This article is about the second book in the Torah. Discussion of
the Exodus, a major event in the book, is in a separate article. For other uses of the name, see
Exodus (disambiguation).
is the second book of the
Torah, the
Tanakh, and the
Old Testament.
In
Hebrew, it is called
Shemot (
שְׁמוֹת), based on its first words
Ve-eleh shemot (
Hebrew: ואלה שמות) (i.e., "And these are the names"). The
Septuagint designates the second book of the Pentateuch as "Exodus" (
Greek:
שְׁמוֹת), meaning "departure" or "out-going". The Latin translation adopted the name, which passed into other languages.
The book opens with the Israelites in
Egypt, having been welcomed there at the end of
Genesis. The Israelites settle in Egypt and grow in numbers. A new
Pharaoh oppresses them to the point of ordering that the male Israelite babies be massacred. A
Levite couple hides their infant son to protect him, and a daughter of the Pharaoh finds him, names him
Moses, and raises him as her son. After killing an Egyptian guard who had been whipping Israelites, Moses flees Egypt. He meets God, who tells him to return to Egypt to liberate the Israelites. Moses returns, and God sends plagues to demonstrate his power. Finally, the Pharaoh relents and lets Moses lead the Israelites away. They travel for years through the wilderness, receive a covenant and its laws, and then displease God by creating a golden calf to worship. Moses wins God's forgiveness for his people, and they build the tabernacle.
According to tradition, Exodus and the other four books of the Torah were written by Moses. Modern
biblical scholarship has produced numerous theories, all of which place it in the 1st millenium BC.
Scholars have been unable to link the stories in Exodus to a particular period in history.
Summary
The account of the growth of the Israelites into a people, their enslavement in Egypt, and their eventual escape (1-12)
Towards the end of Genesis a great famine strikes the Promised Land, causing the Hebrews to relocate to Egypt, where their kinsman
Joseph has risen to a position of great power. Thanks largely to his administrative skills, food in Egypt remains plentiful. Joseph persuades his entire extended family to come live under his protection so that he can support them for the duration of the famine.
Once the famine ends, however, the Hebrews do not return to the Promised Land. Rather, they proceed to settle down in Egypt and remain there.
Then a new
Pharaoh, who did not know Joseph, becomes concerned about the military implications of the large increase in the Israelite population. He forces them to do manual labor, and orders the Hebrew
midwives to kill all male babies.
[1] About this time, a
Levite couple has a son, which they hide until he is three months old. Then, the baby's mother puts him into the Nile in a basket. A daughter of Pharaoh finds him and calls him
Moses (meaning
drawn out). Moses is brought up as an
Egyptian. One day, while watching his fellow Hebrews working, he feels sympathy for a laborer who is being whipped by a guard. He kills the guard and buries his body in the sand.
[2]
To escape from Pharaoh, who wants to kill him, Moses flees the country. Moses' exile takes him to
Midian, where he becomes shepherd to the priest
Jethro and marries his daughter,
Zipporah. As he feeds the sheep on
Mount Horeb, God appears to him from a
burning bush, which fails to turn to ash. God orders Moses to demand the release of the Israelites from Pharaoh and gives him the power to perform three miraculous signs to show his authority.
Aaron, mentioned for the first time and identified as Moses' brother, is appointed to assist him. On his return to Egypt, the Lord seeks to kill Moses, but
Zipporah, at the inn,
circumcises Moses' son, fulfilling the Abrahamic covenant and saving Moses' life. (1-4)
The Pharaoh refuses Moses' request and oppresses the people still further, ordering them to make
bricks without straw. Moses subsequently complains to God, who announces to him that he will display his power to such an extent that the Pharaoh will be keen to send the Israelites away, even with all the jewelery of the Egyptians. The
genealogy of Moses and his family appears at this point, rather than at the beginning of the story. (5-6)
God sends a series of
plagues onto Egypt, each time acting through Moses. Since each one has respite, and the Egyptian magicians are capable of duplicating some of them, the Pharaoh becomes increasingly stubborn (7-10). Finally, a great plague, killing all the firstborn, occurs, passing over the houses of the Israelites, since they have completed the
passover ritual, marking their houses. Pharaoh consequently relents and is only too glad to get rid of the Israelites (11-12).
The journey through the wilderness to Mount Sinai (13-18)
The Exodus begins after the Pharaoh issues the expulsion order following the tenth plague, and the Israelites go to
Succoth. The nobles of Egypt object to Pharaoh's consent, and so Pharaoh gathers together a large army to chase after the Israelites, who have by this point reached what is usually translated as the 'Red Sea'
[3].Fortunately for the Israelites, they are divinely guarded, and are able to make their passage through the Red Sea when God causes the waters to part as Moses leads his people through. The waters collapse on the persuing Egyptians once the Israelites have passed, defeating Pharaoh, and according to Islam, Pharaoh himself drowned, but his body was saved for the future generations, and the Israelites joyfully sing the
Song of the Sea [4]. In 13:21, the Lord is described as going ahead in a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night to lead the Israelites.
The Israelites continue their journey into the desert, and once in the
Wilderness of Sin, they complain about the lack of food. Listening to their complaint, God sends them a shower of
quail, and subsequently provides a daily shower of
manna from heaven. Once at
Rephidim, water is provided miraculously from a rock at
Kadesh. The
Amalekites ambush the Israelites, and although
Joshua manages to lead an army to vanquish them, God orders an eternal war against
Amalek [5]. Jethro hears of Moses' approach, and visits him, advising Moses to appoint
judges [6].
The Covenant and its Laws (19-24)
In the third month the Israelites arrive at
Mount Sinai, and God announces, via Moses, that the Israelites are
God's people. The Jews accept this call, and so, with thunder and lightning, clouds of smoke, and the sound of flutes, God appears to them at the top of Mount Sinai
[7] and again according to Bible, God's light only appeared to selected group of people, chosen by Moses.
God then announces a summarised moral law, the
Ten Commandments (20). A more detailed
Covenant Code is subsequently provided, concerning both ritual and civil law, and God promises
Canaan to the Israelites if they obey, but warns against the
paganism of its inhabitants
[8]. God calls Moses up into the mountain to receive a set of
stone tablets containing the law, and further instructions (24).
This section includes the famous phrase "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live".
The Instructions for a Tabernacle, vestments, and associated ritual objects (25-31)
Intricate instructions, forming one of the least readable portions of the Torah, are then given detailing the construction of a
tabernacle, so that God can dwell permanently amongst the Israelites (25-28). These directions provide for a particularly extensive construction:
- The Ark of the Covenant, to contain the tablets
- A mercy seat, with two gilt cherubim either side, for God to sit upon
- A menorah, never to be extinguished, and its oil
- A construction to contain these things, involving curtains for a roof, walls on silver feet, outer curtain, and a purple veil to separate the Holy of Holies, table, and menorah, from the remainder.
- The outer court, involving pillars on bronze pedestals, connected up by hooks and silver crossbars.
Instructions are also given for the
garments of the priests (28):
- A shoulder-band (ephod), containing two onyx stones, each engraved with the names of six of the tribes of Israel
- A breastplate containing Urim and Thummim
- Golden chains for holding the breastplate set with twelve specific precious stones, in four rows
- A robe for the ephod, with bells and pomegranates around the seam
- A coat
- A mitre
- A golden mitre plate with the inscription Holiness to the Lord
- A girdle
Following these instructions are details of the ritual to be used to ordain the priests, including robing,
anointing, and seven days of sacrifices. There are also instructions for daily morning and evening offerings of a lamb (29). The specifications for construction of the tabernacle is then continued with directions for making a golden altar of
incense, laver,
anointing oil, and
perfume (30).
Bezaleel and
Aholiab are identified, by God, as the appointed craftsmen to construct these things (31).
The golden calf, and regiving of the law (32-34)
While Moses is up the mountain, the people become impatient and urge Aaron to make them "a god who shall go before [them]." In Quran, it is the famous magician Samri, who at the instruction of Satan, created a golden Calf, not the Aaron, who was a chosen by God. Aaron instructs them to take off the gold earrings of their wives, sons and daughters and give these to him. From these, Aaron makes a
golden calf, which the people worship with joy. God informs Moses that they have become
idolatrous, threatening to abandon Israel, but Moses intercedes for them. However, when he comes down, he sees what they have done, and in anger smashes the two tablets of the law. After pronouncing judgment upon Aaron and the people Moses again ascends to God to implore forgiveness, and is successful (32-33). Moses consequently is commanded to make two new tablets on which God will personally write the commandments. God then gives the
Ritual Decalogue, writing the
ten commandments onto the tablets. Moses then returns to the people, who listen to him in respectful silence (34). Moses then commands the sons of Levi to slay "every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor" (Exodus 32:27).
The Construction of a Tabernacle, vestments, and associated ritual objects (35-40)
Moses gathers the congregation, enjoins upon them the keeping of the Sabbath, and requests gifts for the sanctuary. The entire people respond willingly, and under the direction of Bezaleel, and Aholiab, they complete all the instructions, for making the tabernacle, its contents, and the priestly robes, and the Israelites put it together on the first day of the second month (35-40). This section is almost, but not completely, a word for word copy of Chapters 25-31.
Composition
There is no single, universally accepted theory regarding the origins of Exodus; instead various theories are currently advanced placing it in a variety of different periods ranging from the 12th century BC or earlier to the period after 300 BC.
12th century BC or earlier
The traditional belief in both Jewish and Christian circles was that
Moses was the author of all five books of the Torah. The tradition (known as
Mosaic authorship) can probably be traced to a number of verses in the Torah itself. Examples include Exodus 17:14, "And YHWH said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven;" Exodus 24:4, "And Moses wrote all the words of YHWH, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the mount, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel;" and Exodus 34:27, "And YHWH said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel."
[9] Problems with this theory include, notably, the fact that
Deuteronomy includes a description of Moses's own death and burial, and so early rabbinic scholars introduced the explanation that while Moses may have been the author of the bulk of the Torah, some elements were composed by Joshua after his death, implying a final act of composition in the 12th century BC, the age of the conquest of Canaan. Today this theory is still advanced by
Orthodox Jewish and
evangelical Christian scholars, but is not considered viable by mainstream biblical critics due to the overwhelming evidence that parts, at least, of Exodus and other books date from far later than the time of Moses and Joshua.
10th-6th centuries BC
19th century
biblical criticism concluded that the Torah was composed of four originally independent documents, known as the
Yahwist, the
Elohist, the
Deuteronomist, and the
Priestly source. Of these the Elohist is identified as uniquely responsible for the episode of the golden calf, and the Priestly source as uniquely responsible for the chiastic, and monotonous, instructions for creating the tabernacle, vestments, and ritual objects, and the account of their creation. The poetic
Song of the Sea, and the prose
Covenant Code, both in Exodus, were identified as smaller independent works embedded in the main documents. In 1878
Julius Wellhausen, in his
Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, argued that the Priestly source was the last to be composed, in the 6th century BC, and his formulation became the consensual view. Israel Knohl in "The Sanctuary of Silence" (1995) has challenged this, arguing that the bulk of the Priestly source dates from the time of
Solomon, which would place the composition of the bulk of Exodus - the Yahwist and the Priestly sources - in the 10th century BC, with the Elohist in the 8th. Nevertheless, Knohl's arguments have not been widely accepted.
5th century BC
There is no agreement amongst scholars today on just how the final Torah was produced. Documentary approaches such as Wellhausen's classic formulation see it as an act of redaction, in which an editor (usually seen as
Ezra) took the four sources - a 9th century Yahwist, 8th century Elohist, and 6th century Priestly source (the Deuteronomist is not present in Exodus) - and combined them with minimal changes. Thus
Richard Elliott Friedman's
The Bible with Sources Revealed (2003) is a modern documentary hypothesis more or less identical with Wellhausen but accepting
Yehezkel Kaufmann's dating of the Priestly source to the early 7th century. By contrast,
John Van Seters and
Rolf Rendtorff see the Torah as a process of progressive supplementation in which generations of authors added to and edited each other, although Van Seters sees the final author as a late, 5th century, Yahwist, Rendtorff as a Priestly school.
R. N. Whybray, whose
The Making of the Pentateuch (1987) was a seminal critique of the methodology and assumptions of the documentary hypothesis, has proposed that the creation of Exodus and the Torah was the action of a single author, working from a host of fragments. The only areas of agreement between these views is that the terms "Yahwist", "Priestly" and "Deuteronomist" do have some meaning in terms of iedntifiable and differentiable content and style, and that the final Torah emerged in the 5th century BC.
Post-5th century BC
Still a minority view today is the so-called
Biblical minimalism school, which holds that the Torah is a very late composition, created in the 4th century BC or even later.
Historicity
The time-span in this book, from the death of
Joseph to the erection of the
tabernacle in the wilderness, covers about one hundred and forty-five years, on the supposition that one computes the four hundred and thirty years (12:40) from the time of the promises made to
Abraham (Gal. 3:17).
There have been several attempts to fix the date of the events in the book to a precise point on the
Gregorian Calendar. These attempts generally rest on three considerations
- Who the unnamed pharaoh was
- The dates for non-biblical accounts of large numbers of semitic people leaving Egypt
- The date that archaeology implies Jericho was destroyed
Generally, fixing the identification of the Pharaoh is considered the key, and two dynasties are usually suggested:
- Ramses II or Merneptah of the 19th Dynasty, around 1290 BCE, favoured by the large majority of both religious and secular scholars, although this contradicts several key aspects of the biblical account and neglects several recent archaeological discoveries in Tel el-Dab'a and Jericho. See Ramesses II.
- Thutmose III or Amenhotep II of the 18th Dynasty, around 1444 BCE, favoured by a large minority of mostly religious scholars, since it precedes the destruction of Jericho, although some doubt surrounds the archaeological evidence supporting the Exodus and Canaanite conquest dating. However it should be noted that Egypt still dominated Canaan during that period in history http://www.ancient-egypt-online.com/ancient-egypt-map.html, making such a date less plausible. The carbon-dating tests at Jericho are also disputed regarding dating.
- Akhenaton of the 18th Dynasty, around 1340 BC. The link to Akhenaton is that, like Moses, this pharaoh was struggling to convert the people to monotheism. The brother of Akhenaton was named Thutmose,[10] and while it is often assumed that this Thutmose died young Professor Cyril Aldred shows that he was the commander of the king's chariot forces. [11] The Jewish historian Josephus Flavius similarly records that Moses was an Egyptian prince and army commander (Antiquities 2:232, 2:241). [12]
- Many others have been suggested, such as Dudimose, the Hyksos expulsion, and others. See Dudimose and The Exodus Decoded.
See also
- The Exodus
- Moses
- Tabernacle
- Weekly Torah portions in Exodus: Shemot, Va'eira, Bo, Beshalach, Yitro, Mishpatim, Terumah, Tetzaveh, Ki Tisa, Vayakhel, and Pekudei
- Film adaptations of the Book of Exodus
Notes
1.
^ Exodus 1
2.
^ Exodus 2
3.
^ Many scholars believe that the Hebrew phrase 'yam suph', commonly translated 'Red Sea', means 'Sea of Reeds' or 'Sea of Seaweed'.
4.
^ Exodus 13 and 14
5.
^ Exodus 15-17
6.
^ Exodus 18
7.
^ Chapter 19
8.
^ Exodus 21-23
9.
^ Exodus
10.
^ Aidan Dodson & Dyan Hilton, The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson (2004), p.157
11.
^ Cyril Aldred,
Akhenaton, King of Egypt p.259.
12.
^ Ralph Ellis,
Jesus, Last of the Pharaohs p.131.
Further reading
- Colin J. Humphreys, The Miracles of Exodus: A Scientist’s Discovery of the Extraordinary Natural Causes of the Biblical Stories 2003, HarperSanFrancisco
- W. F. Albright From the Stone Age to Christianity (2nd edition) Doubleday/Anchor
- W. F. Albright Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (5th edition) 1969, Doubleday/Anchor
- Encyclopedia Judaica, Keter Publishing, entry on "Population", volume 13, column 866.
- Y. Shiloh, "The Population of Iron Age Palestine in the Light of a Sample Analysis of Urban Plans, Areas and Population Density." Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR), 1980, 239:25-35
- Exploring Exodus: The Origins of Biblical Israel Nahum Sarna, Shocken Books, 1986 (first edition), 1996 (reprint edition), chapter 5, "Six hundred thousand men on foot".
- "Those Amazing Biblical Numbers: Taking Stock of the Armies of Ancient Israel" William Sierichs, Jr.
- "The Rise of Ancient Israel : Symposium at the Smithsonian Institution October 26, 1991" by Hershel Shanks, William G. Dever, Baruch Halpern and P. Kyle McCarter, Biblical Archaeological Society, 1992.
- The Biblical Exodus in the Light of Recent Research: Is There Any Archaeological or Extra-Biblical Evidence?, Hershel Shanks, Editor, Biblical Archaeological Society, 1997
- ''Secrets of the Exodus: The Egyptian Origins of the Hebrew People", by Messod Sabbah, Roger Sabbath, Helios Press, 2004
- "Did the Red Sea Part? No Evidence, Archaeologists Say", by Michael Slackman, New York Times, April 3, 2007
External links
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The Exodus or Yetsi'at Mitsrayim (Hebrew: יציאת מצרים, Tiberian: jəsʕijaθ misʕɾajim
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Exodus is the second book of the Torah and the Christian Bible. The Exodus is the departure of Hebrew slaves from Egypt under the leadership of Moses as related in the above book.
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Old Testament (sometimes abbreviated OT) is the first section of the two-part Christian Biblical canon, which includes the books of the Hebrew Bible as well as several Deuterocanonical books. Its exact contents differ in the various Christian denominations.
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A biblical canon is a list of Biblical books which establishes the set of books which are considered to be authoritative as scripture by a particular Jewish or Christian community.
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Hebrew Bible is a generic reference to books of the Bible, originally written in Hebrew, of uncontroversial canonicity. More precisely, it refers to a collection of specific ancient documents viewed as an organic corpus.
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