Chapter xli., v. 38 and 39. One would imagine, by these verses, that Joseph and the Egyptians worshipped the same God, but this is not the fact; Pharaoh speaks to Moses of the Lord your God, and if the Egyptians had spoken in their usual manner, it would have been not to have praised Joseph for the Spirit of God being in him, but rather to have upbraided the infidel prisoner with having obtained his knowledge from the devil, unless, indeed, we are to assume that the religious Egyptians were more humane than the religious Christians. If Joseph had lived a few years later, he would have stood a fair chance of being stoned to death, for his divinations and fortune-telling (vide Exodus, chap, xxii., v. 18, and Deuteronomy, chap, xviii., v. 10, 11, and 12).
Verses 45 and 50. Potipherah is here called priest of On; in the Douay, he is denominated priest of Heliopolis. In plain truth, he was priest of the sun; and it might be instructive if it were possible to ascertain the reasons which induced the translators to hide Joseph's close connexion with sun worship.
Verse 56. This famine was over the whole earth, so that the favoured family of Abraham were worse off than the Egyptians, to whom God gave seven years' notice, to enable them to prepare against the coming trouble. We have all heard of people living on hope; and the children of Isaac might have hoped for the fulfilment of the promise, but such would be very unsubstantial food during a seven years' famine.
Chapter xliii., v. 32. How could it be considered an abomination for the Egyptians to eat with the Hebrews? the latter were only the descendants of Abraham, few in number, and the Egyptians could not have known of their existence until they made acquaintance with Joseph; and, by giving him the daughter of the high priest to wife, they had conferred great honour and favour on him—he was the first in the land, and the only Hebrew amongst them.
Chapter xliv., v. 5 and 15. Joseph, according to this, used to divine in a cup. My grandmother used to inspect the dregs of her tea cup, and prophesy wondrously; but it is really too much to expect us to find a creed in such a cup.
Chapter xlvi., v. 1 to 3. God again appeared in a vision at night, that is, Jacob dreamed that he saw God.
The Rev. Dr. Giles observes on verses 8 to 26:—
'An error is found also in the other catalogue of Jacob's children, who accompanied him into Egypt. The names occupy from verse 8 to 25 of Genesis, chap. xlvi. In verse 26 it is said:—
'"All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were three score and six."
'This total is erroneous, for the names, added properly, amount to sixty-seven; and a still greater difference is found between the Hebrew text and the Septuagint, in the twenty-seventh verse; the former makes "all the souls of the house of Jacob," to be "three score and ten," whereas the latter states them to have been seventy-five.