! This story also preserves for us the record of the continuance of inter-tribal relationships between the tribe of Abraham, which had gone out from the paternal home, and the ancestral Terahites. Much light on the customs of the early Hebrews is shed by this story. We have a picturesque view of the life of these simple tent-dwellers, abounding in attractive colorings, but not without its shadows. Among other facts we may notice that a young woman's consent was not so much as asked to her own marriage. Throughout these stories of the patriarchs we are ever being reminded of the contrast between the position of woman in modern society and her position in those good old days; a contrast that tells a significant tale of the gradual emancipation by which she is acquiring the right to her own person and property. Yet are we reminded, also, that under all disabilities the true woman can make herself the centre of every human story. There is a curious mixture of piety and superstition in the good steward's manner of finding out the destined bride of Isaac-methods not wholly obsolete yet. Rightly did he feel that God must guide him in such a momentous step; but wrongly did he look to some outward chance-the reception given him by the daughters of the tribe, as they came out to the well-for an indication of the divine will. Slow of heart are we indeed to learn that not in self-appointed, arbitrary omens, the mere play of chance, as we say, but in the intelligent use of the reason given us, are we to receive the guidance from on high. Chapter twenty-five opens with the account of another branch of Abraham's family, giving us the relationships of certain Arabian tribes to the Hebrews. The last days of Abraham are then simply told. With verse twelve the eighth original chapter of Genesis begins: "Now these are the generations of Ishmael." In this genealogical table we have another ethnographical chart, in which the inter-relationships of the various peoples of Arabia are outlined. CHAPTER VII. THE TRADITIONS OF JACOB. THE ninth original chaper of Genesis opens in verse nineteen of our chapter twenty-five, with the words “And these are the generations of Isaac "—and reaches down to the end of our chapter thirty-five (xxv. 19-xxxv.). It gives us The Traditions of Jacob. We rarely find traditions of Jacob among other peoples, while we meet many traditions of Abraham outside of Israel. Abraham, in fact, as the Genesis stories show, was regarded as the ancestor of the various peoples who were recognized by the Hebrews as allied with themselves. Jacob, on the contrary, was viewed as the founder of a separate people the ancestral head of the House of Israel. He was plainly the favorite Father of the people. His story is told in great detail, and with touches of realism that show hands fondly lingering over the picture. The national consciousness of the people found in this composite character-gifted with high spiritual powers, yet delighting in smartness-the type of its own double nature. They called themselves, not after Abraham, but after Jacob. Abraham shrank into the background of tradition through } long centuries; and only came forward again as Israel passed out from its national exclusiveness into broad human relationships. The imagination of the race busied itself in magnifying the heroic form of the original Jew. He became the Great Shepherd; the nomad's ideal hero; who was represented in story with his "staff "-the sign in which he conquered. He was dowered with cunning against which none could contend; and "The Crafty" became a Hebrew Ulysses, over whose unfailing subtlety the people. delightedly chuckled. He was invested with extraor dinary strength, and was pictured as rolling away, single-handed, the great stone that was usually placed over the jealously-guarded well, and as wrestling through a whole night with an angel and coming off victor-a Hebrew Hercules, in fact. Ewald calls the story of Jacob "The Hebrew Comedy of Errors," and thinks that it was originally cast in a form designed for acting in popular assemblies of the peasantry. The various threads of tradition, which, as a woof of many colors, are shot through the warp of the story, mingle curiously at times. From the manner in which the parts of the story fail to fit properly together, it would appear that there had been one body of traditions which represented Jacob as a noble, upright man, deceived repeatedly by Laban; and another body of traditions which represented him as a master of craft and cunning. The national hero's form was for a long time plastic. Different ideals strove together, until at length they were fused into their present shape. When these various representations were finally cast into the form in which they now stand, the Hebrews had grown into a people of profound spiritual and ethical insight; and this spirit breathed through the ancient traditions, doing its best to transform them into pictures. of the soul-training of the Prince of God, the education of a Jacob into an Israel. The tribal significance of these traditions is almost thrust upon our notice in the opening of our story; when Jehovah is represented as saying to Rebekah : "Two nations are in thy womb; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger." Israel recognized the kinship of the people of Edom; the people whose home was in the rocky table-land of Seir, on the southeast border of Canaan; the strange people who built their great city in the face of the mountain wall. Before the Sons of Israel had consolidated into a nation, the Edomites had organized a powerful kingdom; a kingdom whose constant strife with Judah largely shaped its later history. The inter-relationship of these brother-peoples; the characteristics of each race; the explanation of the superiority of the younger nation-such were the problems that were woven by tradition into the story of Jacob and Esau, the Father of the Jews and the |