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hundreds of years experience of the tides, he could not be caught, as he was, through ignorance, nor by any foreknown or natural accident, but by God's powerful hand only; which then falleth most heavily on all men, when looking through no other spectacle but their own prosperity, they least discern it coming, and least fear it. Lastly, if the army of the Egyptians had been overtaken by the ordinary return of the flood, before they could recover their own coast, their bodies drowned would have been carried with the flood which runneth up to Sues, and to the end of that sea, and not have been cast ashore on that coast of Arabia where Moses landed, to wit, upon the sea-bank over against Baalzephon, on Arabia side, where it was that the Israelites saw their dead bodies; and not at the end of the Red sea, to which place the ordinary flood would have carried them; which flood doth not any where cross the channel, and run athwart it, as it must have done from Egypt side to Arabia, to have cast the Egyptians' bodies there; but it keeps the natural course towards the end of that sea, and to which their carcasses should have been carried, if the work had not been supernatural and miraculous. Apollonius, in the lives of the fathers, affirmeth, that those of the Egyptians which stayed in the country, and did not follow Pharaoh in the pursuit of Israel, did ever after honour those beasts, birds, plants, or other creatures, about which they were busied at the time of Pharaoh's destruction; as he that was then labouring in his garden made a god of that plant or root about which he was occupied; and so of the rest. But how those multitudes of gods were erected among them, a more probable reason shall be given elsewhere. Orosius, in his first book and tenth chapter against the pagans, tells us, that in his time, who lived some 400 years after Christ, the prints of Pharaoh's chariot wheels were to be seen at a low water on the Egyptian sands; and though they were sometime defaced by wind and weather, yet soon after they appeared again. But hereof I leave every man to his own be lief.

CHAP. IV.

Of the journeying of the Israelites from the Red sea to the place where the law was given them; with a discourse of laws.

SECT. I.

A transition, by way of recapitulation of some things touching chronology; with a continuance of the story, until the Amalekites met with the Israelites.

BUT to go on with the story of Israel, in this sort I collect the times. Moses was born in the year of the world 2434, Saphrus then governing Assyria; Orthopolis, Sycionia, or Peloponnesus; Criasus, the Argives; Orus, Egypt; and Deucalion, Thessaly. He fled into Midian, when he had lived forty years, in the year of the world 2474, and two years after was Caleb born. He returned by the commandment and ordinance of God into Egypt, and wrought his miracles in the fields of Zoan, in the year 2514, in the last month of that year. On the fourteenth day of the first Hebrew month Abib, or the fifteenth of that month, beginning the day (as they) at sunsetting, in the year of the world 2514, was the celebration of the passover; and in the dead of the night of the same day were all the 'first-born slain through Egypt, or in all those parts where the Hebrews inhabited. The fifteenth day of the first month of the Hebrews, called Abib, being about the beginning of the year of the world 2514, Moses, with the children of Israel, removed from the general assembly at Ramases, and marched to Succoth.

And departing thence they made their third station at Etham; and journeying from Etham they encamped in the valley of Pihacheroth, or Migdol, under the mountain u Baalzephon, and in the same night, after midnight, they passed the Red sea; Pharaoh and his army perishing in

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their return, about the first dawn of the day. Moses having recovered the banks of Arabia, gave thanks unto God for the delivery of Israel; and making no stay on that coast, entered the deserts of Arabia Petræa, called Sur; but finding no water in that passage, he encamped at *Marah, in the desert of Etham, which in Exodus xv. 22. is also called Sur, twenty-five miles from the sea; where the children of Israel, pressed with extreme thirst, murmured against y Moses a second time; first at Pharaoh's approach in Pihacheroth, and now in Arabia. But Moses taking the branches of a tree, growing near a lake of bitter water, and casting the same thereinto, made the same sweet, a plain type and figure of our Saviour; who upon the tree of the cross changed the bitterness of everlasting death into the sweetness of eternal life. Pliny remembers these bitter fountains in his sixth book and twenty-ninth chapter. From whence to Delta in Egypt, Sesostris first, Darius after him, and lastly, Ptolemy the second, began to cut an artificial river, thereby by boats and small shipping to trade and navigate the Red sea, from the great cities upon Nilus. From Marah he removed to Elim, the sixth mansion, a march of eight miles; where finding twelve fountains of sweet water, and seventy palm-trees, he rested divers days.

Whether this Helim were the name of a town or city in Moses's time, I cannot affirm. And yet the scarcity of waters in that region was such, as Helim, which had twelve fountains, could hardly be left unpeopled. William archbishop of Tyre, in his history of the holy war, found at Helim the ruins of a great and ancient city. And at such time as Baldwin the first passed that way into Egypt, a Ingressus, saith he, Helim, civitatem antiquissimam populo Israelitico aliquando familiarem; ad quam cum pervenisset, loci illius incolæ, regis adventu præcognito, naviculam ingredientes in mare vicinum se contulerunt; "Entering "Helim, a very ancient city, well known sometime to the people of Israel; whither when he came, the inhabitants,

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x Numb. xxxiii.

y Exod. xv. Numb. xxxiii.

z Ibid.

Will. Tyr. 1. 11. c. 19.

"forewarned of the king's approach, took boat, and shifted "themselves into the sea, lying near them." From Elim

down by the For it seem

he returned again towards the south, and sat banks of the Red sea; the seventh mansion. eth that he had knowledge of Amalek, who prepared to resist his passage through that part of Arabia. And Moses, who had not as yet trained those of the Hebrews appointed to bear arms, nor assured the minds of the rest, who encountering with the least misery were more apt to return to their quiet slavery, than either to endure the wants and perils which every where accompanied them in that passage, or at this time to undertake or sustain so dangerous an enemy; he therefore made stay at this mansion, until the fifteenth of the second month called Zim, or Ijar, and made the eighth mansion in the desert of bZin; where the children of Israel mutinied against Moses the third time, having want of food. In the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, Moses omitteth this retreat from Elim to the Red sea, but in the collection of every several encamping, in the thirty-third of Numbers, it is set down.

Here it pleased God to send so many flights of quails, as all the country about their encamping was covered with them. The morning following it also rained manna, being the sixteenth of their month, which served them instead of bread. For now was the store consumed which the people carried with them out of Egypt. And though they had great numbers of cattle and sheep among them, yet it seemeth that they durst not feed themselves with many of those; but reserved them, both for the milk to relieve the children withal, and for bread to store themselves when they came to the land promised.

From hence towards Raphidim they made two removes of twenty miles; the one to Daphca, the other to Alus, distant from Raphidim six miles. Here being again pressed with want of water, they murmured the fourth time, and repented them of their departure from Egypt, where they rather contented themselves to be fed and beaten after the

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manner of beasts, than to suffer a casual and sometimes necessary want, and to undergo the hazards and travels which every manly mind seeketh after, for the love of God and their own freedoms. But dMoses, with the same rod which he divided the sea withal, in the sight of the elders of Israel, brought waters out of the rock, wherewith the whole multitude were satisfied.

SECT. II.

Of the Amalekites, Midianites, and Kenites, upon occasion of the battle with the Amalekites,' and Jethro's coming; who being a Kenite, was priest of Midian.

AND while Moses encamped in this place, the Amalekites, who had knowledge of his approach, and guessed that he meant to lead the children of Israel through their country, (which being barren of itself, would be utterly wasted by so great a multitude of people and cattle,) thought it most for their advantage to set upon them at Raphidim ; where the want of water, and all other things needful for the life of man, enfeebled them. On the other side Moses perceiving their resolutions, gave charge to Joshua, to draw out a sufficient number of the ablest Hebrews to encounter Amalek. Between whom and Israel, the victory remained doubtful for the most part of the day; the Hebrews and Amalekites contending with equal hopes and repulses for many hours. And had not the strength of Moses's prayers to God been of far greater force, and more prevalent, than all resistance and attempt made by the bodies of men, that valiant and warlike nation had greatly endangered the whole enterprise. For those bodies which are unacquainted with scarcity of food, and those minds whom a servile education hath dulled, being beaten, and despaired in their first attempts, will hardly or never be brought again to hazard themselves.

After this victory Jethro repaired to Moses, bringing with him Moses's wife, and his two sons, which either Jethro forbare to conduct, or Moses to receive, till he had

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