THE NOACHIC PRECEPTS. 27 CHAPTER III. THE POST-DILUVIAN WORLD, FROM THE DELUGE TO THE DISPERSION; OR, MAN'S SECOND PROBATION AND FALL. "Heroes and Kings, obey the charm, That ne'er on brow of mortal birth "Her many voices mingling, own He shall descend, who rules above, All tongues of men shall tune."-KEBLE. THE NOACHIC PRECEPTS—ABSTINENCE FROM BLOOD-SENTENCE AGAINST MURDER-THE PRINCIPLE OF LAW AND THE AUTHORITY OF THE MAGISTRATE—ORIGIN OF CIVIL SOCIETY-THE PATRIARCHAL CONSTITUTION—AUTHORITY OF THE PATRIARCH BOTH CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS-REMNANTS OF THE PATRIARCHAL FORM OF GOVERNMENT-INCIDENTS OF THE POST-DILUVIAN HISTORY-NOAH'S FALL, AND HAM'S INSULT-THE PROPHETIC CURSE AND BLESSINGS ON HAM, SHEM, AND JAPHETH-DIVISION OF THE EARTH IN THE TIME OF PELEG-MONARCHY OF NIMROD CITY AND TOWER OF BABEL-CONFUSION OF TONGUES. WHEN Noah and his family left the Ark, to people the world anew, God repeated to them the blessing He had pronounced on Adam: they were to be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and to subdue all living creatures beneath their government. But their new state was marked by new laws. All the animals were granted to them for food, as the herbs and fruits had been granted to Adam; nor were they restricted to those afterwards defined by the Mosaic law as clean. No reason is given for this change; but, coupling the principle, that laws are made for existing practices, with what we know of the antediluvian age, we may view it as an example of God's condescension in permitting practices which it would have been hard for human nature to give up. This opinion seems confirmed by the emphatic prohibition against the use of blood for food. We may well believe that, in those antediluvian feasts to which our Lord refers, not only was animal food indulged in, but even blood was not refrained from, especially by a people who set at naught other first laws of nature. And, as the use of bloody banquets marks a sanguinary disposition, this prohibition of blood is naturally associated with the second of the new laws, that against murder, the crime which had stained the antediluvian age, from Cain to his descendant Lamech. Murder was not now first made a crime. The blood of the murdered had from the first cried to God from the very earth that had drunk it up. The new point in the law seems to have been this: under the previous dispensation the mur derer was left in the hands of God, a devoted being, whom man must not touch, even in the way of vengeance; but now he was handed over to human law. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." The reason is given for the murderer's death, that he had defaced God's image in his victim; and to enforce the sanctity of that image, even the beast who should kill a man must be put to death. Such are the first examples of positive law committed to the administration of man; for the law of the forbidden fruit was in the hands of God alone, who could alone enforce its penalty; and His law of labour carried with it its own penalty of want. The former, indeed, was not a law to regulate life, but a special trial to test the spirit of obedience. Henceforth, therefore, man lived under LAW, a dispensation which antediluvian lawlessness had proved necessary. The laws against murder and the eating of blood, and the authority of the civil magistrate to punish the criminal, may be regarded as the new code of the human race, under the name of the NoACHIC PRECEPTS. We are not to suppose that they include all the positive law of that early age. Marriage had been instituted from the first; and the recognition of civil authority, as a principle, would naturally include all that the common-sense of mankind regarded as needful for protecting life, property, and good order, and enforcing subjection to and reverence for God. Hence the Jews extended the Noachic precepts which were binding on Gentile proselytes to seven-the other four being the laws against idolatry, blasphemy, incest, and theft. Thus the elements of civil society were established before the Family had grown into the State, forming what is called the PATRIARCHAL CONSTITUTION. And in this earliest form of social order we may observe the truth of Aristotle's great saying, that the State exists not merely that man may live, but that he may live well. By the first principles of nature and common-sense, the government was placed in the hands of the Patriarch (the fatherruler). It was ensured to Noah by his peculiar position and character. When it was called in question by his son's contempt, B.C. 2348.] THE PATRIARCHAL CONSTITUTION. 29 he did not shrink from using his authority, even to the extent of a terrible prophetic curse. The same example shows that the patriarch's authority did not cease even when his sons had households of their own; for Ham was already the father of Canaan when he incurred his father's censure. And this rule continued throughout the patriarchal age. The first living ancestor had supreme jurisdiction over all the families descended from him; while each family respected also the government of its own immediate head. Thus it was with Abraham, as he dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs of the promise given to him; but we also see Judah claiming the power of life and death over his daughter-in-law, while Jacob is still alive. This patriarchal government was religious as well as civil. The patriarch was the priest. In this character Noah offered sacrifice; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob built altars, and called on the name of the Lord; and both heads of houses and civil rulers are found sacrificing even after the institution of a priesthood. It included also the right of dividing the inheritance, which we find exercised by Noah, in his prophetic blessing and curse on his three sons, by Abraham, by Isaac, and by Jacob, the last going so far as to choose the heir of his own heir in Ephraim, the younger son of Joseph. But in the exercise of this power, there was a customary rule: the inheritance was divided into equal parts, of which the heir received two and the other sons one. In the Book of Job, which, whatever be its date, preserves the record of primitive patriarchal institutions, we see the system still in action after the establishment of cities. In his own family Job rules over his sons, though they had their own separate households; while, in the city, he sits in the gateway with the other elders, receiving the honour due to his station, and administering justice in his turn. Thus did the pure patriarchal government gradually merge into that of patriarchal elders, the primitive type of aristocracy. But neither this, nor the more artificial forms of civil government, have entirely superseded the patriarchal it still exists where it is suited to the state of society. The Arab descendants of Abraham still live in tents, with the government of the oldest living ancestor scarcely changed; and savage tribes scattered over the earth, especially those in the nomad state, have preserved this relic of their primitive condition. The incidents of post-diluvian history are few; and these few bear witness to the renewed corruption of mankind. We are not told how long the rescued family lingered among the highlands of Armenia, before they dispersed themselves over the primeval forests and the alluvial plains, which they had to subdue before they could replenish. Noah began the life of a husbandman, and planted a vineyard; and the righteous man, who had escaped the lusts of the old world, was overcome by shameful intoxication. Then it was proved that in his family, as in that of Adam, there was the distinction between the evil and the good: the wanton insolence of Ham, and the filial piety of Shem and Japheth, received the curse and the blessings which described the destiny of the peoples that have sprung from them. Ham is cursed in the person of his son Canaan,* as the ancestor of the race most hostile to the chosen family, with the doom of servitude to his brethren, and especially to Shem. The inheritance of religious blessing is assigned to Shem; and to Japheth is promised, besides great temporal prosperity, an ultimate share in the privileges of Shem. In this blessing we can clearly see the general outline of the later history of the Hebrew family and the European nations. Ten generations are enumerated from Noah to Abraham, in the fifth of which (the time of Peleg, about B.C. 2247, Ussher), the earth was divided among its several nations. This division was the result, not of quiet diffusion, but of a violent catastrophe, brought on by the increase of corruption, which took the form of political ambition. A difficulty always exists in the arrangement of events where genealogies are our only guide; but remembering that steps are often omitted in these genealogies, which now become more ethnical than personal, we may not improbably. connect the monarchy established at Babel by Nimrod, the son of Cush, the son of Ham, with the attempt to build the city and tower of the same name in the Plain of Shinar. There is at all events an obvious moral connexion in these enterprises. As Ham's outrage upon his father was the first great personal offence against patriarchal authority, so Nimrod's kingdom was the first open revolt from the patriarchal government; and the enterprise of the Babel builders was an organized revolt in the same spirit, defying even the power of God himself. There can be little doubt that these builders were of the Cushite branch of the family of Ham, and that the Plain of Shinar was the great level of Lower Mesopotamia, or Chaldæa, and the site of the city that spot on the banks of the Euphrates, which has ever since borne the name of Babel or Babylon. Their * This special mention of Canaan is a decisive proof that the prophecy has nothing to do with the slavery of the negro races. B.C. 2247?] THE CITY AND TOWER OF BABEL. 31 very manner of building, with brick and bitumen,* is still seen in the ruins of edifices on the same spot. Dismissing the childish idea that they meant to build a brick tower as a refuge from an inundation, which they must have known would wash it away, we see in their city, with its lofty citadel, the first attempt to establish a great universal empire, in the might of which their impiety aspired to resist God himself, and to prevent the weakness which their dispersion would cause.† Of the religious aspect of the movement we are told no more than what is implied in the impiety of the design; but there is ground for tracing in it a positive form of idolatry. The towers of Chaldæa, of the same type as that of Babel, seem always to have been temples; and their peculiar construction was adapted to that early form of idolatry called Sabæism, or the worship of the heavenly bodies. The earliest traditions represent Nimrod as an idolater, and the same is positively affirmed in Scripture of the forefathers of the Israelites, when they dwelt in Chaldæa. Perhaps the temple was the first part of the design, and the city grew up around it. In the fate of this project we see the sentence which God has declared in every age against every attempt at universal monarchy by those acts of providence which form the most conspicuous events in history. The design was frustrated by a confusion of speech among the builders, produced by Divine intervention, which caused them no longer to understand each other, and so forced them to abandon the work; and hence the name of the city, Babel (confusion). The Chaldæans themselves appear to have found the etymology of the name in their own language, as Bab-il, the gate of the god Il (Kronos or Saturn), and some regard the Hebrew etymology as only a coincidence; but it is unsafe to use etymological arguments concerning a period before languages were cast into their later types. We are not informed what became of the tower. Jewish tradition has tried to make up for the silence of Scripture by relating its miraculous destruction; while antiquarians have sought for its remains in the ruined towers of Chaldæa, both near to and far from its proper site. The Birs Nimroud, which stands at some distance from the right bank of the Euphrates, is now certainly identified with the Temple of Nebo * This is the most probable interpretation of the word translated slime in our version: but the mud of the alluvial plain was also used for cement. The motive thus assigned, and their movement from their original seats, prove that the necessity for a dispersion was already obvious even to themselves. |