Bible Animations

   Another thing he mentioned in the post that I really really got a major kick out of, was the UV pass. I had no idea you could wrap textures in post! NONE! It is beyond cool!!! I would luv to do a whole tutorial on this, but that might have to wait for another time. GOD willing, soon! :D

- Average amount of children per household on the Exodus
Onto more Exodus stuff. It is specifically written that:


Grieved here does not mean that the Israelites were a difficult people to live with in Egypt, but that their very existence and multiplication were bothersome. I don't know whether they were difficult to live with, but I believe here it is clearly a sense of frustration, because their plans to oppress to decrease them clearly failed, haha.

As for the average number of children per household, multiplied can imply that they were any multiple or just increased. I am reminded of the instance where Pharaoh called the midwives:


Of course, they, in a very polite way, told him to take a long walk off a short pier by not obeying his orders and told him that they don't even get there to help with the birthing process. This did not sit well with him and he went to an even more extreme measure:


Unfortunately, this does mean that they could only save their children if they hid them. One such woman, Moses' mother, did exactly that. She hid Moses until she could hide him no longer (3 months).

Getting back on point, this does mean that at this time, the children were being reduced in number and there would probably have been more woman than men under the Israelites at the time of the Exodus. I also did a little bit of digging, and found that there wasn't really information kept on the Israelite women and children. I knew that was the case with the first census they did and so on, but unfortunately, this does leave us to speculate how many women and children there were. If you look at the competition between Rachel and Leah, it's easy to assume that a family with one main wife, would on average have 4-6 children (sometimes even a lot more). I think it was extremely rare in Biblical times to just have 1 child. Even Samuel (Hannah's son) wasn't an only child. That's best guess. Also, it fits the "multiply" term too, haha.

- Another apparent contradiction - this one lacks information I don't have.
   Now this was an interesting one. I was kinda thrown for a loop for a second when I read this, but let's see if you can spot what is being said:


We have the verse in Exodus telling us:


Did you see it? It says that they shall be afflicted for 400 years. They were not afflicted from day one. Why? Because Joseph was second to Pharaoh and ruled the land as if Pharaoh. Only after Joseph passed away, arose there another Pharaoh that didn't care and got paranoid about the number of Israelites and decided that they should be enslaved, lest they join the Egyptians enemies in a war and escape.

So let's have a look at the numbers:


Now, following that, we had the 7 years of famine kicking in. So Joseph only saw them again once the famine began to squeeze and his father noticed that Egypt was doing well, while everyone else had been starving. So he sent his children to go buy some food. My guess is this would be within a year the famine started, because this was a very serious famine that caused other countries to buy food before they did...

Then there was the back and forth with Joseph testing his brothers' character:


That means, for Joseph was 30 when he stood before Pharaoh
7 years of plenty passed
and 2 years of Famine
30+7+2 = 39

NOTE: This can be extrapolated to 40, as his birthday was not necessarily in keeping with the famine, hahaha, and we have some time as the arrangements for the move were being made after Pharaoh had invited them to live in Egypt.

His father moved to Egypt when he was:


And we have Joseph at 40, for argument's sake, and he died at the age of 110, giving us at least 70 years.

We are told that they Jacob had lived there 17 years and that he was 147 years old when he died:

Okay, so at this age, we have Joseph's 40+17, making him 57 at the time of his father's passing. He died at 110 and after him arose a king that afflicted the Egyptians. Which means that, if my math is right, he lived in Egypt 53 years. So we have approximately 23 years of excess into the affliction (400 years of affliction, 30 years of staying before said affliction kicked off).
According to research, it was not uncommon for multiple kings to rule at the same time (also causing issues with their chronology), as Egypt has in the past been a divided kingdom and the Bible does say that the land was filled with the Israelites. This being the case, it is possible that their affliction kicked off 23 years before his death. It sounds far fetched, but remember, Joseph was not Pharaoh and only had authority as far as Pharaoh gave him.
It would not be impossible for this other king to not know a thing about Joseph.

All things being reasonable and 23 years I can't, as solidly as I would like to, account for, I did a little digging and found these articles:
 - The 400 years and 430 years puzzle
 - Biblical calender proof
 - Apologetics Press

I disagree with these, not because I think they're bad or horrible, but Moses is clear that the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years, to the day, and the prophecy to Abram is affliction for 400. That means, they had 30 good years in Egypt before things started turning really sour really fast and this is where we are lacking information about Egypt's political climate. We know the Word of GOD is absolutely true - at least those that know JESUS personally know that GOD does not lie and if things don't add up, we don't have the answer for it - yet!

So my question is, what happened in Joseph's lifetime, towards the latter part of his life, that would allow something like this to increase so rapidly, while he was still a man of status and honestly, atm, all I got is the divided nature of Egypt's history and that this king that rose up after Joseph did not initiate the affliction, he just legalized it. Why? Even in Joseph's lifetime, the Israelites were seen as abominable or lower class in the eyes of the Egyptians and they looked down on shepherds with equal disdain, so combine the two and you find something of a political storm waiting to happen - especially if they increase in number rapidly.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about Egypt's history for me to prove such a hypothesis, but it's the only one that makes sense to me, without trying to cram scripture into a box that suits me, like "oh it must be a mistake, because of Egypt's chronology problems" (can't blame their calendar here, because it's GOD's that was used, just using it as an example) or something like that. This will definitely be something to research more at a later time, but for now, to finish the project, I'm going to have to leave it here. Who knows, maybe GOD gives me an article in the week that has the answer, :D! HE loves surprises like that and I do too!!! :D

Know it for sure - GOD does not lie - we just don't know what went on in those last 23 years of Joseph's life that gave rise to the fear in the king that came after him to legalize the affliction...

 - Moses' speech impediment?
   This is another one of those issues where we're not given anything explicitly about what the problem may be. Moses tells us quite frankly that he is not a speaker by saying:

We were listening to a sermon when I felt GOD tell me to put this on the to do list to check out after and so I did and HE specifically told me what HE wanted me to do to check it out. When I finally got to my PC, I wanted to google it first and do all sorts of other searches, but HE insisted I go to see what the Webster dictionary had to say about the matter and this is what it said - which was also what I felt GOD said to me was the issue:


1. Moving a small distance in a long time; not swift; not quick in motion; not rapid; as a slow stream; a slow motion.
2. Late; not happening in short time. These changes in the heavens though slow, produc'd like change on sea and land, sidereal blast.
3. Not ready; not prompt or quick; as slow of speech, and slow of tongue. Ex. 4.
4. Dull; in active; tardy. The Trojans are not slow to guard their shore from an expected foe.
5. Not hasty; not precipitate; acting with deliberation. The Lord is merciful, slow to anger. He that is slow the wrath is of great understanding. Prov. 14.
6. Dull; heavy in wit.
7. Behind in time; indicating a time later than the true time; as, the clock or watch is slow.
8.Not advancing, growing or improving rapidly; as the slow growth of arts and sciences.

Notice Nr3. giving exactly Exodus 4 as the reference point. Basically what this can mean, and what I believe it means, is that Moses simply wasn't this great speaker of his day. He may have been fine reading something off, but he was just not eloquent - which I can totally identify with!

When I first started with speeches in school, GOD put on me a grace gift. I could talk on a subject so long the teacher would have to stop me and it wasn't the least bit of a problem. I prepared in the way of thinking about it and talking about it, so when I got in class, I was ready (no visual aid or anything though - wasn't needed in 5th grade). Anyway, after that we were forced to prepare and use cards, at which point it became carnal and boom, eloquence out the door! haha.

The gifts and the call of GOD are irrevocable and while I lost that confidence, which GOD will finish restoring, but my point is this, I know what it's like to know what you want to say, but it's like your tripping over yourself, you're repeating the same words and concepts and you're just a snoozefest as a speaker. I get that and I really believe that that is what part of Moses' struggle was - it was probably worse with him physiologically speaking slowly (slow tongue being lumped with slow speech), but I can identify somewhat.

Just to make sure that this was not some sort of idiom or something, I also did a search afterward to see and there was nothing. I don't mean nothing as in there were some examples close to it - no, there was nothing in the line of a slow tongue. If he said he was of a slow tongue and slow speech, then he was of a slow tongue and of slow speech in this case. You know, let scripture speak for itself, haha.

There are various other things like this that are quite mysterious as well
 - What was the mark that Cain received from GOD
 - Did it rain before the flood
 - How did Moses know about JESUS while still in the palace
 - Who exactly were Jannes and Jambres (consensus on this has been discussed in a previous post)
 - What happened to the ark after it landed on the mountains of arrarat
 - Which mountain is the mountain of GOD (Sinai/Horeb)
 - Where did the Israelites cross the Red Sea
 - Was there 400 years of silence between the new and old testament
etc.

 - Location of Succoth
   I think I talked about this briefly in a previous post or only in the video, but this area is by no means mountainous. It does become mountainous towards the desert, but Succoth itself would've probably been like a plane even back then. For interest sake, you can view it here on Google Earth (needs Chrome or the App). It was truly an ideal place to stop and cook something, because there is literally nothing except some mountains in the distance and sand.

 - Ways of preparing food
   Speaking of food! This was something that took me extremely long to find out and quite frankly, I am not left with a single answer either, hahaha. So, in the interest of keeping this post as informative, yet brief as possible, I'm simply going to name each I've learned about, with a brief description.
 - Hearthstone
Basically, this is like a hot plate, but it is a flat rock that stays over the fire and serves as a pan of sorts. Some people carved rocks specifically for this reason and they are still seen in food serving today - obviously modernized.

 - Pottery cookware
This week I've seen something like a pan that has a ring handle, that could possibly be used as a pan if it were left on the fire and not too close, so that it could adjust to the heat (I'm guessing) and it could probably be used for cooking all sorts of grainy foods as well, like maize for example. You also get all sorts of pots that you can put over a fire like a cast iron pot.

 - Wide Open mouth volcano (tannur)
This one was by far the most interesting, because of the make shift nature of it and where you place the dough, haha. Basically, you build a wide mouth science fair volcano, big enough to build a fire on, but at about the same height of a camp fire and you place the bread on the inside. This does require a lot of water though, so I doubt that this was practical for the Israelites, unless there was a lot of water close by.

Like I said in the video, GOD never told them how to, because they knew how to. HE just told them to bake unleavened cakes and so they did. I believe they didn't use just one method. When it comes to outdoor cooking, there are just as many preferences as there are chefs (personal opinion, don't quote me on it, hahaha).

   Just for the sake of interest, here is the definition of victual:
VICTUALS, n. vit'lz. L. victus, food, from the root of vivo, which was vigo or vico, coinciding with vigeo. Basque, vicia life. This word is now never used in the singular.

Food for human beings, prepared for eating; that which supports human life; provisions; meat; sustenance. We never apply this word to that on which beasts or birds feed, and we apply it chiefly to food for men when cooked or prepared for the table. We do not now give this name to flesh, corn or flour, in a crude state; but we say, the victuals are well cooked or dressed, and in great abundance. We say, a man eats his victuals with a good relish.

Such phrases as to buy victuals for the army or navy, to lay in victuals for the winter, &c. are now obsolete. We say, to buy provisions; yet we use the verb, to victual an army or ship.

 - Slavery in Israel
   This one totally surprised me. I knew that GOD did not take kindly to one person mistreating someone that works for them, but I'm glad GOD made provision so that these people would not only be treated well, but gain their freedom too.

Check out this video from Answers in Genesis on this topic!
Seriously, this is a superb video!

- Hebrew Alphabet - Aleph
  Since I began looking for info on Egypt and how the country looks and so on, I just prepared myself not to understand hieroglyphics. While I still don't, I do know more than I did - like in the video. 1 is literally like a small L; just a little line.

   The Aleph, which is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is also a number, and it's number is 1. So if you see an Aleph, it is both a character and a number and it also has a pictorial value (GOD is just wow!!!). You can check that out here.

I feel led to show it as three, because they had all sorts of nationalities among them. At this stage though, primarily Egyptian and Israelite. Then why the Latin 1? Because it also applies to us today:


 - GOD brought Israel and HIS host out of Egypt
  Here are the verses where GOD specifically spoke about bringing HIS armies and people out of Egypt.