(1) We may here observe, that in correspondence to Joseph's second dream, which implied that his mother, who was then alive, as well as his father, should come and bow down to him, Josephus represents her here as still alive after she was dead, for the decorum of the dream that foretold it, as the interpretation of the dream does also in all our copies, Genesis 37:10.
(2) The Septuagint have twenty pieces of gold; the Testament of Gad thirty; the Hebrew and Samaritan twenty of silver; and the vulgar Latin thirty.What was the true number and true sum cannot therefore now be known.
(3) That is, bought it for Pharaoh at a very low price.
(4) This Potiphar, or, as Josephus, Petephres, who was now a priest of On, or Heliopolis, is the same name in Josephus, and perhaps in Moses also, with him who is before called head cook or captain of the guard, and to whom Joseph was sold.See Genesis 37:36; 39:1, with 41:50.They are also affirmed to be one and the same person in the Testament of Joseph, sect.18, for he is there said to have married the daughter of his master and mistress.Nor is this a notion peculiar to that Testament, but, as Dr.Bernard confesses, note on Antiq.B.II.ch.4.sect.1, common to Josephus, to the Septuagint interpreters, and to other learned Jews of old time.
(5) This entire ignorance of the Egyptians of these years of famine before they came, told us before, as well as here, ch.5.
sect.7, by Josephus, seems to me almost incredible.It is in no other copy that I know of.
(6) The reason why Symeon might be selected out of the rest for Joseph's prisoner, is plain in the Testament of Symeon, viz.that he was one of the bitterest of all Joseph's brethren against him, sect.2; which appears also in part by the Testament of Zabulon, sect.3.
(7) The coherence seems to me to show that the negative particle is here wanting, which I have supplied in brackets, and I wonder none have hitherto suspected that it ought to be supplied.
(8) Of the precious balsam of Judea, and the turpentine, see the note on Antiq.B.VIII.ch.6.sect.6.
(9) This oration seems to me too large, and too unusual a digression, to have been composed by Judas on this occasion.It seems to me a speech or declamation composed formerly, in the person of Judas, and in the way of oratory, that lay by him.and which he thought fit to insert on this occasion.See two more such speeches or declamations, Antiq.B.VI.ch.14.sect.4(10) In all this speech of Judas we may observe, that Josephus still supposed that death was the punishment of theft in Egypt, in the days of Joseph, though it never was so among the Jews, by the law of Moses.
(11) All the Greek copies of Josephus have the negative particle here, that Jacob himself was not reckoned one of the 70 souls that came into Egypt; but the old Latin copies want it, and directly assure us he was one of them.It is therefore hardly certain which of these was Josephus's true reading, since the number 70 is made up without him, if we reckon Leah for one; but if she be not reckoned, Jacob must himself be one, to complete the number.
(12) Josephus thought that the Egyptians hated or despised the employment of a shepherd in the days of Joseph; whereas Bishop Cumberland has shown that they rather hated such Poehnician or Canaanite shepherds that had long enslaved the Egyptians of old time.See his Sanchoniatho, p.361, 362.
(13) Reland here puts the question, how Josephus could complain of its not raining in Egypt during this famine, while the ancients affirm that it never does naturally rain there.His answer is, that when the ancients deny that it rains in Egypt, they only mean the Upper Egypt above the Delta, which is called Egypt in the strictest sense; but that in the Delta [and by consequence in the Lower Egypt adjoining to it] it did of old, and still does, rain sometimes.See the note on Antiq.B.III.
ch.1.sect.6.
(14) Josephus supposes that Joseph now restored the Egyptians their lands again.upon the payment of a fifth part as tribute.
It seems to me rather that the land was now considered as Pharaoh's land, and this fifth part as its rent, to be paid to him, as he was their landlord, and they his tenants; and that the lands were not properly restored, and this fifth part reserved as tribute only, till the days of Sesostris.See Essay on the Old Testament, Append.148, 149.
(15) As to this encomium upon Joseph, as preparatory to Jacob's adopting Ephraim and Manasses into his own family, and to be admitted for two tribes, which Josephus here mentions, all our copies of Genesis omit it, ch.48.; nor do we know whence he took it, or whether it be not his own embellishment only.
(16) As to the affliction of Abraham's posterity for 400 years, see Antiq.B.I.ch.10.sect.3; and as to what cities they built in Egypt, under Pharaoh Sesostris.and of Pharaoh Sesostris's drowning in the Red Sea, see Essay on the Old Testament, Append.p.132-162.
(17) Of this building of the pyramids of Egypt by the Israelites, see Perizonius Orig.Aegyptiac, ch.21.It is not impossible they might build one or more of the small ones; but the larger ones seem much later.Only, if they be all built of stone, this does not so well agree with the Israelites' labors, which are said to have been in brick, and not in stone, as Mr.Sandys observes in his Travels.p.127, 128.
(18) Dr.Bernard informs us here, that instead of this single priest or prophet of the Egyptians, without a name in Josephus, the Targum of Jonathan names the two famous antagonists of Moses, Jannes and Jambres.Nor is it at all unlikely that it might be one of these who foreboded so much misery to the Egyptians, and so much happiness to the Israelites, from the rearing of Moses.