Bound || in one direction
To study Exodus is to listen in on a story made up of history clothed in faith[1], pieced together by some capable characters, and resolved by a God who is identified mostly in terms of action and being for a people what they couldn’t be for themselves. It is a story of liberation with a dominant oppressive superpower getting theirs. One of the main characters, the hero if you will, struggles from the first time he enters the narrative and needs consistent reminding of who he is to be in the story of redemption that God seems to want to tell with him and others. This shepherd, Moses, carries a staff—one he has held in his hand since he left Egypt years before as a fugitive.[2] When Moses is not sure of what to do or how to move forward God asks him a simple question, “Moses, What’s in your hand?”[3] In other words, “Moses, do you remember who you are?” Moses is God’s shepherd. God and Moses have something in common—they are both shepherds. The people have something in common with God too—corporately they mediate God. They are to be a kingdom of priests, inviting the world to see themselves in a drama that involves them and the God who created it all.
Exodus has movement unlike the other parts of Torah. Genesis is more interested in describing the way things came to be rather than developing a plot line—the main plot being, whether or not the blessing will actualize. Genesis is also structurally held together by genealogies. These genealogies land in Exodus[4], as does the question concerning blessing—tying together Genesis and Exodus. Genesis is the background by which Exodus leaps into the foreground of God’s redemptive activity. The first part of the book Exodus 1-18 describes God acting and the second part, Exodus 19-40, God’s presence, or said better by John Durham, “God in the midst acting.”[5] The theological significance of Exodus is made vivid by the number of times God is the subject of the speaking and acting through out, but especially in Exodus 1-18.[6] The exodus itself could be paralleled with a kind of birth rite or rite of passage.[7] The blood put over the doorpost, near death passage and quasi-rebirth all point in this direction.[8] Whether one sees this motif or not, what happens to the people in the exodus-Sinai climax could be described as birth and binding. Israel is released and then binds themselves to Yhwh through covenanting with Yhwh. The actions of Israel are to imitate the actions of their God, because they are bound and connect. For, as they were slaves in Egypt, so they are to participate in the release of the oppressed.[9] But what does it mean for a people to be bound to God? Perhaps some of the Israelites think it is not far off from what they were experiencing in Egypt, when they were bound to Pharaoh.[10] This is a question I want to explore further in this essay as the story of the exodus is described in greater detail. What does it look like to be a people bound to God?
Marriage || is what brings us together today
As the book of Exodus is concerned, there is a real connection between being bound, a way of relating to another, and the concept of marriage. Marriage is, in our culture, a legal agreement as much as it is an event—just as it is biblically.[11] However, mostly in our culture, it is something you do when you “feel” in love. We set out to find the “one” and when we find out that they are not that missing-piece-to-all-of-lived-meaning we fall out of love with the “one” till the next one comes along. Now surely that is over simplified, but, maybe not. Marriage, in our cultural setting, is made up of the rhetoric of feeling and falling, specifically those cultures under the influence of the Hollywood myth of perfect love. Marriage seems to be described in terms of fruitfulness, in more ways than one, but ultimately we are pushed to believe that marriage is for the individual. This other person will meet all of my unfulfilled needs. Psychologists have been calling this syndrome “co-dependency” for some time now, yet, often we give ourselves over to the selfish desire to take of another’s self for the sake of self-inflation. I mention all of this, not because I have anything figured out, nor am I married to a person and therefore writing from some “privileged” place of arrival. I begin by poking, just a bit, at the scripts I hear in my head—these ideologies that one must notice and assault before asking what a text like Exodus might say concern the reality of marriage.
If one reads Exodus as narrative, a story moving with drama and flow, they may take notice of interesting themes emerging in broad terms. The Hebrew slaves are bound to Pharaoh, an enslaved people with no hope, and so—they cry out. This is not a cry that the Egyptians might notice, because they are graphed into a system of belief, a system that is convinced that these Hebrews are made to serve the interests of the dominate people. The Hebrew people groan as much as they lament with an unresolved voice falling on what seems to be deafness. They become deaf themselves, some, worshiping the deaf gods of the Egyptians and even, at the sign of freedom, doubting its very existence.[12] This is an unhealthy bond. Surely it is a bond woven together by oppression and domination. It is a marriage that reflects what we often find affirmed in culture, and to a malicious degree, in the life of the people who follow after Jesus these days. What is the alternative vision then? The contest between Yhwh and the gods of Egypt display for us what Yhwh is reclaiming.[13] God is interested in the whole creation and a whole personhood. And so God has chosen to begin again with a people confined to a space in the ghetto of Goshen—inviting them to open space.
The marriage between God and people has been well on its way however, the Hebrews are jumping on a moving train.[14] This is a new season of courtship, one might say, but God has loved well for a while now. The first rhetorical glimpses of covenant relationship that we find in the early chapters of Genesis involve God in relationship to all of creation.[15] The relationship is always between God and individuals with the scope of involving all of the creation. Covenant legitimates the interests of the witnesses without violating the interests of those in covenant relation.[16] Simply put, the covenant between God and Israel is for the world. But becoming bound to God in covenant relationship is a process it seems. This is seen not only by the reminders of Yhwh’s desire to be with the creation back in Genesis, but also in the narrative of Exodus itself. The literary arc, that spans chapters 3-19 of Exodus, is put on the lips of Moses each time he addresses Pharaoh. Sure, Moses says on behalf of God, “Let my people go” but then a reason is given, “that they may serve me.”[17] This serving or worshiping is to take place at the mountain where Moses first met God (i.e. Sinai). This is the place the people will return with Moses—their return and worship being the ultimate sign that Yhwh was with them.[18] This should seem ironic—them knowing after the fact—but Israel is on that moving train where “faith begins, not in discovery, but in remembrance”—the conclusion being that once the people reach Sinai Yhwh will be a god worth trusting.[19]
At Sinai, heaven and earth are preparing to intersect—consummation or the wedding event, is in final preparation. Legality is in some ways set aside. To look intertextually, the Torah does not describe marriage so much as legally binding but rather an event witnessed, which is binding.[20] The up and down that Moses does between God’s realm and the realm of the people helps us see how the two are coming together. Exodus 19 is the culminating picture “of a delicate and complicated process whereby Israel becomes covenantally bound to Yhwh, a gradual bridging of the nigh-unbridgeable gulf between the divine and the earthly.”[21] The Sinai event is a happening marked by dressing up, trumpets, thunder, vows spoken and received—not to mention the shape of a people is described in relation to the world they find themselves in the midst of. God is in the midst acting, and, now Israel is to go and do likewise through a communal ethic that is ultimately an invitation to the nations to see the world in term of covenant—an ongoing relational reality. The first verse of chapter 19 helps us see the implications of the Sinai event quite clearly. It says, “On the third new moon after the Israelites had gone forth from the land of Egypt, on this very day, they entered the wilderness of Sinai.”[22] Most translations render this as “that.” The intent is to help us to look back on the story, but rabbis have mentioned that perhaps this is most accurate because it teaches, “the revelation at Sinai—the words of Torah—should be newly experienced each day.”[23] Maybe the question to how do you know you are saved could be is as simple as the way you know you are married. The answer being—everyday.[24]
Mercy|| is what goes with us for tomorrow
Everyday has added up to forty years by the time the Israels are on the edge of the land. Unlike Deuteronomy, Exodus does not conclude with Moses’ departure, nor to we get the sense they are entering the land right a way. Exodus is not a parallel account, it is its own. Exodus ends the way the book of Deuteronomy is framed as a whole, Deuteronomy being a prophetic recasting of the teachings given by Yhwh. It seems Exodus has a concern to recast these teachings as it closes. The text also focuses its ending words with concern for a clear vision of the tabernacle, Yhwh’s home in the midst of Israel. However, all of the betrayal registered to Israel’s account has Yhwh troubled with whether to re-enter into the midst of the people. It seems that the betrayal is rather grevious. Now often we make God out to be a superhero with no will or desire other than one to save everyone from everything. Certain interpretations of the Exodus saga seem to emphasize this idea in order to fit God into a very focused vision of the Jesus. But if we were to step back and read the ending of Exodus through the lens of covenant—seeing the relational reality being severed and then healed, we might be able to draw some conclusions, not only concerning marriage but also concerning the mercy that constitutes the ethos of this relationship.
Chapter 32 recalls an event that brings God to the point of disassociating with the the people. God says to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely.”[25] Once Moses is able to get a word out he asks of God, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt?”[26] Israel has shifted categories it seems, from being the persons bound to Yhwh toward what the prophet Hosea describes as Lo-ruhamah or Lo-ammi.[27] Did God’s compassion dry up? Do God’s people not belong? The covenant was sealed with blood just chapters before and the people seem to be well indended when they make for themselves an idol.[28] The implication of the betrayal is directly related to whom the people are to be in relation to Yhwh, that is, how they are to act in partnership with Yhwh. They have “acted perversely” or maybe to get closer to the term—“they have corrupted themselves.”[29] The idol, or better, image, could never be the image of Yhwh, “who brought you out of Egypt,” because no image brought the people out.[30] They are the image of Yhwh and Yhwh is the character who is with them—so by making an image of Yhwh they have altered the position of, yes, themsleves. If anything they should be worshiping eachother, of course this misses the point as well, but the reader can sense God’s frustration in the narrative. The relationship has shifted with the self understanding of the Israelites being scued.
It would be like a women watching her husband give himself over to alcohol, numbing himself to real presence with her. Yup, God is a her! Women have, like mariage in our culture, been forcefully invited to adapt to an oppressive—even perverse way of relating to their world. Many have refused while living an alternative way amist altered realities. In reflecting on how we as people, specifically women, have “inherited” a former way of seeing the world mixed up with a new way—much like the Israelites are dealing with in Exodus, Marta Benavides describes the process of “inheriting her mother’s garden.”[31] It is a figurative garden, one that is better describing as a way of viewing the world. Her mother’s garden has become the whole creation, and future hope is in becoming partners with the Creator to bring about new creation.[32] In Genesis 1-2 we notice creation newly appropriated and connected to God, and then, the narrtive of corruption climaxes in chapter 8. What is significant for our purposes is what comes after—a new covenant and a new creation described in chapter 9. The Exodus text moves in a similar way with the first Sinai covenanting event birthing a new people, the worship of an idol and its corruption, then finally the renewal of covenant, all parallel the Genesis story.[33] The people in the Exodus story are invited into a renewed covenant—but this covenant is to be reappropiated, (i.e. a new creation). The range of the peoples eye view was not wide enough, worshiping deaf objects could not be the fragrance of Israel’s worship, rather justice and true relationship was to be their vocation and vision.
So God has Moses make another batch of stone tablets so God can speak new and familiar words once again. This comes only after Moses impinges on God, changing God’s mind to once again act in their midst.[34] Moses’ prayer in Exodus 34.9 is stunning, “LORD, if I have found favor in your eyes, then let the LORD go along in our midst. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your possession!”[35] Surely, in Moses’ prayer we can hear the echoes of Exodus 19 and his desire for things to be the way they once where. Moses’ prayer being that God would be in the midst acting, and would take once again, Israel, as a kind of architype spouse, its just beautiful! The tabernacle is pitched and the mercy seat of God is mentioned in passing several times. And, when God passes by Moses after Moses demands to see the kavod of God, God says, “I will be compassionate,” a chant that echoes a “transgenerational mercy.”[36] And so it is with us, the kids of later generations—many of us graphed in by this same transgenerational delivering mercy. To have mercy is to have compassion defined in terms of with-ness.[37] God continues to be with us, showing up in the flesh—as the kavod was beheld in the person Jesus. Jesus was a new way for God to tabernacle in the midst and continue the activity of new creation.[38] We are in the constant the everyday—working out what that relational reality looks like in flesh and blood, in the lived experience. Exodus then, is not some distant guide for a people long ago, it has been for many (myself included), a story to live in and be shaped by. Our ethical resolves fail us as we worship the iconic symbols of our culture, but, there is an alternative. It is the way Yhwh is traversing with us. It is a way marked by newness and it has us on fertile ground where selfishness might by coverted to a covenanted self[39] that finds relation with God—everyday.
[1]Godfrey Ashby, Go Out and Meet God, ITC: Exodus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 1.
[2] Exodus 2.15, 3.1.
[3] Exodus 4.2.
[4] Exodus 1.1-7.
[5] John Durham, Exodus: WBC (Waco, TX: Nelson, 1987), xxii. Exodus 29.46.
[6] Terence Fretheim, Exodus, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1991), 10.
[7] William Propp, Exodus 1-18: Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 35.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Exodus 22.21.
[10] Exodus 17.3, 16.3.
[11] The Essential Talmud
[12] Exodus 2.14.
[13] Nahum Sarna, Exodus: JPS Torah Commentary (New York: JPS, 1991), 38.
[14] Stanley Hauerwas; William Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville: Abington, 1989), 52.
[15] Genesis 1-3, 9, 15.
[16] Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 119.
[17]Exodus 8.1 (NASB).
[18] Exodus 3.12.
[19] Hauerwas, 52.
[20] Essential Talmud
[21] William Propp, Exodus 19-40: Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 151.
[22] Exodus 19.1 (JPS), emphasis mine “that” has been changed to “this”.
[23] Sarna, 103.
[24] A guy named Mitch McViger said this in a spiritual formation class I took in undergrad.
[25] Exodus 32.7 (NRSV).
[26] Exodus 32.11 (NRSV).
[27] Hosea 1.6-8.
[28] Exodus 32.4.
[29] NASB’s translation gets closer.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Katie Geneva Cannon, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, Kwok Pui-Ian, Letty M. Russell; Inheriting Our Mother’s Gardens: feminist theology in third world perspective (Louisville, KY: Westminster Press, 1988), 139.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Walter Brueggemann, Exodus, NIB (Nashville, TN: Abington, 1994), 927.
[34] Walter Brueggemann, The Unsettling God: the Heart of the Hebrew Bible
[35] (TNIV//NASB).
[36] Exodus 33.19, 34.6. Propp, Exodus 19-40, 610.
[37] Justo Gonzalez, Santa Biblia: The Bible Through Hispanic Eyes (Nashville, TN: Abington, 1996).
[38] John 1.14 (I am thinking of the book as a whole, but specifically John 9).
[39] Walter Brueggemann, The Covenanted Self (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1999), title.
