We can find ancient civilizations and countries that have employed the system of militias to provide local and national protection from their enemies. One such nation was the Ancient Nation of Israel, established by God as He led them out of Egypt with a mighty hand. As we have the Holy Scriptures of the Jews, which is the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, we have more information on Israel and the nations involved with Israel than with many other ancient peoples.
Most of our founding fathers were Christians in spite of the historical revisionists who would have you to believe otherwise. Many were scholars; some were involved with theology; some in religious history; and some were even pastors, deacons, and elders. They built the entire superstructure of our government around the government of Ancient Israel. Our laws were built around the Ten Commandments and civil laws of Israel. We often hear the expression that our legal system was built on a Judeo-Christian foundation. The Second Amendment was no exception. It, along with the related militia, came directly from Old Testament Israel.
God began by building the society on the solid ground of the family structure. He built in respect and obedience as stable components of the society. When God led Israel from Egpypt, he did it by clans, i.e., by families headed by the father, with sons with families, being clans as well, according to most historians. Clans were guided by wisdom from the clan partiarchs, a grandfather over many clans. Families were the source and recipents of law, dispensed internally in families. Order was maintained internally. Israelite laws instructed the youth to respect the elderly. Old family members respected the more elderly among them. The use of the word, ‘tribe’ is synonymous with clans under a single related older relative.
The Family of Jacob, grandson of Abraham, whose name was changed by God to Israel, had grown large in Egypt, whose rulers became fearful of their rapidly-growing foreign guests. They advised the midwives to kill the Israelites as the were being born, which they refused to do. So the rulers of Egypt made slaves of the Israelites and put them to work in the construction trades building cities for Pharaoh.
The story is found in Exodus, chapter 1, verses 6-22:Centuries earlier, the arrival of the Israelites into Egypt came through one family, i.e., Jacob and his family, seventy in number (Genesis 46:27, NRSV). They came at the invitation of the Pharaoh in appreciation of what the one son of Jacob (Israel) had done earlier in preventing Egypt from succumbing to the drought which had invated the entire region. The story can be found in Wikipedia.
Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them. Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly. The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?” The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live [NIV].
The Egyptians began to treat the Israelites as slaves, forcing them into hard labor. God then raised up a deliverer, a type of the future delivers, the Messiah. The deliverer’s name was Moses, and his story can be found in Wikipedia also: Read Account in Wikipedia.
Moses was raised up by God to lead the Israelites from Egypt. He did this as he led them out family by family, in this way maintaining order which has already been established internally within each clan [Exodus 12].
The Real Purpose of the Second Amendment continues. . .
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