Many different countries are named in the Bible. The most common one is Israel – not surprisingly, since God says that for him it is the centre of the world, the land he promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (whom he renamed “Israel”).[1]
Judah was one of the leading tribes of Israel from the beginning and later became a separate kingdom for several hundred years. Judah is the nation named most commonly after Israel – although only about one third as often.
What may surprise you, however, is that the third most common country named in the Bible is Egypt, not far behind Judah in frequency.
Egypt appears in the Bible at different times as a place of both safety and oppression. Abraham went there for refuge when there was a famine in Canaan, while Joseph, Rachel’s son, was sold there as a slave before rising to a position of power and saving both Egypt and his own family after God helped him to interpret a dream that warned of a coming famine. Later, though, the Israelites were all made slaves in Egypt, and ten plagues were required to convince Pharaoh to let them go
free. In the New Testament, when Herod was trying to kill Jesus, God warned Joseph and Mary to escape to Egypt so that Jesus was not killed along with the other boys in Bethlehem.[2]
Remembering history
I find it fascinating that more than 100 of the references to Egypt in the Old Testament were reminding the Israelites that God had led them out of Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan.
For example, here is one of about ten examples in the book of Jeremiah alone:
“You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel:
Cursed be the man who does not hear the words of this covenant that I commanded your fathers
when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace,
saying, Listen to my voice, and do all that I command you.
So shall you be my people, and I will be your God,
that I may confirm the oath that I swore to your fathers,
to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as at this day.”
Jeremiah 11:3-5
Given that Jeremiah was prophesying about 700 years after the exodus, God is reaching far back into history to make the point that he was the one who had led his chosen nation into the land he had promised to Abraham and then set them up as a nation. God does not forget the past, or his promises – and he doesn’t want us to forget his actions in the past either, since they are our reason for expecting him to keep his promises in the future.
Since Egypt was one of Israel’s neighbours, it is no surprise that it is often mentioned as a place that people came from or visited. For example, Sarai/Sarah’s maid Hagar was an Egyptian,[3] and when the prophet Uriah was running away from King Jehoiakim, he went to Egypt.[4]
However, some of the most interesting references to Egypt are found in prophecies about Egypt, and we will look at some of these in another newsletter.
