30-38. No one can fail to
wonder why the daughters of Lot are nameless, but this shows that
they are inserted between Lot and his sons Moab and Ammon purely
for the sake of the incest. Sympathies and antipathies are
everywhere at work, and the standpoint is throughout that of
Northern Israel, as appears most evidently from the circumstance
that Rachel is the fair and the beloved wife of Jacob, whom alone
in fact he wished to marry, and Leah the ugly and despised one who
was imposed on him by a trick. /2. On the whole, the rivalries
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2 This, however, only warrants us to conclude that these legends
first arose in Ephraim, not that they were written down there in
the form in which we have them.
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which really existed are rather softened than exaggerated in this
poetical illustration of them; what tends to unity is more prominent
and is more carefully treated than what tends to separation. There
is no trace of any side glances at persons and events of the day, as,
e.g., at the unseemly occurrences at the court of David, and as
little of any twisting or otherwise doctoring the materials to
make them advance this or that tendency.
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