Children of the Old Testament | Page 7

that he would let him stay behind
and be his slave for ever in place of his young brother, and let
Benjamin go home to his father.
At times while Judah was speaking Joseph looked at Benjamin, and
sometimes he turned away his head lest they should see the tears in his
eyes. And when his older brother offered to be his slave for ever, the
young Egyptian suddenly ordered every one to leave the room but the
Hebrews; and he remained silent, with his head turned away, while his
Egyptian friends and servants went slowly out.
As soon as they were all gone he sprang to his feet, and held out his
hands to his brothers, calling to them in Hebrew,--
"I am Joseph! Is my father indeed alive?"
The men gazed at him in amazement. What would this terrible
Egyptian do next? Who was this who knew about their brother whom

they had sold into slavery? They were dumb with wonder.
"Come nearer to me, I beg of you," he pleaded. It was the voice of
Joseph that rang in their ears. They came nearer, and gazed up at the
great man. These cheeks were too ruddy for an Egyptian, and these
brown eyes--were they not the eyes of Joseph!
"I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt!" he cried. They
could no longer doubt that he spoke the truth to them; and as they came
forward he clasped them in his arms one by one, weeping for very joy.
Then seeing in their eyes the deep sorrow for their past unkindness, he
added,--
"Be not grieved nor angry that you sold me into Egypt, for it was God
who sent me hither to save many lives in the years of famine. I am lord
of the king's palace and ruler of all Egypt."
Then he took his wondering brothers home with him to stay in his fine
house, where his Egyptian wife and their little children lived; and after
a time he sent them away, laden with presents, and with wagons to
bring down their children and their old father Jacob into Egypt. For
they were all to come down, he said, and live in the golden and fruitful
land of Goshen, and he would watch over them there.

THE CHILD MOSES.
I.
Jacob and his sons stayed in Egypt until the old man died. Then Joseph
carried his body back to Hebron in a great funeral procession, and
having buried him beside his wife, who had been dead for a long time,
came back again to Egypt.
The Hebrews expected to return to Canaan soon, but that was not to be.
In course of time Joseph and his brothers died, but still the Hebrews, or
Israelites, as they were also called, stayed on in Egypt, and in time
grew into a great nation. Then a new king came to the throne, who was

afraid of their numbers, and made slaves of them all, forcing them to
make bricks and build for him great walls, forts, and buildings of all
kinds.
They were taken in gangs, guarded by soldiers, to the place where the
brown river clay was thick; there they dug it out with spades, trod it
with their feet, and worked it with their hands until it was wet and soft.
Then they shaped it with little square boxes into brown bricks for
building. Other workers placed the bricks in baskets and carried them
away to the boats in the river, for the boatmen to take up to the great
cities where the walls were being built.
Some of the Israelites toiled at building these high brick walls,
storehouses, forts, and even cities for the great king; and it is not
unlikely that some of the Pyramids, which we now see standing on the
banks of the Nile, were built by these poor slaves in the days now long
gone by.
Others, again, were driven out to the fields to drag wooden ploughs up
and down like cattle, to dig with small wooden spades, and to clear the
land of stones; and when the harvest came, they cut down the crops and
threshed out the grain, and carried it off to their master's storehouses.
Others had to stand on the bank of the river all day long, filling buckets
with water and emptying them into little drains that ran away into the
fields. And over all these slaves were slave-drivers, who stood beside
them with long whips to lash them if they did not work hard enough.
So the poor Israelites were very unhappy, and often prayed to God that
they might be set free again; for they were the lowest labourers in the
land, toiling for those who gave them no money for