with a message from God to Pharaoh, concerning the un-covenanted first-born of the Egyptians,' Moses was met by a startling providence, and came face to face with death-possibly with a bloody death of some sort. "The Lord met him, and sought to kill him," it is said. It seems to have been perceived, both by Moses and his wife, that they were being cut off from a farther share in God's covenant-plans for the descendants of Abraham, because of their failure to conform to their obligations in the covenant of Abraham.

"Then Zipporah took a flint, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at [made it touch] his [Moses'] feet; and she said, Surely a bridegroom of blood [one newly bound through blood], art thou to me. So He [the Lord] let him [Moses] alone [He spared him, as one newly true to the covenant of Abraham, and newly safe within its bounds]. Then she [Zipporah] said [again], A bridegroom of blood art thou, because of the circumcision;" or, as the margin renders it: "A bridegroom of blood [art thou] in regard of the circumcision." 2

The Hebrew word, khathan (1), here translated "bridegroom," has, as its root idea, the binding through severing, the covenanting by blood; an idea that is 2 Exod. 4; 25, 26.

1 Exod. 4: 21-23.

3 See Fuerst's Heb. Chald. Lex., s. v.

A BLOOD-WON RELATION.

223

in the marriage-rite, as the Orientals view it,' and that is in the rite of circumcision, also. Indeed, in the Arabic, the corresponding term (khatan,), is applied interchangeably to one who is a relation by the way of one's wife, and to one who is circumcised.2 Hence, the words of Zipporah would imply that, by this rite of circumcision, she and her child were brought into blood-covenant relations with the descendants of Abraham, and her husband also was now saved to that covenant; whereas before they were in danger of being covenanted with a bloody death. It is this idea which seems to be in the Targum of Onkelos, where it renders Zipporah's first words: "By the blood of this circumcision, a khathna [a blood-won relation] is given to us;" and her second speech: "If the blood of this circumcision had not been given [to us; then we had had] a khathna [a blood-won relation] of slaughter [of death]." It is as though Zipporah had said: "We are now newly covenanted to each other, and to God, by blood; whereas, but for this, we should have been covenanted to slaughter [or death] by blood."

1 See Deut. 22: 13-21. To this day, in the East, an exhibit of bloodstains, as the indubitable proof of a consummated covenant of marriage, is common. See Niebuhr's Beschreibung von Arabien, pp. 35-39; - Burckhardt's Arabic Proverbs, p. 140; Lane's Mod. Egypt., I., 221, note.

2 See Lane, and Freytag, s. vv., Khatan, Khatana.

4. THE BLOOD COVENANT TESTED.

After the formal covenant of blood had been made between Abraham and Jehovah, there was a specific testing of Abraham's fidelity to that covenant, as if in evidence of the fact that it was no empty ceremony on his part, whereby he pledged his blood,—his very life, in its successive generations,-to Jehovah, in the rite of circumcision. The declaration of his "faith," and the promise of his faithfulness, were to be justified, in their manifest sincerity, by his explicit "works" in their direction.

All the world over, men who were in the covenant of blood-friendship were ready, or were supposed to be ready, to give not only their lives for each other, but even to give, for each other, that which was dearer to them than life itself. And, all the world over, men who pledged their devotedness to their gods were ready to surrender to their gods that which they held as dearest and most precious-even to the extent of their life, and of that which was dearer than life. Would Abraham do as much for his Divine Friend, as men would do for their human friends? Would Abraham surrender to his God all that the worshipers of other gods were willing to surrender in proof of their devotedness? These were questions yet to be answered before the world.

"And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham [did put him to the test, or the

ORIENTAL ESTIMATE OF A SON. 225

proof, of his friendship], and said unto him, Abraham; and he said, Here am I. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee unto the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." And Abraham rose up instantly to respond to the call of his Divine Friend.

Just here it is important to consider two or three points at which the Western mind has commonly failed to recognize the Oriental thought, in connection with such a transaction as this.

An Oriental father prizes an only son's life far more than he prizes his own. He recognizes it, to be sure, as at his own disposal; but he would rather surrender any other possession than that. For an Oriental to die without a son, is a terrible thought. His life is a failure. His future is blank. But with a son to take his place, an Oriental is, in a sense, ready to die. When therefore an Oriental has one son, if the choice must be between the cutting short of the father's life, or of the son's, the former would be the lesser surren

1 Gen. 22: I, 2.

2" Heaven awaits not one who is destitute of a son," say the Brahmans (See page 194, supra). See, also, e. g., Thomson's Land and Book, I., 177; Roberts's Orient. Ill., p. 53 f., Ginsburg's "Illustrations," in Bible Educator, I., 30; Lane's Mod. Egypt., I., 68. Livingstone's Trav. and Res. in So. Af., p. 140; Pierotti's Cust. and Trad. of Pal., pp. 177 f., 190 f.

der; the latter would be far greater.

Preeminently

did this truth have force in the case of Abraham, whose pilgrim-life had been wholly with reference to the future; and whose earthly-joy and earthly-hopes centered in Isaac, the son of his old age. For Abraham to have surrendered his own toil-worn life, now that a son of promise was born to him, would have been a minor matter, at the call of God. But for Abraham to surrender that son, and so to become again a childless, hopeless old man, was a very different matter. Only a faith that would neither question nor reason, only a love that would neither fail nor waver, could meet an issue like that. The surrender of an only son by an Oriental, was not, therefore, as it is often deemed in the Western mind, a father's selfish yielding of a lesser substitute for himself;1 but it was the giving of the one thing which he had power to surrender, which was more precious to him than himself. The difference here is as great as that between the enforced sending, by an able-bodied citizen, of a "substitute" defender of the sender's country in a war-time draft, and the willing sending to the front, by an aged father, of his loved and only son, at the first signal of his country's danger. The one case has in it more than a suggestion of cowardly shirking; the other shows only a loyal and self-forgetful love of country.

1 See illustrations of this error in Tylor's Prim. Cult., II., 403.