Page 19 - Biblical Backgrounds student textbook

directed at the most popular deity of the time whose name was Sekhmet. According to Friedman
Sekhmet was responsible for sending plague and pestilence. She was the daughter of Ra and sister of
Hathor. The Egyptians came to believe that Sekhmet could send pestilence on them or their enemies.
As a result, they worshipped her in order to entice her to send it on their enemies. She also was seen as
able to send healing.

The social and economic culture of Egypt:
Egypt was an economic might of the patriarchal world. Its location on the Mediterranean Sea and the
Nile was instrumental in Egypt’s rise to prominence. Egyptian families had many children. Those in more
affluent families would hire a wet nurse to care for them. Those in less affluent families would nurse
their own children. This is consistent with the daughter of Pharaoh hiring the mother of Moses to nurse
the baby. Voss makes an interesting note that circumcision was a regular practice of the Egyptians that
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partially marked the transfer of being a boy to a man.

Marriage was often arranged among families. Usually when the children were young. Voss does explain
that in Egypt the practice of a barren woman giving her slave to a husband as a concubine was normal.
The couple would then adopt a son born to the concubine as their own. This again gives a background
that explains Sarah giving her slave to Abraham.
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Egypt offered one of the greatest educations
available at the time. They also were known for
the process of mummification. Joseph was
mummified when he died in Egypt in Genesis
50:2-3. This picture of an Egyptian mummy was
taken when they were on display at the
Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC. The
Bible records Moses taking Joseph’s bones with
the people during the exodus in Exodus 24:32.
Economically the Egyptians were known for
trade, agriculture, and cattle. The Nile provided
the method to ship cargo up and down Egypt
and throughout the world. The Egyptians did business with many other lands such as Phoenicia, Canaan,
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Crete, and many other regions.

The exodus conception in Jewish thought:
The exodus is the story of how God delivered His people and brought them to the land He promised. It
was seen by Jews as the proof of Yahweh’s supremacy over the powers of the earth and the cosmos.
Because of the miraculous intervention of God on their behalf, the vivid memories of the events of the
exodus largely shaped the Jewish view of God’s interaction. Michael Fishbane explains that “the exodus
tradition was used, from the first, as a paradigmatic teaching for present and future generations.” In
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38 Voss, Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Manners and Customs, 68.
39 Ibid., 68-69.
40 Ibid., 76-77.
41 Michael Fishbane, “The Exodus Motif/The Paradigm of Historical Renewal,” in Text and Texture: A Literary
Reading of Selected Texts, ed. Fishbane (Oxford, England: One World, 1998), 121.

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