Theopedia

Book of Exodus

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

— Exodus 20:2

Overview

Exodus is the second book of the Old Testament and the second of the five books of Moses, commonly called the Pentateuch.1 Its Hebrew title, Ve-elle shemoth (“Now these are the names”), or simply Shemoth (“names”), comes from its opening words; the English title follows the Greek Exodos and Latin Exodus, “going forth” or “departure,” naming Israel’s departure from Egypt.1 Genesis had traced one family; with Exodus the history of Israel as a nation begins, and the book carries “perfect unity of plan and steady progress from beginning to end.”1

Timeline

  • Israel’s oppression in Egypt: A new king who never knew Joseph enslaves the growing Israelites and orders Hebrew baby boys drowned. Moses is hidden, raised in Pharaoh’s house, then flees to Midian (Ex. 1-2).
  • God calls Moses at the burning bush: At Mount Horeb, God reveals his name, the LORD, and sends Moses, with Aaron as his spokesman, to demand that Pharaoh free Israel (Ex. 3-4).
  • The ten plagues: Pharaoh keeps refusing to free Israel even after plagues of blood, frogs, gnats, flies, dead livestock, boils, hail, locusts, and darkness. He hardens his heart each time (Ex. 5-10).
  • The Passover and the exodus: The LORD strikes down Egypt’s firstborn sons but passes over houses marked with lamb’s blood. Pharaoh finally frees Israel, who leave in a hurry as the Passover begins (Ex. 11-13).
  • Crossing the Red Sea: Pharaoh chases Israel to the sea. The LORD parts the water so Israel can cross on dry ground, then drowns the Egyptian army that follows them (Ex. 14).
  • Manna, quail, and water from the rock: Traveling toward Sinai, Israel complains about food and water. God gives them manna and quail each day, and water from a rock at Rephidim (Ex. 15-17).
  • The covenant at Sinai: At Sinai, God gives the Ten Commandments and other laws, making a covenant with Israel based on his earlier promise to Abraham. The people pledge to obey (Ex. 19-23).
  • The covenant ratified: Moses reads the covenant to Israel. The people answer, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do.” The covenant is then sealed with the blood of a sacrifice (Ex. 24).
  • Instructions for the tabernacle: God gives Moses detailed plans for the tabernacle, its furnishings, and the priesthood, so that he can dwell among his people (Ex. 25-31).
  • The golden calf: While Moses is on the mountain, Israel talks Aaron into making a golden calf. Moses smashes the stone tablets in anger. God’s judgment falls until Moses prays for the people (Ex. 32-34).
  • The tabernacle built: Israel gives freewill offerings, and skilled craftsmen build the tabernacle exactly as God commanded. Moses then sets it up (Ex. 35-40).
  • The glory fills the tabernacle: A cloud covers the tent, and the LORD’s glory fills the tabernacle so fully that Moses cannot enter. From then on the cloud guides Israel’s journeys (Ex. 40:34-38).

Author and Date

Exodus shares the traditional authorship of the Pentateuch as a whole: the New Testament repeatedly ascribes “the law” to Moses himself, in statements such as “the law was given by Moses” (John 1:17) and “had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me” (John 5:46).2 The Pentateuch already existed in its present form in the days of Christ, and had done so since Ezra’s time three centuries before the Septuagint translators found the same five books they translated around 280 BC.2

Modern critical scholarship has often proposed instead that the Pentateuch is a later compilation of several written sources, a view nineteenth-century conservative scholarship already answered on its own terms: a few clauses (such as Ex. 16:35’s note about the manna) do read as later explanatory additions by a prophetic hand, but such identifiable notes, rather than counting against Mosaic authorship, argue for it, since a late compilation would not leave its own seams so plainly visible against an otherwise unified narrative.3 Within this frame, Exodus itself supplies the same signal Genesis does, that its history and its law are the product of one connected plan.3

Historical and Literary Context

Exodus opens on the family Genesis had followed into Egypt, now grown into a numerous and enslaved people (Ex. 1:8-14). Scripture gives two figures for how long Israel’s sojourn in Egypt and, on one reading, in Canaan before it lasted: the four hundred years given to Abraham (Gen. 15:13) and the four hundred and thirty years Moses records for “the sojourning of the children of Israel” (Ex. 12:40), a figure Paul also uses for the interval between the promise to Abraham and the giving of the law (Gal. 3:17).4 Commentators have divided over whether the fuller number covers Egypt alone or is split between Egypt and Canaan, partly on the reading of Exodus 12:40 preserved in the Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch, which adds “and in the land of Canaan” to the Hebrew text.4

The book’s setting is accordingly twofold: the closing years of Israel’s bondage under a Pharaoh who “knew not Joseph” (Ex. 1:8), and then the wilderness between Egypt and Sinai, a region less uniformly barren than its name suggests, watered enough in places to have supported the flocks and herds Israel brought out with it.4

Structure

Exodus divides into two parts joined by a common purpose.1

Deliverance and journey to Sinai (chs. 1-18). Israel multiplies and is oppressed in Egypt; Moses is born, educated, and flees to Midian (chs. 1-2). God appears to him at Horeb under the name JEHOVAH and sends him to Pharaoh, together with Aaron; a series of plagues culminates in the death of Egypt’s firstborn and Israel’s release, marked by the institution of the Passover (chs. 3-13). Israel then crosses the Red Sea, is fed with manna, and journeys to Sinai (chs. 14-18).1

The Sinai covenant and the tabernacle (chs. 19-40). At Sinai God enters a national covenant with Israel, grounded on his earlier covenant with Abraham, and proclaims the Ten Commandments and a body of civil law (chs. 19-23); the covenant is then ratified with sacrificial blood (ch. 24). God commands the building of a sanctuary, “that I may dwell among them” (Ex. 25:8), and the remainder of the book gives directions for the tabernacle, its furniture, and the priesthood, interrupted by Israel’s sin with the golden calf and its aftermath (chs. 25-40).1

Major Themes

Redemption precedes law. The Ten Commandments open not with a demand but with a reminder of what God has already done: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Ex. 20:2). This preamble and the historical prologue that follows it match the pattern of ancient Near Eastern treaties between a great king and his vassal, which recited the king’s past acts of rescue before setting out the vassal’s obligations.5 The stipulations of Ex. 20:3-17 and the record of blessing and curse for keeping or breaking them follow the same pattern, and two copies of the covenant were deposited in the sanctuary as ancient treaty copies were deposited in each party’s holy place (Ex. 31:18; Deut. 10:2).5 Obedience, on this pattern, answers a redemption already accomplished rather than earning one.

The name of God. At the burning bush God gives Moses his covenant name: “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex. 3:14). The name discloses not one attribute among others but the kind of being God is, one who cannot be defined by reference to anything outside himself and who, unlike every creature, does not receive his being from another.6 Every other being derives its existence from something prior to it; God alone simply is, and everything else exists according to his will.6

The presence of God among his people. The tabernacle’s purpose is stated in the command that introduces it: “Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them” (Ex. 25:8). It gave Israel’s God a visible dwelling place among a people he had just redeemed, foreshadowing “higher realities pertaining to our redemption through Christ.”7 Scripture’s account of God’s dwelling with his people does not end with the tabernacle; the same language recurs for the temple, and finally for the New Jerusalem, where God’s dwelling with his people reaches an undivided, unmediated form: “the tabernacle of God will be with his people; he will dwell among them” (Rev. 21:3).8

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 232-233. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  2. Barrows, 120-121. ↩ ↩2

  3. Barrows, 227-228. ↩ ↩2

  4. Barrows, 233-235. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Michael J. Kruger, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), chap. 5, “The Apostolic Origins of the Canon”: “The Ten Commandments given at Sinai, clearly the core of God’s covenant with Israel, had a preamble (Ex. 20:2a, ‘I am the LORD your God’), a historical prologue (Ex. 20:2b, ‘who brought you out of the land of Egypt …’), a list of stipulations (Ex. 20:3-17), a list of blessings and curses (Ex. 20:5, 6, 7, 11, 12), and, most notably, two copies of the covenant in written form deposited in the holy place of worship (Ex. 31:18; Deut. 10:2).” ↩ ↩2

  6. Samuel G. Parkison, The Fountain of Life: Contemplating the Aseity of God, ed. Matthew Barrett, Contemplating God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2026), chap. 3, “I AM,” 33-34. ↩ ↩2

  7. Barrows, 585-586. ↩

  8. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 4, “Revelation.” ↩