a respite accorded to men for the purpose of obviating by repentance the judgment of extermination. It is in this sense

1

that the Targums and Luther paraphrase the saying, and that the Midrash, Jerome in his Quæstiones, and Augustine in Civ. Dei, xv. 24, explain it. Among the most recent expositors, Abr. Geiger on the Jewish, and Köhler in his Biblischen Gesch. on the Christian side, and now Schrader also, advocate this view, according to which does not refer, as e.g. in Ps. cix. 8, to the lifetime of a single man, but to that of men taken together, i.e. of mankind at that era. A hundred and twenty years are a double Sosse. In the Babylonio-Assyrian sexagesimal system, which preceded the centesimal system, computations were made by Sosses (suššu = 60), Neres (600), and Sares (3600). But the figure of the respite granted may also be taken according to the scriptural symbolism of numbers. 40 is the number for the time of waiting and transition, 120 the tripling of this number of the crisis. In this time of waiting there arose for the generation of the Flood-says the Midrash on Genesis, section 30-a ti, viz. Noah. Announcing the threatening judgment, he became, according to 2 Pet. ii. 5, dialoσúvns knput. But the call to δικαιοσύνης κήρυξ. repentance of this announcement was without result, ver. 4: The Nephilim arose on the earth in those days; and also afterwards, when the sons of God joined themselves unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, those were the Gibborim which were of old, men of renown. The notice, 4a, is of the same kind as xii. 6, xiii. 7; the order of the words is also similar, but the connection with what precedes is wanting. connecting was however inadmissible, and the narrator does not write ", because he wants to give emphatic prominence to the subject. Even Dillmann allows that the narrator regards the D as proceeding from the demoniacal cohabitations, although he translates, fuerunt. In sentences

A

'On the Babylonian sexagesimal system and its supposed origin, see Cantor, Gesch. der Mathematik, kap. iii. : Die Babylonier, and the article, there made use of, of Friedr. Delitzsch: "Soss, Ner, Sar," in the Ægyptolog. Zeitschr. 1878, p. 56 sqq.

=

however of similar construction, like vii. 6, x. 15, 17, it means entrance into appearance, then why not here also exstiterunt, i.e. they entered into existence ? The are the same as the imλoi yiyavτes, Judith xvi. 6, who, according to Wisd. xiv. 6, 3 Macc. ii. 4, comp. Apollodor. i. 7. 2, fell victims to the Deluge. If yiyas could be combined with yís = Fis, vis (but see Curtius, Etym. No. 128, according to which, coming from the ✔ya, to grow, it means as a word of comparison one who has grown tall, comp. Lat. ingens), the derivation of from or Assyr. pûl, to be strong or powerful (whence abnê pilé, blocks, squares, and the proper name Púluv), would commend itself. It would then be formed as T is from Tor, but both these derivations are very uncertain. On the other hand, Aquila's oi èπIπíπтоvтes, whence Luther translates " Tyrannen (in the comm. homines violenti et injurii), is also inadmissible, because cannot of itself have the meaning of hostile attack and surprise. We must perhaps take in the sense of Isa. xxvi. 18, comp. , abortion (Mühlau-Volck, after Oehler), and regard as designating, like chance-child bastard, the fallen as unnaturally begotten. "In those days" refers, if we have correctly understood ver. 3b, to the prediluvian times, and “also after that" to the period of the allowed respite, and not as, according to Num. xiii. 33, it might be thought, to the time after the Flood, for what the spies there relate from hearsay cannot determine the conditions of what is here stated historically. D means atque etiam postea quum (w, like xxx. 38; Lev. iv. 22), and is equally past, as To have carnal intercourse with a woman is euphemistically expressed by N N (to go in unto her), xvi. 2, xxx. 3, xxxviii. 8, Deut. xxii. 13, or less euphemistically by by, xix. 31; Deut. xxv. 5. The apodosis does not begin

.38 .xxx ,תָּבֹאן,

must have been וַתֵּלֶדְנָה or וַיֵּלְדוּ in which case וְיָלְדוּ לָהֶם with

said. Hence the sense is, that also afterwards, when the sons of God associated with the daughters of men and the latter bore children unto them (the dæmonian begetters), such

came into existence. p will then have to be referred to these later born beings, the narrator, like later Greek mythology, distinguishing between a gigantic race and a heroic race which followed it. Three particulars are told us of these later born: (1) They were the heroes, the μideŵv yévos ȧvdpov, of Homer, Il. xii. 23, and of Hesiod's fourth of the five ages of the ancient world, who (2) belonged to the primitive age, iy, in the sense of κóσμos apxaîos, 2 Pet. ii. 5— a separate member of the sentence, on which account has Tebir, and by the still stronger separative Tiphchah; (3) they were men of renown, i.e. famous in popular legends (Num. xvi. 2), much spoken of, OλVŮρÚXλNTOL.

:

The definite decree of judgment, 5-7. The motive, ver. 5: And Jahveh saw that great was the wickedness of man on earth, and that all the images of the thoughts of his heart were only evil the whole day. The character of the picture is as dark as possible. The depravity is designated by 7 (Milra, and therefore an adj.) as intensely great and widespread; by jab navine 78 (78, Jahvistico - Deuteronomic, viii. 21; Deut. xxxi. 21, of the forms of thought and will in their continual course) as profoundly inward, and pervading the heart (= voûs, the property of self-consciousness and self-determination); by as total, and by P (opp. to ai N, Ps. lxxiii. 1; comp. Deut. xxviii. 33 with the same, xvi. 15) as radical; by i, per totum diem omni tempore, as continual and habitual. Result of the judicial cognition, ver. 6: And it repented Jahveh that He had made man upon earth, and He grieved in His heart. The Niph. D means to fetch a deep breath, to grieve, and especially to feel repentance.

=

to pierce oneself, to experience piercing, and, as i emphasizes it, heart-piercing sorrow, sounds even more anthropopathic. Just so does Jahveh say, 1 Sam. xv. 11, 'лɔ, and soon after this we read, 1 Sam. xv. 29: God is not man that He should repent. On the one hand, what Clem. Alex. under the influence of the Stoa asserts, that God is absolute apathy, is, when rightly understood (see on Hos. xi. 9), not untrue; on the

other, it is not less true, if rightly understood, that God feels repentance when He sees the original design of His love rendered vain, that He feels grief when His holy love is rejected. He is the living God, upon whom the sight of fallen man, of the deeply corrupted world, does not fail to react. Hence it is not with cold indifference that He resolves upon the destruction of the world, ver. 7: And Jahveh said, I will destroy man, whom I have made, from the face of the earth, from man to cattle, to creeping things, and to birds of the heaven; for it repenteth me that I have made them. The verb лл, to wipe out, to blot out, recurs in the history of the Flood at vii. 4, 23. The enumeration of living beings beginning with DIN is literally the same as at vii. 23, and has more an Elohistic than a Jahvistic tinge. The unreasoning creatures are exposed to the same ruin as man, for they were created for his sake and are combined with him in solidarity. But the human race is not exterminated without its continuance being at the same time kept in view. For one among mankind was the object of divine favour, ver. 8: And Noah found grace in the eyes of Jahveh, i.e. Noah was regarded by God as worthy that He should incline towards him (n, inclinare) in pitying love. The tone of before in falls back on the penult., which does not take place with Merca before Pashta, Jer. xxxi. 2. The historical narrative of Genesis has now again arrived at the place where it interrupted the Toledoth of Adam, v. 32. The overlapping verse, v. 32, was Q's, this transitional one, ver. 8, is J's, who here names Noah for the first time, here viz. where we have extracts from his book which are used as the stones of a mosaic. This ver. 8 introduces the history of Noah, which forms an independent section, and the third main portion of Genesis.

III.

THE TOLEDOTH OF NOAH, VI. 9-IX. 29.

THE title promises the "generations" of Noah, i.e. a statement of the posterity of which he is the ancestor, or more generally : a statement of the history of which he is the starting-point and centre. This history, so far as it forms an essential element of sacred history-in other words, of the ways of God. with mankind-is the history of the, Isa. liv. 9, the history of the Flood, of that great and long-lasting Flood1 which took place during the life of Noah. The narrator tarries with

special interest at this event, and describes it fully with mosaiclike insertion of whatever his sources of information offered. For the Deluge was an act, both of judgment and salvation, of the very greatest importance on the part of God. It was a total judgment which made a division as deep and wide, and of as violent and universal a nature in the history of mankind, as the final judgment at the end of this world will alone produce. This act of judgment however is at the same time an act of salvation, this sunset the means of a new rising again, a new beginning. From the New Testament standpoint the Flood. appears as the type of holy baptism, 1 Pet. iii. 21, and of

1 In old high German, besides sintfluot, we have more commonly the original form sinfluot, compounded with sin, not occurring alone, and meaning always, everywhere complete; hence sinfluot is equivalent to ummaz fluot (immensum diluvium), by which old high German glosses of the monastery of Reichenau of the eighth century designate the Noachian Deluge. Cædmon has flôd, saeflôd, sea-flood, heahflód, high-flood, or villfléd, spring-flood, for it. The designation Sündflut is just such a popular etymological change of meaning as Sinngrün for singruna, i.e. evergreen pervinca. Luther still writes Sindflut. But on how early Sündflut had already made its appearance in place of Sindflut, see Weigand's Deutsches WB., comp. Vilmar in the Pastoral-Theologischen Blättern, 1861, p. 109 sq., and Glosses to Luther's translation of the Bible in the Theol. LB. of the Ally. KZ. 1862, p. 699 sq.