9. Egypt and the Era of the Israelite Judges

all right so we left off last week if you were here right at the Exodus and the people of God are just now on the cusp of the Red Sea as you recall we kind of got them to that point the Pharaoh of the exodus is amenhotep ii and this is all taking place in the 18th dynasty i want to finish up the 18th dynasty this morning briefly that takes us down to 12 93 and then get a little bit into the 19th dynasty which carries us through the bulk of that period that we call the era of the judges amenhotep ii is presumably the Pharaoh of the Exodus we're guessing the exodus took place around 1446 1447 which would be 480 years prior to the beginning of the building of Solomon's Temple and that's the date that the Old Testament itself gives us so we're going off of that Old Testament chronology amenhotep ii as you know started off as kind of a great military character he had all the DNA of his father Tut most the third in him he was probably going to go out and even do more world conquering things but something happened early in his reign and really it's very interesting the rest of the story of amenhotep ii is strangely quiet it's almost as if there'd been some great cataclysm like foal maybe an exodus that sort of deflated him and left him without the wind in his sails we don't hear anything of the exodus from Egyptian annals it's just a big gaping hole there but we certainly see a dramatic change in the overall style of this king who had at least at the beginning seemed to be so full of promise so full of military exploits and so on the children of Israel meantime of course have have escaped from Egypt and they spend one year at Mount Sinai now if you recall the at least route that we're postulating this is this is not a majority view but I'm happy to report to you there is no majority view so you know this just happens to be one hypothesis that I personally find rather intriguing and that is that the children Israel escaped from Egypt got a head start probably of about two that's about what it would take to cover the North middle part of the Sinai Peninsula at a certain point very strangely at the first part of Exodus 14 they are commanded to go back and it's not real clear what go back means seems like they should go forward but in fact the command is to go back they wouldn't go north because that takes them to the Ridgid region of the Philistines and they've already been told not to do that they wouldn't go back to Egypt and so go back most likely means to go back and down south and that would funnel them into this little peninsula here that we talked about last week called the new wave a peninsula you get there through this rather narrow Wadi it's it's broad enough to accommodate the people who are making their way there but certainly it doesn't allow much of an escape route the hypothesis is that that's the point where the Red Sea crossing would have taken place there is a kind of strange land bridge it's usually submerged but if you could take away the water it's a rather gradual descent and ascent on the other side that would accommodate the kind of thoroughfare that we're discussing here this is all hypothesis it's all speculation some people have gone scuba diving out there trying to find artifacts you know and there's been a mixed response as to what exactly has been discovered so I'm just leaving that off the table for right now but certainly it's been an interesting thought it's been one of many theories that are suggested and the one that I personally finds most intriguing from there they would have gone north to what is called Mount Sinai but Mount Sinai is most likely in Midian present-day Saudi Arabia it is the standard Jewish view it is the view of the Apostle Paul Paul says in Galatians Mount Sinai in Arabia in Galatians Arabia is a name that applies to this part of the world not to the Sinai Peninsula it's the view that was taken by Josephus it's the view that was taken by the Septuagint version it's the standard classical Jewish view that Mount Sinai is over in this region of the world not in the lower part of the Sinai Peninsula so I feel on pretty safe ground to propose to you that that's actually the location of that mountain what particular mountain it is nobody knows it's a very mountainous and rugged area there have been certain that have been suggested and certainly there's some attractive alternatives there but we can at least say probably that it would be in this region it makes sense because Moses met God at the burning bush in Midian and was told you'll come back to this mountain with these people and so we would expect that that would be the location so anyway they spend one year at Sinai they're receiving the law they're building the tabernacle all of that staking place and then as you know they spend 40 years wandering in the wilderness in and around that region probably within about a 1 or 200 mile radius from that location all right so that's what's happening with the children of Israel the next king we run into in Egypt is Tut most the fourth he rules from 1419 to four to 1386 this gets us into the period of the judges in Israel tut MOS is a good-looking guy you see him there and one of the better preserved mummies you know even has a little hair still on top you can see that he obviously died happy kind of but interestingly there was a contest over succession involving Tut most the 4th and that doesn't surprise us because you recall the firstborn son of amenhotep ii would have died the night of the Passover and that would throw open at least to some degree a question as to who was the legitimate successor to the throne and we know that Tut most the fourth had to do a little bit of propaganda work to establish his own claim to the throne this is mainly in a steely that's called the dream stealing if you can make it out there you'll see on the left is a pharaoh that's tough most the fourth on the right is a kind of image of a sphinx and the story is as told by Tut most the 4th that he was sleeping at the feet of the Sphinx and a God came to him and told him that if he would remove the sand that had covered up the paws of the Sphinx that he could be the next ruler of Egypt and so he busily got to work and did that and on that basis he was guaranteed succession well that's a very odd story isn't it but all it says to us is that there was some question about whether Tut most the fourth actually had a legitimate claim to the throne and we would only expect that to happen if the guy that was actually the obvious claimant to the throne was off the was it was gone and that would have been the firstborn son of Amenhotep so at least is somewhat cooperative it doesn't prove anything definitively either way but it's an interesting little detail that seems at least compatible with the exodus account that we've always talked about his reign is otherwise undistinguished he's a peaceful guy in fact most of the pharaohs from this point on tend to be rather pacifist we don't have a whole lot of military activity going on for the most part at the same time there is a rising threat far to the north involving a group that is called the Hittites and as I said we're going to look at them next week you hear of the Hittites in the Old Testament for many years people didn't really think they amounted to much and then it's been discovered in the last century or so that there was a huge and formidable Hittite Empire in the north for a fairly well a relatively brief period of time but at the time that they were a dominant power they were certainly a force to be reckoned with Egypt is aware of them and forms a treaty with another group called the Mitanni so this is kind of the lay of the land in 1400 BC just as the children of Israel are entering Canaan and establishing themselves there and driving out those other tribes that are viewed as worthy of being exposed this is kind of what we look like so in the south you see Egypt reaching up there's Canaan the Amuro refers to the Amer writes this orangish region kind of yellow-orange there are the Mitanni they last only a brief period of time they're fairly significant but fairly brief and then further north and darker orange are the hittites off to the right on the map are the is Babylon and the Kassite Empire that's the way things look more or less in the year 1400 and so what you have is Egypt concerned about the Hittites forming an alliance with the Mitanni and Israel is sort of sandwiched in the middle of all of this international geopolitics at that point all right Israel's invasion of Canaan would have taken place in the seven years or so between 1407 and 1400 the Book of Joshua tells us that it took about seven years to do the the substantial project of conquering Canaan obviously it continues for a good long time after that but this seven-year period is the principal era in which this is happening so this kind of lines up the dots there a little bit all right the next ruler is Amenhotep the third it's he reigns from 1386 to 1349 again fairly peaceful not a lot of military activity going on he had a somewhat religious focus and his own interest he again allies with the Mitanni to read to meet this rising hittite threat it's during his reign that Joshua dies in about the Year 1375 so the speech that we read a few minutes ago would have taken place about this time and then we have the next one who is Amenhotep the fourth and this is an interesting guy he's better known to us as Akhenaten he is one of Egypt's most famous and in my opinion oddest Pharaoh's he's a strange looking guy for openers there but he has this interesting headdress that we've talked about earlier he's got the kind of the implements of his rule the crook and the rod and so on he takes the throne in Egypt when there are mounting problems internationally and he becomes a very interesting character for our purposes Hittite power is more or less approaching the height of its threatening character at this point this is about 1350 the Hittites have driven out the Mitanni and so now if you look closely you'll see there that the Hittites are coming down to a city called Kadesh and the Egyptians in the north are reaching up to the north to that same region so that's kind of the point where the two sides cross Hittite power is is large and threatening the Egyptians are feeling it and Akhenaten is the guy who's kind of caught in the middle of this there's also rising a Syrian power in the east as I said in January we're going to start taking a look at the Assyrians so here's kind of the picture of things about 1350 about 50 years later off on the left you have the Mycenaeans we're skipping them for now we'll pick them up when we talk about the Greece the Minoans the Mycenaeans the trojan war all of that we're going to take a look at a little bit later Egypt of course they're in the middle up to the top is the Hittites and over on the right a Syria and it's City at a sure so there's the kind of a lay of the land a big picture Israel right in the middle with these four great slices of the pie all vying for some degree of control and pressure if you close in to the region that's called Canaan there's some interesting things happening Phoenicia is right there Phoenicia is a little set of cities right on the coast of the mediterranean about five cities cities you've heard of tyre sidon Biblos present-day beirut is one of them veritas was the ancient name and so on these are five more or less semi-independent cities but they all share together a common economic arrangement in which they more or less dominate trade on the sea and they have a very close connection to Egypt I see eyes glazing over out there you're going to like this so just listen up the kings of Phoenicia are feeling pressure and the pressure is coming from them from the north and from the south the north is squeezing the Phoenicians and it comes in the form of the Hittites the king his name is su Polly Loomis what mother would give that name to until I don't know su Paula Loomis but he's a he's a very powerful and threatening character and he is coming down from the north and squeezing the phoenicians this is 1350 the kings of the Phoenicians are writing letters to Akhenaten they're pleading with him to come and help them Akhenaten is supposed to be their ally he's supposed to be the one who is going to support them because they have had a working relationship for many years but Akhenaten seems to be uninterested and these Phoenicians get increasingly desperate because they have both the Hittites coming from the north but also they're complaining about another group that's pressuring them from the south who are called in these letters the UH Peru now the Optio is an interesting term and it's it pops up in various contexts but there are fairly respectable scholars not necessarily Bible scholars or Christian scholars but simply scholars of ancient history who believe that that word a Peru or its alternative rendering ha Peru could actually be the original root of the word Hebrew and if that's the case then again it rates it makes a very interesting kind of picture of what's going on you've got the Phoenicians here in the middle complaining about a squeeze play coming from two sides the Hittites crowding them from the north and this other group crowding them from the south who are called by them the Opera arguably the Hebrews who have now taken control of Canaan and are beginning to press their bore in all directions including incursions into regions that were otherwise controlled by the Phoenicians and so it's one of those rather subtle points which is nevertheless been interesting by standards of you know trying to correlate biblical history with what's otherwise known in the ancient world so the kings of the Phoenicians are writing to Akhenaten pleading with him for help Binaca Naughton basically is turning a deaf ear he's a pacifist he's kind of a religious character and he's not interested in getting involved in these military expeditions to help his erstwhile friends up there and Phoenicia Akhenaten himself was fully preoccupied with a monotheistic religion this is interesting Egypt of course throughout the bulk of its history has been polytheistic with just a couple of notable exceptions this is one of them Akhenaten comes to the throne and he is ferociously determined to lead Egypt into a monotheistic religious outlook he associates the one true God with the Sun and the name that's assigned to that Sun God is often and hence he gives himself the name Akhenaten he views himself as a priest of this God and indeed views himself as the one through an exclusive priest of this one true God this is not the worship of the true God of the Bible I don't want to go that far or imply any such thing but it is interesting that's still within shouting distance of the Exodus you have a pharaoh who comes along who is so deeply persuaded that there is only one god that he basically deal agenda Mises the polytheistic religion of Egypt and insists that people worship this one God and he himself holds himself out as the priest of that God and so if you look at this relief here the Sun is this God often the Rays are coming down you probably can't see it but at the end of each ray is a little hand and the hand is supposed to be a mark of blessing hence blessings are coming from this God and that is Akhenaten him who has by anybody's estimates a very strange figure let's just face it and this is odd because this is the way he's always depicted it's a very female kind of figure that is always associated with Akhenaten some people have speculated as you can probably imagine all kinds of things but he was a father he had lots of kids and so he was otherwise apparently a normal guy but but the pictures of him have always left a little bit of a strange impression about exactly what he was trying to purport you know himself to be but anyway there he is he moves the capital of Egypt to Aachen totten and that's where these are mana archives were discovered these have been very helpful very useful discoveries it's within the last 120 years or so that these discoveries have been made and it gives deep insight at the time but as I say for our purposes the most important and striking discovery was the complaints that were coming from Phoenicia found in those are mana letters with respect to the pressure they were experiencing from the Hittites and from the AH Peru all right quickly the rest of the eighteenth dynasty we have another guy he just reigns a couple of years Macari and then a character that you've all are familiar with of course Tutankhamun so he comes in 1334 to 1325 he is probably one of the most famous Pharaoh's even though he was a fairly minor Pharaoh at the time there was a great deal of question for a long time whether he even existed it was very obscure until a kind of obsessive archaeologist I'll say named Howard Carter was determined to find his tomb and did so in about the year 1922 and what was interesting was that the tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered more or less unmolested by tomb Raider's most of these tombs had been you know from time immemorial already raided and sort of gutted their contents but this one was found more or less intact he was a young fellow he was a teenager his rule was fairly brief 13 34 to 13 25 he immediately reinstated traditional worship in Egypt the polytheistic religion was put back in place the monotheistic religion of Akhenaten was terminated he died of rather mysterious and apparently violent causes when he was still a teenager probably about 19 maybe 20 years of age so his rule is fairly briefed it's uninteresting from a historical point of view but he's very interesting because of the discoveries that were made about him but anyway that's where he shows up the next guy rules rather briefly his name is I he rules for about four years and then the last king of the 18th dynasty is Horemheb and he again is kind of a fellow that marries in to the family he's not a legitimate descendant of that family but he through the marriage becomes a ruler as well he attempted to reinstate Egyptian power with some degree of success but by this time Egypt kind of spent itself he has no male heir and thus he leaves control of Egypt to his Vizier who was a man by the name of Rameses and if you know anything about Egypt you know the Rameses becomes one of the great names of Egyptian history so that's the 18th dynasty we looked at it last week and this week and there it is with a ribbon on it and of course at this time the people of God are here in Canaan they're settling in this has now gotten as well into the era that's called the era of the judges just a quick sketch about the early part of the 19th dynasty Rameses the 1st he's he just rules for a couple of years he's an older guy set to the 1st it takes over from there 1291 to 1278 he renews a certain amount of Egyptian art and prestige and so on he led some campaigns into Syria he took Kadesh that brings us to ramses ii this is usually known as Ramses the great he is an interesting character we don't really have a whole lot of concern about him in terms of biblical history but just in his own right he's quite an interesting character a great deal of the statuary that we associate with Egypt is Ramses the great this is one typical shot and of course there's many and you recognize that image I'm sure he was the father of over 100 children makes you wonder doesn't it but he was pretty productive in that regard he fought the Hittites at a battle called the Battle of Kadesh and this took place in 1276 now Kadesh is right at the seam between the Hittites on the north and Egypt on the south and so it's that border city and this is the greatest single battle that has taken place in military history in you know up until that time it was a huge conflict between the two most powerful nations of the world at the time 1276 right smack dab in the middle of the era of the judges obviously Israel at this point is not a significant enough power to certainly be a player in this conflict and there's no reference to it directly in the Old Testament but it is a time of considerable activity and this is kind of the point where it culminates Israel is down to the south there sort of insinuating itself into that region the Egyptians under Ramses the second and the Hittites under Hitoshi Lee fought to a draw at that border city so it's a major conflict and there is no clear-cut winner but Rameses who was a master politician nevertheless passed himself off to the Egyptian people as the great and victorious ruler and and conqueror of the Hittites at this Battle of Kadesh and so he does all kinds of things to try to portray himself as this great and effective ruler and this is the kind of imagery that we find this is a shot of Ramses who's on the back of a chariot who's got his bow drawn and this is a picture of the Battle of Kadesh in which he's picturing himself is out there actively participating in the battle winning a great victory so even though the outcome of the battle itself was ambivalent nevertheless he uses it for propaganda purposes throughout the rest of his career but other than that he doesn't do a whole lot militarily this is the single point where you have a kind of major military event that takes place in terms of this guy the next ruler after Ramses the great is Marin Tom I'm going to stop with this one I just want to add one detail here Marin ta's rules only for ten years he's the thirteenth son of rameses because the first twelve of his sons had died Ramses outlived the first twelve of his sons so the thirteenth sign is the guy that is able to take the throne the rim top he is best known in history as the one who fought a group called the sea people the sea people are a somewhat mysterious bunch that came in about this time it's about the time of the Trojan War about 1200 or a little earlier and they come in both by land and by sea they seem to have come from the far north they come sweeping through my sania they are the ones who basically dismantle the Hittites there are warlike people and they sort of mix these others along with them so it seems that this this is not a rapid in invasion but it takes place over time and they sort of conquer these people and bring them along with them and especially the mycenaean seemed to have been swept up with the sea people at least some of them seem to have been carried along and they wind up at the border of Egypt when marimba was the ruler now marimba meets them and fights them in 1203 and he successfully resists their invasion and he records this invasion by these sea people on a steely which is called the Israel stealing it should be called them a rem toss steely I suppose but it's called Lee Israel still and this is a picture of it in which he gives a detailed account of his war against the sea people but one of the interesting lines which has been by far the most intriguing and famous line of this so-called Israel steely is a line that says Israel is laid waste and has no seed now what makes that interesting is this is the first time we have any artifact that's ever been discovered in which some kind of Express reference is made to Israel by a nation besides Israel so here for the first time and around the year 1200 Israel is being referred to as an existing nation and it's being referred to by an Egyptian ruler who was describing to some degree his conflict with the sea people and his military activity in a region that is occupied by Israel and one of the throwaway lines he makes at this point is that Israel itself has been laid waste and has no seeds now there's a couple little side points about this that are interesting one it's propaganda you know Israel obviously was not laid waste and it did have plenty of seed and survived for a long time this is the kind of that people would do when they're reporting their own military activities but more important it says Israel is there and it says it's there as a significant enough presence to warrant mention by this rather major military character murim taw who's fighting a battle with the sea people and so from a point of view of those who have tried to make the establishment of Israel rather late this is an embarrassment because it says that Israel has been there long enough to have kind of set itself up as an existing recognized nation in the you know ancient Near Eastern setting so that's been extremely interesting and and somewhat controversial reference that we find and it dates to about 1203 right again in sort of the middle and toward the later part of the era of the judges now the other little detail about the sea people to stall leave it at this they were pushed back by murim taw and they were pushed back by Ramses the third on a second conflict back into the region of Israel southern Israel that is south of Israel north of Egypt into that kind of region there and they settled there and there's there are pretty cogent arguments to be made that the sea people are actually the forerunners of those people who came to be called the Philistines who eventually of course play such a role in later biblical history and that's why when archeology has been done with respect to the Philistines and the cities that are famous for them Ashdod gaze uncertain others that are a gaff you know those cities that are that are mentioned in the Old Testament that Mycenaean pottery has been found and it seems that it was actually pottery that was reflecting the culture of the Mycenaeans who had been picked up by these sea people and deposited there at the region just south of Israel and north of Egypt so again it's one of those interesting little details that may or may not float your boat but nevertheless it is the kind of thing that people like to notice about all of this all right with that said I'd like to come back and make a couple of comments here include about the text that we read Joshua is is giving this speech that we read from Joshua chapter 23 in about 1375 so it's about a hundred and 150 years or so prior to the events that we've just been looking at he's right at the beginning of this era of the judges and we've over sort of taken an overview of at least the first half of the period of the judges and notice what's going on the things that I'd like to remind you of from Joshua's speech that I think are important for us is that first of all Joshua makes this comment he says not one thing has failed of all that God has promised you concerning the land so Joshua is commenting on the land and he's commenting on the fact that God has given these people the land he has supernaturally empowered them fought with them and for them and they have successfully driven out those who were worthy of being driven out from an Old Testament point of view so that Israel could establish itself and they were so successful in doing this that Joshua can say not one thing God has promised concerning the land has failed hence there are no unfulfilled promises to Israel with respect to the land you have ears to hear and you might catch the significance of that the history of Israel's connection to the land is tumultuous from this point on they have their ups and they have their downs the Assyrians deplored major you know portions of the population the Babylonians sack Jerusalem and on it goes and if you're familiar with the Old Testament you know that there's this ongoing kind of struggle with respect to the land and sometimes they do well and sometimes not so well the whole thing seems to culminate in the New Testament era when finally after Assyria after Babylon finally Rome puts as it were a definitive end to the relationship between the Jewish population and the land they drive out in 78 the Jewish population they level Jerusalem leave in a wasteland rename it Palestine in celebration of who the palace the name Palestine comes from what Philistine and so it was a slap in the face the Romans are trying to slap the Jewish population the face by doing knowingly consciously something that will say to those people you have forfeited this land forever that would be the Roman view we're going to name it for your enemies we're going to name it the land of the Philistines the Palestine land you see so whatever took place afterwards at least the one thing we should have in mind is that God did not fail to give the people what he had promised at least according to Joshua in Joshua 23 and anything that happened after that was no abrogation of God having fulfilled his promise to them that's first point second point as we come to the New Testament and ask what do we make of this question of the land one of the things that's interesting is that most of the promises that are given to Abraham is as part of the Abrahamic covenant the Old Testament are repeated in the New Testament there will be a blessing and so on you know all kinds of promises are included in the promise to Abraham but the one thing that's conspicuously absent in the New Testament reiteration of the promises to Abraham is any express reference to the land that is not pictured as part now of the ongoing kind of promise that God is giving to his people what's placed in instead in that where you would expect to hear the land is the word the cosmos the world so for example in Romans chapter 4 we're told that Abraham and his seed are heirs of the cosmos the universe and in a sense in the Old Testament the land becomes a shadow of a much richer blessing that God bestows on his people in the new covenant era and that's why from it some of you kind of see where I'm going with this and I'm just going to kind of boldly go here for a second we should be cautious trying to attach too much significance to a piece of real estate today given the way the New Testament itself conceives of the manner in which God has fulfilled his promises to his people see so the second little point to make is simply that one that we do have certainly an important role for the land in the Old Testament but from the New Testament point of view there's a shift in the focus and indeed the way in which God's promises to his people are conceived of is rather in terms of is much richer and more sweeping kind of package of benefits the third thing and final thing I want to note here is still and this is kind of more the Sunday School lesson now for the morning notice what what Joshua says not one thing that God has promised has he failed to provide and we as God's people can embrace that and say in the same way and with even greater confidence not one thing that God has promised to us as he failed to provide and the New Testament is robust in its great celebration of the way that God has made good on that promise my friends not one thing that God has promised to you as he failed to provide hey sometimes we get a little fixated on the small stuff you know what I'm saying little details come along little irritants little problems let's never lose sight that if God be for us who can be against us let's never lose sight of the fact that as Paul says in Romans chapter or I'm sorry in Ephesians chapter one verse three he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places let's never lose sight of the fact that now to him who has done exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or in imagine to him be glory forever we live in this wonderful kind of explosive truth that God has given us the cosmos richly richly to share and when the little things come along and kind of derail us and cause us upset we can say with Joshua only in a much deeper and Richard sense there's not one thing God has promised us that he hasn't provided and I think you'll agree with me that is pretty good news so we can we can share in the promise that God made to his people and even more richly rejoice in it

Channel: Bruce Gore

Views: 69,444

Rating: 4.8258166 out of 5

Keywords: Apiru, Egypt, Israel, Stele, Bruce, Gore, Israelite, Judges, Kadesh, Qadesh, Ramses, Great, Hattusilli

Id: mMZ2Rw4Rig4

Length: 37min 52sec (2272 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 21 2015