Exodus 1

1. Now these are the names of the sons of Israel, which came into Egypt; every man and his 2 household came with Jacob. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah: Issachar, Zebulun, and 3, 4 Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. And all the souls that came out of the loins 5 of Jacob were seventy souls: and Joseph was in Egypt already. And Joseph died, and all his 6 brethren, and all that generation. And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased 7 abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.

The manner in which the last four of the five books of Moses are made up is peculiar and should have special attention. Their striking peculiarity is the blending of matters pertaining to the religious system, to the civil code, and to the national history, with no well-defined order or method—the historic facts taking their place probably as they occurred and came before the writer, and the other topics being arranged quite miscellaneous. For the most part the record in these four books pertains to the first two years after Moses entered upon his great mission and the last two years before his death. There was a long interval between these periods of which nothing special is said. Passing the first twenty chapters of Exodus, which are history and follow the natural order of the events; and passing also the thrilling and solemn scenes of Sinai—the great work of Moses was to receive and record the statutes of the civil code, and the directions respecting their religious system, including the construction of the tabernacle; the services of the priests and Levites; the sacred festivals, and the whole ritual of worship. H. C.

Moses (the Servant of the Lord in writing for him, as well as in acting for him—with the pen as well as with the rod of God in his hand), having in the first book of his history preserved and transmitted the records of the church, while it existed in private families, comes in this second book to give us an account of its growth into a great nation. The beginning of the former book shows us how God formed the world for himself; the beginning of this shows us how he formed Israel for himself, and I both to show forth his praise (Is. 43 : 21). There we have the creation of the world in history, here the redemption of the world in type. The Greek translators called this book Exodus (which signifies a departure, or going out), because it begins with the story of the going out of the children of Israel from Egypt. Some observe that immediately after Genesis, which signifies the beginning, or original, follows Exodus, which signifies a departure; for a time to be born is immediately succeeded by a time to die. H.

The general scope of the book is plainly to preserve the memorial of the great facts of the national history of Israel in its earlier periods, to wit, their deliverance from Egypt, the kindness and faithfulness of God in their subsequent preservation in the wilderness, the delivery of the Law, and the establishment of a new and peculiar system of worship. There is no book in the Bible that records such an illustrious series of miracles, or that keeps the divine agency so constantly before the mind’s eye. Nor are its moral lessons less prominent and striking. Advertising to the course of Israel’s experience as a nation, Paul adds, “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” No sooner had he adverted to their privileges than he describes their chastisements, as inflicted to the intent that we should not so imitate their sin, as to provoke a visitation of the same vengeance. Their whole history forms one grand prediction and outline of human redemption, and of the lot of the church. In the servitude of Israel we behold a lively image of man’s natural bondage to sin and Satan. In the deliverance from Egypt is foreshown redemption from this thraldom; and the journey through the wilderness is a graphic programme of a Christian’s journey through life to his final inheritance in the heavenly Canaan. So also, without minute specification, the manna of which the Israelites ate and the rock of which they drank, as well as the brazen serpent by which they were healed, were severally typical of corresponding particulars under the Christian economy. Add to this, that under the sacrifices and ceremonial service of the Mosaic institute, were described the distinguishing features of the more spiritual worship of the Gospel. Bush.

It may seem strange that we have so considerable a blank in the history between Genesis and Exodus, and that the long period of time from Jacob’s going down into Egypt and his death, and until Moses’ birth, is passed silently over. But Israel has no history except so far as it is the organ of revelation. How full of blanks is the historical account of the centuries in the time of the Judges, on account of the broken state of the theocratic life! and how little do we know of the exile, which yet belongs entirely to the historical time! or of the centuries from Ezra to the Maccabees, and beyond them! It is the peculiarity of Israel to possess history and historical literature in the full sense of the words only in proportion as it realizes its vocation in the history of the world. O.—As the express design of the work embraced merely the relation of Israel to Jehovah, the writer was content to pass over the whole interval during which the chosen people were growing into a great people according to the prophecies in the book of Genesis, and simply state that those prophecies were fulfilled. This was all that the centuries in question contributed to the development of the theocratic plan, and in this respect they stood far behind the few days, in which Jehovah magnified himself in his people before the eyes of the Egyptians. Ranke.—There is no historical work in which the selection and arrangement of the events narrated are so exclusively and unmistakably regulated by one idea as in the historical books of the Old Testament. Everything is looked at from one point of view; prosperity and misfortune, slavery and redemption, joy and sorrow, are all regarded as operations of God on behalf of his people. There is nothing mentioned which does not admit of being easily and intelligibly described from this point of view. This will explain the fact that nothing is said of the lengthened period during which the Israelites were in Egypt, and so little of the period of the Judges. The historical writings of the Hebrews are as different as they possibly can be from chronicles and annals, or a mere recital of naked facts. Bertheau.

Ex. 1 : 1-7. The first seven verses are introductory to the whole book. In accordance with the almost invariable custom of the writer, we find a brief recapitulation of preceding events, and a statement of the actual condition of affairs. The names of the Patriarchs and the number of distinct families at the time of the immigration into Egypt are stated in six verses: a single paragraph then records the rapid and continuous increase of the Israelites after the death of Joseph and his contemporaries. Cook.

The closing years of the three and a half centuries since their entrance into Egypt found Israel peaceful, prosperous, and probably, in many respects, assimilated to the Egyptians around. “The fathers” had fallen asleep, but their children still held undisturbed possession of the district originally granted them. The land of Goshen, in which they were located, is to this day considered the richest province of Egypt, and could, even now, easily support a million more inhabitants than it numbers. Goshen extended between the most eastern of the ancient seven mouths of the Nile and Palestine. The border-land was probably occupied by the more nomadic branches of the family of Israel, to whose flocks its wide tracts would afford excellent pasturage; while the rich banks along the Nile and its canals were the chosen residence of those who pursued agriculture. Most likely such would also soon swarm across to the western banks of the Nile, where we find traces of them in various cities of the land. There they would acquire a knowledge of the arts and industries of the Egyptians. The simple patriarchal forms of worship would suit the circumstances in Egypt much better than those which the religion of Israel afterward received. Three great observances here stand out prominently. Around them the faith and the worship alike of the ancient patriarchs, and afterward of Israel, may be said to have clustered. They are: circumcision, sacrifices, and the Sabbath. We have direct testimony that the rite of circumcision was observed by Israel in Egypt (Ex. 4 : 24-26). As to sacrifices, even the proposal to celebrate a great sacrificial feast in the wilderness implies that sacrificial worship had maintained its hold upon the people. The direction to gather on the Friday two days’ provision of manna, and the introduction of the Sabbath command by the word “Remember,” convey the impression of previous Sabbath observance on the part of Israel. Indeed, the manner in which many things, as, for example, the practice of vows, are spoken of in the law, seems to point back to previous religious rites among Israel. These outward observances indicate how, even during those centuries of silence and loneliness in Egypt, Israel still cherished the fundamental truths of their ancestral religion. A. E.

As God had chosen the people of Israel as conservators of his Unity and Providence, and of his slowly brightening promises of Redemption, so he perpetually interferes to keep alive the remembrance of these great truths, the object of their selection from mankind; and which nothing less, it should seem, could have preserved through so many ages. In other respects the chosen people appear to have been left to themselves to pass through the ordinary stages of the social state. Mishnu.—Rightly to estimate even the ethnical position and character of the Israelites, it is indispensable that we keep in mind the peculiar work for which, both by prophecy and history, they were specially set apart by God. It is the more necessary to keep their true mission and aim in view, because there are no results beyond those connected with that mission and aim, to justify their claim to be regarded as the peculiar people of God, dealt with as God never dealt with any other nation. Apart from their relation to the spiritual kingdom of Christ, they never made any great figure in the world’s history. They had the same pursuits as their neighbors; they were animated by the same pride of race, the same patriotism, the same ambition for national greatness. They had no higher aims, and as a rule only reached much lower attainments than many other nations. For a brief period, in the reigns of David and of Solomon, worldly glory appeared to be within their reach. The momentary splendor faded amid the troubles of the disruption of the kingdom which followed the death of Solomon. Upon the whole, many other nations have been more prosperous; have, by policy or force of arms, acquired greater power and wider territories; have, within the sphere of action common to them all, exercised more influence on the world’s history. Other nations have done more to promote intellectual culture; to advance the physical sciences; to extend commerce; to perfect the useful arts, as well as what are called the fine arts; to further the progress of philosophy, jurisprudence, political economy; and to enrich the world with masterpieces in architecture, painting, sculpture, and some departments of literature. As a nation, the only distinction which can be claimed for Israel is that already noticed. Nor, according to the Bible, was any other distinction ever contemplated. Temporal blessings were conditionally promised, the condition being fidelity on their part in carrying out their true destiny; but even with this limitation mere worldly greatness was not an achievement which they were at any time encouraged to hope for. Any promises which appear at first sight to point to such a result will be found, on investigation, to require to be interpreted figuratively as looking forward to a kingdom which is not of this world—the kingdom of Him who was a greater even than Solomon, and in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, for all are one in Him. Nor, let it be added, is any other reason for even the most extraordinary of the instances of God’s distinguishing favor to the chosen seed required. Lee.

In the rich and fruitful land of Egypt, and especially in the country of Goshen, had the descendants of Israel become a great, powerful people, amounting to more than two million souls. We here behold the first instance of that remarkable phenomenon, which afterward is often presented to our view,—that God’s covenanted people are placed beside and in the midst of the most cultivated and powerful nations of antiquity in order to enjoy the advantages of their worldly civilization; at the same time, by their marked severance from the idolatry of these nations, and by their permanence (while one people after another beside them decayed and passed away), to bear witness to their own Divine origin. Egypt is that ancient kingdom which has erected monuments of its grandeur surpassing those of any early state, which still remain and astonish us by the magnificence of their design and by the degree of cultivation displayed in them. Geri.

One important result of late Egyptian researches is the establishment of a complete system of transcription of Hebrew and Egyptian characters. At present no doubt remains as to the exact correspondence of the Hebrew letters with phonetic signs, or groups of common occurrence in papyri and monumental inscriptions. Cook.—The Egyptian monuments furnish the most striking proofs of the veracity of the Biblical narratives. Any one must be blind who refuses to see the flood of light which the papyri and other Egyptian monuments are throwing upon the venerable records of Holy Scripture. Brogach.

We may conclude from the words of Joseph (Gen. 46 : 31, 32) that the Israelites pursued in Egypt—in the pasture lands of Goshen, on the borders of the wilderness—that patriarchal, pastoral mode of life which their fathers had done in Canaan. But we are expressly told that they likewise followed field tillage and gardening. They sowed and watered after the manner of the Egyptians (Deut. 11:10, 11). There were “cunning” artificers among them, who could work in cutting precious stones, in gold and in silver (Exod. 35:32, 33). They learned the arts of weaving, spinning, the preparation of leather, from the people, the most celebrated in the ancient world as the inventors of such arts. They made the bricks for the fortresses, Pithom and Rameses. Even when living among the dominant people, they were governed by the heads of their own tribes, who had gradually sprung up from out of the original family government of the patriarchs. Geri.—As the tribes had their princes, so these clans, families, or thousands had their respective chiefs, who were called heads of houses of fathers, heads of thousands, and sometimes simply heads. Harrington denominates these two classes of officers phylachs, or governors of tribes, and patriarchs, or governors of families. Both, while the Israelites were yet in Egypt, were comprehended under the general name of elders. That the tribes were governed, each by its own prince, that they were subdivided into clans, or groups of related families, having also their respective chiefs, and that these princes of tribes and chiefs of clans received the common appellation of “elders of Israel,” will be evident to any one who will compare the first chapter of Numbers with Exod. 3:16; 4:29, and 6:14, 15. These princes of tribes and heads of thousands, the elders of Israel, were the rulers of the people, while they remained still subject to the power of the Pharaohs, and constituted a kind of “imperium in imperio.” E. C. W.

Kitto regards the Israelites, at the period of their descent into Egypt, as distinguished by all the characteristics of the wandering and barbarous shepherd tribes, and not improbably giving occasion at first, by some overt acts of plunder, to the Egyptian government to adopt harsh measures toward them. Hengstenberg, on the other hand, maintains that the roughness and barbarity properly distinguishing the shepherd tribes never belonged to the Hebrews,—that their possessing the character of shepherds at all, arose chiefly from the circumstances in which they were placed during their early sojourn in Canaan,—that they were glad to abandon their wandering life and dwell in settled habitations, whenever an opportunity afforded,—that, set down, as they afterward were, in one of the most fertile and cultivated regions of Egypt, which they held from the first as a settled possession, their manner of life was throughout different from the nomadic, was disdistinguished by possessions in lands and houses, and by the various employments and comforts peculiar to Egyptian society. This view must be adopted with some modification as to the earlier periods of their history; for though the Israelites never entered fully into the habits of the nomad tribes, yet they were manifestly tending more and more in that direction toward the time of their descent into Egypt. The tendency was there gradually checked, and the opposite extreme at last reached,—as it appears that at the time of the Exodus they had all houses with door-posts (Ex. 12:4, 7, etc.), lived to a considerable extent intermingled with the Egyptians in their cities (Ex. 3:20-22; 11:1-3; 12:35, 36), were accustomed to the agricultural occupations peculiar to the country, took part even in its finest manufactures, such as were prepared for the king (1 Chron. 4:21-23), and enjoyed the best productions both of the river and the land (Num. 11:5; 20:5). It is but natural to suppose, however, that some compulsion was requisite to bring them to this state of civilization and refinement; and as it was a state necessary to fit them for setting up the tabernacle and occupying aright the land of Canaan, we see the overruling hand of God in the very compulsion that was exercised. P. F.—It is a mistake to regard the Israelites at their exodus from Egypt as a rude race of nomads, in whom we may not presuppose even the smallest beginnings of culture. They appear in the Pentateuch as an unmanageable, but not as an uncultivated people. While, for example, to take a single illustration, the Pentateuch gives no trace of the art of writing in the time of the patriarchs, this is presupposed as employed among the people when they went out of Egypt, as the name of their functionaries which were taken from the people shows—they were Shoterim, or writers. O.—The art of writing, in Babylon as in Egypt, goes back to the most ancient period. On the bricks of the oldest cities we find letters in use, and that not in their first stage; that is, not hieroglyphic. Southall.—That the Israelites possessed an alphabet and knew the art of writing in the Mosaic age is not subject to reasonable doubt, and is now almost universally admitted. Kurnen.—We need not scruple to assume that Israel knew and used an alphabet in Egypt before Moses. Eseahl.

Europe has learned from Egypt its earliest lessons of geometry, chemistry, medicine, architecture, and sculpture. We are beginning more and more to understand this, as we learn that much of the discovery in science and the arts heretofore attributed to the Greeks and the

Arabians existed long previously in Egyptian papyri. It is very wonderful to find in these ancient documents, chemical facts, arithmetical formulae, and medical recipes, almost in the identical forms in which they were copied by Greeks and Arabs, heretofore believed to be their authors. Independently of this we can discern in the great works of the early Egyptians more of knowledge both of nature and of practical science, than we can gather from the scanty remains of their writings. Early Egyptian art has also in it the germs of all that has succeeded it. Dawson.

7. On the boundary of the Holy Land the Lord had encouraged Israel: “Fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation.” And the Book of Exodus opens with the record that this promise had been fulfilled, for “the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.” A. E.

Each of the twelve patriarchs, when they went down into Egypt, would probably carry with him a household of herdsmen and retainers; and all the males born in the house being circumcised, their descendants would be reckoned as “children of Israel.” Thus the original number that multiplied into 2,000,000 was not seventy, but more probably some 2000 or 3000. And with this agrees the narrative, which tells us how they brought all their flocks and their herds with them, implying a very large number of servants and herdsmen, and how a large tract of country was at once assigned them. J. P. N.

How long a period elapsed between the migration into Egypt under Jacob, and the Exodus, or departure, under Moses, has been a question debated from the earliest ages by Jewish, no less than Christian writers. While some assign the whole duration of 430 years to the captivity in Egypt, others include the residence of the patriarchs, 215 years, within this period. The vestiges of this controversy appear in all the earlier writings. The Hebrew and Samaritan texts, the different copies of the Greek version of the Scriptures, differ. Stephen, in the Acts, seems to have followed one opinion, Paul, in his epistle to the Galatians, the other. Josephus contradicts himself repeatedly. The great body of English divines follow the latter hypothesis; the great modern scholars of Germany generally prefer the former. The following brief statement may throw some light on this intricate subject. The Jews were firmly and religiously persuaded that their genealogies were not merely accurate, but complete. As then only two names appeared between Levi and Moses, those of Kohath and Amram, and the date of life assigned to these two seemed irreconcilable with the longer period of 430 years, they adopted very generally the notion that only 215 years were passed in Egypt. They overlooked, or left to miraculous intervention to account for a still greater difficulty, the prodigious increase in one family during one generation. In the desert the males of the descendants of Kohath are reckoned at 8609. Kohath had four sons, from each son then, in one generation, must have sprung on the average 2150 males. On this hypothesis the alternative remains, either that some names have been lost from the genealogies between Kohath and Amram, or between Amram and Moses, a notion confirmed by the fact that in the genealogy of Joshua in the book of Chronicles, he stands twelfth in descent from Joseph, while Moses is the fourth from Levi: or, as there are certain grounds for suspecting, some general error runs through the whole numbering of the Israelites in the desert. . . . Some curious particulars of this period may be gleaned from the genealogies (1 Chron. 7: 21, 22). Some intercourse with the native country was kept up for a time. Certain sons of Ephraim were slain in a freebooting expedition to drive the cattle of the inhabitants of Gath. Another became ruler of the tribe of Moab. Some became celebrated in Egypt as potters, and manufacturers in cotton (byssus). Milman. (See p. 325.)

The scriptural name “Ham” seems to be identical with the indigenous name of Egypt, as it appears in hieroglyphics, “Khemmi,” and refers to the black color of the soil. The special name in scriptural geography was “Mizraim,” a noun in the dual number, signifying the two (i.e., the Upper and Lower) Misr the name by which Egypt is still designated by the Arabs: it means “red mud.” The Nile is occasionally named “Shihor” (Is. 23: 5); but more commonly “Yeor” (Gen. 41: 1; Ex. 1: 22), after the Coptic iaro, “river;” the Hebrews also applied to it sometimes the term yom, “sea” (Is. 19: 5; Ex. 32: 2). The ancient history of Egypt may be divided into three portions:—the old monarchy, extending from the foundation of the kingdom to the invasion of the Hyksos; the middle, from the entrance to the expulsion of the Hyksos; and the new, from the re-establishment of the native monarchy by Amosis to the Persian conquest. Of the middle monarchy we only know that a nomadic horde called Hyksos for several centuries occupied and made Egypt tributary; that their capital was Memphis; that in the Sethroite name they constructed an immense earth-camp, which they called Abaris, that at a certain period of their occupation two independent kingdoms were formed in Egypt, one in the Thebaid, which held intimate relations with Ethiopia; another at Xois, among the marshes of the Nile; and that, finally, the Egyptians regained their independence, and expelled the Hyksos, who thereupon retired into Palestine. The Hyksos form the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth dynasties. Manetho says they were Arabs, but he calls the six kings of the fifteenth dynasty Phœnicians. The New Monarchy extends from the commencement of the eighteenth to the end of the thirtieth dynasty. The kingdom was consolidated by Amosis, who succeeded in expelling the Hyksos, and thus prepared the way for the foreign expeditions which his successors carried on in Asia and Africa, extending from Mesopotamia in the former to Ethiopia in the latter continent. The glorious era of Egyptian history was under the nineteenth dynasty, when Sethi I., B.C. 1322, and his grandson, Rameses the Great, B.C. 1311, both of whom represent the Sesostris of the Greek historians, carried their arms over the whole of Western Asia and southward into Soudan, and amassed vast treasures, which were expended on public works. Under the later kings of the nineteenth dynasty the power of Egypt faded: the twentieth and twenty-first dynasties achieved nothing worthy of record; but with the twenty-second we enter upon a period that is interesting from its associations with biblical history, the first of this dynasty, Sheshonk I. (Seconchis) B.C. 990, being the Shishak who invaded Judea in Rehoboam’s reign and pillaged the Temple (1 Kings 14:25). Of this event and of the subsequent history of Egypt, we shall have further occasion to speak. P. S.

The land of Egypt has well been called “the land of wonders.” The nature of the country and the history of its people are equally extraordinary. For the most part, the land of Egypt is just a narrow strip, extending to the breadth of a few miles on each side of the river Nile, but expanding, toward the mouths of that river, into an extensive plain, called, from its resemblance to the Greek letter Δ, a Delta. Its total length is about 500 miles; so that, with Palestine, Greece, Rome, and Britain, it ranks among the very small countries that have had a wonderful influence on the rest of the world. W. G. B.

There has probably been little change in the physical aspect of Egypt since the days when Joseph was made “ruler over all the land of Egypt,” or since those in which Moses led the Israelites from the land of their bondage. The Valley of the Nile, or Upper Egypt, must always have presented the same general appearance; the mysterious river rolling silently northward between two, almost unbroken, table-topped walls of limestone, which here approach the water, there retire from it, leaving large plains of the richest soil, to which new life is given each year by the fertilizing waters of the great river. Over these flats is spread a carpet of luxuriant vegetation of the brightest green, which is in striking and not unpleasing contrast to the yellow hills of the barren desert on either side. So, too, the Delta must always have been a great plain, intersected by the many arms of the river and by innumerable canals, which irrigated the country and spread the life-giving waters over an area far greater than that which is now cultivated. The sands of the desert have been allowed to encroach and swallow up large tracts, such as the “land of Goshen,” which was formerly the “best of the land,” but is now little better than the surrounding desert; and many of the canals and lakes, once well stocked with fish, have dried up, and no longer fertilize the land; such is especially the case with the great canal that connected the Nile with the Gulf of Suez, and gave life to the Wady Tumeilat, which is now covered with sand. The Delta is triangular in form, its eastern and western faces being bounded by branches of the river, and its base by the sea; its fertility was surprising, and is alluded to in several passages of the Bible, as in Gen. 13:10, where the Jordan valley is said to have been “like a garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt.” The rainfall is so slight that it has no influence on the cultivation, a peculiarity noticed by Zechariah (14:18); and the necessity for irrigation is mentioned in Deut. 11:10, 11, where a contrast is drawn between the land of bondage and the Promised Land, which was to be “a land of hills and valleys,” that “drinketh water of the rain of heaven.” Wilson.

Egypt in that age stood at the summit of the world’s civilization, a fully organized kingdom, a great and highly cultured people. There is most ample proof that Egypt was then eminent above any other nation in learning, wisdom, science, and art; in jurisprudence, and in the administration of law; in industry and in wealth; in short, in all the main appliances and results of a high civilization. The antiquities of Ancient Egypt are the marvel of our times. Her temples, pyramids, and obelisks; her paintings and works of art, have come down to our age in most wonderful preservation, living witnesses to her ancient greatness. There was no other kingdom on the face of the earth where a man like Moses could have been educated and trained to become the law-giver of the Hebrew nation, or where such a system of civil law as God gave his people by the hand of Moses could have taken its rise and could have been understood, accepted, appreciated, and ultimately wrought into established usage and into the national life. H. C.

The temples reared by the Egyptians to their gods were exceedingly magnificent. The remains of some of them are still among the wonders of the world. The priesthood was a large, wealthy, and highly privileged class, with the king himself, as high priest, at their head. Their sacred rites were numerous and varied, and included much that was fitted to dazzle the senses of the multitude. Prominent in their religious belief was the doctrine of future retribution. This was frequently depicted in paintings. W. G. B.—Where could Clio write their history so appropriately as on the walls of their temples? And never were pages more graphic. The gathering, the march, the melee—the Pharaoh’s prowess, standing erect as he always does in his car, no charioteer, the reins attached to his waist, the arrow drawn to his ear, his horses all fire, springing into the air like Pegasus, and then the agony of the dying, transfixed by his dart, the relaxed limbs of the slain,—Homer’s truth itself; and lastly, the triumphant return, the welcome home, and the offerings of thanksgiving to Amunre—the fire, the discrimination with which these ideas are bodied forth, they must be seen to judge of it. Lord Lindsay.

All hereabout is full of deepest interest—sepulchres, monuments, historical records, and sites of ancient cities. We are in a land of dreams, and all the surroundings bear dreamy outlines; gigantic in their proportions, and rendered even more gigantic by the manner in which they are disposed. Probably the most magnificent of these monuments in Upper Egypt—the Pathros of Scripture—are those of its capital, Thebes, the No, or No Amon of the Bible. It were impossible in brief space to describe its temple. The sanctuary itself was small, but opposite to it a court opened upon a hall into which the great cathedral of Paris might be placed, without touching the walls on either side! One hundred and forty columns support this hall, the central pillars being sixty-six feet high, and so wide that it would take six men with extended arms to embrace one of them. The mind gets almost bewildered by such proportions. All around, the walls bear representations, inscriptions, and records—among others, those of Shishak, who captured Jerusalem during the reign of Rehoboam. But the temple itself is almost insignificant when compared with the approach to it, which was through a double row of sixty or seventy ram-headed sphinxes, placed about eleven feet apart from each other. Another avenue led to a temple which enclosed a lake for funeral rites; and yet a third avenue of sphinxes extended a distance of 6000 feet to a palace. A. E.

The incidental confirmations of the Bible from the tombs are numerous and striking. It seems, as one goes from tomb to tomb, that he is visiting the picture galleries, the manufactories, and the private houses of the old Egyptians, and mingling familiarly in their everyday scenes. It is not death, but life, one here beholds; or, rather, as at Pompeii, life exhumed from the chambers of the dead. In the eloquent language of Cardinal Wiseman, “When, after so many ages of darkness and uncertainty, we see the lost history of this people revive, and take its stand beside that of other ancient empires; when we read the inscriptions of its kings, recording their mighty exploits and regal qualities, and gaze upon their monuments, with the full understanding of the events which they commemorate, the impression is scarcely less striking to an enlightened mind than what the traveller would feel, if, when silently pacing the catacombs at Thebes, he should see those corpses, which the embalmer’s skill has for so many ages rescued from decay, on a sudden burst their cerements, and start resuscitated from their niches.”

These old Egyptians, whose tombs and temples are now open to our inspection, and whose social, commercial, religious, and political history is written upon the imperishable rock, where all may read it—these ancients, over whom we of this nineteenth century are wont to boast in all the “improvements” and the material comforts of life, had wealth beyond all computation; commerce in all the “precious things” of Arabia, of Persia, and the Indies, in gold, and jewels, and spices, and silks, and aromatics; manufactures of fine linen and embroidered work, of vases of porcelain and pottery, of oil, of chariots, of baskets and wickerwork, of glass ornaments and utensils, and of many other articles of comfort and of luxury; husbandry that made Egypt the granary of the world, and once and again the support of neighboring nations in time of famine; civilization that well supplied the comforts of domestic life, that furnished their houses with chairs, sofas, and couches for their parlors, as well as with copper utensils, caldrons, tripods, mortars, pallets, ovens for their kitchens; mechanic arts to fabricate various and formidable weapons of war, and to erect buildings and monuments that would now exhaust the combined strength and treasures of all the nations of Europe; an art that could excavate from the quarry a block of sienite weighing nearly nine hundred tons, that could transport it more than a hundred miles,—the distance of the nearest quarry,—and that could erect this block, when carved into a statue, upon a pedestal prepared for it at the gateway of a temple whose porch was lined with similar, though smaller figures; an art that could arrange in perfect order a double row of fourteen pillars, each upward of seventy feet high by thirty-six in circumference, and raise to the top of these stones thirty feet in length by six feet in breadth, and the same in thickness, and then dispose about this central avenue other avenues formed by a hundred and twenty-two majestic pillars, in like manner capped with gigantic stones, until the roofed temple covered an acre and a half, and with its surroundings ten times that surface, and this centuries before Solomon built the inferior temple at Jerusalem; an art, in short, that could build Karnac and the pyramids: fine arts also; sculpture, which if it be less delicate than that of Greece, is more grand and spirited, which at times unites beauty with grandeur, but which in majesty of conception is rivalled only by the contemporary sculptures of Nineveh; painting, which after four thousand years retains the freshness of its colors; music, which invented both wind and stringed instruments; mathematical science, that could arrange with precision and skill all architectural lines and forms; astronomical science, that decorated the ceilings of temples with celestial signs; geological science, so far as this relates to the selection of different qualities of stone for different qualities of soil; philosophy, that evolved the great idea of a judgment and a future state and the soul’s immortality, though in the form of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls, a philosophy that Moses and Plato studied, and that gave wisdom to the world; and all these under the guardianship of a physical force that was for centuries victorious upon every field, that subdued Ethiopia and Judea, and swept Syria to the Euphrates, and that was shielded at home upon three sides by the mountains and the desert, and on the fourth side by the sea. And yet with all its wealth, and commerce, and manufactures, and agriculture, and civilization, and art, and science, and philosophy, and material force, and natural barriers, Egypt has perished, utterly and forever perished. The mighty conquerors of Egypt, too, have perished. The Persian empire, the Macedonian, the Roman, are fallen to rise no more. J. P. T.

[For other notices of Egypt, see Sections 39 and 67.]

8. Now there arose a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his 9 people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: come, 10 let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us, and get them 11 up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their 12 burdens. And they built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And they were 13 grieved because of the children of Israel. And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to

14 serve with rigour : and they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field, all their service, wherein they made them serve with rigour.

15. And the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was

16. Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah : and he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the birthstool ; if it be a son, then ye shall kill

17 him ; but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared God, and did not

18 as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. And the king of

Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have

19 saved the men children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women ; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwife

20 come unto them. And God dealt well with the midwives : and the people multiplied, and

21 waxed very mighty. And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made

22 them houses. And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.

8-14. The oppression of Israel by the Egyptians.

The new king who arose appears not to have been merely another king, in ordinary succession, but a king of a new dynasty, foreign to the traditions and maxims of his predecessors. Alf.—The first persecutor of the Israelites may be distinguished as the Pharaoh of the Oppression, especially as he commenced, and probably long carried on, the persecution. The general view is that he was an Egyptian, a king of the nineteenth dynasty. The chief points in favor of this are the name of the city Ramses, whence it has been argued that one of the oppressors was a king Ramses, and the probable change of line. The first king of this name known was head of the nineteenth dynasty. Manetho says the Israelites left Egypt in the reign of Menptah, who was great-grandson of the first Ramses, and son and successor of the second. Dic. B.

From the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty, when the Hyksos were expelled by Aahmes I., the monumental history of Egypt is tolerably complete ; the succession of nearly all the Pharaohs and the principal events in the reigns of the most distinguished are distinctly recorded. The chronology, however, is uncertain.

18th Dynasty.—Aahmes I. (Nefertari Queen), Amenhotep I., Thotmes I. (Aahmes Regent), Thotmes II., Thotmes III., Amenhotep II., Thotmes IV., Amenhotep III., Amenhotep IV. (who took the name Khun-Aten), three other kings not recognized as legitimate, Horemheb.

19th Dynasty.—Rameses I., Seti I., Rameses II., Menptah I., Seti II. or Menptah II., Amemmeses, Siptah, and Tauser. Cook.

The period of the sojourn reckoned at 430 years, the administration of Joseph would fall in the time of the Shepherd Kings, while their successors of the XVIIIth Dynasty would mark the beginning of the period of oppression. All Egyptologists now hold Ramses II. and his son Menptah to be the great oppressor and the Pharaoh of the Exodus respectively. Their combined reigns correspond with the length of the persecution in the Bible, and their characters in their own records are the counterparts of the Biblical portraits of the inflexible tyrant and his vacillating successor. The evidence of Manetho and the researches of Lepsius and Brugsch have placed this beyond doubt. R. S. Poole. [See Sections 84, 90, close.]

That Ramses II. was the Pharaoh of the oppression, has long been suspected by Egyptian scholars. The accounts of the wars of himself and his predecessors in Canaan show that up to the date of his death that country was not yet inhabited by the Israelites. But the question as to the date of the Exodus, and consequently as to the Pharaoh of the oppression, has now been finally set at rest by the excavations recently undertaken at Tel-el-Maskhūta. This is the name of some large mounds near Tel-el-Kebir and other places which were the scene of the late war ; and M. Naville, who has excavated them for the Egyptian Exploration Fund, has found inscriptions in them which show not only that they represent an ancient city whose religious name was Pithom, while its civil name was Succoth, but also that the founder of the city was Ramses II. In Greek times the city was called Heroöpolis, or Ero, from the Egyptian word ara, “a storehouse,” reminding us that Pithom and Raamses, which the Israelites built for the Pharaoh, were “treasure-cities” (v. 11). M. Naville has even discovered the treasure-chambers themselves. They are very strongly constructed, and divided by brick partitions from eight to ten feet thick, the bricks being sun-baked, and made some with and some without straw. In these strawless bricks we may see the work of the oppressed people when the order came: ‘Thus saith the Pharaoh, I will not give you straw.’ The treasure-chambers occupy almost the whole area of the old city, the walls of which are about 650 feet square and 22 feet thick. Its name Pithom—in Egyptian Pa-Tum—signifies the city of the Setting Sun; and since it had another name, Succoth, we can now understand how it was that the Israelites started on their march not from Goshen, but from Succoth (Ex. 13:20), that is, from the very place where they had been working. Sayce.

11. The taskmasters were Egyptian bailiffs or general managers; the officers (5:6) were Hebrews, and had each the charge of a certain number, of whom and their work they had to keep account (hence called Sholerim or Writers). When recently in Egypt, I saw this very system still in operation on a road which the Viceroy was constructing. W. L. A.—The Israelites were employed in forced labors, probably in detachments, each under an Egyptian ’taskmaster’ but they were not reduced to slavery, properly speaking, nor treated as captives of war. They continued to occupy and cultivate their own district, and they retained possession of their houses, flocks, herds, and other property until they emigrated from Egypt. Cook.—The ancient monuments of Egypt confirm the statements of sacred history, showing that the Egyptians employed national bondmen in the construction of their vast national works; that they placed over them taskmasters; that when the workmen fell short of the required tale of brick, their masters put them to more severe labors, and in some cases to labors of other sort. It should be noted that this bondage differed from the slavery of modern times in this one respect—that the bondmen were held by the king and the nation in their national capacity and not by individuals. The Hebrews were not held as private but as public property. The king and the nation as such bore therefore the responsibility and guilt of this oppression, and God let his judgments smite them for the most part in such a way as to indicate their sin. H. C.

11,14. The construction of ‘store-cities’ at the required period has received recent illustration of the most remarkable kind. The explorers have uncovered near Tel-el-Kebir an ancient city, which the inscriptions found on the spot show to have been built, in part at any rate, by Rameses II., and which is of so peculiar a construction as to suggest at once to those engaged in the work the idea that it was built for a ‘store-city.’ The town is altogether a square, enclosed by a brick wall. The area contained within the wall is estimated at about ten acres. Nearly the whole of this space is occupied by solidly built square chambers, divided one from the other by brick walls from eight to ten feet thick, which are unpierced by window or door, or opening of any kind. It further appears, from several short inscriptions, that the name of the city was Pa-Tum, or Pithom; and there is thus no reasonable doubt that one of the two cities built by the Israelites has been laid bare, and answers completely to the description given of it. Of the twin city, Rameses, the remains have not yet been identified. We know, however, from the inscriptions, that it was in the immediate vicinity of Tanis, and that it was built perhaps in part by Seti I., but mainly by his son Rameses II. It lends additional interest to the discovery of Pithom that the city is found to be built almost entirely of brick. It was in brick-making that the Israelites are here said (Exodus ch. 1:14; 5:7-19) to have been employed. G. R.

The discovery of Pithom by Naville is of incomparable value: 1. In attesting the truth of the sacred narrative in the Hebrew (’treasure’ or ‘store’ city) and Septuagint (‘fortified’) versions, and in its local coloring of bricks with or without straw, with stubble, and of the use of mortar. 2. In identifying Rameses II., ’the Pharaoh of the oppression,’ as the builder of Pithom. 3. In disclosing valuable monumental records, especially the ‘Stone of Pithom,’ relating to its subsequent history. 4. In identifying the site with Heroopolis and Ero, the Greek and Roman towns. 5. In monumentally showing Succoth to have been the civil name of Pithom, and that Pithom-Succoth was the capital of the district, which was Succoth. 6. In its relation to the geography of the Exodus route and ’the land of Goshen,’ Brugsch and Ebers representing German, Revillout French, Pleyte Dutch opinion, have accepted the site disclosed by Naville as that of Pithom. So have Maspero, Rawlinson, Poole, Miss Edwards, Tomkins, Sayce, and the Americans, J. A. Paine, A. H. Kellogg, and H. C. Trumbull. The explorations of São Tanis (the biblical Zoan) by Petrie, although in comparative incipiency, have proved Avaris, the long-lost capital of the Shepherd Kings, to have been there; have disclosed the ‘colossus of colossi,’ the most gigantic of all statues known to man (that of Rameses II.), and the wall of the great temple; statues, pylons, sphinxes, tablets, Ptolemaic and other household and sacred

relics; articles in glass, bronze, porcelain, alabaster, etc.; silver and gold, and even that rare metal in Egypt, iron. W. C. Winslow.