The Exodus after the Exile
In 586 BCE, Babylon took the city of Jerusalem, destroying the TempleThe Jerusalem temple, unlike the tabernacle, was a permanent structure, although (like the tabernacle) it was a place of worship and religious activity. On one occasion Jesus felt such activity was unacceptable and, as reported in all four Gospels, drove from the temple those engaged... and exiling Judah’s elites. This deeply traumatic event shifted the course of history for the people of Israel, who had lost their king and were scattered outside of their land. It was also a time of significant theological reckoning, as Israel tried to make sense of these losses in the context of God’s promises of land and descendants to AbrahamGod promised that Abraham would become the father of a great nation, receive a land, and bring blessing to all nations., and to DavidSecond king of Israel, David united the northern and southern kingdoms. of an ongoing dynasty. Then, around 539 BCE, King CyrusPersian leader who allowed Jewish exiles to return home. of PersiaPersia was a southwestern Asian country. The Persian empire was a series of empires that occupied what is currently Afghanistan and Iran from 600 B.C.E. forward. Rulers of the Persian empire mentioned in the Bible are Cyrus and Darius. defeated Babylon and allowed those who had been exiled to return to JudahJudah was the name of Jacob's fourth son and one of the 12 tribes. and rebuild the Temple.
This moment of great hope inspires the effusive poetry of the prophetic texts known as “Second IsaiahSecond Isaiah refers chapters 40-55 of the book of Isaiah. This work was likely written during Israel's exile in Babylon (597-538 B.C.E.). Second Isaiah includes poetic passages of hope as well as descriptions of the Suffering Servant.” (IsaiahIsaiah, son of Amoz, who prophesied in Jerusalem, is included among the prophets of the eighth century BCE (along with Amos, Hosea, and Micah)--preachers who boldly proclaimed God's word of judgment against the economic, social, and religious disorders of their time. 40-55), which dates from the time of Cyrus’ rise to power. The return from exile is envisioned as a new exodus:
Was it not you who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep;
who made the depths of the sea a way
for the redeemed to cross over?
So the ransomed of the LORD shall return,
and come to ZionZion originally referred to a mountain near Jerusalem where David conquered a Jebusite stronghold. Later the term came to mean a number of other things like the Temple, Jerusalem, and even the Promised Land. with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away (Isaiah 51:10-11).
The prophet emphasizes the triumphant singularity of God, whose power to save shone through at the Exodus and will be manifested again in the restoration of Judah:
Thus says the LORD,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
who brings out chariot and horse,
army and warrior;
they lie down, they cannot rise,
they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert (Isaiah 43:16-19).
There is a delightful irony in this passage. Confidence in God’s “new thing” is based on knowing and remembering God’s power in the “former things”—specifically God’s victory at the sea. And yet the prophet admonishes his audience not to remember the former things! The effect of this poetic playfulness is to underscore the ineffable power of God. Those “things of old,” as mighty as they were, will be as nothing compared to the new thing God is doing.
MosesProphet who led Israel out of Egypt to the Promised Land and received the law at Sinai. in the Gospels
Moses’ name appears many times in the New Testament’s four Gospels. Most of these occurrences refer to Moses as the law-giver: the one traditionally responsible for the TorahThe Torah is the law of Moses, also known as the first five books of the Bible. To many the Torah is a combination of history, theology, and a legal or ritual guide.. For example, in the story of Lazarus and the rich man, the rich man in torment asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers: “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them’” (LukeThe "beloved physician" and companion of Paul. 16:29). Abraham expects the rich man and his family to have learned from their Scriptures—”Moses and the prophets”—and their tradition about how to care for the poor. Or, in John 7:19, JesusJesus is the Messiah whose life, death, and resurrection are God's saving act for humanity. says to the crowd, “Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why are you looking for an opportunity to kill me?”
Perhaps surprisingly, Moses also appears briefly as an active character of sorts in the Synoptic GospelsThe Synoptic Gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They are called Synoptics because they view the gospel story from a similar point of view; they also share large blocks of narrative material in common. (MatthewA tax collector who became one of Jesus' 12 disciples., Mark, and Luke). In the story known as the TransfigurationThe Transfiguration was a mountaintop event in which Jesus was transformed and became dazzling white, in a manner that suggested his future glory. Peter, James, and John witnessed Jesus' transfiguration; Moses and Elijah appeared on the mountain and talked with Jesus. The event, which is..., Jesus and three of his disciples—Peter, James, and John—go up a mountain together. When they are alone at the top, suddenly Jesus’ appearance is transformed, and his clothes begin to shine with a dazzling light. The disciples then see two other people talking with Jesus: Moses and the prophet ElijahA miracle working Israelite prophet who opposed worship of Baal.. Finally, a cloud comes over the mountain and a voice says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (Mark 9:7) The mountaintop setting, Jesus’ shiny appearance, and the thundering voice of God recall the theophanies (appearances of God) at Sinai, and especially Moses’ own radiant face in Exodus 34:29-35, when he descends Mt. Sinai after receiving the tablets of the law from God. The effect of this allusion is to establish Jesus’ closeness to God: there is divinity in and around him. Notably, Luke adds a more direct reference to “exodus” with this comment: “They appeared in glory and were speaking about his exodus, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem” (NRSVUE; compare with wording found in Luke 9:31 NRSV). The story of the Transfiguration can be found in Matthew 17:1-8, Mark 9:2-8, and Luke 9:28-36.
Jesus and the PassoverPassover commemorates the deliverance of the Hebrew people from Egypt as described in the book of Exodus. It is celebrated with worship and a meal on the fourteenth day of the month called Nisan, which is the first month of the Jewish year. The time...
The accounts of Jesus’ final days in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are set during the celebration of the Passover festival in Jerusalem. On the first night of the seven-day festival, Jesus eats the Passover meal in the upper room with his disciples. Exodus 12 instructs the Israelites to slaughter one lamb per householdA household is a living unit comprised of all the persons who live in one house. A household would embrace all the members of a family, including servants and slaves. In the book of Acts, stories are told of various persons and their households, like... (v. 3), and then to eat the whole lamb, roasted, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, leaving nothing left over (v. 8-10). Notably, the Synoptic Gospels do not mention the herbs or the traditional four cups of wine served with the Passover meal, leading some scholars to propose that the meal being described is simply any regular first-century Jewish meal. The Gospel of John sets Jesus’ last supperLast Supper is another term for the Lord's Supper. The term refers specifically to the final meal Jesus shared with his disciples before his crucifixion. Christians believe that the sacrament of the Lord's Supper (also "communion" or "the Eucharist") was established by Jesus at the... the night before the Passover (John 13:1), casting further doubt on the particularities of the Passover setting. Nevertheless, even if Jesus’ last supper was a Passover meal, it is important to note that most of the customs associated with Jewish observances of the Passover today were not part of Jesus’ experience. The Passover Haggadah—liturgy for the seder meal—likely emerged after the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE, when the festival was no longer able to be celebrated as a pilgrimage festival to the Jerusalem temple.
During the Last Supper—whatever it may have been—Jesus shares bread and wine with the disciples, saying “Take; this is my body” (Mark 14:22 // Matthew 26:26 // Luke 22:19) and “This is my blood of the covenantA covenant is a promise or agreement. In the Bible the promises made between God and God's people are known as covenants; they state or imply a relationship of commitment and obedience., which is poured out for many” (Mark 14:24 // Matthew 26:27-28 // Luke 22:20). This scene is the root of the Christian celebration of the Eucharist—also called the Lord’s Supper or Communion—and Jesus’ words form the basis for the “words of institution”—the liturgy recited in preparation for the communion meal. Luke’s phrase in this scene is not just “blood of the covenant” but “blood of the new covenant,” a rhetorical move that both deepens the echo of Exodus yet also creates distance between Jesus and the Sinai covenant.
Moses with horns
In medieval and Renaissance art, Moses is often depicted with horns. Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses at the tomb of Pope Julius II, dating from the early 16th century, is a particularly famous example of this phenomenon. The inspiration for the horns comes from the description of Moses’ face after he comes down from Mt. Sinai in Exodus 34:29: “…the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.” In the Vulgate—a fourth-century Latin translation of the Bible—Moses’ face is described as “horned” (cornuta) rather than “shining.” The Hebrew word being translated there (qrn) does seem to have an association with horns, but probably more in the sense of a ray of light that is shaped like a horn.
G. F. Handel’s Israel in Egypt
The 18th-century composer George Frideric Handel is perhaps best known for his oratorio MessiahThe Messiah was the one who, it was believed, would come to free the people of Israel from bondage and exile. In Jewish thought the Messiah is the anticipated one who will come, as prophesied by Isaiah. In Christian thought Jesus of Nazareth is identified..., which selects texts from across Christian Scripture to tell the story of Jesus’ promised coming, birth, death, resurrection, and future triumphant return. But Handel also composed other, lesser-known oratorios based on the Bible. Israel in Egypt tells the Exodus story by drawing on texts from the Book of Exodus and from psalms that refer to that narrative. The oratorio is divided into two parts. Part 1 opens with the new king who does not know Joseph and the enslavement of the Israelites, moves through the plagues, and ends with the crossing of the sea. Part 2 is devoted to the Song of the Sea (a.k.a. the Song of Moses), using nearly all of that text from Exodus 15, and then ends with Miriam’s song. It is probable that the libretto (i.e., the text) for Israel in Egypt was created by Charles Jennens, who also put together the libretto for Handel’s Messiah. Like Messiah, the English translation used for Israel in Egypt is close to, though not always identical with, the King James Version of the Bible, or, in the case of the Psalms, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. You can listen to a recording of Israel in Egypt here, and you can read the libretto for the oratorio here.
Exodus and slavery in the United States
Among the many laws in the Book of Exodus are regulations concerning slaves. Proponents and perpetrators of slavery in the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries used the mere existence of these laws in the Bible as evidence that God endorsed the institution of slavery. But even as some used Exodus—along with other parts of the Bible—to support that grotesque practice, enslaved people themselves were finding in the same book a narrative of hope: just as God delivered the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, so too God could and would liberate slaves in America.
Historian Albert J. Raboteau describes the Exodus as an “archetypal event” for enslaved people. Raboteau writes, “Slaves…kept hope alive by incorporating as part of their mythic past the Old Testament exodus of Israel out of slavery. The appropriation of the Exodus story was for the slaves a way of articulating their sense of historical identity as a people” (Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South; Oxford 1978, p. 311). So powerful was the message of the Exodus story that at least one Bible used by missionaries to evangelize slaves in the British West Indies purposefully left out biblical passages about liberation, including the first 18 chapters of Exodus.
The 19th-century abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who herself escaped from slavery and later led dozens of slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad, was known as “Moses.” She used the spiritual “Go Down, Moses” —a folk song created by enslaved people of African descent in the American South—to communicate in coded ways with slaves when she arrived to lead them north. You can listen to a performance of “Go Down, Moses” by baritone Paul Robeson (1898-1976) at this link.
Liberation theology
The story of the Israelites’ liberation from Egypt has been a bedrock Scripture text for the development of Christian liberation theologies. Although the Exodus has long been a source of hope and inspiration for resistance for oppressed peoples—such as, for example, enslaved people in the antebellum United States—liberation theology as a distinctive theological discourse began in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. In his landmark 1971 work A Theology of Liberation (trans. C. Inda and J. Eagleson; Maryknoll: Orbis, 1973), Gustavo Gutierrez, often credited as the “father of liberation theology,” devotes significant attention to the Exodus narrative as evidence of God’s ongoing involvement in history. He writes, “Biblical faith is, above all, faith in a God who gives self-revelation through historical events, a God who saves in history.” God’s interest in the world is not limited to matters of spiritual salvationSalvation can mean saved from something (deliverance) or for something (redemption). Paul preached that salvation comes through the death of Christ on the cross which redeemed sinners from death and for a grace-filled life.; God cares about the physical experiences of humans in the world. God’s leading the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, combined with—among other texts—the Old Testament prophets’ advocacy for economic justice, shows that God exercises a “preferential option for the poor.” Christians are thus called to advocate for the physical and economic liberation of all people, not just look after their “souls.”
Liberationist interpretations of the Exodus story have not been without critique. Some scholars have pointed out that the Exodus event is not a universal moment of emancipation, but rather shows God’s particular interest in Israel as God’s chosen people. Others have called attention to the ways the Exodus story is inexorably connected with the conquest of Canaan (JoshuaThe successor of Moses, Joshua led the Israelites into Canaan. 1-12), where God instructs the Israelites to annihilate the inhabitants of the land in order to take over their territory. In that kind of reading, the oppressed become the oppressors, complicating the text’s message of justice. These diverse interpretations highlight that when it comes to the use of Scripture in Christian theology, the Exodus narrative does not—nor does any other text— have one universally agreed-upon interpretation.
Monuments to the Ten Commandments
Plaques and monuments listing the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) from Exodus 20 can be found in courthouses, city parks, and other public spaces throughout the United States. Some of these monuments can be traced back to a collaboration in the 1950s between Paramount Pictures, Cecil B. DeMille, the Fraternal Order of the Eagles, and a Minnesota judge. The judge, a member of the Eagles, had been shocked that a young man appearing in his courtroom had never heard of the Ten Commandments. He was inspired to start a movement to post copies of the Decalogue in public places as both education and admonishment for America’s youth. The judge’s efforts happened to coincide with the 1956 release of DeMille’s movie, The Ten Commandments, and so Paramount Pictures saw a golden marketing opportunity. Over the next several years, around 200 granite depictions of the tablets of the commandments, copied from the film’s original props, were set up in public spaces all across the country. The Eagles also produced thousands of smaller plaques that have been widely distributed as well. Although many displays have been taken down in the wake of a flurry of legal challenges in the early 2000s, many others remain. Not all displays of the Decalogue share the Paramount/Eagles connection, though. For example, one can visit the World’s Largest Ten Commandments in Murphy, North Carolina, displayed on the hillside of a park called The Fields of the Wood.
Exodus on the big screen
It is difficult to overstate how deeply key elements from the Book of Exodus have seeped into the American cultural fabric, including into its Hollywood blockbusters. The story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt has been depicted countless times in film over the last century. Arguably the two most famous of these are Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 blockbuster The Ten Commandments and DreamWorks Animation’s 1998 animated musical The Prince of Egypt. Each focuses on the life of Moses, his conflict with Pharaoh, the parting of the sea, and the Israelites’ journey across on dry land. The Prince of Egypt ends with Moses’ descent down Mt. Sinai holding the two tablets of the covenant, while The Ten Commandments goes on to chronicle the golden calf incident and the breaking of the tablets. In what functions like a coda to the rest of the story, the DeMille film fast-forwards through the Israelites’ 40 years in the wilderness and ends with Moses’ death at Mt. NeboNebo is a mountain in Jordan. It is known as the promontory from which Moses, at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, observed but did not enter the Promised Land. According to tradition Moses is buried on Mount Nebo, though the biblical record states... on the edge of the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 34).
Not all big-screen references to Exodus are centered on Moses, though. In Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), set shortly before World War II, adventurous archaeologist Indiana Jones races to find the ark of the covenant—built along with the tabernacleThe tabernacle, a word meaning "tent," was a portable worship place for the Hebrew people after they left Egypt. It was said to contain the ark of the covenant. The plans for the tabernacle are dictated by God in Exodus 26. in Exodus 37—before the Nazis can. PaulThe Apostle Paul, originally known as Saul of Tarsus, was the author of several New Testament letters and the founder of many Christian communities. ThomasOne of the twelve disciples of Jesus who is remembered for doubting then believing in the resurrection. Anderson’s 1999 film Magnolia is full of references to the numbers 8, 2, and 82. When frogs begin to rain down from the sky late in the movie, it becomes apparent that the numbers have been nods to Exodus 8:2, the plague of frogs.
These examples are just a few of Hollywood’s innumerable references to the book of Exodus in film. They show us just how deeply these biblical stories are woven into the American cultural fabric. Even moviegoers who have no other familiarity with the Bible will know pieces of the Exodus narrative from its prominence in popular films.
Bob Marley’s Exodus
Time Magazine named Bob Marley and the Wailers’ 1977 reggae album Exodus as the best album of the 20th century. The lyrics of the title track (“Exodus”) reflect Marley’s Rastafari beliefs. The song calls for the “movement of Jah people” from “Babylon” to “our fatherland.” Jah—a shortened form of Jehovah/Yahweh—is the Rastafari name for God, and the journey called for in the song carries both literal and figurative interpretations. Following the influence of Marcus Garvey, Rastafarianism looked toward the movement of Jamaicans to Africa, and more specifically Ethiopia, as an escape from the European colonialism that has exerted oppressive control over Black people in the African DiasporaDiaspora is separation or dispersion of people from their homeland. Historically, the Jews who have been scattered from their native Palestine are said to be in Dispersion or Diaspora. . “Babylon” was thus Jamaica under European colonialism, but also a metaphor for a state of being marked by poverty and oppression. The lyrics of “Exodus” go on to say, “Send us another brother Moses! From across the Red Sea!” The song weaves together the biblical motif of the Babylonian exile with the Exodus from Egypt—something the Old Testament itself does in its post-exilic prophecyProphecy is the gift, inspired by God, of speaking and interpreting the divine will. Prophets such as Amos, Isaiah, and Ezekiel spoke words of judgment and comfort to the people of Israel on behalf of God.. You can listen to “Exodus” at this link.
For more on Marley and Exodus, see Noel Leo Erskine, “The Bible and Reggae: Liberation or Subjugation?” in The Bible In/And Popular Culture: A Creative Encounter (ed. P. Culbertson and E. M. Wainwright; Atlanta: SBL, 2010), 97-109.
