yet a land wondrously rich in vineyard and orchard, mountain, valley, pasture and well-springs, its vales marvellously fair and sweet with flowers at this season of the year. A land flowing with milk and honey, their earthly paradise, the haven where they longed to be.

There, in the vale of Hebron, before he had been sold to the Ishmaelites, Joseph himself had lived as a child with Jacob his father who loved him. This was the land that, long time gone, had been promised of God not only to Jacob but to his father Isaac also, and to Abraham before him, who had worshipped him in faith and hope.

And now, after all these years of Israel’s woes and slavery, they themselves, children with all their lives before them, were about to set out on a journey to a place of peace and refuge for which those who were at rest in their graves had pined in vain with a heartsick longing. In time to come when they had grown up to be men and women, and when, with each returning Spring they kept again this solemn feast, their own children also would question them as they themselves had questioned him.

By then, it might be, the doings of this strange night would be no more than a faint, far memory in their minds. Let them strive then with all their might to keep it clear and vividly in remembrance, so that in their turn they should be able to tell their children all this feast had meant to them, and the wonders that had gone before, and would yet be revealed. Let it be to them for a lifelong token in their hearts; let them bind its remembrance like a frontlet between their brows.

The children listened, their eyes shining, their hearts wildly beating. They promised their father to do all that he had bidden them do, and to keep all that he had said in remembrance.

So, throughout Goshen this, the first feast of the Passover, was being kept; and all Israel was awake and ready.


  By PanEris using Melati.

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