they cannot be diverted by whatever threats and persecutions
people may make against them. This is far more important.

710

_Predictions of particular things._--They were strangers in Egypt,
without any private property, either in that country or elsewhere.
[There was not the least appearance, either of the royalty which had
previously existed so long, or of that supreme council of seventy judges
which they called the _Sanhedrin_, and which, having been instituted by
Moses, lasted to the time of Jesus Christ. All these things were as far
removed from their state at that time as they could be], when Jacob,
dying, and blessing his twelve children, declared to them, that they
would be proprietors of a great land, and foretold in particular to the
family of Judah, that the kings, who would one day rule them, should be
of his race; and that all his brethren should be their subjects; [and
that even the Messiah, who was to be the expectation of nations, should
spring from him; and that the kingship should not be taken away from
Judah, nor the ruler and law-giver of his descendants, till the expected
Messiah should arrive in his family].

This same Jacob, disposing of this future land as though he had been its
ruler, gave a portion to Joseph more than to the others. "I give you,"
said he, "one part more than to your brothers." And blessing his two
children, Ephraim and Manasseh, whom Joseph had presented to him, the
elder, Manasseh, on his right, and the young Ephraim on his left, he put
his arms crosswise, and placing his right hand on the head of Ephraim,
and his left on Manasseh, he blessed them in this manner. And, upon
Joseph's representing to him that he was preferring the younger, he
replied to him with admirable resolution: "I know it well, my son; but
Ephraim will increase more than Manasseh." This has been indeed so true
in the result, that, being alone almost as fruitful as the two entire
lines which composed a whole kingdom, they have been usually called by
the name of Ephraim alone.

This same Joseph, when dying, bade his children carry his bones with
them when they should go into that land, to which they only came two
hundred years afterwards.

Moses, who wrote all these things so long before they happened, himself
assigned to each family portions of that land before they entered it, as
though he had been its ruler. [In fact he declared that God was to raise
up from their nation and their race a prophet,