The Yisraelites In Egypt; The Period Of The Great Persecution
(1325/75-1225)
The volume devoted to Mosheh deals with the terrible ordeal undergone by Yisrael at the time of the nineteenth dynasty 23 whose monarchs transformed the Delta by their huge building enterprises, but a little must be said about it here. Rameses II, especially, was a great builder. On the ruins of Avaris, the former capital of the Hyksos, he built the city of Pi-Rameses. Everywhere colossal palaces and huge temples were put up. Between two campaigns Rameses was fond of resting for a time in this magnificent city which proclaimed his fame. The whole of the surrounding countryside was dotted with fortresses, warehouses and arsenals. He seems almost to have suffered from a building mania.
The map of the Delta provides an explanation of the hard fate which was soon to overtake Yisrael: from the Wadi Tumilat (where the Yisraelites were still settled) to Pi-Rameses was scarcely a hundred miles. To ensure the rapid progress of these building operations the pharaoh's officials had already transported to the site a fairly numerous team of native workers, both from the Delta and even from the valley of the Nile. The rods of the supervisors on the labourers' backs made sure that they did not pause for a moment. The wall paintings in the tombs provide clear and highly coloured evidence of this.
Of course, it had been noticed that near at hand, in the frontier region bordering on the wilderness, was a fairly large number of asiatic shepherds who seemed to have no other care than watching their sheep and cultivating their vegetables. It was decided to commandeer these foreigners at once; no consideration was to be given to men whose detestable domination had been suffered for centuries during the occupation. It would form a golden opportunity for revenge on those whose ancestors -and here they remembered Yoseph, the vizier of a Hyksos pharaoh -had not always shown themselves particularly gentle towards the Egyptian population.
Thus the Yisraelites, proud shepherds of the wilderness, quick to take offence, were sent off to the building sites where they were employed on the most arduous tasks mixing the mud and sand, treading the clay to incorporate the chopped straw, moulding the bricks, carrying the materials, and all this under a relentless sun.
In the evening the unfortunate slaves, dropping with fatigue and sore from the blows that they had received, were taken back to their camps where their wives contrived somehow or other to prepare a frugal meal. They called on YAHWEH. They often bemoaned their lot. One day their terrible affliction would come to an end as Yoseph had foretold: 'I am about to die,' he had said in the presence of his family, 'but YAHWEH will be sure to remember you kindly and take you back from this country to the land that HE promised on oath to Abraham, Yitschaq and Yacob.' And so they waited, though time did not seem to bring the slightest change in the situation.
There was a high death rate and a considerable decrease in the number of births. Moreover, for some time past, the Egyptians had decided that all the male children of the Yisraelites should be thrown into the Nile at birth. And how many of the Yisraelites succumbed daily under the lash of the slave drivers? How did they hope ever to escape from their terrible predicament?
23 The approximate dates are 1320-1200. The names of the sovereigns were Rameses I, Rameses II, Seti, Meneptah -the last is regarded nowadays as the pharaoh at the time of the Exodus (about 1225).
Brick making; nothing has changed since the time when Pharaoh forced Yisrael to make bricks.
'A papyrus basket, coated with bitumen and pitch' (Shemoth 2: 3)
One morning a young Egyptian princess with the girls attending her went down to bathe in the river. And there in the reeds near the bank she saw floating on the water a small papyrus basket. Quite naturally she hastened to open the mysterious package; it contained a young Yisraelite only a few months old. It was easy to see what had happened: a mother, belonging to a group of Asiatic shepherds reduced to slavery, had been unable to resign herself to giving up her new-born child to Pharaoh's executioners. For a time she had managed to conceal its existence, but she knew that she could not do so for long. And so the unfortunate woman decided to place the child in the basket and entrust it to the waters of the Nile. On the spot the princess made up her mind to adopt the foundling. She called him Mosheh and brought him up at the royal court.
Some decades later Mosheh, the Hebrew, received from YAHWEH in person the mission of bringing out of Egypt the Chosen People and bringing back the house of Yisrael to the Promised Land. At that time there appeared in all its splendour, in all its strength, the brilliant personality of Mosheh, the man of YAHWEH, the inspired prophet, the Spiritual chief, the leader of men and the inspired lawgiver.
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