mine. It is the opinion of some learned men, that this precept was given to preserve the people of Israel from the religion of the Egyptians, who honoured the cow as an animal sacred to Isis; and by consequence, abhorred the thought of presenting her at the altar. For this reason, it is supposed, Jehovah commanded a cow to be burnt, rather than a bullock; and one perfectly red, because that colour was held in great abhorrence by the Egyptians, who fancied that Typhon, in their superstition the source of all evil, was of this colour, and therefore they offered him red oxen in sacrifice. But it is doubtful, whether those superstitions, recorded by Plutarch and Herodotus, existed in the days of Moses; and still more, that the divine lawgiver, if he had any respect to the Egyptian rites, would have appointed so great a number of sacrifices, without any regard to colour, and mentioned it only in this instance, which was not a proper sacrifice. Lewis," and other writers imagine, that the difficulty of finding a red cow, without the least intermixture of any other hair, was the reason of the appointment. But it is not easy to conceive, why God, in this instance, had respect chiefly to the great difficulty of procuring a heifer of the required colour. In all his other appointments, the gracious lawgiver seems to have consulted the ease and convenience of his people, by requiring them to offer in his service what was at hand, and what they could easily afford. The difficulty of finding a heifer perfectly red, cannot then be admitted as the true reason of that appointment: nor has any satisfactory account been given, why the heifer was preferred on this occasion before the bullock. Some pious expositors consider the heifer as a type

Antiq. of the Heb. Repub. vol. ii, p. 510.

of our blessed Redeemer : its unblemished perfection, represented his imaculate purity, and sinless excellence; its red colour, indicated the relation of Christ to our family, descended from Adam, that is, a man formed of red earth: the shedding of his own blood for the sins of his people, and the complete victory which he has gained over all their enemies, whose blood he has sprinkled upon his vesture; its freedom from the yoke, his voluntary, his unrestrained devoting of himself to the work of redemption. No doubt can be reasonably entertained, that the burning of the red heifer did prefigure the sufferings and death of Christ; and the purifying efficacy of her collected ashes, mixed in water, the cleansing energy of his blood; for it is the blood of Christ alone that cleanseth from all sin.

The grass of the field, and the young shoots and leaves of the forest, supply the ox with food, which he collects by a peculiar action of his tongue, and devours in large quantities, with great rapidity. The first circumstance is mentioned by the Psalmist as an additional aggravation in the grovelling idolatry of Israel: "They changed their glory into the similitude of an ox, that eateth grass. Disregarding the dictates of reason, which had been planted in their bosoms by the inspiration of God, they exchanged the glorious manifestations or symbols of the divine presence, with which they were still favoured, into the form of an ox, which their Egyptian oppressors had exalted to the rank of a god, and absurdly worshipped; a stupid and irrational animal, doomed by his Maker to fix his brute countenance on the ground, to which both

s Varro de Re Rust. lib. ii, c. 5. Columella, lib. vii, cap. 3.

t Ps. evi, 20.

his soul and body return, and to subsist on the coarsest fare.

"To eat grass like an ox,' was a part of that signal punishment which the most High inflicted on the proud and tyrannical king of Babylon. Deprived of reason, which he had so greatly abused, and resigned to the full influence of bestial appetites, he was hurled from his throne and dignity, and expelled from the society of mankind, to roam naked in the open fields, exposed, like the herd with which he associated, to all the inclemencies of the heavens, and forced like them to feed on grass; a dreadful lesson to the oppressors of every succeeding age. To the second circumstance, or the manner in which the ox collects his food, the quantity which he devours, and the rapidity with which he eats down the pasture, the king of Moab alludes in his address to the elders of Midian, on the dangers to which their country was exposed from the dreaded invasion of the Israelitish armies: "And Moab said unto the elders of Midian, Now shall this company lick up all that are round about up the grass of the field."v

us, as the

ox licketh

In Egypt large herds of cattle are seen pasturing on the margin of the river. Those of the buffalo kind appear to be almost amphibious: during the heat of the day, such as are not employed in husbandry recline in the water with their whole frame immersed, except the head; and long strings of them traverse the current where it is broadest and most rapid, with the ease and regularity of an aquatic fowl. These were probably the "kine" which Pharaoh beheld in his dream as they

u Dan. iv, 29.

66

came up out of the river."w

Gen. xli, 3. Letters from Egypt, p. 254.

Under the special care of oriental husbandmen, the ox, in seasons of plenty, was regaled with a mixture of chaff, chopped straw, and various kinds of grain, carefully winnowed and moistened with subacid water. Such is the meaning of that prediction: "The oxen likewise and the young asses, that ear the ground, shall eat clean (or subacid) provender, which hath been winnowed with the shovel and with the fan." When the Lord returns to bless his repenting people, so rich and abundant shall be the produce of their fields, that the lower animals which toil in the service of man, and have assigned for their subsistence the very refuse of the harvest, shall share in the general plenty, and feed on provender, carefully separated from all offensive matters, and adapted to their taste. But, among the Jews, this animal fed most luxuriously when employed in treading out the corn; for the divine law, many of whose precepts the benevolence of Deity conspicuously shines, forbade to muzzle him, and by consequence, to prevent him from eating even to satiety of the grain which he was employed to separate from the husk. This allusion is involved in the prophet's address to the ten tribes, in which he warns them, that the abundance and tranquillity which they had so long enjoyed, should not exempt them from the punishments due to their multiplied crimes. Despising the frugal and laborious life of their ancestors, they had become slothful and voluptuous, Jike an ox that declines to bend his neck any longer to the yoke, and loves the easier employment of treading out the corn, where he riots without restraint in the accumulated bounties of Heaven: "Ephraim is as an heifer that is taught, (or has become nice and delicate,) and loveth

in

* Isa. xxx, 24.

to tread out the corn: but I passed over upon her fair neck."y

b

a

. Men of every age and country, have been much indebted to the labours of this animal; he was the first that resigned his neck to the yoke and his back to the load, that extended the prospects, and multiplied or enlarged the comforts of the rising nations. So early as the days of Job, who was probably the contemporary of Isaac, "the oxen were ploughing, and the asses feeding beside them," when the Sabeans fell upon them and took them away. In times long posterior, when Elijah was commissioned to anoint Elisha, the son of Shaphat, prophet in his stead, he found him ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen. For many ages, the hopes of oriental husbandmen depended entirely on their labours; this was so much the case in the time of Solomon, that he observes in one of his proverbs, "Where no oxen are the crib is clean, or rather empty; but much increase is by the strength of the ox. "d The ass, in the course of ages, was compelled to bend his stubborn neck to the yoke, and share in his labours; but still, the preparation of the ground in the time of spring, chiefly depended on the more powerful exertions of the latter. This may be fairly inferred from

y Hos. x, 11.

z Maurice's Indian Antiq. vol. iv, p. 350. Bochart. Hieroz. lib. ii, cap. 31, p. 301.

a The internal commerce of Hindostan has been in all ages carried on by means of oxen yoked to the wain, and, when greater dispatch was required, by means of the animal itself without the waggon. It is not unusual to lay upon his back 300 or 350 pounds weight. Maurice's Indian Antiq. vol. vi, p. 348.-So highly were his services prized in the East, that they elevated him to the rank of a god, and paid him religious homage. Ibid. vol. iv, p. 230, 231. d Prov. xiv, 4.

b Job i, 14.

c 1 Kings xix, 19.