more plague he would compel the Egyptians || to let the Hebrews go, he commanded Moses to tell the people, that they should have a sacrifice ready; and that they should prepare themselves on the tenth day of the month Xanthicus, against the fourteenth; which month is called by the Egyptians Pharmuthi, and Nisan by the Hebrews; but the Macedonians call it Xanthicus. And that he should carry away the Hebrews, with all they had. Accordingly Moses having got the Hebrews ready for their departure, and having gathered the people into tribes, kept them together in one place. But when the fourteenth day was come, and all were ready to depart, they offered sacrifice, and purified their houses with the blood; using bunches of hyssop for that purpose: and when they had supped, they burnt the remainder of the flesh as just ready to depart. Whence it is, that we do still offer this sacrifice in like manner, and call this festival Pasch; which signifies the feast of the Passover; because on that day God passed us over, and sent the plague upon the Egyptians. For the destruction of the first-born came upon the Egyptians that night; so that many of the Egyptians who lived near the king's palace, persuaded Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go. Accordingly he called for Moses, and bid them be gone; as supposing that if once the Hebrews were gone out of the country, Egypt should be freed from its miseries. They also honoured the Hebrews with gifts,* some in order to get them to depart quickly, and others on account of their neighbourhood, and the friendship they had with them.

CHAP. XV.

OF THE DEPARTURE OF THE HEBREWS FROM EGYPT, UNDER THE CONDUCT OF MOSES.

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HUS the Hebrews went out of Egypt, while the Egyptians wept, and repented *These large presents made to the Israelites, of vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and raiment, were, as Josephus truly calls them, gifts, really given them; not lent them, as our English falsely renders them. They were spoils required, not borrowed of them; Gen. xv. 14. Exod. iii. 29. xi. 2. Ps. cv. 37. as the same version falsely renders the Hebrew word here used. Exod. xii. 35, 36. God had ordered the Jews to demand these as their pay and reward, during their long and bitter slavery in Egypt; as atonements for the lives of the Egyptians; and as the condition of the Jews' departure, and the Egyptian deliverance from these terrible judgments; which had they not now ceased, they had soon been all dead men, as they VOL. I.-No. 3.

they had treated them so hardly. Now they took their journey by Letopolis, a place at that time deserted, but where Babylon was built afterward, when Cambyses ravaged Egypt. But as they went away hastily, on the third day they came to a place called Baalzephon, on the Red Sea; and when they had no food out of the land, because it was a desert, they eat of loaves kneaded of flour, only warmed by a gentle heat; and this food they made use of thirty days: for what they brought with them out of Egypt, would not suffice them any longer time; and this only while they dispensed it to each person to use so much only as would serve for necessity, but not for satiety. Whence it is, that in memory of the want we were then in, we keep a feast for eight days, which is called the feast of Unleavened-bread. Now the entire multitude of those that went out, including the women and children, was not easy to be numbered; but those that were of an age fit for war, were six hundred thousand.

They left Egypt in the month of Xanthicus, on the fifteenth day of the lunar month: four hundred and thirty years after our forefather Abraham came into Canaan. But two hundred and fifteen years† only after Jacob removed into Egypt; it was the eightieth year of the age of Moses, and of that of Aaron three more. They also carried out the bones of Joseph with them, as he charged his sons to do.

The Egyptians, however, soon repented that the Hebrews were gone; and the king also was greatly concerned that this had been procured by the magical arts of Moses; so they resolved to go after them. Accordingly they took their weapons, and other warlike furniture, and pursued after them, in order to bring them back, if once they overtook them; because they would have no pretence to pray themselves confess, xii. 23. Nor was there any sense in borrowing or lending, when the Israelites were finally departing out of the land.

Why our Mazorete copy so groundlessly abridges this account in Exod. xii. 40. as to ascribe four hundred and thirty years to the sole peregrination of the Israelites in Egypt: when it is clear, even by that Mazorete chronology elsewhere; as well as from the express text itself in the Samaritan, Septuagint, and Josephus, that they sojourned in Egypt but half that time, and that by consequence the other half of their peregrination was in the land of Canaan, before they came into Egypt, is hard to say Exod. xiv. 5.

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