ing 'They entered into the same counsel.' A still farther confirmation of this sense is drawn from the term (35 palag) applied in ch. 10. 25, to this event and of which we have before remarked that it is distinctly paralleled in Ps. 55. 10, 'Destroy, O Lord, and divide their tongues;' i. e. distract their counsels. The view now given of the writer's meaning appears amply accordant with the declared design of heaven in effecting the event. This was to cause a dispersion of the multitudes congregated at Babylon; an end which did not require for its accomplishment the instantaneous formation of new lan

the utterance of the old, as should naturally lead to misapprehension, discord, and division. The dialectic discrepancies, however, thus originating, though perhaps not very great at first, would become gradually more and more marked, as men became more widely

words is that of unity of counsel and | mon Jarchi explains the words by saypurpose; that the builders of Babel in the outset of their undertaking not only had a common language, but presented the very spectacle of union to which, Paul exhorts the Corinthians, Cor. 1. 10, 'Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ve be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment;' and that the confusion consisted in breaking up this concord and splitting the multitude into various contending factions which could no longer cooperate together, but were obliged to separate and disperse them-guages, but simply such a confusion in selves in different directions over the earth; thus bringing about the very purpose of heaven which they had conspired to defeat. In support of this interpretation he appeals to the usage of the sacred writers in a number of passages in which this sense of the terms appears to be involved, particu-separated from each other, and by the larly as it respects the latter influence of climate, laws, customs, rewords. The office of words is to ex-ligion, and various other causes, till they press the inward thoughts, feelings, and purposes of the speaker; and to say that a company of men were all of one kind of words seems equivalent to saying that they were all unanimous in their counsels. A somewhat similar mode of diction occurs in other passages. Thus Josh. 9. 2, 'They gathered themselves together to fight with Joshua and with Israel, with one accord 2. As they journeyed from the East. (Heb. 78 5 with one mouth).' Ex. Heb. Dy in their breakings-up, or 24. 3, And all the people answered removings. The term is peculiar, bewith one voice ( p kol ahad, i. e. ing almost exclusively applied to that nnanimously), and said,' &c. So also kind of progress which is made by 1 Kings, 22. 13. This view of the wri- Nomadic hordes as they alternately ter's meaning we cannot but regard as pitch and strike their tents, and slowly highly plausible, and it is one decidedly advance with their flocks and herds favoured by several of the ancient par- from one region to another. The idea aphrasts. Thus the Jerusalem Targum, usually attached to the English term And all the inhabitants of the earth' to journey,' implying a more or less were of one language, one discourse, rapid passage from one place to anothand the same counsel. Thus too Solo-er, and that for a set purpose, is alto

finally issued in substantially different languages. As this is the simplest, so it is perhaps the most rational account of the confusion of tongues at Babel, an event in regard to which historically considered, it is probable there will always adhere some points of obscurity to task and to baffle the researches of the learned.

gether foreign to the genuine sense of the | the sea, unless for special reasons they original.-Commentators have found had been induced to take up their resi

dence in some suitable intervening country. And that this was the case in the present instance is the express assertion of the text. They stayed their course in the plains of Shinar. Now the country of Armenia, in some part of which the mountains of Ararat were situated, consists of two principal valleys or plains of inclination, viz. that of the Araxes towards the north and the east, and that of the Euphrates towards the south and the west; into one or the other of which flow all the streams of the country. In their descent into the plain country, therefore, the emigrants must have arrived, sooner or later, on the banks of one of these two rivers, and they would naturally have followed its course downwards, until they reached the point of their adopted residence. That it was not the Araxes on whose banks the company arrived is clear, the course of that river being not from the east but from the west; so that by following its

difficulty in satisfactorily accounting for the use of the phrase 'from the East' in this connection. As the mountains of Armenia on which the ark is supposed to have rested, are situated to the north of Babylonia, it might have been supposed that the direction said to have been travelled would have been southward instead of westward. To this it has been considered by some sufficient to reply, that Moses may here have spoken of these localities in a general manner, in reference to the country in which he wrote; from which as Shinar lay to the east, and the mountains of Ararat were probably conceived somewhat vaguely by him to lie still more remote in the same direction, he might have said, without designing to observe strict topographical accuracy, that they journeyed from the East. But we think a still more probable solution may be given free from such an apparent conflict with the letter of the text. It is a fact which will scarcely be questioned, that, at all times, popu-stream. they would have been led, not lation has extended into every country, in the first instance, along the courses of its rivers. The cause of this is the facility of passage, and the ready means of subsistence which are afforded by the banks of the rivers and the country adjacent.

into a plain, but into the mountainous country of Azerbijan, and ere long to the banks of the Caspian. It would seem therefore that the Noachide could not have done otherwise than reach the banks of the Euphrates, and follow the course of that river downwards; and one has only to look at a map of Asia to see that the direction of the Euphrates, that is, of its eastern branch the Morad, or eastern Phrat, is for a great distance almost directly 'from the east,' from its source to the point where it turns abruptly to the southward; whence passing through a break in the chain of Mount Maurus, it pours its waters into the plains of Mesopotamia. Viewed in this light the historian's words are perfectly reconciled with ge

Wherever, in the present day, newly-discovered countries are colonized, we observe the population and the cultivation of the land extending into the interior along the lines of the rivers. Regarding Noah and his sons then in the same light as we should regard any of their posterity, if placed in like circumstances, we may assume, that they descended from the place where the ark rested into the valley-regions below, and following the course of some stream which they would naturally meet with (as a val-ographical verity, even though it be ley generally supposes a stream), they would in process of time have reached

admitted that the sojourners afterwards turned, with the course of the river, to

3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they

had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

particular locality in that chain will absolutely answer to the above description.

3. Go to. A mere hortatory inter jection equivalent to our idiom 'Come, let us' do so and so.-¶ Let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. Heb.

ing. The practical remark of Calvin on these words is peculiarly appropriate. 'Moses would in.timate that they were not prompted to the work by the facilities that offered themselves; but that they were disposed to contend with great and arduous obstacles-a circumstance that went to enhance the greatness of the crime. For how could it be that they should thus wear and ex

the south-east. Now the Agridagh before mentioned, ch. 8. 4, as is well known, stands in the valley of the Araxes; and is further cut off from all communication with the Euphrates, by an intermediate chain of mountains, and also by a tributary of the former river. Its claims, therefore, to the hon-burn them to a burnour of being regarded as the place where the ark rested after the flood are far inferior to those of some elevation within the plain of inclination drained by the Euphrates. This precise spot it is now indeed difficult, if not impossible, to identify. But that such a situation was chosen for its resting-place as was best suited to accomplish the ends of the Most High in regard to the future settlement of the earth, is an infer-haust themselves in this laborious enence which we cannot well help drawing from the tenor of the whole narrative. It is not difficult to suggest a number of reasons to show that the land of Shinar was the centre whence a thorough and entire distribution of the human race over the face of the whole earth could be most readily and conveniently made; and as the val-who give way to their unhallowed lustley of the Euphrates was the route which, of all others, was the best suited to conduct the founders of post-diluvi-ever have been utterly unknown an society to the place so peculiarly fit- throughout the whole region of Babyted for their subsequent dispersion, we lon while the soil, even to this day, is are warranted in supposing that the remarkably well fitted for making brick stranding of the ark occurred at some and abounds with bitumen, both solid spot in the vicinity of that valley and liquid, to a degree unparalleled in whence the descent was easy and free any other quarter of the globe. 'The from the immense difficulties that must soil of ancient Assyria and Babylon,' have impeded the passage down the says Mr. Keppel, (Travels in the East, declivities of the lofty Agridagh. Some p. 73.) 'consists of a fine clay mixed with part of the range of the Taurus along sand, with which, as the waters of the which the Euphrates runs would seem river retire, the shores are covered. This to include the spot likely to fulfil this compost when dried by the heat of the condition; but only by personal inves- sun, becomes a hard and solid mass tigation can it be determined what land forms the finest materials for the

terprise, unless because they had set themselves in a frenzied opposition to God? Difficulty often deters us from necessary works; but they, without stones or mortar, do not scruple to attempt an edifice that should transcend the clouds! Their example teaches us to what lengths ambition will urge men

ings.'-As to the material itself it is notorious that stone quarries are and

4 And they said, Go to, let us | en; and let us make us a name, build as a city, and a tower, lest we be scattered abroad upon whose top may reach unto heav- the face of the whole earth.

a Deut. 1. 28.

the most inflammable of known minerals. In its most fluid state it forma naphtha; and in its most solid, asphaltum, the word by which the Septuagint renders the Heb. hhemar, the

beautiful bricks for which Babylon was so celebrated. We all put to the test the adaptation of this mud for pottery, by taking some of it while wet, from the bank of the river and then moulding it into any form we pleased. Hav- term answering to 'slime' in our transing been exposed to the sun for half anlation. It is usually of a blackish or hour it became as hard as stone'. So brown hue and hardens more or less firm and durable were these bricks, that on exposure to the air. Herodotus the remains of ancient walls which states that the Babylonians derived have been thrown down for centuries, their supplies of this substance from a have withstood the effect of the atmos- place called Is, the modern Hit, a small phere to the present day, and still re- mud-walled town inhabited by Arabs tain the inscriptions with which they and Jews on the western bank of the were impressed-a species of arrow- river. In its present state, the princiheaded character, which has of late pal bitumen pit has two compartments greatly excited the attention of the divided by a wall, on one side of which learned. The text will be best under- bitumen bubbles up and oil of naphtha stood by observing what materials are on the other. As it requires to be employed in those masses of ruin which, boiled with a certain proportion of oil whether belonging to the original city before it can be used as a cement it is and tower or not, are undoubtedly not much employed in building at the among the most ancient remains in present day. The inhabitants of that the world. These bricks are of two region make use either of pure clay or sorts, one dried in the sun, the other mud for mortar, or certain kinds of calburnt by the fire. When any consid- careous earth found in great abundance erable degree of thickness was required, in the desert west of the Euphrates. the practice in the Babylonian structures seems to have been, to form the mass with sun-dried bricks, and then invest it with a case of burnt bricks. The ruins exhibit evident traces of this mode of construction, although, in the course of ages, the external covering of burnt bricks has been taken away for use in building. -T Slime had they for mortar. Or more properly, 'bitumen had they for cement;' as the word in this place undoubtedly denotes that remarkable mineral pitch to which the name of bitumen is given, and which is supposed to have been formed in the earth from the decomposition of animal and vegetable substances. It is

4. And they said, Go to. We have here, if we mistake not, an instance of that trajection, or inverted order which is of such perpetual occurrence in Hebrew. As they would naturally counsel first respecting building the city before they thought of making bricks for the purpose, it cannot well be doubted that the verb here should be rendered in the pluperfect tense; 'For they had said,' &c. Let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, &c. Heb. 11 and

A common

his head in the heavens.
hyperbolical expression denoting an
exceedingly high tower-a sense that
exonerates the builders from the impu