Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets
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In the “Testament of Job,”443 we read that this great man, illumined by the Divine light, comprehended that the idols which his people adored were no gods, and that there was but one only true God, the Creator and Preserver of all things. There was near his house an idol which attracted great worship. He prayed the Lord to show him whether this idol were a demon or not; and he promised, in that case, to destroy it and purify the place; and this he was able to do, being a sovereign.
God sent him an angel, who illumined him, and strengthened him in his resolution. So he destroyed the idol, and abolished its worship. But this act drew upon him the wrath of Satan. The angel had foreseen the disasters which would befall Job if he resolved to strive against the Evil One, and he had warned Job what to expect; but Job answered that, being convinced of the truth, he was ready to suffer for it.
Satan presented himself at the door of Job’s house. He had taken upon him the form of a pilgrim, and he said to the portress, “I desire to see the faithful servant of the Most High.”
Now Job, who had received the gift of prophecy, knew that this was the Evil One, and he refused to see him, saying to the gate-keeper when she brought the message, “Tell him that I am occupied, and that I cannot receive him.”
Satan retired, but he returned soon after, disguised as a beggar, and he said to the portress, “Go and ask Job to give me a morsel of bread.”
“Tell him,” replied Job, “that I will not give him of the bread I eat, because I will not have any thing in common with him. But offer him this burnt crust, that he may not say I sent him empty away.”
The servant, not venturing to give the burnt crust, because she was not aware who the beggar was, offered him some good bread. But Satan, who knew what Job had commanded, thrust it away, saying, “Begone, bad servant, and bring me the bread you were told to give me.”
The portress replied: “You say well, I am a bad servant, for I have not done that which I was commanded to do. Here is the crust my master ordered me to give you. He will not have any thing in common with you; no! not even the bread he eats; but he sends you this, that it may not be said of him that he dismissed thee empty from his door without an alms.”
Satan took the charred crust, and bade the servant tell Job that he would soon render to him such measure as he had dealt to him.444
Then Satan ascended to God, and desired permission to afflict and prove Job. And when leave was given him, he descended to earth, and breathed such a hot blast, that all the cattle, and sheep, and servants of Job were burnt up. Then Satan took the form of a slave, and ran and told the prophet. Job answered, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!”
Then Satan went and shook the earth under the house where the sons and daughters of Job were assembled, and the house fell and destroyed them all.
Satan immediately hastened in the disguise of a servant to Job, and told him what had taken place. He said, “O Job! God has shaken down the house about your children, and they are dead. Had you seen their bleeding faces and broken limbs, and their brains bespattering the stones, and had heard their piercing cries, you would have been heart-broken.”
Job wept, and lifted his eyes to God; and he knew who addressed him, and he said, “Satan! it is thou who comest to tempt me and to cast doubt into my heart, and mistrust in the wisdom and goodness of God; get thee hence.”
Satan then blew a hot breath up the nose of Job, and poisoned all his blood. His body became scarlet next day, and the day after was covered with ulcers from head to foot; there was no whole place in him, except the head, the tongue, the eyes, and the heart; for over these portions God had not given Satan power.
All Job’s friends deserted him and fled; Rahma,445 his wife, alone remained, and she spent on him the rest of his possessions, but he was not cured of his disease. And this was why all his possessions went – Satan stole them away; and thus in a short time he was reduced to penury, and Rahma went from house to house begging alms for his support.
Satan saw that he could not triumph so long as the wife remained with her husband; she was a comfort and joy to him, and he cared not for possessions, or children, or health, so long as his wife was at his side; therefore, he sought occasion to separate them. One day, as Rahma was carrying food to Job, Satan presented himself before her in the form of an old man, and asked her, “O Rahma! art thou not the daughter of Ephraim, the son of Joseph?” She replied, “I am.”
Then said the Evil Angel, “In what condition do I see thee?” She answered, “My husband Job has fallen into poverty, and I serve him.”
He said, “Do not serve him, for when thou touchest him, the poison of his disease passes into thy veins.”
She replied, “He is my husband, and I must attend on him as long as I live, in health or sickness.”
Then Satan retired, despairing of seducing her from her duty. Rahma told Job all that had been said to her.
The prophet said, “O woman! he whom you have seen is Satan, and he desired to separate us. Do not speak to him again when he addresses you.”
Some time after, the Evil One presented himself before the faithful wife under the form of a beautiful youth; and said to her, “What woman art thou, who art so radiant in beauty?” She answered, “I am the wife of a poor man, named Job.”
He said, “O woman! what hast thou, with thy wondrous beauty, to do with a poor sick husband? Go, be divorced from thy husband, and marry me. I have great possessions, and I will treat thee as a queen.”
She answered, “I am the wife of a prophet; I desire nothing higher.”
Then Satan withdrew, despairing of seducing her from her duty. Rahma told Job all that had been said to her.
Job said, “O woman! did I not tell thee to speak with him no more; why hast thou disobeyed my voice? That was Satan, and he sought to separate us. Do not speak to him again when he addresses thee.”
Some time after, the Evil One presented himself before the faithful wife, under the form of an angel; and said to her, “O woman, daughter of a prophet! I am an angel sent from God with a message to thee.”
She said, “What message?”
He said, “Behold the Most High is wroth with Job, for he renders no thanks for all the good things He gave to him; therefore hath the Lord rejected him from being a prophet, and he shall fall from worse to worse, till he is cast into the flames of hell; we, the angels of God, curse him, and do thou, daughter of a prophet, avoid him, lest thou come into the same condemnation.”
When Rahma heard these words, she wept, and said, “After so many afflictions, shall the name of Job be taken from the number of the prophets? And after so many sufferings shall he perish everlastingly?”
Then she went to Job and told him all that had been said to her.
Job was greatly angered when she told him the tenor of the words, and he cried out, “Have I not warned thee these two times not to speak with him, who is the author of my affliction? Wait till I am well, and I will give thee a hundred strokes with a rod.”446
But the story is told differently by others. It is said that the third time Satan appeared as a baker, and Rahma wanted bread, but had nought to pay. Then said the pretended baker, “Thou hast locks of very beautiful hair; cut off thy hair and give it me, and thou shalt take the largest of my loaves.”
Then she cut off three locks and gave them to him.
And when Job saw that she had done this, he was filled with fury, and he swore that when he was well he would beat her for having cut off her hair.447
Thus Satan triumphed in making Job to sin by swearing, and threatening to ill-treat a true and good woman.
Next the Evil One went as an angel, and announced to all the people of the land that he came from God to declare to them that Job was no more reckoned among the prophets; and that they were not to trust his words and believe his doctrine, but were to return to the worship of those gods he had blasphemed and cast out.
Soon after, Job heard his three friends, Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar, converse together, and repeat what had been told them by Satan; and the thought that he was supposed to be rejected by God from among His prophets, was so distressing to him, that he cried out, “Truly, O God! evil has befallen me; but Thou art the most merciful of those who show mercy.”448 That is, the words of men are cruel, but Thou, O God, wilt deliver me out of all my evils.
Job was sick for seven years, and all that while his wife ministered to him.
But the mediæval commentators draw a very different picture of this wife, relying on the words of Scripture which make her tempt Job to “curse God and die.” They say that her tongue was one of the plagues of Job. That he bore patiently the loss of his cattle, of his children, and of his health, was indeed wonderful; but that he also endured the nagging of his wife with equanimity, – that was the most wonderful of all.
Then God looked on Job and had compassion upon him, and he said to him, “Strike the earth with thy foot.”449 Job stamped, and from the dung-heap on which he had been seated a clear stream of water issued, the sweetest that there is, and the water continued to flow. Then God said to Job, “Wash in this water.”
Rahma, the wife of Job, poured the water upon his head and over his body, and he washed himself. All the sores that were on his flesh disappeared, and he was healed; there was not a scar left, and he appeared more beautiful than before he was afflicted.
Then God said to Job, “Drink of the water.”
Then all the worms that were in the inside of Job died, and he was quite whole. Now this took place in Bashan, and the fountain remains to this day, and is called Qarya-Aïyub, and the city near which it is, Aïrs-Aïyub. “I have seen the city of the fountain,” says the Persian translator of Tabari: “every person who goes there, affected by internal or external maladies, and washes and drinks of that water, is healed of his disease.”450
Then God said to Job, “Fulfil thy vow, and take in thine hand a bundle of rods.”451 But the rods God told him to take were light sticks; and he took a hundred of these, and bound them together and smote Rahma with them, and he did not hurt her. By this action of Job, the Mussulman doctors support their advice to those who have taken rash oaths to clear themselves by a subterfuge. Thus, if a man has sworn he will not enter his house again, he is recommended to allow himself to be bound hand and foot and be carried into his home. Or, if he has sworn to recite the whole Koran, it will be sufficient for him to say the word “Koran,” and listen to the imaum reading before the assembly.
Then God restored to Job double all that he had lost; and Job lived, after he was recovered of his disease, twenty years, and he died at the age of ninety-three.
The worms which had devoured the body of the prophet, God turned into silk-worms; and the flies which had bitten him and tormented his sores, converted He into honey-bees; and before this there were neither silk-worms nor honey-bees on the earth. Also the rain and the snow which fell within his possessions, were grains of gold and pearl.
Isidore of Seville places the fountain which cured Job in Idumæa. He says, it is clear during three months of the year, troubled during the next three, then for three months it is green, and for the last three, it is red.
In the “Testament of Job,” we read some details concerning his death, written by his brother Nahor.
After three days of sickness, Job, lying on his bed, saw the angels come to receive his soul. After having divided his substance between his seven sons (for, after his troubles, he became the father of seven sons and three daughters), he gave his daughters three mantles of inestimable price, which he had received from heaven. To the eldest, Hemera (Jemima), he gave his harp; to the second, Cassia (Keziah), he handed his censer; to the third, Keren-happuch, he remitted his tamborine: and as he sang his last hymn to the Most High on his death-bed, Hemera and Keren-happuch accompanied him with harp and timbrel, and Cassia cast up fumes of sweet incense. Thus they greeted the messengers of heaven who came for the soul of Job.
XXXI
JETHRO
As has already been related, Jethro formed one of the council of Pharaoh till he found that his incantations had no effect on the Israelites. He escaped from Egypt before Job; for he had found in the palace of the king the staff of Joseph which had been cut from the Tree of Life, and therewith he hied him into the land of Midian, along with his daughter Zipporah.
According to Mussulman tradition, Jethro, whom the Arabs call Schohair or Schohaib, was a great prophet; and he was sent by God to the Midianites to call them to repentance and the rejection of polytheism. Jethro was old and nearly blind. He preached to the people and exhorted them with many words and for a long season, but all his words were in vain; the Midianites would not be converted, and at length they openly accused him of being a false prophet, and denied that God had sent him.
Therefore God gave over this nation to destruction. He sent a fiery breath upon the land, and the people could not bear the great heat, and retired into the fields, where there was shadow; for God sent a cloud to hide the face of the sun, and it cast a blot of shade upon the fields. But there were old men and women and little children, and the sick who could not leave the city and take refuge in the shade.
Slowly the cloud came down from heaven, like the lid of a saucepan, and covered all the Midianites that were in the field, and the cloud was of fire, and they fried “as fish fry in an oven.” Then the angel Gabriel gave a great shout, and all that were in the city, saving Jethro and his family, died of fright when they heard his cry.
Then Jethro lived in the land of Midian till Moses came to him out of Egypt.452
XXXII
MOSES.453
1. ISRAEL IN EGYPTAfter the death of Jacob, his descendants were drawn into servitude by soft and hypocritical speeches. Fifty-four years had passed since the death of Joseph.
Joseph had had the good fortune to acquire the favor of Mechron, the son and successor of that Pharoah who had raised him from the dungeon to be second in the kingdom. Almost all the inhabitants of Egypt had loved Joseph; only a few voices were raised in murmurs at a foreigner exercising such extensive powers.
The successors of the patriarchs mingled among the people of the land and learned their ways; and many of them abandoned the rite of circumcision, and spoke the language of Mizraem.
Then God withdrew His protection for a while; and the former love of the Egyptians towards the Hebrews was turned into implacable hatred. By degrees the privileges of the children of Israel were encroached upon, and they were oppressed with heavy taxes, from which hitherto they had been held exempt.
Afterwards the king exacted from them their labor without pay; he built a great castle and required the Hebrews to erect it for him at their own cost.
Twenty-two years after the death of Joseph, Levi died, who had outlived all his other brothers.
Fields, vineyards, and houses, which Joseph had given to his brethren, were now reclaimed by the natives of Egypt, and the children of Israel were enslaved.
The Egyptians, effeminate, and hating work, fond of pleasure and display, had envied the prosperity of the Hebrews, who had thriven in Goshen, and whose wives bore sometimes six and sometimes twelve infants at a birth.
They also feared lest this people, increasing upon them, should become more numerous than they, and should seize upon the power, and enslave the native population.
Nine years after the death of Joseph, King Mechron died, and was succeeded by his son Melol.
But before pursuing the history of the oppression of the Hebrews, we must relate some events that had occurred before this time.
When the body of Jacob, according to the last will, had been taken to the cave of Machpelah, Esau and his sons and a large body of followers hastened to oppose the burial of Jacob. After the death of Isaac, Esau and Jacob had come to an agreement, by which all the movable property of the father was made over to Esau, and all that was immovable, especially the burial cave, was apportioned to Jacob. But now Esau desired to set aside this agreement, and, as first-born, to claim the tomb as his, trusting that the sons of Jacob could not prove the agreement.
But no sooner had he raised this objection, than Naphtali, who was swift of foot, ran into Egypt, and returned in a few hours with the writing of agreement.
Esau, seeing himself baffled, had recourse to arms; and a fight took place, in which Esau was killed, and his followers were put to flight or taken as captives to Egypt, where they became the slaves of the Israelites. Amongst those captives was Zepho, son of Eliphaz, son of Esau.
Even in Joseph’s lifetime, the Edomites made incursions into Egypt to recover their captive relatives, but their attempts led to no other result than the tightening of the chains which bound the captives. Later, however, Zepho succeeded in effecting his escape, and he took refuge with Angias, king of Dinhaba (Ethiopia), who made him chief captain of his host.
Zepho persuaded the king to make war upon Egypt. Among the servants of Angias was a youth of fifteen, named Balaam, son of Beor, very skilful in the arts of witchcraft. The king bade the youthful necromancer divine who would succeed in the proposed war. Balaam formed chariots and horses and fighting men of wax, plunged them in water, which he stirred with palm twigs; and it was seen by all who stood by, that the men and horses representing the Egyptians and Hebrews floated, whereas those representing the Ethiopians sank.
Angias, deterred by this augury, refused to have any thing to do with a war against Egypt. Then Zepho left him, and betook himself to the land of the Hittites, and he succeeded in combining that nation, the Edomites, and the Ishmaelites together in making an invasion of Egypt.
To repel them, the Hebrews were summoned from the land of Goshen, but the Egyptians would not receive their allies into the camp, fearing lest they should unite with their kindred nations, and deliver them up to destruction.
Zepho now asked Balaam, who had followed him, to divine the end of the battle, but the attempt failed; and the future remained closed to him. But Zepho, full of confidence, led the combined army against the Egyptians, repulsed them at every point, and drove them back upon the camp of the Hebrews. Then the Israelites charged the advancing forces flushed with victory, who, little expecting such a determined onslaught, were thrown into confusion, and routed with great loss. The Hebrews pursued them to the confines of Ethiopia, cutting them down all along the way, and then they desisted and returned: and on numbering their band – they were but a handful – they found that they had not lost one man. They now looked out for their allies, the Egyptians, and found that they had deserted and fled; therefore, full of wrath, they returned to Goshen in triumph, and slew the deserters, with many words of contempt and ridicule.454
Thus the Hebrews were puffed up with pride, regarding themselves as invincible; and the Egyptians were filled with dread, lest this small people should resolve on seizing upon the supremacy, and should subjugate them.
Therefore the reigning Pharaoh and his council assembled to consult what should be done; and this was decided: – “The cities Pithom and Rameses (Tanis and Heliopolis) are not strong enough to withstand a foe, therefore they must be strengthened.” And a royal decree went forth over all the land of Egypt and Goshen, commanding all the inhabitants, both Egyptians and Hebrews, to build. Pharaoh himself set the example by taking trowel and basket in hand, and putting a brick mould on his neck. Whoever saw this hastened to do likewise, and all who were reluctant were stimulated by the overseers with these words, “See how the king works. Will you not imitate his activity?”
Thus the Israelites went to the work, and laid the mould upon their necks, little suspecting the guile that was in the hearts of the king and his councillors.
At the close of the first day, the Hebrews had made a large number of bricks; and this number was now imposed upon them as the amount of their daily task.
Thus passed a month, and by degrees the Egyptian workmen were withdrawn, yet the Hebrews were paid the regular wage.
When a year and four months had elapsed, not an Egyptian was to be seen making bricks and building; and the wage was stopped for the future, but the Hebrews were kept to their work.
The harshest and most cruel men were appointed to be their overseers, and if one of the Israelites asked for his wage, or fainted under his burden, he was beaten or put in the stocks.
When Pithom and Rameses were walled, the Israelites were employed to strengthen with forts all the other cities of Egypt, then to build storehouses and pyramids, to dig canals for the Nile, and to rear dykes against the overflow. They were also employed to dig and plough the fields, to garden and prune the fruit-trees, and to exercise trades. They were engaged from early dawn till late at night, and because the way from their homes was often far, they were forced to sleep in the open air, upon the bare ground.455
As the life of the Israelites became embittered to them, they called the king Meror, “the embitterer,” instead of Melol, “the grinder,” though that was appropriate enough, one would have supposed.456
But matters grew worse; the Edomites and Hittites again threatened Egypt, and Pharaoh ordered a closer guard to be kept, and heavier tasks to be laid upon the Hebrews.
Notwithstanding all attempts to crush the spirit of this unfortunate people and to diminish their numbers, they were sustained by hope in God, for a voice was heard from heaven, “This people shall increase abundantly, and multiply.”
Whilst the men of Israel slept exhausted after their unspeakable oppression of mind and body, the faithful women labored to relieve and strengthen them. They hastened to the springs to bring pure water to their husbands to drink, and, by the mercy of the All Merciful, it fell out that their pitchers were found, each time, to contain half water and half fish.
These gentle and diligent women dressed the fish, and prepared other good meats for their husbands, and they sought them at their work with the food, and with their cheerful words of encouragement. This loving attention of the women soothed the hearts of the men, and gave them fresh energy.
When 125 years had elapsed since Jacob came into Egypt, the fifty-fourth year after Joseph’s death, the elders and councillors of Egypt presented themselves before Pharaoh, and complained to him that the people increased and multiplied and became very great in the land, so that they covered it like the bushes in the wood; and two of the king’s councillors, of whom one was Job of Uz, said to Pharaoh, “It was well that heavy tasks were laid upon the Hebrews, but that doth not suffice; it is needful that they should be diminished in number as well as enslaved. Therefore give orders to the nurses to kill every male child that is born to the Hebrews, but to save the women children alive.”
This council pleased the king well; and what Job had advised was put in operation.
Pharaoh summoned the two Hebrew midwives before him; they were mother and daughter; some say their names were Jochebed and Miriam, but others Jochebed and Elizabeth. Now, Miriam was only five years old, nevertheless she was of the greatest assistance to her mother in nursing women. Both showed the utmost kindness to the new-born children, washed and brushed them up, said pretty things to them, and strengthened the mothers with cordials and tonic draughts. To their care the Israelites were indebted for the graceful and vigorous forms of their children; and the two women were such favorites with the people, that they called the one Shiphrah (the soother or beautifier) and the other Puah (the helper).
When they appeared before the king, and heard what he designed, Miriam’s young face flushed scarlet, and she said, in anger, “Woe to the man! God will punish him for his evil deed.”