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Whatever is meant to better us may be so used by us as to worsen us. Each condition has, as it were, two handles, and we can take it by either, and generally take it by the wrong one. In the moral region every circumstance has two opposite results possible. But that part of the divine purpose, alas! was not effected as the former was. Delay is fitted and intended to strengthen faith and make hope more eager. That hope had burned bright in Joseph when he died, and he being dead yet spake of it from his coffin to the successive generations. But there was another end, in reference to which the years of peaceful prosperity may be regarded namely, the schooling of the people to patient trust in the long-delayed fulfilment of the promise. So Israel was being multiplied, and the end for which it was peacefully growing into a multitude was hidden from all but God. As the Psalmist sings, ‘ He increased His people greatly.’ ‘Natural processes’ are the implements of a supernatural will. The great increase, of which the writer speaks so strongly, was, no doubt, due to the favourable circumstances of the life in Goshen, but was none the less regarded by him, and rightly so, as God’s doing. It effected the conversion of a horde into a nation by numerical increase, and so was a link in the chain of the divine working. That long period of growth may be regarded in two lights. ‘The individual withers, but the race is more and more.’ How solemn that continual play of opposing movements is, and how blind we are to its solemnity! The web is ever being woven at one end, and run down at the other. The old trees are all cleared off the ground, and everywhere their place is taken by the young saplings. One by one men pass out of the warmth and light into the darkness, and so gradually does the withdrawal proceed that we scarcely are aware of its going on, but at last ‘all that generation’ has vanished. We may note that eloquent setting side by side of the two processes which are ever going on simultaneously, death and birth. The preceding specification of the number of the original settlers brings into impressive contrast the small beginnings and the rapid increase. All that needed to be recorded was that, one by one, the first generation died off, and that the new generations ‘were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty.’ The emphatic repetitions recall the original promises in Genesis 12:2, Genesis 17:4 - Genesis 17:5, Genesis 18:18.
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The calm years glided on, and the shepherds in Goshen had the happiness of having no annals. These extended over centuries, the whole history of which is summed up in two words: death and growth. Both periods had their uses and place in the shaping of the nation and its preparation for the Exodus. The four hundred years of Israel’s stay in Egypt were divided into two unequal periods, in the former and longer of which they were prosperous and favoured, while in the latter they were oppressed. He viewed the political situation apart from all personal predilections, and saw a danger in it. The “new king” felt under no obligation to him, perhaps was even ignorant of his name. But, in the shifts and changes incident to politics-especially to Oriental politics-this condition of things had passed away. Which knew not Joseph.-It seems to be implied that, for some considerable time after his death, the memory of the benefits conferred by Joseph upon Egypt had protected his kinsfolk. “On Egyptian History, as connected with the Book of Exodus,” at the end of this Book.) Seti, though not the actual founder of the nineteenth dynasty, was the originator of its greatness.
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The present writer inclines to regard him as Seti I., the father of this Rameses, and the son of Rameses I. Some suppose him to be Aahmes I., the founder of the eighteenth dynasty of Manetho others suggest Rameses II., one of the greatest monarchs of the nineteenth.
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Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(8) There arose up a new king.-A king of a new dynasty might seem to be intended.