Exodus and Deuteronomy

Athalya Brenner, Gale A. Yee, Athalya Brenner, Gale A. Yee

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780800698942
• eBook ISBN: 9781451408195
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Chapter 1

How Liberating Is the Exodus and for Whom?

Deconstructing Exodus Motifs in Scripture,

Literature, and Life

Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan

Watching Charlton Heston playing Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s movie epic The Ten Commandments along with stories in Sunday School record my earliest recognitions of Exodus. Many have yoked the concept of “exodus” with the liberation of the enslaved, the disenfranchised, those deemed other. Being educated toward the end of segregation and the beginnings of court-ordered integration in southern United States of America, our teachers, churches, and families believed we could do well and we did. Education was our exodus from the stereotypes blasted in the media. I knew about racism, though our parents shielded us from a lot of blatant oppression. Reading slave narratives triggered a rude awakening about the depths of racial hatred. During my master’s studies at seminary and my doctoral work, I began to see and hear the concept of exodus other than liberation. My lived experiences have made me more adamant about justice and liberation issues. Womanist thought provides a powerful rubric that allows me to embrace all my rich experiences, framing my own contexts.

Contexts situate us in the particularity of our reality. The received Exodus text speaks of Hebraic liberation—those God said, in conversation with Abraham years earlier, would be in bondage. God then tells Moses to tell Pharaoh to “Let my people go.” What about the plight of the Egyptians who were Pharaoh’s subjects? What was the justification for the premeditated, sacrificial murder of the Egyptian first borns, not limited to Pharaoh’s son? Who is the God of the Exodus, and is this God the same God who created the Egyptians? Why did this God never tell Moses or Aaron to preach to the Egyptians, setting them free from their own systems of divinity? Why did this God insist on hardening the heart of Pharaoh, causing tremendous pain and suffering, so that this same God could get the glory of a redeemer?

These questions emerge when I wrestle with Exodus 1–15, particularly given the high regard for Exodus by Jews and African Americans. Sermons, song, and film have chronicled this liberation sensibility. Several experiences of African Americans incarnate an exodus experience, from the great migrations to the North and West during the 1930s–50s to the 1960s civil rights movement. Many historians and sociologists, however, argue that the latter did not really change lives of African diasporan or white poor. While you no longer have to enter from the back door, can eat at the lunch counters, and book a room in a hotel, you have to have an education and finances to access these venues. White flight from inner cities to suburbia and shifting tax revenues away from inner cities helped to keep poor school systems poor and further enhanced wealthy school systems. Such flight by middle class persons of all racial-ethnic groups helped to re-segregate society and heighten classism. That the American interstate highway system most frequently went through Black and Brown communities caused a rift in many historic communities. Thus, the village could no longer raise the child, because the village disappeared. So, who gets liberated when an exodus occurs?

My essay problematizes the notion of liberation amidst theodicy, visibility, and poverty in Exodus 1–15. Following the mapping out of my interdisciplinary methodology and context, I then: (1) give an overview and examine themes and concepts of liberation in this pericope; (2) place scriptural exodus motifs in dialogue with exodus themes and outcomes in two novels, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Margaret Walker’s Jubilee; (3) explore the notion of theodicy, poverty, and visibility, in Exodus 1–15 and the novels; and (4) analyze the impact of context on how one hears and engages exodus motifs as living biotexts, as liberation of actual persons.

Mapping a Contextual Terrain

Womanist theory is a tool to name, expose, question, and help transform the oppression of women, particularly those affected by race and class domination daily. Womanists champion theory and praxis, embracing the struggle for freedom for all people. Freedom is a gift and a right bequeathed by a personal God. Taking the use of language seriously, we engage the politics of language, where words and expressions can inspire or subjugate. This strategy is vital to the analysis of biblical texts.

A womanist reading of biblical texts requires a sevenfold interdisciplinary hermeneutics.1 (1) Tempered cynicism sometimes equated with reasonable suspicion invites one to question with a sensitivity that knows the joy of the impossible, the hope of embedded faith, together with the scholarship that helps one appreciate the complexities of such work. (2) Creativity affords a context where customary interpretations and traditions do not hinder exploring oral or canonical texts in new ways. (3) Courage provides the cushion for moments when analysis leads to more of the same or to mystery, with the audacity to ask questions and engage comparative analysis of unique and seemingly antithetical texts and themes. (4) Commitment to the hearing and just, appropriate living of these texts undergird the process of relevant discovery. (5) Candor provides the impetus to reveal oppression within texts and the communities that have incorporated such tenets to produce an oppressive, though mainline faith. (6) Curiosity presses one to keep searching the sacred to push toward inclusivity, mercy, justice, and love. And, (7) the comedic reminds us not to take ourselves so seriously that we fail to grow; and to respect other ways of seeing, though we may disagree.

1. This hermeneutic was first used in my 2000 article, “Hot Buttered Soulful Tunes and Cold Icy Passionate Truths: Hermeneutics of Biblical Interpolation in R&B (Rhythm and Blues),” in African Americans and the Bible, Vincent L. Wimbush, ed. (London: Continuum, 2000), 782–803.

Womanist biblical scholars wrestle with the scriptures as they deal with the absurdity of oppression: calling for cessation of hostilities, new kinds of interpretation, accountability, and change. Womanist theology is the study of God-talk, which intentionally names and exposes issues of sexism, classism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism—all systemic and individual phenomena and actions that oppress and affect women of the African diaspora. Womanist theology analyzes related human individual and social behavior in concert with the Divine; and is relational. Womanist biblical theology merges study of theology with my sevenfold interdisciplinary hermeneutics cited above, to exegete and investigate biblical texts toward human empowerment and transformation, cognizant of the ways people have used scripture to persecute, demean, and control others. Such biblical theological work never worships the text, understands its paradoxes and challenges when speaking about liberation, and often has more questions than answers.

Thus, reading texts can be an engaged, creative, involved, sometimes daunting, and thrilling opportunity to experience the worlds of others and the realm of God, via the received canon. I have always questioned reality and not been afraid to take an unpopular stance. Challenges from systemic oppression, accepted curriculum, practices, and processes have fueled numerous questions. Affirmed and appreciated throughout childhood, my reality has invoked creative expression and liberative participation. My personal exodus through performance, teaching, research, and publications remain framed by a commitment to justice, my lens for reading Exodus 1:1—15:21.

Windows into Emancipation or Tyranny: Themes and Concepts around Liberation

The book of Exodus reflects a testament of faith, not an eyewitness account of God’s self-disclosure and liberative efforts for Israel around 1250 bce. Binz posits that this salvific God of freedom and life rescues Israel and people today, out of desperation, directing us to new awareness, comprehension, and goals (Binz 1993: 3–8).

At first glance and within many traditions, the Exodus saga (1:1—15:21) celebrates emancipation, liberation, and the salvation history deliverance of Israel. Framed as patriarchal, genealogical narrative when the new pharaoh had no knowledge of Joseph’s legacy, Israel poses a threat that must be controlled and liquidated. Empirical intimidation fails to effect Hebrew genocide, and in the language of Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, “if it wasn’t for the women,” Moses would not have made it. Midwives Shiphrah and Puah, Moses’ mother, Pharaoh’s daughter, and Moses’ sister aid Moses’ survival. As an adult, Moses kills an Egyptian and flees to Midian, where he helps Reuel/Jethro’s daughters and subsequently marries Jethro’s daughter Zipporah, who also saves his life. The old pharaoh dies, Israel suffers, God hears their groaning and remembers the patriarchal covenant. God commands Moses to be a deliverer, reveals that the new pharaoh will resist liberating Israel unless compelled by mighty force, and states that divine power will save the day.

God gets angry when Moses is reluctant, and provides Aaron as Moses’ mouthpiece. Bizarrely, Exodus 4 finds Zipporah saving Moses’ life, apparently from divine homicide, by circumcising their son. In their first meeting, Pharaoh asks who this God is and why he should pay attention to this God. Further, he will not release Israel, subsequently placing more burdens on the children of Israel. When Moses questions God about why God allows more evil done to Israel, God replies, “Watch what I do to Pharaoh.” Divine ego again emerges as a central theme. When Moses reminds the people about God’s promise to deliver them, their pathology of brokenness and enslavement foils their listening. Following a genealogical interlude, several chapters rehearse the cat and mouse struggles between yhwh and Pharaoh, with Moses as intermediary, positing, “The Lord God of the Hebrews, sent me to you saying, ‘Let my people go.’” The ten plagues serve as a contested site of power and control. Amid this ecological nightmare, yhwh promises to protect Israel and punish Egypt, though a few times God listens to Moses and ceases the onslaught of destruction after Pharaoh requests respite from the attacks and agrees to let the people go. Often, when Pharaoh acquiesces, yhwh hardens Pharaoh’s heart again. Following the announcement of the final plague of the death of the firstborn, Moses and Israel celebrate Passover. At midnight, yhwh kills all the firstborn in Egypt; and Pharaoh tells them to be gone and to bless him also. Following the consecration of the firstborn of Israel, God leads them out through a wilderness toward the Sea of Reeds, guiding them with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. God again hardens Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh and his armies pursue Israel, only to be drowned in the sea, as “Israel saw the great work which the Lord did against the Egyptians and the people feared the Lord; and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses” (Exod. 14:31). The saga ends with two songs of praise as Moses and Miriam signal yhwh’s praise of Israel’s deliverance.

One reading of the God of Exodus is that God both wants to liberate the Hebrews and bring an awareness of God to Egypt. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, by Pharaoh and by God, is juxtaposed over against yhwh’s determination to liberate Israel. The plagues God orchestrates occur to liberate Israel: salvific history. Freedom in Exodus involves liberty from oppression and freedom to live on the land God promised them. The quest for freedom involves confrontations between a confident, dramatic Moses and a resolute, obstinate Pharaoh. Randall Bailey (1994: 12–17) cautions a liberationist reading of Exodus 7–11, given the difference between the muted liberationist polemic of P and the liberationist/oppressionist motifs of J and E. P suggests that Pharaoh is actually collateral or a puppet of yhwh; Pharaoh is not the problem. The lapse of Israel’s faith is one critical issue. The reshaping of P also signals the superiority of yhwh to all other deities and teases the Egyptians regarding their institutions. Thus, P’s prime directive is recognizing and honoring yhwh’s preeminence. Liberation is a side issue. Tables turn, with irony and divine action throughout the text, notably regarding the roles and power of women, who customarily have no agency nor voice, as they are someone else’s property.

Women, who are normally powerless in this culture, ultimately salvage Moses’ life and help stymie Pharaoh’s power. Pharaoh’s enslavement of the Hebrews, words of warning to the midwives, and an edict to drown Hebrew boy infants prove unsuccessful—the latter two commands are thwarted by women. Shiphrah and Puah birth Hebrew babies; Pharaoh’s daughter rescues Moses from the river, and his own mother gets to nurse him. Their efforts save his life, while Moses himself murders another to help his people, with no apparent ultimate consequences to himself. He helps three different victims: an Egyptian beating a slave; a Hebrew mistreating a neighbor; and women obstructed by nomadic men from getting water (Binz 1993: 1418).

Walter Brueggemann approaches the book of Exodus as a “literary, pastoral, liturgical, and theological response to an acute crisis. Texts that ostensibly concern thirteenth-century matters in fact are heard in a sixth- to fourth-century crisis. . . . [Reading it as] an exilic document . . . requires a rereading of the main themes of the book” (Brueggemann 1994: 680). Thus, liberation pertains to freedom grounded in faith amidst a Babylonian or Persian pharaoh. Second, law involves a counter-ethic in a government bent on total control. Covenant invites membership options to obliging the empire. Last, presence combines vigor, courage, and God’s nearness in a domain that wants to remove the life of such resources. As a liturgical text, Brueggeman posits that the thrust of the book is covenantal liberation with imaginative possibilities, a source of inspiration for other non-oppressive cosmological options, where abused, violated, and oppressed people become agents of their own stories with the capacity to be accountable for their own future. At the same time, as descendants of Jacob cried out, God heard them, and did not emerge in Exodus until chapter 3, where God hears, remembers, sees, and knows. God chooses Israel as God’s people (Binz 1993: 18, 21).

Military historian Richard Gabriel presses us to examine foundational elements of the Exodus experience, of the need for liberation, if the Hebrews were not actually enslaved. Gabriel posits that Israelites in Egypt were habiru, not brigands, freebooters, or slaves, with complex confederation-type social organization. The Israelites had a highly professional military unit and frequently functioned as mercenaries. Not only does the Israelites’ settling in Goshen parallel usual habiru employment elsewhere, they were probably in Egypt shortly before Akhenaton’s reign and his violent campaign to impose monotheism in Egypt. Given that Akhenaton used special non-Egyptian military units to enforce his religious monotheism program, Gabriel notes that we cannot discount the use of Israelite habiru in Akhenaton’s program. If habiru has this status, how could and why was a respected, valued military ally reduced to unpaid, enslaved labor? Gabriel notes that this shift may have occurred since a new king arrives on the scene who does not know Joseph. Several notions of the received text do not make sense around this shift. That Israelites are armed and are slaves and that the Egyptians turn over provisions to the Israelites do not make sense. Several metaphors signal Israelite military prowess before they leave Egypt. That the Israelites could be habiru—bandits, wanderers, outcasts, possibly large complex groups of pastoralists, agriculturalists, stock breeders, merchants, soldiers, construction workers, fishermen, with largely independent military units, with important positions in Egypt’s military at the behest of Pharaoh (Gabriel 2003: 59–73)—begs the question of how much slavery was going on, and who and what needed to be liberated. While this essay cannot fully explore the ramifications of this concept, it does support the need to understand the complexities of, and be cautious in, viewing Exodus (1–15) as a liberation text. Novels reflect another kind of exodus/liberation motif.

Israel in Oklahoma, Alabama, and Egypt:
Exodus Motifs in Dialogue

Grapes of Wrath, Jubilee, and the received Exodus story share many common themes. Each story involves a journey from some place to another and transitions, notably of persons seeking to better the lives of their families and themselves. Sometimes there is an explicit divine presence; other times, persons or rituals signify the role of faith and God.

Contextually, while hundreds of thousands of people migrated thousands of miles during the Great Depression, less tha...

Table of contents

• Contents
• texts @ contexts 
Series Preface
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19