Exodus 1:22

22. Every son… ye shall cast into the river The Nile . This third and most sweeping edict is now promulgated, by which all Pharaoh’s subjects are commanded to become executioners of the Hebrew children . The command was so inhuman, and so contrary to the interests of the Egyptians themselves, that it is not likely that it was ever enforced for any length of time; but it gave legal opportunity to any who desired to destroy the children of Hebrew families who seemed for any reason specially dangerous . Hence the fears of the mother of Moses . This massacre has, moreover, historic parallels . When the servile class in Sparta became formidable from numbers, the Spartan youth were sent out with daggers to murder a sufficient number to remove apprehension. Diodorus relates that before the time of Psammetichus that is, all through the Old Testament period simple jealousy often led the Egyptian kings to put foreigners to death. And this cruel edict opened the schools and the palace of the City of the Sun to the saviour of Israel! And how we glance from the massacre of Goshen to that of Beth-lehem; from the bulrush ark to the manger; from prostrate Ra to Satan falling like lightning from heaven; from the saviour of a nation to the Saviour of a world! CONCLUDING NOTES (see book comments) Chronology of the Exodus. (1.) The period of the Israelitish sojourn in Egypt is expressly declared in Exodus 12:40 to have been 430 years . This harmonizes with the prediction made to Abraham, Genesis 15:13: “Thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them 400 years;” which language is also quoted by Stephen in his discourse in Acts 7:6. But the Samaritan and Septuagint text of Exodus 12:40, give a different reading, which makes the 430 years cover the whole “sojourn” of the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in Canaan, as well as that of the Israelites in Egypt, extending thus from the arrival of Abraham in Haran to the Exode . This would make the Egyptian sojourn only two hundred and fifteen years .

Paul follows this Sept. chronology in Galatians 3:17. We have, then, what are called a long and a short chronology of the Exodus . The short period is adopted in our chronology, (Usher’s) which sets the Exode at B . C . 1491, two hundred and fifteen years after Jacob went down into Egypt . As yet we have not data for deciding with certainty between the two periods, but the census of the Israelites at the Exode is usually deemed to favour four rather than two centuries of Egyptian sojourn. To balance up authorities on this matter gives little light, and the question would seem to have been doubtful in the time of Josephus, since he expressly commits himself to both sides in the same treatise. Compare Antiq., 2: 15 with Exodus 2:9. See notes on Exodus 12:40.

Egyptian chronology is at present so wholly unsettled that it is rash to dogmatize, and wise to wait patiently till more light comes from the monuments. The most famous Egyptologists differ from each other by centuries in regard to the date of the Exodus. As mentioned above, Usher’s date, B.C. 1491, stands in our English Bible; Poole fixes it at 1652, (Smith’s Bib. Dict., art. Chronology;) Rawlinson at 1650, ( Ancient Hist., p. 61;) Wilkinson at first made Thothmes III. the Pharaoh of the Exode, about 1460, ( Anc. Egypt, vol. i, pages 76-81, English Edition,) but has since decided for Pthahmen, (Meneptah I.,) of the nineteenth dynasty, who came to the throne about B.C. 1250, (Rawl., Her. App. to book ii, chap. viii;) and so Brugsch, ( Hist. de l’Egypt, 1: 156,) who makes Rameses II., the father of Pthahmen, to be the Pharaoh of Exodus 1:0. This is the view of Stanley and many others. Lepsius and Bunsen make the Exode to have taken place under the nineteenth dynasty, and Bunsen fixes about 1320 as its date. Ewald, Winer, and Knobel identify the Pharaoh of Exodus i, with Amosis of the eighteenth dynasty, as in our note. This view is learnedly defended by Canon Cook in the Speaker’s Commentary.

The whole story of the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, though so generally accepted, rests solely on the confused and contradictory account of the priest Manetho, who lived more than a thousand years after the alleged events, and fragments of whose work have been handed to us by Josephus and Syncellus, and hopelessly confused with fragments from another Manetho of uncertain date and authority. No trace of the Hyksos is found in the monuments so far, in Herodotus, Diodorus, or the books of Moses. Hengstenberg, Havernik, and many others, consider the whole story as a confused Egyptian legend of the Exode. Blackie, in his Homer, well sets forth this view. ( Homer and the Iliad, 1: 36.) (2.) חאבנים , (Exodus 1:16. ) The word occurs in only one other place, Jeremiah 18:3, where it is rendered the (two) wheels, (of the potter,) in the margin, frames or seats . Five different interpretations are suggested, not noticing proposed alterations of the text, as by Furst, etc .

1. Gesenius, in Hebrews Lex., makes it the midwife’s chair, on which she sat before the woman in labour.

2. Gesenius elsewhere makes it the bath tub or trough ( badewanne) in which the child was washed. So De Wette.

3. Smith’s Dict. quotes Lane’s Modern Egyptians to show that it means the chair used in aiding delivery, showing that the modern Egyptians have the same custom, and such a chair is said to be represented on the monuments of the eighteenth dynasty. Auf dem Geburts-stuhle, Van Ess. But neither of these interpretations explain the dual form.

4. Ewald interprets the word adverbially as meaning instantly, like the German, flugs; English, “ on the fly.”

5. Fagius ( Crit. Sacr.) follows the interpretation of J. Kimchi and others, who refer the word to the vagina, the labia uteri. Thus La Haye, ( Bib. Max.,) who renders cum in ostiis vulvae prolem videritis. So Keil and Knobel, who seem to settle the question.