Keturah

that makes the incense to fume

the name of Abraham’s second wife. Abraham married Keturah, when he was one hundred and forty years of age, and by her he had six sons, Zimram, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Some chronologers, as Bishop Clayton, Hallet, &c, thinking it improbable that Abraham should marry again at such an advanced age, have dislocated the chronology of this period, by supposing that Abraham took Keturah as a concubine, in consequence of his wife Sarah’s barrenness, even before he left Charran; and that Keturah’s children were among the souls born to him and Lot during their residence in that country. But it seems evident from the whole tenor of the history, that Abraham was childless until the birth of Ishmael, Gen. xv, 2, 3; that he had no other son than Ishmael when he received the promise of Isaac, Gen. xvii, 18; and that Isaac and Ishmael jointly, as his eldest sons, celebrated his funeral, Gen. xxv, 9. His second marriage, at the age of one hundred and forty years, shows his faith in the divine promise, that he should be “a father of many nations;” for which purpose his constitution might be miraculously renewed, as Sarah’s was. Beside, Abraham himself was born when his father Terah was one hundred and thirty years of age. Abraham settled the sons of Keturah in the east country of Arabia, near the residence of Ishmael. KEY is frequently mentioned in Scripture, as well in a natural as in a figurative sense. The keys of the ancients were very different from ours; because their doors and trunks were closed generally with bands, and the key served only to loosen or fasten these bands in a certain manner. In a moral sense key has many significations: “And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder: so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open,” Isaiah xxii, 22,--he shall be grand master and principal officer of his prince’s house. Christ promises to St. Peter, that he should first open the gate of his kingdom, both to Jew and Gentile, in making the first converts among them, Matt. xvi, 19. It is observable that no supremacy is here given to St. Peter; as the power of binding and loosing belonged equally to all the Apostles, Matt. xviii, 18. The term binding and loosing was customarily applied by the Jews to a decision respecting doctrines or rites, establishing which were lawful and which unlawful. (See _Bind_.) And it may also denote, to bind with sickness, and to loose by restoring to health. Jesus Christ says that he has the key of death and hell, Rev. i, 18; that is, it is in his power to bring to the grave, or to deliver from it; to appoint to life or to death.