r-TA .'f . ^Xtt^^^i ^ Shelf PRINCETON, N. J. ^ "^ Division Section,_,. Nutnber -/ itJ (s: i 3; =3': 'v=^: MEN OF THE BIBLE. Under an arrangement with the English pub- lishers, Messrs. A. D. F. Randolph & Co. will issue a series of volumes by distinguished scholars, on THE MEN OF THE BIBLE. ABRAHAM : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the Rev. W. J. Deane, M.A. MOSES : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the Rev. Canon G, Rawlinson, M.A. SOLOMON : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the Ven. Archdeacon Farrar, D.D. ELIJAH : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the Rev. Professor W. Milligan, D.D. IN PREPARATION. GIDEON : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the Rev. J. M. Lang, D.D. ISAIAH : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the Rev. Canon S. R. Driver, M.A. JEREMIAH: HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the Rev. Canon T. K. Cheyne, M.A. JESUS THE CHRIST : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the Rev. F. J. Vallings, M.A. To the siude7it and the gefteral reader these volumes will be fomtd alike usefui ajid inter- esting, and the question 77iay well be asked, why the intelligent reader should not find the lives of the great ineji of the Bible as useful or as fasci?mting as the story of those who have won a cofispicuous place i7i the a7inals of secular history. And yet how i7tdiffere7it thousa7ids of cultivated persons are to these lives, save 07ily as they are recorded iti outline iii the Holy Scriptures. Price, $i.oo each. *;!:* Se7it by 7nail 07t receipt of price, ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 38 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET, N. Y. MOSES: HIS LIFE AND TIAIES GEORGE RAWLINSON, M.A. CAMDEN PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, AND COKRESPONUING M.:;MBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF TURIN; AUTHOR OF "the FIVE GREAT MONARCHIES OF THE ANCIENT EASTERN WORLD, ' ETC. ETC. NEW YORK ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY 38 West Twenty-third Street ^/ PREFACE. The materials for a life of Moses are found chiefly in the four later Books of the Pentateuch. The New Testament also con- tributes some valuable notices, especially Acts vii. and Hebrews xi. Next to them in value, but next at an interval that is scarcely measurable, come the accounts given by Josephus and Philo. Moses is the hero of Josephus's Second, Third, and Fourth Books, which present to us the circumstances of his life with a con- siderable amount of detail, but do not add very much to the scriptural narrative, except at the two extremes of- Moses' career, his early years and his decease. Different estimates may be formed of the degree of credit to be attached to these portions of Josephus's history, and it requires, beyond a: doubt, much critical acumen to deal with them properly, neither accepting nor rejecting them en bloc. The same may be said of the notices to be found in the writings of Philo. Philo has left us a work entitled, " The Life of Moses " (mpt Bi'oy Mw(T£we), which contains interesting accounts of his education and personal appearance ; and in several of his other treatises he gives estimates of Moses' character and abilities. A passage of Artapanus, preserved by Eusebius, is entitled to consideration. Many legends have clustered round the name of IVIoses, some Jewish, others Mahometan ; but these are almost wholly worth- less, and throughout the following pages, excepting in a single instance, no notice has been taken of them. The writer's strong conviction has been that it is from Scripture, almost entirely, if not entirely, that we must learn the facts of Moses' life, and deduce our estimate of his character. He believes that in the four later Books of the Pentateuch we have an actual, though not an intentional, autobiography. Without going the length of saying that the whole of Deuteronomy is the composition of Moses, he regards it as a faithful report of discourses held by Moses during the later portion of his life, collected after his IV PREFACE. death by Joshua or Eleazar into a volume. And he has not the slightest doubt that Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, were written, almost as we have them, by IMoses himself. Moses is thus portrayed to us by his own hand in these three Books, and in Deuteronomy by the hand of a contemporary ; and the truth concerning him is best arrived at by a close scrutiny of the scriptural narrative. Materials for a description of the *' times " of Moses exist now in enormous quantities through the interpretation of the hieroglyphic inscriptions, and of the other native Egyptian documerits. They are contained in the works of Lepsius, Wilkinson, Rosellini, Mariette, Brugsch, Birch, Chabas, Stuart Poole, and others. The difficulty here has been that of selection. In a work limited to two hundred pages, the author found it necessary to contract within a painfully narrow space his notices of the contemporary history of the manners, customs, and re- ligion of Egypt ; while of the grand buildings executed by the Egyptian monarchs, amongst which Moses was brought up, he could only allow himself the briefest and most general de- scription. Similarly, with respect to Moses' life in the wilderness, and to the geographical problems involved in the wanderings, he found it impossible within the limits assigned him to enter into details, or to attempt more than some general portraiture of the Sinaitic region, and the life of its ancient inhabitants. For this portion of his essay he is largely indebted to the labours of Stanley, Trislram, Robinson, Trumbull, Porter, and the travellers whose works have been published under the auspices of the Palestine Exploration Fund. Recent com- mentaries, as the " Speaker's," the " Pulpit Commentary," and that sanctioned by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, have also been laid under contribution, and have afforded valuable aid. Among general histories of the time, he has derived the greatest assistance from the late Dean Stanley's " History of the Jewish Church," which, though not faultless, is a work of sterling merit. Ewald's History seems to him far inferior ; and the other accounts given of Moses in Cyclopccdias and Biblical Dictionaries add nothing of any value to the researches and reflections of the two above-mentioned writers. Oxford, G. R. February 27, 1887. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. FAGE Israel in Egypt i Jacobs descent into Egypt : Joseph's position : Circumstances of Egypt at the time — Josephs Pharaoh, Apepi — Israel after Joseph's death — Commencement of the severe oppression ; its nature — Edict issued to destroy all the male infants. CHAPTER n. Birth of Moses , ... 13 Moses' parents ; their position ; their place of abode — His sister, Miriam — His elder brother, Aaron — Aaron's birth had not needed to be concealed — Concealment of the birth of Moses — Plan to save him when further concealment was impossible — The plan skilfully carried out, CHAPTER HI. Moses' Childhood , , , , qt Name given to the saved child — His early life at the Court — Im- pressions made on him by his surroundings — His intercourse with his own family — Story told of his trampling on the Pharaoh's crown— His beauty, spirit, and intelligence. CHAPTER IV. Education . . , , . 27 The physical training of Moses— Egyptian atlilctic games— Early instruction— Reading and writing — Egyptian writing involved a training in art — Aritlimetic— Music and rhythm — Later instruc- tion— University of Ilehopolis — Subjects of tlie University course — Geometry— Literature — Astronomy — Law — Medicine — Philo- sophy of Symbolism — Position of Moses among th« stud«nts. VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER V PAGE Early Manhood of Moses ....'••. 41 Anomalous position of an adopted foundling at the Egj'ptian Court — Annoyances to which Moses would be subjected — Courses of life which would natr.rally be open to him — The official life — The literary life — The life of a soldier ; its attractions at the time — Grounds for concluding that Moses adopted the military life — Training which it involved — Moses in the Hittite wars — Account given byjosephvis of Moses' successes against the Ethiopians — The account criticized. CHAPTER VL The Great Decision 51 Prospects of Moses after the Ethiopian expedition — His leaning towards his brethren — His " tour of inspection '' — His remon- strances in high quarters ineffectual — Two possible courses open to him — The great decision — Moses casts in his lot with his breth- ren — His efforts to help them — His hasty homicide — His danger — His flight eastward — His arrival in Midian. CHAPTER Vn. Moses in Midian , , 61 Country occupied by the Midianites — Position of Reuel among them — Position of Moses— Character of the Sinaitic region — Desolation — Silence — Occasional sand-storms — Silence of the nights — Moses' life in the desert a preparation for his subsequent career — Few circumstances of his life known to us — Names of his sons and explanation of them — Egyptian story of Saneha illustrates this part of the history of Moses. CHAPTER Vni. The Return to Egypt •70 Events in Egypt during the absence of Moses — Peace made with the Hittites— Peace cemented by an intermarriage — Attention of Ramesses II. turned to the construction of great works — Increased sufferings of the Israelites — Death of Ramesses II. — His cha- racter — Menephthah continues the oppression — God's appearance to Moses in the bush — His call — His resistance to the call — The punishment of his resistance — The ground of it — Relations of Moses with Jethro — He is allowed to depart, but lingers — Picture of his dej^arture — His dangerous illness and its consequences — His meeting with Aaron. CHAPTER IX. The Long Struggle with Pharaoh 85 The two brothers convene the elders of Israel — Their mission accepted — Their first appearance before Pharaoh, and the risk CONTENT . VU PAGE thpy ran— The demand and its rejection — Pharaoh increases the oppression- Moses' appeal to God and God's answer-Second interview betwen the two brothers and the king— Contest Willi the magicians begins-The First Plague : Pharaoh unmoved by it— The Second, or Plague of Frogs: Pharaoh relents, but recovers himself— The Third, or Plague of Lice : the magicians gu'e way, but the Pharaoh is unmoved— The Fourth, or Plague of Beetles : Pharaoh gives permission, but retracts it— The Fifth, or I lague of Murrain-The Sixth, or Plague of Boils-The Seventh or Plague of Hail : Pharaoh again yields, but retracts— The l^ighth, or Piacrue of Locusts-The Ninth, or Plague of Darkness— The Tenth^or Death of the First-born— Pharaoh drives Israel out. CHx\PTER X. S The Passage of the Red Sea , . "' • • • • "9 The gathering— The number that came together— The halt at Succoth— Change in the direction of the march— Encampment at Migdol— Peril of the position and faith of Moses— Regret of PhKraoh— His pursuit of Israel-Terror of the Israelites— Move- ment of the Pillar of the Cloud— Passage of the sea by Israel— The Ecryptians pursue— Their difficulties— Destruction of the entire armv— Completeness of the deliverance— Credit which attaches to Moses in respect of it— Moses' Song of Triumph. CHAPTER XI. The Struggle with Amalak ^3^ The Sinaitic Peninsula— Its geography— Its population in the early Egyptian period— Its early history— The population in Moses' t!me-The Kenites-The Amalekites-Natural hostility of the latter to Israel— Their guerilla warfare-1 he great fight at Rephidim-Part taken by Moses-Results of the victory, and com- memoration of it. CHAPTER XII. Moses at Sinai * Sinai • its geo^-raphical feature— God's manifestation of Himself 143 to Ivraelthere.'direcllv, through the elders, and through Moses- Abiding proof of the last-named minifestation in the light that shone from Moses' countenance- Purpose of the manifestations— Tile lecrjslation of Sinai. no\.frorn. but only through Moses— Indi- vidualitv of Moses strongly marked in his conduct at Sinai— His reverence- His care for the peoi^le- His inr^ignation at their apostasv— His severe punishment of it— His subsequent interces- sion for' his people- His stupendous act of selt-devotion and its consequences, to the people, i& himself— Exaltation of the cha- racter of Moses after Sinai. Vin CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIII. PAGE Hebrew Art in Moses' Time 155 Hebrew Art more advanced than might have appeared probable — Possible derivation of some of it from Chaldea — Artificers needed by nomadic tribes— Advances which Hebrew Art would naturally have made in Egypt — Egyptian and Hebrew Metallurgy — Car- pentry — Textile industry — Embroidery — Tanning and dyeing of leather — Gem-cutting and gem-engraving — Coniection of spices and unguents — General Egyptian character of Hebrew Art in Moses' time — Exceptions — Hebrew eclecticism. CHAPTER XIV. Moses as Ruler , ... . . .... 167 Difficulties of the situation — Disorganization — Judges appointed by the advice of Jethro — Perversity of the Israelites — Their con- stant murmurings— Moses but little helped by his subordinates — Conduct of Aaron and Miriam — Relations of Moses with Joshua and Phinehas — The true support of Moses, the Theocracy — Its nature — Mildness and unselfishness of Moses. CHAPTER XV. Later Years of Moses 174 Departure of the Israelites from Sinai — Route to Kadesh-Barnea — Kibroth-hattaavah and the troubles there — Hazeroth and the sin of Miriam — First arrival at Kadesh — The spies and their re- port — The sin of the people, and the sentence on it — Israel smitten by Amalek — The thirty-eight years of penal wandering — Israel hardened and braced by them — Rebellion of Korah and its consequences — Return to Kadesh — Death of Miriam — Sin of Moses and Aaron, and death of Aaron — War with Arad — War with the Amorites — Sihon — Og — Conquest of the Trans-jordanic region — War with Midian and Moab— Part taken in it by Balaam — Moses at Abel-Shittim — He exhorts the .people — His appoint- ment of Joshua as his successor — His injunctions respecting the Book of the Law — His last words — The Song of Warning — The Song of Blessing — Extracts. CHAPTER XVL Moses' Death 195 The ascent of Pisgah — The view from it — Hebrew legend of the circumstances of Moses' death— Actual circumstances unknown — Place ol sepulture unknown — Chief characteristics of Moses — His faithful service of God — His "meekness" — His trust in God — His unselfishness — Conclusion. CHAPTER I. ISRAEL IN EGYPT. Jacob's descent into Egypt : Joseph's position : Circumstances of Egypt at the time — Joseph's Pharaoh, Apepi — Israel after Joseph's death — Commencement of the severe oppression ; its nature — Edict issued to destroy all the male infants. The circumstances of the birth and early life of Moses, and his position in Egypt, cannot be set forth intelligibly without some previous consideration of the historical antecedents whereby those circumstances were brought about, and that position rendered possible. The historical antecedents were strange and abnormal. Three hundred and fifty years before Moses was born, there had arrived in Egypt a band of immigrants from Palestine, amounting to several hundreds, or perhaps to some thousands, who had been permitted to become permanent settlers. Their advent was not unexpected. The great minister of a great Egyptian king had received instructions from the monarch to invite into Egypt his father, his eleven brothers, and their households (Gen. xlv. 17, 18). He had done so, and they had taken advantage of the invitation, and traversed the desert which divides Palestine from Egypt in a huge caravan, bringing with them their flocks and their herds, their asses, their tents and their tent-furniture, their women and their children, their bond-slaves, and "all that they had." It is not an unreasonable calculation of Dean Payne Smith's, that they numbered altogether three thousand souls.' The "household" {(cipJi)^ according to the Hebrew idea, included « " Bampton Lectuies," p. 89. 2 3 MOSES. not merely wife and children, but men-servants and maid- servants, dependents and retainers, even hirelings who might quit the service and go elsewhere when it pleased them. The household of Abraham, when he went in pursuit of Chedor- laomer, comprised three hundred and eighteen adult males, capable of bearing arms, who had all been " born in his house " (Gen. xiv. 14). His taph must altogether have exceeded twelve hundred persons. Jacob's is not likely to have been less ; and if we allow his eleven sons, who were all grown up and had families, an average of two hundred a- piece, their taphs would have amounted to two thousand two hundred, giving a total for the immigrants of three thousand four hundred. That so large a body should be favourably received need not excite surprise. Egypt was always open to refugees from foreign lands, and the circumstances of the time were such as secured this particular body of immigrants a warm welcome. The chief of these circumstances was their kinsman's, Joseph's, position. Joseph had been recognized by the Pharaoh of the time as "a man in whom the Spirit of God was" (Gen. xli. 38) — a man "discreet and wise" above all others (verse 39). He had not only been granted the highest honours that the Egyptian monarchs ever allowed to a subject, but he had been made actual ruler of the whole land under the king. He had employed his extraordinary powers wisely and well, had made provision for carrying Egypt safely through a period of extreme difficulty, and had greatly enriched the royal treasury by his arrangements. There was scarcely any favour within reason- able bounds that the successful minister could ask which the king was likely to refuse to him. He " was a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt" (Gen. xlv. 8). Moreover, it is perhaps not too much to say, that personal intercourse with his minister had produced a real feeling of friendliness and attachment between the two, and had disposed the Pharaoh to make spontaneous efforts to afford gratification to his loved and trusted adviser. In the particular case of which we are speaking, Joseph was not actually obliged to prefer any petition. He expressed to his brethren his desires respecting them, and his words having been reported to the Court, the Pharaoh came forward voluntarily, without being asked, and proposed to his minister that he should send his brethren to fetch their father and their households, adding of ISRAEL IN EGYPT. 3 his own account the suggestion, that they should be supplied with wheeled vehicles for the conveyance of their wives and "little ones" (Gen. xlv. 19). So anxious was he to please his minister and anticipate his wishes. The condition of Egypt was also such that a body of immi- grants froni the quarter from which the family of Jacob came could not be otherwise than welcome. Egypt hnd been con- quered, some centuries before the time of Joseph, by a nomadic race from Asia, of pastoral habits. The conquest had been accompanied with extreme cruelty and violence ; wherever the nomads triumphed, the males of full age had been massacred, the women and children reduced to slavery, the cities burnt, the temples demolished, the images of the gods thrown to the ground. An oppressive and tyrannical rule had been established. The old Egyptians, the native African race, were bowed down beneath the yoke of unsympathetic aliens. Although by degrees the manners of the conquerors became softened, and, as so often happens, the rude invaders conformed them- selves more and more, in language, habits, and methods of thought, to the pattern set them by their more civilized subjects, yet, so far as feelings and sentiments were concerned, a wide gulf still separated the two. Like the Aryan Persians under the rule of the Parthians, like the native Chinese under the Mantchu Tartars, the Egyptians groaned and repined in secret, and persistently nurtured the hope of one day re-asserting their independence. Nor were their foreign masters unaware of these feelings. They knew themselves to be detested ; they were conscious of the volcano under their feet ; they lived in expectation of an outbreak, and were always engaged in making preparations against it. In this condition of affairs, each band of immigrants from Asia, especially if of nomadic habits, was regarded as an accession of strength, and was therefore welcomed and treated with favour. Shepherds were "an abomination" to the real native Egyptians. To the Hyksos kings, who held the dominion of Egypt, shepherds were con- genial, and Asiatic shepherds, more or less akin to their own race, were viewed as especially trustworthy and reliable. Hence the warmth of Pharaoh's welcome. When Joseph introduced his brethren to the monarch, and, in answer to the question, " What is your occupation .^ " they replied — " Thy servants are shepherds, both we and our fathers, thy servants' 4 MOSES. trade has been about cattle from our youth even until now — for to sojourn in the land we are come ; for thy servants have no pasture for their flocks ; now therefore, we pray thee, let thy servants dwell in the land of Goshen," the Pharaoh's words to Joseph were — "Thy father and thy brethren are come unto thee ; the land of Egypt is before thee ; 171 the best of the land make thy father and thy brethren to dwell ; in the land of Goshen let them dwell ; and if thou knowest any men of activity amongst them, then make the?n rulers over my cattle " (Gen. xlvii. 5, 6). The particular king, moreover, who at the time of Jacob's entrance into Egypt occupied the throne, had reasons for being especially drawn towards the nomadic tribe, which under their sheikh, Jacob, solicited his favour. George the Syncellus tells us, that there was a universal consensus of historians w-ith re- spect to the fact, that the monarch who raised Joseph to power was the Shepherd King, Apepi. He does not say, as some have made him say,^ that the synchronism was generally agreed upon by the ecclesiastical historians; but that it w-as "agreed upon by all " ^ — z.^., by all the historians with whose works he was acquainted. Among these were certainly Abydenus, Apollodorus, Eratosthenes, Alexander Polyhistor, the friend of Sulla, Zosimus of Panopolis, Africanus, Annianus, and Panodorus, possibly also many others, some Christian, some heathen, some writers on Church subjects, some authors of purely secular histories. The tradition, thus strongly sup- ported, receives confirmation from Egyptian chronology, which places an interval of four hundred years between the time of Apepi and a late year in the reign of the second Ramesses,^ while Hebrew chronology places an interval of four hundred and thirty years between Jacob's entrance into Egypt and the Exodus, which belongs to the reign of Ramesses the Second's son. But if Apepi was the king to whom Joseph owed his elevation, there would have been in his religion a fresh bond between him and his minister, and a fresh ground for his sympathizing warmly with the new immigrants. Apepi was a monoiheist. One peculiarity of the Hyksos period, belonging especially to * Bunsen, " Eg}^pt's Place in Universal History," vol ii. p. 438. ^ " Chronographia," p. 62, B ; p. 69, C. 3 "Records of the Past,'' vol. iv. p. 36. ISRAEL IN EGYPT. 5 its later portion, is to be found in the religious views professed, proclaimed, and enjoined upon subject princes. Apepi, accord- ing to the MS. known as 'the First Sallier Papyrus,' made a great movement in Lower Egypt in favour of monotheism. Whereas previously the Shepherd Kings had allowed among their subjects, if they had not even practised themselves, the worship of a multitude of gods, Apepi 'took to himself a single god for lord, refusing to serve any other god in the whole land. According to the Egyptian writer of the MS., the name under which he worshipped his god was Sutech ; and some writers have supposed that he chose this god out of the existing Egyptian Pantheon, because he was the god of the North, where his own dominion lay. But Sutech, though undoubtedly he had a place in the Egyptian Pantheon from very ancient times, seems to have been essentially an Asiatic god, the special deity of the Hittite nation, with which there is reason to believe that the Shepherd Kings were closely con- nected. Apepi, moved by a monotheistic impulse, selected Sutech, we should suppose, rather out of his own gods than out of the Egyptian deities, and determined that, whatever had been the case previously, henceforth he would renounce poly- theism, and worship one only lord and god, the god long known to his nation, and to his own ancestors, under the name above mentioned. Apepi's monotheism was a bond of union be- tween him and the family of Joseph, and may well have been among the grounds of the especial favour which he accorded to them. Apepi placed the Israelites " in the best of the land— in the land of Goshen " — probably the alluvial district on the eastern side of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, which verged upon the desert, and was a good pasturage country, where the royal cattle were pastured (Gen. xlvii. 6). At first the Israelites would occupy but a small portion of the district ; but as they began to " multiply exceedingly " (Gen. xlvii. 27), they must have spread further and further to the west and south, favoured still by Apepi, and even after his death protected by the pres- tige of Joseph, whose prudent and successful administration of the country could not easily have been forgotten, and who, if deposed by Apepi's successor, must still have been a power and an influence in the country. The weight and consideration that attached to Joseph until his death, and even afterwards, is 6 MOSES. indicated in the Scriptural narrative by the contrast drawn between the earlier and the later period of the Egyptian sojourn, after a " king arose, which knew not Joseph." But the change in the condition and treatment of the Israelites by the rulers of the country was probably very slow and gradual. According to the Hebrew text of Exod. xii. 40, 41, a space of nearly four centuries and a half intei"\'ened between the entrance of the children of Israel into Egypt and their exodus under the leadership of Moses ; and, although the real duration of the period is disputed,^ the balance of probability is in favour of this long term rather than of a shorter one. The growth of a tribe, numbering even three thousand persons, into a nation of above two millions, abnormal and remarkable if it took place within a period of four hundred and thirty years, would be still more strange and astonishing if the space of time were seriously curtailed. The ten generations between Jacob and Joshua (i Chron. vii. 22-27), who was a grown man at the time of the Exodus, require a term of four centuries rather than one of two. Egyptian chronology also favours the longer period. Adopting it, we must divide the Eg}'ptian sojourn into three portions — one of about seventy years, during which the Israelites enjoyed the powerful protection of Joseph ; a second of about two hundred and sixty years, during which they were " afflicted," but did not suffer any very severe oppression ; and a third of about a century, throughout which their "lives were made bitter, and all their service, wherein the Egyptians made them serve, was with rigour" (Exod, i. 14). The chief event of the first period must have been the death of Apepi, or his expulsion from Egy-pt by the great founder of the eighteenth dynasty, Aahmes. Apepi, in his later years, alarmed at the growing power of Thebes under the Ra-Sekenens, picked a quarrel with the reigning Theban monarch, Taa-ken, and engaged in a war with the native Egyptians of the Upper Country, in which he ultimately suffered complete defeat. He had to retire upon his frontier city, Auaris, where he was at- tacked by Taa-ken's successor, Aahmes, who after a time took the city, and drove out the entire body of the invaders (or, rather, of their descendants), who had made themselves masters of Egypt under Saites. It would be interesting to know whether the Israelites were called upon to take part in this war, and, if * See Mr. Deane's "Abraham : His Life and Times," pp. 81-84. ISRAEL IN EGYPT. SO, what response they made to the call ; but unluckily history is 'silent on these points, and we are left to conjecture. One thin- alone is evident. They did not throw in their lot with the Hyksos. Engaged under them in the quiet pursuits of pasturing cattle, and perhaps to some extent of agriculture, they were probably unwilling to take up arms, and perhaps were not even called upon to do so. Hence, they did not suffer expulsion. The victorious party under Aahmes left the harmless shepherds in possession of their rich pasturages, and Goshen continued to be inhabited by the descendants of Jacob. As time went on and they multiplied, Goshen must have become more and more thickly peopled ; but the land was rich, the shepherds prospered, and in any times of difficulty they had a great and poweriul pro- tector in Joseph. The death of Joseph, which ushered in the second period, must have at once sensibly affected the position of the descen- dants of Jacob. They had no longer an advocate among the great of the land, to look after their interests, intervene on their behalf when needful, and call the attention of those m power to any grievance of which they might have to complain. Joseph's position must have been high, even to the end of his life, as we see by the long continuance of his memory (Exod. 1.8). But his position was not inherited by either of his sons, or by any descendant, though Ephraim and Manasseh, as grandsons of a High Priest of On, must certainly have been persons of some co'nsideration, even after their fiither's decease. The old Egyptian prejudice against shepherds would cause the Israelites to be looked down upon and shunned, while their foreign des- cent and the fact that they had been \\i^ proteges of the Hyksos would also tend to lower them in the public esteem. It was probably not very long after Joseph's death that the "affliction," or ill-usage, commenced which had been foretold to Abraham (Gen. XV. 13). The Israelites began to be treated by their rulers and by the upper classes of the Egyptians much as \\i^fellahin of the present day are treated by their Turkish masters. They were despised, regarded as of small account, tyrannized over, struck upon occasions. As they grew in numbers Goshen be- came too small for them, and they were compelled to take up their abode in the great towns, or to emigrate into the neigh- bouring districts, where they had to work as common labourers on the land of others, or else to occupy themselves in handi- 8 MOSES. crafts. Egypt was very flourishing at the time, and they would have had httle difficuhy in finding employment ; but the passage from the independent nomadic life to a settled abode in towns, or even to a hired service in a country district, is always grievous to those who have enjoyed the freedom of the pastoral state, and is viewed as a degradation. The Israelites did not probably suffer from the wars of the period, for a foreign subject race would not be pressed into the Egyptian service, and the dynasty was so successful in its military expeditions that Egypt had never in its turn to suffer invasion ; so that, on the whole, the " affliction " was, thus far, perhaps more sentimental than physical, affecting minds rather than bodies, and consisting more in diminished consideration than in any very tangible grievances, except occasionally, when the poorer and weaker members of the race came into contact with Egyptian aristocrats. In one respect the time was marked by an extraordinary degree of prosperity. It was during the two hundred and sixty years of the second period that "the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty ; and the land was filled with them" (Exod. i. 7). The population increased from twenty thousand to (probably) above a million, and became thus so numerous as to alarm the native Egyptians, who did not perhaps themselves number more than six or seven millions. Rapid increase of numbers is, how- ever, an advantage only under certain circumstances — z>., when a tribe or a people has a large unoccupied territory, or when com- merce or manufactures offer practically unlimited employment to any multitude of applicants. But the circumstances of Egypt were not such as to afford these facilities ; and the result must have been a difficulty in obtaining subsistence on the part of the Israelites, unless they consented to a low wage or to occu- pations which were generally distasteful. Towards the close of the second period we may be tolerably sure that a large number of them were forced to submit to both these inconveniences; that the lowest kinds of employments were eagerly accepted by thousands of Hebrews who found the struggle for existence a hard fight, and that these persons worked at wages which were barely sufficient to keep the wolf from their doors. The third period now arrived, " A king arose up over Egypt who knew not Joseph " (Exod. i. 8). The memory of benefits received, however great, dies out after a time. Within fourteen ISRAEL IN EGYPT. 9 years of Salamis the Athenians banished Themistocles ; within seventeen years of Waterloo the Duke of WelHngton was obliged to protect the windows of Apsley House from the attacks of the London mob by cast-iron shutters. We ought perhaps rather to admire the fidelity of the Egyptians to the memory of a former benefactor, and the tenacity of their attachments, than blame them for fickleness, or hold them up to opprobrium for ingratitude. After two hundred and sixty years they may be pardoned if they had forgotten. The king intended, who is called "a new king," was probably Seti I., the founder, or quasi- founder, of a dynasty— one wholly unconnected with the preced- ing occupants of the throne, who, if he had heard of Joseph at all, had heard of him only as " the shadow of a mighty name"— a great statesman of the past, perhaps a real " hero," perhaps a myth — and who failed to realize it as a fact, that either the Egypt of his time, or he himself individually, was in any way indebted to so remote and shadowy a personage. The king looked to the condition of Eg^^pt with the dry, hard gaze of shrewd, practical common sense, and saw in the position of things at his accession great cause for anxiety. Egypt was threatened by a formidable enemy upon her north-eastern frontier. Three centuries from the death of Apepi brings us in Egyptian history to the close of Manetho's eighteenth dynasty, and the accession of his nineteenth, a critical period in the Eg}'ptian annals, and one of much interest. Egypt had at this time lost all those Asiatic possessions which had been gained under the earlier kings of the eighteenth dynasty — Thothmes I., Thothmes III., and Amen-hotep II., and had retired within her own natural borders. South-western Asia had fallen under the dominion of the Khita or Hittites, who had gradually extended their dominion from the Cappadocian highlands to the low regions of Philistia and Western Arabia. In alliance with the other Canaanite nations, with the Philistines, and even with the Arabs (Shasu), the Hittites threatened an invasion of Egypt, which, it was felt, might have the most disastrous consequences. What, if this contingency actually occurred, would be the part taken by the Israelites ? Might it not be that they would ''join themselves to Egypt's enemies, and fight against the Egyptians" (Exod. i. id), and so either help to bring them under subjection to the Hittites, or else "get themselves up out of the land".? The Israelites occupied the portion of Egypt which the Hittites lO MOSES. would first enter ; if they joined the enemy they would deliver into his hands a large tract of most valuable territory, and put him in a position from which he would threaten the most im- portant of the Egyptian cities — Tanis, Heliopolis, Bubastis, Memphis. Reflecting upon this, the Pharaoh of the time — Seti I., according to our view — deemed it incumbent on him to take such measures as should seriously weaken and depress his Israelite subjects, crush their aspirations, destroy their physical vigour, and by degrees diminish their numbers. The first step was to deprive them of their freedom. The sovereign of Egypt, an irresponsible despot, absolute master of the lives and liberties of all his subjects, had full power to reduce at any time any individual among them, or any class of them, to the slave condition. The pyramid builders had done this on a large scale in the days of old. The Pharaoh, who at the time of which we are speaking occupied the throne, made public slaves of the Israelites. Without perhaps any proclamation of their change of status, he practically established it by sending his agents into the districts which they inhabited, and impressing into his service as forced labourers all the males of full age, who were not incapacitated by infirmity or sickness. The main em- ployment which he assigned to them was in connection with his buildings. He was a builder of cities, especially of store- cities, or magazine-cities, and needed for their construction a constant supply of hundreds of thousands of bricks. All the outer enclosures of cities, of temples, and of tombs, all the houses, all the walls of magazines and of public buildings generally, except temples and palaces, were built of this mate- rial ; even the mounds upon which cities were ordinarily em- placed, to raise them above the level of the inundation, were of the same substance. The Israelites M'ere taken from their free trade of shepherds, lazily tending their flocks and herds in the open pastures of Goshen, to the close confinement of the brick- field, where, under taskmasters who exacted from them a certain fixed quantity of work, they dug the stiff clay, mixed and kneaded it with hands or feet, shaped it carefully into the proper form by means of a mould, and at the end of the day produced their " tale of bricks " before the taskmaster. The labour was heavy and incessant, carried on under a hot sun, continued from morning to night, and performed under fear of the rod, which was at once freely applied to the back and shoulders of any one ISRAEL IN EGYPT. II who was thought to be insufficiently exerting himself. Another task to which they were set was "service in the field" (Exod, i. 14), probably " such as we still see along the banks of the Nile, where the peasants, naked, under the burning sun, work through the day like pieces of machinery in drawing up the buckets of water from the level of the river for the irrigation of the fields above." ' The service was made purposely harder than it need have been, since the object was to break down the people morally and physically, to exhaust their vital power by over- work, and so to shorten their lives. " The Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour ; and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field : all their service wherein they made them serve, was with rigour" (Exod. i. 13, 14). It was hoped that this over-work, this constant drudger}'' of toil, this deep " affliction," aggravated as it was by continual blows from the taskmasters, would have the effect, at any rate, of stop- ping any further increase in the numbers of the people, even if it failed to produce an actual reduction of their numbers. And this would have been the natural result, had Divine Providence not interfered, but allowed the ordinary laws which govern the ebb and flow of a population to have free course and work themselves out unchecked. Bat such was not the Divine will. God, who had promised Abraham that his seed should increase and mul- tiply until it became as "the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore" (Gen. xxii. 17) for multitude, did not submit to have his purpose baffled by the machinations of human adversaries. By suspending the operation of the laws, or by counteracting it, he brought it to pass that the rate of increase which had hitherto prevailed in the Hebrew population of Eg)'pt should rise rather than fall under the changed circumstances: " The more the Egyptians afflicted them, the ?nore iJiey multipiiea and grew ; and the Egyptians were grieved because of the people of Israel" (Exod. i. 12). A despotic monarch does not readily allow his designs to be defeated and set aside. The Pharaoh who had thought to " deal wisely''^ with the Hebrews, and had therefore devised the plan of crushing them and preventing them from multiplying by en- gaging them in continuous hard labour, finding his craft of no avail, had recourse to violence. Egypt possessed a guild ot ' Stanley, "Lectures on the Jewish Church," vol. i. p. 85. 12 MOSES. midwives, one portion of which was assigned the duty of minis- tering to the necessities of the Hebrew women in their confine- ments. Pharaoh issued secret orders to the two chief midwives, and through them to the others, that, when they performed their office, they should take care to destroy all the male children, and only suffer the female children to live. Infanticide was a common practice among many ancient nations, as the Romans, the Spartans, and others, but in Egypt it was accounted a crime; and though the Pharaoh was reckoned a sort of divine being by his subjects, yet it was not felt that he could dispense with the laws of moral obligation. The midwives " feared God " (Exod. i.17) more than they feared the king, and, though profess- ing a willingness to carry out his will, practically disobeyed his orders. The male children were spared by them, with the result that " the people multiplied " more than ever, and " waxed very mighty" ( ver. 20). Then, at length, the king left off his attempts to " deal wisely," craftily, and secretly, with the difficult circumstances in which he considered himself to be placed ; he openly issued a proclamation to his subjects generally, requiring them to put to death the male Hebrew children by drowning them in the Nile (ver. 22). Perhaps he represented the cruel requirement as given by the command of the Nile-god, who needed to be propitiated by human sacrifices; perhaps he found some other mode of justifying himself At any rate the order went forth, and was doubtless acted upon, though perhaps not very generally. The Egyptians had no quarrel with their Hebrew neighbours, and would not care to act as executioners ; but government officials would be employed to see the king's orders carried out, and no doubt for several years many thousands of innocent lives were sacrificed. Still, however, the king's purpose was not effected. Had the edict been rigorously enforced^ the people would have been extinguished before the date of the Exodus. But it had then reached to a total of above two million souls (Exod. xii. 37). Either, therefore, the edict must have been revoked after a while, or it must gradually have sunk into oblivion. In one way or another God's will triumphed over man's, and the people, doomed to extinction by the highest human power which existed on earth at the time, was preserved by God's providence through all the perils which threatened it, to become, according to the promise given to Jacob (Gen. xxxv. 11), "a nation and a company of nations." CHAPTER II. BIRTH OF MOSES. Moses' parents ; their position ; their place of abode— His sister, Miriam— His elder brother Aaron — Aaron's birth had not needed to be concealed — Concealment of the birth of Moses — Plan to save Iiim w hen further con- cealment was impossible — The plan skilfully carried out. The father of Moses is first introduced to us as " a man of the house of Levi " (Exod. ii. i). We are subsequently told that his name was Amram, and that he was of the family of the Kohath- ites, who were descended from Kohath, Levi's second son (Exod. vi. 16-20). He took to himself a wife of the same tribe, a woman named Jochebed, who was " his father's sister." Such marriages were common among the Egyptians, and, not having been as yet forbidden by any positive enactment, seem to have been regarded as lawful by the Hebrews. The parents of Moses were persons in humble circumstances. No special dignity as yet attached to the Levites among the children of Israel, or to the Kohathites among the Levites ; and the circumstances of the Hebrews since the death of Joseph had been such as rapidly to exhaust ancestral wealth, and bring the whole nation down to an almost dead level of uniformity. The writer of the Pentateuch enters into few details; but we gather from his narrative, that Amram's house- hold was a simple and a modest one, where the main duties were discharged by the house-mother and the house-daughter, whose appearance was such that they could, without impropriety, be asked to perform menial service and accept "wages " (Exod. ii. 9). The abode occupied by'the modest household was in or near the capital city of the time, where the Court resided. The capital was situated on the Nile, or on one of its branches, and was most probably Memphis. Memphis occupied nearly the site 14 MOSES. on which now stands the great city of Cairo, one of the most salubrious residences and one of the most picturesque cities in the world. Itwas a lordly and magnificent town. Built,according to the tradition, by the most ancient of all the Egyptian kings, M'na or Menes, on the left or western bank of the river, which washed its eastern wall, and reflected in its waves temple, tower, and palace, tall obelisk, and huge colossus, and frowning gate- way, the city of Menes was, as its name implied, "a Good," or *' Pleasing Abode," a favourite residence of the monarchs, and, in the earlier years covered by the nineteenth dynasty, the place where the Court was commonly held. Its great pride and glory was the Temple of Phthah. Coeval with the city, founded, that is to say, by Menes, the Temple of Phthah, consisting of a grand central edifice, surrounded by pillared courts, and adorned by colossal statues, by pictured representations of the great deeds of kings,by sphinxes, inscriptions. tablets, perhaps by obelisks,stood up like a great cathedral, in the centre of the lordly town, the work of many kings and of many ages, telling a thrilling tale of by- gone history to those who had skill to read the past in its archi- tecture, or in its records. Here was the nucleus of the building, the cell or shrine of Phthah originally set up by Menes; there, towards the north, was the great portal erected by Amenemhat III., or Mceris; in front of the grand entrance were colossi attributed to Usurtasen III., the Greek Sesostris; all around were spread out the white arms of colonaded courts, the work of this or that Pharaoh. In other parts of the town were numerous temples, erected to other deities. On the eastern edge of the city, washed on one side by the river, was the citadel, or " White Castle," as the Greeks in after times called it, a strong fortress, girt with a lofty rampart made of the light yellow limestone which the neighbouring desert furnishes. Opposite Memphis, towards the west, standing out in clear outline against the pale sky, was its vast and wonderful necro- polis. Stretching north and south a distance of nearly twenty miles, but with its populous centre immediately behind Memphis, this strange "City of the Dead" confronted the living city, drawing the eye by the sharp points of its sixty pyramids ^ and especially challenging attention by those huge monuments of kingly vanity, which have never elsewhere been equalled, the works of monarchs anterior to Abraham, which defy time to ' Stuart Poole, " Cities of Egypt," p. 26. BIRTH OF MOSES. I5 efface them. The household of Amram dwelt under the shadow of the three Great Pyramids. On the edge of the western horizon, as often as they lifted their eyes towards it, they would see tho»^ giant forms, those " artificial mountains," the most impressive monuments that have ever been raised by human hands, stupendous memorials of their builders' egotism, and of the misery of the people by whom they were built. Before the birth of Moses the family was one comprising four persons only, Amram, the paterfamilias^ probably well advanced in years ; whether handicraftsman, or field labourer, or otherwise employed, we cannot say, but a man at any rate of small account among those among whom his lot was cast; Jochebed, his aunt and wife, the viaief/a/jiilias, tender and loving house-mother; and two children, Miriam the elder, a grown-up girl, some fifteen or sixteen years of age, or perhaps more, and Aaron, a boy, an infant not yet three years old. Miriam, the first of all the Marys of whom history tells, is a soft and pleasing figure in the narra- tive. Brightly she rises up before us as the " house-angel," the mother's deft and ready help, the father's pride, gifted with precious gifts, as those of music and of song (Exod. xv. 20), yet quiet and domestic, content to keep her gifts hidden, and to do the common work of a common Hebrew household. Aaron was, we must conclude, born before the cruel edict of the reigning Pharaoh had been issued, so that his birth had not needed to be concealed ; his life had been spared by the God-fearing mid wives; or his mother had been so strong and healthful that in the hour of her travail she had not required their care (Exod. i. 19). As the eldest son of the house he would have been its embryo priest, and would have been set apart, from the womb probably, with some form of consecration. He would also have been especially welcome, as the first man-child always was in a Hebrew household, as securing the continuance of the family in the male line, or, at any rate, giving a reasonable prospect of such continuance. We are told nothing of his appearance, but may presume that he too was, like his brother, "a goodly child" Exod. ii. 2), o{ dL physique that fitted him for the grand and lofty- position xC^iich he afterwards occupied. He was as yet, however, but a boy, a happy, careless boy of three years' old, ignorant of the weight of responsibility that was about one day to fall upon him, the delight of the house probably, causing general cheer- fulness by his chatter and his laughter. l6 MOSES. On this, as on most other Hebrew households, the intelligence of the Pharaoh's barbarous edict fell like a blast of chill air. Jochebed was still of age to bear children, and she either knew when the edict was issued, or became aware soon afterwards, that she was once more about to give birth to a child. Would it be a male child, or a female one? In the former case, how could she bear to have the tender clinging babe torn from her loving arms and breast, carried off by rude hands out of her sight, to be plunged in the cold stream, that flowed so near, and suffocated by the cruel waves, or devoured by the huge jaws of crocodiles ? How could she bear to have her home thus dese- crated, her mother's heart thus rent with grief, her soul tortured and agonized ? She felt that she could not bear it. But what resource was there .-^ Could it be hoped that a mother's tears and prayers would move the heart of a stern and fierce king, and that, if she thrust herself into his presence, or otherwise ob- tained an interview, she would prevail on him to relent and spare one at any rate of the doomed victims.'^ Or could she look to make an impression on the king's myrmidons, and, when they came to snatch her child from her embrace, induce them to refrain, and let her keep him ? Such thoughts must often have passed through the mind of Jochebed, as she pondered during all the long weary months on the fate of the child that she carried in her womb ; and they must have become aggra- vated and intensified to an inexpressible degree, when the time came for her confinement, and she was delivered of a male child, and looking on him saw that he was a " goodly infant." Mothers have been known to favour especially the least beautiful among their offspring : but when was there one who could look upon her new-born babe, if it possessed the gift of a rare beauty, without a thrill of delight and a more than ordinary affection ? So it was with Jochebed. She might perhaps have yielded up her child to the hard fate commanded by the king, had he been an infant of the common stamp, with nothing attractive about him save his innocence and his helplessness ; but he was "goodly" (Exod. ii. 2), "proper "(Heb. xi. 23), "exceeding fair " (Acts vii. 20), of a beauty that seemed almost divine, and hence, when she looked upon him, she felt nerved to defy the monarch and his myrmidons, and resolved to preserve her darling in despite of them. The first steps were comparatively easy to accomplish. For three months the small intruder might be hid — his father's BIRTH OF MOSES. '7 house would shelter him-neighbours, if they knew of thebirlh, would not be likely to acquaint the civil authonties-if tliey ;eeHebre^,^thev'wouldkeep the secret through sympathy; Tf F<'^ptians, they would do so out of pity, and because theie Is r,o all upon them to turn " informers." But, as t,me went ;ncrncealmint would become a '™- -^ --' ^nf: met '' Egvpt like other civilized countries, would have Us informers live and ears of the k,ng, as they would be called, to gloss over the meanness of their office. The tax-gatherer -8>^' ■-" of his periodical calls unexpectedly, and see or hear the mfant Wi h deep reluctance, but with a feeling that there was no help for it, no other course possible to take, Jochebed came to the conclusion that her home could no longer afford her ch Id a safe Xe He must be disposed of elsewhere. But who would receive him ? Who would risk incurring the kmg's displeasure? Who even if willing, would have power to protect the young Tfe so inexpressibly dear to her? Jochebed had to pause, to reflect, to call all her female wit and cleverness to her a,d in order to devise a plan that had, at any rate, a chance of '"rut% which she devised was the following She knew the place where a daughter of '^e reigning Pharaoh was accus^ tomed from time to time to come down to the bank of the sac ed tream and bathe herself in its waters. She knew perhaps the character and circumstances of the princess, who, according o Artapanus. and Philo,' was married, childless, and extremely desTurof having children. She would PJ-e h-l,,ld m this princess's way, in such a manner as would natuially excite her comp'ss on and would trust that the compassion so aroused mi r lead her to extend her protection over the unfortunate infant A princess might venture on steps that no one of in- feHor rank would dare to take; and might be able confidently to cunt on her father's pardoning her indiscretion. To bring her Chi d to the princess's notice, Moses's mother constructed a mtle 'ark,» or boat, " of bulrushes "->... of the papyrus, and, ha tn/made it waterproof by means of a coating of bitumen she put her child in it, carried him to the water's edge, and lad the ark gently among the flags that grew along the stream near ts br nU. The pap;rus was commonly used as a material for bL'lin Egypt, and was regarded as a protection agamstcroco- U M D.ocrv Fv •• lY 27 2" Vit. MOSIS,' 1.4. « Ap. Luseb. " Picep. t-v. ix. 27. 3 l8 MOSES. dilec, though it may be doubted whether this belief was any- thing but a superstition. The little boat was laid among the flags to prevent it from floating down the stream, and keep it within sight of the place where the princess was accustomed to bathe. The time at which she would arrive could not be exactly calculated, and, had the ark been allowed to move with the current, it might have floated off long before she made her ap- pearance. Miriam, Moses's sister, was set to watch the ark until the princess should arrive, that no one might interfere with it, or thrust it out further into the stream. The scheme, skilfully contrived, was effectively carried out, and had a complete success. Pharaoh's daughter, Thermuthis, if we accept the tradition of Josephus,* or Merrhis, if we prefer to follow Artapanus, came down with a long train of maidens about the time expected, and proceeded along the river bank to the bathing-place. On her way, she espied the ark among the flags, and sent hv.r chief attendant to draw it out of the water, and bring it to her, that she might see what it contained. On opening it, for it was covered up, "she saw the child ; and behold, the babe wept." Hungry perhaps, or chilled by near proximity to the water, or frightened, as young children so often are when left alone, the poor babe was bemoaning its lot, and had given way to tears. The heart of the princess was at once stirred with pity. Something in the surroundings or in the look of the infant caused her to divine the truth, and she exclaimed, "This is one of the Hebrews' children." No mother would have deserted and exposed such a child who was not compelled to do so by some dire necessity (such would be her thoughts). Was there any such necessity laid upon any mothers at the time ? Ah ! yes. Her own father's edict had gone forth against the male children of the Hebrews, and Hebrew mothers throughout the land were everywhere in the direst straits — must be everywhere seeking if by any means they could preserve or prolong the lives of their newly-born sons. Evidently, the child belonged to this class. Complexion, tint of hair, cast of countenance, unusual features in the attire or in its arrangement, may have in an instant caught her eye, and strengthened her conviction ; but her conviction did not change her purpose. Miriam saw the look of favour with which she still regarded the babe, and coming forward at the right moment, cried out, * "Ant. Jud." ii. 9, § 5. HIRTll OF MOSES. ^9 « Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that She may nurse the child for thee ?" A Hebrew chdd, she meant tosav,must surely need a Hebrew nurse, to ^^^^^^-^^ '/" conform herself to its ways, to know how it ^^'^^ ^f '^'^'J should be treated during infancy, how it should be fed, dressed played with, dandled, tossed, talked to. And the princess dt Uie excellency of the suggestion. '' Go," sne replied, with the simple brevity characteristic of the antique manners, Go. The one word was enough. Away sprang the light-footed Hebrew lass to fetch her mother, who was no doubt in hiding near at hand, anxiously awaiting the result of the scheme which she had so cleverly contrived ; and the fond mother at once came to her daughter's call, and stood silent before the princess. Pharaoh's daughter, no doubt, carefully scanned her face, and noted her general appearance ; then, seeing in both nothing bu what was pleasing and suitable, she declared her will Take this child away," she said, '' and nurse it for me, and I wul give thee thy wages." u-r ^ ^^u;^. There was much expressed in this short speech Take this child awav"-^^. take it with thee to thine own abode ; do not bring it after me to my palace ; let it have the nurture and treatment which it would have received naturally in the paternal mansion ; " nurse it," but " nurse it /or vie "-remember, it is henceforth mine-mine as much as if it had been born in my household-mine as much as if I had borne it myself- nurse it>r ;;..," and, at the proper time, restore it to me, and then " I will give thee thy wages"-! will repay the care and trouble that has been spent on my adopted son by a suitable largess. Jochebed " took the child" and withdrew, and earned it to her home, and there " nursed it." Did the princess suspect nothing ? Did she not see through the drama that had been acted under her eyes ? Had Miriam seemed to her nothing but an ordinary passer-by ? Unmteres ted in the events, except as a stranger might be interested in what was intrinsically so pathetic ? Did she fail to note any eager- ness in Jochebed's tones or glances, or anything peculiar in her handling of the child when it was put into her arms, any con- vulsive clutch, or tender pressure, or long Hngenngkiss? Surely, the mother could scarcely have contained herself when she saw her child rescued from impending death, rendered safe and secure under the patronage of a great princess, and once more 20 MOSES. entrusted to her own loving care. The deep thrill of delight which must have passed through her maternal heart can scarcely have failed to paint itself on her countenance, even if it did not find a vent in word or action, in exclamation of " God be thanked," or convulsive embrace, or warm kiss, or tears of joy. To us it seems almost impossible that the princess did not thoroughly comprehend the whole scene, the relation of the parties each to each, the clever arrangements that had been made by mother and daughter to carry out their scheme, &c., and lend herself to the satisfactory completion of the business. Of course, it was necessary to dissemble. A daughter of the reigning sovereign could not openly admit that she was en- couraging and assisting one of her fathers subjects to disobey her father's commands. The princess therefore kept her own counsel and affected not to recognize the positions of the several actors in the drama, while she did her best to carry out their wishes and designs. She let the mother have her child to suckle till the natural time for weaning him arrived, while enabling her to meet all inconvenient inquiries with the reply, that it was the princess's adopted child, which she had been hired to nurse during his infancy. CHAPTER III. MOSES'S CHILDHOOD. Name given to the saved child-His early life at the Court-Tmpressions made on him by his surroundings-His intercourse with his own lamily —Story told of his trampling on the Pharaoh's crown— His beauty, spirit, and inteUigence. The name which Moses received has been variously explained. An Egyptian root, mes or meses, is common as an element m names where it has the force of "son" or "child," as in Aahmes, "child of the moon," Ramesses, "child of the sun," Amonmesor Amonmeses, " child of Ammon," and the like. Strictly speakmg, the word orobably means " born from," or " sprung from," and is equivalent of the Latin words natus, ortus, satics, &c. Etymo- lo-ically it perhaps signified " drawn out," and referred to the ac't of deliverance by a midwife. It has been thought that this word " meses" was the real name which the Egyptian princess gave to her foundhng, and that in giving it she only meant to recognise him as her "child." Josephus, however, supplies an entirely different account. According to him, the meaning ot the word " Moses " is " saved from the water," the first syllable vio, moaning, "water" in Egyptian, and the remamder of the word, ses, or uses, meaning " saved." ' The derivation has in its favour the fact, that mo-ushe would in Coptic have the meaning assi-ned, and the further fact that one of the words for water in the ancient Egyptian was certainly mo. From these two accounts that suggested in Exod. ii. lo wholly differs since it makes the name Hebrew, and derives it from the Hebrew root « "Ant. Jud." ii. 9' ^ ^ 22 MOSES. mdshdh^ " to extract, draw forth." Philo Judseus appears to have taken much the same view as Josephus ; but he is less exact, since he gives the word one root only, instead of two, and mis- represents that one, declaring that the Egyptian word for water was 7Jids^ which it certainly was not. Altogether, it is perhaps most probable that Josephus gave the true account, and that "Moses" — more correctly Moyses, as in the Septuagint Version, or Moysus, as in Artapanus ^ — meant " taken from the water," and thus the name which he bore commemorated the circum- stances under which the great prophet was saved by the princess. Transferred from the humble abode of his father to the palace of the princess, Moses was brought up in the Egyptian fashion. As a child, he probably went about, like other Egyptian boys, without clothes, and with his hair shaved off, except a single lock, which depended on one side of the head. He would be waited on by numerous attendants, would be carefully and delicately fed, kept scrupulously clean, and taught the refined manners of the highest circles. His main life would be a Court life. He would live chiefly in the apartments of his mother, which would probably be a portion of the royal residence, and would be fur- nished with every luxury. At first his attendants would be his mother's handmaids ; but ere long the assistance of male in- structors would be called in, and his education, m the common sense of the word, would commence. But there is an earlier education than that derived from instructors. The bent and bias of a character is often formed, is always strongly aifected, by the individual's earliest surroundings, which unconsciously form his mind and fashion his temper. The sights and sounds presented to us in infancy and early childhood sink into our souls, and constitute a substratum upon which the whole per- sonality of the man is afterwards built. What then were those that the impressible mind of the young Moses first took in from the circumstances of his environment, while he dwelt with his mother in her portion of the royal palace } There is reason to believe that the Court, at the time, was held during the greater part of the year at Memphis. The situation and appearance of Memphis have been already dwelt upon. Moses would see from the terraces of the royal resi- dence, whither he would be taken to enjoy the cool northern breeze in the summer evenings, the great city of Phthah spread ^Ap. Euseb. "Prasp. Ev." ix. 27. MOSES'S CHILDHOOD. 23 before him in all its wenlth of architectural ornament, in all its populousncss, in all its busy movement of trade and commerce, of pleasure and religion. Noisy crowds would be thronging its streets and squares, heavily-laden vessels would be ascending,' and descending its mighty river, bright painted sails would be glassing themselves in the calmer reaches of the stream, boats would be darting about, here and there processions with sacred arks lifted up on high would be wending their way through the temple precincts or through the streets of the town, strains of music would be floating in the air, mixed with shouts and cries of all kinds from chariot-drivers, and vendors of wares, and boatmen. Against the orange glow still lighting up the western sky would be seen, silhouetted in sharpest outline, the purple forms of the "Three Great Pyramids," grand monuments, the tombs of mighty kings, sentinels on the edge of that broad desert tract, where life ceased and the kingdom of the dead began. The vastness of the scene around would necessarily impress any intelligent boy with a sense of awe, of wonder, and of mystery ; the life and movement of the city would arouse curiosity and the desire to be up and doing ; the contrast between the city's stir and the still silence of the v.estern ridge would evoke uneasy thoughts, and perhaps bring the riddle of existence before the just av/akening mind. As he grew older, the boy's acquaintance with Memphis, and the life within its walls, would increase. He would be taken into the streets, probably in a wheeled vehicle, and would see near at hand the moving crowd, which he had hitherto contemplated from a distance. He would, perhaps, occasionally be allowed a sail in a p'easure-boat upon the river. He would be taken to the great Temple of Phthah, and shown the mysterious figures upon the walls, and the strange hieroglyphic writing, covering almost every space from which the figures were absent ; and the broad courts, and the solemn corridors, and the calm Oi^irid images, and perhaps an imnge of Phthah, grotesque and hideous. Processions of priests, clad in white garments of linen or cotton, and wearing sandals made of the papyrus plant, chanting litanies to Phthah or Ra, would meet him in the courts, and compel him and his attendants to stand aside for them to pass. Or he would see the priests oiVering sacrifices and prayers, or pouring libations, to the images ; or burning incense before them, in their honour. Now and then he might meet the sacred bull, 24 MOSES. Apis, as he was called, being led in a festive procession through the main streets of the town, that the inhabitants might see him, and come forth from their dwellings, and make obeisance to the incarnation of Phthah. The Egyptian religion delighted in openly manifesting itself, in setting itself everywhere and at all times before the eyes of the people, in challenging and compel- ling their attention. All the grandest edifices were temples ; next to the king, the persons most considered were the priests ; religious festivals, involving great gatherings and long proces- sions, were frequent ; men, women, and even children ^ attended them ; Moses must have been early familiar with the external aspect, at any rate, of the Egyptian worship, and must have frequently witnessed the revolting rites of the prevalent idolatry. But there was another phase of the early life of Moses at Memphis of a softer character. It is impossible to suppose that the princess, who had employed his mother to suckle him, at once on his adoption broke off the connection between her adopted child and his real family. The princess did not, as Philo imagines,^ pretend that he was actually her son. His fiebrew origin was known, both to himself (Exod. ii. ii) and to the Egyptians.3 Must we not conclude that the connection be- tween Moses and his family was continued after he became an inmate of the royal residence, and that, from time to time, he was taken to see his relatives, or that they were allowed to "ome and see him at the palace.'' Had Jochebed been merely Moses's foster-mother, she would have been permitted a cer- tain familiarity, according to the ideas of the East. As his real mother, her claim was greater, and cannot have been dis- allowed. We must regard Moses, therefore, as partly under the influence of the princess and the Court, partly under that of his father and mother, his brother and sister, during the whole period of his early residence in Egypt. His intercourse with his family was of the highest importance, as respected his religious behef and his sympathy with his countrymen. But for it, he would naturally have been brought up a believer in the Egyptian polytheism and an idolater ; he would probably have cared little for his " brethren," even if he were not ashamed of acknow- ledging them. As it was, the principles of the patriarchal re- ligion were impressed upon him while he was still a child, and « Herod, ii. 60. « " Vit. Mosis." i. p. 83. 3 Joseph. " Ant. Jud." ii. 9, § 7. MOSES'S CHILDHOOD. 25 he grew up a firm adherent of monotheism, a believer in the pro- mises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and a contemner of idols and idolatry. He also kept touch with his countrymen, felt sorrow for their sufferings, and hoped in time to ameliorate their lot. Instead of being wholly, he was only half, Egyptianized. He had that substratum of Hebrew feeling and Hebrew training which fitted him to be a leader of his nation, whose confidence would never have gone out to one wholly reared and taught by their oppressors. ^ y According to Josephus, while Moses was still a young child, i^ he escaped another peril as great as that which had menaced him in his infancy. The princess, Thermuthis, as he calls her, had taken her adopted son with her to her father's apartments, wishing to exhibit before him the boy's beauty and cleverness, and with some hope of inducing him to designate the child as his successor. She put her treasure into her father's arms, with a little speech, in which she called attention to his more than human loveliness, and his high and generous spirit, at the same time revealing the ambitious hopes which she ventured to cherish on his behalf. The monarch, wishing to gratify her by a show of willingness to entertain her request, took his crown off his own head, and put it on the head of the child ; whereupon the child got down from his lap, took off the crown to examine it, and then placing it on the ground, put his feet upon it and tried to stand up. A sacred scribe, who, a little before the birth of Moses, had prophesied that a Hebrew child was about to be born who would lay low the power of Egypt, happened to be standing by, and, seeing what the child had done, he cried with a loud voice, and said : " This, O King, is the child, whom the gods told us to kill for our own security. See the witness which he bears to the prophecy — he has put thy sovereignty beneath him, and is trampling thy crown under his feet. Slay him, then ; and cause the Egyptians to cease from their fears, and the Hebrews from their hopes." Thermuthis, on hearing the speech, sprang to the child, and snatching him up bore him away. The king declined to follow the scribe's advice ; and thus Moses escaped this second danger.' There is an allusion in this narrative, and elsewhere impor- tant testimony is borne, to the extreme beauty of Moses, not only as an infant, but as a boy and youth. Philo tells us that his * "Ant. Tud." ii. 9, \. 7. 26 MOSES. appearance was at once beautiful and noble, full of modesty and yet full also of dignity.^ Josephus says that there was no one, however careless about a child's looks, who was not struck with astonishment at his loveliness on first beholding him. As he passed along the streets many of those whom he met would turn their heads to look after him, and labouring men v/ould forget their occupations and stand to gaze.^ He is also said to have been remarkably tall for his age, full of spirit, strong, and cap- able of enduring hard work. As for his intelligence, it was extraordinary, and showed itself in every subject to which his attention was turned. The general feeling was that there was something more than human about the boy ; and while the Hebrews took courage and felt hope revive in their breasts through the promise of future greatness which they discovered in him, the Egyptians generally looked upon him with an eye of suspicion, as one whom they had reason to dread, should he grow to manhood. " Vit. Mosis," p. 83. » " Ant. Jud." ii, 9, §. 6. CHAPTER IV. EDUCATION. The physical training of Moses — Egyptian athletic games — Early instruc- tion — Reading and writing — Egyptian writing involved a training in art — Arithmetic — Music and rhythm — Later instruction — University of Heliopolis — Subjects of the University course — Geometry — Literature — Astronomy— Law— Medicine — Philosophy of Symbolism — Position of Moses among the students. It would seem that in Egypt, as in most civilized countries, education was regarded as including a course of training, both for the mind, and also for the body. The Egyptians had a variety of games, of which a considerable number were gym- nastic or athletic. One of the chief of these was wrestling. The monuments depict wrestlers in all manner of attitudes, preparing to engage, taking their first hold, intertwined, clutching at each other's arms and legs, one forcing the other to the ground, both on the ground, yet still continuing the struggle. " The two com- batants," says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, " generally approached each other, holding their arms in an inclined position before the body ; and each endeavoured to seize his adversary in the manner best suited to his mode of attack. It was allowable to take hold of any part of the body, the head, neck, or legs ; and the struggle was frequently continued on the ground, after one or both had fallen ; a mode of wrestling common also to the Greeks, by whom it was denominated Anaclinopale. I do not find that they had the same sign of acknowledging their defeat in this game as the Greeks, which was by holding up a finger in 28 MOSES. token of submission ; it was probably done by the Egyptians with a word." ' Another exercise was fighting with single-sticks. The left arm was defended by a sort of shield strapped round it from the wrist to the elbow, and could thus be used to turn off or inter- cept blows. The right hand had the protection of a basket or guard, projecting over the knuckles. The sticks employed were somewhat short, not more than about thirty inches in length. The combatants had no defence for the head, beyond the wig ordinarily worn by men of the well-to-do classes ; but it was perhaps a law of the game that neither combatant should strike at the head of his adversary. The game of ball, so much practised by the Romans, was also a favourite amusement in Egypt, especially among females. It consisted, however, so far as appears, simply in tossing the ball and catching it, the Egyptians having nothing that resem- bled fives, or rackets, or tennis, or hockey. On this subject Sir G. Wilkinson tells us that "the game of ball was not confined to children, or to either sex, though the mere amusement of throw- ing and catching it appears to have been considered more par- ticularly adapted to females. They had different methods of playing. Sometimes a person unsuccessful in catching the ball was obliged to suffer another to ride on her back, who continued to enjoy this post until she also missed it — the ball being thrown by an opposite party, mounted in the same manner, and placed at a certain distance, according to the space previously fixed by the players. . . . Sometimes they showed their skill in catching three or more balls in succession, the hands occasionally crossed over the breast ; and the more simple mode of throwing it up to a height and catching it, known to the Greeks as urania^ was common in Egypt. They had also the game described by Homer as having been played by Halius and Laodamas before Alcinoiis,^ in which one party threw the ball as high as he could, and the other, leaping up, caught it on its fall, before his feet again touched the ground." 3 A game, in which strength and dexterity were about equally balanced, was one wherein two opponents contended in throw- ing knives or daggers, so as to remain fixed in a block of hard ^ " Ancient Egyptians," edition of 1878 ; vol. ii. pp. 72, 73. " Horn. " Odyss." ix. 1. 374. 3 Wilkinson, "Ancient Eg>T)tians," vol. ii. p. 67. EDUCATION. 29 wood ; the contention being which of the two could strike nearest to the centre, or to the edge, as agreed beforehand. One, where strength alone was tested, consisted in lifting heavy bags of s:ind, and swinging them at arms' length over the head. The person who could swing the heaviest bag was the victor. These, and other games of a similar character, were among the ordinary amusements of children and youths in Egypt, and were regarded as at once promoting health by the exercise of the body and refreshing the mind by pleasant entertainment. Moses would naturally be required to take his part in such exercises, and that he did so is implied by Philo, who says that he soon conceived a distaste for such amusements,' and showed himself superior to them, preferring more serious occupations. It may be doubted, however, whether Philo, in thus writing, is not rather following out his own views of how the perfect man ought to act in his youth, than delivering to us any Egyptian or Jewish tradition on the subject. Philo's leanings are towards asceticism, and he would fain persuade us that the great lawgiver of his nation held the same views ; but it is at least doubtful whether he had any trustworthy authority for his statements. IVIoses is likely to have been of a serious turn as boy and youth ; but his Egyptian instructors would regard the training of the body as scarcely less necessary than the training of the mind, and would see that he passed through the ordinary course of gymnastic exercises, and that his bodily vigour was as well developed as that of any of his contemporaries. Parallel, even with the earliest physical training, would be a certain amount of instruction, directed to the development of the intellect. Like other children, Moses had to begin by learning to read and write. In Egypt these accomplishments were not very easy of acquirement. The Egyptians had at the time two forms of writing, one known to the Greeks as the hieroglyphic, and the other as the hieratic. In the hieroglyphic, articulate sounds were represented by pictures of objects, which expressed, sometimes letters, sometimes syllables, sometimes whole words, occasionally ideas. The number of the signs used v.as very large, probably not less than a thousand. Several of them expressed more than one sound, while one and the same sound was sometimes expressed by several symbols. To learn the Egyptian alphabet was nearly as diiTicult as to * " Vit. Mosis,'" p. 83. 30 MOSES. learn the Chinese, and must have occupied many months, if not years. To read, it was necessary to know, not only what articulations each symbol had, but which of them was appropri- ate in the connection in which each symbol occurred. Writing was still more difficult ; for as all the signs were objects, it was necessary, in order to write, to be able to draw a vast variety of objects with distinctness and accuracy. Among the most ordinary characters were the eagle, which expressed aj the owl, which expressed m; the chicken, which expressed ic; the duck, which expressed sa; the hawk, which expressed har j and the vulture, which expressed inut. Hieroglyphic writing, to be intelligible, had to mark unmistakably which bird was meant, out of these many ; and indeed there were others also in the hieroglyphic list, as the swallow and the ibis. Animals had to be drawn with equal frequency, as the lion, the wild-goat, the ox, the crocodile, the jackal, the hare. It has been well observed by Mr. R. S. Poole, that to write Egyptian required " a training in art." ^ Some training of the kind was requisite in all cases, but, in the case of those who were receiving the best education, much more was necessary ; for they were expected to " draw beautifully," depicting each bird, and animal, and insect, and flower, with a firm sure hand, rapidly and artistically. Nor was the other form of writing known to the Egyptians in the age of Moses much easier of acquisition. The hieratic was a cursive writing based on the hieroglyphic, and scarcely to be learnt or read apart from it. Whether a knowledge of it was included in the general scheme of a liberal education, is unknown to us. But even if it were, the student's burthen would not have been much lightened, for the hieratic forms are not less numerous than the hieroglyphic, and in many cases so closely resemble each other as to lead to infinite difficulty and confusion. It is said that, about the time of Moses, another language besides Egyptian was taught to students. " The documents of the sci ibes of that age not only show by their accurate trans- literation of Semitic words that the writers had a mastery of the foreign sounds they wrote ; but more than this, it was the faslrion at this time to introduce Semitic words into the Egyp- tian language."^ As all educated Romans in the days of Cicero learnt Greek, and all Russians in the time of Alexander I. were * R. Stuart Poole, " Cities of Egypt," p. 141. ^ Ibid. p. 142. EDUCATION. 31 taught French, so in the days of Moses all educated Egyptians had to be familiar with a Semitic dialect, which, if not exactly Hebrew, was at any rate closely akin to it. Here Moses must have had an advantage over his Egyptian contemporaries, for Hebrew was his mother tongue, which he had begun to speak before his mother gave him back to the princess, and had thenceforth used in his intercourse with the members of his family. After reading and writing, or rather in conjunction with them, long before they were fully mastered, would come arithmetic. A knowledge of numbers, to a certain extent, is needed for the common business of life. The Egyptians were good arithme- ticians. They invented the signs, which we call Arabic, and which we still use, for one, two, three, and four ; they carried numeration as far, at any rate, as millions ; our common multi- plication table is thought to have been of Egyptian origin.* They dealt not only with whole numbers, but with fractions, for which they had a peculiar notation, and which they added or subtracted without difficulty. The higher operations of arith- metic were probably unknown to them ; and it may be suspected that they indulged in mystical speculations on the virtues and qualities of particular numbers, which were purely fanciful and incapable of leading to any useful result. Philo says,^ that among the early acquirements of Moses was a knowledge of music, both vocal and instrumental, of harmony, and of rhythm. That the Hebrews had some musical knowledge when they quitted Egypt is apparent from the account, which is given in Exodus xv., of Miriam, and the women who were her companions, after the passage of the Red Sea. That Moses was skilled in rhythm is evident, both from his "song" in the same chapter, and from the splendid poem which occupies the greater part of Deut. xxxii. There is thus no reason to question Philo's assertion, which may have been derived from tradition, or possibly from his knowledge of the general plan of education among the ancient Egyptians. Music was certainly known and practised in Egypt from a very remote period. In ancient tombs near the Pyramids, probably belonging to about the time of their construction, we see bands of five, six, and even eight performers, some of whom sing, while others play * Wilkinson, "Ancient Egyptians," vol. ii. p. 492. ' " Vit. Mosis," 1. s. c. 32 MOSES. upon various instruments. The harp, the Ij're, the flute, the double pipe, the guitar, and the tambourine are the instruments most frequently represented. No Egyptian musical scores have come down to us ; and it is thus impossible to say what were the ideas prevalent on the subject of harmony, or of melody ; but perhaps, if their ideas were ascertained, we should not find them to be very different from our own. The proficiency of Moses in rhythm, to which Philo testifies, and of which his works give evidence, was, doubtless, in the main, derived from a knowledge of the Egyptian poetry. The Egyptians were great lovers of song. Almost all workmen sang at their tasks ; and at the vintage and the harvest-time there were specially favourite melodies, which rang through the air in the country districts, and were probably known to every one. Epic poems recorded the exploits of monarchs ; lyrical songs declared the praises of the gods ; dirges were recited at funerals, merry roundelays at feasts. We may gather from Philo that something like a scientific study of rhythm was a part of the education of boys, who were inducted into the mysteries of the various Eg}'ptian metres, as our own youth are into the intricacies of sapphics and iambics, of alcaics, asclepiads, and hendecasyllables. The boyish education of Moses was most likely conducted at the Court, under a paedagogue or tutor, assisted by various masters ; but as he approached towards manhood, he would be sent to one of the two great universities. No otherwise could he have become "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (Acts vii. 22) ; no otherwise would his training have befitted his rank and station. The seats of learning at the time were Heliopolis and Hermopolis, the one on the eastern verge of the Delta, about twenty miles north of Memphis ; the other in the lower Nile valley, half-way between Memphis and Thebes. The tradition says that Heliopolis was the university chosen. It was much nearer to Memphis than Hermopolis, and would have a special attraction for any Hebrew youth from the connection between its priestly house and the patriarch Joseph (Gen. xli. 45). Heliopolis, or On, was one of the most ancient of the Egyptian cities, and was famous on two accounts — it was a great seat of learning, and it was the principal centre of the worship of the sun. The description of it given by Dean Stanley is so graphic that we shall venture to transfer it to our EDUCATION. 33 pages. " It stands on the edge of the cultivated ground. The vast enclosure of its brick walls still remains, now almost pow- dered into dust, but, according to the tradition of the Septuagint, the very walls built by the Israelite bondmen. Within the enclosu''e, in the space now occupied by tangled gardens, rose the great Temple of the Sun, which gave its name and object to the city. How important in Egypt was that worship may be best understood by remembering that from it were derived the chief names by which kings and priests were called — *Pha-raoh,' ' The Child of the Sun,' ' ' Po-ti-phe-rah," The Ser- vant of the Sun.' And what its aspect was in Heliopolis may be known partly from the detailed description which Strabo has left of its buildings, as still standing in his own time ; and yet more from the fact that the one Egyptian temple which to this day retains its sculptures and internal arrangements almost unaltered, that of Ipsambul, is the temple of Ra, or the Sun. In Heliopolis, as elsewhere, was the avenue of sphinxes leading to the great gateway, where flew, from gigantic flagstaffs, the red and blue streamers. Before and behind the gateway stood, two by two, the petrifactions of the sun-beam, the obelisks, of which one alone now remains to mourn the loss of all its brethren. Close by was the sacred Spring of the Sun, a rare sight in Egypt, and therefore the more precious, and probably the original cause of the selection of this remote corner of Egypt for so famous a sanctuary. This, too, still remains, almost choked by the rank luxuriance of the aquatic plants which have gathered over its waters. Round the cloisters of the vast courts into which these gateways opened, were spacious mansions, forming the canonical residences, if one may so call them, of the priests and professors of On : for Heliopolis, we must remember, was the Oxford of ancient Egypt, the seat of its learning in ancient times ; the university, or perhaps rather the college, gathered round the Temple of the Sun, as Christ Church round the old cathedral or shrine of S. Frideswide. . . . In the centre of all stood the Temple itself Over the portal, we can hardly doubt, was the figure of the Sun -god, not in the sublime indistinctness of his natural orb, nor yet in the beautiful impersonation of the Grecian Apollo, but in the strange gro- tesque form of the hawk-headed monster. Enter : and the * This derivation is now questioned, that of Per-ao, " the Great House," .being preferred. 4 34 MOSES. dark temple opens and contracts successively into its outer- most, its inner, and its innermost hall ; the Osirid figures in their placid majesty support the first, the wild and savage exploits of kings and heroes fill the second, and in the furthest recess of all, underneath the carved figure of the Sun-god, and beside the solid altar, sate in his gilded cage the sacred hawk, or lay crouched upon his purple bed the sacred black calf, Mnevis or Urmer ; each the living, almost incarnate, representation of the deity of the temple. Thrice a day before the deified beast the incense was offered, and once a month the solemn sacrifice." ^ There are reasons for questioning the latter part of this de- scription. No sacred animal was housed in the inmost sanctuary of the Sun-god at Heliopolis, since that sanctuary was ordin- arily kept closed, sometimes with a seal upon the doors.^ The animals, of which there were several, must have occupied some other position, and most probably had their separate houses, in diff'erent parts of the precinct. Besides the black bull, Mnevis, there were maintained in the temple a lion and lioness, a cat, and a specimen of the bennu, a kind of crane, which was regarded as representing the mythical phoenix, Heliopolis was the locality to which especially belonged the phoenix legend. The bird came from Arabia once in five hun- dred years, carrying the body of his father enclosed in a ball of myrrh, and deposited it in the Temple of the Sun. In form he much resembled the eagle ; but his plumage was in part red, in part golden.3 Herodotus remarks, with some naivete^ that he had nevei seen him — a privation which, however, he must have shared with other travellers. We have no picture of university life in Heliopolis, either in the time of Moses or at any other period ; but we have some knowledge of the character of the instruction which was there imparted to students. Geometry was certainly taught. The science originated in Egypt, where it was a primary necessity on account ot the fact that every year the inundation obliterated many of the landmarks and made a fresh mensuration and de- marcation of properties imperative. The mensuration of land led on to general surveys, which could scarcely be executed except trigonometrically, and the science ol trigonometry must, * " Lectiires on the Jewish Church," vol. i. pp. 87-90. 2 " Records of the Past,'' vol. ii. p. 98. 3 Herodotus, ii. 73. EDUCATION. 35 therefore, it would seem, have been cultivated to some extent.' If the intended height of a pyramid was determined from the first, the angle of the slope of the sides might be definitely fixed by trigonometrical calculation, but scarcely otherwise. The higher branches of mathematics were, of course, unknown to the Egyptians ; and even geometry was but little elaborated until the time of Euclid. It is noticeable, however, that the Greek who tirst did much for go )metry was an Alexandrian Greek, and the suspicion arises that he may have derived much of his improved science from Egyptian sources. Other branches of knowledge cultivated and taught at Helio- polis in Moses' time were literature, especially poetry, astro- nomy, law, medicine, and "the philosophy of symbols." It was an object with all persons of the higher ranks in Egypt to acquire a clear and elegant style. For this purpose the master- pieces of antiquity, whether in poetry or prose, were carefully studied, and composition was regularly practised under the guidance of instructors. Epistolary correspondence was a branch of composition which received special attention, and the model letters of the best authors were set before the student for imitation. It is not clear whether the students were practised in composing poetry ; but on the whole it is most probable that the curriculum included verse as well as prose writing. The Egyptians received at an early date some astronomical knowledge from the Babylonians, and afterwards made con- siderable advances in the science of astronomy themselves. Astronomy was necessary for the construction of the calendar, and was closely connected with religion. The Egyptian astro- nomers succeeded in determining, with a near approach to exactness, the solar year, which they made to consist of 365 j^f days. They knew that the moon derived its light from the sun, that the sun was the centre of our system, and that the revolu- tion of the earth upon its axis was the cause of day and night. There was an observatory at Heliopolis in the time of Strabo, which had probably come down from a high antiquity, since astronomical observations were recorded on the temple walls at Thebes at a very remote period. The Egyptians paid special attention to eclipses, both of the sun and the moon ; to occulta- * Dr. Birch says, "A geometric and arithmetic papyrus, now in the British Museum, has a portion devoted to the mensuration and triangula Hon of fields." 36 MOSES. tions of the planets ; to the motions of the planets, and the determination of their periodic and synodic times ; and to the construction of tables of the fixed stars and the mapping of them out into constellations. They were acquainted with the obli- quity of the ecliptic to the equator, and found a way of deter- mining an exact meridian line. It has been supposed that they were acquainted with the procession of the equinoxes ; but the evidence on this point is insufficient. Altogether their astro- nomy must be pronounced not very advanced, and rather em- pirical than scientific, rather practical than speculative. Dr. Brugsch says of it : " Astronomy with the Egyptians was not that mathematical science which calculates the movements of the stars through the construction of grand systems of the heavens. It was rather a collection of the observations which they had made on the periodically recurring phenomena of earth and sky in Egypt, the bearings of which upon each other could not long escape the notice of the priests, who in the clear Egyptian nights observed the brilliant luminaries of their firmament. Their astronomical knowledge was founded on the base of empiricism, and not on that of mathematical inquiry."^ Such however as their astronomical knowledge was, the students at Heliopolis had the benefit of it, and were perhaps as much advanced in the science as the bulk of those who in modern times enjoy the advantages of a university training. It is a reasonable conclusion of Egyptologists that the prin- ciples and practice of law must have been taught at Heliopolis.^ The Egyptians had a large body of written laws forming a por- tion of some of their sacred books, and believed to have emanated originally from a Divine source. These laws were, for the most part, admirable, and were administered by trained judges, who were in no case allowed to depart from them or call them in question, since such conduct would have been rebellion against the Deity. The kings, though despotic in the sense that there were no means of calling them to account, had not the right, and did not even claim the right, of setting aside the law ; and the courts throughout the kingdom heard and decided ordinary causes without any interference from any superior authority. The class of judges was large ; and those who aimed at the career must have qualified themselves for it by some previous ^ " Histoire d'Egypte," part i. p. 39. » R. Stuart Poole, " Cities of Egypt,'' p. 143. EDUCATION. 37 course of study. That the place where they studied was Helio- polis cannot be said to be proved, but is, at any rate, in the highest degree probable. The same must be said with regard to medicine and its sub- ordinate science, chemistry. Medicine engaged the attention of the Egyptians from the earliest ages, and was pursued with ardour and success. The whole country was subject to sanitary regulations, the kings themselves not being exempted from obedience to them. Very ancient works on medicine existed, and were regarded with extreme respect, being attributed cither to the god Thoth, or to one or more of the ancient kings. The import- ance of anatomy was recognized, and the dissection of the human subject allowed and practised. In the time of Herodotus specialism seems to have prevailed, and to have been carried, indeed, to a ridiculous extent,' but we have no evidence that this system was followed in the earlier times. The medical school of Heliopolis is not to be taxed with any sanction of the principle that "each physician should treat only one disorder." Science, however, was probably regarded at Heliopolis as a secondary and inferior part of education ; the main object of study was religion, the full understanding of the Egyptian sacred books. The professors of the university were also the priests of the great temple, and the colleges of students were under their control, the studies under their superintendence. The youths who came to Heliopolis with the mere vague notions on the subject of religion which were to be gathered from attendance in the various temples and participation in the various festivals, and who must have therefore been, like the mass of the common people, idolaters and polytheists, had to be taught by their religious instructors the deep truths that underlay the external popular religion, the realities shadowed forth by the grotesque imagery of hawk-headed, cow-headed, and ibis-headed idols, of sacred goats and sacred bulls and sacred crocodiles, of processions of the Boat of the Sun, of Osiris myths, of Nile worship, and the like. Philo says that one of the subjects in which Moses received instruction from his Egyptian instructors was "the philosophy of symbolism " ; and this would exactly express the enlightenment which those persons received who passed from the crowd of the uninitiated and uninstructed into the select number of the fully instructed in religion. For ' See Herodotus, ii. 84. 38 MOSES. the entire external aspect of the Egyptian religion was a com- plicated and multitudinous symbolism. "The various deities," as Sir Gardner Wilkinson long ago pointed out/ "were mere emblematic representations of the One and Sole God ; for the priests who were initiated into, and who understood the mys- teries of their religion, believed in one Deity alone, and, in per- forming their adorations to any particular member of their Pantheon, addressed themselves directly to the sole ruler of the universe, through that particular form. Each form (whether called Ptah, Amen, or any other of the figures representing various characters of the Deity) was one of His attributes ; in the same manner as our expressions, ' the Creator/ 'the Omni- potent,' ' the Almighty,' or any other title, indicate one and the same Being." Or, as I have myself observed elsewhere,^ " the gods of the popular mythology were understood, in the esoteric religion, to be either personified attributes of the Deity or parts of the nature which He had created, considered as informed and inspired by Him. Num or Kneph represented the creative mind, Phthah the creative hand, or act of creating ; Maut represented matter, Ra the sun, Khons the moon, Seb the earth, Khem the generative power in nature. Nut the upper hemisphere of heaven, Athor the lower world, or under hemisphere ; Thoth personified the Divine wisdom, Ammon perhaps the Divine mysteriousness or incomprehensibility, Osiris (according to some) the Divine goodness. It is difficult in many cases to fix on the exact quality, act, or part of nature intended ; but the principle admits of no doubt. No educated Egyptian priest certainly, probably no educated layman, conceived of the popular gods as really separate and distinct beings. All knew that there was but One God, and understood that when worship was offered to Khem, or Kneph, or Phthah, or Maut, or Thoth, or Ammon, the One God was worshipped in some one of His forms, or in some one of His aspects. It does not appear that in more than a very few cases did the Egyptian religion, as con- ceived of by the initiated, deify created beings, or constitute a class of secondary gods who owed their existence to the Supreme God. Ra was not a Sun-Deity with a distinct and separate existence, but the Supreme God acting in the sun, making His light to shine on the earth, warming, cheering, and ^ "Ancient Egyptians," vol. ii. p. 476. ' " History of Ancient Egypt," vol. i. pp. 315, 316. EDUCATION. 39 blessing it ; and so Ra might be worshipped with all the highest titles of honour, as, indeed, might any god, except the very few which are more properly called gc?iii^ and which corresponded to the angels of the Christian system." Symbolism was the one and only key to the Egyptian religion ; but it was a key of a most complicated kind, and it required a long course of instructionHO enable the neophyte to use it pro- perly. It had to be applied to the animal worship, to the various forms and ceremonies of the religion, to the Osirid myth, and to the other sagas. There must have been a large field for it in the explanation of the Ritual, or Book of the Dead, which is a long composition of the most obscure and mystic character.^ Probably the priests alone, or those who were intended for the priesthood, pursued their study of symbolism to the furthest possible point, so as to understand exactly the esoteric meaning of each word and phrase of the Ritual. Ordinary lay students may have been merely taught the general principle, and left to themselves to apply it. The more curious and intelligent of such students may have been carried somewhat further, but are not likely to have been able to devote to this single study the time requisite for obtaining a thorough mastery of it. The question here naturally arises, whether Moses was among the lay, or among the priestly, students. According to some authorities, he was an actual priest, and bore a priestly name in addition to his name of Moses, which, if we trust Chaeremon,^ was Tisithen, if we trust Manetho,^ Osarsiph. But it is scarcely conceivable that Moses really entered the Egyptian priesthood, even if we take the most favourable view of the inner meaning of the Egyptian religion. The priests had invented, and main- tained the outward polytheism and idolatry, as the only religion suitable to the mass of the people ; they inculcated it ; they administered its rites ; they sanctioned its grossness, its licen- tiousness, its lowering and debasing materialism. If Moses, as we have supposed, learnt the religion of his forefathers from the members of his own family, and adhered to it, even though a resident at the Pharaoh's Court, he would necessarily have shrunk from the priestly office with its responsibilities, even if the priests would have been willing to admit him to it. But, according to Josephus,"* there was from first to last an antagon- * " History of Ancient Egypt," p, 137, » Ap. Joseph. " C. Apion.'* i. 32 3 Ibid. i. 26, 28, 31. ■♦ " Ant. Jud." ii. 9, 10. 40 MOSES. ism between him and the priests, who constantly laid plots against his life, and were so far from considering him one of tliemselves, that they looked upon him as a dangerous rival and enemy. We must thej-efore regard Tyloses at Heliopolis as a lay student, not in favour with the authorities, doubtless admitted freely to whatever instruction was given in secular subjects, but taught the customary explanations of the established religious practices and of the sacred texts with some reserve — perhaps obtaining his knowledge of these subjects rather from his fellow students than the University professors. CHAPTER V. EARLY MANHOOD OF MOSES. Anomalous position of an adopted foundling at the Pharaonic Court- Annoyances to which Moses would be subjected — Courses of life which would naturally be open to him — The official life — The literary life — The hfe of a soldier ; its attraction at the time — Grounds for con- cluding that r loses adopted the military life — Training which it involved — Moses in the Hittite wars — Account given by Josephus of Moses' successes against the Ethiopians — The account criticized. His university education concluded, Moses must have returned to the Court, and have resumed his position in his mother's household. But the question must now have presented itself to his mind, which presents itself to almost all sooner or later. What was he to do with his life, how was he to employ the talents and the acquirements which were his by nature and training ? The position of an adopted foundling at the Court of an Egyptian king, and that foundling a foreigner, was an anomalous, and can scarcely have been a pleasant, one. The threatened assassinations, of which Josephus speaks, are pro- bably fictions, and the extreme aversion in which Moses was held by the priests is no doubt exaggerated ; but jealousies, we may be sure, were awakened by the favour shewn to an alien interloper, and an atmosphere of suspicion and ill-will was created around him. There could be no one among the courtiers who would really truly sympathize with his feelings when he was vexed or hurt, since there was no one who occupied anything like the same position. He may have had some hangers-on and flatterers, but he can scarcely have had a friend. The courtiers generally would look down upon him on account 42 MOSES. of his birth, envy him in respect of the high favour with which he was regarded by the Princess, and dislike him as one who m creed and race and tone of thought was quite different from themselves. The result would be a series of slights and imper- tmences on the part of the jeunesse doyee of the period, which would stmg and annoy the recipient, without giving him sufficient cause for serious complaint or remonstrance, and these would produce a growing sense on Moses' part of injury and isolation. To hang about the Court from year to year as a mere idler, one of the useless class, frUi^es coiisuniere nati, must have been in any case abhorrent to a man of the temperament ot Moses, and in his peculiar position must have seemed to him specially undesirable. We may assume that it was not long after quitting Heliopolis that he seriously placed before himself the courses of life open to him, and considered carefully their several attractions. The most obvious life, to a person circum- stanced as he was, would have been the official life. " Egypt swarmed with a bureaucracy — a bureaucracy which was power- ful, numerous, and cleverly arranged in such a graduated series, that the most bureaucratic countries of the modern world may with reason be said to have had nothing superior to it.^ Partly in the capital, partly scattered about the country, were hundreds, or rather thousands, of official personages, nomarchs, toparchs, governors of towns, judges, magistrates, collectors of taxes, superintendents of storehouses, treasurers, registrars, and the like ; all of them receiving their appointments from the Crown, and occupying a high and honourable position. Nothing would have been easier for Moses than to have asked the Princess who had adopted him, to obtain for him from the reigning Pharaoh, her father or her brother, one of these civil appointments, by means of which he would have set his foot on the first rung of the official ladder, and might have risen through the many gradations to the highest rung of all. But the official life, in Egypt as elsewhere, was probably monotonous ; it involved, during many years, complete subordination and much unin- teresting drudgery ; it may have required an occasional, or a constant acknowledgment, of the idolatry everywhere established and maintained as the religion of the State. Naturally enough, Moses was not attracted by it. Could he have mounted per ^ Lenormant, " Histoire Ancienne de rOrient," vol. i. p. 487; Birch, '* Egypt from the Earliest Times," p. xix. EARLY MANHOOD OF MOSES. 43 saltum, like Joseph, to the highest place (Gen. xli. 39-44), he would perhaps have overcome his repugnance, and have become a distinguished Egyptian civilian ; but the prospect of toiling from grade to grade did not tempt him, and he decided that the official life would not satisfy his aspirations. The literary life may next have presented itself to his thoughts. It was, to a considerable extent, connected with the official life, to which in a great number of instances it served as a stepping- stone. Proficiency in letters attracted public attention, and the literary man— the " scribe," as he was called— often received offers of civil employment, and commonly accepted them. But literature was also pursued by many as their only occupation, and was recognized as containing within itself many attractions and delights. "Love letters as thy mother," says an early Egyptian author ; " it is a greater possession than all employ- ments." And again—" Consider that there is not an employment destitute of superior ones, except the scribe's, which is the first." The literary man was held in high honour ; he was invited everywhere, even to the royal table. " Truly no scribe," exclaims the writer above quoted, " is without eating the things of the royal palace of the King." ' Such men as Pentaour, Anna, Kakabu, Hor, Amen-em-api, Bek-en-ptah, Pan-bas, not only had the entrt^e to good society, but lived on intimate terms with the highest personages in the land. Moses, with his great literary talents, his strong if undeveloped poetic powers, might well have aspired to join the noble company of authors, which formed one of the main glories of the times w^herein he lived. But the literary life would have afforded no scope for the exercise of his practical energies, and, however respectable, would perhaps at the time have scarcely been thought worthy of a scion, albeit an adopted one, of the royal stock. Moses, at any rate, was not attracted by it. Though " learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (Acts vii. 22), he was not content to take up the role of a mere man of learning, or to pass his life in celebrating the deeds of others, without doing anything which should make him worthy of being celebrated himself. But if neither the literary life nor the life of a government official was sufficiently attractive to content the aspirations of the young Hebrew, taking his first outlook upon the world wherein he had to play his part, what other possibilities were » " Records of the Past," vol. viii. pp. 148, 153, 156. z.— — ^*-'' 44 MOSES. there, what other lines of occupation ? !Merely professional careers, the life of a physician, or a lawyer, or an artist, were even less eligible than those which we have supposed him to have contemplated and rejected. Moses cannot be imagined to have given them so much as a thought. Though of humble birth, he held the position of a pu-ince, and no occupation could be suitable to him, which was not recognized by public opinion as princely. Rank has its obligations. Royal Highnesses find but few walks in life open to them. They cannot accept a metropolitan practice, or become lawyers in a provincial town. There remained, however, one life which we have not yet passed under review — a life royal, princely, which the king himself led. This was the life of a soldier. Every Egyptian monarch of the ancient dynasties led out his army in person, and fought at its head. Egypt, since the times of Apepi and Joseph, had been engaged in a perpetual series of hostilities, either with neighbouring, or with distant, nations. The Thoth- meses and Amenhoteps of the eighteenth dynasty had not been content, hke former kings of Egypt, to defend their frontiers, repulse invaders, and enlarge the limits of the empire by Attaching to it here and there a small province. While the Hebrews were quietly feeding their flocks and herds in Goshen, and growing from a family into a tribe, and from a tribe into a nation, they had commenced a career of aggression, had marched their bands of disciplined troops into Asia, had overrun and conquered all Syria and Western Mesopotamia, had made raids into Assyria, passed the Tigris, plundered Nineveh, and crossed swords with the great Assyrian monarchs, who then held their Court at Kileh-Sherghat, or Asshur. Thothmes I. had begun these distant conquests. He had marched an army through Pales- tine and Syria, crossed the Euphrates into Mesopotamia,engaged the natives in a long series of battles and defeated them more than once with great slaughter. Thothmes I II., " the Alexander of Egyptian history,"' had not only invaded Syria and Western Mesopotamia, but conquered them, had established a strong military post at Arban on the river Khabour, and from this post had carried his arms across the Tigris into Assyria Proper, and forced the Assyrian monarch to pay him a tribute. He had warred in Phoenicia, in Cilicia, and in Commagene ; he had ' Brugsch, ' ' History of Egypt, " vol. i. p. 316. EARLY MANHOOD OF IMOSES. 4^5 collected a fleet and reduced Cyprus ; he had marched with his troops from Nubia to the Taurus range, and from Cyrcnc to beyond Nineveh ; he had borne off from the subject countries ii,ooo captives, 1,670 chariots, 3,639 horses, 4,491 of the larger cattle, above 35,000 goats, silver to the amount of 3,940 pounds, and gold to the amount of 9,054 pounds, besides enormous quantities of corn and wine, together with incense, balsam, honey, ivory, ebony, and other rare woods, lapis-lazuli and other precious stones, furniture, statues, vases, dishes, basins, tent-poles, bows, habergeons, fruit-trees, live birds and monkeys. Amen-hotep II., son of Thothmes III., had, after the death of his father, recovered the various countries subdued by him, which had revolted on his decease. Other kings, notably Ramesses I., the founder of the nineteenth dynasty, and Seti I., his son and successor, had contended in Asia with a new enemy, the Khita or Hittites, and had won fame and glory by their victories. Moses had, it is probable, been growing up while the later of these successes were being obtained, and had witnessed the enthusiasm with which Seti was welcomed back to Egypt by thousands upon thousands of his subjects; when he returned in triumph from some of his Asiatic expeditions. He may have heard the acclamations which greeted the victorious monarch as he re-entered his capital, and listened to the first singing of that song of triumph, which was afterwards engraved on the walls of the great temple of Karnak.^ " Pharaoh is a jackal, which rushes leaping through the Hittite land ; He is a grim lion, frequenting the hidden paths of all regions ; He is a powerful bull with a pair of sharpened horns. Pharaoh has stricken the Asiatics down to the ground ; He has overthrown the Khita ; he has slain their princes." The military glories of Egypt, thus revived by the monarch of the time, and echoed from mouth to mouth among men of all ranks and stations, occupying more or less the thoughts of all, and forming the general subject of conversation, would naturally stir the spirit of one so circumstanced as Moses, and would point out to him a path and an occupation, which none could regard as unworthy of him, which would give employment to all his energies, and might lead to the highest distinction. Pro- motion in the Egyptian army depended mainly, if not wholly upon merit. Moses would have that self-reliance which is » Brugsch, " History of Egypt," vol. ii. p. 16. 46 MOSES. characteristic of all truly great men ; and he would feel that, if interest were needed, he would have in his mother a " friend at Court," on whom he might rely implicitly. Thus the military life would present itself to him in glowing colours, and he would feel drawn to it, rather than to any other. Tradition here steps in and declares to us that the military life was the one actually adopted by Moses, and that it led him to the distinction which we may be sure he coveted. Both Jose- phus and Artapanus relate that, in a great war, which was waged between Egypt and Ethiopia, IMoses commanded the Egyptian army, and led an expedition into Ethiopia, which was crowned with complete success. It seems impossible to suppose that the story, however fanciful in its details, is a pure fiction. We are estopped, moreover, from such a conclusion by the fact that St. Stephen, speaking before the Sanhedrim, mentioned it as a thing generally known, that Moses, before casting in his lot with his own nation, " was mighty in words and in deeds " (Acts vii. 22). A private individual could scarcely at the time be *' mighty in deeds" otherwise than by following the career of arms and distinguishing himself in war. Moses, moreover, could not have marshalled the host of the Israelites as he did (Exod. xiii. 18), on their exodus from Egypt, without military knowledge and skill of an advanced kind. It seems therefore to be, on the whole, reasonable to conclude that during the space of nearly twenty years, which must have intervened between the termination of his university training, at about the age of twenty, and his flight into Midian, when he was "fully forty" (Acts vii. 23), Moses was engaged in the Egyptian military service, first learning the trade of a soldier, and then exercising it, originally in the lower, and ultimately in the higher, grades. The life of a soldier, in its earlier stages, was one of consider- able hardship. " At an early age, the youth destined for the profession of arms was sent to the military school or barracks ; and his miseries there are described by a contemporary of Ramesses II., as also the additional ones of the warrior of a chariot, who underwent instruction in taking to pieces and re- adjusting his chariot, and driving it." ^ The importance of drill was fully recognized, and the young soldier was carefully in- structed by the drill-sergeant for months, until he acquired complete proficiency. To keep step exactly, to carry arms in ^ Dr. S. Birch in Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," vol. i. p. 187. EARLY MANHOOD OF MOSES. 47 exactly the same way, to dress the line to perfection, to move all as one man, to fire volleys of arrows at a signnl all at once, were among the Ics-ons 10 be learnt ; and the drill-sergeant had power to enforce his instructions with a stick, though he would scarcely venture to use it when drilling a young oflicer of the rank of Moses. Kven after drill was over, the recruit was not left to hin)self ; severe exercise was required of him, and (accord- ing to Diodorus Siculus) even Sesostris was obliged, like the other recruits who were trained with him, to run a distance of above twenty miles every morning before breakfast/ If for " twenty " we substitute " two," the fact may have been as stated. Athletic sports and games formed also a part of the soldiers' training, and mock-fights, wrestling, leaping, cudgelling, and numerous feats of strength and agility, were constantly practised under the superintendence of skilled persons. After the earlier drill was completed, there was a special training for the chariot service, the chariot warrior having to learn how to mount into the chariot and descend from it while it was in motion, how to manage the steeds, in case any chance deprived him of his charioteer, and even how to take his chariot to pieces and put it together again. If Seti I. was, as we have supposed, the Pharaoh who began the severe oppression, the youth and early manhood of Moses must have fallen into the period of the joint reign of Seti with his son, the Great Ramesses.- These monarchs v.-ere engaged, separately or conjointly, in a continued series of military expedi- tions. Invasion from the Hittites was feared, and while strong defensive measures were taken against it, a hugh wall being built to protect the north-eastern frontier, and " store-cities " constructed (Exod. i. 2) as military magazines, where arms and food might be accumulated, it was also thought most prudent to carry the war into the enemy's country, and to prevent him from marching his troops beyond his borders by giving him ample employment for them at home. We cannot say whether or no Moses fleshed his maiden sword in these conflicts. On the one hand, Josephus certainly writes as if he thought that the Ethio- ^ Diod. Sic. i. 53. ' Seti associated Ramesses when he was ten years old, probably in his own eleventh or twelfth year. They reigned conjoinliy after this for eighteen or twenty years. Moses was probably bom about the fifth or sixth year of Seti. 48 MOSES. pian expedition was the first one in which Moses was engaged. On the other, it seems incredible that he should have been selected for a post of the highest importance at a time of extreme danger, whether the selection was made by the king himself of his own free will, or Avhether it was enjoined upon him by the priests, if he was an untried officer, wholly undistinguished, not known to possess any, even the smallest, military talent. Neither the king nor the priests can be supposed to have regarded Moses at this time as possessing superhuman powers, and therefore sure to succeed against an enemy by the Divine aid that would be vouchsafed him. Moses had as yet exhibited no such powers. He can only have been selected because he was believed to be a good general. Whence had that belief arisen ? To us it ap- pears that the only possible answer is this — he had exhibited courage, conduct, and the other qualities necessary for a com- mander, in other previous wars ; and these, if he lived at the time which we have ventured to assign to him, would almost certainly be the Hittite wars of Seti, or of his son Ramesses. The circumstances of the Ethiopian expedition, according to Josephus, were the following : — The Ethiopians, neighbours of the Egyptians upon the south, were in the habit of making in- roads into their territory, and ravaging it from time to time. After a while they provoked the Egyptians to retaliate, and the latter marched an army into the land of the Ethiopians, to punish them for their insolence. But the Ethiopians gathered their forces together, and, engaging the Egyptians in the open field, completely defeated them, slaughtering a vast number, and forcing the rest to make a hasty and disgraceful retreat into their own country. It was now the turn of the Ethiopians to take the offensive. Following up the flying foe, they crossed the border, and, not content with ravaging, proceeded to seize and occupy large portions of Southern Egypt. The inhabitants did not venture on resistance ; and, httle by little, the invaders crept on tov.-ards the north, till they reached Memphis, and even the Mediterranean coast, without a single city having held out against their attack. Reduced to the depths of despair, the Egyptians had recourse to their oracular shrines, and inquired of them what it would be best for them to do. The reply given by the oracles, z'.e. by the priests, who had the control of them, was — " Use the Hebrew as your helper." No one doubted that by "the Hebrew" was meant Moses, or that the "help" to be EART.V MANHOOD OF MOSES. 49 required of hifn was that he should take the conduct of the war. Moses accordingly was invested with the sole command, and at the head of the Egyptian troops he marched into the enemy's country, got rid of the serpents which infested it by an importa- tion of ibises, and defeated the army which was sent against him in a decisi\ c battle. He then went on, and took city by city, every- where overcoming the resistance that was offered to him, and slaying large numbers of the enemy. His troops, whom their reverses had disheartened, took courage so soon as they found that their new general could lead them to victory, and showed themselves excellent soldiers, ready to endure alike toil and danger. Penetrating at last to the very heart of the country, they la-id siege to the capital, Saba, afterwards called Meroe, which lay on the Nile, almost surrounded by a bend of the river, and further guarded by a strong wall and by the two streams of the Astaboras and the Astacus. Numerous assaults were made on the defences without any result, though the gallantry of Moses and his cleverness were alike conspicuous ; until at last the king's daughter, Tharbis, attracted by his doughty deeds, fell in love with him, and persuaded her father to come to terms with his assailants. It was agreed that the city should be surrendered on condition that Moses made Tharbis his wife, and that a treaty of peace should at the same time be concluded between the two nations on terms that are not stated. The agreement was carried out : the marriage between Moses and Tharbis was celebrated ; and the Hebrew general, with his army, returned to Egypt in triumph.' There are many points in this narrative which the critical historian reasonably rejects or questions. First, the power of Ethiopia at the time is greatly over-stated, the conquest of Egypt city by city, the fall of Memphis, and the approach of the in- vader to the Mediterranean Sea, being apparently taken from the actual history of six centuries later, when more than one Ethiopian conqueror humiliated Egypt in the way described. Next, the episode of the serpents and the ibises is plainly an embellishment, since ibises do not need to be imported into Ethiopia, where they are as common as in Egypt, and since in no country have serpents ever been known to be so numerous as seriously to impede the march of an army. Further, the ' Josephus, "Ant.Jud." ii. 10. Compare Artapanus in the " Fragm. Hist. Gr." of C. Miiller, vol, iii. p. 220, Fr. 14. 5 50 MOSES. Egyptian successes are probably as much exaggerated as the previous successes of the Ethiopians, since there is no appear- ance in the monuments of the Egyptian authority having ever been extended into the region mentioned, that where the Nile is joined by the tributaries which flow into it from the Abyssinian highlands. The manner, moreover, in which the war ended, and the marriage between Moses and Tharbis, are probably fictions, nothing else being known of Tharbis, and Moses being free to marry Zipporah not long afterwards. But the exaggerations and the embellishments do not affect the general credit of the narrative — or at any rate of that which is of most importance in it — the elevation of Moses to the position of commander-in-chief of an Egy^ptian army at a time of danger, his conduct of a campaign against the Ethiopians, and the successful issue of his expedition. These points seem worthy of our belief, since it is scarcely conceivable that they should be pure inventions, and yet be related as facts by two authors of repute, one a Jew, having access to the archives of his nation, and well versed in its traditions ; the other a Greek of Alexandria, likely to be famihar with Egyptian no less than with Jewish records. CHAPTER VI. THE GREAT DECISION. Prospects of Moses after the Ethiopianexpedition— His leaning towards his brethren — His "tour of inspection" — His remonstrances in higli quarters ineffectual — Two possible courses open to him — The great decision — Moses casts in his lot with his brethren — His efforts to help them— His hasty homicide— His danger— His flight eastward— His arrival in Midian. Moses had returned from Ethiopia covered with glory. What- ever enmities or jealousies he may previously have aroused must have died away, or hid themselves, when it had to be generally acknowledged that the whole country was beholden to him and owed him a debt of gratitude. A tempting prospect of court favour, high employments, sounding titles, and rich emolu- ments, must have lain before him. In Egypt the Court was apt to accumulate its rewards on the favourite of the time being, and to think no amount of seemingly incompatible offices ill-bestowed upon the man who was recognized as deserving. An individual, named Ptah-ases, who lived under the old empire, was at one and the same time prophet of Phthah, of Sokari, and of Athor, priest of the temple of Sokari, and of that of Phthah at Mem- phis, prophet of Ra-Harmachis, of Ma, and of Horus, as well as overseer of the public granaries, royal secretary, chief of the mines, and "chief of the house of bronze."' A subject under the last Ramesses held in combination the offices of high-priest of Ammon at Thebes, chief of Upper and Lower Egypt, royal son of Kush, fan-bearer on the right hand of the king, chief architect, » De Roug6, " Recherches sur les Monuments des six premieres Dynasties," pp. 68-72. 52 MOSES. and administrator of the granaries.' The system of pluralities was an established one, and was rendered possible by the separation of emoluments from duties, the nominal holder receivinjy the high stipends attached to the several offices, while such duties as they involved were discharged by ill-paid deputies. Moses might have confidently looked forward to some such a position under Ramesses II. as Ptah-ases had held under Ases- kaf, or as Her hor afterwards held under the last Ramesses, had he been content to make no change in the character of his life, but simply to continue in the rank and condition in which the circumstances of his birth and breeding had, without any effort of his own, placed him. But underneath the smooth current of his life hitherto — a life of alternate luxury at the Court, and comparative hardness in the camp and in the discharge of his military duties — there had lurked, from childhood to youth, from youth to manhood, a secret discontent, perhaps a secret ambition. Moses, amid all his Egyptian surroundings, had never forgotten, had never wished to forget, that he was a Hebrew. The tale that in his earlier infancy he had refused the milk of Egyptian nurses, and starved himself till he could suck nutriment from a Hebrew breast,"" though a pure myth, is valuable, as indicative of his unceasing attachment to the race from which he was sprung. The more credible tradition that, while at Heliopolis, he always performed his prayers, according to the custom of his fathers, outside the walls of the city, in the open air, turning towards the sun-rising,3 shows that he refused to conceal, under trying cir- cumstances, either his nationality or his religion. To the honour of the Hebrew people it must be said that they have at all times, and under all circumstances, unless perhaps sometimes where persecution was the cruellest, made open avowal of their faith, and submitted to the consequences of such avowal without shrinking. Moses had done this, but as yet he had not thrown in his lot with his people — he had remained an outsider — he had not even, it would seem, made himself acquainted with their actual condition, or had more than a vague knowledge of their sufferings. But the time was now come when he felt it incum- bent on him to do more. He had attained a position of some authority. His voice had become of some weight in the counsels * Brugsch, " History of Egypt," vol. ii. p. 191. ^Josephus, "Ant. Jud." ii. 9, ^ 5. 3 Josephus, " Contr. Apion.," ii. 2. THE GREAT DECISION. 53 of the State. He might expect that any representations which he might make would command attention. So he resolved on a tour of inspection, " He went out unto his brethren, and looked upon their burdens" (Exod. ii. 11). Alone, or accompanied by a few attendants, he passed through the portion of Egypt occupied by the Israelites, and by personal eye-witness made himself familiar, in every detail, with the con- dition of his people. And what was that condition ? One portion were working in the brickfields. Some were digging the stiff clay out of the hot pits, where no shade was possible, and no breath of air, could touch them. Some were kneading the stiti" clay into suppleness with their hands or with their feet, and mixing it with the straw which was required to bind together the soft material. Some were shaping the clay into bricks by means of a mould or form, into which the material was pressed, and from which it was subsequently turned out in the shape de- sired. Some were carrying heavy burdens of bricks upon their backs, either in baskets or by means of a yoke slung across the shoulders. Finally, some were arranging the bricks into stacks, where the drying would be completed, and whence they would be carried off by those employed in building. Another portion utilized the bricks which had been made by their brethren. The "store-cities" of Pithom and Ramesses (Raamses), with their huge walls, their magazines and granaries, their temple-enclosures, their streets and squares, their mansions and residences, were the work of Israelite hands, which dug the foundations, emplaced the bricks, spread the mortar, and gradually raised up the walls and buildings to the prescribed height. Taking our stand on the mound of Tel-es-Maskoutah, and looking round about on the great massive wall enclosing it, 940 yards long, eight yards broad, and from fifteen to twenty feet high, on the tangle of store-chambers and other buildings spread over it, and the temple occupying its south-western angle, we see the actual works in which the Israelites of Moses' time were engaged, and in our wanderings may stand where he stood to consider, and weigh in the scales of truth, the heaviness of the burdens imposed upon them. The work of the builders was scarcely so severe as that of the brick-makers. It is, how- ever, described as both unhealthy and unpleasant by Egyptian authors. " I tell you also of the builder of precincts," says one ; "disease seizes on him (literally, 'tastes him *), for he is always 54 MOSES. in draughts of air ; he builds in slings, tied to the pillars of the house. His hands are worn with labour ; his clothes are out of order ; he washes himself but once [in the day] ; for bread he eats his fingers."^ A section of the Israelites, if we may credit Philo,^ was employed in digging canals. In all countries this is heavy and dreary work ; but in Egypt it is not only wearisome, but also unhealthy. To dig for long hours under a blazing sun, with the feet in wet mud or in w^ater, is trying to any man : to ill-fed and lU-cared-for labourers it is often fatal. Neco, we are told, caused the death of 120,000 men by his attempt to re-open the canal between the Nile and the Red Sea. 3 Ten thousand men perished under Mehemet Ali in the construction of the canal of Alexandria. The great work of M. Lesseps is believed to have proved fatal to a much larger number. Where deaths are numerous, cases of severe suffering short of death are countless ; and we may conclude therefore that Moses would see, in the condition of such Israelites as w^ere engaged in canal-digging, an intensified form of the ''service with rigour," which prevailed generally. One other occupation is mentioned as included in the oppres- sion of Israel ; viz., labour " in the field "—employment, that is, in agriculture. At first sight, there might seem to be nothing very severe in this, since agricultural employment is the lot of the bulk of mankind everywhere. But there is an enormous difference between the kind of work done by free labourers in a land of liberty, and that exacted from forced labourers in countries where slavery is a recognized institution. Negro emancipation in the West Indies and in the Southern States of America, was brought about very much through the representa- tions made by eye-witnesses of the severe drudgery and toil actually imposed on the slaves employed in the cultivation of the cotton-plant and the sugar-cane. In Egypt, as in most other countries, slaves worked under the lash. "The little labourer having a field," says an Egyptian writer of about Moses' time, " passes his life among the beasts ; he is worn down for vines and figs, to make his kitchen of what his fields have. His clothes are a heavy weight ; he is bound as a forced labourer ; if he goes forth into the air, he suffers — he is bastinadoed with * "Records of the Past," vol. viii. pp. 149, 150. • " Vit. Mosis," p. 85. 3 Herodotus, ii. 158. THE GREAT DECISION. 35 a stick on his legs — perhaps he seeks to save himself; but shut against him is the hall of every house, closed are the chambers." ' Any stoppage, any cessation from toil, any rest, such as \vc see our own labourers freely taking as often as they require it, is punished, where the serf works under a task-master armed with a whip or stick, by a sharp blow on the legs, or arms, or back, which often raises a wheal or brings the blood to the surface. Blows may be infrequent ; but the fear of a blow is perpetual ; and the labour is thus constant, unceasing, such as taxes the strength beyond endurance, the fear of the stick causing the labourer to work till he drops. Then, probably, he is kicked, and left lying on the ground in the hot sunshine, until he can crawl home to the wretched shed or cabin which is his resting- place at night. When Moses "went out unto his brethren, and looked upon their burdens" (Exod. ii. 11), such were the sights that he would see, such the images that he would carry back from his tour of inspection, burnt into his memory, to be reproduced in his thoughts over and over again, as he lay on his couch of down in his apartments at the Court. And then would arise in his mind the question — Could he do nothing to help his brethren — to ameliorate their condition — to lessen their sufferings .'* Probably the first course that would suggest itself would be remonstrance with those who were at the head of affairs — a representation to them of the guilt which they incurred, according to the laws of Egyptian morality, in conniving at the cruelties which he had witnessed. Egyptian morality required men to " resist the op- pressor, to put a stop to violence, to shield the weak against the strong," to be kind-hearted and generally benevolent. Moses, ^^ if he occupied the high position which we have supposed, may have expected that his words would have weight, that attention would be paid to his remonstrances, that, if he was not allowed to direct, he might at any rate be permitted to modify, the policy of the empire. "Why," he might urge, "should the Israelites be singled out for suspicion and hatred ? Were they not Jiis brethren, and had not he shown unmistakably the good-will that animated him towards Egypt? What had they done to deserve their hard usage.'' Had they not been quiet subjects, useful servants of the king (Gen. xlvii. 6), an addition to the strength of Egypt?" But Moses would argue to minds blocked * " Records of the Past," vol. viii. p. 149. 56 MOSES. against his reasonings by prejudice, impervious to argument by reason of long-engrained prepossessions, and unaccustomed to changes of policy, unless when one dynasty was superseded by another (Exod. i. 8), and a " new king " introduced new modes of action. Thus, it would soon become plain to Moses that his words were making no impression on those who heard them, and that, if he was to be of any service to his brethren, he must adopt some other method. But what method was possible? As an Egyptian, it was evident that he could do nothing. If he remained an Egyptian, if he clung to his Court life, if he maintained his position as the adopted son of a princess, he must be content to resign the hope of being ever his brethren's deliverer (Acts vii. 25), or of in any way ameliorating their life. The alternative was for him to cast in his lot with them, to make himself one of them, to ingratiate himself with them so that they should accept him as their leader, and then, when occasion offered, to put himself at their head, and break the Egyptian yoke from off their shoulders. The time had arrived, as it arrives to most of us in the course •f our careers on earth, to make the great decision, for God and conscience, or against them. On the one side were all the temptations that the world and the flesh can offer — first, " the treasures of Egypt " (Heb. xi. 26) — not the mere gold and silver that would naturally fall to his lot, if he lived on as a prince in the royal palace — but the luxury, the culture, the enjoyments of "ihe Court — dainty fare, and grand banquets, and the charms of music, painting and statuary — and sports and hunting parties, fishing and fowling, the chase of the lion and the antelope — and soft sofas and luxurious couches, and rich apparel, and chains and collars, proofs of the king's good-will — and all the outward signs which mark off those on whom society smiles from the crowd of those who are of small account ; and, secondly, beyond all these, "the pleasures of sin for a season" (Heb. xi. 25) — the seductive charms of a Court circle not over strict in its morals, the feasts that turned into orgies, the sacred rites that ended in debauchery — all these spread their tempting array before the lower nature of the prince, now in manhood's full vigour, and drew him towards the life of ease, of pleasure, of softness. On the other side were conscience, and honour, and natural affection, and patriotism, and that keen longing for the higher and the nobler life, which is an essential part of all great natures, and THE GREAT DECISION. 57 makes itself felt in crises with an irresistible force. The path of self-sacrifice will always attract the heroic portion of humanity, and the choice of such men will always be ''the choice of Hercules." *' To scorn delights and live laborious days" is the instinctive resolve of every strong and noble character. Moses is said to have made his choice " by faith '' (Heb. xi. 23). Are we to gather from this that a revelation had been already made to him that he was Israel's destined deliverer, or is it only meant that he trusted God would bless his resolution to his own and his brethren's advantage, as godly men may always trust that their efforts will be blest, when with an honest and true heart they seek to do the best they can ? Perhaps this latter view is the more probable, though the other has sometimes been taken. At any rate, whatever the ground of his trust, and what- ever the reasons for his having delayed so long, Moses at length " by faith " made h'.s choice, " refused to be called" any longer "the son of Pharaoh's daughter" (ver. 25), and "chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God " (ver. 26). He quitted the palace, gave up whatever offices he held, returned probably to his father's house, and therein once more took up his abode, so making it clear to all that he renounced his Egyptian citizen- ship, and would henceforth only be known as one of the outcast Hebrews, one of the oppressed, down-trodden nation, which had for above forty years been suffering the bitterest and most cruel persecution. But he was not long to continue in this retirement. With a heart burning with indignation at the wrongs of his countrymen, he went about the neighbourhood of Memphis, observing their treatment, perhaps remonstrating with those who ill-used them, and endeavouring to shame them into the adoption of milder methods. He may have been to some extent successful; but an occasion came when the oppressor turned a deaf ear to remonstrance, and persisted in his ill-usage of an unfortunate Hebrew labourer, despite all that Moses could say to him. Then the pent-up fire which was consuming him burst forth. Moses raised his hand and smote the Egyptian and slew him, It was a hasty and rash act, the result of a violent access of indignation, which made him strike with a force which he had not intended, and produced a result that he had not anticipated. The deed done could not be acknowledged and justified — it was necessary to conceal it. So Moses, after scraping a hole in the sand, which SS MOSES. in Egypt always creeps up to the edge of the cultivated ground, buried the corpse in it. The homicide might have remained unknown, had not the Hebrew on whose behalf Moses had interfered informed his countrymen of the circumstances under which he had been rescued from the hands of his oppressor. We may well believe that he did this with no evil intent, but rather with the object of extolling his benefactor, and venting his own sense of obligation. But a secret once divulged ceases to be a secret; and it v.-as not long before Moses found that his homicide was bruited abroad. ' When he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together ; and he said unto him that did the wrong— Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow ? And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us ? Intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the Egyptian ? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known" (Exod. ii. 13, 14). Known it was, and not only to his own people, but to the Egyptians also; and the Egyptians who heard it carried the news to the king, Ramesses II,, who by this time was reigning alone. What the feelings of the monarch had been towards Moses hitherto is wholly uncertain, the hostility, the fear, and the envy ascribed to him by some writers being in a high degree improbable. Ramesses had gained too many victories himself to be jealous of a subject because he had been successful in a single expedi- tion, and was far too confident in the security of his position to fear a rebellion against his authority. But such an act as that which Moses had perpetrated was an offence against the law, which could not well be condoned ; and we cannot be surprised that the Pharaoh, when he heard of the thing, " sought to slay Moses " (Exod.ii. 1 5), or, at any rate, sought to have him arrested. His arrest would under the circumstances have been, beyond a doubt, followed by his execution ; since he had no legal right to strike the Egyptian at all, and if a man unlawfully wounds another with malice prepense, and the consequences are fatal, he is held in all civilized countries to be guilty of a crime which may in strict justice be punished with death. Moses took a correct view of the situation, and " fled from the face of Pharaoh," feeling that his only chance of safety lay in making his escape from Egypt, and betaking himself to some country which was beyond the reach of the Egyptian influence. Treaties of extradition were not unknown at the period, but THE GREAT DECISION. 59 they were rare and unusual. Once beyond the Egyptian border, he would easily reach a land where he would incur no risk of being surrendered or even demanded. A fugitive from Egyptian justice, starting from Memphis, would almost necessarily set his face towards the east. He could not escape by travelling northward, for in that direction the dominion of the Egyptian monarch reached to the shores of the sea ; it was hopeless to proceed southward, for the frontier on that side was 700 miles away ; to the west was nothing but uninhabited sandy desert, without food, or water, or shade. The eastern desert was, on the contrary, to some extent peopled ; it had trees and wells in places, and thus was traversable ; though reckoned to Egypt, it was scarcely under Egyptian rule, and the writ of the Pharaoh scarcely ran in its recesses. Moses, having provided himself with a bag of meal and a water-bottle, would enter on the desert within a few hours of quitting Memphis, and would gradually thread its valleys, always making towards the east, until he passed the head of the Gulf of Suez, and found himself in Arabia. Even there, however, he was not wholly safe. The Egyptians in the time of Ramesses II. had perma- nent settlements in the Wady Magharah and at Sarabit-el- Khadim in the Sinaitic peninsula, where they worked the mines of copper and turquoise which then abounded in those districts. To communicate with these settlements they must have had a line of fortified posts, extending from their frontier at or near Suez to the valleys in which the mines were situated. It was the aim of Moses to place himself beyond the sphere of Egyptian influence altogether ; and to do this he had to reach the more eastern portion of the peninsula, a region at that time inhabited by the Midianites, and known as "the land of Midian " (Exod. ii. 15). The route which he took was probably very much the same as that by which he afterwards led the Israelites to mount Sinai. It ran nearly parallel with the eastern coast of the Gulf of Suez, but did not skirt the shore excepting for a short distance. It avoided the Egyptian posts and settle- ments, and brought the traveller, after the lapse of some weeks, to the vicinity of the Elanitic Gulf, or eastern arm of the Red Sea, which seems in early times to have been the proper country of the southern Midianites. Having reached this remote district, weary, thirsty, and travel- stained, Moses sate himself down upon the margin of a well, 6o MOSES. and sought to recruit his strength by a short rest. The well was one of considerable repute, so that it is called "///^ well" (Exod. ii. 15)— around it were "troughs," or tanks, prepared for the watering of their flocks by the Bedouin herdsmen of the neighbourhood. As Moses sate and contemplated the scene around him, a band of seven maidens drew near, bringing with them their father's flock, and began to draw water from the well, and to fill the troughs, a work in which Moses, with natural politeness, assisted them (Exod. ii. 19). But, as the animals were beginning to drink, and before they had half satisfied their thirst, some of the Bedouin herdsmen came up, and proceeded to drive the maidens and their flock away, in order to water their own beasts first. Then " the chivalrous spirit which had already broken forth" in Moses "on behalf of his oppressed countrymen, broke forth again on behalf of the oppressed maidens." ^ He " delivered " the maidens from the shepherds, drove them off by threats or blows, and enabled his prot^gdes to complete their watering without further molestation. The brave action naturally led to the damsels' father inviting Moses into his tent, to "eat bread" with him, in the homely phrase of the time (Exod. ii. 20). And the acquaintance thus formed brought the wanderings of the fugitive to an end ; for he was content to take service under the Midianite to whom chance had thus introduced him and to remain his dependent for a period, which St. Stephen roughly estimates (Acts vii. 30) at ''forty years." » Dean Stanley, in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," vol. ii. p. 426. CHAPTER VII. MOSES IN MIDIAN. Country occupied by the Midianites — Position of Reuel among them — Position of Moses —Character of the Sinaitic region — Desolation — Silence— Occasional sand-storms — Silence of the nights — Moses' life in the desert a preparation for his subsequent career — Few circumstances of his life known to us — Names of his sons and explanation of them — Egyptian story of Saneha illustrates this part of the history of Moses. The Midianites were a rich and a powerful people. A portion of them were settled in cities (Numb. xxxi. lo) ; but the greater number led a nomadic life, passing from district to district over a large extent of ground in continual search of fresh pastures for their flocks and herds. In the later life of Moses, their most important settlement was within the territory generally assigned to Moab, on the eastern and northern shores of the Dead Sea (Numb. xxiv. 1-4). Their tribes, however, did not confine themselves to this locality, but wandered as their fancy led them over the entire tract between Palestine and Egypt, while they spread also into Arabia Proper, occupying the eastern no less than the western coast of the Elanitic Gulf, and even build- ing cities there. At the time of the flight of Moses from Egypt, the Midianitish sheikh of most authority in the south-ea^iern portion of the Sinaitic peninsula was a certain Reuel or Raguel, who was at once priest and king of his tribe. This Reuel was the father of the maidens whom Moses had championed, and the person who had received him into his tent, and with whom he took service. It does not at all militate against this view of the rank of Reuel that his daughters watered their father's flock ; for, in 62 MOSES. the simplicity of ancient times, chiefs' daughters, and even prin- cesses, condescended to such an occupation (Gen. xxiv. 15-20). Reuel's position was hke that of IMelchisedek (Gen. xiv. 18), only that Melchisedek was a city king, while Reuel exercised his authority over a tribe of nomads. He was the chief man in the parts to which Moses had come, and it was a fortunate circumstance for the latter that his wanderings had conducted him to the residence of so important a person. Reuel's friend- liness at once placed him above want, and secured him a life of peace, freedom, and dignity. It has been said that Moses was Reuel's "slave,"* but this is entirely to misapprehend his position. He was a refugee whom an Arab sheikh had taken under his protection and re- ceived into his household out of compassion and kindness. He naturally placed his services at the disposal of his benefactor, and employed himself as his benefactor suggested. But he continued a free agent. He might at any time have resumed his wanderings if it had so pleased him, or have transferred his services elsewhere. But self-interest and affection alike retained him where he was. Reuel after a time gave him one of his daughters to wife, and having thus become a member of the tribe and of the family, it was natural that he should make his permanent home in the tents of his new kindred. His employ- ment was, of course, shepherding, as that was the general occupation of the tribe ; and he probably moved with the tribe at different periods of the year into different parts of the peninsula. The pastoral life of the desert is wonderfully peaceful and wonderfully elevating, more especially when the desert has the character which attaches to the region in which the lot of Moses was now cast. All around is stillness. Great bare mountains, scarred and seamed, raise their bald heads into the azure sky, casting broad shadows at morn and eve over the plains or valleys at their base, at noonday searched and scorched by the almost vertical sun, which penetrates into every recess and spreads everywhere a glare of quivering light, except where some over- hanging rock casts a grateful but scanty shade. The herbage in the valleys and plains is short, but sweet and nourishing. Trees are rare ; but low shrubs and bushes, chiefly camel-thorn and acacia, abound ; while here and there a clump, or even a grove, of palms affords the eye a welcome variety. The moun- ' Stanley, in Smith's " Dictionary of the Bible,'' vol. ii. p. 426. MOSES IN MIDI AN. 63 tains ''combine grandeur with desolation"* — in this respect, "their scenery is absohitely unrivalled. They arc the Alps of Arabia, but the Alps planted in the desert, and therefore stripped of all the clothing which goes to make up our notions of Swiss or English mountains ; stripped of the variegated drapery of oak, and birch, and pine, and fir ; of moss, and grass, and fern, which to landscapes of European hills are almost as essential as the rocks and peaks themselves. Of all the charms of Swit- zerland, the one which most impresses a traveller recently re- turned from the East, is the breadth and depth of its verdure. The very name of " Alp " is strictly applied only to the green pasture lands enclosed by rocks or glaciers — a sight in the European Alps so common, in these Arabian Alps so wholly unknown. The absence of verdure, it need hardly be said, is due to the absence of water — to those perennial streams which are at once the creation and the life of every other mountain district." And the silence, partly owing to this absence of running water, is complete. No song of birds enlivens the Sinaitic solitudes, no hum of insect life breaks the deathlike stillness. The bleat of a goat is heard at the distance of half a mile. Now and then a mysterious sound, half ghostly, half musical, suddenly fills the air, and then passes away, leaving the stillness stiller than before. It is caused by some slip of sand upon the mountain- side, or by some expansion or contraction of the rocks through change of temperature. Otherwise, the silence is unbroken. Thunder and lightning, storm and tempest, are rare visitants of the region ; but when they occur, they have a marked character of their own ; and it is one of peculiar impressiveness. The Sinaitic peninsula, though composed chiefly of rock and gravel, is in certain localities liable to sand-storms. Dean Stanley tells us of one that he experienced, which lasted all day. " Imagine," he says, "all distant objects entirely lost to view, the sheets of sand fleeting along the surface of the desert like streams of water ; the whole air filled, though invisibly, with a tempest of sand, driving in your face like sleet. Imagine the caravan toiling against this, the Bedouins, each with his shawl thrown completely over his head, half of the riders sitting backwards ; the camels, meantime, thus virtually left without guidance, though from time to time throwing their long necks * Stanley, "Sinai and Palestine," p. 13. 64 MOSES. sideways, to avoid the blast, yet moving straight onwards with a painful sense of duty truly edifying to behold. . . . Through this tempest, this roaring and driving tempest, we rode on the whole day." ' Such scenes, however, are rare. For the most part, the Sinaitic region is one of unvarying calm and stillness. By day the sun rises through a dull haze in the east, then springs into a clear and speckless sky, through which it slowly moves hour after hour in constant unclouded majesty, bathing the earth in an unvarying flood of light, until, towards evening, it begins to sink into the purple haze that lies along the west, and, turning it for a few minutes into an ensanguined sea, drops down below the horizon and is hid. Night at once closes in — the glow in the west rapidly fades away — darkness descends upon the face of the earth, and with darkness a hush of silence, even deeper than that of the day. One by one the stars come out in the solemn, blue-black sky, till all their hosts are marshalled, but only to look with many-coloured eyes — yellow, and red, and white, and violet — without noise and without motion on the sleeping earth beneath them. Even when the yellow glory of the moon rises above the horizon and walks, or rather floats, in the soft- ness of the limpid firmament, there is little stir of life, or sound, or movement. Bats perhaps come out and flutter their wings ; the cry of a hyaena or a jackal is heard in the distance ; but such sights and sounds are " few and far between," and when they occur, seem rather to intensify the stillness than break it. The pastoral life is always one that favours contemplation. In the East, the shepherd rises with the early dawn, and leads forth his flock from the rough sheep-folds in which they have passed the night, going before them, and guiding them to the pastures whereon he intends them to browse during the ensuing day. The docile flock follow him, and seldom need a word of chiding ; for they soon understand whither he is about to take them, and know they may trust to his guidance. When he has brought them to the spot where he intends them to graze, they scatter themselves, while he seats himself and rests on some convenient knoll, or bank, or stone, whence he can command a view of the beasts under his care, and see that they do not wander away too far. He has but little to do, except to main- tain this watch, which he does almost mechanically, while his * Stanley, " Sinai and Palestine," pp. 67, 68. MOSES IN MIDIAN. 65 thoughts go far a-field, imagining the future, or recalling the past, or straying into those speculative inquiries concerning God, and man, and nature, and the mystery of life, which have always had charms for Oriental minds, and given them unending occupation. Moses could perhaps not be always quite alone while he was shepherding ; for as a head herdsman, to whom a considerable portion of the flock of a great sheikh was in- trusted, he would have subordinates to help him in his task, and would have to give them orders and see to their execution. But still there would be long hours during each day when practically he would be by himself, face to face with nature and with God, unconsciously drinking in the influences of his sur- roundings, gaining mental strength and vigour from his contact with the simplicity and solemnity of nature. At the same time he would be disciplining his body by spare and simple meals, by much walking in the open air, by sleep on the ground, short nights, and early risings ; while he invigorated his whole character by communing with himself and with God, by deep " searchings of heart," sharp questionings of conscience, reflec- tions upon his past life, repentance of his sins, and good reso- lutions with respect to the future. A long spell of solitude, or comparative solitude, is of the highest value for the formation of a high, a noble, and a commanding personality. Elijah's life was chiefly passed in the wilds of Gilead, far away from the haunts of men. John the Baptist "was in the deserts" from the time of his early childhood "till the day of his showing unto Israel " (Luke i. 80), when he was fully thirty years of age. St. Paul, after his conversion and baptism, withdrew for three years into Arabia (Gal. i. 17, 18). The saints of God generally have found the advantage of long periods of retirement from the bustle of active life, and have refreshed and recruited their souls by removing into deserts, or hermitages, or convents, and there passing months or years. Had Moses during these years any presentiment of his future, and did he consciously seek to prepare himself for it ? Our answer must be negative. Unless Divinely warned, Moses could have no expectation of what was about to befall him, and there is no reason to think that he was Divinely warned. When the time for his call came, it came upon him as a new thing, utterly strange to his thoughts, utterly unexpected — "Who am I that I ■should go unto Pharaoh?" (Exod. iii. 11). No! He was n»* 6 66 MOSES. preparin.^ himself during these many years for the leadership of a difficult and dangerous enterprise which would tax all his powers to the utmost ; but the providence of God was preparing him for it. Divine foreknowledge, which sees the end from the beginning, and knows the best means to employ, was directing and shaping his life in the way that was most apt to fit him for the coming enterprise, to strengthen his resolution, to ripen his powers, to draw him into that constant close communion with God which is the only sure support and stay of the soul under the strain and pressure of extreme difficulties. As the healthy air of the desert, pure and dry, untainted by human defilements, braced his physical nature, so that when he died at the age of one hundred and twenty years, "his eye was not dim, neither his natural force abated " (Deut. xxxiv. 7), so the spiritual at- mosphere in which he lived kept his soul braced for doing and for suffering, qualifying him for his high post and for those arduous duties which would have overtaxed the strength of any one unsustained by heavenly influences. In the quiet round of unceasing daily duties, the life of Moses must have slipped almost imperceptibly away. With a reticence characteristic of the truly great, who are almost always humble- minded, he passes over with scant notice the " forty years " of his Midiani'.e sojourn, allowing us but a few fleeting glimpses either of his daily life or of his thoughts and feelings. From slight and scattered notices we gather : first, that after a while Reuel died, and was succeeded in the headship of the tribe by his son, Jelher, or Jethro, who continued in the priestly office held by his father, and was a monotheist, worshipping the same God as Moses with sacrifice and praise (Exod. xviii. 10-12). Jethro would thus be Moses' brother-in-law,' not his "father- in-law," as the Authorized Version makes him ; but, as head of the tribe, would hold towards Moses almost the same position as his father. Moses continued to "keep the flock," which had been Reuel's and was now Jethro's, in the wilderness of Sinai. He moved from one part of the w'ilderness to another (Exod. iii. i), according to the time of year or the condition of the pasturage. His home was probably a tent of the better class ; * So Ranke (*' Pentateuch," ii. 8) and others. It is generally allowed that tlie word Ifin, like the Greek yan(3png, may mean '* father-in-law," " brother-in-law,"' or " son-in-law.'' MOSES IN MIDI AN. 67 and here he dwelt, near the sheep-folds, with his Midianitish wife, the Zipporah whom Reuel had given to him in marriage soon after he arrived in his country (Exod. ii, 21). Zipporah bore him two sons, but apparently no other children. It is in recording the names of these two sons, the props of his house, that Moses gives the only indications, which he allows to appear, of the feelings that stirred his heart during his exile. To his firstborn, borne to him by Zipporah while the grief of being an exile was still fresh to him and rankled in his mind, he gave the name of Gershom — "a stranger there" — "for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land." Surely there is pathos here ! Months, years have gone by, he is welcomed, honoured, received into a chiefs family, trusted, loved ; but he still feels that he is among strangers, not among " his own people," far from parents, and brother, and sister, and kinsfolk, and countrymen, and old friends — a stranger, an alien. The land is foreign to him. It is not the land on which his eyes have been accustomed to look from infancy to youth, and from youth to middle age. All is new and strange in it. How different the awful blood-red rocks from the green plains of the Delta ! How unlike the parched and dried-up watercourses to the abounding stream of the Nile ! It is a strange land, and a strange peo[)le. What sharper contrast possible than that be- tween the elaborate, formalized, thoroughly artificial civilization of Egypt, and the simple, unsophisticated — it may be, somewhat rude life of the desert .'* One a land of cities, and temples, and palaces, and canals, and ships, and active bustle— the other calm, silent, without buildings, almost without inhabitants ! Without any longing for "the fleshpots of Egypt," or any undue hankering after the pleasures and treasures (Heb. xi. 25, 26) which he had foregone, Moses may well have felt the sadness of exile, and have regretted the separation from all that he had for so many years held dear. The name which Moses gave to his second-born was Eli-ezer — " my God hath holpen me." Now has come a reaction in his feelings. He no longer complaiiis, but rejoices. He has become conscious that in his former querulousness there was incrratitude to the God who had ordered all his life, had saved him in in'ancy from an untimely death, had caused him to be cared for and educated, had preserved him from the perils of war, and had finally delivered him from the Pha aoh who sought his life. 68 MOSES. He'named his second son Eli-ezer, " because," he said, " the God of my father was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh" (Exod. xviii. 4). The Pharaoh had "sought to slay him " (Exod, ii. 15), when he fled, had probably sent emissaries after him, to arrest him, or kill him if he resisted. But God had been his helper — not by his own strength, or caution, or wisdom, or cunning, had he escaped the danger that threatened him, but by God's goodness and protecting care. The recogni- tion of God's goodness in the past must have thrown the light of hope upon the future, and have enabled the exile to take a more cheerful view of his position and prospects than he had taken previously — must have, at any rate, made him content to bear his burdens, such as they were, patiently, and leave the future to be determined for him by the will of the most gracious and All-wise Ruler of all things. There is among the Egyptian novelettes a tale which offers, in some respects, a curious parallel to this portion of the history of Moses. It is called "The Story of Saneha." ^ Saneha, a courtier in the time of Usurtasen I., having conceived a dis- gust at the Court life, and a desire for a position of greater independence and freedom, sets out secretly upon his travels without the leave of the Pharaoh. With some difficulty he passes the Eastern boundary, and proceeds on foot through the desert. There he suffers agonies from thirst, until his wants are relieved by a native of the region which he is traversing, a keeper of cattle, who, though recognizing him as an Egyptian (Exod. ii. 19), supplies him both with water and milk. Saneha continues his journeying, and is brought on " from place to place," till he reaches Atima (Edom). There the chief of the country, or of one adjoining, sends for him, receives him into his household, questions him concerning his past, and ends by giving him his daughter in marriage. " He placed me over his children," Saneha says ; "he married me to his eldest daughter ; he endowed me with a part of his land, of the choicest which belonged to him." Saneha enjoyed now the liberty which he had desired. " Licence," he says, " was conferred on me of * The "Story of Saneha," first published by Lepsius in his " Denk- maler '' (vol. vi. pis. 104 et seq.), has been translated into French by M. Chabas (" Les Papyrus Hieratiques de Berlin, recits d'il y a quatre mille ans," Paris, 1863), and into English by Mr. C. W. Goodwin (" Records of the Past," vol. vi. pp. 135-150). MOSES IN MIDI AN. 69 going wherever I chose." In this honourable and prosperous condition Saneha tells us that he " passed many years." During this period "children were born to him ; they became strong, each one a valiant ruler over his servants.' A still higher degree of prosperity follows — the king, or sheikh, " was satisfied with him, loved him, made him the chief of his chil- dren." But, while thus externally flourishing, and surrounded by all that the heart of man commonly desires, Saneha was discontented, unhappy. Nothing could be a compensation to him for what he had left in his own land. So, after a time, his longing is to return home, to see once more the land where he was born. And the result for which he so ardently longs is brought about. A way is opened for his return to Egypt, the sheikh gives his consent, and the fugitive returns to the Pharaoh's court, and is once more numbered among his coun- sellors. It is not pretended that the parallel between this tale and the history of Moses is close ; but the position of Moses is illustrated in several points, and the movements of a refugee from the Pharaonic court, and the possibility of a return after long years of absence, are put before us in a lively and graphic way, which gives them a certain interest. CHAPTER VIII. THE RETURN TO EGYPT. Events in Egypt during the absence of Moses — Peace made with the Hittites — Peace cemented by an intermarriage — Attention of Ramesses II. turned to the construction of great works — Increased sufferings of the Israelites — Death of Ramesses II. — His character — Menephthah continues the oppression — God's appearance to Moses in the bush — His call — His resistance to the call — The punishment of his resistance — The ground of it — Relations of Moses with Jethro— He is allowed to depart, but lingers — Picture of his departure — His dangerous ill- ness and its consequences — His meeting with Aaron. During the absence of Moses in Midian — a period of between thirty and forty years, according to the Jewish tradition — the oppression of the children of Israel in Egypt had continued, and had become more and more severe. Ramesses II. was upon the throne, ruling singly after his father's decease, and applying all his vast energies to the construction of enormous works, partly ostentatious, partly defensive, in various parts of his empire. The days of his great military expeditions were over. He had, after a long and bloody struggle, terminated his differences with the Hittites by a solemn treaty and an inter- marriage. An agreement had been drawn up and signed, and engraved upon a plate of silver, whereby Khitasir, his great antagonist, and himself covenanted to be thenceforth friends and allies — they, and their sons, and their sons' sons, for ever. The high contracting powers were in all respects placed on terms of equality. Khitasir, the puissant, son of Marasar, the puissant, and grandson of Saplal, the puissant, undertook to be a good friend and brother to Ramesses-Meriamen, the puissant, THE RETURN TO EGYPT. 7 1 son of Seti-Menephthah, thepuissant, and grandson of Ramesses- Ramenpehti, the puissant, and Ramesses-Merianien, tlie puis- sant, (Sic, undertook to be a good friend and brother to Khitasir, the puissant, t!\:c. Khitasir engaged under no circumstances to invade the land of Egypt, to carry away anything from it, for ever ; and Ramesses engaged under no circumstances to invade the land of Khita, to carry away anything from it, for ever. Each bound himself, if the other were attacked, either to come in person, or to send his forces to the other's assistance. Each pledged himself to the extradition both of criminals fleeing from justice and of any other subjects wishing to transfer their allegiance. Each, at the same time, stipulated for an amnesty of oftences in the case of all persons thus surrendered. The treaty was placed under the protection of the gods of the two countries, who were invoked respectively to protect observers and punish infringers of it.^ Some years later the friendship was cemented by an inter- marriage. Ramesses seems to have proposed and the Hittite monarch to have given his consent to the connection. The daughter of Khitasir, who on her marriage exchanged her Hittite name for the Egyptian one of Ur-maa-nefru-ra, was conducted by Khitasir himself, " clad in the dress of his coun- try," to the palace of the Egyptian monarch ; the nuptials were celebrated ; Ur-maa-nefru-ra was proclaimed as Queen Consort of her royal spouse, and Khitasir, after receiving hospitable entertainment, returned to his own land.^ The two contiguous empires were thus brought into perfect harmony and agree- ment ; peace was secured, at any rate for some considerable space ; and Ramesses was able to turn his thoughts to those gigantic works which mainly occupied his later years. These works were of various kinds. Some were temples, either built in the ordinary way of huge blocks of hewn stone, or else carved out of the solid rock, as that of Ipsambul in Nubia. Others were palaces for his own abode, with corridors, and courts, and pillared halls, and huge colossi representing his own august person, and internally ornamented with coloured bas-reliefs commemorative of his own actions. A consider- able number were cities, either begun by his father and com- pleted by himself, or entirely of his own construction, as Pa-Tum * " Records of the Past,'' vol. iv. pp. 27-32. • Brugsch, " History of Egypt,'' vol. ii. p. 75. 72 MOSES. (or Pithom), Pa-Ramessu (Raamses), Pa-Phthah, Pa-Ra, Pa- Ammon, &c. Among them were also his Great Canal, and his Great Wall, the former connecting the Nile with the Red Sea, and running from near Bubastis by way of Pithom to the Bitter Lakes, and thence to Suez — the other carried from a point near Pelusium across the Isthmus to the inner recess of the western arm of the Red Sea. It was in the execution of these works that the Israelites suffered the main portion of their afflictions. Pithom and Pa-Ramessu, begun by Seti, but completed by Ramesses II., were certainly the work of their hands ; and they were not improbably employed also in building the other cities. Or, if they did not build them, they at any rate made the bricks for them. And they probably were largely employed in the construction of the Great Canal and the Great Wall. The Great Wall skirted the edge of their special country, Goshen, which lay along the eastern frontier, between the Pelusiac branch of the Nile and the Desert ; the Great Canal was in their immediate neighbourhood, and passed close to Pithom — one of the cities which they are expressly stated to have built. Ramesses had, no doubt, an enormous command of human labour by reason of the multitude of prisoners taken in his many wars ; but still his constructions were so vast and so nume- rous, that this multitude would not have sufficed had not their services been supplemented by that of the subject races dwelling in Egypt — Hebrews, Shartana, and others. And the motive, which had originally lain at the root of the Israelite oppression, was still active and vigorous, still one that ruled the policy of Egypt, and was regarded in governmental circles as of constraining force. The Hebrew people were still viewed as a danger, their multiplication as a thing to be checked, their aspirations and energies as needing repression. Philo tells us * that the taskmasters continually became more and more savage, that many of them were " wild beasts in human shape, as cruel as poisonous snakes and carnivorous tigers, with hearts as hard as steel or adamant, utterly pitiless, and unwilling to make allowance for any shortcoming, whatever its cause." And he declares that the result was a great mortality among the op- pressed people, who perished in heaps, as though they had been stricken by some fearful plague, and were not even allowed burial, but were cast out beyond the borders of the land, to ' " Vit. Mosis," pp. 86, 87. THE RETURN TO EGYPT. 73 moulder away on the bare sand, or to be devoured by vultures and jackals. " In process of time," however, the king, who had inflicted all this misery — of whom a modern writer says, that " there was not a stone in his monuments which had not cost a human life" ' — went the way of all flesh, sickened and died (Exod. ii. 23). He had reached the age of seventy-seven years, one rarely attained by Egyptian monarchs, and was in the sixty-seventh year of his reign, counting from the time when he was associated upon the throne by his father. In person, tall and handsome, with a good forehead, a large, well-formed, slightly aquiline nose, a well- shaped mouth, lips that are not too full, a small delicate chin, and eyes that are thoughtful and pensive ; he had well trained himself in warlike exercises, and was physically a perfect type of the most highly-bred, partly Semitized, Egyptian. In his early wars he greatly distinguished himself, and the " Epic Poem " of Pentaour, engraved upon the walls of more than one of his temples, is an undying commemoration of his martial exploits. He seems not to have been wanting in natural affec- tion, and both towards his father and towards his eldest son he expresses himself upon his monuments with tenderness. But all this promise, all these natural advantages and endowments, were marred and spoilt by an overweening vanity and arrogance, fos- tered by the circumstances of his life, by his father's too partial fondness, by his own successes, by the flattery and adulation that surrounded him, and increasing ever more and more as time went on, until it became an absorbing and impious egotism. Notwithstanding his professed regard for his father, Ramesses in his later years showed himself his father's worst enemy, by erasing his name from the monuments upon which it had been in- scribed,andin many instancessubstituting his own. Amid a great show of regard for the deities of his country, and for the ordinances of the established worship, he contrived that the chief result of all that he did for religion should be the glorification of himself. Other kings had arrogated to themselves a certain qualified divinity, and after their deaths had sometimes been placed by some of their successors on a par with the real national gods ; but it remained for Ramesses II. to associate himself during his lifetime with such leading deities as Ra and Tum, as Phthah, Ammon, and Horus, and to claim equally with them the religious * Lenormant, " Manuel d'histoire Ancienne," vol. i. p. 423. 74 MOSES. regards of his subjects. As vanity made him trench on the prerogatives of ihe gods, so it made him careless of the lives and sufferings of men. To obtain the glory of being, as he is, indisputably the greatest of Egyptian builders, he utterly disre- garded the cries and groans of those over whom he ruled ; he exacted forced labour from all the subject races within his dominions pitilessly. As M. Lenormant observes : " It is not without a feeling of absolute horror that one can picture to one- self the thousands of captives who must have died under the rod of the taskmasters, or victims of excessive fatigue and of priva- tions of all sorts, while they were erecting by their forced labour the gigantic constructions in which the insatiable vanity of the Egyptian monarch took a delight." ^ Ramesses, however, was dead — the God, of whom he had made himself the rival, and whose people he had used so cruelly, had called him to his last account — and the unfortunate wretches employed upon the public works in progress may have momen- tarily breathed more freely, and felt a sense of relief Princes are always popular on their coronation day ; and the son who had succeeded Ramesses II., a weak prince, not credited with much ambition, might have seemed unlikely to continue his father's policy of severe and cruel oppression. But it soon be- came apparent, that Menephthah had neither the goodness of heart nor the strength of character that would lead him to initiate a change. Though, comparatively speaking, unambitious, and free from any desire to astonish posterity by vast constructive works of any kind, he was yet inclined to carry on various con- structions left incomplete by his father, and even to set others on foot in different parts of the empire. Thus, any expectations which the Israelites may have formed of their sufferings being alleviated in consequence of his accession, were disappointed. "The king of Egypt died ; and the children of Israel" still " sighed by reason of the bondage ; and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage." The affliction continued equally bitter, the labour equally hard ; the task- masters still plied their sticks (Exod. iii. 7) ; the Israelites "groaned" (Exod. ii. 24) ; and their cry went up to heaven. Under these circumstances God once more "came down" (Exod. iii. 8), not, however, this time to investigate," but to de- * Lenormant, " Manuel," vol. i. p. 423. * As when the Tower of Babel was built (Gen. xi. 5), and when Sodom was about to be punished (Gen. xviii. 21) THE RETURN TO EGYPT. 75 liver. " He had seen, He had seen the affliction of His people which were in Egypt " — He " had heard their groaning " (Exod. ii. 24), and remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob ; He had determined within Himself' that the time was come both for vengeance and for deHverance, and had settled what should be the method of the deliverance, and who should be the deliverer. It remained that He should execute His purposes. The first step was to recall Moses from the land of Midian to Egypt, and formally to give him a commission to deliver the people. " Moses kept the flock of Jethro, his brother-in-law, the priest of Midian ; and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness" — far from the shores of the Red Sea, where Jethro seems to have dwelt, " and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb" (Exod. iii. i). We do not know the precise place ; but " a tradition, reaching back to the sixth cen- tury of the Christian era, fixes it in the same deep seclusion as that to which in all probability Moses afterwards led the Israel- ites. The convent of Justinian is built over what was supposed to be the exact spot where the shepherd was bid to draw his sandals from off his feet." ' This spot is on the right flank of Sinai, in a narrow valley, called the Wady Shoaib, which runs south-eastward from the great plain in front of the Ras-Sufsafeh, whence it is almost certain that the Law was delivered, and the narrower plain of the Wady-Sebayeh at the eastern foot of the Jebel Mousa. Here, or at any rate in this neighbour- hood, as Moses walked with his flock, pasturing it, there sud- denly appeared to him, a httle out of his direct path (Exod. iii. 4), a wonderful sight. Upon the mountain-side was a well- known shittim, or acacia, tree — " the thorn-tree of the desert, spreading out its tangled branches, thick-set with white thorns, over the rocky ground."* This tree, as Moses approached, appeared to him all ablaze with light, as if on fire ; but instead of the branches crackling and shrivelling up, as they would have done naturally had the fire been real, the whole tree remained unconsumed, the flames merely playing about it. Then said Moses : " I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt " (Exod. iii. 3). Accordingly, he ascended the hill-side, and approached the phenomenon to examine it, ' Stanley, " Lectures on the Jewish Church, " vol. i. p. 107. ' Stanley, in Smith's " Dictionary of the Bible," vol. ii. p. 427. 76 MOSES. when a voice called to him from the midst of the flames, and he at once understood that he was the object of a Divine manifes- tation. First he was addressed by name like Samuel (i Sam. iii. lo), and St. Paul (Acts ix. 4), the voice calling out, " Moses, Moses." Then he was bidden not to draw too near, and warned, that, as the place was holy, it became him to loose his sandals from off his feet, as Orientals do when they enter a place of worship. Finally, he was told who it was that addressed him, and what he was required to do. No angel had been sent to speak to him ; but God had come down Himself — "the God of his father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (ver. 6) — the same that had appeared and spoken with the patriarchs on so many occasions —doubtless, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word or Son of God, the Mediator between God and man, the " Messenger of the Covenant." So Moses " hid his face ; for he was afraid to look upon God." Prostrate in worship he listened while Jehovah spake and said : " I have seen, I have seen the afiliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters ; for I know their sorrows ; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey, unto the place of the Canaanites. . . . Now, therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come unto Me ; and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them. Conic now, therefore, and / %uill se?id tJiee iDito Pharaoh^ that thou uiayest b7'i)ig foiih My people^ the children of Israel, out of Egypf'' (vers. 7-10). The mission was clear, plain, unmistak- able — the people were to be delivered, to be led out of Egypt into Palestine ; Moses was to be their leader, and, as a first step, he was to go and to plead their cause before Pharaoh. But Moses was unwilling. He distrusted his fitness for the task. Unlike Isaiah, whose prompt response to God's call was, " Here am I— send me " (Isa. vi. 8j, but like Jeremiah, who, when appointed to be a prophet, exclaimed : " Ah, Lord God ! Be- hold, I cannot speak ; for I am a child" (Jer. i. 6), Moses was reluctant to undertake the task assigned him. " Who am I," he said, " that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt ?" (Exod. iii. 1 1). Pro- bably he thought that his long sojourn in the wilderness, his THE RETURN TO EGYPT. 77 shepherd's life, his comparative rusticity, and hisobhvion of the habitsofcourts, unsuited him for the part which he was now called upon to play, and made it almost certain that he would fail. He may also have regarded his age, since he was not far short of eighty years old, as disqualifying him for the active duties which under the circumstances would, it might have seemed, have to be discharged by a deliverer. He was diffident, also, as appears later (Exod. iv. lo), of his powers as a speaker, and thought that he would be unable, with his " slow speech" and "slow tongue," to persuade either Pharaoh or his own countrymen. Moses, therefore, like Jeremiah, sought to decline the task set him, preferring to remain in the obscurity in which he had now lived for nearly forty years. But the purpose of God is unchangeable. " Certainly," came the reply out of the midst of the glowing flame, " certainly I will be with thee ; and this shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee. When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain" (Exod. iii. 12). It might have seemed that such a promise and such an assurance—" /will be with thee j" " When thou hast brou^i^ht forth the people out of Egypt "— would, with a God-fearing man, have overcome any reluctance, and produced a willing acceptance of the mission assigned. But it was not so. The diffidence of Moses was deep seated, invin- cible. In spite of the Divine promise and assurance, objection after objection rises to his lips ; the people will ask him for the name of the God who has sent him, and he will not know what to reply (ver. 13); they will not believe that God has ap- peared to him at all, or given him any commission (Exod. iv. I) ; his slowness of speech will make his mission a failure if he undertakes it (ver. 10). To each of these excuses God con- descends to make reply. The Name which he is to announce as that of the God who has sent him is to be Jehovah "the Self- Existent"— a new name and yet an old one— old, in that it has been hitherto one out of the many names of the Almighty (Gen. xxii. 14) ; new, in that it is to be henceforth God's proper name, and to be understood as asserting jc-^-existence : incredulity in his mission he is to meet by a display of miracles, three of which he is empowered to work at his pleasure (Exod. iv. 3-9) ; his want of natural eloquence will be supplied by God, who will " be with his mouth, and teach him what he shall say " (ver. 12). Thus met at every point, and having nothing more 78 MOSES. that he can urge, Moses yields, but even now with an ill grace and grudgingly : " Send, I pray thee, by the hand of him whom thou wilt send " — not " make any one Thine apostle so that it be not me ; " ^ but '•' Do Thy pleasure — send any one, even, if it so please Thee, me" — i.e.^ I resist no longer — I will go ; but I go under compulsion, not seeing the fitness of the choice, not ex- pecting to succeed, but simply because I am forced to submit to Thy will. Then was "the anger of Jehovah kindled against Moses" (ver. 14). Only twice in the whole course of the history is Moses said to have angered God, on this occasion and at the waters of Meribah (Num. xx. 10-13 5 Deut. i. y]^ &c.). Strangely enough, while there his fault was arrogance and an undue as- sumption of plenary power, here he sinned, by an undue and obstinate diffidence. Self-will may perhaps be said to have lain at the root of both errors ; but in the one case it was self-willed assumption, in the other, self-willed renunciation and false humility.^ Each time the fault of Moses drew down upon him a temporal punishment. On the present occasion he was taken at his word. As he declined the sole leadership, he was de» prived of the sole leadership. Aaron was appointed to share the office of leader with him, and when speech was needed, had to be the chief speaker (Exod. iv. 14). " In all outward appear- ance," as Dean Stanley observes, " as the chief of the tribe of Levi, at the head of the family of Amram, as the spokesman and interpreter, as the first who ' spake to the people and to Pharaoh all the words which the Lord had spoken to Moses,' and did the signs in the sight of the people, as the permanent inheritor of the sacred rod or staff, the emblems of rule and power, Aaron, not Moses, must have been " — in the eyes of the Egyptians — "the representative and leader of Israel," ^ More- over, by his persistent diffidence, Moses lost the possession of high gifts which God was ready to confer upon him. The pro- mise, " I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say," was equivalent to a declaration that God would make him eloquent, though he was not so by nature ; and had the faith of Moses been sufficiently strong to overcome his self-distrust, he would have added eloquence and persuasive speech to his » Stanley, " Lectures on the Jewish Church," vol. i. p. 113. * Compare the iQiKoTa.-Ki.iVQ