only that Bered, Tahath, &c., as well as Shuthelah, were sons of Ephraim, and brothers of one another. This would make the men whom 'Ephraim their father mourned,' to be his own sons, and would at once get rid of this particular contradiction.

Any remark of this most able and impartial critic deserves full consideration. In reply, therefore, to the above suggestion,—

(i) I point to 1 Ch. ix. 43, 'and his son Rephaiah,' compared with the parallel passage, viii. 37, 'his son, Rapha ;'

(ii) According to KUENEN, the eight persons named, in vii. 20, 21, would all be brothers, and among them are two Shuthelahs, and two Tahaths, which can hardly have been the case in the same family of brethren.

(iii) Further, if KUENEN'S view were true, those named in v. 23, 25, Beriah, Rephah, Resheph, Telah, Tahan, would also be the sons of Ephraim for a similar reason, and Joshua would be only in the sixth generation from Ephraim. Joseph would now have seen the birth of Ephraim's greatgrandson Ammihud, G. 1. 23, between whose birth and that of Joshua there would be an interval of 100 years (110): and this is quite long enough to allow of the three generations, Ammihud Elishama, Nun, Joshua. The result thus arrived at would, therefore, perfectly agree with our other data: but, for the reasons above given, we cannot assent to KUENEN's suggestion.

Upon the whole it is plain that we are justified in dismissing the whole account in the book of Chronicles, about the genealogy of Joshua, as most probably erroneous, and, at all events, of no importance whatever in opposition to so many testimonies from the Pentateuch and from the Chronicles itself, all tending to the same result.

114. We conclude, then, that it is an indisputable fact, that the story, as told in the Pentateuch, intends it to be understood—(i) that the children of Israel came out of Egypt about 215 years after they went down thither in the time of Jacob,-(ii) that they came out in the fourth generation from the adults in the prime of life, who went down with Jacob.

And it should be observed that the second of these conclusions does not in any way depend upon the correctness of the former.

Upon this point JOSEPHUS writes, Ant. ii. 9. 1:

Four hundred years did they spend under these afflictions; for they strove one against the other which should get the mastery, the Egyptians desiring to destroy the Israelites by their labours, and the Israelites desiring to hold out to the end under them.

But, of course, the last words of the above can only refer to the last portion of their sojourn in Egypt, since they were not struggling with the Egyptians till after Joseph's death, at all events. And so writes JOSEPHUS again, Ant. ii. 15. 2:

They left Egypt four hundred and thirty years after our forefather Abraham came into Canaan, but two hundred and fifteen years only after Jacob removed into Egypt.

And he writes of Moses, Ant. ii. 9. 6

Abraham was his ancestor of the seventh generation.

And so he says of Joseph, Against Apion, i. 33:—

He died four generations before Moses, which four generations make almost 170 years.

And Archd. PRATT observes, Science and Scripture, p. 78:

It was to be in the fourth generation that his seed were to return to Canaan. But 430, or even 400, years is very much longer than four generations, and therefore must include something besides the bondage in Egypt, viz. the sojourning in Canaan. His prediction regarding the 'fourth generation' was literally fulfilled. Moses and Aaron were sons of Jochebed, who was the daughter of Levi, N. xxvi. 59, a text which incidentally confirms the correctness of our general outline. Eleazar, the Priest, the son of Aaron, was, therefore, of the fourth generation from Jacob [? Levi]. He returned to Canaan and died there, his father, Aaron, and that generation, having died in the wilderness.

115. From this it can be shown, beyond a doubt, that it is quite impossible that there should have been such a number of the people of Israel in Egypt, at the

time of the Exodus, as to have furnished 600,000 warriors in the prime of life, representing, at least, two millions of persons, of all ages and sexes,-that is to say, it is impossible, if we will take the data to be derived from the Pentateuch itself.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE NUMBER OF ISRAELITES AT THE TIME OF THE EXODUS.

116. In the first place, it must be observed, as already noted, that we nowhere read of any very large families among the children of Jacob or their descendants to the time of the Exodus. We may suppose, in order that we may have the population as large as possible, that very few died prematurely, and that those, who were born, almost all lived and multiplied. But we have no reason whatever, from the data furnished by the Sacred Books themselves, to assume that they had families materially larger than those of the present day. Thus we are told in G. xlvi that Reuben had 4 sons, Simeon 6, Levi 3, Judah 5, Issachar 4, Zebulun 3, Gad 7, Asher 4, Joseph 2, Benjamin 10, Dan 1, Naphtali 4. It is certainly strange that, among all the 69 children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Jacob, who went down with him into Egypt, there should be only one daughter mentioned, and one granddaughter. The very numbering of these two among the seventy souls' shows that the females out of the loins of Jacob' were not omitted intentionally.

117. Some, indeed, have suggested that these two only were inserted, because they were either notorious

already as, Dinah, or may have become notorious in after days, as may possibly have been the case with Asher's daughter, Serah, v. 17, though the Bible says nothing about it. But it is plain that this is only perverting the obvious meaning of the Scripture in G. xlvi. It is certain that the writer intends it to be understood that these seventy were the only persons, and these two the only females, who had at that time been born in the family of Jacob. And, though the fact itself, of this wonderful preponderance of males, may seem very strange, and would be so indeed in actual history, it is only another indication of the unhistorical character of the whole account. For the present, however, we may admit it as possible in the nature of things, that there should have been, at first at all events, such a preponderance of males, and even probable, if the house of Israel was to increase with extraordinary rapidity.

118. The twelve sons of Jacob, then, as appears from the above, had between them 53 sons, that is, on the average 4 each. Let us suppose that they increased in this way from generation to generation. Then in the first generation, that of Kohath, there would be 54 males, (according to the story, 53, or rather only 51, since Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan, v. 12, without issue,)-in the second, that of Amram, 243,—in the third, that of Moses and Aaron, 1,094,-and in the fourth, that of Joshua and Eleazar, 4,923; that is to say, instead of 600,000 warriors in the prime of life, there could not have been 5,000.

Further, if the numbers of all the males in the four generations be added together, (which supposes that they were all living at the time of the Exodus,) they would only amount to 6,311. If we even add to these