Religion 131 Review of Unit 2 From Egypt to Israel Dr. Fred Kellogg Emory & Henry College

    This review of Hebrew history during the Exodus, forty years in the Sinai wilderness, and settlement in Israel is related especially to chapters 6-13 of  Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament:  A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2006).

EXODUS & SINAI

    The Hebrews would have continued to live in Egypt, if a Pharaoh had not come to the Egyptian throne determined to exploit them as a labor force for his building projects.  He made the freedom-loving Hebrews into virtual slaves.  Their situation led them to make their escape in the Exodus.  Who was this Pharaoh?

    I hope you thought of Rameses II, one of the most powerful kings in the ancient world.  A few years ago, a display of some of the great sculpture from his reign was brought to Charlotte.  According to the book of Exodus, God called one person to set his people free from Egyptian oppression and lead them back to Canaan.  That person was Moses.  But Moses did not fulfill his mission alone.  His brother Aaron assisted him in challenging the Egyptian leaders and in developing priestly rituals which would unify the Hebrews as a people.

    Together Moses and Aaron carried out a series of contests with the Pharaoh's magicians, to prove the legitimacy of their authority.  In the final version of the account, ten plagues were brought on Egypt, to show Yahweh's power over nature.  Some of the plagues involved huge numbers of animals swarming into Egypt.  Think for a minute:  can you name some of those kinds of animals?

• thousands of frogs, singing "it's not easy being green!"

• thousands of locusts, who made Egypt their locus

• thousands of flies, whose motto was "time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana!"

• thousands of gnats, like the no-see-ums that plague Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts on campouts

    The last of the ten plagues was the most tragic of all:  the death of the first-born throughout Egypt.  The only homes spared were those marked with lamb's blood, in a ceremony identified as the origin of the festival of Passover.  After that plague, the Hebrews finally attained their freedom. 

    But Pharaoh Rameses II changed his mind again and sent an army that overtook them at the Reed Sea, a marshy lake which was a branch of the Red Sea.  The victory which came to the Hebrews that day was memorialized in a song by Moses' sister, Miriam.  Accompanied by a tambourine, and dancing with her friends, Miriam sang what we recognize as one of the oldest poems in the Bible:

"Sing to Yahweh, because he has won a glorious victory;
He has thrown the horses and their riders into the sea."  [Exodus 15:21]

    It would take forty years for the Hebrews to make the trip from Egypt to the Promised Land, even though they could normally have walked that distance in just a few weeks.  Why?  Because God had very special plans to help them become a genuine people during this time together, before they entered Canaan.  Exodus describes one part of the plan as the necessity for the Hebrews to come to Mount Sinai, to make a covenant with God.  The image in Exodus is that of a mother eagle, carrying her young to the mountain.  God said:  "You saw what I did to the Egyptians and how I carried you as an eagle carries her young on her wings.  I brought you here to me" [Exodus 19:4].  Christians sing a beautiful hymn, "On Eagle's Wings," based on this image.  

    At Mount Sinai God made a second covenant with the Hebrews.  This time Moses was the representative of the people.  There are striking parallels between the Abraham story and the Moses story.  To me, the most important common dimension is the tremendous amount of trust in the lives of both leaders. 

• Why on earth would Abraham trust God so much that he would abandon a great river civilization like that of the Euphrates?  He went out in the middle of nowhere to a remote, unpopulated area. 

• Why would Abraham trust God to give him countless descendants, when in his nineties he was still childless? 

• Why would Moses trust God and lead his people from the powerful nation of Egypt, with the pyramids and other great cultural achievements, back to that same remote region? 

• Why would Moses wander with the Hebrews for forty years in the Sinai wilderness, instead of going straight to the Promised Land and challenging the Canaanites? 

    The Bible has one key word for this trusting aspect of Abraham and Moses.  It's what God expects of each one of us, and it's far more important than obeying all the laws or worshipping on the Sabbath.  That central biblical concept is faith.  It's described beautifully in the Epistle to the Hebrews [11:1], in the New Testament:

"To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see."

    The responsibilities of the people in the Sinai covenant are spelled out most clearly in the Ten Commandments.  Scholars often compare this covenant with other types of laws and treaties in the ancient Middle East.  Two of the most familiar types of covenants are: 

• parity covenants, in which two equal parties bind themselves to each other with mutual obligations and receive mutual privileges, because they are on a par with each other; and 

• suzerainty covenants, in which a great ruler (suzerain) gives protection and security to the head of a subordinate state and in turn receives gratitude and obedience.

    The Sinai covenant was of course a suzerainty covenant.  God continued to guide the Hebrews in their journey to land and nationhood.  After they had spent forty years in the Sinai wilderness, they looked forward to settling down in Canaan, which seemed like Paradise as they imagined what life would be like there.  One thing they especially anticipated was good food.  The Hebrews imagined Canaan as a land "flowing with milk and honey."  In the books of Joshua and Judges you can see if their dreams were fulfilled.

    In addition to his brother Aaron and his sister Miriam, Moses depended on another person for his understanding of God's will.  Moses' wife Zipporah was the daughter of a priest in the desert area of Midian, and she was able to use her religious knowledge to help him in a number of ways.  In fact, Zipporah reestablished the ancient covenant which God had made with his people, by symbolically carrying out the ritual of circumcision which was part of the covenant with Abraham.  Moses' parents had been unable to circumcise him, since he had to be hidden while still a baby.  But the priest's daughter knew just what to do.  She performed a proxy circumcision on their son, and it was valid for Moses too.  Although she had not grown up the Midianites did not practice circumcision, Zipporah recognized how central it was among Hebrew rituals.  The name Zipporah meant "Bird" in Hebrew, and she was a leader like the Byrds of Virginia!   

    The stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs were woven together with the laws and teachings of the Hebrew people.  They were handed down in oral tradition for many centuries, before they were written down on scrolls.  In the first unit, we've focused on Genesis and Exodus.  The books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy elaborate on the basic accounts in those first two books, but with new emphases and historical narratives. 

    The end result is the foundation of the entire Old Testament.  This basic document, which weaves together material from several sources, was not completed until the time of the Jewish Exile in Babylon, many centuries after the Exodus.  The collection includes stories, rituals, and laws.  But because of the prominent place of Jewish laws, it is called in Hebrew the Torah, meaning "Law" or "Teaching."  It is also identified in Greek as the Pentateuch, or "Five Books." 

    The Torah scroll is given a place of honor in every Jewish synagogue.  If you visit a Jewish synagogue today, such as Congregation B'nai Sholom near Bristol, you'll find the Torah scroll in the Ark of the Covenant.  In ancient times, the Ark was a chest which contained Aaron's rod, some manna, and other sacred Hebrew relics.  If it was lost, raiders such as Indiana Jones would search for it.  Today the Ark is usually a niche in the wall of a synagogue, covered with curtains, where the Torah scroll is stored with respect for its holiness.  

 THE PROMISED LAND  

    Under the leadership of Joshua, the Hebrews crossed the Jordan River into Canaan.  They were able to defeat the inhabitants of some areas and establish their control over large blocks of land.  In other areas they were forced to live in the barren hills which were regarded as less desirable land, and to work out compromises with the Canaanites.

    One reason that the Hebrews were not so successful in the lowlands was that the inhabitants of the coastal plain had mastered the use of one particular metal for both tools and weapons.  What was that metal?  Not bronze -- the Hebrews had tools and weapons of bronze, as most Middle Easterners had used for a couple of thousand years, since the end of the Stone Age.  But they had not yet mastered the use of iron, a much more durable metal.  The Canaanites had already moved out of the Bronze Age into the Iron Age, so they were technologically superior to the Hebrews.

    Even though the Israelites couldn't control all the land, they divided it up into geographical territories under at least partial control of the twelve Hebrew tribes.  They formed a confederacy, with its capital at Shechem, and they allowed others to become part of the covenant alliance.  As they consolidated the unity which Moses had developed over the years in the Sinai wilderness, they needed a story which they could affirm as "their story."  What term could we use for the Israelite foundation story, identifying its form as a dramatic narrative about a whole people?

    Biblical scholars identify the foundation story as an epic of the Israelites, similar to the way that the Iliad is an epic of the Greeks, and the Aeneid is an epic of the Romans.  As we saw in unit 1, the Yahwist epic opens with primeval history, dealing with universal themes in a setting of long ago.  For example, the story of Cain & Abel reflects a characteristic conflict in any agricultural society:  the conflict between farmers and shepherds.  Cain represents the farmers, and Abel represents the shepherds.  On a more general level, the story reflects the conflict between landowners and nomads.

    The epic continues, with the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs and the Exodus.  The Deuteronomic History takes the Hebrews from the Sinai wilderness into the Promised Land.  But they discovered that Canaan wasn't all flowing with milk and honey!  The Israelites found themselves in an ideological struggle which was a crucial for their history as their physical struggles.  The issue was how much they would adopt the farming ways of their neighbors, especially since the Canaanites' agricultural techniques were thoroughly religious.  Can you name any of the Canaanite gods?

• Baal was one of the greatest deities in Canaan.  His name is usually pronounced in English like a "bale" of hay, although the Canaanites made it sound more like a "bah-all."  Baal represented storm and rain; he was such a powerful force in nature that he was often portrayed as a bull.
• Baal's sister, who was also his wife, was Anath.  She was a warrior and a mother figure, who granted children to her worshippers.
• El was the father of all the gods, the head of the pantheon, like Zeus for the Greeks or Jupiter for the Romans.  But El was not usually involved in farming and fertility, the way Baal and his sister-wife were.  El's wife was a mother goddess known as Asherah.  She was often represented by a totem pole.
• Mot, the god of death, constantly threatened drought for the crops and loss of life for the farm animals.  He was locked in battle with Baal and El.
• Astarte, the goddess of love and motherhood, was identified with the Sumerian goddess Ishtar who played a role in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

    Hebrew leaders known as judges appeared at this point in history, to draw the line between the Israelite faith and Canaanite religious practices which were used in farming.  At times the religious crisis called for military leadership as well.  One of the outstanding judges not only ruled on legal cases; she also planned military strategy for the Israelite army.  The poem commemorating her greatest victory is, like the Song of Miriam, one of our most ancient Old Testament poems.  No, she wasn't Judge Judy.  Here's a hint:  her favorite food is manufactured near Chattanooga:  Little Debbies!  Deborah was a great judge.  With her brilliant military tactics, she freed the Hebrews from an oppressive Canaanite tribe.  If you want to read the Song of Deborah, which tells her story, you'll find it in chapter 5 of the book of Judges. 

    Another famous military judge was Gideon.  On God's orders, he narrowed his fighting force from 32,000 down to 300 soldiers and defeated an overwhelmingly superior Midianite army.  His military tactic is reminiscent of Joshua's plan for the defeat of Jericho. 

    A third famous judge was Samson.  He had been dedicated as a Nazirite by his mother, with a vow that his hair would never be cut.  That gave him tremendous strength, which he could have used for the benefit of his people.  But like a certain former American President, he squandered his tremendous leadership ability by having an affair with a woman.  Delilah not only cut off his hair; she gave the Philistines an advantage over the Hebrews by taking away the strength of this potentially great leader.  So Samson has gone down in history as a self-centered failure.    

   The book of Ruth is one of the most beautiful and powerful short stories in the whole Bible.  It tells how a woman named Naomi, who grew up in Bethlehem, moved with her husband out of Jewish territory to the land of Moab, on the eastern side of the Salt Sea.  There she had two sons, who grew up and married Moabite women named Ruth and Orpah.  Everybody assumed that Naomi's family would live happily ever after.  But her husband and both sons died.  She encouraged her two daughters-in-law to remarry, so that they would have a place in their patriarchal society.  Orpah agreed, but Ruth vowed to go to Bethlehem with her mother-in-law and to stand by her through thick and thin. 

    We've seen how Naomi and Ruth went through some very hard times, and how God guided them and Boaz toward the fulfillment of his plan for their lives.  The story is very realistic about all the emotions and complex social situations which these two women faced.  At times, the story sounds like a TV soap opera!  Both Ruth and Naomi were persons who had times of real anxiety, but their courage and strength of character led to their final happiness.  And what's especially important for this unit is that they were ancestors of King David -- so Ruth and Naomi were at least partly responsible for the Golden Age! 

     This is the end of this review of Unit 2.  Any suggestions, comments, or questions are welcome! 

    To look at one of my other review programs or syllabi, go to my Home Page, or go directly to one of the following:

    Unit 1, Hebrew beginnings
    Unit 3. Kings and Prophets
    Unit 4, Writings after the Exile
   

    If you prefer, you may return to the Emory & Henry College Home Page.  

Last updated:  August 08, 2007