At Israel’s beginning, Abraham went to Egypt for food during a famine instead of trusting in Jehovah. His whole family (70 of them) ended up there and within 400 years they became a mighty nation. Then, a new Pharaoh came to the throne that was not favorable to the Hebrews. He made them slaves and sought to kill all newborn males. Moses grew up in his palace as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, after she found him beside the Nile River, and he became the heir-apparent to the throne of Egypt. The very thought of a Jew sitting on the Egyptian throne was breathtaking.

Moses, at 40, refused the power, prestige, and possessions of Egypt and identified with his people the Jews, and spent his next 40 years in desert training. He led Israel from the land of bondage to the land of blessing when he was 80. When they fled Egypt, each family was commanded to kill a lamb and put the blood over their doors and everyone would be safe when the Angel of Death passed over that last night. The Egyptian homes all experienced the death of their first-born sons while the Hebrews’ sons were unharmed. Christians memorialize that incident when they sing, “When I see the blood, I’ll pass over you” referring to the Death of Christ.

The Jews left Egyptian slavery and returned to the land of promise; and since that time, Jews have celebrated that night of deliverance by observing the Passover. The story of their deliverance has been remembered, rehearsed, and retold as it is memorialized with the statement, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Meaning, wherever they were at the time, maybe next year, they would be back in their homeland. During the observance of the Passover, (either seven or eight days) the celebration begins with the Seder (meaning order) meal, symbolic of their deliverance from Egypt.

“The Festival of the Unleavened Bread” is celebrated with the first two days of delicious meals called Seders when the Egyptian Passover is remembered and memorialized. Six more days of celebration follow the first two. On the eve of the Passover, each home is searched to remove any vestige of leaven. According to Exodus 12:11 the meal was to be eaten “with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the LORD’s Passover.” They were to be in a hurry to leave bondage! According to Exodus 13:3, they were to “keep it a feast by an ordinance forever.”

The “Festival of the Unleavened Bread” begins with a hard-boiled egg dipped into saltwater. A rabbi was once asked why Jews eat eggs on Passover. “Because eggs symbolize the Jew,” the rabbi answered. “The more an egg is burned or boiled, the harder it gets.” Seems that way.

During the Seder, the family recalls their Egyptian slavery by eating matzo, known as the “poor person’s bread.” Bitter herbs, called “maror,” are eaten which symbolize the bitterness of slavery, and a sweet paste (charoset) representing the mortar which the slaves used to cement bricks. They dip vegetables into saltwater, and it recalls the tears the Jews shed during their servitude. Roast lamb or goat is a main portion of the meal.

An extra cup of wine is at the table for the prophet Elijah. It is almost electric when a child is sent to the door to open for the prophet who will be the messenger of messianic times ahead.

The whole celebration is to remind them of their slavery and the goodness of God in delivering them, not because of their greatness but because of His goodness and grace.
Israel was overshadowed by the greatness of Egypt, the grandeur of Babylon, the growth of Nineveh but they had what no other nation had going for them: They were the “apple of God’s eye.” Judah was caught in the middle of the constant struggles among the three powers, but Jews survived while the others did not. Will Durant wrote, the “Jews who are as old as history, may be as lasting as civilization.” Obviously.

Jehovah was faithful in showing His grace by delivering the Jews from slavery and He will further show his faithfulness with the construction of the Third Temple on the Temple Mount, the most important and contested 35 acres on earth, claimed by Muslims and Jews! Hummm, that will be an interesting development! Muslims have not learned the truth that you can’t mess with Israel but they are destined to learn that truth the hard way as did Egypt.

While the Passover reminds Jews of their release from slavery, it should be remembered that Pharaoh and his army were destroyed as the Jews were delivered.

The message of the Bible and history is: Don’t mess with Israel.

With passing of time, powerful nations demonstrated hatred toward the little embryonic Jewish nation along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. Powerful nations such as Egypt, Nineveh, and Syria were followed by a new threat that appeared on the stage of history: Babylon. The Amorite king, Hammurabi (ruled 1792-1750) first created the short-lived Babylonian Empire about 1792 B.C. but it quickly faded after his death. The only thing remembered about the empire is the famous Code of Hammurabi.

Bible critics suggest that the Hebrew prophet Moses got his laws from Hammurabi, and if so, so what. Even a pagan king can have some great ideas; however, Moses had something Hammurabi did not have: information from Jehovah! Of course, the earlier an event in history, the less reliable is the date. Moreover, all experts admit that the Mosaic Law was far more gentle and humane than Hammurabi’s.

Until about 600 B.C., Babylon was ruled by various powers in the region. Then, the empire became almost unstoppable. About this time, Zoroaster was teaching in Persia, Buddha was born in India in 563 (and later abandoned his wife and son) and the Roman Republic was founded in 509 B.C.

The Babylonians conquered and destroyed Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire after it had been weakened repeatedly by civil war. The Jews in Jerusalem were swiftly backsliding into all kinds of wickedness and were finally attacked by Nebuchadnezzar II, the head honcho of the Babylonian Empire. In 586 B.C., he returned to Jerusalem and took the best, the brightest, and the bravest Jews into a 70-year Babylonian Captivity leaving only the poorest of the poor to occupy the defeated, destroyed, desolated, and almost deserted city.

In captivity, 500 miles from Jerusalem, the Jews sat beside the Euphrates River, hung their harps on a willow limb and cried, “We wept, when we remembered Zion.” The recently defeated Jews had been marched from Jerusalem to Babylon and often promised, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.” However, with time they came to enjoy the “good life” and adjusted to the captivity. In Jeremiah 29:4-9, the prophet had told them to “make the best of it” and accommodate themselves to the conditions of a protracted exile without being assimilated with the pagan Babylonians. Of course, Jeremiah knew what followed the end of their captivity.

Herodotus, a Greek historian born about 450 BC, wrote, “Babylon surpasses in splendor any city in the known world.” He described the city as a huge square 14 miles on all four sides. It had 100 gates of bronze that were still standing when Herodotus was there about 400 B.C. He claimed the outer walls were 56 miles in length, 80 feet thick and 320 feet high! Wide enough, he said, to allow two four-horse chariots to pass each other. The city also had inner walls which were “not so thick as the first, but hardly less strong.” The walls went 35 feet underground thereby frustrating any tunneling under them. There was a large water-filled moat just outside the outer wall. It was impossible to conquer Babylon but Cyrus did the impossible.

Babylon fell to the Persian Empire under the rule of Cyrus in 539 B.C. The Persian Empire stretched from Ethiopia to India connected by more than 3,000 miles of well-built roads. The most famous road was the Royal Road built by King Darius that stretched about 1,600 miles from Sardis in Turkey to Susa, capital of Persia. Herodotus wrote of this road, “There are royal stations (every 3.4 miles) and excellent inns, and the whole road is through an inhabited and safe country.” Maybe the first Interstate!

Persia was also famous for its efficient postal system, the world’s first, prototype to our Pony Express. At the royal stations there were fresh horses for relay riders to carry the mail from one end to the other. Common travelers made the 1,600 mile trip in 90 days but the “Persian Express” did it is less than a week! About like U.S. mail from coast to coast–today.

Herodotus described the Persian mail system and it functioned exactly as the Pony Express did in America. The famous historian said of those Persian riders, “These are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.” Evidently, Americans took the Persians’ slogan as well.

Cyrus was very generous with all religions, especially the Jews. He understood that religion is “glue” that holds a state together. Within a year he gave permission for the Jews to return to their homeland and even helped finance the journey and the rebuilding of their city and Temple. Mighty Babylon was on a downhill slide and by the time of Strabo (at the end of the 1st century B.C.), the site was in ruins and by 500 A.D. the whole area was a swamp. In recent years, the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein (who envisioned himself as another Nebuchadnezzar) sought to rebuild Babylon; however, he was hindered because his “friends and associates” hanged him by his neck–until dead. Babylon is in the same condition–dead and buried. Many say it will be rebuilt.

When Captain Titus attacked Jerusalem in 70 A.D., the city fell and the Second Temple was destroyed, beginning the period of the Second Exile. The Jews would be scattered throughout the world. In the land God gave to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob the Jews would have little influence for the next 1900 years. However during most of this Second Exile there have always been some Jews living in Jerusalem.

Such has been the Jewish story but they were never destroyed. Some Jews were assimilated but not as a nation. Enough of them stayed true to biblical principles such as worshiping Jehovah, abhorring pagan gods, keeping the Law, observing the Sabbath, circumcision of their sons, etc., to always be a separate nation wherever they were living. They are a strong, separate, and sovereign nation today much to the chagrin of Muslim Jew-haters who want to “drive Israel into the Sea.” Pharaoh tried that and he ended up in the Red Sea.

May all tyrants end that way!