Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

PROVISIONS FOR POSTERITY 2 3 : 1-2 Y : 1 8
As for the tribes that descended from these six sons
of Keturah, efforts to identify them have not been very
successful. (Cf. 1 Chron. 1:32-33.) (Incidentally, who
was Keturah? Rashi identifies her with Hagar “who re-
ceived the name because her deeds were as comely as
‘incense’ (ketoretb) ; also, because she kept herself ‘chaste’
(kasber, cognate root to katar, of which Keturah is the
passive participle), from the time that she separated from
Abraham’’ (SC, 32). Such an identification, however,
cannot be harmonized with the plural, c‘c~ncubine~,7’
25: 6,). It seems obvious that these tribes, descendants of
Keturah and her sons by Abraham, peopled a considerable
part of Arabia to the south and the east of the Promised
Land, under the name of Midianites (Exo. 2:15) among
whom Moses took refuge, the Sabaeans (Sheba, Job 1:15,
6; 19; 1 Ki. lO:l), the Shuhites (Job 2:11), the Dedanites,
etc. “The Arabian tribes with whom the Israelites
acknowledged a looser kinship than with the Ishmaelites
or Edomites are represented as the offspring of Abraham
by a second marriage, cf. 1 Chron. 1:32 ff.” (ICCG, 349).
There are named here six sons of Abraham, seven grandsons,
and three great-grandsons, making sixteen descendants by
Keturah.
(2) Abraham’s Final Disposition of His Property (vv.
5-6).
5 And Abraham gave all that he bad unto haw. 6
But unto the sons of the coim&nes, that Abraham had,
Abraham gave gifts; and be seizt them away from Isaac
his son, while he yet lived, eastward, uizto the east country.
Isaac, the child of promise, the only son of his wife,
Sarah, received all his possessions. The son of the concu-
bines (Hagar and Keturah) were sent away with gifts,
into the east country, that is, Arabia in the widest sense
of the term, to the east and southeast of Palestine, to what
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