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so long as his fore-fathers, he gave him leave to live with his children in Heliopolis; for in that city the king's shepherds had their pasturage.

The famine now increased among the Egyptians, and this heavy judgment grew more oppressive to them, because neither did the river overflow the ground, for it did not rise to its former height, nor did God send rain upon it. Nor did they, indeed, make the least provisions for themselves, so ignorant were they what was to be done. But Joseph sold them corn for their money; and when their money failed them, they bought corn with their cattle and their slaves; and if any of them had a small piece of land, they gave up that to purchase them food. By which means the king became the owner of all their substance; and they were removed some to one place, and some to another; that so the possession of their country might be firmly assured to the king; excepting the lands of the priests; for their country continued still in their own possession. And indeed this sore famine made their minds as well as their bodies slaves; and at length compelled them to procure a sufficiency of food by such dishonourable means. But when this misery ceased, and the river overflowed the ground, and the earth brought forth its fruits plentifully, Joseph came to every city, and gathered the people thereto belonging together, and gave them back entirely the land which, by their own consent, the king might have possessed alone, and alone enjoyed the fruits of it. He also exhorted them to look on it as their own possession; to resume their labours of husbandry with cheerfulness; and to pay as a tribute to the crown, the fifth part of the fruits of the land which the king, when it was

*Reland here puts the question, how Josephus could complain of its not raining in Egypt during this famine, while the ancients affirm that it never does naturally rain there? His answer is, that when the ancients deny that it rains in Egypt, they only mean the upper Egypt, above the Delta, which is called Egypt in the strictest sense; but that in Delta, and consequently in the lower Egypt adjoining to it, it did not hold, and still does rain sometimes. See the note on III. 1.

+ Josephus supposes that Joseph now restored the Egyptians their lands again, upon the payment of a fifth part as tribute. It seems to me rather that the land was now considered as Pharaoh's; and this fifth part as its rent, to be paid to him, as he was their landlord, and they his tenants; and that the lands were not properly restored, and this fifth part reserved as a tribute only, till the days of Sesostris.

his own, restored to them. These men rejoiced upon their becoming unexpectedly owners of their land, and diligently observed what was enjoined them. And by this means Joseph procured to himself a greater authority among the Egyptians, and a greater love to the king from them. Now this law, that they should pay a fifth part of their fruits as tribute, continued until the time of their later kings.

CHAP. VIII.

OF THE DEATH OF JACOB AND JOSEPH.

WHEN Jacob had lived seventeen years in Egypt, he fell into a disease, and died in the presence of his sons; but not till he had made his prayers for their prosperity; and had foretold prophetically how every one of them was to dwell in the land of Cannan. But this happened many years afterwards. He also enlarged* upon the praises of Joseph; how he had not remembered the evil doings of his brethren to their disadvantage: nay, on the contrary, was kind to them; bestowing upon them so many benefits, as seldom are bestowed on men's own benefactors. He then commanded his own sons that they should admit Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, into their number; and divide the land of Canaan in common with them; concerning whom we shall treat hereafter. However he made it his request, that he might be buried at Hebron. So he died; when he had lived a hundred and forty-seven years:† having not been inferior to any of his ancestors in piety towards God; and having such a recompense for it as it was fit those should have, who were so good as these were. Joseph, by the king's permission, carried his father's dead body to Hebron, and there buried it, at a great expense. But his brethren were at first

As to this encomium upon Joseph, as preparatory to Jacob's adopting Eph. raim and Manasseh into his own family, and to be admitted into his two tribes, which Josephus here mentions; all our copies of Gen. omit it, c. xlviii. nor do we know whence he took it; or whether it be his own embellishment.

! Gen. xlvii. 28.

Though there be something of a natural desire in most men to be buried in the places where their ancestors lie; yet Jacob's aversion to have his remains de

unwilling to return back with him; because they were afraid, lest now their father was dead, he should punish them for their secret practices against him; since he was now gone, for whose sake he had been so gracious to them. He persuaded them, however, to fear no harm, and to entertain no suspicions of him; so he brought them along with him, and gave them great possessions, and continually evinced the most particular concern for them.*

Joseph also died when he had lived a hundred and ten years;† having been a man of admirable virtue; who conducted all his affairs by the rules of reason, and used his authority with moderation; which was the cause of his great felicity among the Egyptians, even when he came from another country, and

posited in Egypt seems to be more earnest than ordinary, or otherwise he would never have imposed an oath upon his sons, and charged them all, with his dying breath, not to suffer it to be done. For he very well knew, that had his body been buried in Egypt, his posterity, upon that very account, would have been too much wedded to the country, ever to attempt the acquisition of the promised land; and therefore, to wean them from the thought of continuing in Egypt, and to fix their minds and affections in Canaan, he ordered his body to be carried thither beforehand, in testimony that he died in full persuasion of the truth of the promises which were given to him and his ancestors: nor was it inconvenient, that future generations, after their return into Canaan, should have before their eyes the Sepulchre of their forefathers, for a record of their virtues, and an incitement to the imitation of them. But the strongest motive of all for Jacob's desiring to be buried in Canaan, (supposing that he foreknew that our Saviour Christ was to live and die, and with some others, rise again in that country) was, that he might be one of that blessed number; as it was indeed an ancient tradition in the charch, that among those, who came out of their graves after our Lord's resurrection, Mat. xxvii. 53, the patriarch Jacob was one. Pool's Annotations, and Bibliotheca Bibl. B. * Gen. i. 21

When Joseph died he was not only embalmed, but put into a coffin. This was an honour appropriated to persons of distinction, coffins not being universally used in Egypt. Maillet, speaking of the Egyptian repositories of the dead, having giv en an account of several niches that are found there, says, "it must not be imagi. ned, that the bodies deposited in these gloomy apartments were all enclosed in chests, and placed in niches; the greatest part were simply embalmed and swathed after that manner that every one hath some notion of; after which they laid them one by the side of another without any ceremony; some were even put into these tombs without any embalming at all, or such a slight one, that there remains nothing of them in the linen in which they were wrapped but the bones, and those half rotten. (Letter vii. p. 281.) Antique coffins of stone, and sycamore wood, are still to be seen in Egypt. It is said that some were formerly made of a kind of pasteboard, formed by folding and glueing cloth together a great number of times; these were curiously plaistered and painted with hieroglyphics. Thevenot, part i. p. 137. B.

that in such ill circumstances as we have already described. At length his brethren died, after they had lived happily in Egypt. Now the posterity and sons of these men after some time carried their bodies, and buried them* at Hebron. But as to the bones of Joseph, they carried them into the land of Canaan afterwards,† when the Hebrews went out of Egypt; for so had Joseph made them promise him upon oath. But what became of every one of these men, and by what toils they got the possession of the land of Canaan, shall be shewn hereafter; when I have explained on what account it was that they left Egypt.

* Of the burying places of Joseph, and of the other patriarchs, as they are here rightly stated, see Test. Simeon, § 8. and Test. Benjamin, § 12, with the Note, in Authent. Rec. Part 1, page 415, 116. Acts vii. 16.

+ Exodus, xiii. 19.

There are several reasons which might induce Joseph not to have his dead body immediately carried into Canaan, and buried as his father was. 1st, Because his brethren, after his decease, might not have interest enough at court to provide themselves with such things as were necessary to set off the pomp and solemnity of a funeral befitting so great a personage. 2dly, Because he might foresee, that the Egyptians, in all probability, as long as their veneration for his memory was warm, would hardly have suffered his remains to have been carried into another country. 3dly, Because the continuance of his remains among them might be a means to preserve the remembrance of the services he had done them, and thereby an inducement to them to treat the relations he had left behind him with more kindness. 4thly, And chiefly, because the presence of his body with the Israelites might be a pledge to assure them, and a means to strengthen and confirm their faith, and hope in God's promises to their progenitors, that he would infallibly put their posterity in possession of the land of Canaan; and accordingly, when Moses delivered them out of Egypt, he carried Joseph's body along with him, (Exod. xiii. 19,) and committed it to the care of the tribe of Ephraim, who buried it near Shechem, (Josh. xxiv. 32.) in the field which Jacob, a little before his death, gave to Joseph, as his peculiar property. Pereius, and Patrick's Commentary; Pool's Annotations, and Calmet's Dictionary under the word. B.

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CHAP. IX.

OF THE AFFLICTIONS THAT BEFEL THE HEBREWS IN EGYPT,

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NOW it happened that the Egyptians grew delicate and indolent, and gave themselves to pleasure, and in particular to the love of gain. They also became very ill affected towards the Hebrews, as touched with envy at their prosperity; for when they saw how the nation of the Israelites flourished, and were become eminent already in plenty of wealth, which they had acquired by their virtue and natural love of labour, they thought their increase was to their own detriment; and having in length of time forgotten the benefits they had received from Joseph, particularly the crown being now come into another family, they became very abusive to the Israelites, and contrived many ways of afflicting them, for they enjoined them to cut a great number of channels for the river, and to build walls for the cities and ramparts, that they might restrain the river, and hinder its waters from stagnating, upon its running over its own banks; they set them also to build pyramids,|| and by all

As to the affliction of Abraham's posterity for 400 years, see I. 10. and as to what cities they built in Egypt under Pharaoh Sesostris, and of Pharaoh Sesostris's drowning in the Red Sea, see Essay on the Old Test. Append. page 139-162. + Exodus, i. 8.

It is a common opinion, that the word pyramid is derived from the Greek Pyr or Pur, Fire; and that these structures were so called from their shape, which ascended from a broad basis, and ended in a point, like a flame of fire. Others, whose opinion Vossius seems to approve, say that the name comes from the word Pyros which, in the same language, signifies wheat, because they suppose them to have been the grainaries of the ancient Egyptian kings. But a late writer, versed in the Coptic tongue, has given us another etymology from that language, wherein Pouro signifies a king, and Misi, a race, or generation; and the reason why the Pyramids had this name given them, was, as he tells us, because they were erected to preserve the memory of the princes (who were their founders) and their familics. Wilkins's Dissert. de ling. Copt. p. 108.

Of this building of the pyramids of Egypt by the Israelites, see Perizonius Orig. Egyptiac. c. 21. It is not impossible they might build one or more of the small ones, but the large ones seem much later. See my Chronological Table, and Authent. Rec. Part II. page $85, 886, 887. Only if they be all built of stone,

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