Arabic, Mendelssohn, and the English Version: "with a strong hand he will end them away," which would convey J perfectly incorrect notion.

to

2, 3. The demands which Moses I addressed to Pharaoh, had produced alarming result of a still more rigos and cruel treatment of the Israelites. toses, naturally desponding and without woldness or self-assurance, was still more intimidated by the reproaches with which he was assailed both by the king (ver. 4) and the people (ver. 21), and in this oppressed and isolated position, in which national and personal grief mingled in his patriotic and sensitive heart, he asked God, in humility, why He had ordered him to appear before Pharaoh, if it was not His intention to bless his mission with success. Now, therefore, when the tyrannical obstinacy of the king made the long threatened punishments and plagues unavoidable, even for the long-suffering of God, the appropriate moment had come to fill Moses anew with confidence and firmness of resolution, which were henceforth but rarely to forsake him in extraordinary trials; and to reveal to him the hitherto misunderstood and unappreciated awful divine attributes, which described Him as both willing and competent to rescue the Israelites. Whilst the patriarchs had known God only under the name of the Omnipotent, the all-powerful Being (Gen. xvii. 1; xxviii. 3, etc.); the Creator of heaven and earth (Gen. xiv. 19); and the Ruler of nature and the natural destinies of man, which, however, does not exclude many miraculous events; and although the sacred name of God (Jehovah) was already mentioned to them (Gen. xv. 7; xxii. 14; xxviii. 13, etc.); yet the true and deep purport of this designation was not understood and comprehended by them. This important revelation, which Moses received already when

The

God appeared to him for the first time (iii. 14, 15, see our notes), namely, that God is eternal and immutable, that therefore all His promises, if they even embrace centuries and millenniums, are unfailingly realised in due season; and that the assurances given to Abraham concerning the ultimate glorious redemption of the oppressed Israelites from Egypt (Gen. xv. 14) are likewise on the point of being fulfilled: this revelation is now, for the first time, to be communicated to, and spread among, the Israelites; it is to strengthen their hopes, to erect them in their dejection, and, finally to contribute to the perpetual glorification of God, who, by the deliverance of Israel (ver. 6), and their conquest of Canaan (ver. 8), will be recognised not only as all-powerful, but also immutable in His designs and promises. knowledge of the name Jehovah was, henceforth, not the exclusive privilege of a few favoured individuals, but it became the designation of the national God of Israel, the appellation of the God of the eternal covenant. What had been a dim craving to the patriarchs, was now raised to a clear conviction in the mind of even the lowest of the people; time had worked its enlightening influence, and in the school of misery, the religious feeling had been matured into an intellectual knowledge. Thus had Israel acquired the first and primary condition of its august mission as instructor of the world; and from the conscious knowledge of the Eternal and Immutable, to the proclamation of the Decalogue was but one step.-Saadiah supplies the word alone after, "but under my name, the Eternal alone (exclusively) I have not been known to them, but promiscuously, by Jehovah, and God Almighty," which opinion has already been refuted by Ebn Ezra, who justly rejects the opinion of those also, who assert, that the name Jehovah was, in fact, never used in the time

Engl. Vers.-The Lord.

of the patriarchs, but that Moses introduced it in some passages of Genesis as a name most familiar to himself; but this is impossible, in Gen. xv. 7; xxii. 16, and xxviii. 13, where God Himself speaks under that holy name; and in Gen. xxii. 14, where Abraham uses it. And yet is this opinion repeated by Philippson: "The use of the holy name of God, in Genesis, is to be ascribed to the author." The only possible explanation is that already alluded to: "My name Jehovah has not been understood and comprehended by the patriarchs in its essence and depth, although it was, even in their time, already occasionally mentioned." Ebn Ezra, coinciding almost literally with the author of Cusari (ii. 2.), says, that certainly the name Jehovah was already known to the patriarchs, but only as an uncomprehended and unmeaning proper noun, but not as а descriptive appellative noun, indicative of the attributes and qualities of God. -It is manifest that Moses, in being initiated in the holy and comprehensive name of the Deity, obtains a superiority over the patriarchs, who, although perhaps from the beginning more believing than the long-wavering Moses, lived more in the sphere of innocent childlike obedience than of manly spiritual enlightenment. The lawgiver was considered as the greatest prophet before and after him (Deut. xxiv. 10). Mendelssohn translates, or rather paraphrases, aptly: "but with my nature, which is infinite and allpowerful, I have not been understood (erkannt) by them;" Rashi: "I have not been known with my true attributes;" and still more explicitly, Abarbanel: "I was not known and understood by them with the name Jehovah, although I appeared

to them under that appellation; because they received their revelations not face to face, but through other mediums." And certainly a name of God, already, in some respects, though indistinctly, familiar to the Israelites, must have inspired them with far more confidence in His identity than a designation totally strange to them.

4. To give them the land of Canaan. These promises were made to each patriarch separately, to Abraham in Gen. xvii. 7, 8; to Isaac, in xxvi. 3, and to Jacob, in xxxv. 12.—The land of their sojourns, wherein they sojourned. Canaan was, to the fathers, only the land of their temporary abode, in which they resided as strangers, but which was promised to their descendants as a hereditary and permanent possession. Abarbanel urges this addition, explaining: "they were but strangers in Canaan, and thus the promise of God was not yet fulfilled, although they found there, for a time, a hospitable reception."

5. I am unchangeable and my plans are unalterable (ver. 3); I have promised to your ancestors the possession of Canaan after a certain time of trial and misery (ver. 4, and Gen. xv. 16); this period of oppression is now drawing near its close (ver. 5); and I shall, therefore, fulfil my promise by rescuing you, with great judgments, from your oppressors (ver. 6, et seq.). This is the context of our passage. And I have remembered my covenant, namely, made with Abraham, concerning the slavery and ultimate deliverance of his progeny (Gen. xv. 13—16). Ebn Ezra finds in the words: And I have heard the groaning of the children of Israel, an allusion to the fact, that the Israelites now repented, abandoned their idolatrous

6. Wherefore say

worship, and addressed their pious prayers to the God of their fathers. This interpretation is as little justified by the context as that of Abarbanel, who believes that the phrase: I have remembered my covenant, does not apply to the promise made to their ancestors, but describes God as the judge of mankind, who is resolved to persecute the despotic king with just afflictions.

6. Wherefore, say to the children of Israel, I am the Eternal, that is, I am unshaken in my designs; I promise and fulfil (ver. 3), and I shall redeem you from your bondage with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments. The three parts of our verse, beginning with "I shall bring you out;" "I shall rescue you;" and "I shall redeem you," convey nearly equivalent ideas; we reject therefore the artificial distinctions introduced by some interpreters.

7. And I will take you to me for a people, namely, by the legislation of Mount Sinai, by which Israel became the chosen people (xix. 5), or the firstborn son of God (iv. 22); and this was the higher spiritual end of Israel's deliverance from their physical bondage; and therefore the redemption from Egypt is almost constantly brought into connection with the most important laws of the Pentateuch, even in the Decalogue. Those words will by no unbiassed critic be considered as expressing haughtiness, assumption, or exclusive spirit on the part of the Israelites, but merely containing the undeniable historical fact, that they were the first and earliest worshippers of the true God, whose adoration they were so far from guarding with jealous particularism, that its propagation among all the nations of the earth belonged to the

most enthusiastic hopes and the most fondly cherished wishes of the Hebrew prophets (see Isaiah xix. 24, 25; Zechar. xiv. 10). We declare here once for all positively, that expressions like God of the Hebrews, do in no way justify us to suppose, that according to Biblical notions, the dominion of God was limited to that people, whilst the other countries had their own, although less powerful deities. This opinion, which would "convert the monotheism into monolatry," has even been repeated by Bohlen, who asserts, that Jehovah looked upon the other gods as his equals in essence, although he combated them as his antagonists, and considered them less powerful than himself, as indeed every nation believes its own deity to be the mightiest. To refute this opinion, it is sufficient to point to the designations with which the other gods are mentioned in the Bible; they are called nothings, nonentities (Lev. xix. 4); idle productions of the imagination (Deut. xxxii. 21); even with so severe a name as abominations (Lev.xxvi. 30; Deut. xxix. 16); often coupled with synonymous terms equally descriptive of the utter contempt with which they were regarded (Deut. xxix. 16, and Ezekiel xvi. 36). Are such nonentities equals in essence" to the "God of Israel," the Creator of heaven and earth (Gen. i.), the Judge of the whole earth (Gen. xviii. 25), the God of the spirits of all flesh (Num. xvi. 22), to whom belong the heavens and the heavens of heavens, the earth and all that is upon it (Deut. x. 14)? He fills the universe; and His spirit pervades so entirely all space and time, that scarcely a sphere of existence, much less a sphere of action, is left to the pagan

66

1 Engl. Vers.-The Lord.

gods. Compare also our notes on xix. 3-6.

s. Concerning which I swore, literally: I have lifted up my hand to give it (the land), i. e., I have sworn; for it is an ancient and far spread custom-here also anthropomorphistically attributed to God-to swear by raising the hand, as if to invoke heaven as a witness of the truth of the assertions (Compare Num. xiv. 30; Deut. xxxii. 40). This oath of God securing the land of Canaan to the descendants of Abraham is related in Gen. xxii. 16-18, beginning with: I swear by myself, saith the Lord. And I shall give it you for an heritage, not merely as a land of sojourning, as it was to your ancestors, who were strangers therein (see ver. 4), or like your abodes in Egypt, the sovereignty of which belongs to a prince of another nation. The whole solemn address of God, in which the past promises are most lucidly combined with the present misery and the future glory, and which forms, therefore, the transition to a new epoch in the history of Israel, concludes emphatically with the repeated exclamation: "I am the Eternal" (Jehovah), which includes these three epochs in its deep and significant import.

9. But they hearkened not to Moses. At his first message (iv. 31), they received Moses joyfully and showed confidence in his promises; but now, when they suffered still severer hardships than before, they turned away from him; they neither listened to him, nor accepted the consolation offered to them.-Through shortness

of breath. This literal translation appears to be better adapted here than the more figurative rendering of the Septuagint by pusillanimity, or De Wette and others by impatience; compare Num. xxi. 4; Judg. x. 16; Job xxi. 4; or of the English Version by "Anguish of spirit." Abarbanel also finds in these words the sufferings and grief of the soul, as in the following phrase: "through hard bondage" the torments of the body. (The same commentator ingeniously observes, that the holy text does not say, "they did not believe" (see iv. 31), but only, they did not listen; so also in ver. 12). The words, and through hard bondage are added to shortness of breath as an explanation, according to the Hebraisin already noticed on iv. 12, to illustrate difficult or ambiguous words by easier and more unmistakeable expressions connected with the preceding phrase by the conjunction and. Arnheim takes both phrases as a Hendiadys instead of 'through impatience at the hard bondage." The minds of the Israelites were in such a state of sad despondency, so exhausted and worn out, that they had yielded to a torpid resignation, and an obtuse indifference to their fate, so that even tidings of hope had not the power to stir and animate their apathetic indolence. So perfectly had the Egyptian despot gained his end! (v. 4, 5, 8).

10. It cannot be denied that the following part of this chapter, and the beginning of the following to ver. 7, is so