b girl hereupon called Moses' own mother, to whom the princess put him out to nurse. Thus by a wonderful providence Moses was preserved, and nursed by his own mother for a time, but, afterwards taken to court, and educated there by the favour of the princess as her own son; instructed in all the learning of the Egyptians, and became a man of great eminence amongst them; was made general and leader of their armies, and fought some battles with great conduct and success. The princess had no children, nor the king her father any male-heir, and it is thought that she adopted Moses for her son, and that her father designed him to be king of Egypt; but Moses declined this advancment, as a scheme which would deprive him, and his posterity, of the blessings which God had promised to the Hebrew nation, who were to be but stran b Acts vii. 22. d *Josephus Antiq. Jud, lib. c. 2. 10. Josephus relates, that the princess having no child, adopted Moses, and brought him whilst a child to her father, and admiring both the beauty of his person, and the promising appearance of a genius in him, wished he would appoint him to be his successor, if she should have no children. That the king hereupon in a pleasant humour put his crown upon the child's head; and that Moses took it off, and laid it upon the ground, and there played with it, and turned it about with his feet. One of the priests, who attended thought his actions ominous, and was earnest to have him killed, as a person, who would be fatally mischievous to the Egyptian crown; but the princess here again saved him from destruction, &c. See Josephus Antiq. lib. 2, c. 9. gers in Egypt for a time. He had a full belief that GOD would make good his promises to them; and by faith he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Under a full persuasion of the certainty of those things, which God had promised, he turned his eye and heart from the crown of Egypt, to the afflictions of his brethren; and rather wished, that it would please GOD to have him lead them out of Egypt to the promised land, than to sway the Egyp tian sceptre. He went among them daily, and viewed their condition, and upon seeing an Egyptian severe with one of them, he killed him. The next day, finding two Hebrews in contest with one another, he admonished them to consider, that they were brethren, and would have decided their quarrel; thinking, that they would consider him as a person likely to deliver them out of their bondage," and that they would have submitted their difference to him. But they had no such thoughts about him; his arbitration was rejected with contempt, and one of them upbraided him with his killing the Egyptian. Thus he saw, that the people were not likely to follow his directions, if he should attempt to contrive their leaving Egypt; and thinking that his violence to the Egyptian might be known to Pharaoh; and finding that his spending so much of his time among the Hebrews, had made his conduct much suspected, and that the king had de i e Gen. xv. 13. xlvi. 4, & l. 24. * f Heb. xi. 24. ▲ Ver. 25. k termined to put him to death; he therefore thought it prudent to leave Egypt, and went to Midian to Jethro, the priest and chief inhabitant of that country, with whom he lived as keeper of his flocks, and married one of his daughters. Here he continued forty years. Jethro was perhaps descended from Abraham by Keturah his second wife. Moses was forty years old, when he first thought of relieving the Israelites,” and lived forty years in Midian," being eighty years old, when he led the Israelites out of Egypt. The exit of the children of Israel out of Egypt will appear hereafter to be A. M. 2513; so that Moses was born A. M. 2433. Josephus relates several particulars of Moses, of which we find no hints in the books of Scripture. He has a large account of a war with the Ethiopians, in which Moses was commander of the Egyptian armies. He reports that he besieged Saba, the capital city of Ethiopia, and took the city, and married Tharbis the king of Ethiopia's daughter. Very probably this account of Josephus might be one inducement for our English translators of the Bible to render Numbers xii. 1. And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses, because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married; for he had married an Ethiopian woman. Eusebius gives a hint about the Ethiopians, which favours this Egyptian war with them, mentioned by Josephus. He says, the Ethio pians came and settled in Egypt in the time of Amenophis; and he places Amenophis' reign so as to end it about four hundred and thirty-one years after Abraham's birth, i. e. A. M. 2439. Now, according to this account, the Ethiopians were a new set of people, who planted themselves in the parts adjacent to Egypt much about Moses' time; and, perhaps, they might invade some part of Egypt, or incommode some of the inhabitants of it, and so occasion the war upon them which Josephus mentions. According to Philostratus,' there was no such country as Ethiopia beyond Egypt until this migration. These people came, according to Eusebius, from the river Indus, and planted themselves in the parts beyond Egypt southward, and so began the kingdom, called afterwards the Ethiopian. There are many hints in several ancient writers, which agree with this opinion of the Ethiopians near to Egypt, being derived from a people of that name in the eastern countries. Homer mentions two Ethiopian nations, one placed in the western parts, another in the eastern. Αιθίοπας τ' οι διχθα δεδαιαται εσχατοι ανδρων, Οι μεν δυσσομενες Υπερίονος, οι δ' ανιονιος.....ODYS. L. 1. Strabo indeed endeavours to shew, that the true meaning of this passage is generally mistaken; and 9 Euseb in Chron. ad Num. 402. In vit. Appollon. Tyanei. lib. 3, c. 6. In Chron. ubi sup. that Homer did not intend by it, that there were two Ethiopian nations in parts of the world so distant as Egypt and India; but the remarks of other writers do, I think, determine Homer's words to this sense, more clearly, than Strabo's arguments refute it. Herodotus says, that there were two Ethiopian nations, and he places one of them in the eastern parts of the world, and reckons them among the Indians, and the other in the parts near Egypt." Appolonius was of the same opinion, and says, that the African Ethiopians came from India; and he supposes them to be masters of the ancient Indian learning, brought by their forefathers from India to Ethiopia. Eustathius hints, that the Ethiopians came from India.2 Thus the Ethiopians were a people who wandered from their ancient habitations, and settled in the parts near Egypt about the time when Moses lived; and very probably they and the Egyptians might have some contests about settling the bounds of their country, so that Egypt might not be invaded by them. Perhaps Josephus might have reason, from ancient remains, to relate that Moses was engaged in accommodating this affair; though it is evident that Josephus had added to the account some particulars which are not true. Saba, which Josephus supposes to be the capital city of Ethiopia, was a city of Arabia ; See Strabo Georg. lib. 1, p. 29, lib. 2, p. 103. ■ Herodot. lib. 7, c. 70. * Argonaut. lib. 6, c. 1, c. 4, lib. 6, c. 6. * Id. ibid. c. 8. In Dinoys. p. 35. |