25 ([return])
[ Of this judicial hardening the hearts and blinding the eyes of wicked men, or infatuating them, as a just punishment for their other willful sins, to their own destruction, see the note on Antiq. B. VII. ch. 9. sect. 6.]
26 ([return])
[ As to this winter or spring hail near Egypt and Judea, see the like on thunder and lightning there, in the note on Antiq. B. VI. ch. 5. sect. 6.]
27 ([return])
[ These large presents made to the Israelites, of vessels of and vessels of gold, and raiment, were, as Josephus truly calls them, gifts really given them; not lent them, as our English falsely renders them. They were spoils required, not of them, Genesis 15:14; Exodus 3:22; 11:2; Psalm 105:37,] as the same version falsely renders the Hebrew word Exodus 12:35, 36. God had ordered the Jews to demand these as their pay and reward, during their long and bitter slavery in Egypt, as atonements for the lives of the Egyptians, and as the condition of the Jews' departure, and of the Egyptians' deliverance from these terrible judgments, which, had they not now ceased, they had soon been all dead men, as they themselves confess, ch. 12. 33. Nor was there any sense in borrowing or lending, when the Israelites were finally departing out of the land for ever.]
28 ([return])
[ Why our Masorete copy so groundlessly abridges this account in Exodus 12:40, as to ascribe 430 years to the sole peregrination of the Israelites in Egypt, when it is clear even by that Masorete chronology elsewhere, as well as from the express text itself, in the Samaritan, Septuagint, and Josephus, that they sojourned in Egypt but half that time,--and that by consequence, the other half of their peregrination was in the land of Canaan, before they came into Egypt,--is hard to say. See Essay on the Old Testament, p. 62, 63.]
29 ([return])
[ Take the main part of Reland's excellent note here, which greatly illustrates Josephus, and the Scripture, in this history, as follows: "[A traveller, says Reland, whose name was] Eneman, when he returned out of Egypt, told me that he went the same way from Egypt to Mount Sinai, which he supposed the Israelites of old traveled; and that he found several mountainous tracts, that ran down towards the Red Sea. He thought the Israelites had proceeded as far as the desert of Etham, Exodus 13:20, when they were commanded by God to return back, Exodus 14:2, and to pitch their camp between Migdol and the sea; and that when they were not able to fly, unless by sea, they were shut in on each side by mountains. He also thought we might evidently learn hence, how it might be said that the Israelites were in Etham before they went over the sea, and yet might be said to have come into Etham after they had passed over the sea also. Besides, he gave me an account how he passed over a river in a boat near the city Suez, which he says must needs be the Heroopolia of the ancients, since that city could not be situate any where else in that neighborhood." As to the famous passage produced here by Dr. Bernard, out of Herodotus, as the most ancient heathen testimony of the Israelites coming from the Red Sea into Palestine, Bishop Cumberland has shown that it belongs to the old Canaanite or Phoenician shepherds, and their retiring out of Egypt into Canaan or Phoenicia, long before the days of Moses. Sanchoniatho, p. 374, &c.]