Exodus

An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture

Douglas K. Stuart

• Publisher: Holman Reference
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781433672590
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

THE NEW AMERICAN COMMENTARY is for the minister or Bible student who wants to understand and expound the Scriptures. Notable features include: * commentary based on THE NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION; * the NIV text printed in the body of the commentary; * sound scholarly methodology that reflects capable research in the original languages; * interpretation that emphasizes the theological unity of each book and of Scripture as a whole; * readable and applicable exposition.

DIVISION OUTLINE

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I. ISRAEL'S EGYPTIAN OPPRESSION AND GOD'SCHOICE OF A DELIVERER (1:1–2:25)

1. Opening Genealogy, Connecting the Story with Genesis (1:1–6)¹

2. How Israel Came under Egyptian Bondage (1:7–14)

3. A Pharaoh's Initiative: Genocide as Population Control (1:15–22)

4. Moses' Birth and God's Provision (2:1–10)

5. Moses' Own Exile/Exodus: Midian and Marriage (2:11–22)

6. Summative Reminder: Severity of the Oppression and God's Concern (2:23–25)

I. ISRAEL'S EGYPTIAN OPPRESSION AND GOD'S CHOICE OF A DELIVERER (1:1–2:25)

From all appearances, Moses intended this block of narrative to function as a transitional introduction to the entire book of Exodus. It provides a sense of continuity to some of the main themes of his first book, with the result that the reader of Exodus senses a natural fit with the ongoing story of God's plan of redemption, that is, that story which begins to develop so eloquently in Genesis.² Many in the original audience would not have known most of the details found in these first two chapters of Exodus any more than they would have known many of the details of their spiritual and/or ethnic backgrounds as narrated in Genesis. These were, after all, people who had spent hundreds of years in pagan surroundings, most of whom probably needed reintroduction even to the very identity of Yahweh (the LORD) himself.³ Garrett has carefully argued the position that Moses most likely composed these materials during the years of the wilderness wanderings for the benefit of the second-generation Israelites who were growing up during that thirty-nine-year period, as well as for the benefit of those who came to join with Israel either spiritually or ethnically.⁴

We should remember that a considerable proportion of the people who actually arrived at Mount Sinai, after fleeing Egypt to meet with the only true and living God, were not originally Israelites at all.⁵ They had seen the plagues, had come to believe that the Israelites were indeed a people to join with, and had taken advantage of the discomfiture of the Egyptians on the night of the Passover to join the Israelite ranks and seek freedom. Of course, as they traveled with the Israelites, they would begin to pick up bits and pieces of the history they were officially to adopt as their own at Sinai, but Moses' authoritative and systematic version was what they especially required if they were to be spiritually at one with the new people God was creating for himself in the process of the exodus.

This transitional-introductory material in chaps. 1–2 is composed of six component parts:⁶ (1) First comes an opening genealogy (1:1–6) of the twelve tribes of Israel, featuring the twelve sons of Jacob and thus connecting the story of the exodus with the patriarchal narratives that comprise the bulk (chaps. 12–50) of Genesis.⁷ The fact that this opening genealogy mentions the descent of Jacob's family into Egypt is part of its transitional character.⁸ (2) Next comes a brief section describing how the descendants of Jacob grew into a large nation and eventually came under Egyptian bondage (1:7–14).⁹ This information informs the alert reader that the promises of great growth to Abraham's descendants—restated, as carefully noted in Genesis (e.g., 26:3–4; 46:3) to both Abraham's son and grandson—are in active process of fulfillment. It also orients the reader to how it could come about that the people of Israel should be subject to such extreme loathing that (3) they would become, as described in the following section (1:5–22), the targets of a vicious genocidal campaign by the new pharaoh, with the goal of controlling the population of the Israelites through male infanticide.¹⁰ (4) At the beginning of chap. 2 (2:1–10) Moses described his birth¹¹ and, more importantly for the salvation theme that dominates the entire first half of the book, the unusual circumstances that led to his being found by one of the Egyptian princesses and raised as an Egyptian yet nursed by his own mother and well aware of the plight of his own ethnic people.¹² (5) The fifth element (2:16–22) is the story of Moses' own exodus/exile from Egypt, in which he was forced to flee for his life as a criminal sought for murder because he sided with his people over against his office as an Egyptian princeling. This covers a forty-year period, during which Moses got married, settled in Midianite territory in the Sinai wilderness, and assumed the life of a shepherd within the overall estate of his father-in-law. By this turn of events, Moses was allowed to understand both the experience of fleeing Egypt and a great deal about survival in the Sinai wilderness, knowledge that constituted part of God's preparation of him to assume the position of leader of God's deliverance. (6) A brief summative reminder (2:23–25) then draws the first two chapters to a close.¹³ These concluding three verses remind the reader of two things especially: the severity of the oppression the Israelites endured for many decades and the fact that in spite of their long sojourn in foreign territory and their long period of suffering, God had not forgotten them but was indeed deeply concerned for the plight of his people.

In all of this portion of the book (1:1–2:25), Moses carefully avoided mention of the divine name Yahweh (the LORD) which he does not reintroduce until 3:2, even though he used it 175 times throughout Genesis. His purpose for this is almost certainly a desire to heighten for the reader the significance of the rerevelation of the divine name to the people of God, the centerpiece of chap. 3)¹⁴ and the focus of the covenantal theology that dominates the rest of the Pentateuch.

1. Opening Genealogy: Connecting the Story with Genesis (1:1–6)

¹These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: ²Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; ³Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin; ⁴Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. ⁵The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt. ⁶Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died,

These opening verses provide an obvious connection to what Moses said in the latter chapters of Genesis, in that they contain a brief recapitulation of the story of how Jacob and his sons entered Egypt and were reunited with Joseph (esp. Gen 46) as well as the death of Joseph in the context of his association with his brothers (Gen 50:22–26; note how vv. 25–26 implicitly reflect the concept of “all that generation” in Exod 1:6). Thus there is a conscious concern here to be sure the reader understands that Exodus is not strictly a self-contained narrative but a segment of a narrative on a grander scale, that is, the full Pentateuch. In other words, the story continues smoothly from Genesis into Exodus.

1:1 The book begins by introducing to the reader a list of names. Accordingly, following the common incipit naming system¹⁵ of ancient times, the name of the book of Exodus in Hebrew is “These are the Names” (

lleh š

môt).¹⁶ To a modern reader such an opening might not seem consistent with high literary style. It was, however, not only good style but entirely welcome in the ancient setting, where a group of refugees of mixed ethnic origin, many of whom were young enough to be learning their national traditions for the first time, were being reminded of God's plan through a people descended from Abraham and heirs to the promises first made to him. These promises had four main components: (1) vast population increase for his descendants (Gen 12:2); (2) a long and important family lineage (the meaning of “make your name great” in Gen 12:2); (3) a worldwide blessing through his offspring¹⁷ (Gen 12:2–3), and (4) the eventual granting of unearned citizenship in a special land of God's choosing (implied in Gen 12:1; explicit in Gen 15:18–21). The fact that several biblical books begin with a genealogy (e.g., 1 Chr 1–9) or end with one (e.g., Ruth) is a reflection of the importance ancient Israelites placed on being able to trace their lineage, as part of understanding who they were and what their purpose was on earth.

An even more basic reason for beginning the book with a list of names, however, was the desire to ensure that the reader understood Exodus as a direct continuation of Genesis, accomplished from the outset by making the first six words in the Hebrew of Exodus (“These are the names of the sons of Israel who went …”¹⁸) identical to the first six words of Gen 46:8.¹⁹ The latter context contained a promise to Jacob about his sons and their place in God's plan. The book of Exodus opens with a description of Jacob's grown family in Egypt (1:1, “who went [came] to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family”) that shows clearly how God was beginning to move that plan onto its next stage.²⁰ Genesis had already introduced the theme of the fertility of Abraham's descendants in the patriarchal promises, as noted above, and had developed those promises in such passages as Gen 47:6–12,27; 48:3–7. The next stage also is anticipated in the use of

here as “sons of [the man] Israel” in contrast to its next usage in 1:7, where the same phrase,

, will have its usual post-Genesis meaning, “Israelites,” that is, the nation, not merely an extended family.²¹

1:2–4 It is possible to make either too much or too little of this list of eleven names. It would be a mistake to make too much of their order. There appears to have been no established order for the names in Israelite tradition, as shown by the way the order varies among Gen 46:8–27; 49:3–27; Deut 33:2–29; and the present passage. Likewise, the way they are grouped is of no special importance. The verse divisions are medieval so irrelevant to Moses' original purpose. The placement of the conjunction “and” seems to be²² as follows: n,n,n and n … n, n and n … n, and n … n and n. In other words, the pattern reflects a simple descending order of number of names grouped before a copula is inserted (four names, three names, two names, two names): a pattern for convenience, but not otherwise meaningful.

But what about the meaning of the individual names? Hebrew names were known to be given to children according to events or concepts present at the time of their birth.²³ Should the reader therefore hear in the recitation of these names some sort of echo of their original significance? We think not. By this point in the narrative that began with Genesis, there is no hint that the names carry any symbolic meaning. They are simply names for identification as all names are, simply functioning to remind us that the tribes of Israel were named after the sons of Jacob, that is, that the organization of the people of Israel could be traced back to the original family of the patriarch Israel.²⁴

1:5 Here the Hebrew literally says, “Thus the full offspring of the loins of Jacob was seventy souls in all,” but the NIV translation renders the Hebrew well into idiomatic English—the main point of the first part of the verse being simply to inform the reader that the great nation of Israel that came out of Egypt numbering many tens of thousands had gone into Egypt numbering only seventy. The first readers of the book were people w...