'And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the
Hebrew.'
GENESIS xiv. 13.
This is a singular designation of Abram as 'The Hebrew.' Probably we
have in its use here a trace of the customary epithet which he bore
among the inhabitants of Canaan, and perhaps the presence of the name
in this narrative may indicate the influence of some older account,
traditional or written, which owed its authorship to some of them. At
all events, this is the first appearance of the name in Scripture. As
we all know, it has become that of the nation, but a Jew did not call
himself a 'Hebrew' except in intercourse with foreigners. As in many
other cases, the national name used by other nations was not that by
which the people called themselves. Here, obviously, it is not a
national name, for the very good reason that there was no nation then.
It is a personal epithet, or, in plain English, a nickname, and it
means, probably, as the ancient Greek translation of Genesis gives it,
neither more nor less than 'The man from the other side,' the man that
had come across the water. Just as a mediaeval prince bore the
_sobriquet_ Outremere-the 'man from beyond the sea'--so Abram, to the
aboriginal, or, at least, long-settled, inhabitants of the country, was
known simply as the foreigner, the 'man from the other side' (of the
Jordan, or more probably of the great river Euphrates), the man from
across the water.
Now that name may suggest, with a permissible, and, I hope, not
misleading play of fancy, just two things, which I seek now to press
upon our hearts and consciences. The one is as to how men become
Christians, and the other is as to how they look to other people when
they are.