CHAPTER IV
THE PATRIARCHS
Abraham had been born in "Ur of the Chaldees." Ur lay on the western side of the Euphrates in Southern Babylonia, where the mounds of Muqayyar or Mugheir mark the site of the great temple that had been reared to the worship of the Moon-G.o.d long before the days of the Hebrew patriarch. Here Abraham had married, and from hence he had gone forth with his father to seek a new home in the west. Their first resting-place had been Harran in Mesopotamia, on the high-road to Syria and the Mediterranean. The name of Harran, in fact, signified "road" in the old language of Chaldaea, and for many ages the armies and merchants of Babylonia had halted there when making their way towards the Mediterranean. Like Ur, it was dedicated to the worship of Sin, the Moon-G.o.d, and its temple rivalled in fame and antiquity that of the Babylonian city, and had probably been founded by a Babylonian king.
At Harran, therefore, Abraham would still have been within the limits of Babylonian influence and culture, if not of Babylonian government as well. He would have found there the same religion as that which he had left behind him in his native city; the same deity was adored there, under the same name and with the same rites. He was indeed on the road to Canaan, and among an Aramaean rather than a Babylonian population, but Babylonia with its beliefs and civilization had not as yet been forsaken. Even the language of Babylonia was known in his new home, as is indicated by the name of the city itself.
Harran and Mesopotamia were not the goal of the future father of the Israelitish people. He was bidden to seek elsewhere another country and another kindred. Canaan was the land which G.o.d promised to "show" to him, and it was in Canaan that his descendants were to become "a great nation." He went forth, accordingly, "to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan he came."
But even in Canaan Abraham was not beyond the reach of Babylonian influence. As we have seen in the last chapter, Babylonian armies had already penetrated to the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, Palestine had been included within the bounds of a Babylonian empire, and Babylonian culture and religion had spread widely among the Canaanitish tribes. The cuneiform system of writing had made its way to Syria, and Babylonian literature had followed in its wake. Centuries had already pa.s.sed since Sargon of Akkad had made himself master of the Mediterranean coast and his son Naram-Sin had led his forces to the Peninsula of Sinai. Istar of Babylonia had become Ashtoreth of the Canaanites, and Babylonian trade had long moved briskly along the very road that Abraham traversed. In the days of the patriarch himself the rulers of Babylonia claimed to be also rulers of Canaan; for thirteen years did the Canaanite princes "serve" Chedor-laomer and his allies, the father of Arioch is also "the father of the land of the Amorites" in his son"s inscriptions, and at a little later date the King of Babylon still claimed sovereignty over the West.
It was not, therefore, to a strange and unexplored country that Abraham had migrated. The laws and manners to which he had been accustomed, the writing and literature which he had learned in the schools of Ur, the religious beliefs among which he had lived in Chaldaea and Harran, he found again in Canaan. The land of his adoption was full of Babylonian traders, soldiers, and probably officials as well, and from time to time he must have heard around him the language of his birthplace. The introduction into the West of the Babylonian literature and script brought with it a knowledge of the Babylonian language, and the knowledge is reflected in some of the local names of Palestine. The patriarch had not escaped beyond the control even of the Babylonian government. At times, at all events, the princes of Canaan were compelled to acknowledge the suzerainty of Chaldaea and obey the laws, as the Babylonians would have said, of "Anu and Dagon."
The fact needs dwelling upon, partly because of its importance, partly because it is but recently that we have begun to realize it. It might indeed have been gathered from the narratives of Genesis, more especially from the account of Chedor-laomer"s campaign, but it ran counter to the preconceived ideas of the modern historian, and never therefore took definite shape in his mind. It is one of the many gains that the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions has brought to the student of the Old Testament, and it makes us understand the story of Abraham"s migration in a way that was never possible before. He was no wild nomad wandering in unknown regions, among a people of alien habits and foreign civilization. We know now why he took the road which we are told he followed; why he was able to make allies among the inhabitants of Canaan; why he understood their language and could take part in their social life. Like the Englishman who migrates to a British colony, Abraham was in contact with the same culture in Canaan and Chaldaea alike.
But when he reached Canaan he was not yet Abraham. He was still "Abram the Hebrew," and it was as "Abram the Hebrew" that he made alliance with the Amorites of Mamre and overthrew the retreating forces of the Babylonian kings. Abram--Abu-ramu, "the exalted father,"--is a Babylonian name, and is found in contracts of the age of Chedor-laomer.
When the name was changed to Abraham, it was a sign that the Babylonian emigrant had become a native of the West.
It was under the terebinth of Moreh before Shechem that Abraham first pitched his tent and erected his first altar to the Lord. Above him towered Ebal and Gerizim, where the curses and blessings of the Law were afterwards to be p.r.o.nounced. From thence he moved southward to one of the hills westward of Beth-el, the modern Beitin, and there his second altar was built. While the first had been reared in the plain, the second was raised on the mountain-slope.
But here too he did not remain long. Again he "journeyed, going on still towards the south." Then came a famine which obliged him to cross the frontier of Egypt, and visit the court of the Pharaoh. The Hyksos kinsmen of the race to which he belonged were ruling in the Delta, and a ready welcome was given to the Asiatic stranger. He was "very rich in cattle, in silver and in gold," and like a wealthy Arab sheikh to-day was received with due honour in the Egyptian capital. The court of the Pharaoh was doubtless at Zoan.
Among the possessions of the patriarch we are told were camels. The camel is not included among the Egyptian hieroglyphs, nor has it been found depicted on the walls of the Egyptian temples and tombs. The name is first met with in a papyrus of the time of the nineteenth dynasty, and is one of the many words which the Egyptians of that age borrowed from their Canaanitish neighbours. The animal, in fact, was not used by the Egyptians, and its domestication in the valley of the Nile seems to be as recent as the Arab conquest. But though it was not used by the Egyptians, it had been a beast of burden among the Semites of Arabia from an early period. In the primitive Sumerian language of Chaldaea it was called "the animal from the Persian Gulf," and its Semitic name, from which our own word _camel_ is derived, goes back to the very beginnings of Semitic history. We cannot, therefore, imagine a Semitic nomad arriving in Egypt without the camel; travellers, indeed, from the cities of Canaan might do so, but not those who led a purely nomadic life. And, in fact, though we look in vain for a picture of the camel among the sculptures and paintings of Egypt, the bones of the animal have been discovered deep in the alluvial soil of the valley of the Nile.
Abraham had to quit Egypt, and once more he traversed the desert of the "South" and pitched his tent near Beth-el. Here his nephew Lot left him, and, dissatisfied with the life of a wandering Bedawi, took up his abode in the city of Sodom at the northern end of the Dead Sea. While Abraham kept himself separate from the natives of Canaan, Lot thus became one of them, and narrowly escaped the doom which afterwards fell upon the cities of the plain. In forsaking the tent, he forsook not only the free life of the immigrant from Chaldaea, but the G.o.d of Abraham as well. The inhabitant of a Canaanitish city pa.s.sed under the influence of its faith and worship, its morals and manners, as well as its laws and government.
He ceased to be an alien and stranger, of a different race and fatherland, and with a religion and customs of his own. He could intermarry with the natives of his adopted country and partic.i.p.ate in their sacred rites. Little by little his family became merged in the population that surrounded him; its G.o.ds became their G.o.ds, its morality--or, it may be, its immorality--became theirs also. Lot, indeed, had eventually to fly from Sodom, leaving behind him all his wealth; but the mischief had already been done, and his children had become Canaanites in thought and deed. The nations which sprang from him, though separate in race from the older people of Canaan, were yet like them in other respects. They formed no "peculiar people," to whom the Lord might reveal Himself through the law and the prophets.
It was not until Lot had separated himself from Abraham that the land of Canaan was promised to the descendants of the patriarch. "Lift up now thine eyes," G.o.d said to him, "and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward, and eastward and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever."
Once more, therefore, Abraham departed southward from Shechem; not this time to go into the land of Egypt, but to dwell beside the terebinth-oak of Mamre hard by Hebron, where the founder of the Davidic monarchy was hereafter to be crowned king. It is probable that the sanctuary which in days to come was to make Hebron famous had not as yet been established there; at all events the name of Hebron, "the confederacy," was not as yet known, and the city was called Kirjath-Arba. Whether it was also called Mamre is doubtful; Mamre would rather seem to have been the name of the plateau which stretched beyond the valley of Hebron and was occupied by the Amorite confederates of the Hebrew patriarch.
It was while he "dwelt under the terebinth of Mamre the Amorite" that the campaign of Chedor-laomer and his Babylonian allies took place, and that Lot was carried away among the Canaanitish captives. But the triumph of the conquerors was short-lived. "Abram the Hebrew" pursued them with his armed followers, three hundred and eighteen in number, as well as with his Amorite allies, and suddenly falling upon their rear-guard near Damascus by night, rescued the captives and the spoil.
There was rejoicing in the Canaanitish cities when the patriarch returned with his booty. The new king of Sodom met him in the valley of Shaveh, "the king"s dale" of later times, just outside the walls of Jerusalem, and the king of Jerusalem himself, Melchizedek, "the priest of the most High G.o.d," welcomed the return of the victor with bread and wine. Then it was that Abram gave t.i.thes of the spoil to the G.o.d of Salem, while Melchizedek blessed him in the name of "the most High G.o.d."
Outside the pages of the Old Testament the special form a.s.sumed by the blessing has been found only in the Aramaic inscriptions of Egypt. Here too we find travellers from Palestine writing of themselves "Blessed be Augah of Isis," or "Blessed be Abed-Nebo of Khnum"! It would seem, therefore, to have been a formula peculiar to Canaan; at all events, it has not been traced to other parts of the Semitic world. The temple of the Most High G.o.d--El Elyon--probably stood on Mount Moriah where the temple of the G.o.d of Israel was afterwards to be erected. It will be remembered that among the letters sent by Ebed-Tob, the king of Jerusalem, to the Egyptian Pharaoh is one in which he speaks of "the city of the Mountain of Jerusalem, whose name is the city of the temple of the G.o.d Nin-ip." In this "Mountain of Jerusalem" it is difficult not to see the "temple-Mount" of later days.
In the cuneiform texts of Ebed-Tob and the later a.s.syrian kings the name of Jerusalem is written Uru-Salim, "the city of Salim." Salim or "Peace"
is almost certainly the native name of the G.o.d who was identified with the Babylonian Nin-ip, and perhaps Isaiah--that student of the older history of his country--is alluding to the fact when he declares that one of the t.i.tles of the Messiah shall be "the Prince of Peace." At any rate, if the Most High G.o.d of Jerusalem were really Salim, the G.o.d of Peace, we should have an explanation of the blessing p.r.o.nounced by Melchizedek upon the patriarch. Abram"s victory had restored peace to Canaan; he had brought back the captives, and had himself returned in peace. It was fitting, therefore, that he should be welcomed by the priest of the G.o.d of Peace, and that he should offer t.i.thes of the booty he had recovered to the G.o.d of "the City of Peace."
This offering of t.i.thes was no new thing. In his Babylonian home Abraham must have been familiar with the practice. The cuneiform inscriptions of Babylonia contain frequent references to it. It went back to the pre-Semitic age of Chaldaea, and the great temples of Babylonia were largely supported by the _esra_ or t.i.the which was levied upon prince and peasant alike. That the G.o.d should receive a tenth of the good things which, it was believed, he had bestowed upon mankind, was not considered to be asking too much. There are many tablets in the British Museum which are receipts for the payment of the t.i.the to the great temple of the Sun-G.o.d at Sippara in the time of Nebuchadrezzar and his successors. From one of them we learn that Belshazzar, even at the very moment when the Babylonian empire was falling from his father"s hands, nevertheless found an opportunity for paying the t.i.the due from his sister; while others show us that Cyrus and Cambyses did not regard their foreign origin as affording any pretext for refusing to pay t.i.the to the G.o.ds of the kingdom they had overthrown.
The Babylonian army had been defeated near Damascus, and immediately after this we are told that the steward of Abraham"s house was "Eli-ezer of Damascus." Whether there is any connection between the two facts we cannot say; but it may be that Eli-ezer had attached himself to the Hebrew conqueror when he was returning "from the slaughter of Chedor-laomer." The name of Eli-ezer, "G.o.d is a help," is characteristic of Damascus. More often in place of El, "G.o.d," we have Hadad, the supreme deity of Syria; but just as among the Israelites Eli-akim and Jeho-iakim are equivalent, so among the Aramaeans of Syria were Eli-ezer and Hadad-ezer. Hadad-ezer, it will be remembered, was the king of Zobah who was overthrown by David.
Sarai, the wife of Abraham, was still childless, but the patriarch had a son by his Egyptian handmaid, the ancestor of the Ishmaelite tribes who spread from the frontier of Egypt to Mecca in Central Arabia. It was when Ishmael was thirteen years of age that the covenant was made between G.o.d and Abraham which was sealed with the inst.i.tution of circ.u.mcision. Circ.u.mcision had been practised in Egypt from the earliest days of its history; henceforth it also distinguished all those who claimed Abraham as their forefather. With circ.u.mcision Abraham received the name by which he was henceforth to be known; he ceased to be Abram, the Hebrew from Babylonia, and became Abraham the father of Ishmael and Israel. The new rite and the new name were alike the seal and token of the covenant established between the patriarch and his G.o.d: G.o.d promised that his seed should multiply, and that the land of Canaan should be given as an everlasting possession, while Abraham and his offspring were called upon to keep G.o.d"s covenant for ever.
It could not have been long after this that the cities of the plain were destroyed "with brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven." The expression is found in the cuneiform tablets of Babylonia. Old Sumerian hymns spoke of a "rain of stones and fire," though the stones may have been hail-stones and thunderbolts, and the fire the flash of the lightning. But whatever may have been the nature of the sheet of flame which enveloped the guilty cities of the plain and set on fire the naphtha-springs that oozed out of it, the remembrance of the catastrophe survived to distant ages. The prophets of Israel and Judah still refer to the overthrow of Sodom and its sister cities, and St. Jude points to them as "suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." Some scholars have seen an allusion to their overthrow in the tradition of the Phoenicians which brought their ancestors into the coastlands of Canaan in consequence of an earth-quake on the sh.o.r.es of "the a.s.syrian Lake." But the lake is more probably to be looked for in the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf than in the valley of the Jordan.
The vale of Siddim, and "the cities of the plain," stood at the northern end of the Dead Sea. Here were the "slime-pits" from which the naphtha was extracted, and which caused the defeat of the Canaanitish princes by the Babylonian army. The legend which placed the pillar of salt into which Lot"s wife was changed at the southern extremity of the Dead Sea was of late origin, probably not earlier than the days when Herod built his fortress of Machaerus on the impregnable cliffs of Moab, and the name of Gebel Usdum, given by the modern Arabs to one of the mountain-summits to the south of the sea proves nothing as to the site of the city of Sodom. Names in the east are readily transferred from one locality to another, and a mountain is not the same as a city in a plain.
There are two sufficient reasons why it is to the north rather than to the south that we must look for the remains of the doomed cities, among the numerous tumuli which rise above the rich and fertile plain in the neighbourhood of Jericho, where the ancient "slime-pits" can still be traced. Geology has taught us that throughout the historical period the Dead Sea and the country immediately to the south of it have undergone no change. What the lake is to-day, it must have been in the days of Abraham. It has neither grown nor shrunk in size, and the barren salt with which it poisons the ground must have equally poisoned it then. No fertile valley, like the vale of Siddim, could have existed in the south; no prosperous Canaanitish cities could have grown up among the desolate tracts of the southern wilderness. As we are expressly told in the Book of Numbers (xiii. 29), the Canaanites dwelt only "by the coast of Jordan," not in the desert far beyond the reach of the fertilizing stream.
But there is another reason which excludes the southern site. "When Abraham got up early in the morning," we are told, "he looked towards Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace."
Such a sight was possible from the hills of Hebron; if the country lay at the northern end of the Dead Sea, it would have been impossible had it been south of it.
Moreover, the northern situation of the cities alone agrees with the geography of Genesis. When the Babylonian invaders had turned northwards after smiting the Amalekites of the desert south of the Dead Sea, they did not fall in with the forces of the king of Sodom and his allies until they had first pa.s.sed "the Amorites that dwelt in Hazezon-tamar."
Hazezon-tamar, as we learn from the Second Book of Chronicles (xx. 2), was the later En-gedi, "the Spring of the Kid," and En-gedi lay on the western sh.o.r.e of the Dead Sea midway between its northern and southern extremities.
In the warm, soft valley of the Jordan, accordingly, where a sub-tropical vegetation springs luxuriantly out of the fertile ground and the river plunges into the Dead Sea as into a tomb, the nations of Ammon and Moab were born. It was a fitting spot, in close proximity as it was to the countries which thereafter bore their names. From the mountain above Zoar, Lot could look across to the blue hills of Moab and the distant plateau of Ammon.
Meanwhile Abraham had quitted Mamre and again turned his steps towards the south. This time it was at Gerar, between the sanctuary of Kadesh-barnea and Shur the "wall" of Egypt that he sojourned. Kadesh has been found again in our own days by the united efforts of Dr. John Rowlands and Dr. Clay Trumbull in the shelter of a block of mountains which rise to the south of the desert of Beer-sheba. The spring of clear and abundant water which gushes forth in their midst was the En-Mishpat--"the spring where judgments were p.r.o.nounced"--of early times, and is still called "Ain-Qadis, "the spring of Kadesh." Gerar is the modern Umm el-Jerar, now desolate and barren, all that remains of its past being a lofty mound of rubbish and a ma.s.s of potsherds. It lies a few hours only to the south of Gaza.
Here Isaac was born and circ.u.mcised, and here Ishmael and Hagar were cast forth into the wilderness and went to dwell in the desert of Paran.
The territory of Gerar extended to Beer-sheba, "the well of the oath,"
where Abraham"s servants digged a well, and Abimelech, king of Gerar, confirmed his possession of it by an oath. It may be that one of the two wells which still exist at Wadi es-Seba", with the stones that line their mouths deeply indented by the ropes of the water-drawers, is the very one around which the herdsmen of Abraham and Abimelech wrangled with each other. The wells of the desert go back to a great antiquity: where water is scarce its discovery is not easily forgotten, and the Beduin come with their flocks year after year to drink of it. The old wells are constantly renewed, or new ones dug by their side.
Gerar was in that south-western corner of Palestine which in the age of the Exodus was inhabited by the Philistines. But they had been new-comers. All through the period of the eighteenth and nineteenth Egyptian dynasties the country had been in the hands of the Egyptians.
Gaza had been their frontier fortress, and as late as the reign of Meneptah, the son of the Pharaoh of the Oppression, it was still garrisoned by Egyptian troops and governed by Egyptian officers. The Pulsata or Philistines did not arrive till the troublous days of Ramses III., of the twentieth dynasty. They formed part of the barbarian hordes from the sh.o.r.es of Asia Minor and the islands of the aegean, who swarmed over Syria and flung themselves on the valley of the Nile, and the land of Caphtor from which they came was possibly the island of Krete. The Philistine occupation of the coastland of Canaan, therefore, did not long precede the Israelitish invasion of the Promised Land; indeed we may perhaps gather from the words of Exod. xiii. 17 that the Philistines were already winning for themselves their new territory when the Israelites marched out of Egypt. In saying, consequently, that the kingdom of Abimelech was in the land of the Philistines the Book of Genesis speaks proleptically: when the story of Abraham and Abimelech was written in its present form Gerar was a Philistine town: in the days of the patriarchs this was not yet the case.
At Beer-sheba Abraham planted a tamarisk, and "called on the name of the Lord, the everlasting G.o.d." Beer-sheba long remained one of the sacred places of Palestine. The tree planted by its well was a sign both of the water that flowed beneath its soil and of its sacred character. It was only where fresh water was found that the nomads of the desert could come together, and the tree was a token of the life and refreshment they would meet with. The well was sacred; so also was the solitary tree which stood beside it, and under whose branches man and beast could find shade and protection from the mid-day heat. Even Mohammedanism, that Puritanism of the East, has not been able to eradicate the belief in the divine nature of such trees from the mind of the nomad; we may still see them decorated with offerings of rags torn from the garments of the pa.s.ser-by or shading the tomb of some reputed saint. They are still more than waymarks or resting-places for the heated and weary; when standing beneath them the herdsman feels that he is walking upon consecrated ground.
It was at Beer-sheba that the temptation came to Abraham to sacrifice his first-born, his only son Isaac. The temptation was in accordance with the fierce ritual of Syria, and traces of the belief which had called it into existence are to be found in the early literature of Babylonia. Thus in an ancient Babylonian ritual-text we read: "The offspring who raises his head among mankind, the offspring for his life he gave; the head of the offspring for the head of the man he gave; the neck of the offspring for the neck of the man he gave." Phoenician legend told how the G.o.d El had robed himself in royal purple and sacrificed his only son Yeud in a time of pestilence, and the writers of Greece and Rome describe with horror the sacrifices of the first-born with which the history of Carthage was stained. The father was called upon in time of trouble to yield up to the G.o.d his nearest and dearest; the fruit of his body could alone wipe away the sin of his soul, and Baal required him to sacrifice without a murmur or a tear his first-born and his only one. The more precious the offering, the more acceptable was it to the G.o.d; the harder the struggle to resign it, the greater was the merit of doing so. The child died for the sins of his people; and the belief was but the blind and ignorant expression of a true instinct.
But Abraham was to be taught a better way. For three days he journeyed northward with his son, and then lifting up his eyes saw afar off that mountain "in the land of Moriah," on the summit of which the sacrifice was to be consummated. Alone with Isaac he ascended to the high-place, and there building his altar and binding to it his son he prepared to perform the terrible rite. But at the last moment his hand was stayed, a new and better revelation was made to him, and a ram was subst.i.tuted for his son. It cannot be accidental that, as M. Clermont-Ganneau has pointed out, we learn from the temple-tariffs of Carthage and Ma.r.s.eilles that in the later ritual of Phoenicia a ram took the place of the earlier human sacrifice.
Where was this mountain in the land of Moriah whereon the altar of Abraham was built? It would seem from a pa.s.sage in the Second Book of Chronicles (iii. 1) that it was the future temple-mount at Jerusalem.
The words of Genesis also point in the same direction. Abraham, we read, "called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." It is hard to believe that "the mount of the Lord" can mean anything else than that _har-el_ or "mountain of G.o.d" whereon Ezekiel places the temple, or that the proverb can refer to a less holy spot than that where the Lord appeared enthroned upon the cherubim above the mercy-seat. It is doubtful, however, whether the reading of the Hebrew text in either pa.s.sage is correct. According to the Septuagint the proverb quoted in Genesis should run: "In the mountain is the Lord seen," and the same authority changes the "Moriah" of the Book of Chronicles into _Amor-eia_, "of the Amorites."
It is true that the distance of Jerusalem from Beer-sheba would agree well with the three days" journey of Abraham. But it is difficult to reconcile the description of the scene of Abraham"s sacrifice with the future temple-mount. Where Isaac was bound to the altar was a solitary spot, the patriarch and his son were alone there, and it was overgrown with brushwood so thickly that a ram had been caught in it by his horns.
The temple-mount, on the contrary, was either within the walls of a city or just outside them, and the city was already a capital famous for its worship of "the most High G.o.d." Had the Moriah of Jerusalem really been the site of Abraham"s altar it is strange that no allusion is made to the fact by the writers of the Old Testament, or that tradition should have been silent on the matter. We must be content with the knowledge that it was to one of the mountains "in the land of Moriah" that Abraham was led, and that "Moriah" was a "land," not a single mountain-peak. (We should not forget that the Septuagint reads "the highlands," that is, _Moreh_ instead of _Moriah_, while the Syriac version boldly changes the word into the name of the "Amorites." For arguments on the other side, see p. 79.)
Abraham returned to Beer-sheba, and from thence went to Hebron, where Sarah died. Hebron--or Kirjath-Arba as it was then called--was occupied by a Hitt.i.te tribe, in contradistinction to the country round about it, which was in the possession of the Amorites. As at Jerusalem, or at Kadesh on the Orontes, the Hitt.i.tes had intruded into Amoritish territory and established themselves in the fortress-town. But while the Hitt.i.te city was known as Kirjath-Arba, "the city of Arba," the Amoritish district was named Mamre: the union of Kirjath-Arba and Mamre created the Hebron of a later day.
Kirjath-Arba seems to have been built in the valley, close to the pools which still provide water for its modern inhabitants. On the eastern side the slope of the hill is honeycombed with tombs cut in the rock, and, if ancient tradition is to be believed, it was in one of these that Abraham desired to lay the body of his wife. The "double cave" of Machpelah--for so the Septuagint renders the phrase--was in the field of Ephron the Hitt.i.te, and from Ephron, accordingly, the Hebrew patriarch purchased the land for 400 shekels of silver, or about 47. The cave, we are told, lay opposite Mamre, which goes to show that the oak under which Abraham once pitched his tent may not have been very far distant from that still pointed out as the oak of Mamre in the grounds of the Russian hospice. The traditional tomb of Machpelah has been venerated alike by Jew, Christian, and Mohammedan. The church built over it in Byzantine days and restored by the Crusaders to Christian worship has been transformed into a mosque, but its sanct.i.ty has remained unchanged.
It stands in the middle of a court, enclosed by a solid wall of ma.s.sive stones, the lower courses of which were cut and laid in their places in the age of Herod. The fanatical Moslem is unwilling that any but himself should enter the sacred precincts, but by climbing the cliff behind the town it is possible to look down upon the mosque and its sacred enclosure, and see the whole building spread out like a map below the feet.
More than one English traveller has been permitted to enter the mosque, and we are now well acquainted with the details of its architecture. But the rock-cut tomb in which the bodies of the patriarchs are supposed to have lain has never been examined by the explorer. It is probable, however, that were he to penetrate into it he would find nothing to reward his pains. During the long period that Hebron was in Christian hands the cave was more than once visited by the pilgrim. But we look in vain in the records which have come down to us for an account of the relics it has been supposed to contain. Had the mummified corpses of the patriarchs been preserved in it, the fact would have been known to the travellers of the Crusading age. (See the _Zeitschrift des deutschen Palastina-Vereins_, 1895.)
Like the other tombs in its neighbourhood, the cave of Machpelah has doubtless been opened and despoiled at an early epoch. We know that tombs were violated in Egypt long before the days of Abraham, in spite of the penalties with which such acts of sacrilege were visited, and the cupidity of the Canaanite was no less great than that of the Egyptian.
The treasures buried with the dead were too potent an attraction, and the robber of the tomb braved for their sake the terrors of both this world and the next.
Abraham now sent his servant to Mesopotamia, to seek there for a wife for his son Isaac from among his kinsfolk at Harran. Rebekah, the sister of Laban, accordingly, was brought to Canaan and wedded to her cousin.
Isaac was at the time in the southern desert, encamped at the well of Lahai-roi, near Kadesh. So "Isaac was comforted after his mother"s death."
"Then again," we are told, "Abraham took a wife," whose name was Keturah, and by whom he was the forefather of a number of Arabian tribes. They occupied the northern and central parts of the Arabian peninsula, by the side of the Ishmaelites, and colonized the land of Midian. It is the last we hear of the great patriarch. He died soon afterwards "in a good old age," and was buried at Machpelah along with his wife.
Isaac still dwell at Lahai-roi, and there the twins, Esau and Jacob, were born to him. There, too, he still was when a famine fell upon the land, like "the first famine that was in the days of Abraham." The story of Abraham"s dealings with Abimelech of Gerar is repeated in the case of Isaac. Again we hear of Phichol, the captain of Abimelech"s army; again the wife of the patriarch is described as his sister; and again his herdsmen strive with those of the king of Gerar over the wells they have dug, and the well of Beer-sheba is made to derive its name from the oaths sworn mutually by Isaac and the king. It is hardly conceivable that history could have so closely repeated itself, that the lives of the king and commander-in-chief of Gerar could have extended over so many years, or that the origin of the name of Beer-sheba would have been so quickly forgotten. Rather we must believe that two narratives have been mingled together, and that the earlier visit of Abraham to Gerar has coloured the story of Isaac"s sojourn in the territory of Abimelech.
We need not refuse to believe that the servants of Isaac dug wells and wrangled over them with the native herdsmen; that Beer-sheba should twice have received its name from a repet.i.tion of the same event is a different matter. One of the wells--that of Rehoboth--made by Isaac"s servants is probably referred to in the Egyptian _Travels of a Mohar_, where it is called Rehoburta.