IX. JUSTINUS (in the beginning of the fifth century, A.C., whose work is an abridgment of the Universal History of Trogus Pompeius, who flourished in the time of Augustus) relates: "The Jews are descended from Damascus, king of Syria, among whose successors were Abraham and Israhel [Israel]. The latter had ten sons, among whom he distributed the empire, which he ordered to be henceforth called Judea, from Juda, who had died immediately after the division. His youngest son was Joseph, whom the brothers, apprehending his superior genius, sold into Egypt, where he soon by his wisdom, and especially his skill in interpreting dreams, rose high in the king's favour, and by his agricultural arrangement saved the land during a protracted period of sterility. His son was Moses, who was, not only distinguished by erudition, but also by striking beauty.1 But when the Egyptians suffered from leprosy and tetters, they expelled him with the infected persons from the territories of Egypt, lest the disease should spread still further. He took furtively the sacred implements of the Egyptians with him;2 the latter, to recover them, pursued the Jews with an army, but were compelled by a tempests to return. [Then follows the strange explanation of the Sabbath as a fast-day, see notes on xx. 8-11, p. 272, and of the laws interdicting communication with heathens; and he concludes]: After Moses, his son Aruas [Aaron], who had been priest in Egyptian temples, succeeded as king; and since then it became customary among the Jews, that their kings performed at the same time sacerdotal functions." We remark: 1. The origin of the Israelites from Syria coincides with one account of Tacitus. 2. That Abraham and Israel were reported as kings of Syria, may have been occasioned by Christians, and who were hated for their disgraceful conduct. Christus, the founder of that name, was put to death as a criminal by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only in Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, whither all things horrible and disgraceful flow, as to a common receptacle." We find here, in an unusually repulsive form, the same inveterate animosity and blind hatred which pervade the accounts of the heathen writers on the religion of the Israelites. The Christians were, indeed, long held in the same abhorrence as the Jews, from whom they had sprung; and the persecution which Claudius ordered against the Jews included, as a matter of course, the Christians also. 1 See ii. 2. 2 See note on iii. 21, 22. 3 xiv. 21. the fame of their great wealth (Gen. xii. 5; xiii. 2, 5; xiv., etc.; compare xiv. 15, and xv. 2). 3. The ten tribes and the name Judea are confused notions from the later times of the divided empire. 4. Joseph and Moses are, as in the account of Chaeremon (see ii.), brought into a close chronological connection. 5. The statement, that the kings of Israel performed at the same time pontifical functions is not correct, and may be the result of a misconception of the theocratical institutions of Israel.' 6. The author reports nothing about the fate of the other nine sons of Israel and their descendants, and about their connection with the returning progeny of Joseph. - The other inaccuracies in Justinus' account are too obvious to require comment. All these accounts combined, however scanty and contradictory they are, have yet that incalculable importance, that they confirm and raise beyond the shadow of a doubt, the great and momentous events which form the chief interest of our book, and that they, on the other hand, just by their confusedness, show the lucidity and authenticity of the Biblical relation in a clearer and more advantageous light. 1 See note on xix. 6; compare, however, also note on ii. 16. THE SECOND BOOK OF MOSES CALLED EXODU S. CHAPTER I. SUMMARY.-The seventy individuals, who had immigrated into Egypt in the time of Jacob, increased, in the course of some centuries, to such a numerous people, that a later Pharaoh from another dynasty, ignorant or unmindful of the important services Joseph had rendered to the Egyptian monarchy, and fearful lest the Hebrews join his political-internal-enemies, and leave the land, to his great disadvantage, devised various despotic plans for their diminution: first he tried to exhaust their energies by severe and excessive labour; then he ordered the midwives to kill all male children; and, lastly, he charged all his subjects to watch that every new-born boy be thrown into the Nile. NOW these are the names of the children of Israel, who came into Egypt with Jacob; 'every man came with his household. 2. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 3. Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4. Dan, 1 Engl. Vers.-Every man and his household came with Jacob. 1. The events related in the first chapter, from the death of Joseph (Gen. 1. 26) to the marriage of Amram and Jochebed, comprise a period of 264 years (see Introduction, § 2. 11), viz. from 1910 A.M. to 2174 A. M. (or 1850 B. c. to 1586 B. C.), (see Introduction, § 2. 111). As the history of the descendants of Jacob in Egypt is about to be related, the sons of that patriarch are again enumerated, a complete list of all the members of his family at the time of their immigration into Egypt having already been given in Genesis xlvi. 8-27. That genealogy is further repeated here, in order to indicate, in the most striking manner possible, the commencement of the new epoch in the history of the progeny of Abraham. —Now these are. Ebn Ezra connects the conjunction. now with Genesis 1. 23, where the progeny of Joseph is alluded to; Salomon ("The Pentateuch Translated and Explained") with the promises contained in Gen. 1. 24, 25. It indicates certainly the close connection between the two first books; as, in fact, the whole Pentateuch is intended as one continuous narrative. Every man came with his household. In the word house the wives of Jacob's sons and grandsons are not counted, for as Ebn Ezra remarks: "an individual with his wife, that only is the man." The English version, scrupulously faithful to the tonic accents of the masoretic text, takes the words with Jacob to the second part of the sentence, thereby impairing the simplicity of the sense. None of the ancient versions offers a similar rendering. 2-4. Rashbam, in order to justify the partial repetition from Gen. xlvi. 8-27, thus explains the connection of these verses: "The descendants of Israel multiplied and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. 5. And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls: and Joseph was in Egypt already. 6. And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. 7. And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, prodigiously, although they were originally but 70 in number." Thus also Cahen. The order, in which the sons of Jacob are enumerated, is: first the children of his wives Leah and Rachel, then those of their maid-servants Bilhah and Zilpah, and lastly Joseph, because he did not emigrate together with the other members of his family. 5. That came out of the loins of Jacob; a frequent scriptural metaphor for begotten by Jacob, or, his children, see Gen. xlvi. 26. About the seventy individuals who immigrated into Egypt, in Jacob's time, see Raphall's elaborate note to Gen. xlvi. 26, and note C. of the Appendix, where the opinion of Ebn Ezra, that the seventieth person (for the text enumerates only sixtynine) is Jacob himself, although it might, at the first glance, appear, that he cannot appropriately be included among those that came out of the loins of Jacob, is convincingly defended against the tradition, according to which the number of seventy souls is completed by Jochebed (the mother of Moses), who is asserted to have been born precisely at the time of their entering Egypt, but who, if this opinion were correct, would, even according to traditionary chronology, have been 135 years old when she gave birth to Moses (see note to ii. 1). The Septuagint has seventy-five instead of seventy, as in Gen. xlvi. 27, where it arbitrarily adds five of the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh enumerated in 1 Chron. vii. 14-19. Besides this, the Septuagint exhibits in this verse another deviation from the usual text, viz., it begins the verse with the words: and Joseph was in Egypt. 6. And Joseph died, etc. This verse clearly resumes the thread of the narration from the point to which it had been carried on in the preceding book (1. 26), and repeats, therefore, briefly, the event there stated: "So then Joseph died," etc. -And all that generation, comprising a rather protracted period of an indefinite number of years; for Levi survived Joseph by about twenty-five years, compare Gen. 1. 26, and Exod. vi. 16. 7. The accumulation of the Synonyms (were fruitful, increased abundantly, etc.), peculiar to oriental idioms, is simply intended to express the utmost fruitfulness and increase; and we need therefore, not to adopt the distinctions which ancient commentators find in them (see Rashi, Ramban, Ebn Ezra, Abarbanel), although we easily concur in the opinion, that the verbs here used denote different modifications of the same fundamental notion, and that the Hebrew women gave birth to more than one child at one time (Ebn Ezra, twins; Rashi, six children). That this was not unfrequent in Egypt we learn from Aristotle (Hist. Anim. vii. 4): "Often the women bring forth twins, as in Egypt. They even give birth to three or four children at a time, nor is this of rare occurrence; but five is the highest number, and there have been instances of such fruitfulness." Pliny (Hist. Nat. vii. 3) observes: "That three are born at a birth is undoubted; to bear above that number is considered as an extraordinary phenomenon, except in Egypt, where the waters of the Nile are fructifying." Maillet (Description of Egypt, i. p. 18) ascribes this fertility to the uncommon salubrity of the air in Egypt.-Our text says, that the land was filled with the Israelites. It is impossible to understand hereby the land of Goshen alone, which comprises only the territory of the present province Esh Schurkiyeh, bordering, in the east, on the Arabian desert, and in the west, on the eastern branches of the Nile (see Robinson, Pal. i. p. 84, et seq.). For as, according to xii, 37, there were and multiplied, and 'grew exceedingly strong; and the land was filled with them. 8. Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew 1 Engl. Vers.-Waxed exceeding mighty. among the Hebrews 600,000 men capable of bearing arms, their whole population, including their wives, children and servants, must have amounted to between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 souls; and these cannot possibly have found abodes in the comparatively limited district of Goshen; the less so, if we consider that the Hebrews did not exclusively inhabit it, but that Egyptians lived among them, as appears from the words: "And every woman shall ask of her neighbour," etc. (iii. 22; see our note to ii. 5); and, from the distinct account in v. 12, where it is clearly related that the Hebrews were scattered over all the land of Egypt in order to seek straw for the manufacturing of bricks, we may safely infer that they were spread over the whole country. s. Who knew not Joseph. Targum Onkelos translates: who did not sanction the measures introduced by Joseph; similarly Targum Jonathan and Jerusalem: "who did not regard Joseph, nor observe his laws." The Talmud (Sotah 11 a., where the whole passage from verse 8, to the beginning of the next chapter is explained) mentions the different opinions of Rab and Schemuel on the meaning of the "new king," the one understanding thereby literally another monarch, the latter only a crisis in the life and fates of the old sovereign. But although the Hebrew verb here used () has sometimes the signification of "to care, to be mindful," it is here much more naturally to be understood in its usual and literal sense, to know. Nor is it necessary to have recourse to the talmudical interpretation (quoted by Rashi), "he feigned to know nothing of Joseph's merits," or to that of Clarke and others, "he disapproved of his system." From the circumstance that our text has "a new king," and not " another king," and from the expression, "Now there arose (see Judges ii. 10; Psalm lxxviii. 6), we may conclude, that the new king was not simply a successor of that Pharaoh whom Joseph had served as grand vizier, but that both were from different dynasties; which, in the earlier periods of Egyptian history, changed in rapid succession. Till the times of Sesostris (about 1450 B.C.) Egypt was not united under one mighty ruler, but it consisted of almost as many states as it comprised cities, or at least districts, without connection or unity. Although Thebes maintained, during a long epoch, a predominant influence, it had constantly to resist the dangerous and powerful rivalry of Memphis, which became, later, even the chief residence of the Egyptian kings, and to repel the hostilities of many other colonies, which, mostly founded and governed by priests, had sufficient resources to maintain their autonomy. These facts render the unravelling of the Egyptian history of this period, fabulous in itself, a matter of paramount, if not insuperable, difficulty, as the lists of kings which are preserved to us by Herodotus, Diodorus, Manetho and Eratosthenes, do not exhibit the successive rulers of one monarchy, but to a great extent the contemporary sovereigns of different smaller states, and we should almost consider an authentic enlightenment on this point hopelessly lost, in our time, were it not improper ever to despair of the possible results of scientific researches. But it will readily be perceived, from this dismemberment of the Egyptian territory, that foreign invaders could, without difficulty, attack and subdue the one or the other of those monarchies, and that their mutual jealousy encouraged such invasions, and facilitated the triumphs of the invaders. To a similar conquest by foreign enemies we are naturally led by the tenor of our text, for only such new king could be ignorant of the most eminent services Joseph had rendered to the commonwealth, a cir |