The Promises to Isaac and Jacob, and the Exodus

I've separated these promises from the promises to Abraham, partly for brevity in my previous article, and partly because we'll begin to see categorical differences in those promises. In order to see those differences, we need to briefly review the Scriptural narrative of Isaac and Jacob.

With the article on Abraham, I gave some helpful historical context for his day. With the time of Isaac and Jacob, we're still dealing with the aftermath of the fall of the Sumerian Ur III empire. There were a number of smaller nation-states and even city-states at that time. In addition, just as Sumer was crumbling, the Middle Kingdom of Egypt was beginning to rise.

The time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was the time of the 12th dynasty of Egypt, not long after the fall of Ur, during what archaeologists refer to as the Middle Bronze Age.

During the 12th dynasty, Egypt sent military expeditions into the land of Canaan and conducted trade, but they didn't outright control any part of Canaan. In addition, it was common for people from Canaan to migrate into the Nile Delta in Egypt for work and trade.

We left off the story of Abraham when he was commanded to sacrifice Isaac. As Abraham grew older and Isaac grew to adulthood, Abraham commanded his servant not to take a Canaanite wife for Isaac, but to go back to his family in Padan-Aram and seek a wife for Isaac from among them. In other words, Abraham wanted Isaac to marry within his own tribe or clan, as it were. Abraham was still a foreigner in the land of Canaan, despite God's promise to give him the land of Canaan.

After Isaac married Rebekah and was intimate with her, Rebekah was given a prophecy that there were twins in her womb. They would father two nations, and the elder would serve the younger.

Isaac apparently favored Esau, the elder son, despite this prophecy, while Rebekah favored the younger son Jacob. Because of this, Rebekah and Jacob conspired to achieve God’s will through deceit, since Isaac was unwilling to do things God’s way.

What we're beginning to see is a growing pattern of not fully trusting in God to bring about His will. In Abraham's case, it was because God delayed fulfilling His promise of giving Abraham an heir - Isaac - for 25 years. But in Isaac and Rebekah's case, it's because of self-will rather than following God's will. That will have major consequences later on, even into our day.

One point that I skipped over in my previous article on Abraham is that if you pay close attention to Genesis 17:18, where Abraham asked that Ishmael might "live before" God, Abraham was showing his deep love for Ishmael. But that didn't prevent him from following God's will regarding Isaac, in stark contrast to how Isaac and Rebekah handled things.

After tricking his father into blessing him instead of Esau, and after betraying his brother Esau, Jacob fled from his brother's murderous wrath, back to Abraham's family in Padan-Aram. While camping near the city of Luz, Jacob had a dream of a stairway (not a ladder!) from earth to heaven. In the dream, God promised Jacob the land of Canaan for him and his descendants, who would become like the dust of the earth for multitude. When Jacob awoke from his dream, he declared that place to be the “gate of heaven” and erected the stone that he had slept on as a pillar. That place, which Jacob renamed Bethel, is in the geographic center of the land of Canaan.

Erecting a pillar stone like this was an ancient practice of making a “family land claim” on a particular land.

The idea of a "gate of heaven" comes straight from the Tower of Babel story. In that story, the people built a tower, calling it "Bab-ilu" in Akkadian, meaning "gate of god" or gate of heaven. It was built for the purpose of having a patron god descend and take residence in the shrine atop the "tower" or ziggurat, to protect the city and its people. But rather than a pagan god descending to Bethel, God would become Bethel's patron god, protecting the entire land.

Furthermore, Jacob called this stone "Beth-Elohim" - that is, the "house of God". It's not just referring to a building, but to a family household. Jacob was literally describing his descendants as sons and daughters of God. That will have massive ramifications later on.

Jacob traveled back to Padan-Aram to seek a wife from his uncle Laban. He fell in love with Laban’s younger daughter Rachel, but Laban deceived him and had him work for seven years for his elder daughter Leah instead. Jacob then worked seven more years for Rachel, and even more time for cattle, sheep and goats.

Jacob had twelve sons, whose descendants would become known as the twelve tribes of Israel, from two wives – Leah and Rachel – and two concubines. Judah was one of those sons, but Jacob had many others. The “Jews” today are the descendants of only two of those sons – Judah and Benjamin.

When Jacob was ready to return to the land of Canaan, he divided his family into two groups, for their protection, because he was afraid of his brother Esau seeking revenge on him for his deception. On the way back, he met “the angel of YHWH” and wrestled with Him, trying to prevail through his own strength. This was a metaphor for Jacob’s attempt to achieve God’s will through strength (and deceit) rather than by faith. But when Jacob saw Esau afar off, Esau had 400 armed men with him, and Jacob was finally forced to fully rely on God rather than on his own strength.

In Genesis 35:9-12, God renamed Jacob “Israel” – one who struggles with God – and promised that Jacob’s descendants would form “a nation and a company of nations.” The nation was Israel. In Genesis 48:17-19, we’re told that it would be Ephraim’s descendants who would form the “company of nations.”

Here, we're beginning to see different national destinies for Jacob's "two groups." One group would later form the nation of Israel, but another would be scattered into many nations. In order to understand the purpose behind these different national destinies, we need to more fully understand Biblical cosmology. This will have important ramifications later, when we get to the New Testament.

As I mentioned in my previous article, in Deuteronomy 32:7-9, God Most High (El Elyon) distributed "land grants" to the various sons of God, giving each of them a nation to rule over. YHWH was given the people of Jacob as His inheritance. The land that YHWH ruled over was the land of Canaan...except we have a prior land claim going on, here! And a prior Gentile god, as well! The god Ba'al!

Because YHWH did NOT have dominion in other lands - such as in Egypt or in Padan-Aram, both of which had their own gods - YHWH could NOT legitimately interfere with the divine rulership of those places. That might seem very strange, because nowadays we think of the God of the Old Testament as the ruler of the whole earth. But that's not exactly the case.

Speaking out of the burning bush, God said this to Moses in Exodus 3:7-10:

⁷ And YHWH said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. ⁸ So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. ⁹ Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰ Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”

The God speaking to Moses out of the burning bush is plainly stating that the people who belong to Him - that is, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - were in Egypt. He described Egypt as "that land." It wasn't "his" land.

On the other hand, God Most High - El Elyon - was ALSO known as YHWH, and that was who called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees and out of Padan-Aram. Because God Most High was the one responsible for the division of the nations, that was who HAD to be responsible for creating a brand new nation - Israel - through Abraham. The same is true for calling Israel out of Egypt. But that's not the end of the story.

The "Word," "Angel," or Messenger of YHWH - see Genesis 15:1 - was the ruler of the land of Canaan. That was who led the Israelites through the Reed Sea and into the land of Canaan.

Furthermore, if some of the descendants of Isaac and Jacob - mainly Ephraim, one of the tribes of Joseph - would be scattered into many nations, then YHWH could make a legitimate claim to rule over them too. In this way, YHWH could eventually come to inherit all of the nations because of the scattering of the descendants of Jacob!

There's more to it than just that, and we'll see exactly how this develops when we discuss the Kingdom of Israel and God's covenant with David.

In the meantime, let's look at the Israelites' captivity in Egypt and the Exodus.

There are a lot of different opinions on when, how, or even if the Exodus from Egypt actually happened. I don’t want to get into the weeds discussing why that is, only to say that if we want to look at the historical background of the Israelites going into Egypt and coming back out again, we need what I call a “historical anchor point.” That’s a way of linking Scripture with history, and anchoring that link because you can be sure it’s accurate.

In order to find an anchor point like that, we need to look at specific clues – both in Scripture and in history. One of those clues is in Deuteronomy 11:4, where we’re told that the army of the Egyptians had remained destroyed for the entire 40-year wilderness wandering. And that’s important, because if the Egyptians had rebuilt their army, they could have chased after the Israelites who were still in a wilderness area that the Egyptians were VERY familiar with, and recaptured them. So, when in history would it have been impossible for the Egyptians to rebuild their army for 40 years?

Here’s another possible historical anchor point, this time coming from evidence found right in the Egyptian Sinai. Archaeologists found what are known as “Proto-Semitic” inscriptions at a copper mining site called Serabit el-Khadim, where the Egyptians used Semitic slaves – remember, Israelites are “Semites,” but not all Semites are Israelites – to mine copper. These inscriptions used Egyptian hieroglyphs to represent alphabetic letters in a Semitic language. We can read these inscriptions as Hebrew. That doesn’t mean they were Hebrew, but we can read them as Hebrew! And get this. Two of the inscriptions mention the name of Moses. These inscriptions date to the mid 12th to mid 13th dynasties of Egypt – which is way earlier than most scholars think the Exodus happened. Maybe they’re looking at the wrong time?

Many of these inscriptions are praising the Canaanite goddess Ba’alat – the female consort of Ba’al. Ba’alat was the Canaanite equivalent of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, symbolized by a golden heifer.The Egyptians had a temple of Hathor right there at Serabit el-Khadim. It wasn’t just for worship. They had temple prostitutes – young girls – at the Temple, to keep the miners happy. It wasn’t easy for slaves to run away if they’re in the middle of a desert wilderness, but the Egyptians wanted to give their slaves a reason to stay!

A minority of the inscriptions cursed Ba’alat, praised the god “El” instead (as in "Elohim" - that is, the God ruling over Canaan), and urged their fellow Semites to leave Egypt. Note that technically, the Sinai was part of the land of Canaan, according to the geographic boundaries that God gave Abraham in Genesis 15:18-21 - from the Nile all the way to the Euphrates. That's why the Israelites in the Sinai could contend for worshipping El (YHWH) instead.

Ezekiel 20:5-9 mentions that while the Israelites were still in Egypt, God told them to forsake their false gods and worship Him instead. But they refused. They rebelled against Him. We don’t read about such an event anywhere else in Scripture, just in Ezekiel. But this evidence kinda backs that up.

Right next to Serabit el-Khadim – which is three days’ journey into the wilderness from Egypt – are two mountains. They’re known today as Mount Saniyah (Sinai!) and Mount Ghorabi (Horeb!). No one knows why they have these names, or where they come from.

You’ve probably heard a lot about the ten plagues on Egypt, how they were against the gods of Egypt. But what’s interesting about them is that each of them represented death in one form or another, and showed that God had the power of death. And death kept getting closer and closer to pharaoh with each plague. God wasn’t just randomly choosing plagues to inflict on Egypt, but was giving pharaoh chance after chance to hear Him and let Israel go.

The final plague was the death of the firstborn. I want you to think about it this way. The Israelites were rebellious, but God saved them anyway. But, someone had to pay the price for their rebellion. That price was Egypt’s firstborn, but it was also the Passover lamb.

See the repeating theme of the next generation having to pay the price, from Abraham? We’ll come back to this idea again later.

References:

World History Encyclopedia on ziggurats, including how a god would descend to inhabit the shrine on top:
https://www.worldhistory.org/ziggurat/

Sermon on Jacob's "nation and company of nations":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FscM5mGNwfA
John Day, "Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan" - why El Elyon is not the same as YHWH in Deut. 32:8-9

Biblical Dates for the Exodus
https://biblicalhistoricalcontext.com/exodus/the-biblical-dates-of-the-exodus/

Lack of "Evidence" for the Exodus
https://biblicalhistoricalcontext.com/series/israelite-origins/

YHWH and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/.../yahweh-and-the.../

Michael Bar-Ron's proto-thesis on the Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions. His thesis is being submitted for his Masters Degree at Ariel University in Jerusalem.
https://www.academia.edu/.../Proto_Thesis_Presenting...