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"To the east there rises in the foreground the jagged range of the hills above Jericho;
in the distance the dark wall of Moab; between them lies the wide valley of the Jordan,
its course marked by the tract of forest in which its rushing stream is enveloped . . . . . To
the south and the west the view commanded the bleak hills of Judaea . . . . . and in the far
distance the southern range on whose slope is Hebron . . . . . Northward are the hills
which divide Judaea from the rich plains of Samaria."
The reader is again urged to refer to a map and mark the places that Abraham
surveyed, when first he looked upon the "land of promise".
After pitching his tent between Beth-el and Hai, Abraham moved South and entered
Egypt. This, however, involves so much of interest that we must devote a separate article
to this note of "place" that is associated with the father of the faithful.
#13.
The Egypt of Abraham's Day (Gen. 12: 9-20).
pp. 153 - 155
"And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the south. And there was a famine in
the land: And Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was
grievous in the land" (9, 10).
"The South" (Heb. Negeb or Negev, see extract from Midnight Cry, Nov. 1951, at
close of this article) towards which Abraham journeyed as he went on from Bethel
presents no difficulty, for South any one must go who would leave Bethel for Egypt.
When Abraham left Egypt however, on his return journey (13: 1-4), he must have
traveled north, yet the scripture tells us that: "Abram went up out of Egypt . . . . . into the
south . . . . . from the south even to Bethel."
It is really an ascent to leave Egypt for Palestine, and "went up" is literally correct.
Seti I has left a record that he made "the ascent" to the country of the Amorites. The
word "south" is Negeb, and while meaning in ordinary contexts just the south, was also
the name of that portion of land that lies between the base of Palestine and the Dead Sea.
In this same district later, Isaac dwelt (24: 62). Here were the wells of Lahai-roi and
Beersheba. More is being learnt of this district and we now pass on to the more
important consideration of the earliest reference to the land of Egypt in the Bible. Egypt
has left a fairly complete account of itself, and it will be of peculiar interest for us to note
how far the narrative of the twelfth of Genesis accords with the record that Egypt has left.
"Let it be remembered that Moses never saw that Egypt. It was separated from the
time in which he wrote by more than four centuries. We are now in the year 1900 of the
Christian era. A like interval would therefore, take us back, to say, 1470, when the
Moors were still in Spain, and Louis XI filled the throne of France, when Edward IV
reigned in England, and James the Third in Scotland. Most of us know something of
our country's history, but how many of us could sit down and write the story of some