So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
The Great Captains
The word "captain" following the use in the Bible and all literature down to the present day, is not the particular term, designating the commander of a small company of soldiers, but a general term, standing for leadership in the largest sense. Moses, according to this meaning of the word, was one of the greatest of the worlds captains, for he took a cowardly, unorganized mob of slaves and led them through the most appalling difficulties and dangers, to freedom, and to a position where national existence was possible. While there was little actual fighting in the journey from Egypt to Palestine, yet there was necessity, every step of the way, for the highest qualities of leadership.
Joshua was a great captain in the more strictly military sense of the word. He found the force organized and disciplined by the leadership of Moses, and he used it as a skillful swordsman uses a keen and tempered blade. In his campaigns he displayed the abilities of the great military genius.
| THE FINDING OF MOSES |
Slow glides the Nile: amid the margin flags, Closed in a bulrush ark, the babe is left,-- Left by a mother's hand. His sister waits Far off; and pale, 'tween hope and fear, beholds The royal maid, surrounded by her train, Approach the river bank,--approach the spot Where sleeps the innocent: she sees them stoop With meeting plumes; the rushy lid is oped, And wakes the infant, smiling in his tears, As when along a little mountain lake The summer south-wind breathes, with gentle sigh, And parts the reeds, unveiling, as they bend, A water-lily floating on the wave. |
VIEW FROM RAMAH, THE TRADITIONAL HOME OF SAMUEL
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood and used by special permission.