John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible.

John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible.

Genesis 19:1



INTRODUCTION TO GENESIS 19



The contents of this chapter are Lot's entertainment of two angels that came to Sodom, Ge 19:1; the rude behaviour of the men of Sodom towards them, who for it were smote with blindness, Ge 19:4; the deliverance of Lot, his wife and two daughters, by means of the angels he entertained, Ge 19:12; the sparing of the city of Zoar at the entreaty of Lot, to which he was allowed to flee, Ge 19:18; the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah, Ge 19:23; Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt for looking back, Ge 19:26; Abraham's view of the conflagration of the cities, Ge 19:28; Lot's betaking himself to a mountain, and dwelling in a cave with his two daughters, by whom he had two sons, the one called Moab, and the other Benammi, Ge 19:30.



Ver. 1. And there came two angels to Sodom at even,.... Or "the two angels" {h}, the two men who were angels in the likeness of men, that had been with Abraham in the heat of the day at Hebron, on the evening of the same day came to Sodom:



and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: not as a civil magistrate to try causes there, being appointed a judge over them, as Jarchi relates; yea, the Jews say {i}: that that day five judges were appointed by the men of Sodom, and Lot was the chief of them; but this is not likely, and seems to be contradicted, Ge 19:9; but he sat there to observe strangers that might pass by, and invite them into his house, and that they might not fall into the hands of the wicked Sodomites, who might abuse them; this being a time when not only travellers would be glad to put up and take refreshment, but his wicked neighbours lay in wait for them to satisfy their lusts on them: he had learnt this hospitality from Abraham;



and Lot seeing [them], rose up to meet them: he arose from his seat and went forward to meet them, which showed his readiness and heartiness to receive them:



and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; not in a religious way, as paying worship to angels, for as yet he did not know them to be such, and if he had, would not have given them divine adoration; but in a civil way, as was the custom of the eastern countries to bow very low in their civil respects to men, especially to great personages; and such Lot took these to be by their goodly looks and by their dress, as appears by his salutation of them in Ge 19:2.



{h} Mykalmh ynv "duo illi angeli", Tigurine version, Cocceius; so Ar. "duobus illis angelis", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator. {i} Bereshit Rabba, sect. 50. fol. 44. 4.





Genesis 19:2



Ver. 2. And he said, behold now, my lords,.... Taking them to be, and bespeaking them as persons of quality, who appeared with majesty in their countenances, and looked as if they had been well brought up, and were upon their travels; not knowing them to be angels, whom he received and entertained unawares, as the apostle, referring to Lot and Abraham, observes, Heb 13:2;



turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house; meaning himself, who was their humble servant, and entreats them to turn in to his house, which perhaps was hard by, and take up their lodging with him: the ancient Jews {k} give the sense of the phrase thus, go a roundabout, winding, crooked way to my house, that the men of Sodom may not see you go in there, and know you are there. This is taken from the signification of the word to "turn in", which in a different construction signifies to decline, to go back; and so the Targum of Jonathan,



"turn here, and there, and go into the house of your servant:''



and tarry all night, and wash your feet; the meaning is, that they would stay all night, and take up their lodging with him, when they had washed their feet, which was usually done before they laid down, and even before they supped; and indeed was the first thing that was done to a stranger upon his entering into the house, Ge 18:4:



and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways: signifying that he would not detain them longer than they thought fit; they might rise as soon in the morning as they pleased, and pursue their journey, only he entreats they would accept of a night's lodging with him:



and they said, nay, but we will abide in the street all night; which they said partly out of modesty, it not becoming strangers to be too forward in accepting an invitation, and partly to try whether Lot was hearty in the invitation he gave them; and hereby also reigning ignorance of the manners and behaviour of the men of Sodom, as if they might be safe from their insults in the street in the night; and this made Lot the more pressing upon them, that they might not be exposed to his wicked neighbours.



{k} Bereshit Rabba, sect. 50. fol. 44. 4.





Genesis 19:3



Ver. 3. And he pressed them greatly,.... He prayed, he entreated, he persuaded, he made use of a multitude of words, and of all the arguments he could think of, to prevail upon them; and might not only press them with words, but make use of gestures, as taking them by the hand, or by their clothes, and as it were forcing them into his house, whereby it plainly appeared he was cordial and hearty in his invitation:



and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house: went along with him to it, and instead of proceeding forward, or continuing where they were, or steering their course to a street in the city, they turned in to Lot's house:



and he made them a feast; a large, liberal, and generous entertainment, as Abraham did, consisting of a variety of eatables and drinkables; indeed it has its name only from drinking, wine being a principal part of a banquet:



and did bake unleavened bread; not because it was the time of the passover, as Jarchi suggests, for as yet that was not instituted; but for quicker dispatch, that his guests might have their supper the sooner, and get to bed the earlier, and rest themselves; bread without leaven in it being sooner baked than that which is made with it:



and they did eat; the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem are,



"they seemed as if they ate.''



See Gill on "Ge 18:8";





Genesis 19:4



Ver. 4. But before they lay down,.... Upon their beds to sleep; it was between supper time and bedtime that the following affair happened, while the angels were talking to Lot about the men of Sodom, and inquiring what sort of men they were, as the Jewish writers {l} suggest:



the men of the city, [even] the men of Sodom, compassed the house round about; the house of Lot, where the angels were:



both old and young: the males of the city of every age; some that were past committing the sin they were so infamous for, as well as those that burned with that unnatural lust; some that could not be actors were willing to be spectators; and all were curious to see the lovely persons, that it was reported all over the city were seen to go into Lot's house:



all the people from every quarter; all from one end of the city to the other, and from every corner in it: which shows the general corruption and depravity of the city, that it was so far from having ten righteous persons in it, that of the proper inhabitants of it, there was not, as Jarchi notes, one righteous person, no, not one.



{l} Bereshit Rabba, ut supra. (sect. 50. fol. 44. 4.)





Genesis 19:5



Ver. 5. And they called unto Lot,.... With a loud voice, that he might hear, they being in the street, and he within doors; and perhaps there might be a court before his house, through which there was a passage up to it, as seems from Ge 19:6:



and said unto him, where are the men which came in to thee this night? for though they were angels, they appeared like men, and they seemed to be so to them who saw them go into Lot's house:



bring them out unto us, that we may know them; not who they were, and from whence they came, and what their business was; nor did they pretend anything of this kind to hide and cover their design from Lot, but they were open and impudent, and declared their sin without shame and blushing, which is their character, Isa 3:9; their meaning was, that they might commit that unnatural sin with them, they were addicted to, and in common used, and which from them to this day bears the name of Sodomy. As lawful copulation with a man's wife is modestly expressed by knowing her, Ge 4:1; so this unlawful and shocking copulation of man with man is expressed by this phrase; and that this was their meaning is plain from Lot's answer to them, Ge 19:8.





Genesis 19:6



Ver. 6. And Lot went out at the door unto them,.... At the door of his house:



and shut the door after him; the door of the passage to his house, the courtyard door, for another word is here used; unless the one was properly the door, and the other a hatch: however, this precaution of shutting it was used to prevent the men of Sodom rushing in, and taking away the men by violence; and that Lot might have some opportunity of trying what he could do by arguments, to prevail upon them to desist from their attempt.





Genesis 19:7



Ver. 7. And said, I pray you, brethren,.... Not by family or nation, for the Sodomites were of the race of Ham, in the line of Canaan, and Lot was a descendant of Shem, in the line of Arphaxad; nor by religion, for the one were idolaters, and the other a worshipper of the true God, but by community of nature; and especially he called them so by reason of their having been neighbours considerable time, and on the score of friendship, see 1Ki 9:13; and with this soft and loving language Lot hoped to win his neighbours, and to persuade them from pursuing their unlawful measures: for which purpose and that alone he used it, saying to them,



do not so wickedly; as to use ill a man's guests, to abuse strangers, to break the laws and rules of hospitality, and especially to commit that unnatural sin they were bent upon.





Genesis 19:8



Ver. 8. Behold now, I have two daughters, which have not known man,.... Though some think they were espoused to men, but had not yet cohabited with them, see Ge 19:14:



let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as [is] good in your eyes; this was a very great evil in Lot to make such an offer of his daughters; it was contrary to parental love and affection, an exposing the chastity of his daughters, which should have been his care to preserve; nor had he a power to dispose of them in such a manner: and though fornication is a lesser evil than sodomy, yet all evil is to be avoided, and even it is not to be done that good may come: nothing can be said to excuse this good man, but the hurry of spirit, and confusion of mind that he was in, not knowing what to say or do to prevent the base designs of those men; that he might be pretty certain they would not accept of his offer, their lust burning more after men than women; that this showed his great regard to the laws of hospitality, that he had rather sacrifice his daughters to their brutal lusts, than give up the men that were in his house to them; and that he might hope that this would soften their minds, and put them off of any further attempt; but after all it must be condemned as a dangerous and imprudent action:



only unto these men do nothing; for as yet he knew them not to be angels; had he, it would not have given him the concern it did, since he must have known that they were able to defend themselves, and that the sin these men offered to commit could not be perpetrated on them: but he took them for mere men, and his request is, that no injury might be done to their persons in any respect, and especially in that way which their wicked hearts put them upon, and is so shocking to nature:



for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof; for though it was not their intention in coming, nor the design of Providence in bringing them into Lot's house, to secure them from the violence of the men of Sodom, but for the preservation of Lot and his family, which as yet he knew nothing of, yet it was what Lot had in view in giving the invitation to them: and the laws of hospitality being reckoned sacred and inviolable, a man's house was accounted an asylum for strangers when taken into it.





Genesis 19:9



Ver. 9. And they said, stand back,.... Turn on one side, get away from the door, that we may come to it:



and they said [again]: to one another:



this one [fellow] came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge; this one man, and he a stranger and sojourner, no freeman or citizen of this city, sets himself against the whole body of the inhabitants, and takes upon him to judge what is right and wrong to be done; and if he is let alone in "judging he will judge" {m}, as it may be rendered; he will take upon him this office, and continue to exercise it, and determine and decide all matters among us at his pleasure. This confutes the above notion of the Jews, that Lot was appointed a judge by the men of Sodom, yea, the president of the court for that day;

See Gill on "Ge 19:1":



now will we deal worse with thee than with them: the men in his house, both by abusing his body in their unnatural way, and by beating and bruising him, and pulling him in pieces, limb from limb; something of this kind they seem to threaten him with, and attempted to effect, as follows:



and they pressed sore upon the man, [even] Lot; not only with words in a bullying way, with menaces and threats, with oaths, and curses, and imprecations; for it is the same word that is used of Lot, pressing the angels with words and arguments to come into his house, Ge 19:3; but they rushed in upon him in a body, and pushed him away, and pulled him about, and would in all probability have torn him to pieces, had he not been rescued by the angels:



and came near to break the door: that which was shut, the door of the passage that led to the house.



{m} jwpv jpvy "judicabit judicando", Drusius.





Genesis 19:10



Ver. 10. But the men put forth their hand,.... They came to the door, and opened it, and put out their hands, one on one side the door, and the other on the other:



and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door; and thus they rescued Lot from the fury and rage of the men of Sodom, and prevented his daughters being exposed unto them, as he had offered. This action showed them to be more than men, that they should open the door, take in Lot, and shut it so suddenly, that the men of Sodom could take no advantage of it, could neither retain Lot, nor enter the door when opened, and especially what follows.





Genesis 19:11



Ver. 11. And they smote the men that [were] at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great,.... with "blindnesses" {n}; with extreme blindness, with blindness both of eye and heart, as Aben Ezra interprets it; and indeed had they not been given up to a judicial blindness and hardness of heart, such a stroke upon them might have convinced them that their ways were evil, and their works not right, and that by them they had incurred the displeasure of God, and would desisted from their enterprise; but, on the contrary, they went on with it, and sought with all diligence and labour as much as possible to effect it. The word for "blindness" is only used here and in 2Ki 6:18, and denotes a peculiar sort of blindness; not an entire blindness with respect to every object, but only with regard to that they were intent upon; for otherwise they would not have continued about Lot's house, or fatigued themselves with searching for the door of it, but would rather have been glad to have groped to their own houses as well as they could: and thus it was with the Syrians, when they were smitten at the prayer of Elisha, it was not total, for they could follow the prophet in the way he went and led them, but they could not see their way to the place where they intended to go; and so these men of Sodom could see other objects, but not the door of Lot's house, their heads were so confused, and their imaginations so disturbed as in drunken men; or the medium of the visive faculty, the air, so altered, or the form of the object to be seen so changed, that they could not discern it; when they saw the door, it looked like the wall, and that which seemed to them to be the door, proved to be the wall:



so that they wearied themselves to find the door; went backwards and forwards, fancying the door was here, and then it was there, and when they came to it, they perceived it was not; and thus they went to and fro, until they were quite weary of seeking it, and despaired of finding it, and left off.



{n} Myrwnob "caecitatibus", Pagninus, Montanus, &c.





Genesis 19:12



Ver. 12. And the men said unto Lot,.... When they had got him into the house again, they began to make themselves known unto him, and to acquaint him with the business they came to do:



hast thou here any besides? which they ask not as being ignorant, though angels know not everything relative to men, but to show their great regard to Lot, who had been so kind to them, and so careful of them; that for his sake they would save them all, if they would take the benefit of their protection, and in this they doubtless had the mind of God revealed to them:



son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters; it should be rendered either "son-in-law, or thy sons, or thy daughters" {o}; if thou hast any son-in-law that has married a daughter of thine, or any sons of thine own that live from thee; or grandsons, the sons of thy married daughters, as Jarchi interprets it; or any other daughters besides those two we here see:



and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring [them] out of this place; that is, whatsoever relations he had, whether more near or remote; for as for his goods, whether in his own house, or in any other part of the city, there was no time for saving them.



{o} Kytnbw Kynbw Ntx "generum aut filios aut filias", V. L. so Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Schmidt.





Genesis 19:13



Ver. 13. For we will destroy this place,.... Or "we are destroying it" {p}, are about to do it, and will quickly and immediately do it:



because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the Lord; the cry of the sins of the inhabitants of it, which were many, and openly, and daringly committed, and reached to heaven, and called for immediate vengeance and punishment:



and the Lord hath sent us to destroy it; by which they discovered themselves to be angels, and what their business was, to destroy Sodom; and which confutes the notion of the Jews, that they were sent on different errands; whereas it is clear from hence, these two were sent to do one and the same thing; See Gill on "Ge 18:2".



{p} wnxna Mytxvm "disperdentes nos", Montanus; "nos perdituri mox sumus", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator; so Drusius, Schmidt.





Genesis 19:14



Ver. 14. And Lot went out,.... From his house, after the men of Sodom were gone from it, and before the morning, very probably about midnight:



and spake unto his sons in law, which married his daughters: according to Aben Ezra, he had two other daughters that perished in Sodom, which he gathers from Ge 19:15, "which are here", as if he had some elsewhere; and so Jarchi says, he had two daughters married in the city. And the Jewish writers {q} speak of one of them, whose name was Pelothith, married to one of the grandees of Sodom: but it seems rather, that these were the daughters Lot had at home with him; who, according to Josephus {r} were espoused to men in the city, but not yet married; and on account of such espousals, as were usual in the eastern countries, Lot calls them his sons-in-law, as they were intended, and so the words may be rendered, "that were about to take his daughters" {s}; to take them for wives, and to their own houses, neither of which they had as yet done; for if these had been daughters of his married, and taken home, he would not only have spoke unto their husbands, but to them also; and would have been still more pressing upon them to arise and make their escape; of which nothing is said, nor of any answer of theirs to him, only of his sons-in-law, as they are called on the above account:



and said, up, get ye out of this place; that is, get up from your beds, anne immediately, and make your escape out of the city:



for the Lord will destroy this city; now, directly, immediately; therefore there is no time to be lost, but at once prepare for your safety:



but he seemed as one that mocked to his sons in law; as one that was in jest, and had a mind to have a little sport with them, to get them out of their beds, and put them into a flight, and then laugh at them.



{q} Pirke Eliezer, c. 25. {r} Antiqu. l. 1. c. 11. sect. 4. {s} wytnb yxql "qui brevi fuerant ducturi filias suas", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator; so some in Vatablus & Drusius.





Genesis 19:15



Ver. 15. And when the morning arose,.... When it was break of day, for as yet the sun was not risen, nor did it rise until Lot got to Zoar,

Ge 19:23. He was now returned from his sons-in-law, and by this time it began to be light:



then the angels hastened Lot; urged him to get out of his house as fast as he could:



saying, arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; from whence Aben Ezra, and others, have concluded, as has been observed, that he had other daughters elsewhere, which they suppose were married to men of Sodom; but the phrase, "which are here", or "are found", or "are present" {t}, relates to his wife, as well as his daughters, and only signifies, that he should take all his relations that were present; and these may be only opposed to and distinguished from his sons-in-law that were absent, and refused to hearken to his advice and exhortations. Onkelos paraphrases the words, "who are found faithful with thee"; who believed what the angels said concerning the destruction of Sodom, as well as he, as did his wife and two daughters:



lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city; in the punishment inflicted on the city for their iniquity. See Re 18:4.



{t} taumnh "quae inveniuntur", Pagninus, Montanus; "quae adsunt", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator; "quae praesentes", Fagius, Munster, Cocceius.





Genesis 19:16



Ver. 16. And while he lingered,.... Delayed going out of his house, either loath to leave his goods and substance behind him; or waiting to see whether his sons-in-law would come to him; or, as others, praying that God would spare the city: though rather the sense is, that he was so amazed, and filled with horror and trembling at the thought of what judgments were coming on the city, that he was like one stupid, that had no power to stir nor move, which seems best to agree with the sense of the word used {u}:



the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; one of them took hold of his hand with one of his hands, and on his wife's with the other, and the second took hold of one of his daughters with one hand, and of the other with his other hand, and so led them out:



the Lord being merciful unto him; and so saved them from the ruin and destruction of the city, in which had they stayed a little longer they would have been involved. It was not owing to their merits, but to the mercy of God that they were spared:



and they brought him forth, and set him without the city; not him only, but his wife and two daughters also, and having so done, left them and returned to the city; for so the last clause may be rendered, "and left him without the city" {w}, to shift for themselves; or rather well knowing that there would be one that would immediately appear and take them under his care and protection, as the event shows.



{u} hmhmtyw a hmt "admiratus est". {w} whxnyw "et reliquerunt", Drusius, Schmidt.





Genesis 19:17



Ver. 17. And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad,.... Into the fields of Sodom, or the suburbs of it:



that he said, escape for thy life; not one of the two men or angels that had been with him all the night past, for they had now left him, and were gone back to the city: but Jehovah the Son of God, who had been communing with Abraham, and now came to Sodom, and appeared to Lot, just at the time the two angels left him, and bid him escape with all haste, if he had any regard for his life, and that of those with him:



look not behind thee; as showing any concern for his goods and substance he had left behind him, or for his sons-in-law, who refused to come with him, and much less for the wicked inhabitants of the city; and this command was not given to Lot only, but to his wife and daughters, as appears by the sequel:



neither stay thou in all the plain: in the plain of Jordan, for the whole plain, and the cities in it, were to be destroyed:



escape to the mountain, lest thou be destroyed, lest thou be consumed; the same mountain the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, and they that were with them after the battle of the kings, fled to, Ge 14:10; here only he and his could be safe from the conflagration of the plain.





Genesis 19:18



Ver. 18. And Lot said unto them,.... Supposing three present, not observing that the two angels had left him that had brought him thither; though it is but to one of them he addresses himself, even to him who had bid him make the best of his way to the mountain, as appears by what follows:



oh, not so, my Lord; that is, let me not be obliged to go so far as to the mountain; though R. Samuel takes it to be an assent, and interprets the phrase of his being willing: but this does not agree with what follows, and is rejected by Aben Ezra, who relates it; and who also observes, that the word "Lord" is a common name, that is, that belongs to a creature; but Jarchi says their Rabbins take it to be an holy name, that is, a name that belongs to God, and gives a good reason why it is so to be understood here; since the person spoken to had it in his power to kill or make alive, to save or destroy, as the following words show; so Ben Melech and the Targum of Oukelos render it by Jehovah.





Genesis 19:19



Ver. 19. Behold, now thy servant hath found grace in thy sight,.... In sending two of his angels to him, to inform him of the approaching destruction of Sodom; to pluck him out of it as a brand out of the burning, and to place him without the city, and in directing and encouraging him to escape for his life:



and thou hast magnified thy mercy which thou hast showed unto me in saving my life; he owns it was owing to the mercy of this illustrious Person, whom he knew and acknowledges, by what he says, to be a divine one, that his life was saved; and that this appeared exceeding great in it, that he should spare him and his family, when such multitudes of souls would perish; and he might have perished with the rest, if he had not had timely notice in such a gracious manner:



and I cannot, or, "but now {x}, I cannot"



escape to the mountain; it is too far for me; he signifies that his strength would not hold out through the fatigues of the night past, and want of sleep and rest; but this was owing more to the infirmity of his mind than of his body, for he could go to this same mountain afterwards:



lest some evil take me, and I die; or "that evil" {y}, the burning of Sodom, and the cities of the plain, lest that should overtake him before he got to the mountain: thus he began to distrust the power of God to strengthen him to go thither, who had appeared so wonderfully for him in his present deliverance; and he might have assured himself, that he that brought him out of Sodom would never suffer him to perish in the destruction of it.



{x} ykna "jam vero ego non-potero", Schmidt. {y} herh "malum hoc", Tigurine version; some in Drusius, Piscator, Schmidt.





Genesis 19:20



Ver. 20. Behold now, this city [is] near to flee unto,.... Pointing to Bela, afterwards called Zoar, from what follows: it is said to be two miles distant from Sodom {z}. But the Jews {a} say it was four miles, and some say {b} five; for they reckon that a man may go five miles from the ascent of the morning (or break of day) till the sun shines out:



and it [is] a little one: a little city, and the houses and buildings in it few, the inhabitants few; and the sins of it few, as the Targum of Jonathan adds, in comparison of Sodom and Gomorrah; and therefore Lot hoped this favour would be granted him, that this city might be saved, and he be allowed to flee to it, and go no further; but others think this refers not to the city, which some say {c} was a large and spacious one, but to his request, that it was a small thing he asked, and hoped therefore it would not be denied, and in which he was very importunate:



oh, let me escape thither, ([is] it not a little one?); or "is it not a little thing" {d}? a small request that I make:



and my soul shall live: I shall not only be able to get thither, and so my life will be preserved; but I shall be in good spirits, rejoice and be glad, that I am got safe and out of the reach of danger; my spirits, which are now faint, and therefore can never think of getting so far as to the mountain, but, if this favour is granted me, they will revive, and I shall cheerfully pursue my journey thither, and be comfortable.



{z} Bunting's Travels, p. 63. {a} T. Hieros. Beracot, fol. 2, 3. & Gloss. in ib. {b} T. Bab. Pesachim, fol. 94. 1. {c} Bunting's Travels, p. 63. {d} "Nonne perexigua res est?" Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius.





Genesis 19:21



Ver. 21. And he said unto him, see, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also,.... Accepted thy prayer and granted thy request, as well as in other things; shown grace and mercy to thee: or, "have lifted up thy face" {e}; alluding to the custom of the eastern countries, where persons, when they come into the presence of their superiors, used to prostrate their faces to the ground; when, as a token of their acceptance of them, and good will to them, they used to order them to be lifted up, or them to lift up their faces, and stand before them:



that I will not overthrow this city for the which thou hast spoken; for, though he had not in express words petitioned that the city might be spared, yet he had tacitly done it, insomuch as he had requested he might flee unto it, where he could not have been safe had it been destroyed.



{e} Kynp ytavn "suscepi faciem tuam", Pagninus, Moatanus, Vatablus, Drusius, Piscator.





Genesis 19:22



Ver. 22. Haste thee, escape thither,.... Seeing he had granted him his request, he is urgent upon him to be gone, and not to delay upon any account, or make other excuses:



for I cannot do anything till thou be come thither; that is, consistent with the decree of God, that Lot and his family should be delivered and preserved, and with his promise made to him, that he would not overthrow that city; and therefore the catastrophe which would befall all the cities at once could not begin until he was safely arrived there:



therefore the name of the city was called Zoar; in later times, and probably first by Lot, from his use of the word "little", which was his request, which Zoar signifies; it before was called Bela, see Ge 14:2.





Genesis 19:23



Ver. 23. And the sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. Which is observed partly to point at the time of his entrance into the city, and of the burning of Sodom, which began at the same time; and partly to show what a fine morning it was, and what little appearance there was of such a tempest rising as quickly did; so that the inhabitants of Sodom, who were up so early, little thought of so sudden a catastrophe, and those that were in their beds were at once surprised with it: it was a morning of light and joy to Lot, who was so wonderfully delivered, but a dreadful one to the men of Sodom and the rest of the cities of the plain, with whom the scene was soon altered; likewise from hence it appeared, that the following tempest was extraordinary, and did not proceed from natural causes.





Genesis 19:24



Ver. 24. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom, and upon Gomorrah, brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And not upon those two cities only, but upon Admah and Zeboiim also, see De 29:23; this was not a common storm of thunder and lightning, with which often there is a smell of sulphur or brimstone; but this was a continued shower of sulphurous fire, or of burning flaming brimstone, which at once consumed those cities and the inhabitants of them; and the land adjacent being bituminous, or however some parts of it, full of slimepits, or pits of bitumen, a liquid of a pitchy quality,

Ge 14:10; this flaming sulphur falling thereon, must burn in a most fierce and furious manner; and which utterly consumed not only houses, goods, and everything upon the land, but the land itself, and turned it into a bituminous lake, called to this day, from thence, the Lake Asphaltites, the Greek word for bitumen being "asphaltos". Of this conflagration some Heathen writers speak, as particularly Tacitus {f} who says, some large and famous cities, or, as some copies have it, Jewish ones, not far from Jordan, were struck with thunderbolts, and were fired "igni ceolesti", with fire from heaven, and were consumed; and so Solinus {g} relates, that,



"at some distance from Jerusalem, a sorrowful lake appears, which the black ground testifies was stricken by heaven and turned into ashes; where were two towns, the one called Sodomum, the other Gomorrum.''



This was a righteous judgment on those cities, and a just retaliation for their sin; their sin was an unnatural one, and nature is inverted to punish them, fire comes down from heaven, or hell from heaven, as Salvian's words are, to consume them; they burned with lusts one against another, and flaming sheets of sulphurous fire fall upon them, burn and destroy them; and, in allusion to this terrible conflagration, hell is called the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, Jude 1:7

Re 20:14; and this destruction was brought upon them by Jehovah the Son of God, who had appeared to Abraham in an human form, and gave him notice of it, and heard all he had to plead for those cities, and then departed from him to Sodom, and was the author of this sad catastrophe; this amazing shower of fire and brimstone was rained by him from Jehovah his Father, out of heaven; so the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem both call him, the Word of the Lord.



{f} Hist. l. 5. c. 7. {g} Polyhistor. c. 48.





Genesis 19:25



Ver. 25. And he overthrew those cities,.... Of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim: very probably at the same time that this fiery tempest was in the heavens, there was an earthquake which overthrew the cities; and so Strabo {h} makes the lake, which is now the place where they stood, to be owing to earthquakes and eruptions of fire, and of hot bituminous and sulphurous waters; and says nothing of fire from heaven, which yet Tacitus and Solinus do, being unacquainted with the sacred history:



and all the plain; the plain of Jordan, and the cities on it, all but Zoar; not all the five cities, as Josephus {i}: Egesippus {k} and other authors mistake, only the four above mentioned. Strabo {l} speaks of thirteen cities being formerly upon this spot, of which Sodom was the metropolis:



and all the inhabitants of the cities; none were spared, all were destroyed, but Lot, his wife, and two daughters:



and that which grew upon the ground; the trees, herbs, and plants; these were all turned up by the earthquake, and burnt with fire from heaven: Tacitus, in his account of this conflagration, says,



"the fields, which were formerly fruitful, and inhabited by many cities, were burnt up with lightning; and there are traces (he adds) yet remain; the earth itself looks torrid, and has lost its fruitful virtue; for whatsoever grows up of itself, or is sown and rises up in the plant or flower, or grows up to its usual species, becomes black and empty, and vanishes into ashes.''



The place where those cities stood is now a lake, and is sometimes called the salt sea, Ge 14:3; and sometimes the dead sea, because it is said, no creature can live in it; and sometimes called the Lake Asphaltites, from its bituminous and pitchy quality: though Reland {o} has attempted to confute the notion that the cities of Sodom, &c. stood where this lake now is: and the many things that have been reported of this lake and parts adjacent, by various historians, supposed to be of good credit, are by modern travellers exploded {p}; as those of no living creature being bred in it; of bodies not sinking in it; and of birds being unable to fly over it; and of the cities appearing under water in a clear day; and of the apples of Sodom, which look beautiful to the eye, but when touched fall into ashes; many of which Josephus {q} himself relates: indeed, Ludovicus Vartomanus {r}, a traveller in those parts in the beginning of the sixteenth century, says,



"there yet remain the ruins of the destroyed city, as a witness of God's wrath; we may affirm, there are three cities, and each of them situated on the decline of three hills, and the ruins appear about the height of three or four cubits; there is yet seen, I scarce know what, something like blood, or rather like red wax mixed with earth:''



and our countryman Mr. Sandys {s}, though he questions some of the above things before related, especially concerning the apples, yet says,



"not far from thence grows a tree whose fruit is like a green walnut, which he saw, and which they say never ripens.''



This lake of Sodom, according to Josephus {t}, is five hundred and eighty furlongs in length unto Zoar, and one hundred fifty broad; but, according to modern accounts, it is twenty four leagues in length, and six or seven in breadth {u}; the Arabic geographer {w} says, it is sixty miles in length, and twelve in breadth; it is now called by the Arabs, Bahar Louth, Lot's lake.



{h} Geograph. l. 16. p. 526. {i} De Bello Jud. l. 4. c. 8. sect. 4. {k} De excidio urb. l. 4. c. 18. {l} Ut supra. (Geograph. l. 16. p. 526.) {o} Palestina illustrata, tom. 1. l. 1. c. 38. p. 254, &c. {p} Vid. Universal History, vol. 2. p. 421, &c. See Egmont and Heyman's Travels, vol. 1. p. 341. {q} De Bello Jud. l. 4. c. 8. sect. 4. {r} Navigat. l. 1. c. 10. {s} Travels, l. 3. p. 110, 111. Ed. 5. {t} Ut supra. (De Bello Jud. l. 4. c. 8. sect. 4.) {u} Universal History, ib. p. 424. See Egmont, &c. ib, p. 342. {w} Scherif Ibn Idris, apud Reland. ib. p. 249.





Genesis 19:26



Ver. 26. But his wife looked back from behind him,.... That is, the wife of Lot, whose name the Jewish writers {x} say was Adith, or as others Irith {y}; and, according to the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem, she was a native of Sodom: now, as they were going from Sodom to Zoar, she was behind Lot, his back was to her, so that he could not see her; this was a temptation to her to look back, since her husband could not see her; and this she did, either, as the above paraphrases suggest, that she might see what would be the end of her father's house and family, or whether her married daughters, if she had any, were following her, after whom her bowels yearned; or being grieved for the goods and substance left behind, and for the people of Sodom in general, for whom she had too much concern; however, be it on what account it may, she was severely punished for it:



and she became a pillar of salt; was struck dead at once, either by the immediate hand of God, or by the shower of fire and brimstone; and her body was at once changed into a metallic substance, a kind of salt, hard and durable, such as Pliny {z} speaks of, cut out of rocks, with which houses were built, and hardened with the sun, and could scarcely be cut with an iron instrument; so that she did not fall to the ground, but stood up erect as a pillar, retaining very probably the human form, Josephus {a} says, this pillar continued to his times, and that he saw it; Irenaeus {b} and Tertullian {c} speak of it as in their times, a thing incredible; and Benjamin of Tudela says {d}, it stood in his times two parsas from the sea of Sodom; and though the flocks were continually licking it, yet it grew again to its former size. Rauwolff {e} relates something of the same kind by information, but not on his own testimony; that the pilgrims who visit it used to beat off some small pieces, and yet was found whole again; nay, which is beyond all credit, that they once knocked off a whole hand and took it away, and when they returned found it whole again: and one {f} that travelled in those parts in the beginning of the sixteenth century affirms, that almost in the midway to Zoar is seen to this day the pillar of salt into which Lot's wife was turned; he does not say indeed that he saw it, but leaves his reader to think so; and the Jerusalem Targum says, it will remain until the resurrection; but modern travellers of credit and intelligence could never see it; and when they have inquired of the country people about it, they either tell them there is no such thing, or say it stands in the mountains, where it cannot be come at, because of the Arabs, or because of wild beasts {g}: but no doubt there was such a statue, but how long it continued cannot be said; nor should it be thought incredible, when there are similar facts affirmed by authors of the best credit and reputation: Aventinus {h} reports, that in Bavaria, in 1348, more than fifty peasants, with the cows they had milked, at the time of an earthquake were struck with a pestilential air, and stiffened into statues of salt, and which he himself saw, and the chancellor of Austria: and Bisselius relates {i}, that Didacus Almagrus, who was the first person that with his army penetrated through the cold countries from Peru into Chile, lost abundance of his men, through the extremity of the cold and a pestiferous air; and that, returning to the same place five months afterwards, he found his men, horse and foot, standing unmoved, unconsumed, in the same situation, form, and habit, the pestilence had fastened them; one lying on the ground, another standing upright, another holding his bridle in his hand, as if about to shake it; in short, he found them just as he left them, without any ill smell or colour, common to corpses: indeed, the very fables of the Heathens, which seem to be hammered out of this history, serve to confirm the truth of the whole of it: as the fable of Jupiter and Mercury coming to a certain place in Phrygia, where they were hospitably entertained by Baucis and Philemon, when the doors were shut against them by others; wherefore they directed their guests, after being entertained by them, to leave the place and follow them to the mountains, when they turned the town into a standing lake {k}: and also that of Niobe being changed into a marble stone while weeping for the death of her children: and of Olenus and Lethaea, turned into stones also {l}. But, leaving these, and passing by other instances that might be observed, we are directed to remember this wonderful case by our Lord himself, Lu 17:32; and it should be an instruction to us not to look back nor turn back from the profession of the true religion we have made, but to follow Christ, and abide by his truths and ordinances.



{x} Pirke Eliezer, c. 25. {y} Baal Hatturim in loc. {z} Nat. Hist. l. 31. c. 7. {a} Antiqu. l. 1. c. 11. sect. 4. {b} Adv. Haeres. l. 4. c. 51. {c} In Carmine Sodoma. {d} ltinerarium, p. 44. {e} Travels, par. 3. c. 21. p. 313. by Ray. {f} Baumgarten. Peregrinatio, l. 3. c. 12. p. 96. {g} Universal History, ib. p. 124. Witsii Miscellan. Sacr. tom. 2. p. 195. {h} Annal. Bojor. apud Heidegger. Hist. Patriarch. tom. 2. exercitat. 8. p. 270. & Witsii Miscellan. tom. 2. exercitat. 7. p. 201. {i} Argonaut. Americ. l. 14. c. 2. apud Witsium, ib. p. 202. {k} Ovid. Metamorph. l. 8. fab. 8. {l} Ib. l. 6. fab. 4. & l. 10. fab. 1. Apollodor. de Deorum Orig. l. 3. p. 146.





Genesis 19:27



Ver. 27. And Abraham got up early in the morning,.... Perhaps he had had but little sleep the whole night, his thoughts being taken up with what was to befall the cities of the plain; and especially being in great concern for Lot and his family:



to the place where he stood before the Lord; Ge 18:22; to the very spot of ground where he had stood the day before in the presence of the Lord, and had conversed with him, and prayed unto him; and so the Targum of Jonathan,



"to the place where he ministered in prayer before the Lord;''



here he came and stood waiting for an answer to his prayers; and perhaps this place was an eminence, from whence he could have a view of the plain of Jordan and the cities on it; and so it appears from

Ge 19:28.





Genesis 19:28



Ver. 28. And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain,.... To see how it fared with them: very probably the Lord had hinted it to him, that the destruction would be that morning, and therefore he rose early, got to the place bearly, and being on an eminence, looked wistly to see if he could observe any sign of it:



and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace; after the fiery shower was over, and the cities burnt down, the smoke ascended toward heaven, as the smoke of mystical Babylon will do, Re 19:3; like the reek of a boiling cauldron; or, as Jarchi, like the smoke of a lime kiln always burning.





Genesis 19:29



Ver. 29. And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain,.... Not when he had destroyed them, but when he was about to destroy them; for Lot was sent out from them, and delivered out of them, before they were destroyed; and therefore Noldius rightly renders the words, "before God destroyed" {m} them:



that God remembered Abraham; his promise to him, that he would bless them that blessed him, Ge 12:3; and his prayer to him for Lot in

Ge 18:23; for, though he does not mention him by name, he bore him on his heart, and he was always in the number of the righteous ones, on whose account he interceded for the sparing of the cities; and, though God did not hear and answer him with regard to the cities, yet he did with respect to the righteous men in them:



and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow; by two angels, who took him by the hand and brought him out of Sodom, now overthrown:



when he overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt; that is, in one of which Lot dwelt, namely, Sodom, as Aben Ezra rightly observes, comparing the passage with Jud 12:7; unless it can be thought that Lot first dwelt in one of those cities and then in another, and first and last in them all, which is not very likely.



{m} txvb "antequam perderet", Nold. Ebr. concord. partic. p. 144. No. 679.





Genesis 19:30



Ver. 30. And Lot went up out of Zoar,.... Which lay in the plain, and therefore when he went from thence to the mountain, it was by an ascent:



and dwelt in the mountain; which the Lord had directed him to go to before, but was unwilling, and chose Zoar, and desired he might flee thither, and that that might be spared; but now he likes God's advice for him better than his own, and therefore betook himself to the mountain, where he might think himself safest, and where he continued; very probably this was the mountain Engaddi, under which Zoar is said to lie by Adrichomius {n}:



and his two daughters with him: his wife was turned into a pillar of salt, and these two were all of his family that with him were saved from the destruction; and these are the rather mentioned for the sake of an anecdote hereafter related:



for he feared to dwell in Zoar; it being near to Sodom; and the smoke of that city and the rest might not only be terrible but troublesome to him, and the tremor of the earth might continue and reach as far as Zoar; and perceiving the waters to rise and overflow the plain, which formed the lake where the cities stood, he might fear they would reach to Zoar and swallow up that; and especially his fears were increased, when he found the inhabitants were as wicked as those of the other cities, and were unreformed by the judgment on them; and so he might fear that a like shower of fire would descend on them and destroy them, as it had the rest, though it had been spared for a while at his intercession; and, according to the Jewish writers {o}, it remained but one year after Sodom:



and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters; which was in the mountain, the mountain of Engedi. Josephus {p} makes mention of the mountains of Engedi; and here was a cave, where David with six hundred men were, in the sides of it, when Saul went into it, 1Sa 24:1; and perhaps may be the same cave where Lot and his two daughters lived.



{n} Theatrum Terrae S. p. 54. {o} Juchasin, fol. 8. 1. {p} Antiqu. l. 6. c. 13. sect. 4.





Genesis 19:31



Ver. 31. And the firstborn said unto the younger,.... That is, the firstborn of those two, or the elder of them; for, if Lot had other daughters that were married in Sodom, it is probable they were elder than either of these: Aben Ezra intimates, that Lot had another wife, who died first, and these were by his second; the following motion is made by the eldest of them to the youngest, as being bolder, having more authority, and a greater influence to persuade:



our father [is] old; if he was fifty years of age when he was taken captive by the kings, as says the Jewish chronologer {q} he must now be sixty five, since the destruction of Sodom, according to Bishop Usher {r}, was fifteen years after that:



and [there] is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth; to marry them, cohabit with them, and procreate children of them, which was the common way of the propagation of mankind in the earth; they thought the whole world was destroyed by fire, as it had been by a flood; they understood it would be no more consumed by water, but they had been told it would be by fire, and they imagined the time was now come, and this was the case; that not only Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire, and that by this time the fire had reached to Zoar, and had consumed that, but that the whole earth was destroyed, and not a man left but their father, and therefore thought it could be excusable in them, and lawful for them to take the following method to repopulate the world; or else they supposed there were none in the land, the land of Canaan, not of any of their kindred and relations, for they might be ignorant of Abraham and his family, or however of any good man that they knew of, that they could be joined to in marriage; for as for the inhabitants of Zoar, they had just left, they were as wicked as any, and therefore could not think of living with them in such a near relation: but all this is not a sufficient excuse for contriving and executing what is after related; for they should have inquired of their father, who could have informed them better.



{q} Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 77. 1. {r} Annales Vet. Test. p. 8, 9.





Genesis 19:32



Ver. 32. Come, let us make our father drink wine,.... Meaning to excess, so as to be inebriated with it, and not know what he did: this wine might be brought with them from Sodom, with other provisions for their refreshment and support; or it may be rather from Zoar, where they furnished themselves with a quantity for their support in the mountain they betook themselves unto:



and we will lie with him, that we may preserve the seed of our father; have children by him, and propagate and preserve the human species; this they might think lawful, such incestuous copulations being usual among their neighbours the Arabs, as appears from Strabo {s} and other writers, and especially when there seemed to them to be a necessity for it; and it may be this did not arise from a spirit of uncleanness, or a brutish lust prevailing in them, having been religiously educated, and having preserved their chastity among such an impure generation as the men of Sodom: wherefore this might rather arise, as Bishop Patrick and others have thought, from an eager desire after the Messiah, they might hope would spring from them; their father being a descendant of Shem, a son of Abraham's elder brother, and now remarkably saved from Sodom, which they might conclude was for this purpose; and they knew of no way in which it could be brought about but in this they proposed; and the rather this may be thought to be their view, as the above learned commentator observes, when we remark their former chaste life in Sodom; their joining together in this contrivance, which, had it been a lustful business, they would have been ashamed to have communicated their thoughts of it to one another; and their imposition of names on their children to perpetuate the memory of this fact, which they rather gloried in, than were ashamed of: to which may be added, that the ancient Jewish writers {t} interpret this of the Messiah; and they observe,



"it is not said a son, but seed, that seed, which is he that comes from another place: and what is this? this is the King Messiah:''



and Ruth, the Moabitess, who was of the race of the eldest daughter of Lot, stands in the genealogy of our Lord, Mt 1:5: however, let the intention be ever so good, it will, not justify an action so monstrously vile.



{s} Geograph. l. 16. p. 538. Vid. Pocock, Specim. Arab. Hist. p. 337, 338. {t} Bereshit Rabba, sect. 51. fol. 46. 1. Midrash Ruth, fol. 35. 4.





Genesis 19:33



Ver. 33. And they made their father drink wine that night,.... They persuaded him to drink liberally, urged him to it again, in order to make him drunk, and so complete their design; and Lot might be the more prevailed upon to drink freely, in order to remove his sorrow, and refresh his spirits under the loss of his wife, and his daughters, if he had any married in Sodom, as some suppose, and his sons-in-law, and of all his goods and substance; though this will not excuse his drinking to excess, nor can ignorance of the strength of wine be pleaded, since he must needs know it as well as his daughters, who, it is plain, did, and therefore plied him with it:



and the firstborn went in and lay with her father; went to his bed, and lay down by him, which she would not have dared to have done, but that she knew he was drunk and insensible:



and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose: never heard her come to bed nor get up, so dead drunk and fast asleep was he; but finding a woman in bed with him, lay with her, taking her to be his wife, forgetting, through the force of liquor, that she was dead. There is an extraordinary prick on the Vau in Kumah, rendered "she arose", which the Jews say {u} is to show that he knew her not when she lay down, but when she arose he knew her; and indeed it may be rendered, but in her rising up.



{u} T. Bab. Horayot, fol. 10. 2.





Genesis 19:34



Ver. 34. And it came to pass on the morrow,.... The day following the night, in which the above was transacted:



that the firstborn said to the younger, behold, I lay yesternight with my father; informed her, that what they had contrived succeeded according to their wish, and therefore, for her encouragement to go on, proposes to take the same method again:



let us make him drink wine this night also, and go thou in [and] lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father; may have children by him, and so our family be kept up, from whence it may be hoped the Messiah will spring, See Gill on "Ge 19:32".





Genesis 19:35



Ver. 35. And they made their father drink wine that night also,.... Until he was drunk; which is an aggravation of his sin, that he should be overtaken a second time, and that so soon as the next night, when he ought to have been upon his guard, knowing how he had fallen into it the night before:



and the younger arose and lay with him; arose from her own bed, and went to her father's, and lay down by him:



and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose;

See Gill on "Ge 19:33".





Genesis 19:36



Ver. 36. Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. We learn from hence what the best of men are when left to themselves; a good man, a righteous Lot, is guilty of crimes the most shocking; he exposed the chastity of his daughters to the men of Sodom, and now his daughters attacked him, and succeeded, being both with child by him; and this brought about by excessive drinking, a sin which often leads on to the foulest crimes, and therefore to be carefully avoided; these sins Lot fell into when as it were alone, on a mountain, in a cave, none but his family with him, and these only his two daughters; he that had stood his ground in the midst of Sodom, notwithstanding all the excesses of that place, the impurities in it, and the temptations that every day offered, now falls when seemingly out of the way of all: these sins and failings of good men are recorded for our admonition and caution, that we may shun all appearance of evil, and be careful lest we fall, and neither be presumptuous not self-confident, see 1Co 10:12.





Genesis 19:37



Ver. 37. And the firstborn bare a son, and called his name Moab,.... As if it was "Meab", from the father, as Aben Ezra, and so Josephus, that is, which she had by her father; and she was so far from being ashamed that it might be known in time to come, she gave him this name. Hillerus {w} makes it to be a compound of ba and abwm, and to signify "going into", or "lying with a father", which still more notoriously points to her own action. Drusius has another derivation of the word, at least proposes it, and renders it "aqua patris"; "mo" in the Egyptian language signifying "water", which is sometimes used for seed, see Isa 48:1:



the same [is] the father of the Moabites unto this day; a people that lived on the borders of the land of Canaan, often troublesome to the Israelites, and frequently spoken of in the Old Testament.



{w} Onomastic. Sacr. p. 414.





Genesis 19:38



Ver. 38. And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Benammi,.... That is, "the son of my people", being the son of her father; which though it does not so manifestly appear in this name, as in the other, yet there is some trace of it; and she would have it be known by this, that he was not the son of a stranger, but of a relation of her own: some attribute this to her being more modest than her elder sister; but it looks as if neither of them were sensible of any crime they had been guilty of, but rather thought it a commendable action, at least that it was excusable:



the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day; a people that lived near their brethren the Moabites, and were both enemies to the people of God; they quickly falling into idolatry, and whose names we often meet with in the sacred writings; and of these two sons, Josephus says {x}, the one begat the Moabites, being still a great nation, and the other the Ammonites, and both inhabit Coelesyria; they are both called the children of Lot, Ps 83:8. After this we hear no more of Lot in this history; and it is remarkable, that there never was, as we know of, any town or city that had in it any, trace of his name; but we are not from hence to conclude that he was a wicked man, whose memory perished with him; for mention is made of him in the New Testament, where he has a very honourable character, and is called "just Lot", 2Pe 2:7.



{x} Antiqu. l. 1. c. 11. sect. 5.

 

John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible.

Genesis 20:1



INTRODUCTION TO GENESIS 20



This chapter relates the removal of Abraham to Gerar, Ge 20:1; the king of Gerar's taking to him Sarah, whom Abraham had called his sister, Ge 20:2; who is rebuked of God for it in a dream,

Ge 20:3; for which he makes an apology that is admitted, only he is ordered to restore to Abraham his wife, Ge 20:4; and accordingly early in the morning he called his servants, and acquainted them with what had happened, Ge 20:8; and then sent for Abraham, and expressed his resentment at his usage of him,

Ge 20:9; which Abraham defended as well as he could,

Ge 20:10; the issue of all which was, great kindness was shown to Abraham, and his wife restored to him, though with a reproof to her from the king, Ge 20:14; upon which Abraham prayed for the healing of Abimelech and his family, in which he was heard and answered, Ge 20:17.



Ver. 1. And Abraham journeyed from thence towards the south country,.... He returned from the plains or oaks of Mamre, where he had lived fifteen or twenty years, into the more southern parts of the land of Canaan: the reason of this remove is not certain; some think, because he could not bear the stench of the sulphurous lake, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were become; and others, because of the scandal of Lot's incest with his daughters, which prejudiced the idolatrous people in those parts more against the true religion; neither of which are likely, by reason of the distance; but the better reason seems to be, that it was so ordered in Providence that he should remove from place to place, that it might appear that he was but a sojourner in the land:



and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur; two wildernesses, as Jerom says {y}, one of which joined to Egypt, to which the people of Israel went when they passed over the Red sea, and the other, Kadesh, reached to the desert of the Saracens. Onkelos and Jonathan paraphrase the words between Rekam and Chagra, or Hagra, the same place where the angel of the Lord met with Hagar at the well, See Gill on "Ge 16:7" and

See Gill on "Ge 16:14":



and sojourned in Gerar; or Gerara, as Jerom {z} calls it,



"from whence he says the Geraritic country in his time beyond Daroma, or the south, had its name, and was twenty five miles distance from Eleutheropolis to the south, and was formerly the southern border of the Canaanites, and the metropolis of Palestine.''



According to the Samaritan version, Gerar is the same with Ashkelon, which was afterwards, when aristocracy took place in this country, one of the five lordships of the Philistines; and so says Africanus {a}; and that Gerar was in the country of the Philistines, and Abimelech was king of them, is clear from Ge 21:32. This place was about six miles from Mamre {b}, from whence Abraham removed.



{y} De loc. Heb. fol, 91. I. {z} De loc. Heb. fol. 91. I. {a} Apud Syncell. Chronic. p. 100. {b} Bunting's Travels, p. 57.





Genesis 20:2



Ver. 2. And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, she [is] my sister,.... This he gave out in all conversation he came into, and said it to every one that asked who she was, which was little better than a lie; it at least was an equivocation and deception, and not at all justifiable, and tended to expose his wife's chastity, and discovered a distrust of divine Providence; the same infirmity be had given way to, and the same evil he had fallen into in Egypt, Ge 12:11, and therefore was the more inexcusable now; good men not only fall into sin, but have their relapses:



and Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah; having heard or seen what a beautiful woman. Sarah was, though ninety years of age, having never bore children; and understanding she was a single person, sent his servants to take her, and bring her to his house, in order to be his wife, which seems to be done with some kind of force; and it can hardly be thought that Abraham and Sarah would freely agree to it, at least it must be done with reluctance on their parts. Whether Abimelech was the first king of Palestine of this name, is not certain; if he was, which is not improbable, it became usual afterwards for the kings thereof to be so called, as Pharaoh was a common name to the kings of Egypt; it signifies "father" and "king", as kings should be the fathers of their people.





Genesis 20:3



Ver. 3. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night,.... Put a dream into his mind, by which he cautioned him against taking Sarah to be his wife; so careful was the Lord that no wrong should be done to such a godly and virtuous person, to which she was exposed through the weakness of her husband. Aben Ezra wrongly interprets this of an angel, when it was God himself:



and said unto him, behold, thou [art but] a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; that is, God would punish him with death, unless he restored the woman, whom he had taken, to her husband; not for any uncleanness he had committed with her, but for taking her without her free and full consent, and without inquiring more strictly into her relation to Abraham, and connection with him, and for his impure and unlawful desires after her, if persisted in:



for she [is] a man's wife, or "married to an husband" {c}; and therefore it was unlawful in him to take her to be his wife.



{c} leb tleb "maritata marito", Pagninus, Montanus, Piscator, Schmidt.





Genesis 20:4



Ver. 4. But Abimelech had not come near her,.... Sarah had been put into an apartment in his palace, and not yet admitted into his company, not at least to his bed; he had not lain with her, which is the design of the expression: the Septuagint version is, "had not touched her", as in Ge 20:6; which is another phrase expressive of the same thing:



and he said, Lord, wilt thou slay also a righteous nation? meaning either his family, the greater part of which were not accessory to this affair; or rather his kingdom, as Aben Ezra, see Ge 20:9; which though not a nation of righteous men, in a strict sense, see Ge 20:11; yet with regard to this business of Sarah were no ways criminal: either God had threatened to destroy his people, as well as himself, if he did not return Sarah to her husband, or committed iniquity with her; or he knew that this had been usual for people to suffer for the crimes of their governors, and like a true father of his country shows an affectionate concern for their welfare in the first place; for this may be the sense of the word "also", on which an emphasis is put; wilt thou not only slay me, but also a whole nation for my sake, a nation free from all fault and blame in this matter? though some think he has reference to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, a recent action, and fresh in his mind; as if he should say, thou hast justly destroyed a wicked people for their sins, and wilt thou also destroy a nation that at least, in comparison of them, is a just and righteous one?





Genesis 20:5



Ver. 5. Said he not unto me, she [is] my sister?.... By this it appears, that Abimelech had a personal conversation with Abraham, and inquired of him about Sarah, who she was, and what relation she was to him, who told him that she was his sister; and for the truth of this he appeals to the omniscient God, who knew that Abraham had told him this:



and she, even she herself said, he [is] my brother; when Sarah was asked what relation she stood in to Abraham, and he to her, she declared he was her brother; so that Abimelech had reason to conclude, from what both of them had said, that this was the truth of the matter, and especially from what Sarah said, who he thought might be depended on, and would speak out the whole truth on such an occasion:



in the integrity of my heart, and innocency of my hands, have I done this; hereby declaring, that his design was not to defile the woman, and to gratify his lust, but to take her to be his wife; and this he thought to be no evil, though he had a wife, Ge 20:17; polygamy not being reckoned a sin in those times; and that he had used no violence in taking her, they both seemingly agreeing to it.





Genesis 20:6



Ver. 6. And God said unto him in a dream,.... The same dream continued:



yea, or "also"



I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart; not only thou knowest, but I, who know all things, know and acknowledge that this was so done by thee. Abimelech's plea is admitted, and a very great testimony borne to his integrity in this matter; and throughout the whole account he appears to be a man of great honour and uprightness, especially in this affair, if not a good man:



for I also withheld thee from sinning against me; for had he committed adultery with her, it had been not only a sin against her, and against her husband, but against God being contrary to his will revealed in the minds of men by the law and light of nature, before the law of Moses was given: and indeed all sin against the neighbour is ultimately against God, see Ps 51:4; and now from the commission of this sin God restrained Abimelech, either by some impulse upon his mind not to take her to be his wife as yet, or by throwing some thing or other in the way of it, in his providence, or by inflicting some disease upon him, which rendered him incapable of it, Ge 20:17;



therefore suffered I thee not to touch her; that is, to have carnal knowledge of her, see 1Co 7:1; as there is nothing done but what is done by divine permission, so many more evils would be committed than there are, were it not that men are restrained from them by the power and providence of God, not suffering them to do them; and in particular this sin was prevented, that it might not in any respect be a doubtful point whether Isaac, whom Sarah had now conceived, was a legitimate son of Abraham; and these expressions of Abimelech not coming near her,

Ge 20:4; and not touching her as here, are used for that purpose.





Genesis 20:7



Ver. 7. Now therefore restore the man [his] wife,.... Which will be a full proof and evidence to all of the integrity of thy heart, and the innocence of thine hands, which thou pleadest, and which I own:



for he [is] a prophet; familiar with God, dear unto him, a friend of his, to whom he communicates his secrets; is able to foretell things to come, as well as to interpret the mind of God, and instruct in the knowledge of divine things, all which agrees with Abraham's character; and he is the first man that is dignified in Scripture with the title of a prophet; so he is called in the Apocrypha:



"Beware of all whoredom, my son, and chiefly take a wife of the seed of thy fathers, and take not a strange woman to wife, which is not of thy father's tribe: for we are the children of the prophets, Noe, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: remember, my son, that our fathers from the beginning, even that they all married wives of their own kindred, and were blessed in their children, and their seed shall inherit the land.'' (Tobit 4:12)



Jarchi thinks this is observed to encourage Abimelech to return his wife to him, because being a prophet he knew he had not touched her, and therefore would receive her more readily, and entertain no ill opinion of her; but rather it is mentioned for the reason following:



and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live; it being one part of the business of a prophet to pray for others, and make intercession for them, especially in any distress or trouble, see Jer 27:18. Prophets were praying persons, had usually a great gift in prayer, and great power with God, and prevailed with him for the good of others; and such an one was Abraham; and it is here intimated, that upon the restoration of his wife to him, as he was familiar with God, and had an interest with him, he would make use of it, and pray for Abimelech, that whatsoever offence he had been guilty of to God or men, it might be forgiven, and that he might be healed of the disease with which he was smitten, and so recover of it, and live in health and happiness:



and if thou restore [her] not, know thou, that thou shalt surely die,

thou, and all that [are] thine: if he proceeded to take her to be his wife, and defile her, he is strongly assured that he should die, death being the punishment for adultery before the law of Moses, see

Ge 38:24; and not only he, but all his family, especially such who had been, or would be accessory to this affair, and even all who might he justly punished of God for other sins they had committed; and Abimelech being punished, both in his own person, and in his servants and subjects, the greater his punishment was, the greater abhorrence and detestation was shown to the sin he would be guilty of, to deter him from which this threatening is given out.





Genesis 20:8



Ver. 8. Therefore Abimelech rose early in the morning,.... Awaking upon the dream, could sleep no more, his thoughts running upon what had been said to him by the Lord in it: wherefore as soon as it was light he rose from his bed,



and called all his servants; his household servants, and particularly his courtiers and counsellors, who had advised him to take Sarah for his wife, and had been assisting in it:



and told all those things in their ears: how that God appeared to him in a dream, and told him that Sarah, whom he had taken into his house, was another man's wife, and that if he did not immediately return her to her husband, he would die, and all that belonged to him:



and the men were sore afraid; lest they should be struck with death; and perhaps they might call to mind the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins, they had lately heard of, and might fear that some such calamity would befall them.





Genesis 20:9



Ver. 9. Then Abimelech called Abraham,.... Who might be in the king's palace, being taken into it caressed by the king for the sake of Sarah:



and said unto him; not in a passion, as might have been expected, but in a mild and gentle manner, yet with great strength of reasoning, and making very just expostulations with him:



what hast thou done unto us? what evil to him, his family, and his subjects? this was very probably said in the presence of his servants he had called, and therefore the plural number is used:



and what have I offended thee, that thou hast brought on me, and on my kingdom, a great sin? the sin of adultery, he had been in danger of committing, which by the light of nature was known and acknowledged to be a great sin, and therefore was avoided by Heathens, and prohibited and punished by them; or else a "great punishment" {d}, as death to him, and all his subjects: and now Abimelech expostulates with him, and desires to know what he had done to incur his displeasure, that he should take such a method as this to avenge himself of him; he plainly intimates that he was not conscious to himself that he had done any thing to offend him; he had suffered him to come into his kingdom, and sojourn in it, and used him well, and in no instance, as he knew of, had done anything to affront him:



thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done; in saying Sarah was his sister, and persuading her to say the same, and so virtually disowning his marriage with her, equivocating in this affair, and dissembling truth, and thereby exposing the chastity of his wife, and the king to the commission of sin with her; things that ought not to be done by any man, and much less by a man professing religion and godliness.



{d} hldg hajh "noxam magnam", Junius & Tremellius; "poenam peccati", Menochius; so Abendana.





Genesis 20:10



Ver. 10. And Abimelech said unto Abraham,.... Continuing his discourse with him:



what sawest thou, that thou hast done this thing? he desires to know what he had observed, either in him or his people, that gave him any reason to conclude that they were a lustful people, and would stick at nothing to gratify their lusts, which put him upon taking such a method to secure his life, lest they should kill him for his wife's sake.





Genesis 20:11



Ver. 11. And Abraham said,.... In defence of himself, as well as he could:



because I thought; within himself, concluding from the general depravity of the Canaanites, that this was the case of the inhabitants of Gerar:



surely the fear of God [is] not in this place; this is a certain truth, which he thought might be depended upon, and taken for granted, since so it was everywhere: or "only" {e}, as the word used signifies; this was the only thing he had to plead, that he verily thought with himself that there was no true religion and godliness in Gerar: that the inhabitants of it were without any fear of God before their eyes, or in their hearts; and he knew, where this is the case, there is nothing to restrain from the commission of the grossest sins:



and they will slay me for my wife's sake; that they might marry her, see Ge 12:12.



{e} qr "tantum", Montanus; so Vatablus, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Drusius; so the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan, and Ben Melech.





Genesis 20:12



Ver. 12. And yet indeed [she is] my sister,.... In the same sense as Lot was his brother; for she was sister to Lot, and both were the children of Haran, the brother of Abraham:



she [is] the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; she was the daughter of his father, being his granddaughter, grandchildren are sometimes called children, but not the daughter or granddaughter of Abraham's mother; Terah having had two wives, by the one he had Haran, the father of Sarah, and by the other Abraham. According to the Arabic writers {f}, Abraham and Sarah were the immediate children of Terah, but by two mothers:



"the mother of Abraham (they say) died, whose name was Juna, and Terah married another wife, whose name was Lahazib, some say Tahuitha, who bore him Sarah, afterwards married to Abraham; hence Abraham said, she is my sister on my father's side, but not on my mother's side:''



and she became my wife; as in those times it was judged lawful, and so it has been accounted lawful in many nations to marry sisters on the father's side, when those on the mother's were prohibited {g}.



{f} Elmacinus, p. 51. Patricides, p. 17. apud Hottinger. Smegma Oriental. p. 281. {g} Vid. Philo. de Special. Leg. p. 779. Clement. Alex. Stromat. l. 2. p. 421.





Genesis 20:13



Ver. 13. And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father's house,.... In Ur of the Chaldees, from whence God called him to go forth; which laid him under an obligation to depart from thence, and move from place to place, and go he knew not where, as in

Heb 11:8; or "the Gods", as it is in the plural number, and so the verb in construction with it; not the idol gods, the gods of the Gentiles, as the Targum of Jonathan, who interprets the words thus,



"and it was when the worshippers of idols sought to cause men to err, and I went from my father's house;''



but the true God, as Jarchi, Aben Ezra, and Ben Melech acknowledge, and is by many Christian interpreters understood of the three Persons in the Godhead:



that I said unto her, this [is] thy kindness which thou shalt show unto me; this I shall take as a favour done me, as an instance of tender affection unto me:



at every place whither we shall come, say of me; or for the sake of me, as Aben Ezra and Kimchi, in order to save me from the hands of wicked men, whom he feared would slay him for her sake:



he [is] my brother; and so he hoped, instead of being ill used, he should meet with favour and friendship on her account, being thus nearly related to her: this he observes to Abimelech, to show that this was an old agreement, near thirty years ago, when they first set out on their travels, and was no new device and scheme which they pursued on account of him and his people in particular; but what they had formerly agreed upon should be said in all places wherever they came, and therefore there was no intention to affront Abimelech; only it supposed they might come into places where wicked men dwelt.





Genesis 20:14



Ver. 14. And Abimelech took sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and womenservants, and gave [them] unto Abraham,.... In a good measure satisfied with what Abraham had said to excuse himself; and these gifts he gave unto him, that he might, as Jarchi observes, pray and intercede for him, that he and his family might be healed, having understood by the divine oracle that he was a prophet, and if he prayed for him he would be restored to health: and these were not given to bribe him to give his consent that Sarah might be continued with him, since it follows,



and restored him Sarah his wife; untouched by him, as he was directed by God to do.





Genesis 20:15



Ver. 15. And Abimelech said, behold, my whole land [is] before thee,.... Instead of bidding him be gone, and sending him away in haste out of his country, as the king of Egypt did in a like case, he solicits his stay in it; and to encourage him to it, makes an offer of his whole kingdom to him, to choose which part of it he would to dwell in:



dwell where it pleaseth thee; if there was anyone part of it better than another, or more convenient for him, his family and his flocks, he was welcome to it.





Genesis 20:16



Ver. 16. And unto Sarah he said, behold, I have given thy brother a thousand [pieces] of silver,.... Or shekels of silver, as the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem, which, if two shillings and sixpence of our money, amount to one hundred and twenty five pounds; though perhaps little pieces of silver, current in this country, may be meant, that were not worth so much. Some think that the sheep, oxen, &c. Abimelech had given to Abraham, were worth so many pieces of silver: but it rather seems that he gave these over and above them, and chiefly for Sarah's use, as will be observed hereafter; since the words are directed to her, and in which there is a sharp cutting expression, calling Abraham her brother, and not her husband, thereby putting her in mind and upbraiding her with her equivocation and dissimulation:



behold, he [is] to thee a covering of the eyes, unto all that [are] with thee; a protection of her person and chastity: so an husband, in our language, is said to be a cover to his wife, and she under a cover: thus Abraham being now known to be the husband of Sarah, would for the future be a covering to her, that no one should look upon her, and desire her, and take her to be his wife; and he would also be a protection to her maidens that were with her, the wives of his servants, that these also might not be taken from him: but it seems best to refer this to the gift of the thousand pieces of silver, and read the words, "behold, this is to thee {h} a covering of the eyes"; so the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem; for the words are a continued biting sarcasm on Sarah; as Abimelech twits her with calling Abraham her brother in the preceding clause, so in this he tells her that he had given him so much money to buy her a veil with, and to supply her with veils from time to time to cover her eyes, that nobody might be tempted to lust after her, and that it might be known she was a married woman; for in these countries married women wore veils for distinction,

Ge 24:65; and so not to be had by another, nor would any be deceived by her; and not only was this money given to buy veils for her, but for her female servants also that were married, that they might be knows to be another's property; though this latter phrase "unto", or "with all that [are] with thee" {i}, may be understood, not of persons, but of things, even of all the girls which Abimelech had given her while in his house; these he did not, take back again, but continued them with her, either for the above use, or whatever she pleased; and the following phrase,



and with all [other], as we render it, making a considerable stop, should, according to the accents, be read with what follows thus, "and with all this was she reproved" {k}; so Aben Ezra; and so they are the words of Moses, observing, that by and with all this that Abimelech had said and done,



thus she was reproved; Sarah was reproved for saying that Abraham was her brother: or the words may be rendered thus, "and so before all she was reproved" {l}; before her husband, and before Abimelech's courtiers, and perhaps before her own servants; though Ainsworth, and others, take them to be the words of Abimelech, and render them, "and all that", or "all this is that thou mayest be rebuked" {m}, or instructed; all that I have said and done is for this end, that thou mayest be warned and be careful for the future to speak out truth, without any equivocation, and not call Abraham thy brother, when he is thy husband.



{h} Kl awh tauta estai soi, Sept. "hoe erit tibi", V. L. Schmidt; so Tigurine version, Montanus, Jarchi & Ben Melech. {i} Kta rva lkl "cum omni quod tecum est", Schmidt. {k} txknw lk taw "et sic cum omnibus reprehensa est", Munster. {l} "Atque ita coram omnibus increpata fuit", Noldii Concord. Ebr. Part. p. 314. No. 1219. {m} "Atque haec omnia, ut erudita sis", Junius & Tremellius; "reprehensa es", De Dieu.





Genesis 20:17



Ver. 17. So Abraham prayed unto God,.... As the Lord had told Abimelech be would, Ge 20:7; he might pray for the forgiveness of him and his wife, and might give thanks that Sarah had been restored to him; but chiefly it was on account of Abimelech and his family:



and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants: who by reason of some disease were rendered unfit for and incapable of cohabitation with their husbands, and they with them; but upon Abraham's prayer for them, who was heard, they were healed, and the disorder removed; the Targum of Jonathan is,



"his wife and concubines;''



and they bare [children]; cohabited and conceived, and bare and brought forth children, all which are comprehended in this expression.





Genesis 20:18



Ver. 18. For the Lord had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech,.... With large tumours probably, so that they could not cohabit with their husbands and conceive; nor could those that had conceived bring forth: and this disorder they were smitten with,



because of Sarah Abraham's wife; who was taken into the house of Abimelech, in order to be his; to rebuke and punish for which, and to convince of the evil of it, and cause to abstain from it, this disorder was inflicted on them.

 

John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible.

Genesis 21:1



INTRODUCTION TO GENESIS 21



This chapter gives an account of the conception, birth, circumcision, and weaning of Isaac, Ge 21:1; of the mocking of Ishmael, and of the casting out of him and his mother from Abraham's house, at the request of Sarah, which, though grievous to Abraham, he complied with at the direction of God, Ge 21:9; of the provision Abraham made for their departure, and of the supply they met with in the wilderness from God, where Ishmael was brought up, and where he married,

Ge 21:14; and of a covenant between Abraham and Abimelech, king of Gerar, Ge 21:22; and of Abraham's planting a grove, and calling on the name of the Lord, Ge 21:33; and the chapter is closed with this observation, that Abraham sojourned in the land of the Philistines many days, Ge 21:34.



Ver. 1. And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said,.... To Abraham,

Ge 17:16; in a way of mercy and kindness, by fulfilling his promise, giving strength to conceive and bear a child; see 1Sa 2:21:



and the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken; which intends the same thing in different words; and the repetition is made to cause attention to God's fulfilment of his promise, who is always faithful to his word, even in things very difficult and seemingly impossible, as in the present case: hence the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem paraphrase it, God did a wonder or wonders for Sarah in causing her to conceive when she was so old, and in such circumstances as she was.





Genesis 21:2



Ver. 2. For Sarah conceived,.... This explains what is meant by the Lord's visiting her, and doing to her according to his word, see

Heb 11:11;



and bare Abraham a son in his old age; which circumstance is remarked, that the favour might appear the greater, and the more wonderful; or, "unto", or "for his old age" {n}, for the comfort of him in his old age, who having lived so many years under the promise of a son, and in the expectation of one, even of the promised seed, from whom the Messiah should spring, now has one, than which nothing could yield him greater consolation:



at the set time of which God had spoken to him, Ge 17:21; God was not only faithful in fulfilling his promise, but in keeping the exact time of it.



{n} wynqzl "pro senectute ejus", Vatablus; "senectuti ejus", Junius & Tremellius.





Genesis 21:3



Ver. 3. And Abraham called the name of his son that was borne unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac. Which is the name he was directed to give him, Ge 17:19; and he remembers the order, and is obedient to it; the reason of which name, which signifies laughter, was on account of his laughing for joy at the promise made him, as well as there might be afterwards a further reason for it, from Sarah's laughing through distrust; and it might presignify the joy and laughter that would be expressed by others at his birth; and perhaps also that he would be the object of the laughter and derision of his brother; such a number of events agreeing with his name.





Genesis 21:4



Ver. 4. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac, being eight days old as,

God had commanded him. Ge 17:12, and was the first that we read of that was circumcised on that day, according to the divine precept, which Abraham strictly observed; for though this was the son of the promise, and of his old age, for whom he had the most affectionate regard, yet he administered this bloody ordinance on him; nor did he defer it beyond the time, and was himself the operator, as it seems; all which shows his strict regard, and ready and cheerful obedience to the command of God.





Genesis 21:5



Ver. 5. And Abraham was an hundred years old when son Isaac was born unto him. So that this was years after his departure from Haran, and coming into the land of Canaan, for then he was seventy five years of age,

Ge 12:4; and this exactly agrees with the account of Demetrius, as related by Polyhistor, an Heathen writer {o}, who makes Isaac to be born just twenty five years from Abraham's coming into the land of Canaan, and who must be now an hundred years old, being ninety nine at the time the Lord appeared unto him, and promised him a son at the set time the next year, Ge 17:1. This is observed, both to show the wonderful favour to Abraham, and the faithfulness of God in the exact performance of his promise: according to Bishop Usher {p}, Isaac was born A. M. 2108, and before Christ 1896, and probably at Beersheba, see Ge 21:33.



{o} Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 9. c. 21. p. 425. {p} Annales Vet. Test. p. 9.





Genesis 21:6



Ver. 6. And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh,.... This she said on occasion of the name of her son Isaac, which name her husband had given him by divine direction, and to which she assented. This doubtless brought to her mind her former laughing, when she first heard that she should have a son, which was in a way of diffidence and distrust; but now God having given her a son, laid a foundation for laughter of another kind, for real, solid, joy and thankfulness:



[so that] all that hear will laugh with me; not laugh at her, and deride her, as Piscator interprets it; but congratulate her, and rejoice with her on this occasion, as on a like one the neighbours of Elisabeth did with her, Lu 1:58.





Genesis 21:7



Ver. 7. And she said, who would have said unto Abraham,.... No one a year ago could ever have thought of such a thing, much less have come and told Abraham that he should have a child or children by Sarah; the thing was incredible, and next to impossible; none but God himself, or an angel from him, could have declared this, as none but he could bring it about, the thing is so marvellous and astonishing:



that Sarah should have given children suck? that she who was ninety years of age should bear a child, and suckle it, as she did; and in doing which she set an example to her daughters to do the like, since neither age nor grandeur, nor the business of her family, were any objection to this duty of nature; and her being able to do this was a clear proof that this was truly a child of her own. The plural number may be put for the singular, as it often is, see Ge 46:23; or Sarah might think, as she had strength given her to bear and suckle one child, she might bear and suckle more; though the phrase seems only to be expressive and descriptive of her as a nursing mother:



for I have borne him a son in his old age; See Gill on "Ge 21:2".





Genesis 21:8



Ver. 8. And the child grew, and was weaned,.... He throve under the nursing of its mother, and through the blessing of God upon him; and being healthy and robust, and capable of digesting stronger food, and living upon it, he was weaned from the breast: at what age Isaac was when weaned is not certain, there being no fixed time for such an affair, but it was at the discretion of parents, and as they liked it, and the case of their children required; and in those times, when men lived to a greater age than now, they might not be weaned so early, as we find their marrying and begetting children were when they were more advanced in years. The Jewish writers are not agreed about this matter. Jarchi and Ben Melech say that Isaac was weaned twenty four months after his birth; a chronologer of theirs says {q} it was in the hundred and third year of Abraham, that is, when Isaac was three years old, which agrees with the Apocrypha:



"But she bowing herself toward him, laughing the cruel tyrant to scorn, spake in her country language on this manner; O my son, have pity upon me that bare thee nine months in my womb, and gave thee such three years, and nourished thee, and brought thee up unto this age, and endured the troubles of education.'' (2 Maccabees 7:27)



According to Jerom {r}, it was the opinion of some of the Hebrews that he was five years old; and at this age Bishop Usher {s} places the weaning of him; for to make him ten or twelve years of age, as some of the Rabbins do {t}, when this was done, is very unlikely. Philo the Jew {u} makes him to be seven years of age at this time:



and Abraham made a great feast the [same] day that Isaac was weaned; because he had now escaped the dangers of infancy, and had gone through or got over those disorders infants are exposed unto, and had his health confirmed, and there was great likelihood of his living and becoming a man, since now he could eat and digest more solid and substantial food; and this was great joy to Abraham, which he expressed by making a grand and sumptuous entertainment for his family, and for his neighbours, whom he might invite upon this occasion. Jarchi says, the great men of that age were at it, even Heber and Abimelech. The Jews very impertinently produce this passage, to show the obligation they lie under to make a feast at the circumcision of their infants {w}; for this was not at Isaac's circumcision, but at his weaning.



{q} R. Gedaliah, Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 2. 2. {r} Quaestion. in Genesin, fol. 68. K. tom. 3. {s} Annal. Vet Test. p. 9. {t} Pirke Eliezer, c. 30. Vid. Hieron. Quaest. ut supra. (in Genesin, fol. 68. K. tom. 3.) {u} De his Verb. Resipuit. Noe, p. 275. {w} Pirke Eliezer, c. 29. fol. 30. 1.





Genesis 21:9



Ver. 9. And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian,.... That is, Ishmael, who is not expressed by name, but described by being a son of Hagar, a servant of Sarah's, and an Egyptian woman; all which seems to be observed by way of slight, both to Hagar and her son;



which she had born unto Abraham; not unto Sarah, as she proposed to herself, when she gave her maid to Abraham, Ge 16:2. This son of Abraham she saw



mocking; either at the entertainment made at the weaning of Isaac; or rather at Isaac himself, laughing at his name, and treating him with contempt as his younger brother, and boasting that he was the firstborn, and that the inheritance belonged to him; and threatening what he would do to him, should he hereafter offer to dispute it with him, under pretence of the promise of God that he should be Abraham's heir, and at which promise also he may be supposed to mock: and that this contention was about the inheritance seems plain from the words of Sarah in Ge 21:10; and in it Ishmael might not only rise to high words, but come to blows, and beat his brother; for it is observed the word used sometimes so signifies, 2Sa 2:14; wherefore the apostle might truly call it a persecution, Ga 4:29; and as even cruel mockings are, Heb 11:35. As for the various senses the Jewish commentators put upon this, there does not seem to be any foundation for them, as that Ishmael was committing idolatry, and endeavouring to draw his brother into it; or was talking in an indecent and lascivious manner, in order to corrupt his mind; or that he was intending and attempting to take away his life, by shooting an arrow at him, and pretending it was but in jest and in play; See Gill on "Ga 4:29".





Genesis 21:10



Ver. 10. Wherefore she said unto Abraham, cast out this bondwoman and her son,.... Hagar, Sarah's handmaid and bondservant, and her son Ishmael; by this it appears that Hagar was concerned in this affair, and set her son on to mock Isaac, at least she encouraged him in it, buoying: him up with his being the firstborn, and having a right to the inheritance; wherefore Sarah saw plainly that there would be no peace nor comfort for her and her son, unless Hagar and her son were turned out of doors, for which she moves Abraham; and this not merely in a passion, but by divine direction and influence, as is evident from God's approbation of it:



for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, [even] with Isaac; which he would seem to be, if continued, and would think himself so, and there would be continual bickerings about it; wherefore, to put it out of all doubt who was heir, she desires that he and his mother both might be cast out of the house, which would be a clear determination of this matter. Sarah may seem to take upon her too much, to be so peremptory, as to declare who should, and who should not be heir, which more properly belonged to Abraham, whom she called her lord, Ge 18:12; but what will sufficiently free her from any charge of this kind is the revelation of the divine will, and the promise of God that so it should be; namely, that the covenant God had so often renewed with Abraham should be established with Isaac, and not with Ishmael, Ge 17:19. Now what was the design of God, in guiding Sarah to make such a motion as this to Abraham, is taught us by the Apostle Paul, who makes these two women to be types and figures of the two covenants, and their sons of those that are under them, see Ga 4:22.





Genesis 21:11



Ver. 11. And the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight,.... The motion that Sarah made to turn out of his house Hagar and Ishmael was not agreeable to him, but the reverse; it seemed an ill thing to him; it was greatly displeasing to him, and he was unwilling to come into it:



because of his son; his son Ishmael; not grieved and uneasy for what he had done; not for committing idolatry, as the Targum of Jonathan suggests, or for mocking at Isaac; but for what was proposed to be done to him, the ejection of him from his house, because of the great love he had for him, and the great concern he had for his education, and that he might enjoy the blessing promised him, he, was loath to have him cast out of his family: no concern is expressed for Hagar, though both by what God said to Abraham, and by the provision he made for her, he had a regard unto her; but his chief concern was for his son, who perhaps had a greater share in his natural affections than as yet Isaac had; nor did express so much reluctance when he was bid to him up, as he did at this time, that being at the command of God, this at the instance of his wife, and which he supposed only proceeded from passion and resentment: the Hebrew writers say {x}, that of all the evils that came upon Abraham this was the hardest and most grievous in his sight.



{x} Pirke Eliezer, c. 30.





Genesis 21:12



Ver. 12. And God said unto Abraham,.... Either by an articulate voice, or by an impulse on his mind, suggesting to him what he should do, being no doubt in great perplexity how to conduct between his wife and his son, but God determines the case for him, and makes him easy:



let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of the bondwoman: that is, let not the motion displease thee, which Sarah has made, to turn out the bondwoman and her son; let not thine affection to the one and to the other hinder compliance with it; do not look upon it as an ill thing, or as an hard thing; it is but what is right and proper to be done, and leave the bondwoman and her son to me; I will take care of them, be under no concern for them and their welfare:



in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken to her voice; the Targum of Jonathan adds, for she is a prophetess: and indeed in this affair she spoke under a spirit of prophecy, according to the will of God; at least what she said became a divine oracle, and is called the Scripture, Ga 4:30; for the word "all" here must be restrained to what she had said concerning Hagar and Ishmael, and their ejection, and not to be extended to everything she had said, or should say to Abraham, to which he was always to be attentive: whereas on the other hand, it became her, as a wife, to hearken and be obedient to the voice of her husband: but in this particular Abraham is bid to listen to her, and do accordingly, for the following reason,



for in Isaac shall thy seed be called; he, and those that descended from him, should be called and reckoned the seed of Abraham more especially; and Abraham's seed in his life should inherit the land of Canaan, given to him and his seed for an inheritance: and this is a good reason why the bondwoman and her son should be cast out, that they or their offspring might not inherit the land with Isaac, or his descendants; and particularly from Abraham in his line, and not in the line of Ishmael, should the Messiah spring, that seed in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed; and therefore a separation was necessary, that this might abundantly appear.





Genesis 21:13



Ver. 13. And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation,.... A great nation, as is promised, Ge 17:20; and such the Ishmaelites and Saracens have been, and the Turks now are, the descendants of Ishmael. The Targum of Jonathan paraphrases it, a people of thieves, or a thieving people; as were the Saracens, and who are thought to have that name from the Arabic word "sarac" {y}, to thieve; though they would have it derived from Sarah: but it is not agreeable to the promise of God to Abraham, that when for his comfort he is told that his son Ishmael and his descendants should become a great nation, that they should be described as a company of thieves and robbers; and especially when the reason of the promise is given,



because he [is] thy seed; or thy son; here the word "seed" is again used of a single individual; see Ge 4:25.



{y} "furatus fuit, furto abstulit", Golius, col. 1167. Castel. col. 2626.





Genesis 21:14



Ver. 14. And Abraham rose up early in the morning,.... It was in the night the Lord spoke to him, and bid him hearken to the voice of Sarah; and, as soon as it was morning, he arose, and was not disobedient to the heavenly vision; for, though the thing he was directed to was disagreeable to flesh and blood, and contrary to his natural affection, yet, it being the will of God, he readily complied with it:



and took bread and a bottle of water; a loaf of bread very probably, and a leathern or wooden bottle of water, as Aben Ezra supposes it to be; for there is no need to say that these are put for all necessaries, and a liberal provision that might be made by Abraham; but it is to be taken strictly, according to the letter and history, as a matter of fact, since it could be no more than Hagar could carry, and did carry upon her shoulder: and, though Abraham could have sent cattle laden with provisions, and servants to attend them, yet he did not, which his natural affection and liberal disposition might dictate to him; but, as he was to hearken in this affair to whatsoever Sarah said, and act accordingly, perhaps this was all she would grant; or it might be so ordered by the providence of God, as a chastisement for their ill behaviour, and that they might know the difference between being in Abraham's house and out of it; and that there might be an opportunity given to show favour to them for Abraham's sake, who might probably direct them to some place where to go; and, till they came there, this might be a sufficient supply, when he gave them reason to expect more from him; but they got into the wilderness, wandered about and lost their way, and so became destitute of provisions; and this may be an emblem of the low, mean, and starving condition such are in who are under the law, and seek for happiness by the works of it:



and gave [it] unto Hagar, putting [it] on her shoulder; that is, the bread and the water, which might be put in one parcel or bundle, or in a basket, and so laid and carried on her shoulder: the Targum of Jonathan adds,



"and bound it to her loins, to show that she was an handmaid:''



and the child; not that the child was "on her shoulder", which is quite improbable; for, since he was thirteen years of age when he was circumcised, he must be fourteen when Isaac was born; and if Isaac was two years old when weaned, Ishmael must be sixteen; and if he was three years of age, he must be seventeen; and if five years, he must be nineteen: some of the Jewish writers say {z}, he was twenty seven years of age when he went out of his father's house; but they seem to come nearest the truth that make this event to be when he was at the age of seventeen {a}, and when he must be too big to be carried on his mother's shoulder: but the sense is, that Abraham, when he put the provision on her shoulder, gave Ishmael to her, delivered him into her hand, to be taken care of by her; and very probably she led him in her hand:



and sent her away out of his house to some place assigned for her; the Targum of Jonathan adds, with a bill of divorce, dismissing her not only from his house, but as his wife; and so the Jewish writers {b} generally understand it: but there is no reason to believe there was any such custom before the law of Moses: nay, they go further, and say, that he dismissed her from himself, and from Isaac his son, and from this world, and from the world to come:



and she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba; or, as the Targum of Jonathan, in the wilderness which was near to Beersheba; the place where it is probable Abraham now lived, and where Isaac was born, and the above affair was transacted, which was afterwards called by this name; for this is said by way of anticipation, see Ge 21:31. Beersheba is said {c} to be twelve miles from Gerar, and twenty miles from Hebron, to the south {d}.



{z} Pirke Eliezer, c. 30. Bereshit Rabba, sect. 53. fol. 47. 4. {a} Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 2. 2. {b} Pirke Eliezer & Shalshalet, ut supra. ({z}, {a}.) {c} Bunting's Travels, p. 57. {d} Hieron. de loc. Heb. fol. 89. E.





Genesis 21:15



Ver. 15. And the water was spent in the bottle,.... It was all drank up by them, being thirsty, having wandered about some time in a wilderness, where they could not replenish their bottle: the Jewish writers say {e} that when Hagar came into the wilderness, she began to wander after the idols of the house of Pharaoh her father, and immediately the water ceased from the bottle, or was drank up by Ishmael, being seized with a burning fever:



and she cast the child under one of the shrubs; not from off her shoulder, but out of her hand or bosom; being faint through thirst, he was not able to walk, and she, being weary in dragging him along in her hand, perhaps sat down and held him in her lap, and laid him in her bosom; but, imagining he was near his end, she laid him under one of the shrubs in the wilderness, to screen him from the scorching sun, and there left him; the Greek version is, "under one of the fir trees", and so says Josephus {f}: some Jewish writers {g} call them juniper trees; and some make this to be Ishmael's own act, and say, that, being fatigued with thirst, he went and threw himself under the nettles of the wilderness {h}, see Job 30:7.



{e} Pirke Eliezer, ut supra. (c. 30.) Targ. Jon. in loc. {f} Antiqu. l. 1. c. 12. sect. 3. {g} Bereshit, ut supra. (sect. 53. fol. 47. 4.) {h} Pirke Eliezer, ut supra. (c. 30.)





Genesis 21:16



Ver. 16. And she went and sat her down over against [him], a good way off,.... Not being able to bear the sight of her child in his agonies, and, as she apprehended, ready to expire, she went from the place where she had laid him, and sat down under one of the shrubs or trees to shade herself, right over against that where her child was, though at some distance, which is next expressed:



as it were a bowshot; about as far off from him as an arrow can be shot, or is usually shot out of a bow; according to the Jews this was about half a mile, for they say {i} two bowshots make a mile; here she sat waiting what would be the issue, whether life or death, which last she expected:



for she said, let me not see the death of the child; she could not bear to hear his dying groans, and see him in his dying agonies:



and she sat over against [him], and lift up her voice and wept; on account of her desolate and forlorn condition, being in a wilderness, where she could get no water, and her child, as she thought, dying with thirst: the Septuagint version is, "and the child cried and wept"; and certain it is, from Ge 21:17, that the child did lift up its voice and cry, but that is not expressed in the text; it is quite clear in the original that it was Hagar and not her son that is said to weep, since the verb is feminine.



{i} Bereshit Rabba, ut supra. (sect. 53. fol. 47. 4.)





Genesis 21:17



Ver. 17. And God heard the voice of the lad,.... By which it appears that he cried also; but whether it was in prayer to God, or through the distress and misery he was in, is not certain; and, be it which it will, his cries came up into the ears of the Lord, and he had compassion on him, and supplied his wants, and delivered him out of his miserable condition:



and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven; not a created angel, but the eternal one, the Son of God, the Angel of the covenant, who appeared in the visible heavens, and called to Hagar from thence with an articulate voice, and so loud that she could hear him:



and said unto her, what aileth thee, Hagar? or, what has befallen thee? what is the matter with thee? why criest, why weepest thou? this he said, not as being ignorant of her case, but in order to relieve and comfort her:



fear not; distrust not the power and providence of God in taking care of thee and thy son; do not be afraid of the death of the child:



for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he [is]; though in a wilderness, and under one of the shrubs in it: God is everywhere, and he can hear the cries of men be they where they will, or in ever so desolate a condition: by this Hagar would know that her son was alive, that he had been crying, and God had heard his cry; he that regards the prayer of the destitute, Ps 102:17, heard the cry of Ishmael under a shrub.





Genesis 21:18



Ver. 18. Arise, lift up the lad,.... She had set herself down at some distance, and now she is bid to rise up and go to the place where she had left her son, and raise aim up from the ground, on which he lay along:



and hold him in thine hand: or take hold on him with thine hand, and hold him up with it, he being so weak that he could not sit up without being supported:



for I will make him a great nation: which is a renewal of a promise before made both to her and to Abraham, Ge 16:10; and by this Hagar is assured that he would recover and live, and become a man and the father of children, who in time would become a great nation;

See Gill on "Ge 16:10",

See Gill on "Ge 17:20",

See Gill on "Ge 21:13", this shows that the Angel of God here speaking is God himself, or a divine Person, since none but he could make him a great nation.





Genesis 21:19



Ver. 19. And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water,.... Which she saw not before; not that she was really blind and had her eyes opened, or her sight restored, but they might be holden or restrained by the providence of God, that she should not see it before; or, through inattention and distraction of mind, might not observe it; or her eyes might be swelled with weeping and crying, that she saw it not; though it is not improbable that this well was not in being before, but was immediately produced by the power of God, who when he pleases can open mountains in the midst of the valleys, and make the wilderness a pool of water, Isa 41:18: the Jewish writers {k} say, it was created between the two evenings, that is, on the evening of the seventh day of the creation. Happy are those whose eyes are opened, by the Spirit and grace of God, to see the well of living water, the fountain and fulness of grace that is in Christ, where thirsty souls may come and drink and take their fill.



And she went and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad to drink; with which he was refreshed and recovered from his fainting, and was restored to health again.



{k} Pirke Eliezer, ut supra. (c. 30.)





Genesis 21:20



Ver. 20. And God was with the lad,.... To confirm his health, to provide for him the necessaries of life, to protect him from danger in the wilderness where he was, and to prosper and succeed him in temporal things; all which is owing to the providential goodness of God:



and he grew; increased in bodily stature, and arrived to manhood; or, "he became great", in riches and in substance, as Ben Melech interprets it:



and dwelt in the wilderness; of Beersheba, where he now was, or of Paran after mentioned, a fit place for a wild man to dwell in, as it was said he should be; and by this means the oracle was fulfilled,

Ge 16:12:



and became an archer; skilful in the use of the bow and arrow, both for hunting and slaying of wild beasts, on whose flesh he lived, and for lighting with men, against whom his hand would be: the Jewish writers {l} say he was born with a bow, and brought up with one, and that he shot an arrow at his brother Isaac, with an intention to kill him, while he was in Abraham's house; but it does not appear that he had any knowledge or use of the bow until he was in the wilderness and was grown up, by which he lived and defended himself; and so his posterity the Kedarenes, who sprung from his son Kedar, were famous for archery,

Isa 21:17; and the Ituraeans, from Jetur, another of his sons,

Ge 25:15, were remarkable for their bows, of which Virgil {m} speaks; and so the Arabians that live in the deserts and round about them, called Nabathees, from Nabaioth, another son of Ishmael, are now extraordinary marksmen for bows and arrows, and to sling darts which are made of cane {n}: the Saracens got their living not by the plough, but chiefly by the bow, and were all of them warriors, and lived upon wild flesh, and as rapacious as kites {o}; and now the troops of the governor of Mecca, whereabout Ishmael, by the Arabs, is supposed to live, which are only infantry, are called Al-Harrabah, that is, archers, or dart men {p}.



{l} Pirke, c. 30. Ammian. Marcellin. Hist. l. 14. {m} "Ithyraeos taxi curvantur in arcus". Georgic. l. 2. ver. 448. {n} Rauwolff's Travels, par. 2. ch. 4. p. 118. by Ray. {o} Ammian. Marcellin. l. 14. p. 8. Ed. Vales. {p} Sharif al Edrisi, apud Pocock. Specim. Arab. Hist. p. 122, 124.





Genesis 21:21



Ver. 21. And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran,.... So called from Paran, a city in Arabia Petraea; it reached from the wilderness of Shur to Mount Sinai: the account Adrichomius {q} gives of it is this; Paran or



"Pharan is a wilderness, very large, desolate, impassable, and without water, containing, from Mount Sinai to Kadeshbarnea, a journey of eleven days; its land can neither be ploughed nor sown, is wholly dry, barren, and uncultivated; uninhabitable to men, destitute of villages, houses, and cottages; where neither men are seen, nor beasts nor birds; yea, neither trees nor any grass, only rocks and high rough stony mountains; it is taken sometimes for the first part of the desert of Arabia, near Mount Sinai, and sometimes for the last part, towards the land of promise; sometimes it is called the desert of Sin, and sometimes the desert of Sinai, from the mount; but this name Pharan seems to be the most general of the names of this very long desert:''



this is the wilderness the Israelites wandered in thirty eight years; what this writer says of it must be understood only of some parts of it, otherwise Ishmael could not have lived in it:



and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt: her own country, for she was an Egyptian, Ge 16:1; and where they dwelt was not far from it: according to the Jewish writers, he had two wives; the first he divorced, and then married the Egyptian; his first wife, they say {r}, he sent for, and took out of the plains of Moab, whose name was Aishah, and the other Phatimah; so the Targum of Jonathan here,



"and he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran, and took to wife Adisha (or Aisha), whom he divorced, and then his mother took him Phatimah to wife, out of the land of Egypt:''



the names of Ishmael's wives seem to be taken from the Arabic writers; for Aishah, or Ayesha, was the name of a daughter of Abubeker, and one of the wives of Mahomet, and Phatimah the name of one of his daughters.



{q} Theatrum Terrae, S. p. 116. {r} Pirke Eliezer, ut supra. (c. 30.)





Genesis 21:22



Ver. 22. And it came to pass at that time,.... Not when Ishmael was grown up and married, but when Isaac was weaned and Ishmael was expelled:



that Abimelech, and Phichol, the chief captain of his host, spake unto Abraham; Abimelech was king of Gerar, the same that is spoken of in the preceding chapter, and Phichol was the general of his army; these two great personages came together and paid Abraham a visit, and had some conversation with him, who was still in Gerar, or however in some part of that country not far from it:



saying, God [is] with thee in all that thou doest; greatly prospered him in the things of the world, for of them only could they make a judgment; they saw that he increased in worldly substance, and that his family was increased, and that he succeeded in everything in which he engaged; and, being jealous of his growing greatness and power, were desirous of securing an interest in him and in his favour.





Genesis 21:23



Ver. 23. Now therefore swear unto me here by God,.... By the true and living God, by whom only an oath is to be taken, who was Abraham's God, and whom Abimelech seems to have known and to have been a worshipper of; and therefore moves for an oath to be taken by him, which he knew would be sacred and binding to Abraham, could he prevail upon him to swear:



that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son's son; perhaps he had heard that God had promised to give the whole land of Canaan to him and his posterity, and among the rest his kingdom, which was a part of it; and, seeing him grow great and powerful, he could not tell how soon it might be ere he was put in the possession of it, whether in his own time, or his son's, or his grandson's; and therefore desires Abraham that he would swear to do no hurt to them whenever it should be;



[but] according to the kindness I have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me, and to the land wherein thou hast sojourned; that, as he had given him full liberty to sojourn in any part of his kingdom where he pleased, so, when the whole country should come into his possession, that he, or his son, or his grandson, in whatsoever time it should be, might quietly enjoy their own land, and all the inhabitants of it; at least that they might not be driven out of it, but sojourn in it as he had done.





Genesis 21:24



Ver. 24. And Abraham said, I will swear. Sensible of the many favours he had received from Abimelech in times past, and was still indulged with, he very readily agreed to his proposal; and the rather, as he knew by the vision between the pieces, that it would be four hundred years before his posterity should be put into the possession of the land of Canaan; and therefore could take an oath that neither he, nor his son, nor his grandson, should be injured or dispossessed.





Genesis 21:25



Ver. 25. And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water,.... Before he swore and entered into covenant with him, he thought it advisable to inform him of an affair that had happened concerning a well of water, which in those hot and dry countries, as the southern parts of the land of Canaan were, was an affair of great importance; and to make complaint of the ill usage of Abimelech's servants with respect to it, and to reason with him about it, that the thing might be adjusted to mutual satisfaction, and so a firm basis and foundation be laid for the continuance of friendship for the future; which was wisely done before their league and covenant was ratified: this it seems was a well



which Abimelech's servants had violently taken away: that is, had by force taken the use of it to themselves for their cattle, and had deprived Abraham of it, though it was of his own digging; and perhaps there might be more than one, and the singular may be put for the plural; and so the Septuagint version has it, "the wells": see

Ge 26:15.





Genesis 21:26



Ver. 26. And Abimelech said, I wot not who hath done this thing,.... He pleads ignorance; he knew nothing of it before, nor now which of his servants had done it; intimating, that if he could know who it was, he should severely reprimand him for it:



neither didst thou tell me: signifying that he was to blame he did not complain of it sooner; and at least he had no reason to blame him, since he had never informed him before of it, and therefore could not expect to be redressed:



neither yet heard [of it] but today: he had not heard of it from others, as the Targum of Jonathan rightly adds, by way of explanation, but that very day, and very probably not till the moment he had it from Abraham himself.





Genesis 21:27



Ver. 27. And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech,.... In gratitude for former favours he had received from him, in token of the friendship that subsisted between them, and for the confirmation of it; and to show that he was fully satisfied with Abimelech's answer to his complaint, as well as willing to enter into covenant by sacrifice, when such creatures were divided, and the covenanters passed between the pieces, for so it follows:



and both of them made a covenant; or, "cut or struck a covenant" {s}; cut the sacrifice in pieces and passed between them, in token of the compact and agreement they entered into with each other; signifying that whoever broke it deserved to be cut in pieces as those creatures were.



{s} wtrky "foedus percusserunt", Pagninus, Montanus, Drusius; "secuerunt", Cocceius.





Genesis 21:28



Ver. 28. And Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves. Separate from the sheep and oxen he gave to Abimelech, and from those that were used in making the covenant.





Genesis 21:29



Ver. 29. And Abimelech said unto Abraham,.... Observing what he had done, and not knowing the design of it:



what [mean] these seven ewe lambs which thou hast set by themselves? he understood what the sheep and oxen were for, that they were presents to him, at least some of them, and the rest were for the solemnizing and ratifying the covenant between them; but what these were for he could not devise.





Genesis 21:30



Ver. 30. And he said,.... That is, Abraham replied to Abimelech:



for these seven ewe lambs shall thou take of my hand; as a present from him, to be retained as his own:



that they may be a witness to me that I have digged this well: these were to be a testimony that the well that had been taken away from Abraham was one that he had dug, and was his property, and which Abimelech acknowledged by his acceptance of these seven lambs; and very probably Abraham received a note from the hand of Abimelech, owning his reception of the seven lambs, and his title to the well, which these were a witness of.





Genesis 21:31



Ver. 31. Wherefore he called that place Beersheba,.... Either Abraham or Abimelech, or both, called it so; or it may be read impersonally, "therefore the place was called Beersheba" {t}, for two reasons, one implied, the other expressed; one was, because of the seven lambs before mentioned; so the Targum of Jonathan,



"and therefore he called the well the well of seven lambs;''



"Beer" signifying a well, and "sheba" seven; the other, and which is more certain, being expressed, is as follows;



because there they sware both of them; by the living God, to keep the covenant inviolably they had made between them.



{t} arqy "vocatus", V. L. Calvin, Piscator.





Genesis 21:32



Ver. 32. Thus they made a covenant at Beersheba,.... Which took its name from the oath annexed to the covenant there made; and which is observed for the sake of what follows, to show that when they finished their agreement, and the ceremony of it,



then Abimelech rose up, and Phichol, the chief captain of his host; from the place where they had been conversing and covenanting with Abraham:



and they returned into the land of the Philistines; from Beersheba, which was in the extreme border of it, unto Gerar, which lay in the midst of it, and was the capital city in it; otherwise both places were in Palestine, or the land of the Philistines, a people that came out of Egypt originally, and settled here: in Jerom's {u} time Beersheba was a large village, twenty miles from Hebron to the south.



{u} De loc. Heb. fol. 89. F.





Genesis 21:33



Ver. 33. And [Abraham] planted a grove in Beersheba,.... The Jewish writers {w} are divided about the use of this grove, as Jarchi relates; one says it was for a paradise or orchard, to produce fruits out of it for travellers and for entertainment; another says it was for an inn to entertain strangers in; it rather was for a shade, to shelter from the sun in those sultry and hot countries; and perhaps for a religious use, and to be an oratory, as the following words seem to suggest: in the midst of it very likely Abraham built an altar, and sacrificed to the Lord; hence might come the superstitious use of groves among the Heathens; and, when they came to be abused to idolatrous purposes, they were forbidden by the law of Moses, which before were lawful. And, though the name of Abraham is not in the text, there is no doubt but he is designed, and was the planter of the grove, and which is expressed in the Septuagint version, as it is supplied by us. What sort of trees this grove consisted of cannot with certainty be said, very probably the oak. R. Jonah {x} thinks it may be the tree which in Arabic they call "ethel", and is a tree like that which is called tamarisk in general it signifies any tree, and especially large trees {y};



and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God; who, is from everlasting to everlasting, or "the God of the world" {z}, the Creator and upholder of it, and the preserver of all creatures in it; him Abraham invoked in this place, prayed unto him, and gave him thanks for all the mercies he had received from him.



{w} In T. Bab. Sotah, fol. 10. 1. {x} Apud Kimchi, Sepher Shorash. rad. lva. {y} Vid. R. Sol. Urbin. Ohel Moed, fol. 72. 1. {z} Mlwe la "Dei seculi", Pagninus, Hontanus, Calvin; so Ainsworth.





Genesis 21:34



Ver. 34. And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines' land many days. Even many years, days being sometimes put for years; having entered into covenant with Abimelech, the king of the country, and settled a good correspondence with him, and having his friendship and good will, which commanded respect from his subjects, Abraham sojourned very quietly and comfortably for many years, chiefly at Beersheba; the Jewish writers say {a} he sojourned here twenty six years.



{a} Jarchi & Bereshit Rabba, sect. 54. fol. 48. 4.

 

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