cessary part of the triumphant and jubilant attitude, in which Israel was to depart from Egypt.' Ans. This is, no doubt, true. But it involves the extreme improbability of the Israelites being possessed of these arms in the land of Egypt, as well as that of their acting in the way in which they are said to have acted, if they really did possess them. CHAPTER X. THE INSTITUTION OF THE PASSOVER. 65. Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said unto them, Draw out now, and take you a lamb according to your families, and kill the Passover. And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side-posts with the blood that is in the bason; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house till the morning. And the children of Israel went away, and did as Jehovah had commanded Moses and Aaron: so did they. E. xii. 21-28. That is to say, in one single day, the whole immense population of Israel, as large as that of LONDON, was instructed to keep the Passover, and actually did keep it. I have said 'in one single day'; for the first notice of any such Feast to be kept is given in this very chapter, where we find it written, v. 12, 'I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast.' It cannot be said that they had notice several days beforehand, for they were to take' the lamb on the tenth day of the month, and kill' it on the fourteenth, v. 3, 6, and so v. 12 only means to say 'on that night— the night of the fourteenth-I will pass through the land of Egypt.' For the expression in v. 12 is distinctly, this,' not sin, that,' as in xiii. 8; and so v. 14, ' this day shall-be unto you for a memorial;' and, besides, in the chapter preceding, xi. 4, we read, 'And Moses said [to Pharaoh], Thus saith Jehovah, about midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt, and all the first-born in the land of Egypt shall die,' where there can be no doubt that the 'midnight' then next at hand is intended. It is true that the story, as it now stands, with the directions about 'taking' the lamb on the tenth day, and 'keeping' it till the fourteenth, are perplexing and contradictory. But this is only one of many similar phenomena, which will have to be considered more closely hereafter. Let us now see what the above statement really implies, when translated into simple every-day matter of fact. 66. Moses called for all the elders of Israel.' We must suppose, then, that the "elders' lived somewhere near at hand. But where did the two millions live? And how could the order, to keep the Passover, have been conveyed, with its minutest particulars, to each individual household in this vast community, in one day, rather, in twelve hours, since Moses received the command on the very same day, on which they were to kill the Passover at even, E. xii. 6? It must be observed that it was absolutely necessary that the notice should be distinctly given to each separate family. For it was a matter of life and death. Upon the due performance of the Divine command it depended whether Jehovah should 'stride across' (no) the threshold, (see Is. xxxi. 5,) and protect the house And yet the whole from the angel of death, or not. matter was perfectly new to them. tions,-about choosing the lamb, killing it at even, sprinkling its blood, and eating it, with unleavened bread, 'not raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire,' witlf their loins girded, their shoes on their feet, and their staff in their hand' -were now for the first time communicated to Moses, by him to the elders, and by them to the people. These directions, therefore, could not have been conveyed by any mere sign, intimating that they were now to carry into execution something about which they had been informed before. They must be plainly and fully delivered to each individual head of a family, or to a number of them gathered together; though these, of course, might be ordered to assist in spreading the intelligence to others, but so that no single household should be left uninformed upon the matter. 67. This would, of course, be done most easily, if we could suppose that the whole Hebrew community lived as closely together as possible, in one great city. In that case, we should have to imagine a message of this nature, upon which life and death depended, conveyed, without fail, to every single family in a population as large as that of LONDON, between sunrise and sunset, and that, too, without their having had any previous notice whatever on the subject, and without any preparations having been made beforehand to facilitate such a communication. 68. Further, we are told that 'every woman was to borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourned in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment,' E. iii. 22. From this it would seem to follow that the Hebrews were regarded as living in the midst. of the Egyptians, mixed up freely with them in their dwellings. And this appears to be confirmed by the statement, E. xii. 35, 36, that, when suddenly summoned to depart, they hastened, at a moment's notice, to borrow' in all directions from the Egyptians, and collected such a vast amount of treasure, in a very short space of time, that they spoiled the Egyptians.' And, indeed, it would seem only natural that those among the Egyptians who did not sympathise with the mad folly of their king, and had all along a friendly feeling, and by this time also a deep respect, for Israel, should have taken refuge in the Hebrew dwellings, and sought immunity in this way from the plagues which ravaged the land. And so writes HENGSTENBERG, i. 409: The Israelites dwelt in houses, and intermixed with Egyptians, so that the destroying angel would pass by one door and stop at another. They lived with the Egyptians, with whom, in part, they stood on most friendly terms, in cities. According to E. iii. 20-22, it was not unfrequently the case, that Egyptian lodgers dwelt with an Israelitish householder, and those persons of good property, so that they could give from abundance gold and silver ornaments and clothes. 69. But the supposition of their borrowing in this way, even if they lived in such a city, involves prodigious difficulties. For the city, in that case, could have been no other than Rameses itself, from which they started, E. xii. 37, a treasure-city,' which they had built for Pharaoh,' E. i. 11-doubtless, therefore, a well-built city, not a mere collection of mud-hovels. And so the story, in E. ii. 5, of the daughter of Pharaoh going down to bathe in the Nile, in the immediate proximity of the place where Moses was born, implies that his parents, at all events, lived not far from the |