Exodus, Volume 3

Dr. John I. Durham, Bruce M. Metzger, David Allen Hubbard, Glenn W. Barker, John D. W. Watts, James W. Watts, Ralph P. Martin, Lynn Allan Losie, Bruce M. Metzger, David Allen Hubbard, Glenn W. Barker, John D. W. Watts, James W. Watts, Ralph P. Martin, Lynn Allan Losie

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780310522270
• eBook ISBN: 9780310588535
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship, from the leading scholars of our day who share a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence. The result is judicious and balanced insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology. These widely acclaimed commentaries serve as exceptional resources for the professional theologian and instructor, the seminary or university student, the working minister, and everyone concerned with building theological understanding from a solid base of biblical scholarship.

Overview of Commentary Organization

• Introduction—covers issues pertaining to the whole book, including context, date, authorship, composition, interpretive issues, purpose, and theology.
• Each section of the commentary includes:
• Pericope Bibliography—a helpful resource containing the most important works that pertain to each particular pericope.
• Translation—the author’s own translation of the biblical text, reflecting the end result of exegesis and attending to Hebrew and Greek idiomatic usage of words, phrases, and tenses, yet in reasonably good English.
• Notes—the author’s notes to the translation that address any textual variants, grammatical forms, syntactical constructions, basic meanings of words, and problems of translation.
• Form/Structure/Setting—a discussion of redaction, genre, sources, and tradition as they concern the origin of the pericope, its canonical form, and its relation to the biblical and extra-biblical contexts in order to illuminate the structure and character of the pericope. Rhetorical or compositional features important to understanding the passage are also introduced here.
• Comment—verse-by-verse interpretation of the text and dialogue with other interpreters, engaging with current opinion and scholarly research.
• Explanation—brings together all the results of the discussion in previous sections to expose the meaning and intention of the text at several levels: (1) within the context of the book itself; (2) its meaning in the OT or NT; (3) its place in the entire canon; (4) theological relevance to broader OT or NT issues.
  • General Bibliography—occurring at the end of each volume, this extensive bibliographycontains all sources used anywhere in the commentary.

Part One

Israel in Egypt (1:1–13:16)

I. The Progeny of Israel, the Persecution, and the Deliverer (1:1–2:25)

II. The Call of the Deliverer, His Commission, and His Obedience (3:1–7:7)

III. The Ten Mighty Acts and the Exodus: The Proof of Yahweh’s Presence (7:8–13:16)

I. The Progeny of Israel, the Persecution, and the Deliverer (1:1–2:25)

“And These Are the Names” (1:1–7)

Bibliography

Albright, W. F. “Northwest-Semitic Names in a List of Egyptian Slaves from the Eighteenth Century B.C.” JAOS 74 (1954) 222–33. Coats, G. W. “A Structural Transition in Exodus.” VT 22 (1972) 129–42. Cross, F. M., Jr. The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980. Klein, R. W. Textual Criticism of the Old Testament. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974. Noth, M. Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung. BWANT III, 10. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1928. Vriezen, Th. C. “Exodusstudien Exodus I.” VT 17 (1967) 334–53.

Translation

1Anda these are the names of the sons of Israel, the ones who went down into Egypt with Jacobb—to a man they went, each with his family: 2Reuben (“Behold, a son!”), Simeon (“He Surely Heard!”), Levi (“Joined”) and Judah (“Object of Praise”), 3Issachar (“There is recompense”), Zebulun (“Honored”) and Benjamin (“Son of the Right Hand”), 4Dan (“Judge”) and Naphtali (“My Wrestling”), Gad (“Good Fortune”) and Asher (“Happy One”).a 5Thus was the full issue of the loins of Jacob seventya souls, since Joseph (“Increasing One”) was already in Egypt.b

6In time, Joseph died, and his brothers and indeed that entire generation as well.

7But the sons of Israel were fertile, and so they became a teeming swarm. Indeed, they became so many they were a strength to be reckoned with by their numbers alone. The land was simply filled with them.

Notes

1.a. LXX and Vg omit this “and,” and many translators follow their lead. The “and” is important, however; see Comment, below.

1.b. LXX reads ἄμα Ιακωβ τῷ πατρὶ αὐτῶν “with Jacob, their father.”

4.a. See n. 5.b.*

5.a. LXX gives a total of 75, here and in Gen 46:27, as also does a fragment from Qumran, 4QEx^a (Cross, 184–85). See Num 26:28–37 and Hyatt, 57. As Klein (15) correctly notes, this alternate number is a “secondary calculation” based on the addition of five more descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh to the original count. MT’s “seventy” is the preferred reading.

5.b. LXX locates Ιωσηφ . . . Αἰγύπτῳ “Joseph . . . Egypt,” somewhat logically, following the “Asher” of v 4.

Form/Structure/Setting

This opening passage of Exodus functions as a compact transitional unit that summarizes that part of the preceding Genesis narrative that is essential to what follows, states a new and discontinuous situation, and anticipates the progress of the family of Jacob/Israel toward their birth, in exodus and at Sinai, as the people of God.

Source critics have tended to favor the assignment of v 6 to the Yahwist, because of a supposed connection with the final verse of Genesis (Fohrer, 9), or with Exod 1:8 (Vriezen, VT 17 [1967] 335). There is no convincing reason for such a division of this unit, however. It is better taken as a carefully composed introductory section from the Priestly source (Noth, 20; Coats, VT 22 [1972] 133), strategically placed to afford an ingenious bridge (see Comment below).

As such, this passage links both person and purpose in the patriarchal history to person and purpose in the story of the exodus, and it connects the promise of progeny to the patriarchs with the fulfillment of that promise in the patriarchs’ greatly multiplied descendants in Egypt. Above all, it combines these themes to impel the narrative forward into the next stage of its development and into the fulfillment of the second part of the promise to the fathers, the promise of land.

Comment

1 The Book of Exodus opens with a phrase that serves also as its Hebrew name:

“And these are the names.” This phrase is a carefully chosen and precisely placed connecting link, a bridge from the promise of descendants to Jacob and his sons to a reality of descendants that makes an exodus from Egypt a necessity. Indeed, the first six words of Exod 1:1 are in the Hebrew text an exact quotation of the first six words of Gen 46:8, a clear rhetorical indication of the continuity intended not only in the narrative, but in the underlying theological assertion.

The author of the opening lines of the Book of Exodus quite probably had at hand, in some form, the genealogical list of Gen 46:8–27. There is good reason to suggest that these two passages have the same author, and that an original sequence may have included at least Gen 46:8–27 followed by 47:6–12, 27b–28; then 48:3–7; 49:28–33; 50:12–13; then Exod 1:1–5, 7. The canonical Exodus thus opens with a listing of the essential names of the detailed genealogy of Gen 46:8–27 (the first substantial passage in the patriarchal history from this author after Gen 36:1—37:2a), continues the account of the settlement in Egypt begun in Gen 47:6–12, and amplifies (v 7) the theme of fertility in Egypt introduced in Gen 47:27b and referred to in prospect in Gen 48:3–7.

The narrative regarding Jacob’s desire to be buried in Canaan (Gen 49:28–33 and 50:12–13) and the account of the population explosion in the Egyptian delta (Exod 1:7) both point forward to what is to come, just as the summary of the genealogy of Gen 46:8–27 points backward to what has been promised and thence to what has already com...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Author’s Preface
• Editorial Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction and Bibliography
• Part One: Israel in Egypt (1:1–13:16)
• Part Two: Israel in the Wilderness (13:17–18:27)
• Part Three: Israel at Sinai (19:1–40:38)
• Indexes