e
ancient patriarchs, as well as to the genealogical lists of their
families. Gen. 2:4; 25:19; 37:2 etc. In the same wide sense is it
applied to the book itself.

3. Genesis is the _introductory book_ to the Pentateuch, without which
our understanding of the following books would be incomplete. Let us
suppose for a moment that we had not this book. We open the book of
Exodus and read of "the children of Israel which came into Egypt;" that
"Joseph was in Egypt already," and that "there arose up a new king over
Egypt, which knew not Joseph." Who were these children of Israel? we at
once ask; and how did they come to be in Egypt? Who was Joseph? and what
is the meaning of the notice that the new king knew not Joseph? All
these particulars are explained in the book of Genesis, and without them
we must remain in darkness. But the connection of this book with the
following is not simply explanatory; it is _organic_ also, entering into
the very substance of the Pentateuch. We are told (Ex. 2:24, 25) that
God heard the groaning of his people in Egypt, and "God remembered his
covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob; and God looked upon
the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them." The remembrance
of his covenant with their fathers is specified as the ground of his
interposition. Now the covenant made with Abraham, and afterwards
renewed to Isaac and Jacob, was not a mere incidental event in the
history of the patriarchs and their posterity. It constituted the very
essence of God's peculiar relation to Israel; and, as such, it was the
platform on which the whole theocracy was afterwards erected. The nation
received the law at Sinai _in pursuance_ of the original covenant made
with their fathers; and unless we understand the nature of this
covenant, we fail to understand the meaning and end of the law itself.
The very information which we need is contained in Genesis; for from the
twelfth chapter onward this book is occupied with an account of this
covenant, and of God's dealings with the patriarchs in connection with
it. The story of Joseph, which unites such perfect simplicity with such
deep pathos, is not thrown in as a pleasing episode. Its end is to show
how God accomplished his purpose, long before announced to Abraham (ch.
15:13), that the Israelites should be "a stranger in a land not theirs."

But the Abrahamic covenant itself finds its explanation in the previous
history. For two thousand years God h