Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/26

the custom of embalming dead bodies and placing them in sarcophagi (Gen. 50:2-3, and Gen. 50:26); the basket made of the papyrus and covered with asphalt and pitch (Exo. 2:3), the prohibition against lying with cattle (Exo. 22:19; Lev. 18:23; Lev. 20:15-16),and against other unnatural crimes which were common in Egypt; the remark that Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt (Num. 13:22); the allusion in Num. 11: 5 to the ordinary and favourite food of Egypt; the Egyptian mode of watering (Deu. 11:10-11); the reference to the Egyptian mode of whipping (Deu. 25:2-3); the express mention of the eruptions and diseases of Egypt (Deu. 7:15; Deu 28:27, Deu 28:35, Deu 28:60), and many other things, especially in the account of the plagues, which tally so closely with the natural history of that country (Exo. 7: 8-10:23).
In its general form, too, the Thorah answers the expectations which we are warranted in entertaining of a work of Moses. In such a work we should expect to find “the unity of a magnificent plan, comparative indifference to the mere details, but a comprehensive and spirited grasp of the whole and of salient points; depth and elevation combined with the greatest simplicity. In the magnificent unity of plan, we shall detect the mighty leader and ruler of a people numbering tens of thousands; in the childlike simplicity, the shepherd of Midian, who fed the sheep of Jethro far away from the varied scenes of Egypt in the fertile clefts of the mountains of Sinai” (Delitzsch). The unity of the magnificent plan of the Thorah we have already shown in its most general outlines, and shall point out still more minutely in our commentary upon the separate books. The childlike naiveté of the shepherd of Midian is seen most distinctly in those figures and similes drawn from the immediate contemplation of nature, which we find in the more rhetorical portions of the work. To this class belong such poetical expressions as “covering the eye of the earth” (Exo. 10:5, Exo. 10:15; Num. 22:5, Num. 22:11); such similes as these: “as a nursing father beareth the suckling” (Num. 11:12); “as a man doth bear his son” (Deu. 1:31); “as the ox licketh up the grass of the field” (Num. 22:4); “as sheep which have no shepherd” (Num. 27:17); “as bees do” (Deu. 1:44); “as the eagle flieth” (Deu. 28:49);— and again the figurative expressions “borne on eagles’ wings” (Exo. 19:4, cf. Deu. 32:11); “devouring