And because he loved thy fathers
Not their immediate fathers, whose carcasses fell in the
wilderness, and entered not into the good land because of their
unbelief, but their more remote fathers or ancestors, Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, who had some singular testimonies of the love
of God to them, Abraham is called their friend of God, and Isaac
was the son of promise in whom the seed was called; and Jacob is
particularly said to be loved by God, when Esau was hated:
therefore he chose their seed after them;
not to eternal life and salvation, but to the enjoyment of
external blessings and privileges, to be called by his name, and
to set up his name and worship among them, and to be a special
people to him above all people on the earth, as to outward
favours, both civil and ecclesiastical:
and brought thee out in his sight with his mighty power out
of Egypt;
which was done not only in the sight of the Egyptians openly,
they not daring to hinder them, as the wonders wrought to oblige
them to let them go out, done in the sight of the Israelites as
before observed, but in the sight of God, he going before them in
the pillar of cloud and fire, smiling upon them the Israelites,
and looking with a frown upon the host of the Egyptians, and
conducting the people by the angel of his presence.