In December 2019, we started writing notes on Genesis 1 and posting them to Twitter in the hope of engaging with others and learning from the many biblical scholars who use that platform. We have continued, slowly, to work our way through the narrative portions of the books of the Bible that lead up to Caleb’s story, where he is first mentioned in Numbers 13. As we transition to Leviticus in August 2022, we want to share these notes with you in a more accessible form.
Twitter’s limitations force changes, so there are differences between these, which we took as we read and studied, and what we tweeted out. Because they were written for Twitter, they contain artifacts that make less sense in a webpage format. We hope you will bear with some of the awkwardness to see the process we’re using to understand and re-tell a richly informed version of Caleb’s story.
To find the tweet thread as we posted it, you can go to Twitter and search for ‘@kalevcreative’ plus a hashtag in the title or keywords from the body of the section you’re interested in.
Please read, share, and comment or engage with us on Twitter or via email. We will do our best to respond. In the end, we hope to understand where Caleb’s story fits in the larger narrative, what role he plays in God’s plan for Israel and the nations, and what we can learn from him.
#Bible #Exodus 1 #
Exodus, continuing directly from Genesis, begins by recalling Gen 46, Jacob’s family moving to Egypt. The number 70 is a hyperlink to later passages re representatives of the whole people of God – God calls 70 Israelite elders (Exodus 24, Numbers 11), God shows Ezekiel 70 rebellious Israelite elders indicating the nation’s thorough corruption (Ezekiel 8:11), Jesus chooses 70 disciples to go ahead of him (Luke 10). More subtly, it may recall God’s 7 days and 10 words of completed creation in Gen 1. The phrase - “The Israelites…were fruitful, increased greatly, [swarmed], multiplied, and became extremely strong, so that the land was filled with them.” (Exo 1:7) – appears to both echo Gen 1:28 and foreshadow Joshua 1:9.
The new king quickly opposes God’s plan for the sons of Jacob. He is the latest iteration of the Gen 3 seed of the serpent (beginning with the serpent himself, continuing through Cain, Lamech, the sons of God, Nimrod, the people of Babel, Abraham’s pharaoh, the people of Sodom, and Shechem among others), one reliant on intellect and, in an escalation of evil, willing to mass-murder infants in pursuit of power. Rather than tending a lush garden as in Gen 2, the king compels the Israelites to build cities, another mark of the serpent’s work, the mortar and bricks recalling Babel’s rebellion, their rigorous service in the field recalling God’s curse of the ground.
As in his Gen 3 prophecy, God uses women and their offspring to resist. The midwives obey God by disobeying and deceiving the seed of the serpent, opposite Eve in Gen 3:1-7. Pharaoh, undeterred, orders the newborn males thrown into the Nile. The river that in Gen 2 was a source of life for Eden and now for the Egyptians becomes death for the Israelites at the order of the serpent’s representative. Beginning with Cain, who named a city after his son, the serpent’s line wishes to make a name for itself. The biblical author denies the pharaoh that, instead preserving Shiphrah and Puah’s names across millennia.
@carmenjoyimes notes that in Exodus, God repeatedly uses women to rescue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njP5LWpA5lM&list=PL6bwfe08fufzGaY2YImWQK12Ye7VX15X2&index=19
We saw the beginning of this pattern Genesis. After Levi and Simeon’s violent, depraved rescue of Dinah, God next uses Tamar to save.
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1281285663254609920
This first chapter of Exodus establishes that the people of Israel have entered into a recognizable narrative pattern continued from Genesis. We noted above the parallels with Gen 1-3, but there are other stories of enslavement: Sarai by a pharaoh, Hagar by Sarai, Lot by an alliance of kings, an attempt on angels by the people of Sodom, Dinah by Shechem, Joseph by his brothers and the Egyptians. There are variations among them, but in each God intervenes to rescue the oppressed, sometimes through his chosen line, sometimes in spite of it.
Here we find God’s covenant people enslaved to a murderous tyrant. We can see God preserves and blesses them. We know of God’s Gen 15 promise to Abraham to judge their captor and bring them out. We are led by the pattern of those previously enslaved to expect God to rescue, preserve, and bless them, so we wait in anticipation to see what he will do.
[Unpublished] #Bible #Exodus – a short digression
It’s important to us to bring biblical narrative to life, to connect it as closely as possible to the real world, to make it tangible, able to be grasped. We use a lay person’s understanding of archaeology, geography, military history, metalwork, and other diverse fields in addition to biblical scholarship to do so. With all this in mind, Exodus is a paradox. It is the first narrative in the Bible of a scale and at a time that could reasonably be expected to yield significant archaeological and text evidence of its events. In some ways it does, but as we saw in Exodus 1, the author appears to intentionally obscure the identity of the Egyptians. His purpose is to elevate God’s people, not his enemies. We do not wish to resist this purpose, therefore we will not attempt to identify the Egyptian dynasty or pharaoh of the Exodus.
In Genesis, we presented as accurately as we could the geography of events in order to understand them. In Exodus, we will do this to a lesser extent because the location information we have it is often ambiguous and vigorously disputed even for key events such as the Red Sea crossing and appearance of God on Mount Sinai. Also disputed: the dating (1400s or 1200s BCE) and the number of the Israelites (estimates range from 20,000 to 6 million).
Egyptology has given us significant insights regarding slavery, mud brick construction, the relationship of Egyptians with animals, their military capabilities, roles in their government, and other details that correlate well with those in the Exodus narrative. The specific experiences of the Israelites though have proven so difficult to support that many mainstream scholars deny the Exodus ever happened. We find the founding story of the nation of Israel to be essential to the entire biblical narrative and therefore accept it even in the absence of evidence that would satisfy a skeptic. The system of numbering, geographical data, and dating schemes in Exodus all remain enough of a mystery that we will not attempt to resolve them. When we are aware of solid, relevant scholarship, we will use it and be as clear as we can about the limits of our knowledge.
#Bible #Exodus 2 #Moses
Although we are rapidly overtaking what she has made available, @carmenjoyimes Torah Tuesday has said 90% of what I’d thought to, so if this is interesting, her videos will be too.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6bwfe08fufzGaY2YImWQK12Ye7VX15X2
While we’re looking elsewhere, here are the relevant @bibleproject videos, highly recommended:
Exodus part 1 of 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uf-PgW7rqE
Exodus 1-18:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uf-PgW7rqE
Exodus 2 begins with a marriage between descendants of Levi. Although experienced Bible readers will associate that name with the priesthood, to this point in the narrative, we only know that Levi violently overthrew Shechem, stole their possessions, and enslaved people while rescuing his sister; participated in selling his own brother Joseph into slavery; and was chastised rather than blessed when his father died. So expectations aren’t high…
But this child’s mother “saw that he was good.” We’ve found similar scenes before when children were born, for instance, with Eve’s sons she makes a comment about her expectations and role. This time, the mother uses the same language God does about aspects of his creation in Genesis 1, so maybe the low expectations we had for this child are turning around.
Peter Enns, in the NIV Application Commentary, connects Moses’ imperiled birth and childhood to a long line of variously threatened births among the chosen people of God. He mentions Isaac, Samson, Obed, Samuel, and Jesus, but we could add Jacob and Esau, Benjamin, Perez and Zered…clearly God makes a habit in the biblical narrative of preserving his chosen people through difficult births.
As we saw callbacks to Genesis 1-3 in Exo 1, we now see references to Noah’s flood. Many commentators have noted Moses’ basket is named with the same word used for Noah’s ark, the only other place the word is used, and the basket is sealed with the same materials. The major story that follows Noah’s is Babel, and we may be seeing a similar progression here. The child is drawn out of the water by the family of the oppressive, serpent-allied ruler.
The artistic works of oppressed peoples often tell stories of reversal – how the cleverness of men or the intervention of the divine overcome the oppressor’s power. In Genesis we saw God at work both directly and through his people to rescue the enslaved. In Exo 1, we saw the notionally powerless midwives thwart the intent of the most-powerful pharaoh. Here again, the child’s mother, sister, and adopted mother thwart the intentions of the pharaoh to rescue and nurture. The reversal reaches its peak as the pharaoh’s daughter herself takes the child into the pharaoh’s own house, most threatened and most protected there.
Pharaoh’s daughter names the child Moses, a word with meaning in both Egyptian and Hebrew, more on this later.
We learn nothing about Moses’ Egyptian-influenced life or education, likely related to the narrative strategy of ignoring the names of the Egyptian people and places. We instead skip to a grown Moses observing the Hebrews “hard labor.” When he sees an Egyptian attacking a Hebrew, he reenacts his ancestor Levi’s violent rescue (whether it’s justified here is ambiguous). Enns suggests that his next encounter, with the fighting Hebrews, establishes a precedent we will see throughout the books of Moses: they antagonize, resist, even threaten him.
Moses, neither fully Hebrew nor fully Egyptian, now rejected by both, flees severe punishment, traveling across a vast wilderness.
#Bible #Exodus 2 – the name #Moses
[Pharaoh’s daughter] named him Moses, saying, “Because I drew him from the water.” (Exodus 2:10, NET)
Many commentators have identified a dual Egyptian/Hebrew meaning of Moses' name. In each language, however, the phrasing is awkward.
In Hebrew, the word means “one who draws out.” It is the pharaoh’s daughter who drew him out though. And why would she name him a Hebrew name?
In Egyptian, the word means “child” and, often in a royal context, “son of” with a name preceding it. When the pharaoh’s daughter names him Moses, the effect is the rough equivalent of “son of ?” or “son of _____.” This awkward phrase seems wrong, so much so that some commentators (ie John I. Durham in World Biblical Commentary Exodus) assume it was written by a biblical author who lived hundreds of years later, hundreds of miles away, and was unfamiliar with Egyptian practice.
If we instead assume an author who lived at or near Moses’ time and was familiar with Egyptian naming conventions, there is another possibility, one consistent with literary practice evident elsewhere in the text: this awkwardly formed name is a motif that will develop along with the plot.
We can receive the Hebrew meaning as a prophetic foreshadowing of Moses’ role drawing the Israelites out of slavery, through the sea, and even out of their slavery-oriented understanding into a new life God had for them.
The Egyptian “son of ?” may be viewed as an intentionally unusual formulation that emphasizes the Egyptians don’t know who his father is. She drew him out of the water.
For the early part of the chapter, we don’t know his name at all. He is one of countless infants threatened with death. Now he has a confusing name. We can’t tell if it’s Hebrew or Egyptian, and it doesn’t fully make sense in either language. Strikingly, this is exactly Moses’ status at this point in the narrative: he is discovering his relatives are forced labor and his adopted family is responsible. His attempt to intervene alienates all of them. He is “son of ?”
In fear of retribution for killing an Egyptian, he flees to Midian, where they identify him as an Egyptian. He doesn’t correct them. He names his son “foreigner there,” still unsettled.
Then at Horeb, God calls out “Moses” three times, emphasizing this strange name. God tells him “I am the God of your fathers,” then, for the first time, tells us his name “Yahweh.” Moses is no longer “son of ?” He is “son of Yahweh” and so is all of Israel. James Hoffmeier in his book Israel in Egypt, tells us, “There is widespread agreement that at the root of the name of the great Hebrew leader is the Egyptian word msi, which was a very common element in theophonic names throughout the New Kingdom (e.g., Amenmose, Thutmose, Ahmose, Ptahmose, Ramose, Ramesses).” Theophonic names are not the names of human fathers, they are the names of gods. For the Egyptians, the missing name is the name of Moses' god, and Yahweh has now revealed it to him. Like the pharaohs, Moses is now a national leader, the son of God.
When Moses meets the pharaoh, the first thing he says to Moses is "Who is Yahweh?" God has sent Moses to introduce him.
Moses spends the rest of his life trying to get the Israelites, whom God also calls his son, to recognize and value Yahweh.
#Bible #Exodus 2 Cont. #Moses in #Midian
In Exodus 2:15, “Pharaoh…sought to kill Moses. So Moses fled…and settled in the land of Midian” As readers far removed from the time and place of the events described, it’s worth pausing to understand what transpired in just those few words.
James Hoffmeier, in his book Israel in Egypt , makes numerous references to a network of canals, lakes, and forts that served (with varying effectiveness over time) to control entrance to (and presumably exit from) Egypt.
Moses would have had to use his knowledge and/or status to cross that defensive line, then travel roughly 200 miles across the Sinai desert and perhaps another 50 in the vicinity of Midian to the well where he encounters the daughters of the priest of Midian. The shortest route across the desert likely existed in Moses’ time as a rough trade route, not ideal for chariot pursuers. We have no solid information on what route he traveled, but this is a reasonable guess.
Midian is known from ancient sources to be along the east coast of the modern Gulf Aqaba. The Midianites can be found in the biblical narrative ranging north of there as far as Moab and possibly west into Sinai, so we can’t be sure where Moses encountered the well and the Midianites he settled with.
Gen 25:2 tells us that Midian was descended from Abraham and his wife Keturah, so there is reason to think they also serve the God of Abraham and that God’s provision for Moses includes placing him with a family that would teach him about God after maturing in the house of Pharaoh.
Moses then participates in what Robert Alter has identified as a woman at the well type-scene. Its unusual elements include the presence of seven daughters, that he waters their animals (instead of the other way around), and that the women initially leave him with no sign of returning until their father sends them back for him. Reuel means “friend of God.”
Moses marries his daughter Zipporah (m. “bird”), who bears Gershom (“foreigner there”).
The Israelites cry out to God who hears them. In Genesis, we saw that “God remembered” a key figure was the pivotal point in her/his narrative, a moment of deliverance.
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1281250332870430722
Here, God remembers them as they suffer in slavery, so we should anticipate that he is about to deliver them as he did their ancestors when the phrase was used in their stories. Since the focus has been on Moses, we can anticipate he will be a big part.
In her Torah Tuesday videos, @carmenjoyimes focused on the words “go” and “strike” as what Robert Alter might call “leitwort,” words that repeat and serve as touchpoints, recurring themes in the progression of the narrative. Earlier, I suggested Moses own name interpreted as “son of ?” may be one too. James Hoffmeier proposes the word “knew” as we see here “God saw the Israelites, and God knew.” (Exo 2:25)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGNYyGUytbQ
#Bible #Exodus 3 #fire
In Midian, we find Moses as shepherd, connecting him to Abel, the Patriarchs, Joseph-a good sign for his new life, but the narrative doesn’t dwell there long.
He led his flock to the west or far side of the wilderness, depending on the translation. West of Midian would take him into the Sinai peninsula, so it could be helping us with geography or merely conceptually that he is traveling to a far, remote place. Regardless, he finds Horeb and the mountain of God.
“And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire…” (Exo 3:2a, ESV) This short fragment is already full of meaning, connections to past and future. We met the angel of the Lord in the parallel stories of Ishmael’s exile and Isaac’s near-sacrifice.
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1248904933467983872
We’ve previously seen God manifest in fire in Abraham’s Gen 15:17 night vision of fire and smoke passing between animal halves. In that vision, “The LORD said to Abram, ‘Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.’“
Attentive readers will feel the significance of allusions to shocking events in Abraham’s life: the exile and threat of death of his sons; the terrible promise God made, which Moses likely remembers and knows has been fulfilled, of the enslavement of Abraham’s descendants.
God then addresses the remaining unfulfilled Gen 15:17 promise directly, tells Moses he has seen, heard, and knows. He has come down. All these, along with “God remembered” from the previous chapter are part of God’s pattern of rescue continuing from Genesis.
The narrative tension in the unfulfilled promise of rescue cries out for resolution. Here is God introducing himself to Moses, telling him he will deliver, yet Moses has reservations. God is commissioning him to be a heroic rescuer, but he cannot see the potential, only his own objections. Contrast this with Caleb’s speech and God’s speech about Caleb in Numbers 14, and we can imagine what might have been for Moses. His self-concept and doubt of God’s abilities repeatedly get in the way, qualities that will haunt him to the end of his life.
God reiterates numerous promises he made to the Patriarchs, connecting Moses to them directly, giving this descendant of chastised Levi the mantle of Abraham. At the end of Genesis, one would have expected Joseph or perhaps Judah, but for now, God subverts expectations and chooses one who disobeyed. Moses responds in character, saying “Who am I? ...what shall I say? …they will not believe me..I am slow of speech…please send someone else” until God’s anger burns(!) against him. God chooses a leader whose character we will find matches that not only of his ancestor but also the people he will lead.
Exo 3 is full of allusions to promises God made to Abraham and reaffirmed to his descendants, of rescue, enrichment, land, and blessing. He offers Moses a magnificent task, but Moses can’t see it. Later, we will begin to see that Moses’ experience in these initial chapters serves as a bridge between the experience of Abraham and of Israel through a series of parallel events.
#Bible #Exodus 4
Moses wants to know what to do if the Israelites in Egypt doubt that he heard from God or even that Moses is worth listening to, all understandable human concerns. God’s response is inscrutable and supernatural. He gives Moses signs of a snake, corrupted skin, and water turned to blood. Given the narrative elements we’ve encountered to this point, we can infer some meaning here, possibly hints at anti-creation, foreshadowing judgment to come. The snake most vividly reminds us of the tempter in Gen 3. Here, God’s sign is control over the snake. Next, Moses’ own body is affected. God, the Creator of man in Gen 1-2 can allow disease and heal it. Finally, a sign involving the land and water, specifically the Nile. The waters and land of Gen 1, the Nile-god of the Egyptians, all are under God’s control, and here, the end result is blood. Blood evokes death, but earlier in the narrative, there is also quite a bit of sacrifice - blood linked to relationship with God. The waters, the land, man, the gods in the heavens are subordinate to Yahweh, and he is coming for blood.
Moses continues to object until he runs out of objections and finally just asks God to send someone else. Angry, God agrees to send Moses’ brother Aaron with him and emphasizes Moses must carry the staff that turned into a snake.
In their podcast series on trees @timmackie and @jonpdx of @BibleProject link Eden with its trees, Noah’s ark made of tree, Abram making altars and nearly-sacrificing his son by trees, and now Moses by the bush. All meet with God in a high place by trees as heirs of his covenant. We are nearing the end of Moses’ personal narrative, he is about to reunite with his people.
Moses departure brings Jacob’s to mind. The differences do Moses credit. He asks for and receives permission and blessing to leave Jethro’s household to return to his family in Egypt. God reminds him of his duties, and he leaves with his wife and sons not forgetting the staff. God tells Moses he will harden Pharaoh’s heart. @jamesbejon in his article Pharaoh’s Heart and the Exodus https://www.academia.edu/40289520/Pharaoh_s_Heart_and_the_Plagues argues that heart is a motif central to Israel’s deliverance story. God also emphasizes to Moses Israel’s status as God’s firstborn and threatens Pharaoh with the death of his.
Next comes one of the stranger stories in the entire Bible. After sending Moses back to Egypt and giving him specific instructions for what to do there, “the LORD met Moses and sought to kill him.” Possibly there are links here to Isaac’s near-sacrifice and Jacob’s wrestling. Zipporah’s actions appear to continue a line of brave women who risked death to save their families, perhaps beginning with Tamar and continuing through the midwives and Moses’ own mother, sister, and adopted mother. What Zipporah perceived, how she knew the action necessary to appease God, and why she was disgusted with Moses remain unclear. She is mysterious, powerful, and in charge. After this decisive act, she does not appear in the narrative again. Some commentators speculate she returns to her family after this incident; Exodus 18 says that at some point he sent her back. In Numbers 12, Moses is married to a different woman, a Cushite from a territory over 500 miles away from Midian.
When an Egyptian sought to kill a Hebrew, Moses shed an Egyptian’s blood before leaving Egypt for Midian. When God sought to kill Moses, Zipporah shed her son’s blood while leaving Midian for Egypt
God tells Aaron to meet Moses in the wilderness, they meet at the mountain of God, and they go together to the Israelite leaders in Egypt. The account is silent about Aaron’s escape from enslavement to meet his brother and willingness to return. “Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight of the people, 31 and the people believed. When they heard that the Lord had attended to the Israelites and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed down close to the ground.” (Exodus 4:30-31, NET)
#Bible #Exodus 5
Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh. It's worth pausing to ponder the experience of Moses, raised as son of a Pharaoh's daughter, returning to the palace after 40 years of shepherding in the desert. In contrast, Aaron, a lifelong slave, would experience it differently.
Pharaoh responds “Who is YHWH? …I do not know YHWH,” creating a narrative tension to be resolved in the coming chapters. Pharaoh chastises Moses for giving the people rest from their labors, then gives the command to his slave supervisors to deny the people the straw used in making bricks. Failing at the obviously impossible task, the Israelite foremen receive beatings and go before Pharaoh, who accuses them of laziness and refuses to reduce their quota. They confront Moses and Aaron, angry that they have given Pharaoh “an excuse to kill us!”
Moses, who undoubtedly felt that whatever his prior failings, surely he is now being obedient, expresses his frustration with God – Why did you send me? …Pharaoh has caused trouble for this people, and you have certainly not rescued them!
Each successive scene subtly, yet relentlessly portrays the Pharaoh as a powerful opposite of God, whose character we first learned of in Genesis 1.
-God rested; pharaoh refuses the people rest.
-God provided a fruitful land and commanded man to be fruitful and rule in it; Pharaoh seeks to suppress the Israelites’ fruitfulness, provides mud and straw, and demands they build his cities, support his rule with it.
-God is righteous and just; Pharaoh delights in clever injustice.
-God brought forth life; Pharaoh threatens with death.
At the end of the chapter, Moses’ faith is shaken. Having seen the power and stubbornness of Pharaoh, he returns to God, frustrated that God has not yet acted to save.
#Bible #Exodus 6 #structure #chiasm
Exodus 6 stands out from its surroundings. It does not advance the narrative, actually beginning and ending with the same concepts: God telling Moses to speak to Pharaoh, and Moses protesting. It contains a genealogy of Jacob’s disinherited sons, Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, continuing through Levi’s descendants to Moses and Aaron.
In its first line, God says “Now you will see what I will do…”, so it seems safe to accept the chapter as summary of what has passed and prelude to God’s coming mighty deliverance.
The Exodus becomes the paradigm of judgment of evil and deliverance of God’s people for the entire remaining Bible, but it is echoing themes that began in the beginning. Since the book Exodus is pausing here to reflect, maybe we should too.
We’ve spent quite a bit of time to this point considering chiasms in the stories of major characters. There appears to be one here at the beginning of Exodus too. Are they really useful? Do they even exist? Or have we been imagining and assigning meaning to structures that just aren’t there?
The clearest evidence of symmetry in the story of a major character is the list of days that Noah spent on the ark in Genesis 7-8:
“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open...”
7, 40, 150 days
“God remembered Noah and all…that were with him on the ark”
150, 40, 2x7 days
“in the six hundred and first year…in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. Then God spoke to Noah, saying, “Go out of the ark…”
If we look at the start and end dates, the difference is a year and 10 days. Yet, when we add up the days there are more than that. Why? The author is prioritizing the symmetry of the numbers of days. Some of them likely overlap, but the author chose to focus on symmetry. Is it significant that “God remembered Noah” is in the middle? If we look to the stories of other major characters, we find “God remembered” at the center of those of Abraham and Jacob and “Joseph remembered” his God-given prophetic dream.
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1281250332870430722
In each, though we may not understand the structure well, there is evidence the story steps through a sequence of events and then through a symmetrical sequence of related events to resolve. Yet, in resolution, we often find the symmetry also yields evidence of narrative progress, both in relationship to God and geography. Early in Joseph’s story, his father sends him from Hebron to check on the welfare of his brothers, and near the end, he ensures their welfare in Egypt, using much the same language.
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1279414516367982594
In Exodus 1-6, we find elements that match earlier major character narratives and also earlier examples of judgment. In each era of Genesis, Adam and Eve in the garden, Cain with his brother, the sons of God and Noah, Sodom and Abraham, God judges in a similar fashion. He comes down and observes; assesses thorough corruption; destroys or exiles; and brings forth a remnant. With Noah and Abraham, he makes covenants at locations characterized by Eden imagery, which he reaffirms with Abraham’s heirs.
Following the same pattern, we find a chiasm in Exodus 1-6, in which God hears the cries of his oppressed people, “God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” then declares his purpose to deliver them through judgment into an Eden-like land.
Does recognizing this form aid in understanding?
In the first half of Exodus 1-6, we learn of the oppression of the Israelites, the many ways in which the Egyptians abuse them to build up Egypt.
In the midst of that oppression though, we read 3x "the people multiplied."
Though they were under the rule of a foreign king, God continued to work in them to do what he had called them to in Genesis 1: be fruitful and multiply and fill the land.
Central to this story, God heard their cries and remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
In the second half, God repeatedly tells Moses of his recognition of the Israelites' plight and intent to deliver them into a fruitful, spacious land, directing Moses to tell the people of God's interest in them and Pharaoh of God's relationship with them. He has been blessing them despite their harrowing circumstances, but as we saw at the end of Genesis, they are in the wrong land. God is telling them the time has come to fulfill his promise and give them their inheritance. “Now you will see what I will do.”
#Bible #Exodus 7 pre #plagues
God tells Moses he will make him “E/elohim” to Pharaoh, and Aaron will be Moses’ prophet. We know from Egyptology that the pharaoh was revered as a god in Egypt, so Moses’ standing now matches the pharaoh’s. Through Moses, God will show the pharaoh’s god claim to be a lie.
God tells Moses he will harden Pharaoh’s heart. This statement, made many times in many ways in the plague passages, is the source of much speculation and interpretation from commentators. They often bring the question – “How can Pharaoh be held accountable if God hardened his heart?”- to the text. Well, the text doesn’t give an obvious answer. God created the pharaoh and all the land of Egypt. He will demonstrate his power over the ruler and all in his kingdom. Not only is the pharaoh not a god, he cannot even control his own heart.
God declares his intent that through the plagues and by bringing out “my son Israel,” “the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.”
When they speak to the pharaoh, Moses is 80 and Aaron is 83. Moses is the younger brother.
When God commands Aaron to throw down his staff in the presence of Pharaoh, he says something unexpected. At the burning bush, God told Moses to throw down his staff, and it turned into a snake (4:3), in Hebrew, a “nachash.” Moses was to do this for the Israelite leaders, and, though the text doesn’t specify (4:30), we assume he did. When Aaron is to do the same in Pharaoh’s presence though, God tells him the staff will instead become a “tannin.” What is that? To this point in the narrative, we’ve only seen it once, in Genesis 1, where it’s commonly translated sea monster or great sea creature. Later, in the Prophets, it’s translated “dragon.”
@AvBronstein considers this vocabulary change and concludes it associates Pharaoh with the sea monster, a mythical enemy of Ancient Near Eastern gods, a concept picked up by the Psalms and Prophets. https://mobile.twitter.com/AvBronstein/status/1377452976692985858
Yet, there appears to be even more going on. If today, you approached a world leader uninvited, you would be turned away far from her location. If you were caught with a deadly threat to the leader, you would be arrested and imprisoned. Surely Pharaoh’s court would similarly protect him and the spaces he occupied, and, as a murderous enslaver, his security would be thorough and his punishments severe.
We find Aaron releasing a significant threat in the pharaoh’s presence and inducing pharaoh’s magicians to intensify that threat. Why dwell on this detail even though the story doesn’t when we just pointed out others consider questions of the heart when the text doesn’t? It’s likely an ancient reader with an ANE understanding of kings, gods, and myths would perceive this more readily than a modern reader. It appears important to understand God through Aaron is violating the sanctity of Pharoah’s own presence. The sea monster/serpent is a physical threat but also a spiritual/mythical one.
Richard Gabriel in his book The Military History of Ancient Israel and Leon Kass in a recent presentation, citing other scholars, each conclude that the Tabernacle built later in Exodus closely resembles the war tents of some pharaohs from this general timeframe. We can know from Exodus that God provides extensive instructions to ensure the holiness of the spaces near his presence in the Tabernacle and can safely assume Pharaoh tightly controlled access to himself. Yet here, God introduces something powerfully destructive into Pharaoh’s own presence and multiplies it through Pharaoh’s own magicians. As God controls Pharaoh’s heart, so he controls events in Pharaoh’s court to the point of defiling it with a deadly creature.
How do his magicians each make a “tannin?” I don’t know.
#Bible #Exodus 7 #plagues #bloodriver
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In the first of the plague accounts, God tells Moses to meet Pharaoh in the morning, by the Nile, and to have with him the staff that turned into a snake (nachash). The interplay between nachash and tannin, as we discussed above, continues here, perhaps clarifying that the nachash was from Moses’ staff and intended for Israel, while Aaron’s staff yielded the tannin for Pharaoh.
Moses goes with his staff to the river to tell Pharaoh to let God’s people go, or God will turn the Nile to blood. This Hebrew term for what we know as the Nile is first used in the story of Joseph in the vision of fat and starving cows. It is used again at the beginning of Exodus when that pharaoh orders Hebrew infants thrown in. In Genesis 2, we considered John Sailhamer’s suggestion that the Nile (as the river that flows through Cush) might be one of the four rivers that bounds Eden.
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#Bible #Exodus 8 #plagues #frogs
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God tells Moses to go again to Pharaoh to say, “Let My people go, that they may serve Me.” This time the punishment is frogs that will “swarm” into the most private spaces of Pharaoh, his servants, and his people. Without noting a response, the author jumps to God telling Aaron to stretch out his staff over rivers, streams, and pools, and “make frogs come up.”
“Swarm” echoes the same Genesis 1 passage in which we find the tannin sea monsters. There, waters swarm with creatures and the air with birds. The same term is used again in, during, and after the Flood as swarms die and new ones later receive the command to multiply. Exo 1 refers to the Hebrews themselves with it in a passage adjacent to the story of the midwives.
Aaron obeys and “The Frog,” presumably comprised of many frogs, comes up and covers the land. In all of the Hebrew Bible, frogs only appear here and in two Psalms referencing this same event, so their significance is difficult to assess. It is possible the author wrote with Egyptian religion in mind. In it, Hekat, a frog-shaped goddess, was responsible for forming babies and ensuring their safe delivery.
The Hebrew babies were thrown into the Nile to die, and frogs emerge from the Nile to die in the Egyptians’ houses. The Nile, the Egyptians’ source of life, again produces death.
I live in the flight path of migratory birds. Our trees sometimes host flocks of hundreds. Although we often share with distant family and friends that they’ve arrived, we rarely relate that they coat the neighborhood in their droppings. As the frogs hop into bedrooms and bread bowls, they surely not only repulse the Egyptians by their presence but befoul and destroy private, precious things.
God has controlled Pharaoh’s heart, defiled his court, turned his life-source to death, and now invades his most private areas.
Moses gives Pharaoh the choice of when the plague should end, then “cries out” to God so that he will relent, as God has heard the cries of afflicted people throughout Genesis and Exodus.
During the Flood, we considered judgment as de-Creation. Here also, we see evidence of de-Creation but also reversal of the Flood. Pairs of animals gathered to Noah to be saved. Here, swarms escape their normal bounds to die. In successive plagues we begin to become of aware of what we had taken for granted, that God is maintaining order even for the Egyptians and can selectively allow it to fall apart. Only he is in control, not the Pharaoh or any Egyptian god.
#Bible #Exodus 8 #plagues #gnats
Pharaoh has again hardened his heart, so God tells Moses to tell Aaron “Stretch out your staff and strike the dust..that it may become gnats throughout all the land…” The two previous plagues originated in the water, this one in the dust. The frogs were Gen 1 water swarmers, the gnats, air swarmers. Water, land, and air, all are turned against the Egyptians. There is nowhere to escape this judgment.
This is the first of the plagues Pharaoh’s magicians could not duplicate in some form, and it is pervasive in scope. They are convinced and tell Pharoah it is the work of a deity, but Pharaoh’s heart is hard. Unlike God, who heard the cries of his people, Pharaoh does not listen.
As in the first plague, God tells Moses to rise early and meet Pharaoh by the water. “Let my people go…For if you do not…” God will send flies on him, his servants, and his people into their houses and on the ground. This time, the land of Goshen, where the Israelites live, is set apart and exempted from the plague. God is dividing his people from Pharaoh’s, signaling that future and final judgment will fall on the Egyptians.
After this plague begins, for the first time, Pharaoh tells Moses to go sacrifice as Moses asked, but with caveats. He wishes to retain the people in Egypt. Moses refuses, saying the Israelites’ sacrifice will be abominable to the Egyptians. Commentators speculate about why this is. Perhaps the kind of animal sacrifice the Israelites practice is unacceptable. It is also possible the Egyptians would be angered at honoring the God who is afflicting them. The text doesn’t give us enough information to draw a conclusion. Moses insists on following God’s command to travel three days into the desert.
Pharaoh relents. Moses prays. God removes the swarms. “But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also…”
#Bible #Exodus 9 #plagues
All quotations are NASB
In this fifth plague, God again tells Moses to say to Pharaoh, “Let my people go, that they may serve Me.” This time, the punishment will be “a very severe pestilence on your livestock which are in the field…” In this plague God again distinguishes between his people and Pharaoh’s. It is only Pharaoh’s livestock that are affected. Pharaoh learns that “all the livestock of Egypt died” but none of Israel’s, yet his heart “was hardened…” In later plagues, Egypt has livestock. It’s possible they got more from Israel or their neighbors, or, as we will see in the Conquest narratives, this may be hyperbolic language common in war and judgment passages, where we are told that peoples are utterly destroyed, yet we find them again later in the narrative.
Although the vocabulary is different, this destruction of animals useful to the Egyptians could be viewed as an undoing of their creation in Genesis 1 and man’s relationship with them in Genesis 2. The animals identified are working and production animals - horses, donkeys, camels and herds and flocks. Joseph’s Pharaoh dreamed first of cattle, then of grain. Surely, these animals were a primary concern of any Egyptian leader because they were key to agriculture and trade. It is the rough equivalent of all our trucks, farm tractors, clothing stores, and grocery store dairy sections destroyed at once.
#Bible #Exodus 9 #plagues #boils
God tells Moses and Aaron to take “handfuls of soot from a kiln” and directs Moses to throw it toward the sky where Pharaoh can see.
In the previous plague, “the hand of the Lord” brought pestilence on animals. In earlier ones, Aaron’s staff was the tool of choice. Here, it is Moses’ hands that deliver judgment.
In contrast to some earlier narratives, they appear to obey precisely. Moses stands before Pharaoh and throws soot, which becomes boils and sores on people and animals.
The magicians return in this plague account, not to perform magic, but to be overcome. They “could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils were on the magicians as well as all the Egyptians.”
The Lord hardens Pharaohs heart, and he does not listen. The oppressor again refuses to acknowledge the suffering even of his own people.
Some commentators note the origin of the soot - a kiln - recalling the ones used to bake the bricks the Israelites are compelled to build with. Baked brick is also featured in the Gen 11 construction of Babel, in both cases associated with human attempts to be god-like, resisting God’s stated purposes for his people. God transforms the waste products of Pharaoh’s efforts into debilitating punishment.
Is it significant that the soot forms a cloud in the sky? In Gen 12, God struck Pharaoh and his household with severe disease in defense of Sarai despite Abram’s failing. Smoke as a symbol of God’s presence later appears in Abram’s Gen 15 vision of a smoking pot and flaming torch, when God tells him his descendants will be enslaved in Egypt. There are many interesting connections here to puzzle over. Continuing the plague theme of things in places they don’t belong, soot from a kiln spreads out in the sky to cover the land of Egypt. Water, land, and sky, the three domains of Gen 1, are all represented in the manifestations of God’s judgment on Egypt.
All quotations are NASB
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#Bible #Exodus 9 #plagues #hail
After the boils, there appears to be an inflection point in God’s dealings with Pharaoh. God tells Moses to say “…this time I will send all My plagues on you…that you may know there is no one like me in all the earth.” God repeats his purpose in sending the plagues. In a book called “Names” in Hebrew, God declares his intent that his name be known everywhere, even as we never learn the name of the pharaoh.
God warns that he will send “heavy hail” and, mercifully, tells the Egyptians what they must do to escape it. “The one among the servants of Pharaoh who feared the Lord…” may be spared.
God tells Moses to “stretch out your hand toward the sky…” Moses “stretched out his staff toward the sky…” “So there was hail, and fire flashing continually in the the midst of the hail…such as had not been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.” The hail strikes man, beast, plants of the field, and “shattered every tree of the field.” God strikes all created things left exposed in the land, except the land of Goshen, where the Israelites live.
Pharaoh repents. Moses agrees to pray for the thunder and hail to cease but tells Pharaoh he knows Pharaoh does not fear God. The aside about crops appears to connect Pharaoh’s continued defiance with the hope of remaining food for the year. When the plague ceases, Pharaoh “sinned again and hardened his heart, he and his servants…just as the Lord had spoken through Moses.”
This plague begins the final group of three in the 3x3+1 form identified by many commentators.
All quotations are NASB
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#Bible #Exodus 10 #plagues #locusts
God tells Moses he has “hardened [Pharaoh’s] heart and the heart of this servants” so that God may perform his signs. He wants the Israelites to tell their descendants how God dealt harshly with, made fools of the Egyptians, one of their world’s most powerful nations and their enslavers. God picks fights with the most powerful among men to show that he is far more powerful - controlling waters, crops, disease, and precipitation. Now, the crops that remained after the hail, an apparent source of Pharaoh’s continued resistance, will be consumed. Locusts “will cover the surface of the land, so that no one will be able to see the land” and, like the frogs, will fill the houses of the Egyptians. Like the hail, it will be unprecedented, “something which neither your fathers nor your grandfathers have seen, from the day that they came upon the earth until this day.”
Again, a plague will attack trees in the land. Beginning in Genesis 1, in the biblical narrative, there is an apparent continually developing parallel between trees and man. On day three, when the land emerges, trees also emerge on it and bear fruit. On day 6, when God populates the land, he makes man and commands him to be fruitful. The two trees in the center of the garden, including the Tree of Life, are pivotal in God’s relationship with man. As Abraham travels through the land God promised to his descendants, he builds an altar on a mountain by a tree in place after place, establishing his relationship with God in the land. Hundreds of years after Moses, the Psalmist, in Psalm 1, will recall Eden imagery, comparing the righteous man to “a tree planted firmly by streams of water that yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.” The destruction of trees may represent for Pharaoh and his servants the shattering of their opportunity for relationship with God, their fruitfulness, and their continued blessed life in the land, though God’s willingness to warn even the Egyptians of the hail’s destruction hints at his mercy, which will become more evident later in the Exodus narrative.
Pharaoh’s advisors now recognize that Moses’ threats cannot be ignored. They convince him to comply with God’s demand, yet when he brings Moses back, Pharaoh finds an excuse to deny Moses and send him away.
As he promised, God sends locusts. An east wind brings them, “so that the land was darkened; and they ate every plant of the land and all the fruit of the the trees that the hail had left.” In The Story of God Bible Commentary Exodus, Christopher Wright posits that “the narrator colors in the details of the…of the locusts in a way that foreshadows, surely intentionally, the later account of the exodus itself. God uses an east wind to bring the locusts (just as an east wind pushed the sea back for the Israelites to cross; 14:21) and by a west wind swept them into the sea…(10:19, just as the sea covered the army of pharaoh…).”
Pharaoh summons Moses and asks Moses to speak to the Lord on his behalf. “But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the sons of Israel go.” A west wind blows the locusts into the Red Sea, presumably the same one God will part for the Israelites in the coming chapters, providing a key detail for those interested in discovering the location of the crossing.
Bible quotations are from NASB
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#Bible #Exodus 10 #plagues #darkness
God again tells Moses to stretch out his hand. “So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days. They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days, but all the sons of Israel had light in their dwellings.”
Some commentators intent on finding naturalistic explanations for the plagues have suggested a sandstorm as the source of darkness. My own time in the desert in the same region makes this hard to accept. Night in the desert is not thick darkness. A clear night sky dazzles the observer with lights rarely seen in the city. Once one’s eyes have adjusted, the moon’s light is adequate to navigate by, as untold numbers of desert dwellers have preferred to do for millennia. When the sand comes, it is certainly pervasive and overwhelming, but, rather than darkness, the impression is of a brown, gritty mass as though the land has invaded the sky.
The plague darkness arrives on command, is “thick,” and prevented the Egyptians from seeing one another. These qualities do not support a known phenomenon. This is unprecedented, supernatural darkness, and if we already have Genesis 1 in mind, suggests the removal of God’s initial, most fundamental act of creation from the Egyptians. As a result, they are effectively paralyzed, unable to see one another or rise from their places. That the darkness lasts for three days is surely significant. The Gen 1 creation account is divided into three days of separating and three of populating prior to God’s day of rest. The number three is often associated with God himself - in Christianity, his triune being and Jesus’ time in the tomb. Thick, God-sovereign, blinding, paralyzing - a horror that clarifies the entire powerlessness of the the once most-powerful Egyptians to resist the Israelites’ rescuing God.
All quotations are NASB
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#Bible #Exodus 11
One more plague, severe enough to ensure Pharaoh will let the Israelites go.
Moses is respected by the Egyptians yet threatened with death by Pharaoh. Pharaoh’s hold over his own people is severed, and, rather than fleeing Pharaoh as in Exodus 2, Moses now represents God to him. He is God’s representative in the land, as God commanded the first humans to be in Genesis 1. Like those first humans, Pharaoh rules a well-watered, fruitful land, yet instead of representing God, being fruitful, and filling the land, Pharaoh seeks his own power. Instead of subduing threats to God’s order, Pharaoh subdues other humans under himself. Instead of fruitfulness and multiplication, Pharaoh attempts to destroy the seed and fruit of God’s people and possibly even his own subjects. When confronted with God’s power, Pharaoh refuses to hear and obey the voice of God, so God sends him the fate he forced on others – the death of sons. He is a clear successor to Cain, Lamech, the Nephilim, Nimrod, and the pharaohs and kings of Abraham’s time.
“About midnight I am going out into the midst of Egypt, and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die…” Moses makes the claim that “All these your servants will…bow themselves before me…” Pharaoh did not recognize God’s claim to his people Israel, so God will make Pharaoh’s servants bow before Moses.
“…the Lord said to Moses, ‘Pharaoh will not listen to you, so that My wonders will be multiplied in the land of Egypt.’ So Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh; yet the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the sons of Israel go out of his land.”
#Bible #Exodus 12 #plagues #death
Like the seventh day rest of Genesis 1 is set apart from the others in the text, the threat of the final plague lingers for verse after verse before it manifests. The horror of the deaths of the Egyptians and escape from the threat of death by the Israelites and accompanying mixed multitude is centrally placed within symmetrical ceremonial language.
The lamb sacrificed as a substitute, bread, death, and travel east from the land recall details of many stories - the early chapters of Genesis, Noah’s post-flood sacrifices, Abraham’s vision in the midst of slaughtered animals and encounter with God before Sodom, the near-sacrifice of Isaac, and Zipporah’s God-appeasing circumcision - and this dense collection of images in Exodus 12 foreshadows many stories yet to come.
#Bible #Exodus 7-13 #plagues #patterns
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#Bible #Exodus 13
Chapter 13 spans the end of the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt and the beginning of their travels toward the wildernesses of the Sinai peninsula. Ceremony and geography play significant roles.
Sanctify the firstborn to God. Remember the deliverance of the strong hand of God. God will bring you to the land of the Canaanite, Hittite, Amorite, Hivite, and Jebusite, a land flowing with milk and honey. Eat unleavened bread for seven days and on the seventh day hold a feast to the Lord. Remember. Firstborn, Egypt, Unleavened bread, Remember
Who are the peoples in the land they’re leaving for? The answer isn’t as straightforward as one might like. The terms we’re given group together city states with shifting alliances; family and tribal relationships; similar but not the same language, religion, and culture; and geographical proximity (or not). They did not exist within clearly delineated borders we can inscribe on a modern map and may or may not have been unified under one king.
Canaanite appears to be an umbrella term for peoples south of the Euphrates, north of the Negev, and west of the Jordan who shared language, culture, and religion but not a unified politics. Additionally, Canaanite is used as an even larger umbrella for all peoples in that region, as some use “Coke” for all soft drinks. It can also mean a descendant of the man Canaan.
Hittite is confusing for a different reason – it isn’t clear whether the Hittites referenced here are the same Hittite empire the Egyptians frequently fought. It’s partly a translation issue and partly a question of archaeology. Are there linguistic and material culture links between a powerful kingdom in Turkey and settlements as far south (in the biblical narrative) as Hebron? In the biblical account, Esau married one.
The Amorites fought their way west along the Euphrates, south to the vicinity of the Jordan, and west from there into the hill country of Canaan. Their religion was linked to that of Babylon, the regional power along the Euphrates. In the biblical narrative, they are sometimes associated with, though not explicitly called, giants.
No one seems to know who or what the Hivites were. They have not left a material culture we’ve yet discovered. Some scholars suggest that their defining characteristic may be living in rural areas, yet in the Bible’s account the most famous of them, Shechem, has a city named after him. He’s a kidnapper and rapist. Esau also marries a Hivite. Esau’s Hittite and Hivite wives torment his parents. Once the Israelites arrive in the land, the Hivites lie to and successfully manipulate Joshua. For the rest of the Hebrew Bible, they are to be subdued, driven out, or destroyed.
The Jebusites live in Jebus, former Salem, future Jerusalem. They’re pretty good at keeping it. Caleb defeats them, but they regain control until David finally dislodges them and makes it his capitol. There is no consensus about who they were, with different scholars positing relationships to several different peoples in the region.
Once the repetitive, ceremonial language is done, the focus turns to movement. We first learn the way they did not go, the most direct route, so they don’t “change their minds when they see war, and return…”
In a recent event @Tyndale_House , James Hoffmeier, an archaeologist, Egyptologist, and biblical scholar, lectured on his research on sites mentioned in Exodus 13.
Hoffmeier makes the well-supported claim that many of these sites are identifiable via known inscriptions, excavations of border forts, and geological findings regarding the locations of bodies of water. The geography of the Exodus can reliably be tied to known or discoverable sites and topographical features dating to the time of the Exodus. When was that? In the recently published Five Views on the Exodus, scholars propose dates ranging from the 1400s-1100s BCE. https://zondervanacademic.com/products/five-views-on-the-exodus
13:18 tells us the Israelites went out armed, “in battle array.” Egypt employed foreign troops at times, so it’s possible the Israelites had weapons they would use as part of an Egyptian foreign legion. Given their enslavement culminating in the murder of their children, it seems most likely they acquired weapons and equipment as they “plundered the Egyptians” in 12:36.
Physical conflict plays a significant role in the Exodus narrative. Moses engages in it and must flee Egypt (2:11-15), then again in Midian (2:17) to defend his future wife and her sisters and is himself rescued by their father’s hospitality. From the beginning of their exodus from Egypt, though God is about to deliver them with miraculous signs, the Israelites are armed for war.
They also carry Joseph’s bones, so they can bury him in the land God promised to his fathers.
In Genesis 15, God tells Abram his descendants will be enslaved for 400 years, yet God will judge the enslavers and bring them out with many possessions. In that vision, God passes through the divided halves of animal carcasses, taking the form of “a smoking oven and a flaming torch.” In Exo 13, God appears to the Israelites for the first time “in a pillar of cloud by day…and in a pillar of fire by night,” soon to lead them between the halves of a divided sea, itself a symbol of death.
#Bible #Exodus 14 Crossing the #Sea
The Israelites’ movements suggest to Pharaoh that they are lost, and he feels the loss of their labor. God uses them as bait to draw out Pharaoh for a final confrontation.
There are many place names in this portion of the story, names that few readers over the intervening millenia would recognize. Today, it is possible to reconstruct some of the geographical progression because Egyptian inscriptions share place names with the biblical account, and archaeologists are excavating sites that correlate with them.
Mapping the ancient geography onto modern imagery is difficult. The coastline, the Nile River, inland bodies of water, and marshlands have all shifted. In the ancient world, these elements comprised a barrier that defended the border between Egypt and the Sinai peninsula. Crocodiles, man-made canals, and a series of border forts on the land bridges augmented these natural obstacles, presenting a formidable challenge to anyone wishing to enter or leave without the permission of the Egyptian border force. I have attempted a reconstruction, but the careful observer will note its limitations.
The red and green lines are known roads. The brown line is a rough approximation of the border. The black line is an approximation of the Israelites’ route.
Pharaoh prepares to attack with “six hundred select chariots, and all the other chariots of Egypt…” He commits his entire chariot force. When the Israelites reach Canaan, their rapid advance through the land will be stopped by enemies with iron chariots that dominate the valley terrain. This technology is formidable, even to such a large armed Israelite contingent.
Pharaoh overtakes the Israelites in their camp by the sea. They are frightened and cry out to God but manage some sarcastic complaining – the true mark of the persistently afflicted. “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt…?” They know well the Egyptians’ habit of erecting massive tombs to prolong the memory of their names. Adapted to the perpetual disappointment of the enslaved, the Israelites fail to understand God’s intent to demonstrate the glory of his name so that it will be recognized by the nations and remembered through the generations. Israel “will never see [the Egyptians] again forever.”
Victor Hamilton in his Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary, recalls that Moses words, “’Do not be afraid.’ (v. 13), are the same words even Israel’s great ancestors have needed to hear when they have their backs against a wall: Abram (Gen. 15:1), Isaac (26:24), Jacob (46:34), and Hagar too (21:17).”
“The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent.”
In earlier narratives, the marks of the remnant preserved through judgment were uprightness and faithfulness. In this iteration, there is a twist: God is saving the unfaithful and ungrateful. He honors his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, even if their descendants don’t always want it.
The condition of Pharaoh’s heart continues to receive much attention. Here, God hardens, strengthens that heart and the hearts of the Egyptian military for a final time.
In the cloud, God acts with visible supernatural power, yet he also tells Moses and the people to act. “…go forward…lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea…” As Gen 1, the wind/spirit move over the water and, like Day 3, God separates the waters so dry land appears.
In Gen 3, 4, 6, 11, and 19, God is present and sees prior to executing judgment. This motif recurs here as God views the attacking Egyptians through the fire and cloud, confuses them, and commands Moses to stretch out his hand over the sea once again, so it returns to its place and “overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea…not even one of them remained.”
“When Israel saw the great power which the Lord had used against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the lord and in His servant Moses.”
For now.
This story of rescue from the Egyptians through the sea is intended to be pivotal in the entire biblical narrative, to be remembered by Israel and the nations as evidence of God’s unmatched power to save his people. It echoes elements of earlier stories – The people cry out. God is present and sees their affliction. He tells them (here, through Moses) to not fear, then acts to destroy their oppressors in a manner that recalls the pre-creation waters and Noah’s flood. If we read with those earlier stories in mind, we can see a through-line emerging, with this event as a bright spot, of God hearing the cries of the oppressed, coming down to observe, destroying or exiling the corrupt to save a remnant with whom he will dwell in the land.
#Bible #Exodus 15 #SongoftheSea #wilderness
The Song of the Sea is a unusual opportunity to view the Exodus authors/editors’ priorities and intent.
God is strength, savior, worthy of praise, a warrior. His name is YHWH.
Majestic power, great excellence, burning anger that consumes the oppressor
Unique among the gods, majestic in holiness, awesome in praises, working wonders
Causes the earth to swallow his enemies, leads and redeems in lovingkindness, guides his people to his holy pasture/dwelling place, terrifies the nations, brings his people to his mountain sanctuary and plants them there.
The poem climaxes in God bringing his people to an Eden-like place and dwelling with them there.
Robert Alter, in his translation and commentary, notes that women celebrate a military victory with song and dance in several biblical stories and that it was a common practice in surrounding cultures. He cites Everett Fox to recall that Miriam (or some other unnamed sister of Moses) had also appeared prior to Moses’ basket-borne Egyptian water experience, which emphasizes Moses’ own life as prefiguring the Israelites’ journey. His sister witnessed him preserved in the reeds of the Nile and rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter. His sister now witnesses the Israelites preserved through the Reed Sea, rescued by God’s hand.
Genesis laid a foundation – in the beginning was a dark ocean, God made and separated light, waters, and land, then populated each domain, culminating in a space where he would rest as man ruled in his image.
Man’s failings resulted in judgment and exile, but in each cycle of judgment, God preserved a remnant, always bringing them back to dwell with him in the land.
Now is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham to bring his descendants out of slavery. God does so through the waters, his spirit/wind again bringing forth dry land.
We observed that the plagues were a kind of anti-Genesis 1 creation, that all its elements had been temporarily undone for the Egyptians. Perhaps the anti-creation can be read to culminate in the return of the sea. Israel, the remnant, is preserved through it.
Once through, the Israelites begin to walk in the wilderness of Shur. In Genesis 2:5, “no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land…” Here, there’s no mist and no man being formed, but God is taking this “mixed multitude” of former slaves and preparing to form them into a people in his service.
The first lessons in the wilderness also involve water. An abundance of it covered Pharaoh’s army, now the Israelites cannot find any to drink. They travel three days into the wilderness (the distance Moses had spoken to Pharaoh of). Modern readers interested in the location of Mount Sinai sometimes use three days as a marker for its distance from Egypt because of Moses’ conversations with Pharaoh, but already at the end of Exodus 15, they have traveled that far and have reached, not Mount Sinai, but Marah, whose waters are bitter, undrinkable.
In an echo of Exo 14:12-15, the Israelites complain, Moses cries out, and God provides salvation, this time in the form of a tree. The strangeness of throwing a tree into bitter water to make it sweet may be best understood as imagery that evokes the tree of life, the ark made of trees that Noah rode to salvation until it landed on a mountain, trees on mountains by which Abraham made his altars to commune with God and many other tree and plant-associated salvation stories. For an ancient person, it might be logical to view the tree as a living symbol that reaches up to heaven while rooted in the earth, a link between a God who lives in the heavens and wants relationship with humans who are of the ground. In the biblical narrative, trees, especially on hills, play a unique role in the relationship between God and man.
Between the Song of the Sea’s description of God’s people with him in his mountain dwelling and salvation with a tree at the waters of Marah, it appears we can receive this passage as including discrete elements of the Genesis 2 description of Eden.
In verse 26, God previews the laws to come and his purpose for giving them, “If you will give earnest heed to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I, the Lord, am your healer.”
The chapter ends with the Israelites’ arrival at another Eden-like place, Elim with its 12 springs and 70 date palms, trees that bear fruit. 12 and 70 are symbolic numbers for Israel, with its twelve tribes, and the Genesis 10 seventy nations that spread abroad on the earth. 12 for Israel, 70 for the world. There is a progression here – God makes a barren territory suitable for his people, and God makes symbolic provision for Israel and the nations.
#Bible #Exodus 16 #wilderness #manna
The Israelites leave the Elim oasis and set out again into the desert, arriving in the wilderness of Sin. For a second time, the Israelites complain and wish for death in Egypt rather than their current fate. They believe they will die of starvation in the desert.
A note on the region’s name – Sin was a moon god in Akkadian, thorn bush in Hebrew, and in Egypt mud or clay, a spectrum of possible ancient meanings from the ground to the sky. A modern English reader might assume Sin is a translated word because the people grumble against God there, but that isn’t accurate.
God promises to rain bread on the Israelites and use that bread as a test to see whether they will follow him.
God uses the 7-day week as the medium for this test, with the 7th day set aside for rest as in Genesis 1. Will they gather what he tells them to, even though from a human perspective, the instructions do not seem logical?
“in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, for He hears your grumblings against the Lord”
“It came about as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the son of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness, and behold the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.” The glory of the Lord appears at key moments throughout the wilderness narrative as a sign of God’s imminent presence. What must it have been like to see a tangible and apparently awesome manifestation of God, the deliverer? Despite the experience, the people retained their doubts about God and continued to complain, rebel, and eventually express intent to overthrow their leaders even in the presence of God’s glory. We humans have a remarkable capacity to insist on our own destruction.
God provided meat in the form of massive flocks of quail and bread in the form of manna, honey flavored wafer that appeared on the ground. Moses gave instructions, which some people ignored, and the bread became infested with worms. Manna breeds worms overnight except on the night before the seventh day, and never for the omer (about 2 liters) that is aside to be placed before the Lord throughout the generations. Naturalistic explanations that have been attempted for manna do not meet the narrative’s description of it.
The account tells us that after they complain, God provides them with bread in the desert for forty years until they reach the border of Canaan. This is a jarring note at this point in the story, since the first-time reader does not yet know that they will spend forty years in the desert or why.
The description of manna includes a comparison to coriander seed, in Hebrew ‘gad,’ a word that occurs twice in the Bible with this meaning, both in reference to manna. The second appearance is in Numbers 11:7, which describes manna with another word used twice in the Bible, bdellium, Hebrew ‘bedolach.’ Bdellium’s only other appearance is in Genesis 2 as a material found in the land of Havilah along with gold and onyx in the vicinity of Eden. At least in the Numbers account, God’s provision for the Israelites in the wilderness is again described with Eden imagery.
In The Story of God Bible Commentary Exodus, Christopher Wright emphasizes God’s statement that he will test the Israelites. Prior to its use in the Mara incident in Exodus 15, the only use of this verb ‘to test,’ Hebrew ‘nasha,’ in the biblical narrative is in Genesis 22:1 where we are told “God tested Abraham” as a prelude to the near-sacrifice of Isaac. Wright links Abraham’s test to three episodes of testing the Israelites here in Exodus 15, 16, and 17. He also notes the similarity between the desert narratives of God’s provision for the Israelites and for Hagar, a story we viewed as instructively analogous to the adjacent story of the near sacrifice of Isaac.
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1248904933467983872
Interestingly, a key take-away phrase from Genesis 22 has prophetic resonance for Israel’s current place in the story, “In the mount of the Lord it will be provided.”
Recently, @DrPJWilliams presented on the words of Jesus, showing how Jesus used phrases from Hebrew Bible stories of brothers in the parable of the prodigal son. https://twitter.com/wagiuseppe/status/1441794797430214671
In the wilderness narratives, the author is doing something similar. The progression of events appears to be an expansion of the Genesis 2 progression from undefined, plantless territory with water welling up from the ground to a garden where God places man. It uses phrases from Abraham’s and Hagar’s stories and correlates in places with the Egyptian plagues.
The number 10 connects stories relevant to this early wilderness narrative
-10 words from God in Genesis 1
-per Maimonides in his Commentary to the Mishnah, there were 10 tests of Abraham
-10 plagues in Egypt
-10 words from God on the tablets at Sinai
-10 Israelite rebellions God cites in Numbers 14
#Bible #Exodus 17 #wilderness #water
The Israelites arrive at Rephidim, “resting places,” where they revolt and fight the Amalekites. Someone has a sense of humor.
This is the third Israelite uprising, 1 over water, 1 food, and this again over water.
In the first, the Israelites complain to Moses. In the second, to Moses and Aaron. In the third, they strive/contend/quarrel with Moses.
In the first and third, Moses cries to the Lord. In the second, God speaks to Moses first.
In the first, God shows Moses a tree to purify the water. In the second God sends bread and meat. In the third, God has Moses walk before the people and strike a rock to bring forth water as God “stands before” Moses.
God works through Moses. God works alone. God stands with Moses as he works through Moses. In each event, God miraculously provides for his people after they complain they do not have necessities of life.
When reading many commentaries, one notices a spectrum of opinions about the Israelites’ attitudes. Having lived in a tent in the desert for six months and with a corrupt heart for my whole life, I am sympathetic. Like the saltwater ocean, the desert surrounds you and covers everything with a substance you cannot use, that doesn’t sustain life. The irritation of pervasive grit and the powerlessness to provide for oneself surely help us understand the Israelites’ fear and resistance despite God’s miraculous provision. They earn their name - Israel, “wrestles with God.”
The section ends by telling us Israel tested God asking “Is the Lord among us or not?” In the earlier accounts, they complained about lacking water and food, which God then provided. Here, they ask about his presence, and he appears as he provides through Moses’ action.
God declared his intent to test Israel, yet here they test him. They are not responding as the people he wants them to be.
#Bible #Exodus 17 #Amalek
In Deuteronomy 25, Moses recalls ”…what Amalek did to you on the way when you came out of Egypt, how he…attacked among you all the stragglers at your rear when you were tired and weary; and he did not fear God.”
Genesis 3’s serpent and Gen 4’s “Sin is crouching at your door” begin a narrative thread of evil portrayed as animal predator that runs through the Hebrew Bible. A nation of herdsmen will recognize attacking stragglers as a tactic common to predatory animals, so it’s worth considering that this detail contributes to Amalek’s identification with the seed of the serpent.
Genesis also established a dichotomy between those who call on the name of the Lord and those who seek power and to promote their own names. Cain who named a city after his son, Lamech who boasted of his violent intent, the Nephilim who were men of renown, and Nimrod with the reputation as “a mighty hunter” who founded cities including Babel/Babylon and Nineveh. In Jacob’s day, the city of Shechem was named for its prince, a rapist and kidnapper. During the plagues and exodus from Egypt, we never learn the name or fate of the enslaver pharaoh. The seed of the serpent seeks its own glory, so biblical narrative neglects its exploits and often even its name. God makes this purpose explicit with Amalek, promising to wipe out its name, surely meaning reputation and power, since the name is preserved in the story. Just as in Gen 3 God declares an enduring conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, his commands regarding Amalek foreshadow future conflicts in the wilderness, and with Saul, Samuel, David, and Esther.
Who is Amalek? The name “Amalekites” first appears in Genesis 14:7 referring to their territory. This reference appears best explained as anachronistic, intended for later readers, as we might say that Babylon was in Iraq, though the country of Iraq is only ~90 years old. Amalek’s genealogy appears in Genesis 36 as Esau – Eliphaz – Amalek. Amalek’s mother was the concubine Timna, apparently a Horite. We previously considered Deuteronomy 2’s take on the Horites’ significance and Esau’s:
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1264544101275447298
Joshua appears suddenly as a war leader. He fights with the sword in the valley, while Moses raises his staff on the hill. “And Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.”
Moses will write down God’s sentence over Amalek, so Joshua doesn’t forget. In his Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary, Victor P. Hamilton points out this is the first instance in the Bible of someone writing.
Moses’ staff is elsewhere used for signs of God’s power to the Israelites and for judgment over their enemies. Though this passage is not explicit about what is occurring as Moses raises his staff, there is no reason to suspect something different. The assistance Moses requires from Aaron and Hur emphasizes his human frailty. He is not a god, though he communes with God in a unique manner. Moses’ position on a high place with his staff/tree suggests imagery we have previously encountered in the stories of Eden, Noah, Abraham, and Moses’ own previous experience at Sinai. This is a place to meet with God and for God to act in the world. Moses builds an altar and names it, further connecting him with Noah and the Patriarchs. Several commentators have suggested v.16 could be translated “a hand on top of YHWH’s throne,” an interesting possibility if one views Moses as in an Eden-like, heaven-meets-earth position here on the hill.
In this passage as in the earlier wilderness accounts and in the many references to Pharaoh’s heart during the plague account, there is an ongoing meditation on the things God does and those men do, on how God’s will is applied in his world. Here, Moses raises his God rod, while Joshua swings his sword at men. God does not initially command the fight, but he follows it with a standing order to destroy the enemy. God and man working in the world to fulfill God’s purposes.
Following the sea crossing, the Israelites move to a wilderness location where water wells up from the ground. There, God preserves their lives with a tree. He brings them to a place of flowing water and trees. When they set out again into the desert, he provides food for them according to a calendar in which the seventh day is for rest. He provides flowing water for them from a rock. Then, Amalek comes, a manifestation of the snake.
#Bible #Exodus 18 #Jethro
Following the defeat of Amalek, Israel encounters another desert dwelling people, the Midianites - Moses’ father-in-law Jethro, wife Zipporah, and two sons Gershom and Eliezer. This is the only appearance of Eliezer, whose name recognizes God’s help or support.
Commentators frequently compare Jethro’s role to that of Melchizedek, a priest who recognizes the God of Abraham, comes out to meet the people, eats with them, and affirms God’s work on behalf of the people.
Jethro listens, rejoices with Moses in God’s salvation, and observes Moses’ interaction with the people of Israel. He sees that Moses is overwhelmed and perceives Moses’ need for help. Eliezer’s name recognizes God’s help. Jethro recognizes Moses’ need for help leading and judging the people, and Jethro himself provides help via wise counsel. After a battle that depended on God’s help for victory comes help for Moses’ peacetime leadership.
The “ezer” in Eliezer is the same word used in Genesis 2 to describe Adam’s need for what will be revealed as Eve. She is his help, support. In this scene, Zipporah, who saved Moses on their way to Egypt in the bizarre circumcision of Exo 4:25, returns and is mentioned for the last time. Her continuing relationship with Moses is unclear. The chapter focuses on Moses’ conversation with Jethro and, this last chapter to mention them, ignores his relationship with his wife and sons.
It's worth dwelling on Jethro’s suggested criteria for leaders, “able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain,” and consider whether our own leaders comply, whether we do.
The translation notes that accompany the NET translation suggest this passage is a transition to the law, setting up a structure through which the law can be applied. It certainly is a change in tone, from stories of warfare and fear for survival to the building of the infrastructure of a nascent nation.
One can reasonably argue for this chapter’s structure as chiasm, beginning with Jethro hearing of all God had done for Israel and traveling to meet Moses, ending with Moses listening to Jethro’s counsel and Jethro returning home. The likely center point is Jethro’s statement, “The thing you are doing is not good,” with the passages before describing Moses’ judging of the Israelites and the passages after focused on Jethro’s alternative. Symmetry would suggest Moses’ wife and sons also return with Jethro, but here we have no information about what they did.
Taking a step back, we see Moses’ limitations in his relationships with family and with the Israelites, just as in the battle with the Amalekites, we saw his physical limitations. Moses listens to Jethro though, and thereby lays the foundations of Israelite civil society.
#Bible #Exodus 19 #Sinai
Three months out of Egypt, the Israelites arrive at and camp in front of “the mountain,” Mount Sinai.
In his Exodus commentary, Victor Hamilton notes that each Sinai encounter followed Moses’ encounter with Jethro and his family. In the first, Moses departed to return to Egypt. In the second, Jethro departed to return to Midian.
Moses previously ascended when, with his sheep, he encountered the burning bush. Now, with the Israelites below, Moses again goes up on Mount Sinai and hears the voice of God.
Previously God told Moses he would bring the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt into a fertile land and that worshiping here would be a sign. They’ve finally arrived after momentous events and travel through a wilderness.
@carmenjoyimes, in her book Bearing God’s Name, tells us “At Sinai, everything changes.” Last time, it was Moses’ relationship with God and purpose symbolized by names. https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1329672274543308800
Now, God will change his relationship with Israel.
God declares his purpose to make a covenant with the Israelites. They will be his “treasured possession” among the nations of the land, a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” The people agree, claiming, “All that the Lord has spoken, we will do!”
When Moses approached the bush, God told him to remove his sandals. Now, God instructs the people to wash their garments, and Moses further adds “…do not go near a woman.” Moses’ instruction aligns with the law to come, in which intercourse would make one unclean, yet Moses’ prior experience with a woman near Sinai was his deliverance from God’s lethal anger by Zipporah. God now threatens the Israelites with death if they approach the mountain, where he will appear to Moses again on the third day.
God appears with thunder, lightning, thick cloud, a trumpet sound, smoke, and earthquake. The trumpet increased in volume until Moses and God spoke to each other. On the third day, Moses ascends the mountain for the third time. He warns the priests and people against going near the mountain and ascends again, this time, taking Aaron with him.
In the plagues, we saw a de-creation of Egypt, culminating in the Israelites passing through the waters, reminiscent of Genesis 1.
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1420623000609693696
In the progression from wilderness to Sinai, we may see an expanded re-enactment of God’s movement from the plant-less waste of Genesis 2:5 to the garden with a tree of life and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil at its center. Sinai is not a garden. The Israelites will receive that blessing only once they reach the Promised Land, but Sinai is the mountain of Lord, where God meets with man.
#Bible #Exodus 20 #commandments
If we recall God’s 10 statements in the Genesis 1 creation account and the 10 plagues’ use of them in de-creation, we may see the 10 Commandments, or ten words, as another set in the same series. God first reminds the Israelites of his miraculous rescue of them from slavery and proceeds to use creation imagery in this new standard.
God claims he alone is to be worshiped, as Genesis 1 ascribes all creation to him, who did not delegate aspects of that work to lesser gods.
He forbids images, as in Gen 1, he has made man in his image.
@carmenjoyimes, in her books Bearing God’s Name and Bearing YHWH’s Name at Sinai, persuasively argues that the name command requires God’s people bear his name. Bearing God’s name is to carry his reputation. God establishes reputation in Gen 1 creation, judgment of and rescue from the Egyptians, and now in the wilderness, by adopting Israel as a treasured possession, a nation that will bear his name among the nations.
In the command to remember the Sabbath, God makes explicit the connection we’ve been inferring. This is a relationship with creation order. The Sabbath is set aside for the people of God to behave as God did, still does. All people and animals are included.
The following commands appear to be aligned with maintaining that order.
Honor your father and mother *that your days may be long in the land.*
You shall not murder – the violation that drove Cain away
You shall not commit adultery – “a man shall cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh”
You shall not steal, bear false witness, or covet your neighbor’s things – sources of injustice, conflict, and breakdown of created order
God appears in impressive elements of creation, perhaps recalling Gen 3’s wind of the day (as the @BibleProject podcast suggests in its 2022 tour through the Torah), the storms of Noah’s flood, and the weather events in the 10 plagues. Without words, they testify to God’s reputation as creator and judge.
The people responded as we might expect – with fear, by moving away, and by asking Moses to be mediator. God has appointed him as go between during Moses’ own Exo 3 experience with fire on Sinai, but now, because of God’s awesome display, the people request it of Moses also. Moses tells them, “Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin.” Here, the key to keeping God’s commands is durable fear of Him.
“You yourselves have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven.”
God tells the Israelites what they can do to invoke their relationship with him, sacrifice on an altar of earth or uncut stones. The intimidating presence intends good for them, “…in every place where I cause My name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you.”
In creating an ordered land, then a garden and placing man in it, in landing Noah on a mountain to grow a vineyard, in meeting Abraham on the mountains of the land by trees, and in rescuing Moses and then the Israelites out of Egypt and carrying them to Sinai, God persistently, pervasively pursues relationship with his people. These 10 words tell Israel how God wants them to hold up their end.
#Bible #Exodus 21-23 #law
This is a good opportunity to discuss the purpose of this Twitter account. We’re following the biblical story from the beginning, attempting to comprehend patterns, recognize themes, and identify narrative threads that run from the earliest chapters of Genesis through Caleb’s story and beyond through Judges to David. Given this purpose, we’ll consider the Law but not dwell on it. Chapters 21-23 contain laws concerning relationships with God, people, animals, the land, and time.
John Walton in The Lost World of the Torah and (other scholars including Jerry Unterman interviewed on the @biblicalmindmag podcast episode “The Torah is Not a Law Book”) assess these laws as akin to wisdom literature intended to demonstrate God’s authority and character rather than be directly applied by an Israelite judicial system as a comprehensive law code.
Following a series of laws, God tells the Israelites that agricultural-religious feasts are key to life in the land, then pivots to instructions for occupying the land of Canaan.
#Bible #Exodus 23 cont. #peoples #geography
In Exo 23:20-33, God formally introduces the idea of militarily taking Canaan, makes clear he and the Israelites are to remove the current inhabitants and their religious practices from the land, and tells us his methods and reasons for doing so. As we’ve earlier observed, God’s warfare language often obscures the distinction between his actions, his angel’s, and his people’s. All perform his will.
In Genesis 10:15, the genealogy of Noah’s grandson; Genesis 15, God’s promise to Abraham; and Exodus 23, God’s command to the Israelites, God defines Canaan both in terms of people groups and geography.
Abraham lived among the Hittites and Amorites at Hebron. In his time, Salem, later Jebus - home of the Jebusites, was Melchizedek’s, who blessed Abraham. The Canaanites and Perizzites lived in the land where Abraham wandered, and he told his sons not to intermarry with them. Given that all these peoples were in the land with Abraham, why can those same groups not be tolerated now? God’s guidance in Gen 15 was that the “iniquity of the Amorite [was] not yet complete,” which leaves us with the supposition that in the Israelites’ time, in God’s eyes, it is.
The Genesis 10:15 list is the longest of the three. All the groups mentioned in the Exo 23 list previously appear in the other lists and some mentioned in Gen 10 but not 15 reappear in Exo 23, suggesting they never left.
How do we understand the peoples in the land?
Why are they different across generations? Is this a list we can gloss over, or do they have significance in the larger narrative?
The answers aren’t entirely clear. We can do word studies within the Bible. We can find some information (which can be difficult to correlate directly to names in the Bible) in other ancient text evidence. Ultimately, the full significance of each of these groups is lost to us, but some insight may remain. One possible avenue to understanding is their respective religions. God’s stated purpose in denying them the land is their worship of other gods and the detestable practices they engage in as they do. There is archaeological and text evidence for fertility rites in these religions, and here God promises the Israelites health and fruitfulness. He is the Israelites’ source of life, not other gods worshiped in the land. The cycle of rebellion, judgment, and restoration of a remnant we have seen many times earlier can also give us insight. We’ll consider that next.
God also defines the land in geographical terms. In Gen 10, it was a series of cities forming a rough rectangle between Sidon and the Dead Sea. In Gen 15, it was “from the river of Egypt as far as…the Euphrates.” Here, there is an additional dimension, “from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the River Euphrates.”
God’s concern when the Israelites enter the land is that they “not worship [other nations’] gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their deeds; but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their sacred pillars in pieces. But you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water; and I will remove sickness from your midst. There shall be no one miscarrying or barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.”
God’s promise to send ‘hornets’ remains fascinating millennia afterward. The literal interpretation seems unlikely as it would take massive swarms to drive peoples out of many cities, though no less so than supernatural swarms of flies in Egypt and birds in the wilderness. The Jewish Study Bible suggests “plague.” Robert Alter suggests “the Smasher.” Many commentators have suggested the word as a synonym for the terror mentioned earlier. Supernatural terror would certainly be adequate to exhaust, demoralize, and cause an enemy to flee.
God will drive Israel’s enemies out slowly, so wild animals do not proliferate in the land. We previously considered how the language of predatory animals sometimes signifies the seed of the serpent. In this case, it may both be literal and suggest the threat of the spiritual enemy.
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1451525102160519169
God’s stated purpose for the Israelites echoes Genesis 1, to bring health and fruitfulness, but also to subdue the forces that oppose him in the land.
More on geography in this Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1502839719108952074
#Bible #Exodus 23 cont. #ethics of #war
In the present, we are watching as Vladimir Putin’s army systematically destroys the country of Ukraine, and the people of Ukraine cry for help. May God hear and help them as he intervened on behalf of generations of the oppressed in the distant past. We see in this depraved assault that there is no escaping an appalling outcome. The aggressor is not dissuaded by words or even punishing economic sanctions. Standing on the sidelines without physically intervening fails to stop the aggressor. Entering the fight on one side will result in increased death on the other until hostilities cease. Humans made in the image of God are maimed and killed. There is no pure, undefiled position to take. This is the offensive truth: every option is bad. Such circumstances, though alien to many affluent westerners, are common in human experience. The depravity of man does not always leave us a good option to choose.
In this project, we approach the stories of the Bible by giving them credit for what they purport to be, starting with the assumption that historical accounts describe historical events (albeit shaped by authorial/editorial intent), and remaining willing to say, “I don’t know.” In them, we find intentional, complex organization in the form of narrative threads, recurring themes, repeated word groups, and other literary devices that communicate information and cumulatively develop it, interpreting itself as we read forward and backward across patterns. As a result, we view Exo 23, God’s direction to Israel to occupy Canaan, drive out its inhabitants, and destroy the monuments of the gods in the land, as part of a pattern that begins in Genesis 1.
In Exodus 23, God tells Israel:
I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. “For My angel will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them. “You shall not worship their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their deeds; but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their sacred pillars in pieces. “But you shall serve the Lord your God and He will bless your bread and your water; and I will remove sickness from your midst. “There shall be no one miscarrying or barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days. “I will send My terror ahead of you, and throw into confusion all the people among whom you come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. “I will send hornets ahead of you so that they will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites before you. “I will not drive them out before you in a single year, that the land may not become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. “I will drive them out before you little by little, until you become fruitful and take possession of the land. “I will fix your boundary from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the River Euphrates; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you. “You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods. “They shall not live in your land, because they will make you sin against Me; for if you serve their gods it will surely be a snare to you.”
-I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
-My angel will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites…and I will completely destroy them.
-You shall not worship their gods…but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their sacred pillars in pieces.
-I will send My terror ahead of you, and throw into confusion all the people among whom you come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you.
-I will send hornets ahead of you so that they will drive out the Hivites…
-I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you. -They shall not live in your land…
Many commentators have noted the tendency of ancient battle accounts to use hyperbole, claiming total destruction of a people they later fought or made treaties with. Some biblical warfare accounts appear to do this as well, so hyperbole may take the razor edge off the harshness of God’s Exo 23 statements. It remains inescapable though, that there and in following passages, God tells the Israelites to invade Canaan and kill or drive out its people.
@charlie_trimm ‘s excellent book Destruction of the Canaanites considers scholarly approaches to this moral problem and the difficulties that accompany them. In it, Trimm does not favor any one approach and emphasizes shortcomings of all the proposals. Our own interpretive stance sets aside those that assume the biblical accounts to be ahistorical or God to be dishonest, fickle, or ignorant. Within these constraints, the remaining scholarly claims tend to undermine the severity of the destruction by suggesting only adults were killed, only military strongholds were attacked, or even that physical fighting did not actually occur.
Exo 23 begins what is arguably the 7th major judgment recorded in the biblical narrative. Using Genesis 1 as a template, there is a pattern evident in these judgment narratives beginning in Gen 3. In it, God
-hears cries of, sees oppressed people
-comes down
-assesses thorough corruption
-explains his actions
-is tangibly present in judgment
-imposes exile and/or death
-preserves a remnant
-gives the remnant new responsibilities (credit for this item to Charlie Trimm)
Not every item is obvious in every iteration, yet there is consistency in God’s response across the stories of the Fall, Cain’s murder of Abel, the Flood, Babel, Sodom, and the plagues on Egypt. Exo 23 continues this pattern, though to see the Conquest’s elements clearly, we may need to draw on Genesis 15 and future Torah/Hexateuch passages. One instance might be explained away, but consistent action across generations suggests we are observing the character of God, one who sees and sometimes intervenes to overthrow oppressors and restore his people in a life-giving land.
Unlike many scholarly approaches Trimm cites, this pattern undermines the idea that God’s judgment is limited in scope or only affects military targets. There were no such restrictions in the Flood, the exile of Babel, Sodom’s destruction, or the plagues on Egypt.
In the successive accounts of judgment, we can recognize an accumulation of information about God’s actions and expressed motives.
In the garden, God’s desire is to be in relationship with man and that man freely eat of all the trees except the one that brings death. Yet, when man chooses differently, God’s desire too is denied. God assesses exile and death because he will not tolerate people’s continued access to the tree of life once they have eaten of the knowledge of good and evil.
God is deeply grieved by the corruption of humans, and once it becomes pervasive, God acts through the Flood, a kind of de-creation, undoing the separation of the Genesis 1 waters, to destroy it.
When the people of Babel work to again pursue the pre-Flood corruption, God preemptively scatters them, so a second destruction is averted.
As we follow God’s reasoning through these accounts, there is little evidence of bloodthirsty vengeance. As people act corruptly, God deals with the resulting consequences. He does not impose his ideal – to give people life and relationship with him in a fruitful land – but the pattern shows that thorough corruption will move him to action.
When we hear the cries of the people of Ukraine under brutal, sustained assault, what should we do? In the biblical accounts of judgment, we observe God with a similar dilemma. He does not always intervene, sometimes delaying for generations. At select times though, he sees and hears, is present, assesses, explains himself, and acts in the world to preserve a remnant who will carry on his intent. In the biblical narrative, we do not find that violence is the quick, reflexive answer, neither does God shy away from it once he assesses its necessity. Although we may not see it concisely expressed in Exodus 23, the pattern beginning early in Genesis shows God to be slow to anger, responsive to the cries of the oppressed, willing to assess and communicate his assessment, irresistible in authority and judgment, and committed to preserving a remnant in relationship with him.
For an extended consideration of this topic including charts of each element of the pattern, follow this link.
https://www.kalevcreative.com/blog/2022/3/15/gods-judgment-and-the-ethics-of-the-conquest-of-canaan
#Bible #Exodus 24 #Sinai
God tells Moses and Aaron, Nahab and Abihu, and seventy Israelite elders to go up to Mount Sinai to worship at a distance. We’ve previously met Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron, at their birth in Exodus 6. Now they are apparently grown and in a position of unusual significance, which we’ll need to remember for later.
Moses tells the people what God said to him, presumably including the laws in Exo 20-23. The people agree to everything God has spoken, a passage which may link this moment to Exodus 19:8, in which the people also affirm they will do all the Lord has spoken. Possibly these two passages denote the same moment, with the law and instructions for entering the land included in it.
Finally, the Israelites have reached Sinai and, as Moses had requested of Pharaoh, they sacrifice to the Lord. Moses sprinkles blood from the sacrifices on the altar. The people confirm they will obey God, and Moses sprinkles blood on them too. That the blood comes from “peace offerings” suggests it signifies relationship with God. Blood is sprinkled on the place where God meets with people and on the people themselves, both God and man are touched by it.
Blood imagery is unusual and confusing to us today. It likely meant more to the Israelites in their cultural context. To this point in the biblical narrative, blood has cried out from the ground to bear witness to murder (Genesis 4:10-11), been compared to life itself (9:4), been used as a euphemism for murder (9:6, 37:22, 26, 42:22), been hurled as an epithet at Moses the bridegroom of blood (Exodus 4:25-26), and transformed the Nile (7:17-21). In the bridegroom of blood incident, Zipporah used the apparently bloody foreskin of Moses’ son to avert God’s anger. During the Passover, God instructed the Israelites to put blood on their doorframes to ward off the angel of death. Here again, Moses sprinkles blood on an object and people. Previous uses of blood would suggest as a means of protection from God’s anger. Moses then calls it “the blood of the covenant” that the Israelites have just agreed to.
“Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself. Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they saw God, and they ate and drank.”
We have previously considered the presence of precious metals and stones as evidence of both Eden and heavenly imagery. Here, God stands on what appears to be the sky. @TimMackie in the @BibleProject podcast suggests the “firmament” or “expanse” of Genesis 1. However we receive the blue pavement, like the Eden garden, this is a place where God meets the people he is forming for himself.
In The Story of God Bible Commentary Exodus, Christopher Wright identifies further parallels with Genesis 1-2. As in Eden, there are three apparent divisions of the mountain as there were three levels of Noah’s ark, divisions in the geography of Eden and of the garden.
As in the Creation account, Wright notes, verse 16 emphasizes “Six days…and on the seventh…”
God has, on Sinai, given Moses the Ten Commandments or Ten Words as he spoke ten plagues on Egypt and ten statements of Genesis 1 Creation. Here at Sinai, multiple narrative threads converge, connecting Creation and the Eden garden thematically with this mountain where God meets his people in a new way, with laws, ceremony, and soon, a traveling dwelling place for his presence among them.
In Genesis 2, God forms man in the wilderness and places him in the garden, where he instructs the man and, in the wind of the day, is present together with him and the woman. In Exodus, after the waters divide to yield dry land, out of a mixed multitude, God forms a nation and brings them to Sinai, where he appears in weather phenomena and gives them instruction.
If only the people can avoid the failed temptation of Genesis 3 …
“Then Moses went up to the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; and on the seventh day He called to Moses from the midst of the cloud. And to the eyes of the sons of Israel the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the mountain top. Moses entered the midst of the cloud as he went up to the mountain; and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.”
#Bible #Exodus 24-28 #Dwelling #Meeting
God gives Moses instructions to build a dwelling place where he can be present among the Israelites. He first requests that the Israelites contribute individually as they desire. This wandering people who are entirely reliant on God for food and water in the wilderness have precious metals and stones and rare fabrics at least in part because, as we learned in Exodus 12:35-36, they requested and received from the Egyptians as they left Egypt. God calls them to participate in building an Eden garden-like place where once again, God can meet with humans. He gives them a vision, and they work with physical materials to construct a place between heaven and earth covered in imagery that evokes Eden – water, precious metals and stones, fruit and nut trees, light, cherubim, and an altar as Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob made altars where they met with God.
In Exploring Exodus, Nahum Sarna tells us, “the account of the construction of the Tabernacle is…laced with phrases and expressions that unmistakably echo the Genesis creation story.” Describing its layout, he says, “The division of the sanctuary into three zones involved a progression from profane space outside of it into the sacred space inside in an ascending scale of holiness…access to the differentiated zones was permitted in accordance with the religious classification of the people. Laymen were restricted to the outer Court, priests and Levites ministered in the outer sanctum, the Holy Place, and admission to the Holy of Holies was barred to all except the high priest, and then he could enter it only once a year…” Sarna notes the metals used in construction correlate with the zones. Moving inward, one observes bronze, then silver, and finally gold. The ark in the Most Holy room has a solid gold top, which Sarna views as like God’s footstool, citing 1 Chronicles 28:2. We can also recall the blue pavement of Exo 24, where the leaders on the mountain saw God’s feet. Strikingly, “The section of the Torah that contains the instructions for the building of the Tabernacle—Exodus 25:1 to 31:11—comprises exactly six literary units…distinguishable by its opening formula, ‘The Lord spoke/said to Moses'…the seventh…unit deals with the sabbath.” The three domains of creation-sky, land, and water-and the six days in which they are created echo in the physical structure of this meeting place and the instructions for making it.
In his book, The Military History of Ancient Israel, military historian Richard Gabriel notes the similarities between the layout of God’s meeting place and the war tents of the pharaohs and also that of the camps of Israelites and Egyptians. The biblical account of the Israelites can be compared to the portrayal of Egyptians in reliefs commemorating the battle of Kadesh on the wall of the Great Hall at Abu Sambel. “It would appear that the holy of holies of pharaoh and Yahweh are similar not only in design, but even in function. For both, it is the place where God speaks to his people.” God apparently spoke an artistic and functional language the Israelites recognized. The construction of the meeting place and soon the structure of the camp communicate God’s role as the war leader of an expeditionary force, which aligns with the commands he has given them in Exodus 23.
#Bible #Exodus 28-29 #priests
Moses receives instructions for the priests’ clothing and consecration. “…you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother for glory and for beauty.” Aaron wears garments that apparently correspond to elements of the dwelling place. The priest himself is where God meets man. He wears stones engraved with the names of the tribes and a gold decorative headpiece engraved “Holy to the Lord.” In her book Bearing God’s Name at Sinai, @carmenjoyimes links this gold crown with the command “You shall not [bear] the name of the Lord your God in vain.” The High Priest wears the names of the Israelite tribes in the presence of God and God’s name before the people. Aaron is prominently set apart as holy, a representative of the people before God, clothed in an apparent analogue of Eden, possibly even of God’s heavenly dwelling. “…Aaron shall carry the judgment of the sons Israel over his heart before the Lord continually.”
At the time Aaron and his sons are to be formally dressed in their service uniforms, God prescribes an extensive regime of sacrifices: a bull for a sin offering, a ram for a soothing aroma, a second ram to consecrate Aaron, his sons, and, specifically, their garments. “The holy garments of Aaron shall be for his sons after him, so that they may be anointed and ordained in them. For seven days the one of his sons who is priest in his place shall put them on when he enters the tent of meeting to minister in the Holy Place.” Aaron and his sons eat the sacrifice at the doorway to the tent of meeting, perhaps recalling the Genesis 4 sacrifices of Cain and Abel (where sin was crouching at the door), the Gen 8 sacrifice of Noah after exiting the ark, Abraham’s mountaintop sacrifices (as the meeting place on Sinai transfers to the tent dwelling), and Jacob’s Gen 28 anointed stone at “the gate of heaven.”
Aaron, his sons, and the altar are consecrated with sacrifices for seven days, followed by a permanent system of morning and evening sacrifices, perpetual reference to the Genesis 1 and 2 land where God meets with man.
“I will meet there with the sons of Israel, and it shall be consecrated by My glory. I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar; I will also consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve as priests to Me. And I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, so that I might dwell among them; I am the Lord their God.”
#Bible #Exodus 32 #rebellion and the golden #calf
As Moses receives the instructions for God’s dwelling place with Israel, for Aaron’s garments that denote him as a unique representative of God to the people and the people before God, the same Aaron is at the bottom of the mountain imaging something else altogether.
In Genesis 3, we saw that the serpent’s statements are opposite God’s. https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1207678835094933504
Here, the people’s idol making is opposite God’s instructions for his dwelling place with his people.
While God describes refined processes for artistic crafting and construction of his house; the placing of the ark, his footstool, in an innermost chamber; and detailed description of the ornate clothing that will cover the nakedness of the priests; the people below “tear off” their ornaments to cast a golden cow displayed in the open and worship with apparent sexual immorality. In Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary, Victor Hamilton points out that at the foot of the mountain, instead of a spirit-filled craftsman skillfully forming divinely designed articles of worship, God’s designated high priest makes another god.
The juxtaposition of a simulacrum of Eden or perhaps heaven itself with the base rebellion of the people below is stark and shocking. God wants relationship, but the people resist and rebel at every turn. God tells Moses he will destroy the people and start again with Moses, yet Moses resists.
When confronted with Eve’s disobedient choice, Adam was silent and complicit. Prior to the Flood, Noah was righteous but did not advocate for others. Before Sodom, Abraham negotiated with God for the rebellious people, but when asked to sacrifice his own son, he did not advocate for him. Here, Moses pushes back against God’s threat to destroy Israel and includes himself among the people even as God seeks to separate him from them. Moses intercedes, asking God to spare the Israelites even if it means he be “blot[ted] out of [God’s] book.” By both remaining faithful to God and being an advocate for the people, Moses apparently takes a step further toward a mature relationship with God than his ancestors. That God says to Moses, “Leave me alone,” suggests God perceives in Moses a persistent desire to pursue God’s mercy toward the unrelentingly rebellious people.
The military leader Joshua perceives the sound of war, is corrected by Moses, but his misapprehension foreshadows the Levites’ war on their brothers, which recalls Jacob’s “blessing” of Levi. (Genesis 49:5-7)
Many commentators note the apparent contradiction in the Hebrew wording around the golden calf, that it is both ‘molten’ and engraved with a tool. The presence of a tool for engraving both connects this statue to the foundational prohibition against graven images and is a real part of the process of casting metal, which often yields a rough image with sprues, seams, and inadequate detail that must be worked by hand tools to yield the desired result.
Moses, seeing the rebellion for himself, symbolically destroys God’s newly made covenant by breaking the stone tablets God inscribed. He then orders the breaking of the golden calf, grinding into powder, and mixing with water so the people are forced to drink it. As many commentators note, there are similarities here with the bizarre ritual of Numbers 5:11-31. In addition to the drinking of dust in water, each ritual is in response to a kind of adultery and yields disease and death.
In an earlier thread, we observed a pattern in the judgment narratives of Genesis and Exodus.
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1504502905054941186
Here, in Exodus 32, the same elements are present:
-God observes the people in rebellion
-Moses hears their cries
-Both God and Moses recognize their corruption and threat to God’s intent for relationship
-Moses and God discuss God’s intent
-God expresses a desire to wipe them out and start again, Moses commands the Levites to kill Israelites
-A remnant remains after Moses’ intercession
-Next, Moses will bring back a new set of law tablets, and the Israelites will construct the dwelling place for God to live among them
Here again, when God commands violence in nature or through his people, the outcome is judgment but also restoration of a remnant into a place where they can be in relationship with him. In this narrative, that place is the Tabernacle, God’s dwelling place among them.
#Bible #Exodus 33 #Tent of Meeting
God tells Moses to go up with the people of Israel, recalls his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, declares he will send an angel before them, and describes the land of Canaan in people group language that echoes Genesis 15 and Exodus 3, 13, and 23. The named peoples vary in these passages, though the territory is the same.
“…I will not go up in your midst, because you are an obstinate people, and I might destroy you on the way.”
God tells the people to take off their jewelry. The people who contributed their jewelry to make a new god or forbidden representation of God now shed jewelry as a sign of mourning and possibly contrition. Rather than celebrating God’s rescue of them from Egypt and deliverance through the wilderness into an Eden-like land, they now fear abandonment. This passage recalls Jacob’s direction to his family to set aside their idols and remove their jewelry as they approached Bethel where he would meet with God (Genesis 35:1-4).
God has given Moses extensive instructions for construction of the Tabernacle in the center of the camp, the camp itself to be considered holy because God would walk there, but here we find Moses using a “tent of meeting” outside the camp where people would go to seek God. The position of the tent reflects God’s feeling toward the people - he does not now want to be among them.
This passage emphasizes contrasting ideas – God separates himself from the camp, but anyone can come out to meet him. God is available to all but has a special relationship with Moses.
Moses’ meetings with God were a spectacle. The people repeatedly saw God’s cloud descend to be present with him. When Joshua remains behind, he too communicates a special relationship for all to see.
In Numbers 14, this tent plays a key role in Caleb’s life. When God appears there, it saves Caleb from being stoned to death.
Moses grows in his relationship with God, continually advocating on behalf of the continually rebellious people, bold to ask to know God’s ways and to move God to relent from his purpose to stay distant from Israel and agree to go up with them after all.
The chapter ends with a striking theophany, echoed with Elijah in 1 Kings 19. Moses asks to see God, and God provides a way for Moses to observe from the safety of a cave, protected by God’s own hand. It is surely worth meditating on Moses’ experience, speaking with God “face to face,” though no one can see God’s face and live.
#Bible #Exodus 34 #covenant
When it’s time to reproduce the two tablets of commandments/words, God treats the whole of Mount Sinai as a most holy place. Only Moses is allowed, Moses as functional first high priest of Israel. This passage again emphasizes Moses’ uniqueness among Israelites not only in this generation but in all Israel’s history. Moses alone will receive God’s law and experience God’s tangible, meteorological presence on the mountain.
Moses obeys, and God fulfills his promise to appear made in the previous chapter.
"The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations." (Exo 34:6-7, NASB)
Moses asks to see God, to know him. We can’t see what Moses did but can share what may be God’s most important statement of his character in the Bible. It resonates through many future passages, directly quoted numerous times.
"If now I have found favor in Your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go along in our midst, even though the people are so obstinate, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your own possession." (Exo 34:9, NASB)
After considering the complete destruction of the Israelites, God restates his intent to make a covenant with them, to bring them through judgment into the land he promised their ancestor Abraham, to hold them to the life-giving calendar he inaugurated as they left Egypt and laws he introduced previously on Sinai, though the laws are marginally different.
After his encounter with God’s presence, Moses’ skin shines/horns. The people fear him and flee, so after he speaks with them, he covers his face with a veil. The people fear and flee Moses’ transformation after meeting with God.
This article by Brent Strawn discusses the shining/horning imagery:
https://t.co/SWS2MbFY92
#Bible #Exodus 35-39 #construction of God’s #dwelling place
After the golden calf episode in which the Israelites contributed their jewelry to make an idol, they get another chance. Men and women now contribute all kinds of materials, labor, and wisdom, not just objects, elements from their whole being, so much they had to be asked to stop, to construct God’s dwelling place among them.
Victor Hamilton in his Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary points out another contrast – between the Israelites’ slave labor in the beginning of Exodus on Pharaoh’s store cities (miskenot) and their voluntary, whole being contributions to God’s dwelling place (miskan) here at the end of the book.
Tent components - curtains, frames, veil, ark, table (for bread) and utensils, lampstand, incense altar, oil and incense, bronze altar, bronze laver, court and its curtains,
Priestly garments – ephod, robe, breastpiece, tunics, turban, sash, crown
Chapter 39 ends by repeating that the Israelites did all that God commanded, a phrase used first of Noah’s construction of the ark. Noah’s ark in three levels made of wood covered in pitch appears an intentional source of conceptual references for the construction of this dwelling place with three sections whose most significant elements are of wood covered in gold. Hamilton notes that “Moses saw [the Israelites’ work] and behold it was good,” finished work, and blessing phrases all echo Genesis 1 creation. The imagery – cherubim, tree and fruit elements, precious metals and stones, God coming down in meteorological phenomena – all recall the Eden garden, a place for God to meet man. The burning bush on Sinai, where God delivers the instructions for his dwelling place, may reference Abraham’s altars to YHWH by trees on a mountain. The anointing with oil by the gate of the tent complex suggests Jacob’s anointing of the stone by his envisioned stairway to heaven. This is layered imagery evoking generations of efforts by God to create a place for relationship. Here, God’s chosen people are more involved in the effort than ever before, and the repeated emphasis that they, like Noah, did all God commanded, suggest a shining moment when God and humans cooperate toward relationship in a beautiful place they construct together in the midst of a wilderness.
#Bible #Exodus 40 #construction of God’s #dwelling place
God gives Moses direction to assemble God’s dwelling place from the inside out, most holy to most common. Its start date coincides with the beginning of the year, the one year anniversary of the Passover. (Exo 12:1)
God inaugurates his presence, not just with one man, but a nation holy to him.
In the first half, God tells Moses to assemble the tent complex. At the end of the section, we learn, “This is what Moses did, according to all the Lord had commanded him—so he did.” (Exo 40:16b, NET)
In the second half of the chapter, Moses assembles the tent complex. After each component is complete, we read Moses did it “just as the Lord had commanded him.” (Exo 40:18-32, NET)
The second half differs from the first half by omitting the anointing of Aaron and the priests. It attributes the assembly of the Tabernacle solely to Moses, though the nature of some of the objects suggests he would have needed help. The strong emphasis is on Moses’ obedient fulfillment of “all the Lord had commanded…” an ongoing (chapters 39 and 40) meditation echoing Noah’s construction of the Eden-like ark.
Finally, after “Moses finished the work…the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” Despite being the one repeatedly emphasized as obediently constructing it, Moses cannot enter.
God’s tangible presence is with the Israelites in his dwelling place “in plain view of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.”
#Bible #Exodus #Form
The opening chapters of Exodus, concerning the enslavement of the Israelites and Moses’ early life, form a chiasm similar to those of the major characters in Genesis - at its center, “God remembers.”
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1356370339035545605
The remainder of the book appears to be an expanded re-enactment of the Genesis 1-3 creation and fall story, only instead of expulsion after rebellion, through Moses’ intercession and God’s provision, God remains physically present with Israel in relationship with them.
Chapters 7-13 describe the plagues on Egypt, which we perceived as a de-creation story, a twisted echo of Genesis 1:3-2:4
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1425419758426640387
In chapters 14-15:21 the Israelites pass through primeval-like waters as in Genesis 1:2, and the waters separate to reveal dry land as in day 3 of creation.
In 15:22-18 God leads them from land with no water past springs welling up from the ground to Eden-like Sinai in an apparent parallel with Genesis 2:5-7. He provides food, water and the law in the wilderness, forming this mixed multitude into his intended kingdom of priests. In a sense, they are naked and vulnerable, having no trappings of an established kingdom. God rescues them from Amalekite attack and guides them in building civic foundations.
For the rest of the book, in chapters 19-40, God appears with meteorological signs (suggesting Genesis 3:8). He promises to send an angel to fight and life and health if the Israelites serve him. He gives them the law, guidance for living in relationship with him, and instructions for his dwelling place, where they can meet with him. In Eden, the man and woman had access to the Tree of Life if they lived in obedience to God. Perhaps there is an analogy between the law given to the Israelites and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When Adam and Eve chose their own way, God sent cherubim with a sword.
As Moses communes with God at the top of Sinai, the people at its base rebel with the golden calf. God threatens death, but Moses intercedes successfully. Following Adam and Eve’s Genesis 3 rebellion, Cain killed his brother. Following the Israelites’ Exodus 32 rebellion, the Levites kill 3,000 of theirs.
Unlike in Eden, where human error/sin resulted in permanent expulsion, God provides a means through sacrifice and ongoing intercession for continued relationship, so he may continue to be present with the Israelites despite their failures.
Many commentators have noted that the passages encompassing the instructions for and construction of the Tabernacle form a chiasm with the golden calf episode at its center. Victor Hamilton in his Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary suggests this form, which spans nearly half the book – 17 of 40 chapters.
A Theophany/Moses goes up the mountain (24:15–18)
B Instructions for the tabernacle (25:1–31:11)
C Sabbath (31:12–18)
D Apostasy, forgiveness, covenant renewal (32–34)
C′ Sabbath (35:1–3)
B′ Implementation of the tabernacle instructions (35:4–40:33)
A′ Theophany/Moses cannot enter the tabernacle (40:34–38)
As we observed in Joseph’s story, the events in Moses’ life and those of Israel’s escape from Egypt align in pairs. Hamilton notes:
…the pattern in Exodus of things that happen or are narrated twice. God calls Moses twice to go to Egypt, first in 3:1–4:17 and then again in 6:2–8 after a miserable first audience with Pharaoh (5:1–23). Twice God gives his people the covenant and the tablets, first in chaps. 19–24, and a second time in chap. 34, punctuated again by the miserable scenario involving the calf in chap. 32. In particular, the repetition of the tabernacle data provides another striking illustration in Exodus of the move from promise/instruction to fulfillment. What God promises and predicts in 6:2–7 (the successful liberation of Israel from Egypt) comes to fulfillment in 12:31–14:31. The building of a shrine for whose erection God gives instructions in chaps. 25–31 comes to fulfillment in chaps. 35–39. What God says and predicts and outlines comes to pass in spite of an arrogant Pharaoh and calf-extolling Israelites.
At the end of Genesis, Israel’s family dwells in an Eden-like land, yet it is not the one that was promised, creating a narrative tension to be addressed in the next book, Exodus. Here at the end of Exodus, God’s Eden-like dwelling place is complete, yet Moses cannot enter. We can look forward to finding out how this tension will resolve in the next book, Leviticus.