It is obvious that here the names of Abraham and Jacob are _opposed_ to that of Jahveh. Therefore it is Jahveh, not Abraham; Jahveh, not Jacob! Jahveh is the omniscient redeemer and protector of the people Israel; the others take no care of it. Can we read in this opposition of names anything else but that the writer wishes to contrast the idea of a God recognised as the only true with the memory of something different, which ages ago passed for divine, but is unworthy of adoration now, when the Prophet brings forward the _omniscience_ of Jahveh as an irrefragable argument for the exclusiveness of his divinity? I think not. And it is not stated without a purpose that Jahveh is the redeemer of the Hebrew nation ‘from eternity’ (mêʿôlâm), i.e. even from that age in which to the popular mind Abraham and Jacob towered over the range of humanity into the sphere of the gods. We ought further to notice the change of the names Abhrâm and Yaʿaḳôbh into Abhrâhâm and Yisrâʾêl (Gen. XVII. 5; XXXII. 29 [28]). The motive alleged for the change of Abhrâm ‘High Father’ is, that the historical character of the patriarch as Ancestor may be brought into the foreground: ‘for I have made thee father of multitudes of nations.’ To Jacob the later _ethnographical_ name of the people is given. Thus the memory of that to which the ancient Hebrews had paid divine honours was to be suppressed as a thought of something divine but hostile to Jahveh; and its place was to be occupied by the memory of the _Ancestors_ of the nation, in which character the Patriarchs are warmly commended to the people by this very prophet (LI. 1, 2). We must next explain what was the impulse that drove the Hebrews to form out of the nomenclature of their ancient myth the names of their ancestors, or in other words to translate a considerable portion of their mythological phraseology into ethnological. ----- Footnote 548: An interesting Arabic parallel to this occurs in Yâḳût, III. 496. Thaḳîf and al-Nachaʿ, who with their herds were migrating together, determine to separate: ‘So one said to the other: Assuredly this land can never support both me and thee. If thou goest to the west, then I will go to the east; and if I go to the west, then do thou go to the east. Then said Thaḳîf, Well, I will choose the west. Then said al-Nachaʿ, Then I go to the east.’ _Ibid._, p. 498, occurs an equally curious arrangement between two nomad tribes. Footnote 549: _De vita solit._ I. 10. Inventores artium quarundam post mortem divinitatis honore cultos audivimus, grate quidem potius quam pie. Nulla enim est pietas hominis qua Deus offenditur, sed erga memoriam de humano genere bene meritorum inconsulta gratitudo mortalium, humanis honoribus non contenta, usque ad sacrilegas processit ineptias. Hinc Apollinem cithara, hinc eundem ipsum atque Aesculapium medicina, Saturnum, Liberumque et Cererem agricultura, Vulcanum fabrica deos fecit. Footnote 550: