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 accepted, theory that Ḫabiri in the TA letters is the cuneiform equivalent of the OT. The equation presents no philological difficulty: Ass. ḫ often represents a foreign ; and Eerdmans' statement (AT Studien, ii. 64), that the sign ḫa never stands for (if true) is worthless, for Ḫa-za-ḳi-ya-u = shows that Ass. a may become in OT i, and this is all that it is necessary to prove. The historical objections vanish if the Ḫabiri be identified, not with the Israelitish invaders after the Exodus, but with an earlier immigration of Semitic nomads into Palestine, amongst whom the ancestors of Israel were included. The chief uncertainty arises from the fact that the phonetic writing Ḫa-bi-ri occurs only in a limited group of letters,—those of 'Abd-ḫiba of Jerusalem (179, 180 [182], 183, 185). The ideogram ''SA. GAS'' ('robbers') in other letters is conjectured to have the same value, but this is not absolutely demonstrated. Assuming that Wi. and others are right in equating the two, the Ḫabiri are in evidence over the whole country, occasionally as auxiliaries of the Egyptian government, but chiefly as its foes. The inference is very plausible that they were the roving Bedouin element of the population, as opposed to the settled inhabitants,—presumably a branch of the great Aramæan invasion which was then overflowing Mesopotamia and Syria (see above, p. 206; cf. Wi. AOF, iii. 90 ff., KAT$3$, 196 ff.; Paton, Syr. and Pal. 111 ff.). There is thus a strong probability that was originally the name of a group of tribes which invaded Palestine in the 15th cent. , and that it was afterwards applied to the Israelites as the sole historic survivors of the immigrants.—Etymologically, the word has usually been interpreted as meaning 'those from beyond' the river (cf., Jos. 24$2f. 14f.$; and on that assumption, the river is certainly not the Tigris (De.), and almost certainly not the Jordan (We. Kau]. Sta.), but (in accordance with prevailing tradition) the of the OT, the Euphrates, 'beyond' which lay Ḥarran, the city whence Abraham set out. Hommel's view (AHT, 252 ff.) has no probability (cf. Dri. 139$2$). The vb., however, does not necessarily mean to 'cross' (a stream); it sometimes means simply to 'traverse' a region (Jer. 2$6$); and in this sense Spiegelberg has recently (1907) revived an attractive conjecture of Goldziher (Mythos, p. 66), that signifies 'wanderers'—nomads (OLz. x. 618 ff.).

21. The father of all the sons of 'Ēber] The writer has apparently borrowed a genealogical list of the descendants

21. It is doubtful if the text is in order. First, it is extremely likely that the introduction to the section on Shem in J would require modification to prevent contradiction with v.$22f.$ (P). Then, the omission of the logical subj. to is suspicious. The Pu. of this vb. never dispenses*