The Early Chapters of Genesis

The Old Testament is a revelation from God in view of His earthly people Israel. It was of the highest moment that they should have the truth authoritatively announced that the one true God is the creator of all. Darkness covered the earth, gross darkness the peoples. Israel, in Egypt, as later in the land of Canaan, was ever prone to forget this truth and lapse into the delusions of men. Fallen like others, they wished to be like all nations in their polity and their religion. Hence the importance of their knowing and acknowledging creation in any real sense; it points to and is bound up with the unity of the living God.

A difficulty has been raised, why, if God created, it was not always. The answer is as simple as complete. Eternal creation, eternal matter, is untrue and impossible, a contradiction for thought, even if we had not the word of God to enlighten us. The Eternal God, if He please, creates: there only is the truth of it. To say that the self-existing One cannot create is to deny that He is the Absolute, that He is God. But that God, omnipotent, omniscient, sovereign and good, can create when He chooses, flows necessarily from what He is. If He could not display Himself in this way, or even more gloriously, He is not God. If the display of creation or of anything else were always, He would not be free and absolute. His sovereignty is part of Himself (Eph. 1:11). Suppose any display necessary, and you destroy in thought His divine essence and will. Necessity is at bottom an atheistic device to get rid of the true God. Creation, therefore, was perfectly free to God, but not necessary; it was when and as He pleased. And He was pleased to create. Creation exists.

Nor can there be conceived a more simple, sublime, and comprehensive opening of divine revelativa than these few words: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” It is the absolute commencement of creation, and in the most pointed contradistinction from the seven days. The question is solely about the true unforced meaning of the written word of God, not about Rabbis any more than the chosen people. What does the inspired record contain and convey? it may be of interest to examine what Philo or Josephus understood, as well as how the Seventy translated it into Greek long before Christ. One may weigh either Masora, the Jerusalem Targum, and the comments of Jarchi, Aben Ezra, both Kimchis, Levi Ben Gerson, Saadies Haggaon, Abarbanel, or any other learned Jew, to say nothing of others. But there is God's word given to be read and understood, though not without the faith of Christ, nor without His guidance Who communicated it originally. It was not given to teach science, and it is wholly independent of philosophy for its intelligence. Geologists, Botanists, Zoologists, Astronomers, Historians, &c., have His brief and clear account before them. Man's comprehension of what is communicated may be affected by the amount of, his knowledge, and far more by his faith. This however is a question of our understanding and expounding it; but we must never forget that God is the Author, and the writers only the instruments. The Bible is a moral book, only the more striking in its unity because it consists of so many compositions of so many writers, stretching over a thousand years of the most varied circumstances if we limit ourselves to the O.T. The reader may be right or wrong at any given time in the idea he attaches to what we call “firmament,” “plant,” or the like; but the truth remains unadulterated and unchanging in scripture, for us to read again and again, and to learn more perfectly.

This indeed constitutes its characteristic and permanent value. It is not only a full and sure source of instruction in consonance with its moral and yet higher designs to God's glory; it is the sole standard of the truth, by which we are bound to test all else which professes to be divine. Let us ever search afresh in faith, and ever grow into a deepening knowledge of the revealed mind of God.

The philosophies, as well as the religions, of antiquity were wholly ignorant of creation. Of God, of the “beginning,” they knew nothing. Dreams of evolution were the earliest folly, and among the Ionic school, Anaximander and Anaximenes followed Thales, each differing, all blind. Anaxagoras let in with mere matter the idea of mind, but no creator. It is useless to name others: even Plato and Aristotle, rivals too, had no real light. They, more or less openly, all held eternal matter at bottom; and though the philosophers boasted, as they still do, of their knowledge and logic, they failed to see that they could not prove it, or even that it is to mere mind unthinkable. To the believer it is the simple yet deep truth, that a beginning was given to everything that exists: if God says it, he perceives that nothing else can be true. For it is impossible to admit an effect without a cause; but reasoning never can rise at best beyond, There must be a First Cause; it can never say, There is. This God alone can and does affirm: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” God brought the whole ordered system into being. The form, nature, and aim, are not here explained: such a detail had no proper place here. That He created all is a primary and momentous truth.

But there is not a word in scripture to warrant the strange and hasty assumption that the universe was brought into being in the six days of Genesis 1:3-31, so often referred to throughout the Bible. Construe the six days as men will, it is out of the power of any on just principles of interpretation to deny that the first day begins with light, and that the first two verses are marked off in their nature, as well as by their expression, from the work of the six days. Nothing indeed but prepossession can account for the mistake, which the record itself corrects. “In the beginning” has its own proper significance, and is in no way connected with “the days,” save as the revealed start of divine creation, and in due time (however probably immense the interval) leading to that measure of time only when the constitution of things was made for Adam, for the race.

The antiquity of the earth may be as great as the shifting schemes of the most enthusiastic geologist has ever conceived: there is absolutely neither here nor in any other part of scripture the least intimation that opposes vast ages before man was created, or that affirms man to be nearly contemporary with the original creation. It is ignorance of scripture that Moses assigns an epoch to the earth's first formation such as fathers or commentators (not without worthier remarks) have imagined and made current in Christendom. The philosophers who have spent their time in the study of geology and kindred sciences will act wisely in reading with unwonted care the beginning of Genesis 1. They will thence learn that they have been precipitate in the conclusion that the inspired writing is at all committed to the blunders of its interpreters, theological or scientific. However vast the periods they claim, even for the strata nearest the surface, scripture is the sole record which, while revealing God as the Creator of all things, leaves room for all that has been wrought before the Adamic earth. “The everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary: there is no searching of His understanding” (Isa. 40:28). While geology waits for its Newton, subjection to scripture meanwhile would be untold gain to its devotees as to all other men.

There was an epoch then in the infinite course of eternity when God created the universe. This is here stated with the utmost accuracy— “in the beginning.” It is in view of man, primarily indeed of Israel, that the Pentateuch was written, the Second Man, the last Adam, being the, as yet, hidden object (and the church one with Him) of God's counsels. Angels are not spoken of, though we know from another ancient book of inspiration that they expressed their joy when earth's foundations were made to sink (Job 38:6, 7). “In the beginning,” accordingly, is severed from all the measures of time with which man's existence is conversant. How admirably previous duration, unlimited by ordinary notation, suits the immense changes of which geology takes cognizance, needs no further remark here.

“ God” in our version answers to the Hebrew Elohim, which however has the peculiarity of a plural substantive with a singular verb. Christianity alone in its own time cleared up the enigma, which still remains impenetrably dark to the Jews, as well as to other men, who know not in Christ the True Light.

Again, there ought to be no doubt among scholars that the word “created” in our tongue corresponds better than any other with the original. With us, as with Israel, the word admits of application to signal callings into existence out of actual material as in Genesis 1:21, 27 but only with a special ground and emphasis. And never is it used of any other maker than God. But if the aim were to speak of creation in the ultimate, highest, and strictest sense, the Hebrews, like ourselves, had no other word so appropriated. Here the context is decisive. “God created the heavens and the earth,” where nothing of the kind existed previously. They were created out of nothing as men speak, perhaps loosely, but not unintelligibly. The heathen might worship the heavens, as all did, or even the earth; the Jew sinned against the written word if he was ensnared of Satan after their dark example. The first words of God's law told him that those were but creatures; Israel was to hear if others were deaf, and bound to own, serve, and worship the one God, the Creator. The chosen people was quite as ready as any other to worship the creature, as all their history to the Babylonish captivity proves; but there can be no doubt what the Bible supposed, declared, and claimed from its very first verse. God created the universe.

Further, it is not matter created, crude matter, to be afterward fashioned into the shapely and bea'itiful universe of the heavens and the earth. It is not chaos first, as Greek and Latin poets feigned, in accordance with heathen tradition never wholly right, though often mixing up what was not wrong. It is not a nebula, as La Place conceived, a mere modification of the same rationalism however refined it be. Lord Rosse, by his observations with his great reflector, has fairly disposed of this unbelieving hypothesis. For he has proved that many nebulae, considered even by the Herschels irresolvable objects, actually consist of agglomerations of stars. Surely therefore the only just presumption is that all nebulua are nothing more, and only need more powerful means to make manifest their true nature. God only has given the truth plainly, briefly, and after a way transparently divine in its simple and unparalleled majesty. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

How is it, ye savants, that this great truth is found here only in its pristine splendor, towering above your Hesiods and Homers, your Ovids and Virgils, your Egyptian and Mexican remains, your Hindoo and Chinese fables? How is it that to our day the Lyells and Darwins, to say nothing of profaner men, are stumbling in the dark over a morass of hypothesis, (to say the least) unproved and dubious? It is because God's word is not believed as He wrote it; and this, because men like not the true God Who judges sin and saves only through His Son, the Lord Jesus. So of old when men knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. It is the more guilty now, because, the Son of God being come and having accomplished redemption, the darkness quite passes away and the true light already shines. Alas! anything is welcome but a living God, and least of all the whole universe created by and through and for His Son Who is before all things and by Whom all things consist. “By faith we understand [apprehend] that the worlds have been framed by God's word, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear” (Heb. 11:3). Ed.

Genesis 1:2

Creation then in verse 1 is the great primary fact of revelation. It is all the stronger, because the Hebrew text has no article, any more than the Greek in John 1:1. It is therefore undefined. Compare Proverbs 8:23. From the context, however, it is plain that the fourth Gospel rises beyond the first book of Moses; for it goes back to divine and eternal being (not ἐγένετο but ῆν), and not merely divine origination, which in fact appears later (in John 1:3), and this in a form all-embracing and exclusive. “All things were made (came into being) through Him, and without Him was not anything made which hath been made.”

“ In the beginning” is not a known fixed point of time, but indefinite according to the subject matter; it here intimates that “Of old,” or “In former duration” (expressly undefined), God created the universe, Undoubtedly there is no disclosure of the immense eons of which geologists speak so freely; but the language of verse 1 leaves the door open for all that can be proved by research, or even for the longest demand of the most extravagant Uniformitarian.

But the words do affirm a “beginning” of the universe, and by God's word, as in both Old and New Testament. (See, Psalm 33:64, and Hebrews 11:3). This was everything to accomplish His design, and His design was to create the heavens and the earth, where there had been nothing. Whatever Atheists or Pantheists feign science at length” confesses there was a “beginning;” so that “created” stands here in its proper and fullest sense, as, the context requires:

“There was a beginning, says geology; to Man; and farther back, to mammals, to birds, and, to reptiles, to fishes and all the lower animals, and to plants; a beginning to life: a beginning, it says also, to mountain ranges and valleys, to lands and seas, to rocks. Hence science takes another step back, and admits or claims a beginning to the earth, a beginning to all planets and suns, and a beginning to the universe. Science and the record in Genesis are thus one. This is not reconciliation; it is accordance.” So writes Dr. J. D. Dana, the eminent American Professor, in the Old and New Testament Student of July 1890.

The record declares that God created not a “formless earth,” but “the heavens” (where at no time do we hear of disorder) “and the earth.” But even as to “the earth,” which was to be a scene of change, we are expressly told by an authority no less inspired, and therefore of equal authority with Moses, that such disorder was not the original state. “For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; He is God; that formed the earth and made it; He established it, He created it not a waste, He formed it to be inhabited” (Isaiah 45:18). The Revised V. is purposely cited, as confessedly the most correct reflection of the prophet. Here is therefore the surest warrant to separate verse 2 from verse 1 (save of course that it is a subsequent fact), severed, it may be, by a succession of geologic ages, and characterized by a catastrophe, at least as far as regards the earth. Indeed it would be strange to hear of an ordered heavens along with a “formless earth” as the first-fruits of God's creative activity. But we are not told of any such anomaly. The universe, fresh from God's will and power, consisted of “the heavens and the earth.” Silence is kept as to its condition then and up to the cataclysm of verse 2; and most suitably, unless God's purpose in the Bible were altogether different from that moral end which pervades it from first to last. What had the history of those preliminary physical changes to do with His people and their relations to Himself? But it ought not to be doubted that each state which God made was a system perfect for its aim. Yet it was not materials only, but heaven and earth.

And the earth was [or became] waste and empty, and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God [was] brooding upon the face of the waters” (ver. 2).

The well-known and flexible particle of connection in the Hebrew text introduces the verse. Its meaning, usually and simply copulative, is often modified, as almost all words in every language must he, by contextual considerations. Hence the learned Dathe, in 1781, renders it here “posthaec vero,” expressly to distinguish the state of thing in ver. 2 from that referred to in ver. 1, and sends us to such instances as Numbers 5:23; Deuteronomy 1:19. Now there is no doubt that the Hebrew conjunction admits of an interval as often as facts demand it; but there is no need of departing from its primary force, “clad” (though our conjunction is not so pliant); or it may readily have a somewhat adversative force as we see in the 70. The true determination lies in what follows. For the usage of the past verb when thus employed is to express a state subsequent to and not connected with what goes before, but previous to what follows. Hebrew idiom does not use that verb simply as a copula, as may be seen twice in this verse, and almost everywhere; or it puts the verb before the noun. The right conclusion therefore is that Moses was led to indicate the desolation into which the earth was thrown at some epoch not made known, after creation, but prior to the “days” in which it was made the habitation for Adam and the race.

With this agrees the occurrence of the remarkable phraseology “waste and empty” elsewhere. There are but two other occasions—Isa. 33:11, “the line of confusion [or waste] and the stones of emptiness;” and Jeremiah 4:23, “I beheld the earth; and lo! it was waste and emptiness.” In both it is a desolation inflicted, not the primary condition. So it is in Genesis 1:2. It is the more to be noted, as in Jeremiah it is said of the heavens at this time that “they had no light.” Thus is confirmed, by each of the other occurrences, the conviction that our text describes a state which befell the earth, possibly long after its original creation as in the verse before. It is to this interval that the successive ages of geology apply. There are undeniable facts, full of interest, and implying creation made existent and extinguished. One's confidence in the hypotheses reared on all this may be otiose or enthusiastic; but the exact meaning of Moses' words in this verse leaves all the room that could be desired for those vast processes which may be gathered from the observed phenomena of the earth's crust. There is nothing, in scripture to exclude a succession of creatures rising to higher organization from lower, as the rule with a striking exception here and there, from the Eozoon in the Laurentian rocks of Canada to the Mammalia which most nearly resembles those of the earth as it is. But all the brilliant ingenuity of Sir C. Lyell, with others of kindred view, fails to explain or evade the proofs of change at this very period, immense as it may have been, incomparably vaster and more, rapid than since man appeared. No doubt the deluge had the deepest moral significance, and is thus unique, because the human race, save those in the ark, was then swept away. But physically its traces were superficial compared with those far more ancient convulsions so apparent, except to those who worship Time and —Uniformitarianism.

“We simply assert” (says the cautious Sir R. I. Murchison),” on the countless evidences of fracture, dislocation, metamorphism, and inversion of the strata, and also that of vast and clean-swept denudations, that these agencies were from time to time infinitely more energetic than in existing nature—in other words, that the metamorphisms and oscillations of the terrestrial crust, including the uprise of sea-bottoms, and the sweeping out of debris, were paroxysmal in comparison with the movements of our own era. We further maintain that no amount of time (of which no true geologist was ever parsimonious when recording the history of bygone accumulations of sediment, or of the different animals they contain) will enable us to account for the signs of many great breaks and convulsions which are visible in every mountain-chain, and which the miner encounters in all underground workings.... The case therefore stands thus. The shelly and pebbly terraces, which exist, are signs of sudden elevation at different periods; whilst the theory of modern gradual elevation and depression is still wanting in any valid proof that such operations have taken place except within very limited areas. Much longer and more persistent observations must indeed be made before any definite conclusion can be reached respecting the rate of gradual elevation or depression which has been going on in the last thousand years, though we may confidently assert that such changes in the relation of land to water in the historical period have been infinitesimally small when compared with the many antecedent geological operations” (Siluria, 490-1, fifth ed., 1872).

On the one hand the facts point to changes in earth and sea, and these repeatedly varied too with fresh water; rocks igneous and stratified and metamorphosed, and (during the periods thus implied, and with a corresponding environment of temperature and constitution) to organized natures, vegetable and animal, from lower orders to high, short of man and those animals which accompany his appearance on the earth; whole groups of these organisms in vast abundance coming to an end, and others quite distinct succeeding and extinguished in their turn. Would it not be a harsh supposition that God, in the fossils of the rocks, made a mere appearance of what once lived? that these petrified creatures never had animate existence here below? On the other hand, the principle and the fact of creation we see not more plainly revealed in verse 1 Than of disruption in verse 2; and both before the actual preparation of the earth for Adam as described in the six days.

As the creation, announced in a few words of noble simplicity, is the first and most momentous of God's productive interventions, so the catastrophe here briefly described seems to be the last and greatest disturbance of the globe, the twenty-seventh or sub-Appenine stage, if we are to accept the elaborate conclusions of M. Alcide D'Orbigny (Paleontologie Strat. Tome ii. 800-824), a most competent naturalist, when the Alps and Chilian Andes received their actual elevation, of itself, though with many other changes of enormous consequence, quite sufficient to account for universal confusion, with destruction of life on the earth, the deep supervening everywhere, and utter darkness pervading all. However vast, this state may have been for but a little while. The animals imbedded ages before in the rocks had eyes; presumably therefore light then prevailed. Indeed some of the earliest organic remains had vision with the most striking adaptation to their circumstances, as the Trilobites of the Silurian and other beds, with their compound structure, each eye in one computed to have 6000 facets (Owen's Pal. 48, 49, 2nd ed.) The language of verse 2 is perfectly consistent with this, when compared with verse 1, and in fact naturally supposes the darkness to be the effect of the disorder. To confound the two verses is as contrary to the only sound interpretation of the record, as it is to the facts which science undertakes to arrange and expound. Nor can anything be more certain than the manner in which scripture steers clear of all error and consistently with all that is irrefragably ascertained, whilst never quitting its own spiritual ground to occupy the reader with physics. To reduce these gigantic operations of the geologic ages, in destruction and reconstruction with new living genera and species, to the slow course of nature and providence in the Adamic earth, the fashionable craze of the modern school, is “making a world after a pattern of our own,” quite as really as uninformed prejudice used to do. It was absurd to deny that the petrifactions of the strata were once real animals and plants, and to attribute them to a plastic force in the earth or to the influence of the heavens; but so it is to overlook the evidence of extremely violent and rapid convulsions before man was made, closing one geological period and inaugurating another with its flora and fauna successively suited to it in the wisdom and power and goodness of God.

Neither verse 1 nor verse 2 is a summary of the Adamic earth, which only begins to be got ready from verse 3. There are, accordingly, three states with the most marked distinction: original creation of the universe; the earth passed into a state of waste and emptiness; and the renovation of the earth, &c. for man its new inhabitant and ruler. Science is dumb, because wholly ignorant, how each of these three events, stupendous even the least of them, came to pass; it can only speak, often hesitatingly, about the effects of each, and, with least boldness, about creation in the genuine sense, though some, I cheerfully acknowledge, with outspoken and ungrudging cordiality. How different and surpassing the language of scripture, which has revealed all these things to babes, if they are hid from or dubious to the wise and the prudent! From the Bible they are or ought to be known on infallible authority, and this in the first written words God gave to man, when Rome and Athens had not emerged from barbarism if they existed as such at all.

Our verse 2 Then brings to view a confused state of the earth, as different from the order of primary creation as from the earth of Adam and his sons, in regard to which state the Spirit of God is said to have been “brooding upon the face of the waters.” By His Spirit the heavens are beautified; and as to creatures generally it is written, “Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created, and Thou renewest the face of the ground.” Here it was to be for man's earth. This is the link of transition. All was to be by God's word. Wisdom rejoices in the “habitable” earth, and has delights with the sons of men. A mighty wind might rage over the abyss. The Spirit of God, not the wind, could be said with propriety to “brood.” What new wonders were at hand!

Genesis 1:3-5

Now comes the first point of direct contact with the habitable earth and its surroundings. We have had (ver. 1) the creation of the heavens and the earth, apart from date or definite time; we have had also (ver. 2) a superinduced condition of confusion, but the Spirit of God brooding upon the face of the waters. Neither one nor other has to do with man's earth, though earth there had been under both those differing and successive conditions. Nor can it be doubtful to him who knows God, that even the latter had its worthy and wise aim as well as more obviously the former. But neither phase is connected immediately with man, though all was done to God's glory with man in prospect, and above all the Second man, as we can add unhesitatingly from the N. T. It is to the facts stated in these preliminary verses that geological observations and inferences would mainly refer. As the words are few and general, there is ample space for research. The believer knows beforehand that theoretic conclusions wherever sound must fall in with the sentence of inspiration. The work of the six days has little if anything to do with geology. There may be a measure of analogy between the work of the third, fifth, and sixth days, and certain of the alleged antecedent geologic periods which the Bible really passes over silently as being outside its range and object, while room is left for them all in vers. 1 and 2. But the effort to force the days, whether those three or all six, into a scriptural authority for the successive ages of geology is mere illusion. If it be a harmless use of geology, it is anything but reverence for God's word or intelligence in it. That there are discrepancies between the record and any facts certainly ascertained, neither geology proves, nor any of the sciences still more sure and mature. But he who is assured of revealed truth can afford to hear all that experts assert even when based on a partial induction of facts, as is not seldom the case. If outside scripture, there is nothing a believer has to contend for; if scripture speaks, he believes, no matter what science declares to the contrary; if science confirms it, so much the better for science. Assuredly God's word needs no imprimatur from men.

If one appealed to any branch of physical science as to the first day, he could get no clear answer. Geology has nothing to say, confessedly. What can astronomy or optics do more? Science, as such, leaves out God—science, not scientific men, many of the greatest of whom have been true-hearted believers. Science, in itself, knows nothing of the power that originated, ignores the First Cause, and shirks, ordinarily, even the final causes which might summon heed to a first cause. It occupies itself with art established order in the world and with secondary causes, especially those at work before men's eyes or probably deducible from experience. The peril for the unwary is obvious, and real, and notorious. It would be much less if science were honest enough to acknowledge its ignorance of what is beyond its sphere. But often its interpreter says “There is not", where logically and morally he is entitled only to say, “I know not". This is not merely audacity without warrant, but sin of the worst kind. The fool hath said in his heart, “there is no God.” It is exactly where science finds itself confessedly stopped by a blind wall that scripture proclaims the truth from God. As He knows, so He revealed as far as in His wisdom and goodness He saw fit. “And God said, Light be: and light was. And God saw the light that [it was] good; and God divided between the light and the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning, one (or, first) day” (vers. 3-5).

Now who but an inspired man would have so written? The more you depreciate Israel as an unlettered if not rude and barbarous people, the greater the wonder. Did Egypt so teach, or Babylon, did Greece or Rome? How came Moses to declare that the fact was as he writes? I do not speak of the sublime which Longinus so justly extolled, but of that which human experience never could have suggested; for living man, had he judged from universally known phenomena, had ever regarded the sun as the great source of light; so that if the writing had been his, he must naturally have spoken first of that bright orb: In other words, the work of the fourth day would more reasonably have taken the place of the first. That the philosophers taught for ages afterward. But not so the truth; and, whatever the seeming and striking difficulty, especially then, Moses was given to write the truth. As the apostle says some fifteen centuries after, God spoke light to shine out of darkness (2 Cor. 4:6). The darkness is not said to have been everywhere, but “on the face of the deep”, and now that an earth for the human race was in question, there it was that God commanded light to shine. That it was “created” now is not said; that it had existed before during the geologic ages for varying phases of the earth and for a very long while for the vegetable and animal kingdoms, there is abundant reason to conclude. But this is science, not faith, though the scriptural account is the sole cosmogony that leaves room for it.

But what is affirmed is that (after utter confusion reigned for the earth and darkness on the face of the deep, yet the Spirit of God brooding on the face of the waters) God interposed and said, Light be; and light was. As far as the Adamic earth was concerned, the light-hearers were not yet set in their functions as now: this was the fourth-day work. The word was, “Light be “; and light was: language evidently consistent with that view of light which prevails in comparatively modern times against Sir I. Newton's theory of emanation from the sun. If the phenomena of light are allowed in general to be a result of molecular action, and dependent on fundamental qualities of matter as it is now constituted, so that it was not the creation of an element admitting of independent existence, as science now owns, is it not remarkable that the words of Moses avoid all error, without forestalling scientific discovery, and express nothing but truth in the clearest terms? At the word of God appeared instant activity of light at that time inert.

But science easily over-shoots itself in hasty generalization. For it contradicts the inspired record when it ventures to say that the fiat as to light on the first day must have preceded the existence of water and of earth, of liquid or solid or gaseous compounds of every kind. Granted that light is manifested in the making of such compounds. But verses 1 and 2 give the surest testimony that “earth” and “water” did exist, not indeed before light, but before that particular fiat of God which called it into action for the earth that now is, after the confusion and darkness which had just before prevailed.

It is all a mistake then, and distinctly at issue with the context to assume, that there was no “light” in the state of things intimated by ver. 1. And it is allowed that even the “earth” and “water” of ver. 2, whatever the then state of ruin and darkness could not have been without “light” previously if but to form them. Verse 3 was therefore really the signal of creation begun, but of God acting afresh and in detail, ages after the universe was created, with its systems, and within them its suns, planets, and satellites. On the plain face of the record, after the mighty work of the universe, and after a disruption that befell the earth with most marked consequences, God puts forth His word to form the Adamic earth with its due accompaniments. Hence we may notice anticipatively that on the fourth day not a hint is given of creating the physical masses of the sun, moon, and stars. It is there and then no more than setting them in their declared and existing relations to the earth. Their creation belongs in time to Gen. 1:1; but of the rest more fully in its place. That on the first day light dissipated the then prevailing darkness is true, and of deep interest as God's first word and act for the earth of man. But this says nothing about the original creation of the heavens and earth. Nor is it quite comprehensible why “the waters” of ver. 2 should be not literal waters, because utter darkness veiled the deep or abyss. These are the inconsistencies that necessarily flow from the false start which confounds “in the beginning” of verse 1 with the “first day” of verses 3-5 and those that follow; as this again involves the extraordinary error of taking verse 2 to be the original state of the earth in verse 1, when it originally came into being from God.

The hypothesis that the earth when creation began was a frigid chaos or frozen globe, strange as it seems, is hard to escape for such as deny successive states since creation according to God's will, or, which goes along with it, for such as affirm the “creation” of the sun, etc. only on the fourth day. The argument is that, if so, it must have been almost cloudless, well lighted, and well warmed—in short, an impossibility. But reasoning from things as they are to a condition so contrasted in the record itself with what God formed for man subsequently is fallacious. It is simply a question of what God tells us of the abnormal state supposed in verse 2. Not a word implies frigidity, save that darkness was on the face of the deep, which may rather have been the effect of heat acting on the earth and the waters, a transient state after previous order, and before it was made for Adam. The record in no way identifies the disorder with the earth when its creation was effected in verse 1; but it assuredly distinguishes the dark dislocation of verse 2 from the work of the fourth day when the earth and sun and stars became one in system as in their present constitution. In short, the dilemma appears to be quite baseless. The true scope of verse 2 is not at all that the original creation was a scene of darkness, even for the earth, but that when the earth, not the heavens, was thrown into confusion ever so long after, darkness was on the, face of the deep. Light is not an element calling for annihilation (which would indeed be absurd), but a state flowing from molecular activity which God could and did here arrest as far as “the deep” was concerned. It acted all the same elsewhere; as it had over the earth till then during the formation of what some geologists call the Tertiary, Secondary, and Primary beds, to say nothing of what preceded: details for men to discover and interpret as they can scientifically, but as foreign to scripture as the detailed wonders and movements of the starry heavens.

Hence “creation” of light, first or second, in the universe is only the slip of philosophers. Scripture is more accurate than its most modern expounder, even when striving to show the accordance of science with the Bible. In the gloom that overhung the earth thrown into desolation God caused light to act, as the characteristic act of the “first day” of the week, the brief cycle that was to close with man its new master and representative of God here below. “And God saw the light that it [was] good; and God divided the light from the darkness; and God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.” It presents to us God pondering and speaking in gracious consideration of the race He was about to create thereon, with a mind dwelling on realities about to open out for man far more solemn than the light or the darkness, day or night, literally. Yet the light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart, says the Preacher (Prov. 15:30), and truly is sweet (Eccl. 11:7), as God pronounced it “good”. “And it was evening, and it was morning, first (or, one) day.” Only we must guard against taking the previous darkness as the evening. It would appear rather that light shone; and then its waning into night, and brightening into day, constituted the first day. That the earth would revolve on its axis, before the light-bearing of the sun afterward, and so have the phenomena of evening and morning, is easy to apprehend. The fact is certain; the “how” was no difficulty to Him Who spoke and it was done. Our place is to honor Him in believing His word, without which faith nothing is as it should be. Another first day was to behold a better light: there too, still more conspicuously, if that True Light shone when all was profounder darkness, He too had been before the darkness.

If the preceding exposition be just, the day of the first week is plainly one of twenty-four hours. No one can fairly deny that scripture, like other speech, uses “day” where required in a general or figurative sense, which may cover a period of considerable length. But this need never produce embarrassment to a careful reader: as ever, the context gives the clue. In this chapter and the next we have the word variously applied according to the exigency of the case; in none ought it to be doubtful. Here “the evening” and “the morning” should exclude just question. It can only mean, thus defined, a day of twenty-four hours. Before (not “there was a sun”), but before the sun was set to rule the day (of twelve hours) as now makes no difference as to the length meant. The same phrase is carefully used before and after. Nor would any prolonged sense have been tolerated for this carefully specified week but for the error which muddles “the beginning” with the first and following days, makes the heavens and the earth at first to be a chaos, and in so doing effaces in fact the creation of both the one and the other. For where is either really “created” on such a scheme?

This will appear still more convincingly when we come to close quarters with the six days viewed as embracing the immense ages of geology. It might not be so glaring when taken in a dreamy poetic way as a vision in the hands of the late Hugh Miller. But when the simple dignity of the true father of history is vindicated for the matchless prose of Moses, the effort to make the days, or some of them, answer to the ages of geologic formation in building up the crust of the globe proves itself so much the more glaring and violent failure. Take the first day as our first test: are we told to imagine such a notion as that the outshining of the light in dispelling the immediately antecedent darkness occupied an age? And if not for the first day, or the second, or the fourth, how harshly inconsistent to claim it for the third, fifth, and sixth? Especially as the seventh day, or sabbath, should honestly put to the rout any such application. In every case the figurative sense is here irrelevant and unsuitable. We shall see in due time from scripture that the stretching out of the sabbath into an æon is altogether unfounded.

An ingenious attempt is made in “Sermons in Stones” to show that the brooding of the Spirit in verse 2 means the creation of submarine animals (Zoophytes and Bivalve Mollusks without visual organs) before light; then of a higher class furnished with organs of sight after light on the second day; and lastly of Vertebrate Fishes on the third. All this is error opposed by the record, which admits of animated nature for man's world only after the fourth day. For this confusion we are indebted to the misinterpreting “days” here into ages. The truth is, according to the record, that the Spirit's brooding upon the face of the waters is quite general and admits of no such precision, as it was also before the first day. And if the days were simply days of the week in which Adam was created, geology can neither affirm nor contradict. Its main office is to investigate the evidence of the successive ages of the earth's crust before the human race. It is freely granted that the language employed by inspiration is that of phenomena; but this does not warrant the hypothesis of the medium of a vision. It was a divine communication to and by Moses; but how given we know not and should not speculate, lest we err. A vision in fact might have shown him the submarine animals, being beyond natural conditions; but the hypothesis is invented to foist in the creation of animals not seen or specified in the record.

Further, we must banish the notion that the black pall of an unbroken night was the original condition—a heathen, not a biblical, idea. It was not so before verse 2, which describes a subsequent and transient state. The first verse supposes an order of the universe; the second, an interruption of no small moment for man; then in verse 3 the week begins in which the earth was prepared for his abode who was made before that week ended. The geologic ages had passed before the human measures of time commenced. If the record had been duly read, the Inquisition might have avoided its unwise and suicidal judgment of Galileo; for the first day, compared with the fourth, favors the Copernican theory as decidedly as it condemns the old philosophy of Ptolemy. It exactly agrees with the revolution of the earth round its axis for evening and morning, independently of the function of the sun soon after formed. Only we must take note that the profound darkness dispelled was neither primeval nor universal, as many men of science have hastily assumed. It had nothing to do with the heavens, any more than had the disorder which befell the earth, after ever so long lapse of time.

Genesis:1:6-8

Happily the second day's work admits of a notice so much the more brief because of the rather full remarks on the preceding verses. In these were discussed the original creation “in the beginning “; then the superinduced state of confusion; lastly the work of the “first day” that brings in the week of the earth's preparation for the human race.

The evident immediateness of the first day's work applies throughout the other days. Whatever grounds there may be for scientific men to infer processes occupying vast tracts of time before the “days”, there is no real reason to doubt, but plain and positive scripture to believe, that the work done on the several six days was not of long ages, but really within the compass of the literal evening and morning. How unnatural to suppose an age for light to act on the first day! And why suppose otherwise on the second day or any other? A long succession of ages may be true after “the beginning” and before “the days,” which taken in their natural import have a striking moral harmony with man, the last work of God's creation-week.

In this way there is no contest between long periods of progressive character and successive acts of marked brevity. On the one hand the record is so written as to leave ample space for the researches of scientific discovery before man existed; on the other details under the shape of divine fiats in the six days appear only when man is about to be created. There is thus truth in both views. The mistake is in setting them in opposition. One can understand, if God so willed it, immense times of physical action, with secondary causes in operation before man, not without the evidence of convulsion far beyond volcanoes or the deluge within the human period, which great geologists at home and abroad admit, contrary to the recent speculations of others. But there are those that feel the beautiful (not belittling) condescension of God in deigning to work for six days and rest on the seventh, only when getting ready that earth where, not only the first man was to come under his moral government, but the Second Man was to glorify God to the uttermost, give to such as believe eternal life, and prove the worthlessness of all who reject His grace and repent not of their sins: the true and intelligible and blessed reason why this earth, so insignificant in bulk when compared with the vast universe of God, has a position in His favor so transcending all other planets, suns, or systems, put together. If man was much to differentiate the earth, Christ is infinitely more: and lie has yet to show what the earth and man on it are to be under His glorious kingdom, to say nothing of the heavens according to His grace and the counsels of God.

But a little must be said of the second day. These are the terms— “And God said, Let an expanse be in the midst of the waters, and dividing be between waters and waters. And God made the expanse, and divided between the waters that [are] under the expanse and the waters that [are] above the expanse: and it was so. And God called the expanse Heavens. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day” (vers. 6-8).

There is no more ground for conceiving this to be the first creation of atmospheric heavens than we saw in the case of light on the first day. The absolute language of creating is avoided in both cases. As there had been light in the long ages of geology when not only plants but animals marine and terrestrial abounded, suited to the systems that contained them, so an atmosphere was requisite and no doubt was furnished of God with every provision for their sustenance till a new condition succeeded by God's power. That which now girdles the earth may not have been altogether alike for the varying states of vegetable and animated being long before man existed, to say nothing of the azoic periods before either. They had each an environment adapted by the Creator of all. The remains in successive strata indicate an admirable suitability for the then flora and fauna, quite different from the Adamic earth and its inhabitants, in some of which it may be doubted if man could have lived, as he did not in fact.

The great difficulty for geologists, especially of late from the growth of infidel thought, is to allow such a revolution as verse 2 intimates. Even Christians among them are afraid to be governed by its express declarations, and shrink from the ignorant mockery of those who boldly deny there ever was a breach of continuity between the original creation and the days of man on the earth. But on the one hand it is certain that the record maintains such a breach to have occurred (and this not on a circumscribed part of the earth, which some like Dr. Pye Smith have imagined in a spirit of compromise, but for the earth wholly) as to require an entire re-ordering of it as well as man's creation, God's vicegerent then first made to have dominion over all here below. On the other hand it is intolerable to assume that no convulsions could have effected such changes as the non-action of light, or the destruction of atmospheric conditions, &c. This is mere and narrow unbelief. “Ye do err, knowing not the scriptures nor the power of God.” How little science can explain even of existing life and of its surroundings! And how unbecoming of geology to dogmatize!—one of the youngest of sciences, with so much to explore and adequately weigh, and so far from the precision of chemistry for instance, though there too how much is unknown.

At a fit moment the question of the mammoth &c. co-existing with the musk-ox and other surviving quadrupeds may be briefly examined. But on the face of the argument it is plain that there is no more difficulty in conceiving God might renew some previously existing plants and animals for Adam's earth than in causing light again to act on the first day and the atmosphere on the second. The work of the first day, perfectly if not exclusively consistent with an instantaneous exertion of the divine will, illustrates and confirms that of the second day. Scripture places the description of v. 2 at some time before these days commence. Light acted first after that disorder, and according to the earth's revolution on its axis. Next day the atmospheric heavens, so essential to light, sound, and electricity, to vegetation and animal life, were called or rather recalled to their functions after that confusion which destroyed them in ways beyond our ken.

Assuredly this renewal was no matter of a long age of gradual process, but a work to which God assigned a separate day, though to Him abstractedly a moment had sufficed. As it is, man's attention was impressively drawn to His considerate and almighty goodness Who then separated “waters from waters”, which otherwise had filled space above the earth with continual vapor and without that due mixture of gases which constitutes the air essential to all life on the globe. To its machinery with other causes by divine constitution we owe the formation of clouds and the fall of rain as well as evaporation; to its refractive and reflective powers, that modification of light which adds incalculably to beauty no less than the utility of the creation: a black sky had otherwise cast its constant pall over the earth. Even had dry land by another fiat been disengaged from the waters, without this encompassing elastic fluid vapors would not have been absorbed nor have fallen as now; dew had ceased; fountains and rivers if formed had wasted away; water had enormously prevailed; and if dry land had survived anywhere, it must have been a dry arid mass with neither animal life nor a blade of grass. But enough; these are not the pages in which to seek the physical methods of creative beneficence.

It is now generally known, as it had long been laid down by the most competent Hebraists before modern science existed, that “expanse” is the real force of the original word, instead of “firmament” which came to us through the Latin Vulgate, as it seems due to the Greek Septuagint. Possibly these Jewish translators in the days of Ptolemy Philadelphus may have succumbed here as elsewhere to Gentile ideas or at least phrases. And a great Rabbinical scholar, a Christian teacher, has given his opinion that the Greek version employs the word (στερέωμα) in the sense of an ethereal or third subtle orb, and in no way of a solid permanent vault as rationalists love to assume, basing it on etymology and figurative usage. The aim is obvious, the wish father to the thought. Excluding God from the written word, as from creation, deifying nature and exalting fallen man (more especially of the nineteenth century), they gladly depreciate the text by citing “windows” and “doors", “pillars” and “foundations” as if meant literally. Now the usage of the word even in the chapter itself (vers. 15, 17, 20, 28) sufficiently proves that the word conveys the idea of the open transparent sky, whatever may have been the misunderstanding of the reader at any given time. Hence the A. and R. English versions give “the air” as the equivalent of “the heavens” in ver. 28 as elsewhere. It is really the expanse, including the atmospheric heavens in the lower part of which birds fly. A solid vault is out of the question. The true derivation seems rather from a word expressing elevation, like the source of our own “heaven “; but even if drawn from the idea of beating or hammering out, who knows not that words may and do acquire a force etherealized according to the object designated, wholly above their material origin? The scriptures really present the heavens as spread out, and the earth hung upon nothing, nowhere giving countenance to the grossness of the stars fastened like brass nails on a metallic vault. Skeptical ill-will likes that it should seem so; but it is unworthy slander. Even Dathe who was free enough gives “spatium extensum", as did learned Jews generally long before and since.

“ The waters above” consist of that enormous supply of vapor which fills the clouds and falls as rain, hail, or snow. “The waters below” covered the earth as yet, but were shortly to form seas, when the dry land appeared next day. It is ignorance therefore to say, in the face of a crowd of scriptures, that the waters above imply a permanent solid vault like a shower-bath. The Hebrews could see the movements of many heavenly bodies instead of regarding all as fixtures. But even had they been as dull as rationalism is invidious, our concern is with the divine record, the accuracy of which irritates hostile minds who would hail the least flaw with satisfaction. Scripture abides; science changes and corrects itself from age to age. As to figures, “bottles” are used no less than “pillars,” and a “tent” or “curtain” as well as “windows” and “doors.” They are all strikingly expressive. Only the stupid or malicious could take any of them in the letter.

Genesis 1:9-13

This journal is scarcely the suited place, nor does the writer pretend, to draw out adequately the wondrous and beneficent functions of the separated waters or seas and of the dry land, any more than of the light and of the atmospheric heavens, on which a little has been said. But a few words here may confirm what was remarked as to the first and the second days, that the record speaks with immediate propriety of God's constituting the earth for the human race. By no means does it intimate particulars of the long periods before man when those successive changes are observable, which laid down vast stores for his future use and fitted the earth's progressively built-up crust, the rich field of geological research. One can admire the wisdom which did not encumber the Bible with the details of natural science. Rocks crystalline and stratified are before men's eyes, who can reason on the fossils they embalm. Scripture alone avoids the universal heathen idea of a primitive chaos, and the philosophic error of an eternal universe or even eternal matter. Scripture, on the contrary, has carefully enunciated God's creation at an undefined moment, “in the beginning”, not merely of crude materials but of the heavens and the earth, without a word about their denizens. It also makes known the fact that, the earth was subjected to revolution so complete that before the Adamic state of things divine power was needed to cause light to act in a diurnal way, as well as to order the atmosphere, and from a previous and universal overspread of waters the appearance of dry land, on which God began the plants or vegetable kingdom for man.

Thus the work of these days wholly leaves out, because chronologically it follows, the vast operations both of slow construction and of destruction which give special interest to the geologist. Original creation and subsequent dislocation (which swept away in due time whole species and genera of organized beings, followed by fresh and different ones, and this repeatedly) it asserts distinctly; and both, before the days which prepared all for his life and probation under divine government who was created ere the week closed. The document itself furnishes the warrant to the believer for taking the first verse indefinitely before the six days, and also for affirming the state, possibly final state, of confusion into which the earth passed before it became the world as it now is.

There may indeed be some analogy between the days that concern the earth of the human race and those immense ages of ripening advance which preceded, so as to furnish a slight ground of resemblance on which not a few men of ingenuity and the best intentions have reared their various schemes for accommodating the days to the geological ages. Yet this hypothesis, even when guarded by the most cautious and competent aid of science, does not square with scripture. It is unjustifiable in every point of view to confound the disturbed state of ver. 2 with the creation of the earth described in. ver. 1, which it really follows, disorder after order; is it not even absurd to identify ver. 3 with either? Each follows consecutively; and the long tracts of time, if filled up in a way that scripture does not essay, would come in after ver. 1, and before ver. 3, which wholly differing from what precedes, introduces a new condition where alone details are given to mark God's direct dealings with man.

Hence the days, from ver. 3 and onward, are wholly misapplied to the geologic ages. Where for this scheme have we the formation of the plutonic, volcanic, and metamorphic rocks? Where the upheaval of the mountain ranges and the tracing of the river systems? Where the succession of organic remains, marine and terrestrial, vegetable and animal, new ones following those extinguished, and mutually distinct, from the Laurentian beds to the Post-Pliocene or Quaternary? The six days set forth the peculiar constitution God was pleased to establish for the existing or human world. What the geologic periods embrace is successive remodeling of the earth, where sea and land have changed place, mountains were raised and valleys scooped perhaps again and again, not only a sweeping away of old organic creation, but an introduction of new plants and animals, each assemblage confessed even by Lyell to admirably fit the new states of the globe; with singular varieties all pointing by harmony of parts and beauty of contrivance to One Divine Maker. These days only begin, when God, having closed the long undefined periods of progressive character, with repeated extermination of their correspondingly changed flora and fauna, forms, within the brief span of human labor, that system, inorganic and organic, of which man is the appointed head, but enriched by all He had slowly deposited and rendered available to man's industry and profit by that dislocation which laid bare treasures so remote and manifold, so interesting and important.

The divine operations of the third day call for more detail than that which was last before us. They form a double class, as does the work of the sixth day.

“ And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together to one place, and let the dry [land] appear. And it was so. And God called the dry [land] Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that [it was] good. And God said, Let the earth sprout grass, herb producing seed, fruit-trees yielding fruit after their kind, the seed of which [is] in them, on the earth. And it was so. And the earth sprouted grass, herb producing seed after its kind, and trees yielding fruit, the seed of which [is] in them after their kind. And God saw that [it was] good. And there was evening, and there was morning, a third day” (ver. 9-13).

We have seen light (involving heat) caused to act for the Adamic earth, and that atmosphere which sustains an enormous body of waters above those that lie below: both of them results of essential importance for what was coming, and of course adapted by divine power and wisdom to the system in which the human race were to exist. It was needless and foreign for a divine revelation to explain how these and other works of God were effected. The important truth for His people, and for every soul of man, to know, is that He is both the originator and the maker of all. No student of geology doubts mechanical any more than chemical agency on the largest scale in forming the crust of the earth. Heat, water, and air have played their part under His hand in change, and waste, and progressive formation. But it is only the petty and pedantic unbelief of some who cry up such gradual secondary causes as are now seen, shutting out the evidence which geology itself affords to candid minds of repeated and enormous transformations and all but entire revolution of organic life, in both extinction and new creation, with the corresponding change of the globe and its temperature which this implies, and each of these not for a brief space, but for ages before the earth of man. Facts plainly enough point to these conclusions for those who occupy themselves with the natural antiquities of the earth. Nor can it be doubted that each successive tale inscribed on the fossiliferous rocky tablets of the earth shows on the whole distinct progress, in no way as mere development of the antecedent condition, but the fresh fruit of creative acts, even if some species seem renewed for the subsequent phase, and all with evident relation to the earth as it was to be for Adam, and as it will be when the Second Man takes it with the universe itself for His inheritance. Unity of plan marks all from first to last.

But all this bygone succession of physical change is only left room for in the revealed word which dwells on man and Immanuel. Geological detail in scripture would have been as much out of place as any other science; but how can the room left for all, in what is said, be accounted for save as implying the knowledge of all by Him Who revealed His word? An original creation of the heavens and the earth without details, and unlimited even by myriads of years, “in the beginning,” perfectly falls in with every ascertained fact; and a violent dislocation of the earth, of the highest importance for the race in its disarrangements, altogether different from and more thorough than any diluvial or merely superficial action, is also made known; followed by that “making” of heaven and earth which is historically described in Gen. 1:3-31 and referred to solemnly in Ex. 20:11.

It is pertinent to observe that the effort to interpret the days of the immense ages before man separates Adam from his historic time as well as the creation placed under him as its head. For according to the long periods of geology what would the fossil-plants of the third day have to do with those that grew on the Adamic earth? And so with the animals on the fifth day, if not the sixth. On the contrary “the six days” were plainly meant to convey a realm of creation immediately connected with Adam, the various forms of organic nature being subjected and given to him. The sixth day is thus made geologic as well as historical. Surely this does not hang together; any more than our having a detailed account of fossil creation, and none at all of that which seems the express object of the several days—the creation in view of the incoming race. Now in a divine revelation it is easy to understand passing over all particulars of the fossilized stages of the earth; but inconceivable that there should be no account of heaven and earth and sea and all that in them is, in dependent relation to Adam and his sons: especially as out of the thousands of organized species in the secondary rocks, not a single species, says Prof. Hitchcock, corresponds with any now living; and even out of the thousands in the tertiary, but few seem identical with living species. The natural and only reasonable conclusion is that, whatever the analogy with the divine action in past geologic time, the days speak solely of what God made in immediate view of Adam; not of fossils, animal or vegetable, but of the organic beings placed under Adam and his race, with their surrounding and suited system. To suppose both is nothing but confusion.

Returning to the day before us we see a fresh operation of God for man's world, the waters under the heavens collected to one place, and dry land consequently appearing. Not that such a separation had not existed before, but that the disruption, wise and benevolent for the earth of man, made it a necessary act now, as indeed in a general way everything had to be made afresh for Adam: a disruption wholly distinct from the vague and useless chaos which the heathen imagined.

Now God formed the earth and seas in the condition which substantially abides to our days. How momentous an act for the race needs few words to explain. That both earth and seas had existed previously no geologist disputes, any more than the various phases of both according to the plants and animals that prevailed from one geologic age to another. Doubtless also, save for dead-level Uniformitarians if there be such, the epochs of change that destroyed the older creatures and beheld new races modified greatly both the earth and the seas; for each period had its own proper system, with changes in inorganic matter, water, atmosphere, temperature, and the like, corresponding to each new set of organized beings.

The earth then was to have that form for the most part which God saw best fitted for His new purpose: vast continents and vaster oceans, islands large and small, lakes salt and fresh, swamps and torrents, mountains and rivers, plains greater or less, and valleys not merely effected by gradual erosion but often by deep and sudden dislocation. It is common knowledge what a part is played in the physical economy of the world by the “seas”, (which in Hebrew idiom embrace all large collections of waters, oceans, seas, lakes, and even rivers,) as well as by the varied disposition of the land, high or low. To this the disarrangement of Gen. 1:2 had directly contributed; as now in the separation of earth and seas after having been commingled for a time. Rapid extraordinary operations wrought, and of course slow and existing causes in bringing about what was then done for man; but here we learn that God laid down the great landmarks which abide to this day. Genesis 2:11-14 is enough to indicate that men attribute to the deluge or other changes more than can be proved.

God gave names too, as to the objects of His work on the previous days.

But there is a second part of His work to notice: vegetable nature for the earth that now is, that kingdom which mediates between minerals and animals. God commanded the earth to bring forth grass (or, sprout sprouts), herb seeding seed, fruit-trees yielding fruit after its kind, which has its seed in itself after its kind, as is said here most emphatically. This is the true origin of vegetable species for the Adamic earth. And as God pronounced good the dry land and the seas, so now the beautiful clothing of the dry land, and the abundant supplies for man and beast—at first indeed the exclusive food even for man.

How does the protracted scheme of the days as geologic periods agree with the vegetable kingdom on the third day, and the animal even in its lowest forms on the fifth? Is it really so with the evidence of fossils? The coal measures indicate vast brackens, ferns, etc.; but what of fruit-trees bearing fruit according to each several kind? Certainly it would seem that Zoophytes are as early as any vegetable remains, long before the carboniferous era so paraded as the fulfillment of the third day, after a great abundance of marine animals far beyond plants, of which direct evidence appears in the rocks. If the days are taken simply in reference to Adam, there is no difficulty on any such score, as the provision for the world that now is appeared with no interval such as geology can appreciate.

How absurd, taking the third day before us as our example, for us to identify it with the carboniferous. age, or that which laid the basis for the coal measures! What real analogy between coal-plants chiefly acrogens, and the grass, herb, tree, so manifestly for the food of animals, above all of man? What with herb in general producing seed, and what with fruit-trees yielding fruit, after their kind, the seed of which is in them? This is evidently not provision for coal, but for the food and refreshment of man and cattle, of bird and beast. The analogy vanishes when looked into. For geologic era; it is a failure; for man's world it is the simple and suited truth. It was plant-life for Adam's earth. The carboniferous era, when people have been content with facts, was the age, botanically of cryptogams and gymnosperms, in the animal realm of the earlier reptiles, Batrachian or Amphibian. Now does this truly correspond with the third day? With the formation of seas and the emergence of dry land? And this clothed with verdure, herbs, and fruit-trees, each propagating after its kind? Beyond just doubt Moses meant herbs not of the carboniferous age, but solely of the earth for man, animal life for it not existing till the fifth day. Compare ver. 29.

But the geologic evidence points to plants and animals even in Archman time; for as the simplest animal forms (Rhizopods) have been detected in the Laurentian rocks, so the enormous quantity of graphite, being carbon, implies abundant vegetation, sea-weeds and lichens. The metamorphism of the rocks may account for the rare indications of organic life even in the Huronian beds which were subsequent; but, according to what is generally averred, Pahæozoic time goes farther back than even the Silurian age, Upper and Lower, the era of fucoids on the one hand and of marine invertebrate animals on the other (Protozoans, Radiates, Mollusks, and Articulates). Then comes the Devonian, or age of fishes (chiefly Selachian and Ganoid), and some insects, in addition to previous invertebrates; and besides sea-weeds, Calamites, Conifers, Ferns, and Lycopods. Surely long ages with organic life, not only vegetable but animal, before the carboniferous period, as all geologists accept, disprove beyond controversy the effort to make out the third day therein fulfilled. Hence Principal Dawson (Arch. 168) is obliged to own that the coal flora (consisting mainly of cryptogams allied to ferns and clubmosses, and of gymnosperms allied to the pines and cycads) cannot coalesce with the higher orders of plants called into being in our verses 11, 12. “For these reasons,” says he, “we are shut up to the conclusion that this flora of the third day must have its place before the Palæozoic period of Geology,” i.e., when vegetation was incomparably lower than that of the coal measures! The true conclusion on the contrary is that the third day's work implies a flora for man and the creatures under him, long after the coal measures.

By the way Dawson remarks that “the sacred writer specifies three descriptions of plants as included in it “: the first he will have to be not “grass”, but the cryptogamia, as fungi, mosses, lichens, ferns, &e.; then seed-bearing herbs, and fruit-bearing trees. The cryptogams may well be doubted: if tenable, it might be pleaded even more fairly, that the phænogams, endogenous and exogenous, follow. However it would seem that no scientific classification is intended, but a general division which all could observe into grass, herbs, and fruit-trees, each species none the less expressly and permanently reproductive. In point of fact it is not till the Cretaceous period of Mesozoic time that we find the first traces of Angiosperms (Oak, Plane, Fig, etc.); so that the reference to an age before the Palæozoic time is still less reasonable than the hypothesis of the carboniferous era.

Doubtless geologists would if they could make vers. 11, 12, subsequent to the great operations of the fourth day; for who can question the all-importance not of light only but of the sunbeam for herbage of all kinds, for fruit-bearing, and for timber? This is no difficulty for one who takes the days as “the evening and the morning “; but is it not insuperable for all who regard them as representing ages of untold duration? The Archæan rocks, we must bear in mind, are believed to be near five miles thick; the Silurian system considerably thicker, especially if we add the Devonian. Then come the Carboniferous and Permian formations of not far from four miles; and after the Triassic and Jurassic the Cretaceous, when it would seem that Angiosperms or Dicotyledons began to appear (Rose, Apple, Elm, &c.). In fact it was only just before the Tertiary or Cænozoic, if we include in it as most do the Nummulitic beds. Who can reckon the times of these formations?

There is another observation of importance to make. What scripture reveals of the third day's work points in no way to Archæan or Pahæozoic times, but simply and naturally to the formation of the Adamic earth. Geology tells us that the continents while still beneath the waters began to take shape; then, as the seas deepened, that the first dry land appeared, low, barren, and lifeless; next that, under intestine and external action, the dry land expanded, strata formed, and mountains rose, each in its appointed place, till finally heights and continents reached their fullest development. Now the flora described by the inspired writer does not fit the geologic first appearance of dry land, when of the character above described, till the mountains rose ages afterward and river-systems followed. To say the least, marked advance of state is involved in the flora described by Moses. How then identify it with the earliest geologic time when sea-weeds alone existed in the waters along with lichens on the land, and even then the Eozoon Rhizopod?

Moses describes just such a vegetable kingdom in its main features as Adam had, and we have now. It was vegetation as he knew it; and God led him so to describe it, being the truth. Is there then contradiction between the more or less satisfactory conclusions of Geology and unerring scripture? In no way. Distinguish the times, and clashing disappears. The third day speaks solely of the earth's last emergence from the waters by which it was submerged long ages after the original “outlining of the land and water determining the earth's general configuration.” Dr. Dana on reconsideration should acknowledge that the idea of life expressed in the lowest plants and afterward, if not contemporaneously, in the lowest or systemless animals, the Protozoans, is doubly and hopelessly incongruous with the Mosaic record. Take it as of the Adamic week and all is plain to the believer, if a few difficulties remain for the geologist. Why should any wonder, since it is confessed by the same competent authority that “a broken record the geological undoubtedly is, especially for terrestrial life” (Dana's Manual of Geology, 601, third edition, 1875)? Not so with the Bible, which, being divine, is and must be true: plain for the wayfaring man, profound for the most informed and best cultured:

Genesis 1:14-19

The evidence which the record furnishes of the third day is express. It is dry land and seas in view of man: in no way the varying phases of either in the geologic ages, but solely the result, after the last disturbance when the waters prevailed everywhere. Indeed a good deal of unfounded hypothesis is now exploded (especially since the recent deep-sea soundings) as to the alternation of the ocean beds and the vast mountain ranges east or west. For though the strata and fossils, marine, lacustrine or fluviatile, and terrestrial, point to repeated submergence and emergence of considerable regions, the continents have abode from Archæan time, the Atlantic flowing on one side, the Pacific on another. During the ages that followed, allow all that can be proved of change by upheaval, oscillation, dislocation, and rock formation, fragmental or crystalline, eruptive or stratified, by means organic mechanical, or chemical, by atmosphere, water, fire or aught else, there were elements of life vegetable and animal brought into being in the waters and on the land, and successively extinguished and new ones created with the changed state of the globe, each period having its appropriate species in the new environment.

But none of these alternations, vast and important as they were physically, enters the scope of the six days. No geologist denies that the mountains, to take this one sample, were elevated substantially as they are, long before the human race; and on mountains depend the springs and rivers and even the due fall of rains, and striking equalization of temperature between the extremist climes, so necessary to man and beast and herb. Very much more indeed had been done by God in that immense preparation, not only in the partially hidden supplies (coal, marble, lime, precious stones, metals, etc.) for man's use, but in enriching the soil and beautifying the surface of the earth in countless ways, working, as He still does, now for instance by sudden volcanic action, and again for example by the slow process of innumerable polyps, yea and mysteriously by their combined action (though one be organic and the other not) in the accomplishment of His creative designs from a time when there was no life here below, till every organized form was there short of man. Now it is exclusively of the human era and its belongings that the six days speak; and none more clearly than the third day, when the vegetable kingdom began, but solely in reference to Adam and those subject to him. The application to geologic time is impossible as proved by the record itself, and the mutual contradictions of all who essay it.

The evidence is no less plain and conclusive as to the fourth day, of which the more prudent advocates for the long-period days say little. But even here, though it be a question of the heavenly orbs, the record looks at them simply in view of man and this earth. “And God said, Let there be light-bearers in [the] expanse of the heavens to divide between the day and between the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; and let them be for light-bearers in [the] expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth. And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light for ruling the day, and the lesser light for ruling the night (the stars also). And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide between the light and the darkness. And God saw that [it was] good. And there was evening, and there was morning, a fourth day” (ver. 14-19).

It is a mistake to suppose that during the long ages of vegetable and animal life up to the highest forms, one excepted, there had not been the shining of sun, moon and stars, as well as sea and land and atmosphere though not always quite the same as ours. If geology can trace the proofs of life, and its progress in a typical system, which reveals unity of plan as distinctly as deep and comprehensive wisdom, be it so; but they enjoyed sunlight, heat, air, and water throughout. But here we have everything successively ordered for man, after those immense eras of change were closed, when the last disturbance needed God's interference for a new system. Light was caused to act. The atmosphere as it is followed. Next, the seas were gathered to their own place, and dry land appeared, and the vegetable realm, the work of mountain-making and valley-scooping, shaping as well as storing, having been already and it may be in long successive ages effected. In each case of these days the result seems instantaneous. “He spoke, and it was done.” The work stated here is quite distinct. “The evening and the morning” are the expression of God's considerate goodness to man, responsible to learn of Him and to do His will on the earth, as Christ did perfectly.

It is assuredly not the creation of the sun, etc. This the inspired historian does not say, but only that God now constituted the heavenly luminaries, after the plants and before the animals for the Adamic earth. Light had shone otherwise since the first day of the great week. Now He set the light-bearers of the heavens to do their assigned work, but it is for the earth, and indeed for man. Their creation was implied in ver. 1; for God did not create either empty; and what would heaven be without its host? And we saw that verse 2 implies that the earth even had not been so, though so it became with other marks of disorder. What had hindered the functions of sun and moon was now rectified. Light independently had been proved to be under God's control. On the fourth day He gave the luminaries of heaven their unhindered relation to divide the day from the night. Now we can readily understand the plants (and these were for the use of man and his congeners) caused to spring forth on the day before without the sun-beam; but assuredly not so a geological age of grass, corn, and fruit. Yet we see the fitness of the due ordering of light and heat, as we have it, the next day, if the plants were to flourish, as well as for the animal life that begins after that according to His word.

This is entirely confirmed if we inspect the context more closely. For where would be the sense of the light-bearers “for signs and for seasons, and for days and years” if it had been an age (thousands, myriads, millions of years) before Adam? If on the contrary God was not creating them, but, after that which had intercepted, only “setting” them to their ordained task in immediate view of man, all is clear and consistent. And to whom could this be of such interest as to Israel, the people of His choice, in whose history we have them acting as “signs” on critical occasions for His sovereign will? Without dwelling on His wonders in Egypt where light was in Israel's dwellings, darkness thick in all the rest of the land, or later at Sinai, we see what a sign it was to Israel when Joshua said in their sight, Sun, stand still upon Gibeon, and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon: or in far other days when Jehovah spoke to sick Hezekiah and gave him a sign in the shadow that went back ten steps on the dial of Ahaz. And what a sign again where all was lost, as far as man is concerned, in the cross of Messiah when darkness for three hours covered all the land A mere eclipse was then impossible. Nor will whole clusters of signs be wanting when He comes in power and glory on the clouds of heaven. “For seasons” is needed no comment: man alone on earth understands and appreciates these fit and recurring times. As the same Hebrew word means “the congregation” and “the solemn feast,” as well as the season or appointed time at which they kept it, “seasons” may have a sacred aspect; but the more ordinary sense seems confirmed by what follows. Very little astronomy is requisite to know how “days and years” are defined by them, but only for man. In the ages before him this were all irrelevant. In view of man and Israel especially it is as affecting as full of interest. The constant design is reiterated in “Let them be for light-bearers in the expanse of the heavens.” It was their effeet, not their structure, that is intimated. “And it was so.”

Then we are told that “God made”, not created, “the two great lights.” The language is never varied without purpose. Rosenmüller the younger was an admirable Hebraist, and certainly free enough in his handling of scripture; yet he has no hesitation in his discussion of this question formally, but insists that the genuine force of the construction is not “fiant luminaria” (i.e. let lights be made), but “inserviant in expanso coelorum” (i.e. serve in the expanse of the heavens). He compares the sing. with the plur. of the Hebrew verb for being, and deduces the inference that the language can only express the determination of the luminaries to some fixed uses for the world, and not to their production. Further, it is solely relation to man on earth that demonstrates the strict phraseological propriety of “the two great lights”. He who created all and inspired Moses knew better than Newton or Laplace the sizes of every orb of heaven; but for man's and for Israel's help on earth, to say nothing of every subject creature, what were all the rest for light-giving by day and night compared to the sun and moon?

This again as definitely excludes scientific preoccupation, as it confirms the reference throughout. The stars only come in parenthetically. God made them too, if blind man deified them. But God gave sun and moon to rule over the day and over the night. They were His creatures and gifts for man's use, dividing between the light and the darkness. “And God saw that [it was] good,” not as if they were just created, but the assigned work He gave to be done by them. “And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.” Here it cannot be fairly denied by any, that from the necessary effect of that day's work we have the ordinary vicissitude of night and day; and that a similar diurnal revolution followed for the fifth and sixth days, as for every day since, including the seventh. But this being so, surely consistency requires it for the three previous days. That light was supplied otherwise before the fourth day is no impediment. The daily course of the earth on its axis depends on gravitation, not on illumination, and would have gone on equally, had the sun been only and always opaque, or had its previous and its present action in light-bearing never existed.

And here it may be noticed that those who contend for nothing but the same agencies at work from the first as act now before our eyes, and who go so far as to swell the time into incalculable ages by embracing the fond hypothesis of evolution, so that 300,000,000 years span an inconsiderable period of geological imagination, have now to confront an unexpected and veritable coup de grace from Sir W. Thomson. For he has proved that if the earth existed at all only 100,000,000 years ago, it must have been on scientific grounds a red-hot molten globe altogether incompatible with life animal or vegetable. The geologists in their loose and one-sided way reasoned from the deposition of the enormously deep strata at the present rate of formation. But Thomson founded his far more rigorous calculations on the acknowledged facts of the earth's tidal retardation, as well as of its gradually cooling state. Hence the recent disposition among the less prejudiced men to re-arrange the order and time of formations by the probable contemporaneity of unlike strata. They essay thus to reduce their egregious demands by the supposition that the Cambrian for instance may coalesce chronologically with the Silurian, the former lacustrine, the latter marine; and similarly the Permian with the Jurassic, etc. The groups thus associated would each owe their different phenomena to their respective conditions of deposit.

But those who accept the plain and simple interpretation of the record here offered will observe that, if all these shifting and precarious hypotheses are due to the dim twilight of the science, scripture is responsible for no error. What it asserts remains not only unshaken but indisputably true.

Genesis 1:20-23

We are now come to a fresh activity of divine power, when the Holy Spirit employs again the term “created” (ver. 21): not merely organisms, for these we have seen for the new vegetable kingdom on day three, but the first animal life for the Adamic world, to people the waters below and the heavens above. They are familiarly known to be the opposed but mutually dependent realms of life, far above inorganic nature, not only in growth and structural development, but in germs for the continuance of the species, both of which materialism vainly strives to explain or evade. For plants take in nourishment without an interior cavity or sac, and without digestive fluid, which animals have and as plants imbibe carbon and give out oxygen, animals exhale carbon and use up oxygen: a provision worthy of divine wisdom for the well-being of the earth. Nor is this hard to appreciate; for plants are nourished by inorganic food which they convert into organic for animals, as they store up for their use condensed force from the sun's influence, starch, glutine, &c. for animal development with increasing power, and locomotive faculty, as well as a will. That their germs are chemically like, not only in elements but in their proportions, only brings out the total difference which results from their respective character of life. To originate animal life especially, even in its least form, justly calls for the term “created.”

Thus God is not content with employing chemical powers to disintegrate and to reconstruct, as well as mechanical means chiefly by water, frost and gravitation, not only to enlarge the surface but to increase its fertility. The provision and satisfying of life, is a part of His admirable plan even for a fallen world, the very volcano playing no. small part, whatever its temporary terrors, in His beneficent hand. But all else would have been ineffectual without that great reality, of which science is as ignorant as those whom it most despises in its unbecoming scorn—that reality which would bring God face to face with every rational being, were men not hard in conscience and blinded by sin—that reality which meets every soul as the surest fact, yet the most inscrutable for any man; life, not vegetable only but animal, even if we regard it in its simplest range. It is life that directs the chemistry of plants or animals; it is life which produces the organization appropriate according to its kind. Men may speak of protoplasm, and analyze into carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen; but these are the mere materials which God employs according to the limits He has imposed on species under the agency of life. When life is given, the activity of change goes on in the creature and its reproduction; when life is withdrawn, there is a dissolution into the common stock for the fresh replenishment of the earth and its organized beings. Men may shrink from the Causa causans, and take refuge in “the laws of nature “; but after all they only succeed, if they do succeed, in retreating a step back from the Giver of life, and the Sovereign sustainer of nature. But this retreat is to lose God altogether.

Gen. 1 knows nothing of a primordial gas, or the nebula hypothesis, of an original spore, or of a monad. That God created the universe, is its proclamation, with details of Adam's world. A nisus formativus is here unheard, and left only to the unbelieving fanatics of science. Men would have had wings ere this better than those of Dædalus if desires and efforts availed; nor would the peacock be left alone to expand his feathered glories in the golden light of the sun. The power and wisdom of God has made these countless creatures, plants or animals, out of a few elements; and these, as geology is compelled to own, repeatedly exterminated on the earth, and as often renewed, in systems ever perfectly suited to each, and as uniformly rising on the whole, when He was pleased to form a higher one, till He created man. Yea at last He deigned to send His Son, the eternal Word, to be made flesh, accomplish redemption, and unite to Jesus those that are His for heavenly glory; as He will send Him again to bless Israel and all nations, to reign from heaven over a reconciled creation (for He is Heir of all things), but none the less to judge those who reject Him the Lord and Savior to their own everlasting ruin.

Further, as God created, so He perpetuates life within variations brought about by circumstances and especially by man's will, which, ceasing to act, leave plant or animal to revert to primitive type; when hybrids are forced, sterility also ensues. His will gave birth to the creatures that people the waters and the sky; and He abides to give constant effect to His will. We can see therefore the wisdom of His revelation of the day before us; for how many sages have dreamed and thought that the sun was the prolific source of life? The vegetable kingdom was formed when the sun was not yet set to do its all-important office for the earth of man. The humbler departments of the animal kingdom were called into being by God the day after. And how manifestly is contingency excluded no less than necessity? It is all the result of the Creator's will, Who upholds all that He has called into being. “For Thou didst create all things, and because of Thy will they were and they were created” (Rev. 4:11). Dualism, pantheism, eternal matter, and evolution are mere but wicked delusions.

“ And God said, Let the waters swarm a swarm of living creatures (lit. souls), and let birds fly above the earth on the face of the expanse of the heavens. And God created the great whales (or sea-monsters) and every living creature that moveth with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that nit was; good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day” (ver. 20-23).

Here it is to be observed that “sea-monsters“ is given by many modern translators, the Revisers among them; so as to include the huge creatures of large rivers, crocodiles, &e., as well as marine. Indeed “whales” may be here in view specifically by the accompanying epithet “great “; seeing that they exceed in size all other animals not only of the Adamic period, but even of previous ages when characterized by creatures of enormous magnitude as compared with analogous ones in man's day. If the whale be here singled out, the description is justified beyond dispute; and all the more because the fossils, as the rule, disclose specimens larger of their kind than any now living, whether Protozoans, Crustaceans, or the Vertebrates in general. Even the birds then must have been gigantic, if we accept their supposed footmarks on the new red sandstone of Connecticut. Their fossils were much later.

In ver. 20 then God spoke into being the creatures that people the waters and those that people the air in terms the most general. In ver. 21 The result is stated with more precision, the great whales or sea-monsters being distinguished from every living creature that moveth (whether Protozoans, Radiates, Mollusks, Articulates, or Vertebrates) which the waters swarmed, after their kind. Again we hear of “every bird of wing” after its kind. A correct version here, as the reader may see, explodes the error which commentators, Jewish and Christian, have tried to explain; for the sense is not that the waters produced the birds, but that God made them fly in the open expanse of the heavens. Compare Gen. 2:19, which distinctly teaches that they were formed out of the ground, no less than was the beast of the field.

But the important fact announced is that for Adam's world the waters were now peopled and the air likewise) It is in no true sense the Reptilian age, though no doubt such reptiles as belonged to the waters then were included; for land reptiles are distinctively of the sixth day, as is certain from vers. 24, 25, 26, 28. Hence the effort to make the fifth day's work correspond with the Mesozoic time of geology is an utter fallacy. During it, especially in the Cretaceous period, reptiles abounded, and many were enormous, Dinosaurs, Enaliosaurs, Icthyosaurs, Mosasaurs, Plesiosaurs, or Pterosaurs; for in contrast with the fifth day the earth had then its species, as well as the sea and the air. Jurassic Britain had its vast and numerous varieties, as their absence is the more conspicuous since Adam's day. But all that the cautious Dr. Dana says as to birds is, that they probably began in the Triassic, especially as the inferior tribe of Marsupials were then found; that in the Jurassic some if not all birds exhibited the long vertebrated tail which with other peculiarities allied them to reptiles; but that in the Cretaceous they were numerous, and most of modern type, though some were of the older form. To suppose all that now people the waters and air existed then is as baseless as that these verses really describe the Reptilian age. For the great sea-monsters and many birds had yet to be.

Now it is on the face of the record that the entire population of the waters and of the air, as Adam knew both, is meant; not that extraordinary era of the secondary formation, with its prodigious denizens of earth and sea and air. Indeed it is notorious geologically that Protozoans, Radiates, Mollusks, and Articulates had been even in the Lower Silurian; and in the Upper S. fishes appear if only Sharks and Ganoids. Again, who does not know that the Devonian is habitually designated the age of Fishes? How then can it be fairly alleged that the day-period interpretation holds good? If the third day means the Carboniferous age, though this has been proved erroneous, how comes the age of Fishes to be before it? The record declares that the fish and fowl of Adam's world were only and alike on the fifth day.

Is it not then extreme prejudice that has beguiled able and excellent persons into the thought that the record here speaks of the Reptilian age of geology? Hence one zealous advocate limits the swarm of the waters in ver. 23 to “the reptile” and for the same reason changes “that moveth” into that “creepeth” in ver. 21. The fact is that, though the former word often means “reptile,” the context here proves it to be of far larger bearing and in fact of cognate signification with the verb; so that to “swarm swarms” seems the literal force, and to “bring forth abundantly the moving” thing is a fair representation as in the A. and R. Vv. Again, in ver. 21 The right way is to interpret the Hebrew as “moving” in water and “creeping” on land; so any one may see who can intelligently use a Hebrew Concordance. In both respects Sir J. W. Dawson is more correct than the late Mr. D. McCausland.: but he errs in making ver. 21 Say “great reptiles.” It is either all the large creatures of the deep, or not improbably “the whales,” for the reason already and appropriately implied in “the great.” Perhaps we may fairly add that the Cetacea call for a special place as being the representative of Mammals, and hence are made to stand apart from the general population of the deep. Certainly they were of the waters.

The effect too of the periodic construction of the days is here quite plainly as unfounded as elsewhere. The fishes with which Adam and his race were familiar are thereby almost wholly left out of God's account of His creation. All they are told, on that hypothesis, is of fossil Saurians, the most anomalous in appearance of all the creatures whose remains have come to view, of which Moses knew as little as the children of Israel, however interesting to geologists in our day. Is it credible that the Holy Spirit inspired the law-giver to speak of wonders only intelligible in the nineteenth century, and to pass by without a word what they needed to know of the teeming creatures in the watery world?

As usual the hypothesis when considered seriously betrays its inherent unreality. The huge Saurians of the Mesozoic were not marine only, as they ought to be if the record spoke of them; many of them were Pterosaurs of the land, some species even winged, though we cannot count Pterodactyles as birds. The inspired text therefore conclusively puts them all out of consideration. Here we read solely of the creatures with which the waters swarmed, of every living creature that moved there, each according to its species, as well as of those justly designated “the great” among the multitudes of smaller sea-creatures; as also of “every winged bird” after its kind. The natural force and true aim of the revelation was to make known God's work in that lower part of the animal kingdom, which is none the less the object of His care; and if one portion be of vast bulk, none the less was it His creature. The Adam family were called to own His hand and goodness in the whole.

The evident intention was to impress on all that heed the written word that the fifth day's work embraced the entire circle of aquatic animals as well as all bird life known to mankind; not at all to acquaint them with a bygone system of animated. nature, which sustained at the close of the Cretaceous period one of the most complete exterminations of species confessed by geologists. In fact too it is only in the Quaternary that Teliost fishes as well as Birds find their culmination; of all allusion to which, though nearly affecting man, the misinterpretation entirely deprives us. If on the contrary the inspired writer speak of what concerns man practically, with this agrees the expressed blessing of God, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” It also derives impressive confirmation from vers. 26, 28, where dominion over the fish of the sea is given to man, no less than over birds of the air, and beast and cattle and all that creep on the earth. The only detail in fact is in setting forth the origin of what was actually put under man's rule; which certainly does not apply to Paheozoic, or Mesozoic, or Tertiary times.

Genesis 1:24-25

It needs few words to prove that in the fifth day's work we vainly look for an exact correspondence with the Secondary or Mesozoic period. Fishes, even vertebrated fishes, had been created in abundance in Palæozoic time, and so before the Carboniferous age; also the earlier reptiles, chiefly Amphibian, preceded the age when they arrived at gigantic proportions and in every sphere, earth having its species no less than sea and air. Does this agree with the record which distinguishes its denizens, as of sea and air, from those that were only called into being on the following day—which declares that every reptile of the earth belongs to the sixth, and not the fifth? Dinosaurs (including Megalosaurs, Iguanodons, Hylmosaurs) being land reptiles stand opposed. Nor is this all. The absurdity of the periodic interpretation is that we are compelled to leave out the fishes proper, such as Adam knew and we, in order to make it fulfilled in Labyrinthodonts, Ichthyosaurs, Pterodactyls, &c. Birds had in no way their culmination, any more than Teliost Fishes, or even the higher insects, and mammals, till the Quaternary of man. The Cetacea (“the great whales”) again resist this expository violence. Expressly specified in the text as created on the fifth day, being water creatures, they according to geology ought to belong to a far later epoch, as being of a high mammalian rank, and in no way to be classed with even the small marsupials, &c., of an earlier day, though this again is not according to the record. The truth we have seen, in accordance with that of the four previous days, is that the fifth day's work contemplates the entire population of sea and air for man's world, and nothing else. Here as in every other case the ages of geology prove untenable when fairly examined. Apply the six days to Adam's time, and the balance is restored.

Exactly analogous for the land's inhabitants is the work of the sixth day. Does it really correspond with Kænozoic time before man, or the Tertiary age? The scripture gives manifestly and solely the land creatures made for man and on the same day as man; geology is obliged to confess that “all the Fishes, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals of the Tertiary are extinct species” (Dana, 518). Take the equine tribe alone: there was the Orohippus of the Eocene, the Anchitherium of the Meiocene, and the Hipparion of the Pleiocene. All passed away before the Quaternary, when the Equus Caballus exists for man's service. Even those who contend most keenly for nothing but secondary causes operating all through cannot deny the general extermination of species that closed Mesozoic time, any more than the great disturbances that wrought repeatedly and similarly in the Tertiary age. Indeed geologists of eminence, who had nothing to do with theology and alleged prejudice, are constrained to allow that the elevation of the great mountain chains of Europe and Asia, as well as of America, only attained their full height about the close of that period, as well as the larger part of igneous eruption, with the usual destruction of systems of life in being previous to God's introducing a new one adapted to the fresh conditions. “Chaos” is not a word any Christian need favor; but there was assuredly a fearful state of disorder that intervened, however brief the interval might have been. Do not geologists seem rash to deny that of which they are and perhaps must be ignorant? But all this was antecedent to the six days. The believer absolutely subject to God's word can calmly accept every ascertained fact, assured that every work of God agrees with His word. But hypotheses are another thing and open to criticism, especially where we see plain symptoms of infidelity open or underlying.

“ And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creature (lit. soul) after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the field, after its kind. And it was so. And God made beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after its kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind. And God saw that [it was] good” (ver. 24, 25).

Where is the analogy even here with the age of Mammals, as the Tertiary has been well designated? If we add according to scripture the creation of man on that same day, the system is not only different but even in contrast. The simple truth intended is that we have in these verses the land population of all kinds for the period of the human race; as before we had that of the waters and of the air, after the vegetable provision, with the due establishment not of light only but of the heavenly phenomena.

To introduce the herbivores, the reptiles, and the carnivores into the text is to strain after a scientific gloss, besides failing to represent the sense in some respects if not in all. Compare Deut. 28:26 for the very first class. Reptiles again are too narrow, and so are the “carnivora,” where “ferae” would express the truth more exactly. Nor is there real anachronism in giving “cattle” as the first named in verse 24, the domesticable if not yet domesticated animals, appropriate to the use of man. “Creeping thing” follows in its more literal application, whereas “moving” expressed more fully the action of the creatures that peopled the waters, so as to embrace not only serpents, &c., but insect life. Animal of earth” designates the wild beast.

All of them are terms in constant usage where man lives and reigns; they do not distinctively define the age of Mammals where he was not, such as Anoplotheres, Chæropotami, Dinotheres, Paltnotheres, Lophiodons, Xiphodons, &c. Pachyderms are no doubt included, but by no means so determined as to warrant a reference to the age in which they abounded. Indeed at that time confessedly there was the almost total absence of the tribe of ruminants, which rose to prominence when man was made.

The language of the text does not really call up the period “when the brute species existed in their greatest magnificence, and brutal ferocity had full play,” but the day crowned by the creation of man where material force fell into the shade before higher powers. In man's presence the greater birds and beasts that co-existed even become extinct; as notably the Moa, of New Zealand, the Dodo of the Mauritius, and the Aepyornis of Madagascar; and again the Urus (or Bos primigenius) described in Cæsar's Comm. de Bell. Gall. vi. 26, the great Irish Elk (or Megaceros), the Megatherium, the Mastodon, and the Mammoth. For the evidence points to their co-existence with man, some for but a little while, others till recent time. The tendency has been to push man's age back on the assumption that only so could he have been coeval with them. But the facts are plain and sure enough, not only as to the first but even the last named also, that they existed with man for no inconsiderable time, and this if we accept the lowest reckoning of Biblical chronology. It seems the fashion just now to exaggerate as to time, placing the glacial season or seasons at an incredibly remote distance, and thus the gigantic creatures that perished then, and man also, judging from remains which indicate his hand. There is on the contrary strong and varied evidence, in the estimate of sober geologists, not committed to hypothesis, to show the recent date of the glacial period both in Europe and in America, and the sudden close of what is called “the drift,” and the extinction of mammoths, &c.

The second part of the sixth day's work is too momentous to be touched here. This only may be remarked, how fitting it is that for Adam's time all animal and vegetable creation should arrive at the highest organization, that the heavenly luminaries should do their regulative work in view of the race, that the seas and the land should be as a whole adequately settled, that the atmospheric conditions in supplies of water, vapor, dew, &c., should stand most favorably, with the bountiful and regular vicissitudes of night and day, for life more varied than ever before here below. Thus, if the geologic ages brought in by divine power and wisdom a constantly rising state of the earth, and of creatures suited to each new state, so the six days connected with Adam and his world express rapidly succeeding divine fiats culminating in him, and in their combination of respective goodness characterizing that period in which the human race were called not only into being but into responsibility before God. Other ages might be distinctively azoic, or the system of life might be ushered in with sea-plants, then with marine life of low type, then with fishes when the Vertebrates were made. Next, when dry land was fitted, such plants grew as would flourish and adapt it for higher ones, and, again for living creatures that live on herbage, as well as prey one on another. So in geologic ages we can talk of the age of Acrogens, of Invertebrates, of Fishes, of Reptiles, and of Mammals. But the human period is characteristically that of all, not in their utmost profusion or in their greatest physical magnitude, but as the rule in their highest forms and also together in their respective places under their appointed ruler, God's vicegerent here below. For example the Cereals attach to the human period, and depend pre-eminently on cultivation. Compare Isa. 28:23-29.

In each case we have God's word, the manifest and immediate result, and its excellence in His sight declared. Thus if the six days gave an immediate relation to Adam, the immense ages antecedent were on a vast scale preparatory; and geology, as one of its ablest exponents owns, “leaves wholly unexplained the creation of matter, life, and spirit, and that spiritual element which pervades the whole history like a prophecy, becoming more and more clearly pronounced with the progressing ages, and having its culmination and fulfillment in man.”

Genesis 1:26-27

In day three we saw the distinct twofold energy of the Creator: not only the waters gathered into seas, and the dry land appearing, and this seen to be good; but the earth caused by his word to put forth grass, herb seeding seed after its kind, and tree yielding fruit, with its seed in itself after its kind, upon the earth, and this seen to be good. On the sixth day there is also a double action, and the second still more strikingly distinguished, as human life is brought into being, the highest of earthly natures (not as before vegetable life, the lowest of organized creatures) here below. The spheres had been fitted in divine wisdom and in the unfolding ways of God for the living beings that were to clothe and fill them with beauty, food, and fruit, to be followed duly by higher beings to profit by all that His provident goodness had prepared, all endowed with powers of constant reproduction whether vegetable or animal. In a general way God had in the vast ages of which geology takes cognizance so wrought in creative energy, but without man as the center of systems which successively appeared and fell. The days we have seen have special reference to man who on the sixth follows and crowns the highest animals set under his rule.

“ And God said, Let Us make men in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over fish of the sea, and over bird of the heavens, and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And God created Man in His image, in God's image created He him; male and female created He them” (ver. 26, 27.).

Not only is man introduced with marked separateness from the previous creation of animals, even from those of the earth made on the same day, each “after its kind,” and all seen as “good,” but for the first time God enters into counsel with Himself for this great and absolutely new work. It is no longer “Let there be,” or “Let the earth (or “the waters") bring forth,” though man's body is in its due place expressly said to have been formed of the dust of the ground. Here the language rises into appropriate grandeur and solemnity, “Let Us make men.” Not a word about kinds of men, for there was but one; whatever people may have subsequently dreamed in their pride or in the selfish advantage they desired to take of their degraded follows. Not a little was suffered afterward in view of their hard-heartedness; but from the beginning it had not been so. We shall hear yet more when we come to a fresh revelation, not of man's creation as its head simply, but of the moral relations in which he is shown to have been set; but here there is ample evidence of the dignity conferred on the race. “Let Us make men in Our image, after Our likeness.” Nothing is more opposed to the Bible than the anthropomorphism of Greek and Roman mythology, which degraded their deities to fallen mules and females with like passions and lusts, and gave the sanction of religion to the basest immorality. And what philosophers of Greece or Rome ever ventured to claim so noble a prototype? Here Moses was inspired to give it as the holy declaration of the Creator. How far from the brute at length evolving man, a theory suggested by Satan to brutalize the race! It is the simple yet wondrous truth: not God brought down to the human level, but men alone created after a divine pattern.

A frequent question is raised as to the force of the terms and their precise shade of difference; for those are not to be heard who hide their ignorance under the assumption that both mean the same thing. The usage throughout the O. and N. Testaments seems to indicate, that “image” represents, and “likeness” resembles. Thus the “image” of the world-power in Nebuchadnezzar's dream represented the succession of Gentile empires from first to last: likeness could not be the point. So it is “image” in the plain of Dura, (Dan. 3), the proportions of which exclude a human figure, or time resemblance of any living creature. Whatever it might not be like, it definitely represented what the monarch commanded to be an object of worship. Again, in the N. T. the denarius our Lord asked for had on its face the image and superscription of Cæsar. It might have been a faulty likeness, but was an indisputable image of the Roman imperator. It expressed his authority and represented his claim over the Jew because of their departure from God, ill as they liked to own either.

So men (ver. 26) are said to have been made in God's image, after His likeness, as the former is emphatically repeated in ver. 27: not, in His likeness, after His image. In God's image is the truth insisted on, though here also man is declared to be made after or according to His likeness. To man only was it given to represent God here below. Angels are never called to such a place. They excel in might. They fulfill God's word, they hearken unto the voice of His word. Yet no angel rules in His name, nor does he represent Him, as a center of a system subjected to him, and looking up to him. But man was made to represent God in the midst of a lower creation dependent on him; though in order to he created in God's image, he was also made “after His likeness,” without evil and upright. But even when through sin the likeness existed no more, he abode His image; however inadequate to represent God aright, he was still responsible to represent Him. Hence in Gen. 5:1-2, we read that God made man in His likeness; male and female created He them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam in the day of their creation. But it is significantly added in ver. 3, that Adam begat in his likeness. Seth resembled his father, now fallen, as well as represented him. Again, when after the deluge animals were given for the food of man, blood was interdicted and the most jealous care of human life insisted on, for in the image of God made He man. To kill him was rebellion against God's image, though a man was now anything but like God.

The N. T. fully sustains the same distinction far beyond Caesar's case already referred to. Thus the man in 1 Cor. 11 is distinctively called God's image and glory, as publicly representing Him; and Christ, the incarnate Son, is styled “image of the invisible God.” His not being called “likeness” only confirms the truth. If so entitled, it would deny His deity. He was God, instead of being only like God. Compare for the Christian now Col. 3:10, as well as 2 Cor. 3:18; and for the glorious result Rom. 8:29, and 1 Cor. 15:49.

On the other hand we must not confound the state of Adam unfallen with the new man which after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. This is descriptive of the new creation, not of the first Adam state where all was mere innocence, but the knowledge of good and evil along with the power by grace which abhors evil and cleaves to good that is implied in righteousness and holiness of the truth. This is not nature, but supernatural in believers, who become partakers of a divine nature. 2 Peter 1:4.

Nevertheless, though Adam's state was far from that of which Christ is the risen head, he evidently was made to have a portion though a creature, above all the creation that surrounded him, “in God's image, after His likeness.” How utterly false in presence of the Bible are the speculations of evolution, an hypothesis logically at issue with those fixed laws of nature, which the same philosophers cry up to the exclusion of God. For how reconcile invariable law with change of species? The truth is that real science depends upon the uniformity of results, and consists of discovering and classifying them. This does not hinder variation through circumstances, failing which the original type returns. Again, as natural science is based on the reality and continuance of species, so it can give no account of origins. If honest, it admits there must be a cause, and an adequate one; but here, as science, it is and must he wholly ignorant. God's word alone reveals truth; and of all reveries, none viler than the ignorance, which refuses to learn and dares to defy divine revelation, by conceiving man a developed ape, fish, seaweed, or aught else. The truth is that primordial causes are beyond science, which, instead of honestly owning its ignorance, pretends to deny the creation which scripture clearly reveals. God alone could create; and He declares that He has done so, and in what order. Science would gladly learn if not skeptical; for its province lies in investigating effects, and cannot reach up to primordial causes, which it is of all moment to know: we can only know them from. God's testimony, which is simple if we were.

How worthy of God and cheering to man, turning from these freaks of spurious science, to weigh once more His words! “Let us make men in Our image after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over fish of the sea and over bird of the heavens [the work of day five] and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth [sixth day's work]. And God created Man in His image, in God's image created He him; male and female created He them.” How emphatically, it will be noticed, Moses says that God created the race. It was enough to say so once of the vast universe in ver. 1, when it was brought originally into being. Again it was said to mark the introduction of animated nature, or at least of the aquatic mammals, into the Adamic world in ver. 21. But here of man it is repeated again and again to enforce the attention of all who tremble at God's word. Not only was man an unprecedented creature, but he had a place in God's mind altogether peculiar, not merely in time on earth, but for all eternity. For the unfolding of this we must await other declarations of God's mind. What is said here points to his creature place as originally set on earth by God. Even for the details of this we need chapter 2 with its all-important supplement on the relations of Adam, where we have the key to the fact that the man was created “male and female,” as we are told here: a single pair, and even so, formed as none other ever was, that man might be differentiated from every creature in earth or heaven. For immense consequences turn on that fact, which God took care to make good, and only He in the nature of things could reveal.

What can science as such say on a matter so profoundly interesting, and morally so important? Is it logical to deny whatever it does not know? For science to confess ignorance is no doubt humiliating. But is it reverent to despise what God does know and has revealed? Alas science knows nothing of faith any more than of piety or reverence. Were it content to assert only what it knows, and confess its ignorance of all beyond its own limits, it would do less mischief and speak more becomingly. Hewers of wood and drawers of water have a place useful if not dignified. Boasting is not seemly, save only in the Lord for all who trust Him.

Genesis 1:28

Thus we have seen Man, the race, created in God's image. No doubt, that this should be true, it was and must be after God's likeness in the absence of all moral evil. But it was emphatically a creation in God's image. Man was the last and chief creature here below, the only one in the heavens or the earth, whom scripture designates as made in God's image: a wondrously high distinction, with the grave responsibility of representing Him aright before others, as His delegated ruler. Not even the highest angel possesses such a place before the universe. Angels serve on account of those that shall inherit salvation.

But here, as we may easily stray, we need simple and entire subjection to the written word; and that we are most unlikely to have or court unless we have unwavering faith in it, as we certainly ought if we believe it inspired of God. This the apostle predicates, not merely of scripture generally as a known body of holy writings, but of everything coming under that designation, some of which had yet to be written. What can be conceived more precious and withal comprehensive, than πᾶσα γραφὴ, “every scripture,” in 2 Tim. 3:16? He declares it to be, not only useful for the various purposes of divine blessing to man, but before all God-inspired. All admit the human instruments; but if scripture be God-inspired in every part, it is certain that God is not a man that He should lie. And He has magnified His word above all His name.

Now there is a two-fold danger of misapprehending Adam's state and place while unfallen. We may exalt it beyond the truth by confounding it with what grace gives in Christ; or we may lower it by making it a question of such reasoning and conscience as man acquired by the fall. In his original state Adam stood in relationship with God. in thankful use of all He gave, but liable to death on disobedience. It was in no way heaven held out if he obeyed, as will appear more fully by-and-by. The danger was of losing his first estate by transgression. But God imposed no such moral government as the law; nor had Adam the knowledge of good and evil till the fall. Man was not holy but innocent, and tested solely by prohibition as the simple test of obedience on God's part. It was a blessed creature's responsibility to obey with the threat of death on transgression. By the fall man got the knowledge of good and evil, that is, the intrinsic perception of right and wrong apart from prescription; or as Jehovah Elohim said (Gen. 3:22), “Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil!” In Adam fresh from God's hand the knowledge of good and evil would have been a defect, a moral inconsistency, and therefore an impossibility. Before the fall he had conscience solely in the sense of responsibility to obey, not at all in the way of accusing or else excusing self. Only when he sinned, and thus lost his innocence, did he gain the moral power of knowing good and evil of himself, henceforth his sad, painful, but most useful monitor. Before that he was naturally enjoying divine goodness in its creative effects, under the test, not of resisting things intrinsically evil, but of a single restriction from God which made eating the forbidden fruit wrong: a state wholly different from ours. The fall changed for evil the whole ground of standing. Propitiation with life in Christ is a still deeper and higher change for good, even though in fact the old man yet abides and is altogether evil in itself. Christianity is no mere restoration of man, but eternal life in Christ and eternal redemption.

But unfallen Adam was in no way free in the sense of independence of God. He had indisputable title to act in what God subjected to him, but in nothing else. Obedience and dependence were due to God. All was good around him to enjoy: one thing was forbidden, and wrong because God. forbade it as a test of subjection to Himself. To act independently was to set self up as God, and thus in effect to set aside the true God. But this is sin, yea, apostasy from God, instead of walking as created in His image, after His likeness, the total opposite of Him, Who being God, became man, the image of the invisible God, come to do His will on earth where all else had failed.

And here it is that science, however interesting in its sphere and useful also, comes in so mischievously. At best it ignores man as God created him, because it only knows man as he is, fallen from His original relationship with God in nature; as it equally ignores man born anew, born of water and of the Spirit, because the new birth is supernatural. This ignorance falsifies scientific ideas and reasonings. For instance that knowledge of good and evil of which scripture speaks as a consequence of the fall, or a moral sense as men call it, is assumed to be the highest ethical constitution that has survived the fall! But there was this immense difference that, while of course God knew good and evil, it was as One unassailable by evil and supreme above it in His own nature: man only acquired it by sin and in subjection to the power of evil, and thus having it now in himself. The Lord Jesus on the contrary was the Word made flesh, born not innocent only but holy, rejecting evil always even when tempted as Adam and his sons never were, and at the end as a sacrifice dying for sins and to sin, that we who believe might live in Him risen, the life-giving Spirit, the Second Man and Last Adam.

Now faith only, not science, recognizes either the fall of the first man as affecting all mankind and the entire scene put under him, or the victory which God gives all who believe in Christ risen from the dead. Science accepts fallen man's estate as the only one, because it alone is the subject-matter of ordinary experience. It is therefore involved in difficulties necessarily insoluble, because it knows neither the sinless and happy state in which God originally set man, nor the righteous deliverance which the Lord Jesus gives to faith in God's love; still less the glory, power, and incorruption to be made good even for the dead and for the mortal body when He comes. Philosophy is either openly infidel or vainly essays to conciliate, with a God of power and goodness, a world of sin, suffering, misery, and death. Were creation truly believed and the fall honestly confessed, the main difficulty vanishes; absolutely so, when God's love is read in the gift of His Son incarnate and suffering for the sinful world which crucified Him in its unbelief of His glory and rejection of His grace and truth. But science as such starts with the world and man as they are, ignoring his moral disorder and the effect of this on what was subjected to him; and cannot rise above the facts it discovers in the perceived course of nature, but may deduce its laws so called. God only could reveal creation. His word alone tells how man fell from innocence in first estate into sin and death, and dragged down with him all the inferior creation. Science in its very nature is incapable of rising to this knowledge infinitely more important as it is than all it can make known or even discover, however ample the field in nature may be. For revelation speaks of three broadly distinct conditions: creation unfallen; creation as it is in guilt, and misery, whatever the resources of sovereign grace held out to faith; creation as it will be when all things are made new. Science occupying itself solely with the intermediate is in great danger of denying in dishonest pride what it cannot know scientifically, to the destruction of all who trust it, instead of the God Who gave His Son in love to save sinners who repent and believe the gospel.

But to return, we read, “And God blessed them; and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over fish of the sea and bird of the heavens, and over every living thing that creepeth on the earth” (ver. 28). Man, as Prof. Owen said, is the sole species of his genus, and the sole representative of his species.

This is the second benediction of creation. The first was when God made the creatures that peopled the waters and the air of Adam's world, the earliest to enjoy animal life in that state of things. God has pleasure in blessing His creatures that have a life even of a lowly kind to appreciate the fruits of His goodness, and especially in view of their reproduction and multiplying within their sphere. Here, a second time, He blessed mankind, male and female, of whom alone it is said, though the detailed difference is reserved for a subsequent and more fitting occasion. In verse 22 we have only “saying,” but here “God said to them, Be fruitful,” &c. Man was the depositary of God's revelation, as he ought to be His priest, and, as we have seen, His viceroy. This is more than the interpreter of nature, as one of our sages styled him. He had intercourse with God at once.

Language thus was in no way the slow invention of man's wit, but an immediate endowment of our first parents by God from creation. Here His word assures us of its reality from the first day of man's creation; and everything confirms in the chapters that follow. To imagine otherwise is to disbelieve the Bible and prefer one's own thoughts or the dreams of other men, as if we or they could know anything about the matter. He Who alone knows all has been pleased to tell us the truth through Moses. His word was valid for the unintelligent creation: how comforting for the human pair to hear Him say, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it! Even though man comes in as a creature with the rest, still he is introduced exceptionally as the crown of creation; and the higher creatures are pronounced good separately from man, who is blessed, male and female, in an address to them as at the head of all the rest.

Then comes the proclamation of the rule assigned them by God. Not only were they like others to multiply and fill the earth, they were to subdue, or bring it into subjection. Next He adds as before, “and have dominion over fish of the sea and over bird of the heavens, and over every living thing that creepeth on the earth.” Thus from the outset was man, even when enumerated as a being fresh from God, set apart essentially. None other was to subdue the earth. He alone had the God-given capacity. He alone was called to have dominion. Development in the Darwinian sense is not only an illusion, but at plain issue with the word of God. A striking and practical proof of the reality of this dominion as far as every beast and every bird was given to Adam (Gen. 2:19) when Jehovah Elohim brought them to see what their lord would call them, and whatever he called each living soul (or creature), that was its name: a fact full of interest otherwise on which some remark will fall in its season. He was owned by God in that place of authority which entitled him to give each subject creature its name.

For the present however we do not notice more than the singular evidence here afforded of real intelligible language communicated from the very first to the head of the race. Adam had it in perfection like the other properties of full growth the day he was created. Doubtless in this he differed from all that sprang from him in due time and to this day who have to learn. But here God created worthily of Himself; and even infidels own that there must have been primeval causes for all that exists, of which science can give no account. It can at most only say “must be,” not “is.” For its fixed laws are only gathered from the constant course of things; and such a course supposes the “things that appear” to have gone on long enough for men to observe the order of nature which they thus designate. An originating first cause is no less certain; also the phenomena need time for that regular course that they describe by “laws of nature.” Eternal self-existence belongs only to God, not to the creature; and none so negligent or perhaps rebellious as geologists, if they forget how often God intervened to create as well as to destroy in a way irreconcilable either with chance or with fate. But these are the characteristic main-springs of Epicureanism on the one hand and of Stoicism on the other, the two chief opposing systems of ancient philosophy (Acts 17:18) as of modern under new names. Without creation and the fall man can account for nothing aright; but for knowing either we need faith and these from revelation, which some in their infatuation pronounce impossible. These men confessedly can make known their evil ideas to their fellows; but God, they argue, cannot communicate His good word. What is possible with men seems to their unbelief impossible with God! Could folly sink lower? Creation must be a miracle; and miracles must not be. Has not the nineteenth century settled it forever?

Here also natural religion betrays its inherent insufficiency and falseness. For it never truly feels or acknowledges the fall, even if it borrow creation as a tradition from the Bible. If it estimated the ruin aright, it would own the necessity of divine revelation and of salvation by grace, yea of a Savior able to meet God in righteousness, no less than man in grace. But it takes the ground of making out a righteousness of its own, supplemented by God's mercy to cover all faults and deficiencies. Impossible for any soul to find satisfaction thus. For on one side he acknowledges a Creator God of power and goodness infinite; on the other he faces a world and race of sin, evil, wretchedness, and death, to say nothing of a judgment he could not but dread. The strongest and clearest mind is lost in this labyrinth; and human efforts on the religious side of superstition are as vain to clear it up and present the truth and purge the conscience as the profane speculations and self-contradictory antinomies of philosophy. Human religion only hardens men in their naturally false thoughts of God as either austere or easy-going. Philosophy (in its struggles to escape the inconsistencies inevitable to a fallen estate which is not confessed to God with a broken heart) only darkens more deeply what is already dark, and ends too often by the mental endeavor to deny the God Whom sin and unbelief have made unknown, save in the qualms of conscience.

No! man was made to look up, not physically alone but morally, in dependence on God the source and giver of all goodness. He sought independence by sin, and gained a conscience already bad, which made him look down, while his pride still pretended to everything. He had lost God and departed from Him, and (being wholly insufficient to abide self-sustained) set his mind on the creature below himself so as at length even to deify it. The Son of God emptied Himself by taking the form of a bondman, being made in the likeness of men, and humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto the death of the cross, where God was glorified as to sin by propitiation for it, and the ground laid for the righteous salvation of all who, believe. A man-god was Satan's bait and man's ruin. The God-man dying in obedience and for redemption is the triumph of truth and grace.

Genesis 1:29-31

The closing notice remains, the economy of the primeval creation, and the divine estimate of it all.

“ And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb producing seed that [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which [is] the fruit of a tree producing seed: to you it shall be for food; and to every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, in which [is] a living soul, every green herb for food. And it was so. And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day” (ver. 29-31).

Man has still his distinctive place in God's commission and plan; but it is in the state of innocence. After the fall came in corruption and violence. Animal life was not permitted to man till after the deluge. Herbs and fruit were given at first to man, and to the subject creation every green herb. Death was not in the Adamic earth till sin. Granted that Rom. 5:12-21 does not go beyond the human race as fallen under death through sin; but Rom. 8:19-22 looks at “all the creation” as ruined through the fall of its head. Neither scripture raises any question about states of the earth anterior to Adam. We have seen in Gen. 1:1-2, the general principle of a previous condition called into being and destroyed; which, as far as it goes, leaves room for death by one means or another among the animals then. In no previous conditions was there man existing, still less the great moral trial of Adam the first head, and the varied dispensations of God, till through the last, the risen Adam, God gives those who believe the victory. Whatever gradual approach may have been made before, the six days describe the foundation of that platform where man would be tested in every way according to divine wisdom, and God was in due time to bring in Christ, His Son, become man to glorify Him, not only in obedience but redemption, and a wholly new and everlasting creation only as yet come in the person of its glorious Head on high. The words of God here spoken are in view of man and earth yet unfallen.

Here experience is necessarily at fault. For only the Bible could give us the truth as to the primitive phase of man and the creatures around him. But it at once approves itself, when revealed, as being the sole conceivable state in which the Creator could have placed creation and its head suitably to His own goodness. Hence the force and moral beauty of His final survey in the last verse. “And God saw everything that He had made (i.e., in the Adamic earth), and behold, it was very good.” So with the one exception of day second had He called each thing “good;” now as a whole it was superlatively so in His eyes.

Yet the unbeliever, scientific or not, is misled. by his abuse of experience about a time where he cannot have a tittle of evidence to contradict scripture, and imputes to God, if he allow there is One, such a world as would be the production of a fiend, not of the Only True God. Even on his own ground it is the grossest assumption to assume that at the beginning (and science is now compelled to own there must have been a beginning) things were as they now are. It is illogical, as well as infidel, to take for granted that the present state is a normal one, or that God made men sinful, vain, proud, selfish, to say nothing of more abominable outbreaks; that He left men indifferent, so as to become heathen or Jews, Mahometans or Christians, of any religion or of none, without guidance or proof. It is evident that the state of the world is offensive to God; and that it has been so since man left records more or less credible. This is a fact, Bible or no Bible. But the Bible alone gives us the simplest, clearest, and fullest explanation, in a few words, how it came to pass. God made man upright, surrounded by everything “very good” yet under trial of obedience, as we shall soon hear definitely; but he departed from God through the wiles of the enemy in the face of solemn warning. He sinned and thus introduced death for himself and his posterity, and “subjected to vanity” the creation put under him. But God, when tracing the evil to its source, has proved His goodness by holding out the assurance of a Conqueror over the enemy, even while suffering Himself, to be born of woman too. And to this word all believers from the fall clung till He came Who made it good in His death on the cross and in His resurrection.

Thus does God from the first proclaim mercy rejoicing over judgment, though sin bore its sorrowful fruits in an outcast race and a blighted world, where no creature is as God made it. It is science, not scripture, here as elsewhere, which brings in difficulties even for believers.

Thus Sir J. W. Dawson in his Archaia, 217-222, raises questions which are certainly not solved, though brought by himself, a very competent geologist, “into the light of our modern knowledge of nature.” He pictures Eden either cleared of its previous inhabitants or not yet invaded by animals from other centers! He supposes man created then with a group adapted to his happiness (Gen. 2:19, &c., treating of. them only), and these latest species of animals and plants extending themselves within the spheres of older districts, so as to replace the ferocious beasts of older epochs and other regions! He fancies that on the fall the curse that befell the earth would thus consist in the predaceous animals with thorns and briars invading his Eden. Most of my readers will have heard more than they wish of notions as irreconcilable with scripture as derogatory to it. How can the excellent Principal of Mc Gill College have indulged in such speculations? Evidently, because being sure, too sure, of his geological scheme, he accommodates scripture to it: a position not very wise scientifically where so much is continually shifting and so little is absolutely ascertained—a position most antagonistic to a Christian's faith in God's word. He is not entitled geologically to assume a mixture of the conditions of the Tertiary with those of the human period in the Quaternary. His theory of day-ages exposes him to these consequences, along with the recently adopted fashion of opposition to A. D'Orbigny's careful and exhaustive proof in his “Prodrome de Stratigraphique Palæontologie," that not a species of plants or animals survived the Tertiary, and that a distinct break preceded man's time as often before.

And what is the alleged ground in scripture? “Man was to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the b'hemah or herbivorous animals. The carnivorous creatures are not mentioned, and possibly were not included in man's dominion”! But this is distinctly refuted by ver. 30, which expressly assigns every green herb to “every beast” or animal of the earth. The same text proves that at this time “every animal in the earth was herbivorous,” though it is boldly laid down that this cannot be meant. Nor should any believer question the past fact, if assured by inspired prophecy that the day is coming, when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard lie down with the kid, when the cow and the bear shall feed, their young lying down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. Here undoubtedly science will decry and scoff; but he who believes (as Dawson does) the unfallen state of Adam and his Eden, if not his earth, is inconsistent in curtailing his rule to a petty domain. The apostle, we have seen, interprets his headship of creation in general, whatever modern geology may pronounce to the contrary.

Philologically too, it is quite an error that b'hemah, though expressing “cattle,” is limited as is here imagined. Any good Hebrew Concordance will show the most unlearned that it is frequently employed in the largest sense and rightly rendered “beast” in both the A. and the Rev. Versions. Compare Gen. 6:7; 7:2 twice, 8; Gen. 8:20; 34:23; 36:6; Ex. 8:17-18; Ex. 9:9-10, 19, 22, 25; 11:5, 7; 13:2, 12, 15; 19:13; 20:10; 22:10, 19. It occurs at least 25 times in this sense in Lev. 8 times in Numbers, and 7 times in Deuteronomy; so often in the historical books, in the Psalms and in the Prophets, where the sense of “cattle” is in fact rare.

This then is God's account of His creation, and in detail of the Adamic earth. No wise man will wonder that we are conducted silently over the vast and successive platforms of dead plants and animals, to say nothing of the debris of rocks, under water and heat. Here we have a system of life rising up, not by any necessity but by divine power, wisdom, and goodness, to beings constituted chief of creation and made in His image after His likeness, before sin brought in death and every woe on the guilty and all subject to them: a system where our feeble eyes cannot fail, save blinded by willful evil, to see it everywhere, above, around, below, filled with contrivances that disclose the omniscient designs and the inexhaustible benevolence of the omnipotent Designer, yet in no case absolutely, but with a view to moral government, the effects of which afford a handle of objection to those who refuse that divine word which reveals good then and still higher purposes of grace in Christ for all who believe. Even in the lowest point of view, well may we at this place exclaim with the psalmist, “These wait all upon Thee, that Thou mayest give them their meat in due season: That Thou givest them, they gather. Thou openest Thine hand; they are filled with good.”

Genesis 2:1-3

These verses are really the necessary supplement and close of chap. 1, if we divide into chapters on a sound principle. It is well known that such a division, save in the Psalms etc., has no authority and is not seldom erroneous. The new title given to God, Jehovah Elohim, indicates consistently a new subject, as will be shown in its place. Hitherto it is simply Elohim, the abstract name of the Creator. Here as everywhere the name has nothing whatever to do with the question of authorship, as ignorant unbelief has suggested with misplaced confidence, but springs exclusively from internal reasons, as may be seen throughout scripture to much interest and instruction.

“ And the heavens and the earth and all their host were finished. And God had finished on the seventh day His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that on it He had rested from all His work which God had created in making” (or, and made, lit. to make) (vers. 1-3).

The last is without doubt a remarkable phrase, falling in naturally with what we have seen in the opening verses, an original creation where man was not, succeeded by catastrophe, and by fresh creative energy, the details of which refer to the scene where and when man was to be brought into being. Here the work and the rest of God are in clear view of the race; and the seventh day or sabbath has immense importance. On its first mention it was unmistakeably the witness of God's rest: His rest, not from weariness of course, but from the work of creation and making. This work was now ended for the life that now is. And as the six preceding days were literal, so is the seventh the closing day of the week.

This is amply and strictly confirmed by Ex. 20:1-11. The sabbath is not a but the seventh day, the memorial of creation finished—of the Adamic world. “For in six days Jehovah made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; therefore Jehovah blessed the sabbath day and sanctified it.” The language is precise. It is not said “created” but “made”. This was the right phrase as a whole for the work of the six days, however well creating is said of parts within that work. It was not the original production, but a special construction of divine will and power with man in view. That the seventh day is the sabbath is with equal care impressed in Deut. 5:12-15, though the connection of heart here is with the deliverance from bondage in the land of Egypt rather than with creation.

Nor is there a commandment on which scripture laid greater stress, when the law was bound on the sons of Israel, than that of the sabbath. All the others were moral in a sense which this was not; for of their own selves they could not but feel and own the duty. But the hallowing of the sabbath was of God's initiation exclusively, and singularly marked out for His people that they should not even look to gather the manna on that day. His honor was pre-eminently identified with its observance; and so was His blessing.

For us, Christians, the first day of the week, and not the sabbath, is characteristic. That only is to us the Lord's-day, as the day of His resurrection, and the witness of our accomplished redemption and of the power of His life as risen from the dead, and our life. It is accordingly as much marked by the new creation and grace as the sabbath day was by the six-days' creation and the law. And, though we have to do with the Lord on the first day, as the N. T. makes plain in manifold ways, the sabbath is not done with but will assuredly re-appear, when Zion arises from her long slumber in the dust, and the light of Jehovah shines in Israel for the universal blessing of the earth and the nations, as it never did even in the days of David and Solomon: so the prophets proclaim, and scripture cannot be broken.

Ours meanwhile is a higher call and a brighter hope; for we are by the Holy Spirit united to Him Whom Jew and Gentile crucified, Whom God not only raised but set at His own right hand in the heavenlies, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in that which is to come; we are the body of the glorified Head. Those who had the sabbath, as a sign between them and Jehovah, rejected their own Messiah, Who, slain by the hand of lawless men, lay in the grave that sabbath, “high” or great day as it emphatically was. It was the sin and the death of Israel, the ground of a still more terrible scattering than that of Assyria or of Babylon; yet in God's grace the divine and only efficacious means to faith of blotting out that sin and every other; as we prove who believe the gospel, while hardening in part has befallen Israel. But all Israel shall be saved by-and-by; and when they are, from one moon to another and from one sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before Jehovah. We now by the Spirit sent down from heaven draw near by faith within the holiest, and this with boldness by the blood of Jesus. Of our peculiar blessing the first day, not the seventh, is the witness. Nor can lack of Christian intelligence be more decided than confounding the Lord's-day with the sabbath.

But the seventh day is also decisively against the day periods. For what can be conceived more unnatural, save when we let a system of private interpretation carry us away alike from simplicity and from spiritual understanding? Till the six days introduced Adam and his world, it could not be said that the heavens and the earth, still less “all their host,” were finished. Previous states of the creation had their importance; but till man and his congeners, animal and vegetable, there was a great lack. Neither on earth nor even in the heavens was there a creature made in God's image or after His likeness. This was not a little in itself as bringing in moral ways of and with man, and room for God's manifestation in promise and government, till the infinite fact of Immanuel, the Word made flesh, the Son of God a man, and His work no less infinite of redemption, yet to be the basis not only of the church's blessedness, as also of all saints and of Israel to come, but of the new heavens and new earth through all eternity.

What possible evidence from scripture that “the seventh day is the modern or human era in geology” (Archaia, 235)? or as the author of “Footprints of the Creator” puts it, “God's sabbath of rest may still exist; the work of redemption may be the work of His sabbath day”! Does it need the words of any one to refute such a reverie of self-destroying fancy? The scripture before us points out His rest as cessation from work, not merely from creation, but from creating to make. No doubt, if six immensely protracted periods of several thousand years each were certainly meant by the six days, analogy would claim a proportionately lengthened term for the seventh. But the doctrine of God's word even then would be thrown into confusion. For sin violated the rest of creation; and as God could not rest in sin, so He would not in misery, its effect. This is not our rest; it is polluted.

The argument of Heb. 3-4 is that, even though Messiah is come and the work of propitiation wrought, and we that believed do enter into the rest of God, we are only as yet in the day of temptation in the wilderness. Hence we are exhorted to fear lest any might seem to have failed, and to use diligence to enter in. A sabbatism, then, remains to the people of God. It is not yet come. It is the day of glory and not before when God has no more work to do, all being done so perfectly that He can rest forever. So our Lord pleaded to those who indulged in somewhat similar imagination in His day, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work". But work and rest are in contrast. Hence our Lord did on the sabbath what roused the enmity of the Jews implacably. God's rest was in no true sense come. He must work in grace, yea, the Father and the Son; and this has been done beyond all thought of the creature, and God is glorified thereby, yet the rest remains for another day.

But that work, infinitely acceptable and efficacious, is the very opposite of His rest, though the foundation of it. Meanwhile the heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ are being called; the delay, the longsuffering of God, is salvation; and the people of God must be by faith fitted to enjoy His rest. In due time they will enter in, in heaven and on earth. But it still remains; it is not yet come. The idea of a sabbath from Adam till now is a dream wholly antagonistic to all revealed truth. It will be at the end when God makes all things new, and the first things have passed away. This is in the fullest sense the rest of God, not the morning cloud that enveloped the entrance into Canaan, nor the dew that passed so early away in Eden. They were but shadows. The reality is to come, the true rest of God. There cannot be rest and work at the same time in the same sense. To view the sabbath or rest of God as contemporaneous with His work is to be in a mist and to lose completely the truth of both in strange fancifulness.

The absurdity which thus inevitably attaches to the age-day theory is proved by no consideration more clearly than by the seventh day or sabbath. That the natural day is meant is only the more evident from the fact that scripture leaves no room for a symbolic or age-lasting sabbath, after the Adamic world was made, but casts us only on its sure but still future dawn. It is “a promise left us” which the day of glory alone fulfills. Of this the sabbath, the natural day at the beginning, was the pledge, the blessed antitype, when God and the creature shall by redemption and resurrection power enjoy the communion of His own rest, sin, sorrow and death completely effaced, and love, righteousness, and glory triumphant forever through our Lord Jesus. This the scriptures hold out abundantly and unambiguously; but an allegoric sabbath stretching over the fall and the deluge, the kingdom of Israel and the Gentile world-powers, to say nothing of the law, the gospel, and the church, is a mere fiction of some few geologists speculative beyond the rest, for which not a word of revelation has ever been truly advanced.

Genesis 2:4

A manifestly new section begins with chap. 2:4, though with unmistakable reference to the chapter before, which it summarizes as an introduction to a fresh point of view that looks on to the end of chapter 3. The opening words here and elsewhere are supposed by some who deny neither Moses nor inspiration to indicate that Moses thus interwove separate documents preserved by the heads of the Semitic race, and that this fact is one of the strongest internal testimonies that we have to do with genuine historical records. No believer need deny the principle if God's inspiration be truly maintained. Moses truly have been inspired to incorporate ancient records where authentic, as Luke gives us the confidential letter of Claudius Lysias to Felix. Only it is hard if not quite impossible to conciliate some eleven such documents with the perfect unity that pervades Genesis, especially as a divinely ordered type, i.e., prophetically of the future. But the grand truth overlooked is the reality of divine inspiration and its incomparable character and depth. Documents or not, this is certain. And what document could there have been of the creation? God alone could have given that. Take also this first of “the generations “; how could even Adam have furnished anything of the sort?

“These [are; the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that Jehovah Elohim made earth and heavens.”

The change in the divine designation harmonizes with no less change in the subject matter and calls out phraseology in keeping with it. It is no longer as in chap. 1. “God” (Elohim) only, but “the LORD God” (Jehovah Elohim). We may see, not only here but everywhere, how wise is the design, and how worthy of God; for the instrument employed may not even have understood the full force of what was given him to write. On the one hand difference there is, though not discrepancy; on the other, call for the exercise of faith and spiritual intelligence. “By faith we understand.”

Of all attempts to solve the questions that arise, none so weak or crude as the fancy of distinct remains of independent authors here put together, not to say slashed or mangled. There is no account of creation but that which we have already had. Now we are told of the relations established, which bring in the specific title of divine government, Jehovah, and identify it with Him Who created all. Can aught be conceived more in place, right, and seasonable? It is impossible fairly to call the new section Jehovistic; for throughout Jehovah never occurs without Elohim, though on a few exceptional occasions easily explicable Elohim occurs without Jehovah. How in the least degree does a different writer account for the usage? It is at best a child's guess and can only mislead. See its absurdity in 1 Kings 18:36, 39, and in Jonah 1; 3; 4, &c.

Jean Astruc in 1753 seems to have first suggested the chimera in his “Conjectures sur les memoires originaux, dont ii parait que Moise s'etait servi pour composer le livre de Genese,” which appeared simultaneously at Brussels and Paris. He was a medical man of strong memory, wide reading, and mental activity, but totally devoid of depth or large views even in the science of his own profession. Yet a supposition equally shallow and easy of refutation, inadequate to meet the facts of the case, and barren of a spiritual thought or a godly feeling, drew after it not a few ingenious and learned Germans with their British and American admirers. For this but one circumstance accounts—the skeptical spirit that preceded and accompanied the last century of revolution. Astruc conceived a double set of longer documents by authors respectively Elohistic and Jehovistic, with nine or ten others of lesser extent, all independent. Even to give unity to such various materials was no small task. This some would assign to Moses: others are keen to bring down the unknown “redactor” or digester as late as is plausible by specious arguments. Of truth and divine design these daring speculators have no notion: God is in none of their thoughts. It is a trifle in their eyes to give the lie virtually to the Lord or any of the Twelve or Paul the apostle. To this their “higher criticism” speedily drags them down. It is a snare of the enemy.

As for scriptural usage, the facts are simple, and the principle plain. Elohim expresses the divine Being, the Originator of all other beings, with fullness of power displayed in wisdom and goodness, and so in contrast with man and creature weakness. Hence “God” is used generally where no specific manifestation is intended, or required; and the term is applicable to judges who represent God in delegated authority on earth, and to angels that execute His will from heaven, or even to the “gods many,” as the apostle speaks of heathen worship. The singular form, Eloah, occurs not only in Deut. 32:15, 17, &c., but with frequency from Job 3 to chap. 40, yet rarely in the Psalms and in the Prophets. Still more common is the kindred El, the Mighty One, not only in the Pentateuch (save Leviticus most appropriately) but in Job pre-eminently, as well as in the Psalms and the Prophets, often qualified and even compounded.

Jehovah is His personal name, “The Name,” and this in relationship with man on earth, especially with His people; the Self-existent and Eternal, always the proper name of the true God for those on earth, and in due time that by which He made Himself known as the covenant God of Israel, in Whose presence they were to walk—not El Shaddai, the Almighty God of their fathers, but the LORD God of their sons, His people. Ehyeh (I AM, Ex. 3:14) and Jah (Lord, Ex. 15:2; 17; 10, &c.) are akin to Jehovah, but each used distinctively where a different author is untenable and sheer delusion. Neither is quite Jehovah God, the Governor of man; but as Jah is the absolutely existing One, so Ehyeh expresses His existence as the Everlasting Now consciously felt and asserted, therefore subjective, as Jah is objective.

Hence, in describing creation from first to last as in Gen. 1-2:3, God (Elohim) is the sole suited designation, as giving existence to everything that is, heavens, earth, and all in them. With no less propriety Jehovah Elohim at once appears when He establishes moral relations here below. Hence in chap. ii. alone man is seen (not simply as a creature, whatever his singular honor as head and lord of all on earth) but formed in immediate association with Himself, though his body be of dust. In chap. 2. only do we hear of the garden of delights, with its two mysterious trees, the scene of his trial. Here the lower creatures are “called” as man saw fit, having title from the Eternal God to name them. Here only we learn of the woman taken out of Adam and builded up divinely—she likewise “called” by her husband, yet as part of himself. Here have we no cosmogony as men say, but God, and the creature, in due relations. There is clear recognition of all in chap. 1, but new and special information of the most important kind morally, peculiar to chap. 2 and preparatory to chap. 3. Inconsistency there is none: only prejudiced ignorance can talk so. Still less is there contradiction, save in the mind and mouth of an enemy of God's revelation. The solemn facts of the fall are the continuation, and the same name follows regularly.

This is exactly what ought to be, were one writer inspired to write all three chapters. It was of all moment to know that the One true God, the Creator, is the living Judge of all the earth; and this is simply and impressively conveyed by the combined title. How much better as well as more dignified than by a labored human argument to prove it! In due time (chap. 17.) Jehovah appeared to Abram, the depositary of promise and chief patriarch of Israel, I am El-Shaddai (God Almighty) he. And God (Elohim) talked with him—not man nor angel, but the true God, Whose name is Jehovah. Yet not this but “God Almighty" was the revealed title of Him before Whom the patriarch and his sons were to walk. All the force and beauty of the truth is lost by the low and irreverent conjecture which dreams of so many authors using different names of God, with other points equally misunderstood. “Higher criticism,” indeed! It is really the criticism of the scissors and fit only for the dust-bin of learning without sense. Later still Israel were to have Jehovah given as their God, their national object of worship, and revealed ground of dependence; but He was none other than the God Who created the universe. What a shield against idolatry, had not man been a rebel, a weak and perverse sinner! “He that Was and that is and that is to come” will yet make good His promises in the kingdom. This of course failed under the first man and the old covenant, as everything does; but it will stand forever under the Second Man, the Messiah, and the new covenant when He appears in His glory.

In the chapters that follow it was enough in general to use one or other name alone; and they are invariably employed with purpose, not only throughout Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch, but in the later historical books, in the Psalms, and in the Prophets. In no instance can they be shown to be confounded; in every case where the generic “God” is not used, special motive calls for “Jehovah “; yet these two by no means exhaust the designations we find. In Gen. 14 El-Elyon (the Most High God) dawns on us, reappearing also in the Psalms and the Prophets wherever it was most appropriate. It is that name of God which upholds His title as “possessor of heavens and earth,” to put down all rivals above or below, when the true Melchisedec appears in the exercise of His royal priesthood on the final defeat of the enemy, even before the last and eternal judgment. See Psa. 92:1, as well as Num. 24 and Dan. 4.

Thus Jehovah had been familiar enough from the first; but it was never before revealed to Israel, still less to others, as the specific ground of assurance to them and so of their appeal to Him. God Almighty was the assigned name on which their fathers relied as heirs of promise; and they never found it to fail. Henceforward the sons of Israel (in their greater circle of change than any other people) were to prove Him true, according to the perpetuity of His being, Who is sure to effect His promises in due time; for He is the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever. Alas! they became false witnesses to Jehovah, and even rejected the Object of all promise, Jehovah Messiah. Therefore God has hid His face from Israel for a while, and is now, by the Spirit, making Himself known under the gospel to all who believe, Jew or Greek, as “Father” (2 Cor. 6:18), a still higher and nearer name than that of Jehovah, which was for earth as Father is in and for heaven. The word “Father,” like Jehovah, had been long known, but never all the given name of recognized relationship till the Lord Jesus Who eternally knew it as the Son in His bosom, after declaring it through His living ministry, sent it definitely to His brethren when He rose from the dead, having accomplished redemption (John 20:17); and the Holy Spirit was given them subsequently, crying, Abba, Father.

Clearly therefore the same principle runs through the N. T. as well as the Old. The special name of God, definitely given, is expressive of the relationship in which He is pleased to be known: yet there is also not less but more enjoyment of “God” Himself as such. “The hour cometh and now is,” said our Lord, “when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth".. “God is a Spirit; and they that worship must worship Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23, 24). Both statements are profoundly true and weighty, but they are far from being the same. No key is so false and foolish as imputing the difference to different authors. But this is modern theology.

Nor is it otherwise with those titles disputed in Genesis, where the Spirit led Moses to employ each in accordance with the subject in hand. Even what might seem exceptional is susceptible of ready solution. The serpent is represented as saying (Gen. 3:1), “Yea, hath God said,” and the woman replies, “God hath said” (3), and the serpent rejoins, “God doth know” (5), never in the temptation saying, on either side, Jehovah Elohim. The claims of the divine Governor were in abeyance through the wiles of the evil one. Jehovah Elohim was no longer before the deceived woman. Otherwise the chapter invariably proclaims the two-fold name most appropriately. Now had it been a, composition made up by many successive hands, or the uninspired writing of even Moses or any other man, is it credible that a difference of such delicacy and expressiveness when duly considered could have appeared, to say nothing of the moral wisdom shown in the Elohim of chap. 1 and the Jehovah Elohim of chaps. 2, 3? The suggestion of independent authorship has no basis and therefore no real evidence to commend it; and were it conceded for the moment, it proves quite unequal to explain the single name or the compound, still less the intervening exception. The intention on His part Who inspired the writer renders all simple, especially when the reader learns to understand the propriety in each case.

In a general sense it will be seen that Elohim would have sufficed, and in some cases is most forcible and becoming; but the addition of Jehovah gives special relation and contextual beauty, especially on the supposition of the same hand. It was not nature or evolution that generated the heavens and the earth with their host. Elohim created all to make it as it was for man; as Jehovah Elohim tested man who fails in the face of every advantage. It would have been incongruous to have said Jehovah in describing the creation; and equally so to have said Elohim in laying down relationships. But the creation being attributed to Elohim, it was of all consequence to identify the Creator with the One Who orders all morally and governs man; and this is best expressed by the actually combined terms, Jehovah Elohim, and not casually but consistently till the sad end of the exiled pair, not without a blessed outlook left them on His part Who pronounced judgment on the serpent.

The self-vaunting “higher criticism” means the destruction of the deep interest and profit spiritually derivable from the inspired use of divine titles, as of all else in scripture. The truth is that there never was a drearier nullity, or a more palpable nuisance of learning falsely so called. Who can wonder, since God thereby is divorced from the scriptures? which they cut, apart from all fear of God, as a profane king of Judah the roll that he dreaded. In modern times as in ancient a vain and wicked illusion! God is not mocked. Other opportunities may occur in detail for laying bare the fragment hypothesis, as well as for clearing alleged inconsistencies and disproving what ill will claims to be corroborative evidence. But the main original plea is already shown to be as shadowy as it is unintelligent, as far as could be expected within a short paper such as the present. There is divine design in every change of God's name, as indeed in every other word which the Holy Spirit gave to be written by the chosen instruments.

Genesis 2:5-7

Following up the summary of ver. 4, the peculiar condition of the vegetable kingdom is brought before us just before Adam comes from the hand of God. There is no warrant hence to predicate it of previous ages, even though a similar principle may apply. But all that the text states is that so it was at this time for the abode in immediate preparation for Adam, when Jehovah Elohim made earth and heavens.

“And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for Jehovah Elohim had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground, but a mist went up from the earth and moistened all the surface of the ground. And Jehovah Elohim formed Man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils breath of life [lit., lives]; and Man became a living soul” (ver. 5-7).

It seems clear that it is the description of plants and herbs of the third day's production, before man, the head of creation, appeared. Like man they were of full growth, and not from seed as ever since. It is not a repetition of the general fact of their origin as in chap. 1., but, like all else in chap. 2. from its true beginning, a presentation of special circumstances is here added in the only right place. On the one hand, it is not denied on geological evidence that rain can be proved to have fallen at least as far back as the carboniferous period, however immense the lapse of ages before man. On the other hand, it has been contended that it was a circumstance quite unworthy of notice that the inspired historian should notice these explanatory particulars of vegetation now existing for a few natural days without rain or culture. Evidently this is merely a difficulty and an effort on behalf of the theory of periodistic days. The admirable condescension and interest of Him Who is here shown entering into gracious relations with man are manifested by the intimation, which, in the vast geologic ages, would seem not only unmeaning but untrue. Whatever may have been the divine method before such relations could be, it was of importance for man to know authoritatively that Jehovah Elohim made not only earth and heavens, (changing for similar reason the actual order,) but “every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.” These productions are specified as needful for the food of the living creatures when called into existence on earth; and there they were by God's ordering in suitable maturity, in contrast with subsequent experience. Two reasons are annexed: one that rain had not yet been caused to fall on the earth as it was now constituted; the other that man was not yet there to till the ground. Nobody could mistake, one might think, so plain a hint, but for the blinding influence of a previously conceived theory. He Who made all, even in His every arrangement, considered man and acted in view of him, now especially revealing it when He made man to know Himself in any measure and to enjoy His goodness. Hence also He would have man to know the especial provision even for that brief and peculiar while, “but there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.” This would be strange for scientific men to predicate of the vast geologic periods since vegetation first began. We may see that it is the simple truth for the few days after the third of the first week; and the naming of it here is not only in keeping with the design of the new section, but most worthy of the special place in which man is now set as recorded.

Next, we come to a revelation of transcendent moment, the formation of man, not merely as chief of the earth's denizens (chap. 1.), but for living relationship with Him Who made all. Here, not in the previous chapter, we learn the particulars of man's constitution. “And Jehovah Elohim formed Man [ha-Adam] of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils breath of life; and Man became a living soul.” To this, the apostle refers in his sublime comparison of the first man with the Second in 1 Cor. 15, which every believer should weigh well and make his own. Here it is simply the first man; but what is said is great indeed: dust from the ground the outer man; the inner animated by the breath of Jehovah Elohim. Certainly it was not everlasting life, but none the less an immortal soul. The immediate in-breathing of the Creator is the ground of its immortality. Other animals of the waters or of the earth are called souls,” and justly so; but man alone from God's in-breathing.

In Eccl. 3:21 we hear also of the “spirit of the beast,” for the beast has soul and spirit suited to its nature. The soul is the seat of will for every living creature; the spirit is its capacity. But for the beast all goes “downward to the earth,” not body only, but soul and spirit, having not only a will but also a faculty of its own. But as to man, his spirit (and so of course soul) “goeth upward;” the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” Other animals when produced breathed the breath of life; man was formed externally, as clay by the potter, but did not breathe, till God gave him distinctly and immediately His own breath. Thus did he alone on earth become a living soul, the body mortal, the soul never said so to be, but what is said implying the contrary. Hence is man alone of earthly beings responsible to God. Thus the seat of his individuality and responsibility is in his soul, though the spirit, his inner capacity, goes along with it, greatly enhancing that responsibility; and the body is the outer man, a vessel for serving God or Satan, as the inner man directs.

It will be seen therefore how far they err from the truth who think that Christians only have “spirit” as well as soul and body. Even beasts have, though in them it may be but instinct, in man an incomparably higher and larger faculty, rising with the immensely higher character of man's immortal soul; whereas beasts, however wonderfully endowed according to God's will, are creatures without reason, mere animals to be taken and destroyed (2 Peter 2:12). Consciousness of “I” is in the soul, and on its real existence hangs personal identity; but capacity of reflex reasoning on that consciousness, as on every other object, is in the spirit of man; as capacity for the things of God is with “I” quickened, the power of which is in the Holy Spirit given to the Christian. It is wholly false therefore to confound mind, still more knowledge, with the soul, though the soul has a kindred spirit capable of reflection, discrimination, and all other mental operations within the order of its being. Reflective self-consciousness distinguishes man; still more does God-consciousness. “There is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding” (Job 32:8).

It makes the separate and superior position of man the more impressive, compared with all the subjects of his realm, that he adapts himself to every climate, and to all variety of food, in marked contrast with the brutes whose superficial resemblance is closest. Thus it is plain that the Chimpanzee and Orangutan (or “Hutan” probably) are of small number, limited to a few spots in Asia and Africa, and can live elsewhere, spite of the utmost care, for a short while only.

Yet, of all creatures infant man is the most helpless and dependent on care and shelter during his slow growth; yet he attains in all lands and tribes a longevity thrice as great as his nearest mythical connections. But it is the inner man that differentiates him most truly and essentially from every other earthly being, and enables him (through the family bond that is appointed him) to live above his feeble and defenseless beginning, to make good the dominion given him over fish of the sea and bird of the heavens, and every animal that moves on the earth. Let the waters swarm as they in particular do, let birds multiply on the earth ever so, men were to fill the earth and subdue it as no other being does. Nevertheless, living as he alone does by the in-breathing of God, (he only having his soul thus) is an incomparably higher privilege than all his other natural advantages put together; though in this privilege he perishes everlastingly if he defiantly repent not nor believe in the Savior, instead of submitting to Him, the Lord of all, Who is also full of grace and truth. If by faith subject to the Son, how blessed his portion now and forever, even though his human lot were “most miserable!” Eternal life, eternal redemption, eternal salvation, eternal inheritance, eternal glory: such is the Christian's roll of grace through Jesus Christ our Lord; and he is now sealed of the Spirit accordingly.

Genesis 2:8-9

In chapter 1 we saw that God allotted to the human race dominion over fish, fowl, cattle, and every living thing that creeps or moves upon the earth, as well as over all the earth. That was all general. Here we have, as regularly, a special portion, a domain peculiarly assigned to the first man in his innocence. The deep moral question of the first man was about to be tried.

“And Jehovah Elohim planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put Man whom He had formed. And out of the ground Jehovah Elohim made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowing good and evil” (verses 8, 9).

As for Israel long afterward, there was full preparation now. Nothing was lacking on Jehovah's part. “My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill; and he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein; and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes” (Isa. 5:1, 2). So at the beginning Jehovah Elohim planted a garden eastward in Eden. However fair all the earth might be before ruin came through sin, and everything that God had made “very good,” the garden was distinctly superior, and the object of peculiar care to God in His moral government. Man had to be tried; and no excuse was possible, no flaw could be alleged. If He planted the garden, all was there for use and beauty suitable to creation's unfallen estate. If He loves a cheerful giver, He is Himself the pattern of all bountifulness. He had “formed” Man exceptionally; and so did He “plant” the garden into which He put him; “and out of the ground Jehovah Elohim made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowing good and evil.”

In the last clause we have the elements peculiar to the case, and to that epoch, which as they then were for a little moment did not exist for man at any other time, nor can they be so again. Innocence lost is irrecoverable. God may and does bring in for faith a better condition through the Second man at His first coming, as in manifest power at His second; but there is no restoration of the first estate. The continual tendency is to forget this, even among those otherwise taught of God. They exalt unduly the pristine condition of Adam. They fail to see the completeness of the ruin caused by sin. They lower or ignore the new creation in Christ. And the singular fact is that these errors are confined to no school of theology, though more prominent and glaring in some quarters than in others. Andover, Geneva, Leipzic, Leyden, Montauban, and Oxford differ considerably; but they fairly chime together in assigning too much to the first man, too little to the Last.

Thus it is by almost all men affirmed that Adam was created in righteousness and in holiness of the truth. Not so. This is how the apostle describes the new man exclusively. In no way can it apply to man as originally created for he was simply untainted and upright, but in no real sense cognizant of “the truth” any more than “righteous” and “holy.” He was innocent; he had not what scripture here calls “the knowledge of good and evil.” Man only gained it by the fall. He had, of course, the consciousness of responsibility. He knew that he was bound to obey God, though the test of his obedience lay solely in his not eating, as we shall see in ver. 17, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now holiness implies that, having this knowledge, we are separate from the evil to good. Adam had no such knowledge. Unfallen, he had no lust. He could not have understood the Ten Commandments, still less the Sermon on the Mount. He had neither father nor mother to honor. Nor was there a neighbor to traduce or aught to covet, to say nothing of theft, murder, and adultery. When neighbors began to be, man had been long an outcast from the garden, and the one prohibition in it applied no more. Henceforth as a fallen being he knew good and evil, but he had that knowledge with a bad conscience. As a heathen wrote of himself, we may say of fallen Adam and his race, that they saw the better and followed the worse. Such became the state of man till God intervened with fresh dealings which involved other responsibility.

But there is revealed in ver. 9 another fact of the deepest interest. The tree of life was distinct from that of knowing good and evil. The test of responsible obedience was one thing, quite another the means of life. They are thus from the first shown to be separate; and, in fact, as we know, when man disobeyed by eating of the one tree, he was driven out lest he should take also of the other (ch. 3:22, 23), and thus make his fallen sinful estate everlasting. The tree of life was for one who did not eat of the forbidden tree. Be clearly was it here marked that responsibility and life are wholly separate.

In due time (as the apostle shows, 430 years before the law) came promise, like a tree of life alone. And the fathers clung to it by faith, and were blessed. This, however, was not a complete blessing, but provisional. It was important and necessary that the question of righteousness should be raised; and that of man's righteousness was raised in Israel by the law. But man, Israel, was sinful, and could not answer save to condemnation.

For the law as given by Moses made life contingent on obedience. “Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments; which if a man do, he shall live in them” (Lev. 18:5). Nor did the failure lie in the law but in man; “for if there had been a law which could have given life, truly righteousness had been by the law.” But man was guilty, without strength, and, in short, lost. “As many (men) as are of the works of the law (or on that principle) are under the curse.” The just shall live by quite another principle—by faith. “And the law is not of faith.” They are given for quite different ends, and so (and only so) consistent: the law, to convince the sinner that he cannot thus be justified; faith, to assure the believer that he is thus justified. “By grace are ye saved through faith.” For it is by faith in Christ; Who accepted the responsibility, bearing the consequences of our disobedience and evil state generally on the cross, and is now risen from the dead, manifestly the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. Thus has He, He only, conciliated the two trees, which the law had proposed only to prove that to man as such it is impossible. Our new responsibility as believers is grounded on the relation to God and our brethren, which we enter as having eternal life, along with redemption, in Christ. God is glorified even as to sin in the cross; and we who believe have life eternal and are made God's righteousness in Christ.

It is blessed to see how beautifully the last book of the N. T. answers to the first book of the Old. In the New Jerusalem, fruit of divine grace and of heavenly counsel, when all is accomplished and pilgrim days are over, there is found only the tree of life, with the richest and most varied fruits for those within, and even the leaves of the tree for the healing of the nations. How beautifully in season, and absolutely true, this will be, needs, or ought to need, no words of mine to enforce.

Genesis 2:10-14

Chapter 2:10-14

Next, we have the position of paradise set out with sufficient definiteness to mark the locality in a general way. Eden was the country; “the garden” was that choice portion not in the west or center, but “eastward” which Jehovah Elohim planted for Adam, to which scripture alludes subsequently, not only in this book (3,4,13:10), but in the prophets repeatedly (Isa. 51:3, Joel 2:9), and most at length in Ezekiel (28:13, 31: 9-19, 36:39). It is quite distinct from another Eden, spelled in Hebrew somewhat differently, in Babylonia seemingly, referred to in 2 Kings 19:12, Isaiah 37:12, and Ezek. 37:23).

“And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted and became four heads. The name of the one (first) [is] Pison, that which compasseth all the land of Havilah, where the gold [is], and the gold of that land is good; there [is] the bdellium (B'dolach) and the onyx stone (Shoham). And the name of the second river [is] Gihon, that which encompasseth all the land of Cush. And the name of the third [is] Hiddekel, that which goeth forth before (or eastward to) Assyria. And the fourth river [is] Euphrates” (vers. 10-14).

That the district indicated is the plateau of Ararat ought not to be doubted, though it may be beyond the means of man to determine the great center of interest with precision. What is given clearly it was of interest to know: such particulars are withheld as might only gratify man's curiosity, or perhaps expose to dangerous superstition. The burial place of Moses is not the only spot which divine wisdom has veiled from human ken. And the site of the lost paradise might have been perverted to a still wider, yea universal, pilgrimage of folly and evil. The sad truth is that sin led to man's expulsion. He is an outcast. The natural tree of life was thenceforth barred with unmistakable power and rigor. But a better hope was set before the guilty, if we may anticipate a little, in the to be bruised Bruiser of the old Serpent, the Devil and Satan, who too easily overcame the first man. That God should have sooner or later effaced the Adamic paradise (for it was an extensive park, rather than what a garden ordinarily means) is as intelligible morally, as it accords with the fact that no such scene has greeted the eyes of man in the quarter where it must have been when our first parents were introduced there.

This is confirmed by the notable fact that the river which watered paradise is without a name; silence the more striking, because the four rivers, into which, after its allotted service, it was parted, are carefully named. One can readily understand that fact, if it were caused to disappear as well as paradise. It is implied in the description that it flowed through Eden before it watered the garden, and only after that was severed into four chief streams, two of which are the well-known rivers, Hiddekel or Tigris, and P'hrath or Euphrates. The last was notorious enough to need no description, its companion calling for the very few words, “that which floweth toward,” or in front of, “Assyria.” The first and second are described more fully, as being comparatively unknown to Israel, and in fact nowhere else mentioned in the scriptures. But the account has the difficulties arising from countries obscure to later generations at least, both in their own names and in those of their products. Havilah and Cush have been debated nearly as much as Pison and Gihon; and not less the exact force of B'dolach and Shoham.

Josephus, in the first book of his Antiquities, led the way in strange departure by interpreting Pison as the Ganges! and Gihon as the Nile! Him not only many Rabbis follow (some reversing the case) but the best known of the Christian Fathers, as Eusebius, Epiphanius, Augustine and Jerome, &c., without speaking of allegorists like Origen and Ambrose, who adopted the idea of heaven, as others did the misty ideas of Philo Judæus. They accounted for those distant rivers by the supposition of their immense disappearance in the earth and rising again in the east and the south.

The great Reformed commentator, J. Calvin, was too sober to allow such reveries; but he adopted, or rather invented, the notion that by the four heads were meant, both the beginnings from which the rivers are produced, and the mouths by which they discharge themselves into the sea. Thus he argues that the Euphrates was formerly so joined by confluence with the Tigris that we might justly say one river was divided into four heads. But he misunderstood Strabo (Geog. lib. xi.) who nowhere says that at Babylon these two rivers unite, only that at Babylonia they approximate. The junction (save by artificial canals) is really far below at Kurnah (? Digba), whence their united streams form what is now called the Shatt-el-'Arab, discharging its waters into the Persian Gulf by the town of Bassorah.

Clearly therefore the scheme of Calvin, modified by Huet, Vitringa, and Wells, cannot stand, though the facts were not fully or accurately known before the publication of Colossians Chesney's Expedition of the Survey of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris (London, 2 vols. 4to, 1850). There is not the semblance of reason in making out two new rivers from the confluence of the old ones; nor did they diverge again, as he imagined and displays in his map. Dr. Hales in the second edition of his New Analysis acknowledges the error of this hypothesis (entertained in the first), and owns it to be untenable in every point. Calvin confounded the Eden which had paradise in it with that of a distinct spelling in Babylonia; whereas on the face of Gen. 2 it lay not far from where the Euphrates and the Tigris rose, their beginnings, not the end of their divided course. Nor can language be more perverse, than to count their separate streams after that union, had they really existed, the Pison and the Gihon, still less the mere canals higher up. And it is no improvement of the scheme, to make out that these rivers are the waters which wash Khusistan on the east and Arabia on the west of the Gulf. Another manifest confusion is the Havilah of our chapter with that of Gen. 14:7, Num. 13:29, and 1 Sam. 15:7.

But it is needless to point out the incongruities which will occur to intelligent readers. Reland has proved clearly in his Dissertationum Misc. pars. i. (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1706) that the Gihon is the Araxes, or. Aras, and given strong reasons to conclude that the Pison is the Phasis, though Colossians Chesney pleads for the Halys. Indeed the great Orientalist contended that Colchis, through which the Phasis flows is no other than the Greek form of Havilah; and certainly the connection of gold and precious stones with that land is attested from ancient times more clearly than can be done for the land skirted by the Halys. That the Cossaei, or descendants of Cush, were compassed by the Gihon or Aras cannot be doubted. There was an Asiatic Cush no less than an African, and widely dispersed too. It is the certainty of this fact which explains “The rivers of Cush” in Isa. 18:1. The nation predicted to intervene for Israel is to be “beyond” those rivers (the Nile and the Euphrates) with which they ordinarily had to do.

On the whole then it is plain that the most celebrated men of research (and but a selection of their less strange speculations is here presented) have failed where they trusted either tradition or personal requirements, one swamp of uncertainty only succeeding another. If Dr. Adrian Reland first stood out speaking with more authority than his predecessors, it was because he adhered with commendable tenacity to the word of God. Not that his vast learning failed him here, for he wielded it with a simple mastery found in no other essayist; and this because he put it in its only just place of subservience to the words written with divine authority, while honestly owning difficulties not yet solved. Those who in our day boast of man are no less uncertain according to their unbelief of God's word.

But it may be noticed that in these verses we first hear of a “river.” Of course, to say nothing of previous conditions, there were such in the Adamic earth since the third day. But it was fitting that mention of a river, should be reserved till the Holy Spirit gave it first in connection with paradise. What the river was which went forth from Eden to water the garden seems intentionally withheld: if it vanished when the garden was no longer seen, it is not hard to see the wisdom of the scripture's silence. But it is certain that those who contend like our Milton, that it was the Tigris, which watered paradise, or, as others, the united streams of Euphrates and Tigris, do violence to the inspired text; and “scripture cannot be broken,” says our Lord. An unnamed river, having its rise in the territory of Eden, flows by the garden which it refreshed, and from thence (how far off is not said) it parts and becomes four heads, or chief streams, two of which (P'hrath and Hiddekel) are beyond doubt, Gihon only not certainly the Aras and Pison, probably the Rioni, if not the Kizil-Irmak (or Halys). For the river, after watering the garden in the east, may have run so as to cover the beginnings of these four in the west of that region.

As the chief modern explorer shows, even the Tigris has in Central Armenia two principal sources, both of which spring from the southern slope of the Anti-Taurus, near those of the Araxes and Euphrates, and not very distant from that of the Halys (Chesney's Exped. 1. 13). The Kizil-Irmak, he had already said, has its sources at two places, both of which are much farther to the eastward than they are generally represented on the maps. The sources of the Aras and those of the north branch of the Euphrates are about ten miles from one another (J. of the Royal Geogr. Soc. 6. part 2, p. 200). It is a curious statement, cited by 1. 274, from Michael Chamish in his history of Armenia, himself an Armenian, that Araxmais built a city in the plain of Aragaz, near the left bank of the Gihon, the name of which was then changed to Arast or Araxes after his son. Also, Benjamin of Tudela, the Hebrew traveler who visited the east in the twelfth century, calls the whole tract, east of the sources of the Aras, Cush or Ethiopia, and speaks of the river as the Gihon (Chesney 1. 282).

The text then is conclusive for the Armenian table-land as the true locality, and disproves every modification of the scheme that conceives the garden and the described rivers as in Babylonia or even farther south along Khusistan and E. Arabia. Nor does it compel one to explain away the meaning of a “river” or to give to “heads” any meaning which is not the natural and correct one. As to the moral lesson, it was but creature trial, and no permanence in either river or paradise. How different the paradise of God on high, or even that river the streams whereof make glad the city of God on earth! God is in the midst of her: this accounts for all in His grace. But the manifestation of divine grace and fidelity for both awaits the coming of the Lord. Here was but the responsible man in the midst of the garden; and we see how quickly he fell and dragged down all in his own ruin. Christ alone overcomes, and through Him God gives us the victory.

Genesis 2:15-17

Chapter 2:15-17

We hear again of the Lord God putting Man, the man (Adam) into the garden. This is no vain repetition. In verses 8-14 the general fact was stated, and those special precincts described within a country of delight and pleasantness, where He Who built all things stocked it particularly with everything beautiful and good for His favored creature and representative on earth, but also with two trees, there only, which some have designated “sacramental.” Whether this be quite just or not, certainly they were most momentous and significant, the tree of life evidently and absolutely distinct from that of knowing good and evil, which alone was prohibited. In that garden was Man placed to abide in dependence and obedience, sovereign of all around him, subject to Him Whose goodness set him there with but one test of his loyalty. This we hear only in the second statement of his introduction there, where a river afforded its refreshing waters, which on leaving the garden parted into four heads or chief streams outside, two less known and more described, two more notoriously connected with man's sad history, of which the end is not yet.

The second mention gives the peculiar tenure of man in divine relationship, which is utterly lost when men, or even Christians, trust their a, priori reasonings All is false when inferences are drawn from man and creation under the fall. And philosophical theory is even more remote from the truth than the various and uncertain traditions in almost all lands and races of old, which may partially disguise but ultimately confess a pre-existent state of man and the earth in peace, purity, and happiness. The true golden age is to come when the Man of righteousness, not of sin, the Savior, not the son of perdition, shall rule to God's glory, and His heavenly bride shall reign with Him. Man and the earth are not ever to be the sport of the enemy, but the Most High shall vindicate His possession of heaven and earth. Adam was but a type or figure of the coming One. It ought to be plain, that, as we can know nothing of the glorious as well as solemn future save from God's revelation, so we can have across the ages nothing sure of man's primeval state save from His testimony. It was of the utmost interest and importance to know, not guess, how and for what ends, with what endowments, and on what conditions man was formed, especially, in relation to God; and if accountable to Him, as none but a wicked person doubts (brutalized morally, if he confound himself with brutes, as in effect but a superior brute), surely not left to a cruel and destructive darkness, but with light from God.

“And Jehovah Elohim took Man, and put him into the garden of Eden to till it and to keep it. And Jehovah Elohim commanded Man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou shalt freely (eating) eat; but of the tree of knowing good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day of thine eating of it thou shalt surely (dying) die” (ver.. 15-17).

Now we have, not the locality, its resources and surroundings, however far-reaching, but the moral aspect and end. The divine Governor took Man and put him into the paradise He had prepared. Though all was in unfallen order and beauty, and no taint in Adam or the subject creation, and of course not in its fairest scene, Man was put there to till it and to keep it. Lordly indifference would have been unbecoming, though Man was blessed and everything very good, and toil or sorrow unknown, and no sentence yet pronounced of death or curse, or even of eating bread in the sweat of his face. Still he was to dress the garden and keep it.

But more than this, “Jehovah Elohim commanded Man,” with liberty to eat freely “of every tree of the garden;” there was one and but one restriction, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was prohibited on pain of death. “In the day of thine eating thereof thou shalt surely die.” It was a law, not the law; positive, not moral; a simple test of obedience in what otherwise was indifferent: the only conceivable condition for an innocent, being's probation in an unfallen earth. For the law supposes a fallen state with lust already existing to do the evils which God interdicted. In both cases, as scripture expresses, transgression resulted; not sin simply or lawlessness (ὰνομία), but transgression of law (υόμου παράβασις); for as the apostle justly argues, where no law is, there is no transgression, though there may be sin (as death attested e.g. between Adam and Moses, cf. Gen. 6 and Rom. 5:12, 14). Hence is evident the deplorable misrendering of the A. V. in 1 John 3:4, and its proper and needful correction in the R. V., from which systematic divinity, long deceived, has much to learn.

We may remark the charming simplicity of the earth's prince, but also the suited directness of. God's dealings with man. As there could be no prophet nor priest, there was no angel to intervene. The intercourse was unbroken, and communication immediate. Man needed no argument on the being of God, no disquisition on His attributes Who “blessed” and “commanded” him, Whose voice, or sound, as He walked in the garden in the cool of the day they heard to their fear when they had transgressed. Yet no man had ever imagined such a condition. The truth of it accounts for it to all save those who naturally love a lie and prefer the dark. For present experience would rather lead men to deny it.

The unbelief, which blinds skeptics where it is complete, darkens God-fearing men in the measure of their pursuit of human thoughts and theories. Thus soon after the apostolic age a patristic tradition grew up, from Rabbinism and philosophy, as if Adam, like Israel or fallen man generally, was under a moral government in respect of known good and evil in itself, or such a moral sense as man got by sin and a bad conscience. On the contrary he had only goodness to enjoy in thankfulness to the blessed Giver of all, abiding in that normal condition which was the peculiar position of primeval Man. A general state of government where he could judge intrinsically between good and evil was in no way his originally, though it became his when he transgressed and God drove him out from the garden, with that sad but useful monitor along his fallen pathway. Before he fell, it was his place to live in the constitutional enjoyment of divine goodness and its abundant gifts with a simple test of his obedience. His condition therefore stands in plain contrast with ours, who, being naturally sinful, by faith know Him that called us by glory and virtue, whereby He has granted to us His precious and exceeding great promises. But Man, when unfallen, had just to abide in, not quit his first estate, instead of being called out of a fallen one as believers are. No reward was proposed to him in obeying God's gracious call as to us now, nor was there the least room, as we need, to have senses exercised for distinguishing both good and evil. Adam was simply warned against disobedience in one particular, which was evil because forbidden. Free to act in the sphere subjected to him, he was responsible to obey in refraining from the forbidden tree. Nor can notion here be more evil and false than the thought of freedom to choose. Alas! this suits man's pride, but it is bad and senseless to boot. Free to obey or disobey God! Can these abstract reasoners mean what they say? Unfallen or fallen, man is only and always bound to obey God. He was not a slave of sin then; he is now. This is the truth according to scripture. It was then a natural relationship to God where all was good, but with responsibility to obey, and loss of all—death if he disobeyed. Sin put man out of that relationship to God; grace by faith alone gives a new and better and eternal one in Christ. Reinstatement there is none. The paradise of man is not regained, but the paradise of God opened by Christ to the believer, whom grace makes a child of God and teaches to walk in obedience, as Christ did perfectly and unto death—death of the cross.

Genesis 2:18-20

Here again it is manifest that we have not a second account of creation, but first of all the declared purpose of a moral relationship between husband and wife given through the same inspired writer, every difference of thought and word being strictly required by the divine design in each case. Here therefore the words “male and female,” so appropriate to their creation by Elohim, are out of place where the deeper question of such a relationship comes before us; and Jehovah Elohim expresses His judgment on that which is the chief bond of human society here below. It is accordingly “a help as before him,” his like or counterpart, that is now spoken of, not in Gen. 1 where the race are regarded simply as creatures of God, though constituted chief of all on earth. Each part of the communication is perfect for the varying design of divine revelation, both in entire harmony, the blessed instruction of all which is lost when men sink into the unbelieving superficial hypothesis of documents from different hands, whereby God, the real author who employed Moses, is excluded. No wonder that by such a process the light is quenched in darkness, and that the men who cheat others of the truth (themselves cheated by a subtler rebel against God) boast of their criticism, which sees only men in the case and, according to most, men dovetailing incoherent statements without perceiving it. It is never of such to glory in the Lord, but to rejoice in the works of their own hands. For “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned.”

“And Jehovah Elohim said, [It is] not good that the man should be alone: I will make him a help answering to him. And out of the ground Jehovah Elohim had formed every animal of the field, and every bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man, to see what he would call them; and all that the man called a living creature (soul), that was its name. And the man gave (called) names to all the cattle, and to bird of the heavens, and to every animal of the field; but for Adam was not found a help answering to him” (ver. 18-20).

Even when perpetuation of the race was in view as in chap. i., we saw the marked distinction of Man. There was a single pair, and whatever the varieties to be in different parts of the earth, not a hint of “after his kind” as in the merely animal population of land, sea, or air. Man exclusively was made from the beginning in Elohim's image, after Elohim's likeness, with dominion given over fish of the sea, and over bird of the heavens, and over living thing that moveth upon the earth. But here in chap. ii. Jehovah Elohim, alike moral Governor and Creator, enters with gracious consideration into the daily life and comfort of man on earth, not only has a perfectly kind and wise mind about his well-being but expresses it that it be known as His, and this not by an imperative word as in ver. 16,17, but as the benevolent judgment of Him who absolutely knew all and abounded in favor to Man. “And Jehovah Elohim said, It is not good that the man should he alone.” Interchange of affection and interest is good for Man. No wonder that solitude is in general a most severe punishment short of death. Here no doubt intimacy of the nearest companionship is meant, and this as the revealed object of divine counsel. Indeed it is distinctive of the Jehovah Elohim section as a whole to develop, not mere creation, but creation, Man above all, in special relationships as He was pleased to order all; and hence the garden and the trees, &c., could suitably be here only. Difference of authorship or document has nothing to do with the matter, and is the shallowest resource possible, as it explains nothing. Difference—of design—is all the more strikingly instructive because the same writer gives both consecutively.

The lack of a fitting help for Man, as his counter part, is shown and accentuated in what follows. “And out of the ground Jehovah Elohim had formed every animal of the field, and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man, to see what he would call them; and all that the Man called a living creature, that was its name.” This is the more noticeable, because it beautifully confirms in the style and associations of the new section what had been said in the foregoing one of the Adamic dominion over the inferior creation (chap. 1:26-28). Here their subject relationship to Man appears by their being brought to him by Jehovah Elohim to see what he would call them. Man's government is not only asserted but exercised in the most precise way. It is not their rank in the scale of creation which is laid down, but their place relatively to Adam formally acknowledged. They are therefore brought by the Supreme to Man who gives names to beast and bird, as their appointed lord. Divine authority in the regulation of all is as manifest here in its moral beauty, as the majesty of creation cannot be hid in the previous chapter. Who was sufficient for these things? God alone Who inspired Moses to write both. Nobody pretends that Adam wrote these particulars as to himself and the subject creation, the garden, and all. And what could Adam of himself have told of the creation before he was made? The divine inspiration of it as it stands accounts for all as nothing else can. God assuredly knew and could give the truth with precision through Moses; and for this we have the highest authority, even the Lord Christ's.

“And the man gave names to all the cattle, and to bird of the heavens, and to every animal of the field.” Giving names is a right of sovereignty universally recognized in scripture, as may be seen not only in the book of Genesis but throughout the Bible, even when Gentiles were allotted the upper hand. Indeed, it is inherent in man and exercised to this day over all things or persons subject to him. But the most weighty application of the title, and full of interest, lay in unfallen man fresh from his Creator's hand, Who, Himself Sovereign Ruler, had pleasure in the rule of His earthly representative. Man naturally is not a mere creature, but, apart from the yet higher relationships of saving grace was originally son of God, His offspring, deriving the breath of life from Jehovah Elohim's immediate inbreathing. Thus did not any other on earth become a living soul, and therefore shared in no such relationship with Him. They are irrational, naturally made for capture.

Otherwise Man is regarded as but a brute of greater inward capacity, or, as some dare to think and say without authority and in the face of all truth, a development from any or all. But this is not science nor even its province, which is not to imagine or discuss origins, but to interpret accurately the general laws deducible from phenomena. Evolution is but scientific mythology in contempt of scripture; and the worst class in that school consists of those who are audacious enough to reduce the written word of God to an analogous growth from human elements. The sole field or groundwork of science is the fixed order everywhere observable in the created universe; but of creation, of the production of what exists, true science avowedly and necessarily knows nothing, only of existing natural order, and consequently should be wholly silent where its ignorance is blank. Faith alone understands it on the warrant of God's word, which is infinitely simpler and surer to every individual than in any other way. Nor can any proof of man's need be conceived more demonstrative than the adoption by scientific men of an hypothesis so irrational, which is at issue with every fact really ascertained in the geologic ages no less than in historic times. Speculation is not science, which does not exist save by just deduction from fixed principles or constant order among the beings that exist. This is quite compatible with God's creation; not so the ancient notion of a constant flux or the modern evolution, both of which are ultimately due to man's anxiety to get rid of God and His will and energy here below.

We have further to note that it was this very survey of the subject and dependent creation which evinced the gap for its head. “But for Adam was not found a help answering to him.” God did not create the human pair together for the weightiest reasons, as we shall see conveyed in the verses that follow: a fact only in its due place in the second section, not in the first, where creature hood is the truth stated, not that circle of relationship which fills the scripture now before us. Discrepancy there is none, for chap. 1. gives no detail about the forming of the man or about the building up of the woman, but all is purposely general. “Male and female created he them.” Here throughout the later section we have details which bear on the relations in which they were placed, not with God only but mutually. And the moral importance of this fresh truth is felt increasingly as we ponder it with conscience and heart before God; otherwise it passes easily without a thought save of ignorance to slight or of malevolence to slander. If any one thinketh himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him take knowledge that the things which Moses wrote are the revealed truth of God; but if any one is ignorant, let him be ignorant.

Genesis 2:21-23

The singular formation of woman is another detail reserved by the Holy Spirit for the section of Jehovah Elohim. Nor could it be appropriately elsewhere, supposing one inspired writer to have indited the preceding section as well as this. In the general account of creation Elohim made man in His image after His likeness, with dominion over all that peopled sea and sky, the earth and all that crept upon it. Or, as it is summed up, Elohim made Man in His image, in the image of Elohim created He him; male and female created He them. Impossible to conceive a more distinctive and express place assigned to the race from its beginning, with marked pre-eminence over all those creatures here below, as God's viceroy and their head on earth. Yet, whatever its exclusion of the evolutionary fable, and the more evidently inspired because it is by anticipation in the simple statement of the truth, special relationships are untouched. Creature nature and position are alone laid down with perfect precision and in language as noble as all was very good even in the Creator's estimate.

From 2: 4 on the other hand we receive an equally fine and suitable development of man's moral constitution and the special scene of his probation in the garden of Eden with its mysterious trees, and his relations, not only to God on the tenure of obedience, but to the subject creatures as their appointed lord, peculiarly also and with the nicest care to woman as counterpart. Hence here only do we hear of Man formed by Jehovah Elohim, dust of the ground, yet the breath of life by Him inbreathed only into his nostrils; so that he alone thus became a living soul. How admirably each in place, Elohim's image in ch. i., constituted a living soul by Elohim's direct inbreathing in ch. 2., yet outwardly dust, His offspring thus as no other on earth was! The perfectness of the revelation is clear from the impossibility of displacing a single particular of either account, which is at once intelligible if the Holy Spirit inspired Moses to write both; whereas it would only add to the magnitude of the miracle, where all miracle is denied, if we imagine two uninspired men writing two accounts going over the same ground in part at least, neither inconsistent in any respect yet without repetition, each true to an evident and most important design, and together issuing in a complete result, necessary to give the believer intelligence in the truth of creation and in the moral mind of God so far as it was then revealed.

The material differences, as well as those of form, flow from the design of each and are the more strikingly instructive as indited by the same writer. To assume that they preclude their being the work of the same hand is ignorance of scripture and of the power of God. That creation should be revealed in a style un ornate, measured, precise, with its recurring forms of expression, exactly suits a subject matter so majestic. That the revelation of the moral place of Man, in relation to all above him and beneath him and in the nearest association with him, should be couched in special terms freer and more varied, with a fullness and picturesqueness of detail out of keeping with the generality of creation pure and simple, is just what was requisite. What more worthy of creation than “He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast”? And so it is in Gen. 1-2:3. But from 2:4 et seqq., how proper and affecting the change to Jehovah Elohim “fashioning” Man, and subsequently “in-breathing” the breath of life, “planting” a garden in Eden for him, and “placing,” “taking,” “setting” him there with its two trees, suited to that scene and time and object, and no other, and with a described environment as full of interest as expressive of goodness on His part; then again bringing the inferior animals to their rightful lord; and, as the suited crown, bringing the woman whom He had “builded” from one of his ribs to fill that place of helpmeet, the lack of which all other creatures only made more apparent!

To call this a “duplicate” of the account of creation is the dregs of skeptical criticism, “higher criticism” only in the eyes Of men divinely ignorant and unsteadfast, who wrest these as also the other scriptures unto their own destruction. No doubt a different hand might account for separate accounts with varied phraseology and style, and distinct objects in each, and this regularly reappearing throughout. But the beauty, truth, and power of inspiration are only maintained by the inbreathed power of God, which enabled the same writer to vary his style and representation, in accordance with the varying design of the narrative, marked by the divine name employed as each part required with all its suited concomitants. We may see in every instance that the unbelieving hypothesis miserably fails to explain the phenomena, or the facts, which to the believer make manifest the divine energy that inspired Moses as every other writer of scripture. It is a libel to impute inconsistencies and contradictions. None but an enemy so says or thinks. To call, a wholly distinct aspect bringing forward different objects, an inconsistency, yet more a contradiction, is not criticism, but ill will. How absurd in the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” to set chap. 2. on its union and external prosperity as a contradiction of chap. 1. on its extent and military forces! Yet this is a merely human view, immeasurably short of the comprehensiveness, and depth, the far reaching wisdom and prophetic scope, of the divine word.

In the verses before us is another example falling under the same principles. “And Jehovah Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man; and he slept. And He took one of his ribs, and closed up flesh in its stead. And the rib which Jehovah Elohim had taken from the man He built into a woman, and. brought her unto the man. And the man said, This time [it is] bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh this shall be called Woman [Ishshah], because out of man [Ish] was taken this” (Gen 2:22-23).”

Apples of gold truly in baskets of silver! The God Who wrought has communicated the truth worthily to us. He would give man the boon of companionship, the joy of fellowship, the interchange of affection; and as the end into good, so the way. For He threw the man into an ecstasy, as the LXX. render it, that he might not feel painfully, yet know perfectly what God was giving him. It was not a separate human being independent of Adam, nor yet a female half severed from the male half of a Janus-like creature as Rabbins fancy. It was not from the head nor from the feet, an absolute equal nor an utter inferior, but from his side, as has been remarked by others, of old, the object of nearest love and sustaining cafe, an associated yet dependent sharer of all joy, and sorrow.

As Jehovah Elohim deigned to build his rib into an Ishah (woman), so He brought her to the man, the highest and best form of marriage; a source never absent from faith at any time, but as it was then, how admirably suited to primeval simplicity in the innocence of both! He who knew all had said that it was not good for the man to be alone. The recognition of Adam's authority in giving a name to the inferior creation only made the gap more sensible. And now that the woman was received as it were from the divine hand, not from Elohim only but from Him Who in all His action here recorded was laying perfectly the ground for mutual duty in the relationship of marriage, “the man said, This time it is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: this shall be called Ishah, for out of Ish was taken this.” He was instantly conscious of the intimate and suited relationship, though hitherto unacquainted with the divine purpose; and he gave her a name admirably expressive of the fact. How poor are all the imaginations of man on this theme in presence of the truth thus revealed to us! But it, could be appropriately communicated, not under the head of creation simply (Elohim), but of its moral government (Jehovah Elohim). So simple, sure, and unforced is the usage of the divine designations here employed, without the crude, superficial, and skeptical hypothesis of distinct writers, destructive as it is of all real intelligence, and of that good and profoundly wise design for God's glory which is the surest mark of inspiration from first to last.

Attention may also be drawn to the refutation which the simple facts here revealed give to the vain hypothesis that the use of intelligible. speech was a human invention. We need not quarrel in the least with the science of language, any more than with other Science. The ablest of comparative philologists cannot rise above the root welds in the Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian families of speech, pointing to a common source, the darkness of which science utterly fails to penetrate. Nor need it be doubted that imitative sounds and interjectional cries have added to the force and variety of language since early days. It is only when speculators cry up their little contributions, as if they were an adequate account of the origin of language, that they expose themselves to the derision of the Bow-wow and the Pooh pooh theories. For those who believe the word of God the question does not exist. It is certain that Elohim blessed our first parents, and said to them, Be fruitful, &c. It is certain that, When moral relations were established, Jehovah Elohim brought the subject creatures to Adam as to their lord for the names he would give them. Even before this the man had received the injunction imposed on his tenure of the garden with the solemn sanction of death on disobedience; as after naming the animals Adam intelligently expresses the woman's nature and relation to himself in a way beyond all Rabbins on the one hand and all philosophers on the other throughout the ages, giving her and self names accordingly.

To deny the reality of all this is worthy of the, irrationalism of the Rationalist. It is untrue that God addressed the sea monsters and their congeners, though He blessed them. It is the revealed fact that He did from the first address Man. He puts honor on His word throughout; but He “commanded” in ch. 2. as Jehovah Elohim, and was thoroughly understood. So Adam is declared to have exercised speech according to that power of God, alone suited to the beginning, which formed him a grown man in mind as well as in body, and with language as set over the animal kingdom, and with woman the meet companion of his life, where imitative lessons or interjectional outbursts could have no place, any more than rootwords.

This is the truth; and reason is bound to admit that it is as worthy of God as suited to man: even the vain Rousseau, after all sorts of efforts to account for it, was “convaineu de l'impossibilite, presque mantra, que les langues aient pit naltre, et s'etablir, Dar des moyens purement humaines.” (Inegal. des Hammes.) That Adam at once named the animals brought to him; that he learned to speak from their cries is an infidel reverie, not, an honest exegesis. Science even in its lowest yet haughtiest form, the Positive Philosophy of Comte, abandons all inquiry into the beginning of things as hopeless, abjures causes, and heeds nothing but the laws of phenomena. Rational science undertakes to treat of no more than the established course of nature; but absolute silence about the beginning! It can give no light on the ultimate producing cause; yet a beginning, a primordial and permanent producing cause, there must have been; and this, whatever the mode or means employed, was none other than God.

To unfold creation is not the function of science, which therefore, if alone, leaves men infidel. But scripture supplies what science stops short of, speaks with divine authority and admirable clearness to the open ear, and makes the truth a matter of testimony, not reasoning, and hence adapted to all who believe. This was the way and the pleasure of God, if it is not to the taste of men apt to boast of a little science or learning. As the Hindu could not go beyond his imaginary tortoise, neither can the boldest modern speculator beyond the blank wall which bounds his array of secondary causes. Yet to assume that there is nothing, and no one, behind the blank wall is evidently on man's own ground illogical; for he is wholly ignorant. God Who created all knows all, and has revealed what no science can teach, what is of all moment for man to learn; not creation only, but redemption in Christ the Lord. But all have not faith; and faith alone receives what God alone wrought and revealed, momentous to understand on His authority in order to be saved from the lie of the enemy.

Genesis 2:24-25

The closing words of the chapter are the more to be weighed, as they were cited by our Lord in His vindication of marriage according to the mind of God, apart from that concession made to fallen man which is characteristic of the law. In reply to the question, Why the command to give a bill of divorce and to put away, Moses, said He, in view of your hardness of heart allowed you to put away; but from the beginning it hath not been so. As He had previously answered, Have ye not read that He Who made them from the beginning, made them male and female, and said, For this cause a man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the twain shall become one flesh? so that they are no longer twain, but one flesh. What therefore God yoked together, let not man separate (Matt. 19:3-8). It is not Adam who so said, but God.

How good it is to have divinely given certainty! And this the Lord supplies. We need Him in one form or another to interpret the Bible; and here it is simple and direct. He Who made the man and the woman regulated the relationship from the first; and when things were out of course, the Lord Who made everything perfect cleared it of that allowance which man had abused, and recalled to its original order. This is all the more impressive, because it was so ruled of God, not merely for the transient state of paradisiacal innocence, but as His mind for man on the earth at any time: so the terms prove. Marriage was divinely instituted from the beginning.

“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become (be for) one flesh. And they were both of them naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (vers. 24, 25). The former verse contemplates circumstances wholly different from those of Adam who had neither father nor mother to leave; the latter presents the facts which attached to the primeval condition and neither were nor could be with propriety at any other time. Shame followed sin: the knowledge of good and evil led them consciously fallen to cover themselves.

As marriage was to be the social bond, so is it the ground of family life; the oldest of all institutions I relative, yet a fresh start for each man and woman so united, as ver. 24 contemplates. The work of God corresponds with His word. If a man was to leave his father and mother, he was to cleave to his wife, not to multiply wives. So had the Creator made one man and one woman. So had Jehovah Elohim ordained. Self-will too soon broke through the order, and sorrow followed personal and widespread, for man in nothing errs with impunity, even in a world out of course.

But there are deeper things prefigured. The apostle refers to these words both in 1 Cor. 6 and in Eph. 5; and each is of the highest interest and importance, though the one be individual, and the other corporate. The fleshly union, shameful out of marriage, God would have honorable under marriage, honorable in all things (Heb. 13:4); for even the married are gravely exhorted, as the licentious are solemnly warned. But that union is used and meant to remind the Christian of his own blessed privilege: he that is joined to the Lord is (not one flesh but) one spirit. It is indeed in virtue of his receiving the Holy Spirit. Thus is impurity shown to be a sin not only against his own body, but against the Trinity and the price paid. “Glorify God then in your body.” The corporate reference is no less striking. “Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it,” not merely to sanctify it, purifying by the washing of water in the word, but to present it to Himself glorious, the Eve of the Second Man, the Last Adam. Hence He meanwhile nourishes and cherishes it; for we are members of His body. Thereon our text is cited, with the appended comment, “This mystery is great, but I speak as to Christ and as to the church.” In no way does it yield the paltry sense of “sacrament” which Romanism has drawn from the Vulgate mistranslation, though not without the protest of such as Cajetan and Estius. Holiness is therefore as incumbent on the church as on the Christian; and the Holy Spirit abides in the one as in the other to secure it, and to make the sanction of evil inexcusable in either.

The type is methodically set out. On the man was laid the responsibility, when the woman was not yet in being (Gen. 2:15-17); as He Whom Adam foreshadowed was to glorify the Father and to bear all the consequences of man's failure in the judgment of God on the cross. Then began to dawn the hidden purpose about His bride, but His dominion is carefully shown over the subject creation before laying the basis of that purpose (vers. 18-20). Then comes the deep sleep on the man from Jehovah Elohim and the building up of his wife, owned by him as bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh, the intimacy of this relationship transcending every other in his eyes. So was it in the secret hidden from ages and from generations: even Christ, after His death of redemption, raised and glorified in a heavenly headship and universal supremacy, far above promise and prophecy; and the church made one with Him in sovereign grace, the sharer of all that is given to Him, His dependent but associated bride, even now His body, as each Christian is a member in particular.

Genesis 3:1

We have seen the first Adam in all that variety of relationships which chap. ii. reveals from ver. 4 to the end. No history follows unless so we designate the fact next recorded, the sad and solemn fact of THE FALL, with the righteous but withal gracious intervention of Jehovah Elohim, above all in the woman's Seed. How momentous the issues! Unbelief resists, derides, or at best neglects the word of God to sure and irreparable judgment; faith receives it to such a blessing even now, with heavenly glory soon and forever, as primeval innocence in no way contemplated. For if there be divine counsels revealed when Christ dead and risen was hid in God, all the ways of God are in view of the fall, whether in grace or in judgment, promise or law, government or salvation.

This accordingly the truth continually puts forward and presses, as philosophy no less invariably ignores it. So does man's religion really, though in form owning sin and striving to remedy it after its own fashion. God took care that when man fell, he acquired not only a conscience in the sense of an inward discernment of good and evil, but a bad conscience. He was consciously guilty. When innocent, such an intrinsic sense did not exist in man, and would have been incompatible. But a bad conscience never brings back to God; rather does it, without His grace and truth, lead farther and farther from Him. Sin is not canceled so. Only a Mediator can avail for man with God; and that Mediator God no less than man; and even He by death as a sacrifice for sin. Philosophy ignores the truth, because it seeks the glory of the first man, of the race; human religion, even while professing to acknowledge the Second Man, seeks the same false glory, by priesthood and ordinances. Both undermine the grace of God, are wholly ignorant of His righteousness, and deny present everlasting salvation for the believer; so little or null is the efficacy of Christ's cross to God's glory in their eyes, whether humanly religious or openly profane.

God never made man, the earth, and the lower creation as they are. “He saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.” It is now a ruin; mortality works in animated nature, as sin pervades mankind, and the whole creation groans together and travails in pain together until now. Bible or no Bible, the world is in a state of departure from God; Bible or no Bible, man is a sinner and unable to stand before the God Who judges sin and sinners. But the Bible alone in its own inimitably simple, holy, and dignified way tells the truth how it came in. The myths of men in their little measure testify here, there, and everywhere, to that truth which scripture alone sets out so profoundly that the deepest plummet has never sounded it, so helpfully that the least draft has ever refreshed a truly thirsting soul. Here is not a word to puff a Jew more than a Gentile. Here man reads God's just sentence on his own inexcusable sin. “Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived; but the woman, being beguiled, is involved in transgression.” What a key to the moral history of man! What a ground for divine order in God's church! Yet all in a fact which the O.T. records, and which the N. T. applies, as only God could reveal in either.

Undoubtedly the man was first in being, the woman first in sin; yet another being mysteriously intrudes, not yet alluded to, but availing himself of a creature best adapted to his fell purpose.

“Now the serpent was more subtle than any animal of the field which Jehovah Elohim had made. And it said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” (ver. 1).

Truly we may say, An enemy, the enemy hath done this. There is no allegory whatever, any more than in a dumb ass which, speaking with man's voice, forbad the folly of the prophet. Here it was the great adversary of God and man, who employed the crafty serpent as the vehicle of his temptation. The great apostle of the Gentiles in 2 Cor. 11:3 has ruled in the Spirit that Gen. 3 presents the actual, no fable or myth, but a positive fact: just as we have seen the fallacy of confounding the six successive days with the vast periods of geology that preceded them. A “scientific” account of creation Gen. 1 is in no way; but it does supply with plain certainty the divine revelation of that creation of which all true science professes its total ignorance. The records written in the rocks are wholly out of view in the scriptural account, which speaks solely of the absolute beginning in general, and in detail only of the time immediately connected with man's earth. The scene of geological research lies between, and is passed by in scripture as quite outside its moral scope, so that those labor in vain who look for a scientific tally there.

But true to God's design scripture here brings before us how Satan directed his first assault on man, a fact of the gravest import and nearest interest to all; and this precisely as it happened. On the other hand John 8:44 is a clear reference to the essential truth, stripped of the actual phenomena; and therefore only is the devil named as a liar and murderer. But the same inspired writer in the last book of the N. T. alludes to the first of the O. T., and here employs symbolically the literal instrument of the earliest temptation. See Rev. 12:3, 4, 7, 9 (where the allusion is put beyond doubt), 13, 15, 16, 17; 13:2; 20:2, to say nothing of vers. 7, 10. With this we may compare Isa. 27:1. But to treat the story of the Fall as myth or allegory, while allowing the essential reality of the truth conveyed, to maintain that the Mosaic narrative is not to be understood as literal history any more than the Apocalyptic visions! is, one may fear, to prove oneself incapable of appreciating either the one or the other.

The universal prevalence of serpent worship is the most powerful witness outside to the fact scripture reveals. For otherwise to worship it is far from being natural like that of the sun. But the form of this strange idolatry also, at many times and in unlikely places, points to that which made the deepest impression on the human mind and was handed down, less or more corrupted, from the beginning. It prevailed from China and Japan to Java; through Africa from civilized Egypt to savage Whidah in Guinea; from Scandinavia to Asia Minor, Phenicia, Canaan, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Persia, and India. North America knew it no less than Mexico and Peru; Russia, Prussia, Poland, France, Macedonia, Greece and its isles, perhaps no country more distinctly than England. Nor are any remains more striking in their way than those of Abury in Wiltshire, or of Stanton Drew in Somersetshire, where the Druids according to their vast conceptions did not merely raise the emblem for the entrance or at the altar, but formed the great temples in the figure of the serpent. In Ireland and Scotland the same worship was found extensively; and in the N.W. of France the ruins of Carnac attest a dracontium of not less than eight miles in length, with many of lesser extent.

Perhaps the engraving given in Humboldt's “Researches” (i. 195) of a hieroglyphic painting of the Aztecs may prove the vividness of the tradition more than most other witnesses. For a naked woman, mother of men, converses with a serpent, not fallen but erect. Why too before a tree? In the Mex. Antiq. iii. of Aglio are representations, in one of a human figure smiting a great serpent on the head with a sword, in another of a divine figure destroying it. In plate 74 of the Borgian series in the same work is a god in human form thrusting the sword into the dragon's head, and his own foot bitten off by the dragon at the heel. Can this be mistaken? Faber too, in his Pagan Idol. i. 274, cites Marsden as testifying that the New Zealanders had “a tradition that the serpent once spoke with a human voice.” From what basis do these scattered fragments come?

Classic fables, as being more familiar as well as divergent through poetic handling, need not be added. But in that universal worship of the serpent we see the superstition into which fallen man sunk, growing out of the fact which Moses relates from God. The time or rather place was not yet come to lift the veil and disclose the evil spiritual agent that made the serpent his vehicle. The book of Job gave the suited opportunity to mark him as the great “adversary.” 1 Chron. 21:1, Psa. 119:6, Zech. 3 add a little more. All is in harmony, and utterly different from the Persian myth of Ahriman in conflict with Ormuzd. Scripture knows no dualism, but a rebel against the true God, a slanderer and tempter, of which after all Gen. 3 abides the witness, only less than Matt. 4 and Luke 4, with a vast detail over the entire N. T.

How then did he approach Adam? Through. Eve, the weaker vessel. It was but a question, as if surprised, at most an insinuation. “Is it so that Elohim hath said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden”? If He made and pronounced all very good, why keep back any? Is this love? Did Elohim really say this? Are you not mistaken? Distrust of God and His goodness was his first effort. And it will be noticed that he carefully withholds the title of divine relationship, Jehovah Elohim, vers. 1, 5, and ensnares Eve into fatal forgetfulness of it, ver. 3, in a section which everywhere else carefully maintains it: phraseology consistent with moral purpose, not at all so with an Elohist scribe, a Jehovist, a junior Elohist, a redactor, or any of the other fancied actors in the rationalistic farce. Scripture tells things simply as they were with the calm and simplicity of divine truth.

Genesis 3:2-5

The procedure of the enemy was indeed subtle. It was to awaken distrust of God in Eve's heart. Could it be good to refuse man the fruit of any tree in the garden? Distrust of God opens the door to every sin. Eve ought at once to have turned away. She knew the goodness of Jehovah Elohim. Why then parley a moment more with one who questioned it? To allow it was to sit in judgment on Him, to doubt His love, to accept the serpent as a better friend. She was deceived. Her obvious and urgent duty was to repulse the malicious overture with indignation.

The gift of His only begotten Son is God's answer. For so did He love the world, the fallen guilty world, that He gave His dearest object of affection and delight that every one that believeth on Him should not perish but have life eternal. In presence of the most abounding liberality Satan found his opportunity in the one restriction by which God tested their obedience. In presence of a world of sins and sinners God gave His Son, infinitely more precious than the universe. Yet this was He against Whom grudging was imputed! And Eve alas! listened to her ruin.

“And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which [is] in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said to the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that, in the day ye eat of it, your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil” (vers. 2-5).

Eve well knew the goodness as well as the command of God; nor had she forgotten the dread penalty of disobedience. She even added to His words, “neither shall ye touch it,” which adding may seem pious, but is neither seemly nor wise. The serpent advances a bold step now, and dares to give God the lie. This soon follows, when the heart conceives distrust of His love. “Ye shall not surely die.” “Fear nothing of the sort. On the contrary, to refrain from the fruit of that tree is to abandon your just hopes. God does not wish you to know good and evil as He does. He wants you to remain babes and slaves. Instead of dying, He knows that, in the day ye eat of it, your eyes shall be opened to know what He does. Fear not death, and assert your independence.” Divine truth and majesty were thus alike assailed.

It is so always. The moment God's love is distrusted, His word is sure to be speedily annulled, and His honor goes for nothing. If God is viewed with doubt, Satan reaps the spoil. To trust one's self is to fall a victim to the enemy, who is far stronger and subtler than man, and infuses into the human heart his own self will and enmity against God, especially against the Son Who alone reveals the Father and the Father's love. Man is in no real way self-sufficient, though his own pride and Satan's guile hold it out as a prize. Man had been set up to rule the lower creation, but as God's servant even while His vice-gerent, on the tenure of the amplest gifts and the least possible tax of obedience. But the enemy, concealing himself carefully under the serpent, drew on the woman to be his slave by distrust and disobedience of Jehovah Elohim.

As here, the real failure begins in the heart, which quickly betrays its departure from God by open opposition to His will. For one must be servant of God or of sin; and Satan it is who, behind, thwarts God and ruins man. Christ is, in all respects, the blessed contrast, Who being in the form of God counted it not robbery (or a thing to be grasped) to be on equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, yea, death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him. Phil. 2:6-9. The one being a creature was responsible to do God's will in submissive service, yet disobeyed unto death through setting up to become as God. The other was truly God, even as the Father, yet emptied Himself to be a bondman, and, when found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself to the lowest in the death of the cross, to obey and glorify God where He had been shamefully dishonored. He came to do God's will, and did it perfectly at all cost to Himself. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, raising Him from the dead and glorifying Him in Himself on high.

“We know that everyone that is begotten of God sinneth not; but the begotten of God keepeth himself, and the wicked one toucheth him not” (1 John 5:18). It was not so with Eve. Innocent she was like Adam, but not begotten of God, and consequently, instead of keeping herself, she parleyed, and the wicked one did touch her. She knew that the serpent was insinuating a doubt of God's goodness and emboldening her to disobey Him, in defiance of His word and threat; yet she did not turn away with horror, nor cry to God in her weakness. Thereby fatal lust, the desire to have what God forbade, was infused, which gave birth to overt sin. How different Christ! He instead of yielding suffered, which Eve did not; yet was He tempted far beyond our first parents, tempted in all things in like manner as we, apart from sin: the severest temptations ever endured, sin excepted. From our sinful temptations He was absolutely exempt. He knew no sin; which was as incompatible with His person as with the work He came to do. And we may well bless God that so it was: otherwise our salvation had not been, any more than God glorified in the cross of Christ.

The craft of Satan seduced Eve from one degree to another. First, she was drawn away to doubt His love; then she ceased to tremble at His word, His truth; and lastly, she fell by open transgression under the temptation to receive the devil's gospel—to become as God, knowing good and evil. Can any course more aptly portray what has wrought in hearts ever since? The difference is that we are by birth fallen and prone to sin, and that God has spoken and acted to arouse and deliver, above all in redemption by Christ the Lord; so that men are without excuse if they persist in the lie of Satan against the grace and truth of God. Yet do they live as if there were no death or after this no judgment, no real God, no destroyer, and no Savior. When man as he is takes up his own doings, or rites done by others, in the hope that God is too good to consign him to “the second death,” “the lake of fire,” he is evidently listening to the deceiving voice of the old serpent.

None but the Son of God and Son of Man can save sinners; and even He only by dying for their sins and bearing their judgment at the hand of God.

But this He suffered once, once for all: the infinite fruit of God's love to the sinner, and His hatred of their sins. But the heart must give Him credit for such love, and rest upon His redemption by faith: else there is no purification of heart or conscience; and this must be now and here below, that as believers, as His saints, we may serve and worship Him henceforth by the Spirit of God.

Thus the Savior reverses for good to God's glory what the enemy wrought to His dishonor through human weakness and sin. God is believed in His love that gave and sent His own Son; and thus the soul now repentant, taking God's part against itself in its sins, sets to its seal that God is true, looks up with the assurance which Christ and His atoning work inspire, and bows down in worship begun on earth, never to end in heaven, the new song of Him Who was once dead, alive again now and evermore. “He that spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?”

Genesis 3:6-7

Thus did the enemy craftily prepare the way. The woman had heard him undermine successively the goodness, the truth, and the majesty of God; she had continued to listen when he held out the bait of a knowledge which God possesses and man could not have in his innocent state, the knowledge of good and evil. At length the desire for what God had prohibited was insinuated into her soul: when all the safeguards of obedience were sapped by his wiles, lust ensued.

“When (and) the woman saw that the tree [was] good for food, and that [it was] pleasant to the eyes, and the tree [was] desirable to make wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they [were] naked; and they joined together fig-leaves, and made themselves aprons (girdles)” (vers. 6, 7).

Little did the woman know the internal mischief which made the way for the open and positive act of disobedience. It had never been, had she kept the word of Jehovah Elohim before her in the confidence of His love and the fear of His warning. She was really giving credit to the serpent as a better friend than God to Whom he attributed envy in withholding from man so good a gift. She therefore no longer heeded His prohibition, but trusted her own mind, poisoned as it was against God by the enemy. It was the very reverse of the love of the Father, of which the apostle speaks, the fruit of faith in the power of the Holy Spirit, so characteristic of the Christian. Here was in principle the love of the world or of what is in it. And we are assured that all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and the tree was desirable to make wise, she took of the fruit and ate.” Was this obedience? or dependence?

Here was the root of all evil. She judged for herself. Independence means rejecting God and accepting Satan, though she, like her husband and future children, thought of nothing less. Self will blinds the eyes to God an d things as they are, and sees nothing but the fairness and advantage of what it seeks; in truth it is abandoning God's service for Satan's slavery. Verily, verily, said our Lord to the Jews, whosoever committeth (or rather practiseth) sin is slave of sin; and the slave abideth not in the house forever; the son abideth forever. If the Son therefore make you free, ye shall be free indeed. Abiding in His word is the grand test. There only is the truth known, which makes free even a slave. On the other hand the devil was a murderer from the beginning and stands not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. He is a liar, and the father of it as we see here; and this not only by direct opposition to God's word, but by a partial and cunning misuse of it which wholly misleads those that parley and listen when he pleads for disobedience. He that is of God heareth God's words. This Christ pre-eminently did, but not our first parent. She saw, reasoned, and was conquered. What she knew well, what she had repeated to the serpent, faded from before her mind. She acted from herself, under the instigation of the devil, and boldly rebelled against Jehovah Elohim. “She took of the fruit and ate.” What a contrast with Him Who did nothing from Himself but as His Father taught Him! He spoke the words of light and truth and love; and He that sent Him was with Him; He left Christ not alone, for He was ever doing the things that please Him.

But the mischief alas! did not end there. She “gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.” Mankind was now fallen. Cleverly had Satan planned his temptation He addressed himself to the weaker vessel, and deceived her as we have seen. He left it to the woman to draw the man into her error; and we are told by authority beyond appeal, by the apostle Paul, that “Adam was not deceived.” This is characteristic. The woman was deceived, not the man. So says the Holy Spirit in the Epistle. We perhaps might have failed so to infer from the ancient record, but feel none the less assumed that the difference is true and important, as appears from the application of it to Timothy. The moan without being deceived was entangled by his affection, and shared her transgression to universal ruin. Affection is an excellent bond and a great support when it works in God's order. But here all was out of course. The woman acted first in weak but known opposition to the divine word, and also, as compared with her husband, was not subject to him as became her. He followed, instead of directing her, in too bold disobedience, and so must share the punishment she had incurred. God was not in his thoughts. Satan triumphed for the while, always doomed to defeat in the end.

The moral effect was immediate; and the effort to hide divulged the disastrous wrong, as ever. “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” Jehovah Elohim knows good and evil as a holy being judging righteously, loving good and hating evil in His own nature. Man was made upright; but innocence was his condition, and obedience his duty. Of the tree of knowing good and evil he was not to eat. When the fruit was eaten, he acquired the intrinsic faculty of pronouncing this, evil, and that, good; as a fallen being, now the prey to that lust to which he had yielded in defiance of God. And this became the sad inheritance of every child of Adam. The Seed of the woman is the one blessed contrast. In Him was no sin: not only He did no sin, but sin was not in Him, and He knew it not. He was “the Holy Thing” born of Mary, but so born by the power of the Holy Spirit as none other before or since, the Holy One of God, as the unclean spirit was compelled to confess. Not that He was spared temptation, but on the contrary tried beyond all comparison with the first man, or Abraham, or any other. He was in all points tempted like as we are, without sin; not only without sinning, but sinful trial excepted. For this kind of trial He could not have from the holiness of His person, human nature as well as divine. A body God prepared Him for the work He was to do, with which “flesh of sin” had been absolutely incompatible. So it is written that God, sending His own Son in likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin (i.e., as a sin offering), condemned sin in the flesh.

Our first parents were fallen, innocence was gone irreparably. Grace might and did intervene to bring in “some better thing;” but there can be no return of innocence, however surely faith finds life in the Son of God and inseparably along with it sanctification to God, the basis of all practical holiness. New birth is not peculiar to any time or circumstances, but belongs to every one that sees or enters the kingdom of God. Believing in the rejected Messiah, the Son of man, the Son of God, we have it in its highest revealed character. For “this is the True, God, and Eternal Life “; and eternal life we have in Him; but substantially this was ever true of the believer from of old, though it could not be made known as a present thing till His cross dawned, as we read in John 3. Some misunderstanding the truth have lapsed into strange and deadly error. But the truth is ever simple to those who are simple in faith; and one part of it is not to be sacrificed to another, but all is consistent to God's glory in Christ, as the single eye sees.

The eyes of the man and the woman were opened, but not as they fondly hoped through Satan's prompting. They knew that they were (not divine but) “naked.” What a lowering of high and evil expectations! The shame of guilt invaded them. They recognized their fallen condition painfully. “And they joined together fig-leaves, and made themselves girdles.” No doubt fig leaves were broad and well suited to cover nakedness but what a humiliation! As yet there was no repentance. Alas! most men die unbelieving and unrepentant; and how solemn is the issue that awaits them! Few words of holy writ present it more strikingly than the apostle's to the Corinthians, when more or less awaking and restored from their high-minded folly: “If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.” This from its external impossibility may sound a paradox; but it is really in spirit a weighty truth. In time present life, if a man be clad, he is for that reason not naked. But when resurrection comes, it may and will be very different. The true nakedness is not the body unclothed, but the lack of Christ; and this, which may be unperceived now, will be set in evidence then. For all will be raised, and therefore clothed with the body, in their order and season: those that are Christ's, at His coming; those that are not His, for judgment, when they shall be found naked.

Genesis 3:8-9

We have seen that the recorded effect of disobedience was the sense of nakedness, and this leading to an effort to conceal it from self and from each other. But worse than shame and humiliation followed quickly.

“And they heard the voice of Jehovah Elohim walking in the garden in the cool (wind) of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah Elohim, in the midst of the trees of the garden (ver. 8). Confidence in the Lord God was manifestly gone and sin had filled their hearts with terror as well as unbelief. For faith would have known that distance or darkness makes no difference to Jehovah, as is so beautifully expressed in Psa. 139. His voice was no attraction now; His rich unvarying goodness toward them was forgotten. They had acquired the knowledge of good and evil, but alas! to their own self-condemnation. So it is always. Not death only, but a bad conscience, they have left as a sad legacy to all their descendants. Man conscious of evil shrinks from God and distrusts Him.

So we find here the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah Elohim in the midst of the trees of the garden. No more flagrant proof could well be of the mischief the enemy had wrought. The wiles of the mighty and subtle Satan had drawn the first pair into rebellion, and their instant attempt to conceal themselves was the unmistakable evidence of it. They “hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah Elohim.” Had there been the least working of repentance, they had sought Him in self-reproach and horror at their sin, they had cast themselves in confession on a genuine repentance without faith, and faith in Him was wholly wanting. The voice of Him as He walked in the garden alarmed them, and they hid mercy which endures forever. But there is no themselves away from Him.

How different Christ and His own, who hear His voice and follow Him, who know His voice and know not the voice of strangers! The voice of Jehovah Elohim awoke nothing but the fear that has torment. Nor can conscience do aught else for man, guilty as he is, till he believes God's testimony to Christ. And Christ is the witness of the love of God, Who has sent none less than His Only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him; yea, more, sent His Son as propitiation for our sins. This indeed is love, not that we loved Him, though we ought to have done so, but that He loved us in spite of our sins. Nor could anything short of this love, not in word only but in deed and in truth, have availed us. For sin is moral death; and it is expressly said that we were dead in trespasses and sins. Divine love therefore, if it intervened to save, could only save by giving life to us who believe, His life, and His death too, that, with our sins blotted out righteously and forever, we might live to God.

Another thing calls for our notice here. God came to visit man in the garden. He had visited him before, when He laid upon him His solemn injunction as well as invested him with his high privileges. But He only visited. He did not dwell even in the sinless garden of delights. He came there as One that loved and was deeply interested in His creature, His vice-gerent. The book of Genesis shows us God visiting the earth again and again, and especially in Abraham's case. The most gracious condescension was that seen in His intercourse with “the friend of God.” But even then there was no dwelling of God on the earth, nor yet in Canaan. This is most instructive and a trait which only inspiration could have conceived or given. It is the mind of God from the beginning and entirely above the thoughts of man. Redemption alone lays the ground for God's dwelling with His own on earth. The absence of it is the more striking here, because in the very next book of Moses redemption is the central truth, followed as it is by a habitation for God in the midst of His people.

It is true that the tabernacle was but a shadowy dwelling place for God; yet this was quite consistent with the facts. For the redemption of Israel out of Egypt was but the type of a better and eternal redemption now come. This Christ alone obtained by His death and resurrection; which accordingly is followed by God's habitation in the Spirit Who dwells with us and is in us, abiding with us forever.

Here, therefore, all is intrinsic, real, and everlasting. In Christ we have redemption. “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost that is in you, which ye have of God? And ye are not your own; for ye are bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20). Here the in-dwelling of God is individual and unfailing for the believer. But “know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16). Here we learn that it is equally true of the church, of God's assembly, and no less abiding in this case also. Yet it is only so because of Christ's accomplished redemption. What else could secure it for us and us for it, when we think of our failures individually as well as corporately? But no, there is “one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.” The Holy Spirit only came down because sin was judged to God's glory in the cross; and He abides because of the perfect unchanging efficacy of Christ's work. The unworthiness of man singly or together cannot more annul it, than the power or will of Satan: so the voice of God has surely declared; and so it will be till Christ comes again, yea forever.

Remark the beautiful simplicity of Jehovah Elohim exactly in unison with these primeval days. Here we are told of His “walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” So Jehovah spoke to Cain in remonstrance (ch. 4); shut Noah in the ark (ch. 7); and “came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded” (ch. 11). Favored Moses knew much of this gracious familiarity in a later day; but here even strangers to the covenants of promise were not without considerate communications of a personal kind. Does this provoke wretched man's unbelief, especially in this day of artificial habits? Let him judge himself, believe that every scripture is inspired of God, and enjoy the wisdom and goodness there vouchsafed abundantly.

“And Jehovah called to the man and said to him, Where art thou?” (ver. 9.) It was the first divine utterance to fallen man. What a volume of truth! On the face of things, past all denial, man was gone from God. He had morally doomed himself before he received the dread sentence. “He drove out the man,” we are told later in the chapter; but man hid from His presence at first, and thus drew out the words, “Where art thou?” Away from God! He did not mean to confess his sin, his ruin; but his act unwittingly told the tale, and the word of God, proving it, revealed the truth. Nor is there a road back, save in the Son of God, the Second man, Who is the way, the truth, and the life, as this very chapter shows us authoritatively. He only can break the power of the enemy, though this at all cost to Himself and to the God Who gave Him for this express purpose. How worthy of God, how blessed and reliable for man, is that written word, which unbelief slights now as it slighted Him Who shines throughout it!

Genesis 3:10-13

Drawn from his concealment by the call of Jehovah Elohim, Adam appears. He might strive to hide his sin from himself; he could not hide from God. The very effort testified where he was, and what.

“And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and was afraid because I [was] naked, and hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou [art] naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee not to eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate. And Jehovah Elohim said to the woman, What [is] this thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (vers. 10-13).

The effect of sin was ruinous in all ways. Jehovah Elohim at once became an object of terror, instead of reverence and gratitude, love and trust. Even men own that conscience makes cowards of all. So it was immediately with Adam and Eve. The presence of God is and must be insupportable and alarming to an evil conscience; and this was now acquired. In answer to the divine appeal the man unwittingly tells the tale.”. I heard thy voice in the garden, and was afraid because I was naked, and hid myself.” How different the state, feeling, and conduct, if our first parents had kept their first estate! Still more different, even had they stood in innocence, was Christ, Who waxed strong, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him. He was the Obedient Man. His will was to do God's will. “The words that I speak unto you, I speak not from myself; but the Father that abideth in me, he doeth his works.” Yet these works, stupendous as they were, blessed and blessing overflowing in their nature, were not so characteristic as His dependence. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father.”

But who among those born of women, yea who even born of God, approached His obedience? Power and wisdom, to say nothing of inferior gifts, have been conferred, sovereign and without stint in men as God pleased; but our Lord Jesus stands alone in unswerving devotedness and absolute submission to God. This, the ideal moral glory of man, was His real and crowning perfectness here below even unto death, yea, death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name that is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, [of beings] in heaven and [beings] on earth and [beings] under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Messiah said to Jehovah, Thou art my Lord; He set Jehovah always before Him with an unwavering trust, through life and death, into resurrection and the pleasures for evermore at His right hand. However tried, neither Jehovah on one side, nor Satan on the other, found aught in Him but grace and truth, righteousness and holiness. According to the beautiful type of Lev. 2, in each act of His life He was like the offering of pure flour, mingled with oil, and oil poured over all, with frankincense thereon, an offering made by fire of a sweet savor unto Jehovah. He as a man lived, not by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. His meat was to do the will of Him that sent Him and to accomplish His work. As the living Father sent Him, so He lived, not merely “by” but, because of the Father. “I do always the things that are pleasing to Him.”

Such was the Second man; but the first by his own account, as soon as he heard the voice in the garden, was afraid and hid. Fear has torment, for he had a bad conscience. He shrank from Him Whose word he had disobeyed, and recognized himself naked. “And he said, Who told thee that thou art naked?, Hast thou eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee not to eat?” He was in fact self-condemned. It was not sorrow after a godly sort for the transgression; no was there earnest care, nor clearing of self, nor indignation, nor any other such affection as the Spirit works in the conscience Godward. Consequently in nothing did Adam prove himself to be pure in the matter. His sense of nakedness evinced his guilt. “And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And Jehovah Elohim said unto the woman, What is this thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I did eat.”

It was too plain. They had believed Satan, they had forgotten and rebelled against God. In both the sin was aggravated. The man was bound to lead the woman aright, not to follow her in disobedience; the woman was not to direct but obey her husband, instead of inducing him from natural affection to join her transgression against the Lord God Who had blessed and warned them. Nor as yet was there repentance toward God. They were convicted and compelled to own their respective acts of sin; but there was no true self-judgment, no grief at their dishonor of God, no horror at the evil and their own guilt. On the contrary, there was the self-justification that proves the spirit unbroken, and the shiftings of the blame one on another, and even on God Himself.

Indeed the man was bold, instead of abasing himself as inexcusably wrong; for he not only put forward the woman as his excuse, but dared virtually to upbraid Him Who had in His goodness given her to be his counterpart. “The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” And when Jehovah Elohim asked the woman, What is this thou hast done? her answer was, Not I have sinned, or I am guilty but “The serpent deceived me, and I did eat.” Thus our excuses only make bad worse, and God cannot but righteously deal with pleas so vain and unworthy, which show that unrepented sin is apt to eat as doth a gangrene, and is truly ungodliness.

All this is plain and solemn fact, related not as a myth or allegory but as divinely given history, of the nearest interest and utmost importance to every soul of man. It is wholly unlike the visions of prophecy, such as are given to John in the Revelation, where we read “I was in the Spirit,” “I heard,” “I saw,” &c. Nothing of the kind is found in Genesis. But the history at the beginning and the prophecy at the end have this in common, that their words are alike faithful and true, while the only sense of “myth” which scripture recognizes is that of “fable” in contrast to the truth. The Christian has nothing to do with the dreamy views of heathen philosophy, but with the revealed mind of God, which leaves no room for either Gnosticism or Agnosticism. W. K.

Genesis 3:14-15

There is no interrogation of the enemy: his history and character were already known on high, that “in the truth he standeth not, because no truth is in him.” Sentence is pronounced on the proved tempter forthwith. Now he is in fact a murderer, soon to be manifest, so in principle from the beginning.

“And Jehovah Elohim said to the serpent, Because thou hast done this, cursed [be] thou above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. On thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all [the] days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: he shall crush thy head, and thou shall crush his heel” (vers. 14, 15).

This is a present and earthly judgment on the serpent, as we shall also hear subsequently on the woman and on the man, whatever else may be implied to the instructed ear. But in the former case there is exceptionally stated much more in ver. 15, which none but a natural man could limit to the animal, whom Satan made at once the instrument and the mask of his temptation. The language therein rises above the government of the world, though fully including this also, which is indeed on the surface. Isaiah, we may say, is very bold, not so much in declaring the serpent's degradation and special curse in ch. 65:25 ("Dust shall be the serpent's meat,” when all other animals share the blessed effects of the glorified reigning with Christ in heavenly places and Israel restored fully and forever), as in the utter overthrow of the malignant spiritual power whether on high or here below (chaps. 24:21, 27:1). The N.T., from its superior depth, now that the Son of God is come and has given us an understanding to know Him that is true, lays bare the unseen chief of evil, and the details of his doom, not in the kingdom only but through eternity (Rom. 16, Rev. 20). Cursed is he in every sense.

It is among the striking points of the scene that the enmity is said to be put between the serpent and the woman, rather than the man. Grace so spoke; for the man might have reflected bitterly on her who had first listened to the enemy, disobeyed the divine command, and enticed himself to follow in the path of transgression, poor and unworthy though such an excuse be. Jehovah Elohim graciously lays stress on the woman, and still more on her Seed. It might have seemed natural to have dwelt on the man, head of woman, image and glory of God; as in the preceding chapter we read that into his nostrils was breathed the breath of life, and Adam was set in his place of privilege and of responsibility, where he forthwith acted on the dominion given by assigning names to the subordinate creation before Eve was formed. Notwithstanding all this God-given position of primacy in natural relationships, grace after the fall no less clearly speaks of the woman expressly as at enmity with the serpent. Of her in a peculiar sense was He to come Who should vanquish Satan. Isaiah 7 predicted it in due time, though here it is sounded out from the beginning for all that have ears to hear; whilst Matt. 1 gives certainty, when the prophecy was accomplished to the letter, that we have not followed cunningly devised fables in believing the inspired words of the law and the prophets any more than the apostle.

The woman's Seed is unmistakable. The first Adam was not that, nor could any of his progeny as such be said so to be. Only the Second man could properly prefer the claim in both spirit and letter. This He was beyond all controversy for every believer, though infinitely more: otherwise why should this have been in His case only? Scripture couples it with His Godhead: see Romans 7:3, Gal. 4:4.

But more than this. It is with the Incarnate Word, the only begotten Son when He became man, that we find the personal antagonism of Satan, as the Holy Spirit opposes the flesh, and the Father is hated by the world. For the development and revelation of all this we await the latest oracles of God; but here we see in the earliest days the enmity of the old serpent to the Lord Jesus. “For this cause the Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil “: this the power of death, as He of life, and life-giving; the one the liar, as the other the Truth. Next to His eternal deity, there is nothing truer in itself, nothing sweeter to Christians, nothing more momentous in divine purpose for His glory than His assumption of humanity, spotless and holy, into union with the divine, so that He has both natures in one person.

The truth of His person therefore, as the immediate, unwearied, fatal object of Satan's malice, is the first test of the evil spirits which work in the many false prophets gone out into the world since the Savior appeared. Every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ come in flesh is of God. And every spirit which confesseth not Jesus is not of God: not the fact only but the person confessed. A mere man, however great or good, must have come in flesh. The wonder is that He, the Son of the Father, was pleased so to come. He might have come in His own glory. He might have assumed angelic nature. But it was in grace to us, fallen men, and for our salvation in righteousness. Therefore was He sent “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” for He was born of the Virgin, herself a sinner, like every other daughter of Eve. It was in the reality of flesh: else His had been no valid sacrifice for sin on man's account, as on God's. It was “holy” by virtue of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Highest that overshadowed Mary, and so truly that as thus born He should be called Son of God. In flesh is “how” He came; but Jesus is He “Who” came, even Jehovah the Savior, Emmanuel as Matt. 1 carefully attests.

Granted that Josephus seems to have read these pregnant words as unintelligently as a heathen, divorcing them from the solemn fact of the temptation and the fall just before, ignoring Jehovah Elohim as the speaker and the judge, and utterly dark as to the purpose of God gradually growing into fuller clearness throughout till Himself came, the true Light. Was it the place for nothing more than a common-place on natural history? on the relative position of the serpent henceforth? on its hostility to the human race, provoking no less in turn? on its aptness to bite heels and in retaliation to have its head crushed? This may satisfy those erudite critics who are bent as far as they can on reducing the holy letters to a compilation of legendary tales or myths. But the irrationalism as well as the impiety of these skeptics of Christendom is self-evident to every believer; and the inspired word, though it may by grace convert the worst infidel, is addressed to faith, and given first to Israel, and now, that they are for the time Loammi and worse, to the church of God. Even an unbelieving Jew may not be so blind to the depths of what was meant to arouse inquiry and awaken a blessed hope, as well as search the conscience; as we may unhesitatingly say such a God must do if He spoke to man at all in the circumstances. Hence Maimonides (More Nevochim ii. 30) owns that this is one of the passages in scripture which is most wonderful, and not to be understood according to the letter, but contains great wisdom in it. He too was struck by the mention of the woman's Seed, rather than the man's, as the bruiser of the serpent's head; and both Targums openly point to Christ, Whom we know to be none other than Jesus, not Messiah ben Joseph and Messiah ben Judah, but one and the same Christ, come and coming again to complete in manifested power and glory what He has already done in the efficacy of His reconciliation-work in death and resurrection. His second advent is as sure as his first.

Yet among those orthodox as to His person no error is more serious than attributing to the Incarnation what scripture uniformly bases on the atoning sacrifice of Christ. Beyond doubt the Word made flesh was to save sinners, yea reconcile all things (not all persons), but this by His death. Not otherwise was God glorified about sin, however fully in an obedient man. But sin must be judged by God; and this was not, nor could be, short of His cross. And this betrays the vanity of all human systems, whether of ritualism on the one hand or of rationalism on the other: both agree in the error of making out a possible salvation through the incarnate Word, both therefore slight the redemption grace gives us already in Christ through His blood. It is the bruised Seed of the woman Who bruises the serpent's head. None short of a dead, risen, and ascended Christ is the Savior Whom the gospel proclaims. God is therein just and justifies the believer in Jesus, Whom knowing no sin He made sin for us, that we might become His righteousness in Christ. Thus vanishes the dream of broad-churchism that His birth was the reconstruction of humanity, and so brought every man into blessed relationship with God. Alike disappears the fable on the opposite pole that the sacraments are “an extension of the incarnation;” whereas in truth they are symbols of His death, and thus, only to faith, of a holy salvation according to God. Both systems stop short, even theoretically, still. more practically, of man's total ruin and proved guilt, and of God's righteousness and salvation, in the cross. Hence they lead souls back to an anterior state of things, to law and ordinances, of probation still going on, and of redemption unaccomplished.

Lastly, be it observed that we have here, no matter what theology of, every sort may say, no promise to Adam, still less to the race. It is really in the judgment of the enemy that we hear the revelation of triumph over him for the woman's Seed. If there be promise to anyone, it is to Christ, the risen Second Man. And this best secures the blessing that results in God's grace to all that are His. Thus it is for the believer, because it is in Him. He deserved all by His personal perfection and obedience; but He took it all by death which annulled him that had the power of death, reconciled us that believe sacrificially to God, and glorified Him in all His love and purpose, His majesty and moral nature. For how many soever be God's promises, in Him is the Yea; wherefore also in Him is the Amen, for glory to God through us (2 Cor. 1:20).

Genesis 3:16-19

Then God pronounced on the serpent without parley. As the devil “sinneth from the beginning,” so for this was the Son of God manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil. Untempted the wicked one fell, and became the habitual tempter in the circuit of Jehovah's earth, seeking the race of man as his prey, a murderer from the beginning, a liar and the father thereof. How complete the contrast with the divine and personal Wisdom, Whom Jehovah possessed in the beginning of His way before His works of old! He was set up from eternity, from the beginning, before the earth was, Who was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in that scene and in those beings who were the object of Satan's ill will and destructive effort. All deliverance hangs on the woman's Seed, Who is none other than that eternal Word made flesh, bruised only by the Serpent, but his assured victor and destroyer. It is in the power of Christ's resurrection out of that atoning death which sets the believer free.

Whatever the fullness of light cast on this as on all else since God revealed Himself in Christ, it is important to observe that here and throughout the chapter, and in the O.T. generally, we only hear distinctly of divine government on the earth. Fuller revelation discloses more, especially in the N. T., as to God and man, Christ and Satan, the universe and eternity; and the Holy Spirit, Who includes the less (John 18:9) in the greater, could to faith bring out the greater from the less, as Abraham rejoiced to see Christ's day, and saw it, and was glad, looking too, not for Canaan only, but for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God. “Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises.” Nevertheless it remains true that the scripture here expresses divine dealings externally, and this in keeping with His relationship to the earthly people, unto whose keeping these oracles were primarily entrusted. So even the bruising of the Serpent's head, whatever else was implied to the pondering heart, is manifestly the destruction of his power over man on the earth; and this is the work of the Second Man.

To the believer at all times there were deeper questions behind. Not only the evil and its judgment, but redemption and the positive blessing of eternal life, are now fully brought to light in Jesus the Son of God. This is so true that to not a few there is danger of forgetting the importance of the earthly consequences because of the surpassing interest and weight of what is unseen and eternal. God made Himself known in the Son as to both His nature and His counsels as well as His will, and this accomplished by the only One, now man no less than God, capable of giving it effect for our reconciliation and blessing, even now for the soul, at His coming for the body also, when He reconciles in power all the creation so long dragged down into vanity and suffering through the sin of its first head. Therefore the apostle says that Christ annulled death, and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel. Again therein is God's righteousness revealed by (or out of) faith unto faith; while God's wrath is revealed (not yet executed, of course) from heaven against all ungodliness, or impiety, and unrighteousness of men holding the truth in unrighteousness—a still more solemn thing for souls in Christendom, whose orthodoxy if alone, where they be orthodox, will in no way shelter them in that day. Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Now we turn to our first parents with whose conscience He dealt Who loved and pitied them, however inexcusably wrong both had proved.

“Unto the woman he said, Increasing (greatly) I will increase thy sorrow and thy conception: in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; unto thy husband [shall be] thy desire, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto thy wife's voice, and hast eaten of the tree [of] which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed [be] the ground for thy sake: in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all thy life's days; and thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat herbage of the field; in sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thy return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken. For dust [art] thou, and unto dust shalt thou return” (vers. 16-19).

As with the serpent, Jehovah Elohim speaks to the woman of the present governmental effects of her sin. Woman, more than any other female, was to have sorrow multiplied in her pregnancy and in her bringing forth offspring. Woman, not man, is the victim of reiterated sorrow in this respect. It was righteous, however sad. She first listened to the enemy, despising God and His word; then she drew her husband after her into the ditch. Henceforth she was to be subject; like a younger brother to an elder (chap. 4:7), her desire was to be to her husband, and he should rule over her. The fall would make this hard. How different the original position of companionship! Sin made God a judge: before it, He simply blessed. But grace in Christ leaves Him free now in better and eternal blessings for faith.

To Adam He condescends to explain the reason. His vain plea becomes the ground (and so it always is) of condemnation. He had sought to excuse himself by laying the blame on “the woman,” and aggravated his fault by even imputing it ultimately to God “The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me.” How irreverent as well as unthankful! His sentence is unimpeachably just, “Because thou hast hearkened unto thy wife's voice;” and his wife's voice echoed the serpent's in rebellion against Jehovah Elohim. Her solicitation ought to have deepened his horror of her sin; but, instead of this, he dared to transgress, not deceived as she had been, and ate of the tree in the face of the divine prohibition. How different the last Adam, Who suffered being tempted, obeyed His God and Father unto death, and bore in His own body on the tree the sins of those who are now His body and bride, “one spirit with the Lord,” and so made by a higher character and power than that of Adam and Eve who were but “one flesh!” His taking flesh was for our sakes, vindicating God, not in obedience only, but in sacrificially enduring the consequences of our disobedience, that we might be united by the Spirit to Him our glorified Head on high.

To Adam fallen the word is, “Cursed be the ground for thy sake: in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; also thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field: in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thy return unto the ground, for out of it vast thou taken. For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

Here as before it is present and earthly judgment. On account of the man the ground is cursed. His

superiority entails wider and more serious results. He too must face sorrow here below all his days. Thorns and thistles oppose the food he needs and seeks; and hard toil must be his portion to eat bread, for the herb of the field was allotted, as to the subject beasts, to him who had lost through rebellion the beautiful and abundant garden which Jehovah Elohim had planted. In the sweat of his face he was to eat till he returned to the ground whence he had been taken. How evidently the body only is here regarded, and the end of life on the earth! Yet the source of man's soul had been carefully shown in chap. ii. as emanating from Jehovah Elohim's inbreathing, contrasted with every other creature on earth, to the confusion of materialists old or new. Present government is the theme, and neither hades nor the lake of fire. So in the Psalms, though Sheol or Hades appears appropriately, we read, in Psa. 146:4, man “returneth to his earth: in that very day his thoughts perish.” The body alone returns to dust, out of which the soul was not taken, but, as we are told elsewhere, the spirit returns to God Who gave it. All the notice here taken of man is to humble him who did not look up to God, nor obey Him: sorrow and toil, death and dust. We shall find that more is intimated even here in what follows. If the apostle tells us that the wages of sin is death, we ought not to overlook that the sentence does not mean the whole of sin's wages, but the first part; as in the Epistle to the Hebrews we are expressly told on the one hand that it is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment, on the other that Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time apart from sin to those that look for Him unto salvation: the portion respectively of unbelievers and of believers.

Genesis 3:20-21

Chap. 3:20, 21.

These verses bring before us two facts of high and pregnant significance, stated with that simple dignified brevity which characterizes all we have had thus far before us: what the man called his wife at this critical time, and the reason why; what Jehovah Elohim did for Adam and his wife, and the effect.

“And the man called the name of his wife Eve (Chavvah), because she was the mother of all living. And Jehovah Elohim made for Adam and for his wife coats of skin, and clothed them” (vers. 20, 21).

In chap. 2. the man gave his wife a name from himself. He was Ish; her he called Isshah. This was in due place and season; for the Holy Spirit there laid down the divinely formed relationship. But here sin had brought in disorder and ruin: our first parents were fallen. Nothing however is too far gone for grace, the grace of God, Who, as He will effectuate by indisputable power in the great day that is coming, revealed enough even from the fall to instruct and comfort faith. So it was with Adam now. He looked not at the things that were seen, temporal as they are but at the unseen and durable intervention of the woman's Seed.

Even when a revelation is clear and full, faith may fall short, as every believer knows too well in himself day by day, and as is plain in the Gospels which make known without disguise how far even the Twelve were from entering into the depths of our Lord's communications, till He died and rose and power from on high was given. But Adam did not hear in vain what Jehovah Elohim had intimated in His sentence on the enemy: a conflict, and not merely a successful temptation, from the enmity set between the old serpent and the woman and above all her Seed in some exceptional way specialized; and that conflict issuing in the final and irretrievable destruction of the foe, but not without previous anguish to the victorious Seed in achieving it. Hence in the depths of shame and wretchedness because of his transgression, with the woman's special penalty ringing in his ears, with his own doom to the ground cursed for his sake—to toil all his days ending in death, and to return to the dust whence his body was taken—, he calls her not Death but Life, or Living! The divine assurance that the woman's Seed should bruise the serpent's head (can we doubt?) led him to the new name. It was faith, and founded on the word he had heard; faith real, if not explicit. He confessed that which was before no created eye, what rested simply on the divine word, that she was “mother of all living.” Mother of all dying would have been the natural sentiment. But a hope founded on revelation glimmered through the darkness of sin, and Adam's mouth confessed what his heart believed. This he knew without a question that future blessing turned wholly and solely on the woman's Seed; and that woman, actually Satan's means of the mischief, would in due time give birth to Satan's Vanquisher.

It may be objected that scripture, in its roll of the worthies of faith, does not enumerate Adam. Good reason there surely was, in his introduction of sin and death into the world and the race of which he was head, to abstain from singling him out for honorable mention. But not less surely would it be an error to conceive that none believed of old save those that are expressly so designated. And why, in the noble but short account of primeval facts, should Adam's calling his wife by this name be inserted, unless there were something of extraordinary interest, left (as so much in scripture is) to exercise our faith and spiritual intelligence, or to the corrupt speculations of unbelief? For the Bible is a moral book; and the judgments we utter on its sayings betray our own state, whether we reverently learn of Him Who inspired it, or set up ourselves for a very little while to judge Him and it in ignorance of our sinful folly.

Adam then looked above the just forfeits of sin, trusted not to his own strength, wisdom, or virtue, spoke of no seed of his to regain the lost paradise, but took occasion, by faith of God's gracious holding out the suffering but triumphant Seed of the woman, to call her Life, even then because she was mother of all living; an expectation most unsuitable and unwarranted, unless by the faith however dim of Him Who was coming (and now come), Who brought to light life and incorruption through the gospel, he, like those who followed in the growingly bright path of faith, knew little compared with what is now revealed. But they all looked to God for a Deliverer born of woman, yet in some mysterious way to defeat and destroy the evil one; a hope more than realized in Him Who became man that through death He might annul him that has the might of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver all those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

But in immediate subsequence let us note what scripture adds. “And Jehovah Elohim made for Adam and for his wife coats of skin, and clothed them.” It may suit an infidel to see nothing in this but letter and perhaps triviality. A believer is entitled to find and enjoy what is worthy of the only true God. Yet faith does not make haste but waits on God and His word. Imagination which adds to scripture is no more of God than the free-thinking which stumbles at the word, being disobedient. As every word of God is pure or tried, and He is a shield to those that put their trust in Him, so let none add to His words, “lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.” Our wisdom is to draw from scripture what God put into it.

Now here the force is the greater, because till after the deluge no moving thing that lived was given to be food for man. “Thou shalt eat the herb of the field” Adam had just heard once more. This has induced crowds of theologians to suppose that sacrifice was now enjoined by God and offered by Adam. But we are not at liberty to supplement the word of God with the tradition of man. Sacrifice has its own proper record in chap. iv., and scripture, hath Old Testament and New, attests the all-importance of its antitype for man and its acceptance with God; but we cannot go beyond the inspired word. Before the work of Christ which gave its meaning; faith in Him was the essential, as it still is. The action here revealed was on the part of Jehovah Elohim; not a word is said of what the fallen pair did. Jehovah Elohim made for each (for this is carefully noted), coats of skins and clothed them. More he does not say nor are we called to believe, as to the matter of fact.

Is there then nothing implied beyond a strong garb which efficiently covered their persons, in contrast with the poor aprons of fig-leaves they had made for themselves? There is a truth most impressively taught, that He Who clothed them made for each of them coats which had their necessary origin in skins of animals slain for the purpose. That solemn word, death, was now brought before them as a fact for the first time. Man fallen may vainly essay to hide his shame by some device of nature; Jehovah Elohim bases the clothing He provides on death, the penalty of sin.

Thus whether it be life in ver. 20, or death in ver. 21, both point to Christ, and have no adequate meaning for a spiritual mind short of Christ. The natural man looks anywhere else; or if he does think of Christ, it is only to degrade Him, even when he offers a kiss or a crown. But as the Holy Spirit is come down from heaven to glorify Him, so did He in scripture point onward to Him in things great or small. Christ is secretly or openly the object of the written word. His life and His death were alike essential, and alike blessed, as alike they brought glory to His God and Father. But while we could not live to God without His life, it is only through His death that we could, when clothed, as the apostle says, be found not naked. Christ alone, by His suffering death, removes our nakedness. Those who reject Him, even when in their resurrection bodies for judgment, will be found naked (2 Cor. 5). Clothed or unclothed, present in the body or absent from it, the believer is never naked; he has on always the best robe.

Genesis 3:22-24

We have still to consider the word and act with which the chapter concludes. They are of importance in clearing yet more the true standing of man before the fall, and the anomalous condition of the race henceforth, wholly confused and lost in reasoning as men are apt to do from present experience. The a priori path is misleading to all who betake themselves to it, whether philosophers or theologians. The believer who yields to the snare is inexcusable; for grace has given an unerring account, concise and clear, of all that divine wisdom deemed well to tell us of the entrance of sin into the world through one man, type of Him that was to come, the Second man and last Adam. Here we have neither legend nor myth, but facts related in the language of unaffected simplicity and transparent truth fullness. What is revealed is as worthy of God, as it is remote from the instinctive popular representation of man, ever averse to self-judgment, ever prone to lower or shirk righteousness, ever blind to grace and hating it. Myths and legends are natural and should be left to heathen destitute of the truth, groping in the dark after God if haply they might find Him. But it is sad to think of Christians slipping after the philosophizing Jews of Alexandria, who turned their back on the Light already shining, lost the plain yet profound historic truth of scripture, and set up a Philonic Logos of their own in consonance with human thought, will, and unbelief.

“And Jehovah Elohim said, Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever,...Therefore (and) Jehovah Elohim sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. So (and) he drove out the man; and he placed eastward of Eden's garden the Cherubim and the blade (flame) of the flashing sword to keep the way of the tree of life” (vers. 22-24).

Philosophy or fear of philosophers has misled very many to conceive that the utterance here received was a taunt on man's groundless pretension and an exposure of Satan's cheat. But scripture is plain, and the truth important. Opposition assumes to it what is false, that unfallen man already knew good and evil. He was innocent and upright, but is never said then to be righteous or holy. Nor could he be so called; for both suppose knowledge of good and evil, which he as yet had not and only got through transgression. In truth such a knowledge would have been useless in, not to say, incompatible with, an unfallen nature and world, where he had only good to enjoy in thankfulness to God, avoiding but one tree because God forbade it. There was not, as afterward, a moral government as to good and evil, which man could discern intrinsically apart from an outward law. And that special law under which man innocent was placed consisted solely in not eating of a tree which was prohibited, not because the fruit was in itself evil, but simply as a test of subjection to God. It was a question of death by disobedience. Disobedient, he lost paradise as well as life; but he acquired the knowledge of good and evil with that of his own guilt. Their eyes were opened, as we saw; they knew that they were naked, and were ashamed. “The man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil.” Sense of responsibility he had; but now, when fallen, he could distinguish things as good and evil in themselves. He had along with guilt the moral sense to pronounce this wrong and that right; he had conscience, sad but most useful monitor ever present when man was fallen from God.

Freedom of choice in paradise (or out of it) is an impious absurdity. Was Adam free to choose disobedience? That he did choose it was the fall and ruin. His responsibility was obedience. When he transgressed, God took care that in his sinful estate he should now possess an intrinsic sense of good and evil; and in due time, but not till long after “the promises,” absolute and unconditional to a known object, “the law” came in by-the-bye (Rom. 5:20) to raise the question of righteousness which can never be settled save to faith in Christ and His redemption. In the gospel God reveals His righteousness in virtue of Christ's work, and so is just while justifying the believer in Jesus.

A holy being knows good and evil of course, as God does perfectly; but this consists with the revealed fact that man while innocent had it not, and gained it only by disobedience and to his misery. Grace meets the guilty; but it is in the Second man, not by mending the first. Life is in the Son; and he that believes on Him lives of the same life, the ground of a holy walk, even as our responsibility as sinners is met by His atoning death. Righteousness and holiness therefore have no terror for the believer; but this is because of Christ dead, and risen, and at God's right hand. And such faith produces practical and kindred fruit acceptable to God. For not Adam, but the new man was created according to God in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

But there is further the divine arrest of presumptuous sin. It would have been a chaos morally, and everlasting ruin if the tree of life had been eaten by our first parents in their sin. There was even mercy to them in foreclosing such a peril.

The natural tree of life for innocent man is refused to him fallen. How awful to be everlastingly fixed in sin! Christ thenceforward becomes the object of faith; and as He died for our sins, that they might be blotted out, so because He lives, we also were to live, as He said. Truly all enduring good now is of grace and in Him. There is no restoration to innocence, but to a far better standing. “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

The expulsion of the man therefore followed. He was now an outcast from paradise, to till the ground whence he was taken. So Jehovah Elohim drove out the man, and set the Cherubim, the symbols of judicial power, so familiar to every Jew, as represented not only on the vail but overshadowing the mercy seat, to bar the way. Here the force was the less to be mistaken, because there was also the flame of the revolving sword to menace the intruder. There is no way back to the lost paradise. Christ is the way, and “this is He that came by water and blood “; He is the way for the believer to the Father and the paradise that shall never pass away. There accordingly is no tree of knowing good and evil, no tree of responsibility: this was settled for everlasting righteousness in the cross of Christ, and hence in favor of all that believe to God's glory. There is but one tree, the tree of life, whose fruits full and fresh are for the heavenly ones, as the leaves are for healing the nations; for ha the kingdom will be not only heavenly things, but earthly, as our Lord pointed out to Nicodemus. According to the symbolic description of the new Jerusalem, there are twelve gates, shut not at all by day (for there is no night there), and at the gates twelve angels; and the names inscribed, which are those of the twelve tribes of Israel, witness of the mercy that endures forever. But there is no flame of revolving sword to threaten, though there shall in no wise enter into it aught common or one making abomination and a lie, only those that are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Genesis 4:1-4

Man was now, as he is still, an outcast from Paradise, where Jehovah Elohim had placed him in original innocence; he was an outcast, because he had sinned knowingly, deliberately, and without excuse. It was sin against God; and death the consequence, with its bitter accompaniment for all the creation subjected to man as its head, no less than expulsion from the garden of Eden. Yet man was not driven out before the revelation of the woman's Seed (oh what grace) a Conqueror of the enemy, Himself to be bruised though the Bruiser of the serpent's head. And withal Jehovah Elohim clothed both Adam and Eve, guilty and vainly covered as they were, with coats of skins: a clothing which could only be through death, and death inflicted on the victim for the covering of those guilty.

Now those who truly feel their fallen condition, yet believe in the true God of light and love, never forget but ponder in their hearts both His words and His ways. This is faith; as indifference to them is unbelief. The inspired record that follows brings both before us solemnly; for so it ever is from that day to this in a world and a nature under sin and death. Some believe the things spoken, and some disbelieve. Faith and unbelief have everlasting results: good works, and evil, now respectively; by-and-by life eternal on one side, as on the other wrath and indignation. Thus early does scripture present the principles, and in facts which the simplest may take in and the conscience is bound to heed: how evidently of God and for man

“And the man knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bore Cain, and said, I have acquired a man from (with) Jehovah. And again she bore (she added to bear) his brother Abel. And Abel was a feeder of sheep, and Cain was a tiller of the ground. And it came to pass in process of time (at the end of days) that Cain brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof” (vers. 1-4).

The “first man” Adam was now a father, but only when fallen; as the “Second man” became head of the new family of God, when attested as righteous in resurrection, obeying God and having borne our sins in His own body on the tree (1 Cor. 15:45, 46).

Further, Eve takes the initiative and expresses her thought religiously, but according to nature, which never rises to God's mind as to either man's sin or God's grace. Hence it is wholly unavailing to bring man out of evil to God: only God's word judging sin can give the truth which faith receives. “I have acquired,” said she, “a man (Ish) from (or, with the help of) Jehovah.” How fatal is the haste of nature! “He that believeth (or trusteth) shall not make haste.” But so it ever is with man or woman, One only excepted Who was absolutely what He said, and waited patiently for Jehovah. Not so Eve who yielded to her own thoughts and saw in her first-born the man gotten from Jehovah, the woman's Seed that should crush the enemy. But the fit time or person was not yet.

Eve knew not that first is that which is natural, not what is spiritual. Yet no truth is more certain, none plainer, throughout scripture, which we ought to know to our blessing. In each dispensation man is first tried in responsibility and fails. As with Adam, so with Noah; so with Israel and in detail, people, priests, kings; so with the Gentiles to whom imperial power was entrusted, while Israel is Lo-ammi; so last and not least with Christendom. Not so Christ, Who as He glorified His Father in obedience all His life, glorified God as such in death and for sin; wherefore also God highly exalted Him And as Christ at His first advent was the Faithful Witness, though outwardly all seemed to fail in the death of the cross, so at His second coming everything which failed in man's hand will stand and shine in Christ—mankind, government, Israel, priesthood, royalty, Gentile, power and the marriage of the Lamb with His bride on high, when God hats judged Babylon the great harlot, “and her smoke goeth up forever and ever.”

It is no wonder that Eve could not forecast that the coming Vanquisher was to be the woman's Seed, still more true and exclusive and glorious than her firstborn, because He, He alone, was to be Immanuel, El Gibbor, as the prophet testified, the true God and Eternal Life, as says the apostle. Yet her language shows that she did hope for a min of worth from, or with the help of, Jehovah, though in the way of nature fallen and so coming to naught.

The same plague-spot reappears in Cain, only darker far, when in process of time the two sons approach God in worship. Nor does any other act on earth so fully decide the state of the heart. So it was here. “The way of Cain” abides to this day, as Jude lets us know in a verse which condenses volumes of truth. For the difference between the brothers did not lie in the presence or the absence of religion; but Cain was in nature, Abel in faith. Now nature ignores sin, and God's judgment of it, as well as the grace that revealed a future deliverer, God giving meanwhile a covering for the naked founded on the death of victims.

Of all this, though presented day by day to Cain at least as much as to Abel, the religion of nature took no account. There was total indifference about God's nature and will, and total insensibility about man's moral state. Cain no less than Abel had heard of their parents' transgression, of a lost Paradise, and of the woman's Seed, a sure Avenger to come and smite the enemy. But Cain had ears and heard not, as untouched in conscience about sin in himself and ruin around him, as he was careless of divine grace and truth. “Cain brought of the fruits of the ground an offering to Jehovah.” He never laid to heart “Cursed be the ground for thy sake.” He had tilled it in the sweat of his face; and this in his judgment added value to his offering of its fruit. The sin of man was no more to him than the curse of God. Why should He not accept the fruit of the ground, the offering of his own toil and pains? Cain knew not that it was but “the sacrifice of fools,” the proof of an unrepentant, unbelieving, heart.

Not so Abel who did not presume to approach Jehovah save by bringing “the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof.” It was “by faith” he “offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” Faith is by a report or hearing, as the report is by the divine word. The revelation of the woman's Seed had entered not his ears only but his heart, and purified it by faith. He looked for the Person that was coming, the hope of his soul; and the skin, given to his parents when convicted of sin, spoke of an efficacious covering on God's part which could only be by a victim's death. Thus did his faith prompt a sacrifice which acknowledged sin and found rest in the death of another between himself and God. The sacrifice was presented by one that trembled at Jehovah's word; and its character expressed not nature but the resource of grace revealed by God. It testified to expiation, the sole efficacious ground of acceptance for sinful man, confiding, not in himself or the fruit of his work, but in God Himself and the coming Deliverer. For as impenitent unbelief goes back to what might have been well enough, if man were not a sinner, faith looks onward to a Substitute, Man yet infinitely more than man, and to the abolishing of sin and its consequences by a slain but worthy Victim.

It is remarkable too that “the fat” is especially noticed as offered to God in this, the first recorded sacrifice. We know how God loves to guide those who believe, and far beyond their measure of knowledge. For, more than two thousand years after, Jehovah reserved the fat as well as the blood, notably in the sacrifices of peace offerings, where communion was the point more expressly than in any other institution of the Levitical economy. The fat typified inward energy presented to God, and not only what propitiated. How full is the believer's acceptance in Christ! Here alone is truth, here alone righteousness unfailing and perfect; yet all is of God's grace; and man, confessing his sinfulness, blesses Him for Christ, the Savior of the lost. It was a new and supernatural standing which man, though fallen, found from and with God by faith. The ground of nature in such a case denies sin, dishonors Christ, resists the Holy Spirit, and defies God the Father.

Genesis 4:4-8

The Epistle to the Hebrews is not the only inspired comment on the primitive account of Cain and Abel. There the faith of Abel, who offered thereby a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, stands prominent; through which the former had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness to his gifts. He approached God as in himself fallen and sinful, in the faith of Another, presenting the sacrifice of a slain victim. This was righteousness, and Abel is characterized accordingly. “And Jehovah had respect to Abel and to his offering; but to Cain and to his offering he had not respect: And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And Jehovah said to Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, will it not be lifted up (lit. is there not a lifting up)? and if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door; and to thee [shall be] his desire, and thou shalt rule over him (ver. 7).”

Cain had neither faith, nor righteousness, nor love; but he was not a hypocrite. He was not insincere. He then thought with himself that he ought to bring an offering to Jehovah; and what, he considered, could be more acceptable to Him, what more suitable to himself, than fruit of that ground on which he put forth his daily toil? Alas! it was the offering of that worst “folly,” which slights sin, forgets judgment, ignores grace, exalts man, and dishonors God. To have respect to such an offering and to such an offerer was morally impossible on God's part. It would have been indifference to evil. Jehovah appreciated. Abel and his offering. It was the divine testimony that Abel was righteous, not Cain. Men are proud Godward who bring nothing but sin and are wholly insensible to it. The believer owns his ruin by sin, but looks to a Savior from God, This faith Abel expressed in his sacrifice; and God, rejecting impenitent self-satisfied Cain, testified to Abel's gifts, as he accepted himself.

Nothing rankles more in a natural man than disrespect to his religion; and it assumes the most deadly character where God's disapproval is even insinuated. Yet what can be plainer or more certain than that a sinful man cannot be accepted of God in himself or in virtue of anything he can do? Sin is not canceled so, nor is God thus glorified. The believer judges self before God, not selfishness only but all that is in man as he is, of which nature is proud till God unveils all, too late for salvation; and this justly, for the evil of man, and the resource of divine grace, were before Cain no less than Abel. But Abel laid it to heart believingly, Cain did not and paid the penalty of woe, as all must who proceed in his way (Jude 11): a danger specifically laid before men in the Christian profession. So speaks, expressly in view of “the last hour,” the apostle John in the First Epistle, (chap. 3:12), where Cain appears as of the evil one and slaying his brother; and this, because his works were evil and his brother's righteous. If sin begins toward God, it goes on toward man, even if that man were a brother with the loving claims of a relationship so near. Thus the irritation from a worship rejected of God broke out in hatred of the accepted man, and murder was the result then as ever since (Matt. 23:35, Rev. 18:24), For scripture lifts the veil and proclaims the truth, whatever appearances or pretensions say; the Cain worshippers hate and, if they can, slay those like Abel because their own works are evil, those of the persecuted, righteous.

Here skepticism plies its destructive craft, and imputes a mythical character to the God-inspired history of Moses. To the believer what can be more touching than the intercourse of God, not merely with Adam unfallen, but as here with wicked Cain? How shallow to reason from later reserve, when the law kept man at a distance, or from the total change of the gospel when the intimacy of redemption became expressly one not of sight but of faith! Ought we not with adoration to admire His patience with His enemy, no less than His grace with the fallen if they might believe and be blessed? Unbelief gains nothing by its cavil but loss of God; and what a loss! How strengthening to the soul is the enjoyment of what is alike simple and profound, in His thus adapting Himself to the nursery days of mankind—the same true God Who went down infinitely lower for us in Christ and His cross. But the wise and prudent love not what our Lord Jesus delighted in, as in their measure do babes to Whom the Lord of heaven and earth revealed them.

Superstition no less surely loses the truth, though it wears a more reverent veil and in its odor of sanctity deceives itself more completely than can vain and empty skepticism. Yet is it only man's religion, and the world's worship, in direct rebellion against that worship of the Father in spirit and truth which our Lord announced for the true worshippers of the hour that now is. The total ruin of man is as unknown as the salvation of God in Christ. Grace in God toward the sinner by faith is hateful to both alike; and hence these two, adversaries as they are ordinarily one to another, may be found habitually to unite against His truth and His love. At the same time one thankfully owns that among the superstitious rather than the skeptical appear individuals who believe in the Savior, and are so far taught of God, in spite of their system which under its earth-born clouds, swamps and hides the Christ they love. If superstition is a corruption of what is good and admits of degrees, skepticism also may not be absolute, but is essentially antagonistic to divine revelation. In their common hatred of God's grace and their common confidence in man, both flow from the same unbelief of the flesh, which will not own and abhor its own enmity to God, and will not trust His love in a Crucified Savior and the free gift of eternal life to every believer. Religious or profane, unbelief resists God's sentence on man as lost, and misled by the devil, strives to improve the flesh and ameliorate the world: the denial of Christ and the gospel.

Cain, like every unbeliever, was insensible to the truth. He judged himself as he was capable of coming to God with gifts of the earth, which expressed neither sin nor death, neither judgment nor expiation. How could Jehovah have respect to him or his offering? Nor was this all. The acceptance of Abel provoked his proud spirit to fury and unrelenting hatred: Abel, his righteous and weak brother, was its object ostensibly; God's grace really and beyond all. Jehovah interposed with words of truth and grace, all in vain. “Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, will it not be lifted up? and if thou doest not well, sin (or, a sin-offering) coucheth at the door.”

It was Dr. John Lightfoot who first, as far as I am aware, suggested “sin offering” here rather than “sin,” as preferred in the ancient and most modern versions. Many since that great Hebraist, have followed in his wake, notably Abp. Magee in his well-known work on the Atonement, who argues from the admitted and peculiar form of the connected verb (couching) as strongly confirming an animal ready for offering, and not the sin calling for it, which he regards as, to say the least of it, “a bold image.” Then he summons to his aid the grammatical fact of the substantive, which is feminine, with a verb of the masculine, which he follows Parkhurst in thinking perfectly consistent with the supposition of a sin offering, the victim, and not the thing “sin.” This however is a slender proof, for in the passages cited the words stand as subject and predicate, and therefore do not require sameness of gender, as anyone can see by examination not only of Hebrew, but of Greek and Latin and perhaps almost all if not all languages. There is no doubt that, besides the primary sense of sin, the word admits of the secondary meanings of sin suffering (i.e., punishment) and sin offering; which latter the Septuagint; translators render by περὶ, (or ὑπὲρ) ἁμαρτίας, as we also find in Rom. 8:3, Heb. 10:6, 8. There is also in the Sept.,. text or various readings, simply ἁμαρτίας ἐστίν, as for example in Ex. 29:14, Lev. 4:21, 25, 29, 33, and 34, (τοῦ τῆς ἁμ.), ver. 9. It is a question of context, as we may observe in ver. 13 of our chapter, where the Sept. gives αἰτία, a charge, fault, or crime; as the Auth. and Revelation Versions have “punishment” in the text, “iniquity” in the margin. It is therefore legitimate to conceive that a sin offering may be meant in ver. 7, especially as Jehovah uttered the words, though it was reserved to the law to define and demand them in due time, for by law is full knowledge or acknowledgment of sin. The Septuagintal rendering of the clause is far from happy. “Didst thou sin, if thou hast brought it rightly, but didst not rightly divide it? Be still: unto thee” &c. The Vulgate like the English is intelligible. The question is whether Jehovah simply charges home the conviction of sin on the wrong-doer, or intimates a sacrificial means of getting cleared, according to the proposed correction. In this case a burnt offering would not be in place, since it is generally expressive of man's actual state in approaching God, not a specific bearing away of positive and personal wrong-doing as is here implied. Even if certainly thus, what believer can doubt that the mind of Jehovah has in these words Christ and His cross before Him? What grace in bringing sin to the door!

There was no ground in any case for wrath or despair. God is the God of grace now, as by-and-by He will judge by the Man He has raised from the dead: the witness to the believer that he will not be judged, being already justified; to the unbeliever that he cannot escape judgment, having refused saving grace in Christ Who will judge him. Meanwhile the title of the firstborn remains intact for the unbeliever over the younger brother that believes; just as the man's over the woman. What a just God is ours even to an unjust Cain!

“And Cain said to Abel his brother...And it came to pass when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him” (ver. 8). The Samaritan, the Greek, the Syriac, the Latin, read “Let us go to the field.” But it is far more impressive to leave the words as they are in deference to the Hebrew, as striking almost in its silence as in what is said. What matters it to learn the terms by which Cain deceived his brother? How beautiful the comment on the dark deed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, “He being dead yet speaketh”! But it is through his offering, not his suffering, though this shall never be forgotten above or beneath.

Genesis 4:9-12

Even the atrocious crime of Cain only brought Jehovah once more on the scene. What a contrast with pagan philosophy or poetic myth! The true God deeply concerns Himself with man.

“And Jehovah said unto Cain, Where [is] Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: [am] I the keeper of my brother? And he said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground. And now cursed [be] thou from the ground, which hath opened its mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield its strength to thee; a fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be on the earth” (vers. 9-12).

Not that Jehovah was ignorant any more than heedless; but He would bring home secret sin, and to the guiltiest give space and ground for repentance. Yet in the case before us the conscience was hardened by religious pretension without reality, and exasperated by the acceptance of him who stood only in the faith of divine grace, though in fact Abel's works were righteous and Cain's evil. He that received the best good in hope did good in his measure; he that despised it envied and hated and slew his own brother, that looked up in dependence on the God of grace.

The questions of Jehovah were searching: not, as before to Adam, Where art thou? but Where is Abel thy brother? and What hast thou done? Adam went away from God, self-convicted, before God pronounced on his sin and made known the resource of His mercy in Christ. Cain to his sin against Jehovah added sin against man, no a neighbor wily but his brother: type of the world's, especially the Jew's, sin in the cross of Christ, Who had deigned to come of that people according to flesh. But unbelief blinds the heart to the highest favor which godless will can torture into a wrong to justify its own murderous pride. “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak (excuse) for their sin. He that hateth me hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other hath done, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father. But [it is] that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause” (John 15:22-25). The Son of God come and rejected proved the state of the world and of Israel in particular.

But Cain was as impenitent as faithless, and had the effrontery to fall back at once on falsehood. He knew not! he knew not where his victim lay! Yea, to a lie he added the insolence of “Am I my brother's keeper?” Had he laid to heart Jehovah's remonstrance in ver. 6, 7, he would have judged himself and brought a suitable offering, thankful that his brother had profited by taking the shame of sin and giving God glory for His grace. But as indifferent to God as to his sins, he was puffed up and fell into the devil's fault and snare, manifesting himself as a child of the evil one.

His second question Jehovah follows up with the direct and terrible fact. “And he said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now cursed be thou from the ground, which hath opened its mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand” (vers. 10, 11). The ground had fallen under curse for Adam's sin; and Cain, utterly thoughtless of sin and of God's sentence had brought of the fruit of it under his tillage, itself a consequence of the fall, as an offering to Jehovah. This might have been, had man not sinned. To ignore sin is to show neither repentance nor faith, without which no sinner can find the way to God. No believer would have offered what lay under curse, what spoke of his own toil. Now the proof of the unbeliever's evil was flagrant: violence and falsehood and irreverence. For his brother's blood cried to Jehovah from the ground. He himself too most righteously was pronounced accursed, not the ground now but the man who tilled it, because of the wrath which burned to white heat, not at the instant but the more his haughty spirit brooded over his own worship disowned, his brother's accepted.

It is to be observed that nothing answering to civil government was instituted originally; nor was it invented by man during all the centuries which preceded the flood. God set it up for the first time after that great event which ushered in those dispensations of God which still run their course till the Lord come. Hence it is that Cain was not punished by man, as responsibility would have required after the sword was committed to Noah. Thenceforward did God solemnly require blood for blood: “whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made He man.” The sword of civil government was only borne by man as God's minister after the deluge.

Nor do we find explicitly the eternal judgment in Cain's case any more than in Adam's. No doubt words employed occasionally imply more to the ear of faith; but the open statement speaks of God's government of the earth, as was suitable in a revelation given to His people Israel. Therefore we hear not of heaven or of hell; but “when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield its strength to thee; a fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be on earth” (ver. 12). Heavier than before was to be the lot of him who slew his righteous brother, cursed himself on the reluctant earth, whence with difficulty he should draw his food, and where he should be a constant prey to a had conscience and anxious fears, shunned by all around him.

How blessed the contrast in the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than that of Abel (Heb. 12)! This called for vengeance, as that will for blessing on the earth when the day arrives for the liberty of the glory, as Rom 8 speaks: how due to an infinitely better than Abel!

Genesis 4:13-15

The sin of Cain was not simply self-will in rebellion against God like Adam's, but despite of grace in the fallen state; which broke out in murderous violence against the accepted man, not a neighbor only but his brother. It was the type of the Jews' sin against Christ; and the sentence was not death but to be cursed from the earth, a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth. This too we see strikingly verified in that people, who as yet show as little compunction as their prototype, tenacious of religious forms, but leaders of the world in rationalistic infidelity with a bad conscience. “And Cain said to Jehovah, My punishment (or iniquity) [is] greater than to be borne. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day on the face of the ground, and from thy face I shall be hid, and I shall be a wanderer and a fugitive in the earth; and it will come to pass [that] every one finding me shall slay me. And Jehovah said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, it shall be avenged sevenfold. And Jehovah set a mark on Cain, lest any finding him should kill him” (vers. 13-15).

Here we see the reaction, from unbelieving indifference and dislike of grace and hatred of its object as well as its source, to despair. How deep the lesson and solemn the warning! How hard the heart which so slightly regarded his own fratricidal guilt, to say nothing of such a brother as Abel; and which so ungratefully received the goodness of Jehovah in all His ways and words with himself, which left the door open for repentance and, it would seem, a sin offering also! But his pride rankled with hatred because of his unbelieving and rejected oblation, even though his primogeniture was expressly declared to be intact.

How true is that which our Lord lays down! If, on the one hand, a man love Me, he will keep My word, as, on the other, He that loveth me not keepeth not My sayings. The holy pleading of Jehovah with His vain worshipper never entered that unhappy heart. In man fallen the beginning of moral goodness is in the confession of one's badness; and faith in the Deliverer coming, and yet more as come, produces this repentance, which bows to God and confides in His mercy. So it was with Abel; not so with Cain whose bitterness rose up everywhere rebelliously, the form only changing with the circumstances. Cursed from the earth though he was, he was to live a wanderer here below: Jehovah does not act on the precepts of earthly government He had not yet divulged.

What space for self-judgment, if the appeals of Jehovah had been laid to heart! Heedless of His words, thankless for His longsuffering, Cain sheds not a tear over his murdered and martyred brother; his whole feeling is for himself. It was not his iniquity that overwhelmed his conscience. Of his punishment he complained as too great to be borne. That this is the true meaning of his words the context shows. “Behold, Thou hast driven me out this day on the face of the ground, and from Thy face I shall be hid.” But what care for Jehovah's face had he, who, without a victim, without the confession of sin and death, still less of a Savior to come, dared to approach Jehovah with the fruit of the ground cursed for man's sin? His worship betokened his wickedness, his incredulity, his dark unexercised conscience; as Abel's told out his sense of ruin, but confidence in the One revealed of God to destroy the destroyer on man's behalf and to His own glory.

We shall see ere long how little Cain respected the divine sentence which he next repeats: “And I shall be a wanderer and a fugitive in the earth.” It was really a most mild and merciful dealing with the wicked man whose hands were imbrued with his brother's blood, directly suited to furnish time for bitter reflection and self-loathing and anguish, had not sin hardened his heart into a mill-stone.

Bold as he was, his consciousness of guilt could not keep his fears hid: “And it will come to pass that everyone finding me shall slay me.” There however he was mistaken. Jehovah's long-suffering with His adversaries is amazing; as men now would feel and own, if they only let in light enough to see their own dark enmity to God. “And Jehovah said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, it shall be avenged sevenfold. And Jehovah set a mark on Cain, lest any finding him should kill him” (ver. 15).

Cain was preserved, notwithstanding that which deserved immediate and condign punishment; he was reserved for the special dealing of Jehovah at the end; for He had even a mark set on him (of what sort it is not said) that none should find and slay him. He had the wretched consolation that man's meddling with him to his hurt, certainly to seek his death, would be avenged to the fullest degree. How evident a type it is of God's dealings, and in the revealed character of Jehovah too, with the Jew because of His blood Who was raised up from among His brethren after the flesh to be the anointed king and prophet and priest on His throne, all this and more, being in His own right Son of the Highest and no less God than the Father, Who alone of men and as man had glorified Him in all respects to the uttermost! Yet was He, yea because He was and spoke the truth to the Jews and witnessed the good confession before the Gentiles, slain far more wantonly and ignominiously than Abel was of Cain. But God in that unspeakable wickedness and crime of man made Him sin for us, that we might become divine righteousness in Him: the deepest and most needed and withal most effectual proof of what the God of love is toward man in salvation of the lost at all cost to Himself and His Son. But the Jew, blinded by religious pride and hardened yet more than the Gentile in his guilty course of evil, remains preserved of God, and awaits the special dealings of Jehovah at the end of the age, in that unequaled tribulation which is his predicted portion, before the indignation shall cease and Jehovah's anger in the destruction of the enemies of Israel.

Genesis 4:16-17

The way of Cain thus demonstrates the worthlessness of natural religion to meet the need of fallen man, still more to suit Jehovah. It ignores both the ruin through sin and the nature of God. “Thou thoughtest,” says the Psalmist, “that I was altogether such a one as thyself.” Spiritual insensibility like this, when reproved of God as with Cain, becomes furious against such as by grace bow to the truth, even were they in the nearest ties of flesh and blood. Finding acceptance with God is intolerable in his eyes who was rejected of Him. There was no self-judgment, though Jehovah pointed out the way of mercy for the evil-doer, and maintained Cain's natural primacy intact. His religious observance covered a heart darkened and defiled by unbelief; the word of Jehovah slighted left him a prey to the evil one; and murder followed. For Satan is a murderer, as we saw him a liar in ch. 3. And Cain declares himself hid from Jehovah's face; as the man and his wife themselves from the presence of God when they heard His voice after their transgression.

But there is more for us to weigh in this instructive history. Despair not only closes the heart to the word of God, no matter what the grace He reveals, but it urges on the spirit to ever growing departure, and to fill up the void with present objects of sense. This is the fresh lesson taught here. The time was not yet arrived for the enemy to bring in idolatry, of which we never hear in scripture till after the deluge; and we are not entitled to affirm it without proof. In the antediluvian earth, bad as men were and ever sinking lower, they did not yet worship the powers of nature; still less did they change the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds and quadrupeds and reptiles.

But Cain shows us the progress of an impenitent soul in a field for the energies of man without God. His worship is dropped; the world morally begins.

“And Cain went out from the presence of Jehovah, and dwelt in the land of Nod [wandering] east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived and bare Enoch. And he was building a city, and called the city's name, after the name of his son, Enoch” (vers. 16, 17).

The language of inspiration is most significant. Jehovah did not leave Himself without witness, even to wicked Cain. He knew the end from the beginning, yet remonstrated with him when He could not accept his offering, urging righteousness, but disclosing the resource of grace when wrong was done. He laid the conviction of guilt on Cain after his secret murder of the suffering saint whose blood cried unto Him from the ground. What interest even in so wicked a man! What long-suffering with man as he is!

How can any believer venture to treat such early and gracious interventions of Jehovah as other than plain and sober, however solemn, facts! Undoubtedly they became rarer as the rule in man's history here below; and this in large part because they really were vouchsafed for his learning at the beginning. In no sense are they to be regarded as mythical, but as His actual dealings with man for his profit now and evermore, if he have ears to hear.

It was Cain then who “went out from the presence of Jehovah,” and dwelt in that land which seems named from his exile; east of Eden. Jehovah was no longer before his mind. The world was his object. There were such as he feared already (ver. 14); and Jehovah had given or appointed for him a sign, lest any should find and kill him. Fear of Jehovah he had none. What actuated mankind later wrought in him henceforth. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” The space which grace gives for repentance, ungodliness perverts to pursue its own will and indulge its lusts, in defiance of God and His word. His sin is the “initiated," whose name his father gives to the city he was building: a most striking fact for that day, and above all notable in him whom Jehovah had sentenced to be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth.

It is the rise of civilization without God; the effort of man to make a paradise for himself and forget that he is an outcast through sin. Cain shows us the first budding of what was to bear the bitterest fruit. Psa. 49 is a moralizing of the godly Jewish remnant, who in it see man, whatever his pretensions, no better toward God than the beasts that perish. With all their pride, then self-seeking meets its rebuke, for death shall be their shepherd, they being appointed as a flock for Sheol, and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning. Their inward thought is, their houses are forever, their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names. This their way is their folly; yet after them men approve their sayings. Such is the world, till the Lord appears and executes judgment.

Genesis 4:18-22

We have seen under Cain the cradle of public civilized life, the first building of a city; his son named with an expression of initiation or culture, earthly as it was; and the city named in the pride of life after the name of his son: a little beginning of that vast system to rise up ere long in opposition to God, where the knowledge of the Father and of His love never penetrates, where Christ and they that are His cannot escape hatred. It was the resource of man under curse in the land of his exile, who went forth from His presence Who convicted him of sin against man, his brother, no less than against God. Faith alone purifies” the heart; but faith was as far from him as love, the fruit of that divine love which unbelief never sees or feels. And as there was no dependence on God, so a bad conscience engendered dread of man: “whosoever findeth me shall slay me,” his own words. Within that wretched breast grew up the notion of a city; as his son's name furnished the idea of perpetuating a family boast on earth. Jehovah's name was nothing to his soul, save one of horror, because of his own conscious guilt. He must die like his parents, but his city, like his family, shall continue forever, his dwellings from generation to generation, and then at least the name should not die. Expulsion from paradise, going out from Jehovah's presence, only gave the occasion to prove how a brave and determined man can rise above the dreariest lot and turn a land of wandering into a settled habitation and secured from marauders and other foes.

“And to Enoch was born Irad; and Irad begot Mehujael; and Mehujael begot Methushael; and Methushael begot Lemech. And Lemech took to him two wives; the name of the one [was] Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. And Adah bare Jabal: he was father of such as dwell in tents and [have] cattle. And his brother's name [was] Jubal: he was father of all such as handle harp and pipe. And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-Cain, forger of every tool of copper and iron; and Tubal-Cain's sister [was] Naamah” (vers. 18-22).

In this first genealogical draft, what is said of Lemech arrests us. He is marked as violating first the divine order of marriage. It was “not good that the man should be alone.” But His provision was not two or more, but one woman, “a helpmate,” his counterpart. Self-will, ever growing, did not not longer hesitate to traverse God's mind, evidenced sufficiently for those who fear God in His act: and “Lemech took to him two wives.” From the beginning it was not so. Our Lord treats the account, not as poetic, or mythical, but as authentic and divinely authoritative fact. He also, we may notice, binds together chaps. i. and ii. as parts of one inspired narrative, whatever the difficulties or dreams of soi-disant higher criticism, not only erring but in its overweening vanity ignorant of the scriptures, and of the power of God, which faith alone in the nature of things can apprehend and enjoy. Polygamy is a direct transgression of that unity which is of its original institution according to God's will. The law no doubt permitted a measure of license in view of the hard-heartedness of Israel (i.e. of man in the flesh); but the law made nothing perfect: Christ vindicated, as He is, the truth.

The names of Lemech's wives are given, as of our first mother, and these only, with his daughter Naamah, of the antediluvian women. As Eve was named with express significance, it may well be that Lemech's choice denotes the gratification of taste in the growing world. For Adah means “beauty “, Zillah “shadow “, and Naamah “pleasant.” God was not in the thought of their designations. They fell in with the advances of civilization, which disdains the pilgrim and stranger character, so dear to faith. Earth is its home, and every accession to present loveliness is welcomed. Why think of sin or righteousness, of death and judgment, of Christ and His coming? Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die. A “garden” of Epicurism soon opened when Paradise was closed; and votaries were not wanting long before Epicurus rose among the Greeks or Sadducees among the Jews.

Still clearer or more certain is the inference from the verses that follow. “And Adah bore Jabal: he was father of such as dwell in tents and [have] cattle. And his brother's name was Jubal: he was father of all such as handle harp and pipe. And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-Cain, forger of every tool of copper and iron; and Tubal-Cain's sister [was] Naamah.”

Agriculture was the early occupation of Cain, as Abel had been a shepherd. “Building a city” followed guilt and dread of man without the fear of God acting on a mind stimulated by energy and fertile of resource, and a heart set on earthly hopes. Thenceforward the race progressed rapidly. Some, of whom Jabal is chief, pleased themselves in the rough and adventurous life of nomad herdmen; others struck out and pursued the inventive path of art and science. For Jubal, brother of Jabal, was father of all such as handle stringed and wind instruments: inventions cherished almost alike without a city as within, as experience shows. Nor this only: Tubal-Cain follows, forger (or furbisher) of every tool for cutting instruments of copper and iron. The road to eminence lay open for man alienated from God and indifferent to it, independent of God in will, if not really, and of course wrongly. He acts of and for himself to make the land of his wandering his paradise, of which he is the more proud because these useful or pleasant inventions he can boast of as his own. But he is God's creature, and responsible to obey, and must give account. By Adam's sin he lost his true place and relationship; and instead of seeking another and a better open to faith in the Second man, he prefers his own will, his fancied independence, which is no other than Satan's service, with Satan's doom at the end.

It may not be amiss to notice how the word of God overthrows the modern speculator who assumes the three ages of stone, bronze, and iron, through which they will have early mankind to have passed in pre-historic times. Even had we no inspired record, enough has been gathered from facts of the past to dispel the illusion. Epochs in chronology they are not in any sense. There are regions even now, and not all confined to Australia, whose use of rough stone implements would thus fix them in the palmolithic age. A similar condition was attested a century ago of races in the northern and eastern districts of the Russian empire, European and Asiatic. And we have good authority (Prof. Rygh, of Christiania, before the Stockholm meeting of the International Congress of Pre-historic Archeology) that, north of Nordland in Norway, the inhabitants remained in the practice of the so-called Stone age till the beginning of last century, though for hundreds of years in communication with people who used iron. See Academy, August 29, 1874. Again, the races of Mexico, Central America, and Peru, employed weapons of obsidian and implements of bronze, when the Spaniards overran and conquered them. So it was in the early age of Greece, which used stone and bronze together, but not iron any more than did S. America. And what evidence is there of a stone age in Egypt, however early we trace the facts? No one doubts that a few traces of stone appear, and even bronze only prevailed a short while. In Babylonia both flint and bronze were used for war and peace; as were leaden pipes and jars, along with iron; as, much later, stone implements continued to be used, when ancient civilization had reached its zenith with cutting instruments of metal in familiar use (Smith's Anc. Hist. 375).

To this day the people in Northern Abyssinia use stone hatchets and flint knives, along with iron poignards. And as to cave dwellers, they are still found, not only in distant lands, but even in a land so near as Spain, where many perished quite recently through sudden floods which surprised whole families. It is a question, not of antiquity, still less of definite ages in that imagined succession, but of civilization; and scripture is express that the settled, ordered, and combined life of a city, as well as the working of metals, and the invention of musical instruments within two main divisions, began early in the life of Adam. The mythical treatment of the question is entirely due to skeptical men of science who prefer hypothesis to well ascertained fact, and seem pleased in opposing revelation.

Genesis 4:23-26

We have had in Cain the moral history of man outside Paradise, sin fully developed, not against Jehovah only, but, because his own works were evil and his religious service an offering of impenitent folly and rejected, against his believing and righteous brother Abel. Along side of it the long-suffering yet righteous dealings of Jehovah are of the highest interest and instruction, the manifest foreshadowing of His ways in due time with His people Israel, who would abandon promise by God's grace in Christ for conditions of law which flesh presumes to fulfill to its own ruin. Like Cain too, the Jews slew in result Jesus Christ the Righteous, though He came of them according to flesh, their own Messiah, Who is over all, God blessed forever. Hence they also are gone out from the presence of Jehovah, cursed from the earth for blood-guiltiness, dwell in a land of wandering exile, and, in the evident loss for the present of their divine mission of blessing to all families of the earth, betake themselves to city life, to bold adventure, to the inventions of art and science, and to the amenities of the civilized world. Man's will governs and pursues its onward way, totally indifferent to God's will and glory.

It is therefore not man only, but the firstborn in sin, answering to God's favored people, men religious after the flesh, but in fact unjust and rebellious even to the death of the Righteous One, Whom by the hand of lawless men they did crucify and slay. By fierce imprecation of all the people, His blood is on them and on their children, and their land as yet like the potter's field to bury strangers in, justly called Akeldama, Blood-Field.

This is followed up in the account of Lemech's words to his wives, on which tradition has hung its myths, and theologians have speculated through not seeing the divine mind and purpose to be gathered from the scripture. Either way God's word is not honored by faith; and who can wonder that edification fails?

“And Lemech said unto his wives,

Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;

Ye wives of Lemech, hearken to my speech:

For a man I have slain for wounding me,

And a youth for hurting me;

If Cain shall be avenged seven-fold,

Then Lemech too seventy and seven[fold]” (vers. 23, 24).

It is the first recorded poetry in the Bible; and God is in no way the object, but self for this life: another and weighty addition to the picture of the world. Whatever the historical circumstances, the aim was to reassure his wives who dreaded the consequences of his violent deeds. Lemech appears to plead that the blood he had shed was shed in self-defense, not murderously like Cain; and therefore he avails himself of the divine shelter of his own forefather as the surest pledge of intervention on his own behalf.

The fact is certain that God watches over His ancient people, guiltier far than Cain, but of blood that speaks better than that of Abel. For if the Jew has been kept, in the face of man ever hostile and ready to slay, in the face of more spiteful Christendom, Greek or Latin, utterly ignorant of God's secret purpose to pardon and bless in the end, neither bloody crusades of old nor cruel ukases now, will succeed to exterminate Israel, but only to bring punishment another day on their adversaries. There they are, wanderers but preserved, as no people ever was, for everlasting mercy when their heart turns to God and Him Whom they cast out. And here in Lemech's words, though he may have meant nothing higher than the sad facts of Cain's deed or his own, can we not hear the inspired image of the Jew's confession in the latter day? Assuredly we know on authority which cannot be broken, that the repentant Jew will yet own, like their forefathers in the analogous case of Joseph, but about One greater and better than Joseph, We were very guilty concerning our brother. For the prophet declares what divine goodness and truth will yet fulfill:— “I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they shall look upon ME whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn” (Zech. 12:10).

Lemech's saying, therefore, is an unconscious prophecy like that of Caiaphas, but of the Jews acknowledging, not hiding, blood-guiltiness (Psa. 1), the blood of their own King: and of what a King! Himself, the sacrifice for the sin which slew Him; and those who in their blind unbelief were thus guilty brought to true faith and real repentance, thenceforward to have God blessing them, causing His face to shine upon (with) them that His way may be known upon earth, His saving health among all nations.

“And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Sheth: for God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, for Cain slew [him]. And to Sheth, to him also was born a son, and he called his name Enoch: then it was begun to call on Jehovah's name” (vers. 25, 26).

Abel had been cut off; Cain is not recognized here, save as guilty. All hangs upon the one that God (Elohim) appointed. It is not nature's hopes, but, after all had failed, the intervention of God's grace, and man taking his true place, weak, wretched; for so Sheth called his son. Then too it was begun to call upon Jehovah's name. So it will be in power and fullness another day. It is not Christ come and slain, but the coming Son of man. Jehovah will be owned fully. In that day, says the same prophet, shall Jehovah be one, and His name one. Rivals shall vanish away, false religion no more lift its head. The absurdity of the dovetailed hypothesis is here plain, as is the divine wisdom in the use of designations purposely employed. Men too unbelieving to understand, too conceited or impatient to learn, invented it to throw the blame off themselves on the book. Only think of the credulity of such as believe them instead of God!

Genesis 5:1-2

The chapter on which we now enter strikingly refutes the hypothesis of separate documents, so much in vogue with the neo-critics. For according to it this book of Adam's generation originally followed Gen. 1; 2:1-3, as the more ancient Elohistic record, supposed to be dislocated by the singular compound (Jehovah Elohim) in chaps. 2:4, 3., and by the Jehovistic interpolation of chap. 4. But such an arrangement as is thus assumed not only yields a result barren of any good fruit, but deprives us of truth most interesting, momentous, and necessary about God and man, as well as the enemy of both. For what is omitted thereby? The instructive lesson of the temptation; the awful fact and consequences of the fall; the solemn intervention of Him Who blessed and tried but, by man's sin, was made his Judge; the mysterious revelation of a suffering Destroyer of that enemy who ensnared our first parents by disobedience unto death, and of a Conqueror Who, in some way as yet unexplained, should be born of woman, and yet deal with Satan as not all mankind of all ages together could. Nor is this brief summary of chap. 3. anything like a full appraisal of the most needed truth left out.

Consider next how deep and searching is chap. 4., where sin against man, one's brother even, is as fully out as against God in chap. 3! The sole ground of acceptable approach to Jehovah is by sacrifice; for this was the then acknowledgment of man as sinful, and of God in grace looking on to a remedy in righteousness. So we see the younger son Abel offering and accepted by faith, the elder Cain rejected with his offering of nature in unbelief, though Eve had fondly counted him a man gotten from Jehovah. Then, in pride rankling into hatred, notwithstanding the gracious expostulation of Jehovah, Who points to the remedy and maintains his title after the flesh, Cain slays his righteous brother, is convicted (spite of heartless and insolent prevarication), gets cursed from the ground, and is sentenced to be a wanderer in the earth. What a type of the Jew guilty of the death of Jehovah's righteous Servant, their own Messiah, yet with a sign given that they shall not perish; and in the end under Lamech confessing the sins and avenged seventy and sevenfold, when we hear of another Seed appointed of God instead of the slain, and in due time men calling on the name of Jehovah! For this in its turn is no other than the pledge of the One Who combines the slain Messiah with the appointed Heir of all things, our Lord Jesus. Yet much as is here traced, there is also the picture of the world and its civilization, its arts and sciences and delights, away from God, Who refuses its natural religion and vain efforts to worship Him after the flesh.

Think then of the critical judgment, which can regard the narrative (call it Elohistic, or Book of Origins, or Priest's Code, or anything else), when disengaged from the rest where designations other than Elohim occur, as “a nearly complete whole!” Surely men learned or unlearned, who thus manipulate the scriptures in honor of the crudest fancy which ever rose into a popular fashion, betray their own lack of faith and their consequent inability to interpret that Mind which opens to the believer only. It is just as under another form in Israel of old, “All vision is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot, for it is sealed. And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned” (Isa. 29:11, 12). What! “a nearly complete whole” in God's history, or the Priest's Code, of man, without one word about the details of his divine relationship founded on his peculiar formation, his body of the dust, the inner man as directly inbreathed by Jehovah Elohim! Without one word about paradise lost and death gained by disobedience inexcusable! Without one word about the knowledge of good and evil incompatible with innocence pure and simple, but after his transgression man's condition for good as for ill! Without one word about woman's relationship to man founded on her most singular, but touching; and beautiful, building up under the wise and good hand of the LORD God, with all its fruitful admonition whether men hear or forbear! Without one word about the simplicity of sinless man and woman naked and without shame, their instant ineffectual covering of a natural sort, and the profound truth and grace, though merely as yet a shadow, of the LORD God's effectual clothing based on death! And withal the mysterious serpent's ominous and dark insinuation to man's ruin and his own sure destruction by divine power in the person of the woman's Seed—not a word about this dire and constant adversary of God throughout the sad history of man's responsibility, or the final judgment!

Really the freaks of human speculation are far stranger and more unaccountable than the unvarnished narrative of inspiration as it stands, which to the believing ear requires the distinctive titles of Elohim, Jehovah Elohim, and Jehovah (as others also in due time) according to the varying character of the communications, and therefore intrinsically necessary to the perfection of the divine word. It is the phenomenal ignorance of unbelief, absolutely unheeding God's mind, which, in despair of real intelligence by the Holy Spirit, seeks the superficial, unsatisfactory, and baseless hypothesis of a composite from distinct sources welded together by a later compiler into a continuous whole, which after all is full of inconsistencies in details and wholly unreliable. In truth it is but infidelity and veiled with no better than fig-leaves which betray sin and nakedness. Different points of view there are, as there ought to be for full truth, which account for differing traits of style; but as chaps. 2. 3. pre-suppose chap. 1., so does chap. 4. follow up both, as the actual conflict of nature and grace. Chap. 5., like other scriptures, employs each designation and its accompaniments as truth demands: so we may hope to show to such as, receiving Holy Writ, accept it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth God's word.

Needs it further proof that the so-called duplicates are due to differing design, not to distinct hands, still less to bastard legends? Thus in chap. 2:4 and onward, there is no thought of setting out the order of creation, already given generally from first to last in chap. 1., but the momentous fact of such special truths as the Moral Governor, Jehovah God, set up in the scene of Adam's relations with Himself and paradise, with earthly creation as a whole and the woman in particular. Opposition between the chapters whether materially or formally is a libel. And hence, as in many respects the condition was peculiar to the primeval state, we never in the Pentateuch find Jehovah

Elohim regularly used but here, save exceptionally in Ex. 9:30. It is untrue that chap. 2:7, 19 represents man as created before the birds and the beasts; it is untrue that chap. 2:7 (Adam's formation out of the dust) contradicts chap. 1:27 (created in God's image); it is untrue that chap. 1:27 asserts that the man and the woman were created together, or does not consist with the woman being formed specifically out of Adam's flank. Such objections spring solely from the spite of unbelief. The two chapters, like those that follow, are from the same Mind guided of God; but some to their shame have no knowledge of God.

With the light derivable from all that precedes, chap. v. takes up man in the succession of his generations from Adam to Noah and his sons; and therefore Elohim rather than Jehovah was the correct title, Jehovah only appearing once where it was more proper. And this to the eyes of our “wise and prudent” critics “can only be accounted for upon the supposition that the sections in which they occur are by a different hand” (Driver's Lit., O.T.)!

“This [is the] book of Adam's generations. In the day God created man, in God's likeness made he him; male and female created he them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam (man), in the day when they were created” (vers. 1, 2).

Now suppose the different-document hypothesis a fact, and this chapter had ever followed chap. 1. 2:3, as the immediate sequel, how insipid such a continuation as the opening of chap. 5.! We say nothing of omitting such all important particulars as are ignored between the two, as we have already noticed. If on the contrary we receive these scriptures as they are, the new departure on ground similar to the earliest section most suitably calls for a tracing down from Adam through Seth to diluvian times, just as we have it. The intervening history which brought out God not simply as such, but as Jehovah Elohim, and then in the usual style of Jehovah, where special relationship is treated with rebellion against it, made it all the more requisite to resume the genealogical line from its source till God judged creation.

Even here it is far from mere repetition, which it might seem to the careless reader. For chap. 1:26 says that God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and reiterates not His “likeness” but “image” twice in ver. 27. Here it is said that, in the day of His creating man, He made him in the likeness of God. Both were true, but they are not the same statement; and an imitator or later redactor being uninspired would rather have made them identical. He Who knew the whole truth could and did use each appropriately; as we may see for the form here employed, when ver. 3 comes before us. But the shade of difference is undeniable, understand it or not as we may.

Further, here only are we told that God “called their name Adam (man) in the day they were created.” It was Adam before the fall who called the woman Ishah, because she was taken out of Ish. It was Adam, after the fall but also the revelation of the woman's Seed, who called his wife's name Eve (Chavvah), because she was the mother of all living. Unbelief might have naturally called her Death, as the mother of all dying. But Adam looked in faith for her Seed Who entitled him and them to better things than he and she had any right to. But here it is the racial name, common to both, which God called in the day of their creation. How wise is every change, every difference, embodied in God's word! And how foolish the incredulity that can see nothing beyond the discrepancies of different hands, none of them inspired in any true sense!

Genesis 5:3-5

THAT chapter 5. is in its only proper place, supposing one and the same hand wrote all the sections preceding it, is manifest from the exclusion of reference to Cain and Abel, and its notice of Seth as the true and appointed continuator of Adam's line to Noah. Previous and fragmentary documents, or not, is quite a subordinate question. But this is the more inviting for the speculative to discuss, as there is the slenderest basis whereon to display their skill in building their ingenious but shadowy schemes. The believer has before him the solid fact of a divinely carried out design, on a principle which discovers the enmity of a mind above man's, not here only but throughout the O.T. Nor is there a single instance known to me of sure evidence against Moses as its writer. The ancient heathen themselves, spite of their undying animosity against the Jews, were not in this as unbelieving as our modern critics who call themselves Christians.

For where could the fruitful episode of chap. 4. stand suitably but where we find it? Yet this, to be exact, required the use of Jehovah alone for the first time in the narrative. Neither Elohim as in chaps. 1. 2: 3 would be in keeping, nor yet Jehovah Elohim as in chaps. 2:4 and 3., each in its proper place, which is only proved the more by the exceptions in the language of the serpent and of Eve (chap. 3:1, 3, 5). The conditions in chap. 4 were no longer paradisiacal but such as appealed to all the race now fallen, especially before men lapsed into idolatry, having still the traditional knowledge of God, not as Creator only but in special relationship as Moral Governor of His offspring. Not for two millenniums and a half was that Name with the law given to the chosen people as their distinctive possession and responsibility. But here they were shown, on the small primeval platform of Cain and Abel, the vanity for a sinner of natural religion, slighting, as it always does the guilt and the judgment of sin, no less than sacrificial provision of grace bound up with faith in the coming and suffering Messiah Who should destroy the enemy.

It is remarkable that Eve, who had been misled by the serpent to forget the special relationship of Jehovah Elohim, said on the birth of Cain, I have gotten a man from, or with the help of Jehovah. It was like Sarah in Hagar's case looking for the seed of promise through nature. On the other hand, and in the same chap. 4:25, she said on the birth of Seth, Elohim hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel: the more to he observed, because in the next verse we are told that then it was men began to call upon the name of Jehovah. Now each of these designations is employed with exquisite propriety, and with an aim evident save to men walking in the darkness of Egypt. So mistaken are they who, ignorant of what is all-important spiritually, fall into the delusion of striving to account for these differences and their accompaniments, by the fancy that the sections in which they occur are by different hands. It is the design, and this a divine one, which alone satisfactorily explains all the phenomena, and the more strikingly because they come from the same inspired writer.

So in our chap. 5. Elohim is the only proper term till we come to verse 29, where Jehovah is demanded by the aim of the inspiring Spirit. Difference of hand is the resource of incredulous ignorance. Cain and Abel had played their parts respectively, as all that hear the truth must, in the darkness of unbelief or the light of faith; and Eve, profiting by her early mistake, acknowledges her son Seth as substituted by Elohim for Abel whom Cain slew. Son of Adam, he the firstborn had gone out impenitent and in despair from Jehovah's presence, was building a city called after the name of his son, and began the world of arts and sciences, civilization and pleasure, a wanderer far from the God Who reveals His will and judges those that despise His Christ. With the appointed Man people began calling upon His Name, the foreshadow of the millennial day (compare Isa. 11:9.10;, Jer. 3:17; Zech. 14:9; Mal. 1:11).

Here till the close the sole correct designation is Elohim, and could not be Jehovah. It is the line of Seth from Adam to Noah.

“And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begat [a son] in his likeness, after his image, and called his name Sheth. And Adam's days after he begat Sheth were eight hundred years; and he begat sons and daughters. And all Adam's days which he lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died” (vers. 3-5).

When Elohim made man, chap. 1: 26, He proposed it to be in His image, after His likeness. So He created him in His image, as it is said twice (ver. 27). And we have already seen, that, as likeness resembles, image represents: a distinction which it is of moment to seize, as it holds everywhere in scripture. The “likeness” consisted of qualities corresponding to God, as no other nature on earth had; the image was man's place in presenting Him to others, as not even angels of heaven did or could. As man was made upright, so he was called to dominion over the lower creation. Angels fulfill His word and do His pleasure, yet they only minister, never rule. But now that the head of the race was fallen, he “begat in his likeness, after his image.” It was in his own likeness, not God's; and it was not Cain but Seth that is said to be “after his image.” Adam was represented by Seth, though he could not be said to be begotten after Elohim's likeness but Adam's. Yet it still remains true that man, even though fallen, is the image and glory of God (1 Cor. 11:7). Hence the guilt of murder demanded death, for it was the extinction of what represented God on earth, even when man was no longer after His likeness (Gen. 9:6). The comparison of our verse 1 makes it all the plainer: “in the likeness of God made He him” (Adam). The “image” of God was the emphatic point in Gen. 1:27, and even in 26 takes precedence, however important the “likeness” which sin destroyed for Seth, whom Adam “begat in his likeness, after his image.” The race is fallen.

What progeny Adam had during this early time we are not told, but simply that his “days after he begat Seth were eight hundred; and he begat sons and daughters.” How little is said of the line of faith, especially if we compare the striking picture which the preceding chapter furnishes of the world's rapid progress in all that life which nature deems worth living!

“And all the days which Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died” (ver. 5). There is not the slightest sound reason to doubt the longevity here attributed to antediluvian man. Man was made to live, not to die; his death came in through sin. The truth of life will appear when the Second man takes the world-kingdom (Rev. 11). Those who live righteously when He reigns shall continue through the thousand years, none dying save under curse for rebellion; and the righteous, as scriptural principles imply, are at last changed, without passing through death, into everlasting in-corruption; as Christians are entitled to expect who are alive and are left to the coming of the Lord, before His displayed kingdom begins (1 Thess. 4., 1 Cor. 15.). Lengthened as the span of years may seem, compared with the measure which the prayer of Moses (Psa. 90) lays down as the ordinary rule of human life, they were but “days” of Adam or any other here recorded. After Adam they were begotten, and they begot; they lived and they died. This sums up the history of most; but of this more when we review the account of others, as well as the exceptions.

Genesis 5:6-20

Chap. 5: 6-20.

JOSEPHUS and certain Arabian writers, quoted by Hottinger, allege details of ancient worthies here enumerated; which are not worth repeating, because they are destitute of real authority. The inspired writer all the more impressively gives the same simple outline of these lives so prolonged. Two exceptions occur of most notable character which claim appropriate heed in their places. The general line is all that now comes before us. Divine purpose is the key to both. It explains alike the mention which looks so meager, and the special record in the cases of Enoch and Noah. It accounts for the omission of all particulars in the general genealogy beyond the direct line of the chosen people, and so especially of the Messiah, God's salvation, light for the revelation of the gentiles, and glory of His people Israel. The rest of their progeny, however numerous or distinguished in a human way, are merely merged in “sons and daughters” they begot.

“And Sheth lived a hundred and five years, and begat Enosh. And Sheth lived after he begat Enosh eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters. And all Sheth's days were nine hundred and twelve years; and he died. And Enosh lived ninety years and begat Kenan. And Enosh lived after he begat Kenan eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters. And all Enosh's days were nine hundred and five years; and he died. And Kenan lived seventy years and begat Mahalaleel. And Kenan lived after he begat Mahalaleel eight hundred and forty years, and begat sons and daughters. And all Kenan's days were nine hundred and ten years, and he died. And Mahalaleel lived sixty-five years, and begat Jared. And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared eight hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters. And all Mahalaleel's days were eight hundred and ninety-five years; and he died. And Jared lived a hundred and sixty-two years, and begat Enosh. And Jared lived after he begat Enosh eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. And all Jared's days were nine hundred and sixty-two years; and he died” (vers. 6-20).

It is in vain for men to decry the longevity of the men before the deluge, and, though diminishing, after it. Oriental and other nations long retained the tradition, however disguised, pointing to the primitive facts. To argue that it is contrary to the known laws of physiology is only the resort of narrow-minded and ignorant unbelief. For God if He pleased could easily by change of conditions reduce man's life from 900 years to 90. It is a question of fact for which His word vouches. Nor is there any need to labor on behalf of the plain statements of scripture; for man unfallen never partook of the tree of life; and, when fallen, he was driven out lest he should. The gradual experience of men since the deluge is of no validity against the immensely greater age of mankind as scripture avers before that great event, whatever the physical or secondary causes may have been before or after, as they are presumptuous who deny it.

We are not in a position to ascertain where God has said so little; but there were reasons we can appreciate why in the early history of mankind their prolonged span of life was of incalculable moment. It was in their high interest that the origin of the race should be attested, as well as of the earth and heavens, and of all creatures in them; still higher was it to hear of the fall and its solemn results; highest of all, to know that He, alike the Creator and in moral relationship with man, had interposed in a way not more righteous than graciously revealing a suffering Deliverer, the woman's Seed, to destroy the enemy: the victory of good over evil for all who believe as well as creation. What can be conceived of such great weight for God and man as to convey aright this pregnant revelation of grace, and to those so immediately concerned as the fallen race, or at least such as had ears to hear? And how was a revelation as yet oral to reach the family of Adam effectually save by the longevity which characterized that early day?

Hottinger, allege details of the ancient worthies here enumerated; which are not worth repeating, because they are destitute of real authority. The inspired writer all the more impressively gives the same simple outline of these lives so prolonged. Two exceptions occur of most notable character which claim appropriate heed in their places. The general line is all that now comes before us. Divine purpose is the key to both. It explains alike the mention which looks so meager, and the special record in the cases of Enoch and Noah. It accounts for the omission of all particulars in the general genealogy beyond the direct line of the chosen people, and so especially of the Messiah, God's salvation, light for revelation of Gentiles, and glory of His people Israel. The rest of their progeny, however numerous or distinguished in a human way, are merely merged in “sons and daughters” they begot.

For Methuselah lived to tell Shem what Adam communicated from God Himself, and Shem lived to repeat all to Abraham and Isaac: facts and prospects briefly expressed, of plain meaning, and profoundly important.

Then again one can understand how favorable the lengthened span of life in those days was to carrying out God's word in blessing the first pair, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over fish of the sea, and over bird of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Thus not only is the fact unquestionable for all, that respect revelation, but the wisdom, not to say necessity, of that exceptional condition, is pretty apparent.

The fact is, so far from the truth are those who judge solely from present experience, that man was naturally made at the outset to live. Death was sin's wages, not then a physiological necessity. God had provided the means for prolonging his life if obedient; but deprived him of that means peremptorily when fallen. For what greater misery, or moral anomaly, than an everlasting life of sin? Death therefore is in no way a debt of nature but of sin; and here we read its knell for each even of those who stood aloof from the evil way of Cain, the ancestors not of Israel only but in due time of the Messiah. Of Adam, so of Seth, Kenan, Mahalaleel, Jared, it was alike said “he died.” Now that man is a sinner, it is the one event that happens to all in the seen world; in the unseen there will be another still more solemn. “For it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this judgment” (Heb. 9:27).

How sad, were this all! Not so however; it is only the first man. “But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, first-fruits of them that are asleep. For since by man [is] death, by man also resurrection of dead persons.” He that had the power of death, that is the devil, is brought to naught through the death of Him Who in grace submitted to it, but could not be holden thereby. And so in Christ shall all be made alive, but each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; then they that are Christ's at His coming; then the end, when He shall deliver up the kingdom to Him Who is God and Father. The second man is of heaven and has all things in His hand. They that are His will enjoy a resurrection from the dead like His own; as the unjust shall be raised by His power for judgment, who despised His grace and would not have the life eternal that is in Him. For all must honor Him; if not now by believing in Him unto all blessing, by-and-by when raised to be judged for the ills they did. How blessed is the portion of those that hear His word and believe God that sent His Son! They “have eternal life, and come not into judgment, but have passed from death into life.” So declares the Lord with solemn emphasis on its truth, His “Verily, verily.”

Genesis 5:25-32

IT is but little that is said of Adam's line through Seth. They lived many days on the earth; they begat sons and daughters, besides the one who continued the succession; and they died. This gives great significance to all that is said beyond. Thus we saw the strong moral difference expressed in Seth's case compared with Adam. But the vivid contrast appeared in Enoch, the witness and manifest enjoyer of life which shone out in his walk, and superior to the power of death, as it pleased God to prove, when his comparatively tried pilgrimage closed in a sort altogether heavenly.

His son was Methuselah. “And Methuselah lived a hundred and eighty-seven years and begat Lamech; and Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred and eighty-two years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years; and he died” (vers. 25-27). In his instance it might have seemed that man was exceptionally to reach a millennium. But not so. This is reserved for the reign of the Last Adam; and He will make it good throughout His world-kingdom as the rule, and not the exception, for such as welcome Him when He appears to reign in righteousness. Mighty and beneficent the change in that day, when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea! It is in vain to reason from the first Adam experience, the prolific source of unbelief.

He is Jehovah Who deigned to become a shoot out of the stock of Jesse and a branch out of his roots shall bear fruit in days to come; in virtue of Him shall Jacob “take root; Israel shall blossom and bud; and they shall fill the face of the world with fruit.” For in truth he is also the root of Jesse. “And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse: standing as an ensign of the peoples: it shall the nations seek; and his resting place shall be in glory.” Then, when he that had the power of death is bound, and the Conqueror reigns over the earth, man shall fill his days. And Jehovah will rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in His people; and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. There shall be no more thenceforth an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days; for the youth shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed. And as Christ is the key to our understanding the scriptures now, so will He be the One in that day to put down evil in power and righteousness, and to bless man subject to His scepter.

“And Lamech lived a hundred and eighty-two years and begat a son; and he called his name Noah, saying, This [one] shall comfort us concerning our work and concerning toil of our hands because of the ground which Jehovah hath cursed. And Lamech lived after he begat Noah five hundred and ninety-five years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred and seventy-seven years; and he died” (vers. 28 31).

Here again the Holy Spirit pauses on the occasion of Noah's birth; and his father was made to utter an oracle about his son. The prophetic spirit is evident in Lamech's utterances. Noah he recognized as the witness of comfort for man's work and toiling hands. And so Noah is the type of Him Who will govern and bless the habitable world to come, after it has passed through His judgment of those that defile or destroy the earth. Lamech acknowledges time righteous dealing of Jehovah no less than Enoch does in his prophecy recorded by Jude. But the difference is characteristic. Enoch speaks openly of the Lord's coming with myriads of His saints; for a heavenly portion only adds to the sense of coming judgment of all, and not only in their works is ungodliness which they ungodlily wrought but in the hard things which ungodly sinners spoke against Him. Lamech was given, though more darkly, to see in Noah the pledge of consolation for the earth, after the judgment of the quick has done its work.

They are the complement one of the other; and both look on to a day not yet come; for a judgment in providence makes nothing perfect more than the law did. They are shadows of what is coming, and not only of destruction at the Lord's hand, but of comfort to follow for this toiling earth. It is well to accept the pledge; it is better still not to rest in that measure, but to await the full blessing Christ alone is competent to bestow. Then Jehovah's work will appear to His servants, and His glory upon their children; then the beauty of Jehovah their God shall be upon His people, and He will establish the work of their hands upon them; yea He will establish the work of their hands. No doubt to share Christ's position on high in the Father's house is incomparably more, and this we shall have who share His rejection; but it is wrong to overlook and worse to deny the blessing He will also pour on the earth, and on the ancient people, and on all peoples, in that day of glory.

Nor is there any question that on Christ's first advent and on His infinite work of atonement all depends for blessing to souls now, and for glory in the heavens and the earth at that day, because therein God was glorified in Him even as to sin, the otherwise insuperable block in the way. But while owning this fully and finding now in Him life, peace, joy, liberty, relationship with God as children and union with Himself our glorified Head, through the Holy Ghost given the more ought we to be freed from every hindrance and testify with might from above His coming, not only to take us on high, but to execute judgment on a guilty world and a guiltier Christendom, and to bless the earth gloriously and Israel and all the nations; and so much the more, because we see the day approaching.

We need not dwell on Noah more now, but just observe what we are told in verse 32: “And Noah was five hundred years old [son of 500 years], and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” Shem is first named, not because he was eldest, which Japheth was, but as in the direct line of the blessings of Israel.

Genesis 6:1-2

THE chapter opens with a brief and calm notice of a mysterious fact, on which heathen mythology revels much. What scripture does say is pregnant; but the reticence on such a theme is as suggestive of holiness, as man's tradition as usual indulges prurient curiosity. The recital no doubt seems strange to minds accustomed to reason from existing phenomena and disposed to discredit what is “marvelous” in men's eyes or all that is beyond common sense. Yet Peter and Jude render striking testimony, not only to the truth of the narrative and the divine judgment of the exceptional sin committed, but to the solemn and needed warning it renders to guilty Christendom. God has not spoken in vain whether by Moses at the beginning of the O.T, or by those two inspired men verging on the close of the N. T. If any one has a mind to read a scathing exposure of modern unbelief as expressed by the commentators Patrick or Gill, D'Oyly and Mant, Scott or A. Clarke, he can find it in Dr. S. R. Maitland's Eruvin, Essay vi. 124, (Sze. Henry Ainsworth in his Annotations and Matthew Henry in his Commentary were no better. There is a slight difference in the popular view, some holding the sons of God to be great men, or nobles; others, the progeny of Seth.

But it is impossible to deny that “sons of God,” in the early books of the Bible (Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7), are found appropriated to angels. So in a slightly different form of the Hebrew we read in Psa. 29:1, and 89:6. When the prophet Hosea predicts in chap. 1:10 (or 2:1) what the apostle Paul applied (Rom. 9:26) to the present call of Gentiles during the eclipse of Israel, the phrase is pointedly distinct, besides its having no retrospective bearing. Indeed in the Alexandrine MS. of the Septuagint version of Gen. 6:2, for υἱοὶ of the Vatican is read οἱ ἄγγελοι. But apart from this, which goes rather beyond the place of a translator, there is nο ground from Ο.Τ. usage to question that the application of the phrase is to angels, and not to men even if faithful and righteous. And the apostolic reference is indisputable. Peter and Jude, regarding the awful crisis at the end of this age in the light of this scripture, though from quite different aspects, bear the concurrent testimony of the Holy Spirit that angels were here intended by “sons of God.”

This to a believer in divine inspiration is decisive. God knew all and cannot lie. Difficulties there assuredly are to us, who know little of what is possible to beings so far transcending human estate. But we learn even from the reserved terms employed in the original text and the inspired comments that angelic commerce with mankind was exceptionally heinous in itself and in its results. God therefore avenged the flagrant departure from all the bounds He had laid down for the indigenous dwellers on high, as well as for the creatures of earthly mold by a judgment that slumbered not nor spared either. For it is evident that the fruits of the iniquity no less than the guilty mothers perished in the deluge; while the appalling sentence of consignment to everlasting bonds under darkness befell such angels as kept not their own first estate, to await the great day's judgment. Their lot, so different from that of the devil and his angels, marks the enormity of their sin for which God cast them into Tartarus (2 Peter 2:4). They had so daringly abused their liberty that they were handed over to the gloomiest custody; unlike the rest of the fallen angels, who have even access to heaven and accuse the saints and deceive the whole habitable earth as yet.

“And it came to pass when mankind began to multiply on the face of the ground and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of mankind that they [were] fair and they took to them wives of all that they chose” (verses 1, 2).

Such, we shall see, was the prelude of the deluge, the apostasy of the antediluvian world, the horrible commingling of these sons of God with the daughters of men, which led to such violence and corruption as brought down destruction from the hand of God. Yet it is instructive to notice how the fact stated in our chapter, and pointedly applied by Peter and still more plainly by Jude, is not merely evaded but denounced, if not by the earlier, by the later, fathers Greek and Latin, by some of the Rabbis, and by many of the Reformers as utterly impossible and unworthy of credit.

Abuse on a priori grounds is vain against the direct force of the record according to unquestionable usage, and as interpreted by the highest authority of the N. T., so clearly as to leave no doubt for any soul subject to the written word. That angels could appear as men is beyond controversy, and eat or drink if they pleased is certain from scripture. It is not for believers to recoil from the further and fullest intimations of God's word, because we cannot account for that which was avowedly a strange and portentous violation of nature, i.e. of God's holy will. But if He pledges His word that so it was before the flood, outrageous as it may seem and really was, who are we, who are any, to set up human opinion, and deride as well as oppose the confirmed and reiterated declaration of Holy Writ?

Philosophic difficulties are trifles light as air against scripture; especially as the explanation which takes the place of the literal meaning, supported by the full induction of O.T usage, lands the popular hypothesis in a trivial sense, unsuitable to O.T. thought and expression, and foreign or misleading to the context, as will appear when we examine verses that follow. Calvin's preference of his own judgment to the word drove him, not only to slur over the earlier statements of Gen. 6., but to get rid of the peculiar dealing of God: intimated in the Epistles of Peter and Jude for the apostate angels. Thus he says “We are not to imagine a certain place in which the devils are shut up! for the apostle simply intended to teach us how miserable their condition is, since they apostatized and lost their dignity! For wherever they go they drag with them their own chains, and remain involved in darkness!” Such is the fruit of insubjection to plain scripture, because of our incapacity to understand or explain: a pious man in what is obscure misled to explain away and contradict what is transparently irreconcilable with and corrective of his superficial view! Faith alone is always right: whether we can answer objections or remove difficulties is another question, and merely one of our spiritual measure. In this it is wise and comely not to have high thoughts above what one ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt a measure of faith to each.

Genesis 6:3-4

THESE verses follow up the subject of that mysterious fact already stated, adding the expression of Jehovah's mind on the one hand, and on the other the far different thoughts of man.

And Jehovah said, “My Spirit shall not strive within man forever, for that he also [is] flesh, and his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. The Nephilim (giants) were on the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare to them. These [are] the heroes, mighty men who [were] of old, men of renown (the name)” (vers. 3, 4).

We may see from Job 1:6; 2:1, that various documents have nothing to do with “Jehovah” occurring here along with “sons of Elohim.” The moral question in both scriptures require “Jehovah” as such, whilst the designation of the angels as “sons of Elohim” was equally correct. Further, in the same context we have repeatedly one that feared Elohim (Job 1:1; 2:3), and the kindred language in Job 1:5, 16, 22; 2:9, 10, where Jehovah is emphatically used in that moral trial both by the inspired writer and in the mouth of job (chaps. 1:6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 21, 2:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), so as to demonstrate the vanity of the hypothesis. The reason for one or other lies in the due requirement of the case, wholly independent of any imaginary change of authors. So, in our chapter of Genesis, verses 1-8 demand “Jehovah,” save in the name of the offending angels, as 9-22 call for “Elohim” without exception.

Translators and commentators differ considerably as to the rendering and scope. Onkelos and Saadiah, the Septuagint, the Syriac, and the Vulgate substantially agree in the sense of “remain” for “strive.” But the force is moral rather than physical existence, and fairly given in the A. V. Some prefer “in his wandering” instead of “for that,” which may well be. So it is said in Isa. 31:3, that Egypt is man and not God, and their horses flesh and not spirit. Man had now proved himself no better. But if Jehovah warn that His Spirit will not always plead, He sets a term of patience. For the hundred and twenty years refer, not to man's span of life, but to the space given for repentance.

This verse it is, and especially it would seem “My Spirit,” to which the apostle Peter refers in his first epistle (chap. 3:18-20). He speaks of Christ put to death in flesh, but made alive in [the] Spirit, in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, once disobedient when the long-suffering of God was waiting in Noah's days. The second epistle too (chap. ii. characterizes Noah as a preacher of righteousness. Thus, among other ways, for he prophesied also (Gen. 9), did the Spirit of Christ which was in him point out, testifying beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow them. It was this testimony, which made the days of God's longsuffering and of Christ's Spirit preaching through Noah so apt an allusion for the apostle. For Jews ask for signs of power, as Greeks seek wisdom, the wisdom of the age; but Christ is God's power and God's wisdom, Christ crucified to Jews a stumbling-block and to Greeks foolishness, but made to us that believe wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. Believers from among the Jews (and to such the epistle was addressed) stood peculiarly exposed to the taunts of their unbelieving brethren after the flesh, who would hear only of the visible Messiah exalting Israel and putting down the nations in power and glory; as they scorned the little flock that confessed Him dead and risen and glorified in heaven, and that claimed through Him salvation of souls. Hence, of all the Jew owned true in O.T. story, nothing more suggestive than the few souls saved through the flood, when the mass perished in unbelief. Yet God sent men testimony by Noah, as He does now in the gospel. If that generation paid the penalty of slighting Christ's Spirit in the preaching then, let them beware of resisting the same Spirit still; for, though Christ be not present bodily but, in heaven and at the right hand of God, He is ready to judge living and dead; for which those who rejected the warning in Noah's day are reserved in prison, as are all unbelievers.

It might seem incredible, were it not fact, that anyone could say, “Not a word is indicated by Peter on the very far off lying allusion to the fact that the Spirit of Christ preached in Noah: not a word here, on the fact that Noah himself preached to his contemporaries.” No person has ever shown in the O. T. a case more germane to the apostle's aim, which was to strengthen the believing remnant against Jewish or any other mockery of an absent Deliverer and a spiritual deliverance only enjoyed now by faith. The allusion was strikingly near in its bearing: “very far off” in time is nothing to one who ranges through all scripture, in this very passage expressly introducing Noah, and the Spirit; as he elsewhere styles Noah “preacher of righteousness,” and those who disobeyed in his days “spirits in prison,” awaiting (as we all know) far more than a temporal judgment. Did not all this lie very near those surrounded by unbelievers who jeered at the fewness of Christians and rejected Christ's present testimony by the Spirit? The fact is that not a word connects the time of the preaching with the imprisonment of the spirits. Peter does not say that Christ went into the prison and there preached to the spirits, but that He went in the power of His Spirit and preached to the spirits that are there, disobedient as they once were in Noah's days. So the Jews were in danger through despising the Spirit of Christ now. What the text means is that their imprisonment is because they disobeyed once on a time when the longsuffering of God was waiting out in Noah's days, while an ark was being built for the few that entered and were saved. The nicest and strictest interpretation here lends not the least support to any preaching in Hades, which is foreign and opposed to the rest of God's word.

The superstitious view in effect denies and uproots the gospel, and is wholly baseless in either the O. T. or the New. Nor is the fancy inconsistent only with the testimony of scripture in general; it is opposed to the plain drift of the apostle's reference to Noah in each of his epistles. For how unmeaning, not to say inexplicable, that, if Christ be supposed to have gone in person to preach to the imprisoned spirits, those only should be singled out who had once been disobedient in Noah's days during the preparation of the ark! What revealed principle of either grace or righteousness applies to such a dealing with them in particular? Especially as the original text, Gen. 6:3, implies just the contrary—that the striving of Jehovah's Spirit was with man in this life, and that the limit to His patience with those in question was tied to the hundred and twenty years of their days on earth? To imagine the spirits of those very persons appealed to afterwards seems to annul the scripture in hand and therefore so much the less credible as an inspired comment on it. For it would involve the strange doctrine of Jehovah's striving after death, and with those exclusively who had been the objects of the longsuffering of God for an allotted period previously.

Again, the reference in 2 Peter 2 equally shuts out the notion as the dream of the untaught and unstable. For the apostle speaks of God's not sparing, not only angels when they sin and reserving them extraordinarily for judgment, but the ancient world also, though He preserved with seven others Noah, a preacher of righteousness, when He brought a flood on a world of ungodly persons (and afterward He dealt similarly with Sodom and Gomorrha); as proofs of His rescuing godly ones out of trial and keeping unrighteous people under punishment for judgment day. The heterodoxy we are considering treats these very persons, if not all the wicked dead, as kept for hearing Christ to save them from judgment! Can one conceive grosser ignorance, and, what is worse, more arrant trifling with solemn scriptures, or a more evident desire to bring their meaning to naught?

As to ver. 4, the construction is not without difficulty. It appears to distinguish between the Nephilim or giants in those days, as afterward also, and the Gibborim, mighty ones or heroes, who were the fruit of the union of the sons of God with men's daughters. In fact, notwithstanding the dark confusion of the old heathen remains, traces of this distinction are not wanting; though nothing can be more marked than the superiority of scripture in the very little it says on this painful subject over the traditional lore respecting the Giants and the Titans, which the later poets jumbled inextricably. Num. 13:33 of itself easily accounts for the clause here parenthetically marked. It may run, without parenthesis, “And also after that the sons of God....these [are] the mighty ones which were of old, men of the name,” thus distinguishing the giants and these heroes. One shrinks from boldness in speaking of such a phrase; but the latter part distinguishes a class which was not found afterward: “These [are] the heroes, who [were] of old, men of renown.” These, as being of quite a different source and character, had a fame peculiar to themselves for might. The reputation they acquired of old was not founded on mere stature, like that of the Nephilim.

In result it is clear that the bounds of creation were wickedly traversed by certain angels, and thus a peculiarly evil corruption introduced among men, where evil in its ordinary character grew apace as we are afterward shown. But that unnatural amalgam touched the rights of Jehovah, though outwardly He had left man to himself since his expulsion from Paradise; as it played its grave part in calling for divine intervention in the governmental act of the deluge of which Genesis speaks, but in those deeper, lasting, and unseen ways which the epistles of Peter and Jude reveal in unison with N. T. truth for eternity. The evasive reading of the passage which many pious ancients and moderns have adopted to escape its only fair interpretation, because it conveys what is to us beyond measure strange, if not incomprehensible how it could be, is nothing but a makeshift of unbelief. Received simply, it gives the sure, though purposely reserved, revelation on the darkest scene of old, the true source of what was expanded, after its wonted fashion in Jewish tradition and Pagan mythology. In scripture the evil was dealt with in holy judgment; among men it became the basis of fame for beneficent might on man's behalf in vain struggle against envious but superior gods: no untrue description of beings who were really demons. “Jehovah, what is man that Thou takest knowledge of him? or the son of man, that Thou makest account of him? Man is like a breath, his days are as a shadow that passeth away. Bow Thy heavens, Jehovah, and come down.”

Genesis 6:5-8

THUS far we have had the new, strange, and portentous evil which played its part in calling for the righteous judgment of the deluge. But this was not all which made the catastrophe necessary in the eyes of the divine Governor.

“And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man [was] great on the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually (all the day). And Jehovah repented that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And Jehovah said, I will wipe out man whom I have created, from the face of the ground—from man to cattle, to reptiles, and to bird of the heavens; for I repent that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of Jehovah” (vers. 5-8).

Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Could He be indifferent to the general state of man morally? It is not God simply in His nature, but He who concerns Himself with the ways of His creatures. Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth. Nor would it be easy to find a more solemn appraisal: “every imagination” of them was before Him; and He who loves to accredit the least thought or feeling that is good saw nothing but evil all the day. He is assuredly the God of judgment, and after due testimony will not be slow to execute it.

Yet the language employed is affectingly suggestive of the grief it cost Him Whom the unbelieving mind of man is pleased to treat as impassive. “Be not deceived, evil communications corrupt good manners. Wake up righteously and sin not; for some have ignorance of God,” as the apostle speaks to our shame. Converse with the world lowers to its own level those who thus indulge; and as the world by its wisdom, when it boasted most, knew not God, it never without Christ finds Him out; for Christ is the image of the invisible God; and Christ never showed Himself insensible to human evil, whatever His patience and endurance. No doubt, as is so characteristic of these early revelations, the expression is by grace adapted in childlike fashion to the heart and conscience of man. Jehovah felt deeply what man ought to have felt but did not. “Jehovah repented that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.”

Here however we need to distinguish: else we shall surely and seriously stray. Jehovah is here said to repent of mankind that He had made on the earth. His work is a thing quite different from His purpose. And when corruption pervaded it, He was in no way bound to perpetuate what existed only to His dishonor. On the other hand, when a prophet was sent to cry against a great city because of its wickedness before Him, and its inhabitants, from the greatest to the least, repented at the preaching, God saw their works that they turned from their evil ways, and God repented of the evil which He said He would do unto them, and He did it not, to the disgust of the prophet too self-occupied to appreciate the compassion of God, even for the babes and the cattle. But here we are not told of the slightest effect. The preacher of righteousness testified many a long year, and, as far as we know, in vain. Oracularly warned concerning things not yet seen, and moved with fear himself, he prepared an ark for saving his house, with no recorded result save condemning the world of that day and the imprisonment of their spirits, disobedient as they were then, till eternal judgment come. It was a singularly hard generation in the days of Noah; and the Lord declared that so it will be also in the days of the Son of man. They were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were given in marriage until the day, that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Alas! Christendom is rapidly becoming as unbelieving as the Jews were when divine judgments befell them all; and both will be surprised when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with angels of His power, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those that know not God—and those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But even in that day it will be made clearer than ever that without repentance are the gifts and the calling of God (Rom. 11:29). He may repent of making man, and He may on man's self-judgment repent of His threats; but His gifts and His calling are subject to no such change of mind. So at an early day He compelled the wicked prophet to testify on behalf of Israel (Num. 23:19); and so He confirmed by His holy apostle looking to the latter day. He leaves room for the action of sovereign grace at the close of the age. As we Gentiles were once disobedient to God, but now became objects of mercy by their disobedience, so also the Jews were now disobedient to the mercy that has reached the Gentiles in the gospel, that they too, instead of their old pride of law, may be objects of mercy. For God shut up them all (whether Gentile or Jew) into disobedience that He might show mercy to them all.

For the day of Noah the word of judgment goes forth. “And Jehovah said, I will wipe (or blot) out man whom I have created, from the face of the ground—from man to cattle, to reptiles, and to bird of the heavens; for I repent that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of Jehovah” (vers. 7, 8). For those who believe the language is unmistakable while grace is shown to Noah. Is it possible to use terms more sweeping and unsparing for all that breathes on earth or flies above it Jehovah deals with the creatures set under the headship of Adam. How blessed to know on an authority equally beyond doubt that the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God! For this creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that all the creation together groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only [so], but even ourselves having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan in ourselves, waiting for adoption, the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:19-23). It is God's honor for Christ in this creation. As man's sin dragged it down with himself into ruin, so shall the Second Man raise it out of its degradation and misery. But the inheritance cannot be delivered before the heirs. Therefore are we now brought by faith of Christ into the liberty of grace, having in Him redemption through His blood, the remission of sins. But we await also the redemption of our bodies, and have meanwhile the Holy Spirit, the witness that we are God's children, and the earnest of the inheritance to come. And the groaning creation longs for that day, which will bring it into the liberty of the glory which Christ will have given us, Himself the Heir of all things, as we are by grace His joint-heirs. It is indeed a joyous prospect, in the midst of present weakness and manifold sorrows, truly a prospect full of glory, and most sure and indestructible, because it rests on the holy basis of Christ, the Worthy One, and of His redemption.

Genesis 6:9-12

SPECIAL relationship is now dropt; and we are brought back to the more general dealings of God with man. Hence it is no longer “Jehovah,” as in the previous verses of our chapter, but “Elohim” (God) henceforth to the end. The designations employed are therefore completely consistent, and could not be otherwise with propriety. The suggestion of a difference of authorship is not only uncalled for, harsh and barbarous as well as altogether imaginary, but due to a total want of spiritual apprehension; as it arbitrarily conjectures a fortuitous concourse of fragments, and thus loses the profitable design in the same mind adapting the use of each title to the object in view, as each portion or even clause may require.

“These [are] the generations of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in (or among) his generations; Noah walked with God. And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth” (vers. 9-12).

Viewed in his relationship and its peculiar obligations, Noah, as we have already observed, “found favor in the eyes of Jehovah.” This has its importance. But it is not all. And here we are told of him on the broader ground of the faithful Creator toward all mankind. Noah's piety was recognized as real, but he is also as a righteous man among his fellows. Assuredly so it ought to be always; for the working of the divine nature, of which all born of God partake, is not only upward in dependence and thanksgiving, but vigilantly obedient, escaping the corruption that is in the world through lust. Yet we know too well that failure creeps in too often through lack of prayer and watchfulness. In both respects the record of Noah is excellent.

“These [are] the generations of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect among his generations; with God walked Noah.” So it had been said, in chap. 5:22, 24, of that singularly honored saint Enoch, and with the emphasis of a repeated mention in a list of others where not one but himself was so described. Here it is applied to Noah, already distinguished by his father's prophetic expectation of comfort through him (chap. 5:29). It is of deep moral interest to note, that the Holy Spirit records the grace Noah found in Jehovah's eyes, before He tells us that Noah was a righteous man, perfect, &c., and walked with God. This is really and emphatically the true order. Even the manner in which scripture presents the account ought to have guarded (Matthew Henry, for instance) from the thought that Noah's character in ver. 9 comes in here as the reason of God's favor to him. Reason of grace! What an idea and expression! Had he forgotten the real truth of grace? Had he not before him the pointed negation of any such thought in the apostle's words in Rom. 11:6? “If it is by grace, it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace” (R. V.). His alternative (but how strange for a pious commentator to waver between oppositions!) is alone right: Noah's righteous ways, his walk with God, flowed (as always) from God's favor. Old. or N. T. makes no difference as to this, save that the N. T. is most explicit. See 1 Cor. 15:10 expressly; but is it not really so everywhere?

Further, it is not correct to say that he was a just man, that is justified before God. The confusion is similar to what we have already noticed. The grace that justified him wrought in and by him practical righteousness before man. So in the N. T. the doctrine of James is no less true than the apostle Paul's. They are not the same; and when mixed together, instead of being distinguished, the result is darkness and error. But apply the latter to what the soul wants before God when arrested about its sins, and “to him that worketh not but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom. 4:4, 5). Whereas in James 2:14-26, where baptized Jews were making Christianity a merely new law and school of dogma, instead of living faith in Christ, the word is “Show me thy faith apart from works, and I by my works will show thee my faith” (ver. 18). The one (in Rom. 4) is justification before God, the root of all; the other is the resulting fruit “shown” before man. Each is indispensable in its place; both united in their season in every true believer. Practical righteousness is the effect, in no way the cause, of justification by faith. Here we are on the ground expressly of Noah in his generations, just, perfect, walking with God. But we know also from Heb. 11:7, that faith was the originating principle through grace of the conduct which distinguished him in that day, by which too he condemned the world as heir of the righteousness that is according to faith.

“Perfect” here simply means as in Job 1:1, 8; 2:3, &c., one of integrity or blameless. The evaporation of the old man, or absorption into the new, even with the richest N. T. privileges, is a dream, and a dangerous one.

But “Noah walked with God,” as Enoch had before him. And this is a blessed thing for us to learn authoritatively of men far from enjoying much which could only come in Christ and His redemption, and in the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven. Alas! we all offend in much, as we are told; yet it is inexcusable, for if the flesh lusts against the Spirit, what of the Spirit against the flesh? And are they not opposed, one to the other, that we may not do the things that we would? The A. V. here is sadly astray, and excuses sin, instead of leaving no room for any such thing.

The three sons Noah begot are again named (yen 10); and solemnly runs the word: “And the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth” (vers. 11, 12).

Not a word here or elsewhere gives a hint of other gods or of image-worship for the true God. Scripture speaks of that religious abomination only after the deluge. But, apart from it, what floods of corruption drown men! It was so then, and violence too filled the earth. They are indeed the two ruling forms of human iniquity. But bad as the violence may have been, and it was great and prevalent everywhere, the corruption of the earth, and of all flesh in its way, we can read here at least as most of all odious in the eyes of God then, Noah, we are taught by other scripture, was a preacher of righteousness in that day of universal corruption; but we hear not a word of his voice raised to God in intercession, unless possibly Ezek. 14:14, 20, be supposed to imply it. Certainly the pleading of Abraham, when he knew the impending destruction of the cities of the plain which menaced his kinsman, is touching and instructive. And it is hard to conceive such a man as Noah not deeply moved by the awful fate awaiting an incomparably larger sphere, a world of ungodly.

Genesis 6:13-17

Chap. 6:13-17.

THE crisis is fully set in view by divine revelation. When the audacious and unholy mixture to which Jude refers so solemnly was stated at the beginning of the chapter, Jehovah set a term to His Spirit's pleading with man. And fearful consequences ensued, however gratifying to human pride defiant of the warning. “These were the heroes which were of old, men of the name.” A mighty impulse was thus given, on the earth, to human iniquity which Jehovah felt deeply; and the sentence was pronounced. “I will wipe out man whom I have created from the face of the ground,” as well as the subject creation, but with a careful expression of the favor Noah found in His eyes.

Yet it was important to note, not only the offense and its effects against moral government and special relationship, but for the divine nature the abhorrence of the earth corrupt and full of violence, in contrast with Noah a righteous man, blameless among his generations, walking with God when all flesh had corrupted its way on the earth. This introduces express intimation of the impending destruction for the earth and its guilty inhabitants, and of the means of deliverance for Noah, his house, and the creature, which were thus to be preserved.

“And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is full of violence through them; and behold I will destroy them with (or from) the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood: rooms (nests) shalt thou make in the ark, and pitch it within and without with pitch. And thus shalt thou make it: three hundred cubits the length of the ark, fifty cubits its breadth, and thirty cubits its height. A transparency (or, light) shalt thou make to the ark, and to a cubit thou shalt finish it above; and the ark's door thou shalt set in its side: [with] lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. And I, behold I, bring the flood of waters on the earth to destroy all flesh wherein [is] the breath of life: all that [is] in the earth shall expire” (vers. 13-17).

The deluge was not an event according to secret ways in providence, as we may see in the history of Esther, the importance of which is great in itself and profitable for our learning. It was an inflicted judgment which prophecy made known. And It had a character of universality which separated it from other interventions of God, however real and instructive, and made it suitable to compare with the days of the Son of man when every eye shall see Him as well as with the narrower but awful doom of Sodom and the other cities of the plain when it rained fire and sulfur from heaven: “So shall it be when the Son of man is revealed.” Hence, as Enoch had already prophesied in that vast sweep which, as given by Jude, embraces the ultimate with the beginning of the senses, Noah is made the depositary of the definite accomplishment of what was at hand. The God Who predicts as He pleases, directly or indirectly, is the judge of the suitable occasion; and faith accepts it at whatever time He speaks; but all have not faith. For the believer it is enough for Him to say, Who doeth these things known from eternity. But He makes known also to His servants, as here to Noah, we have seen, expressly a hundred and twenty years before the place of longsuffering testimony closed: a fact early in the Bible and in God's revealed dealings, as irreconcilable with the fundamental principle of skeptical criticism (a very moderate leap forward out of actual history), as with the fallacy of professed believers (prophecy only of value when fulfilled). That there should be this early prediction, with so considerable an interval as one hundred and twenty years, is plain in the one case; as in the other the folly of conceiving the profit to be only when the flood came and took them all away.

But we are fallen on evil days when men, bearing the Christian name and assuming to enlighten their fellows, are not ashamed to designate the inspired account of the deluge a Bible-legend and a poetic myth, chiefly in deference to the difficulties of physical science and the objections of natural historians. Now it is of all moment to stand firm and unbending in the faith. It is no question of mistakes in copies, in translation, or in interpretation. Poetry and its tropes are not before us, but the language of sober history treating of facts, and of God's declaration in respect of them. “Make thee an ark of gopher-wood: nests (or compartments) shalt thou make in the ark, and pitch it with pitch (or bitumen) within and without. And thus shalt thou make it: three hundred cubits the length of the ark, fifty cubits its breath, and thirty cubits its height. A transparency (or light) shalt thou make to the ark, and to a cubit shalt thou finish it upward; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second and third stories shalt thou make it” (vers. 15, 16). It is the plain, and unvarnished expression of fact. The question is, Are believers to accept unhesitatingly the word of God? Every scripture is inspired of God. This is and ought to be absolutely decisive for all who admit that His authority is in it; as the word will assuredly judge him that rejects both in the last day. He and His word are indissolubly together. Nor is it the chiefs of science who speak thus presumptuously, unless they be also infidel. These influence the incredulous mass and the worldly-minded Christians, who are cowed by their arrogance and are ambitious of standing well with men who despise them and abhor the truth. What is it but a day of rebuke and contumely?

Of this too God has spoken. “We should remember the words spoken before by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through our apostles, knowing this first that in the last of the days mockers should come with mockery, proceeding after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For from the days that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this escapes them of their willfulness, that heavens were of old, and earth subsisting by the word of God out of water and in water; by means of which the then world flooded by water perished, and the now heavens and the earth are stored up, being, kept for fire against judgment day and perdition of ungodly men.” 2 Peter 3:2-7. It is man's will that ignores the deluge, his infidel will in despite of revelation. He hates and dreads God's judgment, as that was the harbinger and witness of a judgment still more scathing and final. As men easily believe what they like, so do they willingly forget and deny what is most repulsive, alas! to their destruction. But thus it is that ungodly Christendom works out against itself the fulfillment of that tremendous day; as the Jews fulfilled the voices of the prophets read on their sabbaths by judging the Judge of Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.

The fact is that the heathen, dark as everywhere they were, ought to put such unbelievers to shame. It would be hard to say what race or land or age, of which we have record, forgot the deluge: so deep and universal was the impression on the dispersed children of men where the Bible alas was unknown. But the news of that awe-inspiring catastrophe of the world, that then was unexampled in fact since man existed, was carried by the dispersed families of mankind north and south, east and west; they did not forget it, but colored it by local or national pride in self-flattery. Those disposed to examine the traditions of Egypt (Osiris, or the Sacred Ship, &c.), Greece, Rome, Asia Minor, and elsewhere may find an only too full collection (for fanciful etymology has exaggerated or erred not a little) in J. Bryant's Ancient Mythology. Vol. iii. of the third edition 8vo. is devoted to the subject; as also vol. v. 287-313. It used to be said that only the Semitic and the Aryan nations handed down the legend of the deluge. Modern research has proved its prevalence equally among the Turanian races. Captain Beechey (Vol. ii. 78) found it among the aborigines of California; Mr. Schoolcraft (Notes &c., 358, 359) among the Iroquois; Sir A. Mackenzie (Travels, ch. xviii.) among the Chippeways; Dr. Richards (Frankland's Journey to the Polar Sea, 73), among the Crees; and Mr. West (Journal 131, 133) on the Red River. So did Mr. G. Catlin (N. American Indians, i. 180, 181, fourth edition) among the Mandans “That these people should have a tradition of the Flood is by no means surprising; as I have learned from every tribe I have visited that they all have some high mountain in their vicinity, where they insist upon it the big canoe landed” &c. (ibid. 177, 178). Justly therefore has Dr. J. C. Prichard (Researches, v. 361) cited Mr. Gallatin for a judgment among Americans weighty and unprejudiced, that the native traditions had their source “in a real historical recollection of an universal deluge which overwhelmed all mankind in early ages of the world.” Again, Mr. Ellis (Hawaii, 451; Polyn. ii. 57, 58) attests other varieties of the tradition in the Sandwich Islands; and Wilkes (Exploring Expedition) found similar tales at Fiji or Viti. So with the Araucanians (Molini's Chili, ii. 82). Much to the same effect is given of the Mexicans and those before them by A. von Humboldt from the MSS. of Pedro de los Reos and from Bp. F. N. de la Vega (Researches, i. 96, 320; ii. 23, 64, 65). So he found in Guatemala, and among the tribes of the Upper Orinoco, &c. (Pers. Narr. iv. 470-473). No wonder that he, no hasty generalizer, was constrained to say, “The traditions affecting the primitive state of the globe among all nations present a resemblance that fills us with astonishment. So many different languages, belonging to branches which appear to have no connection with each other, transmit the same fact to us.” See also his “Vues des Cordilleres” &c., 226, 227. Caligero (Hist. Mex. i. 204) tells us that the Peruvians preserved the same report, as he says also of the Indians in Cuba; and Nieuhoff (Voyage to Brazil) relates it of Brazilians.

It was not otherwise in Asia: Kotzebue (Sec. Voy. round the world, St. Petersburg, 1830) found the tradition in Kamtchatka. In China the tale is that Fuh-he, their founder of civilization, was preserved from the flood with wife, three sons, and three daughters; in which legend Mr. McClatchie (Journal of Asiatic Soc. xvi. 403, 404) recognizes Noah and his family, as Archdeacon Hardwick lets us know in “Christ and other Masters,” third ed. 279. The Parsees have their strange version (Anq. Duperron's Zenday. 350-367); the Hindoos have theirs in their old Sanscrit epic, as Bopp showed in the part he translated (Diluv. Mahab. 1829); also in their later Puranas, where eight are said to have been saved from the waters (Burnouf, Bhag. Pour. Tome iii. Pref.). There is a third and simpler form in the Yajur-Veda, which with the two others Hardwick cites at length; but the detail is not worth reproducing. So the Mission Field (July 185S) reports that the Dyaks say four couples were saved from the Flood.

If we listen to the ruder voices of Africa, there too, as in Darbin near Darfour, we are told (Bull. Univ., 1830, 127-9) that the traditional story of the deluge lingers. According to it all perished; so that the Great-Great had to create men afresh. Here the traces are faint; but the form is perhaps characteristic. Mercy in God was unknown there. The true God had vanished from their knowledge.

Turning far back, the cuneiform inscription which Mr. G. Smith deciphered gives the legend as written of old in Erech (now the ruins of Warka), (Car. Milli. Frag. Mist. Gr. ii. 496 et seqq.), confirming what Berosus and Abydenus wrote (Mfiller's Frag. &c.) as cited by Eusehius (Praep. E v. 414, ed. F. Viger, Col. 1688), and indeed Josephus (c. Apion. i. 19) only with greater detail. Xisuthrus i.e. Noah speaks of the world's wickedness, the command to build the ark, with its erection and filling, the deluge, the resting on a mountain, the, sending out of the birds, &c.

How account for all this mass of tradition converging from of old on one fact of the strangest character, and withal of the nearest and widest interest, varied by the appropriating vanity of race, yet at bottom self-evidently akin? The truth explains it, nothing else. As to the coin of Philip the elder struck at Apamea, Eckhel (Doctr. Numm. Vett. iii. 132-139, ed. sec. Vindob. 1828) refuted Barrington and Jeremiah Miller in the Archaeologia iv. 315, &c., and strengthens the timid conclusions of the Abbe Barthelemy. He proves that ΝΩΕ refers to the patriarch only and without doubt, and that the emblem engraven represents him and his wife, first in the ark with one bird resting on it, and another flying with the olive branch in its mouth; next the same pair out of the ark with the right hand of each extended above in gratitude. From the lines in the Sibylline Books which refer to Ararat and the ark he clearly shows that the medal does not allude to Deucalion, as Falconeri had thought (the Greek form of the story), but to the Mosaic account, only adapted to give luster to their own city Apamea in Phrygia, formerly called Kelaenae (or near it, Dr. Smith's Diet. of G. & R. Geog. i. 153), and Kibotlis, i.e. the word given by the LXX for the Hebrew Tebet or ark.

It is needless surely to plead for Scripture in its moral power and its historic dignity, with characteristic repetition of a touching sort, brief yet committed to details found nowhere else, which would only have been given because they were known to. be true and on divine authority. It rises unadorned, adorned the most, above all competition of the glimmering lights in heathendom; though in their measure, and notwithstanding human change, they too testify with unwonted unanimity to that mighty judgment which ushered in the second birth of mankind, followed after no long interval by the lesser but momentous dealing of God which distributed Noah's descendants into their lands, after their tongues, after their families, in their nations.

Genesis 6:18-22

IN the face of the coming destruction of the earth's corrupters God is pleased next to indicate His intended use of the ark Noah was directed to build.

“But I will establish my covenant with thee; and thou shalt go into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy son's wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every [kind] shalt thou bring into the ark to keep [them] alive with thee; male and female shall they be. Of the birds after their kind, and of the cattle after their kind, of every reptile of the ground after its kind, two of every [kind] shall come to thee, to keep [them] alive. And take thou to thee of all food that is eaten, and gather [it] to thee, and it shall be for food for thee and for them. Thus did Noah according to all that God commanded him, so did he” (vers. 18-22).

He that walked with God, a righteous man, blameless in his generations, is the object of His care; and God would have Noah to know it, especially when so tremendous a blow was hanging over a careless unbelieving world. Therefore to him that believed does He intimate His intention to deliver himself and his wife and his family in the way appointed. The execution of this was a suited and notable trial of Noah's faith, involving a long time of waiting, continuous labor, and entire but active submission to God's word. Noah had before his spirit habitually, on the one hand, that the world was doomed, and that judgment would fall upon it at God's hand because of its iniquities; on the other, that he and his would without doubt be sheltered from it in the ark, with the creatures needed to renew the world to come after the flood.

It was a dealing most evidently divine in both its parts for destruction and for rescue, and with ample testimony beforehand. “Shall there be evil in a city (says Amos), and the LORD hath not done it? Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets.” So it was now when He disclosed to Noah that the waters should overspread the earth, yet with mercy glorying against judgment as ordinarily. No doubt it was an outward temporal judgment of His, as we find even at the fall of man; yet just as there it furnishes principles of the profoundest importance for what is inward and everlasting. Though this last is the gravest beyond question, yet is the former of so much the greater moment, as Christendom has been long prone to forget it or to merge it in the final judgment of the dead. Not so the Lord or His apostles, any more than the O. T. prophets, who constantly urge the judgment of the world (i.e., of living men here below, before He reigns in righteousness over all the earth, and therefore long before the scene of His Great White Throne). In this the unbelief of Gentiles under the gospel is in contrast with that of the Jews under the law, who were apt to overlook the everlasting judgment through preoccupation with the day of Jehovah which shall judge all the heathen and the apostates of Israel. The N. T. reveals the final judgment for the dead, small and great, far more clearly than the older books of Scripture; but it is no less distinct in warning that God commands men that they should all everywhere repent, inasmuch as He has established a day in the which He will judge the inhabited earth by the Man Whom He has appointed, giving assurance to all in that He raised Him from the dead. This is beyond controversy His judgment of the quick, not of the dead; and the deluge is its counterpart, as the Lord shows in Matt. 24, and elsewhere.

It has been supposed by some that Moses introduced previously existing records here and there with that which was more strictly his own. But this is a gratuitous fancy to account for seeming repetitions that occur, or even for what they call discrepancies. Now, to say nothing of the irreverence implied, how vain is the expedient! For the differing accounts are presented by Moses without the slightest comment; which no human historian would think of doing. We can easily understand inconsistent reports in two distinct works. Do they really mean that such a one as Moses from different sources put together in immediate juxtaposition accounts which, do not tally, either without perceiving their opposition, or indifferent to the perplexity of readers? On their own ground is the hypothesis reasonable? If inspiration be allowed in any real sense, there can be no question.

For the intelligent believer there is, not only not a shade of difficulty, but the evidence of divine wisdom in the design which governs these respective accounts, as in fact all scripture. Take the case before us. It is God as the faithful Creator preserving a line to perpetuate the succession of all flesh, notwithstanding the flood of waters He was about to bring on the earth, when everything else there akin, in which was the breath of life, must expire. Hence in this point of view, as “Elohim” (God) is required for precision, and not “Jehovah,” so of the human family, as well as of the subordinate creatures, we find simply pairs, male and female. We shall find another aspect following, where different thoughts and languages are necessarily employed, in order to convey the truth with divine exactitude. A man left to himself would in all probability have written but one statement, and contented himself with the general fact modified by certain exceptions. God has been pleased to lead His inspired servant to give the double account, so as to mark off that which He ordered according to His rights as Creator from His specific dealings in moral government. This distinction may be trivial in unbelieving eyes; but it is of deep interest and profit to the souls that ponder His word, and learn His mind thereby. Inspiration explains it all, as nothing else can. And if we believe that the scripture is inspired, one can readily understand God using Moses to present both views distinctly; whereas it seems surely a roundabout and cumbrous alternative to imagine two unknown men uninspired to write separately each of these accounts, and Moses as a third, but inspired, editor employed merely to tack them together. The fact is however that those who keenly urge these suppositions betray for the most part their aim and desire to blot out true inspiration altogether, or, which comes to the same result, to allow inspiration only in a sense which leaves out therein divine action and the certainty of truth. For the same men strive to persuade themselves that the accounts contradict one another, that the compiler was so weak as to accept them as consistent and true, and that Christendom has had the narrative in the same easy-going faith, till the self-styled “higher critics” arose to open men's eyes and give them a Bible without God's truth. Such is their “growth” of scripture.

Genesis 7:1-10

THE decisive moment and a fresh message now arrived.

“And Jehovah said to Noah, Go (or Come) into the ark, thou and all thy house; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt take [by] sevens, a male and its female, but of the beasts that [are] not clean two, a male and its female; also of birds of the heavens [by] sevens, male and female: to keep seed alive on the face of all the earth. For yet seven days and I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights; and all the living substance that I have made will I destroy (blot out) from off the face of the ground. And Noah did according to all that Jehovah commanded him.”

“And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was on the earth. And Noah went in and his sons, and his wife and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because (from the face) of the waters of the flood. Of clean beasts, and of beasts that [are] not clean, and of birds, and everything that creeps on the ground, went in two [and] two to Noah into the ark, male and female, as God commanded Noah. And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth” (vers. 1-10).

A good deal is sometimes made of the word “Come” in the A. V. of ver. 1. This is really beside the mark. The verb may be either, as best suits the context, which is often as here a delicate question if made one. When it means entering where the speaker is, “come” is the more correct in the usage of our tongue; where no emphasis of this kind calls for it, either may be used correctly, as for instance here. Accordingly they are both used freely in translating this and other Biblical Hebrew words into English; and so any special force appears to be inadmissible, except in circumstances which hardly apply to the present case.

Yet we cannot but own the mercy shown to Noah, and for his sake where there could be no personal ground of commendation. All his house benefited by its head. “And Jehovah said to Noah, Go into the ark, thou and all thy house; for thee have I seen righteous before Me in this generation.” It was not a small thing to say “righteous before Jehovah,” and especially “in this generation,” so reprobate as it was already, and so pronounced by Him.

The propriety of the change from Elohim (God) as in the latter half of chap. vi., to Jehovah (the Lout)) here is strikingly and beyond all just doubt confirmed by internal considerations. It is no longer the faithful Creator merely, but special relationship, and ends of a higher and more intimate nature. Hence we have a quite new call to the patriarch as one who had found grace in the eyes of Jehovah and was righteous before Him. “Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee seven, seven, a male and its female, and of the beasts that [are] not clean two, a male and its female; also of birds of the heavens seven, seven: to keep seed alive on the face of all the earth.”

Here the distinction, afterward minutely expounded under the law, first appears, where the special name of Israel's God is introduced: a distinction thus early enforced in the preservation of animals, where the claim of sacrifice was met and the need of suitable food foreshadowed. For only after the deluge was man allowed to eat of flesh without blood (chap. 9.). How exactly this falls in with “Jehovah” speaking requires no argument; not with the shallow and unintelligent supposition of different authors or legends, which explains nothing but only confuses, but with due reverence to scripture and resulting instruction and living interest.

Next, we have Jehovah's considerate care in the notice given of but seven days before the flood, that Noah and his family might the more calmly enjoy their deliverance and the goodness of their Deliverer. The world of unbelievers had refused the warning that sounded through one hundred and twenty years; the seven days' notice was a fresh proof of gracious concern in those that believed. “For in yet seven days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights; all the living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the ground. And Noah did according to all that Jehovah commanded him.” “Forty” appears to be the number of trial or endurance put to the test; as in Moses, Israel, Elijah, Jonah, and Ezekiel (for Judah): so in the legal strokes inflicted on an evildoer, with the limit not to exceed; and so here and such in the Temptation.

The special force of these five verses is the more confirmed by the general statement which follows in vers. 6-10, where “God” appears rather than Jehovah, and consequently nothing of moral relationship in particular. Here we have Noah's age when the flood came—six hundred years; and that the entrance of himself and all his house into the ark (vers. 6, 7). And this is so true that, though birds, and reptiles, as also going in, but two and two male and female are spoken of “as, God commanded Noah” (vers. 8, 9), because it is simply in view of perpetuating the race, high or low. “And it came to pass after the seven days that the waters of the flood were upon the earth” (ver. 10). He who enjoyed the favor of Jehovah had the previous communication in grace; none could be unconscious of God's judgment when it came.

Genesis 7:11-16

WE have thus had clear examples of God's ways in prophecy; not only a short and precisely marked interval of “seven days” in Gen. 7:10, when the blow was to fall, but this after an amply long warning of “a hundred and twenty years” in chap. 6:3, when man's days were to close judicially for the world that then was. Both are undeniable on the face of the record: each worthy of Him Who alone could authoritatively utter, as He punctually fulfilled, both. If He executes judgment on a world that hardens itself in iniquity and disbelieves His word, He provides for the display of His mercy toward such as keep His word in faith, and obey Him, as Noah did to the saving of his house.

So, in the downfall sustained by the chosen people at a later day, Isaiah was raised up to warn of the captivity in Babylon, when no ground for hostility was dreamed of on either side, and Judah's king, saved from the great king of Assyria, too eagerly showed the treasures of his house and kingdom to the friendly Gentile envoys. But Jeremiah was given to speak of Jerusalem's ruin then just imminent, and of the exile for 70 years when Babylon should fall and the remnant return. Both prophets wrote to Jehovah's glory in different times, ways, and circumstances; both served to nourish the faith of souls looking to Him out of human elation on the one side or depression, fear, and despair on the other: and both foretold of the final destruction of the power which led the Jews into captivity. The avowed or the insinuated supposition of anything short of distinctly divine inspiration is mere infidelity flowing from the idolatry of the human mind. In the early predictions of the flood, general or specific, it is idle to imagine any historical circumstances of the smallest bearing on either. It was a divine judgment of the world then existing, and no occasion conceivable to account for the limit of 120 years, any more than for the precision; and He Who thus judged and destroyed guilty man was pleased to fix out of His own wisdom both the one and the other. But He did reveal them beforehand to Noah, not for His preservation only during the judgment, but for the comfort and blessing of his soul in the knowledge of His gracious interest and of His righteous ways, and for all believers who should profit by the word afterward. And He is the same God still, only revealed fully in Christ and known by His Spirit sent forth from heaven in such a sort and measure as could not be then.

“In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, and the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day were broken up all the fountains of the great deep, and the windows of the heavens were opened. And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights. On the same day went Noah, and Shen and Ham and Japheth, sons of Noah, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; they, and every beast after its kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind—every bird of every wing. And they went unto Noah into the ark, two [and] two of all flesh wherein was the breath of life. And they that came came male and female of all flesh, as God commanded him; and Jehovah shut him in (lit. after him)” (vers. 11-16).

As we have seen the double form of prophecy, snore distant and more immediate, and yet both unmistakably of God only, so we have in the great event which befell the ungodly world of that day a stupendous miracle of destruction from His hand which swept away the entire generation of unbelievers, with subordinate creation, from the face of the earth, when man's corruption and violence in the face of testimony from God became insupportable. So tremendous an event is recorded with the utmost precision and solemnity. We are told of it to the year, month, and day, when the judgment was executed. From below as from above, the brief but clear account tells us of what was never before man's creation and has never been since; and we may add on God's assurance, what will never be again, but a still more solemn and significant and all-pervading dissolution of the world. It was no mere question of the clouds or of the sea, as ordinarily. The inspired narrator speaks of quite different and altogether unexampled sources. All the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of the heavens, as the phrase is, were opened. Neither the one nor the other was according to the course of nature God established before or since. This is exactly what makes a miracle evident and impressive; for all admit the regular action of the physical principles by which God orders the universe. But only skepticism is unwilling to own His title, especially in a morally ruined system, to interfere whether in judgment of evil, or in the testimony and triumph of grace: both alike worthy of His goodness and due to His character, fraught too with the richest blessing to His creatures, and subserving His glory.

No doubt it was not ordinary experience, any more than the resurrection of our Lord. It is a question of extraordinary facts proved by adequate testimony and even overwhelming evidence. To set induction from experience against such facts, or indeed any facts, is essentially illogical. “If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater” (1 John 5:9). A miracle has nothing to do with ordinary experience, less even than those primeval and permanent causes of which logic avows it can give no account; yet there they have been from the origin of all things as certainly as the actual sensible course of things which we call experience. They were miraculous, just like the deluge on the one hand, or our Lord's resurrection (as indeed His entire appearing here below) on the other. They are wholly beyond that experience, and above the ken of science; but they are the surest and most momentous of facts; and God has taken care to give His irrefragable witness to them all. The infidel argument begs the question and refutes itself to an honest mind. For it assumes that there is nothing beyond the general laws in ordinary experience; while it is compelled to own that, even for initiating that course of nature, there must have been primordial causes of which it knows nothing and can give no account. How much more was it for God, holy, righteous, and good, to judge iniquity and to reveal grace and truth, yea life eternal in His Son. For “this is the witness, that God gave us life eternal; and this life is in His Son” (1 John 5:11).

The real reason why these illogical reasoners dislike miracles, whether judicial or in grace, is because they dread God, as they must with a bad conscience; and they are too proud to own their sins and be saved through the faith of Christ, Who died for them and rose from the dead. If they refuse to believe now, God will enforce the honor of His Son by their resurrection to judgment executed by Him Whom they refuse now as Savior.

It is striking to observe how the last touching incident here recorded rises up against the irrational hypothesis of pseudo-criticism. The hypothesis of Elohistic and Jehovistic documents so fails to account for the use of the divine designations, as well as the other phenomena of the text, that they are obliged to imagine another modifying element, which they call “the Priest's Code,” and even a redactor of it. But all this is unintelligent jargon which explains nothing, and is as unreliable as the most trifling traditions of the Babylonish Talmud. To the believer the usage of scripture is full of interest and edification. In our chapter Jehovah's care for Noah, with his house, whom He had seen righteous before Him in this generation is attested in the opening verses.1-5. From ver. 6 we have the action of Noah in view of Elohim's word as such, where accordingly the entrance of creatures, clean or unclean, two and two, is named as in chap. vi.; and the more strikingly here, because in the previous verses the clean by sevens had been enjoined by Jehovah as befitted His dealings with His own. The difference is owing to the divine design, however dull we may be in seizing or yet more in expounding it. But ver. 16 is remarkable for its disproof of the dream. For there we read that they went in male and female of all flesh. Now this ought to be, as it is, and only could be accurately, “as Elohim commanded him.”

But there is immediately following the words, as if to explode by anticipation the diverse document notion, “and Jehovah shut him in.” On the believing view, one cannot conceive any addition more pertinent, beautiful, or consoling. It is the expression of special care on Jehovah's part to the one that honored Him and was thus guarded peculiarly at that great crisis. In judgment He remembered mercy and provided generally for the preservation of creation; but He had His affections in a closer way for Noah, and, by that divine name which expressed the relationship, He meant to let, His people know in His imperishable word that He secured His faithful servant: Jehovah shut him in.” Here the scheme of “higher criticism” not only loses the lesson of His grace, but sinks into puerility. It is well that those who believe should resist and resent these “evil workers;” who appear to be as wholly insensible to the grace of God as to His truth. They as scholars avail themselves of the plea of literary questions to fritter away divine authority, and all that is vital and God-glorifying which is bound up with it. But no faithful soul should be deceived. It is not Hebrew learning which is the point, but the skeptical mania of the day.

Genesis 7:17-24

Next we have the prevalence of the deluge described in language alike simple and impressive; but entirely free from the realistic details of horror in which the moderns delight. The effect was complete over all that breathed on the dry land and over bird life.

“And the flood was forty days upon the earth, and the waters increased and bare up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth. And the waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark went upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high mountains that [were] under all the heavens were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh that moved upon the earth expired, bird and cattle and beast and all the creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all mankind: all died which [had] breath of spirit of life, of all that [was] in dry [land]. And every living substance which [was] on the face of the ground from man to cattle and to reptile and to bird of the heavens; and they were blotted out from the earth; and Noah only remained, and what [was] with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days” (vers. 17-24).

It was for God now to accomplish His word of judgment: whether or not He caused His wind to blow, the waters flowed. It was no question of His ordinary regulation according to the laws He impressed on creation. His word is paramount. Man must learn that He is, and that He punishes, even in this world where He sees fit, the iniquity that exceeds. He is long-suffering, but He gave thus early a lesson to the ungodly which they can only forget or deny at their peril. “Behold, He breaketh down, and it cannot be built again; He shutteth upon a man, and there can be no opening. Behold, He withholdeth the waters, and they dry up; also He sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth.” No doubt there were the deceived and the deceivers then, as at other times, who had to learn, whatever their pride or indifference, that they were His Who stood by His warnings and dealt publicly with all that despised Him and them. With Him is strength and wisdom, whereof destruction and death say, We have heard its fame with our ears, if it is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the bird of the heavens. For man, behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding!

God has let us know the process of the deluge, as well as the destruction outside and the deliverance for all within the ark. In vain does the writer of the “Genesis of the Earth” seek to transfer the catastrophe to the low lands of the Euphrates and the Tigris, where an inundation of fifteen cubits would little affect the earth in general or its denizens. This is to overlook or disbelieve “the mountains of Ararat” (chap. 8:4), where the ark rested when the waters were abating. Its chief peak, being 17,000 feet above the sea, may give some notion of the appalling fact. For forty days was the flood i.e., the extraordinary outburst from beneath and from above (vers. 11, 12), which bore up the enormous structure of the ark upon the face of the waters; and the waters so prevailed that “all the high hills that were under all the heavens were covered.” This seems naturally to go beyond Ararat; yet if even its highest peak were far beneath the water, what then for the earth? “Fifteen cubits upward did the water prevail; and the mountains were covered.”

As the apostle Peter comments, “the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished"; so here the narrative has every mark of truth without exaggeration or the least approach to imaginative coloring. The universal death which suddenly befell every living creature of the land or the air, is vividly set before the reader; no less than the security of Noah alone and those with him in the ark. It is childish and sinful to cavil at the destruction of the lower creation, which had already been subjected to vanity through the fall of its head. And now that man's wickedness called aloud for divine judgment, the birds and beasts share his ruin on earth. Yet even in this the goodness and the wisdom of God secure the victory in due time. For if the creation fell with the first man, what joy to know in God's word that all its groaning awaits the triumph of the Second man when the manifestation of the sons of God takes place! For as surely as through Adam's transgression it was plunged into sighs, and travails in pain together until now, so surely will the Last Adam appear, when it also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. Christ, besides being Firstborn from the dead, the Head of the church, is also Firstborn of all creation, its Chief, and Heir of all things. And He died to reconcile, not all believers only, but all things unto Himself, whether things on the earth or things in the heavens. As the word of God is pledged, so His return will vindicate the word and display the reconciliation in power.

Genesis 8:1-5

THUS was the ante-diluvian world purged of its abounding and flagrant evils by divine judgment: the standing witness and warning of another judgment which impends over the habitable earth. There were two witnesses then, first Enoch, then Noah, each with his own characteristic points of difference, both concurring to announce judgment about to fall on the ungodly while living here below. So it will be in the day when the Son of man is revealed (Luke 17:30).

How deeply and universally the judgment of the quick is overlooked in Christendom! It may be said that it is attested in the creeds; and this is true. But even when the creeds were composed, the truth had faded distressingly; and their recital seems to have been an effort to preserve it from utter ruin through the ever rising flood of failure in faith, of worldly ways, and of heterodoxy on every side. Even then all distinctness was lost, no less than the living power was dwindling. For we can read how the baptized were already mixing up the judgment of the quick with that of the dead, because the Lord is to judge both; and no wonder, for they were far and wide substituting the error of a general resurrection for a resurrection of life and a resurrection of judgment, with the millennial reign between them. Such confusion is an error which in itself tends to destroy enjoyment of gospel deliverance and of eternal life as present facts, to darken the proper hope of Christ's coming to receive us for the Father's house, and to frustrate all testimony to His world-kingdom when He returns with power and glory. There is little of truth left by this desolating scheme, harmless as it may appear to men who are not thoroughly subject to the written word—little more than the person of Christ, which may be and is seen truly (thank God) notwithstanding, but which cannot exercise His full power over souls, where there is feeble entrance by faith into His work.

Hence the importance of appreciating the deluge as God's then judgment of living man on the earth and of the creation subject to him there. It was used by the prophet Isaiah (chap. 54) for Israel's comfort; for they must experience Jehovah's face hid from them in overflowing wrath for a moment, before His everlasting kindness rests on them—a state which is in no way true of them yet. So did the Lord compare the days of Noah with His coming or presence as Son of man to introduce the kingdom of the heavens, not in mystery as now, but manifestly over the earth (Matt. 24:37, Luke 17:26). And the apostle of the circumcision does not fail to illustrate and enforce his rebuke of the mockers at the close of the days by a solemn application of that divine intervention (2 Peter 3:4-7). But the Judge stands before the doors. Jehovah's end will be seen, that He is full of pity and merciful; and so we find the faithful Creator here.

“And God remembered Noah, and all that lived, and all the cattle that [were] with him in the ark; and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided. And closed were [the] deep's fountains and heaven's windows, and the rain from the heavens was restrained. And the waters returned from off the earth continually (going and returning); and the waters were abated at the end of a hundred and fifty days. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on [the] seventeenth day of [the] month, on Ararat's mountains. And the waters were abating continually (going and abating) until the tenth month: in the tenth, on the first of the month, were the mountain tops seen” (vers. 1-5).

Here again we see, as in every previous instance, internal evidence of the Holy Spirit's design in speaking of God (Elohim) rather than Jehovah. It is the general care of Him Who had created all; and hence every living thing and all the cattle are remembered along with Noah. We have not here specific relationship, where “Jehovah” (Lord) would be requisite and in keeping. So it was in describing the divine action of bringing on the flood; here, of removing the infliction for His creatures that were preserved. Thus God remembered all, and God made a wind to pass over the earth; and the waters subsided, and the extraordinary stores from below and from above were closed, and rain was restrained. It is thus simply God's way generally from chaps. 7:17 to 8:19 inclusively. From a chap.8:20 we have special relationship, and Jehovah is at once introduced with the strictest propriety. The notion of distinct authorship is merely the device of blind men groping in vain. The same writer was led to vary the expression of the divine name, exactly as the change of subject required. The design of the Holy Spirit is therefore completely lost by the dream of distinct documents and authors, where this change of title ensues, which involves also new associations and different terms, which they in their ignorance work into their hypothesis. To the believer in true divine inspiration the design of God is thus made apparent, instructive, of deep interest, and of no little fruit. On the unbelieving hypothesis all is reduced to barrenness from Dan to Beersheba.

Genesis 8:6-12

Another step was now taken by Noah after the tops of the mountains were seen. God had given necessary warning to save life, but exercised his dependence and patience abundantly.

“And it came to pass at the end of forty days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made. And he sent forth the raven; and it went forth, going to and fro until the drying of the waters from off the earth. And he sent forth the dove from him, to see if the waters were abated [become light] from off the face of the ground; but the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and returned to him into the ark, for the waters [were] on the face of all the earth. And he put forth his hand and took her and brought her in to him into the ark. And he stayed yet other seven days, and again he sent the dove out of the ark; and the dove came to him at eventide, and behold the leaf of olive fresh plucked [was] in her mouth; and Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days, and sent forth the dove, which returned not again to him more” (vers. 6-12).

We may easily gather from scripture that “forty” is habitually used, days or years, for a term of trial, both O. and N. Testaments furnishing instances. So it would seem to have been here. And temptation must be borne, not evaded; as we have the assurance not only that God will not suffer us to be tempted above what we are able, but that He will, with the trial, make also the way of escape that we may be able to endure. So here after duly waiting Noah opened, not the light or roof, but the window of the ark, and sent forth the raven, which kept going to and fro till the waters were dried up from off the earth. He also sent forth the dove. In this case it is added to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. The raven and the dove were true to their habits. The unclean bird found congenial food in that scene of desolation, and sought no more an entrance into the ark, content with what death provided everywhere. The bird of associations afterward so hallowed found no rest for the sole of her foot, and returned to Noah and to the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth; and he put forth his hand, and took her, and brought her to him into the ark. This was conclusive. They must still wait. The historic facts seem to be comprised here; and their design is evident.

But without contending for a type more or less faithful, we may readily admit the moral instruction derivable from the description. The raven is notorious for its restlessness and its voracity, as the dove for its harmlessness and expression of love; the one prohibited from the Israelite's use, as the other was expressly fit, not merely for his food, but for a burnt sacrifice to be offered to Jehovah, and in certain cases as a sin offering also. There is surely nothing far-fetched in observing how the unclean nature finds its satisfaction without where death reigns; while that which is clean returns to the shelter of the ark, first, without a sign of life, next after seven days more with a freshly plucked olive leaf in her beak, the pledge of coming “fatness” wherewith God and man are honored, making man's face to shine. Plainer if possible is the result after seven days further; for the dove, when sent forth, could find rest for the sole of her foot in the renewed earth, and returned not again to him more. The dove, strong of wing to flee from that which was out of harmony with her pure and gentle nature, had now a sphere which attracted her; and Noah could not but draw the right conclusion.

So it is in a far more serious region. Those that are according to flesh do mind the things of the flesh; as those according to Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace. Nor is there any difficulty in apprehending this; because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be; and those that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye, said the apostle to the saints in Rome, are not in flesh but in Spirit, if so be that God's Spirit dwelleth in you. And there He is given to dwell, as had been shown in a preceding part of the Epistle, where souls justified by faith have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. They are justified in the power of His blood, and are anointed of the Holy Spirit accordingly to have His objects theirs henceforth.

Genesis 8:13-19

Life is not all, nor life amply secured in the face of death and desolation all around. This the ark had been, not only to Noah and his house, but to every living creature which found shelter within. The power of death, the judgment of God, had fallen unsparingly on all that breathed outside; but the grace that provided salvation was equally evident. And the word of God was no less simple, intelligible, and in fact understood by all that believed it. Those who discredited the warning of God were the witnesses of its truth when the flood came and swept them all away. The waters of Noah did go over the earth, as surely as they shall go over it no more. A still more terrible destruction awaits it, however long it may seem to linger. The heavens and earth that are now by His word are kept in store, reserved for fire against a day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. The one is as certain as the other. But we according to His promise look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

Meanwhile it never was the mind of God that there should be life only, but liberty. Life out of death ushers into liberty. Christ not only quickens and shelters, but this as a preparation for the freedom of grace. With freedom He set us free. Flesh had long been tried under the legal taskmaster; and it had been demonstrated that its mind is enmity against God. But now that there is life, after death and judgment have done their worst on Him Who is risen out of both, there is liberty also for the regenerate.

But it is beautiful to note how Noah can wait. Many days had passed before he opened the window of the ark; many more while he tried the condition of the renewed earth by the messengers he sent forth repeatedly, and not in vain. A further step was now to be taken in the spiritual intelligence given to him.

“And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth. And Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dried. And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dry” (vers. 13, 14).

His faith had been tried not a little, but the prospect was comforting even from the first. “The face of the ground” was dry when he looked; and after near two months more “the earth was dry.” But if thus and rightly exercised and comforted, he still waited on God's word to go out, as he went in at His word. He will not hasten in the impetuosity of nature and its self-confidence; he depends on God and obeys His word; and the word in due time was given, as it ever is to those who look up to Him.

“And God spoke to Noah, saying, Go forth out of the ark, thou and thy wife, and thy sons and thy sons' wives with thee: all the animals that are with thee of all flesh, among bird and among cattle and among every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, bring forth with thee, that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth. And Noah went forth and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives, with him: all the animals, all the creeping things, and all the birds—everything that moveth upon the earth after their families, went forth out of the ark” (vers. 15-19).

Now comes the faithful word of God to His waiting and watching servant: how welcome to the prisoner of hope! It is the type of those preserved through the great hour of temptation which shall come upon all the habitable world to try those that dwell on the earth. Hence it is referred to in that part of our Lord's great prophecy which sets out a future remnant of the chosen people left for blessing, when the Lord comes in power and glory to establish the kingdom of God publicly here below, on the cutting off of His open enemies. So also we find it in the Gospel of Luke (chap. 17) where our Lord contrasts God's kingdom as a matter not of show but of faith, as it was then and is now, with that public display and resistless power in the day when the Son of man is revealed.

On the other hand, when Christ's coming to receive His own to Himself for the Father's house on high is brought before us, it is after the pattern, not of Noah passing through the scene of judgment, but of Enoch translated to heaven before the time of trouble came, as we may see in 1 Thess. 4:16, 17. So, in Rev. 4 and onward, the symbol of the heavenly redeemed is above, around the throne during the entire period of the judicial dealings of God, which have for their object to put the Lord in actual possession of the inheritance earthly as well as heavenly. Even in that solemn time mercy will rejoice against judgment, and there will be prepared on earth multitudes of the spared (Rev. 7:14.) from not Israel only but all the Gentiles, to welcome the returning Son of man; as others slain for their faith (chap 6:13 etc.) will be raised from the dead before His world-kingdom begins, to reign with Christ no less than those caught up before (chap. xx. 4). There must be a fit condition for men on earth, whether of Israel or the nations, as He has the glorified in heaven. And when the kingdom comes in manifest power and glory, the merely animal creation is to rejoice; and indeed all that is now travailing and groaning through the fall of its head. How beautifully this suits the glory of the Second man needs no argument, however offensive to rationalists, who never rise above the first man.

Genesis 8:20-22

HITHERTO the account throughout this chapter, as also much the greater part of the preceding, has been general history: all since chap. 7:6, save the beautifully appropriate exception of the last clause of chap. 7:17. Now, as in that exception, special relationship is meant to be put forward, and Jehovah appear, rather than Elohim, in the close of chap. 8., as in the opening of chap. vii. Never was a weaker effort to account for the use of the divine names than the fancy of two distinct writings joined into one, never a scheme more utterly unproductive of good fruit. Who was ever helped thereby to a ray of light divine? What holy affection was ever exercised by it? Its direct and inevitable tendency is to destroy reverence for the sacred letters, and to undermine the Lord's authority Who declares that Moses wrote of Him, not the mythical legendists of rationalist imagination. Accepting the scripture as God-breathed, we may easily and surely learn the propriety of the change of designation in the verses before us, and the enhanced value which the name here employed imparts. “And Noah built an altar to Jehovah, and took of every clean beast and of every clean bird, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar. And Jehovah smelled the odor of rest. And Jehovah said in his heart, I will not any more again curse the ground on account of man, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will not any more again smite every living thing as I have done. Henceforth all the days of the earth, seed and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease” (vers. 20-22).

After such grave and long detention, with death and desolation all around in judgment executed on bold and open sin, the natural impulse would have been to build a house for himself and houses for his sons. But as Noah had found grace in the eyes of Jehovah, so he remained righteous before Him; and his first thought, on emerging with all entrusted to his care from the ark, was to own Jehovah and His grace sacrificially. This needed no fresh commandment. It had already received His signal recognition from the beginning, when Abel, just because he had faith, approached Him with the slain firstling and its fat, and Cain was rejected, because he rose not above the religion of nature. There was no sense of sin in himself, nor of grace in God reigning through righteousness to eternal life through the coming Savior.

Noah perceived now the fit provision of the seventh clean beast and bird. He saw by faith that it could only be rightly for an offering to Jehovah. The seventh was not one of a pair: how suitable for presenting on the altar! And so he took of “every clean beast and of every clean bird.” It had thus afar larger range than Abel's; appropriate as his was for one coming to God by faith. Nor was Noah's any more than Abel's a sin-offering. What then suited was a burnt-offering. It was of a sweet savor, or savor of rest, and of course propitiatory; but here there was no question of individual acceptance as in Abel's case. It was no less a righteous ground for presenting the renewed earth to Jehovah. No such position was taken by Adam when set in Paradise. It was exactly right and due to Jehovah now, that man and every living creature and the earth might be before Him in the sweet savor He smelled: the witness of an infinitely efficacious offering whereby Christ in His death would reconcile all things. Now came, it would seem, the fulfillment of Lamech's word in calling his son Noah, This same shall comfort us concerning our works and concerning the toil of our hands, because of the ground which Jehovah hath cursed (Gen. 5:29). Only Christ coming in power will remove the curse; but Noah brought in meanwhile alleviation and comfort for man in his toil.

Nor was this all; “Jehovah said in his heart, I will not any more again curse the ground on account of man, for the thought of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will not any more again smite every living thing as I have done.” How blessed was the effect even of this witness to the great Sacrifice! Compare chap. 6:5-7. When Jehovah saw, not the sacrifice, but man's wickedness great in the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually, it grieved Him in His heart, and He said I will destroy man, &c. Now when He (according to the gracious language of scripture) smelled the savor of rest, He said in His heart, I will not again any more curse the ground, nor smite any living thing, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. Sacrifice made the difference, bringing Christ's death before Him as it should be later. And grace could flow righteously even then. Man was no better in himself; but here the chief of the new world acts in faith, and God answers in grace on this righteous ground. The earth was to be spared. During all its days the seasons should follow, not in the fullness that Christ will impart when He reigns over it, but adequately; seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. And so it has ever been, though many willfully forget why it is, less grateful than the ox which knows its owner, or the ass which knows its master's crib.

Genesis 9:1-7

FROM the specific dealing in the last section of chap. 8., on the ground of burnt offering with its savor of rest, which necessarily brought in the name of “Jehovah,” we return in chap. 9. to the general ways of God, of “Elohim,” till the special blessing of Shem requires “Jehovah” toward the close of the chapter. The propriety of the usage in each case is apparent and undeniable. It has no reasonable connection with the fancy of distinct authors or legends, but is founded on the exigencies of the truth and the exactitude of inspiration. Interchange of the name in any, case would touch, not of course the substance of the facts, but the moral perfection conveyed by their due occurrence.

“And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. And fear of you and dread of you shall be upon every animal of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, with all that moveth [on] the ground, and with all fishes of the sea: into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you: as the green herb I give you everything. Only flesh with its life, its blood, ye shall not eat. And surely your blood [that] of your lives will I require: at every animal's hand will I require it; and at man's hand, at the hand of each [the blood] of his brother, will I require the man's life. [Whoso] sheddeth the man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in God's image made he the man. And ye, be fruitful and multiply; swarm on the earth and multiply on it” (chap. 9:1-7).

Such is the tenure of man and the lower creation in the world that now is, in marked distinctness from the world that then was, when Adam was set up as head of the race in Eden. It was conferred dominion then for man made in God's image, after His likeness—dominion over fish of the sea, and over bird of the heavens, and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. Now it was a fallen world, and the fear and the dread of those blessed by God and charged to replenish the earth were to be upon every beast and bird with reptile and fish. The creatures were delivered into men's hand. Sin pervaded, and God took it into consideration as an existing fact which could not be ignored; as we saw just before in its proper place, where sacrifice intervened, spite of the evil in man's heart and its imagination from his youth.

But if God now first gave every moving thing that lives to be food for man (ver. 3), as freely as green herbage had been originally given to beast and bird and reptile (chap. 1:30), there was marked restriction put on the blood. Of this man was not to eat (ver. 4). It was the life, and this God reserved for Himself. The liberty for animal food to man's use made the divine claim more conspicuous. Life belonged to God; and woe be to those that despise or defy His rights. It is the condition of a fallen world, and God is a Preserver, or a Savior, of all men as says the apostle, especially of those that believe. He governs in His providence. It is no longer the dominion given by the Creator. Now He licenses, and He prohibits.

For this reason God stringently guards human life and death. The very governing authority placed in man's hand would soon be misused and perverted by his will without the fear of God; and rivers of blood would flow, not merely through lawless corruption and violence as before the deluge, but by ambitious kings and governors after it. Therefore does God in His prescient wisdom and considerate goodness declare from the starting point of the new tenure, “Surely your blood [that is] of your lives will I require; at every animal's hand will I require it.” Specially of course would He require the life of man at man's hand, even at the hand of each man's brother (ver. 5). And this is set on its sacred and sound principle in ver. 6; By man should his blood be shed who shed man's blood; for in God's image did He make man.

The image of God expresses man's place and responsibility of representing God. Man alone has that image generally, Christ of course specially and alone perfectly and pre-eminently. It is not His likeness; for alas! man lost this by sin and begat in his own likeness, however grace might act as it does by faith to God's glory. But His image, even when fallen as here, man retains; and the man who slays another (save by competent authority) is guilty of denying God's right in this respect; which we see here that God asserts with the utmost plainness, precision, and solemnity. The murderer meddles not merely with man and injures him to the last degree, hut he also defaces God's image by killing a man, and God sentences him to die. Murder is unwarrantable assumption of what belongs to God. In no other way but by death of the murderer is God's honor vindicated, and God's will maintained. Men may have decreed otherwise; but they that do so are flying in the face of Him from Whom they derive their own title to govern. For here it is laid down before separate nations began, and before His special legislation for Israel where it was guarded with minute care, and not least in the exceptional case of manslaughter. To Noah was said what binds all mankind since the deluge.

Notwithstanding all He foresaw of rebellion and bloodshed, God repeats in ver. 7 His word to men, “Be fruitful and multiply; swarm in the earth and multiply in it.” This they have assuredly done.

Genesis 9:8-11

THUS the situation is entirely new. It is governmental distinctively, and therefore wholly different in this from the world before the deluge. Life is guarded solemnly as that which belongs to God, and may not as the rule be taken from a fellow-man without the forfeit of his that took it. It is not a sinless state like Adam's in Paradise. Innocency lost is lost forever, however grace may step in, and by the Second Man replace all in due time by a new and holy creation, Himself being both Creator and new-creator, as He became the sacrifice which vindicated God as to evil and was the basis of the good that should abide forever.

But man meanwhile had government in his hand. The fear and the dread of him, in a sinful world where man was now called to govern, should be on all the subject creation, the flesh of which, not the blood, was now to be his food, given henceforth as freely by God, as before was the seed-producing herb and the fruit-bearing tree. But the sacredness of life is all the more maintained. Whose shed man's blood, by man should his blood be shed. Details were not given; but God established government, as a root-principle, in man's hand, responsible to him as from Him he received the charge.

It is the blessing of God, Preserver of all men, especially of faithful. Through one man sin had entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned. Yet the sacrifice which faith offered, God accepted, looking on to Him Whose sacrifice of himself would be the crowning completion of His will, and the savor of everlasting rest. Even now He could, would, and did bless the delivered Noah and his sons. But all creation was delivered afresh to man; the new warrant had government inscribed also, with the license and the restriction man is called to own responsibly to God. Nothing can modify this rightly, nothing justify neglect or forgetfulness.

“And God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold I, establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; and with every living soul that is with you, in bird, in cattle, and in every animal of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark to every animal of the earth. And I establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood, neither shall there be a flood any more to destroy the earth “(vers. 8-11).

Here again we may observe that it is “Elohim” Who blessed (ver. 1), and spoke (ver. 8); nor could it with propriety be any other designation. “Jehovah” would have been entirely out of place. For, far from being an occasion for the expression of special relationship, the object before us is of the most comprehensive character. It is the Creator Who is declaring Himself the Preserver of all here below, notwithstanding the imagination of man's heart evil from his youth, which had so recently resulted in the universal destruction of all on earth outside the ark. God could and would and did bless on the footing of sacrifice provisionally till the infinite sacrifice, in virtue of which would come in the new heavens and new earth, save for such as despised it and so justly perishing both here and hereafter in that day. In all this unfolding of His mind about the earth and man upon it unrestrictedly, it is exactly God, “Elohim,” which is requisite, to the exclusion of “Jehovah,” which first reappears in the momentary introduction of His peculiar relationship with Shem (ver, 26), where only and precisely it is demanded, whereas “Elohim” is immediately resumed with Japhet, who enjoyed no such special place, but only providential dealings of an external kind.

Here accordingly God establishes His covenant with Noah and his sons on a footing which ignores all question of the soul or moral considerations. Where these enter as at the close of the chapter, the divine title is changed in harmony with what is revealed. But in the previous portion all is general as expressly as possible. God never forgets His rights as Creator and Preserver; and even when our blessed Lord brought out heavenly and eternal things, He was far from teaching us to despise the birds of the heaven or the lilies of the field, or God's care in either case. Their Creator and Preserver was our heavenly Father, without Whom not even one sparrow falls upon the earth. No doubt the Christian is called to things higher beyond comparison; but God did not omit to testify and teach His people His mind as to the least of His creatures in the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, of which last the closing verse of Jonah is not the least remarkable. And the New Testament is quite as clear as the Old in keeping before us the blessed deliverance which He will surely effect for all the creation groaning and travailing in pain together until now. It waits for the manifestation of the Second man, Head over all things to the church which is His body. For when Christ, our life, shall be manifested, then shall we also with Him be manifested in glory.

Meanwhile God Who remembered not Noah only but every living thing and the cattle with him in the ark, covenants not only with. Noah and his sons and with his seed after them, but with every living creature, cattle, bird, and beast; and He so establishes His covenant as to cut off from every heart that trusted in Him the least fear of destruction of all flesh by a deluge any more, or of any such dealing with the earth. Without such a covenant, what could guilty man expect but repeated strokes of the same judgment which had just taken them all away? Would not old sins renewed and fresh sins added provoke like punishment? Not so; God's covenant with man and the earth interposes absolutely. “I have sworn that the waters of Noah shall no more go over the earth.” He will certainly judge and destroy otherwise, as He warns elsewhere; but it was no small comfort, when the world that now is began after the deluge, that God assured their trembling hearts against a blow so naturally and justly to be dreaded.

Genesis 9:12-17

VERSES 1-7 set out the blessing of God pronounced on Noah and his sons for the world that now is. Man henceforth was allowed animal food, yet forbidden to eat blood due to God; and government, was put for the first time into man's hand for the protection of human life and the vindication of God where it was taken. Now vers. 8-11 give the covenant God established with mankind and every creature set under man: the largest covenant God ever made, and still subsisting under a merciful pledge that cannot fail. Neither the one nor the other applied to the ante-diluvian earth. In the verses that follow (12-17) God deigns to give a sign or token of His covenant with the earth. Of a covenant with Noah we first hear in chap. 6:18.

“And God said, This [is the] sign of the covenant which I set (give) between me and between you and between every living soul that is with you for everlasting generations: my bow I have set in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of covenant between me and between the earth. And it shall come to pass when I bring clouds over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember nay covenant which is between me and between you and between every living soul among all flesh; and no more shall the waters become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the clouds and I will look upon it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and between every living soul of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said to Noah, This [is the] sign of the covenant which I have established between me and between all flesh that is upon the earth” (vers. 12-17).

It is an unprofitable question, seeing that scripture has not furnished adequate evidence to decide it absolutely, whether the rainbow was then seen for the first time, or had been familiarly known to the early ages. One can readily conceive that the Creator may have reserved it for the days of Noah: a slight physical disposition could have hindered the phenomenon. But the language seems rather to favor the inference that, often as it may have been noticed before, God took it up now and established it as a covenant sign between Him and the creatures here below for everlasting generations. The least that can be drawn from the words is that God was now, since the deluge, pleased to graft on it a new and merciful meaning. For men might well tremble after that tremendous catastrophe when dark clouds veiled the skies, and the rain fell in torrents, and tidal waves rose overwhelmingly. An accusing conscience would the more loudly speak of what had been shortly before experienced so disastrously. Man naturally looks for it that what once was will surely recur; and the more if old sins still prevailed, and new evils sprang up.

Hence the immense comfort which God's goodness pledged in the bow He set in the cloud. It is not seen as the rule unless there be rain, of course; and it is only seen when the sun shines brightly at one's back from the opposite quarter of the sky. Thus no sign could be more appropriate. If the rain might awaken fears, the gorgeous bow was entitled to calm them; for God Himself thus deigned to assure man of His unfailing covenant. Indeed the accuracy is the more remarkable, as its terms run, “It shall come to pass when I bring clouds over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living soul among all flesh.” For “rain” does not seem absolutely indispensable, but “cloud” is. So Col. Sykes, treating of the Meteorology of the Deccan (Phil. Trans. 1835), describes a rainbow which he saw from the top of a perpendicular precipice, among the Ghauts, overlooking the Concan, on a fog cloud. “A circular rainbow appeared, quite perfect, of the most vivid colors, one half above the level on which I stood, the other below it. Shadows in distinct outline of myself, my horse, and people, appeared in the center of the circle, as in a picture to which the bow formed a resplendent frame.”

The same witness describes a white rainbow which he saw in a fog bank near Poonah: “Suddenly I found myself emerge from the fog which terminated abruptly in a wall some hundred feet high. Shortly after sunrise I turned my horse's head homewards, and was surprised to discover in the mural termination of the fog-bank a perfect rainbow, defined in its outline, but destitute of prismatic “colors.” Such a white rainbow has been seen by other travelers, and in other lands; but it is not so uncommon as with the usual colors on a fog-cloud. But all attest the faithfulness of God even if man forgets its meaning. “No more shall the waters become a flood to destroy all flesh.”

And how affecting the condescension of the words that follow! “And the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living soul of all flesh that is upon the earth.” It was much that man should see it: how gracious that God too would look on! Nor is this all; but it is added, “And God said to Noah, This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and between all flesh that is upon the earth.” How good is the God we adore! Such repeated assurance is only the more to be prized by vain forgetful man.

Genesis 9:18-19

But there dawns another dealing with mankind, ere long to be consummated by a most striking act on God's part, here marked in an initiatory way as characteristic of the earth since the flood. We need not therefore do more at this point than present a few remarks as general as the text. In due time we may dwell particularly when details come before us.

“And the sons of Noah that went out of the ark were Sherri, and Ham, and Japheth. And Ham is father of Canaan. These three [are] sons of Noah; and from these was all the earth overspread” (vers. 18, 19).

We have already remarked on the principle of government introduced for the first time. Life, man's life, was a sacred thing. It came from God in a way altogether peculiar, as was made known from the outset in Gen. 2:8. Man alone became a living soul by the inbreathing of Jehovah Elohim; other animals without any such immediate association breathed through their organization according to His will. Adam's sons were of Adam naturally, yet inheriting the relationship which Adam had of God differently from all other creatures here below. He, and his alone, had consequently an immortal soul. But to Noah and his sons emerged from the ark there was laid down the root of government, without defining those forms which developed later, all of which have the sanction of His providence.

When the free use of the lower creatures of God was granted, beast of the earth, bird of the air, fish of the sea, every moving thing that lives was to be food for man. As the green herb, God gave all, save the blood, its life, which was not to be eaten: a most significant and instructive reserve, owning Himself the sovereign source of life. Still more solemnly does He speak of man's life. “And surely your blood, [that] of your lives will I require, at the hand of every beast will I require it; and at the hand of man, at the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth Man's blood by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He Man.” We repeat it, because of its signal and abiding importance; and the more so, because other and inferior grounds are often allowed to take the place of divine right with which nothing else can compare.

This, followed up by the covenant with man and the subject creation, and sealed with its appropriate sign of mercy, was settled before attention is again drawn to the three heads of Noah's race, “Shem and Ham, and Japheth,” in the same order as before (Gen. 5:32; 6:10; 7:13). Now, there is an ominous addition, “and Ham is the father of Canaan.” This receives a speedy comment in the sad incident and yet more in the solemn prophecy that follows to the end of the chapter; it not only reverberates through the Old Testament as a whole, but will be only consummated in that kingdom which awaits the Anointed of Jehovah, when all the earth shall be filled with His glory, and the knowledge of it, as the waters cover the sea. The zeal of Jehovah of hosts shall perform this, as surely as His fire is in Zion and His furnace in Jerusalem.

Next, we read “these three [are] sons of Noah; and from these was all the earth overspread.” The last word first indicates that which has been proceeding ever since. There is no sufficient ground to affirm it of the ante-diluvian earth. What strikes one more perhaps is to see how slowly it was carried out after the deluge. Indeed, whatever the causes which acted on men to hinder the plan of God, it soon was plain that mankind resolved on a united community, and not only to congregate together, but to build a city and a tower with its head aspiring to the heavens, and to make a name to themselves lest they should be scattered over the face of the whole earth. This, we are assured, only brought out divine power and wisdom on God's part, not merely in frustrating their vain purpose, but in the accomplishing of His will that they should overspread the earth. He judged their self-exalting folly by breaking the bond which knit them together, and by introducing in the simplest and surest way a separative principle He compelled them to scatter, abandoning their unfinished tower, the abiding monument, not of man's union for strength and fame, but of God's pouring confusion on self-will to its shame. A vast deal more was done by God's interposition, as will appear in due time; but this much may be stated here on the overspreading of all the earth, without anticipating the surprising details that are to follow. As ever, fallen man cared not for God's will—had pleasure in his own will. God was in none of his thoughts, but self which always exposes to some fresh and ruinous device of the great enemy.

Genesis 9:20-24

IN these verses we see the fall of him to whom primarily government was committed by God. Noah failed to govern himself by his abuse of God's creature, and gave occasion to such sin in his family as brought in a special curse there; instead of making good comfort “for our work and for the toil of our hands.” It is the sad and familiar story of the first man; directly he is put to the proof, he breaks down. Nor does the evil terminate with himself. The vilest can see it and despise the guilty, where love would cover a multitude of sins. How deep the ruin where the shame of the father drew out only the contempt of son and grandson! But God is not mocked; and His moral government fails no more than His grace, which answers every failure of man by some better thing in His goodness and wisdom, while He judges impenitent wickedness as it deserves.

“And Noah began as husbandman (a man of the ground); and he planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took the garment and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward and covered their father's nakedness; and their faces [were] backward, and their father's nakedness they saw not. And Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his younger son had done unto him” (vers. 20-25).

It is not merely the fall of a righteous man, and its wholesome warning for all time; for scripture does not withhold the profit from any. But there stands the humbling fact. God reveals the truth without respect of persons. Man was no sooner put to the proof, in the new trial to which he was subjected, than he is seen breaking down in the very point which he was responsible to maintain intact before God and his own fellows. Government over life and death was entrusted by God to his keeping; and he to whom the trust was first made was beyond comparison the most suited by piety and by experience. Yet the next fact recorded of him is that, doubtless through self-indulgence and unwatchfulness, he not only sinned himself, but brought God's ordinance of government into flagrant dishonor. And the sin and dishonor wrought not godly sorrow but contempt in his own household. His younger son Ham was as insensible to God's glory as to what was due to his father, even in such calamitous circumstances; he only manifested the wickedness of his own heart by the unfeeling mockery he put on Noah, and the ready desire to spread his father's shame and ensnare his two brothers. Their reverence was as plain as Ham's impiety, who forgot to whom he owed his life as well as his preservation from the deluge.

But God is not mocked by the sinner any more than He forgets a work of love shown to His name. And it was a work of love which the two brothers did, roused to it all the more through the graceless hardness of their own near kin. Yet what sorrow must have filled their hearts, when their piety compelled them to turn their backs on him to whom ever before they justly looked up with constant affection and honor and gratitude. And this, not only in requital of his fatherly care, but as a righteous man, perfect in his generations, who walked with God, when all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth.

Thus, if man quickly fell, and shamefully, where we might have least expected it, and, as far as he was concerned, tarnished irreparably from the start the new and honorable commission with which he was invested, God did not fail, even when it wrought disastrous effects where it ought not, to work in His goodness the beautiful activity of His grace. And we shall see in due time that the ways of His moral government meanwhile are no less perfect. The wicked and scornful son reaped the fruit of his evil in his own offspring Canaan; as the reverent modesty of Shem and Japheth was remembered in their posterity. Salvation is of grace, and cannot fail, because it is the work of God in Christ where all is infallibly secured to His glory. Even where salvation may not be, God puts honor on obedience and respect paid where it is due. Scripture often indicates this, conspicuously in the Rechabites whom the God of Israel brought before the prophet (Jer. 35) to reprove disobedient Judah. Therefore, when Jehoiakim Josiah's son was disgracing both God and his father, Jonadab, Rechab's son, should not want a man, Gentile though he was, to stand before Him forever.

But whether among the righteous or among the unrighteous everything opposed to God's nature and word bears its consequence Nothing is slighted by Him. And a time of evil is just when fidelity to His will becomes all the more imperative for those who love Him; while its prevalence encourages the evil-minded to become more indifferent and abandoned. Without faith it is impossible to please Him; for he that comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him. And there is no real believer who does not begin and go on with that self-judgment of himself and his ways before God which scripture calls repentance.

Genesis 9:25-29

HUMILIATING as the fall of Noah was, far was he from being forsaken of our faithful God, Who knows how to restore and can make even the weakest to stand. When restored, Noah had fresh honor put on him. We may be assured that the righteous man deeply judged himself, and not the less because it gave occasion to Ham's impiety, if it also brought out the reverent sorrow of Shem and Japheth. There was no waiting in their case as in Jacob's for the Spirit of prophecy on his dying bed. It would seem to have ere long followed that event in his circle which led to the striking prediction here given. It is the first prophecy properly so called which man was given to utter recorded in Genesis. The word given in Gen. 3:15 is of a yet higher nature. It was worthy of Jehovah Elohim to make known, in judging the old Serpent, His gracious purpose in the woman's Seed. Nor is the poetic strain of Lemech to his wives more than typical of the future, though most interesting in that way. Here it is strictly a prophetic prayer.

As Peter, honored among the twelve, was reinstated after his still more grievous and inexcusable sin, so was Noah given to present the broad outlines of what should befall his sons throughout the ages, yet in an aspect precisely suiting that government of man on earth, which he was the first to exercise, and which God would sustain notwithstanding the fault of its representative. Enoch was inspired to prophesy in a wholly different vein of the judgment which the Lord, when He comes with myriads of His saints, will execute on all the ungodly here below. This, however surely uttered at that early day, and appropriate then, was fittingly reserved for its best place of permanent record and warning in the Epistle of Jude. But that of Noah is just where it should be no less certainly, and of a character and scope exactly in keeping with the context.

“And he said, Cursed [be] Canaan; and he said, Bondman of bondman be he to his brethren.

Blessed [be] Jehovah God of Shem, and Canaan be bondman to him;

God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in tents of Shem,

And Canaan be bondman to him” (vers. 25-27).

Appearances were long as usual against the truth. Experience seemed to favor the sons of Ham. His grandson Nimrod, as we know from the next chapter, “began to be a mighty one in the earth.” “He was a mighty hunter [or plunderer], before Jehovah.” It became a proverb. Wherefore it is said, Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before Jehovah. Babel, that ominous tower of confusion, was the beginning of his kingdom, and his kingdom did not stop there. No doubt an evident curse, which none could deny but an infidel, fell on Canaan, when because of their enormous wickedness the guilty cities of the Plain were destroyed by fire out of heaven. But even this was far from being an event of Noah's age, nor growing out of a condition of things yet existent, nor affording any such contact with the then circumstances as rationalists pretend prophecy requires. There was of course a true link which the Holy Spirit saw between Ham's sin, and his descendants' corruption; but it was in no way the mere immediate fortune-telling to which this deplorable unbelief would pervert the prophets. Still less can it be said of Canaan reduced to the lowest bondage, as when Israel took possession of the land of promise. Yet scripture is plain that both the curse and the blessing are not complete till Israel re-enter the land under Messiah and the new covenant, to be rooted there and blessed as long as the earth endures. “And in that day there shall be no more a Canaanite in the house of Jehovah of hosts.”

Undoubtedly for the earth, and God's government, Shem has the richer promise, as that day will establish and proclaim. But all history even in the past attests God's enlarging Japheth, the great colonizer of the earth, and in the strongest contrast with Shorn as to this. For he was not only to spread nationally as Shem never was, but to dwell in Shem's tents. Europe and the north-east of the old world sufficed not, nor yet the new world of America, Australia, &c., but he must also encroach on Shem's tents in the east. So it was to be, according to this earliest oracle; and so it has been, to the letter, as no foresight of man could have anticipated. This closes the divine account of Noah: “And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years; and all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died” (vers. 28, 29).

The reader may note the exquisite propriety of “Jehovah the God of Shem” in ver. 26, and of “God” only in ver. 27 for Japheth, where enlargement in providence is meant rather than the promised blessing of special relationship with Himself. And here is an internal ground, in addition to grammatical reason, against the idea, which many like the late Mr. S. Faber adopted, that the same verse means (not Japhet's, but) God's dwelling in Shem's tents. Had this been intended by the Spirit of God in Noah, would it not have been said Jehovah Elohim, rather than simply Elohim?

Genesis 10:1

This comprehensive, instructive, and interesting chapter, followed by Gen. 11:1-9 which has its own special importance, is devoted to a description of a new element among mankind, its various nations divided in their lands, every one after his tongue. Before the deluge no such distinctions subsisted. Immense as the population might be, they were not thus associated any more than marked off one from another. Jehovah took care that the line of Seth should be guarded for His ways then, and for His purposes in the future. There were moral differences between Cain and his descendants from early days; and an awful form of creature lawlessness arose before God executed judgment on all flesh in an earth corrupt before Him, and filled with violence. But there was no government on the one hand yet established by God, nor was there any division into nations, nor yet diversity of language.

After the flood God had introduced the principle of government, committing the charge into the hands of men. As the next fact of the widest moment for the earth, the origin of the nations which were about to play their part is made known to us; and this with a special view to His choice of a people for Himself, and separated to Himself. Even it is seen first tried and failing through sin, as Adam had been in the world before the flood. Of this the O. T. is the ample witness and the awful proof, before His grace intervenes in the Second man and the Messiah of Israel to deliver both man and Israel, as He will the church and the universe, on the ground of divine righteousness and ever enduring mercy to the praise of Himself and the Lamb.

The fact is before all eyes. Nothing exists more notorious in ordinary and universal knowledge (save perhaps for the most isolated of savages) than the many races and tongues and peoples of mankind, each having its own separate bond of union. Yet how this fact began, so pregnant in history, not one of these nations can tell; nor do the most ancient—one does not ask of formal records, but—of incidental monuments go far enough back to explain. Yet here it is written with simple and calm dignity by the instrument God chose for the purpose. It was easy for Him, Who knew all from before the beginning, to make known distinctly and accurately what it seemed good in His eyes to reveal to His people. This He has done in the short compass of a single chapter, Gen. 10, with His moral ground for so separating mankind in the first paragraph of the following chapter. We shall find there an adequate, not to say absolutely necessary, reason for His intervention at once for His own glory and on behalf of guilty man; unless we assume that He Who but recently instituted responsible government in man's hand was indifferent to a rebellion as slighting to Himself as ruinous to man. This drew out from Him a dealing equally simple and effectual, which issued in the scattering of man over the earth according to God's will, but in separate nationalities to the frustration of man's will against God.

As Israel then was to be His earthly people, God made known in a brief survey the sources of all the nations here below, having provided, laid down, and committed to man government in its root principle. None of these facts applies to the antediluvian earth, where all consisted of a vast indiscriminate population of one tongue and under no restraint of government, as it ended in all but universal lawlessness and a judgment that spared a family of only eight persons, including its head. He Who alone could reveal the primeval state when the first man and woman were made, and ushered then into an unstained earth, now deigned to tell the story of how nationalities began with their miraculously started distinct languages, spreading over different lands according to their families. His pleasure was both to bring to naught man's union for a name of pride and to set Israel in the most central spot, not more for righteous government than for shedding on all the earth the knowledge of Jehovah and His glory. So says Deut. 32:8: “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the children of Adam, He set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel.” The people were redeemed first, then the land: all in view of Messiah and His redemption and reign in manifest glory, when they shall bow in faith who are still unbelieving, and living water issuing from the house eastward shall heal the Dead sea and gird the globe with blessing. See Ezek. 47, and Joel 3:18; and Zech. 14:8, 9 adds that half goes westward: the sign doubtless of universal blessing from the divine center in that day.

The first chapter of Genesis presents the origin of the world, especially of the earth, sea and land, and its inhabitants, above all of man himself its head and God's representative; then in chap. 2. the special relations of man with God, with the lower creaturehood, and with woman his counterpart, which necessitates for completeness and accuracy the special divine name of “Jehovah” Elohim. The slighting of these revelations exposes to Atheism or a powerless Theism. Science cannot penetrate the secrets of the beginnings by the confession even of one so self-confident and skeptical as J. S. Mill (in his Logic). The domain of science is either purely abstract or applied to what is already created; but how it came to be is outside its ken. Here in chap. 10. we are given to survey a fact of immense importance to the government of the earth. The first rise of families into separate nations and tongues, history has utterly failed to indicate, as science fails, in the material realm.

Revelation, as it kept intact two chronological lines in chap. 5., here too supplies the manifest and invaluable light of God with a special view to His earthly people, followed by the moral cause laid before us in chap. 11. which brings in (as it ought) the name of Jehovah throughout its earlier paragraph; whereas it only appears exceptionally, though for good reason, in chap. 10:9. All the lessons and monumental records of all the earth combined are not to be compared for certainty or comprehensiveness with this sacred ethnography, grounded on genealogy, and linked with geography. God gave it by Moses as He alone could. Facts of great weight as to the antediluvians are related in Gen. 4, and, what to some may seem strange, in the family of Cain with religion but without faith. Therein arose city life, arts, and sciences, literary verse, among men who forgot the fall, ignored sin and the Savior, and strove to embellish the earth into a worldly paradise. As the unity of the race was absolute at the beginning, so it was virtually in Noah after the deluge. The outward progress of mankind must have been all the greater because of their longevity. Whatever it was, the sons of Noah possessed all on their new start. No theory is more fallacious than the pretended ages of stone, bronze, and iron. Men, in their wanderings into rude forest life or other forms of savagery, fell into the circumstances of such facts, which still exist under similar conditions: to generalize them, as successive periods through which all passed, is mere myth, not history.

“And these [are the] generations of Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; and sons were born to them after the flood” (Gen. 10:1). This is the true place for such a statement given after Noah's fall and its remarkable consequences; just as the genealogy of Adam's sons followed in Gen. 5 after his sin and that of Cain led to the revealed state of the world before the flood. Noah lived on for centuries after, but is mentioned no more in the history, as Adam disappears after his sin, with Cain's crime leading to Seth given instead of Abel. One Spirit forms the narrative beyond the wisdom of Moses, and in total disproof of incoherent fragments pieced together, least of all at an epoch when all was crumbling to ruin among the chosen people. It was well ordered that none of Noah's sons had children till they emerged from the ark. So Adam became a father only after the fall and expulsion from paradise.

Genesis 10:2

IT will be noticed that the order of Noah's sons is now changed. Japheth has the first place, when we come to genealogic survey; and this is even explained when we arrive at the line of Shem (ver. 21), who for spiritual reasons had been uniformly set in that place of honor hitherto, even Ham being otherwise put before Japheth. That many Jews, followed by others, should overlook the spirit of scripture, in their zeal for the progenitor of the chosen people, is easily understood; but some weighed the word with more care and less prejudice. So Nachmanides remarks that the enumeration begins with Yapheth, because he is the firstborn. It proceeds with Ham, although the youngest, and reserves Shem to the last, because the narrator wishes to enlarge on the history of his descendants. Rashi also, though admitting the doubtfulness of the phrase, decides similarly from comparing other scriptures— “From the words of the text I do not clearly know whether the elder applies to Shem or Japheth. But as subsequently we are informed that Shem was one hundred years old and begat Arpachshad two years after the deluge (chap. 11: 10), it follows that Yapheth was the elder. For Noah was five hundred years old when he began to have children, and the deluge took place in the six hundredth year of his age. His eldest son must consequently have been one hundred years old at the time of the deluge; whereas we are expressly informed that Shem did not arrive at that age till two years after the deluge.”

We next come to the family of the firstborn. “Sons of Japheth: Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras” (ver. 2).

Here is presented the distinct statement of what scholars have regarded as the greatest triumph of modern research in comparative philology. The Asiatic Society instituted in 1784 at Calcutta gave the great impulse, Sir W. Jones declaring that “no philologer could examine the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and Celtic had the same origin with the Sanskrit. The old Persian may be added to the same family.” Long after this scholars were still incredulous, clinging to the heathen notion of aboriginal races with their respective tongues, modified by the thought of a Hebrew primaeval source. Hence, in his prejudice for the honor of Greek and Latin, so cultivated and able a person as the late Professor Dugald Stewart (Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 3: 100-137) denied the reality of Sanskrit as a tongue of the past! and imputed its forgery! to unprincipled Brahmans whom he supposed to have founded it on the model of the old classic languages to deceive the world. F. Schlegel however, though more a genius than a scholar, had scanned the secret early in the century when he gave the name Indo-Germanic to the Aryan tongues of ancient Persia (the Zend), Greece, Italy, and Germany. He might have included quite as surely Celtic, Scandinavian, and Sclavonian under the wider generalization of Indo-European. They were the tongues of the Japhetic or, as moderns speak, the Aryan families.

It was the task of Franz Bopp to set the matter on a sound basis of proof, not only in his essay of 1816 and others, but in his Comparative Grammar of 1833-1852. Others, as Eugene Burnouf in France and Max. Muller in this country, have contributed not a little since.

Now if the Mosaic account had been given its just place, the fact would have been known all through, which is far more simple and to the believer more authoritative than inferences ever so plain and sure drawn from the comparison of these many languages. For it became evident that Sanskrit, old as it may be, is no more the parent of these tongues than Greek, but that they were all sisters, derived from a language earlier than any of them. Thus the tongues were seen to have a family relationship no less than the races of mankind; and phonetic changes follow according to observed principle instead of the more obvious derivatory resemblance. That they had (as Sanskrit proved) in the east a common source was for the learned a recent discovery. But in our verse we are told authoritatively that Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras were sons of Japheth. Thus were they all linked together, dialectically distinct, but of common origin. Nor is it difficult to distinguish those races in general.

Thus Gomer embraces the Cimbri, or the more modern Kelts, who appear to have come first of the Aryan family to Europe from their early seat in the north of India. At one time they had a considerable hold on northern Italy, as well as Spain, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and south of the Danube; but Belgium, Britain, Gaul, were long their own; and even now the Welsh and the Breton dialects (and till recently the Cornish) attest the fact, as also the closely related Erse, Gaelic, and Manx. It was a body of marauders from Gaul, chiefly the three tribes of Tectosages, Tolistobogii, and Trocmi, who overran Asia Minor and gave their name to Galatia where they settled: a consideration not without considerable interest to those who weigh the Epistle addressed to them by the apostle Paul. They seem to have migrated to Asia Minor on their route to Europe, before this final return and settlement for some in that quarter.

Next, Magog (cf. Ezek. 38:2) quite as certainly is identified with the land we call Russia (a name derived from the river Volga, called in Greek 'Pa, as 'Pk is their Greek title). To these we must add Meshech and Tubal, races long known as Moschi and Tibareni: these are the Muskai and the Tuplai of the Assyrian inscriptions, who find their representatives in Moscow and Tobolsk. This is the Sclavonian branch.

Madai again is the unchanged name for the Medes and their country, with whom was the Persian race or Parsee, though Elam was Shemitic. Even to this day the Persian tongue, though debased by Arabic importations, is essentially Aryan, as the alder language, the Zend, was exclusively, and of course closely akin to Sanskrit.

Javan also is the proper Hebrew for Greece, as in Dan. 8 where we hear of the Medes and Persians. The less may be said as here no question can be. Details will follow in due course which confirm the general fact.

There remains but Tiras, which from the likeness of the name has been generally believed to mean the representative of the Thracians. Though they lacked cohesion and persevering purpose and so made little mark politically, it is well to remember that Herodotus set them next to the Indians as the most considerable nation in his day. The absence of the vowel “i” may be accounted for by its subscription in the Greek term. Still the question cannot be said to be settled, like all the others which precede.

The learning of the Greek was at fault at least as much as the tradition of the Jew. Scripture had not been weighed or trusted by either. And when the discovery of Sanskrit came, the issue was so startling that the erudite at first recoiled from that which not only brought in larger views, but shook to its foundations much they had been building up. The method of derivation alone had been trusted; whereas the newly ascertained facts pointed to parallel descents from a common parent in at least six great lines with their modern offspring. But this so revolutionized the entire groundwork as to show that erudition had been on a false scent, especially as to the inflexions and the conjugations of tongues ever so distant locally, which indicate affinity far more surely and thoroughly than isolated words. K. O. Müller was one of the first seriously to own the old position embarrassing; and G. Hermann before him had written sarcastically of those who sought light from “a sort of aurora borealis, reflecting the gleams of eastern illumination, and who, betaking themselves to the Brahmans and Ulphilas, endeavored to explain Greek and Latin by the help of languages which they only half understood.” K. A. Lobeck carried on the war in his celebrated works, Aglaophamus (1829), Paralipomena (1837) and Pathologic (1843), as Ellendt did in the Preface to his Lex. Sophocl. (1835). Yet the truth remains that God marks certain families of language in the great dispersion, and that with their specified differences they give sure evidence of a common kindred. The same grammatical framework belongs to them; and it differs totally too from that of the Shemitic tongues; as the varied Turanian group differs in this from them both.

The Jews, as is known, assign to Cush (translated Ethiopia ordinarily) not only his African seat but the opposite coast of Arabia and the southern shore of Asia generally into India. And this is well founded. But Arabia received also a large Shemitic population which gave character to their language; and this as we shall see not only from Joktan, Eber's son, but from Jokshan, Abraham's son by Keturah, and from Ishmael's twelve sons, with some of Esau's decendants. Even Homer (Od. 2: 23, 24) speaks of Ethiopians as divided into two parts, the most distant of men, some at the setting sun, and some at the rising. It was a Turanian race, which included the Turks, but not the Armenians who were rightly given to Japheth. But the Jews seem never to have realized the fact that the ancient Persian tongue (Zend) and that of northern and central India (Sanskrit) yield the fullest indication of Japhetic origin.

Genesis 10:3

OF Japheth's sons two only have their descendants specified, Gomer the head of the Kelts, and Javan, from whom came the Hellenic-Italian races.

“And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah” (ver. 3).

Jeremiah (chap. 51: 27) introduces Ashkenaz as one of three kingdoms set apart and called together with Ararat and Minni against Babylon, when the kings of the Medes also played their decisive part. There seems no sound reason to doubt that as Ararat and Minni were parts of Armenia, here as elsewhere falling under Togarmah, so Ashkenaz and Riphath occupied the peninsula of Asia Minor at that time and took their place with Cyrus the leader of these races during that notable struggle. But this in no way weakens the general fact that Gomer pushed westward and into Europe, allowing that at least Togarmah settled in Armenia. For this is as sure as any fact of history; and scripture is decisive as to it, not only in the past, but for the future.

For instance, Ezek. 38 beyond doubt unveils the judgment of Russia at the end of this age, and lets us see its supporters compelled to follow and share the general ruin. Among those of the north are Gomer and all his hordes, and the house of Togarmah from the uttermost north and all his, as well as the southern races of Persia, Cush, and Phut under the same influence.

It is quite unfounded to pretend that this vast confederacy of the nations (or its overwhelming destruction) applies to any action under the Seleucidae, any more than the then state of the Jews in the land agrees. For it is clear that Israel previously has been brought back from the sword, gathered out of many peoples, and that they are dwelling in safety, though in a land of unwalled villages, having neither bars nor gates. Again, the position is made all the plainer by taking into account the two preceding chapters, 36. and 37. The prophet in the first declares that Jehovah will call them from among the nations, and gather them out of all the countries, and bring them into their own land. This restoration is to have a national completeness and a holy character beyond all precedent. “And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your uncleannesses and from all your idols will I cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and keep mine ordinances, and ye shall do them. So ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.”

This new and mighty work of divine grace for Israel is clearly seen to be confirmed symbolically in the next chap. 32., where we see the valley of dry bones caused to live and stand up, an exceeding great army; then, under the two sticks made one in Jehovah's hand, the old rent of the divided tribes completely healed, and one nation made on the mountains of Israel with one king to them, as has never been since the days of Rehoboam. “And they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all. And they shall not any more defile themselves with their idols, or with their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions; and I will save them out of all their dwelling-places wherein they have sinned; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd; and they shall walk in my ordinances, and keep my statutes and do them.” It is a bright and blessed prediction awaiting its fulfillment. In these circumstances will Gog lead his vassal hordes to perish signally on the mountains of Israel, and a fire shall also be sent on Magog and those that dwell at ease in the isles; and they shall know Who it is that thus judges them in the day that all Israel shall be gathered out of the nations into their own land, none to be left any more there.

The Rabbins have it that Ashkenaz subsequently migrated into that part of Europe which was afterward called Germany. And a learned German who has devoted much research to the details of this chapter comes to the same conclusion. But the evidence is far from being clear, though all agree that the Teutons are Japhetic and of Gomer. Herodotus indeed (i: 125) tells us of the Germanioi as with other tribes an agricultural class, not pastoral like several, and distinct from the princely and noble, into which the ancient Persians were divided. It is probable that they were at any rate connected with Carmania, the modern Kirman, as Mr. W. S. Vaux suggests; so Agatharcides (Mar. Erythr. 27, Hudson) and Strabo (xiv. 723) use the name of Germania, for what Diodorus (xviii. 6) calls Carmania. But it seems only a curious coincidence. Besides, of old, “Germans” was not the name the Teutonic family gave themselves, but from without. Far less is the ground for applying Riphath to Great Britain as some have done, or to the Rhipaean mountains (in all probability a geographical dream of the ancient Greeks), though here again the rationalist coalesces with the Jewish doctors and labors to find in the Carpathian range a temporary seat for the Kelts or Gaels. But there is no good reason for doubting that those we call Germans were of Gomer, no less than the Kelts.

Genesis 10:4

WE have now to offer such explanation as we can on another branch of the Japhetic race. It may be premised that they come next after Madai. Of this last we have no details; only indeed of Gomer's sons, as now of Javan's, the Keltic and the Italo-Hellenic, families respectively.

It has been already shown briefly on ver. 2 That Javan represents Greece. Ionia however, or Ionia, answers most nearly to the Hebrew name, a narrow district in Asia Minor, of which Greek colonies are said to have possessed themselves more than a thousand years B.C., some time after the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, and even after their advance toward Attica (Muller's Dorians, ii. 511, Tufnell and Lewis' Tr. 1830). Not only was Ionia remarkable for its commercial prosperity, but for excellence in art and poetry, in history and philosophy, before the mother-country attained any eminence in these pursuits (Smith's Diet. of Gr. and R. Geography, 61, col. 1). Ezek. 27:13 speaks of Javan among the traffickers with Tire: only we must distinguish from it Javan of Uzal in ver. 19, which seems to mean the capital town of Yemen or Arabia Felix. But those who migrated here and elsewhere were the race who long before were in Attica and in part of the Peloponnesus. Of course none can wonder at varied forms of mythical genealogy; but the fact is certain of the early predominance of the Ionian name, as Moses here gives it, for a general description of Greece (Thirlwall's Hist. i. 134). In fact Greece is so designated from Gen. 10 to Zech. 9 Homer in xiii. 685, Aeschylus, in Pers. 176, 568, 948 and Suppl. 72, employ a word that approximates to the Hebrew term.

“And the sons of Javan, Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim” (ver. 4)

As Javan unquestionably answers to the Greeks in general and is represented in the Ionian race particularly, it is acknowledged that Elishah also belongs to that people. Ezek. 27:7 helps us to the conclusion that the isles or maritime parts pertained to his lot. Josephus applied the name to the Aeolians, as others to Hellas (which was adopted by J. D. Michaelis, Spicil. i. 79). But Bochart preferred the Peloponnesus as an extension of Elis. The commerce with Tire points to the islands as well as to the Morea.

Tarshish follows; and here it appears that we need not doubt an original settlement on the south shore of Spain, where also the Phoenicians later had factories, and whence by their ships they brought to Tire silver, iron, tin, and lead, as Ezek. 27:12 informs us. The ships of Tarshish were the most famous for merchandise in ancient times. Psa. 72:10 is of itself sufficient to indicate a considerable stretch of country, not merely the well-known city of Tartessus at the mouth of the Baetis (or Guadalquiver). There is no valid ground to doubt that this was the region to which Javan's second son gave the name. There may have been another place so called in the south east or Indian ocean, to which Solomon's ships sailed from Ezion-Geber (cf. 1 Kings 9:26, 2 Chron. 9:21). For we have no ground to suppose the route round Africa by the Cape of Good Hope was then known; nor, if it were, could the south of Spain supply ivory, and asses, and peacocks, which point rather to India or Ceylon. Tarsus in Cilicia, which Josephus conjectured, in no way meets what is said in the references of scripture.

There is no difficulty as to Kittim, which is a term beyond controversy applied to two of the peninsulas of Europe, first Greece [or Macedon], then Rome or Italy. So the writer of Maccabees speaks of Greece (chaps. 1: 1, 8: 5); as Dan. 11:30 is decisive as to Rome. So in the prophecy of Balaam (Num. 24:24) we learn of a fleet from the west afflicting Asshur, when all man's power comes to destruction. In Jer. 3:10 and Ezek. 28:6 we hear of the “isles” or sea-coasts of Kittim; which can hardly mean Cyprus, as understood Josephus and many since his day, though Gesenius approved. He allows however that a wider signification is called for as in not a few Scriptures here cited.

Dodanim remains, which some, from the similarity of sound it seems, would connect with the famous Dodona in Epirus; but the celebrity of an ancient oracle would scarcely give warrant for a place in this chapter. There is another reading which appears in 1 Chron. 1:7, and Rhodians have been thought to correspond with it. The Sept. has the same people for Dedan in Ezek. 27:15, which is assuredly an error. The learned Bochart suggests the Rhone, at whose mouth was an ancient Greek colony and emporium. More than one Targum understood the common reading of the Dardans; and Gesenius inclines to this view in his Monumenta Phoen. 432 and Thes. LL. Hebrews and Ch. 1266. It was a branch of the widely spread Pelasgic stock. Curiously enough Strabo (vii.) preserves a fragment of Hesiod, of Dodona as a seat of the Pelasgians. See also Hes, Goettl, ed, alt. 295.

Genesis 10:5

THE general summary of the Japhetic distribution is given in the closing verse 5: “From these were separated the isles (or, maritime districts) of the nations in their lands, each (man) after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.”

Of the seven sons of Japheth, we have the descendants of but two, Gomer and Javan; from Gomer, three, and from Javan, four; seven only specified of the second generation, as of the first. That Magog and Madai had sons cannot be doubted, for we hear of their posterity to the latest times as well as of Tubal and Meshech; and as little can we doubt of Tiras. But it did not here fall within the design to give details of more. The prophets speak of others who sprung from these early forefathers to figure in the latter day. It is clear also that the order of time is not in question here; for in the following chapter difference of tongues is shown to have been imposed suddenly by a divine act of judgment, only after the project of building a city and tower, and thus making themselves a name. Our chapter therefore anticipates what is historically set out in what follows, and so speaks of the sons of Japhet distributing their seats of settlement, as it does of the Hamite race and the Shemitic in their respective places. On the other hand the “dividing” of the earth in the days of Peleg (chap. 10: 25) should be distinguished.

Dispersion preceded: a different term is employed in the Hebrew, as there ought to be in the translation. The isles are said here to be “separated,” as the earth there is “divided.” The orderly partition followed the confused dispersion.

Hence in Deut. 32:8 we read,

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,

When He separated the sons of Adam,

He set the bounds of the peoples

According to the number of the sons of Israel.

Israel is thus declared to be His earthly center, though as yet we see not His glorious plan, which the prophets fully disclose. Hitherto no more appears than a passing but instructive shadow under David and Solomon, even these bringing in seeds of ruin, with occasional glimpses of better things in such as Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah, but as a whole gradual yet sure downfall till “there was no remedy,” and the chosen people were by reason of their apostasy branded as Lo-ammi, Not-My-people. And so they are from the Babylonish captivity to this day. A remnant of Judah was according to prophecy restored to the land by Cyrus; and a further test of the first man followed, no longer under the failing sons of David, but in the presentation to them of Messiah Himself, the Righteous Servant. But those who had wholly broken down in violating God's law and even in persistent departure after false gods to their shame by the renunciation of one Jehovah, their only true God, proved themselves yet more inexcusably His enemies and the slaves of Satan by rejecting His anointed, though according to flesh of Israel—of Judah—He was, Who is over all, God blessed forever, Amen. But Him they crucified in blind hostile unbelief by the hand of lawless men, and therefore are they dispersed to the ends of the earth. Beauty and Bands are severally both cut asunder.

But the cross of Christ in the wondrous wisdom of God is made His basis for the counsels of His grace, and the display of His righteousness, and the bringing out of His heavenly purpose, the hidden mystery or secret concerning Christ and concerning the church. For He is now in glory made Head, not merely over Israel or even all nations too, but over the universe, expressly over all things that are in the heavens and that are on the earth; and the church is united to Him as the Head of that one body which is soon to share His heavenly and universal glory. Yet shall the Jews, purged by disciplinary judgments, be brought to His feet, and see Him as their Deliverer Whom once they pierced, and all Israel be saved in God's mercy, to make good His plans, laid down from the first, accomplished at the last, to bless all the families of the earth, and fill it with the glory of Jehovah, and with the knowledge of it and of Him, as the waters cover the sea. So little is this chapter to be counted dry or unedifying; for barren as it may seem now, what fruit of righteousness shall be in that day through Jesus Christ unto God's glory and praise

At present God is working in the gospel, and in the church, but it is for His heavenly purpose in Christ, Whose members suffer with Him and wait for Him. The sole dispensation now as to the kingdom is of the heavens in its mysterious form, while the earth-rejected King sits at God's right hand on high. He must come and appear in glory to bring in the manifested kingdom, which alone the prophets predicted, when the daughter of Jerusalem shall have the first dominion here below, as Micah declared. Then, when the heavenly counsels have been completed, shall Jehovah make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: not according to the former Levitical one which they broke; but He will put His law in their inwards and write it in their heart, and He be their God, and they His people. Then, and not till then, shall Jerusalem be the throne of Jehovah; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of Jehovah, to Jerusalem; and they shall no more walk after the stubbornness of their evil heart. Instead of taking out of the nations a people for His name, as God is doing now by the gospel and in the church, the day will have come to destroy in the mountain of His holiness the face of the veil which veileth all the peoples, and the covering that is spread over all the nations. For Jehovah of hosts shall reign on mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before His ancients in glory: a state in strong and manifest contrast with all that goes on now, whether we think of God or man, of heaven or earth.

The word usually rendered “isles” not only admits of an application to coast-lands also (as to the Greek, Italian, Spanish, and Scandinavian peninsulas), but to settlements or habitations wider still, as Gesenius contends with ample consent of the more learned modern Jews; and such is the version of de Sola, Lindenthal, and Raphall in this verse. Again, the division is marked by four particulars: their lands, the tongue spoken, their family descents, and the resulting nation.

We shall see from chap. 11. how little man's will had to do with the distribution. Here we have simply but clearly the fact. It was quite a new thing on earth, not only unprecedented before the deluge, but the very opposite was man's purpose after it; so that the replenishing of the earth could not but seem distant indeed, however fruitful Noah's sons might be. But the God of creation is the God of providence, and He knows how to give effect to His word.; and here we have Europe, though not Europe only, the destined scene for the Japhetic line, of all the earth the most varied in contour, the fullest of coast-line as being the most deeply indented, and so the most accessible through its inland seas, and as well the most open to foreign connection. It was exactly suitable for him who was to be enlarged in his activity beyond his brethren. What a contrast with Africa or even Asia, and their more elevated highlands and extensive plateaus!

Yet contrary to this common purpose each country was allotted to its respective race, and in all this startlingly new fact of lands partitioned by families constituting nations, and distinguished by its tongue appears, as we have seen, the line of Japhet, which mainly and in due time settled in Europe. The remembrance of the deluge would not dispose men to separate. But God meant it to be, and so it was: one race of Adam, but with all the variety into which the several stocks were to divide and replenish the earth. And the immediate occasion was the opposing determination of man, and the practical end for which they united, as the history relates afterward, along with the simple and effectual way in which God confounded their vain and selfish purpose and accomplished His own.

Nor was the earth itself externally out of harmony with God's mind about man, but adjusted in general to his use who was to eat bread in the sweat of his face, and especially to the new condition, fitted to their separate life as nations with mountain barriers and river boundaries, till man's enterprise made even the seas the ready means of intercourse, commerce, and conquest.

Thus also the principle of government, which God laid on Noah and his sons, was to prove its great practical value, as its control could now be brought to bear far more readily when men were distinguished in their nations. If it was a fresh start for the race, it was not under one man, Adam. The post-diluvian earth began with three sons of Noah, and their three wives, besides Noah and his wife, all of them inheriting whatever was known and learned in the long era before the deluge. Agriculture and live stocking were long familiar, city as well as tent life had begun, forging of copper and iron for instruments of every sort, with musical instruments for wind and hand, and metrical composition, from very early days. Since the flood God had entrusted to man's hand the responsibility of the civil sword (Gen. 9: 6), the root of government in restraint of human violence which includes the lesser rights in the greatest; and this well suited to the national bond of each independent nation which was now commencing. Families of course had been before in the midst of an undivided race. Henceforth in the new state of things they take their place in their lands by the lesser relation of their nations, each welded together by that tongue which severed him from others of different descent and locality, with their own associations and their independent interests and aims.

The importance, as well as the permanence, of this new condition of humanity will be felt all the more by comparing the prophecies of the O.T and the Revelation of the New. In the former may be identified the descendants of the Japhetic line as well as those to follow of Ham and Shem. In the others, when the heavenly saints are transferred to their proper home on high, the question of the earth is raised, and we hear of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, out of which the Lamb purchased saints to God by His blood, and the ensuing conflict for the inheritance here below. For Christ, the Son, is alone Heir of all things, and the day hastens when His rights shall be asserted with indisputable power.

Genesis 10:6

THE Holy Spirit now brings before us in a general way the descendants of Ham or Cham. As there seems prophetic significance in the name of Japheth (“may he spread”), and it was expressly claimed for Noah in Gen. 5:29, there appears to be also in that of his younger son, which means “warm” or hot, and so “dark” or black.

“And the sons of Ham, Cush and Mizraim and Phut and Canaan” (ver. 6).

The prominent fact that strikes one here is that this is the branch of mankind which after the deluge distinguished itself by the earliest and most vigorous civilization; and this not in an isolated instance, but alike in Asia and in Africa. Scripture attests the truth; and even rationalism, though ever hostile, cannot dispute it. But along with material progress another characteristic is no less marked: the degradation of the race, their fall into ways and habits of savagery. Phut illustrates this as distinctly as Cush and Mizraim and Canaan showed themselves in different respects pioneers of earthly progress.

However opposite, both are effects of departure from God. In an unfallen earth and the innocence of man, there was room for neither the savage nor the civilized state. No dream of unbelieving poets is more remote from the truth than the pictures they have drawn of early human beings, unable as yet to converse, and subsisting on acorns, wild fruits, edible roots scooped with difficulty out of the reluctant earth; at length imitating the birds, or rising from ejaculations, to express wants and feelings. Then in the course of time, instead of wandering after precarious food, some conceive the idea of collecting seeds, and cultivating their growth in patches cleared from the forest or brushwood; others, again, betake themselves to the chase, and so provide food and clothing for themselves, and begin also to barter with those that tilled the earth, who bethought them too of rearing the animals capable of domestication in order to their supply or exchange. Later in time rude huts and ruder rafts or canoes were made for land and water; and with the long awaited social life villages and towns would arise and give birth to the useful arts in their variety, and to the unlimited refinements of life.

We have already seen how the inspired history contradicts this fanciful scheme. In God's account of man sinless in the paradise of Eden we see our first parents surrounded by every good thing, endowed with mind and moral feelings as well as speech, with a given sphere for activity, and placed under a defined responsibility to the only true God Whose presence and intercourse they enjoyed, and Who thus blessed them whom He tried as bound to obedience under penalty of death. It was a state of natural blessings enjoyed with thanksgiving to Him Who gave them. Alas! they disobeyed Jehovah Elohim, and were expelled from their earthly paradise, but not without a fresh revelation suited in God's mercy to their fallen condition, and directing their hearts to a Deliverer. He from the nature of the case could not but be divine, yet One Who in seine wondrous way must be human also, to suffer indeed but to triumph over the mighty and subtle foe—the bruised Seed of woman to bruise the Serpent's head. Along with this hope did Jehovah Elohim clothe them with coats of skin—with that which had its origin in death: a thing suggestive, especially in connection with the revelation then given, of grave but comforting assurance to guilty man, in lieu of a merely natural device in vain adopted to cover their nakedness.

But it is equally sure, according to scripture, that the arts of civilization began and were developed in that family which rejected God's revelation for nature; which resented His disapproval and vented hatred on the believing brother, as righteous as Cain was not; and which in despair and defiance betook themselves out of a bad conscience and its fears to civic life in its cradle, and sought to make, if not a paradise, a substitute for it in the elegant arts and letters that embellish society. This is surely civilization in the germ; and we see it in Cain's line from the earliest age ever expanding, and recounted for our serious thought in the same chapter 4. of Genesis. To impute its rise or progress to revelation is what none could do who reads believingly.

It is no less plain that Ham and his sons are as marked after the deluge by their progress in civilization, as by the degeneracy into barbarism. To this, war would naturally expose the sufferers from superior power, fleeing into distant lands and forgetting at length what had once been familiar in the new sphere where they sought liberty.

Of Ham's sons Cush has the first place. According to scripture that stock settled in lands the most remote. There is without doubt an Asiatic as well as an African Cush. Gen. 2:13 presents its difficulty, but it would seem to be anticipative like Havilah and Assyria; for it is certain that till the flood there was no actual settlement of lands in their nations. But we know from our chapter that a notable departure was first taken by one of the Cushite descent to possess himself of power by usurpation, and this not in Africa but in the plain of Shinar, of which there are details to follow. It was certainly not after their arrival in Africa that this ambitious movement took place, but early in that day of change; and in fact not a few traces exist, philological and historical, of early connection between Ethiopia, Southern Arabia, and the cities on the lower Euphrates, as may be seen in Rawlinson's Herod. i. 442, 443. No one doubts that in general Cush as a country lies beyond higher Egypt; but as a race they settled far more widely, as already pointed out. And this explains more than one passage, which is commonly and altogether misunderstood from not taking the facts into account no less than from holding fast the strict wording of scripture. Thus, Isaiah (18:1) says, “Ho! land shadowing with wings, which art beyond the rivers of Cush.” It is absurd to infer that this means either Egypt or Ethiopia, any more than Babylonia. The object of the phrase is on the contrary to distinguish the land in question from either those lands or from any within those limits, which had in the past interfered with Israel. It is the prediction, not yet accomplished, of a land beyond the Nile in the south and the Euphrates in the north, which are the rivers of Cush. That unnamed land, described in striking terms as distinctly outside the Gentile powers which had hitherto acted on the chosen people, is to espouse their cause at a future day; but to no good effect, for the nations will oppose, jealous and hostile as of old, just before Jehovah takes up the matter and restores Israel to the place of His name, to Mount Zion. So in Zeph. 3:10 we read, “From beyond the river of Cush my suppliants, the daughter of my dispersed, shall bring my oblation.” Egypt or Ethiopia might be described as on one side of Cush, and Babylonia on the other; but Jehovah shall bring His dispersed from lands expressly beyond both.

There is no question as to the identification of Mizraim, and the great magnificence of its civilization as of the Asiatic Cush in the remotest antiquity. The form of the word in Hebrew is the dual, which some would refer to higher and lower Egypt. However this may be, the context decides that both Cush and Mizraim mean men, and sons of Ham. Ephraim, born in Egypt, has also the dual form, but is none the less surely the name of a man.

Phut or Put exemplifies the more degraded stock of Ham's descendants in Africa, contiguous to Egypt and Ethiopia, and named with one or other at times. But Phut can hardly be the Libyan as A.V. makes out of Jer. 46:9, or Libya as from Ezek. 30:5, and 33:5 where it should be Phut as in chap. xxvii. 10. The Lubim as in Nah. 3:9 point rather to the Lybians. The very obscurity which covers this African branch of Ham's sons serves to show how low they had fallen.

But Canaan, last named, has the most unenviable place of all, as the early object of curse, and the direst adversary of Israel in the land assigned according to promise: a highly civilized race, but steeped in shameless idolatry and every moral abomination, and therefore given up according to earthly righteousness to extermination, both because they deserved it, and as a safeguard lest Israel should be drawn into like iniquities; as indeed, failing to execute His sentence, they proved to their own sin, shame, and cost. More details we hope to have in due course.

Genesis 10:7

THE posterity of Cush we have next, as being Ham's eldest son. “And the sons of Cush, Seba and Havilah and Sabtah and Raamah and Sabtecha. And the sons of Raamah, Sheba and Dedan” (ver. 7; see also 1 Chron. 1:9).

The man Seba gave his name to the country and people afterward known as Meroe between Ethiopia and Egypt. The ruins of the metropolis also so called are not far from the Nubian tower of Dschendi or Shendy, as Gesenius tells us (Thes. Ll. H. and Ch. ii. 993). Bruce in his travels (Sec. Ed. v. 317) says, “If we are not to reject entirely the authority of ancient history, the island of Meroe, so famous in the first ages, must be found somewhere between the source of the Nile and this point where the two rivers unite; for of the Nile we are certain, and it seems very clear that the Atbara is the Asaboras of the ancients.” In his vol. vi. 445, 446, he confirms the former statement, and gives its latitude as 16 deg. 26 min. for the city, adding that there are four remarkable rivers that contribute to form the island Meroe, the Astusaspes (or Mareb), the Astaboras (or Tacazze), the Astapus (or White river), and the Nile (or Blue River). It is rather of course a Mesopotamian tract than an island proper; but no one need wonder that it was so called. Strabo (xviii. 823) corrects Diodorus, Sic. (i. 23) in that 375 miles would be not the length but the circumference, and 125 miles the diameter. It was rich in mines of gold, copper, iron, and salt; possessed woods of ebony, date-palm, almond-trees, &c.; and abounded in pasture-lands and millet fields of double harvest, to say nothing of forests where game and wild beasts were caught.

But its fame was long after the first ages of the Pharaohs; and the derivation (Diodorus Sic., Josephus, &c.), of Meroe from a sister of Cambyses who died during his expedition, is very doubtful. It is rather an adoption from the native designation Meru, which in ancient Egyptian means island, as shown in Smith's Diet. B. iii. 1189. Our Auth. and Rev. Vv. have “Sabeans,” in Isa. 45:14, where it should surely be Sebeans (Sebaim), as the country is named with Cush or Ethiopia in 43:3. In Job 1:15 the error occurs of calling the men of Sheba “Sabeans.” Both Sheba and Seba are brought together in Psa. 72:10; and we shall find a Cushite Sheba presently, as well as a Joktanite and a Jokshanite of the Shemitic line later on, both—of whom found their settlements in Arabia, not in Africa.

There is far from the same clear evidence as to Havilah, the second son of Cush, and also another of similar name, the twelfth son of Joktan (ver 22). As we know there is a country so called in the account of the rivers of Eden (2:11), some have sought it in Colchis or in modern Georgia; or again to the north of Suez (cf. Gen. 25:18; 1 Sam. 15:7). From the scanty references to the Cushite Havilah in scripture, it is not possible to speak with decision; but there is no doubt that they found their way into southern Arabia; and it would seem that the difficulty is increased by their intermingling with the Shemites of the same name, where the district of Khawlan is supposed to have been theirs. It is well known that Niebuhr the elder says there are two districts of that name (Descr. 270, 280); whence some have inferred one for each of the two races. But the second seems a town rather than another large district. There is more ground to look for the Cushite Havilah in the Avalitae on the African coast S.W. of the straits of Bab-el-Man-deb.

The next son of Cush, Sabtah, is generally thought traceable among the Adramitae on the Red Sea coast of Aden, where we have the modern name of Hadramaut. Cl. Ptolemy and Arrian speak of them, and Pliny the elder (N. H. vi. 32) notices a city, Sabatha, which seems to recall their forefather. It is mentioned by Knöbel (in his book on these peoples) that there is a dark race in that quarter though not confined to it, quite different from the ordinary Arab, and pointing to a Hamitic stock.

More distinct is the identification of Raamah, not only through his own name, but in his sons' too. Indeed Ezekiel names father and son as represented long after by the merchants from the eastern coast of Arabia. “The trafficking of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy traffickers; they traded for thy wares with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones and gold” (Ezek. 27:22). These were preeminently products of Arabia Felix on the Persian Gulf. It is interesting to observe, as Mr. E. S. Poole points out in Smith's Diet. B. ii. 983, that the LXX. version of our text helps to trace Raamah's name, Ῥεγμά in connection with the same in Ptol. (vi. 7) and with, Ῥεγμά in Steph. Byzant. (de Urb. ed. Berk. 653). Mr. Forster (Arabia, i, 62, 64, 75) thinks that the tribe's name, whether in Ptol. or in Pliny, is drawn from “Rhamanitae,” and hence from their progenitor; and he says that Ramah is still the name of a town as well as of a tribe and a district in that region.

Sabtecha is the last-named of Cush's sons, of which scripture makes no mention beyond the genealogical list here and in 1 Chron. 1. Hence we cannot say anything sure, and need not repeat more than Bochart's conjecture that they found their way to Carmania on the Persian shore of the Gulf, and that the name seems changed to the Samydace of Steph. Byzant. In his Thos. Gesenius suggests a yet less probable idea.

Of Sheba and Dedan, sons of Raamah, we may say more when we come to compare them with the same names in the Shemitic line. This only may be noticed that in Ezek. 27 Sheba occurs twice; first, with Raamah in ver. 22, which fixes him as the Cushite in the same part of Arabia; secondly, with Asshur, &c., in ver. 23, which points to the Shemitic line, confirmed by the distinct merchandise of each. In like manner the men of Dedan in Ezek. 27:15 appear to be Cushites on the Persian gulf (where the isle of Dedan perpetuates the name) and with imports and exports accordingly; whereas we have Dedan distinguished in ver. 20, who seem to be Shemitic through Keturah. Compare ch. 25:13.

The Jews therefore did not err in assigning to Cush, not only Ethiopia and the contiguous parts in Africa, but the opposite coast of Arabia and the southern shore of Asia generally unto India. But Arabia received also a large Shemitic population, as we shall see, which gave character to their language; and this not only from Joktan, Eber's son early, but from Ishmael's twelve sons, and from Jokshan, Abraham's son still later, with some of Esau's descendants. Even Homer (Od. i. 23, 24) speaks of Ethiopians divided into two parts, the most distant of men, some at the setting sun, and some at the rising. We shall find a Cushite element active early in Babylonia and Africa. It was a Turanian race which included the Turks, but not the Armenians whom they rightly gave to Japhet. But they seem never to have realized that the ancient Persian (Zend) language, and that of northern and central India (Sanskrit), disclose the same Japhetic source.

Genesis 10:8-10

FROM the manner in which Nimrod is introduced, it would appear that he was a descendant of Cush rather than son in the strict sense. Why else should he be named after not only the five sons of Cush, but his two grandsons through Raamah?

“And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before Jehovah: wherefore it is said, like Nimrod a mighty hunter before Jehovah. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar” (vers. 8-10).

Nimrod then was assuredly a Cushite. This only it was of moment to communicate, because of a new departure which originated in him. And as we do not hear particulars of his immediate connection beyond that fact, so neither are we told of his descendants. Personal ascendancy is ascribed to him first, which made the brief notice of himself of sufficient interest to turn aside from the hitherto simple tracing of the genealogical lines, the origin of the various races. “He began to be a mighty one in the earth.” It was no question of divine appointment or providential succession. His own right hand wrought on his own behalf. The Jews have as usual much to say where scripture is silent, and strive to fill up the outline of truth into a fabulous picture. So do others follow them in this natural propensity, which they represent as hoary tradition; so in Arab astronomy Nimrod is transformed into the constellation Orion, “Giant,” in Hebrew “Chesil” (Job 9:9; 38:31, Amos 5:8). We need not occupy our readers with the various hypotheses which have been reared on this latter word; but those curious in such speculations can find them in Michaelis Suppl. ad Lex. Hebr. No. 1192.

But there is nothing mythical in the little that scripture says. Nimrod “began to be a mighty one in the earth.” Not so had it been with Abel or Seth, with Enoch or Noah. What they enjoyed was God's gift. They looked for Him Who is coming; Nimrod sought great things for himself like Cain who was the first builder of a city in primeval days, as Nimrod was the first after the deluge, and on a large and repeated scale. Present power was his aim; and God allowed it apparent success.

We are further told that “he was a mighty hunter before Jehovah.” There seems no sufficient reason to question that this is meant literally. It made a great impression on his contemporaries, so that his prowess as a hunter became proverbial. “Wherefore it is said, like Nimrod a mighty hunter before Jehovah.” It evidently gave him the exercised skill and strength which passed at length into another field of far deeper interest and gravity.

Yet more important is it to note that Nimrod was the first to set at naught the patriarchal headship which hitherto prevailed, as it subsisted elsewhere for ages afterward. His ambition could not be bounded by the chase, and led him from wild beasts to mankind. “And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.” We have to wait for the chapter which follows to see the significance of this fact; and we learn from it and other remarks how little our chapter has to do with chronology. For though it does give the origin of races in their lands and tongues, it intersperses notices by the way which occurred not a little while after; and this episode of Nimrod is one of them.

It was among the Hamitic sons then that a kingdom was first set up among men. God was not in any of Nimrod's thoughts; He was not sought, nor did He give the least direction, in the case. Nimrod conceived the design through his own ambition, and executed it through the force of his will, and the address and skill he had acquired in his hunting. How different the way of Jehovah at a later day! For, when Israel would have a king in imitation of the nations and chose one who served himself, and brought no deliverance even from Philistines within their border who slew him and his sons, He took His servant David from the pasture, from following the sheep, and made him prince over His people, over Israel, to feed them, and assured him that his house and his kingdom should be made firm forever before him—his throne established forever.

But the present use made of this is not the perpetuity of that kingdom, secured as it did become in Christ risen, the sure mercies of David; but the beautiful preparation which pleased Jehovah Who chose him lay, as we have seen, in his lowly and tender care of the sheep, in marked contrast with the first king among men who made his mark in the snaring and slaying of wild beasts. The race of man had already proved how little it regarded aged Noah who was not only chief of all the saved from the deluge but set up by God with the sword of magistracy then first committed. And if he had through heedless self-indulgence fallen into an act whose effects put him to grievous shame, what wickedness in and near him to expose him to mockery who had covered all his own through the dangers of the flood! Of this line it was, though not of Canaan's descent, that Nimrod arrogantly set up first a kingdom. Terrible and dreadful we may say, as the prophet said of the Chaldeans, his judgment and his dignity proceeded from himself.

His kingdom Nimrod began with Babel. This is most characteristic. What recked he, if it had begun in impious self will to centralize mankind in direct opposition to the divine design and command of replenishing the earth? or if it had been abandoned by the builders under a divine judgment which compelled them to scatter abroad upon the face of all the earth? The abandoned city and tower exactly suited his project of a kingdom for himself, not a universal commonwealth. So “the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.” And success in his project encouraged him to go forward; “and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar” followed. As there is no doubt about Babylon, there need be as little that Warka (Irka, or Irak), some forty-three miles east of Babylon, answers to Erech, certainly not Gesenius' identification with Aracca on the Tigris, any more than Jerome's notion of Edessa (or Urfah). More weight is due to Jerome's report of Jewish judgment, that Accad was represented by Nisibis, the ancient name of which was Acar (Rosenmuller 29). The Talmud identifies Calneh with Niffer, about sixty miles south-east of Babylon. Here Arab tradition revels abundantly; but their flights of fancy are not worth recounting.

Genesis 10:11-12

The important fact imparted to us, in the verses immediately preceding, we have seen to be the first establishment of royal power in the Cushite Nimrod; and this by force and fraud, transferred from hunting wild beasts to acquiring dominion over mankind for personal aggrandizement. His city building in Babylonia we have also seen, the earliest development of the kind since the deluge. Nor is any architecture more characteristic of race, as Mr. Ferguson has shown, than the massive monumental style of the sons of Ham.

This is confirmed by the true sense of Mic. 5:6, where “the land of Assyria” is expressly distinguished from “the land of Nimrod,” which last was really the plain of Shinar. They were quite distinct and separated by the Hiddekel or Tigris. In “that land” i.e. Babylonia there were Shemitic and Japhetic elements no less than the Hamitic, which at first was predominant.

It is such an episodical notice as seems to account for the mention in this place of a counter movement on the part of the Shemite Asshur, of whom we read in his due place afterward. A step forward among men naturally finds imitation ere long. And the record of the new policy in the south is followed by that of a similar course in the north as far as the building of cities is concerned, though this may not have been at all contemporary but later than that. Their kindred nature sufficiently explains the mention of both at this point.

“From that land went forth Asshur, and built Nineveh, and Rehoboth-Ir, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah: this is the great city” (vers. 11, 12). It is not intimated that Asshur was driven out by the Hamitic race, but rather is it inferred from the language that the success of Nimrod set the example, and gave the impulse to a like ambition. How completely Noah's authority (for he still lived) was forgotten by all, is evident by all that is revealed. Patriarchal place yielded to men's thoughts and will.

Of these four cities, the first is beyond any just question. Yet it is late in the history of the world when we hear of Nineveh. Then in the days of Jonah it was a “very great city,” according to some of still greater extent than Babylon when the “golden city” rose to its zenith. But human accounts of cities long passed away need to be read with caution, as the chroniclers long after were apt to stray through exaggeration. Still the Biblical intimation of its later existence is of immense extent, vast population, and exceeding splendor. The remains exhumed in our day attest that the words of scripture are here as reliable as everywhere else. Yet we need not conceive anything more when Asshur wrought his work than a little beginning of that which was at length to attain such power and magnificence. This it retained to triumph over the ten tribes of Israel and to menace Judah and David's house, when it received a blow so manifestly divine that it never troubled the holy land again. Ere long it fell never to rise, when God was pleased to bring forward Babylon from a provincial position, though with a king, and sometimes independent, to become the mistress of the world, and the captor of the guilty capital and king and people of the Jews.

Rehoboth-Ir appears to be so specified to distinguish it from Rehoboth the Nahar— “of the river.” This latter (Gen. 36:37; 1 Chron. 1:48) was unmistakably on the river Euphrates; and in fact the name is still found given to two places on the river, one on the western bank, eight miles below the junction of the Khabiir (Rahabeth, Chesney's Euphr. i. 119, ii. 610), the other with an added name (Rahabeth-Malik), which Gen. Chesney does not notice, but it is given in Mr. Layard's Nineveh, a few miles lower on the eastern bank. Rehoboth-Ir was in Assyria proper. Kaplan, the Jewish geographer, identifies Rehoboth of the river with Rahabeth-Malik, but distinguishes it from Rehoboth-Ir, which he believes to have disappeared (see Smith's Diet. of the Bible, iii. 1026, col. 1). As no trace of this city has as yet commended itself to any explorer, it may be worth naming that Jerome, not only in the Vulgate but in his works (Quaest. ad Genesim), gives it as his opinion that it was part of what became Nineveh, meaning “the streets of the city” (i.e. plateas civitatis). This is a mere conjecture, which may be cleared up by better knowledge.

But Calah was too important a city to be so easily hidden. This the Septuagint renders Χαλάχ, and distinguishes from Halah in 2 Kings 17:6; 18:2, and 1 Chron. 5:26, rendered Ἀλαέ Chesney (i. 22, 119) appears to accept Sir H. Rawlinson's identification of Calah with the ruins of Holvvaa” situated near the river Dipitah, and about 130 miles east of Baghdad. If so, it is now Sar. pitli Zohab on the slopes of the Zagros, and in the high road leading from Baghdad to Kirman Shah, vol. ix. 36 of Royal Geogr. Journal (Chesney ii. 25). It seems once to have been the capital of the empire, the residence of Sardanapalus and others, till Sargon built a new capital on the site of what is now called Khorsabad. But it still retained importance till the empire fell.

Resen has been by some identified with the Ῥέσινα of Steph. Byz and Ptol. (Geog. v. 18); this, however, was not in Assyria, but far west. Bochart (Geog. Sac. iv. 28) suggested the Larissa of Xenophon (Anab. iii. 4, §7) which can hardly be doubted to correspond with the remarkable ruins now called Nimrild. Mr. Rawlinson leans to the view that these ruins answer to Calah, and that Resen, therefore, lay between that city and Nineveh, and that its ruins are near the Selaimyeh of modern times; and cuneiform inscriptions at Nimrud give Culach as the Assyrian name of the place. This tends to support the claim of Calah rather than of Resen.

Genesis 10:13-14

LET us now look a little into the family of Mitzraim. “And Mitzraim begot the Ludim and the Anamim and the Lehabim and the Naphtuhim and the Pathrusim and the Casluhim (out of whom came the Philistines) and the Caphtorim” (vers. 13, 14). So it is also in 1 Chron. 1:11, 12.

As there was a Shemite Lud (ver. 22), it is important to distinguish from him, the ancestor of the well-known Lydian race in the west of Asia Minor, those descended from Mitzraim, who spread themselves west of the Nile. They were archers as we learn from Isa. 66:19, and Jer. 46:9, where the African people seem enumerated and so described. It would appear to be the same in Ezek. 27:10, and in 30:4, 5 also. In the Auth. V. of Jer. 46 is given the word “Lydians,” as in Ezek. 30 “Lydia.” This conveys the impression that our translators probably understood the Asiatic people. But there ought not to be a doubt that they were African.

We next hear of the Anamim, of whom nothing more is said in the Bible than in the two genealogical lists. It may perhaps be gathered, from comparison with the names which follow, that they were a race that settled in the Delta of Egypt. But it must be allowed that no reliable trace is known either in the ancient Geographers, or in the monuments hitherto deciphered. Here we have the unfailing record of God, Who alone saw the end from the beginning and has been pleased to communicate to us the truth otherwise unnoticed. The judgment of the habitable earth in a day which approaches will prove that the races are not extinct.

The Lehabim, called also Lubim in 2 Chron. 12:3; 16:8, with the people called Phut, or Put, (if not Pul, as in Isa. 66:19), answer to the ancient Lybians; save indeed that the ordinary usage of Lybia in olden time is vague, and extends far and wide to almost all Africa west of the Nile. The Phut of scripture apparently corresponds with the hieroglyphic bow, or Pet. This is also applied to a people, or rather confederacy of peoples, conquered by Egypt, and called “the Bows,” or “Nine Bows,” Na-Petu, though Brugsch understands simply “the Nine Peoples.” This would seem to connect itself with the Naphtuhim immediately following the Lehabim, who are the same as the Lebu or Rebu of the Egyptian inscriptions, as Mr. R. S. Poole has shown, the Libyans proper. The A. V. renders Phut “the Libyans” in Jer. 49:2 (“handling the shield”) distinguished from the Lydians, or Ludim (“handling and bending the bow”); and in Ezek. 38:5 “Libya,” again marked with other powers by the “shield.” In Nah. 3:9 we see Phut and the Lubim helpers of No-Amon (the god Amon of No, or Thebes of Upper Egypt), the ruins of which, in spite of Cush and Mitzraim, is set by the prophet as a warning to Nineveh. Again, and bearing on what is still future, we are told that when the last king of the north subdues and spoils Egypt, the Lubim and Cush shall be at his steps, though Edom and Moab and the chief of the children of Ammon shall be delivered out of his hands.

What plainer proof can there be to the believer that these races are yet abiding and to take their part in the great catastrophe of the latter day? The reign of Antiochus Epiphanies, directly or indirectly, did not extend beyond Dan. 11:31, 32. That which we have pointed out is after the great break of ver. 35, and expressly supposes the renewal of the two powers of the north and the south, when “the king,” the lawless one, is in “the land” between them “at the time of the end.” Thus that time is as clearly future as sure. Compare Isa. 11:14, which not only confirms the fact of the old cognate but hostile races on the borders of the land, but declares their final subjection to Israel under Messiah “in that day.”

Of the Naphtuhim a little has been already said when speaking of the Lubim. More is given in scripture respecting the next name of Pathrusim. From Isa. 11:11 Pathros as distinguished from Egypt would seem to be the upper part of the land. Ezek. 29:14; 30:13-18 are supposed to point at the Thebais the desolation which the prophet declared should overtake all the land. The chief difficulty is, that Jeremiah speaks of Pathros (44:1) in connection with cities in Lower Egypt, and in a yet more general way later on (ver. 15). But there does not appear in the group anything so decided as to set aside our referring Pathros to the land farther south.

There remain the “Casluhim (out of whom or whence came the Philistines) and the Caphtorim.” These races can hardly be doubted to have occupied the Delta before the Philistine migration to the Shephelah. Some suggest here a transposition; as Deut. 2:23, Jer. 47:4, Amos 9:7, expressly connect the Philistine immigrants with the Caphtorim. Pusey, commenting on the last of these scriptures, inclines to the conclusion, that there were different immigrations of the same tribe into Palestine (as of Danes and Saxons into England, where they all merged into one common name). The first may have been from the Casluhim; the second in time but chief in importance from the Caplitorim; and a third of Kerethim (probably from Crete) in the era of the Judges added but a little to their strength (1 Sam. 30:14-16). Of these last, Cherethites and Pelethites figure as lifeguards of King David, foreigners like the Gittites.

It is plain and certain that the architecture, whether of temples or of palaces, the sculpture and painting, and the various other monuments of Egypt for living or dead bear, like its original language, the marks of extreme antiquity and of high civilization. Idolatry flaunts us everywhere, but as Herren remarks (African Nations, ii. 271, Oxford, Talboys, 1832), “The first idea which presents itself from a view of these monuments must be that Thebes [the No, or No-Amon, of Scripture] was once the capital of a mighty empire, whose boundaries extended far beyond Egypt, which at some distant period comprised a great part of Africa, and an equally large portion of Asia. Her kings are represented as victors and conquerors; and the scene of their glory is not confined to Egypt, but often carried to remote regions. Prisoners of distant nations bow the knee before the conquerors, and count themselves happy if they can obtain their pardon.... This is further confirmed by the many examples which evince the refinement of domestic life, and the degree of luxury to which the people had arrived. The narrow valley of the Nile could not supply all the articles, such as costly garments, perfumes, &c., which we find here represented. An extensive commerce was requisite, not only to obtain all this, but also to produce that opulence, and that interchange of ideas, which constitute its foundation.” Denon (Voy. dans la basse et haute Egypte, 1802), the great French Government work (Description de 1' Egypte, 1811, 1815), Hamilton (Remarks &c. 1809), Belzoni (Narrative &c. 1822), Minutoli (Travels, 1824), and both series of Sir G. Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, are the chief modern authorities.

Genesis 10:15-18

THE youngest branch of the Hamitic race now comes before us, already branded with curse (chap. ix. 25), and a bondman of bondmen to his brethren. Yet no doom long seemed more unlikely. They were enterprising beyond any, and no more disposed to tarry at home than the sons of Cush. Who spread themselves abroad as they? Canaan, who naturally gave the general designation, had a more special application to the “lowlanders” of the country. They are carefully pointed out as races which possessed themselves of the land destined for Israel. As the song of Moses so forcibly expresses it (Deut. 32:8), “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel. For Jehovah's portion is his people, Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.”

This is a revelation of the highest importance for God's government of the world. Men willingly forget that the times of the Gentiles are in this quite abnormal. For He has no direct government of the earth, only providential, during their course. The only time when He governed immediately was when Israel afforded its theater. To this end He chose the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as His people, and gave them the land of promise from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates. To Israel He made Himself known as Jehovah, the one living and true God, as He had to their pilgrim fathers as the Almighty God. But through the self-confidence of unbelief they forgot their redemption from Egypt and their preservation in the wilderness up to Sinai, all of grace; and then accepted law as their condition at Sinai, instead of pleading the promise. Hence their history became a history of sin and ruin, checkered by wondrous interventions of mercy, as well as solemn chastisements of their rebellious iniquity, till at length even the house of David led the last remaining tribe of Judah into abominable idolatry, and God delivered them as captives to Babylon, the first of the four “beasts,” or Gentile imperial powers. Finally under the last of these bestial empires (the Roman), the Jewish remnant, which was permitted to return to the land for a fresh trial, rejected their own Messiah and even the gospel founded on His death, which was first sent to them, and wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.

It is in the Jewish people only that we have a kingdom of the earth set up by Jehovah Himself under the direction of His law. But even under its earliest and brightest phase, when David reigned, what failure and presage of downfall! yet not without shadows of abiding righteousness, power, and glory, as often seen in the psalms! And the man of peace, his son, outwardly more magnificent, brought in but plain evidence of ruin, even then come and far more approaching and sure till there was no remedy. Yet was the history full of instruction both of what man was as responsible under God's law, and of God's ways in blessing and punishing according to the principles of His earthly government.

All this was, however, only a witness in the hands of a people prone to evil and departure from Him. But God has in no way abandoned His purpose for the earth. He is using the interval, since His rejection of the Jews because of their rejection of Christ, to call a people out of both Jews and Gentiles, who put on Christ in Whom there is neither, to form a heavenly family in union with Christ, the body of the ascended Head, God's habitation in the Spirit. When this is complete, the Lord Jesus will come and receive us unto Himself and present us in the Father's house. He will also in due time appear executing judgment, not only on the fourth Beast revived and the Antichrist in the land, but on all hostile powers and peoples, delivering a remnant of Jews then righteous, the nucleus of the nation, believing and expectant, blessed and established forever as a blessing to all the families of the earth. Such will Israel be under Messiah and the new covenant, and mercy endure forever, as they will then sing in truth of heart. And the Gentiles will in that day cast away their idols of silver and gold, and everything high and lifted up, and lofty looks and haughtiness of heart, cordially bowing to the kingdom with Zion as its center, and the mountain of Jehovah's house established in the top of the mountains and exalted above the hills. For Messiah will reign, the only perfect judge between the nations, who shall not lift sword nor learn war any more.

Now the races of Canaan occupied that land which Jehovah intended for Israel. Nor was this all. They were conspicuously vile, most of all the cities of the plain, whose wickedness was not to be named. They were therefore cut off by a sudden and manifestly divine infliction. But when the cup of the Amorites was full, and the land became so unclean that Jehovah must visit its iniquity, He was pleased to make Israel the executioner of His vengeance. What could be more righteous in itself? What wiser for His people, its destined heirs? All unnatural evils as well as idolatries (their very religion ever binding on them these abominations) had become their “customs,” from which Israel must be kept. It was no question of cruelty; and it was Israel's fault not to exterminate as completely as Jehovah enjoined; so that the spared did not fail to ensnare and corrupt the chosen people into like infamy.

Of these races we need dwell on no more than the first two. These can be more easily severed, as they only are personal names, the rest Gentilic. “And Canaan begat Zidon [or Sidon] the firstborn, and Heth” (ver. 15). The name of the first means, like Saida its modern appellation, “fishing.” The city was built on the northern slope of a spur projecting into the sea with its citadel behind on the south. The plain was narrower between Lebanon and the sea. But the daughter city of Tire in time outshines it, as the later prophets indicate. In earlier days we hear of “great Zidon” (Joshua 8, 19:28). So even Homer, who repeatedly speaks of it and its people, never named Tire. They were then skilled in manufactures, later celebrated for their marine and as merchants. But they corrupted even Solomon's house by their abominations.

The Hittites were of Heth or Cheth. Their daughters troubled Isaac and Rebecca, though we hear of Abraham friendly with them and others. They like the Jebusites and the Amorites betook themselves to the mountains from the south, and afterward were outside in the valley of the Orontes. So in 1 Kings 10:29 their kings are spoken of with “the Kings of Aram” or Syria; they seem without doubt to be the Khatti of the Egyptian inscriptions, on the western side of the Euphrates. They had however shared in the efforts against Joshua (9, 11.) and suffered accordingly. In Ezek. 16:3, 45, “thy mother was a Hittite” is no more meant literally than “thy father was an Amorite.” They are the prophet's figures of moral reproach.

As for the races mentioned after these, little more is to be said than what lies on the surface of scripture: “And the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite, and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, and the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite” (vers. 16-18). The Jebusites held Jerusalem, though defeated by Joshua, but not dispossessed till David. The Amorite was in the mountain land of Judah, but pushed east where on their fall or expulsion the two and a half tribes settled east of the Jordan. The Girgashites disappeared from view. Of the Hivites we have the remarkable tale the Book of Joshua tells, and of its consequences, at least of those in Gibeon; for there were others further north and outside, near whom settled the latter five families, or on the coast, and also in the isle of Aradus.

Genesis 10:18-20

THE notices of the Canaanite families are more minute, as God considered His people whose duty it was to execute judgment and dispossess them of the promised land. However they might be “spread abroad” or dispersed, and seen to flourish for a while, the curse was on them, from the first on moral grounds, aggravated at last by enormities against God and man which to His eyes called for extermination.

It may be remarked that we do not hear of Perizzites in this genealogical account, though the name occurs in Gen. 13:7; 15:20; 34:30; Ex. 3:8, 17; 23:23; 33:2; 34:11; Deut. 7:1; 20:17; Josh. 3:10; 9:1; 11:3; 12:8; 17:15; 24:11; Judg. 1:4, 5; 3:5; 1 Kings 9:20; Ezra 9:1 Chron. 8:7; and Neh. 9:8. This appears to imply that they were not a distinct race, but rather such as separated from the town-life, to which the Canaanites generally were addicted, and remained villagers; as in the later history of Israel those who were religious separatists were called Pharisees.

“And afterward the families of the Canaanites spread themselves abroad. And the border of the Canaanites was from Zidon, as thou goest toward Gerar, unto Gazah; as thou goest toward Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim, unto Lasha. These [are] sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, in their nations” (vers. 18-20).

The border is thus traced from Zidon on the N.W. of Gerar and Gazah on the S.W., and from the four doomed cities of the plain in the S.E. to Lasha (probably Laish or Leshem in the N.E.), though Jerome identifies it with Callirrhoe on the east of the Dead Sea, and Bochart with a city called by the Arabs Lusa in the south of Judah. Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim are specified on which fell fire from heaven in early patriarchal days, as recorded in this book, to their utter destruction: a dealing of Jehovah in His wrath, which was recalled to the warning of Israel from Moses (Deut. 29:23) to Hosea (11:8) and Jeremiah (20:16).

In reviewing the posterity of Ham, this we cannot but see, that none sprang so early into prominence of earthly power and dominion, that none carried forward civilization so rapidly and extensively in primeval times, that no other peoples were so distinguished at first with material grandeur, both in the plain of Shinar and in that remarkable country which lies along the Nile, that is, in both Asia and Africa; and that they were long the sole pioneers of commerce in west and east, north and south. But the true God was absent from their souls; nor this only: they out-ran all other races in their vain thoughts, ungratefully abandoning Him when they knew Him, and their foolish heart was soonest darkened. Professing to be wise they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and quadrupeds and reptiles. Wherefore God gave them up to the lowest defilement and vile affections contrary to nature, and worse than brutish, reprobate. Their very mind had pleasure in evil. Such man became without God, none so audaciously and shamefully as the Canaanites, whose judgment therefore was most righteous save to such as are more or less reprobate.

What an illustration is their history of the words of the apostle on the first man as contrasted with the last Adam! “That was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.” The book of nature man never did read aright, though he ought; and conscience, the monitor of fallen man, shows him his sins, but of itself never leads to repentance: only God's goodness does, above all revealed in Christ. But the Hamite races were the leaders of the departure from God, and none so flagitiously as the Canaanite.

Genesis 10:21

THE races which sprang from Shem come before us in the last place. This is quite independent of the respective ages of Noah's three sons. Ham, we know, is declared to be “the little” one (chap. ix. 24)—generally translated “youngest “; and chronology shows that not Shem but Japheth was the eldest. Accordingly Leeser joins Mendelssohn in the rendering of the A. V. and the margin (not the text) of the R. V. The first place assigned to Shem, in the usual formula of “Shem, Ham, and Japheth,” is due not to the order of birth, but to the spiritual purpose which gave Shem that position (chap. 5: 32, 6:10, 7:13, 9:18, 10:1). When, however, “the generations” are given in detail, Japheth's sons are enumerated first; and a similar order prevails in 1 Chron. 1. If primogeniture here in Japheth had its honor, if precocity in his rising to political place and natural power is recognized in Ham, for Shem was reserved, though named last, the honor Godward. “And to Shem also were [sons] born: he [was] father of all the sons of Eber, brother of Japheth the elder” (ver. 21).

Undoubtedly the manner of Shem's introduction is so peculiar as to arrest attention. He had descendants like the other chiefs derived from Noah. But he is specified, on the one hand as the father of all the sons of Eber, and on the other as the brother of Japheth the elder (or, great one). Of the latter enough has been said; but we may compare chap. xiv. 13, “Abram the Hebrew,” in order to understand better what seems meant. And here the LXX give ὁ περαίτης, “the passer,” as Aquila has ὁ περαίτης. This at least gives a distinctive stamp, where as only tradition does it to Eber personally.

The head of that people, above all distinguished among those who sprang from Shem, passed the Euphrates on his memorable way. As Joshua said to all the people at the close of his service, and a little before his death (24:2, 3, 12, 13), “Your fathers dwelt of old on the other side of the river, Terah the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor; and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river, and led him throughout the land of Canaan,” &c. “And now fear Jehovah and serve him in perfectness and in truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the river and in Egypt, and serve Jehovah. And if it seem evil unto you to serve Jehovah, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods whom your fathers that were on the other side of the river served, or the gods of the Amorite in whose land ye dwell.” Scripture thus lays a stress on that fact far beyond what it does to an ancestor who does not stand out from others in the genealogical line, save as the father of Peleg and Joktan. An important event marked Peleg's days; yet it did not concern the chosen people particularly but “the earth” at large.

That Gen. 14:13 connects Abram in the passage of the eastern river, rather than his remote ancestor Eber, seems clear; for this was the regular Gentile name given to God's people by those without, not Israel but Hebrews, as we find from the earliest to later times. And it is intelligible that a tangible fact like that event would be patent and abidingly known.

It is another question whether “all the sons of Eber” can be legitimately connected with any other person than him of whom we read in vers. 24, 25, and chap. 11:14-17, with the corresponding list in 1 Chron. 1. In Num. 24:24 we have the only other reference, I think, which can be connected with it: an early prophecy which looks on to the latter day. For there comes a Star out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel, not merely to out in pieces the corners of Moab but to destroy all the sons of tumult. The great conflict of the future is contemplated, as nothing in the past quite meets all. “And ships shall come from the coasts of Chittim, and afflict Asshur, and afflict Eber; and he also shall come to destruction.” West and East and Israel shall be in collision and suffer; but as the previous word runs, “Israel doeth valiantly, and one out of Jacob shall have dominion.” That Eber is used figuratively for the Jews seems unquestionable; and that they arise to earthly supremacy, when the destroyers of the earth are destroyed and Messiah reigns, is what the prophets declare.

Herein lies the real and superior dignity of Shem. Messiah is to come of his stock; as Canaan was accursed, not Ham wholly, but Canaan; so the living oracle said, “Blessed be Jehovah the God of Shem.” This was not predicted of the elder, but “God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem.” And so it has been. How vast in His providence the spread of that energetic race! Have they not dwelt, too, in the tents of Shem, not as mere conquerors, but, among other ways perhaps, as sharers in that blessing which was shadowed so finely in Israel's “own olive-tree.” Here in due time would be the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the law-giving, and the service, and the promises, and not the fathers merely but the Son, the Messiah with a personal dignity far beyond what Israel has owned—to their own deep loss as yet.

Genesis 10:22

THE immediate descendants of Shem are next enumerated, it would seem in the order of birth, as Arpachshad, the progenitor of the chosen line, stands in the third place, neither first nor last, either of which might be done as elsewhere for special reasons.

“The sons of Shem, Elam, and Asshur, and Arpachshad, and Lud, and Aram” (ver. 22).

Elam, the first apparently in natural order, gave his name to that part of Khusistan, which the Greeks and Romans called Elymais, which had of old Shushan for its capital, of which we hear so much in the book of Esther (1:2, 5; 2:3, 5, 8; 15; 4:16; 8:14, 15; 9:11, 15, 18; as also in Neh. 1:1). There has been no little debate among men of learning on the precise locality, some contending (as Dean Vincent, Anc. Comm. i. 439) for Shuster on the Pasitigris or Kuran, others for Susan a good deal to the east of Shuster. But Mr. Loftus, following Sir W. F. Williams, appears to have set the question at rest in favor of Shush (to the northwest of Shuster), where only an immense mound of ruins remains of the once magnificent fortress and palace of the Persian monarchs, possessed before that by the king of Babylon, as Dan. 8:2 attests. There it was that the prophet saw the vision of the Persian ram, and the Greek or Macedonian he-goat, though some will have it that the prophet was only there in vision. It is known that Nabopolassar, father of Nebuchadnezzar, seized the land of Elam or Susiana, which succumbed afterward to Cyrus; and Susa or Shushan became the regular residence of the Persian monarch for a part of the year. There is no reason to doubt that the excavations made in our day lay bare the plan, with certain remains of “the palaces,” indicating a structure, with its dependent buildings, which occupied a square of 1,000. feet each way, in a massive style of architecture with fluted columns, and those in the outer groups with bases like an inverted lily (which Shushan means).

In the days of Abraham we bear of Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, with his three allies coming 2,000 miles to punish his vassal kings in the vale of Siddim: a plain proof of early power, though signally chastised by the father of the faithful. It seems that subsequently the Hamites, who earlier still rose to power in the east as well as south-west, gave the name of Cissim to this district, as Herodotus (v. 49) and Strabo let us know. They were Cossaei, and Cushites.

But it is of importance to mention that Elam joined the Medes to overthrow Babylon, as we see predicted in Isa. 21:2, the latter a Japhetic race, as the former was of Shem. In Jerusalem's day yet to come Elam will figure with its confederates against Jerusalem. For the mysterious succession here, as in Isa. 14, not applying to the past, looks on to the future, when the last Shebna shall give way to the anti-typical Eliakim, (Whom God hath appointed). Yet we know also from the assured word of prophecy, that however ravaged in the past (Ezek. 32:24, 25, and Jer. 49:34-38), Elam will have its captivity brought again in the latter days according to Jer. 49:39.

On Asshur there is the less motive for dilating, as every reader of scriptural history knows how splendid a part their race played in the comparatively early history of the world, when the struggle for predominance seemed to lie between Assyria and Egypt. Of this we find authentic accounts in the O. T. especially when both came into collision, the Assyrian especially, with the chosen people in its decay through idolatry, sweeping away the kingdom of Israel, and menacing that of Judah. But the awful check given to Sennacherib in the height of his scornful pride soon proved no real opportunity to Egypt; for Babylon that joined in destroying Nineveh was destined of God to be the head of power, as all know according to God's word. Here again shall mercy triumph over judgment; and Isa. 19 is express that in the day of Messianic power and glory Israel shall be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth. We need not speak of Israel, but may say that this was never the case with Egypt and with Assyria in the past. Both wrought innumerable evils for man; both sinned shamelessly against God. But what cannot, will not, mercy work on God's part, even for the enemies of His guilty and chastised people? What a monument will not the trio be “in that day”!

Of Arpachshad we may say still less; for he leads directly down to the time of promise, about which the O.T is almost wholly occupied.

Lud is the next son of Shem; and there is the more need of care, as there was another race of similar name which had its seat in Africa, the first named of the Mizraim or Egyptian peoples, of whom we have spoken (Gen. 10:13). There was thus Ludim of Ham, as well as of Shun. Josephus (Ant. i. § 4) was justified in stating that the latter race settled in Asia Minor, the Lydians. Herodotus (i. 7) says indeed that the Maeones or early dwellers in the far from definite land called Lydia, for its extent changed greatly from time to time, afterward adopted the name of Lydians, being in fact as he thought the same people. But this was a mistake. Even Strabo (xii. xiv.) recognizes on ancient testimony, that they were distinct races, as Niebuhr (Hist. of Rome, i. 32) and others in modern times are convinced. The Maeones were the early Japhetic settlers whom the Shemitic Lydians conquered. Indeed that careful historian, Dionysius (i. 30), notices that the Lydians had nothing in common with their Pelasgian predecessors. It can hardly be doubted that Jer. 46:9 and Ezek. 27:10; 30:5, refer to the African race, perhaps Isa. 66:19, though this be not so certain. But they join in the great catastrophe of “that day.” Of Aram we shall speak in considering ver. 23.

Genesis 10:23

ARAM is the last of the sons of Shem. His name was generally given to the high table-land northeast of Palestine, though applied also more widely in combination with other terms, as will presently be pointed out. In the A.V., following the Septuagint and the Vulgate, “Syria” represents that general use. In the largest sense it comprehended not only the watershed of the Jordan and the country north, west, and east, but that which stretched to the Tigris, with Armenia on the north down to Arabia on the south. In the S.E. quarter it is designated Aram-Naharaim, that is, Syria of the two rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, translated “Mesopotamia” in Gen. 24:10, Deut. 23:4, Judg. 3:8, 10. After 1 Chron. 19:6, we have no longer that name, as the country so named passed under the dominion first of Assyria, and last of Babylon where it attained its supreme place. In early days it was the country where Nahor and his family had a city after leaving Ur (the modern Musheir) of the Chaldees or Kasdim, a Cushite race.

The classic name of Syria was probably a mere abbreviation of Assyria, or Asshur, another name really, though akin, being alike Shemitic. But even Homer (Il. ii. 783) and Hesiod (Theog. 304) know only the name Ἄριμοι, unless Ἔρεμβοὶ also refers to the same (Οd. iv. 84); so does Pindar in the fragment cited by BOckh (iii. 618) who corrects Fv to Eli, as in Homer. As Virgil (Aen. ix. 716) speaks of Inarime Jovis imperiis imposita Typhöeo, the scholars are anxious to relieve the learned Latin, to say nothing of Ovid, Lucan, Sil. Ital., &c., from the imputation of a blunder in the words and transferring the scene from Asia to the volcanic regions of Italy and Sicily. But it is sure enough that Ovid does err in distinguishing Inarime from Pithacusae which were the same island, of late called Ischia. Heyne has written a learned note on the matter in his second Exc. on Aen. ix. (iii. 374-6, Lond. 1793).

At least five districts of Aram are referred to in scripture. (1) Aram-Dammesek or the Syria of Damascus appears in 2 Sam. 8:5, 6; 1 Chron. 18:5, 6. (2) Aram-Zobah, or Zobah only, to the N.E. of Damascus we find in 1 Sam. 14:47; 2 Sam. 8:3; 10:6, 8; 1 Chron. 18 xix. (3) Arambeth-Rehob, or Rehob only, occurs in 2 Sam. 10:6, 8. (4) Aram-Maachah, or Maachah only is mentioned in 2 Sam. 10:6; 1 Chron. 19:6. And Geshur in Syria or Aram we hear of in 2 Sam. 15:8, bordering with Maachah on Argob (Dent. 3:14, Josh. 13:11, &c.). These small kingdoms of Aram seem gradually to have merged in that which is first named; as Damascus grew itself in importance. But (5) Aram-Naharaim, or Padan—more correctly Paddan-Aram (called also Padan in Gen. 28:7), the plowed land of Aram became the most celebrated by far, familiar to us from the days of Jacob. To this Hosea alludes as the field or open country of Syria (12:12) almost wholly an immense plain, nearly 700 miles long and from 20 to 250 miles broad.

The north district is mountainous, where a chain (called Mons Masius of old) connects the ancient Amanus on the west with the Niphates in the east. Then about the middle the Sinjar hills cross, running nearly east and west from Mosul or thereabout to Rakkeh or near it. “This district,” says Prof. Rawlinson, “is always charming; but the remainder of the region varies greatly according to circumstances. In early spring a tender and luxuriant herbage covers the whole plain, while flowers of the most brilliant hues spring up in rapid succession, imparting their color to the landscape, which changes from day to day. As the summer draws on, the verdure recedes towards the streams and mountains. Vast tracts of arid plain, yellow, parched, and sapless, fill the intermediate space, which ultimately becomes a bare and uninhabitable desert. In the Sinjar, and in the mountain-tract to the north, springs of water are tolerably abundant, and corn, vines, and figs, are cultivated by a stationary population; but the greater part of the region is only suited to the nomadic hordes, which in spring spread themselves far and wide over the vast flats, so utilizing the early verdure, and in summer and autumn gather along the banks of the two main streams and their affluents, where a delicious shade and a rich pasture may be found during the greatest heats. Such is the present character of the region. It is thought, however, that by a careful water system, by deriving channels from the great streams or their affluents, by storing the superfluous spring-rains in tanks, by digging wells and establishing kanáts, or subterraneous aqueducts, the whole territory might be brought under cultivation, and rendered capable of sustaining a permanent population. That some such system was established in early times by the Assyrian monarchs seems to be certain from the fact that the whole level country on both sides of the Sinjar is covered with mounds marking the sites of cities, which wherever opened have presented appearances similar to those found on the site of Nineveh. If even the more northern portion of the Mesopotamian region is thus capable of being redeemed from its present character of a desert, still more easily might the southern division be reclaimed and converted into a garden. Between the 35th and 34th parallels, the character of the Mesopotamian plain suddenly alters. Above, it is a plain of a certain elevation above the courses of the Tigris and Euphrates, which are separated from it by low limestone ranges; below, it is a mere alluvium almost level with the rivers, which frequently overflow large portions of it. Consequently from the point indicated, canalization becomes easy. A skilful management of the two rivers would readily convey abundance of the life-giving fluid to every portion of the Mesopotamian tract below the 34th parallel. And the innumerable lines of embankment, marking the course of ancient canals, sufficiently indicate that in the flourishing period of Babylonia a network of artificial channels covered the country.”

It was in that region that the tower of Babel was reared (Gen. 10). It was there Nimrod made “the beginning of his kingdom” (Ibid.). Thence came the four kings to put down the rebellion of the five kings of the south Jordan (Gen. 14). Thence Chushan-Rishathaim reduced Israel to his over-lordship for eight years, soon after Joshua's death till Caleb's nephew, Othniel, broke it down; and David conquered the Syrians everywhere. Assyria then by degrees reached its highest ascendancy to the ruin of Israel, till Babylon rose in God's way on the overthrow of Nineveh, to world-power and swept away Judah, itself succumbing to Cyrus, and Medo-Persian supremacy followed.

“And the sons of Aram,. Uz and Hul and Gether and Mash” (ver. 23). The first of them gave his name to the sandy soil south-east of Palestine, in the north of Arabia Deserta, and west of the Euphrates. We hear in Job 1 who lived there, of the raids of the Sabeans and the Chaldeans.

Hul seems to have gone farther north. His name we may trace in And-el-Huleh, and Bahr-elHuleh, south of this district, the waters of Merom, or the lake Semechonitis as Josephus calls it, though he connects Hul with Armenia.

Gether may have lent his name to Gadara, rather than Geshur, as Kalisch thinks.

Mash would seem, as Bochart supposes (Phaleg ii. 11) to be represented geographically by the classical Mons Masius, the mountainous range which runs north of Mesopotamia between the great rivers, Euphrates and Hiddekel or Tigris. In 1 Chron. 1:17 Mesech is the name, but not the one joined with Kedar, which was Japhetic. In the same genealogy these four sons of Aram are classed directly with the sons of Shem, including Aram, a compendious style not uncommon in such lists, for which verse 4 prepares the reader. The discrepancy is merely apparent.

Genesis 10:24

THE most important line of all Shem's stock, in its remote and even in its approaching consequences, through moral and divine associations, is the briefest in this genealogy; and this must now be noticed.

“And Arphaxad (Arpachshad) begot Shelah (Shelach) and Shelah begot Eber (Ebher)” (ver 24). Arphaxad was Shem's eldest son, born two years after the deluge.

It is to be observed that the inspiring Spirit led Moses to change his manner at this point, introducing Arphaxad and his family as a sort of fresh start. The same style is adopted also in 1 Chron. 1. It is no longer as before, “And the sons of—.” As in evil a new departure was made for Cush and his descendants, so here for good where Arphaxad comes before us. Yet for the present little is said of the latter, unlike Nimrod who shot into immediate prominence, not content to be a mighty hunter before Jehovah, but thereon and after began to be mighty on the earth. Good is of rare occurrence here below and of slow growth, always excepting the One Who manifested its perfection, and all the more because He would not be designated by that which He claimed for God alone, unless indeed there was faith to see and own God in Him.

Josephus states in his Antiq. i. 6, 4 (ed. Hudson i. 19, 20) that Arphaxad gave his name to the Chaldeans. But this is erroneous. For the Chaldim, as they are called in scripture, or Kaldi as they called themselves, were a Cushite race, not Shemitic, and their tongue is said to have closely resembled the Galla or ancient language of the Aethiopians. This appears to have been retained as a learned tongue for erudite and religious purposes at least; and we may see reference to it in Dan. 1:4, even when the Shemitic type of language had superseded it for ordinary or civil usage as shown in the inscriptions of that region both Assyrian and Babylonian. The predominance of Nabopolassar and of Nebuchadnezzar his son gave the Chaldeans their established supremacy over the various races in Babylon; so that what was an old and special tribe at first got to be the more extensive designation of that conquering people, as well as to mark a peculiar class of learned and scientific religionists, &c., astrologers as we see in Dan. 2 of whom the prophet was constituted chief or “master” (4:9; 5:11).

Nevertheless it is very possible that Arphaxad may be traced in the name of the region called Ἀρῥαπαχῖτις mentioned twice by Cl. Ptolemy (Geog. ed. Wilberg, 387) in his account of Assyria, and in the city Ἄρραπα in the list with which that first chap. of book vi. closes. So Bochart concludes in his Geog. Sacr. ii. 4. This region, south of Armenia, was the early home of the Shemites, as afterward Asshur prevailed there. But there also the Cushites were strong in early days, and a Japhetic element was not wanting in self-assertion. But the Shemites unlike the others were ever disposed to stay at home, which made the subsequent crossing the more remarkable in the progenitor of the Hebrews at the call of God.

Of Salah or Salach little can be said with certainty, because the Bible is silent. He was the father of Eber in the direct line of the chosen patriarch Abram, the depositary of promise. The name signifies shoot or extension, but to regard it therefore as fictitious ought to be too absurd for the credulity of rationalism. It is known that a place with a similar name in the north of Mesopotamia occurs in Syrian writings; to which Knobel refers in his well-known book.

Of Eber a little more may be said when verse 25 is examined. It is the more necessary to distinguish the true form, because in Luke 3:35 it is confounded with the different name of “Heber,” which is shared by no less than half-a-dozen persons wholly distinct (14n). The latter reappears in the name of Hebron, the well-known city of Judah, as ancient as Damascus and rather older than Zoan, or Tanis as the Greeks called it, in Egypt. Scripture expressly intimates this (Num. 13:22).

Genesis 10:25

The verse which here claims our attention brings before us incidentally another of the great facts in those early days of man's renewed history, as we have had the characteristic account of monarchy begun in the Cushite Nimrod.

“And to Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan” (ver. 25).

In verse 21 a notable mark was set upon Eber, when his forefather was introduced in the unusual terms of “father of all the children, or sons, of Eber,” though several generations after, not Arphaxad's, nor Salah's, but Eber's. So contrariwise, though not so strikingly perhaps, Ham had to bear the shame of being designated “father of Canaan” (chap. ix. 18). Thus does God call us on the one hand to heed him who inherited the curse and was the instrument of the enemy in striving to hinder Israel in due time taking possession of the promised land; and on the other to learn the interest He took in giving us to look onward to those who stood in the first line of the heirs of Shem's blessing; for “blessed be Jehovah the God of Shem.” One cannot safely run on so fast as the excellent Matthew Henry, in saying “Eber himself, we may suppose, was a man eminent for religion in a time of general apostasy, and a great example of piety to his family; and the holy tongue being commonly called from him the Hebrew, it is probable that he retained it in his family, in the confusion of Babel, as a special token of God's favor to him; and from him the professors of religion were called the children of Eber. Now, when the inspired penman would give them an honorable title, he calls him (Shem) the father of the Hebrews; though, when Moses wrote this, they were a poor despised people, bond-slaves in Egypt, yet being God's people it was an honor to a man to be akin to them.” It is wise to say less, and surer to believe what is written than to suppose with ancients or moderns. Goodness, he adds, is true greatness; but in the case before us we may be content with ascribing both in the highest degree to the Blesser without being too confident sponsors for the blessed. The Lord teaches us to be jealous on that head for God, rather than for man as weak and poor as he is aspiring.

Of Eber we have two sons: Peleg, which means division, the first named, and Joktan his brother. In connection with the former a new and important fact is noted as to the earth and its future history. In the days of Peleg the earth was divided. Such is the meaning of Peleg's name; for as the rule the names then given to men were significant. The scattering of which we have the divine account, its moral reason and its chastening, in the next chapter (11) was historically previous; but our chapter 10 pursues its aim and gives the origin of the nations, everyone after his tongue, apart from time. But as we had (verses 8-11) in Nimrod the assumption of power and the spread of dominion from Babel the beginning of his kingdom, so here we have in Peleg's days the earth divided. Here we are not told of human pride and power, nor yet of Jehovah's scattering men abroad through confounding their language, and their consequent inability to understand one another's speech. The division of the earth after that in the days of Peleg appears to have been done peaceably. But it is a fact which has subsisted ever, whatever the emigration of peoples through stress of circumstances or desire of bettering their lot.

Of Joktan we leave the details till we consider the verses that follow.

Genesis 10:26

The name of Eber's second son was, as we have seen, Joktan, “small,” as distinguished from Peleg whose name, “division,” marked as an epoch the more peaceful dividing of the earth, after the judgment of God necessitated the dispersion of mankind. There is no substantial reason to limit the “division” to the family of Eber himself, when the younger branch migrated into southern Arabia, the elder remaining in Mesopotamia. Had this mere family split been referred to, the younger son would more naturally have borne its name, not the elder who abode where he was. Besides, how can an event so ordinary meet the large terms employed— “in his days was the earth divided?” The Chaldee paraphrase on 1 Chron. 1:19 suggests that Joktan derived his name from the diminution of human life at that time. Certain it is that then longevity sunk one half, judging by the recorded years of Peleg (xi. 18, 19) and of those that succeeded, diminishing by degrees to its ordinary range.

Joktan appears on abundant evidence of varied kinds to answer to the Arabic Kachttin. “Of them [the Beni Sad], and of the Kahtan Arabs,...., Masoudy says in his work entitled ‘The Golden Meadows,' that they are the only remnants of the primitive tribes of Arabia. Most of the other tribes, etc. But the two tribes above mentioned, the Beni Sad and Kahtan, are famed in the most remote antiquity, when Arabian history, for the greater part, is covered with complete darkness” (Burckhardt's Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, 2. 47, 48, London, 1831). We shall see that the traces of his thirteen sons are almost all plain enough also. This had been doubted by some who conceived it to be a Jewish tradition adopted later by Mohammedan writers. Why should any one doubt that the κατανὶται of Cl. Ptolemy (Geog. 6:7) are the Beni Kachtan, or Kahtanys? In Pliny (6:28) and Strabo (16.) they seem spoken of as Catabani, and καταβανεὶς, by an inversion not uncommon among Greeks and Latins. Dionysius Perieg. speaks of the same tribe under a name very slightly changed, of which no account appears in Smith's Dict. of G. and R. Geography. Modern research however has not only vindicated the fact, but explained probably why the change of the name was effected. Of his numerous sons we glance at the four named in the verse before us.

“And Joktan begat Almodad and Sheleph and Hazarmaveth and Serah” (ver. 26).

The first enumerated corresponds with Mudád, or, as the word admits the article, El-Mudád. Bochart in his Phaleg (2:16) long ago connected the name with the αλλονμαιῶται of Cl. Ptolemy (6:7, § 24) who held a central position in Yemen or Arabia Felix. There seems no sufficient ground to heed Gesenius' idea that the name is a variant from Almoram, so as to trace it in the tribe called Morad living in a mountainous region of the same country near Zabid.

Next comes Sheleph or Shaleph. This name has been without reasonable doubt identified with the district of Sulaf or Salif in southern Arabia. The elder Niebuhr gives it as Sitlfie (in his map Selfia) (Descr. 215). More recently Dr. Osiander gives an account of the tribe Shelif or Shulaf, as Yakoot in the Moajam and other Arabic authorities which complete the geographical traces. Indeed Ptolemy (6:7) had of old told us of the Σαλαπηνοὶ or Αλαπηνοί as the Greeks called the people. Here is therefore proof in this case still clearer than in some. Mr. C. Forster (Geog. of Arabia) in both his vols. labors to identify the modern Meteyr tribe with the Salapeni or sons of Σαλέθ as their chief is called by the 70. They were close allies of the Beni Kachtan against the Kedarite BeniCharb or Carbani.

Hazarmaveth plainly answers to the district east of the modern Yemen, called by the Arabs Hadramawt (court of death), also in the south of Arabia, situated on the Indian Sea, and, if unhealthy, no less famous for its rich spices. One of its ports was Zafari, the Sephar of which we read later in this chapter. Here again there is satisfactory evidence that the third in the list of Joktan's sons furnished the name, rendered Σαρμώθ by the 70 and Asarmoeh in the Vulgate.

Jerah or Yerach “the moon” is the fourth, which Michaelis in his Spicileg. ii. 60 finds in the “low land of the moon,” or in the “mount of the moon,” both of which were near Hadramitwt. It is needless and against all probability to follow Bοchart's notion of the Alilaei dwelling near the Red Sea. Mr. E. S. Poole (Smith's Diet. of the Bible, 1. 264) traces the name in a fortress (and probably an old town) mentioned as belonging to the district of the Nijjad, which is in Mareb at the extremity of the Yemen. Indeed Arab tradition, as we may see in Golius (sub voce) is in nothing ancient more unanimous than in styling this son of Joktan “Father of Yemen” (Abu Yemen). His name appears in the LXX. as Ἰαπάχ, and as Jare in the Vulgate. The Arab name may be represented by Jesbit or Serha, giving the “h” its guttural pronunciation of “ch.” C. Ptol. speaks of the Νῆσος Ἰεπάχων on the Arabian gulf, and of the Ἱεπάχων κώμη on a river near the Persian gulf, which appear to point to the same family, wide as they might be apart. Mr. Forster brings many other names under the same reference modified by slight changes of name and sound; just as Ptolemy's river Lar on the east coast seems no other than the Zar of the present day, which the Latin geographers confirm who translate it Flumen Canis—Dog, which the Arabic means. The great region of Karje, he argues, derives its name from Jerah according to an anagram quite common in their proper names.

Genesis 10:27

AFTER the four sons of Joktan already noticed, we have now before us three: “and Hadoram, and Uzal, and Diklah” (ver. 27).

The fifth son appears to have settled farther east in that part of the peninsula which has long been designated Oman, and gives its name to the lower waters of the Persian gulf, opening into the Indian ocean. The south-eastern headland of that deep bay is called Ras-el-Had, which must be carefully distinguished from Ras-Fartask or Fartaques, “the wild boar's snout,” answering to its Greek designation of Σύαγρος ἄκρα (Ptol vi. 7, §11). It is the more necessary to be on one's guard, as of old we learn from the Alexandrian geographer that the position of the latter was misconceived by his predecessor, Marinus; and in this Marcianus (Hudson's Geog. Gr. Min. i. 24) agrees with the correction. In modern times D'Anville, followed by many (as e.g. Long's Classical Atlas) confounded Syagros with Ras-el-Had. Dean Vincent in his earlier writings had been thus misled; but he corrected himself in his elaborate work on the so called Periplus of Arrian (ii. 331-351). The classical title of the headland we are occupied with is really KopoJayov ibcpov, as the learned Bochart long ago conjectured from the name of the forefather therein disguised, i.e. from Hadoramum. So convinced is Mr. Forster of its soundness that he does not hesitate to say, the fact, unnoticed by Bochart, “is simply this, that the promontory now actually bears the name of Hadoram, under an ordinary abbreviation of the Arabic, in its modern appellation of Ras-el-HAD” (i. 140, 141).

It is indeed a confirmation not to be despised also that Commodore Owen's Survey “first gave the correct form of this bay, accompanied by what is more important for our present object, its Arabic name, Bundes Djuram or Doram, the Bay of Doram.” Abbreviations of this kind are notorious in that tongue as in others, as Dfira or Dora for Adoraim, and Jok for Joktan. It appears too from the MS. Journal of Captain Sadleir that there is still existing in the desert of Ul Ahsu on the northern confines of Oman the tribe Dreeman, which corresponds with the Drimati of whom Pliny speaks as being in this quarter. So he does of the Fons Dora and of the Darrae which last word has its analogue in a town and tribe at this day. Hadoram (in the LXX. Ὀδοῤῥᾶ) seems not obscurely traceable in a race singularly unyielding.

It may also be observed that, if we heed the statement of Dionysius, there was a district on the east of Arabia called Chatramis south of Chaldamis (Bahrein) opposite to Persia, which agrees with the north of Oman. This race must be distinguished from the Adamitae, or Chatametitae, that sprang from Hazarrnaveth and lived in Hadramaut on the south. The town of Hadrama corresponds apparently.

Uzal (in the Vat. text of the LXX. Αἰβήλ, prob. err. for Αἰδήλ in others) is named in the sixth place, and gave his name in ancient times to the capital city of Yemen, afterward and still Sanά. Mr. E. S. Poole cites the printed edition of the Marasid, which says “that its name was Oozal, and when the Abyssinians arrived at it, and saw it to be beautiful, they said, Sanά, Which means beautiful, and therefore it was called Sanit.” Arabic authors have compared this with Damascus for its waters and its fruits; as Niebuhr says its houses and palaces are finer than those of any other town in Arabia. The Jews, it seems, who are immemorially settled there, only know it by the name of Uzal. That there should be other traces of the name is natural; but we need not dwell on what is disputable, having a record so direct and clear. The Auth. V. of Ezek. 27:19 has darkened an important reference, which stands no better in the Revised. Dr. Henderson and Mr. Darby present it thus: “Vedan and Javan of Uzal traded in thy [Tire's] markets: wrought iron, cassia, and calamus were in thy traffic [or barter].” The LXX. render it “from Asel,” the Syriac and Aquila “from Uzal.” As ver. 17 gave Judah and Israel, it is possible that Dan or Vedan and Javan were of the Arab race, and Uzal their emporium. So Dathe renders the clause; and de Wette adds to them Mehusal (as the Vulgate Mosel) for a third trafficker. Diodati in his French as well as Italian Version preferred “Dan also, and the vagabond Javan” in its Greek application. Dr. Benisch has for Uzal “spun yarn,” and Dr. Leeser “silken goods” according to other points.

Of Diklah, the eighth name, there is little to say. From signifying “palm-trees” some have looked to the city of Φοινίκων in the northwest of Arabia Felix; but Gesenius after Bochart for a similar reason inclines to find his descendants in the widely spread people classically called Minaei. But Mr. Forster strenuously contends that they were of the stock of Jerah, and that the great region of Kerje or Karje is none other than an anagrammatic inversion (so common in Arab names) of the patriarch Jerah himself. Into this discussion we do not enter; but any one can discern in the Dulkelaitae, of whom Golius speaks in his Lexicon, a name that answers to the son of Joktan we are now tracing, from whom descended a people of Yemen between Sant and Mareb. Pococke also refers to them as Dhu l'Chalaah. Yet Mr. Poole is unaware of any trace of Diklah in Arabic works, except the mention of a place called Dakalah in El-Yemameb, mentioned by Kamoos, where grew many palm-trees. Enough then appears to this day, even as to the least conspicuous. Of these early tribes a Arabia, not only to testify to the Mosaic account, but to demonstrate the gracious interest of God in the otherwise obscure and undistinguished races of mankind. We shall have occasion to speak of some not of the Shemitic stock who seem to have been the first that entered the peninsula as they also penetrated elsewhere the earliest after the dispersion. Also we have to take note of the repeated influx of the Abrahamic seed, outside those chosen and called, who settled in its wide domain and gave special form to a characteristic portion of its denizens. But this must suffice for the earlier names of Joktan's sons.

Genesis 10:28

WE have now to trace, as far as evidence reaches, the seats of Joktan's sons brought together in the verse before us, the eighth, ninth, and tenth names: “and Obal and Abimael and Sheba” (ver. 28). As before, some have left marks much more distinct than others; so it is in the present three.

Obal (“bare, or script of leaves”) is represented as “Ebal” (in the LXX Εὐὰλ, in 1 Chron. 1:22 Γεμιάν). Arabic pronunciation still more closely approximates the name to the Abalites of Pliny, who are evidently the same as G. Ptolemy's Avalites with a bay and emporium of the same name. Indeed Bochart pronounces them to be no other than the name of the eighth son of Joktan. It is true that the settlement which thus recalls the founder was on the African side of the Red sea, not in Arabia; but this is no insuperable difficulty. We may not be able to trace such as abode with the great mass in Arabia; while it is of interest to identify such as crossed the strait to Africa. Nothing binds us to confine all the progeny of Joktan, save as a general rule, to Arabia. And the coast which affords the apparent traces of Obal was severed only by the narrow strait, called by the Greeks Παλίνδρομος, as was the promontory adjacent, and by the Arabs Bab-el-Mandeb. It is a strait made still easier, if not for commerce or passengers, for immigrants into Africa by intervening islands, Cytis, &c. In fact, though on the western side of the Strait, they were but a few miles distant from the coast of Yemen where their kindred abounded pre-eminently. The Gebanites with whom Knobel would identify them were no doubt in a general way their kinsmen; but where is any real evidence to show that they were the offspring of Obal? What has been above given suffices to prove that their mark was left south of Berenice Epidires, a town built by the Ptolemies at a much later day, north of the indentation which was called Avalites Sinus, on the south of which bay dwelt the Avalitae.

Abimael (“father of Mael,” taken as an appellative, “fatness”) is to be found, it would seem, on the east of Yembo (Jambia) and even of the town Ausura (C. Ptolemy) or El-Szafra of Burckhardt. Their town is called both Malai and Kheyf, and appears in Theophrastus (Hist. Plant. ix. 4), along with three others celebrated of old for its spices, under the form MaL. The Alexandrian geographer speaks of Malichae in the neighborhood of Yathreb or Iathrippah, in after history famous as ElMedineh, “the city” in the eyes of Mussulmans, about ten days' journey north of Mecca. The people of Mali or Malai seem no other than the Malichae. To this day the district has a high reputation for its balsam; the sale of which is even now an active trade, and highly remunerative. But of old it was very much more so, when Egypt and the West, Rome especially, used aromatics largely and luxuriously; whereas at present Persia appears to be the chief consumer. But Bochart's identification of Abimael with this people on the edge of the great Arabian desert appears to be well founded.

Sheba needs the greater care because in the inspired history we hear of no less than three heads of tribes who bore the name, the tenth of Joktan's sons now in question, preceded by the Cushite Raamah's son (ver. 7), and followed by the Abrahamic son of Keturah, Jokshan, who begat another Sheba (xxv. 2, 3).

But we may also distinguish Seba's posterity, Cush's eldest son, the Sebaim of eastern Arabia, to which they seem to have migrated from Chuzestan on the eastern side of the Persian gulf. They were dark-colored, and very tall (Isa. 45:14), the Dowser or Danasir Arabs of modern times. C. Ptolemy draws the line between these, the oldest, or amongst the oldest, settlers, and the Sabeans in the province of Sabie (who appear to be descended of Sheba, Raamah's son), and calls them Sabai as distinct from those in the east coast of Omdn, whom he names Sabi (or Asobi, the common Arabic prefix). Of the Jokshanite Sheba the less need be said, as they had their seat far north and were more obviously distinct.

The race from Joktan's son Sheba had their kingdom in the S.W. of Yemen; and these were the Sabeans, familiar to the Greeks and Romans, who had high notions of their wealth attributed to their own products without adequate account of their Indian trade. Their capital was called by Eratosthenes Mariaba, and by C. Ptolemy Sabatha Metropolis. The Arabs used both Mareb and Saba. It is Abulfeda, as Mr. Forster shows (i. 155, 156), who in his geography expressly states that Mareb was the central seat of the Beni Kahtan, i.e. the sons of Joktan. This can only be Sheba's posterity when we come to specify to which of Joktan's numerous sons in particular it belonged.

Nor is there any reasonable doubt that the Queen of Sheba, or as our Lord said “of the south,” whose visit to King Solomon holds so interesting a place in scripture, ruled the Sabean kingdom of which we have last spoken. Indeed “Yemen” means the south generally, and that quarter of Arabia Felix in particular. But scripture carefully distinguishes the Shemitic lines of Sheba, Joktanite or Jokshanite (distinct as they are in themselves), from the Rahmanite Sheba in Yemen and the kindred Seba on or near the Persian gulf. It was the last race which gave its name to the kingdom of Meroe, far as its seats might be apart. Pliny confounded these races, as if one and the same ruled the entire south of the peninsula from west to east; but C. Ptolemy as usual shows more exactness and discrimination. The “Sheba and Raamah” of Ezek. 27:27 would seem to be the Cushite race in the west, as being spice-merchants; whereas Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad in ver. 23 point to the Keturah family as dealers in choice clothes or wares and bales of broidered work. This too was the Sheba that first plundered Job's possessions.

Genesis 10:29

IN addition to the sons already passed in review there remain three; “and Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab: all these were sons of Joktan” (ver. 29).

The local habitation of “Ophir” has been contested most notably; but no sufficient ground appears to look for it outside the peninsula. Josephus (Ant. viii. 6-4) referred it to India, as did Vitringa (Geog. Sac. 114), and Reland in his dissertation on the question, and of late Lassen, Ritter, Bertheau; again, Sir W. Raleigh to the Molucca, Islands; and Pererius, Sir J. E. Tennent, Thenius, Ewald and Gen. Chesney (Euphrates ii. 126) to Malacca and the adjoining tracts. On the other hand, Huet, Bruce, Robertson the historian, Heeren, and Quatremore placed Ophir in Africa; and Plessis and A. Montanus contended for Peru, arguing from the word “Parvaim I” But Michaelis (Spicil. ii. 184), Karsten Niebuhr (Decor. de l'Arabie), Gosselin (Lech. sur la Geog. des Anciens, ii. 99), Vincent (Comm. and Nay. ii. 265-270), Crawford (Desc. Diet.), Forster (Geog. of Arabia i. 161-175), Thirst, Kalisch, Knobel (Volk. 190), and Winer (Realw.), assign it to Arabia. The learned I3ochart (Phaleg ii. 27) was inclined to two Ophirs, one in Arabia, the other in Ceylon; as D'Anville admitted two, one in Arabia, the other in Africa. Gesenius, both in his Thes. and elsewhere, thought that the balance of evidence between Arabia and India was so even that he declined giving a decisive judgment.

The fact is, however, that ever since the maps of Sale and of D'Anville, as Mr. Forster observes (i. 167), Ofor or Ofir appears as the name of a city and district in the mountains of Oman, seated on their eastern side, near the source of the Oman river, and within about a degree, or a little more, of the coast; and the adjoining coast, lying due east under Ofir, was still celebrated in the elder Pliny's time (Nat. H. vi. 32) for its traffic in gold, “littus Hammaeum ubi auri metalla.” This answers to the town and coast of Maham, as laid down in modern maps for that precise locality.

One of the chief arguments against Arabia by those who looked elsewhere is the absence of gold as a known product of the country for many years. But Dean Vincent had anticipated the objection by his remark that silver is not now found at Carthagena in Spain, where the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Romans, obtained it in great abundance. Niebuhr (iii. 256) says of this very province Oman, “there is no want there of lead and copper mines"; and Mr. Wellsted (Travels in Arabia, i. 315) states that the notion is untrue that Arabia is wholly destitute of the precious metals. “In this province we meet with silver, associated as usual with lead. Copper is also found: at a small hamlet, on the road from Seined to Neswah, there is a mine which the Arabs at present work; but the others are wholly neglected. Even in the vicinity of Maskat the hills are very metalliferous.” In ancient times the testimony is distinct that Arabia was a gold-producing land. Thus Agatharchides the geographer who lived in the second century before Christ testifies to it (Hudson's Geog. Min. i. 60); a little later wrote Artemidorus, whose account Strabo reproduces (xiv. 18); Diodorus Sic. is no less plain in his Eibliotheca (ii. 50, iii. 44); and Pliny the elder as we have seen; to whom from Eusebius' Praep. Evang. ix. 30 we may add the testimony of Eupolemus before the Christian era: only that he affirms Ophir to be an island with gold mines in the Erythrean sea, i.e., the sea that compassed Arabia, west, south, and east. At the least Ophir was the emporium whence not gold only but algum trees, red sandalwood or whatever else is meant, and precious stones, were brought.

No one denies that peacocks, apes, and ivory point further east than Arabia; but Ophir was their meeting place and mart. It is to be noticed that Uphaz, as equivalent to Ophir, means “isle of fine gold,” if there was another such place besides the inland one still bearing the name.

The family of “Havilah” have left their mark in the country in a distinct manner, though the name is as usual somewhat disguised by the difference of pronunciation which prevailed when there was little of known pervading literature to fix it. Only we have to take into account that there was a Cushite Havilah which extended itself in its branches over the peninsula from the N.E. to the S.W. These we have to discriminate from the Joktanite tribe which found their place, it would seem, chiefly among their kindred. But as the names of their respective patriarchs were identical, so the same changes of form prevailed over the descendants of each, and the places which derived their designation from them. Thus Khaulan or Haultim evidently sprang from Havilah, harder or softer, as also Hevila and Flail, and Strabo's Chaalla, as we may see in Niebuhr. So Dr. Wells long ago from Bochart noticed the Chaulothaei of Eratosthenes, the Chaulosii of Festus Avienus, the Chablasii of Dionysius Periegetes, and the Chavilei of Pliny. Mr. Forster puts the case yet more strongly that, when in Ptolemy we read Huaela or Huaila, and in Niebuhr Huala, or more correctly Hauiiah, we have before us literally the Havilah of the Hebrew Scripture, Aval or Alial being a dialectic softening which prevails on the Persian Gulf. In Yemen, and north of it, it can hardly be doubted that the Joktanite section of Havilah prevailed.

Nor is there any serious question as to the descendants of “Jobab” in the clan of Jobaritae. They are mentioned by C, Ptolemy as dwelling in the south and near the Sachalitae, who gave their name to the well known hay. Besides, we hear of the Beni Jobub or Jubbar of Niebuhr, as the existing name of a tribe S.E. of Beishe or Baisath Joktan, halfway between lizal (Sand) and Sabata (the modern Zehid). Thus there seems no sufficient reason to doubt the identification. The variations of form at most found in this case in no way hinder the recognition of the ancient designation; while the measure of change is no more than time brings about in the immovable east, even in a land so shut out from intercourse with mankind in general. It is truly remarkable that, for every member of Joktan's numerous sons, living representatives should be traceable, attesting in a simple but striking way the inestimable value of God's word, long before human records, even then few and failing, till long after.

Genesis 10:30

THE verse we are now to consider demands close investigation, as it is not without importance and difficulty also. “And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest to Sephar, a mountain of the east” (ver. 30). It is beyond question a general description of the limits within which dwelt the many sons of Joktan. We have already identified in detail their local habitation throughout Arabia, with the slight exception of those who crossed to the western shore of the narrow strait that severs their father's land from Africa. There is therefore the best reason to reject the idea that they left their original seats for dwellings between “Mount Masius in the south part of Mesopotamia and an imaginary” mount adjoining Siphare, a city in Asia, as Dr. E. Wells conjectured in his Help to the Holy Scriptures i. 77 (Oxford, 1728). In fact Mount Masius forms the northern boundary of Mesopotamia; but this is a slight misapprehension to which the Μασσῆ of the LXX. may have led, in comparison with the chief error, as the Persian Siphare (city or mount) is still more untenable. And so must one think of Dr. C. Wordsworth's idea of Mesha as an island of the Tigris and of a Sephar on the Persian Gulf. Such limits do not include the dwellings of Joktan's sons.

Very different is the hypothesis of Bochart (Phaleg iii. 29) who identifies Mesha with Meza, which seems to be the same as Ptolemy's Μασσῆ (or Μοῦδα in the Periplus), a little north of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. But as he considers Sephar to be the mountain near Saphar in the hill-country between Yemen and Hadrdmaut, it seems clear that such limits (little above 200 miles) are incompatible with the widespread dispersion of the sons of Joktan throughout the southern half of the peninsula. For “the east” seems no difficulty when we bear in mind its usage as in Gen. 25:6.

Gesenius (Thes. i. 823) inclined therefore to the suggestion of J. D. Michaelis (Spicil. ii. 214, Suppl. 1561) of a Mesene (or Middle-land) between the mouths of the Pasitigris. Hence he understood the last part of our verse to mean “from Mesha unto Sephar and (or as far as) the mountain land of Arabia.” He lays it down as certain that “mountain in the east” is not to be joined in apposition with Sephar, but is some other third place to which the boundary extended. It is difficult to understand on what ground this consummate Hebraist so decidedly maintained a construction which seems extremely harsh; for his rationalism did not here intrude to bias him. Like many, he and of late M. Fresnel (Lettres sur l'Hist. des Arabes) regarded Sephar as the metropolis of the region of Shehr, between Hadrdmaut and OnAn; as the highland of the east he held to be the chain of mountains near the middle of Arabia from the Hedjaz on the Persian Gulf. It is called to-day Dhafiri or Dhafhr. But as of the ancient name, so of the modern, there are various places so called.

It becomes therefore a nice point to decide which is here intended. For there are, as C. Niebuhr and E. S. Poole say, no less than four places bearing the same name, besides several others bearing names that are merely variations from the same root. Now Niebuhr (Descr. iii. 206, 207) speaks both of the ruins of DhafAr near Yemen, and of Sumara or Nak'l SumAra as the greatest and the highest mountain he had ascended in Yemen, and very probably the same that the Greek geographers called Climax (Κλίμαξ ὄρος of C. Ptol, vi. 7). This is near the Dhagr which Bochart identifies with the Σαπφάρα μητρόπολις of Ptolemy, capital of the Σαπφαρῖται (vi. 6, § 25), and with the Sephar in our text. Dhafar seems the same city a little disguised, which the author of the Periplils and Diodorus Sic. called Aphar, as others call it Tafar?

If then Sephar be traced to the Dhafar on the border of Yemen and Hadramaut in the S.W. of Arabia, this goes far to determine the site of Mesha as in the N. E. of the peninsula. This satisfies best the compendious summary of the Joktanite settlements, answering to the similar allusion to the Canaanite border, N. and S. in ver. 19, which follows the details of their several families. Now there is a mountain chain in the Nedjd, which was the boundary of the sons of Joktan in that very region, on the north of which wandered their adversaries, the sure indication of a distinct race. The Beni Shaman or Samman, the sons of Mishma or Masma, son of Ishmael, being no other than the MaEcrattiavEig of Ptol. (vi. 7, § 21), jealously guarded mount Zames or Zametas (as the Alexandrian Geographer calls the mountain) against intrusion from the south, where lay the Κατανῖται or Joktanite races. Equally hostile were the Aenezes, or sons of Kenaz. Hence Chesney's suggestion of Mekkah for Mesha is untenable; for the tribe of Harb, the Cerbae, Darrae, &c., descendants of Kedar and enemies of the Joktanites, was paramount in the Hedjaz. The Kenezites, or sons of Kenaz, were of Edomite extraction and dwelt north of the Salapeni, or sons of Sheleph, a Joktanite.

It may be added that it was to Yemen the Greek and Latin geographers applied the epithet Εὐδαίμων, or Felix (Happy), which was at a later time extended more widely, as when one of our own poets speaks of “Araby the Blest.” There was no little exaggeration in allowing the justice of such a claim, even allowing for the mystery in which the Arabian traders indulged with their western and even eastern customers, in attributing to their own country some precious imports from lands more distant still. For mendacity has long infected the Arab people like others of the east. Yet it is not improbable, as Oriental scholars suggest, that the designation may have been an accidental misnomer. Thus Felix was a mistranslation of El-Yemen, or the right hand, the fortunate side in usage of the Greeks, whom the Roman poets mostly followed, Notoriously, as the face was directed to the east, so the peninsula lay as compared with Syria, EshSham, the left hand. Hence was Arabia said to be “fortunate” or “blessed” through a word of good omen, which was afterward by a mistake construed of extraordinary wealth and fertility.

If Mohammedan fanaticism has for long centuries shut out Arabia and its numerous races from the free or friendly intercourse of the rest of mankind, it is interesting to note the striking help given by the Greek and Latin geographers before and since the Christian era to identify places and races with those which then existed. Of comparatively late years the travels of C. Niebuhr, Burckhardt, and Wellsted have contributed to prove that they still exist, though it also appears that the religious imposture has not failed to cover the land and the people with malignant and withering influence. For there are but traces and ruins where considerable tribes and cities once flourished. Happily for the object here in view in no part of the world do names abide more signally resisting change or surviving it, than among the sons of the east.

Genesis 10:31

SUBSEQUENT statements in the Book of Genesis give particulars of other families of the Shemitic stock who entered the Arabian Peninsula. All that is intended here is to fill up the general view of its denizens, in order to complete the picture, in this measure anticipating what follows our chapter. As sons of Cush were the first to settle within it, chiefly on the Persian Gulf and the S. W. coast skirted by the Red Sea, before Joktan and his sons possessed themselves so largely of its borders and interior, we may notice first Ishmael and his sons as a most characteristic class of the dwellers in Arabia. No prediction of the kind has been more signally fulfilled than Gen. 16:12: “He will be a wild ass of a man, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell before the face of all his brethren.”

In vain has the skeptical Gibbon (Decline and Fall, chaps. 46. and 50.) strained his ingenuity to get rid of their standing independence, felt alike by strangers and by natives. There it is to this day, as it has been through all history. Of whom else can it be pretended similarly? The overruling power of God, as always, has guarded His word. Ishmael, though in no way the line of covenant any more than Esau, has lived before Him. Other peoples, and conspicuously in their neighborhood, have dwindled and disappeared, I do not say they are extinguished. Ishmael He made fruitful and a great nation. In this world as it is, no sane person denies checks or exceptions during the course of ages, when God was ignored or misrepresented. But oven the infidel historian had to acknowledge that these exceptions were “temporary or local.” “The body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies: the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia. The present sovereign of the Turks may exercise a shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship of a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke and fruitless to attack.”

The wilderness of Paran was the earliest seat of Ishmael; but his posterity extended completely across the northern parts of Arabia, including the district of Sinai on the west to the Euphrates. In this district the sons of Keturah also dwelt, and thus Ishmaelites or Hagarites got mixed up with Midianites, as we may see in Gen. 37:36, 25-28, Judg. 8:1, 22-26 Chron. 5:20. Nebaioth, Ishmael's firstborn, gave his name to the large region of Arabia Petraea; where Josephus places all the other sons. But this is too limited; for they settled also south of what the ancients called Nabathea or Nabateus. They bred camels, and kept sheep, as they were also merchants in aromatics and other commodities. Like other rationalists, Gibbon imputes their love of independence to their accidental locality. It was rather their wild character which availed itself of rocks and deserts; and God so acted as to suit both to His word and will. Here too the Edomites, or sons of Esau, found their place in mount Seir.

The second of Ishmael's sons was Kedar (from whom Mohammed proclaimed his descent through the tribe of Koreish), the Cedrei of Pliny, Cadraitae or Kadranitae from time immemorial living in the Hedjaz; as the B'nei Kenaz dwelt and still dwell in the interior N.E. who are called in modern times the Aenezes, descendants of Esau, the largest (as Burckhardt says) of all the Bedouin tribes of Arabia, at constant feud with the Joktanites south of them, as their progeny are to this day. Some of the other sons of Ishmael may be more or less obscure; but this cannot be said of Dumah (who had also the characteristic title of B'nei Kalb, as the Kedarites were correspondingly styled B'nei Karb), and Tema, written large and deep in the northern part of the Negd, as the interior highlands of Arabia are called among themselves.

There is no intention at this point to give more than a general notion of the relation of the Ishmaelites and other Abrahamidae to the previous settlers in Arabia. But it is well to bear all in mind, as each race had its influence on the circumstances and history of a land remarkably divided.

“These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations” (ver. 31).

Blessing in the prophecy of Noah was assigned to Shem, or more strictly the word was “Blessed [be] Jehovah, the God of Shem.” So it has been; so faith knows now; so it will be completely fulfilled, when Christ makes the truth indisputable in glorious results to every eye. This is not the design of God either by the gospel or in the church; it is reserved for the age to come.

The notion of such as Ronan (Hist. Generale des Langues Semit.), that the Shemitic races were to be in purpose or in fact monotheistic is a delusion. As the Adamic condition of innocence yielded to sin, so did the post-diluvian government of the world break down, and God's judgment of the earth with which it was preceded was soon darkened and perverted to serving other gods. Ham may lead the way, as beyond doubt the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel; but Asshur soon followed in the same path, not of ambition only but of idolatry; and the very family of him that was chosen to be the father of the faithful were thus corrupted when the call of God called him out to bless him and make him a blessing to all families of the earth (Josh. 24:2). Thus no flesh can glory in itself or its ways. Let him that glorieth glory in Jehovah.

Even Max Muller, though far from believing reverence, is compelled by overwhelming facts to abandon the Rationalistic dream and to pay homage in a measure at least to the truth, as another has culled out of his “Chips out of a German Workshop,” i. 345. “Can it be said that a monotheistic instinct could have been implanted in all those nations which adored Elohim, Jehovah, Sabaoth, Moloch, Nisroch, Rimmon, Nebo, Dagon, Ashtaroth, Baal or Bel, Baal-peor, Baalzebub, Chemosh, Milcom, Adrammelech, Anammelech, Nibhaz and Tartak, Ashima, Nergal, Succoth-benoth, the sun, the moon, the planets, and all the host of heaven.” Shemitic races worshipped these and more.

In the same work M. M. goes farther still in his disproof. “Nor is it possible to explain on merely historical grounds how the Hebrews first obtained and so persistently clung to this grand first truth. Their chronicles show continual lapses into idolatry, and yet they always recovered themselves; till at last, after a bitter discipline of national calamities, they finally turned with enthusiastic devotion to the worship of Jehovah.

“Reference to a primitive religious instinct in mankind is as little satisfactory; for though there must have been such an intuitive sentiment in the earliest men as the basis of their future idolatries, it could only have impressed on them the existence of some Divine Being, but in no degree involved the conception of that Being, as one and one only, but as all history proves, tended to the very opposite. Nor can it be said that the Hebrew worked out the great truth by a profound philosophy; for no contrast could be greater between the Jewish mind and that of other nations of antiquity sprung from a different stock, than the utter absence from it of the metaphysical speculations in which other races delighted.

“Yet, while all nations over the earth have developed a religious tendency which acknowledged a higher than human power in the universe, Israel is the only one which has risen to the grandeur of conceiving this power as the One, Only, Living God.” Better still is his closing confession: “If we are asked how it was that Abraham possessed not only the primitive conception of the divinity as He has revealed Himself to all mankind [a very questionable proposition, corrected anticipatively in Rom. 1:19, 20], but passed, through the denial of other gods, to the knowledge of the one God, we are content to answer that it was by a special divine revelation” (ib. i. 372).

When the Anointed came, He tested this “enthusiastic devotion to the worship of Jehovah,” and proved as Isaiah had testified long before, that in vain the people worshipped Him, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. For had they learned of the Father they would have come to Christ, but they knew neither the Son nor the Father Who sent Him. “Who is the liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son hath not the Father either; he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also” (1 John 2:22, 23).

The day is at hand when the worthlessness of Jewish devotion even to monotheism or rather to their Elohim, or Jehovah, will be manifest. For, as the rejected Messiah warned, the unclean spirit of idolatry which they then thought and still think exorcised forever, will return to his house empty, swept, and garnished; and just because it is empty, instead of filled with His presence Who is Jehovah as well as Messiah. Yea more, he will take to himself in that day (for it is not yet fulfilled) seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becometh worse than the first. Even thus shall it be also to this wicked generation (Matt. 12). To banish idols and judge idolatry forever is reserved for the Lord in the day of His appearing.

Genesis 10:32

IN the concluding verse we have the still larger summary of the post-diluvian earth, which furnishes occasion for a general survey.

“These [are the] families of Noah's sons, after their generations, in their nations; and by these were separated the nations in the earth after the flood” (verse 32).

It is not only that mankind sprang from a single pair created innocent as Adam and Eve were. A fresh start for the race began after the deluge which judged the guilty mass. From Noah and his three sons preserved from destruction, conditions began which subsist to-day and will for their descendants till, with the clouds of heaven, the Son of man come to Whom shall be given dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. So recent comparatively is the history of man, and his tripartite separation of land and tongue, family and nation. For instead of beginning with a single line, we have three heads with their wives, three great families to renew the history of man on earth with the experience derived from the antediluvian earth.

What can be vainer than the dreams of men? From the only evidence we have, happily the highest, surest, and most authoritative of testimony we know that primeval man was as far as possible from savagery. He was set in a garden or park of delights, where grew every tree pleasant to the sight, and good for food. Even when transgression entailed man's expulsion from Paradise, and sons were in due time born, the elder was a husbandman, the younger a shepherd. Town life began for some, nomad habits for others, the forging of tools, bronze and iron, and the making instruments of music, wind and stringed: all this before our first parents died.

It would seem in fact that it was after not only the deluge but the dispersion of the various families, that the more distant and isolated tribes degenerated into a savage condition. To this deserts and forests, marshes and mountains, would expose men, when they found themselves severed from others by distinct tongues, and the national barriers drew in their train opposing interests, and the difficulties of subsistence increasing with population. Hunting soon led to encroachment on human liberty, as our chapter has shown. There was corruption and violence before the flood, a great reason for it though by no means the only one; but there is no evidence of idolatry till after. We know it had set in even through Abraham's progenitors before his call. But idolatry, once introduced, spread like fire, and added enormously to the debasement of its victims.

The Japhetic race is first traced in the early verses (2-5), and with marked brevity. Japheth's sons present the great outline of those that possessed themselves of the north from east to west in Asia and Europe. From two only do we hear of descendants, though doubtless all had; but here we have only the sons of Gomer and of Javan. These were respectively the families which peopled Asia Minor, and Armenia on the east, and the sons of Javan whom we cannot fail to identify with the Greek or Hellenic families, extending to Spain, France, Italy and Sicily, the isles or maritime coasts of the nations.

Much more detail is assigned to Ham, who occupies verses 6 to 20. And with that holy boldness and candor which characterizes the truth, this chapter hides not but sets before us plainly the early rise of kingly power in that race. The beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar; Nimrod was of Cush, Ham's eldest son. He and he alone is here described in terms so strong, even if we conceive that Asshur went out from that land, though of Shem's stock, and emulated Nimrod's ambitious example by building Nineveh and three cities more in Assyria. The sons of Cush include much beyond Ethiopia, but are distinct from Mizraim and Phut as well as Canaan, minutely enumerated, though none so much as that race accursed of God which Israel was responsible to blot out.

Last of all we come to Shem's descendants in vers. 21-31, singularly described as father of all the sons of Eber, brother of Japheth the elder. Eber led the way through Peleg in due time to the father of the faithful. If Shem had not the natural priority over Japheth, he pre-eminently had the blessing, as Canaan the curse. Elam is the first named son, progenitor of those east of Persia proper, occupying the province of which Shushan or Susa was capital. It early rose to power, but faded before the energy of Assyria and Babylon, till with Persia and Media it shared the power of the second world-kingdom. Arphaxad will find his developed place in chap. 11. The Lydians answer to Lud, and Syrians to Aram. Attention is drawn under Peleg to the significant fact of the earth divided in his day. And the list closes with Joktan and his sons who fill Arabia from S.W. to N.E. as the Ishmaelites, Keturahites, and Edomites distinguish the north and west. But of these we have no particulars till later in the book of Genesis, so that we speak here only of the fact in general.

Genesis 11:1

The last chapter gave us with minute detail the new fact on the earth of the sons of Noah after their generations, in their nations, after their tongues, and in their lands. Here were traits and arrangements, unknown to the world before the deluge, and in no degree seen for some time after. Gen. 10 casts invaluable light, found nowhere else, on the rise of those families distributed on the earth, every one after his tongue. It is only in chap. 11 That we find the originating cause and occasion. The previous chapter comes in, not flowing according to historic time, but as a descriptive parenthesis between chaps. 9 and 11. It was of very great importance to give us inspired certainty where men had no adequate record, and no reliable tradition; where pride hastened to disguise or forget a divine judgment which effectually rebuked it. East or west, men set up claims to be indigenous from the first, sprung from their own soil; and if they believed that man was an outcast from Paradise, though in forms disguised by pride, setting up to speak the original language of our primeval parents.

The A. V. fails to express the two thoughts. The speech and the words were alike one. “And the whole earth was of one language (lip) and the words one” (or the same) (Gen. 11:1). The Latin Vulgate gives the literal reflection of the Hebrew text. Moses beyond doubt here goes back to the universal state of mankind for a certain period after the great catastrophe of the flood. Till then and after it, man had but one “lip” and the same words.

There had been ample space before the deluge for the development of many languages. Soon after the murder of Abel had furious Cain gone forth, an unrepentant despairing man, who failed to profit by Jehovah's patience, and dwelt in the land of Nod, away from the scene which even he could not face at ease or unabashed. There is no real ground to accept either von Bohlen's identification with India, or Knobel's with China. Enough for us to know that the land of his “Wandering,” as it means, was toward or in front of the east of Eden. Still less can we identify the city Cain built and called “Enoch” after the name of his son. But the Holy Spirit plainly intimates the rise in his line (not of a rudiment of a different tongue nor of a distinct nationality which we in our ignorance might have thought only natural, but) of science and art, and even the fine arts. The holy wisdom of God took care to apprise His people of the true origin of civic life as well as of nomad, the latter not previous but posterior, of music and its practice in stringed and wind instruments, of the working in copper and iron, of polygamy, and self-occupied verse, the first recorded song of man. It is a picture of man's skill and energy, civilization, letters, and luxury. The Pagans long after attributed these to their spurious gods but real demons. Here we have them shown to be the inventions of men far from God, vainly striving to make the earth of their exile a paradise of their own.

But here first do we learn how, when, where, and why it was that diversity of tongues superseded the “one lip” which had characterized the whole earth hitherto. The original unity of language prevailed for some time after the deluge, as uninterruptedly before it. This is an immense difficulty to such as reason from the existing multiplicity of tongues; for there are confessedly at least 900 in possession of the earth. Of late the researches of the learned have reduced them to families or groups, and have named these Aryan, Shemitic, and Turanian. But a deeper affinity has disclosed itself to patient, comprehensive, and minute study. For these family groups, whatever their strongly marked distinctions from each other, have been proved to yield decided proofs of common relationship, which cannot be thought accidental but indicative of one source. Thus were scholars forced to the conclusion, neither expected nor desired by most, but opposed strongly to the skepticism of many, that these languages point to a time when was spoken but one and the same tongue, whence all drew those common evidences of flowing from the same fountain-head.

Such was the judgment of A. von Humboldt in treating of the prolific varieties of aboriginal American speech in his contribution to the “Asia Polyglotta,” p. 6 (Paris, 1823). Such too was the conviction of Julius Klaproth in that erudite survey itself of the Asiatic tongues. It is the more striking because the latter's incredulity is daring and undisguised. Nor was any wish more remote from his heart than testifying in result to the truth of inspired history. Yet he declared that, in his comparative tables &c., “the universal affinity of languages is placed in so strong a light that it must be considered by all as completely demonstrated. This does not appear explicable on any other hypothesis than that of admitting fragments of a primary language yet to exist through all the languages of the old and new worlds” (Vorr. § ix.).

But the believer stands on an impregnable and unchanging vantage ground. He receives the fact on the word of God, and therefore in simple faith common to all who are led of the Holy Spirit, apart from all linguistic lore, apart from all historic investigation where so much is difficult and obscure, apart from philosophical discussion where vanity revels in opposing old hypotheses and inventing new ones of the day and the man. He knows the only true God, the Father, and Jesus Christ, His sent One; living of that life eternal he delights to honor that word which is open to Jew or Greek, bond or free. But he is not displeased to note how the adversaries of revelation are compelled to bow to the force of proofs which divine mercy leaves to convince inquirers, even though pursuing their own paths without a care for His truth or glory, perhaps not afraid to gainsay Him now and then, as they are estranged from the life of God by reason of the hardness of their hearts.

Is it objected that these were investigators early in the century? Though one distrusts the childish assumption that recent men have better knowledge or judgment, for such experts are rare, let them learn that in this field no living man has greater claim to be heard than Max Muller; that he is morbidly afraid of mixing up theological arguments with his “Science of Language;” and that his real object was not at all to assert revealed truth, but to show how rash it was to speak of different independent beginnings in the history of human speech, before a single argument had been brought forward to establish the necessity of such an admission. On the contrary he endeavored to show how even the most distant members of the Turanian family (the one spoken in the north, the other in the south of Asia) have preserved in their grammatical organization traces of a former unity. So later he says, in the enthusiasm of his theme, though in terms which a believer could not endorse, “the Science of Language thus leads us up to that summit from whence we see into the very dawn of man's life on earth; and where the words which we have heard so often since the days of our childhood ‘and the whole earth was of one language and of one speech’—assume a meaning more natural, more intelligible, more convincing than they had before.” This is so doubtless to himself and others like him on natural ground; but to him who sets to his seal that God is true, no evidences or reasonings of man can compare with the certainty, simplicity, or sweetness of God's testimony. If the child accepts it without question, the mature Christian finds in it truth which lifts him far above the summits of philology, and jarring or jealous disputes of philosophers, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth: possibility, probability, necessity are their respective idols, one as vain and unreliable as another.

Genesis 11:2-4

How many dialects, how many languages, have on the one hand perished practically, or have on the other sprung really into being and the most extensive use, long since the Christian era! Yet here, on the shortest reckoning for nearly as many centuries since our first parents were created, we have the fact calmly and clearly revealed, which was nowhere else made known and wholly inconsistent with human experience as well as all scientific theory of languages, that there was but one “lip” or (as we and others say) one tongue, the “words” also one and the same. This we believe, without reasoning which is here out of court, from one qualified divinely to give us certainty. For Moses was distinguished above even all other prophets, who had a vision or a dream adequate in the power of the Spirit. But to him mouth to mouth did Jehovah speak openly.

So too did the Son of God, both in the days of His flesh and after He rose from the dead, attest Moses, not only as the channel but as the writer of the Law or Five Books (John 5, Luke 20 and xxiv.). But if in presence of supernatural power sons of Israel “were not afraid to speak against” him living, we need not wonder that, in fallen yet haughty and unbelieving Christendom, professing Christians take their place with infidel Jews, in denying that he wrote aught but the merest shreds. These shreds some of these men do rather pretend (for there is no ground, but their self-sufficiency) to identify among the legends of an Elohist, and a Jehovist, with as many more imaginary hands in the patch-work as the pseudo-criticism may invent to hide its empty and naked impotence. Not that any prophet failed to give the word of God; but Moses, besides the divine authority which attached to what he wrote as well as spoke from Jehovah, had a divine intimacy peculiar to himself, the fruit of which is in no part of the Law more conspicuous or of richer consequence than in the book of Genesis.

“And it came to pass as they journeyed [lit. pulled up their tent-stakes] east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Come, let us make bricks and burn (them) thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and asphalt had they for mortar. And they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower, whose top [head] (may be) to the heavens; and let us make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth” (vers. 2-4).

Things were no longer as before God's judgment in the deluge, when men were left, outside paradise, to their own ways without covenant or government. The law which tested innocent Adam in the garden did not apply to himself when an outcast or to his sons who were never there. As fallen men, however, they had conscience, that invaluable monitor universally possessed, which does not fail inwardly to pronounce on right and wrong, or, as scripture says, “to know good and evil.” Nor were they without revelation to and through their first father, brief indeed but of unspeakable moment to fallen man. Other divine intimations also followed, even to Cain, as well as Enoch, Lamech, and Noah: each of deep importance; all together not beyond what the fear of God in every one was bound to weigh, and fairly remember, and might fully profit by.

Only after the flood came in the great principle of divine government laid on man responsibly, never to be revoked to the eternal day. It was not creation left to itself in departure from God, but creation set under government in human hands. Noah walked with God. But Noah, preserved with his family from the destruction which befell the world of ungodly men, failed in an unwatchful hour to govern himself; as his sin and shame gave occasion to the heartless rebellious wickedness of a son, who brought on a curse narrowed to one line instead of overspreading all his seed. But the government, which from God through man abode unreversed, spite of personal flaws does still to this day. For there is no authority except what is from God; and those authorities that exist are established by God.

We have now a new development, in which not one or a few but the race displayed its state. God originally had in blessing men said, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it. After the deluge, His word to Noah and his sons still was, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. But mankind, though awed by that judgment, had no care to do His will. Their mind was to keep together. And assuredly they pitched on a region, by its great rivers on either side and its exceeding fertility, eminently suited for their purpose; which was to constitute themselves a universal republic without God. Was it then for man to live by bread alone? So at least they spoke and acted: God was in none of their thoughts. It was the first joint, and public, step of the post-diluvian race. They were without excuse, not only because of the witness to God's eternal power and divinity manifested to them, but from such knowledge of God as Noah, “preacher of righteousness,” professed and testified, backed by such an intervention as the deluge itself fresh in their memory. They glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful. Into what folly in their inward reasonings this led them ere long need not be stated here. For we do not as yet hear of that new plague of Satan, idolatry; but it soon followed, as we may assuredly gather from Josh. 24:2, Rom. 1:20-23.

But we do learn their united purpose, independent of God, yea, in defiance of His will that they should fill the earth. As stone and lime were not furnished by the plain of Shinar, they none the less resolved to build a city and a tower; and they had brick thoroughly burnt for stone, and asphalt, of which abundance was there, for mortar. But their aim (for this it is that mainly determines man's acts and life)—what was their object? “Come (said they) let us build ourselves a city and a tower, whose top (may reach) to the heavens; and let us make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” There is no need to conceive that more was meant in their aspiration, than in the depressing tone of the spies in Deut. 1:28: “the cities are great and walled up to heaven.”

Nothing was farther from their thoughts or from common sense than to rear a pile to save them from another deluge, as some have fancied for them. God had solemnly assured Noah that this was never to be again. If they had nevertheless dreaded it, the highest of lands might have been chosen with that foolish design; certainly not the low-lying plain they settled on. It was a deep-laid human scheme, ignoring God altogether, and in rebellious self-will; it was for “ourselves” throughout. It was not merely a city to live in (which had been from early days), but to “build ourselves a city and a tower,” and with high-flown pretensions. But worse still, “let us make ourselves a name.” What! poor sinners, saved by divine mercy, from the flood that swept all else away! Noah, they well knew, built an altar and offered Burnt offerings. The earth as a whole now changes all that. They sought to themselves a conspicuous center for every eye; they would make themselves a name, though this belongs only to God, or to a head with an authority delegated of Him. What is man to be accounted, whose breath is in his nostrils?

Yet clearly had they, notwithstanding their self-sufficiency, the fear that accompanies a bad conscience; for what they sought was “lest they should be scattered upon the face of the whole earth.” But therefore it was that Jehovah scattered them. Their forebodings were more than realized in a scattering, by Him Whom they willingly forgot, which immediately and completely dispersed them and their descendants till this day.

Genesis 11:5-7: 1.

THESE verses are a striking example of the childlike simplicity which, as it characterized the ways of God with man in these early days, is reflected in the divine record, and nowhere more so than in the book of Genesis. There it was in the account of creation in itself (1), and in its varied relations (2). Nor was it only with Adam and Eve, innocent or fallen (3), but with wicked Cain (4) and with righteous Noah (6-9). A similar feature prevails throughout the book, as the expression on the one hand of tender interest and on the other hand of His heart grieved by perverseness and rebellion in those that were the object of His great and countless favors. We see it even with such as Pharaoh (chap. 12) and Abimelech (21), not only with Abraham (12-22), Isaac (26) and Jacob (28), but with Sarah (18:15) and Laban too (31), Hagar also (16; 7-13), and Rebekah (25:23). The same simplicity characterizes the ways as the words of God, and produced like effects on the faithful.

“And Jehovah came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of Man builded. And Jehovah said, Behold, the people [are] one, and have all one language (lip); and this have they begun to do; and now they will not be hindered in all that they meditate to do. Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech (lip)” (vers.5-7).

He Who is not the Creator only but the moral governor, Jehovah, came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of Man builded. No designation suited the occasion but this. For He it is Who concerned Himself with all who stood in moral relation with Him, as He had breathed into the nostrils of their first father the breath of life. In the style of the account He would also impress His people with His calm and full judicial survey of men's ways, though all was known to Him from the beginning (ver. 5). God was in none of their thoughts. They never thought of a temple to His honor being a center for themselves. They built no altar to Jehovah, as Noah did on emerging from the ark. They called not on His name, neither sought they His will. On the contrary, “let us make us a name” was their purpose; “let us build us a city and a tower, whose top [is] unto heaven,” their plan, “lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”

It was Jehovah thrown off in open independency; and as He saw and said and wrought before the deluge, so did He now deliberately and righteously deal with this new and daring impiety. We may be assured that those who walked with God had no fellowship with a project of practical atheism. If they forgot Him, it is no wonder that Noah or Shem did not enter their minds. To the exclusion of God, the root of all infidelity, they would make themselves a public center and a striking rallying-place. What did it matter to them that God called man to replenish the earth? Here on this fertile plain, watered by two noble rivers, would they dwell, and construct such a visible symbol of that union which is strength as would keep them together and guard against all danger of scattering. But Jehovah had His plan wholly differing; and as they abandoned both Him and His expressed will, so He made manifest their folly, and perforce scattered them by a simple, peaceful, and effectual means which subsists to this day. How vain is human wisdom in collision with God! How ineffectual is the prudence that trusts self and does without Him! What sin too!

“And Jehovah said, Behold, the people are one, and have all one language, and this have they begun to do; and now they will not be hindered in all that they meditate to do. Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.”

The race had dared to set themselves in direct opposition to Jehovah, Who, in answer to Noah's offering of sweet savor, had guaranteed the continuance of the earth with its seasons, the ground to be cursed no more for man's sake, nor any more every living thing to be smitten as by the deluge. It was not the day for the powers of heaven to be shaken, nor for the kingdom of God to come in power and glory for the earth. But as the principle of government had been set up in Noah, so Jehovah was content to confound man's scheme of union without God, themselves the makers of a center the work of their own device and of their own hands! It was a universal socialism they sought, which Jehovah brought to naught by the confusion of tongues. This compelled them, not only to give up their godless project, but to disperse according to His will and replenish the earth:

What a contrast with God's work in the church! Therein grace gathered from every nation under heaven. There in honor of Him, the righteous Servant of Jehovah (Who suffered for our sins to the uttermost, died, rose, and ascended). His name was the God-given center; and in virtue of one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free, and were all given to drink of one Spirit. Thus was He Whom all in heaven adore made the object of worship and service for all that believe on earth: a worthy and divine center; else it would have been an idolatrous rival and a derogation from the true God. But on the contrary it is His revealed word that we honor Christ as we honor the Father, Who is only known and possessed by such as thus confess the Son. And in witness of the gracious power of God in Christ, while the government of man was left as it had been, and the effect of divine judgment in divers tongues still subsists, His love wrought in unlettered Jews, become Christians, to proclaim the wonderful works of God in all the tongues of Gentiles.

Still greater or at least wider and more conspicuous will the contrast be when the Son of man appears in the clouds of heaven, dominion and glory given Him, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages shall serve Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. Even then manifestly all the peoples, languages, and nations remain, but in blessed harmony around the true center to the glory of God the Father. Only in the eternal state will such distinctions vanish, when God shall be all in all, and His tabernacle be with men.

Genesis 11:5-7: 2.

As the case of the Babel-builders is quite misconceived latterly by some of influence, it seems well to review the observations made by the late Abp. Whately in the third Preliminary Dissertation of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (ed. eighth). Here they are in extenso.

“There is reason to believe that the confusion which is recorded as having occurred at Babel afterward called Babylon, and which caused the dispersion of mankind into various countries, was in reality a dispute among them as to their worship of some god or gods. This at least is certain, that the scheme mentioned in Gen. 11 was something displeasing to God, and therefore could not have been merely the building of a tower. And it is plain also from the Bible history, that some ages after the flood mankind had very generally fallen into gross idolatry, though we are not told expressly when and how it was introduced. As for the Tower of Babel, it is said indeed in our version that a number of persons joined together to build ‘a tower whose top should reach to heaven’ (our translators meant an exceeding high tower), in order that they might ‘not be scattered over the face of the whole earth'; and that God sent on them a confusion of language, which ‘caused them to cease building the tower, and scattered them.' But it is to be observed that the word ‘reach ' is supplied by our translators, there being nothing answering to it in the original, which merely says, ‘whose top to the heavens.' And the meaning doubtless is, that the top of the tower should be dedicated to the heavens—that is, that a temple should be built on it to Bel, Belus, Zeus, or Jupiter; under which title the ancient Pagans worshipped the heavens. For we find the historian Herodotus (I. cxxxi.) who many ages later visited Babylon, expressly declaring that there was there in his time a very high tower, on the top of which was a temple to Belus; who, he says, was the same with the Zeus of the Greeks. The ancient Pagans, it is well known, were accustomed to erect altars to the Heavens, or to the Sun, on 'high places' (Num. 33:52), on the loftiest mountains. And as the land of Shinar is a very fertile plain of vast extent and quite level, it seems to have been designed to make a sort of artificial mountain on it—that is, a very high tower—and to build a temple on the top of this, to their god Belus, and so establish a great empire of people worshipping at this temple. The 'confusion' which God sent among them, and which caused the tower to be less lofty than originally designed, and dispersed many of the people into other lands, was most likely not a confusion of languages, but a dissension about religious worship. The word in the original literally signifies lip. And it is more likely that it was used to signify worship than language. A dissension as to that which was the very object of the building would much more effectually defeat the scheme than a confusion of languages. For laborers engaged in any work, and speaking different languages, would in a few days learn by the help of signs to understand one another sufficiently to enable them to go on with their work. But if they disagreed as to the very object proposed, this would effectually break up the community. As for the different languages now spoken in the world, there is no need of explaining that by any miraculous interference. For tribes who have not the use of letters, and have but little mutual intercourse, vary so much from each other in the language after even a few generations, as not to be able at all to understand each other” (165, 466).

Those who accept what has been said already on these verses will have no hesitation in pronouncing the whole statement a string of strange fancies, which supplant the truth, concluding with undisguised disbelief of scripture. Not a trace does the inspired narrative give of a dispute about worship. Not a word breathes a question about the true God, still less does it “about some god or gods.” We hear of a city and a tower. A temple was as wholly absent from their minds as God Himself. This could not but be displeasing to God.

But there was far more here. They sought only their own glory. They willfully hid from themselves His judgment of the ante-diluvian world, and His merciful preservation of a few, their own progenitors still living. They set their heart unitedly on a city, and a lofty tower which built on the plain should call attention all the more as a centralizing object in the land of their settlement. The name of God was nothing in their eyes. “Let us make ourselves a name.” Was this a peccadillo in the eyes of the archbishop? Their aim was the unity of man without God, and this avowedly in self-exaltation. What a tale it tells that a prelate should fail to understand how displeasing this must be to God! It was setting up a unity of man independently of God; it was claiming for themselves what alone can in truth belong to God, alone is due to His power and glory, to His righteousness and mercy. It was rebellion and usurpation. He alone is the rightful center.

They did not yet set up “some god or gods.” They left the true God out. They would make a name for themselves. It was not merely the building of a tower, but man's first collective effort after unity without God; to make himself a name round a self-made center, instead of multiplying and replenishing the earth. The time would soon come when they would set up other gods beside and before God. The time will at last come when a man, energized by Satan, shall sit down in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. But to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven; and neither of these had yet come.

It was however sad and evil enough, that, while the witnesses of a divine and universal judgment still lived to glorify God for his saving themselves through the deluge, the progeny could forsake the fountain of living water, and set themselves up, cisterns, broken cisterns, that could hold no water. The language of Jehovah confirms all this as the truth; not a word here points to strange gods or idols. “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them—all which they purpose doing.” It was irreligious combination, not false worship. “Once hath God spoken, twice have I heard this, that strength [belongeth] unto God.” They had heeded not but forgotten Him. Their own union would be their strength, and a name of renown on earth. At the end punitive judgment must fall on the full results. But meanwhile Jehovah would bring their pride to naught, and would disperse them by a means as simple as effectual. He would there confound their language, that they should not understand one another's speech; and they would be compelled to scatter as they feared. But what mercy in their dispersion! Not a hair of their heads was lost.

It is utterly unfounded that ver. 4 can mean “a top dedicated to the heavens.” This is perversion, and one so gross that no version however faulty known to me follows it, no scholar as far as I know has ever attempted to justify it. Nor can the testimony so late in the day prove anything of the original tower, even if the site were the same. Not till afterward was the worship of the heavens, as of the sun, or of Bel. Nor had dissension about worship the least to do with the bold builders of Babel, any more than the word translated “language” and “speech” (lit. “lip”) means worship. Indeed it is a notion destructive of the plain sense of the history. If we assume it, what folly Does Jehovah create ever so many forms of false worship? He certainly made the “one lip” to be many, even if the wonder seemed too great for Dr. W. to believe.

The tower then was not designed for religion, but as a rallying center for man in that great plain; which was thoroughly frustrated by the confusion of tongues. The Abp. talks of laborers learning signs of communication; but the sudden completeness of the divine measure overawed men too much, lest a worse thing might befall them. They had not yet learned the rationalists' lesson. The fact that all as yet spoke one language, though men had lived some seventeen or eighteen centuries, not crowded together, nor boasting the use of letters any more than much mutual intercourse, makes only the more impressive Jehovah's dealing in the immediate introduction of different tongues. Yet was it a dealing tempered with wisdom and mercy; for each tongue was spoken by the same clan. They did not part (as might easily have been if God had so willed) from their families, but spread abroad after their generations; and national history thus began in their various lands. How paltry is the misreading, how worthy is the truth!

Genesis 11:8-9

Thus was the scheme of human self-will brought to naught. They had left out God and at best forgotten His word. They had dared to oppose His will Who commanded that they should fill the earth. They sought on the contrary to hold together in a region well suited for union, being alike fertile in itself and peculiarly adapted to receive supplies from all sides. There they proposed not only to built a city and a tower of imposing pretension, but to make themselves a name, that they should not be scattered over the face of the whole earth. Therefore Jehovah interfered, not yet in punishment of their rebellious audacity, but by a dealing which left no doubt of His hand and compelled their dispersion according to His declared mind.

“And Jehovah scattered them thence over the face of the whole earth. And they left off building the city. Therefore was its name called Babel (confusion); because Jehovah there confounded the language of the whole earth. And Jehovah scattered them thence over the face of the whole earth” (vers. 8, 9).

Thus it was that mankind spread everywhere after the flood. It came to pass after a certain lapse of time, not willingly but under the constraint of divine power. This so thoroughly and at once confounded them, that they might well dread the issue of any further effort to disobey. Thus nationalities began, each with its peculiar tongue, in their lands, but as mercy ruled according to their families. There was no confusion in Jehovah's ordering. Chap. 11:1-9 is the key to the previous chap. 10, the moral account thus graphically of what was there given as a fact.

It is sorrowful to find the lack of simple faith even in minds not at all unfriendly to revelation. But men suffer, partly through undue heed to tradition, partly through indulging in dreams of their own. Thus Jacob Bryant, in his New System, or Analysis of Ancient Mythology (vol. iv. 34-45, 3rd edition, 1807), strives to give a very different turn to the confusion of tongues. As his learned work may weigh with some, it seems well to notice briefly what he alleges for denying the general bearing of the event, which he would limit to the Cushite, and pare down in itself to a labial failure, so that the people affected could not articulate and thus failed to understand each other.

“This I take to be the true purport of the history: from whence we may infer that the confusion of language was, a partial event; and that the whole of mankind is by no means to be included in the dispersion from Babel. It related chiefly to the sons of Cush, whose intention was to have founded a great, if not an universal, empire; but by this judgment their purpose was defeated” (37). Hence he distinguishes the scattering here as partial, from the earth divided to the nations the days of Peleg as a general event in which all were concerned. “We must therefore, instead of the language of all the earth, substitute the language of the whole country “; also “a failure and incapacity in labial utterance. By this their speech was confounded, but not altered; for as soon as they separated, they recovered their true tenor of pronunciation; and the language of the earth continued for some ages nearly the same.” For evidence Mr. Bryant sends us to M. A. Court de Gebelin's Monde Primitif Analyze et compare avec le Monde Moderne, in nine vols. 4to (17741784): an ambitious effort of no solid value, any more than this speculation of our own countryman before us.

Now not a word in scripture belittles the fact or God's dealing as is here done. In chap. x. 8-10 we have the pride of power which a son of Cush betrayed early; but a wholly different phase is here, not individual usurpation, nor a kingdom or empire, but a sort of universal republic, as we have already remarked. In that chapter which is not chronological but descriptive we have simply the families of Noah's sons after their families and tongues, in their lands and nations. Here in chap. xi. we have the moral cause, why Jehovah scattered them contrary to their perverse resolve to hold together in the land of Shinar. We have not a word about Nimrod or any other individual here. The force lies in its universality. Attention is expressly called to the whole earth being of one lip and of words alike also. Not a hint is dropped of one land in particular. There would be nothing to surprise in one country pervaded by one tongue; but we are reminded of the state that thus characterized all the earth, in order the better to appreciate the judgment which compelled men suddenly to speak diversely, and so not to understand one another's speech.

It is then an unsubstantial dream to fancy that it was only the Cushites, however numerously followed by others. Not only is there no evidence of any specific family, but the inspired record excludes any such construction. Nimrod was subsequent to the scattering; for “the beginning of his kingdom was Babel,” other cities following. He was not afraid to start his ambitious enterprise from a city branded by divine displeasure. The scattering had already taken place. It was a new form of man's will; for there was no thought or pretense of its being ordained of God. Nor was there any such mark of God's intervention as that which dealt with their purpose to unite unholily and to make themselves a name.

But it was no mere temporary fit of labial failure as Bryant imagined, again without a scrap of divine evidence. It was Jehovah confounding their language, so that men should be no longer one, but be divided into nations henceforth, though mercy took care that the tongues should not dislocate their families. It was Jehovah's doing, not nature nor circumstances, nor development, but a manifestly judicial and a lasting dealing of divine power. And the account is exactly suited to the inspired and only reliable Book of Origins; where man's history fails, and tradition is as puerile and misleading as pretentious philosophy, spinning cobwebs from within.

Genesis 11:10-26: 1. The Genealogy

WE are now presented with a genealogy which ends with Abram, and is followed in the next chapter with the mighty principle of grace, God's call. That prepares the way outwardly. But Jehovah shines through this dealing and revelation. Here we have the special line. It is no more an “endless genealogy” than that of Adam to Noah in chap. v. We may notice ten links in the chain of both chapters.

But there are notable differences to be noticed also. The sorrowful chime is heard throughout the earlier one, “and he died.” Not once does this sound in the later one, though as a fact all spoken of in chap. xi. did die; whereas there was in chap. v. the conspicuous exception of Enoch, “who walked with God and was not, for God took him.” Human life was so prolonged in those days, that it was all the more affecting to say of each with that exception, “and he died.” In the latter half of chap. xi. we read of the line of blessing, and we are told of each succession down to Abram, the time when the promise was made, and the years were lived; but nothing is said of death. Let who will count either accidental, the believer can hardly avoid seeing a distinct purpose in each, which may well awaken serious but happy reflections.

Again, neither is drawn in the style of formal, legal, or historical documents. Each is suited to its own place where it is placed by inspiration, and either would be strange in any book but God's. Yet are they invested with such precise information over the earliest ages, before the Deluge and after it, without a gap, that no genealogical line for that period outside of scripture can be compared with it. But over and above reliable information as to every link in the chain, a special design on God's part governs in each case. This even now earthly learning fails to see, and it has no interest for those intent on literary questions. Yet how great a thing for those whose ears are opened to the voice and teaching of God! But a divine purpose is as far as possible from casual documents or floating traditions from ancient sources, nobody knows whence, pieced together at a later date. The fact of a deep and distinct moral design pervading these lists respectively refutes the notion of any such trivial accident.

“These are the generations of Shem. Shem was a hundred years old, and begot Arphaxad two years after the flood; and Shem lived after he had begotten Arphaxad five hundred years, and begot sons and daughters. And Arphaxad lived thirty-five years, and begot Shelah; and Arphaxad lived after he had begotten Shelah four hundred and three years, and begot sons and daughters. And Shelah lived thirty years, and begot Eber; and Shelah lived after he had begotten Eber four hundred and three years, and begot sons and daughters. And Eber lived thirty-four years, and begot Peleg; and Eber lived after he had begotten Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begot sons and daughters. And Peleg lived thirty years and begot Reu; and Peleg lived after he had begotten Reu two hundred and nine years, and begot sons and daughters. And Reu lived thirty-two years, and begot Serug; and Reu lived after he had begotten Serug two hundred and seven years, and begot sons and daughters. And Serug lived thirty years and begot Nahor; and Serug lived after he had begotten Nahor two hundred years, and begot sons and daughters. And Nahor lived twenty-nine years, and begot Terah; and Nahor lived after he had begotten Terah a hundred and nineteen years, and begot sons and daughters. And Terah lived seventy years, and begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran” (vers. 10-26).

We may readily discern the specialty of this account by comparing it with what is said of the same progenitor in chap. 10:21. “And to Shem, to him also were [sons] born; he is the father of all the sons of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder. The sons of Shem: Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud and Aram.” Here the aim is quite of another kind in a genealogy of Noah's sons parting into their several lands, every one after his tongue, family, and nation. Even so, it wears little or no resemblance to a document such as any human object might demand. For Elam and Asshur, though, of celebrity among mankind (prominent also in the Bible and connected with Jewish story), are but named, though before Arphaxad, like Lud after him; and the apparently youngest, Aram, is introduced before Arphaxad. “And the sons of Aram: Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Mash.”

Certainly the divine wisdom of the record is not at all questioned; but it is not man's fashion. Divine design is stamped on this case, as in the other lists. There is neither repetition nor oversight, still less the clashing of differing documents or writers. Not the slightest evidence of solid worth has ever been alleged to shake the fact that Moses wrote every one of them; but the truth still more precious to the believer, and most solemn for every other, is that God is the author of all. And we can perceive that the design in chap. x. was not to pursue Arphaxad's line there beyond his grandson, Eber's son Peleg, to state the deeply interesting fact of his name's reference to the division of the earth his days. Thence it branches off to his brother Joktan, and his sons who settled in the south of Arabia west and east.

Compared with his father Noah and those before him, Shem's years mark the growing diminution of human age after the flood. Yet it was given to him before he came near the end of his six hundred years to live into the days not of Abram only but of Isaac. Peleg, the fifth in this series, did not reach half the limit of Shem's term; and Nahor, the father of Terah, dwindled to a hundred and forty-five years. So that in God's providential arrangements man was coming by rapid steps to the span of years ordinary since the prayer of Moses (Psa. 90), himself an exception as there have been a few even in modern times.

Genesis 11:10-26: 2. The Generations

At this point it seems well to look a little more closely into “the generations” which so frequently come before us in this book. Some remarks on them were made in looking at the verses preceding; but the matter well deserves further consideration.

No believer in God's plenary inspiration of the scriptures is under the least necessity of denying the incorporation of human documents, any more than of speeches or conversations of men who may have been godless or hostile. Thus in Acts 23 we have the letter from the chiliarch Claudius Lysias to Felix the governor; and in Acts 24 follows the speech of the rhetorician Tertullus accusing Paul. The speech was public, the letter private; but there this is, evidently just as it was written, as the Holy Spirit designed that we should know it. Yet there is no reason to imagine that the contents transpired through officers at Jerusalem or at Cæsarea friendly to Paul. He who inspired Luke to give the private document as unerringly as the open speech is in no way limited to any such means; and it is unwarrantable, when we read of such things in scripture, to cast about for some conceivable way of a natural kind to account for them. The great fact is that in a world of evil, falsehood, and vanity, scripture gives us the truth, and this in relation to God as well as to man. Thus only can we have the certainty of His mind revealed to us, though we still need the guidance of His Spirit in its apprehension and application.

If then God led Moses, in writing the book of Genesis, to make use of documents written (say) by Noah, Shem, the Patriarchs, Joseph and any others, there could be no valid objection on that score. But the unity of style and plan, which pervades each part in the face of all that petty criticism has ever alleged to the contrary, does stand adverse to any such theory. The essential condition is that God should inspire His chosen vehicle to convey to us the truth as He intended it for His own. It cannot be denied on solid ground that the alphabet even of Greece and Rome points to a Shemitic source, though it may have reached them according to the common tradition through a Phoenician or an Egyptian channel. In the days of Moses, at least in the wilderness, the Bible bears testimony that reading and writing prevailed among the Israelites, not merely in a sacred or learned class, but even largely among the rest (Deut. 9:9; 11:20; 24:1, 3). Thus from the earliest date of inspiration there was no difficulty of finding writers or readers.

Is it true then that the book of “Genesis is a compilation, and is stated so to be?” Is it the fact that these “generations” prove it to consist of so many separate documents, each beginning with this title? Let us see.

The first occurs in chap. 2:4: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that Jehovah Elohim made earth and heavens.” Now it is plain that this opening verse of a new section of the book, characterized by a very special employment of the divine names in the rest of chap. 2 and in chap. 3, also sums up the salient facts of chap. 1. What went before gave creation completely. The new section does not speak of the creation of the heavens and earth. It is not a second, still less a different or discordant account, but the added revelation of man set in moral responsibility, tried by Jehovah Elohim; as he, and he only, is said here to become a living soul by His immediate communication of the breath of life. Hence here we have the park or garden planted by Jehovah Elohim; here the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; here a simple test of obedience suited to innocence. Here too the relation of the man and the woman is given, and Adam's exercised authority over the lower creation, in contrast with his associate taken out of himself, his one meet companion, whose name he gave to mark the difference. Then in chap. 3 under the same name of the Creator in moral relationship, the Temptation and the Fall, the present result in death and ruin, but with the revelation of the Deliverer in the woman's Seed: a wholly new presentation of the truth on the moral side, and grace too rising above sin, not the platform of creation as in what preceded (ch. 1-2:3).

Who but the Supreme could have made known the majestic course of creation, and in terms as simple for the hearer as dignified for the Speaker? Was Adam, or any of his sons, the man to announce the solemn yet profound message of his trial and fall, and of the yet future triumph of the bruised Seed of the woman? These assuredly are not casual fragments or “separate documents,” but the words of the One Infinite conveying His mind on the immense foundations of divine truth, creation every whit good, and creation with its head ruined through sin and Satan till the Second man by redemption and in power vanquish the enemy, deliver those that believe, and reconcile all things to God's glory. The title is in the precisely right place. Had it been put as a heading to chap. i., it would have utterly marred the calm sublimity of the description. Where it stands, it is a suited introduction to the moral government that follows, while it seals the already accomplished grand material work, of the one true God; it shows us all coming to ruin that hung on the first man, and points to the Second and Last as the object of faith and destroyer of Satan.

Next in chap. 5 we have and here only, and most appropriately, “the book “ of Adam's generations. It says Elohim throughout, save in Lamech's prophecy where His government comes in, and therefore we hear of Jehovah. It is a summary of the ante-diluvian world. Who could have drawn it up but Himself?

Then in chap. 6:9 we read, “These are the generations of Noah:” where the fitting ground is given for his exemption from the flood, with his three sons and their wives; and “the book” of chap 5 would be out of place.

In chap. 10 we have “the generations of the sons of Noah,” but there collaterally rather than successively unless in measure and for special reason, in order to set out an entirely new thing, the separation of the nations, after their families and tongues, and in their lands. The moral cause is explained in chap. 11: 1-9; after which we find “the generations of Shem” in vers. 10-26, and those “of Terah” to complete the picture, and make way for Abram, the man of God's choice, call, and promise. Here we have, unlike any of those before, at least two genealogies side by side: the nations separate one from another, and the man separated to God with blessing and promise in him, and his seed natural or spiritual.

After Abraham's death in chap. 25, we have also two genealogies—vers. 12-18 Ishmael's, and vers. 19-26 Isaac's—of the flesh, and of promise.

In chap. 36, we have the generations “of Esau” still more pretentiously, ending in kings before there was such a ruler over the sons of Israel. Only it is untrue that the times of the Jewish monarchy, long after Moses' day, are spoken of. The kings of Israel are not alluded to historically; but not one had reigned in Israel when Edom had been thus ruled. To say the least, the eight named may all have reigned when Moses wrote. Did he not know from God (Deut. 17) that Israel would set up a king? if so, he had to charge Israel that he should not be a foreigner but a brother.

Chapter 37:2 gives “the generations of Jacob,” with Joseph the special object of interest and a plain figure of Him Who was rejected by His brethren and separated thence, but exalted of God and wielding the power of the throne over the Gentiles. In due time His brethren are brought to repentance and humiliation before His glory, and Himself made known to them. Even a mere man, to say nothing of a believer, must be a thoughtless reader of the O.T. in the light of the New, who fails to perceive the type of Christ rejected by His natural brethren, and condemned unjustly by the Gentile, yet the Interpreter of God's mind in humiliation, then raised to be the Savior of both Jews and Gentiles outside the land, and at last owned by His own people. So in earlier days was Isaac, the beloved son, after the figure of Christ's death and resurrection (chap. 22), shown us in Canaan only, and the bride brought across the wilderness for union with the heir of promise, to whom the father gave all that he had. Yet the others had gifts; none was forgotten. Ishmael lived before God, and had his twelve sons princes, as Esau had his kings, while the chosen family passed through the furnace and were oppressed in bondage for hundreds of years, Jacob himself typifying their wanderings and sorrows before their restoration and glory.

It is freely granted then that these genealogies are wholly different from those of human pride, and their style in harmony with God's book of beginnings, which adumbrate His ways even to the end of the age and of that to come. The misconception is that God deigns to write history any more than to teach science. But He has written the scriptures to make known Himself and His ways, as well as to let man learn himself as can be nowhere else save in His Son, the center, substance, and display of all truth. To Him all scripture testifies from Genesis to Revelation. Even these genealogies, which seem strange to literary men and furnish materials for all sorts of speculation to such as lack the key of Christ for all the word, in the midst of much variety of form, testify to one and the same writer, even Moses, and bear the stamp of future purpose as on God's part. Surely it is most important, that we should not fail to recognize His wise and holy mind, but grow in grace and faith and the knowledge of Him Who is our all, but the Judge of all that believe not to their utter and everlasting condemnation. “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me” (John 5:46).

Genesis 11:10-26: 3. The Crisis

From the detailed comparison of the genealogies in this book, let us turn to the humbling crisis at this stage of man's sad story. Very interesting it is to note that we are indebted for it to the book of Joshua. In its last chapter we have him making a covenant with the people after his farewell charge at Shechem to the assembled tribes. Thus carefully but in our eyes peculiarly does God order His word. Is it not that we may search and cherish every part of it? Who beforehand could have looked for such important information about the father of Abraham in the book of the conquest of Canaan? Who yet more surprisingly could have anticipated in the Epistle of Jude the account of Michael's contention with Satan? The effort to reduce scripture to the merely human or historical method is vain. Its divinely inspired character is wholly inconsistent with such an aim. Man may not believe God; but he gives Him the lie at his own peril, and must justly suffer if he does not repent.

It is then in Josh. 24 we read that Joshua said to all the people, “Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt of old on the other side of the river [the Euphrates], Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor; and they served other gods.” It is the first notice the Bible affords of idolatry; and this not when it began, but when it corrupted the immediate progenitor of Abraham. There was abundant and flagrant evil in the ante-diluvian world; but of serving other gods we never hear. Nor is there any hint of its existence after the deluge till scripture thus speaks of the fathers in Terah's day, though self will wrought strangely in the race generally and in Nimrod particularly. God was in none of their thoughts. Human association only drew out dispersion; and individual energy subjugated mankind, as it had the beasts previously.

The judgment of God abides in the confusion of tongues; and man's age dwindles with comparative rapidity down to the common standard that subsists. The obedience or gathering of the peoples is reserved for Shiloh. In Him indeed it is God's purpose to head up all things, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth. The entire universe shall find in Him the true center; and we who are His shall share His exaltation Who is the Heir, as He was the Creator, of all things.

But the enemy at this point is shown to have taken a new step of daring moment. He establishes himself as God in the worship of mankind; and so successful were his wiles that, when first told of the fact, we hear of its prevalence in the fathers of Israel. Blessed, said Noah, be Jehovah the God of Shem; but now we find the sons of Shem, and in the most favored stem, serving other gods. Had Ham been thus apostate, or Canaan, Shem's bondman, it were not so astounding. But no; it was not even haughty Japheth enlarging his border and in his earthly energy forgetting the only true God. It was Shem's descendant Terah, father of Abraham and father of Nahor; it was they that “served other gods.” This too was the fitting moment to show how grace had shone on Abraham, when he and his brother and his father were walking thus evilly, separating him to be a witness of the true God. So the sons of Israel knew that they themselves were called to be His people and witnesses since Moses led them out of Egypt. But it is precisely therein lay their danger of returning to what they were called out of. This Satan ever seeks as the enemy of God and man: how successfully when God is forgotten! And Joshua appreciated the danger.

Genesis simply states the fact on God's part and on Abram's, and even in this delays stating it till Terah was dead, when Abraham acted on it freely and faithfully, for he had been hindered as long as Terah lived. It is only when Joshua was near his departure that we learn the deplorable evil, to which Jehovah applied in sovereign grace the separative principle of His call, choosing Abraham to enjoy His promise, blessed and a blessing to all the families of the earth, as will yet be proved in the fullest way when Christ comes.

Let us consider the unclean thing as scripture treats it. The deluge left mankind with the strongest impression of the living God's hand. But they soon ceased to glorify Him as God and were unthankful. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and, changing the truth of God into falsehood, they worshipped the creature more than the Creator Who is blessed forever. Amen. When idolatry began, or by whom is not said, but that Terah and his sons were involved in it. Now in 1 Cor. 10:20 the apostle, citing Deut. 32:17, pronounces on what it really is, though the form may differ. The worship of the heavens and all its host, of the earth and the sea and their denizens, the serpent especially, or again of heroes and departed ancestors, or of fabulous beings and their images, soon laid hold of men's imagination, not only to shut out God but to debase their votaries to the uttermost. And no wonder. For both O.T. and New, as we have seen, declare that what they sacrificed they sacrificed to demons, not to God. Demons were in effect behind the idols. If the idols were nothing in themselves, the demons were an awful reality of subtle and malignant evil to the ruin of such as paid the idols reverence.

Man was corrupt and violent, as before the deluge. But it was an awful advance in rebellion against God, when men not only did without Him absolutely, but chose as their gods many and lords many those who were only mightier rebels than themselves. What a deadly insult to the true God!

How humbling that the lesson is lost on philosophizing linguists like Max Muller! In the second series of Lectures on the Science of Language (419425) he mildly deprecates the strong language of the Bible just cited, and misconstrues God's word in Acts 14:16 and especially in Acts 17:22-31. He admits a great amount of incontestable truth in “hard words such as idolatry and devil worship;” yet he “cannot help thinking that full justice has never been done to the ancient religions of the world (!) not even to those of the Greeks and Romans (! I) who in so many other respects are acknowledged by us as our teachers and models.” It is to be feared that a classical taste has not been acquired without the moral degradation which accompanies idolatry, and not least that of Greeks and Romans. Alas! it has ever been apt to dispose the youth of Christendom toward the not less real but more guilty idolatries of Popery and her Greek and Oriental rivals. Augustine was right in believing the inspired warning that demons exercise real mischief in connection with idol worship; he was deplorably wrong in thinking that it was better for professing Christians, as they would get drunk on feast days, thus to indulge in honor of martyrs rather than at the altars of Jove or Bacchus.

So Prof. M. contrasts the language in Acts with that in 1 Cor. 10:20, saying that the former “are truly Christian words” and that “this is the truly Christian spirit in which we ought to study the ancient religions of the world: not as independent of God, not as the work of an evil spirit, as mere idolatry and devil-worship, not even as mere human fancy, but as a preparation, as a necessary part in the education of the human race—as a race ‘seeking the Lord if haply they might feel after him.'“ Can infatuation or perversion be more complete? Fallen man has a conscience, which refers even in a pagan to God, and vainly sought satisfaction by sacrifices to the gods of its own imagining. Of this the apostle at Athens availed himself, by an altar “to God unknown,” to proclaim the true and only God. It is too plain that this learned man failed to see the perfect consistency of seeking to win the heathen by preaching the grace and truth of Him Whom they knew not, while sternly reproving the profane levity of the Corinthians in partaking of the table and of the cup at a Gentile temple, on the plea that the idol was nothing. The same apostle declares that to do so is communion with demons, and that he did not wish them to be in communion with demons. Think of Paul wishing them or any other Christians “to study the ancient religions of the world!” and to study them “as a preparation, as a necessary part of the education of the human race!” Such is the wisdom of this age, totally insensible to what God revealed to us through the Spirit, as it is to what the cross of Christ means.

Genesis 11:10-26: 4. Ages

The verse before us is a remarkable example of the manner of scripture which men are apt to mistake. Terah, it is written, lived seventy years, and begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran. So it was said, Noah was five hundred years old, and Noah begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The father's age was stated before naming any that were begotten. In neither case also was the elder named first but last, as the examination of other scriptures proves beyond just doubt. The first place in both cases was given to mark the special and spiritual honor God put on each respectively. We have already spoken of the relative seniority of Noah's sons. Here it remains to determine from scriptural facts that of Terah's family.

Now we are told in ver. 32 That Terah lived two hundred and five years. As the birth of his eldest occurred when he was seventy, it could not have been Abram; for he was but seventy five years of age as we are told in Gen. 12:4, when he left Charan, after Terah's death. He was not begotten therefore till sixty years after the firstborn. It would seem from the history that Haran was the eldest son, born when his father was seventy. Thereby we can understand how Nahor married Haran's daughter Milcah, his niece, and (if the Jewish tradition were reliable that Iscah and Sarah are the same) Abram did also. We also apprehend more clearly how the granddaughter of Nahor became the wife of Isaac, Abraham's son. Nor is it hard to explain why Sarah should be spoken of as his sister, seeing that Lot is spoken of as his brother, though strictly his brother's son.

Nevertheless I cannot but believe that the words of Abram to Abimelech (Gen. 20:12) point more naturally to Terah as Sarah's father by a second and later wife, as she was ten years younger than her husband. Scripture does not hide the facts which were at issue with the law given at a later day; but it is easy to see that the Jews might endeavor to soften or get rid of what was discreditable by a so called tradition, and might seek to confirm their wish by any phrase of scripture which could lend it color.

Abram then, though the youngest son, took precedence in God's mind and word through the grace that was shown him. “The last was made first": a principle applied frequently in Scripture, and in the N. T. even more distinctly than in the Old, though there we see it every now and then from the earliest book to the latest. Nor need any wonder that Abram should be thus honored. We have seen ample grounds for it already, and may observe more. In him God began a new headship, not like fallen Adam of mankind universally as they are, but of the faithful. He is the one of whom it is written that “he believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness” (Gen. 15). It is not insinuated that Abel, Enoch, Noah, or others did not believe God before; but in him the privilege of faith was first publicly established, being brought out in a striking manner, as exercised on a definite promise.

Abram had already been called out into separation by the appearing of the God of glory to him in Ur of the Chaldees; and it was to a very thorough separation from country and kindred and father's house. These associations might be and were the providential arrangements subsisting still, as the general rule for all mankind since the confusion of tongues, families, countries, and nations; yet Jehovah called Abram to come out of them all. And more was added, not only in Gen. 15 but in Gen. 17, which gave him, to say this only, a unique place, as the starting-point of that line of promise and testimony, which the apostle compares to the olive tree in Rom. 11, reasoning on it at great length not in this Epistle only but in that to the churches of Galatia. For it came to light first in his seed after the flesh, who, accepting law as their tenure, and consequently their own righteousness, lost everything in the face of the patient and persevering dealings of Jehovah and all possible healing measures till there was no remedy. Even the advent of the Messiah served but to aggravate and seal their ruin on the ground of their responsibility; for they utterly rejected Him, as they do still, till in the latter day they repent and say, Blessed He that cometh in the name of Jehovah. Self will be renounced and judged; divine mercy in Messiah, all their confidence, rest, and boast. Meanwhile during the gap made by their rejection there is secondly not only the remnant according to the election of grace, but the call of Gentiles who believe and (being Christ's) become the seed of Abraham and heirs according to promise. He who was raised up to bring out that which rises far above all such hopes, the mystery concerning Christ and concerning the church, the apostle of the Gentiles, is also the most careful to clear the promise assured to all the seed, not only to that which is of the law, but also to that which is of the faith of Abraham who is father of us all.

Who can be surprised then that God's word should place Terah's youngest son before his older brothers? The reader is left to search out the facts there revealed for his soul's profit, where those we find honored, who honor God, their haste confounded who doubt, and their faith confirmed who believe. How many and great are the errors of such as try to persuade themselves and others, that the Bible is to be treated like any other book! How could this if it be, as it claims to be, the word of God?

Genesis 11:27-28

WE have seen then the immense importance of what God was pleased to accomplish in the call of Abram. But that which accompanies it is not without its interesting instruction, as a brief notice may help to show.

“And these [are] the generations of Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begot Lot. And Haran died before the face of Terah his father in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldeans” (vers. 27, 28).

The order of the three sons of Terah reverses that of nature. Abram was in no sense the head of the family after the flesh, not even when his brother Haran died. The comparison of dates and facts makes it evident that Abram was the youngest of all, and as Haran was born when his father was seventy, so Abram only when he was one hundred and thirty years of age. His foremost place therefore was due to the choice of God.

We may dismiss the traditional dream (Ant. i. 7 § 2) which Josephus was too prone to interweave with inspiration, in order to aggrandize the head of the Jewish people and to commend him in the eyes of Greeks and Romans for wisdom and knowledge, as the teacher of monotheism to the Chaldeans, as well as of astronomy and mathematics to the Egyptians. He even quotes Nicolaus of Damascus, a contemporary of Augustus and therefore not long before his own day, for Abram's reign over Damascus, whither “he came with an army out of the land above Babylon, called the land of the Chaldeans. But after a long time he got him up and removed from that country with his people also, and came into the land then called the land of Canaan, and this when his posterity were become a multitude.” Yet all this is not only without but opposed to scripture, which, brief as it may be, gives us to gather with certainty that the delay was in Charran or Harran, not in Damascus, and that Abram had no “posterity” till a much later day. The fact that he had a confidential and chief servant, Eliezer of Damascus, is a slender guarantee of any conquest there, whatever trophy of victory Dean Stanley may have fancied with others (Jewish Church i. 9).

Nor can we entertain for a moment the Jewish tradition which tells of Abram faithful to the true God from his boyhood. That Terah and his family served other gods, we know on divine authority. That Abram, when at fifty years and trusted to sell the idols which his father manufactured, took in hand the practical measure of demonstrating to Terah the sinful folly of idolatry, is a story suited for the credulity of the Jew Apella, even without the legend of Nimrod's punishing Abram in the flames, and the fountain springing up to extinguish them, with a delightful garden, wherein were seen angels sitting and Abram in their midst. Truth needs neither fables nor more miracles to exalt man. It humbles even those whom it blesses to God's glory. “The God of glory (says Stephen, Acts 7:2) appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he dwelt in Charran.” Here is the truth of God in its simple and sure and satisfactory light. It was he that believed and acted accordingly. Of Terah we are told nothing which gives happy confidence. Of Haran, father of Lot and of Milcah, we only learn that he “died before the face of his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldeans “; he did not reach Charran, the halfway sojourn in the migration; he died before any left their common Chaldean abode. Nahor, it is evident, did not relinquish Ur for Charran till a later day; but there he stayed, so that he made it “his city” in Aram-naharaim or Paddan-Aram.

Wholly distinct was Abram, but it was the sovereign call of God that made him so. “Look unto Abraham your father (says the prophet), and unto Sarah that bare you; God called him alone, and blessed him and increased him.” Terah was of no account in this, nor even Lot though designated a “righteous man” in his day. But Abram was called “alone,” whoever might accompany him, or share less or more the blessing which was his rich portion.

Still we do not well to confound his singularly honored place, chosen and called out by promise to be father of the faithful, with that which is now distinctively given to the Christian as in Eph. 1 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, according as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love.” The difference in character is immense. It is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ Who blessed, not the God of any earthly father. Next, it is universal blessing and above all things of a natural sort on earth. Further, it has no connection with a land to be shown, or Canaan; it is a choice of us in Him Who is above every name. Then again it was not to meet the frightful departure of man when they gave up the true God for other gods who were nothing but puppets with demons behind them. There it was before the world's foundation, a choice not due to creature apostacy or any other evil in time, but flowing from God's own heart when no creature existed to affect it in any way. Nor was it simply to receive blessing or to be the channel for it to all families of the earth, but that we should be holy and blameless in His sight in love. He would surround Himself with partakers of His own nature and character, and this in love. Such was His choice in our ease; and this “through Jesus Christ to Himself.” What a pattern before Him “according to the good pleasure of his will unto the praise of the glory of his grace!” Could the true God rise higher than this ground and purpose?

Genesis 11:29-30

Not only is Haran's death “before the face of his father Terah” recorded, but the relationships the other sons contracted. We need not speculate on Haran's death. Enough for us to learn from this note of scripture how unusual it was for a son to die before his father's face in the land of his nativity. Had there been any divine lesson in the undisclosed details and facts, the goodness of our God would have given this also. It is as truly unbelief to imagine or to accept the imaginations of others, as it is to hesitate about the communications of the inspired word. Where scripture ceases to speak, let us learn to be silent. The attempt to conjecture is presumption, the refusal of it honors God and His word.

“And Abram and Nahor took wives: the name of Abram's wife [was] Sarah; and the name of Nahor's wife Milcah, a daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and the father of Iscah. And Sarah was barren; she [had] no child” (vers. 29, 30).

God takes a beneficent interest not only in the persons who have to do with Him but in their relations, especially in that which, of all natural ties, is the most important for a human being. It may have been that those here in question on either side did not yet know Him; but He at least knew the end from the beginning and guided in His providence those who were to play an influential part in the future dealings of His grace. He registers it in that word of His which endures forever. He would thus impress its gravity on all that fear Him for their own steps here below. He would have them above all to seek His guidance, now in particular since the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. For there His word assures a character of deeper intimacy than with a people chosen to be the theater of His direct government, or even with the fathers resting on His promises. Nor is it only that His word is thus adapted to our calling; for He has now also given us the Holy Spirit in the power of personal indwelling, to speak of nothing else, which could not be till sin was judged in the cross, and the Savior took His new place in heaven before God. Therefore if any one be in Christ, it is a new creation: the old things are past; behold, all things are made new. And all things are of God Who reconciled us to Himself by Christ.

Nor is this all. For the true and sound knowledge which grace gives us of God enables the Christian to vindicate Him as to the things of the old creation, instead of yielding to the teachings of demons which would put a slight on marriage or meats, as we read in 1 Tim. 4. Thus Satan may, to dishonor the Creator, affect a spurious holiness. But the truth delivers us from such reveries and insists that every creature of God is good, and that nothing is to be refused if received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. Now we know every barrier gone in Christ's death: not divine compassion only come down where and as we were, but ourselves free to draw near to God in His victorious love, proved to the full, efficacious and everlasting. Unbelief may mock Christ and His work; it must another day take the bitter consequence in the face of the amplest possible evidence to convince and satisfy. But faith is entitled even now to enjoy divine goodness, both in the heavenly sphere where Christ sits, and in the scene where He was rejected, and we still are in our weakness, waiting for the appearing of His glory. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, of whom in due time we are told so much comparatively; and this not only in the O.T. history, but in the profoundly instructive comment of the great apostle in N.T. doctrine. Of Milcah we hear but little. She was Haran's daughter and Nahor's wife, and as Gen. 22 and 24 inform us, mother of Bethuel and seven other sons. Bethuel was father of Laban and Rebekah, of whom so much is said there or afterward. No more of Iscah is known than that she too was Haran's daughter. But it is said here that Sarai was barren; she had no child. And this remained a painful fact for many years. Yet was she destined, after long patience of faith, checkered by some impatience of unbelief to bear Abram's heir, the child of promise. In Isaac should his seed be called, type of the “Child born” and of the “Son given” in Whose name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, yea, a type of Him even received from the dead in figure. Another woman in after years was to be His immediate mother (Luke 1) and she not barren, though a virgin of David's house when David's tabernacle was fallen down. Of her it was promised centuries before that Emmanuel should be born as He was, Who will assuredly raise up that ruin with every other that is for Jehovah's glory. Highly favored was that maiden, blessed among women in good sooth. But, as He said (and His words are spirit and life) to a woman who lifted up her voice in blessing the mother, “yea rather, blessed [are] they that bear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:27, 28).

Those who affirm, or introduce anything, are bound to furnish proof. The onus probandi lies entirely on such. A single scripture would suffice. Those who deny are entitled to do so till that authority be produced which to faith is an end of controversy.

Genesis 11:31-32

The chapter concludes with the interesting though brief notice here given of Terah and his household. It would be an unbelieving error to overlook the spiritual instruction that every Christian ought to derive from these words of the Holy Spirit. How indeed can men be blessed from above by that which they deem not only human, but even and often unreliable, haphazard and inconsistent, nothing more than tesselated and ill-assorted fragments of men's traditions? If we receive them as God's word, according to the Lord's teaching and example, we are entitled to look for divine light and certain truth as from no other book.

“And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot son of Haran, son of his son, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, wife of Abram his son; and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan; and they came as far as Charan, and dwelt there. And the days of Terah were two hundred [and] five years; and Terah died in Charan” (vers. 31, 32).

In order to the sure understanding of the case, we do well to avail ourselves of the light afforded in Acts 7:2-4, where Stephen interprets that which otherwise might easily be misunderstood. “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he dwelt in Charan, and said to him, Go out of thy land and kindred, and come into the land which I will show thee. Then he came out of the Chaldeans' land, and dwelt in Charan. And thence, after his father died, he removed him into this land in which ye now dwell.” The verses with which chap. 11 close give simply the historical fact. Chap. 12:1-4 give the clue to the failure in carrying out Jehovah's mind. So we saw in chap. 11:1-9 the hidden reason why the nations were formed and distributed after their families and tongues over the earth, of which we find only the fact in chap. 10.

The call of Jehovah was not to Terah but to Abraham, who was called to go out from his kindred as well as his country. Here we learn that he failed. For “Terah took Abraham his son,” &c. This was no right answer to the call of God. The consequence was that for the time it came to nothing. “They set out together,” kindred and all, “from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan.” But into the land of Canaan they came not. “And they came as far as Charan, and dwelt there.” But Charan was no more Canaan than Ur of the Chaldeans. It was an intermediate spot, and in no way the land which Jehovah was to show, and did in due time show Abram when faithful to His word.

But as yet a serious obstacle stood in the way. Abram obeyed only in part. Far from going from his father's house, his father who was not within the terms of the call took the lead, as indeed was but natural if he came with Abram. So we read not even that Abram took Terah, but that “Terah took Abram,” thus making the word of God of none effect. Faith is no compromise; it receives and obeys the divine word. Abram was called to break from all that seemed naturally, yea from all that was naturally, dear to him. His first duty was subjection to Jehovah's call, Who would assuredly show him the land according to His promise. And so it ever must be for faith. The call of grace is paramount; and faith confides in God, It is no calculation of interest or ambition, but as Heb. 11 puts it, at length “he went out, not knowing whither he went,” assured of God's love, wisdom, and power.

Whether Terah took up the call to Abram in his own strength, or Abram yielded to natural feeling and reason, we know not. But we do know that the attempt to unite the father's house with following the call was fatal to its effect. They might leave Ur, and reach Charan; but they got no farther. Terah died in Charan, aged two hundred and five years, Abram being now seventy-five years old. In the same year that Terah died, Abram departed out of Charan, “as Jehovah had spoken to him,” though Lot went with him.

Faith was now cleared of its drawback. “And Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother's son, and all the substance they had gathered and the souls they had gotten in Charan; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came” (chap. 12:5). The word of Jehovah was thus fully honored, and the result was simple, pure, and bright accordingly. For it was no longer man essaying only to hinder: God was obeyed. It is not now “Terah took Abram,” &c. but “Abram took Sarai,” &c. “They went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.” It was the walk of faith, separate to Jehovah, Abram blessed and a blessing. Providence does not fail to watch over the country and the father's house left behind. But this is God's matter, not Abram's. The believer is to go out to Him that called him.

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