Summary: Bible - Book of Exodus

The GIST

Exodus is the second book of the Bible and the one in which Israel becomes a people. Genesis ended with a family settled in Egypt. Exodus opens with their descendants enslaved there, and it tells how God brings them out through Moses, leads them to Mount Sinai, binds himself to them in a covenant, gives them a law, and comes to live in their midst. The scholar Carol Meyers has suggested it is arguably the most important book in the Bible, because it sets out the defining features of Israel's identity: a remembered past of hardship and escape, a binding covenant with the God who chose them, and the pattern for their common life.

The English title comes from a Greek word for departure or going out. The Hebrew title is Shemot, names, from the book's first words. Many readers see it as a work in two panels. The first (chapters 1 to 19) is rescue: God's deliverance of his people from Egypt and their journey under his care to the mountain. The second (chapters 20 to 40) is relationship: the covenant made there and the building of a dwelling for God.

What It Says

Slavery and a child in the river (chapters 1 and 2). Four centuries have passed since Joseph, and the Israelites have multiplied. Then comes the sentence on which the story turns: "Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph." Afraid that so numerous a people might side with his enemies, Pharaoh makes their labor harsher and orders every newborn Hebrew boy killed. One Levite mother saves her son by setting him on the Nile in an ark of bulrushes. Pharaoh's own daughter finds him and raises him, and names him Moses, "Because I drew him out of the water." Grown up, Moses sees an Egyptian overseer abusing a Hebrew slave, kills the man, and flees to Midian, where he marries Zipporah, the daughter of a priest named Jethro, and becomes a shepherd.

The burning bush (chapters 3 and 4). While keeping his father-in-law's flock, Moses sees a strange sight: "the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed." A voice warns him to take off his shoes, "for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." God tells him to go back to Egypt, free the Hebrews and lead them to the land promised to Abraham. Moses asks for God's name and receives the famous answer, often translated "I Am that I Am," which the book offers as the origin of the divine name. He returns, is reunited with his brother Aaron, and gathers the elders of Israel.

The contest with Pharaoh (chapters 5 to 11). Moses and Aaron bring Pharaoh a demand that will be repeated again and again: "Let my people go." Pharaoh refuses, and Egypt is struck by a series of ten plagues. The river turns to blood. Frogs overrun the land. Locusts come, and a thick darkness. Each time Pharaoh will not yield.

Passover and departure (chapters 12 and 13). Before the last plague the Israelites are given a ritual to keep. The spring month is to stand at the head of their calendar. Each household takes a lamb on the tenth day, slaughters it on the fourteenth, daubs its blood on the doorposts and lintel, and eats the Passover meal that night. That night every firstborn son of Egypt dies, and Pharaoh drives the Israelites out. The day is to be remembered. Moses tells them, "Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage."

The sea (chapters 14 and 15). Pharaoh changes his mind and sends his chariot army in pursuit. The Israelites seem trapped at the Red Sea. God parts the water, the people cross, and the pursuing army is drowned. On the far shore Moses and the people sing: "I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea."

The wilderness road (chapters 16 to 18). Freedom turns out to be hard. The people grumble and long for Egypt. God answers with manna to eat and water to drink. Jethro comes to visit, and on his advice Moses appoints judges to share the work of governing.

Sinai and the covenant (chapters 19 to 24). At the mountain God makes his offer. He reminds the people what he has done, "how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself," and promises that if they are faithful they will be a "holy nation, and a kingdom of priests." They accept. Then the mountain shakes. With thunder and lightning, fire, smoke and the sound of trumpets, God descends on the peak, and in the hearing of all Israel he speaks the Ten Commandments. They begin with who is speaking, "I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage," and what follows from it: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Moses then receives a longer body of ritual and civil law, the Covenant Code. He writes it down, and the people agree to keep it. He is called up the mountain again and stays there forty days and forty nights.

The pattern of the tabernacle (chapters 25 to 31). On the mountain God gives detailed instructions for a portable sanctuary, the tabernacle, so that he may dwell among his people. There are directions for the vestments of the priests, the altar and its fittings, the ordination of the priests and the daily offerings. Aaron is to be the first high priest, an office that will pass down his family. Moses is given two tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.

The golden calf (chapters 32 to 34). While Moses is away, the people lose patience. Aaron casts a calf of gold, and they hail it: "These be thy gods, O Israel." It is the first commandment broken at the foot of the mountain where it was given. God tells Moses what has happened and threatens to destroy them all. Moses pleads for them, and God relents. Coming down, Moses smashes the tablets in anger and has the Levites carry out a bloody purge. For a moment it seems that God will not go on with a people he calls stiffnecked. Moses intercedes again, and what follows is among the Bible's most important self-descriptions of God: "merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth." New tablets are made. When Moses comes down this time his face is changed, and from then on he covers it with a veil.

God moves in (chapters 35 to 40). Moses gathers the people and passes on what he has been commanded about the Sabbath and the tabernacle. They build it exactly as instructed. From that time God dwells in the tabernacle and directs the journeys of his people. A book that began with slaves building for Pharaoh ends with a free people building a house for God.

Why It Matters

Exodus gives the Bible its central pattern of redemption followed by covenant. God acts first and gives the law afterward, to a people already rescued. The commandments open by recalling the deliverance, so obedience is presented as the response of the freed, not the price of freedom. The golden calf then shows that the relationship survives only because of mercy, and the tabernacle shows where the whole story has been heading: toward a God who lives among his people.

In Judaism the exodus is the founding memory. The Passover is instituted here, in chapter 12, the book stands in the Torah as Shemot, and tradition regards Moses as its author. Christians share the book as Scripture and likewise long held Moses to be its author. Its themes of deliverance from bondage, covenant and God's dwelling with humanity have shaped how both faiths speak of salvation.

Modern scholarship reads the book differently. Most scholars date its composition to the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, during and after the Babylonian exile, drawing on older written and oral traditions. Most mainstream scholars do not accept the account as history in the form told; archaeologists such as Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman argue that no evidence of Israelites wandering in Sinai has been found, and that early Israel grew out of Canaanite culture. Yet many also think the story has a historical core, though they disagree about what it was. Egyptian texts document Semitic peoples laboring on building projects, small groups are known to have moved in and out of Egypt, and the names Moses, Aaron and Phinehas appear to be Egyptian in origin. Some describe the book as mythologized history, a charter for a people. Readers will come to these questions with their own convictions; the book's power as a story of liberation does not depend on settling them.

Who Should Read It

Read Exodus if you want the story on which so much of the Bible, and so much of the language of freedom, depends. The first half is among the most dramatic narratives ever written, and it will hold anyone who loves a story of deliverance against the odds. The second half asks for more patience, with its laws and building plans, but it carries the book's deepest claim, that freedom is for something. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Judaism or Christianity.