of
how the news of Joseph's being alive and the viceroy of Egypt was
conveyed to the aged and sorrow-stricken Jacob. When the brethren had
returned to the land of Canaan, after their second expedition, they were
perplexed how to communicate to their father the joyful intelligence
that his long-lamented son still lived, fearing it might have a fatal
effect on the old man if suddenly told to him. At length Serach, the
daughter of Asher, proposed that she should convey the tidings to her
grandfather in a song. Accordingly she took her harp, and sang to Jacob
the whole story of Joseph's life and his present greatness, and her
music soothed his spirit; and when he fully realised that his son was
yet alive, he fervently blessed her, and she was taken into Paradise,
without tasting of death.[70]

[70] "Jacob's grief" is proverbial in Muslim countries. In
the Kuran, _sura_ xii, it is stated that the patriarch
became totally blind through constant weeping for the
loss of Joseph, and that his sight was restored by means
of Joseph's garment, which the governor of Egypt sent by
his brethren.--In the _Makamat_ of Al-Hariri, the
celebrated Arabian poet (A.D. 1054-1122), Harith bin
Hamman is represented as saying that he passed a night
of "Jacobean sorrow," and another imaginary character is
said to have "wept more than Jacob when he lost his
son."

_Moses and Pharaoh._

The slaughter of the Hebrew male children by the cruel command of the
"Pharoah who knew not Joseph" was a precaution adopted, we are informed
by the Rabbis, in consequence of a dream which that monarch had, of an
aged man who held a balance in his right hand; in one scale he placed
all the sages and nobles of Egypt, and in the other a little lamb, which
weighed down them all. In the morning Pharaoh told his strange dream to
his counsellors, who were greatly terrified, and Bi'lam, the son of
Beor, the magician, said: "This dream, O King, forebodes great
affliction, which one of the children of Israel will bring upon Egypt."
The king asked the soothsayer whether this threatened evil might not be
avoided. "There is but one way of averting the calamity--cause every
male child of Hebrew parents to be slain at birth." Pharaoh approved of
this advice, and issued an edict accordingly. The Egyptian monarch's
kind-hearted daughter (whose name, by the way, was Bathia), who rescued
the infa