1. AND the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall 2 be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak 3 ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take 4 to them every man a lamb, according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for an household: and if the household be too little for a lamb then shall he and his neighbour next unto his house take one according to the number of the souls; according to every man’s eating ye shall make

5 your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year : ye 6 shall take it from the sheep, or from the goats : and ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month : and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at 7 even. And they shall take of the blood, and put it on the two side posts and on the lintel, 8 upon the houses wherein they shall eat it. And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast 9 with fire, and unleavened bread ; with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire ; its head with its legs and with the inwards 10 thereof. And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning ; but that which remaineth 11 of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire. And thus shall ye eat it ; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand : and ye shall eat it in haste : it 12 is the LORD’s passover. For I will go through the land of Egypt in that night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast ; and against all the gods of Egypt 13 I will execute judgments : I am the LORD. And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are : and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and there shall no 14 plague be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt. And this day shall be unto you for a memorial, and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD : throughout your genera- tions we shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever. 21 Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said unto them, Draw out, and take you 22 lambs according to your families, and kill the passover. And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the bason ; and none of you shall go out of the door of his house until 23 the morning. For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians ; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and 24 will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you. And ye shall observe 25 this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever. And it shall come to pass, when ye be come to the land which the LORD will give you, according as he hath promised, that ye 26 shall keep this service. And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, 27 What mean ye by this service ? that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the LORD’s passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, 28 and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshipped. And the chil- dren of Israel went and did so ; as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron, so did they. 29 And it came to pass at midnight, that the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was 30 in the dungeon ; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians ; and there was a great cry in Egypt ; for there was not 31 a house where there was not one dead. And he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, Rise up, get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel ; and 32 go, serve the LORD, as ye have said. Take both your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, 33 and be gone ; and bless me also. And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, to send 34 them out of the land in haste ; for they said, We be all dead men. And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading troughs being bound up in their clothes upon 35 their shoulders. And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses ; and they 36 asked of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment : and the LORD gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. And they spoiled the Egyptians.

A nobler spectacle of a people’s faith can scarcely be conceived than when, on receiving these ordinances, " the people bowed the head and worshipped" (v. 27). Any attempt at de- scription either of Israel’s attitude or of the scenes witnessed when the Lord, passing through the land " about midnight," smote each firstborn from the only son of Pharaoh to the child of the maidservant and the captive, and even the firstborn of beasts, would only weaken the impression of the majestic silence of Scripture. In that midnight hour did Je- hovah execute " judgment against all the gods of Egypt," showing, as Calvin remarks, how vain and false had been the worship of those who were now so powerless to help. That was also the night of Israel’s birth as a nation : of their creation and adoption as the people of God. 2. Hence the very order of the year was now changed. The month of the Passover (Abib) became henceforth the first of the year. The later Jews had a twofold computation of the year—the ecclesiastical year, which began with the month Abib, or Nisan, and by which all the festivals were arranged; and the civil year, which began in autumn, in the seventh month of the sacred year. A. E.—Moses appointed that Nisan should be the first month; so that this month began the year, as to all the solemnities they observed in honor of God, although they preserved the original order of the months as to buying and selling, and other ordinary affairs. Josephus.

Months of the ECCLESIASTICAL and CIVIL years compared with our months.

| Ecclesiastical Year. | Civil Year. | | — | — | | 1. Nisan or Abib, | 7. part of March and April. | | 2. Jyar or Zif, | 8. " April and May. | | 3. Sivan, | 9. " May and June. | | 9. Kisleu (Chisleu), | 10. " June and July. | | 10. Thebet, | 11. " July and August. | | 11. Sebat, | 12. " Aug. and Sept. | | 12. Adar, | 1. " Sept. and Oct. | | 4. Thammuz, | 2. " Oct. and Nov. | | 5. Ab, | 3. " Nov. and Dec. | | 6. Elul, | 4. " Dec. and Jan. | | 7. Tizri, | 5. " Jan. and Feb. | | 8. Marchesvan, | 6. " Feb. and March. |

As the Jewish years were lunar years, and therefore consisted of only 354 days and 8 hours, they were accommodated to solar years by the addition of a month at the end of the Ecclesiastical year, and this intercalary month, which came after the month Adar, was called Ke-Adar, or the Second Adar. H. C.

Still there remains among the Jews a twofold manner of dating and counting their years. In all matters which relate to the common business of life they retain the old and natural computation, beginning with Tizri or September, so that the first month is the beginning of Autumn; but in religious matters and festivals they follow the injunctions of Moses and begin with Nisan; and this is the legal year, beginning nearly with our month of March, yet not precisely, because we have not their ancient embolisms; for, since twelve circuits of the moon would not equal the sun’s course, they were obliged to make an intercalation. Thence it happens that the month Nisan, in which they celebrated the Passover, begins among the Jews sometimes earlier and sometimes later, according as the intercalation retards it. Calv.

INSTRUCTIONS TO MOSES RESPECTING THE PASSOVER (vs. 3-14).

3-7. The sacrifice was chosen by each household four days before the “Passover” actually took place—most probably in remembrance of the prediction to Abraham, that “in the fourth generation” the children of Israel should come again to the land of Canaan. The sacrifice might be a lamb or a kid of goats, but it must be “without blemish, a male of the first year.” Each lamb or kid should be just sufficient for the sacrificial meal of a company, so that if a family were too small, it should join with another. The sacrifice was offered “between the evenings” by each head of the company, the blood caught in a basin, and some of it “struck” “on the two side-posts and the upper door-post of the houses” by means of “a branch of hysop” (v. 22). A. E.

5. Your lamb shall be without blemish. All the types of the grandest ordinance of the Mosaical dispensation, the feast of the Passover, were accomplished in that day when “Christ our passover was sacrificed for us.” By no undesigned coincidence the two events were made even in time to concur; and the Jews celebrated the passover and consummated all its types, by bringing to his death on the same day, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” The victim was to be a lamb, the most gentle and innocent of all God’s creatures; and therefore the most fitting emblem of “the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world.” It was to be a lamb of the first year, without blemish. If it bore the mark of the slightest deformity, or even deficiency, it would have been a forbidden sacrifice, and a victim unfit to represent him of whom it is said, “we are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” Kit.

6. Keep it until the fourteenth day. The lamb or kid was to be taken from the flock on the tenth day, and kept up and fed by itself till the fourteenth day, when it was to be sacrificed. This was never commanded nor practised afterward. The Rabbins mark four things that were required in the first passover, that were never required afterward: 1. The eating of the lamb in their houses dispersed through Goshen. 2. The taking the lamb on the tenth day. 3. The striking of its blood on the door-posts and lintels of their houses. And 4. Their eating it in haste. These things were not required of the succeeding generations. A. C.—At even. The sacrificial lamb was to be offered “between the evenings” (marginal rendering), that is, according to Jewish tradition, from the time the sun begins to decline to that of its full setting, say, between 3 and 6 o’clock P.M. A. E.

7. Take of the blood, and strike it on the two side-posts.** This was to be done by dipping a bunch of hyssop into the blood, and thus sprinkling it upon the posts, etc. (see ver. 22). That this sprinkling of the blood of the paschal lamb was an emblem of the sacrifice and atonement made by the death of Jesus Christ, is most clearly intimated in the Sacred Writings (1 Pet. 1 : 2 ; Heb. 9 : 13, 14 ; 8 : 10). It is remarkable that no blood was to be sprinkled on the threshold, to teach a reverent regard for the blood of Christ, that men should not tread under foot the Son of GOD, nor count the blood of the covenant wherewith they were sanctified, an unholy thing (Heb. 10 : 29). A. C.

The regular practice under the law was to sprinkle the altar with the blood of the offering (Lev. 1 : 5 ; 4 : 5). But in Egypt, where there was no tabernacle and no altar, each house was the place of offering, and was treated as an altar. Of houses as well as of cities, the door, or gate, was the representative part (see ch. 20 : 10 ; Deut. 5 : 14). The door consisted of lintel, posts, and threshold. Of these the two former only were to be sprinkled, as the blood on the threshold would be liable to be trodden under foot. The sprinkling was significant of atonement and cleansing from sin, for it was to be performed (ver. 22) with hyssop, invariably used in the law when cleansing from sin was symbolized (Lev. 14 : 49 ; Num. 19 : 18). Aff.

It was not enough that the blood of the lamb was shed, but it must be sprinkled; denoting the application of the merits of Christ’s death to our souls; we must receive the atonement (Rom. 5 : 11). It was to be sprinkled with a bunch of hyssop (v. 22), dipped in the basin. The everlasting covenant, like the basin, is the conservatory of this blood, the benefits and privileges purchased by it are laid up for us there; faith is the bunch of hyssop by which we apply the promises to ourselves, and the benefits of the blood of Christ laid up in them. The blood of sprinkling is the saints’ security, in times of common calamity; that is it that marks them for God, pacifies conscience, and gives them boldness of access to the throne of grace, and so becomes a wall of protection round them, and a wall of partition between them and the children of this world. H. — The sprinkling of blood was a representation of the offering of the life, substituted for that of the firstborn in each house, as an expiatory and vicarious sacrifice.

8. In that night.** The night is thus clearly distinguished from the evening when the lamb was slain. It was slain before sunset on the 14th, and eaten after sunset, the beginning of the 15th. Cook. — Roast with fire. Because it could sooner be made ready by roasting than by boiling. This circumstance constituted a marked difference between the Passover-lamb and all the other peace-offerings, the flesh of which was usually boiled, in order to be eaten both by the people and the priests, as something additional even at the paschal solemnity. Wherefore in 2 Chron. 35 : 13, the two kinds of offerings are accurately distinguished: “And they roasted the passover with fire according to the ordinance: but the other holy offerings sod they in pots, and in caldrons, and in pans.” Bush.

Eat the flesh. The paschal lamb was killed, not to be looked upon only, but to be fed upon; so we must by faith make Christ ours, as we do that which we eat, and we must receive spiritual strength and nourishment from him, as from our food, and have delight and satisfaction in him, as we have in eating and drinking, when we are hungry or thirsty (see John 6 : 53-55). H.

Unleavened bread. Leaven, as the cause of fermentation, solution, corruption, was regarded as an emblem of impurity; and therefore unleavened bread, as a type of what God’s redeemed people ought to be, was to be eaten seven days. To be cut off from the people was the penalty of eating leavened bread. The whole feast had thus the name of the feast of unleavened bread; and all leaven was with the most scrupulous care removed from their houses during the days of the feast. Geri.

9. This entire consumption of the lamb constitutes one marked difference between the Passover and all other sacrifices, in which either a part or the whole was burned, and thus offered directly to God. The whole substance of the sacrificed lamb was to enter into the substance of the people, the blood only excepted, which was sprinkled as a propitiatory and sacrificial offering. Another point of subordinate importance is noticed. The lamb was slain and the blood sprinkled by the head of each family: no separate priesthood as yet existed in Israel; its functions belonged from the beginning to the father of the family.

11. With your loins girded.** These instructions are understood by the Jews to apply only to the first Passover, when they belonged to the occasion. There is no trace of their observance at any later time; a striking instance of good sense and power of distinguishing between accidents and substantial characteristics. Each of the directions marks preparation for a journey. Cook.—It is obvious that this injunction as to the manner of eating the Passover applied only to the first time of its celebration in Egypt. The loins were to be girded—the long loose robes bound up round the waist; the sandals on the feet, as was the custom when a long or rough journey was to be undertaken; the staff in the hand, betokening the same purpose; and it was to be eaten in haste, literally, in trepidation or anxiety, as the occasion was fearful and urgent. Aif.

The Lord’s passover. A most important statement. It gives at once the great and most significant name to the whole ordinance. Cook.—It is a feast of passing over in sparing mercy, instituted by the Lord himself, and to be observed by all his people in obedience to his word. The essential parts of this solemnity are the lamb, the time of sacrificing and eating it, the unleavened bread and bitter herbs, the seven days’ feast of unleavened bread. The keeping up from the tenth day was afterward omitted; the domestic observance by the men, women, and children, was succeeded by the celebration at the place which the Lord had chosen (Deut. 16:6) by the men only or chiefly; the lamb was slain by the house-father or the priest; the blood was sprinkled, not on the lintel and posts of the house, but apparently on the altar (2 Chron. 30:16); and the attire and attitude of haste and readiness for travelling were afterward omitted.

Of the three things essential to the salvation of a fallen creature, two are represented by circumcision and the passover, regeneration and redemption. Circumcision denotes the new birth, without indicating any of its fruits. The passover, like all sacrificial feasts, points out not only the act, but the effect of redemption. The slaying of the lamb is the act, being the giving up of the life of one for another: the eating of the sacrifice is the effect, being the reception of the rights and enjoyments recovered on its death. Circumcision was to continue as long as the visible Church was limited to the natural or adopted descendants of Israel: the passover was to be observed until the true Lamb of God should come, of which it was only the type. M.

The primary purpose of this festival was to commemorate Jehovah’s “passing over” the houses of the Israelites when he “passed through” the land of Egypt to slay the first-born in every house. But just as the history of Israel was typical of the whole pilgrimage of man, and as their rescue from Egypt answers to that crisis in the life of God’s redeemed people, ple, at which they are ransomed by the blood of the atonement from the penalty of sin, to which they also are subject, so we trace this wider and higher meaning in every feature of the institution. P. S.

12. I will pass through.** The word rendered “pass through” is wholly distinct from that which means “pass over.” The passing through was in judgment, the “passing over” in mercy. Against all the gods of Egypt. The meaning of this and of the corresponding passage (Num. 33:4) is undoubtedly that the visitation reached the gods of Egypt. The true explanation in this case is that in smiting the firstborn of all living beings, man and beast, God smote the objects of Egyptian worship. It is not merely that the bull and cow and goat and ram and cat were worshipped in the principal cities of Egypt as representatives, or, so to speak, incarnations, of their deities, but that the worship of beasts was universal; every home, every town had its sacred animal, including the lowest forms of animal life; the frog, the beetle, being especial objects of reverence as representing the primeval deities of nature. In fact not a single deity of Egypt was unrepresented by some beast. Cook.

13. See the blood.** A similar mode of expression with that concerning the rainbow (Gen. 9:16). Although the Lord “knoweth His own,” and so far requires no sign, yet still by this strong human mode of expression is the great truth represented that the sign was essential and had a power and meaning in it, and that the atonement which the sacrifice effected was a needful one. The blood, therefore, is by no means merely for a confirmation of the faith of the Israelites. Geri.

When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and there shall no plague destroy you. The grand central truth of all the objective truths here is shadowed forth in that blood of the spotless lamb shed and sprinkled on the door-posts. It has a deep, mysterious meaning and finds its interpretation in the history of Calvary and the cross, far onward yet, even fifteen hundred years, in the history. The blood-marked house is but representative of every soul tenement on earth, the dweller in which—made alive to the impending doom by the voice that cries from Sinai, “whosoever sinneth, him will I blot out from my book,” and by the voice crying from the depths within—hath fled from under the dark thundercloud of wrath, to him who was lifted up on the cross. This blood is not only the central idea of this, but of all the revelations of God. The whole gospel is, in fact, summed up just here, when I see the blood I will pass over.” Blood! blood! this is the one cry of the gospel—the Alpha and the Omega of the gospel. All hope of the divine favor—all strength to resist and conquer sin—all power of a holy life comes from this blood. Is man redeemed? It is because “we have redemption through his blood.” Are any ransomed from sin? “Not by corruptible ransom of silver and gold” are they purchased, “but by the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without spot.” Are these justified? “Being justified by his blood.” Are these cleansed and made holy? “His blood cleanseth from all sin.” Are they, as strangers and wanderers from God, restored? “Ye who sometime were afar off are now made nigh by the blood of Christ.” Have they access to the Father’s presence in prayer? It is because the High Priest hath gone before “sprinkling the blood.” Are they arrayed in spotless robes to appear at the court of the Great King? “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Are sinners cast off at last to eternal death? It is because “they have trampled under foot the blood of the Son of God.” Thus in the gospel revelations, all mercy, compassion, and grace of God, have their ground in that blood. All conviction of sin, all holy desire and emotion in the soul, all strength to overcome sin; as all hope and trust and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, come from that blood. S. R.

14. This passover was ordained by God to be observed by every Israelite at every return of this day of the year; not only because it was to be a standing proof to all future ages of this their deliverance, but also a standing figure or type of a much greater. Bp. Wilson.—As the Israelites were instructed to keep the passover in remembrance of their escape from the Egyptian bondage, so are we required to observe the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, in memory of our deliverance from the yoke of sin. And it is remarkable, that both the Jewish and the Christian rite were enjoined in commemoration of events, which had not yet happened, with the same degree of precision as if they had actually taken place. Polichele.

The redemption of Israel out of Egypt was, as a matter of indisputable fact, accomplished by Moses. It was accomplished on his part reluctantly. It was accomplished, as he believed, in obedience to a divine command. It was accomplished without bloodshed or the drawing of a sword. It was accomplished at once, and without failure or delay. It was accomplished in connection with certain circumstances—such as the institution of the Passover, for example—which gave it a peculiar significance. For fifteen hundred years the Passover was kept, and it was utterly devoid of meaning if it did not point backward to the deliverance out of Egypt. But, unless the record of its institution is altogether untrustworthy, it rested on precisely the same authority as that deliverance itself; and yet that deliverance is the most remarkable event in all history. Every great stage in the historic development of Israel is distinctly announced beforehand. The thraldom in Egypt was announced to Abraham; the deliverance from Egypt was announced to Moses; the establishment of the throne of Judah was announced to David; the captivity was announced to Hezekiah; the return was announced to Jeremiah; the ingathering of the Gentiles was announced to Hosea and to Malachi. The fulfilment of the last elucidates the fulfilment of the others. Hosea’s prophecy was eight centuries before the fact. We dare not, in the face of that, assert that the record of all the others was written after the event to which it referred—to say nothing of such a theory involving so much acquiescence of the nation in the open falsehood of the writers as is absolutely inconceivable. Leathes.

21-27. Directions which, in obedience to the command, Moses gave at the time to the people. This method of composition occurs frequently in the Pentateuch: it involves of course some repetition, from which no very ancient writer would shrink, but it would scarcely have been adopted by a compiler. Moses is ever careful to record first the commands which he receives, and afterward the way in which he executed them. Cook.

21. Families.** No single sacrifice could be offered for the community, because Israel had no existence as a community yet. If Israel was to be reconciled as a whole, that it might escape the coming judgment, it was necessary that each of the separate family-groups into which it was divided should offer for itself the atoning sacrifice, and protect itself from the wrath of the judge with the atoning blood of the victim. When this atoning blood had been smeared upon the lintel and door-posts, the whole house was protected and everything in it; for the entrance represented the entire house. K.

Kill the passover. The lamb was called the paschal or passover lamb; the animal that was to be sacrificed on this occasion got the name of the institution itself. Paul copies the expression (1 Cor. 5:7). Christ our passover (our paschal lamb) is sacrificed for us. A. C.

21-24. The night of the fourteenth day of the month Nisan—that night of grief to the Egyptians—was a night of earnest waiting and of solemn preparation by the Israelites. They had received instructions for its observance in that form in which it was to become a yearly commemorative festival of their deliverance to all generations. It thus, like the great Christian rite of the Lord’s Supper, was instituted previous to the occurrence of the event, the memory of which it was designed to keep alive in coming ages. Intended to be the great national festival of the Israelites, “the Passover” commemorated not only the deliverance wrought for them by their Almighty Protector, but their introduction into an independent national existence, and the solemnities with which it was to be observed were directed to be such as should call up vividly to the mind the remembrance of that event. As each house had its own special deliverance from the calamity which carried wailing into the houses of Egypt, so there was to be in each a domestic celebration. As in this night of emancipation no Israelitish house marked with the blood of the slain lamb was invaded by death, so the sprinkling of the lamb’s blood on the door-posts or the altar was to make, through all time, a part of the commemoration. And they were to eat unleavened cakes, in remembrance of the urgent circumstances which, on that memorable night, had prevented the usual preparation for the making of bread. Kit.

21-24. The provision here made was that the Israelites and whosoever would, should take a lamb, that lamb being typical and significant of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; that lamb they were to kill, and sprinkle its blood upon the lintel, and wherever the destroying angel saw this, from that house he should reverently retire, holding it and its inmates safe and sacred things. This was not that God required blood sprinkled on the lintel to let his messenger know who were his people, and who were Pharaoh’s, but it was to be a typical and significant rite. While it answered the great purpose of distinction for the day, it was to endure as a lasting and expressive lesson book inculcating a great truth, until the fulness of the times should come, when the Passover, like a dim morning star, should be merged in the splendor of the rising and increasing Sun of Righteousness, the Lord Jesus Christ. J. C.

The blood of the paschal lamb did not save the Israelites by being shed, but by being sprinkled. It is not the blood of Christ as shed on Calvary, but as sprinkled on the soul, that saves us from the wrath to come. Kit.—Blood sprinkled on the lintel and door-posts alone was the safety of Israel. Not deeds—not race—not anything inside the house—but wholly the blood outside was safety. There might be doubt or fears within, but those did not weaken the protection. The blood of Jesus is our safety—and it alone. J. C.—The shedding of blood holds forth the great idea of atonement for sin by the substitution of the life of the victim,—which “life is in the blood”—for the forfeited life of the sinner. But you may observe here the exhibition of the mode in which, and the conditions on which, the penitent becomes clothed with the rights of the substitute. This consists simply in sprinkling the blood—nothing else. “For when he seeth the blood the Lord will pass over.” The hyssop branch, with which the blood was struck on the door, is the simple emblem of the appropriating faith which applies the blood to the sin-stained soul. Hence David, under a deep sense of his sinfulness, cries “purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.” The unleavened bread which is to be eaten betokens the sincerity and truth with which the act is to be done. The bitter herbs so specially commanded are a significant reminder, not only of the sorrowful eating of “the fruit of their own doings,” to which they were doomed, but also a warning that redemption by the sprinkled blood may be consistent with many a disagreeable cross and trial. Yea, and the very mode of the eating, with the staff in hand, loins girt, and sandals on the feet—“eating in haste”—is a significant reminder that though they are the redeemed of Jehovah, they are still pilgrims and strangers, as all their fathers were. That they have no abiding city here, but must be up and journeying from the land of Egypt and its bondage to a better country, even the land of which the Lord hath spoken to the fathers. Thus suddenly we come here upon a gospel of full detail, which is henceforth to take the place of that more general and indefinite gospel of salvation by atoning blood which has hitherto been revealed. S. R.

23. When he seeth.** The sign is properly for him, who sees it and judges accordingly; now the blood was seen by Jehovah, as he himself said, and not by the Israelites who were sitting in the houses. And it was just because the blood availed as a sign for Jehovah, that it furnished Israel with a firm ground of confidence. Baum.—The separation between Israel and the Egyptians was not such as to amount to isolation. Goshen would be chiefly, but not exclusively, inhabited by Israelites. These would mingle even in the agricultural districts, but, naturally, much more in the towns, with their Egyptian neighbors. Accordingly, it needed the Paschal provision of the blood to distinguish the houses of the Israelites from those of the Egyptians; while Exodus 3 : 22 seems to imply that they were not only neighbors, but perhaps, occasionally, residents in the same houses. This also accounts for the “mixed multitude” that accompanied Israel at the Exodus, and, later on, in the wilderness, for the presence in the congregation of offspring from marriages between Jewish women and Egyptian husbands. A. E.

21. Observe this thing forever.** The repetition of this solemnity in the return of every year was designed, First, To look backward as a memorial, that in it they might remember what great things God had done for them and their fathers. The word pesach signifies a leap or transition: it is a passing over; for the destroying angel passed over the houses of the Israelites, and did not destroy their first-born. When God brings utter ruin upon his people, he says, I will not pass by them any more (Am. 7 : 8 ; 8 : 2), intimating how often he had passed by them, as now when the destroying angel passed over their houses. Distinguishing mercies lay under peculiar obligations. When a thousand fall at our side and ten thousand at our right hand, and yet we are preserved, and have our lives given us for a prey, this should greatly affect us (Ps. 91 : 7). If the arrow of death has passed by us, passed over us, hit the next to us, and just missed us, we must not say it was by chance that we were preserved, but by the special providence of our God. Old mercies, to ourselves or to our fathers, must not be forgotten, but be had in everlasting remembrance, that God may be praised, our faith in him encouraged, and our hearts enlarged in his service. Secondly, It was designed to look forward as an earnest of the great sacrifice of the Lamb of God in the fulness of time, instead of us and our firstborn; we were obnoxious to the sword of the destroying angel, but Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us, his death was our life, and thus he was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, from the foundation of the Jewish church: Moses kept the passover by faith in Christ, for Christ was the end of the law for righteousness. H.

27. Shall say.** On this is founded the beautiful custom, which has always prevailed among the Israelites in later times, at least since the dispersion, that the son of the house, at an appointed time in the Paschal Supper, shall ask the father of the family, “What meaneth all this?” and the father answers: “We eat this Passover, because the Lord passed over the houses of our fathers in Egypt. We eat these bitter herbs, because the Egyptians made the lives of our fathers bitter in Egypt. We eat this unleavened bread, because our fathers had not time enough to leaven their dough before the Lord appeared and redeemed them. Therefore shall we confess, laud, praise, and magnify him who hath shown unto us and our fathers so great wonders, and hath brought us from bondage into freedom, from sorrow into joy, from darkness into great light.” This is called the “Haggada,” the declaration—explanation. Gerl.

THE FIRST PASSOVER OBSERVED (v. 28).

27,28. And the people bowed the head and worshipped. And the children of Israel went and did so; as the LORD had commanded, so did they.**

From Heb. 11 : 27, 28, we learn that that first Passover evening was another illustration of faith. Noticeably, the writer speaks of both the leaving of Egypt and the keeping of the Passover as illustrating the faith of Moses rather than of the whole people of Israel. “By faith he (Moses) forsook Egypt;” “by faith he (Moses again) kept the Passover.” Moses knew better than they the mighty issues that were pending; the fearful peril they were escaping. The mighty faith of these transactions was his rather than theirs. H. C.

THE TENTH PLAGUE—SMITING OF THE FIRST-BORN (vs. 29, 30).

It was not called forth by either the rod or hand of Moses, nor did it proceed from the water, the earth, or the air; but the hand of Jehovah himself was stretched forth (as he had said, v. 12): “At midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt, and smite all the firstborn in Egypt, both of man and beast, and I will execute judgment against all the gods of the Egyptians, I Jehovah!” In the tenth plague the idea and intention of all the plagues were embodied and fulfilled. It was thought of and announced first (chap. 4 : 22, 23), but it was necessarily the last to appear. If it had been the first to appear, the fact would not have been so completely and universally displayed, that Jehovah was the Lord in the midst of the land (8 : 22), the Lord over the water, the earth, and the air, over gods and men, cattle and plants, and that there was none like him in all the earth (3:14). For this purpose it was necessary that there should be many miracles wrought in the land of Egypt (11:9); and it was also requisite that they should have both sharply defined natural features and an unmistakably miraculous character, in order that freedom of choice might be left for faith or unbelief. But the tenth plague bore upon the face of it a purely supernatural character, and because it was the tenth, i.e. the one which gave a finish and completeness to the whole, it exhibited in a clear and unequivocal manner the design of all the plagues from the very commencement; for the last furnished the key to the entire series. And inasmuch as Pharaoh’s resistance was overcome by the tenth plague, although the hardness of his heart was complete; this fact alone was sufficient to prove that the obstinacy of his refusal had only served to glorify the name of Jehovah, and that the words of Jehovah were fulfilled: “For this cause have I raised thee up, to show in thee my power.” K.

29. All firstborn. The destroying angel selects from each family through the land of Egypt the single victim pointed out; and while with unerring hand he aims this shaft of death, he passes over every habitation of Jacob, marked with the sign appointed by the divine command. Do we not in all this discover the plain operation of that Being, who alone is the God of nature and the Lord of life; whose will controls every element and directs every event? Dr. Graves.—We may suppose that the Israelites had finished the paschal supper, and were awaiting, in awful suspense, the next great event, when the midnight cry of anguish arose through all the land of Egypt. At that moment Jehovah slew the firstborn in every house, from the king to the captive; and, by smiting also all the firstborn of cattle, he “executed judgment on all the gods of Egypt.” P. S.—The circumstance, that it was not merely the firstborn of the god-king Pharaoh and of the sacred animals that were slain, but all the firstborn of man and beast, from the son of Pharaoh who sat upon his throne, to the son of the slave-woman that stood behind the mill, from the Apis that was kept in the temple and worshipped as a god, to the most common and unclean of the beasts, was the most humiliating part of the whole to the gods of Egypt, for it was a practical declaration of the absolute equality of both of them. K.

They had slain the Hebrews’ children, and now God slew theirs. Thus he visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children; and he is not unrighteous who taketh vengeance. It reached from the throne to the dungeon: prince and peasant stand upon the same level before God’s judgments, for there is no respect of persons with him. H.

30. Now God begins to call for the blood they owed him: in one night every house hath a carcass in it; and, which is more grievous, of their firstborn; and, which is yet more fearful, in an instant. No man could comfort other: every man was too full of his own sorrow; helping rather to make the noise of the lamentation more doleful and astonishing. Bp. H.—The blow was universal and irresistible. There was no respect of persons in the indiscriminate destruction of the appointed victims. All the firstborn, from man in the vigor of manhood to the infant which had just been born, died in that hour of death. The stay, the comfort, the delight of every family was annihilated at a single stroke! And how natural was it for them in such a scene of carnage to fancy that they were all doomed to destruction, and that the work of death would not cease till they had all perished? Bash.—The horrors of this night may be better conceived when we call to mind that the Egyptians were noted for the wild and frantic wailings with which they lamented their dead. Screaming women rush about with dishevelled hair, troops of people assemble in tumultuous commiseration around the house, where a single corpse is laid out—and now every house and every family had its victim. Hebrew tradition has increased the horror of the calamity, asserting that the temples were shaken, the idols overthrown, the sacred animals, chosen as the firstborn, involved in the universal destruction. Milman.—Is this a dreadful picture? Yet it is but a type of what must be—a shadow merely of the wrath to come to all the unsprinkled souls’ tenements in eternity. Ye that affect to think so lightly of death and eternity! see here this shadow and gather the elementary ideas of what shall be, from what has been, already, under the government of God. Standing, in imagination, amid these complicated horrors in Egypt—the groans of the dying, mingling with the shrieks of the living, throughout a whole empire:—all earthly pomp and power levelled to mingle its unavailing cries with the lowest and meanest in a common woe—here see what it is for “God to whet his glittering sword and his hand to take hold on vengeance.” S. R.

But on that eventful Passover night, what a contrast lay there side by side between the homes of Israel and the dwellings of Egypt— the Angel of God’s mercy presiding at the tables of the one, but the Angel of Death bursting open every door and singling out every first-born in the other; the quiet repose of faith smiling over the domestic scenes of the one, but the agonies of death and the wails of smitten hearts desolating the other! That was indeed a lesson in faith, witnessing to the potency of the blood of sprinkling, signifying that under its wing there was pardoning mercy, and “the peace of God that passeth all understanding.” H. C.

31-36. How soon hath God changed the note of this tyrannical people! Egypt was never so stubborn in denying passage to Israel, as now importunate to entreat it: Pharaoh did not more force them to stay before, than now to depart: whom lately they would not permit, now they hire to go. Their rich jewels of silver and gold were not too dear for them, whom they hated; how much rather would they to send them away wealthy, than to have them stay to be their executors! Their love to themselves obtained of them the enriching of their enemies; and now they are glad to pay them well, for their old work, and their present journey: God’s people had stayed like slaves, they go away like conquerors, with the spoil of those that hated them; armed for security, and wealthy for maintenance. Bp. II.

31,32. Called for Moses and Aaron.** As Moses had before this withdrawn from the presence of Pharaoh, with the determination to see his face no more, this must be understood to mean that Pharaoh sent his servants to Moses and Aaron, and communicated his message to them. This was a striking fulfilment of Moses’ previous declaration (ch. 11:8), and clearly proving that he then spake under a divine impulse; “And all these thy servants shall come down unto me, and bow down themselves unto me, saying, Get thee out, and all the people that follow thee.” Bush.

The messengers were undoubtedly chief officials; they bowed themselves before Moses, who was now recognized as “very great,” and delivered their master’s message, which granted in express terms all that Moses had ever demanded. And bless me also. Here Pharaoh’s humiliation reaches its extreme point. He is reduced by the terrible calamity not only to grant all the demands made of him freely and without restriction, but to crave the favor of a blessing from those whom he had despised, rebuked, thwarted, and finally driven from his presence under the threat of death. Those with whom were the issues of life and death must, he felt, have the power to bless or curse effectually. G. R.

Yet the sequel shows clearly that even now he was not penitent. He submitted not in heart, nor sincerely humbled himself before God. He let them go by constraint and most unwillingly. He would still have held out if he had dared, and he yielded only because he could oppose no longer. He made a forced show of obedience, but his heart was as hard and rebellious as ever.

33. And the Egyptians were urgent.** The same word in the original with that which is, for the most part, applied to the hardening (strengthening) of Pharaoh’s heart, implying a most vehement, pressing urgency. Ps. 105:38, “Egypt was glad when they departed; for the fear of them fell upon them.” Jerus. Targ. “The Egyptians said, If Israel tarry one hour, lo, all the Egyptians are dead men.” For aught they knew, the plague they had experienced might be but the precursor of another still more dreadful, that would sweep off the whole population in a mass. Bush.

35,36. The Israelites then did what Jehovah had previously commanded them to do: they asked the Egyptians for articles of gold and silver (trinkets and jewels) and for clothes (festal clothing). And Jehovah caused his people to find favor in the eyes of the Egyptians, so that they gave without hesitation whatever was demanded. K.—36. Spoiled the Egyptians. This was in fulfilment of the promise made to Abraham (Gen. 15:14), “They shall come out with great substance” Israel came into Egypt few in numbers; but they go out from the land of their oppressors greatly increased, mighty, and formidable; laden with the spoils of their cruel oppressors, the well-earned reward of the labors of many years, and of much sorrow. In allusion, perhaps, to this event, God says by the prophet Ezekiel (ch. 39:10), “And they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob them that robbed them, saith the Lord God.” Bush.

There is not a word in the text about borrowing or lending. The Hebrews demanded, and the Egyptians in their panic encouraged them to demand, the articles mentioned. The spoiling of Egypt was but the right of Israel, who had been so long spoiled of just wages by servile oppression. It is remarkable how prominent a part this circumstance, the enriching of Israel at the cost of the Egyptians, has played since the first announcement of the Exodus to Abraham: compare Gen. 15:14; ch. 3:21, 22; 11:2, 3, in which latter place it would almost appear that the process must have begun even before the last plague. It was regarded all the way through as a lawful booty gained from enemies, who had long oppressed and defrauded them. Alf.

Israel required these things for their religious worship; and they could no more depart without them than without their cattle, as these “jewels of silver and jewels of gold” were to serve in forming a sanctuary for the people’s worship, and were under their circumstances quite needful. Gerl.—Although the quantity of golden ornaments required to make the golden calf must have been far from inconsiderable, and this calf was subsequently destroyed (Ex. 32:20); we read shortly afterward (Ex. 35:21, seq.), that the whole community, both men and women, brought “clasps and earrings, signet rings, necklaces, and all sorts of trinkets of gold,” as a free-will offering toward the erection and furnishing of the tabernacle. Let any one think for a moment what a mass of gold must have been used in connection with the tabernacle, when the beams were all plated with gold, and the articles of furniture were either made of solid gold or at least covered with it, and he will be obliged to admit not only that the quantity of gold in the possession of the Israelites was extraordinary, but that if we were not acquainted with the circumstance narrated here, it would be incredible and inconceivable. K.

In this history is typically represented to us the condition of the Church of the Lord among the people of the earth at all times. The people of God are really free, and called to serve their Lord. For a while the Lord allows them to suffer oppression, under which they sigh; but at last he leads them forth from their captivity, inflicting heavy punishment on their oppressors, and with the spoil taken from their enemies may they now glorify their Lord. Hence the intellectual culture which the Christian Church learnt from heathen antiquity was rightly called by the fathers of the Church, “The spoils of Egypt.” Gerl.

Among the various festivals of the Jewish Church, one only was distinctly historical. In the feast of the Pascha or Passover, the scene of the flight of the Israelites, its darkness, its hurry, its confusion, was acted year by year, as in a living drama. In part it is still so acted throughout the Jewish race; in all its essential features (some of which have died out everywhere else) it is enacted, in the most lively form, by the solitary remnant of that race which, under the name of Samaritan, celebrates the whole Paschal sacrifice, year by year, on the summit of Mount Gerizim. So has lived on for centuries the tradition of the Deliverance from Egypt; and so it lives on still, chiefly in the Hebrew race, but, in part, in the Christian Church also. Alone of all the Jewish festivals, the Passover has outlasted the Jewish polity, has overleaped the boundary between the Jewish and Christian communities. The Paschal Lamb, in deed or in word, is become to us symbolical of the most sacred of all events. Jew and Christian both celebrate what is to a certain extent a common festival; even the most sacred ordinance of the Christian religion is, in its outward form, a relic of the Paschal Supper, accompanied by hymn and thanksgiving, in the upper chamber of a Jewish household. A. P. S.

The Divine Legation of Moses.

When eighty years old, an age which according to the present proportion of life may be fairly reckoned at 60 or 65, when the fire of ambition is usually burnt out and the active spirit of adventure subsided, entirely unattended, Moses appears again in Egypt, and boldly undertakes the extraordinary enterprise of delivering the people of Israel from their state of slavery, and establishing them as a regular and independent commonwealth. To effect this he had first to obtain a perfect command over the minds of the people, now scattered through the whole land of Egypt, their courage broken by long and unintermitted slavery, habituated to Egyptian customs and even deeply tainted with Egyptian superstitions; he had to induce them to throw off the yoke of their tyrannical masters, and follow him in search of a remote land, only known by traditions many centuries old as the residence of their forefathers. Secondly, he had to overawe and induce to the surrender of their whole useful slave population, not merely an ignorant and superstitious people, but the king and the priesthood of a country where science had made considerable progress, and where the arts of an impostor would either be counteracted by similar arts, or instantly detected and exposed to shame and ridicule. Milman.

Moses was either a true prophet, an enthusiast, a dupe, or an impostor. That he was not an enthusiast, may be argued from his learning; he was versed in all the learning of Egypt—from his education among the courtiers of Pharaoh—from the diffidence with which he received the first annunciation of his mission—from the admirable suitableness of his law to the accomplishment of the object proposed— the knowledge therein displayed of human nature—the connection of laws politically necessary with religion. He could not have been a dupe; for if the appearance in the burning bush had not been real—if he had been deceived in the evidences of his mission—if the miracles wrought to convince him that he was the chosen prophet of God had been only natural phenomena, he could not have inferred from them that he was to be the legislator and deliverer of the Jews. Neither was he an impostor. An impostor would not have chosen to suffer affliction with a degraded race, rather than to indulge in the gayeties and fascinations of a court—an impostor would not have exposed himself to the danger of death, by vindicating the cause of the oppressed—he would not, if banished to a desert be contented with his lot—forget his schemes of ambition, intermarry among the natives of an obscure province, and calmly sink into the condition of a shepherd. Even if he were at length to rouse from this strange lethargy, and resolve to deliver his countrymen or perish in the attempt, an impostor would have proceeded with some address and policy—he would not enter abruptly into the presence of an absolute sovereign and peremptorily insist on the liberation of a race of “useful slaves:” neither would an impostor commit himself by predicting a series of miraculous judgments if these slaves were not permitted to emigrate. If Moses, too, had been any of these, he could not have conquered armies without fighting, or impressed a whole nation with imaginary terrors—or guided or fed a whole nation for forty years in the wilderness;—he could not have compelled and he could not have persuaded the Egyptians and their king to resign their dominion over the Israelites, unless he had been possessed of powers more than human. That is, he was a true prophet—he wrought miracles—he was the character he professed to be. The mere fact, that Moses was not a true prophet, and yet delivered the Israelites, would be a much greater miracle than any he is related to have performed. G. T.

POINTS OF HISTORY (Recapitulation).

Altogether, the arguments in favor of the nineteenth dynasty being that which held the throne at the time of the events recorded in Exodus seem to preponderate considerably over those which can be adduced in favor of the eighteenth. The eighteenth was too powerful and warlike to have feared invasion, or to have regarded Israel as a danger. It built no “store cities.” It was unacquainted with the name Rameses. It did not hold its court at Tans. It contained neither king nor prince of the name of Sethos (Seti). The nineteenth was differently situated. It combined the various particulars to which the eighteenth was a stranger. Moreover, it terminated in such a time of weakness as might have been expected to follow the calamities recorded in Exodus; while the eighteenth was glorious to its very close, and gave no indication of diminished greatness.

On the whole it would seem to be most probable that the Israelites, having come into Egypt in the reign of Apophis (Apepi), the last Shepherd King, who was a thoroughly Egyptianized Asiatic, remained there as peaceable subjects under the great and warlike eighteenth dynasty for some three hundred years, gradually, as the memory of Joseph’s benefits faded, suffering more and more oppression, but multiplying in spite of it, till at length a change of dynasty occurred, and with it a change of policy in respect of them.

Moderate ill-usage was succeeded by the harshest possible treatment; their “lives were made bitter with hard bondage.” The “new king who knew not Joseph” (Exod. 1:8) is, perhaps, in the mind of the writer, rather Sethos I, than Rameses I, who reigned but a year and four months. Sethos, threatened on his north-eastern frontier by the Hittites, and fearing lest the Hebrews should join them, devised the plans ascribed to the “new king” in Exod. 1—set them to build “store cities, Pithom and Rameses,” the latter named probably after his son; when this had no effect, sought to check their increase by means of the midwives; and finally required that all their male offspring should be thrown into the Nile. There is nothing in the character of Seti I, as represented upon his monuments, to render these severities improbable. He was a good son and a good father, but an implacable enemy and a harsh ruler. His treatment of prisoners taken in war was cruel beyond the wont of his time, his campaigns were sanguinary, and his temper fierce and resentful. If Moses was born under Seti I, and bred up by his daughter, the king under whom he found himself when he grew to manhood, and from whom he fled to the land of Midian, must have been Rameses II. Seti associated his son Rameses when he was about twelve years of age, and shortly afterward he practically transferred to him the reins of power. Rameses II, claims to have held the throne for at least sixty-seven years, and was assigned sixty-six by Manetho. His reign is the longest of all the Egyptian reigns, except that of Phiops. He was a king likely to have continued the “hard bondage” of the Israelites, for he was the most indefatigable of builders, and effected the greater number of his constructions by the instrumentality of forced labor. Lenormant says that “during his reign thousands of captives must have died under the rod of the taskmaster, or have fallen victims to overwork or privations of every description;” and that “in all his monuments there was not, so to speak a single stone which had not cost a human life.” It was the sight of oppression such as this which provoked the indignation of Moses, and led to the rash act which caused him to quit Egypt and fly to Midian. So long as Rameses II, lived, the exile felt that he could not return. It must have been weary waiting for the space of forty years or more, while the great Pharaoh made his expeditions, excavated his canal and erected his numerous buildings. The weariness of prolonged exile shows itself in the name given by Moses to his eldest son: “He called his name Gershom; for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.” At length, “in process of time”—after a reign which exceeded sixty-six years—“the king of Egypt died” (Exod. 2:23); and Moses, divinely informed of the fact (Exod. 3:19), returned to Egypt to his brethren.

If Seti I, be the king who commenced the oppression, and Rameses II, the monarch from whom Moses fled, the Pharaoh whom he found seated in the throne upon his return must have been Meneptah. The character of this king, as depicted in the Egyptian monuments, bears a considerable resemblance to that of the adversary of Moses. He was proud, vainglorious, disinclined to expose his own person in war, yet ready enough to send his soldiers into positions of peril. The cruelties that he sanctioned in his Libyan war are worthy of the monarch who, when a subject people complained of their burdens, met the complaint by making their burdens heavier. He appears in Egyptian history as the weak successor of two powerful monarchs; he has one military success, due not to himself, but to his generals, after which his reign is inglorious and closes in disaster. Meneptah, like his father, commonly held his court at Tanis. It would be there, “in the field of Zoan,” that Moses and Aaron confronted him and wrought their “wonders.” The struggle, the departure, the pursuit, the disaster in the Red Sea, may belong to the king’s sixth year; and two years afterward he may have succumbed to revolutionary movements consequent upon the losses which he suffered in the Red Sea catastrophe. His reign certainly ended amid clouds and darkness, and was followed by a period of civil disturbance, terminating in bloodshed and anarchy. The troubles of this period, described in the “Great Harris Papyrus,” together with the remarkable successes of Rameses III., second monarch of the twentieth dynasty, would fall into the period passed by Israel in the “Wilderness of the Wanderings,” and would thus naturally obtain no direct mention in the sacred narrative. Rameses may, however, have been the “hornet” which God sent before Israel to break the power of the Canaanites and Hittites (Exod. 23:28), and render the conquest of Palestine more easy. He seems certainly to have made at least one great expedition into Asia, and to have reduced under his sway the whole tract between “the river of Egypt” and the Euphrates. Had the Israelites been in possession of Palestine at the time, he must have come in contact with them, and have seriously interfered with their independence. As it was, his Syrian wars, by weakening the Canaanite nations, paved the way for the victories of Joshua and the Israelite occupation of the “Land of Promise.”

The depressed state of Egypt between the death of Rameses III. and the accession of the first Sheshonk accounts for the absence of all mention of the Egyptians from the Books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel. G. R.

Lev. 23 5 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, is the LORD’s 6 passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto 7 the LORD: seven days ye shall eat unleavened bread. In the first day ye shall have an holy 8 convocation: ye shall do no servile work. But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work. Nu. 28 19 Ye shall offer an offering made by fire, a burnt offering unto the LORD; two young bullocks, and one ram, and seven he-lambs of the first year: they shall be unto you 20 without blemish: and their meal offering, fine flour mingled with oil: three tenth parts shall 21 ye offer for a bullock, and two tenth parts for the ram; a several tenth part shall thou offer 22 for every lamb of the seven lambs: and one he-goat for a sin offering, to make atonement for 23 you. Ye shall offer these beside the burnt offering of the morning, which is for a continual 24 burnt offering. After this manner ye shall offer daily, for seven days, the food of the offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD: it shall be offered beside the continual burnt 25 offering, and the drink offering thereof. And on the seventh day ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work.

Lev. 23 9 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and 10 say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest : 11 and he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you : on the morrow after the 12 sabbath the priest shall wave it. And in the day when ye wave the sheaf, ye shall offer a he- 13 lamb without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the LORD. And the meal offering thereof shall be two tenth parts of an ephah of fine flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto the LORD for a sweet savour : and the drink offering thereof shall be of 14 wine, the fourth part of an hin. And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor fresh ears, until this selfsame day, until ye have brought the oblation of your God : it is a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.

12 43 And the LORD said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the ordinance of the passover : 44 there shall no alien eat thereof : but every man’s servant that is bought for money, when 45 thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof. A sojourner and an hired servant shall 46 not eat thereof. In one house shall it be eaten ; thou shalt not carry forth aught of the flesh 47 abroad out of the house ; neither shall ye break a bone thereof. All the congregation of 48 Israel shall keep it. And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it ; and he 49 shall be as one that is born in the land : but no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof. One law shall be to him that is homeborn ; and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you.

13 5 And it shall be when the LORD shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, which he swore unto thy fathers to give thee, a land flowing with milk and honey, that thou shalt keep this service in 6 this month. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh day shall be a 7 feast to the LORD. Unleavened bread shall be eaten throughout the seven days ; and there shall no leavened bread be seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee, in 8 all thy borders. And thou shalt tell thy son in that day, saying, It is because of that which 9 the LORD did for me when I came forth out of Egypt. And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the law of the LORD may be in 10 thy mouth : for with a strong hand hath the LORD brought thee out of Egypt. Thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in its season from year to year.

De. 16 1 Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover unto the LORD thy God : for 2 in the month of Abib the LORD thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night. And thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto the LORD thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place 3 which the LORD shall choose to cause his name to dwell there. Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it ; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of afflic- tion ; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste : that thou mayest remember 4 the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life. And there shall be no leaven seen with thee in all thy borders seven days ; neither shall any of the flesh, 5 which thou sacrificest the first day at even, remain all night until the morning. Thou mayest 6 not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates, which the LORD thy God giveth thee : but at the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to cause his name to dwell in, there thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou 7 camest forth out of Egypt. And thou shalt roast and eat it in the place which the LORD thy 8 God shall choose : and thou shalt turn in the morning, and go unto thy tents. Six days thou shalt eat unleavened bread : and on the seventh day shall be a solemn assembly to the LORD thy God ; thou shalt do no work therein.

[All omitted verses are repetitions.]

Exodus, ch. 12th, 13th, contain a record of the circumstances under which the Passover was instituted, and of the events after- ward commemorated in its subsequent annual celebration. No good reason can be given why the Passover alone of the three annual feasts should have been represented to have been the only one instituted in Egypt, unless this was really the case. In all subsequent laws the three feasts are mentioned together as of com- mon obligation. All the subsequent laws relating to the feasts directly connect the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread with the ex- odus. All the later laws are built upon the law in Ex. 12 : 13 ; and presuppose it ; the connec- tion of the Passover with the exodus is explic- itly declared, and that in laws which are dis- tinctly said to have been written by Moses him- self. W. H. G.

Lev. 23 : 5-8. In these verses the Passover or Paschal Supper and the feast of Unleavened Bread are plainly spoken of as distinct feasts.

The two days of holy convocation strictly belonged to the latter. But the two names, in common usage, became convertible. Clark. —The Passover was immediately followed by the feast of Unleavened Bread, which lasted seven days, so that the two together seemed to make one feast of eight days, and were in fact popularly so considered, the names being often interchanged, so that the Passover day was sometimes considered as the first day of the feast of Unleavened Bread, and the whole was often called the Passover Feast. The first and last days of these seven were to be kept as Sabbaths, save that only servile labor was interdicted which allowed food to be cooked. But no suspension of labor was required on the intermediate five days, which were distinguished chiefly by the abstinence from leavened bread, and by the unusual number of offerings at the tabernacle or temple, and of sacrifices for sin. The sixteenth of Abib, or the second day of Unleavened Bread, was distinguished by the offering of a barley sheaf as an introduction to the barley-harvest, accompanied by a particular sacrifice. This observance took place after they had occupied the land of Canaan. Bush. —At this feast, in addition to the abstention from leaven—itself of sacrificial significance—a peculiar ritual was ordered to be observed. Every day, after the offering of the customary burnt-offering, a further offering by fire was made. Two bullocks, a ram, and seven lambs, with their accompanying meal and drink-offerings, were to constitute the festal burnt-offering, and one goat the sin-offering; these offerings being repeated every day of the feast. Cave.

The reason why seven days were spent in commemorating the historical events of one day is to be found in the solemn character of the festival which was observed in honor of this one day. Seven days were required for a full realization of the character of the festival, a perfect exhibition of the idea which it embodied. But as the eating of the Paschal Lamb was the one indivisible basis of the whole festival, and did not admit of repetition, while the festival itself was to last for seven days; this could only be accomplished by continuing for seven days the other essential element of the Paschal meal—viz., the eating of unleavened bread. This was the sole reason why unleavened bread was eaten for seven days, at the subsequent commemoration of the festival. K.

At the original institution the Israelites were commanded to eat the Passover with their loins girt, their shoes on their feet, and their staff in their hand; but this appears to have been enjoined only in consideration of the circumstances in which they were then placed, and like the sprinkling of the blood on the doorposts seems afterward to have been discontinued. The only permanent accompaniments of the feast appear to have been the unleavened bread and the bitter herbs with which the lamb was to be eaten. So strict was the prohibition regarding leaven, that they were ordered to make the most careful search for it in their several dwellings before the slaying of the Paschal Lamb; so that it might not be killed upon leaven (as the expression literally is in the passage Ex. 34:25), that there might be nothing of this about them at the time of the sacrifice. And the prohibition extended throughout the whole of the seven days during which the feast lasted. P. F.

Ex. 13:7. No leaven seen. Not only no leaven must be eaten, but none must be seen in all their quarters. Accordingly the Jews’ usage was, before the feast of the Passover, to cast all the leavened bread out of their houses: they either burned it, or buried it, or broke it small and scattered it in the wind; they searched diligently with lighted candles in all the corners of their houses lest any leaven should remain. The care and strictness enjoined in this matter were designed (1) To make the feast the more solemn, and consequently the more taken notice of by their children, who would ask, “Why is so much ado made?” (2) To teach us how solicitous we should be to put away from us all sin (1 Cor. 5:7). H. —In the absence of leaven there was a symbolical meaning. Whether the taste of the bread was thereby improved or injured is not taken into consideration. Leaven is dough in the course of fermentation. But fermentation is corruption, the destruction of the natural condition. Hence from a symbolical point of view all fermentation, being an alteration of the form given to the material by the creative hand of God, is a representation of moral corruption and depravity. K.

In the arrangements of the Mosaic economy leaven was always the symbol of corruption, and its use in any offering laid upon the altar of God was prohibited with the utmost strictness. The unleavened bread eaten for seven days represented the separation of Israel as God’s elect people from worldliness and sin. They realized the holiness of their calling, and devoting themselves to it they began the year. Such was the leading import of the feast of Unleavened Bread, and such the main lesson which from generation to generation it was intended to convey to Israel. Milligan.

Ex. 12 : 46. Neither shall ye break a bone thereof. Of course this did not mean that it was not to be cut up for the purpose of eating. The lamb was to be put upon the table whole. The unity, of which the undivided lamb was a representation, was communicated in a certain sense to those who ate of it. While eating of the one perfect lamb as of a provision made by God, eaten at the table of God by intimate associates of God, they were thereby linked together as one body, being all partakers of equal fellowship with God. K. —What God commanded as to the lamb was fulfilled in the person of his only-begotten Son; that the truth corresponding with its type and the substance with its shadow, might show that God would be reconciled to his people by no other blood than Christ’s. When the evangelist quotes it (John 19 : 33), he takes it for granted that thus was typically shown what God would bestow by his Son. Hence it came to pass that He was distinguished by this visible mark, which proved Him to be the true Passover. But, in order that no bone of Christ’s should be broken, God’s providence wonderfully interfered. Calv.—A special providence secured that his body, after it had received the stroke of death, should be dealt with as a sacred thing, and be preserved free from mutilation or violence—the sign and token of its preciousness in the sight of the Father, and of the completeness of the redemption it had been given to provide. But this Saviour, even in death whole and undivided, must also be received as such by his people. No more in their experience than in his own person can he be divided. He is in the fulness of his perfected redemption the one bread of life; and by partaking of this in a simple and confiding faith—thus but no otherwise—do sinners become in him one bread and one body—possessors of his life and fellow-heirs of his glory. P. F.

The Wave-sheaf (Lev. 23 : 9-11).

The second day of the feast was also characterized by an additional act, not a little curious. Being the time of early harvest, a sheaf of the first-fruits was brought to the priest, who “waved” it before the Lord, presenting at the same time a lamb for a burnt-offering together with a portion of meal and wine. Cave.—The presentation to the Lord of a sheaf of barley, which took place on the second day of the feast, and was done by waving it before the Lord, accompanied by a burnt-offering with its meal-offering, was expressive of that sense of sin and renewed dedication of heart and life to God, which was proper to such a season. P. F.—From this day, “Wave-sheaf day” we may call it, the seven weeks of Pentecost were counted. J. M. G.

Israel was an agricultural nation. An abundant harvest was the highest token of God’s watchful love; and more than any other offering did the presentation of the first sheaf express the nation’s conviction that it owed to God all its worldly substance, and that it was bound to dedicate the first and the best of that substance to him again. The first week of the new year was the first-fruits of the whole year to follow; the first sheaf of barley the first-fruits, not of the barley only, but of the whole corn harvest about to be cut down. The offering of the first sheaf thus stood in a close and beautiful relation to the whole services of which it formed part. It expressed the thankful dedication to the Almighty of all gifts related to the sustenance of life, which he had bestowed on Israel. By eating the unleavened bread they said, “We are not our own;” and now they added the declaration, “We have nothing that we can call our own.” So the followers of Jesus, with themselves, also yield all that belongs to them to that Redeemer who has purchased them with his own precious blood. They dedicate to him what they have as well as what they are. “What shall we render unto the Lord for all his benefits?” is the constant language of their souls. Such is, or ought to be, the fulfilment in the followers of Jesus of Israel’s Passover and first great annual feast. Milligan.

Who Could not and Who Could Eat the Passover.

Ex. 12 40 Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, which they sojourned in Egypt, was 41 four hundred and thirty years. And it came to pass at the end of four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the LORD 42 went out from the land of Egypt. It is a night to be much observed unto the LORD for bringing them out from the land of Egypt: this is that night of the LORD, to be much observed of all the children of Israel throughout their generations. 50 Thus did all the children of Israel, as the LORD commanded Moses and Aaron, so 51 did they. And it came to pass the selfsame day, that the LORD did bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts.

13 3 And Moses said unto the people, Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand the LORD brought you out from this place: there shall no leavened bread be eaten. This day ye go forth in the month Abib.

12 37 And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children. And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle. And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it was not leavened; because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry, neither had they prepared for themselves any victual.

No. 33 3 And they journeyed from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month; on the morrow after the passover the children of Israel went out with an high hand in the sight of all the Egyptians, while the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn, which the LORD had smitten among them: upon their gods also the LORD executed judgments. And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses, and pitched in Succoth.

40,41. The length of their stay in Egypt is here clearly and unequivocally stated to have been 430 years: “Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.” K.—The statement of Moses in verse 41 is made in the most formal and precise terms, with the express purpose of fixing the length of the sojourn permanently upon the national mind. Cook.—The evidence is conclusive that the abode in Egypt lasted 430 years. This is the natural sense of Ex. 12: 40, and no one would ever think of extracting a different meaning from it but for reasons outside of the verse itself. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were not “children of Israel,” that their sojourning should be included; and the verse makes no allusion to Canaan, but only to Egypt. In Gen. 15: 13 the seed of Abraham were to be strangers in a land not their own, where they would be reduced to bondage and suffer affliction. W. H. G.

The LXX. add to the passage “and in the land of Canaan.” The Samaritan recension adds yet another clause: “And the sojourn of the children of Israel, and of their fathers, in the land of Canaan and in the land of Egypt.” These variations from the original are now almost universally regarded as interpolations, intended to obviate a chronological difficulty. D. M.—Had the clause inserted by the LXX. existed in the Hebrew original, there is no assignable ground on which we can imagine it left out. There is a readily conceivable ground for the insertion of the clause by the LXX. in their anxiety to harmonize their chronology with the Egyptian system prevalent in their day. Further, the clause has the appearance of an insertion, being irrelevant to the narrative, which is naturally concerned at this point with Egypt and with Egypt only. The Samaritan version may appear at first sight to lend the Septuagint confirmation; but a little examination shows the contrary. The Samaritan translator has the Septuagint before him, but is dissatisfied with the way in which his Greek predecessor has amended the Hebrew text. His version is an amendment of the Greek text in two points. First, he sees that the name “children of Israel” could not properly be given to any but the descendants of Jacob, and therefore he inserts the clause “and of their fathers.” Secondly, he observes that the LXX. have inverted the historical order of the sojourns in Egypt and in Canaan, placing that in Egypt first. This he corrects by a transposition. No one can suppose that he derived his emendations from the Hebrew. He gave his readers, not what Moses had said, but what, in his opinion, he ought to have said. With respect to Paul’s statement to the Galatians (3: 17), it is to be borne in mind that he wrote to Greek-speaking Jews, whose only Bible was the Septuagint Version, and that he could not but follow it unless he was prepared to intrude on them a chronological discussion, which would in no way have advanced his argument. His argument is that the Law, having been given long after the covenant made with Abraham, could not disannul it; how long after was of no consequence. G. R.—In the New Testament Stephen’s speech (Acts 7: 6) recognizes 400 years as the period when the seed of Abraham should be in bondage and evil entreated, terms which could only apply to Egypt. Cook.

In the prophecy of Gen. 15: 13, 14 [vol. 1., p. 325, where this subject is also treated] but one land is spoken of and but one people; this people is to afflict Israel for four hundred years; it is then to be judged; and after the judgment, Israel is to “come out,” to come out, moreover, with great substance. Nothing is said that can by any possibility allude to the Canaanites, or the land of Canaan. One continuous affliction in one country and by one people, lasting—in round numbers—four hundred years, is announced with the utmost plainness. G. R.—Two [other] considerations support the authority of the Hebrew text. The arrival in Egypt was on a definite date. But none such can be attached to the arrival of Abraham in Palestine, as no locality is mentioned. And it is a remarkable coincidence, that the 15th of Abib, on each of the years we have determined, fell on the same day of the week, in accordance with the expression, “the selfsame day.” The second proof is the fact that the Bible (1 Chron. 7: 8) contains the genealogies of Kohath, of Gershom, of Pharez, of Ephraim, and of Bela the son of Benjamin, in each of which fourteen generations occur from Abraham to the time of Moses. This allows forty years for a generation, a period that is fully coincident with genealogical requirements. Conder.—There is a growing agreement on the part of expositors of the Old Testament to adhere to the reiterated statement of the Hebrew text, making the sojourn in Egypt four hundred or (exactly) four hundred and thirty years, and to reject the Septuagint emendation, “in Egypt and the land of Canaan.” This accords with the ten (or eleven) generations which are given (1 Chron. 7 : 22-27) as the number from Ephraim to Joshua. It corresponds much more easily to the alleged increase in Egypt. The difficulties admit of explanation. This interval is also thought to be confirmed by an inscription found at San by Mariette Bey, making the interval from Rameses II, back to a certain Shepherd King, Set, four hundred years. S. C. B.

42. The immediate effect of the death of the firstborn was exactly such as had been calculated. It was a strange act of faith, when an entire nation stood in the dead of the night awake, ready for a journey, in the conviction that a certain judgment was to be inflicted by the hand of Heaven, and that this infliction would infallibly insure their departure from the house of bondage. In that conviction much labor had been undergone, and large preparations completed—for we may conceive that it was no light matter for so vast a body of people, with all their flocks and herds, and with numerous women and children, to have completed its arrangements for a sudden departure without confusion or disorder. That all this had been done, and that every direction of Moses and Aaron was implicitly followed, shows that the judgments of the Lord upon the Egyptians, and their own exemption from the plagues which had been showered upon the land, had not failed of their effect in bringing up the people to a sufficient pitch of faith, confidence, and resolution. Kit.—At last the deliverance was accomplished, and Israel went free, redeemed from the plague of death by the blood of the lamb of passover, and redeemed from the dominion of Pharaoh and his task-masters by the power of God, whose rod Moses carried as a weapon mightier far than sword or spear. All this is full of spiritual suggestion for our profit. They whose consciences are alive to the true nature of the service of sin know the house of bondage, and the brick-kilns, and the cruel task-masters. They who are acquainted with the love and power of Christ, know that he has borne reproach, and not merely risked, but suffered death to deliver us. By his precious blood are our lives redeemed, and by his rod of strength are our enemies subdued. D. F.

42. It is a night to be observed.** The providences of that first night were very observable; memorable was the destruction of the Egyptians, and the deliverance of the Israelites by it: God herein made himself taken notice of. The ordinances of that night, in the annual return of it, were to be carefully observed; This is that night of the Lord, that remarkable night to be celebrated in all generations. The great things God does for his people are to be perpetuated throughout all ages; especially the work of our redemption by Christ: this first passover night was a night of the Lord, much to be observed; but the last passover night, in which Christ was betrayed (in which the first passover, with the rest of the ceremonial institutions, was superseded and abolished), was a night of the Lord, much more to be observed, when a yoke, heavier than that of Egypt, was broken from off our necks, and a land, better than that of Canaan, set before us. That was a temporal deliverance to be celebrated in their generations; this an eternal redemption to be celebrated in the praises of glorious saints world without end. H.

12 : 50, 51 ; 13 : 3, 4. Moses and his people simply left Egypt, as they had a glorious right to do; nor did they burst through any restraint of righteous obligation in that mighty uprising and marching forth of their hosts. Faith in the God of their fathers—the Almighty One, their Defender, Refuge, and Portion—sustained Moses in this otherwise perilous movement, and made the wrath of Egypt’s king seem to him but a puny and weak thing. The setting forth of this fearlessness of Moses, begotten of his faith, is wonderfully rich and expressive; profoundly logical, and yet appealing most vividly to the imagination: “For he endured as seeing him who is invisible.” H. C.

The redemption out of Egypt was the most remarkable of all the Old Testament redemptions of the Church of God. It was the greatest type of Christ’s redemption of any providential event. This redemption was by Jesus Christ, since it was wrought by Him that appeared to Moses in the bush, and sent Moses to redeem that people. This glorious Redeemer was he that redeemed the Church out of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh; as Christ by his death and sufferings redeemed his people from Satan, the spiritual Pharaoh. He redeemed them from hard service and cruel drudgery; as Christ redeems his people from the cruel slavery of sin and Satan. He redeemed them with a strong hand and outstretched arm, and great and terrible judgments on their enemies; as

Christ with mighty power triumphs over principalities and powers, and executes terrible judgments on his Church’s enemies, bruising the serpent’s head. He saved them, when others were destroyed, by the sprinkling of the blood of the paschal lamb; as God’s Church is saved from death by the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, when the rest of the world is destroyed. Edwards.

The oppression was a type. Part of God’s design in it was to prepare, for all the world, a symbolic prophecy of the bondage of sin, from which the greater Moses would set us free. The whole is a parable, as the Christian consciousness of all ages has felt. The entire meaning of the Old Testament history is not grasped unless its prophetic and symbolical character is recognized; and there is some danger lest, in the abundance of new light now thrown upon that history and in the eagerness of critical investigation into the origin of its records, this side of the truth should be lost, and the typical aspect should be relegated, with a learned smile, to the limbo of exploded unscientific fancies. If science consists in a reasoned ordering of facts, it will be difficult to vindicate the application of the name to any view of Old Testament history which omits the fact that God has ordered its course so as to be a shadow of the Gospel redemption. . . . Israel had grown under oppression. The pressure which was intended to crush only condensed, “The more they afflicted them, the more they . . . grew.” It is the history of the nation in a nutshell. The same marvellous tenacity of life, the same power of baffling oppression and thriving under it, have been their dower ever since, and continue so yet. Babylonian captivities, Roman conquests, medieval barbarities, modern European mobs—this strange race has survived them all, and fronts the world to-day an unbroken whole. Nothing disintegrates them, nothing destroys them. The powers that oppress them fill the world with their noise for a while, and pass away like a dream; they abide. For every tree felled, a hundred saplings spring up. What does it mean? and how comes it? The only answer is that God preserves them for a better deliverance from a worse bondage, and as his witnesses in their humiliation, as they were his in their prosperity. The fable of the one of their race who bade Christ march on to Calvary is true concerning them. They are doomed to live and to wander till they shall recognize him for their Messiah.

That growth is a truth for God’s Church, too. The world has never crushed by persecuting.

There is a wholesome obstinacy and chivalry in human nature which rallies adherents to a persecuted cause. Truth is most powerful when her back is at the wall. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Times of oppression are times of growth, as a hundred examples from the apostles’ days down to the story of the Gospel in Madagascar prove. The world’s favor does more harm than its enmity. Its kisses are poisonous; its blows do no hurt. If we may fancy the whole Catholic Church gathered into one personality, and endowed with a voice, she would attest that the promise of Israel’s increase in the land of her bondage was but a foreshadowing of her own fruitfulness in the midst of hostility, and would take for her own the triumphant utterance of one who proved the worst that earth can do: “The things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the Gospel.” A. M.

Departure from Rameses. Gathering and Resting at Succoth.

At the time when the Israelites occupied the land, the term “Goshen” belonged to a region which as yet had no definite boundaries, and which extended with the increase of the people over the territory they inhabited. The term “Land of Rameses” applies to a larger area, and covers that part of the delta which lies to the eastward of the Tanitic branch; a country which Rameses II. enriched with innumerable works of architecture. Naville.—The stations given in the narrative are none of them towns or cities. Rameses and Succoth are districts. The distance between the several stations is not necessarily a single day’s journey. It is probable that more than one week, possibly nearly three weeks, elapsed between the Passover night in Goshen-Rameses and the night at the Red Sea. A comparison of the dates given in Ex. 12:1-20, 29-39; Nu. 33:3; and Ex. 16:1, will show how leisurely were the movements of the Hebrews after their hurried start. H. C. T.

Ex. 12:37; Nu. 33:5. The departure of Israel was from the Land of Rameses, not the town. It is unwarranted by the text and inconceivable in itself, that the men, women, and children, with their cattle and movables, should have assembled at the town in order immediately to depart from it. It is not to be supposed that even the full-grown men started in a formed body from any one town, place it where we will. Each family or party, on receiving gifts which its Egyptian neighbors pressed upon its acceptance, turned its steps, with its flocks and herds and beasts of burden, toward the borwidening reach and power. They are most numerous and impressive in the two great periods of Moses and of Christ, the giving of the Law and of the Gospel, the creation of the Jewish commonwealth, and the founding of the Christian Church. However the Law was given, and in whatever way the twelve tribes came to possess the Holy Land, the Jew with the Decalogue in his hand has given law to the world. The miracles of the Exodus and the Conquest are associated with a moral movement, whose course is still widening and deepening.

New Testament Definition of a Miracle.

Miracles are never referred to in the gospels as merely wonders; but always by the double phrases, “wonders and signs,” or “signs and wonders”—that is, the astonishment is traced to a rational ground. The miracle is not a trick of mere power, but an indication of what he is who works it, or in whose name it is wrought. It is seen to be in perfect harmony with his character and ministry. It is a sign, rather than a credential. It neither proves that Jesus Christ was a holy man, nor does it prove his doctrine to have been Divine; it is simply such an act as may reasonably be expected from what he is and what he came to do. Deeds of Divine power must attend one who is himself God or who acts in God’s name; deeds of Divine mercy must characterize the ministry of one who came to save men from sin and death. If he has authority to forgive sin, he must have power to heal the paralytic; if he can raise all the dead at the last day, he must have power over the grave now. The miracle is a sign. So, again, the miracles of our Lord are called “powers,” as growing out of personal energies that are inseparable from his own nature. They are the expressions of a Divine action. They are not, therefore, to be studied as isolated and strange occurrences defying explanation. They are parts of a living system. They have their place in a Divine order. They can be explained—that is, they have a rational ground and a moral intention. They are worthy of God and of his prophet.

Ignoring now all arbitrary or a priori definitions, and confining ourselves to the New Testament description, three things plainly appear:

First, in its outward form, as appealing to the senses, a miracle is a deed that produces and perpetuates astonishment. It is a present and perpetual wonder. The remarkable element does not wear away upon closer inspection or upon repetition. A miracle, then, is a present and perpetual wonder.

But every effect must have a cause. This leads to the second fact, that in a miracle we have the forth-putting and the expression of the personal power of God. The existence of God is the primary and perpetual wonder. You can comprehend neither his eternity nor his infinitude. The senses do not disclose him. And yet what you see compels you to recognize his presence and power. The visible things proclaim his invisible Godhead. There are the stars, here is the globe, and here are you, all alike bearing the stamp of limited existence; whence came they all? It is not the Bible alone that affirms a beginning; science affirms that matter has all the properties of a manufactured article; and that the constitution and course of the universe point to a beginning, as they suggest a future dissolution; while reason finds it impossible to rest in any other conclusion than that mind preceded matter, and that only the Living God can be self-existent, uncreated, and eternal. An eternal nothing is inconceivable; an eternal evolution or revolution is an absurdity and a contradiction; daring as the opening sentence of the Apostles’ Creed is, it is the audacity of reason as well as the loftiest expression of faith—“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” Here the whole controversy hinges; it is the question between God and no God, between atheism and theism. The debate on miracles pushed to its inner court concerns the existence of God, of his eternal and independent Being. If there is a God, he can show himself by deed and by word; he cannot be supposed to have deliberately and eternally fettered himself. The miracle, as a deed of Divine power, is not only possible, but probable and rational, so long as God is not regarded as practically non-existent. And he who rejects on a priori grounds the miracle of power, must also deny inspiration, which is the miracle of God’s wisdom, and deny prayer, which is the miracle of fellowship, and deny providence, which is the miracle of government, and deny the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which are the living miracles of redemption. Posit the supernatural anywhere, and you must affirm it everywhere; deny it in any sphere, and you must deny it in all spheres. Assuming, then, the Divine existence, miracles have their rational explanation. They are possible, probable, and necessary. Their occurrence becomes a question of evidence and of impartial criticism.

And this brings me to the third element in the New Testament definition of a miracle, that it is such a forth-putting of the power of

God as to be a sign of him. It is not only a wonder indicating his power, but a mirror reflecting his character. It must be worthy of him, and answer some Divine purpose. The Bible, so far from encouraging credulity, insists that no wonderful account shall be believed, that no miracle shall be recognized, unless it appear as worthy of God and as answering a Divinely wise and beneficent purpose. The possibility of miracles follows from the existence of God; the reality of the miracle must be determined not by evidence alone, but by its agreement with the character and purpose of God. Here is the legitimate province of criticism; here is the decisive test between a true and a false miracle. Faith in God compels to faith in miracle; but faith in God also compels me to scrutinize any and every alleged miracle, and its recognition is obligatory only to the degree of its agreement with the revealed character and purposes of God.

The New Testament thus defines a miracle as a deed of present and perpetual wonder, accounted for by the forth-putting of God’s personal power, and as worthy of the Divine character and in agreement with his revealed purposes. Nor do I see how we can improve upon this definition. The difficulties of the problem emerge when we come to state how this forth-putting of God’s personal power is related to what we call the order of nature—which is strictly the order of nature as we know it. Of this order, a miracle has sometimes been said to be a violation or suspension; and then the idea of order has been pitted against the miracle. But the difficulties here are purely speculative and imaginary. It is not self-evident that miracles involve the violation or suspension of law, any more than the force of gravity is suspended when I lift my hand. It is begging the question to say that miracles violate order; for if they are signs, they bring to view that higher and inclusive order of which observation only discloses a very small part. The miracle, then, has its rational ground in the existence of God, who need not be supposed to violate or suspend any natural law or order in working it; while the grip of a miracle is in its moral quality, in its inherent propriety, and in the disclosure which it makes of God’s essential glory.

Evidential Value of the Miracle.

Miracles have an evidential value, but they are neither the only nor even the highest proofs of a Divine revelation. The traditional estimate has made too much of them. The Divine authority of the Bible has been made to rest upon them. The miracle has been held to prove the doctrine, completely reversing the biblical order in which the doctrine is made to test the miracle. Christ emphatically declares that they are not the ground on which our faith in him should rest. Philip was kindly but sharply rebuked for having been so long with him, yet asking for a sign. It was the rebuke of a grieved and patient heart which craved faith in itself, faith inspired by its essential goodness and greatness. Christ deprecates a return to any lower ground. We are not to believe in him because he wrought miracles; we are to believe in the miracles because we believe in him, radiant in his person and work with a Divine glory. Then followed that startling declaration, that wonderful as his own works had been, greater deeds should be wrought by those that believed on him.

From this it follows, in the second place, that a higher evidential value must be assigned to the historical triumphs of the Gospel than to the recorded miracles. What Christianity has done for man is proof of a higher order than any single miracle, than all miracles together. Next to what Jesus Christ is in himself is the power with which his message has stirred the hearts of men and has leavened the life of the world. And yet, in the third place, the miracles had their place. They were necessary, for had they not accompanied his personal presence, his rejection and crucifixion by the religious leaders of his day would not have been inexcusable. He made unusual claims. But unusual claims demand unusual evidences, and had these not been forthcoming, the repudiation of the claimant would have been reasonable. But every possible cavil was promptly and fully met, and the whole ministry of our Lord made it clear that the men who rejected him were wickedly blind, hating both him and his Father.

The miracles of a bad man are to be unhesitatingly rejected as false and misleading, whether we can explain them or not; just as we reject the seeming miracles of the magician who imitated Moses. And the miracles accompanying immoral teaching are to be rejected as false, because the doctrine proves the real miracle, and not the miracle the doctrine. That cuts the ground from underneath all the pretensions of modern spiritualism. The miracles are false because the doctrine is false. Goodness and truth are the great things to be kept steadily in view, and these shine in their own light; and where these are absent we should emphatically decline lending our ears. First look at the prophets of the system, ask what kind of lives they live, and what are their teachings, and upon that evidence decide their claim of miraculous power. This is the common-sense and Christian course, and it makes short work of mediæval and modern miracles. The Deceiver’s mark is on them all. Our Lord and his apostles solemnly warn us against lying signs and wonders. The true miracle culminated in the ministry of Jesus Christ, and is to be looked for only in connection with his final advent to judgment. The intervening period is represented as one in which the Christian Church is to depend upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit, until by the preaching of the Gospel the world shall have become prepared for the heavenly bridal. Behrends.

Points bearing upon Mosaic Authorship.

That the wisdom of the Egyptians, in which Moses was instructed, included a high conception of God and a high standard of ethics, seems to be indicated by the monuments of Egypt, as interpreted by some of the most eminent scholars in Egyptology. M. Rougé affirmed, as the conclusion of his thorough study of this subject, that a pure monotheistic religion was the primitive religion of Egypt, and that even through the forms of polytheism and idolatry which supervened on this early faith, there was always to be recognized a consciousness of the primal truth. “The belief in the unity of the Supreme God, and in his attributes of Creator and Lawgiver of man, whom he has endowed with an immortal soul—these,” he says, “are the primitive notions, enchaffed, like indestructible diamonds, in the midst of the mythological superfetations accumulated in the centuries which have passed over that ancient civilization.” And Renouf, who does not altogether agree with Rougé, declares that from neither Greek nor Roman literature can there be quoted such passages as are found in the Egyptian literature, in recognition of the highest Christian conception of the Supreme Self-Existent God.

Of the ethical teaching of the religious literature of ancient Egypt, M. Chabas says: “None of the Christian virtues is forgotten in it; piety, charity, gentleness, self-command in word and action, chastity, the protection of the weak, benevolence toward the humble, deference to superiors, respect for property in its minutest details, . . . all is expressed there, and in extremely good language.” Renouf, in citing this testimony of Chabas, says: “In confirmation of this, I will add that the translators of the

Bible and of the early Christian literature, who were so often compelled to retain Greek words, for which they could discover no Egyptian equivalent, found the native vocabulary amply sufficient for the expression of the most delicate notions of Christian ethics.” It is evident that in Egypt there were better external advantages for training Moses in that knowledge which would fit him to be the recipient of God’s revelation, in his new sphere as Israel’s lawgiver, than were to be found elsewhere on the face of the whole earth, in the days of Moses. S. S. T.

It is admitted, even by the extremest sceptics, that the genuineness of the work carries with it the authenticity of the narrative, at least, in all its main particulars. “It would most unquestionably,” says Strauss, “be an argument of decisive weight in favor of the credibility of the biblical history, could it indeed be shown that it was written by eye-witnesses.” “Moses, being the leader of the Israelites on their departure from Egypt, would undoubtedly give a faithful history of the occurrences, unless” (which is not pretended) “he designed to deceive.” And further, “Moses, if his intimate connection with Deity described in these books” (i.e., the last four) “be historically true, was likewise eminently qualified, by virtue of such connection, to produce a credible history of the earlier periods.” If Moses indeed wrote the account which we possess of the Exodus and of the wanderings in the wilderness, and if, having written it, he delivered it to those who knew the events as well as he, the conditions which secure the highest degree of historical credibility, so far, at least, as regards the events of the last four books, are obtained. We have for them the direct witness of a contemporary writer—not an actor only, but the leader in the transactions which he relates—honest evidently, for he records his own sins and defects and the transgressions and sufferings of his people; and honest necessarily, for he writes of events which were public and known to all—we have a work which, by the laws of historical criticism, is thus for historical purposes just as reliable as Cæsar’s Commentaries or Xenophon’s “Retreat of the Ten Thousand”—we have that rare literary treasure, the autobiography of a great man, engaged in great events, the head of his nation at a most critical period in their annals, who commits to writing as they occur the various events and transactions in which he is engaged, wherever they have a national or public character. Setting aside, therefore, the idea of inspiration, we possess in the last four books of the Pentateuch as reliable an account of the Exodus of the Jews and their subsequent wanderings as we do, in the works of Cæsar and Xenophon, of the conquest of Britain or of the events which preceded and followed the battle of Cunaxa. G. R.

The faith of the Israelite rested on the facts of Abraham’s call, the Exodus, the conquest of Canaan. What is supernatural in these facts is so bound up with what is historical, that the two cannot be separated. What confirms our faith in the one confirms our faith in the other. It happens, therefore, very providentially that while certain modern habits of thought are making belief in the supernatural difficult to some minds, criticism and research are tending every year to strengthen the certainty of those historical facts with which the supernatural revelation is inseparably interwoven. Most strikingly has this been the case with the most important of all the Old Testament records, the record of the Exodus. Just when the destructive criticism of unbelievers was trying to prove it all legendary, trying, by a studied exaggeration of every apparent difficulty, to shake our faith in it, it pleased God to open up to us the buried monuments of that kindred nation with which Israel at this period was so closely connected. Slowly out of these monuments we are reconstructing Egypt’s history. We may safely assert that the Egypt portrayed on these stones and papyrus-scrolls is precisely the Egypt implied and required by the Mosaic narrative. J. P. N.

The linguistic, geographic, and ethnologic notices contained in the books of Moses are of the most veracious character, stamping the whole narration with an unmistakable air of authenticity. And the fact that each accession to our knowledge of the ancient times helps to remove difficulties and multiplies fresh illustrations of the Mosaic narrative, affords to candid minds an argument for the historic truth of the narrative, the force of which can scarcely be overestimated. All tends to show that we possess in the Pentateuch not only the most authentic account of ancient times that has come down to us, but a history absolutely and in every respect true. All tends to assure us that in this marvellous volume we have no “cunningly devised fable,” but a “treasure of wisdom and knowledge”—as important to the historical inquirer as to the theologian. There may be obscurities; there may be occasionally, in names and numbers, accidental corruptions of the text; there may be a few interpolations—glosses which have crept in from the margin; but upon the whole it must be pronounced that we have in the Pentateuch a genuine and authentic work, and one which—even were it not inspired—would be, for the times and countries whereof it treats, the leading and paramount authority.

It is “Moses” who is still “read in the synagogues every Sabbath day,” and they who “resist” him, by impugning his veracity, like Jannes and Jambres of old, “resist the truth.” G. R. (1859).

The New Testament proves the historical character of the narratives of the Pentateuch, the fact that Moses was the great Lævgiver and Prophet, the fundamental position of the Mosaic legislation to the Old Testament, and, above all, the Divine authority of the Pentateuch; and those who antagonize these things come in collision with Jesus and the apostles; but the Mosaic authorship of the whole Pentateuch, so far as the New Testament is concerned, is not decided for us. Any theory of its composition that recognizes Mosaic authorship of the chief parts of it, and the essential features of its legislation as Mosaic, is in accord with the New Testament. Briggs.

A brief compendious statement of the considerations which oppose a late date for the Pentateuch and the arguments in support of such a date. (1) The total lack of external evidence in its favor. All that we know from sacred or secular sources is on the side of the traditionary view. (2) The acknowledged inconsistencies that remain. If the matter of the Hexateuch has been so often revised as the prevailing theory declares, how comes it to pass that so many seeming contradictions continue to be found, so many divergencies in tone, in spirit, in conception? On the ordinary view these are to be expected, but by no means on the other. (3) It is vain to say that Moses was not cultivated enough to write the books attributed to him, for he was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, who, in his day, had, as we know, an abundant and varied literature. (4) There is no reason to dispute the existence of a priesthood in his day, since it is clear that there was a large priestly caste in Egypt, and it is in the last degree improbable that a Hebrew priesthood should wait a thousand years, or even the half of that period, for a ritual. (5) The theory that denies everything but a few fragments to the Mosaic period, and relegates all psalms and proverbs to a post exilian date, leaves a long period of history without any literature, and offers no basis for the splendid outburst of prophecy which illumined the eighth century before Christ. (6) The principle that the non-observance of a law proves its non-existence is wholly fallacious. (7) The language of the Hexateuch is inconsistent with a late origin. Its parts differ among themselves, but in nothing like the degree in which they differ from the Hebrew of the Persian era. (8) The local allusions throughout are to Egypt; how could this possibly be if these writings received their last reduction from persons all whose surroundings were Palestinian or Babylonian? (9) There are continual references to a life in the wilderness, a journeying through the desert; what could suggest these to men whose whole lives were passed in fertile and cultivated regions? (10) The doctrinal contents of the Hexateuch, being simple and elementary, are in harmony with the traditionary date and not the imaginary one. (11) The modern theory abounds in license. Because King Josiah found “the book of the Law” in the temple, it is insisted, without the shadow of reason, that this book was Deuteronomy, which had just been written, and had been secreted in order that it might be found! Ezekiel’s splendid idealization of the Church of the future is, in defiance of all taste and judgment, converted from a magnificent symbolic prophecy into the prosaic outline of a new ritual then for the first time introduced! (12) The Jewish Rabbis enumerate five things wanting in the second temple which were found in the first (the Shekinah, the ark and mercy-seat, the spirit of prophecy, the Urim and Thummim, and the fire on the altar); but if these were inventions of Ezra and his associates, what possible motive did they have for constructing a style of worship which would only make more evident the baldness of their own services? (13) In some cases the theory rests upon the philosophical postulate that religion in any case is only a natural development, the supernatural being impossible and incredible; this is certainly the view of Kuenen and Wellhausen; yet no man who holds it can possibly be a fair interpreter of Scripture. (14) These latter writers not only exclude the Divine factors from the history of Israel, but assert the existence of fictions in that history, not merely in single, separate instances, but passim, wherever a patch was needed to give the story an air of authority. (15) The analysis of the documents is based often upon very subtle criteria, is frequently mechanical, and again makes assumptions that are purely conjectural; hence there is serious difficulty in accepting its conclusions when they are at war with the statements of the history itself. (16) The existence of different documents is no argument against the Mosaic authorship, for the man of

God may have compiled his first book from antecedent data, and in those that followed may have reduced into form what had previously been put in writing by others under his direction. Conjecture is just as allowable in favor of Moses as it is against him. (17) So in regard to the Book of Joshua, the natural complement of the Pentateuch, there is nothing strained or unnatural in the opinion that some of the men trained under the guidance of the great Law-giver made this record. (18) The testimony of the New Testament is clear and strong as to the Mosaic authorship. Our Lord said (John 5:46) of Moses, “He wrote of me,” and in the next verse speaks of “his writings.” No principle of accommodation will explain this language. In Mark 12:26 he asked, “Have ye not read in the Book of Moses?” So the Apostle Peter said (Acts 3:22), “Moses indeed said: A prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto you.” And the Apostle Paul cites the Pentateuch in the terms, “It is written in the law of Moses,” and again, “Moses saith,” and again, “Moses describeth the righteousness that is of the Law” (1 Cor. 9:9; Rom. 10:19; 10:5). It does not seem possible to understand these references as meaning anything else than the accepted view of that age that Moses was the author of the books that bear his name. Chambers.

In closing my remarks on the books of Moses, I make brief mention of a few other points in favor of their veracity, several of which also bespeak undesignedness in the narrative more or less. (1) There is a minuteness in the details of the Mosaic writings which argues their truth; for it often argues the eye-witness, as in the adventures of the wilderness, and often seems intended to supply directions to the artificer, as in the construction of the Tabernacle. (2) There are touches of nature in the narrative which argue its truth, for it is not easy to regard them otherwise than as strokes from the life—as where “the mixed multitude,” whether half-casts or Egyptians, are the first to sigh for the cucumbers and melons of Egypt, and to spread discontent through the camp; as the miserable exculpation of himself which Aaron attempts, with all the cowardice of conscious guilt—“I cast into the fire, and there came out this calf,” the fire, to be sure, being in the fault. (3) There are certain little inconveniences represented as turning up unexpectedly that argue truth in the story; for they are just such accidents as are characteristic of the working of a new system and untried machinery. What is to be done with the man who is found gathering sticks on the Sabbath day? (Could an impostor have devised such a trifle?) How the inheritance of the daughters of Zelophehad is to be disposed of, there being no heir-male. Either of them inconsiderable matters in themselves, but both giving occasion to very important laws—the one touching life, and the other property. (4) There is a simplicity in the manner of Moses when telling his tale which argues its truth—no parade of language, no pomp of circumstance even in his miracles—a modesty and dignity throughout all. Let us but compare him in any trying scene with Josephus—his description, for instance, of the passage through the Red Sea, of the murmuring of the Israelites, and the supply of quails and manna, with the same as given by the Jewish historian, or rhetorician, we might rather say—and the force of the observation will be felt. (5) There is a candor in the treatment of his subject by Moses which argues his truth; as when he tells of his own want of eloquence, which unfitted him for a leader; his own want of faith, which prevented him from entering the promised land; the idolatry of Aaron his brother; the profaneness of Nadab and Abihu, his nephews; the disaffection and punishment of Miriam, his sister. (6) There is a disinterestedness in his conduct which argues him to be a man of truth; for though he had sons, he apparently takes no measures during his life to give them offices of trust or profit; and at his death he appoints as his successor one who had no claims upon him, either of alliance, of clanship, or of blood. (7) There are certain prophetical passages in the writings of Moses which argue their truth, as several respecting the future Messiah, and the very sublime and literal one respecting the final fall of Jerusalem. (8) Above all, there is a comparative parity in the theology and morality of the Pentateuch, which argues not only its truth, but its high original; for how else are we to account for a system like that of Moses, in such an age and among such a people; that the doctrine of the unity, the self-existence, the providence, the perfections of the great God of heaven and earth, should thus have blazed forth (how far more brightly than even in the vaunted schools of Athens at its most refined era!) from the midst of a nation, of themselves ever plunging into gross and grovelling idolatry; and that principles of social duty, of benevolence, and of self-restraint, extending even to the thoughts of the heart, should have been the produce of an age which the very provisions of the Levitical Law itself show to have been full of savage and licentious abominations? Such are some of the internal evidences for the veracity of the books of Moses.

(9) Then the situation in which the Jews actually found themselves placed, as a matter of fact, is no slight argument for the truth of the Mosaic accounts; reminded, as they were, by certain memorials observed from year to year, of the great events of their early history, just as they are recorded in the writings of Moses—memorials universally recognized both in their object and in their authority. The Passover, for instance, celebrated by all—no man doubting its meaning, no man in all Israel assigning to it any other origin than one—viz., that of being a contemporary monument of a miracle displayed in favor of the people of Israel—by right of which credentials, and no other, it summoned from all quarters of the world, at great cost and inconvenience and danger, the dispersed Jews—none disputing the obligation to obey the summons.

(10) Then the heroic devotion with which the Israelites continued to regard the Law, even long after they had ceased to cultivate the better part of it, even when that very Law only served to condemn its worshippers, so that they would offer themselves up by thousands with their children and wives as martyrs to the honor of their temple, in which no image, even of an emperor who could scourge them with scorpions for their disobedience, should be suffered to stand and they live—so that rather than violate the sanctity of the Sabbath day the bravest men in arms would lay down their lives as tamely as sheep, and allow themselves to be burned in the holes where they had taken refuge from their cruel and cowardly pursuers. All this points to their Law as having been at first promulgated under circumstances too awful to be forgotten even after the lapse of ages.

(11) Then, again, the extraordinary degree of national pride with which the Jews boasted themselves to be God’s peculiar people, as if no nation ever was or ever could be so nigh to him; a feeling which the early teachers of Christianity found an insuperable obstacle to the progress of the Gospel among them, and which actually did effect its ultimate rejection—this may well seem to be founded upon a strong traditional sense of uncommon tokens of the Almighty’s regard for them above all other nations of the earth, which they had heard with their ears, or their fathers had declared unto them, even the noble works that he had done in the old time before them. (12) Then, again, the constant craving after “a sign,” which beset them in the latter days of their history, as a lively certificate of the prophet; and not after a sign only, but after such an one as they would themselves prescribe—“What sign shewest thou that we may see and believe? . . . our fathers did eat manna in the desert;” this desire, so frequently expressed, and with which they are so frequently reproached, looks like the relic of an appetite engendered in other times, when they had enjoyed the privilege of more intimate communion with God—it seems the wake of miracles departed.

(13) Lastly, the very onerous nature of the Law—so studiously meddling with all the occupations of life, great and small—this yoke would scarcely have been endured, without the strongest assurance on the part of those who were galled by it of the authority by which it was imposed. For it met them with some restraint or other at every turn. Would they plough? Then it must not be with an ox and an ass. Would they sow? Then must not the seed be mixed. Would they reap? Then must they not reap clean. Would they make bread? Then must they set apart dough enough for the consecrated loaf. Did they find a bird’s nest? Then must they let the old bird fly away. Did they hunt? Then they must shed the blood of their game, and cover it with dust. Did they plant a fruit tree? For three years was the fruit to be uncircumcised. Did they shave their beards? They were not to cut the corners. Did they weave a garment? Then must it be only with threads prescribed. Did they build a house? They must put rails and battlements on the roof. Did they buy an estate? At the year of Jubilee back it must go to its owner. This last in itself and alone a provision which must have made itself felt in the whole structure of the Jewish commonwealth, and have sensibly affected the character of the people; every transfer of land throughout the country having to be regulated in its price according to the remoteness or proximity of the year of release; and the desire of accumulating a species of property usually considered the most inviting of any, counteracted and thwarted at every turn. All these (and how many more of the same kind might be named!) are enactments which it must have required extraordinary influence in the Lawgiver to enjoin, and extraordinary reverence for his powers to perpetuate. Blunt.

Ex. 12 40 Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, which they sojourned in Egypt, was 41 four hundred and thirty years. And it came to pass at the end of four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the LORD 42 went out from the land of Egypt. It is a night to be much observed unto the LORD for bringing them out from the land of Egypt: this is that night of the LORD, to be much observed of all the children of Israel throughout their generations. 50 Thus did all the children of Israel, as the LORD commanded Moses and Aaron, so 51 did they. And it came to pass the selfsame day, that the LORD did bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts.

13 3 And Moses said unto the people, Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand the LORD brought you out from this place: there shall no leavened bread be eaten. This day ye go forth in the month Abib.

12 37 And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children. And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle. And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it was not leavened; because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry, neither had they prepared for themselves any victual.

No. 33 3 And they journeyed from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month; on the morrow after the passover the children of Israel went out with an high hand in the sight of all the Egyptians, while the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn, which the LORD had smitten among them: upon their gods also the LORD executed judgments. And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses, and pitched in Succoth.

40,41. The length of their stay in Egypt is here clearly and unequivocally stated to have been 430 years: “Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.” K.—The statement of Moses in verse 41 is made in the most formal and precise terms, with the express purpose of fixing the length of the sojourn permanently upon the national mind. Cook.—The evidence is conclusive that the abode in Egypt lasted 430 years. This is the natural sense of Ex. 12: 40, and no one would ever think of extracting a different meaning from it but for reasons outside of the verse itself. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were not “children of Israel,” that their sojourning should be included; and the verse makes no allusion to Canaan, but only to Egypt. In Gen. 15: 13 the seed of Abraham were to be strangers in a land not their own, where they would be reduced to bondage and suffer affliction. W. H. G.

The LXX. add to the passage “and in the land of Canaan.” The Samaritan recension adds yet another clause: “And the sojourn of the children of Israel, and of their fathers, in the land of Canaan and in the land of Egypt.” These variations from the original are now almost universally regarded as interpolations, intended to obviate a chronological difficulty. D. M.—Had the clause inserted by the LXX. existed in the Hebrew original, there is no assignable ground on which we can imagine it left out. There is a readily conceivable ground for the insertion of the clause by the LXX. in their anxiety to harmonize their chronology with the Egyptian system prevalent in their day. Further, the clause has the appearance of an insertion, being irrelevant to the narrative, which is naturally concerned at this point with Egypt and with Egypt only. The Samaritan version may appear at first sight to lend the Septuagint confirmation; but a little examination shows the contrary. The Samaritan translator has the Septuagint before him, but is dissatisfied with the way in which his Greek predecessor has amended the Hebrew text. His version is an amendment of the Greek text in two points. First, he sees that the name “children of Israel” could not properly be given to any but the descendants of Jacob, and therefore he inserts the clause “and of their fathers.” Secondly, he observes that the LXX. have inverted the historical order of the sojourns in Egypt and in Canaan, placing that in Egypt first. This he corrects by a transposition. No one can suppose that he derived his emendations from the Hebrew. He gave his readers, not what Moses had said, but what, in his opinion, he ought to have said. With respect to Paul’s statement to the Galatians (3: 17), it is to be borne in mind that he wrote to Greek-speaking Jews, whose only Bible was the Septuagint Version, and that he could not but follow it unless he was prepared to intrude on them a chronological discussion, which would in no way have advanced his argument. His argument is that the Law, having been given long after the covenant made with Abraham, could not disannul it; how long after was of no consequence. G. R.—In the New Testament Stephen’s speech (Acts 7: 6) recognizes 400 years as the period when the seed of Abraham should be in bondage and evil entreated, terms which could only apply to Egypt. Cook.

In the prophecy of Gen. 15: 13, 14 [vol. 1., p. 325, where this subject is also treated] but one land is spoken of and but one people; this people is to afflict Israel for four hundred years; it is then to be judged; and after the judgment, Israel is to “come out,” to come out, moreover, with great substance. Nothing is said that can by any possibility allude to the Canaanites, or the land of Canaan. One continuous affliction in one country and by one people, lasting—in round numbers—four hundred years, is announced with the utmost plainness. G. R.—Two [other] considerations support the authority of the Hebrew text. The arrival in Egypt was on a definite date. But none such can be attached to the arrival of Abraham in Palestine, as no locality is mentioned. And it is a remarkable coincidence, that the 15th of Abib, on each of the years we have determined, fell on the same day of the week, in accordance with the expression, “the selfsame day.” The second proof is the fact that the Bible (1 Chron. 7: 8) contains the genealogies of Kohath, of Gershom, of Pharez, of Ephraim, and of Bela the son of Benjamin, in each of which fourteen generations occur from Abraham to the time of Moses. This allows forty years for a generation, a period that is fully coincident with genealogical requirements. Conder.—There is a growing agreement on the part of expositors of the Old Testament to adhere to the reiterated statement of the Hebrew text, making the sojourn in Egypt four hundred or (exactly) four hundred and thirty years, and to reject the Septuagint emendation, “in Egypt and the land of Canaan.” This accords with the ten (or eleven) generations which are given (1 Chron. 7 : 22-27) as the number from Ephraim to Joshua. It corresponds much more easily to the alleged increase in Egypt. The difficulties admit of explanation. This interval is also thought to be confirmed by an inscription found at San by Mariette Bey, making the interval from Rameses II, back to a certain Shepherd King, Set, four hundred years. S. C. B.

42. The immediate effect of the death of the firstborn was exactly such as had been calculated. It was a strange act of faith, when an entire nation stood in the dead of the night awake, ready for a journey, in the conviction that a certain judgment was to be inflicted by the hand of Heaven, and that this infliction would infallibly insure their departure from the house of bondage. In that conviction much labor had been undergone, and large preparations completed—for we may conceive that it was no light matter for so vast a body of people, with all their flocks and herds, and with numerous women and children, to have completed its arrangements for a sudden departure without confusion or disorder. That all this had been done, and that every direction of Moses and Aaron was implicitly followed, shows that the judgments of the Lord upon the Egyptians, and their own exemption from the plagues which had been showered upon the land, had not failed of their effect in bringing up the people to a sufficient pitch of faith, confidence, and resolution. Kit.—At last the deliverance was accomplished, and Israel went free, redeemed from the plague of death by the blood of the lamb of passover, and redeemed from the dominion of Pharaoh and his task-masters by the power of God, whose rod Moses carried as a weapon mightier far than sword or spear. All this is full of spiritual suggestion for our profit. They whose consciences are alive to the true nature of the service of sin know the house of bondage, and the brick-kilns, and the cruel task-masters. They who are acquainted with the love and power of Christ, know that he has borne reproach, and not merely risked, but suffered death to deliver us. By his precious blood are our lives redeemed, and by his rod of strength are our enemies subdued. D. F.

42. It is a night to be observed.** The providences of that first night were very observable; memorable was the destruction of the Egyptians, and the deliverance of the Israelites by it: God herein made himself taken notice of. The ordinances of that night, in the annual return of it, were to be carefully observed; This is that night of the Lord, that remarkable night to be celebrated in all generations. The great things God does for his people are to be perpetuated throughout all ages; especially the work of our redemption by Christ: this first passover night was a night of the Lord, much to be observed; but the last passover night, in which Christ was betrayed (in which the first passover, with the rest of the ceremonial institutions, was superseded and abolished), was a night of the Lord, much more to be observed, when a yoke, heavier than that of Egypt, was broken from off our necks, and a land, better than that of Canaan, set before us. That was a temporal deliverance to be celebrated in their generations; this an eternal redemption to be celebrated in the praises of glorious saints world without end. H.

12 : 50, 51 ; 13 : 3, 4. Moses and his people simply left Egypt, as they had a glorious right to do; nor did they burst through any restraint of righteous obligation in that mighty uprising and marching forth of their hosts. Faith in the God of their fathers—the Almighty One, their Defender, Refuge, and Portion—sustained Moses in this otherwise perilous movement, and made the wrath of Egypt’s king seem to him but a puny and weak thing. The setting forth of this fearlessness of Moses, begotten of his faith, is wonderfully rich and expressive; profoundly logical, and yet appealing most vividly to the imagination: “For he endured as seeing him who is invisible.” H. C.

The redemption out of Egypt was the most remarkable of all the Old Testament redemptions of the Church of God. It was the greatest type of Christ’s redemption of any providential event. This redemption was by Jesus Christ, since it was wrought by Him that appeared to Moses in the bush, and sent Moses to redeem that people. This glorious Redeemer was he that redeemed the Church out of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh; as Christ by his death and sufferings redeemed his people from Satan, the spiritual Pharaoh. He redeemed them from hard service and cruel drudgery; as Christ redeems his people from the cruel slavery of sin and Satan. He redeemed them with a strong hand and outstretched arm, and great and terrible judgments on their enemies; as

Christ with mighty power triumphs over principalities and powers, and executes terrible judgments on his Church’s enemies, bruising the serpent’s head. He saved them, when others were destroyed, by the sprinkling of the blood of the paschal lamb; as God’s Church is saved from death by the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, when the rest of the world is destroyed. Edwards.

The oppression was a type. Part of God’s design in it was to prepare, for all the world, a symbolic prophecy of the bondage of sin, from which the greater Moses would set us free. The whole is a parable, as the Christian consciousness of all ages has felt. The entire meaning of the Old Testament history is not grasped unless its prophetic and symbolical character is recognized; and there is some danger lest, in the abundance of new light now thrown upon that history and in the eagerness of critical investigation into the origin of its records, this side of the truth should be lost, and the typical aspect should be relegated, with a learned smile, to the limbo of exploded unscientific fancies. If science consists in a reasoned ordering of facts, it will be difficult to vindicate the application of the name to any view of Old Testament history which omits the fact that God has ordered its course so as to be a shadow of the Gospel redemption. . . . Israel had grown under oppression. The pressure which was intended to crush only condensed, “The more they afflicted them, the more they . . . grew.” It is the history of the nation in a nutshell. The same marvellous tenacity of life, the same power of baffling oppression and thriving under it, have been their dower ever since, and continue so yet. Babylonian captivities, Roman conquests, medieval barbarities, modern European mobs—this strange race has survived them all, and fronts the world to-day an unbroken whole. Nothing disintegrates them, nothing destroys them. The powers that oppress them fill the world with their noise for a while, and pass away like a dream; they abide. For every tree felled, a hundred saplings spring up. What does it mean? and how comes it? The only answer is that God preserves them for a better deliverance from a worse bondage, and as his witnesses in their humiliation, as they were his in their prosperity. The fable of the one of their race who bade Christ march on to Calvary is true concerning them. They are doomed to live and to wander till they shall recognize him for their Messiah.

That growth is a truth for God’s Church, too. The world has never crushed by persecuting.

There is a wholesome obstinacy and chivalry in human nature which rallies adherents to a persecuted cause. Truth is most powerful when her back is at the wall. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Times of oppression are times of growth, as a hundred examples from the apostles’ days down to the story of the Gospel in Madagascar prove. The world’s favor does more harm than its enmity. Its kisses are poisonous; its blows do no hurt. If we may fancy the whole Catholic Church gathered into one personality, and endowed with a voice, she would attest that the promise of Israel’s increase in the land of her bondage was but a foreshadowing of her own fruitfulness in the midst of hostility, and would take for her own the triumphant utterance of one who proved the worst that earth can do: “The things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the Gospel.” A. M.

Departure from Rameses. Gathering and Resting at Succoth.

At the time when the Israelites occupied the land, the term “Goshen” belonged to a region which as yet had no definite boundaries, and which extended with the increase of the people over the territory they inhabited. The term “Land of Rameses” applies to a larger area, and covers that part of the delta which lies to the eastward of the Tanitic branch; a country which Rameses II. enriched with innumerable works of architecture. Naville.—The stations given in the narrative are none of them towns or cities. Rameses and Succoth are districts. The distance between the several stations is not necessarily a single day’s journey. It is probable that more than one week, possibly nearly three weeks, elapsed between the Passover night in Goshen-Rameses and the night at the Red Sea. A comparison of the dates given in Ex. 12:1-20, 29-39; Nu. 33:3; and Ex. 16:1, will show how leisurely were the movements of the Hebrews after their hurried start. H. C. T.

Ex. 12:37; Nu. 33:5. The departure of Israel was from the Land of Rameses, not the town. It is unwarranted by the text and inconceivable in itself, that the men, women, and children, with their cattle and movables, should have assembled at the town in order immediately to depart from it. It is not to be supposed that even the full-grown men started in a formed body from any one town, place it where we will. Each family or party, on receiving gifts which its Egyptian neighbors pressed upon its acceptance, turned its steps, with its flocks and herds and beasts of burden, toward the border. They slowly and steadily moved to the east and south along the north end of the bitter lakes, without any fear of the Egyptians, who were engaged in burying their firstborn, or at least in paying them the last sad rites. The males over twenty years of age, by previous concert, formed themselves into marching companies at their respective positions, and faced toward Succoth. M.

In the considerable interval occupied by protracted discussions with Pharaoh and the series of miracles, opportunity was afforded for the thorough organization which is disclosed upon the march, and which appears, indeed, in the early statement that they went up out of Egypt “harnessed” (13:18)—that is, taking the Hebrew word at its lowest, in orderly array. It is stated or implied six times in fifteen verses that they marched not alone from Rameses but from “Egypt,” and the expression “hosts,” twice used, permits, if not suggests, the supposition that they moved in many companies. We may imagine them as gathering at various convenient points to join the general movement. Incidental allusions also imply that in the subsequent march through the wilderness they may be conceived of, not as massed in one solid body, but spread widely out, as convenience might require. The whole company may have spread, as an Arab encampment or a modern army often does, over an area of many miles. S. C. B.

Moving out from their various homes in the land of Rameses-Goshen, the Israelites must first find their way to a common rendezvous, in order to their united movement as one people from Egypt into the wilderness beyond. That place of their rendezvous was Succoth. The numbers of the Israelites and the requirements of the Bible narrative forbid the suggestion that any city or town was a starting-point or a stopping-place in the route of the exodus; hence the hope of determining that route by any discovery of the ruins of one town or another in Lower Egypt, is based on a misconception of both the letter and the general tenor of the Bible narrative. The Israelites started out from their scattered homes in the district of Rameses-Goshen, and made their general rendezvous at Succoth, in an extensive camping field along the line of lakes of which Lake Timsah is the centre. (See map in next section.)

It is not necessary to suppose that all the Israelites reached Succoth on the day of their hurried start from their homes in Rameses-Goshen. There is nothing in the Bible text that requires such a supposition; and there is much in the nature of the case to forbid it. The start was made on the fifteenth day of the first month (Abib) of the new year of the Israelites. “On the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt” (16:1), they came to “the Wilderness of Sin,” which was their eighth station beyond Rameses-Goshen. At the briefest, the intervening period was a full month; which had been spent at or between the stations named. This gives an average of four days to each stage. From the intimations of the time occupied between the Red Sea and Elim, it might even be supposed that ten days would be an ample period for the movement and rest on that side of the Egyptian border; leaving twenty days between the hurried start of the Israelites from their homes, and their midnight crossing of the Red Sea. This would easily allow several days for the gathering at the Succoth rendezvous. Uncalled-for barriers to an understanding of the Bible narrative have been raised, by a popular belief that all the preparations of the Israelites for their departure out of Egypt had to be made during the passover night, and that the first stage of their journey was passed before the morning of the coming day. Nothing of that sort can be fairly inferred from the Bible text. Moreover, there is nothing in the text that justifies the belief that there was but a day’s journey between any two of the stations named as the great landmark camping-places. H. C. T.

The “Sweet Water Canal,” from a point about sixty miles N. N. E. of Cairo, eastward to Lake Timsah, carries beside it a belt of fertility, stretching like a green ribband directly through the yellow desert for forty miles to Lake Timsah, which now is one of the links of the Suez Canal, by which the waters of the Mediterranean and of the Red Sea are united. Looking at the country, it seemed almost certain that the Israelites would concentrate from their various villages on the line of this Sweet Water Canal. Water they must have. They did not steal away furtively, but went out “with a high hand.” “With a strong hand hath the Lord brought thee out of Egypt.” There was no reason for their forsaking this route to the Eastern wilderness, and in this belt of inhabited land we may fairly locate the Succoth where they made their first camp. Dulles.—The Sweet Water Canal carries the waters of the Nile to Suez, Ismailia, and Port Said. This canal was constructed by the Ship Canal Company, and it occupies very much the line of the ancient channel intended to connect the waters of the Nile with those of the Red Sea. Hull.

Succoth. Thukut, or Thuku. The name of a district in which at the time of the exodus there existed not only Pithom, but fortifications to keep off the invading Asiatics. The camping-ground of such a multitude must have had a great extent. Naville.—In February, 1883, M. Naville began the work of excavation at Tell el-Maskhutah, a low mound about twelve miles west of Ismailia. It was known that this mound marked the site of an ancient Egyptian city, but scholarly opinion left it undecided whether we were to look there for Rameses or for Pithom. M. Naville’s excavations quickly resulted in the finding of monument after monument bearing the various names of Pithom, which had already been made familiar to us by the recovered geographical lists of ancient Egypt. H. C. T.

All the facts yet discovered go to show that it was the very city in question. The name is found in the tablet of Ptolemy written fully and “determinated” with the city sign, and also not thus determinated in other texts. These same texts draw a distinction between the city of Tum and the temple of Tum. The one was Pi-Tum, Pithom, and the other was kwa(1)-Tum, temple or sanctuary of Tum. This distinction points conclusively to the existence of a town called after the main deity of the region, and shows by monumental evidence that the city is there. The results of the excavations correspond in a marked way with the facts as recorded in Exodus. The bricks that have been found (and the city is almost entirely composed of these) are of three sorts, with strae, with stubble, and without either, and they are laid in mortar, an unusual thing. Gillett.—When M. Naville had digged down into store-chambers built, perhaps by the Israelites, in this store-city of the Pharaohs, he had done a great deal more than discover the site of Pithom. He fixed, also, the centre of the biblical district of Succoth. From the monuments we had already known that Pithom was the capital of the Egyptian nome called Abot, or East-land, to which was often given the alternative name of Thuku or Succoth, the place of tents, or camping-ground, for the Semitic nomads who entered Egypt from the east. This district or nome of Succoth was also the first camping-place, or rendezvous, of the children of Israel in their march out of Egypt. H. C. T.

The district of Thukut west and northwest of Lake Timsah would be a very convenient place for a general muster, affording a wide space and abundant pasture in the spring-time, and easily reached both from southwest and northwest—in the one case by the Wady Tumilat, in the other by way of Tel-Dafneh and the western shore of Lake Ballah. This position for Thukut seems indeed to be definitely fixed by the discovery of the ruins of Pithom, the capital of Thukut, at Tel-el-Maskutah, combined with the statement in an Egyptian text, that Thukut was a region just within the Egyptian frontier, suited for grazing, and in the vicinity of some lakes. G. R.

The recent discovery by M. Naville of the true site of Pithom at Tel-el-Maskhutah in the Wady Tumilat, when conjoined with the fact that Pithom was the chief city of the district of Succoth mentioned in the exodus, and that it was one of the two “store-cities,” or garrison towns, that the Israelites are said to have been compelled to build for Pharaoh in the land of Goshen, has thrown a flood of light on the subject. It marks one stage in the exodus, and also carries with it the consequence that as Rameses [the store-city] must have been one day’s march or thereabout to the west of Succoth, it also was in Wady Tumilat, but at the western end of it. Certain ruins at the entrance of the Wady Tumilat, hitherto regarded by many as marking the site of Pithom, are therefore, in all probability, those of Rameses. Further, as the monuments at both places indicate that Rameses the Great (or Rameses II.) was their builder, the view held by the majority of Egyptologists that this king was the Pharaoh of the oppression is confirmed. The site of Pithom is distinctly visible from the railway, about twelve miles west of Ismailia, and presents the remains of fortifications and extensive granaries built with crude brick, some portions of which probably date from before the exodus, though the site was occupied down to the Roman times as the chief town of Succoth and an important frontier post. During the construction of the Sweet Water Canal it was also selected as a principal station, and at present it is occupied by Arabs, who cultivate the ground in its vicinity. Taking it for granted that the time of the exodus was in the reign of Meneptah, the son and successor of Rameses, that the Wady Tumilat was a principal part of the land of Goshen, and that Rameses and Succoth were in this valley, let us study the geographical conditions of the question as they present themselves on an examination of the district, now very accessible by means of the railway from Cairo to Ismailia and Suez. On the east side of the delta of the Nile, about fifty miles northeast of Cairo, a narrow valley of cultivated soil extends eastward, with desert on both sides, for about eighty miles or nearly as far as Ismailia, on the line of the Suez Canal, where this crosses Lake Timsah. This valley, Wady Tumilat, is only a few miles wide at its western end, and gradually narrows toward the east. As the desert sand is, however, encroaching on it from the south, and has, indeed, in places overwhelmed an ancient canal which at one time probably ran near the middle of the valley, it must formerly have been more extensive than at present. Recent surveys also render it certain that this valley once carried a branch of the Nile, which discharged its waters into the Red Sea. This branch, or a canal representing it, must have existed in the time of Moses. At present the valley is watered by the Sweet Water Canal, running from the Nile to Suez; and though probably inferior to the land of Goshen in its best days, it is still one of the most beautiful districts in Egypt, at least in its western part, presenting wide stretches of fertile land covered with luxuriant crops, numerous cattle and sheep, large groves of date-palms, whose fruit is said to be the best in Egypt, and numerous populous villages; while it must always have been, what it now eminently is, a leading line of communication between Egypt and the countries to the east. The position of this valley accords admirably with the scriptural notices of it. It would be the only way of convenient entrance into Egypt for Jacob with his flocks and herds. It was separated to a great degree from the rest of Egypt, and was eminently suited to be the residence of a pastoral and agricultural people differing in their habits from the Egyptians, and accustomed to the modes of life in use in Palestine. Dawson.

Number of the Departing Hosts.

Ex. 12:37, 38. 600,000 men, beside children. . . . A mixed multitude also, and very much cattle.

From the census taken at Sinai (Nu. 1) it appeared that the whole number of men, “from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war in Israel,” was 603,550. If to these we add 400,000 male children under twenty years of age, and suppose the females to have been about as numerous as the males, we find that the entire mass of the people of Israel amounted to more than two million souls. But it is a mistake to suppose that the two millions were all the direct descendants of Jacob. When Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt, they must certainly have taken with them all their men-servants and maid-servants, as well as all their cattle, for these formed a portion of their wealth. We know that Abraham had 318 servants fit for war and trained to arms; his nomadic household, therefore, must have contained more than a thousand souls. Jacob, again, who inherited all these, brought with him from Syria many men-servants and maid-servants, and much cattle. With such data as these, we are justified in assuming that the number of those who went down with Jacob to Egypt was not limited to his sixty-six children and grandchildren, but consisted of several thousand men-servants and maid-servants. But according to Gen. 17:12, 13, these had been all received by circumcision into the religious community of the children of Israel, and thus the distinction between master and servant, which is never very marked among nomads, must have been still further softened down. In Egypt, where the striking contrast between Israelites and Egyptians was necessarily a great impediment in the way of intermarriages, the descendants of Jacob will no doubt have married the descendants of his servants. And under such circumstances the distinction must gradually have worn away. Hence we regard the two million souls who left Egypt after the lapse of 430 years as the posterity of the whole of the people who went down into Egypt with Jacob. K.

Such a company moving at once the world never before nor since witnessed; upward of two millions of souls, besides their flocks and herds, even very much cattle; and what but the mere providence of God could support such a multitude, and in the wilderness, too, where to this day the necessaries of life are not to be found? Had not Moses the fullest proof of his Divine mission, he never could have put himself at the head of such an immense concourse of people, who, without the most especial and effective Providence, must all have perished for lack of food. This single circumstance is an ample demonstration of the Divine mission of Moses, and of the authenticity and Divine inspiration of the Pentateuch. To suppose that an impostor, or one pretending only to a Divine call, could have ventured to place himself at the head of such an immense body of people, to lead them through a trackless wilderness, utterly unprovided for such a journey, to a land as yet in the possession of several powerful nations, whom they must expel before they could possess the country, would have implied such an extreme of madness and folly as has never been witnessed in an individual, and such a blind credulity in the multitude as is unparalleled in the annals of mankind! The succeeding stupendous events proved that Moses had the authority of God to do what he did. A. C.

Aside from any miraculous aspects of the case, the exodus must be recognized as one of the most extraordinary achievements in history; and the man who could guide it to a prosperous issue must have been second to no man in the catalogue of great names. It is indeed difficult to name a successful enterprise which can bear a moment’s comparison in magnitude and difficulty with the taking up of a whole people, men, women, and children, and all their portable effects, removing the great heterogeneous company in the face of a mighty, warlike nation, carrying them through a vast desert scantily supplied with water and destitute of the accumulated products of the soil, occupied only by hostile tribes, and then planting them so effectually in their new home as to make of them a nation of wealth and power, and of unity unparalleled. The immigration of four hundred thousand Tartars in a single night from the confines of Russia into their own native deserts, sometimes cited in illustration, bears but the remotest resemblance to it. The tourist who travels over the region, attended by a dozen Arabs and as many camels, to carry and care for him on the way, will ordinarily be not the last ready to believe that no natural force or genius was adequate, except as re-enforced by some such agencies as are recorded in the Hebrew history. The narrative, however, records the most complete preparation that the case admitted: a leader who had himself twice passed over the region, and was now intrusted with absolute authority; long expectation, and seasonable notice at last; a definite time and place of rendezvous; an organized arrangement—for they went up “harnessed,” or rather, in orderly array; a method of march and encampment as thorough as that of the best modern army, with many sanitary provisions; and negotiations, however unsuccessful, with the tribes on the way. The substantial fact of the expedition is no more to be questioned than the Norman Conquest. Never was an event so vitally incorporated with a nation’s history, observances, and literature, in every form, as was the Egyptian residence and rescue with those of Israel. Bartlett.

38. A mixed multitude went.** Partly Egyptians and partly natives of other countries, who had been prevailed upon by the miracles wrought in behalf of the Israelites, and from other motives, to go with them. Some were probably Egyptians of the poorer class, who were in hopes to better their condition in some way, or had other good reasons for leaving Egypt. Others were perhaps foreign slaves belonging both to the Hebrews and Egyptians, who were glad to take the opportunity of escaping with the Israelites. Others again were such adventurers and debtors as could no longer stay safely in Egypt. Whoever or whatever they were, the Israelites were no better for their presence. Bush.

39. The provision made for the camp was very poor and slender. They brought some dough with them out of Egypt in their knapsacks (verse 34). They had prepared to bake the next day, in order to their removal, understanding it was very near; but being hastened away, they took the dough as it was, unleavened, and when they came to Succoth, they baked unleavened cakes, and though they were insipid, yet the liberty they were brought into made it the most joyful meal they had ever eaten in their lives. H.

“History,” says Bunsen, “was born in that night when Moses, with the Law of God—moral and spiritual—in his heart, led the people of Israel out of Egypt.”

Neither alien, sojourner, nor hired servant could participate in the feast. “All the congregation of Israel shall keep it.” But the sojourner and the servant who were joined to Israel by circumcision shared this privilege in common with all others. “One law” is the striking declaration, emphasized by frequent repetition, “shall be to him that is home-born and unto the stranger” that is circumcised and abideth among you. B.—The enlarged and liberal spirit of the Hebrew system appears very strikingly in these regulations. Any stranger might be incorporated into the nation by conforming to the rites of their religion, and thereby become entitled to all the privileges of the native-born Jew. In order to this, it was proper that they should make themselves debtors to the Law in its burdens, for in God’s economy privileges and duties always go together. The provision was calculated at the same time to afford hope to the Gentile and to moderate the self-complacency of the Israelite. Bush.

Injunction to Teach their Sons the Origin and Meaning of the Passover (Ex. 13 : 8, 9).

Here is an ancient law for catechising. It is particularly of great use to acquaint children betimes with the stories of the Scripture, and to make them familiar to them. It is a debt we owe to the honor of God, and to the benefit of our children’s souls, to tell them of the great works God has done for his Church. H.— No wonder that this great event of their deliverance from Egypt was the one selected for a special and perpetual commemoration. There could not have been a better security devised for a safe and firm pathway of tradition than that which was established from the outset in the directions given by God to Moses, whereby it is laid on all parents as a religious duty that they should tell their children the origin and meaning of this ordinance. We of the present day can trace backward by means of this annual festival a series of testimonies, to be accounted for in no other possible way than by the truth of the narrative presented to us in Scripture— so as to make the Passover a monumental evidence for the authenticity of one of the most stupendous miracles ever recorded. T. C.

Israel, atoned for by the sacrifice of the Passover and freed from the leaven of Egypt and feeding upon pure bread, was consecrated as a holy people in communion with a holy God. W. H. G.—The Passover was a sacrifice which spoke of the adoption of the Jewish nation into the closest relationship with God, that relationship being primarily evinced by the forgiveness of sins. The first Passover was the commencement of the special privileges of the chosen nation; and every subsequent Passover became a pledge of the continuance of these privileges. Cave.

The Passover ritual divides itself into two main parts—the sprinkling of the sacrificial blood on the door-posts and lintels, and the feast on the sacrifice. These were separated in the later form of the ritual; for when there was a central sanctuary, the lambs were slain there, and the blood sprinkled on the altar, while the domestic feast remained unaltered. The former was more especially meant to preserve the Israelites from the destruction of their first-born; the latter as a permanent memorial of their deliverance. But both have perpetual fitness as prophetic of varying aspects of the Christian redemption. A. M.

The Passover a Sacrifice and Expiation.

The Paschal Lamb was a sacrifice. The chief characteristics of a sacrifice are all distinctly ascribed to it. It was offered in the holy place (De. 16 : 5, 6); the blood was sprinkled on the altar, and the fat was burned (2 Ch. 30 : 16). The language of Ex. 12 : 27; 23 : 18; Nu. 9 : 7; De. 16 : 2, 5, together with 1 Cor. 5 : 7, would seem to decide the question beyond the reach of doubt. The lamb, the gentlest of all creatures, must be without blemish, to teach not only the general principle of offering our best to God, but also the special doctrine, that an expiatory sacrifice must be that of the innocent for the guilty.

The Passover a Feast.

The Paschal Lamb was also a feast. Even amid the confusion of that awful night, they ate it with joy for their deliverance. Bush.—The Passover as a feast is a prophecy of the great Sacrifice, by virtue of whose sprinkled blood we all may be sheltered from the sweep of the Divine judgment, and on which we all have to feed if there is to be any life in us. Our propitiation is our food. “Christ for us” must become “Christ in us,” received and appropriated by our faith as the strength of our lives. The Christian life is meant to be a joyful feast on the sacrifice, and communion with God based upon it. We feast on Christ when the mind feeds on him as truth, when the heart is filled and satisfied with his love, when the conscience clings to him as its peace, when the will esteems the “words of his mouth more than” its “necessary food,” when all desires, hopes, and inward powers draw their supplies from him, and find their object in his sweet sufficiency. Nor will the accompaniments of the first Passover be wanting. Here we feast in the night; the dawn will bring freedom and escape. Here we eat the glad bread of God, not unseasoned with bitter herbs of sorrow and memories of the bondage, whose chains are dropping from our uplifted hands. Here we should partake of that hidden nourishment, so that it hinders not our readiness for outward service. It is not yet time to sit at his table but with loins girt, and feet shod, and hands grasping the pilgrim staff. Here we are to eat for strength, and to blend with our secret hours of meditation the holy activities of the pilgrim life. A. M.

The Passover a Memorial.