THE THIRD PERIOD. FROM THE CALL OF ABRAHAM TO THE GIVING OF THE WRITTEN LAW. According to the consentient testimony of all the Hebrew and Greek texts, as well as all other paraphrasts and versions, and of St. Paul himself, Gal. iv. 17, this period extends from the confinement of the Gospel Covenant to Abraham and his seed, to the giving of the written law, as a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ, four hundred and thirty years. According to the adjusted computation of this history, it extends From 2779 to 3209 of the Julian Period. From 1929 to 1499 before the true æra of Christ's birth. CHAPTER I. THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND JACOB. I. Why Eusebius makes the birth of Abraham the basis of his chronology.— Agreement of both Hebrew texts, the Septuagint and Josephus. - Abraham's faith. II. The patriarchal religion. - The Book of Job. III. The land of promise preoccupied. — Abraham takes possession by an act of sacrifice wherever the Angel-Jehovah appears to him; and then, on account of the famine, goes down to Egypt. IV. Return to Canaan. Separation of Lot. - The covenantsacrifice. Sarah's want of faith. — Circumcision instituted as the visible sign of the covenant. Ishmael. V. Birth of Isaac.- Infant circumcision. -- Persecution of the children of promise. — The offering up of Isaac.— Sarah dies before Isaac's marriage. — Abraham dies, not having received the promises. — Character of Isaac like that of Christ. Its difference from the character of his two sons. -Esau and Jacob compared. - Rebecca and Jacob punished for their fraud. Jacob became a good man, and died full of faith and blessed. - I. ROM the birth of Abraham, the computation of time FROM becomes clearer and better defined. For this reason, doubtless, Eusebius has made that event the basis of his chronology, and to it has attempted to adjust all other epochas.1 A. J. P. 2705. The Jewish and Samaritan Hebrew, the Greek of the Septuagint in both the texts which have come down to us, the Targum of Onkelos, and the Antiquities of Josephus, all agree that the patriarch removed, by divine direction, into the land of Canaan when he was seventy-five years old. St. Stephen adds, that it was after the death of his father. By this event the great design of God began to be accomplished of separating a peculiar people from the mass of mankind. Whether Abraham had always resisted the prevailing idolatry, as Josephus has affirmed, (Jos. Ant. lib. i. c.vii.,) is not expressly mentioned, though, from the language of Holy Writ, it may reasonably be inferred. But the Searcher of all hearts saw in his, that disposition which believes and obeys implicitly what it knows to be the will of God. The greater part of St. Paul's epistles are occupied with the proof that men are acceptable to God through faith, and not on account of their own works or deservings; for this obvious reason, that no man who has ever lived, the Son of God alone excepted, has been sinless. Every sin, however slight or venial, is in itself a forfeiture of all right or title to salvation as the reward of merit. "There is none righteous, no, not one.' But, in 1 Euseb. Pamph. Chron. Bipart. Pars Posterior. Ed. Aucher. Ven. 1818, vol. ii. p. 63. Ed. Mai. Milan, 1818, p. 265. It is impossible sufficiently to express the obligations which every_student of history owes to Eusebius. That he has committed errors, even his greatest admirers must allow; but to his research and industry we are indebted for our ability, with helps which he did not possess, to adjust the dates of the most recondite periods of profane history. He places the first year of Abraham in the forty-third of Ninus, king of the Assyrians, the twenty-second of Europs, king of the Sicyonians, and the first year of the sixteenth dynasty of the Egyptians. The discovery of "3 Champollion that Sheshonk, the head of the twenty-second dynasty, was the Shishac of Holy Scripture, has exactly corrected his Egyptian chronology. This will be seen hereafter in its proper place. Let us hope that the French and English excavations at Nineveh, and the studies of Maj. Rawlinson and other antiquarians to decipher the cuneiform inscriptions, may throw equal light upon the Assyrian Empire. 2 See Gen. xii. 4, 5. Jos. Ant. Lib. i. cap. vii. Acts vii. 4. There were two removals: first from Ur to Charran; secondly, from Charran, after the death of Terah, to Canaan. See Dr. Hales' Analysis, vol. ii. pp. 108—110. 3 Ps. xiv. 3. Rom. iii. 10. 6 the wondrous scheme of mercy, through a crucified Redeemer, God is pleased to accept of the principle of faith in the human heart in lieu of righteousness; and faith is, by the same apostle, defined to be the certain persuasion of what is now only hoped for, the undoubting conviction of the reality of that which we see not. The subjects of religion, though in harmony with the deductions of enlightened human reason, are such as do not properly come within our knowledge. The being and attributes of God, the possibility of mediation for sin, the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, the future state of rewards and punishments, can be known to us only from revelation; and this revelation has been given, not all at once, but by degrees and in succession -"at sundry times and in divers manners." " How far the revelation at each particular period extended, is a problem in theology of difficult, if not impossible, solution. We know not whether the views of the great plan of human redemption through Christ were clear or obscure. Our Lord himself has told us that "Abraham rejoiced to see his day, and that he saw it and was glad." It is enough for us, therefore, with the whole of revelation in our hands, to look back and see, that, from the beginning, it was the divine purpose to save men in and through Christ; that, to a certain degree, differing according to the extent of the revelation, the coming of the great Deliverer was foretold and foreshadowed; and that the great principle of faith was always the same, whatever might be the degree in which God communicated his designs and his will to man. In a word, it was that principle in the human heart which believes all that God declares because He hath declared it, and is disposed to obey all that HE commands because He hath commanded it. Rom. iii. 22. See Luther's vers. of Heb. xi. 1, and Cranmer's of the same. 6 Heb. i. 1. 7 John viii. 56. 4 II. Though married, Abraham was childless; and it was now the design of the Almighty to abandon all the existing races, in proportion as they first abandoned his worship and service, and, from the loins of one man, to create a new race, to whom the divine favour should thenceforward be confined. The nations now dispersed were not indeed immediately cut off from all intercourse with their Maker. Traces occur in the sacred history, during the whole of this period, of the original patriarchal worship offered to the true God; and wherever this existed, so far as it followed the order of his appointment, we must believe that it was accompanied by his blessing. Mechizedek, one of the kings in the land of Canaan, is expressly said to have been "the priest of the most High God," and to have pronounced a sacerdotal blessing upon Abraham. On this occasion, the practice of paying tithes to the patriarchal priesthood is, for the first time, incidentally mentioned; and on the fact that Abraham, the father of God's peculiar people, paid tithes to this priest and king, St. Paul founds his argument for the superiority of the priesthood of Christ, which was not after the order of Aaron, but after the order of Melchizedek.8 But the most perfect account of the patriarchal religion is given in the book of Job. He was, probably, a descendant of Nahor, the brother of Abraham, in the line of his eldest son. It is impossible to tell precisely at what period he 9 8 Gen. xiv. 18-20. Ps. cx. 4. Heb. v. 6; vii. 22. 9 Gen. xxii. 20, 21. See Bochart Geog. Sac. lib. ii. chap. viii. vol. 81, line 17. Such is the opinion of Bochart, a writer whose opinions are always entitled to respect. Yet there is no subject on which opinions are more discordant, than concerning the parentage and country of Job. Calmet thinks he was a descendant of Esau; but the book of Job appears to me to contain internal evi dence of greater antiquity. Dr. Hales thinks he was descended from Joktan, the younger brother of Peleg, who first colonized Arabia. But in what part of Arabia is the land of Uz? Here again authors differ. The whole subject is elaborately discussed by Dr. Good, from one of whose preliminary dissertations to his translation of Job, Dr. Robinson has extracted largely in his edition of Calmet, under Uz. lived; but it must have been between the calling of Abraham and the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt. The book itself bears internal evidence of very remote antiquity, and of having been written, if not by himself, at least in the country in which he resided.10 In this sublime poem, the object of which is to vindicate the ways of God to man, the evangelical doctrine shines forth with such clearness as to have led some into the unfounded belief that it was the production of a later age. The three friends of Job, who came to comfort him in his afflictions, are evidently believers. They utter the sublimest truths, but they apply them wrongly. Instead of comforting, they oppress him, and provoke him to speak unadvisedly. Stung by their reproaches and harsh judgments, he, who had at the first received with meekness the severe chastisements of God, is provoked to exalt his own righteousness and to justify himself rather than his Maker. For this he is reproved, repents, and is forgiven; whereupon God pronounces that he is far better than his censorious friends; and it is only at Job's intercession, and for the sacrifices which he offers on their behalf, that they are admitted to pardon. III. The land into which Abraham had come, and which, by God's special gift, was now reserved for his posterity, extended from the river of Egypt, the Shichor, to the mountains of Lebanon, from which flow the sources of the Jordan, and from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, or the great sea, westward." It was already possessed by the several colonies of the sons of Canaan, and by the Philistines, who were Bochart thinks it was a part of Arabia Deserta, the site or Ausite of Ptolemy. Bochart ut sup. and Ptolemæi Geog. lib. vi. c. 19. Dr. Good places it in Arabia Petræa, and is very positive that it could not have been in sandy Arabia. See Robinson's Calmet ut sup. Art. Uz, p. 910. " Gen. xv. 18, comp. with Josh. xiii. 3, xv. 4, and elsewhere. Reland has considered the question concerning the river of Egypt with his usual fulness of learning. Palæstina, tom. i. pp. 185-6. See Robinson's Calmet, p. 377, EGYPT, brook or river of, and p. 853, Sihor. |