he inhabited, could smell the clothes of Joseph when he was in Egypt, being a prophet; and thus he knew that his son was alive. He was asked how it was that he divined nothing when his beloved son was cast into the pit by his brothers, and sold to the Ishmaelites. He replied that the prophetic power is sudden, like a lightning flash, piercing sometimes to the height of heaven; it is not permanent in its intensity, but leaves at times those favoured with it in such darkness that they do not know what is at their feet.[1]
The Arabs say that Jacob, much afflicted with sciatica, was healed by abstaining from the meat he most loved, and that was the flesh of the camel. At Jerusalem, say the Arabs, is preserved the stone on which Jacob laid his head when he slept on his way to Haran.
The custom of saying "God bless you!" when a person sneezes, dates from Jacob. The Rabbis say that, before the time that Jacob lived, men sneezed once, and that was the end of them—the shock slew them; but the patriarch, by his intercession, obtained a relaxation of this law, subject to the condition that, in all nations, a sneeze should be consecrated by a sacred aspiration.
XXVIII.
JOSEPH.
JOSEPH'S story is too attractive not to have interested intensely the Oriental nations in any way connected with him, and therefore to have become a prey to legend and myth.
Joseph, say the Mussulmans, was from his childhood the best loved son of his father Jacob; but the old man not only loved him, but yearned after the sight of him, for he was deprived of the custody of Joseph from an early age. Joseph had been sent to his aunt, the sister of Isaac, and she loved the child so dearly, that she could not endure the thought of parting with him. Therefore she took the family girdle, which she as the eldest retained as an heirloom, the girdle which Abraham had worn when he prepared to sacrifice his son, and she strapped it round Joseph's waist.
Then she drew him before the judge, and accused him of theft, and claimed that he should be made over to her as a
- ↑ D'Herbelot, Bibliothéque Orientale, s. v. Ais, i. p. 142.
