Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/320

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accepted, theory that Ḫabiri in the TA letters is the cuneiform equivalent of the OT (Symbol missingHebrew characters). The equation presents no philological difficulty: Ass. often represents a foreign (Symbol missingHebrew characters); and Eerdmans' statement (AT Studien, ii. 64), that the sign ḫa never stands for (Symbol missingHebrew characters) (if true) is worthless, for Ḫa-za-ḳi-ya-u = (Symbol missingHebrew characters) shows that Ass. a may become in OT i, and this is all that it is necessary to prove. The historical objections vanish if the Ḫabiri be identified, not with the Israelitish invaders after the Exodus, but with an earlier immigration of Semitic nomads into Palestine, amongst whom the ancestors of Israel were included. The chief uncertainty arises from the fact that the phonetic writing Ḫa-bi-ri occurs only in a limited group of letters,—those of 'Abd-ḫiba of Jerusalem (179, 180 [182], 183, 185). The ideogram SA. GAS ('robbers') in other letters is conjectured to have the same value, but this is not absolutely demonstrated. Assuming that Wi. and others are right in equating the two, the Ḫabiri are in evidence over the whole country, occasionally as auxiliaries of the Egyptian government, but chiefly as its foes. The inference is very plausible that they were the roving Bedouin element of the population, as opposed to the settled inhabitants,—presumably a branch of the great Aramæan invasion which was then overflowing Mesopotamia and Syria (see above, p. 206; cf. Wi. AOF, iii. 90 ff., KAT3, 196 ff.; Paton, Syr. and Pal. 111 ff.). There is thus a strong probability that (Symbol missingHebrew characters) was originally the name of a group of tribes which invaded Palestine in the 15th cent. B.C., and that it was afterwards applied to the Israelites as the sole historic survivors of the immigrants.—Etymologically, the word has usually been interpreted as meaning 'those from beyond' the river (cf. (Symbol missingHebrew characters), Jos. 242f. 14f.; and on that assumption, the river is certainly not the Tigris (De.), and almost certainly not the Jordan (We. Kau]. Sta.), but (in accordance with prevailing tradition) the (Symbol missingHebrew characters) of the OT, the Euphrates, 'beyond' which lay Ḥarran, the city whence Abraham set out. Hommel's view (AHT, 252 ff.) has no probability (cf. Dri. 1392). The vb. (Symbol missingHebrew characters), however, does not necessarily mean to 'cross' (a stream); it sometimes means simply to 'traverse' a region (Jer. 26); and in this sense Spiegelberg has recently (1907) revived an attractive conjecture of Goldziher (Mythos, p. 66), that (Symbol missingHebrew characters) signifies 'wanderers'—nomads (OLz. x. 618 ff.).[1]


21. The father of all the sons of 'Ēber] The writer has apparently borrowed a genealogical list of the descendants


21. It is doubtful if the text is in order. First, it is extremely likely that the introduction to the section on Shem in J would require modification to prevent contradiction with v.22f. (P). Then, the omission of the logical subj. to (Symbol missingHebrew characters) is suspicious. The Pu. of this vb. never dispenses*

  1. In Egyptian texts from Thothmes III. to Ramses IV., the word 'Apuriu ('Apriu) occurs as the name of a foreign population in Egypt; and had been identified by Chabas with the Hebrews of OT. The identification has been generally discarded, on grounds which seemed cogent; but has recently been revived by Hommel (AHT, 259), and