6
This people is descended from the Chaldeans.
7
At one time they lived in Mesopotamia, because they would not follow the gods of their fathers who were in Chaldea.
8
For they had left the ways of their ancestors, and they worshiped the God of heaven, the God they had come to know; hence they drove them out from the presence of their gods; and they fled to Mesopotamia, and lived there for a long time.
9
Then their God commanded them to leave the place where they were living and go to the land of Canaan. There they settled, and prospered, with much gold and silver and very many cattle.
10
When a famine spread over Canaan they went down to Egypt and lived there as long as they had food; and there they became a great multitude -- so great that they could not be counted.
11
So the king of Egypt became hostile to them; he took advantage of them and set them to making bricks, and humbled them and made slaves of them.
12
Then they cried out to their God, and he afflicted the whole land of Egypt with incurable plagues; and so the Egyptians drove them out of their sight.
13
Then God dried up the Red Sea before them,
14
and he led them by the way of Sinai and Kadesh-barnea, and drove out all the people of the wilderness.
15
So they lived in the land of the Amorites, and by their might destroyed all the inhabitants of Heshbon; and crossing over the Jordan they took possession of all the hill country.
16
And they drove out before them the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Jebusites and the Shechemites and all the Gergesites, and lived there a long time.