Twelve Studies on the Making of a Nation Part 10

Would Joseph's policy in dealing with Pharaoh's subjects meet with public approval to-day?

Could Joseph have succeeded as well in a republic?

Does Joseph's land policy justify the single tax? Or serfdom such as Joseph countenanced?

What place does loyalty to humble friends and kinsmen take in the making of great and n.o.ble characters?

Would you say that the ultimate standard of all real success is service?

Would it be wise for the state to enforce service for the public good by a heavy, progressive inheritance tax?

What justification is there for such a modification of Joseph's land policy, as the single tax? (See George, _Progress and Poverty_; Seligman, _Essays on Taxation_, 64-94.)

Do you think that a man earning his own living can expect to-day to succeed in politics and maintain his self-respect as an independent thinker?

_Subjects for Further Study_.

(1) The Origin and Literary Form of the Joseph Narratives. Kent, _Student's O. T_. I, 126-127; Hastings, _Dict. Bible_ II, 767-769; Smith, _O. T. History_, 54-55.

(2) Contemporary Parallels to the Joseph of the Biblical Narratives. Hastings' _Dict. Bible_ II, 772-775.

(3) Compare and Contrast the Achievements of Joseph, Bismarck and Cecil Rhodes.

STUDY VIII

THE TRAINING OF A STATESMAN.

MOSES IN EGYPT AND THE WILDERNESS.--EX. 1:1; 7:5.

_Parallel Readings_.

Goodnow, F. J., _Comparative Administrative Law_.

_Hist. Bible_ I, 151-69.

And he went out on the following day and saw two men of the Hebrews striving together; and he said to the one who was doing the wrong, Why do you smite your fellow-workman? But he replied, Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? Then Moses was afraid and said, Surely the thing is known. When, therefore, Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to him Moses. But Moses fled from the presence of Pharaoh and took up his abode in the land of Midian.

And Jehovah said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people that are in Egypt, and have heard their cry of anguish, because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a land, beautiful and broad, to a land flowing with milk and honey; Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, Jehovah, the G.o.d of your fathers, the G.o.d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, hath appeared to me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt, and I have said I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. And they shall hearken to thy voice; and thou shalt come, together with the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt, and ye shall say to him, "Jehovah, the G.o.d of the Hebrews, hath appeared to us; and now let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to Jehovah our G.o.d."--_Hist. Bible_.

Hold on; hold fast: hold out--patience is genius.

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand it.--_Lincoln_.

I.

THE EGYPTIAN BACKGROUND OF THE BONDAGE.

The one contemporary reference to Israel thus far found in the Egyptian inscriptions comes from the reign of Merneptah the son of Ramses II. It implies that at the time at least part of the Hebrews were in the land of Palestine:

Plundered is Canaan with every evil; Askalon is carried into captivity, Gezer is taken; Yenoam is annihilated, Israel is desolated, her seed is not, Palestine has become a widow for Egypt.

All lands are united, they are pacified.

Every one who is turbulent has been found by King Merneptah.

The testimony of the oldest Biblical narratives regarding the sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt is, also, in perfect accord with the picture which the contemporary Egyptian inscriptions give of the period. Furthermore, the Egyptian historians never distinguished the different races in their midst, but rather designated the foreign serf cla.s.s by a common name. The absence of detailed reference to the Hebrews is therefore perfectly natural.

It seems probable that not all but only part of the tribes which ultimately coalesced into the Hebrew nation found their way to Egypt. The stories regarding Joseph, the traditional father of Ephraim and Mana.s.seh, imply that these strong central tribes, possibly together with the southern tribes of Benjamin and Judah, were the chief actors in this opening scene in Israel's history.

The Biblical narratives apparently disagree regarding the duration of the sojourn in Egypt. The reference in Gen. 15:16, which, some writers think, comes from the northern Israelite group of stories, implies that it was a period of between one hundred and one hundred and fifty years. The same duration is suggested by the priestly writer in Numbers 26:57-59. The later traditions tend to extend the period. If, as seems probable, the Hebrews first found their way to Egypt during the reign of Amenhotep IV, who reigned between 1375 and 1358 B.C., the older Hebrew chronology would make Ramses II, who reigned between 1292 and 1225, the Pharaoh of the oppression. Of all the Pharaohs of this period in Egypt's history the great builder and organizer Ramses II corresponds most closely to the Biblical description. He it was who filled Egypt from one end to the other with vast temples and other buildings which could have been reared only through the services of a huge army of serfs.

The excavations of the Egypt Exploration fund have identified the Biblical Pithom with certain ruins in the Wady Tumilat near the eastern terminus of the modern railroad from Cairo to the Suez Ca.n.a.l. This probably lay in the eastern boundary of the Biblical land of Goshen, which seems to have included the Wady Tumilat and to have extended westward to the Nile delta. Here were found several inscriptions bearing the Egyptian name of the city P-Atum, house of the G.o.d Atum. The excavations also laid bare a great square brick wall with the ruins of store chambers inside. These rectangular chambers were of various sizes and were surrounded by walls two or three yards in thickness. Contemporary inscriptions indicate that they were filled with grain from the top and were probably used for the storing of supplies to be used by the armies of Ramses II in their Asiatic campaigns. This city was founded by Ramses II, who during the first twenty years of his reign, developed and colonized the territory east of the Nile delta including the Biblical land of Goshen. A contemporary inscription also states that he founded near Pithum the house of Ramses, a city with a royal residence and temples. Thus the inferences in the first chapter of Exodus regarding the historical background are in perfect accord with the facts now known from other sources regarding the reign of Ramses II. In transforming the land of Goshen into a cultivated, agricultural region the nomadic Hebrews were naturally put to task work by the strong-handed ruler of Egypt. That the Hebrews were restive under this tyranny was natural, inevitable. Apparently their rebellious att.i.tude also increased the burden which was placed upon them. The memory of the crushing Hyksos invasion, which meant the rule of Egypt by nomadic invaders from Asia, was still fresh in the minds of the Egyptians.

They both looked down upon and feared the nomad immigrants on their eastern border. In the light of these facts it is possible to understand the motives which influenced Ramses II cruelly to oppress the Hebrews. He endeavored, by forced labor and rigorous peonage, not only to avail himself of their needed services, but also to crush their spirit and by force to hold in subjection the alarmingly large serf cla.s.s which was found at this time in the land of Egypt. Was any other procedure to be expected from a despotic ruler of that land and day?

II.

THE MAKING OF A LOYAL PATRIOT.

The story of Moses' birth and early childhood is one of the most interesting chapters in Biblical history. It is full of human and dramatic interest. The great crisis in Moses' early manhood came when he woke to a realization of his kinship with the despised and oppressed serfs and an appreciation of the cruel injustice of which they were the helpless victims. Was Moses justified in resisting the Egyptian taskmaster? Are numbers essential to the rightness of a cause? What right had Ramses II to demand forced labor from the immigrants within his border? Was he justified in his method of exacting tribute? Is peonage always disastrous not only to its victims but also to the government imposing it?

Did Moses show himself a coward in fleeing from the land of Egypt?

Naturally he went to the land of Midian. The wilderness to the east of Egypt had for centuries been the place of refuge for Egyptian fugitives. From about 2000 B.C. there comes the Egyptian story of Sinuhit, an Egyptian prince, who, to save his life, fled eastward past the "Wall of the Princes" which guarded the northeastern frontier of Egypt. On the borders of the wilderness he found certain Bedouin herdsmen who received him hospitably.

These "sand wanderers" sent him on from tribe to tribe until he reached the land of Kedem, east of the Dead Sea, where he remained for a year and a half. Later he found his way to the court of one of the local kings in central Palestine where he married and became in time a prosperous local prince.

III.

THE SCHOOL OF THE WILDERNESS.

The story of Moses is in many ways closely parallel to that of Sinuhit. Among the Midianite tribes living to the south and southeast of Palestine he found refuge and generous hospitality.

The priest of the sub-tribe of the Kenites received him into his home and gave him his daughter in marriage. Note the characteristic Oriental idea of marriage. Here Moses learned the lessons that were essential for his training as the leader and deliverer of his people.

The Kenites figure in later Hebrew history as worshippers of Jehovah and are frequently a.s.sociated with the Israelites. After the capture of Jericho certain of them went up with the southern tribes to conquer southern Palestine. (Judg. 1:16.) It was Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite (Judg. 5:24), who rendered the Hebrews a signal service by slaying Sisera, the fleeing king of the Canaanites, after the memorable battle beside the River Kishon.

Many modern scholars draw the conclusion from the Biblical narrative that it was from the Kenites that Moses first learned of Yahweh (or, as the distinctive name of Israel's G.o.d was translated by later Jewish scribes, Jehovah). Furthermore it is suggested that grat.i.tude to the new G.o.d, who delivered the Israelites from their bondage, was the reason why they proved on the whole so loyal to Jehovah. This conclusion is possible and in many ways attractive, but it is beset with serious difficulties. We know, in ancient history, of no other example of a people suddenly changing their religion. When there have been such sudden and wholesale conversions in later times they have been either under the compulsion of the sword, as in the history of Islam, or under the influence of a far higher religion, as when Christianity has been carried to heathen peoples on a low stage of civilization. Do the earliest Hebrew traditions imply that the ancestors of the Israelites were worshippers of Jehovah? Is it not probable that Moses fled to the nomadic Midianites not only because they were kinsmen but because they were also worshippers of Jehovah?

In any case Moses' life in Midian tended to intensify his faith in Jehovah. The t.i.tle of his father-in-law implies that this priest ministered at some wilderness sanctuary. In the light of the subsequent Biblical narrative was this possibly at the sacred spring of Kadesh or on the top of the holy mountain h.o.r.eb (elsewhere called Sinai) where Kenites and Hebrews believed that Jehovah dwelt, or at least manifested himself? Moses, in the home of the Midian priest, was brought into direct and constant contact with the Jehovah worship. The cruel fate of his people and the painful experience in Egypt that had driven him into the wilderness prepared his mind to receive this training. His quest was for a just and strong G.o.d, able to deliver the oppressed. The wilderness with its lurking foes and the ever-present dread of hunger and thirst, deepened his sense of need and of dependence upon a power able to guide the destinies of men. The peasants of the vast Antolian plain in central Asia Minor still call every life-giving spring, "G.o.d hath given." The constant necessity of meeting the dangers of the wilderness and of defending the flocks entrusted to Moses' care developed his courage and power of leadership and action. What other great leaders of Israel were trained in this same school? What was the effect of their wilderness life upon the early New England pioneers?

IV.

MOSES' CALL TO PUBLIC SERVICE.

The solitude of the wilderness gave Moses ample opportunity for profound reflection. His previous experiences made such reflection natural, indeed inevitable. Borne by the caravans over the great highway from the land of the Nile or from desert tribe to tribe came occasional reports of the cruel injustice to which his kinsmen in Egypt were subjected. In these reports he recognized the divine call to duty. When perhaps at last the report came that the mighty despot Ramses II was dead, Moses like his later successor Isaiah (Is. 6) saw that the moment had come for decision and action.

It looks to many scholars as if three originally distinct versions of Moses' call have been welded together in the narrative of Exodus 3, 4 and 6. Each differs in regard to detail (Hist. Bible I, 161-5). According to the early Judean prophetic account Jehovah spoke audibly to Moses from the flaming thorn bush. In the Northern Israelite version the moment of decision came to him as he stood with his flock on the sacred mountain h.o.r.eb. Like Isaiah in his memorable vision of Jehovah's presence, the inner consciousness of G.o.d and the compelling sense of duty led him to cry out: "Here am I." Likewise in the late priestly story G.o.d's presence and character were so deeply impressed upon him that he seemed to bear an audible voice, according to the view of those who accept this interpretation, even though the later priests believed and taught that G.o.d was a spirit, not like man clothed in flesh and blood.

Thus the different groups of Hebrew narratives in their characteristic way record the essential facts in Moses' call to public service. Each has preserved certain important elements in that call, and the late editor has done well to combine them. Even as Isaiah caught his supreme vision of Jehovah and of duty in the temple, so to Moses the prophetic call probably came on the lofty heights of the mountain in which he, in common with the Kenites, believed G.o.d dwelt. The wilderness with its flaming bush spoke to him G.o.d's message. Recent writers have felt and forcibly interpreted the fascination and the message of the desert and plain, none more vividly than the Welsh writer Rhoscomyl in describing the experience of one of his rough, self-reliant cowboy heroes:

"Two days ago he was riding back, alone, in the afternoon, from an unsuccessful search after strayed horses, and suddenly, all in the lifting of a hoof, the weird prairie had gleamed into eerie life, had dropped the veil and spoken to him; while the breeze stopped, and the sun stood still for a flash in waiting for his answer. And he, his heart in a grip of ice, the frozen flesh a-crawl with terror upon his loosened bones, white-lipped and wide-eyed with frantic fear, uttered a yell of horror as he dashed the spurs into his panic-stricken horse, in a mad endeavor to escape from the Awful Presence that filled all earth and sky from edge to edge of vision.