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under the express commandment of God , they have no exemption from the judgment of posterity ; and on the same principle , while God is on the scene * the historian will write with caution and reverence ; while man , with freedom , justice , and impartiality . "
His idea of Joseph ' s object in buying up all the land in Egypt and reletting it to the people at a rent of one-fifth , is singular . The transaction is attended with considerable difficulty , and bears upon the face of it , it must be acknowledged , something despotic . Following Diodorus , he supposes that there had existed before this time a three-fold division of the landed
property in the kingdom , between the king , the priests , and the soldiers , which had somehow or other been lost , and that Joseph merely resumed what had before belonged to the crown , adding to it the portion formerly assigned to the soldiery * Upon the value of this solution we will not determine : it certainly appears to us fanciful , and not countenanced by any expression in holy writ : we should rather incline to think that Joseph , as prime minister of Pharaoh , deemed it his duty to promote his master's
aggrandizement in every possible manner ; nor , in those early ages , would an attempt to establish despotic sway in a state be so flagitious as in modern times , when the true nature of the authority of a king , and of the rights of the people , is so well known . The transference of the people to cities , he thinks , in opposition to Mr . Wellbeloved , was an act of kindness , which tended very greatly to meliorate their condition . In confirmation of this idea , he adduces a passage from Belzoni ' s travels , which represents the condition of the poor cultivators in Upper Egypt as wretched and dangerous in
the extreme , from their exposure to the inundations of the Nile , so that the measure of Joseph served as a preventive against the recurrence of those fatal casualties which often happened to them . Mr . Wellbeloved , in his new translation of Genesis , renders , on the authority of many able commentators , the passage thus : and the people he reduced into servitude from one extremity of Egypt to the other . The explanation of Mr . Milman seems easy and consistent , and clears the character of Joseph from that imputation of tyranny which at first sight attaches to it .
Our author assigns very high praise to Moses , whom he characterizes as having *• exercised a more extensive and permanent influence over the destinies of his own nation and mankind at large than any other individual recorded in the annals of the world . " Much of his system he refers to the lawgiver ' s own sagacity and knowledge of the peculiar wants and circumstances of the people , without ascribing every particular institution to divine appointment . He prefers him before Numa , Charondas , Lycurgus , and
Solon , inasmuch as these had much of their work done to their hands : Moses , on the contrary , " had first to form his people and bestow on them a country of their own , before he could create his commonwealth . " The fc ^ ty years' wandering in the desert he conceives to have been a wise plan of the legislator , to discipline their unruly tempers , and to fit them for taking permanent possession of a fruitful country . But , we may ask , does not such
a supposition deprive us of one of the most forcible arguments for the divine legation of Moses ? The reluctance with which he entered upon the task of emancipating his countrymen , and the almost insuperable difficulties , humanly speaking , that attended it , prove that he acted by divine instigation : he would never of his own accord have entered upon the charge , nor could he , without assistance from above , have conducted it to a successful issue . Some
of the most considerable of these difficulties occurred during their journeys in the desert ; and if the Israelites were miraculously delivered out of them , is it
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The History of the Jews . 379
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1830, page 379, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2585/page/19/
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