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 ISRAELITES

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ISRAELITES

the Amorrhite kingdom which extended between the Arnora and the Jeboc. Of the tribes more imme- diately related to Aljraham, the Ismaelites and the Madianites seem to liave lived in the Peninsula of Sinai; the Edomites took possession of Mount Seir, the hilly tract of land lying south of the Dead Sea and east of the Arabah; and the Israelites settled in the country west of the Jordan, the districts with which they are more particularly connected in the Book of Genesis being those of Sichem, Bethel, Hebron, and Bersabee. The history of the Israelites in these early times is chiefly associated with the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel), all of whom kept a distinct re- membrance of their close kinship with the Semitic set- tlement in Aram (cf. Gen., xxiv; xxviii), and the first of whom appears to have reached Chanaan about 2300 B. c, when he came into passing contact with Egypt (Gen., xii) andElam (Gen., xiv) (see Babylonia).

III. Sojourn in Egypt. — The intercourse of Abra- ham with Egypt, jvist referred to, gave place even- tually to one of much longer duration on the part of his descendants, when the Israelites went down to Egypt under the pressure of famine, and settled peaceably in the district of Gessen, east of the Delta. The fact of this later migration of Israel fits in well with the gen- eral data afforded by Egyjitian history. About 2100 B. c. Lower Egypt had been invaded and conquered by a body of Asiatics, probably of Semitic origin, called the Hyksos, who established them.selves at Zoan (Tanis), a city in the Delta, about 35 miles north of Gessen. Their rule, to which the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth dynasties are assigned, lasted .511 years, according to Manetho (cf. Josephus, "Contra Ap.", I, xiv). It was of course repulsive to the native princes, whose authority was restricted to Thebes, while it proved attractive to other invading bodies, Asiatic like the Hyksos themselves. Among these later arrivals are naturally reckoned the Israelites, who probably entered Egypt sometime prior to 1600 B. c, the date assigned for the eventual expulsion of the Hyksos by the Egyptian native kings. The posi- tion of Gessen has been fi.xed by recent excavations, and, as the Israelites were left to pursue without mo- lestation their pastoral life in that region, they rapidly increased in numbers and wealth. The history of Israel's settlement in Egypt is connected particularly with Joseph, Jacob's beloved son by Rachel.

IV. The Exodus and the Wanderings. — The final expulsion of the Hyksos by the native princes de- prived the Israelites of their natural protectors; "never- theless, the kings of the eighteenth dynasty, who came upon the scene about this time, did not interfere with them. On the contrary, these kings were themselves Asiatic in tone, marrying Syrian wives and int roducing foreign customs. One of them, Amenhotep III, mar- ried Tyi, a Syrian princess and smi-worshipper, and their son, Akhenaten (.\menhotep IV), abandoned the national religion for the worship of the solar disc; and when this led to friction with the priesthood of Thebes, he changed his capital to Tell el-Amama, and surrounded himself both in his temples and in the government of the country with foreigners. After his death, there wasa reaction, the foreigners were ejected, and the national religion and party triumphed. The next kings, therefore, those of the nineteenth dynasty, gave no quarter to foreigners, and these were the kings who knew not Joseph, but made the lives of the Hebrews ' bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in all manner of service in the field.' There was good reason why tyrannical kings like those who now arose should view with alarm the rapid increase of the He- brews, .seeing that they were aliens, and lived in a quarter where, if inclined to be disloyal, they could lend invaluable aid to Asiatic invaders " (Souttar " A Short History of .Ancient Peoples", New York, 1903, 200 sq.). The particular Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty who treated the Israelites with special rigour was Raraeses

II, who became king at about the age of eighteen and reigned upwards of sixty years (about 1300-1234 B. c). He employed them on field labour (Ex., i, 14); engaged them upon the store cities of Phithom (the ruins of which, eleven or tweh-e miles from Is- maiha, show that it was built for that monarch) and Ramesse, thus called after his name; and finally made a desperate attempt to reduce their numbers by or- ganized infanticide. Had not God watched over His people, Israel's ruin would have been simply a ques- tion of time. But He raised up Moses and commis- sioned him to free them from this harsh and cruel oppression. This Divine call reached Moses while he was living in the Peninsula of Sinai, whither he had fled from Pharaoh's wrath, residing among the Madianites or Kenites, who, like himself, traced their descent from Abraham. With the help of his brother, Aaron, and by means of the various scourges known as the plagues of Egypt, Yahweh's envoy finally pre- vailed upon Rameses' son and successor, Merneptah I (1234-14 B. c; cf. Ex., ii, 23), to let Israel go free. In haste and by night, the Israelites left the land of bondage, turned eastward, and directed their course towards the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea, thus avoiding contact with the Egyptian troops which then occupied, at least in part, the Mediterranean coast, and making from the first for the encampments of their kindred, the Madianites, near Sinai.

While this general direction can hardly be doubted, the localities through which Israel passed cannot now be identified with certainty. The first move- ment of the Israelites was from " Ramesse to Socoth " (Ex., xii, 37). The former of these two places has often been regarded as the same as Zoan (Tanis) which is called in many papyri Pa-Ramessu Meri- amum (the Place of Rameses II), but it is more prob- ably to be located at Tell er-Retabeh, "in the middle of the length of the Wady Tumilat, about twenty miles from Israailia on the East " (Flinders Petrie), and only eight miles distant from Phithom. The name of the second place, Socoth, is probably a Semitic adaptation of the Egyptian word tliku[l] which des- ignated the district where the city of Phithom was situated. Proceeding thence, Israel encamped in Etham (Ex., xiii, 20; Num., xxxiii, 6), a terra which is supposed to refer to the southern fortress (Egypt, htem) of Thku (Socoth), on the eastern frontier of Egypt, upon the edge of the Wilderness of Etham, or Sur (cf. Ex., xv, 22; Num., xxxiii, S). At this point the children of Israel changed their easterly direction, and journeying southward reached Phihahiroth, which is described in Exodus, xiv, 2, as "between Magdal and the sea over against Beelsephon ". None of the places just spoken of have been identified; indeed, even the portion of the Red Sea which the Hebrews crossed miraculously, is a matter of controversy. Various writers maintain that at the time of the Exodus the western arm of the Red Sea, now called the Gulf of Suez, from the modern town near its northern extremity, extended some thirty or forty miles farther north, and they admit for the actual place of crossing some point of this extension of the Red Sea. Others, on the con- trary, apparently with greater probability, think that in the time of Moses the northern limit of the Gulf of Suez did not vary much, if at all, from what it is at the present day, and they maintain that the crossing took place at some point of the present head of the gulf, not far north of the present Suez, the ancient Cireek name of which (C'lysma) appears to embody a tratlition of the Egj^ptian disaster. It is often and ably argued that after the passage of the Red Sea, the Israelites, resuming their journey in an easterly direction, took the haj route now fol- lowed by pilgrims going from Cairo to Mecca, run- ning eastward across the Peninsula of Sinai to Elath at the northern point of the eastern arm of the Red