Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/426

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The tact of the narrator leaves us in doubt whether the well was now miraculously opened, or had been there all along though unseen. In any case it is henceforth a sacred well.

20, 21. Ishmael's career.—Here we expect the naming of the child, based on v.17: this has been omitted by R in favour of J (1611).—20. The boy grew up, amidst the perils and hardships of the desert,—a proof that God was with him.—he became a bowman] (pt. (Symbol missingHebrew characters): v.i.), the bow being the weapon of his descendants (Is. 2117).—21. The wilderness of Pārān is et-Tīh, bounding the Negeb on the S.—His mother took him a wife from the land of Egypt] her own country (v.9): see p. 285 above.


Comparison of ch. 16 with 211-21.—That these two narratives are variations of a common legendary theme is obvious from the identity of the leading motives they embody: viz. the significance of the name Ishmael (1611 2117); the mode of life characteristic of his descendants (1612 2120); their relation to Israel; and the sacredness of a certain well, consecrated by a theophany (167. 14 2119).[1] Each tale is an exhaustive expression of these motives, and does not tolerate a supplementary anecdote alongside of it. Ch. 21, however, represents a conception of the incident further removed from primitive conditions than 16: contrast the sympathetic picture of nomadic life in 1612 with the colourless notice of 2120; in 16, moreover, Hagar is a high-spirited Bedawi woman who will not brook insult, and is at home in the desert; while in 21 she is a household slave who speedily succumbs to the hardships of the wilderness. In E the appeal is to universal human sympathies rather than to the peculiar susceptibilities of the nomad nature; his narrative has a touch of pathos which is absent from J; it is marked by a greater refinement of moral feeling, and by a less anthropomorphic idea of God.—See the admirable characterisation of Gu. p. 203 f.


20. (Symbol missingHebrew characters)] 'and he became, growing up, an archer'; V juvenis sagittarius (so TO). But (Symbol missingHebrew characters) is (Symbol missingGreek characters)., the syntax is peculiar, and, besides, the growing up has been already mentioned. The true text is doubtless that given above and implied by G (Symbol missingGreek characters). S (Symbol missingSyriac characters) also implies (Symbol missingHebrew characters); but there are further divergences in that Vn. (Symbol missingHebrew characters) = 'shoot' (not so elsewhere), might be a by-form of (Symbol missingHebrew characters) (see on 4923; and cf. (Symbol missingHebrew characters) = 'shooter,' in Jer. 5029, Jb. 1613); but it may be a question whether in these three cases we should not substitute (Symbol missingHebrew characters) for (Symbol missingHebrew characters), or whether in this pass. we should not read (Symbol missingHebrew characters) with Ba. (see esp. Jer. 429, Ps. 789). The rendering 'a shooter, an archer' (De.), is clumsy; and the idea that (Symbol missingHebrew characters) is an explanatory gloss on (Symbol missingHebrew characters) (KS.) is not probable.

  1. The well is not identified in E. Gu.'s view, that it was Beersheba, has little to commend it.