For anyone to truly understand the Bible and the word of God one of the subjects that must truly be understood is the subject of the history of Israel. The children of Israel really began when God separated Abram whose name was changed to Abraham from his family in Mesopotamia.

This is part of our questions and answers, and the question was, what is the history of Israel? Pretty general, so we decided to do a full series on the history of the children of Israel. When you sign up to join our general newsletter, you can leave questions you’d like answer too. Back to this study:

The Lord God chose Abram at age 75 and sent him out of Mesopotamia and told him that he would inherit the land of Canaan. Along the way Abraham was blessed once again by the current high priest Melchizedek, which in itself is a subject of study altogether.

The History of Israel Part One

After the Lord God then made a covenant with Abraham that would multiply him in the land of Canaan and would greatly blessed his offspring. Abraham had a son named Ishmael and later had another son named Isaac (whom the Lord passed the Covenant blessings to).

However Ishmael and all of Abraham’s sons also were blessed (not to mention his children who would be known as spiritual children). His spiritual children are people who believe in Abraham’s God but are not physical children of Abraham.

The generation after Abraham was Isaac. Isaac married Rebekah and from their union came twins, Esau and Jacob. Although Esau was born first and justly should have inherited the first born’s Birthright he ended up not doing so. In his adult years he despised his Birthright.

… a little trickery by Jacob and Rebekah…

According to the scripture he swapped or switched or exchanged his birthright status for a meal. He was truly exhausted and hungry. Unfortunately he made a very costly decision. He sold his birthright to his younger brother Jacob.

If we backtrack a moment we would note that while the two, Esau and Jacob, were in the womb Rebekah received the prophecy from the Lord that the elder child will serve the younger. There were two nations in her womb. According to prophecy, and a little trickery by Jacob and Rebekah, Isaac blessed Jacob and made him lord over Esau.

This angered Esau greatly and he vowed to murder his brother Jacob. So Jacob’s mother had to get rid of Jacob before Esau carried out his plans. They sent Jacob back to Mesopotamia in search of a wife. The idea and the plan for Abraham’s seed was never to marry women from Canaan.

The Elder Should Marry First!

That was the guise they used to get Jacob to leave without suspicion from Esau. As Jacob went back to Mesopotamia to seek a wife, he ran into a beautiful maid named Rachel. The beautiful Rachel was given to him but he also had to take her older sister Leah. It was a family tradition, the younger sister could not marry before the older sister.

This is difficult to carry out if the younger sister is better looking and physically more attractive than the older. At any rate, Jacob ended up with both of the sister’s handmaid’s because of Rachel’s conflict having children at the time. Twenty years later Jacob has four wives and twelve children.

It is at this time he decided to leave Mesopotamia because of a quarrelsome disagreement with his uncle Laban. Upon leaving Laban and Mesopotamia, he prepared himself to meet his long-time brother Esau, who he hadn’t seen all these years.

A Prince with the Lord

As he prepared to meet Esau, he was very fearful that Esau would still carry the grudge over the birthright. The same birthright blessing that he swindled out from him. Before they meet Jacob was met by an Angel who wrestles him all night. Jacob never gave up throughout the entire entangle.

When the angel was trying to leave Jacob commanded the angel to bless him. The angel asked him his name and she said that he should no longer go by the name Jacob but by the name Israel. This is the first time the name Israel is brought up in the scriptures.

The reason his name was changed from Jacob to Israel is because he was able to wrestle God and mankind and prevail. He became a mighty prince in the earth and that is why his name is now Israel. Jacob carried on back to the land of Canaan. First he met with his older brother Esau who had long since forgotten or put away his anger towards his brother.

Sold into Egypt

They embraced and exchanged presents, as well as met each other’s families. Esau had 400 men with him, along as a family well-stocked because he married multiple women. Switching gears, Jacob’s last son is born named Benjamin. That gave Israel twelve sons and one daughter.

Israel now has a full family, he has some stewards or servants, and plenty of cattle. Side note, at the arrival of Benjamin, Rachel died during the childbirth. In process of time, Jacob’s sons become angry at the blatant favoritism Jacob held for his son Joseph.

They sold Joseph into the hands of some Ishmaelites, who sold him into Egypt. Jacob was told that Joseph was torn and eaten by a beast. TO BE CONTINUED!

Selah

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