1450 BC to 1200 BC
Egypt and Sinai
Israel in and then out of Egypt, at a period when Egypt was an imperial power that also controlled Canaan. The nation is formed as a people with a law before it has any land.
the exodus and the wilderness
About the dating
Two datings are seriously held. The early date, around 1446 BC, takes the figure in 1 Kings 6:1 at face value. The late date, in the thirteenth century, fits the store city named Rameses and the archaeology of Canaan better. Both are argued by people who take the account seriously, and this site does not pick one.
The world at this moment
What everyone else was doing while this part of the story was happening.
Egypt
The New Kingdom at its imperial peak, with a professional army, a chariot corps, and control reaching up through Canaan. Ramesses II reigns for sixty-six years and covers the country in monuments to himself. Egyptian power in this period is the reason Canaan is garrisoned rather than free.
The Hittites
The other superpower, in what is now Turkey, and Egypt's rival for the Levant. The two fight the largest chariot battle of the ancient world at Kadesh, then sign a treaty whose text survives from both sides. Hittite treaty form, with its historical prologue, stipulations, witnesses, blessings, and curses, is the shape the Sinai covenant takes, which is one of the stronger arguments for the antiquity of that material.
The Aegean
Mycenaean Greece: warrior kings in stone citadels at Mycenae and Pylos, keeping palace accounts in Linear B. The world of the Trojan War stories, whatever lies behind them.
Further afield
The Shang dynasty in China is casting extraordinary bronzes and writing questions to its ancestors on ox bones. In Mesoamerica the Olmec are beginning the first civilisation of the Americas.
Ordinary life
Bronze, not iron. Bread, beer, onions, fish, and lentils. Brick made with straw as a binder, which is exactly the labour Exodus describes. An Israelite in Egypt would have spoken Egyptian in the street and been recognisable as a foreigner by dress and by keeping flocks.
What you would be reading
4 books sit here. Open any of them and every card in the margin will describe itself at this moment.
Who was alive
21 of the people written up in the Hall of Witnesses belong to this stretch of the story.
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 other spy who urged Israel to go up at once. Forty-five years later, at eighty-five, he asked for the hill country with the fortified cities in it, on the grounds that he was as strong as the day Moses sent him out.
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.
Frightened by the size of Israel's camp, he hired a foreign seer to curse them, and got four blessings instead. His frustration builds through the episode until he tells Balaam to stop talking altogether.
A diviner from the Euphrates hired to curse Israel, who could only say what God gave him to say, including one of the clearest messianic lines in the Torah. The Bible's later verdict on him is harsh: Numbers, Peter, Jude, and Revelation all treat him as the pattern of a religious professional who sells his gift.
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.
Eleazar's son, who ended a plague at Peor by driving a spear through an Israelite man and a Midianite woman, and was granted a covenant of lasting priesthood. A second Phinehas, son of Eli, was a corrupt priest who died carrying the ark into battle.
A Levite who led two hundred and fifty leaders in challenging Moses and Aaron, arguing that the whole congregation was holy and the two of them had exalted themselves. The ground opened and swallowed the ringleaders.
The clan lists for the tribes other than Judah and Levi, spread across Numbers 26 and 1 Chronicles 4 to 8. Each tribe is broken into families, and the families into households, which is how land was allotted and armies were raised.
The twelve leaders named at the census in Numbers 1, who bring identical offerings over twelve days in Numbers 7 and are recorded in full each time, and the twelve spies of Numbers 13.
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.
Levi's three sons, whose families divided the work of the sanctuary. The Kohathites carried the ark and the holiest furnishings on their shoulders, the Gershonites the curtains and coverings, the Merarites the frames, bars, and sockets.
Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh are named with their fathers so consistently that the patronymics function almost as surnames. The two spies who brought back a minority report and the only men of their generation to enter the land.
Two Amorite kings, of Heshbon and of Bashan, who refused Israel passage and were defeated. Their names become a fixed pair in Israel's memory, recited in psalms and speeches for centuries as the standard example of what God did.
The world as it stood
24 entries describe themselves differently at this moment than at any other. These are the same notes that appear in the margin while you read.
The land
Cities, regions, rivers, and kingdoms, as they stood.
New Kingdom Egypt at its imperial height, with a professional army, chariot corps, and control reaching up into Canaan itself. This is the Egypt of enormous building projects using conscripted labor, which is the setting for store cities built with brick and straw. Leaving it meant leaving the strongest state in the region.
The mountain of the covenant, wrapped in smoke and fire and off limits on pain of death. Israel arrives three months out of Egypt, receives the law, builds the tabernacle, and stays nearly a year before moving on.
The water Israel crossed on dry ground, and the moment the exodus becomes irreversible. Miriam and the women take up tambourines on the far side, in what is probably the oldest poetry in the Bible.
Moses' refuge for forty years, where he marries Zipporah and meets God at the burning bush while keeping Jethro's flock. Later in the wilderness the relationship turns hostile.
The district the plagues passed over. Exodus is careful to say the distinction was made, which is part of the argument that the LORD is acting rather than nature.
The peoples
A nation's name outlives its power, often by centuries.
The empire in Anatolia is at its height and is Egypt's rival for control of the Levant. The treaty form it used, with its historical prologue, stipulations, witnesses, and curses, is the shape the Sinai covenant takes.
Israel is told not to harass them, because their land was given to the descendants of Lot. Balak of Moab nevertheless hires Balaam to curse Israel, and the blessing that comes out instead is one of the strangest episodes in the Torah.
Attack the stragglers at the rear of the column on the way out of Egypt, which is the detail the later condemnation turns on: they went for the exhausted and the weak.
Moses marries into them and his father-in-law Jethro, a Midianite priest, gives him the advice that reorganises Israel's whole system of justice. The relationship sours badly later in Numbers.
The New Kingdom at its imperial peak, holding Canaan as a province and using forced labor on state building projects. This is the Egypt with the largest army in the world, which is what makes the exodus a claim about power rather than a story about a border crossing.
The word Egyptians use for these people, and the word they use of themselves when speaking to Egyptians. It is the vocabulary of the outsider throughout the story.
The law already contains provision for the foreigner living among Israel, who is to be loved as yourself and held to much of the same law, on the stated grounds that you were foreigners in Egypt.
Chosen for the sanctuary instead of land, and given the work of carrying the tabernacle and everything in it while Israel travelled.
The tribes
Where each stood, and which of them can still be traced.
Set apart for the sanctuary instead of receiving land, which is presented both as a privilege and as the working out of Jacob's hard words about Levi's violence. They are scattered among the tribes exactly as he said, but as priests rather than as fugitives.
Not a tribe in the lists, because Jacob had already adopted Joseph's two sons and given each a full share. Joseph's name covers Ephraim and Manasseh together, which is how twelve tribes can be counted twelve different ways depending on whether Levi and Joseph are in or out.
Worship and institution
The temple in Ezra is not the temple in Kings, and neither is the one Jesus taught in.
Commanded with a reason attached, and the reason changes between the two tellings. In Exodus it is because God rested. In Deuteronomy it is because you were a slave in Egypt and know exactly what it is to have no day off.
The night itself, eaten standing and in haste with the doorway marked, then commanded as an annual retelling in which each generation is to say that this is what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.
Built at Sinai to hold the tablets, carried on poles that were never to be removed, and treated as the place where God met Israel above the mercy seat.
Required before anyone eats the Passover, which makes it the boundary of the community rather than a private family matter.
Aaron and his sons, in linen and a breastpiece set with twelve stones. He alone enters the innermost room, once a year, and the ritual for that day is described in more detail than almost anything else in the law.
The name is given to Moses at the bush and then used freely. Ordinary people greet each other with it, and it turns up inside personal names all through the monarchy.
There is no temple yet, and the absence is deliberate. God travels in a tent that comes down and moves when the people move. When David later offers to build a house, the answer comes back as a question: did I ever ask any of you for one?
The gods of the nations
What was actually on offer, and how strong the pull was just then.
Named in the law with the severest possible penalty, and the wording, giving your children to Molech, is the reason the practice is not in doubt even where the details are.
Made at God's instruction, a bronze serpent on a pole that the dying were told to look at and live.
And then
A people who went in as a family come out as a nation with a law, a tabernacle, and a covenant, and spend forty years learning to be those things before they see any land.