being at all in his

camp, whether as objects of worship or as objects of value, is evident from his giving Laban free leave to put to death the party on whom they should be found.* He therefore was not an idolater himself; nor, as far as we know, did he wink at idolatry in those about him. Whence then this command, issued to his attendants on their approach to Beth-el, that holy ground, "to put away the strange gods that were amongst them and to make themselves clean?"

Let us only refer to an event of a former chapter, and all is plain. The sons of Jacob had been just destroying the city of the Shechemites-they had slain the males, but "all their wealth, and all their little ones, and their wives took they captive, and spoiled all that was in the house." * Genesis, xxxi. 32.

+ Ibid. xxxiv.

These captives, then, so lately added to the company of Jacob, were in all probability the strangers alluded to, and the idols in their possession the Gods of the strangers, which accordingly the Patriarch required them to put away forthwith before Beth-el was approached. Moreover, it may be observed, that the terms of the command extend to "all that were with him," which may well have respect to the recent augmentation of his numbers, by the addition of the Shechemite prisoners: and the further injunction, that not only the idols were to be put away, but that all were to be clean and change their garments, may have a like respect to the recent slaughter of that people, whereby all who were concerned in it were polluted.

Yet surely nothing can be more incidental than the connection between the

sacking of the city and the subsequent command to put the idols of the stranger away-though nothing can be more natural and satisfactory than that connection when it is once perceived. Indeed so little solicitous is Moses to point out these two events as cause and consequence, that he has left himself open to misconstruction by the very unguarded and artless manner in which he expresses himself, and has even placed the character of Jacob, as an exclusive worshipper of the true God, unintentionally in jeopardy.

VIII.

IN the character of Jacob I see an individuality which marks it to belong to real life and this is my next argument for the veracity of the writings of Moses. The particulars we read of him are consistent

with each other, and with the lot to which he was born, for this more or less models the character of every man. The lot of Jacob had not fallen upon the fairest of grounds. Life, especially the former part of it, did not run so smoothly with him as with his father Isaac-so that he might be tempted to say to Pharaoh towards the close of it naturally enough, that "the days of the years of it had been evil." The faults of his youth had been visited upon his manhood with a retributive justice not unfrequent in God's moral government of the world, where the very sin by which a man offends is made the rod by which he is corrected. Rebekah's undue partiality for her younger son, which leads her to deal cunningly for his promotion unto honour, works for her the loss of that son for the remainder of her days-his own unjust

attempts at gaining the superiority over his elder brother, entail upon him twenty years slavery in a foreign land—and the arts by which he had made Esau to suffer, are precisely those by which he suffers himself at the hands of Laban. Of this man, the first thing we hear is, his entertainment of Abraham's servant when he came on his errand to Rebekah. Hospitality was the virtue of his age and country; in his case, however, it seems to have been no little stimulated by the sight of "the ear-ring and the bracelets on his sister's hands," which the servant had already given her*--so he speedily made room for the camels. He next is presented to us as beguiling that sister's son, who had sought a shelter in his house, and whose circumstances placed him at his

* Genesis, xxiv. 30.