The origin of some of the names of the sons of Jacob is as obscure to us as it was to the writer of Genesis. We do not know, for instance, the meaning and derivation of the name of Reuben. Equally doubtful is the real etymology of the name of Issachar.[[91]] The name of Simeon is already found among the places in Canaan conquered by the Egyptian Pharaoh Thothmes III. before the age of Moses, and in Judah we have a name which seems to be the same as that of a tribe in Northern Syria.[[92]] Levi, like Naphtali, is a gentilic noun, and must be connected with the lau’â(n), or ‘priest’ of Southern Arabia.[[93]] Gad was the god of good fortune, Dan ‘the judge,’ the title of certain Babylonian deities, and Dinah is the feminine corresponding to Dan.
Jacob, ever timorous, fled from Hivite vengeance after the destruction of Shechem, forsaking the property he had acquired there by purchase and the sword. He made his way southward to Beth-el, and there rested on the edge of the great mountain block of Central Palestine. Hard by was the city of Luz, soon to be eclipsed by the growing fame of the high-place on the height above it. Here, at Beth-el, an altar was erected by the patriarch to the God of the locality who had once appeared to him in a dream. It was the prototype of the altar that was hereafter to arise there when Beth-el had become a chief sanctuary of the house of Israel. Whether the altar stood on the high-place on the summit of the mountain, where the Beth-el or column of stone had been consecrated by Jacob, we do not know; there are indications in the prophets, however, that the high-place and the temple were separate from one another. Indeed, from the words of Genesis, it would seem that the altar and future temple were on the lower slope of the hill, close to the old Canaanitish town. Here, at any rate, on the road to the city, was that Allon-bachuth, that ‘Terebinth of Tears,’ which is referred to by Hosea (xii. 4), and is connected in the book of Genesis with the death of Deborah, the nurse of Rachel. In later days another Deborah dwelt under the shadow of a palm-tree on the same road (Judg. iv. 6), and modern critical ingenuity has accordingly discovered that the terebinth and the palm were one and the same tree.
Beth-el, however, was still too near the Hivites of Shechem, and Jacob continued his journey to the south. The death of Isaac called him to Hebron, where, for the last time, he met his brother Esau, who came to take part in his father’s burial. But his own residence was at Beth-lehem, ‘the Temple of the god Lakhmu,’ called Ephrath in those early days.[[94]] Here Rachel died, and here accordingly was raised the tombstone which marked her grave down to the day when the book of Genesis assumed its present form.[[95]]
It was ‘beyond the tower of Edar,’ the tower of ‘the Flock,’ that Jacob, we are told, ‘spread his tent.’ The tower of the Flock guarded the city-fortress of Jerusalem (Mic. iv. 8), and it was therefore between Jerusalem and Beth-lehem that the patriarch made his home. But his flocks were scattered northwards as far as Shechem, grazing on the mountain slopes under the charge of his sons. Jacob remained like a Bedâwi of to-day living among the settled inhabitants of the country, and yet keeping apart from them and sending his flocks far and wide wherever there was fresh grass and free pasturage.
It was while he thus lived that the disgraceful events occurred connected with the marriage of Judah and the Canaanitish Tamar, which throw an evil light on the manners and morals of the patriarch’s family. The whole episode stands in marked contrast to the ordinary character of the history, and its insertion is evidence of the impartiality of the writer. It is clear that he has put together all that reached him from the past history of his people, omitting nothing, modifying nothing. All sides of the past are brought before us, the darker as well as the lighter, and no attempt is made to spare or condone the forefathers of Israel. It has indeed been asked by an over-sensitive criticism how the recital of such abominations can be consistent with the sanctity claimed for the Mosaic writings. But the question has troubled the minds only of the critics themselves; and not more than three centuries ago the compilers of the Anglican lectionary saw no harm in ordering the chapter to be read publicly to men and maidens in church.
The episode was inserted in the midst of the story of Joseph, one of the most pathetic and touching ever told. We need not repeat its details, or describe how Joseph, the spoilt darling of his father, dreamed dreams which aroused the alarm and jealousy of his brothers, how he was sold by them into Egypt, how there he became the vizier of the Pharaoh, and how eventually Jacob and his family were brought into the land of Goshen, there to enjoy the good things of the valley of the Nile. But the story brings us back again to the great stream of ancient Oriental history; once more the history of Israel touches the history of the world, and ceases to be a series of idyllic pictures, such as the memory of shepherds and Bedâwin might alone preserve.
The story of Joseph forms a complete whole, distinguished by certain features that mark it off from the rest of the book of Genesis. It contains peculiar words, some of them of Egyptian origin,[[96]] and it shows a very minute acquaintance with Egyptian life in the Hyksos age. There are even words and phrases which seem to have been translated into Hebrew from some other language, and the meaning of which has not been fully understood: thus it is said that the cupbearer of Pharaoh ‘pressed the grapes’ into his master’s goblet instead of pouring the wine; and the word employed to denote an Egyptian official, and translated ‘officer’ in the Authorised Version, properly signifies ‘eunuch.’ Can the story have been translated from an Egyptian papyrus? The question is suggested by the fact that one of the most characteristic portions of it has actually been embodied in an ancient Egyptian tale. This is the so-called Tale of the Two Brothers, written by the scribe Enna for Seti II. of the nineteenth dynasty while he was crown-prince, and therefore in the age of the Exodus. Here we have the episode of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife told in Egyptian form. The fellah Bata takes the place of Joseph; his sister-in-law plays the part of Potiphar’s wife.[[97]]
This part of the story was therefore known among the literary classes of Egypt in the days when Moses was learned in all their wisdom. And if it has been preserved among the few fragments that have been saved from the wreck of ancient Egyptian literature, may we not conclude that had the whole of that literature come down to us, other portions of the story of Joseph would have been preserved in it as well? There is a gentleness in the character of Joseph which reminds us forcibly of Egyptian manners, and offers a sharp contrast to the rough ways and readiness to shed blood which distinguished the Hebrew Semite.
At all events, the story must have been written by one who was well acquainted with the age of the Hyksos. It is true that an attempt has recently been made, on the strength of certain proper names, to show that it is not the Egypt of the Hyksos that is described, but the Egypt of Shishak and his successors. The names of Potipherah or Potiphar and Asenath are said to have been unknown before that date. A couple of proper names, however, is an insecure foundation on which to build a theory, more especially when the argument rests upon the imperfections of our own knowledge. That no names corresponding in formation to Potipherah and Asenath should as yet have been met with earlier than the time of Shishak is no proof that they did not exist. A single example of each is sufficient to prove the contrary. And, as a matter of fact, such examples actually occur. A stela of the reign of Thothmes III. records the name of Pe-tu-Baal, ‘the Gift of Baal,’ as that of the sixth ancestor of the Egyptian whose name it records;[[98]] while the Tel el-Amarna tablets contain the name of Subanda, the Smendes of Greek writers, which is an exact parallel in form to Asenath.[[99]] Pe-tu-Baal must have lived at the close of the Hyksos period, and the Semitic deity with whose name his own is compounded indicates that it has been formed under Semitic influence. It was, in fact, as we learn from the Phœnician inscriptions, an imitation of a Canaanitish name.[[100]] The Hyksos had come from Asia, and had imposed their yoke upon Egypt, where they ruled for more than five hundred years. Though they held all Egypt under their sway, they had established their capital at Zoan, now called Sân, far to the north on the eastern frontier of the Delta. Here they were near their kinsfolk in Canaan, and could readily summon fresh troops from Asia in case of Egyptian revolt.
The court of the Hyksos Pharaohs, however, soon became Egyptianised. They adopted the arts and science, the manners and customs, of their more cultured subjects, and one of the few scientific works of ancient Egypt that have come down to us—the famous Mathematical Papyrus—was written for a Hyksos king. It was only in physiognomy and religion that the Hyksos conqueror continued to be distinguished from the native Egyptian.