A. M. 2108. A. C. 1896; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3358. A. C. 2053. GEN. CH. xx-xxv. 11. She did as she was ordered; but mistaking their way, and missing of the fountain, they had quite exhausted the little water they had, and her son being in a high fever, and ready to die with thirst, to shade him a little from the scorching heat, she placed him under a tree, whilst herself, despairing to find any succour in the place, and not bearing to see him expire before her eyes, withdrew a little, and began to bemoan her hard fate, while with earnest cries and tears, she was imploring the divine help and commiseration. The divine help was not long a coming; for suddenly an angel from heaven bids the weeping mother dry up her tears, and fear not; tells her, that God had heard the child's prayer, and would make of him a great nation; and, for their present relief, points to her a well of water, which she had not perceived before; and directs her how to cure her son. Refreshed with this water, and supported with other things which Abraham (very probably) from time to time might send them; instead of going into Egypt, as they first intended, they here took up their abode in the wilderness of Paran, where Ishmael, in a short time growing a very expert archer, was able to get provisions both for himself and his mother; and when he grew up unto man's estate, his mother, who was herself an Egyptian, married him to a woman of her own country, by whom he had twelve sons, who dwelt from Havilah unto Shur, that is, in several parts of Arabia Petræa, where of the western part, towards Egypt, is in Scripture called Shur, and the eastern part towards the Persian gulf, Havilah. « arisen between Abimelech's servants and Abraham's, about a well which Abraham's servants had digged. But after a little expostulation, they quickly came to a good understanding. The well was restored to Abraham, and the place where they entered into this solemn covenant was thenceforth called Beersheba. Here Abraham, intending to end his days, unless God should otherwise dispose of him, planted a grove for a place of religious worship, and built an altar, and called on 'the name of the Lord, the everlasting God,' who was minded to make one trial more of his faith and fidelity, and a severe trial it was. God had ordered him to send away Ishmael, and given him assurance, that the blessings promised to his posterity were not to take place in any part of that branch of his family, but that Isaac should be the son of the promise, and his descendants heirs of that happiness and prosperity which he had made over to him; and now he was pleased to require him with his own hands, to destroy this his son, his only son Isaac. A cruel injunction! But Abraham, we see, never stayed to expostulate about the severity or unlawfulness of it; but on the very next morning, without saying a word to any of his family, gets all things ready, and leaving it to God to make good his own promises, resolves to obey." e redressed, there might remain no occasion of quarrel afterwards Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1.-Wells of water were of great consequence in those hot countries, especially where the flocks were numerous; because water was scarce, and digging to find it was attended with much expense of time and labour. In Arabia, the Abraham, in the mean time, having accepted of wells are generally dug in the rocks; their mouths are about six Abimelech's offer, continued to live in the land of Pales-depth, (but many of them, says Niebuhr, are 160 to 170 feet feet in diameter, and they are from nineteen to twenty feet in tine, and, as his riches and power every day increased, deep.) Strife between the different villagers and the different Abimelech, fearing lest, at some time or other, he might herdsmen here, exists still, as in the days of Abraham and Lot; attempt something in prejudice of him, or his successors the country has often changed masters; but the habits of the in the government, came with the general of his forces, ary.-Dr Richardson's Travels, vol. 2. p. 196.-ED. whose name was Phicol, and made a solemn league of friendship with him. Some little difference had The names of these sons are Nabajoth, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadar, Tema, Jethur, Naphish, and Kedemah, 'twelve princes according to their nations,' Gen. xxv. 13, &c.; and as their descendants were, from their father, denominated by the common name of Ishmaelites, so from Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, they are also called Hagarens, or Hagarites, under which name we find some footsteps of them in heathen authors; but certain it is, that the Arabians do, to this very day, value themselves upon their being descended from Ishmael-Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 1. ¿ Gen. xxi. 23. Swear unto me here by God.' This kind of cath appears not only to have been generally in use in the time of Abraham, but also to have descended through many generations and ages in the east. When Mr Bruce was at Shekh Ammer, he entreated the protection of the governor in prosecuting his journey. Speaking of the people who were assembled together at this time in the house, he says, (Travels, vol. 1. p. 148.) "The great people among them came, and, after joining hands, repeated a kind of prayer, of about two minutes long, by which they declared themselves and their children accursed, if ever they lifted up their hands against me in the tell, or field in the desert; or in case that I, or mine, should fly to them for refuge, if they did not protect us at the risk of their lives, their families, and their fortunes, or, as they emphatically expressed it, to the death of the last male child among them."-See also Gen. xxvi. 28, 29.-ED. c It will not seem strange that Abraham should look upon the losing of a well as a matter of such consequence, considering how ill furnished these eastern countries were with water; and it was highly prudent of him to complain of grievances now, before he entered into covenant with Abimelech, that they being once natives both in this and other respects, have been nearly station d The words in the text are, that God did tempt Abraham;' but God is said to tempt no man; and therefore all that he could be supposed to do in this case, was only to make trial of him; and that too, not to inform himself of the sincerity and steadiness of his faith, but in order to the holy patriarch's own justification, and to make him an illustrious pattern of an entire dependence on the Almighty, to future saints and confessors. The Jews reckon up ten trials of Abraham, of which the last was the greatest. 1. God's command to him to leave his country. 2. The famine which forced him to go into Egypt. 3. Pharaoh's taking his wife from him. 4. His war with the four kings. 5. His despair of having Isaac by Sarah, and marrying Hagar on that account. 6. His circumcision in his old age. 7. His wife's being again taken from him by Abimelech. 8. The expulsion of Hagar when she was with child by him. 9. His expulsion of her and Ishmael. And 10. His oblation of his only son IsaacBibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1. e Gen. xxii. 3. 'Saddled his ass.' There is no ground for supposing that the ancient eastern saddles were like our modern ones. Such were not known to the Greeks and Romans till many ages after the Hebrew judges. "No nation of antiquity knew the use of either saddles or stirrups;" (Goguet's Origin of Laws, vol. 3. p. 172. English Edit.) and even in our own times Hasselquist, when at Alexandria, says, "I procured an equipage which I had never used before; it was an ass with an Arabian saddle, which consisted only of a cushion on which I could sit, and a handsome bridle." (Travels, p. 52.) But even the cushion seems an improvement upon the ancient eastern saddles, which were probably nothing more than a kind of rug girded to the beast.-Parkhurst's Heb. Lex. p. 213. Instead of saddles the ancients used a kind of housing or horse cloth which the Greeks called sagè and the Latins sagum. This housing is to be seen upon the horses represented on Trajan's pillar, and in many other monuments of antiquity.-ED. A. M. 2083. A. C. 1921; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3333. A. C. 2078. GEN. CH. xii-xxv. 11. passed for a single, was in reality a married woman; so that the king, immediately calling for Abram, expostulated with him on the ill consequences that might have ensued from the method he had taken; and after some few exprobations, returned him his wife, and gave orders that they might safely depart his kingdom, without any the least molestation, either to their persons or possessions. Abram, after this, tarried not long in Egypt; for understanding that the famine was ceased in Canaan, he returned thither by the same way, and on the altar which he had built before, offered a sacrifice of thanks for his happy escape and safe return. Lot and Abram had hitherto lived together; but by this time their substance was so much increased, that they found it inconvenient to be any longer near one another. Their cattle mingled; "their herdsmen quarrelled; and their flocks, when together, required a larger tract of ground to feed and support them than they could take up, without interfering with the property of the inhabitants of the land wherein they sojourned. Upon these considerations, Abram resolved, in a friendly manner, to separate from Lot; and having given him his choice of the whole country that lay before him, Lot chose the fertile and pleasant plains of Sodom and Gomorrah, which he saw were well watered by the streams of Jordan, and so parted from a The Jews here tell us, that the herdsmen of Abraham were commanded by their master not to go near the Canaanites, or the Perizzites, nor to come into the grounds which they had taken, either for culture or pasturage, so that they might not appear to do the least injury to any of them; and that, in obedience to his command, they took especial care to confine all their cattle, and to watch their flocks with a strict eye, so that none might go astray, and so trespass upon the natives; but that Lot's herdsmen were herein very negligent, and suffered their cattle to go beyond their bounds, and to feed in the fields which belonged to the Canaanites and Perizzites, who dwelt then in the land, and claimed the sovereignty of it.—Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1. 6 The words in the text are these: The plain of Jordan was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah (even like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt) as thou goest to Zoar.' The last clause, as thou goest to Zoar,' has much perplexed commentators, whilst they refer it to the land of Egypt in the clause immediately preceding; whereas, if what is said by way of comparison of the plain of Jordan to the garden of the Lord, that is, the garden of Eden, and to the land of Egypt, be understood as inserted by of parenthesis, the difficulty will be taken away, and the import of the last clause will be plain and easy; for then the meaning of the verse will amount to this, "That before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, the plain of Jordan was well watered every where, as thou comest unto Zoar," that is, in the parts where Sodom and Gomorrah stood, or in short, in the vale of Siddim. But there is another interpretation which supposes the word Zoar to be a false reading for Zoan, a city that was once the capital of Egypt, situate at the lower part of the river Nile, where it divides itself into several branches, and so waters the country more plentifully thereabouts than in any other part. According to which reading, the import of the verse will be this:-That the plain of Jordan was well watered every where about Sodom and Gomorrah, before the Lord destroyed them; yea, the plain was so well watered, that it was in this respect as the garden of Eden, or as the land of Egypt, and particularly as thou goest to Zoan, that is, in the parts about Zoan, where the Nile is divided into several branches. Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 1. The river Jordan, called by the Arabs El Sharia, which runs through this plain, is of so great note in the Sacred Writings that we must not pass it by without this observation,-that it derives its name (as some assert) from the Hebrew word Jor, which signifies a spring, and Dan, which is a small town near the source of this river. But the misfortune is, that the name of Dan is much more modern than that of Jordan. From its source, in Anti-Libanus, about his uncle. Abram, continuing, for some time, in the place where Lot had left him, had a vision in parted to him, wherein God was pleased to renew the promise of enlarging his posterity; and bidding him cast his eyes round the horizon, confirmed the gift of all the land which he beheld to him and his posterity. Not long after this, he left Bethel, and went to dwell at the Oak of Mamre, which is not far from Hebron, where he built an altar unto the Lord, and in a short time contracted an acquaintance with three of the greatest men there, Mamre, Aner, and Escol; the first of whom communicated his name to all the country. This alliance proved very serviceable to him, but more especially upon the following occasion. Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, had held five petty princes in a tributary subjection to him for some years, of which number the king of Sodom was one. At length they shook off their yoke, and confederated against him; which provoked him (in conjunction with three other kings, his allies) to march directly with a powerful army against them. The revolted kings, seeing the enemy drawing towards them, took the field with the resolution to try the fate of a pitched battle. The valley of Siddim was the place where the armies were to meet; and twelve miles north of Cæsarea Philippi, now Banias, it runs through a space of fifty leagues, till it discharges itself into the Dead Sea, otherwise called the Asphaltite lake, where Sodom and Gomorrah, and the other cities of the plain, that were destroyed with fire from heaven, once stood. About five or six leagues' distance from its spring it forms the lake Semechon, or waters of Merom, now Houle, and from thence it enters the lake Tiberias, or Gennesereth, passes quite through it, and is lost in the Dead Sea. Its water, in the summer time, is very shallow; but about the time of the barley-harvest, or the feast of the passover, it constantly overflows its banks, and greatly fructifies the plain.— Calmet's Dictionary. c What we translate the plain should be rendered the Oak of Mamre; because the word elon signifies an oak, or tree of long duration. Sazomen tells us that this tree was still extant, and famous for pilgrimages and annual feasts, even in Constantine's time; that it was about six miles distant from Hebron; that some of the cottages which Abraham built were still standing near it; and that there was a well likewise of his digging, whereunto both Jews, and Christians, and Heathens, did at certain seasons resort, either out of devotion or for trade, because there was held a great mart. As for Hebron, or Chebron, it was accounted one of the most ancient cities in the world, having been built seven years before Tanis, the capital of Lower Egypt. It was situate on an eminence, twenty miles southward from Jerusalem, and twenty miles north from Beersheba, and had its name very probably from the word Chavar, to couple or join; because these married couples, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah, were buried there.-Calmet's Dictionary, and Universal History, in the Notes, b. 1. c. 7. ever, d We meet no where in profane history with the name of Chedorlaomer, nor with any of those names of the kings that were confederate with him: and the reason hereof is, that Ctesias, (from whom the profane historians took the names of these kings) did not use the original Assyrian names in his history, but rather such as he found in the Persian records. Howsince the date of this transaction falls four years before the death of Ninyas, there are good grounds to infer, that Ninyas, who then lived in Persia, was the Chedorlaomer of Moses, at that time the head of the Assyrian monarchy: that Amraphel was his deputy at Babylon in Shinar; and Arioch and Tidal his deputies over some other adjacent countries: for it is remarkable that Ninyas was the first who appointed under him such deputies; nor is there any absurdity in Moses to call them kings, since it is observable, from what Isaiah hinted afterwards, ch. x. 8, that the Assyrian boasted his deputy princes to be equal to royal governors, Are not my princes altogether kings?'-Shuckford's Connection, vol. 2. b. 6. A. M. 2083. A. C. 1921; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3333. A. C. 2078. GEN. CH. xii-xxv. 11. a as it was full of pits of bitumen, it might have made the engagement more difficult and dangerous to the enemy's horse: but so it was, that the five kings were put to the rout; one part of their army was cut in pieces, and the other fled to the neighbouring mountains, leaving their cities a prey to the conquerors. Lot, who at this time resided at Sodom, was involved in the calamity of the city; was plundered of all he had, and himself carried away among the rest of the captives. As soon as Abram had intelligence of this by an express messenger, he immediately sends to his three friends, desiring their assistance at this critical juncture; and putting himself at the head of three hundred and eighteen of his own domestics, all well prepared, and men of resolution, he began his pursuit, and after a march of almost seventy leagues, coming up with the enemy, and dividing his forces into small parties, he fell upon them by night, and charging them on all sides at once, put them in such a terror and consternation, that they took to their heels and fled, leaving all the booty and captives behind them, among whom he happily recovered Lot, and brought him back with all his substance to his former habitation. The first person who came to congratulate Abram upon this victory, was the king of Sodom, (very probably the son of him' who perished in the slime-pits,) who, in thankful acknowledgment of the benefits he had received from his valour and assistance, offered him all the booty which he had retaken, and desired only his subjects, the prisoners, to be restored. But Abram was too generous to take the advantage of the misery of war; and, therefore, saving to his confederates such a proportion of the plunder as by the law of arms belonged to them, he returned all the rest, both prisoners and goods, to the king of Sodom; having before resolved to keep no part of them, that it might be said he undertook that enterprise, not for any private advantage, but purely for the public good, which every man of honour should have always primarily in his view. The next who congratulated him upon this occasion, was Melchizedek king of Salem; who, upon his return from the battle, had provided plenty of all things necessary for his refreshment and his men's in their march; and as he was a priest, as well as a king, he both blessed Abram for being the instrument of so public a deliverance in the hands of God, and God himself, who had given such uncommon success to his arms; whereupon Abram, in return, presented him with the tenth part of the spoils which he had taken from the enemy in this expedition. Abram's deportment, upon this occasion, was so very acceptable to God, that he was pleased to appear to him again in a vision, and to give him fresh assurances of his special favour, and of his intention to be his shield of defence in all dangers, and for all the good acts which he performed his exceeding great reward. 1 Gen. xiv. 10. a As the text tells us, that the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fell into some of the slime pits, with which the valley of Siddim abounds, and takes no notice of their coming out of them, it is more rational to suppose that they perished there, than that Abraham staid to take them up, as the Jews vainly imagine; and that therefore the king of Sodom, who afterwards came out to congratulate Abraham, must have been the son of the deceased. Hitherto, indeed, the patriarch had listened to God's promises without any expression of distrust; but upon this fresh assurance, he ventured, for the first time, to expostulate with him, not knowing how these things possibly could be accomplished whilst himself continued childless, and, to all appearance, must be obliged to leave the bulk of his substance to Eliezar, his household steward. This, indeed, was a modest way to try whether God designed to bless him with a child; and God did not leave him long in suspense. He told him, that not his servant, but a son of his own, begotten of his body, should be his heir, and should have a race descending from him as innumerable as the stars. This was such joyful news, as gave Abram fresh courage, even to request of God some sensible and visible token, whereby he might be assured of this blessing; and accordingly God was pleased to comply with his request. That, therefore, they might enter into a formal covenant upon this occasion, he ordered him to take an heifer, a goat, and a ram, of three years old each, with a pigeon and a turtle-dove, and to offer them up. Abram did as he was ordered; and having killed the four-footed beasts, he cut them in two, and laid the halves at proper distances, directly opposite to each other, but the fowls he left whole; and so passing between the dissected bodies, (as the manner of covenanting then was,) he made his solemn vows of perpetual obedience to God; and then sitting down, in expectance of what God would do on his part, he took care to drive away all birds of prey from settling upon the sacrifice. As soon as the sun began to set, a deep sleep, attended with an horrible darkness and dread of spirits, fell upon him; during which it was revealed to him that he was not to expect an immediate accomplishment of The only place, besides this, where we have any intimation given us of this custom of making covenants, by dividing the beasts then to be sacrificed, and by the parties who covenanted passing between the parts of the beast so divided, is in Jer. xxxiv. 18, 19. I will give the men that have transgressed my covenant, which have not performed the words of my covenant, which they had made before me, when they cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof; the princes of Judah, and the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, and the priests, and all the people of the land, which passed between the parts of the calf; I hand of them that seek their life; and their dead bodies shall be will even give them into the hands of their enemies, and into the for meat unto the fowls of the heaven, and unto the beasts of the earth.' This certainly was a very ancient custom; and accordingly we find in Homer, that making a solemn covenant by oaths and sacrifices, literally, cutting faithful oaths, is a very common phrase, upon which his commentator Eustathius has this observa tion, that in matters of great moment, oaths or covenants were generally made by dividing the animals, which upon such occaMede, in a discourse upon the subject, has expressed it) was as sions were sacrificed;" and the design of this rite (as the learned much as to say, 'Thus let me be divided, and cut in pieces, if I violate the oath which I have now made in the presence of God.' -Patrick and Le Clerc's Commentary. c That horror and dread of spirits do frequently seize on those who see visions, is evident from what Daniel tells us of himself, 'I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me; for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength' (chap. x. 8); but the description which we have in Job of this matter, is, in itself, very awful and affecting. In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face, the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof; an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice; ch. iv. 13, &c. A. M. 2083. A. C. 1921; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3341. A. C. 2070. GEN. CH. xii-xxv. 11. the divine promises; for though himself was to die in Ten years had Sarai expected the performance of God's promise, and judging now, by the course of nature, that her husband's issue must proceed from some other woman, and not from her own body, she prevailed with him to take her handmaid & Hagar to be his secondary a The expression in the text is, 'Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace,' which some will have to be no more than an oriental phrase for going to the grave; but since it cannot be said of Abraham that he did, in this sense, go to his fathers (forasmuch as his body was so far from being laid with them in the sepulchre, that it was deposited in a country that had no manner of communication with that of his fathers,) it must be allowed, that from this text an argument may justly be drawn for the separate existence of human souls. The expression, however, of going to our fathers,' seems to have been formed from some such notion as this,-That the souls of the deceased do go to a certain place, where those of the same family, or same nation at least, are supposed to live together, and in communion: which notion certainly arises from that natural desire, which all men, who think their better part immortal, have to see and converse with such of their relations or countrymen as have left behind them a great and lasting fame. "For if the soul of Socrates," says one, 66 were permitted to go where it desired, it would certainly associate with the worthies of Greece, with Orpheus, Musæus, Homer, and those ancient demigods, who, in their several generations, were so renowned."-See Le Clerc's Commentary; and Biblioth. Biblica, vol. 1. in locum. Expositors have been very much divided in their opinions, how to make it out that Abraham's posterity was in a state of servitude and affliction for the space of four hundred years. It may be observed, however, that all this difficulty is removed, if we suppose that their state of affliction is to be reckoned from the time of Isaac's birth, which, to the deliverance out of the Egyptian bondage, was just four hundred and five years; but the five odd years are therefore not mentioned, because it is a common custom among all writers to take no notice of broken numbers (as they call them) when they name a round sum. And if there be supposed a farther difficulty, in that their sojourning is (in Exod. xii. 40) said to have continued four hundred and thirty years; in these years, the time of Abraham's sojourning (which was exactly twenty-five years from his coming into the land of Canaan to the birth of Isaac) may be comprehended, and then all the difficulty vanishes; because these twenty-five years, added to the four hundred and five before mentioned, exactly make up the four hundred and thirty.-Patrick's Commentary. e By this symbol God designed to represent to Abraham, either the future state of his posterity, the 'smoking furnace' signifying Israel's misery in the land of Egypt, and the burning lamp' their happy escape and deliverance; or (what seems more probable) to notify his own immediate presence, since both smoke and fire are, in several parts of Scripture, mentioned as emblems and representations of the divine appearance. And, therefore, as it was a thing customary, and especially in Chaldea, (from whence Abraham came,) for persons covenanting together to pass between the pieces of the sacrifice; so God, who had no body to do it visibly for him, did it in this type and emblem.-Poole's Annotations; and Bibliotheca Biblica, in locum. d In concubinage, these secondary, or wives of a lower order, were accounted lawful and true wives; had an equal right to the marriage bed with the chief wife, and their issue was reputed as legitimate; but in all other respects they were inferior. And as they had no authority in the family, nor any share in household government; so, if they had been servants in the family before It was not long before Hagar accordingly did conceive; and forgetting now the former condition of her life, she began to value herself upon it, and to treat her mistress with insolence and ill-manners. Sarai, impatient to see herself insulted by a slave, could not forbear breaking out into bitter complaints against her to her husband; but he, willing to make her easy, and withal to discountenance any disrespectful carriage towards her, left her to treat her maid just as she pleased. This license gave Sarai an opportunity of expressing her resentment with too much severity, which the other not able to bear, she stole from her master's house, and was making the best of her way to her own country, which was Egypt; when, in her travels through the wilderness, meeting with a fountain, she tarried to rest and refresh herself there. As she was revolving her sorrows in her mind, an angel came to her, and, after some previous questions, advised her to return home, and be subject to her mistress, because it would not be long before she should be delivered of a son, (whom he ordered her to name * Ishmael,) whose posterity would be very numerous, a stout and warlike people, living upon plunder in the deserts, and apt to annoy others, though not easily vanquished themselves. e they came to be concubines, they continued in that state afterwards, and in the same subjection to their mistresses as before -Howel's History of the Bible. e Ishmael is compounded of the words Jishmag and El, the Lord hath, or the Lord will hear; and the reason of the name is immediately subjoined by the angel, namely, because the Lord bath heard her complaint. f Gen. xvi. 12. His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.' "The one is the natural, and almost necessary consequence of the other. Ishmael lived by prey and rapine in the wilderness; and his posterity have all along infested Arabia and the neighbouring countries with their robberies and incursions. They live in a state of continual war with the world, and are both robbers by land and pirates by sea. As they have been such enemies to mankind, it is no wonder that mankind have been such enemies to them again; that several attempts have been made to extirpate them; and even now as well as formerly, travellers are forced to go with arms, and in caravans or large companies, and to march and keep watch like a little army, to defend themselves from the assaults of these freebooters, who run about in troops, and rob and plunder all whom they can by any means subdue. These robberies they also justify, by alleging the hard usage of their father Ishmael, who being turned out of doors by Abraham, had the open plains and deserts given him by God for his patrimony, with permission to take whatever he could find there; and on this account they think they may, with a safe conscience, indemnify themselves, as well as they can, not only on the posterity of Isaac, but also on every body else; always supposing a kind of kindred between themselves and those they plunder; and in relating their adventures of this kind, they think it sufficient to change the expression, and instead of I robbed a man of such and such a thing, to say, I gained it." Sale's Preliminary Discourse, 30.-Newton on the Prophecies, vol. 1. p. 42. "The Arabs have never been entirely subdued, nor has any impression been made on them, except on their borders; where, indeed, the Phenicians, Persians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, and in modern times, the Othman Tartars, have severally acquired settlements; but, with these exceptions, the natives of Hejaz and Yemen have preserved for ages the sole dominion of their deserts and pastures, their mountains and fertile valleys. Thus, apart from the rest of mankind, this extraordinary people have retained their primitive language and manners, features and characters, a |