For the cloud of the Lord hung over the tabernacle by day, and a fire by night, in the sight of all the children of Israel throughout all their mansions.

the cloud.

Exodus 13:21 And the Lord went before them to shew the way, by day in a pillar of a cloud, and by night in a pillar of fire; that he might be the guide of their journey at both times.

Numbers 9:15 Now on the day that the tabernacle was reared up, a cloud covered it. But from the evening there was over the tabernacle, as it were, the appearance of fire until the morning.

fire

Psalm 78:14 And he conducted them with a cloud by day: and all the night with a light of fire.

Psalm 105:39 He spread a cloud for their protection, and fire to give them light in the night.

Isaiah 4:5,6 And the Lord will create upon every place of mount Sion, and where he is called upon, a cloud by day, and a smoke and the brightness of a flaming fire in the night: for over all the glory shall be a protection. . . .

CONCLUDING REMARKS.

145 years. Moses, having in the Book of Genesis described the creation of the world, the origin of nations, and the peopling of the earth, details in the Book of Exodus the commencement and nature of the Jewish Church and Polity, which has very properly been termed a Theocracy, (from Theos, God, and krateo, to rule,) in which Jehovah appears not merely as their Creator and God, but as their King. Hence this and the following books of Moses are not purely historical; but contain not only laws for the regulation of their moral conduct and the rites and ceremonies of their religious worship, but judicial and political laws relating to government and civl life. The stupendous facts connected with these events, may be clearly perceived by consulting the marginal references; and many of the circumstances are confirmed by the testimony of heathen writers. Numenius, a Pythagorean philosopher, mentioned by Eusebius, speaks of the opposition of the magicians, whom he calls Jannes and Jambres, to the miracles of Moses. Though the names of these magicians are not preserved in the Sacred Text, yet tradition had preserved them in the Jewish records, from which Paul (2 Ti

Exodus 3:8 And knowing their sorrow, I am come down to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians, and to bring them out of that land into a good and spacious land, into a land that floweth with milk and honey, to the places of the Chanaanite, and Hethite, and Amorrhite, and Pherezite, and Hevite, and Jebusite.

,) undoubtedly quotes. Add to this that many of the notions of the heathen respecting the appearance of the Deity, and their religious institutions and laws, were borrowed from this book; and many of their fables were nothing more than distorted traditions of those events which are here plainly related by Moses.