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The whole event of the Exodus had a profound significance on two fronts.
1. National
First, it had national significance for the people of Israel. It marked the beginning of their national history. They received their political freedom and became a sovereign nation in their own right. Though they did not yet have a land they were a nation with a name of their own: ‘Israel’. So central was this event that ever since then its celebration has been written into their national calendar. Just as Americans celebrate their independence on 4 July, so every March/April the Jews celebrate the Exodus. They eat the Passover meal and recount the mighty acts of God.
2. Spiritual
Second, it had spiritual significance. The Israelites discovered that their God was the God who made the whole universe and could control what he had made for their sake. They came to believe that their God was more powerful than all the gods of Egypt put together. Later they would come to realize that their God was the only God who existed (see especially the prophecies of Isaiah).
The truth that God was more powerful than every other god was made clear by the name which God gave to himself. His ‘formal’ title was El-Shaddai, God Almighty, but it is in the book of Exodus that the nation was given his personal name. Just as knowing a person’s name enables a human relationship to become more intimate, when they discovered God’s name Israel could enter into a more intimate relationship with him.
In English we translate the name as ‘Yahweh’, though there are no vowels in the Hebrew – strictly speaking it should simply be Y H W H. The name is a participle of the verb ‘to be’. We saw in our study of Genesis that ‘always’ is an English word which communicates how the Jews would have understood it. God is the eternal one without beginning or end – ‘always’. This is his first name, but he has many second names too: ‘Always my provider’, ‘Always my helper’, ‘Always my protector’, ‘Always my healer’.
In the book of Exodus we are also presented with the extraordinary truth that the creator of everything becomes the redeemer of a few people. The word ‘redemption’ includes the idea of releasing the kidnapped when the ransom price has been paid. This is how Israel was to understand her God. He was the creator of the universe and also the redeemer of his people. Both aspects are important if we are to learn to know God as he is revealed in the Bible.
The book
Exodus is one of the five books which Moses wrote. Genesis deals with events before his lifetime and Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy tell of events during his lifetime. These books are crucial to the life of Israel as they record the foundations of the nation. They are also foundational to the whole Old Testament. This group of slaves needed to know who they were and how they came to be a nation.
We saw in our study of Genesis how Moses collected two things from the people’s memories: genealogies and stories about their ancestors. The book of Genesis is entirely made up of such memories. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are different, comprising a mixture of narrative and legislation. The narrative describes the Israelites’ move from Egypt through the wilderness and into the land of Canaan. The legislation reflects what God said to them concerning how they should live. It is this unique combination of narrative and legislation that characterizes these other four books of Moses.
Exodus itself is part narrative and part legislation. The first half details what God did on the Israelites’ behalf to get them out of slavery. The second half describes what God said about how they were to live now that they were free. The first half demonstrates God’s grace towards them in getting them out of their problems. The second half shows that God expects them to show their gratitude for that grace by living his way. This emphasis is important. Too many people read the law of Moses thinking that it shows how they can be accepted by God. They get it the wrong way round. The people of Israel were redeemed by God, then they were given the law to keep as an expression of gratitude. This principle is the same in the New Testament: Christians are redeemed and then told how to live holy lives. To use theological jargon, justification comes before sanctification. We do not become Christians by living right first, but by being redeemed and liberated and then living right. The liberation comes before the legislation.
In Exodus the Israelites’ liberation takes place in Egypt and the legislation takes place at Mount Sinai, as they travel to Canaan. Here they respond to God’s covenant commitment to them. The covenant takes the form of a wedding service. God says ‘I will’ (be your God if you obey me) and then the people have to say ‘We will’ (be your people and obey you).
STRUCTURE
As well as there being two halves to the book of Exodus, there are ten different portions within it: six sections in Chapters 1–18 and four in Chapters 19–40. They can be arranged as shown in the following table.
Chapters 1–18
(people mobile)
Key themes
DIVINE DEEDS
GRACE
LIBERATION
FROM EGYPT
SLAVERY (men)
REDEMPTION
The sections
1. 1 Multiplication and murder
(ISRAEL)
2. 2–3 Bulrushes and burning bush
(MOSES)
3. 5–11 Plague and pestilence
(PHARAOH)
4. 12–13:16 Feast and first-born
(PASSOVER)
5. 13:17–15:21 Delivered and drowned
(RED SEA)
6. 15:22–18:27 Provided and protected
(WILDERNESS)
Chapters 19–40
(people stationary)
Key themes
DIVINE WORDS
GRATITUDE
LEGISLATION
TO SINAI
SERVICE (God)
RIGHTEOUSNESS
The sections
7. 19–24 Commandments and covenant
(SINAI)
8. 25–31 Specification and specialists
(TABERNACLE)
9. 32–34 Indulgence and intercession
(GOLDEN CALF)
10. 35–40 Construction and consecration
(TABERNACLE)
The first part (Chapters 1–18) details the events preceding and following their flight from Egypt. It includes many miracles, including the most famous, how the Israelites were protected when the first-born of Egypt were killed, and how they were able to pass through the Red Sea. It also includes the less famous but no less remarkable provision of God as they journey from Egypt to Sinai. During the Yom Kippur war of 1973 the Egyptian army was unable to last more than three days in the desert, yet in Exodus 2.5 million people survived there for 40 years.
In the second part the focus is on legislation. The Ten Commandments appear first, but there is also other legislation concerned with God’s intention to live among his people. Just as they lived in tents, so God would join them in their camp. But his own tent would be distinct and separate from theirs. These people had never made anything but mud bricks until that point, but God gave them the skills to work with gold, silver and wood.
The second part does also include some narrative. Here we read the saddest part of the whole book, as the people indulge themselves and make a golden calf to worship. The book finishes with the construction of the tabernacle. God takes up residence and the glory comes down on his tent.
Chapters 1–18
Many perceive the first part of Exodus to be full of problems because it is such an unnatural story. There are so many extraordinary events that many people suggest that what we have here is a series of legends rather than truth. So, are the events described part of a myth or a miracle?
Myth or miracle?
1. NO SECULAR RECORD
The problem is not just with the nature of the events themselves, but also with the fact that the events are not backed up by any secular, historical record. All we have is just one mention of ‘the habiru’ in Goshen – a possible reference to the ‘Hebrews’, as the ‘children of Israel’ were known. This lack of documentation should not surprise us, however. The Exodus of the Jews was one of the most humiliating events in Egypt’s experience. They suffered severe plagues, including the death of their first-born. Their best charioteers were drowned in the Red Sea. This hardly made for comforting reflection.
2. THE NUMBERS INVOLVED
Many people find the story hard to believe due to the large numbers involved. We are told there were 2.5 million slaves who left Egypt. By any reckoning this is a huge number. If they marched five abreast, the column would be about 110 miles long, and that does not include the livestock. It would take months for them to move anywhere. It is also a huge population to keep fed and watered in a desert for 40 years.
3. THE DATE
There is also a question about the dating of the events. As we have no other record outside the Bible we cannot date the events with any certainty. So we do not know for sure which Pharaoh was involved and when it all took place. The choice seems to be between Rameses II, who had a powerful military force, who erected huge statues of himself and whose sons’ tomb has only recently been discovered, and Dudimore, according to the ‘new chronology’ of David M. Rohl.
4. THE ROUTE
There is controversy concerning the route which the Israelites took when they left Egypt, too. There are three possibilities to consider: a route to the north, a route to the south, or one through the middle. We will come back to this question in The book.
5. THE DIVINE NAME
Other scholars find problems with God’s words to Moses in Exodus 6:3 where he says: ‘I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them.’
That last phrase may either be a statement (‘…I did not make myself known…’), in which case Abraham knew him as ‘God’, but without a personal name distinguishing him from other gods; or a question (‘…did I not make myself known…?), in which case Abraham knew God by name as well as Moses. The latter is less likely.
THE FACTS
All these questions have made scholars doubt whether they are reading fact, fiction or perhaps ‘faction’. Those who do not believe the events need to ask why they cannot. Is it prejudice or a so-called scientific view of the universe which prevents them believing? At the same time we can also try to look for the most understandable explanation for the facts which are indisputable.
1 Nobody can dispute that there is a nation called Israel in the world today. So where did they come from? How did they get started? How did they ever become a nation if they were originally a bunch of slaves? We do know from secular records that they were a bunch of slaves. Something dramatic is needed to explain the existence of Israel.
2 Every year, every Jewish family celebrates the Passover. Why do they do it? This is a ritual which has survived for many thousands of years and also needs some explanation.
These two known facts at least need explanation, therefore, and it is the book of Exodus which provides the answers. So let us look at each section, following the structure laid out in the table above, and consider some of the questions surrounding the text.
1. Multiplication and murder
In this opening section we discover that the number of Hebrew slaves must have been around 2.5 million by the time the Exodus narrative starts. This may seem a large number given that they started with just the 12 sons of Jacob, their offspring and wider family. But if each family had four children (not a large number in those days) over 30 generations then this number could be achieved.
But why did they stay in Egypt for 400 years when they only went there for seven originally? They first arrived in the time of Joseph and Jacob following a famine in Canaan. (Egypt was the bread-basket of the Middle East thanks to Joseph’s judicious storing of grain during the seven years of plenty.) They arrive voluntarily, are accepted as guests of the government and are given a fertile piece of the Nile delta called Goshen to live on together. So they remain a nation during the seven years of famine. But at the end of that time why did they not go back to their own land? This is a pertinent question, given that they are eventually forced to become slaves in Egypt.
The human reason is that they were very comfortable. It was much easier to make a living in the Nile delta than it was on the hills of Judea. The land was fertile, the climate was warmer, with no snow in winter as there was in the hills of Judea. The diet was good, they could eat fish from the Nile and look after themselves far better. So they stayed because they were comfortable. It was only when they were forced to become slaves that they remembered God and started crying out to him.
There is also a divine reason. God did not do anything to encourage them to go back to their own land for 400 years. If they had returned as soon as the famine was over, they would have been only a few people, far too small a number to accomplish what God intended. For it was God’s intention to remove the people of Canaan from the land. He explained to Abraham that his descendants would stay in Egypt until the wickedness of the Canaanites was completed. God had to wait until they became so bad that it would be an act of justice and judgement to throw them out of the Promised Land and let the Hebrew slaves in. We read in Deuteronomy that it was not any virtue on the part of the Israelites which made God choose them. Indeed, if they behaved in the land like those they had expelled, they too would have to leave. To be instruments of justice they had to be righteous themselves.
But all that was to come later. As slaves in Egypt, the people of Israel faced three oppressive decrees:
1 Forced labour: the Pharaoh decided to use the Hebrews as labour for his building programmes.
2 Tougher conditions: they had to make bricks without straw (which meant the bricks were much heavier to carry). Archaeological digs within Egypt have discovered buildings made of three different types of brick: the foundations with straw, the middle with rubbish, as the Hebrews sought to continue making light bricks once denied the straw, and then on the top bricks made entirely of clay. The idea behind this harsh decree was that the extra weight of the bricks would make the Hebrews too tired for sex or mischief and so their population would decrease. It was a crude form of population control and it did not work, so the Egyptians had to introduce a third decree.
3 Death: all the baby boys born to the Hebrew slaves had to be thrown to the crocodiles in the River Nile.
2. Bulrushes and the burning bush
Most people know this story well. The River Nile was full of crocodiles and this form of genocide was considered necessary by the Egyptians if Israelite numbers were to be effectively reduced. The baby Moses should have died in this way. But we note that under God’s providence Moses, like Joseph, was brought up at court and given the best education at the Egyptian university. This, of course, made him far better educated than any of the Hebrew slaves, and enabled him to write the first five books of the Bible. For the Jews Moses was the second greatest man in Old Testament – after Abraham. His time as an Egyptian prince came to a sudden end, however, when he lost his temper with one of the Egyptian slave drivers and killed him, after which he had to flee for his life.
The statistics of Moses’ life make interesting reading. At the age of 40, he spent 40 years tending sheep in the very wilderness to which he would return to live for 40 years with the people of Israel! This was clearly God’s hand at work.
Moses’ meeting with the Lord through the burning bush is also intriguing, not so much for the bush as for Moses’ excuses. God first told Moses to take off his shoes because he was on holy ground. Then he told Moses that he was going to be the man to draw God’s people out of Egypt. Moses made five excuses as to why he should not do it.
First he said he was insignificant. God said he would be with him – he was the important one. Next he said that he was ignorant and had nothing to say. God told him that he would tell Moses what to say. His third excuse was that he would be impotent to convince the people that God had met with him and told him to lead them. God said that his power was going to be with Moses and he would perform miracles. Then Moses said that he was incompetent at speaking, having a stammer which would prevent him putting words together. So God provided his brother Aaron to be his spokesman. God would tell Moses what to say and he would relay it to Aaron. Finally Moses said that he was irrelevant – please would God send someone else? But God had provided Aaron as a partner: they would work together. Each time Moses’ questioning focuses upon his weakness, and each time God has an answer.
3. Plague and pestilence
Ten plagues are mentioned in this section: the Nile turned to blood, the plague of frogs, the plague of gnats and mosquitoes, the plague of flies, the cattle disease, the boils, the hail storm, the plague of locusts, the darkness over the land and, finally, the death of the first-born.
There are a number of things to notice, and the first is that God is in total control of the insect world. God can tell mosquitoes and locusts what to do and where to go, just as he can tell frogs what to do. The plagues give a tremendous sense of God’s control over what he has created.
It is also interesting to note how the plagues increase in intensity. There is a build-up from discomfort to disease to danger to death. There is also a movement from plagues affecting nature to plagues affecting people. The afflictions gradually get worse as Pharaoh and the Egyptian people refuse to respond to the warnings. Some see the final punishment as unfair – is the killing of the first-born not far too excessive and harsh? But the Egyptians had done worse to the Israelites, killing all their baby boys, so this retribution was thoroughly appropriate.
It is easy, too, to miss the religious contest that takes place during the plagues. Every one of those plagues was an attack on a particular god worshipped by the Egyptians:
Khuum: the guardian of the Nile
Hapi: the spirit of the Nile
Osiris: the Nile was believed to be the bloodstream of Osiris
Heqt: a frog-like god of resurrection
