A. M. 2108. A. C. 1897; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3398. A. C. 2013. GEN. CH. xx-xxv. 11, is that we read so much in the old law of circumcis- | slaughter in their camp; I cannot see, why a person of ing the foreskin of the heart,' and hear the apostle so frequently telling us in the new, 2 of putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ;' "for he is not a Jew, who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh but he is a Jew who is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.' : that consummate wisdom, and so highly favoured by God with extraordinary monitions upon all remarkable emergencies, as Abraham was, might not, by God's advice, make use of some such stratagem as Gideon did, though the Scripture is herein silent, that the success might be imputed to the operation of faith in him, and not to the agency of second causes, or what some call the chance of war. Of what age Isaac was, when Abraham was ordered to offer him up, is nowhere declared in Scripture. The opinion of some learned Jews, that he was but twelve years old, is ridiculous; since at that age, it would have been impossible for him to have carried such a load of wood, as was requisite upon that occasion; and others run into a contrary extreme, by supposing that he was then seven and thirty years of age, which must have been the year wherein his mother died; and yet she is said to have been alive when this transaction happened. Josephus indeed makes him five and twenty, and some Christian (both ancient and modern) commentators suppose that he was past thirty; but whatever his age might be, it is acknowledged, that he was capable of making resistance, and would certainly have done it, had he not been very well satisfied that the command came from God. To this purpose the a Jewish historian introduces Abraham as making a very tender and pathetic speech to his son; inspiring him with a just contempt of life; and exhorting him to a due submission to the divine order and decree; to all which Isaac attended, says our author, with a constancy and resignation becoming the son of such a father and upon this their mutual behaviour, a very elegant father of the Greek church has made this beautiful reflection :-" All the strength of reluctant love could not withhold the father's hands; and all the It may seem a little strange at first, perhaps, that Abraham, whose course of life was retired and philosophical, should all on a sudden commence so great a warrior, as to be able to defeat four kings at once, and their victorious armies, with a small number of his domestics, and some assistance that was given him by his neighbours. His own men were 318; and what force his confederates, the three Phoenician princes, brought to his assistance, we do not find mentioned. We may probably enough suppose, that they did not exceed his own domestics; but then we are not obliged to affirm, that he fell upon the whole body of the Assyrian army with this small retinue. This certainly would have been too bold an attempt for the little company which he commanded; and therefore the more likely supposition is, that coming up with them by night, he divided his men into two or three parties, the better to make a diversion, and conceal his strength; that with one party himself might attack the beadquarters of king Chedorlaomer, where the chief feasting and revelling was kept for joy of their late victories; that with another he might fall upon those who were appointed to guard the captives and the spoil; and with a third might be beating up other quarters; so that the Assyrians, being fatigued in their late battle, surprised at finding a new enemy, and not knowing what their number or strength might be, or where their principal attack was to begin, might endeavour to save them-horror of a dissolution could not tempt the son to move selves by flight; which Abraham perceiving, might take the advantage of their fright, and pursue them, until he had made himself master of the prisoners and the spoil, and then retire himself, as not thinking it advisable to follow them until the daylight might discover the weakness of his forces. All this might well enough be done by a common stratagem in war, without any miraculous interposition of providence: but it is much more likely, that the same God, who in after ages instructed one of his posterity, even with such another little handful of men, not only to break an army of about 200,000 or 300,000, but to kill of them upon the spot, no fewer than 120,000; to disperse at least as many more; to vanquish after this a party of 15,000 that had retired in a body; and at last to take all the four kings, who were the leaders of this numerous, or rather numberless army; it is much more likely, I say, that the God of Abraham would not be wanting to his servant in his counsels and suggestions upon this important occasion; and if a party of 300 men, under the conduct of a person every way inferior to Abraham, was by a stratagem in the night, and by the help of a sudden panic which God injected, enabled to defeat four mighty princes, and to make such a prodigious 'Deut. x. 16. * Col. ii. 11. Rom. ii. 28, 29. Judges, at the 7th and 8th chapters. Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1. Occasional Annotations, 19. 6 for his own preservation. Which of the two, shall we say, deserves the precedence in our wonder and veneration? For there seems to be a religious emulation or contest between them, which should most remarkably signalize himself; the father, in loving God more than Gregor. Nyss. De Deitate Fil. et Spirit. Sanct. p. 908. a The words wherein Josephus makes Abraham address his son upon this occasion are these:-"My dear son, thou hast been the child of my prayers to me, and since thy coming into the world, I have spared for nothing in thy nurture and education. There is not any happiness I have more wished for, than to see thee settled in a consummated state of age and reason; and whenever God shall take me to himself, to leave thee in possession of my authority and dominions. But since it has been the will of God, first to bestow thee upon me, and now to call thee back again, my dear son, acquit thyself generously under so pious a necessity. It is to God that thou art dedicated and delivered up on this occasion, and it is the same God that now requires thee of me, in return for all the blessings and favours he hath to the law of nature, for every one that is born, to die; and a showered down upon us, both in war and peace. It is agreeable more glorious end thou canst never have, than to fall by the hand of thy own father, a sacrifice to the God and Father of the universe, who hath rather chosen to receive thy soul into a blessed than to suffer thee to be taken away in sickness, war, passion, or eternity, upon the wings of prayer and ardent ejaculations, any other of the common chances of mankind. Consider it well, and thou wilt find, that in that heavenly station, to which thou art now called, thou mayest make thyself the support of thy aged father, and that instead of my son Isaac, I shall have God himself for my guardian.”—Antiquities, b. 1. c. 14. A. M. 2108. A. C. 1896; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3398. A. C. 2013. GEN. CH. xx-xxv. 11. his own child, and the son, in the love of duty above his | which is found in this tract of ground now, was the own life." This is a gallant instance of a profound submission to the divine will; and yet (not to detract from the merit of it) if we consider the matter coolly, it was no more than what many martyrs, even under the Jewish economy, equally have performed. They have given themselves up, in testimony of their love to God, to deaths as cruel as terrible, as this which Isaac was to suffer: They were stoned, were sawed asunder, were tortured; and yet they accepted not deliverance, that they might inherit a joyful resurrection.' a cause, The metamorphosis of Lot's wife is one of the most wonderful events in Scripture; and therefore those who are unwilling, as they say, to multiply miracles without from the different senses which the words in the text are capable of, have endeavoured to affix another interpretation to them. Thus the word which we render pillar, or statue, besides its obvious signification, may, in a metaphorical sense, be applied to denote any thing that, like a pillar or stone, is immoveable and hard; and according to this acceptation, these interpreters suppose that Moses might intend no more than that Lot's wife was struck dead with fear or surprise, or any other cause, and so remain motionless, like a stone. 2 4 3 In like manner, the word which we render salt, besides its common signification, does sometimes denote a dry and barren soil, such as is found about the asphaltic lake; and thus the sense of the words, applied to Lot's wife, intimates, that the place of her death was in a barren country, or in a land of salt. At other times it signifies a long space, or continuance of time, because we find an everlasting covenant called a covenant of salt, (salt being therefore an emblem of eternity, because the things that are seasoned therewith continue incorrupt for many years,) and in this sense Lot's wife may be said to become an everlasting monument of the divine displeasure, without any consideration either of the form or matter whereinto she was changed; and from these significations of the words, they draw this explication of the passage:" That Lot's wife, either looking back upon the city when she saw it all in smoke, and fire from heaven pouring down upon it, was struck dead with the frightful sight, in a country that was afterwards barren and unfruitful: or that, not only stopping, but returning towards the city, (when the angel was gone,) she was suffocated by some poisonous vapour, and perished in the common conflagration." And this, as they say, saves a miracle, and answers the end of providence full as well as if the woman had actually been turned into a pillar of salt, which never was, and never will be proved by any authentic testimony. All this is plausible enough; and yet those who adhere to the literal sense of the words, have this to their vindication-That the vale of Siddim, say in where Sodom, and the other cities stood; was originally a very fruitful soil, (as most bituminous countries are,) which induced Lot to make choice of it for the pasturage of his cattle; but is at present the very reverse, a poor barren land, full of sulphur and salt-pits: and hence they infer, that all the sulphureous and saline matter, See Le Clerc's Dissert. in locum. * Deut. xxix. 23. 'Heb. xi. 35, 37. Numb xviii 19 effect of divine vengeance, and showered down upon it, when God destroyed Sodom, and its neighbouring cities. They therefore suppose, that the woman standing still too long to behold the destruction of her country, some of that dreadful shower, in the manner of great flakes of snow, fell upon her, and clinging to her body, wrapped it all over, as it were in a sheet of nitrosulphureous matter, which congealed into a crust as hard as a stone, and made her appear like a statue or pillar of a metallic salt, having her body enclosed, and, as it were, candied all over with it. And to maintain this their hypothesis, they assert, that all indurated bodies (as chemists well know) are, as they speak, highly saturated with a saline principle, and all coagulations and concretions, in the mixture of bodies, are effected by this means: so that it was not possible to express such a transmutation as Lot's wife underwent, whether it was simply by incrustation, or by a total penetration, more properly than Moses has done. They produce instances from the best historians of several petrifactions, both of men and cattle, (almost as wonderful as this of Lot's wife,) standing in the very same posture wherein they were found at the instant of their transmutation, for several generations afterwards; and, for the confirmation of this in particular, they vouch the testimony of the author of the book of Wisdom, who makes mention of a standing pillar of salt, as a monument of an unbelieving soul, and the authority of the Seventy interpreters, who expressly render it so. Among Jewish writers, they cite the words of Josephus, who tells us, that Lot's wife, casting her eye perpetually back upon the city, and being too much concerned about it, contrary to what God had forbidden her, was turned into a pillar of salt, which I myself (as he tells us) have seen. They cite the words of Philo, who frequently takes notice of this metamorphosis, and, in his allegories of the law more particularly, declares, that for the love of Sodom, Lot's wife was turned into a stone. And among Christian writers, they produce that passage of Clemens, in his epistle to the Corinthians; Lot's wife went along with him, but being of a different spirit, and not persisting in concord with him, she was therefore placed for a sign, and continues a statue of salt to this very day;' together with the testimony of Irenæus, and several other fathers of the church. The accounts which modern historians and travellers give us of this matter are so very different and uncertain, that we cannot so well tell where to fix our belief. Bochart, in his description of the Holy Land, tells us, that he gave himself the fatigue of a very troublesome journey to behold this statue, but was not so happy as Antiq. b. 1. c. 12. not take the salt here mentioned for common salt, which water a Most of the interpreters have observed to us, that we must soon dissolves, and could not possibly continue long, being exposed to the wind and rain; but for metallic salt, which was hewn out of the rock like marble, and made use of in building houses, according to the testimony of several authors. Watsius, Miscell. vol. 1. and Pliny, b. 31. c. 7, tell us, that in Africa, not far from Utica, there are vast heaps of salt, like mountains, which, when once hardened by the sun and moon, cannot be dissolved with rain or any other liquor, nor penetrated with any kind of instrument made with iron.-Heidegger's Hist. Patriar, vol. 2. Essay 8. A. M. 2108. A. C. 1896; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3398. A. C. 2013. GEN. CH. xx-xxv. 11. to satisfy his curiosity; for the inhabitants assured him the place was inaccessible, and could not be visited without apparent danger of death, because of the prodigious beasts and serpents that abounded there, but more especially, because of the Biduini, a very savage and inhuman sort of people, that dwelt near it; and yet, if we will believe other writers of this kind, they will tell us expressly, that there is some part of it remaining, and to be seen between Engaddi and the Dead Sea. of persons struck with lightning, and killed with cold vapours, that have immediately petrified in the same manner. Why she was turned into a body of salt rather than any other substance, is only resolvable into the good pleasure of God. The conjectures of Jewish writers upon this head, we acknowledge, are trifling; nor are we responsible for the reveries of such Christian commentators as would crowd in a multitude of palpable absurdities, merely to make the miracle more portentous : but why God exacted so severe a penalty for an offence so seemingly small, is not so hard to be resolved; because, according to the light wherein we are to consider this woman, her disobedience to the divine command had in it all the malignity of an obstinate and perverse mind, unthankful to God for his preservation of her, and too closely attached, if not to the wicked customs, at least to the persons and things which she had left behind her in that sink of sin and sensuality. We will suppose however for once, that the long duration of this monument is an imposition of the inhabitants upon the credulity of strangers; yet it will not therefore follow, that there never was any such thing in being, unless we can think it inconsistent with the nature of God to work a miracle for the punishment of a wicked woman. Miracles indeed are not to be multiplied, unless there be occasion for them; but when the plain sense of the words leads us to such a construction, it is a niceness, I think, no way commendable, to endeavour to find out another, merely for the sake of avoiding the miraculousness of the fact; as if the Scriptures were more valuable for containing nothing but obvious matters, and the majesty of God any way magnified by seeming to exert as little of its omnipotent power as possible. The short of the matter is this,-We have a clear account in a book full of wonders, of a woman confessedly guilty of disobedience and ingratitude, struck dead by the hand of God, and turned into a statue of salt, for a monument of terror to future generations. And is there any thing in this so repugnant to reason, or so incongruous for God to do, that we must immediately fly to another interpretation, and to make the matter easy, of the patriarch Abraham, and to account for several resolutely maintain that the whole purport of the thing transactions and passages in Scripture, which seem to is only this,―That the poor woman either suddenly died give umbrage to infidelity during the compass of his life. of a fright, or indiscreetly fell into the fire? God certainly And for the confirmation of all this, we might now may work a miracle when he pleases, and punish any produce the testimony of profane authors, and make it wicked person in what manner he thinks fit; nor is there appear, that Abraham's fame for a just, virtuous, and any more wonder in the metamorphosis of Lot's wife, religious man, is spoken of by Berosus in a fragment than there was in changing the rod of Moses into a ser-preserved by Josephus: that his being born in Ur of the pent. The same power might do both; and since the same history has recorded both, there is the same reason for the credibility of both. Nay, of the two, the transformation of Lot's wife seems more familiar to our conceptions, since we want not instances, as I said before, But there is another observation which we may draw ' from our Saviour's application of this story, as well as * the angel's expression to Lot, namely, that she loitered by the way, if not returned to the city; and if so, it is no wonder that she suffered when she was found within the compass of the sulphureous streams from heaven; nor can God be blamed for his exemplary punishment of her, unless we think it reasonable for his providence, in this case, to have interposed, and wrought a miracle for her preservation, who had so little deserved it, and had run herself voluntarily into the jaws of destruction. a a Bisselius (in his Argon. Americ. b. 14. c. 2.) has a very remarkable story to this purpose. He tells us, that Badicus Almagrus, who was the first man that ever marched an army over the mountains between Peru and Chili, by the extremity of the cold, and unwholesomeness of the air, lost in that expedition a great many men. Being obliged, however, some few months after, to return the same way, what the historian tells us upon this occasion is very wonderful. The horsemen and infantry, who five months ago were frozen to death, were still standing untouched, uncorrupted, in the same condition and shape that they were in when they were laid hold of by the sudden grasp of death, one lay flat with his face on the ground, another stood erect, a third seemed to shake the bridle, which he still retained in his hand. In a word, he found them exactly as he left them; they had no fulsome odour, and their colour was altogether different from that of corpses. In fine, unless that the soul had been long ago in another world, they were in other respects more like the living than the dead. To the like purpose it is related by Aventinus (Annot. Bavar. b. 7.), a credible historian, that in his time above fifty country people, with their cows and calves, in Carinthia, were all destroyed at once by a strong suffocating exhalation, which immediately after an earthquake (in the year 1348) ascended out of the earth, and reduced them to saline Thus we have endeavoured to vindicate the character 4 Chaldees, his removal into Canaan, and afterwards sojourning in Egypt, is related by Eupolemus, as he is quoted by Eusebius: that the captivity of his nephew Lot, his victory over the four kings, and honourable reception by Melchizedek, king of the sacred city of author: that his marrying two wives, one an Egyptian, Argarize, and priest of God, are recorded by the same by whom he had a son, who was the father of twelve kings in Arabia, and the other a woman of his own kindred, by whom he had likewise one son, whose name in Greek was Tinos, which answers exactly to the Hebrew word Isaac; and that this Isaac he was commanded to sacrifice, but when he was going to kill him, was stopped by an angel, and offered a ram in his stead; all this is related by Antipanus, as he is quoted by the same Eusebius: that the ancient custom of circumcision is taken notice of by Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo, and others: that the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Gen. xix. 22. 1 Luke xvii. 31, 32. Antiq. b. 1. c. 8. Præpar. Evang. b. 9. c. 17. Præpar. Evang. b. 9. c. 18. Hug. Grot. de Veritate. statues, such as that of Lot's wife, which he tells us were seen both by himself and by the chancellor of Austria.—Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1. Occasional Annotations, 22. A. M. 2108. A. C. 1896; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3398. A. C. 2013. GEN. CH. xx-xxv. 11, the strange waste it has made in a once most beautiful | blackness of the soil, and its being turned into dust and country, is described by Strabo, Tacitus, and Solinus: ashes, is a sure token of its having suffered by fire from that Isaac's being born to a father when old, and to a heaven; and if we may believe the report, of a late tramother incapable of conception, gave occasion of the veller, according to the account which he had from the story of the miraculous birth of Orion, by the help of the inhabitants themselves, some of the ruins of these ancient gods, even when his father Hyreus had no wife at all: cities do still appear whenever the water is low and that Lot's kind reception of the two angels in Sodom, shallow. his protecting them from the insults of the people, and escaping thereupon the destruction that befell them, are all well delineated in the common fable of Baucis and Philemon and (to mention no more) that the fate of his wife, for her looking back upon Sodom, and her being thereupon changed into a statue of metallic salt, gave rise to the poet's fiction of the loss of Eurydice, and her remission into hell for her husband's turning to look upon her, and of Niobe's being changed into a stone for resenting the death of her children. So well has infinite wisdom provided, that the sacred truths of divine revelation should not only be supported by the attestation of all ancient history, but preserved likewise even in the vanity and extravagance of fables; for even 'they, Operhaps might have an account of the thing trom some Lord, shew the glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy power; that thy power, thy glory, and the mightiness of thy kingdom, might be known unto men.' What the number of these cities were, is a matter wherein we can have no absolute certainty. Moses, in the text, makes no mention but of two, Sodom and Gomorrah; but in another place he enumerates four, and gives this description of their dreadful punishment. "When the generations to come shall see the plague of that land, and the sicknesses which the Lord hath laid upon it, and that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, (which the Lord overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath,) even all the nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done this unto the land?' Nay,if we will believe the historian above cited, and who Phoenician writer, the number of the cities which at this time were destroyed were thirteen; and to this there is a passage in the prophet, which seems to give some countenance, though not as to the precise number of them: 11 As I live,' saith the Lord God to Jerusalem, Sodom, thy sister, has not done, she nor her daughters' (that is, CHAP. II.-Of the Destruction of Sodom and Go- the cities which were built round it, and were tributary to morrah. Or all God's judgments upon the wicked, next to that of the universal deluge, the destruction of Sodom, and the neighbouring cities in the plain of Jordan, seems to be one of the most remarkable, and the most dreadful interpositions of providence; and may therefore in this place deserve a particular consideration. That this catastrophe (as the apostle calls it) did really happen, according to the account which Moses gives us of it, we have the concurring testimony of all historians, both ancient and modern, to convince us. * Diodorus Siculus, after having given us a description of the lake Asphaltites, (which now fills the place where these cities once stood,) acquaints us, that the adjacent country was then on fire, and sent forth a grievous smell, to which he imputes the sickly and short lives of the neighbouring inhabitants. 'Strabo, having made mention of the same lake, pursues his account, and tells us, that the craggy and burnt rocks, the caverns broken in, and the soil all about it adust, and turned to ashes, give credit to a report among the people, that formerly several cities stood there, (whereof Sodom was the chief,) but that by earthquakes, and fire breaking out, there were some of them entirely swallowed up, and others forsaken by the inhabitants that could make their escape. 6 Tacitus describes the lake much in the same manner with these other historians; and then adds, that not far from it are fields, now barren, which were reported formerly to have been very fruitful, adorned with large cities which were burned by lightning, and do still retain the traces of their destruction. Solinus is clearly of opinion, that the 14 15 12 The plain of Jordan includes the greatest part of the flat country, through which the river Jordan runs, from its coming out of the sea of Galilee, to its falling into the Asphaltite lake, or Salt Sea. But we are not to imagine, that this plain was once a continued level, without any risings or descents. The greatest part of it indeed was champaigne country, (and for this reason was commonly called 'the great field,') but therein we read 13 of the valley of Jericho, and 1 of the vale of Siddim ; in the latter of which these cities stood, in a situation so very advantageous, that we find it compared to the land of Egypt, even to the garden of paradise, upon account of its being so well watered. And well it might, seeing it had (as the Lacus Asphaltites has to this day) not only the streams of the river Jordan running quite through it, but the river Arnon from the east," the brook Zered, and the 18 famous fountain Callirrhoe from the south, falling into it. Now, since all this water had no direct passage into the sea, it must necessarily follow, either that it was conveyed away by some subterraneous passage, or was swallowed up in the sands, that every where encompassed it; which might the more easily be done, because the inhabitants of those hot countries used to divide their rivers into several small branches, for the benefit of watering their fields. And as this plenty of water gave great riches to the Maundrell's Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem. Deut. xxix. 22, 23, 24. 10 Strabo, b. 16. 11 Ezek. xvi, 48. "Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 1. "Deut. xxxiv. 3 14 Gen. xiv. 3. 15 Gen. xiii. 10. See page 145, in the notes. Josephus Antiq. b. 4. c. 4. "Num. xxi. 12. "Pliny, b. 5. c. 16, 16 A. M. 2108. A. C. 1896; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3398. A. C. 2013. GEN. CH. xx-xxv. 11. 2 Be God, &c.; and the reason is,-Because, men having no power over this kind of meteor, and it being impossible for them, by any kind of contrivance, to ascend up to the clouds, God is therefore supposed to dwell there, and to cast down his bolts from thence. Now, from these observations put together, we may, in some measure, form a notion to ourselves, how this destruction came to be effected. For though Moses does not inform us, after what manner the lightning and thunderbolts from above subverted these cities and their adjacent territories; yet, since he plainly makes mention of them, we cannot comprehend how it could happen any otherwise than that the lightning and thunderbolts, falling in great abundance upon some pits of bitumen, c the veins of that combustible matter took fire immediate of the bituminous soil, these wicked cities were subverted by a dreadful earthquake, which was followed with a subsiding of the ground; and that, d as soon as the earth was sunk, it would unavoidably fall out, that the waters running to this place in so great an abundance, and mixing with the bitumen, which they found in great plenty, would make a lake of what was a valley before, and a lake of the same quality with what the Scripture calls the Salt Sea. Foil, and fertility to the country, so wealth and abun- | nations, is frequently called the fire of God, the fire from dance of all things (as mankind are too apt to abuse God's gifts) made Sodom and the neighbouring cities very infamous for their wickedness and impiety. The prophet Ezekiel gives us a description of them: hold this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom; pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness, was in her and in her daughters; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy, but was haughty, and committed abomination before me;' which Josephus might have in his eye when he gave us this account of them. "The Sedomites (says he) waxed proud, and, by reason of their riches and wealth, grew contumelious towards men, and impious towards God; so that they were wholly unmindful of the favours they received from him. They were inhospitable to strangers, and too proud and arrogant to be rebuked. They burned in unnatural lustsly, and as the fire penetrated into the lowermost bowels towards one another, and took pleasure in none but such as ran to the same excess of riot with themselves." These, and other abominable enormities, provoked the Divine Ruler of the world to destroy their cities, whose cry was now grown great for vengeance; and the manner wherein it was effected, Moses has recorded in these words: Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and he overthrew the cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground;' and for the better understanding of this, we must observe, 1st, That in the vale of Siddim (the tract of ground which was now destroyed) there were a great many pits of bitumen, which being a very combustible matter, is in some places liquid, in others solid; and not only found near the surface of the earth, but lies sometimes very deep, and is dug from the very bowels of it. 2dly, We must observe, that the brimstone and fire which the Lord is said to rain upon Sodom and Gomorrah, means brimstone inflamed; that, in the Hebrew style, brimstone inflamed signifies lightning; and that the reason why lightning is thus described, no one can be ignorant of, that has either smelt the places which have been struck with thunder, or a read what learned men have wrote upon the subject. 3dly, We must observe further, that God is not only said to have 'rained down brimstone and fire,' but brimstone and fire from the Lord; where the addition of from the Lord,' which at first sight may appear to be superfluous, or to denote a plurality of persons in the Deity, (as most Christian interpreters would have it,) does more particularly describe the thunderbolt, which by the Hebrews, as well as other 1 C. xvi. 49, 50. 2 Antiq. b. 1. c. 12. Gen. xix. 24, 25. 'Le Clerc's Commentary. Pliny's Natural History, b. 25. c. 15. aThus thunder and lightning, says Pliny, (b. 25. c. 15.) have the smell of brimstone, and the very light and flame of them is sulphureous. And Seneca (Quæst. Nat. b. 2. c. 21.) tells us, that all things which are struck by lightning have a sulphureous smell; as indeed our natural philosophers have plainly demonstrated, that what we call the thunderbolt, is nothing else but a sulphureous exhalation. Persius, in his second satire, calls it sulphur sacrum. When it thunders, the oak is not more rapidly rent asunder by the sacred sulphury flame than you and your house.' And for this reason the Greeks, in their language, call brimstone divine, because the thunderbolt, which it assimilates, is supposed to come from God.-Le Clerc's Dissertation. 6 Thus, in the second book of Kings, THE FIRE OF GOD came down from heaven and devoured them," ch. i. 12. And Isaiah This lake, according to the account we have of it, is enclosed to the east and west with exceedingly high mountains; on the north it is bounded by the plain of Jericho, on which side it receives the waters of Jordan; with the fire of the Lord;' to which the passage in the Latin poet uses the same expression, ch. lxvi. 16. He shall be punished exactly agrees:- He, swifter than the bolt of Jove and the speed of falling stars, leaped from the dreary banks,' Stat. Theb. b. 1. Some however have remarked it, as a peculiar elegancy in the Hebrew tongue, that it very often makes use of the antecedent instead of the relative, or the noun instead of the pronoun, especially when it means to express a thing with great vehemence, or to denote any action to be supernatural or miraculous.—Heidegger's Hist. Patriar, vol. 2. Essay 8. 106) if you do but touch them with a lighted torch, immediately take fire; nay, the very stones in the rivers and sands in the e The account given in the text of the Salt or Dead Sea differs somewhat, though not much, from the descriptions of modern travellers. According to the analysis of Dr Marcet, the specific gravity of the water is 1. 211, that of fresh water being 1000, Thus it is able to support bodies that would sink elsewhere. It is impregnated with mineral substances, and a fetid air often exhales from the water. Recent travellers may have found a few shellfish on the shore, or seen a few birds cross its waves; but these form only exceptions to the general absence of animal life. Every thing around bears that dreary and fearful character that marks the malediction of Heaven. |