The Birth And Rebirth Of A Nation

by Joseph Hunting

There is no more exciting series of events in the annals of human history than the miracles that attended the birth of the Hebrew nation. And it was an all-star cast chosen by God for this great drama.

I still have vivid memories of Cecil B. De Mille's original TEN COMMANDMENTS made more than fifty years ago. This magnificent film of Israel's deliverance from Egyptian slavery had a prologue and an epilogue. Today we are witnessing an epilogue of a far greater drama that had its prologue 3,500 years ago in the events that surrounded the birth of Israel as a nation.

Prologue

Israel 's prologue begins when Abram and his father Terah lived in Ur of Chaldea. Even in those far-off days there were highly civilized nations. In the area where the human race was cradled Hammurabi instituted his famous code of laws. Egypt was a developing power soon to dominate the area. And Melchizedek, priest of the most high God, was ruler in Jerusalem. His fame had far exceeded all his contemporaries.

Surely with such a cast God could have chosen a race of people already in existence in order to fulfil His plan of redemption for the human race.

And yet, at the time of his choosing by God, there doesn't seem to be anything spectacular in the life of Abram that would vindicate God's choice. He is just one in a long succession of Shem's descendants. Up to that time all we know of him is that he married his half-sister Sarai who proved to be barren.

Then, without warning, God invaded Abram's daily routine with the command, "GO OUT OF YOUR COUNTRY, AND FROM YOUR KINDRED, AND FROM YOUR FATHER'S HOUSE, INTO A LAND THAT I WILL SHOW YOU: AND I WILL MAKE OF YOU A GREAT NATION, AND I WILL BLESS YOU AND MAKE YOUR NAME GREAT; AND YOU SHALL BE A BLESSING: AND I WILL BLESS THOSE THAT BLESS YOU, AND CURSE THE ONE THAT CURSES YOU: AND IN YOU SHALL ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE EARTH BE BLESSED" (Genesis 12:1-3).

In the light of what we know of Abram on the human level we could be forgiven for thinking that God had chosen the wrong man. Was not his wife barren, and even past child-bearing, and was not Abram 75 years old at the time? But Abram had the one ingredient God was looking for: HE BELIEVED GOD!

Part of the great covenant God made with Abram was that he and his descendants would possess the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession in spite of Sarai's condition. Not only did God promise Abram the land, but He also told him that his seed would be as the stars of heaven for multitude.

As the years passed with no child to confirm God's promise, Abram and Sarai did what so many of us might have done in similar circumstances, namely implement a plan of our own to help God fulfil His promise. But for Abram and Sarai the result was disastrous and the consequences have caused bloodshed and hatred to this very day. However, what Sarai did was normal according to the custom of the time -- she gave her maid to Abram to bear a child through whom, they hoped, God would fulfil His promise.

A further fifteen years dragged by and Sarai still remained childless, and although Ishmael was the apple of his father's eye, God had other plans. Sarai indeed was to have a child. When Abram was ninety-nine years old and Sarai eighty-nine, God said, "Sarah your wife shall bear you a son indeed. And you shall call his name Isaac. AND I WILL ESTABLISH MY COVENANT WITH HIM AND WITH HIS SEED AFTER HIM" (Genesis 17:19).

Ponder the implications: Ishmael was the natural offspring of his Divinely chosen parents, but Isaac was the supernatural child of promise! In him was the embryonic nation. To further complicate matters, Isaac's wife Rebekah was also barren, and although Esau and Jacob shared the miracle of childbirth, it was with Jacob that God confirmed the covenant that He had made with Abram and Isaac.

What of the twelve sons of Jacob who were to become the founding fathers of the nation of Israel? Jacob's first love, Rachel was certainly barren and required supernatural intervention for the births of Joseph and Benjamin. Although it is not directly stated it is implied that God also worked a miracle for Leah to bear her children. "And when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, He opened her womb" (Genesis 29:31). Again ponder the implications: it was necessary for God to intervene by miracles in the lives of the matriarchs in order to implement His great plan of redemption for all mankind. Truly, "Salvation is of the Jews" (John 4:22).

In order to gain some idea of the magnitude of Israel's exodus from Egypt, think of the preparation that would be needed to lead two million well-equipped and disciplined troops across a vast waterless desert, and remember that Israel was anything but an organized and well-equipped army. They also had little children and babies as well as vast herds of cattle, sheep and goats to feed and water daily.

It is estimated that if the column was one hundred abreast, together with the vast herds of cattle, sheep and goats moving at one mile an hour, it would be close to twelve miles long and would take twelve hours to pass a given point.

As the children of Israel passed dry-shod through the Red Sea during the time span of one night one can only marvel at the brilliant leadership of Moses. By way of comparison, in 1940 it took the British Expeditionary Force three days to move 70,000 men a distance of about 170 miles using modern transport equipment over modern roads!

Some months after the Six Day War of 1967 I had the privilege of traversing the Sinai Peninsula. The route we took roughly followed that taken by Moses three thousand five hundred years earlier. Along the coast route that Moses followed during the initial stages of his journey to Mt. Sinai there were numerous springs and oases. It didn't seem too bad to me, but I was sitting in a comfortable bus driving along a fairly good bitumen road.

Then we transferred to command cars and I was allocated a seat on an ammunition crate surrounded by shovels and other paraphernalia stored in the back, and we set off along the wadis that would eventually lead us to Mt. Sinai. It was extremely rough going and I soon began to appreciate to some degree the rigours of the march undertaken by Moses along these very wadis.

Several times we had to dig our vehicles out of the sand and when we became mobile my admiration for Moses increased with every jolt and jerk as our four-wheel vehicles slowly made their way into this waterless wilderness. After much less than forty hours of bouncing around on the back of a command car I was ready to cry quits.

But Israel spent forty years in what must be one of the most inhospitable places on earth. If their bondage in Egypt was called the "furnace of affliction" then the forty years in this "howling wilderness" was God's refining crucible.

Just as Israel's exodus from Egypt was miraculous as the waters of the Red Sea parted, so was their entry into the Promised Land when the Jordan, although in full flood, parted to let the Hebrews cross dry-shod to possess the land promised them by God.

Epilogue

And Israel's rebirth on May 14^th 1948 was no less a miracle, though under different circumstances. Consider the birth pangs that preceded both events. Even as Pharaoh planned the genocide of the Hebrews in Egypt by having all male babies cast into the Nile and he made their lives bitter with harsh bondage, so Hitler and his Nazi regime planned genocide for European Jewry. His ultimate plan was the extermination of world Jewry.

He failed, but not before European Jewry suffered similar harsh bondage as did their ancestors and six million perished in the Holocaust that enveloped Europe. Although the stricken survivors bore deep scars the British administration of Palestine during the post war years did little to help ease their suffering -- they blocked their entry to the Land of Promise. Israel's rebirth pangs were severe indeed.

Only hours after its rebirth the tiny new-born state of Israel was attacked by five well-equipped hostile armies intent on wiping out the infant state within two weeks. The fact that Israel survived that war is in itself a miracle. But they did more than survive. Each of the invading armies were flung back across Israel's borders to the astonishment of the rest of the world.

In vain their enemies tried again in 1956, 1967 and 1973 to accomplish what they had failed to achieve in 1948. Surely, Israel's rebirth as a nation and survival during the past forty years against such overwhelming odds are modern miracles without parallel in this century.

How truly has God kept His promise to Abram: "I WILL MAKE OF YOU A GREAT NATION. AND I WILL BLESS YOU AND MAKE YOUR NAME GREAT" . And may the remainder of God's promise to Abram soon have its fulfilment. "AND IN YOU SHALL ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE EARTH BE BLESSED."

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