Exodus II. and a Home for Exiles:
The most formative experiences for Israel's faith, basic to her understanding of herself, her God, and her moral-religious practices, occurred in that vagabond period typically called the exodus from Egypt. The exodus-event, of course, included more than a saving crossing of the Sea of Reeds (Yom Sup) -- though it certainly meant that -- it was a contest between YHWH and the gods of Egypt (since Pharaoh himself was considered divine). Certainly some of the tension an ANE person would have felt in the rising crescendo of Moses' requests, God's plagues, Pharaoh's refusals, and Egypt's inability to stop the Israelites from leaving Egypt was the recognition that YHWH was besting "the gods of the land."1 In the exodus the Jews came to understand themselves as a nation. The bene Israel ("sons of Israel"), a mixed multitude of uprooted people was galvanized into a theocratic nation. But the freedom from bondage, soon seemed meaningless in the "grim waste-land," and the midbar ("desert") was ingrained in their recollection of the exodus-event as a "great and frightening wilderness," or "a terrible land."2 Certainly it was the context Egyptian oppression and landlessness during the years of wandering that caused the Land too take on such powerful theological significance in the faith of Israel. It was a powerful theme both in looking back upon YHWH's promise, and in anticipating
See Exodus chapters 7-12 for this series of requests, refusals, and plagues. Notice how the narrative takes on an almost rhythmical tone through the use and repetition of several key phrases, and how it moves towards an climax through the ever escalating series of ten plagues. The Passover narrative, in Exodus 12-15, culminates the tension generated in the salvation narrative with a series of liturgical reenactments. Exodus 12: 14-20 establishes the Feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread and holy ordinances for the people of Israel "forever." Exodus 12: 43-51 provides the core for the Feast of Passover ("This is the ordinance of the Passover....). Exodus 13:3-10 gives the basis for the Feast of Unleavened Bread ("..seven days you shall eat unleavened, and on the seventh day there shall be a feast unto the LORD.") And Exodus 13:11-16 describes the practice of dedicating the First Born unto the LORD ("And when the LORD brings you into the land of the Canaanites ... you shall set apart to the LORD all that first opens the womb"). In these significant, holy days and holy practices the Exodus-event lived on, through liturgical reenactment, as a significant part of the life of every devout Israelite.
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Cf. Deuteronomy 1:19, 8:15, and Isaiah 21:1 for examples of this sort of recollection.
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Israel's possession (conquest) or restoration (exile) to the land. Walter Bruggemann, in his insightful book The Land, has argued that "land is central, if not the central theme of biblical faith."3 We would expect him to say so, since that theme is the title of his book, but Bruggemann's point is well taken: the biblical faith is about belonging. It is full of the sense that the identity and destiny of this nation is found in her in belonging to YHWH, who had given Israel this land. In fact their entire national history could be crystallized by considering the land both as promise and problem to Israel. Israel (and perhaps this provides some insight on her national psychology even into this very day) was deeply shaped by the recollection of being a refugee or homeless people. This was certainly the national genealogy which they traced from Abraham's call: "God from your country and your kindred and your father's house . . . " (Gen. 12:1); and it was connected to God's self-identification to them through their forefather: "I am Yahweh who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans" (Gen. 15:7). This early sojourn was freely chosen; it was a choice made by those who could have chosen not to leave. Through this choice of faith -- and so many others that followed it -- Abraham and nation after him -- threw themselves upon YHWH committing themselves to live by and for a promise of a better life through a better relationship with God in a better place. Abram's coming out of Ur, allowed the OT writers to term him a "sojourner." Actually the Hebrew is a technical term more commonly describing "a resident alien." It means living in a place, perhaps even for an extended period of time, and yet to live there as an outsider, never really belonging, having no rights, title, or political voice. Our contemporary notion of "sojourner," implying travel or nomadic life style, is not inherent in the Hebrew term, but is was a fact of historical necessity
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Walter Bruggemann, The Land (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), p. 3.
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for the first Hebrews. But the focus of the image remains constant; "sojourner" refers to someone who is on the way to somewhere else, his or her present status is not to be considered an ultimate one. The second recollection of homelessness comes from the exodus. When Israel came out of Egyptian bondage but had not yet entered into the land of promise Israel was homeless again. Now Israel described herself as "a wanderer." And in the narratives of the wandering, the buoyant faith (in which the patriarchal narratives are cast) seems less evident. The stress of deprivation of safety, and the necessities of life began to color the national self-description. The narrative affirms and delivers forty years worth of evidence that a path of deprivation led to the land of promise; hence Israel's landlessness took on negative connotations. Even entering into the land did not greatly alter Israel's immediate life experience. The very term "wanderer" (nual) suggests "precariousness" (as in Ps. 107:27), and certainly this concept communicates something of the national emotive state when YHWH made them to wander forty years in the wilderness. Texts like Num. 32:13 indicate that wandering had become a sign of judgment and not a sign of faith (as it had been for Abram): ... the LORD's anger kindled against Israel, and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the LORD was consumed. And behold, you have risen in your fathers' stead, a brood of sinful men, to increase still more the fierce anger of the LORD against Israel! For if you turn away from following him, he will again abandon them in the wilderness; and you will destroy all this people.4 The murmuring of the years of wandering also became enshrined in Israel's national faith,5 and
Notice once again the pronouns switch back and forth between "you" and "them." The present generation stands with their forefathers and foremothers as wanderers, and wandering (perhaps most emphatically in a theological sense) is used to describe the experience of the present generation--as well as the past.
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Exodus 15:22-23; 16:2, and 7-8.
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it became replicated in the six cycles of faithlessness, oppression, "crying out" (supplication), and salvation, which are the pattern of the book of Judges.6 The manna, "saving bread" of the wilderness journey,7 became for the settled nation "the bread of the Presence;" it lay before the presence of God and the assembly as a sacred sign of God's redemptive power.8 In an ironic twist, the wickedness of the northern Kingdom (after division from the southern Kingdom, Judah) was so great that as it stood under the prophetic rebuke of Elisha, and as the capital city of Samaria lay besieged by the army of Syria, "an ass's head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a kab of dove's dung for five shekels of silver;" instances of cannibalism occurred for want of bread. But God subsequently spared Samaria from the Syrian siege because of the supplication of Elisha.9 The plea-supplication pattern also became enshrined in the Psalter, liturgy or hymnbook (the Psalms) of the nation. It emerges, for example, in the Psalms of personal distress (Ps. 114) and takes on special emphasis in the retelling of the saving history of Israel (Ps. 22); in each instance, repentance and supplication result in salvation. This theme also provided the blueprint for making sense of the exile (Ps. 80, and Is. 63-64). Thus, Psalms of personal lament and narratives of salvation from distress10 seem to belong to the same theological fabric of deliverance.
Judges 3:7-11; 3:11-31; 4:1-6:1; 6:1-8:28; 8:29-10:1; 10:1-12:10; 13:1-16:31. In each instance "Israel did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD," idolatry along with its associated moral and covenantal failings. After years of serious oppression by foreign nations (or civil war in the instance of Gideon's son Abimeleck) the people "cried unto the LORD," and the Lord "raised up" each succeeding judge "to save them." See Exodus chapter 16, especially 16:31-33: "Now the house of Israel called its name manna; it was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers of honey. And Moses said, This is what the LORD has commanded: Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.' ... As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony, to be kept. ..."
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Cf. I Samuel 21:1-6, where David and his men save themselves from hunger by eating "the bread of the Presence." 2Kings 6:24-7. See for example Psalm 113 and Genesis 12:10-20; 32; 37; 44.
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Landlessness, from the standpoint of Deuteronomy, would soon be remedied. Sixty-nine times the promise that Israel would "possess" and "inherit" the land echoes across the landscape of Deuteronomy.11 The name of the land of Canaan seems to have been changed to "the land which YHWH your God gives you," as more than twenty-five instances describe Canaan as a gift from God.12 In Deuteronomy, what one might expect to become a narrative of military strategy and conquest becomes instead a lesson in YHWH's sovereignty. Since both Canaan13 and Israel14 are understood as the "inheritance" and "possession" of YHWH, is seems obvious that YHWH has the power and ability to bring them together. But the land that was given to Israel, was given to her "to possess."15 We note in this instance, as Walter Kaiser pointed out, an example of how "Divine sovereignty and human responsibility were complementary ideas rather than antithetical pairs."16
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In Dt. 1:8; 6:10, 18; 7:8; and 34:4 the present promise of land was linked to the pledge YHWH had given Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Cf. Dt. 1:20, 25; 2:29; 3:20; 4:40; 5:16; 11:9; 17:7; 21:1; and etc. 1Sam. 26:19; 2Sam. 21:3; I Kings 8:36; Josh. 22:19; 2Chron. 20:11. Exodus 19:5; Dt. 7:6; 9: 26, 29; 14:2; 26:18; 32:8, 9 etc. Dt. 3:19; 5:31; 12:1; 15:4; 19:2, 14; 25:19, and etc.
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Cf. Walter Kaiser, Toward an Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), pp. 124-130 for an examination of the occurrences cited here and their linguistic roots. This citation is from p. 127.
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In view of the harsh experiences of the wilderness wanderings "rest" in the land came to carry salvific and almost paradisiacal connotations for Israel. This "rest" was not a part of the patriachical promise, at least not in the direct sense of being one of the three stipulations repeated in the covenants granted to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But the land granted to Issachar was termed "a resting place" in Jacob's blessing (Gen. 49:15). This land anticipated "rest" was more than a matter of real estate; "rest" had to do with life in the presence of YHWH, and it was a quality of life that came to Israel as a gift of God through the fulfillment of God's promises.17 The Sabbath observance, as it was explained in Deuteronomy (5:12-15), linked "rest" with liberation from bondage and the salvation of Exodus.18 Hence, Joshua understood the entering of the land and the reception of "rest" as being the culmination of the ancient promises: "the LORD gave them rest on every side just as he sworn had to their fathers.... Not one of all the good promises which the LORD made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass."19 The "land" as promise was possessed by sheer grace.20 But the "land" would also be a problem for Israel. A pattern of warnings emerges in the midst of Deuteronomy; in four successive series of injunctions, and in the context of her soon entering the land, Israel is warned "Take heed!"21 In the first instance (Dt. 4), Moses told the people "give heed to the statutes and the ordinances which I teach you, and do them; that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land which the LORD, the God of your fathers, gives you." The
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Num. 10:33; Dt. 3:20; 12:10; and 25:19.
Dt. 5:15, "... You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out thence with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day."
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Joshua 21: 44-45. As in Dt. 6:10-15, "you did not build.... you did not fill... you did not hew...." Dt. 6:12f; 8:11-17; 11:16. Cf. Bruggemann's fine chapter "Reflections at the Boundary," The Land, pp. 45-55.
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commandments of the Exodus covenant must be maintained in the land of Canaan. Israel must not forget the events, experiences and obligations of Sinai: "... take heed and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget what your eyes have seen... (4:9)." And they must "...take good heed to yourselves ... lest you act corruptly by making a graven image for yourselves" (4:16). The temptations of the new land would be many, but they would all amount to one and the same thing -- breaking the Torah of YHWH. In the second instance Israel is warned, "...take heed lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the house of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall fear the LORD your God; you shall serve him...." (Dt. 6:12). Now Exodus becomes the focus of reflection. Israel must not forget her oppression in Egypt, and the gratitude and relationship born in liberation must bind her to YHWH in a way that separates Israel from the people of the land and the worship of other gods. 22 The third warning (Dt. 8: 11-17) returns to the danger of forgetting YHWH and his commandments, but this time the nation must "take heed" lest it lose track of God and God's grace in the success and quality of life that will be theirs in the land. Pride in her success, and not gratitude for God grace, might readily become Israel's response to new life in the new land. Thus, Moses's message was characterized by "take heed," and "beware:" Take heed lest you forget the LORD your God, by not keeping his ordinances and his statutes, .... lest, when you have eaten and are full, and have built goodly houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart will be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness .... Beware lest you say in your heart, My power and
22 Dt. 6:13-14. "... you shall serve him and swear by his name. You shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the peoples who are round about you; for the LORD your God in the midst of you is a jealous God; lest the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth."
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the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. .... The fourth and final "take heed," that came to Israel as she stood poised on the boundary of the land of the promise (Dt. 11: 13-18), began again with a call to "... obey my commandments which I commanded you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul ..." (v 13). The theme of well-being emerges again, this time an example of the bounty that will come to the people if they love the LORD and keep his commandments. But if faithfulness brings Israel bounty, idolatry has the opposite effect: Take heed lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, and the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you, and he shut up the heavens, so that there be no rain, and the land yield no fruit, and you perish quickly off the good land which the LORD gives you. Rather than concerning themselves about laying up foodstuffs and riches (as in Dt. 8: 11-17), YHWH urged Israel: "You should lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul; and you should bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes" (11:18). Walter Bruggeman phrased the deep and foundational question that faced Israel "at the boundary" quite well: "Can Israel live in the land without being seduced by its gods, without the temptation of coveting getting in the way? Can Israel live in the land with all the precarious trust of landlessness?"23 The history of Israel's wilderness wanderings, with the golden calf crafted by the "stiff necked people" (Ex. 32) and the failure to enter the land at Kadesh (Num. 13-14), does not give one much hope that the nation could march faithfully forward without soon "turning aside." But Deuteronomy seems to hold out for the other alternative; it can be done if they remember the great deeds of YHWH, especially the past salvations, and resolve to keep the LORD's commandments and
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Bruggeman, The Land, p. 59.
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ordinances. Texts like Psalm 95, from the days of Davidic monarchy, indicate that in her finer moments Israel tried to keep YHWH's saving deeds and commandments before her as she sang "let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation." But the same Psalm ends with the counter example of Israel's wilderness wanderings in an effort to call the nation to faithfulness: 24 O that today you would harken to [YHWH's] voice! Harden not your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty hears I loathed that generation and said, They are a people who err in heart, and they do not regard my ways. Therefore I swore in my anger that they should not enter my rest. Israel's third recollection of homelessness was connected to the exile. Babylon's captivity of Judah in the sixth century BCE provided the context for the extension of this theme. The plight of the captives in Babylon was not the same as the "wanderers" who faced extreme deprivation, or the "sojourner" who went out willingly by faith, though it continued many elements of Israel's previous experiences of landlessness. The exiles in Babylon were not harshly treated, oppressed, abused or imprisoned; they suffered none of the torture and genocide that the Assyrians had wrought upon the northern tribes. But the exiles in Babylon were displaced persons, they were alienated, and stripped of their religious-cultural identity, and in this way they shared the pain of the homelessness of the past. The exile also stood at the sharpest point of discontinuity with Israel's past. None of the old traditions or religious institutions -- which had been born in the exodus-event -- seemed to be valid or
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Psalm 95: 7b-11.
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trustworthy any more. The exile was a theological disaster, perhaps even more than it was a political debacle. Every promise from YHWH seemed null and void. And, as evidenced in Psalm 137, the pain of landlessness mixed easily with a sense of God-forsakenness and anger: By the waters of Babylon there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion! How shall we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy! Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, Raise it, raise it! Down to its foundations! O daughter of Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall he be who requites you with what you have done to us! Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock! The three successive Babylonian deportations of the people of Judah had turned Jerusalem, the holy city of YHWH ("Zion") into a "ghost town." The pathos caused by the destruction of the city and the loneliness of its desolation was well voiced in the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah:25
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Lamentations 1:1-5.
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How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow has she become, she that was great among nations! She that was a princess among the cities has become a vassal. She weeps bitterly in the night, tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has none to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have all become her enemies. Judah has gone into exile because of affliction and hard servitude; she dwells now among the nations, but finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress. The roads to Zion mourn, for none come to the appointed feasts; all her gates are desolate, her priests groan; her maidens have been dragged away, and she [Zion] herself suffers bitterly. Exile in Babylon meant being cut off from "rest," peace (Shalom) and the wholeness implied by the promise of the land, with no clearly marked road leading back to it. But from this theological "melt-down" came a new and remarkable expression of Israel's faith. Israel's landlessness became the setting for her boldest gospel of new-beginnings. The "good news" was epitomized in the oracles of Jeremiah (but found equal expression in Isaiah and Ezekiel), and it looked to a new future that was based upon and built out of the experiences of the past:26 Thus says the LORD: The people who survived the sword found grace in the
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These verses are selected from Jeremiah 31; see also texts like Ezek. 37:5-6; Is. 43:18-21.
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wilderness; when Israel sought for rest, the LORD appeared to him from afar. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Again I will build you, and you shall be built .... Thus says the LORD: Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for your work shall be rewarded, says the LORD, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, says the LORD, and your children shall come back to their own country..... Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with them when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke .... I shall write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each teach his brother saying, Know the LORD,' for they shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD, I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. They had survived the wilderness and the sword before and "found grace" there; it would be so again. YHWH, who had appeared in the exodus wilderness in cloud and in fire, would appear in the exile in love and in faithfulness to his covenant. The exiles would return to their land and the old covenant -which had been memorialized upon tablets of stone -- and was yet broken time and time again, would now be written upon the tablets of their faithful hearts. In the face of severance from their land, the emptiness of Jerusalem, and destruction of the temple, the old promises received new power. It is in the throes of such extremities that risks are run, changes made, and that hope is born with new encouragement. Faith is precisely for exiles, for people
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who remember their land, but see no clear way back to it. Thus, the exile paved the way for a rekindling of the faith of the exodus, and in their utter homelessness a new relationship with God was both promised and hoped for.
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