CHAPTER XXIX2.

Sacred-Texts Christianity   

p. 47

OF MOSES AND THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL³.

   AFTER Joseph was dead, and another king had arisen who knew not the Israelitish people, the people increased and became strong in Egypt. And Pharaoh was afraid of them, and laid a burden upon them, and oppressed them with hard work in clay, and demanded a p. 48 tale of bricks from them without giving them straw. At that time Moses the son of Amram, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, was born. Levi was forty-six years old when he begat Kohath; Kohath was sixty-three years old when he begat Amram; and Amram was seventy years old when he begat Moses. When Moses was born, Pharaoh the king commanded to throw the new-born children of the Israelites into the river. Moses was beautiful in appearance, and he was called Pantîl and Amlâkyâ; and the Egyptians used to call him the Shakwîthâ² of the daughter of Pharaoh. The name of Moses' mother was Yokâbâr (Jochebed). When the command of the king went forth for the drowning of the infants, she made a little ark covered with pitch, and laid the child in it; and she carried it and placed it in a shallow part of the waters of the river Nile (that is Gîhôn); and she sat down opposite (that is, at a distance), to see what would be the end of the child. And Shîpôr³, the daughter of Pharaoh, came to bathe in the river--some say that she was called Tharmesîs⁴--and she saw the ark and commanded it to be fetched. When she opened it, and saw that the appearance of p. 49 the child was beautiful and his complexion comely, she said, 'Verily this child is one of the Hebrews' children;' and she took him, and reared him up as her son. She sought a Hebrew nurse, and the mother of the child Moses came, and became a nurse to him; and he was reared in the house of Pharaoh until he was forty years old. One day he saw Pethkôm¹ the Egyptian, one of the servants of Pharaoh, quarrelling with an Israelite and reviling him. Moses looked this way and that way, and saw no man; and zeal entered into him, and he slew the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. Two days after, he saw two Hebrews quarrelling with one another. And he said to them, 'Ye are brethren; why quarrel ye with one another?' And one of them thrust him away from him, saying, 'Dost thou peradventure seek to kill me as thou didst the Egyptian yesterday?' Then Moses feared lest Pharaoh should perceive (this) and slay him; and he fled to Midian, and sat by the well there. Now Reuel the Midianite had seven daughters, who used to come to that well and water their father's flocks; and the shepherds came and drove them away; and Moses arose and delivered them, and watered their flocks. When they went to their father, he said to them, 'Ye have come quickly to-day.' They said to him, 'An Egyptian rescued us from the hands of the shepherds, and watered the flocks also.' He said to them, 'Why did ye not bring him? Go quickly and call him hither to eat bread with us.' When Moses came to the house of Reuel and dwelt with him, Reuel loved him and gave him his daughter Zipporah the Cushite to wife. And he said to him, 'Go into the house, and take a shepherd's crook, and go feed thy flocks.' When Moses went into the house to take the rod, it drew near to him by divine agency; and he took it and went forth to feed his father-in-law's flocks.

Footnotes

p. 47

² In the Oxford MS. chap. xxxii.

³ Exod. ii-iv.

p. 48

² I do not know the meaning of this word nor its correct pronunciation.

³ Brit. Mus. MS. Or. 2441, fol. 374 a, col. 1. On the margin is written, 'When Moses was born, he was thrown into the river, and Shipôr the Egyptian, the daughter of Pharaoh, took him out.' Bezold, Die Schatzhöhle, p. 41; Brit. Mus. Add. 25,875, fol. 30 a, col. 1.

⁴ This looks like a corruption of the Egyptian name Het-Heru-mes or Athor-mes, 'born of Athor.' She was also called Makrî; see note 1 on next page.

p. 49

¹ 'And he was in the house of Pharaoh forty years, and then he slew Pethkôm the Egyptian, the chief baker of Pharaoh. When this was heard in the house of Pharaoh, after Makrî the daughter of Pharaoh--who was called the "Trumpet of Egypt," and who reared up Moses--was dead, he feared,' etc. See Bezold, Die Schatzhöhle, p, 42; Brit. Mus. Add. 25,875, fol. 30 a, col. 2.