Structure of Exodus

           

Exodus is broken into 2 parts; the action takes place in 2 locations.  Chpts. 1-15  take place in Egypt.  They discuss YHWH’s deliverance of Israel.  Chpts. 16-40 occur near Mt. Sinai, and discuss the establishment of the religion – the institutionalization of the Commandments, the Tabernacle, and the cultural laws: system of dos and don’ts on how you worship God.  The covenant with God progresses to defined rules about what it means to be a chosen people.  These laws given in Exodus and continuing through Leviticus and Numbers 19, are known as the Mosaic laws.

The narrative setting:

At the end of Genesis, the Israelites are set apart in Goshen, ghetto-ized so to speak, though the land of Goshen is fertile, and the people are multiplying.  However, at the beginning of Exodus, a new pharaoh has taken power who has forgotten Joseh (2:3) and his deeds.  He has no respect for what Joseph and his people did (chpt. 1 vs. 8; Ramses II {Ozymandias}).   The racial difference between the Egyptians and the Israelites leads the Egyptians to fear enslavement and being overrun. 

 

“Remember the covenant”

 

Remembrance is associated with renewal; through Moses the Lord is able to continue his relationship with the Israelites by establishing laws and rites by which to worship him.  When the Israelites’ “cry to help” rises up to God (2:23), God is said to have “remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” 

The Lord tells Moses to take his people and leave Egypt.  When the Pharaoh refuses his wish, the Lord’s punishments to Egypt and the Egyptians become worse and worse, resulting in the destruction of Egypt.  God is said to “harden the heart” of the Pharaoh, though Pharaoh sometimes seems to harden his own heart (for example 9:34).  We wonder why he does this.  Pharaoh’s responsibility for his “crime” can be compared in some sense to Oedipus’.  Both these men commit the sins, but how much of it is their fault?  Another way to look at it is that the “hardening of Pharaoh’s heart” is a way to express the psychological operation of forgetting.  Remembering softens one’s heart, creating bonds; forgetting sets oneself against them. 

Although it rarely explains causality, the Bible does so in Chapter 10: 1-2 and Chapter 9: 15-16.  Not unlike the other Mediterranean gods, the Hebrew God wants recognition.  God remembers His people by bringing them out of slavery in Egypt, but the people quickly forget God.  They seem to doubt God (eg. Why do we have to die in the desert when we could have just worked for Egyptians?)  As time goes on, God’s Covenant becomes more and more defined; there are more stipulations.  As people keep disobeying the Covenant, God’s enforcement becomes stronger.  {Also, God establishes that His worship consists of following his laws and keeping the covenant; in return God will fulfill His end of the deal by giving the Israelites land and descendants.}

           

Moses’s Character – Ethos – Identity

           

Moses is the locus for ideas continued from Genesis.  He was born of Levite ancestry and brought up by the royal family in Egypt.  Essentially, like Joseph, he was a “Hebrew Egyptian.”  Joseph and Moses share a few similarities: they both marry non-Jewish wives, thus their offspring don’t become rulers of Israel.  {In other words, kingship is not passed through them}.  And they both seem to have forgotten for a time their Jewish identity: Moses for example, seems to have forgotten to circumcise his son (see chap 4:24).  Zipporah’s circumcising of their son suggests that conversion to Judaism was possible; the fulfillment of the Jewish laws is necessary to become part of the Israelite community.}

Like Joseph, Moses needs help to remember his ancestry.  God has made Joseph forget all his hardship and his ancestry.  Joseph, like Odysseus, disguises himself in front of his family; he undertakes an elaborate ritual and process of recognition before he reveals himself to his family in Egypt.  This process of recognition is full of sorrow and compassion; in general, recognition in Genesis and Exodus is quite often, as in the Greek works we have read, accompanied by tears and weeping. 

Moses is a Levite; Levi being a son of Jacob “Israel”.  The Lord is the God of Jacob and “all his sons” are Israelites, they are his blessed and chosen people.  The word  Hebrew comes from Hebron, the birthplace of Abraham; the word Jew from Judah, the son of Jacob through whose line kingship is passed. 

           

Well scenes

 

As in other well scenes, a young man meets a girl at a well, and her father gives him her hand in marriage.  This well scene, however, is different from the others we have witnessed.  Here, a man is aiding a group of women, not vice versa (as when Rebekah aids Abraham’s servant at the well).  {Moses draws the water from the well himself, but has to drive people aweay from the well}.  Moreover, there are seven daughters at the well, and Moses is given one of htem (Zipporah, until she is named, is indistinguishable from her sisters).  As Moses previously defended the Hebrew slave abused by the Egyptian, so in this well scene he comes to the rescue of another example of the oppressed.  Moses is associated with water throughout the Exodus.  Besides his betrothal at the well, Moses himself has actually been drawn from the water (Nile).  He makes water spring from a rock, and he parts the Red Sea. 

Moses often resists the actions God demands that he perform {Moses is reluctant to go through the ordeal of leading the Hebrews, citing his being a “poor speaker” as a reason for exemption}.  Moses claims he has “uncircumcised lips”; he says he is poor speaker, referring to his stammer.  His mouth has not been opened.  {God therefore uses Aaron to convey the message to the people.  Moses takes instruction from God, passes it on to Aaron, who conveys it to the Pharaoh, and to the Israelites}.  Unlike Abraham who unquestioningly obeys God’s command to sacrifice his son, Moses negotiates with God (as does Abraham about Sodom and Gomorrah and as does Jacob continuously). 

Question we are left with: does Moses die in the end as retribution for killing the Egyptian in the beginning of Exodus, or as punishment for striking the rock twice, when God tells him to strike it once?  This once again is part of our search for causality, a search that is even harder here since unlike previous characters and stories in Genesis, we know very little about Moses’ private life. 

 

Continuity between Genesis and Exodus

 

There is continuity of both theme and trope (such as the water motif).  In both Genesis and Exodus, God is concerned with man doing the right thing, and he establishes tests for men.  In Exodus, however, God seems to be interested in being recognized as the Lord God by other ethnoi besides the Israelites.  He wants to be acknowledged as The God, omnipotent; all other “gods” are false.

            Another reoccurring theme is human failure.  In Genesis, men commit sins and are punished, but there is not yet a concrete set of rules for them to live by.  In Exodus, people explicitly defy the word of God.  Ethical responsibility becomes stronger.  The power of the analogy to children and parents becomes stronger as well.  In Exodus, religion isn’t static {in other words, the laws expand as population increases and the Hebrew society becomes more and more complex}.  Laws increase with time.  In fact, the laws that govern civil behavior are the same ones that govern the people’s relationship with God.  One worships God by following his laws. 

 

Bible as Religious Text

 

Literature doesn’t only mean fiction.  Literature is a body of writing in prose or verse; as such, it shares strategies of composition with other religious, medical, and historical texts.  The Bible in this sense is literature.  Literary devices (such as repetition) in the Bible heighten certain themes: for example, God’s repetition of only worshipping him.  God proclaims His name over and over because he wants to be remembered/worshipped/feared/obeyed.  Repetition makes understanding easier and helps to focus and narrow perspective.  Yet because we aren’t told why things happen, the Bible still forces every reader to interpret for himself.

In the Bible, God gives his rules, and men are appointed as judges.  When an essential rule is broken, it is God’s position to punish the breaker.  The ethos - or character – of Jewish culture is legalistic and ethical/behavioral.  Laws make religion.   We can’t say the same about the Greeks, although their worship of Demeter is an exception.  She established a covenant with her people; one similar to that of the Lord.  In fact, in Greek worship, the Eleusinean mysteries were practiced up into the Christian era.  Because it had the same sort of appeal as their religion, Christians found it was the hardest practice to eradicate.

 

Covenants to Contracts

 

The Lord establishes his first covenant with Noah when He saves him and his family from the flood.  Since Noah’s family members are the only survivors of the Flood, this covenant (represented by the rainbow) encompasses all of humanity.  God’s covenant with Abraham is exclusive to Abraham, and his favored son, and its sign is circumcision.  With Jacob, the Covenant passes to all the sons of Jacob – or Israel – not just the favored one.  Jacob in turn expands the body of recipients.  In the time of Moses, a new sign of the covenant is added: the Passover.   

The Covenant is God’s promise to give his people progeny, land, and abundance.  When the Covenant is broken by the Lord’s people, by their disobedience, God gives new laws, more stipulations and rules.  God doesn’t give laws until he judges something as being bad; eg. Sodom and Gomorrah.  Our relationship with God is performed by following the laws.  It is not based upon talking to him on a regular basis.  The recurring theme pattern of law – transgression – punishment and renewed blessing accompanied by another law is carried over from Genesis into Exodus and beyond. 

 

MISCELLANEOUS

 

1) There are at least two instances when Judah makes a connection between his wrongdoing and his suffering: denying Tamar her right to a husband and then having to admit adultery with her, and when Joseph’s silver cup is found in Benjamin’s bag.  He responds, “God has found our iniquity,” even though he and his brothers are innocent of stealing the cup.  They, however, are guilty of having sold him into slavery.  He associates his present suffering with his past iniquity. 

2) God makes himself known to his people in chpt. 4; God states “I am who I am”.  That is all that we are meant to understand.  {He is life, He is a pure Being, across time everything came form Him, and perhaps more importantly, we could never fully comprehend what, who, how He is, therefore He gives an answer that encompasses so much}.

4) “adam” is the word for human kind.  The first representative of humankind is called Adam.  In Chapter 2 of Genesis, “Woman” comes from the rib of man, in Chapter 1, she has no separate genesis.