they partook of a common entertainment, and erected a pillar; and after this the agreement was concluded with an bath And Laban faid to Jacob, Behold this heap, and behold this pillar which I have caft between me and thee: This beap be witness, and This pillar be witness, that I will not pass over this heap to thee, and that thou shalt not pass over this heap and this pillar to me, for harm: The God of Abraham, and the God of Nabor, the God of THEIR FATHER, judge betwixt us. And Jacob fware by the fear of his father ISAAC, and offered facrifice to him upon the mount, and called his brethren to eat bread*; but we have not the leaft hint

of

* It fhould feem from hence, that eating upon the heap of ftones was in conformity to a mere civil rite, which had now grown into general establishment at the concluding of a treaty, and that Laban did not partake of this religious entertainment afterwards. There is a remarkable difference in the oaths here recorded, which fhews the zeal of Laban in fupport of the old family-worship, and as fteady a

des

of any engraved memorial upon the pillar that was erected, not even a fymbolic one; or of any written terms of agreement, upon a stone or a fhell, delivered for received by either of the con tracting parties.

When

determination in Jacob to adhere to the faith of his father Ifaac; for Jacob calls the God of Abraham only to witness; whereas Laban had joined the God of Nahor, in his invocation, with the God of Abraham, particularizing whom he meant, by calling him likewife the God of their father Terah; intimating by this, that he was determined not to depart from the religion of their common ancestor, whom he names, without any mention of the God of Ifaacs as a rebuke for his fon-in-law's perfifting in the defection which was begun by Abraham.

The character of Laban, from his behaviour in the marriage of Leah, and in changing the wages of Jacob fo many times, appears to have been that of a felfish, unjuft man; but this paffage fhews, that the religious difference between the family of Nabor and that of Abraham had imbittered the fpirits of the former; and that therefore, had literal writing been known in the days of Ifaac, Rebecca would certainly not have failed to make ufe of it, to foften the rugged temper of her brother, for the more benevolent reception of her fon.

When Abraham purchased the field of Machpelah *, we read of no written conveyance: He weighed unto Ephron the four hundred fhekels of filver, and the field of Ephron which was in Machpelah near Mamre; the field, and the cave that was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made fure unto Abraham for a poffeffion, in the prefence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city, who were witneffes of the contract, and confirmed it: and thus, when Jacob purchased the right of primogeniture of his brother, there was no written memorial between them, but the contract was made, and confirmed fimply by an oath.or

Teftamentary requests, before the Exodus, (if this epithet may be attributed to thofe of the Patriarchs) were certainly only

* Gen. xxiii,

only nuncupatory; and it seems extremely probable, from the particular conduct of Abraham and Jacob, in the twenty-fourth and forty-feventh chapters of the book of Genefis, that perfons intrufted with the execution of them were bound by a particular oath, the penalty of which (as may be conjectured from the manner of its being adminiftered) was, either a tem potal curfe upon their own pofterity, or an exclusion from the benefits of the promifed feed, (in whom all the families of the earth were to be bleffed) if they failed to perform the will of the deceafed. This was doing all that could be done in this cafe, to fupply the deficiency of writing: in particular, with refpect to the defire of Jofeph * at his death, that the defcendants of his brethren would carry up his bones from Egypt, when God fhould vifit them, to bring them into the land which he fware unto their

fathers to give them; had writing then been

* Gen. chap. l

been known, we cannot fuppofe it would have been omitted upon this occafion.

The memory of such a request might be forgotten, long before the period of their deliverance arrived, without fome fixt memorial; and the oath of an an ceftor, long buried in his grave, perhaps, might not be thought to bind his children to the obfervance of what was liable to be mifreprefented by tradition, however the penalty of the oath might regard them in its original tenor.

That we meet with no written tefta mentary difpofitions in the Scripture, after the invention of letters, may be thought to invalidate the argument, from their being only nuncupatory before it ; but this is to be afcribed to the peculiar fpirit of the Mofaic law, which left very little discretionary power, in these matters, to the determination of private perfons. The first-born fon was to in