felt within him a different call. He had imbibed affection for his people with his mother's milk, and the sufferings of his brethren went to his heart. He believed that he was called to

be their deliverer and avenger. Whilst brooding over such thoughts as these, he happened one day to see an Egyptian illtreating an Israelite. At once he was carried away by his zeal for his people, and, having slain the Egyptian, he buried him in the sand. There was no witness of what he had done except the injured Israelite; but the news soon spread among the rest, and it was probably the Israelite himself who circulated the report. Such a deed was like a general summons to them to rise against their oppressors, and Moses imagined that he had thereby obtained a certain amount of authority over his brethren. A short time afterwards he saw two Israelites quarrelling, and wished to act as arbitrator, but he was rudely thrust aside by the one whom he pronounced in the wrong. "Who," said he, "made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the Egyptian ?" On account of this, the report of what Moses had done began to spread among the Egyptians as well. The king heard of it, and determined to put him to death. Under these circumstancespursued by the king, and forsaken by the people-Moses saw the necessity for flight (5). He sought refuge, and found it, in the land of the Midianites (6). A prince and priest of this people, named Reguel (7), received him into his house on account of the protection he had afforded to his daughters against the rudeness of the shepherds, gave him his daughter Zipporah as a wife, and entrusted his flocks to his care. The flight of Moses from Egypt introduced him into a new training school. At Pharaoh's court he had learned much that was required to fit him for his vocation, as the deliverer and leader of Israel, as the mediator of the ancient covenant and founder of the theocracy, and also as a prophet and lawgiver. had been of a very partial character.

But his education there
He had learned to rule,

but not to serve, and the latter was as necessary, if not more so than the former. He possessed the fiery zeal of youth, but not the circumspection, the patience, or the firmness of age. A consciousness of his vocation had been aroused within him when in Egypt; but it was mixed with selfishness, pride, and ambition, with headstrong zeal, but yet with a pusillanimity which was soon daunted. He did not understand the art of being still and enduring, of waiting and listening for the direction of God, an art so indispensable for all who labour in the kingdom of God. In the school of Egyptian wisdom his mind had been enriched with all the treasures of man's wisdom, but his heart was still the rebellious unbelieving heart of the natural man, and therefore but little adapted for the reception of divine wisdom, and by no means fitted for performing the works of God. And even the habit of sifting and selecting, of pondering and testing, acquired by a man of learning and experience, must certainly have been far from securing anything like the mature wisdom and steadfastness demanded by his vocation. All this he had yet to acquire. Persecution and affliction, want and exile, nature and solitude, were now to be his tutors, and complete his education, before he entered upon the duties of his divine vocation (8).

(1). On Amram and Jochebed see § 14. 1. Moses was not their first-born son. His brother Aaron was three years older than he (Ex. vii. 7); whilst his sister, whose name (Miriam, LXX. Mapíau) we do not learn till afterwards (Ex. xv. 20), had evidently grown up before he was born (Ex. ii. 4). The following is the family-pedigree:

Nadab, Abihu, ELEAZAR, Ithamar. Gershon, Eliezer.

PHINEHAS.

(2). The biblical record expressly mentions the striking beauty of the child, as leading to the mother's determination to conceal and, if possible, save it. Ver. 2: "And she saw the child that it was good" (i-, LXX., dσreîos). It is true, that it is not an unusual thing for a mother to think her new-born child beautiful; but just because it is not unusual, the peculiar character of the sacred record leads to the conclusion, that in this case there must have been something more than usual. Stephen had this impression, for he expressly traces the connexion between the beauty of the child and God himself (καὶ ἦν αστείος τῷ θεῷ). Some message from God must have been communicated to the mother in a peculiar manner by the eyes of the child; she may have seen in them the intimations of an eventful future, which, with her faith in the promises made to the fathers, stood out before her mind in marked contrast with the oppressions, the sufferings, and the anxieties of the present.

This was also the view taken by the author of the epistle to the Hebrews (chap. xi. 23), for he extols the concealment of the child as an act of faith. The whole affair would be still clearer, if we could rely upon the Jewish tradition that Amram was a prophet. But there is nothing to warrant this; on the contrary the tradition itself appears to have been founded entirely upon the passage before us. If the birth of Moses had been attended by any direct revelations or predictions from God, the sacred record, according to its usual custom, would certainly have mentioned them. And in its silence in this respect we find a proof of its historical fidelity.-Josephus mentions the name of Pharaoh's daughter. In Ant. 2. 9. 5 he calls her Thermuthis. But there is no more reliance to be placed upon his account, than upon that of Eusebius (praep. evang. ix. 27) who calls her Méppis. The latter looks like a corruption of Miriam. -The queen's daughter bathing in the Nile causes great offence to Herr v. Bohlen (Genesis lxxxi.), who regards it as an evidence of the author's gross ignorance of Egyptian customs. However the " gross ignorance" falls back upon the critic. In Egypt there was nothing like the same restraint upon women as in oriental countries or even in Greece. On some of the monuments we meet with scenes, in which the women associate with the men with almost as much freedom as modern Europeans (Hengstenberg Egypt and Moses, p. 26). "That the king's

daughter went to the Nile to wash () is explained by the Egyptian notion of the sacredness of the Nile. A representation of an Egyptian bathing scene-a lady with four female servants who attend upon her to perform various offices,-is found in Wilkinson iii. 389" (Hengstenberg, p. 86). The preparation of the little ark too (whose name reminds one of Noah's ark), the papyrus of which it was composed, and the asphalt and pitch with which it was covered, all harmonize with the antiquities of Egypt (see Hengstenberg, p. 85).-Under the circumstances there is nothing surprising in the fact, that as soon as the princess saw the boy, she concluded that it must be a Hebrew child; and there is certainly no necessity for assuming with Aben Ezra and Theodoret, ὅτι ἡ περιτομὴ τοῦτο édnλwoe.-We may introduce here a most sensible remark made ἐδήλωσε.—We by Baumgarten in his Theological Commentary (i. 1, p. 399): "In the fact, that it was necessary for the deliverer of Israel from the power of Egypt to be himself first delivered by the daughter of the king of Egypt, we find the same interweaving of the history of Israel with the history of the Gentiles, which we have already observed in the history of Joseph; and we may now regard it as a law, that the preference shown to Israel, when it was selected as the chosen seed, on whom the blessings were first bestowed, was to be counterbalanced by the fact, that the salvation of Israel could not be fully effected without the intervention of the Gentiles. This was the opinion of Cyril of Alexandria, which he expressed in his usual allegorical style by saying the daughter of Pharaoh is the community of the Gentiles." In all the decisive turning points of the sacred history, whenever a new bud was about to open, some heathen power always came forward, as though summoned by the providence of God, to assist in bursting the fetters by which the bud was held, in order that it might open into a splendid and fragrant flower.

(3). The time of weaning is generally supposed (according to 2 Macc. vii. 27; 1 Sam. i. 23, 24; Josephus, Ant. ii. 9, 6), to have been at the end of the third year. As the princess was about to adopt the child and bring it up as her own (ver. 10), it is most likely that, according to a mother's rights, she gave it its name. If so, she would naturally select an Egyptian name. But the name is certainly Hebrew (= one who draws out, the deliverer). We have here, however, without doubt, a similar

τας.

case to that which we meet with in Gen. xli. 45, where the Egyptian name, Psomtomphanech, which Pharaoh gave to Joseph, is handed down in the form, Zaphnath-Paaneah, which admits of a Hebrew etymology (Vol. i. § 88, 2). And in both cases the Septuagint puts us upon the right track, by writing the name in a manner more closely resembling the original Egyptian form. Thus the name of Moses is always written, Moüons, of which Josephus (Ant. ii. 9, 6), gives the correct explanation: Tò yàp ὕδωρ ΜΩ οἱ Αἰγύπτιοι καλοῦσιν, ΥΣΗΣ δέ τοὺς ἐξ ὕδατος σωθένPhilo explains it in a similar manner (de vita Mos. ii. 83, ed. Mang.): διὰ τὸ ἐκ τοῦ ὕδατος αὐτὸν ἀνελέσθαι· τὸ γὰρ ὕδωρ ΜΩΣ ὀνομάζουσιν Αἰγύπτιοι). In this Clemens of Alexandria (Strom. i. 251 ed. Sylb.), and Ezekiel the tragedian (Eusebius praep. ev. ix. 28) agree. The derivation here given is confirmed by our present acquaintance with the Coptic, in which Mo means water, and Udshe saved (cf. Jablonski opusc. i. 152 sqq.). Most modern authors adopt it; but though Gesenius will not actually reject it, he says in his Thesaurus that reputans sibi nominum propriorum apud veteres Aegyptios usitatorum, quae pleraque cum Deorum nominibus conjuncta sunt ratione (e.g. Amôs, Thuthmos, Phthamôs, Rhamôs, &c.), he must prefer to trace the name to the Egyptian word Môs, a son, and to assume that the first part of the word, which contained the name of a god, was dropped in Hebrew usage. No one but Lengerke (i. 390), supports this explanation, and it will hardly meet with any further approval. Many of the earlier theologians made it, to a certain extent, a point of honour to affirm, that it was not Pharaoh's daughter, but the child's own mother, who gave it its name. Thus Pfeiffer (dub. vex., p. 214), following Abarbanel, renders ver. 10: "adduxit eum (sc. mater ipsius) ad filiam Pharaonis et factus est ipsi filius. Vocarat vero

nomen ejus (sc. mater jam dudum) Mose (quod tum indicabat filiae Pharaonis), et dicebat: quia ex aqua educendum curasti eum," defending his translation on the ground that not only can, but must be the second person feminine (since it is written defective, without). But apart from every other consideration, we should in this case expect to find not but Meier also decides that the name was originally Hebrew (Wurzel-wörterb. p. 704). In his opinion the real name of