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whole affair. In the first instance* every woman is directed to 
ash, demand, or require of her neighbour and of her that sojourneth 
with her in her house; and in the second, f every man is to 
ask, demand, or require of his neighbour , and every woman cf 
her neighbour , jewels of silver and jewels of gold, or gold and 
silver vessels. Now, when this request or demand was made, 
the Israelites were all gathered into the land of Goschen. On 
the infliction of the plague of flies they were so separated 
from the Egyptians that neither that nor any subsequent 
plague touched them. The question, then, to be asked here, 
is this : How came it that numbers of the rich Egyptians 
should at that time not only dwell in Goschen, but sojourn 
even in the houses of the Israelites ? And the reply lies on 
the very face of the narrative. With the increasing convic- 
tion on their minds that Egypt was being destroyed by the 
judgments of the God of Israel, and with the immunity enjoyed 
in Goschen before their eyes, they sought, in numbers in- 
creasing as each plague descended, to share in that immunity ; 
and fleeing to Goschen with their riches, entreated shelter 
even under the roofs of the persecuted race. The Israelites, 
bearing in mind the divine direction, naturally and fairly 
asked a recompense in the portable wealth of the time.. But, 
besides this, they had for more than two centuries resided in 
one of the most fertile portions of the most fertile land in the 
world, as a pastoral and an agricultural, if not a trading, 
people. They must have had houses and lands of which to 
dispose, and produce of various kinds, which they could not 
carry with them. Might they not, in exchange for real 
property, have demanded a very considerable amount of gold 
and silver? Yes. Only take the Scripture narrative as it 
stands, — only admit that a nation of upwards of 2,000,000, 
after a residence of 200 years, went forth from another and 
that a rich and powerful nation — and there is nothing what- 
ever to excite suspicion of a misapprehension of figures in the 
statement, that the former had become possessed of £259,840. 
22. For, in conclusion, what was this Egypt of which so much 
is made, when her history appears adverse to Scripture, and 
of which, when her history and her monuments tend to con- 
firm Scripture history, so little is made ? Was she an insig- 
nificant nation with a population “not to be put at less than a 
million/'’ and likely to be thrown into a state of terror and 
commotion by the rising of 600 armed men, and the emigra- 
tion of a retinue of 2,500 or even of 6,000 ? Was she not, 
rather, that Egypt which, 200 years prior to the Exodus, 
* Exod. iii. 22. 
t Exod. xi. 2. 
