Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations

by A. H. Sayce

In spite of all repression, however, the oppressed people continued to multiply, and eventually escaped from their "house of bondage." The stela of Meneptah, on which the name of "Israelites" occurs, implies that they had already been lost to sight in the desert. The other nationalities over whom Meneptah is said to have triumphed all have the term "country" attached to their names; the "Israelites" alone are without local habitation. Egyptian legend, as reported by the native historian Manetho, placed the Exodus in the reign of Meneptah, and as Meneptah was the son and successor of Ramses II., the correctness of the statement is antecedently probable. It was in the fifth year of his reign that the Delta was attacked by a formidable combination of foes. The Libyans threatened it on the west: on the north, bands of sea-pirates from the coasts of Asia Minor and the islands of the Mediterranean attacked it by sea and land. A mutilated inscription of Meneptah tells us how the tents of the invaders had been pitched on the outskirts of the land of Goshen, within reach of the Bedâwin shepherds who fed their flocks there, and how the troops of the Pharaoh, pressed at once by the enemy and by the disaffected population of Goshen, had been cooped up within the walls of the great cities, afraid to venture forth. The fate of the invasion was sealed, however, by a decisive battle in which the Egyptians almost annihilated their foes. But the land of Goshen was left empty and desolate; the foreign tribes who had dwelt in it fled into the wilderness under the cover of the Libyan invasion. The pressure of the invasion had forced the Pharaoh to allow his serfs a free passage out of Egypt, quite as much as the "signs and wonders" which were wrought by the hand of Moses. Egypt was protected on its eastern side by a line of fortifications, and through these permission was given that the Israelites should pass. But the permission was hardly given before it was recalled. A small body of cavalry, not move than six hundred in number, was sent in pursuit of the fugitives, who were loaded with the plunder they had carried away from the Egyptians. They were a disorganised and unwarlike multitude, consisting partly of serfs, partly of women and children, partly of stragglers from the armies of the Libyan and Mediterranean invaders. Six hundred men were deemed sufficient either to destroy them or to reduce them once more to captivity.

But the fugitives escaped as it were by miracle. A violent wind from the east drove back the shallow waters at the head of the Gulf of Suez, by the side of which they were encamped, and the Israelites passed dryshod over the bed of "the sea." Before their pursuers could overtake them, the wind had veered, and the waters returned on the Egyptian chariots. The slaves were free at last, once more in the wilderness in which Isaac had tended his flocks, and in contact with their kinsmen of Edom and Midian.

Moses had led them out of Egypt, and Moses now became their lawgiver. The laws which he gave them formed them into a nation, and laid the foundations of the national faith. Henceforth they were to be a separate people, bound together by the worship of one God, who had revealed Himself to them under the name of Yahveh. First at Sinai, among the mountains of Seir and Paran, and then at Kadesh-barnea, the modern 'Ain Qadîs, the Mosaic legislation was promulgated. The first code was compiled under the shadow of Mount Sinai; its provisions were subsequently enlarged or modified by the waters of En-Mishat, "the Spring of Judgment."

The Israelites lay hidden, as it were, in the desert for many long years, preparing themselves for the part they were afterwards to play in the history of mankind. But from the moment of their departure from Egypt their goal had been Canaan. They were not mere Bedâwin; they belonged to that portion of the Semitic race which had made settlements and founded kingdoms in Moab and Ammon and Edom, and their residence in the cultured land of the Nile had made it impossible for them ever to degenerate into the lawless robbers of the wilderness. They were settled Bedâwin, not Bedâwin proper; not Bedâwin by blood and descent, but Semites who had adopted the wandering and pastoral habits of the Bedâwin tribes. They were like their brethren of Edom, who, though they came to Egypt seeking pasturage for their cattle, had nevertheless founded at home an elective monarchy. The true Bedâwin of the Old Testament are the Amalekites, and between the Israelite and the Amalekite there was the difference that there is between the peasant and the gypsy. The fact is important, and the forgetfulness of it has led more than one historian astray.

The first attempt to invade Canaan failed. It was made from the south, from the shelter of the block of mountains within which stood the sanctuary of Kadesh-barnea. The Israelitish forces were disastrously defeated at Zephath, the Hormah of later days, and the invasion of the Promised Land was postponed. The desert life had still to continue for a while. In the fastness of 'Ain Qadîs the forces of Israel grew and matured, and a long series of legislative enactments organised it into a homogeneous whole. At length the time came when the Israelites felt strong enough once more to face an enemy and to win by the sword a country of their own. It was from the east that they made their second attack. Aaron the high-priest was dead, but his brother Moses was still their leader. The Edomites refused them a passage along the high-road of trade which led northward from the Gulf of Aqaba; skirting Edom accordingly, they marched through a waterless desert to the green wadis of Moab, and there pitched their camp. The Amorite kingdoms of Sihon and Og fell before their assault. The northern part of Moab, which Sihon had conquered, was occupied by the invaders, and the plateau of Bashan, over which Og had ruled, fell into Israelitish hands. The invaders now prepared to cross the Jordan and advance into the highlands of Canaan. Moses died on the summit of a Moabite mountain and his place was taken by Joshua.

Joshua was a general and not a legislator. He could win battles and destroy cities, but he could not restore what he had destroyed, or organise his followers into a state. Jericho, which commanded the ford across the Jordan, fell into his hands; the confederate kings of southern Canaan were overthrown in battle, and the tribe of Ephraim, to which Joshua belonged, was established in the mountainous region which afterwards bore its name. Henceforward the mountains of Ephraim formed the centre and the stronghold of Israelitish power in Palestine, from whence the invading tribes could issue forth to conquest, or to which they could retreat for shelter in case of need.

Beyond leading his people into Canaan and establishing them too firmly in its midst to be ever dislodged, Joshua personally did but little. The conquest of Canaan was a slow process, which was not completed till the days of the monarchy. Jerusalem was not captured till the reign of David, Gezer was the dowry received by Solomon along with his Egyptian wife. At first the Canaanites were treated with merciless ferocity. Their cities were burned, the inhabitants of them massacred, and the spoil divided among the conquerors. But a time soon came when tribute was accepted in place of extermination, when leagues were made with the Canaanitish cities, and the Israelites intermarried with the older population of the country. As in Britain after the Saxon conquest, the invaders settled in the country rather than in the towns, so that while the peasantry was Israelite the townsfolk either remained Canaanite or were a mixture of the two races.

The mixture introduced among the Israelites the religion and the beliefs, the manners and the immoralities, of the Canaanitish people. The Mosaic legislation was forgotten; the institutions prescribed in the wilderness were ignored. Alone at Shiloh, in the heart of Ephraim, was a memory of the past observed; here the descendants of Aaron served in the tabernacle, and kept alive a recollection of the Mosaic code. Here alone no image stood in the sanctuary of the temple; the ark of the covenant was the symbol of the national God.

But the influence of Shiloh did not extend far. The age that succeeded the entrance into Canaan, was one of anarchy and constant war. Hardly had the last effort of the Canaanites against their invaders been overthrown on the banks of the Kishon, when a new enemy appeared in the south. The Philistines, who had planted themselves on the sea-coast shortly before the Israelites had invaded the inland, now turned their arms against the new-comers, and contended with them for the possession of the country. The descendants of Jacob were already exhausted by struggle after struggle with the populations which surrounded them. Moabites and Midianites, Ammonites and Bedâwin, even the king of distant Mesopotamia, had sacked their villages, had overrun their fields, and exacted tribute from the Israelitish tribes. The tribes themselves had lost coherence; they had ranged themselves under different "judges" or "deliverers," had forgotten their common origin and common faith, and had even plunged into interfraternal war. Joshua was scarcely dead before the tribe of Benjamin was almost exterminated by its brethren; and a few generations later, the warriors of Ephraim, the stalwart champion of Israel, were massacred by the Israelites east of the Jordan. In the south, a new tribe, Judah, had arisen out of various elements—Hebrew, Kenite, and Edomite; and it was not long before there was added to the cleavage between the tribes on the two banks of the Jordan, the further and more lasting cleavage between Judah and the tribes of the north. Israel was a house divided against itself, and planted in the midst of foes.