| Exodus
BOOK
: Exodus
Description
:
2nd book of the Pentateuch, the Law of Moses
Author:
probably Moses
Date
written : somewhere about
1400 BC (Latter part of Moses' life)
Chapters
:
40
Brief
Synopsis:
•
Gets its name from the miraculous exodus
or departure of the nation of Israel from Egypt
•
Sets the context of Israel in Egypt
•
Moses, a Hebrew, is born and taken into
the royal family and grows up as a prince of Egypt
•
He rashly and unwisely acts to help his
own people who are slaves and has to flee the nation
•
He spends the next forty years as a shepherd
in the wilderness of Sinai
•
Eventually he is called by God to deliver
Israel from Egypt
•
To accomplish this, God has to employ
ten plagues of increasing severity to break the will of the king, Pharaoh,
who resists God. •
Eventually Israel are released and Pharaoh
and his army are destroyed.
•
Israel trek to Mount Sinai where they
encounter God and are inaugurated as the people of God
•
There God gives them His Law for them.
Ch.1-2
Moses background and first forty years
Ch.3-4
Moses meets God in the wilderness and is called to deliver
Israel
Ch.4-12
Deliverance from Egypt
Ch.13-15
Escape
Ch.16-18
Journey to Sinai
Ch.19
First encounter with the Lord on Mount Sinai
Ch.20-24
The Covenant (the Law)
Ch.25-40
The Tabernacle & Worship
Ch.32-34
Inset: Failure & Renewal
2:10
When the child grew older, she took him
to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying,
"I drew him out of the water."
3:2
There the angel of the LORD appeared
to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though
the bush was on fire it did not burn up.
3:7,8
The LORD said, "I
have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt . I have heard
them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about
their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand
of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and
spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey --the home of the
Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites .
3:13-15 Moses said to God,
"Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your
fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then
what shall I tell them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM
This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to
you.'" God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The
LORD, the God of your fathers --the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac
and the God of Jacob --has sent me to you.' This is my name forever,
the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation
3:19,20
But
I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand
compels him. So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians
with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he
will let you go.
5:1,2
Afterward
Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, "This is what the LORD,
the God of Israel , says: 'Let my people go, so that they may hold a
festival to me in the desert.' " Pharaoh said, "Who is the
LORD, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD
and I will not let Israel go."
6:2-6
God
also said to Moses, "I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac
and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make
myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give
them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. Moreover,
I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are
enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant. "Therefore, say to
the Israelites: 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under
the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to
them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with
mighty acts of judgment.
10:1,2
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go
to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his
officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine
among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how
I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs
among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD."
11:4,5
So Moses said, "This is what
the LORD says: 'About midnight I will go throughout Egypt . Every firstborn
son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on
the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand
mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well.
12:3,5,11 Tell
the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each
man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household….The animals
you choose must be year-old males without defect,…. Eat it in haste;
it is the LORD's Passover
19:1-6
In the third month after the Israelites
left Egypt --on the very day--they came to the Desert of Sinai. After
they set out from Rephidim, they entered the Desert of Sinai , and Israel
camped there in the desert in front of the mountain. Then Moses went
up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain
and said, "This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and
what you are to tell the people of Israel: 'You yourselves have seen
what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought
you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant,
then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although
the whole earth is mine, you will be for
me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.'
20:1-6
And
God spoke all these words: "I am the LORD your God, who
brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. "You shall
have no other gods before me. "You shall not make for yourself
an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath
or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them;
for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for
the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of
those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand [ generations] of
those who love me and keep my commandments. (Start
of the Ten Commandments)
33:1,2
Then the LORD said to Moses,
"Leave this place, you and the people you brought up out of Egypt,
and go up to the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
saying, 'I will give it to your descendants.' I will send an angel
before you and drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites,
Hivites and Jebusites.
33:7-11
Now Moses used to take a
tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the
"tent of meeting." Anyone inquiring of the LORD would
go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. And whenever Moses
went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances
to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent. As
Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay
at the entrance, while the LORD spoke with Moses. Whenever the people
saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all
stood and worshiped, each at the entrance to his tent. The LORD would
speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses
would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun
did not leave the tent.
33:18,19
Then Moses said,
"Now show me your glory." And the LORD said, "I will
cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim
my name, the LORD, in your presence.
40:33-38
Then Moses set up the courtyard
around the tabernacle and altar and put up the curtain
at the entrance to the courtyard. And so Moses finished the work. Then
the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of
the LORD filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting
because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled
the tabernacle. In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud
lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud
did not lift, they did not set out--until the day it lifted. So the
cloud of the LORD was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the
cloud by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel during all their
travels.
•
Difficulty of God using a sinner
•
Moses was clearly God's choice of leader
to deliver Israel . For forty years he was a prince of Egypt, for
forty years a shepherd in the desert, and for forty years a shepherd
leading Israel.
•
In the first forty years no doubt pride
existed, in the send forty years all pride went and in the third forty
years he was described as the meekest man in the earth.
•
He was clearly a transformed man, who
repented and was able to be used by God. However, the truth is that
every one of us is a sinner and every person in the Bible, except
Jesus Christ, is a sinner. It is a fact that it is God's mercy that
allows us to live and even be able to enter into a relationship with
Him.
•
Difficulty of God hardening Pharaoh's
heart
•
A number of times we are told God hardened
Pharaoh's heart but the truth is that he already had a hard heart
and every time he was challenged it merely hardened his resolve even
more.
•
Difficulty of the Ten Plagues
•
How can a God of love use plagues to
kill people?
•
The reality was that with each plague
came a clear warning and thus could be avoided.
•
The final plague – death of the firstborn
– only came after a series of plagues that gradually increased in
intensity. Before that last plague, therefore, there had been nine
opportunities to learn that God's power cannot be resisted. Resistance
after such experiences shows the crass stupidity of pride.
•
The plagues corresponded to much of
the worship in that land and each plague was thus a judgment on a
particular object of false worship.
•
The truth is that God can judge whoever
He chooses but He only does so when there is a clear and obvious reason.
Concluding
Comments:
•
Exodus reveals God as an all-powerful
opponent who has chosen Israel through whom to reveal Himself to His
world.
•
Pharaoh shows us the complete folly
of pride and arrogance.
•
When we observe the plagues we marvel
at the slowness and only gradual severity that suggests the grace
of God that allows such time for this foolish king and his superstitious
people to learn and come to their senses. One might suggest that it
is almost as if God has run out of ideas of how to deal with Pharaoh
(apart from killing him outright) and no one can ever say God did
not give him the chance to repent of his pride and arrogance.
•
The story of Moses is engaging: a baby
rescued in the midst of a wave of infanticide, a child brought up
as a prince of Egypt, a man who squandered and lost that position,
a shepherd who probably gave up hope of live in his forty years minding
sheep in the wilderness, and finally as a leader of a nation who fearfully
goes about the business of being God's messenger boy while God did
the business.
•
Moses ‘conversations' with God near
the beginning (Ex 3 & 4) and end (Ex 32-34) of the book, show
us a man who has been transformed from a fearful man with questions
to a faithful man with questions, and both deserve studying.
•
In the narrative sections, Exodus is
a very graphic and dynamic book (the laws and instructions of Ex 20-31
being less graphic), that reveal incredible and wonderful things about
God.
•
It also reveals awful and terrible things
about the people who He chose as a nation, of whom it might be said
that failure was their primary characteristic, from their conception
in these pages to the end of the Old Testament. If we have any doubt
about the reality of Sin in the human race, watch these people and
the people in whose land they dwelt before God delivered them.
Bible
Studies on this site:
Additional
Reading Material on this site:
Chapters
15 & 16 – “God versus a
Tyrant (1 & 2)” in the book “God's Love in the Old Testament”
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