Literary Setting
The Book of Exodus is the second book of the Old Testament and of the Pentateuch. Exodus builds on the narrative of creation, human sin, divine punishment and renewal, the call of Abraham to bless the world, and the struggles of Isaac and then Jacob to carry out God’s call. This ends with Joseph taking his father’s family into Egypt to avoid the harsh sufferings of famine. Exodus takes up the story of the children of Jacob in Egypt, now under a new pharaoh and seen as feared foreigners instead of welcomed deliverers from famine. Israel thus became slave laborers in Egypt (ch. 1). God delivered the baby Moses from danger, and he grew up in pharaoh’s court as son of pharaoh’s daughter. Still he cared for the Israelites. Trying to protect one of his own people, he killed an Egyptian. Thus Moses had to flee to the wilderness of Midian, where he helped seven endangered shepherd girls. He settled among them and married one of the girls. There, God called him at the burning bush of Mount Horeb/Sinai and sent him back to rescue Israel from Egypt (chs. 2-4). With his brother Aaron, he faced a stubborn pharaoh, who refused to release the Israelites. When pharaoh made life harder for Israel, the Israelites griped about Moses. God took this as opportunity to reveal Himself to Israel, to pharaoh, and to the Egyptians. God brought the plagues upon Egypt. Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let Israel go until his firstborn son and the eldest sons of all Egypt died in the final plague. This tenth plague became the setting for Israel’s central religious celebration, that of Passover and Unleavened Bread in which Israel reenacted the Exodus from Egypt and rejoiced at God’s supreme act of salvation for His people (chs. 5-13). As Israel fled Egypt, the pharaoh again resisted and led his army after them. The miracle of the Red Sea (or perhaps more literally, the Sea of Reeds) became the greatest moment in Israel’s history, the moment God created a nation for Himself by delivering them from the strongest military power on earth as He led them through the divided waters of the sea and then flooded the sea again as the Egyptians tried to follow (ch. 14).
After celebrating the deliverance in song and dance (15:1-21), Israel followed God’s leadership into the wilderness, but soon the difficult wilderness life proved too hard. The Israelites cried for the good old days of Egypt, even after God supplied their food and drink needs and after He defeated the Amalekites (15:22-17:15). Moses’ father-in-law Jethro brought Moses’ wife and children back to him in the wilderness and praised God for all that He had done for Moses and the people. Jethro also advised Moses how to organize a more efficient judicial system, relieving Moses of stress (ch. 18). Then Israel came to Sinai, where God called them to become His covenant people, a holy nation to carry out Abraham’s mission of blessing the nations. God gave the Ten Commandments and other laws central to the covenant (chs. 19-23), and then confirmed the covenant in a mysterious ceremony (ch. 24). Moses went to the top of the mountain to receive the remainder of God’s instructions, especially instructions for building the sacred place of worship, the tabernacle (chs. 24-31). Impatient Israel got Aaron to build an object of worship they could see, so he made the golden calf. The people began worshiping. This angered God, who sent Moses back down to the people. Moses prayed for the people despite their sin, but then saw the people’s sinful actions and threw the tablets with the law to the ground, breaking them. Moses again went up and prayed for the people. God punished them but did not destroy them as He had threatened. God showed His continued presence in the Tent of Meeting and in letting His glory pass by Moses (chs. 32-33). God then gave Moses the law on two new tablets of stone and renewed the covenant with the people, providing further basic laws for them. Such intense communication with God brought radiance to Moses’ face (ch. 34). Moses then led Israel to celebrate the sabbath and to build the tabernacle (chs. 35-39). Moses set up the tabernacle and established worship in it. God blessed the action with His holy, glorious presence (ch. 40). This provided the sign for Israel’s future journeys, following God’s cloud and fire.
Theological Teaching
In Exodus Israel learned the basic nature of God and His salvation. They also learned the nature of sin, the characteristics of God’s leader, the components of worship, and the meaning of salvation. In Exodus Israel learned the identity of the people of God.
God is Ruler of the world, able to act for His people even on the home territory of the world’s most powerful political and military force. God chooses to act for the people He elects. God knows the situation of His people even when another nation has forced them into slavery. God saved His people through calling out a leader to communicate God’s will and to face their enemies. God empowered the leader at a time of the leader’s personal weakness rather than at a time of strength. He worked in the forces of nature to show His unequaled power and to demonstrate His concern for His own people. Salvation for His people involved punishing their sinful enemies, and especially their stubborn leader.
Salvation, power, and concern was not all God revealed of Himself. He also showed a holy nature in that special preparations were made to enter His presence. He revealed His great glory, so majestic even the leader could not view it. Most of all, He revealed His will to be present among His people and lead them through their daily activities.
In so doing, He showed the way He expected His people to live, a way of holiness, a way of priesthood among the nations. This way centered on life guided by the Ten Commandments. Such a life reflected the nature of God Himself, who could be identified as “The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex. 34:6-7).
God expected His people to live the way of holiness, the way of the Ten Commandments. Failure to do so is sin. Sin centers particularly in giving another god credit for what God has done and in worshiping what human hands have made rather than the true God who allows no images of Himself. To avoid sin, God’s people had to follow God’s chosen leader, even when the path led through the wilderness and demanded a life-style lacking in some of the food and luxuries they had learned to take for granted. The leader followed God’s will and not the people’s. In so doing, the leader interceded with God for a sinful people, willing to give up his own place with God in exchange for the people’s salvation. Only a leader who communed face to face with God could develop such an attitude. Thus Moses became the leader without parallel for Israel.
The leader’s lasting role included the establishment of a worship place and worship practices. God’s people gained their identity in worship. The leader showed them when, where, and how to worship.
The people offered worship because They had experienced God’s salvation. For them salvation meant physical deliverance in military action against a powerful world enemy. It involved following God’s instructions and waiting for God’s miraculous help. Salvation set up a relationship between God and the people, a relationship based on God’s initiative in delivering the people and on God’s initiative in inviting the people into covenant relationship. This meant the people could trust God to lead them through their personal and national history. It also meant that God expected a trusting people to obey Him as He set out the way of life they should follow. Salvation was not just receiving God’s salvation. It was following in faith the life-style God described for them.
Trent C. Butler
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