SOURCE: Sarna, Nahum M. Introduction to The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus, pp. xi-xv. Philadelphia, Penn.: The Jewish Publication Society, 1991.

[In the following essay, Sarna provides background for Exodus.]

THE TITLE

The commonly known Hebrew title for the second book of the Torah is Shemot, shortened from the opening words ve'elleh shemot. This follows an ancient and widespread Near Eastern practice of naming a literary work by its initial word or words. In Genesis Rabba¹ we find the full title: Sefer 'Elleh Shemot, “The Book of ‘These are the Names.’” The Hebrew name was transliterated in Greek as oualesmoth² and was used in Latin Bibles in the form of Hebraica veelle semoth.

Another ancient Hebrew name was sefer yetsi'at mitsrayim, “The Book of the Departure from Egypt,” expressing its central theme. The Jews of Alexandria, Egypt, in pre-Christian times, rendered this title in Greek as Exodos Aigyptou, abbreviated simply as Exodos, which is how it appears in the Septuagint, the Jewish translation of the Torah into Greek. This was adopted for use in the Old Latin version of the Bible (pre-fourth century c.e.) in the form of Exodus and so passed into the Vulgate and through it into numerous European languages. Another Greek rendering of the Hebrew title was Exagoge, “The Leading Out/The Departure [from Egypt].” The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 b.c.e. to 50 c.e.) used this name and offered his belief that Moses himself had designated the Hebrew title behind it.³Exagoge must have been quite well known in Egypt, for the Hellenistic Jewish tragedian Ezekiel (latest date, mid first century b.c.e.) composed a drama by that name.

The Hebrew title sefer yetsi'at mitsrayim was still current in Palestine in the tenth century c.e., for it is cited in the Dikdukei Ha-Te‘amim (§70) by the Masoretic scholar Aaron ben Moses ben Asher.⁴

Still a third Hebrew name for the book is mentioned in the Talmud:⁵Homesh Sheni, “The Second Fifth [of the Torah].”

THE TORAH READINGS

Present-day editions divide the Book of Exodus into forty chapters. This practice is not rooted in Jewish tradition but was borrowed from Christian Bibles. In the late Middle Ages, the Church forced Jews to engage in disputations, which usually focused upon the interpretation of scriptural passages. This necessitated a common, standardized system of reference, and so the Christian chapter and verse numberings were introduced into the Hebrew manuscript Bibles by Rabbi Solomon ben Ishmael (ca. 1330).⁶

This innovation displaced an earlier Jewish system based upon the weekly Torah readings. In Palestine and Egypt, the entire Pentateuch was originally completed in triennial, or three-year, cycles. The Book of Exodus was variously divided into twenty-nine or thirty-three such sedarim, as the weekly Sabbath readings were called. Eventually, the Babylonian practice of completing the entire Torah in the course of a single year became universal. In this system, the Book of Exodus is divided into eleven sections, each known as a parashah (pl., parashot or parshiyyot) or sidra(h) (pl., sedarot).

THE CONTENTS AND CHARACTER

Using the criterion of geographic location, one may divide Exodus into three parts. Chapters 1:1 to 15:21, which describe the oppression of Israel as well as the struggle for liberation and its final attainment, obviously have as their setting the land of Egypt. The events recorded in chapters 15:22 to 18:27 take place on the way from the Sea of Reeds to Sinai, although the location of chapter 18 is debatable. For the rest of the book, chapters 19 to 40, the scene of the action is Sinai.

Such a simple locational classification, however, obscures the richness and variety of the subject matter, which a glance at the Table of Contents given above will immediately reveal. The Book of Exodus is the great seminal text of biblical literature. Its central theme, God's redemption of His people from Egyptian bondage, is mentioned no less than one hundred and twenty times in the Hebrew Bible in a variety of contexts.⁷ This event informed and shaped the future development of the culture and religion of Israel. Remarkably, it even profoundly influenced ethical and social consciousness, so that it is frequently invoked in the Torah as the motivation for protecting and promoting the interests and rights of the stranger and the disadvantaged of society.⁸

This pervasive and sustained impact of the Exodus drama is not limited to the period of the Bible itself. It continued throughout history down to the present time and in recent years has been a source of inspiration for the “theologies of liberation” movements.⁹ If it has so profoundly affected peoples of widely different cultures, this is hardly because the biblical narrative is a straightforward account of an historical event; it is not. Rather, this influence is due to the special orientation and perspective of Exodus. It is a document of faith, not a dispassionate, secular report of the freeing of an oppressed people. The Book of Exodus possesses a character all its own and must be understood on its own terms.¹⁰

A close examination of the constituent elements of the Book of Exodus determines at once that we do not have a comprehensive, sequential narrative, only an episodic account. Moreover, the time frame in which the varied episodes are placed is extremely limited. The afore-cited passage from the Dikdukei Ha-Te‘amim adduces a tradition that one hundred and forty years elapsed between the death of Joseph (1:4)—the first event recorded in the book—and the construction of the Tabernacle almost exactly one year after the Exodus, the last dated occurrence (40:2). Yet, the narrative is most sparing of detail relating to the period of the oppression. Neither the duration of the sufferings of the Israelites nor anything about their inner life and community existence is mentioned. Only incidentally do we learn that the period of Egyptian enslavement lasted at least eighty years. We are told that Moses, who was born after the king's genocidal decree, was eighty years old when he first presented himself before the pharaoh as the leader of the people. Further investigation reveals that the book really covers the events of just two years: the year-long diplomatic activity as well as the coercive measures taken against the Egyptians and a few incidents from the year in the wilderness following the Exodus. This limitation, together with the paucity of historical data, suggests a high degree of deliberate selectivity. Both the selectivity and the disposition of the featured material stamp the Book of Exodus as falling into the category of historiosophy rather than historiography: Not the preservation and recording of the past for its own sake but the culling of certain historic events for didactic purposes is the intent.¹¹

The entire narrative is God centered. Its focal points are God's mighty deeds on behalf of His people in times of oppression, in the act of liberation, and in the course of the wilderness wanderings. God is the sole actor, the only initiator of events. The various episodes, therefore, project Israelite concepts of God and of His relationship to the world; that is, they embody the fundamental tenets and crucial elements of the religion of Israel and of its world view.

The different aspects of the divine personality, as revealed in Exodus, express a conception of God that is poles apart from any pagan notions. There is but a single Deity, who demands exclusive service and fidelity. Being the Creator of all that exists, He is wholly independent of His creations, and totally beyond the constraints of the world of nature, which is irresistibly under His governance. This is illustrated by the phenomena of the burning bush, the ten plagues, and the dividing of the Sea of Reeds. As a consequence, any attempt to depict or represent God in material or pictorial form is inevitably a falsification and is strictly prohibited. The biblical polemic against idolatry appears here for the first time in the context of the Exodus.

Although the nature of God must be beyond the scope of the human imagination, the texts affirm, as one of their principal teachings, that He is nevertheless deeply involved in human affairs. History, therefore, is not a procession of causeless, undirected, meaningless happenings but is the deliberate, purposeful, unfolding plan of the divine intelligence. God chooses to enter into an eternally valid covenantal relationship with His people, Israel; this legal reality entails immutable and inescapable obligations on their part. The Decalogue and the legislative sections of Exodus thereby constitute divine law. They are not, as is the case with the Near Eastern law collections, the fruit of human wisdom or royal sagacity.

From this flows another credo, first explicated in Exodus, which thereafter animates all of biblical literature: that the welfare of society is conditional upon obedience to God's law. God is deemed to be absolutely moral, and He correspondingly demands moral standards of behavior from human beings. He delivers the faithful from injustice and oppression and ensures the ultimate and inevitable downfall of the wicked.

The religious calendar of Israel became transformed by the Exodus experience. Formerly tied to an expression of the rhythms of the seasons, the sacred times were reinterpreted in terms of that great historical event. They became commemorations of God's benefactions upon Israel in Egypt and in the wilderness and were emancipated from phenomena of nature.

Finally, two of the most important institutions of biblical Israel find their origins in this book. The account of the organization of the cult around a central place of worship with a hereditary priesthood occupies nearly one third of the entire book; thirteen of its forty chapters are concerned with this topic. And the prophetic office, of seminal importance for the national history and faith and later also for some of the world's other major religions, is initiated through the person of Moses. He is the archetypal prophet whose mission epitomizes the distinguishing features of later classical apostolic prophecy.

THE SETTING IN TIME

A clear distinction must be made between the special literary mold in which the narrative is cast—with its particular selectivity, emphases, and teachings—and the historical background of the Exodus. This last issue is complicated by the absence from the biblical accounts of certain data essential to establishing chronological parameters. The names of the reigning Egyptian kings are not given; we do not know how long after Joseph's death the reversal in the fortunes of the Israelites occurred; and we have no extra-biblical documentation that directly refers to Israel in Egypt, to the Exodus, or to the conquest of Canaan.

In addition to these matters, there is the problem that certain biblical texts have not yet yielded their secrets. For instance, Genesis 15:13 foretells that Abraham's offspring “shall be strangers in a land not theirs, and they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years.” This time span is there coordinated with just four generations. Exodus 12:40-41 states that the Israelites resided in Egypt for four hundred and thirty years. We are not told when this period is thought to have commenced; hence one cannot work backward to the patriarchal era in order to fix the date of Israel's departure from Egypt, not to mention the fact that the dates of the patriarchs are still a matter of scholarly dispute.

The one apparently unambiguous chronological note is in 1 Kings 6:1, according to which four hundred and eighty years intervened between the building of Solomon's Temple and the Exodus. The king's project can be reliably dated to around 960 b.c.e. This would place the great event at about the middle of the fifteenth century b.c.e. Unfortunately, this dating cannot be reconciled with many other details of the biblical narrative. Thus Moses, who lived in the Nile Delta, is easily and frequently in touch with the ruling pharaoh, who must also have had his residence in the area. But in the fifteenth century b.c.e. the Egyptian capital and royal palace were located at Thebes, a distance of more than four hundred miles (ca. 650 km.) to the south of the Delta.

Moreover, commencing about 1550 b.c.e. and for the next few hundred years, energetic and powerful Egyptian monarchs maintained a tight grip on Canaan. This situation would hardly have been conducive to Israel's departure from Egypt and its conquest of Canaan in this period, especially as Egypt never figures in the biblical account of Joshua's campaigns.

On the other hand, a thirteenth century b.c.e. dating would seem to be far more satisfactory. It was then that the royal capital was situated in the Nile Delta; it was in this period that archaeological evidence shows the towns of Pithom and Ramses to have been built, and the Bible ascribes their erection to Israelite slaves. It was then that frenetic construction activity took place in the Nile Delta, which would have required the conscription of large numbers of laborers. The end of the thirteenth century was a period of Egypt's decline and loss of its Canaanite province. The invasion of the Sea Peoples and the Libyans occurred; there was a power vacuum in the East; and generally it was a period of turmoil and upheaval.

Although a mid-thirteenth-century b.c.e. dating for the Exodus presently appears to accommodate more facts than a dating two centuries earlier, it is not without its own difficulties. True, it is reinforced by the Stele of Merneptah, the inscribed monument set up in western Thebes by the pharaoh of that name (ca. 1224 to 1211 b.c.e.) to celebrate his victory over the invaders of Egypt. This stele mentions “Israel” as a people in Canaan but apparently not yet settled down within fixed borders. Nevertheless, the Exodus and conquest in the thirteenth century cannot be reconciled with the above-cited biblical chronology if it is to be taken literally. Moreover, the archaeological data collected from numerous sites in the area do not always fit in with the biblical reports of the towns in Transjordan that the Israelites encountered on their way to Canaan nor of the places that Joshua conquered and destroyed in the course of his campaigns inside Canaan, if a thirteenth century b.c.e. time frame be insisted on. Only future research will be able to solve the problem. In the meantime, it must always be remembered that the biblical narrative is a theological exposition—a document of faith, not a historiographical record.

Notes

1. J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck, eds. (Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1965): 708, §64.

2. Used by Origen (3rd cent. c.e.), and by Eusebius (4th cent. c.e.) in his Ecclesiastical History, VI:25.

3. De Migratione Abrahami III. 14, Loeb, ed., p. 138.

4. S. Baer and H. L. Strack, eds. (Leipzig, 1879; [reprint] Jerusalem: Makor, 1970), 57.

5. Sotah 36b.

6. C. D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible ([Reprint] New York: Ktav, 1966), 25.

7. Y. Hoffman, The Doctrine of the Exodus in the Bible [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1983), 11.

8. Exod. 22:20-22; 23:9; Lev. 19:33-34; Deut. 5:12-15; 10:17-19; 15:12-15; 23:8; 24:17-18, 20-22.

9. Cf. W. Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985). On this subject, see J. Levenson, “Liberation Theology and the Exodus,” Midstream, 35:7 (1989): 30-36.

10. See N. M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), 1-9.

11. See I. Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988); G. London, “A Comparison of Two Contemporaneous Lifestyles of the Late Second Millennium B.C.,” BASOR [Bulletin. American Schools of Oriental Research] 273 (1989): 37-55.