a

our wondering eyes records parallel to those which we find in the opening book of Holy Scripture. Orthodox commentators, like Vitringa, had indeed long regarded it as probable that " Moses had certain records or traditions referring to the patriarchal ages which he incorporated into his history" (Bishop Browne, Speaker's Commentary, p. 2); but there were so many difficulties in the way of believing that even the art of writing was known in those ancient days, that thoughtful men spoke diffidently on subject so obscure. Often was the lament uttered that we had no contemporaneous literature that would remove some of the darkness which enwrapped man's early history. But the light has now come. Written on tablets and cylinders of clay, and therefore virtually indestructible, there lay beneath the mounds that mark where populous cities once occupied the Assyrian plains, the libraries of famous kings, in which are found not only translations of ancient Accadian * works, but written records of a king of Ur, which are said by Mr. Sayce to be about three thousand years anterior to the Christian era (Chaldean Account of Genesis, ed. Sayce, p. 24). We now know that writing was in such common use at Ur when Abraham dwelt there, that all the common transactions of business were inscribed on tablets, and numerous specimens of written contracts, contemporaneous with or anterior to the days of Abraham, may now be found among the Assyrian curiosities in our libraries. It has thus become highly probable that Abraham, when leaving that great and cultured mart of commerce, Ur of the Chaldees, would carry his library with him. He left Ur for religious reasons. Its religion had degenerated into idolatry, and we find in the Chaldean accounts of creation and of the flood a polytheism utterly abominable. Now, whence did Terah and Abraham obtain the better knowledge which made them hate idolatry, and abandon their homes at Ur because of its growing prevalence there ? What answer more probable than that it was in these records, which teach so nobly and impressively the unity and omnipotence of the Creator? At what date the Semitic family of Eber crossed the Tigris and migrated to Ur we do not know, but they found there in the Accadians not a Semitic but an Elamite race. Probably they tried to teach them the great truth that God is one; but in proportion as the people there wandered farther into idolatry, so would they hate and persecute an alien family who rejected their many gods; and as the result Terah and his sons and clan withdrew. But their departure was voluntary (chap. xi. 31), and they took with them their wealth, and doubtless also the tablets on which was inscribed the knowledge which had made them stand firm amidst the corruption which encompassed them around, and which was the real cause of their emigration.

The Chaldaic records extend to the end of chap. xi. 26, though much light is also thrown by our enlarged knowledge of Chaldean history upon the invasion of Palestine by Chedorlaomer (chap. xiv.). From chap. xi. 27 to chap. xxxvii. 1, the surroundings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are those of Arabian sheiks. From chap. xxxvii. 2 to the end the colouring is in the main Egyptian, and in all three sections it is not only the general aspect that is thus Chaldaic, Arabian, or Egyptian; but even the minuter points

The Accadians were the primitive inhabitants of Chaldea, and were descendants of Japheth. Ur was one of their chief cities. It is uncertain at what date the Chaldeans, who were a Semitic race, gained the ascendency there.

are true to the time and place. And the result of our increased knowledge is that numerous difficulties are now cleared away. They used to be difficulties. only because of our ignorance, but it seemed to give a triumph to the sceptic if the believer could only answer, We have no sufficient knowledge, and must be content to wait, resting our faith meanwhile upon those parts of revelation where contemporaneous knowledge has been vouchsafed. Nay, even the believer has often been restless and discontented because questions have been asked which were not easy to answer; or, what is worse, because well-meaning defenders of the faith have given answers evidently insufficient, and savouring more of the controversialist than of the seeker after truth. Even now our increased knowledge has not removed all difficulties, nor is it to be expected that there ever will be a time when our faith will have no trial to undergo. But in this trial, it is an aid to our faith if we find that increased knowledge lessens our difficulties; and, as a matter of fact, nothing so profits by each fresh discovery as the Bible. If Galileo cleared away many a mistaken gloss put upon Scripture to make it accord with the Ptolemean solar system, so have the astronomers and geologists of the present day enabled us at last to see something of the grandeur and majesty of the Bib lical account of creation. And our increased knowledge of the country where Abraham and his clan so long sojourned, and of the land where his descendants grew into a nation, is like sunshine illuminating a region where before we had only twilight and shadow.

We shall gain a better idea of the nature of the book, as well as of the difficulties with which it abounds, as also of the light cast upon them by our increased knowledge, if we pass, at least, the two first portions of which it consists somewhat fully in review before our eyes, concluding with some general remarks.

The first narrative is the history of creation, as told in chaps. i.-ii. 3. It consists of eight parts, of which the first, after affirming that God is the Creator of all things, and consequently that matter is not eternal, describes the first stage of creation as a void and formless waste. Chaos is a Greek notion, arising out of their theory that matter was uncreated and eternal. Now no language can convey a notion of a state of existence destitute of all shape, order, and arrangement; but it is sketched with marvellous beauty as an abyss, a depth without bounds, veiled in darkness, but in which the Spirit of God is hovering over the waters to quicken them with life. Without moisture life on our planet cannot exist; but we must not put any commonplace interpretation upon these abysmal waters. They were still void, empty, formless; but the words show that God had called into being in this dark abyss the matter out of which the universe was to be shaped, and that His power was present there to mould and quicken it. Upon this noble preface, which annihilates most of the dogmas of heathenism, of Greek philosophy, and of pseudo-Christian heresy, follow the six creative days, and the day of holy rest.

In the division of our Bible into chapters, with a carelessness only equalled by that perversity which has formed the ninth chapter of Isaiah out of the end and the beginning of two incongruous prophecies, the seventh day's rest is separated from the account of the six working days, and thus the very purpose of the narrative is concealed. Slowly and gradually we see in it the earth passing through successive stages, until it becomes the abode of a being made in the image of God. Mechanical laws are first of all imposed upon

created matter, and as gravitation draws the particles together, the friction produces electricity, and with it light and heat. In union next with chemical laws, they sort and arrange the materials of this our earth, and break it up into land and sea. On the third day, the creative energy for the second time manifests itself, and vegetable life is called into being; and on the fourth lay there was apparently a long pause, during which the atmosphere was purified by means of vegetation, till the sun and moon shone upon the hardening surface, and made it capable of bearing more advanced types of plants, quickly followed on the fifth day by the lower forms of animal life. Finally, when the work of the sixth day was far advanced, and the mammalia had been called into existence, the Creator takes solemn counsel, and by special intervention man is created to be the ruler and governor of all that had been made. From the first he is set forth as a religious being, made in God's likeness; and on the seventh day God rests, to hallow for man his weekly rest. We are now living in this seventh day of God, and it will go on until the advent of the day of the Lord. During this day of rest the creative energy pauses, and no being higher than man is called into existence. We know not how long it may continue, nor what may follow it; but we know that God's days are not as our days. The record is not a geological treatise, but a hymn of praise to God, magnifying His mighty works, indicating man's high relation to Him, and hallowing the weekly Sabbath, which is man's day of rest, just as the whole period of time which has followed upon the creation of man unto the present time is God's day of rest. In it He creates no new being, fashions nothing higher than man, but He still protects and maintains all created things: for in the work of providence and grace God resteth not. (See John v. 17.)

Other minor purposes are, indeed, kept in view. The teaching that God made the sun and moon, and that they are placed under servitude for man's use, coupled with the scarcely grammatical insertion of the words "the stars also," in verse 16, reading like a marginal note thrust into the text, all this had plainly for its object the prevention of the idolatrous veneration of the heavenly luminaries. And it succeeded. Everywhere else the sun and moon and planets were worshipped with Divine honours. Even we Christians call the names of the days of the week after them. The Jew, better taught by this first chapter of Genesis, never fell into this error. To him the heavens declared God's glory, and the firmament displayed His handywork (Ps. xix. 1).

So in verse 21 there is a protest against the worship of the crocodile, the animal especially meant by the word translated whales. Now here we have one of the many indications of the hand of Moses. If it was this record which kept Eber and his race free from the debasing superstition of star-worship, and which made Terah and his family quit their home at Ur of the Chaldees, so by the insertion of these words Moses protected the Israelites from the animal worship so prevalent in Egypt. Equally they needed protection from the attractions of star-worship (Amos v. 25, 26), and found it where the patriarchs had found it of old.

The history of creation is, however, never expressly called a document, as are the other ten portions of the book, and it may have been entirely revealed to Moses. Such was long my own opinion, but there are two considerations which seem to tend in a contrary direction.

For, first, this narrative seems essential as the groundwork for the faith of the patriarchs. Not necessarily

in the form in which we now have it, and which was given it by the hand of Moses, but in some form. And as it must have been inspired, if it was to be the foundation for man's faith, we may well believe that Moses, being guided by the same Divine inspiration, would not make any other changes in it than such as would render it more fit to do God's work in all succeeding times. If, then, the patriarchs possessed this narrative mainly such as it now is, they had a document of so great weight and authority as would account for their rejection of idolatry and their persistence in the belief of one sole Deity. For it is not, like the Oriental cosmogonies, a speculative attempt to solve the great difficulty of creation, namely, how a Being perfect and infinite," with whom can be no variation" (James i. 17), changed from the passive state of not willing the existence of the universe, to the active state of willing it; and how, with almighty power and boundless goodness, He called into being a world imperfect, and marred by sorrow and sin. It is no subtile device of thinking that we find, but absolute knowledge given with authority, and of which the one purpose is to show that man from the first stood in a near relation to God, was made for converse with Him, and must set apart a portion of his time for his Creator's service. Such a narrative stands outside the physical sciences, in which man is to attain to knowledge by his own exertions. But whenever truth is reached, either in physics or in metaphysics, we could not believe a book to be inspired which was incapable of being shown to be in accordance with truth. In every age the Bible speaks to men according to their knowledge, and our increased knowledge of astronomy and geology has shown that there are profound verities in the Biblical account of Creation, concerning which even the ablest commentators without this knowledge spake with stammering lips and unintelligent tongue.

As then such absolute knowledge could have been given only by inspiration (see Job xxxviii. 4), it would be a document, whenever bestowed, that must from the first have been highly prized and religiously preserved. And if it was essential to the faith of the patriarchs it would be bestowed upon them, and probably, from early times, was a treasure in the family of Shem. Even long before the Flood, Enoch was a prophet who attained to a remarkable nearness to God, and foretold a day of judgment (Jude 14, 15). There were also other inspired men through whom God spake, and whose words would probably be recorded; and their teaching, carefully preserved, would account for the purity of the religious belief of the Semitic family as a whole, and especially for that of the race of Eber. God has made it the law of His working that He ever employs secondary causes, and the chastened monotheism of Abraham's faith must have had something to produce it. Subsequently he was himself the recipient of revelations, but these were vouchsafed to him because he was fit for them. If he possessed this narrative of creation, his pure creed, his noble character, his trustful abandonment of his home, all become intelligible. And living in a highly-civilised, though heathen, community, and in an age when the commonest transactions of life were inscribed on tablets and cylinders of clay, there is no difficulty in believing that Abraham had the record in writing, and that it was preserved until the days of Moses. And Moses, instinct with prophetic power, has placed it upon the forefront of revelation, and being himself a prophet, would record it in such a form as would make it fit for the permanent use, first, of the Jewish, and then of the Christian Church.

But had we only these considerations they would not

go beyond the bound of a moderate probability. We have, in the second place, to examine the bearing upon revelation of the Babylonian Legend of the Creation. Now the actual tablets deciphered by Mr. George Smith are of a comparatively late date, being of the time of Assurbanipal, a contemporary of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, in the seventh century before Christ; but the narrative is the Assyrian form of a far older legend.* It is grossly and even childishly polytheistic, describes the creation of the gods, and gives divine honours to the heaven, the earth, and the sea, as the three supreme deities; but in other parts there is so close a resemblance to much in the record in Genesis, that we cannot doubt that they stand in some relation to one another. The library of Assurbanipal consisted either of tablets robbed from other libraries, or of translations made from older and mainly from Accadian works: and as our acquaintance becomes greater with the vast materials brought from Assyria, but unfortunately existing in a very fragmentary state, other Creation-tablets will probably be found, giving us the legend in many forms. What we already possess makes us aware that an account of Creation in remarkable agreement with that in Genesis existed in Assyria,t but with all its sobriety and its pure monotheism gone. The legend is as corrupt as it could well be. whence came it? We can hardly doubt that the land whence the Assyrians obtained it was Ur of the Chaldees, Abraham's erewhile home. He had probably inherited the document, and with loving zeal tried to teach it to the Elamites in Ur, that they might know that their star-worship was the worship of the creature instead of the Creator: and it was this probably which exposed him to persecution, and so God called him away, to preserve the pure faith for future times. But if the revelation be no older than the time of Moses, and was given to him in the wilderness of Sinai when writing the Pentateuch, it would be difficult to account for the possession by the Chaldees of so much of the inspired narrative. And the same holds good of the Chaldean Legends of the Flood, of the Tower of Babel, and of other narratives in Genesis.

But

To one of these we must next briefly call attention. The narrative of the invasion of Palestine by Chedorlaomer has called forth much satirical comment on the part of critics. What could be said in defence of a story which described a king of Elam, a sort of Switzerland lying south and east of Assyria and Persia, as carrying his arms through a region so difficult as that which lay to the north of Babylonia, and onward to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea? Moreover, this mountaineer is represented as having among his vassals a king of Shinar, so that Babylon must have been subject to him. But we have now ancient documents deciphered for us which show that about the time of Abraham the kings of Elam were the paramount power in Asia, and that the plain of Babylonia was parcelled out among numerous towns, whose petty kings were subject to them. According to the Assyrian records the Elamite supremacy lasted for several centuries, and was not finally overthrown

"Every copy of what we will term the Genesis Legends yet found was inscribed, with one exception, during the reign of Assurbanipal, from B.C. 670: but it is stated and acknowledged on all hands that most of these tablets are not the originals, but only copies from earlier texts" (Sayce, Chald. Gen., p. 16). This king's library consisted of not less than 10,000 inscribed tablets (ibid. 15).

Mr. Sayce, Chald. Gen., p. 312, considers that Chaldea was the original home of the narratives concerning Creation, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, &c.

until B.C. 1270; and about Abraham's time one of their kings named Kudur-Mabuk actually claimed the title of "Lord of Phoenicia," or Palestine (see Excursus E), so that we have the most complete corroboration of the Biblical narrative. The names also which occur in the history are all explained by what we now know of the language of this ancient people; and we probably have in Gen. xiv. a contemporary record, carefully preserved from Abraham's times. As the title "Lord of Phoenicia" attests the victories of Kudur-Mabuk, we conclude that he it was who imposed upon the cities of the plain the tribute which Kudur-Lagomar endeavoured to enforce.

But leaving these Assyrian legends, let us revert to the contents of the Biblical narratives of Creation. And here it would altogether exceed our limits if we attempted to show the agreement of the record in Genesis with the proved facts of science. It must suffice to state briefly a few salient points.

First, then, the creative words in the opening record of Genesis are laws. God speaks, and not only is it done, but the law is immutably settled for all future time. The law given on the first day apparently was that grand universal law of gravitation, giving rise, as the result of the closer cohesion of matter, to electrical and chemical forces, whence spring most of the phenomena of existence. The law given on the second day was not a new departure of creative energy, but simply marks a point reached by the law given on the first. Accepting the nebular hypothesis as the only theory which satisfactorily accounts for the phenomena of Creation, there was a vast period of time during which the condensation of matter produced mainly heat and light, and only at last would our planet be so far advanced as for there to be an open "expanse " around it, and solids and fluids beginning to cohere within this ring. On the third day a further stage is reached. The strata formed by gravitation are broken up, partly by chemical and partly by mechanical forces, and dry land appears. This is followed by a new creative act, calling vegetable life into existence, and giving it its laws. For the higher forms of vegetation were not reached until man appeared on the earth, when "God planted a garden,' and made not only fruit trees, but also all the nobler vegetation, described as "every tree that is pleasant to the sight," to grow out of the ground (chap. ii. 8, 9). After the pauso of the fourth day animal life is created, extending through two Divine days, until man finally appears. As on the fourth day so on the seventh. there is no new creative energy displayed, but the laws previously given move on in their mighty power. And they are immutable, because they are the ever-present will of the immutable God.

There are then but three acts of creative power, of which the first is the calling of matter into existence, as recorded in verse 1. Matter is next made subject to laws by which it is so arranged and combined as to form an orderly world, in opposition to the waste and empty abyss through which it was at first dispersed. The next creative act is the bestowal of vegetable life, narrated in verse 11. The third and final act is the bestowal of animal life, recorded in verse 20. To this I would venture to add the creation of the human reason, and of the spiritual nature of man.

Dr. Kinns, in his interesting work, Moses and Geology, shows that the fifteen creative events recorded by Moses correspond in order with their place in science. He also shows that the chances against their being so arranged almost defy the power of numbers to express.

All the rest is but arrangement; but in these four acts we attain to results which no force of mechanical or chemical laws could produce. When some time ago it was argued that life might have come to our earth from an aerolite, scientific men thereby confessed that there was nothing upon this our globe to account for it. But as the materials of aërolites are much the same as those of the earth, and as they are in fact parts of our solar system, we must go outside them: and ever onwards until we find it where alone it is to be found, and where Moses placed it, in God.

But if thus the cosmogony in the Book of Genesis sets before us a gradual advance in creation, giving us its successive stages, and its immutable laws, and marking the introduction from time to time into the abyss of new forces, and especially of life, are we to accept evolution as the best exposition of the manner in which God wrought? I answer that the theologian has nothing to do with such questions. The unwise disputes between science and theology almost always arise from scientific men crying aloud that some new theory just hatched is a disproof of the supernatural, and from theologians debating each new theory on the ground of scriptural exposition. It is but just to the author of the theory of evolution to say that he never made this mistake. Really, every scientific hypothesis must be proved or disproved on the ground of science alone; but when the few survivors of the very many theories which scientific men suggest have attained to the rank of scientific verities, then at last the necessity arises of comparing them with Holy Scripture: for we could not believe it to be the Word of God if it contradicted the book of nature, which also comes from Him. God is truth, and His revealed Word must be true.

Now evolution is very far from having attained to the rank of a scientific verity; it is at most an interesting and ingenious theory. But should it ever win higher rank, the second account of creation is in its favour. While in the first Elohim appears in all the grandeur of the Divine majesty, creating, first, matter by a word, and then life, and finally the rational soul; in the second He appears as the Divine artificer. All is slow

and gradual. He forms man, builds up the woman,

plants a garden, makes trees to grow. The two accounts undoubtedly are meant to supplement one another, and it is remarkable that while the second compresses the whole of creation into one day, it nevertheless represents it as a patient and lengthy process; and when Adam was placed in the terrestrial paradise vegetable life had reached the fruit tree, and animal life had advanced to cattle-animals, that is, fit for domestication. And we have another mark of duration of time in the fact that the waters had not only formed channels for themselves, but that these had become so fixed and settled that two of the rivers of Eden exist and bear the same names at the present day.

Unfortunately for its temperate discussion, evolution is now enwrapped by many of its partisans in the ugly pellicle of materialism, and for this there is in the Bible no place. While, therefore, I am content to leave all the processes of creation to those who make the material universe the object of their intelligent study, I object to their crossing beyond their proper limits, which they do in arguing that our enlarged knowledge of matter and its laws militates with a belief in a governing and law-giving mind: for material science can penetrate no farther than to the phenomena of nature. It is the noble teaching of the Book of Genesis that creation was the work of an All-wise and Almighty intelligence, and that the Infinite Mind, which we reverently call

God, even called matter into being, and gave it those laws which scientific men study so wisely. I am content to believe everything which they prove in their own domain; but when they make assumptions in regions where they are but trespassers, it is mere waste of time to dispute with them. But I cannot say this without at the same time acknowledging the immense obligation under which theologians lie to the masters of the sciences of astronomy and geology; for they have enlarged our ideas, brushed away many a crude popular fallacy, and enabled us to understand more and more of the perfect ways of God.

Leaving, therefore, the theory of evolution to be proved or disproved on scientific grounds, we must next observe that much light is thrown upon the Biblical account of creation by our increased knowledge of the literature of Babylonia. We have seen that the form of the narrative and the arrangement of the work of creation into six days had for one main object the hallowing of the seventh day's rest. We are now aware that the division of time into weeks of seven days, and the weekly day of rest, is of extreme antiquity. Accadian tablets of very early date show that the Sabbath was strictly observed in times anterior to those of Abraham. The Babylonian story of the flood gives to the number seven as marked an importance as is assigned to it in the narrative in Genesis. There is, however, this striking difference. In the Accadian tablets the seven days of the week are connected with the sun, the moon, and the five planets which were all then known. Our own days of the week, as mentioned before, bear testimony to the general prevalence of this idolatry of the heavenly bodies. So, also, the Babylonian narrative of the flood is intensely polytheistic. In the Book of Genesis we have the purest monotheism, without a trace of even the most ancient and most seductive forms of heathenism.

In the second narrative, chaps. ii. 4—iv. 26, creation appears only as a subsidiary part of the history. For following the rule usual in the tôldôth, it is the description of that which follows upon the name given in the title. The tôldôth of Adam is the history of his descendants up to the flood; that of Terah is the history of Abraham; that of Jacob is the story of Joseph. So the tôldôth of creation is the narrative of the lives of Adam and Eve until their posterity was divided into the two lines of Seth and Cain. Naturally, therefore, creation appears as the work of a single day, though the stages recorded are all slowly reached, and have reference to the care taken by God of our first parents. If the mist period is referred to, when the ball of the earth was so hot as to drive off from it the water in the form of vapour to the far side of the expanse, this is in contrast with the cool garden, shaded by forest trees, planted with choice kinds of fruit, and watered by rivers running in settled channels. Precious products of the earth are also mentioned, gold and pearls, and precious stones, because such things adorn civilised life. Beasts and birds, too, are there, because upon them Adam exercised his budding intelligence. But even in Paradise Adam is not represented as being possessed of high metaphysical powers; on the contrary, he is described as in a very rudimentary state, and with his intellect_undeveloped. He does not even know the difference between right and wrong, one of the very first things a child learns, though a child generally learns it in much the same way as Adam did, by doing something wrong and incurring punishment. But neither is he without use of reason, for he studies the animals, and names them after their peculiar gifts

or ways. He holds, too, a simple communion with God, who walks with him in the garden; and thus, again, man appears from the very first as a religious being, capable of and actually having intercourse with the Deity.

But amongst numerous points of surpassing interest in this second narrative, one of the most remarkable is the name given to the Deity. In the first narrative God is Elohim, a term expressive of universal might. Elohim is God in His omnipotence. In the second narrative it is Jehovah-Elohim. Now the name Jehovah holds a mysterious place in Revelation. It is, if we may reverently so speak, the personal name of God. It is no general title drawn from His attributes, but something individual, representing God, first as a person, and secondly as holding personal relations to man. The Israelites correctly expressed this when they said to Joshua," Jehovah is our God" (Josh. xxiv. 18). It was no abstraction which they worshipped, but a definite being, who stood to them in a fixed and definite relation.

But though the meaning is clear, the history of the name is full of difficulties. For in Exod. vi. 2, 3, while revealing Himself to Moses as Jehovah, God says that He manifested Himself to the patriarchs as ElShaddai, "but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them." Now this is startling when we find in Genesis, not only the origin of the name carefully recorded, and a note given of the time when it first was ascribed to Deity (chap. iv. 26), but even its general occurrence joined, nevertheless, with the utmost discrimination in its use. Even if the names El-Shaddai, El-'Olam, El-'Elyon, are those most prominent in the history of Abraham, yet it was Jehovah who first called him from Ur (chap. xii. 1); and when after the Elamite invasion a covenant was made between God and Abraham, not only did God say, "I am Jehovah," but Abraham also addressed Him as Adonai - Jehovah (chap. xv. 7, 8), wrongly rendered in our version 'Lord God."

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is

Strangely enough, the only name compounded with Jehovah, which occurs before the time of Moses, is that of Jochebed (“ Jehovah is glory"), his own mother (Exod. vi. 20). There may, of course, have been others, for the names of very few persons have been preserved. But the existence of even this one name shows that the title Jehovah was in use, and was highly honoured, and perhaps even that it was becoming more common. But the difficulty is apparent rather than real, and disappears upon an examination of the right meaning of the words in Exod. vi. 3. For if we turn to our Bibles, and examine the manner in which the word "name employed there, we shall find, as has been pointed out in innumerable places by commentators, that in Hebrew the name stands for the thing. What is really intended by the passage in Exodus is that the peculiar use of the name Jehovah, which had long been in process of formation, was now fully established; and whereas the Deity had hitherto been El-Shaddai, the Mighty One, henceforth, as their covenant-God, He was to be addressed as Jehovah. It had always been a title round which loving memories clustered, and which had been used with a deep sense of its importance. God had now brought out the meaning of the name in a way in which it had never been interpreted before. Eve had used it of her child, calling him "He shall be" (Gen. iv. 1); but she had been bitterly disappointed. God now applies it to Himself; for when asked by Moses

* Upon its origin see Excursus B.

what was the special epithet by which he was to proclaim Him to the Israelites in Egypt, He answered, "I shall be that I shall be " (Exod. iii. 14). It was a name pointing onward to a future manifestation of Himself, and mysteriously indicating that the fulfilment of the promise in chap. iii. 15 would be by an incarnation of Deity. Jehovah is the third person of that which God spake in the first person, and henceforward it was to be the peculiar title of the Deity in His covenant relation with Israel, because in it were mysteriously summed up all those Messianic hopes which the prophets were to unfold. Israel's covenant-God was one who would become" the Immanuel, God manifest in the flesh.

The words, then, in Exod. vi. 2, 3, indicate that a great culmination had been reached. The Elohim of their fathers (Exod. iii. 13), who had been worshipped under various titles, but who had chiefly been known as the Omnipotent, is henceforward to have a special title, indicative of a close relation between Him and His people. They were at length a nation, and were to have, in a few years, a country of their own; and instead of the general monotheism of the patriarchs, they were to worship still one God, but under a title that set forth, not some special attribute, but that He would manifest Himself more clearly and fully to them in time to come. It is the theocratic name, and could reasonably be given only when the theocracy was about to be constituted. And thus the care and discrimination so clearly shown in Genesis in the use of the names Jehovah and Elohim is explained, and is a strong argument for the Mosaic authorship. Had we a mere jumble of extracts from a Jehovist and an Elohist, no such exactness would have been possible; for it would have been a mere matter of chance which name was employed. As it is they often appear in close juxtaposition, but each correctly used. And in this second narrative of creation, the reason for the unusual title JehovahElohim is plain. God is no longer the Omnipotent, calling matter and life into existence, and giving them laws which cannot be broken; He is a loving being, arranging and providing for man's good and happiness, taking care of the most perfect of His creatures, and revealing Himself to him as his Friend. Even more important is it to notice that in this narrative the foundation is laid for the Gospel, and that the special office of Jehovah, and the reason of the name, are indicated in chap. iii. 15. And they are given in relation to all mankind; for this is a distinguishing point of the Book of Genesis, and one that indicates most plainly that its origin was prior to the giving of the Law, that while it prepares for the theocracy, it ever represents God as the God of all the world. There is none of that exclusiveness of view which grew up subsequently in the Jewish Church: the very noblest form which is presented to us is that of Melchizedek, the king-priest of a Gentile town, and who on that account is the fit type of Christ, in whom once again the bonds of union with God's Church became as wide as the world.

The remaining toldóth have been, I trust, sufficiently considered in the notes. I would only, in conclusion, warn the reader against expecting that all difficulties can be cleared away. If our view be true, that Moses had before him ancient written documents, some of which had even been carried by the family of Eber to the rich and civilised city of Ur, while others, like the toldoth of the patriarchs, were recorded in their tents, then we possess in Genesis the oldest and most venerable literature in the world. There is no reason for supposing that the patriarchs could not write. Abraham