evident that this can only mean, that they were adopted by him ; and as that would not lay the foundation of a new tribe, the tribes of Israel having been fixed once for all, it could only involve the transfer of Joseph's special rights and property to these children of Machir, vid. § 2. The body of Joseph was placed in a wooden sarcophagus. The Egyptian coffins were generally constructed of sycamore wood, and were made to resemble the human body. (See Herodotus ii. 86). M. Baumgarten has most truly observed: "the last instructions, which Joseph gave to his brethren, and made them swear that they would fulfil, are peculiarly important. Joseph remained an Egyptian to the day of his death, and was, therefore, separated from his brethren. If, then, before his death, he expressed his certain hope that they would one day return to Canaan, and his wish to be associated with that return, his former separation must have given the greater force to such a desire. From that time for

ward the coffin with Joseph's remains became an eloquent witness of the fact that Israel was only a temporary sojourner in the land of Egypt, and continued to turn its face towards Canaan, the promised land."

The intercourse between Joseph and his brethren terminated with their anxiety on account of the injury, which they were conscious of having inflicted upon him, and with Joseph's declaration of his forgiving love, by which he removed all doubt as to the unalterable nature of the reconciliation that had taken place, and the perpetuity of his affection for them. Henceforth the brethren were able to give themselves up to the full enjoyment of the rich provision he had made for them, without any lingering fear lest they might one day be punished for their fault, by one whom they had so deeply injured, in fact without a thought that such a thing was any longer possible. The touching history of Joseph is now lying in all its completeness before us, and we have therefore a fitting opportunity for surveying it as a whole.

All the teachers of the Christian Church, who regard the Old Testament history as the result of God's special and supernatural direction, have recognised in Joseph a distinct type of Christ (e.g. Sack, Apologetik 2. A. p. 340 seq.). "In the person of Joseph," says Luther, "God foreshadowed both Christ and his entire kingdom in the most brilliant manner in a bodily form. He received his name on account of his perpetually growing and increasing,

heaping up and accumulating, for Joseph means one who adds. And the crowning point of the figure is this: as Joseph was treated by his brethren, so was Christ treated by his brethren, i.e., by the Jews." Following this rule, there are some who have discovered the most striking agreement between Joseph's call and the events of his life on the one hand, and those of Christ on the other, even in the most trifling, and apparently the most accidental circumstances (vid. e.g. Vitringa observv. ss. 1. vi. c. 21; Heim, Bibelstunden i. 540 sqq. and others without number). There is, in our opinion, just ground for regarding Joseph as a type. But in this, as in other instances, the true historical relation between the type and the antitype has been reversed. The proper method would have been, first of all, to determine the fact, that the position, the calling, and the task of Joseph bore the same relation to the lower stage of development, at which the kingdom of God had then arrived, as was borne by those of Christ to the fulness of time, or the time of fulness, and also to decide how, why, and to what extent such a resemblance existed. When this had been done, then would have been the time to show that the resemblance, which can be traced between the events and results of their lives, was necessary and essential; whereas otherwise it could only be regarded as accidental, and therefore unimportant, or else as purely imaginary. And in this way it would be shown, that the dissimilarities, which would otherwise appear sufficient to outweigh and destroy the resemblance, were equally necessary and essential. Instead of this, expositors have contented themselves with a merely external comparison of particular phenomena, and thus have lost themselves in strange and arbitrary conjectures, and grasped a baseless and visionary result.

There are two things to be considered in the history of Joseph, his relation to heathenism, and his relation to his own people. He brought salvation to the heathen, and to his brethren also. We have already shown, in § 1 and 2, both how and why Joseph's peculiar position as the deliverer of Egypt, the representative of the whole heathen world, was in itself a prophetic event; an event, which was the result of the deepest impulses at work in his history, and which, although merely transient and imperfect, on account of the imperfection of the age of Joseph himself, and of the circumstances, was for that very reason prophetic. But

the salvation, which was to proceed from the house of Israel, was not merely salvation for the Gentiles, but first of all salvation for the house of Israel itself. And in this respect also, the moving principle of the history of Israel was typically exhibited in the person and life of Joseph. The reason and the cause of this prototypical manifestation of Israel's vocation, precisely at that time, and in the person of Joseph, are one and the same. We have already explained, that the patriarchal epoch formed the first complete and definite stage of the kingdom of God in Israel; and that this stage bore the same relation to the whole of the Old Testament history, as the smaller of two concentric circles bears to the larger. The common centre will generate in both the same forms; but in the smaller circumference these forms are on a smaller and less perfect scale, in the larger they reach their fullest development. So we do find in Joseph the noblest blossom of the patriarchal life, the embodiment of all the true worth that it possessed; but in Christ we see the perfect blossom, the entire fulness of the whole of the Old Testament dispensation.

The

The opposition which Christ and Joseph both met with from their own people, the hatred, contempt, and persecution, to which both were exposed, on the part of those to whom they were bringing salvation, were not accidental. They sprang from the same soil, and were the fruit of the same perverse and hostile disposition, the same evils, which are so exuberant in the whole of the Old Testament history, but which appeared in a concentrated and more fully developed form, just at those epochs in which salvation itself was manifested in a similar way. soil, from which they sprang, was the perversity and selfishness of human nature; and these had to be overcome by the devotion and self-sacrifice, in which alone salvation comes to view. In other words, it was that natural enmity of the heart, which consciously or unconsciously resists the ways of grace, but which has to be subdued by the power of the love that comes to meet it. This selfishness and enmity were manifest, not only in the rude and profane minds of an Ishmael and an Esau, whose hearts were hardened into perfect insensibility, and in whose case they were not subdued by the grace of God; but also in the expressions of self-will, of weak faith or of unbelief, to which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, gave utterance; though in their case, after a

conflict, of less or greater violence, between grace and nature, submissive faith and resisting unbelief, they were entirely subdued. They showed themselves more decidedly in Jacob's sons, since with them the selfishness of nature was no longer under the immediate and express control of God, but had to submit to one who was himself a recipient, as well as a mediator of the divine mercy, one who was naturally their equal, but, according to the hidden and marvellous wisdom of God, was destined to be their deliverer and redeemer. Yet even in this instance the power of forgiving love, displayed by Joseph, triumphed over the obstinacy of selfishness in the hearts of his brethren.

This then being the leading principle, on which the course of salvation in the kingdom of God depends, that its victory over the evils existing in human nature shall be gained by godlike love, submission, and self-sacrifice, it is a fundamental law of the whole of the sacred history, till its ultimate completion, that the way of salvation leads through abasement to exaltation, through serving to ruling, through sacrifice to possession, through suffering to glory. And this fundamental law, of which the highest and most perfect manifestation is seen in the life of the Redeemer, was first displayed in a definite and concrete form in the life of Joseph.

The typical character of the life of Joseph, then, consists in this, that he, the first temporary deliverer of Israel, who brought the first stage of its history to a close, like the perfect Saviour of Israel, in whom its entire history terminated, was slighted, despised, persecuted, and betrayed by "his own;" that, like Him, he passed through abasement, service, and suffering, to exaltation and glory, and also that, like him, he succeeded at length in softening their hardened hearts by the fulness of his forgiving love, and in raising his own to the enjoyment of the benefits which he had secured for them. If, in addition to this, there is often a striking resemblance between particular incidents and the accidental circumstances, we cannot lay any very great stress upon this, though we regard it as a mark of that prophetic spirit, by which the history was directed and controlled.

GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PATRIARCHAL AGE.

REVELATION, RELIGION, AND GENERAL CULTURE IN THE TIME OF THE PATRIARCHS.

§ 5. We have already seen (Vol. i. § 12. 13), that in order to determine to what extent the consciousness of God was developed under the Old Testament economy, it is essentially necessary to make a twofold distinction in the process of divine revelation; that is to say, it is necessary to distinguish the preservation and government of the world in general, from the more special operations connected with the introduction and working out of the plan of salvation. We have also seen that this distinction was exhibited to the religious consciousness of the chosen people, in the two names by which God was known, Elohim and Jehovah. The only questions remaining for discussion at present are, whether there was any distinct apprehension in the patriarchal age, of the difference between these two manifestations of God? and if so, whether it was expressed by the two different names of God at that early age? Some have thought that a negative answer to these questions is rendered necessary by Ex. vi. 3; but this is not the case. For, on the one hand, the explanation of the passage on which this answer is founded is an erroneous one (1), and on the other, whatever opinion may be entertained respecting the composition of the book of Genesis (Vol. i. § 20. 2), such a reply is decidedly at variance with the contents of that book (2).

VOL. II.

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