mentioned in the history. Its waters are still fresh and clear in its deep recess. It has outlasted all other changes. It ministers indeed only to human affections and feelings, but it is precisely to those feelings which are as lasting as the human heart itself, and which therefore give and receive from the record which so responds to them, a testimony which will never pass away. III, And now turn from the Patriarchal household to its points of contact with the external world. These are perhaps what most escape us as we read the Sacred story for relations of other purposes, and therefore what may be most fitly noticed here. External Abraham. To the 1. The general relations of Abraham to the Canaanitish tribes have a twofold aspect. On the one hand, as if with the full consciousness of the separation which was to Canaanites exist between his seed and the tribes of Canaan, and generally. also of its future superiority over them, he always keeps himself distinct from them: he professes to be a stranger amongst them; he will accept no favour at their hands; he will not have any intermarriage between his race and theirs ; he refuses the gift of the sepulchre from Ephron, and of the spoils from the king of Sodom. The tomb of Machpelah is a proof, standing to this day, of the long predetermined assurance that the children of Abraham should inherit the land in which this was their ancestor's sole, but most precious, possession. It is like the purchase of the site of Hannibal's camp by the strong faith and hope of the besieged senators of Rome. But, on the other hand, there is not in his actual dealings with the Canaanites a trace of the implacable enmity of later ages; no shadow cast before of long wars of extermination waged against them; no indication of what, in modern times, has been supposed to be the origin of so many dark legends and severe accusations,—the national hatred of rivals and neighbours. The anticipation of distinctness and superiority is not more decided in one class of incidents than the absence of any anticipation of war or animosity is in another. Abimelech, Ephron, Mamre, Melchizedek, all either worship the same God, or, if they worship Him under another name,1 are all bound together by ties of hospitality and friendship. The times when the Canaanite is to be utterly destroyed, when the Amalekite is to be hewn in pieces, when the Jews are to have no dealings wi h the Samaritans, are still very far beyond us: we are still above the point of separation between the various tribes of Syria distinction has not yet grown into difference; 'the 'iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.' To overlook the unity, the comparative unity, between Abraham and the neighbour races of Palestine, would be to overlook one of the most valuable testimonies to the antiquity, the general Patriarchal spirit of the record as it has been handed down to us. 2. Further, there are the more special occasions on which Abraham is drawn, as it were, out of the pastoral or individual life, into wider relations. The chief of these is the journey into Egypt. Abraham in Egypt. I shall not endeavour here, as elsewhere, to determine, where uncertainty still prevails, the special points where the history and chronology of Egypt or Judæa cross each other's path; neither shall I draw out at any length what in this instance is but slightly noticed by the Sacred story, the impression left by Egypt on the mind of this, the first of the myriad travellers who have visited the valley of the Nile. But it is impossible not to pause for a moment on the few points which this event suggests to us. It is the earliest known appearance in Egypt of the nomadic races of Asia, who, under the Shepherd Kings, exercised so great an influence over its destinies in its primitive history-who, under the Arab conquerors, have now for thirteen centuries occupied it as their own. Charlemagne is said to have wept in anticipation of the coming misfortunes of his empire when he saw the sail of the first Norman ship on the waters of the Mediterranean. And the ancient Pharaoh, whoever he was, might have wept in like manner, could he have foreseen, in that innocent and venerable figure, the first of the long succession of Asiatic wanderers, 1 The God of Melchizedek (Gen. xiv. 18) was not Eloah or Elohim, but Eliun, the name given to the God of Phoenicia by Sanchoniathon (Kenrick, Phan. 288). like in outward form, though unlike in almost all besides, attracted to the valley of the Nile by the very same motives, coming' down' from the tablelands or parched valleys of their own deserts or mountains, because the famine was grievous ' in the land,' and sojourning in Egypt, because its river gave the plenteous sustenance which elsewhere they sought in vain.1 me for thy sake, and my His faith and courage are sight of the great poten If the Egyptian may have been startled by the sight of Abraham, much more may Abraham have been moved to awe by his approach into Egypt. Whatever may be said in legendary tales of his connexion with Nimrod and the Assyrian powers, this arrival in Egypt is the only indication given by the Sacred historian of any conscious entrance into the presence of a great earthly kingdom. The very craft into which the Patriarch is betrayed as he was come near to enter 'into Egypt' is not without its significance. "They will kill 'me, but they will save thee alive; say, I pray thee, thou art 'my sister, and it shall be well with 'soul shall live because of thee.'2 unnerved at the prospect and at the tate amidst his princes in his royal house, with his harem and his treasures around him. Yet it is also characteristic of the Biblical narrative, that the impression left upon us by this first contact of the Church with the World is not purely unfavourable. It has been truly remarked that 3 throughout the Scriptures the milder aspect of the world is always presented to us through Egypt, the darker through Babylon. Abraham is the exile from Chaldæa, but he is the guest, the client of the Pharaohs. He dwells, according to the account of a Pagan historian, many years in the sacred city of On, where afterwards his descendants lived so long, and there teaches the Egyptians astronomy and arithmetic.1 He reconciles the theological disputes of the Egyptian priests. He 1 Isaac was going down in like manner, when he was stopped. Gen. xxvi. 2. 2 The English version, in its fear of saying that Sarah was the wife of Pharaoh, substitutes 'I might have had' for 'I had.' 3 Arnold, Sermons on Prophecy. receives (as we infer from the Sacred narrative) the gifts of male and female slaves,1 of mules and asses and camels, with which then as now the streets of the Egyptian cities abounded. He departs in peace. And such as Camels not mentioned on the monuments. Egypt is described in this narrative, such both in its secular greatness and in its religious neutrality it appears to have been in those of her monuments which alone can be with certainty ascribed to its most ancient period. The range of the thirty Pyramids, in all probability, even at that early time looked down on the plain of Memphis. They remain to indicate the same long anterior state of civilisation which the story of Abraham itself implies, yet exhibit neither in their own sepulchral chambers, nor in those which immediately surround them, any of those signs of grotesque idolatry which give additional point to the story of the Exodus, and which exist in the later monuments of Thebes and Ipsambul. 3. The next notice of Abraham's connexion with the outer world is of a wholly different kind, and is far more in accord War with Chedor laomer. ance with the secular aspect of his life presented in Gentile historians than anything else which the Sacred narrative represents. 'Abram the Hebrew' (so, as if from an external point of view, the fragment, apparently of some ancient record,2 represents him) was dwelling in state at Hebron, in the midst, not merely of his familiar circle, but of his three hundred and eighteen trusty slaves, and confederate not merely with the peaceful Ephron, but, after the manner of the Canaanite chiefs of later times,3 with the Amorite mountaineers, Mamre, and his brothers Aner and Eschol. Suddenly a messenger of woe appeared by the tent of the Hebrew. From the remote East, a band of kings1 had descended on the circle of cultivation and civilisation which lay deep ensconced in the bosom of the Jordan valley. They had struck dismay 1 One of these may have been Hagar (Gen. xiii. 1), who afterwards, mindful of her Egyptian home, gets an Egyptian wife for her son Ishmael (Gen. xxi. 21). 2 For the character and importance of this chapter as an historical record, see Ewald's Gesch. i. 401, &c. 3 Josh. x. 3; xi. 1, 2, &c. Some slight likeness to the names of Chedorlaomer and Amraphel has been found in the Assyrian monuments. Rawlinson's Herod. i. 436, 446. far and wide amongst the aboriginal tribes of the desert, all along the east of the Jordan and down to the remote wilds of Petra, and up into the mountain fastness and secluded palmgrove of Engedi. In the green vale beside the shores of the lake the five Canaanite kings rose against the invaders on their return, but were entangled in the bituminous pits of their own native region. The conquerors swept them away, and marched homewards the whole length of the valley of the Jordan, carrying off their plunder, and above all the war-horses,1 for which afterwards Canaan became so famous. But from the defeat in the vale of Siddim had escaped one who climbed the wall of rocks that overhangs the field of battle, and announced to the new colony established beneath the oak of Hebron that their kinsmen had been carried away captive. Instantly Abraham called his allies together, and with them and his armed retainers he pursued the enemy, and (if we may add the details from Josephus 2) on the fifth day, at the dead of night, attacked the host as it lay sleeping round the sources of the Jordan. They fled over the range of Antilibanus, and once more Abraham beheld the scene of his first conquest, the city of Damascus, and in its neighbourhood, in a village still bearing the same name3 (Hobah), he finally routed the army and rescued the captives, and returned again to the banks of the Jordan. In a vale or level spot not far from the river, called, probably from this encounter, 'the vale of the king' or 'of the 'kings,' the victorious chief was met by two grateful princes of the country which he had delivered; one was the King of Sodom, the other was one whose name in itself commands respectful awe-Melchizedek, the King of Righteousness. Whence he came, from what parentage, remains untold, nay even of what place he was king remains uncertain (for Salem may be either Jerusalem or the smaller town of which, in after times, the ruins were shown to Jerome, Melchi zedek. 1 Gen. xiv. 11, 21 (LXX.) 2 Ant. i. 10, I. Præp. Ev. ix. 17. 3 Gen. xiv. 15. Compare also Eus. The scene of this is said to be commemorated in a chapel or mosque of Abraham, still the object of pilgrimage, an hour north of Damascus. Porter, i. 82. See Appendix I. |