630. [Gen. xlix. 11. The choice vine] The vine of Sorek. This Sorek, where Delilah lived (Judg. xvi. 4) was a village or small town, about three quarters of a mile distant from Eshcol, the Grape; so named from the enormous cluster of grapes, brought back by the spies as a proof of the fertility of the Promised Land, Num. xiii. 23. (See BOCHART, Hieroz. tom. i. lib. iii. cap. 13.)-The Hebrew word, says GEDDES, denotes a particular vine of which the grapes are of a yellowish color, and have no stones.

636. [Gen. xlix. 21.] Naphtali or the Naphtalites shall be like a tree having grafts, which shoot out pleasant branches. (BOCHART.)-Jacob compares this tribe to a tree, as he does that of Joseph, in the verse following; either because of its fruitfulness, Naphtali having brought but four children to Egypt, Gen. xlvi. 24, which produced more than fifty thousand in less than two hundred and fifteen years, Num. i. 41, 42; or on account of the fruitfulness of the country

which fell to their lot, which Moses and Josephus represent as the richest of all Judea.

Essay for a New Translation, part ii, p. 43.

637. [Gen. xlix, 26. That was separate]-The nazir in Persia, is the principal officer of the Shah's household: he is both lord-treasurer and steward, and it is with this gentleman that all ambassadors and foreigners transact their affairs. -When the Shah goes out, this lord marches before him with a great staff, covered with gold and precious stones. PINKERTON'S Voy. and Trav. part xxxvi. p. 215.

638. [Gen. xlix. 27.]

In the morning he shall devour the prey, And for the evening he shall divide the spoil. It is thus usual, say the naturalists, for wolves, to glut themselves with a part of their food, and to bury the remainder in the earth for another feast.

Bib. Research. vol. ii. p. 203.

JACOB'S DEATH:

639. [Gen. xlix. 33.] And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered to his people. Thus Indians die almost without any pain, in the manner of consumptive persons: they become extinct like a lamp exhausted of its oil.

BARTOLOMEO, by Johnston, p. 411.

640. [Gen. 1. 2.] That Joseph's household-physicians are represented as a number, will not appear strange when we learn from HERODOTUS, that, in Egypt, every distinct distemper had its own physician, who confined himself to the study and cure of that, and meddled with no other: So that all places were crowded with physicians: For one class had the care of the eyes, another of the head, another of the teeth, another of the belly, and another of occult distempers. HEROD. lib. ii. cap. 65.

641.

Asphaltum, or Jews' pitch, is said to be the same substance which the Egyptians used in embalming their mummies, and it was called by them mumia mineralis. WATSON'S Chem, vol. iii. p. 4.

642. [Gen. 1. 2, 3.] Among the Egyptians there were three different methods of embalming the dead. One used for

the lower class of people, was performed by cleansing the belly with injected lotions, and laying the corpse in salt for seventy days. A second mode was effected, without dissection, by syringing the body with oil of cedar, and laying it in nitre the said number of days. The third method, which was truly exquisite and the most expensive, was performed upon persons of distinction, like the patriarch Jacob, in the following manner:-After evacuating the head, "a person called the paraschistis cut open the left side of the belly, and instantly quitted the house with all possible speed, being pursued with stones and imprecations by the spectators, who deemed it a heinous crime to wound or otherwise offer violence to a dead body; but the embalmers were highly respected, and admitted by the priests, as persons of eminent sanctity, into the most sacred parts of the temples. When these came to perform their office, one of them drew out all the intestines, and another cleansed the entrails, washing them with wine of palms, and perfuming them with several aromatic drugs; all the cavities were then filled with pounded myrrh, cassia, &c. The incision being sewed up, the corpse was carefully anointed for thirty days, and laid in nitre forty days; so that in the whole, they mourned seventy days in Egypt, as Moses observes. At the expiration of this term, every part was covered with fillets of fine linen, overspread with gum, and incrusted with the most exquisite perfumes ; and this was done so variously that the very hairs on the brows and eyelids remained uninjured, and the countenance was preserved so admirably, as to be easily recognized. The embalmers having thus prepared the body, delivered it to the relations, who put it in a wooden coffin, and placed it in an upright position, either in a sepulchre or in one of their own apartments; for many of the Egyptians kept their dead at home, esteeming it a great pleasure to behold the lineaments of their ancestors, in this state of preservation." MAVOR.

643.

"Some affirm, that embalming became necessary in Egypt from the inundations of the Nile, the waters whereof drowning all the flat country near two months, the people were obliged all this while to keep the dead in their houses, or remove them to rocks and eminences, which were often very distant. To which we may add, that although bodies were buried before the inundation, yet that would throw them up again; a sandy moist soil not being strong enough to retain them against the action of the water."

644.

See CASSIAN. Collat. 15. c. 3.

The danger of such disinterment will suggest also a reason for the erection of those pyramids in Egypt, which are generally supposed to have been designed for sepulchres and monuments of the dead. DIODORUS informs us that Chemmis and Cephron intended the first and the second pyramids for their own sepulchres, though it happened that their design was frustrated: all those near Memphis are, in fact, supposed to havo been royal sepulchres, and the tomb, which may still be seen in the greatest pyramid, fully establishes such an opinion.

650. [Gen. 1. 25.] The Egyptian legislature ordained, That no person should obtain burial till a rigorous examination had passed into his conduct when living; for this purpose the corpse was ordered to be carried into an island in the lake Moris, where the people sat as judges upon it, and decreed, or denied it burial, according as the character came out good or bad. The boatman who was first employed in carrying dead bodies over to this solemn trial, being named Charon, has given origin to the poetical fable of Charon ferrying souls over the Styx, or from this world to the next.

Dr. W. ALEXANDER's Hist. of Women, vol. i. p. 225.

EGYPTIAN MIDWIVES.

651. [Exod. i. 16.] And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, and said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools, if it be a son, then ye shall kill him; but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.

Stools, abenim (Hebr.), the lavers or stone troughs, Exod. vii. 19.-The kings of Persia are so afraid of being deprived of that power which they abuse, and are so apprehensive of being dethroned, that they destroy the children of their female relations, when they are brought to-bed of boys by putting them into an earthen trough, where they suffered them to starve (probably in the water).

653. [Exod. i. 15, 16.] The Targum of Jonathan names the two famous antagonists of Moses, Jannes and Jambres, as foreboding much misery to the Egyptians, and much happiness to the Israelites, from the rearing of Moses. This being told the king, he commanded, says JOSEPHUS, “that the Egyptian midwives should watch the labors of the Hebrew women, and observe what is born ; for those (Egyptians) were the women who were enjoined to do the office of midwives to them."

to dip their children, as soon as born, into them, in order to knit and harden their limbs.

See Relig. des Gaul. l. iv. c. 27.

The Israelites, it seems, were washed in salted water.
See Ezek. xvi. 4.

657 [Exod. i. 16.] The Lacedemonians, says PLutarch, washed the new born infant in wine, meaning thereby to strengthen it. Life of Lycurgus.

MOSES IN THE ARK OF BULRUSHES.

658. [Exod. ii. 5.] And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side: and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.

The occurrence probably took place at the time when the Nile annually begins to overflow the country. -IRWIN relates, that looking out of his window in the night, he saw a band of damsels proceeding to the river side with singing and dancing, and that the object of their going thither was to witness the first visible rise of the Nile, and to bathe in it.

Trav. pp. 229, 259.

659. [Exod. ii. 3. An ark of bulrushes]-To succour the elevated Lands in Egypt, the cultivators draw water from the Canals "in wicker baskets of so fine a texture that not a drop of the liquid runs through." MAVOR.-Was not the Ark, containing the child Moses, one of these baskets? or was it not, at least, formed of the same materials; and of the same texture?

660.

The Papyrus grows on the banks of the Nile, and in marshy lands. Its stalk, which rises to the height of ten cubits, is triangular, and terminates in a crown of small filaments, resembling hair, which the Antients used to compare to a Thyrsus. The pith of this reed served the inhabitants for food; the woody part, for the building of vessels. For this purpose the Egyptians made it up, like rushes, into bundles; and, by tying these bundles together, gave their vessels the necessary shape and solidity.

ments.

he is always assisted by a council of the most respectable mem bers of his tribe. The punishments that he can inflict are fines and stripes, and above all, excommunication, or loss of caste which, to a Hindoo, is the most terrible of all punish These hereditary chiefs, also, assisted by their council, frequently decide civil causes, or disputes among their tribe; and when the business is too intricate or difficult, it is generally referred to the hereditary chief of the ruling tribe of the side or division to which the parties belong. In this case, he assembles the most respectable men of the division, and settles the dispute; and the advice (the arbitration) of these persons is commonly sufficient to make both parties acquiesce in the decision. These courts have no legal jurisdiction; but their influence is great, and many of the ablest amildars (or officers of justice, police, and revenue) support their decisions by the authority of government.

See No 243, PINKERTON'S Coll. vol. viii. pp. 607, 633.

MOSES SLAYING THE EGYPTIAN.

665, [Exod. ii. 11, 12.] And it came to pass when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.

Moses sketched the Egyptian, then effaced him, in the sand. This will be understood, when it is known, that in antient times, judges, in the act of finding guilty, wrote the culprit's name in the sand spread on a table before them for the purpose, and that the writing then used in Egypt was hieroglyphic, or the hasty sketching of such outlines as were characteristic of the objects intended to be described; and further, that when the person so written and convicted was pardoned in mercy, his name or hieroglyphic was immediately cancelled or obliterated so as to be hid, or no longer to appear in the sand.—In Moses, this act of judgment and mercy was the prophetic sign he had been instigated to give of his being designed by Providence to be the future deliverer of the Hebrews from their unjust oppressors the Egyptians.

The word Exod. ii. 12, translated slew, is in Exod. ix. 25, rendered smote, and in Deut. xxv. 2, to be beaten.

Dr. TAYLOR's Hebrew Concordance.

666 [Exod. ii. 14.] In every part of India with which I am acquainted, says BUCHANAN, wherever there is a considerable number of any one caste or tribe, it is usual to have a head man, whose office is generally hereditary. His powers are various in different sects and places: but he is commonly intrusted with the authority of punishing all transgressions against the rules of the caste. His power is not arbitrary: as

667. At Cairo and in all the other cities of the East, every trade has a head who is entrusted with authority over them, knows every individual of the body to which he belongs, and is in some measure answerable for them to government.-At Tripoli in Barbary, the black slaves choose a chief who is acknowledged by the regency; and is a mean by which the revolt or elopement of those slaves is often prevented. NIEBUHR'S Trav. vol. i. p. 84.

672. [Gen. xlix. 2.] The Egyptian writings did not consist of syllables put together, but of figures that related to the things they were to express; for they wrote or drew the figure of a hawk, a crocodile, a serpent, the eye, hand, or face of a man, and the like. A hawk signified all things that were to be done expeditiously, (I should rather think expedition itself) because it is the swiftest of birds. The crocodile signified malice; the eye expressed both an observer of justice, and a keeper of any person; the right-hand, with the fingers extended, signified any one's getting his livelihood; the left hand shut, the preserving and keeping of any thing.

673.

POCOCKE's Trav. in Egypt.-Pinkerton's Coll. part Ixi. p. 353.

There is little doubt that Chinese writing was, originally, neither more nor less than a sketch of the objects which it was wished to speak of: but this method, which would serve when it related to visible things, such as a tree, a bird, or a house, was inadequate to convey an expression of abstract ideas. It was therefore requisite to make signs, which were purely arbitrary, and which had no reference to the thought intended to be depicted.

675. [Exod. iii. 2.] And the angel of the LORD appeared unto Moses in a flame of fire, out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

JOSEPHUS says, this bush was a thorn-bush; probably the Arabian thorn called Sittim; a wood ever after selected to stand "in the Presence," and to constitute the most sacred utensils of Jewish worship. Antiq. b. ii. ch. xii. § 1.

677. [Judg. vi. 21.] The following extract will prove, that fire can prey upon exhalations, without consuming the materials from which the exhalations transpire.-"In the neighbourhood of Baku, on the Caspian Sea, is a phenomenon of a very extraordinary nature, called the everlasting fire, to which a sect of Indians and Persians, called Gaurs, pay religious worship.

"It is situated about ten miles from the city of Baku, in the province of Shirvan, on a dry rocky spot of ground. Here are several antient temples built with stone, and supposed to have been all dedicated to fire; and among others there is a little temple in which the Indians now worship. Near the altar is a large hollow cane, from the end of which issues a blue flame, in color and gentleness resembling a lamp, but seemingly more pure.

"At a short distance from this temple is a low cliff of a rock, in which there is a horizontal gap, two feet from the ground, near six feet long, and about three feet broad, out of which issues a constant flame of the color and nature just described. When the wind blows, it sometimes rises to the height of eight feet, but is much lower in calm weather.

"The earth round this place, for more than two miles, has this extraordinary property, that by taking up two or three inches of the surface, and applying a live coal to it, the part so uncovered immediately takes fire, almost before the coal touches the earth. The flame makes the soil hot, but does not consume it, nor affect what is near it with any degree of heat. This lambent flame may be extinguished in the same manner as that of spirits of wine. It smells sulphureous, like naptha, but is not very offensive".

SMITH.-Phil. Trans. R. S. vol. ix. p. 503,

678. [Exod, iii. 3.] In August, 1751, after very hot weather, followed by sudden rain, the cliffs near Charmouth, in the western parts of Dorsetshire, began to smoke, and soon after to burn with a visible but subtle flame; the same phenomena were observed at intervals, especially after rain, till winter, the flame however was not visible by day, except the sun shone, when the cliffs appeared at a distance as if covered with pieces of glass which reflected the rays at night the flame was visible at a distance, but when the spectator drew near, he could perceive smoke only, and no flame: a similar flame has been seen rising from the lodes, or veins of the mines in Cornwall, with this difference, that when the spectator approached, the flame did not disappear, but seemed to surround him, yet did him no harm, and in four or five minutes seemed to sink into the ground. Upon examining Charmouth cliffs, a great quantity of martial pyrites were found, with marcasites that yielded near a tenth of common sulphur, of coruua ammonis, and other shells, and the belemnites, all crusted with pyritical matter: these substances were found not in regular strata, but interspersed in large masses through the earth, which consisted of a dark-coloured loam, impregnated with bitumen to the depth of forty feet; there was also found a dark-coloured substance like coal cinder, which being powdered and washed, and the water being slowly evaporated to a pellicle, its salts, which shot into crystals, appeared to be a martial vitriol. Mr. STEPHENS laid about