from all foreign aggression, they there enjoyed abundance, peace, and
prosperity, to which their wanderings in the desert furnished a sad
contrast.

The policy of Egypt had excluded the Israelites from her crimes. The
energy, the love of change and adventure, which a martial life imparts,
were unfelt; and had not oppression driven the Israelites from Egypt,
the promise of that goodly land destined for their race had hardly
induced the nation to leave their present abundance and protection.
Thus, by the various dispensations of his providence, Jehovah was at
once preparing a guide, leader, ruler, and future lawgiver for his
people, while by the continued vexation, oppression, and cruelty of the
Egyptian rulers, he was suffering them to alienate the affections of the
children of Jacob from a country which had become the native land of the
Israelites, which was the birth-place of generation after generation.

At the time Miriam, the sister of Moses, appears before us, the children
of Israel had reached the fourth generation. A family had become a
nation, a people in the bosom of another, dwelling together, distinct,
separate, too numerous to be easily or safely held in subjection, too
valuable as tributaries to be relinquished. Thus to hold them safely in
bondage and to prevent their further increase, it became the settled
policy of Egypt to oppress and degrade them. As their jealous
apprehensions were at length awakened, by a policy as profound as it was
cruel, the Egyptian monarchs endeavoured, in destroying the sons of this
people, to force the daughters of Israel to intermarry with their
oppressors, that they might obtain the wealth of the sons of Jacob,
while the name and memory of his family would be swept from the earth.
Yet dwelling, as the Israelites did, in a separate province, it was not
easy for Pharaoh to find those who would execute his purposes; and the