ISRAELITES.

ISRAEL (HEB. YISRAEL, “A PRINCE with God”), the name bestowed upon Jacob when he wrestled with an angel at Peniel (Gen. xxxii. 28), afterward the distinctive name of his descendants.

Egypt. A celebrated country in the north of Africa, at the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. The Hebrews called it Mizrain, and hence it is now called by the Arabs, Mizr. The Greeks and Romans called it Ægyptus, whence Egypt; but the origin of this name is unknown.

Rameses the Great, of Egypt, was succeeded by King Menepta, who is now generally accepted by historians as the Pharaoh of the exodus of Israel. The story of this remarkable race begins with the call of Abraham from his home at Ur, the city of his birth, usually called “Ur of the Chaldees,” near the Euphrates, in the northwest part of Mesopotamia, to his promised abode in Canaan. (See map.)

Abraham was a son of Terah, a descendant of Shem, and born in 1996 B. C. In 1922 B. C. he went to Haran, in Mesopotamia (a region northeast of the Euphrates), accompanied by his father, his wife Sarai, his brother Nahor, and his nephew Lot (Gen. xi. 26-32). His father dies soon after, and he takes his wife and nephew and enters the land of promise, or Canaan, as a nomad or wandering shepherd. Sojourning for a time at Shechem, he built here, as was his custom, an altar to the Lord. Removing from place to place for convenience of water and pasturage, he was at length driven by a famine into Egypt. Returning to Canaan in 1918 B. C., rich in flocks and herds, he left Lot to dwell in the fertile valley of the lower Jordan on the plain of Sodom, and pitched his own tents in Mamre: the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan (Gen. xii., xiii.). Here his descendants multiplied to the fifth generation. He became greatly renowned for piety and wisdom, and was called a friend of God. Sarai his wife, being barren, gives Hagar, her Egyptian handmaid, to Abram, and in 1910 B. C. Ishmael was born (Gen. xvi. 11, 12). God covenants with Abram, changes his name to Abraham, institutes circumcision, and promises Isaac by Sarai, whom he calls Sarah. In fulfillment of the divine promise Isaac was born in 1896 B. C., in the extreme old age of both his parents, Abraham being 100 and Sarah ninety years of age. In 1859 B. C., Sarah dies, and five years later Abraham marries Keturah, by whom he had six sons. Abraham dies in 1821 B. C., aged 175 years. His sons Isaac and Ishmael bury him in the cave of Machpelah in the field of Ephron, which is before Mamre (or Hebron) (Gen. xxv. 9, 10).

Isaac at the age of forty marries Rebekah, his kinswoman, who bore him twin sons, Esau (or Edom) and Jacob (afterwards called Israel). They were born in 1836 B. C., but the place of their birth can not be ascertained from the narrative in Gen. xxv., except that it was in the Negeb or “South Country” of the land of Canaan. Esau was the first-born and the favorite of his father, but Jacob, in his early manhood, by the aid of his mother, obtained the birthright (Gen. xxvii.), and in fear of the rage of Esau was sent away by his parents to his uncle Laban at Haran, in Mesopotamia, where he married his cousins Leah and Rachel, and resided twenty years, becoming wealthy in flocks and herds. Jacob then returns to Canaan with his family and his riches. Arriving near home, he meets his brother Esau, and in a rather dramatic personal interview they become reconciled (Gen. xxxiii.). Isaac dies at Hebron in 1716 B. C., aged 180 years, and is buried in the cave of Machpelah with his father. He was a man of gentle nature, a nomadic herdsman of devout and blameless life.

Joseph was the eleventh of the twelve sons of Jacob, and was born at Haran, in Mesopotamia, about 1745 B. C. He was the favorite son of his father, and envied by his brethren on that account. Their enmity was further excited by two dreams in which his future greatness was foreshadowed, and this led them to sell him as a slave to some Midianite traders, by whom he was carried into Egypt, and sold to Potiphar, an officer of the king. The Midianite traders were an ancient Arabian race, the descendants of Midian, the fourth of the six sons of Abraham by Keturah. They appear to have dwelt mainly to the south of Moab, and covered a territory extending to the neighborhood of Mount Sinai. Joseph acquired the confidence of his master, who set him as overseer over all his property, but, having repelled dishonorable proposals made to him by his mistress, she accused him falsely to her husband, and caused him to be thrown into prison. Here he interpreted the dreams of two of his fellow-prisoners, the chief baker and chief butler of Pharaoh, and when his predictions had been justified by the result, he was summoned by King Pharaoh, at the instance of the butler, to interpret two dreams which portended seven years of prosperity followed by seven of famine. The king was so much struck by the wisdom of the advice given by the young Hebrew that he adopted all his suggestions for making preparations for the time of famine, and appointed him ruler over the whole land. The measures taken by Joseph as vizier or viceroy resulted greatly to the advantage of the king and his people, securing an abundant provision for the time of the famine. This calamity extended also to the adjoining countries, and led Jacob to dispatch his sons to the Egyptian granaries to purchase corn, and there the brothers were brought face to face with Joseph, who recognized his unnatural brethren, and after a series of stratagems (Gen. xlii.), by which he reminded them of and punished them for their crime, the whole family, by his request, to the number of about seventy, was brought into and established in the “land of Goshen,” or Ramses, as it was called by the Egyptians. (This was about 1706 B. C.) Here they grew and multiplied for nearly two hundred and fifteen years. Joseph married a daughter of the high priest of On (Heliopolis), and had two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, who became the progenitors of the tribes bearing those names, the most powerful of the future kingdom of Israel. Joseph preserved his authority until his death, which occurred in 1635 B. C. at the age of 110. His body was embalmed, and at the time of the Exodus was carried to Palestine and buried at Shechem, where his tomb is still shown.

Jacob died in Egypt in 1689 B. C., aged 147 years; his body was embalmed and buried with great pomp and all possible honors in the burial-place of Abraham, near Hebron (Gen. 1.).

For a time the growing Israelitic tribe was held in honor by the government and people; but later the ruling class began to look askance at the strangers, and then to oppress them. They were set to work at building and digging. They were set to sweat in the brickyards, and were beaten by taskmasters until they broke out in insurrection. In the course of time, denial of religious privileges complicated and intensified the rebellion. In the year 1573 B. C., Pharaoh orders all the male children of the Hebrews to be drowned. Two years later Jochebed, the wife of Amram, a Levite, succeeded in concealing her infant three months, but when she could no longer hide him, she put him in a basket of papyrus and placed the basket among the rushes of the Nile, and set his sister, Miriam, to watch from afar; finally the king’s daughter found the child, and, being struck with its beauty, determined to adopt it, and sent Miriam to fetch a Hebrew nurse, who conceived the idea of getting her mother, and thus Jochebed became nurse to her own child. According to Ex. xi. 10, the child was adopted by the king’s daughter, who “called his name Moses; and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.” And according to Acts vii. 22, he was initiated in all the secret wisdom of the Egyptian priesthood; but the Bible tells us nothing of his youth from his adoption by the princess to the day when he slew an Egyptian overseer for his barbarous treatment of a Jewish slave. This was in the year 1531 B. C. He was then compelled to flee from Egypt, and lived many years in the land of the Midianites, with Jethro the priest, whose daughter he married and whose flocks he tended. In 1491 B. C. he was called, according to Exodus iii., and Acts vii. 30-34, from the wilderness of Mount Sinai, where he was tending the flocks of his father-in-law, to free his brethren from slavery in which they lived. He returned to Egypt, but at first he was received by his countrymen with suspicion, and by the Egyptians with contempt. Nevertheless, Moses appeared as a leader of his people, and demanded, in a personal interview with the king at Tanis, the privilege of conducting them a three days’ march into the desert to sacrifice to Jehovah. But Pharaoh replied by charging the Hebrews with a purpose to escape their tasks under a pretence of piety. Whereupon Moses, by signs and wonders done in the king’s house and kingdom, humbled the. monarch and compelled him “to let the people go” (Ex. xiii.).

After some delays the Israelites departed along the banks of the canal, touching the principal Hebrew towns, and gathering their population as they went. The route then lay through the Wadi Tumilot (Valley), which extended to the Gulf of Suez, where they arrived, a few miles south of the present city of that name. Here the fugitives were hemmed in by the forces of Pharaoh, which had been sent after the retreating host. At this point in the gulf there is a shallow, stretching from shore to shore, almost fordable at low tide. “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.” Over this...