Come on
Which is a word of exhortation, stirring up to a quick dispatch
of business, without delay, the case requiring haste, and some
speedy and a matter of indifference:
let us deal wisely with them;
form some wise schemes, take some crafty methods to weaken and
diminish them gradually; not with open force of arms, but in a
more private and secret manner, and less observed:
lest they multiply;
yet more and more, so that in time it may be a very difficult
thing to keep them under, and many disadvantages to the kingdom
may arise from them, next observed:
and it come to pass, that when there falleth out any war,
they join
also unto our enemies;
their neighbours the Arabians, and Phoenicians, and Ethiopians:
with the latter the Egyptians had wars, as they had in the times
of Moses, as Josephus F16 relates, and Artapanus {q}, an
Heathen writer, also: Sir John Marsham F18 thinks
these enemies were the old Egyptians, with whom the Israelites
had lived long in a friendly manner, and so more likely to join
with them, the Thebans who lived in upper Egypt, and between whom
and the pastor kings that reigned in lower Egypt there were
frequent wars; but these had been expelled from Egypt some time
ago:
and fight against us, and so get them up out of the
land;
take the opportunity, by joining their enemies and fighting
against them, to get away from them out of Egypt into the land of
Canaan, from whence they came: this, it seems, the Egyptians had
some notion of, that they were meditating something of this kind,
often speaking of the land of Canaan being theirs, and that they
should in a short time inherit it; and though they were dreaded
by the Egyptians, they did not care to part with them, being an
industrious laborious people, and from whom the kingdom reaped
many advantages.