Marty 2020 wrote:
That’s ridiculous!
The tribes were in Egypt for around 400 years before Moses was born. His mother hid him to keep him alive and pharaoh’s daughter raised him, using Moses’ mom as nurse.
Read genesis again, slowly this time.
In Har’an, God spoke with Abraham. "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you and I will make your name great, so that you will exemplify divine blessing." (Gen 12:2). In verse 7, Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.
Genesis 13:15 "I will give all the land that you see to you and your descendants forever."
Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise; and it is a strange thing that the elective purpose of God was in each instance here exercised through a younger son, and a son which was not of the elective choice and wish of his earthly father.
'And the Lord appeared unto Abram"
"and said, unto thy seed will I give this land;"
- the whole of it inhabited by Canaanites and others; and it was for this end chiefly that Abram was called out of Chaldea into Canaan, to be shown the land, and have the grant of it for his posterity:
"and there built an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him:"
- by way of gratitude and thankfulness for His kind and gracious appearance, and for the gift of the land of Canaan to his offspring, through son Isaac and grandson Jacob/Israel;
The Noahic Covenant had existed for 1000 years, the Abrahamic Covenant was being established and the giving of the first five books of the Bible (the Torah) through Moses was 600 years in the future.
From the Bible: Genesis 17:5-6
5 No longer shall your name be called Abram,[a] but your name shall be Abraham,[b] for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.
6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you.
Footnotes
a. Genesis 17:5 Abram means exalted father
b. Genesis 17:5 Abraham means father of a multitude
The Lord then identified himself to Moses: "I am the God of your father, Abraham, The God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (v. 6). The reason for this miracle was that God was informing Moses that he was about to deliver his people from their 400 years of bondage in Egypt.
The word “Father” is not specifically mentioned, yet the covenant context of God’s fatherhood is expressed in Moses' words to the Hebrews/Jacob's descendants he led out of Egypt to Canaan... their promised land:
Exodus 4:22
"Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD, “Israel is My son, My firstborn."Deuteronomy 14:1–2
"You are the sons of the Lord your God … For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth" From the Jewish ultra-orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch website:
https://www.chabad.org › library › article_cdo › aid › 4040690 › jewish › Jacob-Our-Father.htm
"More than Abraham and Isaac, Jacob is exclusively our father. For, Abraham also had a son Ishmael, the father of the Arab nations, so that the Arabs can also claim Abraham as their father.
The Ishmaelites lived like Bedouins in the region of the Arabian Desert south and east of the land of Canaan (Genesis 25:18), corresponding to the modern areas of Sinai (Egypt), Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and western Iraq.
Abraham was also the father of Midian (Genesis 25:2-6) and other nations (the children of Keturah, after Sarah's death), so that the Midianites, and others, could also claim Abraham as their father."
Biblical Midian was in the "northwest Arabian Peninsula, on the east shore of the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea," territory now belonging to Saudi Arabia."
"The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" is the father of Israel, the Israelites, and the Israelis." This phrase was to become a familiar and significant pattern, which appears not only in the patriarchal narratives, but in many places in the biblical record.