ill go to the left." Just what Abraham looked forward to, we,
of course, do not know. Probably his ideas were vague. Yet it seems
that such men as he must have dreamed of a nation great in faith as
well as in material wealth; a nation in which money would not be
considered more important than justice and kindness; in which home
life might be sweet and loving, free from the fear of want or the
blighting influence of greed; and in which the door of opportunity
would always be kept open even for the humblest.

At any rate, some centuries after the time when Abraham is supposed to
have lived, we find a group of shepherd tribes living in and around
Canaan, who believed themselves to be descended from the twelve sons
of Jacob, Abraham's grandson, and among whom there was the tradition
of a divinely guided pilgrimage from Babylonia to Canaan under
Abraham's leadership just as we have described. It is a great thing to
have memories of noble parents and traditions of heroic ancestors.
These the Hebrews had from the very beginning.

STUDY TOPICS

1. Look up in any good Bible dictionary, the articles on Babylonia and
Hammurabi.

2. Read Genesis 12, 15, and 24 and form your own opinion of Abraham as
a husband and father.

3. What was Abraham's most valuable contribution to history?

4. From any map of western Asia, draw a sketch map showing the Nile,
Euphrates, and Tigris Rivers, the Mediterranean Sea, and the general
direction of Abraham's pilgrimage.

5. Where in the Bible is found the sentence spoken by Abraham to Lot,
and quoted in this chapter?

CHAPTER IV

A STRUGGLE AGAINST TYRANNY

Although they had escaped for a time from Babylonian tyranny, the
descendants of Abraham in Canaan found themselves somewhat within the
range of the influence of the other great civilized power of that day,
that is, Egypt. Egyptian officers collected tribute from rich
Canaanite cities. The roads that led to Egypt were thronged with
caravans going to and fro. By and by, a series of dry seasons drove
several of the Hebrew tribes down these highways to Egypt in the
search of food. The story of Joseph tells how they settled there.[1]
They were hospitably received by the king (or Pharaoh, which was the
Egyptian word for "king"), and were allowed to pasture their flocks on
the plains called the land of Goshen in the extreme northeast of the
country west of what we now call the Isthmus of Suez. For some decades
or more they lived