Chapter
Four
In Genesis 12 Yahweh1 appears
to Abram and orders him to leave his own country
and people to go to a new country that he is to be shown. There Abram will
be blessed by Yahweh and given a great name. With this order
in mind Abram, without hesitation, organizes all of his affairs and leaves
Harran with Sarai, his sister-wife, and with Lot, his nephew, and all of
their dependants. Yahweh's appearance to Abram there in the desert is the
initial indication of a promise or covenant between Yahweh and Abram.
That very day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, and he said,
`To your descendants I give this land
from the River of Egypt to
the Great River, the river Euphrates...(Gen. 15.18)
When Abram is ninety-nine years old Yahweh appears to him again to say:
`I make this covenant, and I make it
with you: you shall be the
father of a host of nations. Your name
will no longer be Abram,
your name shall be Abraham, for I make
you a father of a host of
nations. I will make you exceedingly
fruitful; I will make nations
out of you, and kings shall spring
from you. I will fulfil my covenant
between myself and you and your
descendants after you,
generation after generation, an
everlasting covenant, to be your
God, yours and your descendants after you. As an everlasting
possession I will give you and your
desccendants after you the land
in which you are now aliens...(Gen.
17.4-8)
Abraham's special son,
Isaac, given to Sarah so late in life, carries on the seed and
the covenant is passed on from father to son, although
the selection, or choice, of son to receive the blessing and the
responsibility of the covenant is not always according to the conventions
of the time (that is, sometimes the first born son does not receive the
boon). Isaac and Rebecca have the twins Jacob and Esau and the question
arises: which of the two will be chosen to carry on as covenant bearer? Jacob
is a dreamer, a visionary of sorts, who also is marked for heroism by
images of stones and dreams of angels. He will be chosen. Yahweh says to him:
`Jacob is your name,
but your name shall no longer be
Jacob:
Israel shall be your name.' (Gen.
35.10)
and then Yahweh renews the covenant promise:
`The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac I give to you; and to
your descendants after you I give this
land.' (Gen. 35.11-12)
By the end of the book of Genesis the
scene has shifted to Egypt and the Hebrews are enslaved in an alien land.
It seems that Yahweh has forgotten about them and about the
covenant until Yahweh chooses Moses as the new Abraham and announces his intention:
`I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob as God
Almighty. But I did not let myself be
known to them by my name
Jehovah. Moreover, I made a covenant with them to give them
Canaan, the land where they settled
for a time as foreigners. (Ex.
6.2-5)
The history of the Old Testament is the history of the covenant promise for land. Always at the
narrative centre of the stories we find an unbroken cord that is the
covenant between Yahweh and his chosen people. Revelation
of divine intention, frustration on the part of the chosen people as the
intention seems thwarted by time and chance, violation of the covenant
agreement by the chosen ones - these are the narrative beads strung on the
strong cord of the covenant. The story holds our attention on one level to
the extent that we wonder how the covenant promise for land will be
fulfilled, for, after all, Canaan is already occupied by a thriving civilization.
How will this collection of Hebrews, beaten down by hundreds of years of
slavery, ever be able to escape from slavery in Egypt, come together as a
people, wage battles of occupation, and take and hold a country of their
own? The stories of the Pentateuch answer this question in dramatic fashion.
Covenant provides the plot line for these
stories and covenant provides the clue to the structure of
the basic elements of the story. Evidence of other covenants, treaties,
and agreements between a powerful king, a suzerain, and his people, has
been found which provide us with narratives of the type the biblical
writer repeats. Hittite documents show various kinds of agreeements and reveal a pattern to the
treaties. The primary purpose of the suzerainty treaty was to establish a
firm relationship of mutual support between the two parties (especially
military support), in which the interests of the Hittite sovereign were of
primary and ultimate concern. It established a relationship between the
two, but in its form it is unilateral. The stipulations of the treaty are
binding only upon the vassal, and only the vassal took an oath
of obedience. Though the treaties frequently contain promises of help
and support to the vassal, there is no legal formality by which the
Hittite king binds himself to any specific obligation. Rather, it would
seem that the Hittite king by his very position as sovereign is concerned
to protect his subjects from claims or attacks of other foreign states.
Consequently for him to bind himself to specific obligations with regard
to his vassal would be an infringement upon his sole right of
self-determination and sovereignty. A most important corollary of this
fact is the emphasis upon the vassal's obligation to trust in the
benevolence of the sovereign.2
Six main elements can be distinguished in
the texts of most of these
Hittite treaties:
1. A preamble, which identifies the
author of the covenant, giving his
titles, attributes,
and genealogy. For instance: "Thus speaks X, the great king,
king of Hittite land,
son of Y, the valiant, the great king." Here emphasis is laid
on the majesty and
power of the king who is conferring a special relationship
on the vassal.
2. A historical prologue which describes
in detail the previous relations
between the two
parties. It outlines the benevolent deeds which the king has
already performed for
the vassal, not vaguely, but very specifically and
factually. The
implication is that the vassal is already obligated to the great
king because of the
favor and protection experienced in the past. Thus there is
a real mutuality of
contract; but the vassal is pledging future obedience and
loyalty in return for
past benefits which he received without having any claim
to them. Strict
obligation is on his side; on the great kings', there is no
obligation other than
the presumption and implied promise that he will
continue his
benevolence.
Notable is the personal form of this
prologue. The great king addresses
the vassal directly:
"I have sought after you; although you were sick and ailing I
put you in the place
of your father and made your brothers and sisters and the
whole Amurru country
subject to you."
3. The stipulations which spell out in
detail the obligations accepted by
the vassal. These
usually include:
a. Prohibition of service to any other
great king.
b. Promise to be on friendly terms with
the king's other vassals; if
disputes arise they
are to be submitted to the overlord's arbitration.
c. Promise to send contingents to support
the great king when he goes
to war.
d. Promise to trust the great king
completely, and not to tolerate
rebellious or critical
language.
e. Promise to bring yearly tribute in
person, and on that occasion to
renew fealty.
4. A directive that the treaty be
deposited in the temple of the vassal
city, and periodically
read in the hearing of the people.
5. The invocation of the gods both of the
Hittites and of the vassal as
witnesses to the
treaty.
6. Finally, the pronunciation of curses
upon the vassal if he breaks the
covenant, and the
promise of blessings for its observance. These are the only
sanctions expressly
mentioned; that is, the Hittite king does not threaten
military proceedings
and destruction. The treaty is a sacred document, and it is
the gods who will see
to its enforcement and vindication.3
Perhaps the most historic of books in the
modern sense of "historic" are the two Samuels and 1 and 2
Kings. The Septuagint4 called the books "1 and
2 Kingdoms" and "3 and 4 Kingdoms" respectively; names that
emphasize the continuity of story in the now four books called "1 and
2 Samuel" and
"1 and 2 Kings".
Changing the titles from the kings to the prophet in 1 and 2 Samuel
is understandable, as the canon would have been shaped under the
immediate influence of rabbis and not kings. Israel's shift from
prophet-judges of Samuel's type to kings is indeed the subject of the
books of Samuel, and that shift is an important political and historical
development in Israel's early days. The story also includes the personal
life of Saul and David and the divine intervention of Yahweh in the events of history. In some ways
Samuel resembles Genesis in its preoccupation with founding families who
are placed at the centre of historical change in the unfolding story of
Israel.
Historical causation and divine justice
are woven into this story of three central characters: Samuel, Saul, and
David. The books
focus on three major struggles or conflicts: Saul and Samuel, Saul and
David, and David against the combined forces of the two. The history of
David's rise to kingship is personal as well as historical and the kind of
"evidence" we are given to consider is a mixture of prophecy,
internal musings, messages from Yahweh, and claims
about the world, which can be verified in extra-biblical ways. Recent
literary study of the books has corrected a misconception inherited from
historians to see the story as straightforward reporting by an eyewitness
to the events.5 Instead we see the work now as a combination of
chronicle, legend, projection, and above all story in the fullest sense of
that word.
In Second Samuel we read:
After this David inquired of the Lord, `Shall I go up into one
of the
cities of Judah?' The Lord answered,
`Go.' David asked, `To which
city?', and the answer came, `To
Hebron.' So David went to
Hebron with his two wives, Ahinoam of
Jezreel and Abigail widow
of Nabal of Carmel...The men of Judah
came, and there they
anointed David king over the house of Judah. (2 Samuel 2.1-4)
Meanwhile Saul's commander in chief,
Abner son of Ner, had
taken Saul's son Ishbosheth, brought
him across the Jordan to
Mahanaim, and made him king over
Gilead, the Asherites, Jezreel,
Ephraim, and Benjamin, and all
Israel. (2 Samuel 2.8-11)
Abner...marched out
from Mahanaim to Gibeon, and
Joab...marched out with David's troops from
Hebron. They met at
the pool of Gibeon and took up their
positions one on one side of
the pool and the other on the other
side. Abner said to Joab, `Let
the young men come forward and join in
single combat before us.'
...There ensued a fierce battle that
day, and Abner and the men of
Israel were defeated by David's troops. (2
Samuel 2.17-20)
The war between the houses of Saul and
David was long drawn out,
David growing steadily stronger while the house of
Saul became
weaker and weaker. (2 Samuel 3.1)
At first reading, this passage, like most
of the so-called "historical books" from Genesis to Kings,
appears historical. We are given a lot of "facts". Some
suggestion of the causal relationships between events is also given.
Saul and David are struggling for the throne; David will win
because he is the chosen one of Yahweh. The
overriding impressions in the Old Testament are that (1) Yahweh is directly involved
in history; (2) what has happened had
to happen to allow Yahweh's plan to unfold properly; and (3) the
literary structure of the books follows the form of a treaty or covenant document between Yahweh and Israel.
Time after time we are given scenes depicting Yahweh's participation in
the human drama, although these do tend to be- come more subtle in the
later books. For example, the direct contact of the early parts of Genesis
are replaced by the device of having "an angel of the Lord"
speak to characters and then by having the message imparted by means of a
dream. One of the basic reasons why the Old Testament can not
be considered history, in any modern sense of the word, is clear in the
above: for how could a writer be privy to the dreams of his characters?
Or, in the passage from Samuel, how could the
writer know what Abner said to Joab by the side of the pool?
Too often we are presented with material from the omniscient point of
view, are told of intent, dreams, thoughts, conversations with others
in private, and find ourselves, through the narrative skill of the writer,
inside the character's head. Good literature; bad history.
History attempts, at least, to be
objective. That means, among other things, that modern historians feel
much better if they can verify events in the past from multiple sources.
They like to find extra-biblical sources to corroborate biblically
suggested events, characters, and causal relationships. The historian is
interested in human recorded past and deals principally with written
records. When the inquiry is based primarily on oral and/or
artifactual evidence, we refer to the researcher as an anthropologist,
archaeologist, or something other than a historian. Modern historians, for
the most part, tend to dismiss elements of the supernatural as explanatory
devices for the in- terpretation of the events recorded in the documents
of the past. Biblical sources receive essentially the same treatment,
although some historians are more cautious than others in their sifting
out of the supernatural and miraculous elements. Regarding the account of
the Hebrew escape at the Red Sea, for example, even those historians who
are inclined to accept the account as essentially accurate in its present
form will, in their own recounting of the incident, tend to emphasize the
natural rather than the supernatural aspects of the story. That is, they
usually speak in terms of low tide and high winds and either suggest that
Yahweh worked "indirectly" through these
natural phenomena or leave the question of his involvement open
altogether. The following quotation from John Bright's A History of Israel, is typical:6
Concerning these events, to be sure,
we can add nothing to what
the Bible tells us. It appears that
Hebrews, attempting to escape,
were pinned between the sea and the
Egyptian army and were
saved when a wind drove the waters
back, allowing them to pass
(Ex. 14.21,27); the pursuing
Egyptians, caught by the returning
flood, were drowned. If Israel saw in
this the hand of God, the
historian certainly has no evidence to
contradict it!
But such a comment merely begs the
question of causality, since nothing will count as evidence for or against
such an interpretation. Did the wind blow at the Red Sea while the Hebrews
were making good their escape? Who knows? Did God cause the wind to blow?
Who knows? Within the mythical architecture of Exodus the answer is
simple. Yahweh parts the waters and then collapses them
on the Egyptians. `Did this really happen?' is the question of the
literalist, depending on a misunderstanding of the nature of the text:
remember, these are not factual claims about the world, but performatives
within a story true to the world. The defeat at the Red Sea is the defeat
of the Pharaoh-god by the Hebrew god, Yahweh. At the level of story this
defeat is "evidence" of the power of the Hebrew god. For
centuries after, the Jew can point to this story as "evidence"
for chosen tribe status and as a reminder of the covenant between Israel and Yahweh. The stories in the
Old Testament are forming and shaping a people just as the
writers of the stories are forming and shaping the people through the
stories. Egyptian records do not indicate anything about Moses and the escape at the Red Sea, but if
we found them and if such a person as Moses existed to take the Hebrews
out of Egypt, then we could expect the Egyptian story to be a much different
story with a different line about causality offered to explain the events.
We have difficulty sorting out the real causes of events in our own time,
and we still tell stories to reassure ourselves that there is indeed some
understandable cause for events that affect us. And some of us today
continue to offer god as the cause for things we do not understand or
cannot see except in some purposeful way.7
Many recent discoveries in archaeology
have sparked historical interest in the Old Testament. Since about
1890 archaeologists have been constantly active in "the holy
land" and have provided us with a wealth of non-written sources for
information on such things as weapons, dress, foodstuffs, ceramic wares,
architectural styles and other silent artifacts that help us to put
together the past. They have also discovered a number of written documents
from the ancient Near East which have proved to be especially relevant for
the study of Israel's history during Old Testament times. These include:
1.
The Amarna tablets
2.
Royal Egyptian Inscriptions
3.
The Mesha Inscription
4.
Royal Assyrian Inscriptions
5.
The Babylonian Chronicles
6.
Hebrew and Armaic Ostraca
The Armana Tablets were discovered in
1887 in the El-Amarna district of Egypt, about ninety miles south of
Cairo. Written in Akkadian, most of them are letters belonging to the
correspondence between the Egyptian court during the reigns of Amenophis
IV, and the vassal rulers of city-states in Syria, Phoenicia, and
Palestine. They reflect the political and sociological cir- cumstances in Palestine
during the first half of the fourteenth century BCE (before Common Era).
References to the "apiru" in the Amarna Tablets have generated
much discussion among Old Testament scholars, since this Akkadian term may
be related etymologically to the designation "Hebrew" used in
the Old Testament.
The royal Egyptian Inscriptions comprise
the official Egyptian reports of Asiatic campaigns and lists of conquered
cities. These documents are of some importance to early Israeli history
though the age of Egyptian empire and conquests had already passed by the
time of the settlement of the Hebrew tribes in Palestine. The hymn of
victory of Merneptah (c. 1236-1223 B.C.E.), discovered in Thebes in 1896,
is an especially interesting exception in that it provides the earliest
known non-biblical reference to Israel:8
The princes are prostrate, saying:
"Mercy!"
Not one raises his head among the Nine
bows.
Desolation is for Tehenu; Hatti is
pacified;
Plundered is the Canaan with every
evil;
Carried off is Ashkelon; seized is Geyer;
Yanoam is made as that which does not
exist;
Israel is laid to waste, his seed is not;
Hurru is become a widow for Egypt!
All lands together, they are pacified...
The Mesha Inscription is a stele erected
by Mesha, King of Moab, during the mid ninth century B.C.E., and
discovered in Jordan in 1868. It memorializes the King's reign and
celebrates his recovery of Moabite independence from Israel (cf. 2 Kings
3.4ff). Many other inscriptions from the period of the Divided Kingdom
have been discovered and each makes a contribution to our understanding of
the history of Syria-Palestine during Israel's monarchial period.
Records have been discovered from Assyrian
Kings and from Babylonian and Persian Kings which also assist us in
understanding the time of the ancient Near East and provide us with
valuable information, useful to historians and biblical commentators
alike, to assess certain "historical" sections of the biblical
stories. Finally, the ostraca (potsherds which bear messages) provide
lists, letters, etc. which give additional information about Hebrew life.
Some claim a special relationship between the Bible and archaeology9,
pointing out that "the Bible describes public life and the `word
of the spirit;' archaeology fills in a knowledge of everyday life and
culture, [and] both are necessary if we are to comprehend ancient Israel
in its full variety and vitality." To the extent that the Bible is a
text presenting radical theology it can not be judged as a book of history
or a record of everyday life. One obvious limitation that flows from the
theological intentions of the writers/editors is that they tell us next to
nothing about the daily life of the average Hebrew. Archaeology has
dramatically changed our understanding of the everyday life of those
people who are in the background in the biblical stories.
Professor Dever says of the relationship
between the Bible and
archae- ology, "the legitimate archaeologist (in contrast to the
"raider of the lost ark") will...not attempt to date the
creation, or set out to
locate the Garden of Eden and excavate the bones of Adam and Eve, or establish
flood levels and dig up the timbers of Noah's ark." Those who do from
time to time announce that they are setting out to find the ark, or to
search for Joseph's bones, are making the basic mistake of
misunderstanding the nature of the text. Once again, these stories are not
literal social or economic history, but are fundamentally theolog- ical
stories which present a particular official line. In the first
five books of the Old Testament this official line has to do with the
"saving acts" of Yahweh on behalf of his chosen people Israel. These
stories are not just de- scriptions, but are always description plus
theological explanation. In a recent movie about a veteran of Vietnam
("In Country") a U.S. general "blesses" his men who
are on their way to the war. He says: "You are chosen to fight
godless communism...you men have been chosen to be the leaders in a fight
that will never be forgotten...you are chosen...America is never going to
forget you...you are the best...good luck and go with God." It makes
no sense to ask if what the general says is true or false; these are not
statements of fact. They are part of the official line of the time. And as
we have seen in relation to the war in Vietnam the official line has
changed. But the story line has not changed; the horrors of that war, the
people who fought in it, and the human costs, these are as real as the
stories in the Old Testament.
There are many non-biblical sources of
written and "silent" artifacts which can aid the student of the
Bible in recreating the time of the biblical patriarchs and of the
monarchs of the Great Kingdom. To return to the passage at the beginning
of this chapter, we can say that even though the narrative is embellished
with legend and with omniscient point of view it does nevertheless provide
some firm historical facts: there really was a David who fought a civil war against the house
of Saul, achieved undisputed sovereignty over the twelve tribes, conquered
Jerusalem, founded a
dynasty, created a small empire, and was succeeded by his son Solomon. These facts
are facts not because the Bible says so, but because they are facts. These
stories are not, strictly speaking, historiography, but rather the
imaginative reenactment of history by a gifted writer who organizes his
material along certain thematic biases and according to his own remarkable
intuition of the psychology of his characters. He feels entirely free, as
did Shakespeare, to invent
interior monologue for his characters; to ascribe feeling, intention, or
motive to them when he chooses; to supply verbatim dialogue for occasions
when no one but the actors themselves could have knowledge of exactly what
was said. If history at all, this is a special genre of history.
One other characteristic of the text that
makes it difficult to consider as history is that of selection. The main
story is of Israel and of the House of David. This concern
means that at times when the events do not fit those patterns they receive
short shrift. For example, here is the story of Manasseh:
Manasseh was twelve years old when he
came to the throne, and he
reigned in Jerusalem for fifty-five years...he did what was wrong
in
the eyes of the Lord, in following the
abominable practices of the
nations which the Lord had
dispossessed in favour of the
Israelites....the Lord
spoke...:`Because Manasseh ...has done these
abominable things, outdoing the
Amorites before him in
wickedness, and because he has led
Judah into sin with his idols,
this is the word of the Lord the God
of Israel: I will bring disaster
on Jerusalem and Judah..." (2 Kings 21.1 ff)
From twelve years old to sixty seven
years old Manasseh reigned as King, and yet we get his entire life's
history in just a few hundred words. His son, Amon, is dismissed
by the writer in even fewer words so that we can get to the events of real
importance for the writer in Josiah's reign:
the discovery of the Deuteronomy ("I have found the book of
the law in the house of the Lord.").
It is as Professor Alter says10
"what the bible offers us is an uneven continuum and a constant
interweaving of factual historical detail (especially, but by no means
exclusively, for the later periods) with purely legendary "history";
occasional enigmatic stories; archetypal fictions of the founding fathers
of the Nation; folktales of heroes and wonder-working men of
God; verisimilar inventions of wholly fictional personages attached to the
progress of natural history; and fictionalized versions of known
historical personages." The history in the Bible should not be
confused with history and the Bible.
THE EXODUS
Without the Bible we would know nothing
of Moses. He is
not mentioned anywhere else. From the time he first appears in Exodus
until we are told of his death in the last chapter of Deuteronomy we are
dealing with a fictional character stitched to some real historical
events. The exodus from Egypt was probably a real event. The entry into
the "Promised Land" was likely a real event although most scholars
today would suggest that the Hebrew take- over of Canaan was a slow
process and not the dramatic and nearly instant event recorded in the
Bible. The religious experience that Moses underwent alone with his flock
of sheep in the wilderness of Midian is certainly a genuine experience of
turmoil, resolution, and commitment to a task. How can we know this? From
inference and conjecture arising from putting together in- formation from
archaeologists, historians, linguists, anthropologists, we are able to have
a fairly clear picture of the events telescoped into the Biblical Moses
story. We know a great deal about conditions in Egypt at the time when the
events recorded in Exodus took place; we know a great deal about
the conditions in Mesopotamia and Palestine at that time and about the
relations - cultural, social, political, economic - between Semitic
peoples and Egyptians.
The account of Israel's slavery in Egypt,
with which Exodus begins, is presented as a part of a continuing story
which goes back to the Patriarchs in Genesis. The story really opens with
God's call to Abram to leave Haran (northwest Mesopotamia)
and migrate to the country later known as Palestine.
The Lord said to Abram, `Leave your
own country, your kinsmen,
and your father's house, and go to a
country that I will show you. I
will make you into a great nation, I
will bless you and make your
name so great that it shall be used in
blessings:
Those that bless you I will bless,
those that curse you, I will
execrate.
All the families on earth
will pray to be blessed as you are
blessed.
Abram's (later
Abraham) son Isaac was
provided a wife (Rebecca) by his father. The Lord appeared to Isaac also
and renewed the promise he had made to Abraham. Jacob, the chosen son of
Isaac and Rebecca, carries on the tradition and the special agreement;
he is sent back to his
grandfather's original home of Haran to find a wife, and on the journey
there he has his own special encounter with God. In fact he gets two
wives, his cousin Leah and her younger sister Rachel, since his uncle
would not let him have the younger without first taking the older. But he
loved Rachel, who finally bore him Joseph and Benjamin. Joseph's
brothers were jealous of his special status and arranged to have him sold
as a slave into Egypt.11 Once there Joseph rose quickly to
power as a result of his remarkable powers of interpreting dreams and his
abilities in administration. Joseph like his father Jacob is a
dreamer, one in tune with the intellectual side of life, one who is aware
of life as process through time. Soon he was the second in command to the
Pharaoh. During a famine in Canaan Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to buy
corn and they meet the now mighty and powerful Joseph, whom they do not
recognize but who recog- nizes them. Eventually Joseph forgave his
brothers for what they had done to him and persuades Pharaoh to invite
them and his father to come live in that part of Egypt called Goshen.
There they prospered. Jacob died and eventually Joseph died, saying to his
brethren:
`I am dying; but God will not fail to
come to your aid and take you
from here to the land which he promised on oath to Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. He made the sons of
Israel take an oath, saying,
`When god thus comes to your aid, you
must take my bones with
you from here.' So Joseph died at the
age of a hundred and ten. He
was embalmed and laid out in a coffin
in Egypt. (Genesis 50.24-26)
Exodus opens with an account of Jacob's
descendants, the children of Israel, prospering and multiplying in Egypt.
On this stage Moses, representing that
which is universally human in our stories, is implanted in a historical setting.
It is the tiny ark on the Nile that, through Pharaoh's daughter's
pity, penetrates the headquarters of the oppressors.
Who were these Hebrew people? The word `Hebrew' does not
appear to be the name of a race or a nation, but of a class of people who
worked the caravan routes of the middle east - the word probably means something
like `donkey-men' or `caravan-men'. They travelled and traded with their
families and flocks and herds, never in one place for long. The Biblical
picture of the Patriarchs wandering in Palestine between the hill country
and the desert, maintaining contact with their ancestral Mesopotamia and
moving south to Egypt when food became scarce is supported by, among other
extra-Biblical evidence, the 450 clay tablets unearthed at the ancient
city of Alakh, some dating from the 18th century B.C.E., illustrating the
social, economic, and political life of the times. The so-called
Execration Texts dating from about the end of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt
(18th century B.C.E.) record the enemies of the country as well as listing
the lands and territories adjacent to Egypt.
The patriarchal period, the age of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
and their semi-nomadic wanderings, is thus roughly assigned to about
1950-1800 B.C.E. in the Middle Bronze Age.12 The Middle Kingdom
of Egypt collapsed about 1786 B.C.E. in chaos and civil war. When the smoke
clears the Hyksos are in control of the country. They rule until about
1550 B.C.E. when in a war of liberation the Egyptians pushed them out and
replaced their rule with the Eighteenth Dynasty. Now the Hyksos and the
Hebrews were racially connected. Many scholars now agree that there is
some connection between Hyksos rule of Egypt and the settling of the
Hebrews there. It seems reasonable to assume that the Hyksos, who
themselves had travelled
the caravan routes to Egypt for centuries before they took power there, favoured other
`Apiru'13 groups and encouraged them to settle in Egypt. When
the Pharaoh Amosis (1552-1527 B.C.E.) expelled the Hyksos from Egypt,
the Hebrews in Egypt were left without protectors. Contemporary documents show
that the Hyksos who escaped slaughter were enslaved. It is reasonable
to assume that the Hebrews, now unprotected by the Establishment, were
also enslaved at this time. This would place Joseph's rise to power under
Hyksos rule and make Amosis the Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.
The Bible account is not always
consistent and the chronology difficult to pin down. We must remember that
the Bible is not history in the modern sense, but presents the traditions
of a people, their national and religious origins, and a fair amount of
so-called sacral history (of or pertaining to sacral rites and observances).
The account is more an imagined sense of the past which exhibits ideas to
be valued, characteristics to be emulated, traits to be developed. The
Exodus probably took place in the reign of Rameses II between 1280-1250
B.C.E. We are told the Israelites spent 430 years in Egypt which means
they came into Egypt in around 1700 B.C.E. which is when the Hyksos
established themselves. Recently discovered archaeological evidence shows
that the Palestine city of Hazov - destroyed by fire by the
invading Israelites under Joshua (Joshua 11.10-13) - was destroyed in the latter part
of the 13th century B.C.E. We can be reasonably certain that by the end of
the 13th century B.C.E. the Israelites - now really the people of Israel -
were settled in parts at least of Palestine, and the Egyptian experience
was behind them, though never to be forgotten.14 In some ways
it does not matter what the dates are: the story has taken on a timelessness
that makes it the myth to inflame any suppressed peoples anywhere.
What of this Moses? What kind of
man is he? First of all the story gives us Moses the Hebrew who also in
some sense is an Egyptian - and in
this paradox lay his special powers.15 We are told of his
genealogy in simple terms: "A descendant of Levi married a Levite
woman who conceived and bore a son." Levi was one of the sons of
Jacob. Martin Buber in his book Moses has this to say:
"...in order that the one appointed to liberate his
nation should
grow up to be the liberator...he had
to be introduced into the
stronghold of the aliens, into that
royal court by which Israel has
been enslaved; and he must grow up
there. This is a kind of
liberation which cannot be brought by
anyone who grew up as a
slave, not yet by anyone who is not
connected with the slaves; but
only by one of the latter who has been
brought up in the midst of
the aliens and has received an education equipping him with all
their wisdoms and powers, and
thereafter `goes forth to his
brethren and observes their burdens.'.
(page 27)
The marvellous story of Moses' deliverance
from the Nile has caught the imagination of many a child. It is told
quickly: "Pharaoh's daughter came down to bathe in the river, while
her ladies-in-waiting walked along the bank. She noticed the basket among
the reeds and sent her slave-girl for it. She took it from her and when
she opened it, she saw the child. It was crying, and she was filled with
pity for it. `Why,' she said, `it is a little
Hebrew boy.'" The human cry of the child strikes a responsive
chord in the woman and she saves the child from the river. How she
explains this child from the river we are not told. And when he is grown,
educated and raised in the Pharaoh's household, he still has Hebrew blood
coursing through his veins. All of this is compressed and then we are told
of the pivotal episode in his life when he slew the Egyptian. In this act,
in the words of Christopher Fry, "he killed his Egyptian self in the
self of that Egyptian."16
Moses, excited by a
presumably newly realized sense of identity with his fellow Hebrews, takes
the side of an abused Hebrew slave and kills the slave-driver who is
abusing him. The next day he learns that there is no necessary gratitude
on the part of the oppressed. The Pharaoh discovers the murder; Moses must
flee to save his life. This gets him to Midian, home of his mother's
people, where he helps the daughters of a priest of Midian who are being
harassed by other male shepherds at a well. Moses, the future saviour
of the Hebrews, takes sides with the women in the dispute, foreshadowing
the part he will play in the larger drama in Egypt. The land of Midian to
which Moses fled was probably in the south-eastern part of the Sinai Peninsula. Midian
represents for Moses a simple way of life and a stern desert code
in contrast to the cosmopolitan polytheism of Egypt. The life there was
much more like that of his Hebrew ancestors before they settled in Egypt.
Moses needs time to recover his past and discover his roots. The story has
to get Moses to Midian, for it is there, alone in the wilderness, that his
encounter with God takes place.
Moses was minding the flock of his father-in-law
Jethro, priest of
Midian. He led the flock along the
side of the wilderness and came
to Horeb, the mountain of God. There
the angel of the Lord
appeared to him in the flame of a
burning bush. Moses noticed
that, although the bush was on fire,
it was not being burnt up; so he
said to himself, `I must go across to
see this wonderful
sight.'(Exodus .1-5)
After God has Moses' attention
(here again in the image of the burning bush one can sense the human
author at work: in the right sunlight this phenomenon happens often, it is
the cause that is added here) he tells him of the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
binding Moses to this past, this promise. He then tells him of the future
and the part that Moses is to play in it. A reluctant hero, Moses responds
with "But who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should
bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" The answer does not speak of
Moses' special worth or of his special skills, but is about being chosen:
"I am with you," says God. If "I am with you" is present
then you are a hero in the full sense of the word. What is `god'? `God' is
the name for the heroic virtues, the commitment to the future, the change
to be brought about as the hero brings a boon to his people, or in this
story brings his people to a boon. In answer to Moses' question about his
name, God says, "I AM; that is who I am. Tell them that I AM has sent
you to them." "I am" is being itself; "I am" is
the necessary frame within which any story can exist, it is the
very ground of being for a narrative of any kind. "I am" is the
simplest declarative statement possible, and every one of the infinite
sentences that proceed depends upon the truth of "I am".
Moses is to lead the Hebrews out of slavery not
because they are his brethren but because they are unjustly oppressed. He
becomes a national leader because of a universal principle.
Fry represents the conflict between Moses and Pharaoh as a clash between two
ideals: Pharaoh stands for civilization, Moses for humanity and the rights
of the individual. What is more important, the pyramids or the men who
build them? Fry's Moses says:
A man has more to be than a Pharaoh.
He must dare to outgrow the security
Of partial blindness...(Fry, page 14)
...What have we approached or
conceived when we have conquered
and built a world? Even though
civilization became perfect? What
then? We have only put a crown on the
skeleton. It is the individual
man in his individual freedom who can
mature with his warm spirit
the unripe world. (Fry, page 15.)
The conflict between Moses/Aaron and Pharaoh (Moses, the reluctant hero,
has been given his brother Aaron to speak for him since Moses is a "halting speaker")
is at times a childish competition in conjuring tricks, but its function
in the story is clear: this Pharaoh has power and is thought to be a god.
Many commentators make a point of showing that the conflict between God
and Pharaoh is a one-sided conflict, unfair because God has all
the power. But Pharaoh was thought
to be a god also, and so we have here the conflict between two equal
combatants. The story tells of the ascendancy of one tribal god over
another, tells of victory and special care by the Israelite god for his
people. After this the bull god of the Egyptian valley is no longer to
be worshipped, for I AM has triumphed.
I AM has triumphed by direct intervention
into human affairs. The account of the ten plagues is rich with conviction
of "divine" power working for the Hebrews and against Pharaoh.
The object of the plagues is expressed with forceful directness:
Then the Lord said to Moses, `Go into
Pharaoh's presence. I have
made him and his courtiers obdurate,
so that I may show these my
signs among them, and so that you can
tell your children and grand-
children the story: how I made sport
of the Egyptians, and what
signs I showed among them. Thus you
will know that I am the
Lord. (Exodus 10.1-3)
The plagues are not magic, nor are they
presented as merely natural events. Based on natural events they represent
a heightening and ordering and a deliberate turning on and off of events
that could occur, but are given a meaning within the story by showing us
god at work behind the scenes, manipulating the events to the end of
freedom for the Israelites and honour for himself in the future story. They
represent POWER - YAHWEH at work on nature herself. These events give the
exodus a sense of something very special - divine intervention in the aid
of a particular cause. Divine intervention is always easier to write about
after the fact, when one knows how things come out. God's will or
intention, like narrative intention, is revealed in the story. God's
intention is clear: tell my story to future generations of Israelites.
And, of course, it is in the story that this story is molded and formed.
The final plague is the most devastating-
the killing of all Egyptian first born:
`At midnight I will go out among the
Egyptians. Every first-born
creature in the land of Egypt shall
die: the first born of Pharaoh
who sits on his throne, the first-born
of the slave-girl at the
hand-mill, and all the first-born of
the cattle. All Egypt will send up
a great cry of anguish, a cry the like
of which has never been heard
before, nor ever will be again. But
among all Israel not a dog's
tongue shall be so much as scratched,
no man or beast be hurt.'
God has given Moses and Aaron detailed instructions for the
passover sacrifice using for the first time the phrase "all the
congregations of Israel" and associating the ritual of the passover
sacrifice with means of preventing the slaughter of the Israelite
firstborn. This is an echo of the original passover ritual, a festival of
nomadic shepherds at which a sheep or goat was sacrificed and the blood
sprinkled to ward off evil powers, which especially threatened the
firstborn. The narrative recipe: take an ancient ritual, wrap it in a
new story, and bring the new ritual into history as part of an ongoing
story. Another part of the ritual, that of unleavened bread, is brought
into the story at this point. A pastoral festival and an agricultural
festival are historicized in narrative and establish (constitute) the
Passover Feast as a ritual of remembrance of the deliverance from Egyptian
slavery. Moses rediscovers himself, his god, his relationship with the
Israelites, and he will recast and revitalize the law for the Israelites.
A defeated Pharaoh finally lets the
people go (with, one imagines, a sigh of relief) and they become the
charge and responsibility of Moses. He is
to provide; they will consume. Moses is not a new master, he is their
leader: in matters religious and spiritual it is Moses who imposes the way
of life. An unbroken chain from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Moses: this bond
between Yahweh and Israel is welded in images of contact
between the worlds of history and of the "divine" story to be
unfolded in history. And what we know of Moses we know through the story.
After breaking free from the bondage of
Egypt the "children" of Israel now face the problems of
sustaining life in the desert. They need food and water. They will cry for
a return to the known from this new position of hunger and freedom and the
unknown. They will exhibit all of the weaknesses and fears of a people on
a new trek toward identity. The miraculous feeding stories fold together
all the traditions of miraculous feeding in the wilderness available to
the narrator: manna from above, quail from above, and a constant thirst.
The symbolic meaning is clear: the God of Israel is providing for
the sustenance of the people of Israel by direct intervention in natural
events. Manna may be the secretion of insects and be an edible substance made
up of glucose, fructose, and pectin; but its function in the story is to
proclaim that Yahweh is manifest in its presence.
A group of tribes, a collection of
individuals, is formed into a people at Mount Sinai where the covenant between Yahweh and the patriarchs is extended to
include all of the people who have struggled through the desert of despair
to a place which will become the sight for the giving of the
constitution that binds the people together as a congregation. Imaged in
lightning and thunder, shown to be special by purification rituals,
offered to the people on chunks of stone, these commandments are intended
as absolute: everything in the imagery surrounding the giving of the law
is intended to emphasize the importance of the law. "And he wrote
upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments." The
Decalogue is presented in a narrative package that is distinguished by its
images of power, mystery, and the absolute. The WORDS are put in writing
in tablets of stone and the writing is attributed to God or at least to
Moses acting on God's behalf and eventually these
tablets are placed inside the Ark of the Covenant to be stored in the
holiest part of the tabernacle. These words become the symbol of the
meeting and contact between God and his chosen people.
So goes the official line. And the power
of the story of the giving of the law can work to wipe out of our memory
the larger story: on both sides of the narrative devoted to the giving of
the law we find stories of destruction and death. This Yahweh who now gives the law is also capable of
violating many of his own laws. The wrathful god who previously has killed
the firstborn of all the Egyptians orders, “You shall not commit murder”. The
official line states the laws are absolute; the story line reveals that in
fact the laws can be broken. What is officially intended as a list of
duties prescribed by God as absolute, definitive of morality, and
constitutive of the proper relationship between human and god, turns out
to be relative, dependent upon an understanding of morality, and vague in
its expression of proper action. Yes, it is wrong to murder. But what does
that tell us? When is killing to be classified as murder? When you kill
Egyptians? Obviously not. When you kill Canaanites? Obviously not.
Although the official line announces a "truth",
the story line reveals a need for interpretation.
Is this god of Exodus worthy of worship?