Chap. 25:8.  The remainder of the book is mainly occupied with the structure of the tabernacle and its furniture, and the establishment of the Levitical priesthood.  Directions are given for the priestly garments, and the mode of inauguration is prescribed; but the inauguration itself belongs to the following book.  The narrative is interrupted by the sin of the people in the matter of the golden calf, with the various incidents and precepts connected with it (chaps. 32-34), and a repetition of the law of the Sabbath is added.  Chap. 31:12-17.  The office, then, which the book of Exodus holds in the Pentateuch is definite and clear.

8.  With regard to the time of the sojourn in Egypt, two opinions are held among biblical scholars.  The words of God to Abraham:  “Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years,” “but in the fourth generation they shall come hither again” (Gen. 15:13, 16); and also the statement of Moses:  “Now the sojourning of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years” (Exod. 12:40), seem to imply that they spent four hundred and thirty years in Egypt (a round number being put in the former passage for the more exact specification of the latter).  It has been thought, also, that the vast increase of the people in Egypt—­to six hundred thousand men (Exod. 12:37), which shows that the whole number of souls was over two millions—­required a sojourn of this length.  On the other hand, the apostle Paul speaks of the law as given “four hundred and thirty years after” the promise to Abraham.  Gal. 3:17.  In this he follows the Jewish chronology, which is also that of the Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch, for they read in Exod. 12:40:  “who dwelt in Egypt and in the land of Canaan.”  The words, “in the land of Canaan,” are undoubtedly an added gloss; but the question still remains whether they are not a correct gloss.  The genealogy of Levi’s family (Exod. 6:16-20) decidedly favors the interpretation, which divides the period of four hundred and thirty years between Egypt and the land of Canaan.  To make this table consistent with a sojourn of four hundred and thirty years in Egypt, it would be necessary to assume, with some, that it is an epitome, not a full list, which does not seem probable.

Before we can draw any certain argument from the increase of the people in Egypt, we must know the basis of calculation.  It certainly includes not only the seventy male members of Jacob’s family, with their wives and children, but also the families of their male-servants (circumcised according to the law, Gen. 17:12, 13, and therefore incorporated with the covenant people).  From the notices contained in Genesis, we learn that the families of the patriarchs were very numerous.  Gen. 14:14; 26:14; 32:10; 36:6, 7.  If Abraham was able to arm three hundred and eighteen “trained