Exodus 13

Tyranny is too weak crease and multiply. God’s peo they go away like conquerors, wittt them; armed for security, and wealthy for maintenance,” Chap. XII. Ver. 1—22. Israel travels From Succoth to Elam. —Two important particulars here call for our observation. 1. The devotion of the first-born to God, both of man and beast, but in the case only that the first-born provea male; and this law may be considered in two points of view: first, as a memorial of the last plague inflicted on the Egyptians, and of the high hand with which the Israelites were delivered from the hand of Pharaoh; and secondly, as a memento of their obligations to the Lord for their own preservation, not one of their children being slain.

And both these lessons are no less important to us than to them. We have seen the judgments of the Lord around us, one falling on our right hand and another on our left; yet we are left the monuments of distinguishing mercy. And as the preservation of Israel was a call upon them to devote their first-born to God, so no less imperatively are we called upon to devote both ourselves and all we have to his Service; particularly should we so devote our children, and bring them up under a due sense of their obligations to divine mercy: “And thou shalt show thy son in that day, saying, This is done, because of that which the Lord did unto, where God bids, In me in the day that I came forth out of Egypt.”

So the Rable had stayed like slaves; bins say, “Whatever happened to the fathers, is a sign unto the h the spoil of those that hate 2, We have the journeying of the children of Israel to the edge of the wilderness, and the borders of the Red Sea. It was not the nearest way, because that lay through the country of the Philistines; ‘‘ for the Lord said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and return to Egypt.” But could not the same God who delivered them from Pharaoh deliver them from the Philistines? Most undoubtedly; but this was not his plan. Because the Lord was with his people, they were not, therefore, to tempt dangers; the Lord proportions the trials of his people to their strength; and as their bodies had been enervated, and their spirits broken with long and severe slavery, they were now ill prepared to engage in war.

“The Lord worketh wonders,” and had done so in Egypt; but he always chooses his own time and way; and it was proved in the issue, that the way the people were led, though not a near way, was “a right way to their city of habitation.” Nor would, in fact, any victory that might have been miraculously given them, have equally displayed the glory of God as the cloud and the pillar which now attended them, and the passage of the Red sea which now lay before them. As to the pillar of the cloud, it appears calculated for two ends—their direction and protection; the former by passing usually before them, and directing them in their way; and the latter by removing occasionally behind them, and protecting them from their enemies, as we shall see in the next chapter.

The cloud, however, protected them in another way; for it shaded them from the scorching sun, and occasionally afforded them refreshing dews. ‘Fear not, O Israel; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil.” (Ps. exxi. 6, 7.)

Notes on the verses

Chap. XIII. Ver. 2. Sanctif,, &c.—{The word kadash, is to consecrate, separate, and set apart a person or thing from all common or secular purposes to some religious use; and exactly answers to the Greek agiadzo, because every thing offered or consecrated to God was separated from all earthly uses. Thus the persons and animals sanctified to God were employed in the service of the tabernacle and temple; and the animals, such as were proper, were offered in sacrifice. |—Bagster. Ver. 9,16. It shall be for a sign (or token) upon thine hand, and between thine eyes.—The heathen of almost a with the names of their idols, or else wear ornaments connected with superstitious mottoes, or astrological characters, which they use as charms, &c.

The Israelites were to be distinguished, not by such superstitious practices, but by a rigid adherence to the divine institutions of Moses.—Orient. Lit. Nos. 179, 180. From this text, however, originated the phylacteries worn by the Jews in after times, as we shall have farther occasion to observe. Pharaoh’s destruction of the male children.—(Exodus 1:16, 22). Ver. 18. The Red sea.—Hebrew, Yam suph, the weedy sea; so called, probably from a weed, called in the Ethiopic suo, from which the natives extract a red colour, used for dying, whence this was called by the LXX. “the Red sea.” This meee ie declares to be coral, with which thus sea abounds. This sea (called also the Arabian Gulf) is computed to be 350 leagues in length, and about 40 in breadth.

Others think it received its name from Edom, which signifies red, as bordering on his territory. — The children of Israel went up harnessed—That is, “armed,” or in ee eo: here the margin ‘by five in a rank.” [A great variety of meanings have been attributed chamushim, which is here rendered five in a rank, and which rendering of Theodotian and Montanus. But had this been the ” cy rontlets case, and supposing only one yard for each rank to move in, it would have required not less than 68 miles for only the 600,000 effective men to have at ed in, which the circumstances of the history do not admit. The textual reading of harnessed or armed, is supported by Symmachus, Aquila, Vulgate, Symiac, Arabic, and LXX.

in (Joshua 4:12).; but it is very improbable that Pharaoh would have permitted the use of arms to 600,000 men, of military age, and cruelly oppressed. The Targum renders it girded, which is also the version of the LXX. in (Joshua 1:14).; and is followed by Aben Ezra, and approved of by Bp. Patrick; but this is not less objectionable than the preceding; the word being applied in (Judges 7:11). to men who were certainly neither armed nor girded, § as they were lying asleep. Equally inadmissible is the sense attributed to it by Harmer; who thinks they, with their cattle, were in strings or companies of five each. The interpretation of the Editor of Calmet seems to be nearer the truth—embodied under five, i.

e. the officers established by the oe laws and usages of encampments, military service, and caravans, i ow Ver. 21. By night in a pillar of fire.—Xenophon, describes the march of certain Spartans, who carried upon a pole the sacred fire from their altars—partly, perhaps, from superstition, and partly to give them light—a custom probably borrowed from this miraculous pillar.—See Orient. Cust. No. 677.