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 title are alike obscure: see the footnote. In P it is the signature of the patriarchal age (Ex. 6$3$); or rather it designates the true God as the patron of the Abrahamic covenant, whose terms are explicitly referred to in every passage where the name occurs in P (28$3$ 35$11$ 48$3$). That it marks an advance in the revelation of the divine character can hardly be shown, though the words immediately following may suggest that the moral condition on which the covenant is granted is not mere obedience to a positive precept, but a life ruled by the ever-present sense of God as the ideal of ethical perfection.—Walk before me (cf. 24$40$ 48$15$)] i.e., 'Live consciously in My presence,' 1 Sa. 12$2$, Is. 38$3$; cf. 1 Jn. 1$7$.—perfect] or 'blameless'; see on 6$9$.—2. On the idea and scope of the covenant, see p. 297 f. below.—4. father of a multitude (lit. tumult) of nations] In substance the promise is repeated in 28$3$ 48$4$ and 35$11$ ; the peculiar expression here anticipates the etymology of v.$5$. While J (12$2$ 18$1$8 46$3$) restricts the promise to Israel, P speaks of 'nations' in the plural, including the Ishmaelites and Edomites amongst the

least some support in Is. 13$6$, Jl. 1$15$, and is free from difficulty if we accept it as an ancient title appropriated by P without regard to its real significance. The assumption of a by-form (Ew. Tu. al.) is gratuitous, and would yield a form, not. Other proposed etymologies are: from originally = 'lord' (Ar. sayyid), afterwards = 'demon' (pointing or  [pl. maj.]: Nö. ZDMG, xl. 735 f., xlii. 480 f.); from [root]  (Ar. ṯadā) = 'be wet' ('the raingiver': OTJC$2$, 424); from Syr. , 'hurl' (Schwally, ZDMG, lii. 136: "a dialectic equivalent of in the sense of lightning-thrower" ). Vollers (ZA, xvii. 310) argues for an original ([root] ), afterwards, through popular etymology and change of religious meaning, fathered on [root]. Several Assyriologists connect the word with šadû rabû, 'great mountain,' a title of Bêl and other Bab. deities (Homm. AHT, 109 f.; Zimmern, KAT$3$, 358): a view which would be more plausible if, as Frd. Del. (Prol. 95 f.) has maintained, the Ass. [root] meant 'lofty'; but this is denied by other authorities (Halevy, ZKF, ii. 405 ff.; Jen. ZA, i. 251). As to the origin of the name, there is a probability that was an old (cf. Gn. 49$25$) Canaanite deity, of the same class as El 'Elyôn (see on 14$18$), whom the Israelites identified with Yahwe (so Gu. 235).—4.' is casus pendens (Dri. T. § 197 (4)), not emphatic anticipation of following suff. (as G-K. § 135 f).