M. Where was God when the Egyptian Pharaoh was killing the Hebrews?

            As discussed in the essay on God, God only intervened in human events when His chosen people were in immediate danger of being totally annihilated thereby ending His grand experiment. As discussed, this is the reason God often intervened to save the Patriarchs and Matriarchs from death or assimilation into a foreign society.

However, here when the Pharaoh was killing the very people who would be the font of the nation of God’s chosen, God does not intervene. At first blush, this appears to be inconsistent with the above theory regarding God’s interference with human events. However, on closer inspection, it appears that God did intervene. First it was through the midwives’ refusal to carry out Pharaoh’s orders and then through saving of Moses. With these two actions, the nascent Jewish Nation was saved from total annihiliation.

    N. Exodus is a sea change in the religion

            The Exodus marks a sea change in the Jewish religion. Prior to the Exodus, God interacted with individuals (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, etc) or with clans, but never with the entire nation. After Exodus, God interacted with the entire Jewish Nation.

            Prior to Exodus, God walked with and talked with humans. Beginning at the Burning Bush incident, God refused to reveal His countenance to humans. In fact, Moses is specifically instructed not to approach the bush (“Do not come closer” Ex 3:5), and God refuses to be named by a human, and refuses to be named by a human (“Moses said to God, ‘When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘what is His name?’ what shall I say to them?’ And God said to Moses, ‘Ehyeh-Asher-Elyeh” (Ex 3:13-14). Further, after the Exodus, humans referred to God asYahweh, which can be translated to He Brings Into Existence Whatever Exists[1].” Thus, after the Exodus, the Jewish God had no name, no form, and humans were not permitted to look at God – all of which served to clearly separate God from humans. Prior to the Exodus, God was approachable by humans, after the Exodus, God was not remotely human and was separated from humans. This allowed the Jewish God to be portable and served to transform Judaism from a sacramental religion which requires physical structures and thus can disappear if those physical embodiments disappear, into a prophetic religion which can be practiced anywhere at any time by anyone, and this is portable and can be maintained even in exile and diaspora. This is the first time in recorded history that God is so separated from humans. This is also one of the reasons that Judaism survived while so many ancient religions, which were much more prevalent in Biblical times than Judaism, did not survive.

            Surther supporting the idea that Exodus is a sea change in the religion is a consideration of the story of the events occurring at Mt. Sinai (AKA Mt. Horeb). As many as fifty-eight chapters in the Bible can be associated with the events occurring at Mt. Sinai (from Exodus 19 all the way through numbers 10). The events at Sinai relate the moment when Israel’s God revealed Himself to the people as a whole for the first time, when these people heard His words directly, when these people entered into a covenant with their God which has bound them and their descendants ever since. Jews, and the Jewish nation, cannot be understood without an understanding of the events occurring at Mt. Sinai. These events concern both parties to the Covenant: God through His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob regarding the land that was promised to them (and now to the entire nation) if they were true to Him; and the people who promised to remain loyal to God and His requirements. Like characters in a play or novel, events cannot be understood without an understanding of the characters and the characters are understood by knowing and understanding their histories. The histories are presented in Genesis and Exodus and the ramifications are presented in the following books of the Bible. But the central, climax of the story is Mt. Sinai.

    O. God kills innocent Egyptian children

            One of the most troubling episodes in all the Hebrew Bible is the episode in which God kills all the first born sons of the Egyptians, including all the animals. This seems to be in direct contrast with God’s promise to Abraham prior to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in which God promised to refrain from destroying the cities if He could find ten innocent men. This also seems to be directly contrary to God’s assertion to Jonah in Jonah 4:11 that He would not destroy persons “who do not yet know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well!” As discussed in the essay “Sodom and Gomorrah” and other essays, one of the basic reasons that Abraham trusted God at Mt. Moriah was that Abraham learned that God will not destroy innocents.

            Yet the episode of the death of the first born in Exodus 12:29 states “In the middle of the night the Lord struck down all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh who sat on the throne to the first-born of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the first-born cattle.” This seems to fly in the face of not killing or punishing innocents. Why did God do it?

            The difference seems to lie in the different circumstances. In the situations in Sodom and Gomorrah and Nineveh, the transgressions were unnamed. However, even more important is the fact that in the situations of Sodom and Gomorrah and of Nineveh, it was not stated that the transgressions were against God’s own children. Whereas, in the Egyptian situation, the Egyptians were either directly killing or assimilating God’s children. Either action would destroy the Jewish Nation as the entire Jewish Nation resided in Egypt. As discussed in the essay “God’s Ground Rules,” God will intervene when there is danger of the entire experiment failing. This clearly fits this criterion[2].

            In this view, this situation might be closer to the situation which occurred at Shechem where Simeon and Levi destroyed the Shechemites and were not punished by God. In that case, the Shechemites were scheming to assimilate Jacob’s tribe (and hence the entire Jewish nation since Jacob’s tribe was the entirety of the Jewish nation) and God allowed Simeon and Levi to commit otherwise punishable acts in order to prevent this from happening. In that case, all were destroyed. Since all were destroyed, it seems logical that at least some were innocent. Thus, God destroyed the innocent as well as the guilty when His nation was imperiled. God did this again in Egypt at the Red Sea. Therefore, it seems to stand to reason that God would intervene again in this situation.

            The Egyptians had been repeatedly warned and they had not heeded. It was clear that they were not going to change their objective which would include the destruction of the Jewish nation. Thus, God punished all[3].

            Furthermore, it should be noted that in Ex 34:7, God promises to “visit the iniquity of the parents on the children and the children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations”. In the essay on Forgiveness, this edict is interpreted as being an outer limit of God’s punishment. That is, the punishment will not extend to those generations after the fourth generation. It should also be noted that according to the analysis of the time line of Exodus, this action was at the fourth generation. Also, it should be noted that this generation of Egyptians also transgressed, so the curse of 34:7 would be renewed. The transgression was thus doubled since the current one (refusing to allow God’s chosen to be free) is added to the old one (initially enslaving God’s children). Thus, this action of killing Egyptian children seems to be consistent with the curse of 34:7.

            Yet another explanation involves the view taken of children. That is, the authors of this section of the Bible did not have the same view of children as we do. While we are appalled at the killing of children, who were most likely innocent of any transgression which had offended Yahweh, the Biblical authors simply did not have that same view of children.

Either the Israelites who wrote this did not see children as persons, or their conception of personhood was a collective one that allowed children to be punished for the sins of parents.

If the Israelites, or some Israelites, thought children should be sacrificed, this seems indicative that children lacked personhood in their eyes. Other indications of this can be found in the fact that parents could sell off children to pay off debts the parents themselves had incurred (Exodus 21:7–11; Nehemiah 5) and that parents could control whether daughters who had been raped had to marry their rapists (Exodus 22:16–17, Gen 34) and whether drunkard sons should be executed for being drunks (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). Some Biblical texts describe children getting eaten in times of crisis (e.g., 2 Kings 6:28-29; Ezekiel 5:6-10; Lamentations 2:20, 4:10), and there is even a portrayal of Yahweh as threatening the Israelites with catastrophes so severe that they would devour their own children (Leviticus 26:27-29; Deuteronomy 28:53-57).

On the other hand, there are many stories of barren women longing for children (e.g., Sarah, Rachel, Hannah). But is this longing for progeny the same as assigning personhood to children?

At best, the Israelites held a view of personhood that allowed for collective punishment and saw children as low-level subordinates subject to the wishes and whims of parents—usually fathers. At worst, they were not seen as persons. There seems to be a sort of graduated personhood in some Biblical texts, with older children having more claim to personhood than infants. Israelite personhood was based on social role and physical maturity, not chronological age. This may be why it appears that it was infants rather than older children who were sacrificed. The exception to this, of course, is the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. However, this sacrifice did not occur, and as discussed in the essay Partners, it may even have been arranged not to occur before Abraham and Isaac set of for Mount Moriah in the story of the Akedah. At any rate, while there is a disparity over the personhood of children, or perhaps of infants in particular, it is clear that the Israelites, including the authors of this portion of the Bible, did not view children the same way we do.

    P. The animals of Egypt are punished as well

An adjunct to the above discussion of why God would kill children is found in the plague stories. In 9:9 we are told that the soot that Moses throws into the air will become “a fine dust all over the lland of Egypt, and cause an inflammation breaking out in boils on man and beast throughout the land of Egypt.” This is similar to the destruction of animals in Gen 7:21-23 (the flood story). In Gen 1:21-22, 28, we are told that animals are to be protected, and in Jonah 4:11, God tells Jonah that He does not punish “persons who do not yet know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well”. Still further, ne of the overarching themes of the Bible is that God does not punish innocents. This raises a question: Why would God punish animals (who are presumably innocent) for the transgressions of men?

One answer might be that by destroying the animals, God is removing food from humans. But why would God need to destroy otherwise innocent life[4] (which He created in Genesis) in order to punish humans when He could simply go straight to the source and directly punish humans, which He did? Why go after innocent animals as well? Couldn’t God be more precise in His punishment and not have to use the shotgun approach of killing everything?

            One possible explanation is that God wanted to demonstrate to everyone, the Pharaoh, the Egyptians and the Israelites, that if He is defied enough times, that He will be willing to destroy everything, even His own[5], in punishing the defiance and transgression. A message is being sent: defy God enough and He is willing to go way over the line to punish (9:15: “I have spared you for this purpose: In order to show you My power, and in order that My fame may resound throughout the world.”), and when He does, nothing and nobody will be safe or spared and there is absolutely nothing you or your gods can do to stop Him[6].Stated another way: defy God enough and His punishment might go well beyond being “proportional to the transgression,” or “fitting the crime” so you cannot make a calculation that includes being able to predict the punishment so you can calculate if the transgression is worth the punishment (commiting the crime because you are willing to “do the time” that you predict will be associated with the punishment).

Furthermore, along the lines of God sending a message that, if provoked sufficiently, He will be willing to punish anybody and everybody, is found in a comparison of Ex 12:13 and Ex 12:23. In Ex 12:13, God says that the blood on the doorpost is a signal for Him to pass over, yet in v. 23, God refers to a third entity, the Destroyer, “He will see the blood on the lntel and the two doorposts, and the Lord will pass over the door and not let the Destroyer enter and smite your home.” Who is the Destroyer? Is the Destroyer constantly on the lookout for transgressors and only held at bay by God? The Destroyer is like a mad dog being restrained on a leash held by God and there is a constant threat that the Destroyer will be unleashed and will indiscriminately destroy everybody and everything. This seems to be a threat that it is only God’s protection that prevents this catastrophe. If it is interpreted as a threat, the threat is consistent with the suggestion that God killing innocent children is a threat that He will punish even His own.

The interpretation of this being a threat seems to be supported in Ex 15:26 where God says “If you heed the Lord your God diligently, doing what is upright in His sight, giving ear to His commandments and keeping all His laws, then I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians,.…” God is threatening the people, and they surely remember that He had innocent children and animals killed (by the Destroyer), so they clearly understood that they were not protected merely because they were God’s chosen.

            Also, as discussed in the essay “Teshuvah and Repentance,” the process of repentance includes several steps (identifying the transgression; accepting our responsibility in the transgression; identifying the consequences associated with the transgression; understanding how our acts are connected with and caused the consequences; correcting the consequences), and includes a final step of not repeating the transgression if the occasion arises again. It is this last step that Pharaoh (and hence the Egyptian people and advisors who could influence Pharaoh[7]) failed at. Every time Pharaoh agreed to repent and God removed the plague in response, Pharaoh reneged on this when the opportunity arose again. Hence, Pharaoh never repented. This story is cited in that essay as providing a primer to those reading or listening to the Bible on the steps necessary for repentance and Teshuvah.

These explanations fit the above-discussed action of killing Egyptian children.

    Q. “then they will leave with great wealth” Gen. 15:13-14.

            Several times in the Exodus story we are told that the slaves should take gold, silver, jewels, garments and the like from the Egyptians prior to leaving[8]. This act is troubling on several levels. First, it seems that on a basic reasoning level, it does not seem to make sense that one could go to one’s neighbors and have them give you their wealth. On a practical level, it does not seem reasonable for the slaves to take the time and go to this trouble when they were fleeing for their lives. Also on a practical level, it does not seem reasonable for fleeing slaves to burden themselves with booty of this sort. On a theological level, Jacob chastised Levi and Simeon for plundering Schechem during the Dinah incident, Joshua warns the invaders against plundering the country. On a modern level, it seems disturbing that slaves would plunder from their neighbors just before fleeing the country.

Freedom is what they wanted. Why bother to plunder their neighbors? In fact, the promise to Abraham did not state that the “great wealth” would come at the expense of their neighbors. Why not just “go”?

            Could this be considered recompense for their years of slavery? Could this be why Pharaoh’s army pursued the fleeing slaves – to regain the plunder? Was it a way to show that God had power over the Egyptians so He could cause them to give up their wealth to His chosen people? Was it tribute paid by a conquered people as a way to show that the Egyptians had surrendered to the Jews? Were the Jews reclaiming property that had been taken from them during their sojourn in Egypt (they had property when the tribe of Jacob initially entered Egypt and one would assume that the property multiplied as much as the population went from seventy or so to six hundred thousand)?  Was it recompense for their years of unpaid slave labor (see Deuteronomy 15:14-16)? Was it an incentive to persuade people (both reluctant Jews and converts) to go (maybe this is why the promise is repeated several times)[9]? Plunder is a form of stealing, and stealing is a sin, this is troubling for the people who would covenant with their God not to steal (it would seem that this commandment would apply even before the ten commandments and even to people who were not physically in the Promised Land, but Noahide Law forbids robbery, so this is no excuse). Could this have been a payoff by the Egyptians to get rid of these troublesome and dangerous people? Could this have been a way of assuaging later readers’ fears of being penniless in a foreign land – God provided earthly means of self-support while fleeing. Along this line, it is noted that in Ex 13:18, it is said that the ”Israelites went up armed out of the land of Egypt….” Which seems to support the theory that the reader should not feel fear for the fleeing slaves. Some of the things that they may have taken may have been in the nature of a security blanket as well.

            A possible explanation is that because this act has God’s blessing, it is showing that God keeps His promises to those who remain true to Him. God promised Abraham in Genesis 15 that his descendants would be slaves in a strange land for four hundred years but they would “leave with great wealth” and the ones who fled Egypt clearly were being true to God. This would serve as a reminder to all those who follow to remain true to God. If one remains true to God, he or she will be rewarded, if not in this life then in the next. Taking wealth from their neighbors in order to “leave with great wealth” might mean that while one will be rewarded for remaining faithful, one must also work for his gain and not simply sit back and wait for it – “God helps those who help themselves”.

    R. “the Lord encountered him and sought to kill him.”

            Yet another troubling and enigmatic passage in this story occurs in Exodus 4:24-26 where God encounters Moses at a night encampment and seeks to kill Moses. But quickly thinking and acting, Zipporah “took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched his legs with it” thereby persuading God to “let him alone.” This passage is troubling and mysterious. Why would God wish to murder Moses, the very person He chose to lead His people out of Egypt and start a new nation of God’s chosen people? Such and act might defeat God’s intended purpose and, quite possibly, lead to the destruction of the grand experiment God began in Genesis and modified at the Flood and at the Tower of Babel as well as with the patriarchs of Genesis?

            The explanation seems to be answered by the covenant Abraham made with God in Genesis 17:9-14, specifically, 17:11-12 “ you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and that shall be the sing of the covenant between Me and you. And throughout the generations, every male among you shall be circumcised at the age of eight days.” Clearly, circumcision marks a male as being a member of the covenant, likewise, non-circumcision marks the male as being a non-member of the covenant. By not circumcising his son, Moses was excluding him from the covenant. By excluding his son from the covenant, Moses was saying to God that he did not believe. By declaring non-belief, Moses disqualified himself from the leadership role God had chosen for him. Since Moses was privy to God’s plans, if he was an outsider, he was dangerous to God’s plans as he might very well go over to the Egyptians, God’s enemy. He might even be a spy. As such, Moses had to be destroyed.

            A further reason, connected to the above, was that God had planned to kill the first born males of the Egyptians as the final plague. God would identify these Egyptian males because they were not circumcised. If Moses’s son was not circumcised, God may, inadvertently, kill the main link between Himself and the newly created Israeli nation.

            God’s action also demonstrates how seriously He took the covenant. He was actually willing to kill his chosen leader because he did not comply with his duty under the covenant. Much like God tested Abraham, God may have been testing Moses. If this is so, one wonders if it was Moses who passed the test or Zipporah.

            Since the leader of a nation sets the tone for the nation, by not circumcising his son, Moses was setting a tone of non-compliance with the covenant – something God simply could not have. By attempting to murder Moses, God set the tone He wanted: observance of the covenant by all in the new nation. The new nation would start out at its very inception knowing that it was part of a covenant and that all in the nation had a duty to comply with the covenant. By threatening His chosen leader, God signaled that the heretofore personal covenant (as between individual patriarchs in Genesis and God) has become a national covenant between the nation and God.

            Yet a further aspect of this story is found in the concept of repentance. As discussed elsewere, repentance includes several steps: identifying the transgression; accepting one’sresponsibility in the transgression; identifying the consequences associated with the transgression; understanding how one’s acts are connected with and caused the consequences; correcting the consequences; understanding what has to be done so we do not repeat the act. Zipporah’s actions fit these steps. As also discussed elsewhere, God warns of a transgression, then waits for the transgressor to repent and only punishes when the transgressor fails to repent (see, for example the essay Sodom and Gomorrah, see also in the story of Exodus where Pharaoh is given five opportunities to change his mind and repent before God, in Ex 9:8 after an interlude simply brings the plague of dust down onto Egypt without Moses or Aaron giving warning to Pharaoh – God had warned, given opportunity to repent, and then punished). In this instance, Zipporah’s actions clearly demonstrated repentance therefore God did not punish. This also explains why God did not simply destroy Moses without further ado. God wanted to give Moses a chance to repent. This story can be read in conjunction with the story of Jonah. In that story as in this story, non-Jews who are living outside the geographic area of the Promised Land are shown to repent and thus avoid God’s punishment. Both stories demonstrate that the power of repentance is not limited to Jews, and is not restricted to the geographic boundaries of the Promised Land. Indeed, the power of repentance and Teshuvah is truly unlimited.

Continuing the idea of viewing this incident through the lens of repentance provides a further aspect of this story. This episode could be related to Moses’s initial refusal of the call. That is, Moses initially (and quite recently) demonstrated a reluctance to follow God’s instructions. Not circumcising his son may be further demonstration that Moses had not yet accepted this entity as God. This could be a continuation of God’s anger. Still further, it could be that the events in 4:1-17 were a form of warning to Moses which the failure of Moses to circumcise his son showed that Moses had not heeded the warning and God was about to punish Moses.

            In any event, these adverse outcomes were avoided by the quick thinking and action of Zipporah. By acting as she did, Zipporah signaled that all members of the new nation, including women, would honor the covenant. Zipporah’s action may even have saved the nation because God may have walked away from this episode and waited for another suitable candidate for leadership came along. This may have taken so long that the slaves become totally assimilated into Egyptian society and become irredeemable.

            Zipporah’s action is made even more remarkable when it is considered that she was neither Jewish nor Egyptian so she had no blood affinity to either Moses or the people of the nation that Moses was charged with forming and leading. Perhaps it was because of this that she was able to keep her wits about her when she and her family encounter this powerful entity seeking to kill her husband. Had she been a true believer in Moses’s God, she may have been in so much fear and awe that she would be frozen and unable to think or act.

            One question that begs to be addressed is how did Zipporah know what to do, especially in light of the fact that she was not even Jewish, and why did she have a flint handy? One possible approach to this answer might be found in the analysis of this event offered by Rashi: Rashi seeks to excuse Moses’s failure to circumcise his son by using the exception to the rule that one can delay the circumcising past the eight day time limit due to a journey to avoid danger to the child. Assuming that the child was born just prior to Moses and Zipporah setting out on their journey to Egypt, this exception might apply. Thus, perhaps the couple had considered circumcising the child, and may even have gathered the instruments to perform the ceremony, yet had to stop in order to begin their journey. Thus, Zipporah would have been aware of the need for the circumcision ceremony and would have had the flint saved from the interrupted ceremony.

    S. An alternative view

            An alternative view of the plagues might help resolve this issue. As discussed above, it is feasible that the “plagues” actually were natural events associated with flooding of the Nile and were used by later authors of the Bible as part of their theocentered fictional story of the exodus to enhance their story and the point being made. This would explain why the Egyptian people suffered from the plagues when they really had no say in the issue of allowing the Israelites to leave whereby the plagues actually should have been directed at and specific to Pharaoh as he was the sole decision maker who was blocking the exodus. Why would God punish innocent Egyptians if He was battling with Pharaoh? The plagues being from natural causes explains why the Egyptian citizens were “punished.” The natural cause solution also makes the death of the Egyptian children more palatable than God murdering such innocent children.

    T. Another alternative view

            Yet another way to view this event which does not require punishment of innocent Egyptian citizens, is to view the plagues as being specific to and directed only at Pharaoh and his immediate advisors while not affecting anyone else. This will require a bit of verbal gymnastics to interpret the references to Egypt and Egyptians to be restricted to Pharaoh and his immediate advisors, but it does not seem totally unreasonable.

    U. Shared Motifs between the Biblical Story and Documented Egyptian Events

Based on what we have seen, the question might be asked: “should the historicity of the exodus still be denied by reason of absence of evidence? Or can we now invoke the familiar and all-too-true quip that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?”[10]

Actually, there is more to be said than that. Many details of the Exodus story do strikingly appear to reflect the realities of late-second-millennium Egypt, the period when the exodus would most likely have taken place—and they are the sorts of details that a scribe living centuries later and inventing the story afresh would have been unlikely to know:

• There is rich evidence that West-Semitic populations lived in the eastern Nile delta—what the Bible calls Goshen—for most of the second millennium. Some were slaves, some were raised in Pharaoh’s court, and some, like Moses, bore Egyptian names.
• We know today that the great pharaoh Ramesses II, who reigned from 1279 to 1213 BCE, built a huge administrative center out of mudbrick in an area where large Semitic populations had lived for centuries. It was called Pi-Ramesses. Exodus (1:11) specifies that the Hebrew slaves built the cities of Pithom and Ramesses, a possible reference to Pi-Ramesses. The site was abandoned by the pharaohs two centuries later.
• In the Exodus account, pharaohs are simply called “Pharaoh,” whereas in later biblical passages, Egyptian monarchs are referred to by their proper name, as in “Pharaoh Necho” (2 Kings 23:29). This, too, echoes usage in Egypt itself, where, from the middle of the second millennium until the tenth century BCE, the title “Pharaoh” was used alone.
• The names of various national entities mentioned in the Song at the Sea (Exodus 15:1-18)—Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, et al.—are all found in Egyptian sources shortly before 1200 BCE; about this, the book of Exodus is again correct for the period.
• The stories of the exodus and the Israelites’ subsequent wanderings in the wilderness reflect sound acquaintance with the geography and natural conditions of the eastern Nile delta, the Sinai Peninsula, the Negev, and Transjordan.
• The book of Exodus (13:17) notes that the Israelites chose not to traverse the Sinai Peninsula along the northern, coastal route toward modern-day Gaza because that would have entailed military engagement. The discovery of extensive Egyptian fortifications all along that route from the period in question confirms the accuracy of this observation.
• Archaeologists have documented hundreds of new settlements in the land of Israel from the late-13th and 12th centuries BCE, congruent with the biblically attested arrival there of the liberated slaves; strikingly, these settlements feature an absence of the pig bones normally found in such places. Major destruction is found at Bethel, Yokne’am, and Hatzor—cities taken by Israel according to the book of Joshua. At Hatzor, archaeologists found mutilated cultic statues, suggesting that they were repugnant to the invaders.
• The earliest written mention of an entity called “Israel” is found in the victory inscription of the pharaoh Merneptah from 1206 BCE. In it the pharaoh lists the nations defeated by him in the course of a campaign to the southern Levant; among them, “Israel is laid waste and his seed is no more.” “Israel” is written in such a way as to connote a group of people, not an established city or region, the implication being that it was not yet a fully settled entity with contiguous control over an entire region. This jibes with the Bible’s description in Joshua and Judges of a gradual conquest of the land. Some scholars date this stone inscription celebrating Merneptah’s victories as being around 1220 B.C.E.. This date, in conjunction with the building projects of Seti I and Ramses II employing slave labor in the fourteenth century and early thirteenth century B.C.E. seem to support a date of the Moses surge of the exodus as being somewhere around 1280 B.C.E. which seems to be consistent with the other evidence, such as the building of the Egyptian fortresses and the battle of Kadesh discussed in this essay.
• Further proof can be found in the fact that parts of the story told in Exodus are parallel to Egyptian religious practices. For example, additional data from Egyptian religious texts clarifies the terrifying tenth plague. The famous “Cannibal Hymn,” carved in the Old Kingdom pyramid of Unas at Saqqara, about 2300 B.C.E., states: “It is the king who will be judged with Him-whose-name-is-hidden on that day of slaying the first born.” Variations of this verse appear in a few Coffin Texts, magic texts derived from royal pyramid inscriptions of the Old Kingdom and written on the coffins of nobility of the Middle Kingdom, about 2000 B.C.E. For example, “I am he who will be judged with Him-whose-name-is-hidden on that night of slaying the first born. Although the first-born referred to in the Coffin Text and probably also in the “Cannibal Hymn” are the first-born of gods, these texts indicate that an ancient tradition in Egypt recalled the slaying of all or some of the first-born of gods on a particular night. Assuming that some form of this pre-Israelite Egyptian tradition was known during the period of the enslavement, it may have motivated the story of the final plague. However, in the biblical story, he who revealed his hidden name to Moses at the burning bramble bush revealed himself as the Him-whose-name-is-hidden of the Egyptian myth, and alone slew the first-born males of Egypt. In this final plague, then, there was no conflict between the Lord and an Egyptian deity; rather through this plague the triumphant god of Israel fulfilled the role of an anonymous destroyer in a nightmarish prophecy from the Egyptian past.
• There is historic evidence of an ongoing Semitic presence in Egypt throughout the 2^nd millennium B.C.E. These people probably migrated to Egypt as a result of famine in their homeland. The Egyptians referred to these people in general as “Asiatics,” and this group of people were further differentiated into subgroups which included Amu, Shasu, Shamu, Mentu, and Apiru. The Asiatics were, in general, most unfavorably viewed by the Egyptians.

Of course, some scholars maintain that remnants like the Merneptah stele tell us nothing at all about a supposed exodus, only that there existed a nomadic entity named Israel in the land of Canaan in 1206 BCE, who for all we know could have been an indigenous people. Others, however, basing themselves on the same stele, suggest that we should date the exodus of the Israelites to a period shortly before the inscription was written—namely, to the reign of Ramesses II.

As a further example, consider the familiar biblical refrain that God took Israel out of Egypt “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” The Bible could have employed that phrase to describe a whole host of divine acts on Israel’s behalf, and yet the phrase is used only with reference to the exodus. This is no accident. In much of Egyptian royal literature, the phrase “mighty hand” is a synonym for the pharaoh, and many of the pharaoh’s actions are said to be performed through his “mighty hand” or his “outstretched arm.” Nowhere else in the ancient Near East are rulers described in this way. What is more, the term is most frequently to be found in Egyptian royal propaganda during the latter part of the second millennium.

Why would the book of Exodus describe God in the same terms used by the Egyptians to exalt their pharaoh? We see here the dynamics of appropriation. During much of its history, ancient Israel was in Egypt’s shadow. For weak and oppressed peoples, one form of cultural and spiritual resistance is to appropriate the symbols of the oppressor and put them to competitive ideological purposes. It might be concluded that in its telling of the exodus the Bible appropriates far more than individual phrases and symbols—that, in brief, it adopts and adapts one of the best-known accounts of one of the greatest of all Egyptian pharaohs.

Here a few words of background are in order. Like all great ancient empires, ancient Egypt waxed and waned. The zenith of its glory was reached during the New Kingdom, roughly 1500-1200 BCE. It was then that its borders reached their farthest limits and many of the massive monuments still visible today were built. Ramesses II, also known fittingly as Ramesses the Great, reigned from 1279 to 1213.

Ramesses’ paramount achievement, which occurred early in his reign, was his 1274 victory over Egypt’s arch-rival, the Hittite empire, at the battle of Kadesh,  a town located on the Orontes River on the modern-day border between Lebanon and Syria (it should be noted that both side to this conflict claimed victory which seems to indicate an inconclusive outcome). Upon his return to Egypt, Ramesses inscribed accounts of this battle on monuments all across the empire. Ten copies of the inscriptions exist to this day. These multiple copies make the battle of Kadesh the most publicized event anywhere in the ancient world, the events of Greece and Rome not excepted. Moreover, the texts were accompanied by a new creation: bas reliefs depicting the battle, frame by frame, so that—much as with stained-glass windows in medieval churches—viewers illiterate in hieroglyphics could learn about the pharaoh’s exploits.

Enter now a longstanding biblical conundrum. Scholars had long searched for a model, a precursor that could have inspired the design of the Tabernacle that served as the cultic center of the Israelites’ encampment in the wilderness, a design laid out in exquisite verbal detail in Exodus 25-29. Although the remains of Phoenician temples reveal a floor plan remarkably like that of Solomon’s temple[11] (built, as it happens, with the extensive assistance of a Phoenician king), no known cultic site from the ancient Near East seemed to resemble the desert Tabernacle. Then, some 80 years ago, an unexpected affinity was noticed between the biblical descriptions of the Tabernacle and the illustrations of Ramesses’ camp at Kadesh in several bas reliefs.

In images of the Kadesh battle, the walled military camp occupies the large rectangular space. The camp is twice as long as it is wide. The entrance to it is in the middle of the eastern wall. At the center of the camp, down a long corridor, lies the entrance to a 3:1 rectangular tent. This tent contains two sections: a 2:1 reception tent, and, leading westward from it, a domed square space that is the throne tent of the pharaoh.

All of these proportions are reflected in the prescriptions for the Tabernacle and its surrounding camp in Exodus 25-27. The resemblance of the military camp at Kadesh to the Tabernacle goes beyond architecture; it is conceptual as well. For Egyptians, Ramesses was both a military leader and a divinity. In the Torah, God is likewise a divinity, obviously, but also Israel’s leader in battle (see Numbers 10:35-36). The tent of God the divine warrior parallels the tent of the pharaoh, the living Egyptian god, poised for battle.

What have scholars made of this observation? All agree that no visual image known to us from the ancient record so closely resembles the Tabernacle as does the Ramesses throne tent. Nor is there any textual description of a cultic tent or throne tent in a military camp that matches these dimensions. On this basis, some scholars have indeed suggested that the bas reliefs of the Kadesh inscriptions inspired the Tabernacle design found in Exodus 25-27. In their thinking, the Israelites reworked the throne tent ideologically, with God displacing Ramesses the Great as the most powerful force of the time. (For the Torah, of course, God cannot be represented in an image and requires no protection, and pagan deities have no standing, which is why, instead of falcons and Horus, we have cherubim hovering protectively over the ark bearing the tablets of His covenant with Israel.) Others suspect that the image of the throne tent initially became absorbed within Israelite culture in ways that we cannot trace and was later incorporated into the text described in Exodus, but with no conscious memory of Ramesses II. Still others remain skeptical, considering the similarities to be merely coincidental.

An examination of the text describing the battle of Kadesh and the Biblical account of the exodus from Egypt seems to confirm the conclusion that the story of Exodus was based on the text of the Battle of Kadesh. It may be reasonable to claim that the narrative account of the splitting of the sea (Exodus 14) and the Song at the Sea (Exodus 15) may reflect a deliberate act of cultural appropriation. If the Kadesh inscriptions bear witness to the greatest achievement of the greatest pharaoh of the greatest period in Egyptian history, then the book of Exodus claims that the God of Israel overmastered Ramesses the Great by several orders of magnitude, effectively trouncing him at his own game.

Thus, it seems that the story of Exodus parallels the story of the Egyptian Battle of Kadesh. The totality of the parallels, plus the large number of highly distinctive motifs that appear in these two works alone seems to confirm this conclusion. No other battle account known to us either from the Hebrew Bible or from the epigraphic remains of the ancient Near East provide even half the number of shared narrative motifs exhibited here.

V.The Levites

The Levites are characterized in the Bible as a theopolitical ruling elite who had a key role in the government of the country and influence over all other tribes as well as in selecting kings and influencing kings. The Levites are depicted as having so many special privileges and duties as to be the “chosen among the chosen.” It is also noted that Moses, Aaron and Miriam were said in the bible to be descendents of Jacob’s son Levi and hence were Levites. As such, it would be worthwhile to determine who the model was for the Biblical Levites.

Based on similarities, there is basis for concluding that the High Priests from the House of Amun in Thebes served as the model for the Biblical Levites[12]. Furthermore, since the Levites had such special atttibutes, duties and privileges, it seems reasonable to conclude that they were special and different from the remainder of the population. This fits with how Egyptian High Priests were viewed. These people probably merged with the religious groups of the indegineous population over time as discussed elsewhere.

It might also be observed that after some time, while it merged with the religion of the indigeneous population (Yawheh), the religion of the immigrants became the dominant religion, or at least a significant portion of the dominant religion, of the country. This suggests that the leaders of the immigrant religion had significant influence over the people. This, in turn, suggests that those leaders were educated, wealthy and strong and accustomed to leading. This fits the model of the High Priests of Egyptian religions.

    W.  Exodus and the Holocaust

            Note that this situation again begs a discussion of the Holocaust. See the essay “Exodus and the Holocaust.” While the Nazis had the intent to exterminate the Jewish nation, they did not have the means as so many Jews lived in nations that would not be subject to the Nazi objective. Therefore, the Holocaust was not analogous to the situation in Egypt. The Egyptians and the Shechemites both had the intent and the means to carry out the objective; the Nazis may have had the intent but they did not have the means. Furthermore, it is noted that the Nazis were defeated, by humans and not by God. Thus, the result was the same, it was just that we did it ourselves and the Jewish Egyptians needed God’s assistance as there was no one else who could rescue them.

IV. Overview of possible explanation of the Exodus from Egypt as reported in the Book of Exodus

            As discussed above, the story of Exodus might be totally factual, totally fictional, or partially fictional but based on some facts. This portion of the essay will further develop the last option.

Since, based on archeological evidence as well as ecological evidence, it appears that the exodus of 600,000 men from Egypt in one night and their subsequent sojourn in the desert for forty years does not seem factual, the story may have been fictional. This begs the question of why is this story included in the Bible and why is it told in the manner it is? This portion of the essay will explore a possible reason.

            The reason begins with the proposition that Bible stories are intended to answer the questions of “Who am I?” and “How did I arrive at this particular time, place and situation?” The story of the Exodus from Egypt is intended to answer this question posed by people living in either Judah or Babylonia during the Second Temple period.

            As discussed in the essay “Monotheism,” the archeological evidence is that sometime prior to 1200 B.C.E., a group of people immigrated to the Hill Country of Canaan to escape persecution in the big cities. These people adopted a god that was superior to the gods of the people in the cities as a way of ensuring their survival against a potential attack by those people. This god was believed to be dominant and the only god. It was a Yahweh-only religion. This religion was, if not actually monotheistic, it was a pre-monotheistic religion. As also discussed in that essay, sometime around 1200 B.C.E., a group of people immigrated into this area. This group of people may have been small (certainly not 600,000) and was led by a charismatic leader whom the Bible named Moses. This group was identified as the “Moses-led” group of people. This group settled with the indigenous people and adopted their religion. Hence, the Moses-led group of people adopted the Yahweh-only religion.

            As discussed in that essay, over time, this Yahweh-only religion became monotheistic. The religion took hold and by the time of the First Temple, it was the dominant religion of Judah. Certainly, by the time of the Second Temple, it was dominant in Judah, and was taken with the people when they were exiled to Babylonia. Much archeological evidence suggests that much of the Hebrew Bible was written during this exile period. This work was written using stories both written and oral from the past along with historical and physical evidence available to the authors at the time. Since biblical people generally believed that if they were conquered the conquering people have a god that is stronger than their god. This could not hold for a monotheistic Yahweh-only religion. Thus, the authors drafted their stories to have Yahweh supreme and merely using the polytheists as tools to punish transgressions of the Hebrew people.

            The perfect way to prove Yahweh’s superiority was to have him defeat the greatest empire in existence at that time and who worshipped another god: Egypt. It was a double win to have this great empire defeated by a small group of helpless people: slaves because their god was superior to the god of Egypt. Therefore, the story of Exodus was written to first get these people to Egypt, then to have them defeat Egypt and then to have them move to the land that was then Judah. Thus, the story was written with the end result in mind before the story was even drafted. The stories both preceding the exodus from Egypt and following that were all drafted to get the people to be (1) Jewish and monotheistic (to answer the question “Who am I?”); and (2) living in Judah or Babylonia at the time (to answer the question “How did I arrive at this time, place and situation?”). An additional benefit of the stories would be as an instruction manual on how to maintain proper relations with the chosen god, Yahweh, so he would continue to help and protect them (as he did to first get them to Egypt and then to free them from Egypt).

V. The story of Exodus as a metaphor

            As a story of deliverance from oppression, the birth of freedom, and the divine sanction of human rights and responsibilities, the Exodus story has served as a metaphor for over two and a half millennia. From Second Isaiah to Nelson Mandela, the images and ideas of the Exodus persist. There is something in the story that pertains to the human spirit irrespective of cultural difference. The human condition is illuminated by the encounters of Moses and pharaoh, Yahweh and Israel, the holy mountain and the Promised Land. The Exodus is a paradigm, or a congeries of paradigms, of human oppression and salvation in the temporal horizon of the grand sweep of history.

            Freedom is not “freedom from constraint”, but really the ability to act in one’s own best interests. When a person is released from slavery, they no longer have someone ordering them to do this or that. They have become their own master. This, for the Torah, is the precondition for human dignity.

            If you are a slave (or at least an indentured servant or a conscripted captive, or the like), someone else is determining your future, what path you are on, what path you can follow, even how you follow a given path. When you are enslaved, you are only permitted to place one foot in front of the other. This is not the situation God wanted for the people He chose to spread His teachings. In this manner, the story of Exodus could be a metaphor for all oppressed groups, and their fight for freedom and dignity.

            As a note, it may be possible to envision the Exodus as not a group of pre-chosen people fleeing Egypt, but the Hebrew slaves as being allegories for all people living in that time, especially in Egypt. At that time, nearly everyone had their life preset, the peasants were always destined to be peasants, even the rulers were controlled by the High Priests, who, in turn, were controlled by the rules and laws of the religion. No one – from peasant to ruler – was free. To quote Rousseau, “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” The Exodus story could have been written by the sages for the people of the diaspora who were homeless and outsiders to give them courage and reasons to remain true to their heritage. Perhaps the sages simply began the story with those escaping such slavery, and that “slavery” did not literally mean people in physical chains forced to build pyramids, but simply people who wanted to be free to determine their own destinies and to exercise their own free wills. The sages then may have written the story of Genesis to tell how the people who left Egypt got to Egypt in the first place.

            In other words, the story of Exodus is an allegory and is a story written during a diaspora of the birth of nation and which leads to the diaspora and which provides reasons for the rules associated with the Covenant by which the people who had been inhabitants of the land of Israel but who were now exiled had to live by if they were to remain a viable people. Perhaps this is a reason the Pharaoh during this time is not named: there was no one particular “Pharaoh” or none at all, it is simply written that there was “a Pharaoh” because a Pharaoh was needed only as a plot device or plot element for the story[13]. The Exodus story could almost be a Genesis-type story for the nation of Israel as opposed to humanity in general which was the focus in Genesis. In such a case, the Exodus story could almost begin “In the beginning, God took the nation of Israel into the desert……..” In such an interpretation, the kingdom of Egypt would be equivalent to the chaos which existed in the beginning of Genesis and the Pharaoh was only a representative of that chaos and over whom God triumphed as He did in the beginning of Genesis. As such, there would be no need to actually name a particular leader.

            Also, perhaps Moses being prohibited from entering the Promised Land was more of a metaphor than a punishment. Moses represented the past: the people were slaves in Egypt, then they were nomads in the desert. However, they were a new nation when they entered the Promised Land. Perhaps they should shed their ties to the past and focus on the future. One way of shedding the past is to replace the leaders who led in the past. Thus, the Hebrew nation needed to shed Moses as a symbolic way of shedding the past and entering a new future in a new land.

            Parallels between stories in the New Testament and the Exodus story

There seems to be a parallel between the Exodus story and stories in the New Testament. For example, regarding the link between the Exodus from Egypt and the death of Jesus, Father Origen in the third century CE, stated “We were served at this time in Egypt, so we are save at this time now.”  Further parallels include:

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke identify Jesus’s last supper with the Passover Seder:  “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” – Luke 22:10; Jesus celebrates the memory of Israel’s past and he exhorts his followers to celebrate his own memory; the redemption from Egypt is replaced with the redemption that Jesus.

It is not an accident that Jesus’s crucifixion occurs on Passover as God is saving the Christians as He saved the Jews in Egypt.  

Paul analogizes baptism with the crossing of the Red Sea.

Prior to the destruction of the Temple, a lamb was sacrificed for the Passover Service; the Gospel of John refers to Jesus as the “Lamb of God” (John 1:29, 36); Paul “Our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.” (1 Cor 5:7).

Irenaeus: “He saved the children of Israel, showing forth in a mystery the passion of Christ by the immolation of a spotless lamb and its blood…and the name of this mystery is the Passover.”

Many, such as Eusebius and Martin Luther, have suggested that the Eucharist originally replaced the Passover. The Passover Seder places the participants in the event (as stated in the Haggadah: “In every generation a man must so regard himself as if he came forth himself out of Egypt”); in the Eucharist, the act of consuming the bread and wine implicates the  worshipper in the eternal salvation of Jesus. Martin Luther: “Christians should remember our exodus from Egypt, and in remembrance of it return to Him who brought us through the washing of the new birth. Now this we can do most advantageously of all in the sacrament of the bread and wine.”

THOUGHTS ON EXODUS

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. The essay has several suggestions as to what happened during the Exodus. What do you think happened?
2. What do you think about God’s actions during this episode? Could it be that God was the one with the hard heart, and not Pharaoh? Maybe Pharaoh wanted to free the slaves, but God “hardened” Pharaoh’s heart. Maybe God was the intransigent one, not Pharaoh. Do you think someone could have argued for (and hence saved) the Egyptians in the manner of Moses arguing for the Israelites during the Golden Calf episode or Abraham during the Sodom and Gomorrah episode?
3. The essay suggests that the Egyptian children were killed after God had repeatedly warned the Egyptians to let the Jews go. However, wouldn’t it have been just as effective, and far less reprehensible, if the Egyptian leaders – adults – would have been killed? Why kill children? Certainly, it appears to be proper restitution for the Pharaoh’s order to kill the Jewish first born. But one would think that God is above such payback. What do you think?
4. Do you think Moses was aware of God’s plan to kill the children?
5. How could Moses be a part of such a plan?
6. Do you think Aaron and Miriam knew of the plan?
7. How could the Jewish slaves follow a leader who might have been part of a plan to murder children? Would you?
8. In Ex 3:6, Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God, yet it was not until much later, Ex 33:20, that God informs Moses that no man may see His face and still live. How did Moses know to hide his face? Natural human curiosity would seem to cause Moses to want to see what was happening (but see Numbers 12:8 where God states that Moses can behold the likeness of the Lord; however, the “likeness of the Lord” is not the same thing as seeing God’s face; on the other hand, in Ex 33:11, it is reported: “The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one man speaks to another.” Which is it, can humans see God’s face or not?). If you could behold God’s face, what do you think it would look like?
9. In Ex 15:20, it is reported that all the women followed Miriam and danced with timbrels. Where did the timbrels come from?
10. Exodus 17, the battle with Amalek is recounted. In Ex17:11, it is reported that “whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; but whenever he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed”. Why should the position of Moses’s hands have such a direct and immediate affect the battle?
11. Where are Moses’s sons, Gershom and Eliezer? There is virtually no report of them in the story of Exodus? What happened to them? One would think that they, like Isaac and Jacob, would be trained to carry on the work of their father. This same question seems to apply to Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu who actually defy the teaching of their father.

(Leviticus 10:1-3). What happened to them as well? Do you think the transgression of Aaron’s sons was sufficiently heinous to warrant their deaths? There is significant

1. In nearly every synagogue in the world, the Ten Commandments are represented as being evenly divided: five on one tablet and five on another tablet. Who decided on this even split? Who decided on the distribution? Who decided on the order? On what basis? Why not all ten on each tablet (and thus a duplicate copy is provided)? Do you think God kept a copy? If so, where did He keep it?
2. In Exodus, three people stood by Moses’s side: Aaron, Joshua and Hur. The story has a thorough presentation of Aaron and Joshua. But who is Hur? Hur supported Moses’s arms in Ex 17:10-12, and is a co-leader along with Aaron when Moses ascended Mt. Sinai in Ex 24:13-14. Hur disappears during the Golden Calf episode and is never again mentioned. Who was Hur and why did he disappear so suddenly? Josephus contends that Hur married Miriam which would create marital ties between the tribe of Levi (Miriam) and the tribe of Judah (Hur).
3. Could the Exodus story be read as a metaphor for one’s own journey; that is an allegory for the times we are hopelessly mired in misery, when we feel that there is no way out and our lives lack purpose – we are slaves at that point; and how we free ourselves from that slavery and make an exodus to freedom?
4. How would you explain Israel’s “enslavement” in Egypt? Was it to show Egypt’s fear or wickedness? Was it punishment for past sins? Was it to show the value of freedom by showing the suffering of slavery? Was it a practical result of Egyptian agrarian policies (of nationalizing all farms – ironically begun by Joseph to protect against the seven years of famine)? Or was the entire story a plot device to get the people to the time and place of the Temple as suggested in the essay, and used a small group of slaves leaving Egypt as the plot device? Or are we attributing a different definition of slavery to the actual circumstances of the people who left Egypt and who are used as the protagonists in the story?
5. Several of the plagues (blood, frogs, lice and possibly boils and locusts) affected the Hebrew slaves as well as the Egyptians. Why did God send plagues that would harm the very people He wanted to save? If the Hebrews would have been spared, it would have been a very clear sign that they were favored and may have cut the episode short and would certainly have convinced the Hebrews that this was God (but in Ex 10:23, there is some allusion that the Hebrews were spared, but this allusion is vague and open to argument – during the plague of darkness, the Hebrews had light in their homes – this could be artificial light and hence does not refute the premise of this question). Again, why would God have afflicted the Hebrews if He could have achieved His goal much more efficiently by sparing them?
6. Do you see a parallel between the Exodus story and the Garden of Eden story?
7. Jews celebrate the Exodus at the Passover Meal. This celebration uses the Haggadah as the guide for the celebration. The Haggadah tells the story of the Exodus and guides the celebrants in their ceremony. However, traditional Haggadot (the version of the text that was canonized in Ashkenazic, Sephardic or Yemenite traditions by the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, including the Maxwell House Haggadah) only mention Moses twice, once inferentially and once nearly in passing (some modern Haggadot do mention Moses by name). This clearly is not an accident. Why do you think the authors of the traditional Haggadot deliberately omitted any prominent mention of Moses?
8. Further to the previous question, the traditional Haggadot deliberately play down the presence of the Promised Land, Israel. Why do you think the authors of the traditional Haggadot deliberately omitted any prominent mention of Israel?
9. In the story of Exodus, the Reed Sea collapses on the Egyptian army killing all the Egyptians. However, the sea also drowned the horses pulling the Egyptian chariots. Why would God choose such an act that was intended to kill just the Egyptian army but also killed innocent animals as collateral damage? Couldn’t God have chosen another way to save the fleeing Hebrews that spared innocent animals?
10. In Exodus 19:6, God designates the nation as “a kingdom of priests,” what is a “kingdom of priests? Later, in Numbers 16, Korah leads a rebellion against Moses and bases his rebellion on the belief that this promise has already been fulfilled and that Moses and Aaron’s assumption of priestly power for themselves (“You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them…Why then do you raise yourselves above the Lord’s congregation?” Numbers 16:3) is unwarranted. What did Korah mean by this? How were the rights and duties of later kings affected if all the nation is a nation of priests? If everybody is a priest, how would the chief priest be chosen? By whom? What would be his powers?
11. Are there any similarities between the Exodus story and the story of Jacob and his family fleeing Laban? One similarity is the flight from an alien culture where the Jew has been exploited to go home. Are there others? What are the differences? One difference is clearly the difference between the outcome of the confrontation between the fleeing Hebrew slaves and the pursuing Egyptians and the outcome of the confrontation between Jacob and Laban. Is there a lesson to be learned by comparing and contrasting these two stories?
12. Do you see any similarity between the stories of Genesis and Exodus? Both stories have floods destroying pagans, both stories involve a plant (the Tree of Forbidden Fruit in Genesis and the burning bush in Exodus), both stories have a righteous man saving the nation (in Genesis it is Noah, in Exodus it is Moses), both stories feature a serpent, both stories involve an ark-like vehicle. Are these similarities without importance, or are they intentional echoes of each other?
13. Do you see any similarity between Moses and Joseph?
14. Do you see any similarity between Moses and Jonah? Both tried to get out of the task God was giving them, and God persisted with each.
15. Do you see any parallel between Moses and Hagar? Many indicents in the Hagar story are strikingly similar to corresponding incidents in the Moses story. Specifically, see Gen 16 and 31; and, for example, Gen 21:15 and Ex 3:2? Could Hagar have been a prototype for Moses? Could her son, Ishmael, be a prototype for Israel in the desert? Given the ultimate relation between the modern sons of Abraham and the modern sons of Ishmael, could there be a parallel between the modern descendents of the Israelites in the desert and the modern descendents of the indigenous population in the desert?
16. Do you see any connection of the Jonah story and Moses’s initial story? How do we know that the slaves Moses was tasked to rescue were believers? At the time of the initial encounter between Moses and God’s representative, could some, if not most, of the people being targeted for exodus have been closer to the people of Nineveh than to the people of the Jewish nation after Mt. Sinai?
17. Do you think Pharaoh had free will? Or did God usurp his free will? If so, why was Pharaoh punished since it was not his choice to prevent the Hebrews from leaving? What about God’s words to Jonah that He does not punish those who do not know their left hand from their right when referring to the pagans of Nineveh? Didn’t the Egyptians and Pharaoh qualify as pagans who did not know their left hand from their right? How do you justify God interfering with the free will of a human (Pharaoh)?
18. How do you think Biblical history would have changed if Pharaoh had elected to assimilate the Hebrews with full rights(respect the stranger) and use their abilities in ways better suited to their skills than manual labor such as building pyramids and the like (they did pretty well when Pharaoh used Joseph’s skills)?
19. A great deal of text in the Book of Exodus is dedicated to the building of the Tabernacle. Why do you suppose the people were required to build a home for God? Did God need a “home” (Ex 25:8 “And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.”)? What do you think the real purpose of this exercise was?
20. Are you satisfied with the way the Book of Exodus ends?
21. In Ex 1:9, Pharaoh states: “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us.” Supposedly a tribe of some seventy people had become “much too numerous” for the mightiest kingdom on earth in a matter of just four generations. Does this sound reasonable to you? If not, what do you think Pharaoh meant? Perhaps, “Israelite people” was a shorthand expression for the workers as a whole, like our modern labor unions.
22. Along these lines, don’t you think that if Pharaoh wanted to limit the Hebrew slave population, a more efficient way to do it would be to kill the female babies thus limiting the number of females? If the males are eliminated wouldn’t this reduce the amount of manpower available to Pharaoh? Either way, does the order make sense to you?
23. In Ex 6:3, God tells Moses that He appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai. What does El Shaddai mean?
24. The essay offers several alternative interpretations of the plagues. Do you agree with them? Do you have any other interpretations?
25. In the story of Exodus, Moses’s father-in-law is given several names (Jethro, Yitro, etc). There are several other obscurities and seeming inconsistencies in which this man is involved (such as when he shows up in 18:12 as well as at other times). Why?
26. What are the “Ten Commandments”?
27. Are there differences in the commandments between Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5? If so, are they important? Do they change the meanings? Why are they different? Could the difference be explained by simply stating that God was the author of the Exodus version and Moses was the author of the Deuteronomy version (he was repeating what he remembered to remind the people of what had occurred forty years ago so the people would follow the law)? Do you think that the commandments we use today were the ones actually given to Moses?
28. The essay discusses the deeply troubling incident where God killed innocent children. If God is willing to murder innocent Egyptian children, for whatever reason, would God be willing to kill other innocents? For example, could God have wanted or caused the Holocaust, which killed millions of innocents, for some reason? Such as behavior which God deemed to be improper? There are other instances when God seemingly orders the total annihilation of a people (Deuteronomy 25 and 29, Numbers 21, Exodus 17). Are you troubled by orders from God to destroy other people?
29. God instructs the Israelites to be “holy.” What does this mean? What is “holy”?
30. Deuteronomy 34:5-6 “So Moses the servant of the Lord died there, in the land of Moab, at the command of the Lord. He buried him in the valley in the land of Moab…” Who buried Moses?
31. Why do you think the location of Moses’s grave is not revealed?
32. Moses’s father-in-law seems to appear a couple of different times. He is also given different names (Jethro, Reuel, Hobab). Do you think the Bible was written to depict events chronologically? If so, how do you explain the different times he appeared? How does the order of presentation affect the interpretation of events in the Bible? The book of Genesis seems to be close to chronological, but perhaps this is because the book of Genesis may be focused on genealogical origins which dictate chronology. Do you agree?
33. The story of exodus is told twice, once in the Book of Exodus and again in the Book of Deuteronomy. The two stories are written in different styles (third person narrative for Exodus and first person speeches in Deuteronomy). What relationship do you see between the two accounts?
34. Do you see a relationship between the story of Exodus and the history that includes Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings)?
35. In Genesis, God repeatedly reiterated His promise of land to the Patriarchs, yet in Exodus, this promise was not made as often, and in fact, is nearly absent, especially with respect to the nation as a whole. How do you account for this difference, especially since the promise of land is so important to the overall narrative?
36. The Book of Exodus contains many distinct genres of literature (poetry, prose, songs, theophany of Yahweh, etc). In some places, God seems to be the author, in others Moses seems to be the author. What conclusions can you reach from this diversity? Different authors (J, E, P, Moses, God)? Different times? What effect would different authors and/or different times have on the meanings of this story?
37. What does the name “Moses” mean? In 2:10, we are told that it was Pharaoh’s daughter who named the child Moses and that she named him Moses. The next statement in 2:10 merely says “I drew him out of the water.” This does not, per se, mean that the name Moses means “I drew him out of the water.” And why would the Egyptian Princess give her adopted child a Hebrew name and not an Egyptian name? Could the name have originally been an Egyptian name? Furthermore, this child was old enough to be weaned by the time he is taken by the Princess. What do you suppose Jochebed had named him?
38. With regard to the story where Zipporah circumcises her son in order to save Moses, the essay states: “God may have been testing Moses. If this is so, one wonders if it was Moses who passed the test or Zipporah.” Who do you think passed the test?
39. Do you think the plagues affected the Hebrew slaves as well? How do you think those slaves handled the locusts, the wild animals, the boils and the like? Could it be that God protected the slaves? If so, do you think that protection could be reason for the slaves to believe, and for the Egyptians to see that these slaves were something special? How would you have reacted to the “plagues” being caused by a god who was not your own and in whom you did not believe? Would you have believed them or denied them as being Divinely inspired?
40. What do you think the purpose was of increasing the burdens on the slaves after the first request to be set free? Could it have been a test of faith (both in Moses and in Moses’s god)?
41. In Ex 1:19, the midwives gave the reason that they did not follow Pharaoh’s order was because “Because the Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women: they are vigorous. Before the midwife can come to them, they have given birth.” What does this mean?
42. How old is Jochebed when she gives birth to Moses? How old is Amram?
43. Do you think Jochebed had any other choice except to place Moses in the hands of Pharaoh’s daughter? Do you think she had any other choice except the way she did it (in a basket floating on crocodile-infested waters)? How about simply going underground with the baby and hiding? If Micha can hide David from Saul, why couldn’t Jochebed hide Moses from Pharaoh? Weren’t there others in Egypt and/or Goshen who could have cared for Moses, why did it have to be Pharaoh’s own daughter?
44. What do you think Jochebed felt when she handed Moses over to the Princess? How would you feel handing over your child to someone to raise? Does this have any echos in the Holocaust where parents gave their children to Christians or even sent them out of the country to save them?
45. Why do you think Pharaoh’s daughter was willing to adopt Moses? She was endangering herself by doing so. What do you think she would gain?
46.  When Moses fled Egypt, how do you suppose he chose Midian as his destination? The relationship between Israel and the Ishmaelites, Midianites and Moabites was sometimes warm and friendly (see Ex 2:15-22 for example) and sometimes hostile (see Judges 6-8 and 9:17 for example). So Moses may not have been assured a warm welcome.
47. In Ex 2:21, we are told only that Zipporah was given to Moses as his wife after a minimal meeting. What do you think Zipporah thought and felt?  What do you think Moses thought and felt?
48. Note that Esau was punished for an exogamous marriage, yet Moses gets away with it. Why does Moses get away with marrying someone outide his group when Esau does not? How do you think Ezra would have felt about Moses’s marriage to Zipporah?
49. At the time when Moses marries Zipporah, where does he consider his home: Midian or Egypt (see Ex 2:22)?
50. In 2:23-24, God heard the cries of the Israelites. Where has He been for the past 400 years? Where has their faith been for the past 400 years?
51. In 3:4, God calls to Moses: “Moses! Moses!…” why does God repeat the name? God also repeated Jacob’s name in Gen 46:2. What is the significance of God repeating the name? One would think that God would not have to call a person twice to get their attention.
52. In 3:5, it appears that God has transformed heretofor ordinary ground into holy ground. If God can transform simple ground into holy ground, why can’t God transform ordinary people into holy people? What about transforming heretofor evil people into holy people? If He can, why doesn’t He do it more often? It could save (and could have saved) humans much suffering.
53. Why does God require Moses to remove his sandals in 3:5?
54. Is there a parallel between the relationship between Moses and Aaron and the relationship between Ezra and Nehemiah?
55. Is there a parallel between Moses and Balaam (Numbers 22)?
56. Could the exchange between Moses and God reported in 4:1-17 be considered a negotiation between two entities to determine if each wants to be a partner of the other?
57. Compare Jethro’s reaction in 4:18 (“Go in peace.”) to Moses’s announcement that he was taking Jethro’s daughter away to Laban’s reaction to Jacob taking Laban’s daughters away. How do you account for the difference?
58. Could Moses’s steadfast and repeated refusal to heed the call of God be an early indication of or a model for the stiff-neckedness of Israelites in the desert? Could it be said that the flock takes its lead from the leader, and this action by Moses set a tone for the later stiff-neck attitude of the Israelites? Could this be why God got angry at Moses (this is one of only a very frew times that God became angry with an individual as opposed to the nation as a whole)?
59. What is the difference between “signs,” “portends,” “marvels,” and “wonders”?
60. In 6:20, it is observed that both Moses and Aaron are sons of a marriage between Amram and his direct aunt, Jochebed. Why aren’t Moses and Aaron disqualified from being God’s conduits to the people because they are sons of an incestuous marriage? The closest other marriage is that between Abram and his step-sister Sarai. Also, Jacob got away with being a bigamist. But both of those situations had extenuating circumstances of being required to ensure the continuation of the covenant. Another analogous situation is that of Perez who is the (illegitimate) son of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar and who is a predecessor of David through Ruth. However, David was a king and not a prophet or God’s designated representative as was Moses (see Ex 7:1).
61. In 7:7, we are told that Moses was eighty years-old and Aaron was eighty-three years-old when the negotiations with Pharaoh began. Yet in Numbers 33:29, we are told that Aaron dies at 123, meaning Moses was 120 at Aaron’s death. However, in Deut 34:7, we are told that Moses was 120 at his death. Does this mean that everything from Numbers 33 onward through the end of Deuteronomy took place in less than one year?
62. In 7:19- 8:11, we are told that Pharaoh’s magicians replicated the turning of water into blood and the infestation of frogs. However, we are also told that the magicians could not undo the damage, it was left to Moses to undo. The magicians could bring the plague on but could not remove it, why?
63. In 8:18, we are told that God will set Goshen apart so that the plague of lice will not touch them. Still further, in 9:4, God makes a distinction betweend the livestock of His people and the livestock of the Egyptians. If God could tell His people apart from the Egyptians, and even tell the livestock of His people apart from the livestock of the Egyptians, for purposes of saving them from a plague, why did God need the people to mark their homes during the final plague (killing the first born of the Egyptians)? The essay “People vs Pharaoh” in the section titled “Civil Disobedience of the Hebrew Slaves” discusses a probable reason, do you have any others?
64. The essay discusses the issue of God punishing innocent animals and children. The essay provides some possible answers. One answer was that by going way over the line, and killing His own creations , God is sending a message in the strongest of terms that if He is sufficiently defied, He is willing to go way beyond and over the line (the punishment is likely to go way beyond simply fitting the crime or being proportional) in His punishment. Can you provide another answer?
65. In Ex 12:3, God instructs Moses to select the sacrificial animal on the tenth of the month, but in v. 6, He instructs the animal to be slaughtered on the fourteenth day of the month. First, why the tenth day; and second, why is there a gap of four days between selection and slaughter?
66. In Ex 12:13, God says that the blood on the doorpost is a signal for Him to pass over, yet in v. 23, God refers to a third entity, the Destroyer, “He will see the blood on the lntel and the two doorposts, and the Lord will pass over the door and not let the Destroyer enter and smite your home.” Who is the Destroyer? Is the Destroyer constantly on the lookout for transgressors and only held at bay by God? This seems to be a threat. If it is interpreted as a threat, the threat is consistent with the suggestion that God killing innocent children is a threat that He will punish even His own.
67. In the songs sung after the victory at the Red Sea, Moses and the men sing first and longest, while Miriam and the women sing second and shortest. Why would the men sing at all (singing songs such as this is generally left to the women)? And why would the womens’ song be so truncated as compared to the mens’ song?
68. Compare Miriam and Deborah.
69. In 15:26, the imperative shifts between the third person (“His sight”) and the first person (“I will not…”). Why this shift?
70. In 17:8-13, Moses is depicted as raising and lowering his hand. What was he doing? Directing the battle? Praying? Providing inspiration to the troops? Acting like a lightning rod connecting God to the people?
71. Compare Jethro as a father-in-law to Laban and Saul.
72. In Ex 18:21-22, Jethro instructs Moses to select “capable men who fear God, trustworthy men who spurn ill-gotten gain.” Whom would you select? Even thugh they are women and not “men” do you think the midwives who refused to follow Pharaoh’s order to kill Hebrew male infants would make good choices?
73. What ever became of Zipporah?
74. Where (geographically) is Mt. Sinai?
75. How long were the people camped at Mt. Sinai? (See Ex 19:1 and Num. 10:11).

Covenant Code Questions

1. In Ex 20:20, there is a prohibition against making gods of silver, but in v 21, there is an instruction to make an altar of earth. What is the difference?
2. Ex 21:1-11 seems to permit slavery. Was this the type of slavery that was practiced in America prior to the Civl War? Or was it closer to the type of slavery practiced in Egypt (and discussed in the section “Slavery” in this Essay, whuich could include the debt-slave)? If it is closer to the American slavery, could the Hebrew Bible be identified as the source of this practice? Or was it merely recognizing the practice, and seeks to control it by providing certain laws and rules so it does not become overly cruel, or even limit it in such a way to eliminate it (see, e.g., Deut 23:16-17)? Was Joseph Potiphar’s “slave”? After the famine strikes in Egypt, were the people Pharaoh’s (and hence Joseph’s – see Gen 47:23) “slaves”? Do you see the irony in the Egyptian people being the slave of Joseph, who was himself a slave to an Egyptian?
3. How can you justify making a child the property of the slave owner merely because the owner supplied the woman (see Ex 21:4)?
4. 21:24 states that “…the penalty shall be a life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn….” What do you think this means? Might it be a limitation on the retribution that can be taken? In other words, you can extract no more than was lost, thereby avoiding vindictive damages being applied?
5. 22:20-21 expresses special concern for widows, orphans and aliens. Do you think this special concern arose because the Hebrew Bible was prinicipally written and organized during and after the Babylonian Exile when there may have been many, many widows, orphans and aliens which would have been a serious concern?
6. 22:28 states “You shall give me the first-born among your sons.” How do you feel about that requirement? To make matters worse, this requirement is stated simultaneously with a requirement to giving the first skimming of vats, giving the first cattle thereby equating one’s first born with wine and livestock.
7. 23:5 instructs that one must help one’s enemy’s donkey back on its feet. Helping your enemy’s animals is tantamount to helping your enemy (even though your enemy’s animals are not your enemy). How do you feel about being instructed to help your enemy?
8. 23:10 instructs the people to allow their fields to lie fallow every seventh year. Do you think the biblical people understood that continual cultivation of the soil may rob it of ingredients necessary for fertility? Or did they have some other goal in mind?
9. 23:17 instructs that three times a year all males shall appear before God. Does this preclude women? Or can it be interpreted as requiring men to appear but leaving it optional for women (so they can attend to children, homes, nursing, etc.)?
10. Ex 23:19: “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” What does that mean? We all know how it has been used (as the basis for Kashrut), but what does it actually mean? One suggestion is from Philo: “It is improper that the substance which fed the living animal should be used to season and flavor the same after its death…Men should not misuse what has sustained life.” Another suggestion is that this could also be a prohibition against an impermissable co-mingling of life and death. If these interpretations are taken as correct, how did this otherwise cryptic prohibition become so extended as to cover such a broad range of eating and cooking rules as Kashrut?

Additional Questions

1. In 24:18, it is reported that “Moses went inside the cloud and ascended the mountain.” Moses pulled a disappearing act. Could this mysterious disappearance have contributed to the uneasiness felt by the people while they waited for Moses and thus contributed to the Golden Calf episode? How would you have felt if you had left your home to follow a leader who now, suddenly simply disappears and fails to return while you are left far from home, in a foreign, and hostile, desert?
2. In Ex 34:1-3, God instructs Moses to “be ready by morning, and in the morning come up to Mount Sinai…” Why did God instruct Moses to wait until morning? Why not instruct Moses to come up immediately?
3. Where is Mount Sinai?
4. In Ex 34:28, we are told that Moses went forty days and forty nights without bread or water. How did Moses survive?
5. When did Moses write down Leviticus and Numbers?
6. In 34:29, we are told that when Moses descended from the mountain, “the skin on his face was radiant” Moses had been up and down the mountain to meet God before, yet it is only this time that Moses’s face was “radiant”. What was different about this time?
7. In 34:32, we are told that after speaking with the people, Moses put a veil over his face. Why did Moses need a veil to speak to ordinary people, but not to speak to God? Why is this the only time Moses places a veil over his face? Moses was around with the people for many decades after this event, yet there is no report of him veiling his face after this event. This is also the only time that it is reported that Moses’s face was radiant.
8. Do you think Moses participated in the building of the Tabernacle beyond giving instructions? That is, do you think Moses got his hands dirty (Solomon got his hands dirty building his temple)?
9. What is the difference between Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread? Nowhere in the Bible, and certainly not in Exodus 12 when the Egyptian first born sons were slain and the Hebrew slaves left, is the supposed haste of the Israelites presented as a justification for a weeklong consumption of unleavened bread. See Deuteronomy 16.
10. How did the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE affect the Passover rituals?
11. It might be observed that, if the story of the Exodus told in the Bible was either totally or even partially fictional, then the dates of the Exodus as well as many of the events and attributes associated with the Exodus are cast into doubt. If the story is fictional, why are we even concerned with establishing a date for the Exodus? Why do we care how many people the Bible says fled Egypt? It is all made up, so why do we care?
12. Why is Moses often depicted as having horns?
13. Are there any extra-biblical references to people who resemble Moses? Such as the Akkadian legend of Sargon I, king of Akkad who reigned from 2334-2279 B.C.E.? Could the Biblical Moses have been modeled after such pre-existing myths?
14. In the story of Exodus, Moses causes his rod to turn into a snake and back again into a rod. What is the significance of the snake?
15. Why were there ten plagues? Why not five, or seven? Do you see a parallel between the ten plagues and the acts of creation detailed in Genesis?
16. In Ex 3:8, God informs Moses that He will “bring them up out of that land to a good and broad Land, and Land flowing with milk and honey.” Many times thereafter, God repeats that the Israelites are headed for a Land flowing with milk and honey (cf. Exod 3:17; 13:5; 33:3; Lev 20:24). Why do you think God describes the Land of Canaan as one flowing with “milk and honey”? Why not a land like Havilah (see Gen 2:11-12), that was abundant with “gold” (זהב; zahav), “bdellium” (בדלח; bedolach), and “onyx stones” (אבן השׁהם; even ha’shoham)?
17. Is the idea of “chosenness” better associated with the story of Abraham or the story of Exodus?
18. Do you think God was changed in some way during the story of Exodus?
19. Could Moses be considered a philosopher?
20. Can you compare George Washington to Moses? He led our country out of “slavery”to England, but he owned slaves.
21. Could the American Revolution be rooted in the story of Exodus? Could Martin Luther King be analogous to Moses? How about Adam Clayton Powell? How did these two leaders use the story of Exodus to further their ends? How about Malcolm X? How about the abolitionists? How about modern Civil Rights activists? The Civil Rights movement did not and does not seek to leave America and start a new nation, but seeks equality for all Americans. Is this enough of a difference to say the two are different?
22. Viewed in broad terms as a struggle for economic justice in combination with a struggle for political, legal and social equality, do you think the story of Exodus can be applied to nations other than the United States (such as South Africa during Apartheid, in Latin America, India with the struggles of the Christian Dalit in the Church of South India, Native Americans)? See A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo Gutiérrez which coined the term “liberation theology” which visualizes God as standing by the side of the poor and oppressed and thus opposes all forms of such oppression and oppressors – regardless of the oppressor’s religion.Could it be said that every reading of the Exodus story is a reading into the Exodus story? That is, every time we apply the Exodus story to a contemporary problem don’t we change and appropriate that story to fit the issue at hand?
23. Do you think the presence of Greek and later Roman civilizations influenced the story of Exodus? If so, how? Culd the influence be a fear of assimilation?
24. Do you think Moses transcribed the laws according to God’s dictation (thus making God the author of the laws) or do you think Moses was the author of the laws? If the former, do you think God gave Moses some laws that were not written down?
25. Which is more important – the story of Exodus or the giving of the law at Sinai? Or are they equally important?
26. Why doesn’t the Bible begin with the story of Exodus rather than with Genesis?
27. How is the story of Exodus, specifically the giving of the law at Sinai, related to the rule requiring the wearing of ritual fringes (Numbers 14)? Could it be that the rule, no matter how illogical and without reason or basis it appears to be, should be followed simply because God ordained it and Jews are required to do whatever God ordains based on the covenant at Mt. Sinai? Does observing a rule that is illogical and arbitrary simply because God ordained it show virtue? Or is it another form of slavery (recalling that the Jews in the desert had just escaped slavery)? Who enforces such laws and rules? Are there penalties for violating such laws? If so, what are they? How has modern society affected these laws and the adherence to them? Could they be “a custom more honor’d in the breach than the observance” (Hamlet, Act 1, scene 4, lines 7-16) by simply studying them?

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[1] Others have translated God’s answer to Moses’s question as “I AM THAT I AM which is equally vague. No matter what translation one chooses, the result is the same: God in no way told Moses His name.

^[2] God’s continued enmity against the Amalekites (the Edomite decedents of Esau) and God’s killing of these people is similar: these people wish to destroy the Israel nation and God will prevent it.

^[3] The irony of the situation is inescapable. The Egyptians wanted to kill God’s children (the Jewish nation), and God killed the children of the Pharaoh. See also the section on Punishment of Innocents in the essay “Sodom and Gomorrah” for yet another view of this situation.

[4] Animals will be totally innocent since they are in no position to teach humans the proper actions. In the section discussing “collective guilt” in the essay “Guilt,” the concept of innocence is discussed and the term is extended to cover those who appear innocent but are complicit in the transgression because they are in a position to correct the transgression but do nothing – guilt by inaction. This is not the case with animals.

[5] This sends a message to the Israelites as well: defy God and He is willing to destroy you as well, even if you are His chosen, so even if you are spared this time, don’t think you have a free pass every time. This also clearly demonstrates God’s power to any Israelite who may still be skeptical.

[6] This also fits the flood story where certain entities acted like gods.

[7] But see 10:7 where at least some of Pharaoh’s advisors tried to persuade him to let the Israelites go”Let the men go to workship the Lord their God!” One wonders if these advisors were also punished.

[8] This could be viewed as reparation for the years of slavery.

[9] A similar situation existed when the Jews were being expelled from Middle Eastern countries as late as the middle of the twentieth century, see The Dove Flyer by Eli Amir, The New York Review of Books (New York, 1992) which is the story of the last years of the Jewish community in Baghdad before their expulsion in 1950 in the face of genocidal forces against the Jews at that time when some wished to leave and emigrate to the new State of Israel, but some wished to stay in spite of the danger. Yet another situation that may be similar, and certainly more real, is the attitude of European Jews in the late 19^th Century with regard to Theodor Herzl’s call for a mass emigration from Europe to a new land, Palestine. He was asking these people to give up their homes and property (sell to the Jewish Company, an economic arm of the Society of Jews) and move to the new land. No matter how oppressed they were in their countries, they were reluctant to give up their known situation for the totally unknown situation they would face in the new land. This is one of the reasons Herzl’s plan failed in his lifetime.

[10] See also, “The Exodus is Not Fiction,” in Reform Judaism, Spring 2014, Vol. 42, No. 3, page 6.

[11] For centuries, scholars have searched in vain for any remnant of Solomon’s Temple. The fabled Jerusalem sanctuary, described in such exacting detail in 1 Kings 6, was no doubt one the most stunning achievements of King Solomon in the Bible, yet nothing of the building itself has been found because excavation on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, site of the Temple of King Solomon, is impossible.

As reported by archaeologist John Monson in the Biblical Archeological Review, the closest known parallel to the Temple of King Solomon is the ’Ain Dara temple in northern Syria. Nearly every aspect of the ’Ain Dara temple—its age, its size, its plan, its decoration—parallels the vivid description of the Temple of King Solomon in the Bible. In fact, Monson identified more than 30 architectural and decorative elements shared by the ’Ain Dara structure and the Jerusalem Temple described by the Biblical writers. The similarities between the ’Ain Dara temple and the temple described in the Bible are indeed striking. The date of the ’Ain Dara temple offers compelling evidence for the authenticity of the Biblical Temple of King Solomon. The ’Ain Dara temple was originally built around 1300 B.C. and remained in use for more than 550 years, until 740 B.C. The plan and decoration of such majestic temples no doubt inspired the Phoenician engineers and craftsmen who built Solomon’s grand edifice in the tenth century B.C. Even the decorative schemes of ’Ain Dara temple and the temple described in the Bible are similar: Nearly every surface, both interior and exterior, of the ’Ain Dara temple was carved with lions, mythical animals (cherubim and sphinxes), and floral and geometric patterns, the same imagery that, according to 1 Kings 6:29, adorned the Temple of King Solomon in the Bible.

[12] According to Freud, the model was the High Priests of the monotheistic religion Akhenaten whose god was Aten.

^[13] See also the essay “The Hero Has Six Hundred Thousand Faces”.