Chapter X · The Table of Peoples (Priestly-Code and Yahwist).

In its present form, the chapter is a redactional composition, in which are interwoven two (if not three) successive attempts to classify the known peoples of the world, and to exhibit their origin and mutual relationships in the form of a genealogical tree.

Analysis.—The separation of the two main sources is due to the lucid and convincing analysis of Wellhausen (Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments² 6 ff.). The hand of Priestly-Code is easily recognised in the superscription (^1a אֵלֶּה תּוֹלְדֹת), and the methodical uniformity of the tripartite scheme, with its recurrent opening and closing formulæ. The headings of the three sections are: בְּנֵי יֶפֶת (²), וּבְנֵי חָם (⁶), and בְּנֵי שֵׁם (²²); the respective conclusions are found in ^5. (mutilated) ^{20. 31}, verse ³² being a final summary. This framework, however, contains several continuous sections which obviously belong to Yahwist. (a) ^8‒12; the account of Nimrod (who is not even mentioned by Priestly-Code among the sons of Kush) stands out both in character and style in strong contrast to Priestly-Code: note also יָלַד; instead of הוֹלִיד (⁸), יהוה (⁹). (b) ^{13 f.}: the sons of Mizraim (verb יָלַד). (c) ^15‒19: the Canaanites (יָלַד). (d) ^{21. 25‒30}: the Shemites (יֻלַּד ^{21. 25}; יָלַד ²⁶).—Duplication of sources is further proved by the twofold introduction to Shem (²¹ ∥ ²²), and the discrepancy between ⁷ and ^{28 f.} regarding חֲוִילָה and שְׁבָא. The documents, therefore, assort themselves as follows:

Priestly-Code: ^1a; ^2‒5; ^{6 f. 20}; ^{22 f. 31}; ³².

Yahwist: ^1b (?); ^8‒12; ^{13 f.}; ^15‒19; ^{21. 25‒30}.

Verses ^{9. 16‒18a} and ²⁴ are regarded by Wellhausen and most subsequent writers as interpolations: see the notes. The framework of Priestly-Code is made the basis of the Table; and so far as appears that document has been preserved in its original order. In Yahwist the genealogy of Shem (^{21. 25‒30}) is probably complete; that of Ham (^{13 f. 15 ff.}) is certainly curtailed; while every trace of Japheth has been obliterated (see, however, page 208). Whether the Yahwistic fragments stand in their original order, we have no means of determining.

The analysis has been carried a step further by Gunkel (² 74 f.), who first raised the question of the unity of the Yahwistic Table, and its connexion with the two recensions of Yahwist which appear in chapter 9. He agrees with Wellhausen, Dillmann, al. that 9^{18 f.} forms the transition from the story of the Flood to a list of nations which is partly represented in chapter 10; 10^1b being the immediate continuation of 9¹⁹ in that recension of Yahwist (Jehovist^Jahwist). But he tries to show that 9^20‒27 was also followed by a Table of Nations, and that to it most of the Yahwistic fragments in chapter 10 belong (^{8. 10‒12. 15. 21. 25‒29} = Jehovist^Elohist). This conclusion is reached by a somewhat subtle examination of verse ²¹ and verses ^15‒19. In verse ²¹ Shem is the ‘elder brother of Japheth,’ which seems to imply that Japheth was the second son of Noah as in 9^{20 ff.}; hence we may surmise that the third son was not Ham but Canaan. This is confirmed by the apparent contradiction between ¹⁵ and ^{18b. 19}. In ¹⁹ the northern limit of the Canaanites is Ẓidon, whereas in ¹⁵ Canaan includes the Ḥittites, and has therefore the wider geographical sense which Gunkel postulates for 9^20‒27 (see page 186 above). He also calls attention to the difference in language between the eponymous כְּנַעַן in ¹⁵ and the gentilic הַכְּנַֽעֲנִי in ^{18b. 19}, and considers that this was a characteristic distinction of the two documents. From these premises the further dissection of the Table follows easily enough. Verses ^8‒12 may be assigned to Jehovist^Elohist because of the peculiar use of הֵחֵל in ⁸ (compare 9²⁰ 4²⁶). verse ^{13 f.} must in any case be Jehovist^Jahwist, because it is inconceivable that Egypt should ever have been thought of as a son of Canaan; ^25‒29 follow ²¹ (Jehovist^Elohist). Verse ³⁰ is assigned to Jehovist^Jahwist solely on account of its resemblance to ¹⁹. It cannot be denied that these arguments (which are put forward with reserve) have considerable cumulative force; and the theory may be correct. At the same time it must be remembered (1) that the distinction between a wider and a narrower geographical conception of Canaan remains a brilliant speculation, which is not absolutely required either by 9^{20 ff.} or 10¹⁵; and (2) that there is nothing to show that the story of Noah, the vine-grower, was followed by a Table of Nations at all. A genealogy connecting Shem with Abraham was no doubt included in that document; but a writer who knows nothing of the Flood, and to whom Noah was not the head of a new humanity, had no obvious motive for attaching an ethnographic survey to the name of that patriarch. Further criticism may be reserved for the notes.

The names in the Table are throughout eponymous: that is to say, each nation is represented by an imaginary personage bearing its name, who is called into existence for the purpose of expressing its unity, but is at the same time conceived as its real progenitor. From this it was an easy step to translate the supposed affinities of the various peoples into the family relations of father, son, brother, etc., between the eponymous ancestors; while the origin of the existing ethnic groups was held to be accounted for by the expansion and partition of the family. This vivid and concrete mode of representation, though it was prevalent in antiquity, was inevitably suggested by one of the commonest idioms of Semitic speech, according to which the individual members of a tribe or people were spoken of as ‘sons’ or ‘daughters’ of the collective entity to which they belonged. It may be added that (as in the case of the Arabian tribal genealogies) the usage could only have sprung up in an age when the patriarchal type of the family and the rule of male descent were firmly established (see William Robertson Smith Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia², 3 ff.).

That this is the principle on which the Tables are constructed appears from a slight examination of the names, and is universally admitted. With the exception of Nimrod, all the names that can be identified are those of peoples and tribes (Madai, Sheba, Dedan, etc.) or countries (Miẓraim, Ḥavilah, etc.—in most cases it is impossible to say whether land or people is meant) or cities (Zidon); some are gentilicia (Jebusite, Ḥivvite, etc.); and some are actually retained in the plural (Rodanim, Ludim, etc.). Where the distinctions between national and geographical designations, between singular, plural, and collective names, are thus effaced, the only common denominator to which the terms can be reduced is that of the eponymous ancestor. It was the universal custom of antiquity in such matters to invent a legendary founder of a city or state;¹ and it is idle to imagine any other explanation of the names before us.—It is, of course, another question how far the Hebrew ethnographers believed in the analogy on which their system rested, and how far they used it simply as a convenient method of expressing racial or political relations. When a writer speaks of Lydians, Lybians, Philistines, etc., as ‘sons’ of Egypt, or ‘the Jebusite,’ ‘the Amorite,’ ‘the Arvadite’ as ‘sons’ of Canaan, it is difficult to think, e.g., that he believed the Lydians to be descended from a man named ‘Lydians’ (לוּדִים), or the Amorites from one called ‘the Amorite’ (הָֽאֱמֹרִי); and we may begin to suspect that the whole system of eponyms is a conventional symbolism which was as transparent to its authors as it is to us.² That, however, would be a hasty and probably mistaken inference. The instances cited are exceptional,—they occur mostly in two groups, of which one (^{16 ff.}) is interpolated, and the other (^{13 f.}) may very well be secondary too; and over against them we have to set not only the names of Noah, Shem, etc., but also Nimrod, who is certainly an individual hero, and yet is said to have been ‘begotten’ by the eponymous Kush (Gunkel). The bulk of the names lend themselves to the one view as readily as to the other; but on the whole it is safer to assume that, in the mind of the genealogist, they stand for real individuals, from whom the different nations were believed to be descended.

¹ “An exactly parallel instance ... is afforded by the ancient Greeks. The general name of the Greeks was Hellenes; the principal subdivisions were the Dorians, the Æolians, the Ionians, and the Achæans; and accordingly the Greeks traced their descent from a supposed eponymous ancestor Hellen, who had three sons, Dorus and Aeolus, the supposed ancestors of the Dorians and Æolians, and Xuthus, from whose two sons, Ion and Achæus, the Ionians and Achæans were respectively supposed to be descended” (Driver 112).

² See Guthe, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 1 ff.

The geographical horizon of the Table is very restricted; but is considerably wider in Priestly-Code than in Yahwist.¹ Yahwist’s survey extends from the Hittites and Phœnicians in the North to Egypt and southern Arabia in the South; on the Elohist he knows Babylonia and Assyria and perhaps the Kašši, and on the West the Libyans and the south coast of Asia Minor.² Priestly-Code includes in addition Asia Minor, Armenia, and Media on the North and North-east, Elam on the East, Nubia in the South, and the whole Mediterranean coast on the West. The world outside these limits is ignored, for the simple reason that the writers were not aware of its existence. But even within the area thus circumscribed there are remarkable omissions, some of which defy reasonable explanation.

¹ Judging, that is, from the extracts of Yahwist that are preserved.

² Kaphtorim (verse ¹⁴): according to others the island of Crete.

The nearer neighbours and kinsmen of Israel (Moabites, Ishmaelites, Edomites, etc.) are naturally reserved for the times when they broke off from the parent stem. It would appear, further, that as a rule only contemporary peoples are included in the lists; extinct races and nationalities like the Rephaim, Zuzim, etc., and possibly the Amalekites, being deliberately passed over; while, of course, peoples that had not yet played any important part in history are ignored. None of these considerations, however, accounts for the apparent omission of the Babylonians in Priestly-Code,—a fact which has perhaps never been thoroughly explained (see page 205).

From what has just been said it ought to be possible to form some conclusion as to the age in which the lists were drawn up. For Priestly-Code the terminus a quo is the 8th century, when the Cimmerian and Scythian hordes (^{2 f.}) first make their appearance south of the Caucasus: the absence of the Minæans among the Arabian peoples, if it has any significance, would point to the same period (see page 203). A lower limit may with less certainty be found in the circumstance that the names פָּרַם and עֲרָב, עֲרָבִי (Persians and Arabs, first mentioned in Jeremiah and Ezekiel) do not occur. It would follow that the Priestly List is pre-exilic, and represents, not the viewpoint of the Priestly-Code (5th century), but one perhaps two centuries earlier (so Gunkel). Hommel’s opinion (Aufsätze und Abhandlungen arabistisch-semitologischen Inhalts 314 ff.), that the Table contains the earliest ethnological ideas of the Hebrews fresh from Arabia, and that its “Grundstock” goes back to Mosaic times and even the 3rd millennium B.C., is reached by arbitrary excisions and alterations of the names, and by unwarranted inferences from those which are left¹ (see Jeremias Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 252).—The lists of Yahwist, on the other hand, yield no definite indications of date. The South Arabian tribes (^25‒30) might have been known as early as the age of Solomon (Brown, Encyclopædia Biblica, ii. 1699),—they might even have been known earlier,—but that does not tell us when they were systematically tabulated. The (interpolated) list of Canaanites (^16‒18) is assigned by Jeremias (l.c. 256) to the age of Tiglath-pileser III.; but since a considerable percentage of the names occurs in the Tel-Amarna letters (v.i.), the grounds of that determination are not apparent. With regard to the section on Nimrod (^8‒12), all that can fairly be said is that it is probably later than the Kaššite conquest of Babylonia: how much later, we cannot tell. On the attempt to deduce a date from the description of the Assyrian cities, see page 212.—There are, besides, two special sources of error which import an element of uncertainty into all these investigations. (a) Since only two names (שְׁבָא and חֲוִילָה) are really duplicated in Priestly-Code and Yahwist,² we may suppose that the redactor has as a general practice omitted names from one source which he gives in the other; and we cannot be quite sure whether the omission has been made in Priestly-Code or in Yahwist. (b) According to Jewish tradition, the total number of names is 70; and again the suspicion arises that names may have been added or deleted so as to bring out that result.³

¹ It has often been pointed out that there is a remarkable agreement between the geographical horizon of Priestly-Code in Genesis 10 and that of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Of the 34 names of nations in Priestly-Code’s Table, 22 occur in Ezekiel and 14 in the book of Jeremiah; it has to be remembered, however, that a large part of the book of Jeremiah is later than that prophet. Ezekiel has perhaps 6 names which might have been expected in Priestly-Code if they had been known (עֲרָב, כַּשְׂדִּים, קוֹעַ, שׁוֹעַ, פָּרַס, פְּקוֹד), and Jeremiah (book) has 5 (עֲרָבִ[י], כַּשְׂדּים, פָּרַס, פְּקוֹד, מִנִּי). The statistics certainly do not bear out the assertion that Priestly-Code compiled his list from these two books between 538 and 526 B.C. (see Dillmann page 166); they rather suggest that while the general outlook was similar, the knowledge of the outer world was in some directions more precise in the time of Ezekiel than in the Table.

² אַשּׁוּר, כּוּשׁ, מִצְרַיִם and כְּנַעַן do not count, because they are so introduced that the two documents supplement one another.

³ For the official enumeration see Zunz, Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden², 207; Steinschneider, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, iv. 150 f.; Krauss, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 1899, 6 (1900, 38 ff.); compare Poznański, ib. 1904, 302.

The threefold division of mankind is a feature common to Priestly-Code and Yahwist, and to both recensions of Yahwist if there were two (above, page 188 f.). It is probable, also, though not certain, that each of the Tables placed the groups in the reverse order of birth: Japheth—Ham—Shem; or Canaan—Japheth—Shem (see verse ²¹). The basis of the classification may not have been ethnological in any sense; it may have been originally suggested by the tradition that Noah had just three sons, in accordance with a frequently observed tendency to close a genealogy with three names (4^{19 ff.} 5³² 11²⁶ etc.). Still, the classification must follow some ethnographic principle, and we have to consider what that principle is. The more obvious distinctions of colour, language, and race are easily seen to be inapplicable.

The ancient Egyptian division of foreigners into Negroes (black), Asiatics (light brown), and Libyans (white) is as much geographical as chromatic (Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, 32); but in any case the survey of Genesis 10 excludes the true negroes, and differences of colour amongst the peoples included could not have been sufficiently marked to form a basis of classification. It is certainly noteworthy that the Egyptian monuments represent the Egyptians, Kōš, Punt, and Phœnicians (Priestly-Code’s Hamites) as dark brown (Dillmann 167); but the characteristic was not shared by the offshoots of Kush in Arabia; and a colour line between Shem and Japheth could never have been drawn.—The test of language also breaks down. The perception of linguistic affinities on a wide scale is a modern scientific attainment, beyond the apprehension of an antique people, to whom as a rule all foreign tongues were alike ‘barbarous.’ So we find that the most of Priestly-Code’s Hamites (the Canaanites and nearly all the Kushites) are Semitic-speaking peoples, while the language of Elam among the sons of Shem belongs to an entirely different family; and Greek was certainly not spoken in the regions assigned to sons of Javan.—Of race, except in so far as it is evidenced by language, modern science knows very little; and attempts have been made to show that where the linguistic criterion fails the Table follows authentic ethnological traditions: e.g. that the Canaanites came from the Red Sea coast and were really related to the Cushites; or that Babylonia was actually colonised from central Africa, etc. But none of these speculations can be substantiated; and the theory that true racial affinity is the main principle of the Table has to be abandoned. Thus, while most of the Japhetic peoples are Indo-European, and nearly all the Shemitic are Semites in the modern sense, the correspondence is no closer than follows necessarily from the geographic arrangement to be described presently. The Hamitic group, on the other hand, is destitute alike of linguistic and ethnological unity.—Similarly, when Yahwist assigns Phœnicians and Hittites (perhaps also Egyptians) to one ethnic group, it is plain that he is not guided by a sound ethnological tradition. His Shemites are, indeed, all of Semitic speech; what his Japhetic peoples may have been we cannot conjecture (see page 188).

So far as Priestly-Code is concerned, the main principle is undoubtedly geographical: Japheth representing the North and West, Ham the South, and Shem the East. Canaan is the solitary exception, which proves the rule (see pge 201 f.). The same law appears (so far as can be ascertained) to govern the distribution of the subordinate groups; although too many of the names are uncertain to make this absolutely clear. There is very little ground for the statement that the geographical idea is disturbed here and there by considerations of a historical or political order.

The exact delimitation of the three regions is, of course, more or less arbitrary: Media might have been reckoned to the Eastern group, or Elam to the Southern; but the actual arrangement is just as natural, and there is no need to postulate the influence of ethnology in the one case or of political relations in the other. Lûd would be a glaring exception if the Lydians of Asia Minor were meant, but that is probably not the case (page 206). The Mediterranean coasts and islands are appropriately enough assigned to Javan, the most westerly of the sons of Japheth. It can only be the assumption that Shem represents a middle zone between North and South that makes the position of Kittîm appear anomalous to Dillmann. Even if the island of Cyprus be meant (which, however, is doubtful; page 199), it must, on the view here taken, be assigned to Japheth. It is true that in Yahwist traces of politico-historical grouping do appear (אַשּׁוּר and בָּבֶל in ^8‒12; כַּפתֹּרִים, פְּלִשְׁתִּים in ^{13 f.}).—As to the order within the principal groups (of Priestly-Code), it is impossible to lay down any strict rule. Jensen (Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, x. 326) holds that it always proceeds from the remoter to the nearer nations; but though that may be true in the main, it cannot be rigorously carried through, nor can it be safely used as an argument for or against a particular identification.

The defects of the Table, from the standpoint of modern ethnology, are now sufficiently apparent. As a scientific account of the origin of the races of mankind, it is disqualified by its assumption that nations are formed through the expansion and genealogical division of families; and still more by the erroneous idea that the historic peoples of the old world were fixed within three or at most four generations from the common ancestor of the race. History shows that nationalities are for the most part political units, formed by the dissolution and re-combination of older peoples and tribes; and it is known that the great nations of antiquity were preceded by a long succession of social aggregates, whose very names have perished. Whether a single family has ever, under any circumstances, increased until it became a tribe and then a nation, is an abstract question which it is idle to discuss: it is enough that the nations here enumerated did not arise in that way, but through a process analogous to that by which the English nation was welded together out of the heterogeneous elements of which it is known to be composed.—As a historical document, on the other hand, the chapter is of the highest importance: first, as the most systematic record of the political geography of the Hebrews at different stages of their history; and second, as expressing the profound consciousness of the unity of mankind, and the religious primacy of Israel, by which the Old Testament writers were animated. Its insertion at this point, where it forms the transition from primitive tradition to the history of the chosen people, has a significance, as well as a literary propriety, which cannot be mistaken (Dillmann 164; Gunkel 77; Driver 114).

The Table is repeated in 1 Chronicles 1^4‒23 with various omissions and textual variations. The list is still further abridged in LXX of 1 Chronicles, which omits ^13‒18a and all names after Arpachshad in ²².—On the extensive literature on the chapter, see especially the commentaries of Tuch (159 f.) and Dillmann (170 f.). See also the map at the end of Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients.

The Table of Priestly-Code.

1a. Superscription.—Shēm, Ḥām, and Yepheth] compare 5³² (Priestly-Code), 9¹⁸ (Yahwist).

On the original sense of the names only vague conjectures can be reported. שֵׁם is supposed by some to be the Hebrew word for ‘name,’ applied by the Israelites to themselves in the first instance as בְּנֵי שֵׁם = ‘men of name’ or ‘distinction’—the titled or noble race (compare ὀνομαστός): “perhaps nothing more than the ruling caste in opposition to the aborigines.” So Wellhausen (Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments² 14), who compares the name ‘Aryan,’ and contrasts בני בלי שם (Job 30⁸); compare Budde Die biblische Urgeschichte 328 f.; al. Gunkel (73) mentions a speculation of Jensen that שׁם is the Babylonian šumu, in the sense of ‘eldest son,’ who perpetuates the father’s name.

חָם must, at a certain stage of tradition, have supplanted the earlier כְּנַעַן as the name of Noah’s third son (page 182). The change is easily explicable from the extension of geographical knowledge, which made it impossible any longer to regard the father of the Canaanites as the ancestor of one-third of the human race; but the origin of the name has still to be accounted for. As a Hebrew word it might mean ‘hot’ (Joshua 9¹², Job 37¹⁷): hence it has been taken to denote the hot lands of the south (Lepsius, al.; compare Jubilees viii. 30: “the land of Ham is hot”). Again, since in some late Psalms (78⁵¹ 105^{23. 27} 106²²) חם is a poetic designation of Egypt, it has been plausibly connected with the native keme or chemi = ‘black,’ with reference to the black soil of the Nile valley (Bochart, Ebers, Budde, 323 ff.).¹ A less probable theory is that of Glaser, cited by Hommel (The Ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments, 48), who identifies it with Egyptian ‛amu, a collective name for the neighbouring Semitic nomads, derived by Müller (Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 123 ff.) from their distinctive primitive weapon, the boomerang.

¹ Compare the rare word חוּם, ‘black,’ 30^{32 ff.}

יֶפֶת is connected in 9²⁷ with √ פתה, and no better etymology has been proposed. Cheyne (Encyclopædia Biblica, ii. 2330) compares the theophorous personal name Yapti-‛Addu in Tel-Amarna Tablets, and thinks it a modification of יִפְתַּח־אֵל, ‘God opens.’ But the form פתה (pitû) with the probable sense of ‘open’ also occurs in the Tablet (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, v. 290 [last line]). The derivation from √ יפה (beautiful), favoured by Budde (358 ff.), in allusion to the beauty of the Phœnician cities, is very improbable. The resemblance to the Greek Iapetos was pointed out by Buttmann, and is undoubtedly striking. Ἰάπετος was the father of Prometheus, and therefore (through Deukalion) of post-diluvian mankind. The identification is approved by Weizsäcker (Roscher’s Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie ii. 55 ff.), who holds that Ἰάπετος, having no Greek etymology, may be borrowed from the Semites (compare Lenormant ii. 173‒193). See, further, Meyer Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme, 221.

A curiously complicated astro-mythical solution is advanced by Winckler in Mittheilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, vi. 170 ff.

2‒5. The Japhetic or Northern Peoples: fourteen in number, chiefly concentrated in Asia Minor and Armenia, but extending on either side to the Caspian and the shores of the Atlantic. It will be seen that though the enumeration is not ethnological in principle, yet most of the peoples named do belong to the same great Indo-Germanic family.

Japheth.

1. Gomer.

2. Ashkenaz.

3. Riphath.

4. Togarmah.

5. Magog.

6. Madai.

7. Javan.

8. Elishah.

9. Tarshish.

10. Kittim.

11. Rodanim.

12. Tubal.

13. Meshech.

14. Tiras.

(1) גֹּמֶר (LXX Γαμερ): named along with Togarmah as a confederate of Gog in Ezekiel 38⁶, is identified with the Galatians by Joshua, but is really the Gamir of the Assyrian inscription, the Cimmerians of the Greeks. The earliest reference to the Κιμμέριοι (Odyssey xi. 13 ff.) reveals them as a northern people, dwelling on the shores of the Northern Sea. Their irruption into Asia Minor, by way of the Caucasus, is circumstantially narrated by Herodotus (i. 15, 103, iv. 11 f.), whose account is in its main features confirmed by the Assyrian monuments. There the Gimirrai first appear towards the end of the reign of Sargon, attacking the old kingdom of Urarṭu (see Johns, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, xvii. 223 f., 226). Thence they seem to have moved westwards into Asia Minor, where (in the reign of Sennacherib) they overthrew the Phrygian Empire, and later (under Asshur-bani-pal, circa 657) the Lydian Empire of Gyges (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, ii. 173‒7). This last effort seems to have exhausted their strength, and soon afterwards they vanish from history.¹ A trace of their shortlived ascendancy remained in Gamir, the Armenian name for Cappadocia;² but the probability is that the land was named after the people, and not vice versâ; and it is not safe to assume that by גֹּמֶר Priestly-Code meant Cappadocia. It is more likely that the name is primarily ethnic, and denotes the common stock of which the three following peoples were branches.

¹ Compare Winckler Altorientalische Forschungen, i. 484‒496; Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 76 f., 101 ff.; Jeremias Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 253.

² Compare Eusebius Chronicon, Armenian translation (edited by Aucher) i. page 95² (Gimmeri = Cappadocians), and ii. page 12 (Γόμερ, ἐξ οὗ Καππάδοκες).

(2) אַשְׁכְּנַז (Ἀσχαναζ): Jeremiah 51²⁷, after Ararat and Minni.¹ It has been usual (Bochart, al.) to connect the name with the Ascania of Iliad ii. 863, xiii. 793; and to suppose this was a region of Phrygia and Bithynia indicated by a river, two lakes, and other localities bearing the old name.² Recent Assyriologists, however, find in it the Ašguza³ of the monuments,—a branch of the Indo-Germanic invaders who settled in the vicinity of lake Urumia, and are probably identical with the Scythians of Herodotus i. 103, 106. Since they are first mentioned by Esarhaddon, they might readily appear to a Hebrew writer to be a younger people than the Cimmerians. See Winckler ll.cc.; Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 259 f.

¹ Assyrian Mannai, between lakes Van and Urumia, mentioned along with Ašguza in Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, ii. 129, 147.

² Lagarde (Gesammelte Abhandlungen 254) instances Ashken as an Armenian proper name; and the inscription μὴν Ἄσκηνος on Græco-Phrygian coins.

³ Whether the Hebrew word is a clerical error for אַשְׁכּוּז (Winckler, Jeremias), or the Assyrian, a modification of Ašgunza, the Assyriologists may decide (see Schmidt, Encyclopædia Biblica, iv. 4330 f.).

(3) רִיפַת (Ῥιφαθ, Ἐριφαθ: but 1 Chronicles 1⁶ דִּיפַת): otherwise unknown. According to Josephus, it denotes the Paphlagonians. Bochart and Lagarde (Gesammelte Abhandlungen 255) put it further west, near the Bosphorus, on the ground of a remote resemblance in name to the river Ῥήβαζ and the district Ῥηβαντία. Cheyne (Encyclopædia Biblica, 4114) favours the transposition of Halevy (פירת), and compares Bit Burutaš, mentioned by Sargon along with the Muški and Tabali (Schrader Keilinschriften und Geschichtsforschung, 176).

(4) תֹּגַרְמָה (Θεργαμα, Θοργαμα) = בית תוגרמה, Ezekiel 38⁶ 27¹⁴: in the latter passage as a region exporting horses and mules. Josephus identifies with the Phrygians. The name is traditionally associated with Armenia, Thorgom being regarded as the mythical ancestor of the Armenians; but that legend is probably derived from LXX of this passage (Lagarde Gesammelte Abhandlungen 255 ff.; Symmicta i. 105). The suggested Assyriological equivalent Til-Garimmu (Delitzsch Wo lag das Paradies? 246; Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 260; al.), a city on the frontier of the Tabali mentioned by Sargon and Sennacherib, is not convincing; even though the Til- should be a fictitious Assyrian etymology (Lenormant Les Origines de l’histoire² ii. 410).

(5) מָגוֹג (Μαγωγ): Ezekiel 38² 39⁶. The generally accepted identification with the Scythians dates from Joshua and Jeremiah, but perhaps reflects only a vague impression that the name is a comprehensive designation of the barbarous races of the north, somewhat like the Umman-manda of the Assyrians. In one of the Tel-Amarna letters (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, v. 5), a land Ga-ga is alluded to in a similar manner. But how the author differentiated Magog from the Cimmerians and Medes, etc., does not appear. The name מגוג is altogether obscure. That it is derived from גּוֹג = Gyges, king of Lydia (Meyer Geschichte des Alterthums¹, i. page 558), is most improbable; and the suggestion that it is a corruption of Assyrian Mât Gôg (Mât Gagaia),¹ must also be received with some caution.

¹ Delitzsch Wo lag das Paradies? 246 f.; Streck, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 321; Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments², 125.

(6) מָדַי (Μαδαι): the common Hebrew name for Media and the Medes; 2 Kings 17⁶ 18¹¹, Isaiah 13¹⁷ 21², Jeremiah 25²⁵ 51^{11. 28}, Esther 1^{3. 14. 18 f.} 10², Daniel 8²⁰ 9¹ [11¹] (Assyrian Madai). The formation of the Median Empire must have taken place about the middle of the 7th century, but the existence of the people in their later seats (East of the Zagros mountains and South of the Caspian Sea) appears to be traceable in the monuments back to the 9th century. They are thus the earliest branch of the Aryan family to make their mark in Asiatic history. See Meyer Geschichte des Alterthums¹, i. § 422 ff.; Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 100 ff.; Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 254.

(7) יָוָן (Ἰωυαν) is the Greek Ἰάϝων-ονες, and denotes primarily the Greek settlements in Asia Minor, which were mainly Ionian: Ezekiel 27¹³, Isaiah 66¹⁹. After Alexander the Great it was extended to the Hellenes generally: Joel 4⁶, Zechariah 9¹³, Daniel 8²¹ 10²⁰ 11². In Assyrian Yamanai is said to be used but once (by Sargon, Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, ii. 43); but the Persian Yauna occurs, with the same double reference, from the time of Darius (compare Æschylus The Persians 176, 562). Whether the word here includes the European Greeks cannot be positively determined.¹—The ‘sons’ of Javan are (verse ⁴) to be sought along the Mediterranean, and probably at spots known to the Hebrew as commercial colonies of the Phœnicians (on which see Meyer Encyclopædia Biblica, 3736 f.). Very few of them, however, can be confidently identified.

¹ Against the theory of a second יָוָן in Arabia (which in any case would not affect the interpretation of this passage), see Stade Ausgewählte akademische Reden und Abhandlungen 125‒142. Compare, further, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 255.

(8) אֱלִישָׁה (Ἐλισα, Ἐλισσα) is mentioned only in Ezekiel 27⁷ (אִיֵּי א׳) as a place supplying Tyre with purple. The older verbal identifications with the Αἰολεῖς (Josephus, Jerome; so Delitzsch), Ἑλλάς (Targum^Jonathan), Ἠλίς, etc., are valueless; and modern opinion is greatly divided. Some favour Carthage, because of Elissa, the name of the legendary foundress of the city (Stade, Winckler, Jeremias, al.); others (Dillmann al.) southern Italy with Sicily.¹ The most attractive solution is that first proposed by Conder (Palestine Exploration Fund: Quarterly Statements., 1892, 45; compare 1904, 170), and widely accepted, that the Alašia of the Tel-Amarna Tablets is meant (see Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, v. 80‒92). This is now generally recognised as the name of Cyprus, of which the Tyrian purple was a product:² see below on כתּים. Jensen now (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, vi. 1, 507) places אלישה beyond the Pillars of Hercules on the African coast, and connects it with the Elysium of the Greeks.

¹ Compare Targum^Onkelos on Ezekiel 27⁷ ממדינת איטליא; and Eusebius Chronicon, Armenian translation ii. page 13: Ἐλισσὰ, ἐξ οὗ Σικελοί + et Athenienses [Armenian].

² See Müller, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, x. 257 ff.; Orientalische Litteraturzeitung iii. 288 ff.; Jensen Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 379 f.; Jastrow A Dictionary of the Bible, v. 80 b.

(9) תַּרְשִׁישׁ (Θαρσις) is identified (since Bochart) with Ταρτησσός (Tartesos), the Phœnician mining and trading station in the South of Spain;¹ and no other theory is nearly so plausible. The Old Testament Tarshish was rich in minerals (Jeremiah 10⁹, Ezekiel 27¹²), was a Tyrian colony (Isaiah 23^{1. 6. 10}), and a remote coast-land reached by sea (Isaiah 66¹⁹, Jonah 1³ 4², Psalms 72¹⁰); and to distinguish the Tarshish of these passages from that of Genesis 10 (Delitzsch, Jastrow, al.), or to consider the latter a doublet of תירס (Cheyne, Müller), are but counsels of despair. The chief rival theory is Tarsus in Cilicia (Josephus, Jerome, al.); but this in Semitic is תרז (Tarzi). Compare Winckler Altorientalische Forschungen, i. 445 f.; Müller, Orientalische Litteraturzeitung iii. 291.

¹ Herodotus i. 163, iv. 152; Strabo, iii. 151; Pliny Naturalis Historia, iii. 7, iv. 120, etc.

(10) כִּתִּים (Κητιοι, Κιτιοι)] compare Jeremiah 2¹⁰, Ezekiel 27⁶, Isaiah 23^{1. 12}, Daniel 11³⁰, 1 Maccabees 1¹ 8⁵, Numbers 24²⁴. Against the prevalent view that it denotes primarily the island of Cyprus, so called from its chief city Κίτιον (Larnaka), Winckler (Altorientalische Forschungen, ii. 422¹; compare Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 128) argues that neither the island nor its capital¹ is so named in any ancient document, and that the older biblical references demand a site further West. The application to the Macedonians (1 Maccabees) he describes as one of those false identifications common in the Egypt of the Ptolemaic period. His argument is endorsed by Müller (Orientalische Litteraturzeitung iii. 288) and Jeremias (Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 261): they suggest South Italy, mainly on the authority of Daniel 11³⁰. The question is obviously bound up with the identity of אלישה—Alašia (v.s.).

¹ The city, however, is called כתי in Phœnician inscriptions and coins from the 4th century B.C. downwards; see Cooke, A Textbook of North-Semitic Inscriptions, pages 56, 66?, 78, 352.

(11) דֹּדָנִים or רוֹדָנִים (The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch LXX [Ῥοδιοι] and 1 Chronicles 1⁷)] a name omitted by Josephus. If LXX be right, the Rhodians are doubtless meant (compare Iliad ii. 654 f.): the singular is perhaps disguised in the corrupt דדן of Ezekiel 27¹⁵ (compare LXX). The Massoretic Text has been explained of the Dardanians (Targum^Jonathan, Delitzsch, al.), “properly a people of Asia Minor, not far from the Lycians” (Cheyne Encyclopædia Biblica, 1123). Winckler (l.c.) proposes דרנים, the Dorians; and Müller ד(ו)ננים, Egyptian Da-nô-na = Tel-Amarna Tablets, Da-nu-na (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, v. 277), on the West coast of Asia Minor.

(12) תֻּבַל (Θοβελ)] and

(13) מֶשֶׁךְ (Μοσοχ)] are mentioned together in Ezekiel 27¹³ (as exporting slaves and copper), 32²⁶ (a warlike people of antiquity), 38^{2 f.} 39¹ (in the army of Gog), Isaiah 66¹⁹ (LXX); משך alone in Psalms 120⁵. Josephus arbitrarily identifies them with the Iberians and Cappadocians respectively; but since Bochart no one has questioned their identity with the Τιβαρηνοί and Μόσχοι, first mentioned in Herodotus iii. 94 as belonging to the 19th satrapy of Darius, and again (vii. 78) as furnishing a contingent to the host of Xerxes (compare Strabo, XI. ii. 14, 16). Equally obvious is their identity with the Tabali and Muški of the Assyrian Monuments, where the latter appear as early as Tiglath-pileser I. (circa 1100), and the former under Shalmaneser II. (circa 838),—both as formidable military states. In Sargon’s inscriptions they appear together;¹ and during this whole period their territory evidently extended much further South and West than in Græco-Roman times. These stubborn little nationalities, which so tenaciously maintained their identity, are regarded by Winckler and Jeremias as remnants of the old Hittite population which were gradually driven (probably by the Cimmerian invasion) to the mountainous district South-east of the Black Sea.

¹ See Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, i. 18 f., 64 f., 142 f., ii. 40 f., 56 f.; and Delitzsch Wo lag das Paradies? 250 f.

(14) תִּירָס (Θειρας)] not mentioned elsewhere, was almost unanimously taken by the ancients (Jerome, Targum^Jonathan, Jerome, etc.; and so Bochartus, al.) to be the Thracians (Θρᾶκ-ες); but the superficial resemblance vanishes when the nominative ending ς is removed. Tuch was the first to suggest the Τυρσ-ηνιοί, a race of Pelasgian pirates, who left many traces of their ancient prowess in the islands and coasts of the Ægean, and who were doubtless identical with the E-trus-cans of Italy.¹ This brilliant conjecture has since been confirmed by the discovery of the name Turuša amongst the seafaring peoples who invaded Egypt in the reign of Merneptah (Meyer Geschichte des Alterthums¹, i. § 260; W. M. Müller, Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 356 ff.).

¹ Thucydides iv. 109; Herodotus i. 57, 94; Strabo, V. ii. 2, iii. 5: other references in Tuch ad loc.

5. The subscription to the first division of the Table is not quite in order. We miss the formula אלה בני יפת (compare verses ^{20. 31}), which is here necessary to the sense, and must be inserted, not (with Wellhausen) at the beginning of the verse, but immediately before בארצתם. The clause מאלה—הגוים is then seen to belong to verse ⁴, and to mean that the Mediterranean coasts were peopled from the four centres just named as occupied by sons of Javan. Although these places were probably all at one time Phœnician colonies, it is not to be inferred that the writer confused the Ionians with Phœnicians. He may be thinking of the native population of regions known to Israel through the Phœnicians, or of the Mycenean Greeks, whose colonising enterprise is now believed to be of earlier date than the Phœnician (Meyer Encyclopædia Biblica, 3736 f.).—נפרדו] construed like נפצה in 9¹⁹ (Yahwist); contrast 10³².—איי הגוים] only again Zephaniah 2¹¹. Should we read איי הים (Isaiah 11¹¹ 24¹⁵, Esther 10¹)? אִי (for אֱוִי, perhaps from √ ’awaʸ, “betake oneself”) seems to be a seafarer’s word denoting the place one makes for (for shelter, etc.); hence both “coast” and “island” (the latter also in Phœnician). In Hebrew the plural came to be used of distant lands in general (Isaiah 41^{1. 5} 42⁴ 51⁵ etc., Jeremiah 31¹⁰ etc.)

6, 7, 20. The Hamitic or Southern Group: in Africa and South Arabia, but including the Canaanites of Palestine.

Ḥam.

1. Kush.

5. Ṣeba.

6. Ḥavilah.

7. Ṣabtah.

8. Ra‛mah.

10. Sheba.

11. Dedan.

9. Ṣabtekah.

2. Miẓraim.

3. Puṭ.

4. Canaan.

(1) כּוּשׁ (LXX Χους, but elsewhere, Αἰθίοπ-ες, -ία)] the land and people South of Egypt (Nubia),—the Ethiopians of the Greeks, the Kôš of the Egyptian monuments:¹ compare Isaiah 18¹, Jeremiah 13²³, Ezekiel 29¹⁰, Zephaniah 3¹⁰ etc. Assyrian Kusu occurs repeatedly in the same sense on inscriptions of Esarhaddon and Asshurbanipal; and only four passages of Esarhaddon are claimed by Winckler for the hypothesis of a south Arabian Kusu (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 144). There is no reason to doubt that in this verse the African Kush is meant. That the ‘sons’ of Kush include Arabian peoples is quite naturally explained by the assumption that the writer believed these Arabs to be of African descent. As a matter of fact, intercourse, involving intermixture of blood, has at all times been common between the two shores of the Red Sea; and indeed the opinion that Africa was the original cradle of the Semites has still a measure of scientific support (see Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins¹, 6 ff., 24).—See, further, on verse ⁸ (page 207 f.).

¹ See Steindorff, Beiträge zur Assyriologie und semitischen Sprachwissenschaft, i. 593 f.

(2) מִצְרַים (Μεσραιν)] the Hebrew form of the common Semitic name of Egypt (Tel-Amarna Tablets, Miṣṣari, Miṣri, Mašri, Mizirri; Assyrian [from 8th and 7th century] Muṣur; Babylonian Miṣir; Syrian ; Arabic Miṣr). Etymology and meaning are uncertain: Hommel’s suggestion (Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens 530; compare Winckler Altorientalische Forschungen, i. 25) that it is an Assyrian appellative = ‘frontier,’ is little probable. The dual form of Hebrew is usually explained by the constant distinction in the native inscriptions between Upper and Lower Egypt, though מצרַיִם is found in connexions (Isaiah 11¹¹, Jeremiah 44¹⁵) which limit it to Lower Egypt; and many scholars now deny that the termination is a real dual (Meyer Geschichte des Alterthums, i. § 42, An.; Jensen Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xlviii. 439).—On the vexed question of a North Arabian Muṣri, it is unnecessary to enter here. There may be passages of Old Testament where that view is plausible, but this is not one of them; and the idea of a wholesale confusion between Egypt and Arabia on the part of Old Testament writers is a nightmare which it is high time to be quit of.

(3) פּוּט (Φουδ, but elsewhere Λιβυες)] mentioned 6 times (including LXX of Isaiah 66¹⁹) in Old Testament, as a warlike people furnishing auxiliaries to Egypt (Nahum 3⁹, Jeremiah 46⁹, Ezekiel 30⁵) or Tyre (Ezekiel 27¹⁰) or the host of Gog (38⁵), and frequently associated with כּוּשׁ and לוּד. The prevalent view has been that the Lybians, on the North coast of Africa West of Egypt, are meant (LXX, Josephus al.), although Nahum 3⁹ and probably Ezekiel 30⁵ (LXX) show that the two peoples were distinguished. Another identification, first proposed by Ebers, has recently been strongly advocated: viz. with the Pwnt of Egyptian monuments, comprising ‘the whole African coast of the Red Sea’ (W. M. Müller, Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 114 ff., and A Dictionary of the Bible, iv. 176 f.; Jeremias 263 f.). The only serious objection to this theory is the order in which the name occurs, which suggests a place further north than Egypt (Jensen Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, x. 325 ff.).

(4) כְּנַעַן (Χανααν)] the eponym of the pre-Israelitish inhabitants of Palestine, is primarily a geographical designation. The etymology is doubtful; but the sense ‘lowland’ has still the best claim to acceptance (see, however, Moore, Proceedings [Journal] of the American Oriental Society, 1890, lxvii ff.). In Egyptian monuments the name, in the form pa-Ka-n-‛sand-land is the article), is applied to the strip of coast from Phœnicia to the neighbourhood of Gaza; but the ethnographic derivative extends to the inhabitants of all Western Syria (Müller, Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 205 ff.). Similarly in Tel-Amarna Tablets Kinaḫḫi, Kinaḫna, etc., stand for Palestine proper (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 181), or (according to Jastrow Encyclopædia Biblica, 641) the northern part of the seacoast.—The fact that Canaan, in spite of its geographical situation and the close affinity of its language with Hebrew, is reckoned to the Hamites is not to be explained by the tradition (Herodotus i. 1, vii. 89, etc.) that the Phœnicians came originally from the Red Sea; for that probably implies no more than that they were connected with the Babylonians (Ἐρυθρὴ Θάλασσα = the Persian Gulf). Neither is it altogether natural to suppose that Canaan is thus placed because it had for a long time been a political dependency of Egypt: in that case, as Dillmann observes, we should have expected Canaan to figure as a son of Mizraim. The belief that Canaan and Israel belonged to entirely different branches of the human family is rooted in the circumstances that gave rise to the blessing and curse of Noah in chapter 9. When, with the extension of geographical knowledge, it became necessary to assign the Canaanites to a larger group (page 187 above), it was inevitable that they should find their place as remote from the Hebrews as possible.

Of the descendants of Kush (verse ⁷) a large proportion—all, indeed, that can be safely identified—are found in Arabia. Whether this means that Kushites had crossed the Red Sea, or that Arabia and Africa were supposed to be a continuous continent, in which the Red Sea formed an inland lake (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 137, 144), it is perhaps impossible to decide.

(5) סְבָא (Σαβα)] Isaiah 43³ 45¹⁴, Psalms 72¹⁰; usually taken to be Meröe¹ (between Berber and Khartoum). The tall stature attributed to the people in Isaiah 45¹⁴ (but compare 18^{2. 7}) is in favour of this view; but it has nothing else to recommend it. Dillmann al. prefer the Saba referred to by Strabo (XVI. iv. 8, 10; compare Ptolemy, iv. 7. 7 f.) on the African side of the Red Sea (South of Suakim). Jeremias (Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 265) considers the word as the more correct variant to שׁבא (see below).

¹ Josephus Antiquities of the Jews ii. 249. In i. 134 f. he seems to confuse סבא and שׁבא.

(6) חֲוִילָה (Εὑ[ε]ιλα[τ])] often (since Bochart) explained as ‘sand-land’ (from חוֹל); named in verse ²⁹ (Yahwist) as a Joḳṭanite people, and in 25¹⁸ (also Yahwist) as the eastern limit of the Ishmaelite Arabs. It seems impossible to harmonise these indications. The last is probably the most ancient, and points to a district in North Arabia, not too far to the East. We may conjecture that the name is derived from the large tract of loose red sand (nefūd) which stretches North of Teima and South of el-Ǧōf. This is precisely where we should look for the Χαυλοταῖοι whom Eratosthenes (Strabo, XVI. iv. 2) mentions (next to the Nabateans) as the second of three tribes on the route from Egypt to Babylon; and Pliny (vi. 157) gives Domata (= Dûmāh = el-Ǧōf: see page 353) as a town of the Avalitæ. The name might easily be extended to other sandy regions of Arabia, (perhaps especially to the great sand desert in the southern interior): of some more southerly district it must be used both here and verse ²⁹ (see Meyer Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme, 325 f.). To distinguish further the Cushite from the Joktanite ח׳, and to identify the former with the Ἀβαλῖται, etc., on the African coast near Bab-el-mandeb, is quite unnecessary. On the other hand, it is impossible to place either of these so far Nprth as the head of the Persian Gulf (Glaser) or the East-North-east part of the Syrian desert (Friedrich Delitzsch). Nothing can be made of Genesis 2¹¹; and in 1 Samuel 15⁷ (the only other occurrence) the text is probably corrupt.

(7) סַבְתָּה (Σαβαθα)] not identified. Possibly Σάβατα, Sabota, the capital of Ḥaḍramaut (see on verse ²⁶) (Strabo, XVI. iv. 2; Pliny, Naturalis Historia, vi. 155, xii. 63),—though in Sabæan this is written שבות (see Osiander, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xix. 253; Hommel Süd-arabische Chrestomathie 119); or the Σάφθα of Ptolemy vi. 7. 30, an inland town lying (according to Glaser, 252) West of El-Ḳaṭīf.

(8) רַעְמָה (Ῥεγμα or Ῥεγχμα)] coupled with שׁבא (? and חוילה) in Ezekiel 27²² as a tribe trading in spices, precious stones, and gold. It is doubtless the רעֿמה (Raǧmat) of a Minæan inscription,¹ which speaks of an attack by the hosts of Saba and Ḥaulân on a Minæan caravan en route between Ma‛ân and Ra‛mat. This again may be connected with the Ῥαμμανῖται of Strabo (XVI. iv. 24) North of Ḥaḍramaut. The identification with the Ῥεγ[α]μα πόλις (a seaport on the Persian Gulf) of Ptolemy vi. 7. 14 (Bochartus al.; so Glaser) is difficult because of its remoteness from Sheba and Dedan (v.i.), and also because this appears on the inscription as Rǧmt (Glaser, 252).

¹ Halevy, 535, 2 (given in Hommel Süd-arabische Chrestomathie 103) = Glaser, 1155: translated by Müller, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xxx. 121 f., and Hommel Aufsätze und Abhandlungen arabistisch-semitologischen Inhalts, 322, The Ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments, 249 f.

(9) סַבְתְּכָא (Σαβακαθα)] unknown. Σαμυδάκη in Carmania¹ (Ptolemy. vi. 8. 7 f., 11) is unsuitable both geographically and phonetically. Jeremias suggests that the word is a duplicate of סַבְתָּה.

¹ Bochartus: so Glaser, ii. 252; but see his virtual withdrawal on page 404.

(10) שְׁבָא (Σαβα)] (properly, as inscriptions show, סבא: see Number 5 above) is assigned in verse ²⁹ to the Joḳṭanites, and in 25³ to the Ḳetureans. It is the Old Testament name of the people known to the classical geographers as Sabæans, the founders of a great commercial state in South-west Arabia, with its metropolis at Marib (Mariaba), some 45 miles due East of San’a, the present capital of Yemen (Strabo, XVI. iv. 2, 19; Pliny, Naturalis Historia, vi. 154 f., etc.). “They were the centre of an old South Arabian civilisation, regarding the former existence of which the Sabæan inscriptions and architectural monuments supply ample evidence” (Dillmann 182). Their history is still obscure. The native inscriptions commence about 700 B.C.; and, a little earlier, Sabæan princes (not kings)¹ appear on Assyrian monuments as paying tribute to Tiglath-pileser IV. (B.C. 738) and Sargon (B.C. 715).² It would seem that about that time (probably with the help of the Assyrians) they overthrew the older Minæan Empire, and established themselves on its ruins. Unlike their precursors, however, they do not appear to have consolidated their power in North Arabia, though their inscriptions have been found as far North as el-Ǧōf. To the Hebrews, Sheba was a ‘far country’ (Jeremiah 6²⁰, Joel 4⁸), famous for gold, frankincense, and precious stones (1 Kings 10^{1 ff.}, Isaiah 60⁶, Jeremiah 6²⁰, Ezekiel 27²², Psalms 72¹⁵): in all these passages, as well as Psalms 72¹⁰, Job 6¹⁹, the reference to the southern Sabæans is clear. On the other hand, the association with Dedan (25³, Ezekiel 38¹³ and here) favours a more northern locality; in Job 1¹⁵ they appear as Bedouin of the northern desert; and the Assyrian references appear to imply a northerly situation. Since it is undesirable to assume the existence of two separate peoples, it is tempting to suppose that the passage last quoted preserve the tradition of an earlier time, before the conquest of the Minæans had led to a settlement in Yemen. Verse ²⁸ (Yahwist), however, presupposes the southern settlement.³

¹ It is important that neither in their own nor in the Assyrian inscriptions are the earliest rulers spoken of as kings.

² Compare Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, ii. 21, 55.

³ See Meyer Geschichte des Alterthums¹, i. § 403; Glaser, ii. 399 ff.; Sprenger, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xliv. 501 ff.; Margoliouth, A Dictionary of the Bible, i. 133, iv. 479 ff.; Hommel The Ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments, 77 ff., and in Explorations in Bible Lands during the 19th century, 728 ff.; Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 148 ff.; Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 265.

(11) דְּדָן (Δαδαν, Δεδαν; but elsewhere Δαιδαν, etc.)] a merchant tribe mentioned along with Sheba in 25³ (= 1 Chronicles 1³²) and Ezekiel 38¹³; with Tema (the modern Teima, c. 230 miles North of Medina) in Isaiah 21¹³, Jeremiah 25²³, and LXX of Genesis 25³; and in Jeremiah 49⁸, Ezekiel 25¹³ as a neighbour of Edom. All this points to a region in the North of Arabia; and as the only other reference (Ezekiel 27²⁰)—in 27¹⁵ the text is corrupt—is consistent with this, there is no need to postulate another Dedan on the Persian Gulf (Bochartus al.) or anywhere else. Glaser (397) very suitably locates the Dedanites “in the neighbourhood of Khaibar, el-Ola, El-Hiǧr, extending perhaps beyond Teima,”—a region intersected by the trade-routes from all parts of Arabia (see the map in Encyclopædia Biblica, iv. 5160); and where the name is probably perpetuated in the ruins of Daidan, West of Teima (Dillmann). The name occurs both in Minæan and Sabæan inscriptions (Glaser, 397 ff.; Müller, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xxx. 122), but not in the Greek or Roman geographers.—The older tradition of Yahwist (25³) recognises a closer kinship of the Israelites with Sheba and Dedan, by making them sons of Joḳshan and descendants of Abraham through Ḳeturah (v. ad loc.). (An intermediate stage seems represented by 10^25‒29, where South Arabia is assigned to the descendants of ‛Eber). Priestly-Code follows the steps of 25³ by bracketing the two tribes as sons of Ra‛mah: whether he knew them as comparatively recent offshoots of the Kushite stock is not so certain.

22, 23, 31. The Shemitic or Eastern Group.—With the doubtful exception of לוּד (see below) the nations here mentioned all lie on the East of Palestine, and are probably arranged in geographical order from South-east to North-west, till they join hands with the Japhethites.

Shem.

1. Elam.

2. Asshur.

3. Arpachshad.

4. Lud.

5. Aram.

6. Uẓ.

7. Ḥul.

8. Gether.

9. Mash.

(1) עֵילָם (Αἰλαμ)] Assyrian Elamtu,¹ the name of “the great plain East of the lower Tigris and North of the Persian Gulf, together with the mountainous region enclosing it on the North and East” (Delitzsch Wo lag das Paradies? 320), corresponding to the later Elymäis or Susiana. The district round Susa was in very early times (after 3000 B.C.) inhabited by Semitic settlers ruled by viceroys of the Babylonian kings; about 2280 the Anzanite element (of a different race and speaking a different language) gained the upper hand, and even established a suzerainty over Babylonia. From that time onwards Elam was a powerful monarchy, playing an important part in the politics of the Euphrates valley, till it was finally destroyed by Assurbanipal.² The reason for including this non-Semitic race among the sons of Shem is no doubt geographical or political. The other Old Testament references are Genesis 14^{1. 9}, Isaiah 11¹² 21² 22⁶, Jeremiah 25²⁵ 49^{34 ff.}, Ezekiel 32²⁴, Daniel 8².

¹ Commonly explained as ‘highland’ (Schrader, Delitzsch Assyrisches Handwörterbuch etc.), but according to Jensen (Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, vi. 170², xi. 351) = ‘front-land,’ i.e. ‘East land.’

² See the interesting historical sketch by Scheil, Textes elamites-semitiques (1900), pages ix‒xv [= volume ii. of de Morgan, Delegation en Perse: Memoires]. Compare Sayce, The Expository Times., xiii. 65.

(2) אַשּׁוּר] Assyria. See below on verse ¹¹ (page 211).

(3) אַרְפַּכְשֶׂד (Ἀρφαξαδ)] identified by Bochartus with the Ἀῤῥαπαχῖτις which Ptolemy (vi. 1. 2) describes as the province of Assyria next to Armenia,—the mountainous region round the sources of the Upper Zab, between lakes Van and Urumia, still called in Kurdish Albâk. This name appears in Assyrian as Arapḫa (Arbaḫa, etc.),¹ and on Egyptian monuments of the 18th dynasty as ’Ararpaḫa (Müller, Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 278 f.). Geographically nothing could be more suitable than this identification: the difficulty is that the last syllable שׁד is left unaccounted for. Josephus recognised in the last three letters the name of the Chaldeans (כֶּשֶׂד),² and several attempts have been made to explain the first element of the word in accordance with this hint. (a) The best is perhaps that of Cheyne (Encyclopædia Biblica, 318),³ resolving the word into two proper names: ארפך or ארפח (= Assyrian Arbaḫa) and כֶּשֶׂד,—the latter here introducing a second trio of sons of Shem. On this view the Arpakšad of verse ²⁴ 11^{10 ff.} must be an error (for כשׂד?) caused by the textual corruption here. (b) An older conjecture, approved by Gesenius (Thesaurus philologicus criticus Linguæ Hebrææ et Chaldææ Veteris Testamenti), Knobel, al., compares the ארפ with Arabic ’urfat (= ‘boundary’),⁴ Ethiopian arfat (= ‘wall’); ארף כשד would thus be the ‘wall (or boundary) of Kesed.’ (c) Hommel The Ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments, 212, 294‒8) takes the middle syllable pa to be the Egyptian article, reading ’Ur-pa-Kesed = Ur of the Chaldees (11²⁸),—an improbable suggestion. (d) Delitzsch. (Wo lag das Paradies? 255 f.) and Jensen (Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, xv. 256) interpret the word as arba-kišādu = ‘[Land of the] four quarters (or shores),’ after the analogy of a common designation of Babylonia in royal titles.—These theories are partly prompted by the observation that otherwise Chaldea is passed over in the Table of Priestly-Code,—a surprising omission, no doubt, but perhaps susceptible of other explanations. The question is complicated by the mention of an Aramean Kesed in 22²². The difficulty of identifying that tribe with the Chaldeans in the South of Babylonia is admitted by Driver (page 223); and if there was another Kesed near Ḥarran, the fact must be taken account of in speculating about the meaning of Arpakšad.

¹ Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, i. 177, 213, ii. 13, 89; compare Delitzsch Wo lag das Paradies? 124 f.

² Ἀρφαξάδης δὲ τοὺς νῦν Χαλδαίους καλουμένους Ἀρφαξαδαίους ὠνόμασεν ἄρξας αὐτῶν: Antiquities of the Jews i. 144.

³ A different conjecture in Encyclopædia Biblica, 3644; Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel, 178.

⁴ Note Tuch’s objections, page 205.

(4) לוּד (The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch לד, LXX Λουδ)] usually understood of the Lydians (Josephus, Bochartus, al.), but it has never been satisfactorily explained how a people in the extreme West of Asia Minor comes to be numbered among the Shemites. An African people, such as appears to be contemplated in verse ¹³, would be equally out of place here. A suggestion of Jensen’s deserves consideration: that לוד is the Lubdu,—a province lying “between the upper Tigris and the Euphrates, North of Mt. Masius and its western extension,”—mentioned in Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, i. 4 (line 9 from below, read Lu-up-di), 177 (along with Arrapḫa), 199. See Winckler Altorientalische Forschungen, ii. 47; Streck, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, xiv. 168; Jeremias 276. In the remaining references (Isaiah 66¹⁹, Jeremiah 46⁹, Ezekiel 27¹⁰ 30⁵), the Lydians of Asia Minor might be meant,—in the last three as mercenaries in the service of Egypt or Tyre.

(5) אֲרָם (Ἀραμ, Ἀραμων)] a collective designation of the Semitic peoples speaking ‘Aramaic’ dialects,¹ so far as known to the Hebrews (Nöldeke Encyclopædia Biblica, 276 ff.). The actual diffusion of that family of Semites was wider than appears from the Old Testament, which uses the name only of the districts to the North-east of Palestine (Damascus especially) and Mesopotamia (Aram-Naharaim, Paddan-Aram): these, however, were really the chief centres of Aramæan culture and influence. In Assyrian the Armaiu (Aramu, Arimu, Arumu) are first named by Tiglath-pileser I. (circa 1100) as dwelling in the steppes of Mesopotamia (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, i. 33); and Shalmaneser II. (circa 857) encountered them in the same region (ib. 165). But if Winckler be right (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 28 f., 36), they are referred to under the name Aḫlāmi from a much earlier date (Tel-Amarna Tablets; Ramman-nirari I. [circa 1325]; Ašur-rîš-îši [circa 1150]: see Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, v. 387, i. 5, 13). Hence Winckler regards the second half of the 2nd millennium B.C. as the period during which the Aramæan nomads became settled and civilised peoples in Mesopotamia and Syria.

¹ οὓς Ἕλληνες Σύρους προσαγορεύουσιν—as Josephus correctly explains.

In 1 Chronicles 1¹⁷ the words ובני ארם (verse ²³) are omitted, the four following names being treated as sons of Shem:

(6) עוּץ (Ὠς, Οὐζ)] is doubtless the same tribe which in 22²¹ (Ὠξ, Ὠζ) is classed as the firstborn of Naḥor: therefore presumably somewhere North-east of Palestine in the direction of Ḥarran. The conjectural identifications are hardly worth repeating. The other Biblical occurrences of the name are difficult to harmonise. The Uz of Job 1¹ (Αὐσιτις), and the Ḥorite tribe mentioned in Genesis 36²⁰, point to a South-east situation, bordering on or comprised in Edom; and this would also suit Lamentations 4²¹, Jeremiah 25²⁰ (הָעוּץ!), though in both these passages the reading is doubtful. It is suggested by William Robertson Smith (Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia², 61) and Wellhausen (Reste arabischen Heidentums 146) that the name is identical with that of the Arabian god ‛Auḍ; and by the former scholar that the Old Testament עוּץ denotes a number of scattered tribes worshipping that deity (similarly Budde Das Buch Hiob ix.‒xi.; but, on the other side, see Nöldeke Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xl. 183 f.).

(7) חוּל (Οὑλ)] Delitzsch (Wo lag das Paradies? 259) identifies with a district in the neighbourhood of Mt. Masius mentioned by Asshur-nasir-pal. The word (ḥu-li-ia), however, is there read by Peiser as an appellative = ‘desert’ (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, i. 86 f., 110 f.); and no other conjecture is even plausible.

(8) גֶּתֶר is quite unknown.

(9) מַשׁ (The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch משא, LXX Μοσοχ, in accord with 1 Chronicles 1¹⁷ Massoretic Text מֵשֶׁךְ)] perhaps connected with Mons Masius,—τὸ Μάσιον ὄρος of Ptolemy (v. 18. 2) and Strabo (XI. xiv. 2),—a mountain range North of Nisibis now called Ṭûr-‛Abdîn or Ḳeraǧa Dagh (Bochartus, Delitzsch Wo lag das Paradies? 259, Dillmann, al.). The uncertainty of the text and the fact that the Assyrian monuments use a different name render the identification precarious. Jensen (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, vi. 1, 567) suggests the mountain Māšu of Gilgameš IX. ii. 1 f., which he supposes to be Lebanon and Anti-Libanus. The Mât Maš of Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, ii. 221, which has been adduced as a parallel, ought, it now appears, to be read mad-bar (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 191²; compare Jensen Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, x. 364).

31, 32. Priestly-Code’s closing formula for the Shemites (³¹); and his subscription to the whole Table (³²).

The Table of Yahwist.

IX. 18a, X. 1b. Introduction. See pages 182, 188.

A slight discontinuity in verse ¹ makes it probable that ^1b is inserted from Yahwist. If so, it would stand most naturally after 9^18a (Dillmann), not after ¹⁹. It seems to me that ¹⁹ is rather the Yahwistic parallel to 10³² (Priestly-Code), and formed originally the conclusion of Yahwist’s Table (compare the closing formulæ, 10²⁹ 22²³ 25⁴).

8‒12. Nimrod and his empire.—The section deals with the foundation of the Babylonio-Assyrian Empire, whose legendary hero, Nimrod, is described as a son of Kush (see below). Unlike the other names in the chapter, Nimrod is not a people, but an individual,—a Gibbôr or despot, famous as the originator of the idea of the military state, based on arbitrary force.—8. The statement that he was the first to become a Gibbôr on the earth implies a different conception from 6⁴. There, the Gibbôrîm are identified with the semi-divine Nephîlîm: here, the Gibbôr is a man, whose personal prowess and energy raise him above the common level of humanity. The word expresses the idea of violent, tyrannical power, like Arabic ǧabbār.

If the כּוּשׁ of verse ^{6 f.} be Ethiopia (see page 200 f.), it follows that in the view of the redactor the earliest dynasty in the Euphrates valley was founded by immigrants from Africa. That interpretation was accepted even by Tuch; but it is opposed to all we know of the early history of Babylonia, and it is extremely improbable that it represents a Hebrew tradition. The assumption of a South Arabian Kûsh would relieve the difficulty; for it is generally agreed that the Semitic population of Babylonia—which goes back as far as monumental evidence carries us—actually came from Arabia; but it is entirely opposed to the ethnography of Yahwist, who peoples South Arabia with descendants of Shem (^{21. 25 ff.}). It is therefore not unlikely that, as many Assyriologists think,¹ Yahwist’s כּוּשׁ is quite independent of the Hamitic Kûsh of Priestly-Code, and denotes the Kaš or Kaššu, a people who conquered Babylonia in the 18th century, and set up a dynasty (the 3rd) which reigned there for 600 years² (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 21). It is conceivable that in consequence of so prolonged a supremacy, Kaš might have become a name for Babylonia, and that Yahwist’s knowledge of its history did not extend farther back than the Kaššite dynasty. Since there is no reason to suppose that Yahwist regarded Kaš as Hamitic, it is quite possible that the name belonged to his list of Japhetic peoples.

¹ See Delitzsch Wo lag das Paradies? 51‒55; Schrader Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament², 87 f.; Winckler Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen, 146 ff.; Jensen Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, vi. 340‒2; Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments², 148 ff., etc.

² Remnants of this conquering race are mentioned by Sennacherib (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, ii. 87). They are thought to be identical with the Κοσσαῖοι of the Greeks (Strabo, XI. xiii. 6, XVI. i. 17 f.; Arrian, Anabasis vii. 15; Diodorus, xvii. 111, xix. 19, etc.); and probably also with the Κίσσιοι of Herodotus vii. 62, 86, etc. (compare v. 49, 52, vi. 119). Compare Delitzsch Wo lag das Paradies? 31, 124, 127 ff.; Meyer Geschichte des Alterthums¹, § 129; Winckler Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens, 78 ff.; Schrader Keilinschriften und Geschichtsforschung, 176 f.; Oppert, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, iii. 421 ff.; Jensen Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, l. 244 f., etc.

8. נִמְרֹד (Νεβρωδ)] The Hebrew naturally connects the name with the √ מרד = ‘rebel’ (Targum^Jonathan, Rashi, al.): see below, page 209.—הוּא הֵחֵל לִ׳] ‘he was the first to become’; see on 4²⁶ 9²⁰.

9. Nimrod was not only a great tyrant and ruler of men, but a hero of the chase (גִּבּוֹר צַיִד). The verse breaks the connexion between ⁸ and ¹⁰, and is probably an interpolation (Dillmann al.); although, as Delitzsch remarks, the union of a passion for the chase with warlike prowess makes Nimrod a true prototype of the Assyrian monarchs,—an observation amply illustrated by the many hunting scenes sculptured on the monuments.—Therefore it is said] introducing a current proverb; compare 1 Samuel 19²⁴ with 10¹²; Genesis 22¹⁴ etc. “When the Hebrews wished to describe a man as being a great hunter, they spoke of him as ‘like Nimrod’” (Driver).—The expression לִפְנֵי יהוה doubtless belongs to the proverb: the precise meaning is obscure (v.i.).

A perfectly convincing Assyriological prototype of the figure of Nimrod has not as yet been discovered. The derivation of the name from Marduk, the tutelary deity of the city of Babylon, first propounded by Sayce, and adopted with modifications by Wellhausen,¹ still commends itself to some Assyriologists (Pinches, A Dictionary of the Bible, iii. 552 f.; compare Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 581); but the material points of contact between the two personages seem too vague to establish an instructive parallel. The identification with Nazi-Maruttaš, a late (circa 1350) and apparently not very successful king of the Kaššite dynasty (Haupt, Hilprecht, Sayce, al.), is also unsatisfying: the supposition that that particular king was so well known in Palestine as to eclipse all his predecessors, and take rank as the founder of Babylonian civilisation, is improbable. The nearest analogy is that of Gilgameš,² the legendary tyrant of Erech (see verse ¹⁰), whose adventures are recorded in the famous series of Tablets of which the Deluge story occupies the eleventh (see page 175 above, and Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 566 ff.). Gilgameš is a true Gibbôr—“two parts deity and one part humanity”—he builds the walls of Erech with forced labour, and his subjects groan under his tyranny, until they cry to Aruru to create a rival who might draw off some of his superabundant energy (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, vi. 1, 117, 119). Among his exploits, and those of his companion Ea-bani, contests with beasts and monsters figure prominently; and he is supposed to be the hero so often represented on seals and palace-reliefs in victorious combat with a lion (see Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 266 f.). It is true that the parallel is incomplete; and (what is more important) that the name Nimrod remains unexplained. The expectation that the phonetic reading of the ideographic GIŠ. ṬU. BAR might prove to be the Babylonian equivalent of the Hebrew Nimrod, would seem to have been finally dispelled by the discovery (in 1890) of the correct pronunciation as Gilgameš (but see Jeremias l.c.). Still, enough general resemblance remains to warrant the belief that the original of the biblical Nimrod belongs to the sphere of Babylonian mythology. A striking parallel to the visit of Gilgameš to his father Ut-napištim occurs in a late Nimrod legend, preserved in the Syrian Schatzhöhle (see Gunkel Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit 146²; Lidzbarski Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, vii. 15). On the theory which connects Nimrod with the constellation Orion, see Tuch ad loc.; Budde Die biblische Urgeschichte 395 f.; Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 581²; and on the late Jewish and Mohammedan legends generally, Seligsohn, Jewish Encyclopædia, ix. 309 ff.

¹ Sayce (Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, ii. 243 ff.) derived it from the Akkadian equivalent of Marduk, Amar-ud, from which he thought Nimrudu would be a regular (Assyrian) Niphal form. Wellhausen (Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments² 309 f.) explains the נ as an Aramaic imperfect preformative to the √ מרד, a corruption from Mard-uk which took place among the Syrians of Mesopotamia, through whom the myth reached the Hebrews.

² So Smith-Sayce, Chaldean Account of Genesis 176 ff.; Jeremias Isdubar-Nimrod.

9. While Dillmann regards the verse as an interpolation from oral tradition, Budde (Die biblische Urgeschichte 390 ff.) assigns it to his Yahwist¹, and finds a place for it between 6⁴ and 11¹,—a precarious suggestion.—יהוה¹] LXX + τοῦ θεοῦ.—לִפְנֵי י׳] ‘before Yahwe.’ The phrase is variously explained: (1) ‘unique,’ like לאלהים in Jonah 3³ (Dillmann al.); (2) ‘in the estimation of Yahwe’ (compare 2 Kings 5¹ etc.); (3) ‘in despite of Yahwe’ (Budde); (4) ‘with the assistance of Yahwe’—the name of some god of the chase having stood in the original myth (Gunkel); (5) ‘in the constant presence of Yahwe’—an allusion to the constellation Orion (Holzinger). The last view is possible in ^9b, but hardly in ᵃ, because of the היה. A sober exegesis will prefer (1) or (2).

10. The nucleus of his empire was Babylon ... in the land of Shin‛ar] It is not said that Nimrod founded these four cities (contrast verse ¹¹). The rise of the great cities of Babylonia was not only much older than the Kaššite dynasty, but probably preceded the establishment of any central government; and the peculiar form of the expression here may be due to a recollection of that fact. Of the four cities, two can be absolutely identified; the third is known by name, but cannot be located; and the last is altogether uncertain.

בָּבֶל (Βαβυλών)] the Hebrew form of the native Bāb-ili = ‘gate of God’ or ‘the gods’ (though this may be only a popular etymology). The political supremacy of the city, whose origin is unknown, dates from the expulsion of the Elamites by Ḥammurabi, the sixth king of its first dynasty (circa 2100 B.C.); and for 2000 years it remained the chief centre of ancient Oriental civilisation. Its ruins lie on the left bank of the Euphrates, about fifty miles due South of Baghdad.

אֶרֶךְ (Ὀρεχ)] the Babylonian Uruk or Arku, now Warka, also on the Euphrates, about 100 miles South-east of Babylon. It was the city of Gilgameš (v.s.).

אַכַּד (Ἀρχαδ: compare דַּמֶּשֶׂק and דַּרְמֶשֶׂק)] The name (Akkad) frequently occurs in the inscriptions, especially in the phrase ‘Šumer and Akkad,’ = South and North Babylonia. But a city of Akkad is also mentioned by Nebuchadnezzar I. (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, iii. 170 ff.), though its site is uncertain. Its identity with the Agadé of Sargon I. (circa 3800 B.C.), which was formerly suspected, is said to be confirmed by a recent decipherment. Delitzsch and Zimmern suppose that it was close to Sippar on the Euphrates, in the latitude of Baghdad (see Wo lag das Paradies? 209 ff.; Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 422², 423⁸; Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 270).

כַּלְנֵה (Χαλαννη)] Not to be confused with the כלנה of Amos 6² (= כַּלְנוֹ, Isaiah 10⁹), which was in North Syria. The Babylonian Kalne has not yet been discovered. Delitzsch (Wo lag das Paradies? 225) takes it to be the ideogram Kul-unu (pronounced Zirlahu), of a city in the vicinity of Babylon. But Jensen (Theologische Litteraturzeitung 1895, 510) asserts that the real pronunciation was Kullab(a), and proposes to read so here (כֻּלָּבָה).

שִׁנְעָר (Σεν[ν]ααρ)] apparently the old Hebrew name for Babylonia proper (11² 14^{1. 9}, Joshua 7²¹, Isaiah 11¹¹, Zechariah 5¹¹, Daniel 1²), afterwards ארץ כשדים or simply [א׳] בבל. That it is the same as Šumer (south Babylonia: v.s.) is improbable. More plausible is the identification with the Šanḫar of Tel-Amarna Tablets (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, v. 83) = Egyptian Sangara (Müller, Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 279); though Winckler (Altorientalische Forschungen, i. 240, 399; Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 31) puts it North of the Taurus. Ǧebel Sinǧar (ὁ Σιγγαρος ὄρος: Ptolemy v. 18. 2), West of Nineveh, is much too far north for the biblical Shin‛ar, unless the name had wandered.

11, 12. The colonisation of Assyria from Babylonia.—From that land he (Nimrod, v.i.) went out to Assyria]—where he built four new cities. That the great Assyrian cities were not really built by one king or at one period is certain; nevertheless the statement has a certain historic value, inasmuch as the whole religion, culture, and political organisation of Assyria were derived from the southern state. It is also noteworthy that the rise of the Assyrian power dates from the decline of Babylonia under the Kaššite kings (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 21). In Micah 5⁵ Assyria is described as the ‘land of Nimrod.’

That אַשּׁוּר is here the name of the land (along the Tigris, North of the Lower Zab), and not the ancient capital (now Ḳal‛at Šerkāt, about halfway between the mouths of the two Zabs), is plain from the context, and the contrast to שנער in verse ¹⁰.

נִינְוֵה] (Assyrian Ninua, Ninâ, LXX Νινευη [-ι]) the foremost city of Assyria, was a royal residence from at the latest the time of Aššur-bel-kalu, son of Tiglath-pileser I. (11th century); but did not apparently become the political capital till the reign of Sennacherib (Winckler Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens, 146). Its site is now marked by the ruined mounds of Nebī Yūnus (with a village named Nunia) and Kuyunjiḳ, both on the East side of the Tigris opposite Mosul (see Hilprecht Explorations in Bible Lands during the 19th century, 11, 88‒138).

רְחֹבֹת עִיר (Ῥοωβὼς πόλιν)] has in Hebrew appellative significance = ‘broad places of a city’ (Vulgate plateas civitatis). A similar phrase on Assyrian monuments, rêbit Ninâ, is understood to mean ‘suburb of Nineveh’; and it has been supposed that ר׳ ע׳ is a translation of this designation into Hebrew. As to the position of this ‘suburb’ authorities differ. Delitzsch (Wo lag das Paradies? 260 f.) thinks it certain that it was on the North or North-east side of Nineveh, towards Dûr-Sargon (the modern Khorsabad); and Johns (Encyclopædia Biblica, iv. 4029) even identifies it with the latter (compare Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, ii. 47). Billerbeck, on the other hand, places it at Mosul on the opposite side of the Tigris, as a sort of tête du pont (see Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 273). No proper name at all resembling this is known in the neighbourhood of Nineveh.

כֶּלַח (Χαλαχ, Καλαχ) is the Assyrian Kalḫu or Kalaḫ, which excavations have proved to be the modern Nimrûd, at the mouth of the Upper Zab, 20 miles South of Nineveh (Hilprecht l.c. 111 f.). Built by Shalmaneser I. (circa 1300), it replaced Aššur as the capital, but afterwards fell into decay, and was restored by Aššur-nasir-pal (883‒59) (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, i. 117). From that time till Sargon, it seems to have continued the royal residence.

רֶסֶן (Δασεμ, Δαση, etc.)] Perhaps = Riš-îni (‘fountain-head’), an extremely common place-name in Semitic countries; but its site is unknown. A Syrian tradition placed it at the ruins of Khorsabad, ‘a parasang above Nineveh,’ where a Rās ’ul-‛Ain is said still to be found (G. Hoffmann in Nestle, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, lviii. 158 ff.). This is doubtless the Riš-ini of Sennacherib (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, ii. 117); but its identity with רסן is phonetically questionable, and topographically impossible, on account of the definition ‘between Nineveh and Kelaḥ.’

The clause הוא העיר הגדלה is almost universally, but very improbably, taken to imply that the four places just enumerated had come to be regarded as a single city. Schrader (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament², 99 f.) is responsible for the statement that from the time of Sennacherib the name Nineveh was extended to include the whole complex of cities between the Zab and the Tigris; but more recent authorities assure us that the monuments contain no trace of such an idea (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 75⁴; Gunkel² 78; compare Johns, Encyclopædia Biblica, 3420). The fabulous dimensions given by Diodorus (ii. 3; compare Jonah 3^{3 f.}) must proceed on some such notion; and it is possible that that might have induced a late interpolator to insert the sentence here. But if the words be a gloss, it is more probable that it springs from the העיר הגדולה of Jonah 1², which was put in the margin opposite נִינְוֵה, and crept into the text in the wrong place (Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 273).¹

¹ With the above hypothesis, Schrader’s argument that, since Nineveh is here used in the restricted sense, the passage must be of earlier date than Sennacherib, falls to the ground. From the writer’s silence regarding Aššur, the ancient capital, it may safely be inferred that he lived after 1300; and from the omission of Sargon’s new residence Dûr-Sargon, it is probable that he wrote before 722. But the latter argument is not decisive, since Kelaḥ and Nineveh (the only names that can be positively identified) were both flourishing cities down to the fall of the Empire.

11. יָצָא אַשּׁוּר] ‘he went out to Asshur’ (so Targum^Jonathan, Calvin, and all moderns). The rendering ‘Asshur went out’ (LXX, Vulgate, Peshiṭtå, Targum^Onkelos, Jerome, al.) is grammatically correct, and gives a good sense (compare Isaiah 23¹³). But (1) ראשית (verse ¹⁰) requires an antithesis (see on 1¹); and (2) in Micah 5⁵ Nimrod is the hero of Assyria.

13, 14.—The sons of Mizraim.—These doubtless all represent parts or (supposed) dependencies of Egypt; although of the eight names not more than two can be certainly identified.—On מִצְרַיִם = Egypt, see verse ⁶.—Since Mizraim could hardly have been reckoned a son of Canaan, the section (if documentary) must be an extract from that Yahwistic source to which 9^{18 f.} belong (see page 188 f.).

(1) לוּדים (Λουδιειμ: 1 Chronicles 1¹¹ לודיים)] Not the Lydians of Asia Minor (Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 274), who can hardly be thought of in this connexion; but (if the text be correct) some unknown people of North-east Africa (see on verse ²², page 206). The prevalent view of recent scholars is that the word is a mistake for לוּבִים, the Lybians. See Stade Ausgewählte akademische Reden und Abhandlungen 141; Müller, Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 115 f.; Orientalische Litteraturzeitung, v. 475; al.

(2) עֲנָמִים (The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch עינמים; LXX Αἰν-[Ἐν-]εμετιειμ[ν])] Müller reads כנמים or (after LXX) כנמתים; i.e. the inhabitants of the Great Oasis of Knmt in the Libyan desert (Wāḥāt el-Khāriǧah).¹ For older conjectures see Dillmann.

¹ Orientalische Litteraturzeitung v. 471 ff.—It should be explained that this dissertation, frequently cited above, proceeds on the bold assumption that almost the best known name in the section (פַּתְרֻסִים, ¹⁴) is an interpolation. When this ‘cuckoo’s egg’ is ejected, the author finds that the ‘sons’ of Egypt are all dependencies or foreign possessions, and are to be sought outside the Nile valley. The theory does not seem to have found much favour from Egyptologists or others.

(3) לְהָבִים (Λαβιειμ)] commonly supposed to be the Lybians, the ((לוּב) לוּבִים) of Nahum 3⁹, Daniel 11⁴³, 2 Chronicles 12³ 16⁸, [Ezekiel 30⁵?]. Müller thinks it a variant of לוּדִים (1).

(4) נַפְתֻּחִים (Νεφθαλιειμ)] Müller proposes פתנחים = P-to-n-‛ḥe, ‘cowland,’—the name of the Oasis of Farāfra. But there is a strong presumption that, as the next name stands for Upper Egypt, this will be a designation of Lower Egypt. So Erman (Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, x. 118 f.), who reads פתמחים = p-t-maḥī, ‘the north-land,’—at all periods the native name of Lower Egypt. More recently Spiegelberg (Orientalische Litteraturzeitung ix. 276 ff.) recognises in it an old name of the Delta, and reads without textual change Na-patûh = ‘the people of the Delta.’

(5) פַּתְרֻסִים (Πατροσωνιειμ)] the inhabitants of פַּתְרוֹס (Isaiah 11¹¹, Jeremiah 44^{1. 15}, Ezekiel 30¹⁴), i.e. Upper Egypt: P-to-reši = ‘south-land’ (Assyrian paturisi): see Erman, l.c.

(6) כַּסְלֻחִים (Χασμωνιείμ)] Doubtful conjectures in Dillmann. Müller restores with help of LXX נסמנים, which he identifies with the Νασαμῶνες of Herodotus ii. 32, iv. 172, 182, 190,—a powerful tribe of nomad Lybians, near the Oasis of Amon. Sayce has read the name Kasluhat on the inscription of Ombos (see on Kaphtorim, below); Man, 1903, No. 77.

(7) פְּלִשְׁתִּים (Φυλιστιειμ)] The Philistines are here spoken of as an offshoot of the Kaslûḥîm,—a statement scarcely intelligible in the light of other passages (Jeremiah 47⁴, Amos 9⁷; compare Deuteronomy 2²³), according to which the Philistines came from Kaphtōr. The clause אֲשׁר יָֽצְאוּ מִשָּׁם פּ׳ is therefore in all probability a marginal gloss meant to come after כפתרים.—The Philistines are mentioned in the Egyptian monuments, under the name Purašati, as the leading people in a great invasion of Syria in the reign of Ramses III. (circa 1175 B.C.). The invaders came both by land and sea from the coasts of Asia Minor and the islands of the Ægean; and the Philistines established themselves on the South coast of Palestine so firmly that, though nearly all traces of their language and civilisation have disappeared, their name has clung to the country ever since. See Müller, Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 387‒90, and Mittheilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, v. 2 ff.; Moore, Encyclopædia Biblica, iii. 3713 ff.

(8) כַּפְתֹּרִים (Χαφθοριειμ)] Kaphtōr (Deuteronomy 2²³, Amos 9⁷, Jeremiah 47⁴) has usually been taken for the island of Crete (see Dillmann), mainly because of the repeated association of כְּרֵתִים (Cretans?) with the Philistines and the Philistine territory (1 Samuel 30^{14. 16}, Ezekiel 25¹⁶, Zephaniah 2⁵). There are convincing reasons for connecting it with Keftiu (properly ‘the country behind’), an old Egyptian name for the ‘lands of the Great Ring’ (the Eastern Mediterranean), or the ‘isles of the Great Green,’ i.e. South-west Asia Minor, Rhodes, Crete, and the Mycenian lands beyond, to the North-west of Egypt (see Müller, Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 337, 344‒53, 387 ff.; and more fully H. R. Hall in Annual of the British School at Athens, 1901‒2, pages 162‒6). The precise phonetic equivalent Kptār has been found on a late mural decoration at Ombos (Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments⁶, 173; The Early History of the Hebrews, 291; Müller, Mittheilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1900, 5 ff.). “Keftiu is the old Egyptian name of Caphtor (Crete), Keptar a Ptolemaic doublet of it, taken over when the original meaning of Keftiu had been forgotten, and the name had been erroneously applied to Phœnicia” (Hall, Man, November, 1903, No. 92, page 162 ff.). In Orientalische Litteraturzeitung, M. questions the originality of the name in this passage: so also Jeremias Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 275.¹

¹ Verse ^{13 f.} present so many peculiar features—the regular use of the plural, the great preponderance of quadriliteral names, all vocalised alike—that we can hardly help suspecting that they are a secondary addition to the Table, written from specially intimate acquaintance with the (later?) Egyptian geography.

15‒19. The Canaanites.—The peoples assigned to the Canaanitish group are (1) the Phœnicians (צִידֹן), (2) the Ḥittites (חֵת), and (3) a number of petty communities perhaps summed up in the phrase מִשְׁפְּחוֹת הַֽכְּנַעֲנִי in ^18b. It is surprising to find the great northern nation of the Ḥittites classed as a subdivision of the Canaanites. The writer may be supposed to have in view offshoots of that empire, which survived as small enclaves in Palestine proper; but that explanation does not account for the marked prominence given to Ḥeth over the little Canaanite kingships. On the other hand, one hesitates to adopt Gunkel’s theory that כנען is here used in a wide geographical sense as embracing the main seats of the Ḥittite empire (page 187). There is evidence, however, of a strong settlement of Ḥittites near Ḥermon (see below), and it is conceivable that these were classed as Canaanites and so inserted here.

Critically, the verses are difficult. Wellhausen (Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments² 15) and others remove ^16‒18a as a gloss: because (a) the boundaries laid down in ¹⁹ are exceeded in ^{17. 18a}, and (b) the mention of a subsequent dispersion of Canaanites (^18b) has no meaning after ^16‒18a. That is perhaps the most reasonable view to take; but even so ^18b does not read quite naturally after ¹⁵; and what could have induced a glossator to insert four of the most northerly Phœnician cities, passing by those best known to the Hebrews? Is it possible that the last five names were originally given as sons of Heth, and the previous four as sons of Zidon? ^18b might mean that the Canaanite clans emanated from Phœnicia, and were afterwards ‘dispersed’ over the region defined by ¹⁹.—The change from כנען in ¹⁵ to הכנעני in ^{18b. 19} is hardly sufficient to prove diversity of authorship (Gunkel).

צִידֹן] The oldest of the Phœnician cities; now Ṣaidā, nearly 30 miles South of the promontory of Beirūt. Here, however, the name is the eponym of the Ẓidonians (צִידֹנִים), as the Phœnicians were frequently called, not only in the Old Testament (Judges 18⁷ 3³, 1 Kings 5²⁰ 16³¹ etc.) and Homer (Iliad vi. 290 f., etc.), but on the Assyrian monuments, and even by the Phœnicians themselves (Meyer Encyclopædia Biblica, iv. 4504).

חֵת (τὸν Χετταῖον)] elsewhere only in the phrases בְּנֵי ח׳, בְּנוֹת ח׳ (chapter 23 passim 25¹⁰ 27^46b 49³² [all Priestly-Code]); other writers speak of חִתִּי[ם]. The Ḥittites (Egyptian Ḫeta, Assyrian Ḫatti) were a northern non-Semitic people, who under unknown circumstances established themselves in Cappadocia. They appear to have invaded Babylonia at the close of the First dynasty (circa 1930 B.C.) (King, Chronicles concerning early Babylonian kings, page 72 f.). Not long after the time of Thothmes III. (1501‒1447), they are found in North Syria. With the weakening of the Egyptian supremacy in the Tel-Amarna period, they pressed further South, occupying the Orontes valley, and threatening the Phœnician coast-cities. The indecisive campaigns of Ramses II. seem to have checked their southward movement. In Assyrian records they do not appear till the reign of Tiglath-pileser I. (circa 1100), when they seem to have held the country from the Taurus and Orontes to the Euphrates, with Carchemish as one of their chief strongholds. After centuries of intermittent warfare, they were finally incorporated in the Assyrian Empire by Sargon II. (circa 717). See Paton, The Early History of Syria and Palestine 104 ff.—The Old Testament allusions to the Ḥittites are extremely confusing, and cannot be fully discussed here: see on 15^19‒21 23³. Besides the Palestinian Ḥittites (whose connexion with the people just spoken of may be doubtful), there is mention of an extensive Ḥittite country to the North of Palestine (2 Samuel 24⁶ [LXX^Lucian], 1 Kings 10²⁹, 2 Kings 7⁶ al.). The most important fact for the present purpose is the definite location of Ḥittites in the Lebanon region, or at the foot of Hermon (Joshua 11³ [LXX^{B, al.}] and Judges 3³ [as amended by Meyer al.]), compare Judges 1²⁶?). It does not appear what grounds Moore (Judges 82) has for the statement that these Ḥittites were Semitic. There is certainly no justification for treating (with Jastrow Encyclopædia Biblica, 2094) חֵת in this verse as a gloss.

The four names which follow are names of Canaanitish clans which constantly recur in enumerations of the aborigines of Palestine, and seldom elsewhere.

(1) הַיְבוּסִי] The clan settled in and around Jerusalem: Joshua 15⁸ 18²⁸, Judges 19¹⁰, 2 Samuel 5^6‒9 etc.

(2) הָֽאֱמֹרִי] An important politico-geographical name in the Egyptian and cuneiform documents (Egyptian Amor, etc., Assyrian Amurru). In the Tel-Amarna Tablets the ‘land of Amurru’ denotes the Lebanon region behind the Phœnician coast-territory. Its princes Abd-Aširta and Aziru were then the most active enemies of the Egyptian authority in the north, conducting successful operations against several of the Phœnician cities. It has been supposed that subsequently to these events the Amorites pressed southwards, and founded kingdoms in Palestine both East and West of the Jordan (Numbers 21^{13 ff.}, Joshua 24⁸ etc.); though Müller has pointed out some difficulties in the way of that hypothesis (Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 230 f.).—In the Old Testament there appears an occasional tendency to restrict the name to ‘highlanders’ (Numbers 13²⁹, Deuteronomy 1⁷), but this is more than neutralised by other passages (Judges 1³⁴). The most significant fact is that Elohist (followed by D) employs the term to designate the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Palestine generally (compare Amos 2^{9 f.}), whom Yahwist describes as Canaanites. Apart from the assumption of an actual Amorite domination, it is difficult to suggest an explanation of Elohist’s usage, unless we can take it as a survival of the old Babylonian name Amurru (or at least its ideographic equivalent MAR. TU) for Palestine, Phœnicia and Cœle-Syria.—See, further, Müller, Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 218 ff., 229 ff.; Winckler Geschichte Israels in Einzeldarstellungen, i. 51‒54, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 178 ff.; Meyer Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, i. 122 ff.; Wellhausen Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments² 341; Budde Die biblische Urgeschichte 344 ff.; Driver Deuteronomy 11 f., Genesis 125 f.; Sayce, A Dictionary of the Bible, i. 84 f.; Paton, The Early History of Syria and Palestine 25‒46, 115 ff., 147 f.; Meyer Geschichte des Alterthums², 1. ii. § 396.

(3) הַגִּרְגָּשִׁי] only mentioned in enumerations (15²¹, Deuteronomy 7¹, Joshua 3¹⁰ 24¹¹, Nehemiah 9⁸) without indication of locality. גרגש, גרגשים, גדגשי occur as proper names on Punic inscriptions. (Lidzbarski, Handbuch der nordsemitischen Epigraphik 405₄, 622_{4 f.}, 673₃; Ephemeris für semitische Epigraphik i. 36, 308). Ewald conjectured a connexion with New Testament Γέργεσα.

(4) הַחִוִּי (τὸν Εὑαῖον)] a tribe of central Palestine, in the neighbourhood of Shechem (34²) and Gibeon (Joshua 9⁷); in Judges 3³, where they are spoken of in the North, הַחִתִּי should be read, and in Joshua 11³ Hittites and Hivvites should be transposed in accordance with LXXᴮ. The name has been explained by Gesenius (Thesaurus philologicus criticus Linguæ Hebrææ et Chaldææ Veteris Testamenti) and others as meaning ‘dwellers in חַוֹּת’ (Bedouin encampments: compare Numbers 32⁴¹); but that is improbable in the case of a people long settled in Palestine (Moore). Wellhausen (Reste arabischen Heidentums 154) more plausibly connects it with חַוָּה = ‘serpent’ (see on 3²⁰), surmising that the Hivvites were a snake-clan. Compare Lagarde, Onomastica Sacra, 187, 174, line 97 (Εὑαῖοι σκολιοὶ ὡς ἐπὶ ὄφεις).

The 5 remaining names are formed from names of cities, 4 in the extreme North of Phœnicia, and the last in Cœle-Syria.

(5) הָעַרְקִי (The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch הערוקי, LXX τὸν Ἀρουκαῖον)] is from the city Ἄρκη ἐν τῷ Λιβάνῳ (Josephus Antiquities of the Jews i. 138), the ruins of which, still bearing the name Tell ‛Arḳa, are found on the coast about 12 miles North-east of Tripolis. It is mentioned by Thothmes III. (in the form ‛r-ka-n-tu: see Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 247 f.), and in Tel-Amarna letters (Irkata: Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, v. 171, etc.); also by Shalmaneser II. (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, i. 173; along with Arvad and Sianu, below), and Tiglath-pileser IV. (ib. ii. 29; along with Ṣimirra and Sianu).

(6) הַסִּינִי (τὸν Ἁσενναῖον)] inhabitants of סִיָּן‎, Assyrian Sianu (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, ll.cc.). Jerome (Quæstiones sive Traditiones hebraicæ in Genesim) says it was not far from ‛Arḳa, but adds that only the name remained in his day. The site is unknown: see Cooke, Encyclopædia Biblica, iv. 4644 f.

(7) הָאַרְוָדִי (τὸν Ἀράδιον)] ’Arwad (Ezekiel 27^{8. 11}) was the most northerly of the Phœnician cities, built on a small island (Strabo, XVI. ii. 13; Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, i. 109) about 35 miles North of Tripolis (now Ruād). It is named frequently, in connexions which show its great importance in ancient times, in Egyptian inscriptions (Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 186 f.), on Tel-Amarna Tablets, and by Assyrian kings from Tiglath-pileser I. to Asshurbanipal (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament², 104 f.; Delitzsch Wo lag das Paradies? 281); see also Herodotus vii. 98.

(8) הַצְּמָרִי (τὸν Σαμαραῖον)] Six miles South of Ruād, the modern village of Ṣumra preserves the name of this city: Egyptian Ṣamar; Tel-Amarna Tablets Ṣumur; Assyrian Ṣimirra; Greek Σιμυρα. See Strabo, XVI. ii. 12; Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 187; Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament², 105; Delitzsch Wo lag das Paradies? 281 f.

(9) הַחֲמָתִי (τὸν Ἁμαθί)] from the well-known Ḥamath on the Orontes; now Ḥamā.

The delimitation of the Canaanite boundary in verse ¹⁹ is very obscure. It describes two sides of a triangle, from Ẓidon on the North to Gaza or Gerar in the South-west; and from thence to a point near the South end of the Dead Sea. The terminus לֶשֶׂע (LXX Δασα) is, however, unknown. The traditional identification (Targum^Jonathan, Jerome) with Καλλιῤῥόη, near the North end of the Dead Sea, is obviously unsuitable. Kittel, Biblia Hebraica (very improbably), suggests בֶּלַע (14²). Wellhausen (Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments² 15) reads לֵשָׁה or לֵשָׁם (Joshua 19⁴⁷ לֶשֶׁם) = ‘to Dan’ (לַיִשׁ), the conventional northern limit of Canaan,—thus completing the East side of the triangle.—Gerar were certainly further South than Gaza (see on 20¹); hence we cannot read ‘as far as (v.i.) Gerar, up to Gaza,’ while the rendering ‘in the direction of Gerar, as far as Gaza,’ would only be intelligible if Gerar were a better known locality than Gaza. Most probably עַד־עַזָּה is a gloss (Gunkel al.).—On the situation of Sodom, etc., see on chapter 19.—On any construction of the verse the northern cities of ^{17. 18a} are excluded.—The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch has an entirely different text: מנהר מצרים עד הנהר הגדול נהר פרת ועד הים האחרון,—an amalgam of 15¹⁸ and Deuteronomy 11²⁴.

15. בְּכֹרוֹ] compare 22²¹ (Yahwist).—18. אַחַר] adverb of time, as 18⁵ 24⁵⁵ 30²¹ etc. = אַֽחֲרֵי־כֵן: see Brown-Driver-Briggs, 29 f.—נָפֹצוּ] Niphal from √ פוץ; see on 9¹⁹: compare 11^{4. 8. 9}.—מִשְׁפְּחֹת הַכְּנַֽעֲנִי] can hardly, even if the clause be a gloss, denote the Phœnician colonies on the Mediterranean (Brown, Encyclopædia Biblica, ii. 1698 f.).—19. בֹּֽאֲכָה] ‘as one comes’ (see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 144 h) might be taken as ‘in the direction of’ (so Dillmann, Driver, al.); but there does not appear to be any clear case in which the expression differs from עַד־בּֽוֹאֲךָ = ‘as far as’ (compare 10³⁰ 13¹⁰ 25¹⁸ [all Yahwist], 1 Samuel 15⁷ with Judges 6⁴ 11³³, 1 Samuel 17⁵², 2 Samuel 5²⁵, 1 Kings 18⁴⁶).—עַד־עַזָּה] LXX καὶ Γάζαν.

21, 24, 25-30. The Shemites.—The genealogy of Shem in Yahwist resolves itself entirely into a classification of the peoples whose origin was traced to ‛Eber. These fall into two main branches: the descendants of Peleg (who are not here enumerated), and the Yoḳṭanites or South Arabian tribes. Shem is thus nothing more than the representative of the unity of the widely scattered Hebraic stock: Shemite and ‘Hebrew’ are convertible terms. This recognition of the ethnological affinity of the northern and southern Semites is a remarkable contrast to Priestly-Code, who assigns the South Arabians to Ḥam,—the family with which Israel had least desire to be associated.