[163] So, having received the authority which they willingly gave him, with the sanction and assent of God, he proposed to lead them to settle in Phoenicia and Coelesyria and Palestine, then called the land of the Canaanites, the boundaries of which were three days’ journey from Egypt.
[164] The course by which he then led them was not the straight road. He avoided this, partly because he was apprehensive that if the inhabitants, fearing to lose their homes and personal liberty, offered them opposition, and war ensued, they might return by the same road to Egypt, and thus, exchanging one enemy for another, the new for the old, might be mocked, derided and subjected to hardships worse and more painful than what they underwent before. Partly, too, he wished by leading them through a long stretch of desert country to test the extent of their loyalty when supplies were not abundant but gradually grew scarcer and scarcer.
[165] Therefore, leaving the straight road, he found one at an angle to it, and, thinking that it extended to the Red Sea, began the journey. It was then, we are told, that there occurred a prodigy, a mighty work of nature, the like of which none can remember to have been seen in the past.
[166] A cloud shaped like a tall pillar, the light of which in the day-time was as the sun and in night as flame, went before the host, so that they should not stray in their journey, but follow in the steps of a guide who could never err. Perhaps indeed there was enclosed within the cloud one of the lieutenants of the great King, an unseen angel, a forerunner on whom the eyes of the body were not permitted to look.