THE SAMARITAN PENTATEQCH. 



195 



singular masculine of the imperfect active Qal of the ancient 

 Semitic verb with the accusative ending added as we have seen. 



By the comparison of the two forms we arrive at, I think, 

 the certainty that the original name was common to the pre- 

 Semitic-Indo-European. The happy conjecture of Gesenius, 

 which Tregelles tells us he afterwards " THOKOUGHLY 

 retracted," turns out to be perfectly correct, our race possessed 

 this revelation of God before the confusion of tongues, and we 

 can now, it seems to me, spell out something of God's 

 marvellous dealing with and training of our lost race, by the 

 history of this name. 



A comparison of the philological phenomena connected with 

 Zeus and Jove with the kindred forms of Semitic convinces me 

 that they have the same root as their origin, the v is proved by 

 Indo-European philologists to have been consonantal and the 

 J or Y is shown from Semitic to have proceeded from pf but 

 pronounced with a good deal of breath and tending towards sh, t!^. 



But this is exactly what we have in the root of the 

 third personal pronoun in Semitic* If then we can find the 

 original meaning of the verbal-noun from which that pronoun 

 was derived we shall, it may be, reach the original meaning of 

 the name Jehovah, and, it may be, discover why the revelation 

 of our God as Jehovah, Tl^rj^ ^tT^^ I Am that I Am, had 



to be delayed until the time, the set time of Moses. We shall 

 see that there was nothing arbitrary about this. There was 

 a fullness and a fitness of time and language about it which 

 fills one with wonder, love, and praise.f 



The philologist knows that words which express pure being 

 are the very last to be hammered out in the workshop of 

 human life. To bring even one word into being how many 

 hearts must be filled with emotion, how many minds illumined, 

 how many lips and tongues moulded into particular shapes. 

 To bring this supreme triumph of intellect and heart into 

 being, so that the Eternal and Almighty God might use it and 

 fit one mem to receive it in trust for his whole race, required all 

 the training of the human race, up to that day when on that 

 lonely hillside the heart-broken shepherd, at length trained to 

 be the meekest of men, saw the wondrous " bush " burning but 

 not consumed, heard a voice reaching not the ear only, but the 

 whole inward being, filling with meaning undreamed of the 

 word which had been hammered out, the word " to be." 



* See fist of " Essays," 7 S.I.E., Research, etc., p. 2. 

 t Of. " Essays," 7 S.I.E., Research, etc., p. 2. 



