Hebrew Life and Times | Page 8

a good father to his son. And he put a higher value on personal friendship and kindly family relations than on property interests. When his herdsmen quarreled with those of his nephew, Lot, he said to the latter with dignified generosity and common sense, "Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee ... for we are brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou take the right hand, then I will go to the left." Just what Abraham looked forward to, we, of course, do not know. Probably his ideas were vague. Yet it seems that such men as he must have dreamed of a nation great in faith as well as in material wealth; a nation in which money would not be considered more important than justice and kindness; in which home life might be sweet and loving, free from the fear of want or the blighting influence of greed; and in which the door of opportunity would always be kept open even for the humblest.
At any rate, some centuries after the time when Abraham is supposed to have lived, we find a group of shepherd tribes living in and around Canaan, who believed themselves to be descended from the twelve sons of Jacob, Abraham's grandson, and among whom there was the tradition of a divinely guided pilgrimage from Babylonia to Canaan under Abraham's leadership just as we have described. It is a great thing to have memories of noble parents and traditions of heroic ancestors. These the Hebrews had from the very beginning.
STUDY TOPICS
1. Look up in any good Bible dictionary, the articles on Babylonia and Hammurabi.
2. Read Genesis 12, 15, and 24 and form your own opinion of Abraham as a husband and father.
3. What was Abraham's most valuable contribution to history?
4. From any map of western Asia, draw a sketch map showing the Nile, Euphrates, and Tigris Rivers, the Mediterranean Sea, and the general direction of Abraham's pilgrimage.
5. Where in the Bible is found the sentence spoken by Abraham to Lot, and quoted in this chapter?
CHAPTER IV
A STRUGGLE AGAINST TYRANNY
Although they had escaped for a time from Babylonian tyranny, the descendants of Abraham in Canaan found themselves somewhat within the range of the influence of the other great civilized power of that day, that is, Egypt. Egyptian officers collected tribute from rich Canaanite cities. The roads that led to Egypt were thronged with caravans going to and fro. By and by, a series of dry seasons drove several of the Hebrew tribes down these highways to Egypt in the search of food. The story of Joseph tells how they settled there.[1] They were hospitably received by the king (or Pharaoh, which was the Egyptian word for "king"), and were allowed to pasture their flocks on the plains called the land of Goshen in the extreme northeast of the country west of what we now call the Isthmus of Suez. For some decades or more they lived here, following their old occupation--sheep-raising.
=Egyptian civilization.=--Egypt was in many ways like Babylonia. In Egypt too a great civilization had sprung up many millenniums before Christ. In some ways it was an even greater civilization than that of Babylonia. Egyptian sculptors and architects erected stone temples whose grandeur has never been surpassed. Many of them are still standing and are among the world's treasures. It would seem that there was somewhat more of love of beauty and somewhat less of greed for money among the Egyptians than among the Babylonians.
THE ACCESSION OF RAMESES II
There came to the throne of Egypt about B.C. 1200 a man of extraordinary vanity and selfish ambition known as Rameses II. He wished to build more temples in Egypt than any other king had ever built, so that wherever the traveler might turn people would point to this or that great building and say Rameses II built that. To put up these buildings he enslaved his people, compelling them to labor without pay. To raise the funds for building materials he made war on his neighbors, especially the Hittites in western Asia north of Canaan. Again and again Hebrew children would see the dust of marching armies over the roads past their pastures and men would say, "Rameses is going to war again." And by and by, weeks or months later, the soldiers would return with tales of bloody battles and sometimes laden with spoils.
=Enslavement of the Hebrews.=--Now, wars usually breed more wars. Rameses having attacked the Hittites was afraid they would attack him. Egypt was indeed very well protected from attack. There was only one gateway into the country, and that was by way of the narrow Isthmus