Another dreadful feature wonderfully and portentously pervades that fair world, namely, that everything consecrated or vowed must die. This also was probably an usage of war transferred to peace. The inhabitants of a city which forcibly defends itself are threatened with such a vow; it is taken by storm or otherwise. Nothing is left alive;—men never, and often women, children, and even cattle, share a similar fate. Such sacrifices are rashly and superstitiously and with more or less distinctness promised to the gods, and those whom the votary would willingly spare, even his nearest of kin, his own children, may thus bleed, the expiatory victims of such a delusion.
The Old Testament.
In the mild and truly patriarchal character of Abraham, such a savage kind of worship could not arise; but the Godhead,[3] which often, to tempt us, seems to put forth those qualities which man is inclined to assign to it, imposes a monstrous task upon him. He must offer up his son as a pledge of the new covenant, and, if he follows the usage, must not only kill and burn him, but cut him in two, and await between the smoking entrails a new promise from the benignant Deity. Abraham blindly, and without lingering, prepares to execute the command; to Heaven the will is sufficient. Abraham's trials are now at an end, for they could not be carried further. But Sarai dies, and this gives Abraham an opportunity for taking typical possession of the land of Canaan. He requires a grave, and this is the first time he looks out for a possession in this earth. He had before this probably sought out a two-fold cave by the grove of Mamre. This he purchases with the adjacent field, and the legal form which he observes on the occasion, shows how important this possession is to him Indeed it was more so, perhaps, than he himself supposed; for there he, his sons and his grandsons, were to rest, and by this means, the proximate title to the whole land, as well as the everlasting desire of his posterity to gather themselves there, was most properly grounded.
From this time forth the manifold incidents of the family life become varied. Abraham still keeps strictly apart from the inhabitants, and though Ishmael, the son of an Egyptian woman, has married a daughter of that land, Isaac is obliged to wed a kinswoman of equal birth with himself.
Abraham despatches his servant to Mesopotamia, to the relatives whom he had left behind there. The prudent Eleazer arrives unknown, and, in order to take home the right bride, tries the readiness to serve of the girls at the well. He asks to drink himself, and Rebecca, unasked, waters his camels also. He gives her presents, he demands her in marriage, and his suit is not rejected. He conducts her to the home of his lord, and she is wedded to Isaac. In this case, too, issue has to be long expected. Rebecca is not blessed until after some years of probation, and the same discord which in Abraham's double marriage arose through two mothers, here proceeds from one. Two boys of opposite characters wrestle already in their mother's womb. They come to light, the elder lively and vigorous, the younger gentle and prudent. The former becomes the father's, the latter the mother's favourite. The strife for precedence, which begins even at birth, is ever going on. Esau is quiet and indifferent as to the birthright which fate has given him; Jacob never forgets that his brother forced him back. Watching every opportunity of gaining the desirable privilege, he buys the birthright of his brother, and defrauds him of their father's blessing. Esau is indignant, and vows his brother's death; Jacob flees to seek his fortune in the land of his forefathers.
Now, for the first time, in so noble a family appears a member who has no scruple in attaining by prudence and cunning the advantages which nature and circumstances have denied him. It has often enough been remarked and expressed, that the Sacred Scriptures by no means intend to set up any of the patriarchs and other divinely-favoured men as models of virtue. They, too, are persons of the most different characters, with many defects and failings. But there is one leading trait, in which none of these men after God's own heart can be wanting—that is, an immovable faith that God has special care of them and their families.
The Old Testament.
General, natural religion, properly speaking, requires no faith; for the persuasion that a great producing, regulating, and conducting Being conceals himself, as it were, behind Nature, to make himself comprehensible to us—such a conviction forces itself upon every one. Nay, if we for a moment let drop this thread, which conducts us through life, it may be immediately and everywhere resumed. But it is different with a special religion, which announces to us that this Great Being distinctly and pre-eminently interests himself for one individual, one family, one people, one country. This religion is founded on faith, which must be immovable if it would not be instantly destroyed. Every doubt of such a religion is fatal to it. One may return to conviction, but not to faith. Hence the endless probation, the delay in the fulfilment of so often repeated promises, by which the capacity for faith in those ancestors is set in the clearest light.
It is in this faith also that Jacob begins his expedition, and if by his craft and deceit he has not gained our affections, he wins them by his lasting and inviolable love for Rachel, whom he himself woos on the instant, as Eleazar had courted Rebecca for his father. In him the promise of a countless people was first to be fully unfolded; he was to see many sons around him, but through them and their mothers was to endure manifold sorrows of heart.