Prophets Jacob and Moses vs. Pharaoh Merneptah

Exodus 12:42 states; “Because the Lord kept a vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt, on this night all the Israelites are to keep a vigil to honor the Lord for generations to come.” And Psalm 105:1-2 states: “1 Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.”

It is amazing that about 120 generations later, most of the descendants of the original people, and those who have joined themselves to us during our journey, still gather together for the Passover celebration.

Ancient Egyptians made records of major events in their history, yet they never mentioned anything about “Moses” or the “Exodus” because the Pharaohs always ignored times when they were defeated. A good example of this is the Merneptah Stele, erected in Egypt in 1208 BCE, which is an Egyptian victory stele erected by Pharaoh Merneptah that tells how he (and his army) defeated the Libyans, and put down uprisings in Canaanite cities, followed by a claim about the destruction of a people called “Israel”.

The Egyptian inscription describes the Israelites as a stateless group of semi-nomadic men and women inhabiting Canaan at a time when Canaan was under Egyptian rule. Pharaoh Merneptah groups them together with several Egyptian-ruled city states in Canaan that were crushed. The Hebrew’s Exodus from Egypt occurred just a generation or two before this 1208 BCE victory stele.

Pharaoh Merneptah’s totally false claim that Israel had been destroyed is evidence that the Pharaohs were still angry that the Pharaoh of the Exodus had been defeated by the one, and only imageless, God of the Hebrews.

Almost all of the Bible’s texts were passed down verbally for many generations before they were finally written down. The earliest reference to Prophet Moses from outside the Bible appears in the Egyptian history of Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek historian of the 4th century BCE. Parts of it’s account of Moses were passed down to us by Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian of the 1st century BCE.

Maybe the Sea Peoples, recorded as invading Egypt, Gaza and the Eastern Mediterranean around 1200-1100 BCE, destroyed the early pre-Biblical texts like the song of Prophet Deborah (Judges 5. The Song of Deborah (there were 7 female Biblical prophets) as an ancient victory hymn sung by the prophetess Deborah and her military commander Barak, after the Israelites defeated the Canaanite army of King Jabin, but whose identity of this seaborne coalition remains one of antiquity’s greatest whodunits.

When Pharaoh Ramesses III recorded their defeat at Medinet Habu he listed several distinct groups, including the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Sherden, and Weshesh. While there is no single homeland for this confederacy, a prevailing consensus among archaeologists and historians points to the Aegean Sea and Western Anatolia (modern-day Greece and western Turkey) as their primary regions of origin.

Scholars have traced the likely origins of some specific factions through a combination of linguistic, archaeological, and genetic clues. Excavations at Philistine sites like Ashkelon reveal pottery styles, loom weights, and hearth designs similar to those of the Mycenaean Greek world.

Mycenae is a mighty city of the Bronze Age on the mainland of Greece was one another victim of the Bronze Age collapse. It was destroyed by fire around 1000 BCE….and we don’t know who did it. Greece, like all the Mediterranean regions was undergoing a prolonged drought that lasted almost 300 years

Rather than a unified invading army, these groups were likely part of a multi-generational immigration from 1250-1100 BCE. The Eastern Mediterranean had suffered a catastrophic series of earthquakes, plagues, prolonged droughts, and subsequent famines. Fleeing environmental disaster, widespread crop failures, and the crumbling administrative structures of the Mycenaean and Hittite empires, displaced populations took to the sea invading the Levant and Egypt the Sea Peoples were a symptom of an interconnected Bronze Age world coming unraveled.

Unlike the Hebrews, who entered the Levant from Egypt a couple of generations earlier, the Sea People did not speak Semitic tongues; nor did they worship imageless God. Prophet Abraham was unknown to them because they had ignored him. “And We certainty settled the Children of Israel in an agreeable settlement [the Land of Israel] and provided them with good things. And they did not differ until [after] knowledge had come to them.

“Indeed, your Lord will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection concerning that over which they [Jews and Christians] used to differ. So if you [O Muhammad] are in doubt, about that which We have revealed to you, then ask those [Jews and Christians}who have been reading the Scripture before you. The truth has certainly come to you from your Lord, so never be among the doubters.” (Qur’an 10:93-4)

“And remember Our servants, Prophets Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – those of strength and [religious] vision. Indeed, We chose them for an exclusive quality: remembrance of the home [the “safe haven” Land of Israel]. And indeed they are to Us among the chosen and outstanding.” (Qur’an 38:45-7)

Between 1200 and 1100 BCE, almost every major eastern Mediterranean city burned to the ground. The culprit wasn’t a foreign army, but a fatal collapse of ancient globalization.

The thriving, interconnected world of the Late Bronze Age—which included the Mycenaean Greeks, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia, the Canaanites, and the New Kingdom of Egypt—was shattered in a matter of decades. Writing systems like Linear B vanished, international trade ceased, and populations plummeted.

Historians long blamed a single culprit: the “Sea Peoples.” Egyptian records from the reign of Ramesses III describe confederations of mysterious seaborne raiders attacking from the Mediterranean, the Hittites and coastal kingdoms, before being repelled at the Egyptian border.

The Bronze Age Collapse was driven by a compounding disasters that shattered a highly integrated regional economy.

Climate Change and Drought: Pollen samples and isotopic data reveal that a severe, multi-decade mega-drought struck the eastern Mediterranean starting around 1200 BCE. The highly centralized “palace economies” of the Bronze Age relied on agricultural surpluses to feed specialized workers and ruling elites. When crops failed year after year, famine set in, and central authorities could no longer distribute food.

So, Exodus 12:42 is right; “Because the Lord kept a vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt, on this night all the Israelites are to keep a vigil to honor the Lord for generations to come.”