=The Patriarchs.=—­The tribe was like a great family; it was composed of the chief, his wives, his children, and his servants.  The chief had absolute authority over all; for the tribe he was father, priest, judge, and king.  We call these tribal chiefs patriarchs.  The principal ones were Abraham and Jacob; the former the father of the Hebrews, the latter of the Israelites.  The Bible represents both of them as designed by God to be the scions of a sacred people.  Abraham made a covenant with God that he and his descendants would obey him; God promised to Abraham a posterity more numerous than the stars of heaven.  Jacob received from God the assurance that a great nation should issue from himself.

=The Israelites.=—­Moved by a vision Jacob took the name of Israel (contender with God).  His tribe was called Beni-Israel (sons of Israel) or Israelites.  The Bible records that, driven by famine, Jacob abandoned the Jordan country to settle with all his house on the eastern frontier of Egypt, to which Joseph, one of his sons who had become minister of a Pharaoh, invited him.  There the sons of Israel abode for several centuries.  Coming hither but seventy in number, they multiplied, according to the Bible, until they became six hundred thousand men, without counting women and children.

=The Call of Moses.=—­The king of Egypt began to oppress them, compelling them to make mortar and bricks for the construction of his strong cities.  It was then that one of them, Moses, received from God the mission to deliver them.  One day while he was keeping his herds on the mountain, an angel appeared to him in the midst of a burning bush, and he heard these words:  “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.  I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, I have heard their cry against their oppressors, I know their sorrows.  And I am come down to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians and to bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites....  Come now therefore and I will send thee unto Pharaoh that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt."[41] The Israelites under the guidance of Moses fled from Egypt (the Exodus); they journeyed to the foot of Mount Sinai, where they received the law of God, and for an entire generation wandered in the deserts to the south of Syria.

=Israel in the Desert.=—­Often the Israelites wished to turn back.  “We remember,” said they, “the fish which we ate in Egypt, the cucumbers, melons, leeks, and onions.  Let us appoint a chief who will lead us back to Egypt.”  Moses, however, held them to obedience.  At last they reached the land promised by God to their race.