By Mark Morgan | Exodus
When Israel left Egypt, everything about their day-to-day life changed.
No more would their daily work be ordered by slave drivers. No more would they live in houses or grow their own food in a vegetable patch. Instead, they would have no fixed place of abode and no clear itinerary, so they would have to deal with uncertainty and learn many new ideas as they travelled.
By Mark Morgan | Exodus , Jeremiah , Jesus , Passover
The people of Israel were slaves in Egypt for a long time. Finally the right time came for God to lead them out and guide them to the Promised Land. Ten terrible plagues battered Egypt before Pharaoh finally agreed to let the Israel go. The Passover Feast celebrates the last of these plagues when all the Egyptian firstborn were killed, but the Israelite were saved – as long as they obeyed God’s commands surrounding the Passover Feast. In this article, we look at later celebrations of the Passover Feast in Israel’s history as recorded in the Bible.
God said they should keep the Passover not only on that first night to save their firstborn, but every year from then on. Likewise, they were to eat unleavened bread for a week each year to obey God’s command to remember – not just once because they didn’t have time to let it rise when hurrying out of Egypt.
In this article, we’ll examine how dedicated Israel was to keeping these combined feasts as Biblical history progressed.
By Mark Morgan | Exodus , Family trees , Jeremiah , Miscellaneous
Many people – perhaps most – have heard of the Ten Commandments or the Law of Moses. Fewer would know much about Aaron, Moses’ brother. In this article, we present Moses’ and Aaron’s family trees. Being brothers, the main difference is the central character – as you’ll see below.
We learn about the life of Moses in the Old Testament of the Bible, since he was born about 1,500 years before Jesus. However, the name of Moses was still known by everybody who lived in or around Israel in Jesus’ day, and the New Testament contains many references to the law which God gave through him.
So where did Moses come from and why was he so famous?
By Mark Morgan | Exodus , Jeremiah
What is the right age to start our life’s most important work? Some people begin to excel in their chosen profession at a very early age (for example, Mozart began composing at four or five years of age), while others shine much later (Oscar Swahn won his first Olympic gold medal at the age of 60). The Levites helped with the worship of God – who has killed people for flouting his rules of worship. For everyone’s good, the job had to be learned thoroughly. So what was the working age of Levites?
We still have rules today about the age at which one can start or stop work, and the same was true for priests and Levites in Israel.
By Admin | Exodus , Jeremiah , Joseph
The Bible names many different countries: Israel, Babylon, India, Ethiopia, Persia, Syria, Moab, Egypt, Italy, and many more. The most common one is Israel – not surprisingly, since God says that for him it is the centre of the world, the land he promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (whom he renamed “Israel”).[1] Continue reading
Notes
| ↑1 | Sometimes it is hard to separate God’s love for the land from his love for the people he chose to give it to: see Ezekiel 5:5; 20:6; 38:12; Isaiah 41:8-9; Zechariah 2:8 and Jeremiah 12:14. When you think about it, it makes sense that God would give his favourite land to his best friends! |
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By Mark Morgan | Exodus , Jeremiah
From time to time over many years, the following question has popped to my mind: Did the people of Israel and Judah keep the Sabbath day during the period of the kings? Keeping the Sabbath was one of the Ten Commandments, but did God’s people keep the day holy as God had said?Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Exodus , Jeremiah
A covenant is simply an agreement. Bible covenants are agreements made between people, or between God and people.
When we sign a contract, that is an agreement, and each country has many laws that detail just how binding such agreements are. These sorts of agreements and their associated laws have changed through history, and the Bible tells us of many agreements made thousands of years ago.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Exodus , Jeremiah , Passover
Just before God led the people of Israel out of Egypt, he told them to keep the Passover lamb in their homes from the 10th day of the first month (Exodus 12:3) until until they killed it on the 14th at twilight (Exodus 12:6).
When the Passover is defined as a national feast in Leviticus 23 and Deuteronomy 16, there is no mention of any requirement to keep the lamb beforehand. Was this just a once-off requirement as part of building up for the first Passover? Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Exodus , Jeremiah , Passover
The cycle of the year in Israel was guided by “feasts” – annual religious events. The name “feast” can be a little misleading as it may lead us to think of celebrations with party food, but these feasts were not like that at all. One “feast” – the Day of Atonement – required all the people to “deny themselves” (Leviticus 23:27), which seems to refer to fasting.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Exodus , Jeremiah
In the time of King Josiah, the book of the law was found in the temple of Yahweh. It was read to Josiah and the words he heard caused him to tear his clothes and weep (2 Chronicles 34:19-21, 27; 2 Kings 22:11, 19) because the nation had not obeyed the laws it contained. Josiah expected that the punishments promised in the book of the law would follow.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Exodus , Jeremiah
As far as we can tell, the majority of people in the Bible never heard directly from God. Nevertheless, God has spoken to humans on many occasions in many different ways throughout history. Men and women, young and old, kings and slaves, rich and poor, righteous and evil. God has also communicated or interacted in other ways: blessings, curses, riches, poverty, rewards, punishments, sickness, health, barrenness and having children. We are even told that in some situations he took control of people and made them do what he wanted. So what does the Bible tell us about God’s communication with people?
Continue reading