Hello, hello! And welcome to Exodus. This is our first week with the second book of Moses, and it begins with a punch. Buckle up.
Right away, we’re steeped in Genesis symbolism, introduced to five women who each, in their own brave and defiant way, save Moses’ life, and drawn into some of the most compelling dialogue in the Bible. I’ve always been most captivated by the back-and-forth between God and a mortal — the honesty, the tension, the rawness. So it’s no surprise these opening chapters of Exodus thrill me.
Strong Symbolism Between Genesis and Exodus
We’re told at the start of Exodus, 1:5 The total number of persons that were of Jacob’s issue came to seventy, Joseph being already in Egypt. And right after that, 1:7 But the Israelites were fertile and prolific; they multiplied and increased very greatly; As Professor Nahum Sarna points out, the specific language used here, “multiply and increase” echos what God instructs all living creatures all over the earth (Genesis 1:28) in the beginning of Genesis.
A new king rose over Egypt, a king who did not know Joseph. Who does not remember all the good Joseph had done, saving the land from famine. Amazing, right? Barely one generation later, all the good is wiped away. Do you remember how favorably the last king felt towards the people of Israel? One generation earlier, Joseph was a savior; now his people are a threat.
Our new Pharaoh does not appreciate how numerous the Israelites are becoming, worried in the event of war, they may join Egypts enemies in fighting against them. So they: 1. set taskmasters over the Israelites, 2. ruthlessly impose hardships on them, 3. make them perform harsh labors, and 4. make their lives bitter.
The bitterness is what gets me. It’s one thing to impose hard labor and cruel conditions — but to deliberately make a person’s life bitter on top of that feels especially inhumane. That’s exactly why we eat bitter herbs at the Passover seder: not just to remember suffering, but to taste it. I happen to love horseradish (and yes, I have a fantastic vegetable dish with a horseradish butter sauce — remind me to share it), but on this night, it isn’t about enjoyment. It’s about remembering the bitterness.
And most damning of them all, the king of Egypt tasks the Hebrew midwives with killing any newborn boy, though allowing newborn girls to live. Soon, Pharaoh realizes this is not happening, he confronts our brave midwives, and they lie to him about it. God rewards the midwives for their bravery. So Pharaoh implores his people with drowning every newborn boy. Dennis Prager notes, “Only through the cooperation of the masses can mass evil be committed.”
We’re introduced to Moses parents, a husband and wife from the house of Levi, who decide to hide their beautiful baby boy, and when baby Moses can be hidden no longer, his mother puts him in a wicker basket [Hebrew word used is tevah, the same word used for Noah’s ark (Genesis 7:1), for some strong Genesis symbolism], and places him into the Nile. We all know what happens next, Pharaoh’s daughter bathes in the Nile, spies the basket, the crying baby, acknowledges it “must be a Hebrew child,” and takes pity on him. Meanwhile, Moses sister, Miriam, had followed the basket to learn what would befall of it. She approaches Pharaoh’s daughter and, in what can only be described with strength and bravery, offers to fetch a Hebrew wet-nurse for the baby. Pharaoh’s daughter agrees, even kindly offering to pay the wet-nurse (who will end up being Moses’ mother) for her time. When the baby is weaned (around the age of three), he is brought back to Pharaoh’s daughter, who made him her son, and names him Moses, “I drew him out of the water.”
We’re not given much access to Moses’ inner life, but we are shown his reflexes. He knows he’s a Hebrew, and when he goes out among his people and sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew man, something in him snaps. He kills the Egyptian and hides the body in the sand. The next day, when he tries to intervene in a fight between two Hebrews, they throw his act back at him: Who made you judge? Will you kill us too? Moses realizes the secret is out. He’s afraid — not only of Pharaoh’s punishment, but of what his own actions have revealed — and he flees to Midian.
In Midian, Moses sits by a well, and almost immediately, the pattern repeats. The priest of Midian has seven daughters who come to draw water, only to be driven off by shepherds. Moses steps in again, unable to ignore injustice, and waters their flocks. Their father welcomes him into his home, and Moses eventually marries Zipporah. They have a son, whom Moses names Gershom — “I have been a stranger in a foreign land.” It’s a quiet but telling name. Moses has escaped Egypt, but he still does not belong anywhere. Even in safety, he understands himself as a man in exile.
God is Always There, Simply Waiting For Us to Take Notice
One day, while Moses is attending to the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, he comes to the mountain of God, where an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a fire out of a bush. Moses notices that the bush is ablaze with fire, yet the bush is not burning up. He can’t look away. 3:4 When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him out of the bush: “Moses! Moses!” He answered, “Here I am.” “Here I am.” That same familiar cadence God had with our patriarchs, “Abraham! Abraham!” (Genesis 22:11).
God tells Moses that He sees and notes the Israelites suffering, He’s coming down to rescue them, and plans to bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey. God has chosen Moses for the task of going to Pharaoh and freeing His people from Egypt. Moses puts up three objections:
- “Who am I?” – So humble, a shepherd in Midian didn’t think he was the appropriate person for the task, God answers that He will be with Moses.
- “Who are You?” – Moses doesn’t know how to refer to the God who was sending him, a complicated answer, the name is composed of the Hebrew letters YHVH, pronounced Adonai, meaning Lord. Though YHVH means “I am what I am,” or “I will be what I will be,” or “Is.” Because God simply, “Is.”
- “What if they do not believe me” – Valid. God then goes on to show him some tricks He has up His sleeve; a. turning the rod into a snake, b. sudden appearance and disappearance of leprosy, and finally, c. water from the Nile into blood.
After all these reassurances, God tells him; go to the elders, tell them, show them, then go to Pharaoh and ask for three days leave in the wilderness to pray to Me. God then outlines what will take place, the plagues, the eventual walking away, but not empty-handed, stripping the Egyptians of their silver, gold, and clothing. Rabbi Akiva explains in the Talmud, “All is foreseen, yet free will is granted.” Which is a bit chilling and sobering.
4:10 Please, O’Lord; I am slow of Speech and Slow of Tongue
Yet another objection, and yet another reassurance: God will be with Moses. Finally, Moses begs God to send someone else — the fifth objection. After five objections, God finally loses patience and recruits Aaron. It feels familiar — like a parent trying to get a child to do something hard, hearing excuse after excuse, and finally saying, “Fine. Get your sibling to help you.” As a mother of young children, this exchange made me laugh. God, I see you 🙂
Before he goes, Moses asks Jethro’s permission, and Jethro bids him to “go in peace.” God reassures Moses that those who sought to kill him back in Egypt are already dead, so Moses packs his wife, his sons, and heads back to Egypt, to make his request to Pharaoh. Though God does let him know ahead of time that He will stiffen Pharaohs heart so that he will not let the people go.
The next part of this chapter is a bit puzzling, comes out of nowhere, is only three lines, and the narrative moves on; 4:24-4:26 At a night encampment on the way, the Lord encountered him and sough two kill him. So Zipporah took a link and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched his legs with it, saying, “You are truly a bridegroom of blood to me!” And when He let him alone, she added, “A bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision.” It’s a bit odd. Umberto Cassuto argues it was Moses that God sought to kill, perhaps as a punishment for failing to circumcise his son. Either way, it’s one more example a woman in Moses’ orbit who saves his life. At the Shabbat Table this two days ago, over wine, my husband, my cousin, and I debated these bizarre three lines, gathering several books around the house to help us understand. It was fun, and reinforces how much I love Shabbat and the weekly parsha.
OK, moving on! The Lord tells Aaron to go meet his brother in the wilderness. The brother meet, and Moses relays everything The Lord told him. Then they assemble with the elders of the Israelites. The people were convinced.
“Who Is the Lord That I should Heed Him and Let Israel Go?”
Next up! Pharaoh. Moses and Aaron approach Pharaoh, and ask to let His people go so they may celebrate a festival in the wilderness. As God predicted, Pharaoh says no. Not only that, but he then charges the task masters with even harder labor for the Hebrews – they now must gather straw for brick making, while keeping the quota of bricks. Things are not looking good, now the Israelites are angry with Moses and Aaron. Moses questions God, 5:22 Then Moses returned to the Lord and said, “O Lord, why did You bring harm upon this people? Why did You send me? God’s answer does not acknowledge what Moses says. Which in the face of an accusation, means it must be true. God doubles down and informs Moses that he will soon see what he will do to Pharaoh, and that Pharaoh will indeed drive Israelites from the land.
Takeaways for the Week
- Lying is moral when it’s applied in the right ethical context.
- Exodus doesn’t begin with miracles. It begins with women refusing to cooperate with evil.
- God communicates with all of us, but it’s up to us to notice, just like the burning bush.