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him" (ibid. 27). The officers of the Israelites "met Moses and Aaron, who stood in the way, as they came forth from Pharaoh " (chap. v. 20). The frogs died out of the houses, out of the villages, and out of the fields; and they gathered them together in heaps (chap. viii. 13, 14). The Lord sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground" (chap. ix 23). The locusts covered the face of the earth, so that the land was darkened" (chap. x. 15). “Darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt" (ib. 21). And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt" (chap. xii. 30). "The people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders" (ib. 34). "The Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night" (chap. xiv. 21). "Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore” (ib. 30). The Egyptians "sank into the bottom as a stone; they sank as lead in the mighty waters" (chap. xv. 5-10). "The quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning the dew lay round about the host" (chap. xvi. 13). "They did mete the manna with an omer (ib. 18). "When the sun waxed hot, the manna melted" (ib. 21). "Moses went out to meet his father-in-law, and did obeisance, and kissed him" (chap. xviii. 7). "The whole mount (Sinai) quaked greatly" (chap. xix. 18). 'All the people answered with one voice, and said: All the words which the Lord hath said we will do" (chap. xxiv. 3). The subject need not be further pursued. It is evident that the style of narration is exactly that of an eye-witness, and we must either suppose intentional fraud, or the composition of Exodus by one of those who quitted Egypt at this time under the circumstances narrated. The date of the final completion of the work will therefore be, at the latest, some twenty or thirty years after the entrance into Canaan.

V. Author. If the Book of Exodus be granted to have been written by a contemporary-an Israelite present at the greater part of the scenes recorded in it-the question of its exact author becomes one of mere literary curiosity. The credibility of the Biblical history is established, as even Strauss admits,1 if it can be shown that it was written by eye-witnesses. And the author of Exodus can have been no ordinary Israelite, no uneducated person, no mere member of the rank and file; he must have been among the foremost of his nation, highly gifted, possessed of rare culture, a man of mark, one of the chief leaders. It would not detract from the value of the work as an historical record if it could be shown to have been written by Aaron or Hur, by Joshua or Caleb; but the interest is increased, no doubt, if it can justly be regarded as the work of Moses.

What ground, then, is there for this belief, which, notwithstanding all that has been urged against it, is still the prevalent one? In the first place, there is the unanimous tradition. "The Book of the Law" is ascribed to Moses by Joshua,2 by the author of Kings,3 by the author of Chronicles, by Ezra," by Nehemiah," by Malachi, by our blessed Lord," by St. John the Baptist," by Philip the Apostle,10 by St. Peter,11 by St. Paul repeatedly, and by all the Jewish Targums,

Rabbis, and commentators generally. A work which there is every reason to regard as the same is assigned to him by Hecatæus of Abdera, by Manetho, by Eupolemus, by Nicolas of Damascus, by Juvenal, and by Longinus. There is no counter-tradition. No writer of antiquity, of either great or small authority, has ever suggested any other author of Exodus, or (if we take the word author in its wider sense) of the entire Pentateuch, but Moses.

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Secondly, there is a large mass of internal evidence pointing to the Mosaic authorship of Exodus. Not only was the author familiar with Egypt, but he had a large acquaintance with the Egyptian language, laws, art, and literature. The number of Egyptian words and phrases which occur in Exodus is considerable.12 The Mosaic legislation has Egyptian features. The ornamentation of the tabernacle, and the fabrics used for curtains and for garments, betray an acquaintance with the resources and methods of Egyptian industrial skill. Acquaintance with Egyptian literature is shown in the more elevated parts of the work, especially in the "Song of Moses." As there is no reason to believe that any other Israelite of the time had enjoyed the advantage of being bred up in the Egyptian learning, and familiarised with the highest specimens of Egyptian artistic and literary genius, it is unlikely that any other member of the community could have produced Exodus. But Moses was fully competent for the task. Moses, brought up at the court, as the son of a princess, "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians (Acts vii. 22)—or, at any rate, in all that was not of a recondite character-familiar with artists and literary men, accustomed to the splendour and magnificence of the Pharaonic palaces and temples, might naturally have at once the literary skill, the legislative ability, and power of artistic conception which the work displays. Further, many of the little turns noticed in the preceding section, and others similar to them, which betray the hand of an eye-witness, are of such a nature that the eye-witness could only be Moses. Who but Moses could know that before he "slew the Egyptian" he “looked this way and that" (chap. ii. 12)? Who but he would remember that he buried him in the sand” (ib.)? Who but he could know that he turned aside to see the great sight of the burning bush (chap. iii. 3), or that he "fled from before" the serpent into which his rod was turned (chap. iv. 3), or that when he quitted Midian, he set his wife and child upon an ass (ib. 20), or that Zipporah cut off her son's foreskin "with a stone" (ib. 25), or that when she had cut it off, she cast it at Moses' feet (ib.)? Who but he could tell us that at Marah "he cried unto the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree" (chap. xv. 25), or that at Rephidim his "hands were heavy" (chap. xvii. 12), or the exact reasons for which he gave his two sons their names (chap. xviii. 3, 4), or that when he came down from the mount he "wist not that his face shone" (chap. xxxiv. 29), or that when he saw the glory of God, he made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped" (ib. 8)? Not only the actions of Moses, but his thoughts and feelings, the very words of his prayers breathed inwardly to God (chaps. xxxii. 31, 32, xxxiii. 12-16, &c.), are declared to us with openness, simplicity, and an unmistakable stamp of truth. Who but Moses could dare to lay bare to us the secret thoughts of Moses, to expose to us the very recesses of his heart?

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12 See Canon Cook's "Essay" in the Speaker's Commentary, Vol. I., pp. 476–492.

Again, a strong argument for the Mosaic author. ship may be drawn from the entire manner in which Moses is portrayed and spoken of. Whereas to the Hebrew nation-who owed him so much-Moses had always been the first and greatest of men, the writer of Exodus is unconscious of his possessing any personal greatness at all. The points in the personality of Moses which have impressed him the most, and on which he lays the greatest stress, are his deficiencies in natural gifts, and his numerous imperfections of temper and character. Rash and impetuous, beginning his public life with a crime (chap. ii. 12), and following up his crime with an assumption of authority that was unwise (ib. 13), he next shows a timid spirit, when he finds that his crime is known (ib. 14, 15), and betaking himself to exile, relinquishes all patriotic effort. Called by God, and entrusted with the mission of delivering Israel, he holds back, hesitates, pleads his personal defects, until he angers God, and loses half his leadership (chap. iv. 1-14). Unsuccessful in his first application to Pharaoh, he utters a remonstrance which verges on irreverence (chap. v. 22, 23). Encouraged by fresh promises, and bidden to make a second application, he responds by a fresh disparagement of his natural powers (chap. vi. 12). When at last he makes up his mind to carry out his struggle with Pharaoh to the bitter end, he shows, no doubt, courage and confidence in God; but still he is never praised: no single word is uttered in commendation of his moral qualities; once only is he said to have been "very great in the sight of Pharaoh's servants and of the people" (chap. xi. 3). It has been urged that he would not have spoken of himself in this tone-and it is just possible that the words are a later addition to his work-but still they contain no praise; they do but note a fact, and a fact of importance to the narrative, since it accounts for the gifts lavished upon Israel at their departure. In the later portion of Exodus, it is absence of all words of praise rather than any record of faults that we note; nothing calls forth from the writer a single sentence of approval; even when the offer is made to be blotted out of God's book for the sake of his people (chap. xxxii. 32), the same reticence is observed: no comment follows; there is no apparent recognition that the offer was anything but a small matter. Nor is any notice taken of the courage, faith, and wisdom exhibited by Moses in the performance of his mission from the time of his second appearance before Pharaoh (chap. vii. 10). Contrast with this silence what later writers say of him, as the son of Sirach (Ecclus. xlv. 1-5), the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (chap. xi. 24-28; comp. chap. iii. 5), and the completer of Deuteronomy (chap. xxxiv. 10-12). It will be sufficient to quote the last-named passage to show what his countrymen generally thought of their deliverer." And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, in all the signs and the wonders, which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh," &c. The humble estimate formed of the deliverer, and the general reticence, are quite intelligible, and in harmony with the rest of the Scripture, if the author was Moses. They are wholly unintelligible on any other hypothesis.

VI. Credibility.-Strauss observes, as has already been stated (see above, § v.), that "it would, most unquestionably, be an argument of decisive weight in favour of the credibility of the Biblical history could it indeed be shown that it was written by eye

witnesses." And, again, "Moses, being the leader of the Israelites on their departure from Egypt, would undoubtedly give a faithful history of the occurrences, unless" (which no one supposes) "he intended to deceive." 2 These admissions show that the credibility of Exodus is involved in the Mosaic authorship, and is proved if that be proved, as we conceive that it is. Still, as all men are not logically-minded, the following remarks on the credibility of the narrative itself, whoever was the writer, may not be superfluous.

The narrative contains an account of Egypt, touching in numerous points its history, geography, productions, climatic peculiarities, manners and customs, &c., with much definiteness and exactness. A writer who ventures on such minutiæ, unless a contemporary, and familiar with the scene which he describes, is liable to trip at every turn, and is certain to be caught tripping if subjected to a close scrutiny by those who, with all the aids of modern historical research, have made the country and the period their special study. But the more closely Exodus is scrutinised by learned Egyptologists, the more triumphantly does it emerge from the ordeal; and it is not too much to say that, for the future, no sceptical critic is likely to repeat the attack of Von Bohlen, which called forth so crushing a reply from Hengstenberg.3 The narrative of Exodus, though at present it receives no direct confirmation from the Egyptian monuments, is indirectly confirmed on so many and such minute points, that its historical character must be admitted, unless we tax the writer with conscious imposture. He is familiar with the Egypt of the early Rameside period, and must have known the circumstances of the departure of Israel. If he has misrepresented them, he must have done so intentionally, and have sought to give his fiction an air of reality by observing, in all his details, the utmost truthfulness and accuracy.

Though the general narrative is unconfirmed by the Egyptian monuments, which would not be likely to notice an inglorious episode in Egyptian history, yet it receives a certain amount of confirmation from an Egyptian writer of repute, as well as from several of the classical historians. Manetho, an Egyptian priest, who wrote a history of Egypt, in the time of the first Ptolemy (B.C. 323-283), declared that, in the reign of an Amenophis, who was the son of a Rameses, and the father of a Sethos, a man named Moses led out of Egypt a colony of unclean persons, and conducted them to Syria. Hecatæus, of Abdera, who lived about the same time, told a similar story, adding that the colony consisted of foreigners, and settled in Judæa.5 Artapanus, Chæremon, Eupolemus, Lysimachus, Tacitus, and others gave accounts which were not very different. It was generally accepted as historic truth in the ancient world, that the nation known as Jews or Israelites had at one time dwelt in Egypt, had quitted that country under circumstances of hostility, and had passed through the desert to Palestine. Most writers agreed that the leader of the migration had been Moses. Some mentioned both Moses and Aruas, i.e., Aaron. The passage of the Red Sea was admitted by the Egyptians themselves, who only differed

1 Leben Jesu, 13, p. 55, E.T.

2 Ib., p. 56, E.T.

See the important work of this writer, entitled Egypten und Mose, published in 1840, and translated into English for Clark's Theological Library in 1845. Some additions have been made to the proof furnished by Hengstenberg in the following work of the present writer-Historical Illustrations of the Old and New Testament, pp. 67-79.

Ap. Joseph. Contra Apion. i. 26, 27.

5 Ap. Phot. Bibliothec., p. 1152.

• Trog. Pompeius in the Epitome of Justin (xxxiv. 2).

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as to the question whether it had been miraculous or not. While the priests of Memphis maintained that Moses had merely taken advantage of a low tide to lead the Israelites across, those of Heliopolis, more honest or better informed, freely declared that, on the Egyptian king, at the head of a large force, pursuing after the Jews, because they were carrying away with them the riches which they had borrowed of the Egyptians, the voice of God commanded Moses to smite the sea with his rod, and divide it. Moses, therefore, when he was thus admonished, touched the water with his rod, and so the sea parted asunder, and the host marched through on dry ground." The march by way of Mount Sinai is witnessed to by one classical writer, and there is a general agreement that the laws which marked off the Jews from all other nations were given them by Moses.

2

2.

At the present day, the credibility of Exodus is assailed on two principal grounds:-1. The miraculous character of a large portion of the narrative. The exaggeration, which is thought to be apparent, in the numbers. A school of foreign critics denies the possibility of a miracle; and among ourselves there are many who accept the view of Hume, that it is more probable that the witnesses to miracles should have been deceived, than that the miracles should have happened. It is impossible, within the limits of an "Introduction," to discuss these large questions. Every Christian, every believer in the Apostles' Creed, must accept miracles. And when the Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord are once accepted, any other minor miracles cease to be felt as difficulties. In the present case, it is observable :-(1) that the miracles were needed; (2) that they were peculiarly suitable and appropriate to the circumstances; and (3) that they were of such a nature that it was impossible for eye-witnesses to be deceived with regard to them. Moses especially, whom we have shown to have been almost certainly the writer of Exodus, could not have been deceived as to the miracles. He must have known whether he performed them or not. Even if the writer be a companion of Moses (Joshua or Caleb), and not Moses himself, deception is inconceivable. Either the plagues of Egypt happened, or they did not. Either the Red Sea was divided, or it was not. Either the pillar of fire and of the cloud guided the movements of the host for forty years, or there was no such thing. Either there was manna each morning round about the camp, or there was none. The facts were too plain, too simple, too obvious to sense for there to be any doubt about them. The record is either a true account, or a tissue of lies. We cannot imagine the writer an eyewitness, and reject the main features of his tale, without looking on him as an impudent impostor. No "enthusiasm," no poetic temperament," could account for such a record, if the Exodus was accomplished without miracles. The writer either related the truth, or was guilty of conscious dishonesty.

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With respect to the numerical difficulties, it is to be borne in mind, in the first place, that numbers are peculiarly liable to corruption in ancient works, from the fact that they were not fully expressed, but written in a sort of cipher.3 It is quite possible that the numbers in our present copies of Exodus are in excess, and express the ideas of a reviser, such as Ezra, rather than those of the original author. The males of full

age who quitted Egypt may have been 100,000, or 60,000, instead of 600,000, and the migration one of 400,000 or 200,000 souls, instead of two millions. But, on the whole, judicious criticism inclines to uphold the numbers of the existing text. Alarm would not have been felt by the Egyptian kings until the people had greatly multiplied, and become formidable from a military point of view, which they could not have been until the fully-grown men numbered some hundreds of thousands. For the population of Egypt was probably from seven to eight millions, and the military class, at a far less flourishing time than that of the Exodus, was reckoned at above 400,000. Nor could Canaan well have been conquered by an emigrant body which did not amount to some millions, since the country was well peopled at the time, and its occupants were brave and warlike. The difficulty of subsistence for two millions of persons in the desert is entirely met by the continuous miracle of the manna, and that of sufficient pasture for their numerous flocks and herds, by the far greater fertility of the Sinaitic peninsula in ancient than in modern times, of which abundant indications have been observed by recent travellers.7 Ewald, Kalisch, Kurtz, and Keil accept the numbers of the present text of Exodus, and believe the migration to have been successfully accomplished by a body of about two millions of persons.

VII. Condition of the Text.-The condition of the text of Exodus is extremely good. Variant readings of any importance are few, and passages which require emendation almost non-existent. There are one or two short sentences which may be interpolations by a later hand, perhaps Joshua's : and there is one long insertion (chap. vi. 14-27) which seems not to be from the pen of Moses, but which he may have sanctioned. Some critics, grounding themselves upon the LXX. or Samaritan Version, or both, maintain that a considerable number of passages have fallen out of the text, which were originally part of it; but the predominant voice of scholars pronounces the passages in question to be unauthorised additions, foisted into the work by the Greek or the Samaritan translators. Even the supposed transposition of the passage concerning the altar of incense from chap. xxvi. to chap. xxx., the place where it stands in the Hebrew copies, which at first sight seems highly probable, is condemned by the spirit of the rule, Proclivi lectioni præstat ardua, and is rejected by all recent commentators. Thus Exodus would seem to have come down to us almost in the condition in which it was left by Moses, who was regarded with so much veneration by succeeding prophets, that the greatest care was taken to hand down his works unaltered.

See Exod. i. 9, 10.

5 Diod. Sic. i. 31; Joseph., Bell. Jud. ii. 16. 6 Herod, ii. 165-6.

7 See Our Work in Palestine (chap. xiii., p. 270). The writer says:-"Objections have been made, based on the present barrenness of the peninsula, to the narrative of the Bible. They vanish before the results of the survey. The barrenness of the peninsula is due to neglect. In former times it was more richly wooded; the wadies were protected by wails stretching across, which served as dams to resist the force of the rushing waters; the mountains were terraced, and clothed with gardens and groves.'

8 As especially the second clause of verse 3 in chap. xi.

9 The most important of these passages are chap. i. 11, where the LXX. add "On" to "Pithom and Raamses"; and xii. 40, where the LXX. insert "and in the land of Canaan" after Egypt"; and the Samaritan, adopting this change, adds further, and their fathers" after "the children of Israel." Other places, where comparatively unimportant additions occur, are chap. vii., between verses 18 and 19; viii., between 19 and 20; ix., between 5 and 6, and between 19 and 20; x., between 2 and 3; xi., between 2 and 4; and xx., between 17 and 18.

THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT, AND THEIR OPPRESSION BY A NEW KING. (1) Now these are the names.-The divisions between the "books" of the Pentateuch are not arbitrary. Genesis ends naturally and Exodus begins at the point where the history of the individuals who founded the Israelite nation ceases and that of the nation itself is entered on. That history commences properly with verse 7. Verses 1-6 form the connecting link between the two books, and would not have been needed unless Exodus had been introduced as a distinct work, since they are little more than a recapitulation of what had been already stated and stated more fully in Genesis. Compare verses 1-5 with Gen. xlvi. 8-27, and verse 6 with Gen. 1. 26.

Every man and his household.-"A household," in the language of the East, includes not only children and grand-children, but retainers also-" servants born in the house "-like those of Abraham (Gen. xiv. 14). The number of each "household" may thus have been very considerable.

(3-4) Reuben

(5) All the souls

-The sons of the legitimate wives are placed first, then those of the concubines. Leah has precedence over Rachel; Bilhah over Zilpah. The children of each wife and concubine are given in order of seniority. The omission of Joseph from the list is explained in the last clause of verse 5. . were seventy souls. Comp. Gen. xlvi. 8—27. The number is made up as follows:-Jacob himself, 1; his sons, 12; his daughter, Dinah, 1; his grandsons, 51; his grand-daughter Serah, 1; his great-grandsons, 4-Total, 70. His daughters, except Dinah, and his sons' daughters, except Serah, spoken of in Gen. xlvi. 7, are not included. If his female descendants were, at the time of his descent into Egypt, as numerous as the males, the entire number of those who "came out of his loins" must have been 132. To form a calculation of the number of persons who entered Egypt with him, we must add the wives of his sons and grandsons, and the husbands of his daughters and granddaughters. A further liberal allowance must be also made for retainers. (See the comment on verse 1.) It is not perhaps surprising that Kurtz, taking all these classes into account, should cal

(8) Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. (9) And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are

culate that those who entered Egypt with Jacob amounted to "several thousands" (History of The Old Covenant, vol. ii. p. 149, E.T.).

(7) The children of Israel were fruitful.A great multiplication is evidently intended. Egypt was a particularly healthy country, and both men and animals were abnormally prolific there. Grain was so plentiful that want, which is the ordinary check on population, was almost unknown. The Egyptian kings for many years would look favourably on the growth of the Hebrew people, which strengthened their eastern frontier, the quarter on which they were most open to attack. God's blessing was, moreover, upon the people, which he had promised to make "as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore, for multitude (see Gen. xxii. 17). On the actual extent of the multiplication and the time that it occupied, see the comment on chap. xii. 37–41.

The land-i.e., where they dwelt-Goshen (Gen. xlvii. 4-6)—which seems to have been the more eastern portion of the Delta.

The

(8) There arose up a new king.-A king of a new dynasty might seem to be intended. Some suppose him to be Aahmes I., the founder of the eighteenth dynasty of Manetho; others suggest Rameses II., one of the greatest monarchs of the nineteenth. present writer inclines to regard him as Seti I., the father of this Rameses, and the son of Rameses I. Seti, though not the actual founder of the nineteenth dynasty, was the originator of its greatness. Excursus I. "On Egyptian History, as connected with the Book of Exodus," at the end of this Book.)

(See

Which knew not Joseph.-It seems to be implied that, for some considerable time after his death, the memory of the benefits conferred by Joseph upon Egypt had protected his kinsfolk. But, in the shifts and changes incident to politics-especially to Oriental politics-this condition of things had passed away. The " new king" felt under no obligation to him, perhaps was even ignorant of his name. He viewed the political situation apart from all personal predilections, and saw a danger in it.

(9) He said unto his people.-It is not intended to represent the Egyptian monarch as summoning a popular assembly, and addressing it. "His people," is

antithetical to "the people of the children of Israel," and simply marks that those whom he addressed were of his own nation. No doubt they were his nobles, or, at any rate, his courtiers.

More and mightier than we.-Heb., great and mighty in comparison with us. The more to impress his counsellors, and gain their consent to his designs, the king exaggerates. Ancient Egypt must have had a population of seven or eight millions, which would imply nearly two millions of adult males, whereas the adult male Israelites, near a century later, were no more than six hundred thousand (chap. xii. 37). Wicked men do not scruple at misrepresentation when they have an end to gain.

(10) Let us deal wisely.-Instead of open force, the king proposes stratagem. He thinks that he has hit upon a wise scheme-a clever plan-by which the numbers of the Israelites will be kept down, and they I will cease to be formidable. The nature of the plan appears in verse 11.

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When there falleth out any war. -The Egyptians were in general an aggressive people-a terror to their neighbours, and seldom the object of attack. But about the beginning of the nineteenth dynasty a change took place. "A great nation grew up beyond the frontier on the north-east to an importance and power which began to endanger the Egyptian supremacy in Western Asia (Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. ii. p. 2). War threatened them from this quarter, and the impending danger was felt to be great.

They join also.-Rather, they too join. It was not likely that the Hebrews would have any real sympathy with the attacking nation, whether Arabs, Philistines, Syrians, or Hittites; but they might regard an invasion as affording them a good opportunity of striking a blow for freedom, and, therefore, attack the Egyptians simultaneously with their other foes. The Egyptians themselves would perhaps suppose a closer connection between them and the other Eastern races than really existed.

Get them up out of the land.-The Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty were excessively jealous of the withdrawal from Egypt of any of their subjects, and endeavoured both to hinder and to recover them. Immigration was encouraged, emigration sternly checked. The loss of the entire nation of the Hebrews could not be contemplated without extreme alarm.

(11) Task-masters.-Heb., chiefs of tributes. The Egyptian system of forced labour, which it was now resolved to extend to the Israelites, involved the appointment of two sets of officers—a lower class, who personally overlooked the labourers, and forced them to perform their tasks, and a higher class of superintendents, who directed the distribution of the labour, and assigned to all the tasks which they were to execute. The task-masters" of the present passage are these high officials.

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Oppression of Israel begins.

Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses. (12) 1 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel. (13) And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: (14) and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all

To afflict them.-This was the object of the whole proceeding. It was hoped that severe labour under the lash would produce so much suffering that the number of the Israelites would be thinned, and their multiplication stopped. Humanly speaking, the scheme was a "wise" one-i.e., one likely to be successful. They built for Pharaoh treasure-cities.-By "treasure-cities we are to understand magazines' -i.e., strongholds, where munitions of war could be laid up for use in case of an invasion. (In 1 Kings ix. 19, and 2 Chron. viii. 4, the same expression is translated "cities of store.") The Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty gave great attention to the guarding of the north-eastern frontier in this way.

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Pithom.-This city is reasonably identified with the "Patumus" of Herodotus (ii. 158), which was in Lower Egypt, not far from Bubastis (Tel Basta). It is mentioned in the inscriptions of the nineteenth dynasty under the name of Pi-Tum (Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. ii. p. 128). It was, as the name implies, a city of the sun-god, and was probably not very far from Heliopolis, the main seat of the sun-god's worship.

Raamses.-Pi-Ramesu, the city of Rameses, was the ordinary seat of the Court during the earlier part of the nineteenth dynasty. It appears to have been a new name for Tanis, or for a suburb of Tanis, which overshadowed the old city. Rameses II. claims to have built the greater part of it; but it was probably commenced by his father, Seti, who made the defence of the north-eastern frontier one of his main cares. The name must be considered as a mere variant rendering of the Egyptian Ramessu or Ramesu. The site is marked by the mounds at San.

(12) The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.-This result was not natural. It can only be ascribed to God's superintending Providence, whereby "the fierceness of man was made to "turn to his praise." Naturally, severe and constant labour exhausts a nation, and causes its numbers to diminish.

They were grieved.-This is scarcely strong enough. Translate, "They were sore distressed."

(13) With rigour.-Forced labour in Egypt was of a very severe character. Those condemned to it worked from morning to night under the rod of a task-master, which was freely applied to their legs or backs, if they rested their weary limbs for a moment. (See Records of the Past, vol. viii. p. 149; Chabas, Mélanges Egyptologiques, vol. ii. p. 121). The heat of the sun was great; the burthens which the labourers had to carry were heavy, and the toil was incessant. Death often resulted from the excessive work. According to Herodotus, a single monarch, Neco, destroyed in this way 120,000 of his subjects (Herod. ii. 158).

(14) In morter and in brick.-It has been questioned whether the Egyptians used brick as a material