The Bible Period by Period: A Manual for the Study of the Bible by PeriodsTidwell, Josiah Blake
Religion
The Bible Period by Period: A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods
Tidwell, Josiah Blake
Bible -- Commentaries; Bible -- History of Biblical events; Bible -- Introductions
The call of Moses consists of two elements. (1) _The human element_
which consisted of a knowledge of the needs of the Hebrew people. To
him, as to all great leaders and benefactors of the race, the cry of
the oppressed or needy constituted the first element of a call to
enlist in their service. (2) _The divine element_. God heard the cry
of his people and remembered his covenant with Abraham and appeared to
Moses in a burning bush and sent him to deliver them from under the
tyranny of Pharaoh. Like Isaiah (Is. Ch.6) he not only saw the need of
his people but also the holy God calling him to supply the need.
Moses task was three fold: (1) Religious: He was to show in Egypt
weakness of the idolatrous worship and to establish in the wilderness
the true worship of one and only God who is ruler of all. (2)
_Political:_ He was to overcome the power of the mighty Pharaoh and
deliver a people of 600,000 men besides the children with their herds
and flocks out of his territory. Then, too, he was to give them laws
and so connect them together that as a nation they would survive the
hostile nations around them and the civil strife and dissensions
within. (3) _Social_: He was also called upon to provide rules by
which, to keep clean not only the individual, but his family, and to
teach them right relations to each other. In carrying out this
program, it devolved upon him to provide an elaborate code of civil,
sanitary, ceremonial, moral and religious laws.
The Great Deliverance. The deliverance may be properly considered in
three sections. (1) The preparation. (2) The contest with Pharoah and
the ten plagues. (3) The crossing of the Red Sea.
The preparation consists (1) in getting the people acquainted with
what God intended to do and thereby secure their full consent to enter
into the plan. Then, too, it was necessary to have a very thorough
organization so that the expedition could proceed in an orderly way.
(2) There were various preliminary appeals to Pharaoh with the
consequent added burdens laid upon the Hebrews.
The contest with Pharaoh consisted of certain preliminary demands
followed by ten national calamities intended to force the king to let
the people go. The struggle was all based upon the request of Moses
that all Israel be allowed to go three days' journey into the
wilderness to serve their God. This gave the conflict a religious
aspect and showed that the struggle was not merely one between Moses
and Pharaoh, but between the God of Israel and the gods of Egypt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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