n
embellishment only.

[16] As to the affliction of Abraham's posterity for 400 years, see
Antiq. B. I. ch. 10. sect. 3; and as to what cities they built in Egypt,
under Pharaoh Sesostris, and of Pharaoh Sesostris's drowning in the Red
Sea, see Essay on the Old Testament, Append. p. 132-162.

[17] Of this building of the pyramids of Egypt by the Israelites, see
Perizonius Orig. Aegyptiac, ch. 21. It is not impossible they might
build one or more of the small ones; but the larger ones seem much
later. Only, if they be all built of stone, this does not so well agree
with the Israelites' labors, which are said to have been in brick, and
not in stone, as Mr. Sandys observes in his Travels. p. 127, 128.

[18] Dr. Bernard informs us here, that instead of this single priest
or prophet of the Egyptians, without a name in Josephus, the Targum of
Jonathan names the two famous antagonists of Moses, Jannes and Jambres.
Nor is it at all unlikely that it might be one of these who foreboded so
much misery to the Egyptians, and so much happiness to the Israelites,
from the rearing of Moses.

[19] Josephus is clear that these midwives were Egyptians, and not
Israelites, as in our other copies: which is very probable, it being not
easily to be supposed that Pharaoh could trust the Israelite midwives to
execute so barbarous a command against their own nation.

[Consult, therefore, and correct hence our ordinary copies, Exodus 1:15,
22.] And, indeed, Josephus seems to have had much completer copies of
the Pentateuch, or other authentic records now lost, about the birth
and actions of Moses, than either our Hebrew, Samaritan, or Greek Bibles
afford us, which enabled him to be so large and particular about him.

[20] Of this grandfather of Sesostris, Ramestes the Great, who slew the
Israelite infants, and of the inscription on his obelisk, containing, in
my opinion, one of the oldest records of mankind, see Essay on the Old
Test. Append. p. 139, 145, 147, 217-220.

[21] What Josephus here says of the beauty of Moses, that he was of a
divine form, is very like what St. Stephen says of the same beauty; that
Moses was beautiful in the sight of Acts 7:20.

[22] This history of Moses, as general of the Egyptians against the
Ethiopians, is wholly omitted in our Bibles; but is thus by Irenaeus,
from Josephus, and that soon after his own age:--"Josephus says, that
when Moses was nourished in the palace, he was appointed general of the
army