DEPRAVITY WITHOUT GOD PART 2: HERE COMES THE FIRST ISRAELITE

In Genesis we learn of a man in Ur named Abrams. He was born around 2000 BC, some say it was 1996 BC. He lived for 175 years. The name Abrams means “high father”. God changed his name to Abraham after he made a promise to him. Some say Abraham means “father of many nations”, but this is not technically correct. The name better translates to “a strong leader who made a covenant;" which is what God and Abrams did. 

In Genesis 15:13 God tells (Abrams) Abraham his “offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted 400 years.”

Ten years after God promised Abram (Abraham) that he would make him a great nation, Abraham is dwelling as a nomad in Canaan and with Hagar, an Egyptian woman, conceives Ishmael., who is born the next year. God proclaims to Hagar that he will make Ishmael a great nation, which will always be a thorn in the side of Israel.

Then in Genesis 21:5 Abraham is 100 year old when Isaac is born. This is 25 years after God initially promised Abram he would make him a great nation and it is 405 years before the Exodus. 

5 years later (Genesis 21:8-9) Isaac is weaned and Sarah, his mother and Abraham’s wife, sees Ishmael laughing at Isaac. Genesis 4:29 informs us this was: “He born according to the flesh persecuting him born according to the spirit.” The affliction of Israel (Isaac) by Egypt (Ishmael) has begun. It is 400 years before the Exodus. God’s prophesy to Abraham that his offspring will be afflicted 400 years has begun.

Joseph was born 176 years after God’s promise to Abraham or 254 years before the Exodus (totaling 430 years), and Joseph dies at age 110 (144 years before the Exodus). Only 64 years pass after Joseph’s death until Moses is born and placed in a basket to be saved from death under Pharaoh’s decree that all Israeli baby boys must be killed.. It is 350 years since God made his promise to Abraham. (176+110+64=350)

Moses is 80 years old when the Exodus begins, exactly 430 years since God’s promise to Abraham. (350+80=430)

In Exodus 12:40-41 it is stated: The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. 

Keep in mind, the time of the people of Israel began with Abraham because at the time of the promise Abraham did go and sojourn in Egypt. So from the beginning of the Israelites until the Exodus was 430 years.

Now obviously since there were only 64 years between the death of Joseph and the birth of Moses, the Israelites could not have been enslaved in Egypt 400 years. But that was not what God had said.

Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years.”

First of all, God said they would be sojourners. Sojourn means to stay or visit temporarily. To be sojourners would be people who traveled in and out of this place or that, which the Israelites certainly did from Abraham’s first journey there. And during 400 hundred years of sojourning they were afflicted by a land not their own. This affliction began with Ishmael’s mocking of Isaac and ended with the Exodus. God said they would be afflicted by Egypt for 400 years, not that they would be servants that entire time. He only said at some point they would be servants there.

Here we are 64 years after Joseph died and there is Egypt with a brand new Pharaoh who doesn’t even remember Joseph and he is showing fear at the growth of the Israelites. He doesn’t necessarily know how they got there, he is just afraid of their growth. So in that 64 year time span between Joseph and Moses he has indeed enslaved them and now he is killing their boy babies. (Exodus 1: 7-22)

The Israelites needed a new deliverer and along came Moses.
Moses killed an Egyptian, relying on his own strength, not on God, and he had to flee Egypt. In the land where he went he came across a burning bush one day and God was in it.

Moses was no youngster when he saw the burning bush and God ordered him to lead the Hebrews out of Egyptian bondage. He was 80 years old by then. I am pushing hard on 80 and with my beard, sandals and walking stick have been called Moses by people who pass me.  I’ll confess, right here and now, I am not anywhere near up to the rigors Moses was going to face. 

There were times when Moses felt his age and once he did have two men hold his arms up as he tired in a battle against the Amalekites (Exodus 17:12-14). Well, one week doing these Bible Studies I required my own Aaron and Hur; let's call them Bill M. and Kenny G., to hold me up and get me home.

Anyway we know Moses led the Israelites across the red sea, on dry land no less. Getting from the Red Sea to the Jordan River bordering the Promise Land of Canaan should not have taken the 40-year ordeal it became, not really.

After crossing the Red Sea and escaping Pharaoh, Moses led the Israelites across a desert until they camped at the base of Mt. Sinai, also called Mount Horeb. Making this encampment only took about three months or so after leaving Egypt. While there Moses went up the mount where he got the Ten Commandments, and he was gone 40 days. After a bit of a delay to deal with the people’s impatient revolt, where they began worshipping a golden calf while Moses was away, they set out straight for the Promised Land. The average man or woman on the street would most likely tell you, if asked, that it took them 40 years to get there.

No, it didn’t, not that first time.

Say what? The first time?

Yep, there were two trips to the Promise Land.

These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side of Jordan in the wilderness, in the plain over against the Red sea, between Paran, and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Dizahab.

(There are eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir unto Kadeshbarnea.)

And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spake unto the children of Israel, according unto all that the Lord had given him in commandment unto them…(Deuteronomy 1:1-3)

Yeah, see, “And it came to pass in the fortieth year”, right?

No, in the fortieth year Moses spoke to the Hebrews all that God had commanded to them. This is not when they first arrived on the edge of the Promise Land nor how long it should have taken to travel there. It was Moses giving an overview of their trip.You must look at verse 2, the one in parenthesis in the King James version. “There are eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of mount Seir unto Kadeshbarnea.”

So what does this mean?

After Moses and the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea out of Egypt, they escamped at Mt. Sinai, also known as Horeb.  Then we find in Deuteronomy 1:19:

“Then we set out from Horeb and went through all that great and terrifying wilderness that you saw, on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, as the Lord our God commanded us. And we came to Kadesh-barnea.”

It was eleven days journey from Mt. Sinai to Kadeshbarnea. That’s all. In far less  than a year, the Hebrews should have been entering the Promise Land and taking it as directed by God.

Here we see clearly the faithless nature of these people. After seeing the Red Sea parted and the fate of Pharaoh’s army, they were still afraid to trust God. Well, we saw that back at Sinei, didn’t we? Moses disappears up the Mount for just over a month and these people were already making a new idol to replace God in their hearts.

Kadeshbarnea in on the southern border of Israel, across the Jordan River in what is now called Transjorden and about 5 miles from Petra, Jordan. Back then it was part of what was known as Edom. And what happened back there at Kadeshbarnea when the Hebrews arrived the first time?

The people again lost heart.

Moses send 13 men to spy out Canaan on orders from God, “from each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a leader among them.” (Numbers 13:2)

Now one may ask, 13? Were there not 12 tribes? Where dd this 13 come from?

These spies and their tribes are listed in Numbers 13: 4-15, but Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, are named as two tribes because back in Genesis 48 Jacob basically adopted them as his own, thus there were 13 men sent.

These men then slipped into Canaan, where they spied for 40 days before returning to Moses with their reports. All but two came back shaking in their sandals, fearing they had no chance again the giants and powerful occupants of Canaan. Only Two came back ready to go in and take the country. These were Joshua and Caleb.

As a result of this lack of faithfulness, God condemned the Hebrews to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, one year for each day those spies had been in Canaan. The punishment was that not a single Hebrew who came out of Egypt would live to go into the Promise Land, except Joshua, Caleb and the children under 20 years of age, and so it was to be.  Even Moses didn’t get there because of his own disobedience in striking the Rock of water. (Numbers 20:2-13).

Caleb, son of Jephunneh, was a member of the Judah tribe. When Caleb was given his allotment in the Promise land he had this to say in Joshua 14:10-12:

“Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.”

Once I said I will be like Caleb, but I cannot say it anymore. I am not 85, I’m just short of 80, but not so strong as I was at 65. Doesn’t mean I back down from speaking out for God, though. More pertinent, when we finally get around to the three hombres again, we’ll find Caleb plays another roll.

Joshua was no spring chicken himself. There is no exact birth date given for him nor how old he was when he and Caleb spied out Canaan, but most believe he was 30 or 40 at the time, so after 38 years wandering about the wilderness, he would have been between 68 and 78 when he led the Israelites into the Promise Land. In Joshua 24:29 we are told Joshua was 110 when he died. Therefore, 32 to 42 years passed while he was leading the Israelites through the conquest of Canaan. And after his demise is when things went south for the Israelites.

Things started out looking good, of course. Joshua led him to the banks of the Jordan and he sent two spies to Jericho, this big fortified city in Judah. The two men got into the city proper just fine and a prostitute hid them. This prostitute it is believed became the wife of one of these spies and he was Salmon. They had a son named Boaz and Boaz became the husband of some woman from Moab you might have heard of, named Ruth. Ruth and Boaz began Obed, who was the grandfather of David. If you keep going you find that this one-time Prostitute was a grandmother of Jesus.

Funny the way things work out.

DEPRAVITY WITHOUT GOD PART 1: THREE HOMBRES WE HARDLY KNEW YE

It has been a while since you last heard from me, hasn’t it. I am sure you used that time when I wasn’t pestering you to  really dig into the adventures of those three dashing musketeers: Othniel, Ehud and Shamgar. Of course they really weren’t musketeers. The musket hadn’t even been invented yet. And no, Shamgar was not their pet dog.Truthfully, these guys might not even known each other.

Afterall, Othniel (The Big O as I call him) was from Judah and dead before Ehud grabbed any headlines.

And Ehud wasn’t from Judah; he was a Benjaminite.

 Of Shamgar, we are not told much. Even though his name comes up twice, but in neither time does it say where he was from or where he went after his brief moment of note. There is speculation offered by scholars based solely on his name that he was the offspring of a mixed marriage between an Israelite and a Canaanite.

But why am I telling you all this when you probably have often pondered and discussed these guys at parties and other  get togethers. Perhaps I should be asking you about them and their deeds.

But before we consider their deeds, lets look at some Israeli history because how did we ever get to the place where these three guys got the spotlight? Before them we had some superstars that everybody knows upon the world’s stage, Joseph, Moses and Joshua.Yet we got some kind of hiccup after Joshua passed away and people were left on their own without God, and without God depravity fills the void and into that vacuum came Ophniel, Ehud and Shamgar.

It took a lot of history to reach that point, so a flash review may be in order. First you got to realize the Bible isn’t a collection of snappy little stories. It is one big book written by God and everything is a connected, logical, continuing narrative. But we are not going to go all the way back to the beginning. We are going to begin instead with Joseph.

Most Americans have heard of Joseph. At least they know he had a coat of many colors. There was even a Broadway musical written about him called, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”. My daughter was once in the cast of one such production. 

There is more to Joseph than his coat. You will find his whole story told from Genesis 30 through Exodus 1. Wow, that is a lot of press. He must have been important.

Joseph was the favorite of his pop, Jacob, aka Israel. He had 11

brothers, but his father singled him out for that colorful coat. Despite his father’s favoritism, or perhaps because of it, he was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers because they didn’t like his colorful coat, but even more so resentment of his dreams, which in all honesty, he did talk about too much. He became known as the dreamer.

The slavers took him and sold him in Egypt, and so at least one Israelite came to Egypt. (I will tell you this though, he wasn’t the first.) But how did those many others get there?

Because of his faith and faithfulness to God, Joseph rose to greatness in Egypt. He became Pharaoh’s golden boy and God’s interpreter of dreams .God gave Pharaoh dreams that no one could interpret:

And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river.

And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favoured kine and  fatfleshed; and they fed in a meadow.

And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river,

ill favoured and leanfleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river.

And the ill favoured and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven well favoured and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke.

And he slept and dreamed the second time: and, behold, seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good.

And, behold, seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind sprung up after them.

And the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and, behold, it was a dream. (Genesis 41:1-7)

It might just be fat and skinny cows and odd corn to us, but Joseph was able to understand this stuff. What he saw in the dream was the coming of seven great years followed by seven terrible years when a great famine would hit Egypt and the countries around it. God gave Joseph the insight to devise a plan that not only saved Egypt from starvation, but also provided a storehouse of food for others. It was through this famine and the need to eat that the other sons of Jacob (Israel) came to Egypt. They came to buy food, but were reunited with Joseph, not without some intrigue and drama, which we won’t go into here. Eventually, Joseph’s father Jacob, and all his family moved to Egypt, and perhaps at this point we would expect to say, lived happily ever after.

Happiness never comes that easily., especially in Scripture. There are some very interesting passages in Genesis 47:13-22, which tell us much.

Now there was no food in all the land, for the famine was very severe, so that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished by reason of the famine. And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, in exchange for the grain that they bought. And Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh's house. And when the money was all spent in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came to Joseph and said, “Give us food. Why should we die before your eyes? For our money is gone.” And Joseph answered, “Give your livestock, and I will give you food in exchange for your livestock, if your money is gone.” So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and Joseph gave them food in exchange for the horses, the flocks, the herds, and the donkeys. He supplied them with food in exchange for all their livestock that year. And when that year was ended, they came to him the following year and said to him, “We will not hide from my lord that our money is all spent. The herds of livestock are my lord's. There is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our land. Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food, and we with our land will be servants to Pharaoh. And give us seed that we may live and not die, and that the land may not be desolate.”

So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, for all the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe on them. The land became Pharaoh's. As for the people, he made servants of them from one end of Egypt to the other. Only the land of the priests he did not buy, for the priests had a fixed allowance from Pharaoh and lived on the allowance that Pharaoh gave them; therefore they did not sell their land.

You follow what happened here?

People came to Joseph, acting as Pharaoh’s agent, and bought the food with money, which Joseph turned over to Pharaoh. But the famine was long and severe, so the people ran out of money, then Joseph made a barter with the people of Egypt. Pharaoh would continue to give them food in exchange for their livestock, but the next thing you know, all the livestock had become Pharaoh’s property and the people faced famine again.

What did the people do? They not only sold their land and livestock, they sold themselves to Pharaoh and became his servants. Pharaoh came out of this famine, thanks to Joseph, richer and more powerful than ever and the people much poorer. This was the ancient equivalent of paying for one credit card with another. You just end up owing more to the credit card bank. In this case the credit card bank was Pharaoh.

Meanwhile, Jacob, now reunited with his lost son, brings his people our of Canaan to settled down in Egypt in an area called the Land of Goshen. Here the Israelites prospered. (Genesis 47)

Then at the age of 110, Joseph died. Genesis 50:26)

Jacob had come into Egypt with 70 people, but after Jacob died, and  Joseph died and all that first immigrating generation died, the Israelites continued to be quite prosperous and their population grew mightily. Before you knew it Egypt was full of these Israelites. (Exodus 1:7)

And generations passed and there were scads and scads of Israelites down in the Land of Goshen. There was also a new Pharaoh, who remembered nothing of this guy Joseph. What the new Pharaoh saw was a bunch of foreigners who he thought had gotten too big for their britches and too big for Egypt to contain as well. So he set taskmasters over them and they became forced labor (Exodus 1:10-14)

That wasn’t enough. The more Pharaoh came down on the Israelites, the more they seemed to multiply. So, in the end Pharaoh enslaved them. He even went further than that. He directed the midwives to kill any babies born of the male persuasion.

The midwives, brave souls, disobeyed Pharaoh because they feared God more than he, but to save their own necks they told Pharaoh these Hebrew women were just too fast for them. They had their babies before the midwives could get to them. Pharaoh then ordered all his subjects to throw any new born Hebrew boys into the Nile. After all, There were crocodiles needing to be fed and appeased.(Exodus 1:15-22)

Thus we see that because of Joseph’s dealings with the Egyptians, Pharaoh has increased his treasury, his livestock and had made the people his servants. Pharaoh had become very, very powerful. Meanwhile, the Israelites, those 70 who came down with Jacob, were growing and proffering in the Land of Goshen. So now we know the Egyptian government has grown very powerful and we know how the first Israelites came to be in Egypt. Actually we must go back to Abraham, to whom God made a promise if he would leave Er and travel to a distant land, to learn who was the first Israelite and how the prophesies to him played out.