The Role of Abraham in The Bible

In Biblical history, Abraham is viewed a spiritual father, in Judaism, for instance, he is considered as the father who founded the Christianity covenant. He is the role model of all believers for his outstanding faith in God be it to the Jewish side or the Gentiles and to the Islam he starts the connection of prophets that begin with Adam and connects eventually to Muhammad.

            God commands him to journey to a far of land and leave behind everything he owned and also leave behind his people, in return God promised him abundant blessings and many great descendants. Abram had a wife, Sarah, who was without child.  Abraham departed for Canaan together with Sarah, Lot and Terah, but settled in a place named Haran, where Terah died of old age of. Abram is then commanded to leave Haran and go to a land that the Lord would show him, and promised to make of him a great nation through his descendants (Haran 221).

Abram left Haran with his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot at the age of 75years and traveled to  Canaan where the Lord had promised Abraham a great nation through his sons.Through a series of events that occur during the decades the Israelites are captured in Egypt by Pharaoh ,but God sees them suffering and appoints Moses who had once lived in Egypt and had escaped from there because he had killed a servant of the king. God enables Moses to perform miracles to scare the pharaoh to let the people of God go free which after a series of deadly attacks like famine and the death of the Egyptian first born the king agreed to let the Israelites go free.

  After spending 40 years wandering the desert because of unbelief and mistrust of the power and ways of the Lord, the Israelites arrived at Canaan as promised to them by God (Bright 25). King David a decent of Abraham as promised by God conquers Jerusalem and declares it Israel’s capital city. God had also promised David an everlasting dynasty. Solomon David’s son is then commissioned to build a temple for the Lord; where he would reside among his people, as years went by Israel is divided by religious differences. The northern tribes were against the Lord law and set up an alternative religion of their own choice. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin retained their faith to the Lord for a while (Haran 224).

The 10 rebellious tribes that remained are taken into captivity in Assyria as a punishment for going against the Lord. The temple in Jerusalem is then destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. captives are taken into exile in Babylon for   70years exile as it had been prophesied by prophet Jeremiah until King Cyrus of Persia, orders the release of Jews captives who later return to Israel to build the second temple after destruction of the first one (Bright 28-29).

Works Cited

Bright, John. A history of Israel. Westminster John Knox Press, 2000.

Haran, Menahem. Temples and temple-service in ancient Israel: an inquiry into biblical cult phenomena and the historical setting of the priestly school. New York, NY: Eisenbrauns, 1985.