XV. JEHOVAH’S COVENANT WITH ABRAM. (1) AFTER THESE THINGS. — After the war with Chedorlaomer. THE WORD OF THE LORD CAME (HEB., _WAS_) UNTO ABRAM. — This phrase, used so constantly afterwards to signify revelation, occurs here for the first time. The revelation on this occasion is made by night (Gen... [ Continue Reading ]
LORD GOD. — Not _Jehovah Elohim,_ but _Lord Jehovah,_ “Lord” being the ordinary title of respect. Usually Jehovah takes the vowels of _‘donai, “_lord,” but as the two words occur here together, it takes the vowels of _Elohim,_ whence the translation in our version, in obedience to a superstition of... [ Continue Reading ]
ONE BORN IN MY HOUSE. — This is a mistake. Those born in Abram’s house were his servants (Genesis 14:14). The Hebrew is, _the son of my house,_ my house-son, not born of me, but the chief of the house next to myself, and its representative. Eliezer was probably born at Damascus.... [ Continue Reading ]
HE BROUGHT HIM FORTH. — There is no reason for regarding this as a poetical description of a merely mental emotion. With his senses dormant, but alive to every spiritual impression, Abram feels himself led forth from the tent into the open space around, and is there commanded to count the stars. As... [ Continue Reading ]
HE BELIEVED IN THE LORD (IN JEHOVAH)... — We have here the germ of the doctrine of free justification. Abram was both a holy man and one who proved his faith by his works; but nevertheless the inspired narrator inserts this reflection, not after the history of the offering of Isaac, but in the accou... [ Continue Reading ]
LORD GOD. — Heb., _Lord Jehovah,_ as in Genesis 15:2. WHEREBY SHALL I KNOW THAT I SHALL INHERIT IT? — Jehovah had required Abram to leave his home in Ur of the Chaldees on a general promise of future endowment with the land of Canaan. Abram now asks this question, not from want of faith, but from a... [ Continue Reading ]
TAKE ME AN HEIFER... — This form of making a covenant was probably that usual in Babylonia, and thus Abram received the assurance of his inheritance by means of a ceremonial with which he was familiar. But in most ancient languages men are said to _cut_ or _strike_ a covenant, because the most solem... [ Continue Reading ]
AND WHEN THE FOWLS... — Heb., _And the birds of prey came down upon the carcases, and Abram scared them away._ Had there been a sacrifice the fire would have kept the vultures from approaching; but the bodies lay exposed, and Abram therefore kept guard over them, lest the purpose of the ceremonial s... [ Continue Reading ]
WHEN THE SUN WAS GOING DOWN. — The time described was the evening following the night on which he had received the assurance that his seed should be countless as the stars. He had then, in his trance, also asked for some security that Canaan should be the heritage of his posterity, and in answer had... [ Continue Reading ]
FOUR HUNDRED YEARS. — The exact duration of the sojourn in Egypt was 430 years (Exodus 12:40), and with this agrees the genealogy of Jehoshua (1 Chronicles 7:23).... [ Continue Reading ]
THAT NATION. — Had it been expressly revealed that the country that would afflict them was Egypt, the patriarchs might have been unwilling to go thither; but the reference to the plagues in the denunciation of judgment, and to the spoiling of the Egyptians in the promise that they should “come out w... [ Continue Reading ]
THOU SHALT GO TO THY FATHERS IN PEACE. — Abram’s ancestors had died in Babylonia, but the phrase, used here for the first time, evidently involves the thought of the immortality of the soul. The body may be buried far away, but the soul joins the company of its forefathers in some separate abode, no... [ Continue Reading ]
THE FOURTH GENERATION. — Heb., _dôr._ (See Note on Genesis 6:9.) As the four generations are identical with the four centuries of Genesis 15:13, we have here an undesigned testimony to the long duration of human life. So Abram was 100 years old when Isaac was born, and Isaac was 60 at the birth of h... [ Continue Reading ]
A SMOKING FURNACE. — The word really means the circular firepot which Orientals use in their houses to sit round for purposes of warmth. This one was wreathed in smoke, out of which shot “a burning lamp” (Heb., _a torch of flame_). For not two symbols, but only one, passed between the divided carcas... [ Continue Reading ]
THE LORD MADE A COVENANT. — Heb., _Jehovah cut a covenant._ Abram had divided the slaughtered animals, and Jehovah, by passing between them, made the whole act His own. THE RIVER OF EGYPT. — That is, the Nile. In the Hebrew the Wady-el-Arish, on the southern border of Simeon, is always distinguished... [ Continue Reading ]
THE KENITES. — An Arab race, found both among the Amalekites in the south (1 Samuel 15:6) and among the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulon in the north (Judges 4:11), and even in Midian, as Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, is called a Kenite (Judges 1:16). Balaam speaks of them as being a powerful na... [ Continue Reading ]