e

17 So Abraham prayed | of Abimelech, because of Sarah, unto God: and God healed Abin- Abraham's wife. elech, and his wife, and his maid-servants; and they bare children.

18 For the LORD had fast closed up all the wombs of the house

e Job 42. 9, 10. f ch. 12. 17.

easy to heap up a vast diversity of conflicting interpretations. But as we ait especially at the benefit of common readers, we shall, instead of encumbering our pages with an array of critical authorities, barely remark that we agree with Buxtorf in considering the original word a substantive instead of a verb, and that it is connected by the copulative and with 10 covering, so as to make the purport of Abimelech's language to be that he had given the money as the price of a veil and also as a means of reproof.

CHAPTER XXI.

AND the LORD a visited Sarah

as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken.

a 1 Sam. 2. 21. b ch. 17. 19. & 18. 10, 14. Gal. 4. 23, 28.

the blessings of salvation, which will infinitely overbalance any evils that they may have suffered through our

means.

CHAPTER XXI.

1. And the Lord visited Sarah. Heb. pakad; bestowed upon her the promised mercy. Chal. 'The Lord remembered Sarah.' 'Visiting' is attributed to God in a two-fold sense; (1.) That of showing mercy, especially in the fulfilment of promises; as, Gen. 50. 24, God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land.' Ruth 1. 6, That the Lord had visited his people in giving them bread.' Luke 1. 68,

་

17. So Abraham prayed unto God, and God healed Abimelech, &c. Abraham by his prevarication had brought distress on Abimelech and all his house-Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, hold. Being now humbled by the re- for he hath visited and redeemed his buke he had received, he prayed to God people.' (2.) That of inflicting judg for the removal of the judgments which ments or executing threatenings; as, he had been instrumental in procuring. Ex. 28. 5, 'A jealous God, visiting the By this means, as far as in him lay, he iniquity of the fathers upon the chilcounteracted and reversed the mischief dren.' Ps. 89. 33, 'Then will I visit that he had done. It is but seldom their transgressions with a rod.' Num. that we can cancel in any degree the 16. 29, 'If these die the common death evil we have committed; but if any of all men, or if they be visited after the way whatever present itself, we should visitation of all men; then the Lord embrace it gladly and put forth our ut- hath not sent me.' As the Psalmist most endeavours to undo the injury we assures us that 'children are an herimay have wrought. At all events, the tage of the Lord, and the fruit of the course adopted by Abraham is open to womb is his reward,' i. e. an heritage us all. We may pray for those whom from him and a reward given by him, we have injured. We may beg of God it is the dictate of a pious mind always to obliterate from their minds any bad to refer such an event to the special impressions which either by word or visitation of heaven, notwithstanding it deed we may have made on them. And takes place in accordance with the opif we find in them a kind forgiving spir-eration of established physical laws. it, we should so much the more re- But in the present case there was an double our exertions to obtain for them additional reason for recognising such

5 And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him.

h ch. 17. 1, 17.

6And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.

i Ps. 126. 2. Isai. 54. 1. Gal. 4. 27.

called upon to join with them in magnifying the Lord, who placeth the desolate in families, and causeth the barren woman to become a joyful mother of children.' The joy of such an event can be better imagined than described. The birth of a child is al

least to the mother's heart; what then must have been the solid, the heartfelt joy of Abraham and Sarah, on the birth of a son, the progenitor according to the flesh of the Saviour of the world, given by promise and raised up by miracle!

child to the painful rite of circumcision. Although as a parent and a man of humane feelings he must have shrunk from lacerating the flesh of a tender infant, yet his supreme deference to divine authority overcomes every natural instinct, and he does to his new-orn child 'as God had command-ways matter of unfeigned de ight, at ed him.' Nothing is of higher value in the sight of God than an implicit observance of his positive precepts, and a disposition to adhere with punctilious strictness to the letter of the command, neither failing nor exceeding in the rule of duty. This is peculiarly important in the matter of sacramental institutions, where, as we learn from the example of the Papists, human perverseness is prone to fabricate new observances, and enforce them by promises and threatenings equally unknown to the Scriptures. Well would it be were they as much intent upon performing what God has really enjoined.

5. And Abraham was an hundred years old. After all delays and difficulties the promised mercies of Heaven come at last. The child of hope, of prayer, of faith at length is born, and the previous years of patient waiting compensated an hundred fold. Moses again makes mention of Abraham's advanced age in order the more forcibly to excite the attention of the reader to the consideration of the miracle. What could afford a more illustrious display of omnipotence than the fact, that after a childless union of more than sixty years, they should now, when exhausted nature in its common course forbade all hope of offspring, find themselves the parents of a smiling babe! Well therefore may the reader of the wondrous narrative be

6. God hath made me to laugh, &c. Heb. pyn hath made to me laughter; i. e. hath given me occasion of laughter, by which she means simply rejoicing. 'A woman advanced in years, under the same circumstances, would make a similar observation: 'I am made to laugh.' But this figure of speech is also used on any wonderful occasion. Has a man gained any thing he did not expect, he will ask, 'What is this? I am made to laugh.' Has a person lost any thing which the moment before he had in his hand, he says, 'I am made to laugh.' Has he obtained health, or honour, or wealth, or a wife, or a child, it is said, 'He is made to laugh.' 'Ah, his mouth is now full of laughter; his mouth cannot contain all that laughter." Roberts. Comp. Ps. 126. 1, 2. The expression carries an allusion to Isaac's name (ph yitzhak) and to the circumstance mentioned Gen. 17. 17-19, on which it was founded. It is a mode of speech which not only shows how sincerely she recognised the propriety of Abraham's laughing on the occasion referred to, and how

7 And she said, Who would | great feast the same day that have said unto Abraham, that Isaac was weaned. Sarah should have given children suck? for I have borne him a son in his old age.

8 And the child grew, and was weaned and Abraham made a

་

1 ch. 18. 11, 12.

cordially she assents to the name thence bestowed on the child, but intimates also that God had made her, as well as Abraham, to laugh; which was in fact a virtual condemnation of her former incredulity. We meet in the prophets with some striking allusions to this incident where Sarah is considered a symbol of the church. Thus, Is. 54. 1, Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear,' &c. Comp. Is. 51. 2, 3. Gal. 4. 22-28.- All that hear will laugh with me. Will sympathize in my joy, and tender to me their congratulations. To this also, the prophet alludes, Is 66. 10. 'Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her; rejoice with joy with her;' where the Jerusalem mentioned is expressly said by the Apostle, Gal. 4. 22. 27, to be mystically shadowed out by Sarah.

9 T And Sarah saw the son of Hagar m the Egyptian, " which she had borne unto Abraham, • mocking.

m ch. 16. 1. n ch. 16. 15. o Gal. 4. 22.

primary idea of the verb is that of return, requital, restitution. How it came to be applied to the act of weaning a child it is difficult to say. As it is in several instances employed to denote the yielding or returning of fruits and flowers to the earth when fully ripened, Parkhurst suggests that it is used in like manner of a mother or nurse, who at the proper season drops the child, as it were, from the breast and returns it to the father; thus making out a striking resemblance between the animal and vegetable world. Adam Clark remarks that our verb to wean comes from the Anglo-Saxon awendan, which signifies to convert, transfer, turn from one thing to another; and hence to wean is to turn a child from the breast in order to receive another kind of nourishment. This is perhaps a correct view of the import of the English word, but when he says that this is the exact import of the Heb.

gamal in the text, the assertion is stronger than the evidence will warrant.

7. Who would have said, &c. It would have exceeded the bounds of belief; it could never have entered into the thoughts of a mortal. It is a virtual acknowledgment that God's merThe etymology of the term, cies are as high above our thoughts, as however, is not a point of any great they are above our deserts. Yet the moment, as there can be no doubt of fact had been previously announced not its being here correctly rendered. At only to Abraham, but also to her, and what time children were weaned among she was bound to believe it, strange the ancients is a question that admits and incredible as it might appear. of much dispute. 'Most oriental peoProbably she was now deeply abased ple,' says the editor of the Pictorial in her own eyes in view of her former Bible, 'suckle their children much lonunbelief. The church expresses a sim-ger than is customary in Europe, and ilar admiration, Is. 49. 21, 'Who hath begotten me these ?--Behold I was left alone; these, where had they been?' 8. The child grew and was weaned, &c. Heb. 27 vayiggamēl. The

the same custom may be traced in the Bible. When Samuel was weaned, he was old enough to be left with Eli, for the service of the tabernacle; in 2 Chron. 26. 16, nothing is assigned for the pro

thy of notice that we find the Gr. word for playing (raiovra), which is here employed, occurring also, 2 Sam. 2. 14— 16, in the sense of fighting; 'And Abner said to Joab, Let the young men arise and play (raižarwoav) before us,— And they caught every one his fellow by the hand, and thrust his sword in his fellow's side; so they fell down to

vision of the children of priests and Levites until after three years of age, which renders it probable that they were not weaned sooner; and in the second book of Maccabees ch. 7. 27, a mother says, 'O my son, have pity upon me that bare thee nine months in my womb, and gave thee suck three years and nourished thee, and brought thee up unto this age.' When the Per-gether.' On the whole there can be no sian ambassador was in England he attributed to the custom of early weaning the greater forwardness of our children in mental acquirements than those of his own country; where male children are often kept to the breast till three years of age, and never taken from it till two years and two months. The practice is nearly the same in other Asiatic countries. In India the period is precisely three years. But everywhere a girl is taken from the breast sooner than a boy in Persia, at two years; in India, within the first year. | When the child is weaned, the Persians make a great feast,' to which friends and relations are invited, and of which the child also partakes, this being in fact his introduction to the customary fare of the country. The practice is the same among the Hindoos.'

doubt that the Heb. phrase implies a contemptuous and malignant treatment, a bitter and sarcastic jeering, sufficient to constitute a very grave of fence. This is clear from the language of Paul, Gal. 4. 29, who says that Ishmael persecuted Isaac; and he is here specially designated as 'the son of Hagar the Egyptian,' to intimate that the predicted four hundred years' affliction of Abraham's seed by the Egyptians, commenced at this time in the insults and taunts of Ishmael, the son of an Egyptian woman. The fact would seem to be, that Ishmael, now a grownup lad of about sixteen or seventeen, and who up to the age of fourteen had expected to be the sole heir of his father, was not quite satisfied by being superseded in the inheritance by his younger brother, whom he does not appear

9. Sarah saw the son of Hagar the to have treated with all the consideraEgyptian-mocking. Heb. tion which Sarah required. Sarah, it metzahek; a word in this connection is evident, had little confidence in the of rather dubious import. It is derived promise of a son which had been made from the same root with Isaac (p to Abraham; and probably, until the tzahak) which signifies to laugh, and birth of Isaac, treated Ishmael as the here perhaps has the sense of laughing hope of Abraham's house, if not as her at, deriding. Both the Gr. and the own son. But the birth of Isaac made Chal. render by the word 'play'-'saw a great change in Ishmael's condition; the son of Hagar playing with Isaac;' and the change is quite conformable but by this can scarcely be understood with the usages which still prevail in the mere sportive gambols of children, the East, where the son of a female which would be too frivolous an occa- slave would certainly be superseded by sion for the adoption of such a harsh the son of a free woman, afterwards measure as Sarah proposed. We are born. Nay, this feeling goes further; rather to conceive of it as a wanton for, leaving slaves out of the question, teazing, something which in its own in Persia, if a man has more than one nature was peculiarly calculated to irri-wife-and he may have four, all equaltate and vex; and it is not a little wor-ly his wives in the eye of the law-the