Notes Critical and Practical, on the Book of Genesis. By George Bush [pp. 271-301]

Bush on7 Genesis.
Ezek. vii. 5. Thus saith the Lord, an evil, an only evil,
behold is come." The context would rather attach to it a
sense hinted at in our version, making the idea to be, that a
calamity is at hand( so utterly wasting that no other is needed;
such that there shall be room for no more This is confirmed by the following sentence. "An end is come, the end is
come," as in Gen. vi. 13. Such a force surely obtains in 1
Sam. xxvi. 8. "Now tlherefore let me smite him, Ipray thee,
with the spear, even to the earth at once (but one stroke,)
and Iwill not smite tlhe second time." But allowing all
that is claimed from the passage above cited, and Cant. vi. 9,
we cannot admit the same in regard to any of the others
referred to. In 1 Kings xix. 4, "But he himself went a
day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down
undler a juniper tree." We see no ground to conjecture
that it was a "peculiar" juniper "distinguished above all
others of the class."
So of 1 Kings xx. 13. "And behold there came a prophet unto Ahab."
Gen. xxxvii. 20. Come now therefore, and let us slay
him, and cast him into some pit.
The author infers froin this use of'inx that "the evening
and morning constituted a certain, a special, a peculiar
day, a day sui generis;" and understands that "a series or
succession of twenty-four hour days constituted a period
of undefined extent." "And so of the subsequent days of
the creative week."
If a specific reason must be assigned for the use of -int
here, would it not be quite as plausible to find it in the circumstance that no other day had as yet existed in reference
to which this primal succession of day and night could be
denominated first: that it was rather numbered "one," in
relation to the similar intervals which should follow? It
is not uncommon, however, in enumeration, where the
numbers explain themselves, to use cardinals for the first and
second, passing to the ordinal in the succeeding; as in Suetonitts we find consecutively, unus-alter-tertius, where the
connection renders the force sufficiently clear.
A use of'inr singular indeed, is met with in Exodus
xviii. 4, where, nevertheless, nothing "peculiar" can be
denoted. " Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took Zipporah, and
her two sons; of which the name of the one was Gershom —and the name of THE ONFE was Eliezer."
But as yet no passages have been referred to, where mneK
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