Further Anxieties Of Yoseph's Brothers
Yacob was dead. The ten brothers, who had been responsible for the evil deed perpetrated at Dan, were very worried. Had Yoseph, they wondered, awaited the death of Yacob to take his personal vengeance on them in all tranquility? After all, it was perfectly legitimate for him to do so under the laws prevailing at the time. Without delay they sent in a petition to Yoseph, reminding him of the patriarch's last words: 'You must say to Yoseph: Oh forgive your brothers their crime and their sin and all the wrong they did you.'
Obviously, they had not yet understood what could be accomplished by love of the neighbour and generosity of heart. On receiving their message Yoseph was unable to hold back his tears. But the ten brothers were still exceedingly anxious. They asked to be received personally by him whom formerly they had sold as a slave; they desired to fall down before him with their heads in the dust, and in true eastern fashion they cried out to him: 'We present ourselves before you as your slaves.' Yoseph made haste to raise them up, reassuring them and speaking to them affectionately. 'The evil you planned to do me,' he explained, 'has by YAHWEH's design been turned to good, that he might bring about as indeed he has, the deliverance of a numerous people.'
In those merciless times when the law of retribution (the lex talionis) was applicable among the Semites, there had suddenly appeared, and for the first time in the Scriptures, the luminous notion of forgiveness of injuries. It was a new climate of charity in which the coming of better times was foreshadowed.
The Hyksos Driven Out Of The Delta By The Egyptian National Forces
(1580 B.C.)
With the powerful protection of the vizier, a man of their own race, behind them, the group of Hebrews were able to achieve a comfortable life in the pleasant surroundings of the Wadi Tumilat. On the material level they were really well provided for. The flocks grazed on rich pastureland, in meadows where the water from the canals drained from the Nile, and streams abounded. In the well-irrigated fields bordering the pasture the Yisraelites on occasion turned to horticulture and even to farming. Theirs was a pleasant life.
What was their spiritual position? As was pointed out above, in Egypt we no longer find recorded those imposing appearances of YAHWEH with which the patriarchs were frequently honoured in former times in Canaan. Had the mysterious colloquies with YAHWEH with which from time to time HE encouraged HIS chosen ones come to an end?
It is true that the Yisraelites never forgot to render homage to YAHWEH the one Sovereign of Abraham; they continued to call upon HIM and invoke HIM. But by its very proximity the Egyptian religion was extremely dangerous. Its majestic temples towering in the nearby Delta, its splendid ceremonies taking place in its sanctuaries and especially its picturesque pantheon, appealing to the senses and the imagination, formed so many attractive elements calculated in course of time to seduce the followers of YAHWEH whose theology offered them a QADASH and invisible YAHWEH.
In addition, it must be admitted, the Yisraelites established in the land of Goshen increasingly lost interest in the Promised Land (Canaan, the future Palestine) where one day they were to settle. Life in the Tumilat valley was so pleasant, with the 'pans of meat' and 'bread to their heart's content', that it was difficult to see any reason for returning to Beersheba or even Hebron and the arduous life of wandering shepherds in the plains with the close cropped grass often burnt up by the sun. In this little corner of Egypt on the east side of the Delta they were living in a dreamland.
Now at the beginning of the sixteenth century, between the deaths of Yacob and Yoseph, an Egyptian national dynasty, hitherto driven back to Thebes in the south undertook a methodical war of liberation intended to achieve the permanent expulsion of the Hyksos from the valley of the Nile. A local Theban prince, Sequenenre I, of the seventeenth dynasty, began hostilities. The Egyptian armies won some outstanding victories, but also suffered heavy defeats. In the end, in about 1580, the pharaoh Ahmosis I, the embodiment of national resistance, managed to penetrate into the Delta and we find him taking the citadel of Avaris, the Hyksos capital. The fall of this military and political centre marks the downfall of the Hyksos empire. These invaders who had occupied Egyptian territory for more than two centuries were thrown back right into Canaan, and it is very probable that Amenhotep I (the son and successor I. Ahmosis) pursued the remnant of the Hyksos army as far as Syria. He was concerned principally to guarantee the valley of the Nile against the offensive return of these invaders. To achieve this successive pharaohs led victorious expeditions as far as the banks of the Euphrates.
Bereshith, which is not a political history of the ancient Near East, passes over these events in silence. At the very beginning of Exodus the writer confines himself to saying, 'There came to power in Egypt a new king who knew nothing of Yoseph'. We know the name of this new king; it was, as we have seen, Ahmosis I, a national hero, the conqueror of the Hyksos and the liberator of the country. With this new political regime in Egypt it was to be wondered whether Yacob's sons would enjoy so peaceful a life as hitherto.
Yoseph Index Yoseph Sitemap Scripture History Through the Ages Yoseph Egyptian Adventure Yoseph Scriptures and Dreams The Plot Against Yoseph Yoseph's Brothers Cruel Seqel Yoseph In The House Of Potiphar Yoseph In Prison Pharaoh's Strange Dreams Yoseph Slave Becomes Viceroy Of Egypt Yoseph's Unexpected Family Reunion The Ten Brothers Before Yoseph Yacob Goes To Egypt Yoseph and the Death Of Yacob YAHWEH's Sword History Further Anxieties Of Yoseph's Brothers Yisraelites Remain In Egypt Period Of The Great Persecution