THE OLD COVENANT.

REMOVAL OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL TO EGYPT.

§ 1. (Gen. xlvi. xlvii. 12).—The report that Joseph was still alive, and was ruler over all the land of Egypt, was like a fable to his aged father Jacob; and it was not till he saw the Egyptian waggons that he could be convinced that it was true. "It is enough,” he then exclaimed, "Joseph my son is yet alive, I will go and see him before I die." Well versed as he was in the ways of God, the old man could recognise at once the call of Jehovah in the invitation of Joseph. He therefore went to Egypt without delay. He stopped at the border of the land of his pilgrimage, which was also the promised land, to offer a sacrifice to the God of his fathers; and God appeared to him in a dream. Fear not,” he said, "to go down to Egypt, for I will there make of thee a great nation. I will go down with thee into Egypt, I will also surely bring thee up again, and Joseph shall close thine eyes" (1). The whole house of Jacob, with their wives, their children and grand-children, and all their possessions (2), then went down to Egypt in Pharaoh's waggons. (3) Judah was sent forward to announce their approach to Joseph, who hastened to meet his father, "and wept on his neck a good while." He then procured from the king the formal and official sanction to his plans, and presented five of his brethren to Pharaoh, who willingly gave them the required permission to live as strangers and immigrants (4) in the land of Goshen which was so peculiarly suited to their nomad life. As a further proof of his confidence, he instructed Joseph to give his own cattle into the charge of the most able members of his family.

VOL. II.

A

At a later period Joseph introduced his aged father to the king. The hoary-headed pilgrim blessed the king, and replied to his friendly enquiry as to his age: "The days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage" (6).

(1). There seems to have been always a strong inclination in the minds of the patriarchs to turn, they probably knew not why, towards Egypt, the fairy land of wealth, of culture, and of wisdom. This bias appears in all the three, but it was only in the case of Jacob that the inclination of the heart coincided with the call of God. Abraham actually went there, but the result taught him a lesson (§ 52); Isaac was restrained by God, just as he reached the frontier (§ 71); at last Jacob turned his steps in the same direction, and Jehovah appeared to him on the border of the land, to assure him that his course was pleasing to God.

In the history of the Old Testament, so long as it evinced any life and progress, we detect a constant disposition to coalesce with heathenism; and it was not till Israel had so hardened itself, that any further development was impossible, and had sacrificed its lofty, world-wide destiny for exclusiveness of the most absolute and contracted kind, that the inclination ceased to exist. There was truth at the foundation of this disposition, viz., a consciousness on the part of Israel of its relation to the world, and a presentiment of the fact that, whilst it was to infuse new life into heathenism from the fulness of its divine inheritance, it would also require to draw supplies from the culture of heathenism, that is, of the world. But in most cases the inclination was manifested in a thoughtless way, and therefore in ungodly, perverse, and injurious efforts. We find indications of this disposition as early as the days of the patriarchs, and in their case it was associated with the same truth and the same rashness. At that time it turned exclusively to Egypt, which was then and for a long time afterwards the only representative and type of earthly power, wealth, and civilisation. The rashness is seen in Abraham and Isaac, the truth appears first in Jacob.

It was not till the days of Jacob that the promised seed attained to such maturity as to render a certain amount of intercourse with heathenism both desirable and useful.

The first stage in the covenant history was drawing to an end, and Israel was preparing to enter upon a second. They left Canaan as a family, to return to it a people. As a family they had done their work and accomplished their end, viz., to exhibit the foundations on which national life is based. Henceforth their task would be to show how the basis of the world's history, in its widest form; is to be found within the nation. The two epochs, the growth of the family and that of the nation, stood in the same relation to each other as two concentric circles. The force of the common centre, from which the circumference of each is generated, gives to the two circles analogous forms. And this central creative power was the divine decree, on which Israel's history rested and by which it was sustained. At the conclusion of its entire history Israel was to enter into association with heathenism, in order that its all-embracing destiny might (to a certain extent) be fulfilled by its receiving from the latter the goods of this world, human wisdom and culture; and, on the other hand, by its imparting to the heathen the abundance of its spiritual possessions, the result of all the revelations and instructions which it had received from God. And thus also at the period under review, when the first stage of its history was drawing to a close, Israel joined with Egypt, the best representative of heathenism, bringing to Egypt deliverance from its troubles, through the wisdom of God with which it was endowed, and enriching itself with the wealth, the wisdom, and the culture of that land. Thus was it prepared to enter upon a new stage of its history, a stage of far wider extent and greater importance. Vid. § 92, 7.

It was not merely a vague surmise in Jacob's mind, which led him to the conclusion that the time had arrived for yielding to the inclination to go to Egypt, and that this inclination was confirmed and sanctified by a call from God. All the previous leadings of God combined to make this clear and certain, even without any express permission or direction on His part now. The remarkable course of Joseph's history, no less than Joseph's dreams, which the issue had shown to be from God, and the pressure of the existing famine, prevented any other conclusion