Both figures offered him a gift and asked him to choose one or the other.  Miriam’s hand held a heavy gold tablet, at whose top was written in flaming letters:  “The Law!” and which she offered with stern severity.  The child extended one of the beautifully-curved palm-leaves which he had often waved as a messenger of peace.

The sight of the tablet filled him with pious awe, the palm-branch waved a friendly greeting and he quickly grasped it.  But scarcely was it in his hand ere the figure of the prophetess melted into the air like mist, which the morning breeze blows away.  In painful astonishment he now gazed at the spot where she had stood, and surprised and troubled by his strange choice, though he felt that he had made the right one, he asked the child what her gift imported to him and to the people.

She waved her hand to him, pointed into the distance, and uttered three words whose gentle musical sound sank deep into his heart.  Yet hard as he strove to catch their purport, he did not succeed, and when he asked the child to explain them the sound of his own voice roused him and he returned to the camp, disappointed and thoughtful.

Afterwards he often tried to remember these words, but always in vain.  All his great powers, both mental and physical, he continued to devote to the people; but his nephew Ephraim, as a powerful prince of his tribe, who well deserved the high honors he enjoyed in after years, founded a home of his own, where old Nun watched the growth of great-grand-children, who promised a long perpetuation of his noble race.

Everyone is familiar with Joshua’s later life, so rich in action, and how he won in battle a new home for his people.

There in the Promised Land many centuries later was born, in Bethlehem, another Jehoshua who bestowed on all mankind what the son of Nun had vainly sought for the Hebrew nation.

The three words uttered by the child’s lips which the chief had been unable to comprehend were: 

“Love, Mercy, Redemption!”

     ETEXT editor’s bookmarks: 

     Asenath, the wife of Joseph, had been an Egyptian
     Most ready to be angry with those to whom we have been unjust
     Pleasant sensation of being a woman, like any other woman
     Woman’s disapproving words were blown away by the wind

     ETEXT editor’s bookmarks for the entire Joshua: 

     A school where people learned modesty
     Asenath, the wife of Joseph, had been an Egyptian
     Brief “eternity” of national covenants
     But what do you men care for the suffering you inflict on others
     Childhood already lies behind me, and youth will soon follow
     Choose between too great or too small a recompense
     Good advice is more frequently unheeded than followed
     Hate, though never sated, can yet be gratified