The narrative of Exodus 4:18-26 is a portion of the Bible that holds much significance despite the seemingly odd circumstances. Through in-depth research, one is able to identify the significance of the narrative. It begins with Moses desiring to continue embarking on his journey back to Egypt in order to lead forth the Israelites out of bondage, the Lord reassuring Moses that all those who attempted to kill him are now dead, and God attempting to kill Moses. However, Zipporah took out a flint knife and circumcised her son, thus saving Moses’ life. Each of these puzzle pieces provide a glimpse into the entire picture of the narrative. My initial response to the seemingly odd circumstances of the narrative in Exodus 4:18-26 was changed as a …show more content…
Exodus divides itself into two portions known as: “the historical narrative of the fortunes of Israel and a didactic portion” (Rawlinson and Ellicott 3). The historical and didactic portion is interwoven with historical events, thus making the exact date of the narrative of Exodus 4 difficult to interpret (Rawlinson and Ellicott 3). These sources employ the archaic form of Exodus. Rawlinson and Ellicott unearth that the completion of the compiled book of Exodus led to the final date being twenty or thirty years after the entrance into Canaan (5). Likewise, Propp conveys that the historical portion of Exodus “recounts the further fortunes of Jacob’s sons and daughters,” known as the first generation (Propp 31). The audience of Exodus 4 would have been all future generations of Abraham’s seed, particularly the second generation. The book of Genesis continuing onto Exodus showcases this flow of the generations. Such information employs that the original audience was the second generation from Abraham’s …show more content…
According to Dirham, “The section at hand is best understood as a collection of narrative bits and pieces connected with Moses’ return to Egypt” (Durham 54). Durham focuses on verse 20, which reads, “So Moses took his wife and his sons and had them ride on a donkey, and went back to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the staff of God in his hand.” According to Durham, these three statements represent three differing narrative strands, each connecting to the return to Egypt. The narratives indicate that Moses’ family was a part of the journey, Moses returned to Egypt alone, and the staff was the staff of God. These three threads reveal God working through Moses “to establish irrevocably the powerful reality of his Presence” (Durham 56). Also, Zipporah’s actions that save Moses exemplify God’s means of grace as a protective sign of the covenant. Durham essentially interprets Exodus 4 as a reminder to God’s people of his covenant with
“Exploration of Similarities in Religious Texts: A Further Look at the Koran, the Tanakh and the New Testament”
When God first approaches Moses in the form of a burning bush, God says “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land,” (Exodus 3:7). Moses however, questioned God’s judgement, saying, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). Moses continues to question God throughout the rest of the chapter, but eventually begins his journey to rescue his
Abraham obeyed God by preparing wood and loading his donkey and took away Isaac and two servants with him. On reaching the place ordered by God, Abraham built an Alter and arranged the wood on it. He tied up his son and placed him on altar, on top of the wood and picked up the knife to kill him. Abraham was stopped by the Lord’s voice from heaven telling him, he was an obedient man who honored God. The angel of God confirmed to him how God would richly bless him and give him many descendants as there are stars in the sky or grains of sand along the seashore.
Exodus 21-24 was definitely quite an instructive piece of literature. It was almost raw in its nature as a text or “book” but more of reading an excerpt from a piece of non-fiction most similar to an instruction manual of some sort that you get when you buy a dissembled bike or desk. Something like being enrolled in a police academy there was definite sense of a master-slave relationship in the air. It is like something never before seen in the Torah, these chapters showed a whole new YHWH. The YHWH who is feared like the school principal in an elementary school, not even mom and dad has come on so strong as to the dos and donts of living life. It seems as if YHWH was pushed to such a point where YHWH has no choice but intervene into the lives of his children, and set the rules for the pl...
Moses' journey begins in Egypt. This is a land where the Pharaoh has ultimate control and power over the people. Campbell refers to this greedy, egocentric, possessive leader as the tyrant. At this time, Egypt is noticing a huge increase in the number of Hebrew slaves (Exodus 1:9). In order to maintain possession of the land, Pharaoh must stifle the future threat that the increasing population of Israelites represent. To do this he orders the first born son of every Hebrew to be thrown into the Nile. However, baby Moses floats to the Pharaoh's daughter and Moses is raised as an Egyptian prince. He grows up different than any other Hebrew. He learns how to become soldier for his Pharaoh, but something is always troubling him. One day Moses sees an Egyptian striking a Hebrew slave and Moses intervenes and kills the Egyptian (Exodus 2:12). The next day he sees two Hebrews struggling, and tries to intervene, but he discovers that his murder of yesterday is known. This conflict symbolizes what Campbell says is the "call t...
This section of exodus focuses on Moses, an Israelite who was raised as an Egyptian, who has fled from Egypt after the Pharaoh tried to kill him for killing an Egyptian man. By Exodus 3:1 Moses is married to Zipporah daughter of Jethro who gives him a job working as a shepherd. While tending to his animals Moses arrives at Horeb also known as Mount Sinai or the Mountain of God. Here Moses has his first theophany with God in the form of a burning bush. During this passage God talks to Moses telling him what he needs to do: go to Egypt and convince the Pharaoh to let the Egyptians go by performing a series of miracles. What god is asking Moses to do is intimidating. At this time the Pharaoh was the ruler of Egypt who had a powerful army and the Israelite’s weren’t going to be easy to convince that God sent him. Despite the “signs” Moses is reluctant to take the role beca...
There are fifty chapters found in the book of Genesis that are divided into main subject units, and presented chronologically: 1:1-2:3 – A description of creation, 2:4-11:26 – the emergence, development, and degeneration of the human race, and 11:27-50:26 – [Majority of the Book], the stories of the lives of the fathers of the people of Israel. “The narratives about the patriarchs of Israel are framed by two historic migrations in and out of the Promised Land. Between those migrations we are not given a continuous history but cycles of individual episodes about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” The predominant genre of the book of Genesis and the selected text found in Genesis 29:1-14 is narrative.
The Book of Exodus begins hundreds of years later once Joseph and his brothers have all died. This leaves a void in leadership over Israel and is eventually subdued to Moses. He is a Hebrew boy who starts off as a slave, and eventually encounters God through the burning bush where he is convinced to assume his role as leader of the Israelites. With the help of his brother Aaron, they face controversy with the Pharaoh of Egypt trying to rid their people and lead them to a land full of prosperity, which God has promised. It is through Moses leadership that they find freedom and religious conformity as a community. Although Moses is initially timid, he consequently develops the willpower of a traditional hero through attaining a personal relationship with God and his people through the breaking of the clay tablets along with using the power God has given him through his staff to intimidate the Pharaoh and shows his urgency and pride as leader of a great nation.
“Certainly, the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place. Humanity might have eventually stumbled upon all the Jewish insights. But we cannot be sure. All the great conceptual discoveries of the human intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they had been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift. To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of human person; of the individual conscience and so a personal redemption; of collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind. Without Jews it might have been a much emptier place” (Paul Johnson).
Exodus is the second of the five “books of Moses” that tells the story of the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt through the Sinai Desert. When Moses was born, the Israelites were oppressed by the Egyptian Pharaoh and bound to a harsh life of labor taking part in building some of the great public works of Egypt such as the pyramids, fortresses, and installations to regulate the flow of the Nile River. For fear that the Israelite population would continue to increase, the Pharaoh insisted that every male Hebrew child would be killed at birth. Ironically, during this oppressive period, Moses, the “future deliverer of Israel”, was born. To protect his life, his mother sent him down the Nile in a specially woven ark. He was found by the Pharaoh’s daughter who took him in and, to add to the irony, she hired his mother to be his foster nurse. The baby boy grew up and was adopted into the Pharaoh’s household and named Moses. His name is derived from the Egyptian root “mose” meaning “son”, but in the Bible, it is said to hale from the Hebrew root meaning “drawn out of the water.”
In the Biblical Book of Exodus, Moses was not originally supposed to be born under the Pharaoh’s rule because he was an Israelite male. Pharaoh decreed all Hebrew boys born were to be killed in the Nile River. Moses survived because Pharaoh’s servants feared God more. This law was one of Pharaoh’s ways to oppress the Hebrew people. It was a tactic to keep the majority of the population from growing as well as implementing slavery. However, that did not stop the Israelites from multiplying in size: “’And now indeed the cry of the Israelites has come to me, and I have also seen how severely the Egyptians oppress them. So now go, and I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt’” (New English Translation, Exodus 3:9-10). In this passage, God is speaking to Moses in the form of a burning bush that he has seen the hardships Pharaoh put the Israelites through, and that he will deliver them from their sufferings. M...
There are many people who believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God, therefore believing that the Exodus did in fact happen, exactly as described in the Bible. The biblical account states that God sent plagues upon the people of Egypt, causing strife. Once the ten plagues had been set upon Egypt, Pharaoh set the Israelites free from bondage. Then, God told Moses to change their path, placing them against the Red Sea. So, when Pharaoh changed his mind, and went after them, the Israelites were cornered between the Egyptians and the water. Moses then, by the command of God, stretched out his staff and the waters parted. The Hebrews crossed on the dry ground. After they reached the other side, God cause the water to fall onto the Egyptians chasing after them, killing them all.
... people. It also shows the dependence of people on God. Moses was a man of courage who sought to see the face of the God. He received the laws of the lord and made sacrifices for them when they sinned. Moses acted as a mediator between Yahweh and his people (Woolfe).
Tarwater explains that even through the small snippet of information how “the God we serve in the New Testament is the same God who worked on behalf of the people of Israel in Exodus.” Through the last chapters, I began to appreciate Jesus’ teachings and the correlation to the commandments of the Old Testament. Before this book, reading through the Old Testament did not bring about the importance within the books of Leviticus or Numbers. However, the author’s strong statement “the laws were meant to demonstrate how obedience and holiness were to permeate every aspect of the people’s lives” highlights the nature of the Bible to be a continual work highlighting God’s mercy and forgiveness. Digging deeper into the context of the stories through the author’s visual narrative that I could see how the theme of each book extended into another. Ultimately, the book of Leviticus is clarified with the realities of how sinful the people are and why God had to ultimately bring to earth His son to take away our
Covenant has a central place in the Christian religion. It is a relationship between us and God created by a pledge in which part has defined responsibilities. The type of covenant we are in with God is suzerainty. This simply means that God is our master and we are his slaves. Too many there might be a bad connotation in the master-slave analogy. However, I embrace the fact that god is my master and I am His slave. He will never do anything to harm me, knows my needs, will provide for me, and He loves me unconditionally. That is way different compared to the way slaves were treated by their human masters.