called it by this name. When we find that in the first of these stories
God is called Elohim, [Footnote: In the last verse of this narrative the
word Jehovah is used, but this is probably an interpolation.] and in the
second Jehovah, we can readily explain this discrepancy. The compiler
took one of these narratives from one of these old documents, and the
other from the other, and was not careful to reconcile the two.

A similar duplication of the narrative is found in chapters xx. and
xxvi., with respect to the incident of Abimelech; in the first of these
narratives a serious complication is described as arising between
Abimelech King of Gerar on the one hand and Abraham and Sarah on the
other; in the second Abimelech is represented as interfering, in
precisely the same way and with the same results, in the domestic
felicity of Isaac and Rebekah. The harmonizers have done their work, of
course, upon these two passages; they have said that there were two
Abimelechs, and that Isaac repeated the blunder of his father; but it is
a little singular, if this were so, that no reference is made in the
latter narrative to the former. It is altogether probable that we have
the same story ascribed to different actors; and when we find that the
one narrative is Elohistic and the other Jehovistic, the problem is
solved.

More curious than any other of these combinations is the account of the
Flood, in which the compiler has taken the narratives of these two old
writers and pieced them together like patchwork. Refer to your Bibles
and note this piece of literary joiner-work. At the fifth verse of the
sixth chapter of Genesis this story begins; from this verse to the end
of the eighth verse the Jehovistic document is used. The name of the
Deity is Jehovah, translated LORD. From the ninth verse to the end of
the chapter the Elohistic document is used. The word applied to God is