The Bible with Dr. Bill Creasy

Exodus

Lesson #3The Call and Commission of Moses(Exodus 2: 23 4: 31)

Review

In Lesson #2 we witnessed the plight of the Israelites and we met Moses, one of the great characters of Scripture. Born to a Levite couple, Moses is saved from the infanticide ordered by Pharaoh: he is adopted by Pharaohs daughter and brought up in the household of Pharaoh, a prince of Egypt, a young man educated [in] all the wisdom of the Egyptians, a young man groomed for leadership in Egypt.

Then at 40 years old, in a moment of righteous indignation and extremely poor judgment, Moses throws it all away by killing an Egyptian who was abusing a Hebrew slave. His crime discovered, Moses flees Egypt, a wanted criminal, running east, all the way to the backside of the desert in the land of Midian.

In a biblical type-scene, Moses meets a girl at a well in Midian, marries her and settles down off the grid, tending his father-in-laws sheep for the next forty years.

Preview

In the grand sweep of our narrative, the Hebrews have lived in Egypt for 400 years and have increased in population from Jacobs family of 70 to nearly 2 million people. During that time, immersed in the advanced and sophisticated culture of Egypt, they have forgotten the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; indeed, if they remembered anything at all about him, it was little more than the faint echo of a folktale from a long time ago.

Meanwhile, in Midian, in the rugged landscape of the Sinai wilderness amidst snakes, scorpions and jackals, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob speaks to 80-year old Moses from within a burning bush, telling him to return to Egypt, confront Pharaoh and say: Let my people go!

The stark contrast between the gods of Egypt and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is startling. What kind of God is this, one who dwells not in a magnificent temple in Thebes, but in a bush in the middle of nowhere?

Exodus 2: 23-24

A long time passed, during which the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their bondage and cried out, and from their bondage their cry for help went up to God. God heard their moaning and God was mindful of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God saw the Israelites, and God knew . . .

Exodus 2: 23-24A long time passed, during which the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their bondage and cried out, and from their bondage their cry for help went up to God. God heard their moaning and God was mindful of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God saw the Israelites, and God knew . . . In Stephens defense before the Sanhedrin in Acts 7: 23-30 we learn that Moses fled Egypt when he was 40 years old and that he returned to Egypt when he was 80 years old; indeed, Exodus 7: 7 tells us that Moses was eighty years old. And Aaron eighty-three, when they spoke to Pharaoh.

Exodus 2: 23-24

A long time passed, during which the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their bondage and cried out, and from their bondage their cry for help went up to God. God heard their moaning and God was mindful of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God saw the Israelites, and God knew . . . The Hebrew words translated here as groaned and moaning (or groaned and moaned) are phonetic cousins through metathesis, the rearranging of letters within each word to create a play on sound. Nice touch!

Exodus 2: 23-24A long time passed, during which the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their bondage and cried out, and from their bondage their cry for help went up to God. God heard their moaning and God was mindful of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God saw the Israelites, and God knew . . . In Genesis the character of God is deeply developed, bedecked with dazzling detail. He is an intimate God, a God who walks in the garden with Adam and Eve, who has dinner with Abraham and who debates with Abraham face to face.We noted in Lesson #2 of Exodus that the God of Genesis seems to withdraw in Exodus, morphing into a remote and mysterious figure, one of awesome power, cloaked in fire.God is barely mentioned in Exodus 1 and 2, but in these two verses he steps from the shadows onto center stage, his nameElohimrepeated five times in two verses.

Exodus 2: 23-24A long time passed, during which the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their bondage and cried out, and from their bondage their cry for help went up to God. God heard their moaning and God was mindful of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God saw the Israelites, and God knew . . . In a single verse, God heard the Hebrews moaning; he was mindful of his covenant; he saw the Israelites; and God knew . . .. This progressive sequence of four vivid verbs awakens God to the plight of his people, and launches his epic plan for their redemption.

Egypt at the Time of Exodus

Sinai Peninsula

Mt. Sinai (Horeb)

Not the highest peak in the Sinai Peninsula, Mt. Sinai rises 7,497 feet above sea level as part of a volcanic ring complex, consisting of various types of granite. Its alternate name Horeb derives from the Hebrew root word meaning dryness, suggesting something like Parched Mountain. Mt. Sinai

Approaching Mt. Sinai from the southwest.

Photography by Ana Maria Vargas

Established in the 6th century by the emperor Justinian I, St. Catherines Monastery sits near the foot of Mt. Sinai.Photography by Ana Maria Vargas

Moses and the Burning Bush (mosaic), 6th cent.St. Catherines Monastery, Mt. Sinai, Egypt.

The traditional burning bush at St. Catherines Monastery.Photography by Ana Maria Vargas

Now, go! I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt (Exodus 3: 10).

Moses has five reasons why he cant go!

Moses has five reasons why he cant go!

But, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? (3: 11).

Moses has five reasons why he cant go!

2.But, if I go to the Israelites and say to them, The God of your ancestors has sent me to you, and they ask me, What is his name? what do I tell them (3: 13).

God replied to Moses: I am who I am. Then he added: This is what you will tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.

As Robert Alter observes, Gods name poses an ontological divine mystery of the most daunting character, a mystery that resists unraveling. I AM suggests a faint etymological link to the primitive Hebrew root of the verb to be; that is, to pure essence. It is being in its purest form, being that rests at the very core of creation.

Moses has five reasons why he cant go!

3.But, suppose they do not believe me or listen to me? For they may say, The Lord did not appear to you. (4: 1).

Moses has five reasons why he cant go!

4.If you please, my Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and tongue (4: 10)literally, I am of uncircumcised lips.

Moses has five reasons why he cant go!

5.If you please, my Lord, send someone else! (4: 13).

Begins with: Israel is my son, my first born (Exodus 4: 22)

And ends with:. . . and thus, all Israel will be saved . . . for the gifts and call of God are irrevocable. (Romans 11: 26-29)

Any discussion about the Jews . . .

A very strange story

On the journey, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord came upon Moses and sought to put him to death. But Zipporah took a piece of flint and cut off her sons foreskin and, touching his feet, she said, Surely you are a spouse of blood to me. So God let Moses alone. At that time she said, A spouse of blood, in regard to the circumcision. (Exodus 4: 24-26).

As Robert Alter points out: This elliptic story is the most enigmatic episode in all of Exodus. It seems unlikely that we will ever resolve the enigmas it poses . . .. (The Five Books of Moses, p. 330)

Not unlike the phantasmagorical scene in Genesis 15 when a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a great, dark dread descended upon him (15: 12) and God said to Abram: Know for certain that your descendants will reside as aliens in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years (15: 13);and not unlike the mysterious stranger (God) who confronts Jacob at the Jabbok River in the dark of night and wrestles with him until morning, as though trapped in a nightmare from which he cant escape (Genesis 32: 25-31);so this story seems starkly archaic and primitive, adrift in a dark night of the soul, and written in a crabbed style, as though the writer were afraid to spell out its real content.

In this strange story the Lord is dark and dangerous, a potential killer of both father and son (after all, he has just said to Pharaoh in the previous verse, Since you refused to let [my son, Israel] go, I will kill your son, your firstborn).Moses claim in the preceding verses that he is a man of uncircumcised lips (4: 11) somehow connects to this story in a twisted, fragmented way.In addition, the story mirrors on some level the perilous rite of passage that the hero must undergo before embarking on his mission, although in this story the mirror seems cracked and distorted.Awash in ambiguity, the murky language shifts, keeping the reader off balance: Why does the Lord intend to put Moses to death? Why does Zipporah cut off her sons foreskin? Whose feet (a euphemism for genitals) does she touch: the boys, Moses or Gods? And who is the spouse of blood: Moses or God?

As we have noted already, the first space of the Exodus storyEgypt as a place of bondageis saturated in water imagery; parched dryness and fire dominates the second spacethe Wilderness. The transition between the two demands blood: in the first plague the life-giving waters of the Nile turn to blood, bringing death; in the tenth plague God slays the firstborn of Egypt, sparing the Israelite firstborn by blood smeared on the wooden lintels, warding off the Angel of Death.Once the Israelites pass through the waters of the Red Seaand the Egyptians drown in itthe Israelites build the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, and God prescribes five great sacrifices, four of which are blood sacrifices.RedemptionGod moving the Israelites from slavery to freedomcalls for vast quantities of blood and water.

On the way back to Egypt to launch Gods epic plan of redemption, this strange, dreamlike sequence foreshadows the intimate link between water and blood, life and death.

In Leviticus 17: 11 we read: . . . The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement on the altar for yourselves, because it is the blood as life that makes atonement.And our author of Hebrews writes: . . . Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness (9: 22).

Later, to inaugurate his redemption of all humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, passes through the waters of baptism, as the Israelites pass through the waters of the Red Sea; and he sheds his blood on the cross, as the blood of the Passover Lamb is shed on the wooden lintels of the Israelite homes: in both cases, the Lamb of God dies, that the children of God may live.

Pietro Perugino. Moses Journey into Egypt and the Circumcision of His Son, Eliez (fresco), 1482. Southern Wall, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.

Questions for discussion and thoughtIn Exodus 2: 23-24 God is spurred into action by the groaning and moaning of the Israelites. Why now and not earlier?Why does God appear to Moses in a burning bush in the wilderness, a bush that is not consumed? What is Moses immediate reaction to God speaking to him from within the bush?Moses has five reasons why he cannot go back to Egypt. What is the real reason?Why is the strange story of Zipporah circumcising her son placed between Gods calling Moses in the wilderness and his return to Egypt?

Copyright 2014 by William C. CreasyAll rights reserved. No part of this courseaudio, video, photography, maps, timelines or other mediamay be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval devices without permission in writing or a licensing agreement from the copyright holder.