The Old Testament Review

This is part 4 of 6 of the third chapter of my book, Biblical Glasses.

Terah, who was Abram’s father, and his entire family were called by God to move from their homeland, Ur of the Chaldeans, to Canaan (the future Promised Land). They followed the Euphrates River up to Haran, in present day Lebanon or Jordan, and settled there, most likely because of Terah’s poor health and old age.

After Terah’s death at age 205 in Haran, Abram moved the family to Canaan, as God had prescribed. They lived among the Canaanites, descendants of Noah’s son, Ham, and raised their livestock in the lush fields. But then Lot, Abram’s nephew, decided he needed more grazing room, so he moved to Sodom. Abram stayed in Canaan, until he had to go save Lot from the abundant evil of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abram pleaded with God to save the evil cities; but there was not one righteous man there, so God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah by raining down sulfur after Lot was saved. Recently, remains of the evil twin cities were found; the sulfur content was unusually but, Biblically speaking, expectedly high among the ruins.

Now Abram and his wife, Sarai, were getting older and had no children, so God told them to be faithful and wait; He would provide a child. They waited and waited, but finally Sarai got impatient and begged Abram to sleep with her handmaid, Hagar. Abram did so, and Hagar gave birth to Abram’s illegitimate son, Ishmael. The Bible tells us that Ishmael went on to father twelve sons, the beginning of the Arab nations, which would always be at war with Abram’s legitimate family, the Jews. Fourteen years later, Abram and Sarai had a legitimate son named Isaac. God tested Abram’s faith by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac. God already knew Abram’s faith was real, but he wanted Abram to demonstrate that faith. Imagine if God told you to sacrifice your only true son, the son you had waited until you were 100 years old to have!

Abram’s faith allowed him to prepare to sacrifice Isaac, even to the point of taking him out into the wilderness, tying him down on an altar, and raising a knife to strike him dead. God stopped him before the act was done. Can you imagine what Abram must have felt? What about Isaac? There was a loving father cherishing his only true son and a young boy, perhaps a teenager, enjoying a journey into the countryside with his dad. This event, Abram’s willingness to sacrifice his only true son, is considered a similitude of God’s willingness to sacrifice His only Son.

God felt the same way Abram felt just moments before he sacrificed his son and the same way you would feel if you had to kill your own son. God, in His amazing love for you and me, actually followed through with it! Isaac had to be scared and so hurt that his dad would kill him; think of the relief Isaac felt when Abram put down the knife and untied him. Jesus felt the same horror upon being offered as a sacrifice for our sins. He was agonized, even to the point of sweating blood, as we will see. But Jesus, in order to fulfill the Father’s plan, had to endure the pain of being ridiculed, tortured, and killed, unlike Isaac.

God showed Abram His plan to redeem the world from its sin. What a blessing Abram received almost 2000 years before the Savior would even be born! God made Abram His chosen one to continue the lineage for His chosen people, Israel; He formed a covenant of faith, represented by circumcision, with Abram, who became Abraham. Sarai became Sarah. God enriched their lives for their faith; God’s promise to make Abraham the father of many nations would be realized. As long as the people kept their faith and trust in God, He would protect them.

Now Abraham’s son, Isaac, had twin boys, Esau and Jacob. Esau was worldly minded; Jacob was spiritually minded. Esau was the oldest and had legal rights to Isaac’s estate, but Jacob purchased those inheritance rights from Esau with a bowl of soup.

Jacob literally wrestled with God and was blessed for his faith. Jacob fathered twelve boys, including Joseph, who was the second youngest. The older brothers did not like Joseph for two reasons: He boasted about his dreams of becoming a great leader, and he was given an ornate robe by Jacob, as the favorite son. (You have probably heard of Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat.) The older brothers sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt. He was purchased by Potiphar, pharaoh’s Captain of the Guard, and worked at the palace. Meanwhile the brothers told their father Joseph was killed by a lion.

Joseph developed a fine reputation, but then Potiphar’s wife came on to him; he ran from her, but she called out, “Rape!” Joseph was imprisoned for a crime he did not commit; several years went by. Word eventually got to pharaoh that Joseph was a good interpreter of dreams. Pharaoh had a disturbing dream and wanted to know its meaning, so he released Joseph from prison to interpret the dream. Joseph explained pharaoh’s dream: There would be seven years of crop surplus followed by seven years of drought. Pharaoh was so concerned that he put Joseph in charge of preparing for the famine.

Joseph saved up during the good years, so he had Egypt prepared for the famine. People from all around came to Joseph to get food during the famine. Joseph had become the second most powerful man in Egypt, behind only pharaoh himself.

Meanwhile, Jacob was aging and never really recovered from the loss of his favorite son. The brothers were suffering from the famine, but they heard about a man in Egypt handing out food in return for land. So they made the trip to Egypt hoping to get food for their family’s survival. When they arrived, Joseph recognized them immediately, but they did not recognize him. He tested their integrity, and then he revealed his true identity to them.

The brothers immediately feared for their lives, but Joseph was forgiving. He had the brothers bring Jacob and the rest of the family (seventy people in all) to Egypt. Jacob lived there until his death. Jacob had asked to be buried in Canaan, so pharaoh let the family go to bury him. Then they returned to Egypt, where the entire nation mourned with Joseph and his family.

Jacob’s sons formed the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. Levi was not given an inheritance, because his descendants would become priests supported by the tithes of the other tribes. Joseph received a double inheritance through his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, as they took the place of Joseph and Levi. The tribes were: Rueben, Simeon, Levi (Manasseh), Judah, Zebulun, Isachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph (Ephraim), and Benjamin.

Joseph was rewarded by God for his faith and service. He lived to see the third generation of Manasseh’s and Ephraim’s sons. Before his death, Joseph asked his brothers to carry his bones out of Egypt when God delivered them back to the Promised Land of Abraham. He wanted to be buried in the tomb of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

After all the brothers died, a new pharaoh took over in Egypt, who did not remember the legacy of Joseph. The new pharaoh noticed the Israelite population growing quickly and feared for his own peoples’ safety, so he repressed the Israelites into slavery. For nearly 400 years, the Israelites were subjected to harsh treatment in slavery to Egypt; but their population continued to grow, so pharaoh requested that all Israelite male babies be killed at birth to control the Israelite population. The Egyptian midwives had compassion on the Hebrew people and feared the Hebrew’s God, so they did not obey pharaoh’s demands; they let the boys live. Pharaoh was angry at this, so he demanded that all Israelite parents throw their newborn baby boys into the Nile River.

Most likely, the Hebrew people were the laborers behind the building of the pyramids in Egypt. Remember the Tower of Babel was a pyramid-like structure, a ziggurat, and when God forced the people to spread out all over the world, each group took with them the building skills they had learned while together. Thus, pyramid-like structures are all over the ancient world. For example, the Mayan, Aztec, and Incan civilizations in Central and South America, as well as Chinese civilizations, built massive pyramid-like structures similar to the Egyptian pyramids. They were likely for practicing astrology and worshipping the sun, moon, and stars, since all the pyramids face the same direction with similarly applied geometry.

Now in 1658 B.C., a Levite man married a Levite woman (both descendents of Levi, the son of Jacob), and she gave birth to a baby boy. Fearing pharaoh’s command to kill the male children, the woman hid the boy in a basket so he would float on the Nile River, rather than sink and die. The boy was found by pharaoh’s daughter, by no coincidence I assure you. At the suggestion of the boy’s sister, who had watched the basket float safely down the river, he was nursed by a Hebrew midwife, who happened to be his mother! He was later returned to pharaoh’s daughter as her own son, and she named him Moses, which means “drawn up out of the water.”

Moses grew up in pharaoh’s palace and played with pharaoh’s children. He lived the normal life of a member of Egyptian royalty, until one day when he saw an Egyptian guard shoving a Hebrew slave. Something inside told him he was a Hebrew, not an Egyptian, so he killed the Egyptian guard and buried him in the sand hoping nobody would notice. Killing an Egyptian was punishable by death!

The next day, Moses tried to separate a fight between a pair of Hebrew slaves, and one of them asked Moses if he was going to kill him and bury him in the sand like he had done to the Egyptian. That meant people knew about his murder of the Egyptian! He had to flee for his life. So Moses ran out into the desert.

He found rest in Midian, along the western border of modern day Saudi Arabia. Moses rescued the daughters of a priest from some rowdy shepherds near a well outside of town. The priest, Jethro, asked Moses to stay with them. Moses accepted and became a shepherd, eventually marrying Zipporah, one of Jethro’s daughters. Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses had a new life. Meanwhile, the pharaoh of Egypt died, and his son took the throne. The Israelites were in agony over their enslavement; they cried for God’s deliverance, and He heard their cry.

Sometime later, God told Moses, now eighty years old, to approach pharaoh, likely the step-brother Moses knew while growing up, and demand that he let the people go. Moses was scared; he could not go back to pharaoh after all he had been through. Moses had a peaceful life now; there was no need to disrupt it. But God’s calling stayed with him, and Moses, who stuttered when he spoke, went to pharaoh with the help of his older brother, Aaron, to demand that pharaoh release the slaves. Aaron spoke eloquently but did not have the leadership ability, so they worked together.

Now with any basic knowledge of ancient Egypt, we can say pharaoh would have killed anyone who approached him with a demand to let the slaves go. But since he was happy to see his long lost step-brother, pharaoh had some compassion. Pharaoh listened to Moses and did not harm him, because they were family! They had grown up together! But pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he did not let the Hebrew people go. Moses was persistent; he knew God would use him to free the Israelites from bondage, so he continued nagging pharaoh. Pharaoh continued to refuse Moses’ demand, so God had Moses threaten pharaoh with some devastating plagues.

Pharaoh saw the power of the God of Moses over and over, but his heart remained hard. Through ten various plagues—blood, frogs, gnats, flies, livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and finally death of the firstborn—God got pharaoh’s attention. Upon the death of his son at the first Passover, pharaoh released the Hebrew people, and Moses led them into the desert. Moses remembered the request of Joseph to bury his bones with his forefathers, so he carried Joseph’s remains with him on the journey.

God led the Israelite people through the desert toward the Red Sea in the form of a dust cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He led the Israelites to camp by the Red Sea on the Sinai Peninsula, so pharaoh would think they were wandering around in ignorance. Shortly thereafter, pharaoh regretted letting the people go, so he mounted his huge army and set out after them to round them up and capture or kill them.

As the Egyptian army neared, the Israelites panicked, because they were literally trapped on the Sinai Peninsula between the Red Sea and pharaoh’s advancing army. Moses did not know what to do, but God delivered them. He told Moses to stretch out his staff over the water, and the Red Sea was parted. As the two million Israelites walked on, the angel of the Lord stood between them and the army of Egypt to keep pharaoh from attacking while they were walking across the parted Red Sea. See the map below representing the possible route of the Exodus. The Red Sea crossing took place at the bottom right of the Sinai Peninsula, where the present day Gulf of Aqaba meets the Red Sea.


Once all the Israelite people were safely on the other side of the Sea, the angel of the Lord left, and the Egyptian army came rushing after the Israelites. Only then, the Red Sea came crashing down on them. It is interesting that the floor of the Red Sea at the Gulf of Aqaba is littered with chariot debris and ancient Egyptian items, like spears and other weapons. Perhaps these artifacts are found there, because this event actually occurred! We do not hear about this event through secular Egyptian history, because the Egyptians were notorious about recording only the good parts of their history. They were proud of their pyramids, great wealth, mummification skills, etc., but they were ashamed of their defeats in battle, plagues, and coup attempts.

Now the Israelites were in the desert of present day Saudi Arabia, near Midian, where Moses had lived for forty years. Fearing for their survival, they criticized Moses often, because they had no idea where Moses was leading them. Moses went up on Mount Sinai, Jabal al-Lawz, for forty days and forty nights learning the laws of the covenant from God. While the laws did include the Ten Commandments, they also included much more. There were laws regarding property, money, hygiene, worship, offerings, slavery, clothing, food, etc. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, he was astonished to see the people making idols to worship! They had already forgotten God in just a few short months. Moses discussed the laws of God’s covenant with them, and they built a tabernacle and an ark to house the Spirit of the Lord for protection as they traveled through the desert. God provided manna (bread) every day. When the Hebrew people awoke in the morning, they were instructed to gather enough for that day only. They had to learn to trust God before entering the Promised Land awaiting them.

For the Israelites, the shortest path to the Promised Land was on a road out of Egypt toward Philistine. But God led them through the desert for several reasons. First, the Israelites would have grown weary traveling on the road, and they would have turned back to Egypt. They grew weary in the desert too, but they had no idea how to get back to Egypt that way. Second, God wanted to punish pharaoh and give the people a sign of His power and love by parting the Red Sea. Third, God would be cleansing and purifying the Israelite people in the desert, teaching them to trust Him daily for food and shelter. God wanted to renew the covenant of faith He had set with Abraham. Thus, the Ten Commandments and other covenant laws were given while the Israelites were roaming in the desert for forty years. These laws would show the people the character of their God and that they could not live up to His standards of perfection. They had to rely on Him in faith for their salvation. By obeying the law of God, Jewish tradition was founded.

A census of the Hebrew people was taken when they left Egypt. There were over 600,000 men over the age of twenty. There were about two million total people, counting women and children. During the forty years in the desert, the entire generation that left Egypt, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, died before setting foot in the Promised Land. Even Moses did not get an opportunity to go into the Promised Land.

Moses disobeyed God while drawing water from a rock; that disobedience cost him his life. Joshua and Caleb were the only men who trusted God enough to try to enter the Promised Land the first time around. All the other Israelites had reserves. They had to be purified; the people had to learn to trust God fully before heading into the Promised Land. An average of eighty-four people died every day during the desert wandering, but despite all this death, a second census was taken by Moses before he died; amazingly, the total number of people was nearly identical forty years after the first census! God had blessed the people with many births during their years in the desert, and it was now time to enter the Promised Land.