Page:Legends of Old Testament Characters.djvu/234

212 times a thousand, seven thousand and two hundred) sheep, and six hundred thousand dogs; but some Rabbis say the sheep were quite innumerable, but when Jacob counted his sheepdogs he found that he had twelve hundred thousand of them; others, however, reduce the number one-half. They say, one dog went with each flock, but those who say that there were twelve hundred thousand dogs, count two to each flock.

Jacob, says the Rabbi Samuel, could recite the whole of the Psalter. Of course this must have been in the spirit of prophecy, as the Psalms were not written, with the exception of Psalm civ., which had been composed by Adam. Adam, after his fall, had been given by God six commandments, but Noah was given a seventh—to this effect, that he was not to eat a limb or portion of any living animal. Abraham was given an eighth, the commandment of circumcision; and Jacob was communicated a ninth, through the mouth of an adder, that he was not to eat the serpent.

If we may trust the Book of Jasher, the affair of Shechem, the son of Hamor, was as follows:—The men of the city were not all circumcised, only some of them, so as to blind the eyes of the sons of Jacob, and throw them off their guard; and Shechem and Hamor had privately concerted to fall upon Jacob and his sons and butcher them; but Simeon and Levi were warned of their intention by a servant of Dinah, and took the initiative. But this is a clumsy attempt to throw the blame off the shoulders of the ancestors of the Jewish nation upon those of their Gentile enemies.

Jacob, say the Rabbis, would have had no daughters at all in his family, but only sons, had he not called himself El-elohe-Israel (Israel is God). Therefore God was angry with him, for making himself equal with God, and in punishment he afflicted him with a giddy daughter.

Esau, say the Mussulmans, had no prophets in his family except Job. All the prophets rose from the family of Jacob; and when Esau saw that the gift of prophecy was not in his family, he went out of the land, for he would not live near his brother. The father of the Israelites, from the land of Canaan which