Egyptians in all
attitudes of entreaty cumbered their path--Egyptians, born to the
purple, rich, proud, powerful, on their faces to enslaved Israel!
Meneptah wrenched himself from Hotep's sustaining arms and, staggering
forward, all but on his knees, met them.
"Rise up and get you forth from among my people," he besought them,
"both ye and the children of Israel, and go and serve the Lord as ye
have said. Also take your flocks and your herds as ye have said, and
be gone; and bless me also!"
Great was the fall for a Pharaoh to pray a blessing from the hands of a
slave; great was his humility to kneel to them. But there was no
triumph, no exultation on the faces of the Hebrews. Aaron, with his
bearded chin on his breast, looked down on the head of the shuddering,
pleading monarch; but Moses, after sad contemplation of the humbled
king, raised his splendid head and gazed with kindling eyes at Har-hat.
Then with the words, "It is well," spoken without animation, he turned
and, with his brother, disappeared into the dusk of the long corridor.
The expression, the act, the mode of departure seemed to indicate that
the Israelites doubted the stability of the king's intent. In a
moment, therefore, the courtiers were pursuing the departing brothers,
urging and praying with all their former wild insistence.
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