[383] Exod i. 6, 7. “And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation; and the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty, and the land was filled with them.” After the death of Christ, our Joseph, his spiritual Israel began abundantly to increase, and his death had an influence upon it. It was like the sowing of a corn of wheat, which, if it die, bringing forth much fruit. John xii. 24. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” From the call of Abraham, when God first told him he would make of him a great nation, to the deliverance of his seed out of Egypt, was 430 years, during the first 215 of which they were increased but to 70, but in the latter half, those 70 multiplied to 600,000 fighting men; so sometimes God’s providence may seem for a great while to thwart his promises, and go counter to them, that his people’s faith may be tried, and his own power the more magnified; and though the performance of God’s promises is sometimes slow, yet it is always sure; at the end it shall speak, and not lie, Heb. ii. 3. “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him?”
[432] Exod. ii. Concerning Moses. Clemens Alexandrinus, Strom. I. reports, out of the books of the Egyptian priests, that an Egyptian was slain by the words of Moses; and Strom. V. he relates some things belonging to Moses, out of Artapanus, though not very truly. Justin, out of Tragus Pompeius, says of Moses, “He was leader of those that were banished, and took away the sacred things of the Egyptians; which they, endeavouring to recover with arms, were forced by a tempest to return home; and Moses being entered into his own country of Damascus, he took possession of mount Sinai.” And what follows is a mixture of truth and falsehood; where we find Arvas written in him, it should be read Arnas, who is Aaron, not the son of Moses, as he imagines, but the brother, and a priest. The Orphic verses expressly mention his being taken out of the water, and the two tables that were given him by God. The verses are thus
So was it said of old, so he commands.Who’s born of water, who received of God The double Tables of the Law.
The great Scaliger, in these verses, instead of hulogenes, with a very little variation of the shape of a letter, reads hudogenes, born of the water.
The ancient writer of the Orphic verses, whoever he was, added those lines after he had said, that there was but one God to be worshipped, who was the Creator and Governor of the world.
Palemon, who seems to have lived in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, has these words: “In the reign of Apis the son of Phoroneus, part of the Egyptian army went out of Egypt and dwelt in Syria, called Palestine, not far from Arabia.” Several things are related about his coming out of Egypt, from the Egyptian writers, Monethro, Lysimachus, Chœremon. The places are in Josephus against Apion, with abundance of falsities, as coming from people who hated the Jews; and from hence, Tacitus took his account of them. But it appears from all these compared together, that the Hebrews descended from the Assyrians, and possessing a great part of Egypt, led the life of shepherds, but afterwards being burdened with hard labour, they came out of Egypt under the command of Moses, some of the Egyptians accompanying them, and went through the country of the Arabians unto Palestine, Syria, and there set up rites contrary to those of the Egyptians.
Diodorus Siculus, in his first book, where he treats of those who made the gods to be the authors of their laws, says, “Amongst the Jews was Moses, who called God by the name Greek or Hebrew. Jehovah,” which was so pronounced by the oracles, and in the Orphic verses mentioned by the ancients, and by the Syrians.
Strabo, in his sixteenth book, speaking of Moses as an Egyptian priest, (which he had from the Egyptian writers, as appears in Josephus,) says, “many who worship the Deity agreed with him, (Moses,) for he hath said that the Egyptians did not rightfully conceive of God, when they likened him to wild beasts and cattle; nor the Libyans, nor the Greeks, in resembling him to a human shape; for God is no other than the Universe which surrounds us, the earth, and the sea, and the heaven, and the world, and the nature of things, as they are called by us. Who, says he, (i. e. Moses,) that has any understanding, would presume to form any image like to those things that are about us? Wherefore we ought to lay aside all carved images, and worship him in the innermost part of a temple worthy of him, without any figure.” He adds that this was the opinion of good men He adds also that sacred rites were instituted by him, which were not burdensome for their costliness, nor hateful as proceeding from madness. He mentions circumcision, the meats that were forbidden, and the like; and after he had shown that man was naturally desirous of civil society, he tells us, it is promoted by divine and human precepts, but more effectually by divine.