.............following

88            Ancient  Civilizations: Almanac

common: by shedding the blood  of  a lamb, a creature that symbolizes purity, men could atone, or make up, for their sins.  Again,  the  sacrifice was  a  sym- bolic act whose most important aspect was  not  so much  God’s desire for the offering as it was the willingness of the worshiper to make that  offering. This was  another  difference  between the Hebrew  god  and   other deities,  who tended to be greedy and demanding.

It should be pointed out, how- ever,  that  the Hebrew   god  had   his demanding side as well. He was, as he often  described  himself throughout the  Old  Testament,  “a  jealous god,” meaning that  he expected to  be  the Israelites’ only object of worship. This attitude  extended to his name, which is often rendered as Yahweh (YAH-way) or  Jehovah  (je-HO-vah) [see  sidebar, “God’s Names”]. Despite his  demand for worship,  however,  the offer of a covenant  demonstrated  a  desire  to treat man as a kind of equal. This may seem inconsistent, but  Genesis  says that  God  created  man  “in  his  own image”; likewise,  he  allowed human  beings the freedom to choose between right and wrong, which  he would not have  done if  he considered  people mere slaves.

God’s Names

The word “God,” or Elohim  (ee- loe-HEEM)  in Hebrew,  was a  general term, like “man,”  and capitalizing it simply distinguished  him as the one and only supreme deity.  (Likewise Muslims worship Allah  [ah-LAH],  which is Arabic for “God.”) Later, when Moses  asked the name of the god  who appeared in the burning bush,  he was told simply, “I Am.” The  Israelites believed that God had a  name; however,  it was so sacred that  it  could  not  even  be   spoken. Therefore they usually referred to him by titles such as “Lord”  or  Adonai (a-doe- NIE.) The Hebrew  scriptures sometimes represented his name as “YHWH,” which was unpronounceable  precisely because

it was too sacred to be  pronounced. Over  time, however,  he  came  to  be called Yahweh (YAH-way), which  later Christian  scholars changed to  Jehovah (jeh-HOE-vah).

But   the sins of later generations made God so angry that  he nearly destroyed his creation  in the Great Flood, as described in the seventh and  eighth chapters  of Genesis.  He spared Noah, along  with Noah’s families and  the creatures in the ark with him, and afterward he made the first of many sig- nificant covenants,  promising  that  he would  never again destroy the earth. As  important as this covenant was, however, it did  not have as much bearing on the Israelites’ later history as  the covenants  that  he would  make  with a  descendant of Noah, a man called Abraham.

Israel        89

From Abraham  to Joseph

(c. 1800–c. 1650 B.C.)

The true history of Israel begins in the Sumerian  city- state of Ur  around 1800  B.C.  Abraham,  or rather Abram  (AY- brum)—he would only later receive his new name from God— was married to Sarai (suh-RYE), who also would be renamed later. Like many people in the region both then and now, Abram and Sarai lived with an extended family. The leader of their family was Abram’s father Terah (TARE-ah), who apparently worshiped the gods of Ur. At   one point Terah almost  moved his family to Canaan (KAY-nun),  which  would  later become  the Israelites’ Promised Land, but he decided to settle in a city close to Ur.

God did  not allow  Abram  to remain there long but instead told  him to “go to the land  I will show you”: Canaan. God told  him that this land  would be his and promised that Abram would become  the father of many people. This seemed impossible, because  Abram and Sarai had so far been unable to conceive even one child. Later God came to Abram in a dream and told  him that his descendants would one day be enslaved in a foreign land  for 400 years, but promised that they would come away “with great possessions.” Soon afterward, he made his first  true covenant  with Abram  (Genesis 15), promising him that his people would rule the lands  from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates in Mesopotamia.

Impatient for God to fulfill his promise of  children, Abram and  Sarai  decided that Abram would conceive a child with Hagar (HAY-gar), her Egyptian maid. So Hagar gave birth to a son named Ishmael (ISH-may-el) when Abram was eighty- six years old. In spite of Abram’s impatience, God blessed him with another covenant in which he broadened the scope of his earlier promises and  gave Abram and  Sarai  their new names, Abraham  and   Sarah. As     a  symbol  of their covenant, God directed that Abraham and all the males under his care—Abra- ham was a wealthy man, with many  servants and  others who looked to him for  protection—should undergo circumcision. This delicate operation on the most sensitive spot in his body served to show that a man belonged to God, and thereafter the men of Israel would be circumcised.

Many  more years passed,  and   both  Abraham  and

Sarah   doubted  that  God  would ever  make good on  his

90                Ancient  Civilizations: Almanac

promise—especially  now  that  Sarah was  more than  ninety years old. But finally she gave birth to a son named Isaac, an  event that  both  she and Abraham greeted with much joy. Soon afterward, however, she became  jeal- ous of Hagar, and convinced Abraham to send her and  Ishmael away. Reluc- tantly   Abraham   agreed.  Hagar  and  Ishmael  wandered in  the  desert for many   days, and  just  when she was about to give up, God came to her and told  her that her son too would father a  great  nation. And   indeed he did: today the Arab peoples, who consider Ishmael  their ancestor,  control   the area  from the Nile to the  Euphrates, and   virtually  all  of  the Middle  East except Israel.

There      remained    one     last important episode in  Abraham’s  life, and  it was  a powerful one.  According to Genesis 22:2, God said,  “Take  your son, your only son,  Isaac, whom you love, and  go to  the  region of Moriah [more-AYE-uh.] Sacrifice  him there as a burnt offering on  one of  the  moun- tains  I will tell you about.”  Abraham did  not question this terrible demand. He went through with it to the point of drawing a knife to kill the son that God had   promised for so  long. But    God stopped him and told him to sacrifice a ram (a male sheep) instead. Because of his faith and his willingness to do what

God had  asked him—though God apparently never intended to  let him go through with the sacrifice—God  said, “I will surely bless  you and  make your descendants as numerous  as the sky and as the sand  on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have

obeyed me.”

Abraham  waking with his son, Isaac. Archive Photos. Reproduced by permission.

Israel        91

Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph

Abraham would become  the most important figure in the Old Testament other than Moses. Known by the respectful term “Father Abraham,”  he is held in the highest regard  by Jews, Muslims, and  Christians, and  all  three religions  place great importance  on God’s promises to him. To Christians in particular, the episode involving the sacrifice of Isaac, as well as the promise that  the world would be  blessed through his descendants, was  a foreshadowing of Christ  and  his sacrificial death on the cross.

By   contrast, Isaac’s chief significance is as the son of Abraham and  the father of Jacob, to whom God would later give a new name: Israel. Abraham had his flaws, but Jacob was an  outright  rascal in  his  early years.  He  tricked   his  older brother Esau  by pretending to be  him, and  thus  received a blessing from Isaac, who had  gone blind  and  did  not realize that he was blessing his younger son. The blessing of a father to an oldest son was an important event that could determine a man’s  success for the rest of his  life. To the people of the ancient Middle East, words were sacred: therefore they put a great deal of emphasis on blessings and  covenants, and  they did  not dare to speak the name of God. Saying something was the same thing as doing it, so by stealing Esau’s blessing, Jacob in effect stole his brother’s future.

When  Esau found out what  Jacob had  done to  him, Jacob had to leave home in a hurry, and over the next years, a number of harsh  experiences caused  him to grow up. He was even tricked  himself by a man named Laban (LAY-ban) when he fell in love with Laban’s daughter  Rachel and  agreed to work seven years for her hand  in marriage. At  the end of seven years, a marriage  ceremony  was  held. Presumably the  bride was veiled, and there was probably a great deal of drinking at the  celebration that followed. At   any rate, Jacob woke up the next morning to discover  that the wife he had  slept with was not  Rachel but  her older—and much  less attractive—sister, Leah. When he went to Laban to complain, Laban explained that he had  to marry  off his older daughter first; but if Jacob would work for another seven years, he could marry Rachel as well.  It  was  an  appropriate payback for Jacob’s own trickery against Esau years before.

92              Ancient  Civilizations: Almanac

Though he still had to work the seven years, Jacob mar- ried Rachel after spending a week with Leah. Probably Laban’s intention was  to let Leah conceive children, since he knew that  Jacob would probably not spend many  nights with her after he had  Rachel.  The  Old  Testament says  that  God had mercy on Leah, and  that  she had  six sons and  a daughter; Rachel, on the other hand, could not conceive for many years. In the meantime, Jacob fathered four other sons by two concu- bines, but he still wanted a child with the wife he loved most. Finally Rachel became  pregnant, and  she bore  a son named Joseph, whom Jacob  loved more than  all  the rest. She  later gave birth to  Benjamin, bringing the total  of Jacob’s sons to twelve. The  descendants of  these sons  would become   the twelve tribes of Israel.

Later Jacob had a remarkable experience. One night in a time of great trouble—he was about to face his brother Esau again—he lay  down beside a  stream to sleep, but an  angel came and wrestled with him. They fought until dawn, neither of them overpowering the other.  Toward  daybreak  Jacob demanded that the angel bless him. The angel’s blessing was this: “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel”—which means “he struggles with God”—”because  you have struggled with God and  with men and  have overcome.” Suddenly real- izing that the angel was God in human  form, Jacob asked him his  name, to which  the angel replied, “Why   do  you ask  my name?” Then Jacob knew for sure that it was God.

The focus of Genesis eventually  shifts from  Jacob to Joseph. Jacob had pampered his beloved son so much that the boy’s brothers began to despise him. Joseph did not help mat- ters by telling his brothers that he had  dreams in which they all  bowed down to him. Finally,  a  group  led by Leah’s son Judah  (JEW-duh)  ganged up on him and  sold   him to slave traders from Egypt.

In Egypt, Joseph went through a series of difficult expe- riences, but eventually he gained favor with the pharaoh (FAIR- o) by interpreting his dreams for  him. Clearly  dreams had  a great deal of meaning for the Israelites, as they did  for people throughout the Middle East in ancient times. Joseph won the pharaoh’s admiration even though the interpretation itself was not  pleasant: Egypt was  about  to  experience seven  years  of famine (a period of time when food is scarce). But he also offered

Israel        93

The Structure of the Bible

The scriptures of the Jewish faith are contained in what Christians  call the Old  Testament,  which consists of  thirty- nine   separate   books.   The   Christian scriptures     also    include    the    New Testament, an additional set of  twenty- seven   books.   Some   Christians also recognize seven  more  books, sometimes referred to as  the Apocrypha (uh-POCK- riff-uh),  or writings of uncertain origin. (“Apocrypha”  is a negative term,  but it is easier to remember—and  pronounce— than  the  other  name  for  these  books, which is  deutero-canonical [DOO-tuhr-o kuh-NON-i-kul].)

The books are in turn broken up into chapters (or psalms in the case of the book by that name). The chapters  are further   broken   into   verses,   usually designated  with  a  colon   separating chapter and verse. Hence the first verse of the Bible is Genesis  1:1,  meaning Chapter

1, Verse 1. However, the books were not originally written in verse form;  those divisions were assigned later.

To make it easier to understand the  scope of the Bible, the books of the Old and New  Testaments are often divided into  groups. These divisions vary  between Jews and Christians, and  between the Catholic and  Protestant   branches  of Christianity.  What follows is  one way of dividing the books:

Old Testament

Pentateuch ([PIN-tuh-tuke] or Law; a record of the period from the creation of  the world to the death of Moses.)

Historical Books (The history of  Israel from the conquest of Canaan to  the end of the Captivity.)

Poetic Books

Prophetic Books (Prophecies, and records of prophets’  lives, from  the  time  of  the divided kingdom through the Captivity. Prophetic  Books  are    divided   into “major”  and  “minor,”  which  refer  to the  size  of  the  book,  not  the  impor- tance of the prophet involved.)

Apocryphal Books

(The origin of these writings is not known; Apocryphal Books can be  found in various places throughout the Old Testament.)

New Testament

Gospels  (The life  of  Jesus   according  to

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.)

Acts (The acts of Jesus’s apostles after his life- time.)

Epistles   (Letters  from   the   apostles   to churches  they  established  throughout the ancient world. The first  group are by the Apostle Paul, the second group by various authors.)

Revelation (A prophecy of the world’s end.)

94           Ancient  Civilizations: Almanac

a solution in the form of a plan to store up grain and other food- stuffs, so the pharaoh  put him in charge of the operation.

Thanks to Joseph, Egypt survived the famine, and  he became  a  very powerful man  in the Egyptian  government. Meanwhile, the famine forced Jacob’s sons to go to Egypt to see if they could buy any  food. By   now  many  years had  passed since Judah and the others had sold Joseph into slavery; there- fore, when they went to see a great Egyptian official, they had no idea he was their brother. As  was customary when meeting an important person, they bowed down to him—just as Joseph had dreamed they would.

The most respectful of them all was  Judah, who  had emerged as the leader among  Jacob’s sons even though he was not the oldest. He had clearly repented of his earlier deeds, and God blessed him for this by ultimately  making  Judah’s  the most notable of the twelve Israelite tribes.  The word Jew,  in fact, comes from the name Judah, which means “praise.”

After a series of meetings, Joseph finally  revealed his identity, but he had  no interest in taking revenge. Instead, he welcomed his brothers and  invited the entire family to come to Egypt and  live. So Jacob and all his sons and  their families settled in Egypt, where  they would remain for 400  years—as God had told  Abraham long before.

From Moses to Samuel (c. 1250–1020 B.C.)

Many historians believe that the movement of Jacob’s family into Egypt may  have coincided with (occurred  at  the same time as) the Hyksos invasion. If so, it is perhaps easy to understand how the Egyptians came to despise the Israelites, as they later did. Thus by the beginning of the Book  of Exodus (which means “to go out from a place”), the Israelites’ situa- tion had  become  very  different than  it was  in the time of  Joseph.  Fearing their  growing  numbers,  the Egyptians had made slaves of them, and  the pharaoh  set out to kill all boys born to the people of Israel.

But  a woman  from the tribe  of Levi (LEE-vie) devised a plan  to save her own son. She  put him in a  basket made of reeds and  let it float down the Nile past the pharaoh’s palace.  The pharaoh’s daughter found the basket and decided to adopt

Israel        95

the boy, who eventually came to live in the pharaoh’s house. She   named the  child Moses,  which   comes  either  from a Hebrew  word meaning “to draw  out” (of the water) or from an Egyptian word meaning “is born.”

The  boy would grow  up  to  become   Israel’s  greatest leader,  the true founder of  the Israelite nation. But  he was raised as an Egyptian, and he might have had an easy life if he had  not grown concerned  about the harsh  treatment of his people. When  he saw  an  Egyptian  beating an  Israelite, he killed the Egyptian and had to flee to the land of Midian (MIH- dee-uhn), a desolate place on the Arabian Peninsula.

Moses lived in Midian for a long time, taking  a  wife and  starting  a family.  The Book   of Exodus says  that  one day while he was tending a flock of sheep for his father-in-law, God appeared to him in a burning bush and ordered him to go lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Moses was extremely reluctant to do this, but God promised  that he would be with him, so finally he returned to Egypt. There  he enlisted the help of his brother Aaron, and together they went to the pharaoh  and demanded the release of the Israelites. This must have taken a great deal of bravery,  because  Moses did  not yet have any  great  power. The pharaoh’s response was to make conditions even worse for the people of Israel.

Moses and Aaron kept going back to the pharaoh, and each time the pharaoh  refused to yield. Therefore God sent ten plagues (PLAYGZ) against  Egypt. First he turned the Nile into blood, and  then he infested the land  with  frogs, gnats, and flies in turn. He killed livestock, or farm animals; caused boils, or intense sores; sent a rain  of hail; brought another infesta- tion in the form of locusts; and  turned daytime into darkness. Each time, the pharaoh’s resistance simply increased.

Then came the tenth and  worst plague, the killing of all the Egyptians’ firstborn sons—just as the earlier  pharaoh  had  tried to kill the sons of the Israelites. On the night when this happened,  the Israelites protected  themselves from the angel of death by placing the blood of a lambs on the frames of their front doors; then  they ate  a solemn feast.  This  was called  the Passover.  Jews still celebrate it each  year to com- memorate the way that God passed over their houses and  did  not take their sons.

96                      Ancient  Civilizations: Almanac

The pharaoh  was  not so fortunate. When  he lost his firstborn son, he finally gave in. Moses, by now recognized as the leader over all the Israelites, led  them  out of Egypt. The Bible reports that when they came to the Red Sea, God parted the waters and  let them walk on dry land; but when the pur- suing army of the pharaoh—who had meanwhile changed  his mind—tried to follow them, the sea  swallowed them up.

Forty years in the wilderness

Despite this triumphal exodus from Egypt, it would be forty years before the Israelites  finally  claimed  the  Promised Land, as they called Canaan. During  this time, they made their way through what the Bible calls a wilderness, the Sinai Desert. Of course it would not even take forty days  to cross such a rel- atively small area, but this long period of wandering was God’s punishment for disobedience, according to the Book of Exodus.

The most significant event  during this time occurred when the people stopped at  Mount  Sinai. Leaving Aaron  in charge of the people, Moses went up to the top of the mountain. There  he received from God the Ten Commandments [see side- bar, “The Ten Commandments”], which  were carved  into two stone tablets. He also received a long, long series of laws, chiefly concerning the ways that God should be worshiped. The Book of Leviticus  (luh-VIT-i-cus) consists  of many  more  laws  con- cerning  everything  from diet to  the settlement  of disputes between neighbors. Dietary restrictions, in fact, would become  very important to Judaism (JOOD-ee-izm), as the faith of Israel came to be called: even in modern times, people who strictly fol- low the Jewish scriptures refuse to eat  pork and other foods.

Moses remained on the top of Mount Sinai for so long that the people of Israel became  impatient and  proceeded to make a golden calf  and  worship it. When Moses  saw this, he became  so furious that  he broke the two  stone tablets. God later replaced these, but he dealt  severely with the Israelites, killing many  of them. This was the first of many  violent acts that  would follow  as  Israel became  a nation. God called  the Israelites his  Chosen   People, but that  did  not stop him from responding with swift fury when they disobeyed him.

Later,  as  they approached the  Promised Land, Moses sent twelve spies to observe the military strength of the Canaan- ites. All    but two  of  them came  back and  said  that  Canaan

Israel        97

The Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments formed the basis of Israelite law and have greatly influenced the legal traditions of many civilizations that followed.  The first three command respect for God,  the fourth respect  for  one’s   parents, and  the remainder  respect  for one’s  neighbors. The   commandments   begin   with   a reminder  that “I am the Lord your God, who  brought  you out of Egypt, out of the  land of slavery.” Adapted here from Exodus 20, the commandments are:

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

2. You shall not make or worship any idols.

3. You shall not misuse the name of God.

4. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

5. Honor  your father and your mother.

6. You shall not commit murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

10. You  shall  not  covet  anything  that belongs to your neighbor.

appeared too powerful to defeat.  This lack of faith and  courage, too, enraged God, and  he  condemned the Israelites to wander for forty years. Moses himself never  entered the Promised Land but died within sight of it.

Conquest and conflict

Aaron had been Moses’s closest associate, but he was  a priest. In  fact  the entire tribe   of Levi  became  the priests of Israel from that point on. The task of actually leading the people fell to  Joshua, who  was  one of  the two spies who  had   come  back from  the Canaanite   cities  with  a  good  report. Under Joshua, the Israelites conquered the ancient city of Jericho, which may well be  the  oldest city  yet  discovered by  archaeologists. According   to  the biblical  account, Israel destroyed Jeri- cho  by  marching  around the city  for seven   days,  shouting  and   blowing trumpets. More conquests of  Canaan-  ite cities followed, until  the  Promised Land belonged to the Israelites.

In spite of these great victories, the period that  followed  was  one of great  conflict. Thus  the Bible says  at the end of the Book  of Judges, “every- one did  as he saw fit.” The dozen lead- ers called   judges were not  judges as that term is normally understood, but simply powerful rulers. It is interesting that one of them was a woman, Debo- rah,  since the number of well-known female leaders in the ancient world can

probably be counted on one hand  [see sidebar, “Women in the

Old Testament.”]

A  less admirable female figure of this time was Delilah,  who tricked  the judge Samson  into giving up the secret of his

98               Ancient  Civilizations: Almanac

incredible strength. Delilah was a Philistine (FILL-i-steen). The Philistines—one of the many Canaanite peoples already living in the area  when the Israelites arrived—were almost  always  in conflict  with  Israel. (Some archaeologists   believe that  the Philistines  were also  among  the Sea  Peoples who threatened Egypt.) Samson killed many of them, and they could not defeat him until he confessed to Delilah that his strength came from the fact that he had never cut his hair. Therefore she cut it while he was sleeping one night and rendered Samson powerless.

After  the time of  the judges, Israel came  under  the leadership of the prophet  Samuel.  Moses,  too, had  been a prophet,  or  someone who  receives communications  directly from God and passes these on to the people. Samuel would be the only other prophet to exercise a direct leadership role over Israel. Later, in the time of kings, prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah existed outside the circles of power and were often at odds with the leaders.

All   the other peoples of the area  had  kings,  but God had  decreed that Israel  would be  different. The people, how- ever, demanded a king, and finally God granted their wish. He sent Samuel to anoint Saul, a tall and  handsome donkey-han- dler from the tribe  of Benjamin. To anoint  means to pour oil over someone’s head, a symbol that God has chosen that per- son to fill a position of leadership. At  first Saul appeared to be a great and capable leader; but another leader was on the rise.

From Saul to the Exile (1020–587 B.C.)

Only  at  this  point  in  Israel’s  history  can historians assign  accurate dates to events. Saul, who ruled from  about

1020 to 1000 B.C., won a number of victories in battle against  the Philistines and other enemies. On several occasions he dis- obeyed orders from God  delivered  through  Samuel. God became   increasingly   displeased  with  him. Meanwhile, the Bible says, God was raising  up a new and unlikely leader.

David, who ruled from about 1000 to 960 B.C., would be Israel’s greatest king. Under his leadership, Israel’s territory would reach  its largest point, and  David  would win victory after victory. Though he started as a mere shepherd boy, from an early age  he showed signs of future greatness. He is said  to