Posts from — September 2008

St. Mary Bulletin - September 28, 2008

St. Mary Bulletin - September 21, 2008

EXODUS 2 

      That is how the birth story of Moses begins Exodus 2:1-10.   In Chapter 2:1-2: “There is a certain man of the House of Levi married to a Levite woman who conceived and bore a son.  Seeing that he was a goodly child, she hid him for three months.”  You know who we are talking about. Although he not yet named. 

In verse 5: “Pharaoh’s daughter came down to the river to bathe.”  Where in Egypt do you find a river?

You are in that Fertile Crescent area, and what it is called historically is the delta area.  So she goes down there to bathe.  So some time had passed so that you know in terms of Egyptian history itself that Amoas had moved the capitol from the city of Avares and decided to move it into the area which would be called Thebes in the delta area.  This period of time is about the last quarter of the fourteenth century, when the court was moved from Thebes to the delta area, because they wanted to focus on the Asiatic Empire.  Under Amoas I what followed was a long succession eventually giving rise to Raamses I. 

      Raamses II becomes one of the great, great Pharaohs of Egypt and he re-names the capitol at Thebes, calling it the House of Raamses.  He liked to name most of the projects that he undertook after himself because he was the glorification, the living embodiment of the deity, of the god, that he brought into Egyptian life.  This god is called Amn-Ra 

In Exodus 1:11, “Accordingly taskmasters were set over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor.”  That is a nice translation for “slavery.”  “Thus they had to build for Pharaoh, the supply cities of Pithom, and Raamses.”  So the Book itself tells us exactly what we are dealing with.  The historical documents uncovered in many excavations of Egypt itself concur with the Book of Exodus itself.  So there is a cross-pollination of historical data, one data agreeing with the other set of data.  The Hebrew slaves are going to build the city.  It appears that the Book of Exodus, therefore, took place about the beginning of the reign of Raamses II, the fellow who built the city of Raamses.  The time period, when you chronicle Egyptian history,  is shortly after 1200 B.C.  He is, therefore, the Pharaoh which Moses will have to do deal with.

According to Exodus 12:40, “The time that the people of Israel dwelt in Egypt from the period of time that they came with Joseph during the famine, when they came and Jacob sent his family down, was 430 years.”  An awful lot of child-birthing takes place in 430 years so there is, in some sense, that they had become quite numerous and also that they had become quite prosperous.  Because they had been recognized by that very first Pharaoh and his direct lineage until the shift took place in the dynastic lines, and the new Pharaoh enters the throne who knew not Joseph, they, the Hebrews, held very powerful positions throughout the Egyptian government. The Egyptian documents tell us, they were very, very good at the mid-level management, and that is the place to be because it keeps the bureaucracy functioning and flowing. 

      Since we have set the context here, we will focus on a man called Moses.  You cannot, whenever you read the Book of Exodus, therefore “the Departure”, therefore, ”the Covenant”, therefore “the journey – to go out from -  you cannot separate the Book of Exodus from the person of Moses.  Remember this; he is not just a political hero.  In fact, you might say, this has nothing to do with politics. 

He is not a political hero who leads his people to freedom, a people that he cannot get out of his mind, as you find out, and of his heart, because of the rage that he gets into when he sees an Egyptian beating one of his kinsmen.  He has to flee because he murders that Egyptian.

How do you stylize him in the Book of Exodus?  For us, he is seen as a mediator between God and the enslaved Hebrew people.  As the text develops, while Moses is brooding over the fate of his Hebrew kinsmen, his people, Moses’ understands, as we experience it, when he experiences a theophany, and is illuminated by this experience with God. 

Where does it take place?  It takes place on a lonely mountain spot.  In the New Testament you will find a lot of correlation between Moses and Jesus.  Moses is the original lawgiver, Jesus is the new lawgiver.  Moses has the experience of God on a mountain where he is with the Midianites, tending to the flocks; and, it is out there that he has this Theophany of God on a piece of territory that the Midianites control.  It is in a mountainous area. 

Jesus, up on Mount Taber is Transfigured before the three and is seen in dialogue with Moses and Elijah.   So you have two mountainous experiences that are parallel:

1. The Old Testament and;
2. The  New Testament. 
3. You have the third mountainous experience when Moses goes up Sinai to receive

the Ten Commandments.

In Jesus you have His third experience, found in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew tells us that Jesus went to the top of the mountain and  gave us the The Beatitudes.  This is the charter of the Kingdom of God.  This is how you are to live your life.   

What did Moses get?  The charter of the Covenant between the Israelites and God.  This is how you are to live your life.  Jesus does not come to bring another law.  He comes to fulfill the “law of Moses”  the Ten Commandments”  in The Beatitudes and it, the Beatitudes, become foundational text of the Kingdom of God in the Synoptics.  So you have those three.

Moses also becomes a teacher.

Jesus also.

Moses always teaches as he is coming down the mountain from these experiences of God. 

Where does Jesus teach?  He goes up the mountain, the crowd sits on the side of the mountain, and He teaches them.

So you have all of these parallelisms running between the Old and New Testaments with Moses and Jesus.  

On the basis of the experience that he has had when he, <oses,  encounters the Burning Bush, returns back to Egypt to rally his countrymen and to announce the meaning of the events that are going to take place.  So he, Moses,  is the spokesperson, the mediator, between God and the people.

Moses’ story takes place in Chapter Two and Chapter Three.  Another relative piece of information for you, so that you recognize that everything that we know about Moses, everything that has been written about him, all of the critical understanding that has ever been done about him, comes only from one place – the Bible – there is no textual or side material, sidebar information, about Moses, at all.  It is all right here in the Book of Exodus – the Biblical narrative. 

 Moses, in Exodus Chapter Two is brought up and is trained in Egyptian circles.  This is probably for us as we read the text pretty authentic material although it can get colored with a bit of back writing.  Why would someone do that who is writing out the Biblical text?  You have to make sure that Moses is well launched.  It has to be a good, good launch, so the story of birth is always important. 

Look at the birth of Jesus.  Mark doesn’t do much with it, Matthew does some discussion, and Luke does even more because birth events signify the course that person is going to lead.  If it is a monumental birth, then you know this person is destined for great, great things. 

      So the story of the baby found in the reed bushes in Chapter Two, verses 1-10, by Pharaoh’s daughter has a pretty amazing birth story:

  “Now a certain man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman who conceived and bore a son, seeing that he was a goodly child, she hid him for three months.  When she could hide him no longer, she took a basket made of bulrushes, dabbed it with bitumen and pitch, putting the child in it, placed him among the reeds on the river bank.  His sister stationed herself at a distance to find out what would happen to him.  Pharaoh’s daughter came down to the river to bathe while her maids walked along the river bank.  Noticing the basket among the reeds, she sent her handmaid to fetch it.  On opening it, she looked and lo there was a baby boy, crying!  She was moved with pity for him and said, ‘It is one of the Hebrew children.’  Then his sister asked pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I call one of the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you.’  ‘Yes, do so’ she answered.  So the maiden went and called the child’s own mother.  Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Take this child, nurse it for me, and I will repay you.’  The woman, therefore, took the child, nursed it, and when the child grew, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him as her son and called him ‘Moses’ for she said, ‘I drew him out of the water.’”

      Upon reading these first ten verses, nobody has a name except Moses.  That tells us that when Middle Eastern literature is read, the name is extremely important.  Name identifies personality. Name identifies the inner nature and core of the person.  When Moses sees the Burning Bush and there is the beginning of a  dialogue, what does Moses ask?  “Who shall I say sent me?”  Translated, “Tell me your name.”  Name is extremely important.  When names gets changed, as noticed already, with Jacob in Genesis, that then takes on an extremely important factor.

So we have no names other than the name of Moses.  Who should also be named in verses 1-10?  Out of all those people in the story, from his mother, his father, the Pharaoh’s daughter, the Pharaoh’s handmaid, his sister, who should be named?  His sister does not get named until much later on.  She becomes as important as he, Moses, is.  She becomes a prophetess in the Book of Exodus – Miriam.  And she does not have a name in these opening verse?  Why?  The author of the text wants to make sure you are focused on only one person here.  Do not clutter up the text with a lot of names that you do not need to know anything about yet. We are interested in one man – Moses and his birth – because Moses is the mediator between God and the people.

      Now Exodus 2:1-10 is reminiscent of a similar account of a very, very famous king called Sargon of Akkad.  Sargon ruled Akad at the capitol of Akkad in 2300 B.C.  It is very popular story.  Sargon is well, well known.  Sargon writes that his mother gave birth in secret, like Moses’ mother.  She placed him in a basket of bulrushes, sealed the basket with bitumen, and cast the bundle adrift on the river Akee, the “drawer of water,” The King’s daughter lifted him out of the water, and reared him as her son.  So from the humble beginnings of floating on the river, Sargon rose to become King of Akkad.  A parallel story?  Is this the true story of the birth of Moses?  It is very difficult to make that decision.  Do you need to know his true story for birth?  That is really not that important.  Somehow he became attached into the Egyptian Pharaoh’s household.  That is what becomes important because part of his destiny is to rise up from there.  Even if they are copying the story of Sargon, from a humble beginning, he, Moses,  became God’s spokesperson and led, in the name of God, the Hebrew people from slavery into freedom.  That is what we want to know.

      Moses’ name is, we are pretty sure, an authentic indication of his Egyptian nurture, which is, after all, one of the main points of the story.  He was raised in the House of Raamses II.  To be sure, the Hebrew storyteller does a little bit of a play on words and tries to derive the name “Moses,” the Hebrew name that is, as coming from a verb in Hebrew, Mosheh, to “draw out.”  Moshe is actually an Egyptian word, but it is similar to the word Mosheh.  So Mosheh – Moshe – it is a play of words going on there with an Egyptian word.  This word means to “get a child.”  The Hebrew word means to “draw out.”  So perhaps it could have been originally joined to an Egyptian deity that you might recognize as a person from history – Tut Moses.  Moses being that Egyptian word.  Or else, perhaps, this name – Raamses.  Whose household is he living in?  Raamses.  The builder.  The house that Raamses built.  So they may have just given him that name.  There are other members of Moses’ tribe, the Levi tribe, who also had Egyptian’s names.  It is not a problem, and it does not create any difficulty for the text.

Phineas is an Egyptian name. 

Hopfize is an Egyptian name.  Rases is an Egyptian name. 

These are all people mentioned in the Book, and that is okay.  What you do want to know that even if he has an Egyptian name and it really is not a Hebrew word, but there is a play between the Hebrew verb and the Egyptian verb – to beget a child – Moses still has a strong identification with his Hebrew kinsmen. 

When you read in Chapter 1: 11, “Accordingly, taskmasters were sent over to the Israelites to oppress them with their forced labor.  Thus, they had to build for Pharaoh the supply cities of Pithom and Raamses.  Yet the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread.  The Egyptians, then, dreaded the Israelites and reduced them to cruel slavery, making their life bitter for them with hard work in mortar and brick and all kinds of field work — the whole cruel fate of slaves.”  This is what Moses identifies with as he grows into a young man.  He recognizes that he is not them, a slave, although they and he are one and the same.  After he has his difficulty, the murder of the Egyptian, he takes flight to Midian.  Why?  Because he does not want to be killed and he also recognizes that he has created a real problem – it is like killing a policeman.  It is the same sort of thing.  Everybody is out after everybody.  So, out of his rage, he has created a more serious problem for the Hebrew people.   

So he flees across the Sinai Peninsula to the area of Midian controlled by these shepherds, Midianite shepherds.  Thereafter, a romance starts at a well, and he marries the daughter of Jethro, the priest of Midian – Exodus 2:15-22.  Zipporah becomes his wife and he has a son named Gershom, translated, “I am a stranger in a foreign land.”  

      That leads us to a particular point in the life of Moses.  We are not interested in what he learned when he was growing up in the Egyptian Court.  We just know that he did.  We know that he had an incident.  The incident is important because we have to recognize why he is so concerned about the Hebrews.  In vv11-15, that is what causes him the problem.  He cannot stand the fact that his people are being oppressed by the very people with whom he is living.  It sends him into that rage that allows him to take drastic action when he sees a Hebrew being beaten by an Egyptian.   

But, he has to get matured.  You cannot have this crazy, young man coming back with no identity.  So, how do you mature a man?  You marry him.  You get him married off.  This is how the Bible deals with it.  Give him a wife.  She will settle him down.  Give him children which gives him roots.  All that happens in a few short verses.  

Moses meets her at a well, He falls in love with her. Her father, Jethro, promises the daughter to him.  He marries her and has a son. 

Then we go immediately to the Pharoah dying.  How long did it take for Raamses to die?  He lived to be pretty old.  “A long time passed.”  The Israelites were still in slavery.  The next Raamses who comes to the throne makes no real changes in their life. 

 Our approach to salvation history, through the Book of Exodus  will go like this:  to the Sea of Reeds; to the Covenant: and, then to the end of Exodus until just before the death of Moses; and, the introduction of Joshua whom you know from the Battle of Jeicho.   

Exodus is the second book of the Pentateuch.  The Pentateuch is the first five books of the Bible, Penta:  from the Greek meaning five. Teuch:  referring to the text.  So it is the first five texts.

This is the second of those five books, which traditionally were always understood, and some traditions to this day still understand this to be true, to be written by Moses himself.  Most Scripture scholars hold that that is not true.  If Moses did write the Pentateuch, you can date it to approximately 1700BC.  If he did not write it then you can date it to approximately 1200BC.

Exodus is a word translated into English, which would be best understood from the Greek, meaning, “departure,” because it is an event that is essentially narrated around a departure: The “departure” of what we call today:  the Israelites, although when they departed from the land of Egypt, actually, that territory of Goshen, where they were living under the Egyptian domination and control, they were not the Israelites at that particular point.  They were the Hebrew people.   God had not formed them into His people.  When they get “formed” later on in the Book of Exodus and become what we know today:  the Israelites. 

Their name is taken from Jacob who wrestled with the angel.  Jacob, after wrestling with the angel all night long, and, then, with the angel losing,  broke Jacob’s hip bone, smashed it, and the angel said:  “See I win.”  Then Jacob said: “okay, who are you?”   

Jacob’s name got changed at that point to “Israel” after that encounter with the angel. 

Therefore, Israelites, coming from their Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are not the Israelites when they leave Egypt.  They are what you call “chosen people” because God tells us in the Book of Exodus.  God will be faithful to the covenant. 

God:

1. has heard the cry of His people, and because He has heard their cry under the yolk of slavery by the Egyptians
2. Has has come down to free them because their cry has reached where He is;
3. God says: I will free them and lead them to the Promised Land. 
4. It is a miraculous deliverance and you have to understand it that way.

In previous discussions about the Bible, we know that this is God’s Word speaking to us about something. You have to accept and believe that this is a faith-revealed book.  This is a book of God’s special Word about God’s everlasting deeds, which are found  in the Book of Exodus.   

They, “The Hebrew people”,  will cross the Red Sea, which is typically known as the Sea of Reeds, to Mount Sinai, where they will enter into this Covenant with the Lord and become God’s people, the Israelites.   

In reviewing the first chapter of the Book of Exodus we are told that, after the death of Joseph, the family of Jacob lost favor in Egypt.  That is:  Jacob’s descendents in Egypt; There was a great famine and the famine brought the remaining eleven sons of Jacob into Egypt; Joseph had already been sold into slavery; so, he was already there.  That sets the stage for what is going to happen.  Joseph rises to a very highposition in the Court of The Pharoah and is named Prime Minister, because of this great charism that he has, which is the charism of dream interpretation that God has given him.  So he is able to interpret the seven lean years and the seven fat years and so prepares Egypt for the great drought, the great famine that will cover the Mesopotamian Valley.  Because of the dream interpretation  Egypt prospers greatly and financially.  So, when Joseph dies, a new king, a new Pharaoh, enters the throne who knew not Joseph.  We are going to look at that new Pharaoh shortly.

      In Exodus 1:8, the statement is:  “There arose in Egypt a new king who did not know Joseph. . .”

and because he did not know Joseph there is no covenantal link, therefore, with all of those individuals, the Hebrews, Jacob’s descendents who came into Egypt at the time of the great famine and had risen now to great status.  As a result, the Hebrews, because of the rise of the new Pharaoh, Ramses I, were reduced to the status of slaves, and they were put to work building what we know today as the cities of Pithom and Raamses in the delta area.  The City of Raamses later would be called the House of Raamses because it became this wonderful splendor of a city. 

There is  Egyptian history that the capitol had once been in Thebes and was now moved because the Egyptian Pharaohs, wanted to concentrate more, in the sense of the protection of their empire, by way of what they would be facing in the Asiatic conquest, So the capitol was moved.  The Hebrews, now put into slavery, became the people to begin to do the building of the great cities of Pithom and Raamses in the delta area.    

       From Exodus 1:8:  “Then a new king, who knew not Joseph, came to power in Egypt.” He said to his subjects,” verse 9: “’Look how numerous and powerful the Israelite people are.  They are growing more so than we ourselves.’”  From that text, you can divine in-between the text of Exodus 1:8 and Exodus 1:9, that there is probably a large gap of time between these two narratives.  But it is evident that there has probably been some kind of change or adaptation.  In that account, Exodus 1:8, basically through verse 10, you find that the Pharaoh’s Court is now the delta area. 

St. Mary Bulletin - September 14, 2008

St. Mary Bulletin - September 7, 2008