Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary: Exodus 1-19 1573128198, 9781573128193

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Exodus 1–19

Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary: Exodus 1–19 Publication Staff President & CEO Cecil P. Staton Publisher & Executive Vice President Keith Gammons Book Editor Leslie Andres Graphic Designers Daniel Emerson Dave Jones Assistant Editors Katie Brookins Kelley F. Land

Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc. 6316 Peake Road Macon, Georgia 31210-3960 1-800-747-3016 © 2014 by Smyth & Helwys Publishing ISBN 978-1-57312-819-3

SMYTH & HELWYS BIBLE COMMENTARY

Exodus 1–19 William Johnstone

PROJECT EDITOR R. SCOTT NASH Mercer University Macon, Georgia

OLD TESTAMENT GENERAL EDITOR SAMUEL E. BALENTINE Union Presbyterian Seminary Richmond, Virginia AREA OLD TESTAMENT EDITORS MARK E. BIDDLE Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, Virginia KANDY QUEEN-SUTHERLAND Stetson University Deland, Florida PAUL REDDITT Georgetown College Georgetown, Kentucky Baptist Seminary of Kentucky Lexington, Kentucky

NEW TESTAMENT GENERAL EDITOR R. ALAN CULPEPPER McAfee School of Theology Mercer University Atlanta, Georgia AREA NEW TESTAMENT EDITORS R. SCOTT NASH Mercer University Macon, Georgia RICHARD B. VINSON Salem College Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Contents xv

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

xvii

SERIES PREFACE

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HOW TO USE THIS COMMENTARY

1

INTRODUCTION TO EXODUS PART 1: EXODUS 1–19

27

1

Setting the Scene: How the Israelites Became Slaves in Egypt Exodus 1

29

2

Moses’ Birth and Egyptian Upbringing: His Instinctive Attempt to Help Israel Ends in Failure, but God Takes Note

Exodus 2

49

The LORD Commissions Moses to Go to Pharaoh to Demand Israel’s Freedom

Exodus 3

69

4

Moses Finally Accepts YHWH’s Commission

Exodus 4

107

5

Moses and Aaron Confront Pharaoh; Pharaoh Imposes an Even Harsher Regime

Exodus 5:1–6:1

131

A Complementary Account of the Commissioning of Moses and Aaron

Exodus 6:2–7:13

143

7

The Plague Cycle

Exodus 7:14–11:10

169

8

The Festivals of Passover and Unleavened Bread to Commemorate the Exodus

Exodus 12:1–13:16

223

Guidance through the Wilderness

Exodus 13:17-22

267

10

Deliverance at the Sea

Exodus 14

275

11

Israel’s Hymns in Response to YHWH’s Victory at the Sea

Exodus 15:1-21

295

12

YHWH Makes Bitter Water Sweet

Exodus 15:22-26

315

13

Bread from Heaven

Exodus 15:27–16:36

327

14

Water in the Wilderness and Victory over the Amalekites

Exodus 17

349

15

Advice from Jethro, the Priest of Midian, on the Administration of Justice

Exodus 18

373

Meeting God at the Mountain

Exodus 19

393

3

6

9

16

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

421

INDEX OF MODERN AUTHORS

447

INDEX OF SCRIPTURES

451

INDEX OF SIDEBARS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

461

INDEX OF TOPICS

467

Dedication

For Megan, Isla, and Ethan ynb ynb



ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS COMMENTARY Books of the Old Testament, Apocrypha, and New Testament are generally abbreviated in the Sidebars, parenthetical references, and notes according to the following system. The Old Testament Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Joshua Judges Ruth 1–2 Samuel 1–2 Kings 1–2 Chronicles Ezra Nehemiah Esther Job Psalm (Psalms) Proverbs Ecclesiastes or Qoheleth Song of Solomon or Song of Songs or Canticles Isaiah Jeremiah Lamentations Ezekiel Daniel Hosea Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah

Gen Exod Lev Num Deut Josh Judg Ruth 1–2 Sam 1–2 Kgs 1–2 Chr Ezra Neh Esth Job Ps (Pss) Prov Eccl Qoh Song Song Cant Isa Jer Lam Ezek Dan Hos Joel Amos Obad Jonah Mic

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Abbreviations Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah Malachi

Nah Hab Zeph Hag Zech Mal

The Apocrypha 1–2 Esdras Tobit Judith Additions to Esther Wisdom of Solomon Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach Baruch Epistle (or Letter) of Jeremiah Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Daniel and Susanna Daniel, Bel, and the Dragon Prayer of Manasseh 1–4 Maccabees

1–2 Esdr Tob Jdt Add Esth Wis Sir Bar Ep Jer Pr Azar Sus Bel Pr Man 1–4 Macc

The New Testament Matthew Mark Luke John Acts Romans 1–2 Corinthians Galatians Ephesians Philippians Colossians 1–2 Thessalonians 1–2 Timothy Titus Philemon Hebrews James 1–2 Peter 1–2–3 John Jude Revelation

Matt Mark Luke John Acts Rom 1–2 Cor Gal Eph Phil Col 1–2 Thess 1–2 Tim Titus Phlm Heb Jas 1–2 Pet 1–2–3 John Jude Rev

Abbreviations Other commonly used abbreviations include: AD

BC

C. c. cf. ch. chs. d. ed. eds. e.g. et al. f./ff. gen. ed. Gk. Heb. ibid. i.e. LCL lit. masc. n. n.d. pl. rev. and exp. ed. sc. sg. s.v. trans. vol(s). v. vv.

Anno Domini (“in the year of the Lord”) (also commonly referred to as CE = the Common Era) Before Christ (also commonly referred to as BCE = Before the Common Era) century circa (around “that time”) confer (compare) chapter chapters died edition or edited by or editor editors exempli gratia (for example) et alii (and others) and the following one(s) general editor Greek Hebrew ibidem (in the same place) id est (that is) Loeb Classical Library literally masculine note no date plural revised and expanded edition scilicet (that is to say) singular sub voce (in dictionary references, meaning “under the entry”) translated by or translator(s) volume(s) verse verses

Selected additional written works cited by abbreviations include the following. A complete listing of abbreviations can be referenced in The SBL Handbook of Style (Peabody MA: Hendrickson, 1999): AB ABD ACCS

Anchor Bible Anchor Bible Dictionary Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture

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x

Abbreviations AnBib ANET

ANF Ant ANTC AOAT ASTI B BA BAR BASOR BBC BBET BDB

BETL BH BHK BHS BJS BK BN Book List BT BWANT BZAR BZAW CahRB CBOTS

Analecta biblica Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. James B. Pritchard (2d ed., Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955) Ante-Nicene Fathers Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, trans. William Whiston (Edinburgh: Peter Brown, 1837) Abingdon New Testament Commentaries Alter Orient und Altes Testament Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute The “Book of the Covenant” (Exod 20:22–23:33) The Biblical Archaeologist Biblical Archaeology Review Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Blackwell Bible Commentaries Beiträge zur biblischen Exegese und Theologie Francis Brown, Samuel R. Driver, Charles A. Briggs, eds., A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906) Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium Biblical Hebrew Biblia Hebraica, ed. Rudolf Kittel (Stuttgart: Privilegierte Württembergische Bibelanstalt, 1937) Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1968-76) Brown Judaic Studies Biblischer Kommentar Biblische Notizen Society for Old Testament Study, Book List The Bible Translator Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Cahiers de la Revue biblique Coniectanea biblica (Old Testament Series)

Abbreviations CBQ CBQMS CML

CTA

CVMA DCH

DDD

DtrH DtrJer(emiah) D-version

Eben Shoshan

EncJud EvQ EvT EVV FAT FIOTL FOTL FRLANT

Catholic Biblical Quarterly Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series John C.L. Gibson, Canaanite Myths and Legends (2d ed., Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1978) Corpus des tablettes en cunéiformes alphabétiques découvertes à Ras Shamra-Ugarit de 1929 à 1939, ed. Andrée Herdner, Mission de Ras Shamra 10 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale: P. Geuthner, 1963) Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, ed. David J.A. Clines, 8 vols. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press/Sheffield Phoenix Press, 1993–2011) Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. Karel van der Toorn et al. (2d ed., Leiden: Brill, 1999) The Deuteronomistic History (conventionally, Joshua–2 Kings) The assumed Deuteronomistic edition of Jeremiah (especially its sections in prose) The exilic version attested by the reminiscence in Deuteronomy and other texts in the Deuteronomistic corpus Abraham Even Shoshan, Millon Hadash [New Dictionary], 5 vols. (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sepher, 1964) Encyclopaedia Judaica Evangelical Quarterly Evangelische Theologie English Versions Forschungen zum Alten Testament Formation and Interpretation of Old Testament Literature Forms of Old Testament Literature Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments

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Abbreviations GKC

HB HCOT HDB Heb. HSM HTR HUCA ICC IDB Jastrow

JBL JNES JQR JSJ JSJSup JSNT JSNTSup JSOT JSOTSup KAI

KBL KBL3

KJV Lane LCC

Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, as edited and enlarged by the late E. Kautzsch, rev. A. E. Cowley (2d ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910) The Hebrew Bible Historical Commentary on the Old Testament Dictionary of the Bible, ed. James Hastings et al., 5 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1898–1904) Hebrew Harvard Semitic Monographs Harvard Theological Review Hebrew Union College Annual International Critical Commentary The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible Marcus Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Pardes Publishing House, 1950) Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Near Eastern Studies Jewish Quarterly Review Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods: Supplement Series Journal for the Study of the New Testament Journal for the Study of the New Testament: Supplement Series Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften, H. Donner and W. Röllig (2d ed., Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1966–1969) Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros (2d ed., Leiden: Brill, 1958) Ludwig Köhler, Walter Baumgartner, Hebräisches und aramäisches Lexikon zum Alten Testament, 5 vols. (3rd ed., Leiden: Brill, 1967–1990) King James Version (1611) Edward William Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 parts (London: 1893; repr., Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1980) Library of Christian Classics

Abbreviations LHBOTS lit. LSJ

LXX MDB Mandelkern MT NASB NCB NEB NICNT NIDB NIV NJPSV

NovT NRSV NT NTS OBO OED OGIS OTG OTL PAAJR par. P-edition PEQ PRSt RevExp RB RSV

Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies literally A Greek-English Lexicon, compiled by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, rev. Henry Stuart Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940) Septuagint = Greek Translation of Hebrew Bible Mercer Dictionary of the Bible Solomon Mandelkern, Veteris Testamenti Concordantiae (5th ed., Tel-Aviv: Schocken, repr. 1962) The traditional (“Masoretic”) Text of the Hebrew Bible New American Standard Bible New Century Bible New English Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970) New International Commentary on the New Testament New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible New International Version (Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan, 1978) The New Jewish Publication Society Version, Study Edition, ed. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) Novum Testamentum New Revised Standard Version (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) New Testament New Testament Studies Orbis biblicus et orientalis Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, ed. C.T. Onions (3rd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, ed. 1944) Orientis graeci inscriptiones selectae Old Testament Guides Old Testament Library Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research parallel the post-exilic edition of the Pentateuch that priestly circles produced Palestine Exploration Quarterly Perspectives in Religious Studies Review and Expositor Revue Biblique Revised Standard Version of the Bible (New York: Collins, 1952)

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Abbreviations RV SBLABS SBLDS SBLSP SBLWAW SBS SBT ScrHier SHR SJLA SJOT SJT SP StudBib TB TDNT TEV TSAJ UBS

USQR VC VT VTSup WBC Wehr WMANT WTJ ZAR ZAW // *

Revised Version of the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1885) Society of Biblical Literature Archaeology and Biblical Studies Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers Society of Biblical Literature Writings from the Ancient World Stuttgarter Bibelstudien Studies in Biblical Theology Scripta hierosolymitana Studies in the History of Religions (supplement to Numen) Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Scottish Journal of Theology Sacra pagina Studia Biblica Tyndale Bulletin Theological Dictionary of the New Testament Today’s English Version Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum United Bible Societies, The Greek New Testament, ed. Kurt Aland et al. (27th rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007) Union Seminary Quarterly Review Vigiliae christianae Vetus Testamentum Supplements to Vetus Testamentum Word Biblical Commentary Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Literary Arabic, ed. J. Milton Cowan (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1961) Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Westminster Theological Journal Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Parallels (sometimes not specified, especially in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew–Luke) A composite text (e.g., a close combination of the D-version and the P-edition)

Author’s Preface I have very many people to thank for help in the production of this commentary. First of all, I am most grateful to Professor Ronald E. Clements for proposing my name to the editors of this series and to them for accepting his suggestion. I can only express my admiration and gratitude to my editors for their patience, perceptiveness, sympathy, and skill in reading and preparing the manuscript for publication. Further, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Dr. Philip G. Ziegler, then Head of the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, and to administrators in the Library and Human Resources in the University of Aberdeen for enabling my online access to e-journals and e-books. That access has, in turn, enabled me to enjoy the facilities of Edinburgh University Libraries through the auspices of the Society of College, National and University Libraries. I have especially appreciated the peerless collections and study facilities of the Scottish National Library in Edinburgh and the British Library in London. Many individuals deserve to be thanked by name for help and support, but I learned long ago (when, straying into a frontier zone, I sought learned opinion, and was given it but on condition of anonymity, on an article I was writing, “Cursive Phoenician and the Archaic Greek Alphabet,” that the editor of the journal concerned [Kadmos: Zeitschrift für vor- und frühgriechische Epigraphik 17 (1978): 152–66] described as making “a whole series of revolutionary proposals”) that it can be unfair to implicate others in one’s own explorations and particular conclusions. These individuals know who they are: Patrick and Ruth for a helpful invitation to read a paper, David and Angela for fetching and carrying, Costanza for marvelous materials from Venice, Nancy for arresting modern German sculpture, Nance and Julie for reading the first draft of the Introduction, Ken for technical assistance, and many others, not least in the Edinburgh University Biblical Seminar, for sustained kindly interest and encouragement. Above all, I have to thank Elizabeth, my wife of fifty years, herself a graduate in Biblical Studies and Post-biblical Hebrew, who has long since complemented her biblical studies with work as tutor in Arts in the Open University. She enthusiastically joined in the Moses hunt in stained glass across France, Germany, Austria, and Italy and, in turn,

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led me into many an art gallery, theatre, and even opera house. In her, I have found my utterly ideal, understanding, and stimulating companion. None of these are to be blamed for my not having made better use of their suggestions and my opportunities. William Johnstone Edinburgh Easter 2014

SERIES PREFACE The Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary is a visually stimulating and user-friendly series that is as close to multimedia in print as possible. Written by accomplished scholars with all students of Scripture in mind, the primary goal of the Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary is to make available serious, credible biblical scholarship in an accessible and less intimidating format. Far too many Bible commentaries fall short of bridging the gap between the insights of biblical scholars and the needs of students of God’s written word. In an unprecedented way, the Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary brings insightful commentary to bear on the lives of contemporary Christians. Using a multimedia format, the volumes employ a stunning array of art, photographs, maps, and drawings to illustrate the truths of the Bible for a visual generation of believers. The Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary is built upon the idea that meaningful Bible study can occur when the insights of contemporary biblical scholars blend with sensitivity to the needs of lifelong students of Scripture. Some persons within local faith communities, however, struggle with potentially informative biblical scholarship for several reasons. Oftentimes, such scholarship is cast in technical language easily grasped by other scholars, but not by the general reader. For example, lengthy, technical discussions on every detail of a particular scriptural text can hinder the quest for a clear grasp of the whole. Also, the format for presenting scholarly insights has often been confusing to the general reader, rendering the work less than helpful. Unfortunately, responses to the hurdles of reading extensive commentaries have led some publishers to produce works for a general readership that merely skim the surface of the rich resources of biblical scholarship. This commentary series incorporates works of fine art in an accurate and scholarly manner, yet the format remains “user-friendly.” An important facet is the presentation and explanation of images of art, which interpret the biblical material or illustrate how the biblical material has been understood and interpreted in the past. A visual generation of believers deserves a commentary series that contains not only the all-important textual commentary on Scripture, but images, photographs, maps, works of fine art, and drawings that bring the text to life.

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The Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary makes serious, credible biblical scholarship more accessible to a wider audience. Writers and editors alike present information in ways that encourage readers to gain a better understanding of the Bible. The editorial board has worked to develop a format that is useful and usable, informative and pleasing to the eye. Our writers are reputable scholars who participate in the community of faith and sense a calling to communicate the results of their scholarship to their faith community. The Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary addresses Christians and the larger church. While both respect for and sensitivity to the needs and contributions of other faith communities are reflected in the work of the series authors, the authors speak primarily to Christians. Thus the reader can note a confessional tone throughout the volumes. No particular “confession of faith” guides the authors, and diverse perspectives are observed in the various volumes. Each writer, though, brings to the biblical text the best scholarly tools available and expresses the results of their studies in commentary and visuals that assist readers seeking a word from the Lord for the church. To accomplish this goal, writers in this series have drawn from numerous streams in the rich tradition of biblical interpretation. The basic focus is the biblical text itself, and considerable attention is given to the wording and structure of texts. Each particular text, however, is also considered in the light of the entire canon of Christian Scriptures. Beyond this, attention is given to the cultural context of the biblical writings. Information from archaeology, ancient history, geography, comparative literature, history of religions, politics, sociology, and even economics is used to illuminate the culture of the people who produced the Bible. In addition, the writers have drawn from the history of interpretation, not only as it is found in traditional commentary on the Bible but also in literature, theater, church history, and the visual arts. Finally, the Commentary on Scripture is joined with Connections to the world of the contemporary church. Here again, the writers draw on scholarship in many fields as well as relevant issues in the popular culture. This wealth of information might easily overwhelm a reader if not presented in a “user-friendly” format. Thus the heavier discussions of detail and the treatments of other helpful topics are presented in special-interest boxes, or Sidebars, clearly connected to the passages under discussion so as not to interrupt the flow of the basic interpretation. The result is a commentary on Scripture that

Series Preface

focuses on the theological significance of a text while also offering the reader a rich array of additional information related to the text and its interpretation. An accompanying CD-ROM offers powerful searching and research tools. The commentary text, Sidebars, and visuals are all reproduced on a CD that is fully indexed and searchable. Pairing a text version with a digital resource is a distinctive feature of the Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary. Combining credible biblical scholarship, user-friendly study features, and sensitivity to the needs of a visually oriented generation of believers creates a unique and unprecedented type of commentary series. With insight from many of today’s finest biblical scholars and a stunning visual format, it is our hope that the Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary will be a welcome addition to the personal libraries of all students of Scripture. The Editors

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HOW TO USE THIS COMMENTARY The Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary is written by accomplished biblical scholars with a wide array of readers in mind. Whether engaged in the study of Scripture in a church setting or in a college or seminary classroom, all students of the Bible will find a number of useful features throughout the commentary that are helpful for interpreting the Bible. Basic Design of the Volumes

Each volume features an Introduction to a particular book of the Bible, providing a brief guide to information that is necessary for reading and interpreting the text: the historical setting, literary design, and theological significance. Each Introduction also includes a comprehensive outline of the particular book under study. Each chapter of the commentary investigates the text according to logical divisions in a particular book of the Bible. Sometimes these divisions follow the traditional chapter segmentation, while at other times the textual units consist of sections of chapters or portions of more than one chapter. The divisions reflect the literary structure of a book and offer a guide for selecting passages that are useful in preaching and teaching. An accompanying CD-ROM offers powerful searching and research tools. The commentary text, Sidebars, and visuals are all reproduced on a CD that is fully indexed and searchable. Pairing a text version with a digital resource also allows unprecedented flexibility and freedom for the reader. Carry the text version to locations you most enjoy doing research while knowing that the CD offers a portable alternative for travel from the office, church, classroom, and your home. Commentary and Connections

As each chapter explores a textual unit, the discussion centers around two basic sections: Commentary and Connections. The analysis of a passage, including the details of its language, the history reflected in the text, and the literary forms found in the text, are the main focus

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of the Commentary section. The primary concern of the Commentary section is to explore the theological issues presented by the Scripture passage. Connections presents potential applications of the insights provided in the Commentary section. The Connections portion of each chapter considers what issues are relevant for teaching and suggests useful methods and resources. Connections also identifies themes suitable for sermon planning and suggests helpful approaches for preaching on the Scripture text. Sidebars

The Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary provides a unique hyperlink format that quickly guides the reader to additional insights. Since other more technical or supplementary information is vital for understanding a text and its implications, the volumes feature distinctive Sidebars, or special-interest boxes, that provide a wealth of information on such matters as: • Historical information (such as chronological charts, lists of kings or rulers, maps, descriptions of monetary systems, descriptions of special groups, descriptions of archaeological sites or geographical settings). • Graphic outlines of literary structure (including such items as poetry, chiasm, repetition, epistolary form). • Definition or brief discussions of technical or theological terms and issues. • Insightful quotations that are not integrated into the running text but are relevant to the passage under discussion. • Notes on the history of interpretation (Augustine on the Good Samaritan, Luther on James, Stendahl on Romans, etc.). • Line drawings, photographs, and other illustrations relevant for understanding the historical context or interpretive significance of the text. • Presentation and discussion of works of fine art that have interpreted a Scripture passage.

How to Use This Commentary

Each Sidebar is printed in color and is referenced at the appropriate place in the Commentary or Connections section with a color-coded title that directs the reader to the relevant Sidebar. In addition, helpful icons appear in the Sidebars, which provide the reader with visual cues to the type of material that is explained in each Sidebar. Throughout the commentary, these four distinct hyperlinks provide useful links in an easily recognizable design.

Alpha & Omega Language

This icon identifies the information as a language-based tool that offers further exploration of the Scripture selection. This could include syntactical information, word studies, popular or additional uses of the word(s) in question, additional contexts in which the term appears, and the history of the term’s translation. All nonEnglish terms are transliterated into the appropriate English characters.

Culture/Context

This icon introduces further comment on contextual or cultural details that shed light on the Scripture selection. Describing the place and time to which a Scripture passage refers is often vital to the task of biblical interpretation. Sidebar items introduced with this icon could include geographical, historical, political, social, topographical, or economic information. Here, the reader may find an excerpt of an ancient text or inscription that sheds light on the text. Or one may find a description of some element of ancient religion such as Baalism in Canaan or the Hero cult in the Mystery Religions of the Greco-Roman world.

Interpretation

Sidebars that appear under this icon serve a general interpretive function in terms of both historical and contemporary renderings. Under this heading, the reader might find a selection from classic or contemporary literature that illuminates the Scripture text or a significant quotation from a famous sermon that addresses the passage. Insights are drawn from various sources, including literature, worship, theater, church history, and sociology.

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Additional Resources Study

Here, the reader finds a convenient list of useful resources for further investigation of the selected Scripture text, including books, journals, websites, special collections, organizations, and societies. Specialized discussions of works not often associated with biblical studies may also appear here. Additional Features

Each volume also includes a basic Bibliography on the biblical book under study. Other bibliographies on selected issues are often included that point the reader to other helpful resources. Notes at the end of each chapter provide full documentation of sources used and contain additional discussions of related matters. Abbreviations used in each volume are explained in a list of abbreviations found after the Table of Contents. Readers of the Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary can regularly visit the Internet support site for news, information, updates, and enhancements to the series at www.helwys.com/commentary. Several thorough indexes enable the reader to locate information quickly. These indexes include: • An Index of Sidebars groups content from the special-interest boxes by category (maps, fine art, photographs, drawings, etc.). • An Index of Scriptures lists citations to particular biblical texts. • An Index of Topics lists alphabetically the major subjects, names, topics, and locations referenced or discussed in the volume. • An Index of Modern Authors organizes contemporary authors whose works are cited in the volume.

Introduction to Exodus The “Ten Commandments” as Starting Point

The “Ten Commandments” (better: the “Ten Words” or “Decalogue”) are probably the best-known part of the book of Exodus, if not of the whole Bible. Their affirmation of the values of family and community life—the care of the elderly, the sanctity of marriage, and the right of the neighbor to security of person and property and to justice at law— gives them universal appeal. For the faith community, the affirmation of the first four “Words,” that the prior action of God and the continuing acknowledgment of that action laid the foundation of individual and corporate human life, gives the Decalogue supreme authority. The New Testament too endorses the Ten Words in the summary, “Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.” For reading and understanding the book of Exodus as a whole, these Words also provide a good starting point. They stand in Exodus 20 in virtually central place in the book and divide it into two roughly equal parts. Their “Prologue” looks back at the story of the first nineteen chapters, God’s great act of deliverance of Israel from crushing slavery in Egypt. The remaining chapters state the response that God expects from Israel as the redeemed community. Two Voices in Exodus

The Decalogue also offers a good introduction to the many questions that arise about the composition and interpretation of the book of Exodus. The Bible presents the Ten Words as uniquely authoritative. They provide the pivotal statement about God and about the terms of God’s relationship with Israel (Deut 4:13). They were the only laws that, according to Exodus, God wrote in person, inscribing them “with the finger of God” on two stone tablets (31:18). Moses, God’s appointed mediator, stored these tablets in a special deed box, “the ark of the covenant/testimony,” and placed them in the safety of the innermost shrine of the sanctuary (40:20-21). Such Words that God has revealed, recorded, and preserved in this way are surely immutable. It may, then, come as a surprise to the reader that the Bible contains two versions of the Decalogue, one in Exodus 20:2-17 and the other in Deuteronomy 5:6-21. There is substantial agree-

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Introduction

ment between these two versions, but, if one counts carefully, there are about thirty variations between them. Some of these variations concern minor matters of spelling and punctuation, yet even these are unexpected in a document engraved on stone. But there is one major difference: the reason for keeping the Sabbath. Exodus 20:11 relates the observance of Sabbath to creation: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth . . . but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it” (NRSV).1 Deuteronomy 5:15, however, provides an alternative reason for Sabbath observance that relates it to the exodus: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there . . . ; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” What is the reader to make of this surprising divergence in the accounts of the content of this uniquely authoritative document? Deuteronomy 5:12 claims to be remembering the wording of the Sabbath commandment as God originally promulgated it in Exodus 20 by explicitly adding the phrase, “as the LORD your God commanded you.” The same phrase recurs in Deuteronomy 5:16 in connection with the parents’ commandment: “Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you.” The simplest interpretation of these cross-references in Deuteronomy 5 to Exodus 20 is that they are, from Deuteronomy’s point of view, accurate. The wording of the Sabbath commandment in Exodus was once, like the wording of the parents’ commandment, exactly as Deuteronomy records. That is, Exodus originally justified Sabbath observance by reference to Israel’s exodus from Egypt (a hardly surprising justification in light of the opening words of the Decalogue in Exod 20:3). For some reason, a later editor of Exodus—and he must be an editor subsequent to the Exodus version that Deuteronomy reminisces—has decided to provide Sabbath observance with an alternative justification. This alternative justification relates Sabbath observance to the story of creation in Genesis 1:1–2:4a that culminates in God as creator observing rest on the seventh day (Gen 2:2-3). The justification for Sabbath observance is, then, not just “covenantal,” the commemoration of God’s deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt (as in Deuteronomy and the original version that it attests in Exodus), but, rather, “cosmic”: Sabbath belongs to the very rhythms of creation itself (as in Gen 2:2-3). This commentary will conclude that Exodus and Deuteronomy offer two complementary views about the content of the Decalogue—and about much more besides. It will argue that

Introduction

Deuteronomy, which presents itself as, substantially, reminiscences, attests the original wording that once stood in Exodus, a “covenantal” version not just of the Decalogue but also of many other passages dealing with fundamental events, institutions, and concepts. A later, “cosmic” edition in Exodus as it now stands has overlaid the original version that Deuteronomy attests. Because the reminiscences in Deuteronomy (“D”) provide the instrument for the recovery of that original version in Exodus, this commentary will call that recovered version the “D-version.” The later edition will be called the “P-edition”: “P,” because, as interpreters have long observed, the final stage in the production of Exodus—and of the Pentateuch as a whole—reflects characteristically “priestly” interests.2 For convenience, I shall, on occasion, personalize “D” and “P” as individuals, whatever the precise identity of those responsible for the production of these works may have been. The variation in the Sabbath commandment goes beyond the divergence about the motive for keeping the Sabbath and extends even to its first word: “Remember” in Exodus 20:8; “Observe” in Deuteronomy 5:12. On that divergence, Rashi, the medieval Jewish commentator (1040–1105 CE), makes an ingenious comment: both “Remember” and “Observe” “were said simultaneously. . . . As it says in Psalm 62:12 [11], ‘One thing God has spoken; two things have I heard.’”3 Rashi’s comment goes to the heart of the problem of theology (“God-talk”): how can humans speak about God? To express who God is in the mystery of the divine being transcends the power of human speech. God is by definition beyond definition. Whatever God “says,” humans “hear” in different ways, no one of which exhausts the divine “speech.” Human words can offer only approximations about God and about the relation between the divine and the human. The interpreter is not to gloss over or to harmonize variations in theological expressions such as in the Decalogue or to show preference for one over the other. Scripture, it seems, is not a monolithic structure, monochrome, or flatly two-dimensional. It contains a rich dialogue, even debate, between two competing viewpoints. Faithful interpretation of Scripture requires that justice be done to that debate. Both motives for keeping the Sabbath, in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, are “correct”; in the interplay of their contrasting formulations, they allude to more than a single harmonized expression can say. Theology has the unending, creative task of relating afresh the elusive presence of the one unchanging but ultimately unknowable God to ever-changing human conditions. [Theology as Creative Hearing and Speaking about God] This variation in expression is not a regrettable

3

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Introduction

necessity; it is inescapable. The vigor of debate between two correct accounts lends vitality and color to the task of speaking about God. That observation provides the baseline for this commentary. [T]he truth of faith can only be represented fully in antinomies This variation between two voices [paradoxes]. Divine reality is so full of life that not only a rational but even a paradoxical judgement cannot exhaust it. continues far beyond the Decalogue. A religious truth, even a truth revealed by the Spirit, is per se Time and again, the underlying version a one-sided truth, and therefore a misrepresentation of the that Deuteronomy attests breaks truth if it is reported rationally. When considered only by itself it is, therefore, an untruth. (T. C. Vriezen) through the surface of the present form of the book of Exodus (and Numbers). Juliana Claassens writes on the “unfinalizable” dialogical The same cross-reference formula, “as character of Scripture and of scriptural interpretation: the LORD your God commanded you” (or similar), is found frequently and [C]hanged conditions actualize the potential already embedded in the image . . . “[N]ewcomers” to the theological explicitly in these reminiscences (e.g., debate such as women [and] liberation theologians . . . ask Deut 1:19; 2:1; 10:5). But the reminisnew questions concerning how God should be imagined. cences extend much more widely than These “outsiders” ask questions that have not been asked the explicit use of such formulae (just as before and thus serve the function of re-accentuating the traditional imagery found in the biblical texts. the formula is missing in the other “commandments” of the Decalogue, Theodoor C. Vriezen, An Outline of Old Testament Theology, trans. S. Neuijen apart from those concerning Sabbath (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962) 76–77; L. Juliana M. Claassens, “Biblical Theology and parents, that Deuteronomy accuas Dialogue: Continuing the Conversation on Mikhail Bakhtin and Biblical Theology,” JBL 122 (2003): 132, 136. On the general topic, see Karl Allen rately recalls). Kuhn, Having Words with God: The Bible as Conversation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 2008). As in the case of the Sabbath, the variations between the version of Exodus that the reminiscences in Deuteronomy attest and the present edition of the book concern not peripheral issues but matters of fundamental importance. A preliminary list of such substantive issues includes Theology as Creative Hearing and Speaking about God Many writers have cautioned that, while God has searched us out and found us, there is—there can be—no easy and direct route into understanding the mind and being of God. Here are a couple of examples:

• the history of covenant: according to P, God established the covenant already with the ancestors (Exod 2:24; cf. Gen 17); what happens at Sinai (P’s name for the mountain of God) is the revelation of the Law/Torah. According to D, what happens at Horeb (D’s name for the mountain) is the making of the covenant between God and Israel (Exod 24:3-8). • the number of plagues of Egypt: seven acts to compel Pharaoh to release Israel (D); ten signs to demonstrate God’s universal power (P) (see commentary on Exod 11). • the chronology of events: contrast the “three days” of Exodus 3:18 (D) and the “third month” of Exodus 19:1 (P) for arrival at the mountain of God.

Introduction

• the festivals that commemorate these events: a seven-day Passover, according to D; a one-night Passover and fiftieth-day Pentecost/Weeks, according to P (see on Exod 12:1). • Israel’s journey through the wilderness: a pilgrimage of grace pre-Sinai (P); a succession of post-Horeb punishments (D) (see commentary on Exod 12:37). • the sanctuary in the wilderness: the place of meeting with God, according to D; God’s dwelling, according to P (see on Exod 25:1).4 The identification of D and P materials in Exodus is relatively clear in broad terms (but complicated in detail). The later, P-edition of Exodus contributes a variety of materials: • large, self-contained blocks of mostly independent material, especially on the Levites in Exodus 6:2–7:13, the Passover in Exodus 12, and the Tabernacle in Exodus 25–31; 35–40; • blocks of material developed from the D-version in Numbers, especially on the route through the wilderness in Exodus 15:22b–19:2a; • a host of adjustments in the detail of the D-version in the remaining parts of the book. For the D-version of Exodus, the Decalogue in the form that Deuteronomy attests provides the essential statement of the terms of the covenant between God and Israel. The Book of the Covenant in Exodus 20:22–23:33 (“B”) expounds the Decalogue at length. The Decalogue and B also constitute the terms of the covenant that God reaffirms after the apostasy of the golden calf incident in Exodus 32–34. Matching the Decalogue, both D and P accounts look backwards and forwards. They are ideological works that provide a story of origins from the point of view of the loss of the land and a program for the recovery of ideal origins when Israel will realize its vocation to be “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exod 19:6). [Are D and P Based on Earlier, Pre-Exilic Documents?]

The Kind of Literature in Exodus

Many scholars have attempted to relate Exodus and its account of the exodus from Egypt to what is known of ancient Egyptian history.5 Without doubt, the Exodus narrative reflects the general outline of events in ancient Near Eastern history. All Israel’s fore-

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Are D and P Based on Earlier, Pre-Exilic Documents? The reminiscences in Deuteronomy seem to refer back to an earlier narrative in the preceding Pentateuch. The search for earlier documents dominated earlier generations of historical critical study, who termed the putative documents that might contain such a narrative “J,” “E,” or, in combination, “JE” (see further in [The Unity of Exodus 3]). “The nature of the opening chapters of Deuteronomy as retrospect on the plains of Moab seems naturally to point to some such narrative of events of preceding years as JE offers” (Nicholson, 157). Partly to come to terms with that heritage, I organized the Robertson Smith Congress in 1994. In my view, Deuteronomy is a “Janus” document that looks both backwards and forwards. Where its narrative framework ceases to be reminiscence, it becomes the continuation of the D-version in Numbers. See the narratives in Deut 4:41-49, Moses’ designation of three cities of flight on the East Bank, as continuation of the D-version in Num 32; and Deut 31:1-23, the appointment of Joshua as Moses’ successor (Num 27:12-23 is a rival account that belongs to P, where Joshua is subordinate to Eleazar, high priest in succession to Aaron). Ernest W. Nicholson, The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998). William Robertson Smith: Essays in Reassessment, ed. William Johnstone, JSOTSup 189 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).

bears were once slaves to Egypt at least in the sense that Egypt in the N ew Kingdom period from the sixteenth to the twelfth centuries BCE was the dominant power in the ancient Near East with an empire reaching out from the Nile valley at times as far as the borders of the Hittite empire in north Syria. The onslaught of the Sea Peoples, including the Philistines, from the Aegean and across the eastern Mediterranean around the twelfth century was a significant factor in weakening that Egyptian empire in the Levant and in creating the conditions for the liberation of subject peoples and the eventual emergence of small independent kingdoms like Israel in the region. Undoubtedly, the archaeology of the ancient Near East, not least its epigraphical discoveries, has made an enormous contribution to elucidating obscure details.6 This commentary maintains that the attempt, however well intentioned, to elucidate the present text by reconstructing the original events to which it refers can run counter to the biblical narrative. The book of Exodus combines two theological narratives of a suitably complex nature that tolerate diverging views on factual matters. The truths of these two accounts jostle with one another in creative debate. In the eagerness to propose credible historical circumstances, there may be occasions when a reconstruction of origins or original sense that seems plausible to a modern interpreter flies in the face of the biblical purpose. For instance, commentators regularly substitute the etymologically accurate “Reed Sea” or papyrus marsh for the embarrassingly expansive “Red Sea” that the Israelites escaped across in one night. The latter is, however, the D-version’s probable intention (see Exod 13:18). Strikingly, the book of Exodus pays little or no attention to specific features of ancient Egyptian history and to reconstructing, as a modern historian might, the past for its own sake on its own terms

Introduction

7 The Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age

(see [The Pharaohs of Exodus]). The biblical account is at once less than historical and more than historical. It generalizes the specific past exclusively from Israel’s point of view. Persecution by unnamed pharaohs in Moses’ time becomes emblematic of the long history of persecution that threatened Israel’s existence many times in its past, including recurrently at the hands of the Egyptians, and of its survival despite such persecution. The historical approach by relating this body of literature as a specific response to a particular set of historical circumstances is in danger of relativizing its significance. By contrast, Exodus imagines the past as model. It places the Israelites once again in the primal time of their mythic origins in the wilderness. There, God reveals the Torah as they set out on their generation-long trek through the typological wilderness towards the promised land, the ideal possession of which they will attain only in the end-time. [The Limits of Historical Interpretation] The probable date of composition of the two accounts removes the biblical narrative still further from the attempt to elucidate by

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origins. The close link between the D-version and the great history that ends in 2 Kings suggests that the D-version was written in the exilic period (see the connection between the golden calf in Exod 32:4, 8 Even when we can date a text with some confidence, and the “sin of Jeroboam” in 1 Kgs 12:28 there is no reason to limit our interpretation of that text by seeing it exclusively or primarily as a response to that provides the explanation for the exile of social, economic, or political factors. Literature that Israel and of Judah in 2 Kgs 17). If P repreendures for millennia does so precisely because it transents an edition of the D-version, then its scends its setting . . . . The tendency among biblical date is later still, sometime in the post-exilic scholars to focus first on setting and then to find a reading that fits the setting draws these scholars away period. from what is most abiding in the texts, often moving The exilic and post-exilic dates of these them toward what Jon Levenson rightly terms “a triviaccounts provide the circumstances for the alizing antiquarianism.” This tendency encourages composition of an epic of national origins scholars to belittle religiously significant or humanistically interesting interpretations so that they can that are a positive advantage for theological concentrate instead on the pettiest possible reading. statement. By the time of the composition of the book of Exodus, the events surBenjamin D. Sommer, “Dating Pentateuchal Texts and the Perils of Pseudo-Historicism,” in The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on rounding the exodus from Egypt had taken Current Research, ed. Thomas B. Dozeman et al., FAT 78 (Tübingen: place in the remote past, perhaps a thousand Mohr Siebeck, 2011) 106–107. years earlier. The narrative thus places the action of God too in primal time. After the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE, the physical becomes available for metaphysical application. The institutions have long ceased to exist; they become the currency of metaphor and of religious and theological symbolism. Couched in the knowingly naïve terms of anthropomorphism (e.g., in Gen 3:8, God walks in the garden, in Gen 8:21 appreciatively smells the savor of sacrifice, and, in Exodus, hears, speaks, and writes),7 the past is open to transcendence. Beyond the limitations of actual historical reality and verifiability, and the acids of historical falsifiability, the biblical narrative can now speak in physical terms figuratively of the significance of Israel’s ancient religious institutions now long gone. It recalls the memorial of the exodus stored up in the holy of holies of that first temple now destroyed, the deed box of the covenant with its tablets miraculously written by the finger of God that no doubt perished in that destruction. The miracles of Exodus—the plagues unparalleled before or since, the crossing through the Red Sea on dry land, the hearing of the voice of God at the mountain, and the inscribing of these tablets—are not to be decoded and relativized as mundane events explicable in physical terms. (This was the sort of reaction of biblical scholars from the eighteenth century onwards to philosophers’ objections to miracle, sometimes focused precisely on Exodus.8) These unparalleled, The Limits of Historical Interpretation Benjamin Sommer makes pungent comments on the limits of certain historical-critical reconstructions:

Introduction

9

Sight and Vision The art critic Waldemar Januszczak notes how the impressionist painter, Claude Monet, who obsessively painted his famous series on water lilies in his garden at Giverny during the last thirty years of his life (now hung in the dedicated gallery, the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, France), turned the impairment of his eyesight through cataract to positive advantage in his final and, in Januszczak’s judgment, finest canvas: “It freed his vision and made him trust his imagination.” Waldemar Januszczak, The Impressionists: Painting and Revolution: Gang of Four (London: British Universities Film & Video Council, 2011, videorecording.)

Claude Monet (1840–1926). Waterlilies, 1906. Chicago Institute of Art. [Credit: Wikimedia Commons, PD-Art (PD-old-auto)]

once-for-all miracles provide the literary context for the once-forall revelation of the uniquely authoritative Torah, “the desirable instrument through which the world was created” (m. Aboth 3:18). Safely located in Israel’s desert sanctuary long before the destruction of even the first temple and the depredations of the exilic age, the Decalogue stands in primal time as the unassailable founding document of Israel’s relation with its God. Appropriately, the holy of holies of the post-exilic second temple was empty.9 P’s account of the tabernacle (Exod 25:10-22; 26) imaginatively furnishes that empty space. Vision replaces sight. The power of the idea lies beyond the capacity of the physical structure to contain it. Herein lies the Bible’s implacable opposition to material relics: they fix and so reduce the locus of God’s action; they may degenerate to become objects of idolatry.10 Hence, Jeremiah looks to the future beyond the destruction of Jerusalem, the temple, and its contents in 586 BCE: “[I]n those days, says the LORD, they shall no longer say, ‘The ark of the covenant of the LORD.’ It shall not come to mind, or be remembered, or missed; nor shall another one be made” (Jer 3:16). This distance between portrayal in theological narrative and the reconstruction of actual historical events with their uncertainties and ambiguities is paralleled in the interpretation of other parts of the Bible, not least in the New Testament. The conventional distinction between the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith,” the first essential for the second, yet the second not limited by the first, well captures that distance. As has often been observed, the biblical narratives could only belong to a pre-photographic age.11 A

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photograph, even a running newsreel, could only present a limited, one-sided picture frozen in time, distorting by its fixity. Exodus as Christian Scripture

For the Christian reader, the fulfillment that the Old Testament receives in the New Testament provides the most important initial connection. The Christian church has received the Hebrew Bible as Scripture from the hands of Jesus, the risen Christ (e.g., Luke 24:25-27). He has welcomed in the Gentiles, summoned them to become joint inheritors of Israel’s tradition.12 In reading the Hebrew Bible as Old Testament, the chief adjustment that the interpreter must make is that the truths conveyed through the particulars of Israel’s past are transposed in universal terms into the present age. The treasured possession of a privileged group limited in time and space has become the common property of all peoples in any time and place. Everything that God was for Israel, God in Christ must be for the world. Everything that God required of Israel in response must, suitably transposed, serve as a model of response for all. To trace the connections between Exodus and the N ew Testament, a convenient place to start is the explicit citations of Exodus that appear in the New Testament. The UBS Greek New Testament identifies more than 280 allusions to, or quotations from, Exodus.13 These occur in almost every book of the New Testament, with particular concentrations in the Gospels and Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Hebrews, and (perhaps unexpectedly), most of all, Revelation.14 Almost every chapter in Exodus is represented.15 The density of these references is hardly surprising. The Old Testament story of deliverance in Exodus supplies the New Testament with the most essential resources of vocabulary and concept for understanding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the redeemer. The New Testament understands itself as the fulfillment of the Old in a number of ways. It stands in continuity with Israel’s history and marks its climax. The affirmation in Ephesians 1:10 that all things are “summed [N RSV: gathered] up” in Christ includes the sense that Christ as fulfillment recapitulates the whole history of ancient Israel and brings every element within that history to its full potential of meaning. In Christ, all the promises to Israel come to completion; all Israel’s expectations receive their realization. The New Testament understands “fulfillment” also in the sense of intensification, the “filling full” of implications of the

Introduction

Old; see, for example, the series of statements on the Law in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:17-48). The New Testament recognizes that the Law is holy, just, and good; but from a human point of view, its prohibitions only succeed in awakening the consciousness of sin and shortcoming. Radicalized by Jesus’ exposition, its demands are impossible to achieve. Christ personifies the Law of God; it finds its fulfillment through his perfect obedience. God in Christ satisfies the demands of God’s own Law. Only by union with Christ, by inspiration with the Spirit whom the resurrected Christ imparts, who animates the Law and motivates its observance, can his followers participate in his victory and find acceptance by God (e.g., Rom 6–8; 2 Cor 3:6-14). The faith of Abraham, “the ancestor of a multitude of nations” (Gen 17:5), who set out on a journey in trust in God’s promises long before the revelation of the Law of Moses (Gal 3:17; cf. Exod 12:40), provides the prior basis for the new international community, and the prior model of human response (e.g., Rom 4). Jesus, the divine-human mediator who combines all the attributes of sanctuary, priest, and victim (Heb 7–10), brings to realization the hope of securing oneness with God that the Law of Moses expressed through the apparatus of the sanctuary, its priesthood, and its sacrificial rites (see Exod 25–31). Finality in Christ has been present by implication throughout the Old Testament. The Old Testament is but the “shadow,” “sketch,” “pattern,” “type,” or “symbol”; the New Testament reveals the true “substance,” “content,” and “reality.” What was true for Israel is true for the church: the New Testament repeatedly applies to the new community (e.g., 1 Pet 2:5, 9; Rev 1:6) the affirmation of Exodus 19:5-6 that Israel is God’s “special possession, chosen, kingdom of priests, holy nation.” Israel’s passing through the waters of the Red Sea (Exod 14) becomes a model for baptism; God’s gift of manna (Exod 16) a model for the Eucharist (1 Cor 10). These sacraments provide for Christ’s followers “means of grace,” the physical vehicle and expression of their union with him and incorporation in him. The Christian festivals of Easter and Whit, patterned on ancient Israel’s festivals of Passover and Weeks/Pentecost (Exod 12–24), enable, year by year, the reliving of these once-for-all events. The book of Revelation uses the resources of language and ideas in Exodus for the portrayal of the end-time. It predicates the course of history upon the eternity of God, “He who is,” of Exodus 3:14.16 It depicts the drastic apocalyptic events that usher in the end in terms of the Exodus plague cycle, specifically plagues I, II,

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VI, VII, VIII, and IX.17 Revelation exploits the imagery of Mount Sinai quaking and smoking in Exodus 19:16-19.18 The names of the twelve tribes are inscribed on the gates and foundations of the new Jerusalem (Rev 21:12-13; cf. Exod 28:21). Explicit allusion to Exodus in the New Testament, however, such as the UBS Greek New Testament identifies, is sporadic and partial and hardly does justice to the influences and connections that run deeper and wider at the theological level (cf. the inadequacy of the “proof text” method of biblical interpretation). Thus, for example, the first direct citation of Exodus that UBS New Testament recognizes is in Matthew 2:20, “for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead,” where it identifies a reference to Exodus 4:19, the possibility for Moses’ safe return to Egypt (a loose connection indeed, for the geographical movement is in the opposite direction). Yet it is surely impossible to read the early chapters of Matthew without finding other parallels with the early life of Moses: conspicuously, Herod’s massacre of the innocents (Matt 2:16) and Pharaoh’s drowning of the boys in the Nile (Exod 1:22). Thereafter, in broad sweep, as the UBS New Testament notes, the two narratives run in parallel. Jesus’ forty days and nights in the wilderness echo of Moses’ forty days and nights on Sinai (Matt 4:2 echoes Exod 34:28), his forty years in Midian, and Israel’s subsequent forty years in the wilderness (Matt 4: 4, 7, 10 cite Deut 8:3; 6:16; 6:13). The Sermon on the Mount with its deliberate antitheses, “You have heard that it was said to those of old times . . . But I say to you” (Matt 5:22, 27, 31, 33, 38, 43), presupposes the Torah received on the Mountain of God.19 Scholars have proposed similar connections between the early chapters of John’s Gospel and incidents in Moses’ life.20 It would not be difficult, either, to propose connections between individual passages beyond those identified by UBS: e.g., Peter’s request for the washing of his head and hands as well as his feet in John 13:10 could be taken to reflect the washing and anointing of Aaron and his sons as priests (Exod 29:4, 7; 30:21). For further proposals, see the connections at Exodus 24:1-11; 29; 31:10-17; 35. The New Testament itself recognizes that fulfillment does not imply supersession or abrogation. The Old Testament retains validity in its own right. Thus the New Testament may quote the Old Testament directly as source of authority; perhaps most famously, Jesus, Paul, and James endorse “you shall love your neighbor as yourself ” as the epitome of ethics (Lev 19:18, which Lev 19:34 itself radicalizes by including the alien). There are large swathes of Exodus of which the New Testament makes no direct

Introduction

use; one can hardly regard these materials as theologically mute. Even where the New Testament happens to make use of the Old Testament, it may not always provide the sole, or even the necessary, Christian interpretation of a particular passage. Paul’s application of Exodus 34:29-35, “the veil on Moses’ face,” in 2 Corinthians 3:13-18, for instance, turns a perfectly acceptable theological statement about the blinding light of revelation that only the mediator can sustain into an attack on the veiled minds of Paul’s opponents. The issue of accurate interpretation of individual passages becomes still more acute when the interpreter links passage to passage for the construction of dogmatic statements. Does Genesis 2–3 really teach the fall as a historical event perpetuated genetically by the biological transmission of original sin (Ps 51:5) that only a subsequent historical event can reverse?21 Is the prophetic sign of the birth of a son to a virgin in Isaiah 7:14 a long-term forecast of the virgin birth? Is it not, rather, about the speedy coming of salvation for Jerusalem in the eighth century BCE within the time frame of a pregnancy and the subsequent weaning of a child? The Old Testament retains intrinsic value as an independent witness in its own right to issues of theological importance, perhaps even as a corrective to doctrinal excesses. Exodus poses searching questions to standard Christian doctrines in at least three areas: 1. The role of Law: see, e.g., Exod 15:22–19:2, where Israel from the start of its wilderness wanderings even before Sinai is, as Paul might say, “under the Law.” But the Law in these chapters is not an instrument of punishment but the source and way of life. 2. The relationship of justification and sanctification, the characteristic complementary emphases of the D-version and the P-edition. 3. In contrast to the expectation of an interventionist God, Exodus affirms a once-for-all event and revelation of Torah that has its counterpart in the once-for-all passion of Christ in, for example, Romans 6:10; Hebrews 7:27 (see commentary on Exod 1). For its own credibility and defense, Christianity would be well advised to stick closely to its Hebrew parent. These comments on the continuing validity of the Hebrew Bible in its own right raise questions about the appropriate method of its interpretation. There are two broad approaches to the integration of the Hebrew Bible into the Christian Scriptures. The first approach is essentially “deductive”: it looks back at the Hebrew

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Bible from the point of view of the New Testament and later Christian theology. With the general system of Christian theology in mind, it proceeds to the particulars of the biblical text in order to uncover the biblical sources of the doctrine that the church has historically affirmed, to illuminate and to fructify that doctrine. It looks across the Bible as a whole to find unity and consistency throughout as witness to the one God who is also the Father of Jesus Christ. This “canonical” approach to the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible has been associated in recent decades above all with the work of Brevard S. Childs.22 But, in view of the variety of literatures and viewpoints that the Scriptures happen to contain (not to mention the variety of canons endorsed by different branches of the church), does “canon” provide a principle of interpretation? Hence, Childs adds the history of interpretation in the church as further set of criteria,23 a program that seeks to identify a “family resemblance” that represents the Christian view of Scripture.24 This first approach will figure prominently in the illustrations that this commentary will use (see, e.g., the Verduner Altar, below). The second approach is “inductive”: it gathers the evidence text by text, seeking to approach the Hebrew Bible receptively without prejudging what it may say on any point at any level.25 It acknowledges that the Hebrew Bible is theologically articulate in its own right, on its own terms. It is not to be suffocated by a presupposed or supersessionist system that rules out certain conclusions about unity and variety in advance. The individuality of its texts is not to be flattened or distorted by being forced to fit into a dogmatic pattern that is read back into it. The contribution of the Hebrew Bible read forwards in relation to Christian theology may be to pose searching questions about the distillation of individual texts into doctrinal propositions and to help to reconstruct theology from the foundations. A commentary is by its nature episodic and has to proceed inductively, passage by passage. This approach too will be much in evidence in the discussion below. The two approaches need not be polarized.26 In the mind of the reader, both processes may be going on: expectations arising from prior belief along with unexpected challenges from intractable texts. Cultural Applications of Exodus

The influence of Exodus ideas is widespread and has struck deep chords in universal human experience: the instinct for liberation from oppression; the hope for personal freedom against seemingly

Introduction

invincible tyrants; and the vision of an ideal future. Its patterns, metaphors, and symbols have provided resources to portray and to make sense of human existence, to claim rights and to sustain confidence: the crossing of perilous waters; encounter at a mountain; the long journey through desolate regions towards the realization of dreams beyond attainment by the current generation. [Historic Appeals to Exodus] [Allusions to Exodus]

15

Historic Appeals to Exodus Examples of the many appeals to the exodus story by the oppressed would include Bede’s account of the Anglo-Saxons crossing the North Sea to England in the 5th century CE; the community of St. Cuthbert on Lindisfarne fleeing the Vikings in the 7th century CE; the Pilgrim Fathers fleeing persecution in their native England in the 17th century CE; Thomas Jefferson’s idea for using the crossing of the Red Sea on one side of the seal of the US; the emancipation of slaves; the American civil rights movement; the liberation theologians in South America and South African; Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms. For a brief summary, see Jonathan Boyarin, “Reading Exodus into History,” New Literary History 23 (1992): 523–54. For more comprehensive coverage, see David W. Kling, The Bible in History: How Texts Have Shaped the Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Scott M. Langston, Exodus Through the Centuries (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).

Exodus provides materials for almost endless applications, but its elevation of Torah lays down a stiff criterion for its appropriate use. Exodus is about not only freedom from oppression but also freedom for the service of God. In Christian terms, God is not only freeing us from sin and death (which is not in doubt) but also freeing us for a world of possibility (which demands constant creativity). The topics that Exodus raises touch on almost every pressing issue that continues to perplex the modern world and thus remain of the highest significance, from the financial crisis in Western economies caused by debt to the relations between the modern state of Israel and its Arab neighbors. The making of connections between the ancient and the modern world cannot be done in any trite or facile manner. Readers will, I hope, be constantly irked by the non-mention of what seems to them obvious and pressing connections. It cannot be otherwise. (I write, for instance, in the context of the “Arab spring” of 2011 where the issues of freedom are urgent; but today’s topical example soon becomes wearisomely dated.) It is impossible to do justice to all the details in the text, and totally impossible to exhaust the possible connections that fan out in a myriad of directions; the text pulsates with theological significance. Points of connection may well strike the user randomly and unexpectedly throughout. A verse at the heart of Exodus could almost have been designed for the reading process: “those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed” (16:18). There is profit at every level of engagement with the text.

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Introduction

Allusions to Exodus As a resource of language and allusion, Exodus pops up in unexpected places and has provided almost the default reference for the plight of human existence and the cry for rescue from it. Giacomo Puccini’s opera, La Bohème, opens with the impoverished painter Marcello in his garret working on his canvas, The Passage of the Red Sea: “This Red Sea Passage,” he cries, Marcello’s studio, Act III. La Bohème (1897) by Ruggero Leoncavallo (1858–1919). “feels damp and chill to me/As if a (Credit: Reginald gray / Wikimedia Commons, PD-self) stream down my back were flowing./But, in revenge, a Pharaoh will I drown.” One should not exaggerate the influence, however: a more recent version by Robin Norton-Hale purges the biblical references, no doubt reflecting the decline of public biblical knowledge and interest. Marcello now cries, “Why did I start this painting of the sea today? I feel as cold as if it were pouring over me. But in revenge, a sailor has to drown!” The impoverishment of the figure is startling. In Tom Stoppard’s play Jumpers, the “heroine” cries out in despair against the moral relativity of the age reflected by the other protagonists, citing perhaps almost unconsciously the Decalogue: “There is going to be such . . . [she searches for the right word] breakage, . . . such coveting of neighbours’ oxen and knowing of neighbours’ wives, such dishonouring of mothers and fathers, and bowings and scrapings to images graven and incarnate.” The “Golden Rule,” “do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matt 7:12), the summary of the ethics of the Decalogue, is the subject of a mosaic presented to the UN Headquarters in New York by Mrs. Nancy Reagan as First Lady in 1985 on behalf of the American people. Operation “Exodus” was the term used for bringing Ethiopian refugees from Sudan to Israel in 1984. Operation “Mose” (the Italian form of “Moses”) is the name given to the project for creating flood barriers to protect the lagoon in Venice, Italy. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in a fainter echo and a darker tone, Macduff, on news of the total slaughter of his family, rails against the apparent inactivity and silence of God (as in the centuries of oppression of Israel in Egypt in Exod 1–2): “Did heaven look on, and would not take their part?” Giacomo Puccini, La Bohème, English National Opera, London: John Calder, 1982. Robin Norton-Hale, La Bohème, revised (London: Oberon, 2010). Tom Stoppard, Jumpers (London: Faber, 1972) 70–71. William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act IV, scene 3.

“As Seeing the Invisible”:27 The Use of Art to Illustrate Theology

The point made above about the unsuitability of the fixed image to convey the rich texture of the biblical narrative in itself, not to mention its limitless interconnections inside the Bible and beyond, raises acutely the question that is part of the mission of this commentary series: How can one express the message of the Bible visually through works of art to a visually oriented age? Not least in connection with Exodus, the question arises of the compatibility in principle of representational art with the apparent prohibition of the “Second Commandment” (Exod 20:4) that has had an

Introduction

17

inhibiting and disabling effect on the development of religious art in Judaism and also in Protestantism in the Reformation period and after. Can one surmount the mismatch between the definiteness of the image and the never completely definitive nature of theological discourse? Masterpieces of European art, particularly from the medieval period, successfully go beyond realistic portrayal of the individual biblical scene, do justice to the multilayered interconnections of the individual text within the wider sweep of the biblical narrative, and challenge relationship to shared human experience. As a preliminary example, I offer the massive Verduner Altar in the monastery at Klosterneuburg, Austria.28 Specialists agree that the Verduner Altar provides one of the most complete expressions in art of the subtly elaborated program of biblical interpretation broadly called “typology.”29 Examples of Typological Interpretation in the Early Church Following the lead of the Theresia Heither provides in a helpful review of the biblical interN ew Testament, the church pretation of the Greek and Latin Fathers. Their presupposition is has traditionally pursued a that in Scripture we encounter by faith the living word of God. This encounter bridges all distance in time. The Fathers deal with the overall Christ-centered “typological” Old Testament picture and the New Testament fulfillment, not with approach to the interpretation exegetical difficulties of individual verses. The texts of the Old Testament of the Old Testament. Reading are never isolated from Christ and read historically, but are understood it literally or figuratively, it typologically in the light of the celebration of Easter. Christ is “the paschal has found witness to Christ in lamb.” “Israel’s redemption from Egypt” is the type of human redemption every part. The Old Testament from the dominion of Satan and death, from all that enslaves and demeans. “Egypt” is the world in its ambivalence: on the one hand, it provides “prototypes”; the offers security for existence; on the other, with its blandishments, it N ew Testament, appropriate enslaves the servants of God and tempts them to turn back. Christians correspondences, “antitypes.” [Examples of Typological Interpretation in

are called to another “land”; their goal is the heavenly Jerusalem. God permits “Israel” to suffer in “Egypt” so that they are prepared and ready to depart from this world. “Moses” is the type of the Christ: in relation to Pharaoh and Aaron he is “God” (Exod 4:16); in relation to the people, he is mediator and redeemer. “Pharaoh” is the “ruler of this world” who does not know “Joseph,” the true redeemer of the world. For named exponents of these views, see Theresia Heither, Schriftauslegung: Das Buch Exodus bei den Kirchenvätern, Neuer Stuttgarter Kommentar, Altes Testament 33/4 (Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2002) 22–41.

Henri de Lubac, in his massive account of this tradition of interpretation in medieval times, summarizes its general viewpoint: “Everything in [Scripture] is related to [Christ]. In the end he is its sole object. Consequently, he is, so to speak, its whole exegesis.”30 Typology is thus a highly “deductive” approach to Old Testament interpretation, in which the New Testament exerts the controlling influence. Even if one cannot subscribe exclusively to the theory, that inability should not deter one from appreciating the richly suggestive network of correspondences and interconnections between the biblical texts that it proposes. the Early Church]

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Introduction

The Verduner Altar The central column, 9, illustrates the theological scheme of the altar. The Offering of Isaac (Gen 22:1-19) and the Spies bearing Grapes from the Valley of Eshcol (Num 13:23-24) are types of the Crucifixion of Christ (Matt 27//), center. The motto around the top panel, “The father prepares at the altar to sacrifice the precious child,” gives a factual summary of the narrative in Gen 22. The viewer is left to make the connection between the distraught father torn between duty and love, his preparedness to sacrifice his beloved only son of promise, and the anguish of God the Father at the crucifixion of Jesus. Isaac bearing the wood for the sacrifice (Gen 22:6) is seen as a prefiguration of Jesus bearing his cross. The ram caught in a Verdun Altar in Klosterneuburg Abbey. (Credit: Effi Schweizer / Wikimedia Commons, PD-self) thicket is a type of the innocent Lamb of God (see John 1:29; Rev 5:6-13). The inscription around the bottom panel of the spies bearing the grapes from Eshcol is overtly typological: “In the pole, read the wood of the cross; in the grapes, the sign of Christ.” The grapes hanging from the pole symbolize Christ hanging from the cross; the grapes themselves represent the wine of the Eucharist. The two bearers are the Old Testament and the New Testament, the synagogue and the church. The leading bearer is the Old Testament, coming before Christ, turning his head toward the grapes. The central panel, the crucifixion, “the passion of the Lord,” bears the motto, “The victim is slaughtered by whom our ruin is removed.” The inscription on the cross reads “Jesus, the Nazarene.” Mary and John stand on either side. The moon on the right of the cross, representing the Old Testament, is in partial eclipse by the sun, the New Covenant, on the left. The squares behind the cross have cosmic significance. Above left is Daniel with a scroll bearing the Messianic text: “After [the sixty-two weeks of years] an anointed one shall be cut off [and no-one will help him]” (Dan 9:26).

The Verduner altarpiece now contains fifty-one enamel panels. The execution of each panel is exquisite, but only their arrangement and combination fully conveys the typological sense of the whole. The panels stand in three rows of seventeen scenes: Diagram of the Verduner Altar left wing center right wing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 I before the law II under grace

†

III under the law = Moses panel;

† = crucifixion of Christ

Introduction

The top and bottom rows (I and III in the diagram above) contain Old Testament scenes (except for a couple of panels on “the last things” at the extreme right); the middle row (II) contains New Testament scenes. Each of the rows has a Latin title (down both left and right sides): • the top (I), “before the Law,” scenes before Exodus 19, the beginning of the revelation of Law to Moses; • the bottom (III), “under the Law,” scenes beginning from Exodus 19 (but including the legislation on Passover in Exod 12 and on manna in Exod 16); • and the middle (II), “under grace,” scenes from the N ew Testament, especially from the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation. The viewer can read the panels horizontally from left to right, in the sequence top, bottom, and middle rows, to give the complete Bible story in outline in chronological order from Genesis to Revelation. But the viewer is also meant to read the panels vertically in seventeen columns of three scenes each; this vertical reading provides the typological sense. In each column, two Old Testament scenes, one above (I), “before the Law,” the other below (III), “under the Law,” match typologically the New Testament scene in the center (II), “under grace.” The ninth scene in the middle row, the crucifixion of Christ (shown † in diagram above), stands at the center of the altarpiece whether read horizontally or vertically. It is the pivot that integrates the theological program of the whole work: in the horizontal reading, it marks the midpoint in the history of salvation; in the vertical reading, it provides the key to the typological sense of Scripture. The Latin inscription that runs in a band right through the altarpiece duly explains the purpose of these three parallel rows. The inscription begins, “You will discern, portrayed in this work, how the sacred things31 of the [three] ages [shown in these rows] are in agreement.” Consistency is embedded in Scripture at multiple levels, and the altarpiece is designed to demonstrate that consistency. The three sets of figures that preside over the three rows further indicate the integration of the whole work. Over the top row, probably intended to preside over the whole work, is a series of angels. This is a statement of the inspiration and authority of the Bible (see Heb 2:2 for the Old Testament as “the message declared by angels”; also Acts 7:38, 53; Gal 3:19). Over the bottom row presides a set of twenty virtues: first virtue itself, followed by joy, obedience, pity, fear, peace, temperance,

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20

Introduction

charity, piety, generosity, prudence, sobriety, concord, fortitude, justice, faith, humility, patience, chastity, and truth. Life “under the Law” should express itself in the fruits of virtuous living. In the middle row, a series of prophets presides over the scenes from the New Testament. The sacred events in the three ages do not happen haphazardly; they are related to one another, in accordance with the divine plan, by a scheme of prophecy and fulfillment. David in the Psalms is the “prophet” most frequently cited, seven times; Isaiah, four; Solomon, twice (in Proverbs and Song of Songs); the rest once each, Moses, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Jonah, Zephaniah, Daniel, and, interestingly, Paul (he presides over the scene of the angels sounding the last trumpet, 1 Cor 15:52, in the second last column in connection with the second coming of Christ). Medieval interpretation identified “four senses of Scripture” (the title of De Lubac’s work, cited above); the complex web of panels in the Verduner Altar brilliantly conveys these four senses. Each passage taken in and of itself has a literal sense. Beyond the literal sense, are three figurative senses that one may neatly sum up as “faith,” “hope,” and “charity”:32 • faith: the “analogical”33 sense where the correspondence of meaning between scriptural passages is discerned through kinship with other passages (reading in the vertical dimension above); • hope: the whole presentation has a forward movement; from promise to fulfillment, it leads to the expectation of the second coming, the final consummation of all things in Christ (as in the horizontal dimension above; this is the so-called “anagogical” sense, literally, “leading up,” from this world to the next); • and charity: portrayed in the bottom row of the altarpiece where Law is realized in virtuous acts (the so-called “tropological” sense, from the Greek verb “to turn,” in this case faith into action). The altarpiece has been justly called a summa theologica in pictures34 (the allusion is to the theological system of Thomas Aquinas, written in the 1260s–1270s). This exhilarating combination of materials across the Bible is a visual expression of the whole gospel as proclaimed in Scripture (before its adaptation in 1331, the “altarpiece” was actually a pulpit) and celebrated in liturgy at the altar. In this commentary, the illustrations drawn from the Verduner altar have to be confined to the six columns where panels portray Moses or the Mosaic age. All but one of these Moses panels relate

Introduction

to Exodus. A preliminary overview reveals the following pattern of interconnections: • Column 5: the Crossing of the Red Sea (above; Exod 14), and the Brazen Sea in Solomon’s Temple (below; 1 Kgs 7:23-26), as types of Christ’s Baptism (center; Matt 3//); • Column 6: Moses’ Return to Egypt (above; Exod 4:18-26), and the Selection of the Passover Lamb (below; Exod 12:3-13), as types of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (center, Matt 21:1-11//); • Column 7: Melchizedek’s Offering of Bread and Wine (above; Gen 14:17-20), and the Deposit of Manna in the Ark (below; Exod 16:32-34), as types of the Last Supper (center; Matt 26:17-29//); • Column 12: the Slaying of the Firstborn of Egypt (above; Exod 12:29-36), and Samson Slaying the Lion (below; Judg 14:5-6), as types of Christ’s Descent into Hell (center; cf. Eph 4:9; 1 Pet 3:19); • and Column 15: Noah’s Ark (above; Gen 6:11–8:19) and the Giving of the Law on Sinai (below; Exodus 19–23) as types of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (center; Acts 2:1-4). The association of these biblical passages may at first sight seem arbitrary;35 yet it is every bit as potent as the linking of Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel lessons in many a lectionary (indeed, in the ratio of two Old Testament panels to one New Testament, it more faithfully reflects the relative weights of the two Testaments). Whether or not one endorses typology as a method, the interplay of imagery is richly suggestive, and the erudition is impressive. The commentary in the contexts in Exodus just noted will discuss these panels more fully in Exodus 12, along with Exodus 4:18-26; and Exodus 14, 16, and 19. The central column, 9, which also involves Moses (though the passage referred to is in Numbers, not Exodus), provides an appropriate example in anticipation. [Non-polarization of Modes of Access to Truth] [Modern Screen Images]

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Introduction

Non-polarization of Modes of Access to Truth Helmut Buschhausen has suggestively commented that these three ages, “Before the Law,” “Under the Law,” and “Under Grace,” may also be called the times of natural law, written law, and grace; the realms of heathens, Jews, and Christians; or of reason, law, and the Holy Spirit. Under the tutelage of angels, virtues, and prophets, these are not only successive eras, as in the history of salvation, but also states of mind in contemporary interrelationship. That is a perception of fundamental validity, in the view of this commentary. The Verduner Altar is thus not simply a matter of antiquarian, aesthetic interest; its affirmation about interactive processes of what might be called Wisdom, Law, and Gospel in the human mind retains enduring relevance. Once again, one should avoid unnecessary polarization. The Hebrew canon is capacious; it recognizes the complementarity of Law, as in the Pentateuch, and of Wisdom, as in Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes, as well as of Prophecy. “Special” revelation, “theology from above,” and “general” revelation, “theology from below,” meet and overlap. In the contemporary scene, not least in Britain, sharp polarization is being fomented by militantly atheistic scientists and philosophers. A. C. Grayling’s collection is an example of the latter, a deliberately provocative anthology of philosophical and other writings arranged as an alternative Bible. But many of the writings he includes share perceptions compatible with biblical “Wisdom”; a more constructive task would be to search for common ground in the pursuit of virtue. The direction of travel in the line, “May thy Church the world deliver,” in Percy Dearmer’s hymn, “Father, who on man dost shower,” can sometimes be advantageously reversed: “May thy World the church deliver.” The Jewish Chronicle, 2 March 2012, 23, reports Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, as saying at the Jewish Book Week 2012 that he had “learnt more from atheists than from theists.” Helmut Buschhausen, Der Verduner Altar (Vienna: Edition Tusch, 1980) 117–18. A. C. Grayling, The Good Book (London: Bloomsbury, 2011).

Modern Screen Images Typological interpretation, by its affirmation of layers of meaning and its interrelating of multiple texts and motifs, does profound justice to the inescapably allusive character of speech about God and to the texture of the biblical material. With good reason, the Bible incorporates a composite Pentateuch, two versions of ancient Israel’s history, four large collections of prophecies, and four unharmonized Gospels. The success of artworks inspired by typology contrasts with the frequent failure to satisfy of simple representational pictures, as in some insipid Victorian and later stained glass, or as romanticized in the cinema where a single narrative thread has to be chosen out of the multiple interactive strands in the biblical source often with added “dramatic” material. But the best need not be made the enemy of the good. Beyond doubt, such famous essays in biblical portrayal as Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, 1956, starring Charlton Heston, or The Prince of Egypt, 1998, by Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg, and David Geffen of Dreamworks make an impact through imaginative reconstruction of incidents and personalities. They may even encourage the viewer unsatisfied with the concrete image to return to the potency and nuance of the written narrative. M. M. Homan, “The Good Book and the Bad Movies: Moses and the Failure of Biblical Cinema,” in Milk and Honey; Essays on Ancient Israel and the Bible in Appreciation of the Judaic Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego, ed. Sarah Malena et al. (Winona Lake IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007) 87–112; Images of the Word: Hollywood’s Bible and Beyond, ed. David Shepherd, Semeia Studies 54 (Atlanta GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008).

Notes 1. NRSV is the English version that this commentary—like others in the series— primarily refers to. I have written the commentary, however, on the basis of the Hebrew text of Exodus in BHS that underlies that English version; occasionally, I propose modification of the English rendering in NRSV. Where verse numbering varies between the English and the Hebrew versions, the commentary follows NRSV. 2. The term “D-version,” which recognizes the priority of the positive contribution that Deuteronomy makes, seems preferable to this writer to the negative-sounding “Non-P,” now widely current in contemporary scholarly literature. The usage “Non-P” has arisen especially in German-speaking scholarship, where, in the view of many, “P”

Introduction provides the earliest continuous narrative that binds Genesis to the following books, Exodus through Numbers. See Konrad Schmid, Erzväter und Exodus: Untersuchungen zur doppelten Begründung der Ursprünge Israels innerhalb der Geschichtsbücher des Alten Testaments, WMANT 81 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1999); trans. James Nogalski, Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible, Siphrut: Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures 3 (Winona Lake IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010). See also Thomas B. Dozeman, Exodus, Eerdmans Critical Commentary (Grand Rapids MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009) 31–43. 3. Michael Carasik, The Commentators’ Bible: The JPS Miqra’ot Gedolot, Exodus (Philadelphia PA: Jewish Publication Society, 2005) 160. 4. Traditionally in biblical study, scholars have identified different “sources” in the text (e.g., D and P) on the basis of distinctive vocabulary. Such distinctive vocabulary is indeed to be noted in Exodus (e.g., in verbs for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, kbd in D, ˙zq in P; “I” [the first-person singular pronoun] in D is nh; vv. 11-12); YHWH responds to that “misery” (root again >nh) in 3:7. P, too, intensifies Pharaoh’s actions in vv. 13-14: the phrase “in mortar and brick” heightens the drudgery of the building works; the addition of agricultural work

Exodus 1

37

Pharaoh as Prototype Tyrant The Deuteronomic literature applies the model of Pharaoh to condemn other tyrants, not least—and perhaps surprisingly—King Solomon in his latter years in 1 Kgs 5–11. Like Pharaoh, Solomon subjects Israel to forced labor, “state slavery” (mas, 1 Kgs 5:27; 9:15; the plural missîm is used in Exod 1:11 to match the plural “taskmasters”). His project to construct “storage cities” is, partly at least, the same as Pharaoh’s (1 Kgs 9:19, cf. Exod 1:11; NRSV varies its rendering of the same Hebrew expression; for the use of such cities as depots for agricultural produce, see 2 Chr 32:28). Solomon’s tyrannical policies led directly to the breakup of the kingdom. Jeroboam, the first king of the schismatic North, had been supervisor in charge of the mas on the House of Joseph; he led the revolt of the northern tribes when Solomon’s son and successor, Rehoboam, tried to intensify his father’s policies. Ado[ni]ram, who had been David and Solomon’s official in charge of the mas (2 Sam 20:24; 1 Kgs 4:6), was stoned to death by the aggrieved northern tribes (1 Kgs 12:18). The standard by which Deuteronomy measures Solomon as despot is the “law of the king” in Deut 17:14-20. In 1 Kgs 10:28-29, Solomon flouts the limitation on the trade in horses with Egypt (Deut 17:16); his amassing of wealth and his multiple foreign marriages, not least to Pharaoh’s daughter (1 Kgs 11:1; 10:27), contravene Deut 17:17.

restricts still more the free spirit of the shepherd. [Egypt as “The House of Slaves”]

The Deuteronomic literature, as in the “Prologue” to the Decalogue, calls Egypt “the house of slaves,”10 i.e., of chattel slaves, not only because of what the Egyptians did to Israel but because of what Egypt was to its own people (see Gen 47:13-27). From this realm of atrocity as measured even by its own standards of human

The Key Term “Slave” So abhorrent to modern sensibility is slavery that it comes as a surprise that the D-version uses the vocabulary of slavery to denote the relation between Israel and YHWH (3:12; 4:23) and the rites of worship (10:26). The word “slave” is undifferentiated in Hebrew. In secular usage, it covers the range from outright “slave” through “servant, employee, official, or subject” to its use in deferential address by an inferior to a superior, “my Lord, your servant.” But if one applies “slavery” in its primary sense of slavery for debt, the metaphor is bold, its implications far-reaching. The Israelites are YHWH’s debtors. They owe to YHWH the committed service such as the creditor requires of a debtor. Not only can their imperfect service never repay the debt they owe; they are also expected in love for their master (Exod 21:5) to opt for perpetual service in YHWH’s household. There they receive a gracious welcome where their children too, “house-born,” belong as part of the household. In P, in Lev 25, the reason for enslavement of one Israelite to another is, again, economic: the means of physical support of those who have fallen on hard times. P recognizes the slave’s continuing standing as a member of the community of Israel: the creditor is not to subject an Israelite to “the slavery of the slave” (Lev 25:39) but, rather, to regard him as a hired worker (∞åkîr) whose notional pay goes toward the discharge of the debt and who resides with the creditor as a “resident visitor” (tô¡åb; Lev 25:40). Lev 25:47-55 expresses horror that an Israelite might be the slave of a non-Israelite. It is the duty of the next-of-kin to act as “redeemer” (gôbr, “to cross,” supplies a play on words with “Eber”). (10:17), the penultimate plague in the DForeigners use the term “Hebrew” disparagingly to version; and the death of Pharaoh’s firstborn describe the Israelites (Philistines, 1 Sam 4:6; in the climactic plague (12:30). The death of Egyptians, Exod 2:6). Israelites may use it to explain Pharaoh’s firstborn, as 4:23 makes clear, is an themselves to foreigners (Exod 3:18). Within Israel itself, “Hebrew” denotes the debtapplication of the law of retaliation in slave as belonging to the lowest social stratum to 21:22-27: the death of an infant brings which the Israelite can slip (Exod 21:2). Gen 14:13 condign punishment; if a master knocks out uses the term of Abraham as a stateless, landless so much as a slave’s tooth, he should auto- warrior; see also 1 Sam 13:3, 7 (where the same play on the verb >br, “to cross,” occurs), of Israelites whom matically grant him his liberty. The midwives wisely (so much for the Philistines have dispossessed, forced to flee, or Pharaoh’s taking “wise counsel” in v. 10) do hold in subjection (1 Sam 14:21). Documents mentioning a similar-sounding social not refuse the commission outright on a class, habirû/ >apiru, have been recovered from ˘ point of principle but, seeming to go along throughout the 2d millennium BCE and throughout the with the policy, undermine it from within. “fertile crescent” and beyond, into Anatolia. Thus, As “God-fearers,” they cannot take the life while every Israelite might in some ethnic or social of their compatriots. The narrative uses the sense be a “Hebrew,” not every “Hebrew” is necesinternational term for Deity, ibrî vom Appellativum h abiru (BZAW 160; ˘ Pharaoh should recognize universal moral Berlin: De Gruyter, 1984). constraints and acknowledge the piety of the midwives. These universal norms find expression in the terms of the “Noahic covenant” (Gen 9:1-17, that most critics assign to P), binding thus on all humans, the chief of which is, precisely, the prohibition on the shedding of human blood. When Pharaoh summons them to explain themselves, they disingenuously claim that the Hebrew women give birth so quickly16 that they are delivered before the midwives can reach them. Thus, they fool Pharaoh and frustrate his plans. God rewards the loyal midwives (v. 20). At the very least, this implies that God protected them from any reprisals from Pharaoh. Many interpreters associate v. 21b, “he gave them families,” with this “dealing well with” the midwives: as they saved the lives of children, so God preserved the lives of their own children. But the personal pronoun in the phrase “them” is masculine. While it is not unparalleled for the masculine to be used for feminine, the fact that the phrase in v. 21b is parallel to the phrase in v. 20b, “and the people multiplied and became very strong,” which is the whole point of the story, may support the interpreta-

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Exodus 1

The Nile The biblical writers were well aware of the significance of the Nile for Egypt. Donald B. Redford comments that the ancient Egyptians “experienced their world as an unrelenting manifestation of [the Nile’s] power, often creative, sometimes destructive, but always regular and predictable. Annually in the spring, the melting snows in the Abyssinian highlands caused the Nile to flood and inundate the flood-plain along the lower courses of the river during the summer and early fall; and thereafter the falling water left behind a fen, marsh, and meadow teeming with life.” Herodotus, the Greek historian, famously referred to Egypt as “a gift of the river.” Amos 8:8; 9:5 and Jer 46:7-8 refer to the phenomenon of the Nile flood. There is a knowledge of the geography and important cities of Egypt in, e.g., Isa 19:5-11; Jer 46:14; Ezek 30:6, 13-18 and, at least to a degree, of its mythology (Jer 46:25). Ezek 29:3, 9-10 alludes to the false claims of the deified power of the beast that lurks in the Nile (part of the haphtarah reading accompanying Exod 6:2–9:35; NJPSV, 1098a). Ironically, Exodus turns the Nile as source of life into an instrument of death: its bank, as “liminal” space, will be the scene of encounter (2:3, 5; 7:15-25; 8:20); the river will be the place where, by the law of retaliation for the death of Israelite males in 1:22, the pursuing Egyptian army meet their death (14:9–15:21). Donald B. Redford, The Ancient Gods Speak: A Guide to Egyptian Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) ix.

(Credit: Satellite photo of the Nile. Dbachmann, PD-USGov-NASA)

J. Gwynn Griffiths, “Hecataeus and Herodotus on ‘A Gift of the River,’” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 25 (1966): 57–61.

tion that v. 21b also refers to God’s act in creating households for Israel as a whole. When Pharaoh sees that the midwives are totally ineffectual as his agents, he turns to his own people and orders them to throw the male infants into the Nile (but to keep the female infants alive). Curiously, Pharaoh does not specify drowning only the Hebrew male infants.17 Such is Pharaoh’s paranoia that he may even include the infant Egyptians in his deranged orders. [The Nile]

Connections Does Exodus Affirm an Interventionist God?

It may seem obvious that Exodus gives warrant for affirming that God intervenes in human history. [God Who Acts] The transition from Genesis to Exodus 1 raises, then, an acute theological question: why is there a delay in the fulfillment of the promises that God has made to Israel? In Genesis 12:1-3, YHWH promises to give Israel a

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land and that they will become a great nation. Genesis 17:2, 4, 8 confirms these promises in the covenant of circumcision. Why, then, is there a gap of 430 years before God begins to implement these promises (Exod 12:40; cf. Gen 15:12-16)? The portrayal of Israel’s enslavement in Exodus 1 makes the question even more acute. The four centuries of slavery that follow the death of Joseph do not just represent a postponement of fulfillment; they inflict unmerited suffering on millions. The Israelites cry out because of their affliction (Exod 2:23; 3:7), yet God has done nothing in the interim to alleviate their God Who Acts God Who Acts is the title of a widely influential suffering. Is God absent, powerless to interwork by G. Ernest Wright, in which the thesis vene, careless, or callous? No doubt, there is that history is the theater of the continual intervention an element of self-inflicted suffering, of by God receives classic statement. human responsibility, in the biblical story of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt: the failings of the At the centre of Israelite faith lay the great proclamation that the God of the fathers had heard the cry of a fractured relations between the rival weak, oppressed people in Egypt. They had been families of Jacob’s complicated marital relaslaves, but then freed by mighty acts which demontionships lead to the enslavement of the strated God’s power to the Egyptians and to the world. whole group. But the famine in Canaan, . . . The knowledge of God was an inference from what actually had happened in human history. The Israelite crop failure in the land of promise that has eye was thus trained to take human events seriously, brought the recipients of promise down into because in them was to be learned more clearly than Egypt as starving refugees, is beyond human anywhere else what God willed and what he was responsibility and culpability. That YHWH about. Consequently, in all that happened subsequently the Israelite simply interpreted the meaning of events should then have permitted the long cenby recognizing and acknowledging in them the God turies of enslavement of Israel seems who had formed the nation by the remarkable events at incomprehensible. the Exodus and in the wilderness . . . God who had saved Israel at the Exodus had a historical purpose and The biblical story of culpability, of hopes program. . . . As one who had met Israel in historical deferred, and of the silence and apparent event, he thus was recognized as the Lord of all events absence of God is only too recognizable as a who was directing the whole course of history to his constant of human experience. The modern own ends, for nothing happened in which his power was not acknowledged. (44–46) reader can hardly encounter the story of Exodus 1 without relating it to the Wright shows no hesitation in affirming the historHolocaust, the Shoah, the most shameful ical character of the Exodus narrative: “[T]he covenant event of Jewish suffering in the twentieth was an actual event which took place at a certain hiscentury—indeed, in twenty centuries. torical time and place. . . . At Sinai Moses ascended Pharaoh’s master plan of population control into God’s presence and brought down the tablets of seems to prefigure the “final solution” that the Decalogue” (54). Cf. the ambition of George W. Coats, who, in identithe Nazis developed of the Jewish “problem” fying eighty speech forms in Exod 1–18 each with its in Germany in the 1930s and early 1940s, social setting, aims thereby to trace “the footsteps of including the very particular horror of the deity in this world” (xiii). murder of an estimated 1.5 million chil- G. Ernest Wright, God Who Acts: Biblical Theology as Recital, Studies dren.18 The history of the Jews in Germany, in Biblical Theology 8 (London: SCM Press, 1952 and many reprints). W. Coats, Exodus 1–18, FOTL 2A (Grand Rapids MI: William B. especially deteriorating conditions in the late George Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999).

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nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, shows grim parallels to the deterioration of the treatment of the ancestors of the Jews in ancient Egypt.19 But not even Pharaoh had the cynical effrontery to claim, as on the gateway to Auschwitz and other concentration camps, “Arbeit macht frei” (“work liberates”). In the postHolocaust period, the sense of outrage at long centuries of persecution unrelieved and the silence of God is heightened still further. Just as troubling would be to interpret Exodus 20:5 in the Decalogue in terms of an interventionist God who “punishes children for the iniquity of parents.” Or should one understand suffering across the generations as an inevitable consequence of human failure? “The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge,” the prophets probably contemporary with the Decalogue recognize (Jer 31:29; Ezek 18:2). Exodus is about to recount extraordinary exhibitions of God’s intervention and power, overwhelming demonstrations of God’s zeal to vindicate fundamental order in creation and society (Exod 7–15). Yet the story that Exodus tells does not provide the model of repeated intervention by God. It will affirm that these dramatic events are unique, once-for-all displays. Where has God been in the meantime? And where is God hereafter? Where is God in the daily round of casual atrocity, of violation of every code of decency, when humans become the playthings of fate, victims of social, economic, and political forces beyond their control and comprehension? Is God deaf to the cry of the passing generations? The story that Exodus tells is of unparalleled action of God, unlike any before or since (10:14, “never . . . before, nor ever shall be again”; cf. 9:18b, 24; 11:6; 34:10). The climax of this once-for-all decisive intervention by God is the revelation of Torah that definitively changes the status of Israel. In the second half of the book of Exodus, the mode of God’s normal intervention in human affairs is disclosed. God’s purpose is about to be revealed in covenant and Torah (Exod 20–24). Beyond the lurid colors of catastrophe and spectacular intervention, God renounces power but reveals what is good. God’s tactic is not the control of human decision but, astonishingly, the “justification” of its outcome: God accepts that the place where humanity finds itself is the place for restart. In face of the freedom of humanity, its intransigence, even its monstrous cruelty, God is the one who repents, who engages in unremitting courtship of humankind. After the revelation of Torah, God does not abandon the people without guidance. The continual unfolding of the Law proceeds in

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tandem with the continuing life of the community: “the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, to observe all the words of this law” (Deut 29:29); “The LORD has told you . . . what is good” (Mic 6:8). Neglect of Torah precipitates a legacy of disaster (the reverse conclusion, however, that all disaster is attributable to neglect of Torah, does not follow). The affirmation of a God whose will is deeply embedded in the continuing life of the world as in the Torah, rather than of one who spectacularly and miraculously intervenes in cases of injustice whether slight or grave, seems particularly relevant in the post-Shoah age. The upshot is the elevation of Torah; it is not ours to know when or if God will intervene. What is required of God’s people The Trial of God is constancy through the long For the combination of the experience of the devastating processes of the maturation of absence of God with the maintenance of faithful religious observance, see the introduction by Robert McAfee Brown to the play evil (Gen 15:16: “the iniquity of by Elie Wiesel, The Trial of God. Brown notes that the play was stimuthe Amorites is not yet comlated by an experience of Wiesel himself in Auschwitz, the Nazi plete”). [The Trial of God] concentration camp in Poland. Three rabbis decided to indict God for The counterpart in Christian allowing his children to be massacred: terms to the once-for-all revelation of Torah is the once-for-all The trial lasted several nights. Witnesses were heard, evidence was gathered, conclusions were drawn, all of which issued finally in a unanideath and resurrection of Christ mous verdict: the Lord God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, was (Rom 6:10; Heb 7:2, contrast found guilty of crimes against creation and humankind. And then, after Lev 9:7; 16:6, 15; Heb 9:12, what Wiesel describes as an “infinity of silence,” the Talmudic scholar looked at the sky and said “It’s time for evening prayers,” and the 26-28, with reference to Gen members of the tribunal recited . . . the evening service. (vii) 3:19; Heb 10:10-12, contrast Exod 29:38; 1 Pet 3:18; Jude 5, Elie Wiesel, The Trial of God (New York: Shocken Books, 1995). with explicit reference to the exodus). The absence of God is nowhere more keenly expressed than in Jesus’ anguished quotation from Psalm 22 on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” What God offers now is not miraculous intervention but continuing fellowship with the word made flesh in Christ. [Calvin on Miracles] Crucifixion remains at the heart of human experience: the reception of suffering by the innocent, fellowship in the Private H. Miller. (Army) Jewish slave laborers in the Buchenwald concentration camp near sufferings of Christ, with Jena, Germany. April 16, 1945. Elie Wiesel is in the second row from the bottom, seventh from the left. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons, PD US Army) redemptive intent, in the confi-

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Calvin on Miracles Peter F. Jensen expounds the views of the Protestant reformer John Calvin (1509–1564) on miracles: Calvin “repudiated contemporary miracles. Certainly he believed in the possibility of the miraculous—scripture taught that; . . . but the age of miracles is past” (131). He “was conscious of being a citizen of a world different from the apostolic. The miraculous was not simply banished—it was replaced by rational human effort” (135). Further, “the word must of necessity dominate the sign, since the word is what brings faith and explains the sign” (141) (cf. Deut 13). Thus Calvin “discounts all [contemporary] miracles on the score that they would disturb the completeness of a faith now delivered in its entirety and sealed at the time by miracles enough” (142). See, e.g., Calvin’s Institutes, 4.19.6: “But those miraculous powers and manifest operations, which were distributed by the laying on of hands, have ceased. They were only for a time. For it was right that the new preaching of the gospel, the new kingdom of Christ, should be signalized and magnified by unwonted and unheard-of miracles. When the Lord ceased from these, he did not forthwith abandon his Church but intimated that the magnificence of his kingdom, and the dignity of his word, had been sufficiently manifested” (reference, among others, 138 n. 30). Peter F. Jensen, “Calvin, Charismatics and Miracles,” EvQ 51 (1979): 131–44.

Artist unknown. Theologian and reformer John Calvin (1509–1564). Formerly attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger (1498–1543). [Credit: Wikimedia Commons, PD-Art (PDold-100)]

dence of ultimate vindication (1 Pet 3:14-18). Appropriately, given the crucial role of women in the Exodus narrative, in particular in Exodus 1 the utter loyalty of the wily midwives as God-fearers to immutable righteousness at the heart of existence in defiance of the atrocities of the human tyrant of the day, there is, in modern times, a no more eloquent expression of God’s “presence in absence” than in women’s writing. Melissa Raphael, a Jewish feminist theologian, draws together a powerful set of forces in a series of publications, from her ingeniously titled work Thealogy and Embodiment: The Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality,20 through her study of the role of women in the Holocaust,21 to the use of art to illumine the biblical narrative.22 In the latter, she writes that Chagall’s White Crucifixion is “by far the best known representation of the Holocaust as a crucifixion of the Jews.”23 She continues, “The visual conflation of Auschwitz and Golgotha reflects and evokes a theological response to Jewish suffering as vicarious, necessary suffering—both human and divine” in the tradition of the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 (interpreted in its primary sense as relating to the Jews of the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BCE).24 Further, “[T]here seemed to be [available to Jewish artists] little or no iconography for public, collective suffering whose

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Chagall’s White Crucifixion scale struck a cosmic rather than purely historical register, other than that of the cross.”25 “The cross is used in these paintings precisely because its dereliction is known to be not the last word.”26 Chagall further emphasized the Jewishness of Jesus by using a prayer shawl as Image Not Available loincloth. due to lack of digital rights. Mary C. Grey transposes such Please view the published commentary or perform an Internet ideas into more specifically search using the credit below. Christian terms. She distinguishes the distant interventionist monarchical God of classical theism from the “feminist reimaging of the divine,” the organic, embodied model of God as suffering and grieving with us, as in Jesus’ cry of dereliction on the cross.27 She Marc Chagall. White Crucifixion. 1938. Art Institute of Chicago. notes, for instance, the key role of The Russian Jewish artist Marc Chagall (1887–1985) frequently women at the end of Mark’s Gospel: painted the suffering of the Jews in the pogroms of the 19th and from the anointing of Jesus by the 20th centuries as a crucifixion. woman (Mark 14:3-9) to the three women who looked on at the crucifixion “from a distance” (Mark 15:40-41), and the resurrection appearance to the same three (Mark 16:1).28 God is not absent but present in weakness. Paul seems to provide an apt comment on the two Hebrew midwives. “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are” (1 Cor 1:27-28). The action of God is embedded within the fabric and processes of history, disclosed in steadfast loyalty to the ultimate vision, in compassion and forgiveness, even if “the son of man is delivered into the hands of sinners” (Matt 26:45) and resurrection can only come through death. Genesis 50:15-21 provides an apt theological preface to Exodus. Joseph’s brothers fear that their past betrayal is at last overtaking them. They expect reprisals, the requital of tit-for-tat. Joseph replies with words of utter grace: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today” (Gen 50:20). [The Fallen Tyrant]

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The Fallen Tyrant The imminent arrival of the head the statue of Ramesses II in England in 1818 inspired the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley to write his sonnet, “Ozymandias” (the Greek form of “Ramesses,” derived from Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, I, 47 [Loeb vol. 303]). Richard Holmes has called “Ozymandias” “the finest sonnet [Shelley] ever wrote: harsh, dramatic and deeply expressive of his eternal hatred of tyranny and his brooding philosophical skepticism.” It would be perverse to ignore such a finely wrought, if perhaps over familiar piece on the vanity of human wishes, in terms so relevant to Exodus. Even the most powerful are not impervious to decay:

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear, ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Quoted in Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (London: Flamingo, 1995) 410.

Lines from the hymn of the American Unitarian, Frederick Lucian Hosmer (1840–1929), “‘Thy kingdom come’—on bended knee/The passing ages pray,” well express a sense of the silent transcendent cosmic order that ever seeks to manifest and realize itself within, and despite, the perennial disorders of human existence: But the slow watches of the night Not less to God belong; And for the everlasting right The silent stars are strong.29

Notes 1. The opening phrase of v. 1, “[And] these are the names of . . . ,” provides the title for the book of Exodus in MT. It begins with a conjunction in the Hebrew (not shown in NRSV) and thus overtly links back to Genesis. The Hebrew title signals the continuation of the story: the development from family to nation. The English title “Exodus,” true to its origin in Greek exodos, “the way out, departure, military expedition, deliverance” (LSJ), reflects the content of the book: Israel’s release from slavery, escape from Egypt, and advance toward the promised land. 2. The point is actually prepared for by MT in v. 1. The NRSV rendering, “These are the names of the sons of Israel who came with Jacob,” overlooks the facts that, according to the MT punctuation, the phrase “with Jacob” belongs to the second half of the verse; that v. 1a is thus a title; and that the verb “came” occurs twice. Exod 1:1-2 reads literally and with total clarity, “Now these are the names of the Israelites who came to Egypt. With Jacob, there came, each with his household, Reuben, Simeon, etc.” 3. There is a close parallel between 1:6, 8 and Judg 2:8-10 (which by common consent belongs to DtrH): “Joshua . . . died . . . that whole generation was gathered to

Exodus 1 their ancestors, and another generation grew up after them, who did not know the LORD.” For the history and development of the observation, see Thomas B. Dozeman, Exodus, Eerdmans Critical Commentary (Grand Rapids MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009) 65–68. The dying out of a complete generation before the next phase of the action is a characteristic of the D-version (e.g., Deut 2:14). 4. There are problems in v. 5a: “The total number of people born to Jacob was seventy” (the Hebrew is emphatic: “issuing from the loins of Jacob”). This looks like a combination of two verses, Gen 46:26, “All the persons belonging to Jacob who came into Egypt, who were his own offspring . . . were sixty-six persons in all,” and 46:27b, “all the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy,” which includes Joseph and his sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, as well as Jacob himself. Further, the opening verb is masculine, despite the feminine subject (an irregular if not unparalleled construction; GKC 145o). 5. By the time of the exodus, Israel had become a nation of two to three million (12:37). Rashi (1040–1105), apparently troubled by historical possibilities, proposed that Israel’s amazing growth in the time available was accounted for by each pregnancy resulting in the birth of sextuplets (Michael Carasik, The Commentators’ Bible: The JPS Miqra’ot Gedolot, Exodus [Philadelphia PA: The Jewish Publication Society, 2005] 4). 6. The roots are related but not, in fact, identical (rbh in v. 7; rbb in v. 8). 7. Carol M. Kaminski, From Noah to Israel: Realization of the Primaeval Blessing after the Flood, JSOTSup 413 (London: T&T Clark, 2004) ch. 9. 8. NRSV sorts out the rough syntax, “when things happen—war,” with the help of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Versions. 9. The distinctive noun, perek, “harshness,” used here (concealed in NRSV’s rendering “ruthless”), matches the distinctive terminology in Lev 25:43, 46, 53 (where NRSV now translates “with harshness”) of a degree of severity in slavery forbidden in Israel (the word “slavery” itself is qualified with the adjective “hard,” Exod 1:14a). The verb >bd, with the preposition b, “to enslave” (Exod 1:14b), occurs in Lev 25:39. 10. The use of the two clauses, “out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,” is characteristic of the D-literature: in Deuteronomy itself, Deut 6:12; 8:14; 13:11; in DtrH, Josh 24:17; and in Dtr-Jeremiah, Jer 34:13 (cf. Exod 13:3, 14); “house of slaves” is used alone in Deut 7:8; 13:6; Judg 6:8. 11. CML, 156. Rashi relates to the verb p>h, “to cry aloud,” that occurs once in BH, Isa 42:14, i.e., “in the manner of women who pacify an infant” (Carasik, Commentators’ Bible, 6). Suggestively, the context of Isa 42:14 relates the verb to childbirth. 12. Even if the phrase “the Hebrew midwives” is translated “the midwives to the Hebrews” (though the object marker would have been expected between the words as in v. 16), it is unlikely that these were Egyptian midwives (and thus “righteous gentiles”; cf. v. 17, where they are “God-fearers”), given the Semitic etymology of their names. 13. K. McGeough, “Birth Bricks, Potter’s Wheels, and Exodus 1,16,” Biblica 87 (2006): 305–18, who interprets as “stone pillow” on basis of J. Wegner, “A Decorated Birth-Brick from South Abydos,” Egyptian Archaeology 20 (2002): 3–4 (with illustration). 14. So already Kimhi (1160–1238) (Carasik, Commentators’ Bible, 7). 15. See note in BHS. A reading in a Qumran scroll of Isa 65:3 may suggest “vaginas” (cf. BHK in loc.; DCH IV, 94 under yåd II).

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Exodus 1 16. Rashi (Carasik, Commentators’ Bible, 6) cites the rabbis who note the similarity between “vigorous” (˙åyôt, a form that occurs only here) and “wild animals” (˙åyyôt): like the wild animals, the Hebrew women need no midwives. 17. The Samaritan Pentateuch and some ancient versions make that point clear. 18. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005142 19. Jewish Museum, Berlin; http://www.jmberlin.de. 20. Melissa Raphael, Thealogy and Embodiment: The Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996). 21. Melissa Raphael, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust (London: Routledge, 2003). 22. Melissa Raphael, Judaism and the Visual Image: A Jewish Theology of Art (New York: Continuum, 2009). 23. Raphael, Judaism and the Visual Image, ch. 5, “Towards a Theology of the Holocaust Image,” 138, where the victim is an Orthodox Jew, wearing a prayer shawl as loincloth. Raphael draws attention also to Chagall’s The Way to Calvary (1941); Yellow Crucifixion (1943); and The Crucified (1944). 24. Raphael, Judaism and the Visual Image, 141. 25. Ibid., 146. 26. Ibid., 149, emphasis original. 27. Mary C. Grey, Introducing Feminist Images of God (Cleveland OH: Pilgrim, 2001) 88–98. 28. See also her comments on the “re-imaging of Divine transcendence”: “Instead of a Deity untouched by the suffering of people and planet, we meet a God who is totally involved, who is also touched and wounded by the suffering of the planet . . . a God experienced as suffering presence” (From Cultures of Silence to CosmicJustice-Making: A Way Forward for Theology? [Southampton: University of Southampton, 1993] 18–19). 29. Church Hymnary: Revised Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927) #153. Frederick William Faber’s “Workman of God! O lose not heart . . . God is on the field when he is most invisible” (ibid., #520) is in similar vein.

Moses’ Birth and Egyptian Upbringing: His Instinctive Attempt to Help Israel Ends in Failure, but God Takes Note Exodus 2 In defiance of Pharaoh’s decree to drown every son at birth, an Israelite mother of the tribe of Levi hides her new baby at home. When she can no longer conceal him, she entrusts him to the waters of the Nile in a reed basket. Pharaoh’s daughter comes to bathe at that spot. She sees the basket, recognizes the baby as one of the Hebrews, and, despite her father’s decree, not only spares him but eventually adopts him as her son, giving him the name “Moses.” One day, when Moses has grown to adulthood, he sees an Egyptian striking a Hebrew slave. He intervenes, The Structure of Exodus 2 kills the Egyptian, and hides the body in The Masoretic Text divides Exodus 2 into two sections: 2:1-22 and 2:23-25. This the sand. The next day, Moses sees two division corresponds to the two complementary Hebrews fighting and seeks to interviews that are in dialogue throughout Exodus (see vene, but the assailant accuses him of the introduction to this commentary). Exod 2:1-22 threatening to kill him as he had killed belongs (probably in its entirety except perhaps the Egyptian. Realizing that news of the for a slight adjustment to v. 1) to the older version killing has leaked, Moses, in fear of that looks forward to the covenant that YHWH will conclude with Israel in 24:3-8. The later, cosmic Pharaoh’s reprisals, flees for his life to edition, according to which God has already made the land of Midian. The hopes of a the covenant with Israel’s ancestors, contributes human deliverer for Israel end in humil2:23-25. The older version will resume in 3:1 with iating failure, but God has heard Israel’s the commissioning of Moses in the wilderness of cry and remembers the covenant with Midian and continue through 6:1 (again with their ancestors. [The Structure of Exodus 2] slight adjustments: see 3:19; 4:19-26). The later edition will resume in 6:2–7:13 with the commissioning of Moses in Egypt.

Commentary Who Can Save Israel? (2:1-22)

In a fast-moving narrative, these verses trace the uncertain beginnings in the early life of the as-yet-undisclosed human agent, Moses: his

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survival at birth against the odds, upbringing at Pharaoh’s court, disastrous interventions, and ignominious flight.1 Verses 1-4 presuppose the deadly decree of Pharaoh in 1:22.2 The focus now shifts from the fate of the people of Israel as a whole, and the threat to their survival by the drowning of their male infants, to a particular Israelite family and the birth of a particular male child along with the threats to his survival The Text of 2:1 in both infancy (vv. 1-10) and adulthood NRSV tacitly emends the text of 2:1, ren(vv. 11-22). What can become of such a boy, dering both phrases indefinitely: “Now a born at such a time? The knowing reader is man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman.” In MT, however, there is an unexaware of how much depends on the survival of pected mixture of the indefinite, “a man from the this child, whom God has destined to be Israel’s house of Levi,” and the definite, “married the deliverer out of Egypt and mediator of the daughter of Levi.” The first phrase implies a wellcovenant and Law. established group, “the house of Levi,” that has The story begins quite obliquely (vv. 1-2): a developed some considerable time after the son is born to the family of Levi. [The Text of 2:1] descent of the Israelites into Egypt; but the second, “Levi’s daughter,” takes the reader back to The key role that the Levites will fill, as teachers the first generation of the descent. and priests, in enabling Israel to realize its status Does the MT contain a textual error, or is the as the special people of God only becomes clear final editor making a tiny adjustment? The unexlater (see especially 4:14; 6:16-25; 32:26-28; pected definite reading, “the daughter of Levi,” 38:21). The story names none of the initial parmatches the precise genealogical information in ticipants in the action: the child’s parents, his the family tree in 6:14-25 (P): Moses’ father, Amram, son of Kohath, son of Levi, marries his sister, the pharaoh, the pharaoh’s daughter, or aunt, Jochebed, daughter of Levi, who must be her attendants. Only finally in v. 10 does it “the daughter of Levi” intended by 2:1 as it now name the child himself, and thereafter only stands, despite the extreme age-difference those immediately involved in his adult life implied. The names Amram and Jochebed do not (vv. 18-22). recur in any passage in Exodus that can be attribLike the Hebrew midwives (Exod 1:15-19), uted to the D-version (see 6:18, 20). This marriage between a man and his aunt, this mother is defiant. Seeing her goodly child, specifically the sister of his father, is an anomaly, she nurses him in secret for three months (v. 3). at least in terms of later legislation (Lev 18:12; As resourceful as she is devoted, when she can 20:19). In the terms of the storyline in the no longer hide him, she makes for him an ark Pentateuch, at the time of Moses’ parents’ marof reeds. Strikingly, the narrative uses the same riage, this legislation is not yet in existence. The word as for Noah’s ark (in both versions of the P-writer must have felt that it was more important to portray both parents as descended as immediflood narrative, Gen 6:14 [P]; 7:1 [D]), thus ately as possible from Levi, to assure purity of associating the saving of Moses from the Nile descent. with the saving of the few survivors of the human race and of the animals from the flood. She lines the ark inside with mud and caulks it outside with pitch.3 Trusting to providence, she consigns her child to the shelter of the papyrus reeds on the edge of the Nile (see [The Nile] for this “liminal” place). There must be some play between sûp, “papyrus reeds,” among which Moses’ mother hides him (2:3, 5), and yam sûp, “Red Sea,”

Exodus 2

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The Finding of Moses the location of the divine deliverance of Israel (13:18). In a sense, she is obeying Pharaoh’s orders; but she gently “places” her son on the water (not “throws into” as in 1:22) and, in the first of many ironies, to opposite effect: salvation not destruction. To see what will happen to Image Not Available him, the baby’s sister (presumably due to lack of digital rights. Please view the published Miriam) “takes her stand” nearby (v. 4).4 commentary or perform an Internet Verse 8 terms her an >almâ, implying that search using the credit below. she is an adolescent (e.g., Isa 7:15) and thus older than Aaron, who according to 7:7 is three years older than Moses (cf. Num 26:29, which does not explain their order of birth). Pharaoh’s daughter5 comes to the Nile William Blake (1757–1827). The Finding of Moses. Watercolor: Victoria and to bathe at the very spot (v. 5). She sees Albert Museum, London, Great Britain. (Credit: V&A Images, London/Art Resource, NY) the ark, gets her attendant ( (root y¡>): this verb occurs frequently of deliverance from attack by an enemy and other acts of violence. God as warrior (Zeph 3:17) delivers not by sword and spear (1 Sam 17:47) or by bow, war, horses and horsemen (Hos 1:7). The verb expresses the full range of response to crisis, from the cry for help (2 Sam 14:4; cf. the imperative “hosanna,” “save, we pray,” Ps 118:25); to help itself (Josh 10:6) and deliverance (Judg 6:14), to the giving of victory (Isa 51:5) and gaining renown, “glory” (Ps 21:6). The root recurs only twice again in Exodus, both times of YHWH’s deliverance of Israel: the verb in climactic position in 14:30; the associated noun in 14:13. Moses’ actions in Exod 2, then, foreshadow events to come. Isa 19:20 explicitly terms Moses “the deliverer.” The root y¡> appropriately occurs in the proper names of several key individuals in the history of salvation: e.g., Joshua (hence, via the Greek, Jesus), Isaiah, and Hosea. 2. hißßîl (root nßl): the verb implies forcible intervention to remove an object from danger (Amos 4:11, “a brand plucked from the burning”); so widely in HB, of persons rescued by human or divine intervention from the power or possession of destructive agencies, enemies, animals, or deep waters, then metaphorically death, sickness, or transgression. The root recurs in Exodus in 3:8; 5:23; 6:6; 12:27; 18:4, 8, 9, 10, all of the action of God that Moses here again foreshadows. In the “intensive” stem, the verb

Toward a “systematic theology” of liberation, it is convenient to list here the other verbs used in the vocabulary of liberation in Exodus. 3. >lh, ”to come/go up, gain the upper hand over” (already 1:10); in the causative stem, “to bring up” (3:8; see [The Vocabulary of Liberation]); 4. yß