REASONS WHY ROD NOT MENTIONED 4Il 
iv. 19, ‘‘ she opened a bottle of milk,”’ both demand an extrusion 
effected by one and only one method, whereas “ jars of fish ”’ 
may have been filled by any piscatorial method. 
D. There is no evidence that the Israelites brought from 
Egypt a single particle of Egyptian civilisation. Nomads they 
were when they entered, and nomads they were when they 
left Egypt. Their kultuy was taken over from the Canaanites, 
and their later civilisation, despite periods of subjection to 
Egypt, owed far less to that country than to Babylonia. 
Even if we grant that no actual evidence of Egyptian 
culture exists, the probabilities incline the other way. Their 
abiding place was in no sterile or out-of-the-way corner of that 
country, but in Goshen, where we read “ they gat them posses- 
sions therein,’ and was in close proximity to the great high 
road, which bore the commerce between Egypt and Asia, and 
vice versa. They were certainly familiar with the manufacture 
of bricks, and presumably the building of houses, etc. 
E. The verse, “ The fishers shall also lament and they 
that cast angle in the brooks shall mourn,” which may betray 
knowledge of the Rod, is apparently much later than Isaiah, 
and may, perhaps, be assigned to the second century B.c., and 
refer to the campaign of Antiochus Epiphanes in Egypt. 
Even if we allow that this date accounts for all omission 
of Angling during the millennium between the Exodus and this 
campaign, why is there no actual or implied reference in subse- 
quent literature, especially in the voluminous Talmud ? 
But the Jewish lack of sport is evidenced not only in their 
methods of fishing, but, what is more remarkable, in those of 
their hunting, or rather non-hunting. While Assyrian, Egyp- 
tian, and Persian Monarchs were famous for their hunting 
exploits, no single Jewish king, except Herod, is handed down 
to us delighting in or even taking part in the chase.! 
We find no Hebrew counterpart to Tiglath-pileser, with his 
historical bag of ‘‘ 4 wild bulls mighty and terrible, 10 elephants 
and 120 lions’’ on foot, and 130 speared from his chariot, or 
1 Herod seems, from notices in Josephus, to have been quite a sportsman, 
for he kept a regular stud (Ant., XVI. 10, s. 3), and hunted bears, stags, wild 
asses, etc., with a record bag of forty head in one day (ibid., XV. 7,s.7; and 
B. J., 1. 21, 5. 13). 
2E 
