Chapter 43.—Of the Times of Moses
and Joshua the Son of Nun, of the Judges, and Thereafter of the
Kings, of Whom Saul Was the First, But David is to Be Regarded as
the Chief, Both by the Oath and by Merit.
Jacob being dead, and Joseph also, during the remaining 144 years until they went out of the land of Egypt, that nation increased to an incredible degree, even although wasted by so great persecutions, that at one time the male children were murdered at their birth, because the wondering Egyptians were terrified at the too great increase of that people. Then Moses, being stealthily kept from the murderers of the infants, was brought to the royal house, God preparing to do great things by him, and was nursed and adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh (that was the name of all the kings of Egypt), and became so great a man that he—yea, rather God, who had promised this to Abraham, by him—drew that nation, so wonderfully multiplied, out of the yoke of hardest and most grievous servitude it had borne there. At first, indeed, he fled thence (we are told he fled into the land of Midian), because, in defending an Israelite, he had slain an Egyptian, and was afraid. Afterward, being divinely commissioned in the power of the Spirit of God, he overcame the magi of Pharaoh who resisted him. Then, when the Egyptians would not let God’s people go, ten memorable plagues were brought by Him upon them,—the water turned into blood, the frogs and lice, the flies, the death of the cattle, the boils, the hail, the locusts, the darkness, the death of the first-born. At last the Egyptians were destroyed in the Red Sea while pursuing the Israelites, whom they had
let go when at length they were broken by so many great
plagues. The divided sea made a way for the Israelites who were
departing, but, returning on itself, it overwhelmed their pursuers
with its waves. Then for forty years the people of God went
through the desert, under the leadership of Moses, when the
tabernacle of testimony was dedicated, in which God was worshipped
by sacrifices prophetic of things to come, and that was after the
law had been very terribly given in the mount, for its divinity was
most plainly attested by wonderful signs and voices. This took
place soon after the exodus from Egypt, when the people had entered
the desert, on the fiftieth day after the passover was celebrated
by the offering up of a lamb, which is so completely a type of
Christ, foretelling that through His sacrificial passion He should
go from this world to the Father (for pascha in, the Hebrew
tongue means transit), that when the new covenant was
revealed, after Christ our passover was offered up, the Holy Spirit
came from heaven on the fiftieth day; and He is called in the
gospel the Finger of God, because He recalls to our remembrance the
things done before by way of types, and because the tables of that
law are said to have been written by the finger of God.
On the death of Moses, Joshua the
son of Nun ruled the people, and led them into the land of promise, and divided it among them. By these two wonderful leaders wars were also carried on most prosperously and wonderfully, God calling to witness that they had got these victories not so much on account of the merit of the Hebrew people as on account of the sins of the nations they subdued. After these leaders there were judges, when the people were settled in the land of promise, so that, in the meantime, the first promise made to Abraham began to be fulfilled about the one nation, that is, the Hebrew, and about the land of Canaan; but not as yet the promise about all nations, and the whole wide world, for that was to be fulfilled, not by the observances of the old law, but by the advent of Christ in the flesh, and by the faith of the gospel. And it was to prefigure this that it was not Moses, who received the law for the people on Mount Sinai, that led the people into the land of promise, but Joshua, whose name also was changed at God’s command, so that he was called Jesus. But in the times of the judges prosperity alternated with adversity in war, according as the sins of the people and the mercy of God were displayed.