bable that in those times which lie beyond the reach of our knowledge, the notion had crept in, that the life of a son, and especially of the eldest, the only, or of a very dear son, was the most valuable and precious offering in their power to present, it must needs be the most acceptable and meritorious in the eyes of the gods they worshipped. Hence, as the most sensible of the Jewish writers conjecture,* Abraham understood that this highest sacrifice by which, as he knew, the heathen manifested their zeal for their false gods, was required of him as a test of his zeal for the true God. But how he could reconcile such a command with the promise of a numerous posterity through this very Isaac might not appear very evident, did we not learn from the New Testament,† that so confident did he feel that this promise would and must be accomplished, that he believed that God would restore Isaac again to life after he was sacrificed. Curbing, therefore, the force of his paternal emotions, he, with the usual alacrity of his obedience, "rose early in the morning," and made the necessary preparations for the journey and for the sacrifice, directing the ass on which he usually rode to be saddled, and the wood required for a burnt-offering to be cleaved. He then departed with Isaac, attended by two of his young men. On the third day they arrived within a distant view of the place, which God had appointed for this awful act; and it proved to be that Mount Moriah on which, in after ages, the temple of Solomon was built; and this site was probably selected with a prospective reference to that circumstance, as well as to the mysteries of which the neighbourhood was to be the scene in ages to come.

Here, while the place was still some way off, Abraham alighted from his ass, and fearing lest the young men might be disposed to interfere, or, perhaps, apprehending that the act which he was about to execute might, through such witnesses, be drawn into a precedent, he directed them to remain there with the ass, while he and Isaac went yonder to worship. The father and son passed on in silence, Isaac bearing the wood which, unknown to him, was destined to consume his own body, and Abraham taking the knife and a vessel containing the fire with which the wood was to be kindled. (7) As they thus proceeded, it occurred to Isaac to ask the natural but, under the circumstances, very trying question,-" My father, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?" To this Abraham only answered, "God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt-offering, my son." But as they proceeded, or when they arrived at the top of the hill, the patriarch must have explained to his son that he was himself the victim which God had provided; and that the pious and dutiful youth then bowed in submission to the will of God and the desire of his father, is evinced by the circumstances: for any act of compulsion was morally impossible by an old man of 125 years upon a vigorous youth of 25 years, whose strength is evinced by his ability to carry all the wood required for such a sacrifice; and his submission must have been founded on the conviction that his father was right in that which he was doing. The altar was built; the wood was disposed properly upon it; Isaac laid himself down upon the wood; and lest the weakness of the flesh should shrink in this fiery trial, he submitted to be bound: and then the patriarch—with feelings which a fond father can understand without any description, and which none else would understand if described-lifted up his hand to smite the life which was doubtless far more precious to him than his own. The trial was complete. The uplifted arm was arrested, and the intense feelings of that solemn moment were calmed in an instant by a most welcome voice from heaven, which cried :-" Abraham! Abraham! lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him: for NOW I KNOW that thou fearest God, seeing that thou hast not withheld thy son―thy only son-from Me." And as the patriarch heard these words, his eyes fell upon a ram which had been caught in a thicket by its horns, and joyfully recognizing in this the victim which God had provided for a burnt-offering, he hastened to offer it on the altar in the place of his son Isaac; and never, surely, from the beginning of the world till now, was a religious act performed with such released feelings as those which attended this sacrifice. In memory of this event, and with a happy allusion to

In all sacrifice the victim was slain before being laid upon the altar: we are, therefore, convinced in our own minds that this fact furnishes another instance of Isaac's cheerful submission, and that to assist Abraham's intention as far as in his power, he disposed himself properly upon the altar, sparing his father what might have been an after difficulty.

his own ambiguous answer to the question of Isaac, as well as to its most unexpected accomplishment, he called the name of that place JAHOH JIREH,*-the Lord will provide.

This act of perfect obedience being consummated, it pleased God to reward the faith he had thus proved, and not found wanting, by the renewal of all his former promises, in terms so express and so strong, and confirmed by the highest of all possible sanctions-" By MYSELF I have sworn,”—that the patriarch could not but receive it as a firm and settled matter; and hence it does not appear that any further promise was made to him during the remainder of his life. Cheered by this promise, Abraham returned happily to Beersheba with his son, whom he had, as it were, received again from the dead, and who must now have become all the dearer to him, for the signal proof he had given of his pious resignation and filial piety.

After this twelve years passed away, during which we only know that Abraham received news from Mesopotamia, informing him that the family of his brother, Nahor, was in a flourishing condition, and that he had many children, and some grand-children. During this time, it appears, also, that Abraham removed his camp from Beersheba to his old station in the valley of Mamre, or at least to some place near Hebron. Here, at the end of the twelve years, Sarah died, at the age of 127 years; and it is remarkable that she is the only woman whose age, at the time of death, is mentioned in the Scripture. At this time, and probably from the time of her becoming a mother, Sarah occupied a separate tent from that of her hus band.t And now, when her death was announced to him, he left his own tent, and satdown at the door of hers, "to weep for her," this being the mode of proceeding which custom required.

The death of Sarah raised a new question, which hitherto there had been no occasion to consider. It has been an ancient custom among the Bedouin tribes, not to bury their dead just where they happen to die, but to have a burial-place within their respective territories, to which they bring the bodies of such of the tribe as die within its district. In conformity with this custom, Abraham now wanted a suitable burial-ground, appropriated to the special use of his family, and in which the remains of all of that family who died in the land of Canaan might be laid. He therefore applied to the Hittites, dwelling in Hebron, to obtain the permanent grant of a piece of ground proper for this purpose. The account of the interview is curious and interesting, from the light it throws upon the position of Abraham and the manners of the time. The wealthy and powerful patriarch appears to have been popular with the Hittites, or was rather, perhaps, regarded by them as one whom it was their interest to oblige. He was received with great attention and respect, and when his wish was understood, the choice of all their sepulchres in which to bury his dead was readily and freely offered to him. On this the good patriarch rose up and bowed to the children of Heth, and then proceeded to explain more clearly the object he had in view. He wanted a family burial-place, for a permanent possession; and there was a field, called Machpelah, well planted with trees, and with a good cave at the end of it, which would exceedingly well answer his purpose, if the owner, one Ephron, then present, could be induced to sell this property to him. This person, without waiting to be pressed, readily, and with much tact, answered for himself:-"Nay, my lord, hear me: the field give I thee, and the cave that is therein. I give it thee; in the presence of the sons of my people [as witnesses] give I it thee: bury thy dead." Now this looks very fair; but the readiness of the man, the tone of the whole speech, with the parade of "give—give—give,” so much reminds us of certain passages in our own Oriental experience, that Ephron and his speech find no favour in our eyes. We are convinced that, with all this apparent generosity, the man had a keen eye to his own interests, and saw clearly that it might be a more profit

⚫ Dr. Hales, whose view of this transaction we have much followed in the preceding paragraphs, considers that Jahoн is, probably, more nearly than JEHOVAH, the true reading of the awful name of God. How the true pronunciation was lost by the Jews, we have shown in a note at p. 49. But," says Dr. Hales, "the true pronunciation had been fortunately preserved in several of the heathen classics, according to the pronunciation of those foreigners who had early intercourse with the Israelites and afterwards the Jews. Thus the Clusian Oracle (founded after the Trojau war), in answer to the inquiry, Which of the gods is he to be reckoned who is called IAN?" uttered a remarkable response, preserved by Macrobins, of which this is part :

able thing to lay the emir under an obligation, than to sell him the ground outright. Besides, if Abraham was, as seems to be the case, a much more important person than Ephron himself, he could not have received this land as a present, according to the usages of the East, without making a more considerable present in return. It seems to us that Abraham quite understood all this. He rose, and, after bowing generally to the congregation, addressed himself particularly to Ephron, and insisted on paying for the field with money; and this person, seeing him resolute, at last named the price. "It is worth four hundred shekels (weight) of silver;" but still, in exact conformity with the character we have assigned him, he takes care to add," What is that between me and thee?" As he had thus been brought to name a sum in the presence of so many witnesses, Abraham immediately weighed out the quantity of silver he required; and thus closed the bargain, with a degree of address, which shows that he was a judge of character, and knew how to deal with such persons as Ephron. The act of purchase included a specification of the property thus transferred, so precise and lawyer-like, as to make this primitive deed of conveyance a perfect model of its kind ;* while it seems to intimate that the patriarch felt the necessity of precision in dealing with a person of Ephron's character. Thus was acquired the first possession of the Hebrew race in the land of Canaan―that possession a sepulchre.

There is not in the East any grief like the grief of a mother for her son, or of a son for his mother; and there were circumstances calculated to give peculiar intensity to the mutual attachment of Sarah and Isaac. The grief for the loss of his mother, acting upon the quiet and passive character of Isaac, must have been very strong; and it was probably the sense of privation and continued distress which he manifested, that put it into the mind of Abraham, about three years after Sarah's death, of providing a wife for his son, who was then about forty years of age. In meditating such an object, a Bedouin chief would naturally first think of keeping up the family connection, by seeking for his son a wife from the household of his brother; and, in fact, the young man is held to have the first claim to the hand of any female which the house of his uncle will supply. To the influence of such feelings was, in the case of Abraham, added an anxiety to keep pure and unmixed the race which God had chosen. This explains the strong interest which Abraham and the other patriarchs took in providing wives for their sons from among their own connections. On the present occasion, Abraham called his trusty old servant, Eliezer of Damascus, and made him take a solemn oath, to go to the family of his brother Nahor, in Mesopotamia, and bring thence a wife for Isaac, if one willing to come could be found there; giving him entire authority to conclude the marriage-which, in itself, is a remarkable illustration of the ideas on which Oriental marriages are usually concluded.

Eliezer departed with a train suitable to the importance of his mission, and calculated to impress a proper notion of his master's consequence upon those to whom he was going,-consisting of ten camels, with a proper proportion of attendants, and with valuable presents for the damsel and her friends; it being then, as now, the custom of the East to purchase the bride from her friends at a high price, as well as to make presents to herself, instead of the bride bringing a dowry to her husband.

It would seem that Nahor's family still lived in the town (Charran) where Abraham left it. Like Lot in Sodom, they lived in a house-and, so far, had relinquished the character of the pure pastoral nomades who dwell in tents, although the flocks were still sent out to distant pastures under the care of the younger branches of the family, and of shepherds, whose mode of life was like that of the Bedouins. Or, which is as likely, if not more so, the head establishment lived in a house only from the latter end of autumn to the spring, spending the rest of the year in tents—a practice which still prevails among some of the pastoral tribes of Western Asia.

How many days Eliezer's journey took we know not: but it was towards evening when he

"The field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession, in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of the city." Gen. xxiii. 17, 18.

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arrived in the vicinity of his place of destination. His intimate acquaintance with Bedouin habits then suggested to him the measures which seemed best calculated to ensure the object of his journey. In that age, as now, the duty of drawing water from the wells devolved upon the young women of every Bedouin household; and the sheikh's own daughter is not above taking her share in a service which is not by any means considered degrading,―so much otherwise, indeed, that the young women find much enjoyment in meeting at the well, and talking together of their small affairs. When Eliezer reached the well, the time of the evening had nearly arrived at which the females are wont to come forth to draw water; and he knew that among them he might expect to see the destined bride of his young master. He therefore allowed his camels to kneel down, in their usual posture of rest, resolving to remain there, as one who tarried for leave to give water to them from that well. While thus waiting, he prayed to the God of his master Abraham to give him good speed that day; and, being deeply impressed with the responsibility of the duty he had undertaken, he ventured to propose a sign whereby the kindness of her disposition should be made to indicate the female appointed to be the wife of Isaac. He was yet speaking, when the young women came to discharge their evening duty. To one of them his attention was particularly drawn, by her great beauty; and as she was returning from the well, with her pitcher on her shoulder, he ran to meet her, with the request that she would allow him to take a draught of water from her vessel. She said, "Drink, my lord ;" and, with the utmost alacrity, lowered her pitcher from her shoulder to her hand,

to give him drink. When he had finished, she hastened again and again to the well, emptying her pitcher into the trough, to give the camels water; while the admiring stranger pondered in his mind whether this, being the sign he had required, did not sufficiently indicate the future bride of his master's son. To assist his conclusions, he took from his treasures a nose-jewel and a pair of bracelets, both of gold, and presented to her, asking, at the same time, whose daughter she was, and whether her father's house afforded room where his party might lodge. To his great joy, her answer proved her to be the very woman of whom Abraham had already heard in Canaan-namely, Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel, one of the sons of Nahor. She also told him, not only that there was room for his party, but also chopped straw and corn for the camels. The good old servant now convinced that he had found the right person, bowed his head, and blessed, aloud, the God of Abraham, who had thus led him to the house of his master's brethren. No sooner had these words fallen from him, than Rebekah ran home to tell all this to her friends.

At this time Nahor does not seem to have been alive-at least his name does not appear

in any part of this transaction; and although Bethuel, the father of Rebekah, still lived, the management of all affairs appears to have fallen into the hands of his son-the keen and active Laban,-who no sooner caught the meaning of his sister's hurried statement, and saw (as the narrative is careful to add) the valuable presents which had been given to her, than he hurried forth, and warmly invited Eliezer into the house. There, with the usual promptitude of Eastern hospitality, a meal was ready for him and his companions by the time they had attended to their camels and washed their feet. But the faithful servant was too much interested in the result of his mission to sit down and eat before he had declared his errand. This he did in a precise and simple narrative of what has already been related,-in which, however, he, with much address, was mindful to let his audience know of Abraham's great wealth, and of the prosperity with which he had been favoured. So Laban, in his own name, and that of Bethuel, declared that the visible traces of Divine direction in this matter left them without an answer; and then, without taking the trouble to consult Rebekah, added,-"Behold, Rebekah is before thee; take her and go, and let her be thy master's son's wife, as the Lord hath spoken." On this the overjoyed steward bowed his head in thanks to God. Then he drew from his store of precious things, ornaments of gold and silver, and costly garments, and gave them to the elected bride; and also to her brother and mother he made the valuable presents which they were entitled to expect. The next morning Eliezer rose early, and, rather unexpectedly, required permission to return to his master with the bride. They wished him to tarry a few days; but as he persisted, and Rebekah professed her willingness to go at once, no further opposition was made.

Women in the East consume but little time in preparing for even an extensive journey; and Rebekah being soon ready, was dismissed by Laban with the very characteristic Oriental

blessing,- "Be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them." The nurse is a very respectable and influential personage in an

Josephus says he was dead; and some other writers follow him, being evidently unable to reconcile the prominent part taken by Laban with the supposition that his father was present. But as the sacred text intimates that a Bethuel was actually there, and as no instance occurs in all Scripture of a son bearing the same name as his father, we prefer to think that the father was himself alive, and either from imbecility, or some other cause, had relinquished his share in the activities of life to his sharp and energetic son.