Chapter V (4)

4. Of other ancient legends in which some traces of the Chaldean
influence may be suspected, only a very brief account can
here be given. The _Indian_ story, to which there is a single
allusion in the Vedas, is first fully recorded in the Çatapatha
Brāhmaṇa, i. 8. 1‒10.¹ It relates how Manu, the first man,
found one day in the water with which he performed his morning
ablution a small fish, which begged him to take care of it till
it should attain its full growth, and then put it in the sea.
Manu did so, and in gratitude for its deliverance the fish
warned him of the year in which the Flood would come, promising,
if he would build a ship, to return at the appointed time and
save him. When the Flood came the fish appeared with it; Manu
attached the cable of his ship to the fish’s horn, and was thus
towed to the mountain of the north, where he landed, and whence
he gradually descended as the waters fell. In a year’s time a
woman came to him, announcing herself as his daughter, produced
from the offerings he had cast into the water; and from this
pair the human race sprang. In a later form of the tradition
(Mahābhārata, iii. 187. 2 ff.),² the Babylonian affinities are
somewhat more obvious; but even in the oldest version they are
not altogether negligible, especially when we remember that
the fish (which in the Mahābhārata is an incarnation of Brahma)
was the symbol of the god Ea.³――The _Greeks_ had several
Flood-legends, of which the most widely diffused was that of
Deukalion, best known from the account of Apollodorus (i. 7. 2
ff.).⁴ Zeus, resolved to destroy the brazen race, sends a heavy
rain, which floods the greater part of Greece, and drowns all
men except a few who escape to the mountain tops. But Deukalion,
on the advice of his father Prometheus, had prepared a chest,
loaded it with provisions, and taken refuge in it with his
wife Pyrrha. After 9 days and nights they land on Parnassus;
Deukalion sacrifices to Zeus and prays for a new race of
men: these are produced from stones which he and his wife, at
the command of the god, throw over their shoulders. The incident
of the ark seems here incongruous, since other human beings were
saved without it. It is perhaps an indication of the amalgamation
of a foreign element with local Deluge traditions.――A _Syrian_
tradition, with some surprising resemblances to Priestly-Code
in Genesis, has been preserved by the Pseudo-Lucian (_De dea
Syra_, 12, 13). The wickedness of men had become so great that
they had to be destroyed. The fountains of the earth and the
flood-gates of heaven were opened simultaneously; the whole
world was submerged, and all men perished. Only the pious
Deukalion-Sisuthros⁵ was saved with his family in a great chest,
into which as he entered all sorts of animals crowded. When the
water had disappeared, Deukalion opened the ark, erected altars,
and founded the sanctuary of Derketo at Hierapolis. The hole
in the earth which swallowed up the Flood was shown under the
temple, and was seen by the writer, who thought it not quite
big enough for the purpose. In Usener’s opinion we have here
the Chaldean legend localised at a Syrian sanctuary, there being
nothing Greek about it except the name Deukalion.――A _Phrygian_
localisation of the Semitic tradition is attested by the epithet
κιβωτός applied to the Phrygian Apameia (Kelainai) from the
time of Augustus (Strabo, xii. 8. 13, etc.); and still more
remarkably by bronze coins of that city dating from the reign
of Septimius Severus. On these an open chest is represented,
bearing the inscription ΝΩΕ, in which are seen the figures of
the hero and his wife; a dove is perched on the lid of the ark,
and another is flying with a twig in its claws. To the left
the same two human figures are seen standing in the attitude
of prayer.⁶ The late date of these coins makes the hypothesis
of direct Jewish, or even Christian, influence extremely
probable.――The existence of a _Phœnician_ tradition is inferred
by Usener (248 ff.) from the discovery in Etruria and Sardinia
of bronze models of ships with various kinds of animals standing
in them: one of them is said to date from the 7th century B.C.
There is no extant written record of the Phœnician legend:
on Gruppe’s reconstruction from the statements of Greek
mythographers see above, page 141.

¹ Translated by Eggeling, _Sacred Books of the East_,
xii. 216 ff. See Usener, _Die Sintfluthsagen_
(_Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen_, iii.), 25 ff.

² Translated by Protap Chandra Roy (Calcutta, 1884), iii.
552 ff. See Usener, 29 ff.

³ Usener, however (240 ff.), maintains the entire independence
of the Indian and Semitic legends.

⁴ The earliest allusion is Pindar, _Olympian_ 9. 41 ff.
Compare Ovid, _Metamorphoses_ i. 244‒415; Pausanias i. 40.
1, x. 6. 2, etc. The incident of the dove (in a peculiar
modification) appears only in Plutarch _De sollertia
animalium_ 13.――Usener, 31 ff., 244 ff.

⁵ Text Δευκαλίωνα τὸν Σκύθεα, which Buttmann (_Mythologus_,
i. 192) ingeniously emended to Δευκαλίωνα τὸν Σισυθέα――a
modification of the Σίσιθρος of Abydenus.

⁶ See the reproductions in Usener, 45, and Jeremias _Das Alte
Testament im Lichte des alten Orients_¹, 131, ²235.

5. There remains the question of the origin of this widespread
and evidently very popular conception of a universal Deluge.
That it embodies a common primitive tradition of an historic
event we have already seen to be improbable. If we suppose the
original story to have been elaborated in Babylonia, and to have
spread thence to other peoples, it may still be doubtful whether
we have to do “with a legend based upon facts” or “with a myth
which has assumed the form of a history.” The mythical theory
has been most fully worked out by Usener, who finds the germ
of the story in the favourite mythological image of “the god
in the chest,” representing the voyage of the sun-god across
the heavenly ocean: similar explanations were independently
propounded by Cheyne (_Encyclopædia Biblica_, 1063 f.) and
Zimmern (_ib._ 1058 f.; _Die Keilinschriften und das Alte
Testament_³, 555). Of a somewhat different order is the
astrological theory advocated by Jeremias (249 ff.). The
Babylonian astronomers were aware that in the course of ages
the spring equinox must traverse the watery (southern) region
of the Zodiac: this, on their system, signified a submergence
of the whole universe in water; and the Deluge-myth symbolises
the safe passage of the vernal sun-god through that part of the
ecliptic.――Whatever truth there may be in these theories, it is
certain that they do not account for the concrete features of
the Chaldean legend; and if (as can hardly be denied) mythical
motives are present, it seems just as likely that they were
grafted on to a historic tradition as that the history is merely
the garb in which a solar or astral myth arrayed itself. The
most natural explanation of the Babylonian narrative is after
all that it is based on the vague reminiscence of some memorable
and devastating flood in the Euphrates valley, as to the
physical possibility of which, it may suffice to quote the
(perhaps too literal) description of an eminent geologist: “In
the course of a seismic period of some duration the water of
the Persian Gulf was repeatedly driven by earthquake shocks over
the plain at the mouth of the Euphrates. Warned by these floods,
a prudent man, Ḥasîs-adra, _i.e._ the god-fearing philosopher,
builds a ship for the rescue of his family, and caulks it with
pitch, as is still the custom on the Euphrates. The movements
of the earth increase; he flees with his family to the ship; the
subterranean water bursts forth from the fissured plain; a great
diminution in atmospheric pressure, indicated by fearful storm
and rain, probably a true cyclone, approaches from the Persian
Gulf, and accompanies the most violent manifestations of the
seismic force. The sea sweeps in a devastating flood over the
plain, raises the rescuing vessel, washes it far inland, and
leaves it stranded on one of those Miocene foot-hills which
bound the plain of the Tigris on the north and north-east below
the confluence of the Little Zab” (Eduard Suess, _The Face of
the Earth_, i. 72). See, however, the criticism of Sollas, _The
Age of the Earth_, 316.

IX. 18‒27.
_Noah as Vine-grower: His Curse and Blessing_
(Yahwist).

Noah is here introduced in an entirely new character, as the discoverer of the culture of the vine; and the first victim to immoderate indulgence in its fruit. This leads on to an account of the shameless behaviour of his youngest son, and the modesty and filial feeling of the two elder; in consequence of which Noah pronounces a curse on Canaan and blessings on Shem and Japheth.――The Noah of verses ²⁰⁻²⁷ almost certainly comes from a different cycle of tradition from the righteous and blameless patriarch who is the hero of the Flood. The incident, indeed, cannot, without violating all probability, be harmonised with the Flood-narrative at all. In the latter, Noah’s sons are married men who take their wives into the ark (so expressly in Priestly-Code, but the same must be presumed for Yahwist); here, on the contrary, they are represented as minors living in the ‘tent’ with their father; and the conduct of the youngest is obviously conceived as an exhibition of juvenile depravity (so Dillmann, Budde, al.). The presumption, therefore, is that verses ²⁰⁻²⁷ belong to a stratum of Yahwist which knew nothing of the Flood; and this conclusion is confirmed by an examination of the structure of the passage.

First of all, we observe that in verse ²⁴ the offender is the
_youngest_ son of Noah, and in verse ²⁵ is named Canaan; while
Shem and Japheth are referred to as his _brothers_. True, in
verse ²² the misdeed is attributed to ‘Ham the father of Canaan’;
but the words חָם אֲבִי have all the appearance of a gloss intended
to cover the transition from ¹⁸ ᶠᐧ to ²⁰ ᶠᶠᐧ; and the clause וְחָם הוּא
אֲבִי כְנַעַן in ¹⁸ᵇ can have no other purpose. Now ¹⁸ᵃ is the close of
Yahwist’s¹ account of the Flood; and ¹⁹ points forward either
to Yahwist’s list of Nations (chapter 10), or to the dispersion
of the Tower of Babel. Verses ²⁰⁻²⁷ interrupt this connexion,
and must accordingly be assigned to a separate source. That
that source is, however, still Yahwistic, is shown partly by
the language (יַהְוֶה, verse ²⁶ [in spite of אֱלֹהִים in verse ²⁷]; and
וַיָּחֶל, verse ²⁰); and more especially by the connexion with 5²⁹
(see pages 3, 133 f.). It is clear, therefore, that a redactor
(Redactorᴶᵃʰʷⁱˢᵗ) has here combined two Yahwistic documents, and
sought to reduce the contradiction by the glosses in ¹⁸ᵇ and ²².

¹ Compare נָֽפְצָה with 10¹⁸ 11⁴ᐧ ⁸ᐧ ⁹; and כָּל־הָאָרֶץ (= the population
of the earth) with 11¹ᐧ ⁹ (Budde); שְׁלֹשָׁה אֵלֶּה בְּנֵי־נֹחַ with 10²⁹ 22²³
25⁴ (Holzinger).

=18, 19.= Connecting verses (see above).――Noah’s sons are here for the first time named in Yahwist, in harmony, however, with the repeated notices of Priestly-Code (5³² 6¹⁰ 7¹³). On the names see on chapter 10 (page 195 f.).――=20.= _Noah the husbandman was the first who planted a vineyard_]――a fresh advance in human civilisation. The allusion to Noah as _the_ husbandman is perplexing. If the text be right (_v.i._), it implies a previous account of him as addicted to (perhaps the inventor of) agriculture, which now in his hands advances to the more refined stage of vine-growing. See the note on page 185.

Amongst other peoples this discovery was frequently attributed
to a god (Dionysus among the Greeks, Osiris among the Egyptians),
intoxication being regarded as a divine inspiration. The
orgiastic character of the religion of the Canaanites makes it
probable that the same view prevailed amongst them; and it has
even been suggested that the Noah of this passage was originally
a Canaanitish wine-god (see Niebuhr, _Geschichte des ebräischen
Zeitalters_, 36 ff.). The native religion of Israel (like that
of Mohammed) viewed this form of indulgence with abhorrence; and
under strong religious enthusiasm the use of fermented drinks
was entirely avoided (the Nazirites, Samson, the Rechabites).
This feeling is reflected in the narrative before us, where
Noah is represented as experiencing in his own person the
full degradation to which his discovery had opened the way. It
exhibits the repugnance of a healthy-minded race towards the
excesses of a debased civilisation.――Since the vine is said to
be indigenous to Armenia and Pontus (see Delitzsch, Dillmann),
it has naturally been proposed to connect the story with the
landing of the ark in Ararat. But we have seen that the passage
has nothing to do with the Deluge-tradition; and it is more
probable that it is an independent legend, originating amidst
Palestinian surroundings.

* * * * *

=19.= נפצה כל־הארץ] ‘the whole (population of the) earth was
scattered.’ For the construction compare 10⁵.――נָֽפְצָה] hardly
contracted Niphal from √ פצץ [= פוץ] (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 67
_dd_); but from √ נפץ, whether this be a secondary formation
from √ פוץ (Gesenius-Buhl¹⁴ 465 f.), or an independent word
(Brown-Driver-Briggs, 659). Compare 1 Samuel 13¹¹, Isaiah
11¹² 33³.――=20.= ויחל וגו׳] compare 4²⁶ 6¹ 10⁸ 11⁶ 44¹² (Yahwist)
41⁵⁴ (Elohist). The rendering ‘Noah commenced as a husbandman’
(Davidson § 83, _R._ 2) is impossible on account of the article
(contrast 1 Samuel 3²): to insert להיות (Ball) does not get
rid of the difficulty. The construction with ו construct,
instead of infinitive, is very unusual (Ezra 3⁸); hence Cheyne
(_Encyclopædia Biblica_, 3426²), following Kuenen (_Theologisch
Tijdschrift_, xviii. 147), proposes לַֽחֲרשׁ for אִישׁ: ‘Noah was the
first to plough the ground.’ That reading would be fatal to
any connexion of the section with Genesis 3, unless we suppose
a distinction between עבד (manual tillage) and חרשׁ. Strangely
enough, Rashi (on 5²⁹) repeats the Haggadic tradition that Noah
invented the ploughshare; but this is probably a conjecture
based on a comparison of 3¹⁷ with 5²⁹.¹

¹ So Mr. Abrahams, in a private communication.

* * * * *

=21.= _uncovered himself_] the same result of drunkenness in Habakkuk 2¹⁵, Lamentations 4²¹.――=22.= There is no reason to think (with Holzinger and Gunkel) that Canaan was guilty of any worse sin than the _Schadenfreude_ implied in the words. Hebrew morality called for the utmost delicacy in such matters, like that evinced by Shem and Japheth in verse ²³――=24.= בְּנוֹ הַקָּטָן cannot mean ‘his _younger_ son’ (LXX, Vulgate) (_i.e._ as compared with Shem); still less ‘his contemptible son’ (Rashi); or Ham’s youngest (Abraham Ibn Ezra). The conclusion is not to be evaded that the writer follows a peculiar genealogical scheme in which Canaan is the youngest son of Noah.――=25‒27.= Noah’s curse and blessings must be presumed to have been legible in the destinies of his reputed descendants at the time when the legend took shape (compare 27²⁸ ᶠᐧ ³⁹ ᶠᐧ 49) (on the fulfilment see the concluding note, page 186 f.). The dominant feature is the curse on Canaan, which not only stands first, but is repeated in the blessings on the two brothers.――=25.= The descendants of Canaan are doomed to perpetual enslavement to the other two branches of the human family.――_a servant of servants_] means ‘the meanest slave’ (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 133 _i_).――_to his brethren_] not the other members of the Hamitic race, but (as is clear from the following verses) to Shem and Japheth.――=26.= _Blessed be Yahwe the God of Shem_] The idea thus expressed is not satisfactory. To ‘bless’ Yahwe means no more than to praise Him; and an ascription of praise to Yahwe is only in an oblique sense a blessing on Shem, inasmuch as it assumes a religious primacy of the Shemites in having Yahwe for their God. Budde (294 f.) proposed to omit אֱלֹהֵי and read בְּרוּךְ יַהְוֶה שֵׁם: _Blessed of Yahwe be Shem_ (compare 24³¹ 26²⁹ [both Yahwist]). Dillmann’s objection, that this does not express wherein the blessing consists, applies with quite as much force to the received text. Perhaps a better emendation is that of Graetz בָּרֵךְ י׳ אָֽהֳלֵי שֵׁ (יְבָרֵךְ would be still more acceptable): _[May] Yahwe bless the tents of Shem_; see the next verse.――=27.= _May God expand_ (יַפְתְּ) _Yepheth_: a play on the name (יֶפֶת). The use of the generic אלהים implies that the proper name יהוה was the peculiar property of the Shemites.――_and may he dwell_] or _that he may dwell_. The subject can hardly be God (_Jubilees_, Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ, _Bereshith Rabba_, Rashi, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Nöldeke, al.), which would convey no blessing to Japheth; the wish refers most naturally to Japheth, though it is impossible to decide whether the expression ‘dwell in the tents of’ denotes friendly intercourse (so most) or forcible dispossession (Gunkel). For the latter sense compare Psalms 78⁵⁵, 1 Chronicles 5¹⁰.――A Messianic reference to the ingathering of the Gentiles into the Jewish or Christian fold (Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ, Fathers, Delitzsch, al.) is foreign to the thought of the passage: see further below.

The question of the origin and significance of this remarkable
narrative has to be approached from two distinct points of
view.――I. In one aspect it is a culture-myth, of which the
central motive is the discovery of wine. Here, however, it
is necessary to distinguish between the original idea of the
story and its significance in the connexion of the Yahwistic
document. Read in its own light, as an independent fragment
of tradition, the incident signalises the transition from
nomadic to agricultural life. Noah, the first husbandman and
vine-grower, is a tent-dweller (verse ²¹); and this mode of life
is continued by his oldest and favoured son Shem (²⁷). Further,
the identification of husbandry and vine culture points to a
situation in which the simpler forms of agriculture had been
supplemented by the cultivation of the grape. Such a situation
existed in Palestine when it was occupied by the Hebrews. The
sons of the desert who then served themselves heirs by conquest
to the Canaanitish civilisation escaped the protracted evolution
of vine-growing from primitive tillage, and stepped into the
possession of the farm and the vineyard at once. From this point
of view the story of Noah’s drunkenness expresses the healthy
recoil of primitive Semitic morality from the licentious habits
engendered by a civilisation of which a salient feature was
the enjoyment and abuse of wine. Canaan is the prototype of the
population which had succumbed to these enervating influences,
and is doomed by its vices to enslavement at the hands of
hardier and more virtuous races.――In the setting in which it
is placed by the Yahwist the incident acquires a profounder
and more tragic significance. The key to this secondary
interpretation is the prophecy of Lamech in 5²⁹, which brings it
into close connexion with the account of the Fall in chapter 3
(page 133). Noah’s discovery is there represented as an advance
or refinement on the tillage of the ground to which man was
sentenced in consequence of his first transgression. And the
oracle of Lamech appears to show that the invention of wine is
conceived as a _relief from the curse_. How far it is looked
on as a divinely approved mode of alleviating the monotony of
toil is hard to decide. The moderate use of wine is certainly
not condemned in the Old Testament: on the other hand, it is
impossible to doubt that the light in which Noah is exhibited,
and the subsequent behaviour of his youngest son, are meant to
convey an emphatic warning against the moral dangers attending
this new step in human development, and the degeneration to
which it may lead.

II. In the narrative, however, the cultural motive is crossed
by an ethnographic problem, which is still more difficult to
unravel. Who are the peoples represented by the names Shem,
Japheth, and Canaan? Three points may be regarded as settled:
that Shem is that family to which the Hebrews reckoned
themselves; that Canaan stands for the pre-Israelitish
inhabitants of Palestine; and that the servitude of Canaan to
Shem at least _includes_ the subjugation of the Canaanites by
Israel in the early days of the monarchy. Beyond this everything
is uncertain. The older view, which explains Shem and Japheth
in terms of the Table of Nations (chapter 10),――_i.e._ as
corresponding roughly to what we call the Semitic and Aryan
races,――has always had difficulty in discovering a historic
situation combining Japhetic dominion over the Canaanites with
a dwelling of Japheth in the tents of Shem.¹ To understand the
latter of an ideal brotherhood or religious bond between the two
races brings us no nearer a solution, unless we take the passage
as a prophecy of the diffusion of Christianity; and even then
it fails to satisfy the expressions of the text (Dillmann, who
explains the figure as expressing the more kindly feeling of the
Hebrew towards these races, as compared with the Canaanites).――A
number of critics, starting from the assumption that the oracles
reflect the circumstances and aspirations of the age when
the Yahwistic document originated, take Shem as simply a name
for Israel, and identify Japheth either with the Philistines
(Wellhausen, Meyer) or the Phœnicians (Budde, Stade, Holzinger).
But that the Hebrews should have wished for an enlargement of
the Philistines at their own expense is incredible; and as for
the Phœnicians, though their colonial expansion might have been
viewed with complacency in Israel, there is no proof that an
occupation of Israelitish territory on their part either took
place, or would have been approved by the national sentiment
under the monarchy. The alienation of a portion of Galilee to
the Tyrians (1 Kings 9¹¹⁻¹³) (Budde) is an event little likely
to have been idealised in Hebrew legend. The difficulties of
this theory are so great that Bertholet has proposed to recast
the narrative with the omission of Japheth, leaving Shem and
Canaan as types of the racial antipathy between the Hebrews and
Canaanites: the figure of Japheth, and the blessing on him, he
supposes to have been introduced after the time of Alexander
the Great, as an expression of the friendly feeling of the Jews
for their Hellenic conquerors.²――Gunkel’s explanation, which
is put forward with all reserve, breaks ground in an opposite
direction. Canaan, he suggests, may here represent the great wave
of Semitic migration which (according to some recent theories)
had swept over the whole of Western Asia (_circa_ 2250 B.C.),
leaving its traces in Babylonia, in Phœnicia, perhaps even in
Asia Minor,³ and of which the later Canaanites of Palestine were
the sediment. Shem is the Hebræo-Aramaic family, which appears
on the stage of history after 1500 B.C., and no doubt took
possession of territory previously occupied by Canaanites. It
is here represented as still in the nomadic condition. Japheth
stands for the Hittites, who in that age were moving down from
the north, and establishing their power partly at the cost of
both Canaanites and Arameans. This theory hardly explains the
peculiar contempt and hatred expressed towards Canaan; and
it is a somewhat serious objection to it that in 10¹⁵ (which
Gunkel assigns to the same source as 9²⁰ ᶠᶠᐧ) Heth is the _son_
of Canaan. A better defined background would be the struggle
for the mastery of Syria in the 14th century B.C.⁴ If, as many
Assyriologists think probable, the Ḥabiri of the Tel-Amarna
Letters be the עִבְרִים of the Old Testament,――_i.e._ the original
Hebrew stock to which Israel belonged,――it would be natural to
find in Shem the representative of these invaders; for in 10²¹
(Yahwist) Shem is described as ‘the father of all the sons of
Eber.’ Japheth would then be one or other of the peoples who,
in concert with the Ḥabiri, were then seeking a foothold in the
country, possibly the Suti or the Amurri, less probably (for
the reason mentioned above) the Hittites.――These surmises must
be taken for what they are worth. Further light on that remote
period of history may yet clear up the circumstances in which
the story of Noah and his sons originated; but unless the names
Shem and Japheth should be actually discovered in some historic
connexion, the happiest conjectures can never effect a solution
of the problem.

¹ As regards the former, the expulsion of Phœnician colonists
from the Mediterranean coasts and Asia Minor by the Greeks
(Dillmann) could never have been described as enslavement
(see Meyer _Geschichte des Alterthums_¹, i. 311 f.); and the
capture of Tyre by Alexander, the Roman conquest of Carthage,
etc. (Delitzsch), are events certainly beyond the horizon of
the writer,――unless, indeed, we adopt Bertholet’s suggestion
(see above), that verse ²⁷ is very late. For the latter,
Dillmann hints at an absorption of Japhetic peoples in the
Semitic world-empires; but that would rather be a dwelling
of Shem in the tents of Japheth.

² See Wellhausen _Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der
historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments_ 14 f.; Budde
_Die biblische Urgeschichte_ 325 ff.; Stade _Geschichte des
Volkes Israel_, i. 109; Meyer _Geschichte des Alterthums_¹,
i. p. 214; Bertholet, _Die stellung der Israeliten und der
Juden zu den fremden_, 76 f. Meyer’s later theory (_Die
Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme_, 220 f.), that Japheth (=
Egyptian _Kefti_?) stands for the whole body of northern
invaders in the 12th century, to whom the Philistines
belonged, does not diminish the improbability that such a
prophecy should have originated under the monarchy.

³ See Meyer _Geschichte des Alterthums_¹, i. page 212 ff.;
Winckler _Geschichte Israels in Einzeldarstellungen_, i. 37,
130, 134; Peiser, _Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_, iv. page
viii.

⁴ Already suggested by Bennett (page 158), who, however, is
inclined to identify the Ḥabiri with Japheth.

* * * * *

=22.= ויַּגֵּד] LXX prefered καὶ ἐξελθών.――=23.= הַשֵּׁמְלָה] On the article,
see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 126 _r_. That it was _the_ שׂ׳ which
Canaan had previously taken away, and that this notice was
deliberately omitted by Yahwist (Gunkel), is certainly not to
be inferred. The שׂ׳ is the upper garment, which was also used
for sleeping in (Exodus 22²⁶ etc.).――=24.= וַיִּיקֶץ] on the irregular
seghol, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 70 _n_.――=26.= לָמוֹ may stand
either for לָהֶם (collective) or לוֹ: see Note 3 in Gesenius-Kautzsch
§ 103 _f_. The latter is the more natural here. Olshausen
(_Monatsberichte der Königlich-Preussischen Akadamie der
Wissenschaften zu Berlin._, June 1870, 382) proposed to omit
²⁶ᵇ, substituting ²⁷ᵃ{β} (וישכן――שם), and retain ²⁷ᵇ with reflexive
of plural suffix to אֶחָיו. LXX has αὐτοῦ in ²⁶ᵇ and αὐτῶν in
²⁷ᵇ.――=27.= יַפְתְּ] LXX πλατύναι, Vulgate _dilatet_, etc. The √ פתה
in the sense ‘be spacious’ is extremely rare in Hebrew (Proverbs
20¹⁹ [?24²⁸]), and the accepted rendering not beyond challenge.
Nöldeke (_Bibel-Lexicon_, iii. 191) denies the geographical
sense, and explains the word from the frequent Semitic figure
of spaciousness for prosperity. This would almost require us to
take the subject of the following clause to be God (_v.s._).

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