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had conquered. Of course, one could not expect to find onEgyptian monuments an
account of the disasters which the nation sustained at the Exodus, nor howPharaoh and
his host had perished in the Red Sea. But we do find in his reign the conditions
whichwe should have expected under such circumstances, viz., a brief, prosperous
reign, then a suddencollapse; the king dead; no son to succeed him; the throne
occupied by the widow of the Pharaoh,and for twenty years no attempt to recover the
supremacy of Egypt over the revolted nations inCanaan and east of the Jordan. Lastly,
the character of his queen, as it appears on the monuments, isthat of a proud and
bitterly superstitious woman, just such as we would have expected to
encouragePharaoh in "hardening his heart" against Jehovah. But the chain of
coincidences does not break evenhere. From the Egyptian documents we learn that in
the preceding reign - that is, just before thechildren of Israel entered the desert of Sinai
- the Egyptians ceased to occupy the mines which theyhad until then worked in that
peninsula. Further, we learn that, during the latter part of Israel's stay inthe wilderness,
the Egyptian king, Thothmes III., carried on and completed his wars in Canaan,
andthat just immediately before the entry of Israel into Palestine the great confederacy
of Canaanitishkings against him was quite broken up. This explains the state in which
Joshua found the country, sodifferent from that compact power which forty years
before had inspired the spies with such terror;and also helps us to understand how, at
the time of Joshua, each petty king just held his own city anddistrict, and how easily
the fear of a nation, by which even the dreaded Pharaoh and his host hadperished,
would fall upon the inhabitants of the land (compare also Balaam's words in
Numbers23:22; 24:8). We may not here follow this connection between the two
histories any farther. But allthrough the troubled period of the early Judges down to
Barak and Deborah, Egyptian history, asdeciphered from the monuments, affords
constant illustration and confirmation of the state of Canaanand the history of Israel,
as described in the Bible. Thus did Providence work for the carrying out ofGod's
purposes, and so remarkably does He in our days raise up witnesses for His Word,
wheretheir testimony might least have been expected.
We remember that Abram was at the first driven by famine into Egypt. The same
cause also led thebrothers of Joseph to seek there corn for their sustenance. For, from
the earliest times, Egypt wasthe great granary of the old world. The extraordinary
fertility of the country depends, as is wellknown, on the annual overflow of the Nile,
caused in its turn by rains in the highlands of Abyssiniaand Central Africa. So far as
the waters of the Nile cover the soil, the land is like a fruitful garden;beyond it all is
desolate wilderness. Even in that "land of wonders," as Egypt has been termed,
theNile is one of the grand outstanding peculiarities. Another, as we have seen,
consists in itsmonuments. These two landmarks may conveniently serve to group
together what our space will stillallow us to say of the country and its people.
(^)