Genesis 12:1-9
The Call of Abram
1 The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. 3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”
4 So Abram departed as the Lord had instructed, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. 5 He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all his wealth—his livestock and all the people he had taken into his household at Haran—and headed for the land of Canaan. When they arrived in Canaan, 6 Abram traveled through the land as far as Shechem. There he set up camp beside the oak of Moreh. At that time, the area was inhabited by Canaanites.
7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your descendants.” And Abram built an altar there and dedicated it to the Lord, who had appeared to him. 8 After that, Abram traveled south and set up camp in the hill country, with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. There he built another altar and dedicated it to the Lord, and he worshiped the Lord. 9 Then Abram continued traveling south by stages toward the Negev.
Exodus 1:1-22
The Israelites in Egypt
1 These are the names of the sons of Israel (that is, Jacob) who moved to Egypt with their father, each with his family: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, 3 Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, 4 Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. 5 In all, Jacob had seventy descendants in Egypt, including Joseph, who was already there.
6 In time, Joseph and all of his brothers died, ending that entire generation. 7 But their descendants, the Israelites, had many children and grandchildren. In fact, they multiplied so greatly that they became extremely powerful and filled the land.
8 Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are. 10 We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don’t, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us. Then they will escape from the country.”
11 So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down with crushing labor. They forced them to build the cities of Pithom and Rameses as supply centers for the king. 12 But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread, and the more alarmed the Egyptians became. 13 So the Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy. 14 They made their lives bitter, forcing them to mix mortar and make bricks and do all the work in the fields. They were ruthless in all their demands.
15 Then Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, gave this order to the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah: 16 “When you help the Hebrew women as they give birth, watch as they deliver. If the baby is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.” 17 But because the midwives feared God, they refused to obey the king’s orders. They allowed the boys to live, too.
18 So the king of Egypt called for the midwives. “Why have you done this?” he demanded. “Why have you allowed the boys to live?”
19 “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women,” the midwives replied. “They are more vigorous and have their babies so quickly that we cannot get there in time.”
20 So God was good to the midwives, and the Israelites continued to multiply, growing more and more powerful. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Throw every newborn Hebrew boy into the Nile River. But you may let the girls live.”
Exodus 32:1-35
The Golden Calf
1 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” 6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people.13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
15 Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. 16 The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
17 When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “There is the sound of war in the camp.”
18 Moses replied:
“It is not the sound of victory,
it is not the sound of defeat;
it is the sound of singing that I hear.”
19 When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing,his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. 20 And he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder,scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it.
21 He said to Aaron, “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?”
22 “Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. 23 They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ 24 So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”
25 Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. 26 So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him.
27 Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. 29 Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”
30 The next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”
31 So Moses went back to the Lord and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. 32 But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.”
33 The Lord replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. 34 Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.”
35 And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made.
Numbers 32:1-42
The Transjordan Tribes
1 The Reubenites and Gadites, who had very large herds and flocks,saw that the lands of Jazer and Gilead were suitable for livestock. 2 So they came to Moses and Eleazar the priest and to the leaders of the community, and said, 3 “Ataroth, Dibon, Jazer, Nimrah, Heshbon, Elealeh,Sebam, Nebo and Beon— 4 the land the Lord subdued before the people of Israel—are suitable for livestock, and your servants have livestock. 5 If we have found favor in your eyes,” they said, “let this land be given to your servants as our possession. Do not make us cross the Jordan.”
6 Moses said to the Gadites and Reubenites, “Should your fellow Israelites go to war while you sit here? 7 Why do you discourage the Israelites from crossing over into the land the Lord has given them?8 This is what your fathers did when I sent them from Kadesh Barnea to look over the land. 9 After they went up to the Valley of Eshkol and viewed the land, they discouraged the Israelites from entering the land the Lord had given them. 10 The Lord’s anger was aroused that day and he swore this oath: 11 ‘Because they have not followed me wholeheartedly, not one of those who were twenty years old or more when they came up out of Egypt will see the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob— 12 not one except Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua son of Nun, for they followed the Lord wholeheartedly.’ 13 The Lord’s anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until the whole generation of those who had done evil in his sight was gone.
14 “And here you are, a brood of sinners, standing in the place of your fathers and making the Lord even more angry with Israel. 15 If you turn away from following him, he will again leave all this people in the wilderness, and you will be the cause of their destruction.”
16 Then they came up to him and said, “We would like to build pens here for our livestock and cities for our women and children. 17 But we will arm ourselves for battle and go ahead of the Israelites until we have brought them to their place. Meanwhile our women and children will live in fortified cities, for protection from the inhabitants of the land. 18 We will not return to our homes until each of the Israelites has received their inheritance. 19 We will not receive any inheritance with them on the other side of the Jordan, because our inheritance has come to us on the east side of the Jordan.”
20 Then Moses said to them, “If you will do this—if you will arm yourselves before the Lord for battle 21 and if all of you who are armed cross over the Jordan before the Lord until he has driven his enemies out before him— 22 then when the land is subdued before the Lord, you may return and be free from your obligation to the Lord and to Israel. And this land will be your possession before the Lord.
23 “But if you fail to do this, you will be sinning against the Lord; and you may be sure that your sin will find you out. 24 Build cities for your women and children, and pens for your flocks, but do what you have promised.”
25 The Gadites and Reubenites said to Moses, “We your servants will do as our lord commands. 26 Our children and wives, our flocks and herds will remain here in the cities of Gilead. 27 But your servants, every man who is armed for battle, will cross over to fight before the Lord, just as our lord says.”
28 Then Moses gave orders about them to Eleazar the priest and Joshua son of Nun and to the family heads of the Israelite tribes. 29 He said to them, “If the Gadites and Reubenites, every man armed for battle, cross over the Jordan with you before the Lord, then when the land is subdued before you, you must give them the land of Gilead as their possession. 30 But if they do not cross over with you armed, they must accept their possession with you in Canaan.”
31 The Gadites and Reubenites answered, “Your servants will do what the Lord has said. 32 We will cross over before the Lord into Canaan armed,but the property we inherit will be on this side of the Jordan.”
33 Then Moses gave to the Gadites, the Reubenites and the half-tribe of Manasseh son of Joseph the kingdom of Sihon king of the Amorites and the kingdom of Og king of Bashan—the whole land with its cities and the territory around them.
34 The Gadites built up Dibon, Ataroth, Aroer, 35 Atroth Shophan, Jazer,Jogbehah, 36 Beth Nimrah and Beth Haran as fortified cities, and built pens for their flocks. 37 And the Reubenites rebuilt Heshbon, Elealeh and Kiriathaim, 38 as well as Nebo and Baal Meon (these names were changed) and Sibmah. They gave names to the cities they rebuilt.
39 The descendants of Makir son of Manasseh went to Gilead, captured it and drove out the Amorites who were there. 40 So Moses gave Gilead to the Makirites, the descendants of Manasseh, and they settled there.41 Jair, a descendant of Manasseh, captured their settlements and called them Havvoth Jair. 42 And Nobah captured Kenath and its surrounding settlements and called it Nobah after himself.
Deuteronomy 18:14-22
The Prophet to Come
14 The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, the Lord your God has not permitted you to do so. 15 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. 16 For this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.”
17 The Lord said to me: “What they say is good. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. 19 I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. 20 But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”
21 You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.
History of the world records many different gods...Most of the gods were from the ancient near east, but Greek had her share of gods too...The God of Abraham was the One God that the Bible is written all about...This God had promised Abraham the land of Canaan, which would be God's people's Promised Land...God's people were the Hebrew people, later to be called the Jewish people of Israel...And the Hebrew or Jewish people got to know this One particular God as they traveled from their release from Pharaoh in Egypt to the land that God had promised Abraham...God's promise of the country that is now Israel, was first made in God's covenant to him...Of all the different god's mentioned only the God of Israel is with us today...He is the God of the heavens and earth...He is the God of all things...He is the God of the country of Israel...He spoke to Abraham, and is the God of Abraham...
God's covenant to Abraham was this: “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you...I will make you into a great nation...I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others...I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt...All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”...
At the time of this covenant, Abraham and his wife Sarah had no children...Later, Abraham had a son Isaac...And years later Isaac had a son named Jacob...These are the three Patriarchs of the religion of Judaism...And these three Patriarchs are the ancestors to the Hebrew and Jewish people...When God made His covenant to Abram, who later becomes Abraham, the Hebrew and Jewish people were no established...Abraham was the first Patriarch and he believed in this One True God of the Universe and not in idols and statues of idols...
Abraham had one only child Isaac...Isaac had two children, they were twins Esau and Jacob...Jacob would gain Esau's birthright (because Esau was the older) and also receive Isaac's blessing in his last days...Jacob would have twelve sons and one daughter...Jacob's twelve sons were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph and Benjamin...The brothers would grow to be jealous of Joseph and would sell him to an Egyptian merchant...Joseph would spend most of his life in Egypt...But God was with Joseph and Joseph prospered in Egypt...Jacob's sons are the ancestors of the tribes of Israel, and the ones for whom the tribes are named...Joseph is the father of two tribes: Manasseh and Ephraim...Levi and his immediate descendants were not given land...They were assigned the religious duties over the Promised Land...So the ten other brothers of Jacob and the two sons of Joseph make up the twelve tribes of Israel...
As centuries past, a famine hit the land where Jacob lived and he sent his sons to find food in Egypt...Joseph, the son who was sold by his brothers, had become powerful in Egypt and was the one who planned around this great famine...Joseph's brothers and father, from an unlikely invitation from Joseph, and their entourage would come to Egypt to live and make due while the famine lasted...But they wound up staying in Egypt for centuries...These descendants were Jewish and now slaves of Egypt...A new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done for Egypt...This king said to his people, “Look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are...We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more...If we don’t, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us...Then they will escape from the country.”...So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves...They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down with crushing labor...They forced them to build the cities of Pithom and Rameses as supply centers for the king...But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread, and the more alarmed the Egyptians became...So the Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy...They made their lives bitter, forcing them to mix mortar and make bricks and do all the work in the fields...They were ruthless in all their demands...They would stay slaves until a deliver named Moses would help them exodus from Egypt and take them to the Promised Land...
God could have taken the Jewish people right to the Promised Land from Egypt...That Exodus would not have been very long...But His people had many things to learn...They sinned as we sin today, and they needed to learn much...They would become the nation of Israel and God was their Teacher as Moses led the Way...And often when they sinned in the desert God became angry with their sinful ways...The LORD’s anger was aroused one day and He swore this oath: ‘Because they have not followed Me wholeheartedly, not one of those who were twenty years old or more when they came up out of Egypt will see the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob— not one except Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua son of Nun, for they followed the Lord wholeheartedly.’...The LORD’s anger burned against Israel and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until the whole generation of those who had done evil in his sight was gone...
So Caleb and Joshua kept the faith and would get to see the Promised Land...But the others who left Egypt would not get to see the land God promised to Abraham...
Yet, God was with His people, but God's own people built a golden calf when they were with Him...Moses was leading them to the Promised Land and went up Mt. Sinai to speak to God...And the people were impatient...When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the Sacred Mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us...As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”...Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.”...So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron...He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool...Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”...
The people called this idol the god who had brought them up and out of Egypt...And God had chose to be with His people in the desert as they wandered toward the Promised Land of Israel...The relationship between God and His people was like none other, and is a very large part of the Bible...The wandering in the desert makes up the early parts, after Genesis, of the Old Testament...And the trip from Egypt to Israel took forty very long years, and did not have to because of the distance between Egypt and Israel is not a forty year trip...But God wanted them to learn about Him...After all, they did not know Him that well or why would they constructed a golden calf...
If the trip to the Promised Land was only ten to twenty days, would the Hebrew people learned much about God?...But this forty year process was God’s Way and His Plan of getting not only the Hebrew people to know Him, but also the world to know Him through the Old Testament...God over these forty years instilled in His people the type of God He was...A Moral God...A Loving God...A Living God...God's people needed (as we do) this repetition to learn about Him...And over this forty year period they knew that God was God, and that He is the Only One True God and that He is a Moral God...
There were oral stories and some mythical stories about different gods, that I am sure the Hebrews had heard them...The god Baal comes to mind that in mentioned in 1 Kings and the one who Elijah had a showdown with as the mean queen Jezebel believed in Baal...So there were odd stories of different gods...But now over the forty year period, they were with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob...The people would know who God was, and it wasn't just one generation of Hebrews knowing Him...God was with the Hebrew people for forty years...And as Moses leads God's people to the Promised Land of Israel, in Deuteronomy he writes about a Prophet who would eventually come to the people of Israel... Moses said, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your fellow Israelites...You must listen to Him...For this is what you yourselves requested of the LORD your God when you were assembled at Mount Sinai...You said, ‘Don’t let us hear the voice of the LORD our God anymore or see this blazing fire, for we will die.’...“Then the LORD said to me, ‘What they have said is right...I will raise up a Prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites...I will put My words in His mouth, and He will tell the people everything I command Him...I will personally deal with anyone who will not listen to the messages the Prophet proclaims on My behalf...But any prophet who falsely claims to speak in my name or who speaks in the name of another god must die.’...“But you may wonder, ‘How will we know whether or not a prophecy is from the LORD?’...If the prophet speaks in the LORD’s name but his prediction does not happen or come true, you will know that the LORD did not give that message...That prophet has spoken without My authority and need not be feared...
C. S. Lewis said this about God and the Prophet that He would send, "God sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men...He also selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was — that there was only One of Him and that He cared about right conduct...Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process."...