In their extremity they turned to Egypt. Joseph's influence was such that the patriarch's delegation found favor with the king. The prime-minister of Egypt knew his brethren, but they had forgotten him. So he managed to find out all about his father's house, and made his brothers bring dear Benjamin, when he wept aloud, and made himself known to them all. Pharaoh sent for the whole race, and soon the Hebrew caravan reached the fruitful land of Goshen, which was exactly suited to the life of shepherds. Here the strangers grew in numbers and wealth, until Joseph died, and the friendly monarch also. His successor cared neither for Joseph nor his countrymen. He was a tyrant, and enslaved the dwellers in Goshen. Centuries of captivity wore away, and God determined to deliver his people, and send them back again to Palestine. The scene displayed in this picture you will recognize at a glance. Moses, the Hebrew babe, afloat on the Nile, in a small boat made of bulrushes by his mother, because Pharaoh was slaying the children of her nation, to get rid of them. Neither the haughty and cruel monarch, nor the mother, nor the little voyager, thought of Moses as the future deliverer of his countrymen from bondage--the great leader and lawgiver of Israel. We have already had glimpses of the Hebrews in the wilderness, their progress and rulers in Palestine, after the moving multitude reached the "promised land." The ages of changing sovereigns, and fortunes of crimes and discipline brought them at last to another mournful captivity. About six hundred years before Christ, while that wicked Manassah was king in Palestine, the monarch of Assyria--a grand and powerful empire--invaded it, and took Jerusalem. Manassah was carried in chains to Babylon, the splendid Assyrian capital. His son, Amon, became the sovereign under the Assyrian conqueror, but was soon assassinated, and Josiah took the throne. During his reign, the King of Egypt marched into Palestine and conquered it, killing Josiah, the king. A few years later, Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian monarch, besieged and took Jerusalem, the "City of David." The massive walls of the cities of old was their chief protection. Those of Babylon, according to the old Roman historians, were marvelously great. Think of them rising three hundred and fifty feet, eighty-seven feet in thickness, and extending sixty miles around the city! One writer says, that two four-horse chariots could pass each other on the top. They were built of brick, cemented together with bitumen. They had twenty gates made of solid brass, and were surmounted with two hundred and fifty towers. The city had six hundred and seventy-six squares, each over two miles in circumference. The river Euphrates flowed through the entire extent, from north to south. The hanging gardens, suspended from the walls, were gorgeous, and the public buildings rich and elegant. Such was the home of the Hebrew exiles for seventy years or more.