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Background to the book of Exodus
The Exodus is a MAJOR event in the Bible! There are a few things you really NEED to know about and the Exodus is one of them!

The Old Testament is all about the people of Israel, because God set them apart from all the other races of mankind as HIS people – a special chosen race who would serve Him and whom He would protect.

At the end of the book of Genesis we see that there was a great famine and the people of Israel moved to Egypt where there was food. The Egyptians allowed them refuge in the land because of Joseph. But the Jews became too great in number and the Egyptians started to turn against them (see Exodus 1). Some people think it might have been the Jews who were forced into building the great pyramids, but not everyone agrees that that is what happened to them. What we do know for sure in the Bible is that they endured great hardship at the hands of the Egyptians and longed for God to set them free.

The Egyptians called the Jews ‘Hebrews’, because that’s the language the Jews spoke, Hebrew. One of the Egyptian rulers, the pharaoh decided to kill every Hebrew boy that was born because the Egyptians were afraid of the Jews and wanted to control them. But one Hebrew baby boy was hidden by his mum in a basket and placed in the reeds along a riverbank so that he might survive. The Egyptian pharaoh’s daughter came along the river bank and found the baby and adopted him as her own son.

That baby was Moses, a true Hebrew but raised as an Egyptian in the courts of the Pharaoh. When he grew older he saw the suffering of the Jews and killed one of the Egyptian guards. Afraid of what he had done he ran away into the wilderness. There in the desert God appeared to him in a burning bush and told him to go back and set God’s people free from the Egyptians.

Eventually Moses did as he was told and returned to face the pharaoh.

Pharaoh believed he himself was a god, and was not worried when Moses told him he had to let God’s people go. But pharaoh’s refusal to release the Jews resulted in God sending plague after plague upon the land of Egypt. These plagues ended with the death of ever male child in the land of Israel as the Angel of God passed over pharaoh’s kingdom. So just as pharaoh had done to the Hebrews, so now God did to him. This was the final straw for the pharaoh and he finally let the people of God leave.

As they were leaving he changed his mind though and chased after them. God brought down the crashing waves on the Egyptian army and they were drowned in the red sea once the Jews were safely on the other side.

Once across and safely away from the Egyptians the Jews then began the journey to the promised land where they would settle into a new home as God’s people. This journey though took them 40 years!

This is the story of the Exodus in a nutshell. There is more to tell, there is more to read. The story is a wonderful one of God’s power and faithfulness. You can read it for yourself in the Book of Exodus in the Bible!

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