Happy New Year ya dirts! I’ve been moving slow as always, but the Book of Exodus is among the richest (and definitely my favorite) book of the Old Testament, so this took some time putting together. Here is an unrelated podcast as your reward.
The Book of Exodus is focused on the life of Moses, and his journey leading the Hebrews out of Egypt. There are so many symbolic elements in the life of Moses that still loom large in our narrative lexicon. Let’s look at some of them.
First, Moses’ survival as a baby is miraculous. Pharaoh had ordered the Hebrew handmaids to kill all the sons of the Israelites, and so Moses is placed in a basket by his mother and sent down the river. He is discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter, who takes pity on baby Moses and saves the child. Because of this turn of events, Moses is able to be raised among the Egyptians with access to wealth and education.
“When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, ‘I drew him out of the water.’”
We can recognize the beginning of a million famous stories in this setup. What immediately jumps to my mind is Star Wars, with Luke Skywalker being sent away by his parents to be raised in anonymity lest he be killed by the Empire. Virtually every fantasy or sci-fi story has a similar beginning, at least if there is a prophesized savior figure. Because of prophecy, the leader of the evil forces has some awareness that their opponent is being brought into the world, and can take steps to prevent them reaching adulthood. Another example is Paul Atreides escaping into the desert with his mother in Dune after escaping the Baron’s assassination attempt, where he becomes leader of the Fremen.
If you watched the Pageau video Divine Patterns in the Life of Moses, you heard him say that Pharaoh’s daughter, the one who saves Moses, represents profane knowledge of the world, i.e. science and philosophy. Moses’ birth mother, on the other hand, represents the Church. What’s particularly interesting here is that Pharaoh’s daughter is obviously a positive figure, and plays the essential role in saving Moses. The significant affliction of Pharaoh’s daughter though is that she is barren. This is clearly meant to tell us something about the role of profane i.e. material knowledge in human life. Perhaps that such knowledge can assist a person or guide them, even as it is incapable of bringing its own meaning into the world.
There’s also something particularly resonant for Americans in the story of Moses. Moses is aware of his Hebrew origins, but has achieved status and acclaim in his adopted country. There is something about this that circumscribes the immigrant experience in America, the reality that one can achieve entry into the ranks of the American successful, but to some extent, only by abandoning the confines of the communal setting of origin.
But Moses does not forsake his roots, and in fact kills an Egyptian he sees abusing a Hebrew, and via this act is forced back into hiding. In some ways, this story almost directly refutes the mythology of America. Yes, it is possible to transcend one’s roots and gain acceptance in a new, more illustrious community, but to do so is to betray oneself and God. Better to hide as an anonymous shepherd among one’s own people, than betray them and be welcome in the house of Pharaoh.
“And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.
And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.”
Ultimately, Moses is not allowed his peaceful life in anonymity though, and God sends Moses back to Egypt to free his people. Pharaoh initially refuses to release the Hebrews, and only relents after God sends a series of plagues down on the Egyptians. It struck me reading Exodus this time how remarkable it is that in the town where I grew up, Jewish people still celebrate Passover to commemorate the sons of Hebrews being saved from Gods slaughter of Egyptian boys. If we think of events that loom large in our own lives, say 9/11 or the COVID pandemic, how long will it take before American children are unfamiliar with these events. 100 years? For most of history, there have never been more than a few million Jews, and yet the story of Passover has been known to much of the world for thousands of years.
When the Israelites are released from Egypt, Pharaoh decides to give chase, resulting in his army being drowned in the Red Sea. After several months, the Hebrews reach Mt. Sinai.
A short digression here. In college, I studied abroad in Egypt, and most weekends when we were out of class we would take short trips to sites around the country. One of these trips was to Mt. Sinai. We reached the area via bus from Cairo, and arrived at night unable to see anything. We were led up a relatively steep path in the dark, eventually being informed we had reached the summit. This is sort of a dangerous and unsatisfying way to climb a mountain, but the point of this approach became clear in the morning. We awoke to beautiful sights from the top of the mountain and a surprising, new awareness of the sheerness of the path we had already traversed. I certainly didn’t think this at the time, but I wonder if this trip played a role in my fascination with religious history and theology. I have pictures from that morning on a decades old external hard-drive that no longer turns on when you plug it in, so you’ll just have to take my word that it was beautiful.
This photo I found on google is similar to what I remember waking up to, though I don’t think we slept quite so close to the edge.
The view from the top is something like this.
I don’t want to be confrontational, but I do wonder what secular people make of the fact that these places are real and you can go visit them. Of course, reactions to visiting Mt. Sinai will vary, and I can’t claim you will immediately be converted. But I do feel I can guarantee that your response will not be, “why would God come here?”
Mt. Sinai is where Moses receives the Ten Commandments, and shares them with the Hebrews. Some of you may recall that I took a class on the French philosopher Rene Girard. According to Girard, particularly significant among the commandments is this:
“An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee.”
Girard notes that even in the previous book of the Bible, Genesis, we have God demanding a human sacrifice from Abraham in the form of his son Isaac. First, God relents and spares Isaac, and then here we have a full transition from human to animal sacrifice. Girard claims one of the key innovations of Judeo-Christianity is to replace the human sacrifice with a symbolic sacrifice. Girard’s claims that human sacrifice was a ubiquitous practice in the pre-Christian world is not accepted by all historians or anthropologists, but it does offer one explanation for why the religion might be so appealing.
Moses spends forty days with God on Mt. Sinai, and then returns to his people, only to discover that led by his own brother Aaron, the Hebrews have erected a golden calf to worship. Moses smashes the tablets, and God is set to destroy the Israelites, but Moses begs for God to spare them. We will discuss this more in future books, but it is interesting how easily shaken the Hebrews’ faith in God is in this and the subsequent chapters of the Old Testament. Furthermore, Gods continued forgiveness of the Israelites seems to counter the idea that the Old Testament God is far less forgiving and crueler than His New Testament incarnation.
The golden calf, and idolatry in general, is among the most important and relevant symbols in scripture. In moments of weakness, or perhaps simply distance from God, mankind has an almost irrepressible urge to worship something unworthy. In its pagan incarnations, this worship might focus on sexuality or the seasons, but as civilization develops, the focus turns towards things like money or discreet forms of power.
Both Judaism and Christianity seem to tell us that man is a worshipful animal, and simply dispensing with the religious impulse is not actually possible. When worship is turned away from God, and towards aspects of the material world, mankind is inevitably perverted by this inappropriate shift in focus. Thousands of years later, I struggle to find anything incomplete or misleading in this description.