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23 Now therefore swear unto | I have done unto thee, thou shalt me here by God, that thou wilt do unto me, and to the land not deal falsely with me, nor with wherein thou hast sojourned. my son, nor with my son's son: 24 And Abraham said, I will but according to the kindness that swear.

d Josh. 2. 12. 1 Sam. 24. 21.

They seem to attach supernatural consequences to such an act, and to believe that the Almighty would resent having his name made subservient to earthly purposes. Their most solemn oath is, 'By God, and in God, and through God.'' Pict. Bible.

23. That thou wilt not deal falsely with me, &c. Heb. 3pn_ox if thou shalt lie unto me. An elliptical mode of speech in which an imprecation is to be understood; the complete sentence standing somewhat thus, 'If thou doest so, woe be unto thee,' or, 'The Lord will avenge the perjury.' The sense therefore is, 'Swear to me here by God, who, if thou violatest this compact, will avenge it, that according to the kindness which I have showed unto thee, thou shalt do unto me and my country.' Gr. 'That thou wilt not wrong me.' Chal. That thou wilt not hurt me.' Mr. Bruce, the traveller, came to a place, called Shekh Ammer, from the Arab Shekh, of which place he got a pledge that he should not be molested in his journey across the desest to Cosseir. A number of people afterwards assembled at the house. 'The great people among them,' says the traveller, 'came, and after joining hands, repeated a kind of prayer, by which they declared themselves and their children accursed if ever they lift

and to curse them that cursed him.' In making a covenant, therefore, with Abraham he was virtually making a covenant with the God of Abraham. (2.) The solemnity with which he wished the friendship to be confirmed; 'Swear unto me by God.' With this request Abraham complied though we cannot suppose that he needed to be sworn not to deal falsely; but as posterity was concerned, the more solemn the engagement the better. But why should covenants, promises, oaths, be necessary in the commerce of human life? It is, alas, for no other reason than that men are false, treacherous, and perfidious. The manners and customs of past times only serve to convince us, that in every age the corruption of man has been so great upon the earth, that ordinary obligations will not bind; that without the sanctions of religion neither the sense of honour or iustice or interest will avail to preserve men in a course of rigid integrity. No other argument is necessary to prove that our nature is depraved than the necessity of solemn appeals to the Deity, making 'an oath for confirmation an end of all strife.'-'Among the Arabs of the present day, the name of God is heard in almost every sentence they speak and it is not seldom invoked to give weight to the most mendacious assertions. But there is no peo-ed up their hands against me in the tell, ple who, with more fearfulness and awe, shrink, even in a just matter, from appealing to that great Name in a solemnly administered oath. Most Arabs would much rather lose a small sum than venture to swear in the name of God, however truly they might swear.

a field in the desert; or, in case that 1 or mine should fly to them for refuge, if they did not protect us at the risk of their lives, their families, and their fortunes, or, as they emphatically expressed it, to the death of the last male child among them.'

25 And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water, which Abimelech's servants had violently taken away. 26 And Abimelech said, I wot not who hath done this thing:

e ch. 26. 15, 18, 20, 21, 22.

neither didst thou tell me, neither yet heard I of it, but to-day.

27 And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech: and both of them made a covenant.

f ch. 26. 31.

25. Abraham reproved Abimelech, &c. That is, argued and expostulated with him. As they were now formally entering into closer terms of amity, it was proper that if there were any cause of complaint on either side, it should be mentioned and adjusted, that nothing which was past, at least, might interrupt their future harmony. Abraham accordingly makes mention of a 'well of water' which Abimelech's servants had violently taken away. In the hot and thirsty countries of the East, and to a man whose substance consisted much in cattle, a spring or well of water was of the utmost consequence; and to have it taken away by mere violence, though it might be borne from an enemy, yet it was not to be overlooked, where there was professed friendship. Happily, however, the good feelings and good sense of both parties prevented this offence from coming to an open rupture. The moderation of the patriarch appears plainly from the fact, that he had hitherto borne patiently with the grievance without attempting to right himself by force, although it is perhaps to be inferred from the emphatic term 'reproved' that he supposed the wrong had been at least connived at by the king. When men are disposed to peace, slight grounds of variance are easily overlooked; but where there is a disposition to quarrel, it is easy to magnify the most petty neglect into a gross affront, and to make even an unmeaning look the occasion of a breach.

26. I wot not, &c. This is the first time I have heard of the affair; had it

come earlier to my ears justice should have been done before. This was undoubtedly the drift of Abimelech's reply, in which he fairly and fully exonerates himself from blame. The wrong had not been done by him nor with his consent; it was the act of his servants, that is, his officers, who perhaps had pretended his authority for their unjust spoliation, than which nothing is more common among the minions and creatures of sovereignty. Subjects are wronged, oppressed, despoiled, and yet their grievances never reach the ears of rulers, because the oppressors find it for their interest to bar access to all voices but their own. Too often are not only the consciences, but the very senses of princes taken into the keeping of corrupt and unprincipled officials.'Public characters cannot always be accountable for the misdeeds of those who act under them, they had need take care, however, what sort of servants they employ, as while matters are unexplained, that which is wrong, is commonly placed to their account.' Fuller.

27. Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech. That these animals were intended for sacrifice seems probable from the last clause of the verse, which informs us that they both made, or, as the Hebrew has it, cut a covenant, i. e. made a covenant by cutting the victims in pieces. But why the sheep and oxen are said first to have been presented to Abimelech is not so clear, unless it were, that Abraham designed to do him greater honour by giving him the animals to

28 And Abraham set seven ewe-lambs of the flock by themselves.

29 And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What mean these seven ewe-lambs, which thou hast set by themselves?

30 And he said, For these sev

g ch. 33. 8.

offer before the Lord. As if duly mindful of his rank as a subject and desirous of showing a proper respect to the king, he seems to have studied to give him the precedency in the whole transaction.

29-30. Abraham set seven ewe-lambs by themselves, &c. Mr. Bruce, relating the manner in which the compact before mentioned (on v. 24), was made between his party and some shepherds in Abyssinia says, 'Medicines and advice being given on my part, faith and protection pledged on theirs, two bushels of wheat and seven sheep were carried down to the boat;' on which the Editor of the Pict. Bible remarks, that 'Although he seems to have received this merely as a present, yet it is not unlikely that the Arabs intended it as a ratification of the preceding covenant. At any rate there is throughout considerable analogy between the covenant of Abraham and Abimelech, and that of Bruce and the Arabs. The details of the remarkable transactions between Abraham and Abimelech which this chapter contains will be considered with the more interest when it is recollected that it affords the earliest recorded instance of a treaty of peace. Its terms and forms seem to show that such treaties were not then newly invented. The inability of nations or tribes to maintain a continual hostility with their neighbours must have rendered the necessity of such engagements apparent to the earliest generations of mankind. It has been suggested that the practice of giving and receiving belts, pipes, &c. when treaties

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31. Wherefore he called that place Beer-sheba. Or perhaps more correctly to be understood impersonally, called,' i. e. the name of the place was called, as the same phraseology evidently implies elsewhere. See Note on Gen. 2. 20. Heb. 8 the well of the oath, or, the well of the seven; from the seven lambs above mentioned. The Heb. word for swearing or taking an oath (

shaba), comes from the same root with the word which signifies seven, the reason of which some think to be that an oath was confirmed as by seven, that is, many, witnesses. The connection however between these two terms rests upon grounds difficult to be determined. As the original root for seven has the import of fulness, satiety, satisfaction, it may be that it is applied to an oath, as the completion or perfection, the sufficient security, of a covenant, that which made it binding and satisfactory to each of the parties. For a geographical account of Beersheba see on v. 14. There they swear both of them. Heb. were sworn. Swearing in Hebrew is always expressed in a passive form of speech, as if it were an act in which one is supposed not to engage voluntarily, but only as he is adjured, or has an oath imposed upon him by another.

32 Thus they made a covenant | grove in Beer-sheba, and called at Beer-sheba then Abimelech there on the name of the LORD, rose up, and Phichol the chief the everlasting God. captain of his host, and they returned into the land of the Philistines.

33 And Abraham planted a

34 And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines' land many days.

k ch. 4. 26. 1 Deut. 33. 27. Is. 40. 28. Rom. 16. 26. 1 Tim. 1. 17.

ted upon the correctness of our present translation, which makes Abraham the planter of the grove. But it will be observed, his name being in Italics, that the original is indefinite, and we incline to the opinion that it is one of those impersonal expressions alluded to above v. 31, and which are of such frequent occurrence in the Hebrew Scriptures. The writer's design, if we mistake not, was to say that in process of time, in consequence of the transaction above recorded between Abraham and Abimelech, a grove was planted on the spot which became a usual resort for religious worship, a place of the same kind with the Proseucha, i. e. oratorics or praying-places, which were afterwards so common among the Jews. It is perhaps some slight confirmation of this view of the passage that Abraham is said v. 34, to have sojourned many days in the Philistines' land; but Beersheba was not in the land of the Philistines, and why should his planting a grove in Beer-sheba be connected at all with his sojourning in another part of Canaan? Let the 33d verse be construed as we propose and included in a parenthesis, and the narrative runs free and unembarrassed.- -T And called on the name of the Lord. Heb.

33. And Abraham planted a grove in Beer-sheba. Gr. Planted a field.' Jerus. Targ. Planted a paradise or orchard.' The Heb. term 3 eshel is supposed by Rosenmuller and others to signify the tamarisk-tree and to be used here in a collective sense for a grove of tamarisks. Among the ancient versions some render it by oak or oak-grove, and others, like the English, simply a grove. It was probably designed in the first instance for the shading of his tent, and implied the hope of a peaceful, and the purpose of a protracted, residence at that place. But from the ensuing clause it would seem that it was employed also for religious purposes. The practice of using groves and forests as places of worship seems to have been common among all nations. The deep silence and solitude of forests render them peculiarly congenial to feelings connected with religious devotion. As the abominations, however, that characterized idolatrous worship might easily be concealed in groves, we find that the practice of offering sacrifices in such places was forbidden by the Mosaic law, Deut. 16. 21. Accordingly during various reformations which occurred under the reign of pious kings in Israel, they signalized their zeal by cutting down the groves where the kara beshem Yehovah, people burnt incense to idols. It seems which Shuckford maintains should be to have been an object of peculiar inter- rendered 'invoked in the name of the est in the Mosaic law, to render every Lord.' This however is not an unact of social worship a public transac- questionable construction, and it will be tion. No mysterious or secret rite, like sufficient to remark of the import of those of the Egyptians or Greeks, was the phrase here, as elsewhere, that it is allowed. Every religious act was per- equivalent to saying, that public worformed in the open view of the world.- | ship in general was performed in this The above remarks have been predica- i grove.

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