Lesley.] ^Ob [j au . 15, 



sire of a horde of nations, and give thee Abraham's blessing and his prom- 

 ised lands." 



After describing Esau's marriages and settlement, the story of Jacob's 

 journey is taken up, and then, and not until then, comes in the name 

 Jehovah, "I am Jehovah Elohi Abraham, thy father," &c, who promises 

 him a great covenant people. Jacob, awakened and affrighted, erected a 

 stone and called the place, not Bethjah, but Bethel. 



Gen. 35 : 11. The third time El Shedi appears it is under precisely similar 

 circumstances ; Jacob returns from Mesopotamia to Bethel, with a great 

 household and builds an altar, this time dedicating it by the name of (not 

 Jehovah, but) El-Beth-El, "because El had appeared there to him when 

 he fled from his brother. ' ' And El now again appears to him and repeats 

 the blessing; changes his name from Jacob to Isra-El, saying, "I am 

 El Shedi, be fruitful and multiply ; a nation, a horde of nations shall be 

 of thee, and kings shall come from thy loins ; " the land was again prom- 

 ised, and then " El ascended from him in the place where he talked with 

 him." 



Gen. 43 : 14. The fourth place the name appears is in the story of the 

 famine, and from Jacob's mouth. "Take also your brother (Benjamin) 

 and arise, go back to the man (Joseph, now prince of Egypt) and El Shedi 

 give you mercy before the man, that he may send back to me your other 

 brother and Benjamin too.* But if I be bereaved (of my children) I am 

 bereaved." i. e., El Shedi promised them to me at Bethel, and if he takes 

 them away again, I must be resigned. There is here again no mention 

 of Jehovah. El Shedi is evidently the tutelary deity of the Abrahamic 

 nomades. And he is evidently in some mysterious way the god that gives 

 increase. 



Gen. 48 : 3. The next occurrence of the word carries out this idea ex- 

 actly. It is again Jacob who says to Joseph "El Shedi appeared unto me 

 at Luz (Bethel) and blessed me and said to me, ' Lo, I make thee fruitful 

 * * * a host of peoples, and give this land to thy seed forever.' " There 

 is no reference to Jehovah. 



Gen. 49 : 25 is very remarkable. El Shedi here occurs in Jacob's bless- 

 ing, and in that part of it addressed to Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh, 

 the ten tribes, and not at all to Judah), but he divides the El from the Shedi, 

 and assigns them two separate tasks : — "By the El of thy father who 

 shall help thee, and by the Shedi who shall bless thee with blessings," &c. 

 &c. If Shaddai be as the commentors fancy "the Almighty," then Jacob 

 ought to have reversed the parts of his blessing, and said : "By Shedi who 

 shall help thee, and by El who shall bless thee," &c. It is elear that the 

 idea of a blessed posterity, fruitfulness, &c, is organically involved in the 

 word El Shedi as used six times in Genesis. 



It must be noted no article is prefixed to El nor to Shedi ; but a curious 

 poetic balance is preserved by inserting nx before Shedi. It really means 



* If Joseph was under the Hyksos, he also must have had the god Setl as his 

 Kod, and this reference to Shedi's Influence over Joseph has a double value. 



