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26 Behold! God is great-surpassing knowledge:
The number of his years!-surpassing research.
27 Lo! he exhaleth the drops of the waters;

They throw off the rain for his tempest.

28 Then down flow the heavens;

They pour upon man impetuously.

29 But if he heap up the spreadings of the cloudy-woof,
The tapestry of his pavilion,

30 Behold! he throweth forth from it his flash,

And investeth the roots of the very ocean.

31 Lo! thus judgeth he the nations;

He passeth sentence amain.

32 He brandisheth the blaze athwart the concave,
And launcheth his penetrating bolt:

33 Along with it rusheth his roar,

The fierceness of wrath, because of wickedness:

CHAP. XXXVII.

1 Wrath-at which my heart trembleth,
And staggereth in his post.

2 Hear! O hear ye, the clangour of his voice,
And the peal that issueth from his mouth.

3 Under the whole heavens is his flash,

And his lightning unto the ends of the earth.

4 After it pealeth the voice;

He thundereth with the voice of his majesty;

And there is no limit to them when his voice soundeth. 5 God thundereth marvellously with his voice.

The original of this passage has other difficulties than what we have noticed above; and hence the translators have various differences in their rendering. But we have not space for verbal criticism, and must refer, in the present instance, to the author from whom we have quoted.

A.M. 2484.
B.C. 1520.

memory of

The name of Job occurs in the ancient martyrologies with the Honours title of prophet, saint, and martyr. The worship of him, under the paid to the one or other of these characters, is of high antiquity, and was Job. at one time very extensive, both in the Greek and Latin churches. The Greeks made choice of May 6, for his festival, and have been followed in this arrangement by the Christians of Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Russian empire. The Latins hold his festival on May 10. Next to the Maccabees, who were brothers as well as martyrs, Job is the first saint to whom the western church decreed public and religious honours.

Among the patriarchs and prophets there is no character to whom more churches have been consecrated, or chapels dedicated, than to Job. A pretended tomb of him has been shown in many places. The most celebrated is that of the Trachonitis, towards the springs of the Jordan. It is situate between the cities still bearing the names of Teman, Shuah, and Naama. There is another tomb publicly shown for that of the patriarch in Armenia, where Cock, the Chaldee paraphrast, contended that he had lived. And as another Chaldee interpreter placed his residence in the vicinity of Constantinople, we have also a third tomb of Job exhibited near the walls of this city; but which, by soberer historians, has been referred to an Arabian warrior of the same name, who fell at the

AM. 2484. siege of Constantinople in the year 672. In this city, however, B.C. 1520. was a monastery in the sixth century, dedicated to the patriarch

himself; yet the ecclesiastics did not venture to affirm that it was erected in consequence of their being in possession of his remains, as is usually done on the foundation of monasteries.

CHAPTER IV.

MOSES.

BORN A.M. 2433, B.C. 1571-DIED A.M. 2553, B.C. 1451.

the birth of

MOSES, who is characterised in the Scriptures as "meek above A.M. 2433. all the men that were upon the face of the earth," and who as such B.C. 1571. was singularly qualified to be the agent of Providence in some of its most wonderful operations, was born in Egypt, of Amram and Jochebed, about sixty-four years after the death of Joseph, and one Period of hundred and thirty-six from the descent of Israel into that country. Moses. His history is interwoven with that of the people over whom he presided, whose deliverance from a state of bondage he was destined to effect, and whose civil and ecclesiastical polity he was chosen to establish. His life, which spreads over a period of one hundred and twenty years, brings down the annals of the Israelites from the two thousand four hundred and thirty-third, to the two thousand five hundred and fifty-third year of the world;-a period replete with prodigies, and illustrative both of the divine perfections and the character of man.

The period now to be introduced to the reader's consideration admits of an advantageous division into three parts: the first of which will comprehend the personal narrative of this illustrious Hebrew, including such collateral histories as connect themselves with the general subject; the second, a demonstration of his divine mission; the third, an inquiry into the nature, character, and spirit of those laws which he promulgated amongst the ancient Israelites.

I. THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF MOSES.

history.

At the time when Moses was born, a king had arisen, who His personal cherished very different feelings towards the Israelites from those with which a sense of obligation had inspired his celebrated predecessor, who had introduced them into Egypt; and who perceiving they had multiplied so rapidly that they might soon be in a condition to take possession of the entire kingdom, determined upon a very cruel method of checking their progress: this was to oppress them with exactions and labour of the most intolerable kind. The inspired history states, that "the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the

A.M. 2433. field: all their service wherein they made them serve was with B.C. 1571. rigour:" which is subsequently explained by the recorded com

Pharaoh's cruelty.

Moses is hid in the bulrushes.

Found by Pharaoh's daughter.

mands of the king to his officers; "Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves; and the tale of bricks which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof." In this instance, however, as in most others, persecution failed of effecting its purpose; the severities with which they were treated not in the least tending to prevent their multiplication. The country indeed had been always notorious for the fruitfulness of the women, which was attributed, says Strabo, to the air, and particularly to the waters of the Nile; but the strangers seem at this period to have so excelled the natives as to excite their alarm; which can be attributed to nothing less than the interposition of an extraordinary providence, whose designs were hastening to the moment of their intended development.

The king accordingly enacted, that every male child of the Hebrews should be cast into the Nile: a measure which was unquestionably aimed at the total extermination of the race. Even parents were required to be instrumental to the death of their offspring; and the attendants upon the women were ordered to strangle the sons, but spare the daughters. Josephus represents the immediate occasion of this decree to have been the prediction of an Egyptian prophet, that a Hebrew child was about to be born who would hereafter diminish the power of Egypt, and enhance that of the Israelites.

At this critical juncture Moses was born; but notwithstanding the anxieties which must have pervaded the maternal bosom at such a season, in addition to the usual pains of child-bearing, (which, however, according to the testimony of Josephus, were in this case providentially prevented,) Jochebed was able instantly to nurse and to set about the concealment of her beloved little son. The same writer states, that assurances had been given to his father in a vision, that he should be miraculously preserved and raised to the important work of effecting the deliverance of Abraham's posterity.

up

At the expiration of three months, his solicitous parents found it impossible any longer to elude the sanguinary decree of Pharaoh: in order, therefore, to avoid the misery consequent upon being the direct murderer of her own infant, the ingenious mother contrived an ark of bulrushes, and besmearing it with slime and pitch to render it water-tight, committed it to the rushy brink of the river, but with better hope to the care of the invisible God. Her daughter Miriam was at the same time placed at a convenient distance to watch the event. It was early in the morning, and the daughter of Pharaoh, accompanied by several female attendants, went down to the river to bathe. Her eye was caught, and her curiosity excited,

by the little ark or basket among the flags, and upon examining its A. M. 2433. contents, her heart was touched with sympathy at seeing one of B.C. 1571. the most attractive objects in creation-a beautiful child of three months, whose tears seem to correspond well with its melancholy situation, and whom she instantly conjectured to be one of the Hebrew's children.

Court.

Encouraged by the compassionate expressions and affectionate manner of the Princess, his sister approached to ask if she should go in search of a nurse for the child, and by this little artifice obtained the real mother to become the protector of her own infant, under the promise of an ample recompense. Thus, in the very family of Pharaoh, the future emancipator of Israel found an Educated in asylum, and was trained up, under the inspection of the Princess Pharaoh's who adopted him, in all the learning and wisdom which the Egyptian Magi were capable of imparting. It was customary to name the child at his circumcision, which took place on the eighth day after his birth; but whether this had been omitted in consequence of the confusion and distress which the edict of the king had every where diffused, or whether the royal protectress determined to substitute another which should better transmit to posterity the remarkable history of his infancy, it is certain that she gave him the name by which he is now universally distinguished. Mo and Mos in the Egyptian, as well as in other ancient languages, signified water, as Philo, Clemens, (who expresses it Möu,) Artapanus, (who styles him Mavoos, Moüsus,) and other authorities testify.

ance.

Although the situation he occupied in the court of Pharaoh was favourable to his temporal advancement, it was by no means conducive to the accomplishment of those magnificent designs in which he was predestined to become the instrument of his nation's deliverIf, instead of imbibing the superstitions of the age and country in which he resided, he acquired the knowledge and lived in the fear of the true God, it may be attributed with the greatest probability to the private instructions of his mother, to whom the care of his infancy was so singularly intrusted. And if, at the age of maturity, instead of lingering with fond delight and forgetfulness of his kindred and nation, amidst the attractions of earthly splendour, he was influenced to renounce every prospect of distinction for the friendship and fellowship of his brethren in adversity; we must attribute the choice, not only to that right thinking which his mother had inspired, and that judicious mind with which he was endowed, but to the overruling of providence; to the immediate influence of Him who had formed him for the accomplishment of his omniscient purposes. He had, besides, intimations of his calling; and when, at the age of forty, he quitted the prospects of elevation which Egypt afforded in order to visit his countrymen, he took the deepest interest in their concerns; and on one occasion, when he saw an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, he slew the Egyptian and hid him in Egyptian.

Slays an

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