The Exodus story is the central event of Jewish history. It is also a model -- in microcosm -- for what happens later throughout the history of the Diaspora. We see again and again the roller-coaster ride from high points to low. Generally, the higher the Jews manage to rise, the lower they fall and then, despite the odds, they rise again.



The supernatural, rapid increase in the Jewish population has made the Egyptians nervous -- "there are too many of them, what if they rise up against us" -- and Pharaoh issues a genocidal decree: Kill all the Jewish boys. (This is a classic anti-Semitic pattern -- the Jew the in Diaspora is always loyal to his host country, yet can never escape unfounded suspicion of treachery.)


Irony of ironies? It's all part of the plan. As noted earlier, God puts the cure before the disease. This is another classic case.

It does give one pause though -- that the savior of the Jewish people is going to be raised in the house of the ultimate enemy of the Jews. The only modern equivalent would be of some fellow who is meant to overthrow Nazi Germany being raised as Adolf Hitler's adopted grandson. That's what we have here. You realize what a wild story this is if you imagine it in a modern context.



The events of Exodus happened circa 1314-1313 BCE if we translate Jewish chronology into the Christian dating system the world uses today. But that may be misleading. For one thing, the Egyptian chronologies we use in modern world history have only been calculated in the last centuries by scholars who tried to estimate the reigns of the kings of Egypt and Assyria/Babylonia, two of the oldest empires in the world. There's a huge amount of educated guesswork involved in these chronologies. If you open any books on ancient Egypt you'll get lots of different opinions as to when different Pharaohs reigned.



The Pharaoh who reigned after Rameses was his son Mernephtah who ruled in the late 13th century BCE. Now what's most interesting is that in Thebes (modern Luxor in Egypt), Mernephtah carved on a large slab of black granite (known as a "stele") a victory inscription. Known as the Mernephtah Stele, it contains a record of Mernehtah's military campaigning including the area of Canaan, the Sinai/Israel. And it's the first extra-Biblical mention of "Israel" anywhere in human history. We're talking about something that's around 3,200 years old. And this would correspond in Jewish chronology to some time after the Exodus story.

What does the stele say? "Israel is a widow. Her seed is no more." That is, we've wiped out the Jewish people, they're gone. This means:

1) The Ancient Egyptians lie when they record things. Jews are here today 3,200 years later, they hardly wiped the Jews out; in fact, they're gone. This is not surprising as the ancient people are notorious for lying in their official records.






Moses could easily have grown up to be a totally assimilated, totally spoilt Egyptian kid. But the Pharaoh's daughter has hired his own mother as his nanny and so he never loses the connection or the commitment to his people.4

It is no surprise therefore that, when one day he sees an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Jew, he cannot stand it and he kills the taskmaster. Then, of course, some Jews inform on him, which is another classic case we're going to see in Jewish history -- Jews informing on other Jews. And Moses has to flee for his life.

Eventually he ends up in the land of Midian, which is across the Sinai Peninsula. There he meets Jethro, an excommunicated priest who has several daughters, one of whom named is Tzipporah, Moses marries Tzipporah and they have two sons, Gershon and Eliezer, (about whom we don't hear much) and he becomes a shepherd.

In this regard he follows the example of the other great leaders of the Jewish people; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob's twelve sons were all shepherds. So, we have to ask: Why were so many Jewish leaders shepherds?







When Moses encounters God at the burning bush, God identifies Himself repeatedly (Exodus 3:6, 3:13, 3:15, 3:16, 4:5) as the God of his forefathers -- Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with whom He had made an eternal covenant.

This is an extremely important passage because later on in Jewish history a lot of different people are going to come -- the Christians, for example -- claiming that God changed His mind, abandoned the Jews and made a new covenant (new "testament" to use the Greek term) with them.

God made an "eternal" covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and He renews the deal at several intervals.


At this juncture, God has decided to bring the Jews out of Egypt. And it's important to keep in mind that God put the Jews in Egypt in the first place – It says in the Talmud, you have to bless the bad as well as the good. 6Traditionally, whenever a Jew hears bad news (ie someone has passed away) the first response is "Boruch Dayan Emet –Blessed is the truthful Judge (God). "There is no concept in Judaism of a devil who does evil and competes with God. God is omniscient and omnipotent and nothing is outside His knowledge or control. While we finite human beings may perceive events as good or bad, from God's infinite perspective everything that happens is part of a master plan and ultimately for the good.


God tells this to Moses and then commands, "Go back and tell Pharaoh to let My people go."


Moses goes back down to Egypt, confronts the Pharaoh with his brother Aaron, and he says, "The God of my forefathers told me to tell you: 'Let My people go.'" And in response, the Pharaoh is incredulous "What are you talking about? Who is this God? I don't know him."

The ancient Egyptians had around 2,000 gods. They took their spirituality and knowledge of the spiritual world very seriously. Since Pharaoh didn't have a laptop to do a "god-search," you can imagine the Egyptian priests furiously flipping through their lists of the different gods and couldn't find the God that Moses was invoking.

The notion of one, infinite, all-powerful God was an idea that was incomprehensible to the ancient polytheistic people -- it simply did not fit with their fragmented way of viewing the world.

When the Pharaoh won't listen, what does Moses do? Aaron takes his staff and he throws it down and it turns into a snake. If someone did something similar today it would make a very big impression on us, but Pharaoh is not impressed. His magicians can do the same thing. (Even though Aaron's staff then swallows the other staffs)



But Moses was just getting started.

1. Moses is an Egyptian name meaning "from the water." There were even a number of Pharaohs with similar names-Thutmose.
6. "Whatever God does is for the good." (Talmud, Brachot: 60b)