Note 241 — PART THE SECOND.

The occasion of this suspicion, it is said, was that Joseph having been brought up by his father’s sister, she became so fond of him, that when he grew up and Jacob designed to take him from her she contrived the following stratagem to keep him. Having a girdle which had once belonged to Abraham, she girt it about the child, and then pretending she had lost it, caused strict search to be made for it; and it being at length found on Joseph, he was adjudged, according to the above-mentioned law of the family, to be delivered to her as her property. Some, however, say that Joseph actually stole an idol of gold, which belonged to his mother’s father, and destroyed it; a story probably taken from Rachel’s stealing the images of Laban: and others tell us that he once stole a goat or a hen, to give to a poor man.—S.