Excerpt from Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, Vol. 2: Arranged in the Form of a Harmony Abraham were infected with the itch, and were driven away from Egypt, lest others should catch it from them. That' this was an ancient calumny appears from Josephus, both in the ninth book of his Antiquities, and in his Treatise against Apion; and it is repeated both by C. Tacitus and Justin. Yet I make no doubt that the Egyptians, a very proud nation, in order to cfl'ace the memory of their own disgrace, and of the vengeance inflicted upon them by God, invented this lie, and thus grossly turned against this inno cent people what had happened to themselves, when they were smitten with boils and blains. But we shall see here after, amongst God's curses, that He chastised His people with the same plagues as He had inflicted on the Egyptians The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, &c. (deut. Xxviii. Whence it may be probably inferred, that God avenged the crimes of His ancient people with special judgments, which are now unknown to us; just as afterwards new diseases arose, from which those in old times were free. At any rate, Josephus, by clear and solid arguments, exposes the absurdity Of this accusation, that Moses was driven from Egypt with a crowd of exiles, lest they should infect the country with their disease; because, if they had been universally affected with this malady, he never would have imposed such severe laws for separating the lepers from general society. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.