=Suggestions to the teacher.= The most valuable help that the teacher can get in teaching this lesson also comes from the study of the Biblical story itself. Note that in the Bible although it is made clear that the settlement in Egypt was brought about in accordance with a divine plan for the development of the chosen people, this is nowhere stated in abstract terms but we are allowed to infer it from the words and acts of the characters and the events as they shape themselves. In teaching children, who have no power of forming abstract notions, no other method is possible. It is necessary, however, for this very reason to take more pains to make the meaning of the words and acts of the characters clear to the child. Thus in speaking of God's appearing to Jacob at Beer-sheba with his reassuring message, one must first state what the Bible leaves to our own power of inference, Jacob's reluctance to go to Egypt and the reason for his reluctance. One might say for example: "So Jacob made ready to leave Canaan and go to meet his son Joseph, whom he so longed to see once more. And yet, in spite of his anxiety to meet Joseph, he felt sorry to leave this land of Canaan where he was born, where his father and mother and his dear wife Rachel were buried, and where God had promised him that his children would become a great nation. Perhaps he also felt sorry because he remembered hearing of a prophecy that God had told to Abraham, saying that his descendants would become slaves to a strange people in a strange land, and he thought "Maybe now my children will be made slaves in Egypt." But that night as he slept God sent a dream to cheer him. He dreamt he heard God speak to him and say "--etc. Again, when telling of Joseph's going to meet his father, emphasize the love that made him hasten to welcome the patriarch and the pride with which he introduced his aged father to King Pharaoh, as well as the solicitude for his father's and brothers' comfort implied in the preparations for their reception in Goshen, the most fertile part of Egypt, in the delta of the Nile.