A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and Essays

Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau, and heard that the latter was coming to meet him followed by 400 men. Jacob, a timorous knave at best, became terribly afraid. He, doubtless, remembered the wrongs inflicted upon Esau, the cruel extortion of the birthright, and the fraudulent obtainment of the dying Isaac's blessing. He, therefore, sent forward to his brother Esau a large present as a peace offering. He also divided the remainder of his flocks, herds, and goods, into two divisions, that if one were smitten, the other might escape; sending these on, he was left alone. While alone he wrestled with either a man, or an angel, or God. The text says "a man," the heading to the chapter says "an angel," and Jacob himself says that he has "seen God face to face." Whether God, angel, or man, it was not a fair wrestle, and were the present editor of Bell's Life referee, he would, unquestionably, declare it to be most unfair to touch "the hollow of Jacob's thigh" so as to put it "out of joint," and, consequently, award the result of the match to Jacob. Jacob, notwithstanding the injury, still kept his grip, and the apocryphal wrestler, finding himself no match at fair struggling, and that foul play was unavailing, now tried entreaty, and said, "Let me go, for the day breaketh." Spirits never appear in the daytime, when, if they did appear, they could be seen and examined; they are more often visible in the twilight, in the darkness, and in dreams. Jacob would not let go, his life's instinct for bargaining prevailed, and probably, because he could get nothing else, he insisted on his opponent's blessing before he let him go. In the Roman Catholic version of the bible there is the following note: Chap, xxxii, 24. A man, etc.

"This was an angel in human shape, as we learn from Osee (xii, 4). He is called God (xv, 28 and 30), because he represented the son of God. This wrestling in which Jacob, assisted by God, was a match for an angel, was so ordered (v. 28) that he might learn by this experiment of the divine assistance, that neither Esau nor any other man should have power to hurt him." How elevating it must be to the true believer to conceive God helping Jacob to wrestle with his own representative. Read prayerfully, doubtless, the spiritual and inner meaning of the text (if it have one) is most transcendental. Read sensibly, the literal and only meaning the text conveys is that of an absurd tradition of an ignorant age. On the morrow Jacob met Esau:

"And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him; and they wept.

"And he said, What meanest thou by all this drove which I met? And he said these are to find grace in the sight of my lord.

"And Esau said, I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast unto thyself."

The following expressive comment, from the able pen of Mr. Holyoake, deserves transcription: "The last portion of the history of Jacob and Esau is very instructive. The coward fear of Jacob to meet his brother is well delineated. He is subdued by a sense of his treacherous guilt. The noble forgiveness of Esau invests his memory with more respect than all the wealth Jacob won, and all the blessings of the Lord he received. Could I change my name from Jacob to Esau, I would do it in honor of him. The whole incident has a dramatic interest. There is nothing in the Old or New Testament equal to it. The simple magnanimity of Esau is scarcely surpassed by anything in Plutarch. In the conduct of Esau we see the triumph of time, of filial affection, and generosity over a deep sense of execrable treachery, unprovoked and irrevocable injury." Was not Esau a merciful, generous man? Yet God hated him, and shut him out of all share in the promised land. Was not Jacob a mean, prevaricating knave, a crafty, abject cheat? Yet God loved and rewarded him. How great are the mysteries in this bible representation of an all-good and all-loving God thus hating good and loving evil. At the time of the wrestling, a promise was made, which is afterward repeated by God to Jacob, that the latter should not be any more called Jacob, but Israel. This promise was not strictly kept; the name "Jacob" being used repeatedly, mingled with that of Israel in the after part of Jacob's history. Jacob had a large family; his sons are reputedly the heads of the twelve Jewish tribes. We have not much space to notice them: suffice it to say that one Joseph, who was much loved by his father, was sold by his brethren into slavery. This transaction does not seem to have called for any special reproval from God. Joseph, who from early life was skilled in dreams, succeeded by interpreting the visions of Pharaoh in obtaining a sort of premiership in Egypt; while filling this office he managed to act like the Russells and the Greys of our own time. We are told that he "placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land." Joseph made the parallel still stronger between himself and a more modern head of the Treasury Bench; he not only gave his own family the best place in the land, but he also, by a trick of statecraft, obtained the land for the king, made slaves of the people, and made it a law over the land of Egypt that the king should be entitled to one-fifth of the produce, always, of course, excepting and saving the rights of the priest. Judah, another brother, sought to have burned a woman by whom he had a child. A third, named Reuben, was guilty of the grossest vice, equaled only by that of Absalon the son of David; of Simeon and Levi, two more of Jacob's sons, it is said that "Instruments of cruelty were in their habitations;" their conduct, as detailed in the 34th chapter of Genesis, alike shocks by its treachery and its mercilessness. After Jacob had heard that his son Joseph was governor in Egypt, but before he had journeyed farther than Beer-sheba, God spake unto him in the visions of the night, and probably forgetting that he had given him a new name, or being more accustomed to the old one, said, "Jacob, Jacob," and then told him to go down into Egypt, where Jacob died after a residence of about seventeen years, when 147 years of age. Before Jacob died he blessed, first the sons of Joseph, and then his own children, and at the termination of his blessing to Ephraim and Manasseh we find the following speech addressed to Joseph: "Moreover, I have given to thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow." This speech implies warlike pursuit on the part of Jacob, of which the bible gives no record, and which seems incompatible with his recorded life. The sword of craft and the bow of cunning are the only weapons in the use of which he was skilled. When his sons murdered and robbed the Hivites, fear seems to have been Jacob's most prominent characteristic. It is not my duty, nor have I space here, to advocate any theory of interpretation, but it may be well to mention that many learned men contend that the whole history of Jacob is but an allegory. That the twelve patriarchs but typify the twelve signs of the zodiac, as do the twelve great gods of the Pagans, and twelve apostles of the gospels.

From the history of Jacob it is hard to draw any conclusions favorable to the man whose life is narrated. To heap additional epithets on his memory would be but waste of time and space. I conclude by regretting that if God loved one brother and hated another, he should have so unfortunately selected for his love the one whose whole career shows him in a most despicable light.

NEW LIFE OF ABRAHAM

Most undoubtedly father Abraham is a personage whose history should command our attention, if only because he figures as the founder of the Jewish race – a race which, having been promised protection and favor by Deity, appear to have experienced little else besides the infliction, or sufferance of misfortune and misery. Men are taught to believe that God, following out a solemn covenant made with Abraham, suspended the operations of Nature to aggrandize the Jews; that he promised always to bless and favor them if they adhered to his worship and obeyed the priests. The promised blessings were, usually, political authority, individual happiness and sexual power, long life, and great wealth; the threatened curses for idolatry or disobedience: disease, loss of property and children, mutilation, death. Among the blessings: the right to kill, plunder, and ravish their enemies, with protection, while pious, against any subjection to retaliatory measures. And all this because they were Abraham's children!

Abraham is an important personage. Without Abraham, no Jesus, no Christianity, no Church of England, no bishops, no tithes, no church rates. But for Abraham England would have lost all these blessings. Abraham was the great-grandfather of Judah, the head of the tribe to which God's father, Joseph, belonged.

In gathering materials for a short biographical sketch, we are at the same time comforted and dismayed by the fact that the only reliable account of Abraham's career is that furnished by the book of Genesis, supplemented by a few brief references in other parts of the bible, and that, outside "God's perfect and infallible revelation to man," there is no reliable account of Abraham's existence at all. We are comforted by the thought that Genesis is unquestioned by the faithful, and is at present protected by Church and State against heretic assaults; but we are dismayed when we think that, if Infidelity, encouraged by Colenso and Kalisch, upsets Genesis, Abraham will have little historical claim on our attention Some philologists have asserted that Brama and Abraham are alike corruptions of Abba Rama, or Abrama, and that Sarah is identical with Sarasvati. Abram, is a Chaldean compound, meaning father of the elevated, or exalted father [ – ] is a compound of Chaldee and Arabic, signifying father of a multitude. In part V of his work Colenso mentions that Adonis was formerly identified with Abram, "high father," Adonis being the personified sun.

Leaving incomprehensible philology for the ordinary authorized version of our bibles, we find that Abraham was the son of Terah. The text does not expressly state where Abraham was born, and I can not therefore describe his birthplace with that accuracy of detail which a true believer might desire, but I may add that he "dwelt in old time on the other side of the flood." (Joshua xxiv, 2, 3.) The situation of such dwelling involves a geographical problem most unlikely to be solved unless the inquirer is "half seas over." Abraham was born when Terah, his father, was seventy years of age; and, accord-ing to Genesis, Terah and his family came forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and went to Haran and dwelt there. We turn to the map to look for Ur of the Chaldees, anxious to discover it as possibly Abraham's place of nativity, but find that the translators of God's inspired word have taken a slight liberty with the text by substituting "Ur of the Chaldees" for "Aur Kasdim," the latter being, in plain English, the light of the magi, or conjurers, or astrologers. [ – ] is stated by Kalisch to have been made the basis for many extraordinary legends, as to Abraham's rescue from the flames.

Abraham, being born – according to Hebrew chronology, 2,083 years after the creation, and according to the Septuagint 3,549 years after the event – when his father was seventy, grew so slowly that when his father reached the good old age of 205 years, Abraham had only arrived at 75 years, having, apparently, lost no less than 60 year's growth during his father's lifetime. St. Augustine and St Jerome gave this up as a difficulty inexplicable. Calmet endeavors to explain it, and makes it worse. But what real difficulty is there? Do you mean, dear reader, that it is impossible Abraham could have lived 135 years, and yet be only 75 years of age? Is this your objection? It is a sensible one, I admit, but it is an Infidel one. Eschew sense, and, retaining only religion, ever remember that with God all things are possible. Indeed, I have read myself that gin given to young children stunts their growth; and who shall say what influence of the spirit prevented the full development of Abraham's years? It is a slight question whether Abraham and his two brothers were not born the same year; if this be so, he might have been a small child, and not grown so quickly as he would have otherwise done. "The Lord" spoke to Abraham, and promised to make of him a great nation, to bless those who blessed Abraham, and to curse those who cursed him. I do not know precisely which Lord it was that spake unto Abraham. In the Hebrew it says it was [ – ] Jeue, or, as our translators call it, Jehovah; but as God said (Exodus vi, 2) that by the name "Jehovah was I not known" to either Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, we must conclude either that the omniscient Deity had forgotten the matter, or that a counterfeit Lord had assumed a title to which he had no right. The word Jehovah, which the book of Exodus says Abraham did not know, is nearly always the name by which Abraham addresses or speaks of the Jewish Deity.

Abraham having been promised protection by the God of Truth, initiated his public career with a diplomacy of statement worthy of Talleyrand, Thiers, or Gladstone. He represented his wife Sarah as his sister, which, if true, is a sad reproach to the marriage. The ruling Pharaoh, hearing the beauty of Sarah commended, took her into his house, she being at that time a fair Jewish dame, between 60 and 70 years of age, and he entreated Abraham well for her sake, and he had sheep and oxen, asses and servants, and camels. We do not read that Abraham objected in any way to the loss of his wife. The Lord, who is all-just, finding out that Pharaoh had done wrong, not only punished the king, but also punished the king's household, who could hardly have interfered with his misdoings. Abraham got his wife back, and went away much richer by the transaction. Whether the conduct of father Abraham in pocketing quietly the price of the insult – or honor – offered to his wife is worthy of modern imitation, is a question I leave to be discussed by Convocation when it has finished with the Athanasian Creed. After this transaction we are not surprised to hear that Abraham was very rich in "silver and gold." So was the Duke of Marlborough after the King had taken his sister in similar manner into his house. In verse 19 of chapter xii, there is a curious mistranslation in our version. The text is: "It is for that I had taken her for my wife," our version has: "I might have taken her." The Douay so translates as to take a middle phrase, leaving it doubtful whether or not Pharaoh actually took Sarah as his wife. In any case, the Egyptian king acted well throughout. Abraham plays the part of a timorous, contemptible hypocrite. Strong enough to have fought for his wife, he sold her. Yet Abraham was blessed for his faith, and his conduct is our pattern!

Despite his timorousness in the matter of his wife, Abraham was a man of wonderful courage and warlike ability. To rescue his relative, Lot: – with whom he could not live on the same land without quarreling, both being religious – he armed 318 servants, and fought with four powerful kings, defeating them and recovering the spoil. Abraham's victory was so decisive that the king of Sodom, who fled and fell (xiv, 10) in a previous encounter, now met Abraham alive (see v, 17), to congratulate him on his victory. Abraham was also offered bread and wine by Melchisedek, King of Salem, priest of the Most High God. Where was Salem? Some identify it with Jerusalem, which it can not be, as Jebus was not so named until after the time of the Judges (Judges xix, 10). How does this King, of this unknown Salem, never heard of before or after, come to be priest of the Most High God? These are queries for divines – orthodox disciples believe without inquiring. Melchisedek was most unfortunate as far as genealogy is concerned. He had no father. I do not mean by this that any bar sinister defaced his escutcheon. He not only was without a father, but without mother also; he had no beginning of days or end of life, and is therefore probably at the present time an extremely old gentleman, who would be an invaluable acquisition to any antiquarian association fortunate enough to cultivate his acquaintance. God having promised Abraham a numerous family, and the promise not having been in any part fulfilled, the patriarch grew uneasy and remonstrated with the Lord, who explained the matter thoroughly to Abraham when the latter was in a deep sleep, and a dense darkness prevailed. Religions explanations come with greater force under these or similar conditions. Natural or artificial light and clear-sightedness are always detrimental to spiritual manifestations.

Abraham's wife had a maid named Hagar, and she bore to Abraham a child named Ishmael; at the time Ishmael was born, Abraham was 86 years of age. Just before Ishmael's birth Hagar was so badly treated that she ran away. As she was only a slave, God persuaded Hagar to return, and humble herself to her mistress.

Thirteen years afterward God appeared to Abraham, and instituted the rite of circumcision – which rite had been practiced long before by other nations – and again renewed the promise. The rite of circumcision was not only practiced by nations long anterior to that of the Jews, but appears, in many cases, not even to have been pretended as a religious rite. (See Kalisch, Genesis, p. 386; Cahen, Genese, p. 43) After God had "left off talking with him, God went up from Abraham." As God is infinite, he did not, of course, go up; but still the bible says God went up, and it is the duty of the people to believe that he did so, especially as the infinite Deity then and now resides habitually in "heaven," wherever that may be. Again the Lord appeared to Abraham, either as three men or angels, or as one of the three; and Abraham, who seemed hospitably inclined, invited the three to wash their feet, and to rest under the tree, and gave butter and milk and dressed calf, tender and good, to them, and they did eat; and after the inquiry as to where Sarah then was, the promise of a son is repeated. Sarah – then by her own admission an old woman, stricken in years – laughed when she heard this, and the Lord said, "Wherefore did Sarah laugh?" and Sarah denied it, but the Lord said, "Nay, but thou didst laugh." The three then went toward Sodom, and Abraham went with them as a guide; and the Lord explained to Abraham that some sad reports had reached him about Sodom and Gomorrah, and that he was then going to find out whether the report was reliable. God is infinite, and was always therefore at Sodom and Gomorrah, but had apparently been temporarily absent; he is omniscient, and therefore knew everything which was happening at Sodom and Gomorrah, but he did not know whether or not the people were as wicked as they had been represented to him. God, Job tells us, "put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly." Between the rogues and the fools, therefore, the all-wise and all-powerful God seems to be as liable to be mistaken in the reports made to him as any monarch might be in reports made by his ministers. Two of the three men, or angels, went on to Sodom, and left the Lord with Abraham, who began to remonstrate with Deity on the wholesale destruction contemplated, and asked him to spare the city if fifty righteous should be found within it. God said, "If I find fifty righteous within the city, then will I spare the place for their sakes." God being all-wise, he knew there were not fifty in Sodom, and was deceiving Abraham. By dint of hard bargaining, in thorough Hebrew fashion, Abraham, whose faith seemed tempered by distrust, got the stipulated number reduced to ten, and then "the Lord went his way."

Jacob Ben Chajim, in his introduction to the Rabbinical bible, p. 28, tells us that the Hebrew text used to read in verse 22: "And Jehovah still stood before Abraham;" but the scribes altered it, and made Abraham stand before the Lord, thinking the original text offensive to Deity.

The 18th chapter of Genesis has given plenty of work to the divines. Augustin contended that God can take food, though he does not require it. Justin compared "the eating of God with the devouring power of the fire." Kalisch sorrows over the holy fathers "who have taxed all their ingenuity to make the act of eating compatible with the attributes of Deity."

In the Epistle to the Romans, Abraham's faith is greatly praised. We are told, iv, 19, 20, that:

"Being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb."

"He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God."

Yet, so far from Abraham giving God glory, we are told in Genesis, xvii, 17, that:

"Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old, and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?"

The Rev. Mr. Boutell says that "the declaration which caused Sarah to 'laugh,' shows the wonderful familiarity which was then permitted to Abraham in his communications with God."

After the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham journeyed south and sojourned in Gerar, and either untaught or too well taught by his previous experience, again represented his wife as his sister, and Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah. As before, we find neither remonstrance nor resistance recorded on the part of Abraham. This time God punished, a la Malthus, the women in Abimelech's house for an offense they did not commit, and Sarah was again restored to her husband, with sheep, oxen, men-servants, and women-servants, and money. Infidels object that the bible says Sarah "was old and well stricken in age;" that "it had ceased to be with her after the manner of women;" that she was more than ninety years of age; and that it is not likely King Abimelech would fall in love with an ugly old woman. We reply, "chacun a son gout?" It is clear that Sarah had not ceased to be attractive, as God resorted to especial means to protect her virtue from Abimelech. At length Isaac is born, and his mother Sarah now urges Abraham to expel Hagar and her son, "and the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son;" the mother being only a bondwoman does not seem to have troubled him. God, however, approving Sarah's notion, Hagar is expelled, "and she departed and wandered in the wilderness, and the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs." She had apparently carried the child, who being at least more than fourteen, and according to some calculations as much as seventeen years of age, must have been a heavy child to carry in a warm climate.

God never did tempt any man at any time, but he "did tempt Abraham" to kill Isaac by offering him as a burnt offering. The doctrine of human sacrifice is one of the holy mysteries of Christianity, as taught in the Old and New Testament. Of course, judged from a religious or biblical standpoint, it can not be wrong, as, if it were, God would not have permitted Jephtha to sacrifice his daughter by offering her as a burnt offering, nor have tempted Abraham to sacrifice his son, nor have said in Leviticus, "None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed; but shall surely be put to death" (xxvii, 29), nor have in the New Testament worked out the monstrous sacrifice of his only son Jesus, at the same time son and begetting father.

Abraham did not seem to be entirely satisfied with his own conduct when about to kill Isaac, for he not only concealed from his servants his intent, but positively stated that which was not true, saying, "I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you." If he meant that he and Isaac would come again to them, then he knew that the sacrifice would not take place. Nay, Abraham even deceived his own son, who asked him where was the lamb for the burnt offering? But we learn from the New Testament that Abraham acted in this and other matters "by faith," so his falsehoods and evasions, being results and aids of faith, must be dealt with in an entirely different manner from transactions of every-day life. Just as Abraham stretched forth his hand to slay his son, the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and prevented the murder, saying, "Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son." This would convey the impression that up to that moment the angel of the Lord was not certain upon the subject.