[342] Gen. i. 2.“The earth was without form and void.” The first state of the earth, or this lower world, shows what it was to be afterwards, viz. a world of confusion and emptiness, full of evil, vanity of vanities. So in the first state of man in his infancy, is an image of what man always is in himself, a poor, polluted, helpless worm.

[427] “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The word translated moved, in the original is Greek or Hebrew which, as Buxtorf says, the Hebrew note properly signifies to hover as a bird, or to brood as a bird over her young, or her eggs when sitting on them; and both Grotius and Buxtorf observe from the writers of the Talmud, properly signifies the brooding of a dove upon her eggs. See Buxtorf on the Radix am and Grotius de Veritate, B. 1.sec. 16. Notes; where Grotius also asserts more than once, that the word merachepheth signifies love. Hence the many fables among the heathen about the world’s being formed by love, and by the breeding of a dove, &c. Macrobius resembles the world to an egg, in the 7th book and 16th chap. of his Saturnalia. And hence the Syrian gods are called by Arnobius the offspring of eggs, by which gods he means the stars. Orpheus had his opinion from the Phœnicians, one of which was this in Athenagoras, that mud proceeded from water, after which he mentions a great egg split into two parts, heaven and earth.

In the Argonauticks, ascribed to Orpheus, we have these lines,

In verse he sung the origin of things-How Love, the cause of all things, by his power Creating every thing, gave each his place.”

And Aristophanes, in his play called the Birds, in a passage preserved by Lucien, in his Philopatris and Suidas,

“First of all was Chaos and Night, dark Erebus and gloomy Tartarus. There was neither earth, nor air, nor heaven, till dusky night, by the wind’s power on the wide bosom of Erebus, brought forth an egg, of which was hatched the god of love; (when time began;) who with his golden wings fixed to his shoulders flew like a mighty whirlwind, and mixing with black Chaos in Tartarus’ dark shades, produced mankind, and brought them into light. For before love joined all things, the very gods themselves had no existence. But upon this conjunction all things being mixed and blended, æther arose, and sea, and earth, and the blessed abodes of the immortal gods.” Grotius. Ibid.

[448] Gen. i. 2. “And the earth was without form and void.” Tohu, Bohu, which last are words signifying vanity and emptiness. Thus God was pleased in the first state of the creation to show what the creature is in itself; that in itself it is wholly empty and vain, that its fulness or goodness is not in itself, but in him, and in the communications of his Spirit, animating, quickening, adorning, replenishing, and blessing all things. The emptiness and vanity here spoken of, is set in opposition to that goodness spoken of afterwards. Through the incubation of the Spirit of God, (as the word translated moved, signifies,) the Spirit of God is here represented as giving form, and life, and perfection to this empty, void, and unformed mass, as a dove that sits infuses life, and brings to form and perfection the unformed mass of the egg. Thus the fulness of the creature is from God’s Spirit. If God withdraws from the creature, it immediately becomes empty and void of all good. The creature as it is in itself is a vessel, and has a capacity, but is empty; but that which fills that emptiness is the Spirit of God.

As the Spirit of God here is represented as hovering or brooding as a dove, so it is probable, when the Spirit of God appeared in a bodily shape, descending on Christ like a dove, it was with a hovering motion on his head, signifying the manner in which not only he personally was filled with the fulness of God, but also every individual member of his mystical body. So that this that we have an account of is one instance wherein the old creation was typical of the new. (See note on Eph. iii. 19.)

[398] Gen. i. 27, 28, 29, 30. Covenant with Adam.Gen. i. 27, 28, 29, 30. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them; and God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said. Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat; and it was so.”

Here is described the sum of the blessedness that man had in his first estate. Here is first his inherent spiritual good, which lay in his being created in God’s image. Here is the happiness that he had in the favour of God; his blessing of him is a testimony of it. Here is the happiness he had in his intercourse with God; for his thus talking with him in this friendly manner is an instance of it. Here is all his external good, which consisted in two things: first, in having society, implied in that expression, Male and female created he them, and in those words, Be fruitful and multiply. Here is the sum of their outward good in the enjoyment of earthly good. Here is the possession of the earth, and the enjoyment of the produce of it, and dominion over the inferior creatures in it. These things were evidently given to Adam as the public head of mankind. God in blessing them, evidently speaks to them as the head of mankind. The blessings he pronounces are given him in the name of the whole race, and therefore the favour manifested in blessing them is implicitly given to him as the head of the race. God’s making them in his own image and then blessing them, implies his bestowing those blessings pronounced on the subject blessed, on the condition of its continuing such an excellent subject as he had made it, and as it now stood forth to receive his blessing, or continued in such a happy capacity to enjoy the blessings as it now was. Otherwise the blessing would be in a great measure made void; for in order to men’s being happy in the blessing, two things were needful: first, that the enjoyments granted should be good; and secondly, that the subject should be good, or in a good capacity to receive and enjoy them; therefore both these are doubtless implied in the blessing here pronounced on Adam, which is plainly pronounced on him in 690the name of the whole race. And therefore, in like manner when Adam is threatened with being deprived of all these in case of his disobedience, Adam must understand it in like manner as a calamity to come on the whole race, and consequently the implicit promise of life, as the confirmation and increase of the blessing, respects also the whole race. Hence the covenant must be made with Adam, not only for himself, but all his posterity.

[450] Gen. ii. 2. “And on the seventh day God ended all his works.” The word translated work, is Greek or Hebrew which comes from Greek or Hebrew, angel or messenger, and therefore most properly signifies a work done in the execution of some function to which the workman is appointed, as the angel, messenger, officer, or workman of another; and so is fitly used concerning the work of creation; which was performed by the Son of God, who is often called the angel of the Lord: he being the Father’s great officer, and artificer, through whom he performs all his work, and executes his eternal counsels and purposes.

[451] Gen. ii. 5. “And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.” This seems to be observed to teach that all the life that is in the creation is immediately from God, and not from the creature itself: that in itself is wholly lifeless and void, and empty of all perfection. The vegetable life that is in this lower world was immediately from God. Of all the innumerable kinds of principles of life that now are manifest, every one was immediately from God. Though the earth, and the rain, and the cultivation and husbandry of men be now made use of, yet these living principles were not first owing to them, for they were before them. So it is as to all principles of spiritual life in the spiritual creation.

[397] Gen. ii. 9. and iii. 22, 23, 24. Concerning the Tree of Life. This tree seems manifestly to have been designed for a seal of Adam’s confirmation in life, in case he had stood, for two reasons: 1st, because its distinguishing name is the tree of life; and 2d, because by what is said in the latter end of the 3d chapter, there appears to have been a connexion by divine appointment, between eating of that tree and living for ever, or enjoying a continued, certain, and everlasting life. But yet here are these difficulties attending such a supposition. If it was so that this fruit was intended as a seal of Adam’s confirmation in life, and was by divine constitution connected with confirmed life, then it should seem that it was something kept in store, reserved by God to be bestowed as a reward of his obedience and his overcoming all temptations, when his time of probation was ended. There seems to be an allusion to this in Rev. xxii. 14. “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life.” And chap. ii. 7. “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life.” So that it was not to be come at until the time of his trial was ended, for if he had eat of the tree before his probation was ended, confirmed life would doubtless have been as much connected with it as after he fell, and that would have defeated God’s design, which was that he should not have confirmed life till his obedience was tried; and if so, why was there not need of cherubim and a flaming sword before, to keep Adam from the tree, before he fell, as well as afterwards? Whereas there seems to have been nothing to keep him from this tree. The tree was not forbidden him; for he had leave to eat of every tree, but only the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And as there was no moral hinderance, so there seems to have been no natural force to keep him off: it does not seem to have been out of his reach; for, if so, what occasion was there for placing cherubim and a flaming sword after he fell. The tree does not seem to be hidden from Adam, for, if it was sufficiently secured from him by this means, before he fell, so it was afterwards, and so what need of the cherubim and flaming sword? From the account which Moses gives of the place of this tree, that it was in the midst of the garden, it appears probable that it was in the most conspicuous place in the whole garden; as the tree of life is said to grow in the midst of the street of the heavenly paradise. Rev. xxii. 2. The street of a city is the most public place in it; and that Adam might have it in view to put him in mind of the glorious reward promised to his obedience, to engage him to the greater care and watchfulness, that he might not fail.

The most probable account that is to be given of this matter is this: that the fruit of the tree of life was not yet produced; but that it was revealed to Adam, that after a while the tree should produce fruit, of which whosoever eat should live for ever; that he might eat of it if he persisted in his obedience; and that if he did not persevere in obedience he would expose himself to death before that time, and so cut himself off from ever tasting of it. The tree probably made a most lovely and excellent appearance, and sent forth a sweet fragrance, and perhaps was gay in the blossom, promising most excellent fruit.

This tree, as it grew in the midst of the garden, so probably it grew by the river, that ran through the midst of this Paradise. See Rev. xx. 2. Ezek. xlvii. 12.

[469] Gen. ii. 9. and iii. 22-24. On the Tree of Life.

There is not the least probability that every fruit-tree in the garden of Eden was then loaded with ripe fruit all at one time. If so, there would have been no provision made for Adam’s subsistence through the year, according to those laws which God had established concerning the tree when he created them; for, according to those laws, the same fruit was not to be perpetually hanging; but when the fruit was ripe, the fruit was to be shed, otherwise the seed would not be shed upon the earth in order to a new production, according to Gen. i. 11, 12. “God said, Let the earth bring forth grass; the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth, and it was so.” It is much more probable that it was with the trees of paradise as is represented of the trees that grew on the banks of Ezekiel’s river of living waters. It is represented as though there were all sorts of fruit-trees, and some yielding their fruit one month, and others another; so that there were ripe fruits newly produced every month of the year, and so a perpetual summer, and also a perpetual spring: some trees were hung with ripe fruit, and others in the blossom, in each month in the year. St. John’s vision, Rev. xxii. may be so understood that each single tree bore twelve manner of fruits on different branches; and yet perhaps there is no necessity of so understanding it; and so one sort bore ripe fruit in one month, and another in another; so that the same tree was always in blossom in some part, while some other part was loaded with ripe fruit. But in Ezekiel’s vision the variety of fruits seems to be on different trees, because it is said there shall grow all trees for meat.

Corol. This is a confirmation of the supposition, that the angels were not confirmed till Christ had ended his humiliation, and until he ascended into glory. For Christ is the tree of life in the heavenly paradise, in the native country of the angels; just as the tree of which we have been speaking was the tree of life on earth, the native country of men; and the Scriptures give us to understand that this person, who is the tree of life in this heavenly paradise, is “angels’ food.” Hence we may infer, that the fruit of this tree was the food by which the angels have their eternal life, or their confirmed life. But as man, who was made under a like covenant of works with the angels, would not have been confirmed, if he had persevered in his obedience, till the tree had brought forth its fruit, and till the fruit of the tree was ripe; so it is not probable that the angels were confirmed, until Christ, the Tree of life in the heavenly paradise, had brought forth his fruit. But what is the fruit that grows on this heavenly tree, the second Person of the Trinity, but the fruit of the Virgin Mary’s womb, and that fruit of the earth spoken of Isa. iv. 2. and ix. 6. “In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely, for them that are escaped of Israel.” “For unto us a son is born, and unto us a child is given,” &c. (how often are the children that are born in a family compared in Scripture to the fruit that grows on a tree!) when this holy child had gone through all his labours and sufferings, and had fulfilled all righteousness, and was perfected, as ‘tis expressed in Luke xiii. 32. Heb. ii. 10. and v. 9.: then he was seen of angels, and 691received up into glory, then the fruit was gathered: Christ, as fall ripe fruit, was gathered into the garner of God, into heaven, the country of angels, and so became angels’ food: then the angels fed upon the full ripe fruit of the tree of life, and received of the Father the reward of everlasting life. Christ did not become the author of eternal salvation to man, till he was thus made perfect, neither did he become the author of confirmed eternal life to the angels, till he was made perfect. Thus the fruit of this tree of life did not become the food of life to either men or angels till it was ripe.

This tree of life did as it were blossom in the sight of the angels, when man was first created in an innocent, holy, pleasant, and happy state, and was that creature from whence this future fruit of the tree of life was to spring, the blossom out of which the fruit was to come. It was a fair and pleasant blossom, though weak and feeble, and proved a fading thing like a flower. When man fell, then the blossom faded and fell off; man came forth like a flower, and was cut down, but the blossom fell in order to the succeeding fruit. The fall of man made way for the incarnation of Christ, it gave occasion to the production and ripening of that fruit, and to its blessed consequences.

Thus, though Christ God man be not the Saviour of the angels, as he is of men, yet he is the tree of life to the angels, and the bread of life as truly as to men.

[77] Gen. ii. 17. “In the day that thou eatest thereof, dying thou shall die.” This expression denotes not only the certainty of death, but the extremity of it. Thou shalt die, in the superlative and to the utmost degree; and so it properly extends to the second death, the death of the soul; for damnation is nothing but extreme death, and I am ready to think that God, by mentioning dying twice over, had respect to two deaths, the first and the second, and that it is to those words the apostle John refers in Revelation xx. 14. when he says, “This is the second death.” It is much such a reference as he made in the 2d verse of that chapter. There he explains to us who the serpent was that beguiled Eve, viz. the dragon, that old serpent, who is the devil and Satan: so here he explains what the second of those deaths, that was threatened to Adam, was. See notes on Rev. xx. 14.

[325] Gen. ii. 17. “Dying thou shalt die.” If we sometimes find such kind of doubled expressions, and also this very expression, dying thou shalt die, as in Solomon’s threatening to Shimei, when no more is intended than only the certainty of the event, yet this is no argument that this does not signify more than the certainty, even the extremity as well as certainty of it. Because such a repetition or doubling of a word, according to the idiom of the Hebrew tongue, is as much as our speaking a word once with a very extraordinary emphasis. But such a great emphasis, as we often use, signifies variously; it sometimes signifies certainty, at other times extremity, and sometimes both.

[320] Gen. ii. 17. “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” This, in addition to notes in blank Bible, And besides Adam died that day, for he was ruined and undone that day, his nature was ruined the nature of his soul which ruin is called death in Scripture, Eph. ii. 1, 5. Colos. ii. 13. Matt. viii. 22. John v. 25. The nature of his body was ruined that day, and became mortal, began to die, his whole man became subject to condemnation, to death; he was guilty of death, and yet that all was not executed; that day was a token of his deliverance; and his not dying that day a natural death, is no more difficult to reconcile with truth, than his never suffering at all that death that was principally intended, viz. eternal damnation; and probably there were beasts slain the same day by God’s appointment in their stead, of which God made them coats of skins, for it is probable God’s thus clothing them was not long delayed after that they saw that they were naked.

[110] Gen. ii. 21. “Adam received Eve as he awaked out of a deep sleep;” so Christ receives his church as he rises from the dead. Dr. Goodwin speaks of this deep sleep of Adam as a type of Christ’s death, 1st vol. of his Works, part iii. p. 58.

[251] Gen. iii. at the beginning. ”Now the serpent was more subtle,” &c. ‘What is an argument ex posteriori of the devil’s having assumed the form of a serpent in his temptation of our first parents, is the pride he has ever since taken of being worshipped under that form, to insult, as it were, and trample upon fallen man. To this purpose we may observe that the serpent has all along been the common symbol and representation of the heathen deities, Jul. Firmic. de errore Prof an. Relig. p. 15. That the Babylonians worshipped a dragon, we may learn from the Apocrypha, and that they had images of serpents in the temple of Belus, Diodorus Siculus, lib. ii. cap. 4. informs us. Grotius out of several ancient authors, has made it appear that in the old Greek mysteries they used to carry about a serpent, and cry, Greek or Hebrew, the devil, thereby expressing his triumph in the unhappy deception of our first mother. The story of Ophis among the heathen was taken from the devil’s assuming the body of a serpent in his tempting of Eve. Orig. contra Celsus, lib vi. And to name no more what Philip Melancthon tells us of some priests in Asia, is very wonderful, viz. that they carry about a serpent in a brazen vessel, which they attend with a great deal of music, and many choruses in verse, while the serpent every now and then lifts up himself, opens his mouth, and thrusts out the head of a beautiful virgin, (as having swallowed her,) ‘to show the devil’s triumph in this miscarriage among those poor deluded idolaters.’ Nicol’s Conference with a Theist, vol. i.

[452] Gen. iii. 14. “Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.” This doubtless has respect not only to the beast that the devil made use of as his instrument, but to the devil, that old serpent, to whom God is speaking, chiefly as is evident by the words immediately following. The words, On thy belly shalt thou go, as they respect the devil, refer to the low and mean exercises and employments that the devil shall pursue; and signify that he should be debased to the lowest and most sordid measures to compass his ends, so that nothing should be too mean and vile for him to do to reach his aims. The words, Dust shalt thou eat alt the days of thy life, have respect to the mean gratifications that Satan should henceforth have for his greatest good, instead of the high and glorious enjoyments of which heretofore he was the subject in heaven; and that even in those gratifications he should find himself sorely disappointed, and so his gratifications should from time to time in all that he obtained as long as he lived, turn to his grief and vexation, agreeably to the use of a parallel phrase, Prov. xx. 17. “Bread of deceit is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.” When a man has eagerly taken into his mouth that which he accounted a sweet morsel, but finds it full of dirt, it moves him immediately to spit it out, and so to endeavour to clear his mouth of what he had taken as eagerly as he took it in. So Satan is from time to time made sick of his own morsels, and to spit them out again, and vomit up what he had swallowed down, as the whale vomited up Jonah, and as the devil vomited up Christ, when he saw that he had swallowed down that which, when within him, gave him a mortal wound at his vitals.

[456] Gen. iii. 14, 15. “And the Lord said unto the serpent,” &c. In this first prophecy ever uttered on earth, we have a very plain instance of what is common in divine prophecies through the Scripture, viz. that one thing is more immediately respected in the words, and another that is the antitype principally intended, and so of some of the words being applicable only to the former, and others only to the latter, and of God’s beginning to speak in language accommodated to the former, but then as it were presently forgetting the type, and being taken up wholly about the antitype. Here in the 14th verse, the words that are used are properly applicable only to that serpent that was one of the beasts of the field; so here it is said, Thou art cursed above all cattle; which shows that this prophecy has some respect to that beast that is a type of Satan. But, in the things spoken in the next verse, the beast called a serpent seems to be almost wholly forgotten, and the speech to be only about the devil; for the enmity that is there spoken of, is between the Seed of the man, and that Seed a particular person; for the words in the original are, “He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel;” it is Greek or Hebrew (He) in the Hebrew, and Greek or Hebrew in the Septuagint; as is observed in Shuckford, vol. i. p. 286.

692[322] Gen. iii. 20. “And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” What Adam in this has respect to, doubtless is that which God had signified in the 15th verse., viz. that Eve was to be the mother of that Seed that was to bruise the head of the serpent, the grand enemy of mankind that had brought death on them, and had the power of death, and so was to be the author of life to all that should live, i. e. all that should escape that death. So Eve was the mother of all living, as all that have spiritual and eternal life are Christ’s, and so the woman’s seed, because Christ was of the woman. Adam, when he had eaten the forbidden fruit, and his conscience smote him, had a terrible remembrance of the awful threatening; “Dying, thou shalt die;” and therefore took great notice of those words which God spake concerning the seed of Eve bruising the serpent’s head; which seem to afford some relief from his terror, and therefore he thought it worthy to give Eve her name from it, as the most remarkable thing that he had observed concerning Eve, and the thing that he thought more worthy to be remembered, and could think of with greater delight and pleasure, than any thing else concerning her, and therefore he thought it above all things worthy that her name should be a continual memorial of it.

That the thing of which Adam took special notice in giving his wife this name, was not her being the universal mother of mankind, or the universality of her maternity, but the quality of those that she was to be the mother of, viz. living ones, is evident from the name itself, which expresses the latter, and not the former; the word Greek or Hebrew Chavah, which we render Eve, expresses Life, the quality of those that she was to be the mother of, and not the universality of her maternity. And it is not likely this would have been if there was nothing in this quality of her posterity that did at all distinguish her from any other mother; which would have been if all that was intended by her being the mother of those that were living, was that she was to be the mother of such as were to live in the world; for so all other mothers might be called Chavah as well as she, or by some name that expressed that quality of life. A name is given for distinction; and therefore doubtless Adam gave her a name that expressed something that was distinguishing; but if what was meant was only that she was the mother of all mankind, then the thing that was distinguishing of her, was merely the universality of her maternity, and not at all the quality of her posterity. Why, then, was not the universality, the distinguishing thing, expressed in the name, rather than the quality, which was not at all distinguishing?

Again: It is not likely that Adam would give her a name from that which did not at all distinguish her from him. If persons have not names that shall distinguish them from all others, yet doubtless they ought to have names to distinguish them from those with whom they always live, and from whom there is most occasion to distinguish them. But if it was not the quality of her posterity, but only the universality of her progeniture of mankind, to which he had respect, that was what was common to her with himself.

If it had been only her being the mother of all mankind to which Adam had respect, it would have been more likely that he would have given her this name on her first creation, and on her being brought to him; which was after that benediction, “Be fruitful and multiply;” but we find that this name was not given on that occasion, but then Adam gave her another name, Gen. ii. 23. He called her Ishah, from her being taken out of man; but the name of Chavah, as the mother of all living, is given on another occasion, viz. just after God had promised that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head, and immediately after God had pronounced the threatening of death on Adam, as in the verse immediately foregoing, “till thou return to the ground, for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return:” while Adam is under the terror of this sentence of death, he comforts himself with the promise of life couched in what God had said to the serpent. Adam gave Eve a new name on this occasion, from that new thing that appeared concerning her after the fall: as she had her first name from the manner of her creation, so she had her new name given her from Christ’s redemption, and Adam gave her her name from that which comforted him, with respect to the curse that God had pronounced on him and the earth; as Lamech named Noah, Gen. v. 29. “And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work, and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed.”

It was a common thing for the progenitors of Christ to have names given them from something that had respect to him or his redemption, or some of his benefits: so were Seth, and Noah, and Abraham, and Sarah, and Israel, and Judah, and others named.

And besides, we have no parallel place in the Bible to justify our understanding this expression, all living, of all mankind that shall hereafter live upon the earth, or including them with those that are now living.

[399] Gen. iii. 20. There are also these further arguments to confirm that Adam does not give his wife the name of Eve, which signifies Life, because she was the mother of all mankind, but because she was the mother of Christ, and of his living seed, who are the seed of the woman of whom God had just spoken. 1st. This name is exceedingly proper and suitable to signify the latter, because, “in Adam all die, but in Christ shall all be made alive; by man came death, so by man also came the resurrection of the dead;” “the second Adam is made a quickening Spirit;” “in him was life, and he is the life.“ All mankind by the first Adam are in a state of death, dead in trespasses and sins, but Christ is the bread of life, of which he that eats should live for ever; and he is thus the fountain of life to the children of men, by bruising the head of the serpent, or destroying him that has the power of death, even the devil; which God had just before promised should be by the Seed of Isha, the name that Adam gave his wife at first.

2. It is not likely that Adam would give this name, viz. Living One, as a distinguishing name for mankind, to distinguish them from other creatures; for the same name is, from time to time in the preceding chapters, given to other creatures, as chap. i. 21, 24, 28. and chap. ii. 19. where the word is radically the same; and so afterwards the name is often given to other animals, chap. vi. 19. vii. 4, 23. viii. 1. and in many other passages of Scripture. And especially it is unlikely that he would give this as a distinguishing name to mankind immediately upon man’s fall, whereby he was ruined, and had brought that threatening on himself, “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die;” and immediately after he had been told by God that he was dead, (i. e. in effect so,) “dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.” Adam could not mean by the phrase all living, what indeed we sometimes use that expression to signify, viz. mankind; but yet we do not intend by it, all that have had, and now have, the human nature, as though life was a distinguishing property of that nature, but we merely mean by it those that are now alive, to distinguish them from those that are dead, or are not yet born. And it is exceeding unlikely that Adam would now first find out this name to distinguish mankind, even those that yet had no life or being, as though life was a distinguishing property and dignity of human nature, on the occasion of so great, awful, and affecting an event, as the first entrance of any such thing as death into the world, to waste, and destroy, and make fearful havock of all mankind, all Eve’s posterity, and that originally by her means. If Adam had meant by all living, all mankind that then had a being in this world, the name was very improper for her; for he that was living of mankind was the only person of all mankind that she was not the mother of: he was rather the father of her. But in the other sense it is true, Eve was the mother of all living universally, of every living one, as it is in the original. There is not one that has spiritual and eternal life of all mankind, who in this sense is excepted, not Adam, nor Christ, no, nor herself, for in this sense, as she was the mother of Christ, she was her own mother.

3. It is remarkable that Adam had before given his wife another name, viz. Isha, when she was first created and brought to him; but now, that on the occasion of the fall, and what God had said upon it, he changes her name, and 693gives her a new name, viz. Life, because she was to be the mother of every one that has life; which would be exceeding strange and unaccountable if all that he meant was, that she was to be the mother of mankind. If that was all that he intended, it would have been much more likely to be given to her at first, when God gave them that blessing, viz. “Be fruitful and multiply,” by virtue of which she became the mother of mankind; and when mankind was hitherto in a state of life, and death had not yet entered into the world. But that Adam should not give her this name then, but call her Isha, and then, after that, change her name, and call her name Life, immediately upon their losing their life and glory, and coming under a sentence of death, with all their posterity, and the awful, melancholy shadow and darkness which death has brought on the whole world, occasioned by Eve’s folly, is altogether unaccountable, if he had only meant, that she was the mother of mankind.

4. That Adam should change her name, and call her name Life, after he had given her another name, doubtless was from something new that appeared, that was very remarkable, concerning Eve; and doubtless we have an account of what that remarkable thing was. The scriptural history is not so imperfect as to give us an account of such an event as a person’s name being changed, without mentioning the occasion of that change. We have several times elsewhere an account of the change of persons’ names in Scripture, but always have an account of the reason why; but we have no account of any thing new concerning Eve, that could give Adam occasion thus to change her name, and call her Life, but only what God said concerning her and her seed after her fall. We have an account of this change of her name immediately upon it, and therefore must understand that as the occasion of it. This was an exceeding proper occasion for such a name, and it is natural to suppose that Adam’s mind might now be so affected by the curse of death just pronounced by God, and the promise of life by Eve, as to induce him to change her name from Isha to Life.

It is most probable, that Adam would give Eve her name from that which was her greatest honour, since it is evident that he had respect to her honour in giving her this name. The name itself, Life, is honourable; and that which he mentions concerning her being the mother of every living one, is doubtless something he had respect to as honourable to her. Since he changed her name from regard to her honour, it is most likely he would signify in it that which was her peculiar honour; but that was the most honourable of any thing, that had ever happened, or that ever would happen concerning her that God said that she should be the mother of that seed, that should bruise the serpent’s head. This was the greatest honour that God had conferred on her; and we find persons’ names changed elsewhere to signify something that is their peculiar honour, as the new names of Abraham, Sarah, and Israel.

6. All new names, of which we have an account in Scripture as given prophetically, are given with respect to some great privilege persons have by some special relation to Christ, or interest in him, and his redemption. So Abraham’s and Sarah’s new names were given them of God, on occasion of the promise made to them, that in their seed all the families of the earth should be blessed; and Jacob’s new name of Israel is given because as a prince he had prevailed with Christ in wrestling with him, and had obtained the confirmation of Abraham and Isaac’s blessing to him and his seed, when he and his posterity were in danger of being cut off by Esau.

[466] Gen. iii. 20. “And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she is the mother of all living.” To suppose the living here to mean those that are restored to spiritual life, and shall be saved from death, and have everlasting life, is agreeable to the denomination the apostle gives true Christians, 2 Cor. iv. 11. “Greek or Hebrew, the living, or the livers; and again chap. v. 15.

[82] Gen. iv. 1. “And Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.” In Eve’s expressing herself thus, it is probable she had an eye to what God said, that her seed should bruise the serpent’s head: and now seeing she had a son, her faith and hope was strengthened that the promise should be fulfilled.

[453] Gen. iv. 3, 4. Cain’s and Abel’s sacrifice. Abel when he comes before God is sensible of his own unworthiness and sinfulness, like the publican, and so is sensible of his need of an atonement, and therefore comes with bloody sacrifices, hereby testifying his faith in the promised great sacrifice. Cain comes with his own righteousness, like the Pharisee, who put God in mind that he paid tithes of all that he possessed. He comes without any propitiation, with the fruit of his ground, and produce of his own labours, as though he could add something to the Most High, by gifts of his own substance; and therefore he was interested in no atonement, for he was not sensible of his need of any, nor did he trust in any; and so being a sinner, and not having perfectly kept God’s commandments, sin lay at his door unremoved, and so his offering could not be accepted, for guilt remained to hinder. This reason God intimates, why his offering was not accepted, in what way he says to him, verse 7th., “If thou doest well if thou keepest my commandments, thou and thine offerings shall be accepted; but seeing thou doest not well, as thine own conscience witnesses that in many things thou hast offended, the guilt of sin remains to hinder thy being accepted without an atonement, thy righteousness cannot be accepted, whatever offering thou mayest bring to me.” See Bp. Sherlock’s Use and Intent of Prophecy, p. 74, 75. and Owen on Heb. xi. 4. p. 18.

[344] Gen. iv. 7. “If thou doest well, shalt not thou be accepted; and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.” Cain was not accepted in his offering, because he did not well because, 1. He was a wicked man, led an ill life under the reigning power of the world and the flesh, and therefore his sacrifice was an abomination to the Lord, Prov. xv. 8. a vain oblation, Isa. i. 13. God had no respect to Cain himself, and therefore no respect to his offering, as the manner of the expression (ver. 5.) intimates. But Abel was a righteous man: he is called righteous Abel, Matt. xxiii. 35. His heart was upright, and his life was pious; he was one of those whom God’s countenance beholds, Psal. xi. 7. and whose prayer is therefore his delight, Prov. xv. 8. God had respect to him as a holy man, and therefore to his offering as a holy offering. The tree must be good, else the fruit cannot be pleasing to the heart-searching God.

2. There was a difference in the offerings they brought. It is expressly said, Heb. xi. 4. Abel’s was a more excellent sacrifice than Cain’s: either, 1. In the nature of it. Cain’s was only a sacrifice of acknowledgment offered to the Creator; the meat-offerings of the first of the ground were no more, and for ought I know might have been offered in innocency. But Abel brought a sacrifice of atonement, the blood whereof was shed in order to remission, thereby owning himself a sinner, deprecating God’s wrath, and imploring his favour in a Mediator: or, 2. In the qualities of the offering. Cain brought of the fruit of the ground, any thing that came next to hand, what he had not occasion for himself, or was not more charitable. But Abel was curious in the choice of his offering, not the lame, or the lean, or the refuse, but the firstling of the flock, the best he had, and the fat thereof, the best of those best. 3. The great difference was this, that Abel offered in faith, and Cain did not “Abel was a penitent, like the publican that went away justified; Cain was unhumbled, and his confidence was in himself, like the Pharisee who glorified himself, but he was not so much justified before God.” Henry on verses 3, 4, 5.

[“If thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.”] Not at Cain’s door, but at God’s door. His wicked doings lay, as it were, at the door of God’s temple, to prevent his admittance and acceptance with God: they stood as a partition-wall between God and him. Wicked men’s sins are a cloud which their prayers cannot pass through, and which hinders their offerings from being brought into the holy place: they are a thick veil before the door of the holiest of all, to hinder their access to God. 1 John iii. 21, 22. “Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God, and whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.”

694[51] Gen. iv. 14. It seems to me no way improbable that Cain’s house was intended, and by him understood, not only of him personally, but of his posterity. Such he might learn from his father Adam, seeing the covenant that was made with him was made not only for himself, but for his posterity. If Cain understood it only of himself personally, it seems somewhat strange that he should express himself after such a manner. The inhabited earth was not broad enough for such expressions. The expression, from thy face, may be in the same sense as David was shut out from the face of God when he dwelt in Ziklag, from his altar where his people sacrificed and worshipped him, and where he especially manifested himself. Doubtless there were then such things as well as afterwards.

[323] Gen. v. 29. “And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work, and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed.” Noah comforted God’s people concerning their labour and fatigue, that was the fruit of God’s curse on the ground.

1. And chiefly as the Redeemer was to be of him, who should deliver his people from all their labours and sorrows, and should procure them everlasting life in the heavenly Canaan, a better paradise than that which was lost, where the ground is not cursed, and shall spontaneously yield her rich fruit every month, where there remains a rest to the people of God, who shall rest from their labours, and their works shall follow them.

2. He first invented wine, which is to comfort him that is faint and weary with fatigue, and the toil of his hands, and which makes glad man’s heart, a remarkable type of the blood of Christ, and his spiritual benefits.

3. To him was given leave to eat flesh, as a relief from the fruit of the curse on the ground, which rendered the fruits of it less pleasant and wholesome. God gave Noah leave to feed on the flesh of other animals, to comfort him under his toil of his hands in tilling the ground. And this is another type of our feeding on Christ, and having spiritual life and refreshment in him: for, in feeding on the flesh of animals, our food and the nourishment of our lives is obtained at the expense of their lives and shedding their blood, as we come to feed on Christ by his laying down his life. And these things in Noah that should be matter of comfort under God’s curse, are the rather taken notice of in him, because in his time the curse on the ground was to be more fully executed than ever it had been before the good constitution of the earth was to be overthrown by a flood, and its wholesomeness and fertility greatly diminished, and so the toil of his hands would be greatly increased, were it not for this relief given that has been mentioned.

4. Before Noah, God’s people did not know how far this curse would proceed; they probably foresaw that God intended to execute the curse on the ground in a much further degree than ever yet he had done. God had not comforted his people by any limits set in any promise made to them, but to Noah God made a gracious promise, setting limits to the curse, promising in some respects a certain measure of success to the labour of their hands, promising that seed-time, and harvest, &c. should not cease.

[5] Gen. vi. 4. The monstrous births that arose from the conjunction of the sons of God with the daughters of men, typify unto us what an odious monster results from the conjoining of holy things with wicked, as of a holy profession with a wicked life in hypocrites, and what powerful enemies against religion such are, whether they are particular persons or churches, as the church of Rome, that monstrous beast, in whom are joined the profession of the name of Christ and many of his doctrine with the most odious devilism, who has horns as a lamb, but speaks as a dragon: and their bulk and huge stature denotes their pride, as none are so proud as hypocrites. Vid. 257.

[257] Gen. vi. 4. And their great bulk, and strength, and renown, besides the pride of such persons and churches as join the religion, doctrine, and worship, and profession of his church, with the deluding glories and bewitching pleasures of this world, and of the heathenish and other human and carnal churches and societies of it, here typified by the beauty of the daughters of men. I say, besides the pride of such churches, these things seem to denote the earthly pomp and splendour, and worldly renown and glory, and great temporal power, that such churches affect, and are commonly in providence suffered to arrive to, as the church of Rome and others.

[428] Gen. vi. 4. “And there were giants in the earth in those days,” &c. Pausanias, in his Laconics, mentions the bones of men of a more than ordinary bigness, which were shown in the temple of Esculapius, at the city of Asepus: and in the first of his Eliacks, he speaks of a bone taken out of the sea, which aforetime was kept at Piso, and thought to have been one of Pelops. Philostratus, in the beginning of his Heroicks, informs us that many bodies of giants were discovered in Pallene, by showers of rain and earthquakes. Pliny, b. vii. ch. 16. says, “That upon the bursting of a mountain in Crete, there was found a body standing upright, which was reported by some to have been the body of Orion, by others, the body of Aetion. Orestes’s body, when it was commanded by the oracle to be digged up, is reported to have been seven cubits long. And almost a thousand years ago, the poet Homer continually complained, “that men’s bodies were less than of old.” And Solinus, chap. i. inquires, “Were not all that were born in that age less than their parents?” And the story of Orestes’s funeral testifies the bigness of the ancients; whose bones when they were digged up in the 58th Olympiad at Yegea, by the advice of the oracle, are related to have been seven cubits in length. Other writings, which give a credible relation of ancient matters, affirm this, that in the war of Crete, when the rivers had been so high as to overflow and break down their banks, after the flood was abated, upon the clearing of the earth, there was found a human body of three and thirty feet long: which L. Flaccus, the legate, and Metellus himself, being very desirous of seeing, were much surprised to have the satisfaction of seeing what they did not believe when they heard.” Grotius de Verit. b. i. sect. 16. Notes.

Josephus, b. v. chap. 2. of his ancient history: “There remains to this day some of the race of the giants, who by reason of the bulk and figure of their bodies, so different from other men, are wonderful to see or hear of. Their bones are now shown far exceeding the belief of the vulgar.” Gabinius, in his history of Mauritania, said that Antæus’s bones were found by Sertorius, which, joined together, were sixty cubits long. Phlegon Trallianus, in his 9th chap. of Wonders, mentions the digging up the head of Ida, which was three times as big as that of an ordinary woman. And he adds also that there were many bodies found in Dalmatia, whose arms exceeded sixteen cubits. And the same man relates out of Theopompus, that there were found in the Cimmerian Bosphorus a company of human bones twenty-four cubits in length. Le Clerc’s Notes on Grotius de Veritat. b. i. sect. 16.

We almost every where in the Greek and Latin historians meet with the savage life of the giants mentioned by Moses. In the Greek, as Homer, Iliad 9th, and Hesiod, in his Works and Days. To this may be referred the Wars of the Gods mentioned by Plato in his Second Republic, and those distinct and separate governments taken notice of by the same Plato, in his third book of Laws. And as to the Latin historians, see the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the fourth book of Lucan, and Seneca’s third book of Natural Questions, Quest. 30. where he says concerning the Deluge, “that the beasts also perished, into whose nature men were degenerated.” Grotius de Verit. b. i. sect. 16.

[199] Gen. vi. 14. “Make thee an ark of gopher wood.” The word in the Hebrew language seems to imply that the wood was of a bituminous or pitchy nature, and consequently more capable of resisting wet or moisture, and St. Chrysostom particularly calls it Greek or Hebrew, square wood not liable to rot. The learned Fuller rightly concludes it to be the cypress, from the affinity of the word for cypress in Greek, which is Greek or Hebrew; from whence, if the termination is taken away, Cuphar, or Gopher, consists of such letters as are often changed into each other; neither is there any wood less subject to rottenness and worms than this is, as all writers do allow. Pliny saith that the cypress-wood is not sensible of rottenness or age, that it 695will never split nor cleave asunder except by force, and that no worm will touch it, because it hath a peculiar bitter taste; and therefore Plato advised that all records that are to be preserved for the benefit of future generations, should be written upon tables of cypress. Martial says that it will last for a hundred ages and never decay. Thucydides saith that the chests were made of cypress in which the Athenians carried away the bones of those who died in war for their country, and the Scholiast gives this reason for it, because it would never decay; and the Pythagoreans abstained from making coffins of cypress, because they certainly concluded that the sceptre of Jupiter was made of this tree, and no reason can be assigned for such a fiction among the poets, but because it was the fittest resemblance of that eternal power and authority which they attribute to him. Theophrastus, speaking of those trees which are least subject to decay, adds this as a conclusion, that the cypress-tree seems to be the most durable of all, and that the folding-doors of the temple of Ephesus being made thereof, had lasted without damage for four generations. In this Pliny is more particular, and saith that those doors were made of cypress, and they had lasted till his time, which he saith was near four hundred years, and still looked as if they were new. And Vitruvius speaks both of the cypress and of the pine-tree, that they kept for a long time without the least defect, because the sap, which is in every part of the wood, hath a peculiar bitter taste, as is so very offensive that no worm or other consuming animal will touch it. He also tells us that such works as are made of such wood will last for ever. And therefore he advises that the beams of all churches should especially be made of cypress-wood, because such as were made of fir were soon consumed by the worm and rottenness; and as it was such a lasting wood, so it was also very fit for the building of ships. Peter Martyr, as cited by the learned Fuller, saith that the inhabitants of Crete had their cypress-trees so common, that they made the beams of their houses, their rafters, their rooms, and floors, and also their ships, of this wood. Plutarch saith that the ship-carpenter in the first place useth the pine from Isthmos, and the cypress from Crete; and Vegetius adds, that the galleys are built chiefly of the cypress, and of the pine-trees, or of the larch and fir; and in the epistle of Theodoricus to Abundantius, the prefect, in which he gives him a commission to build a thousand barks for fetching provisions, or bread-corn; he commands him to inquire throughout all Italy, for proper artists, for wood for such work; and wherever he should find the cypress or pine-trees near the shore, that he should buy them at a reasonable price. Neither was it thus only in Crete and Italy, but Diodorus proves that in Phœnicia there was timber sufficient to build ships, because Libanus, near Tripoli, and Biblus, and Sidon were full of cedar-trees, and larch-trees, and cypress-trees, which were very admirable for show and greatness; and Plato, among the trees that were fit for ship-carpenters to use, places the cypress next to the pine and the larch-trees. And even in latter years, we are told that the Saracens did hasten from Alexandria to Phœnicia to cut down the cypress-wood, and fit it for the use of the ships. And as the cypress-tree was very fit for this use, so it grew in great plenty in Assyria and Babylonia, and therefore Arrian and Strabo speak particularly of it, and that the numerous fleet which Alexander the Great built in those parts, was made of the cypress which he cut down, and which grew in Babylonia. For there was, as they say, a great plenty of these trees in Assyria, and that they had no other wood in the country which was fit for such a purpose.

Bedford’s Scripture Chronology, p. 111, 112. notes that the reason why they needed a sort of wood not subject to decay or rottenness, was chiefly because the ark was so long in building. Had it not been a kind of wood of extraordinary durableness, it would have decayed and spoiled in much less than 120 years, being exposed to the weather.

[259] The country where Noah built the ark, was probably in Babylonia, or the region thereabout, which abounds with cypress or gopher-trees. The Gordyean mountains in Armenia seem to be at a proportional distance, and since they are allowed to be the highest in the world, there is no reason for receding from the commonly received opinion, viz. that those were the hills whereon the ark stopped. Here it is that the generality of geographers place the ark. Here it is that almost all travellers have found the report of it. And lastly, here it is that the inhabitants of the country show some relics of it, and call places after its name to this very day. Complete Body of Divin. p. 324.

“In Armenia est altior mons quam sit in toto orbe terrarum, qui Arath vulgariter nuncupatur; et in cacumine montis illius arca Noe post diluvium primo sedit; et licet propter abundantiam nivium, quæ semper in illo monte reperiuntur, nemo valet illum ascendere; semper tamen apparet in ejus cacumine quoddam nigrum, quod ab hominibus dicitur esse Arca.” Hist. Orient. c. 9.

The mount Gordion, called by the Turks Ardagh, is the highest in the world; the Jews, the Armenians, and the Mussulmans, affirm that the ark of Noah stopped at this mountain after the deluge. La Boulaye’s Voyages. They tell us likewise that the city Nahsivan, which is about three leagues from the mountain Ararat, is the oldest in the world; that Noah dwelt therein when he came out of the ark; that the word Nahsivan is derived from Nah, which signifies a ship, and sivan, which signifies to stop or stay; and that this name was given to it because the ark stopped at this same mountain. Tavernier’s Travels, tom. iv.

[297] Gen. vii. 1-7. The company in Noah’s Ark was upon many accounts a type of the church of Christ. The ark did literally contain in it the church of God, for all flesh had corrupted their way before God, and true religion and piety seemed to be confined to Noah and his family. The ark was made for the salvation of the church, and for the saving the church from the destruction which the world was to undergo, and to which it was doomed, and of which all the rest of mankind were to be the subjects in an overflowing deluge of God’s wrath. So Christ, God-man, mediator, was made for the salvation of his church, to save it from that destruction and woe that is denounced against this wicked world, and that deluge of wrath that will overwhelm all others. The way in which persons were saved by the ark, was by taking warning from Noah the preacher of righteousness to fly from the wrath to come, and hearkening to the call, and flying for refuge to the ark, and getting into the ark. So the way by which we are saved by Christ, is by flying from the deluge of God’s wrath, and taking refuge in Christ, and being in him.

The ark was a refuge from storm, and from wind, the rain that poured down out of heaven in a very dreadful manner, it did not hurt those that were in the ark; so Christ is a hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest. Isa. xxxii. 1. He is a place of refuge, and a covert from storm and from wind. Isa. iv. 6. “He is to his church a refuge from the storm, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall.” Isa. xxv. 4. “He that is built in Christ, when the wind blows, the rain descends, and the floods come and beat upon his house, it will not fall.”

The company in the ark was safe in the greatest catastrophe, when the world was as it were dissolved. So they that have Christ for their refuge and strength, need not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, (as they in fact were in the flood, they were in the midst of the sea, the sea surrounded them and overwhelmed them,) though the waters thereof roar and are troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof, Psal. xlvi. 1, 2, 3. Though the waters were so exceeding great and overwhelming, yet those that were in the ark did not sink in them. Though the waters overtopped the highest mountains, yet they could not overwhelm them; though the ark when it stood on the ground was a low thing, in comparison of other things that the waters overwhelmed, yet the waters could not get above them, but let the waters rise never so high, yet the ark kept above them, which evidently represents the safety of the church in Christ in the greatest danger, so that “when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.” Isa. xliii. 2. Concerning 696those that belong to the church of Christ, it is promised in Psal. xxxii. 6. “For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found; surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him.” And though the church often appears as a low thing, as though the mighty waters that come against it could immediately overflow it, yet the church is kept above water, let them come in ever so fiercely, and rise never so high. If it was not the Lord that is on their side, oftentimes her enemies would swallow her up quick. This also represents to us how Christ was kept from sinking under his sufferings. It was impossible that Christ should fail in the great work that he undertook; and though his sufferings were so great, though the deluge that came upon him was so very great, the billows of wrath so mighty, enough to overwhelm a whole world, and to overwhelm the highest mountains, to overtop the stoutest and mightiest, yet Christ did not sink and fail, but was kept above water; he kept above all, and in the issue triumphed overall; as his church also in him shall obtain the victory over all her enemies, and shall appear finally above them, let them rise never so high, and deal never so proudly, as the ark kept still above the water, when the waters were mounted up even to heaven. The ship wherein Christ was could not sink. Matt. viii. 24, 25, 26. “And behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves; but he was asleep, and his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us; we perish. And he said unto them, Why are ye fearful? O ye of little faith! Then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.”

They that went into the ark were saved, when thousands and millions of others were destroyed; so they that dwell in the secret place of the Most High, that make Christ their refuge, and the Most High their habitation, thousands shall fall at their side, and ten thousands at their right hand; only with their eyes shall they behold and see the reward of the wicked, but no evil shall befall them, nor any plague come nigh their dwelling, Psal. xci.

There was but one ark that any could resort to for refuge in the whole world. So there is no other name, but the name of Christ, given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved. There was no other refuse but the ark. If they went up to the tops of their houses, or to the tops of the highest mountains, it was in vain, the waters overtopped them; so if men trust in their carnal confidences, in their own strength, their own works, and mount high in a towering conceit of their own righteousness, it is in vain. In vain is salvation looked for from the hills, and the multitude of the mountains, for there is no safety but in the Lord. Other refuges did they then probably look for, more likely to save them than the ark, for they could scarce conceive of such a way of safety by the floating of such a building on the waters, the art of making ships having not been discovered before that time. So men’s own righteousness looks more likely to men to save them, than Christ. They are ready to say of the Lord’s anointed, How shall this man save us?

There were but a few saved, when all the rest of the world was destroyed; so the church of Christ is but a little flock.

The door of the ark was open to receive all sorts of creatures, tigers, wolves, bears, lions, leopards, serpents, vipers, dragons, such as men would not by any means admit into the doors of their houses, but if they came they would soon have beat them out again. So Christ stands ready to receive all, even the vilest and worst: he came to save the chief of sinners. There were all kinds of creatures in the ark; so in the Christian church are gathered together persons of all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, persons of all degrees, all kinds of tempers and manners. In the ark the wolf dwelt with the lamb, the leopard lay down with the kid, all were peaceable together in the ark, even those that were the greatest enemies, and were wont to devour one another before, as it is prophesied that it should be in the Christian church, Isa. xi. 6., &c. lxv. 25.

All in the ark was subject to Noah, as the church is subject to Christ; all was saved by his righteousness, Gen. vii. 1. “And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark: for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.” As the church is saved by Christ’s righteousness, there is no rest any where for God’s people but and in Christ, as the dove that Noah sent forth found no rest for the sole of her foot but in the ark; when she wandered from the ark, she found no rest till she returned again. The dove therein was a type of a true saint, as the raven was a type of a false professor, who separates from Christ, and returns to him no more.

The ark was taken up from the earth, and after being long tossed to and fro in the waters, when it was not steered by the wisdom of Noah, but was only under the care of Providence, is rested on the top of an exceeding high mountain, as it were in heaven, and was brought into a new world; so the church of Christ in this world is tossed to and fro like a bark on the water, passes through great tribulation, and appears to be overwhelmed. Isa. liv. 11. “O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted! behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and will lay thy foundations with sapphires.” At last, through God’s care of it and mercy to it, it rests in heaven. The ark, in the midst of the flood, rested on a mountain strong and high; so the church, when ready to be overwhelmed, rests on a rock higher than she.

[354] Gen. vii. 8, 9., and 14, 15, 16. Concerning the resorting of all kinds of birds, and beasts, and creeping things to the ark before the flood. The particular animals that were gathered together to the ark and saved there, when all the rest of their kind were destroyed, were those that God had pitched on, and in his sovereign pleasure chosen, out of the many thousands and millions that were of their kind, and yet they were of every kind, as it were of every nation of birds and beasts. So that here was a lively image of that gathering together of the elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other, that there was before the destruction of Jerusalem, and before the terrible judgments of God that came on the earth at and before Constantine’s time, and that will be before the great destruction of God’s enemies that will be about the time of the destruction of antichrist, when the harvest of the earth shall be gathered in before the vintage, and the gathering together there will be to Christ before the great, and general, and last destruction of the wicked by the general conflagration, when the world shall be destroyed by a deluge of fire. There are elect of every nation that shall be gathered in before the final destruction of the wicked world, as is often said in Scripture, especially in the book of Revelation. The doves and other birds then flocked to the windows of the ark, representing that flocking of souls to Christ which shall be as doves to their windows. They flocked together, the eagle, the vulture, and other rapacious birds, together with doves and other such birds, without preying upon them; representing times of great ingathering of souls to Christ, wherein the wolf dwells with the lamb, and the leopard lies down with the kid, &c.

[346] Gen. viii. 7, 8., &c. Concerning the raven and the dove, that Noah sent forth. The dove is an emblem of a gracious soul, which, finding no rest for its foot, no solid peace or satisfaction in this world, this deluged, defiling world, returns to Christ as to its ark, as to its Noah. The carnal heart, like the raven, takes up with the world, and feeds on the carrion it finds there. But return thou to thy rest, O my soul, to thy Noah, so the word is, Psal. cxvi. 7. “O that I had wings like a dove to flee to him,” Psal. lv. 6. The olive-branch, which was an emblem of peace, was brought, not by a raven, a bird of prey, nor by a gay and proud peacock, but by a mild, patient, humble dove. It is a dove-like disposition that brings in to the soul earnests of rest and joy.

[166] Gen. viii. 21. “And the Lord smelt a sweet savour, and the Lord said in his heart, I will not,” &c. It was not for the acceptableness of that sacrifice that made God promise that he would no more curse the ground, but the acceptableness of the sacrifice of Christ represented by it.

[347] Gen. ix. 5., &c. “And surely your blood of your lives will I require it whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” We have an account of murders before the flood, but nothing that looks as though murder was wont then to be revenged with death by men, 697in an established course of public justice. Lamech, when he had been guilty of murder, seems not to have been executed for it by men. And by the story of Cain, it should seem that God took the punishment of murder then into his own hands. In all probability, a little before the flood, when we read that the earth was filled with violence, the earth was filled with murders, and that those giants who then became such mighty men, and men of renown, were guilty of many murders, and that it was in the earth as it was in corrupt times in Israel, and the land was filled with oppression and violence, in other respects their hands were full of blood, Isa. i. 15. Jer. ii. 34. “And the land was full of blood,” Ezek. ix. 9. By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they broke out, and blood toucheth blood: the like in many other places. And there being no human laws for putting murderers to death, therefore God did in a remarkable manner take that work into his own hands in the destruction of those murderers by the waters of the deluge; but now establishes it as a rule henceforward to be observed, that murder shall be revenged in a course of public justice.

Another reason why God now does expressly establish and particularly insist on this rule is, that God had now first given them leave to shed the blood of beasts for food, which had not been granted till now, which liberty they would have been in danger of abusing, to make shedding of blood appear a less terrible thing to them, and so taking encouragement the more lightly to shed men’s blood, had not God set up this fence.

[238] Gen. ix. 12, 13, 14, 15. Concerning the rainbow that God gave for a token of the covenant to Noah. The author of Revelation Examined with Candour, supposes that the rainbow was never seen before Noah saw it, on occasion of his revealing his covenant to him, and says, “The tradition of antiquity concerning the rainbow, seems strongly to confirm this opinion; for Iris, which is the name of the rainbow with the Greeks, is said to be the daughter of Thaumas, i. e. Wonder, and the messenger of Jupiter, to carry his great oath to the other gods when they had offended. Now this seems to be a fable plainly founded upon the solemn covenant now mentioned, which God made with men after the deluge: the covenant of God on this occasion plainly implies the oath of God, as you may learn from Isa. liv. 9. where God declaring his resolution of mercy to the Gentiles, useth these words, ’For this is as the waters of Noah unto me, for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.’”

[348] Gen. ix. 12., &c. Concerning the rainbow, the token of the covenant. This is on many accounts a token of God’s covenant of grace, and his special promise of no more overthrowing the earth with a flood in particular.

It was a most fit token of the covenant of grace of which this particular covenant was a part, and also an image, as appears by Isa. liv. 8, 9, 10. Tokens of things that appertain to the covenant of God do as fitly confirm this promise, as they did the promise mentioned in the 7th chap. of Isaiah, ver. 14. It is light which is the symbol of God’s favour and blessed communications to those that are the objects of his favour, and a symbol of hope, comfort and joy, excellency and glory. It is a very pleasant light, excellently representing that grace and love that is manifested in the covenant of grace, and that sweet comfort and peace, and that excellent grace and glory, that is the fruit of that love.

It is light manifested in all the variety of its beautiful colours, which represent, as has been elsewhere shown, the beauty and sweetness of the divine Spirit of love, and those amiable sweet graces and happy influences that are from that Spirit.

It is a pleasant sweet light in a cloud, which is the symbol of the divine presence, and especially of God manifest in the flesh, or in the human nature of Christ, and therefore fitly represents the pleasant grace and sweet love of God as appearing in Christ God man. The light of the sun is more beautiful and pleasant to our weak eyes appearing thus in a cloud where the dazzling brightness of it is removed, and its pleasantness retained and illustrated, than when we behold it in the sun directly. So the divine perfections, as appearing in Christ God man, are brought down to our manner of conception, and are represented to the greatest advantage to such weak creatures as we are, and appear not glaring and terrifying, but easy, sweet, and inviting. The light of the rainbow in a cloud, teaches the like mystery with the light of fire in a pillar of cloud in the wilderness, even the union of the divine nature, or God dwelling in flesh.

It is a pleasant light in the bosom of a dissolving cloud, that is wearied with watering, and is spending itself for the sake of men, and in order to shed down its fatness, its nourishing, benign, refreshing influences on the earth, and so fitly represents the beauty, and love, and excellent fulness of Christ, as it is manifested in his dying for men. The drops of rain fitly represent Christ’s blood, and also his word, and the blessed communications of his Spirit, which come by his death, and are compared to the rain in the Scripture.

As the cloud fitly represents the human nature of Christ’s person, so also it doth Christ mystical, or the human nature of the church. In the rainbow the light of the sun is imparted to, and sweetly reflected from, a cloud, that is but a vapour that continues for a little while, and then vanishes away in an empty, unsubstantial, vanishing thing, driven to and fro with the wind, that is far from having any light or beauty of its own, being in its own nature dark.

The multitude of drops from which the light of the sun is so beautifully reflected, signify the same with the multitude of the drops of dew that reflect the light of the sun in the morning, spoken of, Ps. cx. 3. (See notes in the place.) They are all God’s jewels, and, as they are all in heaven, each one, by its reflection, is a little star, and so do more fitly represent the saints than the drops of dew. These drops are all from heaven, as the saints are born from above; they are all from the dissolving cloud: so the saints are the children of Christ, they receive their new nature from him, and by his death they are from the womb of the cloud, the church: Jerusalem which is above, is the mother of us all: the saints are born of the church that is in travail with them, enduring great labours, and suffering, and carnal persecutions; so those jewels of God are out of the dissolving cloud. These drops receive and reflect the light of the sun just breaking forth, and shining out of the cloud that had been till now darkened and hid, and covered with thick clouds; so the saints receive grace and comfort from Christ’s rising from his state of humiliation, suffering, and death, wherein his glory was veiled, and he that is the brightness of God’s glory was as it were extinguished, as was signified in the time of it, by that eclipse of the sun. The light which in the sun, its fountain, is one and unvaried, as it is reflected from the cloud appears with great variety; so the glory of God, that is simple, is reflected from the saints in various graces. The whole rainbow, composed of innumerable shining beautiful drops, all united in one, ranged in such excellent order, some parts higher and others lower, the different colours one above another in such exact order, beautifully represents the church of saints of different degrees, gifts, and offices, each with its proper place, and each with its peculiar beauty: each drop may be beautiful in itself, but the whole, as united together, much more beautiful. Numb. xxiv. 5, 6. “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles, O Israel! as the valleys are they spread forth, as the gardens by the river’s side; as the trees of lign-aloes which the Lord hath planted, and as the cedar-trees beside the waters.” Ps. xlviii. 2. “Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion.” Ps. 1. 2. “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.” Ps. cxxii. 3. “Jerusalem is builded as a city compact together.” Part of this bow is on earth, and part in heaven, so it is with the church. The bow gradually rises higher and higher from the earth towards heaven, so the saints from their first conversion are travelling in the way towards heaven, and gradually climb the hill, till they arrive at the top. So this bow in this respect is a like token of the covenant with Jacob’s ladder, which represented the way to heaven by the covenant of grace, in which the saints go from step to step, and from strength to strength, till they arrive at the 698heavenly Zion; so in this bow the ascent is gradual towards the top in the way to heaven; the beginning of the ascent is sharpest and most difficult; the higher you ascend the easier the ascent becomes. On earth this bow is divided, the parts of it that are here below are at a distance from one another, but in heaven it is united, and perfectly joined together. So different parts of the church on earth may be divided, separated as to distance of place, have no acquaintance one part with another, and separated in manner of worship and many opinions, and separate in affection, but will be perfectly united in heaven. The parts of the rainbow, the higher you ascend, the nearer and nearer do they come together; so the more eminent saints are in knowledge and holiness, the nearer they are to a union in opinion and affection; but perfect union is not to be expected but in heaven.

This beautiful, pleasant light, appears after the heavens have been covered with blackness, and have poured out rain on the earth, seeming to threaten its destruction by a deluge; so it is a fit symbol of his mercy after his anger, the turning away of his anger, his mercy appearing in the forgiveness of sins. So the glorious gospel follows the law, and Christ’s glory follows his sufferings, and comfort in the hearts of the saints follows sorrows of conscience; yea, this light is light in darkness, it is a beautiful light reflected from the dark cloud, showing God’s love in his anger, his love appearing in his frowns. God’s love never so greatly appeared as in the sufferings of Christ, the greatest manifestation of his anger against sinners, and his love when the shower is over in past threatenings, and convictions, and terrors of conscience, which the saints have been the subjects of.

The rainbow, if completed, would be a perfect circle, the most perfect figure in every part united, fitly representing the most excellent order and perfect union that there shall be in the church of Christ. The rainbow is sometimes in Scripture represented as a circle, Rev. x. 1. “And a rainbow was upon his head.” The reason why the circle is not now complete, is because a part of it is as it were under the earth; but if we by standing on a high mountain, or otherwise, see it all raised above the earth, we should see it a complete circle. So the church of Christ is now incomplete, while a part of the elect church is buried under the earth, and a part has never yet received being, but after the general resurrection, when that part of the church that is now under the earth shall be raised above it, then the church of Christ would be in its complete state. If we could view the resurrection church from a high mountain, as the apostle John viewed it, and saw it in the colours of the rainbow, reflected from these precious stones, we should see the circle completed without any part wanting, all disposed in the most perfect union and beautiful order. The order of the drops of the rainbow, supposing them to represent saints, and the sun to represent Christ, is the most apt, commodious, and beautiful, both with respect to the sun and each other. They are in the most apt order with respect to the sun, all opposite to him, and so placed in a fit posture to view the sun, and to receive and reflect his rays, all at an equal distance from the sun, and all in a sense round about him to testify their respect to him, and yet none behind him, but all before his face, and all in the most apt order to behold and reflect light on, and converse together, and assist and rejoice one another. On the whole, here is an image of the most pleasant and perfect harmony, of a great and blessed society, dependent on, blessed in, and showing respect to, the fountain of all light and love.

The sun is as it were in the centre of this beautiful circle of little jewels or stars, as the sun is in the centre of the orbits of the planets, and as the ark, and the mercy-seat, and the seven lamps, were in the midst of the tabernacle of blue, and purple, and scarlet, those colours of the rainbow, and as Christ is in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, and as the throne of the Lamb is in the midst of the saints of heaven, who are round about that throne, and also a rainbow round about the throne, Rev. iv. 3, 4. and as the Lamb, who is the light of the new Jerusalem, has that city adorned with the colours of the rainbow round about him.

Each drop contains in itself a beautiful image of the sun reflected after its manner according to that part of the sun’s glory which is most conspicuous in it: one contains a red image of the sun, another a yellow one, another a green one, and another a blue one, &c.: so each saint reflects the image of Christ, though each one has his particular gift, and there be some particular grace or spiritual beauty that is most conspicuous in him. The whole bow, when completed into the form of a circle, or all that multitude of shining jewels or stars together united into that excellent form and order, do together constitute one complete image of the sun. Though the image differs from the sun itself in the following things: 1. That whereas the disk of the sun is full within its own circumference, the image is empty, it is a circle not filled, but left empty to be filled with the sun; so Christ has all fulness in himself, but the church is in itself an empty vessel, and Christ is her fulness. 2. Whereas the light is single in the sun, in the bow it is diversified, reflected in a great variety, the distinct glories of the sun as it were divided, and separately reflected, each beauty by itself, as it is in Christ and his church. 3. Though there be so many that each one reflects a little image of the sun, and the whole bow or circle be of so great extent, and be so beautiful, yet the sun infinitely exceeds the whole in light, the whole reflects but a little of the brightness of the fountain.

A drop of rain fitly represents man. It is a very small thing, of little value and significancy; a drop of the bucket, and light dust of the balance, are mentioned together as small and worthy of no consideration. It is very weak, very mutable, and unstable, exceeding liable to perish, soon falls and is dissipated, and cannot be made up again. The continuance of a drop of rain is but short, it is a thing of a very posting nature, its course is swift, and in a moment it sinks into the earth, and is no more, which fitly represents the frailty and mortality of man, whose days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, who is but a momentary thing, and hastens with a swift course to the grave. Man’s dying and sinking into the grave is compared to this very thing, of water’s being spilt on the ground, sinking into the earth, and so being irrecoverably gone, 2 Sam. xiv. 14.

The drops of rain reflecting the light of the sun in the rainbow fitly represent the saints, for in them fire and water are mixed together, which fitly represents the contrary principles that are in the saints’ flesh and spirit. In those drops are a brighter spark of heavenly fire in the midst of water, and yet it is not quenched, it is kept alive by the influence of the sun, as the heavenly seed and divine spark is kept alive in the saints in the midst of corruption and temptation, that seem often as if they would overwhelm and extinguish it. So God suffers not the smoking flax to be quenched. The drop in itself is wholly water, as the nature of man in itself is wholly corrupt; in the saints, that is, in their flesh, dwells no good thing; they have no light or brightness in them, but only what is immediately from heaven, from the Sun of righteousness. In the drops of the rainbow is represented both the saints descending to the grave by the flesh, and also their ascending to heaven by the spirit of holiness, for the water descends swiftly to be buried in the earth, but by the fire, a beautiful light, in them is represented an ascent as it were up a hill from the earth to heaven.

These drops fitly represent the saints on another account, as Mary’s alabaster box of precious ointment represented the heart of a saint; this drop, though itself is weak and frail, yet is clear and pure as alabaster, and contains as it were a spark or show of beautiful heavenly light in it, which represents the same divine grace that Mary’s precious ointment did.

[419] Gen. x. and xi. The dispersion and first settlement of the nations. By the descendants of Jophat were the isles of the Gentiles divided, Gen. x. 5. By the Isles, the Hebrews denoted not only such countries as were on all sides encompassed by sea, but also such countries as were so divided by the sea from them as that they could not be well come unto, or at least used not to be gone unto, but by sea; in brief, they called islands all beyond sea-countries, and all people islanders, which were wont to come by the sea to them and to the Egyptians, among whom the Jews lived a long time, and so called things 699by the same names, at least in Moses’s time, when the people were lately come out of Egypt. Now such are not only the island of Cyprus, Crete, and other islands of the Mediterranean, but also the country of the Lesser Asia, and the countries of Europe; and indeed those countries, so many of them as were then inhabited and known to the Jews, were not only beyond the sea, but peninsulas mostly encompassed by the sea, as the Lesser Asia, Greece, Italy, and Spain. And that not only Europe, but the countries of the Lesser Asia were called isles, seems manifest by Isa. x 10, 11. “The Lord shall recover the remnant of his people from Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.” Lesser Asia is either here included under the term, islands of the sea, or wholly left out; but it is not likely the countries of Asia would be mentioned, so many of them to the south-east and north of Judea, far and near, and the countries of Europe beyond the Lesser Asia, and all countries of the Lesser Asia wholly passed over.

The sons of Japhet were seven, Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah. The sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodenim, Gen. x. 2, 4.

To begin with Gomer and his sons, to whom we may assign the greatest part of the northern tract of the Lesser Asia for their first plantations. Josephus tells us expressly that the Galatians who lived in this tract were called Gomerites, and Herodotus tells us that a people called Cimmerii dwelt in those parts; and Pliny speaks of a town in Troas, a part of Phrygia, called Cimmeris. All the northern part of Lesser Asia was anciently called Phrygia by the Greeks, which is a word that in the Greek language signifies torrid or burnt country, as Gomer in Hebrew is from the Radix Gamar, which signifies to consume; and its derivation Gumra, or Gumro, signifies a coal, and it is certain there was a part of this country which was specially called by the Greeks Greek or Hebrew Burnt Phrygia.

Ashkenaz, who of the three sons of Gomer is first named by Moses, was seated in the western part of the nation of Gomer, i. e. in the north-west part of the Lesser Asia; as it is hardly to be questioned, there being so plain footsteps of his name to be found in those parts; for in Bythinia there is a bay formerly called the Ascanian bay, together with a river and lake of the same name, and in the lesser Phrygia, or Troas, there was both a city and province anciently known by the name of Ascania, and there was isles lying on the coast called the Ascanian isles; nor is it any way unlikely but that in honour of this Ashkenaz, the king and great men of those parts took the name of Ascanias, of which name, besides Ascanius, the son of Eneas, we find a king mentioned in the second book of Homer’s Iliads, which came to the aid of Priamus at the siege of Troy, and from hence probably came that name the Greeks gave to the sea, the Euxine sea. From the family of Ashkenaz, upon the coasts along which lies the entrance into this sea, with some variation of the sound, which length of time might naturally introduce. And the prophet Jeremiah foretelling the taking of Babylon by Cyrus, has this expression, chap. li. ver. 27. “Call together against her the kingdom of Ararat, and Miseni, and Ashkenaz;” where, by the kingdom of Ashkenaz, may very well be understood the inhabitants of those parts we are speaking of, for Xenophon, as Bochart has well observed, tells us that Cyrus having taken Sardes, sent Hystaspes with an army into Phrygia, that lies on the Hellespont, and that Hystaspes having made himself master of the country, brought along with him from thence a great many of the horse and other soldiers of the Phrygians, whom Cyrus took along with the rest of his army to Babylon.

Riphath, the second son of Gomer, is probably supposed to have seated his family in the parts adjoining eastward to the plantation of his brother Ashkenaz. This opinion is confirmed by the testimony of Josephus, who expressly says that the Paphlagonians, a people inhabiting some portion of this tract, were originally called Riphateans, from Riphat. There are also some remainders of his name to be found here among the writings of the ancient Greeks and Latins. For in Apollonius’s Argonauticks, there is mention made of the river called Rhebœus, which rising in this tract, empties itself into the Euxine sea. The same is called by Dionysius Periegetes and others, Rhebas. Stephanus does not only acquaint us with the river, but tells us also of a region of the same name, and whose inhabitants were called Rhebœi; and Pliny places here a people called Riphœi, and another called Arimphœi.

The third and last son of Gomer named by Moses, is Togarmah, whose family was seated in the remaining, and consequently in the most easterly, part of the nation of Gomer, and this situation of the family of Togarmah is agreeable both to sacred and common writers; for as to sacred Scripture, Ezekiel thus speaks, chap. xxxviii. ver. 6. “Gomer, and all his bands, the house of Togarmah, of the north quarters, and all his bands;” and again chap. xxvii. ver. 14. “They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs, (i. e. the fairs of Tyre,) with horses, and horsemen, and mules.” Now the situation that we assign to Togarmah makes it in a manner lie true north from Judea and Cappadocia, by which name a considerable part of the lot of Togarmah was in process of time known to the Greeks, was very well stocked with an excellent breed of horses and mules, and that the inhabitants were esteemed good horsemen, as is well attested by several ancient heathen writers, as Solinus, of Cappadocia, Dionysius Periegetes, Claudian, and Strabo; and there are to be found footsteps of the very name of Togomah in some of those names, whereby some of the inhabitants of this tract were known to old writers. Thus Strabo tells us that the Trochmi dwelt in the confines of Pontus and Cappadocia. And several towns lying on the east of the river Halys, and so in Cappadocia, are assigned to them by Ptolemy. They are by Cicero called Trogmi, and Trachmeni by Stephanus; and in the council of Chalcedon they are called Trocmades or Trogmades; there being frequent mention made in that council of Cyriæus, bishop of the Trogmades.

We next proceed to say something of the colonies which, coming from the nation of Gomer, in process of time spread themselves in several parts of Europe. Herodotus tells us that a people called Cimmerii formerly dwelt in that tract of Lesser Asia, which we assign to Gomer. So he tells us withal that these people put out a colony to Palus Mæotis, on the north of the Euxine sea, and so gave the name of Bosphorus Cimmerius to the strait betwixt the Euxine sea and the Mæotick lake, now commonly called the strait of Caffa.

This colony of the Cimmerii increasing in process of time, and so spreading themselves still by new colonies further westward, came along the Danube, and settled themselves in the country which from them has been called Germany. For as to the testimony of the ancients, Diodorus Siculus (as Mr. Mede observes) affirms that the Germans had their original from the Cimmerians, and the Jews to this day (as the same learned person remarks) call them Ashkenazim of Ashkenaz. Indeed they themselves retain plain marks enough of their descent both in the name Cimbri and also in their common name Germans, or as they call themselves, Germen, which is but a small variation from Gemren, or Gomren, and this last is easily contracted from Gomerin, that is, Gomereans; for the termination en is a plural termination of the German language, and from the singular number, Gomer, is formed Gemren by the same analogy that from brother is formed brethren. The other name Cimbri, is easily framed from Cimmerii, and by that name the inhabitants of the northwest peninsula of old Germany, now called Jutland, were known not only to the ancient, but latter writers, and from this name of the inhabitants, the said peninsula is called Cimbrica Chersonesus, and that frequently by modern authors.

Out of Germany, the descendants of Gomer spread themselves into Gaul, or France. To prove this, Mr. Camden quotes the testimony of Josephus, when he says that those called by the Greeks Golatæ were originally called Gomerites, which words may be understood either of the Asiatic Golatæ, commonly called by us Galatians, or the 700European Galatæ, commonly called by us Gauls. If it be taken in the former sense, then it is a testimony for the first seating of Gomer in the tract of the Lesser Asia we have assigned him, and on this account it is before taken notice by us. Mr. Camden also produces the testimony of other writers to prove the Gauls to be from Gomer, as of Appian, who, in his Illyricks, says expressly that the Celts, or Gauls, were otherwise called Cimbri. Those barbarians whom Marius defeated, Cicero plainly terms Gauls, and all historians agree that these were the Cimbri. And the coat-armour of Beleus, their king, digged up at Aix, in Provence, where Marius routed them, does evince the same, for the words Beleos Cimbros were engraven upon it in a strange character. Again: Lucan calls that ruffian that was hired to kill Marius, a Cimbrian, whereas Livy and others affirm him to have been a Gaul; and by Plutarch the Cimbri are called Gallo-Scythians.

Hence we conclude that the ancient inhabitants of Britain were descended from Gomer, for it is not to be questioned but that the isle was first peopled from those countries of the European continent which lie next to it, and consequently from Germany or Gaul. The name by which the offspring of those ancient Britons, the Welch, call themselves to this very day, is Kumro, or Cimro, and Kumri, and in like manner they call a Welch woman Kumraes, and their language, Humeraeg; and since the Saxons and Angles were Germans, who, as was before observed, were descendants of Gomer, and were near neighbours to the people that were more especially called Cimbri, hence it follows that our ancestors, who succeeded the old Britons, were also descended from Gomer.

But now to proceed to the other sons of Japhet, as the nation of Gomer first seated itself in the northern tract of the Lesser Asia, so the nation of Javan seated itself in the southern tract of the same. And this appears not only from the name of a country in this tract called Ionia, but also from the situation of the four families of Javan’s sons within this tract, which are mentioned in this order by Moses, Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim, Gen. x. 4.

Tarshish seated himself on the eastern part of this tract, as is probable, on several considerations. For Tarsus is a chief town of Cilicia, and Josephus expressly affirms that Cilicia, and the country round it, was originally known by the name of Tarshish. It is scarcely to be doubted, but this was the Tarshish to which the prophet Jonas thought to flee from the presence of the Lord, as also that this principally was the Tarshish mentioned so often by the prophets, on account of its trading with Tyre.

To the west of Tarshish, adjoining the portion appertaining to Kittim, or Cittim, which word having a plural termination, does, in all probability, imply the descendants of Keth, or the Ketians. Ptolemy tells us of a country here called Cetis, and Homer in Odys. 4. mentions a people called Cetii, who were thought to take their name from a river, Cetius, in the same quarter. But it is remarkable that this is agreeable to the name mentioned by Homer. Josephus will have the isle of Cyprus to have been the seat of the Cittim, because therein was a town called Citium, of good note, but it is not to be questioned, but the continent was peopled before the island, and consequently that the Cittim first seated themselves on the continent, from which they might, probably enough, send in process of time some colony over into the neighbouring island of Cyprus.

The two remaining families of Javan, viz. Elishah and Dodanim, seated themselves on the western coast of the southern tract of the Lesser Asia. Here upwards, or northwards, were anciently situated the Æoles, who as they carry some marks of their pedigree in their name, so are expressly affirmed by Josephus to have been descended from Elishah, and from him to have taken their name. And since the country, peculiarly called in after-ages, Ionia, joined to the south, of what was in said ages peculiarly called Æolia, it is probable that the said Ionia, (so peculiarly called perhaps, from Javan’s living therewith his son Elishah,) was possessed originally by the sons of Elishah, or else partly by them and partly by the Dodanim of whom next.

On the same western coast, south of the family of Elishah, may the family of Dodanim be supposed to have first planted itself, for there we find in ancient writers a country called Doris, which may not improbably be derived from Dodanim, especially if this be plural, as the termination seems to import, and so the singular was Dodan; which being softened into Doran, the Greeks might easily frame from thence Dorus, whom they assert to be the father of the Dorians. Certain it is from the Greek writers themselves, that the Dorés or Dorians were a considerable body of the Greeks, insomuch that Dorico Castra is taken by Virgil to denote the whole Grecian camp, wherefore it is very probable that they had their extraction from one of the sons of Javan, the father of the Greek nation, and distinguished themselves from the other families of Javan, by assuming to themselves the name of the father of their family, as the others did, and consequently called themselves Dodanim, which the Greeks in time moulded into Dorés. The Greeks say of Dorus, the father of the Dorians, that he was the son of Neptune, who evidently was the same with Japhet; (see No. 405.) and though Dodanim was the grandson of Japhet, yet according to the usual way of speaking among the Hebrews, he was called the son of Japhet. The change of Dodan into Dorus is the more likely, by reason of the great likeness there is between the Hebrew D and R. Hence, (viz. from Doris,) some might pass over to the isle of Rhodes, which might take its name from those Dodanim, which by reason of the likeness of letters is sometimes writ Rodanim, which seems to have been the opinion of the Seventy Interpreters, by their rendering the Hebrew word Dodanim by Greek or Hebrew, Rhodii.

I proceed now to speak of the colonies of the posterity of Javan, that in process of time were made from their first settlements, and I shall begin with the two last mentioned, Elishah and Dodanim; for those lying on the western coast of the Lesser Asia, as they increased, peopled by degrees the many isles that lie on the adjoining sea, and so at length spread themselves into the European continent. The family of Elishah seems to have possessed themselves of most, or at least the most considerable isles lying in the sea between Europe and Asia, forasmuch as they are called by the prophet Ezekiel xxvii. 7. the isles of Elishah. What the prophet there says of the blue and the purple from the isles of Elishah, is very applicable to the isles of this sea, forasmuch as they did abound in this commodity, and are on that account celebrated by common authors, and some of them took their names from it. And the sea itself on which these isles were, seems originally to have been called the Sea of Elishah; which name, though it wore away in process of time in other parts, yet seems to have been all along preserved in that part, which to this day is frequently called the Hellespont, as if one should say Elisæ Pontos, the Sea of Elishah. And this derivation of the word Hellespont will appear yet more likely, when we consider that the descendants of Elishah, passing over into Europe, came afterwards to be termed Hellenes, and their country Hellas, a name which in process of time became common to all Greece; in which there were other footsteps of Elishah’s name to be found formerly, as in the city and province of Elis, in the Peloponnesus, in the city of Eleusis, in Attica; and in the river Elissus, and Ilissus, in the same province. Some think the Campi Elisii, so much celebrated among the Greeks, to have been so called from Elishah.

As to Dodenim, or the Dorians, the Spartans, or the Lacedemonians, looked on themselves to be of Dorick extraction, and there were formerly remainders of the name to be found in those parts of Greece. In the province of Messena, in the Peloponnesus, there was a town called Dorion, and of the other tract of Greece, lying above the isthmus of the Peloponnesus, there was a considerable part called Doria, Dorica, or Doris; to say nothing of Dodona: and all the Greek nation is sometimes called Dores, as was before observed, out of Virgil.

As to Kittim, or the Cittim, they probably sent their first colony to the neighbouring isle of Cyprus, which seems to be called the land of Chittim, Isa. xxiii. 1-12. But in process of time wanting more room, and therefore seeking out further, and finding the lower parts of Greece already inhabited by the descendants of Elishah and Dodanim, they still proceeded on, coasting along the western shores of Greece, until they came to the upper and northern 701parts of it, which not being yet inhabited, some of them planted themselves there, while some others of them descrying the coast of Italy, went and settled themselves in that country. Hence it comes to pass, in probability, that both Macedonia in Greece, and also Italy, are denoted in Scripture by the names of Cittim, or Kittim. The author of the book of Maccabees plainly denotes Macedonia by the land of Chetiim, when he says that Alexander, the son of Philip the Macedonian, came out of the land of Chetiim, 1 Mac. i. 1.; so also chap. viii. 5. the said author calls Perseus king of Macedonia, king of the Citims. The more ancient name of this country was Macetia, and the Macedonians themselves are otherwise termed Maceta.

The place of Scripture where Chittim, by the consent of almost all expositors, denotes the Romans, is Dan. xi. 29, 30. for by the ships of Chittim, there mentioned, is understood the Roman fleet; by the coming whereof, Antiochus was obliged to desist from his designs against Egypt. There are also several footsteps of the name Chittim, or Cheth, to be found in Italy, among eminent writers; as a city of Latium, called Cetia, mentioned by Dionysius Helicarnasseus: another city among the Volsci, called Echetia, mentioned by Stephanus; also a river near Eumæ, called Cetus. Nay, there are not wanting authors who expressly assert the Romans and Latins to have had their extraction from the Citii, or Cetii, as Eusebius, Cadrenus, Suidas; whose testimonies are produced by Bochart; and this learned person observes further, that the word Chetim does, in the Arabic tongue, denote a thing hid, so that the name Latins might be originally only a translation of the old eastern name Chetim.

There remains now only the colonies of Tarshish to be spoken of, and wheresoever else they seated themselves it is highly probable that Tartessus, a city and adjoining country in Spain, and much celebrated by the ancients for its wealth, was a colony of Tarshish. Bochart has observed that Polybius, reciting the words of a league between the Romans and Carthaginians, mentions a place under the name of Tarscium; and Stephanus expressly says, that Tarscium was a city near Hercules’s Pillars: the situation whereof agrees well enough with that of Tartessus. Again, what is said by Ezekiel, chap. xxvii. ver. 12. agrees very well with this Tarshish; for the words of the prophet run thus, “Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs;” i. e. in the fairs of Tyre. Now, as has been before observed, Tartessus was celebrated among the ancients for its multitude of riches, and the metals mentioned by the prophet were such as Spain did formerly abound with. Some also are of opinion that the Etrusci of Italy, otherwise called Turrheni and Tusei, were a colony of Tarshish. The word Etrusci, without the initial E, (which was frequently added to derivatives,) contains the radicals of Tarshish.

The descendants of Tarshish were the most expert seamen, and consequently the chief merchants of the early ages of the world. Hence the whole Mediterranean sea seems to have been at length comprehended under the name of the sea of Tarshish. And because the descendants of Tarshish were wont to make longer voyages, and to adventure further into the open sea, than others did in those days, it is not unlikely that they had ships built for this purpose, and so of somewhat different make both as to size and shape from the vessels commonly used by others: and hence it is probable that all vessels built for longer voyages and greater burdens came to be called ships of Tarshish, because they were built like the ships of Tarshish properly so called.

Having observed these things concerning the settlements and colonies of the four families of Javan, I would here add something with respect to Javan himself, the father of this whole nation; and I would observe that it is probable that the colonies that passed over in process of time into Europe, though they were distinguished in reference to their distinct families by their distinct names, yet were all at first comprehended under the name of Jonians. Indeed the Scholiast in Aristophanes (as Bochart hath observed) expressly says, that all the Greeks were by the Barbarians called Iaones, i.e. Ionians. Hence the Ionian sea came to be extended anciently to the western coast of Greece, and that northwards up as far as the western coast of Macedonia. Now it is plain that the name Ionians was derived from the founder of this nation, Javan. For the Hebrew word, setting aside the vowels which are of disputable authority, may be read Ion, or Jaon. But supposing the word to be all along pronounced with the same vowels it has in the Hebrew text at present, it is granted by the learned in the same language, that the true pronunciation of the Hebrew vowel, Kamets, carries in it a mixture of our vowel o as well as a, so that the Hebrew Greek or Hebrew is very regularly turned into the Greek Greek or Hebrew, whence by contraction may be made Greek or Hebrew. Since therefore not only the forementioned Scholiast, but also Homer, styles those who were commonly called Iones, by the name of Jaones, it is not to be doubted but the Ionians were so called from Javan the founder of their nation. Agreeably to what has been said, we find the country of Greece denoted in the book of Daniel from time to time, the country of Javan, Dan. viii. 21. Dan. x. 20. Dan. xi. 2.; and also in Joel iii. 6. And though the Athenians affirm that the Asiatic Ionians were a colony of theirs, yet Hecateus in Strabo affirms, that the Athenians, or Ionians of Europe, came from those of Asia.

Having spoken somewhat largely of the posterity of Gomer and Javan, because Europe appears to be chiefly peopled by them, we now proceed to take notice of the other sons of Japhet, among whom I shall speak next of Tubal and Meshech, which are so mentioned together from time to time in Scripture, that it is evident that their settlements were adjoining one to the other.

Meshech joined on to the nation of Gomer eastward, and so settling at first in part of Cappadocia and Armenia, what according to the present vowels in the Hebrew is Meshech, was by the Seventy Interpreters, and others, read Mosoch, and hence it is very probable that they are the same called by the Greeks Greek or Hebrew, Mosci, who were seated in those parts, and from whom no question but the neighbouring ridge of hills took the name of Montes Moschici, mentioned by the old geographers.

To the north of Meshech adjoined the first plantation of Tubal, who, by Josephus, is expressly affirmed to be the father of the Asiatic Iberians. The same historian asserting that when the Greeks called Iberi were originally called Theobeli from Tubal, adds hereunto that Ptolemy places in those parts a city called Thabilica. Mr. Bochart supposes the Tibareni, a people mentioned by old authors in this tract, to have been so called, from Tubal, by the change of L into R, which is very frequent. But that Meshech and Tubal seated themselves in those parts is in a manner put beyond dispute, by what is said of those two nations in Ezek. xxvii. 13. ”Tubal and Meshech were thy merchants; they traded in slaves and vessels of brass in thy market.” For it is evident from the testimonies of heathen writers that the Pontic region, especially Cappadocia, was remarkable formerly for slaves, as also that in the country of the Tibareni, and Iberia, there was the best sort of brass. Mr. Bochart observes that the Hebrew word translated in this place brass, is sometimes rendered steel; and hence he remarks that as a piece of iron or brass is in the Arabic tongue called Tubal, probably from its coming out of the country of Tubal, so it is likely that from the excellent steel that was made in their country, some of the inhabitants thereof were denominated by the name of Chalybes among the Greeks: the word Chalybs, in the Greek language, signifying steel.

That the Muscovites, or Moscoviles, in Europe, were a colony originally of Meshech, or Mosoch, called by the Greeks, Moschi, is very probable.

Magog is, by the testimony of Josephus, Eustathius, St. Jerome, Theodoret, and, (as Mr. Mede expresses it,) by the consent of all men, placed north of Tubal, and esteemed the father of the Scythians that dwell in the east, and north-east, of the Euxine sea. This situation is confirmed by Scripture itself, Ezek. xxxviii. 2. “Set thy face against Gog, in, or of, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal.’’ Bochart conjectures that the mountain called by the Greeks Caucasus, took its name from Gog. But the name of Gog was entirely preserved in the name Gogarene, whereby was formerly denoted a country in those parts, as we learn both from Strabo and Stephanus. And from hence perhaps in time was fashioned 702the name Georgia, Gurgistan, whereby at this very day is denoted a considerable tract in this quarter. That Gog denotes the Scythians in the prophecy of Ezekiel, may be rationally inferred from Ezek. xxxix. 3. where God speaks of Gog thus, “I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand.” Now it is too well known to the learned to need proof, that the Scythians were remarkably famous of old for their skill in the use of the bow and arrow, insomuch that some among them for their winking with one eye when they shot, are said to have given them the name of arimaspi, one-eyed. Nay, it is thought by some, and not without ground, that the very name of Scythians was derived from shooting, forasmuch as in the German tongue shooters are called Scutten.

To say something of the colonies of Magog. In the panegyric of Tibullus to Messala, we find mention made by the poet of a people about the river Tanais, called Magini, which probably came from Magog. Yea, it is not improbable that the Mæotick lake into which the Tanais runs, took its name from the descendants of Magog; for Magogitis, or Magotis, the Greeks might naturally after their manner soften into Maiotis, which the Latins and we render Mæotis. We read in Pliny, that the city in Syria, called Hierapolis, was by the Syrians called Magog, which name it is thought most likely to have taken from the Scythians, when they made an excursion into Syria, and took this city. On the like account it is that the city in Judea, called Bethsan, was also called in after-ages, Scythopolis. Now Hierapolis being thus called Magog, it is not improbable but the adjoining part of Syria might be from thence called Magagene; which afterwards might be moulded into Gomagene, and so into Comagene; by which the northern part of Syria was denoted among the Greeks and Latins.

The next son of Japhet is Madai, who is almost universally looked upon to be the father of the Medes, who are all along denoted by the name of Madai in the Hebrew text. Bochart thinks the Samaritans a colony from those; he conjectures that the name of the Samaritans was originally Sear-Madai, which in the original language denotes the remnant, or posterity, of the Medes. See objections against this and another region allotted to Madai, in Pool’s Synops. vol. i. col. 117, 118.

Tiras, or Thiras, the last son of Japhet, is by universal agreement esteemed the father of the Thracians. The name whereby the country of Thrace is called in oriental writers, plainly shows that the Greek name Thrace was originally derived from Thiras, the founder of the nation. Ancient writers also tell us, that here was a river, a bay, and a haven, each called by the name of Atheyras, and they mention a city in the peninsula of Thrace called Tyristasis, and a tract in this country called Thrasus, and a people called Trausi. We learn also from them that one of the names of Mars, the god of the Thracians, was Greek or Hebrew. Hence Homer calls Mars by an epithet Greek or Hebrew, Mars Thurus. We read also in old authors of Tereus, the son of Mars, and first king of the Thracians, and of one Teres king of Odrysæ, a people in Thrace: and the Odrysæ themselves are said to take their name from one Odrysus, a great person among them, insomuch that in after-ages he was worshipped by the Thracians as a god. As for the colonies of Tiras, it is hardly to be doubted but some of them planted themselves in the country over against Thrace, on the north side of the Euxine sea. For there is a considerable river in those parts, called in both Greek and Latin writers Tiras. The very same as the name of the father of the Thracian nation, which river is now called the Niester. There was also a city of the name of Tiras, standing on this river. The inhabitants of these parts were also formerly known by the name of Turitæ, or Tyragetæ. Though probably the Tyritœ might denote the true descendants of Tyras; and the Tyragetæ might denote a mixed race, that arose out of the Tyritæ mixing with the Getæ, a bordering people, descendants of the Cetim, who settled in Macedonia.

It is not unlikely that Tyras might first sit down with his family in the Lesser Asia, in the country of Troy, which had nothing to part it from Thrace but the narrow strait of the Hellespont, and the ancient king named Tros, whence the country is denominated, was probably no other than Tyras. It is the common opinion and tradition among Greek writers, that the inhabitants on the east side of the Hellespont and Propontis, were originally or anciently Thracians.

We proceed next to the first plantations of the sons of Shem. There are five sons of Shem mentioned by Moses, viz. Elam, and Ashur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram.

I shall begin with the settlement of Aram, as being the first nation of the branch of Shem, adjoining to the nations of the branch of Japhet, already spoken of. For the portion that fell to the nation of Aram, lay in the countries called by the Greeks Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Syria. It is probable that Armenia took its present name from Aram. Mesopotamia, as it was so called by the Greeks, from its situation between the rivers Euphrates and Tygris, so it was called by the Hebrews Aram Naharaim, i. e. Aram of, or between, the two rivers. And whereas one part of this country, viz. that lying next to Armenia, was very fruitful, and the other to the south very barren, and so of the like sort with Arabia Deserta, to which it adjoined, hence the former is in Scripture distinguished by the name of Padan-aram, which is equivalent to, Fruitful Aram.

Aram’s sons are four, viz. Uz and Hul, Gether and Mash. As for Uz, he is by a great agreement of the ancients said to be the builder of the city of Damascus, and his posterity are supposed to have settled the country about it. Here see Pool’s Synopsis on Gen. x. 23.

The family of Hul, or as it is in the original, Chul, may, with great probability be placed in Armenia, particularly the Greater Armenia, for there we find the names of several places beginning with the radicals of Chul, as Cholva, Cholvata, Cholimna, Colsa, Calura; and to mention but one more, Cholobatene, which last seems to have been formed from the oriental Cholbeth, which denotes the same as the house or dwelling of Chol. Now this Cholobatene being the name of a province in Armenia, from this especially we may gather with good probability that Chul with his family seated himself in those parts.

Between Hul to the north, and Uz to the south, their brother Mash seated himself, viz. about the mountain Masius. From this mountain issues out a river of Mesopotamia, called by Xenophon Masca, which probably comes from the name of this son of Aram, who otherwise is called in Scripture Meshech, the radicals whereof are plainly contained in the name Masca. The inhabitants of the tract adjoining to the M. Masius, are by Stephanus called Masieni, or Masiani.

Gether probably seated himself east of his brother Hul, on the eastern borders of Armenia; where some in Ptolemy observe a city called formerly Getaræ, and a river of the same country called Getras.

We now pass on to the nation of Ashur, which is eastward of the nation of Aram, in the country called Ashur in the eastern tongues, which is Assyria, properly and originally so called, living east of the Tigris, and wherein stood the city of Nineveh, which was afterwards called Acetabene, and also was sometimes by a change of S into T formerly called Attyria. The most ancient king of Assyria was said to be the son of Zames, i. e. Shem, and is styled in Suidas, and some others, Thuras, corruptly for Atthuras, i. e. Ashur; for Ashur in the Chaldee tongue is Atthur, or Atther. This Thuras, the son of Zames, was worshipped by the Assyrians as their Mars, or god of war.

That Elam seated himself in the southern tract beyond the river Euphrates, is beyond dispute, not only from the authority of the Scriptures, wherein the inhabitants of the said tract are plainly and frequently denoted by the name of Elam, but also from heathen writers, wherein we read of a country here called Elymais, and a city of the same name.

To the lot of Arphaxad is assigned by learned men the more southern part of Mesopotamia, where the plain or vale of Shinar lay, on the river Tigris, together with the country of Eden, and the tract on the east side of the same river, called Arapachitis, a name plainly derived from Arpachshad, which is the name of Arphaxad in the Hebrew text. That the vale of Shinar, with the country of Eden, was part of the first plantation of Arphaxad, is supposed 703on these probabilities: 1. That Noah, after the flood, returned and settled himself again in these parts, as well knowing the goodness of the soil and pleasantness of the country, which is confirmed by a town here called Zama from them. 2. That upon the dispersion of mankind and confusion of tongues, as the primitive Hebrew tongue was preserved in the family of Arphaxad, so agreeably hereunto this family still continued in the same parts where they then were, together with their grandsires, Noah and Shem. 3. This opinion may be confirmed from Gen. x. 30. “And their dwelling was from Mesha, as you go unto Sephar,a mount of the east;” for the Mesha here mentioned is probably esteemed to be the same mountain as is before mentioned under the name of Mash, or Mesius, in the western parts of Mesopotamia; so that if the forecited text is to be understood of the descendants of Arphaxad, (as is thought by several learned men, and also by the historian Josephus,) it will import thus much, that the southern part of Mesopotamia, lying on the east of the mount Mesha, or Mesius, was first peopled by the descendants of Arphaxad; (and accordingly we here find Phalga, a town probably named from Peleg, or Phaleg, settling there;) and so on eastward as far as to Sephar, a mount in the east. Now this mount Sephar is probably thought to be the mountain adjoining to Siphare, a city in Aria, and which lies directly east from Mesha; and though this be a long tract of ground, yet it will be but proportional to the numerous descendants of Arphaxad, especially by Joktan, of whom more by and by. 4. It is the tradition of the ancients, Eustathius, Antiochenus, and Eusebius, that Salah, the son of Arphaxad, seated himself in Susiana; and agreeably hereto, we read in old writers of a town called Sela. But now Susiana did contain part of the country of Eden, which adjoined to, or in all probability was part of, the vale of Shinar, largely taken. 5. It is further confirmed that Arphaxad seated himself in the vale of Shinar, because we find that Terah, and Abraham his son, came out of those parts, Gen. xi. 31. “And Terah took Abram his son, and went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan.” Now it is confessed, I think by all, that Chaldea comprehended at least a great part of the vale of Shinar, and it is certain that it comprehended as much of the country of Eden as lay west of the common channel of the Euphrates and Tigris. On this text of Scripture seems to be grounded what Josephus saith of the Chaldeans being called the Arphaxadeans.

Having thus seen the first settlements of the descendants of Arphaxad, let us turn our eyes a little upon their after-colonies, particularly those that sprung from Joktan, of whom Moses reckons up no fewer than thirteen sons; and as Moses assigns their habitation from Mesha to mount Saphar, so in this tract learned men have observed the names of several places, which by their likeness to the names of Joktan’s sons, seem to tell their respective situations.

There is nothing certain concerning Lud, the remaining son of Shem, but that he did not seat himself in the country of Lesser Asia, called Lydia.

Ham was the youngest of the three sons of Noah. He had four sons, Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. We find Egypt twice or thrice in the book of Psalms called the land of Ham, whence it seems probable that Ham went thither himself, and there settled with his son Mizraim. And it is scarce to be doubted but the person denoted by the Greeks under the name of Jupiter Ammon (in honour to whom there was a temple erected in the parts of Libya adjoining to Egypt, much celebrated for its oracles) was no other than Ham.

It is well known that the nation of Canaan settled itself in the country so often called in Scripture the land of Canaan. Upon the dispersion of mankind, the country living on the east and south-east of the Mediterranean sea fell to the share of Canaan, so that he was seated between the nation of Aram to the north and east, and the nation of Cush, his brother, to the south and south-east, and Mizraim, another of his brothers, to the south-west: his western boundary was the Mediterranean sea. His descendants are thus reckoned up by Moses, Gen. x. 15, 18. ”Canaan begat Sidon his first-born, and Heth, and the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite, and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, and the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite.”

Of Sidon were the inhabitants of the city of Sidon, and the country about; which city, as is apparent both from sacred and ancient profane writers, was in the more early ages of the world much more considerable than Tyre. Sidon is called Great Sidon, Josh. xix. 29.; but Tyre does not seem to have become considerable until about David’s time. Homer never so much as once mentions Tyre, but often makes mention of the Sidonians, and Tyre is expressly called the daughter of Sidon, Isa. v. 12.

The second family of Canaan mentioned by Moses, is that of Heth, whose posterity placed themselves in the southern parts of Canaan, about Hebron, as appears from Abraham’s concern with them there, Gen. xxiii. We also read that during Isaac’s dwelling at Beersheba, Esau took him wives of the daughters of Heth, Gen. xxvi.

The Jebusites were seated about Jerusalem, which was originally called Jebus, 1 Chron. xi. 4.; so that the Jebusites joined on to the Hittites in the mountains towards the north. As the Hittites and Jebusites, so also the Amorites, dwelt in the mountainous or hilly part of the land of Canaan, as appears from. Josh. xi. 3. And the spies gave this account, Num. xiii. 29. “And the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and the coast of Jordan.” Now as the Hittites seem to have possessed the hill country to the west and south-west of Hebron, and the Jebusites to the north, so the Amorites might settle themselves at first in the hill country to the east and south-east of Hebron. This seems probable, because the mountainous tract lying next to Kadesh-Barnea, is called the mount of the Amorites, Deut. i. 7.; and we are told, Gen. xiv. 7. that Chedorlaomer smote the Amorites that dwelt in Hazezon-tamar, which was the same place with Engedi, 2 Chron. xx. 2. and so was seated in the hilly part of the land of Canaan to the east, or towards Jordan. And their neighbourhood to the country beyond Jordan might be the occasion that the Moabites were in process of time dispossessed thereof by the Amorites; whence that tract beyond Jordan is called the land of the Amorites; and Sihon, the king thereof, is always called king of the Amorites.

The Girgasite is the next family mentioned by Moses, who probably seated themselves at first along the upper part of the river of Jordan. Here, on the eastern side of the sea of Tiberias, or Galilee, we find in our Saviour’s time a city called Gergesa.

The Hivite we find was seated in the upper or northern parts of Canaan, and so adjoining to his brother Sidon. For we read, Judg. iii. 3. that “the Hivites dwelt in mount Lebanon from mount Baal-Hermon unto the entering in of Hamath.”

In process of time, these families intermixed one with the other; whence we read of some Hivites, Amorites, and Hittites in some other places than those we have assigned them for their first settlements, and also the Amorites becoming the most potent nation in process of time. Hence they are put to denote, frequently, any one or more of the other nations of Canaan.

Many of the posterity of Canaan of different families, either originally or afterwards, (possibly by being dispossessed of their original settlements by the Philistines, or by other means,) appear to have settled confusedly together, and to have become so intermixed that the names of their distinct families were not kept up, but they were called by the general name of Canaanites. Hence we read in the forecited passages, Numb. xiii. 29. the Canaanites dwelt by the sea, and by the coast of Jordan.

As to the remaining families of Canaan mentioned by Moses, the first of them that occurs is the Arkite; which is probably thought to have settled himself about that part of mount Libanus where is placed by Ptolemy and others a city called Arce. Not far from this settlement of the Arkite, did the Sinite likewise settle himself; for in the parts adjoining, St. Jerome tells us, was once a city called Sin. As for the Arvadite, the little isle of Ardus, lying up more north, on the coast of Syria, is supposed to have taken its name from the founder of this family. In the neighbourhood on the continent did the Zemarite probably 704fix, forasmuch as on the coast there we find a town called Symyra, not far from Orthosia. And Eusebius does expressly deduce the origin of the Orthosians from the Samareans.

The only remaining family is the Hamathite, or the inhabitants of the land Hamath, often mentioned in sacred writ, and whose chief city was called Hamath. This country lay to the north of all the rest of the posterity of Canaan.

The nation of Cush had its first settlement in the country adjoining to his brother Canaan on the south, that is in Arabia. That by Cush in Scripture, is denoted Arabia, and not Ethiopia in Africa, is manifest every where in Scripture, particularly from Num. xxi. 1. compared with Exod. ii. 15-21. and Hab. iii. 7. 2 Kings xix. 9. 2 Chron. xiv. 9. and Ezek. xxix. 10. “I will make the land of Egypt desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the borders of Cush.” Now all that have any knowledge of old geography, know that Syene was the border of Egypt towards Ethiopia in Africa. There Cush being the opposite boundary cannot be Ethiopia in Africa, but must be Arabia.

The sons of Cush are Seba, Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtecha; to which Moses subjoins the two sons of Raamah, Sheba and Dedan; and then adds lastly that Cush begat Nimrod, who began to be a mighty one upon earth, Gen. x. 7, 8,. &c. Now we shall find all these but the last seated in Arabia. As for Seba, the first son of Cush, he probably seated himself in the south-west of Arabia, where we find a city called Sabe. On the south-east side we find another city called Sabana, where we may therefore place Sheba, the grandson of Cush, by Raamah; and the reason why we choose this to be his situation, rather than the other side of the country, is, because it is on the eastern side of Arabia that we find his father and his brother situated; and it is likely he seated himself in their neighbourhood. On this account we find him always mentioned with his father and brother, as Ezek. xxvii. 22. “The merchants of Sheba and Raamah were thy merchants,” and chap. xxxviii. “Sheba and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish,” &c. Now these two names, Sheba and Sebah, being so much alike, the two different families were confounded by the Greeks, and called promiscuously Sabeans. Hence Pliny says that the Sabean nation inhabited those parts spreading themselves to both seas, i. e. from the Red sea to the gulf of Persia. But the sacred writers exactly distinguish them, Ps. lxxii. 10. “The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.”

On the same side of Arabia with Sheba was seated, as has been mentioned, both his father Raamah and his brother Dedan. For, as to the former, we find on this shore of the Persian gulf a city called Rhegma by Ptolemy; which it is not to be doubted was so called from this reason, for the Hebrew name, which in our translation is rendered Raamah, is in other translations, particularly the Septuagint, rendered (agreeably enough to the radicals) Rhegma. Nor far from Rhegma, mentioned by Ptolemy, we find on the same coast eastward another city called Dedan, now-a-days Dadaen, from which the neighbouring country also takes its name, as Bochart has observed, from Barboza, an Italian writer in his description of the kingdom of Ormuz.

On the same shore of the Persian gulf, but higher northward, we find in Ptolemy the situation of a city called Saphtha, whence it is probable that Sabta, the son of Cush, seated himself here.

Higher still to the northward was seated Havilah, or Chavilah, along the river Pison, on the western channel of the two, into which the common channel of the Tigris and Euphrates again is divided, before the waters thereof empty themselves into the Persian gulf. That Havilah was seated here, is confirmed in that Moses tells us it was seated on a branch of that common channel of which Euphrates and Hiddekel were a part: and in this country, where we have placed Havilah, there was, agreeably to what Moses says of Havilah, plenty of gold, and that good gold; which is agreeable to what ancient authors tell us of Arabia. Moses adds, that in Havilah was Belodach, which some take to signify pearls, others the Bdellium gum. It is much the most likely, however, that pearls are what are intended; for Moses, in describing the manna, says it was like coriander seed, and the colour thereof as the colour of Belodach. Now it is evident from another description that the colour of manna was white, Exod. xiv. 31. which is opposite to pearls, as also is the roundness of the manna, but in nowise to the Bdellium gum. Hence the Talmudists, mentioning this description of manna, instead of saying it is like the colour of Bdellium gum, say it is like the colour of pearls; and it is certain that there is no place in the world that produceth so fine pearls, and in so great plenty, as the sea next to the shore of this country, where we place Havilah; as is evident from the testimony of Nearchus, one of Alexander’s captains; of Isidorus; of Chorax, who lived a little after; of Pliny, and Ælian, and Origen; of Benjamin, a Navarian; of Tudela, who lived five hundred and fifty years ago; of Texeira, a Portuguese; of Balbyn, Linscot, Vincent, Le Blanc, Tavernier, and Thevenot. And if we understood the Belodach of the Bdellium gum, this also abounded in Arabia, and particularly near the Persian gulf, as appears from the testimony of many ancient writers. And as to the Schoham, which Moses says was to be found in Havilah, which we render the onyx-stone, it is doubtless some precious stone that is meant by this; and it is evident from ancient writers, both sacred and profane, that Arabia formerly abounded with precious stones. See Ezek. xxvii. 22, 23.

And that this very country was the country of Havilah, is manifest from Gen. xxv. 18. where we are told that the Ishmaelites dwelt from Havilah unto Shur, that is before Egypt; and from 1 Sam. xv. 7. where we are told that Saul smote the Amalekites from Havilah until thou comest to Shur that is before Egypt. In both which passages, by this expression, from Havilah unto Shur, is probably meant the whole extent of that part of Arabia from east to west; and it is evident that Shur was the western boundary of Arabia, from those passages, and also from Exod. xv. 22. where we read that Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and therefore it seems no less evident that Havilah was in the eastern extremity of Arabia, over against it, and consequently where we have placed it. Where we find in common authors a people placed, whose name retains the visible footsteps of the name of their forefathers, Havilah, or Chavilah, as it is in the original; thus, by Eratosthenes, are placed on these parts the Chavlothi; by Tresans, Anienas, the Chaulosii; by Dionysius Periegetes, the Chablasii; and by Pliny, the Chaveleai.

There remains now Subteca, who, we must not doubt, placed himself among the rest of his brethren, especially since there is room enough left for him in the northern part of Arabia. His descendants might from him regularly enough be styled at first by the Greeks Sabsaceni, which name might afterwards be softened into Saraceni, by which name it is well known that the people of this tract were formerly denominated; and this is the more probable, because Stephanus mentions a country in those parts called Saruca.

The reason why no mention is made in the Scriptures of the Sabtaceans, may be this, that those parts of Arabia lying next to the Holy Land, are by the sacred writers denoted by the name of the whole land of Cush, or Arabia, it being to them as it were instar totius; being the only part of the land of Cush they were usually concerned with; and they probably learnt it first in Egypt of the Egyptians; who, after their father Mizraim, called the country the land of Cush, it being natural to him to call it from the name of his brethren, rather than from one of his children.

Moses having named the other sons and grandsons of Cush, subjoins, Gen. x. 8. “And Cush begat Nimrod.” By this distinct mention of Nimrod after the rest of his brethren, the sacred historian is supposed to intimate that Nimrod was indeed the youngest of the sons of Cush, but, however, the most remarkable of them: and accordingly it immediately follows in the text, “He began to be a mighty one upon the earth.”

By what method Nimrod became thus mighty, Moses seems to intimate by these words, “He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.” He probably applied himself to hunting, to destroy the wild beasts that began to grow very numerous, and very much to infest the parts adjoining to the nation of Cush; and by his great art and valour 705in destroying wild beasts, he inured himself and his companions to undergo fatigue and hardship, and withal to manage dexterously several sorts of offensive weapons. Being thus occasionally trained up to the art of war, and perceiving at length his skill and strength sufficient, he began to act offensively against men.

The country at first assigned to Nimrod, the youngest son of Cush, was probably the country on the east of Gihon, the eastern branch of the common channel of Euphrates and Tigris, after its second division, before it emptied itself into the Persian gulf, next to his brother Havilah, his brethren having possessed Arabia. This part next to Arabia was assigned to him, and so being the portion of one of the sons of Cush, was called the land of Cush, as it is by Moses when speaking of the river Gihon, “The same is it which compasses the whole land of Cush;” which country was formerly, by the Greeks and Latins, called by the name of Susiana, and is now called Chuzestan. The Nubian geographer, and some other Arabians, call it Churestan. The inhabitants of the land call it absolutely and plainly Chus, if we will believe Marius Niger. The same region is called Cuthah, 2 Kings xvii. 24. speaking of the people transported thence into Samaria, by Salmanezer. The word Cuthah, or Cuth, undoubtedly came from the word Cush, or Cus, the last letter of which is often changed by the Chaldeans into a T, or Th, as Dion hath observed; so they called Theor, for Sor, and Attyria, for Assyria. There are yet many marks of the word Cush found in the same province. We find there the Cassians, neighbours of the Uxians, according to the position of Pliny, Ptolemy, and Arrian. There is also a little province of Susiana, viz. Cissia, and the people Cissians. The poet Eschylus takes notice of a city of that name, situated in the same land, and what is remarkable, he does distinguish it by its antiquity.

This country was probably named Cush before Nimrod was born, or at least when he was young, before he distinguished himself in the world, from Cush his father living here, in that part of the face of the earth, that fell to the lot of him and his posterity, that was nearest to the original settlement of Noah and his sons, and was the pleasantest and most beautiful, like Eden, on which it bordered. While Cush sent forth his elder sons to settle Arabia, it is likely that he staid here himself with his youngest son, who was probably very young when the earth was divided.

But Nimrod, when he found his strength and ability for war, and being grown famous for his extraordinary valour in destroying wild beasts, was not contented with the lot assigned him; but invades first the neighbouring part of the nation of Shem, which upon the division of the earth fell to the lot of the family of Arphaxad, and so makes himself master of the lower part of the land of Shinar, being a most pleasant and fruitful country, and pitching on that very place where the city and tower of Babel had been, began to build the capital city of his kingdom. Moses says, “The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.” As to Erech, it is probably the same that occurs in Ptolemy under the name of Arecca, and which is placed by him at the last or most southern turning of the common channel of the Tigris and Euphrates. The fields hereof are mentioned by Tibullus, on account of its springs of Naphtha. The Archevites, mentioned Ezra iv. 9. are thought to be some that were removed from Erech to Samaria. What in the Hebrew is Acchad, is by the Seventy Interpreters writ Archad, whence some footsteps of this name are probably thought to be preserved in the river Argades mentioned by Ctesias, as a river near Sittace, lying at some distance from the river Tigris, and giving name formerly to Sittacene, a country lying between Babylon and Susa, and because it was very usual, particularly in those parts, to have rivers take their name from some considerable city they run by; hence it is not improbably conjectured, that the city Sittace was formerly called Argad, or Acehad, and took the name of Sittace from the plenty of Psitlacias, or Pistacias, a sort of nut, that grew in the country. Strabo mentions a region in those parts under the name of Artacene, which might be framed from Archad. As to the other city belonging to the beginning of Nimrod’s kingdom, viz. Calneh, and which is called, Isa. x. 9. Calno, and Ezek. xxvii. 23. Cauneh. It is mentioned as a considerable place, Amos vi. 2. “Pass ye up into Calneh and see.” It is said by the Chaldee interpreters, as also by Eusebius and Jerome, to be the same with Ctesiphon, standing upon the Tigris, about three miles distant from Seleucia, and for some time the capital city of the Parthians. That this opinion concerning the situation of Calneh is true, is mightily confirmed from the country about Ctesiphon being by the Greeks called Chalnoitis; and since we are expressly told by Ammianus Marcellinus, that Pacnus, a king of the Parthians, changed the name of the city Ctesiphon, when he gave it that name, we may reasonably suppose that its old name was Calneh, or Cholone, and that from it the adjacent country took the name of Cholonitis.

And whereas it is said, Gen. x. 11, 12. in our translation, “Out of this land went forth Ashur, and built Nineveh, and the city of Rehoboth, and Colah, and Resen, between Nineveh and Calah, the same is a great city.” It might have been rendered as agreeably to the original, and much more agreeably to the preceding verses, and the drift of the historian, Out of that land he went forth into Ashur, and built Nineveh, &c.; for Moses in the preceding verse having told us what was the beginning of Nimrod’s kingdom in the land of Shinar, then goes on to tell us how he extended it further afterwards to other cities beyond the land of Shinar into the land of Ashur.

Nineveh was a city that lay on the river Tigris, somewhat above the mouth of the river Lycus, where it runs into the Tigris.

Rehoboth is a word in the Hebrew tongue that signifies streets; and there being a city or town called Birtha by Ptolemy, and the said name denoting in the Chaldee tongue the same as Rehoboth does in the Hebrew, hence it is thought to be the same city, and it is not to be doubted but the Birtha mentioned by Ptolemy is the same which Ammianus Marcellinus calls Virta. It was seated on the river Tigris about the mouth of the river Lycus.

As for Calah, or Calach, since we find in Strabo a country about the head of the river Lycus called Calachene, it is very probable the said country took this name from Calach which was once its capital city. Ptolemy also mentions a country called Calacine in those parts; and whereas Pliny mentions a people called Classita, through whose country the Lycus runs, it is likely that Classita is a corruption for Chalachita. To this city and country in all probability it was that Salmanezer translated some of the ten tribes, 2 Kings xvii. 6. He placed them in Chalach, as it is in the original.

Resen, the other city mentioned by Moses, is supposed to be the same with a city mentioned by Xenophon under the name of Larissa, lying on the Tigris, and being as Moses says between Nineveh and Calah, and was also said by Xenophon to have been strong and great, (but then in ruins,) being two parasangs, that is, eight miles, in compass, and its walls a hundred feet high and twenty-five feet broad, which agrees with what Moses says of Resen, “The same was a great city.” Larissa was a Greek name, we find a city so called in Thessaly. There was another which the Greeks called by the same name in Syria, which the Syrians themselves called Sizora. It is therefore easy to suppose that the Greeks might change Resen into Larissa. It is likely that the Greeks asking, What city those were the ruins of? the Assyrians might answer, Laresen, i. e. of Resen, which word Xenophon expressed by Larissa, like the names of several Greek cities.

We proceed now to Mizraim, who by Moses is named second among the sons of Ham. And where he at first settled himself, we need not doubt, since the Hebrew text generally denotes Egypt by the name of the land of Mizraim, or simply Mizraim. I proceed therefore to the descendants of Mizraim. The names whereby these are denoted by Moses, are plurals. They are thus enumerated by Moses: “Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim, and Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (out of whom came Philistim,) and Caphtorim.

To begin with Ludim, whereby are denoted the Ethiopians in Africa, and who alone are commonly so called both in ancient and modern writers. That these Ethiopians 706are denoted in Scripture by the name of Ludim, and their country Ethiopia by the name of Lud, the learned Bochart has proved at large, by no fewer than ten distinct arguments: I shall mention only those that are drawn from the sacred Scriptures, as from Isa. lxvi. 19. and Jer. xlvi. 9. where Lud or Ludim are said to be very skilful in drawing their bow, which agrees punctually with the character given of the Ethiopians by many ancient writers.

As to Anamim, Bochart thinks the inhabitants of the country about Jupiter Ammon’s temple might be denoted from this Anamim. The same learned person thinks the Nasamones took their rise and name, as also the Amantes, and Garamantes, and Hammomantes, mentioned by old writers, on the adjacent parts.

The Lehabim came next both in the text and in situation; for it is very probable that Lehabim and Lubim are one, and that from hence was derived originally the name of Libya, which, though at length extended to the whole African continent, yet at first belonged only to the country Cyrenaica. Now this country lying next over against Greece, hence the name of Lehab, or Lub, originally belonging to this tract only, was moulded into Libya, and given to the whole continent over against them on the other side of the Mediterranean sea, just as the name of Africa, properly pertaining only to that part of this continent which lies over against Italy, was therefore by the Latins extended to all the continent; or, to come to our own times, much after the same manner as we extend the name of Holland to all the Dutch provinces, and the name of Flanders to all the Spanish provinces, in the Netherlands, whereas they properly denote only the two particular provinces in the Spanish and Dutch Netherlands that lie next over against the island of Great Britain.

The Naphtuhim are probably enough placed by Bochart in the country adjoining to Cyrenaica, or Libya, properly so called, towards Egypt, viz. in Marmorica; for here we find in Ptolemy some remainder of the name in a place called Aptuchi Fanum. And in the heathen fables, Aptuchus, or Aphtuchus, or Autuchus, is said to be the son of Cyrene, from whom the city and country of Cyrene took its name.

The Pathrusim, or descendants of Pathros, are mentioned next by Moses, whereby are to be understood the inhabitants of the Upper Egypt, or Thebais, where Ptolemy places Pathyris, an inland town not far from Thebes; and agreeably hereto, the Septuagint translation renders the Hebrew Pathros by the Greek Pathyris.

The Casluhim are thought to have first settled in the country on the other side of Egypt, called Casioti, where is a mountain called Casius; and this situation of them is confirmed by what Moses says concerning them, viz. that from them sprang the Philistines, who in process of time made themselves masters of the adjoining tract of the land of Canaan.

That the Caphtorim were situated near to the Casluhim, is inferred not only from Moses’s putting them next one to another in the forecited place of Gen. x. but also from this, that the Philistines, who are, in Gen. x. 13. said to be descended of the Casluhim, are elsewhere denoted by the name of Caphtorim, as Deut. ii. 23. Jer. xlvii. 4. and Amos ix. 7. which perhaps cannot be better accounted for than by supposing the Casluhim and Caphtorim to be neighbours, and so in time to have been mutually intermixed, or to be looked upon as one and the same people. Now the name Caphtor seems to be preserved in an old city of Egypt called Captus, from which, as the name of Captetes is still given to the Christians of Egypt, (whence the translation of the Bible used by them is called also the Coptick translation,) so it is not unlikely that the common name of Egypt was derived from it, it being called Ægyptus, for Ægoptus, as if one should say in Greek Greek or Hebrew the land of Koptus. And it is a good remark of the learned Mede, that the Greek Greek or Hebrew, or Æa, is likely derived from the Hebrew Greek or Hebrew, ai, or Ei; to which may be very pertinently subjoined this remark, that in Jer. xlvii. 4. what we render the country of Caphtor, is in the Hebrew text termed Ai Caphtor, which are the two words which we suppose the Greeks to have moulded into the name Greek or Hebrew. Our translators observe on the forementioned place in Jeremy, that the Hebrew word translated the country in the text denotes also an isle, as it is rendered in the margin, agreeably to which it is observable that the city of Captus stood on a small island, so that upon the whole we need not doubt thereabout to fix the first settlement of the Caphtorim.

Of the four original nations descended from Ham, there remains now only that of Phut to be spoken of; and the first settlement of this is with good reason supposed to be in the parts of the Libyan or African continent, which join on next to those possessed by the descendants of Mizraim. For in Africa, properly so called, below Adrumentum, was a city named Putea, mentioned by Pliny; and in Mauritania there is a river mentioned by Ptolemy called Phut. St. Jerome is very full to the point, telling us that there is a river in Mauritania which was until his own time called Phut, and from which the adjacent country was called Regio Phytensis, the country of Phut. Mr. Bedford supposes it was the river Niger that was called by this name, and that the posterity of Phut settled themselves chiefly on that river, (as the first inhabitants of the earth were wont to choose the neighbourhood of rivers for their settlements,) and from thence spread themselves into other parts.

[415] Gen. x. l. These things are evidences that all mankind are originally from one head or fountain, and of one blood, viz. 1. That all agreed in the same custom of sacrifices, which could be from nothing else than tradition from their progenitors. 2. Their all agreeing in counting by decads, or stopping at ten in their numerical computations, which Aristotle says, all men, both Barbarians and Greeks, did use. 3. Their having every where anciently the same number of letters, and the same names (or little varied) of them. 4. The remarkable affinity of all ancient languages. 5. Their dividing time into weeks, or systems of seven days, of which practice to have been general there are many plain testimonies. 6. Their beginning the day or revolution of twenty-four hours with the night. Yea, perhaps, if one consider it, the whole business concerning matrimony. Thus, Dr. Barrow, vol. ii. of his Works, p. 93.

[405] Gen. x. 1, 2. Concerning Japhet, the son of Noah. Neptune is the same with Japhet, who is called the god of the sea, because mountains, places, islands, and the great peninsulas of Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and Spain, were peopled by his posterity. The name Neptune is derived from the same radix that Japhet is, even from Greek or Hebrew, to enlarge, whence Greek or Hebrew, Japhet, and Greek or Hebrew, Nephta, in niphal, according to the allusion of Noah, Japht Elohim Japhet, Gen. ix. 27.“God shall enlarge Japhet:” proportionably whereunto Neptune was called by the Greek Greek or Hebrew, which grammarians in vain attempt to deduce from the Greek tongue, seeing, as Herodotus in Euterpe asserts, the name Poseidon was at first used by none but the Libyans or Africans, who always honoured this god. Poseidon is the same with the Punic word Greek or Hebrew, Pesitan, which signifies expanse, or broad, from Greek or Hebrew, Pasat, to dilate or expand. Japhet’s name, and what is said of him, God shall enlarge Japhet, well suits with Neptune’s character among the heathen, who is styled, Late imperans and Late-sonans, as also one that has a large breast. The genealogy of Neptune confirms that he is Japhet: he is the son of Saturn, i. e. Noah. See note on Gen. i. 27. Gale’s Court of the Gen. p. 1. b. 2. c. 6. p. 73, 74.

[400] Gen. x. 6. Now what the heathen said of Jupiter is evidently taken from Ham, the son of Noah. Noah is the Saturn of the heathen, as is evident by note on Gen. i. 27. It is fabled that Saturn had three sons, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, who divided the world between them. Sanchoniathon says, “The son of Saturn was Zeus Belus, or Baal, the chief god among the Phœnicians. It was a name assumed by Jehovah, the God of Israel, before abused to superstition, as appears by Hosea ii. 16. It is elsewhere written Greek or Hebrew Beel, or Greek or Hebrew which answers to the Hebrew Baal Shamaiim, the Lord of heaven. Greek or Hebrew is derived from Greek or Hebrew, which signifies to be hot, and answereth exactly to the Hebrew Cham, from the radix Chamam, to wax hot. Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians called Jupiter, Ammon, from their progenitor Ham; whence Egypt is called Ps. cv. 23, 27the land of Ham,” Ps. cv. 23, 27. 707Also Plutarch testifies that Egypt in the Sacreds of Isis, was termed Greek or Hebrew whence this, but from Cham? And Africa of old was called Hammonia. The Africans were wont to worship Ham under the name of Hanmon. These things are more largely treated of by Cudworth, p. 337, 338, 339.

Again: Sanchoniathon terms Jupiter, Sydyk, or as Damascius in Photius, Sadyk. Now this name is evidently taken from the Hebrew Saddik, the just, which is a name given to God, as also to the first patriarchs, whence Melchizedek. The name Jupiter is evidently the same with la Pater, or Greek or Hebrew, that is, Father Jah, or Jeu. That God’s name, Jah, was well known to the Phœnicians, who communicated the same to the Grecians, is evident by what Porphyry says of Sanchoniathon’s deriving the materials of his history from Jerombatus, the priest of the god Greek or Hebrew. So Diodorus tells us that Moses inscribed his law to the god called Jao. So the oblique cases of Jupiter are from God’s name, Jehovah, as Jovi, Jove, &c. The same name, Jai, in the oracle of Clarius Apollo, is given to Bacchus again. Jupiter was Sabasius, from that title of God, Jehovah, Sabaoth. (This Cudworth also notices, p. 259, 260.) The fable of Jupiter’s cutting off his fathers genitalia, seems to arise from Ham’s seeing his father’s nakedness. Again, in the metamorphosis of the gods of Egypt, it is said that Jupiter was turned into a ram; which fable Bochart supposes to have had its rise from the cognation between the Hebrew words Greek or Hebrew or Greek or Hebrew, and Greek or Hebrew a ram, the plural number of both which is the same, Elim. The tradition of Bacchus being produced out of Jupiter’s thigh, seems to come from that known expression to signify the natural proceeding of posterity from a father, their coming out of his loins. Gale’s Court of the Gen. p. 1. b. ii. l. 1. p. 10, 11, 12, 13.

[410] Gen. xi. 3, 4., &c. Concerning the building of Babel and confusion of tongues. Bochart, in his preface to his Phaleg, about the middle, says, “What follows concerning the tower of Babel, its structure, and the confusion of tongues ensuing thereon, also of its builders being dispersed throughout various parts of the earth, is related in express words by Abydenus and Eupolemus in Cyrillus and Eusebius.” Bochart, in his Phaleg, gives us a description of the tower of Babel, out of Herodotus, parallel to that of the Scripture, and where it is said, Gen. xi. 9. that it was called Babel, because the Lard confounded their language. Hence pagan writers called those of this dispersion, and their successors Greek or Hebrew, men of divided tongues. So Homer, in the Iliad, Greek or Hebrew, generations of men, having divided tongues. Abydenus affirms, that it was a common opinion, that the men whom the earth brought forth gathered themselves together, and builded a great tower, which was Babel, and the gods being angry with it, threw it down. Gale’s Court of Gen. p. 1. b. 3. c. 8. p. 83.

[430] Gen. xi. 3, 4., &c. Concerning the tower of Babel, Cyril, b. 1. against Julian, quotes these words out of Abydenus, “Some say that the first men that sprang out of the earth, grew proud upon their great strength and bulk, and boasted they could do more than the gods, and attempted to build a tower where Babylon now stands; but when it came nigh the heavens, it was overthrown upon them by the gods with the help of the winds; and the ruins are called Babylon. Men, until then, had but one language, but the gods divided it, and then began the war between Saturn and Titan.” Grotius de Verit. b. i. sect. 16. Notes.

Dr. Winder supposes that the crime of the builders of Babel was an obstinate renouncing the orders before given by Noah, and agreed to by his sons, under the divine direction for a general dispersion and division of the earth among the various families of mankind, and that the builders of Babel were not the whole body of mankind, but that part of them which, according to the forementioned orders and regulations, were to be settled in parts that were to be westward of the original settlement where Noah dwelt; and that, after they had dwelt in Shinar, ambition might inspire some of their leaders with the thoughts of setting up a great empire. But that this supposes that there were at that time other tribes elsewhere, against which they might direct their ambitious projects. There appears (says he) to have been something of ambition either for power or fame, or both, in their design; for they said, Let us make us a name.

“There is” (says Dr. Winder, p. 127.) “a most noble authenticated confirmation of the Mosaic history, by this city or country retaining the name Babel, or Confusion, by which every age and nation called this great city, the supposed seat of the first empire, even according to heathen writers, which seems to be a name of infamy and reproach, which its own princes or inhabitants would not have given it without some such notorious undeniable circumstances obliging them to it. What a signal defeat (says he) was here given by Providence to this ambitious plan ”Let us make us a name;” for what they aimed to erect as a monument of their grandeur and glory, God indeed suffered to stand long, but then it was as a monument of their own infamy and folly, the impotency of their rebellion, and their decisive defeat.”

[240] Gen. xi. 7. Concerning the confusion of languages. The state of the world of mankind, with respect to variety of language, now and in all past ages that we can learn any thing of from history, does exceedingly confirm this account of the confusion of languages. Without this, it is very unaccountable how there should be so great a variety of language in so little a time, or indeed ever at all. Concerning this, the author of “Revelation Examined with Candour,” observes as follows: “It is true that the English and all living languages are in a perpetual flux; new words are added, and others die, and grow obsolete. But whence does this arise? Not at all from the necessary mutability of human things, but most evidently from the mixture of other tongues. Scholars add new words or terminations from the learned languages, either through affectation of learning or desire of adorning their native tongue with some words of more elegance or significance; and others from a commerce with other countries of different languages, naturally adopt some of their phrases and expositions into their own. And so our language varies; and what then? How does this affect the question concerning the continuance of the same language, where no other was ever taught or heard? The Jews spoke the same language from Moses to the Babylonish captivity: if their polity had continued, would they not speak the same language to this day?” [And here I would insert what Bedford in his Scripture Chronology observes, viz. that “the Arabic continued the same from the time of Job till later ages. The Arabic spoken by Christians in Asia at this day, is the same with that spoken by Mahomet, the impostor, which was much the same with that used in Job’s time; and the Chaldee remained the same from the time of Iaco till the date of the Babylonish Talmud; and the Greek continued the same from the days of Homer to Chrysostom.” See Bedford, p. 291 and 512.] The author of Revelation Examined with Candour, goes on. “Some of the inland inhabitants of Africa are found to speak the same language now which they spoke two thousand years ago (and in all probability the same observation is true of our neighbours, the Welch). Could they keep to one language for two thousand years, and could not the descendants of Noah keep to one language two hundred years? Could they keep their language amidst a variety of so many others about them, and when it is scarcely possible that they should be clear of all commerce with people of different tongues; and could not these keep their language, when it was impossible that they should have any commerce but with one another? Those Africans, to say nothing of the Welch, now keep their own tongue, though there are so many others in the world to taint, and by degrees to abolish it. If there were no other language in the world but theirs, does any man believe they would not continue to speak it for two thousand or ten thousand years more, if the world lasted so long? It is true, as arts increased, and customs changed, new terms and phrases might be added; when then new words would increase and adorn the tongue; but sure no man would say it would destroy it, unless it be believed that new branches, or fruit, or flowers, do daily destroy the tree they shoot out from.”

“The learned author of the letter to Dr. Waterland seems to think, that all other languages sprang as naturally from the Hebrew, as many shoots from the same root, or 708many branches from the same stock: but I am confident, whoever carefully considers the genius of each of the ancient languages now extant, will find as little reason to believe that they all had their original from the Hebrew, as that all the variety of the forest and fruit-trees in the world were originally but so many shoots and branches from the palm-tree of Judea.

“Besides all this, if we consider that the language of Adam (if we could suppose it imperfect in him, when it was demonstrably inspired by God, yet) had time enough to arrive at full perfection in 1656 years; and that Noah and his sons had time enough to learn it in perfection before the flood; the youngest of his sons being about 100 years old at that time, and himself 600; we cannot with any colour of reason imagine that there could be any necessity of adding so much as one word to it before the building of Babel.” Thus far the author of Religion Examined with Candour.

And besides all this, the greater excellency and regularity of some of the ancient languages so early, when arts were in their first beginning, as the Latin and Greek, the latter of which was in great perfection in the days of Homer, seems to argue something divine in it. If the arts and learning of the nation had so early brought their language to such a pitch of perfection, they had made infinitely greater progress in this than in other things that pertain to human life.

The manner in which God confounded the languages of the posterity of Noah, seems to be by confounding their memory with respect to their former language, but not utterly destroying it; so that they still retained some notion of many of the words and phrases of their former language; hence it is found that other languages have in many words affinity to the Hebrew.

[275] Gen. xiii. 10. “And Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt as thou comest unto Zoar.” Zoar here probably is the same city which was elsewhere called Zoan, which was of old the chief city of Egypt. (See No. 254.) The Hebrew letter Greek or Hebrew, Nun, seems easily convertible into Greek or Hebrew, Resch, as in Achon, Achor. Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadrezzar. Zoan was probably at this time the most famous and the royal city in Egypt. It stood in the Delta of Egypt, or that part of it that was near the sea, through which the river Nile ran in many branches, so that it was well watered every where, as the land about Sodom is here said to be; for “it had not only the river Jordan running through it, but the river Arnon from the east, the brook Zered (Numb. xxi. 12.) and the famous fountain Callirhoe (Pliny, lib. 5. c. 16.) from the south, falling into it.” (Complete Body of Divinity, p. 350.) Probably this fountain is the same with the well, which the princes of Israel digged with their staves, Numb. xxi. 16, 17, 18. And probably being a low flat country, which is sometimes called a plain, sometimes a valley, Gen. xiv. 10. was in the time of the swelling of Jordan overflowed, as Egypt was with the Nilus.

[302] Gen. xiv. 15, 16., &c. Abraham in thus conquering the great kings and princes of the earth, and their united hosts, is a type of Christ and of the church. God seems to have granted this great victory to Abraham, as some earnest of those great blessings he had promised to him; the belief of which promises was attended with so much difficulty. Here was given some specimen of what Abraham’s promised seed should do, which includes Christ and his church. Abraham might well represent Christ, for Christ is Abraham’s seed, and he might well represent the church, for he was the father of the church, the father of all that believe, as the apostle testifies. And besides, Abraham and his household was then as it were God’s visible church; God had separated Abraham from the rest of the world to that end that his church might be continued in his family. And though there were as yet some other true worshippers of God, who were not of his family, yet soon after the church was confined to his posterity. This victory of Abraham was doubtless intended as a sign and earnest of the victory that Christ and his church should obtain over their enemies, and over the nations of the world; because God himself makes use of it to this purpose in the 41st. chap. of Isaiah.: “Keep silence before me, O islands, and let the people renew their strength; let them come near, then let them speak; let us come near together in judgment: who raised up the righteous man from the east, called him to his foot, gave the nations before him, and made him rule over kings? He gave them as the dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to his bow. He pursued them and passed safely; even by the way that he had not gone with his feet.” It is not probable that this victory of Abraham would be spoken of in such lofty language, and in expressions so much like those that are elsewhere made use of to represent Christ’s glorious victories over the powers of earth and hell, if the one were not a type of the other. This victory of Abraham is in this place mentioned to that end, that the church, the seed of Abraham, might take it as a sign and evidence that they should not be subdued, but should subdue and conquer the world, as appears from what follows, ver. 8. “But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend.” Ver. 10, 11. “Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded: they shall be as nothing, and they that strive with thee shall perish.” Ver. 15. “Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument, having teeth, thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff.”

Abraham conquered the chief nations and princes of the world, which was a seal of what God promised him, that he should be the heir of the world. Rom. iv. 13. “For the promise that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.” He conquered them not with a hired army, but only with the armed soldiers of his own household. So the armies that go forth with Christ unto battle to subdue the world, (Rev. xix. 14. “And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean,) they are his church, which is his household. Abraham conquers the kings of the earth and their armies united, and joining all their force together, and therein his victory was a type of Christ’s victory, as in the 41st Isa. 6, 7. speaking of this victory, “They helped every one his neighbour; and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage. So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the soldering: and he fastened it with nails that it should not be moved.” Abraham by his conquest rescued Lot his kinsman; so Christ our near kinsman by his victory over our enemies, who had taken us captive, delivers us. Abraham redeemed Lot and the other captives freely, and would take nothing of them for his pains: so Christ freely redeems us. Abraham redeemed the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, that wicked people; which is a type of Christ’s redeeming sinners.

[129] Gen. xv. 17. “Behold a smoking furnace and a burning lamp passes between those pieces.” The smoking furnace, I am ready to think, signified the same as fire from heaven to consume the sacrifices, that is, the wrath of God in the midst of Jesus Christ. The furnace passed between the pieces, that is, as it were, through the midst of them. The burning lamp which followed was a fire of another nature; it was a clear bright light; whereas the other, though exceeding hot like a furnace, was all smoking. This signified the Holy Ghost, who is often compared to fire; and the lamp signified that light, glory, and blessedness which followed Christ’s enduring wrath, and was purchased by it, both for himself and for his people. And doubtless this also has respect to the church in Egypt of Abraham’s seed, and signified those things that God was now telling Abraham in his deep sleep. The smoking furnace signified their suffering grievous persecutions and afflictions in Egypt, which is called the iron furnace; and the shining lamp signified their glorious deliverance in the fourth generation, and being brought into the land of Canaan. Isa. lxii. 1. “And the salvation thereof shall be as a lamp that burneth.” The birds coming down, that 709Abraham frayed away, were to typify the devils, and their endeavours to devour Jesus Christ and the church; this thing may also signify the terrors and consolations that attend the wish of conversion and deliverance out of spiritual Egypt.

[363] Gen. xv. 17. “And it came to pass, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold, a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.” Here were four things that were significant of the death and last sufferings of Christ, all at the same time.

1. There were the sacrifices that were slain, and lay there dead and divided. Christ feared when his last passion approached, lest Satan should utterly devour him, and swallow him up in that trial, and cried to God, and was heard in that he feared; and those fowls were frayed away that sought to devour that sacrifice, as Abraham frayed away the fowls that attempted to devour this sacrifice while it lay upon the altar.

2. The smoking furnace that passed through the midst of the sacrifices.

3. The deep sleep that fell upon Abraham, and the horror of great darkness that fell upon him.

4. The sun, that greatest of all natural types of Christ, went down, and descended under the earth, and it was dark.

“It is probable this furnace and lamp which passed between the pieces, burned and consumed them, and so completed the sacrifice, and testified God’s acceptance of it, Judg. vi. 21. xiii. 19, 20. and 2 Chron. vii. 7. This was of old God’s manner of manifesting his acceptance of sacrifices, viz. kindling a fire from heaven upon them; ‘and by this we may know that he accepts our sacrifices, if we kindle in our souls a lively fire of divine affections in them.’ ” Henry.

[241] Gen. xvi. 10-12. “I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude And shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.” The following observations are taken principally out of a book entitled Revelation Examined with Candour. This prophecy is remarkably verified in the Arabs. The Arabs are the undoubted descendants of Hagar and Ishmael. Ishmael was circumcised at thirteen years of age; so have all those his sons from him until the establishment of Mahometanism, and many of them to this day, though some of them circumcise indifferently in any year from the 8th to the 13th, but all professing to derive the practice from their father Ishmael. He was an archer in the wilderness; his sons, the Arabs, have been the most remarkable archers in the world, and are so to this day, and in the wilderness too, where culture is not known. Hagar was a concubine and an hireling, and while she dwelt with Abraham, Abraham dwelt in tents, and was continually moving from place to place. Ammianus Marcellinus observes of the Arabs, that they had mercenary wives hired for a time. The learned Dr. Jackson makes it exceeding evident that the Arabs and the Saracens were descended from Ishmael, and also the writers of the life of Mahomet, and the writers of travels and voyages without number. In short, it is a point universally agreed upon all over the east and south. As the Ishmaelites lived under twelve princes by Moses’s account, so these principalities remained till later times, bearing the names of the twelve sons of Ishmael, as Le Clerc makes very evident.

The first part of the prophecy, viz. I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude, is fulfilled in them. The Hagarenes spoken of in Scripture, and the Arabs, especially the Scænitæ, were very numerous, and the Saracens were more numerous than either. But this prophecy is most evidently fulfilled in that vast empire that the Saracens have set up in the world.

The next part of the prophecy is that he should be a wild man. The word which is translated wild, in this place signifies a wild ass: the literal construction of the phrase in Latin is erit Onager Homo: He shall be a wild ass man. The Arabs are above all nations a wild people, and have been so through all ages throughout so many hundred generations. They vary no more from their progenitors’ wild and fierce qualities than the wild plants of the forest, never accustomed to human culture, do from the trees whence they are propagated. The dwelling of those Arabs and the wild ass is alike, and indeed the same. See Job xxxix. 6.

The next part of the prophecy: His hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. He shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. The meaning of which words seems to be that they should be in perpetual enmity with all mankind, and yet should subsist in the face of the world. And such a sense of this prophecy seems to be agreeable to the idiom of scripture phrase. Thus when the Scripture speaks of brethren with respect to nations, sometimes nothing is intended but only other nations that are round about. So when it is said concerning Canaan, Gen. ix. 25. “A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren,” it is not intended only, nor chiefly, and it may be not at all, that he should be a servant of servants to his literal brethren, Cush, Mizraim, and Phut, the other sons of Ham; but that he should be a servant to other nations; and it was fulfilled especially in his posterity’s being subdued by the posterity of Shem and Japheth. When it is said, “He shall dwell,” the meaning is, that they shall remain a nation, and still retain their habitation and possession without being cut off, or carried captive from their own land. In such a sense the word is used, Psal. xxxvii. 27. “Depart from evil and do good, and dwell for evermore.” This expression is explained by other passages in the Psalm, as ver. 3. “Trust in the Lord and do good, so shalt thou dwell in the land.” Ver. 9. “Evil-doers shall be cut off, but those that wait on the Lord shall inherit the earth.” Ver. 10, 11. “Yet a little while and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth.” Ver. 18. “The Lord knoweth the days of the upright, and their inheritance shall be for ever;” and ver. 22. “For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth, and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off.” Ver. 29. “The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever.” Ver. 34. “And he shall exalt thee to inherit the land; when the wicked are cut off thou shalt see it.” It is also agreeable to the scriptural way of speaking, when it is said, “He shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren,” to understand it, that they after all their opposition to it shall see him still subsisting and retaining his own habitation in spite of them: so the expression in the presence of, seems evidently to signify, Psal. xxiii. 5. “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” This is also remarkably fulfilled in the Arabs, for they have ever lived in professed enmity with all mankind, and all mankind in enmity with them; they have continued in a state of perpetual hostility with the rest of their brethren, and yet have subsisted perpetually under it before their faces, and in spite of them all; they have neither been destroyed nor lost by mingling with other nations; they marry only in their own nation, disdaining alliances with all others. Their language continued so much the same through all ages, (as Bedford in his Scripture Chronology observes, that it continued much the same from the days of Job until latter ages,) shows that this nation has never been much mixed with other nations. They and the Jews only have subsisted from the remotest accounts of antiquity as a distinct people from all the rest of mankind, and the undoubted descendants of one man. And the Arabs never were subdued and carried captive, as the Jews have been. Alexander the Great intended an expedition against them, but was prevented by death. What Alexander intended, Antigonus, the greatest of his successors, attempted, but without success; being repulsed with disgrace, and the loss of above eight thousand men, he made a second and greater attempt, but without success.

They had wars afterwards with the Romans and Parthians, but were never either subdued or tamed: resembling in this (the only comparison in nature that suits them) the wild ass in the desert, and sent out by the same hand free, as he whose house is also the wilderness, and the barren land his dwelling, alike disdainful of bondage, scorning alike the multitude of the city and the cry of the driver. Pompey made war with them, and some part of 710them seemingly submitted, but never remained at all in subjection to him after this they misled and deluded Crassus to his destruction. Antony after this sent his horse to ravage Palmyra, but the city was defended from them by archers, who were probably Arabs. Afterwards their chief city was besieged by Trajan, one of the most warlike and powerful of all the Roman emperors. He went in person with his army against them with great resolution to subdue them, but his soldiers were strangely annoyed with lightnings, thunders, whirlwinds, and hail, and affrighted, and dazzled with the apparition of rainbows, and so were forced to give up the siege. After this, Severus, a great conqueror, after he had subdued all his enemies, marched in person against them with great resolution to subdue them with his greatest force, and warlike preparations, besieged the city twice, but it twice repulsed him with great loss; and when they had actually made a breach in the wall of the chief city, they were strangely prevented from entering by unaccountable discontents arising among the soldiers, and so they went away baffled and confounded. These Ishmaelites, when their wall was broke down, being invited to a treaty with the emperor, disdained to enter into any treaty with him. After this the Saracens set up a vast empire, and so the prophecy of their becoming a great nation that could not be numbered was most eminently fulfilled.

They also have dwelt in the presence of all their brethren, in another sense, viz. that all their brethren, the posterity of all the other sons of Abraham, and even the posterity of Isaac, have seen them remaining and unsubdued, and holding their own dwelling, when they all of them, and even the posterity of Isaac and Jacob themselves, were conquered and carried away out of their own dwellings.

[301] Gen. xvii. 10. Circumcision signified or represented that mortification or the denying of our lusts, that is the condition of obtaining the blessings of the covenant. Totally denying any lust, is represented in Scripture by cutting off. Thus, cutting off a right hand, or right foot, is put for the denying of some very dear lust; so cutting off the flesh of a member so prone to violent lust, signifies a total denying of our lusts. A main reason why lust, or our natural corruption, is represented by the instrument of generation, is because we have all our natural corruption or lust by generation, i. e. by being the natural offspring of the corrupt parents of mankind. Therefore when God would signify that our original or natural corruption should be mortified, he appoints that the flesh of the part specified should be cut off.

Another reason why the seal of the covenant that God made with Abraham was appointed to be affixed to this part of the body, seems to be that God made this covenant not only with Abraham and for him, but him and his seed. It mainly respected his seed, as abundantly appears by the tenor of the words, in which the covenant was revealed from time to time; and therefore the seal was to be affixed to that part of the body whence came his seed. The covenant was made not with a man, but with a race of men ordinarily to be continued by natural generation; and therefore the sign of the covenant was a sign affixed to the instrument of generation. The sign was a purgation of the member of the body, by which offspring was procured, and was to be a sign of the purification of the offspring. God seeks a godly seed, and children that are holy.

Corol. Hence we learn that seeing the Gentiles now in the days of the gospel are admitted to the seal of Abraham as the Jews were, and are admitted to an interest in Abraham’s covenant, and to the blessing of Abraham, so that Abraham is become the father now, not of one nation, but of many nations in the way of that covenant, as the apostle Paul abundantly teaches; then the posterity of Christians by natural generation are now God’s people, and are a holy seed by Abraham’s covenant, as the Israelites were of old. There are but two ways in which persons can become of Abraham’s covenant, race, or generation: one is by generation by the natural instruments of generation, to which the seal of the covenant was affixed, and so continued from the root to the branches; the other is by ingrafting a new branch into that stock, that shall after ingrafting grow and bring forth branches, and bear fruit upon that stock, as the other branches did that were cut off to make room for them. In this way now many nations or generations are of Abraham’s race, instead of one nation or family.

[355] Gen. xviii. Isaac, the interpretation of whose name is Laughter, was conceived about the same time that Sodom and the other cities of the plain were destroyed, and he was born soon after their destruction. So the accomplishment of the terrible destruction of God’s enemies, and the glorious prosperity of his church, usually go together, as in Isa. lxvi. 13, 14. “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem and when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like an herb; and the hand of the Lord shall be known toward his servant, and his indignation toward his enemies.” First the enemies of the church are destroyed, and then Isaac is born, as that prosperous state of the church is brought about, wherein their mouths are filled with laughter, and their tongue with singing. So the Egyptians were first overthrown in the Red sea, and then Moses and the children of Israel rejoiced in peace, and liberty, and sung that glorious song of triumph. So first Babylon is destroyed, and then the captivity of Israel is returned, and Jerusalem rebuilt. So when the heathen Roman empire was overthrown, then commenced that prosperous and joyful state of the church that was in the days of Constantine. So when antichrist is destroyed, there will follow that joyful glorious state of the church we are looking for. Isaac was the promised seed of Abraham, the father of all the faithful, the blessing he had long waited for, and when Sarah brought him forth, it represented the same thing as the woman in the 12th chap. of Rev. “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars; and she, being with child, cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.” The accomplishment of the prosperous state of the church is in Scripture often compared to a woman’s bringing forth a child with which she had been in travail. It is so in particular by our Saviour, John xvi. 19, 20, 21, 22. “Now Jesus knew that they were desirous to ask him, and said unto them, Do ye inquire among yourselves of that I said, A little while, and ye shall not see me; and again a little while, and ye shall see me? Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” Hereby is especially represented the accomplishment of the church’s glory, joy, and laughter, after the destruction of antichrist, or the throne of Rome, that is spiritually called Sodom.

[431] Gen. xviii. Concerning the burning of Sodom, &c. Diodorus Siculus, b. 19. where he describes the lake Asphaltites, says, “The neighbouring country burns with fire, the ill smell of which makes the bodies of the inhabitants sickly, and not very long-lived.” Strabo, b. 16. after the description of the lake Asphaltites, says, “There are many signs of this country being on fire, for about Mastada they show many cragged and burnt rocks, and in many places caverns eaten in, and the ground turned into ashes, drops of pitch falling from the rocks, and running waters stinking to a great distance, and their habitations overthrown; which give credit to a report amongst the inhabitants that formerly there were thirteen cities inhabited there, the chief of which was Sodom, so large as to be sixty furlongs round; but by earthquakes and fire breaking out, and by hot waters mixed with bitumen and brimstone, it became a lake, as we now see it. The rocks took five, some of the cities were swallowed up, and others forsaken by those inhabitants that could flee.” Tacitus, in the fifth book of his history, has these words: “Not far from thence are those fields which are reported to have been formerly very fruitful, and inhabited 711by a large city, but were burnt by lightning, the marks of which remain, in that the land is of a burning nature, and has lost its fruitfulness; for every thing that is planted or grows of itself, as soon as it comes to an herb or flower, or grown to its proper bigness, vanishes like dust into nothing.” Solinus, in the 36th chap. of Salmasius’s edition, has these words: “At a good distance from Jerusalem, a dismal lake extends itself, which was struck by lightning, as appears from the black earth burnt to ashes. There were two towns there, one called Sodom, the other Gomorrah; the apples that grow there cannot be eaten, though they look as if they were ripe, for the outward skin encloses a kind of sooty ashes, which, pressed by the least touch, flies out into smoke, and vanishes into fine dust.” Grotius de Verit. b. i. sect. 16. Notes.

[359] Gen. xix. 23, 24. “The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” This signified that the terrible destruction of the wicked is at the beginning of the glorious day wherein the Sun of righteousness rises on the earth, and at the coming of Christ, Lot’s antitype, and visiting his church, the little city, the antitype of the church. So it was in the days of the apostles, in the morning of the gospel day, when Judea and Jerusalem were so terribly destroyed. So it was in the days of Constantine; and so it will be at the fall of Antichrist; and so it will be at the end of the world. See Job xxxviii. 13. Note.

[336] So Dagon fell once and again before the ark early in the morning; so after the disciples had toiled all night and caught nothing, yet in the morning Christ came to them, and they had a great draught of fishes; so Christ rose from the dead early in the morning. It is said concerning God’s church, that “weeping may continue for a night, but joy will come in the morning.”

The children of Israel were all night pursued by their enemies at the Red sea; in the night they were in the sea, in a great and terrible east wind, but in the morning watch the Lord looked through the pillar of cloud and fire, and troubled the hosts of the Egyptians; and in the morning the children of Israel came up out of the sea, and the host of the Egyptians was destroyed, and the children of Israel rejoiced and sang. Jacob, after wrestling with the angel in the night, obtained the blessing in the morning. “He that ruleth over men shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds: and as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.” 2 Sam. xxiii. 4. Psalm xlix. 14. “The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning, and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling. In the morning, when the Sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in his wings, the day comes that shall burn as an oven, (as that day burnt in which Lot entered into Zoar,) and all the proud, yea, all that do wickedly, shall be stubble, and the righteous shall tread down the wicked, and they shall be as ashes under the soles of their feet.” Mal. iv. at the beginning. The church in the 59th Psalm, after expressing her great troubles from her enemies, and declaring how God should destroy them, says, verse 16. “But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning, for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble.” So likewise the church, in speaking of her troubles, in Psalm cxliii. 8. “Cause me to hear thy loving-kindness in the morning, for in thee do I trust; cause me to know the way wherein I should walk, for I lift up my soul unto thee.” It is said of the church, Psalm xlvi. 5. “God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved; God shall help her, and that right early.” And then in the 8th verse., it is said, “Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth.” Hosea vi. 1, 2, 3. “Come, and let us return unto the Lord, for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind up. After two days will he revive us; in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as the morning, and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter rain and the former rain unto the earth.”

[276] Gen. xix. 24, 25, 26, 27, 28. Concerning the destruction of Sodom and the parts adjacent. The very ground of that region, great part of it, seems to have been burnt up. For it was in great measure made up of bitumen, or what the Scripture calls slime, Gen. xiv. 10. “And the vale of Siddim was full of slime pits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain.” And because of the abundance of bitumen in the lake of Sodom, it was called of old, and is still called, Lacus Asphaltites. It is full of bitumen, which at certain seasons boils up from the bottom in bubbles like hot water. This bitumen is a very combustible matter. It is in some places liquid, and in others firm; and not only lies near the surface of the earth, but lies sometimes very deep, and it is dug out of the bowels of it. So that the streams of fire that came from heaven set the very ground on fire; and therefore it is here, in the 28th verse., that Lot looked towards Sodom and Gomorrah, and towards all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. So that the country burning was a very lively representation of the general conflagration; and by the melting of the bituminous ground in many places was probably a burning lake, and so was a lively image of hell, which is often called the lake of fire, and the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. Note, that bitumen is a sulphurous substance, (see Bailey’s Dictionary,) and therefore is fitly compared to hell fire in Scripture, Jude. 7th ver. “Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” There seems to be an evident allusion to the manner of the destruction of this country in Isa. xxxix. 9, 10. “And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day: the smoke thereof shall go up forever; from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever.” Deut. xxix. 23. “And the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath;” where we are expressly taught that the very ground of this country was burnt. The ground burning up sunk the land, and made this valley deeper, so that after that the waters of Jordan perpetually overflowed it; and besides, there was probably an earthquake at the same time, by which the ground subsided, as the tradition of the heathen was. It is probable that the same time as the meteors of their air were inflamed, the bitumen and other combustible matter that was in the bowels of their earth was also enkindled, or the fire that was first kindled on the top of the ground might run down in the bituminous and sulphurous veins deep into the earth, and being there pent up, might cause earthquakes, after those cities and inhabitants were all consumed, which might make the country to sink, and turn it into a bituminous and exceeding salt lake. The ground there was doubtless very likely to sink by an earthquake, being hollow, as it is evident it is still, in that since the surface of the earth hath been broken to let down the water at the river Jordan and other streams, there is no outlet out of the lake above-ground, but they have a secret passage under the earth. The bitumen there is mixed with abundance of nitre and salt, which by their repugnant quality might cause a more violent struggle in the fire that burnt down into the caverns of the earth to cause an earthquake. See many of these things in Complete Body of Divinity, p. 351,352.

[239] Gen. xix. 26., Concerning Lot’s wife. Revelation Examined with Candour. “The unreasonable delay of Lot’s wife was without question occasioned by her solicitude for her children, which she left behind her. The story of Niobe weeping for her children, and being stiffened into stone with grief, is doubtless founded upon this history. Possibly, too, the fable of Orpheus being permitted to redeem his wife from hell, and losing her afterwards by looking unseasonably back, contrary to the. express command given him, and then through grief deserting the 712society of mankind and dwelling in deserts, might be derived from some obscure tradition of this history. Sodom was now the liveliest emblem of hell that can be imagined. It was granted to Lot by a peculiar privilege to deliver his wife thence. He was expressly commanded, Gen. xix. 17. “Look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.” By her looking back, contrary to this command, his wife was lost; after which he quits the city, and dwells alone in the mountains. Here are all the main circumstances of the fable, and the poets had nothing to do but to vary and embellish as they liked best.

[380] But his wife looked back from behind her, and she became a pillar of salt. What happened to Lot’s wife when she looked back as she was flying out of Sodom, is typical of what commonly happens to men that are guilty of backsliding when they have begun to seek deliverance out of a state of sin and misery, and an escape from the wrath to come. The woman was there stiffened into a hard substance; which signifies the tendency that backsliding has to harden the heart. She became a senseless statue; which signifies the senselessness which persons bring on them by backsliding. There she was fixed, and never got any further; which typifies the tendency that backsliding has to hinder persons from ever escaping eternal wrath.

[361] Gen. xxi. 10, 11. “Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bond-woman and her son; for the son of this bond-woman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.” The son of the bond-woman is men’s own righteousness; which is the son of the first covenant, given at mount Sinai, which is Hagar; and Isaac, the son of the free-woman, is Christ, as applied to the soul by faith: he is the child of promise, and the son of the free-woman: at least this is part of the signification. It is Sarah, the mother of Isaac, that urges the casting out of the bond-woman; so it is the church in its ministry and ordinances, which is the mother of Christ in the souls of believers, that urges the casting out our own legal righteousness. It is Christ that is the heir of the blessings of the covenant; it is by his merits only that we have a right or title to those blessings; we must cast out our own righteousness, and not have any manner of regard to that, as though that had a right, or as though a right came by that. [“And the thing was very grievous in Abraham’s sight, because of his son.”] This signifies how very hard and grievous it seems to persons wholly to cast out their own righteousness, the son of the legal covenant from mount Sinai, because they are our own works, our own offspring, that are dear to us, as Ishmael was to his father Abraham.

[138] Gen. xxi. 8. “And Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned.” This typifies the weaning of the church from its milk of carnal ordinances, ceremonies, and shadows, and beggarly elements. Upon the coming of Christ, the church under the Old Testament is represented as being in its minority; and the apostle tells us that babes must be fed with milk, and not strong meat. Christ therefore dealt with his disciples just as a tender mother does with her child, when she would wean it from the breast. There was a great feast provided, which represents the glorious gospel feast provided for souls when the legal dispensation ceased by the coming of Christ. It may also signify the weaning of souls from the enjoyments of the world at conversion, and the spiritual feast which they find instead of them.

[362] Gen. xxii. Concerning Abraham’s offering up his son Isaac. God’s command to Abraham to offer up his son Isaac, considered with all its circumstances, was an exceeding great trial. Abraham had left his own country and his father’s house, and all that was dear to him, and followed God, not knowing whither he went. First, he left Ur of the Chaldees with his father. This was a great trial, but this was not enough. After this he was required also to leave Haran and his father’s house there, after he had been there settled in hopes of a blessing which God encouraged him that he would give him in a posterity. When he came there he found a famine in the land, and was forced to fly the country and go down into Egypt for sustenance; and God appeared unto him time after time, promising great things concerning his posterity. Abraham waited a long time, and saw no appearance of the fulfilment of the promise, for his wife continued barren, and he made his complaint of it to God. God then renewed and very solemnly confirmed his promise; but did not tell him that it should be a child by his wife, and therefore after he had waited some time longer, he went in to his maid; but God rejected her son, and he waited thirteen years longer, till he was an hundred years old, before he obtained the son promised; and then God gave him but one, without any hopes of his having any other. After this, at God’s command, he cast out his son Ishmael, though it was exceedingly grievous to him, on encouragement of great blessings in Isaac and his posterity. And now, at last, God commands him to take him and offer him up for a burnt-offering. He does not merely call to see him die, though that would have been a great trial under such circumstances; but he is to cut his throat with his own hands, and when he has done so, to burn his flesh on the altar, an offering to God to that God that carnal reason would have said had dealt so ill with him, after he had lived long enough to get fast hold of his affections; after he was weaned from Ishmael, and had set all his heart on Isaac; and after there began to be a most hopeful prospect of God’s fulfilling his promises concerning him. And God gave him no reason for it. When Ishmael was to be cast out, the reason assigned was, that in Isaac his seed should be called. But now, in seeming inconsistency with that reason, Isaac must die, and Abraham must kill him; and neither one nor the other must know why, nor wherefore; and, as Mr. Henry observes, how would he ever look Sarah in the face again? with what face could he return to her and his family, with the blood of Isaac sprinkled on his garments? “Surely a bloody husband hast thou been to me,” would Sarah say to him, as Zipporah said to Moses, Exod. iv. 25, 26.

[7] Gen. xxii. 8. “My son, God will provide a lamb for a burnt-offering.” This was fulfilled in Christ.

[350] Gen. xxiii. Concerning Abraham’s buying, in Canaan, the possession of a burying-place. Canaan is the land that God made over to Abraham by covenant; and yet he gave him none inheritance in it to live upon, as Stephen observes; no, not so much as to set his foot on, Acts vii. 5. But the first possession he had in it was the possession of a burying-place, or a possession for him to be in after he and his were dead; which signifies this, that the heavenly Canaan, the land of promise, the rest that remains for the people of God, is a land for them to possess, and abide and rest in, after they are dead: they do not enter upon the possession of it, until after they are dead, and then they are gathered to their possession in Canaan. Therefore it was so ordered that Jacob and Joseph so much insisted on it to be buried in that land.

[161] Gen. xxiv. 15. Rebekah, and Rachel, and Zipporah, Moses’s wife, those types of the church, all found their husbands, who were types of Christ, when coming out to fountains to draw water; which typifies this, that Christ is found by believers in a way of the use of the means of grace. The woman of Samaria found Christ when coming to draw water.

[71] Gen. xxv. 22. “And the children struggled together in the womb.” I believe this had reference to the spiritual war that is in the soul of the believer, Christ’s spouse, between the flesh and spirit: the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these two are contrary one to another.

[35] Gen. xxvii. 29. “Let the people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee; be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee. Cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.” Hence we learn that the prophets themselves may not understand their prophecies, for Jacob thought that this should be accomplished of Esau.

[406] Gen. xxvii. 18, 19. “And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it, and he called the name of that place Bethel,” &c. So, chap. xxxi. 13, 45. and xxxv. 14. From hence the heathen Bætylia, mentioned by Philo Biblius out of Sanchoniathon. The god Uranus excogitated Bætylia, 713having fashioned them into living stones. Bochart conceives that Sanchoniathon, instead of living stones, wrote anointed stones, D’rj (from the radix tw, Shuph, which, among the Syrians, signifies to anoint) which Philo Biblius read ; whence he changed anointed, into living stones. So Damascius tells us, I saw a Bœtylus moved in the air. The Phœnicians, imitating Jacob at Bethel, first worshipped the very stone which the patriarch anointed. So Scaliger, in Euseb. tells us that “the Jews relate so much, that although that Cippus, or stone, was at first beloved of God, in the times of the patriarchs, yet afterwards he hated it, because the Canaanites turned it into an idol.” Neither did the Phœnicians worship only this stone at Bethel; but also, in imitation of this rite, erected several other Bœtylia, on the like occasion as Jacob erected his pillar of stone as a memorial of God’s apparition to him. So in like manner both the Phœnicians and the Grecians, upon some imaginary apparition of some god, (or dust, rather,) would erect their Bœtylia, or pillars, in commemoration of such an apparition. So Photius, out of Damascius, tells us that near Heliopolis, in Syria, Asclepiades ascended the mountain Libanus, and saw many Bœtylia, or Bœtyli; concerning which he relates many miracles. He relates also that these Bœtylia were consecrated, some to Saturn, and some to Jupiter, and some to others. So Phavorinus says, Bætylus is a stone which stands at Heliopolis, near Libanus. This stone some also called im^m-, which is the same word by which the Seventy render Jacob’s pillar. Gale’s Court of the Gen. p. l. b. 2. c. 7. p. 89, 90.

[169] Gen. xxviii. 18-22. “And he took the stone that he had set for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it And this stone which I have set up for a pillar shall be God’s house.” This anointed pillar is a type of the Messiah, or Anointed, who is often called a stone or a rock, and is the house of God, wherein the Godhead dwells and tabernacles. He was signified by the tabernacle and temple, as Christ tells us, when he says, “Destroy this temple,” &c. And he, we are told, is the temple of the new Jerusalem. This is the stone that was Jacob’s pillow; it signified the dependence the saints have upon Christ, and that it is in him they have rest and repose, as Christ invites those that are weary to come to him, and they shall find rest. The psalmist says he will lay him down and sleep, and awake, the Lord sustaining him. And as the stones of the temple rested on the foundation, so the saints, the living stones, rest upon Christ, building and resting upon that rock. This stone signified the same with the other that he built there when he returned: chap. xxxv. 7. “And he built there an altar, and called the place El-beth-el, because there God appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother.” Ver. 14. “And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, even a pillar of stone; and he poured a drink-offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon.”

[417] Gen. xxxiii. 1-7. As Jacob’s family returned to the land of Canaan, after Jacob had been long banished from thence, so it is probable will be the return of the spiritual Israel to God, its resting-place, and as it were to the promised land, to the land flowing with milk and honey, to a state of glorious rest, plenty, prosperity, and spiritual joy and delights, in the latter days, which is often represented by the prophets as bringing God’s people into the land of Israel, and recovering them from foreign lands, where he had driven them. Jacob, at his first entrance, meets with great opposition from those professors who are often in Scripture represented by the elder brother, as Cain, and Ishmael, and Zarah, the son of Judah, who first put forth his hand, and David’s eldest brother, and the elder brother of the prodigal. But Jacob’s meek and humble behaviour towards his opposing brother, to soften and turn his heart, teaches the duty of Christians. Jacob’s family was divided into several companies, one going before another with a space between; so the return of the church of God will be by several companies, that will come in one after another in successive seasons of the pouring out of the Spirit of God, with a space between. In Jacob’s family, the lowest and meanest went first, and afterwards the more honourable and most amiable, and best beloved; so, in the spiritual return of the church of Christ, God will first bring in the inferior sort of people; he will save the tents of Judah first, agreeable to the prophecy, Zech. xii. 7. “The Lord also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David, and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, do not magnify themselves against Judah.” And the first outpouring of the Spirit will be the least glorious, and they that are first brought in are not only inferior among men, but the least pure, beautiful, and amiable as Christians in their experiences and practice. In Jacob’s family went first the hand-maids and their children; so this is the blemish of the first children of Christ that shall be brought in at the glorious day of the church, that though they will be true children of Jacob, yet shall they be as it were children of the handmaids, with much of a legal spirit, i. e. spiritual pride and self-confidence. After these comes Leah and her children, who were more honourable and better beloved than the former; she was a true wife, but yet less beautiful and less beloved than his other wife: so after the first outpouring of the Spirit there will be a work of God that will break forth, that will be more glorious and more pure than the first. In Jacob’s family came last of all the beautiful Rachel and Joseph, Jacob’s best beloved and dearest child of all the family; so will it be in the church of God in days approaching. Jacob goes before them all, leads them all, and defends them all; so doth Christ go before his church as their leader and defence.

[126] Gen. xxxvii. 28. “And they lift up Joseph out of the pit.” Joseph was here a type of Christ; he was designed death by his own brethren, as Christ was; he was cast into a pit, whereby his death and burial was signified. He was lifted out again, and his resurrection was an occasion of their salvation from famine and death.

[127] Gen. xxxviii. 28. &c. “Zarah put his hand out first, but Pharez, from whom came Christ, broke forth before him.” This imports much the same thing as Isaac’s casting out Ishmael, as Jacob’s taking hold of Esau’s heel when they were born, and afterwards getting his birth-right of him, and as David’s getting the kingdom from Saul.

[407] Gen. xli. The history of Joseph’s advancement in Egypt, &c. “The Apis and Serapis of the Egyptians seems to signify Joseph, because, 1. It was the mode of the Egyptians to preserve the memories of their noble benefactors by some significative hieroglyphics, or symbols; and the great benefits which the Egyptians received from Joseph in supplying them with bread-corn, is aptly represented under the form of an ox, the symbol of a husbandman. Thus Suidas (in Serapis) tells us, “that Apis, being dead, had a temple built for him, wherein was nourished a bullock, the symbol of a husbandman.” According to which resemblance also, Minutius, a Roman tribune, was in very like manner honoured with the form of a golden ox, or bull. 2. Joseph is compared to a bullock in Scripture, Deut. xxxiii. 7. “His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth; and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh.” 3. The same may be evinced from the names Apis and Serapis, for Apis seems evidently a derivative from 3*, Father, as Joseph styles himself, Gen. xlv. 8. “So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God; and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.” As for Serapis, it was the same with Apis, and also a symbol of Joseph, which Vossius collects from this: 1. It had a bushel on its head, as a symbol of Joseph’s providing corn for the Egyptians. 2. From the etimon of Serapis, which is derived either from Tier, an ox, or from ^v, a prince, and Apis, both of which are applicable to Joseph.” Gale’s Court of Gen. p. 1. b. 2. c. 7. p. 93, 94.

[128] Gen. xli. 14. “And they brought Joseph out of the dungeon.” By Joseph’s being cast into the dungeon, is signified the death of Christ; by his being delivered, his resurrection; and the ensuing great advancement of Joseph, to be next to the king, signifies the exaltation of Christ at the right hand of the Father. Joseph rose from 714the dungeon, and was thus exalted to give salvation to the land of Egypt and to his brethren, as Christ, to save his people.

[103] Gen. xliv. 32, 33. “For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to my father for ever. Now, therefore, I pray thee, let thy servant abide instead of the lad, a bond-man to my lord; and let the lad go up with his brethren.” Judah is herein a type of his offspring, Jesus Christ.

[382] Gen. xlviii. 21. “And Israel said to Joseph, Behold, I die, but God shall be with you.” So Joseph, when he was near his death, said to his brethren after the like manner, Gen. 1. 24. “And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die; and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Thus the blessing of the presence of God with the children of Israel, and his favour and salvation, is consequent on the death of their father, and their brother, and Saviour: shadowing this forth, that the favour of God, and his presence and salvation, is by the death of Christ. He, when near death, said to his disciples, John xvi. 7. “It is expedient for you that I go away; for, if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart, I will send him unto you.” And elsewhere he promises that the Father and the Son will come to them, and make their abode with them. Isaac’s and Jacob’s blessing their children before their death, and as it were making over to them their future inheritance, may probably be typical of our receiving the blessings of the covenant of grace from Christ, as by his last will and testament. We find the covenant of grace represented as his testament. Christ, in the 14th, 15th, and 16th chapters of John., does as it were make his will, and conveys to his people their inheritance before his death, particularly the Comforter, or the Holy Spirit, which is the sum of the purchased inheritance.

[403] Gen. xlix. 10. “Until Shiloh come.” “Silenus, so famous among the poets, whom they place in the order of their gods, is derived from hence. Diodorus, lib. 3. says, the first that ruled at Nisa was Silenus, whose genealogy is unknown to all, by reason of his antiquity, which is agreeable to what the Scriptures say of the Messiah, Isa. liii. “Who shall declare his generation?” And elsewhere, “To us a child is born, to us a son is given, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the everlasting Father;” and other passages. As for Nisa, where Silenus reigned, it seems to be the same with Sina, (as was showed elsewhere. See No. 401.) The Messiah dwelt there. It was he that dwelt there in the bush. And there he manifested himself and spake with Moses and the children of Israel. This is represented as his dwelling-place several times in Scripture; and therefore, when God redeemed the children of Israel from Egypt, and brought them there, he is represented as bringing them to himself. Near this mountain was the altar called Jehovah-Nissi, which is a name Moses gave the Messiah. Of Shiloh it is said, and to him shall the nnp» the gathering, or the obedience, (as the word signifies,) of the people be. Thus Silenus is made by the poets to be the greatest doctor of his age, and he is called Bacchus’s preceptor, i. e. according to Vossius’s account, Bacchus was Moses, (see No. 401.) and Silenus, or Shilo, or Christ, instructed Moses on mount Sinai, or Nisa, the place where Bacchus and Silenus were said to be. Bacchus and Silenus are made by the poets to be inseparable companions. Another attribute given to Silenus is, that he was carried for the most part on an ass, which Bochart refers to that of Gen. xlix. 11. “Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes.” The mythologists fable Silenus as a comrade of Bacchus, to be employed in treading out grapes; this Bochart refers to, Gen. xlix. “He washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes;” and is agreeable to what is said of the Messiah elsewhere in the Scripture, “I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the people was none with me.” They characterize Silenus as one that was always drunk, as it is supposed from what follows, Gen. xlix. 12. “His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk,” which Solomon makes the character of one overcome with wine. Prov. xxiii. 29, 30. “Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.” They ascribe to Silenus for his meat cow’s milk, which Bochart makes to be traduced from Gen. xlix. 12. “And his teeth white with milk.” That Silenus is the same with Shilo, further appears from that of Pausanius Eliacon 2., the monument of Silenus remains in the country of the Hebrews. See Gale’s Court of Gen. p. 1. b. 2. c. 6. p. 67-69.