25. The recent discoveries in Chaldæa and the surrounding countries show that the names of these four kings—Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations, are names which have in large part been found on the tablets and in the history of the countries mentioned. Amraphel is the same in the Hebrew as Amarphal, and it was so translated in the Septuagint made more than 250 B. C. This name was that of a viceroy of Sumir, the district around and south of Babylon, called Shinar in Genesis, and the name Amar-pal has been found “borne by private persons on two cylinders of ancient workmanship” (Lenormant). The Septuagint has for Tidal, Thargal, which seems to be the proper spelling; the difference between the two spellings in the original Hebrew is only that between an r and a d, which in that language is exceedingly small. In the Akkadian (same as Accadian), which was the language used in the ancient Chaldæan times,Turgal meant “great chief.”[53] This king was chief of apeople called the Gutium in the monumental inscriptions, and this tribe or small nation has been identified with the Goim of the Hebrew text, which in our English version is translated “nations.” So that the “Tidal king of nations,” of the text in Genesis, is shown to be the “great chief” of a tribe living in Northern Babylonia,of which one part became afterwards the nation of the Assyrians.[54]
Chedorlaomer, the monuments show us, was truly an Elamite name, Chedor, or Kudur, forming part of several names of the early kings of that district, and Laomer, or Lagamar, being the name of a most important Elamite god. The name Arioch is very similar to that of the son of an Elamite king who was king of Larsa, which itself is similar to the Hebrew name Ellasar, and the circumstances have led the best Assyriologists to believe that they are the very same.
26. The monumental records show that this king of Elam, on a previous occasion, when Abram was still at Haran, had passed over the Euphrates and conquered Phœnicia and a country to the south. He is called both king of Elam and king of Phœnicia, as the land of Canaan was called by name “Martu,” “the land of the setting sun,” or Phœnicia. So that 14 years before, at the time when Chedorlaomer crossed the Euphrates on his first expedition, Abram may have beheld the troops of that king whom heafterward conquered, with his viceroys, when they came on their second invasion of Canaan. At that time Abram was with his father Terah at Haran, as we may see from the dates in the context, Gen. 16:3; 14:5.
THE ISHMAELITES.
27. Some years after this battle we have the account of the birth of Ishmael, the son of Abram by Hagar. As the descendants of Ishmael exerted great influence in years afterward, it is well at this point to study the early history of this son of Abram. When Isaac was born Ishmael was about 16 years of age, Gen. 17:21, 25; 21:1, 8, and until the day of the divine promise to Abram, at which time his name was changed to Abraham, he was evidently, from the context, greatly attached to Ishmael. Moreover, Abram was considered by his neighbors as “a mighty prince among them,” Gen. 23:6. Under these circumstances this only son must have been allowed privileges and attentions at the hands of the hundreds of Abram’s servants such as an heir apparent to all the wealth of Abram would be certain to receive. When, however, Sarah became the mother of Isaac a change necessarily transpired. Ishmael was no longer the expected heir. Hagar’s spirit of self-importance, which showed itself before so positively that she was forced to leave the family, was now repeated in some disagreeable actions of her son Ishmael, and, despite the persistent love of Abraham,Ishmael and his mother were summarily dismissed from the family.
28. There can be no reasonable doubt that the action of Abraham in sending Hagar and her son out upon the desert with only sufficient food to support them for a time was greatly or almost entirely influenced by the direct revelation to Abraham that the divine interference would be exerted on behalf of the exiles. That had been assured, as we see in verses 12 and 13 of chapter 21. At the same time both the mother and son, after all the preceding years of privilege, would naturally imagine that a great wrong had been done them, and Ishmael readily became a wild wanderer upon the vast deserts east of Egypt.
He was the progenitor of twelve great tribes whose names in part are recognized among some of the tribes existing at the present day and whose characters are accurately represented in the description of what they were to be, as it occurs in Gen. 16:12, and the expression “he shall dwell in the presence of his brethren” simply alludes to the fact that his race should be wanderers upon the desert without any fixed habitation, this being the life of all the most pleasurable to the desert Arabs.
29. As Abraham was 99 years of age when Ishmael was 13, Gen. 17:24, 25, and died at 175, it is plain that Ishmael must have been about 90 years of age at Abraham’s death. The love and reverence which Ishmael had for the patriarch were apparentafter this long time in the fact that at the death of the latter, Isaac and Ishmael united to perform the burial at the cave of Machpelah at Hebron, Gen. 25:9.
HEBRON AND MACHPELAH.
30. Hebron is a very old city, having been founded long before Abram’s time, and it is in existence at present. It is south of Jerusalem eighteen miles, and is unlike nearly all the cities in Palestine in that it is situated in a valley. The cave of Machpelah is on the east side of the valley, which runs nearly north and south.