[21] lit. “the character of Sodom.”
[22] i.e., He thinks the world requires nothing more than the interchange of commodities. As to the way of putting it, be it remembered that in the Orient business transactions are, politely, “gifts”; cp. Gen. 2310-16.
[23] A. R. Wallace, Natural Selection.
[24] G. A. Smith, Early Poetry of Israel, p. 33; and cp. Kinglake, Eothen, ch. 17.
[25] Cohen, Ancient Jewish Proverbs, 88.
[26] op. cit. 13.
[27] Fulleylove and Kelman, The Holy Land, pp. 103, 104. Note the “Scriptural” language. Such talk, when we find it in the Bible, is neither pedantic nor is it a “religious” dialect. To a Western it seems affected, but let us remember that to an Eastern our manner of speech, with its tortuous sentences, might savour of an unholy cunning.
[28] Appius Planius, 188 (McKail’s translation).
[29] e.g., Hosea 510, Isaiah 58, Deut. 2717, Job 242.
[30] Cp. Joshua 724, 25. The earliest form of the narrative clearly implies that all, and not Achan alone, were destroyed by burning or stoning.