but as is the case with perverse mankind now, so it was then; the
lessons of the past were lost upon them. No very great period of time
elapses till we find the posterity of this good man, Noah, impiously and
daringly conceiving the idea of measuring strength with the Almighty by
attempting to build a tower so high that it could not possibly be
overflowed should a subsequent deluge occur. The dispersion of mankind,
and the consequent division into tribes, or races, was the result of
such presumption. The desperately wicked heart of man began to devise
new mischiefs, and revive old ones. Monogamy, the great conservator of
moral purity, was disregarded, and one corruption viler than another
followed in rapid succession. Before the calling of Abraham, mankind, as
a whole, appear to have lapsed, if not into absolute heathenism, at
least into something very near it. The knowledge and worship of the true
God seems to have been retained only in isolated families, and even
there to have been but partially observed, being marred and dishonored
by human inventions and substitutions.

That Abraham might be delivered from the pernicious example of his
neighbors, and that his mind might be prepared for the reception of the
grand manifestations of the Divine character which God designed to
impart to him, he was commanded to break off all association with them;
and, the more completely to effect this, he was desired to leave his
kindred and his country, and become a stranger in a strange land. Yet
somewhat of the contamination of early association seems to have clung
both to him and Sarah, as is evidenced in the matter of Hagar. In
something very like doubt of God's power to fulfill his own promise,
Abraham yielded to Sarah's suggestion, and thus was partially drawn into
the evil current, though he does not appear to have been a willful
polygamist. It is asserted by Jonathan Ben Uzziel, the Jerusalem Targum,
and other learned authorities, that Hagar and Keturah are the same