Old Testament · The Law
שְׁמוֹת
Out of slavery, plagues, Passover, a parted sea, Sinai's covenant, and a tent where God dwells.
Israel groans under Pharaoh, and God hears. Exodus is the Bible's great rescue: the bush that burns without burning, ten plagues, the first Passover, a sea standing on end. But the escape happens by chapter fifteen, and the remaining twenty-five chapters are about something harder, which is what a freed people becomes. At Sinai slaves are made a nation with a law, a calendar, and a tent. The detail readers most often miss is that each plague strikes something Egypt held divine, from the Nile to the sun to the life of Pharaoh's heir, so the contest is theological rather than merely meteorological. And the last third of the book, all cubits and curtains, is not filler: the tabernacle instructions echo the creation account in Genesis 1, seven speeches and a rest at the end, as if a tent were a world in miniature and God were starting over inside it.
If you remember one thing
God hears, God comes down, God rescues, and then God moves in. The book ends not with freedom but with glory filling a tent in the middle of the camp.
“God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM,” and he said, “You shall tell the children of Israel this: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’””
Exodus 3:14
Exodus 4:21 and 9:12
God hardening Pharaoh's heart. The text also says Pharaoh hardened his own, and the interplay between the two has been argued over for as long as there have been commentators.
Exodus 21
Laws regulating slavery. Readers differ over whether these restrain an existing institution or endorse it, and the question deserves to be faced rather than skipped.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
Jacob's favored son, sold into slavery by his brothers, imprisoned on a false accusation, and raised to second in Egypt because he could read dreams. When his brothers finally stood before him he said the line the whole story turns on: you meant it for evil, God meant it for good.
Raised in Pharaoh's household, exiled for forty years as a shepherd, then sent back to demand Israel's release. He led the nation out of Egypt, received the law at Sinai, and led them forty years through the wilderness, but died on Mount Nebo within sight of the land he never entered.
Moses' older brother and spokesman, and the head of Israel's priesthood. He also made the golden calf while his brother was on the mountain, which the text reports without softening.
Moses' sister, who watched the basket in the reeds and later led the women in song after the sea. She is called a prophetess, and she was also struck with leprosy for a week after challenging Moses' authority.
Moses' assistant and one of the two spies who came back from Canaan saying it could be taken. He led the crossing of the Jordan and the conquest, and at the end of his life made the whole nation choose openly whom they would serve.
The king who would not let Israel go. Exodus never names him, which is itself a choice: the most powerful man in the world is a title rather than a person, while the Hebrew midwives who defy him are named. His hardening heart is described both as his own doing and as God's, and the two statements sit side by side without resolution.
Ordered by the most powerful man in the world to kill every Hebrew boy at birth, they refused, and told the king a story about how quickly Hebrew women delivered. Exodus names them and does not name the Pharaoh, which is the narrator making a point about who matters.
A Levite couple whose three children were Miriam, Aaron, and Moses. Jochebed hid her son for three months and then built him a waterproofed basket, the same Hebrew word used for Noah's ark.
With Aaron, he held up Moses' arms through the battle with Amalek when Moses grew too tired to keep them raised, one on each side, until sunset. Left with Aaron to handle disputes while Moses was on the mountain.
Aaron's two eldest sons, ordained as priests and among the seventy who went up the mountain and saw the God of Israel. Days after the tabernacle was consecrated they offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, and fire came out and consumed them.
Aaron's third and fourth sons, who inherited the priesthood after the older two, Nadab and Abihu, were killed offering unauthorized fire. Eleazar succeeded Aaron as high priest and stood with Joshua to divide the land.
The sons and grandsons of Levi's three houses, named in the genealogies that open Exodus 6 and Numbers 3 and fill the Chronicler's registers. Libni and Shimei from Gershon; Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel from Kohath; Mahli and Mushi from Merari.
A quiz for Exodus is on the workbench. In the meantime, the games for the judges, the kings, and the prophets are open.
