By Roy B. Blizzard
The story of Moses is too well known to reiterate at length here. But, the story actually begins with Jacob and his extended family numbering around 70 souls in all winding up in Egypt where they settled in the fertile delta area, known as the land of Goshen. We are told that they were there for some 400 years, which is longer than the United States of American has been in existence. Yet, we have no archaeological evidence of their ever being in Egypt. There is no archaeological or inscriptional evidence for a ruler of Egypt by the name of Joseph, a group of people known as the Hebrews, nor an individual by the name of Moses or a series of events that led to their expulsion from the land of Egypt.
There is some circumstantial evidence and a logical explanation as to why we have found no archaeological evidence for their stay in the land, but the Biblical text still remains our only extensive account of this 400-year period. One explanation as to why we have such little evidence lies in the fact that the Hebrew people were largely settled in the land of Goshen. This is a very difficult location from an archaeological perspective as the water table is so high that you can only excavate down a few inches before you hit water. Thus, much of the archaeological evidence is still unexcavated and, at least for the present, basically unrecoverable.
We remember the story of Moses as he was placed in the Nile in a reed basket. He was found by one of the Egyptian noble women and raised in the court of Pharaoh. Moses was forced to flee Egypt after slaying an Egyptian who was being cruel to a Hebrew slave. He then lived in the land of Midian – a shepherd of his father-in-law, Jethro, for some 40 years until God finally appeared to him in a burning bush and told him to go back to Egypt, appear before Pharaoh and request that he "let the Hebrew people go."
Although we have no archaeological evidence for these events, there have been suggestions by some for many years that the Egyptian noble woman who raised Moses was none other than Queen Hatshepsut.
This in an interesting aside in view of the fact that Queen Hatshepsut’s mummy may have been recently discovered just in the last few months. (see two photos below)
Again, it is interesting aside but her mortuary temple at Der el Bahri is one of the most impressive structures of ancient Egypt still standing. (see photo below)
But, back to our story – Moses is an 80-year old shepherd in the land of Midian when God appears to him and sends him back to Egypt. Not only is Moses 80 years old, but he is a stutterer according to Jewish tradition. Not at all like Charlton Heston! Because he is a stutterer, God sends his brother Aaron along with him to speak in his behalf.
You remember the story of the ten plagues, the Exodus, and all of the Hebrew people arriving ultimately at the foot of Mount Sinai. When we pick up our story in Exodus, Chapter 19, three months after the children of Israel had left the land of Egypt, they came to the wilderness of Sinai and Moses went up on the mountain of God. God told Moses that they were to be unto Him a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. The people responded all that the Lord has spoken, we will do.
Then, the Lord told them to go and to sanctify themselves, to wash their garments and to be ready on the third day for the Lord would come down in the sight of all of the people on Mount Sinai. The people did as instructed but on the third day, there was thundering and lightning and a thick cloud on the mountain and the voice that was exceedingly loud so that all of the people in the camp trembled in fear. The mountain was full of smoke and fire because the Lord had descended upon the mountain.
Picking up the story in Chapter 20, verse 15, all the people perceived the thundering and lightening, the voice of the horn, the mountain smoking and when they saw it, they trembled and they stood afar off. And they said to Moses, "you speak to us and we will listen, but let God not speak to us lest we die." The people stood afar off but Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.
This marks for the Hebrew people a breakdown in faith, a critical and crucial point in the history of the Hebrew people. God, because of this breakdown of faith was ready to wipe them all out and start over again with Moses, but Moses exercised his priestly capacity, drew near unto God and beseeched God on the part of the people. God says, in chapter 25, verse 8,
"let them make for Me a sanctuary (or physical structure), but I will have My dwelling place in them."
God’s original intention had been that they would be a kingdom of priests and that His dwelling place would be in them and not in some kind of a physical structure.
This idea or concept of God dwelling in man was reiterated hundreds of years later by the apostle Paul when he said in I Corinthians 6:19,
"Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you."
And reiterated again in II Corinthians 6:16 when he says,
"And what agreement has the temple of God with idols for you are the temple of the living God as God said I will dwell in them and walk in them and I will be their God and they shall be My people."
Now the question is, Where did God say that? He said it in Exodus 25:8 and again in Exodus 29:45-46. In each instance, He says,
"Let them make for Me a physical building but I will have My dwelling place in them."
In Hebrew, that is very specific. This is a concept that at this early stage in their history they were not able to comprehend. So, Gold gave Moses the instructions for a physical structure that was known originally as the Tabernacle and then later as the Temple. This physical structure was a tri-part structure consisting of the outer court, the holy place, and the placed called the "Holy of Holies." Each part housed certain accoutrements of furniture. In the outer court was the altar of burnt offerings and the bronze laver or washbasin. Here we have one of the first specific references to ritual immersion. Its correspondent in the Temple when it was constructed was called the molten sea and in II Chronicles 4:6 we are told that it was for the priests to wash in.
As one entered into the holy place on the right side was the Table of Shew Bread. To the left was a seven-branched golden Lamp Stand and in front of the curtain that separated the holy place from the Holy of Holies was the Altar of Incense. In the Holy of Holies, which was a perfect cube 30 feet by 30 feet by 30 feet, was the Ark of the Covenant made of acacia wood and covered with solid gold and surmounted by two winged cherubim. It contained Aaron’s rod, a jar of manna and the two tablets of the Law. The Tabernacle remains the focus of worship in ancient Israel until the time of Solomon and the construction on Mt. Moriah of the physical Temple that was designed, as had been the Tabernacle, as a tri-part structure containing the same accoutrements of furniture.
Following the death of Solomon, his son Rehoboan ascended to the throne and because of his harsh policies, the kingdom that once consisted of twelve tribes was divided with ten tribes going to the north to be known as Israel and two tribes (Benjamin and Judah) remaining in the south known as Judah, with Jerusalem as the capitol and their worship centered around YHWH and the Temple. On the other hand, the ten tribes to the north under their first king, Jeroboam, instituted the religion of the golden calves that they had worshipped in Egypt and set one idol up at Bethel on the southern border and the other at Dan on the northern border.
Jeroboam announced, "Hear O Israel these are the gods that brought you up forth out of the land of Egypt," and from that time – approximately 931 BCE – the ten northern tribes never again worshiped YHWH as God. As a result, in 721 BCE, Sargon II carried them away into Assyrian captivity. Those carried away and those that remained behind intermarried and reappear back on the scene as the hated Samaritan or half-blood Jew.
The southern kingdom, on the other hand, continued until 586 BCE when it was carried away into Babylonian captivity by Nebuchadnezzar. They remained there for some 70 years until 538 BCE when a decree was issued by Cyrus of Medo-Persia allowing the captives to return back to Jerusalem. Not only does he allow them to return, but he funds the expedition and sends them back with many of the vessels that had been taken from the Temple. They set out in 537 and arrived in 536 BCE and began work on the reconstruction of the Temple.
There were minor delays in its reconstruction, but it is finally completed and dedicated in 516 BCE, but it lacked much of its former glory. It is an interesting fact that must be taken into consideration that only a small percentage of the Jews returned and most stayed behind in Babylon. Babylon, in fact, becomes the center of Jewish religious activity for over 1000 years.
The restructured Temple stood until the time of Herod the Great when, beginning approximately 28 BC in order to win favor of the Jews, he initiates a program of restoration and refurbishing which was probably never quite completed until its destruction in 70 of the present era. With that destruction, worship centering around a Tabernacle/Temple comes to an end.
The real question for our consideration is this: was all this the original intent and purpose of God for His people or was it not?
That is the question we will consider in our next article.
