And it came to pass the selfsame day, that the LORD did bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their armies. The Lord did bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their armies, х `al (H5921) tsib'otaam (H6635)] - in consolidated organized bodies. х tsaabaa' (H6633) does not necessarily suggest the idea of war, and though it sometimes signifies an army, yet it is a regularly arranged band of men. In this passage it denotes the tribes and families of Israel ranged under their respective chiefs, and separated, it might be, at considerable distances from each other, as coming from different cities and districts of the land.]
The exodus, in Bunsen's view, instead of being a marvelous work of divine power, was merely an insurrection of the Hebrews in concert with the Bedouins of the adjoining desert, in a time of Egypt's weakness, in which Moses and his fellow-conspirators had quietly made preparations in the peninsula to ensure the success of their vast undertaking ('Egypt's Place,' vol. 2:, p. 266). But everyone who acknowledges the historical character of this narrative must believe, from the series of appalling phenomena that paved the way for it, that it was, as the historian piously remarks, the doing of the Lord. The population of Egypt never exceeded 8,000,000; and if 2,000,000 quitted Egypt at the time of the exodus, the loss of such a multitude of labourers and artisans must have dealt a severe blow to the material prosperity of that country. 'Not only were the fields of the Delta entirely void of produce, the fruits having been destroyed by the locusts and the hail, but the cities were without inhabitants. The withdrawal of more than two million of inhabitants, with all their possessions, must have been a misfortune irremediable to Egypt. The exodus was an event to tell upon the subsequent history of Egypt, and to leave its destructive traces on the yet imperished coeval records of her monuments, if it was an actual occurrence. Such traces certainly exist; but it is almost needless to say that they are of necessity altogether of a negative character' (Osburn's 'Mon. Hist.,' vol 2:, pp. 598-601; also 'The Exodus,' The traces thereof discoverable on the monuments of Egypt, by the same writer, 'Jour. Sac. Lit.,' No.
xxii., July, 1860, pp. 257-268.)
The main circumstances of the exodus, but disguised and confused to conceal the national disgrace, are related by the Egyptian historian, Manetho, whose narrative, as well as the shorter account by Choeremon, has been preserved by Josephus ('Contra Apionem,' b. 1:, 26,27,32; see also Corbaux's disentanglement of the errors and confusion in Manetho's narrative, in the Historical Introduction to Heath's 'Hieratic Papyri,' pp. 30-32). The exodus was typical of a future and greater deliverance; for as ancient Israel was a type of the Christian Church, so the rescue of that people from the house of bondage adumbrated the spiritual deliverance obtained for Christians from the effects of sin. Nay, further, the exodus, with the series of miracles that preceded and followed it, was in order to the manifestation in the fullness of time of a future Redeemer; the one liberation was effected to prepare the way for the other (Pye Smith's 'Scrip. Test.,' vol. 1: p. 369).
Further still, our blessed Lord carried from dire necessity to Egypt in early childhood, found an asylum in that very region which afforded a cradle to the Hebrew race; and hence, the prophetic saying was applied to Him, "Out of Egypt have I called my Son" - because the Christ is in the highest sense the promised seed; 'because He is the Head and Antitype of God's collective First-born; and because He alone realized in all their fullness the exalted characteristics which Israel as a nation was commissioned to exhibit and diffuse (Hardwick, 'Christ and other Masters,' vol 1:, p. 131).