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Cave of

of Abraham present. Underneath the tree his tent was pitched when he sate in the heat of the Eastern noon. Thither came the mysterious visitants whose reception was afterwards commemorated in one of the pictures hung from the sacred oak. In their entertainment is presented every characteristic 2 of genuine Arab hospitality, which has given to Abraham the name of 'The Father of Guests.' But there is another spot in Hebron which gives a yet more permanent and domestic character to its connection with Abraham's life. When Darius pursued the Scythians into their wilderness, they told him that the only place which they could appoint for a meeting was by the tombs of their fathers. The ancestral burial-place Machpelah. is the one fixed element in the unstable life of a nomadic race; and this was what Hebron furnished to the Patriarchs. The one spot of earth which Abraham could call his own, the pledge which he left of the perpetuity of his interest in 'the land wherein he was a stranger,' was the sepulchre which he bought with four hundred shekels of silver from Ephron the Hittite. It was a rock with a double cave ('Machpelah'), standing amidst a grove of olives or ilexes, on the slope of the tableland where the first encampment had been made. The valley above which it stood probably occupied the same position with regard to the ancient town of Hebron, that the sepulchral valley of Jehoshaphat did afterwards to Jerusalem. Round this venerable cave the reverence of successive ages and religions has now raised a series of edifices which, whilst they preserve its identity, conceal it entirely from view. But there it still remains. Within the Mussulman mosque, within the Christian church, within the massive stone enclosure probably built by the Kings of Judah, is, beyond any reasonable question, the last resting-place of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebecca; and there Jacob buried Leah ;' and thither, with all the pomp of funeral state, his own embalmed body was brought from the palaces of Egypt. Of all the great

1 Gen. xviii. 4, 'the tree,' and through

out, 'plain'='oak-grove.'

2 For the haste (Gen. xviii. 6-8) of

Arabian hospitality, see Porter's Damascus, i.

Patriarchal family, Rachel alone is absent. All that has ever been seen of the interior of the mosque is the floor of the upper chamber, containing six chests, placed there, as usual in Mussulman sepulchres, to represent the tombs of the dead. But it is said that here, as in the analogous case of the tomb of Aaron on Mount Hor, the real cave exists beneath; divided by an artificial floor into two compartments, into the upper one of which only the chief minister of the mosque is admitted to pray in times of great calamity. The lower compartment, containing the actual graves, is entirely closed, and has never been seen by any one1 within the range of memory or tradition.

Beersheba.

4. Although the oaks of Mamre and the cave of Machpelah rendered Hebron the permanent seat of the Patriarchs beyond any spot in Palestine, and although they are always henceforth described as lingering around this green and fertile vale, there is yet another circle of recollections more in accordance with their ancient pastoral habits. Even at the moment of the purchase of the sepulchre, Abraham represents himself as still ' a stranger and a sojourner in the land ;' and as such his haunts were elsewhere. 'He journeyed from 'thence toward the south country, and dwelt between Kadesh 'and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar.' None of these particular spots are known with certainty; but it is evident that we are now far away from the hills of Judæa, in the wide upland valley, or rather undulating plain, sprinkled with shrubs, and with the wild flowers which indicate the transition from the pastures of Palestine to the desert,―marked also by the ancient wells, dug far into the rocky soil, and bearing on their stone or marble margins the traces of the long ages during which the water has been drawn up from their deep recesses. Such are those near the western extremity of the plain, still bearing in their name their identification with 'the well of the oath,' or 'the well of 'the Seven'2-Beersheba,-which formed the last point reached by the Patriarchs, the last centre of their wandering flocks and herds; and, in after times, from being thus the last inhabited 1 See Appendix II.

See Mr. Grove's article on 'Beersheba,' in Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

spot on the edge of the desert, the southern frontier of their descendants. This southernmost sanctuary marks the importance which, in the migratory life of the East, was and is always attached to the possession of water. Here the solemn covenant was made, according to the significant Arab forms, of placing the seven lambs 1 by themselves, between Abraham and the only chief of those regions who could dispute his right, the neighbouring king of the Philistines or Avites. 'And Abraham,' still faithful to the practice which he had followed in Canaan itself, 'planted there a grove,' 2-not now of ilex or terebinth, which never descend into those wild plains, but the light feathery tamarisk, the first and the last tree which the traveller sees in his passage through the desert, and thus the appropriate growth of this spot. Beneath this grove and beside these wells his tents were pitched, and 'he called there on the name of the 'Lord, the everlasting God.' It was the same wilderness into which Ishmael had gone forth and become an archer, and where he was to be made a great nation. It is as though the strong Bedouin (shall we add the strong parental ?) instinct had, in his declining days, sprung up again in the aged Patriarchas if the unconquerable aversion to the neighbourhood of walls and cities, or the desire to meet once more with the first-born son who recalled to him his own early days, drew him down from the hills of Judæa into the congenial desert. At any rate, in Beersheba, we are told, he sojourned 'as a stranger' many days. In Beersheba Rebekah was received by his son Isaac into Sarah's vacant tent; and in the wilderness, as it would seem, 'he gave up the ghost and died in a good old age,' in the arms of his two sons,-Isaac, the gentle herdsman and child of promise; Ishmael, the Arabian archer, untameable as the wild ass of the desert,3— and they buried him in the cave ' of Machpelah.'

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II. We turn from this external framework to the general effect of the Patriarchal age, as suggested, amongst many other scenes, by the few words which have just been quoted describing

1 Herod iii. 8. Compare Bähr's Symbolik, 200.

2 Gen. xxi. 33, Sinai and Palestine, 21. 3 Gen. xvi. 12 (Heb.)

Simplicity of the Patriarchal

age.

the end of Abraham. They bring home to us, beyond any other writings, the force and the beauty of simple feeling and natural affection. It is Homer, and more than Homer, carried at once into the hands and hearts of every one. We all know the instantaneous effect produced upon us in countries however distant, in classes or races of men however different from our own, by hearing the cry of a little child; with what irresistible force it reminds us that we belong to the same human family; how suddenly it recalls to us, however far away, the thought of our own home. Is not this the exact effect of reading the story of Ishmael ? Remote as it is in language, garb, and manner from ourselves, we instantly recognise the testimony to our common nature and kindred in the prayer of Abraham for his first-born Ishmael,-the child who had first awakened in his bosom the feeling of parental love :-'O that Ishmael might 'live before Thee !' or yet more in the pathetic scene where the imperious caprice of the Arab chieftainess forbade Hagar and her son to remain any longer in the tent, and the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son. 'Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread and ""a skin filled with water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away into the 'wilderness.'

Ishmael.

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Or look at the story of the other son, the child of laughter and joy, the gentle Isaac. Read the narrative of Eliezer's mission to fetch Rebekah. Track every stage of that journey -our first introduction in early childhood to the pictures of Oriental life, only deepened more strongly by the sight of the reality. Watch the long pilgrimage over river and mountain, retraced back to the original settlement of the race. See the camels kneeling beside the well without the city; Rebekah descending the flight of steps with the pitcher on her Rebekah. shoulder, exactly as the traveller Niebuhr met the Syrian damsels at one of these very wells. Look at the different characters as they come out one by one in the interview

1 Compare Milman's Hist. of Jews, i. 13.

Eliezer, the faithful slave, bent solely on discharging his mission: 'I will not eat till I have told mine errand. Hinder me 'not, seeing that the Lord hath prospered my way.' 'Send me 'away, that I may go to my master ;'-the aged Bethuel always in the background; '-Laban's hard temper relaxing when he sees the ear-ring or nose-ring, and the bracelets on his sister's hands, the exact ornaments still so dear to Arab acquisitiveness in this very region ;-Rebekah eager to receive, forward to go, the same high spirit that we shall see afterwards in her future home. 'I will draw water for thy camels also till they have 'done drinking.' 'We have both straw and provender enough, ' and room to lodge in.' 'And they called Rebekah, and said 'unto her : Wilt thou go with this man, and she said, I will go.' ' And they sent away Rebekah, their sister, and her nurse. And 'they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister : 'be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed 'possess the gate of them that hate thee.' Nor can we overlook the first touch of what may be called sentimental feeling, in the close of the journey, when the mournful meditations 2 of Isaac, by the well at eventide, are suddenly interrupted by the arrival of the bride and he brought her into his mother Sarah's 'tent, and Rebekah became his wife and he loved her, and 'Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.'

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What an insight into the primitive age! but what a cradle also for the earliest religious history! We often say that in the family is to be found the Patriarchal Church, in the father of the family the Patriarchal Priest. It is indeed so in more senses than one. When we think of the many periods in which the relations of brother and sister, father and child, husband and wife, have, even by good men, been thrust into the background as unworthy of a place in the religious relations of mankind, we may well hail this first chapter of Ecclesiastical History, as possessing far more than a merely poetical value. It is like one of those ancient Patriarchal wells so often

This is well brought out by Professor Blunt, Veracity of the Books of Moses, ch. v.

'Mournful.' See Blunt, ib. 'By the 'well,' LXX. Gen. xxiv. 63.

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