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Moses fasted 80 days7/3/2023 And when God had granted him that favour, he took the top of a stick that lay down at his feet, and divided it in the middle, and made the section length ways. He therefore betook himself to prayer to God, that he would change the water from its present badness, and make it fit for drinking. For they ran all of them to him, and begged of him: the women begged for their infants, and the men for the women, that he would not overlook them, but would procure some way or other for their deliverance. Moses therefore was in great difficulties, and made every body’s calamity his own. The multitude of the children and of the women also, being of too weak capacities to be persuaded by reason, blunted the courage of the men themselves. When Moses saw how much the people were cast down, and that the occasion of it could not be contradicted: for the people were not in the nature of a compleat army of men, who might oppose a manly fortitude to the necessity that distressed them. Yet was this water bitter, and not fit for men to drink: and not only so, but it was intolerable even to the cattel themselves.Ģ. Now here was a well, which made them chuse to stay in the place: which although it were not sufficient to satisfy so great an army, did yet afford them some comfort, as found in such desert places: for they heard from those who had been to search, that there was nothing to be found, if they travelled on farther. Thither they came afflicted, both by the tediousness of their journey, and by their want of food for it intirely failed them at that time. And as they thus travelled, they came late in the evening to a place called Marah: (1) which had that name from the badness of its water for Mar denotes bitterness. Moreover, what water they found was bitter, and not fit for drinking, and this in small quantities also. They had indeed carried water along with them from the land over which they had travelled before, as their conductor had bidden them but when that was spent they were obliged to draw water out of wells, with pain, by reason of the hardness of the soil. So they were forced to travel over this countrey, as having no other countrey but this to travel in. When the Hebrews had obtained such a wonderful deliverance, the countrey was a great trouble to them, for it was intirely a desert, and without all sustenance for them, and also had exceeding little water, so that it not only was not at all sufficient for the men, but not enough to feed any of the cattel for it was parched up, and had no moisture that might afford nutriment to the vegetables. How Moses, when he had brought the people out of Egypt, led them to mount Sinai but not till they had suffered much in their journey.ġ. Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, Book IIIįrom the Exodus out of Egypt, to the rejection of that generation.
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