Reading Plan: Bridging the gap between Abraham to Exodus

If you are following our reading plan, I am certain that it feels like it's jumping around quite a bit. Here's a summary of what's been going on:

Jacob wrestling with the angel of God

• Abraham was the first of the "patriarchs," or fathers of the Israelite nation.
• Job is believed by many scholars to be an early account of interaction with God. This likely would've come in the patriarchal age. It is placed where it is because from a literary standpoint, the majority of the book is considered poetical literature, so it is placed with the other poetical books (psalms, proverbs, etc.)
• BACK TO the patriarchs. Abraham's grandson, JACOB, would become the father of the nation Israel. After wrestling with God/an angel (Gen 32), Jacob is renamed ISRAEL. 
• Jacob had 11 SONS. These are where we get the tribes of Israel. The sons were: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Isaachar, Zebulun, Gad, Asher, Dan, Naphtali, Joseph and Benjamin.
• When you see names that are related to these, they are referring to the tribes. Examples are Reubenites, LEVITES, Gadites, Danites and Benjamites.
• These are only 11. Joseph had two sons and they are known as "HALF-TRIBES." These are Manasseh and Ephraim. Joseph is NOT considered one of the tribes of Israel, but his two sons are.
• Jacob (Israel's) whole family numbered about 70 men, and they were driven to Egypt from Canaan because of a famine. 
• JOSEPH was already there, had found favor with the Pharaoh and got the family awarded a plot of land up near the northern part of the Sinai peninsula. 
• We pick up Exodus seeing that the Israelites had reproduced (a lot) and a new Pharoah did not know of the agreements made with Joseph, nor did he like the sheer number of Israelites in his land, so he forced them into slave labor to prevent any threat to his power.