.^-■ iiii 5/if//' PRINCETON, N. J. ^/t/»/.«'2)...sil3.7 •s't'f//v(nv. 321 years earlier. Isaac had been already blessed in his birth and marriage. He was by his birth (1) the child of a definite promise. Abra- ham was twice mistaken ; once when he thought that Eliezer his steward would be his heir, and again when he believed that Tshmael would occupy that position. When he perceived that Ishmael was to be superseded by the birth of a son to Sarah, he prayed, " Oh that Ishmael might live before thee ! " a prayer that Ishmael might not be cast out, but share in the Divine favor and the covenant blessings. One might, though with some reserve, imagine that Abraham anticipated the early death of Isaac as possible, and that in such an event he looked forward to the accession of Ishmael to the great inheritance ; taking what has been called "• a. double security for the fulfil- ment of the promises." But he was taught to acquiesce in the plan of Providence ; for the Lord said to him that Ishmael should live, and be blessed, and be made a great nation, but God would establish his covenant with Isaac for an everlasting covenant (chaps, xvi., xvii.). 2. Isaac was the fruit of a supernatural interposition in the ordinary course of human nature. " God had chosen a people which as yet did not exist, which he was to call into being by his almighty power, irapa ^vVcv, against nature, from a sterile body which was as good as dead." ^ At Isaac's birth, Abraham and Sarah were beyond the age when the human being becomes a parent. So thought the future father and mother. When God said to the husband, " I will give thee a son also of Sarah," the old man fell upon his face and laughed. According to Calvin, he " was partly lifted up with gladness, and partly car- ried out of himself with wonder." Paul recognized no sin of unbelief in Abraham's laughter: "He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that what he had promised, he was able also to perform " (Gen. xvii. 17 ; Rom. iv. 20, 21). The laughter of Sarah was an expression of incre- dulity, if not of derision. As such it was rebuked by the 1 Kurtz: Old Covenant, i. 204. 322 SACBED HISTORY. Jehovah-Angel (Gen. xviii. 13). " This Divine interposition ele- vates the whole development above the sphere of mere nature, and transports it into that of grace " (Gen. xviii. 10, 14).^ 3. Isaac was, undoubtedly, the legitimate son of Abraham. This is proved by the promise of God to him, often repeated. It receives a striking illustration from the incident related in chap. XX. During a visit of Abraham and his wife to Gerar, Abimelech, the heathen king, attempted to take Sarah as his wife. God threatened the king with death if he should come near to her ; and afterward he added, " I withheld thee from sinning against me, therefore suffered I thee not to touch her." According to the general opinion of biblical scholars, this inci- dent occurred within the year before the birth of Isaac (Gen. XX. 1 ; xxi. 2). But God, by a direct interposition, prevented the paternity of Isaac from being brought into doubt. A minute and exact account of the whole transaction was spread upon the sacred record, so that the posterity of Isaac, down to the latest generation, might be assured that they were the children of Abraham. Very significant is the well-considered account in Gen. XX. 5-11, of Sarah's narrow escape from the advances of Abimelech, when compared with the less precise, though suffi- cient, explanation of her relation with Pharaoh, twenty-five years earlier (Gen. xii. 15-20). In"* both cases her honor, in the last her maternity as well as her honor, were protected by the act of God, 4. Isaac was the sole representative of the chosen seed, and the sole heir of the chosen land. God said to the old patriarch, " In Isaac shall thy seed be called." When God said to him, " Unto thy seed will I give this land," he meant Isaac. The people that should go into Egypt, and be oppressed tliere, and afterwards go out with great substance, and possess the prom- ised land, were the posterity of Isaac. From Abraham through Isaac, the only son of Sarah, a race arose, unique in character and habits, whose historical position, through all their generations down to this day, has been the problem and wonder of the world. 5. Isaac was a child of the covenant. He was entitled to 1 Kurtz: Old Covenant, i. 206. SOLE TIEin OF THE COVENANT. 323 this distinction on three grounds. First, he was the "son indeed," promised in the second stage of the covenant. " Abra- ham said unto God, Oh that Ishmael might live before thee ! And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed ; and thou shalt call his name Isaac." Next, he was made, by Divine appointment, a party to the covenant, God said, " I will estab- lish my covenant with him [Isaac], and his seed after him;" " My covenant will I establish with Isaac " (Gen. xvii. 18-21). And, thirdly, he had an hereditary interest in all the promises. Heirship is one of the privileges of a child ; and by virtue of his birthright as the sole child of the covenant in Abraham's household, he was entitled to hold the position of its represent- ative. This circumstance justifies the Church, as it now is, in calling the offspring of believers " the children of the cove- nant." The name itself originated with Peter, after the Day of Pentecost : " Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with your fathers" (Acts iii. 25). The unique and exalted position assigned to Isaac, in the plan of Providence, appeared not only in the incidents attending his birth, but it gave shape to the whole course of his life. It controlled, for example, the arrangements which were made for his marriage. Gex. xxiv. — Abraham Experienced a twofold anxiety in regard to Isaac's choice of a wife. His marriage with a Canaan- itish woman would result in an intermixture of the chosen with the rejected race, and a doomed race, even if it did hot weaken Isaac's loyalty to the covenant. If he should go to his kindred in Mesopotamia in search of a wife, he might never return to the promised land. The wise old patriarch made pro- vision against both of these contingencies. He took his faithful old steward into his confidence, and exacted from him a three- fold promise, under the sanction of an oath in the most solemn form. The steward swore that he would not marry Isaac to a daughter of the Canaanites ; that he would bring a wife- to him from Abraham's native country and kindred; and that he would in no event take Isaac to Mesopotamia, not even if the woman should refuse to go to Canaan before she should be 324 SACRED n I STORY. married. Abraham, as usual, solved the problem by his faith. He said to his steward, " The Lord God of heaven . . . shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from thence " (Gen. xxiv. 7). In due time the steward returned from his journey, bringing with him Rebekah. Isaac met her, and took her to Sarah's tent (xxiv. 67) ; and she became his wife. The minuteness of the story is justified, not only by its simple beauty, and the insight it affords into the customs and habits of the period, but by the consciousness awakened in Isaac of God's care for himself as the representa- tive of the chosen seed. And in order to direct attention to the special providence in the marriage, Moses had already recorded the genealogy of Rebekah, showing that she was the second cousin of Isaac, being the granddaughter of Nahor, Abraham's brother (Gen. xxii. 20-23). Gen. XXV. — Before entering on the public career of Isaac, the historian disposes finally of Hagar and Keturah, with their descendants, in order to clear the ground for the history of the chosen seed. Such is the uniform method of the writer. He had already given place in his narrative, first to the race of Cain, and then to the race of Seth. He speaks first of Japheth and Ham, and then of Shem. And here Keturah is dismissed from the record, and after her Ishmael, to make way for Isaac. Prominence is given to Ishmael, by assigning to him a separate section in the narrative. It is the eighth in the series, and is entitled, "The generations of Ishmael, Abraham's son." His twelve sons, twelve princes, corresponding to the twelve patri- archs of Israel, are mentioned by name, and their primeval home in Arabia described. In answer to the touching inter- cession of Abraham, God had promised to enrich Ishmael with temporal blessings, to build him up into a great and powerful nation under the rule of princes, and to assign a home to him and his posterity. Moses is understood to say that the Ishmael- ites occupied the vast regions from the Persian Gulf and the Euphrates to the borders of Egypt ; and Josephus confirms that statement.! They dwelt also "in the presence of all their 1 Ant. i. 12, 4. BEDOUIN PEDIGREES. 325 brethren," near the possessions of the Israelites, Edomites, ]\Iidianites, Moabites, Ammonites, and of the other descendants of Terah and Abraham. And no words conid more accurately describe the character of the Bedouin Arab than the oracle at the birth of Ishmael, recorded in Gen. xvi. 12. He is a wild man, lawless and ungovernable, often cut to pieces or put to flight in battle, but never subjugated. He is the outlaw among the nations. His proverbial saying is, that " in the desert every- body is everybody's enemy." ^ Although the Bedouins have fulfilled the terms of tlie oracle, it is to be borne in mind that they did not derive their origin from Ishmael alone. At the dispersion of mankind, about three hundred years before his birth, Arabia was settled by the thirteen sons of Joktau of Shem, and a portion of £he family of Cush of Ham.^ The twelve tribes of Ishmael, with the offspring of Keturah's six sons, of Esau, and perhaps of Lot, became fused down with each other and with the aborigines. Their blood was still further adul- terated by that of the many foreign races from Africa, from Abyssinia and other regions, which in later times gained a foot- hold in Arabia.^ The student of Scripture prophecy should give due Aveight to these circumstances in the application of the oracle. With the help of these facts it is easy to dispose of the empty boasts of the ]\Iahometan Arabs that they and notably their great prophet were Ishmaelites of the pure blood. The most that can be said of the Bedouins is that their mixed race is to a certain small degree Ishmaelitish. And yet Mahomet's direct descent from Ishmael is asserted by the Arabs with an intensity and passion bordering on ferocity. Even according to their own authorities, his pedigree, beyond its steps nearest to himself, is very doubtful. Mr. Gibbon, after examining the traditional genealogy, says, " At Mecca I would not dispute its authority; at Lausanne I will venture to observe, (1) That from Ishmael to Mahomet, a period of twenty-five hundred years they reckon thirty instead of seventy-five generations. (2) TJiat modern Bedouins are ignorant of their history, and 1 Kaliscb: Gen. xvi. 12. 2 Rawlinson: Orig. of Nations, pp. 246-249. 8 Ency. Brit., 9tli ed., art. Arabia. 326 SACRED HISTORY. careless of their pedigree." ^ And yet the tradition, if taken as true, yields a remarkable result. Jesus Christ is pre-eminently the seed of the woman : no less notoriously does Mahomet rep- resent the seed of the serpent. If both of them are the sons of Abraham, then in the family of the Friend of God and the Father of the faithful has arisen the longest and fiercest war ever waged by the seed of the serpent on the seed of the woman. Here begins the ninth section of Genesis: "Now these are the generations of Isaac." His life after his marriage was uneventful. He was little more than the connecting link in the chain of the promised seed between Abraham his father and Jacob his son. No new promise was made to him. No further development or explanation of the Abrahamic covenant distin- guished his life. And yet he received from God decisive evi- dence that he was of the chosen seed, and the channel through which salvation was conveyed to the coming generations. Among the tokens of the Divine favor, two theophanies were granted to him : one at Gerar, the other at Beersheba (Gen. xxvi. 2-24). In these sacred phenomena, God renewed the covenant which he had made with Abraham ; promising to be with Isaac and to bless him, and to give to him with his seed all the land of Canaan. As the consummate promise, God said that in Isaac all nations should be blessed. Just here, however, the record makes mention of two important particulars. In one of these the promises to Isaac are shown to be founded in the oath which God swore to Abraham. Isaac received no new covenant, but a renewal simply of that given to his father ; showing that instead of a series of covenants, one to each gene- ration, the original instrument was declared to be one covenant with a continuous life. Nearly eight hundred years later David described the covenant as a word which " God commanded to a thousand generations, even the covenant which he made with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac, and hath confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant " (1 Chron. xvi. 15-17). Moreover, God bound up his covenant 1 Decline and Fall, ch. 1., note. TREADING IN HIS FATHER'S STEPS. 327 with the faith and obedience of Abraham. He dechired that he renewed the promise to Isaac, because, said he, " Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, and my laws" (Gen. xxvi. 5), — an encomium which God has not passed on any other human being. Righteousness, obedience to God, was the indispensable condition of the promises. The close connection of Isaac with Abraham in the line of the chosen seed is set forth in the resemblance between the experience of the father and the son. During the life of both a famine fell upon the land. Abraham went to Egypt on the occasion ; and Isaac intended to do the same, but was prohib- ited by the Almighty from going beyond Gerar. At Gerar he imitated the example of his father, resorting to a falsehood in order to protect his wife from the wicked purposes of the king. The Almighty delivered both Sarah and Rebekah from dis- honor, while he left their husbands to the indignant and humiliating reproof of the princes whom they had deceived. To the older and younger patriarchs God gave great worldly prosperity in Gerar. Abraham received a thousand pieces of silver from the sheik. God gave to Isaac a harvest of a hun- dred-fold, showing that he need not go to Egypt, and that, even in a year of famine, the land of promise was a land of plenty. Abraham dug wells of water, and Isaac used them. The Philistines, for envy, took away the wells from the father, and afterwards filled them with rubbish to the annoj^ance of his son. The father digged a well in Beersheba, and made a treaty there with the king Abimelech. The son visited the old well, and renewed the treaty ; and in memory thereof the well now a second time took the name of Beersheba, the " well of the oath." Abraham planted there a tamarisk, a long-lived evergreen tree, gathering its wealth of foliage in clusters, — an emblem of the everlasting grace of God. Isaac in his turn built an altar there, and called on the name of Jehovah (Gen. xxi. and xxvi.). His life, as a whole, was not a life of adventure or striking incidents. He passed the first forty years of his life with his parents, and was subject to them. Not until the close of that 328 SACRED HISTORY. period, and after the death of his mother, was he married. Only two children were born to him, and they not until he had been married twenty years. Although a pilgrim and a stranger in the land, he was not migratory like his father and his son. He made but a single journey, going no farther than Gerar, a few miles from home. He returned, after a brief absence, to Canaan, and there he spent the last hundred years of his life. In regard to the activities or sufferings by which this long period was filled, the record observes a silence which is broken by the mention of two incidents only. When Isaac was seventy-five years old, Abraham died. After this we find Isaac at the well Lahai-roi, a secluded and solitary spot, far removed from the haunts of the Canaanites, and well adapted to his retiring dis- position. Here, perhaps, at the age of one hundred and thirty- seven, he gave his final bequest to Jacob and Esau. Although greatly enfeebled in body and mind, he lingered forty-three years longer, and, lingering, died when he was one hundred and forty-seven years old. Isaac's character is not without its charming traits. The virtues of constancy and tenderness were conspicuous in all his domestic relations. He mourned the death of his mother for three years, and until he found comfort in the society of his wife. Rebekah he loved at first sight, and with a double affection. Such was his conjugal fidelity that he never took another wife to her, showing a way of life more excellent than the way followed by his father and by his sons. For Jacob and Esau his affection was never stronger than when they were twenty-seven years old and he was a hundred and thirty -seven. The painful scene of his final benediction upon them shows that his affection for both was purer than the affection of either was for him. We have already seen that if he was twenty-five years of age when he was offered up by Abraham, it is right to imagine that the sacrifice was, on his part, voluntary, — a memorable act of obedience to his father and of self-devotion to God. Other evidences of the existence in him of a spiritual life are made known to us. He had gone to the field to pray when Rebekah arrived; he entreated the Lord that he might FATHER AND SON CONTRASTED. 329 have a son ; he held intercourse with God at Gerar ; he adhered loyally to the Abrahamic covenant ; his life was exemplary as before God and man ; though weak in body and mind, he refused to recall the blessing which he had unwittingly granted to Jacob, out of weakness being made strong by the conviction that he had expressed the will of Jehovah. And yet his softness of character, and his patience under injuries, contrast the vigorous personality of his father. Isaac was not allowed, like Abraham, to go to Egypt in time of famine. Kurtz suggests that Abraham's moral strength pro- tected him from the corrupting customs of the Egyptians, — a resistance to which Isaac, through weakness, would have been unequal.^ Another series of incidents is more instructive than that. Abraham got possession of a well at Beersheba, and the servants of the sheik took it away from him. Thereupon Abraham "reproved" Abimelech for the bad conduct of his people. The sheik, by way of apology, protested that he had not heard of the outrage. He restored the well, and the parties entered into a treaty of peace under the solemnity of an oath. Abraham made presents to Abimelech ; and the latter, by accepting them, acknowledged Abraham's possession of the well. About ninety years later, Isaac went to Gerar with his caravan. The natives, out of envy for his prosperity, filled the old wells purchased many years before by Abraham, with rubbish. Isaac, instead of calling the sheik to account, after the manner of his father, allowed himself to be sent away. Going farther up the valley of Gerar, Isaac cleaned out another well digged hy his father ; but the natives quarrelled with him, and he digged a third well. From that they drove him still farther away. At last his patience, not his resistance, conquered a peace. He called his newly dug well Rehoboth, — room or breadth. What the father had gained by resenting injustice, his son obtained by the Divine blessing upon patient submission. And yet, in all the essential particulars, he resembled Abraham. He believed God, obeyed his commands, and maintained his worship. 1 Kurtz: Old Covenant. 330 S ACE ED HISTOEY. Kurtz is of opinion that " elasticity of endurance, which does not resist evil or contend against it, but by patience and yielding overcomes it, constitutes the fundamental type of his character." Hengstenberg remarks that in Isaac " a pledge is given that a life which is not highly gifted, nor endowed with extraordinary powers, may yet be good and blessed ; that faith and truth alone are indispensable." Kalisch says, " If Abraham's enterprising, unsettled life foreshadowed the early history of his descendants, if Jacob was a type of the careful, commercial, unwarlike character of their later days, Isaac may represent the middle period, in which they lived apart from the nations, and enjoyed possession of the fertile land of promise." TUE FAMILY TREE BROADENS. 331 CHAPTER XXIII. JACOB AND ESAU. Gex. XXV. 21-24, xxvii. — Several particulars entered into the position assigned to Jacob in sacred history. In the first place, he was the representative of the covenant, and one of the three illustrious pilgrim fathers. Secondly, in his family the unit became plural. The promises were originally given to one only of Terah's children, — Abraham ; then to one of Abraham's eight sons, — Isaac ; and in the third generation to one of Isaac's twin children, — Jacob. In Jacob's family the headship of the chosen seed was vested jointly in all his sons, called by Stephen the twelve patriarchs (Acts vii. 8). Thirdly, in the lifetime of Jacob an important change took place in the outward condition of the race. He gathered his entire family, seventy in number, together with the servants, and went to Egypt. There his posterity were held in slaver}^ through several hundred years, and there they expanded into a great nation. This emigration had been already foretold to Abra- ham. It was foreshadowed also by his visit to Egypt, and by the attempt of Isaac to go thither. Fourthly, Jacob became, by Divine inspiration, a prophet. He predicted the future character and destiny of the several tribes descending from his twelve sons ; and he uttered a new IMessianic promise, the third in the series to which the first gospel and the blessing of Noah on Shem belonged. Jacob's position gives importance to the incidents connected with his birth. In the first place, his birth was not in the ordinar}^ course of nature. His father, Isaac, was married at forty years of age, and was childless at sixty. The trial of Abraham's faith, rising 332 SACRED HISTORY. out of the delay for many years of the promise of a son, was repeated in the experience of Isaac. Instead of endeavoring to help God, after the unhappy example of his father in the matter of Hagar, Isaac resorted to prayer : " he entreated the Lord for his wife, and the Lord was entreated of him." Isaac owed his birth to a Divine interposition, so also did Jacob. This phenomenon, twice occurring, indicated that the chosen seed were a peculiar people, and that the sjpiritual seed of Abraham should be born, not of the will of the flesh, but of God. Before she became a mother, Rebekah perceived signs in herself of evil omen, if not of personal danger. Two children struggled together within her person. She cried out with dis- tress, and hastened to consult Jehovah. She was informed that she carried in her womb two nations; these should an- tagonize each other ; one of them should be stronger than the other, and the elder should serve the younger. What occurred at t]]e birth of the children explained the meaning of the Divine oracle. The first-born was covered with a suit of reddish-brown hair ; him they called Esau, the " shaggy." The younger came forth grasping Esau's heel ; him they called Jacob, the "heel-holder" or " supplanter," or "one who trips up his fellow." This oracle, establishing the supremacy of Jacob over Esau, is used in the later scriptures to teach us that the selection which God makes of the objects of his favor has its ground, not in the objects themselves, but in his own sovereign will. Jehovah told Malachi that he had loved Jacob and hated Esau (Mai. i. 2, 3). Paul takes up the words spoken to the prophet, and remarks that before Isaac's children were born, or had done either good or evil, it was said that the elder should serve the younger ; as it is written, " Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated." That was done, that "the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth " (Rom. ix. 11-13). The words "love" and " hate " are employed idiomatically, here and in other places, to signify simply preference. Thus, in Gen. xxix. 33, Leah DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 333 complained that Jacob hat&cl her ; and this is exphuned in ver. 30, "Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah." Again, our Saviour said, " If any luan come to me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he caimot be my disciple "(Luke xiv. 26 ; compare Deut. xxi. 15-17, Pro v. xiii. 24, Matt. vi. 24). God preferred Jacob over Esau ; that, in short, is the whole case. Now, this preference did not follow the law of primo- geniture, for Esau was the oldest ; nor was it governed by their parentage, for both of the brothers were born of the same father and mother, and at one birth ; nor did it depend on any promise or prayer, for both were given to the parents under the same promise, and in answer to the same entreaty ; nor was it secured by the good works of Jacob or the bad con- duct of Esau, for the choice was made before they were born, or had done either good or evil. Paul declares that the choice was an act of sovereignty ; the reason was not in the brothers, in either or both, but in God. His choice was not irrational, but rested on good and sufficient reasons, which were not revealed. Paul further declares that this selection establishes the doctrine that men are chosen to salvation not for their own merits, but according to God's own good pleas- ure. " For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion " (Rom. ix. 15). Moses does not dismiss the thought here. He goes on to show that .the Divine prefer- ence of Jacob, as the heir of the promises, was fully justified by the course of events. Esau's individuality announced itself in his birthmarks. His shaggy exterior was the sign of a rough and sensual vigor. His life fulfilled the sign : " He was a cunning hunter, a man of the field ; " abandoning the pastoral life of his race for the perils and stratagems of the chase, and for the wild and roving habits of the Bedouin. He has been called the "after- play of Nimrod." "Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tent^." He preferred the life of the shepherd to the life of the hunter, pitching his tent quietly in the midst of his flocks and herds. 334 SACRED niSTORY. " Isaac loved Esau, because lie did eat of his wild game ; " and one might imagine that a superannuated Isaac would naturally lean for support on an impulsive and robust Esau. Rebekah loved the more gentle and domestic Jacob, taking pride haply in him as the counterpart of herself. So the brothers grew up together, each developing the nature that was in him. At the age of forty, Esau followed his propensities in con- tracting a marriage, in a single year, with two daughters of the Hittites, a native trib6 in Canaan (Gen. xxvi. 34). In this misalliance Esau disregarded the traditions of his family, iden- tified himself with the rejected and accursed races, made it certain that his children would be born of idolatrous mothers, separating him and them from the land of promise and the blessings of the covenant. This marriage was from the first a grief to Isaac and Rebekah; and twenty years afterwards Rebekah complained that Esau's wives made her life a weariness (Gen. xxvii. 46). Esau's double marriage showed that he was controlled by his selfishness rather than by the proprieties of his position as a member of the chosen seed. About nine years later, if we may follow the received chronology, he took another stejD in the same direction, by the sale of his birthright. In a graphic description of this painful scene, the sacred writer points out the progressive fulfilment of the oracle at the birth of the brothers, establishing the supremacy of the younger over the elder ; shows how events were shaped towards the recogni- tion of Jacob as the successor of his father in the patriarchy ; unfolds still further the disposition of Esau, and for the first time lights up the character of Jacob. Esau is seen returning from an unsuccessful hunt, tired and hungry. He found in Jacob's hands a mess of lentils, just prepared, — a favorite dish in Syria and Egypt even to this day. The following conversa- tion occurred : — Esau. — Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage, for I am faint. Jacob. — Sell me this day thy birthright. Esau. — Behold, I am at the point of death ; and what profit shall this birthright be to me ? TUB BROTHERS CONTRASTED. 335 Jacob. — Swear to me this clay. Esau confirmed tlie sale by an oath. "Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils, and supplanted him " (xxv. 29-34). In this interview Esau appears faint and hungry ; turning away from ordinary homely fare to a dainty dish, allowing his appetite to get the better of his self-respect, reckless of the future, greedy for the present; bartering the richest possible in- heritance of blessings temporal and spiritual, for a paltry sen- sual gratification ; consenting and swearing to a bargain which disinherited and humiliated him ; and complaining, like a fool, that he was about to die, as if his death could excuse him for depriving his children of the patriarchal birthright. Jacob is seen over-reaching Esau, tripping him up. He is crafty, selfish, covetous, seeing instantly and seizing his advantage over Esau, suppressing the impulse, if any he felt, to relieve the hunger of his twin brother without fee or reward ; taking from an only brother an inheritance of boundless honor, and giving for it a beggarly return ; extorting from the hungry man an unright- eous bargain, and compelling him to bind the bargain by an oath in the name of a righteous God. The historian passes no judgment on Jacob's conduct in the transaction. But neither the writer nor Jacob appears, from any thing that is said after- wards, to have based his claim to the birthright on this bargain and sale. The judgment passed on Esau is made known in these graphic terms: "He did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright." Paul describes him as a " fornicator and profane person, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright" (Heb. xii. IG). The first epithet may be understood in its specific sense, or symbolically, to characterize him as a sensualist. The word " profane " inti- mates that the sale of his birthright was a kind of simony. The censures uttered by Moses and Paul are justified by the intrinsic value of the birthright, and the trifling price which he set upon it. The special privileges settled on the birthright, during and after the patriarchal age, are thought to be these : the office of the priesthood (Num. iii. 12, 13) ; supremacy in the 836 SACBED HISTOBY. family, the first-born succeeding to the dignity and authority of the father (2 Chron. xxi. 3) ; and a double portion of the patrimony (Deut. xxi. 17). Moreover, Isaac's first-born was, apparently at least, the natural heir to the promises made to Abraham for his seed, including the land of Canaan, a great and powerful posterity, and the special favor of God. He should also in his generation be the progenitor of Jesus Christ, and the channel through which salvation should flow to the ends of "the earth. The sin and folly attached to the sale of such a birthright, "for one morsel of meat," are not exaggerated in the Scriptures. After an interval of forty-five years, our attention is called to another feud in the family of Isaac, which affords a new insight into the character of the parents and their sods ; which brought to a crisis the destiny of Esau, and settled irrevoca- bly upon Jacob the heirship to the covenant promises. Isaac was one hundred and thirty-seven years old, Esau and Jacob were seventy-four. The insidious approaches of old age had enfeebled the physical and mental powers of the patriarch. He was blind and bedridden, and he thought that his death was at hand. He requested his favorite son Esau to take his hunting-gear, and make from the wild game that he might kill, in his own words, " savory meat, such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, that my soul may bless thee before I die." This conversation took place in private, but was over- heard by Eebekah. Rightly suspecting that Isaac was about to convey the Abrahamic blessing to Esau, she urged Jacob to take advantage of Esau's absence, and obtain the blessing by stealth. Here begins a chapter of frauds. Jacob hesitated, not because the proposal was perfidious, but because, if the plan should fail, he would draw down upon himself the curse of his father. Rebekah removed his fears by a reckless impre- cation whereby she set an impious example too often followed by the Jewish race. She volunteered to take the curse upon herself. The historian relates how Jacob killed two kids of goats ; how Rebekah prepared the dainty dish ; how she dressed Jacob in Esau's clothes, and fastened the rough skins of the JACOB'S FRAUD — ESAVS GBIEF. 337 young goat upon liis Imnds and his neck; how Jacob offered the food to Isaac ; how the blind old man suspected mischief, and interrogated Jacob as to his identity ; how cleverly the deceiver answered or parried the questions ; how he supported one of his falsehoods by taking the name of Jehovah in vain ; how he permitted his father to feel his hands and neck ; with what skill he disguised every thing but his voice ; with what shamelessness, when Isaac, still suspicious, asked him, " Art thou my very son Esau ? " Jacob replied, " I am ; " with what honeyed words he persuaded the feeble old man to sit up, and eat the meat, and drink the wine. Then the supplanter kissed his father, and the father smelled the smell of the field upon the raiment of his son. The heart of Isaac M^as warmed towards Jacob by "the food and the wine and the kiss and the smell ; " and he pronounced upon the pretender the final and irrevocable blessing. Jacob went out, and Esau came in. The historian describes the dismay of the patriarch, and the grief and anger of Esau, at the discovery of the fraud. Isaac " was horrified, a great horror exceedingly " (^Heh.') ; " Esau cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry." And j'et Isaac perceived that the blessing already given to Jacob was from God. He told Esau that it did not admit of recall. Paul lends a vivid touch to the picture: "Esau found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears " (Hcb. xii. 17) ; meaning that he could not prevail upon Isaac, no, not with persuasions and weeping, to take back his words. When the sense of his irreparable loss began to dawn upon Esau, he lifted up his voice and wept, exclaiming, " Hast thou but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father ! " Isaac answered him with a poor remnant of a bless- ing which was yet no blessing, and the painful interview closed. Esau went out, carrj-ing with him a hatred towards Jacob for which he could find no relief except in the hope of being able to kill the offender so soon as Isaac should die, and the days of mourning be ended. Isaac's first benediction on Jacob secured to him some of the 338 SACRED HISTOET. temporal benefits, only, of the Abrahamic covenant ; a reserve which is not explained. It was followed by a supplementary blessing recorded in the next chapter. He bequeathed to Jacob the possession of Canaan, a land refreshed with the dew of heaven, having a kindly soil, and abounding in wheat and wine. He gave him promise also of a posterity wliich should assume pre-eminence over the nations around them, and over their own kindred (Gen. xxviii. 3, 4). Isaac's legacy to Esau has been called "a modified sentence." It was a direct an- tithesis to Jacob's inheritance. The barren sands of Idumea were to be the home of Esau and his posterity, far away from tlie falling dews, the prolific soil, and the abundant fruits of Canaan. The people themselves were to be a nation of free- booters living by the sword. They should be subjugated, also, by Jacob's race, but afterwards they would assert themselves, and throw off the yoke. This prediction was an enlargement and explanation of the pre-natal omen, representing the brothers as engaged in a violent struggle for pre-eminence. The omen and the prediction were fulfilled. Esau's posterity, under the name of Edomites, settled in the Idumean deserts, were long afterwards defeated in battle by Saul and subdued by David. As often as they revolted, they were put down, until they gained their independence in the reign of Ahaz. About one hundred and thirty years before the birth of Christ, they were completely subjugated by John Hyrcanus, compelled to submit to circumcision, and incorporated into the Jewish state.^ At a later period, Antipater and Herod, descendants of Esau, established an Idumean dynasty over Judcea, which continued until the dissolution of the Jewish polity ; that the prediction of Isaac to Esau might be fulfilled : " When thou shalt have dominion, thou shalt break his [Jacob's] yoke from off thy neck" (Gen. xxvii. 40). The fulfilment of the predictions respecting Jacob will hereafter appear. Taken together they show that Isaac was a prophet, speaking by Divine inspiration. " By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come " (Heb. xi. 20). 1 Josephus, Aut. xiii. 9, 1, xv. 7, 9. SOME GOOD WITH THE BAD. 339 From the fact that he spake as a prophet, we take an answer to the question, why did he not recall his legacy to Jacob on the discovery of his having obtained it by false pretences? Doubtless fraud vitiates all gifts and agreements as between man and man.^ But Isaac uttered, unconsciously to himself, the will of God, not his personal wishes. When he ascertained that deception had been practised upon him, he perceived, also, that the blessing which he had intended to give to Esau was, in the Divine purpose, assigned to Jacob. He could not change that decree if he would. He perceived that he had spoken not as the father of Esau, but as the organ of Jehovah. He said sorrowfully but positively, " I have blessed him, and yea, he shall be blessed." And the hard destiny to which he left his oldest and favorite son- makes it still clearer that he spoke not for himself, but for the Almighty. In the disgraceful scene at the bedside of an aged patriarch, where we might look for the beauties of holiness and peace, we meet as ministering spirits, craft, perfidy, falsehood, and strife. All the members of the household are attempting to overreach one another. And yet, where there is so much to be censured, there is something to be commended. Isaac must have known that he was proposing to disregard the Divine oracle at the birth of his sons; that Esau had, by bigamy, voluntarily forsaken the chosen seed, and identified himself with the rejected races around him ; and that he had despised his birthright. He endeavored, also, to transfer the blessing to Esau clandestinely; and he was unduly governed by his partiality for Esau and his love for the savory meat. But, on the other hand, although he intended to give the blessing to his oldest son, yet, as soon as the Divine appointment of Jacob was made known to him, he instantly brought his own inten- tions into subjection to the will of God. Rebekah and Jacob resorted to duplicity and falsehood to settle the inheritance, instead of waiting till God should bring about, in his own way, what they believed to be his fixed purposes. They would not only help God, but help him by the resources of ungodliness. Rebekah was the tempter ; Jacob was willing to be tempted. 340 SACBED EISTOBY. She devised the stratagem ; he gave it full effect. Few women could have contrived so unnatural a conspiracy against an imbecile husband ; few sons could so boldly execute the plan. Luther said, "I should have probably run away with horror, and let the dish drop." On the other hand, Rebekah and Jacob entertained a just sense of the surpassing value of the Abrahamic promises; they kept in their hearts the Divine oracle choosing Jacob and rejecting Esau ; they could not doubt that Jacob was, by God's appointment, the representative of the chosen seed ; and they proposed no more than to secure to Jacob the patriarchal blessing which, in point of fact, belonged to him, and not to his brother. Esau might plead that he was not insensible to the value of the covenant prom- ises, and to the honor of him whose name should stand with those of Abraham and Isaac in the roll of the three great patriarchs. He might contend that Jacob had gotten the birth- right by playing upon his ravenous appetite, stung by hunger, and that he was under no obligation to refuse the blessing of his father, who was ready to take upon himself the responsi- bility of disregarding both the bargain and the adverse oracle at Esau's birth. But Esau was not -equal to the sturdy honesty of him "who sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not." He knew, also, that he had forfeited the coveted legacy by his bad conduct, and that he had sought to recover it clandes- tinely. Moreover, his brutal instincts betrayed themselves in the avowal of his intention to kill Jacob, partly out of revenge, and partly, as it may be conjectured, in the expectation of inheriting the blessing at Jacob's death, Esau being the only living heir of his brother. The sacred writer passes no formal judgment on the mis- conduct of these people. But what is more to the purpose, and falls in better with the plan of the record, he describes their guilt, and, as the narrative proceeds, he points out the punishment which was inflicted upon them. Isaac endured the indignities put upon him by the stratagems of Rebekah and Jacob ; the sons of his old age became enemies, and he was left alone in his last days, deprived of his children. Rebekah JACOB WISELY PEEFEBBED. 341 parted witli Jacob, never to see him again. Jacob, born to affluence, was compelled, at the age of seventy-four years, to flee for his life to a strange land, and to earn his bread by servile labor. There the cheater of his brother was cheated by Laban his uncle. Still later he was deceived by his sons, even as he had deceived his father. They sold his best-beloved son to the Ishmaelites, and then led him to believe that the lad had been torn and devoured by a wild beast. In process of time Esau abandoned his home in Canaan, for the desert of Edom. We shall do well to observe, as we proceed, that it is the way of the sacred writers to record faithfully the sins and follies of the patriarchs, to withhold comment or censure, and to show how, in due time, the Almighty visits their iniquities. The main object of the historian was to explain how the purposes of God were accomplished, in opposition to the per- verse will of man, and to trace out the course of Providence by which Jacob's position as the heir of the covenant was established. Much attention, however, has been given by biblical scholars to the comparative fitness of Jacob and Esau for this exalted destiny. It must be said that neither deserved the distinction. Their offences, if strictly marked, would have justly led to the rejection of both. But, as between the two, Jacob was wisely preferred. Not that Esau was without his attractive qualities; not that Jacob was without his faults. Esau was robust and athletic ; he was manly ; he honored his father: and, as will hereafter appear, he frankly forgave his brother. Jacob was wary, calculating, and crafty, he was quick to take advantage of the hunger of his brother in order to get the birthright, and of the feebleness of his father in order to get the blessing. It is a humbling task to balance wliat was good, forgetting what was evil, in Esau, over against wliat was evil, forgetting what was good, in Jacob. It is easy to challenge the Divine preference of Jacob over Esau as the representative of the chosen seed. But it should be borne in mind, that Esau's understanding was narrow, his appetites were clamorous, his disposition wayward. He grew up quite 342 SACRED HISTORY. naturally, not into a patriarch, walking by faith, but into a Bedouin chieftain, living by the sword. Michael Angelo could not hew a Moses, or Canova a Venus, out of a block of pud- ding-stone. Esau was a natural-born sensualist and profane person. Under any training, not supernatural, he would have remained Esau to the end. There was in him no ordinary possibility of a proper representative of the covenant, just as there was in Jezebel no ordinary possibility of an Esther. Like the rich man in the parable, he sacrificed all he had which was worth having to his lower appetites. The rich man said to his soul, " Soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." Esau " did eat and drink, and rose up and went his way." The vices of Jacob, his duplicity and craft, do not admit of disguise or apology ; and yet, withal, he was gentle, thoughtful, patient, and full of resources. He believed God's promises to Abraham ; he estimated their value as above all price, and he desired most earnestly to inherit them. Imperfect as he was, a worthy example of the chosen seed could be made of him. In Jacob there was the possibility of an Israel, just as in Saul of Tarsus there was the possibility of the Paul. He needed the training which comes with the grace of God and with severe chastise- ment. This training was applied to him. The grace of God came to him in the theophanic revelations and in the struggle at Jabbok. The chastisement was administered by his exile to Padan-aram, by the oppression, fraud, and privations which he suffered there, and by his unhappiness in Canaan, culmi- nating in the loss of Joseph. Jacob stands in the patriarchy as the representative of those who by nature are no better than others, but who become the subjects of irresistible grace, — the sinning, repenting, struggling, suffering children of God. PABENTAL ANXIETIES. 343 CHAPTER XXIV. Jacob's exile. The sacred writer now turns his attention to the period in the life of Jacob which occupied twenty years, and was marked by three events, — his flight from Beersheba, his exile in Padan- aram, his return to Canaan. Gen. xxvii. 41-46. — His flight was brought about by the worldly wisdom of his mother. She told Jacob that Esau was taking comfort in the hope of being able to kill him. She was "in terror lest both of her sons might be slain, — Jacob by the hand of Esau, and Esau by the hand of the avenger of blood. She urged Jacob to flee from the country, exclaiming, " Why should I be deprived of ycfu both in one day ? " It does not appear that she communicated her fears to her husband. But she reminded him of Esau's misalliance, and declared that her life, which had been a weariness to her because of the daughters of Heth, Esau's two wives, would become an intolerable burden if Jacob also should marry a heathen wife. She persuaded Isaac to send Jacob away. Gen. xxviii. 1-7. — The old patriarch charged Jacob not to take a wife of the women of Canaan, but to go to Padan-aram, and marry a daughter of his uncle Laban, Rebekah's brother. In bidding his son adieu, Isaac pronounced upon him and his seed all the blessings, temporal and spiritual, conveyed in the covenant with Abraham, enlarging the promises which he had just before uttered. Isaac lingered forty-three years longer; but nothing more is said of him, except that he died, and was buried by Esau and Jacob, at the ago of one hundred and eighty years (Gen. xxxv. 28, 29). 344 SACRED ni STORY. Gen. xxviii. 8, 9. — It was soon afterwards made plain that Esau's connection with the covenant had ceased. He saw that the advantage over him which he had given to Jacob by marry- ing two heathen women would be fatal to all his hopes if Jacob should marry one of their Padan-aram cousins. In the hope of propitiating his parents, and recovering the ground that he had lost among the chosen seed, he determined to marry in the family, as it were. He chose for his third wife INIahalath, a daughter of Ishmael. But she belonged to an exscinded branch of Abraham's family ; and in marrying her, instead of repairing his first error, he made it irreparable. It completed the proof that he was unfit to represent the people of God. " A three- fold cord is not quickly broken." Even so, Esau's triple mar- riage drew him away finally from the company of the chosen seed, and Jacob was left alone the true heir of the covenant. The latter was at that time seventy-seven years old. Here ter- minates the significance of Esau's history, and the career of Jacob is followed by the sacred writer. Gen. xxviii. 10-22. — A journey of fifty miles from Beersheba towards Haran brought Jacob at nightfall to Luz. He chose a stone for a pillow, and slept in the open air. Here he saw, in a dream, his first theophany. A ladder appeared, reaching from earth to heaven. Upon it angels ascended and descended. Jehovah himself stood above it, and proclaimed himself to Jacob to be the God of his fathers. He confirmed to Jacob, in all their fulness, the blessings given to Abraham, even the land and seed of promise, and a salvation in that seed for the whole human race. God promised also to accompany and to protect him on his journey, and to bring him back to his native country. And, in foresight of the obstacles to his return which should be interposed by Esau, and by his many trials afterwards in Padan- aram, Canaan, and Egypt, God added, " I will not leave thee until I have done all that which I have spoken to thee." In this theophany, Jehovah for the first time distinctly declared Jacob's heirship to the covenant, and his Divine right to suc- ceed Abraham and Isaac. Again, the promise in regard to the expansion of the spiritual seed of the patriarchs was greatly NEW LIFE AT THE LADDER'S FOOT. 345 enlarged. It should reach far beyond their natural posterity. It should overspread the limits of the promised land. It should be world-wide. " Thou siialt spread abroad " Qlt.^ breal: forth) " to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south." Further, the vision assured Jacob that communication was now opened between Jehovah in heaven and himself, a helpless fugitive, lying on the ground. But it has a broader meaning. It teaches the people of God that a way of holy fellowship and communion is established between God and man. The angels are the ministers of grace, passing to and fro, and bringing help in every time of need to God's chosen ones. But it was re- served for Christ to unfold its most profound meaning. Said he to Nathaniel, " Hereafter ye shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man " (John i, 51). The vision so interpreted reveals the person and glory of Christ. The communication between heaven and earth, which had been closed by sin, was now opened by the Son of God. The glory of Christ was foreshown ; and, as one of its signals, angels minister to him (Luke ii. 9-13, xxii. 48 ; Acts i. 10 ; Matt. XXV. 31). In this theophany Jacob's sj^iritual training was begun. Such discipline was the first necessity of his position. Without it he could not be a true successor to Abraham and Isaac, or a suit- able representative of the covenant. The Divine word to Abra- ham was : " I am the Almighty God ; walk before me, and be thou perfect " (Gen. xvii. 1). Jacob's conscience full of guilt, and his disposition full of deceit, must be rebuked. He must be born again ; he must become an " Israelite indeed, in whom tliere is no guile." To this end a revelation of the majesty of Jehovah is now made to him, extorting the cry, " How dreadful is this place ! " He was taught that the eye of God was upon him in his most unguarded moments : " Jehovah was in this place, and I knew it not." He was encouraged to pursue a life of obedience and faith, by the hope that the angels would bear up the knowledge of his wants to heaven, and return laden with mercies. In answer to the vision, he took the stone on which he had slex)t, and set it up for a memorial pillar. He 346 SACBED HISTOBT. consecrated the place to tlie offices of worship, and called it Bethel, the house of God. He also made this vow : " If God will be with me, and will keep me in the way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall Jehovah be my God." The expression, " If God will be with me," is not a con- dition conceived in a mercenary spirit: it is the response of gratitude to the promise, "I will be with thee." Jacob uses the preposition "if" as an equivalent to "inasmuch as," or " since," and it might with propriety have been so translated. And, in order that God's worship might be sustained, he set apart to that object one-tenth of all the wealth that he should acquire ; following the example of Abraham, who gave tithes to the priest of the most high God (Gen. xiv. 20), anticipating also the rule of giving to pious uses which was afterwards pre- scribed (Lev. xxvii. 32). In the courage and strength derived from the heavenly vision, Jacob resumed his journey. Gen. xxix. 1-14. — The distance between Bethel and Laban's house is computed at four hundred miles. None of the inci- dents of the journey are recorded ; but, in describing Jacob's arrival at Padan-aram, the historian draws a charming picture of primitive life " in the land of the children of the East." In the foreground is a well. The weary fugitive from Beer-sheba sits upon the curb. Flocks of sheep and goats are lying around him. The shepherds are standing idly by. A beautiful girl draws near, guiding her father's flocks to the watering. Jacob hears that she is his cousin, Laban's daughter. He rolls the stone from the well's mouth, and waters her sheep. He tells her who he is. Overcome by his emotions, the cloud of his sorrows breaking away, and thinking, perhaps, that in Rachel he sees his future wife, he kisses her, and bursts into tears. Rachel runs to bring her father word that her cousin, from the far-off land of Canaan, is at the sheep-well. Laban hastens to meet him, and brings him to his home. Jacob tells Laban his story. Laban has two daughters. Leah is the oldest, and her eyes are weak ; Rachel is graceful and beautiful. Gen. xxix. 14-30. — Jacob was now seventy-seven years of LABAN'S GBEED AND TBEACHEET. 347 age. He was a little beyond middle life, for he lived until he was a hundred and thirty-seven years old. He sojourned in Padan-aram not less than twenty years. The incidents wliich filled up this period were few in number, but marked by deci- sive indications of God's overruling providence, and man's weakness and unworthiness. Jacob became a servant to a hard master. From the moment of his arrival, his activity and industry made him useful to Laban. At the end of a month, Laban offered to give him permanent employment as a shep- herd. He asked Jacob to name his wages. Jacob replied, " I will serve thee seven years for thy youngest daughter." Laban closed the contract on these terms, revealing thus early his greedy disposition. Bethuel, Laban's father, had freely given Rebekah, Laban's sister, to Isaac for a wife ; in his turn, Laban disposed of his daughter by way of a bargain and sale. Rachel, as we shall see, never forgot the indignity. "Jacob served seven years for Rachel ; and they seemed but a few days, for the love he had to her." At the end of seven years Laban made a marriage-feast. Instead of Rachel, he gave Leah to Jacob, by a fraud which owed its success to the darkness of the night, and the Eastern custom of concealing under a veil the person of the bride. Laban attempted to excuse his bad faith by appealing to the custom of the country, which, as he pretended, did not permit a younger sister to be given in marriage before the older. But this subterfuge does not excuse Laban's treach- ery, for he said nothing of tlie rule in the original agreement. In making the bargain, Laban betrayed his shameless avarice ; in breaking the bargain, he betrayed his insufferable treachery ; and in both, he showed himself to be a grasping and faithless master. It was not, however, open to Jacob to complain ; for Laban had simply cheated him in the purchase of his wife, as he had cheated Esau in the purchase of the birthright. This was the first in a series of manoeuvres, in which the older player gets the best of the game for nearly twenty years ; but in the end the tables are turned. The record is not pleasant ; it is the story of a match between craft and craft.^ Laban then 1 Cancllisli: Genesis, vol. ii. p. 21. 348 SACEED HISTORY. offered to give Rachel to him in consideration of another term of service fur seven years. Jacob consented; and Rachel became his wife on the eighth day after his marriage to Leah (xxix. 28). It is right to conjecture that Jacob, with his usual shrewdness, demanded the reward of his labors in advance, lest he should be defrauded again by his father-in-law. Gen. XXX. 25-41. — At the end of his second term of service, Jacob asked Labau to allow him to return to his own country, with his wives and children ; for, said he, " thou knowest my service wdiich I have done thee." Laban urged him to remain with this remark : " I have learned by experience " (or " I have divined," Rev. Ver.') "that the Lord hath blessed me for thy sake." They came to an agreement in regard to the wages, and Jacob served Laban six years longer. The bargain was exceedingly profitable to Jacob ; but Laban, with his character- istic bad faith, repeatedly changed the terms, for the purpose of repressing his nephew. Gen. xxix. 31-36, xxx. 1-24. — The unhappiness in Jacob's family w^as a conspicuous feature of his sojourn in Padan-aram. His early and -constant love for Rachel, the long service to which he submitted in order to secure her as his wife, and the fraud which Laban practised upon him at the marriage-feast, led Jacob into polygamy. Polygamy was one of the habits of the time. The marriage of two sisters, both living, to one man, however repugnant to the sensibilities, was not held to be incestuous until prohibited by the law given at Sinai long after Jacob's day (Lev. xviii. 18). But the unavoidable evils of a double marriage declared themselves very early in the family. Leah was hated, and Rachel was loved. Of the two women, Leah was the more worthy. She was vehement in her love to Jacob, notwithstanding his indifference to her. Leah became the mother of four sons in quick succession, but Rachel was childless. And so it happened that Leah was jealous of Rachel, and Rachel was envious of Leah. Rachel's impetuosity led her astray in two directions. She taunted Jacob with her childlessness, and Jacob reprimanded her angrily for casting on him the reproach which the Almighty had laid upon laer. JACOB'S CIIILDBEN. 349 Kurtz suggests that Rachel's sensitiveness arose from the fear lest she might be excluded, by her want of offspring, from any share in the blessings pronounced on the chosen seed. And yet it may be well said, that, by faith, Rachel should have waited patiently for the promised seed. She should have re- membered that Isaac was not born until Sarah had been mar- ried twenty-five years, and Jacob was not born until Rebekah had been married twenty years. But in her impatience she gave her handmaid Bilhah to Jacob as a wife in the second degree, and adopted as her own Bilhah's two sons that were afterwards born to her. Jacob consented to the arrangement, perhaps in the hope of appeasing Rachel, and silencing Leah's boasts. But Leah, believing that Judah, her fourth son, was her last child, gave her handmaid Zilpah to Jacob as a wife in the same degree, and adopted the two sons to whom she gave birth. Thus the family troubles, arising from a double marriage, were aggravated by the mischiefs of a double con- cubinage. And these evils were the fruits of inexcusable unbelief, as was afterwards made clear. For, in answer to special prayer, Rachel became the mother of Joseph and Benja- min, and Leah became the mother of two sons and a daughter in addition to the four older children. The feuds and strifes, recorded and unrecorded, which entered the household through these open doors, turned it into a school of affliction and discipline for Jacob. Gen. xxix. 31-35, xxx. 1-24. — Thirteen children were born to Jacob. They were distributed among his four families in the order of their mothers : thus, — Leah's. Zilpah's Rachel's. BrLHAH'S {Leah's maid). (Rachel's maid). Reuben. Gad. Joseph. Dan. Simeon. T ,P171 Asher. Benjamin. Naphtali. iJC VI. Judah. Issachar. Zebiiluu. Dinah. 850 SACRED HISTORY. This family register casts light upon various particulars in the narrative. The thirteen children were born in Padan- aram, Benjamin only excepted, whose birth near Bethel cost Rachel her life (Gen. xxxv. 18). They were all born within the period of thirteen years ; for Jacob was married seven years after his arrival in the country, and he sojourned there twenty years (Gen. xxxi. 38). The name of only one daughter, Dinah, appears in the register ; but it is conjectured that other daughters were born to Jacob (chap, xxxvii. 35, xlvi. 7). Two of Leah's sons became the progenitors of the most prominent tribes in the commonwealth of Israel : Judah, the ancestor of Christ ; and Levi, the founder of the sacerdotal order. The tribe of Rachel's son Joseph was hardly inferior to these in historical significance. The twelve sons were put upon a foot- ing of equality, without regard to the position of their mothers, whether wives or servants. They were all the children of Jacob, and the promise was to him and his seed after him. In a few instances only was any discrimination made among them, grounded on the rank of their mothers. Their names are twice arranged iaccording to that rank (Gen. xxxv. 23-26 ; Exod. i. 2-4). Again, by way of accounting for the hostility of the brothers against Joseph, it is mentioned that the lad had reported to their father the bad conduct of the sons of the concubines Bilhah and Zilpah. In one other instance regard was paid to the rank of the brothers. When the children of Israel were in the wilderness, Moses divided the twelve tribes into four " camps," tln-ee tribes in each. To these camps he assigned positions in the order of march when the host was in motion, and posted them around the tabernacle when they were at rest. In making up the camps, Moses took care to put three of the tribes descending from the maids together ; and the tribe of Gad, son of Leah's maid, was associated with the tribes of Leah's sons Reuben and Simeon, Gad's half-brothers. But on every important occasion the perfect equality, each to each, of the twelve tribes, was not disturbed by the accident of birth. The exceptions are introduced here to show the studied accuracy of the historian, and to point out a few of the linhs, too often unnoticed, which give unity to the narrative. INNER LIFE OF THE FAMILY. 351 This register is valuable for the light which it casts upon the inner life of the family. Jacob's alienation from Leah, shortly after her marriage, is to be referred to her participation in the fraud whereby she became his wife, and to his preference for Rachel. Her unhappiness discovers itself in the name which she gave to her first-born son. She called him Reuben (behold, a son !), for she said, " Surely Jehovah will look upon my afflic- tion; now, therefore, my husband will love me." How sharp was her disappointment in this hope, appears at the birth of her second son. She called him Simeon (hearing), "because" said she, " Jehovah hath heard that I am hated, he hath there- fore given me this son also." The poor wife took courage when her third son was born, saying, " Now this time will my husband be joined to me ; " therefore was his name called Levi (attachment). The cloud was lifted at last. When her fourth son was born, her heart broke forth in praise : " Now will T praise Jehovah," therefore she called him Judah (praise). Still later we discover the joy of Rachel when she named the first son of her maid Dan (judge) ; " for God hath judged me, and given me a son." We hear her exultations over Leah when she called the second son of her maid, Naphtali (wrestling) ; "wrestling with my sister." And the unamiable reply to Rachel comes from Leah in the names which she gave to the two sons of her maid : Gad (fortune) and Asher (happy am I). Afterwards Leah called a son Issachar (my hire), " because I have given my maid to my husband." To another she gave the name Zebulun (dwelling), saying, " Now will my husband dwell with me, because I have borne him six sons." The list ends with Rachel's two sons, — Joseph (adding), so called because in his birth his mother saw the promise of another son ; and Benjamin (son of happiness). It so occurred that the names of these children, and of the tribes which they founded, perpetuated the memory of the jealousies, strifes, and unseemly exultations which prevailed in the bosom of this unhappy fam- ily. The melancholy story vindicates the subsequent prohibi- tion of polygamy as inevitably hostile to the marriage relation and to the peace and purity of the family. 352 S ACE ED HISTORY. Geist. XXX. 25-43. — The worldly prosperity which at last came to Jacob is a leading feature in his story. At the end of his second term of service, he asked Laban to permit him to return to Canaan, taking with him his famil3^ Laban, we have seen, urged him to remain ; not that he was reluctant to part with his daughters, but for a reason wholly mercenary, — the pecuniary value to him of Jacob's services. At Laban's urgent request Jacob consented to remain, on the condition that he should receive for his wages all the speckled and spotted goats and sheep in Laban's flocks. Laban had some good reason to believe that he himself had gotten the best of the bargain ; party-colored cattle being at that time, though not now, rare in the East. The sheep were anciently white, and the goats black or brown , rarely were any of them spotted. Jacob, however, resorted to artifices whereby he gradually secured to himself by far the larger part, as well as the most thrifty, of the animals. The secret of his devices is not divulged. To what extent he availed himself of his knowledge of animal economy, cannot be determined. Jacob himself referred his success to the inter- position of Providence (xxxi. 9-12). As it turned out, Laban got no advantage of his nephew Although he changed the conditions of the employment as many as "ten times " according to Jacob's statement, the grasping old man took nothing by his dishonesty. At the end of six years Jacob was wealthy. " He increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maid-servants and men-servants, and camels and asses." More definite infor- mation is contained in Gen. xxxii. 14, 15, where it appears that Jacob sent a present to Esau of more than five hundred and fifty cattle. Jacob's prosperity led to an important crisis in his history. Gen. xxxi. 1-21. — The time had now fully come for the return of Jacob to his native country. His permanent settle- ment in Mesopotamia was forbidden by the plan of Providence which had assigned the land of Canaan to the promised seed. And yet the life of Jacob seemed to be taking a turn out of harmony with that plan. He had been an absentee for at least twenty years. He had become identified with Mesopotamia by ESCAPE FROM PADAJST-ARAM. 353 his plural marriages and by the birth of eleven children there. A man of his thrift might be sorely tempted to make a permanent home in the midst of luxuriant pastures covered with flocks and herds. He might reasonably expect to become a wealthy and powerful sheik. Peculiar dangers, withal, threatened his family. IJis kindred were native-born idolaters, and so were his wives. Rachel, it is certain, clung for a season to her false gods. Six of his children were from five to twelve years of age, and they and their younger brothers as they grew up would be exposed to the contagion of idolatry. Jacob could not return too soon to his native land. Happily for himself, as the representative of the covenant, he was led in good time to quit Mesopotamia. Angry words uttered by Laban's sons in regard to his in- creasihg wealth were repeated to him. He discovered, also, in Laban himself, always a hard master, signs of hostility towards him. And, what was decisive, he received from the Almighty a peremptory command to go back to Canaan without delay. He called his wives into the field where he was feeding his flocks, for a private conference. He said to them, substantially, " Your father is no longer my friend. I have served him faith- fully, and in return he has changed my stipulated wages ten times. God, who has protected me from harm and has transferred to me all these flocks, now commands me to return to the land of my own kindred." Rachel and Leah replied, not without bitter- ness, that they had no longer any inheritance in their father's house ; their father, instead of generously endowing them with marriage gifts, had sold them to Jacob long before they became his wives, as if they were servants to be bought and sold ; the property which God had taken from him and given to Jacob belonged to them and their children. " Now, then," said they, "whatsoever God hath said to thee, that do." Gen. xxxi. 22-55. — The manner of Jacob's departure was not such as became a manly man, least of all one who knew that he was obeying the direction of the Almighty, and was under his special protection. Dr. Candlish says, " He must needs play the part of a cowardly fugitive, escaping as a thief 354 SACEEB HISTORY. under the cloud of niglit." This severe comment is borne out by the record, " And Jacob stole away unawares to Laban the Syrian, in that he told him not that he fled." Laban at that time was gone to shear his sheep. Jacob stole away, taking with him his wives and children, and the many herds of cattle which he had gathered during his last term of service. He crossed the Euphrates, and went towards the region east of the Jordan. Rachel in her father's absence from home, without Jacob's knowledge or consent, robbed Laban of his teraphim, and hid them in the luggage carried by the camel on which she rode. The teraphim were small images, worshipped in the family and consulted as oracles, not unlike the penates, or household gods, of the Romans ; " such as JEneas carried out of Troy." Rachel took, also, other objects of superstitious observances ; for example, rings and armlets (xxxv. 2-4). Laban did not hear of Jacob's escape until he had been gone two days. Taking with him a troop of his kinsmen, he set off in the pursuit. On the seventh day he overtook the fugitives at Mount Gilead. He tried to pick a quarrel with Jacob. In a tirade of mingled hypocrisy and parental emotion, he charged Jacob with having hurried away his daughters as if they were captives taken in war, and with having prevented him from doing honor to their departure, and bidding them farewell in a feast, with music and song, and a parting kiss. Laban added that it was in his power to avenge himself ; but he had been deterred from doing that by a warning from the Almighty. Li a bitter sarcasm he said to Jacob, " You went away because you had such a longing for your father's house, but why did you steal my gods ? " Jacob replied that he had fled clandestinely because he was afraid that Laban would take his wives away from him. He then challenged Laban to search the tents for his idols. Jacob threatened death to the offender ; revealing both his ignorance of Rachel's theft, and the power of life and death claimed by the patriarch. A thorough search was made in the tents of all the family ; but Rachel, who was more than a match for her father in craft, contrived to hide the sacred plunder. Thereupon Jacob, being himself deceived by BECONCILIATION. 355 Rachel, turned in anger upon Laban. He resents liis insulting search, in terms which it was proper for hiiA to use, believing, as he did, that Rachel was innocent as charged by her father. Having done that, he turned upon Laban with becoming bold- ness, and said in effect, "I have been with you twenty years. Through my watchfulness your ewes and she-goats have not lost their young. I have not eaten the rams, according to the habit of the faithless shepherds [Ezek. xxxiv. 3]. I did not charge to your account the cattle that were killed by wild beasts : I bore the loss myself. You required me to make good all that were slain by day or by night ; even though by day the heat consumed me, and the frost b}^ night, and sleep de- parted from mine eyes. I have been twenty years in your service, — fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your cattle, — and you have changed my wages ten times. Except the God of my father had been with me, you had sent me away a pauper. God has seen my labor and afflic- tions ; you he rebuked last night." This is no doubt a manly utterance ; and yet it would have been not less manly if Jacob had frankly acknowledged that he had met craft by craft, and deceit by deceit. He had come far short of the rule laid down in Prov. xx. 22. Laban, however, intimidated by the Divine warning of the night before, proposed to Jacob a covenant of reconciliation. The offer was accepted. The kinsmen of both parties present built a cairn of stones. Laban called it in the Chaldee, a "heap of witness;" and Jacob called it in Hebrew, JNIizpah, a " watch-tower." The parties exchanged promises of perpetual good-will and amity. The ceremony was closed with a sacrifice and a feast of love. Early in the morning Laban kissed his daughters and his grandsons, and blessed them, and went to his own land. The separation was final ; the isolation from his kindred which was enforced on Abraham entered into the experience of Jacob, and into that of his wives and children. Gen. xxxii. 1, 2. — We hear nothing more of Jacob until he reached the borders of Eastern Palestine. He encamped a few miles north of the River Jabbok, now known as the Zerka, 856 SACRED niSTOEY. which flows into the Jordan about midway between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. Here he became conscious of an impending danger more formidable than the displeasure of Laban, — the wrath of Esau. When he parted from his mother, twenty years before, she promised to send for him when Esau's anger should be appeased. But it would seem that she had never encouraged him to return to Canaan ; and she was now dead. The danger was imminent : Jacob knew that Esau was in Mount Seir, distant only a few days' journey. At that moment the angels of God met him, and the visit was in good time. Their presence reminded him, perhaps, of the ascending and descending angels which he saw at Bethel ; and of the voice of God promising protection on his journey, and a safe return to his own land. He said, " This is God's host." He called the place Mahanaim, — "two camps;" one camp for himself, and the other pitched near by for the angels. The war- like terms, " God's host " and " Mahanaim," point to an outstand- ing controversy, an impending conflict, and a sure protection. Geist. xxxii. 3-12. — With his habitual forethought, Jacob sent word to Esau announcing his return. After the manner of Oriental courtesy, he directed his messengers to address his brother as " my lord," and to express the desire that Jacob might "find grace in his sight." They brought back the unwelcome news that Esau was marching upon him at the head of a column of four hundred men. Jacob sought to meet the emergency by measures of precaution, prayer to God, and conciliation towards Esau. By way of precaution, he divided his caravan into two companies, and posted them apart from each other ; so that, if Esau should fall upon the one, the other might escape. He then betook himself to God ; and his prayer is exceedingly comprehensive and beautiful, a model of Old-Testament prayer in all its parts. The invocation is: " O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, Jehovah which saidst unto me. Return unto thy country and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee." The oonfession is : "I am not worthy of the least of all thy mercies, and of all the truth which thou hast showed unto thy servant." Then PRAYER TO GOD, AJ^D GIFTS TO ESAU. 357 follows a thankful acknowledgment of God's mercy : " For with my staff I passed over this Jordan, but now I am two bands." The supplication is : " Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau ; for I fear him lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children." The plea is : " Thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude." Gen. xxxii. 13-23. — In the hope of conciliating Esau, Jacob selected from his herds more than five hundred and fifty animals, — goats, sheep, camels, beeves, and asses judiciously assorted. These he divided into three separate droves, and sent them as gifts to Esau. In order, by successive appeals, to mitigate the anger of Esau, Jacob directed the drivers to put a certain distance between drove and drove, and to present one by one, at proper intervals of time, to his brother. Each driver, in turn, was to say, " These be thy servant Jacob's ; it is a present sent unto my lord Esau ; and, behold, also he is behind us." Jacob followed the caravan which conveyed these magnificent presents, as far as the torrent Jabbok. Under cover of the night, he conveyed his entire family with all his possessions across the stream, and then returned to the northern shore. He was alone, and the darkness was over him. Here he was taught that Jehovah had a controversy with him far more alarming than that waged by Esau. This controversy had been of long standing, and was now to be settled. God would not suffer him to return to Canaan while he was the double-dealingr Jacob who had fled long since from Beersheba, and who had now, under cover of the night, escaped from Aram. He \vas not fit to inherit the blessings and responsibilities of the covenant so long as he was in the habit of resorting to crooked ways to accomplish his purposes, instead of relying on God, who had repeatedly promised to keep him in all his journeys. The night which Jacob spent at the Jabbok is memorable for the course of Divine discipline by which he was fitted for the land of promise. 358 SACBED HISTOEY. Gex. xxxii. 24-32. — There are mysteries in this transaction which remain unexplained. And yet it was marked by certain intelligible incidents. It is plain, for example, that the struggle of might and main which occurred was no hallucination, no subjective vision or troubled dream. Its objective reality is proved by the fact that Jacob came out of it with a dislocated thigh, and was lamed for life. His antagonist was at first The Unknown. Jacob thought him to be a man ; but he is called the angel by Hosea (xii. 4), and was recognized by Jacob at the break of day as God: "I have seen God face to face." His acts and words, moreover, were Divine. At his super- natural touch, the hollow of Jacob's thigh was " strained," so the last revision translates the text. His hip-bone was dis- jointed, according to the reading of the Authorized Version, supported by Keil, Kurtz, Alford, and Murphy. He blessed Jacob, and gave him a new name, Israel ; " for thou hast striven with God and man, and hast prevailed." We have before us, therefore, a true theophany, and a new proof of the identity of the angel with Jehovah. The conflict passed through two stages, — one, outward or physical ; the other, inward or spiritual. In the first instance, described by the phrase " there wrestled a man with him," the encounter was almost, but not altogether, a bodily struggle. The second stage, introduced by the touching of Jacob's hip- bone, was altogether a spiritual wrestling. In the earlier part of the night, the Divine Being made as if he would allow Jacob to conquer; but at the break of day the angel touched his thigh, and the lever of his strength was broken at the fulcrum. Jacob could not stand alone. He was overmastered. This was the crisis, the turning-point. Jacob's self-confidence was re- buked, crushed out. The conflict, which in the first stage was outward and physical, gave place, in the second, to the inward and spiritual ; the stout-hearted and muscular athlete became the broken-hearted and crippled suppliant. He clung convul- sively to the angel ; he would not be shaken off. He put on a new strength, — the strength that comes of tears and entrea- ties. Hosea describes the spectacle : " He took his brother by JACOB BECOMES ISRAEL. 359 the heel in the womb, and by his strength he had power witli God : yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed : he wept, and made supplication unto him" (Hos. xii. 3, 4). We hear the angel saying, "Let me go, for the day breaketh." We hear Jacob's reply, " I will not let thee go till thou bless me." The Divine wrestler could paralyze the sinews and dis- locate the bones of his intrepid adversary ; but he could not resist the entreaties of the helpless, clinging, weeping sufferer. When Jacob contended with the Almighty, in a match of mus- cular strength, he was defeated hip and thigh : when he turned from muscle to prayer, he conquered. He won the blessing of God, and with it a new name : " Thou shalt be called no more Jacob " (the supplanter), " but Israel " (the prince of God) ; "for as a prince thou hast power with God and with men, and hast prevailed." The profound remark of Ewald on the narra- tive is, " Man knows no real or inalienable possession but that which he has won rather from God than from man, and which is thus made a part of his very life and soul." The memory of this theophany is perpetuated by many his- torical monuments. First, the place was called Peniel by Jacob, and was known as such for nearly eight hundred years : Peniel is the face of God. Gideon; in his campaign against Midian, found a tower standing there which he destroyed (Judg. viii. 17). Long afterwards, Jeroboam fortified the place (1 Kings xii. 25). Next, these incidents explain the refusal of Jacob's posterity to eat, as animal food, the ".sinew which shrank;" an abstinence which is religiously observed by the Jews to this day. Again, the chosen seed took from that good hour new and honored patronymics, — Israel, Israelites, the children of Israel. In the subsequent scriptures, the names Jacob and Israel are used interchangeably ; with the difference, that, to a certain extent, when the patriarch is spoken of indi- vidually, he is called Jacob ; when the communit}^ is spoken of, they are called Israel. Further, the traces which Jacob's expe- rience at Peniel left upon his person and character are plainly marked. He " halted upon his thigh " to the end of life ; a memento of his past weakn.ess, of his mortal combat and signal 860 SACRED HISTORY. defeat. And yet tins incident is hardly worthy of mention, compared with the supernatural change which was wrought upon his character. He represented, in his person, the two men described by Paul, the old man and the new man (Eph. iv. 22). The old man was the fruit of the natural birth, the other was the fruit of the new birth. The old man in Jacob was tricky, deceitful, timid ; the new in Israel was open, frank, courageous. Dating from Peniel we can discover little or nothing of the guile by which he won the blessing from his father, or of the cunning by which he got the better of Laban. Into his plan of life he incorporated steadfastness of purpose, jDurity of motive, and uncalculating submission to the Divine will. His humility expressed itself in the prayer : "I am not worthy of the least of all thy mercies, and of all the truth which thou hast showed unto thy servant" (Gen. xxxii. 10). Gen. xxxiii. 1-17. — The historian proceeds at once to the reconciliation of the brothers. The narrative fills the imagin- ation with a beautiful picture in Oriental coloring. Esau ap- proaches with his four hundred warriors. Jacob draws near, bowing seven times to the ground before Esau. Esau runs to meet him, and embraces him, and falls on his neck and kisses him, and they both weep together. Jacob presents his wives and children to his brother, and they offer the usual obeisance. Jacob urges his present upon Esau ; Esau accepts the gift with kindly reluctance, and offers in return to escort Jacob into the land of Canaan. Jacob declines the courtesy in friendly terms, and engages, after he shall be settled in Canaan, to visit his brother in Mount Seir. Jacob undoubtedly ascribed to the interposition of Jehovah the sudden change which had occurred in his brother's disposition. He had prevailed with God, and by the help of God had prevailed with Esau. Esau returned to his encampment in Mount Seir. Jacob, in peace with his brother, proceeded to Succoth (or the Booths), on the east side of the Jordan, near the mouth of the River Jabbok. That Jacob, for reasons not recorded, spent several months here, appears from the fact that, instead of dwelling in tents, be JACOB AND PETER. 361 built a house for bis family and buts for bis cattle. From Suceotb Jacob ultimately crossed tbe Jordan, and came " in peace to tbe city of Sbecbem in tbe land of Canaan." The cases of Jacob and Peter present some points in common if tbe inner significance of events is noticed. Jacob at Bethel and .at tbe ladder's foot may be likened to Peter at Ceesarea Philippi (Matt. xvi. 13-18) ; though Jacob did all those wrong things, and Jesus was obliged to call Peter Satan afterwards. And then Peter at the denial and repentance (Luke xxii. 60- 62) may be likened to Jacob at the wrestling. And if Christ spake to Peter, saying, " When thou wast young thou girdedst thyself," etc. (J.obn xxi. 18), "in order that be might know that henceforth an entire reliance upon the leading and protection of God must take tbe place of his sinful feeling of his own strength, and bis attachment to his own way ; so, doubtless, tbe lameness of Jacob's thigh has the same significance, with this difference, that as Peter must be cured of tbe self-will of bis rash, fiery temperament, so Jacob of bis selfish prudence, tending to mere cunning." ^ 1 Lange's Genesis, p. 555. 362 S ACRED HISTORY. CHAPTER XXV. JACOB AT HEBRON. CHRONOLOGY OF JACOB. {After Usher.) Cir. B.C. Age. 1837 Jacob born. 1822 Abraham died .... 15 Gen. xxv. 1805 Birthright bought .... 32 1796 Esau married ..... 40 xxvi. 34. 1760 Jacob's flight 77 1753 His double marriage ... 84 1752 Reuben born 85 1751 Simeon born 86 1750 Levi born 87 1749 Judah bom 88 1745 Dinah born 92 1745 Joseph born 92 1739 Jacob left Aram .... 98 1739 Wrestled at Peniel .... 98 1732 Slaughter of the Shechemites . 107 1729 Rachel died 108 1729 Jacob at Hebron . . . .108 1728 Joseph sold 109 1716 Isaac died, aged 180 .. . 120 1715 Joseph promoted . . . .122 xli. 46. 1707 Jacob in Egypt . . . .130 xlvii. 9. 1690 Jacob died 147 xlvii. 28. 1635 Joseph died, aged 110 . . . 1. 22. Gen. xxxiii. 18-20. — When Abram left Padan-aram to go to the promised land, he came first to a place afterwards called Shechem, and there he built an altar. About one hundred and SHECUEM, BACKWARD A^^D FOBWARD. 363 eighty years afterwards Jacob, returning from Padan-aram, came also to Shechem, and builded another altar there, and called it El-elohe-Israel, " Grod (the ]\Iiglity) is the God of Israeiy Shechem became, next to Jerusalem, the most famous city in Palestine. Jacob bought a parcel of ground there, and dug a well within its borders. At his death he bequeathed the field to his son Joseph. The sons of Jacob all died in Egypt. Their remains were not allowed to moulder in the land of bondage, but were brought over to Shechem for burial (Acts vii. 16). At the exodus the Hebrews took the bones of Joseph, and on their arrival in Canaan deposited them in Shechem. Ebal and Gerizim, the mountains of blessing and cursing, guarded the spot. It was near the site of the future Samaria, the capital of the kingdom of Israel. There Reho- boam, the last monarch of the undivided kingdom, was crowned; there Jeroboam, the founder of the kingdom of the ten tribes, reigned ; there Ahab and Jezebel polluted the throne ; and there Elijah and Elisha kept the faith. About eight hundred and fifty years still later, our Lord sat on Jacob's well, and gathered to himself the first fruits, reserving the fuller harvest of souls for Philip the evangelist (Acts viii. 5). Gen. xxxiv. — Jacob pitched his tent near the city of Shechem, of which Hamor was the prince. Dinah, Jacob's daughter, was robbed of her honor by Shechem, a son of Hamor. In an interview with Jacob and his sons, the sheik declared the love of his son Shechem for Dinah, and made pro- posals of marriage between them. He offered to Jacob's sons a joint possession with himself of the region, granting to them the full liberty to trade and acquire property. Hamor warmly urged his suit for Dinah's hand, promising an anq)le dowry. Her brothers, with shameless duplicity, consented to the mar- riage, on the condition that all the males of the city would submit to circumcision. The terms were accepted and fulfilled. Thereupon Simeon and Levi, the full brothers of Dinali, at the head, no doubt, of their brothers and other fighting men, rose upon the Shechemites, when they were feverish and prostrated from the effects of circumcision, put them to the sword, plun- 364 ', S ACHED HISTORY. cTered the cit}^ and their wives took they captive. Hamor and Shechem were among the slain. Jacob expressed his horror of the crime, and his fears lest he and his family should be destroyed by the survivors of the slaughtered princes. Well might he so express himself. His sons pleaded as their excuse the indignity inflicted on their sister. But this could not excuse a slaughter which bore the marks not only of perfidy and ferocity, but of a double sacrilege likewise. His sons had used their Divine election as a cloak for revenge (vs. 7 and 14), and had employed the sacramental sign of the covenant to serve their bloody purposes. When the old patriarch was on his death-bed, fifty-two years afterwards, he could not sup- press his horror at the deed. The houses of Simeon and Levi, said he, were filled with merciless weapons ; his very soul would fly from companionship with them ; cursed be their fierce anger, cursed be their cruel wrath ; let them be dispersed forever (Gen. xlix. 5, 7). Gen. xxxv. — A wiser than Jacob mi^ht have recognized the necessity to the plan of Providence of another and more prolonged exj^atriation of the chosen seed. Jacob himself was not slow in reaching the conclusion that he must once more seek safety in flight. Jehovah came to his relief, directing him to go to Bethel and erect an altar on the spot where he had seen God in his flight from the anger of Esau. There he had beheld the ladder and the angels, and had received the benedic- tion of Jehovah. But how could he return to that "dreadful place " which was " none other than the house of God, the gate of heaven " ? To enter the sanctuary would be a mortal sin, a sacrilege ; for his family, in the persons of his wives, was defiled with the sin of idolatry. In his weakness, and with his tacit consent, they had brought strange gods with them from Aram. He now required them to bring to him all these idols and objects of false worship, with their rings and armlets; and he buried them under an oak at Shechem ; the very oak, perhaps, under which Abraham had pitched his tent (xii. 6). He then required Leah and Rachel to wash their persons, and exchange their garments for clean and festal robes, as signs of their puri- BETHEL AGAIN, AND TWO FUNEBALS. 365 fication and the sanctification of their hearts. This being done, the patriarch and his family made a safe journey to Bethel. The cities round about did not dare to pursue the holy fai\iily, for the ""terror of God was upon them." On his arrival at Bethel he remembered the vow which he had made, more than twenty years before, to the effect that if God would bring him back to Canaan he would establish on the spot the house of God. He made haste to build an altar, and called the place El-beth-el (the God, the house of God}. Jehovah appeared to him the second time, blessed him, con- firmed to him his new name Israel, and renewed in plenary fulness the promises first made to Abraham. His seed should swell into a congregation of nations, kings should come out of him, and liis posterity should possess the land. Jacob set up a pillar of stone on the place where Jehovah had talked to him, and poured upon it consecrated oil and a drink-offering. By so doing the chosen family, in the person of their patriarch, acknowledged Jehovah to be their God. From Bethel the caravan journeyed slowly towards Hebron, resting by the way for the benefit of the flocks. Near Ephrath, Benjamin was born, and Rachel gave her life for his. Jacob erected a monument over her grave. How tenderly he loved her, down to the day of his death, may be known from his last words to Joseph's sons (Gen. xlviii. 7). Near the shepherds' watch-tower of Edar, Reuben was guilty of incest with Bilhah, Rachel's maid and Jacob's w^ife in the second degree. The his- torian says significantly, "and Israel heard it." Nor did he forget the indignity until he had opportunity to take away Reuben's birthright (Gen. xlix. 4). Jacob at last, after an absence of about thirty years, — twenty in Padan-aram and ten on the homeward journe}^ — came to his father in Plebron. Rebekah is not mentioned here : she was probably dead. Isaac was now one hundred and sixty-three years old. He survived Jacob's return to Hebron thirteen years, and the sale of Joseph twelve ; and died at the age of one hundred and forty-seven years. Esau, reconciled to Jacob near the Jabbok, was present at his funeral ; and the two brothers buried him by the side of 866 S ACRED HISTORY. Abraham at Machpelali. From the time when Isaac gave his parting blessing to Jacob to the day of his death, an interval of forty-three years, nothing is said of him in the record. His significance in the history had ceased; and Moses dealt with his closing years as he had dealt with the closing jeavs, of Abraham, — he passed over them in silence. Here ends the ninth section of Genesis, beginning at chap. xxv. 19, and en- titled " the generations of Isaac." Here also a new period in the life of Jacob begins. But the historian, adhering to his invariable plan, clears the way for the career of Jacob and his family by disposing of the race descending from Esau. Gen. xxxvi. — Moses devotes the tenth and eleventh sections of his narrative to " the generations of Esau, who is Edom." This chapter undoubtedly contains the most ancient and accu- rate genealogy now in existence, of the famous Idumean races. An abstract of the same register appears in 1 Chron. i. 34-50. Esau's family were originally settled in Mount Seir, — the re- gion which extends from the Dead Sea to the eastern branch of the Red Sea, including what is now known as Petrfea. In later times the Edomites spread their habitations through the region south of Palestine. The register in Moses traces the social progress of the sons of Esau, showing how their families multi- plied and prospered, how the families expanded into dukedoms, how the dukedoms became consolidated into an elective mon- archy, and how the monarchy became renowned "before there reigned any king over the children of Israel " (ver. 31). The fickle and violent temper of Esau perpetuated itself in his posterity. Josephus describes the Idumeans of his day as "a turbulent and unruly race, always hovering on the verge of revolution, always rejoicing in changes, roused to arms by the slightest petition or flattery, rushing to battle as if they Avere going to a feast." ^ The sacred record preserves only a few minute details of their history ; none, indeed, except such as were needed to explain their relation in the after ages with Israel. It is notorious that the hostility of the seed of the serpent to 1 Bel. Jud., iv. 4, 1. THE TEAIL OF THE SERPENT. 367 the seed of the woman, which broke out in paradise, was twice renewed in the family of Abraham, the father of the faitlifuL At the birth of Isaac, Ishmael gave expression to his jealousy by mocking his half-brother , or, as Delitzsch interprets the text, by " making fun of him ; " or, as Paul has taught us, he ''persecuted" Isaac (Gal. iv. 29). His posterity, as we have seen, fulfilled the bad omen. And now, as if to preserve all the unities, the war was renewed in the family of Isaac. Esau, first in his person and afterward in his posterity, per- petuated these hostilities through the period, first and last, of two thousand years. Edom would not permit the Israelites in the wilderness to pass through his border, and drew the sword to enforce his refusal. In the time of David, Edom marched in force on the land of Israel. David mcit him in the " valley of salt," on the Dead Sea, gave him battle, and de- feated him with the slaughter of eighteen thousand Edomites (2 Sam. viii. 13) ; a victory which the king celebrated in the sixtieth Psalm. And so it occurred that in the days of jNIoses the heel of the woman's seed was bruised, in the days of David the head of the serpent was crushed. But the race of Esau seems to have brought out all its reserved forces of malignity and strength for an assault on Christ, the ideal Seed of the woman, and on his disciples, Herod the Great was, it is supposed, Esau's lineal descendant, and Herod began the bloody war by seeking to kill Jesus in his cradle. Herod the tetrarch, " that fox " (Luke xiii. 32), was the son of Herod the Great. He slew John the Baptist, and mocked the Son of God on the morning of the crucifixion. His wife was the grand-daughter of the first Herod ; she contrived the murder of John. Herod Antipas killed James, the brother of John, with the sword ; he intended to kill Peter. " He was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost" (Acts xii. 23). What effect the crimes and pun- ishment of this man had upon his son,^ the King Agripi)a of Paul, is not known. We hear only that he was graciously lifted out of this brood of serpents so far as to declare himself an "almost Christian." This story, among its useful lessons, calls 1 Joseplius, War, ii. 11, G. 368 SACRED HISTORY, our attention to threads running in and out, and giving unity and coherence to tlie narrative. The biography of the patriarch Jacob, between his return from Aram and his death, may be distributed into tliree periods. (1) His journey from the river Jabbok to Hebron occupied about ten years. From the circumstances tliat he built a house for himself, and tliat lie bought a piece of ground at Shechem, we may infer that he spent the larger part of these ten years in those places. (2) He sojourned in Hebron about twenty -two years, and then went down into Egypt. (3) He remained in Egypt seventeen years, until he died, aged one hundred and forty-seven years. During the second of these periods, Jacob's residence in Hebron, his sons were shepherds, leading their flocks in search jOf pasture-grounds and water-springs as far as Shechem and Dothan (chap, xxxvii. 12-17). From the sheaves of wheat which figured in the dreams of Joseph, it appears that they also tilled the soil. Jacob remained at home superintending, as best he could, the wanderings and labors of his sons, and communicating with them from time to time. Joseph brought to Jacob intelligence of the misconduct of some of his half- brothers, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. Jacob sent Joseph also to Shechem on a visit to his brethren there. In the twelfth and last section of Genesis, the historian enters anew upon the biography of Jacob. Gen. xxxvii. — This section is entitled "the generations of Israel," and it extends to the death of Joseph and the end of Genesis. It opens with a narrative of the sale of Joseph, which was made within a year after Jacob came to Hebron. It has been thought that " Joseph might be described as the moving principle of the subsequent history." But it remains true that Jacob was the head of the family, the third of the three older patriarchs ; and Joseph, with all his prominence in the removal of the family to Egypt, did not take the birth- right from Judah, nor Judah's place in the genealogy of Christ, nor did Joseph at his death pronounce the patriarchal blessing on his own sons and on his brothers. The true representative PEOGBESS UNDER JACOB. 369 of the chosen seed was Jacob. And Jacob conies before us m several important rehations to the history of redemption. (1) He left Canaan, a fugitive and an exile, with his staff only. He returned to his father's house, bringing with him twelve sons, great riches, repeated assurances of the Divine blessing, and the confirmation of his patriarchal position. Mean- while he had received the regeneration : the old nature that was within him, filled with selfishness and duplicity, had been emptied of those vices, and filled with the graces of the Spirit. He was a new man ; no longer Jacob, but Israel. (2) Abra- ham, Isaac, and Jacob were, each in his generation, the sole heirs of the covenant, their brothers having been laid aside. In Jacob's family, the covenant seed expanded into the com- pany of twelve tribes of Israel, the tribes to be consolidated in due time into a single commonwealth. (3) The chosen family, having been called to this high destiny, were separated from the peoples around them by the sign of circumcision, by their wor- ship at the altar of one God, the most liigli Jehovah, and by their purification at Shechem of the last traces of idolatry. (4) The removal of the chosen seed to Egypt, one of tlie salient points in the history of redemption, occurred in the old age of Jacob. The first decisive step towards this migration was taken in the sale of Joseph into Egypt. The word of God to Abram, uttered about a hundred and thirty years before, foreshadowed the enslavement and affliction of his posterity in some strange land, fur the period of four hundred years (Gen. xv. 13). Jacob did not take in the meaning of this warning. It did not, apparently, occur to him that this exile would take place in his day, or that it should be experienced in Egypt. Least of all did he anticipate the noble position assigned to his son Joseph in this epoch. His ignorance in regard to the whole case fol- lowed the general rule, according to which no prophecy can be unerringly interpreted until after it shall be fulfilled. There is no reason to suppose that he understood, in whole or in part, the providential plan to be accomplished by the removal of the chosen seed into Egypt. That important information is com- municated by Moses to his readers. 370 SACRED BISTORT. 1. Certain occurrences in the land of Canaan show that the removal thence of Jacob's family was necessary in order to pre- vent unrestrained intermarriage between the Israelites and the heathen, leading to a fusion of the races. Both Abraham and Isaac took special precautions against such misalliances. Simeon, Judah, and Judah's oldest son married Canaanitish women ; and it is probable that some or all of the brothers took wives of the daughters of the heathen, or of Ishmael and Esau. Forty-six grandsons went with Jacob into Egypt, and it is right to ima- gine that many of them had done likewise. The exposure of Judah's disgusting dissoluteness, in Gen. xxxviii., shows still further the necessity of some measure which would effectually prevent the chosen seed from being polluted and finally absorbed by the natives. The expedient which God adopted was the removal of the whole chosen family into another country. The suitableness of Egypt as a refuge from the perils here mentioned will be recognized, when it is remembered that there was no ordinary possibility of intermarriage between the Hebrews and the Egyptians. There could be no common table for husband and wife in a mixed marriage : " The Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians " (xliii. 32). Some writers have referred this antip- athy to the general aversion of the Egyptians towards all for- eigners, others to repugnant customs in the preparation of food, and others to the circumstance set forth in xlvi. 34: "Every shepherd is an abomination to tlie Egyptians." It may be con- jectured that their refinement was offended by the coarse man- ners of the nomadic races, for they habitually resented the inroads of the Bedouin shepherds and robbers of the adjacent deserts by refusing to eat with any shepherd. We approach still nearer the distinct ground of the aversion, when we re- member that the Hebrews slaughtered for their daily food and for their burnt-offerings the animals which were worshipped in Egypt (Exod. viii. 26). One or all of these particulars make it plain that the barriers to the intermarriage between the Hebrews and the Egyptians were well-nigh impassable. Indeed, not more than two or three instances are on record in which the SEASONS FOE GOING TO EGYPT. 371 barrier was overleaped ; the case of Joseph being every way exceptional. So far as the preservation of the Hebrew stock in its purity entered into the Divine plan, the object was fully accomplished by the removal of Jacob's sons to Egypt. 2. The expansion and consolidation of the chosen seed into a nation was conditioned on their expatriation. The problem to be solved was, how to develop the twelve patriarchs into a great people, in such manner as to secure their organic unity as one commonwealth, and to preserve their organic diversity as twelve tribes. It is difficult to see how this could be brought about, if the people had remained in Canaan. For their unity as a single people was liable to dissolution from two causes: first, their nomadic pursuits dispersed them over the whole land in search of pasture-grounds, and wells or pools ; and, next, dissensions among themselves, like those which separated Lot from Abraham, and Esau from Jacob, might be expected to spring up. The effect of these disturbances would be, to split them into small and perhaps hostile clans, and to defeat their consolidation into one nation, severed from all other peoples and united in themselves. This problem was readily solved in Egypt. The Hebrews were settled in one compact body in Goshen ; they were alienated from the Egyptians and from the Bedouin tribes in the deserts, by the prejudices of race. Their pursuits also, their traditions, the oppressions which they en- dured, and their expectations for the future, gave them the position and character of a peculiar people, and perpetually^ reminded them that they were one in origin, in history, and destiny. In Goshen it was that the sense of unity was planted in the Hebrew mind, which has remained inextinguishable through the ages. And while this organic unity was main- tained, the integrity of the tribal organization was protected during the sojourn in Egypt. The method by which the twelve tribes were kept distinct is not described ; suffice it to saj, the object was attained. 3. The relations of the Hebrews to their neighbors in Canaan were exceedingly critical. If the Canaanites of Jacob's day, dwelling in tents and watching their flocks, be compared with 372 SACEED HISTORY. the Canaanites of Joshua's day, living in walled towns and pro- tected by fighting men, it will be seen that they were rapidly growing in numbers and power. The time was at hand when the land could no longer accommodate both races; one must give way, or be subjugated to the other. Collisions between the parties, engendered by accident or malice, were inevitable. A serious controversy had already sprung up between the servants of Isaac and the Philistines, in regard to the wells in Gerar. The seduction of Dinah, Jacob's daughter, by the young prince of Shechem, had been avenged by her brothers in the cowardly slaughter of a whole city. There is reason to believe that wars of races were impending, out of which the sons of Jacob, if they escaped with their lives, would have emerged with the temper of the Bedouin — more Ishmaelites than Israel- ites. Moreover, the chosen people were appointed of God not only to supplant, but to destroy, the Canaanites ; to the end that these people might be punished for their iniquities, and that the country might be cleared for the occupancy of the chosen people. Neither Jacob's sons, nor his grandsons, nor their sons, would be strong enough to drive out the native tribes. Ac- cordingly, they were lifted up in a body and sent to Egypt, and kept there until they could return to the promised land with six hundred thousand fighting-men, able to overrun the country in a single campaign. 4. The plan of Providence in this exile contemplated a change in the habits of the people, suited to their destiny. The pilgrim father tilled the soil (Gen. xxvi. 12) , but, for the most part, the chosen people were shepherds, dwelling in tents, and leading their flocks throughout the whole land, from the wells of Beersheba to the slopes of Hermon. Their nomadic habits remained unchanged through two hundred and fifteen years, — from the arrival of Abram at Shechem, down to the migration of Jacob to Egypt. But for the fear of God that was in them, the patriarchs resembled the Arab sheiks, surrounded by their herdsmen and warriors. This stereotyped form of society had accomplished the purposes for which it had been ordained, and "the simplicity connected with it made them susceptible of ARTS LEARNED IN EGYPT. 373 Divine revelation." The time had come when the plan of Providence required a radical change in their mode of life, looking to an exalted theocratic civilization. It was appointed to the descendants of these wandering shepherds, to found a great commonwealth; to build, in the wastes of Canaan, cities and palaces, and a temple for Jehovah, all of them fenced about with walls and towers. They must also construct streets and roads, conduits, fountains and sewers, prisons and tombs ; invent instruments of music, and the implements and chariots of war. This transformation in the habits of the people was easily effected in Egypt. In the fertile province of Goshen the chil- dren of Israel, while they were few in number, were taught how to combine the cultivation of the soil with special training in the useful arts. Towards the close of the sojourn, they became skilled in agriculture (Deut. xi. 10), and they dwelt in houses framed with door-posts (Exod. xii. 4, 7). They built cities for Pharaoh, and in that employment they acquired a practical acquaintance with domestic and public architecture. Still further, they became skilled in the elegant arts. The gen- eration which went out of Egypt set up in the wilderness a tabernacle for Jehovah, adorned with curtains of fine twined linen, blue, purple, and scarlet. Its furniture was decorated with gold, beaten out into knobs and almond blossoms and crowns. They clothed their priests with holy garments ; even robe, broidered coat, mitre, ephod, with the curious girdle thereof, woven for glory and for beauty. They engraved the names of the tribes in onyx-stones, and set them in gold ; they made a breastplate for the high priest, of twelve gems, — the diamond, and the ruby, and other jewels rare and precious, — graven with the names of the tribes of Israel, like the engraving of the signet. They compounded costly spicery, holy oil and incense, a perfume, a confection after the art of the apothecary, tempered together, pure and holy, — the whole made after the pattern of heavenly things. They established a sanctuary, a ministry, and a worship, not unworthy of the sacred Presence (Exod. xxviii., xxx.). Now, this thorough transformation of simple nomads into husbandmen, architects, engineers, weavers, 374 SACBED HISTOEY. artists, and jewellers, could scarcely have been effected in Canaan. Egypt became, on a large scale, a school of industry and the arts for the Hebrews. The discipline was severe, but the education was thorough. 5. Israel was to receive, at the proper time, a Divine law, moral, civil, and ceremonial, and was to establish a sanctuary, a priesthood, and ordinances of worship wholly unknown on earth before. This was a work of extraordinary difficulty, even under the most favorable circumstances. The obstacles were insuperable in Canaan ; and this by a double tendency, — the propensity of the Hebrews, as discovered in the wilderness and even in the promised land, to adojjt the religious usages of the heathen, and the reciprocal willingness of the heathen to adopt the religious usages of the Hebrews. The absence of the family from Canaan, until it should become a great people, able to receive a Divine ecclesiastical polity, was indispensable. 6. By the removal of the chosen seed into Egypt, the kingdom of God was planted for a season in the heart of a great pagan empire. Once near the beginning and once near the end of the Old-Covenant dispensation, God was pleased to send his visible Church, as a whole, into the bbsom, first of Egypt, then of Babylon. In the part of the history now before us, mighty and powerful Egypt, the representative of the seed of the serpent, is brought into contact with Israel, the representa- tive of the seed of the woman. By the op^^ression which God's chosen people endured, by their trouble and anguish, was ful- filled the prophecy of the heel of the woman's seed bruised ; by the terror of the ten plagues, and the overthrow at the Red Sea, was fulfilled the prophecy of the head of the serpent crushed. We now come upon the assaults which the world-powers have made upon the kingdom of God, and upon the judgments by M-hich these hostile forces shall be paralyzed, one by one, until the last day. To Moses, God said, " The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch my hand upon Egypt" (Exod. vii. 5). By Ezekiel he said of Babylon, "I will set my glory among the heathen, and all the heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid THE HAND OF GOD IN EACH TUING. 375 upon them " (Ezek. xxxix. 21). Nothing further needs to be set forth showing that the removal of the promised seed from the promised land was wisely ordered. Nor could that measure be effected too soon. Just before the arrival of Jacob at Hebron, the slaughter of the Shechemites and the beastly behavior of Judah (chap, xxxviii.) made it plain that the time for quitting Canaan was rapidly approaching. About that time another painful occurrence, the sale of Joseph into Egypt, pointed to the country to which the chosen seed were to go. Gen. xxxvii. — The story of Joseph begins with Jacob's preference of Rachel to Leah, his undisguised partiality for her son Joseph over all the other children, and the natural jealousy of Leah and the other sons. This jealousy towards Joseph was aggravated by the unwise favoritism which Jacob displayed for Joseph ; and it rose into hatred when the foolish boy told them his two dreams, and his interpretation of them. " They hated him yet the more for his dreams and his words " (ver. 8). It is easy to see the hand of God in the indiscretion of Jacob, sending Joseph on a visit to his angry brothers in Shechem , in their removal from Shechem to Dothan, directly in the route of ordinary traffic from Syria to Egypt; in the conspiracy of the brothers to put Joseph to death so that his dreams might come to nothing ; in the stratagem of Reuben to gain time with the hope of saving the life of the lad; in the timely arrival at Dothan of the travelling merchants, on their way, not to Syria, but to Egypt ; in the distant relation- ship between the Ishmaelitish traders and Joseph ; in Judah's proposal to sell him to the merchants, thus enabling them to avoid fratricide, and yet get rid of the lad ; and, finally, in the hypocrisy and falsehood whereby they made Jacob believe that Joseph was dead, a deception which effectually prevented Jacob from sending to Egypt for the purpose of redeeming and recov- ering his son, albeit it was divinely ordained that Joseph should live and die in Egypt. What Peter said of the envious Jews is applicable to the angry brothers : they did whatsoever the hand and counsel of God determined before to be done (Acts iv. 28). The attempt of the Jews to defeat, by tlije 376 SACRED HISTOBY. death of Jesus, the Divme purpose concerning him, was the means of carrying that purpose into execution ; even so the attempt of Joseph's brothers to defeat his dreams by selling him into Egypt helped to bring the dreams to pass. Afterwards the accusation made by Potiphar's wife had a similar effect-, and the resistance of Jacob to the journey of Benjamin into Egypt finally secured the removal thither of Jacob liimself. MEANING OF JOSEPH'S SALE. 377 CHAPTER XXVI. JOSEPH IN EGYPT. CHRONOLOGY OF JOSEPH. {After Usher.) Cir. B.C Age 1746 Born. 1729 Sold .... . 17 1729 In Potiphar's house . 17 1729 Imprisoned . . 17 1718 Tells Pharaoh's dreams . 28- 1716 Promoted . . 30 Geu. xli. 46. 1716 Married . 30 1712 Manasseh born . . 34 xli. 51. 1711 Ephraim born . 35 1707 First visit of his brothers . 41 1707 Second visit . 41 1706 Jacob goes to Egypt . . 42 1689 Jacob died . . 56 xlvii. 28. 1635 Joseph died . 110 1. 26. 1427 Buried at Shechem ^• 11? x7^ - -1 J L- -L'- Josh. xxiv. 32 -_- •„ T7I i Joseph himself gave the clew to his career in Egypt, when he said to his brothers, " God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity iu the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me, but God ; and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler in the land of Egypt" (Gen. xlv. 7, 8). The efficient agency in his career was Divine. It was not his brothers, but God, who had sent him to Egypt twenty years before they came. The Divine purpose was to save the chosen seed from extirpation by a signal deliverance ; and to this end 378 SACBED HISTORY. God bad made him the second author of life to Pharaoh, and the prime minister of Egypt. He made no mention of his services to the Egyptians, because, with his nice discernment of the plan of Providence, he perceived that the preserva- tion of the Egyptians was incidental only to the preservation of the Israelites. Joseph understood also his true position in the sovereign plan. He was not, like Jacob, the sole patriarch, but was simply one of the twelve patriarchs. He wrought no miracles, he saw no theophany; he was inspired only for the interpretation of the dreams of his two fellow-prisoners and of the king. He received no new promises in regard to the progress of the kingdom of God. He was neither prophet, nor j)riest, nor sole representative of the covenant ; he was simply a man of affairs, viceroy, statesman. And yet, in the history, he is scarcel}^ less conspicuous than Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, and Daniel. The narrative of Joseph's early life in Egypt reveals the prep- aration which he received, from the grace and the discij)line of Providence, for his illustrious career. Gen. xxxix. — Joseph was, in the first place, the special object of the Divine favor. While he was in the service of Potiphar, the record says that " Jehovah was with Joseph, and he was prospered," and that " Jehovah blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake ; and the blessing of Jehovah was upon all that Potiphar had in the house and in the field." Potiphar himself saw that Jehovah was with him, "and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hands." The use of the ineffable name, Jehovah, the covenant- keeping God, five times repeated here, is most significant. It prepares the way for the story of Joseph's deliverance from the temptation which he endured in Potiphar's house, and of his escape from death. The crime laid to his charge was, under the laws of Egypt, punishable with one thousand blows, — a horrible death. Whether, as is quite possible, Potiphar was led to doubt the guilt of Joseph as charged, is not material. The accused was, no doubt by Divine interposition, rescued from death, and cast into prison. He was treated at first with JOSEPH'S PERSONAL PIETY. 379 great severity. " His feet they hurt with fetters ; he was laid in cliains of iron" (Ps. cv. 18). "But Jehovali was with Joseph, and showed him mercy." He became tlie under- warden. The governor of tlie prison did not supervise Joseph, " because that which lie did, Jehovah made it to prosper." His release from prison, his promotion to the position in Egypt next the throne, the rapidity with which he grew into the favor of the king and the priesthood and the people of Egypt, were among the signal tokens of God's favor. IMureover, Joseph was from his youth the servant of the God of his fathers. In Potiphar's house he was protected from sore temptation, not only by the nicest sense of honor towards the man who had committed every thing to his hands except his wife, but by the fear of God. " How shall I do this great wickedness, and sin against God ? " and " he fled, and got him out." He had been sold and delivered when he was but a stripling. His piety is to be traced to his early training in his father's house. Tlie idea of the true God was never absent from his mind. He declared to the baker and butler in prison that the interpretation of dreams belongs to God. When the king demanded the interpretation of his two dreams, Joseph said, " It is not in me ; God shall give Pharaoh an answer in peace ; " and again, " What God is about to do, he showeth to Pharaoh ; " and yet again, " The thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass." His promotion quickly followed. Gen. xli. 25-45. — By virtue of the Divine inspiration that was in him, Joseph told the king that his royal dreams pointed to seven years of great plenty in Egypt, to be followed by seven years of famine. He also suggested, by way of provision against the impending calamity, that one-fifth part of the grain produced in the years of plenty should be laid up in store- houses. Joseph's interpretation of the dream, and his advice, won the confidence of the king and his court. Pharaoh, though an idolater, openly declared that the " spirit of God " was in the prisoner, and said to him, " Forasmuch as God hath showed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou 380 SACRED HISTORY. art ; tliou slialt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled. Only in the throne will I be greater than thou." Pharaoh's good confession in regard to the only living and true God was not a piece of affectation : it is one of many incidents showing that the knowledge of God still lingered in the memory of mankind. The Pharaoh of Abraham's day recognized the hand of God in the plagues which fell upon his household (Gen. xii. 17). Abimelech, the Philistine chief, acknowledged that the God of Abraham and Isaac was to be feared and adored (xxi. 22, xxvi. 28). Even so the Pharaoh of Joseph's day was seized with the conviction that the prisoner before him was the servant of a true God, that his prophetic warning must be heeded, and that the young j)rophet himself was the divinely appointed savior of the people. He raised Joseph to the office of the grand vizier, and gave orders for his inauguration with imposing ceremonies. The signet-ring used in sealing royal edicts was put upon his finger, his person was adorned with the robe of byssus, and his neck was encircled with a golden chain, to which the scarabaeus was usually attached. A royal procession was formed. Joseph rode in the chariot next to the king's chariot ; and heralds went before the new ruler crying, Abrech, " Bend the knee." As if to emphasize the dignity and honor of the first minister of state, Pharaoh gave to him a new name, Zaphnath-paaneah, the " support of life," and procured his marriage with the daughter of the priest of the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis. Besides all this, the belief of the king in regard to the true God secured to Joseph, to the end of his life, liberty of conscience and worship. It is worthy of men- tion, also, that his elevation from obscurity to honor and power has its counterpart in the subsequent advancement of Daniel by Darius, and of Mordecai by Ahasuerus. In fidelity to the faith and worship of the chosen seed, these men did not exceed the example of Joseph. Although in close contact with heathenism, he escaped its contagion. He had been separated from the people of God in early life, and yet he kept the faith of his boyhood. He LOYALTY AND PRACTICAL WISDOM. 381 was the confidential minister of a pagan king; his wife was the daughter of the high priest of an idol temple ; his duties, we may believe, required him, from time to time, to be present at the celebration of false worship, yet there is not the least reason to suspect that he conformed or pretended to conform to its rites. He walked by faith in the promises to the older patriarchs. To his first son he gave the name of Manasseh, a word of gratitude, signifying that his past sorrow was swallowed up in present joy. He called his second son Ephraim, — a sign of longing for the promised land : " For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of afBiction." Towards the close of life, his vague longing gave place to an assured hope. Jacob was with Joseph in Egypt seventeen years. The son must have taken from the lips of the father the story of all the theoph- anies that had been seen in Canaan, together with the promises respecting a chosen seed and a chosen land, the blessings that were to abide there, and the greater blessings that were to flow thence throughout all the world. Looking unto these prom- ises, Joseph brought his sons to Jacob when he lay a-dying, that they might receive the patriarchal blessing. Jacob adopted the youths as his own sons under the Abrahamic covenant, and assigned to them separate and princely inheritances in Canaan ; so that Joseph through them obtained a double por- tion. And finally, Joseph at his death " made mention of the departing of the children of Israel, and gave commandment concerning his bones" (Gen. 1. 24, 25; Heb. xi. 22). Gen. xli. 46-56, xlvii. 13-26. — The practical wisdom dis- played by Joseph in his official position must be ascribed to the Divine guidance. He was sold into Egypt at the age of seventeen, and was thirty years old at his promotion. Accord- ing to Usher's chronology, his stewardship in Potiphar's house occupied less than a year, and his imprisonment lasted twelve years. He rose suddenly from the condition of a prisoner to the dignity of the grand vizier. And yet it cannot be said that he took office wholly unprepared for its duties. For Jacob had brought him up in the fear of God, the source in him of incorruptible purity and integrity. Next, he got the 382 S ACHED HISTORY. needed spiritual purification from the discipline of adversity and suffering. This thought is contained in Ps. cv. 17-19. He had been stolen and sold for a slave, tempted to sin, falsely accused, cast into prison without cause, his feet were bound in fetters, anguish entered his soul, his intimate faith was sorely tried. The arrogance of the stripling had disappeared from the chastened man of mature age and piety. And, further, his administrative ability had been partially developed b}" his experience as the overseer in Potiphar's house, and as the deputy warden in the prison. But, with all that, he was a stranger in Egypt, with little knowledge of its manners, customs, and public affairs ; and now the whole duty of making provision for a famine of seven years was suddenly cast upon him. Gen. xli. 46-57, xlvii. 13-26. — A few paragraphs, in all no more than twenty verses of our English Bible, are devoted to his plan for the accumulation, from the whole land, of food in seven years of plenty, and its distribution throughout the whole land in seven years of want. He began his official duties by making a personal inspection of all Egypt. He selected certain cities as centres of his administration. In them he ordered storehouses to be prepared, and appointed officers to superintend the work in the adjacent districts. By a royal edict the farmers were required to deliver one-fifth part of the wheat, produced year by year, to the cities near them. The accumulation was immense ; its abundance was like the sands of the sea. The record of receipts which was begun was finally abandoned for want of time. The dis- tribution of the food when the famine came was not less systematic and judicious. Owing to the improvidence habitual in a fertile region, like the banks of the Nile, the people soon exhausted their own meagre stores of food, and began to cry to Pharaoh for bread. Joseph removed the j)eople from their homes to the cities where the grain was kept, and to the suburbs ; a precaution lest any of the needy should be over- looked. In order to prevent waste and extravagance, the grain, instead of being given gratuitously to those who were JOSEPH'S POLICY CBITICISED. 383 able to buy, was sold to them for money. The rule of sale and purchase was rigidly enforced. When the money of the people was spent, Joseph took their cattle and other property, and then their farms, in payment. Thus Pharaoli became the abso- lute and sole owner of the soil, and of the movable property of the people. An exception, however, was made by the king in favor of the jDriests : they received gratuitously their portion of food, and " sold not their lands." Joseph's character and administration have been sharply criticised. Kalisch, for example, labors through eight closely printed pages to show that Joseph was "despotic, cruel, and heartless, anxious only for the aggrandizement of the regal power, and unfeeling for the miserable condition of the people," and that his character is "at once stained by the execrable meanness of sacrificing the happiness of the nation to subser- vient sycophancy of a tyrannical dynasty."^ In the defence of Joseph it is not necessary to suggest that his discretion in the matter may have been controlled by Pharaoh and his advisers. He had supreme authority, and was responsible for his policy. It is proper to say, however, that, until more is known of the condition of the peasantry of Egypt before and after the fam- ine, Joseph's accusers are not justified in aspersing his charac- ter or his administration ; least of all are they at liberty to assume that the sacred writers intended to cast reproach upon him. The indignation of Kalisch is somewhat robbed of its virtuous quality by an examination of the public policy adopted by Joseph. The worst possible land-law for America or Eng- land may have been the best possible land-law for semi-barbar- ous Egypt. Joseph lost no time, after the famine ceased', in providing adequate relief for the peasantry. He encouraged them to cultivate the farms that they had once owned. He supplied them with wheat for their first crop and for the sup- port of their families until the harvest. He fixed the rental at one-fifth of the crop from year to year; not an exorbitant charge, for the product of the soil was about thirty-five fold. Moreover, the revenue derived from the rent enabled the king 1 Kalisch on Gen. xlvii. 13-26. 384 SACRED niSTOET. to support a standing army for the protection of his subjects from the raids of the Bedouins roaming about the deserts, and to construct machinery and canals for the irrigation of the wheat-fields. And, as a still further return for the taxes and rents, the government undertook one of the greatest public works on earth, the artificial sea of Moeris. This immense reservoir received the superfluous water of the Nile in the time of its great floods. When the overflow failed, or the river ran low, the country was watered by canals and trenches leading from the artificial sea to the thirsty soil. By this means the recurrence of the famine was effectually prevented. The fur- ther defence of this great minister of state against modern cen- soriousness is furnished by the joint testimony of Pharaoh and the peasants. Before the famine the king said to his council- lors, " Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is the Spirit of God?" After the famine, when Joseph made known his land system, the Egyptians said, " Thou hast saved our lives. Let us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's servants " (Gen. xli. 38, xlvii. 25). The success of his administration presupposes in him the highest gifts of organization and administration ; the ability to solve a bread question which was complicated by obstinate conditions ; the wisdom which enabled him to preserve a steadfast loyalty to his royal master, and to secure the confidence of a starving population ; the sagacity to enforce obedience to his single will throughout a wide public service, and to guide the discretion of the king and the priesthood and the court. By a marvellous statesmanship he effected a revolution in the land-laws which first impoverished the people with their own consent, and then led them on to prosperity. Gen. xlii.-xlv. — The critics who can see nothing to com- mend in Joseph as a ruler ought not to be expected to admire him as a son and brother. In character-drawing, as in a picture, all the unities should be preserved. When Ucalegon's house is on fire, the adjacent house of Priam must also burn. Kalisch charges Joseph with duplicity, cruelty, and heartlessness towards his brothers when they came to Egypt to buy food. He con- JOSEPH'S COURSE DEFENDED. 385 cealecl his identity, called them spies, and threw them into a dungeon without cause, and released them without an examina- tion. In the case of Benjamin and the cup, he devised a new stratagem with almost demoniac cruelty. He assumed the part of a retaliatory Providence towards his brethren, and acted as a judge and avenger. In his desire to see Benjamin, Joseph " almost designedly tormented " his aged father, and made him- self the medium of dispensing the justice of God on the help- less old man. The duplicity of Joseph is established by a curious process of thought. While he is engaged in harassing his brothers, he cannot well suppress his tears when he sees their repentance, and hears the confession of their guilt ; the fervent and almost passionate love for his father and for Benja- min breaks forth in every part of the transaction, and when he can no longer refrain himself, he makes himself known to his brothers with the most loving, the most touching tenderness. And this, we are taught, was a remarkable duplicity. Thus far the hostile critics.^ Now, in explanation of Joseph's course it is not necessary to deny what cannot be well proved, that, in his first interview with his brothers, he intended to rebuke them for their cruelty in selling him as a slave. But it is evident that he begaji very early to consider the propriety of removing his father's whole family to Egypt in order to preserve them alive through the famine. But before doing that, he must subject the dispositions of his brothers to repeated and decisive tests. He must be assured that they were not in the same temper that led some of them, twenty-two years before, to desire to kill him, and all of them to sell him into slavery. If they should be settled in Egypt, would they recognize his official authorit}'- over them, and so voluntarily fulfil the dreams of his boyhood, or would they give way to their former impulses of jealousy and hatred towards him? Were they capable of repeating their former merciless deceptions on their father ? There too was Benjamin, the youngest son of Rachel. Had Jacob transferred to him the unwise partiality that he had lavished on Joseph, and had the 1 Kalisch on Gen. xli. 386 SACRED BISTORT. ten brothers transferred to the youngest-born their old jealousy towards him whom they had sold? And, finally, were these men at peace among themselves? Unless their behavior, and in some good sense their hearts, had been changed, their re- moval to Egypt would have introduced a turbulent population which would disturb if it did not paralyze Josej)h's administra- tion. He was at the head of Pharaoh's governmefnt; he must rise to the dignity of his responsible position, and do nothing ^ which might compromise him with the king, or work disaster on his family. It was his first duty to prove his brothers. He was helped in his investigations by perceiving at the very first, that while he identified the persons of his brothers, and understood their native tongue, they were in ignorance of his person, and of the language which he spoke. When they saw him last, he was a mere stripling : now he was a swarthy, care- worn official, in the fortieth year of his age ; his head and beard were shaved ; he was clothed in princely attire ; and he spoke a strange tongue, — addressing them always through an inter- preter (xlii. 23) ; and his brothers were sure that he was dead (xliv. 20). Joseph availed himself of his advantages. At the first interview he spoke roughly to them , he told them that they were spies, and reiterated the charge upon their denial of its truth. Having ascertained that Benjamin was at home with their father, Joseph told them that he would hold in custody nine of the ten there present until one of them should produce Benjamin. He sent them all to prison. At the end of three days he modified his order, telling them all to go home, except one whom he would hold as a hostage for the appearance of Benjamin. This severe discipline took effect. When they received Joseph's final order, they said to one another in his presence, but in their own tongue, " We are verily guilty con- cerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us, and we would not hear ; therefore is this distress come upon us." Reuben added, " Therefore, also, his blood is required." Joseph overheard and understood it all. The brothers were penitent and humble, and worthy of his confidence. Overcome by emotion, he suddenly withdrew, TUB TESTS ENDURED. 387 and burst into tears. It is right to imagine that among his conflicting emotions, joy was predominant ; not only the joy of a good man over a sinner that repents, but, in Joseph's case, a peculiar joy in discovering the change which had been wrought by Divine grace in the hearts of his brothers. But he must prove them still further. So soon as he regained his composure, he selected Simeon as the hostage, and bound him before the eyes of the brothers. He then ordered his servants to fill their sacks with wheat, to provide them with food for their journey. And because he could not consent to extort payment for the staff-of life from his own famishing flesh and blood, he ordered their money to be put into their sacks. Gen. xliii. — On their second visit, Benjamin came with them. Joseph nearly lost his self-control when he saw his mother's son : " Is this your younger brother, of whom ye spake? And he said, God be gracious unto thee, my son. And Joseph made haste ; for his bowels did yearn for his brother ; and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his chamber, and wept there." He made a feast for his guests, and seated his brothers at the tables in the order of their seniority. And as if to see whether they would show jealousy towards their younger brother, he gave to him the largest and daintiest morsels on the tables. The historian describes with glowing word-painting the final test to which he put them, in the story of the sacred goblet found in Benjamin's sack ; the dismay and anguish of the lirothers when crime was, as they thought, brought home to Benjamin ; the inimitable pathos of Judah, beseeching Joseph to reduce him to slavery, and allow Benjamin to go home, lest their old father's gray hairs should go down with sorrow to the grave. Joseph could stand it no longer. He threw off his reserve ; he said, " I am Joseph , " he fell upon Benjamin's neck, and kissed him, and kissed all his brothers, and wept upon them. He knew now that liis brothers respected him, and loved their father and one another, and that the way was open for their happy settlement in Egypt. In due time Jacob and his entire household, with his servants and cattle, were transported with Pharaoh's full consent to 388 SACEED HISTORY. the fertile and beautiful plains of Goshen. And so was ful- filled the word of God to Abraham, that his seed should go down into the land of Egypt. Jacob was assured that his removal was in the plan of Providence ; for when he reached Beersheba, on the border of the desert, Jehovah appeared to him once more, and encouraged him to proceed on his journey, with the repetition of the patriarchal promises. And if Jacob thought that Joseph had been unmindful of his distress in demanding the presence of Benjamin in Egypt, he might well excuse his son for Avhat was simply incidental to the wisest possible method ; and he might easily forget the sorrow of a few days in the comfort of a serene and honored old age. One of the truths most clearly revealed in this history is the sovereignty of God and the freedom of man, in whatsoever comes to pass. God said to Abram, " Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them " (Gen. xv. 13). Here was God's decree. The sale of Joseph into Egypt was in pursuance of that decree. For he himself said to his brothers, " God sent me before you to pre- serve you a posterity in the earth, and to save j'our lives by a great deliverance " (xlv. 7). It has been already shown that the removal of Joseph to Egypt was brought about by events which are easily traced as far back as the birth of Jacob and Esau. To this it may now be added that Joseph's imprison- ment, his Divine gift of inspiration in the interpretation of dreams, his release from prison, his promotion and brilliant ad- ministration, the visits of the brothers, and the removal of the family to Egypt, are successive links in the chain of events, wherein God was the efficient cause, and the settlement of the chosen seed in Goshen was the issue. The narrative brings before us also the many persons, in many lands, througli whose instrumentality the Divine purpose was brought about. Isaac, Rebekah, Esau, Jacob, in Canaan ; Laban, Leah, and Rachel, in Mesopotamia ; Reuben, Judah, and the Ishraaelitish merchants, in Dothan ; Potiphar and his wife, the butler, the baker, and Pharaoh in Egypt, — appear one by one in the story. Each of them in his turn wove his own separate SOVEREIGNTY WORKING WITH FREEDOM. 889 thread into the tapestry, and stepped aside to give place to another, knowing nothing of the rare and luminous device, even the Divine ideal, which was graduall}'- coming out on the hidden side of the canvas. Each of them, also, revealed some personal motive or passion : Rebekah her maternal pride, Esau his re- venge, Jacob his partiality for Rachel and Joseph, the brothers their jealousy, Reuben his lingering kindness towards Joseph, Judah his moderation, the merchants their love of gain, Poti- phar's wife her desires, Pharaoh his superstition in regard to dreams, Jacob's sons their renewed natures, and Jacob his love for the long-lost Josepli. These many men and women, differ- ing in race and customs, good and bad, heathen and Israelites, distributed through many countries and many years, known to each other or unknown, wrought unconsciously together unto one definite end, the foregone and predeterminate purpose of God. On the part of man was the absolute freedom of his will, choosing and refusing, doing and not doing, at every step, according to his own good pleasure. On the part of God was his providence executing his own absolute decrees. He prompted all that was good, overruled all that was evil. He adjusted both the good and the evil to his general plan ; he suf- fered no link in the chain to be misplaced or lost ; he allowed neither undue haste nor undue delay ; and he bound together events as remote as the sale of a mess of pottage and the sale of a human being, and events as natural as the dreams of a lad in Canaan, the dreams of the prisoners and of the king in Egypt. At last, through the intricate and tangled maze, God brought to .pass every word that he had spoken, never once interfering with the liberty of man. Aside from the value of this part of the record as a development of the plan and promise of salva- tion, it is invaluable as an example of the supreme dominion of the Creator, interwoven, if we may so say, into the freedom of the creature. 390 SACRED EISTOEY. CHAPTER XXVII. THE CHOSEN SEED IN EGYPT. Gen. xlv. 17-21, xlvi. 28-34, xlvii. 1-12. —Having ascer- tained what had passed between Joseph and his eleven brothers, Pharaoh cordially invited Jacob and all his house- hold to remove to Egypt. His offer, by way of inducement, was, " I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat of the fat of the land." He sent carriages to convey them from Canaan ; he urged them to leave behind them their household effects, for, said he, " the good of the land of Egypt is yours." On their arrival, the king greeted them with a warm welcome. He gave audience to a delegation of the brothers, and, at their request, he assigned to the family the land of Goshen. He intrusted to their care the royal droves of cattle that were kept there. He also invited Jacob to a personal interview, treated him with the utmost veneration, and accepted from him a blessing. These incidents indicate the special favor of Providence towards the chosen seed, and the unlimited confidence which Pharaoh placed in the wisdom and integrity of Joseph. His confidence was not misplaced, for Joseph dealt frankly with his royal master. Remembering that all shepherds were an abomination unto the Egyptians, he required his brothers to be frank with the king, and tell him that they had been shepherds from their youth, they and their fathers. The land of Goshen, or the land of Rameses (xlvii. 11), lies between the desert of Arabia Petrsea on the east and the Tanitic arm of the Nile on the west. The modern traveller looks in vain for the attractions which it offered to Jacob's EXCELLENCE OF THE LAND. 391 family. Dr. Geikie quotes a remark of Napoleon, to the effect that under a good government the Nile invades the desert; under a bad one, the desert invades the Nile. The neglects and abuses of wretched misgovernment and of degraded peoples have reduced the region which, in Jacob's day, was "the best of the land," to a desert of sand and loose stones covered with ruins. AVhat it was, as the Hebrews knew it, is described by an Egyptian scribe writing at the time. The chief city, in its borders, " is a pleasant place to live in. Its fields are full of good things, and life passes in constant plenty and abundance ; it has a daily market; its canals are rich in fish; jts lakes swarm with birds ; its meadows are green with vegetables ; there is no end of the lentiles, and melons which taste like honey grow in its irrigated fields ; its barns are full of wheat and durra, and reach as high as heaven ; onions and leeks grow in bunches in the enclosures ; the vine and the almond-tree and the fig-tree grow in the gardens ; there is plenty of sweet wine, the produce of Egypt, which they mix with honey." ^ Robinson adds, that while the western district was the garden land of the Nile, the eastern portion was suited for pasturage, — two advantages seldom found united. There the Israelites lived together as one family, and were separated from the Egyptians by religious and social peculiarities. Joseph's resi- dence was near by ; and when the time for the exodus came, the people found themselves on the very edge of the desert through which they were to pass on their way to the promised land. The family became, very naturally, fond of their new home. They had exchanged famine in their native Canaan for plenty in Egypt. After the famine ceased, Joseph was perhaps still in power, certainly in a position to protect their persons and property. But there is reason to believe that neither Jacob nor his sons contemplated a permanent residence in Egypt. Joseph urged his father to come to him, on the ground that there were yet five years of famine (xlv. 11). The deputation of the brothers told the king that they had come simply " to 1 Geikie: Hours, etc., vol. ii. pp. 3-5, and the authorities cited there. 392 SACRED HISTORY. sojourn " in the land, and because " the famme was sore in the land of Canaan" (xlvii. 4). But although they held their possessions by a good title, — a gift from the crown, — and though their numbers were multiplied, and their riches in- creased, they were not allowed to forget that they must return at some future time to Canaan. The burial of Jacob, and after that, the burial of one after another of his sons in Canaan, and the arrangements made for the transfer thither of Joseph's remains when they should go back to the land of promise, indicate tliat the earlier generations did not look upon Egypt as their home. After Joseph's death they were suddenly enslaved, and closely confined to the house of bondage. Then their eyes were opened, and they saw that the time of oppres- sion in a strange land had come, of which Jehovah had spoken to Abraham. The duration of the sojourn in Egypt raises one of the most intricate problems of sacred history. Many of our most approved authorities compute the period at four hundred and thirty years ; many, equally distinguished, reduce the computa- tion by one-half, to two hundred and fifteen years. Josephus is quoted on both sides of the question, showing how early the difficulty was perceived.^ Among Christian scholars, the longer reckoning is supported by Rosenmueller, Hoffman, Ewald, Keil, Hengstenberg, Kurtz, Kalisch, George Rawlinson, Geikie, and Canon Cook. The shorter reckoning is adopted by Augustine, Usher, Murphy, Baumgarten, J. A. Alexander, Ellicott, and Jacobus. From this conflict of opinion it may well be inferred that the question cannot be solved by the information now before the world, and that no great importance is to be attached to the subject, else it would have been cleared up by the sacred writers. As the case now stands, the only treatment called for by the problem is a fair statement of its conditions, and of the solutions which have been proposed. The evidence, as of record, is as follows (Gen. xv. 13): " And God said to Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them ; 1 Antiq., ii. 15, 2; ii. 9, 1. Wars of the Jews, v. 9, 4. CnnONOLOGY OF THE BONDAGE. 393 and they shall afflict them four hundred years. And also that nation whom they shall serve, will I judge ; and afterward shall they come out with great substance." The four hundred years was, according to the usage of prophecy, a round number for four hundred and thirty years (Exod. xii. 41). Some have thought that these years covered the period of the sojourn of the patriarchs in Canaan, and the period of their posterity in Egypt. And yet the prediction points to an enslavement, not a sojourn simply, but an enslavement in one land by a single nation. God would visit that nation with sore judgments ; the enslaved should come out of the place of bondage, should come out laden with treasures, at the end of four hundred years. Egypt alone, not Egypt jointly with Canaan, was dis- tinctly and exclusively pointed at in the vision of Abram. It was made known explicitly at the giving of the covenant in its first stage ; it was exactly fulfilled at the exodus. Moses, describing the departure of Israel from Egypt, writes ; " Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years" (Exod. xii. 40); This language, taken from the Authorized Version, supports the longer computation. All doubt, if any there be, is removed by the Hebrew text, as it is understood by the Revisers. Their reading is : " Now the sojourn of the children of Israel, which they sojourned in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years." It should be added that the advocates of the shorter chronology rely on the readings exhibited in the two oldest versions- of the Pentateuch, — the Septuagint and the Samaritan. The text in the Septuagint, the gloss being here printed in Italics^ is : " The sojourning of the children of Israel, which they sojourned in Egypt and in the land of Canaan, was four hundred and thirty years." The reading in the Samaritan is : " The sojourning of the children of Israel, and of their fathers, which they sojourned in the land of Canaan and in Egj'pt, was four Iiundrcd and thirty years." The rejoinder i& to the^ effect; that the original Hebrew text is of paramount authority; that the LXX. are no- torious for the liberties they take with the Hebrew Scriptures ; and that, in this instance, they may have sought to harmonize 394 S ACHED RISTOBY. their chronology with the system then prevalent in Egypt. In regard to the Samaritan reading, it is shown that the translator has followed the SejDtuagint, introducing an additional gioss.^ With respect to Paul's statement in Gal. iii. 17, to the effect that the law was given four hundred and thirty years after the covenant with Abraham, it is to be borne in mind that Paul was writing to the Jews, who used no other Bible than the Septuagint version. He chose, in his argument, to follow that reading, rather than confuse the matter which he had in hand, with a vexed problem in chronology .^ The apostles and evan- gelists frequently quoted the Septuagint, even when that version deviated from the Hebrew text. Next, on the hypothesis of the shorter computation, the in- terval which separated the birth of Moses from the death of Joseph is reduced to sixty-two years. Joseph was about thirty- seven years old when Jacob removed to Egypt. Joseph died at the age of one hundred and ten, or seventy-three years after Jacob came. Moses was eighty years old at the exodus ; leav- ing, of the two hundred and fifteen years, only sixty-two years for the interval between the death of Joseph and the birth of Moses. Usher assigns sixty-four years to the interval. It may well be doubted, whether within so short a period as sixty- two or sixty-four years the restoration of the old Pharaohs was firmly established ; the services of Joseph forgotten ; the Hebrews enslaved not only, but so thoroughly unmanned and demoralized, as to submit to pitiless drudgery, to the degradation of the lash, and to the smothering of their newly-born children. Something may be learned in regard to the length of the so- journ in Egypt, from the number of the Hebrews at the exodus. The number of men capable of bearing arms at that time was about six hundred thousand, yielding a population of at least two millions. Jacob's following when he came into Egypt may be estimated at, say, two thousand. Now, it is difficult to be- lieve that within two hundred and fifteen years two thousand persons could, under any natural law of increase, expand into one thousand times that number. Upon a review of the whole i Keil and Delitzscb on Exod. iii. 37. 2 Rawlinson's Egypt and Babylon, p. 198. DYING JACOB IS INSPIRED ISBAEL. 395 case it may be said that the longer computation is sustained by the testimony now within our reach. Jacob lived seventeen years after his settlement in the land of Goshen, and Joseph survived his father fifty-four years. The narrative of this period is limited to a few leading events. The prosperity of the Hebrews is described. Then follow the bless- ings which Jacob pronounced on Joseph's two sons, and the prophetic outline which he drew of the future career of the. twelve patriarchs and of their descendants. The Book of Gene- sis closes with the death of Jacob at the age of a hundred and eighty-nine years, and his burial in Hebron, and with the death of Joseph at the age of a hundred and ten years. A single paragraph describes sufficiently the condition of the family during the life of Joseph. Under his protection, and the favor of the Egyptians for his sake, the Hebrews grew rapidly in numbers and wealth. They were not impatient to return to the land of Canaan. And yet, that Canaan was to be their future home, was made clear by the dying words of both Jacob and Joseph. Gex. xlviii. — Jacob pronounced his patriarchal blessing upon Joseph's two sons in the retirement of his sick-chamber. Con- trary to Joseph's remonstrance, his father gave the preference to Ephraim over his older brother Manasseh. Jacob followed the example of his father Isaac, except that Jacob did intention- ally what Isaac did unwittingly. Jacob adopted Ephraim and Manasseh as his own sons, and assigned to each a separate portion in the land of promise. He declared that the tribe of Manasseh should become a people, and should be great ; but the tribe of Ephraim should be greater, and his seed should become the fulness of nations. Nothing is better established in the sub- sequent history than the supremacy of the tribe of Ephraim over the tribe of Manasseh. It should be noticed here, that in the beginning of the chapter it was Jacob who talked with Joseph, but it was Israel that pronounced the benediction, for it was as Israel that he was the bearer of the promises; and what he uttered \yas not a pious wish of the patriarch Jacob, but the inspired prediction of the prophet Israel. 396 SACBEB HISTORY. Gen. xlix. — Shortly after this mterview, and just before his death, Jacob summoned his sons into his presence, and pre- dicted what should befall them in the distant future with special reference to the time of the Messiah. His death was about to remove the last of the three patriarchs who had each in his turn been the sole representative of the chosen seed, and the sole organ of inspiration. His command was : " Gather yourselves together and hear, ye sons of Jacob, and hearken unto Israel your father." Here again the distinction appears : Jacob was his name as their natural father, Israel was his name as their spiritual father and the prophet of Jehovah. And to him they listened while he foretold to each his destiny, beginning with the oldest. Reuben, being his first-born son, was entitled to the birthright ; and the birthright consisted, as we have already seen, in a double portion of the patrimony, the headship over the family, and the office of the priesthood. But the indignity which he had put upon his father (xxxv. 22) cost him that great inheritance. The double portion passed to Joseph's two sons, the chieftainship lapsed to Judah, and the priesthood to Levi. The later Scriptures show that the portion of Reuben's posterity in Canaan was on the east of the Jordan. They were a feeble people ; and neither judge, prophet, nor ruler sprang from the tribe. Simeon and Levi were full brothers by birth. " They were joined together in the brotherhood of treachery and cruelty " at the slaughter of the Shechemites (xxxiv.). By these crimes, they had forfeited not only the right of primogeniture which had lapsed from Reuben, but their right also to a distinct share in the land of Canaan. Jacob said, " Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce ; and their wrath, for it was cruel : I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel." This oracle was explained and fulfilled when Simeon received in Canaan, not an independent inheritance, but a few scattered cities in Judah's lot (1 Chron. iv. 27) ; and to Levi were awarded forty-eight cities in different districts. And yet neither of these tribes was excluded from the community, or from the spiritual bless- ings of the chosen seed; although they lost, by reason of THE COMING OF SHILOII. 397 tlie sin of their ancestors, an independent landed estate with definite metes and bounds. And, still further, the tribe of Levi, as a reward for its loyalty at a later period, in the midst of general a})ostasy, regained the favor of God, and obtained the birthright of the priesthood which had lapsed from Reuben (Exod. xxxii. 2G-29 , Deut. xxxiii. 8). The dismembered tribe of Simeon dwindled into insignificance, and soon became almost extinct. The leading feature in the prophecy comes out in the ]\Ies- sianic promise respecting Judah. Israel assures him (1) that he shall enjoy an unchallenged supremacy over his brethren. " Thy brethren shall bow down to thee ; " that is to say, the chieftainship which Reuben lost fell to Judah. (2) He will maintain his supremacy by force of arms. He shall be the " ancestor of the lion-tribe." His prowess and power shall ripen into irresistible strength. He is the young lion, then the full-grown lion, then the old lion (or, as some read the text, the lioness fierce in the defence of her young), going up to the lair in the mountains, and who will dare to beard the lion in his den ? (3) This dominion shall continue till Shiloh come. The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh come ; And unto him shall the obedience of the peoples be. (Revision.) Who is Shiloh ? Some receive it as a personal term pointing to Solomon ; others as impersonal, describing a restful or peace- ful age ; others as local, referring to a town of that name in Canaan, so that the phrase may read "till he shall come to Shiloh." Neither of these conjectures is satisfactory. The last of them, although entertained by respectable authority, is liable to three exceptions: the town did not exist in Jacob's day ; the tribe of Judah never came to Shiloh as tlie seat of government; nor did the loss of their supremacy occur in that city. The great body of interpreters, both Jewish and Chris- tian, apply the title to the Messiah. The later Scriptures show 398 SACRED HISTORY. that Juclali became the most powerful tribe of the twelve ; that out of Juclah came David and Solomon, who reigned over all Israel , that David's sons in an unbroken line succeeded to his throne, and that their right to reign, altliough long in abeyance, was never lost, in contemplation of law, down to the birth of Christ. In point of fact, the sceptre did not depart from Judah's family till this Shiloh came. And when the Son of the Highest came, Jehovah gave to him the throne of his father David ; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for- ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end (Luke i. 32, 33). He was the true rest, or Shiloh : " Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you" (John xiv. 27). Afterwards when the elder told John to behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah, he looked, and behold a Lamb ! He was in Jacob's prophecy both the "Lion of the tribe of Judah," and the Lamb, the emblem of innocence and patient suffering, and gentleness, — the Shiloli.^ Judah became, therefore, the ancestor of Christ, and the fourth Messianic prophecy was made a part of his legacy. To the crowning glory of the tribe, Jacob adds the assurance of consummate worldly prosperity. So productive shall be his inheritance, that the ass will be allowed to browse on the tendrils of the choicest vine ; so profuse shall be the vintage, and so prolific the flocks, that Judah shall M'ash his clothes in the blood of the grape ; his eyes shall sparkle with wine, and his teeth shall be white with milk. Upon Joseph the patriarch poured out the fulness of a loving heart. He had already adopted Ephraim and Manasseh as his own sons, had assigned to each a large inheritance in the land of promise, and foreshown the future exaltation of Ephraim. Now Israel invokes upon Joseph by name, and, through him, on Joseph's sons, special blessings. In his worldly prosperity he shall resemble the luxuriant vine, its roots moistened at the well, and its branches overrunning the wall. He shall be an archer also, at first sorely wounded, but at last his bow and his right arm shall abide in strength derived from the mighty God of Jacob, — the Shepherd and Rock of Israel. Divine blessings 1 Hengstenberg: Christology, vol. i. pp. 47-90. VIVID PROPHETIC PICTUEES. 399 shall rest upon Joseph from the heavens, from the soil and streams, — blessings greater than those that came upon his fathers, rising even to the tops of the everlasting hills. These profuse benedictions were partly the expressions of Jacob's love as a father for his son, and partly the oracle of Israel, as a prophet, in regard to Joseph's renowned posterity in the person of his younger son Ephraim. But such was his nice prophetic sense, that he did not intimate that either of the tribes of Joseph's sons should rise to supremacy in the commonwealth, or give birth to the Messiah. This distinction was reserved for Judah. From him the covenant seed were called Jews; and " salvation is of the Jews." Jacob disposed of the six tribes which were of subordinate importance in the history, with a few touches of word-painting. Zebulun dwells by the seashore in the promised land. Issachar is a bony beast of burden, choosing to lie down in rich pastures rather than to struggle for liberty. Dan is a formidable and wily enemy, a serpent in the way, biting tlie heels of the horse so that its rider falls backward. Gad is fierce and warlike , driving back the foe, and then harassing his rear. Asher luxuriates on dainties fit for the tables of kings. Naphtali runs like a deer on the hills, and is eloquent in prose and verse. Benjamin is a wolf; a warrior eager for booty, and chasing his prey from morning till night. These six oracles are left some- what obscure by their brevity, and the metaphorical forms in which they are expressed. Dr. Candlish says that they " are so brief and enigmatical as to defy, at this distance of time, any thing like a really discriminating application of them, or a trustworthy historical vindication of them." " They doubtless suggested marks and badges, of which a college of heralds might have made good use in emblazoning the escutcheons and banners of the tribes." ^ In other words, we may say that the strong ass of Issachar, the horned viper of Dan, the swift deer of Naphtali, and the wolf of Benjamin served in some actual or ideal way the purposes answered by the eagle of the United States, the lion and unicorn of England, the flying 1 Candlish : Gen., vol. ii. p. 301. 400 SACRED HISTOBY. dragon of China, and the white elephant of Siam. But their prophetic significance should not be overlooked. Biblical scholars have pointed out certain historical events correspond- ino; with some of these utterances. Jacob's foreknowledo'e of the warlike character of Dan, Gad, and Benjamin, is verified by the subsequent history ; Naphtali's words of beauty appear in the song of Barak (Judg. v.) ; and the inheritanceas signed to Zebulun and Asher corresponds to the terms of the oracle. Since their locations were determined by lot, they could not have been foreknown except through the gift of prophecy. ^ Still further, the six tribes which are most prominent in Jacob's address are most prominent also in the subsequent histor}-; whereas the six tribes which are put in the background by Jacob occupy the background in the history. Undoubtedly Jacob spake as a prophet. And any fair comparison of his utterances respecting his four older sons and the two sons of Joseph, with their historical position and career in the promised land, will abundantly establish his Divine inspiration. That gift in him cannot be impeached, except on the pretext of rationalism that all prophecy is impossible. And what will the rationalists do with Shiloh? What, indeed, will they do with all the benedictions and discriminating oracles uttered by Jacob? From first to last, in every word and syllable, Jacob's utter- ances presuppose the return of the chosen seed to the chosen land. It is impossible to explain them on any other supposi- tion. In reading them we have the sense, not of Jacob an old man dying in Egypt, but of Israel, the prince of God, standing with his sons around him on the heights above Samaria, map- ping out the country into twelve portions, and leading them in a journey through the length and the breadth of the land, establishing each of his sons in his inheritance. In these oracles Jacob responds by faith to the theophany at Beersheba on his journey into Egypt : " I will go down with thee [said God] into Egypt, and I will also surely bring thee up again " (Gen. xlvi. 4). That expectation dictated the oath which 1 Keil and Delitzsch, Canon Cook, Murphy, on Gen. xlix. FUNERAL MARCH TO HEBRON. 401 Jacob exacted from Joseph, and the charge which he laid upon his sons, to bury him with his father in Hebron. He would not consent that his body should moulder in a strange land ; he would be buried with his fathers, and make his grave where his children might be buried around him. Gen. 1. — Jacob is dead. The imagination is filled with the picture of his burial. We witness the grief of Joseph, bathing the face of his father with tears; the process of embalming the body by the Egyptian physicians, and the mourning through seventy days in the court of Pharaoh. We observe the order of the funeral procession, composed of Joseph and his brothers and sons, and of the officers of the palace and the rulers of the land. We follow the stately cavalcade, guarded b}' chariots and horsemen, making its way slowly through the wilderness, around the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, and over the fords of the Jordan. We reverently wait upon the funeral ceremonies through seven days at Atad, and sjmipathize with the respect- ful wonder of the Canaanites at the "grievous mourning of the Egyptians." We proceed to the cave of Machpelah, where Jacob's sons buried him with " all Egyptian and Hebrew honors." Fifty years afterwards Joseph died. He had taken an oath from his brothers, " God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence." The}' might not build a p3'ramid or a pictured corridor in Egypt to receive his remains, nor adorn his tomb with the storj^ of his exploits and honors. They might not, shortly after his death, bury him in Canaan. They should embalm his body, and keep it safely in Egypt, and carry it with them to the promised land when they themselves should go thither. The significance of the immediate burial of Jacob in Canaan, and of the retention in Egypt of Joseph's body, are every way remarkable. When Jacob died, his sons were happy and prosperous in Goshen. Joseph was their protector. Yet they were strangers in the land of plenty and peace. Egypt was not their dwelling-place, for all the promises were bound up with Canaan. Jacob taught them that lesson, by directing them to bury him in Hebron. The lesson was repeated as often as his sons, one by 402 SACRED HISTORY. one, were carried over into Shechem, and laid in the sepulchre there (Acts vii. 16). When Joseph died, fifty-one years later, the long years of oppression and misery were at hand. By faith in the promised deliverance, Joseph "gave commandment concerning his bones" (Heb. xi. 22). The possession of his remams reminded the Israelites of the promises of God which were associated with them. While they were passing through the furnace of affliction, the sacred mummy, bearing on its bosom the effigies of Joseph, the great deliverer, was in some sort the prophecy and guaranty of an escape from the fires. The sight of the coffin gave them courage when the sunshine of Egypt was turned to darkness, when its riches were cor- rupted, when its luxuries became privations and woes, and the people sighed and groaned by reason of their bondage. NEW EPOCH IN OUR UISTORY. 403 CHAPTER XXVIII. BONDAGE. A NEW epoch in the kingdom of God is marked by the sepa- ration in tlie Pentateuch of the Book of Genesis, the history of the patriarchate, from the Book of Exodus, the history of the growth and maturity of the embryo which was planted in Egypt, and struggled to its birth as a great nation in the night when the hosts of Jehovah went out from the land of bondage. The narrative in Genesis ends with the death of Joseph, and is resumed in Exodus with the accession to the throne of a new king who knew not Joseph. De Wette calls attention to what he calls the " immense gap " between the two books, and is of the opinion that it is " useless to attempt to restore the history and establish any connection." Bauer says that " the historian leaps over the lengthened period without the slightest suspicion of its importance." ^ To these strictures, the first reply is that a minute history of the interval was not within the plan on which the Pentateuch was composed. The time was occupied by the natural expansion of the people in numbers, wealth, and power, and by the process of training them for their destiny. No importance was given to the period by the disclosure of any new promise, or covenant, or theophany, or Messianic prophecy, or of any truths before unknown. The prediction in Gen. xv. 13, to the effect that the chosen seed should dwell in a strange land, covers the ground. The second answer is that the his- torian fills up the " gap " by the recapitulation with which he opens his narrative in Exodus. He repeats the names of Jacob's sons, notices the death of Joseph, and of his brothers, 1 Kurtz : Old Gov,, ii. 145. 404 SACEED HISTOEY. and of all their generation, and intimates that up to that time the children of Israel were at the height of their prosperity. He then introduces the story of the oppression by mentioning that a new king came to the throne, who was ignorant of Joseph. The narrative of the intermediate period, though brief, is sufficient, and the continuity of the history as a whole is maintained. ExoD. i. 8-22. — Here begins the narrative of the bondage in Egypt : " and there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph." This remark may mean that the new king intentionally ignored, or " remembered to forget," the services of Joseph. But, according to the commonly received interpre- tation, the lapse of time, together with a change of dynasty and other revolutions, had obliterated the memory of Joseph and of his superb administration. The task of identifying the new king belongs less to biblical science than to Egyptology. From the days of Eusebius (A. D. 270-340), it has been thought that the accession of this new king is accounted for by Manetho's story of the Hyksos. The Hyksos were shepherd- kings from the East, who overran Egypt, expelled the royal family, and raised one of their own sheiks to the throne. At the end of five hundred and eleven years the Egyptians drove away the invaders, and restored the native Pharaohs to power. The suggestion therefore is that the new king was either a Hyksos, or a legitimate Pharaoh who came to the throne after the shepherd-kings were deposed, under one of whom Joseph had ruled in Egypt. A true Pharaoh would naturally refuse to know him. But the name of this new king and his dynasty has not been identified ; for the question whether he was a Hyksos or an acknowledged Pharaoh belongs to an obscure period of more than five hundred years. Nor is it certain that the shepherd-kings reigned in the Delta, the region occupied by the Hebrews. And, further, the truth of Manetho's story in re- gard to the Hyksos is vigorously impeached. Keil declares that " not a single trace of the Hyksos dynasty is to be found either in or upon the ancient monuments." ^ Hengstenberg asserts 1 Keil and Delitzsch, i. 420, note. PUARAOUS IDENTIFIED. 405 that " the more recent and solid Egyptian researches have not discovered the smallest trace of the supremacy of the Hyksos in Egypt.i Among others, Uhlmann has shown this." Haver- nick defends at large this position.^ These authors hold that the story of the Hyksos is a cUstorted account of the settlement of the Israelites in Egypt and their expulsion, a clever device invented by Manetho to hide the chagrin of the Egyptians at the overthrow of Pharaoh. A discovery in Egypt made in 1883 seems to have deter- mined the questions so long debated in regard to the dynasty which was in existence near the close of the bondage, and in regard to the names of the kings who were concerned in the oppression and deliverance of the Hebrews, and, proximately, the date of the exodus. Excavations were made in the mounds of Tel-el-Maskhutah, not far from Tel-el-Keber, where the Arabi-Pasha war ended. The mounds were identified as the ruins of Pithom, one of the " store-cities " built by the Hebrews. The fact was also brought to light, that Rameses H. was the Pharaoh who compelled the Hebrews to build the town.^ This discovery supports the opinion that the bondage and exodus took place under the nineteenth dynasty. From these and other sources we gather that Seti I. was the Pharaoh under whom Moses was born ; that Rameses H., the son of Seti, was, when young, associated with his father on the throne ; that he reigned sixty-seven years ; that he is the king whose death is recorded in Exod. ii. 23 ; and that he was succeeded by his thirteenth son, Manephtah. By the slaughter of the innocents, Seti became the Herod of his dynasty ; Rameses H. was the Pharaoh of the oppression, and Manex)htah was the Pharaoh of the exodus. Moses was born in the reign of Seti, fled to Midian from the wrath of Rameses H., and returned from his exile during the reign of Manephtah.* Rameses II. was raised by his father Seti I. to the joint occupancy of the throne at the age of sixteen, and reigned sixty-seven years, as is supposed. His reign covered the hot- 1 King, of God, i. 240. 2 Havernick, Introd. to O. T., p. 235. 8 Dr. S. H. Kellogg in Pros. Rev., 1S83. * Osborne : Ancient Egypt, pp. 71-79. 406 SACBEB HISTORY. test period of the bondage. This young king became the greatest of all the Pharaohs. By his subjects he was known as Rameses the Great, and as Miameon, the beloved of Ammon, Jupiter Ammon, Lord of the Diadems, God of both Horizons, Son of Ra ; by the Greeks he was called Sesostris the Great. He waged innumerable wars, and that means the slaughter of thousands. He was the most enterprising builder of all the Pharaohs, and that means the sacrifice of tens of thousands. His insatiable passion for public works ought to be taken into account in any conjecture we may form in regard to the labors which he exacted of the Hebrews. He built temples and reared monoliths and colossal statues. His temples were ap- proached through long avenues of sphinxes. Out of the solid rock at Ipsambul he hewed two spacious subterranean temples, and set up at their doors four human figures sixty feet high. Monuments of the despot in countless numbers cumber the ground in Egypt and Nubia. Benonin says that of the thirty- two obelisks which yet exist in Egypt and elsewhere, twenty- one are either wholly or in part due to him. One of the huge granite columns which he set up in Thebes is now in Paris. The magnificence of his palace was rivalled by the solemn grandeur of his tomb. Among his public works was a chain of fortifications along the entire north-eastern frontier of Egypt, for one hundred and sixty miles. By his command immense dikes were built on the Lower Nile and in the Delta. Canals were dug, and cities were built. His domestic relations are brought to light by his marriage with his daughter, the Princess Bent-Anat, and by the number of his cliildren, one hundred and seventy .1 His long and cruel reign gives emphasis to the notice of his death in Exod. ii. 23 : " And it came to pass in pro- cess of time " (in the course of many days. Rev.') " that the king of Egypt died." It is well said by Lenormant, that " the calm judgment of history confirms the account of his tyranny given in Exodus." Moses says that the Hebrews built for Pharaoh treasure-cities, or magazines, for the materials of war and for 1 Milman: Hist. Jews, vol. i. p. 115. Osborn: Ancient Egypt, pp. 70 seq. Geikie: Hours, etc., vol. ii. pp. 74 seq. CEVELTY OF R AMESES II. 407 provisions, in Pithom and Rameses. The Egyptians "made their lives bitter with hard bondage in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field" (Exod. i. 11-14). Mr. Stanley Pool, in describing the recent excavation at Pithom, states that the ten-acre area within the walls, which are twenty- two feet in thickness, is full of large square pits, separated from each other by square partitions, the bricks made both with and without straw. The narrative in the Book of Exodus, although very brief, furnishes sufficient information in regard to the leading events of the times. The numerical increase of the Hebrews ; tlieir growing wealth; the change which occurred in the policy of the Pharaohs towards them, together with its occasion, causes, and results ; the relations of the Hebrews to the dominant race and to each other; their social and religious condition; the stern discipline by which they were educated for the future ; the means by which their amalgamation with the Egyptians, or, as an alternative, their extermination, was prevented; the preparation made for the inevitable exodus, — all these essen- tial points are cleared up, together with the name of the royal oppressor, the dynasty to which he belonged, and his place in that dynasty. Pharaoh avowed the motives which induced him to afflict the Hebrews. Their prodigious growth in numbers and power awakened in him the apprehension that they would soon become greater and mightier than the Egyptians ; that they would make common cause with his enemies, and would in the end quit Egypt forever. If, as it is altogether likely, the king was aware of the hope cherished by the Hebrews in regard to their return to the fatlierland, his fear of losing them is explained. He adopted, in the first instance, the policy of repression ; and when that failed, he resorted to wholesale infanticide. For the purpose of repression, he reduced the Israelites to compulsory service, under the command of overseers, upon the public works ; his intention being to utilize their skill and labor, and at the same time to check the increase of their population, and extirpate their love of liberty and their spirit of inde- 408 S ACHED HISTOBY. pendence. Severities like these were no novelties in Egypt. Homer says they regarded all strangers as enemies, and either killed or enslaved them. According to Herodotus and Diodorus, the Egyptians, as a matter of pride, employed prisoners and slaves, instead of the natives, in building their monuments.^ One might, with a certain satisfaction, accept the tradition that their kings, after death, were called to account for cruelty to their serfs. The Hebrews did not, as has been imagined, labor on the Pyramids. These piles were standing in the days of Abraham. The " treasure-cities," Pithom and Rameses, were built in Goshen, and the toils of the laborers were in some degree modified by the nearness of their homes. So it was that the king saw, to his chagrin, that the bondsmen multiplied in proportion to their afflictions. Their oppressor was thwarted, though he knew it not, by the supernatural powers that took the side of the oppressed. And yet, instead of accepting the omen, he ventured on another expedient. He imbittered the lives of his unhappy victims with a more cruel bondage, in mortar and brick not only, but in the irrigation of the land by use of the tread-wheel, — a drudgery which gradually paralyzed the most strenuous muscle, and filled the springs of life with malarial poison. Ebu-Ezra sees in these labors the progress of the cruel exactions. From the public works in Goshen, the people were sent far away into the service of irresponsible masters scattered throughout Lower Egypt. Rosellini, a cele- brated Egyptologist, describes a picture discovered in a tomb at Thebes, in which workmen, whose physiognoni}^ and beards show that they are not Egyptians, are represented as making brick, whilst two Egyptians are shown standing by and armed with sticks, ready to fall on the laborers. Copies of the picture may be found in the books. An abundant caution may lead us to hesitate in regard to Rosellini's confident opinion that these slaves are Hebrews ; but the picture may be taken as a fair representation of the sufferings which in all probability were inflicted upon them by these pitiless taskmasters.^ The 1 Hengstenberg: King, of God, ii. 24, i.2. 2 Hengstenberg: Egypt and Books of Moses, pp. 80, 81. FAILURE OF li AMESES' POLICY. 409 mortality wliicli niiglit be expected to pursue the miserable bondsmen may be estimated from two circumstances. In the century of Rameses the Great, the Pharaoh of the oppression, thirty thousand laborers died in constructing the Mahmoudieh Canal with their hands, without picks or spades or wheel- barrows. In the reign of Pharaoh Necho, one hundred and twenty thousand men died in excavating the canal to unite the Nile and the Red Sea ; and, after all, the scheme was abandoned in obedience to an adverse oracle.^ It would seem, however, that no such mortality fell upon the Israelites ; for the king, as if disappointed by the failure of his policy of repression by hard labor, resorted to infanticide, in order to reduce the numbers and break the spirit of the people. He directed the mid wives to kill all the newly-born male chil- dren of the Hebrews ; and when the order was evaded by a clever device of these women, he commanded the mothers to drown their infant sons. By a refinement of cruelty to which the Herod of the future was not equal, he required parents to execute the sentence of death on their own children. But the plan failed through the maternal tenderness of the women, and the faithfulness of God to his promises. As if to empha- size the defeat of the heathen king, the historian is careful to mention that Moses, the future deliverer of Israel, was born and saved alive in the midst of the wholesale infanticides. This part of the history is, in some sort, prophetic of the future. The slaughter of the Hebrew children under one Pharaoh was avenged in the destruction of the first-born in Egypt, in the reign of another Pharaoh ; and the hardening of the heart of the first oppressor, under the repeated failures of his plans to diminish the numbers and to subjugate the ^^'ill of the people, re-appeared in the hardening of the heart of his successor when the plagues poured their fury upon him. The birth of Moses gives intimation of the purpose of Jehovah to rescue his people from bondage. Their spiritual servitude called not less urgently for Divine interposition. The moral and religious degeneracy of the chosen seed is fully exposed in the 1 Geikie: Hours, etc., ii. 79, 80. 410 SACRED HISTORY, record. They served tlie gods of Egypt, descending even to the disgusting goat-worship of tlie heathen. The Lord said to Moses, " They shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils" (lit, shaggy ones, he-goats) " after whom they have gone a-whor- ing" (Lev. xvii. 7). At Sinai they set up the calf, a favorite Egyptian idol. The inveterate crime of idolatry did not disap- pear until the captivity in Babylon, when, by a singular course of providence, the Hebrews were cured in pagan Chaldsea of a moral leprosy contracted in pagan Egypt. The worship of Jehovah by the bondsmen in Egypt went gradually into disuse. What Moses said to Pharaoh (Exod. viii. 26) indicates the entire suspension of the Hebrew sacrifices in Egypt, at least as a public service. Nor is it probable that the bondsmen were allowed to rest from labor on the sabbath ; the phraseology in Exod. xvi. 22, 23, indicates the renewal of an appointment of the holy day which had fallen into neglect. The spiritual de- generacy became desperate. That it became hereditary, as it were, is shown by the repeated murmurings and insurrections in the wilderness, and more decisively by the judgment of God, under which every grown man who came out of Egypt, two only excepted, died in the wilderness. Yet, in the midst of this apostasy, a certain number served the Lord. Paul mentions the parents of Moses, and Moses himself, among those who were illustrious for their faith (Heb. xi. 23-25). There were midwives, also, who "feared God, and did not as the king commanded them." Besides these instances of piety among individuals, there are several indications of a religious conscience in the body of the people. One is to be recognized in the proper names used among them, in which the syllable Ul, the Hebrew term for God, appears ; as in Elzephan, Eleazar, Jemuel, and Uzziel (Exod. vi. ; Num. iii.). Another indication is found in the scrupulous observance of circumcision in Egypt (Josh. v. 5) ; and what is still more decisive, Moses, as the ambassador of Jehovah, the God of their fathers, got a hearing among them (Exod. iii. 15, vi. 3). How far these cir- cumstances are to be referred to a lino-erinsr recog^nition of Jehovah as their God, and their own covenant relation to him. UXDER A DOUBLE BONDAGE. 411 and how far they are to be resolved into an attachment for tra- ditional ideas, cannot be known ; but the true heirs of the cove- nant were not extinct. There was an Israel according to the spirit, as well as an Israel after the flesh ; there was " an election within an election." The double bondage of the chosen seed — a bondage to the taskmasters, and a bondage to false worship — was in some sense prophetic of a new development in the history of redemp- tion. True, the Church is almost apostate, but it is the only visible kingdom of God on earth. The sincere worshippers of God are in its bosom ; these he will not forsake. They are his people by covenant with Abraham ; he will not be unmindful of his covenant. To Abraham he said, " That nation whom they serve will I judge, and afterwards they shall come out with great substance ; " and to Jacob, " I will go down with thee into Egypt, and I will also surely bring thee up again." The case, as made, demands the interposition of Jehovah, lest his word and covenant and oath should fail, and the plan of redemption which is inextricably woven into the career of the Hebrews should come to naught under the wondering stars. The dignus vindice nodus was taken into God's hands. He will, in his own time, loosen it by making bare his arm for the deliverance of his people. The nature of the deliverance is foreshown in the condition of Israel. The vine must be brought out of Egypt, and trans- planted in a new region. The Church must be removed to a place where the knoAvledge of the true God may be revealed within it, and where all the institutes of true religion may be established. Not only this, but a work of spiritual renewal must be wrought within the Church. Of what avail were it to transplant, unchanged, these degraded bondsmen? There are idolaters enough in Canaan already; why add two millions to their number? They must be taught to fear the Lord, and to worship him only ; a new heart and a new spirit must be given to tliem. A twofold deliverance was indispensable : on the one part, external, from slaverj- in Egypt; on the other, spiritual, from their native and acquired depravity. In short, 412 S ACHED BISTORT. there must occur a national exodus and a national regenera- tion. These are the two luminous points in the history of the departure from Egypt, and the discipline of the wilder- ness. The basis, the rule, and the end of the approaching deliver- ance are set before us. The basis was the grace of God. If it be asked, Why did not God cast off this rebellious people ? the answer must ^-esolve it into his distinguishing grace ; first choos- ing, then redeeming from bondage, then planting in Canaan, this particular stock of the race. The same grace, meanwhile, secured the salvation of such of them as were ordained unto eternal life. The rule of the deliverance was the covenant made four hundred and thirty years before with Abrah:.m. This instrument is steadily brought forward in the history as its controlling element. When God heard the groaning of the children of Israel, " he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and Jacob " (Exod. ii. 24). " I have established ray covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan ; " . . . "I have remembered my covenant;" ... "I will bring you unto the land concerning which I sware to give it to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob " (Exod. vi. 3-8 ; comp. Ps. cv. 8, cvi. 45). It is impossible to comprehend the meaning of these events, except by observing how thoroughl}^ they were controlled by the stipulations of this covenant, the organic law of the forces which shaped and ruled the entire future of the chosen seed. The end of this deliverance was the glory of God in the salvation of the race. The final purpose of God's dealings witli Israel was not to set up an opulent and powerful nation, nor to secure the spiritual welfare of the Hebrews alone, but the salvation of the Gentiles as well. The Jews were the beneficiaries not cfiily, but the vehicles also, of saving grace ; the dispensation which was granted to them was pre- paratory to that which is more glorious, and which is this day the inheritance of us all. The way for the coming of Christ was prepared in tlie period before the bondage, and in all the events which marked every succeeding era, through the golden age of Judaism in the reign of David, thence onward to the TRIBAL OBGANIZATION. 413 decline of the commonwealth in the period of the monarch}^, and its fall in the reign of Herod. Towards the close of the sojourn in Egypt, the providential plans for the exodus approached maturity. When the family went into Egypt, they expected to remain there no longer than the continuance of the famine. Before the new kinsf arose, and while the people were free, some of Ephraim's sons attempted to anticipate God's appointments, and to take pos- session of Southern Palestine, but were repelled with heavy losses (1 Chron. vii. 20-22). But as the set time approached, the signs of its coming appeared. By way of outward prepara- tion, the population had swelled to numbers sufficient to en- counter the hostile tribes in the wilderness, and to gain, with the help of God, by an easy victory, the conquest of Canaan. To a large extent the chosen seed were, even to the last, isolated both locally and socially from the Egyptians, gathered in a compact body, and dwelling on the edge of the wilderness through which their journey was to be made. The Hebrews were fully equipped for the march. Instead of an organization founded on the Egyj^tian idea of caste, they received a form of government founded in the idea of a family. Tribal distinctions, proceeding from the original patri- archal unity, were established. These tribes lived under the rule, not of a common sheik, but each tribe was governed by its own ruling elders. While Moses was in exile in Midian, God said to him, " Go and gather the elders of Israel together," etc.; "And thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt." Again we read that Moses and Aaron, on their arrival in Egypt, "went and gathered together also the elders of the children of Israel" (Exod. iii, 16, 18, iv. 29). Afterwards it is sttid thixt " Moses called for all the elders of Israel," and gave them directions in regard to the passover. Still later, he smote the rock " in the sight of the elders of Israel" (Exod. xvii. 5, 6). Notices to the same effect occur, over and over again, in the subsequent history. This organization was peculiar to the Hebrews, and contributed largely to the success of the exodus. 414 SACRED HISTORY. Next, by way of tlie preparation of will and heart for the journey, all the traditions of the people, religious and national, pointed to Canaan as their future home. The gift which God made to Abraham of Palestine as the sure and everlasting possession of his posterity ; the promise that the fourth genera- tion should actually enter on the inheritance ; the oath which Jacob when dying had exacted from Joseph respecting his burial in Hebron ; the funeral caravan of the family, with the pomp of Egypt and Israel, fulfilling the terms of the oath; the commandment which Joseph gave concerning his bones, and the presence among them of the coffin waiting for the exodus, — were memorials which had neither passed away nor lost their power. And yet influences more potent than traditional ideas were needed to loosen the attachment of the Hebrews for Egypt. The problem of an emigration, such as was contemplated in the plan of Providence for this people, has been mastered but once in the history of the world, and that instance is in this record. Colonies innumerable have been planted by adventurers like the Phoenicians, by survivors of a ruined country like the Trojans, by exiles for conscience' sake like the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, by trading companies, by gold-hunters, and land- hunters. Indeed, the race has spread over the earth, from its original centre in Asia, by a series of successive migrations. These, however, have been offshoots simply from their native stocks, a few departing from the many. Armies of picked and disciplined soldiers have marched through vast regions in flying columns, cut off from the base of supplies, and leaving the rear iniprotected ; but when, before or since the days of Moses, has an entire nation, counted by millions, with its helpless ones, the young, the old, the sick, been taken up in a body, formed into a caravan, and transplanted to a distant region ? When has a whole people voluntarily quitted a country like Egypt, at that time the garden and granary of the world, unrivalled for its rainless sky and perpetual verdure and inex- haustible soil and luxurious climate ? When did such a nation willingly abandon a region like the Delta of the Nile, and NOT SELF-EMANCIPATED. 415 boldly strike out into a region like the Desert of Arabia? The attachment of the Hebrews to Egj^pt is shown in their murmuring in the wilderness at Moses for bringing them away, and their attempt to return (Exod. xvi. 3 ; Num. xi. 5, xiv. 4). The problem of the departure was solved partly by the rod of oppression; and yet not wholly, for the experience of the American Colonization Society shows how difficult it is to persuade even an enslaved race to leave the soil on which they have been born, for the home of their ancestors. The afflictions of the Hebrews in Egypt were intolerable, and they threatened to become perpetual. The death of the tyrant who murdered their infant sons brought no relief, and the bondage was as cruel as ever (Exod. ii. 23). But their sufferings did not lead them to make insurrection with one accord, and to fly self- emancipated out of Egypt. Their cry came up unto God, and God heard their groaning. Their sufferings prepared them to depart at the time when God would plague the Egyptians until the oppressors themselves should, for very terror, send his people out of the land (Exod. xii. 30-33). 416 SACBED HISTORY. CHAPTER XXTX. MOSES. ExoD. ii., iii., iv. 1-17. — Stephen divides the life of Moses into three equal periods (Acts vii. 23, 30, 36). He was in the Egyptian court forty years, in Midian forty years, with the Israelites in the wilderness forty years. ExoD. ii. 1-10. — "• When the tale of bricks is doubled, then comes Moses," saith the proverb. In his person, the future of the chosen seed was at this time represented. This one man was the deliverer of Israel, the commander of the people through forty years, the inspired historian, the Divine oracle, and the type of Christ as a prophet. His biography shows how he was prepared by his birth, his preservation from death in infancy, his education in Egypt, and his discipline in INIidian, for his great offices. He was a Hebrew child, of the tribe of Levi ; Amram was his father, and Jochebed his mother. Like the greater Prophet of whom he was the type, he was a partaker of the flesh and blood and of the reproach of the people whom he served and saved. His birth took place when Pharaoh's edict of infanticide was in full force. The Assyrian mythology supplies a curious parallel with the story of the infant Moses ; " I am Sargina, the great king, the king of Agani. My mother gave birth to me in a secret place. She placed me in an ark of bulrushes, and closed up the door with slime and pitch. She cast me into the river." ^ Pharaoh's edict secured not the untimely death of the child, but his adoption as a son by a princess of the blood-royal. She is identified by the latest authorities with Thermouthis. She was the daughter of Seti I., 1 Fausset : Bib. Cyclo,, p. 485. OPPORTUNITIES FOR LEARNING. 417 and the sister of Rameses the Great ; Rameses and Moses having, as is supposed, been born about the same time. Accord- ing to this chronology, INIoses flourished in tlie nineteenth dynasty ; its date being not earlier than B.C. 1462, nor later than B.C. 1340.^ Moreover, Moses was born in the reign of Seti I., the Pharaoh of the bondage ; fled from Egypt in the reign of Rameses II., the Pharaoh of the oppression; and re- turned to Egypt in the reign of Menephtah L, the Pharaoh of the exodus. The parents of Moses, and the princess who adopted him, resided, as is supposed, near Tanis, or Zoan, now San, east of the Tanitic branch of the Nile. His Hebrew mother became his nurse. We must presume that she did not fail to pre-occupy the mind of her child with Hebrew ideas and sympathies. In due time he became an inmate of the palace. The absence of self-consciousness, which was one of the leading characteristics of Moses, led him to withhold an important fact supplied by Stephen : " He was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyp- tians." The Hebrew and Egyptian traditions agree in saying that he was educated at Heliopolis, and grew up there as a priest under the name of Osarsiph or Terithen.^ This tradi- tion cannot be fully verified. But it is well known that the learning of Egypt in the age of Moses, besides the arts of reading and writing, embraced the sciences of arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, and astronomy. The pyramids and other colossal structures, which still exist in their integrity or ruins, point to the knowledge of architecture and its kindred arts. That some branches- of animal and vegetable chemistry and of medicine were cultivated, is proved by the practice of embalming the bodies of the dead, at that time a familiar but now a lost art. The ease with which Moses reduced to powder the golden calf in the wilderness indicates in him a practical acquaintance with the working of metals. Among other orna- mental arts, the Egyptians excelled in the use of bright and enduring colors in painting. Music on many instruments gave animation to their religious ceremonies. The song of Moses at 1 Osborn : Ancient Egypt, pp. 70-77. ^ Stanley : Jewish Ch., i. 117. 418 SACBED HISTORY. the Red Sea shows that he was educated in the art of poetry, and the mstrumental accompaniment of Miriam and the women reveals the invention of the timbrel and the dance (Exod. xv.). Stephen's estimate of the attainments of Moses is justified by the breadth of his understanding, by his educational advan- tages as the foster-son of Pharaoh's daughter, and by the length of his residence in Egypt, forty years, before his flight into Arabia. The overruling providence of God is conspicuously set forth in the narrative. The birth of Moses, under the rule of a typical forerunner of Herod, would seem to be ill-timed: he was exposed at the Nile to premature death. " The pleasures of sin " and the " treasures of Egypt " lavished upon him in the palace of the royal princess threatened his manliness and purity. His education as an Egyptian, possibly as a priest, separated him apparently from the Hebrews, and identified him with their oppressors. And yet the providence and grace of God shaped all these influences towards the vocation that was in reserve for him. Schiller's remark is, "An Egyptian by birth would have lacked the requisite patriotic impulse, the national interest for the Hebrews, to attempt their deliverance. A mere Hebrew, on the other hand, would, under his oppres- sion and thraldom, scarcely have had the energy and courage indispensable for such an a'rduous undertaking. What device, therefore, did Providence choose? It selected an Israelite, but withdrew him in early infancy from the miseries of his people, and enabled him to store his mind with all the treasures of Egyptian wisdom ; and thus the Hebrew brought up as an Egyptian became the instrument by which the nation was redeemed from slavery."^ Exod. ii. 11-14; Acts vii. 23-28; Heb. xi. 24-26. — When Moses was fully forty years old, he entered on the second epoch of his life. " It came into his heart " — doubtless it was a Divine suggestion — "to visit his brethren, the children of Israel," for the purpose of looking into their unhappy condition, and of ascertaining what he could do for their relief. Accounts 1 Die Sendung Moses, x. pp. 414, 415. PUTS urn SELF IN THE WRONG. 419 of this visit are given by Moses very briefly, by Stephen more in detail, and by Paul who describes also the gracious influence by which Moses was guided. It so fell out that he saw an Egyp- tian, no doubt a taskmaster (Exod. ii. 11), flogging a Hebrew. The officers were armed for that purpose, according to some, with the bastinado ; according to others, with the long heavy scourge made of tough and pliant wood, a growth of Syria. Moses doubtless knew that the castigation was not of excep- tional but of habitual cruelty (Exod. v. 6-14). The remark of Moses, that the victim was "a Hebrew, one of his brethren," explains the natural indignation under which he slew the Egyp- tian on the spot, and hid his dead body in the sand. On the next day he attempted to restrain a Hebrew who was wrong- fully maltreating another Hebrew. The assailant resented the interference of Moses : " Wilt thou kill me as thou didst the Egyptian yesterday ? " Moses perceived that the man whom he had protected from cruelty had betrayed the secret. Pharaoh heard what Moses had done, and sought to slay him. With a full appreciation of all that was noble in the impulse of Moses, it must be said that he put himself in the wrong. The brutal taskmaster deserved punishment, possibly death. But the con- science of Moses accused him of unjustifiable homicide. He did not slay his man until he had looked this way and that way, and saw that there were no witnesses ; he hid the body in the sand ; he made no defence when charged with the act, and, he fled the kingdom. That he identified himself with his brethren, , not on his own motion but under a Divine impulse, may be assumed. That his position in Pharaoh's court clothed him with a certain authority, may also be assumed ; for the taunt of the angry Hebrew, " Who made thee ruler or a judge over us?" may imply that Moses was asserting some legal right in his first ^ visit to protect his kinsmen, and in his second visit to require the Hebrews to keep the peace among themselves. And yet it must be said, that, in killing his man, he acted without color of authority, either from God or the king. Augustine utters the dictates of an enlightened conscience when he says, comparing this act with that of Peter in smiting Malchus, " Each of them, 420 SACRED HISTORY. not by blamable cruolty, but by excess of a brave spirit, passed the ordinary rule of justice ; each through hatred of another's wickedness, the one through love of his brother, the other of his Lord, — carnal in both cases, yet love, — committed a sin.''^ Stephen points out the error of Moses and the error of the Hebrews in this transaction: "He smote the Egyptian, for he su[;posed his brethren would have understood how God by his hand would deliver them ; but they understood not" (Acts vii. 24, 25). Moses erred in attempting to enter prematurely on his vocation as the liberator of the Hebrews, running before he was sent. He was also presumptuous, thinking that by " his hand," by his personal wisdom and strength, God would deliver the people. The Hebrews were stupid and unbelieving. They failed to see in the boldness of Moses, and in God's special care over him, the evidence that he was divinely chosen to be their deliverer. He risked every thing in striking a blow for their emancipation. They, in their want of manliness, abandoned him. Judgment took effect upon both parties. Moses was driven into exile for the term of forty years, and the bondage of the Hebrews was prolonged through the same period, — the life- time of a generation. After the same example of unbelief then- posterity wandered in the wilderness forty years. It should be added that Stephen ilsed this incident to show that the Jews had rejected Jesus just as their fathers had rejected Moses; God having appointed Jesus to save them, just as he had before appointed Moses to break the yoke of their bondage. Paul celebrates in glowing terms the heroic faith exhibited by Moses, when he identified himself with the peo2:)le of God. Pie voluntarily abandoned his position as the adopted son of the royal princess -, he renounced the pleasures of sin, and all share in the wealth of Egypt. Nor was this done by a youth in a moment of enthusiasm, but by a self-poised man, forty ^ years old. When it is said that he rose above the i)leasures of sin, it is not intimated that he was chargeable with the vicious indulgence of his senses or appetites or passions, but simply that he resisted all the seductive temptations to which he was 1 Alford: Exod. ii. 12. AFFLICTION EICHER THAN EICHES. 421 exposed in a serai-tropical climate ; in a luxurious home on a soil of boundless fertility ; among a people who neither loved nor feared God, and who, if we may give such a turn to the words of Peter, were walking "in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries." The value of the treasures of Egypt, an expectation of which he relinquished, may be measured by the magnificence of the Hall of Columns, begun by Seti in the early life of Moses, and finished by Raraeses the Great after Moses was grown. The Egyptologists invite us to imagine a forest of towers ; columns a hundred and forty in number, the highest seventy feet high and eleven feet in diameter, covered with bas-reliefs and hiero- glyphics , the hall three hundred and forty feet long and one hundred and seventy wide. Champollion says of it, " Were I to attempt a feeble sketch, far from highly colored, I should jtass for an enthusiast, and perhaps for a fool." "No language," says Ferguson, " can convey an idea of its beauty." ^ More- over, in order to estimate the faith by which Moses was con- trolled, we must consider what he chose in place of what he refused. For he chose to suffer affliction with the people of God, rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin ; and he con- sidered reproach like that which Christ, or that which Christ's disciples, endured, to be greater riches than all the wealth of Egypt. Paul closes his eulogium on Moses with the remark, " By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king ; for he endured as seeing hira who is invisible" (v. 27). The first clause refers not to his early flight from Egypt, but to his triumphant departure in command of the Hebrew hosts at the exodus. The last clause should be taken in connection with the end of verse 26 : " He had respect to the recompense of the reward," — even life everlasting, a place by the side of Elijah with Jesus at the transfiguration, and the authorship of a song to the Lamb, sung by the glorious company of martyrs. ExoD. ii. 15-22. — On his escape from Egypt, INloses fled into the deserts east of the Red Sea. The narrative is silent in regard to the journey until it brings him to a sheep-well, the 1 Osboru: Ancient Egypt, pp. 153, 154. 422 SACRED HISTORY. sign of a country inhabited by Bedouin shepherds. Moses sat down by the well. Here the story of Jacob's arrival at Padan- aram repeats itself. The daughters of a neighboring sheik bring his flock to the well. With his characteristic manliness, Moses protects the shepherdesses from the rudeness of a party of untamed hirelings, and assists them in watering their flock. The Egyptian, as the maidens call him, was immediately wel- comed by their father to the hospitalities of his tent ; and there he found a home. The region to which Moses had come was Midian, situated in the eastern and south-eastern regions of the peninsula of Sinai, and within easy reach of Horeb, whither Moses afterwards led his flocks (Exod. iii. 1). The people were the distant kinsmen of Moses; descendants of Midian, one of the sons of Abraham in his marriage with Keturah (Gen. XXV. 2). The chief was Reuel, the Raguel of Num. x. 29. The syllable Ul defines his name, — the friend of God. He was not only the sheik, but the priest also, of Midian. His name Jethro, or " his excellency," was a title indicating his princely and priestly dignity. He had seven daughters, among whom was Zipporah, the future wife of Moses. Hobab, who was long afterwards the counsellor and companion of Moses in the wan- dering, was either the son or the younger brother of Reuel. It would seem that the sheik and his family were, in some sense, the worshippers of the true God. The position of their re- nowned ancestor Abraham, his theism, and the revelations made to him, lingered in the traditions of these people. Yet they dwelt under the shadows of approaching heathenism. The sacrament of circumcision had fallen into disuse, if not disrepute (Exod. iv. 24-26). Their indifference to the promises made to Abraham may be inferred from the little that Moses thought it worth while to communicate to them respecting the destiny of the chosen seed, until the appearance of the Israelites at Horeb (Exod. xviii. 1). We have only meagre information of the life of Moses in Midian. Yet enough is divulged to show, that, unconsciously perhaps to himself, he was trained for the work that he was to do. He had been forty years in the school of human wisdom BETIBEMENT FOR SOUL-GROWTH. 423 in Egypt ; thence he went forty years to the school of Divine wisdom, within sight of Mount Sinai. Ample oj)portiinity was afforded him for spiritual culture. Not a few men of broad understanding, and uncommon force of character, have been providentially sent into retirement for calm reflection and prayer. Paul, after his baptism by Ananias in Damascus, spent three inactive years in Arabia. Augustine, after receiving bap- tism from Ambrose in Milan, passed several silent years in Tageste, Africa. In like manner, Moses became a shepherd, leading his flocks, forty years long, as far as Horeb. In those solitudes, isolated from kindred and enemies and from all the world, it is right to imagine that he meditated profoundly on the history of the chosen seed, beginning with the call of Abra- ham ; on the theophanies which God had granted to the older patriarchs ; on the everlasting covenants which he had made with them ; on the mysterious bondage in Egypt, and on the promise of deliverance. His personal experience also taught him the much-needed lesson of humility. He could not forget that he was the adopted son of the king's daughter, the inmate of her palace, bred in luxury, taught in sufficient learning. Now he is a fugitive from the wrath of the king, if not from public justice, separated also from his kindred; he is a stranger in a strange land, the servant of a Bedouin chief, eating the bread of dependence or of servile toil. He was not understood, perhaps misunderstood, by the family of Jethro. The exalted position to which he was destined, the masterful capacities that were in him, and his proficiency in Egyptian learning, were hidden under the menial position of a hireling. He was unhappily married. The incident recorded in Exod. iv. 24, shows that Zipporah was self-willed and quarrelsome; that she was not in sympathy with his religious convictions ; that she had persuaded him to neglect the circumcision of their youngest son ; and that she was capable of expressing contempt for that sacrament, even when the life of her husband depended on its observance. The names which he gave to his children in Midian tell the story of his discipline. He called his first son Gershom; for, said he, "I have been a stranger in a strange 424 SACRED HISTORY. land" (Exod. ii. 22). But this despondency in due time gave way to a more grateful memory and to a better hope for the future. He named his second son Eliezer; "for the God of my fathers," said he, "was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh." Exod. ii. 22-25. — Moses devotes a few words only to his residence of forty years in Midian. He mentions his introduc- tion to Jethro's family, his marriage, and the names of his two sons, and is done with the subject. Meanwhile Rameses II., by whom, jointly with his father Seti I., the Hebrews were enslaved, had died ; and Manephtah, the thirteenth son of Rameses, had come to the throne. If the Hebrews had ex- pected relief on the accession of a new king, the}^ were sorely disappointed. Deliverance was about to come from a higher source. For their " cry came up unto God ; " " and God heard their groanings, and God remembered his covenant." The thoughtful reader will not overlook the importance which God himself invariably attached to his everlasting covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Here the mention of the engage- ments opens the way for a copious narrative of the measures which the Almighty adopted to make them good. Exod. iii. — The Hebrew shepherd had led Jethro's flocks to the juicy herbs and grapes, and aromatic shrubs, and to the springs of water, which abounded near Horeb, the future mountain of God. He saw in the distance a thorn-bush ap- parently on fire. The fire was not a consuming, but a shining flame. He turned aside to see why the bush was not con- sumed. God called to him out of the bush, warning him not to draw near, but to put his shoes from off his feet, for the place where he stood was holy ground. This "great sight" was a true theophany, the first that had appeared since Jacob was at Beersheba nearly four hundred years before ; the first, also, that had assumed the form of a flame, since a smoking furnace and a burning lamp passed between the pieces of Abraham's sacrifice in the day when Jehovah made his covenant with the patriarch. The place of the vision cannot be identified. In the sixth century of the Christian era, two thousand years TIIEOrUANY AT THE BUSH. 425 after the exodus, Justinian built the convent of St. Catharine on the spot where, according to the traditions then received, Moses removed his sandals. The monks assert that the great altar of the convent marks the precise place made holy by the burning bush. Very few visitors are disposed, while enjoying the hospitalities of the monks, to challenge openly their inno- cent traditions. The significance of the miracle which Moses saw corre- sponded to the verbal message which he heard. The bush was probably the wild acacia, indigenous to the desert ; an insig- nificant shrub, — a symbol, therefore, of the Hebrews in their humiliation. The unconsuming flame which glowed in the bush was the symbol of the chosen seed cast into the iron furnace of Egypt (Deut. iv. 20), but saved from destruction. Even so, in the after-ages, three Hebrew children walked unin- jured in the furnace at Babylon. In modern times the Church of Scotland adorned her banner with the picture of a burning bush, and the legend '•'■Nee tanien consumebatur,'' — the sign of a church persecuted, ecdesia pressa, and victorious, ecclesia trium- phans. The awful presence in the bush at Horeb, filled with undestroying fire, was a notable Divine manifestation. The name of the Almighty appears twenty-four times in eighteen verses. He is called interchangeably God, Jehovah, the Angel of Jehovah, Jehovah God, I AM THAT I AM, and I AM. The identity of the Jehovah-Angel with Jehovah himself and with God is established: he who aj)peared to Mose& in the bush is the Angel Jehovah (Exod. iii. 2), he Avhom Moses turned aside to see is Jeliovah (ver. 4), and he who called to Moses out of the bush is God (ver. 4). Some authors, holding to the documentary hypothesis, maintain that the chapter is Jchovist, although the name Elohim occurs seventeen tiines, and the name Jehovah six times only. In order to meet this difficulty, some of the writers propose to break up the chapter into frag- ments, and distribute them to suit the theory; notwithstanding the internal evidence of the organic unity of the narrative. The hypothesis can take nothing from this chapter.^ Lest 1 Speaker's Com., in Exod. iii. 1. 426 SACRED HISTORY. Moses should be in doubt as to the Beiug who was calling to him out of the bush, the voice added, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." While the shepherd stood speechless, his bare feet rooted to the ground, and his face hidden in his robe, Jehovah told him that he had seen the affliction of his people in Egypt, and knew their "sorrows," and that he had come down to lead them to the land of Canaan. Jehovah then appointed him to be the liberator of the Hebrews : " Come now, therefore, and I will send thee to Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egj^pt." ExOD. iii. 11-22, iv. 1-23. — INIoses frankly confesses his un- worthy reluctance to meet the responsibilities and difficulties of his great office. The excessive self-confidence which had led him forty years before to undertake unbidden the liberation of his kindred, had given place to a painful self-distrust. He offered a series of excuses for declining the work to which God was calling him. " Who am I," asked he, " that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt ? " Jehovah graciously replied, " Surely I will be with thee ; " adding the assurance, every way signifi- cant, that the Hebrews should come out of Egypt, and offer sacrifices to God at that very mountain where God was talking with him. Moses still hesitated. How should he answer the challenge of the Hebrews, " Tell us who sent you to us ? " God replied, "I AM THAT I AM;" and he said, "Thus shalt thou say, I AM hath sent thee." And then, by way of bra- cing up the resolution of Moses, he authorized him to assure the people that the God of their fathers had marked well their sufferings, and that he was resolved to bring them out of the brickyards of Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. Moreover, he assured Moses that the elders should go with him to Pharaoh to demand the liberation of the Hebrews ; that he would use the resources of omnipotence to put down the oppo- sition of the king; and that he would see to it that they should go out of Egypt not empty-handed, but loaded down with the riches of their oppressors. Moses started a third difficulty. BRACED UP BY SIGNS AND WONDERS. 427 The people, lie said, would refuse to listen to liim ; they would say, " Jehovah hath not appeared unto thee." This suggestion was not without some color of plausibility; for God had not appeared to any Israelite since the theoi^hany which Jacob saw on his way to Egypt, several hundred years ago. Now, how- ever, God removed the scruple of Moses by furnishing him with credentials of his Divine vocation in the form of three supernatural signs, two of which were forthwith shown to Moses for his encouragement; and these two, together with the third, were to be exhibited in Egypt to the Hebrews and to Pharaoh, proving that God had sent Moses to them. For the first sign, God directed Moses to cast his shei^herd's staff to the ground. He did so ; the staff became a viper, and Moses fled. At God's command, he took the serpent by the tail, and it became a staff again. In the spitefulness of the serpent, Moses was forewarned of the anger with which Pharaoh would repel Aaron and himself ; Moses was reminded by his flight, of his unwillingness to encounter the anger of Pharaoh ; and in the paralysis of the reptile, he recognized the impotence of the king. For the second sign, the hand of Moses put into his bosom became " leprous as snow ; " put into his bosom a second time, it was " turned again as his other flesh." A symbol this was of the degradation and defilement which had happened to Israel in idolatrous Egypt, and of the purification which should be wrought in them by the grace of God. For a third sign, the power which should be given to Moses, to turn the Avaters of the Nile into blood, was reserved for his mission in Egypt. These three miracles were to be shown to the enslaved Hebrews, for whom, indeed, they were primarily and chiefly intended. The wonders of the staff and of the blood were to be shown also to Pharaoh, as evidences of the supreme power of Jehovah, and as credentials of the Divine mission of Moses and Aaron. The details will be considered hereafter. Moses interposed another objection. He could not talk to the king; for, said- he, "I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue." He was, perhaps, a stammerer like the young Demosthenes ; or he thought his " speech was contemptible," as long afterwards 428 SACBED HISTOBY. Paul described his own utterance. But the answer and rebuke of God was, " Who hath made man's mouth ? . . . Have not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say." Moses was silenced. His scruples had been met and removed one by one , and nothing was left but to yield them frankly, or to fall back on the real source of them all, — an unwillingness to undertake the work which God had given him to do. He chose the latter course, and begged that some one, other than himself, might be sent to Egypt. Jehovah was angry, and sharply rebuked his disobedi- ence. But seeing that it proceeded from nothing more blame- worthy than excessive self-distrust, God condescended to tell him that his brother Aaron should go with him to Egypt, and he should take with him his shepherd's staff. Aaron, who was fluent in speech and eloquent, should be his spokesman, and address Pharaoh and the people under the dictation of Moses ; the staff should be his instrument in the working of penal signs and wonders. Moses instantly accepted his vocation, and thereupon he became another man. The impetuosity with which forty years before he had, unbidden, espoused the cause of his people, and the despair with which he abandoned the cause after striking a single unsuccessful blow, now gave place to waiting upon God, and boldness in doing his will. Instead of the rash and impatient son of Pharaoh's daughter, at forty years of age, the shepherd of Midian, at eighty, was ready to meet the provocations of an unbelieving and stiff-neclvcd people with meekness and long-suffering. It is worthy of notice, moreover, that, among the excuses which he urged for declin- ing to go to Egypt, there is not one that carries with it a symptom of personal fear. In his many interviews with the king and people of Egypt he exhibited, though in the quietest way possible, a courage which never flinched and never vaunted itself. What Paul says of the close of the brave man's mission to Egypt, is true of its entire history: "By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king." Moses returned without delay to the tents of Jethro, and made preparations for his departure to Egypt. He gave to his father-in-law no other TUE BESUREECTION TAUGHT. 429 reason for his journey than a desire to see his kindred. Jethro had never understood Moses or his position. In his ignorance of the pkm of Providence respecting the chosen seed and their destiny, he was not prepared to comprehend the Divine voca- tion which his son-in-hiw had received at the burning bush. Moses, therefore, offered no explanation of his proposed journey. In the theophany of the bush, God said to Moses, " I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Exod. iii. G). We ought not to over- look the light which this oracle, as interpreted by Christ, casts upon the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the plenary inspiration of Moses, and the doctrine of the resurrection of those who die in the Lord. The Sadducees, who said there was no resurrection, proposed to our Saviour their favorite puzzle of the woman who had been married to seven husbands. The Master gave the well-known and complete solution of the problem. He then cited the oracle of the bush, thus : — " But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you " (i.e., the descendants of Abraham) " by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (Matt. xxii. 31, 32). " And as touching the dead, that they rise : have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaa^, and the God of Jacob?" (Mark xii. 26.) "Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living : for all five unto him " (Luke xx. 37, 38). Our Lord asserts that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, for he called it the "book of Moses" (Mark). He assumes that Moses was inspired to the extent of a verbal accuracy ; for he rests his argument on the very words in which the oracle Avas conveyed. Still further, the great Teacher declares that certain words were spoken by God (Matthew and Mark), and that Moses uttered thera (Luke). That is to say, what God said, Moses 430 SACRED HISTOEY. said ; what Moses said, God said : expressions pointing directly to the plenary inspiration of Moses. Next, our Lord's discourse related specifically to the resurrection of the dead ; not, as some have thought, merely to the continued existence of the soul after death. The Sadducees attempted to discredit the fact of the resurrection ; and Christ's answer was directly responsive to that, and to no other question. The three Evangelists agree in this. Matthew says that Christ introduced the oracle at the bush with the words, " As touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not heard," etc. Mark quotes Christ thus : " And as touching the dead, that they rise, have ye not read in the book of Moses ? " etc. Luke cites him thus : " Now, that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush," etc. The continued existence of the soul after death is involved in the statement ; but the precise truth which our Lord deduces from the words spoken to Moses is the fact of the resurrection. That, says Christ, is the meaning of the oracle, its true and real sense is there. The INIaster proceeds to clear up the subject. The word of Jehovah is, " I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Christ's exposition of the word is, " For God is not the God of the dead, but of the living : for all live unto him " (Luke). Of the testimony this is the sum. (1) The expression, " I am the God of Abraham," etc., points to the covenant which God made with the three patriarchs. The first promise in the Abrahamic covenant is in these words : " I wdll be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee " (Gen. xvii. 7). This covenant was renewed to Isaac and to Jacob. When God heard the groaning of his people in Egypt, " he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob" (Exod. ii. 24). At the bush God recalls the promise, and with the promise the covenant contain- ing it ; saying, " I am the God of Abraham," etc. (2) This covenant was, as we have seen, a manifestation of the covenant of life, delivered to our first parents. Its consummate promise was life, — life to the body, life to the soul. Christ declared that " God is not the God of the dead, but of the living ; " not the God of the disembodied spirits only of the patriarchs, but GOD IS THE GOD OF LIVING BEINGS. 431 of their total personality ; not the God of Abraham dead and turned to dust, but of Abraham alive in the body, and alive in the soul. The living God gives, by his power, life to his own ; but Abraham's soul is not the entire Abraham, and without the body Abraham is not entirely living. So long as the body lies dead in the earth, the divided man is still reckoned among the dead. While his body is mouldering in the grave, "the expression, I am thy God, cannot be fulfilled in the man; for God is not a God of the dead, but of the living." ^ (3) It may well be said, that Abraham received in his flesh the seal of the promise, even circumcision, showing that the plan of redemp- tion extends to the body as well as to the soul ; and that God is, to the whole extent of the proposition, the God not of the dead man, but of the living, — the man alive all over, alive throughout and throughout, and alive for evermore. (4) The same is true not only of the patriarchs, but of all true believers. By virtue of the covenant between God and his people, they are always living beings ; they possess the life that proceeds from God. When the bodies moulder in the ground, the soul of the righteous is received into the highest heavens, waiting for the redemption of the body. And more than that : under the foreseeing eye of God, the patriarchs and all saints stand forth in their resurrection bodies. That eye looks beyond the narrow grave, and beholds them risen from the dead, and re- instated and rehabilitated in angel-like glory. (5) Some of our learned interpreters go a step farther. They hold that the promise of the land of Canaan to the patriarchs, for an ever- lasting possession, is still outstanding, and will be fulfilled by the power of God raising the three pilgrim fathers from the tomb at Machpelah, and putting them in personal possession of the land of Canaan. But the belief which has gained more general acceptance is, that this promise is to be made good by the ingathering of all the people of God, after the resurrection of the just, into the " better country, even a heavenly," unto which the patriarchs looked forward while they were pilgrims and strangers in the earthly Canaan. 1 Stier: Words of Jesus, iii. 173. 432 SACEED EISTOEY. It ought not to be said that our Lord gives the oracle an interpretation which no one would have ever thought of on any principle of biblical exegesis. A knowledge of the meaning of the covenant, which God made with the fathers, would lead an intelligent believer to the conclusion announced by Christ. It was obscure to the Sadducees ; but the difficult}^ was not in the words of Jehovah, but in their own twofold ignorance . " they erred not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God." Undoubtedly, the inward illumination of the Spirit of God is necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the word of God ; and yet it is right to believe that such an illumination is not beyond the reach of a devout and humble disciple. To this it may be added, that, in point of fact, the meaning of the oracle lay so near the surface, that a few words from Christ put the Sadducees to silence ; drew from certain of the scribes, who were the official expounders of the Scriptures, the tribute of admiration, " Master, thou hast well said -, " and filled the bj^standers with amazement at the brightness of the light that Christ had now cast into their dark- ness (Matt. xxii. 33, 34; Luke xx. 39). Nor is there any occa- sion for the surprise with which some have noticed that our Lord passed by passages in the Old Testament, such as Job xix. 25-27, Ps. xlix. 15, Isa. xxvi. 19, Dan. xii. 1-3, where the doctrine of the resurrection is more explicitly taught. This criticism overlooks the manner in which the Sadducees opened the conversation : " Master, Moses said. If a man die," etc. Our Lord quoted against them their own witness, thus : " Now, that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush," etc. (Luke). He showed that the very authority, Moses, from whom the difficulty was taken, furnished the answer. The history of the doctrine of the resurrection follows the analogy of the o^her revelations. It is planted in the germ in the earlier scriptures ; and in its complete disclosure, it obeys the law of growth and progress. We have seen that the redemption of the body is among the promises of the first gospel. Proof of its future existence was afforded by the trans- lation of Enoch. Abraham, when he offered up Isaac, believed MOSES AND THE RESURRECTION. 433 that God was able to raise liiin from the dead. Tlie oracle at the bush builds the salvation of the body upon the foundation of an everlasting covenant. The sublime song of Moses takes from Jehovah the declaration, "I kill, and I make alive," — words in which Ilengstenberg finds the same blessed hopes.^ If it be said, that in all these places the doctrine is taught not by way of assertion, but inferentially only, the answer may well be that the conclusion is unavoidable ; and whatever is deduced from scripture by the Lord Jesus Christ is of equal value and authority with that wliicli is expressly set down in his written word. In Moses, therefore, we find the beginning of an argu- ment which ends, in the Gospels and Epistles, in a demonstra- tion so thorough,- that, in the words of Paul, he who disputes it falls heir to the epithet, " Thou fool." Upon the question whether the doctrine of the resurrection is to be found in the books of Moses, upon which some Chris- tian scholars express doubts, the best Jewish authorities have fixed convictions. Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel says, "The faith of the resurrection of the dead is one of the chief articles of our law, and whoever says it cannot be proved from the law is a heretic aud an epicure, and shall have no part in the world to come."^ The Book Menerath says, "Whoever denies the resurrection of the dead, or one of all the wonders written in the law, denies the whole law, and shall have no part in the world to come." ^ Mairaonides says, " The resurrection of the dead is the foundation of the foundations of Moses, our teacher, peace be to him ! and he who believes it not has no religion, nor does he belong to the Jewish religion." ^ Professor Drum- mond shows, by quotations from the Mishna, that the following persons have no part in the world to come : " he wlio says there is no resurrection of the dead according to the law " (i.e., taught in the Pentateuch), "and that tlie law is not from heaven, and the despiser of the law ; " " Three kings and four ordinary persons have no part in the age " (the world) " to come : three kings, — Jeroboam, Ahab^ and Manasseh ; four 1 Contributions, etc., iii. 570. - Nisliinalli, fol. ."!), col. 2. 8 Tal., 6. col. 1. ^ Com. on Tract. Sauhedrim, fol. 20, col. 1. 434 S ACRED HISTORY. ordinary persons, — Balaam, Doeg, Ahithophel, Gehazi. The generation of the Flood, and of the dispersion " (the builders at Babel), " and the men of Sodom, are excluded ; the spies, the generation of the wilderness, also, shall not stand in judg- ment ; and the assembly of Korah shall not come forth again." ^ The doctrine of the rabbins appears to be, that none of these wicked men shall rise from the dead ; a judgment which would be feeble-minded if there were no resurrection. 1 Drummoud: Jewish Messiah, 383, 384. THE DELIVERER INAUGURATED. 435 CHAPTER XXX. THE TEN WONDERS. The scene of the sacred action is now transferred to tlie land of Egypt. At the accession of Pharaoh Menephtah, the Hebrews hoped for some amelioration of their sufferings, but they were bitterly disappointed : " They sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God." In answer to the cry, Moses came. God said to him at the bush, " Come now, I will send there unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt." God directed him on his arrival in Egypt to gather the ruling elders of Israel, and announce to them the approach- ing deliverance. That being done, he was required to take with him a delegation of the elders, and to say to Pharaoh, "The Lord God of the Hebrews hath met with us; and now let us go, we beseech thee, three days journey into the wilder- ness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God." Moses was told that the king would obstinately refuse to grant the re- quest ; that the Almighty would smite Egypt with all his wonders ; that thereupon the king would let them go ; and they should leave Egypt laden with spoils. Moses returned to Midian, and made arrangements for the journey. Jehovah now assured him that he might safely return to Egypt, all the men being dead who had sought his life. He was directed to take the " rod of God " in his hand, and to display before Pharaoh his miraculous gifts, the credentials of his mission. He was told to forewarn the king that if he should refuse to let the people go, God would slay his first-born son. Moses was allowed to see the end from the beginning. 436 SACRED HISTOBY. ExOD. iv. 24. — By way of preparation for his mission, Moses was tauglit a lesson of humility and obedience. The plight in ■ which he left Midian brought his exile to a pitiable close. His wife and sons rode upon an ass, while he trudged along on foot, as best an old man of eighty could, supported by his staff. He came to Midian a fugitive, he departed penniless. Nor were his troubles ended. God had a controversy with him. He had allowed his youngest son to go uncircumcised. He had, per- haps, given way to the prejudices of Zipporah against the sac- rament ; but God could not pass by an open breach of his covenant in the man who was to be the instrument of execut- ing the provisions of that covenant in Israel. He met Moses at a resting-place on the journey, and threatened to kill him. Zipporah, to save the life of her husband, performed the cere- mony with her own hand, though with passionate reproaches upon Moses. Soon afterwards she returned to her own home, leaving her husband to pursue his journey alone (Exod. xviii. 5). But he went to his work purged from known sin. His distress was soon relieved by a joyful experience. Exod. iv. 10-16, 27-29. — At the bush God promised to unite his brother Aaron with him in the commission to Pharaoh ; Moses to be the leading spirit, Aaron to be the spokesman. " And behold," said God, " he cometh forth to meet thee." When Moses set out from Midian to go to Egypt, the Lord said to Aaron, "Go into the wilderness to meet Moses." The brothers met at Horeb. "We are left to imagine what passed between them, descriptive of the life of one in Egypt and the other in Midian through the forty years of their separation, and with what confidence or misgivings they looked forward to the work set before them. We are told simply that they received each other with kisses, and that Moses repeated to Aaron all the words that God had spoken to him, and described the miraculous signs which were in his hand. Exod. iv. 29. — All went well with the brothers in their first interview with the Israelites. Aaron, being the chief speaker, repeated to them the communications which God had made to Moses, and wrought the supernatural wonders in their presence niMEDIATE EMANCIPATION. 437 which Moses had done in Midian. The miracle of the rod turned to a serpent was a sign to the people that Jehovah, the God of their fathers, had appeared to Moses, and had sent him to Egypt; and a sign, also, that the dangers to which his mission would expose them should be removed. The hand miraculously covered with leprosy represented the moral defile- ment which the chosen seed had contracted in the bosom of Egypt ; the hand miraculously cleansed represented the spirit- ual purification which should follow their release from the house of bondage. When the people heard Aaron, and saw the signs, they believed that Jehovah had visited them, and had looked on their afflictions; and they bowed their heads and worshipped. These interviews went far towards the prepa- ration of Moses and Aaron for their arduous labors, although they may not have anticipated the obstacles which they were to encounter. ExoD. v., vi. — The liberation of the bondsmen was to be not gradual but immediate, not temporary but final , it was to redeem, not a favored few, but Israel as a whole. To this extent, the emancipation of the slaves in the United States, and of the serfs in Russia, resembles that of the Hebrews. But never before and never since the exodus of the Hebrews, have two millions of bondsmen suddenly quitted their native country in one body-, never has the dominant race passionately urged them to depart ; never have the fugitives gone away laden with spoils taken from their masters. This wonderful social revolution was effected in spite of many apparently insurmountable obstacles. First, a people like the Egyptians could not be expected to submit, without a struggle, to the loss of six hundred thousand able-bodied slaves. The more robust were employed in the fields, canals, and brick-kilns. The tabernacle built by the Hebrews in the wilderness shows that among them were skilled workmen in woods and metals, in spinning and weaving, in embroidery and jewellery, and other useful and ornamental arts. The dominant race would naturally resist the attempt to de- prive them of this immense productive industry, even if the 438 SACRED HISTORY. Egyptians had been able to rise above the pride of authority and irrational obstinacy often exhibited by the masters of a slave population. Account must be taken, secondly, of the servility engendered among the Hebrews by their long servitude. Forty years before, instead of standing by Moses when he struck a blow for liberty, some of them betrayed his secret, and compelled him to flee for his life. Nor had the oppressions of forty years more roused them to resistance. Moses and Aaron required the king, in the name of God, to allow the Israelites to hold a sacrificial service in the wilderness. Pharaoh replied, " Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go ? " He gave orders that the laborers should gather straw for themselves, and make the daily tale of bricks. By way of enforcing the new rule, he ordered the bastinado to be applied to the Hebrew overseers. The wretched serfs, instead of re- senting the outrage, charged Moses and Aaron with having put a sword into the hands of the op]3ressors to slay them. For the purpose of re-assuring them, God immediately revealed himself by the name of Jehovah ; a name the significance of which they had never understood. They were familiar with the pronunciation of the word ; but they had not yet appre- hended its breadth and grandeur as a description of the cove- nant God, the self-existent, eternal, and unchangeable Redeemer of Israel (Exod. vi. 3). Jehovah announced, also, that he held himself bound by his covenant engagements to transfer his chosen seed from Egypt to the heritage which he had sworn to bestow upon them. And yet, so thoroughly was the courage of the people broken, that "they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit and cruel bondage." The reader looks in vain through the history of the period for a single instance in which they rallied to the call of Moses. From first to last they were " faint and spiritless, dull and dead of look." The enterprise was embarrassed, thirdly, by the misgivings of Moses himself, arising not from any personal fear of Pharaoh, but from the probable effect of cruelty on the timid bondsmen. When he saw that Pharaoh had, on his first STUBBORN OBSTACLES. 439 demand, defied Jehovah, and redoubled the anguish of the Israelites, he said unto the Lord, " Wherefore hast thou so evil entreated the peoj^le ? Why is it that thou hast sent me ? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people ; neither hast thou delivered thy people at all." Even after God had revealed his new name, and reiterated the promises of his covenant in regard to the deliv- erance of Israel, Moses hesitated to go in again to Pharaoh. " Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me ; how then shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips ? " (heavy, slow-speaking lips.) Fourthly, the idolatry of the people hung like a dead M'eight upon the scheme of emancipation. The hand of Moses defiled by leprosy was a fair representation of their spiritual condition. They worshipped the gods of Egypt, stooping even to the worship of devils (Lev. xvii. 7 ; Josh. xxiv. 14). From the day when they set up the golden calf at Sinai, to the Babylonish captivity, — a period of a thousand years, — idolatry was the inveterate crime of Israel. It Avas therefore a first necessity of their condition, that the bondsmen should be brought to per- ceive that the gods of Egypt were a lie, and that the supremacy of one God, only one, the very God of the patriarchs, the Almighty, the El Shaddai, the I A^I, should be ])rought home to the public conscience. Until this could be done, the peo- ple would not respond to the plans of Providence for their liberation. Fifthly, of all these obstacles, the hardest to deal with was the stubbornness of Pharaoh. His refractory temper was dis- tinctly considered by the Almighty, and gave shape to his counsels. He said to Moses at the bush, " I am sure the king of Egypt will not let you go." Not only that, but God had resolved to exasperate his stubbornness. "I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go." The issue between Jehovah and the Pharaohs was squarely made up. God com- manded the king to let the Hebrews depart ; the king refused to obey. The command was unaml)iguous, peremptor}^ reiter- ated; the refusal was direct, positive, contemptuous. Next, 440 SACEEB HISTORY. the Almighty had resolved to compel obedience by the use of supernatural terrors. He would not attempt to persuade the king, or to appeal to his reason or conscience ; nor would he instigate the people to fly to arms, and rise upon their oppres- sors. Moses had tried that experiment forty years before, and it had come to nothing. God said, "I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders, and after that he will let you go." " I will redeem you with a stretched-out arm, and with great judgments." God himself would be their deliverer. ExoD. V. 1-19. — The impending judgments were introduced by two preliminary demands. By the first, a test was applied to the temper of the tyrant. Moses and Aaron told him, " Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness." Pharaoh's insolent reply was, " Who is Jehovah, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go." Moses endeavored to gain his consent by limiting the absence to three days, and by declaring that its only pur- pose was to offer sacrifices to Jehovah. It was a reasonable request. The Hebrews might not offer in Egypt a sacrifice to the God of Israel ; neither could they safely, in the presence of the Egyptians, slay for the altar and the sacrificial feast the animals which were set apart as objects of worship by the law and usage of the land. The king uttered the insulting taunt, " Ye are idle, ye are idle : therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice to Jehovah." He remanded the people to the double toil of making the brick, and finding the straw as best they could. The tyrant's refusal to remit a few days' labor made it certain that he would resist to the last the departure, never to return, of the laborers. By both word and deed he betrayed also his open contempt for Jehovah, and made it necessary for the Almighty to assert his adorable majesty. ExoD. vii. 1-13. — The second preliminary measure estab- lished the Divine commissions of the messengers of Jehovah. Pharaoh demanded a supernatural proof or sign of the power of their God. Aaron threw down the rod of Moses, and it TH-E ERA OF MIRACLES OPENS. 441 became a serpent. Pharaoh sent for his magicians, who were adepts in the art of serpent-charming. They appeared, and threw down their rods. These also became serpents, but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods. Pharaoh would not acknowledge the defeat of his sorcerers. God hardened his heart, so that he would not hearken to the Divine command. The way was now prepared for the judgments upon Egypt. The miracle of warning was like the word going before the blow, the blank cartridge discharged in the presence of the mob before the fatal order to fire is given. A general view of the wonders which followed will disclose their nature. The number of the wonders was ten. This is one of the perfect numbers, so called,_ of Scripture, a symbol of completeness. The decimal system of numbers j)revails almost universally among the nations. Indeed, it owes its origin to the structure of the human hand, as the very term " digits " indicates. The number of the plagues, like the equiv- alent number of the Divine commandments, was the signature of a work fully done. They were, without exception, miraculous. The word " mirac- ulous " is here used to describe not only a supernatural event, but a wonder wrought by God through the instrumentality of man (Acts ii. 22). In this sense of the word, no miracle was done from the creation to the age of Moses, a period of twenty- five hundred years. Enoch had tliis testimony, that he pleased God, but he wrought no miracle ; nor did Noah, who walked with God ; nor did Abraham, who was the father of the faithful. The translation of the first of these patriarchs, the Deluge in the days of the second, and the destruction of Sodom in the presence of the third, were supernatural ; yet they were brought about directly by God himself. Through all these early ages the Almighty revealed his being and his will by visions, from which the period derives the name of the theophanic era. The age of miracles, as distinguished from theophanies, began with Moses. At Horeb God clotlied liim witli a commission to deliver the cluirch from bondage, and endowed liim with super- natural gifts as the credentials of his Divine vocation. On 442 SACRED HISTORY. his arrival in Egypt lie exhibited the signs in the presence of Pharaoh and the people. Afterwards the plagues took the form of miracles, or wonders wrought by God, in immediate connection with certain things done and said by Moses and Aaron. God forewarned these messengers of the judgments which he intended to send upon Egypt, and he told them what they must do by way of showing that the judgments w^ere forthcoming. The sicfus were varied. A Jewish writer observes that the wonders of the blood, frogs, and gnats, were introduced by Aaron; three others, hail, locusts, and darkness, by Moses; three others, the beetles, the pestilence, and the death of the first-born, by God himself, without the medium of Moses or Aaron.i So, also, in six of the plagues, the rod was used by Moses or Aaron. In one, Moses stretched forth his hands ; in others, he simply warned Pharaoh of the impending calamity. Nine of them were directly or indirectly associated, both in their infliction and removal, with the actions of the two brothers, showing that they were the tri,ie ministers of God ; yet these actions showed that there was no inherent power in Moses or Aaron. The tenth, the destruction of the first-born, was purely supernatural. Here, then, was the beginning of miracles in the history of redemption. Moreover, each plague differed from all the others. Their variety was adapted to convince the parties concerned that God, who never rej^eats himself, and never exhausts his resources of mercy or judg- ment, had stretched out his own arm over the land. Some might be convinced by one of the ten signs, and some by another. The proof from the whole was cumulative and over- whelming. They fell upon the land in swift succession. It appears from Exod. vii. 25, that seven days elapsed between the first and the second. The last four occurred within a single month; for when the hail fell, which was the seventh wonder, "the barley was in the ear, and the flax was boiled," a state of vegetation which in Egypt appears early in March (Exod. ix. 31) ; but 1 Kalisch on Exodus, p. 89. PLAGUES, EAPID AND PBOGBESSIVE. 443 the tenth plague came in the middle of the month Abib, or about the first of April, giving an interval of nearly four weeks between the seventh, which occurred early in March, and the tenth, which came early in April (Exod. xiii. 4). Assuming a wreck's interval as the rule for the entire series, the con- clusion is that they began about the first of February, and closed about the first of April, the whole occupj'ing, let us say, sixty days. The rapidity with which the plagues ran their career was one of their most frightful concomitants. The judgments were both cumulative and progressively severe. In the first, the sweet water of the Nile, turned into blood, mocked their thirst ; in the second, myriads of loathsome frogs covered the land, and when the}^ died the carrion poisoned the air ; in the third and fourth, lice like dust and swarms of flies tormented the people ; in the fifth, their cattle perished by the murrain ; in the sixth, filthy boils on man and beast de- graded the man to a fellowship of suffering with the beast ; in the seventh, hail fell from heaven, and lightning ran along the ground, killing man and beast and herb and tree ; in the eighth, countless myriads of locusts devoured the residue in the fields that had escaped the hail-storm, and then pressed their way into every open door and window ; in the ninth', an awful darkness fell upon the desolated land; and in the tenth, at midnight, a frantic vv^ail over the dying first-born of the Egyptians smote the air. The blows fell thick and fast and furious. Three of the plagues fell upon the Hebrews as well as upon their oppressors; showing that, because the people of God par- took in the idolatry of the Egyptians, they must also partake, to a certain degree, in the sufferings of the heathen. Thencefor- ward the Israelites were severed from the Egyptians, and suffered no more. During the prevalence of the murrain the king as- certained, through messengers sent by him to Goshen, that not one of the cattle of the Israelites had died. Hail fell in Egypt, but in the land of Goshen there was no hail. In tlie time of darkness, "all the children of Israel had light in their dwell- ings" (Exod. ix. 7-26, x. 23). Their exemption fi-om seven 444 SACEED HISTORY. of the plagues indicated that they were the chosen seed. Wliile God chastised them for their sins, he would not destroy them with the heathen. The primary design of the judgments was to break the bond- age of the promised seed, for the purpose of removing them from Egypt to the promised land ; but they yielded other results hardly less important. The wonders could hardly fail to inspire the bondsmen with faith in the promise and power of God to break their chains. Next, the mighty works wrought by the two brothers accredited them to the Hebrews as the ministers of God, bearing a Divine commission to lead them from Egypt to Canaan. Nor were these miracles less service- able to Moses and Aaron. God had assured Moses at Horeb, " Certainly I will be with thee." The fulfilment of the j^rom- ises strengthened the two brothers in all their gifts, both natural and supernatural, and in the confidence of the people, — advantages which they would need in the wilderness. Many of the Egyptians, even, were brought to a better mind, by what they suffered under the hand of Gocl. On one occasion at least, the officers of state remonstrated with the king in his futile resistance to the Divine power ; and a mixed multitude of the natives cast in their lot at the exodus with the Hebrews, in their journey towards Canaan. Still further, by those wonderful works, Jehovah asserted his supreme dominion over all the provinces and orders of nature in Egypt. Pharaoh's challenge, " Who is Jehovah ? I know him not," expressed the theology of the Egyptians. Their thought was, that the God of the Hebrews was no more to them, and no other, than Bel the national god of Babylon, or Moloch the tutelary deity of Ammon ; Bel, Moloch, and Jeho- vah were all alike, so they imagined, strange gods, and power- less on the Nile. Jehovah forewarned the king that he was about to assert his authority as the supreme God, ruling over Egypt with free and complete omnipotence. All the elements of nature in Egypt were converted into so many scourges. The waters turned to blood, frogs out of the Nile, lice swarm- ing in the dust, swarms of stinging insects, carbuncles, hail, EMPHATICALLY SUPERNATUBAL. 445 fire, locusts, darkness coming in the air or from the sky, deatli falling on man and beast, came in quick succession. The blows fell rapidly upon the property of the people, on their growing crops, on their cattle, upon their persons in vermin and boils, and finally upon all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne, to the first- born of the captive in the dungeon (Exod. xii. 29). These lessons were emphasized in the exemption of the Israelites from seven of the ten plagues. The oppressors were taught that the Being who infhcted upon them penal sufferings was not an Egyptian deity, but was Israel's God ; that Jehovah was supreme over all Egypt, over that which he scourged, and that which he spared ; that his supremacy was exclusive and abso- lute ; and that there was no god in all the earth like the God of the Hebrews. These lessons were enforced, still further, by the nature of the wonders. They were not miracles of power chosen, per- haps, at random, but were, with two excerptions, aggravated forms of calamities indigenous to the banks of the Nile. The exceptions are the turning of the waters into blood, and the death of the first-born. The eight other plagues, as to the mat- ter of them, were evils natural to Egypt. The presence of the supernatural in the forms given to them is immediately appar- ent. It is true that the Nile assumes a reddish color at the period of its overflow ; but the overflow occurs in July, where- as the plague of blood took place in February. At the word of Moses, the liver became l)lood ; it stank, the fish died, the people loathed the taste of its waters. At the word of ]\Ioses, also, the blood was turned to w^ater. It is impossible to elimi- nate the quality of the supernatural from this judgment, or from those that followed. Their intensity cannot be otherwise explained. Vermin of all kinds were multiplied by myriads, and diseases had never before been so malignant. The plagues occurred in quick succession, falling within the period of about two months ; they appeared and disappeared promptly at the time predicted by Moses ; many of them came and went in obedience to the motions of his hands or his rod, or at the word of his 446 SACRED HISTORY. mouth. The union of the natural and the supernatural in the visitations served a purpose which could not have been other- wise gained. It demonstrated the sovereign dominion of Jeho- vah over all the land of Egypt ; a truth which was derided by the scoffing king and dissembling priesthood. Again, Jehovah declared open war against the gods of Egypt. In contemplation of the tenth plague he said, " I will pass through the land of Egypt this niglit, and will smite all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast ; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment; I am Jehovah " (Exod. xii. 12 ; Num. xxxiii. 4). In smiting the beasts he struck down the objects of Egyptian worship. The sacred bullocks, Mnevis and Apis, sons of the creative Nile, were installed as deities in many a temple. In all the great cities, divine honors were paid to four-footed animals, as the incarnations or proxies of the Egyptian gods. The bull was worshipped in Memphis, Heliopolis, and Hermopolis ; the goat in Mendes; the ram in Thebes; in other cities, the cow and the cat. Their sacred carcasses were smitten with the rinder- pest in the fifth plague ; and in the tenth, by the destruction of the first-born of the deified beasts, the anger of Jehovah once more smote the gods of Egypt. The River Nile, also, was worshipped under the name of Osiris, as the bountiful deity of Egypt. A temple was devoted to the Nile-god, and a distinct order of priests was consecrated to his service. No expression of the Divine contempt could exceed the act of God turning the waters of the river into blood until they stank, and gave forth myriads of disgusting reptiles, which forced their way into the houses, and even into the kneading-troughs of the people. The exuberant soil of Egypt was supplied with its deities, but the dust arose from its surface in clouds of lice. The translucent atmosphere and brilliant sky were the glory of Egypt ; yet the atmosphere was filled with winged insects, tormenting man and beast and magician. In spite of the gods and goddesses who inhabited and guarded the skies, ulcers fell out of them on the people ; a storm of hail mingled with fire followed the ulcers ; a cloud of locusts overspread the land; and SORCERY EXPOSED AND DEFEATED. 447 after the locusts, a darkness that miglit be felt hid the face of the great Sun-god through three days. So thoroughly defeated and defiled were all the gods of Egypt, that Pharaoh himself, a boasted demigod, sought refuge more than once in the mercy of Jehovah (Exod. ix. 27, 28, x. 16, 17). Another leading design of the plagues was to expose the system of Egyptian magic. That system entered as an integral element into the false religion of the country, and its adepts belonged to the sacerdotal order. The purjDOse of Jehovah to execute judgment on all the superstitions of Egypt brought the miracles of Moses and Aaron face to face with the enchant- ments of the magicians. Accordingly, the first three signs wrought by the servants of God — the rod changed to a serpent, the water turned into blood, and the production of frogs — were imitated by Jannes and Jambres; for such, prob- ably, were the names of the chiefs among the magicians (2 Tim. iii. 8). Several prominent features appear in this notable conflict. It took place, for example, in the sphere of the sorcery that was specifically Egyptian. The ten plagues, as we have seen, were for the most part aggravations of evils native-born to Egypt ; the supernatural resting on the basis of the natural not only, but on what was pecular to the land of the Nile, — its soil and climate, its sky, air, and water, its boasted advantages, and its acknowledged limitations. By way of preserving all the unities, the sorcery which was generically Egyptian was delivered over to power Divine. Next, the wonders wrought by Moses and Aaron were incomparably superior in variety, number, and sufficiency, to the counter wonders of the magi- cians. The rod of Aaron turned to a serpent swallowed the rods of the impostors ; he changed the Nile and all the waters of Egypt into blood, the magicians did so upon a little water ; he produced myriads of frogs, they a few only. He removed all the plagues: they removed none, not even those which they imitated ; they could do no more than increase in a small way tlie volume of blood and the number of frogs. Aaron used the simple word and the staff: the magicians used their secret en- 448 SACRED HISTORY. chantments. His word was invariably followed by the appear- ance of the plague : at the tliird plague they failed ignominiously with their enchantments, and confessed, " This is the finger of God."' The impostors themselves became the victims of the subsequent visitations, for " the boil was upon the magicians " (Exod. ix. 11), and doubtless their fields were ravaged by the hail and the fire and the locusts, their houses were filled with the thick darkness, and their children perished in the destruc- tion of the first-born. Nothing could be more complete than the defeat which was suffered by the arts of magic, except the judgments which were executed on the gods of Egypt. Various explanations of these counter wonders have been proposed. It has been suggested that both the ministers of Jehovah and the sorcerers were " wise men " in science and art beyond their age, working by some laws of nature at that time known only to themselves. Thus the chemist, setting phos- phorus on fire under water, might appear to the ignorant to work a miracle. This suggestion is liable to two exceptions. The first, which will be fatal in the opinion of the Christian scholar, is that the proposed solution leads up to the conclusion that the wonders wrought by Moses were not necessarily super- natural, but were within the competency of an accomplished manipulator ; and that Moses, who was learned in all the wis- dom of the Egyptians, may have been after all only a more clever artist than either Jannes or Jambres. The second exception will at least give pause to the rationalist. The prog- ress of science, through the twenty-five hundred years which have elapsed since the days of Moses, has not enabled any exjDcrt to change a dry stick into a serpent and back into a stick, or to turn all the waters of Egypt into blood, or to convert ashes into swarms of lice, or to reproduce any one of the eight other plagues of Egypt, and to remove them, at his will. Nor can these phe nomena be classed with the Greek fire, or with the art of embalming, or with any of the lost arts. Another solution is obtained by supposing that God was pleased to bestow miraculous powers on the magicians to the limited extent indicated in the record; the Divine purpose ORIENTAL JUGGLERY. 449 herein being to try the faith of his people, to afford to Pharaoh a temporary triumph to be followed by a signal defeat in the withdrawal of his assistance. But this theory does not account for the existence of the system of Egyptian magic, of which these few artifices were the products. It presents, also, the Almighty in the attitude of setting miracle against miracle ; supporting with Divine credentials a system of fraud and im- posture ; using his infinite power at one and the same moment to verify and to expose a lie ; bearing witness for the time being to the emissaries of Satan, with signs and wonders and with divers miracles. No analogy in support of this explanation can be drawn from the gift of prophecy in Balaam, and of miracles in Judas Iscariot. These men were not allowed, in any one instance, to use their Divine endowments to the prejudice of the truth. Balaam could do nothing but bless Israel, and Judas wrought no miracles on the side of Christ's enemies. The opinion best supported by the Scriptures, and most commonly received, is that the magicians were adepts in leger- demain, and their enchantments were simply due to their clever- ness in their profession. This opinion rests on the well-known skill of the Orientals in jugglery ; on the circumstance that Aaron, in the miracles of the blood and the frogs, had supplied them with abundant materials for imposture ; and especially on the singular gift of serpent-charming to this day even emploj^ed in Egypt. The jugglers are able, as is said, to throw a particu- lar species of reptile into a torpor, by spitting into its throat, and closing its mouth, so that it lies stiff and motionless on the ground. In order to revive it again, they seize it by the tail, and rub it vigorously between the hands. Hengstenberg de- scribes the trick, and relies upon it as an explanation of the matter in hand.^ Dr. W. L. Alexander is authority for the statement that " the jugglers of India will for a few pence do tricks with serpents far more wonderful than making them rigid so as to resemble staffs ; and any clever juggler could make water in a tank resemble blood, or, when the country was already swarming with frogs, could cover some place, that had 1 Hengstenberg: Egypt and the Books of Moses. 450 SACRED HISTORY. been cleared for the purpose, with these reptiles as if he had suddenly produced them."^ Some attention is due to the suggestion that the magicians were the ministers of Satan with power to deceive by their sorceries, and that the wonders wrought by them at this junc- ture, though spurious as miracles, were beyond the competency of mere legerdemain. This exj)lanation has found favor with eminent and orthodox scholars well represented by Professor Kurtz. 2 The facts by which it is supported are drawn from the mysterious background of Divine inspiration, the region whence proceed false Christs, false prophets, deceitful workers, privily bringing in damnable heresies ; the man of sin, whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders. On the other hand, in behalf of the opinion that the counter wonders in Egypt did not rise to the bad pre-eminence of the " lying wonders " described by Paul, it may be said that the resources of Oriental jugglery afford a satisfactory exjDlana- tion of all the phenomena. To this it may be added that any suggestion is inadmissible which involves the idea that the dry rod of the magicians was turned into a real serpent, — an act of creative power which belongs only to God, and ought not to be ascribed to Satan or to any other finite being. Pharaoh was perhaps deluded by the trickery of his servants; but Pharaoh was himself a party to the pending contest with the Almighty, and for this cause God sent him strong delusion, that he should believe a lie. 1 Alexander. Kitto, i. 750. 2 Kurtz: Old Covenant. ORIENTAL ABSOLUTENESS. ' 451 CHAPTER XXXI. PHAEAOH MANEPHTAH. One of the leading characteristics of the transactions in Egypt which led to the exodus is the prominence given to the reigning monarch. At the bush God said to Moses, " Come now, I will send you to Pharaoh." Moses replied, " Who am I, that I should go before Pharaoh?" On their arrival in Egypt, Moses and Aaron, by the Divine direction, exhibited to the king the miraculous credentials of their commission, and required him to let Israel go, on the penalty, if he should refuse, of the death of his first-born son. The brothers held negotiations with the king in person through the period of about sixty days. The magicians were defeated before his eyes ; the approach of the plagues, one by one, was announced to him. Several of them were removed at his entreaty, and on his promise to let Israel go ; and his heart was repeatedly hardened so that he was false to his promise. The story, with Manephtah left out, would be unintelligible. His prominence was derived from many sources. He stood in the illustrious line of the Pharaohs, who, with Ptolemies of a later age, were the Ca3sars of Egypt. He was the son and immediate successor of Rameses the Great. Egypt,, moreover, was an absolute monarchy of the Oriental type of absolutism. The dignity of the kingdom was identified with the person of the king, to a degree hardly asserted by Louis XIV. in his boast, "Tlie king is the state." Hiswill^his caprices even, gave law to the realm. Nor is this all. "With the throne of his fathers, Manephtah inherited their Divine honors. The name Pharaoh is derived from an Egyptian word signifying the sun. 452 SACRED HISTORY. Wilkinson is of the opinion that the name was probably given in the earliest times to the Egyptian kings, because they claimed to be the chiefs on earth, as the sun is the chief among the heavenly bodies ; and afterwards, when this lumi- nary became the object of idolatrous worship at Heliopolis, it was the representative of their Sun-god.^ " Son of the Sun " came to be the title of every Pharaoh, and Manephtah inherited this divine honor. An ode by one of his poets-laureate calls him the image of his father the Sun, and the merciful lord and creator of breath.^ Still further, in the struggle on the Nile, the most formidable adversary of the true religion was not Pharaoh as a man, or as an official representative of Egypt, or as a king-god, but heathenism itself incarnate in his person, and endeavoring to strangle the Church while it lay in the womb of Egypt. In his ignominious death by drowning in the Red Sea, the king, and with him the kingdom, was brought low; and more, the very head of the old serpent of the Nile was crushed. Pharaoh's position explains a message from Jehovah in the interval between the sixth and seventh plagues. Moses was instructed to say to the king, that, unless he would let the people go, the Lord God of the Hebrews would smite him and his people with pestilence, and cut him off from the earth. Moses repeated to Pharaoh the warning words of Jehovah : " And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to show in thee my power, and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth" (Exod. ix. 16; Rom. ix. 17). God had " raised him up," had given him a place in the royal line, had supplied him with wealth, armies, munitions of war, and a priesthood skilled in magic wonders, had allowed him to receive the heathen apotheosis, in order to make of him an example, set on high, to suffer a righteous retribution, and to declare the adorable majesty of Jehovah in all the earth. Then came the end. A storm of hail, and of fire mingled with hail, swept over Egypt. The hail was followed by the locusts ; " this death," Pharaoh called it ; '•'■ pestis irce deorum^'' " the 1 Wilkinson: Ancient Egypt, iv. 267. 2 Geikie: Hours, etc., i. 129. GENTLE TREATMENT AT FIRST. 453 pestilence of Divine wrath," so Pliny styles it. After the locusts came a mighty west wind, after the wind the darkness, and after the darkness the destruction of the first-born, and the catastrophe of the Red Sea. Tholuck remarks that the report of the display of God's power went to the nations round about (xv. 14), thence to the Greeks and Romans, and now, by the Holy Scriptures, Jehovah's power over Pharaoh is "declared in all the earth." The temper of the king was disclosed by his treatment of a Divine requisition which was very early laid upon him. To Moses at the bush God said, " Thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt, and ye shall say unto him, The Lord God of the Hebrews hath met us ; and now let us go, we beseech thee, that we may sacrifice to Jehovah our God" (Exod. iii. 18). The communication was respectful; it was conveyed to the king as a message from the God of the Hebrews, and presented hj their acknowledged chiefs. It took the form of a petition, " We beseech thee." The request was reasonable ; if neglected wilfully, the Hebrews would incur the Divine displeasure (v. 3). Moderate was it also, contem- plating nothing more than a short leave of absence. The request carried with it the promise of a return of the people at the end of three days. There is no intimation that the king imputed any want of good faith to Moses. Again, the proposal was an act of mercy to Pharaoh. It gave him opportunity to show a kindness to his Hebrew subjects, and a spirit of obedi- ence to God. His consent might have opened the way to a friendly agreement, by virtue of which Israel would depart in peace, Pharaoh receiving a blessing from God, and Egypt spared from the terrors of the Almight3^ While it was an offer of kindness to the king, it was a test of character. He was not asked to send his laborers to Canaan, or even to set them free. Will he, at the command of Jehovah, grant an indulgence so small as a three-days' rest from labor, for the purpose of religious worship ? Here the least involved the greatest. The refusal to grant so small a favor made it clear that he would treat with contempt the demand to let the 454 SACRED HISTORY. people go, never to return. His answer was an insolent fling at Jehovah : " Who is Jehovah, that I should obey his voice ? " " Get you to your burdens." " Ye be idle, ye be idle." What followed might have been anticipated. God told Moses that he would crush the spirit of Pharaoh, so that the king would not only let the people go, but would " with a strong hand drive them out of the land." Moses never renewed the request for the three-days' visit to the wilderness; he simply communicated to Pharaoh the command of God to let the people go out of the land, never to return (Exod. vi. 11, viii. 1, ix. 1). As the series of terrors went forward, the king attempted to meet the proposition of Moses by counter pro- posals. While the flies were swarming in the land, Pharaoh consented that the Hebrews might offer sacrifices in Egypt. No, answered Moses, for our worship is an abomination to the Egyptians, and they will stone us. When the king was threatened with the locusts, he said that the Hebrews might go to offer the sacrifice, if they would leave their wives and children in Egypt. Moses replied again : No, for the law of sacrifice required all the people to be in attendance. In the midst of the plague of darkness, the king proposed that all the people should go, leaving in Egypt their flocks and herds. No, replied Moses finally, for the question, what victims and how many, would be needed for the burnt-sacrifices, must be referred to Jehovah, making his will known at the time and place of the solemnity. Pharaoh became enraged, and drove Moses from his presence (x. 28, 29). Moses returned shortly, to announce the imj)ending destruction of the first-born. High words arose, and Moses went out in great anger (xi.). The Almighty then took the case into his own hands. Exod. xii. 29-36. — At midnight there was a great cry in Egypt ; Jehovah smote all the first-born, from the first-born of the king on the throne, to the first-born of the prisoner in his dungeon. There was not a house where there was not one dead. Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron by night, and ordered them peremptorily to leave Egypt, they and all the children of Israel. He made no condition whatever looking to a limited ISBAEL TUBVST OUT OF EGYPT. 455 absence. He granted fully all that they had demanded : " Take your flocks and herds as ye have said, and be gone, and bless me also." His subjects joined in the entreaty. They did not allow the Hebrews time to bake the dough which was in the kneading-troughs ; and at the demand of the Hebrews, the Egyptians loaded them down " with jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and raiment," and sent them away with all possible haste. Neither Manephtah nor his people expected them to return. That question had been settled by the obstinacy of Pharaoh himself. Jehovah told Moses that the king would "surely thrust them out altogether " (xi. 1). In his turn the king said to Moses, " Get you forth from among my people ; " and these words, uttered in that awful night, can mean nothing less than an order to depart, never to return. His piteous request for a blessing was a final farewell. And the Egyptians thought of nothing except how to be rid of them before daylight if possible ; for they cried out in agony and despair, " We be all dead men." They willingly, if not "joyfully, took the spoil- ing of their goods," to induce these dangerous people to go away and be gone forever. Nothing that was said or done is inconsistent with this statement. The words of the king, " Go serve the Lord as he hath said," refer to the flocks and herds mentioned in the next clause (xii. 31, 32). Pharaoh's pursuit of Israel after they were gone is explained by two circum- stances, — first, his heart was hardened ; and next, he was informed that the fugitives were "entangled in the land, and the wilderness had shut them in." And that tiie king and his people intended to thrust them out, for good and all, is con- clusively proved by their own words when they heard that the Hebrews had fled : " Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us ? " (Exod. xiv. 5.) The process known as the hardening of Pharaoh's heart gave a peculiar color to these transactions. Before Moses left Midian, he was forewarned that this induration would surely occur, and would enter into the plan of Providence. " The Lord said to Moses, When thou goest to return to Egypt, see that thou 456 SACRED HI STORY. doest all these wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put into thine hand ; but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go " (Exod. iv. 21). The number of places in the history of the exodus, in which this hardening is mentioned, is twenty ; indicating the prominence given to the incident. The agencies by which the process was effected are distinctly mentioned. God's agency appears in Exod. iv. 21, vii. 3, ix. 12, x. 1, 20, 27, xi. 10, xiv. 4, 8, 17. Pharaoh's agency appears in viii. 15, 32, ix. 34, xiii. 15. The hardening is described impersonally in vii. 13,^ 14, 22, viii. 19, ix. 7, 35. The synopsis shows that in ten places out of the twenty, one- half of the whole, the hardening is ascribed to God ; in four only, to the king himself; and in six places the term is used impersonally, intimating that his heart was simply hardened. Next, it is declared that Pharaoh hardened his own heart through four of the plagues, but after the sixth plague that sin is not distinctly imputed to him. Again, the first and the last instance is ascribed to God ; or, as Hengstenberg remarks, " Pharaoh's hardening is enclosed, as it were, by God's." " It also appears to proceed from design, that the hardening is attributed at first, in a preponderating degree to Pharaoh, and toward the end to God. The higher the plagues rise, so much the more does Pharaoh's hardening assume a sujjernatural character, so much the more obvious is its supernatural cau- sality." ^ Moreover, the synopsis may help us to estimate the value of the various explanations of the process which have been proposed. Some have ascribed this induration to the direct operation of Divine power on the king's heart. God stood by him, and moved him to refuse to let the people go, and to exult in his obstinacy under respite, and finally to pursue the Israelites after their departure with increased malice and revenge. By way of preparing Pharaoh for his final state, God continually 1 Revised Version, in Exod. vii. 13. 2 Genuineness of the Pent., ii. 380. HEART HARDENING. 457 hardened his heart from the hegiunin^ to tlie end of his days.^ Tliis explanation is not consistent with the fact that the king hardened his own heart, nor with the generally accepted idea of human responsibility and of the Divine administration. The opposite extreme is reached by those who resolve the Divine agency in this process into something merely incidental. The analogy in nature is taken from friction in machinery ; it is an unavoidable incident in the best possible models. The analogy in moral government is the injury done the son by domestic discipline ; the parent's proceedings are all good, but they lead incidentally to the ruin of the child. Thus, also, in the sphere of the gospel, Christ designed to bring peace, but incidentally strife and dissensions come in. It is held, accord- ingly, that Pharaoh's heart was hardened not by any Divine act looking to that result, but as an event incidental to what God did in Egypt with other intentions. Now, it may well be said that this theory, instead of explaining, crowds out the agencj of God ten times distinctl}^ asserted. God permitted Pharaoh to harden his own heart ; such is the thought of some of the Lutheran divines. They rely on the places, four in number, in which he is said to have hardened his heart ; and on the usage of the Bible, according to which events are ascribed to God, which in his Avisdom he allows to occur. Tins solution is not satisfactory. Ten times out of twenty the active agency of God is affirmed in terms as precise as those used in the four places which afllrni the active agency of the king. Besides, this theory makes the Divine purposes dependent on the human will, perverting the relations of God to his creatui'es. And, further, God announced to Moses at first, and repeatedly afterwards, that lie intended to harden the king's heart for purposes such as tlicso : that he might bring Israel out of Egypt witli great judgments; that Israel might know that he is Jehovah ; that their posterity might hear what signs and wonders he liad wrought in the land. He said also that when Israel should depart, he would harden Pharaoh's heart that he should pursue them, and God would be honored ; and the king 1 Dr. N. Emmons: iv. p. 327. 458 SACBED niSTORY. and all his hosts and the Egyptians should know that he is Jehovah. These are the fore-ordained results of the induration. They cannot be explained upon the theory that Pharaoh was simply allowed to harden his own heart. They were essential to the Divine plan, so also was the operation by which these important ends were secured (Exod. vii. 3-5, x. 1, 2, xi. 9, xiv. 4). The solution commonly proposed by the Calvinistic theolo- gians is taken from the doctrine of judicial abandonment. They teach us that we are to deny, on the one hand, that God merely permits evil, and, on the other hand, to deny that he is its author. We must hold fast the doctrine that evil is of man, and that God bounds it most wisely and powerfully. And yet it is to be remembered, that the hardening of the sinner's heart is itself punitive.^ It presupposes sin, and is its reward. According to this thought, God, in punishment for the sins of Pharaoh, withheld from him the restraints of his grace, and abandoned him to the dominion of his own malignant passions. This is the basis of the true explanation, as appears from Rom. i. 24- 82, where we read that God, b}'" way of punishing the wicked, gives them up unto " vile affections ; " and this " re]3robate mind" is both a retribution and a distinct, aggravated sin. The solution contemplates the three aspects presented in the record. God hardened Pharaoh's heart by giving him over to his own wicked passions ; Pharaoh hardened his own heart by following his evil impulses ; and his heart was hardened by the joint agency of God abandoning the man to himself, and of the king going on in sin. But may we not inquire whether this explanation, in order to cover the case, does not need to be extended? The active causality of God, so often asserted in the record, seems to imply somewhat more than a mere abandonment of the king to his own rebellious nature. Another and further idea is suggested ; the hypothesis, to wit, of a judicial active agency. That is to say, God, in judgment for his sins, not only withheld gracious restraints from Pharaoh, but he ordered and arranged particu- 1 Hodge on Rom. ix, 14. INDURATION POSITIVE AND PENAL. 459 lar events which made his heart, already disposed to evil, still harder, although these very events would have led a righteous man to do right. Here the order of thought should be noticed. First, the king had oppressed the chosen seed, and had refused to let them go at God's command. Next, God resolved to pun- ish the cruel and disobedient monarch. Again, the particular punishment awarded was hardness of heart. Further, this sen- tence was carried into effect not only by the withdrawal of the restraints of providence and grace, but by placing the king in circumstances which, owing to liis own perversity, served to harden his heart, although his heart ought to have been softened by them. The induration, let it be noticed, did not precede, but followed after, the impiety of the king, and was its fruit and retribution. Still further, this obduracy is to be contem- plated under two aspects ; under one it was a grievous sin, under the other it was a severe punishment. As a sin, it was the act of Pharaoh ; as a punishment, it was an act of God. Looking at the author of the sin, one must say Pharaoh hard- ened his own heart ; looking at the avenger of his crimes, one must say God hardened his heart. Guilt and wrath were min- gled in the bitter cup ; the guilt was Pharaoh's guilt, the wrath was God's wrath. Toward the close of this remarkable struggle, the insolence of the king became insufferable, and this harden- ing as a direct judgment of God came out in bolder relief; the fact being, that in the last eight places in which the hardening is mentioned, seven times out of eight it is ascribed to the Almighty .1 The circumstances which were arranged by Jehovah, and were adapted to produce the result, confirm this view of the case. One of these was the character of the first three miracles wrought by IMoses ; they were such as the magicians were able to counterfeit. When the king witnessed the success of their enchantments, liis "heart was hardened," and he turned away in contempt from Moses and his demands (Exod. vii. 22, 23). Secondly, certain of the i)lagnes wliich annoyed liim excessivel}'"' were attended with the like effect. When the dust of the earth 1 See Westminster Confession, chap. v. sect. iv. 460 SACRED HISTORY. became lice or gnats on man and beast, on Pharaoh himself perhaps, the magicians said to him, " This is the finger of God," and "his heart was hardened" (viii. 19). When the boils broke out "upon the magicians and all the Egyptians," on Pharaoh probably as well, it is added, " The Lord hardened his heart" (ix. 12). Thirdly, the respites from the plagues were followed by similar results. When the frogs were removed, "he hardened his heart;" when the flies were taken away, "he hardened his heart at this time also ; " and "when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunders were ceased, he sinned yet more and more, and hardened his heart, he and his servants " (viii. 15, 32, ix. 34). He took offence, fourthly, at the exemption of the Hebrews from the visitations of God. During the prevalence of the murrain, "Pharaoh sent, and behold, there was not one of the cattle of the Israelites dead. And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened " (ix. 7). Fifthly, he resented the refusal of Moses to accede to any compromise re- specting the festival in the wilderness. Moses, having declined two counter propositions, rejected the third also. Thereupon " the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them go " (x. 27). Finally, when he was told that the people, at the exodus, were shut up between the wilderness and the Red Sea, his heart was hardened once more (xiv. 8). It should be mentioned that his obduracy led him more than once to ask Moses to intercede for him while the plagues were raging, promising, if they were taken away, that he would obey the Divine command ; and yet in ever}^ instance he was false to his word. Two of the elements entering into these transactions are the Divine appointment of all the destructive agencies, and their specific effect on the heart of the king. But a third ele- ment is not less vital. These inflictions would, but for his obstinate unbelief, have constrained him to yield to the demands of Jehovah. The failures of the magicians ought to have con- vinced him that they were either impostors, or the ministers of some lying spirit ; the annoyance which he suffered from the gnats and the boils should have humbled his pride ; the good- ness of God in removing the terrors ought to have led him to PARALLEL PASSAGES. 461 repentance ; the protection given to the Hebrews should have rebuked his unbelief; the refusal of Moses to grant any conces- sions should have persuaded him to yield to the inevitable ; and the entanglement of Israel in the wilderness should have taught him, in connection with what liad already occurred, that Jehovala of hosts was encamped not far away. The foregoing observations on the liardening of Pharaoh's heart indicate the proper interpretation of Isa. vi. 9, 10, and its paraphrases in the New Testament. The ninth verse in Isaiah draws attention to the agency of the Jews in bring- ing insensibility and blindness on themselves: "Go and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not ; and see ye indeed, but perceive not." The words resemble the rebuke of Christ to the Jews : " Fill ye up the measure " (the iniquity) "of your fathers" (Matt, xxiii. 32). The tenth verse goes further, and affirms the agency of the prophet in their indura- tion : " Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy." The guilty agency of the people, and the instrumental agency of the prophet, are the two aspects of the case presented by Isaiah. Christ in Matt. xiii. 15, and Paul in Acts xxviii. 27, dwell on the first of these aspects, showing that the Jews fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, by their self-inflicted callous- ness : " For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their cz/es have they closed^'''' etc. Finally, in John xii. 40, Christ reveals the third factor in this operation, namel}^ the agency of God : "He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their hearts." We are taught, therefore, by the words of God through Isaiah, and the interpretation put upon them by Jesus and Paul, that the three parties to this proceeding are the sinner himself, the prophet, and the Almighty. On the part of the sinner it is an act of aggravated guilt ; on the prophet's part, an instrumental agency ; on the part of the Almight}', it is a just retribution. INIicliaelis states it tluis : " Deus sic prcecepit jiidicialiter, poptdus criminaliter^ propheta autem minister ialiterr J. A. Alexander says, "In this fearful process there are three distinguishable agencies expressly or implicitly described : the ministerial agency of the prophet, 462 S ACE ED HISTORY. the judicial agency of God, and the suicidal agency of the people themselves." ^ A fine instance this is of the way in which the Scriptures exhibit, progressively and harmoniously, the various jjhases of a many-sided truth. It illustrates, also, the perfect wisdom with which Christ developed and enlarged the profound spiritual meaning of the old prophets. By the same rule the place in Rom. ix. 18 is to be explained : " Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." The discrimination here set forth rests on the distinction between the dealings of God which are judicial, and those which are sovereign. The reason why he punishes any man is found in the bad behavior of the man, and the punitive act is judicial. The reason why he pun- ishes one sinner rather than another is to be sought not in that other, but in God himself, and the discrimination is sovereign. The hardening presupposes the existence of flagrant sin, and is both the fruit and the punishment thereof. The order of thought to be observed in clearing up this method of Divine retribution is pointed out in what is said above, of the sin and punishment of Pharaoh. 1 Alexander on Isa. vi. 9, 10, and on Acts xxviii. 27. FIBST-BOBN FOB FIBST-BOBN. 463 CHAPTER XXXII. THE EXODUS. Before the series of plagues began, Jehovah gave this com- mission to Moses : " Thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Tims saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my first-born ; and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me ; and if thou refuse to let him go, I will slay thy son, even thy first-born " (Exod. iv. 22, 23). Tills message defined the relation of the people to Jehovah. Israel was his son, having received an adoption flowing from Divine grace. Tlie sonship in its highest sense was spiritual. They were chosen to be a holy nation, and they owed to their Father love, reverence, and obedience. The term "first-born son" is both a term of endearment, and an intimation of the adoption of many other sons from among the heathen ; just as the change of Abram's name to Abraham, " the father of many nations," pointed to the ingathering of the Gentiles. The message shows, also, that the destruction of the first-born was the death-wound of the ten blows about to be laid upon Egypt. The nine were preliminary to the tenth, and in the nature of warnings ; the tenth was the work of final judgment. That infliction, moreover, returned like for like, — that is to say, the leading characteristic of the sin of Egypt was reiterated in the leading characteristic of the pun- ishment, upon the principle involved in "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." The oppression of Israel, God's first-born son, was the sin; the destruction of the first-born sons of the oppressors was the punishment. The visitation was, further, thoroughly supernatural. Unlike most of the preceding won- ders, the destruction of the oldest son was not a calamity 464 SACRED HISTORY. indigenous to the country, under a form intensely aggravated by tlie Almighty ; but it was altogether a strange terror, never before inflicted, never since repeated. Finally, the tenth plague was not introduced by human instrumentality. During the progress of the wonders, the ministries employed rose in dignity. In the first three, Aaron used the rod ; at the fourth, and thence onward, Moses was prominent; but in the tenth, Moses warned Pharaoh and the Hebrews that the disaster was approaching, and then stepped aside at the coming of the Jehovah-Angel. God had said to Moses, "About midnight I will go out into the midst of Egypt ; " and to the king, " I will slay thy son, even thy first-born son." This plague, as Kurtz remarks, was of such a kind that even hardness and unbelief could not refuse to admit the interposition of the personal, living, supreme, and almighty God. Several Divine institutions, established at the time of the exodus, bring out its memorable significancy. One of these was the appointment of a new era. The Hebrews had been accustomed to begin the year with the month Tisri, correspond- ing very nearly with our October. The exodus occurred in the month Nisan, corresponding very nearly with our April ; and, by the Divine direction, the year was thenceforth to begin at that time. According to Josephus, this change determined the beginning of the ecclesiastical year only; the civil year began six months later, as before.^ The ecclesiastical year began with the Passover, the civil year with the sabbath and the jubi- lee (Lev. xxiii. 5; Num. ix. 3). This arrangement gave to the Hebrews a double computation of time, not unlike the method adopted in the United States, whereby important state papers bear two dates ; one running with the vulgar era, and proceed- ing from the first day of January, and the other governed by the Declaration of Independence, and beginning with the fourth day of July. By the exodus, Israel acquired a spiritual, in addition to its natural, character ; ^ and it was a turning-point in the history of redemption, changing the face of the world. Many eminent historians, though failing to recognize the reli- 1 Antiq. Jud., i. 1, chap. iii. 53. 2 Hengstenberg: Kingdom of God, i. 278. FEAST OF JEHOVAH'S PASSOVER. 465 gious significance of that event, agree in clothing it "with tlie dignity of an epoch. Ewakl says that "the montli of departure became the commencement of the whole national freedom, and Moses was fully justified in placing in the spring the festival of the deliverance of Israel, and the commencement of a new era." ^ " History," says Bunsen, " was born in the night when the children of Israel went forth out of Egypt." ^ President Edwards, with a finer sense of the place of the exodus in the history, says, " This was quite a new thing that God did towards the great work of redemption. God had never done any thing like it before (Deut. iv. 32, 3-4). This was a great advance- ment of the work that had been begun and carried on from the fall of man ; a great step taken in Divine providence toAvards the preparation for Christ's coming into the world, and working out his great and eternal redemption : for this was the people of whom Christ came." ^ The feast of the Passover was now instituted. Each family of the Hebrews was required to procure a lamb or a kid without blemish, a male of the first year. On the fourteenth day of the month the animal was killed ; the blood was sprinkled on the door-posts and lintels of the house ; the body of the lamb was roasted whole, and eaten l)y the family, parents and chil- dren, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They partook of the repast in haste, with their garments girded about their loins, sandals on tlieir feet, and staff in hand, ready at a given signal to set off for Canaan. At midnight the Almighty passed through the land, smiting the first-born of the Egyp- tians, but passing over the houses the door-posts of which were marked with the blood of the paschal lamb. The cere- mony was "Jehovah's passover;" for, said he to the IIeI)re\A^s, "I will pass over you." The "passing through" was in judg- ment on the Eg3q:)tians, the " passing over " was in merc}^ to the Hebrews. The feast was established as a perpetual ordi- nance. It was kept sacred by the Jews down to the destruc- tion of their commonwealth at the fall of Jerusalem ; it has even survived that catastrophe among the Jews, and appears 1 Antiq. Israel, p. 344. 2 Egypt, i. 23. 8 Hist. Red., p. 208. 466 SACBED HISTOBT. to this day in Christendom under the name of the Easter festivaL The Passover was, in the first place, a commemorative insti- tution. Said God to the Hebrews, " This day shall be unto you for a memorial." " When your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? ye shall say, It is the sacri- fice of the Lord's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt ; when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses." Moses said, " It is a night to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them out of the land of Egypt" (Exod. xii.). Much importance was given to the exodus by an alteration in the Fourth Commandment. Accord- ing to the text given at Sinai, the sabbath day is to be remem- bered because God rested on that day from the six days of creation. In the recapitulation of the law in Deut. v. 15, that reason was omitted for the time being, and the Hebrews were directed to keep the sabbath in remembrance of the exodus ; perhaps their flight was on the sabbath day. But with the fall of the commonwealth, the sabbath, considered as a Jewish ordi- nance, lost its significance ; and the Church of God came back to the ground for its observance which was laid at the creation, and hallowed in the Fourth Command. The Passover was, moreover, a teaching institution. The doctrine taught is salvation by tlie shedding of blood. The Hebrews had partaken with the Egyptians in their idolatry, and in the liabilities which that sin draws after it. A community in guilt brought the first three judgments on both peoples alike. Thenceforth they were made to differ, and the jilagues fell only on the Egyptians. But inasmuch as the Hebrews were better neither by nature nor by behavior than the heathen, their exemption from the death-blow could be secured in no other way than by the shedding and sprinkling of blood. They had been chosen by the election of grace, they miist be redeemed by . an atonement. " And the blood," said Jehovah, " shall be a token upon the houses where ye are ; and when I see the blood I will pass over you " (Exod. xii. 13, comp. ver. 23). Some of the cardinal ideas which enter into the gospel are expressed in THE PASSOVER A SACEIFICE. 4G7 this transaction. God will have a chosen people to serve him ; they must be chosen not only, but redeemed as well ; this redemption is effected by the blood of the Lamb of God ; the shed blood must be appropriated by an act of faith on the part of the sinner, even as the Hebrews sprinkled the paschal blood on their door-posts ; when the Almighty, coming to judge the wicked, sees " the blood," he will pass over his chosen, re- deemed, and believing people ; and the destruction of the wicked goes hand in hand with the salvation of the righteous. Next, the Passover was a sacrifice. Many of the earlier Prot-' estant theologians held that it was a sacrament only, not a sac- rifice. They were driven to this position by a polemic of the Roman-Catholic divines, contending that the Lord's Supper, being the substitute and continuation of the Passover, is, like the Passover, a sacrifice for sin. To this suggestion the suffi- cient answer is, that the quality of a sacrifice cannot appear in the Lord's Supper, for the reason that since the death of Christ there remains no more sacrifice for sin ; and for the further reason, that the supper is simply, by Christ's appointment, a commemoration of the atonement, not the atonement itself. That the Passover was a sacrifice, is evident. It is called in Exod. xii. 27, the " sacrifice of the Lord's passover ; " in xxxiv. 25, the "sacrifice of the feast of the passover;" in Num. ix. T, "an offering of the Lord;" and in Deut. xvi. 2-6, the term "sacrifice "is four times applied to the ceremony. After the building of the Temple the paschal lamb was, by Divine com- mand, to be slain at the sanctuary, and in no other place (Deut. xvi. 5). Both the blood and the fat of the paschal victims were offered by the priest on the altar, according to the invariable law of atonement (2 Chron. xxxv. 1, 11, 14). And, further, Paul puts into the same category the slaying of the paschal lamb and the death of Christ : " For even Christ our passover " (our paschal lamb, Mark xiv. 12) " is sacrificed for us " (1 Cor. v. 7). Moreover, the ritual of the ordinance was sacrificial. The victim was a lamb or kid without blemish ; the officiating priest, in the absence of a sacerdotal order, was the patriarch of the family ; the altar, in the absence of a public sanctuary, was the doorway 468 SACRED UISTOEY. of the house ; the sprinkling of blood upon the door-posts and lintel was an act of obedience to God and of faith in his promise ; the passing over of the houses marked by the blood was an act of God administering his own rule of salvation ; and the whole was a true expiation for sin, offered by the sinner, and accepted by the sovereign Judge. Nor is any importance to be attached to the particulars wherein the first Passover differed from the ritual of sacrifice prescribed at Sinai. The imposition of hands, the ministry of Aaronic priesthood, the offering of the blood and fat on the altar, were necessarily omitted in Egypt, because neither a consecrated priesthood nor altar of burnt-offering was in existence. The attitude of the worshippers on the night of the exodus, eating the flesh of the lamb in haste, with girded loins, the feet in sandals, the staves in hand, were actions which were afterwards laid aside. They were accidents attending the rite celebrated in Egypt, not substantial characteristics of the ordinance. The feast of the passover was also a sacrame&t, — one of the two sacraments of the Abrahamic covenant. Circumcision was the first in order, and was given as a part of that covenant. Four hundred and thirty years had elapsed since that sign and seal was instituted. Nearly two hundred years had passed since Jehovah had made any communication of his will to the chosen seed, whether by vision, by covenant, or by oral revela- tion. Through many generations the seed of Abraham had been enslaved by the heathen. When Jehovah came to bring them out of bondage in Egypt, he is said to have remembered his covenant. In order to give dignity to the new epoch, he appointed a new sign of his ancient covenant, in the form of the second sacrament. The relation of the Passover to the Abrahamic covenant is easily defined. It was in due time incorporated with circumcision into the Mosaic institutes ; but it is older than the Sinaitic covenant, older than the Levitical priesthood, older than the ceremonial law. It pertains, there- fore, to the covenant made with Abraham four hundred and thirty years earlier, and was a new sacrament added to the initiatory rite of circumcision. The sacramental character of MABKS OF A SACRAMENT. 409 the Passover is to be recognized (1) in the fact that it was of Divine appointment, in the absence of which no observance can be a true sacrament. (2) The two essential parts of a sac- rament, the visible sign and the inward grace signified thereby, were present in the Passover. The lamb, killed, roasted, and eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, made up the sign. Exemption from the destruction of the first-born, and deliverance from slavery, were the immediate blessings repre- sented; but redemption from sin by the blood of Christ was the spiritual grace signified in the ordinance. (3) The minis- ters of tlie ordinance were divinely designated, — in Egypt the head of the family, and in the final form of the ritual the priest jointly with the head of the family. (4) The trutlis proper to a sacrament were set forth in the paschal symbols. The killing and roasting of the lamb conveyed the idea of an offering made for sin by the knife and fire. Its body laid on the table whole and entire, not a bone being broken, expressed the unity of the chosen seed, and of the one sacrifice for sin. The burning of what remained after supper, and the giving it back to God by fire, indicated that all the flesh of the lamb was set aside from a common to a sacred use. (5) Tlie gracious affections' proper to a true sacrament were demanded in the observance of the Passover. Repentance for sin was represented by the bitter herbs ; the entire exclusion of inworking corruption was expressed by the putting-away of the leaven (Exod. xii. 15 ; 1 Cor. v. 5-8) ; a joyful sense of union and communion with God was awakened by the sight of the unbroken body of the lamb ; and a living faith in the coming one, the Lamb of God, was set forth typically in the paschal sacrifice. The intimate nature of circumcisit)n and the Passover, and their relations to each other, might be set forth somewliat thus : Both were signs and seals of the covenant of grace which was manifested in the covenant with Abraham. Both were of per- petual obligation by virtue of the Divine connnand ; and butli were sacredly observed by the chosen seed, witli certain inter- vals of guilty neglect, down to tlie death of Christ. Circum- 470 SACRED HISTOEY. cision was administered to the Master himself when eight days old, and he kept the Passover with the disciples on the night in which he was betrayed. The particulars wherein these ordinances differed are : (1) Circumcision left a mark in the flesh of the subject, certifying to his birthright under the covenant : the Passover had no such personal sign. (2) Males only received circumcision : all persons of suitable age, male and female, were admitted to the Passover. (3) Circumcision was applied to its subjects severally, one by one : the Passover was a social festival, a family re-union, expressing the com- munion of saints. (4) In circumcision the subject was passive ; in the Passover he was active ; he ate the flesh of the lamb and the bitter herb, and drank the cup of blessing. (5) Infant circumcision was an act of faith on the part of the parent : the eating of the Passover was an act of faith on the part of the communicant. (6) Circumcision pointed to the corruption of fallen man, and was a sign of regeneration : the Passover pointed to his guilt, and was the sign of pardon through atoning blood. (7) Inasmuch as regeneration can occur but once, it was well represented by circumcision, which can be applied but once ; inasmuch as the believer needs continual pardon and saving grace, the Passover was offered year by year continually. The particulars wherein circumcision and the Passover differ, and the particulars wherein baptism and the Lord's Supper differ, need not be stated here. There is a close connection between the Passover of the old covenant and the Lord's Supper of the new covenant. While Christ was celebrating the Passover with the eleven, he took the bread and the wine that were before him, and blessed these elements, and gave them to his disciples, repeating the words of a new institution. The feast which began as the old Pass- over terminated by a gentle and beautiful transition in the sweeter and holier sacrament, even as the morning brightens into the perfect day. There is, moreover, a close resemblance between the Passover and the Lord's Supper. Both were instituted a few hours previous to the events which they were appointed to commemorate. Both are festal, social, and sym- PRIESTHOOD INSTITUTED. ill bolical. Each sustains similar relations to its fellow ordinance : none but the circumcised might come to the Passover, none but the baptized may approach the Lord's table. Both are monuments of a great redemption; both are prophetic, — the Jewish Passover foreshowing the first coming of Christ, the Christian Passover pointing to his second coming. The Lord Jesus slain for sin was set forth in both, — in the old sacra- ment by the lamb, in the new by the bread and the wine. The sacramental action in the two are the same; the communi- cant eats the flesh of the lamb in the first, and in the latter he partakes of the symbols of Christ's body and blood. Repent- ance for sin, faith in the sufficiency and efficacy of Christ's blood, and communion with God and all the saints, are the graces suitable to the one and the other. It is to be dis- tinctly borne in mind, however, that the two sacraments of the Christian Church are far more precious as means of grace and vehicles of saving truth than the two sacraments of the Jewish Church; just as the Christian Scriptures are richer than the Jewish Scriptures in the same grace and truth. Besides the feast of the Passover, two other Mosaic institutes took their origin from the destruction of the first-born. The sacerdotal order is one of these. From the story of Cain and Abel we learn, that, in the beginning, every worshipper offered gifts and sacrifices for himself. From the history of Noah, Abraham, and Melchizedek, we gather that tlie oflice of the priest was put in the head or patriarch of the family. During the period of the bondage, worship at the Hebrew altar was suppressed by the Egyptians (Exod. viii. 26). At the exodus, God prepared the way for a sacerdotal order, by setting apart for that purpose all the first-born sons of the twelve tribes, lie declared, that on the day Avhen he smote all the first-born (if the Egyptians, he separated unto himself All the first-born of Israel, both man and beast : " Mine they shall be, I am Jehovah" (Exod. xiii. 2; Num. iii. 13). By this appointment the first-born male, both of man and l)east, was reserved for tlie altar; the former as the priest, the latter as the victim. Tlie designation of the first-born of all Israel to the priestly office 472 SACRED HISTORY. was provisional only. About six months later the law was amended at Sinai by Jehovah. Aaron and his sons were set apart to the priesthood ; and shortly afterwards the males of the whole tribe of Levi, to which Aaron belonged, were constituted in perpetuity the sacerdotal order. The circumstances amidst which this change was effected appear in the record. The cruelty of Levi in the slaughter of the Shechemites, described in Gen. xxxiv., moved Jacob, when he was dying, to exclude the tribe of that son from any separate inheritance in the land of Canaan (Gen. xlix. 7). At the exodus, therefore, Levi's de- scendants set out for a country in which there was not an acre that they could call their own. But when the people worshipped the molten calf at Sinai, the warriors of the disinherited tribe of Levi flew to arms at the call of Moses, and slew three thousand of the idolaters. Li acknowledgment of their piety and courage, they were raised to the dignity of a holy tribe (Exod. xxxii. 25-29 ; Deut. xxxiii. 8-10). A census was taken showing that the number of males, first-born and after-born, in the tribe of Levi, was 22,000 ; and the number of first-born males in the other eleven tribes was 22,273. Jehovah ordered 22,000 of the sons of the tribe of Levi to be taken, instead of an equivalent number of the sons of the other tribes ; and he directed, that the excess of the males in the eleven tribes, being 273, should be redeemed at the rate of five shekels each ; the redemption- money to be deposited in the treasury of the sanctuary. By this proceeding Jehovah took the Levites to himself, instead of all the first-born of Israel. Aaron and his sons in all genera- tions held the priesthood ; and the other Levites, in perpetual succession, discharged the inferior offices of public worship (Num. iii. 12-51, viii. 16-18). And so the act of God at the exodus, consecrating to liimself the first-born, terminated in the establishment, for all time to come, of a priesthood for Israel. In order to complete this part of the history, it should be added, that in the settlement of Canaan the family of Aaron received neither part nor lot in the sacred soil ; the Lord was their inherit- ance, that is to say, he charged himself with their maintenance (Num. xviii. 20). To the Levites were assigned the tithes of BEDEMPTION OF FIRST-BORN. 473 all Israel, together with forty-eight cities distributed throughout Palestine. By these measures, ample provision was made for their support, while the forfeiture long before announced in the prophecy of Jacob was enforced: "1 will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel." The destruction of the first-born of the Egyptians, and the preservation of the first-born of the Hebrews, extended not only to the families of both people, but to their beasts likewise. The ordinance by which Jehovah consecrated the first-born of the chosen seed to the priesthood, provided victims for the altar in their flocks and herds (Num. iii. 13). The firstling of the clean kind, as of oxen, sheep, and goats, was brought to the altar , the offs^jring of an unclean beast, as the foal of an ass, might be redeemed by a lamb, or its neck broken, at the option of the owner (Num. xviii. 17 ; Exod. xiii. 13). It is probable, moreover, that the rule by which God reserved to himself the first-fruits of the earth of every kind, rested on the principles involved in the sanctification of the first-born (Exod. xxii. 29, 30). The Mosaic institute, known as the redemption of the first- born, is another memorial of the events. When a first-born child attained the age of a month, the parents were required, by the Levitical law, to pay five shekels — say two dollars and a half — into the sanctuary. The ordinance is set out in Exod. xiii. 15, and in Num. xviii. 16 ; and it rested on the rescue of the first-born in Egypt. The Passover commemorated this event once a year ; the redemption of the first-born kept alive the memory of that deliverance thr(mghout tlie entire year. The usage associated the departure from Egypt with the joy of the parents in the birth of their first-born ; it afforded a steady revenue to the sanctuary ; it was not a burdensome tax, because it was levied on a family only once, and at a time when its other expenses were comparatively light. The ordinance was in force down to the end of the dis})cnsation. Jesus was him- self redeemed l)y liis parents, as a })art of the rigliteousuess which tliey were required to fulfil on liis l)ehalf (Luke ii. 23, 24). The idea of redemption, and the kindred idea of the se[)aration 474 SACRED HISTORY. of the redeemed to the service of God, pervaded the mstitutes of Judaism. He reserved to himself the first-fruits of the earth in all their kinds, in token that every returning harvest and vintage belonged of right to him. The redemption of the first- born, and the oblation of the first-fruits, carried into every dwelling, and every harvest-field and vineyard, the doctrine of a signal redemption and a complete consecration. " They are mine," said Jehovah. Israel left Egypt in triumph, laden with the spoils of their oppressors. When God announced to Abraham the future enslavement of his posterity, he added this promise : " That nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and they shall come out with great substance." The conspicuous fulfilment of this promise was a necessity, both of the faithfulness of God, and of the dignity of the occasion. Nothing could have been more inappropriate as the conclusion of the wonders wrought in Egypt, nothing more unsuitable to the character of the God of Israel, than the escape of the Hebrews under the cover of the night, after the manner of a gang of runaway slaves. They were not a ragged and starving rabble of mendicants and mis- creants : they were the heirs of a superb inheritance ; they were a redeemed Church, God's own son, even his first-born, A future of consummate glory was before them. Prophets, kings, and priests, not only, but One in whom the offices held by prophets and priests were to obtain their illustrious consumma- tion, were borne in their loins ; and the whole company of the elect, then and thereafter to be born, were represented in their array. Their departure from Egypt was in keeping with their position and destiny. " They went out with a high hand " (of Jehovah) "in the sight of the Egyptians" (Num. xxxiii. 3). " They went up harnessed ; " that is to say, armed and in order of battle. They marched out of Egypt a victorious, not a retreating, host. Not only so, but their sons and daughters went out clothed with the best spoils of war; "jewels of silver, and jewels of gold and raiment" (Exod. iii. 21, 22). The value of the treasures taken from the Egyptians may be estimated from the contributions subsequently made by the VALUE OF TUE SPOILS. 475 Hebrews, first to the support of idolatry, and then to the ser- vice of God. The calf worshipped at Sinai was molten out of the golden earrings worn by the people. The profusion of the precious metals which were lavished upon the tabernacle, is set forth in the twenty-fifth and thirty-seventh chapters of Exodus. The foundation was of silver ; the walls were plated without, and coupled together, with gold; the crown of the altar of incense, and of the table of shew-bread, together with their wings and bowls, were of gold. The mercy-seat and the overshadowing cherubim were of beaten gold. The candlestick and its seven branches were made of gold " pure and beaten," of a talent, or about eighty pounds, in weight. Embroidered curtains were hung within and without the sanctuary ; rare and precious jewels were set in the breastplate and shoulder-strap of the high priest ; and munificent gifts of gold and silver vessels were offered by the twelve princes at the dedication of the sanctuary. The value of the gold and silver expended, and the building and appointments of the tabernacle, are esti- mated b}^ Canon Cook at ^1,165,550, by xVrbuthnot and Boekh at somewhat less that a million dollars, and by Keil at about three- quarters of a million in our money.^ The vast depreciation in the value of the precious metals since the days of Moses is to be taken into the account. Dr. John remarks tliat their value in the fourth century before Christ was to their value in England in A.D. 1780 as ten to one. The ratio in the problem, between the sixteenth century before Christ and the present time, must be greater. If the estimate of one million dollars be put upon the treasures used in the taber- nacle, and if, furthermore, that estimate be increased by a moderate formula, representing the depreciation in the precious metals during tlie lapse of thirty-five centuries, the same total will rise into the millions. After all proper deductions are made for the contributions which the Hebrews made to the tabernacle out of their own earnings in Egypt, it will remain true that the spoils taken from their oppressors were immense, and that they were Avell applied to tlie service of public worship. 1 Speak. Com. on Exod. xxxviii. 31. Kcil and Delitzsch, Id. 476 SACRED HIS TOE Y. Indeed, the tabernacle, not invested with the grandeur of a cathedral, but clothed with the beauty of a gem, stood for live hundred years, first in the wilderness, and then in Canaan, a monument of the night in which the fathers came out of Egypt "with great substance." The method by which the Hebrews obtained the spoils pre- sents, so it has been thought, a difficult problem. According to the Authorized English Version, the Hebrews "borrowed," and the Egyptians "lent," their jewels and raiment. The question of morals raised here would be of little importance if it involved the Israelites alone, their virtues at the time being somewhat shrunken. But it goes deeper. The Almighty told Moses in Midian that his people should be set free, and should " borrow " jewels and raiment from their oppressors (Exod. iii. 19-22). Just before the tenth plague, God com- manded them, through Mpses, to " borrow " of their Egyptian neighbors the property already described (Exod. xi. 1-3). On their departure from Egypt, the Hebrews " borrowed," and the Egyptians " lent " unto them, such things as they required, and "they spoiled the Egyptians" (Exod. xii. 35, 36). Tliis trans- action has been alleged by the sceptics to be an impeachment either of the inspiration of the Pentateuch or of the righteous- ness of God. But the difficulty is removed by the fact that the Hebrew word sJiahal, here translated "borrow," means primarily, and well-nigh universally, to her/, to asJc, to demand; and the Hebrew word hisJmil, here translated " lend," means to c/ra7it a request, to (/ive lohat is ashed. The proof of this assertion is ample. (1) The word shahal occurs one hundred and seventy- five times in the Hebrew Scriptures. Its precise meaning ap- pears in such places as these ; " Ash of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance" (Ps. ii. 8). "He ashed life of thee, and thou gavest it him " (Ps. xxi. 4). " One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after " (Ps. xxvii. 4). "And God said to him" (Solomon), "Because thou hast ashed this thing, and hast not ashed for thyself long life, neither hast ashed the life of thine enemies, but hast ashed for thyself MEANING OF " BOEROWED." 477 understanding," etc. (1 Kings iii. 11). The use of the word " borrow " in these places would introduce utter confusion of thought. (2) There are only two places, out of the one ]iun- dred and seventy-five, in which it can be plausibly affirmed that sliahal is correctly translated " borrow " : " If a man shall bor- row aught of his neighbor " (Exod. xxii. 14). " Alas, master ! for it was borrowed " (2 Kings vi. 5). Many of our most com- petent scholars maintain that the word in the first of these places means to hire^ and in the last to beg. (3) The Hebrew expresses the idea of borrowin5 before Pharaoh 437 writer of Pentateuch .... 510 his greatness 520 writing about Moses .... 520 Miiller, Max, on unity of the race . 151 on language-roots Kil ancient forms of speech . . . 1(32 Nature, unity of 17 Nimrod, founder of cities .... 15(5 Noah not saved by merit .... 98 636 INDEX. PAGE Noah, what he represented ... 99 second father of mankind . . 125 his comprehensive offering . . 128 his dominion 130 covenant with 133 his prophetic ode 138 compared with Adam .... 143 his inspiration 149 his sons distributed 150 Particularism newly recognized . 176 not exclusivism 177 comi^ared with generalism . . 182 Passover a teaching institution . . 46G a sacrifice and sacrament . . . 468 its sacramental marks .... 469 and Lord's Sujsper 470 Patriarchs, their sins discussed . . 504 good men after all 514 trustees for the world .... 513 Pedigrees, Mosaic, unparalleled . 169 Peniel, its lessons 359 Pharaoh, his heart hardened . . . 455 philosophy of hardening . . . 456 Manephtah 453 Pharaohs identified 405 Plagues rapid and progressive . . 443 manifestly miraculous . . . 445 aimed at gods and sorcery . . 446 Priesthood, Melchizedek and Christ 306 rooted in tenth plague .... 471 Promises progressive 189 Rainbow appropriated, analogies Rameses II., his greatness . . Rawlinson, Sir Henry, on Gen. x. Sir George, on Gen. x. . . language of Arabians . . Red Sea, crossing of, discussed Redemption rooted in the fall Resurrection, doctrine of of body emphasized Revelation, first truths . laws of progress . . sufficient from first . Revelations made to Noah Sabbath instituted . . . Sabism, earliest form of idolatry Salvation first foretold . . 136 406 145 153 162 484 77 429 430 103 105 106 127 47 174 69 PAGE Salvation through a person ... 69 Seed of the woman 67 of Abraham, four classes . . 244 consummated in Christ . . . 248 spiritual, have supreme gifts . 248 Seeds, enmity between .... 70-74 Semitic group of tongues .... 161 Serpent, the trail of 367 Seth, seed of the woman .... 92 his family and Cain's .... 92 his genealogy prolonged ... 93 Seti I., "knew not Joseph" . . . 403 Shechem, backward and forward . 363 costly exclusivism 363 Shem, his place ascertained . . . 152 Shepherd life, Oriental, picture of . 346 Shiloh, who and when ? .... 397 Schroder on Gen. x 145 Sinai, dignity of its events . . . 496 importance of record .... 496 Sin, problem of its origin .... 59 Society, civil, its power 46 Sojourn in Egypt, its duration . . 392 "Sons of God," Gen. vi. 2 ex- plained 96 Sovereignty co-working with free- dom 389 " Spirits in prison," 1 Pet. iii. 18-20, 99 Supernatural, word how used . . 1 Temptation of Eve 53 Analogies 62 Theocracy, results of 502 Theophany of the bush 424 at the ladder 344 of the fire and cloud .... 487 Turanian groups of tongues . . . 163 Von Miiller on Gen. x 145 Virchow, Professor, primitive man, 24 Vedas estimated . 2 "Wilberforce, character of Moses ■Wilderness, good results of education in the law . heathen benefited . . population of ... . crucial test for critics . Woman not inferior to man "Worship, first ordinances of enlarged ritual . . . 524 481 482 483 490 492 32 104 127 SCEIPTUEE TEXTS INTERPRETED OR REFERRED TO. Geitesis. page Gen. i. 1,2 27 chaps, i. to 1 30 i. 27 42 i. 26-28 4G ii. 1, 3 18 ii. 7, 27 42 iii. 14, 15 80 iii. 21 82 iv. 6 84 iv. 16-24 89 V. 2 31 V. 3 81, 143 vi. 1-8 91 A'ii. 19-21 120 viii. 20-22 127 ix. 1-27 127 X. 15-19 147 xi 155 xii. 2, 3 177 xii. 1, 3 l'S4 XV. 16 139 xvi 199 xvii. 5 18-5 xvii 200 xvii. 18-21 323 xviii. 1 187 xx.,xxi 202 xxvi. 2,24 32r, xxix. 1-30 340 XXX. 1-41 348 xxxi. 1-21 3.52 xxxii. 1,2 355 xxxiii. 18-20 3(i2 XXXV. 18 350 xxxvii. 33 3.")0 xxxvii 375 xliii. 32 370 xlvi. 7 350 xlvi. 34 370 PAGE Gen. xlviii. 7 365 xlix. 4 3G3 xxii 202 Exodus. Exod. ii. 1-10 416 ii. 11-14 418 iii. 11-22 426 iv. 10-29 436 viii. 20 471 X. 1, 20 456 xii. 27-36 454 xii. 27 467 xiii. 2 471 xxiv. 3-8 292 xxxiv. 25 467 xxxii. 26-29 397 iv. 22, 23 463 xii. 15 469 Leviticus. Lev. iv. 15 498 ix. 1 498 xvii. 11 131 xviii. 21 175 xviii. 13 348 xxiii. 5 464 xxvii. 32 316 Numbers. Num. X. 29-32 495 xi. 25 488 xi. 22 489 xiii. 33 96 xxi. 18 492 xxiii. 9 237 xxi. 18 492 XXV. 9 275 xxviii. 6 128 537 538 TEXTS INTEBPRETEB OR REFEBEED TO. PAGE Num. xxxi. 35 275 xxxii. 11 280 X. 29 422 ix. 3 4G4 ix. 7 467 iii. 13 471 viii. 16, 18 472 xviii. 16, 17 473 xi. 25 488 xi. 22 489 Deuteronomy. Deut. i. 9-18 495 i. 8 286 ii. 25 120 ii. 9-19 201 V. 15 466 iv. 6-8 190 vii. 12 292' viii. 7-9 237 xii. 31 310 xxi. 12 275 xxiii. 8 275 XXV. 17, 18 71 XXV. 18 494 xxviii. 12 477 XXX. 20 286 xxxi. 15 488 xxxiii. 8 397 xxxiv. 10-12 521 viii. 2, 5 494 Joshua. Josh. ii. 10, 11 483 iv. 24 483 V. 12 491 V. 2-8 267 V. 5 410 V. 1 483 xii. 4 96 xxiv. 2-14 175 Judges. Judg. i. 16 -.495 iv. 11 495 viii. 9 359 Samuel. 1 Sam. i. 27, 28 477 2 Sam. xxi. 16 96 viii. 13 367 Kings. 1 Kings iii. 11 477 ix. 20, 21 139 PAGE 1 Kings xii. 25 359 2 Kings vi..5 477 xiii. 22, 25 287 Chronicles. 1 Chron. i. 34-50 366 vii. 20-22 413 xvi. 15-18 ....... 286 2 Chron. v. 14 489 vi. 1 487 XX. 7 185 XXXV. 1, 11, 14 467 xxxvi. 7 270 Ezra. Ez. ii. 36-39 271 Nehemiah. Neh. ix. 19 487 ix. 7, 8 287 X. 28 276 Esther. Esth. viii. 17 276 Job. Job xix. 25-27 432 xxxi. 26-28 174 Psalms. Ps. ii. 8 476 xxi. 4 476 xxvii. 4 476 Ii. 10 42 Ixxxv. 11 11 xlix. 15 432 xcix. 7 488 cii. 13, 15 277 cv. 39 487 cv. 41 492 cv. 8 412 cv. 39 487 cvi. 45 412 cvi. 37 310 ex. 4 307 Proverbs. Prov. XV. 8 82 xix. 17 477 XX. 22 355 xxii. 7 477 Eoclesiastes. Eccles. iii. 19 28 viii. 11 Ill TEXTS INTERPRETED OR REFERRED TO. 539 Isaiah. page Isa. vi. 9, 10 4G1 vii. 14 G9 xxiv. 2 477 xxxiii. 22 500 xli. 8 185 xliv. 28 518 xlv. 1-6 518 xlviii. 21 492 liv. 9 129 Ix. 3 142 Ix. 3-5 277 Ixi. 2 75 Ixv. 17 42 Ixv. 20 110 Ixv. 8 281 Ixiii. 8, 9 483 Jeremiah. Jer. iv. 4 297 xi. 16 280 xxxi. 34 292 xxxii. 40 ', 292 xliv. 22 270 EZEKIEL. Ezek. xxiv. 3 355 xxxix. 21 375 xlvii. 1-12 531 Daniel. Dau. iii.25 214 vii. 14 214 xii. 1, 3 432 HOSEA. Hos. xii. 4 358 xiv. 2 297 Joel. Joel i., ii 239 Amos. Amosiv.,v. 19 240 MiCAH. Mic. vii. 20 287 Malachi. Mai. i. 2, 3 332 iii. 1 305 Matthew. Matt. iii. 5 121 iii. 12 75 X. 5, 6 180 PAGE Matt. xiii. 38 68 XV. 24 180 xxiii. 35 86 xxiv. 38 100 XX. 18 272 xxii. 31, 32 429 xxiii. 32 461 XXV. 31 345 XXV. 41 73 'Mark. Mark vii. 27 181 X. 6 44 X. 33, 34 272 xii. 26 429 - xiv. 12 ^67 Luke i. 54-73 288 i. 68 141 ii. 23, 24 473 ii. 9, 13 345 iii. 38 44 iv. 13 72 xiii. 32 367 xiv, 26 333 XX. 37, 38 429 xxii. 43 345 xvi. 29 519 John. John ii. 21 34 iii. 5 297 iii. 36 298 V. 46,47 519 viii. 44 54 viii. 56 225 xi. 57 272 xii. 40 461 xiv. 27 398 Acts. Acts i. 10 345 ii. 10 276 ii. 5 120 iv.28 375 vii. 22 523 vii. 3 185 \'ii. 16, 50 214 vii. 16 363 vii. 23-28 416 viii. 5 363 ix. 4, 5 87 xii. 23 367 xiii. 46 278 540 TEXTS INTEBPRETED OR REFERRED TO. PAGE Acts xvii. 4-12 276 xvii. 26 21 xviii. 4 276 X 194 xviii. 6 278 KOMANS. Kom. i. 20 12 iv. 1, 8 221 iv. 11, 18 210 iv. 16, 17 193 V. 12-21 56 V. 19 21 ix. 7 244 ix. 10-13 267 ix. 18 462 xi. 11-15 277 xi. 17 266 xi. 26, 27 290 xi. 5-17 281 xi. 30, 31 280 COKINTHIANS. 1 Cor. V. 5, 8 469 V. 7 467 • vi. 19 34 vii. 14 301 XV. 21, 22 21 XV. 22 1 XV. 22-45 56 2 Cor. V. 21 85 iv. 4-6 306 xi. 3 54 Galatians. Gal. iii. 8 283 iii. 16 70 iu. 17 292 iv. 22, 26 252 iv. 29 367 Ephesians. Eph. ii. 19 101 iii. 15 101 PAGE Eph. V.2 128 V, 25, 33 32 COLOSSIANS. Col. i. 23 .120 iii. 10, 11 297 Thessalonians. 1 Thess. ii. 15, 16 278 TraiOTHT. 1 Tim. ii. 11, 14 53 vi. 16 . . 487 Hebrews. Heb. i. 1 207 vii. 7, 14, 24 308 ix. 15 49<3 ix. 19, 20 . . 292 vi. 13-19 203 X. 5 128 xi. 7 143 xi. 14, 16 243 xi. 22. . . 381 xi. 24-26 418 xi. 4 86 James. Jas. i. 13 58 ii. 23 185 Peter. 1 Pet. iii. 18-20 99 iii. 21 74 iv. 6 100 Epistle of John. 1 John iii. 12 87 JCDE. Judel4, 15 94 Revelation. Rev. xii. 9 54 XX.2 . 64 ^^^^ __ BS1197.2.H92 Sacred history from the creation to the Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1012 00050 3963