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[5]
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 complete army of men, who might oppose a manly fortitude to the necessity
that distressed them; 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, - he was therefore in great difficulties, and made
everybody's calamity his own; 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 procure some way or other for their
deliverance. He therefore betook himself to prayer to God, that he would
change the water from its present badness, and make it fit for drinking.
And when God had granted him that favor, he took the top of a stick that
lay down at his feet, and divided it in the middle, and made the section
lengthways. He then let it down into the well, and persuaded the Hebrews
that God had hearkened to his prayers, and had promised to render the water
such as they desired it to be, in case they would be subservient to him
in what he should enjoin them to do, and this not after a remiss or negligent
manner. And when they asked what they were to do in order to have the water
changed for the better, he bid the strongest men among them that stood
there, to draw up water 1
and told them, that when the greatest part was drawn up, the remainder
would be fit to drink. So they labored at it till the water was so agitated
and purged as to be fit to drink.
1 The additions here to Moses's account of the sweetening of the waters at Marah, seem derived from some ancient profane author, and he such an author also as looks less authentic than are usually followed by Josephus. Philo has not a syllable of these additions, nor any other ancienter writer that we know of. Had Josephus written these his Antiquities for the use of Jews, he would hardly have given them these very improbable circumstances; but writing to Gentiles, that they might not complain of his omission of any accounts of such miracles derived from Gentiles, he did not think proper to conceal what he had met with there about this matter. Which procedure is perfectly agreeable to the character and usage of Josephus upon many occasions. This note is, I confess, barely conjectural; and since Josephus never tells us when his own copy, taken out of the temple, had such additions, or when any ancient notes supplied them; or indeed when they are derived from Jewish, and when from Gentile antiquity, —we can go no further than bare conjectures in such cases; only the notions of Jews were generally so different from those of Gentiles, that we may sometimes make no improbable conjectures to which sort such additions belong. See also somewhat like these additions in Josephus's account of Elisha's making sweet the bitter and barren spring near Jericho, War, B. IV. ch. 8. sect. 3.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
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