29
The modern Jews count the year of the Creation from 3761 B.C., so that, in order to calculate the Jewish
era, we have to add to our Christian era the number 3761.
30
See the article Ur, in Smith's Bible Dictionary. The view previously adopted, which finds Ur in quite a
different district, is evidently erroneous.
31
Van de Velde.
32
There is in the British Museum an ancient Egyptian "papyrus," which, although of somewhat later date
than that of Abram, proves that his fears, on entering Egypt, were at least not groundless. It relates how a
Pharaoh, on the advice of his counselors, sent armies to take away a man's wife by force, and then to murder
her husband.
33
Another curious coincidence is, that the name of this "chief" is abshah, "father of land" which reminds us
of Abraham, the "father of a multitude." The whole bearing of the Egyptian monuments on the narratives o f
the Bible will be fully discussed in the next volume.
34
Genesis 10:10. There is frequent reference to the kingdom of Elam on the Assyrian monuments,
confirmatory of Scripture, and Mr. Smith inserts the names of Chedorlaomer and his three confederates in
his "list of Babylonian monarchs" (see Assyrian Discoveries, pp. 441, 442).
35
The expression "I will make My covenant" (Genesis 17:2) is quite different from that rendered by the same
words in Genesis 15:18. In the latter case it is "to make" - literally, to "cut a covenant;" while the terms in
Genesis 17:2 are, "I will give My covenant," i.e., establish, fulfill it.
36
Others have derived the name Sarah from a root, meaning "to be fruitful."
37
A very considerable price for those times.
38
See "Those Holy Fields; Palestine illustrated by Pen and Pencil, p. 39.
39
The age of Isaac is thus ascertained: When Joseph stood before Pharaoh (Genesis 41:46), he was thirty
years old, and hence thirty-nine when Jacob came into Egypt. But at that time Jacob was one h undred and
thirty years of age (Genesis 47:9). Hence, Jacob must have been ninety-one years old when Joseph was
born; and as this happened in the fourteenth year of Jacob's stay with Laban, Jacob's flight from his home
must have taken place in the seventy-seventh year of his own, and the one hundred and thirty-seventh of
his father Isaac's life.
40
There is no mention here that Esau dreaded God's displeasure, or even thought of it. We may remember
our earthly, and yet, alas, forget our heavenly Father.
41
We infer from the sacred text that Jacob made his first night's quarters at Bethel.
42
Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 217.
43
The journey from Beersheba to Haran is quite four hundred miles.
44
So both Luther and Calvin understood it.
45
This is the correct translation; or else after another reading: "With good luck!"
46
In Jacob's last blessing (Genesis 49) we find quite a different succession of his sons; this time also with a
view to the purposes of the narrative, rather than to chronological order.