Exodus Pt. 1

 

 *

It's All About Moses

Quick reminder. If you want to catch up on Genesis, just click on the link to the right and it'll take you to all thirteen installments. It may sound like a lot, but honestly it's an easier read than the source material.

When last we met, Joseph had just passed away, but before he did he anticipated quite correctly that the cushy Goshen shepherding gig couldn't last forever--after all they were just renters--and so he made the Israelites swear that when they picked up and moved, they would put him in a nice piece of rolling luggage and take him with them.

    And with that we move on to Exodus, Chapter 1, which begins with a real grab the reader sort of opener. In other words, we are once again told who the sons of Jacob are, all twelve of them, just in case we hadn't been taking notes earlier. And then we are told that they had done the fruitful and multiplying thing and had filled the land and prospered and generally were doing alright for themselves in The Land O' Goshen.

    But as any good writer will tell you, a story can't just have good times in it, a bit of hardship and conflict are needed. A reversal of fortunes is a good way to go if you want to keep the reader's interest. Sure enough, in verse 8 we learn that the Pharaoh who had been chums with Joseph had either died or retired, or ran up against term limits, because "Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph." That can't be good for the people of Goshen, aka the Israelites, aka the Hebrews**.

    The new Pharaoh riles up the natives against the renters and pretty soon things get to be pretty warm for the Israelites. Pharaoh sends taskmasters who impose tasks and bitter service in mortar and brick and other kinds of difficult, unfulfilling work. Ruthlessness is involved. The Pharaoh even tries to get the two Hebrew midwives in charge of all of the Goshen births to kill baby boys, but they outsmart him by simply not doing it. So he modifies his order to be more specific: all baby boys are to be tossed in the Nile.

    This brings us to Chapter 2 and another one of those Famous Stories from the Bible They Teach in Sunday School, kind of: Moses and the Bullrushes and the Pharaoh's Daughter. Actually, I didn't see anything about bullrushes specifically, but it seems to me that's the way it is presented in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and I love that book, so I probably just filled that word in myself. In any case, we learn that Moses' unnamed mother, who is married to an unnamed man of the house of Levi, hides her newborn son, also currently unnamed, for three months, apparently hoping the Pharaoh will ease up on the whole toss 'em in the river decree, but when that doesn't happen she tries to abide by the spirit, if not the letter, of his decree by fashioning a fairly watertight little basket for her little boy and setting it amongst the reeds in the water. It would be nice to know what she was hoping to accomplish with this, but as so often seems to be the case here we are left to either speculate or shrug and move on.

    As we all remember from Sunday School, Pharaoh's daughter happens to come down to that section of the river for a bit of aquatic recreation at just the right time, and as she is splashing about under the watchful eyes of her attendants, she spots the floating basket, hears the plaintive cries of the abandoned infant, and, being a young woman of tender heart, decides not to leave him bobbing among the reeds, even though she correctly surmises that said infant is one of the Hebrew tikes her daddy has been trying really hard to eliminate lately. And wouldn't you know it, Moses' aunt on his daddy's side, who had been lingering around to see how things would develop after his mama placed him in the water, approaches Pharaoh's daughter brave as can be and offers to find a suitable Goshen woman to nurse the child until he is old enough to, you know, join the Pharaoh's household, which is where all of us, even in Sunday School, should have been shaking our heads and muttering "like that's a good idea." Of course, the woman she has in mind to do the nursing is her sister-in-law, Moses' birth mama.

    Pharaoh's daughter, anxious to get back to paddling around in the refreshing and male child strewn waters of the Nile, agrees to this plan in verse nine. In verse 10 we read, "When the child grew up, she (meaning his actual birth mother) brings him to Pharaoh's daughter, just as promised, and she takes him as her son. She names him Moses, "because" she said, "I drew him out of the water." Whether "grew up" means on solid food now or a young fellow in his late teens or something in between we don't know.

    No word on how the sudden introduction of a new member of the family is explained to Pharaoh. But maybe he just had other things on his mind at the time and was too distracted to notice an extra place set at the family dinner table.

    Before you know it, Moses, all grown up now, gets a closeup view of the forced labor still being imposed on the Hebrews, which are described as "one of his kinsfolk", so it seems either Pharaoh's daughter has clued him into his heritage or he has surreptitiously subscribed to Ancestry.com but somehow he knows he is adopted and. So when he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew it upsets him and he kills the Egyptian and then buries him in the sand, which seems to me to be a temporary sort of fix, but maybe I watch too many murder mystery shows. Then, the next day he takes another walk and sees two Hebrews quarreling and he tries to settle things between them. But the Hebrew who was in the wrong (we're told) tells Moses to get lost or he'll tell the authorities about the body in the sand, which proves my point about the incompatibility of sand and corpses when discretion is wanted.

    Moses leaves town. Already being in Egypt he can't escape to Egypt, so he goes to Midian, which is I have no idea where. But wherever it is the local priest has seven daughters and one of them, name of Zipporah, looks pretty good to Moses and before you know it Moses and Zipporah are wed. They have a son in short order and name him Gershom.

    Time passes and by and by the nasty Pharaoh dies, but the oppression of the Israelites doesn't get any better. So they try to get God's attention, and, as we come to the end of Chapter 2, "God remembered*** his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them."

  In Exodus Pt. 2 we will try to make our way through a burning bush, learn what God likes to be called (sort of), and introduce the character of Aaron, brother to Moses. There may even be a magical staff and some bricks.

*Horseshoe Bend by Page, Arizona.

**If I'm not mistaken, this is the first time the term "Hebrew" is used. If I am mistaken it is not the first time. Anyway, "Hebrew" and "Israelite" seem to be interchangeable at this point.

***I realize being God is the ultimate multitasking job, but he does seem to leave "His People" hanging for long periods of time before he remembers them.