this unresisting people. And Pharaoh's pretended fear, lest, in the event of war, they might make common cause with the enemy, was a sufficient pretext with his own people for oppressing the Jews; at the same time that it had the effect of exciting their prejudices against them. Affecting, therefore, some alarm at their numbers, he suggested that so numerous a body might avail themselves of the absence of the Egyptian troops, and endanger the safety and tranquillity of the country, and that prudence dictated the necessity of obviating, the possibility of such an occurrence. With this view, they were treated like captives taken in war, and were forced to perform the gratuitous labour of erecting public granaries and other buildings for the Egyptian monarch.

But the monarch whom Wilkinson 'conjectures to have been him by whom the Hebrews were first oppressed, lived, according to Dr. Hales, at the time of the exode of the Israelites, and as there must have been more than one reigning monarch in Egypt during the period of their cruel bondage, there is no alternative left us but to pursue this portion of Egyptian history with reference to those various monarchs under their general Scripture name of Pharaoh, as before.

What were the motives by which Pharaoh was actuated in this line of policy towards the Hebrews, cannot be positively asserted. Josephus says, that the act was intimately connected with the expulsion of the shepherds, and the same author also tells us, that the shepherds were yet lingering on the frontiers, and fortifying the city Aouaris, and that they did again rally and overrun Egypt a second time in the reign of the last king of the eighteenth dynasty. These circumstances would certainly furnish a colourable plea, which would, doubtless, be taken advantage of to oppress the Israelites; but such cannot be stated as facts.

The course which this monarch adopted to subdue the Israelites to his yoke, was by compelling them to relinquish their mode of life as tent-dwelling shepherds, and by fixing them down as cultivators of that soil originally granted them for pasturage. This, to a free people, unaccustomed to labour, he supposed, and that naturally, would have the effect, not only of subduing their spirits, but of reducing their numbers. In the first place, as we learn from Exod. i., he required that they should make bricks, and with them build towns and villages, a mode of labour hitherto unknown to them. Pithom and Raamses, as before stated, were erected by them. These cities were probably intended to be held by

the Egyptians, to enforce the new measures, as well as to furnish secure places to which they might bring, and in which they might treasure up the corn and other produce paid to the king for the rent of his lands. The situation of these treasure cities is not exactly known; but there is no doubt, as all accounts show, that they were placed in the land occupied by the Hebrews. But before the land could be made available for the purposes of cultivation, it was necessary to cut canals, construct dams, and to execute many other works requiring much drudgery; and such undertakings as these, would be very hateful to a pastoral people; they would be so felt at the present day by the Bedouins. They would not, indeed, have executed such, unless by compulsion. This Pharaoh knew, and the execution of his orders was therefore confided to "taskmasters," who were charged with responsibilities which caused them to exact the services required with rigour. Thus, in the emphatic language of the sacred historian, "they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour," Exod. i. 14.

But the more the Israelites were oppressed, the more they multiplied and grew, and the more Pharaoh and the Egyptians were alarmed. A new expedient, therefore, was sought to check their increase. The Hebrew midwives were ordered to destroy all the male children that should be born. But this command was not obeyed; the midwives alleging that the Hebrew were more lively than the Egyptian women, and consequently did not require their assistance. Upon this, the cruel monarch issued an edict that all the male infants should be destroyed, Exod. i. 15—22.

This cruel decree was in force at the birth of Moses, sixtyfour years after the death of Joseph, and was probably enacted soon after the birth of his elder brother Aaron, who was not subject to the decree. This illustrious legislator of the Hebrews was of the tribe of Levi, in the line of Kohath and of Amram, whose son he was. By a singular providence, the infant Moses, when exposed on the river Nile, in a frail bark of papyrus, coated on the outside with bitumen, and inside with the slime of that river, through fear of the royal decree, after his mother had hid him three months, was taken up and adopted by Pharaoh's own daughter, and nursed by his own mother, whom she hired at the suggestion of his sister Miriam. When the child needed a nurse no longer, he

was taken home to the house of the princess by whom he was saved, thus finding an asylum in the very palace of his intended destroyer. Here he was instructed in all that wisdom of the Egyptians which was the admiration and proverb of all surrounding nations, Exod. ii. 1—10.

It does not appear that the murderous edict against the Hebrew infants was long in force. We are, however, unacquainted with the considerations which led to its repeal. It is possible, that the people of Lower Egypt, generally, were not prepared to go to this extent with the court in such a barbarous measure against the Hebrews, and that their murmurs were heard and respected. Or it may be, as has been supposed, that this daughter of Pharaoh had interest enough with her father to induce him to revoke this fulminating decree. Another alternative may be, that, as this measure seems to have been adopted at the latter part of this king's reign, the accession of a new king was attended with a change of policy towards the Hebrews, which involved the preservation of their infants, and which may to this extent have been influenced by the monarch's sister. It may be mentioned, indeed, that some conclude, from the fragments of Manetho, and the hieroglyphics on the sculptures, that Ammoph 1., who bears the character of "a great encourager of the arts of peace,' began his reign about this period, and that he was succeeded by Ameuse, his sister, the patroness of Moses, and Thothmes 1., her husband, whose accession to the throne took place about the time that Moses comes again under our notice in the Egyptian history, as recorded in Scripture, and as noticed in the succeeding paragraph.

But if new monarchs had arisen, if the order to destroy the Hebrew children was withdrawn, and the policy of the Egyptian state was changed towards that people, their "hard bondage" was by no means relieved; they were still doomed to toil under the inspection of "taskmasters." But the day of their redemption drew nigh. When Moses was grown to manhood, and was full forty years of it would appear that he was moved by a Divine impulse to undertake the deliverance of his countrymen. See Acts vii. 23-25.

age,

He left the court of Pharaoh, and took part with the despised and afflicted bondsmen. He "refused to be called the

* The well-known design of Jews at work, brick-making, is found in the tomb of Kekshari, who was his superintendent of public works. Hence, that he was one of the oppressors of the Hebrews, appears to be an authenticated fact.

son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season," Heb. xi. 24, 25. But in the height of his zeal to redress their grievances, going forth one day, he saw a Hebrew atrociously maltreated by an Egyptian officer, and kindling at the sight, he delivered him by slaying his oppressor. This deed became known to the monarch, who sought to slay him, but he fled for his life to the land of Midian, in Arabia Petrea, where he married Zipporah, the daughter of Jethro, or Reuel, prince and priest of Midian, and he, as a shepherd, kept his flocks in the vicinity of Mount Horeb, or Sinai, for forty years, Exod. ii. 11-25.

At the end of that time, it is recorded in Scripture that "the king of Egypt died." Exod. ii. 23. It is, however, the opinion of some that Thothmes 1. died after a reign of twenty-seven years, and that he was succeeded by a queen whom Mr. Wilkinson calls, Amun-neit-gori, who has hitherto given rise to more doubts and questions than any other sovereigns of this period. This author says of Amun-neit-gori: Whether she was only regent during the reign of Thothmes II. and III., or succeeded to the throne in the right of Thothmes I., in whose honour she erected several monuments, is still uncertain, and some have doubted her being a queen. The name has been generally erased, and those of the second and third Thothmes are placed over it; but sufficient remains to prove that the small temple of Medeenet Haboo, the elegant edifice under the Qoorneh rocks, and the great obelisks of Karnak, with many other handsome monuments, were erected by her orders, and the attention paid to the military caste is testified by the subjects of the sculptures.

In what character this princess operated, in the reigns of Thothmes I and III., cannot now be known, and therefore we proceed to notice the latter monarch. It is said, that the reign of Thothmes I lasted ten years, and that consequently the fortieth year from the flight of Moses fell in the reign of his successor, Thothmes III. If this be correct, he is to be regarded, therefore, as the Pharaoh who so madly opposed Israel's deliverance.

At this period, the oppression of the Israelites was come to the full, and they cried to God for succour. Their cry was heard. Moses was leading his flocks round the eastern arm of the Red Sea into the peninsula of Sinai, and when near the mountain of Horeb, "the God of glory" appeared to him in a flame of fire, from the midst of a bush, and announced

himself as "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," and commissioned him first to make known to the Israelites the Divine will for their deliverance; and next to go with the elders of Israel to Pharaoh, requiring him, in the name of "the Lord God of the Hebrews," to suffer the people to go three days' journey into the wilderness, to sacrifice unto the Lord their God, Exod. iii.

Charged with this high and arduous mission, Moses departed from the shores of the Red Sea, to return to the banks of the Nile. As he advanced towards Egypt, Aaron received the Divine command to go forth and meet his brother in the wilderness, and to assist him in his mission: and afterwards they proceeded together to the land of Goshen, Exod. iv.

On appearing before the king, Aaron announced that JEHOVAH, the God of the Hebrews, had appeared to them, and had sent them to require the king to allow the Israelites to hold a feast to him in the wilderness. The monarch was doubtless astonished at such a demand. He replied, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go." But they still persisted in their demand, explaining more particularly, that they wished the people to go three days' journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to God, and intimating that the Israelites might expect to be visited by "the pestilence or the sword" unless they were obedient. The king did not deign to reply to this, but dismissed them with a reprimand for putting such wild notions into the heads of the people, and calling away their attention from their occupations, Exod. v. 1-4.

The same day, the king, affecting to attribute this application to a leisure life, determined to bring down their spirits by adding to their burdens: "Let there more work be laid upon the men," said he, "that they may labour therein; and let them not regard vain words." It was now, indeed, ordered that they should no longer be furnished with the straw wherewith they compacted the bricks, but that they should collect it for themselves, while the same number of bricks should be exacted which they had formerly been required to supply. Under these circumstances the work could not be done, and they were beaten for deficiencies which they could not prevent, ver. 5-23.

The prophet and his minister came again unto Pharaoh, and at this second interview, in obedience to the Divine com