Entering Exodus-The Great Exit

Exodus is all about Redemption. Okay fine, they're all about redemption. Exodus is like Joseph's story magnified by four hundred years and thousands of descendants. It follows the same path. . . there is a time of slavery following all the promises of prosperity (Joseph's dreams about himself and his brothers, Abraham's dreams about all his descendants). Something beautiful happens during the time of oppression that prepares the protagonist for a greater purpose beyond it, both in Joseph's story and the story of his descendants.

God is not the author of suffering or any evil. But God's magic is that He alone can take evil and transform it into good. God took the opportunity to use Egypt as a furnace for educating and shaping His people. He took a handful of nomads and put them in the thick of the most advanced civilization in the world up to that date.

We can assume that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were illiterate. Why all the stopping to pile up a bunch of rocks in commemoration of something? They couldn't write and their people couldn't read. You needed visuals to mark the milestones of your history, to provide an opportunity for dialogue. Uncle Judah, what is that big pile of rocks doing there in the middle of the river? Well, son, I'm glad you asked. . . let me tell you a story about God and your grandpa Jacob. . . which is part of your story, too.

Apparently Joseph learned how to write since he got to be kind of the finance minister for Pharaoh. And boy could Moses write. . . since we attribute to him the Pentateuch, this first five books of the Law, also known to the Jews as the Torah (separate from all the other books of the Old Testament and more revered). But we'll get to that.

While Genesis covers a ton of time and is one exciting narrative right after another, Exodus is only about half narrative. The rest consists of descriptive instructive details about how to worship, how to manage relationships and social conduct, how to maintain the tabernacle and rituals that would be a lifeline between a people and their God, basically an initial handbook on how to have their own culture now that they're not just some random diaspora population of slaves in Egypt assimilating to someone else's values and traditions. Exodus is the beginning of God's instruction about how to build a culture based on God's values, establishing traditions that embody and preserve them.

Among the well known narratives of Exodus are these:

1) The birth of Moses
2) The killing of the Egyptian
3) Moses' exile to Midian
4) The Burning Bush: Moses' Calling
5) Ten Plagues
6) The First Passover
7) Four Tests on the way to Mt. Sinai:
a) bitter water, b) hunger, manna and quail, c) thirst, d) conflict (Amalekites)
8) Moses' brother-in-law Jethro mentors Moses in the art of delegation
9) The 10 Commandments and other instructions
10) The golden calf debacle