daughters of men, and begat to themselves children, those [giants] were the mighty ones, who were renowned of old. 5 And Jehovah saw, that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every imagination of the 6 thoughts of his heart was only evil continually: then Jehovah repented that he had made man upon the earth, 7 and it grieved him in his soul: and Jehovah said, I will destroy man whom I created, from the earth, [all living things] from man to the beast, to the creeping thing, and to the fowls of the heaven, for it repenteth me that 8 I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of Jehovah. 9 This is the history of Noah. Noah was a just and pious man in his time; [and] Noah walked with God. Verse 5.-Yéçer, 'imaginations,' Dichten und Trachten (thoughts and intentions) in Luther's translation, is a later mode of expression, employed in connection with machshěboth (thoughts), and occurring frequently in Chronicles'. This verse refers as little to a corruption of the entire human race as chap. viii. verse 21: it will be observed that Noah is here already specially excepted, and that from him the peopling of the earth is subsequently derived. It is plain that the older narrator intended only to describe a state of violence, chamas, while the later writer wished to pourtray moral wickedness, raah. Grimm and Graff have shown how the modern word Sündfluth (sin-flood) was corrupted from the old German word Sintvluot, or 'great flood.' Verse 9.-Dor (race, generation) in the plural generally means 1 1 Chron. xxviii. 9; xxix. 18. 2 See Bretschneider, Grundl. des Evang. Pietism (On the Foundation of Evangelical Pietism), p. 51, &c. 10 And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. 11 But the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth 12 was filled with violence. Then God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh corrupted 13 its way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold I will destroy 14 them with the earth. Make thee an ark of pine wood; make the ark with chambers, and pitch it within and time: Noah alone walks, as a pious man, in intimacy with the gods', whilst the rest of mankind have become rebellious. Verse 11.-Before God,—that is, the Deity having the knowledge of the circumstance, which would lead to his judgement: what had occurred must be present before him, that he might look thoroughly into it, and thereupon form his decision 2: similarly in verse 13, ba' lifnei ( is come before my face') stands for I have determined within myself.' Verse 13.-Mifneihem, 'from their face,' 'from them,'-i. e. proceeding from them,—refers to the collective kol báʼsar, (all flesh). 'Eth is 'together with,' meaning, that the surface of the earth is doomed to be destroyed together with all creatures upon it3. Verse 14.—If the myth had been conceived by a Hebrew author, we should unquestionably here find a real ship, Ŏniyyah, or we should meet with a later word, selfinah, built of cedar and sycamore; as the maritime Hindoo introduces a ship provided with masts (naus yuktavatáraká, Diluv. verse 30); but here the construction of the vessel sufficiently indicates the locality of the narrative. The word Te'bah occurs again only in Exodus ii. 3, in speaking of the chest in which Moses was exposed, and it cannot be derived from any word in the Semitic languages. The word appears earlier in the dialects, as in the Aramæan tébiyya' 3 See Ewald, Kr. Gram., p. 609, note. 1 Gen. v. 22. 2 Compare Gen. xviii. 21. 15 without with pitch. And thus thou shalt make it: the length of the ark [shall be] three hundred ells, the breadth of it fifty ells, and the height of it thirty ells. and the Arabic tabút, meaning chest and coffin; and this is the KBwròs of the Septuagint, according to the known interchange of the consonants t and k, as in reσσapes, four, and re, and. The explanation of the meaning is found most readily in the Coptic 'BOUT and raẞour, or, without the article, ßour; a word which, as is the case with so many Egyptian ones1, is remarkably connected with an Indo-Germanic root. Pota in the Sanscrit means either a 'pot' or a 'river-ship,' (or boat). From pota the trader is called in Sanscrit potavanij. Pota is strictly a raft covered in, so as to make a kind of chest, which in Babylon might have been towed by horses or men, for neither sails nor rudders are here mentioned. Any one who has had an opportunity of witnessing the large Sarmatian coffin-like rafts in East Prussia, called Wittinns, the crews of which are at the present time just like the Scythians of Herodotus, will be able to form an idea of these Asiatic vessels ; and at all events the word arca, like Luther's Arche, (or the English ark,) admirably expresses this chest-shaped vessel.-Gofer (the wood of which the ark was built) occurs in no other passage, but compared with Gofrit, resin,' and the kindred word Kofer, 'pitch,' it is without doubt the resinous cypress, кʊжαρiooos. In Assyria the river-boats were built of this wood, since no other kind was to be had: roÚTwv yàp μóvwv τῶν δένδρων εὐπορίαν εἶναι ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ τῶν ̓Ασσυρίων, says Aristobulus in Arrian. Kinnim, literally meaning 'nests,' are here cells or chambers, and the same word is to be supplied in connection with t'acht'iyim, &c., the lower, second and third compartments, in verse 16. Verse 15.-Celsus had good reason for considering the ark as a monstrous chest (κιβωτὸν ἀλλόκοτον) in opposition to those who regarded it as a masterpiece of ship-building; for the vessel 1 See Alt. Indien, ii. 456. 2 Expedit. Alex. 7, 19, 6. 16 Make a window to the ark, and finish it to [the size of] an ell from above, and set the door of the ark in the side would have been three times as long as the largest man-of-war; and it is well known that a similar chest which a Dutch Mennonite1, Janson, built in the beginning of the seventeenth century, according to this measurement, immediately went to pieces. It has sometimes been maintained that the (Hebrew) ell was shorter, but the 'ammah, or cubit, is unquestionably the length from the wrist to the elbow 2, and it is therefore the true ell. According to the representation of the narrator, Noah and his sons must have built the ark by themselves, and hence Origen is of opinion that they worked at it a hundred years. Verse 16.-Cohar [which only occurs in this passage] is feminine, and means 'light'; it stands here for an opening to admit light, in which interpretation all the old versions agree1; but it is not a collective word, as Ephraem supposed", for the ark had only one window (viii. 6,' eth challon, "Noah opened the window of the ark,") and it is not the business of the commentator to find out how all the cells in the ark could be lighted through this one window. Besides the window was only one ell in height, ('el'ammah, made to [the size of] an ell), and its place is thought to have been high up on the side of the ark, for only gratings were at that time known, which would have admitted the rain. Schulten's idea that the Hebrew çohar is the Arabic z'ahr, ' a back,' i. e. a cover (or lid?), is quite inadmissible; as it does not agree with the given measurements, and the cover of the ark is afterwards called mikme'h". The door is placed at the side, as in the Wittinns, which we have already mentioned. (See the note in the preceding page.) 1 [The Mennonites of Holland are a section of the Anabaptists, deriving their name from their founder, Menno Simons of Friesland: they are frequently opulent individuals. See note in Mosheim's Ecc. Hist. ed. by Soames, iii. 571.] 2 Deut. iii. 11. 3 Ewald, Gram. § 249. b. 4 Symmach. Siapavès, Samarit. Syrian, Onkelos and Saadias lumen; the Vulgate has fenestra. 5 See Lengerke, De Ephr. Syr., p. 236. 6 Gen. viii. 13. thereof, and make it with a lower, a second and a third 17 story. For behold, I will bring the flood of rain upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is upon the earth 18 shall die. But with thee do I establish my covenant, and thou shalt go into the ark, thou and thy sons, and 19 thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, a pair of every [sort] shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; let 20 them be male and female. Of birds after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind, a pair of every [sort] shall come 21 to thee, to keep them alive. But take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and collect it together to thee, 22 that it may be for food for thee and for them. Noah did all, as God commanded him, so did he. And Verse 17.-The word Mabbul (flood), which is only used in speaking of the flood1 of Noah, is far-fetched; compare the Arabic bal and wabal, 'to rain:' it is connected as an accusative with the next word mayim, 'water,' and it means 'rain-water,' or 'floodwater,' for the article does not admit of a genitive; the expression is more clear in chap. vii. 6, " the flood was of water." The conjecture of Michaelis, which Jahn has followed, that the word mayim water" should be read as if it were miyyam of the ocean,' would alter the leading idea of the narrative, which refers singly and solely to the rain. 1 [See Isaiah liv. 9, and the poetical description in Psalm xxix. 10.] VOL. II. K |