We are expressly told in Deut. 32:8, that when the Most High divided unto the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. God made Israel the center of his earthly government. The profane history of nations, in fact, centers round it. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, all contend for it, are known in connection with it, or actually get their full imperial possession and character at the time they acquired possession of it (i do not say, by gaining possession of it, but at the epoch at which they did). Clouds of dark traditions, scarce pierced by modern researches, hang over all the rest, and obscure their history, while they reveal their existence
In the neighborhood of Israel all is light. Prejudiced, ignorant, barbarous as they might have been, they possess and shed the light of their history on all the nations around them. It is preserved almost with modern accuracy, when a few fragments scarce rescue from entire oblivion other ancient histories. We must disentomb the remains of the Thebes and the Ninevehs to get at the history of their ancient monarchs, to know their dynasties, and say even if there were two Assyrian empires or one, while, by God's providence, that which gives some historic data to the glories of Mizraim and Asshur, confirms in its detail that of which we have already the minutest particulars in Israel's authentic history. We find in pictures yet fresh on the lore-covered walls of the country of the Pharaohs, the very kinds of overseers over the Jews making their bricks, of which Moses speaks in the book of Exodus. Modern research alone has given the place and importance to these countries which the scriptures had already assigned them.