Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/363

 prising things in the narrative is the circuitous route by which the Eastern kings march against the rebels. We may assume that they had followed the usual track by Carchemish and Damascus: thence they advanced southwards on the E of the Jordan; but then, instead of attacking the Pentapolis, they pass it on their right, proceeding southward to the head of the Gulf of Aḳaba. Then they turn NW to Ḳadesh, thence NE to the Dead Sea depression; and only at the end of this long and difficult journey do they join issue with their enemies in the vale of Siddim.

In explanation, it has been suggested that the real object of the expedition was to secure command of the caravan routes in W Arabia, especially that leading through the Arabah from Syria to the Red Sea (see Tu. 257 ff.). It must be remembered, however, that this is the account, not of the first assertion of Elamite supremacy over these regions, but of the suppression of a revolt of not more than a few months' standing: hence it would be necessary to assume that all the peoples named were implicated in the rebellion. This is to go behind the plain meaning of the Heb. narrator; and the verisimilitude of the description is certainly not enhanced by Hommel's wholly improbable speculation that the Pentapolis was the centre of an empire embracing the whole region E of the Jordan and the land of Edom (AHT, 149). If there were any truth in theories of this kind, we should still have to conclude that the writer, for the sake of literary effect, had given a fictitious importance to the part played by the cities of the Jordan valley, and had so arranged the incidents as to make their defeat seem the climax of the campaign. (See Nöldeke, 163 f.)

The general course of the campaign can be traced with sufficient

The reading of the Sixtine and Aldine edd. of G, , which even Di. adduces in favour of a distinction between the two cities, has, amongst the MSS used by the Cambridge editors, the support of only one late cursive, which Nestle maintains was copied from the Aldine ed. It is doubtless a conflation of and the (? ) of G$E, al.$ (Nestle, ZDPV, xv. 256; cf. Moore, JBL, xvi. 155 f.).—] G  = : so ST$OJ$. Σ. has = .—] GVS read (, etc.). Some MSS of [E] have, which Jerome expressly says is the real reading of the Heb. text.—6. ] [E]GSV. Duplication of is rare and doubtful (Ps. 30$8$, Jer. 17$3$) in sing. of this word, but common in const. pl. Buhl strikes out as an explanatory gloss, retaining .—] GS render 'terebinth of Paran,' and so virtually VT$h$as {OJ}, which have 'plain' (see on 12$6$). If the ordinary theory, as given above, be correct, is used collectively in the sense of 'great tree' (here 'palms').—7. For , ST$OJ$ (also Saadya) have, apparently identifying it with Petra: see Tuch's Note, p. 271 f.—] GS, 'princes.'