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There are some passages in the Bible which apparently lend color to the idea that a person's acts are determined from on high. Such are the expressions used in relation to Pharaoh's conduct toward the Israelites in refusing to let them go out of Egypt. We are told there that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh that he should not let the Israelites go.
But the corpse of Joseph was perhaps not laid in one of these, but remained housed somewhere in sight, as it were, of all Israel. Many a passer-by would pause for a moment, and think; Here is the end of dignity second only to Pharaoh's, to this has come that strong brain, that true heart, Israel's pride and protection is shut up in that wooden case.
In illustration of this he would quote Moses, who preferred the reproach of Israel to the glories of a kingdom offered to him by Pharaoh's daughter; of Esther, who hated the splendid ornaments with which they decked her to make her pleasing in the eyes of Assuerus; of the Apostles, whose greatest joy was to suffer shame and reproach for the name of Jesus; and of David, who danced before the Ark amid a crowd of buffoons and mountebanks, and who exulted in thus making himself appear contemptible in the eyes of Michol, his wife.
Then he added that he would make every effort in his power to keep him in the army and show that the Egyptians even against Pharaoh's will, or which he would speak farther with him privately knew how to honor genuine merit without distinction of person or birth.
It was as the prophet spoke: "This city hath been to me a provocation of mine anger and of my fury from the day that they built it even unto this day." In the nuptial night Pharaoh's daughter had her attendants play upon a thousand different musical instruments, which she had brought with her from her home, and as each was used, the name of the idol to which it was dedicated was mentioned aloud.
And it came to pass, that when the army of the Chaldeans was broken up from Jerusalem for fear of Pharaoh's army, Then Jeremiah went forth out of Jerusalem to go into the land of Benjamin, to separate himself thence in the midst of the people.
The Egyptians followed and all of Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen went after them into the sea. In the morning before sunrise, Jehovah looked out through the pillar of fire and of cloud upon the army of the Egyptians and threw them into confusion. He also bound their chariot wheels, so that they dragged heavily.
Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child and nursed it.
She describes, as if she had herself witnessed the catastrophe, the passage of the Red Sea: and, as if there were no doubt of the transaction, an unhappy love-affair between Pharaoh's eldest son and Moses's daughter. At Cairo, apropos of Joseph's granaries, she enters into a furious tirade against Putiphar, whom she paints as an old savage, suspicious and a tyrant.
On a wall of the Temple of Luxor an earlier inscription sets forth that the god of Thebes, incarnating himself in the person of Thotmes IV., appeared in his divine form to the pharaoh's queen, who, at sight of his beauty, conceived. It was therefore not in the beast alone, but in man, that divinity revealed itself in Egypt.
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