p. 316 | Untitled article

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, November 5, 1867

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 21

Notes on Genesis

CHAP. xxviii, 5. And Isaac sent away Jacob; and he went to Padan-aram unto Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob’s and Esau’s mother.

Sent away Jacob. Whoever observes Jacob’s life, after he had surreptitiously obtained his father’s blessing, will perceive that he enjoyed very little worldly felicity. His brother proposed to murder him, to avoid which he was in a manner banished from his father’s house; his uncle Laban deceived him, and treated him with great rigor;—after a servitude of twenty-one [Dr. A. Clarke, see his calculation, says 40] years, he was obliged to leave him in a clandestine manner, not without danger of being brought back, or murdered by his enraged brother;—no sooner were these fears over, than he experienced the baseness of his son Reuben; he had next to bewail the treachery and cruelty of Simeon and Levi; then he had to feel and lament the loss of his beloved wife; he was next imposed upon by his own sons, and had to lament the supposed untimely end of Joseph;—and to complete all, he was forced by famine to go into Egypt, and there die in a strange land. So just, wonderful, and instructive, are the ways of Providence!—Greenfield.

VERSE 11. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.

We know not to what hardships we may in Providence be called; it is therefore prudent to inure ourselves to labor and self-denial; as the mean accommodations, which are intolerable to the delicate and luxurious, are scarcely inconvenient to those, who have been accustomed to labor and fare hardly.—Scott.

Wrapping their heads in their mantles, the Arabs, like Jacob here, often sleep abroad, with a stone for a pillow.—Boothroyd.

VERSE 12. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to Heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

Prof. Bush has given, in a note of considerable length, his reasons for believing that, ‘instead of an ordinary ladder,’ the original rather imports, that the object of vision in Jacob’s dream was a ‘towering elevation, as of mountains cast up, and heaped in one, of broken sides, as steps or stairs for ascent; typifying the succession of kingdoms afterward made known to Daniel, agreeably to the Jewish commentators.—Jenks.

VERSE 13. And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.

Oil.] Vegetable oil; a very common article of food in the East, the S. of Europe, &c., where it is used much as we use butter. Oil indeed would be thought as indispensable as bread to a person making ever so hasty a journey. It seems also to have been used to lubricate the travel-worn limbs, and was, and is considered very invigorating and refreshing, as appears from many texts of Scripture, and from the accounts of travelers in hot countries. Its medical virtues have also ever been highly esteemed.

CHAP. xxix, 2. And he looked, and behold a well in the field, and, lo, there were three flocks of sheep lying by it; for out of that well they watered their flocks; and a great stone was upon the well’s mouth.

A great stone.] In Arabia and other places, they cover up their wells of water, lest the sand, which is put in motion by the winds, should fill and quite stop them up.—Chardin. So great was their care not to leave the well open any length of time, that, as we see, they wait till all the flocks are gathered, and then, on the flocks being watered, immediately replace the stone.—Harmer.