to place him at the head of the exodus from Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis xi. 31); then, further, that the advanced years and failing health of Terah arrested the pilgrimage when it had gone no further than Haran, a comparatively short distance from Ur, Abram being graciously permitted to tarry at this halting place, until at length he had performed the last ministrations of love for his father; and, finally, that the Divine summons first given to Abram in Ur was then repeated to him in Haran, and was at once carried into complete execution. This view, for which the writer is indebted to Murphy's able commentary on Genesis, seems admirably to suit all the indications preserved; and if accepted raises in the mind very grateful feelings, consisting on the one hand of admiration for the filial devotion of a son who was willing to follow a father whom he was nevertheless qualified to lead, and unwilling to leave him behind so long as he could hope to see him resume the journey; on the other hand of delighted satisfaction with the forbearance of Abram's Divine Guide, who does not under the circumstances insist upon the complete overt act of obedience when He sees that the hearts of all concerned are directed to the keeping of His commands. The stern word stands, "Out of the house of thy father;" but the gentle providence adds in most sympathetic undertone, "Unless indeed the house will come too." At length, however, after a delay of about five years, the time of forbearance closes; and the call of God is again heard. We thus reach the first Scripture passage which requires detailed examination.

GENESIS xii. 1–3.

"(1) So Yehweh says unto Abram :
Come thou out of thy land,

And out of the place of thy birth,
And out of the house of thy father,

Into the land which I will show thee;

(2) That I may make thee into a great nation,
And bless thee,

And make great thy name,

And become thou a blessing;

(3) That I may bless them that bless thee,

But him that makes light of thee will I curse:

Thus shall be blessed in thee all the families of
the ground."*

CRITICAL NOTES.-Come] Or "Go:" the Hebrew word means either; but as God would accompany His servant, "Come seems the happier rendering. That I may] Weak waw with the voluntative: a form used "in order to express the design or purpose of a preceding act" (Driver, "Uses of the Tenses in Hebrew," p. 66); presents the will and purpose to attain something as the sequence or design of a presupposition, answering to our in order that, the Latin ut with the conjunctive" (Ewald, Introductory Hebrew Grammar," 1870, p. 167). And become thou]

66

We have here already the substance of the Divine covenant with Abraham thrown into the form of covenant proposals. Yehweh and Abram come together. The Divine Proposer sets before His servant the gracious stipulations which He would have him accept; first naming the one condition which Abram must fulfil, "Come," etc.; then tracing in a few comprehensive words the intermediate blessings which shall follow obedience; and finally bringing into view the ultimate good to the whole human race which shall thus be secured. The command is only one, and is as much an invitation as a command. The intermediate promises are several, and they are most comprehensive and attractive, appealing to some of the strongest motives which can actuate a human heart. The crowning prediction bounds away to the utmost circumference of the family of man, and directs its persuasive force to the largest benevolence and deepest religiousness to which the heart of a good man is accessible. With what design then were these proposals laid before Abram? For one, and one only-to induce his consent, to prevail on him to "come."

He did come. He started for Canaan, and in Canaan he arrived. And when he arrived, what, we may ask, was his position? He was virtually in covenant with God. He had consented to the Divine proposals. He had fulfilled the one condition so far laid upon him. The blessings promised were his by Divine agreement. He must have understood his position to be that of a man virtually in covenant with that glorious and gracious Being whom he had already learned to love, honour, and obey.

It is true there had been, so far, no sacrificial covenanting rites, that we know of; no solemnising oath sworn; no memorial institution set up. But then, on the other hand, we have no grounds for supposing that Abram had at that time any idea of the more formal and solemn covenanting ceremonies which would afterwards be vouchsafed. In fact, he, at that early period, little knew how long his faith would be tried, and how welcome therefore those further confirmations would be. We repeat, therefore, that, having regard to that mutual and deliberate agreement which is the very essence of all covenanting, Abram must have felt and known that his

"God's purpose is

Aptly termed by Ewald, "a progressive imperative: addressed to Abram's will; and thus voluntary fellowship with God in blessing the world is the goal set before Abram. Thus shall be blessed] "The relatively progressive perfect" (Ewald): "calls attention to the fact that if the antecedent be realised, in that case () = then, so) the following event, which is viewed as its necessary consequence, will inevitably attain to completeness" (Ball, "Merchant Taylors' Hebrew Grammar," p. 147). The ground] In manifest allusion to the curse, Gen. iii. 17.—The symmetry of this whole passage is very striking: first, a call, combining the authority of a command with the graciousness of an invitation; secondly, the design of the call, richly amplified, and enlivened by an eruptive imperative; thirdly, a strong conditional prediction crowning the whole.

obedience to the Divine call placed him in virtual covenant with his God.

And this conclusion is confirmed by the interesting circumstance that when the Apostle Peter, shortly after the day of Pentecost, quoted the crowning promise of the Abrahamic covenant, he wove into it the word "families," which occurs in this first covenantsketch alone.

Abram having arrived in the land of invitation: we next read about him as follows:

Genesis xii. 6, 7.

"(6) And Abram passes along in the land as far as the place of Sychem, as far as the oak Moreh. Now the Canaanite [was] then in the land. (7) Then appears Yehweh unto Abram, and says: To thy seed will I give this land. So he builds there an altar unto Yehweh."

There are two things to note here: first, that the original invitation to come into a land is now deepened into a promise to give the land to Abram's seed; second, that the promise is unconditional, suiting well the fact that the only condition hitherto imposed has been complied with.

We may add regarding the first of these points—that, although God does not appear to have at first positively promised to give Abram the land to which He called him, yet some expectation of that nature must almost certainly have been originated in Abram's mind: "I am to become a great nation-I am called to view a land: there is some especial intention in this. Is the land to be for my descendants to dwell in ?" To this obvious question a positive answer is now given.

Still is only given in brief; for although the Chaldean stranger has by this time seen something of the land, that something may not have been much. The showing of which God spake in Ur and in Haran has not yet been fulfilled. Everything moves on deliberately. But now for the promised showing,-to which, we are disposed to think, something less than justice is commonly done.

Genesis xiii. 14-17.

"(14) But YEHWEH said unto Abram, after the separation of Lot from him, Lift up, pray, thine eyes; and look from the place where thou art, northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward. (15) For all the land which thou art beholding, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed, unto olam. (16) Thus will I make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, even THY SEED may be numbered. (17) Rise, walk up and down in the land, to the length thereof and to the breadth thereof; for to thee will I give it."

Plainly this is the promised showing of the land. For notice

the great prominence here given to it. First, at the beginning of this extract, is the animated Divine entreaty to Abram to look to the four points of the compass, as if a Divine finger were directing the beholder's eye; but this is not nearly enough, for then at the close of this address to the sojourner is the remarkable injunction which directs him to make a special tour of inspection through the land-to perambulate it, in fact, with the one object of viewing it, as if to take it all in and lay clearly and brightly to his heart the dimensions, form and aspects of the land of promise. It is as if the Giver were deeply interested in the gift and wished the receiver to be so too.

And this is the next thing observable-that the promise to "show" is now again deepened into the promise to "give: verse "to thee and to thy seed; verse 17, “to thee.”

15,

Further we now notice for the first time a word expressive of the duration of the gift-" to thee and to thy seed FOR EVER," says the "Authorised" English Version; "TO OLAM, says the Hebrew, which for the present we transfer, quite content to judge and not at all anxious to prejudge the question as to what extent of duration is thereby intended. To olam that is literally, according to the derivation of the word, to concealed duration, which is as good as to say-indefinitely. How long? No limit is made. One would naturally say (having no ends to serve) as long as the land is a land and the people are a people. For it really would appear to be just a little flippant to pick out a few cases of seemingly circumscribed duration, in which the word olam stands, and in the strength of them to intimate that nothing at all can be gathered from its occurrence in this promise of the land of Canaan to Abram. That is not a fair handling of the word. The Hebrew phrase, standing by itself, would never suggest an ending. Man was banished from the tree of life, lest he should put forth his hand and eat and so live to olam (the first instance of the word in the Bible). God's throne stands firm to olam. David's "Lord is to be priest to olam. And so on: it is the most common way of saying "FOR EVER," from Genesis to Malachi. It follows that he who affirms a limit should make good his affirmation. Even the Hebrew servant, offered his freedom but electing to remain in servitude to a much-loved master, and who accordingly had his ear bored with the significance that he was to continue his present master's servant "for ever"-to olam,-furnishes no exception to the principle on which the word is used. He was to remain his servant to concealed duration; indefinitely; as long as the conditions should exist which made such service possible. As long as the master could be a master and the bondman could be a bondman, so long was the service to continue. And so-as we have a right to assume-just as long as Abram's seed should be capable of dwelling in a land and the land of Canaan should remain a land for men to dwell in, for so long was the land promised

as an inheritance. We pursue this topic no further at present, save to point out that the gift of the land to olam is promised to Abram as well as to his seed-if to him FOR THEM, then it is "to him for them;" and to the question will and must recur, "What has ABRAHAM done to forfeit the inheritance ?"

Here again, in this passage, a connection between the land and the seed is observable. The first passage said, "Come to the land, that I may make of thee a great nation;" and the idea is repeated in this place,-"I will give thee the land, &c., so will I make thy seed to be innumerable." And it seems to be so all along, though not without penal intermission, until the consummation is sighted (say) from the loftiest summit of Moses' Song, and portrayed in the profoundly significant words: "Rejoice, O ye nations with His people: for He will avenge the blood of His servants, and will render vengeance to His adversaries, and (rather, so or THEN) will (he) be merciful to His land and to His people "then will He put a propitiatory covering over His land, His people!" (Deut. xxxii. 43).

Lastly, we are struck by an important note of time as to when the showing of the land to Abram was vouchsafed. To arrest every reader's attention it comes at the very outset of the passage. Abram received this Divine invitation to perambulate and survey his inheritance, "after the separation of Lot from him." How significant! Abram must realise that God has called him "alone" (Is. li. 2); for Terah is dead, and now Lot has left him. There must be no trusting in an arm of flesh, no thought of propping up the promise or anxiously trying to help the Almighty. Moreover, Abram has just been acting a noble, because a peace-loving, generous, trustful part, by leaving it for his nephew to choose to the right hand or to the left hand of the country, himself accepting what Lot has declined. He does not care to choose. He will not grasp at the best of the land for the pasturing of his flocks. No, he is in the hands of his Divine Guide, and there he will leave himself. For this noble conduct God at once rewards him, inviting him now to make a sort of royal progress through the land of which his quiet confidence has made him the spiritual conqueror.

see how disciplinary Yehweh's dealings with Abram are becoming. God is already blessing Abram and fitting him to be a blessing. The faith and the patience of the patriarch are under loving and gentle and generous cultivation.

And still the discipline proceeds, as chapter xiv. forcibly reminds us. For Lot getting into sore trouble through his choice of the well-watered plain of the Jordan and being carried away captive by the marauding kings, thereupon Abram displays his family affection and his heroism, as before he has shown his peaceful disinterestedness. And duty bravely done brings further blessing. Abram returning from the slaughter of the kings is met by the mysterious Melchizedek, who brings forth to him bread and wine and publicly heaps blessings on his head. JOSEPH B. ROTHERHAM.