Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/426

 The tact of the narrator leaves us in doubt whether the well was now miraculously opened, or had been there all along though unseen. In any case it is henceforth a sacred well.

20, 21. Ishmael's career.—Here we expect the naming of the child, based on v.$17$: this has been omitted by R in favour of J (16$11$).—20. The boy grew up, amidst the perils and hardships of the desert,—a proof that God was with him.—he became a bowman] (pt. : v.i.), the bow being the weapon of his descendants (Is. 21$17$).—21. The wilderness of Pārān is et-Tīh, bounding the Negeb on the S.—His mother took him a wife from the land of Egypt] her own country (v.$9$): see p. 285 above.

''Comparison of ch. 16 with'' 21$1-21$.—That these two narratives are variations of a common legendary theme is obvious from the identity of the leading motives they embody: viz. the significance of the name Ishmael (16$11$ 21$17$); the mode of life characteristic of his descendants (16$12$ 21$20$); their relation to Israel; and the sacredness of a certain well, consecrated by a theophany (16$7. 14$ 21$19$). Each tale is an exhaustive expression of these motives, and does not tolerate a supplementary anecdote alongside of it. Ch. 21, however, represents a conception of the incident further removed from primitive conditions than 16: contrast the sympathetic picture of nomadic life in 16$12$ with the colourless notice of 21$20$; in 16, moreover, Hagar is a high-spirited Bedawi woman who will not brook insult, and is at home in the desert; while in 21 she is a household slave who speedily succumbs to the hardships of the wilderness. In E the appeal is to universal human sympathies rather than to the peculiar susceptibilities of the nomad nature; his narrative has a touch of pathos which is absent from J; it is marked by a greater refinement of moral feeling, and by a less anthropomorphic idea of God.—See the admirable characterisation of Gu. p. 203 f.

20. ] 'and he became, growing up, an archer'; V juvenis sagittarius (so T$O$). But is ., the syntax is peculiar, and, besides, the growing up has been already mentioned. The true text is doubtless that given above and implied by G. S also implies ; but there are further divergences in that Vn. = 'shoot' (not so elsewhere), might be a by-form of (see on 49$23$; and cf.  = 'shooter,' in Jer. 50$29$, Jb. 16$13$); but it may be a question whether in these three cases we should not substitute for, or whether in this pass. we should not read with Ba. (see esp. Jer. 4$29$, Ps. 78$9$). The rendering 'a shooter, an archer' (De.), is clumsy; and the idea that is an explanatory gloss on (KS.) is not probable.