[20]. Rom. 8:29.
[21]. Alma 13:3.
[22]. Deut. 32:7, 8.
[23]. Eccl. 10:7.
ARTICLE EIGHTEEN.
Moses and Aaron.
Joseph in Egypt.—In the whole range of Bible literature, if we except what is told of the Redeemer and Savior, there is nothing more beautiful than the story of Joseph in Egypt. Joseph the dreamer, sold into slavery, exalted to a throne, and becoming, by God's design, a savior to his father's house. Who cannot see in this a prophetic likeness of the universal redemption wrought out by Him who descended below all, that He might rise above all, and deliver the souls of men from spiritual famine and starvation?
The Exodus.—Another foretokening of the same sublime event was Israel's exodus from Egypt, after centuries of oppression. Egypt, with its dusky population, devoid of priesthood and of gospel light, symbolized the sable bondage of sin and death. Moses, leader of the Exodus, and reputedly "the meekest of men,"[[1]] was a type of the Great Deliverer, "like unto Moses," who led an enslaved universe out from the Egypt of Darkness into the Promised Land of Freedom and Light.
The Passover.—In commemoration of the Egyptian exodus, the Feast of the Passover was instituted, an observance designed to perpetuate, in the minds of the children of Israel, their liberation from slavery, and at the same time prepare them to comprehend in due time, the mightier Redemption thus foreshadowed.
The Passover was kept as follows: Obedient to God's command through Moses, each Israelitish household, on the eve of the departure out of Egypt, took a lamb, spotless and "without blemish," and slew it, sprinking its blood upon the posts and lintels of their doors. It was promised that the Angel of Death, sent to afflict the cruel nation for its mistreatment of the Lord's people, should, while slaying the first-born of every Egyptian family, pass over every Hebrew dwelling upon which the symbolic blood was found sprinkled in accordance with the divine command. Not a bone of the lamb was to be broken, nor a fragment of it left to decay; for it symbolized the Lamb of God, the Holy One, whose body was not to see corruption.[[2]] Neither was any bone of Him to be broken.