the privilege of being the only legitimate issue of his marriage with Sarah, giving naive or derogatory accounts of the relations which connected the others with their common ancestor; Ammon and Moab were, for instance, the issue of the incestuous union of Lot and his daughters.  Midian and his sons were descended from Keturah, who was merely a concubine, Ishmael was the son of an Egyptian slave, while the “hairy” Esau had sold his birthright and the primacy of the Edomites to his brother Jacob, and consequently to the Israelites, for a dish of lentils.  Abraham left Kharan at the command of Jahveh, his God, receiving from Him a promise that his posterity should be blessed above all others.  Abraham pursued his way into the heart of Canaan till he reached Shechem, and there, under the oaks of Moreh, Jahveh, appearing to him a second time, announced to him that He would give the whole land to his posterity as an inheritance.  Abraham virtually took possession of it, and wandered over it with his flocks, building altars at Shechem, Bethel, and Mamre, the places where God had revealed Himself to him, treating as his equals the native chiefs, Abimelech of Gerar and Melchizedek of Jerusalem,* and granting the valley of the Jordan as a place of pasturage to his nephew Lot, whose flocks had increased immensely.** His nomadic instinct having led him into Egypt, he was here robbed of his wife by Pharaoh.***

* Cf. the meeting with Melchizedek after the victory over the Elamites (Gen. xiv. 18-20) and the agreement with Abimelech about the well (Gen. xxi. 22-34).  The mention of the covenant of Abraham with Abimelech belongs to the oldest part of the national tradition, and is given to us in the Jehovistic narrative.  Many critics have questioned the historical existence of Melchizedek, and believed that the passage in which he is mentioned is merely a kind of parable intended to show the head of the race paying tithe of the spoil to the priest of the supreme God residing at Jerusalem; the information, however, furnished by the Tel- el-Amarna tablets about the ancient city of Jerusalem and the character of its early kings have determined Sayce to pronounce Melchizedek to be an historical personage.

** Gen. xiii. 1-13.  Lot has been sometimes connected of late with the people called on the Egyptian monuments Rotanu, or Lotanu, whom we shall have occasion to mention frequently further on:  he is supposed to have been their eponymous hero.  Lotan, which is the name of an Edomite clan, (Gen. xxxvi. 20, 29), is a racial adjective, derived from Lot.

     *** Gen. xii. 9-20, xiii. 1.  Abraham’s visit to Egypt
     reproduces the principal events of that of Jacob.

[Illustration:  093.jpg THE TRADITIONAL OAK OF ABRAHAM AT HEBRON]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph brought home by Lortet.

On his return he purchased the field of Ephron, near Kirjath-Arba, and the cave of Machpelah, of which he made a burying-place for his family* Kirjath-Arba, the Hebron of subsequent times, became from henceforward his favourite dwelling-place, and he was residing there when the Elamites invaded the valley of Siddim, and carried off Lot among their prisoners.