Notes, Critical and Explanatory, on the Book of Genesis #260269

The Book of Genesis has thus a character at once special and universal, It embraces the world. It speaks of God as the God of the whole human race. But, as the introduction to Jewish history, it makes the universal interest subordinate to the national. Its design is to show how God re vealed Himself to the first fathers of the Jewish race, in order that He might make to Himself a nation who should be His witnesses in the midst of the earth. This is the inner principle of unity which pervades the Book. Its external framework exhibits five principal persons as the pillars (so to speak) on which the whole superstructure rests, — Adam, Noah, Abra ham, Isaac, and Jacob.