain, he rains down from heaven. So likewise the wireworms and the locusts are as truly his army, as were the hosts of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Greece, and Rome, when, for the sins of Israel, they were once and again sent against them. A like line of remark might be followed with reference to the prevention of famine. Man's agency in the physical, as in the moral world, is followed by fruits corresponding to the kind of effort put forth. In the latter sphere, the absence of moral training results in increased wickedness and more prevalent misery. In the former sphere, neglect of agriculture, the want of industry, and indifference to opportunities of improvement, make men more liable to the terrible scourge of famine, than they would have been, had agricultural industry, commercial enterprise, and sound principles of social economy characterized them. God has ever shown it to be his way to help those, in such things, who help themselves, and to bless abundantly the faithful use of means. There may, nevertheless, be circumstances connected with the relations of particular countries to others, with their state of civilization and the like, which might tend greatly to make them liable to the inroads of famine. It was so with Palestine in the days of the patriarchs. Its plains were held by a numerous population. Crowded cities stood as the capitals of petty states. But it had none of those resources by which, especially in modern times, food is readily brought from a distance in the day of famine. Whenever the blight fell upon the crops, or the murrain raged as a deadly plague among their cattle, the people could only suffer and die. The climatal condition of Canaan also, was such as to cause the want of a wide-spread commerce to be at times severely felt. From May till about the end of October, the sky is almost without a cloud. Bright uninterrupted sunshine for nearly six months streams down on the whole land. Towards the end of October occasional clouds gather on the sky, and periodic rains begin to fall. During the months of November, December, January, and February, rain or snow falls. The period between the middle of November on to the second week of January may be named the rainy season; after that the rain or the snow falls in showers to the beginning of April. In April and May heavy morning mists frequently hang over the landscape, which, for the most part, wholly disappear, and give place to the cloudless sky of the summer months. During the rainy season, the pasture and tilled lands are completely saturated; the springs, which indirectly depend on the supply from surface water, as most springs in the neighbourhood of porous rocks do, are filled; the water courses are refreshed, and the trees on their banks hasten to a growth which will cast a shade, and form a shelter for vegetation during the summer, when the water-courses are dry. A failure of supply of moisture at the rainy season results in scanty harvests, an intensity of drought during the summer, the burning up of the pasturage, and the consequent destruction of the best of the flocks and herds. The mild character of the winter helps to prepare yet another agency in the production of suffering. Insect life, every where abundant, has none of the trials from severe and long-continued winters, which destroy so many of the full-formed insects in climates like our own. The egg and the larva develope uninterruptedly into the full-grown form, and, both in the larval and in the perfect state, are ready instruments in keeping down the herbage or in destroying the crop. All these things should be taken into account when we look at the presence, the end, and influence of the famines mentioned in Scripture. The references to famines are so numerous, and the ends accomplished by them in the moral government of God are so important, that they claim a fuller notice. Two words are used in the Hebrew Bible which we render by the one word "famine." One of these (kapan) is only used twice (Job v. 22, xxx. 3), and seems to point chiefly to the craving, hungering desires of the famished. The other (rahav), occurs sixty-two times, and is mainly linked up with the suffering and grief of the faminestricken. The latter word occurs thrice in another form (Gen. xlii. 19, 33; Ps. xxxvii. 19). In the last passage a thought of much power and beauty has been lost sight of, by our rendering-" the fat of lambs"-in this place. The translators have seen the difficulty, and have set down in the margin-" the preciousness of lambs." But this does not meet the striking contrast, even though, with many, we should hold the reference to be to the melting of the fat on the altar of burntoffering. There is no authority for rendering the original word "fat." But if we admit the idea which, as Gesenius has shown, should be attached to it, viz., "pasture," one of the objects on which the famine falls, we see how suggestive and appropriate the whole passage is. The upright shall be happy and contented in the time of famine; the wicked shall perish as the burnt up grass does, by whose destruction the famine is brought about: "The Lord knoweth the days of the upright, They shall not be ashamed in the evil times; And in the days of famine they shall be satisfied. But the wicked shall perish, And the enemies of the Lord! like the beauty of pastures, They shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away." The notices of the natural means by which famine is produced, gain in significance when we fully acknowledge the sovereignty of God in the use of these, as this is stated in the Bible. Whatever the natural means may be, the Lord claims the recognition of the direct presence of his own hand in all. Thus the solemn warning to nations during such visitations, and thus national responsibility in the acknowledgment of sin, when under the direct stroke of God. Accordingly we find this form of judgment once and again linked up with national sin, contracted by rulers. "Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David enquired of the Lord. And the Lord answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites" (2 Sam. xxi. 1). When David sinned in numbering the people, the prophet Gad went to him and said "Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land; or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies, while they pursue thee? or that there be three days' pestilence in thy land. Now advise, and see what answer I shall return to him that sent me" (2 Sam. xxiv. 13). And when the prophet was sent with a message to Zedekiah king of Judah, and his princes, and the residue of Jerusalem, his words were "Thus saith the Lord, I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence among them, till they be consumed from off the land that I gave unto them and to their fathers" (Jer. xxiv. 10). This view of the hand of God in the famine, to which, indeed, all the light we have in the Bible on the providence of God points, is that which, at the dedication of the temple, Solomon, speaking by the Spirit of God, sought to lead Israel as a covenant people:-"If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting, mildew, locust, or if there be caterpillar; if their enemy besiege them in the land of their cities; whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there be; what prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward this house: then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-place, and forgive, and do, and give to every man according to his ways, whose heart thou knowest (for thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men); that they may fear thee all the days that they live in the land which thou gavest unto their fathers" (1 Kings viii. 37-40). "The famine" is thus to be accepted from the immediate hand of God. Thus its place as a means of discipline to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. But not less so to believers in New Testament time. Paul saw clearly this aspect of it, and he makes it stand very boldly out in connection with his sublime utterances touching election, and as to the intercession of Christ, as exalted in behalf of those in him, while they are in the heart of trial-" Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" (Rom. viii.) A famine then is brought about in the providence and government of God, either as a divine retribution, for neglect of proper means of prevention, or as a punishment, because of a nation's sins. Innumerable |