Once Jacob and his clan settled in Shechem (the place where Jacob’s two sons led their raid of revenge), some interesting historical developments were taking place in other parts of the world.
Back up in Mesopotamia, a brand new Babylonian culture had emerged led by the continuing domination of the Amorites.
These Amorites had erected these huge towers called Ziggurats and had begun charting the skies.
I guess you could consider them to be the world’s first expert astronomers.
And back down in Egypt, traditional Egyptian culture was now on a downward slope.
The nation that had given the world the pyramids and possessed a highly advanced civilization with libraries, agriculture and science all under one central government had begun to disintegrate.
The reason why is something a lot of scholars have no idea about of and 99.9% of all Bible pastors, preachers and teachers completely overlook.
Here’s the thing.
Starting from Jacob and moving on to Joseph’s time, Egypt was NOT being ruled by Egyptians.
Yup, you read that right.
Instead foreigners were sitting in the seat of Pharaoh in Egypt.
“What kind of foreigners?”…you ask?
They were Bedouin Sheiks descended from the sons of Shem.
In other words, they were Semites.
However, just because they were originally wandering Bedouins did not mean they were mindless or dangerous barbarians.
Once they took over Egypt, they easily assimilated into Egyptian culture and even adopted Egyptian names.
But since they were by nature tribal and were used to a wandering lifestyle they weren’t proficient in establishing and maintaining a big central government.
And the native Egyptians hated being ruled by these foreigners.
As a result, these so-called Hyksos rulers (or Shepherd Kings) were never able to achieve peace and harmony and unite all of Egypt together like the native Egyptian pharaohs before them had.
The result was that Egypt fell into a decline for the next 150 years and wouldn’t become prosperous again until the time of Moses.
What was the place of the Children of Esau in this time and later Edom was in unity with the Amorites or against them?