We notice,
II. Jacob's answer to it —
[The patriarch's mind was fraught with zeal for God ; and therefore not contenting himself with a plain short answer, he framed his reply in words calculated to make a deep impression on the mind of Pharaoh, without giving him the smallest offence. He insinuates, and repeats the idea, that life is but a "pil- grimage" that we are merely sojourners in a foreign land, and that our home and our inheritance is in a better country. This part of his speech is particularly noticed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as being an open acknowledgment of his principles as a worshipper of Jehovah, and of his expectations in a better world0. He intimates also that his gears, though they had been an hundred and thirty, were few. This age might appear great to Pharaoh; but it was not near equal to that of Jacob's pro- genitors d. On a retrospect, every person's days appear to have been but few. Various incidents of former life seem to have been but recently transacted ; the intervening time being lost, as it were, like valleys intercepted by adjacent hills. He further declares, that these gears of his had been replete with evil. Certainly his life, from the time that he fled from the face of his brother Esau to that hour, had been a scene of great afflic- tions. His fourteen years' servitude to Laban, the disgrace brought on him and his family by Dinah his only daughter, the murderous cruelty of his vindictive sons, the jealousies of all his children on account of his partiality to Joseph, the sudden loss of Joseph, and all his recent trials, had greatly embittered life to him, and made it appear like a sea of troubles, where wave followed wave in endless succession. And who
c Heb. xi. 13, 14, 16.
a Terah was 205 years old; Abraham 175; Isaac 180.