Exodus.

Unlike other ancient religions, the ancient Hebrew religion was rooted in history, not mythology. It began with God’s promise to Abraham, and it reached a peak with the Exodus, when God took twelve tribes of Abraham’s descendants and freed them from Egyptian slavery. The Exodus takes place, naturally, in the book of Exodus, the second book of the Torah. Exodus follows this outline:

1. The Exodus.
   1. Background: Slavery and Moses, 1-2.
   2. Moses called to free Israel, 3-4.
   3. Moses goes to Pharaoh, 5 - 7.7.
   4. The mighty acts of God, 7.8 - 11.
   5. Passover, 11.1-27.
   6. The death of the firstborn and Exodus, 11.28 - 13.16.
   7. The crossing of the Sea of Reeds, 13.17 - 15.21.
2. Israel becomes the people of God.
   1. From the Red Sea to Sinai, 15.22 - 17.7.
   2. Hostility of Amalek and friendliness of Jethro, 17.8-18.
   3. The covenant, 19 - 24.11.
   4. Directions for the tabernacle, 24.12-31.
   5. Rebellion of the Israelis, 32-34.
   6. Building of the tabernacle, 35-39.
   7. Assembling and consecration of the tabernacle, 40.

 

Moses.

First, what were these Hebrews doing in Egypt? You have read in Genesis how Abraham’s grandson Joseph had been sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, and how he was bought by an Egyptian. After many misfortunes, Joseph became Zafenatpaneah, the vizier of the pharaoh, and was in a position to have his family live in Egypt during a great famine.

Joseph and his father Israel (or Jacob), were able to live into their old age in peace; but the next generations were not so comfortable. “Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done.” (Ex 1.8) By his time, the descendants (in the Hebrew, “sons” or “children”) of Israel—known as Israelis or Israelites—were so numerous that the new pharaoh considered them a threat. He quickly enslaved them.

Slavery was meant to decrease the Israeli population, but slavery only made them stronger. The pharaoh resorted to killing the newborn boys. One boy, Moshe or Moses, survived and grew up to be the leader of the Israelis. This man had an Egyptian name (possibly a short version of the pharaoh’s name, Thutmose) and was raised as an Egyptian, but had been born to an Israeli family.

After a failed first attempt to become leader of the Israelis—in which he murdered an Egyptian—Moses fled prosecution and hid in Midian, located on the southwest coast of Arabian peninsula (modern Saudi Arabia). There he met and married into the family of Jethro (or Reuel), a priest of El-Shaddai, (in English, “Almighty God.”) He married Jethro’s daughter, and for the next 40 years, he watched Jethro’s sheep. Jethro possibly taught Moses the creation stories, plus everything he knew about El-Shaddai. Unlike the Egyptian gods, El-Shaddai was not just a symbol representing nature, like Nut (the sky), Re (the sun), or even the Nile river itself, but a person—a being who created nature, and a being who could be known personally. Moses came to recognize that El-Shaddai was the God of the Hebrews, his ancestors.

 

The Exodus.

Moses, however, is not the main character of Exodus. God is. Appearing to the now 80-year-old Moses in a theophany of a burning bush, God revealed Himself to Moses as “the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex 3.6) and as His eternal name, “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex 3.14) —ehyeh asher ehyeh, from where we get the name Yahweh (in English, Jehovah). Moses was commissioned despite his own objections, namely that he was “not very good with words,” (Ex 4.10)—literally “have a heavy tongue and heavy lips,” an idiom meaning he couldn’t speak Hebrew. God’s solution was for his brother Aaron to speak to the people for him, (Ex 4.16) whereas he would stand before the pharaoh and demand the Israelis’ freedom.

In the ancient Egyptian culture, the pharaoh is worshipped as a god—the son of the sun god, Amun-Re. Since the pharaoh knew nothing about Yahweh, he wasn’t willing to give up his slaves easily. God had to strike at each of Egypt’s gods, one by one, in order to convince the pharaoh that they were powerless before Him. In His ten mighty acts—also called the plagues—God mocked the holy Nile river and the holy Pharaoh; the frog goddess Hekt, the cattle goddess Hathor, the storm goddess Sekhmet, the fertility god Min, and sun god Amun-Re, and the death god Osiris.

What God did for the Hebrews is a central part of Judaism, recited every year during the Passover ceremony:

We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt,


and the Lord our God brought us forth


with a mighty hand


and an outstretched arm.


And if the Holy One, blessed be He,


had not brought our fathers forth from Egypt,


then we, our children,


and our children’s children


would still be slaves in Egypt.

The tenth mighty act killed every firstborn living being in Egypt, with the exception of every Hebrew who had followed Moses’s instruction to spread sheep blood on their doorframes. Because the death-messenger “passed over” these homes (Hebrew, pesach) the Jews have celebrated this day yearly with Pesach (in English, Passover).

Pharaoh’s permission finally given, the Hebrews left that night—only to be chased by the Egyptian army once the Pharaoh had changed his mind. Trapped at the edge of the Sea of Reeds (today called the Red Sea), God made a wind blow overnight that cleared a path for the Hebrews through the sea, then closed the path behind the Egyptian army.

 

Sinai and the covenant.

By this point God was visibly leading Israel personally: A pillar was leading them (in daytime it was cloud, at night it was fire) from the sea to Mt. Sinai (or Horeb) in Midian. There, safely away from the Egyptians on the other side of the Sea of Reeds, and unknown yet to the nations of Canaan in the north, God revealed Himself to the Israelis in fire and thunder, and recited the Decalogue, His first ten commands. (Ex 20) Moses was then given further directions, (Ex 21-23) and was invited, with seventy elders, to see God personally. (Ex 24) Then Moses was called up the mountain to collect further directions regarding worship, (Ex 25-31) which God wrote down Himself. (Ex 31.18)

Almost immediately, the people violated the commands. While Moses was still on Sinai, the Israelis had constructed an idol—possibly to represent God, but more likely not—a gold calf, which they were worshiping like pagans. (Ex 32.1-6) And essentially, this is the problem we see throughout the rest of the Torah: The Israelis were freed from slavery, but they knew nothing about how to be a free people, and nothing about serving the God who had saved them.

Exodus wraps up with the construction of the tabernacle—the tent God had the Hebrews construct for Him in the center of their camp, so that His people could meet with Him there instead of on the top of mountains. And so began Yahweh’s difficult relationship with Israel.

 

Where and when did the Exodus take place?

As I’ve said before, the bible is not a history book. It contains history stories, but it’s not specific about when and where these events took place. Unlike other ancient stories, they aren’t set “long ago and far away,” but in a specific place at a certain time in the past. The writer assumed that his readers would know where and when that was, and it seems the ancient Hebrews did know, more or less, where Sinai was, (1Ki 19.8) and when the Exodus took place. (1Ki 6.1)

But since that time we have lost track of where and when they happened. Our lack of knowledge has resulted in some conflicting theories.

The 13th century? Fifty years ago, it would have been near-impossible to find any bible scholar who didn’t think the Exodus had taken place between 1280 and 1240 BC. There are two reasons for this. The “Merneptah stele,” a monument pillar constructed by pharaoh Merenptah (dated to 1209-08), lists Israel along with other places that Merenptah conquered. So clearly the Exodus took place before 1208. The Hebrews are also described as building the city of Pi-Ramesses (Ex 1.11), which was constructed by Rimisisu II (ruled 1279-1213). The Hebrews built that city; they left before Merenptah; so the Exodus must have taken place between these two times.

The trouble with a 13th-century Exodus is that it doesn’t fit with any of the dates in the bible. More likely, “Rameses” is an anachronism: The last redactor of Genesis and Exodus had updated the names of cities and places to what they were in his day. Thus we have Joseph sending his family to “the region of Rameses,” (Ge 47.11) —and of course both Joseph and Moses can’t have lived in the 13th century. So “Rameses,” rather than being a clue to the date of the Exodus, is a red herring that leads us nowhere.

The 15th century? Before the 13th-century theory, people had figured the Exodus took place in the 15th century. When Solomon (reigned about 971-931 BC) began to build the temple, it was 480 years after the Exodus. (1Ki 6.1) This puts the Exodus at about 1450. The city of Rameses was called Avaris in that day, and the pharaohs were Hatshepsut, (reigned 1508-1458 BC) and her co-regent stepson Thutmose III (reigned 1479-1425). Some have wondered whether Hatshepsut was the “pharaoh’s daughter” who had adopted Moses, (Ex 2.10) but there’s no way to know.

The 13th century date is still popular in movies about the Exodus, but scholars tend to lean towards the 15th century date simply because of the 1 Kings reference. All we can confirm is that, according to the Merneptah Stele, it likely wasn’t in the 13th century. The rest is guesswork.

The Sea of Reeds. I stated above that the Sea of Reeds was what the Red Sea used to be called, but if you look at most of the maps bundled into bibles, you’ll see that most of them indicate the crossing of the Sea of Reeds took place on one of the branches of the Nile, or in the Gulf of Suez, or even up north in the Mediterranean. Mostly this is so that they can depict the Israelis journeying across the Sinai Peninsula to “Mount Sinai,” which is what the monastery of St. Catherine claims they’re perched on.

Thing is, the name “Sinai” for that peninsula only dates back to the time of the Roman Empire, around 300 to 400 CE. Archeological digs, done while Israel occupied the Sinai in the late 1960s and ’70s, discovered nothing in the Sinai Peninsula that could point to a million ancient Hebrews traveling through. Nothing.

Sinai is described in Midian, (Ex 3.1) or Arabia (Ga 3.25)—on the east side of the Gulf of Aqaba. Unfortunately, the only archaeologists who have explored that area have been amateurs, whose science isn’t all that trustworthy. Their favorite site is Jabel al-Lawz, located in present-day Saudi Arabia, which is located in a military zone that is off-limits to archaeologists.

Geologists note a land-bridge at the opening to the Gulf of Aqaba, which is sometimes visible during strong winds, and may be where the Israelis crossed the Sea of Reeds. Excavations have discovered the remains of Egyptian chariots on the sea floor, which indicates that Egyptians may have tried to cross the land-bridge and failed. Or it can just mean an Egyptian boat ran aground on the land-bridge and wrecked.

 

What can we learn from Exodus?

The main thing that Jews take away from Exodus is the historicity of God: God actually did something in their past, and interacted with history. God may be transcendent, but He’s not that transcendent. He’s willing to get His hands dirty when He needs to.

The main thing that Christians take away from Exodus is usually the Decalogue. We love us the Ten Commandments. We suck at following them, though; and we have a bad habit of trying to set up graven images of them on public property, as if this show of piety is going to impress God or get Americans to follow them better. Sadly, it does neither.

Exodus demonstrates, with God’s mighty acts, that Yahweh was more powerful than any other god (although the bible doesn’t make clear that those other gods aren’t real gods until much later in the Old Testament). Yahweh was also more powerful than the most powerful empire, and the most powerful king, in the world at that time—destroying Egypt’s economy, stripping Egypt of its slaves, killing its firstborn children, and drowning its army in the sea. Yahweh is no minor god.

However, despite God’s might and darn-near visibility, the Israelis still built the gold calf and worshiped it, less than two months after God told them to worship nothing but Him, in fire and thunder. So often people argue if they could just see God, they would follow Him better; but Exodus 32 shows how this argument is crap. God can give us thousands of reasons to trust Him, yet people will ignore them all if they so choose.

Lastly, the tabernacle demonstrates yet again that God’s greatest desire is to have a relationship with His people—to live among them, and to walk with them like He had in Paradise. This was just another one of many steps in that direction.