Interesting bits from Sefer HaYashar

AAnd it came to pass in the one hundred and thirtieth year of Israel’s going down ‎into Egypt, and Pharaoh dreamed, and behold, he sat upon his regal throne, and he saw, and ‎behold, an old man stood opposite him, and in the hand of the old man was a pair of scales like ‎unto the scales of the merchants, and the old man took the scales. And cast them down ‎before Pharaoh. And the old man took all the elders of Egypt and all the princes and great ‎men, and he tied them together and placed them into one scale; and then he took a kid and ‎placed it into the other scale, and the kid was heavier than all the elders, princes and great ‎men. And Pharoah awoke and behold, it was a dream. And when Pharaoh rose up in the ‎morning and he related his dream unto his servants, the men were all in great fear. And ‎Pharaoh said to all of his wise men: I pray you, interpret the dream which I have dreamed, and ‎let me know its meaning. And Balaam, the son of Beor, answered unto the king, and he said ‎unto him: This can have reference to nothing else but to a great evil, which will grow up against ‎Egypt in the latter days; for behold, a son will be born unto Israel, who will lay all Egypt into ‎ruins, and destroy all its inhabitants, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt with a powerful hand.‎

And now, our lord and king, reflect over this matter and crush the strength of Israel, and their ‎hope, before this great evil grows up over all Egypt.‎‏ ‏And Pharaoh replied unto Balaam: And ‎what is it that we can do unto the Israelites? for have we not had our plans concerning them ‎time and again, and yet we could not prevail over them ? And now give thou thy counsel ‎concerning what we should do unto the children of Israel. And Balaam answered unto the ‎king, saying: Send now for thy two counselors and let us see what they will advise concerning ‎this, and afterwards thy servant will speak. And the king sent for his two counselors, for Reuel, ‎the Midianite, and Job, the Uzite, and they came and seated themselves before the king, and ‎the king said unto them: Behold, both of you have heard the dream I have dreamed, as also its ‎interpretation, and now counsel ye and reflect concerning what hath to be done unto the ‎children of Israel in order that we prevail over them, before their evil will grow upon us. And ‎Reuel, the Midianite, answered unto the king saying: May the king live; may the king live ‎forever: If it please the king let him desist from the Hebrews and leave them to themselves, ‎and let him not stretch out his hand against them; for they are the people whom the Lord hath ‎chosen in days of old, and he took them as the portion of his inheritance from the midst of all ‎the nations of the earth and the kings of the earth; and who is he that hath ever put forth his ‎hand against them with impunity, without being punished by their Lord?

And Moses said unto Pharaoh: My lord, I have come to ask a small favor of thee, and I pray ‎thee not to turn my face away empty; and Pharaoh said unto him: Speak. And Moses said unto ‎Pharaoh: Grant thou that thy servants, the children of Israel, be given one day to rest from ‎their labor. And Pharaoh said: Behold, I will grant that request, for thy sake. And Pharaoh ‎ordered it to be proclaimed through all Egypt and Goshen, saying: Thus said the king unto you, ‎all ye children of Israel: For six days you shall do your work and on the seventh day you shall ‎rest and not perform any labor; thus shall ye do all the days accord ing to the commandment of ‎the king and of Moses, son of Bathia. And Moses rejoiced greatly at the thing with which the ‎king had favored him, and all the children of Israel did as Moses had commanded unto them. ‎And this was ordained by the Lord, for the Lord had begun to remember the children of Israel ‎to deliver them for the sake of their fathers. And when Moses was eighteen years of age, he ‎desired to see his father and mother, and he went unto them to Goshen, and he saw the ‎burden of his brethren, and he saw an Egyptian smiting one of his brethren, the Hebrews. And ‎when the smitten man saw Moses he ran unto him for help, for Moses was greatly respected ‎in the house of Pharaoh, and he said unto him: My lord, I pray thee, this Egyptian came unto ‎my house by night and he bound me and defiled my wife in my presence, and now he seeketh ‎to take my life. And when Moses heard of this wicked action he was very wroth at the ‎Egyptian, and he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he ‎slew the Egyptian and hid him in the sand, and delivered the Hebrew from the hand of his ‎oppressor. And when the man returned home he desired to separate from his wife, for it was ‎not lawful in the house of Jacob for any man to come unto his wife if she was defiled; and the ‎woman went and informed her brothers and they wanted to slay him; but he fled into his ‎house and escaped. And on the second day, when Moses went forth to his brethren and ‎behold the two men were quarreling, and Moses said to the wicked one: Wherefore smitest ‎thou thy fellow And he answered unto him and said: Who made thee a prince and a judge ‎over us? intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the Egyptian And Moses feared and said: ‎Surely, this thing is known.‎

And when Pharaoh heard of this occurrence he ordered Moses to be slain, but God sent his ‎angel and he appeared in the guise of a captain of the guards before Pharaoh. And the angel ‎seized the sword from the hand of a captain of the guard and he cut off the captain's head, for ‎the likeness of the captain was turned into the likeness of Moses. And the angel took Moses ‎by the right hand and transferred him from Egypt a distance of forty days’ journey.

And it was ‎at the time of the war and siege of Cush that Moses fled from Egypt and he came into the ‎camp of Kikianus who was besieging Cush at that time, and Moses was nine years in the camp, ‎through all the time of the siege of Cush. And the king and the princes and all the soldiers ‎loved Moses, for he was very efficient and worthy, his stature and strength was like a lion’s, ‎and his countenance beamed like the sun, and he was the king's counselor. And at the end of ‎nine years Kikianus fell sick—it was the disease of which he died, for his sickness overpowered ‎him and he died on the seventh day. And his servants embalmed him and they carried him ‎away and they buried him opposite the gates of the city northwards of Egypt, and they ‎erected over him a lofty and costly building, and they placed large stones upon it, and the ‎scribes of the king wrote down upon these stones all the heroic deeds of Kikianus, and all the ‎wars in which he participated, and behold they are there in writing even to this day.‎ And after the death of Kikianus, his people were very grieved on account of the war, and they ‎said to each other: Let us counsel together what we are to do, for we have been living in the ‎wilderness away from our homes, nine years this day. If we continue to fight against the city, ‎then many of us will be wounded and slain, and if we keep up the siege we shall die likewise. ‎For now all the Kings of Aram and the people of the east will hear that our king is dead, and ‎they will come upon us suddenly, and they will fight against us, and they will not leave of us a ‎remnant. Come then and let us select a king and continue the siege until the city is given into ‎our hands. And they searched all the army of Kikianus for a man fit to be king over them, and ‎they found none like Moses worthy to be king over them; and they hastened and stripped ‎themselves of their garments and cast them upon the ground, and they made a great heap. ‎And placed Moses upon it, and they rose up and blew the trumpets and they exclaimed ‎before him, saying: May the king live; may the king live. And all the princes and the people ‎swore to give him for a wife Adoniah, the queen of Cush, wife of Kikianus, and they crowned ‎Moses their king on that day. And all the people of Cush proclaimed in a loud voice: Every man ‎must give unto Moses something of what he hath in his possession. And they spread out a ‎cloth upon the heap and every man threw into it something of what he had, nose rings and ‎coins, and onyx stones, and baellium, and pearls and rare stones, and silver and gold in great ‎abundance, and Moses took all that the sons of Cush had given unto him, and he put it into his ‎treasury; and Moses was king over the sons of Cush from that day on instead of Kikianus, their ‎former king. In the fifty fifth year of Pharaoh’s being king over Egypt, which is the one ‎hundredth and fifty-seventh year of the Israelites going down to Egypt, Moses was made king ‎of Cush; he was twenty-seven years of age when he began reigning, and for forty years did he ‎reign. And the Lord caused Moses to find grace in the eyes of the sons of Cush, and they loved ‎him greatly, and Moses was liked by the Lord and by men.

Thus ‎Moses left the land of Cush and he went his way after he ceased to be king over Cush; and ‎Moses was sixty seven years of age when he departed from the land of Cush, and this was ‎ordained by the Lord, for the time had come which he had appointed in times of old, when he ‎was to bring forth the children of Israel from the affliction of the sons of Ham.‎‏ ‏And Moses ‎went to Midian, as he was afraid to return unto Egypt on account of Pharaoh, and he went and ‎seated himself at the well of water in Midian.‎

‏And Moses related unto Reuel, that he had fled from Egypt and that he had been reigning for ‎forty years over Cush, and how they had deprived him of his kingdom, and sent him away in ‎peace with honor and with gifts.‎‏ ‏And when Reuel heard the words of Moses he said within ‎himself: I will put this man into the prison house and gain favor by the children of Cush on his ‎account, for he hath surely fled from them; and they took him and put him into the prison ‎house, and Moses remained in prison for ten years.‎‏ ‏And while Moses was in the prison house, ‎Zipporah, Reuel’s daughter, had pity upon him, and she supplied Moses with bread and with ‎water all the time.‎‏ ‏And all the children of Israel were still in the land of Egypt, and they served ‎the Egyptians in all manner of hard labor, and the hand of Egypt continued in its rigor over the ‎children of Israel in those days. ‎

At that time the Lord smote Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, with the plague of leprosy, from the ‎sole of his foot to the crown of his head, and on account of the rigorous labor of the children of ‎Israel this plague was visited upon Pharaoh at that time by the Lord; for the Lord had listened ‎unto the prayer of Israel, his people, and their crying came before him on account of their hard ‎labor.‎‏ ‏And for all that, Pharaoh’s anger was not turned away from them, and his hand ‎continued outstretched against the children of Israel, and Pharaoh stiffened his neck before ‎the Lord and he made the yoke of Israel heavier, and he embittered their lives in all manner of ‎hard work.‎‏ ‏And when the Lord had smitten Pharaoh, he sent for all his magicians and wise ‎men to come and cure him.‎‏ ‏And his wise men and magicians said that the blood of little babes ‎be put upon the wounds, and they would be healed.‎‏ ‏And Pharaoh listened unto them, and he ‎sent his officers to Goshen, to the children of Israel, to take away their little babes.‎‏ ‏And ‎Pharaoh’s officers went and they tore away the little infants forcibly from the breasts of their ‎mothers, and they brought them unto Pharaoh day after day, one infant each day, and the ‎physicians slaughtered them, and applied the blood to his sores, and thus did they all the days.‎‏ ‏And the number of infants that Pharaoh had slaughtered in this manner, was three hundred ‎and seventy-five; but the Lord did not hearken unto the physicians of the king, and the plague ‎grew always more painful, and Pharaoh continued to suffer the plague of that disease for ten ‎years, and yet Pharaoh's heart grew always in cruelty against the children of Israel.‎‏ ‏And at the ‎end of ten years the Lord added blow upon blow and sore upon sore unto the king of Egypt, ‎and the Lord smote him with malignant sores and abdominal diseases, and the plague ‎assumed its worst forms. At that time two of the king's officers had returned from Goshen and ‎they said unto Pharaoh: We have seen the children of Israel very careless of their work, and ‎very negligent in their labor.‎‏ ‏And when Pharaoh heard the words of his officers, Pharaoh’s ‎anger was kindled against the children of Israel, for he was at the time suffering from great ‎physical pain, and he answered, saying: Behold, now, since the children of Israel know that I ‎am sick, they turn around and deride us; but hasten ye now and harness my chariot, that I go ‎to Goshen and see the children of Israel, and the manner in which they are deriding me.‎‏ ‏And ‎his servants harnessed for him the chariot, and they seated him upon the horse, for he was ‎not able to ride in the chariot, and he took with him ten horsemen and ten footmen, and he ‎went to the children of Israel unto Goshen.‎

Meantime Moses, the ‎son of Amram, was still confined in the prison house in those days, in the house of Reuel, the ‎Midianite, and his daughter Zipporah supplied Moses secretly with food day after day. And at ‎the end of ten years, which was the first year of the kingdom of the new Pharaoh, Zipporah ‎said unto Reuel, her father: Behold, the Hebrew man whom thou hast bound in the prison ‎house is there for ten years, and yet no man inquired or searched for him; and now if it ‎seemeth good in thine eyes, let us send and see whether he be dead or alive; and her father ‎knew not that she had supported him. And her father said unto her: Hath ever such a thing ‎come to pass, that a man could stand to be ten years in prison without eating and live? And ‎Zipporah answered unto her father, saying: Verily, thou hast heard that the God of the ‎Hebrews is great and fearful, and that he works wonders in their behalf at all times.

d unto the Lord his God, who had done with ‎him such great wonders. And whilst he was praying he looked before him, and beheld a rod of ‎the saphir tree, which had been planted in the midst of the garden. And he approached the ‎rod, and looking at it closer, he saw the name of the Lord, the God of hosts, engraved upon ‎the rod in distinct characters. And he read it, and put forth his hand, and he extracted it from ‎the ground wherein it was rooted, like a tree in the forest. And this is the rod with which all the ‎wonders of our God have been performed from the day he finished heaven and earth and all ‎their hosts, the oceans and streams, and all their fishes. And when God drove Adam from the ‎Garden of Eden, Adam took this rod along with him, and he went to till the ground whence he ‎was taken. And the rod was transmitted to Noah and through him to Shem and his ‎descendants, and then it came into the hands of Abraham, the Hebrew; and when Abraham ‎gave all his property unto Isaac, his son, he gave him this rod likewise. And when Jacob fled to ‎Padan-aram he took that rod with him, and when he returned to his father the rod was not ‎forgotten. And when Jacob went down to Egypt he gave that rod unto Joseph, saying: I have ‎given to thee a portion above thy brethren which I took out of the hands of the Amorite; for ‎Jacob took it forcibly from Esau, his brother. And after the death of Joseph, when the princes ‎of Egypt came into his house, the rod fell into the hands of Reuel, the Midianite, and when he ‎left Egypt he took it along and planted it into his garden. And whenever a man came to ask ‎Zipporah for a wife, Reuel would tell him to extract the rod from the ground, for she would not ‎be given for a wife to any man who could not pluck it. And all the powerful men of the Kanites ‎tried to pluck that stick, for they endeavored to get Zipporah, his daughter, but they could not. ‎Thus that rod remained in Reuel's garden until the man came who had the right to take it. And ‎when Reuel saw the rod plucked by the hand of Moses, he was greatly astonished, and he ‎gave his daughter Zipporah unto Moses for a wife. ‎

And God smote Pharaoh and his people with very terrible ‎plagues, and he turned by the hands of Aaron all the waters of Egypt into blood, and when an ‎Egyptian came to drink and drew water and he looked into his pitcher, behold it was turned ‎into blood, and also when a woman kneaded her bread or cooked her meals, all had the ‎appearance of blood. And the Lord sent again, and he caused all the waters to produce frogs, ‎so that the frogs came into the houses of the Egyptians, and when the Egyptians drank the ‎water, their stomachs were filled with frogs, and they leaped within them like in the river. And ‎all the water they used for cooking and drinking turned into frogs, and when they lay upon ‎their beds, they perspired frogs from their body. But for all that the anger of the Lord did not ‎turn from them, and his hand was still out stretched upon all Egypt, to smite them with all the ‎terrible plagues; and he sent and turned their dust into lice, so that the ground of Egypt was ‎covered with lice two cubits in height. And the lice were also upon the flesh of man and beast ‎among all the people of Egypt, and also upon the king and the queen, and Egypt was greatly ‎afflicted on account of the lice. But for all that the anger of the Lord did not turn, and his hand ‎was still outstretched over Egypt, and the Lord sent all the beasts of the field, and they came ‎and destroyed man and beast, and the trees, and all that was in Egypt. Then the Lord sent fiery ‎serpents, and scorpions, and mice, and rats, and weasels, and other vermin, that creepeth in ‎the dust, as also flies and fleas and all sorts of insects, and they came and tortured the ‎Egyptians, entering even their eyes and their ears. Then the hornets came over them also, and ‎they drove them to hide in their innermost chambers, and the Egyptians had to hide ‎themselves from the swarms of vermin and they locked the doors after them. But the Lord ‎commanded the Tulzoth, the great monster of the sea to come up and invade Egypt; and she ‎had very long arms, ten cubits in length according to the cubits of a man, and she went up and ‎unroofed their houses, and she put forth her arms into the houses and removed the bolts and ‎bars and opened the houses of the Egyptians, and the swarm of animals filled the houses of ‎the Egyptians, to torture them exceedingly.‎ But for all that the anger of the Lord did not turn from Egypt, and his arm was still outstretched ‎upon them, and he sent the pestilence to rage in Egypt amongst horses, and asses, and ‎camels, and oxen, and sheep, and man, and when the Egyptians rose up in the morning to ‎drive their cattle to pasture, they found it dead. And there remained only one out of ten of ‎the cattle of the Egyptians, but of the cattle belonging to the Israelites in Egypt not one died. ‎And God sent burning heat into the bodies of the Egyptians that their flesh burst and turned ‎into malignant sores on all the Egyptians from the soles of their feet to the crowns of their ‎heads, and they had ulcers all over their bodies that their flesh sloughed away in stench. But ‎the Lord’s anger did not turn for all this, and his hand was still outstretched upon Egypt, and he ‎sent a heavy hail storm which smote their vines, and injured their fruit trees, so that they dried ‎up and finally fell upon the people. And every green herb became blighted and destroyed, for ‎fire was mingled with the hail, and therefore the fire and hail consumed all things on the field, ‎also man and beast that were found in the streets, so that the villages became depopulated. ‎Then the Lord brought into Egypt all sorts of locusts in great numbers, and they devoured all ‎that was left after the hail. Then all the Egyptians were pleased with the locusts, although they ‎consumed all the productions of the field, for the Egyptians caught them in great numbers and ‎salted them for food; but the Lord turned a mighty sea wind which carried away all the locusts, ‎even those that were salted, and cast them into the Red Sea, and not a single locust remained ‎within the boundaries of Egypt. And the Lord sent darkness over Egypt, and the whole land of ‎Egypt was so dark for three days that a man could not see his hand when he put it even to his ‎mouth. In those days many of the children of Israel died, all those that had rebelled against the ‎Lord, and would not hearken unto Moses and believed not that God had sent him, and said: ‎We will not go away from Egypt to die of starvation in the barren wilderness. And the Lord ‎punished them in those days of darkness, and the children of Israel buried them in those days, ‎so that the Egyptians should not know and rejoice over them; and the darkness was so intense ‎in Egypt for three days, that any man who stood up when the darkness came had to remain ‎standing in his place, and he that was sitting had to remain sitting, and he that was lying had to ‎keep on lying, and he that was walking remained fixed to the ground, and thus it was with all ‎the Egyptians until the darkness had subsided.‎ And when the days of darkness were over, the Lord sent Moses to the children of Israel, ‎saying: Celebrate ye your feast and prepare your passover, for behold I will come at midnight ‎in the midst of the Egyptians, and I will slay all their first born, from the first born of man to the ‎first born of beast, and when I will see your passover I will pass over you; and the children of ‎Israel did according to all that the Lord had commanded unto Moses. And at midnight the Lord ‎passed through Egypt, and he slew all the first born of the Egyptians, from the first born of ‎man to the first born of beast; and Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all ‎the Egyptians, and there was a great crying in Egypt; for there was not one house where there ‎was not one dead; and even the likenesses of the first born, which were engraved upon the ‎walls of their houses, fell broken to the ground, and the bones of their first born, which had ‎died before and lay buried in their houses, were raked up by the dogs of Egypt in that night, ‎and dragged about before the eyesight of the Egyptians. And when the Egyptians saw the ‎great evil which had befallen them so suddenly, they cried with a loud voice, so that all the ‎families of Egypt were weeping in that night, one for his son and one for his daughter, their ‎first born, and the consternation and noise of Egypt resounded in the distance on that night.

And Bathia, Pharaoh’s daughter, went forth with the king in search of Moses, and they found ‎him eating and drinking and rejoicing with all the Israelites, and Bathia said unto Moses: Shall ‎this be the reward for my kindness towards thee, for raising and elevating thee, that thou ‎bringest now upon me and upon the house of my father this evil? And Moses answered unto ‎her: Behold the Lord hath brought ten plagues over Egypt, and hath ever one annoyed thee? ‎And she said: No. And Moses said: Behold, although thou art the first born of thy mother thou ‎shalt not die, neither shall any evil befall thee. And she replied: Of what good is that to me ‎after I see my brother, the king, and all the household of my father, and all his servants in that ‎great evil, for their first born perish with all the first born of Egypt? And Moses said unto her: ‎Surely, thy brother and his household and his servants, the families of Egypt refused to listen ‎to the words of God and therefore this evil hath come over them. ‎

Then Pharaoh, king of Egypt, approached Moses and Aaron and part of the children of Israel ‎that were with them in that place, and he entreated them, saying: Rise up and get you forth ‎from among my people, and take your brethren, all the children of Israel that are in the land, ‎with their sheep and oxen, and all belonging unto them, leave nothing here, but pray ye unto ‎the Lord in my behalf. And Moses said unto Pharaoh: Behold, thou art the first born of thy ‎mother, but fear thou not as thou shalt not die, for the Lord hath commanded that thou ‎shouldst live, in order to show unto thee his great might and his outstretched arm.