Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/390

meaning is that Ishmael will be an inconvenient neighbour ((Hebrew characters)) to his settled brethren.—13, 14. From this experience of Hagar the local deity and the well derive their names. 13. Thou art a God of vision] i.e. (if the following text can be trusted) both in an objective and a subjective sense,—a God who may be seen as well as one who sees.—Have I even here (? v.i.) seen after him who sees me?] This is the only sense that can be extracted from the MT, which, however, is strongly suspected of being corrupt.—14. Bĕ'ēr Lahay Rōî] apparently means either 'Well of the Living One who sees me,' or 'Well of "He that sees me lives"'. The name occurs again 24⁶² 25¹¹.—between Ḳadesh and Bered] On Ḳadesh, see on 14⁷. Bered is unknown. In Arab tradition the well of Hagar is plausibly enough identified with 'Ain-Muweiliḥ, a caravan station about 12 miles to the W of Ḳadesh (Palmer, Des. of Exod. ii. 354 ff.). The well must have been a chief sanctuary of the Ishmaelites; hence the later Jews, to whom Ishmael was a name for all Arabs, identified it with the sacred well Zemzem at Mecca.—15, 16. The birth of Ishmael, recorded by P.

The general scope of ^13f. is clear, though the details are very obscure. By a process of syncretism the original numen of the well had come to be regarded as a particular local manifestation of Yahwe; and the attempt is made to interpret the old names from the standpoint of the higher religion. (Hebrew characters) and (Hebrew characters) are traditional names of which the real meaning had been entirely forgotten, and the etymologies here given are as fanciful as in all similar cases. (1) In (Hebrew characters) the Mass. punctuation recognises the roots (Hebrew characters), 'live,' and (Hebrew characters), 'see,' taking (Hebrew characters) as circumscribed gen.; but that can hardly be correct. We. (Prol.⁶ 323 f.), following Mich. and Ges. (Th. 175), conjectures that in the first element

13. (Hebrew characters)] G (Greek characters), V Tu Deus qui vidisti me: both reading (Hebrew characters) (ptcp. with suff.).—For (Hebrew characters), Ba. would substitute (Hebrew characters), deleting (Hebrew characters).—The (Hebrew characters) of ^{13b. 14a} is not the pausal form of the preceding (Hebrew characters) (which would be (Hebrew characters): 1 Sa. 16¹², Nah. 3⁶, Jb. 33²¹), but Qal ptcp. with suff. The authority of the accentuation may, of course, be questioned.—14. (Hebrew characters)] indef. subj., for which [E] substitutes (Hebrew characters).—(Hebrew characters)] S (Syriac characters) T^O (Hebrew characters) (see on v.⁷). T^J has (Hebrew characters) (Elusa), probably el-Ḥalaṣa, about 12 miles SW of Beersheba. It has been supposed that (Hebrew characters) may be identical with a place (Greek characters) in the Gerar district, mentioned by Eus. (OS, 145² [Lag. 299⁷⁶]), who explains the name as (Greek characters) (= (Hebrew characters)): see v. Gall, CSt. 43.