the teeth, another of the region of the belly, and another of the occult distempers." lib. ii. c. 84. After this we shall not think it strange that Joseph's physicians are represented as a number. A body of these domestics would now appear an extravagant piece of state, even in the first minister. But then it could not be otherwise, where each distemper had its proper physician; so that every great family, as well as city must needs, as Herodotus expresses it, swarm with the faculty. There is a remarkable passage in Jeremiah (chap. xlvi. 11.) where, foretelling the overthrow of Pharaoh's army at the Euphrates, he describes Egypt by this characteristic of her skill in medicine. up into Gilead, and take BALM, (or balsam) O virgin the daughter of Egypt; in vain shalt thou use MANY MEDICINES, for thou shalt not be cured.

WARBURTON'S Divine Legation, b. iv. sec. 3. § 3.

Go

No. 658.-1. 3. And forty days were fulfilled for him, (for so are fulfilled the days of those who are embalmed) and the Egyptians mourned for him three-score and ten days.] We learn from two Greek historians (Herodotus, lib. ii. chap. 85, 86. Diodorus, lib. i. Bibl. p. 58.) that the time of mourning was while the body remained with the embalmers, which Herodotus says was seventy days. During this time the body lay in nitre, the use of which was to dry up all its superfluous and noxious moisture: and when, in the compass of thirty days, this was reasonably well effected, the remaining forty (the time mentioned by Diodorus) were employed in annointing it with gums and spices to preserve it, which was the proper embalming. The former circumstance explains the reason why the Egyptians mourned for Israel three-score and ten days. The latter explains the meaning of the forty days which were fulfilled for Israel, being the days of those who were embalmed.

WARBURTON'S Divine Legation, b. iv. sec. 3. § 4.

No. 659.-I. 13. His sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah.] That Jacob after his decease should be carried from Egypt into Canaan for interment, and Joseph also when he died is perfectly conformable to the practice of the East. Homer represents the shade of Patroclus as thus addressing Achilles.

Hear then; and as in fate and love we join,
Oh suffer that my bones may rest with thine!
Together have we liv'd, together bred,
One house receiv'd us and one table fed;
That golden urn, thy goddess mother gave,
May mix our ashes in one common grave.

Pope, Il. xxiii. 103.

No.660.-1. 23. The children also of Machir were brought up upon Joseph's knees.] They were dandled or treated as children upon Joseph's knees. This is a pleasing picture of an old man's fondness for his descendants. So in Homer (Odyss. xix. 401.) the nurse places Ulysses, then lately born, upon his maternal grandfather Autolychus's knees.

Tor pa

οἱ Ευρύκλεια φίλοις επι γενασι θηκε.

And on the other hand (Il. ix. 1. 455.) Amyntor imprecates it as a curse upon his son Phoenix, that he might have no son to sit upon Amyntor's knees.

No. 661.-1. 25. The children of Israel.] Though the people were very numerous, they were still called the children of Israel, as if they had been but one family; in the same manner as they said, the children of Edom, the children of Moab, &c. Indeed all these people were still distinct they knew their own origin, and took a pride in preserving the name of their author. Thence probably it comes that the name of children signified, with the an

cients, a nation, or certain sort of people. Homer often says, the children of the Greeks, and the children of the Trojans. The Greeks used to say, the children of the physicians and grammarians. With the Hebrews, the children of the East, are the eastern people; the children of Belial, the wicked; the children of man, or Adam, mankind. In the gospel we often see the children of this world; of darkness and of light; and also the children of the bridegroom, for those who go along with him to the wedding. FLEURY'S Hist. of Israelites, p. 18.

No. 662.-EXODUS i. 16.

And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives,—When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them on the stools, if it be a son, then ye shall kill him; but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.

To understand the word stools as referring to the women to be delivered, involves the passage in perplexity; but if it be interpreted of those troughs or vessels of stone, in which new born children were placed for the purpose of being washed, it is perfectly clear and intelligible. This custom in relation to children is justified by eastern usages; and such a destruction of boys is actually practised in the courts of eastern monarchs. Thevenot (part ii. p. 98.) hints at both these principles. He says that "the kings of Persia are so afraid of being deprived of that power which they abuse, and are so apprehensive of being dethroned, that they destroy the children of their female relations, when they are brought to bed of boys, by putting them into an earthen trough, where they suffer them to starve."

No. 663.-ii. 5. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river.] The people of Egypt, and particularly the females of that country, express their veneration for the benefits received from the Nile, by plunging into it at the time of its beginning to overflow the country. Is it not probable that when the daughter of Pharaoh went into that river, it was in conformity with that idolatrous practice? Irwin (Travels, p. 229, 259) relates, that looking out of his window in the night, he saw a band of damsels proceeding to the river side with singing and

dancing, and that the object of their going thither was to witness the first visible rise of the Nile, and to bathe in it. HARMER, vol. iv. p. 279.

No. 664.-iii. 2. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire.] The traditionary notion of a miraculous light or fire being a token of a divine presence prevailed among the Greeks in the time of Homer: for, after relating that the goddess Minerva attended on Ulysses with her golden lamp, or rather torch, and afforded him a refulgent light, he makes Telemachus cry out to his father in rapture.

Ω πατερ, η μεγα θαύμα τους οφθαλμοισιν ορωμαι, &c.

What miracle thus dazzles with surprise?

Distinct in rows the radient columns rise;

Odyss. xix.

The walls, where'er my wondering sight I turn,
And roofs, amidst a blaze of glory burn;

Some visitant of pure ethereal race

With his bright presence deigns the dome to grace.

POPE.

No. 665.-iv, 25. A bloody husband'art thou to me.] The learned Joseph Mede (Diss. xiv. p. 52.) has given to these words of Zipporah the following singular interpretation. He says that it was a custom among the Jews to name the child that was circumcised by a Hebrew word, signifying a husband. He builds his opinion upon the testimony of some rabbins. He apprehends that she applied to the child, and not to Moses, as most interpreters think, the words above mentioned. Chaton, which is the term in the original, is never used to denote the relation between husband and wife, but that which is between a man and the father or mother of the person to whom he is married: it signifies a son in law, and not a husband.