The Pulpit Commentary — Genesis — Section 443

EXPOSITION. Yer. 4~.-And J"acob took a atone, and the designation. And Mizpah; - ,vatch- ,et it up for a pillar-or 11.fatzebah, as a tower, from Tsaphah, to watch. Mizpah ' memorinl or witness of the covenant about afterwards became tho site of a town in the to be formed (nr. 52) ; a different trans- district ~f Gilea~ (Ju~ges x. 17 ; xi. 11, 19, action from the piling of the stone-heap next 34)_; w~1c_h received its name, as the his- referred to (cf. eh. xxviii. 18; Josh. xxiv. tona.n mtimates, from the pile of witness 2i). erected by La.ban and his kinsmen and was Ver. 46. - And J'acob said unto hie later celebrated as the residence of Jephthah brethren, - Laban's kinsmen and his own (Judges xi. 34) and the seat of the sanctuary (vide i-er. 37) - Gather stones; and they (Judges xi. 11). Ew.i.ld supposes that the took stones, a.nd made an heap :-Gal, from mound (Galeed) and the watch tower (Miz- Galal, to roll, to move in a circle, probably pah) were different objects, and that the signified a circular cairn, to be used not as a me~uin~ of the (so-called) legend is that, scat (Gerlach), but as an altar (ver. 54), a while the former (the mountain) was piled witness (-.er. 48), and a table (ver. 54), since up by Jacob and his people, the latter (now it is added-and they did eat there-not the city and fortress of Mizpah on one of the imrncdintcly (Lange), but afterwards, on the heights of Gilead) was constructed by Laban conclusion of the covenant (vcr. 54)-upou and _his followers (vide 'History of Israel,' the heap. vo~. ~- p. 347);. but the "grotesquenes~" of Ver. 47. -And I.a.ban called it J'egar- tbll! interpretation of the Hebrew story 1s its sa.hadutha: -A Chaldaic term sigmfying best refutation-for he (i. e. Laban) said, "Heap of testimony," /3011vor;; riji; µ,aprvpiar;; Th11 I.ord~ehovah; a proof that vers. 49, (LXX.); tuinulwn test-is (Vulga.te)- but 60 are e. J ehovistic interpolation (Tuch, Jacob called it Galeed-compounded of Gal Bleek, Colenso, Kalisch) ; an indication of nnd •ed and meaning, like the corresponding their being a subsequent insertion, though Aramaic term used by Laban, "Heap of not warranting_ the inference that the entire wih1ess," /3ovvoc µ,ap,vc (LXX.); acervum history is a complication (Keil) ; a sign that testiinonii (Vulgate). "It is scarcely pos• henceforth Laban regarded Jehovah as tho sible to doubt," says Kalisch, "that an im- representative of his rights (Lange); but portant historical fact," relating to the primi- probably· only a token that La.ban, recog- tive language of the patriarchs, "is concealed nising Jehovah as the only name that would in this part of the narrative;" but whether bind the conscience of Jacob (Hengstenberg, that fact was that Aramaic, Syriac, or Chal- Quan-y), had for the moment adopted Jacob's dee was the mother-tongue of the family of theology (' Speaker's Commentary'), but ~ahor, while Hebrew was acquired by Abra- only in self-defence (Wordsworth)- watch ham in Canaan (Bleek, Delitzsch, Keil), or that between me and thee, when we are absent Laban had deviated from the original speech one from another - literally, a man from of his ancestors (Jerome, Augustine), or that his companion. If thou shalt afflict my Laban and Jacob both used the same lan- daughters, or if thou shalt take other wives gua"e \,ith some growing dialectic differences beside my daughters (Laban's concem for his (Go~an in Lange, Inglis), Laban simply.on daughters, though hitherto not conspicuous, this occasion giving the heap a name which may, in the hour of parting from them, have would be known to the inhabitants of the been real : his language shows that he was not district (Wordsworth), seems impossible to quite e.t ease as to Jacob's integrity. Per- determine with certainty. The most that haps the remembrance that he had been tho ean l.,e reasonably inferred from the term cause of Jacob's taking two wives made him Jegar-sahadutha is that Aramaic was the anxioue to secure that Jacob should not im- language of Mesopotamia (R~eenmiiller) ; prove upon his evil instructions), no man is besides this expression there ll! no oth~r with us ;-either then they stood apart from evidence that Laban and Jacob conversed m Laban's clo.n followers (Inglis); or his mean- different dialects; while it is certain that ing was that when widely separated there the word Mizpah, which was probably a~o would be no one to judge betwixt them, or spoken by Laban, is not Chaldee or Aramaic perhaps even to ohserve them (Rosenmiiller), but Hebrew. but...:..see, God (Elohim in contrast to man) Yers. 48-50.-And I.aban said, This heap is witD.ess betwixt me and thee. is a witness between me and thee this day. Ver. 61-53.-And I.aban said to laoob, The historian adding - Therefore was the -according to Ewald the last narrator has name of it called (originally by Jacob, and transposed the no.mes of Laban and Jacob :o.flerwards by the Israelites from this trans• (v-ide 'History of Israel,' vol. i. l'· 346)- f..~lion) Galeed (vide on ver. 21 ). 'l.'he atony Behold this heap, and behold tins pillar, e,,::~r~cter of the regiou may Lave eug 6e~ted which I have cast (samo word as in ver. 45. on. XXXI. 45-55.J THE BOOK OF GENESIS. 387