Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/434

 as arrested by the thought that even this terrible sacrifice might rightly be demanded by the Being to whom he owed all that he was; and as brooding over it till he seemed to hear the voice of God calling on him to offer up his own son as proof of devotion to Him. He is led on step by step to the very verge of accomplishing the act, when an inward monition stays his hand, and reveals to him that what God really requires is the surrender of the will—that being the truth in his previous impression; but that the sacrifice of a human life is not in accordance with the character of the true God whom Abraham worshipped. But it must be felt that this line of exposition is not altogether satisfying. The story contains no word in repudiation of human sacrifice, nor anything to enforce what must be supposed to be the main lesson, viz., that such sacrifices were to find no place in the religion of Abraham's descendants. (2) Having regard to the origin of many other Genesis narratives, we must admit the possibility that the one before us is a legend, explaining the substitution of animal for human sacrifices in some type of ancient worship. This view is worked out with remarkable skill by Gu. (211-214), who thinks he has recovered the lost name of the sanctuary from certain significant expressions which seem to prepare the mind for an etymological interpretation: viz. , $8$ (cf. $14$);, $12$; and [] , $13$. From these indications he concludes that the original name in $14$ was ; and he is disposed to identify the spot with a place of that name somewhere near Tekoa, mentioned in 2 Ch. 20$16$ ( in 1 Ch. 7$2$ is excluded by geographical considerations). Here he conjectures that there was a sanctuary where the custom of child-sacrifice had been modified by the substitution of a ram for a human being. The basis of Gn. 22 would then be the local cultus-legend of this place. Apart from the philological speculations, which are certainly pushed to an extreme, it is not improbable that Gu.'s theory correctly expresses the character of the story; and that it originally belonged to the class of ætiological legends which everywhere weave themselves round peculiarities of ritual whose real origin has been forgotten or obscured.—An older cultus-myth of the same kind is found in the Phœnician story in which Kronos actually sacrifices his only son ( = ?) or  (?) to his father Uranus (Eus. Præp. Ev. i. 10, 29). The sacrifice of Iphigeneia, and the later modification in which a hind is substituted for the maiden, readily suggests itself as a parallel (Eurip. Iph. Aul. 1540 ff.).

XXII. 20-24.—The Sons of Nāḥôr (J, R).

In the singular form of a report brought to Abraham, there is here introduced a list of 12 tribes tracing their descent to Nāḥôr. Very few of the names can be identified; but so far as the indications go, they point to the region E and NE of Palestine as the area peopled by the Naḥorite family. The division into legitimate ($20-23$) and illegitimate*