Part 5 (1/2)

Verse 3 to 22, and chap, x.x.xiii., v. 1 to 15. Read this account attentively, and then ask yourselves which of the brothers was the more worthy of the promise--Esau, cozened out of his birthright, swindled out of his father's blessing, yet forgetting and forgiving when he had the power to crush and punish; or Jacob, the cheater, the liar, and the coward.

*Chapter x.x.xiii., v. 19: In the Douay, instead of 'a hundred pieces of money,' we are told that Jacob gave the children of Hamor 'a hundred lambs.'

Verse 20 is thus translated; 'And raising an altar there, he invoked upon it the most mighty G.o.d of Israel.'

Whether Douay or Protestant translation be correct, it is quite certain that Jacob was a little too fast--there was no [--------] (al alei ishral)--Jacob was not called Israel until chap, x.x.xv., v. 10--so that the 'El-elohe-Israel' of our version, and the 'most mighty G.o.d of Israel' of the Douay, are both out of place unless Jacob used the words in the spirit of prophecy, which will explain many difficult pa.s.sages.

*Chapter x.x.xiv. Upon this chapter Voltaire indulges in criticism more pungent than before:--

'Here our critics exclaim in terms of stronger disgust than ever. What!

say they, the son of a king is desirous to marry a vagabond girl; the marriage is approved; Jacob, the father, and Dinah, the daughter, are loaded with presents; the King of Sichem deigns to receive those wandering robbers, called patriarchs, within his city; he has the incredible politeness or kindness to undergo, with his son, his court, and his people, the rite of circ.u.mcision, thus condescending to the superst.i.tion of a petty horde that could not call half a league of territory their own! And, in return for this astonis.h.i.+ng hospitality and goodness, how do our holy patriarchs act? They wait for the day when the process of circ.u.mcision generally induces fever; when Simeon and Levi run through the whole city with poignards in their hands and ma.s.sacre the king, the prince his son, and all the inhabitants. We are precluded from the horror appropriate to this infernal counterpart of the tragedy of St. Bartholomew, only by a sense of its absolute impossibility. It is an abominable romance; but it is evidently a ridiculous romance. It is impossible that two men could have slaughtered in quiet the whole population of a city. The people might suffer, in a slight degree, from the operation which had preceded; but, notwithstanding this, they would have risen in self-defence against two diabolical miscreants; they would have instantly a.s.sembled, would have surrounded them, and destroyed them with the summary and complete vengeance merited by their atrocity.

'But there is a still more palpable impossibility. It is that, according to the accurate computation of time, Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, could be only four or five years old; and that, even by forcing up chronology as far as possible in favour of the narrative, she could, at the very most, be only eight. It is here, then, that we are a.s.sailed with bursts of indignant exclamation. What! it is said, what! is it this book--the book of a rejected and reprobate people--a book so long unknown to all the world--a book in which sound reason and decent manners are outraged in every page--that is held up to us as irrefragable, holy, and dictated by G.o.d himself? Is it not even impious to believe it? or could anything less than the fury of cannibals urge to the persecution of sensible and modest men for not believing it?'

*Chapter x.x.xv., v. 11. Although kings were to come out of Jacob's loins by promise, Esau's issue have been quite as successful, in fact rather more so, without any of G.o.d's a.s.sistance.

Verse 22, and chap, xlix., v. 3 and 4. The family to whom G.o.d promised 'the land,' seem to have been as immoral and vicious as any on record.

Abraham has been noticed; the conduct of Lot, his family, and neighbours I dare not comment on; Isaac was pretty free from blame, except in the matter of Rebekah; but his goodness is overborne by the rascality of his son Jacob and his wife, Rachel, who (worthy partner of such a husband) robs her own father--the cutthroat propensities of Simeon and Levi--and the licentiousness of Reuben. {42} *Chapter x.x.xv., end of verse 22 to verse 26. Dr. Giles speaks of the inaccuracy of the last verse, as follows:--

'”These are the sons of Jacob, which were born to him in Padan-Aram.”

'But it is well known that Benjamin was born some years after Jacob returned to Canaan. The text, therefore, is incorrect, and creates a serious difficulty, if we suppose that Moses, writing in the presence of G.o.d, could have been liable to such an error.'

*Chapter x.x.xvi., v. 2 and 3, are contradicted in chap, xxvi., v. 34.

Verses 14, 16, and 18. It is difficult to discover from this whether Korah was the son or grandson of Esau, as he is described in both characters.

Verse 31 has been referred to on page 6. In Dr. Giles's 'Hebrew Records,' page 140, the critical reader will find the matter discussed more fully than my pages allow.

*Chapter x.x.xvii., v. 1. In the Douay, instead of 'wherein his father was a stranger,' it reads,' wherein his father sojourned;' and, in verse 2, instead of 'seventeen,' it reads 'sixteen,' and states that Joseph 'accused his brethren to his father of a most wicked crime.'

Verses 25, 27, and 28. These verses are criticised in the 'Hebrew Records' as follows:--

'Here the merchants, to whom Joseph is sold, are twice called Ishmaelites, and once Midianites. Bishop Patrick explains the inconsistency in the following extraordinary manner:--

'”_Ishmaelites_. They are called below Midianites. These people were near neighbours to each other, and were joined together in one company, or caravan, as it is now called. It is the custom, even to the present day, in the East, for merchants and others to travel through the deserts in large companies, for fear of robbers or wild beasts.”

'If the pa.s.sage to which these comments are annexed, occurred in one of the famous Greek or Latin historians--Livy, Thucydides, or any other--such a note would not, for one instant, be taken as sound criticism, because none of those able writers would be guilty of such an absurdity as applying two names, known to be distinct, to the same people, within the s.p.a.ce of four lines. If some idle and weakly written tale contained the inconsistency, the mode of interpreting it, which Bishop Patrick applies to the pa.s.sage before us, might be pa.s.sed over, but, even then, more from its being of no importance, than from its soundness or its propriety. But, when we find this discrepancy in a work which professes to be inspired, it is highly desirable that such an inconsistency or discrepancy should be cleared up. Why have none of the commentators remarked on the singular circ.u.mstance of there being Ishmaelitish merchants at all, in the time when Joseph was sold into Egypt? Ishmael was Jacob's uncle, being brother to Isaac, Jacob's father. The family of Ishmael could not have increased to such an extent in the time of which the history treats. The mention of Ishmaelites, in the text before us, indicates that the writer lived many generations later, when Ishmaelitish {43} merchants were well known. Still less likely is it that there were Midianitish merchants in those days; for Midian was also one of the sons of Abraham, and fifty-four years younger than Isaac; see chap, xxv., y. 2. At all events, the variation in the name of this tribe of merchantmen renders it impossible that Moses could have written the narrative, unless we suppose that, when he had it in his power to describe the matter accurately and definitely, he rather chose to relate it in such a manner as to puzzle all future ages as to its exact meaning.'

Verse 35. In the Douay, the word 'h.e.l.l' is subst.i.tuted for the word 'grave.' The Hebrew is [------] (shale). Jacob believed his son devoured by wild beasts, and, therefore, could have hardly expected to find him in his grave; and, although h.e.l.l might, perhaps, be the appropriate receptacle for one who had been so great a rascal as Jacob, yet, I much doubt whether he ever expressed his intention to go there to find his son. I must refer my more precise readers to the various controversial works written by various shades of Catholic and Protestant divines, on the words 'purgatory,' 'limbo,' 'h.e.l.l,' and 'grave.'

Verse 36. The word [------] translated 'officer,' means eunuch, and is so translated in the Douay; if this be correct, we can scarcely wonder at the conduct of Potiphar's wife, as detailed in chap, x.x.xix.

*Chapter x.x.xviii Judah and his children are a still further ill.u.s.tration of the happy and moral family in whom all the nations of the world were to be blessed. The following is quoted from Voltaire:--

'The Rev. Father Dom Calmet makes this reflection, in alluding to the thirty-eighth chapter of Genesis:--”Scripture,” he observes, ”gives us the details of a history, which, on the first perusal, strikes our minds as not of a nature for edification; but the hidden sense which is shut up in it is as elevated, as that of the mere letter appears low to carnal eyes. It is not without good reasons that the Holy Spirit has allowed the histories of Tamar, of Rahab, of Ruth, and of Bathsheba, to form a part of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.”

'It might have been well, if Dom Calmet had explained these sound reasons, by which we might have cleared up the doubts, and appeased the scruples, of all the honest and timorous souls who are anxious to comprehend how this Supreme Being, the Creator of the world, could be born in a Jewish village, of a race of plunderers and of prost.i.tutes.

This mystery, which is not less inconceivable than other mysteries, was a.s.suredly worthy the explanation of so able a commentator.'