before their communication with Egypt.* But, after that (as appears from the place of Herodotus quoted above, concerning the Pelasgi), they decorated their gods with distinguished titles, indicative of their specific office and attributes. A NAME was so peculiar an adjunct to a local tutelary deity, that we see by a passage quoted by Lactantius from the spurious books of Trismegist (which however abounded with Egyptian notions and superstitions) that the one supreme God had no name or title of distinction.† Zachariah evidently alluding to these notions, when he prophesies of the worship of the supreme God, unmixed with idolatry, says, In that day shall there be one Lord, and HIS NAME ONE;‡ that is, only bearing the simple title of LORD: and, as in the words of Lactantius below, ac ne quis NOMEN ejus requireret, ΑΝΩΝΥΜΟΝ esse dixit; eo quod nominis PROPRIETATE non egeat, ob ipsam scilicet UNITATEM. Out of indulgence therefore to this weakness, God was pleased to give himself a NAME. And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: And he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.§ Where we may observe (according to the constant method of divine wisdom, when it condescends to the prejudices of men) how, in the very instance of indulgence to their superstition, he gives a corrective of it.-The religion of names arose from an idolatrous polytheism; and the NAME here given, implying eternity and self-existence, directly opposeth that superstition.

This compliance with the religion of names was a new indulgence to the prejudices of this people, as is evident from the following words: And GOD spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the NAME OF GOD ALMIGHTY, but by my NAME JEHOVAH was I not known to them. That is, as the God of Abraham, I before condescended to have a name of distinction: but now, in compliance to another prejudice, I condescend to have a name of honour. This seems to be the true interpretation of this very difficult text, about which the commentators are so much embarrassed. For the word Jehovah, whose name is here said to be unknown to the patriarchs, frequently occurring in the book of Genesis, had furnished unbelievers with a pretext that the same person could not be the author of the two books of Genesis and Exodus. But ignorance and scepticism, which set infidelity on work, generally bring it to shame. They mistook the true sense of the text. The assertion is not, that the WORD Jehovah was not used in the patriarchal language; but that the NAME Jehovah, as a title of honour, (whereby a new idea was affixed to an old word,) was unknown to them. Thus, in a parallel instance, we say rightly, that the king's SUPREMACY was unknown to the English constitution till the time of Henry VIII., though the word was in use, and even applied to the chief magistrate, (indeed in a different and more simple sense,) long before.

The common solution of this difficulty is as ridiculous as it is false. You shall have it in the words of a very ingenious writer." The word JEHOVAH signifies the being unchangeable in his resolutions, and consequently the being infinitely faithful in performing his promises. In this sense, the word is employed in the passage of Exodus now under examination. So that when God says, by my name Jehovah was I not known to them, this signifies as one faithful to fulfill my promise, was I not known to them: i. e. I had not then fulfilled the promise which I had made to them, of bringing their posterity out of Egypt, and giving them the land of Canaan."* By which interpretation, the Almighty is made to tell the Israelites that he was not known to their fathers as the God who had redeemed their posterity from Egypt, before they had any posterity to redeem. A marvellous revelation, and, without doubt, much wanted. To return.

MOSES, however, appears still unwilling to accept this commission; and presumes to tell Gon, plainly, Behold they will not believe me, nor hearken to my voice: for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee. But could this be said or thought by a people, who, groaning in the bitterest servitude, had a message from God, of a long promised deliverance, at the very time that, according to the prediction, the promise was to be fulfilled, if they had kept him and his dispensations in memory? When this objection is removed, Moses hath yet another; and that is, his inability for the office of an ORATOR. This too is answered. And when he is now driven from all his subterfuges, he with much passion declines the whole employment, and cries out, O my GOD, send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send. This justly provokes God's displeasure: and thereon, he finally complies. From all this backwardness, (and the cause of it could be no other than what is here assigned; for MOSES, as appears by the former part of his history,§ was forward and zealous enough to promote the welfare of his brethren,) we must needs conclude, that he thought the recovery of this people from EGYPTIAN SUPERSTITIONS to be altogether desperate. And, humanly speaking, he did not judge amiss; as may be seen from a

-Il signifie l'étre immuable dans ses resolutions, et par consequent l'étre infiniment fidelle dans ses promesses, et c'est dans cette acception que ce nom est emploié dans le passage de l'Exode, que nous examinons. Qu'ainsi quand Dieu dit, Je ne leur ai point été connu en mon nom de Jehovah, cela signifie, Je ne me suis point fait connoitre, comme fidelle à remplir mes promesses, c'est-a-dire, JE N'AI PAS ENCORE REMPLI LA PROMESSE, qui je leur avois faite, de retirer de l'Egypte leur posterité, et de lui donner la terre de Chanaan. -M. Astruc, Conjectures sur le livre de la Genese, p. 503. He says very truly, that, in this solution, he had no other part to perform, que suivre la foule des commentateurs tant Chretiens que Juifs, p. 301.

† Exod. iv. 1.

‡ Chap. iv. 3.

$Chap. ii. 12.

succinct account of their behaviour during the whole time God was working this amazing deliverance.

For now Moses and Aaron discharge their message; and having confirmed it by signs and wonders, the people believed: but it was such a belief, as men have of a new and unexpected matter, well attested.. They bow the head too, and worship;* but it appears to be a thing they had not been lately accustomed to. And how little true sense they had of God's promises and visitation is seen from their murmuring and desponding† when things did not immediately succeed to their wishes; though Moses, as from God, had told them beforehand, that Pharaoh would prove cruel and hard-hearted; and would defer their liberty to the very last distress. And at length, when that time came, and GoD had ordered them to purify themselves from all the idolatries of EGYPT, so prodigiously attached were they to these follies, that they disobeyed his command even at the very eve of their deliverance. § A thing altogether incredible, but that we have God's own word for it by the prophet Ezekiel: In the day, says he, that I lifted up mine hand unto them to bring them forth of the land of Egypt, into a land that I had spied for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands: then said I unto them, Cast ye away every man the abominations of his eyes, and defile not yourselves with the idols of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. But they rebelled against me, and would not hearken unto me: they did not every man cast away the abominations of their eyes, neither did they forsake the idols of Egypt: then I said, I will pour out my fury upon them, to accomplish my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt. But I wrought for my name's sake, that it should not be polluted before the heathen, amongst whom they were, in whose sight I made myself known unto them, in bringing them forth out of the land of Egypt. Wherefore I caused them to go forth out of the land of Egypt, and brought them into the wilderness.||

From all this it appears, that their cry, by reason of their bondage, which came up unto God, was not for such a deliverance as was promised to their forefathers, to be brought up out of Egypt; but for such a one as might enable them to live at ease, amongst their flesh-pots, in it.

But now they are delivered: and, by a series of miracles performed in their behalf, got quite clear of the power of Pharaoh. Yet on every little distress, let us return to Egypt, was still the cry. Thus immediately after their deliverance at the Red sea, on so common an accident, as meeting with bitter waters in their route, they were presently at their what shall we drink? And no sooner had a miracle removed this distress, and they gotten into the barren wilderness, but they were, again, at their what shall we eat?** Not that indeed they feared to die either of hunger or of thirst; for they found the hand of God was still ready to supply their wants; all but their capital want, to return again into EGYPT; and these pretences were only a less indecent cover to their designs: which yet, on occasion, they were not ashamed to throw off, as where they say to Moses, when frightened by the pursuit of the Egyptians at the Red sea, Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians.* And again, Would to GOD, we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots and did eat bread to the full. That is, in plain terms, "Would we had died with our brethren the Egyptians." For they here allude to the destruction of the first-born, when the destroying angel (which was more than they deserved) passed over the habitations of Israel.

But they have now both flesh and bread, when they cry out the second time for water; and even while, again, at their why hast thou brought us up out of Egypt,‡ a rock less impenetrable than their hearts, is made to pour out a stream so large that the water ran down like rivers:§ yet all the effect it seemed to have upon them was only to put them more in mind of the way of Egypt, and the WATERS of Sihor. || Nay even after their receiving the LAW, on their free and solemn acceptance of Jehovah for their God and KING, and their being consecrated anew, as it were, for his peculiar people, Moses only happening to stay a little longer in the mount than they expected, they fairly took the occasion of projecting a scheme, and, to say the truth, no bad one, of returning back into Egypt. They went to Aaron, and pretending they never hoped to see Moses again, desired another leader. But they would have one in the mode of Egypt; an image, or visible representative of God, to go before them. Aaron complies, and makes them a GOLDEN CALF, in conformity to the superstition of Egypt; whose great god Osiris was worshipped under that representation; ** and, for greater holiness too, out of the jewels of the Egyptians. In this so horrid an impiety to the God of their fathers, their secret drift, †† if we may believe St Stephen, was this; they wanted to get back into Egypt; and while the CALF, so much adored in that country, went before them, they could return with an atonement and reconciliation in their hands. And doubtless their worthy mediator, being made all of sacred, Egyptian metal, would have been consecrated in one of their temples, under the title of OSIRIS REDUCTOR. But Moses's sudden appearance broke all their measures: and the ringleaders of the design were punished as they

deserved.

At length, after numberless follies and perversities, they are brought, through God's patience and long-suffering, to the end of all their travels,

• Exod. xiv. 12.

Ps. lxxviii. 16.

† Chap. xvi. 3.
|| Jer. ii. 18.

** Ο ΜΟΣΧΟΣ οὗτος, ὁ ΑΠΙΣ καλεόμενος.-Herod. lib. iii. 28.

‡ Chap. xvii. 3. Exod. xxxii. 1.

To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their

hearts turned back again into Egypt, saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us, &c-Acts vii. 39, 40.

to the promised place of rest, which is just opening to receive them; when, on the report of the cowardly explorers of the land, they relapse again into their old delirium, Wherefore hath the Lord brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt? And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.* This so provoked the Almighty, that he condemned that generation to be worn away in the wilderness. How they spent their time there, the prophet Amos will inform us, Have ye offered unto me, says God, any sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?t

In a word, this unwillingness to leave Egypt, and this impatience to return thither, are convincing proofs of their fondness for its customs and superstitions. When I consider this, I seem more inclined than the generality even of sober critics to excuse the false accounts of the pagan writers concerning the exodus; who concur in representing the Jews as expelled or forcibly driven out of Egypt; for so indeed they were. The mistake was only about their driver. The pagans supposed him to be the king of Egypt; when indeed it was the God of Israel himself, by the ministry of Moses.

Let us view them next, in possession of the PROMISED LAND. A land flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands. One would expect now their longing after Egypt should have entirely ceased. And so without doubt it would, had it arisen only from the flesh-pots; but it had a deeper root; it was the spiritual luxury of Egypt, their superstitions, with which the Israelites were so debauched. And therefore no wonder they should still continue slaves to their appetite. Thus the prophet Ezekiel: Neither LEFT she her whoredoms brought from Egypt. So that after all God's mercies conferred upon them in putting them in possession of the land of Canaan, Joshua is, at last, forced to leave them with this fruitless admonition: Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth; and PUT AWAY the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood and in EGYPT. It is true, we are told that the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord, that he did for Israel. || But, out of sight out of mind. It is then added-And there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel-And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them. And in this state they continued throughout the whole administration of their JUDGES; except when, from time to time, they were awakened into repentance by the severity of God's judgments; which yet were no sooner passed, than they fell back again into their old lethargy, a forgetfulness of his mercies.