"The word חֲמֻשִׁים, which is here rendered 'harnessed', appears to mean 'armed', or, 'in battle array', in all the other passages where it occurs. * * * It is, however, inconceivable that these down-trodden, oppressed people should have been allowed by Pharaoh to possess arms, so as to turn out at a moment's notice six hundred thousand armed men. If such a mighty host--nearly nine times as great as the whole of Wellington's army at Waterloo--had had arms in their hands, would they not have risen long ago for their liberty, or, at all events, would there have been no danger of their rising? * * Are we to suppose, then, that the Israelites acquired their arms by 'borrowing' on the night of the Exodus? Nothing whatever is said of this, and the idea itself is an extravagant one. But, if even in this, or any other way, they had come to be possessed of arms, is it conceivable that six hundred thousand armed men, in the prime of life, would have cried out in panic terror, 'sore afraid' (_Ex._, xiv. 10), when they saw that they were being pursued?"--(pp. 48, 49). He afterwards proceeds to argue on other grounds that, according to the Scripture narrative, the Israelites must have been possessed of arms when they went up out of Egypt:-- "Besides, if they did not take it with them out of Egypt, where did they get the armour with which, about a month afterwards, they fought the Amalekites (_Ex._, xvii. 8-13), and 'discomfited them with the edge of the sword'? It may, perhaps, be said that they had stripped the Egyptians whom they 'saw lying dead upon the sea-shore' (_Ex._, xiv. 30). And so writes Josephus (_Ant._, ii. 16, 6):--'On the next day Moses gathered together the weapons of the Egyptians, which were brought to the camp of the Hebrews by the current of the sea, and the force of the winds assisting it. And he conjectured that this, also, happened by Divine Providence, that so they might not be destitute of weapons'. * * The Bible story, however, says nothing about this stripping of the dead, as surely it must have done if it really took place. * * * And even this supposition will not do away with the fact that the stubborn word חֲמֻשִׁים exists in the text before us. Besides, we must suppose that the _whole body_ of six hundred thousand warriors were armed when they were numbered (_N._, i. 3) under Sinai. They possessed arms, surely, at that time, according to the story. How did they get them unless they took them out of Egypt?