Pensees by Blaise Pascal

Author:Blaise Pascal
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141915647
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

SERIES XIII

[PARTICULAR PROPHECIES]

[484] Predictions of particular things. They were strangers in Egypt with no possession of their own in that country or anywhere else – (there was not the slightest sign of the kingship which came so long afterwards, nor of the supreme council of seventy judges, which they called the Sanhedrin, which was set up by Moses and went on up to the time of Christ. All these things were as far removed from their present state as they could be) – when Jacob on his death-bed blessed his twelve sons and told them they would enjoy possession of a great land, and in particular foretold to the family of Judah that the kings who should one day govern them would be of his race, and that all his brothers would be subject to him. (And that the Messiah who was to be the hope of the nations would be born of his line, and that the kingship would not be taken from Judah, nor the governor and lawgiver from his descendants, until the expected Messiah was born into his family.)

The same Jacob, disposing of this future land (and as if he were its master) gave to Joseph one more portion than the others. ‘I give you,’ he said, ‘one share more than your brothers.’1 And when he came to bless his two children, Ephraim and Manasseh, whom Joseph had presented to him with Manasseh the elder on his right and Ephraim the younger on his left, he crossed his arms, and, placing his right hand on Ephraim’s head and his left on that of Manasseh, he blessed them like that. When Joseph pointed out to him that he was giving preference to the younger, he answered with remarkable firmness: ‘I know, my son, I know it very well, but Ephraim will increase much more than Manasseh.’ So true did this turn out to be that, since Ephraim alone was almost as fruitful as two entire families composing a whole kingdom, they were commonly called by his name alone. The same Joseph as he died charged his children to carry his bones with them when they went to this land where they only arrived 200 years later.

Moses, who wrote down all these things so long before they happened, himself distributed to each family its share of the land, before they arrived there, as if he were master over it. And finally declared that God should raise up from their nation and their race a prophet whom he prefigured, and proclaimed to them on God’s behalf, with exact predictions, everything due to happen in the land into which they should enter after his death, the victories that God would give them, their ingratitude towards God, the punishments they would receive and the rest of their adventures.

He gave them judges to divide out the land. He prescribed the whole form of political government they should observe, the cities of refuge they should build, etc.

(711)

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