to the vengeance of their enemies and cease to be tribes.  Hence the primogeniture is transferred to Judah.  Judah also suffers great losses, no doubt in the conflict which accompanied the settlement in the land of Canaan, and is reduced to a fraction of his former importance.  But this breach is made good by fresh accessions from the mother-stock of the Leah tribes, by the union of Pharez and Zarah, i.e. of Caleb, Kenaz, Cain (Ken), Jerahmeel, with the remnant of ancient Judah.  The Jehovist narratives about Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, are undoubtedly based on occurrences connected with the period of the conquest of the holy land; but this is not the place to trace the historical interpretation of the stories further. 1

**************************************** 1.  See “Israel,” sec. 2, infra.  Genesis iv. 1-15 is a similar tribal history.  The old tribe of Cain, the name of which is indicative of settlement and culture, appears to have been broken up and scattered to the four winds in very early times (Judges v. 24) in the same way as Levi, with which it appears to have divided the priesthood.  We have already said that Genesis iv. 1-l5 can only have found its way into the primitive legend by interpolation. ****************************************

It may, however, be remarked, and it is important to do so, that even where true historic motives are indisputably present in the patriarchal legend, it is not exactly a reproduction of the facts as they occurred.  In reality Edom always kept up his hatred against Israel and suppressed his feeling of relationship (Amos i. 11); in Genesis he meets his brother returning from Mesopotamia, and trembling with anxiety at the encounter, in a conciliatory temper which is quite affecting.  The touch is one to reflect no small honour on the ancient Israelite.  To set against this we have the touch, manifestly inspired by hatred, of Genesis xix. 30-38.  No one can fail to wonder why the daughters of Lot are nameless, but this shows that they are inserted between Lot and his sons Moab and Ammon purely for the sake of the incest.  Sympathies and antipathies are everywhere at work, and the standpoint is throughout that of Northern Israel, as appears most evidently from the circumstance that Rachel is the fair and the beloved wife of Jacob, whom alone in fact he wished to marry, and Leah the ugly and despised one who was imposed on him by a trick. 2.  On the whole, the rivalries

*************************************** 2 This, however, only warrants us to conclude that these legends first arose in Ephraim, not that they were written down there in the form in which we have them. ***************************************

which really existed are rather softened than exaggerated in this poetical illustration of them; what tends to unity is more prominent and is more carefully treated than what tends to separation.  There is no trace of any side glances at persons and events of the day, as, e.g., at the unseemly occurrences at the court of David, and as little of any twisting or otherwise doctoring the materials to make them advance this or that tendency.