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Updated: June 27, 2025
His name, however, was as familiar to the Canaanite as it was to the inhabitant of Chaldæa, and the god before whom his exploits were displayed was Yahveh and not Bel. It was about 1600 B.C. that the Hyksos were finally expelled from Egypt. They were originally Asiatic hordes who had overrun the valley of the Nile, and held it in subjection for several centuries.
A few outlaws maintained a guerilla warfare in the mountains of Benjamin, and the prophet Samuel, the representative of Shiloh, was allowed to declare the oracles of Yahveh to his countrymen. But the vanquished population was deprived of the means for revolt. The Israelites were forbidden the use of arms, and no itinerant smith was permitted to enter their territory.
We have here the experiences of many souls, with a certain kinship, yet with wide differences. In many of these hymns one recognizes the religion in which Jesus was cradled. Imagination and feeling have full scope. The constant idea is of Yahveh, ruler of the world and its inhabitants, the judge of the wicked and friend of the good.
Sometimes it is a little difficult to tell where the line runs which separates these narratives, but usually it is distinct. Readers of Genesis find many passages in which the name given to the Deity is "God," and others in which it is "LORD," in small capitals. The first of these names represents the Hebrew Elohim, the second the Hebrew Yahveh or Jehovah.
It is known that one god was exalted over all the rest in Egypt, and that as far back as 1375 B.C. King Ikhnaton made the religion of Egypt an absolute monotheism. The Hebrews, in proclaiming their Yahveh as the one and supreme deity, were but following what they had assimilated from the Egyptians.
The main evidence of this is to be found in "Truth Stranger Than Fiction: A Narrative of Recent Transactions involving Inquiries in Regard to the Principles of Honor, Truth, and Justice, which Obtains in a Distinguished American University," by Catherine E. Beecher, New York, 1850. See "Yahveh Christ, or the Memorial Name," by A. McWhorter, Boston, 1857.
Next, each clan, or city, or nation, comes to regard itself as under the patronage of one of these deities. The national god of the Israelites, at the earliest time we know them, bore the name of Yahveh, a name more familiar to us under the form Jehovah. Originally he was probably the god of the sun and fire. His acts were seen everywhere, his motives guessed.
Yahveh was for destroying them off hand for their manifold sins and iniquities; but Abraham argued and bargained and brought him down till if peradventure there should be found ten righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah, the Lord promised he would spare them. But ten righteous there were not, nor nothing near; so the Cities of the Plain went down.
He hath made Him a mock of the heifer of Isis, He hath broken the chariot reins of Ra, On Yakûb He cries, and His folk arises, And the knees of the Nation are loosed in awe. He gives us their goods for a spoil to gather, Jewels of silver, and vessels of gold; For Yahveh of old is our Friend and Father, And cherisheth Yakûb He chose of old.
Man really modifies his Gods in terms of the ideal human being. It is not the Gods who moralize man, it is man who moralizes the Gods." In the formation of the Old Testament, the moralization of Yahveh led to the creation of a god who coincided more with the morality of the later writers, the God Elohim.
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