chapter 5 and 11¹⁰ ᶠᶠ with regard to the ages at the birth of

the first-born.

¹ 1307 + 940 (see page 233) + 290 (as before) + 430 + 40 = 3007·

3. A connexion between LXX and _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ is suggested by the fact that the first period of LXX (2242) is practically equivalent to the first two of _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ (1300 + 940 = 2240), though it does not appear on which side the dependence is. Most critics have been content to say that the LXX figures are enhancements of those of Massoretic Text in order to bring the biblical chronology somewhat nearer the stupendous systems of Egypt or Chaldæa. That is not probable; though it does not seem possible to discover any distinctive principle of calculation in LXX. Klostermann (_Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift_, v. 208‒247 [= _Der Pentateuch_ (1907) 1‒41]), who defends the priority of LXX, finds in it a reckoning by jubilee periods of 49 years; but his results, which are sufficiently ingenious, are attained by rather violent and arbitrary handling of the data. Thus, in order to adjust the ante-diluvian list to his theory, he has to reject the 600 years from the birth of Noah to the Flood, and substitute the 120 years of Genesis 6³! This reduces the reckoning of LXX to 1762 years, and, adding 2 years for the Flood, we obtain 1764 = 3 × 12 × 49.

See, further, on 11¹⁰ ᶠᶠᐧ (page 234 f.).

II. _The Ten Ante-diluvian Kings of Berossus._――The number _ten_ occurs with singular persistency in the traditions of many peoples¹ as that of the kings or patriarchs who reigned or lived in the mythical age which preceded the dawn of history. The Babylonian form of this tradition is as yet known only from a passage of Berossus extracted by Apollodorus and Abydenus;² although there are allusions to it in the inscriptions which encourage the hope that the cuneiform original may yet be discovered.³ Meanwhile, the general reliability of Berossus is such, that scholars are naturally disposed to attach considerable importance to any correspondence that can be made out between his list and the names in Genesis 5. A detailed analysis was first published by Hommel in 1893,⁴ another was given by Sayce in 1899.⁵ The first-named writer has subsequently abandoned some of his earlier proposals,⁶ substituting others which are equally tentative; and while some of his combinations are regarded as highly problematical, others have been widely approved.⁷

¹ Babylonians, Persians, Indians, Phœnicians, Egyptians, Chinese, etc. See Lüken, _Die Traditionen des Menschengeschlechts oder die Uroffenbarung Gottes unter den Heiden_, 146 ff.; Lenormant _Les Origines de l’histoire_ i. 224 ff.

² Preserved by Eus. _Chronicon_ [edited by Schœne] i. 7 ff., 31 f. See Müller, _Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum_ ii. 499 f.

³ See Jeremias _Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients_², 221 f.

⁴ _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, xv. 243‒246.

⁵ _The Expositor Times_, 1899, 353.

⁶ _Die altorientalischen Denkmäler und das Alte Testament_ [1902], 23 ff.

⁷ See Zimmern, _Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament_⁸, 531 ff.; Driver _The Book of Genesis with Introduction and Notes_ 50 f.; Nikel, _Genesis und Keilschriftforschung_ 164 ff.

The names of the Kings before the Flood in Berossus are: 1. Ἄλωρος, 2. Ἀλάπαρος, 3. Ἀμήλων [Ἀμίλλαρος], 4. Ἀμμένων, 5. Μεγάλαρος [Μεγάλανος], 6. Δάωνος [Δάως], 7. Εὐεδώραχος, 8. Ἀμέμψινος, 9. Ὠτιάρτης [Read Ὠπάρτης], 10. Ξίσουθρος. Of the suggested Babylonian equivalents put forward by Hommel, the following are accepted as fairly well established by Jeremias and (with the exception of number 1) by Zimmern: 1. _Aruru_ (see page 102), 2. _Adapa_ (page 126), 3. _Amelu_ (= Man), 4. _Ummanu_ (= ‘workman’), 7. _Enmeduranki_ (page 132), 8. _Amel-Sin_ (page 133), 9. _Ubar-Tutu_ (named as father of Ut-Napištim), and 10. _Ḫasisatra_, or _Atraḫasis_ (= ‘the superlatively Wise,’――a title applied to Ut-Napištim, the hero of the Deluge). On comparing this selected list with the Hebrew genealogy, it is evident that, as Zimmern remarks, the Hebrew _name_ is in no case borrowed directly from the Babylonian. In two cases, however, there seems to be a connexion which might be explained by a _translation_ from the one language into the other: viz. 3. ‎ אֱנוֹשׁ‎ (= Man), and 4. קֵינָן‎ (= ‘workman’); while 8 is in both series a compound of which the first element means ‘Man.’ The parallel between 7. חֲנוֹךְ‎ ∥ _Enmeduranki_, has already been noted (page 132); and the 10th name is in both cases that of the hero of the Flood. Slight as these coincidences are, it is a mistake to minimise their significance. When we have two parallel lists of equal length, each terminating with the hero of the Flood, each having the name for ‘man’ in the 3rd place and a special favourite of the gods in the 7th, it is too much to ask us to dismiss the correspondence as fortuitous. The historical connexion between the two traditions is still obscure, and is complicated by the double genealogy of chapter 4; but that a connexion exists it seems unreasonable to deny.

III. _Relation of the Sethite and Cainite Genealogies._――The substantial identity of the names in Genesis 4¹ᐧ ¹⁷ᐧ ¹⁸ with numbers 3‒9 of chapter 5 seems to have been first pointed out by Buttmann (_Mythologus_, i. 170 ff.) in 1828, and is now universally recognised by scholars. A glance at the following table shows that each name in the Cainite series corresponds to a name in the other, which is either absolutely the same, or is the same in meaning, or varies but slightly in form:

Illustration: (‡ Sethite versus Cainite Genealogy)

While these resemblances undoubtedly point to some common original, the variations are not such as can be naturally accounted for by direct borrowing of the one list from the other. The facts that each list is composed of a perfect number, and that with the last member the single stem divides into three branches, rather imply that both forms were firmly established in tradition before being incorporated in the biblical documents. If we had to do merely with the Hebrew tradition, the easiest supposition would perhaps be that the Cainite genealogy and the kernel of the Sethite are variants of a single original which might have reached Israel through different channels;¹ that the latter had been expanded by the addition of two names at the beginning and one at the end, so as to bring it into line with the story of the Flood, and the Babylonian genealogy with which it was linked. The difficulty of this hypothesis arises from the curious circumstance that in the Berossian list of kings, just as in the Sethite list of patriarchs, the name for ‘Man’ occupies the _third_ place. It is extremely unlikely that such a coincidence should be accidental; and the question comes to be whether the Assyriologists or the biblical critics can produce the most convincing explanation of it. Now Hommel (_Die altorientalischen Denkmäler und das Alte Testament_, 26 ff.) argues that if the word for Man is preceded by two others, these others must have been names of superhuman beings; and he thinks that his interpretation of the Babylonian names bears out this anticipation. The first, _Aruru_, is the creative earth-goddess, and the second, _Adapa_ (= Marduk) is a sort of Logos or Demiurge――a being intermediate between gods and men, who bears elsewhere the title _zir amiluti_ (‘seed of mankind’) but is not himself a man.² And the same thing must, he considers, hold good of Adam and Seth: Adam should be read אֱדֹם‎, a personification of the earth, and Seth is a mysterious semi-divine personality who was regarded even in Jewish tradition as an incarnation of the Messiah. If these somewhat hazardous combinations be sound, then, of course, the inference must be accepted that the Sethite genealogy is dependent on the Babylonian original of Berossus, and the Cainite can be nothing but a mutilated version of it. It is just conceivable, however, that the Babylonian list is itself a secondary modification of a more primitive genealogy, which passed independently into Hebrew tradition.³

¹ Hommel’s view (_Die altorientalischen Denkmäler und das Alte Testament_, 29 f.) is that the primary list was Chaldean, that the Sethite list most nearly represents this original, and that the Cainite springs from a modification of it under Babylonian influence. It would be quite as plausible to suggest that the Cainite form came through Phœnicia (see the notes on Jabal, Tubal, and Na‛amah), and the Sethite from Arabia (Enos, Kenan, Hanokh [?], Methuselah).

² But against this interpretation of the phrase, see Jensen _Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_, vi. 1, 362.

³ Thus, it might be conjectured that the original equivalent of _Aruru_ was not Adam but _Ḥavvah_, as earth and mother-goddess (see pages 85 f., 102), and that this name stood at the head of the list. That in the process of eliminating the mythological element Ḥavvah should in one version become the wife, in another remain the mother, of the first man (Adam or Enoš), is perfectly intelligible; and an amalgamation of these views would account for the duplication of Adam-Enos in 4²⁵ ᶠᐧ 5. The insertion of a link (Seth-Adapa) between the divine ancestress and the first man is a difficulty; but it might be due to a survival of the old Semitic conception of mother and son as associated deities (William Robertson Smith _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_², 298 ff.). It is obvious that no great importance can be attached to such guesses, which necessarily carry us back far beyond the range of authentic tradition.

VI. 1‒4. _The Origin of the Nĕphîlîm._

This obscure and obviously fragmentary narrative relates how in the infancy of the human race marriage alliances were believed to have been formed by supernatural beings with mortal women (verses ¹ᐧ ²); and how from these unnatural unions there arose a race of heroes or demi-gods (verse ⁴), who must have figured largely in Hebrew folklore. It is implied, though not expressly said, that the existence of such beings, intermediate between the divine and the human, introduced an element of disorder into the Creation which had to be checked by the special interposition of Yahwe (verse ³).

The fragment belongs to the class of ætiological myths. The belief in Nĕphîlîm is proved only by Numbers 13³³ (Elohist?); but it is there seen to have been associated with a more widely attested tradition of a race of giants surviving into historic times, especially among the aboriginal populations of Canaan (Deuteronomy 1²⁸ 2¹⁰ᐧ ¹¹ᐧ ²¹ 9², Joshua 15¹⁴, Amos 2⁹ etc.). The question was naturally asked how such beings came to exist, and the passage before us supplied the answer. But while the ætiological motive may explain the retention of the fragment in Genesis, it is not to be supposed that the myth originated solely in this reflexion. Its pagan colouring is too pronounced to permit of its being dissociated from two notions prevalent in antiquity and familiar to us from Greek and Latin literature: viz. (1) that among the early inhabitants of the earth were men of gigantic stature;¹ and (2) that marriages of the gods with mortals were not only possible but common in the heroic age.² Similar ideas were current among other peoples. The Ḳoran has frequent references to the peoples of ‛sons of Godal races noted for their giant stature and their daring impiety, to whom were attributed the erection of lofty buildings and the excavation of rock-dwellings, and who were believed to have been destroyed by a divine judgment.³ The legend appears also in the Phœnician traditions of Sanchuniathon, where it is followed by an obscure allusion to promiscuous sexual intercourse which appears to have some remote connexion with Genesis 6².⁴

¹ Homer _Iliad_ v. 302 f.; Herodotus i. 68; Pausanias i. 35. 5 f., viii. 29. 3; 32. 4; Lucretius ii. 1151; Virgil _Aeneid_ xii. 900; Pliny, _Natural History_, vii. 73 ff. etc. Compare Lenormant _Les Origines de l’histoire_² i. 350 ff.

² Homer _Iliad_ xii. 23: ἡμιθέων γένος ἀνδρῶν; Plato, _Cratylus_, 33: πάντες [_sc._ οἱ ἥρωες] δήπου γεγόνασιν ἐρασθέντος ἢ θεοῦ θνητῆς ἢ θνητοῦ θεᾶς (text uncertain): see Jowett, i. 341.

³ _Surah_ vii, xv, xxvi, xli, xlvi, lxxxix: see Sale, _Preliminary Discourse_ § 1.

⁴ Eusebius _Præparatio Evangelica_ i. 10 (see page 124 above): ἀπὸ γένους Αἰῶνος καὶ Πρωτογόνου γεννηθῆναι αὖθις παῖδας θνητοὺς, οἷς εἶναι ὀνόματα Φὼς καὶ Πῦρ καὶ Φλόξ ... υἱοὺς δὲ ἐγέννησαν οὗτοι _μεγέθει τε καὶ ὑπεροχῇ κρείσσονας_ ... ἐκ τούτων, φησὶν, ἐγεννήθη Σαμημροῦμος ὁ καὶ Ὑψουράνιος· ἀπὸ μητέρων δὲ, φησὶν, ἐχρημάτιζον τῶν τότε γυναικῶν ἀνέδην μισγομένων οἷς ἂν ἐ[ν]τύχοιεν.

That the _source_ is Yahwist is not disputed.¹ Dillmann, indeed, following Schrader (_Einleitung in das Alte Testament_ 276), thinks it an extract from Elohist which had passed through the hands of Yahwist; but borrowing by the original Yahwist from the other source is impossible, and the only positive trace of Elohist would be the word נפילים‎, which in Numbers 13³³ is by some critics assigned to Elohist. That argument would at most prove overworking, and it is too slight to be considered.――The precise position of the fragment among the Yahwistic traditions cannot be determined. The introductory clause “when mankind began to multiply,” etc., suggests that it was closely preceded by an account of the creation of man. There is, however, no reason why it should not have followed a genealogy like that of 4¹⁷⁻²⁴ or 4²⁵ ᶠᐧ (against Holzinger), though certainly not that of Priestly-Code in chapter 5. The idea that it is a parallel to the story of the Fall in chapter 3 (Schrader, Dillmann, Wellhausen, Schultz) has little plausibility, though it would be equally rash to affirm that it _presupposes_ such an account.――The disconnectedness of the narrative is probably due to drastic abridgment either by the original writer or later editors, to whom its crudely mythological character was objectionable, and who were interested in retaining no more than was needful to account for the origin of the giants.

¹ The literary indications are not absolutely decisive (except ‎ יהוה‎, verse ³); but the following expressions, as well as the structure of the sentences (in verse ¹ ᶠᐧ), are, on the whole, characteristic of Yahwist: הֵחֵל‎, עַל־פְּנֵי הָֽאֲדָמָה‎ (¹), בָּאָרָץ‎, הָיָה גִּבּוֹר‎ (⁴): see Budde _Die biblische Urgeschichte_ 6 ff., 39 A.

There remains the question whether the passage was from the first an introduction to the story of the Deluge. That it has been so regarded from a very early time is a natural result of its present position. But careful examination fails to confirm that impression. The passage contains nothing to suggest the Flood as its sequel, except on the supposition (which we shall see to be improbable) that the 120 years of verse ³ refer to an impending judgment on the whole human race. Even if that view were more plausible than it is, it would still be remarkable that the story of the Flood makes no reference to the expiry of the allotted term; nor to any such incident as is here recorded. The critical probability, therefore, is that 6¹⁻⁴ belongs to a stratum of Yahwist which knows nothing of a flood (page 2 ff.). The Babylonian Flood-legend also is free from any allusion to giants, or mingling of gods and men. O. Gruppe, however (_Philologus_, Neue Folge, i. 93 ff.; _Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft_, ix. 134 ff.), claims to have recovered from Greek sources a Phœnician legend of intermarriages between deities and mortals, which presents some striking affinities with Genesis 6¹⁻⁴, and which leads up to an account of the Flood. Of the soundness of Gruppe’s combinations I am unable to judge; but he himself admits that the Flood is a late importation into Greek mythology, and indeed he instances the passage before us as the earliest literary trace of the hypothetical Phœnician legend. Even, therefore, if his speculations be valid, it would have to be considered whether the later form of the myth may not have been determined partly by Jewish influence, and whether the connexion between the divine intermarriages and the Flood does not simply reproduce the sequence of events given in Genesis. That this is not inconceivable is shown by the fact that on late Phrygian coins the biblical name ΝΩ appears as that of the hero of the Deluge (see page 180 below).

=1, 2.= The sense of these verses is perfectly clear. The _sons of God_ (בני האלהים‎) are everywhere in Old Testament members (but probably inferior members) of the divine order, or (using the word with some freedom) _angels_ (_v.i._).

“The angels are not called ‘sons of God’ as if they had actually derived their nature from Him as a child from its father; nor in a less exact way, because though created they have received a nature similar to God’s, being spirits; nor yet as if on account of their steadfast holiness they had been adopted into the family of God. These ideas are not found here. The name _Elohim_ or _sons_ (_i.e._ members of the race) _of the Elohim_ is a name given directly to angels in contrast with men ... the name is given to God and angels in common; He is Elohim pre-eminently, they are Elohim in an inferior sense” (Davidson, _Job_, _Cambridge Bible_, page 6).

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‎ =1.= וַיְהִי כִּי‎] peculiar to Yahwist in Hexateuch; 26⁸ 27¹ 43²¹ 44²⁴, Exodus 1²¹ 13¹⁵, Joshua 17¹³. See Budde 6. The apodosis commences with verse ².――הֵחֵל‎] see Holzinger _Einleitung in den Hexateuch_ 97.――על־פני האדמה‎] see _Oxford Hexateuch_ i. 187.――=2.= ‎ בני [ה]אלהים‎] Job 1⁶ 2¹ 38⁷, [Daniel 3²⁵]; compare ב׳ אלים‎, Psalms 29¹ 89⁷. In all these places the superhuman character of the beings denoted is evident,――‘belonging to the category of the gods.’ On this Semitic use of בן‎, see William Robertson Smith _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_², 17; _The Prophets of Israel_² 85, 389 f. (1) The phrase is so understood by LXX (οἱ ἄγγελοι [also υἱοὶ] τοῦ θεοῦ), Theodotion, _Jubilees_ v. 1, Enoch vi. 2 ff. (Jude ⁶, 2 Peter 2⁴), Josephus _Antiquities of the Jews_ i. 73; Fathers down to Cyprian and Lactantius, and nearly all moderns. [Peshiṭtå transliterates (‡ Syriac phrase) as in Job 1⁶ 2¹.] (2) Amongst the Jews this view was early displaced by another, according to which the ‘sons of the gods’ are members of aristocratic families in distinction from women of humble rank: Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ⁻ᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ (בני רברביא‎), Symmachus (τῶν δυναστευόντων), _Bereshith Rabba_, Rashi, Abraham Ibn Ezra [Aquila (υἱοὶ τῶν θεῶν) is explained by Jeremias as ‘_deos_ intelligens _sanctos_ sive _angelos_’]. So Spinoza, Herder, al. (3) The prevalent Christian interpretation (on the rise of which see Charles’s valuable Note, _Book of Jubilees_ 33 ff.) has been to take the phrase in an ethical sense as denoting pious men of the line of Seth: Julius Africanus, most Fathers, Luther, Calvin, al.: still maintained by Strack. Against both these last explanations it is decisive that בנות האדם‎ cannot have a narrower reference in verse ² than in verse ¹; and that consequently בני ה׳‎ cannot denote a section of mankind. For other arguments, see Lenormant, _Les Origines de l’histoire_² 291 ff.; the Commentary of Delitzsch (146 ff.), Dillmann (119 f.), or Driver (82 f.). On the eccentric theory of Stuart Poole, that the sons of God were a wicked pre-Adamite race, see Lenormant 304 ff.――ויקחו ... נשים‎] = ‘marry’: 4¹⁹ 11²⁹ 25¹ 36² etc.――מכּל אשר‎] ‘_consisting of_ all whom,’――the rare מן‎ _of explication_; Brown-Driver-Briggs, _s.v._ 3b (e); compare Gesenius-Kautzsch § 119 _w_²: Genesis 7²² 9¹⁰.

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In an earlier polytheistic recension of the myth, they were perhaps called אלהים‎ simply. It is only a desire to save the credibility of the record as literal history, that has prompted the untenable interpretations mentioned in the note below.――=2.= These superhuman beings, attracted by the beauty of _the daughters of men_ (_i.e._ mortal women) _took to themselves as wives_ (strictly implying permanent marriages, but this must not be pressed) _whomsoever they chose_. No sin is imputed to mankind or to their daughters in these relations. The guilt is wholly on the side of the angels; and consists partly, perhaps, in sensuality, partly in high-handed disregard of the rights of God’s lower creatures.――It is to be noted, in contrast with analogous heathen myths, that the divine element is exclusively masculine.

=3.= A divine sentence on the human race, imposing a limit on the term of man’s life.――_My spirit shall not_ [... _in_?] _man for ever_; [...?] _he is flesh, and his days shall be 120 years_.

A complete exegesis of these words is impossible, owing first to the obscurity of certain leading expressions (see the footnote), and second to the want of explicit connexion with what precedes. The record has evidently undergone serious mutilation. The original narrative must have contained a statement of the effects on human life produced by the superhuman alliances,――and that opens up a wide field of speculation;¹――and possibly also an account of the judgment on the sons of God, the really guilty parties in the transaction. In default of this guidance, all that can be done is to determine as nearly as possible the general sense of the verse, assuming the text to be fairly complete, and a real connexion to exist with verses ¹ᐧ ².――(i.) Everything turns on the meaning of the word רוּחַ‎, of which four interpretations have been given: (1) That רוּחִי‎ is the Spirit of Yahwe as an _ethical_ principle, striving against and ‘judging’ the prevalent corruption of men (as in Isaiah 63¹⁰); so Symmachus, Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ, Luther, al. There is nothing to suggest that view except the particular acceptation of the verb ידון‎ associated with it, and it is now practically abandoned. (2) Even less admissible is the conception of Klostermann, who understands רוּחִי‎ subjectively of the divine feeling (_Gemüt_) excited by human sin² (similarly Rashi). (3) The commonest view in modern times (see Dillmann) has been that רוּחַ‎ is the divine principle of _life_ implanted in man at creation, the tenor of the decree being that this shall not ‘abide’³ in man eternally or indefinitely, but only in such measure as to admit a maximum life of 120 years. There are two difficulties in this interpretation: (a) It has no connexion with what precedes, for everything the verse contains would be quite as intelligible apart from the marriages with the angels as in relation to them.⁴ (b) The following words הוא בשׂר‎ have no meaning: as a reason for the withdrawal of the animating spirit they involve a _hysteron proteron_; and as an independent statement they are (on the supposition) not true, man as actually constituted being both flesh and spirit (2⁷). (4) The most probable sense is that given by Wellhausen (_Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments_² 305 ff.), viz. that ‎ רוח‎ is the divine substance common to Yahwe and the angels, in contrast to בָּשָׂר‎, which is the element proper to human nature (compare Isaiah 31³): so Holzinger, Gunkel. The idea will then be that the mingling of the divine and human substances brought about by illicit sexual unions has introduced a disorder into the creation which Yahwe cannot suffer to ‘abide’ permanently, but resolves to end by an exercise of His supreme power.――(ii.) We have next to consider whether the 120 years, taken in its natural sense of the duration of individual life (_v.i._), be consistent with the conclusion just reached. Wellhausen himself thinks that it is not: the fusion of the divine and human elements would be propagated _in the race_, and could not be checked by a shortening of the lives of individuals. The context requires an announcement of the annihilation of the race, and the last clause of the verse must be a mistaken gloss on the first. If this argument were sound it would certainly supply a strong reason _either_ for revising Wellhausen’s acceptation of ³ᵃ, _or_ for understanding ³ᵇ as an announcement of the Flood. But a shortening of the term of life, though not a logical corollary from the sin of the angels, might nevertheless be a judicial sentence upon it. It would ensure the extinction of the giants within a measurable time; and indirectly impose a limit on the new intellectual powers which we may suppose to have accrued to mankind at large through union with angelic beings.⁵ In view of the defective character of the narrative, it would be unwise to press the antagonism of the two clauses so as to put a strain on the interpretation of either.

¹ Compare Cheyne’s imaginary restoration in _Encyclopædia Biblica_, 3391, with the reconstructed Phœnician myth of Gruppe in _Philologus_, 1889, i. 100 ff.

² Reading לֹא יִדֹּם רוּחי‎, ‘shall not restrain itself’ (literally ‘be silent’). See _Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift_, 1894, 234 ff. (= _Der Pentateuch_ [1907] 28 ff.).

³ On this traditional rendering of ידון‎, see the footnote, page 143.

⁴ Budde’s argument that the verse is detachable from its present context is, therefore, perfectly sound; although his attempt to find a place for it after 3²¹ is not so successful (see page 3 above).

⁵ Just as in 3²²ᐧ ²⁴ man is allowed to retain the gift of illicitly obtained knowledge, but is foiled by being denied the boon of immortality. The same point of view appears in 11¹⁻⁹: in each case the ruling motive is the divine jealousy of human greatness; and man’s pride is humbled by a subtle and indirect exercise of the power of God.

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‎ =3.= יהוה‎] LXX Κύριος ὁ θεός.――יָדוֹן‎] There are two traditional interpretations: (a) ‘abide’: so LXX (καταμείνῃ), Vulgate, Peshiṭtå, Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ; (b) ‘judge’ (Symmachus κρινεῖ: so Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ). The former is perhaps nothing more than a plausible guess at the meaning, though a variant text has been suspected (ילון‎, ידור‎, יִכּוֹן‎, etc.). The latter traces the form to the √ דין‎; but the etymology is doubtful, since that √ shows no trace of medial ו‎ in Hebrew (Nöldeke _Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, xxxvii. 533 f.); and to call it a jussive or intransitive form is an abuse of grammatical language (see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 71 _r_). A Jewish derivation, mentioned by Abraham Ibn Ezra and Calvin, connects the verb with ‎ נָדָן‎, ‘sheath’ (1 Chronicles 21²⁷),――the body being compared to the sheath of the spirit. The Arabic _dāna_ (medial _w_) = ‘be humbled’ or ‘degraded,’ yields but a tolerable sense (Tuch, Ewald, al.); the Egyptian Arabic _dāna_, which means ‘to do a thing continually’ (Socin; see Gesenius-Buhl _s.v._), would suit the context well, but can hardly be the same word. Vollers (_Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, xiv. 349 ff.) derives it from ‎ √ דנן‎, Assyrian _danânu_ = ‘be powerful’; the idea being that the life-giving spirit shall no longer have the same force as formerly, etc. It would be still better if the verb could be taken as a denominative from Assyrian _dinânu_, ‘bodily appearance,’ with the sense “shall not be embodied in man for ever.”――בָּאָדָם‎] LXX ἐν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τούτοις, whence Klostermann restores באדם הַזֶּה‎¹ = ‘this humanity,’ as distinguished from that originally created,――an impossible exegesis, whose sole advantage is that it gives a meaning to the גַּם‎ in בְּשֶׂגַּם‎ (_v.i._).――לְעוֹלָם‎――לֹא‎ (thus separated)] here = ‘not ... for ever,’ as Jeremiah 3¹², Lamentations 3³¹; elsewhere (Psalms 15⁵ etc.) the phrase means ‘never.’――בְּשֶׂגָּם‎] so pointed in the majority of MSS, is infinitive construct of שָׁגַג‎, ‘err,’ with suffix. This sense is adopted by many (Tuch, Ewald, Budde, Holzinger, al.), but it can hardly be right. If we refer the suffix to הָאָדָם‎, the _enallage numeri_ (‘through _their_ erring _he_ is flesh’) would be harsh, and the idea expressed unsuitable. If we refer it to the angels, we can avoid an absurdity only by disregarding the accents and joining the word with what precedes: ‘shall not (abide?) in man for ever on account of their (the angels’) erring; he is flesh, and,’ etc. The sentence is doubly bad in point of style: the first member is overloaded at the end by the emphatic word; and the second opens awkwardly without a connecting participle. Moreover, it is questionable if the idea of שׁגג‎ (inadvertent transgression) is appropriate in the connexion. Margoliouth (_Expositor_, 1898, ii. 33 ff.) explains the obscure word by Aethiopian _shegā_ = ‘body’; but the proposed rendering, ‘inasmuch as their body (or substance) is flesh,’ is not grammatically admissible. The correct Massoretic reading is בְּשֶׂגַּם‎ (_i.e._ גַּם‎ + שֶׁ‎ + בְּ‎) = _inasmuch as he too_. The objections to this are (a) that the relative שֶׁ‎ is never found in Pentateuch, and is very rare in the older literature (Judges 5⁷ 6¹⁷ 7¹² 8²⁶), while compounds like בְּ׳h do not appear before Ecclesiastes (_e.g._ 2¹⁶); and (b) that the גַּם‎ has no force, there being nothing which serves as a contrast to הוּא‎. Wellhausen observes that בְּ׳‎ must represent a causal particle and possibly nothing more. The old translators, LXX (διὰ τὸ εἶναι αὐτοὺς) Peshiṭtå, Vulgate, Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ seem to have been of the same opinion; and it is noticeable that none of them attempt to reproduce the גַּם‎. The conjectures of Olshausen (לָבַשׁ גַּם‎), Cheyne ‎ (בְּמִשְׁכְּנוֹת בָּשָׂר‎), and others are all beside the mark.――והיו ימיו וגו׳‎] The only natural reference is to the (maximum) term of human life (so Josephus, Tuch, Ewald, and most since), a man’s יָמִים‎ being a standing expression for his lifetime, reckoning from his birth (see chapter 5. 35²⁸, Isaiah 65²⁰ etc.). The older view (Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ⁻ᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ, Jerome, Rashi, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Calvin, al.: so Delitzsch, Klostermann), that the clause indicates the interval that was to elapse before the Flood, was naturally suggested by the present position of the passage, and was supported by the consideration that greater ages were subsequently attained by many of the patriarchs. But these statements belong to Priestly-Code, and decide nothing as to the meaning of the words in Yahwist.

¹ Already proposed by Egli (cited by Budde).

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=4.= _The Nĕphîlîm were_ (or _arose_) _in the earth in those days_] Who were the נְפִלִים‎? The name recurs only in Numbers 13³³, where we learn that they were conceived as beings of gigantic stature, whose descendants survived till the days of Moses and Joshua. The circumstantial form of the sentence here (compare 12⁶ 13⁷) is misleading, for the writer cannot have meant that the נ׳‎ existed in those days apart from the alliances with the angels, and that the result of the latter were the גִּבּוֹרִים‎ (Lenormant, al.). The idea undoubtedly is that this race _arose_ at that time in consequence of the union of the divine ‘spirit’ with human ‘flesh.’――_and also afterwards whenever_ (LXX ὡς ἂν) _the sons of the gods came in ... and they_ (the women) _bore unto them_] That is to say, the production of Nephîlîm was not confined to the remote period indicated by verse ¹ ᶠᐧ, but was continued in after ages through visits of angels to mortal wives,――a conception which certainly betrays the hand of a glossator. It is perhaps enough to remove וְגַם אַֽחֲרֵי־כֵן‎ as an interpolation, and connect the אֲשֶׁר‎ with בַּֽיָּמִים הָהֵם‎; though even then the phrasing is odd (_v.i._).――_Those are the heroes_ (הַגִּבּוֹּרִים‎) _that were of old, the men of fame_] (אַנְשֵׁי הַשֵּׁם‎, compare Numbers 16²). הֵמָּה‎ has for its antecedent not אֲשֶׁר‎ as objective to יָֽלְדוּ‎ (Wellhausen), but הַנְּפִלִים‎. There is a touch of euhemerism in the notice (Wellhausen), the archaic and mythological ‎נְפִלִים‎‎ being identified with the more human גִּבּוֹרִים‎ who were renowned in Hebrew story.

It is probable that the legend of the Nephîlîm had a wider circulation in Hebrew tradition than could be gathered from its curt handling by the editors of the Hexateuch. In Ezekiel 32 we meet with the weird conception of a mighty antique race who are the original denizens of Sheol, where they lie in state with their swords under their heads, and are roused to a transient interest in the newcomers who disturb their majestic repose. If Cornill’s correction of verse ²⁷ (גבורים נְפִלִים מעולם‎) be sound, these are to be identified with the Nephîlîm of our passage; and the picture throws light on two points left obscure in Genesis: viz., the character of the primæval giants, and the punishment meted out to them. Ezekiel dwells on their haughty violence and warlike prowess, and plainly intimates that for their crimes they were consigned to Sheol, where, however, they enjoy a kind of aristocratic dignity among the Shades. It would almost seem as if the whole conception had been suggested by the supposed discoveries of prehistoric skeletons of great stature, buried with their arms beside them, like those recorded by Pausanias (i. 35. 5 f., viii. 29. 3, 32. 4) and other ancient writers (see William Robertson Smith in Driver A critical and exegetical commentary on Deuteronomy 40 f.).

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‎ =4.= הַנְּפִלִים‎] LXX οἱ γίγαντες; Aquila οἱ ἐπιπίπτοντες; Symmachus οἱ βίαιοι; Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac word); Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ גבריא‎. The etymology is uncertain (see Dillmann 123). There is no allusion to a ‘fall’ (√ נָפַל‎) of angels from heaven (Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ, Jerome¹, Rashi), or to a ‘fall’ of the world through their action (_Bereshith Rabba_, Rashi). A connexion with נֵפֶל‎, ‘abortive birth’ (from נָפַל‎, ‘fall dead’), is not improbable (Schwally, _Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xviii. 144 ff.). An attractive emendation of Cornill (נְפִילִים מֵעוֹלָם‎) in Ezekiel 32²⁷ not only yields a striking resemblance to this verse, but supports the idea that the נ׳‎ (like the רְפָאִים‎) were associated with the notion of Sheol.――אחרי כן אשר‎] cannot mean ‘after’ (as conjunction), which would require a perfect to follow, but only ‘afterwards, when.’ On any view, יָבֹאוּ‎; and וְיָלְדוּ‎ are frequentative tenses.――בוא אל‎] (as euphemism) is characteristic of Jehovist (especially Yahwist) in Hexateuch (Budde 39, _Anm._). Compare William Robertson Smith _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_², 198 ff.――חַגִּבּוֹרִים‎] literally ‘mighty ones’ (Aquila δυνατοί; Vulgate _potentes_; LXX, Symmachus, Peshiṭtå, Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ do not distinguish from נפילים‎). The word is thoroughly naturalised in Hebrew speech, and nearly always in a good sense. But passages like Ezekiel 32¹² ᶠᶠᐧ show that it had another aspect, akin to Arabic _ǧabbār_ (proud, audacious, tyrannical). The Arabic and Syrian equivalents are used as names of the constellation Orion (Lane, _An Arabic-English Lexicon_ i. 375 _a_; Robert Payne Smith _Thesaurus Syriacus_ 646).――אשר מעולם‎] compare עַם עוֹלָם‎, Ezekiel 26²⁰, probably an allusion to a wicked ancient race thrust down to Sheol.――The whole verse has the appearance of a series of antiquarian glosses; and all that can be strictly inferred from it is that there was some traditional association of the Nephîlîm with the incident recorded in verse ¹ ᶠᐧ. At the same time we may reasonably hold that the kernel of the verse reproduces in a hesitating and broken fashion the essential thought of the original myth. The writer apparently shrinks from the direct statement that the Nephîlîm were the offspring of the marriages of verses ¹ᐧ ², and tantalises the curiosity of his readers with the cautious affirmation that such beings then existed. A later hand then introduced a reminder that they existed ‘afterwards’ as well.――Budde, who omits verse ³, restores the original connexion with verse ¹ ᶠᐧ as follows: [והיה ‎ כאשר] יבאו בני האלהים ... [וכן] היו הנפלים בארץ בימים ההם‎. Some such excellent sentence may very well have stood in the original; but it was precisely this perspicuity of narration which the editor wished to avoid.

¹ “Et angelis et sanctorum liberis, convenit nomen cadentium.”

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VI. 5‒IX. 29. _Noah and the Flood._

_Analysis of the Flood-Narrative._――The section on the Flood (6⁵‒9¹⁷) is, as has often been observed, the first example in Genesis of a truly composite narrative; _i.e._, one in which the compiler “instead of excerpting the entire account from a single source, has interwoven it out of excerpts taken alternatively from Yahwist and Priestly-Code, preserving in the process many duplicates, as well as leaving unaltered many striking differences of representation and phraseology” (Driver 85). The resolution of the compound narrative into its constituent elements in this case is justly reckoned amongst the most brilliant achievements of purely literary criticism, and affords a particularly instructive lesson in the art of documentary analysis (compare the interesting exposition by Gunkel² 121 ff.). Here it must suffice to give the results of the process, along with a summary of the criteria by which the critical operation is guided and justified. The division generally accepted by recent critics is as follows:

Yahwist Priestly-Code 6⁵⁻⁸ ⁹⁻²² 7¹⁻⁵ ⁶ ⁷ᐧ (⁸ᐧ ⁹)ᐧ ¹⁰ ¹¹ ¹² ¹³⁻¹⁶ᵃ ¹⁶ᵇ ¹⁷ᵃ ¹⁷ᵇ ¹⁸⁻²¹ ²²ᐧ ²³ 7²⁴ 8¹ᐧ ²ᵃ ²ᵇᐧ ³ᵃ ³ᵇ⁻⁵ ⁶⁻¹² ¹³ᵃ ¹³ᵇ ¹⁴⁻¹⁹ ²⁰⁻²² 9¹⁻¹⁷

The minutiæ of glosses, transpositions, etc., are left to be dealt with in the Notes. Neglecting these, the scheme as given above represents the results of Budde (to whom the finishing touches are due: _Die biblische Urgeschichte_ 248 ff.) Gunkel and Holzinger. Dillmann agrees absolutely, except that he assigns 7¹⁷ wholly to Yahwist, and 7²³ᵇ to Priestly-Code; and Wellhausen, except with regard to 7¹⁷ (Yahwist) 8³ᐧ ¹³, which are both assigned entirely to Priestly-Code. The divergences of Kuenen and Cornill are almost equally slight; and indeed the main outlines of the analysis were fixed by the researches of Hupfeld, Nöldeke, and Schrader.――This remarkable consensus of critical opinion has been arrived at by four chief lines of evidence: (1) _Linguistic._ The key to the whole process is, of course, the distinction between the divine names ‎ יהוה‎ (6⁵ᐧ ⁶ᐧ ⁷ᐧ ⁸ 7¹ᐧ ⁵ᐧ ¹⁶ᵇ 8²⁰ᐧ ²¹) and אלהים‎ (6⁹ᐧ ¹¹ᐧ ¹²ᐧ ¹³ᐧ ²² 7¹⁶ᵃ 8¹ᐧ ¹⁵ 9¹ᐧ ⁶ᐧ ⁸ᐧ ¹²ᐧ ¹⁶ᐧ ¹⁷). Besides this, a number of characteristic expressions differentiate the two sources. Thus Yahwist’s איש ואשתו‎ (7²) answers to Priestly-Code’s זכר ונקבה‎¹ (6¹⁹ ‎ 7⁽⁹⁾ᐧ ¹⁶); מחה‎ (6⁷ 7⁴ᐧ ²³) to שִׁחֵת‎ and השחית‎ (6¹³ᐧ ¹⁷ 9¹¹ᐧ ¹⁵); מות‎ (7²²) to גָוַע‎¹ (6¹⁷ 7²¹); כל־היקום‎ (7⁴ᐧ ²³) to כל־בשר‎¹ (6¹²ᐧ ¹³ᐧ ¹⁷ 7²¹ and often); קל‎ (8⁸ᐧ ¹¹) and שוּב‎ (7³ᵃ) to חסר‎ (8⁵); חרב‎ (8¹³ᵇ) to יבש‎ (8¹⁴) [but see on 8¹³ᵇ]; נשמת חיים‎ (8²²) to רוח חיים‎ (6¹⁷); לְחַיּוֹת‎ (7³) to לְהַֽחֲיוֹת‎ (6¹⁹ᐧ ²⁰); כל־ביתך‎ (7¹) to the specific enumerations of 6¹⁸ 7⁽⁷⁾ᐧ ¹³ 8¹⁶ᐧ ¹⁸. (Compare the list in Holzinger _Genesis erklärt_ page 68).――(2) _Diversity of representation._ In Yahwist clean and unclean animals are distinguished, the former entering the ark by sevens and the latter in pairs (7², compare 8²⁰); in Priestly-Code one pair of every kind without distinction is admitted (6¹⁹ ᶠᐧ 7¹⁵ ᶠᐧ). According to Yahwist, the cause of the Flood is a forty-days’ rain which is to commence seven days after the command to enter the ark (7⁴ᐧ ¹⁰ᐧ ¹² 8²ᵇᐧ ⁶)――the latter passage showing that the waters began to subside after the 40 days. In Priestly-Code we have (7¹¹ 8²ᵃ) a different conception of the cause of the Flood; and, in 7⁶ᐧ ¹¹ᐧ ¹³ᐧ ²⁴ 8³ᵇᐧ ⁴ᐧ ⁵ᐧ ¹³ᵃᐧ ¹⁴, a chronological scheme according to which the waters increase for 150 days, and the entire duration of the Flood is one year (see page 167 ff.).――(3) _Duplicates._ The following are obviously parallels from the two documents: 6⁵⁻⁸ ∥ 6¹¹⁻¹³ (occasion of the Flood); 7¹⁻⁵ ∥ 6¹⁷⁻²² (command to enter the ark, and announcement of the Flood); 7⁷ ∥ 7¹³ (entering of the ark); 7¹⁰ ∥ 7¹¹ (coming of the Flood); 7¹⁷ᵇ ∥ 7¹⁸ (increase of the waters: floating of the ark); 7²² ᶠᐧ ∥ 7²¹ (destruction of terrestrial life); 8²ᵇᐧ ³ᵃ ∥ 8¹ ᶠᐧ (abatement of the Flood); 8¹³ᵇ ∥ 8¹³ᵃᐧ ¹⁴ (drying of the earth); 8²⁰⁻²² ∥ 9⁸ ᶠᶠᐧ (promise that the Flood shall not recur).――(4) The final confirmation of the theory is that the two series of passages form two all but continuous narratives, which exhibit the distinctive features of the two great sources of the primitive history, Yahwist and Priestly-Code. The Yahwist sections are a graphic popular tale, appealing to the imagination rather than to the reasoning faculties. The aim of the writer, one would say, was to bring the cosmopolitan (Babylonian) Flood-legend within the comprehension of a native of Palestine. The Deluge is ascribed to a familiar cause, the rain; only, the rain lasts for an unusual time, 40 days. The picturesque incident of the dove (see 8⁹) reveals the touch of descriptive genius which so often breaks forth from this document. The boldest anthropomorphisms are freely introduced into the conception of God (6⁶ ᶠᐧ 7¹⁶ᵇ 8²¹); and the religious institutions of the author’s time are unhesitatingly assumed for the age of Noah.――Still more pronounced are the characteristics of Priestly-Code in the other account. The vivid details which are the life and charm of the older narrative have all disappeared; and if the sign of the rainbow (9¹²⁻¹⁷) is retained, its æsthetic beauty has evaporated. For the rest, everything is formal, precise, and calculated,――the size of the ark, the number of the persons and the classification of the animals in it, the exact duration of the Flood in its various stages, etc.: if these mathematical determinations are removed, there is little story left. The real interest of the writer is in the new departure in God’s dealings with the world, of which the Flood was the occasion,――the modification of the original constitution of nature, 9¹⁻⁷, and the establishment of the first of the three great covenants, 9⁸⁻¹⁷. The connexion of the former passage with Genesis 1 is unmistakably evident. Very significant are the omission of Noah’s sacrifice, and the ignoring of the laws of cleanness and uncleanness amongst animals.²

¹ Phrases characteristic of the style of Priestly-Code generally.

² Traces of Priestly-Code’s general vocabulary are very numerous. Besides some of those (marked by ¹) already enumerated in contrast to Yahwist, we have תּוֹלְדֹת‎ (6⁹); דֹּרֹת‎ ‎ (6⁹ 9¹²); הוֹלִיד‎ (6¹⁰); הקים ברית‎ (6¹⁸ 9⁹ᐧ ¹¹ᐧ ¹⁷) and נתן ב׳‎ (9¹²); ‎ אִתּו‎ in enumerations (6¹⁸ 7¹³ 8¹⁶ etc.); מין‎ (6²⁰ 7¹⁴); רֶמֶשׂ‎, רָמַשׂ‎ ‎ (6²⁰ 7⁽⁸⁾ᐧ ¹⁴ᐧ ²¹ 8¹⁷ᐧ ¹⁹ 9²ᐧ ³); שֶׁרֶץ‎, שָׁרַץ‎ (7²¹ 8¹⁷ 9⁷); לְאָכְלָה‎ ‎ (6²¹ 9³); בעצם היום הזה‎ (7¹³); מאד מאד‎ (7¹⁹); בְּ‎ of specification ‎ (7²¹ 8¹⁷ 9¹⁰ᐧ ¹⁵ᐧ ¹⁶); פרה ורבה‎ (8¹⁷ 9¹ᐧ ⁷); למשפחתיהם‎ (8¹⁹); ברית ‎ עולם‎ (9¹⁶).――Of the style of Yahwist the positive indications are fewer: מצא חן‎ (6⁸); מחה‎ in the sense ‘destroy’ (6⁷ 7⁴ᐧ ²³) [see Holzinger _Einleitung in den Hexateuch_ 101]; עצב‎ ‎ (6⁶); על־פני האדמה‎ (7⁴ᐧ ²³ 8⁸ᐧ ⁽{?} ¹³ ᴸˣˣ⁾); בעבור‎ (8²¹). See the commentaries of Dillmann, Holzinger, Gunkel, etc.

The success of the critical process is due to the care and skill with which the Redactor (Redactorᴶᵃʰʷⁱˢᵗ⁺ᴾʳⁱᵉˢᵗˡʸ⁻ᶜᵒᵈᵉ) has performed his task. His object evidently was to produce a synthetic history of the Flood without sacrificing a scrap of information that could with any plausibility be utilised for his narrative. The sequence of Priestly-Code he appears to have preserved intact, allowing neither omissions nor transpositions. Of Yahwist he has preserved quite enough to show that it was originally a complete and independent narrative; but it was naturally impracticable to handle it as carefully as the main document. Yet it is doubtful if there are any actual lacunæ except (a) the account of the building of the ark (between 6⁸ and 7¹), and (b) the notice of the exit from it (between 8¹³ᵇ and ²⁰). The middle part of the document, however, has been broken up into minute fragments, and these have been placed in position where they would least disturb the flow of narration. Some slight transpositions have been made, and a number of glosses have been introduced; but how far these last are due to the Redactor himself and how far to subsequent editors, we cannot tell (for details see the notes). Duplicates are freely admitted, and small discrepancies are disregarded; the only serious discrepancy (that of the chronology) is ingeniously surmounted by making Yahwist’s 40 days count twice, once as a stage of the increase of the Flood (7¹²) and once as a phase of its decrease (8⁶).¹ This compound narrative is not destitute of interest; but for the understanding of the ideas underlying the literature the primary documents are obviously of first importance. We shall therefore treat them separately.

¹ The supposition of Hupfeld and Lenormant (_Les Origines de l’histoire_ i. 415), that the double period occurred in the original Yahwist, has no foundation.

_The Flood according to Yahwist._

=VI. 5‒8. The occasion of the Flood=:――Yahwe’s experience of the deep-seated and incurable sinfulness of human nature. It is unnecessary to suppose that a description of the deterioration of the race has been omitted, or displaced by 6¹⁻⁴ (Holzinger). The ground of the pessimistic estimate of human nature so forcibly expressed in verse ⁵ is rather the whole course of man’s development as hitherto related, which is the working out of the sinful knowledge acquired by the Fall. The fratricide of Cain, the song of Lamech, the marriages with the angels, are incidents which, if not all before the mind of the writer of the Flood-story, at least reveal the gloomy view of the early history which characterises the Yahwistic tradition.――=5.= _the whole bent_ (literally ‘formation’) _of the thoughts of his heart_] It is difficult to say whether יֵצֶר‎ is more properly the ‘form’ impressed _on_ the mind (the disposition or character), or ‘that which is formed’ _by_ the mind (imagination and purpose――_Sinnen und Trachten_): compare 8²¹, Deuteronomy 31²¹, Isaiah 26³ (Psalms 103¹⁴?), 1 Chronicles 28⁹ 29¹⁸; _v.i._――=6.= The anthropopathy which attributes to Yahwe regret (וַיִּנָּחֶם‎) and vexation (וַיִּתְעַצֵּב‎) because He had created man is unusually strong. Although in the sense of mere change of purpose, the former is often ascribed to God (Exodus 32¹⁴, Jeremiah 18⁷ᐧ ⁸ 26³ᐧ ¹³, Joel 2¹³, Jonah 3¹⁰ etc.), the cases are few where divine regret for accomplished action is expressed (1 Samuel 15¹¹). The whole representation was felt to be inadequate (Numbers 23¹⁹, 1 Samuel 15¹¹); yet it continued to be used as inseparable from the religious view of history as the personal agency of Yahwe.――=7.= God’s resolve to _blot out_ (מָחָה‎) the race: not as yet communicated to Noah, but expressed in monologue.――=8.= _But Noah had found favour, etc._] doubtless on account of his piety; but see on 7¹. The Yahwistic narrative must have contained some previous notice of Noah, probably at the end of a genealogy.

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‎ =5.= יהוה‎ LXX Κύριος ὁ θεός (so verse ⁸).――וכל־יצר וגו׳‎] LXX loosely: καὶ πᾶς τις διανοεῖται (יֹצֵר‎?) ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ ἐπιμελῶς ἐπὶ τὰ πονηρά; Vulgate _cuncta cogitatio_. Another Greek rendering (ὁ Ἑβρ., see Field, _ad loc._) is φυσικὸν τοῦ ἀνθ.; but in 8²¹ the same translator has τὸ πλάσμα τῆς καρ. ἀνθ. On the later Jewish theologoumenon of the יצר הרע‎ (the evil impulse in man, also called יצר‎ simply) which is based on this passage, and by Jewish commentaries (Rashi on 8²¹) is found here; see Taylor, _Sayings of Jewish Fathers_², 37, 148 ff.; Frank C. Porter, _Biblical and Semitic Studies; critical and historical essays by the members of the Semitic and Biblical faculty of Yale University_ (1901), 93 ff.――כל־היום‎] ‘continually’; see Brown-Driver-Briggs, 400 b.――=6.= יהוה‎] LXX ὁ θεός (so verse ⁷).――ויתעצב‎] Genesis 34⁷; compare Isaiah 63¹⁰ (Piel). Rashi softens the anthropomorphism by making the impending destruction of the creatures the immediate object of the divine grief.――=7.= אמחה‎] compare 7⁴ᐧ ²³. In the full sense of ‘exterminate’ (as distinct from ‘obliterate’ [name, memory, etc.]) the verb is peculiar to Yahwist’s account of the Flood; contrast Numbers 5²³ 34¹¹ (Priestly-Code).――The verse is strongly interpolated. The clauses אשר בראתי‎ and מאדם ... השמים‎ are in the style of Priestly-Code (compare 6²⁰ 7¹⁴ᐧ ²¹ 8¹⁷ᐧ ¹⁹ 9² etc.); and the latter is, besides, an illogical specification of האדם‎. They are redactional glosses, the original text being אמחה את־האדם מעל פני האדמה כי נחמתי כי עשיתים‎ (Budde 249 ff.; Dillmann 125).――=8.= מצא חן בעיני‎] characteristic of, though not absolutely confined to, Yahwist: 19¹⁹ 32⁶ 33⁸ᐧ ¹⁵ 34¹¹ 39⁴ 47²⁵ etc. (Holzinger _Einleitung in den Hexateuch_ 97 f.).

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=VII. 1‒5. Announcement of the Flood.=――The section is an almost exact parallel to 6¹⁷⁻²² (Priestly-Code). Verse ¹ presupposes in Yahwist a description of the building of the ark, which the redactor has omitted in favour of the elaborate account of Priestly-Code. Not till the work is finished does Yahwe reveal to Noah the purpose it is to serve: verse ⁴ is obviously the first intimation that has been given of the approaching deluge. The building of the ark in implicit obedience to the divine command is thus a great test and proof of Noah’s faith; compare Hebrews 11⁷.――=1.= _Thou and all thy house_] Yahwist’s brevity is here far more expressive than the formal enumerations of Priestly-Code (6¹⁸ 7¹³ 8¹⁶ᐧ ¹⁸). The principle involved is the religious solidarity of the family; its members are saved for the righteousness of its head (compare 19¹²).――_thee have I seen (to be) righteous_ ‎(צַדִּיק‎, see on 6⁹)] Budde and others take this to be a judgement based on Noah’s obedience in building the ark; but that is hardly correct. The verb is not מצא‎ but ראה‎, which has precisely the same force as the וירא‎ of 6⁵. Compare also 6⁸.――=2.= _clean_ (טְהוֹר‎) means, practically, fit for sacrifice and human food; the technical antithesis is טָמֵא‎, which, however, is here avoided, whether purposely (Delitzsch 174) or not it is impossible to say. The distinction is not, as was once supposed (see Tuch), a proof of Yahwist’s interest in Levitical matters, but, on the contrary, of the naïveté of his religious conceptions. He regards it as rooted in the nature of things, and cannot imagine a time when it was not observed. His view is nearer the historical truth than the theory of Priestly-Code, who traces the distinction to the positive enactments of the Sinaitic legislation (Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14), and consequently ignores it here. The same difference of standpoint appears with regard to sacrifice, altars, etc.: see 4³ ᶠᐧ 8²⁰ 12⁷ etc.――שִׁבְעָה ‎שִׁבְעָה‎‎] _by sevens_ (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 134 _q_); _i.e._ ‘7 (individuals) of each kind’ (Delitzsch, Stade, al.), rather than ‘7 pairs’ (_Bereshith Rabba_, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Dillmann, Gunkel, al.),――in spite of the following איש ואשתו‎. It is a plausible conjecture (Rashi, Delitzsch, Strack) that the odd individual was a male destined for sacrifice (8²⁰).――=3a= presents an impure text (_v.i._), and must either be removed as a gloss (Kuenen, Budde, Holzinger, Gunkel, al.) or supplemented with LXX (Ball, Bennett).――=3b.= _to keep seed alive, etc._] reads better as the continuation of ² than of ³ᵃ.――=4.= With great rhetorical effect, the reason for all these preparations――the coming of the Flood――is reserved to the end. Yahwist knows no other physical cause of the Deluge than the 40 days’ rain (compare verse ¹²).――=5.= Compare 6²² (Priestly-Code).

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‎ =1.= יהוה‎] _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_, Peshiṭtå ‎ אלהים‎; LXX Κύριος ὁ θεός.――צדיק‎] predicate accusative; Davidson § 76.――=2.= For שנים‎, _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_, LXX, Peshiṭtå, Vulgate read שנים שנים‎,――probably correctly.――איש ‎ ואשתו‎ (_bis_)] _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ זכר ונקבה‎, assimilating Yahwist to Priestly-Code.――=3a.= The distinction to be expected between clean and unclean birds is made imperfectly by _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ and Peshiṭtå, which insert הטהור‎ after השמים‎; and fully by LXX, which goes further and adds the words καὶ ἀπὸ παντῶν τῶν πετεινῶν τῶν μὴ καθαρῶν δύο δύο ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ. Ball accepts this, thinking the omission in Massoretic Text due to homoioteleuton. But the phrase זכר ונקבה‎ shows that ³ᵃ has been manipulated; and it is on the whole more likely that it is entirely redactional. Birds _may_ be included in the הבהמה‎ of verse ²; though Budde’s parallels (Exodus 8¹³ ᶠᐧ 9⁹ᐧ ²²ᐧ ²⁵, Jeremiah 32⁴³ 33¹⁰ᐧ ¹² 36²⁹, Psalms 36⁷) are not quite convincing.――=3b.= לְחַיּוֹת‎] Priestly-Code uses Hiphil (6¹⁹ ᶠᐧ).――זֶרַע‎] as Jeremiah 31²⁷.――=4.= לימים‎] On ‎ לְ‎ as denoting the _close_ of a term (compare verse ¹⁰), see Brown-Driver-Briggs, _s.v._ =6b.=――הַיְקוּם‎] a rare word (only 7²³, Deuteronomy 11⁶), meaning ‘that which subsists’ (√ קום‎). LXX ἀνάστεμα (other examples in Field, ἐξανάστασιν), Vulgate _substantia_, Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac phrase). On the form see Barth, _Die Nominalbildung in den Semitischen Sprachen_ 181; König ii. 146; Gesenius-Kautzsch § 85 _d_.

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=7‒10, 12, 16b, 17b, 22, 23.――Entrance into the ark and description of the Flood.=――Yahwist’s narrative has here been taken to pieces by the Redactor, who has fitted the fragments into a new connexion supplied by the combined accounts of Yahwist and Priestly-Code. The operation has been performed with such care and skill that it is still possible to restore the original order and recover a succinct and consecutive narrative, of which little if anything appears to be lost. The sequence of events is as follows: At the end of the seven days, the Flood comes (verse ¹⁰); Noah enters the ark (⁷) and Yahwe shuts him in (¹⁶ᵇ). Forty days’ rain ensues (¹²), and the waters rise and float the ark (¹⁷ᵇ). All life on the earth’s surface is extinguished; only Noah and those in the ark survive (²² ᶠᐧ).

The rearrangement here adopted (¹⁰ᐧ ⁷ᐧ ¹⁶ᵇᐧ ¹²ᐧ ¹⁷ᵇᐧ ²²ᐧ ²³) is due mainly to the acute criticism of Budde (_Die biblische Urgeschichte_ 258 ff.), who has probably added the last refinements to a protracted process of literary investigation. Some points (_e.g._ the transposition of verses ⁷ and ¹⁰) are, of course, more or less doubtful; others (_e.g._ ¹⁶ᵇ) are seen to be necessary as soon as the components of Yahwist have been isolated. The most difficult thing is to clear the text of the glosses which inevitably accompanied the work of redaction; but this also has been accomplished with a considerable degree of certainty and agreement amongst recent commentaries. The most extensive interpolations are part of verse ⁷, the whole of verses ⁸ and ⁹, and part of ²³. For details see the footnote.

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‎ =7.= וּבָנָיו――אִתּוֹ‎] The enumeration is in the manner of Priestly-Code (obsolete also אִתּוֹ‎); the words either replace וכל־ביתו‎ (as verse ¹), or are a pure insertion;――in either case redactional.――מי המבול‎] so 7¹⁰ (Yahwist), 9¹¹ (Priestly-Code) (contrast הַמּ׳ מַיִם‎, 6¹⁷ ‎ 7⁶).――מַבּוּל‎] LXX κατακλυσμός; Vulgate _diluvium_; Peshiṭtå and Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ טופנא‎ (Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ טובענא‎). The word has usually been derived from יבל‎, ‘streaming’ (see Gesenius _Thesaurus philologicus criticus Linguæ Hebrææ et Chaldææ Veteris Testamenti_, Dillmann); but is more probably a foreign word without Hebrew etymology (see Nöldeke _Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, xl. 732). Delitzsch (_Wo lag das Paradies?_ 156) proposed the derivation from Assyrian _nabâlu_, ‘destroy,’ which is accepted by König (ii. 153), Ball (page 53), and others. The Babylonian technical equivalent is _abûbu_, which denotes both a ‘light-flood’ and a ‘water-flood’: the double sense has been thought to explain Priestly-Code’s addition of מַיִם‎ to the word (see on 6¹⁷). A transformation of the one name into the other is, however, difficult to understand (see _Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament_³, 495¹, 546²). In Psalms ‎ 29¹⁰ מבול‎ appears to be used in a general sense without a historic reference to the Noachic Deluge (see Duhm, _ad loc._). ――=8, 9= present a mixed text. The distinction of clean and unclean points to Yahwist; but all other features (אלהים‎ [though a reading יהוה‎ seems attested by _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_, Vulgate, Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ, and MSS of LXX]; זכר ונקבה‎; the undiscriminated שנים שנים‎; the categorical enumeration [to which LXX adds the birds at the beginning of verse ⁸]) to Priestly-Code. In Priestly-Code the verses are not wanted, because they are a duplicate of ¹³⁻¹⁶: they must therefore be assigned to an interpolator (Budde al.).

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=10.= _At the end of the 7 days_ (compare verse ⁴)] The interval (we may suppose) was occupied in assembling the animals and provisioning the ark.――_the waters of the Flood_] הַמַּבּוּל‎, a technical name for the Deluge, common to both sources (_v.i._).――=7.= Noah enters the ark _on account of the ... Flood_: hence verse ⁷ presupposes verse ¹⁰. The same order of events is found in Priestly-Code (¹¹ᐧ ¹³) and in the Babylonian legend: “when the lords of the darkness send at evening a (grimy?) rain, enter into the ship and close thy door” (1. 88 f.).――=16b= (which must in any case follow immediately on verse ⁷) contains a fine anthropomorphism, which (in spite of the Babylonian parallel just cited) it is a pity to spoil by deleting יהוה‎ and making Noah the implicit subject (Klostermann _Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift_, i. 717).――=12.= _forty days and forty nights_] This determination, which in Yahwist expresses the entire duration of the Flood, seems to have been treated by Redactor as merely a stage in the increase of the waters (compare 8⁶). It obviously breaks the connexion of Priestly-Code. The Babylonian deluge lasted only six days and nights (1. 128).――=17b.= Parallel to ¹⁸ (Priestly-Code).――=22, 23.= A singularly effective description of the effect of the Flood, which is evidently conceived as universal.

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=10.= On the construction of the sentence, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 164 _a_, and on verse ⁶ below.――=12.= גֶּשֶׁם‎] (√ _ǧasuma_ = ‘be massive’) commonly used of the heavy winter rain (Ezra 10⁹, Canticles 2¹¹): see George Adam Smith _Historical Geography of the Holy Land_, 64.――=16b.= יהוה‎] LXX Κύριος ὁ θεός + τὴν κιβωτόν.――=17b.= Since ¹⁸ belongs to Priestly-Code (ויגברו‎, מאד‎), its duplicate ¹⁷ᵇ must be from Yahwist, where it forms a natural continuation of ¹². ¹⁷ᵃ, on the other hand (in spite of the 40 days), must be assigned to Priestly-Code (see page 164).――=22.= ‎ נשמת רוח חיים‎] is an unexampled combination, arising from confusion of a phrase of Yahwist (נשמת חיים‎, 2⁷) with one of Priestly-Code ‎ (רוח חיים‎, 6¹⁷ 7¹⁵). The verse being from Yahwist (compare חָרָבָה‎ instead of יַבָּשָׁה‎; מתו‎ instead of ויגוע‎, ²¹), רוח‎ is naturally the word to be deleted.――=23a= as a whole is Yahwist (מחה‎, יקום‎, על־פני האדמה‎); but the clause מאדם ... השמים‎ seems again (compare 6⁷) to be redactional, and the three words following must disappear with it. ²³ᵇ might be assigned with almost equal propriety to Yahwist or to Priestly-Code.――וַיִּמַֿח‎] (apocopated imperfect Qal) is a better attested Massoretic reading than וַיִּמַּח‎ (Niphal). It is easier, however, to change the pointing (to Niphal) than to supply ‎ יהוה‎ as subject, and the sense is at least as good.――Gunkel’s rearrangement (²³ᵃ{α}ᐧ ²²ᐧ ²³ᵇ) is a distinct improvement: of the two homologous sentences, that without וְ‎ naturally stands second.

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=VIII. (1b?), 2b, 3a, (4?), 6‒12, 13b. Subsidence of the waters.=――The rain from heaven having ceased, the Flood gradually abates. [The ark settles on some high mountain; and] Noah, ignorant of his whereabouts and unable to see around, sends out first a raven and then a dove to ascertain the condition of the earth.

The continuity of Yahwist’s narrative has again been disturbed by the redaction. Verse ⁶ᵃ, which in its present position has no point of attachment in Yahwist, probably stood originally before ²ᵇ, where it refers to the 40 days’ duration of the Flood (Wellhausen _Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments_² 5). It was removed by Redactor so as to make up part of the interval between the emergence of the mountain-tops and the drying of the ground.――There are two small points in which a modification of the generally accepted division of sources might be suggested. (1) ¹ᵇ (the wind causing the abatement of the waters) is, on account of אלהים‎, assigned to Priestly-Code. But the order ¹ᵇᐧ ²ᵃ is unnatural, and transpositions in Priestly-Code do not seem to have been admitted. The idea is more in accord with Yahwist’s conception of the Flood than with Priestly-Code’s; and but for the name ‎ אלהים‎ the half-verse might very well be assigned to Yahwist, and inserted between ²ᵇ and ³ᵃ. (2) Verse ⁴ is also almost universally regarded as Priestly-Code’s (see Budde 269 f.). But this leaves a lacuna in Yahwist between ³ᵃ and ⁶ᵇ, where a notice of the landing of the ark must have stood: on the other hand, ⁵ᵇ makes it extremely doubtful if Priestly-Code thought of the ark as stranded on a mountain at all. The only objection to assigning ⁴ to Yahwist is the chronology: if we may suppose the chronological scheme to have been added or retouched by a later hand (see page 168), there is a great deal to be said for the view of Hupfeld and Reuss that the remainder of the verse belongs to Yahwist.¹――The opening passage would then read as follows:

¹ It may be noted that in _Jubilees_ v. 28 no date is given for the landing of the ark.

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‎ =3a.= הלוך ושוב‎] Gesenius-Kautzsch § 113 _u_. LXX has misunderstood the idiom both here and in verse ⁷.

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=6a.= _At the end of 40 days_, =2b.= _the rain from heaven was restrained_; =1b.= _and Yahwe (?) caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters abated._ =3a.= _And the waters went on decreasing from off the earth_, =4.= _and the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat_.――On the landing-place of the ark, see page 166 below.

=6b‒12.= The episode of the sending out of the birds appears in many forms of the Deluge-tradition; notably in the Babylonian. It is here related as an illustration of Noah’s wisdom (Gunkel). Tuch quotes from Pliny, vi. 83 (on the Indians): “siderum in navigando nulla observatio; septentrio non cernitur; sed volucres secum vehunt, emittentes sæpius, meatumque earum terram petentium comitantur.”――=7.= _He sent out a raven_] The purpose of the action is not stated till verse ⁸; partly for this reason, partly because the threefold experiment with the dove is complete and more natural, the genuineness of the verse has been questioned (Wellhausen, Holzinger, Gunkel, al.). Dahse, _Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xxviii. 5 f., calls attention to the fact that in LXXᴹ the verse is marked with the obelus. The Babylonian account has three experiments, but with different birds (dove, swallow, raven).――=8.= _And he sent out a dove_] perhaps immediately; see LXX below. But if verse ⁷ be a later insertion, we must supply _and he waited 7 days_ (see verse ¹⁰).――=9.= The description of the return and admission of the dove is unsurpassed even in the Yahwistic document for tenderness and beauty of imagination.――=10.= _Seven other days_] implying a similar statement before either verse ⁷ or verse ⁸.――=11.= _a freshly plucked olive leaf_] The olive does not grow at great altitudes, and was said to flourish even under water (Tuch). But it is probable that some forgotten mythological significance attaches to the symbol in the Flood-legend (see Gunkel page 60). Compare the classical notices of the olive branch as an emblem of peace: Virgil, _Aeneid_, viii. 116 (_Paciferaeque manu ramum prætendit olivæ_); Livy, xxiv. 30, xxix. 16.――=12.= The third time the dove returns no more; and then at last――=13b.= Noah ventures to remove the _covering_ of the ark, and sees that the earth is dry.

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‎ =7.= הערב‎] on the article see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 126 _r_; but compare Smith’s note, _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_², 126.――LXX here supplies τοῦ ἰδεῖν εἰ κεκόπακεν τὸ ὕδωρ, as in verse ⁸.――ויצא יצוא ושוב‎] LXX καὶ ἐξελθὼν οὐχ ὑ πέστρεψεν; so Vulgate, Peshiṭtå (accepted by Ball): see on ³ᵃ.――=8.= מֵאִתּוֹ‎] LXX ὀπίσω αὐτοῦ (= אַֽחֲרָיו‎); assuming that both birds were sent forth on the same day.――=10.= וַיָּחֶל‎] compare וַיִּיָּחֶל‎, verse ¹² (_The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ has ויחל‎ both times). Both forms are incorrect: read in each case וַיְיַחֵל‎ (Budde, Dillmann, al.).――=13b.= ‎ מִכְסֵה‎] possibly described in Yahwist’s account of the building of the ark. Elsewhere only of the covering of the Tabernacle (Priestly-Code); but compare מְכַסֶּה‎, Ezekiel 27⁷.――חרבו‎] LXX ins. τὸ ὕδωρ ἀπό.

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=20‒22. Noah’s sacrifice.=――Yahwist’s account of the leaving of the ark has been suppressed. Noah’s first act is to offer a sacrifice, not of thanksgiving but (as verse ²¹ shows) of propitiation: its effect is to move the Deity to gracious thoughts towards the new humanity. The resemblance to the Babylonian parallel is here particularly close and instructive (see page 177): the incident appears also in the Greek and Indian legends.――=20.= _an altar_] Literally ‘slaughtering-place.’ The sacrificial institution is carried back by Yahwist to the remotest antiquity (see on 4³ ᶠᐧ 7² ᶠᐧ), but this is the first mention of the altar, and also of sacrifice by fire: see page 105 above.――עֹלֹת‎] _holocausts_,――that form of sacrifice which was wholly consumed on the altar, and which was naturally resorted to on occasions of peculiar solemnity (_e.g._ 2 Samuel 24²⁵).――=21.= _smelled the soothing odour_] ‎רֵיחַ נִיחֹחַ‎‎ (κνίση, _nidor_)¹ becomes a technical term of the Levitical ritual, and is never mentioned elsewhere except in Priestly-Code and Ezekiel. This, Gunkel points out, is the only place where Yahwe is actually described as _smelling_ the sacrifice; but compare 1 Samuel 26¹⁹. It is probably a refinement of the crude eudæmonism of the Babylonian story (see page 177 below); and it is doubtful how far it elucidates primitive Hebrew ideas of the effect of sacrifice. That “the pleasing odour is not the motive but merely the occasion of this gracious purpose” (Knobel), may be sound theology, but it hardly expresses the idea of the passage.――=21b= is a monologue (אֶל־לִבּוֹ‎).――כִּי יֵצֶר ‎וגו׳‎ (see on 6⁵) may be understood either as epexegetical of בַּֽעֲבוּר הָאָדָם‎ (a reason why Yahwe _might_ be moved to curse the ground, though he will not [Holzinger]), or as the ground of the promise _not_ to visit the earth with a flood any more. The latter is by far the more probable. The emphasis is on מִנְּעֻרָיו‎, _from his youth_; the innate sinfulness of man constitutes an appeal to the divine clemency, since it cannot be cured by an undiscriminating judgement like the Flood, which arrests all progress toward better things (compare Isaiah 54⁹).――=22.= The pledge of Yahwe’s patience with humanity is the regularity of the course of nature, in which good and bad men are treated alike (Matthew 5⁴⁵). A division of the year into six seasons (Rashi), or even into two halves (Delitzsch), is not intended; the order of nature is simply indicated by a series of contrasts, whose alternation is never more to be interrupted by a catastrophe like the Flood. This assurance closes Yahwist’s account of the Deluge. It rests on an interior resolve of Yahwe; whereas in Priestly-Code it assumes the form of a ‘covenant’ (9¹¹),――a striking instance of the development of religious ideas in the direction of legalism: compare Jeremiah 31³⁵ ᶠᐧ 33²⁰ ᶠᐧ ²⁵ ᶠᐧ.

¹ _Iliad_ i. 317: κνίση δ’ οὐρανὸν ἷκεν ἑλισσομένη περὶ καπνῷ; compare Ovid _Metamorphoses_ xii. 153.

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‎ =20.= ליהוה‎] LXX τῷ θεῷ.――=21.= יהוה‎] LXX Κύριος ὁ θεός (_bis_).――ריח ‎ הניחח‎] Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac phrase)――conflate?――לְקַלֵּל‎] a different verb from that used in 3¹⁷ 4¹¹ 5²⁹ (ארר‎). Holzinger points out that Piel of קלל‎ is never used with God as subject (compare Genesis 12³); and for this and other reasons regards ²¹ᵃ as an unskilful attempt to link the Noah of the Flood with the prophecy of 5²⁹. But ²¹ᵃ can only refer to the Flood, while the curse of 5²⁹ belongs to the past: moreover, an interpolator would have been careful to use the same verb. The sense given to קִלֵּל‎ is fully justified by the usage of Pual (Psalms 37²², Job 24¹⁸, Isaiah 65²⁰).――‎בעבור] LXX διὰ τὰ ἔργα, as 3¹⁷.――כי יצר וגו׳‎] LXX ὅτι ἔγκειται ἡ διάνοια τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐπιμελῶς κτλ. See on ‎ 6⁵.――=22.= עֹד‎] LXX omitted; Ball, עַד‎――.ישבתו‎] ‘come to an end’: see on 2².

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_The Flood according to Priestly-Code._

=VI. 9‒12. Noah’s piety; The corruption of the earth.=――=9.= _This is the genealogy of Noah_] The formula is usually taken as the heading of the section of Priestly-Code dealing with the Flood; but see on 9²⁸ ᶠᐧ.――Noah is characterised as _righteous_ (צַדִּיק‎) and _faultless_ ‎(תָּמִים‎): on the construction _v.i._ There is perhaps a correspondence between these two epithets and the description of the state of the world which follows; צדיק‎ being opposed to the ‘violence,’ and תמים‎ to the ‘corruption’ of verse ¹¹ ᶠᐧ. צדיק‎, a forensic term, denotes one whose conduct is unimpeachable before a judge; תמים‎ is sacerdotal in its associations (Exodus 12⁵, Leviticus 1³ etc.), meaning ‘free from defect,’ _integer_ (compare 17¹).――_in his generations_ (_v.i._)] _i.e._ alone among his contemporaries (compare 7¹). That Noah’s righteousness was only relative to the standard of his age is not implied.¹――_walked with God_] see on 5²². The expression receives a fuller significance from the Babylonian legend, where Ut-napištim, like the Biblical Enoch, is translated to the society of the gods (page 177 below).――=11 f.= וְהִנֵּה נִשְׁחָתָה‎] is the intentional antithesis to the וְהִנֵּה טוֹב מְאֹד‎ of 1³¹ (Delitzsch).――_All flesh had corrupted its way_] had violated the divinely-appointed order of creation. The result is _violence_ ‎(חָמָס‎, LXX ἀδικία)――ruthless outrage perpetrated by the strong on the weak. A “nature red in tooth and claw with ravin” is the picture which rises before the mind of the writer; although, as has been already remarked (page 129), the narrative of Priestly-Code contains no explanation of the change which had thus passed over the face of the world.

¹ So Jerome: “ut ostenderet non juxta justitiam consummatam, sed juxta generationis suæ eum justum fuisse justitiam.”

The fundamental idea of verse ¹¹ ᶠᐧ is the disappearance of the Golden Age, or the rupture of the concord of the animal world established by the decree of 1²⁹ ᶠᐧ. The lower animals contribute their share to the general ‘corruption’ by transgressing the regulation of 1³⁰, and commencing to prey upon each other and to attack man (see 9⁵): so Rashi. To restrict כל־בשר‎ to mankind (Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ, Tuch, Strack, Driver, Bennett al.) is therefore unnecessary and unwarranted. The phrase properly denotes ‘all living beings,’ and is so used in 8 out of the 13 occurrences in Priestly-Code’s account of the Flood (Driver _ad loc._). In 6¹⁹ 7¹⁵ᐧ ¹⁶ 8¹⁷ it means animals apart from man; but that in the same connexion it should also mean mankind apart from animals is not to be expected, and could only be allowed on clear evidence.――The difference of standpoint between Priestly-Code and Yahwist (6⁵) on this matter is characteristic.

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‎ =9.= צדיק תמים‎] (so Job 12⁴). The asyndeton is harsh; but it is hardly safe to remedy it on the authority of _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ (ותמים‎) and Vulgate, against LXX. To remove צדיק‎ as a gloss from Yahwist (7¹) (Ball) is too bold. Perhaps the sentence should be broken up into two clauses, one nominal and the other verbal: ‘Noah was a righteous man; perfect was he,’ etc.――The forensic sense of צדיק‎ given above may not be the original: see S. A. Cook, _The Journal of Theological Studies_, ix. 632¹, who adduces some evidence that it meant what was ‘due’ among a definite social group, and between it and its gods.――בְּדֹרֹתָיו‎] LXX ἐν τῇ γενέσει αὐτοῦ. The feminine plural is highly characteristic of Priestly-Code (Holzinger _Einleitung in den Hexateuch_ 341); but apparently always as a _real_ plural (series of generations): contrast the solitary use of singular in Priestly-Code, Exodus 1⁶. Here, accordingly, it seems fair to understand it, not of the individual contemporaries of Noah (Tuch, Wellhausen, Holzinger, al.), but of the successive generations covered by his lifetime. The resemblance to צדיק בדור הזה‎ (7¹) is adduced by Wellhausen (_Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels_⁶ 390) as a proof of Priestly-Code’s dependence on Yahwist.――=11.= הָאלהים‎] One of the few instances of Priestly-Code’s use of the article with א׳‎――=12.= אלהים‎] LXX Κύριος ὁ θεός.

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=13‒16. Directions for building the ark.=――=13.= Announcement in general terms of some vast impending catastrophe, involving _the end of all flesh_ (all living beings, as verse ¹²).――=14‒16.= Description of the Ark.――_An Ark_ (chest) _of gopher wood_] probably some resinous wood. In Hebrew תֵּבָה‎ is used only of Noah’s ark and the vessel in which Moses was saved (Exodus 2³ᐧ ⁵); the name _ark_ comes to us through Vulgate (_arca_), where, however, it is also applied to the ark of the testimony (Exodus 25¹⁰ etc.). The Babylonian Flood-narrative has the ordinary word for ship (_elippu_).――The vessel is to consist internally of _cells_ (literally ‘nests’), and is to be coated inside and out with _bitumen_ (compare Exodus 2³). Somewhat similar details are given of the ship of Ut-napištim (page 176). Asphalt is still lavishly applied in the construction of the rude boats used for the transport of naphtha on the Euphrates (see Cernik, quoted by Suess, _The Face of the Earth_, 27).――=15.= Assuming that the _cubit_ is the ordinary Hebrew cubit of six handbreadths (about 18 inches: see Kennedy, _A Dictionary of the Bible_, iv. 909), the dimensions of the ark are such as modern shipbuilding has only recently exceeded (see Bennett 140); though it is probably to be assumed that it was rectangular in plan and sections. That a vessel of these proportions would float, and hold a great deal (though it would not carry cannon!), it hardly needed the famous experiment of the Dutchman Peter Janson in 1609‒21 to prove (see Michaelis, _Orientalische und exegetische Bibliothek_ xviii. 27 f.).――=16.= The details here are very confused and mostly obscure. The word צֹהַר‎ (ἅπαξ λεγόμενον) is generally rendered ‘light’ or ‘opening for light,’――either a single (square) aperture (Tuch), or “a kind of casement running round the sides of the ark (except where interrupted by the beams supporting the roof) a little below the roof” (Driver, so Delitzsch, Dillmann, al.). Exegetical tradition is in favour of this view; but the material arguments for it (see Dillmann 141) are weak, and its etymological basis is doubtful (_v.i._). Others (Ewald, Gunkel, Gesenius-Buhl al.) take it to mean the _roof_ (literally ‘back’: Arabic _ẓahr_).¹ The clause _and to a cubit thou shalt finish it above_ is unintelligible as it stands: some suggestions are given in the footnote.――The _door_ of the ark is to be _in its_ (longer?) _side_; and the cells inside are to be arranged in three stories. The ship of Ut-napištim appears to have had six decks, divided into nine compartments (lines 61‒63).

¹ According to Jensen (_Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_, vi. 1, 487), the Babylonian ark had a dome-shaped roof (_muḫḫu_).

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‎ =13.= בָּא לְפָנַי‎] not (as Esther 9¹¹) ‘has come to my knowledge,’ but ‘has entered into my purpose.’ This is better than (with Dillmann) to take קֵץ בָּא‎ absolutely (as Amos 8²), and לפני‎ as ‘according to my purpose.’――מִפְּנֵיהֶם‎] _through them_; Exodus 8²⁰ 9¹¹, Judges 6⁶ etc.――[מַשְׁחִיתָם] את־הארץ‎ LXX καὶ τὴν γῆν; Vulgate _cum terra_; so Peshiṭtå, Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ⁻ᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ. As Olshausen says, we should expect מֵעַל ה׳‎ (מֵאֵת‎ [Graetz] is unsuitable). But the error probably lies deeper. Ball emends מַשְׁחִית אֹתָם וִאֵת־ה׳‎; Budde מַשְׁחִיחָם כי [הם] ‎ מַשְׁחִיתִם את־ה׳‎; Gunkel וְהִנָּם מַשְׁחִיתִם את־ה‎. Eerdmans (_Alttestamentliche Studien_, i. 29) finds a proof of original polytheism. He reads הִנֶנּוּ מַשְׁחִיתִם וגו׳‎: “we [the gods] are about to destroy the earth.”――=14.= תֵּבָה‎] LXX, Peshiṭtå κιβωτὸς; ♦Targum תיבותא‎. The word is the Egyptian _ṭeb(t)_ = ‘chest,’ ‘sarcophagus’ (θίβις, θίβη, in LXX of Exodus 2³ᐧ ⁵): see Gesenius _Thesaurus philologicus criticus Linguæ Hebrææ et Chaldææ Veteris Testamenti_; Erman, _Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, xlvi. 123. Jensen (_Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, iv. 272 f.), while admitting the Egyptian etymology, suggests a connexion with the Assyrian _ilippu ṭí-bi-tum_ (a kind of ship). I am informed by Dr. C. H. W. Johns that while the word is written as the determinative for ‘ship,’ it is not certain that it was pronounced _elippu_. He thinks it possible that it covers the word _tabû_, found in the phrase _ta-bi-e Bêl ilâni Marduk_ (Delitzsch _Assyrisches Handwörterbuch_ 699 a), which he is inclined to explain of the processional barques of the gods. If this conjecture be correct, we may have here the Babylonian original of Hebrew תֵּבָה‎. See _Cambridge Biblical Essays_ (1909), page 37 ff.――עֲצֵי־גֹפֶר‎] The old translators were evidently at a loss: LXX (ἐκ) ξύλων τετραγώνων; Vulgate _(de) lignis lævigatis_; Jerome _ligna bituminata_: the word being ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. Lagarde (_Semitica_ i. 64 f.; _Symmicta_ ii. 93 f.) considered it a mistaken contraction from גָפְרִית‎ (brimstone), or rather a foreign word of the same form which meant originally ‘pine-wood.’ Others (Bochart, al.) suppose it to contain the root of κυπάρισσος, ‘cypress,’ a wood used by the Phœnicians in shipbuilding, and by the Egyptians for sarcophagi (Delitzsch).――קִנִּים‎] Lagarde’s conjecture, קנים קנים‎ (_Onomastica Sacra_¹, ii. 95), has been happily confirmed from Philo, _Quaestiones in Genesis_ ii. 3 (_loculos loculos_: see Budde 255), and from a Palestinian Syriac Lectionary (Nestle, cited by Holzinger). On the idiom, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 123 _e_.――כֹּפֶר‎] also ἅπαξ λεγόμενον, = ‘bitumen’ (LXX, Vulgate, Peshiṭtå, Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ), Arabic _ḳufr_, Aramaic כופרא Assyrian _kupru_ (used in the Babylonian Flood-story). The native Hebrew word for ‘bitumen’ is חֵמָר‎ (11³ 14¹⁰, Exodus 2³).――=15.= אֹתָהּ‎] LXX ‎ אָת־הַתֵּבָה‎.――=16.= צֹהַר‎] LXX ἐπισυνάγων (reading צֹבֵר‎?); all other versions express the idea of _light_ (Aquila μεσημβρινόν, Symmachus διαφανές, Vulgate _fenestram_, Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac word), ‘windows,’ Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ ניהור‎). They connected it (as Aquila shows) with צָֽהֳרַיִם‎, ‘noon day’; but _if_ צהרים‎ means properly ‘summit’ (see Gesenius-Buhl; Brown-Driver-Briggs, _s.v. _), there seems nothing in Hebrew to connect the root with the idea of light. The meaning ‘back’ is supported by Arabic _ẓahr_.――ואל־אמה תְּכַלֶּנָּה מלמעלה‎] The suffix may refer either to the צהר‎ (whose gender is unknown: compare König _Historisch-comparative Syntax der hebräischen Sprache_ page 163) or to the תֵּבָה‎: the latter is certainly most natural after כִּלָּה‎. The prevalent explanation――that the cubit indicates either the breadth of the light-opening, or its distance below the roof (see Dillmann)――is mere guess-work. Budde (following Wellhausen) removes the first three words to the end of the verse, rendering: “and according to the cubit thou shalt finish it (the ark)”: Dillmann objects that this would require הָאמה‎. Ball reads וְאֶל־אָרְכָּהּ תְכַסֶּנָּה מל׳‎, “and for its (the ark’s) whole length thou shalt cover it above”; Gunkel: ‎ ואל־א׳ תְּגֻלֶּנָה‎, “and on a pivot (see Isaiah 6⁴) thou shalt make it (the roof) revolve,”――a doubtful suggestion.

♦ duplicate word “Targum” removed

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=17‒22. The purpose of the ark.=――Gunkel thinks that verse ¹⁷ commences a second communication to Noah; and that in the source from which Priestly-Code drew, the construction of the ark was recorded before its purpose was revealed (as in the parallel account of Yahwist: see on 7¹). That, of course, is possible; but that Priestly-Code slurred over the proof of Noah’s faith because he had no interest in _personal_ religion can hardly be supposed. There is really nothing to suggest that ¹⁷ ᶠᶠᐧ are not the continuation of ¹³⁻¹⁶.――=17.= _Behold I am about to bring the Flood_] הַמַּבּוּל‎: see above on 7⁷ (Yahwist), and in the Note below.――=18.= _I will establish my covenant, etc._] anticipating 9⁹ ᶠᶠᐧ. Delitzsch and Gunkel distinguish the two covenants, taking that here referred to as a special pledge to Noah of safety in the coming judgement; but that is contrary to the usage of Priestly-Code, to whom the בְּרִית‎ is always a solemn and permanent embodiment of the divine will, and never a mere occasional provision (Kraetzschmar, _Die Bundesvorstellung im Alten Testament_ 197 f.). The entering of the ark is therefore not the condition to be fulfilled by Noah _under_ the covenant, but the condition which makes the establishment of the promised covenant possible (Holzinger).――_Thou and thy sons, etc._] The enumeration is never omitted by Priestly-Code except in 8¹; compare 7¹³ 8¹⁶ᐧ ¹⁸: contrast Yahwist in 7¹.――=19 f.= One pair of each species of animals (fishes naturally excepted) is to be taken into the ark. The distinction of clean and unclean kinds belongs on the theory of Priestly-Code to a later dispensation――=20.= The classification (which is repeated with slight variations in 7¹⁴ᐧ ²¹ 8¹⁹ 9² ᶠᐧ ¹⁰) here omits wild beasts (חַיָּה‎): _v.i._ on verse ¹⁹.――יָבֹאוּ‎ does not necessarily imply that the animals came of themselves (Rashi, Abraham Ibn Ezra, al.), any more than תָּבִיא‎ (verse ¹⁹) necessarily means that Noah had to catch them.――=21.= _all food which is_ (or _may be_) _eaten_] according to the prescriptions of 1²⁹ ᶠᐧ.――=22.= _so did he_] the pleonastic sentence is peculiar to Priestly-Code; compare especially Exodus 40¹⁶ (also Exodus 7⁶ 12²⁸ᐧ ⁵⁰ 39³²ᐧ ⁴² ᶠᐧ, Numbers 1⁵⁴, and often).

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‎ =17.= ואני הנני‎] compare Driver _The Journal of Philology_ xi. ‎ 226.――המבול מַיִם‎ (compare 7⁶)] The מים‎ is certainly superfluous grammatically, but על־הארץ‎ is necessary to the completeness of the sentence. LXX omits מים‎ in 7⁶, and inserts it in 9¹¹ᵇ (Priestly-Code). Whether it be an explanatory gloss of the unfamiliar מבול‎ (so most), or a peculiar case of nominal apposition (see Driver _A Treatise on the use of the Tenses in Hebrew_ § 188), it is difficult to decide: on the idea that it is meant to distinguish the water-flood from the light-flood, see above, page 154. The pointing מִיָּם‎ (Michaelis al.) is objectionable on various grounds: for one thing, Priestly-Code never speaks of the Flood as coming ‘from the sea.’ Yahwist’s phrase is מי המבול‎: 7⁷ᐧ ¹⁰; compare 9¹¹ᵃ (Priestly-Code).――לְשֶׂחֵת‎] _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_, לשחית‎; but elision of ה‎ in Hiphil is unusual: some Samaritan MSS have לחשחית‎ (Ball).――יִגְוַע‎] ‘expire,’――peculiar to Priestly-Code in Hexateuch. (compare 7²¹ 25⁸ᐧ ¹⁷ 35²⁹ 49³³,――12 total in all); elsewhere only in poetry (Holzinger _Einleitung in den Hexateuch_ ‎ 341).――=19.= הָחַי‎] (on anomalous pointing of article, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 35 _f_ (1)). _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ reads החיה‎ as in 8¹⁷; and so LXX, which takes the word in the limited sense of wild animals, reading [καὶ ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν κτηνῶν καὶ ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν ἑρπετῶν] καὶ ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν θηρίων] (see 7¹⁴ᐧ ²¹ 8¹⁹).――שׁנים‎] LXX, Peshiṭtå שנים שנים‎ as in 7⁹ᐧ ¹⁵. So also verse ²⁰.――=20.= מכל־רמש‎] Inserted וְ‎ with _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_, LXX, Peshiṭtå, Vulgate, Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ; the וְ‎ is necessary to the sense.――LXX has כל‎ before each class, but Massoretic Text rightly confines it to the heterogeneous רמש‎ (Holzinger). For רמש האדמה‎, _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_, LXX have אשר רמש על הא׳‎.――=21.= לאכלה‎] see on 1²⁹.――=22.= אלהים‎] LXX Κύριος ὁ θεός.

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=VII. 6, 11, 13‒17a. Commencement of the Flood.=――These verses (omitting ¹⁶ᵇ [Yahwist]) appear to form an uninterrupted section of the Priestly narrative, following immediately on 6²².――=6.= Date of the Flood by the year of Noah’s life. The number 600 is a Babylonian _ner_; it has been thought that the statement rests ultimately on a Babylonian tradition.――=11.= This remarkably precise date introduces a sort of diary of the Flood, which is carried through to the end: see below, page 167 f. Verse ⁶, though consistent with ¹¹, is certainly rendered superfluous by it; and it is not improbable that we have here to do with a fusion of authorities within the Priestly tradition (page 168).――_the fountains of the Great Deep_] (תְּהוֹם רַבָּה‎: see on 1²). Outbursts of subterranean water are a frequent accompaniment of seismic disturbances in the alluvial districts of great rivers (Suess, 31‒33); and a knowledge of this physical fact must have suggested the feature here expressed. In accordance with ancient ideas, however, it is conceived as an eruption of the subterranean ocean on which the earth was believed to rest (see page 17). At the same time _the windows of heaven were opened_] allowing the waters of the heavenly ocean to mingle with the lower. The Flood is thus a partial undoing of the work of creation; although we cannot be certain that the Hebrew writer looked on it from that point of view. Contrast this grandiose cosmological conception with the simple representation of Yahwist, who sees nothing in the Flood but the result of excessive rain.

Gunkel was the first to point out the poetic character and structure of ¹¹ᵇ: note the phrase תהום רבה‎ (Amos 7⁴, Isaiah 51¹⁰, Psalms 36⁷), and the _parallelismus membrorum_. He considers the words a fragment of an older version of the legend which (like the Babylonian) was written in poetry. A similar fragment is found in 8².

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=6.= On the syntax of the time-relation, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 164 _a_.――מַיִם‎] see 6¹⁷.――=11.= בשנת――שנה‎] ‘in the year of 600 years’; compare Gesenius-Kautzsch § 134 _o_.――For ‘17th day’ LXX has ‘27th’; see page 167 below.――אֲרֻבֹּת השמים‎] 8², Malachi 3¹⁰, ‎ = א׳ בשמים‎, 2 Kings 7²ᐧ ¹⁹ = מִמָּרוֹם‎, Isaiah 24¹⁸. Apart from these phrases the word א׳‎ is rare, and denotes a latticed opening, Hosea 13³, Isaiah 60⁸, Ecclesiastes 12³. Here it can only mean ‘sluices’; the καταράκται of LXX “unites the senses of waterfalls, trap-doors, and sluices” (Delitzsch).

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=13.= _On that very day_] continuing verse ¹¹. The idea that all the animals entered the ark on one day (Yahwist allows a week) has been instanced as an example of Priestly-Code’s love of the marvellous (Holzinger, Gunkel).――=14‒16.= See on 6¹⁹ ᶠᐧ.――=17a.= _the Flood came upon the earth_] as a result of the upheaval, verse ¹¹.――The words _forty days_ are a gloss based on 7⁴ᐧ ¹² (_v.i._); the Redactor treating Yahwist’s forty days as an episode in the longer chronology: see on verse ¹² (Yahwist).

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‎ =13.= בעצם היום הזה‎] 17²³ᐧ ²⁶, Exodus 12¹⁷ᐧ ⁴¹ᐧ ⁵¹, Leviticus 23¹⁴ᐧ ²¹ᐧ ²⁸ᐧ ²⁹ᐧ ³⁰, Deuteronomy 32⁴⁸, Joshua 5¹¹ (all Priestly-Code); Holzinger _Einleitung in den Hexateuch_ ‎ 346.――שְׁלשֶׁת‎] irregular gender: Gesenius-Kautzsch § 97 _c_.――אִתָּם‎] Better as LXX, Peshiṭtå אִתּוֹ‎ (8¹⁶ᐧ ¹⁸).――=14.= הַחַיָּה‎] distinguishing wild beasts from domestic (compare verse ²¹); see on 6¹⁹.――כל צפור ‎ וגו׳‎] LXX omitted. Compare Ezekiel 17²³ 39⁴.――=17a.= ארבעים יום‎] Budde (264) ingeniously suggests that the last three consonants of the gloss ([ארבע]מים‎) represent the genuine מַיִם‎ of Priestly-Code (6¹⁷ 7⁶). LXX adds וארבעים לילה‎. The half-verse cannot be assigned to Yahwist, because it would be a mere repetition of verse ¹².

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=18‒21, 24. Magnitude and effect of the Flood.=――While Yahwist confines himself to what is essential――the extinction of life――and leaves the universality of the Flood to be inferred, Priestly-Code not only asserts its universality, but so to speak proves it, by giving the exact height of the waters above the highest mountains.――=18, 19.= _prevailed_] גָּבַר‎, literally ‘be strong’ (LXX ἐπεκράτει, Aquila ἐνεδυναμώθη). The Flood is conceived as a contest between the water and the dry land.――=20.= _fifteen cubits_] is just half the depth of the ark. The statement is commonly explained in the light of 8⁴: when the Flood was at its height the ark (immersed to half its depth, and therefore drawing fifteen cubits of water) was just over one of the highest mountains; so that on the very slightest abatement of the water it grounded! The explanation is plausible enough (on the assumption that 8⁴ belongs to Priestly-Code); but it is quite as likely that the choice of the number is purely arbitrary.――=24.= _150 days_] the period of ‘prevalence’ of the Flood, reckoned from the outbreak (verse ¹¹): see page 168.

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‎ =19.= וַיְכֻסּוּ‎] LXX וַיְכַסּוּ‎, with מַיִם‎ as subject (better). So verse ‎ ²⁰.――=20.= גָּבְרוּ‎] LXX גָּבְהוּ‎ (ὑψώθη), is preferable to Massoretic Text (compare Psalms 103¹¹).――הֶהָרִים‎] LXX (and Peshiṭtå) add τὰ ὑψηλά as in ¹⁹.――=21.= וכל האדם‎] here distinguished from כל־בשר‎.

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=VIII. 1, 2a, 3b‒5, 13a, 14. Abatement of the Flood.=――The judgement being complete, God remembers the survivors in mercy. The Flood has no sooner reached its maximum than it begins to abate (³ᵇ), and the successive stages of the subsidence are chronicled with the precision of a calendar.――=1.= _remembered_] in mercy, as 19²⁹ 30²² etc. The inclusion of the animals in the kindly thought of the Almighty is a touch of nature in Priestly-Code which should not be overlooked.――=1b.= The mention of the wind ought certainly to follow the arrest of the cause of the Deluge (²ᵃ). It is said in defence of the present order that the sending of the wind and the stopping of the elemental waters are regarded as simultaneous (Dillmann); but that does not quite meet the difficulty. See, further, page 155 above.――=3b.= _at the end of the 150 days_] (7²⁴). See the footnote.――=4.= The resting of the ark.――_on (one of) the mountains of ’Ărārāṭ_] which are probably named as the highest known to the Hebrews at the time of writing; just as one form of the Indian legend names the Himalayas, and the Greek, Parnassus. Araraṭ (Assyrian _Urarṭu_) is the North-east part of Armenia; compare 2 Kings 19³⁷ = Isaiah 37³⁸, Jeremiah 51²⁷. The name _Mount_ Araraṭ, traditionally applied to the highest peak (Massis, Agridagh: _c._ 17, 000 feet) of the Armenian mountains, rests on a misunderstanding of this passage.

The traditions regarding the landing-place of the ark are fully discussed by Lenormant _Les Origines de l’histoire_² ii. 1 ff.: compare Tuch 133‒136; Nöldeke _Untersuchungen zur Kritik des Alte Testament_ 145 ff.――The district called Araraṭ or Urarṭu is properly that named in Armenian _Ayrarat_, and is probably identical with the country of the Alarodians of Herodotus iii. 94, vii. 79. It is the province of Armenia lying North-east of Lake Van, including the fertile plain watered by the Araxes, on the right (South-west) side of which river Mt. Massis rises.¹ Another tradition, represented by Berossus (page 177 below) and Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ Peshiṭtå קַרְדּוּ‎², locates the mountain in Kurdistan, viz. at Ǧebel Ǧûdî, which is a striking mountain South-west of Lake Van, commanding a wide view over the Mesopotamian plain. This view is adopted in the Koran (Surah xi. 46), and has become traditional among the Moslems.――The ‘mountain of Niṣir’ of the cuneiform legend lies still further south, probably in one of the ranges between the Lower Zab and the next tributary to the South, the Adhem (Radânu) (Streck, _Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, xv. 272). Tiele and Kosters, however (_Encyclopædia Biblica_, 289), identify it with Elburz, the sacred mountain of the Iranians (South of the Caspian Sea); and find a trace of this name in the μέγα ὄρος κατὰ τὴν Ἀρμενίαν Βάρις λεγόμενον indicated as the mountain of the ark by Nicolaus Damascenus (Josephus _Antiquities of the Jews_ i. 95).――What the original Hebrew tradition was, it is impossible to say. The writers just named conjecture that it was identical with the Babylonian, Araraṭ being here a corruption of _Hara haraiti_ (the ancient Iranian name of Elburz), which was afterwards confused with the land of Urarṭu. Nöldeke and Holzinger think it probable that Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ and Peshiṭtå preserve the oldest name (Ḳardu), and that Araraṭ is a correction made when it was discovered that the northern mountains are in reality higher than those of Kurdistan.

¹ “Ararat regio in Armenia campestris est, per quam Araxes fluit, incredibilis ubertatis, ad radices Tauri montis, qui usque illuc extenditur.” Jerome on Isaiah 37³⁸.

² Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ has both קרדוניא‎ and ארמניא‎, as has Berossus.

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=1.= The addition of LXX καὶ παντῶν τῶν πετεινῶν καὶ παντῶν τῶν ἑρπετῶν is here very much in place.――וַיָּשֹׁכּוּ‎] The √ is rare and late: Numbers 17²⁰ (Priestly-Code), Jeremiah 5²⁶, Esther 2¹ ‎ 7¹⁰.――=3b.= מקצה חמשים‎] Read מקץ החמשים‎ (Strack, Holzinger, Gunkel). _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ מקץ ח׳‎.――=4.= For 17th LXX has 27th (7¹¹).

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=5.= _the tops of the mountains_] _i.e._ (as usually explained) the other (lower) mountains. The natural interpretation would be that the statement is made absolutely, from the viewpoint of an imaginary spectator; in which case it is irreconcilable with verse ⁴ (compare Hupfeld _Die Quellen der Genesis und die Art ihrer Zusammensetzung_ 16 f.).――=13a, 14.= On New Year’s day the earth’s surface was uncovered, though still moist; but not till the 27th of the 2nd month was it _dry_ (_arefacta_: compare Jeremiah 50³⁸).

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‎ =5.= היו הלוך וחסור‎] ‘went on decreasing’ (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 113 _u_); less idiomatic than ³ᵃ (Yahwist).――_Tenth_] LXX _eleventh_.――=13a.= After שנה‎ LXX adds לחיי נח‎ (7¹¹).

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=15‒19. Exit from the ark: blessing on the animals.=――=17b.= A renewal of the benediction of 1²², which had been forfeited by the excesses before the Flood. The corresponding blessing on man is reserved for 9¹ ᶠᶠᐧ.――=19.= The animals leave the ark _according to their families_,――an example of Priestly-Code’s love of order.

The _Chronology of the Flood_ presents a number of intricate though unimportant problems.――The Dates, according to Massoretic Text and LXX,¹ are as follows:

1. Commencement of Flood, 600th year, 2nd month, 17th day (LXX 27th)

2. Climax (resting of ark), 600th year, 7th month, 17th day (LXX 27th)

3. Mountain tops visible, 600th year, 10th (LXX 11th) month, 1st day

4. Waters dried up 601st year, 1st month, 1st day

5. Earth dry 601st year, 2nd month, 27th day

¹ _Jubilees_ v. 23‒32 (compare vi. 25 f.) adds several dates, but otherwise agrees with Massoretic Text, except that it makes the Flood commence on the 27th, gives no date for the resting of the ark, and puts the drying of the earth on the 17th, and the opening of the ark on the 27th day of the 2nd month.

The chief points are these: (a) In LXX the duration of the Flood is exactly 12 months; and since the 5 months between (1) and (2) amount to 150 days (7²⁴ 8³), the basis of reckoning is presumably the Egyptian _solar_ year (12 months of 30 days + 5 intercalated days). The 2 months’ interval between (3) and (4) also agrees, to a day, with the 40 + 21 days of 8⁶⁻¹² (Yahwist). In Massoretic Text the total duration is 12 months + 10 days; hence the reckoning appears to be by _lunar_ months of _c._ 29½ days, making up a solar year of 364 days.¹――(b) The Massoretic scheme, however, produces a discrepancy with the 150 days; for 5 lunar months fall short of that period by two or three days. Either the original reckoning was by solar months (as in LXX), or (what is more probable) the 150 days belong to an older computation independent of the Calendar.² It has been surmised that this points to a 10 months’ duration of the Flood (150 days’ increase + 150 days’ subsidence); and (Ewald, Dillmann) that a trace of this system remains in the 74 days’ interval between (2) and (3), which amounts to about one-half of the period of subsidence.――(c) Of the separate data of the Calendar no satisfactory explanation has yet been given. The only date that bears its significance on its face is the disappearance of the waters on the 1st day of the year; and even this is confused by the trivial and irrelevant distinction between the drying up of the waters and the drying of the earth. Why the Flood began and ended in the 2nd month, and on the 17th or 27th day, remains, in spite of all conjectures, a mystery.³ (d) The question whether the months are counted from the old Hebrew New Year in the autumn, or, according to the post-Exilic (Babylonian) calendar, from the spring, has been discussed from the earliest times, and generally decided in favour of the former view (_Jubilees_, Josephus _Antiquities of the Jews_ i. 80, Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ, Rashi, and most).⁴ The arguments on one side or the other have little weight. If the second autumn month (Marchešwan) is a suitable time for the commencement of the Flood, because it inaugurates the rainy season in Palestine and Babylonia, it is for the same reason eminently unsuitable for its close. Priestly-Code elsewhere follows the Babylonian calendar, and there is no reason to suppose he departs from his usual procedure here (so Tuch, Gunkel, al.).――(e) The only issue of real interest is how much of the chronology is to be attributed to the original Priestly Code. If there be two discordant systems in the record, the 150 days might be the reckoning of Priestly-Code, and the Calendar a later adjustment (Dillmann); or, again, the 150 days might be traditional, and the Calendar the work of Priestly-Code himself (Gunkel). On the former (the more probable) assumption the further question arises whether the additions were made before or after the amalgamation of Yahwist and Priestly-Code. The evidence is not decisive; but the divergences of LXX from Massoretic Text seem to prove that the chronology was still in process of development after the formation of the Canon.――See Dahse, _Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xxviii. 7 ff., where it is shewn that a group of Greek MSS agree closely with _Jubilees_, and argued (but unconvincingly) that the original reckoning was a solar year, beginning and ending with the 27th of the 2nd month.

¹ So _Jubilees_ vi. 32. Compare Charles’s Notes, pages 54 f. and 56 f.

² That it is a later redactional addition (Holzinger) is much less likely.

³ King (_The Journal of Theological Studies_, v. 204 f.) points out the probability that in the triennial cycle of Synagogue readings the Parasha containing the Flood-story fell to be read _about_ the 17th Iyyar. This might conceivably have suggested the starting-point of the Calendar (but if so it would bring down the latter to a somewhat late period), or a modification of an original 27th (LXX), which, however, would itself require explanation.

⁴ See Delitzsch 175 f., 183, 184; Dillmann 129 f.

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‎ =15.= אלהים‎] LXX Κύριος ὁ θεός.――=17.= _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_, LXX, Peshiṭtå read וְכל־החיה‎; so verse ¹⁹.――הוצא‎] Why Qrê substitutes in this solitary instance הַיְצֵא‎ is not clear: see König i. page 641.――וּפָרוּ וְרָבוּ‎] LXX וּפְרוּ וּרְבוּ‎ (Improved), omitting the previous ושרצו בארץ‎. This is perhaps the better text: see on 9¹ ᶠᶠᐧ Vulgate reads the whole as Improved.――=19.= כל־הרמש――רמש‎] LXX (better) וכל־הבהמה וכל־העוף וכל הרֶפֶשׂ הרֹמֵשׂ‎.――למשפחתיהם‎] (Jeremiah 15³); the plural of מין‎ (Priestly-Code’s word in chapter 1) is not in use (Holzinger).

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=IX. 1‒7. The new world-order.=――The religious significance of the Flood to the mind of the Priestly writers appears in this and the following sections. It marks the introduction of a new and less ideal age of history, which is that under which mankind now lives. The original harmonious order of nature, in which all forms of slaughter were prohibited, had been violated by both men and animals before the Flood (see on 6¹¹ ᶠᐧ). This is now replaced by a new constitution, in which the slaughter of animals for human food is legalised; and only two restrictions are imposed on the bloodthirsty instincts of the degenerate creatures: (1) Man may not eat the ‘life’ of an animal, and (2) human blood may not be shed with impunity either by man or beast.

The Rabbinical theologians were true to the spirit of the passage when they formulated the idea of the ‘Noachic commandments,’ binding on men generally, and therefore required of the ‘proselytes of the gate’; though they increased their number. See Schürer, iii. 128 f.

Verses ¹⁻⁷, both in substance and expression (compare לכם יהיה לאכלה‎, ‎ נתתי לכם את־כל‎, and especially ירק עשב‎), form a pendant to 1²⁹ ᶠᐧ We have seen (page 35) that these verses are supplementary to the cosmogony; and the same is true of the present section in relation to the story of the Flood. It does not appear to be an integral part of the Deluge tradition; and has no parallel (as verses ⁸⁻¹⁶ have) in Yahwist or the Babylonian narrative (Gunkel). But that neither this nor 1²⁹ ᶠᐧ is a secondary addition to Priestly-Code is clear from the phraseology here, which is moulded as obviously on 1²²ᐧ ²⁷ ᶠᐧ as on 1²⁹ ᶠᐧ. To treat 9⁴⁻⁶ as a later insertion (Holzinger) is arbitrary. On the contrary, the two passages represent the characteristic contribution of Priestly-Code to the ancient traditions.

=1.= An almost verbal repetition of 1²⁸. The wives of Noah and his sons are not mentioned, women having no religious standing in the Old Testament (so verse ⁸). It is perhaps also significant that here (in contrast to 1²²) the animals are excluded from the blessing (though not from the covenant――verses ¹⁰ᐧ ¹²ᐧ ¹⁵ ᶠᶠᐧ).――=2.= Man’s ‘dominion’ over the animals is re-established, but now in the form of _fear_ and _dread_ (compare Deuteronomy 11²⁵) towards him on their part.――_into your hand they are given_] conveying the power of life and death (Leviticus 26²⁵, Deuteronomy 19¹² etc.).――=3.= The central injunction: removal of the prohibition of animal food.――_moving thing that is alive_] an unusually vague definition of animal life.――Observe Priestly-Code’s resolute ignoring of the distinction between clean and unclean animals.――=4.= The first restriction. Abstention from eating blood, or flesh from which the blood has not been drained, is a fundamental principle of the Levitical legislation (Leviticus 7²⁷ 17¹⁰ᐧ ¹⁴); and though to our minds a purely ceremonial precept, is constantly classed with moral laws (Ezekiel 33²⁵ ᶠᐧ etc.). The theory on which the prohibition rests is repeatedly stated (Leviticus 17¹¹ᐧ ¹⁴, Deuteronomy 12²³): the blood is the life, and the life is sacred, and must be restored to God before the flesh can be eaten. Such mystic views of the blood are primitive and widespread; and amongst some races formed a motive not for abstinence, but for drinking it.¹ All the same it is unnecessary to go deeper in search of a reason for the ancient Hebrew horror of eating with the blood (1 Samuel 14³² ᶠᶠᐧ²).――=5, 6.= The second restriction: sanctity of human life. ‘Life’ is expressed alternately by דָּם‎ and נֶפֶשׁ‎.――On לנפשתיכם‎, _v.i._――_I will require_] exact an account of, or equivalent for (42²², Ezekiel 33⁶, Psalms 9¹³ etc.). That God is the avenger of blood is to Yahwist (chapter 4) a truth of nature; to Priestly-Code it rests on a positive enactment.――_from the hand of every beast_] see Exodus 21²⁸ ᶠᐧ.――=6a= is remarkable for its assonances and the perfect symmetry of the two members: שֹׁפֵךְ דַּם הָאָדָם | בָּאָדָם ‎דָּמוֹ יִשָּׁפֵךְ‎‎. It is possibly an ancient judicial formula which had become proverbial (Gunkel). The ♦Targum (_v.i._) read into the text the idea of judicial procedure; others (Tuch, al.) suppose the law of blood-revenge to be contemplated. In reality the manner of execution is left quite indefinite.――=6b.= The reason for the higher value set on the life of man. On the _image of God_ see on 1²⁶ ᶠᐧ.――=7.= The section closes, as it began, with the note of benediction.

¹ See _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_², 234 f.; Frazer, _The Golden Bough_², i. 133 f., 352 f.; Kennedy, _Encyclopædia Biblica_, 1544.

² It has been thought that the offence warned against is the barbarous African custom of eating portions of animals still alive (Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ, Rashi, Delitzsch, al.); but that is a mistake.

♦ duplicate word “Targum” removed

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=1.= LXX adds at end καὶ κατακυριεύσατε αὐτῆς, as 1²⁸.――=2.= ‎ בכל――ובכל‎] LXX, Peshiṭtå ובכל‎ (_bis_). The בְּ‎ cannot be that of specification (7²¹ 8¹⁷ 9¹⁰ᐧ ¹⁶ etc.), since no comprehensive category precedes; yet it is harsh to take it as continuing the sense of על‎ (LXX), and not altogether natural to render ‘along with’ (Dillmann).――נִתָּנוּ‎] _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ LXX נְתַתִּיו‎:――=3.= נתתי לכם את־כל‎] seems a slavish repetition from 1²⁹. We should at least expect the article, which _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ (הכל‎) supplies.――=4.= ‎ דמו‎ is an explanatory apposition (if not a gloss) to בנפשו‎; but LXX renders ἐν αἵματι ψυχῆς, and Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac phrase), Symmachus (οὗ σὺν ψυχῇ αἷμα αὐτοῦ) as a relative clause.――=5.= ‎ ואך‎ is suspicious after the preceding אך‎. _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ (ואת־דמכם‎) omits.――לנפשתיכם‎] usually taken as circumscription of genitive, emphasising the suffix: ‘_your_ blood, your own’――in contrast with the animals. It is better to render ‘according to your persons,’ _i.e._ individually;――“dem eloh. Sprachgebrauch entspricht distributive Fassung des ל‎ doch am besten” (Delitzsch).――מיד איש אחיו‎] ‘from the hand of one man that of another.’ The full expression would be מיד איש את־נפש אחיו‎ (Olshausen); but all languages use breviloquence in the expression of reciprocity. The construction is hardly more difficult than in 15¹⁰ 42²⁵ᐧ ³⁵; and an exact parallel occurs in Zechariah 7¹⁰. See Gesenius-Kautzsch § 139 _c_; Budde 283 ff. The ואחיו‎ of _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_, Peshiṭtå, Vulgate makes nonsense; LXX omits the previous ומיד האדם‎. It would be better to move the Athnach so as to commence a new clause with מיד איש‎.――=6.= באדם‎] Vulgate omitted; Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ בסהדין ממימר דיניא‎: Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ is still more explicit.――=7.= ורבו בה‎] Vulgate _et implete eam_ (as verse ¹). Read ורדו בה‎ after 1²⁸ (Nestle in Ball).

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=8‒17. The Covenant and its Sign.=――In Priestly-Code as in Yahwist (8²⁰⁻²²) the story of the Flood closes with an assurance that the world shall never again be visited by such a catastrophe; and in both the promise is absolute, not contingent on the behaviour of the creatures. In Priestly-Code it takes the form of a covenant between God and all flesh,――the first of two covenants by which (according to this writer) the relations of the Almighty to His creatures are regulated. On the content and scope of this Noachic covenant, see the concluding note, page 173 f.――=9.= _establish my covenant_] in fulfilment of 6¹⁸. Priestly-Code’s formula for the inauguration of the covenant is always ‎הֵקִים בְּרִית‎ or נָתַן בּ׳‎ (17², Numbers 25¹²) instead of the more ancient and technical כָּרַת בּ׳‎.――=11.= The essence of the covenant is that the earth shall never be devastated by a Flood. Whether its idea be exhausted by this assurance is a difficult question, on which see page 173 below.――=12‒17.= The sign of the covenant. “In times when contracts were not reduced to writing, it was customary, on the occasion of solemn vows, promises, and other ‘covenant’ transactions, to appoint a sign, that the parties might at the proper time be reminded of the covenant, and a breach of its observance be averted. Examples in common life: Genesis 21³⁰, compare 38¹⁷ ᶠᐧ” (Gunkel).¹ Here the sign is a natural phenomenon――the rainbow; and the question is naturally asked whether the rainbow is conceived as not having existed before (so Abraham Ibn Ezra, Tuch). That is the most obvious assumption, though not perhaps inevitable. That the laws of the refraction and reflection of light on which the rainbow depends actually existed before the time of Noah is a matter of which the writer may very well have been ignorant.――For the rest, the image hardly appears here in its original form. The brilliant spectacle of the upturned bow against the dark background of the retreating storm naturally appeals to man as a token of peace and good-will from the god who has placed it there; but of this thought the passage contains no trace: the bow is set in the cloud by God to remind Himself of the promise He has given. It would seem as if Priestly-Code, while retaining the anthropomorphism of the primitive conception, has sacrificed its primary significance to his abstract theory of the covenant with its accompanying sign. On the mythological origin of the symbol, see below.――=14‒16.= Explanation of the sign.――¹⁴ᵇ continues ¹⁴ᵃ: _and (when) the bow appears in the cloud_; the apodosis commencing with ¹⁵ (against Delitzsch).――The bow seems conceived as lodged once for all in the cloud (so Abraham Ibn Ezra), to appear at the right moment for recalling the covenant to the mind of God.――=16.= _an everlasting covenant_] so 17⁷ᐧ ¹³ᐧ ¹⁹, Exodus 31¹⁶, Leviticus 24⁸, Numbers 18¹⁹ 25¹³ (all Priestly-Code).

¹ Hence both of Priestly-Code’s covenants are confirmed by a sign: the Abrahamic covenant by circumcision, and this by the rainbow.

The idealisation of the rainbow occurs in many mythologies. To the Indians it was the battle-bow of Indra, laid aside after his contest with the demons; among the Arabs “Kuzah shoots arrows from his bow, and then hangs it up in the clouds” (Wellhausen _Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels_⁶ 311); by Homer it was personified as Ἶρις, the radiant messenger of the Olympians (_Iliad_ ii. 786, iii. 121; compare Ovid _Metamorphoses_ i. 270 f.), but also regarded as a portent of war and storm (xi. 27 f., xvii. 547 ff.). In the Icelandic Eddas it is the bridge between heaven and earth. A further stage of idealisation is perhaps found in the Babylonian Creation-myth, where Marduk’s bow, which he had used against Tiamat, is set in the heavens as a constellation. (See Jeremias _Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients_², 248; Dillmann 155 f.; Gunkel 138 f.; Driver 99).――These examples go far to prove a mythological origin of the symbolism of this passage. It springs from the imagery of the thunderstorm; the lightnings are Yahwe’s arrows; when the storm is over, His bow (compare Habakkuk 3⁹⁻¹¹, Psalms 7¹³ ᶠᐧ) is laid aside and appears in the sky as a sign that His anger is pacified. The connexion with the Flood-legend (of which there are several examples, though no Babylonian parallel has yet been discovered) would thus be a later, though still ancient, adaptation. The rainbow is only once again mentioned in Old Testament (Ezekiel 1²⁸ הקשת אשר יהיה בענן ביום הגשם‎: but see Sirach 43¹¹ ᶠᐧ 50⁷), and it is pointed out (by Wellhausen, al.) that elsewhere קֶשֶׁת‎ always denotes the bow as a weapon, never an arc of a circle.

With regard to the covenant itself, the most important question theologically is whether it includes the regulations of verses ¹⁻⁶, or is confined to the unconditional promise that there shall no more be a flood. For the latter view there is undoubtedly much to be said (see Valeton, _Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xii. 3 f.). Verses ¹⁻⁷ and ⁸⁻¹⁷ are certainly distinct addresses, and possibly of different origin (page 169); and while the first says nothing of a covenant, the second makes no reference to the preceding stipulations. Then, the sign of the covenant is a fact independent of human action; and it is undoubtedly the meaning of the author that the promise stands sure whether the precepts of ¹⁻⁷ be observed or not. On the other hand, it is difficult to believe that Priestly-Code, to whom the ברית‎ means so much, should have dignified by that name the negative assurance of verse ¹¹. In the case of the Abrahamic covenant, the ברית‎ marks a new ordering of the relations between God and the world, and is capable of being observed or violated by those with whom it is established. Analogy, therefore, is so far in favour of including the ordinances of ¹⁻⁷ in the terms of the covenant (so Isaiah 24⁵ ᶠᐧ). Kraetzschmar (_Die Bundesvorstellung im Alten Testament_ 192 ff.) solves the difficulty by the supposition that the idea of verses ⁸⁻¹⁷ is borrowed by Priestly-Code from Yahwist, and represents the notion of the covenant characteristic of that document. It is much simpler to recognise the existence of different tendencies within the priestly school; and we have seen that there are independent reasons for regarding verses ¹⁻⁷ as supplementary to the Deluge tradition followed by Priestly-Code. If that be the case, it is probable that these verses were inserted by the priestly author with the intention of bringing under the Noachic ברית‎ those elementary religious obligations which he regarded as universally binding on mankind.――On the conception of the ברית‎ in Yahwist and Priestly-Code, see chapters 15 and 17.

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‎ =10.= מכל‎] ‘as many as’; see on 6².――לכל חית הארץ‎] LXX omitted.――לְכל‎] perhaps = ‘in short’: compare 23¹⁰, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 143 _e_. The sense of ח׳ ה׳‎ = ‘animals’ in general, immediately after the same expression in the sense of ‘wild animals,’ makes the phrase suspicious (Holzinger).――=11.= מבול‎] _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ המבול‎; LXX adds מַיִם‎.――לשחת‎] _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ להשחית‎; so verse ¹⁵.――=12.= ‎ אלהים‎] LXX Κύριος ὁ θεός + (with Peshiṭtå) אל־נח‎.――=13.= נתתי‎] hardly historic perfect (‘I have set’), but either perfect of instant action (‘I do set’), or perfect of certainty (‘I will set’); see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 106 _i_, _m_, _n_.――=14.= בענני ענן‎] literally ‘when I cloud with cloud’; see Gesenius-Kautzsch §§ 52 _d_ and 117 _r_.――הקשת‎] LXX, Vulgate קשתי‎; so LXX in verse ¹⁶.――=15.= ‎ חיה‎] _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_, Peshiṭtå החיה ‎ אשר אתכם‎ (compare verse ¹²).――=16.= לִזְכֹּר‎ Peshiṭtå, Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ ‎ לְזֵכֶר‎.――בין אלהים‎] LXX ביני‎.

* * * * *

=28, 29. The death of Noah.=

The form of these verses is exactly that of the genealogy, chapter 5; while they are at the same time the conclusion of the תולדת נח‎ (6⁹). How much was included under that rubric? Does it cover the whole of Priestly-Code’s narrative of the Flood (so that תולדת‎ is practically equivalent to ‘biography’), or does it refer merely to the account of his immediate descendants in 6¹⁰? The conjecture may be hazarded that 6⁹ᐧ ¹⁰ 7⁶ 9²⁸ᐧ ²⁹ formed a section of the original book of תולדת‎, and that into this skeleton the full narrative of the Flood was inserted by one of the priestly writers (see the notes on 2⁴ᵃ). The relation of the assumed genealogy to that of chapter 5 would be precisely that of the תולדת‎ of Terah (11²⁷ ᶠᶠᐧ) to the תולדת‎ of Shem (11¹⁰⁻²⁶). In each case the second genealogy is extremely short; further, it opens by repeating the last link of the previous genealogy (in each case the birth of three sons, 5³² 6¹⁰); and, finally, the second genealogy is interspersed with brief historical notices. It may, of course, be held that the whole history of Abraham belongs to the תולדת‎ of Terah; that is the accepted view, and the reasons for disputing it are those mentioned on page 40 f. Fortunately the question is of no great importance.

* * * * *

‎ =29.= ויהי‎, Hebrew MSS (London Polyglott) and _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ ויהיו‎.

* * * * *

_The Deluge Tradition._

1. Next to cosmogonies, flood-legends present perhaps the most interesting and perplexing problem in comparative mythology. The wide, though curiously unequal, distribution of these stories, and the frequent occurrence of detailed resemblances to the biblical narrative, have long attracted attention, and were not unnaturally accepted as independent evidence of the strictly historical character of the latter.¹ On the question of the universality of the Deluge² they have, of course, no immediate bearing, though they frequently assert it; for it could never be supposed that the mere occurrence of a legend in a remote part of the globe proved that the Flood had been there. The utmost that could be claimed is that there had been a deluge coextensive with the primitive seat of mankind; and that the memory of the cataclysm was carried with them by the various branches of the race in their dispersion. But even that position, which is still maintained by some competent writers, is attended by difficulties which are almost insuperable. The scientific evidence for the antiquity of man all over the world shows that such an event (if it ever occurred) must have taken place many thousands of years before the date assigned to Noah; and that the tradition should have been preserved for so long a time among savage peoples without the aid of writing is incredible. The most reasonable line of explanation (though it cannot here be followed out in detail) is that the great majority of the legends preserve the recollection of local catastrophes, such as inundations, tidal waves, seismic floods accompanied by cyclones, etc., of which many historical examples are on record; while in a considerable number of cases these local legends have been combined with features due either to the diffusion of Babylonian culture or to the direct influence of the Bible through Christian missionaries.³ In this note we shall confine our attention to the group of legends most closely affiliated to the Babylonian tradition.

¹ Andree (_Die Flutsagen ethnographisch betrachtet_, 1891), who has collected between eighty and ninety such stories (of which he recognises forty-three as original and genuine, and twenty-six as influenced by the Babylonian) points out, _e.g._, that they are absent in Arabia, in northern and central Asia, in China and Japan, are hardly found anywhere in Europe (except Greece) or Africa, while the most numerous and remarkable instances come from the American continent (page 125 f.). The enumeration, however, must not be considered as closed: Naville (_Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, 1904, 251‒257, 287‒294) claims to have found fresh proof of an Egyptian tradition in a text of the Book of the Dead, containing the following words: “And further I (the god Tum) am going to deface all I have done; this earth will become water (or an ocean) through an inundation, as it was at the beginning” (_l.c._ page 289).

² On the overwhelming geological and other difficulties of such a hypothesis, see Driver 99 f.

³ See Andree, _l.c._ 143 ff.; Suess, _The Face of the Earth_, i. 18‒72 _passim_ Compare the discussion by Woods in _A Dictionary of the Bible_, ii. 17 ff.; and Driver _The Book of Genesis with Introduction and Notes_ 101 ff.――Lenormant, who once maintained the independence of the legends as witnesses to a primitive tradition, afterwards expressed himself with more reserve, and conceded the possibility that the Mexican and Polynesian myths might be distant echoes of a central legend, emanating ultimately from Babylonia (_Les Origines de l’histoire_² i. 471 f., 488 ff.).

2. Of the Babylonian story the most complete version is contained in the eleventh Tablet of the Gilgameš Epic.¹ Gilgameš has arrived at the Isles of the Blessed to inquire of his ancestor Utnapištim how he had been received into the society of the gods. The answer is the long and exceedingly graphic description of the Flood which occupies the bulk of the Tablet. The hero relates how, while he dwelt at Šurippak on the Euphrates, it was resolved by the gods in council to send the Flood (_abûbu_) on the earth. Ea, who had been present at the council, resolved to save his favourite Utnapištim; and contrived without overt breach of confidence to convey to him a warning of the impending danger, commanding him to build a ship (_elippu_) of definite dimensions for the saving of his life. The ‘superlatively clever one’ (_Atra-ḥasis_, a name of Utnapištim) understood the message and promised to obey; and was furnished with a misleading pretext to offer his fellow-citizens for his extraordinary proceedings. The account of the building of the ship (line 48 ff.) is even more obscure than Genesis 6¹⁴⁻¹⁶: it is enough to say that it was divided into compartments and was freely smeared with bitumen. The lading of the vessel, and the embarking of the family and dependants of Utnapištim (including artizans), with domestic and wild animals, are then described (line 81 ff.); and last of all, in the evening, on the appearance of a sign predicted by Šamaš the sun-god, Utnapištim himself enters the ship, shuts his door, and hands over the command to the steersman, Puzur-Bel (90 ff.). On the following morning the storm (magnificently described in lines 97 ff.) broke; and it raged for six days and nights, till all mankind were destroyed, and the very gods fled to the heaven of Anu and “cowered in terror like a dog.”

¹ Discovered by G. Smith, in 1872, among the ruins of Asshurbanipal’s library; published 1873‒4; and often translated since. See _Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament_², 55 ff.; Jensen _Die Kosmologie der Babylonier_, 368 ff.; Zimmern in Gunkel’s _Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit_, 423 ff.; Jensen _Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_, vi. 1, 116 ff. (the translation followed below); Ball _Light from the East_, 35 ff.; Jeremias _Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients_², 228 ff.; and the abridgments in Jastrow _The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_¹, 493 ff.; _Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament_³, 545 ff.; _Texte und Bilder_, i. 50 ff.

“When the seventh day came, the hurricane, the Flood, the battle-storm was stilled, Which had fought like a (host?) of men. The sea became calm, the tempest was still, the Flood ceased. When I saw the day, no voice was heard, And the whole of mankind was turned to clay. When the daylight came, I prayed, I opened a window and the light fell on my face, I knelt, I sat, and wept, On my nostrils my tears ran down. I looked on the spaces in the realm of the sea; After twelve double-hours an island stood out. At Nisir² the ship had arrived. The mountain of Nisir stayed the ship....” (line 130‒142).

² See page 166.

This brings us to the incident of the birds (146‒155):

“When the seventh day³ came I brought out a dove and let it go. The dove went forth and came back: Because it had not whereon to stand it returned. I brought forth a swallow and let it go. The swallow went forth and came back: Because it had not whereon to stand it returned. I brought forth a raven and let it go. The raven went forth and saw the decrease of the waters, It ate, it ... it croaked, but returned not again.”

³ From the landing.

On this Utnapištim released all the animals; and, leaving the ship, offered a sacrifice:

“The gods smelt the savour, The gods smelt the goodly savour The gods gathered like flies over the sacrificer” (160 ff.).

The deities then begin to quarrel, Ištar and Ea reproaching Bel for his thoughtlessness in destroying mankind indiscriminately, and Bel accusing Ea of having connived at the escape of Utnapištim. Finally, Bel is appeased; and entering the ship blesses the hero and his wife:

“‘Formerly Utnapištim was a man; But now shall Utnapištim and his wife be like to us the gods: Utnapištim shall dwell far hence at the mouth of the streams.’ Then they took me, and far away at the mouth of the streams they made me dwell” (202 ff.).⁴

⁴ Two fragments of another recension of the Flood-legend, in which the hero is regularly named Atra-ḥasis, have also been deciphered. One of them, being dated in the reign of Ammizaduga (_circa_ 1980 B.C.), is important as proving that this recension had been reduced to writing at so early a time; but it is too mutilated to add anything substantial to our knowledge of the history of the tradition (see _Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_, 288‒291). The other is a mere scrap of twelve lines, containing Ea’s instructions to Atra-ḥasis regarding the building and entering of the ark, and the latter’s promise to comply (_Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_, 256‒259). See _Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament_³, 551 f.――The extracts from Berossus preserved by Eusebius present the Babylonian story in a form substantially agreeing with that of the Gilgameš Tablets, though with some important variations in detail. See Eusebius _Chronicon_ i. (edited by Schoene, columns 19‒24, 32‒34: compare Müller, _Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum_ ii. 501 ff.).

3. The dependence of the biblical narrative on this ancient Babylonian legend hardly requires detailed proof. It is somewhat more obvious in the Yahwistic recension than in the Priestly; but there is enough in the common substratum of the two accounts to show that the Hebrew tradition as a whole was derived from Babylonia. Thus both Yahwist and Priestly-Code agree with the Babylonian story in the general conception of the Flood as a divine visitation, its universality (so far as the human race is concerned), the warnings conveyed to a favoured individual, and the final pacification of the deity who had caused the Deluge. Yahwist agrees with Babylonia in the following particulars: the entry of the hero into the ark _after_ the premonitory rain; the shutting of the door; the prominence of the number 7; the episode of the birds; the sacrifice; and the effect of its ‘savour’ on the gods. Priestly-Code has also its peculiar correspondences (though some of these may have been in Yahwist originally): _e.g._ the precise instructions for building the ark; the mention of bitumen (a distinctively Babylonian touch); the grounding of the ark on a mountain; the blessing on the survivors.¹ By the side of this close and marked parallelism, the material differences on which Nickel (page 185) lays stress――viz. as to (a) the chronology, (b) the landing-place of the ark, (c) the _details_ of the sending out of the birds, (d) the sign of the rainbow (absent in Babylonian), and (e) the name of the hero――sink into insignificance. They are, indeed, sufficient to disprove immediate literary contact between the Hebrew writers and the Gilgameš Tablets; but they do not weaken the presumption that the story had taken the shape known to us in Babylonia before it passed into the possession of the Israelites. And since we have seen (page 177) that the Babylonian legend was already reduced to writing about the time usually assigned to the Abrahamic migration, it is impossible to suppose that the Hebrew oral tradition had preserved an independent recollection of the historical occurrence which may be assumed as the basis of fact underlying the Deluge tradition.――The _differences_ between the two narratives are on this account all the more instructive. While the Genesis narratives are written in prose, and reveal at most occasional traces of a poetic original (8²² in Yahwist, 7¹¹ᵇ 8²ᵃ in Priestly-Code), the Babylonian epic is genuine poetry, which appeals to a modern reader in spite of the strangeness of its antique sentiment and imagery. Reflecting the feelings of the principal actor in the scene, it possesses a human interest and pathos of which only a few touches appear in Yahwist, and none at all in Priestly-Code. The difference here is not wholly due to the elimination of the mythological element by the biblical writers: it is characteristic of the Hebrew popular tale that it shuns the ‘fine frenzy’ of the poet, and finds its appropriate vehicle in the unaffected simplicity of prose recitation. In this we have an additional indication that the story was not drawn directly from a Babylonian source, but was taken from the lips of the common people; although in Priestly-Code it has been elaborated under the influence of the religious theory of history peculiar to that document (page lx f.). The most important divergences are naturally those which spring from the religion of the Old Testament――its ethical spirit, and its monotheistic conception of God. The ethical motive, which is but feebly developed in the Babylonian account, obtains clear recognition in the hands of the Hebrew writers: the Flood is a divine judgement on human corruption; and the one family saved is saved on account of the righteousness of its head. More pervasive still is the influence of the monotheistic idea. The gods of the Babylonian version are vindictive, capricious, divided in counsel, false to each other and to men; the writer speaks of them with little reverence, and appears to indulge in flashes of Homeric satire at their expense. Over against this picturesque variety of deities we have in Genesis the one almighty and righteous God,――a Being capable of anger and pity, and even change of purpose, but holy and just in His dealings with men. It is possible that this transformation supplies the key to some subtle affinities between the two streams of tradition. Thus in the Babylonian version the fact that the command to build the ark precedes the announcement of the Flood, is explained by the consideration that Ea cannot explicitly divulge the purpose of the gods; whereas in Yahwist it becomes a test of the obedience of Noah (Gunkel page 66). Which representation is older can scarcely be doubted. It is true, at all events, that the Babylonian parallel serves as a “measure of the unique grandeur of the idea of God in Israel, which was powerful enough to purify and transform in such a manner the most uncongenial and repugnant features” of the pagan myth (_ib._); and, further, that “the Flood-story of Genesis retains to this day the power to waken the conscience of the world, and was written by the biblical narrator with this pædagogic and ethical purpose” (_Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients_², page 252).

¹ See more fully Driver, page 106.

4. Of other ancient legends in which some traces of the Chaldean influence may be suspected, only a very brief account can here be given. The _Indian_ story, to which there is a single allusion in the Vedas, is first fully recorded in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, i. 8. 1‒10.¹ It relates how Manu, the first man, found one day in the water with which he performed his morning ablution a small fish, which begged him to take care of it till it should attain its full growth, and then put it in the sea. Manu did so, and in gratitude for its deliverance the fish warned him of the year in which the Flood would come, promising, if he would build a ship, to return at the appointed time and save him. When the Flood came the fish appeared with it; Manu attached the cable of his ship to the fish’s horn, and was thus towed to the mountain of the north, where he landed, and whence he gradually descended as the waters fell. In a year’s time a woman came to him, announcing herself as his daughter, produced from the offerings he had cast into the water; and from this pair the human race sprang. In a later form of the tradition (Mahābhārata, iii. 187. 2 ff.),² the Babylonian affinities are somewhat more obvious; but even in the oldest version they are not altogether negligible, especially when we remember that the fish (which in the Mahābhārata is an incarnation of Brahma) was the symbol of the god Ea.³――The _Greeks_ had several Flood-legends, of which the most widely diffused was that of Deukalion, best known from the account of Apollodorus (i. 7. 2 ff.).⁴ Zeus, resolved to destroy the brazen race, sends a heavy rain, which floods the greater part of Greece, and drowns all men except a few who escape to the mountain tops. But Deukalion, on the advice of his father Prometheus, had prepared a chest, loaded it with provisions, and taken refuge in it with his wife Pyrrha. After 9 days and nights they land on Parnassus; Deukalion sacrifices to Zeus and prays for a new race of men: these are produced from stones which he and his wife, at the command of the god, throw over their shoulders. The incident of the ark seems here incongruous, since other human beings were saved without it. It is perhaps an indication of the amalgamation of a foreign element with local Deluge traditions.――A _Syrian_ tradition, with some surprising resemblances to Priestly-Code in Genesis, has been preserved by the Pseudo-Lucian (_De dea Syra_, 12, 13). The wickedness of men had become so great that they had to be destroyed. The fountains of the earth and the flood-gates of heaven were opened simultaneously; the whole world was submerged, and all men perished. Only the pious Deukalion-Sisuthros⁵ was saved with his family in a great chest, into which as he entered all sorts of animals crowded. When the water had disappeared, Deukalion opened the ark, erected altars, and founded the sanctuary of Derketo at Hierapolis. The hole in the earth which swallowed up the Flood was shown under the temple, and was seen by the writer, who thought it not quite big enough for the purpose. In Usener’s opinion we have here the Chaldean legend localised at a Syrian sanctuary, there being nothing Greek about it except the name Deukalion.――A _Phrygian_ localisation of the Semitic tradition is attested by the epithet κιβωτός applied to the Phrygian Apameia (Kelainai) from the time of Augustus (Strabo, xii. 8. 13, etc.); and still more remarkably by bronze coins of that city dating from the reign of Septimius Severus. On these an open chest is represented, bearing the inscription ΝΩΕ, in which are seen the figures of the hero and his wife; a dove is perched on the lid of the ark, and another is flying with a twig in its claws. To the left the same two human figures are seen standing in the attitude of prayer.⁶ The late date of these coins makes the hypothesis of direct Jewish, or even Christian, influence extremely probable.――The existence of a _Phœnician_ tradition is inferred by Usener (248 ff.) from the discovery in Etruria and Sardinia of bronze models of ships with various kinds of animals standing in them: one of them is said to date from the 7th century B.C. There is no extant written record of the Phœnician legend: on Gruppe’s reconstruction from the statements of Greek mythographers see above, page 141.

¹ Translated by Eggeling, _Sacred Books of the East_, xii. 216 ff. See Usener, _Die Sintfluthsagen_ (_Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen_, iii.), 25 ff.

² Translated by Protap Chandra Roy (Calcutta, 1884), iii. 552 ff. See Usener, 29 ff.

³ Usener, however (240 ff.), maintains the entire independence of the Indian and Semitic legends.

⁴ The earliest allusion is Pindar, _Olympian_ 9. 41 ff. Compare Ovid, _Metamorphoses_ i. 244‒415; Pausanias i. 40. 1, x. 6. 2, etc. The incident of the dove (in a peculiar modification) appears only in Plutarch _De sollertia animalium_ 13.――Usener, 31 ff., 244 ff.

⁵ Text Δευκαλίωνα τὸν Σκύθεα, which Buttmann (_Mythologus_, i. 192) ingeniously emended to Δευκαλίωνα τὸν Σισυθέα――a modification of the Σίσιθρος of Abydenus.

⁶ See the reproductions in Usener, 45, and Jeremias _Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients_¹, 131, ²235.

5. There remains the question of the origin of this widespread and evidently very popular conception of a universal Deluge. That it embodies a common primitive tradition of an historic event we have already seen to be improbable. If we suppose the original story to have been elaborated in Babylonia, and to have spread thence to other peoples, it may still be doubtful whether we have to do “with a legend based upon facts” or “with a myth which has assumed the form of a history.” The mythical theory has been most fully worked out by Usener, who finds the germ of the story in the favourite mythological image of “the god in the chest,” representing the voyage of the sun-god across the heavenly ocean: similar explanations were independently propounded by Cheyne (_Encyclopædia Biblica_, 1063 f.) and Zimmern (_ib._ 1058 f.; _Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament_³, 555). Of a somewhat different order is the astrological theory advocated by Jeremias (249 ff.). The Babylonian astronomers were aware that in the course of ages the spring equinox must traverse the watery (southern) region of the Zodiac: this, on their system, signified a submergence of the whole universe in water; and the Deluge-myth symbolises the safe passage of the vernal sun-god through that part of the ecliptic.――Whatever truth there may be in these theories, it is certain that they do not account for the concrete features of the Chaldean legend; and if (as can hardly be denied) mythical motives are present, it seems just as likely that they were grafted on to a historic tradition as that the history is merely the garb in which a solar or astral myth arrayed itself. The most natural explanation of the Babylonian narrative is after all that it is based on the vague reminiscence of some memorable and devastating flood in the Euphrates valley, as to the physical possibility of which, it may suffice to quote the (perhaps too literal) description of an eminent geologist: “In the course of a seismic period of some duration the water of the Persian Gulf was repeatedly driven by earthquake shocks over the plain at the mouth of the Euphrates. Warned by these floods, a prudent man, Ḥasîs-adra, _i.e._ the god-fearing philosopher, builds a ship for the rescue of his family, and caulks it with pitch, as is still the custom on the Euphrates. The movements of the earth increase; he flees with his family to the ship; the subterranean water bursts forth from the fissured plain; a great diminution in atmospheric pressure, indicated by fearful storm and rain, probably a true cyclone, approaches from the Persian Gulf, and accompanies the most violent manifestations of the seismic force. The sea sweeps in a devastating flood over the plain, raises the rescuing vessel, washes it far inland, and leaves it stranded on one of those Miocene foot-hills which bound the plain of the Tigris on the north and north-east below the confluence of the Little Zab” (Eduard Suess, _The Face of the Earth_, i. 72). See, however, the criticism of Sollas, _The Age of the Earth_, 316.

IX. 18‒27. _Noah as Vine-grower: His Curse and Blessing_ (Yahwist).

Noah is here introduced in an entirely new character, as the discoverer of the culture of the vine; and the first victim to immoderate indulgence in its fruit. This leads on to an account of the shameless behaviour of his youngest son, and the modesty and filial feeling of the two elder; in consequence of which Noah pronounces a curse on Canaan and blessings on Shem and Japheth.――The Noah of verses ²⁰⁻²⁷ almost certainly comes from a different cycle of tradition from the righteous and blameless patriarch who is the hero of the Flood. The incident, indeed, cannot, without violating all probability, be harmonised with the Flood-narrative at all. In the latter, Noah’s sons are married men who take their wives into the ark (so expressly in Priestly-Code, but the same must be presumed for Yahwist); here, on the contrary, they are represented as minors living in the ‘tent’ with their father; and the conduct of the youngest is obviously conceived as an exhibition of juvenile depravity (so Dillmann, Budde, al.). The presumption, therefore, is that verses ²⁰⁻²⁷ belong to a stratum of Yahwist which knew nothing of the Flood; and this conclusion is confirmed by an examination of the structure of the passage.

First of all, we observe that in verse ²⁴ the offender is the _youngest_ son of Noah, and in verse ²⁵ is named Canaan; while Shem and Japheth are referred to as his _brothers_. True, in verse ²² the misdeed is attributed to ‘Ham the father of Canaan’; but the words חָם אֲבִי‎ have all the appearance of a gloss intended to cover the transition from ¹⁸ ᶠᐧ to ²⁰ ᶠᶠᐧ; and the clause וְחָם הוּא ‎ אֲבִי כְנַעַן‎ in ¹⁸ᵇ can have no other purpose. Now ¹⁸ᵃ is the close of Yahwist’s¹ account of the Flood; and ¹⁹ points forward either to Yahwist’s list of Nations (chapter 10), or to the dispersion of the Tower of Babel. Verses ²⁰⁻²⁷ interrupt this connexion, and must accordingly be assigned to a separate source. That that source is, however, still Yahwistic, is shown partly by the language (יַהְוֶה‎, verse ²⁶ [in spite of אֱלֹהִים‎ in verse ²⁷]; and ‎ וַיָּחֶל‎, verse ²⁰); and more especially by the connexion with 5²⁹ (see pages 3, 133 f.). It is clear, therefore, that a redactor (Redactorᴶᵃʰʷⁱˢᵗ) has here combined two Yahwistic documents, and sought to reduce the contradiction by the glosses in ¹⁸ᵇ and ²².

¹ Compare נָֽפְצָה‎ with 10¹⁸ 11⁴ᐧ ⁸ᐧ ⁹; and כָּל־הָאָרֶץ‎ (= the population of the earth) with 11¹ᐧ ⁹ (Budde); שְׁלֹשָׁה אֵלֶּה בְּנֵי־נֹחַ‎ with 10²⁹ 22²³ 25⁴ (Holzinger).

=18, 19.= Connecting verses (see above).――Noah’s sons are here for the first time named in Yahwist, in harmony, however, with the repeated notices of Priestly-Code (5³² 6¹⁰ 7¹³). On the names see on chapter 10 (page 195 f.).――=20.= _Noah the husbandman was the first who planted a vineyard_]――a fresh advance in human civilisation. The allusion to Noah as _the_ husbandman is perplexing. If the text be right (_v.i._), it implies a previous account of him as addicted to (perhaps the inventor of) agriculture, which now in his hands advances to the more refined stage of vine-growing. See the note on page 185.

Amongst other peoples this discovery was frequently attributed to a god (Dionysus among the Greeks, Osiris among the Egyptians), intoxication being regarded as a divine inspiration. The orgiastic character of the religion of the Canaanites makes it probable that the same view prevailed amongst them; and it has even been suggested that the Noah of this passage was originally a Canaanitish wine-god (see Niebuhr, _Geschichte des ebräischen Zeitalters_, 36 ff.). The native religion of Israel (like that of Mohammed) viewed this form of indulgence with abhorrence; and under strong religious enthusiasm the use of fermented drinks was entirely avoided (the Nazirites, Samson, the Rechabites). This feeling is reflected in the narrative before us, where Noah is represented as experiencing in his own person the full degradation to which his discovery had opened the way. It exhibits the repugnance of a healthy-minded race towards the excesses of a debased civilisation.――Since the vine is said to be indigenous to Armenia and Pontus (see Delitzsch, Dillmann), it has naturally been proposed to connect the story with the landing of the ark in Ararat. But we have seen that the passage has nothing to do with the Deluge-tradition; and it is more probable that it is an independent legend, originating amidst Palestinian surroundings.

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‎ =19.= נפצה כל־הארץ‎] ‘the whole (population of the) earth was scattered.’ For the construction compare 10⁵.――נָֽפְצָה‎] hardly contracted Niphal from √ פצץ‎ [= פוץ‎] (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 67 _dd_); but from √ נפץ‎, whether this be a secondary formation from √ פוץ‎ (Gesenius-Buhl¹⁴ 465 f.), or an independent word (Brown-Driver-Briggs, 659). Compare 1 Samuel 13¹¹, Isaiah ‎ 11¹² 33³.――=20.= ויחל וגו׳‎] compare 4²⁶ 6¹ 10⁸ 11⁶ 44¹² (Yahwist) 41⁵⁴ (Elohist). The rendering ‘Noah commenced as a husbandman’ (Davidson § 83, _R._ 2) is impossible on account of the article (contrast 1 Samuel 3²): to insert להיות‎ (Ball) does not get rid of the difficulty. The construction with ו‎ construct, instead of infinitive, is very unusual (Ezra 3⁸); hence Cheyne (_Encyclopædia Biblica_, 3426²), following Kuenen (_Theologisch Tijdschrift_, xviii. 147), proposes לַֽחֲרשׁ‎ for אִישׁ‎: ‘Noah was the first to plough the ground.’ That reading would be fatal to any connexion of the section with Genesis 3, unless we suppose a distinction between עבד‎ (manual tillage) and חרשׁ‎. Strangely enough, Rashi (on 5²⁹) repeats the Haggadic tradition that Noah invented the ploughshare; but this is probably a conjecture based on a comparison of 3¹⁷ with 5²⁹.¹

¹ So Mr. Abrahams, in a private communication.

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=21.= _uncovered himself_] the same result of drunkenness in Habakkuk 2¹⁵, Lamentations 4²¹.――=22.= There is no reason to think (with Holzinger and Gunkel) that Canaan was guilty of any worse sin than the _Schadenfreude_ implied in the words. Hebrew morality called for the utmost delicacy in such matters, like that evinced by Shem and Japheth in verse ²³――=24.= בְּנוֹ הַקָּטָן‎ cannot mean ‘his _younger_ son’ (LXX, Vulgate) (_i.e._ as compared with Shem); still less ‘his contemptible son’ (Rashi); or Ham’s youngest (Abraham Ibn Ezra). The conclusion is not to be evaded that the writer follows a peculiar genealogical scheme in which Canaan is the youngest son of Noah.――=25‒27.= Noah’s curse and blessings must be presumed to have been legible in the destinies of his reputed descendants at the time when the legend took shape (compare 27²⁸ ᶠᐧ ³⁹ ᶠᐧ 49) (on the fulfilment see the concluding note, page 186 f.). The dominant feature is the curse on Canaan, which not only stands first, but is repeated in the blessings on the two brothers.――=25.= The descendants of Canaan are doomed to perpetual enslavement to the other two branches of the human family.――_a servant of servants_] means ‘the meanest slave’ (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 133 _i_).――_to his brethren_] not the other members of the Hamitic race, but (as is clear from the following verses) to Shem and Japheth.――=26.= _Blessed be Yahwe the God of Shem_] The idea thus expressed is not satisfactory. To ‘bless’ Yahwe means no more than to praise Him; and an ascription of praise to Yahwe is only in an oblique sense a blessing on Shem, inasmuch as it assumes a religious primacy of the Shemites in having Yahwe for their God. Budde (294 f.) proposed to omit אֱלֹהֵי‎ and read בְּרוּךְ יַהְוֶה שֵׁם‎: _Blessed of Yahwe be Shem_ (compare 24³¹ 26²⁹ [both Yahwist]). Dillmann’s objection, that this does not express wherein the blessing consists, applies with quite as much force to the received text. Perhaps a better emendation is that of Graetz בָּרֵךְ י׳ אָֽהֳלֵי שֵׁ‎ (יְבָרֵךְ‎ would be still more acceptable): _[May] Yahwe bless the tents of Shem_; see the next verse.――=27.= _May God expand_ (יַפְתְּ‎) _Yepheth_: a play on the name (יֶפֶת‎). The use of the generic אלהים‎ implies that the proper name יהוה‎ was the peculiar property of the Shemites.――_and may he dwell_] or _that he may dwell_. The subject can hardly be God (_Jubilees_, Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ, _Bereshith Rabba_, Rashi, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Nöldeke, al.), which would convey no blessing to Japheth; the wish refers most naturally to Japheth, though it is impossible to decide whether the expression ‘dwell in the tents of’ denotes friendly intercourse (so most) or forcible dispossession (Gunkel). For the latter sense compare Psalms 78⁵⁵, 1 Chronicles 5¹⁰.――A Messianic reference to the ingathering of the Gentiles into the Jewish or Christian fold (Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ, Fathers, Delitzsch, al.) is foreign to the thought of the passage: see further below.

The question of the origin and significance of this remarkable narrative has to be approached from two distinct points of view.――I. In one aspect it is a culture-myth, of which the central motive is the discovery of wine. Here, however, it is necessary to distinguish between the original idea of the story and its significance in the connexion of the Yahwistic document. Read in its own light, as an independent fragment of tradition, the incident signalises the transition from nomadic to agricultural life. Noah, the first husbandman and vine-grower, is a tent-dweller (verse ²¹); and this mode of life is continued by his oldest and favoured son Shem (²⁷). Further, the identification of husbandry and vine culture points to a situation in which the simpler forms of agriculture had been supplemented by the cultivation of the grape. Such a situation existed in Palestine when it was occupied by the Hebrews. The sons of the desert who then served themselves heirs by conquest to the Canaanitish civilisation escaped the protracted evolution of vine-growing from primitive tillage, and stepped into the possession of the farm and the vineyard at once. From this point of view the story of Noah’s drunkenness expresses the healthy recoil of primitive Semitic morality from the licentious habits engendered by a civilisation of which a salient feature was the enjoyment and abuse of wine. Canaan is the prototype of the population which had succumbed to these enervating influences, and is doomed by its vices to enslavement at the hands of hardier and more virtuous races.――In the setting in which it is placed by the Yahwist the incident acquires a profounder and more tragic significance. The key to this secondary interpretation is the prophecy of Lamech in 5²⁹, which brings it into close connexion with the account of the Fall in chapter 3 (page 133). Noah’s discovery is there represented as an advance or refinement on the tillage of the ground to which man was sentenced in consequence of his first transgression. And the oracle of Lamech appears to show that the invention of wine is conceived as a _relief from the curse_. How far it is looked on as a divinely approved mode of alleviating the monotony of toil is hard to decide. The moderate use of wine is certainly not condemned in the Old Testament: on the other hand, it is impossible to doubt that the light in which Noah is exhibited, and the subsequent behaviour of his youngest son, are meant to convey an emphatic warning against the moral dangers attending this new step in human development, and the degeneration to which it may lead.

II. In the narrative, however, the cultural motive is crossed by an ethnographic problem, which is still more difficult to unravel. Who are the peoples represented by the names Shem, Japheth, and Canaan? Three points may be regarded as settled: that Shem is that family to which the Hebrews reckoned themselves; that Canaan stands for the pre-Israelitish inhabitants of Palestine; and that the servitude of Canaan to Shem at least _includes_ the subjugation of the Canaanites by Israel in the early days of the monarchy. Beyond this everything is uncertain. The older view, which explains Shem and Japheth in terms of the Table of Nations (chapter 10),――_i.e._ as corresponding roughly to what we call the Semitic and Aryan races,――has always had difficulty in discovering a historic situation combining Japhetic dominion over the Canaanites with a dwelling of Japheth in the tents of Shem.¹ To understand the latter of an ideal brotherhood or religious bond between the two races brings us no nearer a solution, unless we take the passage as a prophecy of the diffusion of Christianity; and even then it fails to satisfy the expressions of the text (Dillmann, who explains the figure as expressing the more kindly feeling of the Hebrew towards these races, as compared with the Canaanites).――A number of critics, starting from the assumption that the oracles reflect the circumstances and aspirations of the age when the Yahwistic document originated, take Shem as simply a name for Israel, and identify Japheth either with the Philistines (Wellhausen, Meyer) or the Phœnicians (Budde, Stade, Holzinger). But that the Hebrews should have wished for an enlargement of the Philistines at their own expense is incredible; and as for the Phœnicians, though their colonial expansion might have been viewed with complacency in Israel, there is no proof that an occupation of Israelitish territory on their part either took place, or would have been approved by the national sentiment under the monarchy. The alienation of a portion of Galilee to the Tyrians (1 Kings 9¹¹⁻¹³) (Budde) is an event little likely to have been idealised in Hebrew legend. The difficulties of this theory are so great that Bertholet has proposed to recast the narrative with the omission of Japheth, leaving Shem and Canaan as types of the racial antipathy between the Hebrews and Canaanites: the figure of Japheth, and the blessing on him, he supposes to have been introduced after the time of Alexander the Great, as an expression of the friendly feeling of the Jews for their Hellenic conquerors.²――Gunkel’s explanation, which is put forward with all reserve, breaks ground in an opposite direction. Canaan, he suggests, may here represent the great wave of Semitic migration which (according to some recent theories) had swept over the whole of Western Asia (_circa_ 2250 B.C.), leaving its traces in Babylonia, in Phœnicia, perhaps even in Asia Minor,³ and of which the later Canaanites of Palestine were the sediment. Shem is the Hebræo-Aramaic family, which appears on the stage of history after 1500 B.C., and no doubt took possession of territory previously occupied by Canaanites. It is here represented as still in the nomadic condition. Japheth stands for the Hittites, who in that age were moving down from the north, and establishing their power partly at the cost of both Canaanites and Arameans. This theory hardly explains the peculiar contempt and hatred expressed towards Canaan; and it is a somewhat serious objection to it that in 10¹⁵ (which Gunkel assigns to the same source as 9²⁰ ᶠᶠᐧ) Heth is the _son_ of Canaan. A better defined background would be the struggle for the mastery of Syria in the 14th century B.C.⁴ If, as many Assyriologists think probable, the Ḥabiri of the Tel-Amarna Letters be the עִבְרִים‎ of the Old Testament,――_i.e._ the original Hebrew stock to which Israel belonged,――it would be natural to find in Shem the representative of these invaders; for in 10²¹ (Yahwist) Shem is described as ‘the father of all the sons of Eber.’ Japheth would then be one or other of the peoples who, in concert with the Ḥabiri, were then seeking a foothold in the country, possibly the Suti or the Amurri, less probably (for the reason mentioned above) the Hittites.――These surmises must be taken for what they are worth. Further light on that remote period of history may yet clear up the circumstances in which the story of Noah and his sons originated; but unless the names Shem and Japheth should be actually discovered in some historic connexion, the happiest conjectures can never effect a solution of the problem.

¹ As regards the former, the expulsion of Phœnician colonists from the Mediterranean coasts and Asia Minor by the Greeks (Dillmann) could never have been described as enslavement (see Meyer _Geschichte des Alterthums_¹, i. 311 f.); and the capture of Tyre by Alexander, the Roman conquest of Carthage, etc. (Delitzsch), are events certainly beyond the horizon of the writer,――unless, indeed, we adopt Bertholet’s suggestion (see above), that verse ²⁷ is very late. For the latter, Dillmann hints at an absorption of Japhetic peoples in the Semitic world-empires; but that would rather be a dwelling of Shem in the tents of Japheth.

² See Wellhausen _Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments_ 14 f.; Budde _Die biblische Urgeschichte_ 325 ff.; Stade _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_, i. 109; Meyer _Geschichte des Alterthums_¹, i. p. 214; Bertholet, _Die stellung der Israeliten und der Juden zu den fremden_, 76 f. Meyer’s later theory (_Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme_, 220 f.), that Japheth (= Egyptian _Kefti_?) stands for the whole body of northern invaders in the 12th century, to whom the Philistines belonged, does not diminish the improbability that such a prophecy should have originated under the monarchy.

³ See Meyer _Geschichte des Alterthums_¹, i. page 212 ff.; Winckler _Geschichte Israels in Einzeldarstellungen_, i. 37, 130, 134; Peiser, _Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_, iv. page viii.

⁴ Already suggested by Bennett (page 158), who, however, is inclined to identify the Ḥabiri with Japheth.

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‎ =22.= ויַּגֵּד‎] LXX prefered καὶ ἐξελθών.――=23.= הַשֵּׁמְלָה‎] On the article, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 126 _r_. That it was _the_ שׂ׳‎ which Canaan had previously taken away, and that this notice was deliberately omitted by Yahwist (Gunkel), is certainly not to be inferred. The שׂ׳‎ is the upper garment, which was also used for sleeping in (Exodus 22²⁶ etc.).――=24.= וַיִּיקֶץ‎] on the irregular seghol, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 70 _n_.――=26.= לָמוֹ‎ may stand either for לָהֶם‎ (collective) or לוֹ‎: see Note 3 in Gesenius-Kautzsch § 103 _f_. The latter is the more natural here. Olshausen (_Monatsberichte der Königlich-Preussischen Akadamie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin._, June 1870, 382) proposed to omit ²⁶ᵇ, substituting ²⁷ᵃ{β} (וישכן――שם‎), and retain ²⁷ᵇ with reflexive of plural suffix to אֶחָיו‎. LXX has αὐτοῦ in ²⁶ᵇ and αὐτῶν in ‎ ²⁷ᵇ.――=27.= יַפְתְּ‎] LXX πλατύναι, Vulgate _dilatet_, etc. The √ פתה‎ in the sense ‘be spacious’ is extremely rare in Hebrew (Proverbs 20¹⁹ [?24²⁸]), and the accepted rendering not beyond challenge. Nöldeke (_Bibel-Lexicon_, iii. 191) denies the geographical sense, and explains the word from the frequent Semitic figure of spaciousness for prosperity. This would almost require us to take the subject of the following clause to be God (_v.s._).

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