Hebrew Life and Times | Page 8

is pictured in the Bible. No doubt he and his
clansmen hoped to better their condition. But Abraham was a dreamer
and a man of deep religious faith. He believed that he was being guided
by his God. And he believed that in accordance with God's plan his
descendants in the land to which they had come would become a great
nation. Best of all, it seems probable that he dreamed of a nation

different from Babylonia. Certainly he is described as a different kind
of a man from the typical Babylonian. In some respects, to be sure,
judging by our Christian standards, he had serious shortcomings. He
did not scruple to deceive a foreigner, nor to treat harshly a slave. His
ideas as to the character of God were far below those revealed by Christ.
Yet he had the Hebrew gift for home and family life. He was 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