The Pulpit Commentary — Genesis — Section 270

EXPOSlTION. Ycrs. 14. 15.-And the Lord nid-spenk- seculum promittitur, non slmplicitcr 'notatur ing probnbl)· with e.n art.iculate voice; the perpetuitas, sed qure fin cm ncc~pit ht Christo" third occasion on which the patriarch wns (Ca.kin); and (2) unto ctcrnit:y, in so far as <lin•rtly addrosscd by God. 'l'he narrative, it wn~ 11 promise of e. spiritual mhel"itanca to however, does not affirm that there was any Abraham's believing children. 'l'hus ns the actual theophany-unto Abre.m-who could promise did not preclude the expulsion or readily recognise the voice which had twice unbelieving Israel from the !anti, so neither nkee.dy spoken to him. After the.t Lot we.a does it guarantee to existing Jews n returu separated f'rom him, Tims God approved that to the enrthly Paradise (Keil). separation (Poole), e.nd e.dminist.ered ~onsol- Ver. 16.-And I will m&ke thy seed as at.ion to the troubleo. heart of the patriarch the dust of the earth. "As the lnnd sho.ll (Cah-:in), though Dinne revelations are rather be great for thy people, thy posterity, so thy wont to be made to minds already quiet and people shall be great or innumero.ble for the ~edate (Lyra). Lift up now thine eyes. land" .(Lange). Afterwards the seed· of Perhaps a studied reference to the a.et of Lot, Abram is likened to the stnrs of heaven for which Moses describes in similar language multitude (eh. xv. 5). So that if a man can (,;er. 10), and possil.,ly designed to su~o-est number the dust of the ,earth, then shall the greater satisfaction wl1ich would be m1- thy seed also be numbered. • 11a.rted to the soul of Abram by the survey Ver. 17.-Ariee. According to a common about to be ma.de. And look from the place mode of Oriental speech, pleonai;tically where thou art. Between Bethel and Ai, affixed to verbs of going, going forward·, anti ou one of the mountain peaks (cf. eh. xii 8 ; of setting about anything with impulse xiii. 3), from whid1 a commanding view of (Gesenius, p. 727; cf. eh. xxii. 3; Job L 20). ,,]most the entire country could be obtained. Walk through the land in the length of it Northward-towards "the hills which dinde &nd in the breadth of it. To be unde1·stood .I udrea from the rich plains of Samaria" - not as a literal direction, but as an intima- and southward-as far as to the Hebron tion ·that he might leisurely suxvey ]}is in- ra.nge-anil eastward-in tl1e direction of heritance with the. calm DSsm-ance that it the dark monntain wall of Moab, down was ltis. For I will give it nnto thee. through the rich ravine which leads from the central hills of Palestine to the valley of Ver. 18.-Then -literally, and, acting the Jordan, and across that very "circle " immediately 11s the heavenly voice <lixected into which Lot has already departed with -Abra.m removed'-or rather pitched (cf. his flocks-and westwaril-literally, towards ver. 12}--his tent, a.nd dweli-settlccl· down, the sea. Cf. on the view from the stony made the central point of his subsequent but fertile plateau between Bethel 8.Jld Ai, a.bode in Canaan (Wordsworth)-in the-plain Stanley's 'Sinai a.nil Palestine,' eh. iv. p. -'~-~~.;!= oaks (Gesenius) or terebfot,hs(Cel- 218. For all the land which thou seest- sius); vide eh. xii. 6-of llle.mre...:.an Amori te i. e. the entire country, a pa.rt being put for chieftain who afterwards became the friend the whole-to thee will I give it. To and ally of Abi·am (eh. ·xiv. 13, 24), and· to avoid 1111 apparent conflict between this ·whom probably the grove belonged.,-whicli Dime declaration and the words of Stephen is in Hebron-twenty-two ·miles south of (Acts vii. 5), it is proposed by some to read the Jerusalem on the way to Beersheba, a town next clause as epexegetic of the present (Ains- of great antiquity, ho.ving been built seven worth, Bush); but the land was really given years before Zoan, in Egypt (Numb. xiii. to Abram as a nomade chief, in the sense that 22). As it is elsewhere styled l(irjath-arba, he/eacefully lived for many years, grew old, or the city of Arba (eh. xxiii. 2; xxxv. 27), an died within its borders (ClericUB, Rosen- and appears to have been so called until the miiller, 'Speaker's Commentary'), while it conquest (Josh. xiv. 15), the occlll"rence1 of was assigned to his descendants only because the name Hebron is regarded as a trnce of it had been first donated to him. Anil to post;M?saic authorship (Clericus, et alii) _; thy seed. Not his bodily posterity alone, but 1t 1S more probable that Hebron was the to whom the terrestrial Cana.an was given, original name of the city, and that it re- Lut also and chiefly his spiritual family, tr, ceived the appellation Ki'ljath-arba on the whom was made over that better country, amval in the country of Arba the Anakite, tvcn an heavenly, of which the land of perhaps dming the sojourn of Jacob's de- 1,romisc was a type. For ever. 'Adh 'olam scendants in Egypt (Rosenmiiller, Baum- (vik on eh. ix. 16) := in perpetuity; ie. (1) garten, Hengstcnberg, Keil, Kurtz). The to the close of that 'olam or period which place is called by modern Arabs El KhaW, was already measured out in the secret coun- the friend of God. And built there an altar 1els of Jehovah for the duration of the seed unto the Lord. of Abrnuam 11.B a people, "quum ten-a in en. :nu. 14--tR.1 'l'IIE BOOK OF GENESIS. 201