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of the two words in the original it is | yea for the king is it prepared; he hath clear that they are not literally applied made it deep and large: the pile thereof to designate the same things, nor is is fire and much wood; the wrath of the present phrase 'smoking furnace' the Lord, like a stream of brimstone intended to convey precisely the same doth kindle it.' Again, Is. 33. 10--14, idea with the phrase 'furnace of iron' when his own degenerate people are in Deuteronomy. The latter undoubt- more particularly the subject of the edly refers to Egypt as a scene of afflic-threatening, 'Now will I rise, saith the tion and bondage; but that the former Lord; now will I be exalted; now will has any such allusion is not to be gath- I lift up myself. Ye shall conceive ered from the import of the term itself, chaff, ye shall bring forth stubble: your nor is it in fact consistent with the de- breath as fire, shall devour you. And corum of the imagery. The smoking the people shall be as the burnings of furnace is described as passing between lime: as thorns cut up shall they be the parts of the slaughtered animals; burned in the fire :-The sinners in Zion but this was an action appropriate to are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised one of the covenanting parties, and to the hypocrites. Who among us shall him alone, or to his representative sym- dwell with the devouring fire? who bol and with what propriety such an among us shall dwell with everlasting act could be attributed to the symbol burnings?' In the great scarcity of of persecuting Egypt, which was no wood for fuel throughout the East, the party in the transaction, we are utterly tannoor or oven is usually heated with at a lost to conceive. Yet that the ob- stubble or chaff, and the rebellious Isject seen in the vision had a mystical raelites are here represented as alarmimport of some kind is beyond ques-ed at the idea of being cast into the tion, and this we know no other mode of determining than by comparing the figurative use of the term in other pla

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But here our resources are scanty, for there are not more than two or three passages in which any thing beyond the literal sense of the term, can be detected. Of these the principal are the following; Is. 31. 9, 'And he (the Assyrian) shall pass over to his strong hold for fear, and his princes shall be afraid of the ensign, saith the Lord, whose fire is in Zion and his furnace (775 tannoor) in Jerusalem.' As this is a denunciation of wrath to the enemies of Israel, the natural purport of the passage seems to be, that as the divine presence dwelt in Jerusalem, this was the seat and source from whence the judgments of Jehovah should issue against his adversaries. With this it may be well to compare the following equivalent passages, 1s. 30. 33, speaking of the same hostile power, the Assyrians, 'For Tophet is ordained of old;

oven of divine wrath which their own sins have furnished the fuel, the chaff and the stubble, for heating. John the Baptist utters a clearly parallel intimation, Matt. 3. 12, 'He will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into his garner: but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.' The 'unquenchable fire' in this passage answers plainly to the 'everlasting burnings' in that of the Old Testament prophet, and has moreover a direct reference to the words of Malachi, ch. 4. 1, where the coming of John the Baptist is announced as the forerunner of the great Messenger of the Covenant;' For behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven (725 tannoor); and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.' So also Ps. 21. 8, 9, 'Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies, thy right hand shall

intimation of the peculiar manner in which his indwelling in the midst of his posterity should be manifested. The 'burning lamp' is probably to be considered merely as an equivalent symbol, introduced in order more vividly to de

character of that visible manifestation by which the divine glory and majesty was to be displayed under the economy afterwards to be established among the chosen people. This is confirmed by a reference to the solemn rites wit

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find out those that hate thee. Thou the covenant and avenging God of his shalt make them as a fiery oven (seed, and that he now appeared in this tannoor) in the time of thine anger: the symbol in order to convey to him a preLord shall swallow them up in the time, of his wrath, and the fire shall devour them.' From all this we cannot avoid the conclusion that the 'smoking oven' is a designed symbol of the divine presence viewed more especially in its vindictive aspect; and in the passage be-pict to the mind's eye of the patriarch the fore us, instead of regarding it as pointing to the afflictions endured by Abraham's seed in Egypt, we rather look upon it as mystically shadowing forth the divine judginents visited upon Egypt. As far as it has relation to that persecuting power, it represents it rath-nessed at Sinai, where among other cirer as the subject than the agent of suffering. Nothing is more common with the sacred writers than to represent the Deity in his avenging dispensations under the emblem of a consuming fire, and in this connection it will be proper to bear in mind that in Sinai he appeared in mingled fire and smoke, in circumstances of grandeur and terror, of which the object seen in the vision of the patriarch was perhaps but a miniature adumbration; Ex. 19. 18, And mount Sinai was altogether in a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace.' So also when he manifested his wrath at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, it is said ch. 19. 28, that Abraham in looking toward the burning cities 'be-improbable. On the whole, we conheld, and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.' Add to this, that the standing symbol of Jehovah's presence in the wilderness was the pillar of cloud (or smoke) by day and of fire by night, and that on several occasions the temple is said to have been filled with the smoke of his glory, 1 Kings, 8. 10, 11. Is. 6. 4. Rev. 15. 8, and we can searcely fail to perceive that the object here exhibited to Abraham was a designed and appropriate symbol of the Most High, as

cumstances of the sublime and awful scene it is said Ex. 20, 18, that 'all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings (Heb. 3 lappidim, lamps), and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking.' mention of 'lamps' in connection with. the divine appearances is by no means infrequent, as may be seen by turning to Ezek. 1. 13. Dan. 10. 6. Rev. 1. 14. It has indeed been usual with commentators, especially on the ground of Is. 62. 1, to consider the 'burning lamp' in this place as an emblem of deliver.. ance, but as it is represented as passing between the parts of the victim, which was the act of a covenanter, this sense seems to be somewhat remote from the main scope of the vision, and therefore

ceive the grand drift of this symbolical transaction to be, to disclose to Abraham the leading fortunes of his seed through a long lapse of ages not only their bondage and afflictions in Egypt, but their subsequent establishment in the land of Canaan, the scene of the vision, as a nation of sacrificers, among whom the distinguishing symbols of the divine presence were to be fixed as their glory and their defence. Thus viewed the incidents here recorded assume a significancy and an interest of

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given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:

19 The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites,

At the same time, it is probably to be understood, though not expressly affirmed, that Abraham became so far a party to the covenant as to promise under the most solemn sanctions a general course of obedience to all the divine requirements.— -¶ Unto thy seed have I given. Gr. dwow I will give, on which the Jewish doctors very pertinently remark, 'He saith not 'I will give,' but 'I have given;' and yet Abraham had now begotten no children. But because the word of the holy blessed God is a deed, therefore he thus speaketh.'-¶ From the river of Egypt. Heb. D. Commentators are in great doubt as to the identity of this river. At first view it would unquestionably seem that the Nile is intended, as that river is clearly in several places indicated by this phrase But as it does not appear that the jurisdiction of the Israelites ever actually extended to the Nile, Wells, Clark, and others incline to the opinion that it denotes an inconsiderable river or brook falling into the Mediterranean at a small distance south of Gaza. This is supposed to be the same stream which is called by Joshua, ch. 15. 47, the 'Sihor,' corresponding to the supposed situation of which Dr. Richardson crossed the dry bed of a river, thirty yards wide, called the 'Wadi Gaza.' But we still think the former is the true interpretation. For (1.) a brook or small stream is never called in Hebrew, as here, nahar, but

18. In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, &c. Heb. cut a covenant; in allusion to the ceremonies above described. From what follows it would seem that these words contain more than a mere exposition of the drift of the preceding rites. Those rites indeed had reference to a covenant; they were designedly subservient to one; yet of the verbal stipulations of that covenant nothing thus far has been said. That part of the transaction is now related. It is spoken of apart from the foregoing, probably because it took place subsequent to the incidents there mentioned. The action of the furnace and lamp in passing between the pieces was performed as it were in pantomime or dumb show, while Abraham was entranced in a vision. But the actual engagement into which God was pleased to come with his servant was of too much moment, of too high an import, to be made with him in any other than a waking state. Abraham accordingly is released from his state of vision, and God thus proceeds to bind himself by covenant to make over, as by a solenin deed of gift, the whole land in which he then was, the boundaries and the present occupants of which are specified with great accuracy and minuteness. Though called a 'covenant,' yet it was mainly a stipulation on the part of God only; for which reason it nahhal. (2.) In Josh. 13. 3, the probably was, that in the previous vision his symbol only passed between the parts of the animals, while nothing of this kind is affirmed of Abraham.

destined boundary of the land of Israel on the south is said indeed to be the Sihor, which is before Egypt, but in Is. 23. 3. and Jer. 2. 18, mention is made

20 And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims,

21 And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

Now

CHAPTER XVI. OW Sarai, Abram's wife, bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, ban Egyptian, whose name was Hagar.

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a ch. 15. 2, 3. b ch. 21. 9. c Gal. 4. 24.

in their situation aud history. Out of the ten here mentioned only seven were actually subjugated, Deut. 7. 1. It is hence, with great probability inferred that the redundant three had, by the

either extinct or blended with other tribes, or had changed their names.

CHAPTER XVI.

1. Sarai, Abram's wife, bare him no children. Abraham had now dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and not withstanding his advanced age appears to have discovered no impatience for the fulfilment of the promise. It was now put beyond a doubt that he should become a father; but it had not yet been explicitly declared that Sarah should become a mother. We may suppose therefore that her feelings as a wife gave force to her concern about her

of the same stream under the denomination of yeor, river, which is the appropriated name of the Nile, as is known to every reader of the Hebrew Scriptures, it being but in a single instance (Dan. 12. 5—7) applied to anoth-time of the actual conquest, become er stream. Indeed Wilkinson remarks that yeor, river, is merely the Hebrew form of the Egyptian word JARO river, applied to the Nile. (Dom. Man. of Anc. Egypt. vol. I. p. 12, note.) It is no valid objection to this that the Israelites never extended their borders quite to the banks of the Nile; for (3.) It is doubtless the object of the divine speaker merely to designate in a loose and general way the two great rivers as the extreme limits within which the territory of the Israelites was to be included, though it might fall somewhat short of these limits on either side. In like manner in Is. 27. 12 and Jer. 2. 18, the Euphrates and the Nile are un-husband's glory and happiness, and doubtedly opposed to each other as the extreme boundaries of the possessions of the Hebrews. Moreover (4) in the time of David and Solomon all, or nearly all, the kings between these rivers were tributaries of the Israelitish kings. 2 Chron. 9. 26. 2 Sam. 8. 3. From the combined weight of the above reasons we feel little hesitation in assigning the Nile as the stream here intended by the river of Egypt.' As to the fulfilment of the promise respect ing the actual occupancy of this extended region, see Note on Josh. 1. 4.

prompted the weak and carnal expedient which is here described, and to which Abraham himself undoubtedly lent too ready an ear. Seeing at her time of life but little hope of seed in the ordinary way, she seems deliberately to have concluded, that if the promise were to be fulfilled it must be in the person of another. Accordingly, as unbelief is very prolific of schemes, she here proposes a measure evidently fraught with the most pernicious consequences. It implied a culpable distrust of God who had promised, and went to introduce a foreign, perhaps an idolatrous mother into the family of Abraham. It was a most unwise and inconsiderate tampering with her husband's affections,

19-21. Kenites-Kenizzites-Kadmonites, &c. So little is known of most of these nations or clans, that it will be sufficient to refer to the maps and Marg. Ref. for all that is important and it laid a foundation of probable, if

2 dAnd Sarai said unto Ab.am, | Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray

d ch. 30. 3. e ch. 20. 18. & 30. 2. 1 Sam. 1. 5, 6.

thee f go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain childreu by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.

f ch. 30. 3, 9. g ch. 3. 17.

in the same relation to Sarah, that Eliezer did to Abraham. Thus likewise Rachel and Leah, the daughters of La

not of certain domestic jealousies and quarrels. In a word, it was a direct doing of evil in the vain expectation that good might come. But let us con-ban, had their respective handmaids, sider the particulars.or female head-servants, Gen. 30. 3. In such cases the relation between the mistress and her servant was so intimate, that the children of the latter by the master were reckoned as those of the mistress, as appears not only from the present instance, but also in the parallel case of Rachel, Gen. 30. 3, 6, 8. So afterwards under the law, the children of the bond-servant were accounted the children of the master, Ex. 21. 4.

2. Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing. The acknowledgment conveyed in these words is almost the only redeeming feature of Sarah's conduct on this occasion. She owns God's providence in her childless

She had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. A bond-woman, a female slave, in opposition to a free woman, Jer. 34. 10, 11. Gal. 4. 22, who according to the usages of those times might be disposed of by her mistress Sarah as she chose, v. 6. She probably came into Abraham's family during his sojourn in Egypt, and may have been one of the 'maid-servants' presented by Pharaoh to the patriarch, Gen. 12. 20. Her name 'Hagar' flight, or a fugitive, we think with Mchaelis was not bestowed by her parents--for why should an Egyptian child be called by a Hebrew name?-but was one that accrued to her in process of time from the lead-condition, Ps. 127. 3, and yet well nigh ing event in her history here recorded. Multitudes of similar instances, as we have before remarked, occur in the sacred narrative. Her descendants were called Hagarites' or 'Hagarenes,' 1 Chron. 5. 10, rendered by the Gr. παροίκους strangers. From her, by Ishmael, the Saracens and Arabs were descended, and the word 'Hegira' applied to the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, comes from the same root, as does also 'Mohagerin' or 'Mohajerin,' fellow-flyers, the name given by the false prophet to the companions of his flight. She is said to have been handmaid or servant to Sarah, and not to Abraham, from its being customary in those patriarchal times, for the male and female departments of a family to be kept in a great measure distinct; and Hagar probably stood

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destroys the virtue of this confession by making the fact a plea for contriving some other means for the fulfilment of the promise! What a lively pattern do I see in Abraham and Sarah, of a strong faith and weak; of strong in Abraham, and weak in Sarah! She, to make God good of his word to Abraham, knowing her own barrenness, substitutes a Hagar; and, in an ambition of seed, persuades to polygamy. Abraham had never looked to obtain the promise by any other than a barren womb, if his own wife had not importuned him to take another. When our own apparent means fail, weak faith is put to the shifts, and projects strange devices of her own, to attain her end: she will rather conceive by another womb, than be childless : when she hears of an impossibility to

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