To quote the words of Dr. Clay Trumbull, ‘Long before’ the night of the Exodus, ‘a covenant welcome was given to a guest who was to become as one of the family, or to a bride or bridegroom in marriage, by the outpouring of blood on the threshold of the door, and by staining the doorway itself with the blood of the covenant. And now,’ on the eve of the flight from Goshen, ‘Jehovah announced that He was to visit Egypt on a designated night, and that those who would welcome Him should prepare a threshold covenant, or a passover sacrifice, as a proof of that welcome; for where no such welcome was made ready for Him by the family, He must count the threshold as His enemy.’[[178]]
The belief that sacrifice alone could secure the house from the wrath of Heaven has been spread widely over the world. Numberless traces of it are to be found in the folklore of Europe. Popular legend knows of bridges and castles which refused to stand until the human victim had been buried beneath their foundations, and even S. Columba was held to have been unable to build his cathedral at Iona until his companion Oran had been immured alive beneath its foundation-stones. We learn from the Old Testament that the belief was strong among the Israelites also. When Hiel of Beth-el rebuilt the ruined Jericho, we are told that ‘he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub’ (1 Kings xvi. 34). The Deity had a right to the firstborn; and if this right were not recognised by the sacrifice either of the firstborn himself or of a substitute, there could be no covenant between the family and its gods. A new building implied a new local habitation for the family and the gods it worshipped; and where there was no covenant between them, the gods would come as foes and not as friends.
The Passover feast was therefore nothing new. The rite connected with it and the ideas associated with the rite must have long been familiar to the Israelites. What was new was the adaptation of the rite to the new covenant that Yahveh was about to enter into with His people. It became ‘the Lord’s Passover,’ commemorating the deliverance from Egypt when Yahveh smote the Egyptian firstborn, but ‘passed over the houses of the children of Israel.’ Like the old springtide feast of unleavened bread, it was given a new signification, and made a memorial of the first event in the national life of Israel. A similar significance was given to a change that was made in the calendar. The Hebrew year had begun in the autumn with the month of September; but side by side with this West-Semitic calendar there had also been in use in Palestine another calendar, that of Babylonia, according to which the year began with Nisan or March. It was this Babylonian calendar which was now introduced for ritual purposes. While the civil year still began in the autumn, it was ordained that the sacred year should begin in the spring. The sacred year was determined by the annual festivals, and the first of the festivals was henceforth to be the Passover. The beginning of the new year was henceforth fixed by the Passover moon.
It was at midnight that the angel of death passed over the land of Egypt. The plague spared neither rich nor poor. The firstborn of Pharaoh died like the firstborn of the captive in prison. Vain attempts have been made to discover which among the sons of Meneptah this may have been. But Meneptah lived many years after the overthrow of the Libyans, and consequently after the Exodus of the Israelites, and it may not have been till late in his reign that his successor, Seti II., became crown-prince. More than one elder brother may have died meanwhile. Moreover, none but the son of a princess of the royal solar race could sit on the throne of the Pharaohs. The reigning king might have elder sons born to him by foreign princesses, but his successor could not be chosen from among them. He only who could trace his descent to the Sun-god, who was, in short, a direct descendant of the Pharaohs, had any right to the throne.
Amid the terrors of the plague, and under cover of the darkness, the Israelites and their companions, the ‘mixed multitude,’ departed from the land of Goshen. They took with them their flocks and herds; they took also such precious plunder as they could easily carry away from the houses of their terrified masters. They ‘borrowed,’ according to the euphemistic expression of the chronicler, ‘jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and raiment,’ ‘and they spoiled the Egyptians.’ It was little wonder that the Pharaoh subsequently determined to pursue the retreating hordes.
They first made their way from ‘Rameses to Succoth.’ Succoth is the Thukut of the Egyptian texts, the district in which Pithom was situated, and which extended from the land of Goshen to the line of fortifications that enclosed Egypt on the East. It is mentioned in the letter sent to Meneptah three years after the Israelitish Exodus, which we have already had occasion to quote.[[179]] The flight of the Israelites had left the district uninhabited, and it was not very long before it was again handed over to some of their Edomite kinsmen, who wanted pasture for their herds.
The site of the town of Rameses is still uncertain. It is called Pi-Ramses, ‘the House of Ramses,’ in the hieroglyphic texts, and, like Zoan, it lay near the canal of Pa-shet-Hor. A long description is given of it by the scribe Paebpasa, who was stationed at Zaru, on the eastern frontier of Egypt, during the early part of Meneptah’s reign. He tells us (according to Brugsch’s translation)[[180]] how he had ‘arrived at the city of Ramses and found it excellent, for nothing can compare with it on the Theban land and soil.... Its canals are rich in fish, its lakes swarm with birds, its meadows are green with vegetables, there is no end of the lentils; melons with a taste like honey grow in the irrigated fields. Its barns are full of wheat and durra, and reach as high as heaven.... The canal, Pa-shet-Hor, produces salt, the lake-region of Pa-Hirnatron. Their sea-ships enter the harbour, plenty and abundance is abundant in it.’ And then the scribe goes on to describe the annual festivities of its inhabitants in honour of their founder Ramses II.
In Thukut or Succoth were fortresses which protected the Delta from Asiatic incursions, and at the same time prevented those who were in Egypt from escaping out of it without the permission of the Government. One of them was called ‘the Khetem,’ or ‘Fortress, of Thukut’; another the Khetem of Ramses II. Both seem to be mentioned in a report sent to Meneptah’s successor, Seti II. Here we read: ‘I set out from the hall of the royal palace (in Zoan) on the 9th day of the month Epiphi, in the evening, after the two (fugitive) slaves. I arrived at the Khetem of Thukut on the 10th of Epiphi. I was informed that the men had resolved to take their way towards the south. On the 12th I reached the Khetem. There I was informed that grooms who had come from the neighbourhood [had reported] that the fugitives had already passed the Wall to the north of the Migdol of king Seti Meneptah.’[[181]]
The runaway slaves must have taken the same road as that which had been taken by the Israelites before them. The Israelites had avoided the nearest and more usual road to Palestine, which ran along the edge of the Mediterranean and passed through Gaza. The Philistines were already threatening the southern coast of Canaan, and Gaza was garrisoned by Egyptian troops. The undisciplined and unwarlike multitude which followed Moses would have been cut to pieces had they ventured to force their way through them, or else would have returned to Egypt. They turned therefore southward towards the desert and ‘the way of the wilderness of the Yâm Sûph.’
From Succoth, we are told, they marched to Etham ‘in the edge of the wilderness.’ Brugsch was the first to see that in Etham we have a Hebrew transcription of the Egyptian Khetem. The only question is, which of the many Khetemu or ‘Fortresses’ which protected the Asiatic frontier of Egypt this particular Etham may have been. We hear of ‘the Khetem of Ramses II., which is in the district of Zaru,’ at the very point where one of the roads to Asia passed through the great line of fortification, and the report quoted above tells us of another Khetem, that of Thukut. It was, however, the second Khetem mentioned in the report which is referred to in the Old Testament narrative. This second Khetem lay between Succoth and the lines of fortification, and might therefore be described as ‘in the edge of the wilderness,’ which began on the eastern side of the Shur or fortified wall. It was, in fact, the fortress which guarded one of the roads out of Egypt at the point where it intersected the lines. To the south of it came the Migdol or Tower of King Meneptah.