Moses I
So, the book of Genesis ends with the children of Jacob (Israel) in Egypt. We learn how they got there through Joseph. Joseph died, and the Israelites multiplied greatly. Too many for the Egyptians to be comfortable with. So, the Egyptians, who controlled the army, put the children of Israel into a cruel slavery that lasted for a few hundred years.
Then, in God’s time, not man’s, a deliverer came—Moses. His early life story is told in the first few chapters of the book of Exodus. He was a Levite, so he wasn’t in the Messianic lineage; his tribe will become the priestly tribe in Israel. He was raised in the house of Pharaoh, the adopted son of his daughter. So, Moses obviously received the best Egypt could give him, including training in all Egyptian medicine, traditions, arts, religion, culture, etc., etc., none of which appears in the Law which Moses gave to Israel.
Moses certainly became a great man, one of the greatest in human history, but he was also a murderer (Exodus 2:12). He spent 40 years away from Egypt because of it, but eventually God took him back to Egypt where he led the people out of slavery and on their way to the home the Lord had promised Abraham several centuries before. Several...centuries...before. Please keep historical perspective here. God works in His own time, not in ours.
Exodus 12:40 says the children of Israel spent 430 years in Egypt. We don’t know exactly when that time period began. When Joseph was sold into slavery? When Jacob and his family moved there? Or does it cover the whole “Abrahamic family” period (like “Colonial America” starts in 1492 with Columbus)? It’s not a major point, as none of these ancient dates are absolutely clear to us.
I mentioned that Moses was a murderer. We don’t usually think of him in those terms (for rather obvious reasons), but he did do that. And that leads me to some very important, and incredibly misunderstood information which I must spend some time on if we are truly going to comprehend “The Story of the Bible.” So, we’ll look at these ancient children of Israel, and discuss the Law of Moses, its purpose and historical context in some detail beginning in my next article in this series.