* Gen. xviii. 1-16, according to the Jehovistic narrative. Gen. xvii. 15-22 gives another account, in which the Elohistic writer predicts the birth of Isaac in a different way.  The name of Isaac, “the laugher,” possibly abridged from Isaak-el, “he on whom God smiles,” is explained in three different ways:  first, by the laugh of Abraham (ch. xvii. 17); secondly, by that of Sarah (xviii. 12) when her son’s birth was foretold to her; and lastly, by the laughter of those who made sport of the delayed maternity of Sarah (xxi. 6).

** Many critics see in the life of Isaac a colourless copy of that of Abraham, while others, on the contrary, consider that the primitive episodes belonged to the former, and that the parallel portions of the two lives were borrowed from the biography of the son to augment that of his father.

     *** Gen. xxxv. 27, Elohistic narrative.

Like him, also, he renewed relations with Abimelech of Gerar.* He married his relative Rebecca, the granddaughter of Nakhor and the sister of Laban.** After twenty years of barrenness, his wife gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob, who contended with each other from their mother’s womb, and whose descendants kept up a perpetual feud.  We know how Esau, under the influence of his appetite, deprived himself of the privileges of his birthright, and subsequently went forth to become the founder of the Edomites.  Jacob spent a portion of his youth in Padan-Aram; here he served Laban for the hands of his cousins Rachel and Leah; then, owing to the bad faith of his uncle, he left him secretly, after twenty years’ service, taking with him his wives and innumerable flocks.  At first he wandered aimlessly along the eastern bank of the Jordan, where Jahveh revealed Himself to him in his troubles.  Laban pursued and overtook him, and, acknowledging his own injustice, pardoned him for having taken flight.  Jacob raised a heap of stones on the site of their encounter, known at Mizpah to after-ages as the “Stone of Witness “—­G-al-Ed (Galeed).*** This having been accomplished, his difficulties began with his brother Esau, who bore him no good will.

     * Gen. xxvi. 1—­31, Jehovistic narrative.  In Gen. xxv.
     11 an Elohistic interpolation makes Isaac also dwell in the
     south, near to the “Well of the Living One Who seeth me.”

** Gen. xxiv., where two narratives appear to have been amalgamated; in the second of these, Abraham seems to have played no part, and Eliezer apparently conducted Rebecca direct to her husband Isaac (vers. 61-67).

*** Gen. xxxi. 45-54, where the writer evidently traces the origin of the word Gilead to Gal-Ed. We gather from the context that the narrative was connected with the cairn at Mizpah which separated the Hebrew from the Aramaean speaking peoples.

One night, at the ford of the Jabbok, when he had