Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/161

Rh inhabitants of a city which forcibly defends itself are threatened with such a vow: it is taken by storm or otherwise. Nothing is left alive; men never: and often women, children, and even cattle, share a similar fate. Such sacrifices are rashly and superstitiously and with more or less distinctness promised to the gods; and those whom the votary would willingly spare, even his nearest of kin, his own children, may thus bleed, the expiatory victims of such a delusion.

In the mild and truly patriarchal character of Abraham, such a savage kind of worship could not arise; but the Godhead, which often, to tempt us, seems to put forth those qualities which man is inclined to assign to it, imposes a monstrous task upon him. He must offer up his son as a pledge of the new covenant, and, if he follows the usage, not only kill and burn him, but cut him in two, and await between the smoking entrails a new promise from the benignant Deity. Abraham, blindly and without lingering, prepares to execute the command: to Heaven the will is sufficient. Abraham's trials are now at an end, for they could not be carried farther. But Sarai dies, and this gives Abraham an opportunity for taking typical possession of the land of Canaan. He requires a grave, and this is the first time he looks out for a possession in this earth. He had before this probably sought out a twofold cave by the grove of Mamre. This he purchases, with the adjacent field; and the legal form which he observes on the occasion shows how important this possession is to him. Indeed, it was more so, perhaps, than he himself supposed: for there he, his sons and his grandsons, were to rest; and by this means the proximate title to the whole land, as well as the everlasting desire of his posterity to