precious things;"* but not it seems to her father; still Bethuel is overlooked, and he alone. It is proposed that she shall tarry a few days before she departs. And by whom is this proposal made? Not by her father, the most natural person surely to have been the principal throughout this whole affair; but "by her brother and her mother." In the next generation, when Jacob, the fruit of this marriage, flies to his mother's country at the counsel of Rebekah to hide himself from the anger of Esau, and to procure for himself a wife, and when he comes to Haran and inquires of the shepherds after his kindred in that place, how does he express himself: "Know ye," says he, "Laban the son of Nahor." This is more marked than even the former

* Genesis, xxiv. 53.

Ibid. xxix. 5.

Ibid. xxiv. 55.

instances, for Laban was the son of Bethuel, and only the grandson of Nahor; yet still we see Bethuel is passed over as a person of no note in his own family, and Laban his own child designated by the title of his grandfather, instead of his father.

This is consistent-and the consistency is too much of one piece throughout, and marked by too many particulars, to be accidental. It is the consistency of a man who knew more about Bethuel than we do, or than he happened to let drop from his pen. It is of a kind, perhaps, the most satisfactory of all for the purpose I use it, because the least liable to suspicion of all. The uniformity of expressive silence-repeated omissions that have a meaning-no agreement in a positive fact, for nothing is asserted; yet a presumption of the fact conveyed by mere negative evidence. It is

like the death of Joseph in the New Testament, which none of the Evangelists affirm to have taken place before the Crucifixion, though all imply it. This kind of consist

ency I look upon as beyond the reach of the most subtle contriver in the world.

V.

On the return of this servant of Abraham, his embassy fulfilled, and Rebekah in his company, he discovers Isaac at a distance, who was gone out (as our translation has it)" to meditate or (as the margin has it) in the field at eventide."*

to pray

Now in this subordinate incident in the narrative there are marks of truth, (very slight indeed it may be,) but still, I think, if not obvious, not difficult to be perceived

* Genesis, xxiv. 68, my pr

and not unworthy to be mentioned. Isaac went out to meditate or to pray-but the Hebrew word does not relate to religious meditation exclusively, still less exclusively to direct prayer. Neither does the cor

responding expression in the Septuagint (αδολεσχῆσαι) convey either of these senses exclusively, the latter of the two perhaps not at all. The leading idea suggested seems to be an anxious, a reverential, a painful, a depressed state of mind-" out of the abundance of my complaint" (or meditation, for the word is the same here, only in the form of a substantive,)" out of the abundance of my meditation and grief have I spoken," are the words of Hannah to Eli.* "Who hath woe, who hath sorrow, who hath contentions, who hath babbling, (the word is here still the same and evidently might be ren

* 1 Samuel, i. 16.

dered with more propriety melancholy,) who hath wounds without cause, who hath redness of eyes? * Isaac therefore went out into the field not directly to pray, but to give ease to a wounded spirit in solitude. Now the occasion of this his trouble of mind is not pointed out, and the passage indeed has been usually explained without any reference to such a feeling, and merely as an instance of religious contemplation in Isaac worthy of imitation by all. But one of the last things that is recorded to have happened before the servant went to Haran, whence he was now returning, is the death and burial of Sarah, no doubt a tender mother (as she proved herself a jealous one,) to the child of her old age and her only child. What more likely than that her loss was the subject of Isaac's mournful * Proverbs, xxiii. 29.