was willing to fulfil, being more desirous to obey his Creator than to gratify his own affections. But the Deity, who is never harsh to believers, withheld the man, by the voice of an angel, from the slaughter of his son, showing him a ram which he might slay instead of his son, so that the sacrifice of such a man might be consummated without the cost of any pious affection. After these events, when Isaac was sixty years old, he begat Esau and Jacob, the patriarchs of the Idumsean and Israelitish nations. CH . II.—The Foundation of the Kingdom of Argo* in Greece. ABOUT this time the kingdom of the Argives was established, of which Machus was the first king, who is reported to have been the father of Io, the wife of Osiris, who is worshipped in Egypt as a mighty goddess, because she ruled there with justice, and instructed the people of the country in literature. CH . III.—The chief circumstance* in the life of Isaac and of Jacob—The Character of Esau. ISAAC, who has been already mentioned, having gone with Rebecca, who was great with child, and who had heard the oracle that Esau should fear Jacob, to Abimelech in Gerar, after he had called his wife his sister, and gathered crops of an hundred-fold from his seed, and cleaned out three wells, and digged a fourth in Beersheba, and made a treaty in the same place with Abimelech and Phicol, without intending it, rejected Esau and blessed Jacob, who having supplanted his brother both in his birthright as the elder, and also in his blessing, went into Mesopotamia, and on his way he erected a pillar with an inscription on it near Luz ; l and he served a servitude of fourteen years to Laban for Rachel and Leah, and made a covenant with him to serve him seven years more for his flocks ; but when this latter period, in which he varied the rods, was scarcely fulfilled, he departed with his wives and his eleven sons, and as Rachel had privily carried off his images from Laban, he was caught by him at Galaad. There having made a treaty with Laban, he stopped his bands at the stones near Manaim,' where on his journey he saw camps of angels, This was the same as Bethel (Gen, xxviii. 19). * Manaim, or Mahanaim, means Two Hotte or Two Camps. " When