Oriental customs: or an illustration of the sacred Scriptures, by an explanatory application of the customs and manners of the Eastern nations, and especially the Jews. Therein alluded to, together with observations on many difficult and obscure texts, collected from the most celebrated travellers, and the most eminent critics / by Samuel Burder.

Samuel Burder

Date:: 1802

Credit: Oriental customs: or an illustration of the sacred Scriptures, by an explanatory application of the customs and manners of the Eastern nations, and especially the Jews. Therein alluded to, together with observations on many difficult and obscure texts, collected from the most celebrated travellers, and the most eminent critics / by Samuel Burder. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$his head is, that Pharoah would take out the peg, which had the cup-bearer’s name on the top of it, to read it, i. e. would sit in judgment, and make examination into his accounts ; for it seems very probable that both he and the baker had been either suspected or accused ot having cheated the king, and that, when their accounts were examined and cast up, the one was acquitted, while the other was found guilty. And though Joseph uses the same expression in both cases, yet we may observe that, speaking to the baker, he adds, that Pharoah shall lift up thine head from of thee, i. e. shall order tliy name to be struck out of the list of his servants, by taking thy^ peg out of the socket.” Bibliotheca Bibl. in locum, cited in Stackhouse’s Hist, of the Bible, vol. i. p. 331. No. 28.—xli. 40. Thou shalt be over my home, and according to thy word shall all my people be ruled.\ The Easterns kiss what comes from the hand of a superior. The editor of the Ruins of Balbec observed, that the Arab governor of that city respectfully applied the fir- man of the grand seignior (which was presented to him) to his forehead when he and his fellow travellers first waited on him, and then kissed it, declaring himself the sultan’s slave’s slave (p. 4.). Is not this what Pharoah refers to in these words : Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word, or on account of thy word, shall all my people kiss (for so it is in the original) only in the throne will I be greater than thou; that is, I imagine, the orders of Joseph were to be received with the great- est respect by all, and kissed by the most illustrious of the princes of Egypt. Harm.er, vol. ii. p. 48. No. 29.—xlii. 15. By the life of Pharoah. ] Extraor- dinary as the kind of oath which Joseph made use of may appear to us, it still continues in the East. Mr. HanWjAY says, the most sacred oath among the Per-$

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