Amos 9:7-10 Are you not as children of the Ethiopians to me, O children of Israel? said the LORD… The most competent authorities teach us to conceive of successive waves of population issuing from the mountainous country near the sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris, to which the narrative of Genesis points as the cradle of the human race, and to which the Mosaic accounts of the Deluge bring us back as the centre from which the children of Noah went forth again to people the earth. Of all the migrations from the land of Kir, to the regions that lay south-west of it, that which is of the greatest importance in the history of man, is undoubtedly the one which the Bible connects with the name of Terah. But this was so far from being the first of the movements in this direction, that it is much more likely to have been the last. The anthropomorphic language Of the Mosaic record is certainly not intended to hinder us from the quest of second causes for the change of abode, which it ascribes to the direct command of Deity. It was probably partly in consequence of the barrenness of the upper valley of the Euphrates, that rendered it little fitted for the home of a pastoral tribe; partly from the establishment of a powerful non-Semitic empire upon the banks of the Tigris, leading, according to an old tradition, which may be accepted in its general meaning, even if its details bear the stamp of later invention, to the persecution of those who clung to the purer faith, that the family of Abraham found its way into the more fertile and peaceful land of Canaan. But the same causes which had urged him on we may believe to have been powerful with kindred tribes. All evidence that we have confirms the supposition that, long before the days of Abraham, Semitic tribes had pressed along the path by which the Divine guidance was to lead him, to the land that should afterwards be possessed by his descendants, as the sand that is by the seashore for multitude. (A. S. Wilkins, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir? |
    |