Joseph comforts for his father seven days. GENESIS, L. the inhabitants of the land, the Canaan- mourning of the a Acts 7. 16. his Brethren. (11) And when 1 That is. The Thy father did command before he died, saying, (17) So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. (18) And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we be thy servants. (19) And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God? (20) But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. (21) Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly b ch. 23. 16. sons did unto him according as he com- (15) And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. (16) And they 2 sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, c ch. 45. 5. 3 Heb., to their markable that we find hostilities going on between the (11) Abel-mizraim.—There is here an example of that play upon words that is always dear to Orientals. The word for "mourning" is ébel, while abel means a meadow, and is often found prefixed to the names of towns. When the Versions were made no vowel points were as yet affixed to the Hebrew consonants, and they all read Ebel-mizraim, the mourning of Egypt. The Hebrew text alone, as at present pointed, has Abel-mizraim, the meadow of Egypt. (15) Joseph will peradventure. .-Heb., What if Joseph should hate us, &c. They had not seen any change in his treatment of him, but if it were the case unto them. с (22) And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father's house: and Joseph lived an hundred and ten years. (23) And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the that he cherished feelings of revenge, they felt that they were now in his power. (16, 17) Thy father did command .-Many Jewish expositors consider that this was untrue, and that Jacob was never made aware of the fact that his brethren had sold Joseph into slavery. It is, however, probable, from chap. xlix. 6, that Jacob not only knew of it, but saw in Simeon and Levi the chief offenders. But besides the father's authority the message brings a twofold influence to bear upon Joseph: for first it reminds him that they were his brethren, and next, that they shared the same religious faith-no slight band of union in a country where the religion was so unlike their own. (19) Am I in the place of God?-That is, am I to act as judge, and punish? Judges are sometimes in Hebrew even called God (as in Exod. xxi. 6, xxii. 8, 9; 1 Sam. ii. 25), as exercising His authority. (20) Ye thought God meant.-The verb in the Heb. is the same, and contrasts man's purpose with God's purpose. In chap. xlv. 7 Joseph had already pointed out that the Divine providence had overruled the evil intentions of his brethren for good. At the end of the verse "much people," or a great people, means the Egyptians. 66 (21) Your little ones.-Heb., your tafs:" rendered in the LXX., ". your households," and in the Syriac, "your families," your dependents-its usual translation in that Version. (23) The third generation.-These would be Joseph's great-grandchildren. Thus Eran, son of Shuthelah, son of Ephraim, was to be born in Joseph's lifetime (Num. xxvi. 35, 36). Were brought up .-Heb., were born upon Joseph's knees, that is, were adopted by him. (See Note on chap. xxx. 3.) They would not form tribes, as this prerogative was reserved for the sons of Jacob (chap. xlviii. 5), but they would count as Joseph's sons (chap. xlviii. 6), and form "families." (24) God will .. bring you out of this land. -This is, first, a proof of Joseph's faith, commended in Heb. xi. 22; and, secondly, it is a preparation for the next book (Exodus). Joseph's faith thus unites the two books together. (26) A coffin.-The word means a case or chest of wood. The mummy-cases were generally of sycamorewood. As it would not be possible for the Israelites, now that their great protector was no more, to go with a military escort to Hebron to bury him, Joseph orders that his embalmed body should be placed in some part of Goshen, whence it would be easy to remove it when the time of deliverance had arrived. And his wish was fulfilled; for" Moses took the bones of Joseph with him" (Exod. xiii. 19), and Joshua buried them in Shechem, in the piece of ground which Jacob had given to him (Josh. xxiv. 32). of Joseph. and to Jacob. (25) And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. (26) So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. : With the death of Joseph ends the preparation for the formation of a chosen race. Summoned from a remote city upon the Persian Gulf to Palestine, Abraham had wandered there as a stranger, and Isaac and Jacob had followed in his steps. But in Palestine the race could never have multiplied largely; for there were races already there too powerful to permit of their rapid increase. Abraham and Lot, Esau and Jacob had been compelled to separate; but now, under Joseph, they had been placed in a large, fertile, and well-nigh uninhabited region. The few who dwelt there were, as far as we can judge, of the Semitic stock, and whatever immigrants came from time to time were also of the same race, and were soon enrolled in the "taf" of some noble or chief. And thus all was ready for their growth into a nation; and when we next read of them they had multiplied into a people so vast that Egypt was afraid of them. EXCURSUS ON NOTES TO GENESIS. EXCURSUS A: UPON THE PROBATION OF ADAM (Chap. ii. 16). The great object for which the world is constituted such as we actually find it to be is evidently the trial and probation of man's moral nature. We cannot wonder, therefore, at finding Adam subject to a probation; and even if he had remained innocent we have no right to suppose that his posterity would always have withstood temptation, or that the world would not finally have become such in the main as it is now. But the manner of Adam's probation was different. In Paradise he had unlimited freedom, except in one small particular, and no promptings of his own nature urged him to take delight in disobedience and sin. But if thus he was free from passion, on the other hand his conscience was undeveloped, even if it could be said to exist at all in one who did not know the difference between good and evil. He was devoid, too, of experience, and his reason must have been in a state as rudi. mentary as his conscience. For as there was no struggle between passion and conscience, man had not then learned to choose between opposing ends and purposes, as he has now. Nevertheless, Adam was an intellectual being. He must have had a deep knowledge of natural history; for doubtless he called the animals after their natures. In verse 23 he calls his wife Ishah, and himself Ish. Now, this name signifies a being, and in so calling himself Adam seems to claim for man that he is the one creature upon earth conscious of his own existence. And when Eve appears he simply adds a feminine termination to the name, recognising her thereby as the female counterpart of himself; but in so doing he shows a mastery of language, and the power of inflecting words according to the rules of grammar. There is proof, after the fall, of even increased insight into the nature of things; for in the name Eve, life, Adam plainly recognised in her difference of sex the Divinely-appointed means for the maintenance of human life upon earth. But man now, to balance the corruption of his nature, has, in addition to intellect, the help of conscience, of increased knowledge and experience of the effects of sin, and of largely developed reason. Devoid of such assistance, a difficult probation, such as is the lot of mankind now, would apparently have been beyond the power of Adam to sustain; whereas, had he not been tempted from without, he might easily, with his passions as yet unstirred, and most of his intellectual gifts still dormant, have endured the simple trial to which he was subjected. But temptation from without was permitted, and Adam fell. It would be easy to lose ourselves in reasoning upon the possibilities involved in Adam's trial; but there are points upon which there can be no doubt. First, if probation is the normal law of our condition now, it would be just as right and equitable to make Adam subject to a probation. And alike for Adam then and for men now, probation seems to be a necessary condition of the existence of beings endowed with free will. Secondly, the fall was not all loss; St. Paul affirms this with reference to the gift of a Saviour (Rom. v. 17-19). And besides this, higher qualities are called into existence now than were possible in the case of one who had no experimental knowledge of evil. We may even say that in giving this command Jehovah was appealing to qualities still dormant in Adam; and this exercise of the Divine attribute of foreknowledge makes us sure that the Divine purpose was to develop these qualities: not necessarily, however, by the fall, for they would have been to some extent exercised by resisting temptation. Thirdly, Adam, had he remained innocent, could nevertheless have attained to no higher happiness than such as was possible for a being in a rudimentary and passionless state of existence. would have attained to the perfection of innocence, of pure physical enjoyment, and of even large scientific knowledge; but his moral nature would have developed very slowly, and its profounder depths would have remained unstirred. He would have been a happy grown-up child, not a proved and perfected man. sufferings of this fallen world are intense (Rom. viii. 22), but the product in those who use their probation aright, is probably higher than any product of Paradise could have been. The holiness attained to by Enoch, the seventh from Adam, was of a different and higher kind than the most perfect innocence of a being who had been called to make no earnest struggle; for it was as the gold tried in the fire (1 Pet. i. 7). He The EXCURSUS B: ON THE NAMES Throughout the first account of creation (Gen. i. 1— ii. 3) the Deity is simply called Elohim. This word is strictly a plural of Eloah, which is used as the name of God only in poetry, or in late books like those of Nehemiah and Daniel. It is there an Aramaism, God in Syriac being Aloho, in Chaldee Ellah, and in Arabic Allahu-all of which are merely dialectic varieties of the Hebrew Eloah, and are used constantly in the singular number. In poetry Eloah is sometimes employed with great emphasis, as, for instance, in Ps. xviii. 31: "Who is Eloah except Jehovah ?" But while thus ELOHIM AND JEHOVAH-ELOHIM. the sister dialects used the singular both in poetry and prose, the Hebrews used the plural Elohim as the ordinary name of God, the difference being that to the one God was simply power, strength (the root-meaning of Eloah); to the other He was the union of all powers, the Almighty. The plural thus intensified the idea of the majesty and greatness of God; but besides this, it was the germ of the doctrine of a plurality of persons in the Divine unity. In the second narrative (chaps. ii. 4-iii. 24), which is an account of the fall of man, with only such intro GENESIS. ductory matter regarding creation as was necessary for making the history complete, the Deity is styled Jehovah-Elohim. The spelling of the word Jehovah is debatable, as only the consonants (J, h, v, h) are certain, the vowels being those of the word Adonai (Lord) substituted for it by the Jews when reading it in the synagogue, the first vowel being a mere apology for a sound, and pronounced a or e, according to the nature of the consonant to which it is attached. It is generally represented now by a light breathing, thusY'hovah, 'donai. As regards the spelling, Ewald, Gesenius, and others argue for Yahveh; Fürst for Yehveh, or Yeheveh; and Stier, Meyer, &c., for Yehovah. The former has the analogy of several other proper names in its favour; the second the authority of Exod. iii. 14; the last, those numerous names like Yehoshaphat, where the word is written Yeho. At the end of proper names the form it takes is Yahu, whence also Yah. We ought also to notice that the first consonant is really y; but two or three centuries ago j seems to have had the sound which we give to y now, as is still the case in German. But this is not a matter of mere pronunciation; there is a difference of meaning as well. Yahveh signifies "He who brings into existence;" Yehveh "He who shall be, or shall become;" what Jehovah may signify I do not know. We must further notice that the name is undoubtedly earlier than the time of Moses. At the date of the Exodus the v of the verb had been changed into y. Thus, in Exod. iii. 14, the name of God is Ehyeh, "I shall become," not Ehveh. Had the name, therefore, come into existence in the days of Moses, it would have been Yahyeh, Yehyeh, or Yehoyah, not Yahveh, &c. The next fact is that the union of these two namesJehovah-Elohim-is very unusual. In this short narrative it occurs twenty times, in the rest of the Pentateuch only once (Exod. ix. 30); in the whole remainder of the Bible about nine times. Once, moreover, in Ps. 1. 1, there is the reversed form, Elohim-Jehovah. There must, therefore, be some reason why in this narrative this peculiar junction of the two names is so predominant. The usual answer is that in this section God appears in covenant with man, whereas in chaps. i.-ii. 3 He was the Creator, the God of nature and not of grace, having, indeed, a closer relation to man, as being the most perfect of His creatures (chap. i. 26), but a relation different only in degree and not in kind. This is true, but insufficient; nor does it explain how Jehovah became the covenant name of God, and Elohim His generic title. Whatever be the right answer, we must expect to find it in the narrative itself. The facts are so remarkable, and the connection of the name Jehovah with this section so intimate, that if Holy Scripture is to command the assent of our reason we must expect to find the explanation of such peculiarities in the section wherein they occur. What, then, do we find? We find this. The first section gives us the history of man's formation, with the solemn verdict that he was very good. Nature without man was simply good; with man, creation had reached its goal. In this, the succeeding section, man ceases to be very good. He is represented in it as the object of his Maker's special care, and, above all, as one put under law. Inferior creatures work by instinct, that is, practically by compulsion, and in subjection to rules and forces which control them. Man, as a free agent, attains a higher rank. He is put under law, with the power of obeying or disobeying it. God, who is the infinitely high and self-contained, works also by law, but it comes from within, from the perfectness of His own nature, and not from without, as must be the case with an imperfect being like man, whose duty is to strive after that which is better and more perfect. Add that, even in the first section, man was described as created "in God's image, after His likeness." But as law is essential to God's nature-for without it He would be the author of confusion-so is it to man's. But as this likeness is a gift conferred upon him, and not inherent, the law must come with the gift, from outside, and not from himself; and it can come only from God. Thus, then, man was necessarily, by the terms of his creation, made subject to law, and without it there could have been no progress upward. But he broke the law, and fell. Was he, then, to remain for ever a fallen being, hiding himself away from his Maker, and with the bonds of duty and love, which erewhile bound him to his Creator, broken irreme. diably? No. God is love; and the purpose of this narrative is not so much to give us the history of man's fall as to show that a means of restoration had been appointed. Scarcely has the breach been made before One steps in to fill it. The breach had been caused by a subtle foe, who had beguiled our first parents in the simplicity of their innocence; but in the very hour of their condemnation they are promised an avenger, who, after a struggle, shall crush the head of their enemy (chap. iii. 15). 66 66 Now this name, Y-h-v-h, in its simplest form Yehveh, means "He shall be," or "shall become." With the substitution of y for v, according to a change which had taken place generally in the Hebrew language, this is the actual spelling which we find in Exod. iii. 14: namely, Ehyeh 'sher Ehyeh, "I shall be that I shall be." Now, in the New Testament we find that the received name for the Messiah was the coming One" (Matt. xxi. 9, xxiii. 39; Mark xi. 9; Luke vii. 19, 20, xiii. 35, xix. 38; John i. 15, 27, iii. 31, vi. 14, xi. 27, xii. 13; Acts xix. 4; Heb. x. 37); and in the Revelation of St. John the name of the Triune God is, He who is and who was, and the coming One" (chaps. i. 4,8, xi. 17). But St. Paul tells us of a notable change in the language of the early Christians. Their solemn formula was Maran-atha, "Our Lord is come (1 Cor. xvi. 22). The Deliverer was no longer future, no longer "He who shall become," nor "He who shall be what He shall be." It is not now an indefinite hope no longer the sighing of the creature waiting for the manifestation of Him who shall crush the head of his enemy. The faint ray of light which dawned in Gen. iii. 15 has become the risen Sun of Righteousness; the Jehovah of the Old Testament has become the Jesus of the New, of whom the Church joyfully exclaims, "We praise Thee as God: we acknowledge Thee to be Jehovah." : But whence arose this name Jehovah? Distinctly from the words of Eve, so miserably disappointed in their primary application: "I have gotten a man, even Jehovah," or Yehveh (chap. iv. i.). She, poor fallen creature, did not know the meaning of the words she uttered, but she had believed the promise, and for her faith's sake the spirit of prophecy rested upon her, and she gave him on whom her hopes were fixed the title which was to grow and swell onward till all inspired truth gathered round it and into it; and at length Elohim, the Almighty, set to it His seal by calling Himself "I shall be that I shall be" (Exod. iii. 14). Eve's word is simply the third person of the verb of which Ehyeh is the first, and the correct translation of her speech is, "I have gotten a man, even he that shall GENESIS. be," or "the future one." But when God called Himself by this appellation, the word, so indefinite in her mouth, became the personal name of Israel's covenant God. Thus, then, in this title of the Deity, formed from the verb of existence in what is known as the future or indefinite tense, we have the symbol of that onward longing look for the return of the golden age, or age of paradise, which elsewhere in the Bible is described as the reign of the Branch that shall grow out of Jesse's root (Isa. xi. 4-9). The hope was at first dim, distant, indistinct, but it was the foundation of all that was to follow. Prophets and psalmists were to tend and foster that hope, and make it clear and definite. But the germ of all their teaching was contained in that mystic four-lettered word, the tetragrammaton, Y-h-v-h. The name may have been popularly called Yahveh, though of this we have no proof; the Jews certainly understood by it Yehveh-"the coming One." After all, these vowels are not of so much importance as the fact that the name has the pre-formative yod. The force of this letter prefixed to the root form of a Hebrew verb is to give it a future or indefinite sense; and I can find nothing whatsoever to justify the assertion that Jehovah-to adopt the ordinary spelling -means "the existent One," and still less to attach to it a causal force, and explain it as signifying "He who calls into being.' Finally, the pre-Mosaical form of the name is most instructive, as showing that the expectation of the Messiah was older than the time of the Exodus. The name is really man's answer to and acceptance of the promise made to him in chap. iii. 15; and why should not Eve, to whom the assurance was given, be the first to profess her faith in it? But in this section, in which the name occurs twenty times in the course of fortysix verses, there is a far deeper truth than Eve supposed. Jehovah (Yehveh) is simply "the coming One," and Eve probably attached no very definite idea to the words she was led to use. But here He is called Jehovah-Elohim, and the double name teaches us that the coming One, the future deliverer, is God, the very Elohim who at first created man. The unity, therefore, and connection between these two narratives is of the closest kind; and the prefixing in this second section of Jehovah to Elohim, the Creator's name in the first section, was the laying of the foundationstone for the doctrine that man's promised Saviour, though the woman's seed, was an Emmanuel, God as well as man. EXCURSUS C: ON THE DURATION OF THE PARADISIACAL STATE OF The Bereshit Rabba argues that Adam and Eve remained in their original state of innocence for six hours only. Others have supposed that the events recorded in chaps. ii. 4-iii. 24 took place in the course of twentyfour hours, and suppose that this is proved by what is said in chap. ii. 4, that the earth and heavens, with Adam and the garden, were all made in one day, before the end of which they suppose that he fell. This view, like that which in chap. i. interprets each creative day of a similar period, really amounts to this: that the narrative of Holy Scripture is to be forced to bend to an arbitrary meaning put upon a single word, and drawn not from its meaning in Hebrew, but from its ordinary use in English. More correctly, we might venture to say that the use of the word day in chap. ii. 4 is a Divine warning against so wilful a method of exposition. Read intelligently, the progress of time is carefully marked. In verse 6 the earth is watered by a mist: in paradise there are mighty rivers. Now, mist would not produce rivers; and if there were mist in the morning, and rain in the afternoon, a long period of time would still be necessary before the falling rains would form for themselves definite channels. A vast space must have elapsed between the mist period and that in which the Tigris and Euphrates rolled along their mighty floods. And with this the narrative agrees. All is slow and gradual. God does not summon the Garden of Eden into existence by a sudden command, but He "planted" it, and "out of the ground He made to grow" such trees as were most remarkable for beauty, and whose fruit was most suitable for human food. In some favoured spot, in soil fertile and fit for their development, God, by a special providence, caused such plants to germinate as would best supply the needs of a creature so feeble as man, until, by the aid of his reason, he has invented those aids and helps which the animals possess in their own bodily organisation. The creation of full-grown trees belongs to the region of magic. A book which gravely recorded such an act would justly be relegated to the Apocrypha; for the God of revelation works by law, and with such long ages of preparation that human eagerness is often tempted to cry, "How long?" and to pray that God would hasten His work. And next, as regards Adam. Placed in a garden, two of the rivers of which-the Tigris and the Euphratesseem to show that the earth at his creation had already settled down into nearly its present shape, he is commanded" to dress and keep it." The inspired narrator would scarcely have spoken in this way if Adam's continuance in the garden had been but a few hours or days. We find him living there so long that his solitude becomes wearisome to him, and the Creator at length affirms that it is not good for him to be alone. Meanwhile, Adam is himself searching for a partner, and in the hope of finding one, he studies all the animals around him, observes their ways, gives them names, discovers many valuable qualities in them, makes several of them useful to him, but still finds none among them that answers to his wants. But when we read that "Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowls of the air, and to every beast of the field," we cannot but see that this careful study of the creatures round him must have continued through a long period before it could have resulted in their being thus generally classified and named in Adam's mind. At length Eve is brought, and his words express the lively pleasure of one who, after repeated disappointments, had at length found that of which he was in search. "This," he says, "this time is bone of my bone." How long Adam and Eve enjoyed their simple happiness after their marriage is left untold; but this naming of the animals at least suggests that some time elapsed before the fall. Though Adam had observed their habits, yet he would scarcely have given many of them names before he had a rational companion with whom to hold discourse. For some, indeed, he would have |