fore, he did so in fear and under a sense of dependence; but he often defied them too, and must not always yield to them. A good example of the conflict between man and the powers of nature may be found in Longfellow's poem of “Hiawatha.” It is founded upon the traditions of the North American Indians :— Kabibonokka, the fierce north wind, dwells among the icebergs and perpetual snowdrifts in the land of "Wabasso," the white rabbit. Once the fierce Kabibonokka Issued from his lodge of snowdrifts, As he howled and hurried southward, Over frozen lakes and moorlands. Here he finds Shingebis, the diver, lingering in the cold regions, whence all his tribe, and even the heron and the wild goose, have long departed. Cried the fierce Kabibonokka, "Who is this that dares to brave me? I will go into his wigwam, I will put his smouldering fire out!” And at night Kabibonokka To the lodge came wild and wailing, Flapped the curtain of the doorway. But Shingebis has plenty of fuel and plenty of food, and only laughs at Kabibonokka. Even when the latter comes in to him, though he feels his icy breath, he only gives the log a turn, and sings and laughs as before, till Kabibonokka can bear it no longer, and rushes out into the cold again, and, stamping on the frozen lakes, freezes them yet harder, and challenges Shingebis to come out and wrestle with him naked upon the ice. Shingebis accepts the challenge, and Kabibonokka wrestles all night with the bold diver. Till his (Kabibonokka's) panting breath grew fainter, Till he reeled and staggered backward, To the kingdom of Wabasso, To the land of the White Rabbit, You are but my fellow mortal!" So in the celebrated poem of the Swedish Tegnèr, the Frithiof's saga, the hero Frithiof kills Ham, the winter wind, and Hejd, the hailstorm, with his spears. What we now consider a poetical mode of speaking was literally true to the ancients. With spear, club, arrow, or sword the heroes fought against the hostile powers of nature, against the gods. The Israelite, too, when he had to brave the violence of storm and lightning, of the scorching east wind, or of a water-spout, recognised in these phenomena gods who desired his destruction. His highly-wrought imagination, the fruit of fear and ignorance, taught him actually to see these beings rushing wildly about him. If he was killed by the lightning, people said he was overcome by the deity; but if he escaped the danger by his intrepidity then he had triumphed over the god; and even if he had been wounded he could still boast of having won the victory, for though the mighty god had wounded him, yet he had been unable to kill him. So too a stroke or a fit of epilepsy was supposed to be an attack by some god, and even an accident, such as being struck by the fall of a tree or stone, or anything else, was believed to have been designed by some deity who was intent on taking the life of the individual in question. If he escaped uninjured therefore, or only wounded, he had parried the onset of the god. These ideas gave rise to the stories of conflicts between gods and men; for the poets worked out the mythological expressions until they had made them into legends. The story of Jacob's wrestling was naturally suggested to the writer who recounts it by the name Israel, which he desired to ascribe to the patriarch of whom he was speaking, as the ancestor of the people of Israel, and which he interpreted, quite incorrectly however, as "warrior-of-god." Of all these legends, as we saw just now, the Book of Origins has nothing but the mention of the stone at Bethel. It does not even tell us that while Jacob was away Esau moved to Seir. It simply gives the names of Jacob's twelve sons and tells us1 that when he came back from Padan Aram he returned to his father Isaac again, and, not long after, the latter died at the age of a hundred and eighty, and was buried by his two sons. They lived together like brothers, until their possessions became so numerous that they could no longer stay together. Then they parted, as Abram and Lot had done before them, and Esau settled in Mount Seir. In another connection we shall speak of a saga that is told us in connection with Jacob's stay at Shechem, but which could not be understood at present without a longer digression than our readers would find pleasant. 1 Genesis xxxv. 23-29; xxxvi, 6-8. 2 Genesis xxxiv. CHAPTER XXVI. JOSEPH, THE FAVOURED OF YAHWEH. GEN. XXXVII., XXXIX. -XLI. FROM this point in the patriarchal narratives Jacob steps into the back-ground, and Joseph becomes the chief character, and his greatness the favourite theme. We shall divide the stories about him into three sets. First we shall see how the blessing of his god was always upon him, then how he became a mighty ruler and lord even over his own relatives, and finally how he protected them. Israel's son Joseph, a lad of seventeen, served his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, as a shepherd,1 and as he always told their father when they did anything wrong he was thoroughly hated by them. Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons, because he was born to him in his old age; and he clothed him in a regal robe. But this preference of Joseph by his father roused the envy of his brothers so strongly that they could not speak a friendly word to him. Matters became still worse when Joseph told them once a dream that he had had. "I dreamed," said he, "that we were all binding sheaves in the field together, and all at once my sheaf stood up on end and stayed upright, and all your sheaves came round it and fell down before it." "Oh, indeed!" sneered his brothers, so you're to be our king and to rule over us, are you?" If all this increased their hatred, it became more bitter yet when something of the same kind happened again, and Joseph told them that he had had another dream, and that this time it was the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars that bowed down before him. Even his father, however much disposed to find everything that was good in his best beloved son, rebuked him now, 66 1 After an amended version. and said to him, "What! shall I and your mother and your brothers-shall we come to do homage to you?" But while the only effect of these events upon Joseph's brothers was to increase their hatred towards him, his father thought a great deal of them, and pondered over them deeply. And he had good reason! For these dreams were sent by Yahweh to announce the future greatness of Jacob's son, and this repetition of the same idea under various forms was a most emphatic prediction. 66 For the present, however, there did not seem much chance of the dream being fulfilled; and Joseph soon had a very substantial proof of the hatred of his brothers. For once upon a time they were pasturing the cattle near Shechem, and Joseph was sent by Jacob to ask after their welfare and that of the cattle. In obedience to his father's commands, Joseph went to look for them. On his way he understood from a man whom he met at Shechem that they had gone on to Dothan. So he followed them there. Now when they saw him in the distance they conceived the thought of murdering him. "There's our dreamer coming!" said they. Let us kill him and throw his body down a well, and say that he has been torn to pieces by a wild beast. Then we shall see what comes of all his dreams!' But one of them, Reuben, who, as the eldest brother, felt his responsibility more than the rest, sprang into the breach. He did not venture, however, to declare outright that he disapproved of the plan altogether, so he had recourse to a stratagem to rescue his brother. "We had better not murder him with our own hands," said he. "We can throw him down this well here in the wilderness, and then he will die without our having killed him." This suggestion was adopted, so when Joseph came up to them they dragged him out of his splendid robe and threw him down a dry well, where he would die of hunger and thirst. |