The Patriarchs after the flood were at first, in all, but four persons, with each his wife. Noah be came the second father of the human race. They were exceedingly fruitful, as God had ordained they should be. The tenth chapter of Genesis is a wonderful document, describing the vast emigra dons of the families of the sons of Noah. The number of nations there enumerated is reckoned by the Hebrew expositors as seventy ; from Japheth fourteen, from Ham thirty, and from Shem twenty six. But they no longer lived to the age of their antediluvian forefathers. The following table, given by Archdeacon Wordsworth, presents a synoptical view of the lineage of the family of Shem To this it may be added, that Abraham was go at the birth of Ishmael, and about too at the birth of Isaac ; that Isaac was 6o at the birth of Esau and Jacob, and died at ao ; that Jacob died at 147, and Joseph at no. It will be observed, also, that as human life was shortened, children were usually born at an earlier period in the life of their parents. A providential compensation was thus supplied, by which the human family was multiplied, and large portions of the earth occupied. The language of men was, however, no longer one. When an attempt was made to concentrate the race, instead of occupying the earth and replenishing it, the scheme was defeated by the miraculous confusion of tongues. From that time the patriarchal state was preserved, or revived in its purity, chiefly, if not wholly, in the family of Abraham, the friend of God. Nations grew up on the right hand and on the left. In Babylonia there arose the kingdom of Nimrod. Out of that land went forth Asshur and builded Nineveh.' Without notice from the sacred historian the marvellous civilisation of Egypt then sprang up, and the thirty pyramids themselves were probably already built when Abraham first arrived in that land. Idolatry, moreover, was fast taking the place of the primeval religion, and if the name of the true God was ever in danger of being wholly forgotten in the world, it was probably then, when Abraham was called to go forth from Ur of the Chaldees. In the book of Joshua (xxiv. 2, 14), we read, that the original fathers of the Jewish race, who dwelt beyond the Euphrates, served other gods. Such was probably the case with Terah, the father of Abraham. If we are asked,' says Professor Max how this one Abraham passed through the denial of all other gods to the knowledge of the one God, we are content to answer that it was by a special divine revelation.' It is true,' adds Dean Stanley, that Abraham hardly appears be fore us as ... a teacher of any new religion. As the Scripture represents him, it is rather as if he was possessed of the truth himself than as if he had any call to proclaim it to others. His life is his creed ; his migration is his mission. . . . His faith transpires not in any outward profession of faith, but precisely in that which far more nearly concerns him and every one of us—in his prayers, in his actions, in the righteousness, the justice,' ... the uprightness,' the moral elevation' of soul and spirit which sent him on his way straight forward, without turning to the right hand or to the left.' Indeed Abraham must be regarded as the type, the hero' as he has been called, of the Patriarchal state. He was acquainted with civilisation and organised government, but in his own person and family adhered to the simple habits of a nomad life. With him and his, the father of the family was the Patriarchal priest, the family itself the Patriarchal church. Dean Stanley has remarked
how exactly, when Abraham and Lot went forth' to go into the land of Canaan, they resembled two Arabian chiefs at the present day on a journey or a pilgrimage. He notes how at this day, as so many centuries ago, the chief wife, the princess of the tribe, is there in her own tent, to make the cakes, and prepare the usual meal of milk and butter ; the slave or the child is ready to bring in the red lentile soup for the weary hunter, or to kill the calf for the unexpected guest. Even the ordi nary social state is the same : polygamy, slavery, the exclusiveness of family ties ; the period of ser vice for the dowry of a wife ; the solemn obliga tions of hospitality ; the temptations, easily fol lowed, into craft or falsehood' (Lectures on yew/A Church, Lect. i., p. 12).
But if Abraham was in all outward respects like any other sheikh, there was that which distin guished him, as it did Noah before him, and Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and others, after him, from all the world. This distinction consists partly in the cove nant whereby these men were especially bound to God, and secondarily in the typical character of their recorded actions. Thus God made a league or covenant [COVENANT] with Noah (Gen. ix. 8, 9), and afterwards with Abram (Gen. xv. 8-18), when, as Dean Stanley says, the first covenant, the Old Testament,' was concluded between God and man,' and when there was represented by out ward signs that which had its `highest fulfilment' in one who, far more than the Jewish people, re flected in his own union of suffering and of triumph, the thick darkness of the smoking furnace, the burning and the shining light.' This league was often renewed, as with Abraham when circum cision was enjoined (xvii. so), and with Isaac pro spectively (xvii. 59) but with each of these as being themselves types another seed ... and another son of promise, in whom the covenant was to be accomplished' (see Dean Jackson, Creed, book ix. ch. xvi.) The lives of the patriarchs are eminently typical. By this is not meant, of course, that in themselves the patriarchs were different from other men, but that the record of their lives is so written as to exhibit this typical character in them. The ma terials of the history of Genesis are so selected, methodized, and marshalled, as to be like rays con verging steadily from various points to one central focus. The incidents in the lives of the Patriarchs, which seem trivial when read literally, and which would never have been recorded unless they had possessed a prospective value, and unless he who guided the writer had perceived them to have that prospective value, all fall into their proper place when they are read by the light which is shed on them by the gospel of Christ... . They are so selected as to be full of instruction' (Wordsworth, Introd. to Gen., etc., p. xxxiv.) To this may be added, from the same authority, the beautiful illus tration of St. Augustine (c. Faust. blanich. xxii. 94) ' As it is in a harp, where only the strings which are struck emit the sound, and yet all things in the instrument are so fitted together as to minis ter to the strings which send forth the music, so in these prophetic narratives of the Pentateuch, the incidents which are selected by the prophetic spirit either send forth an articulate sound themselves, and pre-announce something that is future, or else they are there inserted in order that they may bind together the strings which produce the sounds.'— W. L. M.