Once again, we see Kipling's extremely detailed knowledge, and imaginative use,
of the Bible. It's more specific than George's suggestion.
First of all I looked at Exodus 14:11-12, where the Israelites see Pharaoh's
army approaching before the crossing of the Red Sea. Quoting from the New
Revised Standard Version, which is clearer than the King James in this case:
They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have
taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us
out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, 'Let us alone
and let us serve the Egyptians'? for it would have been better for us to serve
the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness."
Then I found similar expressions in Exodus 16:4 and Exodus 17:4.
Then I looked up the parallel account in Numbers 11, and got very excited,
because there I find a similar account of the complaint in verse 4, but then in
verse 11:
So Moses said to the Lord, "Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why
have I not found favour in your sight, that you lay the BURDEN of all this
people on me? Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that
you should say to me, 'Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking
child.' ... Where am I to get meat to feed all these people? For they come
weeping to me and say, 'Give us meat to eat!'"
... and so the complaint goes on, in terms that would certainly have struck a
chord with Kipling. I am reminded of his descriptions of the famine in 'William
the Conqueror'.
Liz Breuilly
George Engle wrote:
> "Why brought ye us from bondage" refers, I take it , to Exodus 20.2 -
> "And God spake all these words, saying, I am the LORD thy God, which have
> brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" -words
> which preface the Ten Commandments.
> As far as I know, the words "Our loved Egyptian night" are Kipling's,
> and describe the supposed unwillingness of the Israelites to adopt the moral
> standards embodied in the Command-ments. If I am right , then the inverted
> commas round the last two lines of stanza 5 indicate that this is the cry of
> "the hosts ye humour...toward the light"[i.e the indigenous population
> coming under white administration], and not a verbatim quotation from the
> Bible or anywhere else
> George Engle
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