Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/331

 uses it), whereas Elohim is used eighteen times and Ha-Elohim seven, not to mention such expressions as “your God” (Gen 43:23), or “the God of his, or your father” (Gen 46:1, Gen 46:3). So long as the attention is confined to this numerical proportion of Jehovah, and Elohim or Ha- Elohim, it must remain “a difficult enigma.” But when we look at the way in which these names are employed, we find the actual fact to be, that in Gen 38 and 39 the writer mentions God nine times, and calls Him Jehovah, and that in Gen 40-50 he only mentions God twice, and then calls Him Elohim (Gen 46:1-2), although the God of salvation, i.e., Jehovah, is intended. In every other instance in which God is referred to in Gen 40-50,, it is always by the persons concerned: either Pharaoh (Gen 41:38-39), or Joseph and his brethren (Gen 40:8; Gen 41:16, Gen 41:51-52, etc., Elohim; and Gen 41:25, Gen 41:28, Gen 41:32, etc., Ha-Elohim), or by Jacob (Gen 48:11, Gen 48:20-21, Elohim). Now the circumstance that the historian speaks of God nine times in Gen 38-39 and only twice in Gen 40-50 is explained by the substance of the history, which furnished no particular occasion for this in the last eleven chapters. But the reason why he does not name Jehovah in Gen 40-50 as in Gen 38-39,, but speaks of the “God of his (Jacob's) father Isaac,” in Gen 41:1, and directly afterwards of Elohim (Gen 41:2), could hardly be that the periphrasis “the God of his father” seemed more appropriate than the simple name Jehovah, since Jacob offered sacrifice at Beersheba to the God who appeared to his father, and to whom Isaac built an altar there, and this God ( Elohim) then appeared to him in a dream and renewed the promise of his fathers. As the historian uses a periphrasis of the name Jehovah, to point out the internal connection between what Jacob did and experienced at Beersheba and what his father experienced there; so Jacob also, both in the blessing with which he sends his sons the second time to Egypt (Gen 43:14) and at the adoption of Joseph's sons (Gen 48:3), uses the name El Shaddai, and in his blessings on Joseph's sons (Gen 43:15) and on Joseph himself (Gen 49:24-25) employs rhetorical periphrases for the name Jehovah, because Jehovah had manifested Himself not only to him (Gen 35:11-12), but also to his fathers Abraham and Isaac (Gen 17:1 and Gen 28:3) as El Shaddai, and had proved Himself to be the Almighty, “the God who fed him,” “the Mighty One of Jacob,” “the Shepherd and Rock of Israel.” In these set