The Introduction to Exodus
A Selection by Murray Pura
"I hearby make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform marvels, such as have not been performed in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you live shall see the work of the Lord; for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you" (Exodus 34:10).
Exodus is the account of a people discovering who they are, who their God is, and the kind of spirituality they must fashion their lives around if they wish to become the nation they were called to be. Those who recorded the story of Moses and Israel at such a critical stage needed to be precise about the laws God had given their people to help shape who they were becoming. But they also wished to retain every scrap of information about what took place between Moses and God and between Israel and God, no matter how fantastic that information might seem. This was, after all, the story of their birth and it was a time of great miracles. It is the inclusion of this material which gives the book of Exodus its unforgettable power and its distinctive voice.
The Drama of the Exodus
Exodus is one of the great stories of the world. No other book in the Bible has been more dramatized and filmed except the life of Christ. God is not talked about. He is not theorized about. He is right there in the face of Moses. We see his anger, his fierce holiness, his power, his mercy. Nothing is at a distance. It is almost as if we could see the pores on the back of his hand as he stretches it out over Israel and Egypt.
The story is steeped in mud and blood and death. Lightning and thunder and darkness and fire spill out of it. God's radiance knifes into our eyes. One moment we watch in awe as water turns to blood. Another moment we are smearing more blood on our door posts. One moment we gaze in horror as locusts make the land a crawling blackness. The next we are running through the night to freedom. One day we swear we will worship God. The next we are praying to a calf made out of the Egyptian gold we had stuffed in our pockets . . .
Why does Exodus live forever where other Bible stories are unknown? Moses is part of it, the reluctant hero we can all identify with, the small figure who nevertheless stands up to both Pharaoh, the power of earth, and Yahweh, the power of heaven. God is part of it, the Lord of land and sky, hidden behind cloudbanks crackling with lightning, shimmering with firelight at night, blustery and intractable, yet still setting Israel free and forgiving her sins. The drama of the plagues is part of it, frogs and locusts and hail and the cruel shock of the death of the firstborn. The parting of the sea, manna in the desert, grim Mount Sinai, Moses arriving out of the ominous thunderhead with the Ten Commandments engraved in stone... these incredible images form part of the universal appeal of the story. Exodus is graphic, it is visual, it is visceral, and one comes away from repeated readings or retellings with an imagination swirling with terror and wonder.
Yet possibly the greatest single aspect of Exodus that commands the fascination of the world is that it is about freedom. The slaves are set free. Utterly free. Men like us, children like us, women like us. Their tormentors are vanquished and cannot hurt them any longer. God fights for them, Yahweh, the God of heaven and earth, fights for them in all his power and glory... Exodus becomes not only a model for the liberation of those who are oppressed, it becomes a promise, a hope, that the God who has done it for one will do it for all. It must be God's nature, it must be, and that means Exodus can happen again, not just for a few, but for all peoples.