Genesis 15:18-21 - Exposition

In that day the Lord made a covenant —literally, cut a covenant (cf. ὅρκια τέμνειν , foedus icere ). On the import of בְּרִית vide Genesis 9:9 )— with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt —the Nile (Keil, Kurtz, Hengstenberg, Kalisch) rather than the Wady el Arch, or Brook of Egypt (Knobel, Lange, Clarke), at the southern limits of the country ( Numbers 34:5 ; Joshua 15:4 ; Isaiah 27:12 )— unto the great river, the river Euphrates. The ideal limits of the Holy Land, which were practically reached under David and Solomon ( vide 1 Kings 4:21 ; 2 Chronicles 9:26 ), and which embraced the following subject populations, ten in number, "to convey the impression of universality without exception, of unqualified completeness" (Delitzsch). The Kenites ,—inhabiting the mountainous tracts in the south-west of Palestine, near the Amalekites ( Numbers 24:21 ; 1 Samuel 15:6 ; 1 Samuel 27:10 ); a people of uncertain origin, though ( 1:16 ; 4:11 ) Hobab, the brother-in-law of Moses, was a Kenite— and the Kenizzites, —mentioned only in this passage; a people dwelling apparently in the same region with the Kenites (Murphy), who probably became extinct between the times of Abraham and Moses (Bochart), and cannot now be identified (Keil, Kalisch), though they have been connected with Kenaz the Edomite, Genesis 36:15 , Genesis 36:42 (Knobel)— and the Kadmonites, —never again referred to, but, as their name implies, an Eastern people, whose settlements extended towards the Euphrates (Kalisch)— and the Hittites ,—the descendants of Heth ( vide Genesis 10:15 ); identified with the Kheta and Katti of the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, and supposed by Mr. Gladstone to be the Kheteians of the 'Odyssey;' a powerful Asiatic tribe who must have early established themselves on the Euphrates, and spread from thence southward to Canaan and Egypt, and westward to Lydia and Greece, carrying with them, towards the shores of the AE gean Sea, the art and culture of Assyria and Babylon, already modified by the forms and conceptions of Egypt. The northern capital of their empire was Carchemish, about sixteen miles south of the modern Birejik; and the southern Kadesh, on an island of the Orontes— and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims ( vide Genesis 13:7 ; Genesis 14:5 ), and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Oirgashites, and the Jebusites ( vide Genesis 10:15-19 ). The boundaries of the Holy Land as here defined are regarded by some (Bohlen) as contradictory of those designated in Numbers 34:1-12 . But