Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/454

 8. gathered to his kindred (see on 17$14$)] Originally, this and similar phrases (15$15$ 47$30$, Dt. 31$16$ etc.) denoted burial in the family sepulchre; but the popular conception of Sheôl as a vast aggregate of graves in the under world enabled the language to be applied to men who (like Abraham) were buried far from their ancestors.—Isaac and Ishmael] The expulsion of Ishmael is consistently ignored by P.—11a. Transition to the history of Isaac (25$19ff.$).

$11b$ (like v.$5$) has been torn from its context in J, where it may have stood after 24$1$ 25$5$, or (more probably) after the notice of Abraham's death (cf. 24$62$). Meyer (INS, 253, 323) makes the improbable conjecture that the statement referred originally to Ishmael, and formed, along with v.$18$, the conclusion of ch. 16.

XXV. 12-18.—The Genealogy and Death of Ishmael (P).

With the exception of v.$18$, which is another isolated fragment of J, the passage is an excerpt from the Tôledôth of the Priestly Code.—The names of the genealogy ($13-16$) represent at once 'princes' (: cf. the promise of 17$20$) and 'peoples' (, $16$); that is to say, they are the assumed eponymous ancestors of 12 tribes which are here treated as forming a political confederacy under the name of Ishmael.

In the geography of P the Ishmaelites occupy a territory intermediate between the Arabian Cushites on the S (10$7$), the Edomites, Moabites, etc., on the W, and the Aramæans on the N (10$22f.$); i.e., roughly speaking, the Syro-Arabian desert north of Ǧebel Shammar. In J they extend W to the border of Egypt (v.$18$).—The Ishmaelites have left very little mark in history. From the fact that they are not mentioned in Eg. or Ass. records, Meyer infers that their flourishing period was from the 12th to the 9th cent. (INS, 324). In OT the latest possible traces of Ishmael as a people are in the time of David (cf. 2 Sa. 17$25$, 1 Ch. 2$17$ 27$30$), though the name occurs sporadically as that of an individual or clan in much later times (Jer. 40$8ff.$, 2 Ki. 25$23$, 1 Ch. 8$38$ 9$44$, 2 Ch. 19$11$ 23$1$, Ezr. 10$23$). In Gn. 37$25ff.$, Ju. 8$24$, it is possible that 'Ishmaelites' is synonymous with Bedouin in general (see Mey. 326).

13. ] are the Nabayati and Ḳidri of Ass. monuments (Asshurbanipal: KIB, ii. 215ff.; cf. Del. Par. 297, 299; KAT$3$, 151), and possibly the Nabatæi and Cedrei of Pliny, v. 65 (cf. vi. 157, etc.). The references do not enable us to locate them with precision, but they must

8. ] v.$1$7 35$29$; see on 6$17$.—] [E]G better, as 35$29$.—] so 25$17$ 35$29$ 49$29. 33$, Nu. 20$24. 26$ 27$13$ 31$2$, Dt. 32$50$† (all P).—10. ] G + .—11. ] see on 24$62$.