Gen. l. 24.—Josh. xxiv. 32.
Once when God was talking to Abraham, and promising to give the Land
of Canaan to his children, He told him that they should be strangers
in a land which was not theirs for four hundred years, and should be
afflicted by those among whom they dwelt; but "also the nation whom
they shall serve will I judge," said God, "and afterwards shall they
come out with great substance."
The Children of Israel, who are now called the Jews, travelled from
Canaan into Egypt to their brother Joseph, because, of the great
famine, and lived in Egypt for four hundred and twenty years.
But when Joseph came to die, he called his brothers to his side and
uttered this prophecy: "I die; and God will surely visit you, and
bring you out of this land which He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and
to Jacob." And Joseph took an oath of his brothers, saying: "God will
surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence."
So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten years, and they embalmed
and put him in a coffin in Egypt.
But when the time came for the children of Israel to be delivered from
Egypt, as they escaped from their cruel task-masters, in all their
hurry and confusion, Moses remembered to take the bones of Joseph with
him; and as the Children of Israel wandered in the Wilderness, they
bore that coffin with them, till at last they reached the land of
Canaan which God had promised to give them. Here Joshua, who led the
people after Moses' death, buried the bones of Joseph in Shechem, in a
piece of ground which Jacob had bought before he was carried down into
Egypt at the time of the famine.
Thus the prophecy uttered hundreds of years before was fulfilled to the
very letter.