The Jews had a lot to learn before they could safely be God's people.
Bible Study Ideas and Commentary for Exodus 2 and 3
Welcome to the book of Exodus, the story of how God rescued His people from slavery in Egypt and told them that He has chosen them to be His people. This first passage introduces Moses, the One True God, and God's mission for Moses. What we learn this week helps us understand basically the rest of the Old Testament.
I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them from that land to a good and spacious land (3:8)
When We Studied This Passage in 2017
I go into a lot more detail about some of the topics related to this week's passage in the 2017 post:
Including:
geography
timeline
the Hyksos
theophany
the parable of the tenants
If you think I have skimped on a topic below, it might be because I cover it in this previous post.
Getting Started: Things to Think About
It's Advent! -or- Advent and Exodus
For anyone reading this in the future, we are studying this passage on the first day of Advent. If you're doing this some other time of the year, or if you're the Grinch, I have another musical idea for you below.
What is "Advent"? (If you don't know, pay closer attention to the Advent devotionals we give out every year.) It's essentially a time of "waiting" or of "anticipation". My favorite song that captures this idea is "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel":
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel.
That song taps into the Babylonian Captivity, a terrible event that happened after the Israelites knew what God wanted them to do and chose not to. That era is when the prophets started reporting to them the idea of a Messiah who would come and rescue them.
Well, all of that simply pointed back to the first time God had done this for His people -- sending Moses to lead them from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. And that's what the book of Exodus is about! God rescued His people once; He can do it again.
And of course, as New Testament people, we realize that God used both the Egyptian Slavery and the Babylonian Captivity to point us to how God will rescue us from the greatest slavemaster -- sin and fear.
Dt 18:15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him. 16 This is what you requested from the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, ‘Let us not continue to hear the voice of the Lord our God or see this great fire any longer, so that we will not die!’
Your Favorite Biblical Epic Movies
Okay -- the only two acceptable answers are probably "The Ten Commandments" and "Ben Hur", right? But you might surprise me. (Exodus: Gods and Kings, anyone? Prince of Egypt? No?)
I know that The Ten Commandments was a Charlton Heston vehicle, but it's also the movie where I realized that Yul Brynner might be the coolest man alive.
Your obvious discussion question is this: what makes parts of the Bible (the exodus, the birth of Jesus) so compelling for moviemakers? I think it's the themes, but why might that be the case?
Kids Ask the Darndest Questions
I don't suggest this topic enough. Many of you are parents, grandparents, or teachers. What are some of the "darndest questions" a child has asked you? "Why does the letter 'W' start with a 'D'?" "Why does 'I'm up for it' and 'I'm down for it' mean the same thing?" "Do trees have belly buttons?"
I'm going to offer one that was apparently asked around here are few weeks ago: "What's God's name?"
What a great question! And we're kinda but kinda not going to get an answer today!
Your Favorite Traditional Spirituals
[If you're reading this not-at-Christmastime...] I'm going to hope and assume that young people today still know what a "spiritual" is -- that we haven't so whitewashed our history that we have forgotten that African slaves gave birth to one of the more enduring and beautiful genres of music.
The songs created and sung by enslaved women, men and children were born in North America and recant with dignity, resolve and sometimes joy, their stories of life, death, faith, hope, escape, and survival. NATS.org
That said, what's your favorite spiritual?
The most famous might be "Go Down, Moses", a song so well-known that it even made Ferris Bueller's Day Off. (By the way, kids, get off my lawn.) But I know plenty of non-musical non-Christians who know a few lines of "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen". There's a swirl of slave songs that melded into "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", "Deep River" (which is probably my favorite), and "Down in the River to Pray". But goodness, "Wade in the Water" sure strikes an amazingly haunting chord:
What makes these songs so powerful? I'll give you the sparknotes answer, but you need to do your own digging. These songs are about how God rescued the Israelites (and separately Daniel) from impossible circumstances -- He can rescue anybody. The best of the songs also explain how Jesus made salvation available to the whole earth. In them, the Jordan River doubles as a pathway to the Promised Land for the Israelites and a pathway to heaven for Christians. We know that "Deep River" predates 1867, and that's probably all we will ever know about it. But these lyrics: "Deep river, / my home is over Jordan, / Deep river, Lord, / I want to cross over into campground. / Oh, don't you want to go to that gospel feast, / That promised land where all is peace?" That's fundamental humanity.
The point? You're simply establishing that the events of Exodus have been baked into western civilization on a very deep level.
Getting Oriented to Exodus
Actually, Let's Go Back to Genesis
We studied the book of Genesis one year ago, and if you've forgotten what you learned, I encourage you to skim through the overview of the book --
There, I pointed out that the first five books of the Old Testament (the Torah / the Pentateuch -- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) are considered one long continuous story. Moses is considered the author (and Joshua the regular scribe), though much of the Torah is Moses simply passing along to the Israelites what God told him. I believe that God gave Moses the book of Genesis at the same time that He gave Moses the law. And that's for a very important reason ...
Remember that when God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, they had been in Egypt for 400 years. They didn't know who God was. They probably didn't know who Joseph was. They almost certainly didn't know who Abraham was. God gave the book of Genesis for two very simple purposes:
to tell His people who He was, and
to tell His people who they were.
If we think of the book of Genesis as answering two key questions --
where did everything come from? and
where did everything go wrong?
then we can likewise think of the book of Exodus as answering two follow-up questions --
why should the Israelites believe that God is the true God? and
how should the Israelites relate to this true God?
You should immediately see how these books are foundational not just to the Jewish identity but also to the Christian understanding of the world as we know it.
In the book of Genesis, God tells His people the story of where they came from, what their ancestors' relationship was with them, how they ended up in Egypt, and most importantly -- why God allowed them to be slaves for so many generations.
Now, to Exodus
The Author. Once again, Moses is the author (with Joshua as the regular scribe), and most of it is what God told him to say.
Ex 17:14 The Lord then said to Moses, “Write this down on a scroll as a reminder and recite it to Joshua: I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek under heaven.”
Ex 34:27 The Lord also said to Moses, “Write down these words, for I have made a covenant with you and with Israel based on these words.” 28 Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did not eat food or drink water. He wrote the Ten Commandments, the words of the covenant, on the tablets.
The Date. Well, hold your horses on this one; I'll say a few things about the identity of the Pharaoh below, but that's about it for now. The date of the book is connected with the date of the exodus (the event), and we are going to talk about that in detail in a few weeks when we talk about the exodus. There are three main camps:
People who don't believe the exodus happened at all.
People who believe in an "early" exodus (~1450 BC).
People who believe in a "late" exodus (~1250 BC).
I summarily reject that first camp, and I encourage you to do the same. The difference between the other two camps might not seem like a big deal (and in some ways, it's not), but it greatly affects how these events fit with the rest of world history as well as the later history of the Jews. But again, we will talk about this more in the future. This first lesson is probably best spent simply reorienting everyone to where we are in the Bible and in biblical history.
The Meaning. The book of Exodus begins with Abraham's descendants in slavery in Egypt, the most powerful nation on earth, with a huge question of how God will fulfill His promises to Abraham. In the course of this book, God appoints a man (Moses) to be His mediator, conquers the Egyptian gods, defeats the most powerful army in the world, miraculously delivers the Israelites from all manner of calamities, gives them a ritual identity (the Passover), a cultural identity (the Law), and a religious identity (the Ten Commandments and the law), and at the end of the book is dwelling in the midst of His people in a specially-made Tabernacle.
Let's let the pros at the Bible Project fill in the gaps --
The Importance. We cannot overstate the importance of the book of Exodus to Judaism (or well, the Old Testament). This is where all of the seeds are planted for basically everything in Israel's future. But beyond that, we see so many allusions to God's long-term plan for the salvation of the whole earth through Jesus Christ, much of which is further developed in the book of Leviticus, which we are also studying this quarter.
The Context and the Timeline. Our focal passage jumps in halfway through chapter 2. Previously, we would have learned that the Israelites have been enslaved, that Pharaoh seriously sucks, and that God has intervened for the good of the Israelites without their knowledge -- He has protected the midwives who secretly rebelled against Pharaoh's evil plan to kill all Hebrew boys. One of those boys was Moses, who "somehow" ended up being raised by Pharaoh's daughter. Moses grew up in Pharaoh's court (remember "Prince of Egypt"?) until he had the world's worst midlife crisis which resulted in him fleeing Egypt for Midian, where he met his wife Zipporah and her father Reuel (local name Jethro). The inhabitants of Midian were related to Abraham (Gen 25).
Our friend Stephen fills in some important details --
Acts 7:17 “As the time was approaching to fulfill the promise that God had made to Abraham, the people flourished and multiplied in Egypt 18 until a different king who did not know Joseph ruled over Egypt. 19 He dealt deceitfully with our race and oppressed our ancestors by making them abandon their infants outside so that they wouldn’t survive. 20 At this time Moses was born, and he was beautiful in God’s sight. He was cared for in his father’s home for three months. 21 When he was put outside, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted and raised him as her own son. 22 So Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his speech and actions. 23 “When he was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. 24 When he saw one of them being mistreated, he came to his rescue and avenged the oppressed man by striking down the Egyptian. 25 He assumed his people would understand that God would give them deliverance through him, but they did not understand. 26 The next day he showed up while they were fighting and tried to reconcile them peacefully, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why are you mistreating each other?’ 27 “But the one who was mistreating his neighbor pushed Moses aside, saying: Who appointed you a ruler and a judge over us? 28 Do you want to kill me, the same way you killed the Egyptian yesterday? 29 “When he heard this, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons. 30 After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush.
So there you go. Moses lived for 40 years in Pharaoh's court, and for another 40 years in the Midian wilderness before God spoke to him. That means that all of the "exciting stuff" happened between the ages of 80 and 120 for Moses. Oy vey. (See Deut 34.)
Controversy #1: The Population of Israel
I'm going to spread these controversies out so they don't get overwhelming. The first controversy is this:
Ex 12:37 The Israelites traveled from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand able-bodied men on foot, besides their families. 38 A mixed crowd also went up with them, along with a huge number of livestock, both flocks and herds. ... 40 The time that the Israelites lived in Egypt was 430 years.
In other words, there are fully 2 million Israelites by this time. How is that possible? Easy:
Ex 1:7 But the Israelites were fruitful, increased rapidly, multiplied, and became extremely numerous so that the land was filled with them.
Let's do some math. 5% is considered a high growth rate in today's world. The "Rule of 70" says that it will take 14 years (70/5) for that population to double. So, in 14 years, there will be 140; in 28 years, 280; and so on. In 400 years, there will be some 19 billion people. In other words, there is absolutely no trouble believing that the population of Israel was 2 million people after 400 years.
To me, the more difficult-to-comprehend number is that the population of the entire world around 1500 BC was between 40 and 80 million. That means that God's people made up a meaningful percentage of the world population -- which, of course, was the point, that they could squander such a blessing.
Part 1: The People Have a Desperate Need (Exodus 2:23-25)
23 After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned because of their difficult labor, they cried out, and their cry for help because of the difficult labor ascended to God. 24 God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God saw the Israelites, and God knew.
See below for "the king of Egypt".
Note that the people aren't necessarily crying out to God. We can assume that many of them don't even know who the God of Abraham is anymore! That's why Moses is so jumpy about "God's name". When God sends the plagues on Egypt to show His dominance over their so-called gods, it's not just for Egypt but also Israel's benefit. God's own people have to learn who God is. (That's also a big theme in the Gospels, if you remember.)
So, God's people aren't crying out to God, but God hears their misery anyway. Why? Because He made a promise to Abraham.
Gen 12:7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”
But most important is this promise:
Gen 15:13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain: Your offspring will be resident aliens for four hundred years in a land that does not belong to them and will be enslaved and oppressed. 14 However, I will judge the nation they serve, and afterward they will go out with many possessions. 15 But you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”
God warned Abraham what would happen. And why? To give the Amorites (the people living in the Promised Land) time to repent and turn from their sin. God's people didn't appreciate that (and I'm sure I would feel the same way in their shoes), but it's critical for us to realize that God would allow His own people to be enslaved in order to give sinners more time to repent.
But 400 years was long enough. It was now time to bring His people to the Promised Land.
Note that "remembered" does not mean that God "forgot"! The word is used to demonstrate God's compassion for His people. They "groaned" and "cried out", and then God "heard" and "remembered". Our God is a God who sees and hears the misery of people, and He acts to bring peace and wholeness. (Unfortunately, our own sin gets in the way of our being able to enjoy God's ultimate purposes.)
What happens next? God appears to Moses in a burning bush.
Application: What are the things you have cried out to God for? Do you feel like God has not heard you? This passage should bring you comfort, and but it might not make you happy -- it was 400 years before God said it was time to take the next step in His plan. How long do you have trouble waiting? A month? A week?
[Fun note: this passage also reinforces why we think of heaven/God as "up", even though God is everywhere.]
Aside: The King of Egypt
"Pharaoh" is a title given to the king of Egypt. The earliest it was used was possibly Thutmose III. So far in Exodus, we read about "a new king who didn't know Joseph" (1:8) and another "new king when that kind died" (2:23). So, who are these kings?
Partial List of Pharaohs
Disarray: 1802-1550 BC
Ahmose I: ~1550-1525
Amenhotep I: 1541-1520
Thutmose I: 1520-1492
Thutmose II: 1492-1479
Hatsheput: 1479-1458
Thutmose III*: 1458-1425
Amenhotep II: 1425-1400
Thutmose IV: 1400-1390
Amenhotep III: 1390-1352
Ahkenaten: 1352-1334
Tutankhamun: 1333-1324
Seti I: 1294-1279
Rameses II*: 1279-1213
This list helps you see why the argument over "when the exodus happened" is important. If you believe in the early date for the exodus (as I do), then this new king is Thutmose III. If you believe in the later date, then this new king is Rameses II.
The name "Thutmose" easily explains where Moses got his Egyptian name. But several passages in the Bible call attention to the name "Rameses". More about this next week.
Part 2: God Provides a "Deliverer" (Exodus 3:7-10)
7 Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt, and have heard them crying out because of their oppressors. I know about their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them from that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the territory of the Canaanites, Hethites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 9 So because the Israelites’ cry for help has come to me, and I have also seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them, 10 therefore, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh so that you may lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
We skip over the part that God talks to Moses from a burning bush on "Horeb, the mountain of God". That's all kinda important, but mention it briefly. The burning bush is one of the all-time great symbols. Fire is regularly associated with the presence of God in the Old Testament, but it needed to be the kind of fire that you would be attracted to, not terrified by.
"Horeb" means "desert", and many scholars believe this name refers to the region, not the specific mountain peak -- the specific mountain is "Sinai" (but more on this below).
This post goes into much greater detail about God's promise to Abraham which sets up what God is saying to Moses:
And God's message is simple: "I'm sending you to lead my people out of captivity and misery." The Lifeway material talks about a time you were "voluntold" to do something. That's a fun topic -- run with it!
Think about the meaning of "I am sending you". Do a search for all of the times God sent somebody for a task. What did He send them to do? And then, what is the importance of the fact that God sent them to do it?
What I'd like you to do is think about and list all of these ways that God's words to Moses points us to the greater plan of salvation in Jesus.
Part 3: Moses Doubts God (Exodus 3:11-12)
11 But Moses asked God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 He answered, “I will certainly be with you, and this will be the sign to you that I am the one who sent you: when you bring the people out of Egypt, you will all worship God at this mountain.”
Moses' reluctance is why I called my previous post on this passage, Moses Is the Wrong Kind of Model in Exodus 3. That's a point that Moses himself repeated drove home as he and Joshua wrote out the Pentateuch. Yes, Moses did lead the people out of slavery in Egypt, and yes, whoever edited the Torah in future generations rightly said of him,
Deut 34:10 No prophet has arisen again in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.
[Grammatical aside: Moses and Jesus are the only two names in the English language where it is considered appropriate not to include an "s" after the possessive apostrophe.]
But Moses was still a mess. He doubted, he fussed, he overreacted. He was the "perfect" example of how even the best of us (humans) falls so short of the mark God would have for us. And that, of course, points us to Jesus.
This is just the first of four times Moses doubted God's call --
3:11-12
3:13-22
4:1-9
4:10-17
What do all of those passages together say about Moses and about God?
God's answer to Moses is the answer to all of us: "it's not about you being worthy of this task; it's about Me being with you."
Think about the things you don't feel "qualified to do". What are tasks in your church you pass on because you don't think you can do it? What does God's statement to Moses say to you about that?
God's "sign" to Moses is, well, interesting. It's a sign that won't be evident until after all of these things have happened. Essentially, God tells Moses that when they return to this mountain, they will all know that God is the One who brought them here.
Question 1: which mountain? (Question 2: which God? is below.) We will bring this up again when we the Israelites arrive here in a few weeks. There are two common suggestions, both involving different paths for the exodus. Don't get hung up on this -- this is a controversy for a future lesson.
And also, you probably don't have time to dwell on the word "worship" right now. It's a critical word that will dominate the book of Leviticus -- for now, simply say that we will get back to this when the Israelites arrive in a few chapters.
Part 4: God Insists (Exodus 3:13-15)
13 Then Moses asked God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what should I tell them?” 14 God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the Israelites: The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name forever; this is how I am to be remembered in every generation.
Question 2: which God? This is quite possibly the most important passage in the Old Testament.
God's answer is not an answer that Moses would have expected. He was probably thinking of the "gods" he knew -- like Osiris and Ra. (Think about other gods we have learned about in the Bible. In Canaan, Baal and Molech. In Babylon, Ishtar and Marduk. In Greece/Rome, Artemis and Zeus.) All of the people name their gods.
But not the One True God. He doesn't have a name. (Bob? Timmy?) He doesn't even answer, "I am The Lord." He simply says, "I AM WHO I AM."
This is related to the Hebrew word Yahweh (YHWH), and its meaning has been debated as long as the Bible has been translated. It has been argued to mean
I am who I am
I will be who I will be
I am he
I will cause to be
The basic meanings many scholars agree on is that this "name" indicates that God is self-existent, sovereign above creation, and the One who fulfills the covenant.
This won't actually help Moses because the Israelites do not know God by that "name". This means that God is telling Moses this to help Moses understand who the One True God is. Saying that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is what will connect with the Israelites; the rest is to help them realize that He is not like the gods of Egypt (or anywhere else).
See the importance?
The Israelites must learn who the One True God is so they can safely be His people. The rest of the Old Testament can rightly be said to be the story of how these people learn and fail to learn who God is and who God wants them to be.
Praise God for Jesus.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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