This recent article in The Atlantic raises some very challenging issues for any Christians involved in children’s work. It highlights the way in which many Christian children’s clubs and organizations consistently rely upon false representations, both to parents and children. Parents are led to believe that the groups running such clubs will be teaching a message to their children that would be acceptable to a general interdenominational Christian audience, when in actuality the message being taught is one that would be highly objectionable to many. The article also draws attention to the ways that the organizations that run such clubs can subtly undercut or reject the authority of parents and their churches through their teaching.
Children can also feel that they have been sold a bill of goods. Promised lots of fun and games, such activities may prove to be incidental inducements, while the actual form of the events are dominated by and organized around activities that weren’t clearly advertised up front. The relationship that exists between schools and Christian children’s clubs can also be misrepresented, lending the clubs an aura of the school’s authorization that they do not actually possess.
One of the central concerns of the article is the teaching of a message that focuses heavily upon the threat of death and hell, something with which many parents would be very uncomfortable. In many cases, this discomfort does not arise principally from a denial of hell’s existence, but from the way that it exposes psychologically vulnerable and impressionable kids to a form of teaching that exploits those weaknesses, exposing them to psychological forces and processes that they are not yet mature enough to handle in a healthy manner.
It is very easy to brainwash and psychologically to overwhelm a young child. It is also easy to abuse a child’s unquestioning trust in authority figures to get them to act and believe in the way that you desire. It is much harder to address your message to a child at a level at which they can truly respond to it in a manner that isn’t a mere manipulated or pressured reaction.
A few years back, Jesus Camp was released, a documentary film which illustrates these dangers very powerfully.
Within this film you see kids being pushed to a point where they lack the ability to respond, but can only react. You see their bodies shaking, in floods of tears, rhythmically dancing or clapping, shouting maniacally, caught up in the crowd’s energy and the enthusiasm of the moment, they are berated and harangued by speakers whipping up wildfires of emotion. The language is martial and passion-fuelled.
Many Christian children’s organizations would be appalled by such practices and utterly deplore such methods. However, given the fragility of young children’s minds, it doesn’t take much to exploit their weaknesses. Even well-meaning Christians can be at risk of doing it. This often – usually – isn’t something that is done intentionally. Instead, it arises from a lack of mindfulness of and attention to children’s vulnerability in these areas. If you are not consistently and carefully assessing your methods to see whether you are doing this, there is a good chance that you will slip into doing it. It is the easiest way to get ‘results’.
For many, the real trauma of childhood sexual abuse is often primarily retroactive. The utterly sickening truth is that many kids do not feel abused at the time and some may even seem to be enjoying it. It is only when they grow up and realize what was done to them that the trauma hits. Much the same can be true of childhood spiritual or psychological abuse. Many who seemingly responded to a Christian message in their childhood can later completely turn away from the faith when they realize that their vulnerable emotional, spiritual, and psychological states were exploited – whether wittingly or not – by people that they thought that they could trust. On occasions, the stumbling blocks that we have put before our little ones may not show their true effects for decades.
The onus is thus on Christian children’s group leaders to relate to the children they teach in a way that, when the grown children look back on their experience, they will affirm that the fragile minds entrusted to those leaders were treated with all of the gentleness, care, and honour that they required. Just as the trauma of our stumbling blocks may take many years to break the surface, so trustworthy seeds sown deep in a child’s heart seldom bear their full fruit until many years down the line.
The children’s worker is primarily a sower, not a reaper. When the primary focus is placed upon the number of children converted in a summer camp we can easily forget that fact. The most important question that the children’s worker must always be asking is ‘did I sow trustworthy seeds today?’.
If and when I have children, the most important lesson of all that I want them to learn is that Jesus is someone that they can and should trust. As someone representing Christ to them in various ways, it is imperative that they can trust me. If I manipulate and pressure them to enter into a relationship of trust, I have poisoned that relationship at its roots. But if I honour their weaknesses, treat them with gentleness and care, act towards them and – in the case of children not my own – parents in a manner that is forthright, open, and honest, never taking advantage of their vulnerabilities, those trustworthy seeds sown early in life may bear lifelong fruit.
Sure, I disagree with his theology, but when it comes to engaging communication, the man is virtually without peer.
If you want to see a masterpiece in clever communication, look no further than a promotional video for a Rob Bell book.
This is Bell in his element.
Attention-grabbing. Engaging. Dynamic.
Take, for instance, this recent offering:
The dislocated camera shots. The fractured statements.
It’s all there.
You start with the evocative image of the Velvet Elvis, reminding you of that summer you read through that book as a teen.
How that book resonated with you at the time!
Rob begins by telling us that a lot of people in our culture ‘can’t do the God-sort of belief system or idea.’ A ‘very, very popular movement’ tells us that this is all that there is. However, lots and lots of people, when they experience vaguely defined moments of transcendence – your kid is born, you hear that piece of music, you find yourself in that natural wonder – find that this doesn’t work for them.
And then, suddenly, we are snapped into another line of thought: ‘There’s just such extraordinary, great, interesting, fascinating truths and insights and discoveries.’
Indeed there are, but whose exactly and on what subject?
Who cares! That was a nice bundle of adjectives and the sense of wonder that they evoked is lingering…
Where did the idea for the book come from?
‘It actually started years ago. Kept having all these ideas. And it all seemed to have something connecting it, but I didn’t know what.’
Italian monkeys eating peanuts. The strangeness of the universe.
Rob then tells us about his sense of a need to study and read. We see his books. His cue cards, each of which bears an idea. Scattered like buckets to catch the rainfall of inspiration.
Cosmic significance. Crying for the divine. We’ve all been there.
And all at once, Rob isn’t talking about ‘I’ anymore, but about ‘you’. And then we experience the writing of the book through Rob’s eyes.
The words slow down. The camera pans its unfocused gaze over close ups of Rob’s features. The passion exudes. The smile widens.
And we’re in that feeling and that moment. Right with him.
‘And it doesn’t matter who’s going to read this or like it or not like it it’s all totally irrelevant the only thing that matters is you know that you are here to make this and so your feet get planted under the table and you … start typing.’
‘The desires of your heart are revealed.’ ‘Do you want to make the next thing?’ ‘Do you love it?’ ‘…and so you just give a big giant “YES”!’
Oh, so what is the book about then, Rob?
‘The book is essentially: God is not behind us dragging us backwards into some primitive, regressive state. God has always been ahead of us, pulling us forward into greater and greater peace, integration, wholeness, and love.’
Amen. Who could be against that?
Rob followed up the above tour de force with this offering:
Rob begins with an engaging story about an old car: the Oldsmobile that he owned as a 20 year old. A masterful storyteller, with an economy of brushstrokes, he paints a picture of the car that draws in our humour, our affection, and our nostalgia, all while the music plays in the background.
But the Oldsmobile that he once loved, while serving him well for several years, wasn’t able to keep up with the times. And then it becomes clear that the engaging story is designed to serve as a compelling metaphor.
‘…for a growing number of people in our modern world, God is a bit like Oldsmobiles…’
As the video cuts between panning and refocusing shots of the shabby and disintegrating car interior, Rob informs us:
‘Things have changed. We have more information and technology than ever. We’re interacting with a broader more diverse range of people than ever. And the tribal god, the only one many people have ever heard of, appears more and more small and narrow and irrelevant and in some cases just plain mean and other times, not … that … intelligent.’
Then Rob gives us three anecdotes from his friends, Cathy, Gary, and Michael, which invite us to share their feelings of shock, disgust, or bemusement at the antiquated views that still exist in some Christian circles. For the God of such Christian circles is the Oldsmobile of the story, ready to be gracefully retired before he embarrasses himself further.
‘And, as a pastor over the last twenty years what I’ve seen again and again is people with a growing sense that their spirituality is in some vital but mysterious way central to who they are as a person and yet the dominant perceptions and conceptions and understandings of God that they’ve encountered along the way aren’t just failing them, but in many cases are causing … harm.’
The hand gestures become at once more pronounced and more animated.
‘…because I believe there are other ways, better ways of talking about God and understanding God. Because I believe God is with us and for us. And I believe God is actually ahead of us, calling us and drawing us, inviting and pulling us all, every one of us, into a better future than we could ever imagine.’
***
If the theologian of the 16th century was a lawyer, the theologian of the 21st century is an ad man.
For this is what Rob Bell is. If we are to understand Bell, it is imperative that we recognize the sort of movement in Christian discourse that he exemplifies.
The ad man doesn’t persuade his customer by making a carefully reasoned and developed argument, but by subtly deflecting objections, evoking feelings and impressions, and directing those feelings and harnessing those impressions in a way that serves his interests. Where the lawyer argues, the ad man massages.
Rob Bell’s theology seldom approaches you head on. It typically comes at you couched in a question, insinuated in an anecdote, embedded in a quotation from one of his friends, or smuggled in a metaphor. Its non-confrontational and conversational tone invites ready agreement. Even if you don’t agree, Bell hasn’t pinned himself down. He’s only asked a question, quoted an acquaintance, or related an anecdote, and could easily distance himself from any of them.
We aren’t accustomed to arguing against metaphors, quotations, questions, images, and anecdotes, Bell’s stock-in-trade. We often don’t see them coming, and when we do, we are often uncertain of how to respond to them. Artfully employing such tools, someone like Bell can move you much of the way to his position before you even realize what is happening.
Bell’s distinctive rhetorical style is taken straight from advertising (before writing this post, I bet myself that Bell had studied something along the lines of advertising or psychology in the past: a quick Google search revealed that I was correct). His fragmentary and impressionistic statements, single sentence paragraphs, vague, one-size-fits all observations, generous deployment of unspecific adjectives, frequent uses of the second person singular to describe states of feeling, and heavy dependence upon narrative, anecdote, question, quotation, metaphor, and image are all fairly typical of advertising style.
Advertisers can be masters of eliciting feelings and states of mind in a manner that makes you think that you are on exactly the same wavelength, without actually telling you anything. They give you the bucket and you fill it, without recognizing what you are doing. Vague and indefinite terms that will be filled with highly emotive states (e.g. ‘spiritual’, ‘transcendent’, ‘wonder’ – words which almost always carry great emotional resonance for any hearer) and prose that seems to be saying something profound without making much of a specific claim is fairly typical here. They hold up a mirror and you see yourself in it.
While much modern preaching is about entertainment, I believe that advertising is a better category within which to understand Bell. When Bell brings a goat on stage, or shaves a person’s head while preaching on Numbers 6, he isn’t seeking primarily to entertain or even to inform, but to create a strong visual impression to bind to his message. The purpose of such a pastor is less one of reasoning with people to persuade them of a truth than one of creating an impression with them in order to get them to buy into an idea. Lest I be seen to dismiss the use of lessons learnt from advertising in our communication entirely, let me make clear that they can have a place. My point is that they should not be allowed into the driving seat.
I am a fan of the TV show Mad Men, set in an ad agency in 1960s New York. The show’s chief protagonist, the charismatic philanderer, Don Draper, puts this point well:
As Don says, ‘You are the product. You, feeling something.’
The ad man knows this secret, and so do many contemporary evangelicals. Much of the time Bell isn’t trying to communicate a particular abstract theology to people. Rather, he elicits desirable emotive states from his audience and connects those with a heavily chamfered theology while tying undesirable emotive states to opposing viewpoints. All of this can be done without actually presenting a carefully reasoned and developed argument for one’s own position, or engaging closely with opposing viewpoints.
The advertising style comes with a fragmentation of thought. Even the way that Bell describes his thinking and writing process – trying to find a theme to bind together hundreds of detached impressions – seems to manifest this. The advertiser does not make lengthy and involved arguments and those who are raised on advertising can seldom handle them.
And this is a key point, one which, having been raised without a television, it took me a while to recognize: the overwhelming majority of people today were trained in the process of making up their minds by advertisers. They also picked up the art of persuasion, not from classic texts of reason, but from advertising. As a result, many people fail to demonstrate genuine literacy in understanding and creating reasoned arguments, but are adept at producing advertising copy for their impressions. They have been taught both to process and to persuade using impressions. I think that Josh Strodtbeck expresses this well (I’ve quoted this before):
Then there’s this other type of person. As nearly as I can tell, they seem to create collages in their mind as they read. Turns of phrase here and individual metaphors there get thrown into different places in the collage until they have what appears to them to be a fairly complete picture, then they react to the picture in more of a qualitative way (this reaction is usually emotional since they don’t really do “critiquing logic” or “refuting ideas”). This sort of person really doesn’t do very well at all with complex writing, especially writing that goes in directions they’re not used to. In my experience, explaining what I wrote to a person like this is a lost cause. I inevitably find myself repeating ideas over and over, quoting my own text, and dissecting my own grammar to prove to this sort of person that I said what I actually said. If your audience is this sort of person, you need to be extremely careful in how you choose your individual words and phrases, or you will set off a negative emotional reaction that makes further communication impossible.
If you read many blogs, especially from a certain brand of progressive evangelical, you will notice similar styles of writing and thinking in operation. Sentences are brief, there are numerous single sentence paragraphs, sentences in bold, or fragmented statements. Anecdotes and engaging narratives are consistently employed. Rhetorical questions, potent images, and controlling metaphors are used extensively. Such writing typically persuades by getting the reader to feel something. The responses to such pieces are almost always emotive and affirming, very seldom critical (and critical responses are hardly ever interacted with carefully).
In an age dominated by advertising and the manipulation of feelings for the purpose of persuasion, the proliferation of conversational and self-revelatory styles of discourse, designed to capture people’s feelings, where logical argumentation once prevailed, shouldn’t surprise us. Where persuasion occurs through feeling, truth becomes bound up in the authentic communication of the ‘self’ and its passion, rather than in the more objective criteria of traditional discourses, where truth was tested by realities and practices outside of ourselves. This is truth in the mode of sharing one’s personal ‘sacred story’.
It is for this reason that narrative, anecdote, metaphor, and potent images are so important for such approaches. All of these are non-argumentative ways of drawing and inviting you, the reader, into the feelings of the text. They also serve as ways of avoiding direct ideological confrontation and engagement. By couching what would otherwise have to be presented as a theological argument in an impressionistic narrative they make it very difficult to frame disagreements. The most effective communicators of this type tend to be those who elicit and direct feelings most consistently. It can almost be as hard to have reasonable argument with such people than it would be to argue with an advert.
I wanted a pretext to include the following Mad Men clip, which shows Don Draper accomplishing this process masterfully.
By the end of Don’s pitch, you have a strong emotional bond with the product. Don hasn’t spoken about the technology itself, or argued its merits relative to other products on the market, but has just told us a compelling story, shared a smart anecdote, quoted someone, given us some compelling and emotionally resonant images to hang our feelings on, and taken us on a journey. And we are sold. This is how much Christian communication operates today. It is no less slick and clever, but we risk forgetting that we are not called to be salespersons.
Some might think that some of my points above are falling a little shy of the mark when it comes to Rob Bell and several others, who are often very smart people, making lots of clever points in their writings and sermons, referencing the original biblical languages, the cultural context of scriptural passages, and scholarly insights. I don’t dispute this for a moment. Advertisers are frequently incredibly intelligent people, as are many people who, whether intentionally or not, employ their methods. The point to recognize, however, is the way that such learning gets framed when we adopt the model of advertising.
One good example of how learning gets framed by advertising is the graphical or computer visualization of the operation of the clever science behind how the shampoo makes your hair so shiny. The actual science is not the real message of this graph or visualization. The real message is: trust us, trust our product – we are smart people who know what we are doing. The point of the science visualization is to relax your critical faculties more than to engage them. You’re OK, we have the science covered.
While making another point, this recent article compares Bell’s style to that of speakers at TED conferences. I think that this is a very illuminating analogy. The TED talk is a further example of the way that advertising techniques can shape the processes of thought and communication. While not being explicitly framed as advertising, the TED talk is all about pitching and selling an idea to an audience. For this reason, the style of the TED talk is typically emotive, focused upon ‘engagement’ and ‘inspiration’. It often aims primarily for people’s sense of curiosity or wonder. It aims to create strong impressions, though audio-visuals, demonstrations, or general stage-presence. It aims to put the mind of the viewer at complete rest concerning the validity of the science, hiding much of the messy working, allowing them to bask in the sense of insight that the ideas produce.
As this piece observes, what the TED context discourages is disputation or a devil’s advocate. A devil’s advocate would put such a damper on the sense of epiphany that the TED talk is supposed to produce. While it would produce a more informed audience, it would make it much more difficult for the TED talk to achieve its primary purpose of making the audience feel something. The problem here isn’t that speakers at TED are stupid – they are some of the smartest people around. Rather, the problem is with the adopted style of discourse.
One finds the same thing in other contexts where the goals of advertising are substituted for the goals of thought: disputation and challenge are consistently discouraged and resisted. Once we have recognized why this is taking place, we are halfway to answering an interesting conundrum: why is it that many of the people who most champion ‘questioning’ within the Church can be the most unwilling to expose their own thought to direct challenge and close interrogation? If questioning is such a good thing, then surely being questioned must be too.
A clue to understanding here is found in recognizing that critical thought and the requirement to reason are far more inescapably engaged when we have to commit to and defend a fixed position than when we can merely question. As long as we don’t have to respond to questioning, we can easily operate according to how we feel about different positions. We can relax and be at ease, because ideas don’t come with the heavy responsibility of thought, of reasoning for and defending them. Our critical faculties don’t have to be engaged.
As soon as we have to reason – something that being questioned forces us to do – we may find that the truth doesn’t underwrite our feelings, but often wounds them. The current celebration of ‘questioning’ in many quarters of the Church can play to pleasant feelings of novelty, curiosity, inspiration, superiority, popularity, and intelligence, and quell the negative feelings associated with certain beliefs that we would like to avoid. Questioning frees us from unpleasant commitments, from being tied down. However, situating this questioning within a context of rigorous mutual questioning would destroy this dynamic, as feelings are seldom salved and can never be settled in the driving seat when we are forced to reason for our impressions.
This new form of discourse is very weak when it comes to commitment. Traditional contexts of thought require commitment, a need to nail your colours to the mast, and preparedness to face opposition and accusation. Within such a context ideas are presented in a didactic or dogmatic style, one that confronts us more directly. The new context doesn’t require the same commitment of us, but is about ‘inspiring’ and ‘engaging’. It often couches its claims in non-confrontational rhetorical questions: ‘isn’t it interesting that…?’, ‘have you ever wondered whether…?’, etc. There isn’t a sense of the deep responsibility and accountability of thought.
The new evangelical communicator is all too often just such an ideas guru, spreading non-conventional, novel, and cool insights that make us feel good and encourage us to buy into their teaching, without being prepared to engage in the same costly work of thought and defence. Accusing such a person of possible heresy is such a buzz-kill and creates the sort of negative feelings that we don’t want to buy into. It isn’t heresy, it’s rebranding.
While recognizing the power and potential uses of advertising, we need to develop a deeper understanding of the ways that it works and the manner in which it can distort our thought and discourse. As Christians, maintaining the integrity of our discourse is one of our primary duties. This duty does not merely demand an attention to the content of our discourse, but also to the weaknesses, temptations, and inclinations of our chosen forms. Is the fragmented, vague, and emotionally-oriented and disorienting discourse of advertising, with its dense maze of interlocking narratives, questions, anecdotes, quotations, images, metaphors, and suggestions, the most faithful means of communication? I don’t think that it usually is.
The gold standard of Christian communication is provided for us in 2 Corinthians 4:2:
But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
To the extent that our forms of discourse obfuscate the truth in order to evoke feelings that allow us to sell our ideas, we have fallen short of this goal.
In a recent post, Peter Leithart reflects upon the debate on same-sex marriage between Douglas Wilson and Andrew Sullivan. Observing the increasing inability of Christian arguments to gain purchase upon the public’s imagination, he wonders how arguments against same-sex marriage might become persuasive again. His conclusion is far from sanguine: without a recovery of Christian imagination we are fighting a losing battle. “[T]he only arguments we have are theological ones, and only people whose imaginations are formed by Scripture will find them cogent.”
I must confess to some astonishment at such a conclusion. From such a statement, one might be led to presume that we were defending something akin to the Chalcedonian Definition, rather than the virtually universal consensus that has existed across human history and culture that marriage is a public institution, declaring the interdependence of men and women, formed around the natural realities of sexual dimorphism, the procreative union between a man and woman, the bonds of blood, and providing a secure setting where children’s bonds with the parents that bore them are honoured and upheld and their nurturance assured. The fact that a Christian thinker as insightful and uncompromising as Dr Leithart has arrived at such a conclusion strikes me as an indication of just how much ground has been needlessly surrendered in this particular debate.
I dropped a couple of days this week. At present I am four days behind in total. I have slightly more on my plate this next week, so I am not sure whether or not I will be able to post. However, the series will definitely be completed, even if I have to overrun Lent in order to do so. I might post an outline of the posts to come at some point soon, so that you know what to look forward to.
The purpose of signs and wonders – Moses’s three signs and their meaning – Conflict with the magicians – Egypt’s plague of corruption – The order of the plagues – The battle of the gods
The announcement of the death of the firstborn – The meaning of the firstborn son – Institution of the Passover – Meaning of the memorial – The sacrifice of Israel’s firstborn – Other themes in the Passover
Water crossings and transitions – A world framed by water – Preparing for the crossing – Red Sea crossing as new creation – The battle of YHWH – The Song of the Sea as liturgical memorial
Biblical teaching and practice of slavery – Pharaoh as cruel master – Legal background to the Exodus – Competing masters – Adopted servants – The boring of the ear
A central theme of the story of the Exodus, one that we have not properly touched upon to this point, is that of the release of the slaves. YHWH comes as the kinsman redeemer of Israel, the one who avenges their blood that has been shed and delivers them from the hand of the oppressing and wrongfully enslaving power of Pharaoh through great judgments (cf. Leviticus 25:47-49; Numbers 35:9-30). Themes of slavery and release pervade the narrative and provide a crucial background for understanding the Law that is given at Sinai. As we shall see, reading the narrative against the background of the laws of slavery will bring out dimensions of significance in the drama that might otherwise be entirely missed.
Before we study these themes, however, we need to get a better grasp of the institution of slavery as it functions within the world of the narratives of Genesis and Exodus. We have already encountered forms of slavery at various points in the narrative of the patriarchs. We saw that Abram had many servants in his household in such places as Genesis 14:14, which mentions 318 homeborn servants trained for combat. Abram’s servants were members of the covenant people (17:12) and at one point one of his homeborn servants was his heir (15:2-3). As I observed in another post, the number of servants within the house of Jacob as Israel went to Egypt must have been quite considerable, as they were given the entire land of Goshen as their possession.
Slavery isn’t seen as a bad thing in principle in the book of Genesis. From our historical perspective, with the brutal legacy of race slavery, it can be hard for us to understand why the scriptural writers did not entirely condemn the practice of slavery, and typically appear to condone or even present it as a good thing.
Slavery is mentioned in a number of the prophetic blessings or curses. Canaan was to be a servant of servants to his brothers (Genesis 9:25-27). Esau was to serve Jacob (25:23; 27:40). We see concubines/maidservants in Hagar, Zilpah, and Bilhah. Jacob is reduced to the status of a servant by Laban, but gains great wealth through service. The sons of Jacob later sell their brother Joseph into slavery to the Ishmaelites. The story of Joseph’s slavery, like that of Jacob, is one of gaining rule through service and an initial fulfillment of the divine promises that Israel would be served by others and become a father to many nations. Through obedient submission, he becomes the great power in the land of Egypt.
In the story of Joseph we see slavery presented in a positive light in certain respects. Through YHWH’s help, Joseph brings the whole nation of Egypt, first into a feudal relationship, and then into outright slavery to Pharaoh (Genesis 47:13-26). Joseph’s divinely given wisdom enables him to make the people by whom he was enslaved the servants of Pharaoh. This is a good thing in a number of respects. It fulfills divine promises that other peoples would serve Abraham and his seed. It also brings the Egyptians under the wise, divinely blessed, and provident rule of Joseph, saving their lives from famine.
Our concept of slavery and servanthood is powerfully shaped by the notion of slavery being involuntary, coercive, and lifelong (James Jordan’s paper, ‘Slavery in Biblical Perspective’ is very helpful on this subject, and I will draw upon it in much of what follows). This is a very unhelpful way to understand most forms of biblical slavery, which occurred on a spectrum of differing degrees of dependency and voluntariness. Man-stealing and kidnapping for slavery were subject to the death penalty (Deuteronomy 24:7). In perhaps the majority of cases, biblical slavery was not strictly involuntary, although it was an undesirable state to which to be reduced.
Slavery was a means of managing the dependency of the poor or the indebted in a society without a welfare state (which is typically somewhere on the spectrum of service itself, limiting people’s rights in various respects). It was part of the criminal justice system, as it was used as a means of providing restitution. Israelites could also enslave foreigners taken in war and could buy foreign slaves from others, something that they couldn’t do in the case of Israelites (Leviticus 25:42ff.). Finally, people could voluntarily enter into the state of service to another, desiring security and membership in a good master’s household (Exodus 21:5-6).
As dependents, biblical slaves had certain securities, but also many limitations on their freedoms. In Galatians 4:1, Paul says that ‘the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all.’ The analogy between slavery and childhood is an illuminating one in several respects. The slave was, unlike the hired hand, a member of the household. He did not have the autonomy of the hired hand and, rather than have his employment ended or pay cut, he could be beaten as a form of punishment. The master had a duty to provide for him as a member of his household. Like the child, his rights of free movement, his bodily autonomy, and such things as his rights of marriage were curtailed. However, also like the child, this period of dependency and limited freedom was typically intended to be temporary, with a clear and legally established ending point in view, and to lead to the learning of greater self-discipline and providence from a master who had proved himself more adept in these respects.
The system of slavery is seen as a positive way of securing the survival of dependent and improvident people in society, ensuring that they are protected and provided for by provident masters into whose service they come. It is seen as a way that YHWH blesses those who are faithful and wise, bringing other people under their authority and provision, thus extending the means of their influence within society and the level of their responsibility. It is a form of judgment upon the wicked, as YHWH makes them the servants of the righteous.
The harshness of slavery is mitigated in many ways in Scripture. The biblical slave is guaranteed the rest of the Sabbath (Exodus 20:10). Clear requirements are established for the release of different kinds of slaves after different periods of time (21:3; Leviticus 25:8-17). Protections are provided for concubines (Exodus 21:8-11). Departing Hebrew servants should be sent out with generous gifts (Deuteronomy 15:12-14). YHWH consistently reminds his people that they were once slaves in Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:15; 15:15; 16:12; 24:18, 22). YHWH declares that he will bless those who are faithful in their treatment of their servants (Deuteronomy 15:18). The entire story of the Exodus is a repeated reminder that YHWH hears the cry of the oppressed slave.
The state of slavery to men is not celebrated in Scripture. It is a state of immaturity akin to that of childhood. YHWH’s intention is always that people gain maturity through obedience. The biblical expectations of the slave were similar to those upon children: to grow in responsibility through faithful obedience. Like childhood, it is very negative for people to return to the state of slavery: rather, people must grow beyond it and the strict law-bound character of slavery, like that of childhood, can provide a means of maturation. Biblically, slavery is oriented towards manumission and blessing. Slave-owning is a means by which the righteous and provident man can come to provide for and protect many dependent people, training them towards responsible independence, or fully absorbing them into the life of his family.
While we have clear continuing forms of dependency relations in society, it is very good that we have moved beyond slavery in many respects. The sort of slavery spoken of in Scripture was necessary and served good purposes in a less developed society. However, as society matures, such an institution fitted for a more childlike stage in humanity’s life should be left behind.
Pharaoh as Master
Israel entered Egypt as free people. However, Pharaoh wrongfully and coercively enslaved them. They did not voluntarily enter into Pharaoh’s service for security, to pay off debts, or on account of poverty – they were multiplying greatly. Pharaoh treated the Israelites wickedly, reducing them to involuntary servitude, trying to get control over them in a vicious fashion. In Exodus we see Pharaoh as a harsh and unforgiving taskmaster, who increases the burdens of his Hebrew servants when they ask for the freedom to go into the wilderness to celebrate a feast (Exodus 5 – notice that nothing is yet said about them leaving for good).
The story of the Exodus is one in which the Hebrew slaves are ripped free from Pharaoh’s clutches. We have already observed the relationship between the narrative and the laws concerning slavery in our study of Jacob. The work of David Daube is especially helpful in revealing the way that the same holds in the case of the Exodus narrative: the customs and laws surrounding slavery clearly lie in the background of many of the events that occur.
After the eighth plague, in Exodus 10:8-11, Pharaoh granted Moses and Aaron permission to leave. However, he wanted to know who were the ones who would be leaving. When Moses and Aaron declared that they will be leaving with their wives, children, and flocks, Pharaoh refused, only permitting the men to go for the feast. Exodus 21:1-4 is important background for this interaction. If the Israelite men had been given their wives and children by the Egyptians, Pharaoh’s terms might have appeared fairer (although Exodus 21:9-11 would apply in that case): the wives and children would have remained in Pharaoh’s service and the men would have to return to visit them, rather than taking them with them. However, the women, the children, the flocks, and the herds of the Israelites had entered Egypt with them and should be allowed to leave with them.
After the ninth plague, Pharaoh is prepared to allow all of the Israelite persons to leave, provided that their flocks and herds are left behind (10:24). However, Moses refuses, insisting that all of their flocks and herds must depart with them (vv.25-26). In Deuteronomy 15:12-14, the Hebrew slave is supposed to be released with all of his possessions and with liberal gifts. Moses and Aaron’s refusal to accept the terms of Pharaoh at this point are an insistence upon the biblical rights accorded to slaves.
The ‘plundering’ of the Egyptians should also be read against the requirement for the slave to be sent away with many gifts. YHWH ensures that his people are released from slavery with many possessions to establish their new life.
When Israel leave, they leave with a large ‘mixed multitude’ (12:38), people who also escape the service of Pharaoh. Former servants of Pharaoh too, they were fleeing from the oppression of a cruel madman, who was bringing the nation down to destruction. In harbouring these fugitives among them (these were the initial ‘strangers’ among the children of Israel, before settling in the land), Israel was obeying the command of Deuteronomy 23:15-16, providing refuge for the oppressed runaway servant. In previous studies we have also seen the way in which the patriarchs brought servants up out of oppressive situations with them.
Competing Masters
The Exodus should not be thought of as a movement from slavery to autonomy. Rather, it is a movement from oppressive bondage to Pharaoh to obedient service of YHWH. The Scriptures are not absolutely opposed to slavery at all, but rather speak of a change of masters. There is liberty and redemption from oppression, but also entry into a new service as slave-sons of YHWH. As Daube observes, both of these themes occur throughout the Scriptures, but receive differing emphases on different occasions.
YHWH brings Israel out of Egypt so that they might ‘serve’ him (Exodus 7:16; 8:1, 20; 9:1, 13; 10:3). The story of the Exodus is the struggle between two masters and their claims. YHWH claimed Israel as his firstborn son and insisted that Pharaoh release Israel so that Israel might serve him (4:22-23). Pharaoh’s refusal to acknowledge YHWH’s title to his servants provides much of the drama that follows.
This redemption from slavery to Pharaoh also provides the basis for the demands of the covenant upon Israel, which YHWH gives to Israel as the new servants of his royal household. The Ten Commandments, the charter of Israel’s life in covenant with YHWH, begins with this fundamental fact (20:1-3), with a declaration of his claim on the Israelites, and their duty to serve him and no others.
The theme of redemption by God for service is a prominent one throughout the Scriptures, as we shall later see. We were once slaves of sin, but now, having been set free from sin, we have become slaves of righteousness (Romans 6:16-22). The master changes, but we don’t cease to be slaves. Without a clear biblical theology of slavery and the way that it can function as a positive institution, we will find it hard to understand such themes.
As the slaves of God, we owe him our service and are not autonomous. We don’t have the right to use our lives and bodies as we wish. We must render him faithful obedience and surrender all competing claims to pure self-determination or a right of detached choice.
Adopted Servants
Peter Leithart has made a persuasive case (The Priesthood of the Plebs fills out this argument) for regarding priests as household servants. The story of the Exodus is the story of the movement from slavery to Pharaoh in the Egyptian house of bondage, building store cities, to service as royal priests in YHWH’s house and building the tabernacle.
In Exodus 21:5-6 and Deuteronomy 15:16-17, we encounter a strange ritual in which the servant who loves his master and wants to bind himself to him from that point onwards, beyond the period of his appointed service, has his ear pierced against the doorpost with an awl and is adopted into his master’s household as a homeborn slave. The bloodied doorposts of the Passover relate to this. The servants of Pharaoh are judged with all of his household. However, the Israelites, by applying the blood representing its commitment to be YHWH’s firstborn slave-son to the doorposts, comes under the refuge and protection of YHWH’s house and is not judged with the household of the dragon, Pharaoh.
In Numbers 3, as we have seen, YHWH will claim the Levites in exchange for the firstborn of Israel as his primary servants, concerned with the priestly running of YHWH’s tabernacle and the house of Israel. The establishment of the priestly ministry is one of the purposes for which YHWH released Israel. The bored ear of the adopted servant relates to part of the ordination rite (and also to circumcision), in which the ear of the priest was bloodied.
Jordan also suggests the possibility of a relationship between this rite and the incarnation:
The incarnation of the Second Person of God is spoken of in terms of this provision. Psalm 40:6 states, “Sacrifice and meal offering Thou hast not desired; My ears Thou has opened;” the NASV margin notes that “opened” is literally “dug, or possibly, pierced.” This verse is cited and paraphrased in Hebrews 10:5 thus, “Sacrifice and offering Thou hast not desired, but a body Thou hast prepared for Me.” The boring of the ear, making a free person into a slave, is here a figure for the incarnation. As Paul puts it, He “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men” (Phil.2:7).
Summary
The story of the Exodus must be read against the background of a biblical theology of slavery. YHWH claims and delivers his people from the oppressive tyrant, ensuring that they are sent out with all of their possessions and with great gifts. They also release many other fugitive slaves as they do so. The Israelites are freed from bondage for service, delivered from the house of Egypt to minister to YHWH. Through the blood on the doorposts, they are adopted servants in the household of YHWH, charged with obeying him as their new master and redeemer.
The Red Sea crossing is the decisive moment of transition in the Exodus narrative. It is the watery threshold between slavery and freedom, between life in Egypt and the wanderings into the wilderness. It is the broken waters of the womb of Egypt and the narrow birth canal of the nation. It is the baptism into the new life of ‘body of Moses’. It is the great existential boundary marker of the nation.
As I observed in a previous post, such crossings and establishing of boundaries are not merely events in a historical narrative, but are the inscription of the spiritual identity of the nation onto a particular geography through divinely guided itineraries. YHWH places his people in the land by walking them into it and through it, by marking out its borders and boundaries with spiritual transitions, by ‘story’-ing its territory. While we are accustomed to thinking of the spaces of Israel – its tabernacle or its land – as viewed from the panoptic and detached perspective of the map or diagram, for Israel these places were known through itineraries, related by means of particular journeys or movements through time and space, with all of the meaningful transitions that those entail (this article raises some helpful thoughts along these lines). For instance, God didn’t give a diagram of the tabernacle, but rather ‘walked’ the reader of Exodus through it, describing its furniture step by step and then later described the process of moving through its space in the sacrifices. If we are to understand events such as the Red Sea crossing, we need to recapture something of this way of thinking about space.
When we think of the washing of water associated with the worship of the tabernacle, or in such events as the Red Sea, we are at risk of thinking purely in terms of actions detached from movements in time and space, in terms of such things as ‘purification’ or ‘cleansing’, failing to recognize that the geography, orientation, and time of water crossings are significant. We passthrough waters from one realm and time to another, come up out of the waters of the deep and ascend through the waters of the firmament – they cannot be detached from time and geography.
We live in a watery world. The great divisions of the world are divisions of water, something that is clear from the story of creation. The waters above are divided from the waters below. The waters are gathered together in one place and divided from the dry land, the lands are divided by the great rivers. To pass from one realm into another one must pass through waters. To go into the abyss, you enter into the below-waters, the waters of the deep. To go into heaven, one must pass through the above-waters of the firmament. These divisions are not merely divisions in space, but also divisions in time. To enter into the restored creation, Noah had to pass through the waters of the flood. To enter into the new era YHWH had prepared for them, Israel had to cross through the Red Sea. In entering the new creation we are baptized into Christ’s death.
To find one’s place on earth, one does so by defining oneself through water crossings. To become Israel, Israel had to pass through the waters of the Euphrates, which marked off former idolatry from the patriarchs’ service of YHWH. They had to pass through the Jabbok/Jordan, where Jacob was given his new identity. They had to pass through the Red Sea, where they left slavery. They had to pass through the Jordan, where the conquest of the land began and the wandering of the wilderness years ended. Finally, to truly become Israel, they had to venture out onto the Gentile sea and become fishers of men.
The great movements of the world are movements of water and movements through water. It is the springing up of water within the garden and the flowing of that river of water into the world. It is the rain of heaven and the rainbow of God’s promise that signify the descent of God’s good favour upon us from above. It is the rising up of the waters below and the flooding of the world that signifies death and judgment. It is the pouring out of the water of the Spirit and the flowing out of the Spirit into a parched creation that signifies the healing and life of the new creation.
Water brings together and, while forming certain divisions, dissolves others and unites new wholes. While dividing Israel from Egypt, the waters of the Red Sea dissolved many people into one new nation under Moses’ leadership, just as the waters of baptism dissolve Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, into one new people in Christ, their separations and oppositions broken down. The old divisions and separations are washed away as we enter into a new creation.
The Red Sea crossing is a great threshold in the story of Israel, a watery seam between eras of its narrative. As a seam between stories, it is sometimes associated with the story that precedes (the exit from Egypt) and sometimes associated with the story that follows (the entrance into the wilderness wanderings).
The Preparation for the Crossing
YHWH hardens Pharaoh’s heart and causes him to pursue the Israelites who have departed with his chariots (I have commented on the biblical theme of chariots and water elsewhere). It has become clear to Pharaoh that this is not a temporary departure, but that his Israelite slaves intend to leave his service for good, much as Jacob fled from the service of Laban. YHWH declares that through this event he will decisively prove his identity to the Egyptians. The Red Sea crossing is a site where YHWH’s identity is demonstrated with power.
YHWH declares that at the Red Sea he will accomplish a decisive victory over the Egyptians, establishing a definitive boundary between Israel’s past life of slavery and its new life of freedom. Their old master will be defeated and they will be a free people, with a deep watery line drawn between them and their former bondage. Due to its definitive character, the Red Sea crossing can serve as a sort of synecdoche for the entire Exodus – the one event that encapsulates the whole.
Seeing the Egyptians coming upon them, the Israelites complain against Moses, accusing him of bringing them out of Egypt to die in the wilderness (14:10-11), claiming that they would have been better off remaining in the service of the Egyptians. This grumbling seems out of place in the order of the narrative, as we typically associate such wilderness complaints with Israel’s unbelief in the wilderness before crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land. In this event in the wilderness before the Red Sea we see an anticipation of this later unbelief of the forty years of wilderness wandering and also of the faithfulness of YHWH and the victory that he provides. The Red Sea crossing should have prepared them for the later crossing. As we shall later see in more detail, the Red Sea crossing is a decisive event that occurs in two stages: the first part of the washing through the Red Sea, to be completed in the crossing of the Jordan. The two events become conflated at various points in the scripture and in the imagination of its later interpreters (e.g. Psalm 106:9).
YHWH declares that this is his battle and that all should hold their peace and see the salvation that he will accomplish on their behalf: he will put a final end to the Egyptians, without the Israelites having to raise a finger (vv.13-14). Moses is instructed to lift up his rod and stretch out his hand over the sea and it will be divided so that the children of Israel can pass through on dry ground. The man who was drawn out of the reeds and the water as a child will be used by YHWH to draw his people out of the Sea of Reeds. Through this event, Israel will enter into the experience of Moses. The return to the themes of the first chapters of Exodus also involves the presence of Miriam as the witness of both great birth events and the throwing of the Egyptian boys into the waters, just as they had thrown the Israelite boys into the Nile.
Red Sea as New Creation
The creation themes here should be clear to us. The great acts of creation are ones of forming by means of division (days one to three of the creation) and filling (days four to six of the creation). The waters are divided as they were divided on the second day. The sea is separated from the dry ground as it was on the second day. Israel is the dry ground taken up out of the sea and the Egyptians are consigned to the abyss and the deep. The Egyptians and the Israelites, formerly mixed together, are going to be separated in YHWH’s new act of creation. YHWH’s cloud – the water of his presence above – comes between the Egyptians and the Israelites (v.19). The Israelites are symbolically drawn above the firmament, and the Egyptians placed beneath it. It also serves as a division between darkness and light (v.20), such as that accomplished by YHWH on the first day of the creation. The wind of YHWH passes over the waters (v.21), just as at the creation (Genesis 1:2) and the flood (Genesis 8:1). At the Red Sea YHWH is creating a new world. Later on in such places as Isaiah 63:11-14, these creation themes will become even more pronounced. Having formed a new creation through these great acts of division, YHWH will bring the Israelites in to fill those divisions.
As we shall see, the Red Sea is the site of both a creation and a de-creation. The Israelites are drawn up out of the deep, out of the undifferentiated sea of their slavery among the Egyptians, established on dry ground, and symbolically set in the heavens, above the firmament of the glory cloud. The Egyptians, however, descend into the primeval waters of the abyss (notice that the ‘deep’ is mentioned in 15:5 and 8, a word that is associated with the waters that existed before the formation of the creation and at the time of the flood – Genesis 1:2; 7:11; 8:2). The entire story of the plagues has been one of decreation, as the world of Egypt has been steadily destroyed: this is the final decisive blow.
As in the case of previous exodus patterns, the movement from the darkness to the new dawn is given great prominence within the story of the Red Sea crossing. The wind blows through the night (v.22) and the Israelites cross over, the morning watch comes and God troubles the Egyptians (v.24), then, as the morning appears, the sea returns and drowns the Egyptians (v.27). This movement from evening to morning is not merely the ending of a period of symbolic darkness: it is also the transition that marks out a creation day (‘and the evening and the morning were…’).
The Battle of YHWH
The Red Sea is YHWH’s battle and the Israelites are supposed to stand by and watch (v.14). Through this event, YHWH will bring honour for himself. 14:19 refers to the Angel of YHWH moving from the front of the camp to the rear, with the pillar of cloud moving too. Until this point in history, the Angel of YHWH had always appeared by himself, without the Glory cloud (see my discussion of the Angel of YHWH here), on odd occasions and for a limited period of time. Now, at this point in time, the Angel was clothed in the Glory cloud.
Here we see a fuller revelation of the identity of the Angel as he is accompanied by the Spirit-Presence. The ‘glorification’ of the Angel of YHWH manifests a deeper and more powerful presence and association of YHWH with his people. Prior to this point, the Angel of YHWH had appeared in less dramatic form, often as a man, such as in his appearance to Abraham in Genesis 18:1-2 and his wrestling with Jacob in Genesis 32:24. This development is like the development between Christ’s self-revelation (the Angel of YHWH is, I believe, a pre-incarnate manifestation of Christ) during his incarnate ministry and Christ following his ascension, at which point he receives the Glory-Spirit (cf. Acts 2:33). The Angel of YHWH who wrestled incognito with Jacob at the fording of the Jabbok now rides on a glorious pillar of fire and cloud (Exodus 14:24), fighting with the Egyptians from his stormy throne chariot in the midst of the Red Sea.
In the Red Sea, the sea monster Pharaoh has his head crushed (cf. Psalm 74:13). This is the final judgment: the defeat of the dragon and the Angel of YHWH coming with the fiery glory cloud of heaven. In this Day of YHWH, God’s identity is revealed to Israel in a way that it hadn’t been before. It is a foretaste of the last day, when the true glory, power, and justice of YHWH will be made known.
The Song of the Sea
It is not surprising that the narrative of this event is immediately followed by the Song of the Sea, in which the event is memorialized. The Song of the Sea contains in nuce much of the larger early history of Israel, presenting the Red Sea crossing as an anchoring point for the broader sweep of the surrounding narrative and for the identity of Israel more generally. This song should be regarded as Israel’s national anthem, what some have described as ‘a foundational piece of literature’ that was drawn upon by later tradents for the description of events within their own time. The Song of the Sea frames the crossing as a battle, in which the warrior God gains victory over the foes of Israel. The continuing presence of the Red Sea crossing event in the regular prayer and worship of Israel is evidenced in many of the psalms.
The Song also introduces the canonical motif of YHWH as the divine king, where earlier texts focus primarily upon YHWH as guide and provider. Until this point in history, Israel hadn’t seen YHWH riding his throne chariot. Now, seeing the Angel of YHWH enthroned on the Glory-cloud there is a fuller revelation of and response to his identity. This historical revelation of YHWH’s might, and the closeness of his alliance with Israel, will cause the surrounding nations to melt with fear.
Brevard Childs observes the effect of the literary device that juxtaposes the original events with their continuing celebration, ‘The original events are not robbed of their historical particularity; nevertheless, the means for their actualization for future Israel is offered in the shape of scripture itself.’ The fact that the Red Sea crossing is immediately presented to us in the form of a liturgical memorialization testifies not merely to its foundational character, but also that ‘the authentic form of departure for the story is the celebrating assembly in its present reality’ (Chauvet) as I observed in the previous post. As the Song is a liturgical retelling of the Red Sea crossing event, the text never ceases to be a contemporary declaration of YHWH’s might and victory to its readers and performers, rather than just a witness to a past history.
Worship is a response to YHWH’s self-revelation in his great acts of salvation and judgment in history. It is appropriate that this, the fullest revelation of YHWH’s salvation and judgment in the life of Israel to that point, should immediately give rise to answering praise declaring the greatness of YHWH’s power and goodness to those who fear him and his judgment upon all oppressors. This event and the song that follow establish a pattern for much of the worship of Israel that follows.
It should once again be stressed that this Song is a liturgical memorial. As such, it was designed to be sung throughout the centuries that followed, and by us in the present. Like other such memorials, it declares YHWH’s great covenant acts of old and calls him to remember and fulfil his covenant in the present. In this way, declaring such past victories of God in our worship recognizes them as realities that give direction and impetus to the covenant actions of both God and man in the present. Past deliverances are joyfully sung forth as reality-filled promises of future deliverances. We sing to YHWH, calling him to remember his covenant that we are memorializing and finding strength and orientation in the present as we do so.
Conclusion
As songs and dancing follow after military victory and birth, so Moses’ Song of the Sea and the dancing and the song of Miriam are the joyful response to the great act of YHWH at the Red Sea. This crossing is the decisive transition in Israel’s life, the moment when they are born as a new nation and the foundation of a new creation, the moment when they pass from slavery to freedom. It is the final judgment on the dragon and the crushing of his head. It is a powerful new revelation of YHWH’s identity and is consequently fundamental for much of the worship of Israel that follows. As the climax and final decisive blow of the Exodus deliverance, the Red Sea crossing encapsulates the entire moment.
As we shall see as this series develops, the themes associated with the Red Sea are extensively developed over the course of biblical history and, unsurprisingly, provide one of the most important biblical paradigms for understanding the meaning of Christian baptism.
In Exodus 11, YHWH declared the coming death of the firstborn. It is this plague that would be the last straw for Pharaoh and would finally lead to his acceding to YHWH’s demands. He would then drive the Israelites from his presence. 11:4-8 seems to follow from 10:29, with 11:1-3 functioning as an explanatory note.
The explanatory note serves the purpose of highlighting the power that Moses and the Israelites had gained among the Egyptian people. While Pharaoh continued to resist YHWH’S demands, the Egyptian people were becoming increasingly fearful of the consequences of his insane recalcitrance (10:7; 12:33). The hardness of Pharaoh rendered the Egyptians the powerless occupants of a vessel that their nation’s captain seemed hell-bent to shipwreck in his hubristic opposition to the will of YHWH. The Israelites gained great favour in the eyes of the Egyptians, who realized what it meant that YHWH was on their side. Moses, as the mouthpiece of YHWH, was viewed with particular fear and honour. The Israelites were instructed to request gifts from the Egyptians (vv.2-3). YHWH would give them favour in the eyes of the Egyptians, so that the Egyptians would readily hand over silver and gold to them.
As we go through the narrative of the Exodus we will see that there were those who came to fear the word of YHWH through the plagues (9:20-21). Those who came to fear the word of YHWH, while not immune, would have been saved from the full force of the plagues. Many of these Egyptians would later have been found among the mixed multitude that departed from Egypt with the Israelites (12:38). The plagues introduced a process in which rebellion against YHWH was gradually whipped up into a terrible madness in the dragon Pharaoh, while many of the Egyptians were humbled to the point where they recognized YHWH’s supremacy, some of them to the extent of leaving Egypt to serve him.
The final plague would involve the death of all of the firstborn in the land of Egypt, man and beast. In this plague a clear distinction would be made between the Israelites and the Egyptians: the air of Egypt would be torn with the cries of the bereaved, while not even a dog would bark among the Israelites (vv.6-7). Through this distinction the Israelites would be more clearly divided from the Egyptians.
This event would occur at midnight. The last two plagues – the plague of darkness and the death of the firstborn – and the Passover and the Red Sea Crossing are all events in which the night or darkness is stressed. YHWH is switching the lights off in Egypt as the Israelites leave.
After the announcement of the final plague, Moses would no longer present himself before Pharaoh, seek him out, or be summoned by him. Rather, Pharaoh and his servants would have to present themselves to him and bow down to him (v.8), recognizing that, as the prophet of YHWH, he was now the greatest power in the land of Egypt.
The Meaning of the Firstborn Son
The death of the firstborn was probably limited only to those between one month and five years of age and only involved the sons (cf. 4:23; 13:13-15; Numbers 3:40-43). The firstborn boys of Israel had been slain by Pharaoh at the start of Exodus: now YHWH would slay Egypt’s boys and claim Israel’s boys for himself. YHWH declared that Israel was his firstborn son and that if Pharaoh didn’t release him, he would kill Pharaoh’s firstborn son (4:22-23).
The firstborn son represented the strength and authority of the father and the family (cf. Genesis 49:3; Deuteronomy 21:17; Psalm 78:51; 105:36). He was the standard-bearer for the family, a concentration point for the family’s identity, who also received a double portion of the inheritance (Deuteronomy 21:17). In biblical patrilineal society, where great emphasis is placed upon the continuance of the family line over time and family, nation, and covenant people typically function as more powerful loci of identity than that of the individual, the firstborn son has huge significance and bore a heavy burden of responsibility upon his shoulders. The strength, authority, and rule of the nation were represented by males, and by the firstborn sons in particular. The firstborn sons would also be the guardians of the people. The son was the image of the father, representing his authority, strength, and rule within the world. The nation was God’s firstborn son, and the firstborn sons of Israel symbolized the identity of Israel as a whole.
The concept of the ‘image’ is not one that is applied in an undifferentiated way to male and female in Scripture. The ‘imaging’ relationship is primarily the relationship between father and son, associated with rule, power, and authority. Adam bore the image of God in a way that Eve did not and it is from Adam in particular that that the image that we bear is received (Genesis 5:3; 1 Corinthians 15:47-49). This principle is a broader distinction between male and female in Scripture. Women are associated with glory, the final word, life, communion, the future, and perfection (note the prominence of the daughters in securing the future of Israel at the beginning of Exodus), while men are associated with image, the founding word, authority, rule, and strength. This isn’t about one sex being ‘better’ than the other, but about each sex having a unique symbolic meaning and vocation.
In 1 Corinthians 11:7 Paul points out this principle (one not novel to him) as he declares that man is the image and glory of God, while woman is the glory of man. The human race, male and female, is the image and glory of God, although this identity and vocation is ministered by and to the race in a ‘membered’ fashion. As Paul points out, neither man nor woman can ever be independent of each other (1 Corinthians 11:11-12) and the vocations that we have all been given are never private or autonomous rights that set us apart from everyone else, but ministries to which we have been appointed for the empowering of others and the securing of the identity of the whole body.
All of this is important background for understanding the meaning of the final plague and the Passover. The threat to the firstborn males was not solely a threat to some individuals within Egypt and Israel, afflicting people by severing sentimental bonds. The threat was far more fundamental and existential: a symbolic threat to the very personal being of the nation. By claiming the firstborn sons of Israel for himself, YHWH was making a claim on the nation as a whole, not just upon a particular fraction of the individuals within it. As people who are inclined to think individualistically, and not thinking of other people bearing dimensions of a shared identity for us, this can be hard for us to grasp.
Institution and Memorial
Exodus 12:1 begins with a temporal disjunction, shaking us loose from the general linearity of the previous narrative. It clearly situates us in a time when the children of Israel are no longer within the land of Egypt, but looks back to that time in narrating the institution of the Passover. If we study the chronological clues within it, we shall also see that it throws us back before the preceding narrative, before the announcement of the final plague to Pharaoh. This disruption of time provides an avenue for us to follow into the meaning of this particular text.
The text also begins with a changing of Israel’s calendar, so that their religious calendar would begin in the month of Nisan. This change set apart the events described in the chapter as fundamental for Israel’s subsequent orientation in time and history. The yearly cycle of festivals would take its starting point here. Chapters 12 and 13 speak to the relationship between times, looking back, looking forward, establishing the pattern for the future. As Louis Marie Chauvet has observed, Exodus 12:1—13:16 does not chiefly present us with a historical narrative of the Exodus, but with a liturgical recitation and memorialization of it. The ‘time’ of these passages is one that is shared between the Israelites at the first Passover and everyone who celebrates the Passover subsequently.
To this point in our studies, our focus has been upon the relationship between various accounts within the sacred history. It is here that the fourth wall is clearly cracked and we see that the story of Exodus was also about the worshipping community all along. In the celebration of the Passover and the keeping of the law of the firstborn, the event of the Passover is made present to the worshipping community. The worshipping community memorializes the first Exodus, that past event reconstituting the present reality. It is in that event that the community rediscovers its identity and the life of the present is set into motion.
The biblical ‘memorial’ is not designed primarily to bring a past occurrence to the mind of the worshipper, as we might think. For instance, in celebrating the Lord’s Supper, the point is not chiefly that the worshipper reflects upon the fact and meaning of Christ’s sacrifice, but that Christ’s death be brought to God’s mind, calling God to act in the present on the basis of that past covenant-constituting action. As a covenant memorial, the Passover served to re-establish the community of the present in its living connection with the founding covenant reality of the past, primarily through appeal to God, who established that covenant. The celebration of Great Passovers was especially important at key junctures of Israel’s national history, where the people needed to be reconstituted in the life and vocation of the covenant – after crossing the Jordan in Joshua 5, by Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 30, then later by Josiah in 2 Chronicles 35.
There is a measure of contemporaneity between the worshipper and the original covenant-constituting event. In the act of memorialization, the worshipping community to some extent inhabits the same ‘time’ as the original participants in the historical event. The events of the first Passover become living and present, and the worshipper a participant in them.
As will become clearer over the course of these studies, the liturgical memorialization of the founding event in the present does not merely involve the past giving new life and orientation to the present: it also provides us with a reality-filled promise of a future and functions as a petitionary act for that future. We memorialize the foundational covenant event cycle by cycle until all of the promises of the covenant are fulfilled.
The Sacrifice of the Firstborn
Both Hebrew and Egyptian firstborn males were threatened by YHWH (cf. 4:24-26). This is why circumcision, the celebration of the Passover, the sacrifice of the Passover lamb, and the displaying of its blood were given such importance. The firstborn of Israel – and, by extension, Israel as YHWH’s firstborn – would be saved through this celebration.
The theme of the firstborn is incredibly strong within these chapters (as I have pointed out elsewhere, the bloodied doors are associated with birth and the womb). In Numbers 3:13 we are told that, in the Passover, YHWH sanctified all of the firstborn sons of Israel to himself, claiming them as his own. The beginning of Israel’s strength and the symbol of its authority belongs to YHWH. The Levites are later exchanged for the firstborn sons, representing YHWH’s claim upon his people and their identity. The sacrifice of the firstborn is part of Israel’s setting apart as a kingdom of priests. The ministry of the Levites re-presents the identity of the whole nation as the kingdom of priests, the firstborn son, and authoritative image of YHWH to the nation.
We have already commented upon recurring sacrificial themes in the stories of the patriarchs and their children. One passage that I passed over with little comment to which I now intend to return is that of the Aqedah, Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac in Genesis 22. YHWH instructs Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his first and only son by Sarah. On the brink of taking Isaac’s life, which YHWH has claimed, Abraham’s hand is stayed and he sees that a ram has been provided in Isaac’s stead for an ascension offering. The sacrifice of Isaac still occurs after a fashion, however. While Isaac’s life was redeemed by the sacrifice of the ram, he was still claimed by YHWH. While the sort of sacrifice is slightly different in Exodus, there is still a divine claiming and sacrifice of the firstborn of Israel. The sons of Abraham are claimed as YHWH’s sons in the Passover too: the sons of Israel are born on YHWH’s knees.
As we have already recognized, the claiming of the firstborn is a symbolic claim upon the entire nation. They are the human firstfruits, the initial expression of the strength and virility of the nation and the symbol of all subsequent power to come. The dedication of the firstfruits to YHWH was a symbolic donation of the entirety. Through the Passover, as through the Aqedah, the entire people were set apart as YHWH’s firstborn son – not merely the seed of Abraham. From that point onwards they represent, not only the authority of Abraham within the world, but the authority of YHWH. The Passover thus involves themes of adoption.
Other Themes in the Passover
The cutting off of the leaven of Egypt was a sort of corporate circumcision, a cutting off of the old strength and life principle of Egypt. As the old strength and life principle was cut off, the new strength – the firstborn sons – was claimed by YHWH. This is also a process of purification, a removal of the old leaven of Egypt’s wickedness from Israel’s system. It is related to other seven day periods or processes of purification, such as those associated with childbirth (Leviticus 12:2), cleansing those who had touched the dead (Numbers 19:11), or the cleansing of lepers (Leviticus 14:1-9). The use of hyssop in the application of the blood of the Passover might suggest some connection with the cleansing rites associated with leprosy in Leviticus 14 and with contact with the dead in Numbers 19, some of the only other occasions where hyssop is mentioned. Israel must cleanse itself from its contact with Egypt’s plague of corruption. Passover is the beginning of that process. The whole process involves suggests that a decisive break is taking place, in preparation for a new creation.
The Passover involves a meal. The unique way in which this meal is first eaten, with the displaying of the blood, and eaten in haste, ready to depart, does not apply to every subsequent celebration. However, it is an act that binds together the household and nation in a shared covenant reality, all participating as they eat of the Passover lamb.
The display of the blood purifies and sets apart the house as a sanctuary, where YHWH can dwell, the inhabitants can be safe, and judgment is averted. The bitter herbs associated it with the suffering of Egypt, in contrast to the honey of the Promised Land. The fact that the sacrifice must be roasted rather than boiled and must not be eaten raw (12:8-9 – boiling was the usual form of cooking for sacrificial meat) is significant. The lamb must be brought into contact with the divine fire that symbolized YHWH’s consuming or preparation of the sacrifice and which creates a powerful sacrificial aroma. The lamb also remains intact, without any of its bones being broken or parts separated (the red heifer in Numbers 19 seems to be the only other animal in the sacrificial system kept intact in such a fashion).
It must be consumed in the same day, with any leftovers being burned. The peace offering for thanksgiving (for deliverance from death) in Leviticus 7:15 is the only other sacrifice for which this is stipulated. The fact that the lamb should not be divided and that the whole of it must be eaten inside the house suggests that unity and wholeness in association with it is of paramount importance. There is an undivided animal, an undivided meal, and a complete participation. Participation in the sacrifice binds all together in a single place, event, and body. Out of a people fractured by slavery and a disjointed history, through the Passover, YHWH will form one whole nation.
The Passover was the fundamental sacrifice, the sacrifice that preceded all of the later sacrifices of the sacrificial system. It was in this sacrifice that all of Israel was included in the sacrifice of the firstborn. Both YHWH and the people partake of the whole sacrifice – YHWH through the roasting fire, and the Israelites through eating – rather than separating it between them, forming a stronger association between the partakers than a divided sacrifice would. All of the eaters are implicated in the sacrifice, being claimed by YHWH within it, and the firstborn especially so.
Summary
In the darkness of the night of the Passover, YHWH killed the young male children of the Egyptians, much as the Egyptians had killed the Hebrew boys previously. He cut off the symbolic strength of the Egyptian nation and claimed the firstborn sons, the ‘images’ of Israel – the great symbols of their strength and authority – for his own. In the process, he was declaring Israel to be his firstborn son and opposing the tyrant who would not release that son. The book of Exodus began with the daughters courageously securing the future of Israel in conflict with the dragon, Pharaoh. Now we see YHWH securing the wellbeing of the seed that the women struggled for in their enmity with the serpent, claiming the seed for himself.
The celebration of the Passover was not a one-time event, but an event at the heart of a yearly cycle of feasts. The institution of the Passover in Exodus connects the present with the past, reconstituting the covenant people in the present in the foundational covenant event and reorienting them towards the fulfilment of the covenant reality in the future. As a memorial, the Passover appeals to God to re-establish the covenant and bring about its promises and is not only a subjective reminder of past events.
Exodus offers the entire nation up to YHWH and binds it together in a single event and participation. The Passover and feast of unleavened bread serve to separate Israel from the life of Egypt and all that it represents, both in the original event and every subsequent celebration.
Within this study we will be looking at the signs, wonders, and plagues associated with the Exodus. The recounting of the signs and plagues accounts for much of the Exodus narrative and merit close attention. Before we do so, however, it is important to reflect upon the place played by signs, wonders, and plagues more generally within sacred history.
The miraculous isn’t a constant feature of sacred history, but flares up on particular occasions. The principal scriptural concentrations of miraculous events occur in the context of the creation, the Exodus and the years in the wilderness, the ministries of Elijah and Elisha, and the ministry of Christ and the early Church. Apart from those events, miraculous events are fairly thin on the ground. There are smaller concentrations of them – in the book of Daniel, for instance – but for most periods of history such events were rare, isolated occurrences, often with few witnesses.
This point is important because it alerts us to the general purpose of signs, wonders, and miracles. They are associated with the foundation or creation of a new world or covenant order and the de-creation of old ones. Once the new world or covenant order has been established, miracles become much less common and the order operates primarily through God’s ordinary instituted means. Once the Church and its worship have been established, for instance, we shouldn’t be surprised if things become quiet on the miracle front.
This isn’t an indication that something has gone wrong: if the means of word, sacrament, and body of Christ are firmly in place then God will typically work through those, rather than by dramatic miracle. The efficacy of God’s work should not be presumed to be directly related to how powerful the means that he employs appear to our sight. God took away the sin of the world in a dead body hanging on a wooden cross: he can form a new humanity using words, water, bread, and wine.
The prominence given to the signs, miraculous plagues, and deliverances of the Exodus narrative is an indication that the Exodus is a de-creation and new creation event. YHWH is dismantling the world of Egypt and creating a new nation out of Israel.
The signs, miracles, and plagues are also given in the context of a great showdown between powers. Exodus 5-15 is a huge battle of the gods, climaxing in the crushing of the dragon’s head at the Red Sea. YHWH is taking on Pharaoh and the gods of the Egyptians and steadily bringing them to their knees. The plagues are great blows in this conflict, with the drowning of Pharaoh and his men in the Red Sea the final and decisive strike.
Finally, the Exodus narrative is full of ‘signs’ and the great plagues have a sign dimension to them. A sign cannot be reduced to a mere flexing of the divine muscle to prove God’s supernatural strength to mankind. A sign is a meaningful action that manifests truth in a situation. Such miraculous signs of God should not only provoke fear and awe: they also should yield understanding.
The Three Signs Given to Moses
As Moses is commissioned by YHWH in Exodus 3-4, he asks what he should do if the children of Israel do not believe his words (4:1) and that YHWH had appeared to him. We should remind ourselves that Moses would probably not have been regarded with favour by most of the Israelites. Like the dreamer Joseph, to many he was a man who had gotten above his station, seeking to exercise rule over and to represent his brethren when he really wasn’t one of them at all. While they had been suffering hardship in Egypt, he had either been living as a member of the royal household or living far away in Midian. The words of the Hebrew in 2:14 probably represent the sentiment of many of the other children of Israel. Consequently, it is not at all surprising that Moses should ask what to do in the case that his message wasn’t received.
The signs that follow were signs to Moses that YHWH was equipping him for the task to come but, far more importantly, they were signs to be used with the elders of the children of Israel, to prove that YHWH has indeed sent Moses. These are the signs that Moses performs in 4:28.
There were three separate signs, each with a distinct meaning. For the first sign, YHWH asked Moses what the item in his hand was, to which Moses replied that it was a rod. He was instructed to cast it on the ground, where it became a serpent and Moses fled from it. YHWH then told him to pick up the serpent by its tail. When he did so, it transformed back into a rod in his hand.
As we shall later see, the Egyptian sorcerers can achieve a similar effect to this, seemingly transforming their rods into serpents. However, they do not show the ability to transform them back (though stories were told of certain great sorcerers who did). Taking the serpent by the tail was an act that required considerable courage. By performing such an action, Moses would manifest his faith in YHWH’s power to the elders of Israel.
The sign was meaningful. A rod is an instrument of its owner, empowering and serving him in various tasks. In Isaiah 10:5-19, YHWH speaks of Assyria as the rod of his anger. Assyria is wielded by YHWH for his ends: even though it is like a serpent, it becomes a rod in YHWH’s hands. Under Joseph, Israel had wielded the rod of Egypt with incredible effectiveness and power. However, the rod had been thrown from their hands, especially as they had begun to serve the gods of the Egyptians (cf. Joshua 24:14). The greatest element of this sign is that Moses can pick up the serpent and control it again. As the story of Exodus proceeds, the writhing serpent of Pharaoh will be hardened back into a rod, an instrument through whom YHWH manifests his power (cf. 9:16).
The hardening of Pharaoh is a crucial theme and point of the Exodus narrative. It is one of the ends that YHWH wills to achieve. As he becomes hardened, Pharaoh starts to act more and more mechanically, becoming a rigid rod that YHWH employs as he desires.
For the second sign, YHWH instructs Moses to place his hand in his bosom. Removing his hand, he sees that his hand is leprous like snow (in Scripture leprosy is an unknown skin condition, different to what we think of as ‘leprosy’ – perhaps we would be better off speaking of ‘corruption’). He is then instructed to return his hand to his bosom. When he takes it out again, it was restored.
Within the purity system of Leviticus, leprosy/corruption rendered one unclean and separated those who suffered from it from YHWH’s presence. Leprosy is given considerable attention in the book of Leviticus (Leviticus 13-14). It is important that we notice that it is spoken of in terms of ‘plague’. Leprosy is a ‘plague’ of corruption that afflicts persons and houses, having a similar effect to contact with a corpse (Numbers 19).
As a sign of death and uncleanness and associated with separation from the presence of YHWH, Moses’ sign of leprosy was a powerful one. The fact that he put his hand into his bosom is an important aspect of the sign, though. As the hand touches the flesh above his heart it turns leprous, bearing the plague of corruption. This is a sign of Israel’s state. When he returns his hand to his bosom and takes it out again, it is smooth and restored. Once again, the sign lies in the transformation: Israel’s corrupt heart will be exposed, but then healed, while Pharaoh’s heart will become more and more corrupt and hardened.
The story of the plagues that follow is a story of the plague of corruption breaking out in Egypt, of the house of Pharaoh becoming corrupted and being condemned to destruction. Both the Israelites and the Egyptians originally manifest the plague of corruption (as we shall see, both Israel and Egypt probably suffer the first three plagues). However, for the last seven plague ‘days’ a distinction is made between the Hebrews and the Egyptians, as the plague of corruption spreads among the Egyptians while Israel, their households purified with blood sprinkled with hyssop, escape the condemnation of Egypt through the water.
The final sign that Moses was given involved taking water from the Nile and pouring it on the dry land. This sign manifested YHWH’s power over the Nile, one of Egypt’s deities, and the primary source of its life. The Nile gave life and purification (notice that Pharaoh and his family go down to the river, quite probably to wash, on a number of occasions in Exodus – 2:5; 7:15; 8:20): in turning it to blood it became associated with death and defilement. It also summoned the avenger of blood, recalling the Hebrew boys thrown into it eighty years earlier (and possibly also subsequently). As such it was a sign of YHWH’s remembrance of what had happened. It also serves as a foretaste of the first plague.
Conflict with the Magicians
In chapter 7, Moses and Aaron are sent to Pharaoh. Aaron has been appointed as Moses’ prophet, with Moses being as God to him (4:16) and to Pharaoh (7:1). While Moses’ rod was used for the initial signs in chapter 4, we now begin to see a clear distinction being drawn between the rod of Moses and the rod of Aaron. In 7:8-13, Aaron confronts Pharaoh’s magicians. The magicians are Pharaoh’s representatives, while Aaron is Moses’ representative.
I commented in a previous post on the Angel of YHWH and the two witnesses. In the story of the Exodus the Angel of YHWH appears to Moses, and the two witnesses, Aaron and Moses, come to the city. Once the witnesses have borne their testimony and struck the nation, the Angel of YHWH comes in the decisive judgment.
Aaron’s sign in chapter 7 is similar to the first sign of Moses. He casts down his rod and it becomes a dragon, monster, or crocodile (the word is different from the word used for the serpent in chapter 4). The Egyptian magicians achieve a similar result by their secret arts (although they don’t seem to do it immediately, as YHWH does through Aaron). Aaron’s rod then swallows them up. Elsewhere in Scripture, Egypt is compared to a monster in its river (Ezekiel 29:3). Through this sign YHWH demonstrates his supremacy over the symbol of Egypt’s power. The fact that Aaron’s rod produces a dragon, while Moses’ only produces a serpent might also serve as a sign of the extension of Moses’ power in Aaron.
The conflict with the magicians is an important theme in the first three plagues. The magicians can replicate the effects of the first and second plagues (7:22; 8:7), rather ironically adding to the affliction of the nation of Egypt. At the third plague, they have to admit that they have been beaten and that it is the finger of God that is at work (8:19). By the fifth plague they are so afflicted that they can no longer stand before Moses (9:11).
The Plagues
The distinction between Moses’ rod and Aaron’s rod is seen in the first plague, where Moses strikes the waters of the Nile with his rod, while Aaron extends the judgment of Moses to one on all of the waters of Egypt (Exodus 7:19). Turning the waters to blood pollutes the source of purification, rendering the country unclean, and turns the source of life to death. The turning of the water to blood also recalls the Hebrew boys that were slain in the Nile waters, as we have already noticed, and the display of their blood calls for vengeance (cf. Genesis 4:10).
The Angel of YHWH is coming against Egypt as the Avenger of Blood. This is one of the important points to take away from the peculiar episode in 4:24-26. Circumcision and the display of blood is necessary when judgment is about to occur. The fact that Moses didn’t circumcise his son wasn’t a problem while he was in Midian, nor was the Israelites non-practice of circumcision while in the wilderness an issue. Circumcision only becomes necessary when the Avenger of Blood is marching on the land. In the bloody waters of the Nile, Egypt’s sin is exhumed and displayed openly for all to see.
Various patterns are suggested for the plagues. Cassuto suggests that they occur in three cycles: A. (1) Blood, (2) Frogs, (3) Gnats; B. (4) Swarms, (5) Pestilence, (6) Boils; C. (7) Hail, (8) Locusts, (9) Darkness. The tenth plague, the killing of the firstborn, is the final judgment and distinct from the rest of the cycles (we will be discussing it in a coming post). The first plague in each cycle (1, 4, 7) involves Moses going to Pharaoh in the early morning, usually when he goes out to the river, and warning him of what is to come (7:15; 8:20; 9:13). The second plague in each cycle (2, 5, 8) involves Moses coming before Pharaoh to warn him, presumably during the day. The final plague of each cycle (3, 6, 9) come without any warning to Pharaoh at all. The first cycle of plagues is brought about through Aaron (Aaron is no longer prominent in bringing the plagues once the magicians have been knocked out and only Pharaoh himself remains standing in the ring); the final cycle of plagues is brought about by Moses (as Cornelis Houtman observes).
The corruption that begins in the bloody Nile and then extends to all of the waters gradually spreads to the land in the frogs, the dust of the land then turns to lice, the plague of insects is then given wings in a plague of swarms, rendering the whole land unclean, the land animals then become diseased, then human beings also break out in boils. The plagues rise further as the hail comes from the sky to strike the seasonal crops and the east wind brings locusts to consume what is left. Then the lights of the heavens themselves turn out over Egypt. Finally, in the climactic judgment, the lives of the firstborn are extinguished. The plague of corruption thus spreads throughout the entire house of the nation of Egypt, from roots to rafters.
After the first three plagues, a distinction seems to be made between Israel and Egypt (8:22-23). We are left to speculate whether such a distinction was made in the first three plagues. If it wasn’t, a couple of reasons for this might be suggested. First, Israel was corrupted with uncleanness too. One of the signs to Moses was that this plague of corruption would be arrested and healed in Israel’s case. Second, the first cycle of plagues was primarily a judgment upon the waters and the ground. The second cycle of plagues spread to the flesh of the land. The final cycle of plagues was a judgment borne by the heavens above the land. The Israelites suffered from the plague of corruption of the waters and the ground, because the land that they were living in was to be a condemned house, which was one reason why they had to leave it. However, the corruption did not spread to their livestock, their flesh, their seasonal crops (being under the jurisdiction of the heavens above, its rains, winds, and lights), and the sun and moon above them. The land of Egypt and Goshen within it would no longer be a source of blessing for them, but the rest of the world order would. The plagues would thus serve to create a separation. They first separated Israel from the land and waters of Egypt, which were obviously now bearers of a curse, but then went on to separate the Israelites from the Egyptians as people, by making a distinction between them.
The Battle of the Gods
The story of the plagues is a great battle of the gods (Exodus 12:12; Numbers 33:4). YHWH begins by defeating the sorcerers, the servants of the Egyptian gods, in the first cycle. He humiliates the Egyptian gods by demonstrating his power over them. At each stage the great gods of the Egyptians prove powerless to defend them against the heavy hand of YHWH. They are impotent in the very areas of their supposed strength.
It must be remembered that Exodus is bound up with divine self-revelation. For many centuries afterwards, YHWH would be spoken of primarily as the one who delivered the people from Egypt. This deliverance revealed the identity of YHWH in a dramatic fashion, and would be spoken of in the nations around for many generations to come (e.g. 1 Samuel 4:8). YHWH proved that he was not just the god of a particular territory, but could exert his power in a foreign land. YHWH proved that he was not just the god of a particular element or natural force, but was over all creation. YHWH proved that he was not just the god of one nation, but was the Most High God, and master of all. While YHWH could have made Pharaoh give up the children of Israel immediately, he ensured that Pharaoh was so hardened that his identity could be demonstrated in the judgments upon Egypt beyond all dispute.
Within the book of Exodus the gods of the Egyptians aren’t presented as non-existent, but rather as powerless to resist YHWH. The Egyptian sorcerers exercise genuine power, a power used in the service of the dragon. YHWH’s battle with the dragon of Egypt was a conflict with the grown serpent of Genesis, rebellious demonic powers at work in the world (we also see the rebellious angelic forces in Genesis 6). We will see demonic forces in direct conflict with YHWH in a number of exodus accounts as we proceed in this series. As Jesus sets out on his ministry he resists Satan in the wilderness, then encounters demonic possession throughout Israel, a fairly rare occurrence in the Old Testament. Things climax as Jesus defeats Satan at the cross. Exodus is bound up with themes of exorcism and defeat of the demonic.
The conflict is undertaken largely through YHWH’s servants, Moses and Aaron. To this point in the biblical narrative, most of the serpents we have encountered have been human beings, with hints that they are puppets of shadowy forces – the mighty dragons – lying being them. However, in the story of the Exodus these forces become more apparent as Moses and Aaron are empowered to join the battle against principalities, powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places. While angels were sent against Sodom, YHWH sends two men against Egypt and its gods.
Moses and Aaron perform signs and wonders, acts of de-creation and new creation. They are thus empowered of agents of YHWH’s new world-forming activity, bearing a power greater than that of any of the patriarchs who preceded them.
Conclusion
Within the Exodus the plague of corruption spreads throughout the entirety of Egypt’s house, while Israel is delivered from their corruption. Israel’s power over the serpent is once again asserted. The Exodus narrative is a narrative of conflict and of signs. It is a narrative in which the forces of the demonic dragon, false gods, and their minions are crushed (the head of the Egyptian dragon is finally crushed at the Red Sea, cf. Psalm 74:14), and the identity, power, and rule of YHWH and his servants is demonstrated.
Unfortunately, I missed two days of my 40 Days of Exoduses project during this week. I wasn’t able to catch up this weekend, but will hopefully manage to do so over the coming week.
Laban pursues and overtakes Jacob – God appears to Laban – Rachel and Laban’s idols – Humiliation of the false gods – Covenant between Jacob and Laban – Preparing to meet Esau – Wrestling with YHWH – Peace with Esau
Joseph going to his brothers – Sold into slavery – Reduced to prison – The dreams of Pharaoh – Two stage exodus – Joseph’s brothers – The exodus of Israel into Egypt – Promise and anticipation of Exodus
The affliction of Israel – The Hebrew midwives’ righteous deception – A story of daughters – Eve and the dragon – The deliverance of Moses – Pharaoh’s daughter – Moses’ first visitation – Moses in Midian – Laban’s split personality
We have arrived at the beginning of the book of Exodus. The children of Israel have grown and increased in the land. Seventy direct descendants of Jacob had entered the land, but they had since become a mighty nation. It is worth recalling a point that we have made on a number of occasions before: Jacob, like the other patriarchs before him, was the leader of a large sheikhdom. Each of his sons would have had their own large company of servants and workers. In Genesis 38:12 we read that Judah had sheepshearers. In Genesis 34:25-29, Simeon and Levi kill all of the males in a city, capture their wives and children and plunder all of the livestock and possessions. We can presume that they had a few hundred trained fighting servants to help them in this venture, and were not acting alone. By the time that they enter into Egypt, they have to be given the entire land of Goshen for their flocks and people, and are probably still active in Canaan at the time. By the point of the beginning of the book of Exodus, the number and power of the children of Israel had grown so much that they had become a threat to the Egyptians, being ‘more and mightier’ than the people of Pharaoh.
Throughout Exodus 1 we see the fertility and liveliness of the children of Israel and the thwarted efforts of Pharaoh to arrest their growth. First, Pharaoh afflicts the Israelites, setting taskmasters over them, and forcing them to build supply cities. Later on the description of the process of making bricks will recall the building of Babel in Genesis 11. Pharaoh then speaks to the Hebrew midwives, instructing them to kill the sons and spare the daughters. The killing of the sons prevented the children of Israel from defending themselves or challenging the Egyptians, while the daughters would be spared for Egyptian men. Once again we see a threat to the promised seed and to the woman by the serpent/dragon figure. The dragon wants to kill the seed that threatens him and use the woman to produce his own seed.
The Hebrew midwives, like the godly women of Genesis, deceive and lie to the tyrant. The women of the Hebrews are contrasted with the Egyptian women, who lack their vigour. The sense is of a divinely given life that is continually outpacing the death-dealing tyrant that is fruitlessly seeking to overtake and arrest it. Having failed with the midwives, Pharaoh then instructs his people to kill every Hebrew baby boy, while saving the daughters alive. The fact that midwives are mentioned should also alert us to the fact that Israel is about to undergo a national birth.
It is important that we recognize that this story, as in the case of other great stories of Exodus, focus at their outset on faithful women (Rachel and Leah, Hannah, Mary and Elizabeth). Exodus 1 and 2 are all about women and especially daughters – the Hebrew midwives, the Hebrew mothers, the daughters of the Israelites, Jochebed, the daughter of Levi (2:1), Miriam, the daughter of Jochebed (v.4), Pharaoh’s daughter and her maidens (v.8), and the seven daughters of Midian (2:16). Our attention is typically on the slain sons and on Moses, and we miss the crucial role that the women play in the story.
It is the women who outwit the serpent, Pharaoh, and mastermind the salvation of the Hebrew boys. It is Jochebed and Miriam who bring about Moses’ salvation and the daughter of Pharaoh who rescues him. The place of women in the narrative will be important as we go along. Having registered the importance of this detail, we will remark upon its presence at various points as we proceed.
The women and the seed are in direct conflict with the tyrant because the story of the Exodus grows out of the enmity established between the woman and her seed and the serpent and his seed in Genesis 3:15. Until Moses grows up, the only man really active within Exodus is the greater serpent, the dragon Pharaoh. Exodus 1:15—2:10 is a story of Eve and the dragon.
The Deliverance of Moses
Jochebed sees that Moses is a beautiful child (2:2). Reference to the physical beauty or remarkable appearance of a person is seldom made without good reason. Moses’ beauty is a sign that he is a child with a peculiar destiny in the salvation of his people, like Noah (Genesis 5:29) or Joseph (Genesis 39:7), and consequently especially threatened and desired by the dragon. Jochebed sees something in Moses that marks him out as different. The fact that the story begins with the birth of Moses, rather than with his actions as a grown man, suggests that, as a person, he bears a greater significance and destiny, fulfilling a purpose that is more than instrumental. It also suggests that the actions of the many women who orchestrate his deliverance and the deliverance of other Hebrew boys are important actresses in the drama of God’s salvation and not just bit parts or extras.
Moses is hid for three months, after which there is a transformation of his circumstances and a deliverance (the number three is significant in such contexts). Jochebed builds an ‘ark’ for Moses – the only time that this word is used outside of the Flood account. Taken together, Jochebed and Moses function as a new Noah. The waters of death that destroy the other baby Hebrew boys (Exodus 1:22) are the waters through and from which Moses will be saved, much as the waters of the Flood that destroy the earth are those through which Noah is saved.
Once again, the detail that is given to us concerning the construction of Moses’ ark is not unimportant. Peter Leithart observes that the description of its construction is connected both to the construction of Noah’s ark, but also of the Tower of Babel (the same word for ‘tar’ is used in Exodus 2:3 as is used in Genesis 11:3). Jochebed’s modest construction project also contrasts with the ongoing hubristic construction projects of Pharaoh in 1:11. We should recall our earlier point that Babel was designed as a sort of false ark. Just as the ark was the embryo of a new world that God would build, so Jochebed’s ark and the child within it is the initial stage of God’s new building project in answer to Pharaoh: the climax of the book of Exodus is the construction of the tabernacle.
The daughter of Pharaoh sees the child’s ark by the river side, and sends her maid to get it (2:5). When she opens it, the baby cries and she has compassion on him. This is similar to the way that YHWH will later hear the cry of his people and have compassion upon them. She recognizes that the child is one of the Hebrew’s children. Miriam, the child’s sister suggests that she find a Hebrew woman to nurse the child and calls Jochebed, her mother. Pharaoh’s daughter adopts the child and gives the child to Jochebed to nurse.
Pharaoh’s daughter is a neglected character in many readings of this passage. She knows the command of her father, yet spares and even adopts the Hebrew child as her own, taking the child under her protection. A faithful daughter of an unfaithful father, she should remind us of Rachel, who deceived and resisted Laban, and Michael, who deceived Saul and saved David from her father’s clutches (1 Samuel 19:11-17). Rahab of Jericho is another instance of a faithful woman who resists and deceives her rulers to spare the lives of Israelites. In Pharaoh’s daughter we see that God raises up enemies for the dragon from his own household and makes them willing instruments of his salvation. Pharaoh’s daughter even names the child, calling him Moses. Through what YHWH will accomplish through Moses, all of the world will be blessed. The fact that he uses an Egyptian princess as one of his means to accomplish his salvation is a sign that even the Egyptians will be included.
The name of Moses is given to him as he was drawn out of the water (like Jacob, the water-crossing is associated with a naming event). Moses’ deliverance anticipates the later deliverance of Israel, for whom being drawn out of the waters of the Red Sea would prove a definitive experience for the forging of their identity. Moses was rescued from the reeds, just as Israel would be delivered at the Sea of Reeds. Moses was saved through the waters of death, just as Israel would be saved through the waters that would drown the Egyptians. Israel would be established in a new identity and set of relationships after the Red Sea, just as Moses was given a new identity following his deliverance from the Nile. Miriam is an important witness of the events in both accounts (cf. 15:20-21). Just as Moses was drawn out of a situation of slavery and the threat of death to a status of royalty, so Israel were drawn out of the water where they entered as an enslaved people in deadly peril and raised up to become a royal priesthood.
Moses is the head of Israel and his deliverance is the deliverance that the body will be brought into. His life anticipates that of Israel, something that will become even clearer as we proceed.
Moses’ First Visitation
Like in the case of Joseph, the story of Moses’ exodus begins with him going out to visit his brethren. Moses as a member of the royal family is qualified to act as a judge and, when he sees an Egyptian beating one of his Hebrew brethren, he takes matters into his own hands and kills the Egyptian. The next day, he discovers that his action has become known. Moses has to flee from the face of Pharaoh, just as Israel would later do. This is Moses’ first visitation of the children of Israel. The second visitation will lead to the slaying of many Egyptians and the release of innumerable burdened Hebrews.
Moses, like Joseph, is rejected by his brethren: ‘who made you a prince and a judge over us?’ (2:14). This rejection anticipates the later rejection that he will experience at his second visitation. Joseph, while rejected the first time, was accepted when he made himself known to his brothers at their later encounter. An infancy exodus, followed by an exodus when the character comes of age should also remind us of Jesus’ exoduses in the book of Matthew: first an exodus to/from Egypt and deliverance from the wrath of Herod, and then an exodus at the start of his public ministry through John’s baptism and the forty days in the wilderness.
As in the exodus of Jacob, where he met the shepherdess Rachel at a well with other shepherds, Moses encounters women at a well, seven shepherdess daughters of the priest of Midian (the seven women at the well might be connected with the seven ewes of Beersheba in Genesis 21:28-31). These daughters are threatened by violent shepherds, much like the shepherd brothers of Joseph. Moses resists the shepherds and waters the flocks. At this point Moses becomes more than the one drawn from the water: he is also the one who gives water in the wilderness and the true shepherd who stands up to the false shepherds. Moses’ later ministry in Egypt will involve resisting the false shepherd, Pharaoh, using a shepherd’s staff. Standing up to the shepherds at the well is a foreshadowing and preparation for his later calling as a fighting shepherd.
Moses in Midian
Jethro’s daughters tell him of their encounter with Moses and what he did for them. Moses goes on to live with Jethro and to marry his daughter, Zipporah. The Midianites were descended from Abraham and Keturah (Genesis 25:1-6) and were also associated with the Ishmaelites (e.g. Genesis 37:25-28) – they were all descendants of Abraham who did not bear the covenant destiny of Israel. While related through Abraham, they were considered foreigners (while Laban and his family were more close relatives). YHWH here prepares the bearer of his salvation in the land of the wilderness sons of Abraham (we will later explore the connections between this story and that of Elijah). Fleeing from the face of the persecutor and sitting down by the well might recall Hagar in Genesis 16:6-7. YHWH has not forgotten the other sons of Abraham and it is them that he uses to prepare and instruct the great leader of his people.
The fact that Moses, once rejected by his brethren, goes out to these nations, gives water/bread (symbols of life), and marries a foreign daughter of a high priest, with whom he has two sons (cf. Genesis 41:50-52; Exodus 18:3-4) also echoes the story of Joseph. Once again, we see the life of the covenant spreading to and blessing other peoples before it returns to the children of Israel who despised it at first.
Moses, like Jacob, keeps the flock of his father-in-law (3:1). He spends forty years as a shepherd in the wilderness of Midian (cf. Acts 7:23; Exodus 7:7), much as he will later spend forty years shepherding Israel. The Angel of YHWH appears to Moses in the burning bush at Mount Sinai/Horeb, and commissions him to deliver his people, telling him that he will later return with them to worship on that mountain (3:12), where they too will be commissioned as the royal priesthood. Moses’ first encounter with YHWH in a burning bush anticipated his later encounter with YHWH, when the whole mountain would bear the fire of YHWH’s presence (19:18). YHWH performs signs for Moses, much as he will perform signs in Egypt and the wilderness. Moses shows unbelief and YHWH’s wrath is kindled against him, much as it later will be with Israel (4:14).
YHWH reveals his identity to Moses (3:14). The connection between the revelation of divine identity and the Exodus is a very important one. The identity of God is revealed in fuller measure at key moments of deliverance, most fully in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Exoduses are times when the identity of God is revealed in a new way, and when his people are brought into a new identity and role, becoming new people. These two things always go together: a profoundly new encounter with God will always leave us radically changed.
Moses is instructed to return to Egypt, and informed that all of those who sought his life have since died. On the way back he has a threatening night encounter, where God comes to kill, his firstborn son has to be circumcised and the blood displayed – a proleptic Passover and Red Sea crossing (see Appendix F of this for a defence of this reading) – also reminiscent of Jacob’s struggle with the Angel at Jabbok (it could also be related to encounter with the Commander of the army of YHWH in Joshua 5, following the circumcision of the wilderness generation and the celebration of the Passover). He then meets with his brother, Aaron, who has come out to meet him, much as Esau came out to meet the returning Jacob.
The Split Personality of Laban
I have commented at some length on the relationship between the story of Jacob’s sojourn in Haran and the story of the Exodus. Laban plays the role of Pharaoh, reducing the people of YHWH to servitude, mistreating them, oppressing the women, being steadily dispossessed by YHWH in ten setbacks, having his gods humiliated, having YHWH judging between him and his fleeing servant, etc.
However, the character of Laban in the story of the Exodus seems to undergo something akin to a typological bifurcation. While he is typologically associated with the character of Pharaoh as I have pointed out, he also bears no less clear a typological symmetry to the character of Jethro. Like Jacob, Moses flees to the east from his home and a threat of death (Exodus 2:15; cf. Genesis 27:43-45; 29:1), comes to the aid of women at a well and waters their flock (Exodus 2:16-19; cf. Genesis 29:1-10), marries one of the them, has children, and keeps the flock for his father-in-law (Exodus 2:21-22; 3:1), receives a vision where God tells him to leave (Exodus 3:2ff.; cf. Genesis 31:11-13), has a threatening encounter with YHWH on the way (Exodus 4:24-26; cf. Genesis 32:24-32), before being reunited with a brother whom he hasn’t seen for many years who has journeyed to meet him (Exodus 4:27-28; cf. Genesis 33), and returning home with the original threat that occasioned the departure removed (Exodus 2:23; 4:19).
Within this abbreviated and lightly sketched exodus pattern, Jethro plays the role of the good father-in-law, who gives his daughter in marriage without trickery or deceit, provides refuge, welcomes his son-in-law as a full member of his family and freely blesses him on his departure (Exodus 4:18), a striking contrast to Laban’s dishonourable treatment of Jacob in Genesis.
Summary
Exodus 1-2 presents us with the struggle of the faithful Eve against the dragon, Pharaoh. Eve, in her many expressions in the narrative – the Hebrew mothers, the midwives, Shiprah and Puah, Jochebed, Miriam, and Pharaoh’s daughter – successfully protects the seed from the dragon’s attacks, making possible all that follows, eighty years later. Moses is delivered from the waters of death through a new ark and protected by a faithful Gentile woman, a Rahab in Pharaoh’s house.
Moses, when he comes of age, visits his brethren who, like Joseph’s brothers, reject his rule over them. At this point Moses undergoes another exodus, an exodus that leads him to Midian and Mount Sinai/Horeb. James Nohrnberg writes:
It was in the mountain that it was revealed to Moses that he was to return to Israel in Egypt, and that this Israel would return to the mountain and to the territorial Israel. This pattern is one more of the blueprints that God shows Moses in the mountain. Moses shares the life of his people, and so shares his life with them. His life is thus converted to Israel’s while its life is converted to his. He preparticipates in the life of his people in Egypt and Midian, then repossesses that life through the stories in Exodus.
Moses’ exoduses serve to mark him out as the head of the people. As the head of the people, he is the one who sets the pattern, the one into whom they must mature and participate. As the Apostle Paul will later remark, the Israelites were ‘baptized into Moses’ in the cloud and the sea (1 Corinthians 10:1-2). His life and story became their life and story. His deliverance was the blueprint and prototype for theirs. In these opening chapters of Exodus, we see Moses, as the future leader of the nation, living out the destiny of the people in advance. He takes up the typological roles originally performed by the patriarchs, and brings them to a new level.
Alastair's Adversaria 