Genesis packed quite a punch. There was lots of action - creation, the fall of man, a big flood and Broadway-musical-inspiring-guy with a colorful coat. Can Exodus live up to its predecessor? The answer to that would be, "Not quite."
Exodus starts off on a pretty interesting note - we see that the Egyptians are becoming leery because the Israelites that live among them are freakishly fertile. So the pyramid builders decide they'll kill all the boys born to these uber-reproducers. But one particularly cleaver woman put her "fine" son in a basket and hide him among the reeds near the river. Long story short - Pharaoh's daughter finds the tyke, names him Moses (Hebrew for "draw out," by the way) and raises him as her own. Some stuff happens, Moses kills an Egyptian at some point and doesn't get punished, yadda, yadda, yadda. Fast forward many years and Moses decides to investigate an oddly burning bush and basically meets God. God tells him that he has been chosen to lead his people out of Egypt.
God decides that he's going to make sure the Egyptians won't allow the Israelites leave. Which leads to a pretty odd scenario considering several years prior the Egyptians tried to basically exterminate this group. I don't think the Bible ever really explains why God wanted to make it this hard on his chosen people. Maybe it does and I missed it? Whatever the reason, it illustrates the actions of a a Pharaoh that is even more stubborn than I've been known to be. It took 10 different plagues on his people before he finally let Moses' people go. We then learn the origin of Passover: the chosen people put blood over their doorways as a way to separate them from the Egyptians so that the plague of the unborn doesn't bother them. God causes this plague to "pass over" these houses. Which makes me wonder - didn't they have to suffer the other nine plagues, even though they were innocent?
Now that the Israelites are free to go, they follow Moses into the desert. But once again, the Egyptians feel the need to keep them around so they follow the wandering group. They catch up to them only to have their efforts thwarted when Moses uses his handy dandy staff (which has already turned into a snake a couple times) and parts the Red Sea for his followers but not for the unfortunate Egyptians following them in their chariots. Those poor suckers drowned when the waters un-parted.
Safely free of their previous captors, the Israelites now have time to listen to some instructions from God, via Moses, via Aaron. These instructions are the 10 Commandments. The thing I took note of here is that, in at least the NIV version of the Bible, the Commandments aren't numbered. Is it possible that God listed them in no particular order and man interpreted the the order? You always hear people say stuff like, "The 4th Commandment says to keep the Sabbath holy." But then God also dictates a bunch of other rules regarding personal injuries, protection of property, social justice and some other stuff. Why are these never considered in the same league as the "big ten" that we hear so much about?
And that's where the action seems to come to an abrupt halt.
That's pretty much all I can tell that happens in Exodus. The next 15 chapters of this book go on to laboriously explain how to construct the Tabernacle, design the priests' outfits and consecrate the priests.
Full disclosure, I skimmed that last part so I wouldn't call on me to make your next Tabernacle.
No comments:
Post a Comment