Thus far in class I have learned a multitude of intriguing things. One of the most striking is that the oldest part of Bible is not the story of creation, but rather “the Song of Deborah”. This particular piece is about Deborah, who gathered Israelite tribes and united them in order to defeat the Canaanites at Mount Tabor. When attacking, the Canaanites became stuck in the mud due to the weight of their armor and supplies, which allowed the Israelites to come from the hills and slaughter them. This particular song is unusual because it is centered around Deborah, a woman, and the Lord, while the majority of victory hymns tend to revolve around men and God. Related to the Canaanites, the land that they, and later the Israelites, occupied is
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God promised that Abram and Sarai would become the “mother and father of many nations”, as their descendents would last through time thanks to God’s blessing and, despite mass oppression, would one day rise to become kings and rulers of the land of Israel. However, due to the age of Abram and Sarai, they were skeptical, which eventually led to them distrusting God to the point that their lives were filled by sin for a time. During this period Sarai had their servant, Hagar, go to Abram, who impregnated her with what would become Ishmael, blessed by God to last through the generations despite the hate he would face from his family and outsiders. When Abram and Sarai returned to the path of God, God asked Abram to perform a blood sacrifice of animals - a three-year old calf, goat, ram, dove, and pigeon, of which he cut all the animals but the birds in half and laid them side by side - as part of a ritual to bind them to a covenant. This covenant promised that Abram, now Abraham’s blood would last, although they would be enslaved for four hundred years as the sins of the Amorites were not to their fullest potential, but in the end the Amorites would receive punishment while his descendants would rise to power and receive riches and such. As a token of this, all future male descendants were to be circumcised by the eighth day of life to ensure that it stayed “within the flesh” of Abraham’s descendants. Within a year of sealing the covenant, Sarah conceived a child, beginning the start of the birth of “many
God promised that Abram and Sarai would become the “mother and father of many nations”, as their descendents would last through time thanks to God’s blessing and, despite mass oppression, would one day rise to become kings and rulers of the land of Israel. However, due to the age of Abram and Sarai, they were skeptical, which eventually led to them distrusting God to the point that their lives were filled by sin for a time. During this period Sarai had their servant, Hagar, go to Abram, who impregnated her with what would become Ishmael, blessed by God to last through the generations despite the hate he would face from his family and outsiders. When Abram and Sarai returned to the path of God, God asked Abram to perform a blood sacrifice of animals - a three-year old calf, goat, ram, dove, and pigeon, of which he cut all the animals but the birds in half and laid them side by side - as part of a ritual to bind them to a covenant. This covenant promised that Abram, now Abraham’s blood would last, although they would be enslaved for four hundred years as the sins of the Amorites were not to their fullest potential, but in the end the Amorites would receive punishment while his descendants would rise to power and receive riches and such. As a token of this, all future male descendants were to be circumcised by the eighth day of life to ensure that it stayed “within the flesh” of Abraham’s descendants. Within a year of sealing the covenant, Sarah conceived a child, beginning the start of the birth of “many