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which Israel may have seen in Egypt ere they were cast down-but now, behold the "high arm of the wicked!" "it is broken," as Job said (xxxviii. 15). The giant arm and hand in red granite is a mute comment on the following words:

...

"The word of the Lord came unto me saying—. .I have broken the arm of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and lo, it shall not be bound up to be healed.........And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and disperse them through the countries,... ...and they shall know that I am the Lord." (Ezek. xxx. 21, 23, 26.)

As Abraham went into Egypt about 430 years after the Flood, or more than 1900 B.C. (see Gen. xii. 10), he must have seen the earliest of its pyramids at Memphis. Despotic Pharaohs were then in existence, for he feared they would seize upon his fair Sarah, "kill him," and "save her alive;" but his fears were ungrounded; he was entreated well for her sake, and received addition to his shepherd wealth, and even Sarah was undeservedly restored unharmed through the interference of his Almighty

Friend.

Meantime the Egyptian empire grows for another 400 years. The Temple of Karnak arises in Thebes -the "City of the Hundred Gates." ISAAC never goes down into Egypt; and we must return to his history in Palestine, and then see how Jacob's story blended with his son Joseph's in the land of Ham. Joseph's age was 39 when his father came down to him, and he was 56 at the death of Jacob. Of his 110 years, 88 were spent in Egypt.

JACOB AND JOSEPH IN EGYPT.

THE history of Isaac, the promised seed, begins in chapter xxi. of Genesis, as intertwined with that of his father, Abraham, and continues to the 10th verse of chapter xxviii., when it merges into

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that of his son JACOB, who was born to him with Esau when he had reached the age of sixty, and while he dwelt by the well Lahai-roi, "The well of Him that liveth and seeth," where the angel first met Hagar.

Jacob's history may be found from Genesis xxvii. to xxxvii.; and is continued in connection with JOSEPH'S, from chapter xlii. to the close of the first book of the Pentateuch. Joseph's history begins in chapter xxxvii.

Esau had married Judith, a daughter of the children of Heth, when he was forty, and his father Isaac a hundred years old; and although Isaac had unwittingly transferred to Jacob the patriarchal blessing of the eldest son, he must have perceived that this transfer was by the will of God, for he confirms it to Jacob, ere he sends him away to the Syrian kindred of his mother Rebekah, to seek a wife of the chosen race of Shem, at Haran, near Damascus.

Jacob departs from "Beersheba, or the well of the oath," to which the family must have previously removed. It is said that Isaac reopened the wells which his father Abraham had dug, and which the Philistines had filled up again with earth. The existence of a city at Beersheba is mentioned in Gen. xxvi. 33. And many years afterwards Jacob revisited the spot for solemn worship, before starting for Egypt with his family. (Gen. xlvi. 1-5.)

Those very wells of Beersheba are still visited by travellers of our own age; they are lined with masonry, and the deep grooves cut in the curbstones by the friction of ropes, make their edges appear to be frilled or fluted.* All around lie the

The Arabs always bring their own ropes to these wilderness wells, which explains the saying of the woman of Samaria: "Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.”

stone camel-troughs of ancient days. Seven wells have been described by different travellers, which is worthy of notice, because "Sheba" in Hebrew signifies seven, as well as an oath.

Two of these wells are five feet across, but a third is much wider, twelve feet and-a-half across, which is probably the well whereof the Lord spoke unto Moses in Numbers xxi. 16. "Gather the people together, and I will give them water. Then Israel sang this song,

Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it:

The princes digged the well, the nobles of the people digged it,
By direction of the lawgiver, with their staves."

Hagar saw the first well of Beersheba (Gen. xxi. 19), which revived the fainting Ishmael.

By the wells they dug Abraham and Isaac have sat with Abimelech, made sacred oaths of peace, and planted groves. The wandering Arab strikes his tent, and leaves but the ashes of his extinguished fires. The patriarchs left wells and groves.

From Beersheba Abraham journeyed with Isaac to offer him in sacrifice; and, restored to his father by the word of the Lord, here Isaac himself dwelt long and peacefully.

From this spot Jacob fled, having filched birthright and blessing from his brother Esau; here the Israelites entered the land they were to possess, even unto Dan. Here Samuel made his sons judges, and hence Elijah wandered out into the southern desert from the wrath of Jezebel, when God was about to feed him with that meat in whose strength he went forty days to Horeb, the Mount of God.

It was in Gerar, west of Beer-Sheba, among the Philistines, that Isaac dwelt, when the Lord said unto him, "Go not down into Egypt; sojourn in this land," and here he received his first

blessing (xxvi. 3), for himself and his seed, and all nations. In Gerar Isaac sowed, and received in the same year an hundredfold. Abram had been called by the children of Heth "a mighty prince," and Isaac "went forward," and was "very great" in possession of flocks, herds, and servants. The Philistines envied him, and even the friendly Abimelech said to him, as the Egyptians afterwards said to the people of Israel, "Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we." He dug more wells in Gerar, but he was obliged to name them Esek, "contention," and Sibnah, "hatred," before he obtained the blessing of Rehoboth, “room.”

It was specially at Beersheba that the second blessing reached Isaac (xxvi. 24), and it is given for "Abraham's sake." Jacob, it is evident, did not go up to Padan-aram till he was seventy-seven years old, when Isaac must have been 137. Before this Isaac is spoken of as old and dim-sighted, and expecting the day of his death, which appears, however, not to have occurred for forty-three years, when Jacob and Esau bury him at the age of a hundred and fourscore in the cave of Machpelah. Jacob is away from him for twenty years with Laban, during which the much coveted blessing is confirmed to this favoured son, a third, fourth, and fifth time, by God Himself, at Bethel, at Peniel, and at Bethel yet again (see Gen. xxviii. 19; xxxii. 30; xxxv. 11, 15); his father Isaac had blessed him twice, so that there are seven prophetic blessings upon Isaac and Jacob, confirming the seven bestowed upon Abraham.

FOURTEEN are the precious TITLE DEEDS received from their fathers by the nation chosen by God as witnesses for Himself in a fallen world. No faultless witnesses however, for in Jacob's last words

to his twelve sons, those addressed to Reuben, to Simeon, and to Levi, almost disguise the father's blessing under his emphatic blame. The Bible is so really fitted to be the guide of our daily life, because it is so truthful and impartial in its narratives. Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, and even Benjamin, the prophetic spirit does not so much bless as it tells them "that which shall befal them in the last days;" but for Judah and to Joseph (or Ephraim), the blessing brims over. They are the two heads of the tribes.

"The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.

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Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes.

"His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk."

And Joseph,

“Is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose

branches run over the wall:

"The archers have sorely grieved him and shot at him, and

hated him;

"But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob; (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel).

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Every blessing of the heaven above and of the deep that lieth under-all are his, to the utmost bound of the everlasting hills.

It is very interesting to turn from the 49th of Genesis to the 33rd of Deuteronomy, and compare the blessing of Moses to the tribes of Israel, 238 years afterwards, when the seventy souls had been multiplied into a great nation, the children and successors of the 600,000 fighting men who had fallen in the wilderness in the last forty years that interval (Num. i. 46). In the list of Moses

of

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