XLIII. (1) In the 130th year after the Israelites had gone down to Egypt, Pharaoh dreamt a dream. While he was sitting on the throne of his kingdom he lifted up his eyes, and beheld an old man standing before him. In his hand he held a pair of scales as used by merchants. The old man then took the scales and, holding them up before Pharaoh, he laid hold of all the elders of Egypt and its princes, together with all its great men, and, having bound them together, placed them in one pan of the scales. After that he took a milch goat, and, placing it in the other pan, it outweighed all the others. Pharaoh then awoke, and it was a dream.
(2) Rising early next morning, he called all his servants, and told them the dream. They were sorely frightened by it, and one of the king's eunuchs said, 'This is nothing else than the foreboding of a great evil about to fall upon Egypt.' On hearing this the king said to the eunuch, 'What will it be?' And the eunuch replied, 'A child will be born in Israel, who will destroy all the land of Egypt.
sprout as the grass of the field, and as the young trees of the forest. Then they would return to their families, and to the house of their fathers, where they would remain. (6) Accordingly, it happened that after the earth had swallowed up, through the mercy of God, the males born of the house of Jacob, that the Egyptians went out into the field to plough with teams of oxen and with the ploughshare. They worked (ploughed) upon them as the spoiler in time of the harvest. But although they ploughed never so hard they were unable to injure them, and thus they increased abundantly.
[Another Version.—It came to pass at the time of birth that they left their children in the field, and the Lord, who swore to their ancestors that He would cause them to inherit the land, tamed for them the beasts of the field, and sustained and reared them, as it is said, 'And the beasts of the field were at peace with thee.' When the Egyptians saw that they (the Israelites) left their sons in the field, and that the wild beasts helped them, and led them in the forests until they had grown to manhood, they said, 'These have surely reared them in the caverns and vaults of the earth,' and each of them brought their ploughshare and their plough, and ploughed above them, etc.]