Important Events In Hebrew History From Abraham to Moses

     From Abraham to Moses, there were many important events which all affected Hebrew history in some way. Hebrew history is in fact typically thought to have begun at the time when God commanded Abraham, the head of a very large household in the Mesopotamian city of Ur, to take his family and his property and move to the land which God would show him. Abraham and his wife had never had any children, despite their being almost a hundred years old, yet God promised to them that they would be the beginning of a great and numerous people – a promise which was fulfilled in the birth of their son, Isaac. Abraham trusted God implicitly, and when God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac as a show of his faith, Abraham began to do so without question. At the last minute God stayed Abraham's hand from killing his son and provided a perfect ram as sacrifice instead.

      Isaac was married to Rebekah, a woman whom Abraham had chosen for him as a suitable wife because she came from Abraham's relatives, people who also worshiped the true God. Together Isaac and Rebekah had two sons, Esau and Jacob. Although Esau was the elder son, Jacob tricked his brother into selling Jacob his birthright in exchange for a meal. Esau didn't think much of this "bargain," but Jacob took it very seriously and when Isaac their father lay dying he, with the help of his mother Rebekah, tricked Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing of the oldest son. Fearing Esau's wrath, Jacob fled to Rebekah's brother Laban, for whom he worked for seven years without wage in exchange for the hand of Laban's daughter, Rachel. When the seven years were up, Jacob married whom he thought was Rachel, his beloved – but when the ceremony was completed and the veil was lifted, Jacob realized that he had been tricked into marrying Rachel's older sister Leah instead! Jacob was furious, but agreed to work another seven years without pay, again for Rachel's hand. Finally at the end of fourteen years' unpaid labor, Jacob married the woman he loved, and he took his family and left Laban. On the road with his household and property, Jacob met his brother Esau – and, after so many years, they finally made peace. Jacob also wrestled with an angel of the Lord, who rechristened him Israel, and called him the father of a great nation.

      Jacob had ten sons with Leah and two sons with Rachel. Because Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah, her two sons were Jacob's favorite out of all his twelve sons. Jacob and Rachel's son Joseph was the one whom Jacob loved best, and this was obvious to all of Joseph's brothers, who became very angry and jealous of their father's preference. Finally in retaliation they sold their brother Joseph into slavery and told Jacob that he had been devoured by wild beasts. Joseph, meanwhile, had become a servant of a high-ranking general of Egypt named Potiphar, who eventually came to trust Joseph enough to make him manager over all of Potiphar's property. After a while, however, Joseph was accused of a crime he did not commit, and he was thrown into prison. In prison with the cup-bearer and the baker of the Pharaoh of Egypt, Joseph's God-given talent for dream-interpretation – a skill which was highly prized in the ancient world – brought him to the attention of Pharaoh himself, whose dream Joseph interpreted and predicted a long famine coming for all of Egypt. Pharaoh then made Joseph the ruler of all Egypt, second only to Pharaoh himself, in order to prepare for the famine which Joseph had predicted from Pharaoh's dream. When the famine hit, Egypt became the most well-stocked nation in the ancient world, leading peoples from all over to come to Egypt to buy food. Among those who came were Joseph's own brothers, who did not recognize this high-ranked, powerful Egyptian as the brother they had sold into slavery all those years ago. Joseph revealed himself to his brothers and forgave them for what they had done, and then invited them and their families to come to Egypt to live.

      After many generations, the Hebrew people had become very numerous in the land of Egypt. Joseph and the Pharaoh he had served were both long dead, and the new Pharaoh did not like the Hebrews and was afraid of the threat their numbers posed. Because of this, he put the Hebrews into slavery, and later ordered all Hebrew male children under a year old to be killed, allowing only the females to live. Amidst this infanticide one child was born to Hebrew parents, who hid him from Pharaoh's men for as long as they could, until at last the boy's mother put him into a basket and set him afloat in the Nile, where he was eventually found and adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, who called him Moses. Moses grew up as a privileged young Egyptian, while his people the Hebrews were still being oppressed under Pharaoh's regime. One day Moses happened upon an Egyptian overseer who was beating a Hebrew worker. Moses was so furious that he killed the Egyptian, and was forced to flee Egypt, having finally accepted his heritage as a Hebrew man. Moses was later commanded by God that he was to lead the Hebrews out of slavery and show them to the Promised Land – the land of Canaan, where Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph had once lived. Pharaoh refused to set the Hebrews free when Moses asked, and in fact even increased their workload, which did not make Moses very popular among the Hebrews. But God sent a number of plagues upon Egypt every time Pharaoh refused to let the Hebrews go, until – after a plague that killed every firstborn son of Egyptian households – Pharaoh agreed. The Hebrews were on their way out of Egypt when Pharaoh changed his mind and sent an army to fetch the Hebrews back, cornering them between the army and the Red Sea. But God used Moses to perform a miracle: parting the waters of the Red Sea down the middle, providing a path of dry land for the Hebrews to walk on. The Hebrews made it safely across to the other side, with Pharaoh's army following, when the Red Sea crashed back into place and drowned the entire army.

      Moses led the people with God's help all the way to the Promised Land, a journey which – thanks to disbelieving, disobedient and dissatisfied Hebrews – lasted forty years, during which time God gave the people the Ten Commandments and a system of laws to live by. Moses was not to enter the Promised Land because of his earlier disobedience to God, but he led the people all the way there, and was personally buried by God when he died. Then the Hebrew people at long last entered the land of their forefathers.