Israel in Egypt (1)

A. Israel in Egypt (1)

The first verse of the book of Exodus connects the Joseph cycle of Genesis (see Chapter 2.3) to the exodus story by showing how the Hebrew people came to Egypt.

¹ These are the names of the sons of Israel who entered Egypt with Jacob, each with his family. (1:1)

    After naming all the sons the writer remarks that the Israelites were fruitful and prolific, so much so that Egypt was teeming with them. The language of multiplication echoes the ancestral covenant blessing (Genesis 17:2; 28:3; 35:11), and goes back even further to the priestly creation blessing (Genesis 1:28; 9:1).

    Beginning with Jacob's clan the Hebrews lived in Egypt for many generations. After a time the government changed hands and the Egyptian Pharaoh, or king of Egypt, enslaved the Hebrews. The term pharaoh is derived from the Egyptian phrase "the great house." It designates the highest office of Egypt and is not a personal name. Notice how their covenant blessing became their curse; they had become so numerous that the new ruler considered them a threat.

⁸ A new king rose to power over Egypt, who did not know about Joseph. ⁹ He said to his people, "Now, the Israelites are more numerous and powerful than we are. ¹⁰ Come on, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will become even more numerous. If war breaks out they would join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the land." ¹¹ They put slave masters over them to inflict hard labor on them. They built the store cities Pithom and Rameses for Pharaoh. (1:8-11)

    Unfortunately, there are no direct references to Moses or the Israelite exodus outside the Hebrew Bible. Still, extra-biblical sources have helped to build a plausible setting for Israel's experience within Egyptian history.

 Figure 3.2 Early Israel and Egypt

    Egyptian history provides a context for understanding the Egyptians' change of heart toward the Hebrews, implied by the reference in verse 8 to the "new king" who rose to power. Prior to this time, from 1750 to 1550 B.C.E., a group of non-Egyptians had ruled northern Egypt. This foreign rule, which historians call the Second Intermediate Period, was a break in the flow of native Egyptian government. The invaders were the Hyksos an Egyptian term that means "rulers of foreign lands." Most of them were Semites from Syria and Palestine, the same general area the ancestors of the Hebrews called home. If Joseph was part of the influx of the foreign Hyksos, this might explain how he could come to such prominence and power in Egypt.

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Ahmose I and the Hyksos The middle panel on this ceremonial axe depicts the Egyptian Pharaoh Ahmose smiting an enemy. Egyptian sources credit Ahmose I with expelling the Hyksos, who were foreign invaders of Egypt (see Pritchard 1969: 230-34). Jacob and Joseph, along with all the Hebrews, were likely considered part of the Hyksos group, and would have been despised by ethnic Egyptians. Egyptian Museum, Cairo

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    Under Pharaoh Ahmose I (1552-1527 B.C.E.) of the eighteenth dynasty, native Egyptian rule resumed and Egyptians began to subjugate foreigners. According to Exodus 12:40, the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years, and perhaps as many as 300 years of that were spent in subservience. If the traditional date of the exodus early in the thirteenth century B.C.E. is accepted, the Pharaoh at the time of the exodus was Ramses II (1290-1224 B.C.E.), the great empire builder of the nineteenth dynasty. He moved Egypt's center of government to the eastern Nile delta and initiated sizable building projects there.

 Dating the Exodus evidence and further explanation.

Dating the Exodus. This is a complex issue, dependent on chronological hints in the biblical text as well as evidence from history and archaeology. There are two recognized candidates, 1440 B.C.E. and 1280 B.C.E. The early date is calculated by counting back from the known date of Solomon's temple building using the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1. The late date depends heavily on the date of the conquest of Canaan as determined by archaeology and then working back from the forty years of the wilderness wandering to the exodus. See Bimson (1978).

    The Israelites were set to work building Pithom and Rameses (1:11), two Egyptian fortress cities in the eastern Nile delta region. The cities were strategic in defending Egypt from Asian attack, and served as bases for extending Egyptian power into Palestine and Syria.

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Figure 3.3 Making Bricks in Egypt This depiction of the brick-making process is from the tomb of Thut-mose lII of the 18th Egyptian dynasty, c. 1460 B.C.E. Laborers are shown processing the raw mud and forming the bricks used to construct walls and buildings. Line drawing by Barry Bandstra after Davies (1943), plate 58.

Description of brickmaking and building a New Kingdom city.

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    The Hebrews were forced to manufacture the mud bricks (see Figure 3.3) and construct the fortresses. The hard work of city building did not diminish the Hebrew population, however, so the Egyptians initiated a policy of male infanticide. The midwives who serviced the Hebrews (it is not clear whether the midwives themselves were Hebrew) secretly refused to cooperate. The desperate Pharaoh then commanded that all Hebrew infant sons be drowned in the Nile. The stage is set for the birth and early life of Moses.

 Table 3.A shows the distribution and usage of the term Hebrew.

Hebrew and Habiru. Documents from Mesopotamia and Egypt from the second millennium to the twelfth century B.C.E. make frequent reference to groups of people associated with the term habiru. These habiru were evidently not a homogenous ethnic group but a class of social misfits and troublemakers. The term may be linguistically related to the biblical term for a Hebrew, 'ivri. The question has been raised whether the Israelites were originally such people. If so, this would have implications for the origin of the Israelites, their social formation, and their ethnic constitution or lack thereof (see Na'aman 1986).

Hebrew and Israelite. Israelites are sometimes referred to as Hebrews in the early chapters of Exodus. The term Hebrew is used only about thirty times in the entire Hebrew Bible. Its pattern of usage indicates that it refers to Israelites in contrast to other ethnic groups. Interestingly, it is used mostly of early Israelites when people of other ethnic groups refer to them, rather than by Israelites themselves.

Shemot. In Jewish tradition the book of Exodus is named shemot, "names," from the first sentence of the book. Could the use of shemot here be an allusion to the importance of name in the primeval story and in Genesis 12:2, "I will make your name great"? Blessing is a prominent theme of the Priestly source (see Chapter 1). Using the phrase "sons of Israel" for the Israelites is deliberate because Jacob's name had been changed to Israel. He is the eponymous ancestor of the nation, that is, the nation takes its name from him.