A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3548. A. C. 1863. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END. wealth shall quite lose all form, and never recover it makes Cyrus speak) at the point of death became proagain." phetic. Though, therefore, the last words which we find our patriarch uttering to his sons, may be rather accounted prophecies than benedictions; yet since the text assures us, that he blessed every one with a separate blessing,' we may fairly infer, that though he found reason to rebuke the three eldest very sharply; yet if his rebukes, and the punishment pronounced against them, had the good effect to bring them to a due sense of their transgressions, it was a blessing to them, though not a temporal one; though, even in this last sense, it cannot be said but that he blessed them likewise, since he assigned each of them a lot in the inheritance of the promised land, which it was in his power to have deprived them of.

The bequest which Jacob makes to his son Joseph, runs into this form :- Moreover, I have given to thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite, with my sword, and with my bow.' But when did we ever read of Jacob's being a military man? His sons indeed invaded Shechem, and took, not from the Amorites, but the Hivites, the adjacent country, as we may suppose; but so far is he from approving of what they did, that to his very dying hour, we find him severely remonstrating against it, and must therefore be supposed too conscientious, either to retain himself, or to consign to his beloved son, a portion of land acquired by such wicked and sanguinary means.

3

9

The tract of ground, therefore, which he mentions, However this be, it is certain that all impartial crimust certainly be that which he purchased of Hamor, tics have observed, that the style of these blessings or the father of Shechem; which he gave Joseph for a prophecies, call them which we will, is much more lofty burying-place, and where Joseph, in consequence of that than what we meet with in the other parts of this book; donation, was afterwards buried, and not in the field of and therefore some have imagined, that Jacob did not Machpelah, the common repository of most of his ances-deliver these very words, but that Moses put the sense of tors. And to resolve the difficulty of his saying, that what he said into such poetical expressions. But to me he took it from the Amorite by force of arms, when it is it seems more reasonable to think, that the spirit of promanifest that he bought it of Hamor the Hivite, for an phecy, now coming upon the good old patriarch, raised hundred pieces of silver, we may observe, that the per- his diction, as well as sentiments; even as Moses himsons who are called Hivites in one place, may, without self is found to have delivered 10 his benedictions in a any impropriety, be called Amorites in another, foras- strain more sublime than what occurs in his other writings. much as the Amorites, being the chief of all the seven It is true, indeed, that in the predictions of the nations in Canaan, might give denomination to all the rest, patriarch, as well as in the benedictions of Moses, severin like manner as all the people of the United Provinces al comparisons do occur, which are taken from brute are, from the pre-eminence of that one, commonly called animals. Thus Judah is compared to a lion, Issachar Hollanders: and then, if we can but suppose, that after to an ass, Dan to a serpent, Benjamin to a wolf, and Jacob's departure from Shechem, for fear of the neigh-Naphtali to an hind let loose. But this is so far from bouring nations, some straggling Amorites came, and being a disparagement to the prophetic spirit, that it is seized on the lands which he had purchased, and that he a commendation of it; since, if the lion be a proper was forced to have recourse to arms to expel the emblem of power and strength; if the ass be an image invaders and maintain his right, all the difficulty or of labour and patience; if the serpent, an hieroglyphic seeming repugnance of the passage vanishes. of guile and subtlety; if the wolf, a symbol of violence and outrage; and if a hind let loose be no bad representation of a people loving liberty and freedom; then were these qualities, which nothing but a Divine Spirit could foresee, abundantly specified, as their respective histories show, in the posterity of the several heads of tribes to which they are applied.

*Jacob, we allow, was a man of peace, but his sons were warriors; and to them he might the rather give permission to recover the possession of what he had bought, because he looked upon it as an earnest of his posterity's future possession of the whole land. 5 And though we read nothing in the foregoing history, either of the Amorites invading Jacob's property, or of his expelling them thence; yet this is far from being the only instance of things being said to be done in Scripture, whose circumstances of time, place, and persons, we find nowhere recorded; and a much easier supposi-a man must be a stranger to all compositions of this tion it is, than to make, as some have done, the sword and the bow, here mentioned, to signify the money wherewith he purchased this small territory.

Jacob is the first, that we read of, who particularly declared the future state of every one of his sons, when he left the world; but it has been an ancient opinion, that the souls of excellent men, the nearer they approach to their departure hence, the more divine they grew, had a clearer prospect of things to come, and (as Xenophon

And as these comparisons are a kind of testimony of the divine inspiration of the holy patriarch upon this occasion, so are they far from being any diminution of the dignity of the subject he was then treating of; since

kind, who is not persuaded, that comparisons taken from
the animal world, are, as it were, the sinews and support
of what we call the sublime; and who finds not himself
less inclined to cavil at Jacob's manner of expression,
when he perceives the lofty Homer comparing his heroes
so frequently to a lion, a wolf, an ass, a torrent, or a
tree, according to the circumstances he places them in,
or the different point of light wherein he thinks proper
to take them. And I mention it as an argument of the
truth and excellency of the Mosaic history, that we find
its author adhering to the original simplicity, and pur-
suing that very method of writing, which was certainly
• Patrick's Commentary.
10 Deut. xxxiii.

Gen. xlix. 28.

A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3548. A. C. 1863. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.

in vogue, when the most ancient books that we know any thing of were composed.

Moses' method of writing, as we have had occasion more than once to take notice, is very succinct; and therefore when he tells us, that upon Joseph's coming into Egypt, and being sold to Potiphar, captain of the guard, he commenced steward of his household, we must not suppose, that there did not a sufficient space of time intervene to qualify him for that office. What therefore some of the Jewish doctors tell us, seems not improbable, namely, that his master, as soon as he bought him, sent him to school, and had him instructed, not in the language only, but in all the learning of the Egyptians. However this be, it is certain that there is no small affinity between the Hebrew and Egyptian tongue; so that a person of good natural parts, and of an age the fittest that could be for learning any thing, might, with a little diligence and application, make himself master of it in a very short time.

Joseph, indeed, as we may observe, talked to his brethren by an interpreter ; and that he might do, though the difference between the two tongues was not very great. A Frenchman, we see, is not understood at first by an Italian or Spaniard, though all the three languages are derived from the same original; but when once he is let into the knowledge of this, and comes to perceive their different formations and constructions, what was foreign to him before, soon becomes familiar. And in like manner, Joseph, with a small matter of instruction, and some observation of his own, might be let into the secret of the Egyptian language, the nature of their accounts, and the customs of the country, and so become every way qualified to give the content, we find he did, in the place to which he was advanced.

* The notion that we have of an eunuch, is a person who has lost his virility; and therefore to assign him a wife, as we find Potiphar had a very naughty one, may seem a manifest incongruity; but for this there is an easy solution to be given. The word Saris indeed denotes equally an eunuch,' and any court minister;' and the reason of this ambiguity is,―That, as eastern kings, for their greater security, were wont to have slaves, who were castrated, to attend the chambers of their wives and concubines, and upon the proof of their fidelity, did frequently advance them to the other court employments, such as being privy-counsellers, high-chamberlains, captains of their guards, &c., it hence came to pass, that the title of eunuch was conferred on any who were promoted to those posts of honour and trust, even though they were not emasculated. And indeed, when we read, in the books of Kings and Chronicles, so frequent mention made of eunuchs about the person of David, and other Jewish princes, we must be far from supposing, that these were all eunuchs in reality, since it was unlawful, ' according to their historian, in that nation, to castrate even a domestic animal; and according to the institution of their law, an express prohibition it was, that he who had his privy members cut off, should not enter into the congregation of the Lord.'

Both the Arabic version, and the Targum of Onkelos,

are therefore very right in rendering the word, a prince or minister of Pharaoh: for if we compare the several parts of his history, we shall find, 5 that Potiphar had the chief command of the forces that guarded the person and palace-royal; that as such he presided in all courts and causes that had a more immediate relation to these; that he had power under the king, of judging and deciding all cases within those walls, of imprisoning and releasing, of life and death, and of hastening or suspending the execution of capital punishments.

And if Potiphar was a person invested with all this authority, it may seem a little strange, why he did not immediately put Joseph to death; since, had his wife's accusation been true, his crime deserved no less a punishment. But whether it was that Joseph had found means to vindicate himself, by the mediation of the keeper of the prison, who was Potiphar's deputy, though there is no account of it in Scripture; or God, in behalf of the righteous, might interpose to mollify the heart of this great man, and restrain his hand from doing violence; the issue of the matter shows, that he was in a short time convinced of his innocence, or otherwise it cannot be believed that he would have suffered him to be made so easy, and to be invested with so much power in the prison; though at the same time, he might not think proper to release him, for fear that so public an acquitment might bring disreputation both to his wife and himself.

Joseph could not but foresee, that to live in the palaces of kings, and to accept of high posts and honours, would be very hazardous to his virtue. 6 But when he perceived the hand of providence so visible in raising him, by ways and means so very extraordinary, to eminence, and an office wherein he would have it in his power to be beneficial to so very many, he could not refuse the offers which the king made him, without being rebellious who had secured him hitherto, he might in this case comto the will and destination of God. To him therefore mit the custody of his innocence, and accept of the usual ensigns of honour, without incurring the censure of vanity or ostentation.

And though, in after ages, all marriages with infidels were certainly prohibited, yet there seems to be at this time a certain dispensation current, forasmuch as Judah to be sure, if not more of Joseph's brethren, had done the same besides that, in Joseph's case, there was something peculiar. For as he was in a strange country, he had not an opportunity of making his addresses to any of the daughters of the seed of Abraham; as the match was of the king's making, he was not at liberty to decline it, without forfeiting his pretensions to the royal favour, and consequently to the means of doing so much good; and as it is not improbable that he might be advised to it by a particular revelation, so it is highly reasonable to believe that he converted his wife, at least to the worship of the true God, before he espoused her: even though there should be nothing in that opinion of the rabbins, that he made a proselyte likewise of her father, the priest of On, who could not but be desirous to purchase at any rate so advantageous

Bibliotheca Biblica on Gen. vol. 2. Occasional Annota-
a Ibid.

tions, 39.
"Heidegger's Hist. Patriar., vol. 2. Essay 20.

A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3548. A. C. 1863. GEN. xxxvii. TO THE END.

an alliance, and took this occasion to establish the rite of circumcision, if not in all Egypt, at least among persons of the sacred order, who, according to the account of those who wrote the history of that country, in very early days certainly were not without it.

Some may imagine, that the better to personate an Egyptian lord, and thereby conceal himself from his brethren, or rather to comply with the language of the court, in this particular, Joseph swore by the life of Pharaoh,' in the same manner as the Romans, in adulation to their emperor, were wont to swear by his genius. It must be acknowledged indeed, that, as every oath is a solemn appeal to God, to swear by any creature what- | ever must needs be an impious and idolatrous act; and therefore the proper solution of this matter is,-not that oaths of this kind were allowable before the institution of Christianity, but that Joseph, in making use of these words, did not swear at all. For since every oath implies in it either an invocation of some witness, or a postulation of some revenge, as our great Sanderson terms it, to say that Joseph appealed to the life of Pharaoh as a witness is ridiculous; and without a very forced construction indeed, the words can never be supposed to include in them a curse, and therefore their most easy signification must be, what we call indicative: By the life of Pharaoh,' that is, as sure and certain as Pharaoh liveth, ye are spies;' just as we say, 'By the sun that shines, I speak truth,' that is, as sure as the sun shines; neither of which can with any propriety be called oaths, but only vehement asseverations.

A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3548. A. C. 1863. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END. father, and his younger brother were yet alive. For upon their return, we may perceive, especially considering that it is the first minister of a mighty state that speaks to a company of poor indigent shepherds, a wonderful tenderness in his expressions: Is your father well; the old man of whom you spake, is he still alive?' besides the instructions which he plainly gave his steward to bid them be of good cheer.' When he understood that his father and brother were both alive, and as yet had not matters prepared for the removal of his father and family, the eagerness of his affections may perhaps be thought to have carried him a little too far, in demanding his brother to be brought to him; but we are not to doubt but that Joseph, by the Divine Spirit wherewith he was endowed, did certainly foresee what would happen, and that his father's grieving a little time for Benjamin, would be so far from endangering his health, that it would only increase his joy, when he saw him again, and dispose him the better for the reception of the welcome news of his own advancement in Egypt; which, had it come all upon him at once, and on a sudden, might have been enough to have bereaved him of his senses, if not of his life itself, by a surfeit of joy. Upon their second dismission, after a very kind entertainment, it may be thought perhaps a piece of cruelty in Joseph, to have his cup conveyed, of all others, into Benjamin's sack, and thereupon to threaten to make him a bond-slave for a pretended felony: but herein was Joseph's great policy and nicety of judgment. He himself had been severely treated by the rest when he was young, and therefore was minded to make an experiment, in what manner they would now behave towards his brother; whether they would forsake him in his distress, and give him up to be a bond-slave, as they had sold him for one; or whether they would stand by him in all events, make intercession for his release, or adventure to share his fate.

never imitate. So that, upon a review of his whole conduct, Joseph is far from deserving blame, that all this seeming rigour and imperiousness of his did eventually produce a great deal of good; and was in reality no more than the heightening the distress, or thickening the plot, as we call it in a play, to make the discovery, or future felicity he intended his family, more conspicuous and agreeable.

It must be acknowledged, indeed, that Moses has done justice to the history of Joseph, and employed most of the tender passions of human nature to give it a better grace; but we must not therefore infer, either that he hath transcended truth or committed an error, in recording the quality of the persons employed to embalm his father. What has led some into a great mistake concerning the origin of physic, and that it was of no vogue in the world until the days of Hippocrates, was the great superiority of skill and genius which he demonstrated both in his practice and writings. The truth is, the divine old man, as one expresses it, did so totally eclipse all who went before him, that as posterity esteemed his works the canon, so did it look upon him as the great father of medicine. But if we will credit the testimony of 6 Galen, who, though a late writer, was a very competent judge, we shall find, that he was far from being the first of his profession, even among the Greeks,

This, perhaps, may be thought, was carrying the matter a little too far: but, without this conduct, Joseph could❘ not have known whether his brethren rightly deserved the favour and protection which he might then design, and afterwards granted them. Without this conduct we had not had perhaps the most lively images that are to be met with in Scripture, of injured innocence, of meekness and forbearance, and the triumphs of a good conscience in him; and of the fears and terrors, the convictions and self-condemnations of long concealed guilt in them. Without this conduct, we had not had this lovely portraiture of paternal tenderness, as well as brotherly affection; we had never had those solemn, sad, and melting words of Jacob, If I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved,' enough to pierce a tender parent's heart; or those words, Joseph is yet alive, I will see him before I die,' enough to raise it into joy and exultation again. In a word, without this conduct, we had never had that courteous, that moving, that pleasingly mournful speech, wherein Moses makes Judah address Joseph, in behalf of his poor brother Benjamin, which exceeds all the compositions of human invention, and a flows indeed from such natural passions, as art can

Homer, indeed, in his poem of the Trojan war, seems to have cut out more work for surgeons than physicians; and therefore we find the chief of the faculty only employed in healing wounds, extracting arrows, preparing anodynes, and other such like external operations; but if we look into his other work, which is of a more pacific strain, we shall soon discern the use of internal applications, when we find Helen brought in as giving Telemachus a preparation of opium, which, as the poet informs us, she had from Polydamna, the wife of Thon, an Egyptian physician of great note. And well might the physicians of Egypt be held in great esteem," when (as Herodotus relates the matter) every distinct distemper had its proper physician, who confined himself to the study and cure of that only; so that one sort having the cure of the eyes, another of the head, another of the teeth, another of the belly, and another of occult diseases, we need not wonder, that all places were crowded with men of this profession, or that the physicians of Joseph's household should be represented as a large number." True it is indeed, that these physicians, and the very

5 Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses, vol. 2. b. 4. sect. 3. Meth. Medic. b. 1.

worth our notice and serious consideration. "Since such passages are related by men, who affect no art, and who lived long after the parties who first uttered them, we cannot conceive how all particulars could be so naturally and fully recorded, unless they had been suggested by his Spirit, who gives mouth and speech to man; who, being alike present to all successions, is able to communicate the secret thoughts of forefathers to their children, and put the very words of the deceased, never registered before, into the mouths or pens of their successors, for many generations after, and that as exactly and distinctly as if they had been caught, in characters of steel or brass, as they issued out of their mouths: for it is plain every circumstance is here related, with such natural specifications, as he terms it, as if Moses had heard them talk; and therefore could not have been thus represented to us, unless they had been written by his divine direction, who knows all things, as well forepast, as present, or to come.”—Dr Jackson on the Creed, b. 1. c. 4.

1

A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3548. A. C. 1863. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END. best of them, were employed in embalming the dead; but | come to a conclusion, he gave the people back their then there was a wise designation in this, namely, not liberties and estates, reserving to the king no more than only to improve them in the knowledge of anatomy, but a double tenth out of the produce of their lands, as a to enable them likewise to discover the causes of such tribute of their vassalage; which, considering the richdisorders as were a baffle to their art. And therefore ness of the soil, and the little pains required in cultivatit was the custom of the kings of Egypt, as Pliny ing it, was an imposition far from being burdensome to informs us, to cause dead bodies to be dissected, on the subject, or vastly disproportionate to the benefit they purpose to find out the origin and nature of all diseases. had received, a Thus it appears from the concurring testimony of other historians, that the practice of physic was a common thing in Egypt, as early as the days of Joseph; that the multitude of its professors makes it no strange thing his having a number of them in his family; and that the nature of the thing, as well as the order of the state, obliged the very best of them to become dissectors and embalmers.

1

There is but one thing more that I find objected to Joseph, in this public station, and that is, his favour and indulgence to the priests, and priests that were idolaters, in sparing their lands, and laying no tax upon them.

The Jewish doctors have a tradition, that when Joseph was in prison, and his master had bad designs against him, it was by the interest of the priests that he was set free, and that, consequently, in gratitude, he could not do less than indulge them with some particular marks of his favour, when he came into such a compass of power. But there is no occasion for any such fiction as this. The priests of Egypt were taken out of the chief families of the nation; they were persons of the first quality;

'Lord Shaftesbury's Characteristics, vol. 3. Miscel. 3. Shuckford's Connection, vol. 2. b. 7.

This may serve for a vindication of what the sacred historian has related of our patriarch in his private life, and we come now to consider him in his public capacity. As soon as he had foretold the king the long famine that was to befall Egypt, he gave him advice to have the fifth part of the product of the country laid up in store against the ensuing want. The tenth part, according to the constitution of the nation, belonged to the king already, and to advise him to purchase as much more, for seven succeeding years, was to consider him as the public father of his people, for whose support and wel-in fare he was concerned to provide. When himself was appointed to the office of gathering in the corn, he took care, no doubt, to have his granaries in fortified places, and as the scarceness increased, to have them secured by a guard of the king's forces, to prevent insurrections and depredations. When he came to open his storehouses, he sold to the poor and to the rich; and was it not highly reasonable, that he who bought the corn, should likewise sell it? or that the money, which by the king's commission and order, had been laid out for such a stock of provisions against the approaching necessities of his subjects, should return to the king's coffers again, to answer his occasions? When their money was gone, they brought him their cattle; but this they did of their own accord, without any compulsion or circumvention; and might he not as legally exchange corn for cattle, as he did it for money before? His corn he kept up perhaps at a high rate; but had he sold it cheap, or given it gratis, the people, very likely, would have been profuse and wanton in the consumption of it; whereas his great care and concern was, to make it hold out the whole time of the famine. He obliged the inhabitants of one city and district to remove, or make room for those of another; but this he might do, not so much to show their subjection to Pharaoh, as to secure the public peace, by disabling them in this way from entering into any sedi-bution of water would be guided by prudence; each district would tious measures and combinations.

It cannot be imagined, indeed, but that, in a time of such general want and calamity, men's minds would be ripe for rapine, violence, and mutiny; and yet we meet with no one commotion, during the whole period of his critical ministry; which bespeaks the skill of the mariner, when he is found able to steer steady in the midst of so tumultuous a sea. In fine, after he had a long while executed his high trust, and the years of famine were 'Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses, b. 4. sect. 3.

Joseph as viceroy of Egypt; but fortunately that conduct stands a This is rather a feeble attempt to vindicate the conduct of need of no other vindication, than to be fairly stated. If credit be due to Diodorus Siculus, all the land of Egypt was, prior to this period, divided, in equal shares, among the king, the priestthe beginning, adscriptitii gleba; and they were not likely to hood, and army. The people therefore must have been, from suffer by being transferred with the soil, which they cultivated, from the vassalage in which they had hitherto been held by a fierce soldiery to the common sovereign and father of his people. But let us suppose, that Diodorus was mistaken, and that not the army but the people at large, shared the soil in equal portions with the king and the priests. Even on this supposition they were gainers by the new regulation of Joseph; for they henceforth enjoyed four-fifths of two-thirds of the produce of the whole kingdom, instead of one-third as formerly. Indeed whatever was the state of the Egyptians before this famine, it was happy for them that the minister, whom they acknowledged to have saved their lives, was not on that occasion influenced by modern notions of civil and political liberty." By the policy of Joseph, the whole of the land of Egypt, not occupied by the priests, became the property of the sovereign, and the people with their children his slaves; an event, which, however unpropitious it might be in any other country, was necessary there, where every harvest depended on the Nile, and where the equal distribution of its waters could alone produce a general cultivation. possible to induce individuals to sacrifice their own possessions, When the lands of Egypt were private property, would it be that they might be turned into canals for the public benefit? or, when the canals were constructed, would it be possible to prevent the inhabitants of the upper provinces from drawing off more water than was requisite for their own use, and thereby injuring the cultivators lower down? But when the whole belonged to one man, the necessary canals would be constructed; the distri

receive its necessary proportion; and the collateral branches would then, as they are now, be opened only when the height of Valentia's Travels, vol. 3, p. 348.)-Our author's supposition, the river justified such a measure for the public benefit." (Lord that the people who had sold their lands to preserve their lives, were transplanted into cities far from their former places of abode, that they might, in time, lose the remembrance of their ancient possessions, is a groundless dream. Granaries were formed, and cities and villages built in every district of the kingdom; and when cultivation ceased, the people were transplanted, for the easiness of distribution, from the country into such of those cities as were nearest to them; and when the famine ceased, they were sent back, with seed to sow their former fields.