Chapter XI: The Patriarchs (2)

Arrangements for the future are soon made. Joseph assures them that the best of Egypt’s land shall be given them, and insists that they hasten home and bring their aged father and their little ones――every thing they have――down to Egypt, because five more years of famine are to follow. Egyptian wagons――unknown to Jacob’s household――are sent, and the brethren are hastened off. Were they not a happy band? The great agony of fear is past; the surgings of anxiety and solicitude have ceased; the pungent convictions of that dread crime long ago against their younger brother have done their work, and wrought out “the peaceable fruits of righteousness.” This is a wonderful crisis in their life history. Let us hope that most if not all of them found God through these fiery trials and these penitent tears!

They are home again. The first thing is to break this strange secret to their father. They make just two points: “Joseph yet alive;” “Joseph Governor over all the land of Egypt.” It was too much――was too good to be believed. The English version has it, “Jacob’s heart fainted.” Better――“Jacob’s heart _remained cold_, for he believed them not.” It stirred no joyous and warm emotions, for he could not believe it. But when they told him all the words of Joseph, and especially when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, then his spirit rose; his heart waxed warm; he said: “_It is enough_; Joseph my son _is_ yet alive; I will go and see him before I die.”

Beersheba, the old home of his father Isaac, lay on his route. He stopped there and offered sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac. The night following the Lord met him in vision, saying, “I am thy God and the God of thy father; fear not to go down into Egypt, for I will there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into Egypt and will bring thee up again; and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes”――_i. e._ to close them in death.――――How tenderly appreciative of the circumstances and of Jacob’s need was this vision of Beersheba! Such are God’s blessed ways with his children. He can not send them into scenes of special danger or of critical interest, without some special manifestations of his presence.

II. We are to notice _the hand of God_ in this history in its twofold bearings:

1. As active in the sufferings and moral trial of the virtuous;

2. As manifested in his overruling control of the wicked to bring forth from their wickedness abounding good.

1. As active in the sufferings and moral trial of the virtuous.――――The most cursory reader of this story will see in it a striking case of the sufferings of innocence. Joseph, envied and hated for no fault of his; coming near to being murdered by his own brothers, and really sold into slavery――a slavery prospectively life-long and in a distant, unknown land; torn away from every thing dear in _home_, at the age of seventeen:――this surely was innocence subjected to the sternest suffering.

How do such things happen under the government of God? When they do happen, _what do they prove_?

a. Negatively: They prove that all the suffering in this world _can not be retribution for sin_. There may be great suffering which can not in any true sense be the punishment of great crime. The greatest sufferers are not necessarily and always the greatest sinners. Suffering is not graduated to crime.――――This lesson Job’s three friends were slow to learn. Even Job himself seems not to have learned it thoroughly, but was groping toward it, under the lessons of his own conscious experience. It may not be amiss to suggest here that Job and his friends reasoned _without the light_ which this history of Joseph would have given them if they had ever heard or read it. They either lived _before Joseph_, or too remote from these scenes to hear or in any way learn the lessons they teach.

b. Positively this case illustrates some of the ends which God aims to secure by permitting the sufferings of the good; _e. g._ to discipline them to patience under suffering, and to trust in God in the midst of darkness and in spite of it. Joseph’s slavery and prison-life in Egypt would have been simply miserable without this patience and this trust in the Lord his God. Suppose he had given himself up to fretting and chafing and dashing his head against the strong walls of his prison and to wrenching off the fetters with which they “hurt his feet” (Ps. 105: 18);――What could have come of such adjustment of one’s self to dark providences? Certainly not the sweet and blessed discipline which he did in fact get from his afflictions; certainly not the favor and the blessing of his God. Every thing in the future as before his eye was dark enough; but he knew there was a God of loving kindness above――a God who made no mistakes, yet whose purposes were often too deep for afflicted man to fathom, and therefore a God whom his children should learn to trust as certainly doing _all things_ well.

Again; the case serves to reveal God’s pity and his love in that he _goes with_ his children into their slave-life and into their prison-life with such smiles of favor, such tokens of his presence, as may well make them joyful in the most terrible affliction. As Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises within the cold, desolate walls of a prison while yet smarting under the Roman scourge, and with perhaps some prospect of sufferings more severe when another day should dawn; so Joseph found the Lord with him when he reached Egypt a slave; with him when cast into prison because he virtuously repelled a foul temptation to crime. God was there, proving to his servant Joseph that no surroundings are so dark that God’s manifested presence will not make them light――that no sufferings and no bereavements are so severe that God can not throw his smile upon the sufferer and fill his soul with overflowing joy!

Yet again; this lesson teaches that God uses means apparently rough and stern to prepare his servants for higher responsibilities and more signal blessings. We can not say what Joseph would have been if he had remained in the bosom of his doting father’s home through all those years from seventeen to thirty, instead of being in God’s school of suffering and trial; but it is safe to say that he made rapid strides forward in this school of God――in his knowledge of human nature; in his quick and manifest sympathy with every one in trouble; in his skill to gain the confidence of those about and above him; in his capacity for business; and not least in his living piety and his humble walk with God. His surroundings threw him roughly upon his own resources, and at the same time sweetly upon God’s resources; and in consequence he rose, as few men have even been fit to rise, from slave-life and from prison-life, to be the actuary of a great kingdom――the almoner of bread and of life to the nations of the then civilized world; and also to become one of the most exalted and spotless characters of all history. Are not the ways of God truly wonderful?

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_The ways of God toward Jacob_ must not be overlooked. We need not debate the question how far his sufferings were those of innocence, and how far he was criminally responsible for the lack of moral culture and the power of fearful depravity in his sons. Be this as it may, it was hard for him to lose Joseph――the one son who was a comfort to his heart among so many who were quite otherwise. Even after thirteen years his heart seems still to be sore with that great sorrow, so that when his ten sons say that Benjamin must go with them to Egypt, he exclaims, “All these things are against me”! And when at length he is compelled to consent, his words indicate that he bows to an inexorable fate rather than yields in sweet trust to a divine hand believed to be wise and kind, though utterly and inexplicably mysterious;――“If I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.”

Jacob lived to see the clouds of darkness lifted and rolled away. He lived to learn that all those things were _not against him_ by any means, but were in fact shaped of God to save his great household alive through a seven years’ famine; and (what is far more than even this)――were designed of God for the salvation of those sons of his whose wickedness had brought these sorrows upon him, and whom God had faithfully taken in hand to bring them to repentance. Had he not learned ere this that it was always safe to trust in his father’s God? Had not the Lord said to him, “I will surely do thee good”? As to being “bereaved of his children,” was not the covenant very definite: “A nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins”? (Gen. 35: 11).――――This discipline of the aged patriarch was sharp but wholesome. He might have said, “In faithfulness hast thou afflicted me.” The clouds of life’s stormy day cleared before sunset. It would be pleasant to hear, if we might, the experiences of his closing years when he came to understand God’s ways and to reap the blessed fruits of such chastening sorrows.

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These methods and ends of God in the discipline and culture of his people _reach onward into eternity_. The faithful here are the rulers there (Mat. 25: 21). Those who take God’s discipline kindly here and turn it to best account according to his thought and will, have their reward above. It is not needful that we know in their details what the heavenly responsibilities are, and what the dignities and the honors of those who have been faithful over a few things here; but we are safe in the belief that earthly discipline and culture are not lost attainments as to the after life.――――As one short day transferred Joseph from the prison-house of the kingdom to the lordship of that kingdom, so one day is long enough for the transfer of many a humble, suffering saint of God from dungeons of darkness and pain to palaces of royalty and bliss. In the story of Joseph these great truths of God’s administration with his people were breaking forth upon the minds of men by most interesting stages of progress.

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2. From these lessons in God’s ways with the righteous, we turn to other lessons pertaining to his _ways with the wicked_. This history of Joseph shows how skillfully and mightily God manages the wicked, making their wickedness work (wholly against _their_ purpose) to evolve abounding good.

We have seen how Joseph directed the thought of his brethren to these ways and designs of God. “Be not angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life.” “So now it was not ye that sent me hither, but God” (Gen. 45: 5, 7, 8). And again seventeen years later, after Jacob’s death, his brethren being apprehensive lest Joseph might then relapse into revenge, he said to them; “Fear not, for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Gen. 50: 19, 20). We should quite under-estimate Joseph’s knowledge of human nature and his sense of moral distinctions if we were to press his words to mean that God’s agencies in those crimes superseded theirs; lifted off their responsibilities and left them essentially faultless.――――The reason why Joseph’s remarks took this turn seems to have been this. He saw that conviction for sin had done its vital work in their souls; that they were apparently penitent and leaning toward the most severe self-condemnation――at a stage where it was both safe and kind to turn their attention to God’s hand as evolving good from their sin. In so far as we can have confidence in Joseph’s judgment as to their moral state, his words afford proof that his brethren were truly penitent, and at a stage where consolation might properly be suggested as some relief to their mental anguish.

The use which God made of the sin of Joseph’s brethren exemplifies his consummate, far-reaching wisdom. He knew all the future. He saw the coming famine; knew how to advance Joseph to the lordship of all Egypt, and to put him there just in time to garner up the surplus of seven years of overflowing abundance, and then dispense these stores of corn for the sustenance of thousands less provident throughout all Egypt and all adjacent countries. The resources of God’s providence, guided by such wisdom, are simply boundless. What can he not do when he wills to do it?――――The case is equally demonstrative of his _love_. Mark how he bends the great powers of his infinite being to the production of good, to multiply the means of happiness. This view of his character is doubly, yea infinitely precious when studied in its developments in a world, or rather a universe, _with sin in it_. If the Lord were obliged to say――I must content myself with the co-operation of the good, the unfallen, turning their agency to best account for the promotion of happiness; but as to the wicked, they are beyond my reach; I can do nothing with them; the evil they do must be endured as so much dead loss to the universe, never to be of any service toward virtue and happiness――the case would be, so far, one of unrelieved sadness. We may bless the name of our God that his resources of wisdom and power and the outgoings of his love are not thus limited. No indeed; some good results will be extorted from even those horrible crimes of Joseph’s brethren. Even the devil’s wickedness in which he exults as availing to frustrate God’s plans and to shake his throne, he will find at length to his everlasting confusion and shame, has been made, by the over-mastering wisdom, power, and love of God, to subserve the very cause he thought to break down, and to break down every thing he had vainly hoped to build up! For is not God wiser and mightier than the devil? The final result of the conflict will prove it.――――But it is in place here to note that this story of Joseph’s brethren and of God’s over-ruling hand in their case was shedding some rays of light on these previously dark problems, and therefore was indicating progress in the revelations of God and of his ways with sinful men.

Nor let us overlook this one other point――that the case evinces the consummate skill of God in managing the free moral activities of men without the least infringement upon their free agency and moral responsibility. We see this in the way they went into their sin――purely of their own free purpose――after their own envious and proud heart, although God had purposes to answer by means of this very sin. We see it still more, if possible, in the means he used to bring them to repentance; how he put his great hook into their jaws and brought them down to Egypt; took the pride out of them; pressed them with one calamity after another till they came to feel very weak before Almighty God; aroused their long slumbering consciences and kept their thought upon that long past, almost forgotten crime against Joseph――till at length they seem to have become thoroughly penitent. Only by legitimate means and influences, and only by such a use of these as still left their moral activities under their own responsible control――were these grand results reached.――――Thus we may take lessons in the masterly skill with which God’s agencies interwork with man’s, effective to the result he proposes because God is more and mightier than man.

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III. Taking a broader range of view, we may next study the purposes of God _in locating the birth of the Hebrew nation in the land of Egypt_.

Since God’s purposes never come to nought but are always accomplished perfectly, the ends he has in view being surely secured, it is safe to reason backward from known results to original purposes. It would amount practically to the same thing if we were to ask――What great results were actually secured by locating his people in Egypt when and as he did; by shaping their history as he did, and by bringing them out at length with his high hand and outstretched arm?

1. In answering these questions we may note that Egypt in that age stood at the summit of the world’s civilization, a fully organized kingdom, a great and highly cultured people. There is most ample proof that Egypt was then eminent above any other nation in learning, wisdom, science, and art; in jurisprudence, and in the administration of law; in industry and in wealth; in short, in all the main appliances and results of a high civilization. The antiquities of Ancient Egypt are the marvel of our times. Her temples, pyramids, and obelisks; her paintings and works of art, have come down to our age in most wonderful preservation, living witnesses to her ancient greatness. There was no other kingdom on the face of the earth where a man like Moses could have been educated and trained to become the law-giver of the Hebrew nation, or where such a system of civil law as God gave his people by the hand of Moses could have taken its rise and could have been understood, accepted, appreciated, and ultimately wrought into established usage and into the national life. We shall have occasion in its place to inquire how far the civil system given through Moses was borrowed from the Egyptian Code, and consequently how far the scenes of their Egyptian life prepared the way for the new national life instituted in the wilderness.

2. The plan of transferring his people from their nomadic, pastoral life in Canaan, to a settled residence in Egypt provided scope for all those developments which we have been studying in the history of Jacob, Joseph, and his brethren.

3. Yet more and greater developments of God’s mighty hand were provided for in the deliverance of his people from their bondage in Egypt; in his judgments on Pharaoh and his land; in the destruction of his hosts in the Red Sea; in the wilderness life of Israel during forty years; and at length in their location in the land of promise. All these points will come under review in their order.

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IV. _Some notice should be taken of ancient Egypt as affording confirmation to the historic accuracy and truthfulness of Moses in Genesis._

1. Moses assumes that Egypt had a king and a fully organized government. The evidence of this from Egyptian history and antiquities is too abundant and accessible to need citation.

2. Also that the people subsisted mainly by agriculture, not pasturage; that their soil was exceedingly fertile and the country one of great wealth. The facts on these points also are beyond question. The Nile has always made Egypt rich in soil and in agricultural productions. Its periodical inundations have sustained the fertility of that valley for thousands of years. Alternations of years of plenty with years of famine have been their common experience in all ages, though probably never so extreme and protracted as in the age of Joseph.

3. The history by Moses records the fact that in the early stages of this great famine the lands passed over largely to the crown, but were leased to the farmers for a certain portion (one-fifth) of the crops (Gen. 47: 20–26).――――Testimony from sources other than sacred proves these points. Herodotus was told by the priests of Egypt that the king gave each Egyptian laborer a square piece of land of equal extent and collected from each a yearly rent. Diodorus states that all the land of Egypt belonged either to the king, the priests, or the military caste. Strabo says that the farmers and tradesmen held their lands subject to rent. In the Egyptian sculptures as shown by Wilkinson, only kings, priests, and the military orders are represented as land-owners. [See “Hengstenberg and the Books of Moses,” pp. 62–70.]

4. The history by Moses makes an important exception in the case of the priests. Being supported directly from the royal treasury, they were not obliged to alienate their lands during the great famine and consequently continued to hold them (Gen. 47: 22). With this all profane testimony concurs.

5. This fact implies an organized priesthood as a favored and therefore powerful class in Egyptian society. Egyptian history confirms this and shows moreover that they were not merely priests, performing religious functions, but were the learned and scientific men of the nation; had charge of education; held in their body the art and the “wisdom” of the nation and performed largely the administrative functions of government. “The thirty judges (says Drumann) priests of Heliopolis, Thebes, and Memphis, were maintained by the king, and without doubt, the sons of the priests also, all of whom over twenty years of age were given to the king as servants; or, more correctly, to take the oversight of his affairs.” “The ministers of the court were in Egypt the priests, just as the state was a Theocracy, and the king was considered as the representative and incarnation of the Godhead.” (Hengstenberg, p. 68).――――It was by virtue of this usage that Joseph married into the class of the priesthood, Asenath his wife being a daughter of Potipherah priest of On (Gen. 41: 50).――――The reader will perhaps recall the striking analogy between the Egyptian system and the Hebrew Theocracy, particularly in the point that the ministers of religion were also ministers of civil law and prominent in its administration. The judges in the civil courts were taken chiefly from the tribe of Levi.

6. Joseph’s arraignment of his brethren――“Ye are spies; to see the nakedness of the land are ye come”――suggests an inquiry into the relations of Egypt to foreign powers. The suspicions of Joseph obviously assume a consciousness of great liability to foreign invasion. Such was the fact; and the reasons for it will readily appear. We have only to think of the powerful tribes scattered over vast Arabia, the Hittites and other tribes of Canaan and of the regions North and East――all stalwart men, all poor and subsisting on precarious supplies, yet possessed of fleet animals――horses, dromedaries, camels――with which they were able to move masses of men with great celerity. Let such men see the tempting bait of corn in plenty in Egypt, and the marvel is how Egypt could protect herself against sudden and formidable invasion. The monuments of her early history testify to her long and bloody wars with the Hittites and other tribes of Western Asia, often carrying the war into their country as a wiser policy no doubt than to stand behind her own walls on the defensive. Suffice it to say here that when those Asiatic countries were famishing for bread and it was well known there was corn enough in Egypt, the suspicion expressed by Joseph that those ten men were spies was not only natural but perhaps even a necessary measure of policy to satisfy the Egyptians. _They_ must naturally apprehend danger though _he_ might personally know that these men were harmless.

7. Sacred history drops this incidental remark――“For every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians” (Gen. 46: 34). To some extent this feeling was a natural outgrowth of their relations to the nomadic tribes of South-western Asia――to which we have recently referred. But there is some reason to suppose among them a certain special antipathy against the sheep, more intense than against any other domestic animal unless swine be an exception. They had so much respect for the cow that they made her and her species objects of worship. Although they attained great skill in the manufacture of linen, cotton, and silk, I meet with no allusion to wool. Woolen cloths are never found upon Egyptian mummies; linen and cotton were used.――――Some writers have supposed that shepherds were held in special abhorrence because their country had been conquered and ruled by a dynasty of shepherd kings from the North-east; but the precise date of their invasion and of their rule over Egypt is very much in doubt.

8. Both Joseph and his father were embalmed after death (Gen. 50: 2, 3, 26)――a service performed by the physicians. The antiquities of Egypt furnish most conclusive testimony to their skill in this art――a skill far surpassing that of any other people known to history. Great numbers of those embalmed bodies (“mummies”) have been found in Egyptian tombs within the present century, in perfect preservation. On this point the coincidences between sacred and profane history are striking.――――The practice was very ancient, some mummies bearing the date of the oldest kings. It was performed by a special class of physicians. In harmony with Moses, Herodotus and Diodorus state that the embalming process occupied forty days; the entire period of mourning seventy. Classic authorities give accounts similar to those in Gen. 50 of great mourning for the dead. The monuments contain representations to the same effect. Funeral trains, processions, of such sort as Gen. 50 records, are represented abundantly in the oldest tombs at Elithias, also at Sagguarah, at Gizeh, and at Thebes. (Hengstenberg’s Egypt and Moses, pp. 70–78).――――A coincidence so minute as this is noticed; that mourners forbore to shave their hair or beard; but none might appear ♦before the king unshorn. Consequently we observe that in the mourning scene of Gen. 50, Joseph does not come before the king in person but “spake unto the house of Pharaoh” requesting them to speak in his behalf to the king (Gen. 50: 4–6).

Quite in contrast with the usual oriental custom, women were exempt from seclusion and moved in society with apparently entire freedom. This appears in the family of Potiphar. The ancient sculptures and paintings found in their tombs give a very full view of the domestic life of the ancient Egyptians, no point of which is more striking than the high social position of woman and the entire absence of the harem system of seclusion. “The wife is called the lady of the house.” (See Smith’s Bible Dictionary, p. 677). According to the monuments the women in Egypt lived under far less restraint than in the East, or even in Greece. Wilkinson’s Egypt is full of testimony to this point (Vol. II., p. 389). Hengstenberg’s Moses, p. 24.

Sad to say there is abundant evidence from profane sources of a very lax morality among married women――of which the history of Joseph in Potiphar’s house is an illustration. Herodotus gives a fact in point: “The wife of one of the earliest kings was untrue to him. It was a long time before a woman could be found who was faithful to her husband. When at last one was found, the king took her without hesitation for his wife.”

Yet other points might be adduced of coincidence between the sacred and the profane records of Egypt as the former appear in Moses. The above may be taken as specimens. Most amply do they testify that the author of Genesis was entirely familiar with Egyptian life and manners. The sharpest and most unfriendly criticism has hitherto detected no point of discrepancy between these respective records――no point in which it can be made to appear that Moses wrote without well understanding the Egyptian life of which he speaks.――――The corresponding coincidences in Exodus will be suggested in their place.

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Some special passages occurring in these latter chapters of Genesis should receive attention.

_Jacob going down into Sheol to his son Joseph._

In Gen. 37: 35 Jacob, supposing Joseph to be dead, says――“I will go down into the grave (Sheol) to my son mourning.” The reader of the Hebrew text of Genesis has not met with this word before, and may reasonably expect to see its meaning discussed here.

In the outset it should be observed that these words can not possibly mean――My dead body shall go down into the grave proper, the sepulcher――there to lie by the side of Joseph’s dead body. He could not have meant this because the place of Joseph’s supposed dead body was entirely unknown to him. He had seen his bloody coat and inferred that Joseph was no doubt torn in pieces; _where_, he knew not; and whether devoured by flesh-eating animals he could not know. We must therefore reject this construction of his words.――――Plainly the Joseph he thought of was the undying soul. He expected at his own death to meet Joseph in that state or place which the Hebrews indicated by the word “Sheol.”

What is the primary significance of this word? What were the views of the ancient Hebrews in regard to its location and the state of its occupants?

The noun “Sheol” is made from the verb Shaal[25] having the sense, to ask, to demand; and conceives of the place as evermore demanding, insatiable; that which is never full; never has enough. The current Hebrew conceptions of the word may be seen in Prov. 30: 15, 16, and Isa. 5: 14, and Hab. 2: 5. “There are three things that are never satisfied; yea four say not, It is enough: the grave” [Sheol], etc.――――“Therefore hell [Sheol] hath enlarged herself and opened her mouth without measure; and their glory, and their multitude and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth shall descend into it.” “Who enlargeth his desire as hell” [Sheol] “and is as Death, and can not be satisfied,” etc.

As to the location of Sheol it seems clear that they thought of it as an _under-world_, as somehow beneath the surface of the earth. We see this in the case of Korah and his company (Num. 16: 28–34), of whom Moses said:――“If the earth open her mouth and swallow them up with all that appertain to them, and they _go down_ alive into Sheol [Eng. ‘the pit’], then shall ye understand that these men have provoked the Lord” ... “As he had made an end of speaking these words, the ground clave asunder that was under them and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up,” etc.――――We find the same view in Deut. 32: 22. “For a fire is kindled in mine anger and shall burn unto the lowest hell [Sheol], and shall consume the earth with her increase and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.”

In regard to their conceptions of Sheol as a state of being for the righteous and the wicked dead, it is easy to see that holy men of the oldest time lacked the clear light of the gospel age. Then it had not yet been said――“In my father’s house are many mansions”; “I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am, there ye may be also” (Jno. 14: 2, 3). They had not heard these words of Jesus――“This day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23: 43); those of Paul: “Having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better” (Phil. 1: 23).――――But the patriarchs did expect to “be gathered to their people”――the good men who had gone on before. This is said of Abraham (Gen. 25: 8); of Ishmael (25: 17); of Isaac (35: 29); and of Jacob (49: 29, 33). David said of his deceased infant child: “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.” Job said of that little known world――“There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest” (Job 3: 17), and yet he sometimes thought of it as intensely dark, for gospel light had not then fallen upon it:――“Before I go whence I shall not return, even to a land of darkness and the shadow of death; a land of darkness as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness” (Job 10: 21, 22). Conceptions of this state as well illustrating the fall and doom of wicked kings and kingdoms, tinged, it would seem, with the spirit of poetry, may be seen in Isaiah 14, and Ezek. 31: 15–18.

How far these notions as to the locality of Sheol are to be ascribed to direct inspiration, and how far to a merely human speculation, following the leading thought that the body _goes down_ and back to dust at death, it seems by no means easy to determine positively. We may be allowed to doubt whether the Lord intended to reveal definitely the _location_ of human souls after death. It was a point of the least conceivable importance; and moreover our knowledge of celestial geography may be yet quite too limited to admit of any intelligible revelation on this point.

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_Jacob’s benedictions upon his sons_ on his death-bed――more or less prophetic――present some points that call for special notice. Remarkably they seem in most if not in all cases to start from the then existing present, and to build their allusions to the future upon it. We see it in the case of Reuben――noted for his outrage of his father’s nuptial bed; of Simeon and Levi, whose history suggested their cruelty toward the men of Shechem; of Judah, whose name bore the thought of _praise_ and whose record in the case of Joseph put him at once in the front among his brethren; of Joseph, whose relations to his father and indeed to all the family had been surpassingly precious. The special address of Jacob to each of these was closely linked to their past history. The prophetic feature in all these cases seems to have been suggested by these salient points of their history. Reuben as the first-born might have kept his supremacy――if he had been worthy of it――but he was not. Simeon never rose to any distinction, and scarcely held any well-defined territory in Canaan. Levi came into prominence as the ancestor of Aaron and of Moses, and redeemed himself also by the religious zeal and energy of Phineas in a great emergency during the wilderness life (Num. 26: 6–13). The tribe were scattered in Israel, yet not in the bad sense. Judah and Joseph had each a future more resplendent and distinguished than any other of the twelve――their prominence in Jacob’s benediction being fully carried out through the history of their nation.

Some special passages and phrases should be briefly explained.

In v. 4, the phrase, “Unstable as water,” does not compare water to the solid earth or to more solid rock as treacherous to the foot and unsafe to stand on; but rather as bubbling, effervescing under heat or applied force――as therefore a fit image of ungoverned passion; of wantonness, impatient of restraint. Reuben had no moral stamina, and therefore could not hold his natural place of headship as the first-born――a moral lesson worthy of thoughtful consideration. A young man given to licentious indulgence can have no solid bottom to his character. The sagacious will never trust him.

v. 5. “Simeon and Levi are brethren”――of kindred spirit; “instruments of cruelty are in their habitation”; better, instruments of cruelty their swords are. Most solemnly does the dying patriarch disavow all sympathy with their cruelty!――――The phrase――“Mine honor” in the sense of myself――my nobler powers――is specially significant here, for their spirit was dishonorable, treacherous, basely cruel. Jacob had a sense of honor which utterly forbade all sympathy with them in this thing.――――In the last clause of v. 6, the English margin gives the sense of the Hebrew: “They houghed oxen.” They slew not one man only but man as a species; and cut the hamstrings of their cattle.

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_The benediction upon Judah_ (v. 10) stands unrivaled in importance and is not without difficulty. The main question is whether the word “Shiloh” signifies the Messiah, in the special sense of the Peace-giving One; or refers to the city of that name in Canaan. If it refers to the Messiah, the sense, the application and the fulfillment of the passage are facile and truly rich――thus: Judah shall head the tribes and give them kings until the Great Messiah shall come: then all the nations (Gentile and Jew) shall obey him――obedience rather than “gathering” being the best established sense of the word. It occurs elsewhere only in Prov. 30: 17.

No facts of Jewish history are better known than these――that Judah led the march through the wilderness, and that from David to Christ the scepter was in Judah――until the Messiah came, when it dropped from his hand. “We have a law,” (said the Jewish Sanhedrim in the age of Christ) “and by our law he ought to die”――_i. e._ for blasphemy. But under their law, capital punishment was by stoning (Lev. 24: 15, 16, and Mat. 26: 65, 66, and Jno. 19: 7). Having lost the power of life and death over criminals, they were compelled to take the case to the Roman authorities. _Their_ mode of capital punishment was crucifixion. Thus the “cross” stands through all the ages to prove that the scepter had departed from Judah and that the Messiah had come.――――But he came not only to die but to reign, and the nations of the wide earth are to bow to his scepter.――――Such is the construction of this passage, provided the term “Shiloh” refers to the Messiah.

That it does refer to him may be argued on two grounds:

(a.) This construction is facile, natural, and supported by analogous prophecies;

(b.) The other which makes Shiloh the name of a town in Canaan, labors under serious, not to say insurmountable difficulties.

(a.) “Shiloh” is derived readily from the verb Shalah,[26] kindred with Shalam, both words being in frequent use in the sense of being at peace and in rest; expressing good wishes for peace――_i. e._ for all prosperity――the noun from which might naturally mean the author of peace, as we see in Mic. 5: 4. Furthermore, this distinctive feature of the Messiah’s character and mission is the theme of Ps. 72 and of many passages in Isaiah, _e. g._ 9: 6, 7, and 11: 1–10, and 60: 18–22. These prophecies naturally follow the lead of this and therefore sustain the construction here given it.

Moreover, it is natural and highly probable that Jacob whose twelve sons were to found the twelve tribes of Israel and who knew that the Messiah was to come in the line of _some one_ of his sons, should indicate which. Noah had designated Shem: God had designated Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; now the choice is naturally made out of these twelve. That the long promised Seed was in Jacob’s thought is forcibly and beautifully suggested in the midst of these dying benedictions by the words――“I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord” (49: 18). In the sustaining hope of a coming Savior he had waited and trusted through many long years; for these words express the precious experiences of a life. As Jesus himself testified of Abraham, “He rejoiced to see my day,” hailing it joyously from afar, so Jacob witnesses of himself, “I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord.”

(b.) Those who give “Shiloh” here the geographical sense argue that in every other case of its use in scripture, it refers to the town of that name. This name for a town appears first in Josh. 18: 1, 8, 10, and often subsequently in Judges, 1 Sam., etc. But there is no evidence that in Jacob’s day it had come into use in geography. This usage, so far as appears, was long subsequent. Nothing forbids, therefore, that Jacob should use it simply for its significance――the Peace-giving One.

Again, the most marked supremacy of Judah began _after_ the nation had reached Shiloh. It is therefore bad history and very inept prophecy to represent Judah as holding the scepter _until_ the nation came to Shiloh; the fact being that he had not held it in the full sense previously to reaching Shiloh, but did hold it for many centuries after Shiloh had lost its pre-eminence as the religious capital. I see therefore no good ground for setting aside the Messianic interpretation of this passage. The argument in its defense is ably and fully drawn out by Keil in his Commentary, and yet more fully by Hengstenberg in his Christology, vol. 1. pp. 50–63.

_The less readable portions of Genesis._

We have passed several portions of Genesis with little or no notice; _e. g._ the genealogical tables, and some of the less important sketches of family and tribal history; _e. g._ that of Abraham’s sons by Keturah; of Ishmael, Esau, Laban, etc.

Of these less readable passages, let it be noted:

1. They are such as never could find place in a tale of fiction, gotten up in some later age to interest and amuse the reader. The fact that nobody finds interest and amusement in reading them now proves conclusively that no writer of fiction could possibly have concocted such chapters from his own fancy and have foisted them into a professedly ancient history. The men who forge books of fiction to pass them off as truthful history are careful not to put in unreadable chapters――void of rational or even imaginative interest to the men of after ages.

2. Consequently these passages are incontrovertible proof of the genuineness and real antiquity of these writings. In their time they had interest――just that interest which attaches to sober truth: none more or other than this.

3. The Scriptures were written with special adaptation to their first readers, and must include therefore those matters which had real value and interest _to them_, whether they would continue to have interest and value many thousand years onward or not. This fact, often overlooked, has many important bearings.

4. By far the greater portion of these historic books has a permanent interest and value to us and will have to their readers through all future ages. We see in these ancient books not only the earliest developments of human nature in the primitive society of the race, but also the earliest manifestations of God to men, and can trace their progressive unfoldings step by step, age after age by new methods and with clearer light as we move on toward the great era when God became manifest in human flesh.

5. It may well reconcile us to the annoyance (if such it be) of some unreadable portions that precisely these above all others afford us the strongest evidence of the genuineness and high antiquity of these entire books. They constitute an internal mark of antiquity and genuineness which by the laws of human nature never could be counterfeited. The man who should attempt to counterfeit such proofs that his fiction is true history would not prove himself very sharp save in the skill of spoiling his book and frustrating the only conceivable object of a fiction――for the sake of what?

We lay down Genesis, profoundly impressed that this oldest volume of human history is unsurpassed in simplicity and beauty, and wonderfully rich in its revelations both of man and of his Maker.