shepherds. Now the shepherds, we are told, were the direct natural enemies of the Egyptians who lived in towns. The shepherds also sacrificed the god whom the Egyptians worshipped. We cannot (says Moses[1]) sacrifice in this land the abomination of the Egyptians, lest they stone us. If the Egyptians did not eat with them, so neither would they with the Egyptians; but it is a mistake that the Egyptians did not eat flesh as well as the shepherds, it was only the flesh of certain animals they differed on, and did not eat.
The Egyptians worshipped the cow[2], and the shepherds lived upon her flesh, which made them a separate people, that could not eat nor communicate together; and the very knowledge of this was, as we are informed by scripture, the reason why Joseph told Pharaoh, when he asked him what profession his brethren were of, "Your servants, says Joseph, are shepherds, and their employment the feeding of cattle;" and this was given out, that the land of Goshen might be allotted to them, and so they and their descendents he kept separate from the Egyptians, and not exposed to mingle in their abominations. Or, though they had abstained from these abominations, they could not kill cattle for sacrifice or for food. They would have raised ill-will against themselves, and, as Moses says, would have been stoned, and so the end of bringing them to Goshen would have been frustrated, which was to nurse them in a plentiful land, in peace and security, till they should attain to be a mighty people, capable of subduing and filling the land to which, at the end of their captivity, God was to lead them.
