crossed the
Euphrates, the desert, and Syria and came to the country of the Jordan
beyond Phoenicia. This tribe was called the Hebrews, that is to say,
the people from beyond the river. Like the majority of the Semites
they were a race of nomadic shepherds. They did not till the soil and
had no houses; they moved from place to place with their herds of
cattle, sheep, and camels, seeking pasturage and living in tents as
the Arabs of the desert do to this day. In the book of Genesis one has
a glimpse of this nomad life.

=The Patriarchs.=--The tribe was like a great family; it was composed
of the chief, his wives, his children, and his servants. The chief had
absolute authority over all; for the tribe he was father, priest,
judge, and king. We call these tribal chiefs patriarchs. The principal
ones were Abraham and Jacob; the former the father of the Hebrews, the
latter of the Israelites. The Bible represents both of them as
designed by God to be the scions of a sacred people. Abraham made a
covenant with God that he and his descendants would obey him; God
promised to Abraham a posterity more numerous than the stars of
heaven. Jacob received from God the assurance that a great nation
should issue from himself.

=The Israelites.=--Moved by a vision Jacob took the name of Israel
(contender with God). His tribe was called Beni-Israel (sons of
Israel) or Israelites. The Bible records that, driven by famine, Jacob
abandoned the Jordan country to settle with all his house on the
eastern frontier of Egypt, to which Joseph, one of his sons who had
become minister of a Pharaoh, invited him. There the sons of Israel
abode for several centuries. Coming hither but seventy in number, they
multiplied, according to the Bible, until they became six hundred
thousand men, without counting women and children.

=The Call of Moses.=--The king of Egypt began to oppress them,
compelling them to make mortar and bricks for the construction of his
strong cities. It was then that one of them, Moses, received from God
the mission to deliver them. One day while he was keeping his herds on
the mountain, an angel appeared to him in the midst of a burning
bush, and he heard these words: "I am the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, the God of Jacob. I have seen the affliction of my people which
is in Egypt, I have heard their cry against their oppressors, I know
their sorrows. And I am come down to deliver them out of the hands of
the Egyptians and t