Legends of the Jews, Volume 2 — Chap. 4-02 – Moses in Egypt

THE THREE COUNSELLORS

In the one hundred and thirtieth year after Israel's going down to Egypt Pharaoh dreamed that he was sitting upon his throne, and he lifted up his eyes, and he beheld an old man before him with a balance in his hand, and he saw him taking all the elders, nobles, and great men of Egypt, tying them together, and laying them in one scale of the balance, while he put a tender kid into the other.

The kid bore down the pan in which it lay until it hung lower than the other with the bound Egyptians.

Pharaoh arose early in the morning, and called together all his servants and his wise men to interpret his dream, and the men were greatly afraid on account of his vision.

Balaam the son of Beor then spake, and said: "This means nothing but that a great evil will spring up against Egypt, for a son will be born unto Israel, who will destroy the whole of our land and all its inhabitants, and he will bring forth the Israelites from Egypt with a mighty hand.

Now, therefore, O king, take counsel as to this matter, that the hope of Israel be frustrated before this evil arise against Egypt."

The king said unto Balaam: "What shall we do unto Israel?

We have tried several devices against this people, but we could not prevail over it.

Now let me hear thy opinion."

At Balaam's instance, the king sent for his two counsellors, Reuel the Midianite and Job the Uzite, to hear their advice.

Reuel spoke: "If it seemeth good to the king, let him desist from the Hebrews, and let him not stretch forth his hand against them, for the Lord chose them in days of old, and took them as the lot of His inheritance from amongst all the nations of the earth, and who is there that hath dared stretch forth his hand against them with impunity, but that their God avenged the evil done unto them?"

Reuel then proceeded to enumerate some of the mighty things God had performed for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he closed his admonition with the words: "Verily, thy grandfather, the Pharaoh of former days, raised Joseph the son of Jacob above all the princes of Egypt, because he discerned his wisdom, for through his wisdom he rescued all the inhabitants of the land from the famine, after which he invited Jacob and his sons to come down to Egypt, that the land of Egypt and the land of Goshen be delivered from the famine through their virtues.

Now, therefore, if it seem good in thine eyes, leave off from destroying the children of Israel, and if it be not thy will that they dwell in Egypt, send them forth from here, that they may go to the land of Canaan, the land wherein their ancestors sojourned."

When Pharaoh heard the words of Jethro-Reuel, he was exceedingly wroth with him, and he was dismissed in disgrace from before the king, and he went to Midian.

The king then spoke to Job, and said: "What sayest thou, Job, and what is thy advice respecting the Hebrews?"

Job replied: "Behold, all the inhabitants of the land are in thy power.

Let the king do as seemeth good in his eyes."

Balaam was the last to speak at the behest of the king, and he said: "From all that the king may devise against the Hebrews, they will be delivered.

If thou thinkest to diminish them by the flaming fire, thou wilt not prevail over them, for their God delivered Abraham their father from the furnace in which the Chaldeans cast him.

Perhaps thou thinkest to destroy them with a sword, but their father Isaac was delivered from being slaughtered by the sword.

And if thou thinkest to reduce them through hard and rigorous labor, thou wilt also not prevail, for their father Jacob served Laban in all manner of hard work, and yet he prospered.

If it please the king, let him order all the male children that shall be born in Israel from this day forward to be thrown into the water.

Thereby canst thou wipe out their name, for neither any of them nor any of their fathers was tried in this way.

[21] THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

Balaam's advice was accepted by Pharaoh and the Egyptians.

They knew that God pays measure for measure, therefore they believed that the drowning of the men children would be the safest means of exterminating the Hebrews, without incurring harm themselves, for the Lord had sworn unto Noah never again to destroy the world by water.

Thus, they assumed, they would be exempt from punishment, wherein they were wrong, however.

In the first place, though the Lord had sworn not to bring a flood upon men, there was nothing in the way of bringing men into a flood.

Furthermore, the oath of God applied to the whole of mankind, not to a single nation.

The end of the Egyptians was that they met their death in the billows of the Red Sea.

"Measure for measure"—as they had drowned the men children of the Israelites, so they were drowned.

[22] Pharaoh now took steps looking to the faithful execution of his decree.

He sent his bailiffs into the houses of the Israelites, to discover all new-born children, wherever they might be.

To make sure that the Hebrews should not succeed in keeping the children hidden, the Egyptians hatched a devilish plan.

Their women were to take their little ones to the houses of the Israelitish women that were suspected of having infants.

When the Egyptian children began to cry or coo, the Hebrew children that were kept in hiding would join in, after the manner of babies, and betray their presence, whereupon the Egyptians would seize them and bear them off.

[23] Furthermore, Pharaoh commanded that the Israelitish women employ none but Egyptian midwives, who were to secure precise information as to the time of their delivery, and were to exercise great care, and let no male child escape their vigilance alive.

If there should be parents that evaded the command, and preserved a new-born boy in secret, they and all belonging to them were to be killed.

[24] Is it to be wondered at, then, that many of the Hebrews kept themselves away from their wives?

Nevertheless those who put trust in God were not forsaken by Him.

The women that remained united with their husbands would go out into the field when their time of delivery arrived, and give birth to their children and leave them there, while they themselves returned home.

The Lord, who had sworn unto their ancestors to multiply them, sent one of His angels to wash the babes, anoint them, stretch their limbs, and swathe them.

Then he would give them two smooth pebbles, from one of which they sucked milk, and from the other honey.

And God caused the hair of the infants to grow down to their knees and serve them as a protecting garment, and then He ordered the earth to receive the babes, that they be sheltered therein until the time of their growing up, when it would open its mouth and vomit forth the children, and they would sprout up like the herb of the field and the grass of the forest.

Thereafter each would return to his family and the house of his father.

When the Egyptians saw this, they went forth, every man to his field, with his yoke of oxen, and they ploughed up the earth as one ploughs it at seed time.

Yet they were unable to do harm to the infants of the children of Israel that had been swallowed up and lay in the bosom of the earth.

Thus the people of Israel increased and waxed exceedingly.

And Pharaoh ordered his officers to go to Goshen, to look for the male babes of the children of Israel, and when they discovered one, they tore him from his mother's breast by force, and thrust him into the river."

But no one is so valiant as to be able to foil God's purposes, though he contrive ten thousand subtle devices unto that end.

The child foretold by Pharaoh's dreams and by his astrologers was brought up and kept concealed from the king's spies.

It came to pass after the following manner.

[26] THE PARENTS OF MOSES

When Pharaoh's proclamation was issued, decreeing that the men children of the Hebrews were to be cast into the river, Amram, who was the president of the Sanhedrin, decided that in the circumstances it was best for husbands to live altogether separate from their wives.

He set the example.

He divorced his wife, and all the men of Israel did likewise,[27] for he occupied a place of great consideration among his people, one reason being that he belonged to the tribe of Levi, the tribe that was faithful to its God even in the land of Egypt, though the other tribes wavered in their allegiance, and attempted to ally themselves with the Egyptians, going so far as to give up Abraham's sign of the covenant.

[28] To chastise the Hebrews for their impiety, God turned the love of the Egyptians for them into hatred, so that they resolved upon their destruction.

Mindful of all that he and his people owed to Joseph's wise rule, Pharaoh refused at first to entertain the malicious plans proposed by the Egyptians against the Hebrews.

He spoke to his people, "You fools, we are indebted to these Hebrews for whatever we enjoy, and you desire now to rise up against them?"

But the Egyptians could not be turned aside from their purpose of ruining Israel.

They deposed their king, and incarcerated him for three months, until he declared himself ready to execute with determination what they had resolved upon, and he sought to bring about the ruin of the children of Israel by every conceivable means.

Such was the retribution they had drawn down upon themselves by their own acts.

[29] As for Amram, not only did he belong to the tribe of Levi, distinguished for its piety, but by reason of his extraordinary piety he was prominent even among the pious of the tribe.

He was one of the four who were immaculate, untainted by sin, over whom death would have had no power, had mortality not been decreed against every single human being on account of the fall of the first man and woman.

The other three that led the same sinless life were Benjamin, Jesse the father of David, and Chileab the son of David.

[30] If the Shekinah was drawn close again to the dwelling-place of mortals, it was due to Amram's piety.

Originally the real residence of the Shekinah was among men, but when Adam committed his sin, she withdrew to heaven, at first to the lowest of the seven heavens.

Thence she was banished by Cain's crime, and she retired to the second heaven.

The sins of the generation of Enoch removed her still farther off from men, she took up her abode in the third heaven; then, successively, in the fourth, on account of the malefactors in the generation of the deluge; in the fifth, during the building of the tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues; in the sixth, by reason of the wicked Egyptians at the time of Abraham; and, finally, in the seventh, in consequence of the abominations of the inhabitants of Sodom.

Six righteous men, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Levi, Kohath, and Amram, drew the Shekinah back, one by one, from the seventh to the first heaven, and through the seventh righteous man, Moses, she was made to descend to the earth and abide among men as aforetime.

[31] Amram's sagacity kept pace with his piety and his learning.

The Egyptians succeeded in enslaving the Hebrews by seductive promises.

At first they gave them a shekel for every brick they made, tempting them to superhuman efforts by the prospect of earning much money.

Later, when the Egyptians forced them to work without wages, they insisted upon having as many bricks as the Hebrews had made when their labor was paid for, but they could demand only a single brick daily from Amram, for he had been the only one whom they had not led astray by their artifice.

He had been satisfied with a single shekel daily, and had therefore made only a single brick daily, which they had to accept afterward as the measure of his day's work.

[32] As his life partner, Amram chose his aunt Jochebed, who was born the same day with him.

[33] She was the daughter of Levi, and she owed her name, "Divine Splendor," to the celestial light that radiated from her countenance.

[34] She was worthy of being her husband's helpmeet, for she was one of the midwives that had imperilled their own lives to rescue the little Hebrew babes.

Indeed, if God had not allowed a miracle to happen, she and her daughter Miriam would have been killed by Pharaoh for having resisted his orders and saved the Hebrew children alive.

When the king sent his hangmen for the two women, God caused them to become invisible, and the bailiffs bad to return without accomplishing their errand.

[35] The first child of the union between Amram and Jochebed, his wife, who was one hundred and twenty-six years old at the time of her marriage, was a girl, and the mother called her Miriam, "Bitterness," for it was at the time of her birth that the Egyptians began to envenom the life of the Hebrews.

The second child was a boy, called Aaron, which means, "Woe unto this pregnancy!"

because Pharaoh's instructions to the midwives, to kill the male children of the Hebrews, was proclaimed during the months before Aaron's birth.

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