Become a thousand times a thousand, and may thy seed possess the gate of thy enemies. When Eliezer returned home, he told all that he had done, and Isaac received Rebekah into the tent of his mother, and she became his wife, and he loved her. And Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac; but to Ishmael and the sons of Keturah he gave gifts, and sent them away from his son Isaac into the land to the East. Then Abraham, after he had lived 175 years, died at a good old age, and his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah. These narratives show that the Hebrews derived the origin of their nation from the land of the Euphrates and Tigris. We remarked above that the legend of the Deluge could only have arisen in river valleys, exposed to severe inundations (p. 245). If we set aside the additions made in the prophetic revision, the narrative of the flood belongs to the first text; in this text therefore the nations of the earth were derived from the sons of Noah. The revision adds that the descendants of Noah, in their journey from the East, found a plain in the land of Shinar, i.e. Babylonia, and dwelt there, and erected a city and a tower, intended to reach to heaven. Then Jehovah confounded their language and scattered them over the earth.[580] But it is the first text which gives the genealogy of Abraham, according to which the descendant of Noah, Terah, the father of Abraham, dwells in the land of his nativity, at Ur in Chaldæa. We found that Ur lay on the lower Euphrates, where the ruins of Mugheir mark its site, that the oldest buildings in Babylonia belong to this place, and the oldest sovereigns on the Euphrates called themselves kings of Ur (p. 259). From Ur Terah, according to the first text, journeyed with his family to Haran.[581] Haran lies in a wide plain surrounded by hills on the Skirtos, a tributary of the Belik, at no great distance from the Euphrates; it is the Carrhae of western writers. From Haran Abraham turns towards Canaan; but his brother's tribe remains in Haran. Hence, as the oldest writings of the Hebrews without any doubt derive the progenitors of the nation from Ur and Carrhae in the land of the Euphrates, so later authorities maintain, as an absolute certainty, that "the fathers dwelt beyond the river," _i.e._ the Euphrates. In the "second law" Abraham is called a "wandering Aramæan," and Ezekiel calls Chaldæa "the birthplace of the Hebrews."[582] The name "Hebrews" confirms this statement and view. Heber means "that which is beyond," "those who dwell beyond." The Hebrews call themselves the sons of Israel; the name of Hebrews they received from the Canaanites, into whose land they forced a way, though the Canaanites, no doubt, meant no more by the name than that the sons of Israel dwelt on the other side of the Jordan, before they set foot in Canaan.