Exodus

Overview

Exodus is about a hundred and ten pages and it changes genre twice. The first fifteen chapters are the most gripping narrative in the Hebrew Bible: an infant in a basket, a fugitive prince, a bush that burns without being consumed, a contest with an empire, ten plagues, and a sea that opens. Then the pace drops into wilderness episodes and a legal code. Then, for the last sixteen chapters, it becomes something most readers do not expect at all: detailed construction specifications for a portable tent, given twice, once as instructions and once as a report that they were carried out exactly.

That shape is not a failure of editing. The book is arguing that the point of getting people out of Egypt was to give them a law and a way of living with God in the middle of the camp, and it gives the tent as much space as the sea because it thinks the tent is the result.

Like Genesis it is visibly composed from more than one source, and the seams are easier to see here: two accounts of the call of Moses, a law code in chapters 21 to 23 that reads like an independent document, and a distinct style running through the tabernacle chapters. The Hebrew name is Shemot, “names”, from its first line.

What happens

Egypt and the call (1 to 6). A new king who did not know Joseph enslaves the Israelites and orders their sons drowned. Two midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, disobey him and lie about it, and are the first characters in the book to defy Pharaoh. A Levite woman hides her son, then puts him in a basket in the reeds, where Pharaoh’s daughter finds him and raises him. Grown, Moses kills an Egyptian overseer, is seen, and runs to Midian, where he marries and keeps sheep.

At Horeb a bush burns and is not consumed. Moses is sent back, and objects four separate times: who am I, who are you, they will not believe me, I am not a man of words. He is given signs, a brother to speak for him, and a name that is not quite a name: ehyeh asher ehyeh, I will be what I will be.

The plagues and the sea (7 to 15). The demand to Pharaoh is modest, a three-day journey to hold a festival, and it is refused. Ten plagues follow, escalating from nuisance to catastrophe, with a refrain that recurs and disturbs readers: Pharaoh hardened his heart, and also, the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart. The tenth is the death of the firstborn, and the instructions for the meal eaten that night, with blood on the doorposts and the bread unleavened because there is no time, are given as a rite to be repeated forever before the event itself is narrated.

They leave. Pharaoh changes his mind and pursues, and the sea divides and closes. Chapter 15, the Song of the Sea, is one of the oldest passages in the Bible, and its Hebrew is archaic enough that parts of it are difficult even for specialists.

The wilderness (16 to 18). The complaining begins almost immediately and never really stops: no water, no food, better in Egypt. Manna appears with rules attached about gathering and the sabbath. Water comes from a rock. Amalek attacks. Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, watches him judge cases from morning to night and tells him it is unsustainable, and the delegation of judicial authority in chapter 18 is the first administrative reform in scripture.

Sinai (19 to 24). Thunder, smoke, a mountain nobody may touch, and a people who ask Moses to go up instead of them. The Ten Commandments in chapter 20. Then, immediately, chapters 21 to 23: what to do when an ox gores, how long a Hebrew slave serves, what is owed for a tooth, the treatment of widows and strangers, sabbath years, festivals. The covenant is ratified in chapter 24 with blood dashed on the altar and on the people, and seventy elders go up and see the God of Israel, and eat and drink.

The tabernacle, the calf, and the tabernacle again (25 to 40). Seven chapters of specification: the ark, the table, the lampstand, the curtains, the priestly vestments, the incense, the craftsmen named and said to be filled with the spirit of God in wisdom and workmanship.

Into the middle of this falls chapter 32. Moses has been on the mountain forty days, the people give up on him, and Aaron takes their gold and makes a calf. Moses comes down, breaks the tablets, destroys the calf and makes them drink it, and the Levites kill three thousand. Then he goes back up and argues with God, twice, first to stop the destruction of the people and then to insist that God go with them and not merely send an angel. He asks to see the glory, and is allowed to see the back of it while covered in a cleft of rock. New tablets are cut, and the formula of mercy in chapter 34 is spoken.

The last chapters build the tent, and the book ends with the cloud covering it and the glory filling it, so that not even Moses can enter.

How to read it

Read chapters 1 to 20 straight through. That is the narrative arc and it holds up against anything.

Then read chapters 21 to 23 slowly, and notice what kind of thing it is. Coming directly after the fire on the mountain, the law is mostly about livestock, loans, injuries and the treatment of the poor, and the recurring reason given is that you were slaves in Egypt and know what it is like. The memory of the first half is the argument for the second.

Do not skip the tabernacle chapters entirely, but you may skim the second run. Read chapter 25 and chapter 31, then jump to 32 and read the golden calf and its aftermath carefully, since Moses arguing God out of a decision is one of the strangest scenes in the Bible.

Alter’s translation is the one to use if you want to hear the Hebrew’s rhythm and repetition; the King James is the one that shaped English and is worth having in reach for the famous verses.

Sit with the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart rather than resolving it quickly. The text alternates between saying Pharaoh hardened his own heart and saying God did it, and the alternation looks deliberate. Every later argument in the West about freedom and predestination has this passage somewhere behind it.

Questions it raises

• God hardens Pharaoh’s heart and then punishes Egypt for his refusal. Is Pharaoh free, and does the book think the question matters?
• The demand made to Pharaoh is for a three-day festival, not for freedom. Is that a negotiating position, a test, or a deception?
• Ten plagues fall on a whole population for one king’s decision. What does the book assume about collective responsibility?
• I will be what I will be is an answer to a request for a name. What kind of knowledge does it give, and what does it refuse?
• Liberation takes fifteen chapters and the law takes the rest. Is the law the reward of freedom, or its replacement?
• Moses argues God out of destroying the people, twice, and wins. What is being said about prayer, and about God?