but
the Macedonians call it Xanthicus,] and that he should carry the Hebrews
with all they had. Accordingly, he having got the Hebrews ready for
their departure, and having sorted the people into tribes, he kept them
together in one place: but when the fourteenth day was come, and all
were ready to depart they offered the sacrifice, and purified their
houses with the blood, using bunches of hyssop for that purpose; and
when they had supped, they burnt the remainder of the flesh, as just
ready to depart. Whence it is that we do still offer this sacrifice in
like manner to this day, and call this festival Pascha which signifies
the feast of the passover; because on that day God passed us over,
and sent the plague upon the Egyptians; for the destruction of the
first-born came upon the Egyptians that night, so that many of the
Egyptians who lived near the king's palace, persuaded Pharaoh to let the
Hebrews go. Accordingly he called for Moses, and bid them be gone; as
supposing, that if once the Hebrews were gone out of the country, Egypt
should be freed from its miseries. They also honored the Hebrews with
gifts; [27] some, in order to get them to depart quickly, and others on
account of their neighborhood, and the friendship they had with them.

CHAPTER 15. How The Hebrews Under The Conduct Of Moses Left Egypt.

1. So the Hebrews went out of Egypt, while the Egyptians wept, and
repented that they had treated them so hardly.--Now they took their
journey by Letopolis, a place at that time deserted, but where Babylon
was built afterwards, when Cambyses laid Egypt waste: but as they went
away hastily, on the third day they came to a place called Beelzephon,
on the Red Sea; and when they had no food out of the land, because it
was a desert, they eat of loaves kneaded of flour, only warmed by a
gentle heat; and this food they made use of for thirty days; for what
they brought with them out of Egypt would not suffice them any longer
time; and this only while they dispensed it to each person, to use so
much only as would serve for necessity, but not for satiety. Whence
it is that, in memory of the want we were then in, we keep a feast
for eight days, which is called the feast of unleavened bread. Now
the entire multitude of those that went out, including the women and
children, was not easy to be numbered, but those that were of an age fit
for war, were six hundred thousand.

2. They left Egypt in the month Xanthicus, on