Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/125

was therefore preserved and sustained by God, in order that under the training of mercy and judgment the human race might eventually attain to the great purpose of its creation. The genealogies of the primeval age, to quote the apt words of M. Baumgarten, are “memorials, which bear testimony quite as much to the faithfulness of God in fulfilling His promise, as to the faith and patience of the fathers themselves.” This testimony is first placed in its true light by the numbers of the years. The historian gives not merely the age of each patriarch at the time of the birth of the first-born, by whom the line of succession was continued, but the number of years that he lived after that, and then the entire length of his life. Now if we add together the ages at the birth of the several first-born sons, and the hundred years between the birth of Shem and the flood, we find that the duration of the first period in the world's history was 1656 years. We obtain a different result, however, from the numbers given by the lxx and the Samaritan version, which differ in almost every instance from the Hebrew text, both in Gen 5 and Gen 11 (from Shem to Terah), as will appear from the table on the following page.