against this supposition, since it appears that foreign kings, who can only be assigned to one of these two lines, had Egyptian names. In corroboration of this view we quote a remarkable passage that does not Beem otherwise explicable: "My people went down aforetime into Eg] pi to sojourn there ■ and the Assj r- ian oppressed them without cause" (Isa. lii, 4) : which may be compared with the allusions to the exodus in a prediction of the same prophet respecting Assyria (x. 24,26). Our inference is strengthened by the dis- covery that kings bearing a name almost certainly an Egyptian translation of an Assyrian or Babylonian re- gal title an- among those apparently of the Shepherd age in the Turin Papyrus (Lepsius, Kunigsbuch, Tafel xviii, xix. 275, 285). According to our view of the Hebrew chronology, the birth of Moses occurred B.C. 1738. 'I he scheme of Egyptian chronology which we have adopted places the beginning of the sixteenth (Shepherd i dynasty in B.C. 1755, and it would there- fore be under the reign ot one of the firsl kings of this dynasty, whose names art: unknown, that the persecution of the Israelites began.
4. The Pharaoh of Moses's Exile. — It is often sup- posed that the Pharaoh who ruled Egypt at the birth of Moses i- the same Pharaoh who ruled it when Mo- ses fled into Midian ( I'.xod. ii, 15). There is nothing in the narrative of Scripture to lead us to this conclu- sion, though it may possibly have been the case. The probabilities, however, seem to point Ihe other way. "We have allowed about eight years of his reign to have elapsed prior to the birth of Moses, who at the period of Bight was forty years of age (Acts vii,23). 'I he monarch, therefore, if the same, must have reigned forty-eight years, which is an unusual length. (The entire 16th dynasty of thirty-two kings seems to have lasted Put H2 years.) The jealousy also with which Moses was regarded by this Pharaoh seems to indicate that he did not stand towards him in the relation of his grandfather by adoption. The view is further confirmed by the intimation in I'.xod. iv. 19, which
seems to tell us that the Pharaoh who SOllght Moses's
life lived nearly to the time of his return into Egypt, a period <if forty years. If this were so. it is impossi- ble for this king to have been the monarch who began the persecution of Israel. We prefer, therefore, to re- gard him as different, and as probably chosen by adop- tion, to continue the succession of a childless family. We would make the year during his reign at the flight of Moses to have been P..< '. Kins, and his att< mpt upon the life of the great lawgiver is the only event of bis reign recorded in Scripture.
5. The Pharaoh of the Exode.— The Pharaoh in whose reign the deliverance of the Israelites was achieved would appear to have succeeded to the throne not very long lief,, re the return of Moses to Egypt af- ter his forty yen--' sojourn in M'clian (Exod. iv, 19). His relationship to his predecessor is not told us. but he was probably of the same dynasty, and carried on the traditional policy of a grinding oppression of the isr telites. We do not read ot am effort of his to re- duce the numbers of that nation . he seems rather to have looked on their numbers as an additional source of grandeur and power to Egypt by an enforced sys- tem of 1., I, or. The name of this Pharaoh is very vari- ously related. Wilkinson supposes him to have been
///. the fourth or fifth monarch, aco rding
to him, of the eighteenth dynasty of Theban or Dios- politan kings; while Manetho, according to Africanus,
makes him to have been . I >«•;■•. the first of that line of monarch-: and lord Prudhoe would have him to have been Pthahmen, the last of that dynasty (Wilkinson, Egypt, i. 31,41, 81 I. Ptolemy, the priest of Mendis, agrees in opinion with Manetho | Bunsen, Egypt, i, 90). Various reasons an- given in the Journal oj Sacred Literatun (new ser. i,490) for supposing him to have been Sethoa II. Respecting the time of this king, we can only be sure that he was reigningfor about a year or more before the exodus, which we place B.t '. 1658.
His acts -how u> a man at once impious and super- stitious, alternately rebelling and submitting. At lirst he seems to have thought that hi- magicians could work the same wonders as Moses and Aaron, yet even then he begged that the frogs might he taki n away, and to the end he prayed that a plague might I e re- moved, promising a concession to the Israelites, and as soon as he was respited failed to keep bis word. This is not strange in a character principally influ- enced by fear, and history abounds in parallels to Pha- raoh. His vacillation only ended when he lost his army in the Red Sea, and the Israelites were finally delivered out of his hand. Whether he himself was di'ow tied has I e, n consider! d matter of uncertainty, as it is not so stated in the account of the exodus. An- other passage, however, appears to affirm it | l'-a. exxxvi, 15). It seems to be too great a latitude of criticism either to argue that the expression in this passage indicates the overthrow, hut t ot the death of the king, especially as the Hebrew expression "shook Off" or '■threw in" is very literal, or that it is only a strong Slumitie expression. Besides, throughout the preceding history his end is foreshadowed, and is. perhaps, positively foretold in Exod. ix, 15; though this passage may In- rendered. "For now I might have stretched out my hand, and might have .-mitten tl ee and thy people with pestilence; and thou wouldest have been cut off from the earth." as I y Kalisch {Com- mentary, ad loc. |, instead of as in the A. A".