Jacob Narratives Summary

 ... and  Moses Summary

You’ll notice that I don’t separate this final summary “lecture” by differentiating the many narratives that concern Jacob; and many indeed exist that students of the Hebrew Scriptures would find of interest: the birth, the duplicity by which he wins his brother’s birthright, the actual moment when Jacob, with the help of his mother, steals the birthright, Jacob’s return to the land of his birth and the first of many dreams to be found in the Hebrew narratives, the story of his sons, the rape of his daughter, Dinah, and finally that which most links him with the Hebrew people through his youngest son, Joseph.  While all of these narratives are of interest, it becomes necessary to focus on but a few episodes taken from several in order to appreciate their value for the story of the Hebrew nation.

Jacob represents the promise of Abraham’s seed through his son Isaac, whom God used to test Abraham and the future of a people.  It may surprise many students of the Bible to learn that most scholars tend to focus more on Jacob as the most important figure in the myths, legends, stories, promises, and, finally, epic of a nation.  We may pause here briefly in order to note that what differentiates the genre of epic from other literary forms is that an epic tells the story of how a people came to be, and, in so doing, focuses upon a single individual and how he figures in and becomes the champion of that struggle.  Narratives swell in proportion to both the importance of and the years from which the person is remembered.  In other words, those earliest figures remain safely distanced by time and memory so that it becomes difficult to determine truth from fiction; but then, it matters not if the person represents the best impulses or ideas of a nation—he or she may become the metaphor for an entire people.

Most would ascribe this function to Moses.  Indeed, as we shall see, Moses fulfills all requirements and then some, so to speak, in that he has a personal encounter with God, literally leads his people out of their bondage and past, and formulates all that becomes the nation, which establishes its place within the “promised land,” that place that Abraham first called home after being called away from his home in the Mesopotamian valley.  The Hebrew nations had three “invasions” or callings to the land of Canaan, which was originally never theirs: first, we have the call to Abraham to leave his home in Ur and to go to a land that God would show him: Canaan.  From the heights of Hebron he watched the smoke arise on the horizon signaling the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the fertile land that his nephew chose in order to avoid conflict between the herdsmen and followers of his uncle and his own.  By tradition, he attempted to sacrifice his own son, Isaac, in obedience to God on the “mountain” that would one day be the home of Solomon’s Temple.  The seed of Abraham would one day return from their adopted home and later site of slavery in Egypt to reclaim their land from the inhabitants of Canaan, as the spies from Moses’ camp across the Jordan found their way into Jericho, one of the most ancient of cities, to reclaim through war their promised home.  It was then that these people would find their way back to the land where father Abraham had been lead by God, in order to reorganize and to reconstruct their past and to correct their failures following captivity by the hands of the Babylonians.

Most students of the Bible would quickly point to Moses as the epic figure, the epitome of all that represents a people, a name attributed to the Torah, the first five books of Scripture, in order to lend the name of their most famous son to their retelling of nation-building.  But Moses was a descendant of one of Jacob’s sons; his own brother Aaron becomes priest, and all those of the tribe of Levi would become more respected in terms of authority and spokesmen for God.  Indeed, Moses, who had his own failings, as all great Biblical heroes do, never saw to fruition the dream of that land promised by God.  So too, I would argue, Jacob fulfills the trope of the most interesting and oldest of the biblical writers, so named as “J” due to his insistence upon referring to God as YWYH, which German biblical scholars, those who advanced the “higher criticism” predominantly in the 19^th century, named the “Yahwist” writer, due to the pronunciation of the name that stood for Jehovah, the unpronounceable name of the Hebrew’s highest god (a name that never appears in the Bible until the Middle Ages).  Other differences exist as well as to the recognizable differences in this writer from the several others to be found in the Hebrew Scriptures: language differences, knowledge of events more pertinent to his time than to others, archaeological findings that confirm his era of writing, and stylistic differences in story-telling that surpass all possibilities that Moses on anyone else was merely writing a bit differently on any given day.  In the LXX, the so-called Septuagint from tradition, those scholars of the Greek world writing from northern Africa several centuries prior to Christ, acknowledge the differences in authorship as they translate the Hebrew into the lingua franca of their day.  The so-called Masoretic text, also known as the Leningrad manuscript, would once again, and largely based on the LXX, translate the Bible into Hebrew before the 11^th century, BCE.  They too acknowledged the recognizable differences in hands, in tone, in direction, in preference for what God’s word should be.

But the important difference for our purposes lies in the Yahwist’s writer’s love affair with the trope, the metaphor, of who and what Jacob was.  One would not be far wrong in saying that the writer looked ahead toward Jacob as his most ambitious project and, in pouring everything into him, seemed a bit exhausted or let down in much of what followed, even though it was made of the stuff of magic, supernatural forces, human drama, and the confrontations of the divine with the human in dictating what a people, not an individual, should learn from the exchange.  We saw in J’s earliest narrative that the head/heel trope would serve as figure for the relationship of God to Man.  There was once a time that God came down to visit His creation, to walk about, to look them over, to check in on their progress or lack thereof.  But bit-by-bit, Yahweh was not pleased with the exchange, with what He learned, and slowly if inexorably Yahweh distanced Himself from humanity, so that soon they had to “come up” to Him.  And not long thereafter, not only did they come up, but only the chosen from among them was so permitted.  By the time we get to Moses talking with God on Sinai, much has changed, new covenants made, new promises set forth having previously been broken.  When Moses loses his right to cross over into the Promised Land, it comes from a misdeed that Yahweh would have previously either forgiven or clarified in direct address.  Not so now.  Too much investment went into the burning bush, the recorded moral laws, the suffering of a people who demonstrated on every occasion that they were indifferent to their God.

J’s first use of the head/heel trope occurs with the Serpent’s chastisement and punishment in the Garden; thereafter, the trope stands for the distance between Yahweh and His creation, ever-growing, ever more distant, and finalized when what He spoke to Moses is kept in pieces within an ark, available only to the priests in the Holy of Holies, and never more in direct address.  Now, spokesmen do His bidding; and, more often than not, to deaf ears, so that the admonition “Hear, O Israel!” becomes something of a familiar preamble to anything smacking of religion or shouted by the numerous, indefatigable strange men of the desert, who shout it out at Holy days.

Jacob is the realization of the trope: his very name means “heel” or sneak.  In looking back, either as divine scribe or poetic interpreter of the past, the J writer finds Jacob to be the personification of the distance that still maintains God and humans as one, two in the same image.  In looking at the stories of so-called Old Testament figures, can anyone doubt that God loves the rascal above all others?  Why the imperfections of David, the failings of Moses, the duplicities of Jacob, the bargaining’s of Abraham, the singularity of Noah (who likes to imbibe), or the “hands-on” affection afforded the first couple?  It seems, not to speak it too lightly, that Yahweh enjoys the imperfections.  I’m inclined to believe that Midrash stories must fairly abound as to Yahweh’s boredom with the perfections of heaven.  And here I would mention but one story to illustrate this point, in which Abraham becomes enlightened by the God who ordered his own son’s execution: He tells the patriarch that He ordered Abraham to “come up,” not to sacrifice his son Isaac.  The comparison of verbs is strikingly similar: given that Abraham questions God about His order, Yahweh instructs him on a grammatical point: “Come up” to me, not “yield up” your son.  Such reading would have made the J writer proud—of course, he may have known the difference already and so constructed the narrative to take full advantage.

But this goes to the heart of J’s trope: Yahweh never comes down anymore; humanity must go up.  The covenant made to Noah was general, in that it affected all humanity, and not the faithful servant in particular.  However, the covenant given to Abraham some time later is more specific, and it has to do with a particular person, and people, and demonstrates for the first time that Yahweh chooses His people, rather than the people electing their gods.  In these narratives, Yahweh still comes down, but does so in disguise.  Who can figure whether angels appear to Abraham at Mamre or Yahweh Himself?  J says that it was Yaweh, then goes on to say that three strangers stand before the patriarch.  Abraham instantly knows it’s his God.  Were they interchangeable, look alike, to whom did he direct his speech?  Would Christians, as an after-thought to this, interpret this to mean the Trinity?  It’s difficult to know, but what we’re certain about is that the Tanakh changes when it concerns the patriarch of Israel, Abraham.  Chapter 12 of Genesis separates primeval history from patriarchal history, with a recognizable difference: “Yahweh said to Abram.”  This is direct, straightforward, and the first relief from the genealogies that please so much and become necessary for the Priestly writer(s), who, given their bent for law and exactitude, must reconstruct laws, family histories, and the like, especially since they’re dealing with a nation after (or still within) captivity at the hands of the Babylonians.  How much have they forgotten or been changed by five hundred years as enforced expatriates? 

Such narratives as Abraham’s claim in Egypt that Sarai is his sister are typical of the J writer: we’ll see it used again by a male looking for security in having married well or above himself.  On closer inspection, it seems a useful if less than dignified device—I’m reminded here of Shakespeare’s use of the “bed trick” in Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well, though the time and cultural tolerances must be taken into consideration: both are judged harshly by today’s standards, even for storytelling.  The more important point remains: Abraham continues in direct contact with Yahweh; even at ninety-nine years old, he receives a visit from Yahweh, who identifies Himself here as El Shaddai, “God of the Mountain,” which Albright attributes to the Akkadian, and which is often translated as “Almighty” (it is used here in early anticipation of its more common use in the Moses narratives, for obvious reasons, but this is a telling pre-figuring of another appellation for God: J has Yahweh and His chosen representatives speaking freely, and those individuals are people described in all the variations of human behavior, often less than heavenly).

Jacob gets a free ride into life by clutching his brother’s heel; thus, the sneak literally defines his own metaphor.  His name, itself, designates who and what he is.  He grows up second at a time and within circumstances that make the seconds of separation at birth life informing.  The differences between the two, even as twins, remains enormous: one is hairy, given to hunting and things of the wild, while the other is smooth of skin, enjoys life within the tents, and remains his mother’s favorite, even as the father prefers the other.  This comparison of the twins, much like the earlier narrative of Noah and his avoidance of destruction in pleasing God, owes much to the Gilgamesh narrative.  The Epic of Gilgamest, the oldest known piece of literature (of writing) known to humanity, comes from a Sumerian story of a prince, two thirds god and one third human, who combats a beast-like man, two-thirds beast and one part human.  Enkidu runs wild with the animals of the forest.  When hunters complain of his freeing animals from their traps, the bored, young, celestial prince encourages a prostitute to go the pool of water where the animals nightly drink.  When she appears, all animals shun her, running into the forest, except for Enkidu, who finds something in her too alluring to resist.  She makes love to him; after which, in the morning, all animals of the forest shun the man-beast as somehow changed; he, having no recourse, follows her into the city from the forest, where he meets Gilgamesh, and the two wrestle for most of the day in blood combat: Gilgamesh is quicker, more skillful, but Enkidu possesses strength and tenacity.  After a daylong battle, they consider their combat a draw and quickly become devoted to one another.

We can see how this compares favorably with Creation and the Garden, as well as the Fall, and later narratives.  Enkidu loses his innocence in the awareness of sexuality, loses his paradise of roaming free with the animals, and becomes mature, having nowhere to turn but to the city and the future.  Together, Enkidu and Gilgamesh merge to become one human being, with each possessing different aspects.  Their journey together ends with Enkidu’s untimely death, which Gilgamesh refuses to accept.  He journeys to find the answer to immortality from the only mortal never to have died: Utnapishtim, who received instructions on building a boat in order to escape the gods’ wrath, which determined to end the world by flood.  Gilgamesh makes the arduous journey, finds Utnapishtim, learns of immortality’s secret—a plant with a berry that grows only in a deep pool of water—acquires the plant, and, upon returning to the body of Enkidu, decides to engage in a sort of ritualistic cleansing before approaching the body.  Unfortunately, as he bathes a serpent slithers from the forest, devours the berry, and stops long enough to shed its skin—a sign of immortality—before returning to the primeval forest.

Jacob is the favored Gilgamesh, the son who will prevail and take unto himself all the qualities of the brother whom he supplants.  His immortality, like that of Gilgamesh, is learned by danger, journey, and the gods’ providence.  Gilgamesh learns that immortality lies in the remembrance we afford others during life; so too, Jacob is the father of nations, which recognize him as the father to a chosen people.  Like Gilgamesh, who’s mother is mortal and helps to interpret her son’s dreams, Jacob takes instruction from his mother and becomes the first of many dreamers in the Hebrew Scriptures, those who realize their destiny from the prophetic nature of sleep.

Notice as well that Jacob becomes God’s favorite by means of an expulsion of the other: not only his brother Esau, but the Egyptian Hagar’s child, Ishmael, much like his destiny would lead to the expulsion of the Canaanites, first owners of the land promised to those fleeing Egypt.  Ishmael remains at home in the wilderness, whereto he is sent, and becomes a skilled hunter and bowman.  The comparisons between the two epics, that of Gilgamesh and that of Jacob, have numerous comparisons—much as we discussed with regard to the Noah narrative—so that we’re left wondering: Were these stories familiar to all the peoples of and have a common source for the peoples of Mesopotamia, or did one (or many) cultures borrow from the original?

One of the characteristic qualities of the J writer are the many puns at work in these narratives, much like the adama of Chapter 2.  One play upon words here has to do with the quality of Esau, his reddish hair and reference to the “red stuff” which Jacob cooks in order to force the concession out of his beastly brother, too hungry to think about what he does.  The Gilgamesh tablet informs us of Enkidu’s description: “shaggy with hair was his whole body” (Tablet 1), which compares to Genesis’ account of Esau’s birth as “a hairy mantle all over” (25:25).  Speiser’s excellent commentary in the Anchor Bible edition of Genesis makes a further point: business transactions in the Near East, he notes, may have been subject to legal norms but were as well looked upon to some extent as a “game.”  Here, we may think of Job and God’s court advocate Satan questioning the other legal combatant, God Himself, to enter into legal dispute; so too, though abstract legal judgments be misapplied, the game turned on the true meanings of words and sounds—what we and other generations have delighted in as puns, so that the original meaning of Jacob’s name was “may God protect” or “may God hold firmly” but became familiar, because the original verb had gone out of use: all that remained was “heel.”  Numerous examples of the previous can be seen in the study of Shakespeare’s plays, wherein such words as “die” have more to do with the colloquial sense of sexual climax than the more serious sense with which we would use the word—thus the paradox and double-sense of the word that causes pause when the juvenile Juliet, having married but not yet known her wedding night, calls upon night and so casually mentions that which will occur after she “dies.”

The gamesmanship begins with the birth of the twins, but it also continues the narrative game: Isaac follows his father’s lead in another deception: he passes off Rebekah as his sister rather than wife lest the Philistines kill him for the beautiful prize.  We note that in both of these instances, not only are the men schemers, but the women regarded as dangerous due to their beauty.  Like their relationship to God, the men are wholly undeserving; is it for this reason that Jacob labors so for his wife?  Is this the balance that tells us that such a man is worthy to be chosen by God?  This incident, so believe both Speiser and Albright, give rise to the idea that a single incident was remembered and rendered by two authors, especially since both Abraham’s deception and that of Isaac encounter Ambimelech, host of the Philistines or captain for Pharaoh.

Careful readers of the narrative to this point notice an important event in the narratives involving the differences between Esau and Jacob: in the first, Esau sells his birthright due to hunger, coming across as a gross barbarian willing to do anything for a bit of food; but in the second deception, we genuinely feel his sorrow and offer pity when he cries before his father for any blessing, whether for the first-born or not.  The result is that others, notably Hosea (12:4) and Jeremiah (9:3), disapprove of Jacob’s behavior.  So why has the J writer recorded it as such?  Probably because this narrative, like so many others, shows sympathy for victims, and here Esau is the victim.

Esau will be father to the nation of Edom, which had a political and cultural tradition with that of Israel.  Birthright in this part of the world was largely a matter of the father’s discretion, and deathbed declarations carried great weight.  What was once an ancient tradition had, at the time of the narrative rendering, lost much of its legal authorization; but what was not lost was the whole picture, so to speak, the plan that Yahweh oversaw for the development of a promise, a covenant, and a general agreement made at the expense and pain of one party in the legal binding.  What is of most relevance, therefore, is not the propriety of the blessing directed to the younger son while the older cries out in pain that he has been duped; nor is to be found in our asking “why can’t Isaac undue the blessing—did he have but one?  If so, what would the younger Isaac have received—nothing? as does Esau?  Why must that be?  What is so binding in a ‘blessing’ that a father cannot share his bounty with both?”  The answers lie in the literary qualities of the narratives, an additional argument for the reading of these stories as such: tension mounts continually as we follow the younger Isaac, disguised and aided by his mother, awaiting a blessing while wondering if and when his rightful brother should appear, the hunt he was on, by the way, taking less time than mother and son how allowed, with the old, sightless Isaac touching and smelling his way toward his rightful heir.  Thus the reader becomes completely taken in, drawn into the drama, wishing for the “underdog,” the heel, to come out on top, since we know that this has heavenly sanction: it cannot be undone, but will last for eternity.

We should notice another attribute of the Jacob narratives, because they prepare us for what comes later: the tension filled between brothers, between families, and, finally, that of nations.  Much of that tension will result in outright war and the clear indications of something new: a nation with but a single god not only clarifies its differences with other peoples of the Mesopotamian or Mediterranean areas but signifies enough differences because of their beliefs that bloodshed becomes necessary.

If we step back a bit, to this point we have Yahweh create a world, people it, regret the creation, and then change enough so as to acknowledge that humanity will always be wicked, despite the Creator’s best intentions; He then makes a new covenant, honors it, and eventually chooses its pater familias, the patriarch of nations, Abraham.  As noted previously, this is unique for several reasons, the principal being that here a god chooses the people rather than the other way round.  However, it goes deeper.  What held nations together as a people in antiquity was the transference of gods; that is, the sun god may be called many things in different languages, but different peoples can offer respect to and worship of the same god.  Gods are interchangeable.  But when Abraham is called from Ur to go to a new place, he must have been surprised that the god he left behind went with him.  All cultures share their gods, and it was common, even for the Hebrews, to worship the local gods and to therefore show their respect.  If gods were to go with an individual, they were the gods of the tent (el shekinah), of the home, and worshipped as such.  Suddenly Abraham learns that the god who had called him out of Ur remains with him in a new, strange land.  Tension becomes the obvious result, and we see it almost immediately when Abraham travels to Egypt and has Sarai lie about their relationship.

Egypt represents a mighty culture at the time, and, if nothing else, the earliest narratives in Genesis set us up for the dissention and break of the allegiance of these nations and the antipathy established and rooted far into the present.  But we also note the way that tension informs the narratives of Isaac, of Rebekah (and the same deception that his father had used, worked as well for Isaac when he passed her off as his sister when they traveled to the coastal land that would be known as Philistia), of Jacob and Esau, and the parallel countries involved in their internecine struggles.  The tension is part of the family, just as the eleven sons hate the favor bestowed upon the youngest, Joseph.  Even prior to this we note that several brothers take it upon themselves to avenge the rape of their sister, Dinah, a massacre that Jacob fears will bring hatred and defeat upon the tribe.  But we’re being “readied,” as it were, for the greatest break of all, that of the exodus, the calling out of bondage of the Hebrew people and the final return to the Promised Land, which will find national realization in the court of David and establishment of the Temple by his son, Solomon.

All of these accounts speak as well to the crises at the time most scholars believe the Yawish and Elohist writers recorded their narratives, when two kingdoms emerged from the original invaders to Canaan, who defeated the people of the land with Yahweh’s help: Israel of the North and Judah of the South.  Those of the South wanted a king, wanted unity; those of the North favored the rights of the individual tribes, descended from the sons of Jacob.  To some degree similar to the struggles millennia later in America, some favored an united, centrally-controlled kingdom, while others opted for local, individual authority.  David was that king of the South; he forged too strong a nation for others to attempt conquest, though the North failed and fell to several invaders over time.  The lessons are in the past.  And if we read All the literature of the Hebrews, we find connection and vitality for the present, or the time in which oral tradition gives way to written.

Israel and Edom, or the lands of Jacob and Esau, did not get along; they, much like the Israelites and Egyptians, were bitter rivals.  Kind David defeated the Edomites (2 Samuel).  The land of Seir was the home of the Edomites, which is a continual pun upon the latter, red, and the previous, hairy.  But the numerous and memorable adventures of Jacob have many and varied interpretations, meanings, significances that readers pay attention to.  With so many heroes and central characters of the Biblical narratives to choose from, we note here particular stories that seems best to inform who they are by what they’ve done, all inclusive of one person.  Those of Jacob and his adventures and encounters seem too many to find a single focus.  His dream of heaven, for instance, in which he sees a ladder, a stairwell to heaven, represents an excellent example.  Since the loss of Paradise, humanity has been searching for a way back to God; the tower of Babel was such an attempt, if for the wrong reasons.  No more does Yahweh come down; now, a particular one must go up.  Jacob’s dream seems more of lost longing, realized in what Sigmund Freud will call “wish fulfillment” in having access to that which is otherwise denied.  His dream employs the image of a ladder, and, as pointed out in an earlier summary, two great symbols dominate human thought: the tree and the ladder (background that branch off from a single source, or those which proceed step by orderly step).  Here is the simple, if we may use that description, direct pathway to God.  Thus, upon completion of the desirable dream, Jacob names the place Bethel, or, literally, El’s House, or “house of God.”  Is it entirely coincidental that the names Babel and Bethel sound so familiar to us?

But the final sequence of events of the Jacob cycle may be even more remarkable: Jacob returns to Canaan, an event full of fear and trepidation at meeting his brother Esau after all these years, and has a heavenly wrestling match before the break of day.  When we read the narrative, we aren’t certain as to why Jacob distances himself from his family and possessions—is it because, in staying behind on the far side of the river, he affords himself “room to think”?  Or is he scheming once again and determining the best way to approach his brother, who may be moved by the sight of the family preceding the brother who wronged him so long ago?  Whatever the case, he once again has an encounter with heaven.  Here at Penuel (alternately spelled Peniel), Jacob wrestles with someone not described more specifically; most would have it an angel, but Jacob believes it to be Yahweh—and the narrative would seem to confirm that idea.  Here he receives a new name: no longer is he trickster or heel-grabber, but rather Israel, or “he who wrestles with God.” 

Most remarkable is that it represents a turning point: this moment represents both the national and the personal.  Israel is favored of God, whether nation or man.  And if, as most scholars do, we ascribe this narrative to both the J and E writers (the Elohist, who probably borrowed from J and attempted to save the accounts of a people facing deportation into Babylon), we see two familiar tropes: the J writer’s head/heel trope.  First, the celestial being dislocates Jacob’s leg but cannot free himself from Jacob’s grasp; for those who have experience with wrestling, as Jacob does with the stranger, they know that the necessity of any match is to control the heel of one’s opponent, wherein he can’t twist, turn, or free himself—a firm grasp upon the heel or ankle area of an opponent means a tactical edge.  Second, the Eloist, as we shall see with Moses, maintains a common idea in his writing: one cannot see the face of God and live.  But Jacob does, which means he’s blessed and indeed special.

I leave it to those for whom literature offers such great rewards to determine the significance of the river (a telling symbol) that Jacob does not yet cross, as well as the wrestling match, which seems to have the nation of Israel wrestling with God—afraid to let go, but suffering from the fray.  Or does the story present one of personal forgiveness, reward, and a metaphoric reaching out to God in ways that may seem as dreams, but have rewards in the present reality?  If nothing else, the Jacob narrative cycles reveal that the heroes of Israel, like its people, have serious flaws, but remain God’s chosen.

Moses: The Exodus and the Israelites

An Introduction     Textual Analysis     A Brief Synopsis of Exodus    The Literary Qualities of Exodus

   Moses: Who Was He?  Comment on Narrative Episodes   Hebrew Poetry

An (Uneasy) Introduction

Knowing how to begin this summary about the most famous of all Hebrew narratives, or, more commonly referred to as the Moses of the Old Testament by Christians, poses difficult problems at best, and at worse some ideas that few would accept, most of all conservative Christians.  The idea of Biblical scholarship already draws a line in the sand, so to speak.  How does one convince people who believe that God’s call, which can come at any time to anyone, no matter his station, intelligence, or societal relevance, can change not only his destiny but all who will but hear and obey?  Isn’t this one of the lessons of Moses’ call by Yahweh in the desert?  

On the other end of the spectrum we have archaeological, linguistic, historical, literary, cultural, textual and biblical scholars (and by these adjectives we mean an enormous range of those interested in the Bible, many of whom are unknown to day-to-day believers, but do the work of the scholarship that many of the faithful take for granted), who, no matter how much they publish, are read only by the educated few because no one else has the where-with-all or the curiosity to understand their writing, much less their findings.  In other words, we have people who will give more credit to that one blinded in a moment as opposed to the one educated for a lifetime.  

Why would this be so?  The answers are many and far too complex to discuss here, except to generalize a bit: we as Americans, especially, have always distrusted scholarship.  It’s a puzzle, but while we tout the need for an education and try to grant to every one of our citizens an education as a right, we also denigrate it.  No political battle is complete until one has called the other an “intellectual,” thereby putting the mark of Cain, so to speak, upon his opponent.  We’re suspicious of educated people.  We may demand the best of educations for our children, but, put to the test, we’ll opt for “commonsense” every time, as if commonsense came by default to all those who couldn’t or wouldn’t get an education: “all those who don’t have smarts, please raise your hands: you will now get ‘commonsense’.”  

It may well be that an education is just for show: it gets us more money in the job market, but we don’t want separation from the group—we’re just “regular folks.”  And so, in the risk of being different, we may find the price too high.  It should go without saying, as well, that education and scholarship are not easy; learning takes time, commitment, and, perhaps most important, it also reveals to us (so long as we remain honest) what our limitations are.  It’s difficult to accept that we may have deficiencies in what we can do or know; and so long as we never test it, we can always suggest that we could do something if we set our minds to it, but we choose differently.  The temple at Delphi had above it’s entrance, “Know Thyself”—a difficult task for anyone, but it would seem to suggest that we accept what we can and cannot do in all honesty with ourselves.

Now, if you will, imagine how divisive education and scholarship may be when applied to the Bible.  No longer a matter of commonsense, we now believe that God would not permit true believers to live in ignorance; they may be uneducated, but God has “called them.”  We have ample providence: Moses, as mentioned, and Peter too, and we’re sure there must be others, even if we cannot recall their names at the moment.  However, in all fairness we must observe that Moses was educated at Pharaoh’s court, and Peter apparently deferred the guidance of the early Church to Paul, an enormously educated man.  These are the seeds of problems that do not yield apparent resolutions.

Having attended a fundamentalist, church-sponsored high school, I recall that we were on safe ground and always praised for our active minds whenever we could answer as taught or, more importantly, pose questions that were answerable according to our faith.  But should we stray, that is, ask questions that put our mentors to the test, we were charged with an abundance of “self,” asking for knowledge that was beyond our kin.  We once trapped a visiting lecturer about the necessities of apostolic example, upon which many Christians take their lead for such things as meeting on Sundays, regular communion, what transpires within the physical church, how to worship, and how to treat the misguided among us, among others.  We asked a question about our worship that was neither set forth by Jesus nor found in apostolic example.  After having cornered our visitor with a difficult set of questions, which we admittedly attempted, we heard the familiar “Does that bother you?  You’re now reaching for things that God recognizes as hubris,” and that leads to proud, self-sufficiency, wherein you see no reason for God in your lives.  

Today, when I teach Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, I understand better, I like to think, the Sixteenth-Century audience for whom the agnostic Marlowe wrote.  The West’s literary and historical dividing line between what we have come to term medieval and Renaissance, for want of better terms, rests on the distinction of what we may know and what God has set out of bounds.  Faustus wanted all knowledge; but the Good Angel tells him that some things should be beyond his search, even if they are within humanity’s reach (free will makes it possible but does not deem it necessary).

But how are we to square a lifetime of learning and grounding in the fundamentals that will “prove” belief, or at least give one the sufficient knowledge to pursue belief and faith, if we so easily dismiss the relevance of learning?  The options for biblical scholarship are many, from the most liberal of seminaries to the most traditional of Bible colleges, and somewhere in-between we find university Theology departments that offer consensus scholarship without doctrinal influence.  So the easy answer as to how we manage to juxtapose scholarship and faith is, of course, we do not; rather, for most, they continue to remain separate, or, at the best, we do as I did in High School, learning to defend that which we first believe.  Let me offer an illustration, leaving it to the reader to position him or her as to the relevance of the above.

The conservative, traditional belief has it that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, which we call the Torah, and which describe in detail the first migrations to, the three different occupations of, and the final circumstances that surround the occupation of the land that would become Israel, formerly Canaan.  God intends the land for the habitation of the exiled people whom Moses led from bondage in Egypt.  This god dictates a set of moral instructions that all people follow—another bond or covenant between Yahweh and His chosen people, an example to the known world—which grants the moral authority of a people who in time have more specific laws that pertain to them alone, laws both justifying and explaining their avoidance of other cultures and other beliefs.  What follows becomes a history of this endeavor.

Moses (and remember that no historical records beyond the Bible exist as to his existence) would have lived about 2000 BCE.  The supposed record of his writings and facts of his life, however, are written in a style and with colloquialisms and records that cannot place him before about 800 BCE.  Or, in other words, it’s as if a student of Shakespeare suddenly believed that people of the twentieth century not only thought and spoke as do characters in Hamlet and King Lear, but they also carried swords, wore doublets, swore loyalty to the king and country, and liked to speak in iambic pentameter—especially when upset.  

The differences between the Moses of historical time and the writing of the Bible that records him are even more different (and Shakespeare is only four-hundred years removed, not fourteen hundred).  Even if we ignore the differences between history and the text in verb tense—reading Canaan was, as oppose to Canaan is—that’s not the biggest of problems; and neither is the fact that the narrative uses different words for God (something no one would do lightly), or that it tells of the author’s death and things he could not know, because, we may believe, this is prophetic; yet, never mind that nothing else written at this time is regarded as prophecy—but this continues to the point of absurdity.  If one chooses not to believe otherwise, no amount of scholarship will overcome the necessities of faith we may place upon our insistences.

Textual Analysis of Exodus

The point to be made here is fairly straightforward: textual—much less anthropological, literary, historical, political, and all the other studies—takes no prisoners; it’s the hardcore of scholarship.  If you want to know the real scholars, engage in textual studies, where scholars can offer percentages, based upon history and all known texts, of scribal error: in other words, how often will a text’s copier make a mistake?  How often transcribe a line twice, how often change a circumlocution or colloquial phrase into something that doesn’t do it justice, how often duplicate a series of letters, how often divide words so as to confuse their meaning (just to get it to come out on the parchment or whatever so as to look nice or to get the line to end as it should?), how often remove a redundancy that bothers the scribe, how often to expand the material to include the speaker, the location or other information as to where they are, who is doing what?  How often does the scribe confuse similar looking words that repeat in an extended manuscript that he has been working on for hours, how often make the mistake of transposing letters (as I have done dozens of times as I type?), how often add another text he knows about and respects, how often….  And this represents but the beginning.

To demonstrate my point, I quote here from the excellent Translation notes from the Introduction to the Anchor Bible: Exodus 1-18 by William H. C. Propp in order to render the idea of textual considerations more specifically:

Readers rarely ask how ancient (or modern) works have reached their hands, and whether they have arrived intact.  For the bible, we do not possess the original manuscript of a single book.  Rather, we have copies of copies of copies, to the nth degree.  Some may have been dictated orally to facilitate mass production, some ay have been written from memory; most were probably reproduced by visual inspection, as required by Jewish law.  Despite the safeguards of professional scribedom, the transmission process was fraught with peril at every step.  We cannot simply flourish a Hebrew Bible and call it “the text.”  In fact, even printed editions differ in trivial ways.

The aim of textual criticism is to restore, insofar as is possible, the original words of the first edition, the lost “parent” of all extant textual witnesses.  Or so we pretend.  In fact, even for modern works, defining “original” can be difficult.  Do we give priority to the author’s manuscript, the author’s corrected proofs, the first printed edition or a later version revised by the author’s own hand?  Comparable complications probably apply to ancient works.

Skipping over numerous problems, I will now summarize the evolution of the pentateuchal text.  Sometime after the Jews’ return from Babylonian Exile in 539, the first Torah was assembled by a scribe whom we call the Redactor.  Like a modern synagogue scroll, it contained no vowels or cantillation, only consonants and probably blank spaces to separate words and major sections.  The letters were in the paleo-Hebrew alphabet not the “square” Aramaic script used today.  Unlike a modern Torah, the original was probably written on five separate rolls.  Ever after, the text was considered sacrosanct; it has undergone minimal development.  The era of composition was over.

The Torah became the constitutions of the nation of Judah, and ultimately of world Jewry.  It was transcribed into contemporary Aramaic letters c. 300 and copied and recopied by hundreds of scribes of varying and competence, who introduced countless changes into the text, mostly minor and inadvertent.  These were in turn perpetuated in “daughter” MSS—although meticulous proofreading was later mandated to control the spread of error.  Whether some copyists were known to be more careful than others, so that their work possessed greater authority; we do not know.  It is reasonable assumption that prior to 70 C.E. master copies were kept in the Jerusalem Temple .

Meanwhile, in Alexandria, Egypt, Hellenized Jews had translated the Torah into Greek, producing the Septuagint (LXX) in the third century B.C.E.  Again, we don not possess the original LXX, but copies of copies handed down in the Christian churches.  Our oldest complete biblical MSS are Greek translations from the fourth century C.E., although LXX fragments from the second and first centuries B.CE. have been recovered.  The various witnesses to LXX may be compared to reconstruct, more or less, the original Greek.  If we then retranslate this work into Hebrew, we obtain a text often different from that preserved among the Jews.  Some differences are the result of translators’ license, others of translators’ error, but many are faithful renditions of a lost Hebrew text, the LXX volarge (German: “what lay before”).

Though their numbers have considerably dwindled, in Roman days, the Samaritans were an important and populous subgroup of Jews.  The Samaritan Pentateuch (Sam) differs from LXX and the standard Jewish Torah (MT), frequently agreeing with one against the other—unless the question is one of specifically Samaritan doctrine.  Scholars date the prototype of Sam to c. 100 B.C.E., based primarily on its paleo-Hebrew script and affinities with some Dead Sea Scrolls.  Like LXX, Sam is not one MS, but a family of closely affiliated MSS.

During the past fifty years, the Qumran caves near the Dead Sea have yielded hundreds of scrolls and scroll fragments dating from the mid-third century B.C.E. to 68 E.E.  Among these are over a dozen MSS of Exodus, all fragmentary, all different from one another and all in partial agreement and disagreement with LXX, Sam, and MT.  Phylacteries and mezuzoth from Qumran and Masada also contain portions of Exodus 12-13 and 20.

LXX, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Sam and MT jointly attest to a spectrum of readings in Greco-Roman times.  These textual witnesses cannot be derived one from another.  They rather share a common source, the object of our text-critical task.  It may not be the pentateuchal autograph, only an intermediate exemplar, but textual criticism can take us no further.

To this point, the picture is much as we would expect.  MSS increasingly diverge the more they are removed from their ancient prototype.  But the picture appears to change abruptly in the early second century C.E.  Scrolls from Wadi Murabba’at and Nahal Hever are almost identical to the later MT, and all subsequent evidence attests to the relative homogeneity of the biblical text throughout the (non-Samaritan) Jewish world.  Can it be that all variant MSS were suppressed in a coup, from one end of the Diaspora to the other?  If not, what really happened?

Rabbinic Judaism arose after the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E.  This crisis unleashed certain tendencies, stifling others.  A group of sages known to posterity as the Tanna’im became, in the late first and early second Christian centuries, the arbiters for succeeding generations of what was Jewish and what was not.  Dissident groups such as the Samaritans and later the Qara’ites were excluded from the fold.  I suggest, then, that we imagine a wave phenomenon, coincident with the rise of Tanna’itic hegemony, resulting in the near-total standardization of all Hebrew MSS.  This version naturally required a few centuries to expel its rival from the far-flung reaches of the Diaspora.  But it so far outstripped its competitors in prestige, the Tanna’itic Bible became the natural basis for all scholarly work on the Hebrew text, whether by the Rabbis, the Qara’ites or the Church Fathers.  Deviant MSS were no doubt preserved by some communities until they wore out.  But they were not copied or cited by the experts of the day; hence, their readings have not been passed down.  The appearance, from our perspective, of the Jews instantaneously adopting a uniform biblical text is probably the combined result of natural selection and the incompleteness of the record.

After the Dead Sea Scrolls, we possess no Hebrew biblical MSS until the early Middle Ages.  For the interim, we have only the indirect testimony of ancient translations and citations.  A Targum (Tg.) is a Jewish translation of the Bible into Aramaic, the vernacular of the pre-Islamic Near East.  Dating Targumic literature is extremely difficult.  Our three complete Targumim of the Torah are the fairly literal Tg. Onqelos (c. 100 C.E.?), the far freer Tg. Neofiti (c. 300 C.E.?) and the much-embellished Tg. Pseudo-Jonathan (completed c. 700 C.E. but with older antecedents).  There are also Targumic fragments from the Cairo Genizah and the so-called Fragmentary Targum, akin to Neofiti I and Pseudo-Jonathan.  These translations vary from MT in minor but interesting ways, confirming that the standardization of the Bible was an uneven process, and less thorough than surviving Hebrew MSS might suggest.  The same is evident from deviant scriptural citations in the Talmuds.

Throughout Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the Hebrew biblical text was undergoing near-total standardization, down to the merest details.  Perhaps as early as c. 700 C.E., groups of Rabbinic and Qara’ite Jews confirmed the basic consonantal text, refined safeguards for accurate copying and developed symbols enshrining received pronunciation, cantillation, syntactical analysis, even scribal quirks.  The era of the Massoretes (“tradition experts”) reached its peak c. 900 C.E.  Massoretic texts became standard for all Jewish communities retaining knowledge of Hebrew, except for the Samaritans.  One should remember, however, that, despite its standardization, MT is an abstraction, a type of text attested in about six thousand medieval exemplars that disagree in numerous but relatively minor ways.  Properly speaking, a Massoretic text is any biblical text accompanied by vocalization, trope and marginal annotation in the style of the Massoretes.

Few ancient variant readings survive in MT tradition; most differences among MSS are new mistakes or developments, and in any case are rarely more serious than “Egypt” vs. “land of Egypt.”  But we should remain open-minded and alert.  Individual readings, though generally transmitted “genetically” from parent to daughter MS, may also leap “infectiously” from MS to MS, as when a scribe compare existing texts or consults his memory.  Thus, even if Rabbinic authority prevented deviant MSS from being reproduced in toto, individual variants apparently found shelter here and there in otherwise Massoretic texts.  We in fact find sporadic agreement between MT MSS and LXX, Sam, the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.  In any case, since there is no such thing as the MT, it is arbitrary to select on prestigious text—the Aleppo Codex, the Leningrad Codex, the Second Rabbinic Bible, etc.—as sole witness.  (Propp 42-45)

As for the difficulties of translation and the possibilities of error, if one should respond that God would not allow such a thing, I can offer no rebuttal.  If I did, I would hold up as evidence the fact that we have NO original text: we have the LXX (Septuagint) from the tradition of the seventy Alexandrian scholars who translated the Hebrew into Greek (the world language after Alexander), the Targums, the supposedly translated texts into Aramaic, the Samarian text, supposedly also based on earlier manuscripts, the Massoretic text, based on medieval Hebrew translation, and on it goes, again and again—in other words, we have translations, based on translations, based on translations, based on more translations.  

To repeat, no UR text (German for “First”) exists; so what do we follow?  You’ll notice that we haven’t even begun to discuss the Geneva, Bishop’s, King James, Revised Standard, New Jerusalem, International, Phillips, and other translations familiar to readers of the Bible today.  And each follows a discipline of scholarship and practices with regard to how to translate words, what notes to add (if they do), what scholarly position to take with regard to difficult or unfinished bits of text (here we get that terrible distinction between “liberal” and “conservative”—more often referred to as “traditional”), or what our “overview” may be.  Most of these decisions never appear to readers, unless they read the translator’s introduction, which most often has brevity in order to diminish and yield the scholastic to the divine, which, paradoxically, is suffused unobtrusively throughout the text.  This is much like the old joke, though I have indeed heard it in earnest, that “whatever the Apostle Paul spoke in the King James Version is good enough for me.”  

In sum, Biblical scholarship renders a more complicated picture of a text in more need of study than most of us wants to admit, much less pursue.  Having had a course limited to textual scholarship when studying for a degree in Shakespeare, I became so overwhelmed with the responsibilities and justifications of standing behind a famous bit of text that was but an exercise, I froze like the proverbial animal before headlights.  But I understand somewhat better the severe punishments that awaited the Reform editors of the Bible should they make errors—not forgetting the death sentences for those who had no church or state sanctioned authority to translate.  In lieu of understanding textual studies in general, and how they apply to biblical scholarship in particular, we assure ourselves that God would not permit us to live in error or to read a poorly rendered translation, and so we “choose” not to engage its scholarship.

But the counter to this is that we have minds, and good ones: why is it that other generations have spoken several languages (Queen Elizabeth I was conversant in seven, including Hebrew and Greek, and she never claimed to be a Biblical scholar), have studied all past scholarship, have learned the cultural differences (and here, if one claims it doesn’t matter, I’ll simply ask why most all of us no longer tolerate multiple wives, slavery, and mass extinction in the name of God), and have engaged the textual studies necessary to know the basics of translation and when to trust a source?  Why?  The answer is probably because it’s too much trouble; but equally true is that many of us have not the education or the necessary facilities of intellect to do so.  

However, such answers may be equated to one believing that, because everything works out for the best, if he’s laid off, has no money, and can’t support your family, he should sit by the phone in the assurance it will ring.  In fact, if the parallel illustration holds true with what precedes it, it would be unchristian for him to make an effort or to try to support his family, because it places more responsibility on us than it permits for faith in God.  Why is study so different?

The Moses narratives are not so easy to understand as we may think.  The following information tries to balance scholarship, tradition, and biblical importance into one.  But should it fail for the reader, he or she must determine why, based on what one can learn and determine individually, as opposed to what the reader has been told, read, or memorized from the past.  If the above propositions, or the statements and questions to follow, make one uneasy, settle it now, for reasons of scholarship, faith, or curiosity—but do it and learn.  

Libraries remain repositories of learning, with texts full of information.  Especially now, within an era hallmarked by the instant gratification of suspect knowledge available through the Internet, one’s abilities and desire to learn will always be challenged.  In failing either to accept or to attempt an effort that meets those challenges, we surrender the enormity of human potential, whether one attributes the repository as that granted by God or by humanistic curiosity: blasphemy exists in a multitude of forms.

So, where does that leave us with regard to the writing of the Torah in general, but the book of Exodus in particular?  Tradition lightly dispels the the difficulties of much of the above, invoking Moses' prophetic powers.  The logic is unassailable, if only we allow for the supernatural.  In theory, a true prophet could have predicted the Canaanites' demise, the coronation of Saul, his won death and Persian-period spelling.  But the critical historian is rather drawn to conclude that the Mosaic authorship of the Torah is just another legend, or at best an exaggeration.  In fact, the Pentateuch never explains how it cam to be written.  The earliest allusion to a Mosaic Pentateuch come from the postexilic period, when most scholars date the Torah's editing and promulgation (Ezra 3:2; 6:18; 7:6; Nehemiah 1:7, 8; 8:1, 14; 9:14; 10:30; 13:1, etc.).

If Moses did not write the Torah, who did?   Most likely several people, for, as is well known, the Pentateuch is rife with internal contradictions and duplications (doublets).  Each,  taken alone, proves nothing; traditional Jewish and Christian scholars have effectively dealt with most of them piecemeal.  Cumulatively, they constitute a major challenge to the tradition of a single author.  It rather appears that an editor (or multiple editors) produced the Torah by combining several written sources of diverse origin, relatively un-retouched, into a composite whole.  This is the Documentary Hypothesis [and here, let me remind American readers of the unfortunate definitions we have ascribed to words such as "hypothesis," "theory," and "myth"].

The number of sources appears to have been small.  First, no story is told more than three times.  Second, it is hard to imagine an either countenancing so many duplications and inconsistencies were he at liberty to weave together isolated fragments from dozens of documents.  Third and most important, if we arrange the doublets in four columns and then read across, continuity and consistency replace contradiction and redundancy.  These columns approximate the original sources.

While the exact process by which the Torah coalesced is impossible to reconstruct, here is a commonly accepted model, which may be pretty close to the truth.  After the demise of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, refugees brought south to Judah a document telling the national history from a Northern perspective.  We call this text "E" and its author the "Elohist," because God is called (hā) 'ělōhîm' (the) Deity prior to Moses' day and sporadically thereafter.  In Judah, a scribe we call "Redactor" combined E with a parallel, southern version, "J," which calls God "Yahweh" throughout (except in some dialogue).  We call J's author the "Yahwist."  The composite of J and E is known as "JE." 

Precisely a century later (621 BCE), a work called "D," essentially the Book of Deuteronomy, was promulgated to supplement JE.  It purports to be Moses' final testament deposited in the Tabernacle (Deut 31: 24-26) and rediscovered after centuries of neglect (2 Kings 22).  In fact, D appears to be a rewritten law code of Northern origin, with stylistic and ideological affinities to E.  The author/editor of D. the Deuteronomistic Historian, also continued Israel's history down to his own era, producing the first edition of Deuteronomy through 2 Kings (a second edition was made in the Exile).  Some think JE was also reworked so that the Deuteronomistic work properly began with Creation.  If so, however, the editor added relatively little in Genesis-Numbers.

If D was intended to complement and complete JE, another work, the Priestly source (P), attempted to supplant JE with its own partisan account of cosmic and national origins.  The date of P is disputed, with most scholars favoring a late pre-exilic, exilic or early postexilic date (i.e., c. 700-400).  Subsequently, a second priestly writer, the final Redactor (R), thwarted P's purpose by combing it with JE, inserting additional genealogical and geographical material.  The Redactor also detached D from Joshua-2 Kings, producing the Pentateuch.

For Exodus, our main concern is with P, E, and J, although there is some D-like language, too.  It is likely, moreover, that the Song of the Sea originally circulated independently and should thus be considered another source.  P is the document most easily recognized, thanks to its characteristic vocabulary, style and agenda.  P's main concern is mediating the gulf between God's holiness and the profane world through priestly sacrifice.  P stresses distinctions of clean and unclean, the centrality of Tabernacle service and the exclusive right of the house of Aaron to officiate.  Its rather austere Deity sends no angelic messengers.  P also evinces a scholarly interest in chronology and genealogy.  In JE, in contrast, sacrifice is offered by a variety of men in a variety of places.  Thee is more interest in narrative and character portrayal, less in ritual, chronology and genealogy.  god communicates through angels, dreams or direct revelation.

The most striking difference among J, E and P involves the divine name.  E and P hold that the name "Yahweh" was first revealed to Moses (3:14-15 [E]); 6:2-3[P]).  Previously, God was called "God" (el)," God Shadday ('ēl šadday)" or "(the) Deity ([hā]) 'ělōhîm')."  In J, however, the earliest generations of humanity already use the name "Yahweh" (Gen. 4:26, etc.); Moses is merely granted a more detailed revelation of God's attributes (Exodus 34:6-7).  Consequently, virtually any text prior to the Burning Bush containing the name "Yahweh" is from J.  When it comes to the Mountain of Lawgiving, however, J and P line up against E and D: J and P call it "Sinai," while in E and D it is "Horeb."  A final difference between J and E is that the former calls Moses' father -in-law "Reuel," while the latter uses "Jethro" (Jethro/Reuel does not appear in P or D).

Because separating J from E is difficult outside of Genesis, prudence would dictate partitioning Exodus simply between P and JE.  However Propp undertakes the dubious task of disentangling J from E, because the results are surprising.  If J is the dominant voice in Genesis, in Exodus we probably have more E than J.  This flies in the face of all previous scholarship, which unanimously ascribes the bulk of non-Priestly Exodus to J.  This is simply an unexamined dogma, however, put baldly in D. N. Freedman's methodological postulate that, "in dubious cases, one must opt for J rather than for E."  In fact, we find far more E than J in Exodus.  Recurring idioms, characters and themes all point to the Elohist.  

[Propp offers an extensive argument, verse by verse, chapter by chapter : I advise the textual scholar or interested party in textual studies to pick up at this point, p. 51 ff. in the excellent Anchor Bible: Exodus 1-18.]

A Brief Synopsis of Exodus

Outline of Exodus

       I.            Exodus: The Deliverance Traditions (1-18)

                            A.            Israel in Egypt (1)

                            B.            The Early Moses (2-4)

                            C.            Plagues (5-11)

                           D.            Passover (12:1-13:16)

                            E.            Exodus from Egypt (13:17-15:21)

                             F.            Wilderness Journey (15:22-18:27)

    II.            Sinai: The Covenant Traditions (19-40)

                            A.            Theophany on the Mountain (19)

                            B.            Law and Covenant (20-23)

                                                     1.            Ten Commandments (20:1-17)

                                                     2.            Book of the Covenant (20:18-23:33)

                            C.            Covenant Confirmation Ceremony (24)

                           D.            Tabernacle Design (25-31)

                            E.            Covenant Breaking and Remaking (32-34)

                                                     1.            Golden Calf (32)

                                                     2.            Covenant Renewal (33-34)

                             F.            Tabernacle Construction (35-40)

Hebrew Scriptures identify their books of scripture by how they begin the narrative; thus, Exodus is called ’ēlle[h] š∂môt (“These are the names of…”), rendered in the Greek as Exodos (“road out, exit”), and Latinized as Exodus for the second book of the Torah.  After what may be approximately three centuries, the Egyptians fear the numbers of the Hebrew people; so Pharaoh first enslaves them and then determines that he must kill the male newborn children.  The king’s daughter, spares a child she finds in the water, and raises him in the palace as her own.

We are as well, that Pharaoh will not listen to Moses and his brother Aaron, who accompanies him, because Yahweh has hardened the heart of the king so as to not listen to pleas.  The resulting miracles worked by God become ten plagues against Egypt, concluding with all Egyptian firstborn dying on a night that sees the Hebrews spared, since they have been instructed to anoint their door frames with lambs’ blood.

Pharaoh releases the Hebrews but almost immediately changes his mind, seeking to attack them with their backs to the sea; Yahweh intervenes again, and the sea parts, permitting the Hebrews, lead by

The jubilant Israelites, descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob, whose named was changed to Israel, wander into the wilderness on their way back to God’s mountain, Mount Horeb, also called Sinai.  Many scenes of discontent and miracles take place, as the Israelites grow discontented and scared but are saved by miracles of food from heaven and protection against tribal attacks.  At the foot of the mountain, Moses, with the aid of his father-in-law, Jethro, establish what is called the Israelite judiciary, and Moses reveals the Covenant Tablets he received of God, as well as instructions for building the earthly habitation of God, the Tabernacle.

However, in Moses’ absence, the weak Israelites again backslide, making and worshipping a golden calf.  In anger, Moses smashes the tablets received from God, but manages to intercede with God on behalf of the Israelites, renews the Covenant, and receives additional laws from God.  The craftsman Bezalel directs the construction of the Meeting Tent, which is consecrated shortly before the anniversary of their departure from Egypt. 

The Literary Qualities of the Narratives

The ironies of the early Moses narrative are great, indeed; for, even as Moses is saved by water, so too Pharaoh’s army will be destroyed.  And it becomes clear to readers that water figures into the narrative in many ways: the manner in which the child Moses is saved and the command of Pharaoh for destruction of the children share similarities in verb form, so that an irony between “throw” and “place” becomes apparent in the Hebrew, as if the mother of Moses obeys the order of Pharaoh but is saved by his daughter by means of the death sentence.  Others have noted the importance of the fact that the princess then hires the mother of Moses to act as wet nurse for the child and so not only raises her own son but also is now paid to do so.

But water once again becomes an irony in that the Nile fills with blood by one of the miracles wrought through Moses, paralleling the bloody business of killing children through the orders of Pharaoh to fill up the Nile with the bodies of children.  Moses’ young body was one that was saved by the method of the reed basket, fashioned by his mother, who in turn saves his people in the same manner—especially relevant for the irony of the tale is that many scholar believe, and some translate, “Red Sea” as “Reed Sea” (called as well the Suph Sea, which translates as “reed”) for the accidental corruption by scribal error that mistook one body of water for another.  Or, do we also see salvation for the future in the small ark that saves the Moses child, which equates to the flood that destroys all but those found righteous in God’s eyes?  

If nothing else, we’re reminded of the many thematic qualities that water, especially, has in fairy tales and other various forms of literature.  This more properly would take us into the arena of Carl Jung, who postulated the idea of all humanity being born with a genetic set of imprinted archetypes which humanity then uses to make associations, for expressions, and as means for understanding ourselves and relation to others.  Jung called such archetypes “universal,” differentiating them from “particular” archetypes, those that a society imprints upon its children through its stories and literature (thus, some refer to these as “literary” archetypes as opposed to “particular”).  Jung has much to say about the use of archetypes as they relate more specifically to faith, especially in his lectures on Christianity (see Jung and Christianity in Suggested Reading)

Other actions become too apparent to dismiss: most importantly, Christians will use the anagogic mode of allegory (also referred to as typological) to interpret the “Passover” in Exodus to the Last Supper and subsequent death of Jesus.  Jesus becomes the paschal lamb, offering up his blood so that the believers within may find salvation—so Easter supplants Passover, reminding us of God’s saving grace, which, more specifically through the Apostles example and directives of Jesus will entail a specific physical action associated with water, baptism, which then links one to the death of Jesus and birth into a new life, an adopted child of God (which for Gentiles, becomes even more significant, since the adoption becomes available only after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and transfiguration).

Consider too, as Propp does, the role that women play in the narrative, and how evenly balanced they are: the Hebrew women are distinguished for the ability to bear and their fast, easy labor, an excuse used at the first of the narrative to explain why some have not died as Pharaoh so ordered.  Moses’ own mother and sister see to his survival, which becomes assured by the princess and her maidservant; later, Zipporah, will again save Moses from Yahweh’s attack in the desert.  Thus, even as Yahweh pronounces that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob several times in the narrative as more general background, so too we are reminded several times of the women involved in Moses’ past who have delivered him more specifically for his role as God’s servant.

We need as well to note two other vital details about the narrative quality of how Exodus begins and why it becomes such a memorable and successful story.  The first of these is the familiarity of a tale where the child is saved despite his abandonment, so that we are accustomed to adoptive parents, the illustrious and exceptional nature of the child becoming known as he grows, and finally his coming into his own, either by reuniting with his original parents or by fulfilling his exceptional destiny.  Folklorists recognize the repeated use of the design in various disguises, such as Romulus, Oedipus, King Arthur, Snow White, and on it goes.  Propp mentions a nearly identical tale from the Assyrian narrative of Sargon of Akkad (c. 2300 BCE), wherein the noble hero is saved by being placed into a reed basket before being cast into the water, drawn out by Aqqi, the water drawer, is loved by Ishtar, goddess of Love, and reigns as king.  Other such stories include the Egyptian, involving Seth and Horus, and the Hittite tale that also involves a princess, a child set adrift in the river, its discovery by gods, and its maturation into greatness.  Similar stories to that of Exodus are found in Egyptian, Assyrian, and Hittite societies, but the Sargon story is closest in time to the one we have in Exodus, and scholars know as well that the Sargon narrative spread not only eastward, but westward throughout the lands south of the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian regions, but northward as well, and probably into Canaan.

Virtually all peoples have tales that could be referred to as “adoption” narratives: for instance, Abram takes a servant as wife and has an adopted heir, King David is called Yahweh’s adopted son (Psalms 2), and Yahweh adopts the nation of Israel, which various books describe as Israel being the foster child, or the wayward child found by God, and the like (Deuteronomy 32; Ezekiel 16; Jeremiah 31; Hosea 11, and others).

So the narrative about Moses holds thematic significance, in that just as he was adopted and raised into something noble, so too Israel becomes the adopted, orphaned people whom Yahweh raises into the promise of glory.  The childhood is at times difficult, but so long as the nation as son remembers the father, all is forgiven and accepted—much like Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son.  That the people were saved by the sea has significance as well: whether we see it as anagogical as a fulfillment through baptism (which, interestingly enough, often equates immersion with sonship), or view it more thematically, as one may find in Job 38, which likens the sea to amniotic fluid, or in other interesting references, such as Hosea 12, that makes clear that Jacob’s wrestling match at a river parallels his struggle with Esau before birth.

Propp makes a number of interesting observations concerning the success of the Exodus narrative, some of the literary structures and reasons for which we have noted above.  Most of all, the story of Moses, the children of Israel and God involves the classic adventure story or fairy tale.  And, while it cannot so neatly be laid within a template of a “standard” story” (so few register as neat reproductions without interesting diversions), it still follows the fairy tale structure as studied by V. I. Propp (no relation to William H. C. Propp, editor of the Anchor edition; but one essential difference is noted by the editor of the Anchor edition as to the relevance of the fairy tale scholar: in Exodus, we have not one hero but three: Moses, Israel, and God).

1. The initial situation: a recounting of lineage, family members, or genealogy.
2. A family member is absent
3. The villain harms a family member

[At this point, so the editor Propp notes, the fairy tale structure is interrupted by some secondary narrative about the midwives explanation as to why they don’t kill the Hebrew children and sojourning into the land of the Midianites—but they satisfy other independent literary types, such as the hoodwinked villain, floating foundling, Disillusioned Prince, etc.]

4. The misfortune is made known and responded to.
5. The Hero is tested or interrogated and given a task by the Donor-Helper, whom he encounters accidentally
6. The Hero is granted a magic agent
7. The Hero is relocated to the vicinity of the Sought-for Person
8. The Hero is branded
9. The Hero and Villain fight, sometimes repeatedly
10. The Hero is branded again
11. The Villain is defeated
12. The initial misfortune/lack is removed
13. The Hero returns/flees homeward
14. The Hero is pursued
15. The Hero is rescued.

[At this point again we have a deviation from Propp’s standard structure; but often, he notes, when the Hero returns home he faces a daunting task, passes the ordeal, vanquishes all rivals, and ascends to the throne.  If we follow this structure, we find that Yahweh and Israel wed—not Moses—and, as William Propp notes, they do not live “happily ever after.” 

To the study of structure with regard to fairy tales, we should note other literary structures that a reader should encounter, especially that work of Arnold Van Gennep shortly after the turn of the Twentieth Century, and the follow up work, most especially how it applied to drama, by Victor Turner and others who have followed his lead, notably Richard Schechner.  What they have studied is the concept of the Rite of Passage.  Because at one time, at such transformations had a sacred quality about them, we still use the term even when it fails to represent religiosity or what Northrop Frey calls the tenemos, that sacred area around which we draw a circle and demarcate as special, private, approachable by the few.

A Rite of Passage consists of three areas: Separation, Transformation, Re-Integration.  In literary terms, the hero is separated from the group, goes through numerous experiences that represent a series of trials and tests, and then, if successful, returns to the group in a changed form, as a leader of the society or one to be praised for his journey.  All literature is essentially a going out and a coming back.  If we could draw a circle, we would find that any of the various genres (kinds or types) of literature can be illustrated by the usual distinctions of things that occur as we move around that circle.  For instance, in comedy the hero is expelled from society, goes through a number of experiences, and, at the end, arrives back at the point at which he begin, but now he is vindicated and accepted, for he has learned from those experiences, and what usually follows is marriage, marking a new beginning and a new influence on a family of people within his society.  Satire, however, follows the same circular development, but at the end the hero is not accepted back into the group, nor has he learned anything from others.  He is no better off than when he began, perhaps worse.

The majority of the circle, whether comedy, satire, tragedy, romance, adventure, or whatever, is spent in the middle phase of the Rite of Passage, the Transformation.  Another term is liminal, that is, one of limbo or unknowing.  It posits a period of danger, a neither/nor phase in which things could go well or fail.  We recognize such liminal moments in most of life’s passages: marriage, for instance, has danger whenever the minister, priest, or rabbil asks if anyone present objects to the union, young men must learn certain skills or make a degree of progress prior to baptism, bar mitzvah, or acceptance into the circle of adult males.  Even joining a club or group has some sort of initiation process that represents a test in order to fulfill the demands of saying goodbye to the old and transforming into the new.

Israel’s term in the Wilderness prior to crossing over into and occupying the Promised Land is another form of liminal period: too often the people fail the test, become propped up once again by their leaders, renew a commitment to God, and then await to see if they’re faithful.  Moses undergoes such a test when he is first called by Yahweh: he attempts to remove himself from the responsibility but is given little choice, and then Yahweh seeks to kill him in the desert—a test, a trial of the faithful is given, and apparently understood by Zipporah, who then circumcises their son in order to appease the wrathful God, and Moses is then free to pursue God’s purpose in Egypt.  Most of the Biblical narratives we’re so familiar with employ a standard Rite of Passage structure; and what we find of most interest is always the liminal or transformational phase, for that’s when it matters the most and tells us if the hero will succeed or fail.

Moses: Who and What Was He?

The story of the Hebrew people proliferating in Egypt speaks to their blessing by God for some special purpose.  Even though they come to know the harshness of slavery from a Pharaoh who does not remember Joseph and what he and his family did to help the nation, this narrative sets us up for special deliverance and something that makes an enormous difference in their association together, or, to put it another way, something of supernatural intervention that marks the significance of the chosen people, but even more importantly focuses upon their savior.

Many have commented on the fairy tale nature of the Moses narrative, which begins with the intervention that saves him from death, but few understand that many scholarly works attempt to identify or to explain who or what Moses was in both the relation to the Israelites and in terms of history.  It should come as no surprise to any student of the Bible and its expansive literature that most of its chief protagonists do not exist in history, but have life only through the Biblical passages that most of us know.  

For some of us, that presents no problems; for others, however, this realization comes as a jolt due to the manner in which we've received the material: once we learn that historical references are scant or nonexistent, it seems as if the validity of what we believe and why has not only been challenged but found wanting.  But why should this be the case?  Were these individuals such that historical record or "proof" validates their claims?  Or is rather the case that whatever powers in existence at that time sought not only to erase any records that might be used as rallying points in the future, and thus sources of rebellion, but that they, nor anyone except for the handful of faithful, realize what an impact later generations would know based on what happened at those important times in history?

We know, for example, that the early Church found no reason to record or validate Christianity until it became necessary due to error and the outrageous stories, in the minds of the few still alive who witnessed the events and promises, that suddenly found readers or adherents, who based their beliefs on what Christianity was in their limited view.  That such interpretations would bother many of those who had taken part in the rebellion of peace and certitude from heaven becomes evident in the Gospel of John, who, though well-advanced in years, seems terribly disturbed at not only the claims of the day but the writings as well (even in what we take as the inspired pens of Matthew, Mark, and Luke); hence we have John's Gospel, which scholars regard as "non-synoptic," that is, not part of an interlacing narrative, which identifies Matthew, Mark, and Luke's Gospels.

Consider, then, that events for the Israelites that identify them as God's people, the chosen, those delivered from bondage and taken to a land destined for their use, homes, and site of God's earthly throne, should cause no less stir and need of clarification after centuries of oral tradition and finally a written narrative of their people and their relationship to God.  If history had failed to include or to document them, it was (in this view) due to the lapse of time and certitude that the Israelites had in the power of their God; in other words, the problem lies not with their documentation but with the world's notice.  That would seem no less a valid interpretation than the politicalization or propaganda that literature served for dynasties, kingships, or royal families.

(Time line for situating Moses, the Exodus, and Hebraic history)

A “Facticity”

 The literary and biblical scholar Harold Bloom coined the infelicitous word “facticity” for any text we believe we know, but when closely read, it invariably says something different, surprising, or becomes problematic.  We have such an instance in Exodus, Chapter 4.  What precedes it represents another famous, readily “knowable” event or text, that of Chapter 3:13: “But Moses said to the Deity, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, or that I should take Israel’s Sons out from Egypt?’”  This question precedes the famous statement of God, rendered in the King James Version as “I am that I am.”  The statement is more difficult than this, since it plays upon Ehyeh, meaning “existence” in the first person, as in “I exist.”  When transferred to the third person form of the verb, it becomes Yahweh, which may be translated as “he exists.”  Besides the obvious connection to the name of God, Yahweh, it also may mean “he causes to exist”; thus, we have a multi-layered problem, apparently done on purpose, to suggest that God’s essence remains essentially unknowable, save the evidence of His power.  Turned into a colloquialism, it may be rendered, “I know who I am…” (“whereas you…”) or even “never you mind about my existence.”  We must remember that the chosen of God knew Yahweh by different names, such as El Shaddai, probably meaning “God Almighty,” or El, “the High God,” or Elohim, “Lord,” etc. 

 The name of God functions on many levels here in Exodus when Moses asks his seemingly simple question as  who it is sending him to Pharaoh’s court.  Not only are we disarmed by the answer, but we ask as well whether such a long period of time had passed that the Hebrew people were unaware of the allegiances established by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, so that Moses, evidently aware of his true parentage (given that one of the two Hebrew men—when he intercedes in their fight—speaks to him in a disrespectful manner, suggesting that he knows Moses’ secret, that he has killed an Egyptian), flees to the land of the Midianites and marries a woman of the people who are enemies to the Hebrews.  This marriage then sets up the most difficult of passages in Exodus, if not one of the most perplexing of the Bible itself.

 In Chapter 4, verse 24, following Yahweh’s specific instructions as to what Moses is to say to Pharaoh, the text reads, “And it happened on the way, at the night-stop, and Yahweh met him and sought to put him to death.”  Not only do we have an unexpected, sudden turn from God using Moses as His prophet, Yahweh wishes to kill him—and fails!: “But Zipporah took a flint and severed her son’s foreskin and applied to his legs and said, ‘For you are a bridegroom/son-in-law of bloodiness to me.’  And he slackened from him.  Then she said, ‘A bridegroom/son-in-law of bloodiness by circumcision’” (vv. 25-26).  This is Bloom’s “facticity”: most of us have read Exodus, or know its narratives, but fail to recall this encounter and all the questions it raises.

 As one may suppose, explanations abound as to what happens here and why (which becomes compounded by such translations as the King James Version, because it is never quite clear who does what to whom or how).  The passage remains important for so many reasons that it becomes difficult to attempt an explanation without getting caught in a web of mystery, explanation, or too excessive a response.  More simply, we may say, because the Israelites would acknowledge that life resides in the blood, that blood bonding, sacrifice, covenant, and the like between the Israelites and their God established a never-ending, thematic element of their relationship, one that would soon be played out in the “passing over” of the Angel of Death, by means of a sign of blood upon the door posts, in the final plague against Pharaoh, whose heart had been “strengthened” by God so that he would not heed the dire warnings of Moses, allowing the Hebrew slaves to leave the land (v. 21).

   Enter Sigmund Freud

 The episode of Yahweh’s attack against His own prophet and messenger has been rendered by such extremes as the authors of the Midrash to the likes of Sigmund Freud, which sets up our journey into the mysteries of this text.  Freud’s least successful book, as judged by those who acknowledge his indefatigable efforts in defining the bedrock theories of psychoanalysis, in all the dozens of volumes of writing—done, by the way, at the writing desk and not at the “couch”—was Moses and Monotheism (1939).  As a Jew, Freud had a love/hate relationship with his race and its theological, sociological history.  Often referred to as “Godless Jew,” as if there existed redundancy and hence extreme evil in the term, Freud did not adhere to the faith of his fathers.  For Freud, God and His inspired religions and their faithful, represented the Oedipal Conflict on a cosmic scale.  However, he became fascinated—if not obsessed—with this particular episode in Exodus and attempted to explain it (interestingly, there existed several of these bête noirs for Freud, such as the belief that Shakespeare had not written “Shakespeare”).  Freud’s “least successful” book, Moses and Monotheism, has been reviled, misunderstood, and only recently has begun to enjoy a more favorable reading, even as the reputation of Freud and psychoanalysis in general have suffered correspondingly by those who maintain Freud’s theories are hopelessly out of date and irrelevant in light of the “modern” cognitive theories of mind (that’s admittedly another argument; but one must understand that with which he disagrees in order to establish the priority of something different; so too, people tend to forget that Freud always hoped that somatic reasons could be found for neuroses and psychoses).

 But Freud never intended the charges and critical implications the work received, as a work concerned with the establishment of the Oedipal Conflict on a grander scale, or explanation for the nexus of Hebrew/Christian correspondence.  That the book saw publication in 1939 lends itself to the latter view almost by default, especially since Freud had moved abroad by this time, one step ahead of Hitler’s police.  Freud saw the work as a “Historical Novel”—the qualifying, generic distinction speaks volumes as to his intentions and the material with which it deals.  But, still, it came from Freud, and therein lay the explanation of its relevance and intended audience.  What follows then serves as the gist of Freud’s historical novel.

 Freud believed that the passage in question, wherein Yahweh seeks to kill Moses in the desert, represents a biblical “echo”; that is, the incident should have been deleted, forgotten by later peoples, and never found its way to oral storytelling, much less print (if peoples two millennia before Christ could conceive of such).  Freud is not alone in this idea; many aspects of an older, oral tradition exist, but most have been synthesized into acceptable forms of redaction.  The scholar/writer Robert Graves gives us his well-known work Hebrew Myths (with Raphael Patain, 1963), which, for instance, focuses on the oral tradtions of the earliest of writings, such as Genesis 3: the Serpent and its tempting manner in the Garden, for Graves and other mythologists, stands as an echo of the Dragon of Chaos, and Adam’s first wife, Lilith, who, as the first liberated woman, wished for equality.  She saw the act of lovemaking as typical male domination and desired other means for intercourse, which caused Adam considerable problems.  Forsaking her mate, she liberates herself by coupling with the great god of Chaos and breeds evil spirits, among whom may be found one god of evil who would distinguish himself as Satan.  Thus the idea of a sanitized and much-changed narrative finds the Serpent showing up in the Garden, after Yahweh has tamed and created out of Chaos, and seduces the woman who succumbs to his power, partly because of her dissatisfaction with the way women are disparaged.

 Freud believed that the echo in question here, with regard to Yahweh attacking Moses in the desert, represented something that historically took place, a thing so horrible and traumatic for the people who engaged in it that they had to rewrite the story in order to live with their guilt.  Make no mistake: the story as Freud comes to believe is certainly part of his Oedipal theory; however, all psychic development in Freud’s view depends on this (these) traumatic circumstance.  He maintained that the children of Israel killed Moses in the wilderness, and, suffering great guilt for the death of their father figure, the people had to “invent” a second Moses, one who delivered them from evil and sent them on their way to the Promised Land.  Freud’s research led him to believe that the echo of Yahweh seeking to kill Moses inadvertently remained in the text, clarified as to its Oedipal crisis by the manner in which Zipporah manages to dissuade God from taking Moses’ life (circumcision or symbolic castration), and all that follows, with the rash actions of the Hebrews in the wilderness and the apparent ease with which they stray, even after a first-hand view of God’s power in the night of the “Passing Over.”

 Freud maintained that the Israelites retold and rewrote their history so that no death occurred, merely the threat, and that Moses maintained his grasp over the feckless, backsliding Israelites.  Moreover, Freud maintains that various concern from the text, such as the inability of the people to leave the inhospitable wilderness for such a long time—when Abraham managed a much longer journey in a fraction of the time and braving worse conditions—could not profitably be explained, except to say that time and its corresponding confusion were attempts to expiate and muddy the waters as to what truly happened.  As a small token of revenge in their collective memories, at least Moses does not reach the Promised Land. 

After Christian doctrine had burst the confines of Judaism, it absorbed constituents from many other sources, renounced many features of pure monotheism, and adopted in many particulars the ritual of the other Mediterranean peoples.  It was as if Egypt had come to wreak her vengeance on the heirs of Ikhnaton [Freud’s spelling for Akenaten].  The way in which the new religion came to terms with the ancient ambivalences in the father-son relationship is noteworthy.  Its main doctrine, to be sure, was the reconciliation with God the Father, the expiation of the crime committed against him; but the other side of the relationship manifested itself in the Son, who had taken the guilt on his shoulders, becoming god himself beside the Father and in truth in place of the Father.  Originally a Father religion, Christianity became a Son religion: the fate of having to displace the Father it could not escape (Freud 175-76).

 Freud maintained that Moses was, in fact, not a Hebrew at all, but the Egyptian pharaoh who ascended the throne about 1375 B.C.E., named Akhenaten (who took the king name, Amenhotep IV; like his father, he changed his name—he died in 1358), who believed in only one god, the Sun, which was heresy for the priests of Egypt and their plethora of gods and goddesses.  This pharaoh overturned all that was “holy” in the name of heresy, a belief in one god, and reversed all the most cherished religious practices and beliefs of his people.  These same people rose up, overthrew the pharaoh, and sent him and his followers into exile in the desert.  There his people grew restless, rose up in agitation over their homelessness and heretical beliefs, killed Amenhotep, and then suffered the guilt that children go through in their infancy and before adolescence: the desire of the male child to wish the father dead in order that he may possess the mother, and, should some harm actually come to the father, the child suffers throughout his life with the guilt for having not only desired the death, but somehow possessing the power in which to effect it.  As a subtext to this idea, note how important women are in the earliest parts of the narrative; they remain the desired objects of a people, most especially in the episode of Moses at the well in Midia, for wells are thematically equated in Scripture to a wife (Proverbs 1:15-16), a prostitute (Proverbs 23:27), or, if sealed, a virgin (Genesis 29:2-10), and the word may pun between “drink,” “kiss,” and “lust.”

More Modern Work 

This brief summary does no justice to Freud’s book, for its more compelling and obviously more complicated than my bald rendering.  However, suffice it to say that readers found the work to be Freud’s least successful effort, too sweeping in associating the particulars of the child/father confrontation with sociological-historical generalizations, most especially those of the only peoples of the ancient world to break with the communal idea of similar gods, differentiated only by the languages used to describe them, and the singularity of a distinct people who had their god choose them rather than the other way round.

 And that brings us up to the present, where considerable scholarship, most especially of the past two decades, has investigated what Freud himself did, finding similar and pertinent arguments, if not rendered within the father/son conflict.  Moreover, the work has come from a variety of disciplines: literature, theology, Egyptology, anthropology, and history, to name but a few.  And within these, we may also note that sub-disciplines remain equally important, if unknown beyond their own academic borders: mnemohistory serves as one example: the cultural memory of a people, which finds within a discourse more than the inter-textual—it possesses thematic dimensions that recall the double relationship of a text to the chain of its predecessors, its text, and to the common thematic idea, its remembered, material dimension (see Assmann 16).  When a people recall their history, they turn it into myth as soon as recollected, narrated, and used in the service of the present.  Mnemohistory feels the idea that history declares, even if we know that the declared memory has fallacies.  American history “recalls” the honesty and truthfulness of George Washington, but the “facts” of what he did as a child are patently untrue in terms of recorded information; yet what he stands for and how we remember this aspect of our collective American past is no less “truthful” for the mythical idea of his honesty.  He and his folklorist deeds still serve our memory and function as well to situate ourselves in relationship to the sound, just, and unvarnished persona of the American people: this is who we are.  Washington cannot, like Jefferson or Madison, be easily separated from the phrase "Founding Fathers," denoting our citizenship as a childhood association with paternal figures.

 As with Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, my simplistic synopsis of his text runs parallel to my explanation of “mnemohistory.”  Suffice it to say that the reader needs to study and understand the idea for him or herself.  What follows, however, renders the important work done by noted Egyptologists and historians such as Jan Assmann (Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism, 1997), who have undertaken of late to investigate the same territory that Freud braved in the 1930s, and others less famous have previously.  Akhenaten’s name, even in the careful king-lists and records of the Egyptians, was eradicated by the nation he served and ruled.  Only in the great revivals of Egyptology, the Renaissance first, then the Napoleonic era, and finally our own time (beginning again in the late Nineteenth Century), did the history of this monotheistic become extant and revealed.  The implications are many, for equal numbers of reason, but for our purposes they tell us something about the reading of Exodus as literature.

 In dealing with what is “true” and what we wish to believe, Moses figures as the key figure to the Hebraic and Christian traditions.  Most scholars I have encountered in study, whether in person or through their scholarship, have emphasized the importance of the Jacob/Israel narratives as most important to the foundation of Israelite history.  Indeed, we remain struck by how diverse and how thematically appealing these narratives remain for what they promise.  The J writer, the most crafty, cunning, and psychologically penetrating of those figures we so name from the documentary hypothesis is most in evidence in these narratives; that is, when the subterfuge, duplicity, complexity, and, ultimately, the humanity of the narrative characters appears, we easily suspect the presence of the Yahwist.  The Priestly writer P has his tolodot, his distinctive “beginnings” and their set-piece construction, as well as the difficult task of establishing genealogical lines of descent that lead us back to the forefathers who grant the imprimatur of authority upon the present.  The E writer, bu similar means, writes in such a way as to comment upon the confederation of states that oppose or at least remain different from the monarchy of the South.  When all of these are brought to bear in Exodus, it becomes apparent that Genesis presented an easier time of it in rendering which writers were at work at which times.  But as for the many writers, not only is the style of writing different, the vocabulary reveals centuries of distinction in the language, to say nothing of their own personal reflections, for whatever reasons.  The language remains as different as those writing in America in the Twentieth Century as compared to Shakespeare in the England of the late Sixteenth.  Stylistically, they use the same words (of which the name of God is but one--yet the most important, given the respect and responsibility of those addressing the most high, El).  And lastly, we have evidence of events that no people, save those from centuries later, could know: the Tabernacle, the Ark, the change in geographic borders, the peoples who only later became Israel’s enemies, and the distinctions between the monarchy of the South with the confederation of the North (and the latter, most especially, with regard to their prophets).

 Echoes from generations past abound in the Exodus narrative; the authors are interspersed throughout, so that J, the Yahwist writes of particular events, the E, or Elohist writer of the Northern Kingdom, retells history from his own perspective, and the P writer(s) of the most modern school render their own priestly manner of seeing things.  In fact, these authors (along with R, the “redactor”—one who tried to merge narratives without losing important details—opting rather for repetition than omission) of the documentary hypothesis, display much more evidence of a multi-authored text than most other narratives do—that is, one can more clearly and easily see the results of authorship in terms of the era in which they wrote, which followed, as stated above, by centuries those subjects of their mnemohistorical reflections.  The Elohist of the Northern Kingdom will, for instance, give us the golden calf that the errant Israelites construct and succumb to in Moses’ absence on the mountain (called Horeb in one narrative and Sinai in another, much like the differences of name for Moses’ father-in-law), which finds significance in the fact that the Northern Kingdom, a loose confederation of states, established as their own Ark of the Covenant two great golden bulls at the southern and northern ends of their land, in opposition to the Southern Kingdom’s Ark, which represented God’s earthly throne (with duplicate angels facing in toward the center).  For the North, all of their land was God’s throne, with a bull located at Bethel and Dan, established by Jeroboam—and these are the same words we find by the Elohist in Exodus, himself a Levitical priest, later in 1 Kings 12:28.  The bull created in Moses’ absence established a reminiscence of Canaan’s high god Baal (for whom Saul named a son, as did his son, Jonathan).  But when the Israelites conquer Canaan, they assimilate the foreign gods into their own theology and its monotheism.

 No historical documentation exists to suggest that the Moses of Egypt or Israel ever existed.  But that should not deter us, anymore than specific evidence of Jesus having lived remains “unprovable.”  Akhenaten instituted a monotheistic religion in the fourteenth century, B.C.E.  His established religion was forgotten immediately after his death: Moses is a figure of memory but not history, while Akhenaten was a figure of history but not of memory.  But when we speak of religion are we speaking of no more than a distinction between “us” and “them”?  Doesn’t every religion establish what passes for barbarism and paganism even as it totes what and who the “divine” and elected are?  All cultures establish this “otherness” in their construction of identity but also develop the techniques of translation; that is, we must distinguish between the “real” and the “other,” which always goes to the heart of determining self and otherness, as well as constructing the Other to such a degree that it is duplicitous and obviously dangerous, for it remains the shadow of individual identity.

 Polytheistic religions overcame the primitive ethnocentrism of tribal religions by distinguishing several deities by name, shape, and function.  The names are, of course, different in different cultures, because the languages are different.  The shapes of the gods and the forms of worship may also differ significantly.  But the functions are strikingly similar, especially in the case of cosmic deities; and most deities had a cosmic function.  The sun god of one religion is easily equated to the sun god of another religion and so forth.  Because of their functional equivalence, deities of different religions can be equated.

 The gods were international because they were cosmic.  The different peoples worshipped different gods, but nobody contested the reality of foreign gods and the legitimacy of foreign forms of worship.  The Mosaic distinction was therefore a radically new distinction, which considerably changed the world in which it was drawn.  The space, which was “severed or cloven” by this distinction, was not simply the space of religion in general but that of a very specific kind of religion.  We may call this new type of religion “counter-religion” because it rejects and repudiates everything that went before and what is outside itself as “paganism.”  It no longer functioned as a means of intercultural translation; on the contrary, it functioned as a means of intercultural estrangement.

 All cultural distinctions need to be remembered in order to render permanent the space, which they construct.  Usually, this function of remembering the fundamental distinction assumes the form of a “Grand Narrative,” a master story that underlies and informs innumerable concrete tellings and retellings of the past.  The Mosaic distinction between true and false in religion finds it expression in the story of Exodus.  In the space that is constructed by the Mosaic distinction, the worship of images came to be regarded as the absolute horror, falsehood, an apostasy.  Polytheism and idolatry were seen as the same form of religious error.  The second commandment is a commentary on the first:

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

 Images are automatically “other gods,” because the true god is invisible and cannot iconically be represented.

 Exodus is a symbolical story, the Law is a symbolical legislation, and Moses is a symbolical figure.  The whole constellation of Israel and Egypt is symbolical and comes to symbolize all kinds of oppositions.  But the leading one is the distinction between true religion and idolatry.  Some poignant verses in Deutero-Isaiah and Psalm 115 develop into whole chapters in the apocryphal Sapientia Salomonis and long sections in Philo’s De Decalogo and De Legibus Specialibus.

 This hatred was mutual and the “idolaters” did not fail to retaliate.  Understandably enough most of them were Egyptians.  For example, the Egyptian priest Manetho, who wrote an Egyptian history under Ptolemy II, represented Moses as a rebellious Egyptian priest who made himself the leader of a colony of lepers.  Whereas the Jews depicted idolatry as a kind of mental aberration, of madness, the Egyptians associated iconoclasm with the idea of highly contagious and bodily disfiguring epidemic.  The language of illness continues to typify the debate on the Mosaic distinction down to the days of Sigmund Freud.  This story about the lepers originally referred not to Moses, but Akhenaten, who was the first to establish a monotheistic counter-religion and to draw the distinction between true and false.  But after this death, his religion was abolished, and his name fell into complete oblivion.  The traumatic memories of his revolution were encrypted and dislocated; eventually they came to be fixed on the Jews.

 When Sigmund Freud felt the rising tide of German anti-Semitism outgrowing the traditional dimensions of persecution and oppression and turning into a murderous attack, he—remarkably enough—did not ask the obvious question of “how the Germans came to murder the Jews”; instead he asked, how “the Jew came to attract this undying hatred.”  He embarked on a project very different from his normal work.  This “historical novel,” as he first called it, was a rather private undertaking, a kind of “day-dreaming,” which underwent many transformations before it was finally published as a book.

 His quest for origins took him as far back as Akhenaten and his monotheistic revolution.  In making Moses an Egyptian and in tracing monotheism back to ancient Egypt, Freud attempted to deconstruct the murderous distinction.  It is the same method of deconstruction by historical reduction that Nietzsche had used in his Genealogy of Morals.  But to understand properly what we’re saying here means understanding that Egypt and Israel, both North and South, were neighbors, sharing both political, ideological, commercial, and complex associations.  Thus, for one of the these countries, along with several others, to break the relationship by not evolving but breaking—revolution as opposed to evolution—that bond obviously meant trouble.

 We seem to think that monotheism represents progression and “modern” views in contrast to polytheism; it does not.  Monotheism always appeared as counter-religion to the status quo or the conservative, traditional way.  Imagine, if you will, the difficulty that anyone would have today in establishing a new thought that ran counter to that most of us accepted, and, most especially, the middle road of conservatism in our nation.  America is and has always been a very conservative nation, so that we even shy away from the thought of a Roman Catholic occupying the White House, to say nothing of a Jew or African-American.  What we call “liberalism” in America is the middle way to most European nations, and even represents conservativism in many.  Anything that changed the conservative nature of our religious beliefs would be attacked in America, but how much more so by the well-known, well-connected most conservative of Christians, such as Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell?  How could one possibly stand against their onslaught of money, influence, television time and opportunity?

So, in order for us to assimilate these terms and ideas, it becomes necessary to repeat some of them, if briefly, in order clearly to establish the concept so that we may move on to the later significances.  The Exodus represents a story of migration and conversion, of something radical, of something that separates the old from the new: Egypt represents the old, while Israel represents the new.  In terms of cultural memory, this becomes the “memory of conversion.”  And in this new way of thinking, the old ways, the ways of memory for a people say that idolatry is forgetting and regression, but monotheism means remembering and progression.  The term for cultural memory as a people who can and do go back to some pertinent event in their history, which represents more than an act but designates who and what they are, has come to be termed “Mnemohistory” (Mnemosyne was the mother of the nine muses; the name suggests “memory” and the totality of cultural activities).  While not the opposite of history, the term means a branch, whether social or intellectual or even cultural that leaves aside the synchronic events of what is happening or is investigated; it focuses on the products of history or memory, a recourse to the past that can only become clear when we have read, participated, or become influenced in many areas of our history.  In other words, history is no longer transmitting and receiving: we become haunted by our past as it encroaches on everything we do.

 Memories easily change, as we’re coming to learn and which, even as I write this, have been distorted, falsified, invented, and implanted.  Just recently a researcher demonstrated this by implanting the idea of memories within people who had visited one of the Disney theme-parks, suggesting that they had visited with “Bugs Bunny” while there and had pleasant memories associated with what they did and what their children saw, etc., when Bugs approached them.  They recalled it vividly, enough to swear it happened, only to learn that Bugs Bunny is a Warner Brothers character, not one of the Disney stock.  Memory is only a valid, historical source if checked by “objective” evidence.  But for historical researchers, history lives only if it made an impression on the collective memory, and if it makes no impression it is easily forgotten.

 And so, for the historicist, the task remains to separate historical facts from mythical elements, and then to distinguish those elements of the past as they shape or impinge upon the present.  However, for the mnemohistoricist, the truth exists in analyzing the mythical elements of the past and attempting to understand their hidden agenda.  In this instance, the problem is not was Moses aware of and trained in the life of Egypt, but rather why his Egyptian life and ways is not presented in the book of Exodus—and, moreover, why is not in the Hebrew text of Exodus but is in the Christian text of Acts 7:22?  This is somewhat akin to forgetting that Paul was a conservative Jew, who comes to bridge the gap between Jews and Christians in our thinking, but in terms of his time he was as much different from today’s Christians as one can imagine, an ambivalent figure in Jewish messianism.  This counter-memory goes even further, stating that “you remember it this way, but I remember it differently…because I recall what you have forgotten.  We forget that the line between history and myth is one of continuous movement: history turns into myth as soon as it is remembered, narrated, and used in such a way as to be woven into the fabric of our present.

 The question that now must be addressed is what is the cultural memory of the Jews and Egypt, what is it or how does this cultural memory differ from historical events in terms of objective portrayal or evidence passed onto the Jews, and by way of the Jews to Christians in their time (when they first differentiated themselves from Jewish thought and belief) and our own?  One must first go back to the Renaissance (originally an art history term of the nineteenth century, designating the “new birth” of classical thought that transpired in the late fourteenth century in Southern Europe and later, in the early sixteenth century, in the North).  This was the “golden age” of the Egyptophilia.  The second wave occurred in the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt, when hieroglyphic script was first deciphered, in the next century.  The interest in all things Egyptian was such that the nineteenth century firmly believed that the nation was the “origin of all cults.”

 Where are we headed?  The answer to that remains far easier than the explanation.  Moses was an Egyptian—the question, however, is still one of who Moses was: Akhenaten, perhaps?  Akhenaten, or Pharaoh Amenophis IV, became erased shortly after his death from all the king-lists, monuments, inscriptions, and anything that bore his name—this from a people who were scrupulous in their historical lists (from which much biblical historicity is gathered, given that the Bible may be the only evidence for the existence of many people).  It was not until that great age of the Nineteenth Century that he became known once again.  The difficulty here is that Akhenaten existed, but there is no memory of him, while Moses has been recalled in memory, but no physical, historical evidence survives to prove his existence.

 Whoever Moses was, he destroyed and abolished all cults and idols of Eyptian polytheists and established a purely monotheistic religion—for Akhenaten, that meant the god of light, whom he called Aton.  Scholars of Eyptology and the Moses connection look, for instance, at Psalm 104 and ask if this is not a hymn to the Egyptian god translated into Hebrew.  Moreover, they ask if Aton and the Hebrew Adonai (“Lord”) are not the same and from the root noun.  This pharaoh is the one that Freud argued in his “historical novel” was really Moses.  But because he saw the resurrection, so to speak, of a second Moses once they had killed the first as a continuation of their need for a hero, a leader, and one they could look back upon with fond memory and to establish who and what they were, many mistook the Oedipal associations of a people acting in concert and collectively the way that Freud had argued for the individual’s struggle with selfhood and maturation as the raison d’être of the work.  While it fit perfectly with Freud’s schema, the book was not intended as psychoanalytic theory but conjecture, and that with considerable license, as with all fiction.

 What, you may ask, has all this to do with a leader who lived in the mid-fourteenth century B.C.E., and ruled for a brief seventeen years?  Because, this is the same time as our biblical Moses.  And one can go back further for several more centuries to remembered events in this part of the world that would influence its people: the Hyksos invasion of Palestinian invaders who lived and ruled Egypt for one hundred years.  They, however, lived and conformed to the polytheistic way of the people whom they conquered, but they were driven out in such a way that those retelling the stories of Akhenaten and trying to explain his “evil ways” could impart a different cultural memory.  Is what the people suffered through their traumatic recollection (and traumas cause memories—to such an extant that people sometimes forget them but carry their influences in the lack of speech, sleep, terrible episodes brought about by seemingly irrelevant events or triggers, and the like, so that traumas are bad enough that our entire being attempts to erase them as best as possible) part of their displeasure and upheaval over the first monotheist converting through power the nation into monotheism?  One argument for the idea of trauma comes to us from this age, referred to as the Armana age, when the Hittite Empire raided an Egyptian garrison and brought with them plague, one that raged for as long as twenty years.

 The feasts in ancient Egypt were the only occasion when the gods left their temples and appeared to the people at large; otherwise, they dwelt entirely in darkness inside the sanctuaries of their temples, inaccessible to all but the most select of priests.  All feasts took the form of processions, when the gods appeared outside the city walls; thus the city is where people wanted to be, to be buried, to find their gods, to associate with the priesthood: the more important the god or procession, the more important the city and vice versa.  Can one imagine a period of time when disease spreads by the contact of individuals within the city?  To stop this and to deprive the people of their feasts and associations with their gods must have caused enormous turmoil and trauma.  Conjoin this with the idea of the trauma of one bringing a new religion, one different than all of their past, and one can understand how cultural memory wishes to link the two and recall them as one.  The Asiatic illness—leprosy?—soon finds itself in association with the Hyksos’ god Baal, who is associated with the Egyptian god Seth.  It is at this time that the Egyptian god Seth begins to become a god of “otherness,” of characteristics of a devil and Asiatic foreigner.

 To try and recast this explanation into summarized form, we find that the Armana period, that which saw the pharaoh break with all tradition and to institute a religion of but one god, not many, retrospectively shapes a collective memory of the Hyksos occupation, of disease and foreignness, so that for the Egyptian memory is associated with all that represents this “otherness,” which finds its way to projection upon Jews.  Jews remember the experience one way, Egypt another.  Ancient historians, such as Josephus, write of the terrible period as being brought about by the Jews: as Egypt remembers the events, they cast out the unclean, disease bearing and ungodly Jews; as Hebrew memory has it, a leader rose up and released them from the bondage of living among pagans, visiting upon them numerous dire and plague-filled wonders from their god.  The Egyptians remember the savage Hyksos, Palestinians, while the Jews remember Pharaoh and his “strengthened heart.”

 The argument for this cultural memory and what has changed or how it has been remembered is, admittedly, poorly rendered here, and I would urge the reader to consult Jan Assmann’s work, Moses the Egyptian, Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, the work of anthropologist and sociologist Mary Douglas, or a host of other sources in the study of both religion and Egyptology.  But the most important principle here, especially in terms of literature, is to remember that all is fiction.  And by that we do not denigrate biblical narratives; we merely remind the reader that all events, whether purported to be fiction or fact, render perspective and recall events and their selective memories as biased points of view.  Such a perspective does not render something “untrue,” but it goes back to the concept discussed in another essay that “truth” exists by correspondence or coherence—one may judge the “rightness” of something by how it corresponds to know facts, those we feel comfortable with and have come to accept without question, or one may see events by their totality and how they cohere to a larger idea, since some of the parts may be symbolic, metaphoric, or used for illustration.

 Note, however, that polytheism is not ignorance or immaturity with regard to a culture; on the contrary, it represents a much more sophisticated form of interaction between peoples.  Two entirely different races may call their gods by different names but they agree on the existence of the god and the power exhibited.  Many of the gods of monotheism, in fact, derive from a single source, acknowledged by the believers, which attribute not to gods, but God (this God is called by many names but answers to the “true name,” distinguishing its rightful source. 

I invoke you as do the Egyptians:

As do the Jews: Adonaie Sabaoth

As do the Greeks: king, ruling as monarch over all,

As do the high priests: hidden one, invisible one, who looks upon all,

As do the Parthians: OYERTO almighty.  (Papyrus Leiden I, 384)

Or,

The sons of Ogyges call me Bacchus,

Egyptians think me Osiris,

Mysians name me Phanaces,

Indians regard me as Dionysus,

Roman rites make me Liber,

The Arab race thinks me Adoneus,

Lucaniacus the Universal God.  (Epigram 48 of Ausonius)

 The crime that Akhenaten committed was to dismiss all power into but one source, the Sun.  Priests would tell the people that this caused the plague, disease, death, and that the only way to regain favor with “the” Deity was to expel those who brought the contagion.  In fact, the story of Moses circulated among many different peoples, in many cultures, and in many narratives (including one of the First Century B.C.E., where the leaders of the people are named Joseph and Moses, much like a later rendering of two different people at two vastly different times having to do with the Egyptians and escape).

 The point here is that one religion may give way, and often does, to a counter religion that attempts to revile the former and in everyway appear as different.  In the study of literature, for instance, it is commonplace to accept and to identify the fact that every age disparages the previous; it attempts to move as far away as possible.  And yet, by its very insistence upon difference, it points up all the more its similarities—the idea of Gertrude stating in Hamlet that “the lady doth protest too much.”  In other words, Gertrude notes that the Player Queen makes too much out of denial and therefore points to her own guilt (much as Claudius does in the play, Hamlet).  The argument that the literature concerning Moses reveals “protestation” by the people who adhere to its tenets rests in everything that the revealed religion demanded: monotheism is the counter-religion; no zooistic or animal-like powers and deities may be demonstrated; dietary laws are essential; the people are separated from their gods due to impurity, and so the gods cannot come out to visit them from the city, and the people were not expelled—they revolted and left of their own accord, having first struck the land with a plague.

Here are a few questions and observations for the reader to consider with regard to the Exodus and Moses narratives: 

 Note how little we know about the early Moses, his confrontations that lead to his self-imposed exile (must he flee?), the lack of control in all of this (is God directing Moses or is this pure providence?—and what does that mean?); the restraint he shows when dealing with the invaders at the well—only scaring them off as opposed to killing them.

 Moreover, Moses demonstrates progressively restrained tendency from the first killing of the Eyptian taskmaster.  After the encounter at the well in Midian, he has the opportunity to meet the seven daughters of Reuel.  Note that the well or spring was, as it is now, life to the Bedouins.  But there’s more: the spring or well is a female symbol: a wife (Proverbs 1:15-16); a prostitute (Proverbs 23:27), or, if sealed, a virgin (Genesis 29:2-10; Cant. 4:12; and Cant. 1:2 (which develops a pun between drink, kiss, and lust [p. 175]).

 The bond is greater between Reuel (sometimes referred to as Jethro) than between Moses and Zipporah—why?  Does he look rich?  But they would have feared and loathed the Egyptians.  Does the narrative smack of the testing of Isaac and Rebekah—also, Reuel has nothing but daughters.  Then again, this isn’t romantic, but political and religious as opposed to patriarchal and matriarchal.

 Note the bond between Israel and Midian:  Gen. 4:1-16 paints these people as murderers; they kidnap Joseph; P won’t deal with them in his narrative—who omits Moses sojourn among them, that his wife came from Midia.  P would have nothing to do with them; only the older texts of J and E come through with this information.

 Exodus 2:23-25: “And Deity remembered his covenant.”  J and E give us suspense, where we believe that the God behind this must make Himself known; however, the redactor detached this from 6:2, from P; as it stands here, it demonstrates Yahweh’s universal scope, even interrupting a pastoral description that Israel’s suffering continues.  But the most striking feature of this passage is that Elohim is repeated five times.  This signals the lack of detachment from His place in the world—no more behind the scenes, but now actively taking part.

 Moses claims to be heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue—he attempts to dissuade Yahweh: Chapter 4, verse 14: “then Yahweh’s nose grew angry at Moses…”  Notice the mix of senses.  Yahweh points out that Aaron approaches, his fellow Levite.  Yahweh tells him that He will “strengthen his heart” that Pharaoh won’t believe.”  Also, Moses gathers his woman and his possessions and saddles his ass—does this seem like the Christian Scriptures? 

 Verse 24-25 is the troublesome passage of Zipporah saving Moses from death.  Verse 26: “A bridegroom/son-in-law of bloodiness by circumcision.”  Then Yahweh speaks to Aaron: “Go to meet Moses to the wilderness.”  What happens here?  Is this belated punishment for having killed a man in the heat of anger?  Or is there other significances to Moses' being saved by his wife?

 Verse 29: “And Moses and Aaron went and assembled all of the elders of Israel’s Sons, (30) and Aaron spoke all the words that Yahweh had spoken to Moses, and he did the signs before the people’s eyes. (31)  And the people trusted, and they heard that Yahweh acknowledged Israel’s Sons and that he beheld their oppression.  And they knelt and bowed down.  Is this an indication of the Priestly writer, a way to work the importance of the line of priests from Aaron into this important narrative?

 Exodus 3-4 offers the best evidence for the Documentary Hypothesis, most especially J and E.  Distinguishing from P is much easier here—but that between J and E is the problem.  E calls Moses’ father-in-law Jethro, rather than Hobab or Reuel, as well as referring to the Deities mountain as Horeb.  As well, E gives us Aaron as Moses’ interpreter.  Many echoes of Genesis, where the E writer is easy to spot are here in evidence as well: “moreover, see: him coming out to meet you” is repeated in Gen. 32:7 and Exodus 4:14.  Does E give us the Aaron importance because of the division of the kingdom when he wrote, where North and South are separate, but the Priests coming from the North?

 Exodus 3:7 & 9 represent doublets.  Later, specific mentions of “hiding his face,” or removing his sandals” are both evidence of J and E—never P.  The strange sequence of events here seems to be the work of the Redactor: Aaron’s mission seems often misplaced in the narrative, where he receives his call, where Moses meets him, to say nothing of the bridegroom of blood incident.

 The most momentous change wrought by the combination of J and E involves the divine name.  In E. the scene at Horeb is the climactic moment when God first reveals his proper name to Moses, Israel and the world.  In JE, the meaning of the scene is entirely changed.  Since the name “Yahweh” was already known to the Patriarchs (e.g., Gen 15:2[J]), Moses’ request for God’s true name (3:13[E]) implies either that Moses is testing the bush (cf. Deut 18:20-22; Judg 13:17) or that the name of the ancestral god had been forgotten by Israel, or at lest never been taught to Moses.  If Moses himself never learned the name, he is presumably preparing himself for interrogation by a skeptical people (Jacob 1992: 65-62; and Comment, pp. 223-224).

One may find in various newer biblical translations that Moses and the Hebrews do not have the Red Sea part for them by God; rather it is the Reed Sea.  This would have been the case in terms of their journey out of Egypt--and the reeds that were used in so much of their writing (papyrus) and building materials, such as bricks, grow only in fresh, not salt water.  A translator's error has been compounded throughout the years (centuries) incorrectly translating Red for Reed, so that with more modern translations that have gone back to older, more reliable translations (for remember that all biblical material is translation, from translation, from translation), the substitution of Reed for Red is natural.  Older, more venerated translations, such as the King James Version, hold onto the incorrect "Red Sea" for the departure out of Egypt.

 Finally, we must observe several contributions of the Redactor: he is probably responsible for 4:21b, “But I, I will strengthen his heart, and he will not release the people.” We have already been advised that Pharaoh will be uncooperative (3:19 [E]); now we are assured that this is God’s plan.  Had the Redactor inserted his comment between vv 23 and 24, he would have destroyed Redactor’s association of Pharaoh’s son with Moses’s son.  Instead, he set his interjection between references to the coming “wonders” (i.e., the Plagues) and the slaying of the firstborn.  Exodus 4:21b later becomes the refrain of the Plagues cycle (7:13, 22; 8;11, 15; 9:12, 35; 10:20, 27; 11:10-11).  The Redactor’s work also created new implications and associations.  “Aaron your brother [i.e. “fellow”] Levite” (4:14[E]; becomes Moses’ full brother 6:20 [R].  The valuables taken from the Egyptians (3:22; 11:2-3; 12:35-36[J?] are no longer mere booty.  In the composite Torah, they are presumably used for building the Tabernacle (chaps. 25-31, 35-40 [P]).

And Here Are a Few Charts and Information That May Help:

Literary Sources of Exodus

Following in the main the literary analysis of R. E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible (1987),  this table categorizes the legal collections and narratives of the book of Exodus according to their reputed literary sources.

Yahwist and Priestly Versions of the Plagues

The Yahwist narrative supplied eight plagues. The plagues of gnats and boils were added to the original series by the Priestly editor who was responsible for the final edition. Priestly additions are marked in purple.

  Literary Structure of the Plague Narrative

Notice the literary symmetry of the plagues narrative. The plagues are ordered into three series of three disasters each. The tenth plague stands alone and is the climax. The symmetrical structure is established by repetitions within the narrative. Notice that a time indication is provided only for the first, fourth, and seventh plagues. No forewarning is given for the third, sixth, and ninth plagues. There is also a pattern to the instructions given to Moses.

Examine the literary symmetry and ponder its literary and theological significance. Though the plagues narrative was composed using Yahwist and Priestly source material, the final narrative is well-formed. Does the structural symmetry also suggest that these disasters, while perhaps having natural explanation, are also purposeful and divinely directed?

Passover (12:1;13-16)

The Israelites avoided the devastating tenth plague because each family slaughtered a lamb as a substitute for its firstborn. They painted blood from the lamb on the door frames of their homes, and when God saw this evidence of the sacrifice on a house, he "passed over" that house, sparing the firstborn son. Beginning with the exodus God laid claim to all firstborn sons, and provided for their redemption, or buying back, with a substitutionary sacrifice (13:11-16). On the significance of the firstborn in biblical literature see Greenspan (1994).
    The avoidance ritual of the tenth plague developed into a ceremonial meal called the Passover, or pesach in Hebrew. During this meal a roasted lamb was eaten along with bitter herbs and unleavened bread (bread made without yeast) called matsot. Eating matsot symbolized the hurriedness of Israel's departure; the bread simply had no time to rise. In pre-Israelite times the Passover sacrifice and the feast of unleavened bread may have been two separate occasions, one pastorally based and the other agriculturally based. They were combined in biblical tradition and stand as a memorial and eternal ordinance of the exodus (12:14). The Passover ritual is defined not just in Exodus but also in a variety of Torah texts (see Leviticus 23:4-8; Numbers 9:1-14; 28:16-25; Deuteronomy 16:1-8).
    The exodus story became so important to Israel's identity that the prescription for remembering it came to be contained within the tradition of the event itself. The yearly Passover celebration developed into one of Israel's most important festivals. Observing it or failing to observe it became a measure of the faithfulness of Israel in the Hebrew Bible. It is still widely celebrated today and serves as an enduring memorial to human freedom and divine compassion.

Reed Sea or Red Sea? "God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea" (13:18, NRSV). Most English Bible versions locate Israel's miraculous escape at the Red Sea, but the underlying Hebrew phrase yam suf might better be rendered Reed Sea. Suf is derived from the Egyptian word for the papyrus reed, which only grows in fresh water. This would place the crossing at one of the lagoons or inland lakes in the northeast of Egypt near the shore of the Mediterranean Sea (see Batto 1984, who presents the evidence but opts for a mythological interpretation of yam suf).

Code of Hammurabi

There are notable similarities between the Code of Hammurabi and certain Israelite legal materials, especially the Book of the Covenant. For instance, as in Israelite law, the Code of Hammurabi contains the law of retribution in kind (lex talionis), which prescribes proportional punishment: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

If a man has destroyed the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye. If he has broken another man's bone, they shall break his bone. (196-97)

Book of the Covenant

If any injury occurs, you shall take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, beating for beating. (21:23-25)

    While such physical retaliation may seem brutal, in fact, it was humane in its day. Specifying restitution in kind prevented resort to harsher punishments for such offenses, typically the death penalty. The existence of this code and others like it demonstrate that Israel shared with her neighbors an ideal of justice that would be administered by a righteous king. In Israel, David and Solomon were thought to epitomize this ideal.

There are notable similarities between the Code of Hammurabi and certain Israelite legal materials, especially the Book of the Covenant. For instance, as in Israelite law, the Code of Hammurabi contains the law of retribution in kind (lex talionis), which prescribes proportional punishment: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

The commandments begin with God's self-identification and also evoke the exodus.

¹ And Elohim spoke all these words, saying, ² "I am YHWH your Elohim, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of enslavement. (20:1-2)

    This prologue to the commandments emphasizes the loving character and concern of God in rescuing the Israelites from slavery. First he delivered them from slavery, then he came to them with a covenant. The implication of this prologue is that obedience to these commands would be Israel's expression of appreciation, and not an onerous imposition from a distant and demanding God.

³ "You may not have any other Elohim (translated as either "gods" or "God") except me." (20:3)

    This command prohibits devotion to any deity but Yahweh. Perhaps to your surprise, it does not categorically deny the reality of other gods.

⁴ "You may not make for yourself a sculpted image, or any representation of anything that is in heaven above, or on the earth below, or in the water under the earth. ⁵ You may not bow down to them or serve them; for I YHWH your Elohim am a possessive god, visiting the guilt of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and the fourth generation of those who disown me, ⁶ but showing loyalty to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments." (20:4-6)

    This command prohibits using any physical form to represent Yahweh. Nothing that God has created could ever adequately represent him. The only thing that bears a likeness to God is humankind, which was created in his image, "after his likeness," according to Genesis 1. This command to appropriately honor God stresses the seriousness with which God treats loyalty and disloyalty. The reference to heaven above, earth below, and water under the earth in the formulation of this command is evidence that the Israelites had a tri-level concept of the cosmos. This is also evident in the creation narrative of the Priestly source (see Chapter 1.1).

⁷ "You may not take the name of YHWH your Elohim in vain; for YHWH will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain." (20:7)

    This command originally intended to prohibit taking false oaths. More than that, it also forbade disrespect shown to God by using his name wrongly or frivolously. God's name was special. It was the nearest the Israelites came to possessing any part of God, and had to be treated with the utmost care. Later Jewish practice takes this prohibition so seriously that the name of God, and even the word God, was never spoken, with phrases such as "the Lord" and "the Name" used in its place, and G_d used in print.

⁸ "Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy. ⁹ Six days you may work, and do all your jobs; ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a Sabbath to YHWH your Elohim; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your cattle, or the resident alien who lives with you; ¹¹ for in six days YHWH made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them, and ceased from work on the seventh day; by doing this YHWH blessed the Sabbath day and made it a holy day." (20:8-11)

    The Sabbath command institutionalizes a periodic cessation of typical daily work. The Hebrew term shabbat literally means "cease, stop, rest." The warrant for such a time of inactivity is the pattern of creation in which God completed his efforts in six days and ceased work by the seventh. The explanation from creation was added by the Priestly writer to provide the reason for Sabbath observance. The Deuteronomy 5 restatement of this command warrants Sabbath rest by recalling Israel's period of slavery in Egypt and God's deliverance from it. In this light, Sabbath rest commemorates Israel's freedom rather than God's creation.

¹² "Honor your father and your mother, so that your days in the land which YHWH your Elohim gives you may be numerous." (20:12)

    Respect must be shown to ancestors and especially parents. A high social value was placed on children's duty to care for parents, and veneration of ancestors, even dead ones, was broadly practiced in the ancient Middle East. Note that this is the only command that is future oriented and holds the promise of blessing attached to its observance. The blessing is evidently one of communal more than individual application, assuring lasting possession of the Promised Land.

¹³ "You must not murder." (20:13)

   This is a prohibition of murder, and not of killing generally. Capital punishment was mandated for a variety of offenses in the Hebrew Bible (for example, see 21:12-17).

¹⁴ "You must not commit adultery." (20:14)

    In its original setting this command primarily prohibited sexual relations with another man's wife. This prohibition against the sexual promiscuity of married persons is aimed to protect the blood line of offspring. This was a crucial issue in matters of inheritance where a father wants to be sure he and not someone else has sired his heir.

¹⁵ "You must not steal." (20:15)

    Stealing in the first instance probably applied to persons rather than property in the biblical world. Kidnapping was a common ancient practice (see 21:16 where the same Hebrew verb is used) and this commandment was intended to provide for personal security. Later it was extended to material property.

¹⁶ "You must not bear false witness against your neighbor." (20:16)

    Here deceitfulness and perjury are in view, perhaps first of all in a judicial setting. However, the commandment extends to a general protection of personal reputation, which is crucial for maintaining social order.

¹⁷ "You must not covet your neighbor's estate: that is, you must not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." (20:17)

    This is the only command that was intended to regulate attitude rather than behavior. The reason is clear: coveting, or deeply desiring what is not one's own, is a state of mind that often leads to other prohibited behaviors. Contentment with what God has already provided is implicitly enjoined.
    The commands naturally divide into two general categories. The first commands define behaviors that apply to the people's relationship with God. This relationship is an exclusive one that demands total loyalty. The latter commands define behaviors which apply to relationships within the community. Both categories of behavior together constitute the essence of covenant. Put positively they command this: Love God and your neighbor as yourself (see Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18).
    Most of the Ten Commandments take the form of absolute law, also termed apodictic law. The commands, in other words, are unconditional. They apply with no "ifs, ands, or buts." Even though most of these commands are negative in form ("do not do this"), this does not imply that God's requirements were oppressively restrictive. In fact, they merely placed certain general types of actions and attitudes out of bounds. Beyond that they leave a rather wide latitude for freedom of action. They were certainly not perceived as oppressive by the Israelites, who found delight in God's law (for example, see Psalms 1 and 119). Although cast in the negative, they can be considered general policy statements which were intended to shape the broader religious and moral character of the nation.

The Revision

Having destroyed the first copy of the covenant tablets Moses was instructed to ascend Mount Sinai and receive another copy. However, the conditions of this version of the covenant differ from the more famous ones of Exodus 20. While still containing ten commandments, Exodus 34 consists of laws related to worship practices and is called the Ritual Decalogue. Various schemes have been devised to come up with the exact ten suggested by 34:28. This is one possible enumeration.

1. You may not worship any other god, because YHWH, whose name is Jealous One, is a jealous God. (14a)
2. You may not make molten gods for yourselves. (17)
3. Every firstborn human or animal belongs to God. (19a)
4. No one may appear before God without an offering. (20c)
5. You can work six days, but on the seventh day you may not work. (21a)
6. You must observe the feast of weeks, the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering. (23)
7. You may not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened. (25a)
8. The Passover sacrifice must not remain until the morning. (25b)
9. You must bring the best of the first fruits of the soil to the house of Yahweh your God. (26a)
10. You may not boil a kid in its mother's milk. (26b; also 23:19 and Deuteronomy 14:21)

Kashrut. The practice of boiling a kid in its mother's milk may derive from Canaanite fertility rituals. The prohibition of eating milk and meat together is part of the elaborate Kashrut system of Jewish laws that regulates food and cleanliness.

    Moses descended Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant. Because he had been talking directly with God his face was aglow with the glory of Yahweh.

The people of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone; and Moses would put the veil upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him (34:35).

The Golden Calf (32-33)

Moses spent a longer time on the mountain receiving the covenant from God than the people had expected. Thinking that they had lost Moses and thus their contact with the deity, they demanded that Aaron the high priest provide a substitute. Responding to their urging, Aaron solicited gifts from the people and proceeded to make a golden calf.

Canaanite Religion. Bulls, cows, and calves were religious objects in the ancient Middle East. In Canaan the high god El was called Bull El. Baal was the god of fertility and rode on a bull, surely a symbol of virility. Technically then, the bull was not itself Baal; rather, it functioned as his mount. In a functionally similar way the ark of the covenant was Yahweh's throne. When Aaron constructed the golden calf he may have intended it as the throne of God rather than as a deity in its own right. Practically speaking, this is a rather fine distinction, and one that would have been easily lost on the Israelites.

⁴ He took the gold from them, cast it in a mold, and made a calf image. They said, "These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt." ⁵ When Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it and made a proclamation, "Tomorrow there will be a feast to YHWH." (32:4-5)

    Thus the Israelites committed idolatry. This idol is reminiscent of the bull of Canaanite religion that was associated with the high god Baal. This episode stands as a warning against worshipping the gods of the Canaanites who inhabit the Promised Land.

Jeroboam's Golden Calves. Also, the golden calf unmistakably echoes the golden calves that Jeroboam, the first king of Israel after the civil dispute, erected in Dan and Bethel when he established religious centers in the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the tenth century B.C.E. (see Chapter 9). The negative way in which the golden calf is viewed in Exodus is a veiled prophetic condemnation of Jeroboam's golden calf worship centers. The statement, "These are your gods," in the plural, when only one calf was molded, evokes the multiple calves of Jeroboam. In fact, these words are the same as the words of Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12:28.

   In response God became extremely angry and resolved to destroy the people and begin building a nation from Moses. Moses argued with God, suggesting that if all the Israelites died, the Egyptians will have triumphed. He urged God saying, "Turn from your fierce anger, change your mind, and do not bring catastrophe on your people." Remarkably, God responded to Moses' plea and voided his threatened punishment.
    God instructed Moses to return. Going down the mountain he saw the pagan revelry of the people. Partly out of anger he smashed the two tablets containing the record and testimony of the covenant. It also effectively signaled that the covenant had been broken because the people had compromised their loyalty by worshiping another god.
    The people had gone wild in celebration, and Aaron was held to blame.

²⁵ When Moses saw that the people were out of control (for Aaron had let them get out of control, to the point that they were a menace to anyone opposed to them), ²⁶ Moses stood at the entrance to the camp and said, "Who is on YHWH's side? Come over to me!" ²⁷ He said to them, "This is what YHWH, the Elohim of Israel, says, 'Each of you, strap your sword to your side. Go back and forth through the camp, from gate to gate. Each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor.'" ²⁸ The Levites did what Moses commanded, and about three thousand people fell on that day. ²⁹ Moses said, "Today you have dedicated yourselves to YHWH, each at the cost of a son or a brother. You have earned a blessing today." (32:25-29)

    This incident demonstrated the loyalty of the Levites to the cause of Yahweh. They were the only ones who had not succumbed to the lawlessness of golden calf worship. The story, again, pictures the Levites in a very favorable light; not surprisingly, for the Elohist was a Levite.

Aaron and the Elohist. Though he was an advocate for the Levites generally, the Elohist did not admire Aaron. He directly implicates Aaron in the golden calf incident. Why would the he want to put Aaron in such a bad light? Perhaps because the Elohist and his group had migrated to Jerusalem after the fall of Israel in 721 B.C.E. They were unable to practice their livelihood in Jerusalem even though they were Levites, because the family of Aaron, also of the tribe of Levi, had locked the priestly craft up tight. The privilege of serving as a priest was inherited, and one had to be from the family of Aaron of the tribe of Levi to qualify. Aaron, understandably, came under their severest criticism.

    Yahweh then told Moses to take the people and head on to the Promised Land without him. Distressed at this change of plan Moses met with Yahweh in the tent of meeting and urged him to reconsider. Again Yahweh changed his mind and decided to continue on with the Israelites. As proof of his commitment, the glory of Yahweh passed by Moses, and Moses caught a glimpse of the backside of Yahweh.

Tent of Meeting. The tent of meeting is the symbol of Yahweh's dwelling among the Israelites in the Elohist tradition. It never mentions the ark of the covenant, only the tent of meeting. Perhaps this is because the Elohist was from the north, where Shiloh was situated. Shiloh was the home of the tent shrine during the days of the tribal federation (see Chapter 8.1). The Yahwist never mentions the tent of meeting. The ark ended up in Jerusalem, and that was the focus of worship there. That was of interest to the Yahwist, who was from Judah, but the Elohist ignored it, because northern priests were not allowed to minister in the temple.

Giving of the Law: Combined Sources

Yahwist source / Elohist source / Priestly source 

Exodus 19

1 On the third new moon after the people of Israel had gone forth out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. 2 And when they set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, they encamped in the wilderness; and there Israel encamped before the mountain. 3 And Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him out of the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: 4 You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel." 7 So Moses came and called the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which the LORD had commanded him. 8 And all the people answered together and said, "All that the LORD has spoken we will do." And Moses reported the words of the people to the LORD. 9 And the LORD said to Moses, "Lo, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you for ever." Then Moses told the words of the people to the LORD. 10 And the LORD said to Moses, "Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments, 11 and be ready by the third day; for on the third day the LORD will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. 12 And you shall set bounds for the people round about, saying, 'Take heed that you do not go up into the mountain or touch the border of it; whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death; 13 no hand shall touch him, but he shall be stoned or shot; whether beast or man, he shall not live.' When the trumpet sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain." 14 So Moses went down from the mountain to the people, and consecrated the people; and they washed their garments. 15 And he said to the people, "Be ready by the third day; do not go near a woman." 16 On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. 17 Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God; and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. 18 And Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and the smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. 19 And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. 20 And the LORD came down upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain; and the LORD called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. 21 And the LORD said to Moses, "Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to the LORD to gaze and many of them perish. 22 And also let the priests who come near to the LORD consecrate themselves, lest the LORD break out upon them." 23 And Moses said to the LORD, "The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai; for thou thyself didst charge us, saying, 'Set bounds about the mountain, and consecrate it.'" 24 And the LORD said to him, "Go down, and come up bringing Aaron with you; but do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the LORD, lest he break out against them." 25 So Moses went down to the people and told them.

Exodus 20

1 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 "You shall have no other gods before me. 4 "You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. 7 "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. 8 "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; 11 for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it. 12 "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the LORD your God gives you. 13 "You shall not kill. 14 "You shall not commit adultery. 15 "You shall not steal. 16 "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 17 "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's." 18 Now when all the people perceived the thunderings and the lightnings and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled; and they stood afar off, 19 and said to Moses, "You speak to us, and we will hear; but let not God speak to us, lest we die." 20 And Moses said to the people, "Do not fear; for God has come to prove you, and that the fear of him may be before your eyes, that you may not sin." 21 And the people stood afar off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. 22 And the LORD said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the people of Israel: 'You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. 23 You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold. 24 An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen; in every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you. 25 And if you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones; for if you wield your tool upon it you profane it. 26 And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it.'

Tabernacle Components

Aaron and the Elohist. Though he was an advocate for the Levites generally, the Elohist did not admire Aaron. He directly implicates Aaron in the golden calf incident. Why would the he want to put Aaron in such a bad light? Perhaps because the Elohist and his group had migrated to Jerusalem after the fall of Israel in 721 B.C.E. They were unable to practice their livelihood in Jerusalem even though they were Levites, because the family of Aaron, also of the tribe of Levi, had locked the priestly craft up tight. The privilege of serving as a priest was inherited, and one had to be from the family of Aaron of the tribe of Levi to qualify. Aaron, understandably, came under their severest criticism.

    Yahweh then told Moses to take the people and head on to the Promised Land without him. Distressed at this change of plan Moses met with Yahweh in the tent of meeting and urged him to reconsider. Again Yahweh changed his mind and decided to continue on with the Israelites. As proof of his commitment, the glory of Yahweh passed by Moses, and Moses caught a glimpse of the backside of Yahweh.

Tent of Meeting. The tent of meeting is the symbol of Yahweh's dwelling among the Israelites in the Elohist tradition. It never mentions the ark of the covenant, only the tent of meeting. Perhaps this is because the Elohist was from the north, where Shiloh was situated. Shiloh was the home of the tent shrine during the days of the tribal federation (see Chapter 8.1). The Yahwist never mentions the tent of meeting. The ark ended up in Jerusalem, and that was the focus of worship there. That was of interest to the Yahwist, who was from Judah, but the Elohist ignored it, because northern priests were not allowed to minister in the temple.

Literary Sources of Exodus

Following in the main the literary analysis of Friedman (1987), this table categorizes the legal collections and narratives of the book of Exodus according to their reputed literary sources.

Literary Sources of Exodus

Following in the main the literary analysis of Friedman (1987), this table categorizes the legal collections and narratives of the book of Exodus according to their reputed literary sources.

Hebrew and Habiru. Documents from Mesopotamia and Egypt from the second millennium to the twelfth century B.C.E. make frequent reference to groups of people associated with the term habiru. These habiru were evidently not a homogenous ethnic group but a class of social misfits and troublemakers. The term may be linguistically related to the biblical term for a Hebrew, 'ivri. The question has been raised whether the Israelites were originally such people. If so, this would have implications for the origin of the Israelites, their social formation, and their ethnic constitution or lack thereof (see Na'aman 1986).

Yahwist and Priestly Versions of the Plagues

The Yahwist narrative supplied eight plagues. The plagues of gnats and boils were added to the original series by the Priestly editor who was responsible for the final edition. Priestly additions are marked in purple.

 Passover (12:1-13:16)

The Israelites avoided the devastating tenth plague because each family slaughtered a lamb as a substitute for its firstborn. They painted blood from the lamb on the door frames of their homes, and when God saw this evidence of the sacrifice on a house, he "passed over" that house, sparing the firstborn son. Beginning with the exodus God laid claim to all firstborn sons, and provided for their redemption, or buying back, with a substitutionary sacrifice (13:11-16). On the significance of the firstborn in biblical literature see Greenspan (1994).
    The avoidance ritual of the tenth plague developed into a ceremonial meal called the Passover, or pesach in Hebrew. During this meal a roasted lamb was eaten along with bitter herbs and unleavened bread (bread made without yeast) called matsot. Eating matsot symbolized the hurriedness of Israel's departure; the bread simply had no time to rise. In pre-Israelite times the Passover sacrifice and the feast of unleavened bread may have been two separate occasions, one pastorally based and the other agriculturally based. They were combined in biblical tradition and stand as a memorial and eternal ordinance of the exodus (12:14). The Passover ritual is defined not just in Exodus but also in a variety of Torah texts (see Leviticus 23:4-8; Numbers 9:1-14; 28:16-25; Deuteronomy 16:1-8).
    The exodus story became so important to Israel's identity that the prescription for remembering it came to be contained within the tradition of the event itself. The yearly Passover celebration developed into one of Israel's most important festivals. Observing it or failing to observe it became a measure of the faithfulness of Israel in the Hebrew Bible. It is still widely celebrated today and serves as an enduring memorial to human freedom and divine compassion.

The conjectured route of the Israelite Exodus; note where Mount Sinai is in relation to Goshen and Canaan.  Most of us don't realize the proximity of the lower Nile to Hebron and Jerusalem, which implies a closer and thus greater relationship between the cultures of Egypt and what would become Israel.

Israel's Pre- and Post-Sinai Wilderness Experiences

Tabernacle Components

The commandments begin with God's self-identification and also evoke the exodus.

¹ And Elohim spoke all these words, saying, ² "I am YHWH your Elohim, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of enslavement. (20:1-2)

    This prologue to the commandments emphasizes the loving character and concern of God in rescuing the Israelites from slavery. First he delivered them from slavery, then he came to them with a covenant. The implication of this prologue is that obedience to these commands would be Israel's expression of appreciation, and not an onerous imposition from a distant and demanding God.

³ "You may not have any other Elohim (translated as either "gods" or "God") except me." (20:3)

    This command prohibits devotion to any deity but Yahweh. Perhaps to your surprise, it does not categorically deny the reality of other gods.

⁴ "You may not make for yourself a sculpted image, or any representation of anything that is in heaven above, or on the earth below, or in the water under the earth. ⁵ You may not bow down to them or serve them; for I YHWH your Elohim am a possessive god, visiting the guilt of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and the fourth generation of those who disown me, ⁶ but showing loyalty to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments." (20:4-6)

    This command prohibits using any physical form to represent Yahweh. Nothing that God has created could ever adequately represent him. The only thing that bears a likeness to God is humankind, which was created in his image, "after his likeness," according to Genesis 1. This command to appropriately honor God stresses the seriousness with which God treats loyalty and disloyalty. The reference to heaven above, earth below, and water under the earth in the formulation of this command is evidence that the Israelites had a tri-level concept of the cosmos. This is also evident in the creation narrative of the Priestly source (see Chapter 1.1).

⁷ "You may not take the name of YHWH your Elohim in vain; for YHWH will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain." (20:7)

    This command originally intended to prohibit taking false oaths. More than that, it also forbade disrespect shown to God by using his name wrongly or frivolously. God's name was special. It was the nearest the Israelites came to possessing any part of God, and had to be treated with the utmost care. Later Jewish practice takes this prohibition so seriously that the name of God, and even the word God, was never spoken, with phrases such as "the Lord" and "the Name" used in its place, and G_d used in print.

⁸ "Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy. ⁹ Six days you may work, and do all your jobs; ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a Sabbath to YHWH your Elohim; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your cattle, or the resident alien who lives with you; ¹¹ for in six days YHWH made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them, and ceased from work on the seventh day; by doing this YHWH blessed the Sabbath day and made it a holy day." (20:8-11)

    The Sabbath command institutionalizes a periodic cessation of typical daily work. The Hebrew term shabbat literally means "cease, stop, rest." The warrant for such a time of inactivity is the pattern of creation in which God completed his efforts in six days and ceased work by the seventh. The explanation from creation was added by the Priestly writer to provide the reason for Sabbath observance. The Deuteronomy 5 restatement of this command warrants Sabbath rest by recalling Israel's period of slavery in Egypt and God's deliverance from it. In this light, Sabbath rest commemorates Israel's freedom rather than God's creation.

¹² "Honor your father and your mother, so that your days in the land which YHWH your Elohim gives you may be numerous." (20:12)

    Respect must be shown to ancestors and especially parents. A high social value was placed on children's duty to care for parents, and veneration of ancestors, even dead ones, was broadly practiced in the ancient Middle East. Note that this is the only command that is future oriented and holds the promise of blessing attached to its observance. The blessing is evidently one of communal more than individual application, assuring lasting possession of the Promised Land.

¹³ "You must not murder." (20:13)

   This is a prohibition of murder, and not of killing generally. Capital punishment was mandated for a variety of offenses in the Hebrew Bible (for example, see 21:12-17).

¹⁴ "You must not commit adultery." (20:14)

    In its original setting this command primarily prohibited sexual relations with another man's wife. This prohibition against the sexual promiscuity of married persons is aimed to protect the blood line of offspring. This was a crucial issue in matters of inheritance where a father wants to be sure he and not someone else has sired his heir.

¹⁵ "You must not steal." (20:15)

    Stealing in the first instance probably applied to persons rather than property in the biblical world. Kidnapping was a common ancient practice (see 21:16 where the same Hebrew verb is used) and this commandment was intended to provide for personal security. Later it was extended to material property.

¹⁶ "You must not bear false witness against your neighbor." (20:16)

    Here deceitfulness and perjury are in view, perhaps first of all in a judicial setting. However, the commandment extends to a general protection of personal reputation, which is crucial for maintaining social order.

¹⁷ "You must not covet your neighbor's estate: that is, you must not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." (20:17)

    This is the only command that was intended to regulate attitude rather than behavior. The reason is clear: coveting, or deeply desiring what is not one's own, is a state of mind that often leads to other prohibited behaviors. Contentment with what God has already provided is implicitly enjoined.
    The commands naturally divide into two general categories. The first commands define behaviors that apply to the people's relationship with God. This relationship is an exclusive one that demands total loyalty. The latter commands define behaviors which apply to relationships within the community. Both categories of behavior together constitute the essence of covenant. Put positively they command this: Love God and your neighbor as yourself (see Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18).
    Most of the Ten Commandments take the form of absolute law, also termed apodictic law. The commands, in other words, are unconditional. They apply with no "ifs, ands, or buts." Even though most of these commands are negative in form ("do not do this"), this does not imply that God's requirements were oppressively restrictive. In fact, they merely placed certain general types of actions and attitudes out of bounds. Beyond that they leave a rather wide latitude for freedom of action. They were certainly not perceived as oppressive by the Israelites, who found delight in God's law (for example, see Psalms 1 and 119). Although cast in the negative, they can be considered general policy statements which were intended to shape the broader religious and moral character of the nation.

 Ethical Decalogue (20:1-17)

God devised a set of ten basic moral mandates that defined the relationship of Israel with Yahweh and people with one other. They were delivered to the Israelites through Moses. Commonly referred to as the Ten Commandments ("ten words" in Deuteronomy 4:13), they are the Ethical Decalogue of religious and moral commands. The core stipulations appear to come from the Elohist, with elaboration to some of the them coming from later Priestly additions. Deuteronomy 5 contains a duplicate of the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20, with some subtle but interesting variations (see Chapter 5).
    The commands are framed in the second-person singular form of address, as if to target each individual person in Israel while at the same time addressing Israel as a collective unit. The ambiguity of "you" in English (is it singular or plural?) is not present in the Hebrew text. In the discussion that follows we will not refer to the commandments by number because Judaic and Christian traditions enumerate the commandments differently.

A Comparison of Commandment Writers:

A comparison of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 lists the commandments in different post-biblical traditions.   The commandments begin with God's self-identification and also evoke the exodus.

¹ And Elohim spoke all these words, saying, ² "I am YHWH your Elohim, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of enslavement. (20:1-2)

    This prologue to the commandments emphasizes the loving character and concern of God in rescuing the Israelites from slavery. First he delivered them from slavery, then he came to them with a covenant. The implication of this prologue is that obedience to these commands would be Israel's expression of appreciation, and not an onerous imposition from a distant and demanding God.

³ "You may not have any other Elohim (translated as either "gods" or "God") except me." (20:3)

    This command prohibits devotion to any deity but Yahweh. Perhaps to your surprise, it does not categorically deny the reality of other gods.

⁴ "You may not make for yourself a sculpted image, or any representation of anything that is in heaven above, or on the earth below, or in the water under the earth. ⁵ You may not bow down to them or serve them; for I YHWH your Elohim am a possessive god, visiting the guilt of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and the fourth generation of those who disown me, ⁶ but showing loyalty to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments." (20:4-6)

    This command prohibits using any physical form to represent Yahweh. Nothing that God has created could ever adequately represent him. The only thing that bears a likeness to God is humankind, which was created in his image, "after his likeness," according to Genesis 1. This command to appropriately honor God stresses the seriousness with which God treats loyalty and disloyalty. The reference to heaven above, earth below, and water under the earth in the formulation of this command is evidence that the Israelites had a tri-level concept of the cosmos. This is also evident in the creation narrative of the Priestly source (see Chapter 1.1).

⁷ "You may not take the name of YHWH your Elohim in vain; for YHWH will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain." (20:7)

    This command originally intended to prohibit taking false oaths. More than that, it also forbade disrespect shown to God by using his name wrongly or frivolously. God's name was special. It was the nearest the Israelites came to possessing any part of God, and had to be treated with the utmost care. Later Jewish practice takes this prohibition so seriously that the name of God, and even the word God, was never spoken, with phrases such as "the Lord" and "the Name" used in its place, and G_d used in print.

⁸ "Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy. ⁹ Six days you may work, and do all your jobs; ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a Sabbath to YHWH your Elohim; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your cattle, or the resident alien who lives with you; ¹¹ for in six days YHWH made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them, and ceased from work on the seventh day; by doing this YHWH blessed the Sabbath day and made it a holy day." (20:8-11)

    The Sabbath command institutionalizes a periodic cessation of typical daily work. The Hebrew term shabbat literally means "cease, stop, rest." The warrant for such a time of inactivity is the pattern of creation in which God completed his efforts in six days and ceased work by the seventh. The explanation from creation was added by the Priestly writer to provide the reason for Sabbath observance. The Deuteronomy 5 restatement of this command warrants Sabbath rest by recalling Israel's period of slavery in Egypt and God's deliverance from it. In this light, Sabbath rest commemorates Israel's freedom rather than God's creation.

¹² "Honor your father and your mother, so that your days in the land which YHWH your Elohim gives you may be numerous." (20:12)

    Respect must be shown to ancestors and especially parents. A high social value was placed on children's duty to care for parents, and veneration of ancestors, even dead ones, was broadly practiced in the ancient Middle East. Note that this is the only command that is future oriented and holds the promise of blessing attached to its observance. The blessing is evidently one of communal more than individual application, assuring lasting possession of the Promised Land.

¹³ "You must not murder." (20:13)

   This is a prohibition of murder, and not of killing generally. Capital punishment was mandated for a variety of offenses in the Hebrew Bible (for example, see 21:12-17).

¹⁴ "You must not commit adultery." (20:14)

    In its original setting this command primarily prohibited sexual relations with another man's wife. This prohibition against the sexual promiscuity of married persons is aimed to protect the blood line of offspring. This was a crucial issue in matters of inheritance where a father wants to be sure he and not someone else has sired his heir.

¹⁵ "You must not steal." (20:15)

    Stealing in the first instance probably applied to persons rather than property in the biblical world. Kidnapping was a common ancient practice (see 21:16 where the same Hebrew verb is used) and this commandment was intended to provide for personal security. Later it was extended to material property.

¹⁶ "You must not bear false witness against your neighbor." (20:16)

    Here deceitfulness and perjury are in view, perhaps first of all in a judicial setting. However, the commandment extends to a general protection of personal reputation, which is crucial for maintaining social order.

¹⁷ "You must not covet your neighbor's estate: that is, you must not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." (20:17)

    This is the only command that was intended to regulate attitude rather than behavior. The reason is clear: coveting, or deeply desiring what is not one's own, is a state of mind that often leads to other prohibited behaviors. Contentment with what God has already provided is implicitly enjoined.
    The commands naturally divide into two general categories. The first commands define behaviors that apply to the people's relationship with God. This relationship is an exclusive one that demands total loyalty. The latter commands define behaviors which apply to relationships within the community. Both categories of behavior together constitute the essence of covenant. Put positively they command this: Love God and your neighbor as yourself (see Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18).
    Most of the Ten Commandments take the form of absolute law, also termed apodictic law. The commands, in other words, are unconditional. They apply with no "ifs, ands, or buts." Even though most of these commands are negative in form ("do not do this"), this does not imply that God's requirements were oppressively restrictive. In fact, they merely placed certain general types of actions and attitudes out of bounds. Beyond that they leave a rather wide latitude for freedom of action. They were certainly not perceived as oppressive by the Israelites, who found delight in God's law (for example, see Psalms 1 and 119). Although cast in the negative, they can be considered general policy statements which were intended to shape the broader religious and moral character of the nation.

Comment by Narrative Episode of Exodus 

1.  Note how little we know about the early Moses, his confrontations that lead to his self-imposed exile (must he flee?), the lack of control in all of this (is God directing Moses or is this pure providence?—and what does that mean?); the restraint he shows when dealing with the invaders at the well—only scaring them off as opposed to killing them would seem to imply that Moses begins to learn self-restraint following his rash act that marks him at the beginning of the Exodus narrative.

In Moses’ self-imposed exile, an entire lifetime transpires, since he is 80 years old when he returns to Egypt as Yahweh’s messenger.  He fortuitously meets his bride-to-be (the woman who will save his life after his encounter with Yahweh) at the well in Midian, and makes a strong, political and economic tie with his father-in-law Reuel.  It at the spring that thematic significances make themselves known in this narrative.  The well or spring was, as it is now, life to the Bedouins.  But there’s more: the spring or well is a female symbol: a wife (Proverbs 1:15-16); a prostitute (Proverbs 23:27), or, if sealed, a virgin (Genesis 29:2-10; Cant. 4:12; and Cant. 1:2 (which develops a pun between drink, kiss, and lust [p. 175]).

Curiously enough, the bond is greater between Reuel than between Moses and Zipporah—why?  Does he look rich?  Apparently Moses looks foreign, appearing to be Egyptian.  But they would have feared and loathed the Egyptians.  Does the narrative remind us of the testing of Isaac and Rebekah (given that the test is a major thematic device of this most ancient Hebrew narratives—also, Reuel has nothing but daughters.  Then again, this isn’t romantic, but political and religious as opposed to patriarchal and matriarchal.

Note the bond between Israel and Midian:  Gen. 4:1-16 paints these people as murderers; they kidnap Joseph; P won’t deal with them in his narrative—who omits Moses’ sojourn among them, or would even acknowledge that his wife came from Midian.  P would have nothing to do with them; only the older texts of J and E come through with this information.

2.  The next part of the narrative has to do with Moses meeting Yahweh through the burning bush.  Exodus 2:23-25: “And Deity remembered his covenant.”  J and E give us suspense, where we believe that the God behind this must make Himself known; however, the redactor detached this from 6:2, from P; as it stands here, it demonstrates Yahweh’s universal scope, even interrupting a pastoral description that Israel’s suffering continues.  But the most striking feature of this passage is that Elohim is repeated five times.  This signals the lack of detachment from His place in the world—no more behind the scenes, but now actively taking part.

3.  But in his counter to Yahweh asking him to return to Egypt as his messenger, Moses claims to be heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue—he attempts to dissuade Yahweh: Chapter 4, verse 14: “then Yahweh’s nose grew angry at Moses…”  Notice the mix of senses.  It’s curious that the J and E writer both use sensory images to convey a particular quality or emotion to Yahweh.  Here, the idea is much like the flaring of nostrils, the anger, the dragon breathing fire, etc.  And the idea of “anger” here is much like fire and burning, coupling with the visitation from the burning bush.  But Aaron speaking for Moses is probably not just expediency; this is a “put down” for Moses that he will not be Yahweh’s voice. 

But what we note in this section of the story is that Yahweh has problems with Moses’ acceptance of the task set before him, and Moses is less than truthful with his own father-in-law as to what he must do and why.  The later point runs true to an aspect of the sojourner’s tale.  The similarities, for instance, between Moses and Jacob are many: Jacob commits a crime, flees as a refugee, experiences Yahweh, proves his heroism at a well, and marries into a native family, acquiring a powerful patron, whose service he enters as a shepherd.  He becomes wealthy, begets many children; he then asks permission from his tricky father-in-law to leave with his wives, children, and possessions, but is refused.  Nonetheless, Yahweh requires it of Jacob, and he then leaves (taking more than his share with him), is pursued and overtaken, but is protected by Yahweh.  He becomes dominant over his former patron, and Jacob’s wife repulses with blood hostility between the two, he crosses a river, and then has a hostile encounter with a deity at night in a quasi-rite of passage.  He defeats the deity at dawn but suffers a symbolic wound.  He meets his brother, a former adversary, and then, now mature, he arrives home.

Note how this narrative compares to Moses’ life.  He commits a crime, flees, proves his heroism, marries into a native family, acquires the help of a strong patron into whose service he enters as a shepherd and begets a child.  He experiences Yahweh who commands him to leave his exile.  He informs his father-in-law of this intention to depart but conceals the true reason.  He then leaves with this family and has a hostile encounter with Yahweh at night in a quasi-rite of passage; his wife repulses the attack with blood, and Moses is symbolically wounded.  He meets his brother, a future adversary, then his brethren, the Hebrews, and a substitute adversary, the new Pharaoh.  Mature, he has returned home to Egypt.  Moreover, what occurs in Egypt is the same for these Hebrews: Jacob’s sons commit a crime while in Egypt whereby the brother Joseph becomes a slave; he acquires a powerful patron, however in Potiphar and Pharaoh, marries into a native family.  His brothers arrive in Egypt and also marry into the native families, become slaves to the powerful Pharaoh.  Yahweh commands them to leave, they ask permission to do so but conceal the true reason.  Yahweh attacks at night, but the Children of Israel are saved by blood, as their houses are symbolically “wounded” by the sign.  Israel leaves but is overtaken by Pharaoh; due to Yahweh’s protection, they are stronger now than their former master; they cross over a river/border while Yahweh attacks the Egyptians.  Israel repeatedly encounters Yahweh in the desert, they’re tested in a quasi-rite of passage, and, finally, a mature Israel will arrive home in Canann.

Joseph’s life is a miniature, specific version of this sojourner’s tale, as are other stories from Antiquity: The Odyssey, The Epic of Gilgamesh, as the most famous, but there are many more.

4.  Then there’s the question of who Yahweh is: does He reveal or obfuscate?  The most momentous change wrought by the combination of J and E involves the divine name.  In E. the scene at Horeb is the climactic moment when God first reveals his proper name to Moses, Israel and the world.  In JE, the meaning of the scene is entirely changed.  Since the name “Yahweh” was already known to the Patriarchs (e.g., Gen 15:2[J]), Moses’ request for God’s true name (3:13[E]) implies either that Moses is testing the bush (cf. Deut 18:20-22; Judg 13:17) or that the name of the ancestral god had been forgotten by Israel, or at lest never been taught to Moses.  If Moses himself never learned the name, he is presumably preparing himself for interrogation by a skeptical people (Jacob 1992: 65-62; and Comment, pp. 223-224).

If nothing else, the encounter with Yahweh where the deity tells Moses that He is “He who exists,” or “He that is eternity,” “He that knows His name, whereas Moses…,” all of which has been discussed elsewhere in this Moses material, may be ironic, may meant even to be humorous.  But this is a strong example of dramatic irony, when the audience knows more than the characters do.  In this case, readers know who it is that speaks with Moses, even if he does not.

5.  Why the emphasis on Moses’ hesitation to serve Yahweh?  If, as most scholars attribute, this material is E’s account, then we look to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, a land that had political squabbles, claims and counter claims as to whom spoke with and for God, some were even paid as prophets, so perhaps E would cast the episode as one of hesitation.  So too, with the great distance of time since Joseph and Moses returning to the people in bondage, it would seem natural to depict their hesitation, and by extension Moses’, in getting them to believe again and have faith that this God of the past was now with them.  Other figures of Antiquity have been those with handicaps, so that their heroism is all the more pronounced for what they have overcome.  Muhammad, for instance, was illiterate, yet chosen, so that these heroes validate their messages by the fact of overcoming their impediments, whatever they may be.  Does Moses stammer, have a stutter?  Or does he have a problem merely to get Aaron into the narrative?

6.  While Aaron is there to aid in lieu of Moses’ speech impediment, it doesn’t really explain his role in the narrative.  There remain, however, several possibilities.  The use of paired messengers conforms to the Near Eastern social and literary convention.  Multiple envoys give greater insurance that the message arrives, and note that two spies go to Jericho, and two angels go to Sodom.  However, consider that Moses may not be the hero of this narrative, but rather Yahweh (as opposed to Moses with Yahweh as the donor-helper).  But many would rather categorize this as a battle between Moses and Yahweh with the prize being who shall possess Israel, and the tradition for seeing this latter idea as a pairing of antagonists has a specific prototype: the Canaanite myth of the storm god Baʽlu, the biblical Baal, which itself has been compared to a Proppian fairy tale.  In the beginning of the story, Baʽlu lacks a permanent abode.  A rival deity, Prince Sea, dispatches two envoys demanding th god’s submission and the delivery of Baʽlu as hostage.  With two magic clubs provided by the divine craftsman Koţarus, Baʽlu defeats and probably dries up Sea, whereupon he is acclaimed king.  Having amassed riches, Koţaru builds a mountaintop palace where Baʽlu host a banquet and thunders to rout his enemies.  The resemblance to Exodus is unmistakable.  Yahweh and Israel lack a permanent abode.  Yahweh sends two messengers to demand that Pharaoh hand over Israel.  God vanquishes his adversary through two magic rods, drying the Sea.  He then leads Israel to his mountain abode, where the elders dine before him, where his eternal kingship is proclaimed and where he reveals himself in thunder.  The craftsman Bezalel builds Yahweh’s dwelling out of the peoples amassed treasures. 

E’s Aaron is a complex yet shadowy figure.  In fact, he is never called a priest, but is just a Levite.  He is always subordinate to Moses and even engages in hostile acts: in making the golden calf and then again in Numbers 12 (Snow-White Miriam).  He is Moses’ sidekick, not a sibling as in the P writer’s account.  The P writer, on the other hand, pushes Aaron to the fore and underscores his pedigree.  One branch is assumed to have run the Jerusalem Temple and the other may have officiated at Bethel.  What is most important to remember is that Moses needs Aaron to speak, and without Moses, Aaron has nothing to say.  On a final speculative note, we may also note that the one who sees who has the vision often needs another to interpret: Christian glossolalia (speaking in tongues) is a famous example.

7.  Exodus 3-4 offers the best evidence for the Documentary Hypothesis, most especially J and E.  Distinguishing from P is much easier here—but that between J and E is the problem.  E calls Moses’ father-in-law Jethro, rather than Hobab or Reuel, as well as referring to the Deities mountain as Horeb.  As well, E gives us Aaron as Moses’ interpreter.  Many echoes of Genesis, where the E writer is easy to spot are here in evidence as well: “moreover, see: him coming out to meet you” is repeated in Gen. 32:7 and Exodus 4:14.

Exodus 3:7 & 9 represent doublets.  Later, specific mentions of “hiding his face,” or removing his sandals” are both evidence of J and E—never P.  The strange sequence of events here seems to be the work of the Redactor: Aaron’s mission seems often misplaced in the narrative, where he receives his call, where Moses meets him, to say nothing of the bridegroom of blood incident.

Finally, we must observe several contributions of the Redactor: he is probably responsible for 4:21b, “But I, I will strengthen his heart, and he will not release the people.” We have already been advised that Pharaoh will be uncooperative (3:19 [E]); now we are assured that this is God’s plan.  Had the Redactor inserted his comment between vv 23 and 24, he would have destroyed Redactor’s association of Pharaoh’s son with Moses’s son.  Instead, he set his interjection between references to the coming “wonders” (i.e., the Plagues) and the slaying of the firstborn.  Exodus 4:21b later becomes the refrain of the Plagues cycle (7:13, 22; 8;11, 15; 9:12, 35; 10:20, 27; 11:10-11).  The Redactor’s work also created new implications and associations.  “Aaron your brother [i.e. “fellow”] Levite” (4:14[E]; becomes Moses’ full brother 6:20 [R].  The valuables taken from the Egyptians (3:22; 11:2-3; 12:35-36[J?] are no longer mere booty.  In the composite Torah, they are presumably used for building the Tabernacle (chaps. 25-31, 35-40 [P]).

8.  But what Yahweh gives to Moses are magician’s tricks, and we wonder why such slight of hand would give credit to Yahweh’s messenger; in fact, the magicians at Pharaoh’s court can do the first two of the three miracles quickly enough.  So Moses seems ordinary, except that it points out that the power of the prophet or spokesman for God is in speaking His word, not in tricks.  But the rod that Moses carries has occasioned much discussion: does it magically appear in his hand when Yahweh asks, “what is that in your hand?” to which Moses answers “a rod”?  Or as a shepherd would Moses have one, and then another, God’s own appears so that he carries both?  The point here is that the instrument is usual in fairy tales and tales of magic, wherein a token or symbol of power is given to the chosen one.  In this instance, the Song of the Sea describes Yahweh killing the Egyptians with his “right hand”, with the prose account having Moses extend his arm or rod, so that Yahweh’s arm becomes associated with the rod—as if the one is a mere extension of the other.

9.  The strange encounter between Yahweh and Moses in the desert, where Yahweh seeks to kill his servant, has given more than a little pause to those who scarcely notice it in the Exodus narratives.  Chapter 4, verse 24-25 is the troublesome passage of Zipporah saving Moses from death.  Verse 26: “A bridegroom/son-in-law of bloodiness by circumcision.”  Then Yahweh speaks to Aaron: “Go to meet Moses to the wilderness.”  But what exactly has happened here?  This is the biblical echo that Freud used for his speculation in his “historical novel,” Moses and Monotheism (see above).  If we look at the role of Moses and the narrative of his journey as the typical Heroic Tale narrative archetype the Hero may be “branded” with injury or protective sign before the final match with the Adversary.  But this event still remains mysterious and represents a trauma for Moses and his family in the night-stop and is apparently not totally unexpected.  The difficulty of identifying the actors and explaining their actions lend the vignette a nightmarish surrealism.  In fact, it is not far-fetched to say that the episode, that fascinated Freud, reads as a leaf from one of his casebooks: “I dreamed that God tried to kill my father; my mother cut off the end of my penis to save my father’s life, saying to both me and my father, ‘You are my bridegroom.’”

Our first question is who is “him” in “Yahweh met him and sought to put him to death”: Moses or his son?  In the context of J, it seems likely that Moses is the victim.  Were it Gershom, the text would read “(he) sought to put Moses’ son to death.  The reason it is Zipporah who acts, then, is that Moses is incapacitated.  It also follows that “he slackened from him” refers to the cessation of Yahweh’s aggression against Moses.  (The identity of the victim in the composite text, however, is less clear.  Next, why should Yahweh attack the man he has just commissioned to liberate Israel?  Moses is not the only biblical hero to be unexpectedly opposed by the Deity or his angels.  One may compare Jacob’s wrestling match and Balaam’s confrontation with an armed angel.  In general, the Bible reflects a conviction that encounters with divinities are fraught with peril.  But if Yahweh is often portrayed as volatile, his actions are rarely if ever irrational.  So, we still need a motive.

According to early Jewish interpreters, God is provoked by Moses’ failure to circumcise his son on the eighth day (see Genesis 17).  Zipoorah quickly remedies the situation, and God is appeased.  But this explanation, while possible for the redacted Torah, is problematic for J.  The strict command to circumcise boys on the eighth day is from P.  Even if the Yahwist, too, presupposed infant circumcision, his document nowhere commands it (remember that the time difference between J and P is probably about 300 years, and that P is interested in Priestly activities and the law).  While the bible is often elliptical (see Auerbach’s essay elsewhere at this site), it seems unfair that readers be expected to infer both the requirement of circumcision and Moses’ omission of the rite between the lines of 4:24-26.  A more convincing interpretation would find a reason for Yahweh’s attack in events prior to Moses’ departure from Midian actually mentioned in the text.

Many modern commentators approach our story through its “moral,” the repeated phrase dāmîm hặtan.  They focus primarily on the meaning of hặtan (ordinarily, “bridegroom” or “son-in-law”) and the identity of its referent (Moses” the boy? Yahweh?).  Dāmîm “blood” (pl), on the other hand, has been largely neglected.  Almost all assume that the reference to blood is fully explained by “she applied to his legs” (4:25).  That is, with either the flint or the foreskin, Zipporah transfers Gershom’s blood to Moses.  This is undeniably the simplest reading, but other possible nuances of dāmîm have not gone unexplored.  Some, for instance, find an allusion to the blood of defloration, as the mention of a “bridegroom” might suggest.  This approach has not proved productive, however.  More plausibly, dāmîm hặtan means a “bridegroom who has shed blood,” noting that the plural dāmîm, as opposed to the singular dam, almost always connotes bloodguilt.  But note that Yahweh does not kill Moses.  Secondly, only unjust homicide creates bloodguilt, whereas the Bible in general considers Yahweh to be just by definition.  Unlike the Hindu gods, he is inherently immune to bloodguilt.  Finally, in no sense is Yahweh Zipporah’s bridegroom or son-in-law.  But Moses as the bridegroom who has shed blood fits Moses perfectly.  He is Zipporah’s husband, and, as Yahweh reminds him, he has until recently been wanted in Egypt for murder.

As for law, Yahweh demands blood for blood, and only the shedding of blood will remove the curse from the land (compare this to other notable laws of the Axial Age), and monetary restitution for intentional homicide.  But Israelite law distinguishes between premeditated and accidental homicide (what we would call “Manslaughter”).  So, is Moses the manslayer entitled to asylum?  He didn’t lie in wait for his victim, but it seems rather to be a crime of passion—but he did look in different directions before the act, suggesting some premeditation.  In terms of law, the killer is safe only so long as he remains within the city of sanctuary to which he may flee; in this instance, Moses has presumably outlived those connected to his crime.  The holy ground he stands upon in Midian is essentially that of asylum, but without any atonement for his act, his is not free to go home.  If this were so, then Moses’ attempt to return while bearing unexpiated bloodguilt would elicit Yahweh’s attack.  A popular midrash (cf. Jude 9) even describes the quarrel of Michael and Satan/Sammael over Moses’ body, with Stan claiming Moses was an unabsolved murderer.

This analysis of William Propp’s renders new meaning to the expression “bridegroom of bloodguilt” because when Yahweh attacks Moses, Zipporah realizes that the violent stranger she married is a felon.  Had she known, she may well have hesitated to marry a man with a price and curse on his head.  But here’s the paradox: if by God’s own law Moses may not return, why does He then send Moses back?  It would seem that Yahweh has two irreconcilable plans for Moses: he wants to dispatch him to Egypt to liberate the people, and he wants to punish him for his old crime.  How can God accomplish both?  Should Moses return home bearing his guilt, he must be executed, lest he pollute the community on the eve of the Exodus (which looks ahead to ritual purity and the paschal rite; and note as well that this same predicament may be found with the Greek gods and what to do with Orestes).  Zipporah evidently solves Yahweh’s problem.  Since the attack ceases after her action, by shedding Gershom’s blood she has performed a rite of expiation/purification.

But now we have two more new problems: why should the atoning blood come from the penis, and why should it come from the innocent son, not the guilty father?  Evidence exists that Israelites, Arabs, and Phoenicians attributed to circumcision an expiatory or purificatory function.  Leviticus 12 (P writer) implies that a boy’s circumcision removes his mother’s childbirth impurity.  Both circumcision and ritual purity are requirements for celebrating the Pesah.  But the circumlocution of Zipporah applying the blood to Moses’ legs in fact means penis.  And the words used here that connote circumcision, interesting enough, also can mean in the native languages a blood ceremony or marriage; thus we have a corresponding, multi-layered meaning here of Zipporah symbolically circumcising her husband having first circumcised her husband—not only does it expiate Moses’ bloodguilt, but “marries” Moses, and by extension his family, to Yahweh (whether Moses himself was circumcised may be another argument, given that he was raised as an Egyptian and no mention exists of his having followed this command of Yahweh to His chosen people).

But perhaps we have Paschal symbolism here.  Recall that Pharaoh’s firstborn will be at risk, as will all without the blood of the lamb on their doorposts.  So it may be that Yahweh attacks Gershom as opposed to Moses.  Does the child’s blood anticipate the blood that will save the firstborn children on that terrible night?  Moses and Gershom in this scenario would both be uncircumcised and could not, therefore, partake of Pesah.  The parallelism of the action in the desert that night now has greater correspondence:  4:24-26 links Moses’ limited, unauthorized act of violent protest, killing one Egyptian taskmaster, to Yahweh’s grand act of violent protest, killing all the Egyptian firstborn.  And as Moses’ deed causes him to flee to God’s mountain in the desert, so Yahweh’s deeds will enable Israel to escape to Sinai.

Circumcision was not unknown to other peoples of the time; but it represented for the Israelites the bond with their God and an act of initiation in the rite of passage.  Originally it was a ceremony for adolescents, moving them from childhood to adulthood.  It is indeed striking in how many respects the tale of Moses’ Midianite sojourn is comparable to rituals of male initiation in other cultures.  A young man, previously surrounded by women, goes alone into the desert, meets a dangerous spirit, learns its secret name and the history of his people, receives his life’s mission and a symbolic wound, then returns to the men of his tribe—this is terrain familiar to ethnographers.  If the story of Moses in Midian is not directly inspired by Israelite rites of initiation, it must draw upon the same wellsprings in the human psyche.

Initiation ceremonies frequently feature elements of danger, acted out or real, and a symbolic death and rebirth into adulthood.  J has already featured two “births” of Moses—literally to his Hebrew mother and figuratively to Pharaoh’s daughter, who draws him from the water and names him.  In 4:24-26, Moses nearly dies and is rescued by a symbolic circumcision.  His Midianite wife gives him an epithet properly applied to circumcised boys and daubs him with the blood of circumcision.  Thus, Zipporah is a third mother figure for Moses.

And lastly, to help us to understand this most perplexing, if brief, episode that has occasioned so much debate and endless speculation that goes to the heart of the nature of God’s relationship to His people, we look at the daemonic side of Yahweh.  The book of Jubilees (c. 150 BCE) attributes the attack to Mastemah, the archfiend, while Fragmentary Targum blames the Angel of Death.  Explaining evil and chaos was as much a challenge to ancients as to us.  There are two basic rationalizations for disorder and injustice: either one sees divinities (gods, spirits, demons, etc.) working at cross-purposes, or else one attributes psychological instability to individual gods.  Judaism and Christianity influence by Persian dualism, opted for the first approach, crating a hierarchy of evil angels and purging the Godhead of malicious attributes.  The Israelites, on the other hand, were forced to impute to Yahweh a degree of maleficence in order to explain reality: “Can there be harm in a city, and Yahweh has not done it?” (Amos 3:6); “I am Yahweh, and there is none other, who fashions light and creates dark, who makes well-being and creates harm; I, Yahweh, make all this” (Isaiah 45:6-7).  It follows human understanding that an anthropopathic being of limitless power should possess an exaggerated dark side.  Although the Bible generally depicts its deity as equitable, the Book of Job probes the seemingly irrational cruelty of the universe and its Master.  Exodus 4:24-26, too, depicts Yahweh’s dread unpredictability, even for his closest intimate.

10.  Chapter 4: verse 29: “And Moses and Aaron went and assembled all of the elders of Israel’s Sons, (30) and Aaron spoke all the words that Yahweh had spoken to Moses, and he did the signs before the people’s eyes. (31)  And the people trusted, and they heard that Yahweh acknowledged Israel’s Sons and that he beheld their oppression.  And they knelt and bowed down.”  We understand many things at this point: we know that Yahweh is not the name that the early chosen had known, but even though these individuals do not become independently important until much later in Exodus, this manages to link the prophets, people, and their elders as one in the message that God was with them.  The main question we ask is whether the elders are present or absent when all the miracles are done; they seem to be absent, but perhaps the idea reflected in the narrative is that this serves as Aaron’s function—to stand for the elders.  However, clearly Pharaoh attempts to divide and conquer, so that the people, through their elders, cry out against the Pharaoh’s harshness that Moses has caused them. 

Notice here, as well, that in the past God has changed individual’s names in order to mark a new, closer relationship; in this instance, it is God who changes: as Elohim He ordered the cosmos; as God Shadday he restricted his concern to a band of semi-nomads, promising them numerous progeny and the land of Canaan.  Now, however, as Yahweh, He is ready to free Israel and wrest Canaan from its current occupants.  With the genealogies that follow, they are necessarily accurate records of paternity and maternity but meant to assign status and to establish responsibilities and privileges among social groups.  The Levites will trace themselves to the authority they have for the Tabernacle and Temple—Aaron’s grandson Phinehas is ancestor to Israel’s high priests.

Who tells the story is now of importance: the biblical depictions of the interactions among the Levites, Moses and Aaron reflect a centuries-long battle over the right to priesthood waged between the Levites and the house of Aaron.  In E, Aaron comes in for criticism, while Moses and the Levites are heroes.  In P, however, the Levites are consecrated as the priests’ servants and are even punished for seeking higher office (Numbers 16).  Even Moses is somewhat diminished in P since he is clearly Aaron’s younger brother and contrasted to the older brother as one who is “uncircumcised of lips.”  His hot temper brings about both his and his brother’s death.

11.  In the beginning, God created light, restricted the waters, uncovered the dry land and fashioned heavenly bodies, plants, animals and humanity.  Now, to punish Egypt, Yahweh harms or removes each element constituting the natural order: water, animals, plants, sunlight and humans.  Not surprisingly, the Plagues of Egypt have been characterized as a deliberate inversion of cosmogony.  Yet it is more complicated than this, and it does fall out as neatly as some would have it.  Is not any act of destruction in a sense “anti-Creation”?  Some plagues (blood, frogs, biting insects, boils) have no cosmogonic allusions whatever—frogs and insects really involve Creation, not its opposite [and why didn’t Noah swat those mosquitoes, anyway?]).

The Plagues cycle, like stories of the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Ninevah, portrays God as Universal Judge, weighing crimes and assessing penalties.  But one aspect of this portion of the narrative should be stressed: its hyperbole, which is meant to make a point, but that which is used to both delight and to offend too fastidious sensibilities—in other words, those who see the text as completely literal without recourse to metaphor and rhetorical devices (such as hyperbole), and those who delight in attacking such people by pointing up discrepancies (beyond asking where did Cain find his wife? Or, how large was that ark, anyway?  Even the bacteria got a helping hand?).  What we find in the Plague rendition is pure hyperbole; it makes its point, but consider what delights or raises problems for both groups formerly mentioned.

Do the Hebrews gather stubble “in all the land of Egypt,” from border to border (5:12)?  Does Aaron extend his rod “over all Egypt’s waters,” up and down the length of the Nile (7:19; 8:1)?  If there is no water in all Egypt, what do the magicians convert to blood (7:22)?  If all the dirt turns to lice (8:13), on what do the magicians attempt to operate (8:14)?  Is the land really” devastated” by the swarms of tiny insects (8:20; cf. Psalms 78:45)?  How can all the cattle die from murrain (9:6) if some are later killed by hail (9:19-21), if Moses demands from Pharaoh sacrificial animals (10:25), if the firstborn cattle die during the paschal night (11:5; 12:12, 29) and if the horses drown in the Sea Chapters 14-15)?  Does Yahweh send all his afflictions against Egypt (9:14), or are some held in reserve?  How can every servant of Pharaoh, throughout all Egypt, receive warning of the plague of hail in a single day (9:18-20)?  Can every household of Egypt contain a dead, firstborn male (12:30)?

Obviously, the modern historian’s method precludes acknowledgement of supernatural phenomena, or onetime suspensions of physical law.  When considering prodigies recorded in ancient texts—texts centuries younger than the events they purportedly chronicle—it is only prudent to credit human imagination with the majority of “miracles.”  So any rigorous attempt to explain the whole Plagues narrative as a naïve but basically accurate report of a chain of natural calamities is doomed from the start.  Rationalistic explanations for miracles, common in Hellenistic times and revived to counter Enlightenment skepticism, are anachronistic today.  To believe that the Bible faithfully records a concatenation of improbably events, as interpreted by a pre-scientific society, demands a perverse fundamentalism that blindly accepts the antiquity and accuracy of biblical tradition while denying its theory of supernatural intervention.  It is particularly unmethodical to discern causal links between events narrated in different documentary strata, all the more since Psalms 78 and 105 prove that the Plagues’ number and sequence were fluid in Israelite tradition.  Exodus itself never refers to written sources about the Plagues, but rather implies a chain of oral tradition. 

Not surprisingly, many aspects of the biblical Plagues find parallels in world folklore.  Here, but one shall be given: Biblical tradition is probably inspired by memories or reports of a natural occurrence: the harmless reddening of the Nile each June, caused by sediment acquired upstream.  Exodus 7:14-25 may even be etiological, explaining the origin of this phenomenon.  If so, the rubefaction has intersected with a universal literary motif: bloodied or bloodlike water as an omen or curse.  Compare Isaiah 15:9, “the waters of Dimon will be filled with blood”; see also 2 Kings 3:22-23; Revelation 8:8; 11:6; 16:3-4.  Akkadian texts, too, regard bloodlike water as portentous.  The closest ancient parallels to the plague of blood, especially in its Priestly version, come from Sumer.  A gardener has intercourse with the sleeping goddess Inanna.  Upon awakening, she bring three plagues upon the land.  In the third, all the water in the land turns to blood.  The plague of blood arguably has mythic antecedents as well.  The Israelite tradition of Yahweh drying or cleaving the Sea manifests deep roots in Canaanite myth, particularly the story of Ba‘lu’s victory over Prince Sea (see above).  Since Prince Sea’s other name is Judge River, perhaps the bleeding Nile, too, represents Yahweh’s stricken, ancient adversary.

12.  Pharaoh’s Heart: The lavish narration of Egypt’s mortification is predicated on the recurrent “hardening,” strengthening” or “becoming firm” of Pharaoh’s heart.  The king may bend, at least in E, but he always springs back.  Each episode ends where it began, with Pharaoh still defiant and Israel still enslaved.  But the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is more than a device to prolong the narration, however.  While all concede that “the passage” is not intended as an essay on the theological and philosophical issue of human freedom and divine determinism, nonetheless, underlying the tale is a theory of the interplay between human and divine will that requires brief exposition.  Most commentators distinguish between two idioms: either Pharaoh hardens his own heart, or Yahweh hardens it for him.  Since the first is gradually replaced by the second, with an overlap in Chapter 9, many infer that Pharaoh’s intransigence is primarily self-generated.  God intervenes only toward the end, to push him over the brink.

But taken as a whole, the Old Testament is unclear on whether sin is produced by human initiative (e.g., 2 Kings 17:14; Jeremiah 6:28; 9:13; 11:8, etc.)or by divine intervention (e.g., Deuteronomy 2:30; Joshua 11:20; Judges 9:23; 1 Samuel 2:25; 1 Kings 17:14, etc.).  The implication of the composite Plagues cycle is that both factors can be at work (cf. 1 Samuel 2:25).  The situation really differs little from what we find in Homeric epic.  The gods breathe cowardice or courage into mortals who are already brave or fearful; they punish humans for sins that ultimately should be blamed upon the gods themselves.  In sum, from the Plagues narrative and other biblical passages we may abstract the following understanding of sin: while people are often spontaneously evil, God may encourage or tempt them to err, until they become so wicked that his own attribute of justice compels him to destroy them.  In other words, God ensures in advance that the wicked deserve their fated punishment.  He may be just, but he is not necessarily fair.

In most of the Hebrew Bible, God plays the role later Judaism reserves for Satan.  Haśśātān “the Adversary” first appears in early postexilic writings as an officer in Yahweh’s angelic court entrusted with presenting human behavior in the worst light (Zech 3:1-2; Job 1-2).  But when Judaism encountered Zoroastrianism, Persian dualism evidently attracted thinkers trouble by Yahweh’s role in creating evil and misfortune.  Beginning in the Persian period, various spirits—Belial, Mastemah, Asmodai, Sammael, the Evil Impulse, Satan—assumed the task of seducing humanity toward evil and launching attacks against individuals.  For example, although it is Yahweh who tempts David into sinfully ordering a census (2 Sam 24:1), a later retelling (1 Chr 21:1) makes the instigator Satan (or perhaps an anonymous celestial adversary.  Similarly, while it is Yahweh who attacks Moses in 4:24, in Jub 40:2, the adversary is Mastemah.  Even the command that Abraham sacrifice his son (Gen 22:2) is, according to Jub 17:15-16, Mastemah’s doing.

Although in Judaism, Satan et al. relieved Yahweh of some “demonic” aspects, diabolic influence was never consistently invoked to explain sin.  St. Paul honestly confronts the plain sense of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart” God “has mercy on whomever he wishes, and he hardens the heart of whomever he wishes.  But after raising the hypothetical question “Why does [God] still blame, for who can resist his desire?”  Paul can only reject the question with a hauteur borrowed from Job’s Deity: “Who are you, a man, to answer back to God? (Rom 9:18-20).  Paul stands squarely in the Old Testament tradition: God himself may lead sinner s to sin.  But at least Paul acknowledges the attendant moral problem ignored by the Elohist and Priestly Writer.  It is curious that no post-biblical tradition blames the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart on Satan.  This is presumably because Pharaoh is, after all, the villain.  So far as we know, no one before Paul had thought to question the justice of his plight.

13.  It’s surprising that on the brink of liberation after 400 years, the text pauses to give us the particulars of the paschal ritual, which then digresses once more to ordain the Festival of Unleavened Bread and the Consecration of the Firstborn.  The effect, however, may be literary, since it hurries us to suspense about the actual deliverance only to bundle with the Israelites, so to speak, behind blood-splattered doors, tasting roasted meat, unleavened bread and bitter herbs.  The relationship between the paschal meal and the Festival of Unleavened Bread would seem, at first, to be that of Pesah observance introducing the week of Maşşôt.  However, many scholars note independent origins for the two institutions: Pesah was a holday of nomadic Hebrew shepherds, while Maşşôt was celebrated by farmers, possibly Caananite.  But William Propp offers this last bit of speculation with regard to the two festivals or remembrances: while leaven and honey are never offered to Yahweh, salt accompanies every sacrifice.  Eating one’s overlord’s salt has well-known convenantal overtones.  But salt may also be considered leaven’s opposite.  While one is the product and agent of decay and defilement, the other preserves.  Salt, in the proper hands, can repel death itself (2 Kings 2:20-21) and is compatible with God’s absolute holiness.

In post-biblical Jewish literature, leaven symbolizes the power of evil and ritual impurity to eternally replicate themselves, tainting whatever they touch, hence Paul’s warning against “the leaven and malice of evil” (1 Cor 5:6-8; cf. Matt 16:6-12; mark 8:15; Luke 12:1, etc.).  In short, the Festival of Unleavened Bread is primarily a rite of riddance.  Leaven symbolizes the undesirable misfortune, evil intentions and especially ritual impurity.  One wonders if the Festival of Unleavened Bread was believed, a the popular level or in an early period, to avert bad luck, personified as demonic—demons may have been attracted to leaven or what it represents; thus, evil is used against evil.

Scholars have also long noted the extraordinary similarity between Pesah as described in Exodus 12 and a Muslim sacrifice called fidya, “redemption.”  Analogous rites are performed by Jews and Christians throughout the Middle East, especially in the Holy Land.  Fidya is essentially a sacrifice of atonement of purging.  Along with the slaughter and consumption of the animal victim, there is often an additional procedure.  Blood from the slain beast is applied to humans, animals, the ground, a pillar, a domicile—or a doorway.  Fidya is performed in times of danger.  According to folk beliefs common to Muslims, Jews, and Christians, demons are attracted to and powerful against those undergoing major life transitions, e.g., marriage, birth, circumcision, etc.  In addition to fidya as a rite of social passage, blood applications are particularly common in the spring as a rite of seasonal passage.  How does blood repel demons?  The name fidya “redemption” implies that the animal’s death is vicarious.  Its blood deludes demons into thinking a human has already died.  Rituals in which a slain animal substitutes for an endangered human are well attested worldwide, including Mesopotamia.  Note the sacrificial lamb after the binding of Isaac; or, in other cultures, the blood that Odysseus must take to the Underworld in order to attract the spirits of the dead.  The use of animal blood as ritual purification of the Tabernacle suggests that, even though Yahweh at one time knew well enough the difference between Egyptian and Hebrew within a house, in time this becomes an aspect of Yahweh Himself, a quasi-demonic figure that must be appeased, so that it’s as if the blood acts in such a way as to appease the demonic side of Yahweh—the doorway functions as a sort of altar: it receives atoning blood, demarcates a zone of purity an asylum, and bars leaven.  (For all the implications of Pesah, one needs to consult Propp’s thorough comment and equally detailed bibliography in the Anchor text.)

14.  Although Moses could probably lead the Children of Israel to the land of Canaan himself (he has at least been to Horeb), Yahweh chooses to give them a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day.  These are corresponding primal antitheses of dark and light.  But the pillar does more than lead: it separates Egyptian from Israelite, as well as serving to panicking the Egyptians.  Moreover, it serves as what the Ark of the Covenant does later by designating Yahweh’s divine presence.  Just as the cloud is associated with the Sulph Sea crossing—the more specific name for that which was designated the “Reed” Sea—the ark will later be associated with the crossing of Jordan, leading their way into battle.  And the ark, as well, appears to designate the “storm,” given that it has association with cherubim—not cupids, but winged monsters on which Yahweh sits enthroned and rides into battle.  The cherubim represent, among other things, the power and mobility of the storm.

15.  In the composite text, it is clear what happens at the Sea.  Yahweh parts the waters, and the Hebrews enter onto the seabed with Egypt close behind.  Once Israel is safely across, or nearly so, Yahweh releases the waters, submerging Pharaoh’s host.  It is commonplace in folklore stories that obstructing waters magically part or recede before a hero.  But here we have something doubly wondrous because wet becomes dry and dry becomes wet again.  Alexander the Great apparently had the Pamphylian Sea part before him, as did Scipio Africanus the Elder.  The historian Livy deflated the “magic” of Scipio, just as Hellenized Egyptians claimed to de-mystify the Exodus of Moses and the Children of Israel, claiming that Moses merely had a superior knowledge of the tides.

According to J/E, “Yahweh conducted the Sea with a mighty forward wind all the night and made the Sea into the dry ground” (14:21).  The more recent Priestly account is somewhat similar, except it reads as if the wind simply deflects the water.  Then the Egyptians drown in the returning waters while attempting to pass over the seabed (v. 27).  But we are never told of the Hebrews’ transit in J/E.  Why would this be?  Several explanations have been offered:

     1.  It was so well known it didn’t need spelling out.

     2.  The Hebrews according to J/E do not in fact cross the Sea; rather, they stand near the shore, having 
          circumvented an inlet.

     3.  Israel’s crossing is mentioned in the Song of the Sea, so, in the interest of economy, it is hinted at and
          does not require mentioning.

     4.  The J/E account has been excised by the Redactor (editor and merger), who, because of a distaste for
          redundancy, prefers P and mentions only it.

Of course, some problems exist with this: for where would P get the story if not from J/E?  As well, the poem Song of the Sea is much older in style and grammar, and appears to have been written much earlier than the narrative about the Exodus.  Moreover, the Ancient Near Easterners found the world unsettling; the so-called “Fertile Crescent” was bounded by encroaching deserts and ever-present reminders of drought.  On the other hand, the sea constantly nibbled away at the known land and habitable earth.  Peoples feared the displacement of water, whether as water against drought or the sea with its terrible monsters.  The two find expression in one creature in particular, the sea serpent, represented in the mind’s eye by the undulation of waves, the serpentine movement of rivers, to say nothing of the strange eels and crocodiles of Egypt.  In Egyptian belief, the various gods each night ward off a subterranean sea monster threatening the sun; this battle was also part of Creation.  In a late second millennium text, when the sun god “made heaven and earth…he repelled the water-monster.”  The dragon, or great serpent, becomes associated with Chaos.  In Canaanite myth, the Sea demands tribute from the gods in order not to attack their domain.  These myths run throughout the Ancient world of both Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean peoples.  The Babylonian Creation account, for example, has Tiāmat (Mother Ocean) and her husband Apsu (abyss) of the Enūma eliš as the oldest gods of Creation.  One of their progeny is Marduk, god of Babylon and master of the storm.  When Marduk destroys the older gods, he splits Tiāmat’s corpse “like a fish.” Half, laid over the watery abyss—i.e., her slain husband Apsu—becomes the dry land; half become the aquamarine sky.  All the parts of Tiāmat are used (clouds, headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, streams) and Marduk sets up his habitation for himself and all the other gods, Babylon.  Humanity is created to relieve the gods of their labors, and the gods set a bow in the sky as a memorial constellation.

The Hebrews, unlike the Phoenicians and the Greeks, were not mariners.  Thus all references to the sea are those of terror and marvel.  Many scholars believe that the Exodus tradition evokes or builds upon the ancient Near Eastern Combat Myth, especially since the Exodus in general and the Song of the Sea in particular resembles Enūma eliš and the Baal epic (storm god), where he releases waters in order to demonstrate both his life-giving and terrible powers.  The text most closely resembling the myth of Baal and the Sea is 2 Esdras 13 (1^st Century C.E.): a manlike figure rises out of the sea, breathes out fire and proceeds to a mountain, from which he chases his enemies.  He is finally revealed as the Messiah.  In the New Testament, the ancient Serpent Satan, imprisoned by God, proves to be an avatar of Sea/River/Serpent/Leviathan/Rahab [Isaiah’s name 30:7 and that in Psalms 87:4 explicitly for Egypt: “Rahab”] (Revelation 12; 20:1-3).

The Song of the Sea and Hebrew Poetry

Poetry has many important aspects, not the least of which being that it emulates and "captures" the rhythms of life.  Everything in life has rhythmic patterns: our heartbeats, brainwaves, body chemistry; or nature, with the change of seasons, the effects of the moon on tides, the cyclic life patterns of insects, migrations; or the movement (as seen from earth) of planetary rotation, sun and moon and stars in their rhythms of time.  Something exists in poetry that captures the essence of what it means to be human.  Poetry has always been the means for remembering stories or for their telling.  In ancient times, scops (storytellers) would recite after dinner, when listeners were full of food, wine, and staring into fires, rhythmically telling their stories of heroes, of epic battles, of the past, the desires, the wants of life that never change from age to age, so that a good storyteller managed to put his listener into a sort of hypnotic trance, which would then cause the rhythm of the poem to become one with the rhythm of the listener so that no beginning and no end could be found.

The same qualities of listening made it possible for the teller, the poet to remember long "tellings" by means of the rhetorical devices, or the associations of the "ups and downs," so to speak, of the poetry.  Anything of importance was put into poetry, the noble language.  On Shakespeare's stage, for instance, prose was used for common folk, for madness, or for less than noble speech; words of love, of great deeds, of terrible conflict were always reserved for poetry.  In this same era as Shakespeare's plays, King James gathered a committee of scholars to render a new translation of the Holy Scriptures.  At that time, English speaking peoples had the Geneva Bible or the Bishops Bible to read from (those who could, at least).  But both had theological problems above those that might be considered textual: the Geneva Bible represented the Reform movement in exile, as most extreme European reformers gravitated to Geneva because of its religious freedoms (or, at the least, lack of overt hostility).  During the reform movement that we have come to call the Reformation, Northern Europe was slow to follow the South, where the distinctions between the Church of Rome and the reform sought were not so great as to cause a schism.  Not so the North, which took its claim to the people, going so far as to state that humanity needed no go-between in the God to Mankind relationship.  The Church had long believed that the Bible was a dangerous thing in the hands of the mostly-illiterate, and certainly unschooled individual.  But the Northern reformers emphasized the direct relationship, to be interpreted by the person and his God, between the Creator and the created.

In point of fact, the Northern reformers broke with Rome, but their cause was less noble than history has, for the most part, glided over in what their feeling were.  They too isolated and condemned those with whom they differed, but they did so in the name of reformation and direct relationship with God.  Thus, translation of scripture represented for them the highest achievement of that relationship: everyone a reader, everyone with a direct contact to God, everyone with access to a Bible.  It was in this atmosphere that James drew together his scholars to translate God's word in a form less divisive than the Geneva exiles, and more to the liking of believers than the committee of Bishops who had, for the most part, followed the lead of the Geneva Bible.

Translating the Bible was serious enough to cause poor printing, no matter what the error and what one truly believed, to become a matter of prison.  Errors with God's Holy Writ were not easily forgiven (and not easily corrected in the early years of moveable type).  But King James committee had another function and purpose: to render the harsh, if at times unpleasant directness of the Geneva and Bishops Bible into more elegant language.  While many today believe, as in the old joke that still has relevance ("if it was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it's good enough for me!") that Biblical characters spoke King James English, in truth they did not.  The committee deliberately rendered the language into something more noble, higher in sound and thus reflecting purpose--in other words, what poetry had always meant to do.  The King James Version of the Bible is that of Shakespearean plays, of the eloquent poetry of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, and others.  And, in some places, where the eloquence wouldn't quite fit or "hold," the lines were changed ever so slightly to render the beauty over the literal.

King James understood, as we have temporarily, perhaps, lost the feeling for, that poetry is the language of beauty, holiness, epic events, and nobleness of spirit.  All most of us know of such things today, with regard to Biblical material at any rate, is that some books of the Bible are called or grouped together as Books of Poetry.  But poetry abounds.  And even in translation, when Yahweh wants to demarcate something special, something for the future, something of rhythmic beauty and importance, it becomes rendered in poetry: much like the condemnation of the Serpent, judgment against Adam, Eve, and humanity.  This is special--what Martin Luther believed to be the first prophecy of Christ to be found in Scripture--rendered in poetry.

Much work was done on Hebrew poetry in the 1970s and 1980s.  Hebrew verse consists of terse utterances (called "cola") generally grouped in pairs (bicola) or triplets (tricola).  These in turn can form larger constellations: the strophe and the stanza.  A colon may but need not contain an internal pause, the caesura.  factors determing the points of caesura and colon end are generally syntactical and somewhat subjective.  If the caesura is sufficiently strong, we must consider whether a supposed colon is in fact a short bicolon.  In the Song of the Sea, for example, it would be equally reasonable to analyze 15:6 as four short cola or two long cola with strong internal caesurae.  For this reason, scholars disagree over the number of cola in 15:1b-18.  Jewish tradition distinguishes forty-two lines.  

Biblical poetry lacks metrical feet like those of English and classical verse.  But there is usually a rough equality of length between cola in a bi- or tri-colon, whether we count stresses, syllables or morae (hypothetical units of length).  How the Israelites themselves measured length is unknown; sometimes one method works better than another.  Israelite Hebrew was not pronounced like Modern Israeli Hebrew, not even like the Hebrew of the medieval Massoretes.  We can to a degree reconstruct or approximate ancient pronunciation, but this is naturally a speculative procedure.

What separated cola in acoustic reality is unknown.  There could have been an actual pause, a change of intonation or merely a sense of grammatical closure.  It appears that Israelite poetry was sung or chanted, not spoken, but the musical dimension is no longer accessible.  Beyond approximate equality of length, the device binding single cola into bi- and tricola is conventionally, but misleadingly, called "parallelism."  Parallelism covers many analogies among lines of poetry: shared subject, similar grammatical structure, synonymous sentiment, opposite sentiment and so forth.  Often there is more than one type of parallelism at work, and sometimes there appears to be none.  Parallelism,  moreover, i not an infallible guide to colonic division, since we must acknowledge "internal parallelism" with cola.

Art lies in balancing the expected and the unexpected.  Synonymous parallelism, verse after verse, would be trite, lack of parallelism for more than a few lines would no longer be poetic.  In fact, prose is often parallelistic.  As scholars disagree on the delineation of cola within the Song of the Sea, so they differ on the larger units.  much study ahs been devoted to the structure of 15:1b-18, at the ascending levels of strophe and stanza.  Since no such divisions are indicated in the text, these analyses are inevitably subjective, and in fact no two agree.  All recognize, however, the important function of vv6, 11, 16b.

Some scholars put form first.  However, if we look at content we find that the poem falls into three stanzas of unequal length: vv 1b-7, vv 8-12, and vv 13-18.  The first stanza gives the gist of events the Song will celebrate: Yahweh cast the Egyptians into the Sea, where his anger consumed them.  There is no clear substructure of strophe, although we find a cluster in vv 4-5, describing the drowning of Egypt.

The second stanza explains what happened in reality: Yahweh did not literally hurl the enemy, but made a path in the Sea to entice them; then he brought the Sea back upon them so that they died.  One might say that the first two stanzas of the Song are related in the manner of parallel cola within a bicolon: the first says in general what the second says in particular.  In stanza II, the only apparent cluster of tricola (i.e., a strophe) is in v 9, revealing the enemy's thoughts.

This reveals a pattern of sorts for stanzas I and II.  Each ends with a mineral comparison ("like stone" [v 5], "like lead" [v 10]), followed by the enemy being metaphorically "eaten" (v 6 [consumed by anger], v 12 [swallowed by the underworld]).  Both stanzas also climax in extolling the might of Yahweh and his right arm--but here the parallel is imprecise.  In stanza I, Yahweh's right are appears in the "staircase" bicolon (v 6), while stanza II mentions his arm in the concluding bicolon (v12).

The third stanza (vv 13-18) proceeds to new business: crossing the desert and reaching Yahweh's holy mountain.  "Your holiness's pasture/camp/tent" and God's "sanctum" (vv 13, 17) constitute a frame more or less surrounding this section.  A cluster of cola describes the fright of Israel's neighbors (vv 14-15), flanked by versed with ..."the people which you...."  

There is at least one structure/thematic link between stanza III and the previous stanzas.  Once more, a mineral comparison (v 16 ["like stone"]) is followed by a "staircase" bicolon.  But, in contrast to stanzas I and II, stanza III continues with several lines in which Yahweh does not strike down an enemy with his right hand, but builds up a shrine with both ands.  Exodus 15:17 thus creates a frame by antithesis with the beginning of the Son (15:1, 4), where Yahweh "casts down" the enemy--in terms that can also connote the laying of foundations.

Hebrew poetry delights in assonance, i.e., the clustering of identical or similar sounds.  As well, the Hebrew enjoys polysemy, i.e., the many meanings associated with a set of sounds.  In addition to structures, Hebrew poetry has its own peculiar grammar.  Terseness, a hallmark of poetry in general, is achieved by under-use of "prose particles": the definite article ha-, the definite accusative preposition 'ēt and the relative pronoun ’ăšer.  A further peculiarity of the Son of the Sea is a paucity of adjectives, especially attributive adjectives. 

Biblical poetry also differs from prose in the use of verbs.  Hebrew prose knows to tenses/aspects, conventionally (but misleadingly) called "perfect" and "imperfect."  In prose, the former generally describes past action, the latter future or durative/habitual action.  In Hebrew poetry, however, it often seems that tenses are used indiscriminately; it is upon the reader to supply the interpretation according to the context.  For prophetic poetry, the unfortunate result is that we sometimes cannot tell whether the writer is recalling the past, describing the present or predicting the future.  For the Song of the Sea in particular, scholars are divided on whether v 17 originally described a future or a past event.  Within the book of Exodus, at least, only the former option exists.  

An Israelite poetic form approaching narrative is the victory hymn, of which Exodus 15:1b-18 and Judges 5 are our most extensive specimens.  Still, the genre is lyric, not epic.  It is impossible to extract from either work a clear or complete understanding of the events celebrated.  Doings and happening are alluded to, not recounted--as is appropriate, since the fictive, "implied" audience is supposed recently to have experienced them, while the poems expect of the "actual" audience (i.e., readers) prior familiarity with the tradition.  Out of context, these hymns would be as enigmatic as paintings of forgotten historical incidents.

What makes reading the Song of the Sea so challenging is that, just as stanzas interpenetrate, so time blurs; events become metaphors for one another.  In 15:16, what do the people cross: the Sea, the desert, a river, Canaan?  All are possible, and all may be intended.  And the goal of Israel's journey is equally unclear.  Throughout the Song, mixed metaphors and ambivalent language provoke multiple interpretations.  In such a case, under-reading may be more dangerous than over-reading.

The date of the Song of the Sea is highly controversial.  Modern estimates range from the thirteenth century to the fifth century B.C.E.  Most American scholars consider the Song extremely early, i.e., pre-monarchic, while many Europeans date it to the later monarchic, exile, exilic or post-exilic eras.  As well, based on particular theories about meter and parallelism, or yearning for structural symmetry, or presuppositions about the development of Israelite thought, or a vision of What Really Happened, many commentators "fix" the text or reconstruct it "original," shorter form.  But no shorter form may exist.

16.  The Israelites are inveterate doubters and whiners.  While the Bible constantly speaks of Yahweh testing Israel in the desert, Yahweh is tested too.  Having proved His ability to give the people water in the desert, He manages to give them bread as well.  While it may seem implausible that a people who had witnessed the miracles of Yahweh that delivered them from Egypt, the Plagues and the miraculous event of the water dividing for them and swallowing up the Egyptians, should lose faith so easily we must remember that the “murmuring” tradition, like the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, is essentially a parable aimed at readers.: if Pharaoh and the liberated Hebrews would not believe in Yahweh, how much harder for us.  Yahweh may graciously accede to the people’s plight and demands prior to their Covenant, but later He grows testy, slaying thousands for impiety.

Yet the desert food of the people probably has its beginnings in things more easily understood than the miracle of the Exodus.  For instance, quails traveling over Sinai fall exhausted to the ground in the flight journey, becoming easy prey and sustaining those of the desert.  So, too, Manna is a mythologization of “honey-dew,” the sweet pellets (not necessarily white) secreted by plant lice.  The Arabs call it mann, found in the summer in the tamarisk trees.  Gathered in enough quantities, it can be distilled into a flavoring syrup for confections.  There is something undeniable in the appeal of the Israelites eating candy everyday for its forty-year infancy.

17.  In the desert there is continual need for drink.  The Torah narratives features five spring narratives (15:22-26; 15:27; 17:1-17; Num 20:2-13; 21:16-18) which together spawned the legend of “Miriam’s Well” following Israel through the desert.  Generally, Yahweh leads Israel from oasis to oasis like a competent shepherd.  But in water’s absence, He must improvise.