Before we can draw any certain argument from the increase of the people in Egypt, we must know the _basis of calculation_. It certainly includes not only the seventy male members of Jacob's family, with their wives and children, but also the families of their male-servants (circumcised according to the law, Gen. 17:12, 13, and therefore incorporated with the covenant people). From the notices contained in Genesis, we learn that the families of the patriarchs were very numerous. Gen. 14:14; 26:14; 32:10; 36:6, 7. If Abraham was able to arm three hundred and eighteen "trained servants born in his own house," how large an aggregate may we reasonably assume for the servants connected with Jacob's family, now increased to seventy male souls? We must not think of Jacob going into Egypt as a humble personage. He was a rich and prosperous _emir_, with his children and grandchildren, and a great train of servants. With the special blessing of God upon his children and all connected with them, we need find no insuperable difficulty in their increase to the number mentioned at the exodus. Provision was made in a miraculous way for the sustenance of the Israelites in the wilderness. The question has been raised: How were their flocks and herds provided for? In answer to this, the following remarks are in point: (1.) We are not to understand the word "wilderness" of an absolutely desolate region. It affords pasturage in patches. Robinson describes Wady Feiran, northwest of Sinai, as well watered, with gardens of fruit and palm trees; and he was assured by the Arabs that in rainy seasons grass springs up over the whole face of the desert. The whole northeastern part of the wilderness, where the Israelites seem to have dwelt much of the thirty-eight years, is capable of cultivation, and is still cultivated by the Arabs in patches. (2.) The Israelites undoubtedly marched not in a direct line, but from pasture to pasture, as the modern Arabs do, and spreading themselves out over the adjacent region. When Moses besought his father-in-law not to leave him, but to go with him that he might be to the people instead of eyes (Numb. 10:31), we may well suppose that he had in view Hobab's knowledge of the places where water and pasturage were to be found. (3.) There is decisive evidence that this region was once better watered than it is now, and more fruitful. The planks of acacia-wood, the shittim-wood, which were employed in the construction of the tabernacle, were a cubit and a half in width; that is, in English measure, something more than two and a half feet. No acacia-trees of this size are now found in that region. The cutting away of the primitive forests seems to have been followed, as elsewhere, by a decrease in the amount of rain.