Page 199 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XXXVIII, 193
in confusion. There can be no doubt therefore that it
must be taken as a proper name, and here not of a man
as in Genesis xxvi. 2, if the common reading stand, but
of a race. This at once furnishes a suitable sense, which
is strengthened by the term which precedes it, as well
as by those that follow. For, as regularly means
the head of a tribe, or a prince in general, so Mesh cell
and Thubal fix as meaning a Gentilic name (Rush).
They were in fact three great tribes, by the ancients
called Scythians, the first of them apparently deriving
its name from their proximity in those days to the river
Bha, or Volga (though some think the Araxes), and
supplying that of the modern Russ, as the others are
reproduced in Moscow or Muscovy, and in Tobolsk.*
There is of course no difficulty in supposing migrations
northward from the original seats, supposing that they
may have been the races in the north of Asia Minor
* Those who wish to go farther into the evidence may see it
more fully in the Appendix to a vol. of mine containing “ Lec­
tures on the Second Coming and Kingdom of our Lord Jesus.”
They will find there the more important extracts and interest­
ing discussion in J. Von Hammer’s Origines Russes, drawn from
Oriental MSS. (St. Petersburg, 1820)—a work which few can see
for themselves. The author tries to make out that the T iraz of
Genesis x. w as the progenitor of the Ros or Ras of the Bible and
the Koran, that is, of the Russians. Meshech and Tubal are
undoubtedly given there. Prefixes and suffixes were often thus
added, and hence the same name appears in more than one form.
It was very common in the East, and we find it also in the Bible.
Gomer appears to be the head of the Cimmerian or Celtic race, as
Togarmah of the Armenians. Cush and Phut are those translated
Ethiopia and Libya. It only needs to be added here that part of
Cush settled on the Euphrates, part on the Nile, being thus
Asiatic as well as African. Compare Isaiah xviii. for Cush.
o