Consequently Joseph had absolute power vested in him. The King also gave him to wife Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah, priest of On. And Joseph went throughout all the land of Egypt. And in the seven plenteous years the earth brought forth by handfuls. And he gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities; the food of the field, which was round about every city, laid he up in the same. And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left off numbering; for it was without number.
The land of Egypt is six hundred miles long, and is bounded by two ranges of naked limestone hills which sometimes approach, and sometimes retire from each other, leaving between them an average breadth of seven miles. Northwards they part and finally disappear, giving place to a marshy meadow plain which extends to the Mediterranean coast. To the south they are no longer of limestone, but of granite; they narrow to a point; they close till they almost touch; and through the mountain gate thus formed the river Nile leaps with a roar into the valley, and runs due north towards the sea. This land and its neighbourhood was first inhabited by the descendants of Ham, the third son of Noah; Mizraim, the second son of Ham, occupied Egypt. The noble river Nile is recorded in the Scriptures as the second river which parted from the main stream which went out of Eden to water the garden where Adam and Eve were placed by their Creator.
In the winter and spring it rolls a languid stream through a dry and dusty plain; but in the summer an extraordinary thing happens. The river grows troubled and swift, it turns red and then green; it rises, it swells, till at length, overflowing its banks, it covers the adjoining lands to the base of the hills on either side. The whole valley becomes a lake, from which the villages rise like islands, for they are built on artificial mounds. The land of Egypt is by nature a rainless desert, which the Nile, the mysterious Nile only, converts into a fruitful garden every year.
The task that Joseph had been entrusted with was stupendous. He had to build storehouses that would contain all the fifth part of the produce of the plenteous years of the fertile land of Egypt that were gathered up during the seven years. Before he set himself to the building of these vast receptacles he must have searched for models, and whilst doing this the building of the Tower of Babel must have come to his recollection, for the father of Abraham was the chief officer of King Nimrod who built it. This was a grand model, and that he followed it is evident from what we see in the Pyramids, or Storehouses of the King, in this, the nineteenth century of our Lord.
When the Temple at Jerusalem was about to be built by Solomon, he must have read how the storehouses were built, and he must have been aware for what use they were intended, as well as by whom they were built. Solomon married the daughter of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and as son-in-law of the King he must have had free access to all the secret buildings and records of the land of Egypt.
This is the account of the building of the Temple: Solomon laid the foundations of the Temple very deep in the rock of Moriah, and the materials were strong stones, and such as would resist the force of time; these were to unite themselves with the rock, and become a basis and a sure foundation for that superstructure which was to be erected over it. They were to be so strong in order to sustain with ease those vast superstructures and precious ornaments, whose own weight was to be not less than the weight of those other high and heavy buildings which the King designed to be very ornamental and magnificent. He erected its entire body, quite up to the roof, of white stone; its height was sixty cubits, its length was the same, and its breadth was twenty. There was another building erected over it, equal to it in its measures, so that the entire altitude of the Temple was a hundred and twenty cubits. Its front was to the east.
Now the whole structure of the Temple was made, with great skill, of polished stones, laid together so very harmoniously and smoothly that there appeared to the spectators no signs of any hammer, or other instrument of architecture, but as if, without any use of them, the materials had naturally united themselves together, the agreement of one part with another seeming rather to be natural, than to have arisen from the force of tools upon them. The King also had a fine contrivance for an ascent to the upper room over the Temple, and that was by steps in the thickness of its wall; for it had no large door on the east end, as the lower house had, but the entrances were by the sides, through very small doors. He also overlaid the Temple, both within and without, with boards of cedar, that were kept close together by thick chains, so that this contrivance was in the nature of a support and strength to the building.
The Temple was built on the crown of Moriah, “the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite” (2 Chr. iii. 1), with a surrounding platform six hundred and twelve feet square. The building called the Naos would seem to have stood on the summit of the rock, in which graduated platforms were cut, forming the courts of the Jews and women. The Naos was small (sixty by twenty cubits), and was divided into the Holy of Holies and Holy Place, the former used once a year, the latter occupied only by the priests performing daily service. In the former was the Ark; in the latter the altar of incense, with the table of Shew-bread on its one side, and golden candlestick on the other. These two parts were separated by a veil, which was rent at the crucifixion (Matt. xxvii. 51). The court of the Gentiles surrounded the Naos, but was on a lower platform, separated by a trellis fence. The Naos was, like Mount Sinai, the sanctuary of Jehovah, fenced off from the Gentiles’ court, the plain below.
Solomon must have referred to the discovery that he had made regarding these buildings (the Pyramids) and to the builder of them, when he said: “Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished. For out of prison he cometh to reign; whereas also he that is born in his kingdom becometh poor” (Eccl. iv. 13, 14).
Joseph built these storehouses near the fields of every city, according to the size of the city and the number of its inhabitants. In the north, near the Delta, he built many and large, according to the amount of corn the fields there yielded. He was occupied seven years in building them, and during the time thus occupied, he must often have recalled the fond memories of home, and of his aged father, and his youngest brother, the son of his deceased mother; and doubtless the three largest Pyramids of Jeezeh he dedicated to the memory of his ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.