mitted him to spread the veil of oblivion over it: but there is every reason to believe that it took place for Dinah is never mentioned afterwards.

Here then was the sin which brought upon its perpetrators this fearful denunciation of the Divine vengeance; and, moreover, he who spake by the lips of the dying and agonized father when he uttered it, "is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent! Hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" Its fulfilment however, is no where directly recorded: for the arrangement in the Holy Land whereby Levi had Jehovah and His service for his patrimony was preeminently a blessing; the direct reversal of a curse; as it is invariably styled in the language of Scripture. (See Num. xviii. 20. Deut. x. 8, 9, &c.) It is well known also, no such fate befel Simeon, who was equally included in the malediction.

The prophecy therefore must have received its fulfilment during the sojourn in Egypt; and in the well-known gap in the genealogy of Levi and in the census afterwards, we point to the silent but highly significant evidences of it. The ruffian propensities of these men would soon fulfil their curse without any miraculous interposition, when the death of their father had in some measure freed them from the restraint which his authority had imposed upon

them. In order rightly to apprehend this, the state of society which prevailed among the children of Israel in Egypt after his death must be considered.

The

There is but one passage in the whole Bible in which any event that befel Israel in Egypt after the death of Jacob, and before the rise of the king that knew not Joseph, is recorded. It occurs in the genealogy of Ephraim. 1 Chron. vii. 20—23. history narrated in it amounts to this: The Ephraimites crossed the desert on a predatory expedition into Philistia, for the purpose of driving off cattle. They were defeated with great slaughter by the men of Gath. Eliad in the direct line from the first-born of Ephraim was among the slain.

This circumstance tells of a state of society in the Delta, on the death of Joseph and the first immigrants, perfectly analogous to that which our knowledge of the elements of which it was composed would have led us to anticipate. It consisted of

I. The Lower Egyptians. The professors of the man-worship of the Pyramids.

II. The Egypto-Canaanites, or Shepherds, their co-religionists and the close imitators of all their

customs.

III. The Canaanite rangers of the Desert, the inhabitants of Canaan Proper, and professing its local idolatry.

IV. The children of Israel, now rapidly increasing in numbers.

The transition from barbarism to civilization commenced by the regulations of Joseph at the famine, (above p. 134.) was also in progress at this time, and upon all these classes, for we shall presently find that long afterwards the change was still far from complete. Quarrels, feuds, broils, and deeds of violence would inevitably attend such a state of things, and in the midst of these, the wild fierce propensities of Simeon and Levi would drive them with uncontrollable vehemence. Their sons would also follow them and close at their heels. Had the government of Egypt been a weak one instead of a strong one, Simeon and Levi might have stood in its annals for great conquerors. But law in Egypt was always very powerful, and society therefore wonderfully peaceable and well-ordered; so that Simeon and Levi would only figure among their cotemporaries as violent, quarrelsome, turbulent men, and their tribe as bad subjects, and troublesome, dangerous neighbours. Retribution would speedily follow. The entire population of every class would rise against them. They would be overpowered, and the laws both of social order and of war would take their course upon them. It was as bond-slaves and prisoners-of-war among the cities and tents of their brethren of the other tribes

that Simeon and Levi were divided in Jacob, and scattered in Israel. As we have already explained, the misfortunes of Simeon and Levi during this interval are not recorded, but the fact that they underwent them is very significantly indicated by their places in the census of Israel in the Desert. In the first census, Simeon brings forward 59,300 fighting men, Numb. i. 23., shewing that the increase in his tribe had been at least as rapid as in that of those of his brethren. But the Levites were left out of this census by express command, the reason for which is not given, (verses 47-50.) It appears however, and very clearly, in the following census. The whole of the living males of Levi of all ages, was then only 23,000; considerably less than half the average number of the fighting men (i. e. the men between 20 and 60) of each of the other tribes. Levi therefore had been omitted from the former census, because his numbers were so insignificant, that to have recorded them would have been to set him forth as a reproach in Israel. Simeon also partook in the curse of his progenitor, as this second census shows unmistakably. His 59,300 has dwindled down to 23,000 only,-scarcely the half of the numbers of any one of the rest of his brethren, in the same enumeration. The men of the former census therefore had been far advanced in life, and past the age of prolificness. They fell

in the wilderness and left few representatives behind them; for the young men of the tribe had already perished in Egypt.

Amram, the head of the tribe of Levi and his family, are now household slaves attached to one of the palaces of Si Phtha the viceroy of the Delta at Heliopolis. He himself is probably far away from his family, as head of his tribe, and task-master over them in their forced labours in some distant quarry. His wife and sister, with his child, were housed in a wretched hovel in the court of the palace, and worked under the baton of the master of the house.

FROM NAHRAI AT BENIHASSAN.

The birth of Moses would not be an event in which their oppressors took any interest. Had they detected the concealment, they would merely have thrown the infant into the river, and beaten the mother:-occurrences too frequent in the house of bondage everywhere to have attracted notice.