CRITICAL AND PRACTICAL, ON THE BOOK OF EXODUS; DESIGNED AS A GENERAL HELP TO BIBLICAL READING AND INSTRUCTION BY GEORGE BUSH, PROF. OF HEB. AND ORIENT. LIT. N. Y. CITY UNIVERSITY IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. BOSTON: HENRY A. YOUNG & CO., No. 24 CORNHILL. 1871. ΕΝΤΕΣ Ε According to act of Congress, in the year 1841, by GEORGE BUSH. A the Clerk's office of the District Court of the Southeru District of NEW YORK INTRODUCTION. § 1. Title, Author, Scope, &c. THE designation given in our version to the second book of the Pentateuch, riz. 'Exodus,' is derived directly from the Greek ɛçodos, exodos, varying only by the Latinised termination us for os. The import of the term is that of going forth, emigration, departure, and is significant of the principal event recorded in it, to wit, the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt. According to Hebrew usage, though no where in the text itself, it is called au bai ve ëlleh shemoth, and these are the names, from the initial words of the book. This phrase, however, is sometimes abbreviated by the Jewish writers to the simple term shemoth, the names. That the authorship of this book is rightly ascribed to Moses, is proved by the arguments which go to ascertain the entire Pentateuch as the production of his hand. These are so fully detailed in our troduction to Genesis, that it will be unnecessary to repeat them here. But we have in addition still more explicit evidence on this point. Moses testifies of himself, Ex. 24. 4, that he 'wrote all the words of the Lord,' commanded him on a certain occasion, which words are contained in this book. Our Savior, also, when citing, Mark 12. 26, a certain passage from this book, calls it 'the book of Moses.' And again, Luke 20. 37, he says, 'Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush.' It is moreover to be observed that the books of the Old Testament are spoken of in the New, Luke 15. 31, as divided into two grand classes, 'Moses and the prophets,' and in v. 16, 'the law and the prophets;' so that all the Scriptures, besides 'the prophets,' were written by Moses; in other words, the four books of the 'law' were written by him. There remains, therefore, no room for doubt that Moses wrote the book of Exodus, and if any thing more were necessary to estab lish its canonical character, it would be found in the fact mentioned by Rivet. that twenty-five passages are quoted from it by Christ and his Apostles in express terms, and nineteen as to the sense. As to the general scope of the book, it is plainly to preserve the memorial of the great facts of the national history of Israel in its earlier periods, to wit, their deliverance from Egypt, the kindness and faithfulness of God in their subsequent prese vation in the wilderness, the delivery of the Law, and the establishraent of a new and peculiar system of worship. All the particulars connected with these several events are given in the fullest and most interesting detail, and in such a manner as to compel in the reader the recognition of an overruling Providence at every step of the narration. There is perhaps no book in the Bible that records |