Encountering The Old Testament

One of the most important parts of any ancient civilization is its history, and Israel’s history was horrible. Around thirteen hundred to twelve hundred years before Christs’ existence the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, they were not called Israelites before this because they were given their name after Abraham’s grandson, Israel, had created them. After a few hundred years their king Saul established the nation then David took the crown after him. David’s son ruled right after him and his name was Solomon, one of the most famous kings in history. He built the first temple in Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar about four hundred years later when he exiled the Jews from their land and into slavery.

I mentioned the difference between their human and spiritual kings earlier. In their eyes their human king commanded them and their spiritual king commanded the human king. In Encountering the Old Testament it talks about their kings that Yehweh, the English spelling of their word for God, preferred such as Solomon and David. Israelite religious history starts off with Abraham and progresses to his son Isaac and more narrowly, his son Israel. Now the countries name comes from the grandson of Abraham, but the countries people comes from Israel’s twelve sons which then grow into the twelve tribes of Israel then finally into the Jewish nation that we have today. Now since Israel had almost every nation fight through it because of its centralized location on the map of Middle Eastern countries, it is obvious that of course the people of this Jewish nation were going to be taken and enslaved by other countries. One of these countries was Egypt and they were enslaved, by them, for a while, but once they were led out by Moses they were promised to be taken back to the land that Yehweh had promised to the people that descended from the three main people in the history, Abraham, Isaac and