ON THE LIFE OF MOSES.

and of those who had adopted him, he cherished good will and ardent affection toward the former and displayed gratitude toward the latter in return for the kindness he had received. He would have displayed this same balance throughout his whole life had he not beheld a great and novel iniquity wrought in the country by the king. For, as I have said before, the Jews were strangers in Egypt; the founders of their race had migrated from Babylon and the upper regions during the time of the famine because of their lack of food. They had settled in Egypt and, in a manner, had taken refuge like suppliants (petitioners seeking protection) in the country as in a sacred asylum, fleeing to the good faith of the king and the compassion of the inhabitants. In my opinion, strangers should be looked upon as refugees and as the suppliants of those who receive them. Moreover, as suppliants, these men were likewise sojourners in the land and friends desiring to be admitted to equal honors with the citizens, and neighbors differing but little in character from the natives.

The king of the country, however, reduced these men who had left their homes and come into Egypt—expecting to dwell there as in a second country in perfect security—to slavery. As if he had taken them prisoners by the laws of war, or bought them from masters in whose houses they had been bred, he oppressed them and treated them as slaves, even though they were free men, strangers, and suppliants. He had no respect for, nor any awe of, God, who presides over the rights of free men, strangers, and suppliants, and who observes all such actions. He laid commands on them beyond their power to fulfill, imposing labor upon labor; and when they fainted from weakness, the sword was used against them.

He appointed overseers over their works—the most pitiless and inhuman of men—who pardoned and made allowance for no one, and whom the people, from the circumstances and their behavior, called "persecutors of work." They worked with clay, some fashioning it into bricks, others collecting straw from all quarters (for straw is the bond that holds bricks together), while others had the task allotted to them of building houses, walls, and gates, and cutting...