Page 72.—_Goshen._] Respecting its situation see Jablonski, Diss. de Terra Gosen; Opusc. ii. 77. seq. According to him it was the Heracleotic name, an island in the Nile, above Memphis, and answering to the modern Fayoum. His reasons, however, seem insufficient to counterbalance the strong presumption (arising from the absence of all mention in the Exodus of crossing any branch of the river) that the abode of the Israelites must have been in Lower Egypt and _beyond_ the Nile. Such is the general opinion of commentators. Page 73.—The martyr Stephen (Acts vii. 6.) appears to speak of the captivity of Israel in Egypt as lasting four hundred years. So Jos. Ant. i. 10. 3. ii. 9. 1. In Exod. xii. 40. their sojourning is said to have been four hundred and thirty years; Gen. xv. 13. it is foretold by God to Abraham, that his seed should be afflicted in a foreign land four hundred years, to which it is soon after subjoined, (ver. 16) “and in _the fourth generation_ they shall come hither again.” It is, however, generally supposed, that the sojourning of Abraham and his descendents in Canaan, where they were strangers, is included in the four hundred, or four hundred and thirty years. Accordingly Usher reckons the first period at two hundred and fifteen years, and the Egyptian bondage at about the same number. The difficulty remains that only four generations, inclusive, elapsed from the going down into Egypt to the Exodus; for Moses and Aaron were sons of Amram, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi; this the author solves, by reference to the prolonged term of human life in those ages. Page 74.—_Egyptian horror of pastoral tribes._] Gen. xlvi. 34. Ἀιγυπτίοις ἀπειρημένον ἤν περὶ νομὰς αναστρέφεσθαι. Jos. Ant. ii. 7. 5. It is generally supposed that this horror arose from the shepherds killing the sacred animals of the Egyptians; others regard it as a piece of policy on the part of the Egyptian priests to keep up a horror of the nomadic tribes, in order to confine the people to agriculture; others, as the effect of what the country had suffered from the irruptions of these tribes, especially that of the _Hycsos_ or Shepherd kings. Jos. c. Apion. i. 15.