Lecture

This is our fourteenth lecture. We turn now in this lecture to the book of Exodus. First an outline of the book, forty chapters, bisected by the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, makes it easy to remember the major outline of the book.

The first half tells of the deliverance from Egypt, the first twelve chapters, and the Passover night, the leaving of Egypt into Passover. That first Passover is celebrated in chapter 12. Then the escape and the journey on down the peninsula to the mountain of Sinai.

The last half of the book has first the Ten Commandments and the material following the Ten Commandments that interprets them and applies them to civil legislation. This is what we have already called the Book of the Covenant, chapters 20 to 24. Then follows the plan for the tabernacle. God gave the plan for the tabernacle to Moses on the mountain, 25 to 31. And then a break describing the sin of the golden calf, where Aaron made the golden calf and Moses came down from the mountain and saw the dancing in chapters 32, 33, and 34, including Moses going back up the mountain and there receiving the Ten Commandments again.

The rest of the book, 35 to 40, gives the building of the tabernacle according to the plans given in 25 to 31. And as I have already suggested I believe, these last chapters are very, very similar to chapters 25 to 31. It’s the design and the building. The relationship of the command and the fulfillment.

Of course, it is of great importance for us to settle the date of the Exodus, but this is a technical subject and somewhat difficult, and first we want to have a description of the background of the period, and then we will be able to better understand the arguments for and against. The date of the Exodus depends very heavily on a verse in 2 Kings 6:1, which says that the building of the tabernacle was four hundred eighty years after the Exodus.

Well, the history in Egypt should be outlined. We have discussed the old kingdom going down to about 2200 and then the first intermediate and then the middle kingdom, the great Twelfth Dynasty going down to 1776 and then comes the second intermediate. The second intermediate or second dark ages runs from about 1776 to 1560, about two centuries. And during this period the Hyksos people came into the land of Egypt and conquered it. Exactly who the Hyksos people were is not so clear. One reason is because during this dark ages, we don’t have as many documents as we would like. The Turin Papyrus gives us the names of some of the Hyksos kings, but several dynasties were in control of Egypt. Part of the time probably there were some dynasties in partial control in upper Egypt, up the Nile, down south, and then also there were other dynasties in the north, and these were probably where the Hyksos kings were in the delta.

The Hyksos kings seemed clearly to have been of Semitic origin. They came through Palestine. They would be Asiatic chiefs and their god was the god Baal, which was paralleled with the Egyptian god Seth. So the Hyksos conquered Egypt and reigned, but did not interfere with the basic population of Egypt. It was no displacement of the population; it was rather the rule of overlords who conquered Egypt apparently bringing in the chariot and horse and, indeed, this was the secret of their military success. The maneuverability particularly crossed long stretches of desert that was made possible by the use of the chariot and the horse.

The Hyksos were finally displaced by the Eighteenth Dynasty. The Eighteenth Dynasty, around 1560, drove out the hated Hyksos, pursued them as far as Palestine, and in a long siege of the city of Sharuhen they conquered the Hyksos kings. And the people who did this started the Eighteenth Dynasty. The great kings of this dynasty were the Thutmoses. Thutmose had a daughter, but no son and so the son by a concubine was put on the throne by virtue of marrying his half-sister, and this was Thutmose I. The legal wife of Thutmose had no male child. So Thutmose I held the title because of his wife. Strangely enough, this union also produced no male offspring, and so Thumose II was chosen, again from a harem wife, I believe, to marry his sister and ruled in the name of his sister. His half-sister was the great woman Hatshepsut, who is called by Breasted of the University of Chicago, the first individual in history. She was individualistic enough, surely, and she ruled with great energy after her husband died.

After her husband died, the one next in succession was Thutmose III, but Thutmose III was not a son. This union also had no male offspring, and we have the strange situation that for three generations the legal wife of the Pharaoh had no male offspring. This is curious. Hatshepsut took over the throne, perhaps in the name of her son underage, but Thutmose III eventually became of age and then reacted strongly against his step-mother. And when she died, and some think that she died by foul means, he erased her name from all the statues and memorials of Egypt because his theory was that it was he who was reigning and not Hatshepsut

This is a very peculiar situation because according to the early date of the Exodus, which we shall eventually defend, it would be just about this time when Moses would be born, and you can imagine something of the yearning of the Queen of Egypt under these circumstances to have a son that she could call her own, instead of having the throne go to the son of a hated rival wife. And this may have been the reason why one of these queens picked up Moses, and it is not impossible that might have been the great Hatshepsut herself that wanted to raise Moses to displace Thutmose III. Of course, it didn’t work out that way, and Thutmose III became the great energetic conqueror who conquered up into Palestine, because now he had adopted the horses and the chariots from the Hyksos predecessors and so with a moveable army, his exploits were many, and indeed so were those of Thutmose II.

Thutmose III was followed eventually by Amenhotep III, whom we call Amenhotep the Magnificent. The time now is about 1400 BC. Amenhotep the Magnificent was the great builder. The builder of Colossi that we see pictured. The Colossi of Memnon, they’re called. Actually, they were statues of doubtless, Amenhotep III and behind them there would presumably have been a big temple or structure that is now completely gone. Amenhotep III in turn was followed, after a lesser king, by a man who was called Amenhotep IV, but changed his name because he threw overboard the religion of the Thutmoses and of Amenhotep III. The priest of Amun had been very prominent in thieves, but Amenhotep IV changed his whole outlook on life and his philosophy and his religion. The art forms also are changed in his day, and he held to the belief in one god, the solar disc of the sun, stripped of the mythology that the Egyptians had usually given to the sun god Ra. So he changed his name also to Akhenaton or Ecnaton, it’s spelled various ways, E C N A T O N, and he is called in history the heretic king because of his reaction against the gods of his fathers.

It was a very interesting movement toward monotheism. It wasn’t a pure monotheism, nor was it particularly an ethical monotheism, such as we have in the Bible, but it is interesting that it was a movement toward monotheism. Of course, many people have felt that Moses got his monotheism from Akhenaton. It seems to me much more logical to suppose that Akhenaton, who had a monotheism that was more like a “flash in the pan,” got his monotheism from Moses where it was in its pure form and was stable and lasted through the centuries among the Hebrews in Canaan. But at least we have Akhenaton shortly after 1400 advancing these strange ideas for Egypt. When he died, his ideas did not last and a king soon after him called Tutankhamun just about closed out the great Eighteenth Dynasty.

Tutankhamun was a lesser king. He had a short reign and not nearly the brilliance and magnificence of his predecessors, but he is best known in history because his burial place was found in tact in 1924 with the unbelievable treasures of the well-known tomb of King Tut. He himself was buried in a coffin of solid gold and this coffin of solid gold weighed two hundred fifty pounds, richly ornamented. That was inside a wooden coffin that was gilded and ornamented, too. That was inside a stone sarcophagus, I believe, and that was inside a chapel, a demountable wooden-framework chapel with a linen covering thrown over it, which in its construction was remarkably like the wilderness tabernacle described in Exodus. That was within a larger chapel and that in a larger chapel there were a total of eleven different layers in the funerary arrangements of King Tut. His golden throne, golden bed, golden chariot, everything was there in the tomb, and these treasures are not seated to be seen in the Cairo Museum mainly.

So this is the history of the Thutmoses, the Eighteenth Dynasty, and the end of this dynasty, these weaker kings lost their hold on Palestine. Palestine had been conquered by Thutmose III and held under his control, but in the days when Akhenaton was dabbling in philosophy and theology, they lost their hold and the kings of Palestine, the kings of the different little city states, wrote to the Egyptian crown asking for help. This correspondence has been found in Akhenaton’s capital of Amarna, and it is written on clay tablets and, therefore, it has lasted. They’re written in the Akkadian language and they universally begin, “To the King, my lord, seven times, seven times I fall down,” and the protestations of loyalty to the king and then they say, “Send help, the invaders are coming into the land of Canaan.” The Sagaz they are sometimes called; Hibiru they are sometimes called, and “I am loyal to the king, but Mr. So and So has given in to the Hibiru.” This is what is called the Amarna Period from around 1400 to 1360. The Amarna letters describe this invasion, partly a war and partly a diplomatic conquest, with people changing their allegiances overnight; and some have argued, and I would really support this as we shall see later, that this is the Canaanite side of the picture given in the book of Joshua of the invasion by the Hebrews. Of course, much discussion has revolved around this matter.

After King Tut, there was an intervening rule, a general, a General Horemheb who’s perhaps to be put in as the first of the next dynasty or the last of the previous dynasty. It makes no difference. And then around 1310, the Nineteenth Dynasty begins with Seti I. Seti I followed by Ramesses II, and this is the dynasty of the Ramessides. The Nineteenth Dynasty, the dynasty of the Ramessides and Ramesses the Great II, was ruled from about 1290 to 1223. There’s an uncertainty of about ten years in the dates for Ramesses. It depends on certain synchronisms, but for our purposes, we can take perhaps 1290 to 1223. More details can be found particularly in the writings of Albright, and the matter is discussed in Jack Finegan’s book, Light from the Ancient Past.

Ramesses II was followed by Merneptah; Merneptah was the last important king of this dynasty, and he is particularly famous because it was he who mentions one of his conquests in Palestine at which time he declares he conquered some of the people of Israel. And this is quite interesting because it is the first mention of Israel. The date would be about 1219 BC, the first mention of Israel in the land of Palestine.

So this is the Egyptian background of our times, and we turn then to the book of Exodus itself and it begins with the birth of Moses. The birth of Moses is surely an example, as was the story of Joseph, of the providence of God. Here in the midst of the slavery of the children of Israel, they were hated now and it is quite possible to hold, though all do not agree, that Joseph came down to Egypt during the time of the Hyksos rule. The Hyksos were Semites, would rather naturally be favorable to Semitic peoples that would speak their language and be culturally similar to them. And so Joseph would have been promoted under the Hyksos. Eventually, when the Hyksos lost their power and were driven out and, of course, hated by the Egyptians, then any friend of the Hyksos would be an enemy of the Egyptians. And if the Israelites did not leave with the Hyksos, which they did not, then they would have been subjected to slavery, and this would have been signalized in the phrase, “A new king rose over Egypt that knew not Joseph.” This is a common reconstruction, and I think, myself, it is the right one.

So the children of Israel were in hard bondage in Egypt, and they labored. Of course, so many of the Egyptians labored. In a sense everybody were slaves in Egypt. It was a monarchy and it took totalitarianism. The king was god, and this would have, of course, complicated the situation for the Hebrews. It would have made it very difficult for them to keep their true faith, and so the word finally went out from the Pharaoh that all the boy babies would be thrown into the Nile, the rivers of Egypt, the canals and all of the delta. But God in his providence took care of Moses. His parents saw that he was, as the King James says, “a proper child” and in much prayer, we may know, his mother put him in this basket in the river and there he was found by Pharaoh.

One of the most important things that Moses did perhaps in all his life was to cry that particular day and just as Pharaoh saw the crying baby, her mother’s heart took pity and took the child in, though it was transparent that it was a Hebrew child, and the little girl who was watching was doubtless his sister, but Pharaoh’s daughter kept the baby and raised him.

For forty years, Moses was in the palace of the Pharaoh. During this time, he was raised and trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and this was a very important part of God’s training for Moses. He was given training surely in administration. He was given training in legislation. Some people have felt that there are similarities between the Mosaic Code in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers and the Code of Hammurabi. There may be some such similarities. They’re not real copies or anything, but there are some similarities, and I would not be at all surprised that in his university training in the Royal University of Egypt or such equivalent, Moses studied the jurisprudence of eastern Fertile Crescent.

Well, after forty years of training in Egypt, God had other plans for Moses. Moses didn’t know what these plans were, but Moses was attracted to his people. His mother had raised him partly too, and his mother had done her work well, and the prayers of mother surely followed the young man. And when he was come of age, it says in Hebrews, “He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God and esteeming the reproaches of Christ better than all of the treasures of Egypt.” We get some idea of the treasures of Egypt when we see the tomb of King Tut, and this was counted as nothing by Moses in order that he might identify himself with the children of Israel.

But identify he did, but not wisely or well, and he had to leave the country in flight and lived in Midian, in the desert, for many years. There he married and had experiences in the desert that we do not know about. Why did the Lord leave him forty years in the desert? This was in the providence of God. There were surely two reasons. One reason was that the children of Israel were not yet ready; probably the crown was not yet ready either. Everything must be just right for this great deliverance that God was planning. Many other boys were thrown into the water and died in those difficult 80 years, the first part of Moses’s life. Many slaves died under the lash, but the more ready the children of Israel were to escape Egypt, as the cup of the iniquity of Egypt was coming to the fold.

Also, the cup of the iniquity of Canaan was coming to the fold. Albright remarks that discoveries in the land of Canaan, both in the literature of Ugarit of 1400 BC and, also, in the amulets and the fertility goddesses found in Palestine of this day, show a decline in morals in Palestine that sapped the strength of these Canaanites. And Albright argues that the Canaanites were even more ready to be overthrown by Joshua because of the degradation of the Canaanites. The Bible says the iniquity of the Amorites was coming to the full.

So in God’s good time, Moses was called by the Lord to go back to Egypt, but in the meantime, be it noted, that Moses had had another training that he did not get in the University of Egypt. He got training now in the University of Hard Knocks as a shepherd in the desert, and there was no book on the geography of Palestine by Dennis Bailey that Moses could read. He had to learn the different moods of the desert of Sinai first hand, and that he did. Leading his sheep north and south and east and west across those barren lands, he could tell where there was some bit of bush and grass that they could crop in the hot summertime. They could extend their pasturage a little bit father out into the desert in the spring rains. We do not know whether the climate in Sinai at that time was exactly the same as it is now. Bailey points out that a slight difference in rainfall would make a tremendous difference in the ability of shepherds to maintain themselves in this wild country. It may well be that the weather was changing for a short time there, and that the children of Israel could handle their flocks as nomads have done so often in that arid territory. Moses must know where the water sources were. The springs would be good at one time of the year and not another time of the year. All of this he learned in forty years, and he also learned surely to trust in God the more.

And finally the time came when God spoke to Moses, and Moses, in the backside of the desert as it says, saw a bush burning, and he watched it and it burned, but it didn’t burn up. And Moses said to himself, “Curious, strange, wonderful. I’ll have to turn aside and see,” and as he turned aside and saw, it developed more and more that this was really a miracle. Here was a visitation of God, and this is what a miracle is. It is the finger of God coming into our space-time universe and inserting itself in supernatural fashion into the natural fabric of time and history. And Moses saw a thing that was impossible. Impossible to man, of course, but possible to God. And when he saw something like this, it was clear that it was God’s handiwork, and as Moses drew near, a voice from the bush called him, “Moses, draw not nigh hither. Take off your shoes from off your feet. The ground on which you stand is holy.” And Moses did so, and God spoke to Moses.

This brings up, of course, the question of what a prophet is. God called Moses to be a prophet. Moses had not been a prophet before this, but God spoke to Moses and this is really the main thing in a prophet’s call. When God called Isaiah, He called him audibly and Isaiah was a recipient of revelation. Samuel, when just a boy, was a recipient of revelation and all Israel knew that Samuel was called to be a prophet. So God revealed Himself to Moses in vision and later He revealed Himself mouth-to-mouth, as it says in Numbers 12, and visibly, audibly, intimately, God spoke to Moses. He was, therefore, the great prophet. In Numbers 12:6–8, God says that He would reveal Himself to ordinary prophets in more ordinary ways of vision and dream, but to Moses in a special way, with special intimacy.

In Deuteronomy 18 and Deuteronomy 13, God speaks to Moses about prophets. Of course, Abraham had been a prophet. God had spoken to Noah likewise, and Enoch, remember before, but God says here that He will raise up a prophet and that the children of Israel should listen to the prophets that God would raise up, and they would know a prophet. How would they know a prophet? Well, they would know a prophet it says in chapter 18 by whether or not he prophesied the truth. And if he prophesied falsely, he was not a prophet. This was in a sense a negative test. Of course, there are some people who do say the truth, after all the multiplication table is a truth, but it is not the truth of revelation from God. But a prophet who could tell the future and could tell it truly, accurately, this would be a prophet.

But this was not the only sign. Another sign was miracle. The actual working in the space-time world of the supernatural, and Moses was given this privilege in a very special way. Moses had a symbol that he carried and that symbol was called “the rod of God.” And God took the rod in Moses’s hand and transformed it into a symbol of divine power. When he stretched out the rod over the sea, it parted. When he held up that rod in the fight against the Amalekites, we usually speak of Moses holding up his hands in prayer. It doesn’t say that Moses was holding up his hands in prayer. He was holding up the rod, which was the symbol of divine presence and power, and here was the miraculous. And so the miracle is the sign of the prophet.

And then there is, also, another test in Deuteronomy 13, and that is true doctrine. A prophet that presumes to speak in the name of another god, who contradicts the previous true revelation of the prophets of God. This prophet is false and should be dealt with in ancient Israel.

So Moses was a prophet and the type, as it says in Deuteronomy 18, of the great prophet to come, and this is, of course, mentioned in the New Testament, especially in the Gospel of John. Christ fulfilled this great prophecy as the line of prophets following Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the rest issued at last in Jesus Christ who came prophet, priest, and king, speaking the words of God, revealing to us by His word and Spirit, the will of God for our salvation.

God called Moses, sent him down to Egypt, and we remember the dialog between Moses and Egypt. When Moses demanded that he let the people go, Pharaoh refused and God brought the ten plagues against Pharaoh; these were real plagues, these were super natural plagues, and God made a distinction between the Israelites and the Egyptians. The darkness settled over the land of Egypt, a darkness that might be felt; but over the land of Goshen, there was light. And so finally, the children of Israel were let go by the Egyptians after the Pharaoh, who had killed the boy babies of the Egyptians time after time, finally the Lord laid His hand upon Egypt and killed the first born in the land of Egypt, and there was a great cry, and at midnight the Egyptians rose up and pushed the people out. And the people went out with a high hand, it says in chapter 12, and they were ready to go. Moses had told them to kill the lamb and have their kneading troughs ready to eat in haste, because they would on this Passover night leave.

By the way, it was the fourteenth of Nisan, the beginning of the month, and Hebrew was on the new moon, so the fourteenth of Nisan would be a broad full moon for the children of Israel to get ready to leave the land of Egypt and out they went and they took their belongings with them. The Egyptians gave them gifts. They asked the Egyptians and they got something what we would call back pay, and they went out, crossing at last the sea. And we must take up next time the route of the Exodus and discuss, also, the time of the Exodus as they left the land of Egypt where they had been slaves so long, out into the freedom of first the wilderness and then at last to the land that God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.