III. The Ten Mighty Acts and the Exodus: The Proof of Yahweh\u2019s Presence (7:8\u201313:16)
\nThe Miracle of the Rod and the Monstrous Snake: A Prologue to the Ten Mighty Acts (7:8\u201313)
\nBibliography
\nLabuschagne, C. J. \u201cThe Emphasizing Particle Gam and Its Connotations.\u201d Studia Biblica et Semitica. Wageningen: H. Veenman and Sons, 1966. 193\u2013203. Redford, D. B. A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph. VTSup 20, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970. Stadelmann, L. I. J. The Hebrew Conception of the World. AnBib 39. Rome Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1970. Vergote, J. Joseph en \u00c9gypte: G\u00e9n\u00e8se ch. 37\u201350 \u00e1 la lumi\u00e8re des \u00e9tudes \u00e9gyptologiques r\u00e9centes. Louvain: Publications Universitaires. 1959.
\nTranslation
\n8 Then Yahweh said this to Moses and to Aaron: 9 \u201cWhen Pharaoh speaks to you to say, \u2018Make yourselves a wondrous deed,\u2019 then you say to Aaron, \u2018Take your staff and fling it down right in front of Pharaoh.\u2019 It will turn into a monstrous snake.\u201d
\n10 When Moses and Aaron came before a Pharaoh, they did exactly as Yahweh had ordered. Aaron threw down his staff right in front of Pharaoh and right in front of his court, and immediately it turned into a monstrous snake, 11 So Pharaoh, in a countermove, called the wise scholars and the magicians, and then they too, the learned men of Egypt, did the same thing by their arcane arts. 12 Everybody threw down his staff, and they all turned into monstrous snakes. Then, suddenly, Aaron\u2019s staff gobbled up all their staffs!
\n13 But the mind of Pharaoh was unchanged. He paid no attention to them, just as Yahweh had predicted.
\nNotes
\n8.a. \u05dc\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201cto say\u201d; so translated in the next verse following \u05d9\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u201che speaks.\u201d
\n9.a. \u201cGive,\u201d \u05e0\u05ea\u05da Pharaoh enjoins Moses and Aaron to give credence to what they say with some sign of the power of the God they claim.
\n9.b. LXX \u1f21\u03bc\u1fd6\u03bd reads \u201cus\u201d and Syr. lj read \u201cme\u201d rather than \u201cyourselves,\u201d and LXX \u03c3\u03b7\u03bc\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bf\u03bd\u1f23 and SamPent \u05d0\u05d5\u05ea \u05d0\u05d5 add \u201ca sign or\u201d before \u201ca wondrous deed.\u201d
\n9.c. SamPent adds special waw to the \u05d9\u05d4\u05d9 of MT, to give \u201cthen, immediately it will turn into.\u2026\u201d
\n9.d. \u05ea\u05e0\u05d9\u05da as opposed to the \u05e0\u05ea\u05e9\u05c1 of 4:3. The \u201cserpent\u201d of that account becomes an even more frightening reptile here. Cassuto (94) even translates \u05ea\u05e0\u05d9\u05da \u201ccrocodile.\u201d
\n10.a. MT reads \u05d0\u05dc \u201cto, toward\u201d; LXX \u1f10\u03bd\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03af\u03bf\u03bd and SamPent have \u05dc\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9 \u201cright in front of,\u201d as does MT v 9.
\n10.b. Hiph of \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05da, translated \u201cfling down\u201d in the context of v 9.
\n10.c. Lit., \u201chis servants.\u201d
\n11.a. Special waw plus \u05d2\u05dd \u201calso,\u201d an adverbial particle which has a correlative, and even an adversative, usage; see BDB, 169 \u00a7\u00a7 4, 5. Cf. also Labuschagne, Studia 197\u201398, who maintains that \u05d2\u05dd here is an emphasizing particle connected with the subj and designed \u201cto express correspondence\u201d; he reads, \u201cAnd Pharaoh in his turn summoned.\u2026\u201d
\n11.b. Emphasis is indicated by the independent pers pronoun with \u05d2\u05dd \u201calso,\u201d in addition to the 3d pers pl. pronoun with the verb.
\n11.c. \u05d7\u05e8\u05d8\u05de\u05d9\u05dd implies, by its derivation from \u05d7\u05e8\u05d8, one who is skilled in the use of a stylus or other tools for writing and engraving; hence the general translation \u201clearned men,\u201d embracing both the \u201cwise scholars\u201d and the \u201cmagicians\u201d mentioned earlier in the verse. Cf. Vergote, Joseph en Egypte, 66\u201373; Redford, Biblical Story, 49, 203\u20134.
\n11.d. \u05d1\u05b5\u05bc\u05da \u201cdid thus.\u201d
\n11.e. \u05dc\u05b8\u05d4\u05b2\u05d8\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd is apparently related to \u05dc\u05d5\u05d8 \u201cwrap completely, cover fully,\u201d and signifies mysterious learning, secret lore.
\n12.a. \u201cAll\u201d is suggested by the pl. verb and by the context.
\n13.a. Lit., \u201cthe heart of Pharaoh remained firm, grew strong.\u201d
\n13.b. \u05d3\u05b4\u05bc\u05d1\u05b6\u05bc\u05d5 \u201chad spoken.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThis brief section is from the priestly circle and is a part of the block of Priestly material that extends without interruption from 6:2 through 7:13 (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 6:2\u201313). Its association with that block, however, is a kinship more of origin than of subject. By content, the section is drawn to the third major complex of the Book of Exodus in its present form, the complex dealing with the ten mighty acts demonstrating Yahweh\u2019s Presence, and with the exodus itself, the climactic proof of that Presence.
\nThese six verses function as a prologue to the mighty-acts sequence. The section preceding them, 6:28\u20137:7, previews that sequence as a whole by providing a theological explanation of the events narrated by it. 7:8\u201313 function as a prologue by their single emphasis upon the miraculous as the medium of Yahweh\u2019s proof of his Presence. The preceding section (6:28\u20137:7) is broad in scope and inclusive; this one is focused on a single aspect of what is to follow, and so is exclusive. The preceding section provides a conclusion to the narrative that begins with 6:2, and by its emphasis on the proof of Yahweh\u2019s Presence to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians, a transition to the great sequence setting forth that proof in detail, 7:8\u201313:16. The section at hand functions both as a transitional section and a prologue. It provides a transition from the account of the instructions regarding the proof to the Pharaoh to the beginning of that proof, and it provides a prologue by its focus on miracle as the medium of that proof.
\nOne wonders whether 7:8\u201313 was originally located in the Priestly compilation following 6:2\u20137:7, and what may have been the form and sequence of the Priestly narrative following these verses before that narrative was fragmented and spliced into the compilation of the Book of Exodus. Given the Priestly affection for the dramatically miraculous, it is possible that these verses originally functioned much as they do now, as transition and prologue, in particular as prologue to a sequence in which the miraculous was even more dominant than it is in the sequence preserved in the received text. Whatever the accuracy of such a suggestion, the appropriateness of the location of these verses as prologue to the great proof-of-Presence sequence is clear, and the chord they strike must be heard throughout that sequence: the reality and power of Yahweh\u2019s Presence is demonstrated to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians by the miraculous.
\nComment
\n8\u20139 For the first time in the narrative thus far, the suggestion is made that Pharaoh will request a wondrous deed as a vindication of the authority Moses and Aaron are claiming. Such a request may be implicit in Pharaoh\u2019s sarcastic question, \u201cWho is Yahweh?\u201d (5:2), but it is not anticipated in the earlier narrative on the changing of the staff (4:1\u20135), where this sign is given along with two more as proof of Moses\u2019 authority for the sons of Israel. There is no need to emend the text of v 9 to have Pharaoh asking this wondrous deed for himself and his court (see n. 9.b above). Moses and Aaron are to do this miracle for themselves, as a means of establishing their own credibility.
\nIn 4:3, the staff of Moses was changed into a \u05e0\u05d7\u05e9\u05c1, a serpent probably regarded as dangerous. Moses ran away from it, then \u201csnatched\u201d at it very cautiously. Here (vv 9, 10, 12), a staff now referred to as Aaron\u2019s (vv 9 and 10) turns into a \u05ea\u05b7\u05bc\u05e0\u05b4\u05bc\u05d9\u05df. This word too is generally translated \u201cserpent,\u201d but as it clearly designates a different kind of reptile, the term should be rendered differently. Apart from its three occurrences here, \u05ea\u05b7\u05bc\u05e0\u05b4\u05bc\u05d9\u05df occurs in the OT a dozen times (Lisowsky, 1525; Mandelkern, 1249, lists eleven occurrences) and refers in most of these occurrences (Gen 1:21; Pss 74:13; 148:7; Isa 27:1, where both terms occur, and 51:9; Jer 51:34; Ezek 29:3; 32:2; Job 7:12) to a reptile of terrifying size, a sea-monster, even a dragon (so perhaps LXX, which reads \u03b4\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03c9\u03bd here, \u1f45\u03c6\u03b9\u03c2 in 4:3). A crocodile may be the point of departure for the Ezekiel references (Eichrodt, Ezekiel, OTL [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970], 403, 432\u201333), but there is at least a suggestion of the primordial monster of the deep in the background of these and other usages (Stadelmann, Hebrew Conception, 20\u201327). At the very least, a snake of awesome appearance and perhaps size seems intended here, a \u201cfrightful\u201d or \u201cmonstrous\u201d snake.
\n10\u201312 The report that Pharaoh\u2019s \u201clearned men\u201d (cf. Redford, Biblical Story, 204) are able to duplicate this wondrous deed is by no means to be taken as an indication that what is described here is nothing more than fancy sleight-of-hand, making \u201ca snake go rigid by pressing on a nerve at the back of its neck\u201d (Knight, 53, who adds, \u201cAaron evidently knew the trick\u201d). All such attempts to find \u201cnaturalistic\u201d explanations for the wondrous deeds of the Book of Exodus, along with designs on \u201cwhat really happened,\u201d are not only misleading and impossible, but irrelevant as well. The whole point of this prologue is its miraculous element. The narrator goes to great trouble to make plain that Pharaoh had to call in the best he had to match the wondrous deed of Moses and Aaron: \u201cwise scholars,\u201d \u201cmagicians,\u201d \u201clearned men,\u201d with \u201carcane arts.\u201d
\nEven then, however, Yahweh\u2019s men had the best and last and triumphant word. In the delightfully funny v 12, when \u201ceverybody\u201d throws down his staff and Pharaoh\u2019s palace is about to be overrun with monstrous snakes, we are told that \u201cAaron\u2019s staff\u201d (not, significantly, \u201cAaron\u2019s monstrous snake\u201d) \u201cgobbled up\u201d or \u201cgulped down\u201d everybody else\u2019s staff. Pharaoh and his best minds are by no means presented as inept or lacking in power. Quite the contrary, they are formidable, a force to be reckoned with. But when they come up against Yahweh, they are outdone. This point is reiterated ever more forcefully throughout the proof-of-Presence sequence.
\n13 With the awesome potential of the two opposing forces thus illustrated and the inevitable conclusion of the confrontation already clearly anticipated, this prologue is brought to a close by a restatement of the foil against which the entire sequence of the mighty acts is parried and sharpened. Gobbling staff or no gobbling staff, and with the requested wondrous deed ignored, Pharaoh remains unconvinced. His mind is unmoved. He pays no attention to Moses and Aaron. Yahweh had said that he would not. And in that closing reminder, Yahweh\u2019s own role in Pharaoh\u2019s intransigence is subtly anticipated.
\nExplanation
\nThe point of this brief section is that Yahweh\u2019s proof of his powerful Presence to the Pharaoh and thus to the Pharaoh\u2019s Egypt will be miraculous in nature. The miracle of the rod transformed into a monstrous snake is not called an \u05d0\u05d5\u05ea \u201csign,\u201d as the rod turned into a serpent was (4:8\u20139), but a \u05de\u05d5\u05e4\u05ea \u201cwondrous deed.\u201d And confronted by such a wondrous deed, Pharaoh calls in his best, apparently all of them, to match the deed by their own secret lore. This they proceed to do, but not quite, for Aaron\u2019s staff gulps down their staffs.
\nThese lines sparkle with the humor of such a scene, in the delivery of Pharaoh\u2019s challenge; in the flinging down of one staff, then many; in the proliferation of monstrous snakes; and in the wolfing down of all the copycat snakes by their original. This humor, indeed, may be a part of the creation of an unforgettable scene for a didactic purpose. The proof Moses has wanted, the proof Moses has said Israel will need and Pharaoh will need, the proof which at the opening of this section Pharaoh himself asks for is now about to be given.
\nThis proof is introduced here by a scene telling us that (1) the proof will be so extraordinary a display of Yahweh\u2019s power that it can only be understood as miracle; (2) the proof will be matched to begin with by Pharaoh\u2019s own considerable power, a power that will nonetheless be outdistanced, then overwhelmed; and (3) the proof will be resisted by Pharaoh, in the face of reason. The introduction ends on this latter note, having raised neatly the questions of how Pharaoh can resist and how long Pharaoh will hold out.
\nLike the proof-of-Presence sequence it introduces, the impulse of this brief section is theological, and the theological message it bears is so crucial that, in the sequence to follow, it must be made and then remade and emphasized by every conceivable means of making it memorable. Egypt becomes a stage, and Pharaoh a villain. Israel is the rapt audience. And there the metaphor breaks down, for Yahweh is not playing, or performing; he is simply being himself and keeping his promises, and he will not be finished until all who doubt believe completely.
\nSo marvelously matched to the proof-of-Presence sequence of 7:14\u201313:16 is this prologue that it is easy to imagine its having been composed for the purpose. While that speculation cannot be confirmed, the location of such a section in such a place as such a prologue can be seen as nothing less than an exemplary display of compositional skill.
\nThe First Mighty Act (7:14\u201325)
\nBibliography
\nHolt, G. \u201cThe Plagues of Egypt.\u201d ZAW 69 (1957) 84\u2013103. Labuschagne, C. J. \u201cThe Emphasizing Particle Gam and Its Connotations.\u201d Studia Biblica et Semitica. Wageningen: H. Veenman and Sons, 1966. 193\u2013203. McCarthy, D. J. \u201cMoses\u2019 Dealings with Pharaoh: Ex 7, 8\u201310, 27.\u201d CBQ 27 (1965) 336\u201347. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cPlagues and Sea of Reeds: Exodus 5\u201314.\u201d JBL 85 (1966) 137\u201358. Winnett, F. V.M The Mosaic Tradition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1949.
\nTranslation
\n14 So Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cThe mind of Pharaoh is heavy and dull; he refuses to send out the people. 15 Go along to Pharaoh in the morning, just when he is going out toward the water. Take a position where you can intercept him upon the bank of the Nile, and take in your hand the staff that was changed into a serpent. 16 Say to him, \u2018Yahweh the God of the Hebrews sent me to you to say, \u201cSend out my people, in order that they may worship me in the wilderness. And look here, you have still not obeyed this order. 17 Thus does Yahweh say, \u2018In this are you to know by experience that I am Yahweh: see now, I will strike with the staff that is in my hand against the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood; 18 the fish in the Nile will die and the Nile will become putrid and the Egyptians will be too repulsed to drink water from the Nile.\u2019 \u201d \u2019 \u201d
\n19 Yahweh said further to Moses, \u201cSay to Aaron, \u2018Take your staff and thrust out your hand against the waters of Egypt: against their streams, against their irrigation-channels, against their marsh-basins, and against all their stores of water, so that all the water will become blood. Blood will be everywhere in the land of Egypt, even in wooden containers and stone containers.\u2019 \u201d
\n20 Thus Moses and Aaron did exactly as Yahweh had ordered, and Yahweh raised high the staff and struck the water of the Nile before the very eyes of Pharaoh and before the very eyes of his court, so that all the water of the Nile was changed into blood. 21 Then the fish in the Nile died, and the Nile turned putrid, and the Egyptians were not able to drink water from the Nile. And sure enough, there was blood everywhere in Egypt.
\n22 The learned men of Egypt, however, did the same thing by their arcane arts. So Pharaoh\u2019s mind was again obstinate; he paid no attention to them, just as Yahweh had predicted. 23 Pharaoh turned his back on them, entered his palace, and put the whole business out of his mind.
\n24 The Egyptian people meanwhile searched all around the Nile for drinking water, because they could not bring themselves to drink from the water of the Nile. 25 Seven days came and went following Yahweh\u2019s blow against the Nile.
\nNotes
\n14.a. \u05db\u05d1\u05d3 \u201cheavy and dull.\u201d The point of this \u201cheaviness\u201d is Pharaoh\u2019s insensitivity; his \u05dc\u05d1 \u201cmind,\u201d the seat of his process of understanding, is a kind of leaden lump, says Yahweh.
\n15.a. MT has \u05d4\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cbehold\u201d followed by the qal ptcp \u05d9\u05b9\u05e6\u05b5\u05d0 \u201cgoing.\u201d SamPent, LXX add \u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u201chim\u201d between these two words, to give \u201cbehold him going out.\u201d
\n15.b. \u05e0\u05e6\u05d1 means to \u201ctake up a stand, station oneself\u201d for some specific purpose. See BDB, 662 \u00a7 1.a, and the references cited there.
\n16.a. \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3 \u201cserve.\u201d
\n16.b. Lit., \u201cAnd behold, you have not heard up until now.\u201d
\n18.a. \u05dc\u05d0\u05d4 means \u201cto weary of, to become reluctant to do\u201d something; the point here is that the Egyptians will not be able even to force themselves to drink such polluted and stinking water.
\n18.b. SamPent adds \u201cSo Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and they said to him, \u2018Yahweh the God of the Hebrews has sent us to you to say \u2026\u2019 \u201d and continues with a verbatim repetition of vv 16b\u201318.
\n19.a. \u05d9\u05b0\u05b9\u05d0\u05e8 appears to be a loan-word from Egyptian, and to refer to a channel for Nile water, a canal as opposed to a tributary-stream.
\n19.b. The cognate terms and the usage of \u05d0\u05d2\u05dd suggest swampy pools, marshland where papyrus and other aquatic plants grow.
\n19.c. By derivation, \u05de\u05e7\u05d5\u05d4 implies collected water, reserved or set aside for particular purposes.
\n19.d. \u05d5\u05d9\u05d4\u05d9\u05d5\u05be\u05d3\u05dd, lit., \u201cand they (the \u2018waters\u2019 just listed) will become blood.\u201d
\n19.e. Lit., \u201cand blood will be in all of the land of Egypt.\u201d SamPent \u05d5\u05d9\u05d4\u05d9 \u05d4\u05d3\u05dd divides the words at a different place.
\n20.a. MT has \u201che,\u201d but Yahweh is apparently the subj of the hiph of \u05e8\u05d5\u05dd \u201craise high,\u201d and is thus inserted above for clarity. LXX \u1fe5\u03ac\u03b2\u03b4\u1ff3 and SamPent \u05de\u05d8\u05d4\u05d5 attempt to resolve the ambiguity by reading \u201chis staff,\u201d making Moses or Aaron the subject.
\n21.a. Special waw plus \u05d9\u05b4\u05d4\u05b0\u05d9\u05b6\u05d4 \u201cit was,\u201d to give the apocopated form \u05d5\u05b7\u05d9\u05b0\u05d4\u05b4\u05d9 \u201cand sure enough, there was.\u201d
\n22.a. See nn. 11.c,d,e above.
\n23.a. The verb is \u05e4\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cturn,\u201d to which \u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u201cface,\u201d is related. The context makes clear the direction of Pharaoh\u2019s turning.
\n23.b. \u201cHis house.\u201d
\n23.c. \u201cAnd he did not set his mind (\u05dc\u05d1) even to this.\u201d The particle is \u05d2\u05dd \u201ceven, also,\u201d here as elsewhere used for emphasis, as Labuschagne (Studia, 193\u2013203) shows.
\n24.a. \u05d7\u05e4\u05e8 \u201csearch\u201d may also mean \u201cdig,\u201d in reference to a shallow well or pit, but the emphasis here appears to be on an increasingly urgent search for some unchanged, unpolluted water.
\n25.a. The verb is niph of \u05de\u05dc\u05d0 \u201cfilled up, accomplished.\u201d It is sg in MT, thus taking the days as a collective whole. SamPent makes the verb pl., thus taking the days individually.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe form of this first of the mighty acts accounts is composite. Two of the three tetrateuchal sources, J and P, are clearly in evidence, and most commentators who write from a source-critical perspective find E also, though in a \u201cfragmentary\u201d manner (e.g., Beer, 45, 47\u201348; Fohrer, Uberliefmng, 70\u201372; Childs, 137\u201338; the major exception is Noth, 69\u201370).
\nThis composite is not without its problems, some of which are produced by the fact that it is a composite. These have often been pointed out (whose is the plague-bringing rod? how much water became blood? where did the Egyptian learned men find unchanged water for their wonder-working? etc.), and have in fact been posed as clear evidence of the source-strata within the composite. To a degree, this becomes a self-serving argument.
\nThere can hardly be any disputing the existence of separate traditions reporting the mighty acts designed to demonstrate Yahweh\u2019s powerful Presence, and differences in detail between such separate traditions are inevitable. There are undoubted discrepancies, certainly, between the impression these traditions would have left in their earliest forms and the impact of the composite they make up in the text of Exodus. But we must keep two points clearly in view: (1) variant traditions have been woven together here to present a brilliant narrative sequence with a single unmistakable emphasis; (2) the array of diversity in detail within this narrative sequence cannot be there by accident, given the obvious skill of the compositor(s) who put together the sequence.
\nAs intriguing as the differences within this unified narrative are, the question of why they have been permitted to remain, given the clear and single purpose of the sequence as it stands, may be even more intriguing still. The discussion of the so-called \u201cplague\u201d sequence has been too preoccupied with the variations within the narrative as clues to its documents of origin, and not enough concerned with the wholeness of the narrative (cf. McCarthy, CBQ 27 [I965] 336\u201338 and JBL 85 [1966] 138\u201341), which incorporates such variations quite consciously and still presents a single emphasis.
\nThe form of the mighty-act sequence is best understood from the end product we have at hand; it can only partially be understood from component parts we can reconstruct, at best, by a pastiche of fragments and conjecture. Despite the excesses of his argument and the unacceptability of his emphasis on a late Deuteronomistic composite, Rolf Rendtorff (\u00dcberlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem, 147\u201373) has raised some very important questions about the usual post-Wellhausenist approach to the composition of Tetrateuch\/Pentateuch.
\nThe account of the first mighty act, in Exodus 7:14\u201325, is perhaps the best section in the mighty act sequence to illustrate this point, a point vital to the interpretation of the entire sequence. Of the ten mighty acts, only the first and the tenth are reported by composites made up from all three tetrateuchal sources, J, E, and P. Since the account of the tenth mighty act is unique as both a part of the narrative as a whole and also as separate in important ways from the sequence of the first nine (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 12:29\u201336), the account of the first mighty act stands as a kind of paradigm of the first nine.
\nThat Exodus 7:14\u201325 includes information from both J and P, as these are usually described, and that this information presents some divergence of detail, cannot be doubted. The case for material from E, as Noth\u2019s objections (68\u201370) have shown, is much less certain, but still plausible enough to persuade a majority of the critical commentators. The divisions of Fohrer (\u00dcberlieferung, 70, 125) are typical:
\nJ:
\nvv 14\u201315a<\/p>\n
16\u201317a<\/p>\n
18<\/p>\n
21a<\/p>\n
24\u201325<\/p>\n
E:<\/p>\n
15b<\/p>\n
17b<\/p>\n
20a\u03b2b
\n23<\/p>\n
P:<\/p>\n
19\u201320a\u03b1<\/p>\n
21b\u201322<\/p>\n
At the same time, the unified and sequential form of this account, especially as it is seen alongside the accounts which follow it, and as an integral part of the whole they present, has led some commentators to elaborate theories of a unity of form in which variations and the sources posed to express them are to be regarded as conjectured impositions. Typical here are Cassuto\u2019s (92\u201393) theory of three cycles of plagues within which five pairs of plagues are to be discovered, and Winnett\u2019s (Mosaic Tradition, 3\u201315) theory of stylistic arrangement involving in each plague \u201can Introductory Formula, a Central Core and a Concluding Formula.\u201d
\nA proper approach to the composite narrative of the mighty acts of Yahweh in Egypt cannot be made on the basis of such an either\/or option. Separate traditions regarding the mighty acts are clearly present, as is an overarching pattern of arrangement. Neither must be pressed, however, either to the exclusion of the other or to a degree that superimposes upon the text something clearly not in it. Formulaic patterns can easily become as wildly speculative and as absurd as fragment-hypotheses.
\nThe form of the mighty-act accounts may be seen to be determined by two factors: (1) the traditional material, in both oral and written form, which the compositor of the text of Exodus had at hand; (2) his purpose in composition. The first of the mighty act accounts illustrates this suggestion. There is a variance between the conception of the miracle of the changing of the water to blood as a sign of authority involving a dipping of water (4:9), as a mighty act involving the water of the Nile only (7:17\u201318, 20), and as a mighty act involving all the water everywhere in Egypt (vv 19, 21). There is a variance in who wields the staff that brings on the miraculous transformation, whether Moses (vv 14\u201316) or Aaron (v 19) or even Yahweh (vv 17, 20). There may be a variance in what constitutes the pollution of the Nile; McCarthy (CBQ 27 [1965] 337) sees two possibilities, Fohrer (\u00dcberlieferung, 63) proposes three.
\nBut there is also here a clear movement toward an unachieved goal, the proof to Pharaoh and his people and by implication, perhaps, to Israel as well, that Yahweh is indeed both present and powerful. The careful reader of the narrative of the Book of Exodus, moving seriatim from 1:1 to this point is not surprised at the disbelief of Pharaoh. Not only has Yahweh predicted it (note 3:19; 4:21\u201322; 5:2; 6:1; 7:3\u20135, 13, 22), he has taken responsibility for it in advance and will continue to do so throughout the mighty act sequence. Yahweh\u2019s purpose cannot be said to be that of convincing Pharaoh and his people that he is the supreme deity. If that were so, all his efforts would have to be pronounced a failure, even by the unapologetically biased account of the OT. Yahweh\u2019s purpose, rather, is to convince the Israelites of the reality of his claims of power and Presence. And this is the purpose too of the compositor of Exodus as we know it\u2014a purpose that has determined, along with the traditional material available to him, the form of his narrative.
\nThat form is largely unaffected by any interest in an all-inclusive or fully homogenized account. The compositor\u2019s intention is aided by the variety of traditions, which are for him but the separate facets of a single stone. His intention is to describe Yahweh\u2019s validation of Yahweh\u2019s own claim, and with the enthusiasm of a believer he uses every argument available to him.
\nComment
\n14 The report of Yahweh to Moses that Pharaoh\u2019s mind is \u05db\u05d1\u05d3 \u201cheavy and dull,\u201d quite literally like a lump of lead, must be understood, in the context of the mighty act sequence and indeed in the context of the anticipation of that sequence, to be more than a mere announcement of additional difficulty. Every reference to the stubborn, obstinate, dull, hardened mind of Pharaoh must be seen against the backdrop of the entire mighty-act sequence, and every one of them, if only by general implication, reflects Yahweh\u2019s involvement. V 14 is thus tantamount to a report by Yahweh that \u201call is in readiness\u201d for the proof of Presence to begin.
\n15 Speculation about the hygienic or religious reasons for Pharaoh\u2019s morning visit to the River Nile, though frequently undertaken by commentators, is not only useless but also a distraction. The substance of the mighty act at hand is the water of the Nile, referred to specifically no less than seven times in these twelve verses. This, surely, is the necessary point of Yahweh\u2019s instruction to Moses: he must intercept Pharaoh exactly where the substance for Yahweh\u2019s mighty act is at hand. Given the nature of the miracle, the place is unavoidable.
\n16\u201317 The staff can clearly be seen as a symbol of the power and authority of Yahweh. Moses is told by Yahweh to take it along to the meeting with Pharaoh, to announce to Pharaoh formally what everyone knows already, and then to deliver (complete with a messenger-formula) a prophetic word: Yahweh himself will strike (\u05e0\u05db\u05d4) the Nile waters with the staff in his hand, and those waters will become blood. \u05d3\u05dd \u201cblood\u201d refers only to blood in the OT, whether of men or of animals, and vv 17, 19, and 20 do not say that the Nile waters were turned into something as red as blood, or even into a liquid that looked like blood, but quite directly and without qualification, into blood.
\nThe whole point of this narrative, as of the additional mighty-act narratives that follow it, is the miraculous nature of an act for which Yahweh is given unequivocal responsibility. V 17 asserts and v 20 at least implies that it was Yahweh who struck the waters of the Nile. The action of Moses and\/or Aaron, armed with the staff (or staffs) symbolizing Yahweh\u2019s authorizing power, is symbolic of what was really happening. And the effect of Yahweh\u2019s blow is that the Nile turns into \u05d3\u05dd \u201cblood,\u201d not into the muddy or algae-laden and thus red-looking water the \u201cnaturalistic\u201d commentators never tire of suggesting (see most fully, Hort, ZAW 69 [1957] 87\u201395). We simply must never lose sight of the fact that the mighty-act narratives are theological accounts, not phenomenological reports. Yahweh struck the Nile, and instantaneously, \u201cbefore the very eyes of\u201d Pharaoh and his court, it changed into blood. Whatever the difficulties such an assertion may pose for the readers of another age, they must not be allowed to diffuse or even to alter what the text actually says, for that inevitably either obscures or removes entirely the real point of the narrative in the first place.
\n18\u201321 In the composite of the present text, the changing of the water of the Nile sets off a chain reaction of unpleasant consequences. The transformed water is inhospitable to the fish of the Nile. They die and begin to decompose. The water-become-blood turns putrid. The Egyptians cannot bring themselves to drink such water. While it is logical to assume that the tradition of such a blow against Egypt expanded and intensified with age, an assumption often supported by reference to this first mighty-act report, we must again take seriously the composite account as we have it as the only form of the narrative about which we can be completely sure. Whatever the separate layers may originally have said about what water and how much water was changed into blood, the composite at hand presents, in effect, an initial transformation of the Nile following a blow struck by Yahweh (vv 17\u201318, 20) and a subsequent blow struck by Aaron (v 19; Moses and Aaron, v 20a), changing the remainder of the water in Egypt, both channeled and stored. Vv 17\u201319 anticipate this two-stage transformation; vv 20\u201321 report its accomplishment, finishing with the summary-declaration, \u201cAnd sure enough, there was blood everywhere in Egypt.\u201d
\n22\u201323 Immediately following this summary statement, there comes the surprising report that the learned men of Egypt proceeded to do \u201cthe same thing\u201d: \u05d5\u05d9\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5\u05be\u05db\u05df \u201cand then they did thus.\u201d Given the context, \u05db\u05df \u201cthe same thing, thus,\u201d must refer to the follow-up action of Moses and Aaron, the transformation not of the Nile waters already transformed by Yahweh, but the transformation of channeled or stored water, the source of which is not specified. What is especially important about this brief notice is (1) the status it assigns to the learned men of Egypt, as worthy opponents, and (2) the fact that these wizards only duplicate what Moses and Aaron have done, and make no attempt to undo the disgusting pollution of the Nile. The most that can be said for their miracle-working is that it is a copy of what Moses and Aaron have accomplished and that it actually makes matters worse for their master and their people.
\nWe are not to conclude, therefore, that Pharaoh\u2019s obstinacy is a result of the duplication by his learned men of the action of Moses and Aaron. Yahweh has predicted that obstinacy (vv 22b, 23), and as we come increasingly to learn, he is himself responsible for it.
\nThe River Nile as blood is mentioned in a catalog of catastrophe describing the disastrous conditions in Egypt in the period of transition from the Old Kingdom to the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2300\u20132250 b.c.). The copy of the text in which we know this catalog dates, interestingly enough, from the period between 1350 and 1100 b.c., the period in which the exodus almost certainly took place. The pertinent lines read as follows:
\nWhy really, the River is blood.
\nIf one drinks of it,
\none rejects (it) as human
\nand thirsts for water
\n(ANET, 441, ii 10).
\nNo more can be made of this than that such a condition describes a time of chaos and distress. One cannot even say whether the usage is in some sense metaphorical. What is important is that the description of a time of serious reverse includes such language, and that such a text was current in the general period of the exodus. The changing of the River Nile to blood may even have been a rhetorical formula for a terrible judgment upon Egypt. Whether that is the case or not, the language in the composite at hand appears both to have been taken quite literally and also to have represented a blow that resulted in a temporary condition of the Nile.
\nThe Egyptians are depicted as searching everywhere, and feverishly, for potable water. No hint of whether they were successful is given, and there is no suggestion as to whether the Israelites also suffered or were somehow excluded from the blow. With the passage of seven days, the effects of Yahweh\u2019s blow apparently passed, for the pollution of the Nile is not mentioned again in the narrative of the mighty acts (cf. also Pss 78:44 and 105:29).
\nExplanation
\nEach of the first nine of the mighty-act accounts may be said to have the same fundamental point, expressed in much the same way. That point, concisely summarized, is that Yahweh powerfully demonstrates his Presence to a Pharaoh prevented from believing so that Israel may come to full belief.
\nAs we know from the preview to the proof-of-Presence sequence, Yahweh intends that the Egyptians shall know by experience that he is Yahweh, but that preview states quite specifically that such knowledge will come to them in Yahweh\u2019s bringing forth of the children of Israel from their midst (7:4\u20135). In the prologue to the narrative of the mighty acts, Pharaoh asks for a wondrous deed as an authentication not of Yahweh, but of Moses and Aaron (7:8\u20139). The wondrous deed is given (7:10), and only partially matched by Pharaoh\u2019s learned men (7:11\u201312), but Pharaoh remains unimpressed by Moses and Aaron, and oblivious of Yahweh. The section at hand begins with Pharaoh heavy and dull of mind, refusing to send out the Israelites (7:14), and ends with Pharaoh turning his back on Moses and Aaron, dismissing the whole affair from his mind (7:23), while his people search feverishly for some water they can drink (7:24). Of the difficult situation of the Israelites in Egypt, nothing has changed. If anything, they are worse off than ever.
\nTo whom, then, has the power of Yahweh\u2019s Presence proven anything? Moses and Aaron clearly believed already\u2014else why would they have obeyed Yahweh\u2019s orders? The belief of the people of Israel is never mentioned in the narrative of the first nine of Yahweh\u2019s mighty acts, and it is only implied in the account of the tenth mighty act, in the complex of inserted liturgical material (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 12:1\u201313, 14\u201320, and 21\u201328). The belief of Pharaoh is mentioned directly or indirectly in each of the mighty-act narratives, but though Pharaoh comes to an altered attitude toward Yahweh\u2019s powerful Presence, he never believes in him. McCarthy\u2019s theory (CBQ 27 [1965] 345) that the \u201cplagues\u201d \u201ccome close\u201d to a purpose of producing \u201ca conversion in Pharaoh\u201d is not sustained by the text. Pharaoh never comes to belief, and the most that can be said of his people is that they come to a fearful respect.
\nWho, then, is left? For whose faith has the composite of the mighty-act narrative been assembled? And to whom are these narratives directed? There can be but a single answer to these questions, an answer that stands forth more clearly with each successive narrative of the ten. The mighty-act accounts are written from faith to faith. They were compiled that the generations of Israel to come might know that Yahweh Is, and so know also the redemption of exodus, whatever their bondage.
\nThe Second Mighty Act (7:26\u20138:11 [8:1\u201315])
\nBibliography
\nDijk, H. J. van \u201cA Neglected Connotation of Three Hebrew Verbs.\u201d VT 18 (1968) 16\u201330. Frankfort, H. Ancient Egyptian Religion. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961. Loewenstamm, S. E. \u201cThe Number of Plagues in Psalm 105.\u201d Bib 52 (1971) 34\u201338. Margulis, B. \u201cThe Plagues Tradition in Ps 105.\u201d Bib 50 (1969) 491\u201396. Skehan, P. W. \u201cExodus in the Samaritan Recension from Qumran.\u201d JBL 74 (1955) 182\u201387.
\nTranslation
\n26[8:1] Next Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cGo to Pharaoh and say to him, \u2018Thus says Yahweh, \u201cSend out my people in order that they may worship me. 27[8:2] Should you refuse to do so, look out: I will level a blow at the whole of your territory with frogs. 28[8:3] The Nile will be aswarm with frogs, and they will leave the river and come into your house, right into your bedroom and even up onto your bed, and into the houses of the members of your court and onto your people, and even into your cooking-places and mixing-bowls. 29[8:4] Onto you yourself and onto your people and onto all the members of your court the frogs will leap.\u201d \u2019 \u201d
\n8:1[5] So Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cSay to Aaron, \u2018Thrust out your hand with your staff against the streams, against the irrigation-channels, and against the marsh-basins, and bring up the frogs against the land of Egypt.\u2019 \u201d 2[6] Thus Aaron thrust out his hand against the waters of Egypt, and sure enough the frogs came up and spread over the land of Egypt. 3[7] Then the learned men of Egypt did the same thing by their arcane arts, and so they brought up the frogs against the land of Egypt.
\n4[8] Now concerned, Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron, and said, \u201cPray to Yahweh, that he may remove the frogs from me and from my people; then I will send the people out, and they shall sacrifice to Yahweh.\u201d 5[9] Moses replied to Pharaoh, \u201cJust set the time when I am to pray in your behalf, and on behalf of the members of your court and your people, to cut off the frogs from you and from your house, that in the Nile only they will remain.\u201d 6[10] He answered, \u201cTomorrow!\u201d So Moses said, \u201cJust as you say, so will it be, in order that you may know by experience that none is comparable to Yahweh our God! 7[11] The frogs will leave you and your house, and the members of your court and your people; in the Nile only will they remain.\u201d
\n8[12] Then Moses and Aaron left Pharaoh\u2019s court and Moses proceeded to cry out to Yahweh concerning the frogs that he had set against Pharaoh. 9[13] So Yahweh answered Moses\u2019 prayer, and the frogs beswarming the houses and the yards and the fields died. 10[14] They piled them up, pile after pile, until the land was heavy with the smell of them. 11[15] The minute Pharaoh saw that there was an end to the frogs, however, he steeled his mind and would pay no attention to them, just as Yahweh had predicted.
\nNotes
\n27[8:2].a. \u05d4\u05b4\u05e0\u05b5\u05d4 \u201cbehold.\u201d
\n27[8:2].b. \u05e0\u05d2\u05e3 most often depicts a blow, either in a physical or a metaphorical sense. It is used particularly of the action of Yahweh, and never, in the OT, of any other deity.
\n27[8:2].c. \u05e6\u05e4\u05e8\u05d3\u05e2 \u201cfrogs\u201d is used as both a masc. pl. (7:27, 28, 29, 8:1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9) and a fem. sg collective (8:2) noun in this sequence. It is derived from \u05e6\u05e4\u05e8 \u201cpeep,\u201d and may therefore be an onomatopoeic name, in reference to the \u201cpeeping\u201d sound of newly hatched frogs.
\n28[8:3].a. Lit., \u201cthey will go up,\u201d read in the context above \u201cleave the river,\u201d for clarity.
\n28[8:3].b. LXX has pl., \u201chouses, bedrooms, beds\u201d; SamPent has \u201chouse,\u201d but pl. of the other two nouns.
\n28[8:3].c. MT has \u05d1\u05d9\u05ea \u201chouse,\u201d but the pl. \u201chouses\u201d of SamPent and LXX fits better with \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3\u05d9\u05da \u201cyour servants\u201d following.
\n28[8:3].d. \u05ea\u05e0\u05d5\u05e8 \u201ccooking-place\u201d is a portable container for fire; cf. Gen 15:17; Ps 21:10 [9]; Hos 7:4, Isa 31:9; apparently it could function also as a kind of oven.
\n28[8:3].e. See esp. Exod 12:34; Deut 28:5, 17.
\n29[8:4].a. LXX has the more logical order, with \u03bb\u03b1\u03cc\u03bd \u201cpeople\u201d last, and without \u05db\u05dc \u201call\u201d before \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3\u05d9\u05da \u201cyour servants\u201d; Syr. reads \u05db\u05dc before \u201cpeople.\u201d
\n29[8:4].b. \u201cWill go up,\u201d \u05e2\u05dc\u05d4. SamPent adds a lengthy verse summarizing the account to this point. Skehan (186) infers the inclusion of the same expansion in 4QExa.
\n8:1[5].a. See above, n. 7:19.a.
\n1[5].b. See above, n. 7:19.b.
\n2[6].a. Special waw.
\n2[6].b. \u05e6\u05e4\u05e8\u05d3\u05e2 \u201cfrogs\u201d is fem. sg collective here as the two fem. sg verbs before and after it make clear.
\n3[7].a. \u201cOf Egypt\u201d is added from the context for clarity; cf. 7:11.
\n4[8].a. Special waw, in the context of Pharaoh\u2019s request.
\n4[8].b. LXX adds \u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u1f10\u03bc\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cfor me.\u201d Cf. MT at 8:24 and LXX at 9:28.
\n4[8].c. This verb is made emphatic by the addition of cohortative \u05d4. See GKC \u00b6 48c, e.
\n5[9].a. \u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201csay\u201d plus special waw.
\n5[9].b. Lit., \u201cPlease yourself over me as to the time,\u201d a statement not so much in deference as in confidence.
\n5[9].c. LXX adds \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bb\u03b1\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03c3\u03bf\u03c5 \u201cand from your people.\u201d
\n5[9].d. This last clause is missing from Syr.
\n6[10].a. \u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201csay\u201d plus special waw.
\n6[10].b. \u201cMoses\u201d added from the context, for clarity.
\n6[10].c. Lit., \u201cin accord with your word.\u201d
\n6[10].d. LXX reads \u1f44\u03c4\u03b9 \u03bf\u1f50\u03ba \u1f14\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03bd \u1f04\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c0\u03bb\u1f74\u03bd \u03ba\u03c5\u03c1\u03af\u03bf\u03c5 \u201cthat there is none besides Yahweh.\u201d
\n7 [11].a. LXX adds here \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f10\u03ba \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f10\u03c0\u03b1\u03cd\u03bb\u03b5\u03c9\u03bd \u201cand your outbuildings,\u201d or as MT in v 9, \u201cyards.\u201d
\n8[12].a. Lit., \u201cwent out from with Pharaoh.\u201d
\n8[12].b. Special waw.
\n8[12].c. \u201cThat he had put with reference to Pharaoh.\u201d Cf. van Dijk, VT 18 [1968] 27\u201330.
\n9 [13].a. Lit., \u201cdid as the word of Moses.\u201d
\n10[14].a. Lit., \u201cand then the land stank.\u201d
\n11 [15].a. Special waw.
\n11[15].b. \u05e8\u05d5\u05d7\u05d4 means \u201crelief, enlarging, respite.\u201d It is rendered in the context above, \u201cend to the frogs.\u201d
\n11 [15].c. Hiph of \u05db\u05d1\u05d3 \u201ccause to be heavy, dull, insensitive.\u201d MT employs the inf abs; SamPent has 3d masc. sg hiph impf.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe report of the second mighty act of Yahweh is, like the report of the first one, a composite report. Its seams are not so numerous and so obvious, and only two sources can be posited, J and P, but the addition of Aaron as an agent (8:1\u20133) and the expansion of the water sources for the miraculous multiplication of the frogs (7:28 vis-\u00e1-vis 8:1\u20132) are alone enough to indicate at least two layers of tradition. The source-critics have been in general agreement for some decades now on the division of this narrative. Beer in 1939 (49), Noth in 1959 (75), Fohrer in 1964 (\u00dcberlieferung, 70) and Childs in 1974 (131) suggested substantially identical patterns of division: 8:1\u20133 and 11a\u03b2 b to P, the remainder to J (though Fohrer thinks 7:28\u201329 is an \u201caddition\u201d [\u00dcberlieferung, 125]).
\nHere again, however, the whole is far more than a mere sum of its parts. The composite is designed to say more than either of the two traditions by themselves or laid together as two traditions reporting a single narrative sequence. The redactor who produced this amalgam did so without regard to discrepancies of minor detail and sequence. His intention, rather, was to produce a single account suggesting the impact of a mighty act that reached right into Pharaoh\u2019s palace, an account giving Yahweh an unqualified triumph, and one in which Moses is presented as Yahweh\u2019s representative and spokesman.
\nThe same mingling of traditional material and purpose that dictated the form of the first mighty act account is also determinative here. The same general outline present in the other eight of the first nine mighty-act accounts is present, and what might be called the recurring rhetoric of the mighty acts is fully in evidence. Indeed this narrative, as is true of each of the first nine mighty-act narratives, may be said to have a common form as a mightyact report: a composite form as a mingling of traditions originally separate, and a combinant form as a part of the larger and longer proof-of-Presence narrative.
\nA mighty act involving frogs is mentioned both in Ps 78:45 and in Ps 105:30. In each of these references, the term for \u201cfrogs\u201d is the same as in this section in Exodus. Ps 105:30 refers to the teeming (\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8\u05e5) of the frogs and to their intrusion even into the royal chambers, thus conforming to the references in Exod 7:26\u20138:11. Ps 78:45 refers to the frogs \u201cdevastating\u201d or \u201cdestroying\u201d (hiphil of \u05e9\u05c1\u05d7\u05ea) the Egyptians, an apparent expansion of the tradition reflected in the Book of Exodus (Durham, \u201cPsalms,\u201d BBC 4 [Nashville: Broadman, 1971], 332).
\nThis variance has led Loewenstamm (Bib 52 [1971] 35\u201336) to suggest that Ps 105 stands in an \u201cintermediate position\u201d in the development of the tradition, from the Exodus account to that of Ps 78. Indeed, Loewenstamm goes on to argue (37\u201338) that Ps 105 preserves \u201ca separate form of the plague tradition,\u201d one reflecting a \u201cpoetic tradition\u201d antedating the Pentateuch.
\nB. Margulis (Bib 50 [1969] 491\u201396) takes the view that Ps 105 is based on the Exodus narrative, and reflects some revision of that narrative, an argument he sustains by a reconstruction based on the psalm scroll from Qumran\u2019s Cave 11 (11QPsa).
\nWhile neither of these two theories can be proven, they yet demonstrate the growth within the OT itself of both the content and the organization of the mighty-act traditions. Not only can the form of the mighty-act narratives be seen to be an evolved form, the number and sequence of the mighty acts themselves is also revealed as variable at different stages (and perhaps in different centers) of the growth of the OT (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 7:14\u201325).
\nComment
\nWith this second in the sequence of Yahweh\u2019s mighty acts in Egypt, Moses is told for the first time to warn Pharaoh (7:27, \u201clook out\u201d) of the consequences of continuing intractability. In the prologue to the mighty-act sequence, Pharaoh was simply presented with a wondrous deed (7:8\u201310). In the first mighty act, he was given a prediction of a demonstration of Yahweh\u2019s power (7:17\u201318). But here for the first time, he is given a warning, and here for the first time, the effects of the mighty act reach his own person. It is at least beside the point to contend, as some commentators do, that the first \u201cplague\u201d is more serious and a greater threat than the second. The mighty acts are not weighted from mild to serious, and the application to their sequence of \u201clogical\u201d patterns of increased or decreased power or intensity of effect is misleading. Each of the accounts is to the same end, and their cumulative effect is a magnification of repetition, not increasing degree. The special feature of the second mighty act, apart from its medium, is the warning and the fact that the Pharaoh actually feels its effect in his house and upon his person.
\n26\u201329[8:1\u20134] The warning to be delivered to Pharaoh by Moses is not reported in the composite of MT as having been delivered, as for example the prediction of the first mighty act is (7:20, though cf. SamPent 7:29b, which does make such a report). The report of the summons of the mighty act (7:26\u201328) and the description of its results (7:29) effectively lead us to assume this delivery. The warning anticipates not a \u201cplague,\u201d as such translations as rsv, neb and jb suggest, but a \u201cstriking\u201d or \u201csmiting,\u201d qal active participle \u05e0\u05b9\u05d2\u05b5\u05e3. The most frequent use of this verb and its two noun derivatives is in reference to Yahweh\u2019s striking of blows against nations or individuals whom he is for some reason punishing. Eighteen of the forty-five OT occurrences of \u05e0\u05d2\u05e3 make such a reference (see, e.g., Exod 32:35; Judg 20:35; 1 Sam 25:38; 2 Chr 21:14, 18), as do thirty of the thirty-three occurrences of the two derivatives, \u05e0\u05b6\u05d2\u05b6\u05e3\u05b8 and \u05de\u05b7\u05d2\u05b5\u05bc\u05e4\u05b8\u05d4, both of which are best translated \u201cblow,\u201d \u201chitting.\u201d \u201cPlague\u201d is a far more general term than \u05e0\u05d2\u05e3 suggests, and it may imply to the modern reader disease on a widespread and uncontrolled scale.
\nThe effects of this threatened blow of Yahweh are described with some wit and in convincing detail. The Nile will be teeming with frogs, as Egypt\u2019s Delta teems with Israelites, and by the same power (\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8\u05e5 \u201cteem\u201d is the verb both here in v 28 and in 1:7). They will swarm up from the river into the Egyptians\u2019 living quarters. Nobody will escape their incessant \u201cpeeping\u201d and their slimy hopping. In a typically Hebrew list, ordered by priority of position, Pharaoh is mentioned first, then the members of his cabinet, then the ordinary Egyptians (7:28; 8:5). These frogs will get into everything, from the most private chambers and even the beds in them, to the utensils where food is prepared and the oven-stoves where it is cooked. These references to sleeping places and cooking places are a graphic description of the extent of the blow, a description amusingly augmented by the mental picture of frogs leaping up onto Pharaoh\u2019s own person and the proud persons of the members of his cabinet as well.
\n8:1\u20132[5\u20136]. The introduction of Aaron into this narrative brings the sole mention of the staff symbolizing Yahweh\u2019s power and authority in the account of the second mighty act. The instruction of Yahweh in this Priestly tradition of the second mighty act is more detailed than the statement of v 28, but it is in no way contradictory of that statement. In addition to the waters of the Nile, the waters of streams and irrigation canals and river marshes will be media for the miraculous crop of frogs. Aaron\u2019s commanded and symbolic move brought on Yahweh\u2019s blow.
\n3[7]. The action of the learned men of Egypt, by which still more frogs were added to the frog infestation can hardly have brought any cheer to the befrogged Pharaoh or his court. V 3 is an obvious parallel to 7:11\u201312 and 22, and it is significant here as in 7:14\u201325 that the Egyptian wizards make no attempt to reduce the effects of Yahweh\u2019s acts; they can indeed only multiply them. One wonders, indeed, if in the original traditions these Egyptian learned men attempted to reverse the effect of Yahweh\u2019s mighty acts, and against his awesome power could succeed only in multiplying that effect, the very opposite of what they set out to do. The merit of such a suggestion is that it makes sense of the \u201cmagic\u201d of the learned men of Egypt, which in each case only makes the situation worse. The obvious flaw in the suggestion is that it is without basis in the text of Exodus as we know it.
\nSome commentators (e.g., Cassuto, 101, or Hyatt, 108) suggest in the manipulation by Yahweh of the frogs a defeat of Hekt, the frog-headed goddess who assisted her husband Khnum in bringing men into being (Frankfort, Egyptian Religion, 15 and 85). The second mighty act would thus be a frustration, at the very least, of the life-giving process in Egypt. While such symbolism is possible, given the Egyptian context of the mighty-act sequence, it is not to be pressed. For one thing, it assumes more knowledge of Egyptian totemic theology than the collectors and readers of the mighty-act sequence are likely to have had; for another, it draws implications about the second of the mighty acts that are nowhere suggested in Exodus or anywhere else in the OT.
\n4[8]. With this second of the mighty acts, Pharaoh for the first time is concerned, to such an extent that he asks Moses to pray to Yahweh for the removal of the frogs, adding emphatically that he will send the people of Israel forth for their religious observance when the frogs are taken away. The verb for \u201cpray\u201d in vv 4 and 5 is \u05e2\u05ea\u05e8, used in the OT only of the supplication of God. Pharaoh is thus represented as giving at least a tacit acknowledgment of the Yahweh he has earlier claimed not to know (\u05d9\u05d3\u05e2, 5:2).
\n5\u20137[9\u201311]. The reply of Moses to this request of Pharaoh is a bold display of confidence; not only will he so pray, he is so sure of the effectiveness of such a prayer that he gives Pharaoh the privilege of setting the time for it, and hence the time for the removal of the frogs. Why Pharaoh specified \u201ctomorrow\u201d (8:6) instead of \u201cright now\u201d is unclear. It cannot be that Pharaoh was \u201choping\u201d the frogs would leave by themselves within that period (Knight, 61\u201362) or that \u201ctomorrow\u201d was \u201cthe earliest possible time\u201d (Cassuto, 103). Perhaps the specification of such a time is intended to show Pharaoh\u2019s skepticism. Obviously so many frogs could not be removed by human means; otherwise Pharaoh would have ordered the removal himself. \u201cTomorrow\u201d would allow Moses ample time to prepare for such a special prayer, but no time to plan and carry out any trickery.
\nMoses, however, is not daunted. It will be just as Pharaoh has specified: the frogs will leave every place except the Nile, where they belong, and all to the end that Pharaoh may know by experience (cf. 5:2) the incomparability of Yahweh, God of Israel.
\n8\u201311[12\u201315] The report that Moses began to cry out (\u05e6\u05e2\u05e7) to Yahweh immediately after his departure, with Aaron, from Pharaoh\u2019s court is reflective more of the composite nature of this narrative than of any attempt by Moses to ignore Pharaoh\u2019s timetable.
\nThe answer to Moses\u2019 prayer was immediate, and it must have prompted in Pharaoh a wish that he had been more specific about the means and timing of the frogs\u2019 removal. Yahweh\u2019s solution was to put them to death, and their rotting carcasses, heaped into piles, sent a terrible stench throughout the land. One could argue that such a further pollution prompted Pharaoh to go back on his promise to send the people of Israel out of the land, but Pharaoh\u2019s change of mind is virtually predetermined. Yahweh has predicted it, because Yahweh is prompting it. Whether Pharaoh steels his mind as here, or whether Yahweh makes Pharaoh\u2019s mind obstinate, as in 9:12, Yahweh is using Pharaoh, who finally will not fully believe, as a teaching tool for Israel. We have been told as much in. 4:21, in a passage encapsulating both the wondrous signs and the mighty acts and stating their purpose.
\nExplanation
\nThis second of the mighty act accounts is thus a further statement of the point of the first account, the point shared by each of the first nine mighty-act accounts. Here, the motif of the Pharaoh\u2019s disbelief is intensified by his apparent capitulation under pressure, a capitulation quickly reversed when the pressure is removed. Just as Pharaoh could not control the population explosion of the Israelites in the Delta of Egypt, even though he wanted to, so here he cannot come to a cooperative belief, even should he want to. Yahweh\u2019s hand is in these matters from the start and throughout and to the end that Israel might believe\u2014not Pharaoh and not the nation of Egypt.
\nThe entire mighty-act sequence increasingly demonstrates this point, and the assumption that Pharaoh or his people are the real objects of Yahweh\u2019s powerful deeds in Egypt makes Yahweh out to be unthinkably and cruelly arbitrary and the whole mighty-act sequence to be both ineffective and irrelevant. The center of purpose of each of these narratives and of all of them together is Israel, the community of faith.
\nIn this narrative, the quasi-comical picture of frogs hopping everywhere, even onto the mighty king of Egypt himself, and Moses\u2019 mock-deference in allowing Pharaoh himself to set the time for the frogs\u2019 removal, present clearly the message that Yahweh is in charge in the very territory of the Pharaoh\u2019s own supremacy. Everything occurs as Moses predicts, except one thing: Pharaoh does not come, by the experience, to a convincing knowledge of the incomparability of Yahweh. But then, as 8:11 makes clear, that was an expectation of Moses, not of Yahweh.
\nThe Third Mighty Act (8:12\u201315 [16\u201319])
\nBibliography
\nCouroyer, B. \u201cLe \u2018doigt de Dieu\u2019 \u2019 (Exode, VIII, 15).\u201d RB 63 (1956) 481\u201395. Greenberg, M. \u201cThe Redaction of the Plague Narrative in Exodus.\u201d Near Eastern Studies in Honor of W. F. Albright. Ed. H. Goedicke. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971. 243\u201352. Hort, G. \u201cThe Plagues of Egypt.\u201d ZAW 69 (1957) 84\u2013103; 70 (1958) 48\u201359. Loewenstamm, S. E. \u201cThe Number of Plagues in Psalm 105.\u201d Bib 52 (1971) 34\u201338. \u2014\u2014\u2014 \u05de\u05e1\u05d5\u05e8\u05ea \u05d9\u05e6\u05d9\u05d0\u05ea \u05de\u05e6\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u05d1\u05d4\u05e9\u05ea\u05dc\u05e9\u05dc\u05d5\u05ea\u05d4. Jerusalem: at the Magnes Press, 1965.
\nTranslation
\n12[16] Next, Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cSay to Aaron, \u2018Thrust out your staff and strike the loose soil of the earth, and it will turn into a swarm of gnats blanketing the whole of Egypt.\u2019 \u201d 13[17] They did just as Yahweh ordered: Aaron thrust out his hand with his staff and struck the loose soil of the earth, and instantly it turned into the swarm of gnats, on man and on animal alike. All the loose soil of the earth turned into a swarm of gnats blanketing the whole of Egypt.
\n14[18] The learned men of Egypt then attempted by their arcane arts to produce the swarm of gnats, but they were not able to do it. Even so, the swarm of gnats was on man and on animal alike. 15[19] Then the learned men said to Pharaoh, \u201cThis is an act of a god.\u201d But Pharaoh\u2019s mind remained obstinate, and he would pay no attention to them, just as Yahweh had predicted.
\nNotes
\n12[16].a. SamPent has \u05d9\u05d3\u05da \u05d1\u05de\u05d8\u05da \u201cyour hand with your staff.\u201d
\n12[16].b. Lit., \u201cand it will be,\u201d \u05d5\u05b0\u05d4\u05b8\u05d9\u05b8\u05d4. SamPent has \u05d5\u05d9\u05d4\u05d9, special waw with impf. of \u05d4\u05d9\u05d4.
\n12[16].c. LXX adds \u1f14\u03bd \u03c4\u03b5 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03ce\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f10\u03bd \u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2 \u03c4\u03b5\u03c4\u03c1\u03ac\u03c0\u03bf\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd \u201cupon man and upon animal alike,\u201d as in vv 13, 14.
\n12[16].d. Lit., \u201cin all of the land of Egypt.\u201d
\n13[17].a. This phrase, obviously referring to both Moses and Aaron, is lacking in LXX.
\n13[17].b. Special waw.
\n14[18].a. The reference is clearly the same as in 7:11 and 22; \u201cof Egypt\u201d is thus added above for clarity.
\n14[18].b. \u05d5\u05d9\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5\u05be\u05db\u05df, lit, \u201cthen they did the same.\u201d
\n14[18].c. \u05dc\u05d4\u05d5\u05e6\u05d9\u05d0 \u201cto cause to go forth.\u201d
\n15[19].a. Lit., \u201cthe finger (\u05d0\u05e6\u05d1\u05e2) of a god.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThis brief, compact account of the third of the mighty acts, unlike the two accounts preceding it, is not a composite. Along with the account of the sixth of the mighty acts, this account is usually assigned wholly to the Priestly source (e.g., Beer, 51, and 53; Fohrer, \u00dcberlieferung, 70\u201371 [N.B. an error, IV for VI on p. 71]; Hyatt, 109\u201311 and 115\u201316), though Greenberg (Near Eastern Studies, 245\u201352) prefers a \u201ctradition-complex\u201d labeled \u201cB,\u201d which viewed the \u201cplagues\u201d as \u201cdemonstrations of God\u2019s power,\u201d and Loewenstamm sets forth a theory of an array of traditions amalgamated under the aegis of three motifs (\u05de\u05e1\u05d5\u05e8\u05ea, ii\u2013v, 25\u201376). Many commentators consider this third mighty-act account simply a variant of the fourth mighty-act account that follows it (e.g., Rylaarsdam, IB 1:900; Hyatt, 110\u201311), and Noth (76\u201379) actually treats the two accounts together, as a single mighty act, a procedure that Loewenstamm (Bib 52 [1971] 34\u201338) supports on the basis of the text of Ps 105:31.
\nOne point of importance for the resolution of this problem is the difference between the terms \u05db\u05b4\u05bc\u05e0\u05b8\u05bc\u05dd (\u05db\u05b4\u05bc\u05e0\u05b4\u05bc\u05dd, \u05db\u05b4\u05bc\u05e0\u05b4\u05bc\u05d9\u05dd BDB, 487) and \u05e2\u05b8\u05e8\u05b9\u05d1. \u05db\u05e0\u05dd is variously rendered \u201cgnats, swarm of gnats, lice, mosquitoes, maggots.\u201d The harvester gnat (Chironomidae), the Anopheles mosquito, and the sandfly (Psychodidae) have all been proposed as possibilities (Frerichs, \u201cGnat,\u201d IDB 2:403). \u05e2\u05b8\u05e8\u05b9\u05d1 appears to be a more general term, derived from \u05e2\u05e8\u05d1 \u201cmix\u201d and referring to a \u201cmixture\u201d or \u201cswarm\u201d of flying insects; thus \u05e2\u05b8\u05e8\u05b9\u05d1 is generally translated \u201cflies.\u201d jb translates \u05e2\u05b8\u05e8\u05b9\u05d1 by \u201cgadflies,\u201d and some commentators refer to stinging flies (Honeycutt, BBC 1:356; Driver, 66\u201367), the biting fly Stomoxys calcitrans (Hort, ZAW 69 [1957] 99, 101\u20133), and even the devouring scarab beetle (Knight, 63\u201364). The \u05e2\u05b8\u05e8\u05b9\u05d1 is not said in the account of the fourth mighty act to bite or sting, however; Exod 8:20[24] says that the land was \u201cdevastated\u201d or \u201cruined\u201d (\u05e9\u05c1\u05d7\u05ea) by it, a term used in Ps 78:45 of the effect upon the Egyptians of the frogs, while the \u05e2\u05b8\u05e8\u05b9\u05d1 is said, in that same verse, to have \u201ceaten\u201d (\u05d0\u05db\u05dc) them. The use of both terms in Ps 105:31 is not much help, since \u05e2\u05b8\u05e8\u05b9\u05d1 could obviously include \u05db\u05e0\u05dd as flying insects, and the parallelism is not necessarily synonymous.
\nA second point of importance, that both the third and the fourth mighty-act accounts appear to be each from a single source, both describing an act of Yahweh involving insects, is also inconclusive. The more detailed account of 8:16\u201328 is the one that uses the more general term \u05e2\u05b8\u05e8\u05b9\u05d1, while the compact account at hand uses the specific term \u05db\u05e0\u05dd. Though there are additional noncomposite mighty-act accounts (9:1\u20137; 9:8\u201312, sixth and seventh of the mighty acts), there are not two additional accounts so similar in theme.
\nIn sum, one has to admit that there is not in these accounts themselves, or in any other passage in the OT sufficient evidence for sustaining either argument, that Exod 8:12\u201315 and 8:16\u201328 are two accounts of the same mighty act or separate accounts of two successive (or at least different) mighty acts.
\nWe are thus left with the overall sequence of the ancient proof-of-Presence compilation, a sequence in which, everywhere else, parallel accounts of the same mighty act have been combined, and a sequence which not only drew upon a number of traditions but apparently left some unmentioned (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 7:14\u201325 and 7:26\u20138:11). In that compilation, which is itself far the most ancient commentary on the mighty-act sequence we have, the \u05db\u05e0\u05dd \u201cgnats\u201d mighty act and the \u05e2\u05e8\u05d1 \u201cswarm of insects\u201d mighty act appear to be separate, with the second of them a more devastating threat than the first.
\nThe section at hand probably describes therefore a separate mighty act, one reported entirely in the characteristic style of the Priestly circle, a discomfiting divine act more akin to the unpleasant multiplication of the frogs than to the devastation of the swarming of a horrible mixture of flying insects. Whatever may be the irrecoverable foundation sequence of the proof-of-Presence acts, the sequence of the text at hand is plain, and in the absence of conclusive evidence, it is best treated as it stands\u2014or, in this instance, appears to stand.
\nComment
\n12\u201313[16\u201317] Yahweh\u2019s instruction through Moses to Aaron that he is to strike the \u05e2\u05e4\u05e8, the loose topsoil or surface-dirt of the land of Egypt, is probably to be understood as a symbol of both the endless number of the gnats and their universal extent. As the water of Egypt was changed to blood, so the loose dirt, not just \u201cdust,\u201d is now to be changed to a swarm of gnats that will cover the whole of Egypt just as the loose soil of the earth does. No locale where there is loose soil is to escape (another point of contrast with the following account, involving the \u05e2\u05e8\u05d1 \u201cswarm of insects\u201d).
\nWithout a report of any confrontation with Pharaoh, the narrative moves instead directly to the obedience first of Moses, then of Aaron, and to the immediate result, the swarming upon humans and animals alike of gnats.
\n14\u201315[18\u201319] As in the first two instances of mighty action, the learned men of Egypt attempt to duplicate the marvel, but this time, they fail to do so. Not only can they not reverse the miracle, they cannot now even copy it, as heretofore they have done. Thus the Egyptian wonderworkers declare to Pharaoh that they are up against a god (Elohim, 8:15). This assertion should not be taken as an indication that the previous mighty acts were regarded by these learned men as mere tricks or sleight-of-hand. From the first, the learned men are presented as worthy opponents (see Comment on 7:22\u201323). They would no doubt have been regarded, just as were Moses and Aaron, as representatives or extensions of the power of deity. But with this third of the mighty acts, they confess themselves, and thus the power they represent, as outdistanced.
\nThe statement of the learned men of Egypt, \u05d0\u05e6\u05d1\u05e2 \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd \u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 literally, \u201cElohim\u2019s finger, this!\u201d has been taken by Couroyer (RB 63 [1956] 483) as unique in its reference to the \u201cfinger\u201d as opposed to the more usual reference to the \u201chand\u201d of God. Couroyer distinguishes between texts that speak of the \u201cfingers\u201d of God (as Ps 8:3) and those that speak of the \u201cfinger\u201d of God (as here, and in Deut 9:10), and he proposes (487) that the phrase, spoken by the Egyptian wizards, may be of Egyptian origin. He then concludes (487\u201390), from references in Egyptian texts, that the \u201cfinger of Elohim\u201d refers to Aaron\u2019s staff, by which the loose soil is turned by a blow into the swarm of gnats. \u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u201cthis\u201d comes thus to refer not to the mighty act of Yahweh, but to the staff that brings on that act. And Elohim, Couroyer concludes (491), may refer not to Yahweh, or to any specific deity, but simply to divinity in general: \u201cgod,\u201d not \u201cGod.\u201d
\nCouroyer\u2019s theory is interesting, but his support for it is not conclusive. The idea that the phrase \u201cfinger of god (God)\u201d refers literally to the staff of Aaron which the learned men of Egypt have watched in increasing awe (491\u201392) is only arbitrarily supported. But Couroyer may be correct in his suggestion that the Egyptian wizards are declaring to Pharaoh the presence in this miracle of divine power without confessing a belief in Yahweh, the God Moses and Aaron represent. The statement of the learned men is perhaps not the surrender it has often been made out to be, but instead a declaration to Pharaoh that God or a god, perhaps even one of Egypt\u2019s gods, is responsible for what has taken place.
\nThis information, however, has no effect on Pharaoh. His mind remains obstinate, and he pays no attention to his learned men now, any more than he has earlier to Moses and Aaron (here not in his presence, as before).
\nExplanation
\nThe new element introduced in the account of the third of the mighty acts is the realization by Pharaoh\u2019s learned men that God or a god is in the midst of what is happening in Egypt. In the first two mighty act accounts, Moses and Aaron represented Yahweh, as the learned men represented their gods. But with the terrifying swarm of gnats, which they cannot remove or control or even copy, these learned men declare for the first time, \u201cThis is an act of a god.\u201d
\nThis difference is a difference of nearness. For the first time, the Egyptians, in the person of those most likely to be the first to know such a thing, move a step toward the recognition of the one fact the entire mighty-act sequence is designed to prove: that Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, is himself powerfully present right in their midst, precisely where their own gods manifest their greatest strength. And though it is probable that the Egyptian learned men are to be understood at best as making a declaration that is far short of a surrender, they have nevertheless been shaken, and their arrogant defense for the first time shows a crack.
\nPerhaps the most that can be said of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, even at the end of the proof-of-Presence sequence and following its full cumulative effect is that they admit the existence of Yahweh and the reality of his powerful Presence. They do not come, even according to the OT\u2019s accounting, to a belief in him that changes anything more than their policy toward the Israelites, and even on that subject they remain ambiguous and mercurial right to the very end.
\nThere is thus a kind of theological realism in the arrangement of the proof-of-Presence sequence, a realism reflected both in the primary purpose of the mighty acts, the proof of Yahweh\u2019s Presence to the sons of Israel, and also in the clear suggestion that the Egyptians, though shaken, never really come to faith in Yahweh as their God, only to the admission of his powerful Presence as Israel\u2019s God. The first hint of this realism is the manner in which the learned men of Egypt are represented in the first two of the mighty-act accounts. They are not mere magicians, the clever tricksters they have sometimes been represented to be, but worthy opponents who are able to match the miracles wrought by Yahweh through Moses and Aaron. There is no attempt in Exodus to discredit these learned men, for discrediting them means discrediting Moses and Aaron and hence Yahweh. On the contrary, they are taken very seriously, and the move is to outdo them, not to undo them.
\nThe second manifestation of this theological realism is the admission by the learned men, when they are first outdone here in the third of the mighty acts, that \u201cthis is an act of a god!\u201d Even if their reference is to their own deity, or to one of their own deities, the declaration is no less significant, for they are acknowledging themselves outdistanced by a divine power manifested through two men their Pharaoh has refused to take seriously. The context of their assertion makes plain that its reference is not to the miracle of the gnat-swarm (in which case the assertion should have come after 8:13[17]) but to their inability to copy that miracle, for the assertion (8:15[19]) follows the report of their failure (8:14[18]).
\nThere are further reflections of this theological realism in the proof-of-Presence sequence, and these will be noted as they occur; but perhaps the most telling evidence of it to this point is the refusal of the narrator of Exod 8:12\u201315[16\u201319] to give in to the temptation to have the learned men of Egypt say, \u201cThis is an act of Yahweh!\u201d What they do say is far more likely what they would have said: \u201cThis is an act of a god!\u201d
\nThe Fourth Mighty Act (8:16\u201328 [20\u201332])
\nBibliography
\nAlbright, W. F. \u201cNew Light on Early Recensions of the Hebrew Bible.\u201d BASOR 140 (1955) 27\u201335. Davies, G.I. The Hebrew Text of Exodus VIII 19\u2014An Emendation.\u201d VT 24 (1974) 489\u201392. Gardiner, A. H. \u201cThe Geography of the Exodus: An Answer to Professor Naville and Others.\u201d JEA 10 (1924) 87\u201396.\u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cThe Supposed Egyptian Equivalent of the name of Goshen.\u201d JEA 5 (1918) 218\u201323. Ginzberg, L. Legends of the Jews. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961. Greenberg, M. \u201cThe Thematic Unity of Exodus III\u2013XI.\u201d Fourth World Congress of Jewish Studies: Papers, Vol. 1. Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1967. 151\u201354. Labuschagne, C. J. \u201cThe Emphasizing Particle Gam and Its Connections.\u201d Studia Biblica et Semitica. Wageningen: H. Veenman and Sons, 1966. 193\u2013203. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cThe Particles \u05d4\u05b5\u05df and \u05d4\u05b4\u05e0\u05b5\u05bc\u05d4.\u201d OTS 18 (1973) 1\u201314. MacIntosh, A. A. \u201cExodus VIII 19, District Redemption and the Hebrew Roots \u05e4\u05d3\u05d4 and \u05e4\u05d3\u05d3.\u201d VT 21 (1971) 548\u201355. McCarthy, D.J. \u201cMoses\u2019 Dealings with Pharaoh: Ex. 7,8\u201310,27.\u201d CBQ 27 (1965) 336\u201347. Naville, E. \u201cThe Geography of the Exodus.\u201d JEA 10 (1924) 18\u201339. N\u00f6tscher, F. \u201cZum Emphatischen Lamed.\u201d VT 3 (1953) 372\u201380. Philo. De Vita Mosis in Philo, VI. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935. 273\u2013595.
\nTranslation
\n16[20] Next, Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cGet up early in the morning, and take a position where you cannot miss Pharaoh, just as he is going out toward the water; then say to him, \u2018Thus says Yahweh, \u201cSend out my people, in order that they may worship me. 17[21] If you do not send out my people, look out: I will send forth against you and against the members of your court and against your people and against your houses a mixed swarm of flying insects. The Egyptians\u2019 houses will be full of these flying insects, and even the very ground will be covered with them. 18[22] Yet on that day I will separate the land of Goshen, where my people remain. There will not be there any swarm of insects, so that you may know by experience that I am Yahweh, right in the heart of the land. 19[23] I will set a protecting shield between my people and your people. Tomorrow this sign will arrive.\u201d \u2019 \u201d
\n20[24] So Yahweh did exactly that. A thick swarm of flying insects came into Pharaoh\u2019s palace, into the mansions of the members of his court, and into the whole land of Egypt. The land was devastated by the presence of this swarm.
\n21[25] Once again concerned, Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron, and said, \u201cGo along and offer sacrifices to your god in this land.\u201d 22[26] But Moses replied, \u201cIt would not be proper to do that, because we will offer sacrifices to Yahweh our God that the Egyptians will find objectionable; if we offer such sacrifices before the very eyes of the Egyptians, won\u2019t they stone us to death? 23[27] We must rather go along three days\u2019 journey into the wilderness and there offer sacrifice to Yahweh our God, just as he is telling us.\u201d
\n24[28] Then Pharaoh responded, \u201cI will send you out, and you will offer sacrifices to Yahweh your god in the wilderness; just don\u2019t go any great distance away. Pray in my behalf.\u201d
\n25[29] Moses replied, \u201cI am going straight out from your presence to pray to Yahweh, and the swarm of flying insects will leave Pharaoh, and the members of his court, and his people, tomorrow. Just let Pharaoh not multiply deceit by not sending out the people to offer sacrifices to Yahweh.\u201d
\n26[30] So Moses went forth from Pharaoh\u2019s presence and prayed to Yahweh. 27[31] And Yahweh did what Moses prayed he would do, and took the swarm of flying insects from Pharaoh, the members of his court, and his people.
\n28[32] Not one insect was left. Once again, however, Pharaoh steeled his mind, this time as well, and he would not send out the people.
\nNotes
\n16[20].a. See n. 7:15.b.
\n16[20].b. Lit., \u201cbefore Pharaoh\u2019s face,\u201d or \u201cright in front of Pharaoh.\u201d
\n16[20].c. See n. 7:15.a.
\n16[20].d. LXX adds \u03b5\u03bd \u03c4\u1fc7 \u1f10\u03c1\u03ae\u03bc\u1ff3 \u201cin the wilderness,\u201d in accord with MT at 7:16. Cf. also 5:1 and 8:24.
\n17[21].a. Lit., \u201clook at me sending forth.\u201d
\n17[21].b. On \u05e2\u05e8\u05d1 \u201cswarm of insects,\u201d see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 8:12\u201315[16\u201319].
\n17[21].c. Lit., \u201cThe Egyptians\u2019 houses will be full \u2026 and also the ground that they are upon.\u201d Cf. Labuschagne, Studia, 199\u2013203.
\n19[23].a. Reading \u05e4\u05e8\u05d3\u05ea from \u05e4\u05e8\u05d3 \u201cdivide, separate,\u201d instead of MT\u2019s \u05e4\u05d3\u05ea from \u05e4\u05d3\u05d4 \u201cransom, redeem, save.\u201d Though \u05e4\u05e8\u05d3\u05d4 \u201cseparation, shield\u201d does not occur in the Hebrew of the OT, the verb from which it may be derived does, more than 25 times. \u05e4\u05b0\u05bc\u05d3\u05d5\u05bc\u05ea \u201cransom\u201d occurs only 4 times, including this occurrence, and can be made to fit the context here only by a complete and arbitrary change of its clear meaning. The emendation to \u05e4\u05e8\u05d3\u05ea is a suggestion of Davies (VT 24 [1974] 491\u201392), who explains \u05e4\u05d3\u05d4 as a corruption by haplogr (the similarity, in this instance, of \u05e8 and \u05d3). For a review of the traditional position and an alternative suggestion, see MacIntosh, VT 21 (1971) 548\u201355. By its \u201cFactor 8, misunderstanding of linguistic data,\u201d the Preliminary and Interim Report (99\u2013100) of the United Bible Societies stays with the \u05e4\u05d3\u05d4 of MT, with the explanation that \u201cthis deliverance will distinguish my people from your people\u201d\u2014a circumlocution the text and the context will not sustain. LXX reads \u03b4\u03b9\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03bb\u1f74\u03bd \u201cdistinction\u201d; Vg divisionem \u201cdivision.\u201d
\n19[23].b. Lit., \u201cthis sign will be.\u201d To this, LXX adds \u1f10\u03c0\u1f76 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03b3\u1fc6\u03c2 \u201cupon the land.\u201d
\n20[24).a. Special waw + \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d4 + \u05db\u05df \u201cSo Yahweh did yes, thus.\u201d
\n20[24].b. \u05db\u05d1\u05d3 \u201cheavy,\u201d to which SamPent adds \u05de\u05d0\u05d3 \u201cvery, exceedingly.\u201d
\n20[24].c. Syr. and Tg. Onq have \u201cso he (Yahweh) brought.\u201d
\n21[25].a. Special waw in this context.
\n22[26].a. The negative is lacking in LXX, Syr., Vg, thus turning the verse into an assertion ending with \u201cthey will stone us to death.\u201d Labuschagne (Studia, 10\u201311) argues against deletion of the negative on the basis of the presence of \u05d4\u05df \u201cbehold\u201d as a conj followed by an interrogative clause. Notscher (VT 3 [1953] 375) argues that \u05dc\u05d0 \u201cnot\u201d here is an emphatic usage of \u05dc\u05b0 \u201cto\u201d giving \u201can affirmative sense\u201d to the statement: \u201cDie \u00c4gypter werden uns gewiss steinigen.\u201d
\n23[27].a. Or \u201cas he tells us, is saying to us\u201d; the instruction has been given already, repeatedly. There is thus no reason to translate the impf. \u05d9\u05d0\u05b9\u05de\u05b7\u05e8 \u201che says\u201d as a fut tense verb.
\n24[28].a. The \u201cI\u201d is made emphatic by the use of the independent personal pronoun \u05d0\u05e0\u05db\u05d9 plus the 1st pers verb form.
\n24[28].b. Hiph inf constr plus hiph impf. of \u05e8\u05d7\u05e7 \u201cmake distance, go from.\u201d
\n24[28].c. LXX adds \u03bf\u1f56\u03bd \u201ctherefore, please.\u201d
\n24[28].d. LXX adds \u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03ba\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd \u201cto Yahweh\u201d as in v 4 and 9:28.
\n25[29].a. Lit., \u201cLook, I am going out from with you.\u201d
\n25[29].b. LXX has \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03bd \u201cGod\u201d instead of \u201cYahweh.\u201d
\n25[29].c. LXX has \u1f00\u03c0\u1f78 \u03c3\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cfrom you\u201d instead of \u201cfrom Pharaoh,\u201d and \u03c3\u03bf\u03c5 \u201cyour\u201d instead of \u201chis\u201d with \u201ccourt\u201d and \u201cpeople.\u201d
\n26[30].a. See n. 25.b.
\n27[31].a. Lit., \u201cas the word of Moses.\u201d
\n28[32].a. Special waw in this context, followed by \u05d2\u05dd \u201calso.\u201d Cf. Labuschagne, Studia, 202\u20133.
\n28[32].b. Hiph of \u05db\u05d1\u05d3 \u201ccause to be heavy, dull insensitive.\u201d Cf. above, n. 11.c..
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe account of the fourth mighty act is, like the account preceding it, an apparent unity, and one generally attributed to the Yahwist (so, e.g., McNeile, 51\u201352, Hyatt, 111\u201315). Noth (76\u201379) thinks of it as a J version of the \u201cplague\u201d described by P in vv 12\u201315[16\u201319], the two narratives side by side making up a composite consisting of two accounts of the same mighty act. This argument cannot, however, be sustained, and for the reasons set forth above (Form\/Structure\/Setting on 8:12\u201315) it is best to consider the two accounts separate narratives of two mighty acts, at the very least by the time the proof-of-Presence sequence was brought together in its present order.
\nThe similarity of the sequence of this mighty-act account to that of the first (7:14\u201325) and the seventh (9:13\u201335) mighty-act accounts, along with the like parallels in the other accounts, has led to a series of theories about a cyclical arrangement or a grouping of accounts based on certain recurring features (see, e.g., Greenberg, Fourth World Congress, 153\u201354, and much more fully, Understanding, 169\u201382; Cassuto, 92\u201393; McCarthy, CBQ 27 [1965] 341\u201344). As ingenious as these theories are, however, the very fact that they all begin with the same original and all end with a different pattern suggests either that they are making too much of inevitable similarities or that they are approaching these similarities from the wrong perspective.
\nThere may be some truth in both of these suggestions. As Childs quite correctly says (150), \u201c\u2026 it is difficult to determine how much sense for symmetry was intended by the final redactor and how much is accidental,\u201d and the wide variation in the patterns suggested tends to support the alternative of accident as opposed to the alternative of intention. A still more important consideration may be that of perspective: if the points of similarity are viewed not from the outside, as clues to formal and parallel patterns, but from the inside, as indicative of an inventory of what may be called mighty-act rhetoric, they may perhaps be seen more as evidence of the long accumulation of mighty-act tradition than as the formal characteristics of cyclical or counterpointed arrangement.
\nThe one common denominator of all the mighty-act narratives is their purpose in proving Yahweh\u2019s Presence, in establishing both the validity of the claim of \u201cIs-ness\u201d made by the tetragrammaton and also the authority of the command to both Pharaoh and Israel. But expressive of that purpose, and so an inevitable outgrowth of that common denominator, is the special language of the mighty-act narratives, a language of both concept and deed, of both context and symbol. So the hardening of Pharaoh\u2019s mind, the bringing and the ending of the specific mighty acts, the necessary occasions and places of confrontation with Pharaoh, the authorizing staff, all gave rise to a pointed and loaded mighty-act rhetoric. This rhetoric, further, was a common stock from which all the narrators drew, and would immediately have been understood by all who were in any meaningful way party to the tradition. It necessarily dictates much of the form of the report of the mighty acts in the proof-of-Presence sequence, and it may suggest, when viewed from the outside, patterns of arrangement not actually present.
\nThus the form of this fourth mighty-act account, itself a unity, can be parallel to that of the first account, clearly a composite. The parallels are created by a common purpose and the language expressive of that one purpose. The additional elements in this account, the exclusion of the land of Goshen (v 18[22]) and the flexibility of Pharaoh (vv 21 and 24[25, 28]), may be seen therefore as logical and appropriate additions to the traditions, not as variations in established patterns. And the form of this account, as of the other mighty act narratives, emerges more from the mighty-act rhetoric and the confession of faith that gave rise to it than from any overarching and recurring formula.
\nComment
\nThe command of Yahweh in Exod 7:15 that Moses should intercept Pharaoh \u201cin the morning, just when he is going out toward the water,\u201d a command that specifies \u201cthe bank of the Nile\u201d as the place of confrontation, bears a logical connection with the first of the mighty acts, which has as its substance the waters of Egypt, to begin with, apparently, the water of the Nile.
\n16\u201320[20\u201324] No substance for the swarm of flying insects of the fourth mighty act is specified, and the command of v 16 that Moses \u201cget up early\u201d (hiphil of \u05e9\u05c1\u05db\u05dd), a new element in the instruction, and that he intercept Pharaoh as he goes \u201ctoward the water,\u201d is probably best taken as a rhetorical provision of a setting, perhaps a reflection of the first mighty-act account, and not as a reference to some \u201cstanding custom\u201d (Driver, 59). The instruction to \u201cget up early\u201d is repeated verbatim in 9:13, the opening sentence of the seventh mighty-act account, but there is no reference there to any water, or to any movement of Pharaoh. Yet Moses is in that instance, as in these other two, to \u201ctake a position\u201d in Pharaoh\u2019s presence. The similarity in the three separate instructions is rhetorical, and probably an evidence that they come from the same source. The differences in them are also important, for they reflect an adaptation of a single setting, necessary in the first instance, to two additional instances in which a specific setting within Egypt is unnecessary.
\nThe \u05e2\u05e8\u05d1 \u201cmixed swarm of flying insects\u201d (LXX \u03ba\u03c5\u03bd\u03cc\u03bc\u03c5\u03b9\u03b1\u03bd \u201cdog-fly, i.e., shameless fly\u201d (Liddell-Scott, Greek-English Lexicon [Oxford: Clarendon, 1968] 1010), dramatically described by Philo (De Vita Mosis I, xxiii, 130\u201332) and transformed in Haggadic legend into \u201ca mixed horde of wild animals, lions, bears, wolves, and panthers, and \u2026 many birds of prey\u201d (Ginzberg, Legends, 335\u201336) is best taken as a general term, referring to a terrifying collection of insects. They are said in Ps 78:45, but not here, to have \u201ceaten\u201d the Egyptians. They are clearly regarded as a miracle of Yahweh, both by the suddenness of their arrival and by their endless number, and also by the equal suddenness and completeness of their departure (vv 26\u201327[30\u201331]). So similarly, their absence from the land of Goshen, where Yahweh\u2019s people are, is regarded as miraculous.
\nGoshen has generally been connected with the eastern half of the Delta region of Egypt, in the main because of references in Gen 46:28\u201329, 33\u201334; and 47:1\u20136, 11. Joseph is said to have given his father Israel and his brothers \u201cland of their own in the land of Egypt, in the best (\u05de\u05d9\u05d8\u05d1) of the land, in the land of Rameses (\u05e8\u05e2\u05de\u05e1\u05e1, in Genesis an anachronism), just as Pharaoh had ordered\u201d (Gen 47:11), and the context makes clear that this is at least inclusive of Goshen. A variety of attempts to locate Goshen more specifically, either in terms of Egyptian texts (Naville, JEA 10 [1924] 19\u201332; Gardiner, JEA 5 [1918] 218\u201323, and JEA 10 [1924] 94\u201395) or the LXX references to \u201cGesem of Arabia\u201d in Gen 45:10 and 46:34 (Albright, BASOR 140 [1955] 31), have proven inconclusive (cf. Lambdin, \u201cGoshen,\u201d IDB 2:442).
\nThe exclusion of Goshen from the visit of the swarm of flying insects, whatever relief it may have meant for the sons of Israel there, is said specifically to be to the end that Pharaoh might come by experience to know that Yahweh is a reality and \u201cright in the heart of the land,\u201d that is, in Egypt itself. The admission by Pharaoh that the \u201cHebrews\u201d might have their own god in their own land is one thing\u2014an admission that he exists even in Egypt\u2019s land is something else. The rendering of some translators (e.g., rsv; Cassuto, 108), \u201cin the midst of the earth,\u201d obscures this point and is misleading. Once again, it is not Pharaoh\u2019s \u201cconversion\u201d that is in view, but his acknowledgement that Yahweh is, and to that end, Yahweh interposes a barrier, a protecting shield, between his people and the insect-covered Egyptians.
\n21\u201324[25\u201328] Once more, as when the frogs filled the land, Pharaoh becomes concerned and offers an opportunity for sacrifices \u201cin this land.\u201d The opportunity offered in 8:4 is less specific, though the piel \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7 at least implies a sacrifice beyond the land. To this offer, however, Moses raises a question of discretion. The Egyptians, he says, will find the sacrifices offered to Yahweh \u05ea\u05d5\u05e2\u05d1\u05ea \u201cobjectionable.\u201d
\nExactly the same term is used, in Gen 43:32, of the Egyptians\u2019 attitude toward dining with Hebrews, and in Gen 46:34, of the Egyptians\u2019 opinion of the Hebrews\u2019 vocation as shepherds. What in particular may be objectionable about the Hebrews\u2019 sacrifices is not said. Given the references in Genesis and the reflections in Exodus of the virulence of Egyptian oppression, we might easily conclude a general Egyptian antipathy toward all things Israelite.
\nPharaoh indeed is apparently convinced by the argument of Moses that Hebrew sacrifices right in front of the Egyptians could well lead to violence, and he accepts the condition that Moses and his people should do what Yahweh is saying to them, by indicating without demurrer, and emphatically, that he will himself send them forth from the land to their religious duty to Yahweh their god. To this assertion, Pharaoh adds two conditions, or at least a condition and a request: they are not to go a great distance, and Moses must pray on his behalf, apparently for the removal of the thick swarm of insects.
\n25\u201328[29\u201332] The second of these conditions Moses agrees to meet, without reference to the first. Then he states a condition of his own: the Pharaoh is not this time to go back on his word. Moses is as good as his word, and Yahweh answers Moses\u2019 prayer fully, removing even the last insect. But once again, Pharaoh breaks his word, steels his mind, and refuses to send Israel forth. By now we are not surprised. Though we are not here reminded of Yahweh\u2019s prediction of this intransigence, as at the end of the second (8:11) and third (8:15) mighty-act accounts, we are increasingly aware of its inevitability, throughout the proof-of-Presence sequence.
\nExplanation
\nOnce more, then, the recurring point of the mighty-act narratives is made. Yahweh is what his name claims him to be, and he is that in Egypt, in Pharaoh\u2019s own territory, in the houses of his cabinet and his people, and under the very noses of Pharaoh\u2019s own gods.
\nWhat is new in this fourth of the mighty acts, apart from the nature of the miracle itself, is the separation of the land of Goshen from the effects of miracle (there has been no mention of Goshen\u2019s fate in the earlier accounts), the negotiations between Pharaoh and Moses, with each of them setting conditions, and the allusion to the antipathy of the Egyptians to Israelite worhsip (or to Israelite ways, and to Israelites in general).
\nBut the point remains the same. Yahweh is in Egypt. Pharaoh will see that Yahweh is, and is in Egypt, both by what he does and also by where he does it. But so also will Israel, the real pupils, see the point. For they, Yahweh\u2019s own people, are the ones who are spared the devastation of the thick swarm of flying insects. And in the end, though Pharaoh sees enough to negotiate, he does not see enough to believe. Nor does he, ever, as the further mighty acts reveal.
\nThe Fifth Mighty Act (9:1\u20137)
\nBibliography
\nHort, G. \u201cThe Plagues of Egypt.\u201d ZAW 69 (1957) 84\u2013103. Loewenstamm, S. E. \u05de\u05e1\u05d5\u05e8\u05ea \u05d9\u05e6\u05d9\u05d0\u05ea \u05de\u05e6\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u05d1\u05d4\u05e9\u05ea\u05dc\u05e9\u05dc\u05d5\u05ea\u05d4. Jerusalem: at the Magnes Press, 1965. Ogden, G. S. \u201cNotes on the Use of \u05d4\u05d5\u05d9\u05d4 in Exodus IX 3.\u201d VT 17 (1967) 483\u201384.
\nTranslation
\n1 Next, Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cGo to Pharaoh and speak to him: \u2018Thus says Yahweh, God of the Hebrews, \u201cSend out my people in order that they may worship me. 2 For should you refuse to do so, and once again tighten your grip on them, 3 look out\u2014the hand of Yahweh will be against your livestock in the pasture, against the horses, against the he-asses, against the camels, against the herd and against the flock: a decimating epidemic. 4 Yet Yahweh will separate the livestock of Israel from the livestock of the Egyptians, and no animal belonging to the sons of Israel will die.\u201d \u2019 \u201d
\n5 Then Yahweh set a specific time, saying, \u201cTomorrow Yahweh will do this deedin the land.\u201d 6 And sure enough, Yahweh did this deed, beginning the next day. In consequence, all the Egyptians\u2019 livestock died; but of the livestock of the sons of Israel, not a single animal died. 7 Yet when Pharaoh sent out and saw that not even a single animal from the livestock of Israel had died Pharaoh\u2019s mind remained heavy and dull, and he did not send out the people.
\nNotes
\n2.a. Lit., \u201cFor if you refuse to send out.\u201d
\n3.a. Masora parva notes that the qal ptcp of \u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cbe\u201d occurs only here in the OT, and SamPent has the qal pf form, \u05d4\u05b8\u05d9\u05b8\u05d4 Ogden (VT 17 [1967] 484) has proposed that the usage of the participle here is reflective of a pattern followed uniformly in the first, second, fifth, seventh, and eighth mighty-act accounts.
\n3.b. \u05de\u05e7\u05e0\u05d4 \u201clivestock\u201d is a collective term, referring generally to domesticated grazing animals, as the list of v 3 shows.
\n3.c. \u05d1\u05e7\u05e8 and \u05e6\u05d0\u05df are also general terms, the first referring to herd-animals such as cows and horses, the second referring to flock-animals such as sheep and goats.
\n3.d. Lit., \u201ca very heavy (or severe) epidemic.\u201d
\n4.a. LXX continues in 1st pers here, and uses a somewhat different expression, \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03b4\u03bf\u03be\u03ac\u03c3\u03c9 \u1f10\u1f7c \u1f10\u03bd \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b9\u03c1\u1ff7 \u1f10\u03ba\u03b5\u03af\u03bd\u0345 \u201cAnd I will make an extraordinary (lit, a paradoxical) distinction in that time.\u2026\u201d
\n4.b. \u05d3\u05b8\u05bc\u05d1\u05b8\u05e8 \u201cthing.\u201d
\n5.a. The word here and in v 6 is also \u05d3\u05b8\u05bc\u05d1\u05b8\u05e8 \u201cthing\u201d; in an unpointed text, however, these consonants could be read \u05d3\u05b6\u05bc\u05d1\u05b6\u05e8 \u201cepidemic,\u201d a more specific vocalization.
\n6.a. Special waw in this context.
\n6.b. \u201cFrom the next day,\u201d thus giving an impression of the start of an epidemic lasting through some days.
\n6.c. \u201cOne, a single one.\u201d
\n7.a. The verb \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7 \u201csend out\u201d here, in apparent reference to servants or even soldiers of Pharaoh, presents a dramatic parallel with Yahweh\u2019s command (\u201cSend out my people,\u201d v 1), contrasting whom Pharaoh does and does not \u201csend out\u201d (\u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7 is used twice in v 7). LXX reads altogether differently, \u1f30\u03b4\u1f7c\u03bd \u03b4\u1f10 \u03c6\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03c9 \u201cPharaoh saw.\u201d
\n7.b. \u05d5\u05d4\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cand behold.\u201d
\n7.c. SamPent, LXX, and some Tg. MSS (see D\u00e9aut, Targum, 67, British Museum Add. 27031) add \u201cthe sons of\u201d here.
\n7.d. \u05db\u05d1\u05d3 \u201cheavy and dull,\u201d as in 7:14; qal pf there, qal impf. with special waw here; cf. n. 7:14.a.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSource-critics generally have assigned this fifth mighty-act account to the Yahwist (so, e.g., Beer, 52\u201353, \u201cJ2\u201d; Fohrer, \u00dcberlieferung, 70\u201373). The general features of J narration are present, and the section is clearly uniform in style. The account is more compact than any other all-J-mighty-act narrative, and some commentators use this fact and various supposed \u201cdiscrepancies\u201d as indications of important shifts in layer in the traditions underlying the mighty-act accounts. Noth (79), for example, thinks this account is \u201ca secondary addition\u201d to J, set forth in J\u2019s pattern.
\nThe difficulty with such proposals is that they must speculate a non-extant original form from which the extant narratives can be seen to deviate. The proposals themselves, as helpful as they sometimes are in illuminating specific details, reveal their own limitation by the wide divergency between them. To date they have not produced any agreed-upon original pattern, even in the most general terms. Nor are the motifs of Loewenstamm (\u05de\u05e1\u05d5\u05e8\u05ea, ii\u2013v, 25\u201379) or the cycles of Cassuto (92\u2013131) or the sets of Greenberg (Understanding, 169\u201392) any less contrived than the patterns based on source criticism. They too provide not a single schema, but as many schemata as there are theorists.
\nWhat we must keep in mind is not a series of carefully controlled variations of several themes and forms, but a series of somewhat haphazard variations on a single theme, all drawn to a common general form from at least several circles of tradition. The mighty-act accounts were a long while growing (and in some cases reducing) into the form in which we know them. They came to that form in the service not of the integrity of their source-traditions, but in the service of their single theme, the proof of Yahweh\u2019s active Presence.
\nThus this fifth of the mighty-act accounts, wholly from J, is closer in form and closer in literal phrasing to the second account in 7:26\u20138:11[8:1\u201315], a JP composite, than to the fourth account immediately preceding it (8:16\u201328 [20\u201332]), generally agreed also to have come solely from J. The common denominator, once again, is the purpose of the accounts and the rhetoric giving exposition to that purpose.
\nThe major peculiarity of the form in which this fifth mighty-act account is presented is the shift from the first to the third person in Yahweh\u2019s speech to Moses, from vv 1\u20132 into v 3 and especially v 4. It is, of course, possible to speculate that vv 1\u20132, spoken to Moses, were followed by an account of Moses\u2019 repetition of Yahweh\u2019s words to Pharaoh, and that v 4 and even v 5b originally represented further explanations by Moses, who logically referred to Yahweh in the third person. But such an \u201coriginal\u201d account, we do not have; and in the account in hand, what we do have is Yahweh referring to himself first in the first person, then in the third person, a style of which there are ample examples in the OT.
\nComment
\n1\u20134 Yahweh\u2019s command to Moses in v 1 as well as the command he is to pass along to Pharaoh, including also the first part of the warning of v 2, is a duplicate of 7:26\u201327a, except for the use of \u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u201cspeak\u201d instead of \u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201csay\u201d and the addition of \u201cGod of the Hebrews\u201d and the deictic particle \u05db\u05d9 \u201cfor.\u201d Pharaoh is then warned that, if he should again \u201ctighten his grip\u201d on the Israelites, literally, \u201cmake strength against them,\u201d Yahweh intends to bring a decimating epidemic against the domesticated livestock of Egypt.
\n\u05d9\u05d3 \u201chand\u201d is often used in the OT in reference to strength or power, especially in reference to God (over 200 times in the OT; see van der Woude, THAT 1:672\u201374). The reference in v 3 adds impact to Yahweh\u2019s warning in a context that implies his thinning patience with Pharaoh and a concurrent intensification of the effect of the mighty acts (cf. Greenberg, Understanding, 170\u201371).
\nHyatt (114) surveys the plausibility of the presence in Egypt of the animals listed in v 3 at any period to which the oppression and the exodus can reasonably be assigned. The mention of the camel, in particular, has been widely questioned as an anachronistic reference. As intriguing as such discussions are, however, they are misleading, for they imply a historical motivation that is lacking in these theological narratives. As Hyatt notes, the list itself may reflect the time at which the account was written. To this we might add also the growth of the tradition to that point, and the time should by now have arrived when all this could simply be assumed.
\nThe decimating epidemic has been identified by Hort (ZAW 69 [1957] 100\u2013101) as B anthracis, brought on by the frog carcasses left by the second mighty act and affecting only unstabled animals (thus sparing some Egyptian animals for the seventh mighty act, and the stabled [?] Israelite animals altogether). This kind of wild speculation is also misleading, and not alone because of its absurdity. Worse still is its discrediting of the theological tenor of the biblical narrative, which will admit no naturalistic and hence nonmiraculous \u201cexplanations.\u201d The epidemic is, as the text plainly says, the work of Yahweh\u2019s hand; so also is the protection of the Israelite livestock.
\n5\u20137 As in the fourth mighty act (8:19b), so here too, the next day is set for the arrival of the blow against Egypt. \u05de\u05de\u05d7\u05e8\u05ea \u201cfrom the next day\u201d implies only the start on the morrow of the \u05d3\u05b6\u05bc\u05d1\u05b6\u05e8 a term that is used in the OT only of epidemic as an act of God\u2019s powerful judgment (Mayer, TDOT 3:126\u201327).
\nThe sparing of the Israelite livestock (vv 4, 6, 7) is, like the exclusion from Goshen of the thick swarm of flying insects (8:18\u201319[22\u201323]), a further miracle of Yahweh. When the epidemic arrives, Pharaoh sends out to Goshen to check on this further exclusion, and his discovery that it is a fact strengthens instead of weakens his resolve to keep his hold on Israel. The juxtaposition of \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7 \u201csend out\u201d in reference to Pharaoh sending his representatives to Goshen with \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7 in reference to Pharaoh not sending Israel from Goshen is a deft stylistic touch, one that leaves us once more in the suspense of an inevitable \u201cWhat next?\u201d
\nExplanation
\nThere is no new element in this fifth of the mighty-act reports apart from the statement in v 7 that Pharaoh sent out to Goshen to check on the predicted exclusion of Israel\u2019s livestock from the decimating epidemic. In the only other mighty act in which Goshen has been mentioned thus far\u2014the fourth, involving the \u201cmixed swarm of flying insects\u201d (8:16\u201328)\u2014there is no reference to any such curiosity on Pharaoh\u2019s part, even though it would be logical to assume.
\nThe point of this fifth mighty-act account is of course the same as that of the four preceding it, the proof of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. That point is sharpened still further here, however, by the Pharaoh\u2019s skepticism in sending out to Goshen to determine that the Israelite livestock really has been spared, and by his reaction of redoubled stubbornness in the face of what should have been a convincing enhancement by confirmation of the miracle. That the epidemic should come with such sweeping devastation is one thing; that the livestock of Israel in Goshen should be spared is another; but that Pharaoh should still be heavy and dull of mind, in the fact of such a double demonstration, is an enigma until we remember Yahweh\u2019s recurring prediction of Pharaoh\u2019s intransigence (3:19\u201320; 4:21; 7:13; etc.) and Yahweh\u2019s continuing involvement in Pharaoh\u2019s reaction (7:3\u20135, 22; 8:11; etc.). Then we can understand why Pharaoh would send out those whom he had no need to send out, his factfinders to Goshen, and refuse to send out those whom Yahweh had commanded him to send out, the sons of Israel to their religious commitment.
\nThe Sixth Mighty Act (9:8\u201312)
\nBibliography
\nGressmann, H. Die Anf\u00e4nge Israels. G\u00f6ttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1922. Hort, G. \u201cThe Plagues of Egypt.\u201d ZAW 69 (1957) 84\u2013103; 70 (1958) 48\u201359. Wilson, R. R. \u201cThe Hardening of Pharaoh\u2019s Heart.\u201d CBQ 41 (1979) 18\u201336.
\nTranslation
\n8 Next, Yahweh said to Moses and to Aaron, \u201cScoop up for yourselves double handfuls of furnace-ash; Moses is to fling it heavenward in full sight of Pharaoh. 9 It will become a dust settling upon the entire land of Egypt and will infect man and beast with inflamed swellings breaking into septic sores, everywhere in Egypt.\u201d
\n10 They thus scooped up the furnace-ash, and standing right in front of Pharaoh, Moses flung it heavenward; it immediately caused inflamed swellings breaking into septic sores, on man and on beast. 11 The learned men were no longer able to stand up to Moses because of the infection of the inflamed swellings, for they afflicted the learned men along with all the Egyptians.
\n12 Yet Yahweh made obstinate the mind of Pharaoh, so he paid no attention to them, just as Yahweh had predicted to Moses.
\nNotes
\n8.a. Qal impv. \u05dc\u05e7\u05d7 \u201ctake, take in hand,\u201d rendered here in the context of the \u05de\u05dc\u05d0 \u201cfull\u201d and the dual \u05d7\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05db\u05dd \u201cthe hollow of your hands\u201d that follow.
\n8.b. \u05e4\u05d9\u05d7, a derivative of \u05e4\u05d5\u05d7 \u201cblow, puff,\u201d refers probably to the fine powdery ash left by a thorough burning, and \u05db\u05d1\u05e9\u05c1\u05df, as the additional reference of Gen 19:28 and Exod 19:18 suggest, is a furnace, or even kiln (cf. Funk, \u201cBrickkiln,\u201d IDB 1:446, and \u201cFurnace,\u201d IDB 2:330), producing thick columns of smoke reminiscent of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Sinai theophany.
\n8.c. \u201cTo the eyes of Pharaoh.\u201d
\n8.d. LXX adds \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f10\u03bd\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03af\u03bf\u03bd \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03b8\u03b5\u03c1\u03b1\u03c0\u03cc\u03bd\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cand in front of his servants.\u201d
\n9.a. Lit., \u201cwill be upon (or against) man and beast.\u201d
\n9.b. \u05e9\u05c1\u05d7\u05d9\u05df apparently comes from a root meaning \u201chot, inflamed\u201d (cf. BDB, 1006), and its usage in Isa 38:21; Deut 28:27; Lev 13:18\u201320; and Job 2:7 implies a somewhat stronger term than the usual \u201cboil\u201d; so \u201cinflamed swellings,\u201d \u201cangry boils.\u201d
\n9.c. \u05e4\u05e8\u05d7 \u05d0\u05d1\u05e2\u05d1\u05e2\u05ea is difficult, because the second and determining word occurs only in vv 9 and 10 of this passage, \u05e4\u05e8\u05d7 means \u201cbreak out, spread,\u201d and perhaps in such a context, even \u201cdrain, suppurate.\u201d \u05d0\u05d1\u05e2\u05d1\u05e2\u05ea are \u201cblisters, sores, boils,\u201d and these two words with the preceding \u05e9\u05c1\u05d7\u05d9\u05df \u201cinflamed swellings\u201d suggest the contextual translation \u201cseptic, putrefying sores.\u201d Pope (Job, ab 15 [Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1965] 21) refers to \u05e9\u05c1\u05d7\u05d9\u05df here as a \u201cboil\u201d or \u201cbotch\u201d breaking out into \u201cpustules,\u201d posing the meaning \u201ca boil which becomes ulcerous and leaves a deep scar.\u201d LXX has \u1f13\u03bb\u03ba\u03b7 \u03c6\u03bb\u03c5\u03ba\u03c4\u03af\u03b4\u03b5\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b1\u03b6\u03ad\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03b1\u03b9 \u201cblistered, boiling ulcers,\u201d and adds \u201cupon man and upon animal alike\u201d as it does in 8:12\u201314.
\n10.a. See n. 8.c.
\n10.b. Special waw in this context.
\n10.c. \u201cBecame,\u201d \u05d4\u05d9\u05d4.
\n10.d. The word order differs in this second occurrence, with \u05e4\u05e8\u05d7 \u201cseptic\u201d coming last; Syr. reads \u05d5\u05d9\u05e4\u05e8\u05d7 instead of \u05e4\u05e8\u05d7, but the end result is the same.
\n11.a. See n. 7:11.c.
\n11.b. Lit., \u201cto the face of, before Moses,\u201d and so rendered above in the sense of \u201cstand in opposition to, hold one\u2019s own with.\u201d
\n11.c. Lit., \u201cfrom the face or presence of.\u201d
\n11.d. Lit., \u201cwere on,\u201d \u05d4\u05d9\u05d4. The verb is sg in Hebrew, here as elsewhere in the passage; \u05e9\u05c1\u05d7\u05d9\u05df \u201cinflamed swellings\u201d is a collective sg noun.
\n12.a. This closing statement, \u201cso he \u2026\u201d is the same in 7:13; 8:11, 15.
\n12.b. LXX omits this final \u201cto Moses.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThis sixth of the mighty-act accounts, like the third, is generally assigned to the priestly stratum (see above, Form\/Structure\/Setting on 8:12\u201315 [16\u201319]. The two accounts are the briefest of all the accounts (four verses and five verses, respectively), and are the only mighty-act accounts assigned exclusively to P. They both display the unique priestly interest in the learned men of Egypt (compare 7:11, 22; 8:3, 14 [7, 18]), the general priestly sequence, and the priestly inclusion of Aaron.
\nIn the account at hand, however, Aaron\u2019s role in the execution of the instructions of Yahweh is minimal. He merely scoops up a double handful of furnace-ash, apparently, though the text does not say so, as an additional supply of ash for Moses to fling heavenward. This reduction in the role of Aaron is all the more interesting in a priestly section, and it should be taken as a caution against a tendency in the form-critical treatment of the mighty-act accounts to present too standardized a narrative pattern for each of the respective sources (so Driver, 55\u201359; Fohrer, \u00dcberlieferung, 62\u201370; and, to a lesser degree, Childs, 133\u201341). It may also reflect here the strength of the tradition associating Moses alone with the more severe mighty acts. In this account, for the first time, Yahweh is said explicitly to be responsible for Pharaoh\u2019s resistance (v 12), and from this point forward in the narrative sequence of the mighty acts, Aaron does not appear in an active role: he is mentioned either as merely present (9:27; 10:3; cf. v 6; 10:16; 12:1, etc.), or in such summary-verses as 11:10 and 12:28.
\nR. R. Wilson has argued (CBQ 41 [1979] 29\u201336) that in P, the hardening-of-the-heart motif is connected with the vocabulary and the theology of Yahweh\u2019s holy war against Egypt, and that it serves both a unifying function, in the redaction of the narrative of Exodus, and a didactic-theological function, as a call of Israel to obedience. It is well known that the motif occurs in each of the major source-layers reflected in the mighty-act accounts. While this motif may help to unify these accounts, however, and may also have fulfilled a didactic function, its primary function is neither literary nor didactic, but theological. Indeed, the motif is far more understandable as a theological assertion linked to the overall theme of the mighty-act compilation: the proof of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. As such, it unifies the layers within the composite and within the successive mighty-act accounts as well, because it makes always and everywhere the same point in much the same way: Yahweh Is, as he has claimed; and he Is powerfully Present.
\nComment
\n8\u20139 Yahweh\u2019s instruction to Moses and to Aaron here, as in 8:12, includes no words of warning to Pharaoh. As in that miracle of the swarm of gnats, so here there is no threat of what is to come for a lack of obedience, though Moses is told in this instance to perform the disaster-bringing action in full view of Pharaoh. No such restriction of place is mentioned in the instruction to Aaron in 8:12, and this detail, so pointedly included, functions in connection with the assertion of v 12 as a declaration of Yahweh\u2019s undeniable involvement.
\nThere is no obvious link between the furnace-ash flung toward the sky and the settling dust that brings infection. Hugo Gressmann translated \u05e4\u05d9\u05d7 \u201csoot,\u201d and linked the blackness of the soot to the darkness of the ninth mighty act (Die Anf\u00e4nge Israels, 43, 46), but there is no basis for such a proposal, or even for such a translation. The word occurs only in this passage (vv 8, 10) in the OT, and the root from which it is derived and the context alike require a powdery substance that can be scooped up in the \u201chands\u2019-hollow\u201d from a furnace\u2014ash seems a more likely possibility than soot.
\nThe furnace-ash cast heavenward in front of Pharaoh appears to be a symbol of the infectious dust (\u05d0\u05d1\u05e7, a synonym of \u05e2\u05e4\u05e8, takes on such a meaning only here and, possibly, in Deut 28:24; cf. 28:27) which settles down from heaven (again cf. Deut 28:15\u201335, esp. v 24) onto the whole land. The disease caused by this infectious dust has been frequently identified as \u201cskin anthrax\u201d (Hort, ZAW 69 [1957] 101\u20133, appears to be the source of the most recent repetitions of this diagnosis). The disease, interestingly called \u201cinflammed swellings of Egypt\u201d in Deut 28:27, cannot be identified, of course, and attempts to make such identifications serve only to obscure the miraculous nature of the mighty act. Like the horrendous illness of Job, which amasses a terrifying array of dreadful symptoms (compare Rowley, \u201cThe Book of Job and Its Meaning,\u201d From Moses to Qumran [New York: Association Press, 1963] 143\u201344), the point of these awkwardly described \u201cinflammed swellings breaking into septic sores\u201d has much to do with theology and little to do with medicine.
\nThe speculation that this sixth mighty act is somehow a variant account of the one preceding it and the question whether there would be any animals left outside Goshen for this infection (cf. Rylaarsdam, \u201cExodus,\u201d IB 1:903; Hyatt, 115) are likewise beside the point at hand. Even the terminology employed in the two accounts, \u05de\u05e7\u05e0\u05d4 \u201clivestock\u201d (9:3\u20134, 6\u20137) and \u05d1\u05d4\u05de\u05d4 \u201cbeast\u201d (vv 9\u201310) denies a discrepancy; the former refers to domesticated grazing animals of the species listed in 9:3, the latter to beasts of all kinds (BDB, 96\u201397). But more important still is the cumulative sequence of theological assertion. The point of these narratives, both singly and in compilation, is not animal husbandry and stylistic verisimilitude, but their declaration of the Is-ness of Yahweh.
\n10\u201311 As in the previous accounts, the obedience of Yahweh\u2019s instructions by Moses (and, secondarily, by Aaron) leads immediately to the result predicted. In this account, the learned men of Egypt appear for the fifth and final time, and here they not only cannot reverse or duplicate the mighty act, they suffer its effect so severely that they can offer no resistance of any kind. G. Hort (ZAW 69 [1957] 101) reads \u05e2\u05de\u05d3 \u201cstand\u201d literally and in comparison with Deut 28:7\u201335 to mean that the disease affected \u201cprincipally \u2026 the legs and feet\u201d so that the learned men are reported to be unable to stand up. The more probable meaning, reflected in the translation above, is that the learned men, afflicted as were their countrymen, no longer had any will to oppose or resist Moses and his God.
\n12 It may well be in the light of this most serious setback to the Egyptians up to this point in the mighty-act sequence, as Pharaoh is left alone before Moses, that Yahweh\u2019s involvement in Pharaoh\u2019s resistance comes for the first time to be stated explicitly. In 8:15, following their failure to produce a swarm of gnats, the learned men of Egypt confessed themselves outdistanced in the presence of a divine power: \u201cthis is an act of a god.\u201d Pharaoh ignored them; his mind \u201cremained obstinate.\u201d Here, these same learned men, afflicted along with all Egyptians, have no will to further resistance. It is difficult to imagine how Pharaoh could have held out so long, and inconceivable that he could hold out any longer, and so, at the ideal point, we are told plainly what has been implicit all along (cf. Comment on 3:19\u201320 and 4:21): Yahweh has made obstinate the mind of Pharaoh.
\nExplanation
\nYet again the recurring motif of the proof-of-Presence sequence is sounded. Yahweh Is, and Yahweh Is in Egypt; Yahweh Is, and Yahweh Is responsible for the affliction of an Egypt whose Pharaoh remains intractable. Here, for the first time, the inevitable complete defeat of the learned men of Egypt is announced; they are no longer able to offer any resistance, diseased as they are along with the rest of their countrymen. And here for the first time there is an explicit assertion of Yahweh\u2019s responsibility for the Pharaoh\u2019s strange stubbornness, a responsibility implicit in the composite Exodus from 3:19\u201320 following, inferred by 4:21, 6:1, 7:13 and in each of the first five mighty-act accounts, and plainly asserted in 7:3\u20135.
\nAgain in the eighth (10:20) and ninth (10:27) mighty-act accounts, Yahweh is said to \u201cmake obstinate\u201d the mind of Pharaoh, as in the prologue to the tenth mighty act (11:10) and the prologue to the account of Yahweh\u2019s rescue at the sea (14:4, 8). Only once more, in the conclusion of the seventh mighty-act account (9:35), is the responsibility for Pharaoh\u2019s obstinacy left unassigned, while in 9:34, Pharaoh is said to have \u201cmade heavy and dull\u201d (hiphil of \u05db\u05d1\u05d3) his mind and that of his courtiers.
\nWhatever may have been the original implication of the varied expressions of the motif of Pharaoh\u2019s obstinacy, with their varied vocabulary and differences about the cause of his stubbornness, the clear implication of the composite presented to us in Exodus is that Yahweh is in every case the prime mover in this matter. We are told as much in anticipation of the proof-of-Presence sequence, in the prologue that begins it, and in the dramatic victory that concludes it, the final triumph over Pharaoh and Egypt at the sea. Every mighty act must be read within such a bracketing, and so every stubborn reversal of promise by Pharaoh, like every reversal of the welfare of his country, must be recognized to be the work of Yahweh.
\nSuch an implication is made all the more clear by the first specific declaration, within the mighty-act sequence itself, that Yahweh himself has \u201cmade obstinate\u201d the mind and intention of Pharaoh (9:12), for the declaration comes precisely at the point in the sequence When any other explanation is no longer possible.
\nThe Seventh Mighty Act (9:13\u201335)
\nBibliography
\nCouroyer, B. \u201cUn \u00c9gyptianisme biblique: \u2018depuis la fondation de l\u2019\u00c9gypte.\u2019 \u201d RB 67 (1960) 42\u201348. Labuschagne, C.J. The Incomparability of Yahweh in the Old Testament. POS 5. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1966. Thomas, D. W. \u201cA Consideration of Some Unusual Ways of Expressing the Superlative in Hebrew.\u201d VT 3 (1953) 209\u201324.
\nTranslation
\n13 Next, Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cGet up early in the morning, and take a position where you cannot miss Pharaoh, and you say to him, \u2018Thus says Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, \u201cSend out my people, in order that they may worship me, 14 because now I will send my whole arsenal of blows against your mind, against the members of your court, and against your people, to the end that you may know by experience that there is none like me in the whole earth. 15 Indeed now I will let loose my power and strike you and your people with total epidemic, so complete that you will be effaced from the earth! 16 In fact for this one reason alone will I cause you still to stand firm, to the end that I show you my strength, in result of which my name will be celebrated throughout the earth.
\n17 \u201cYou are still tyrannizing my people, refusing to send them out. 18 Just watch me send a downpour of very heavy hail this time tomorrow, the like of which has never fallen in Egypt from the day of its beginning to this moment. 19 Send out now, bring your livestock and everything you own that is out in the open into a protected place: every man and beast left out in the open, not gathered into the shelter of home, and onto which the hail falls, will die.\u201d \u2019 \u201d
\n20 Those members of Pharaoh\u2019s court who had respect for Yahweh\u2019s word set their servants and their livestock in flight toward the shelter of home. 21 Those who had no confidence in Yahweh\u2019s word left their servants and their livestock loose out in the open.
\n22 Then Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cThrust out your hand against the heavens, and there will be hail throughout the land of Egypt, upon man and upon beast, and upon every crop in the land of Egypt.\u201d 23 So Moses thrust forth his staff against the heavens, and Yahweh loosed thunderclaps and hail, and lightning licking earthwards. Indeed Yahweh poured hail upon the land of Egypt. 24 There was hail, and lightning cracking back and forth through the midst of the very heavy hail, the like of which had never fallen anywhere in the land of Egypt from the beginning of the nation. 25 The hail battered the entire land of Egypt, everything out in the open, from man to beast and every, crop\u2014indeed, the hail hit and shattered the unprotected trees, 26 In the land of Goshen alone, where the sons of Israel were, was there no hail.
\n27 Thus Pharaoh sent anxiously, summoned Moses and Aaron, and said to them, \u201cI have been wrong this time. Yahweh is the righteous one; I and my people are the guilty ones. 28 Pray to Yahweh. Enough of God\u2019s thunderclaps and hail! I will send you out; you shall certainly stay no longer.\u201d 29 Moses answered him, \u201cAs I depart the city, I will open my hands in prayer to Yahweh: the thunderclaps will stop instantly, and the hail will fall no more, so that you may know by experience that the earth belongs to Yahweh. 30 You and the members of your court, I know, have yet no sense of awe in the Presence of Yahweh God.\u201d
\n31 The growing flax and the standing barley were beaten to the ground, for the barley was coming to head and the flax was coming to bud. 32 The wheat and the spelt were not beaten down, because they had not yet sprouted.
\n33 So Moses then went out from Pharaoh\u2019s presence, departed the city, and opened his hands in prayer to Yahweh: immediately the thunderclaps and the hail stopped, and rain inundated the earth no longer. 34 Yet Pharaoh, seeing that the rain and the hail and the thunderclaps stopped, gave in once more to wrongheadedness, and so steeled his mind; he did, and the members of his court did. 35 Thus Pharaoh\u2019s mind remained unchanged, and he did not send out the Israelites, as Yahweh had predicted through Moses.
\nNotes
\n13.a. See n. 7:15.b.
\n13.b. See n. 8:16.b.
\n14.a. \u05d1\u05e4\u05e2\u05dd \u05d4\u05d6\u05d0\u05ea \u201cin this stroke, at this time,\u201d translated above as an emphatic usage.
\n14.b. \u05db\u05b8\u05bc\u05dc\u05be\u05de\u05b7\u05d2\u05b5\u05bc\u05e4\u05b9\u05ea\u05b7\u05d9 \u201call my smitings, strikings, plagues.\u201d The pl. form of \u05de\u05b7\u05d2\u05b5\u05bc\u05e4\u05b8\u05d4 is used only here in the OT.
\n14.c. MT has \u05d0\u05dc \u201ctoward, against\u201d; SamPent reads \u05e2\u05dc \u201cupon, against.\u201d
\n15.a. \u05db\u05d9 \u05e2\u05ea\u05d4, lit, \u201cbecause now.\u201d There is no basis in the text for rsv\u2019S and neb\u2019S \u201cby now\u201d followed by the conditional \u201ccould.\u201d
\n15.b. \u05d9\u05d3\u05d9 \u201cmy hand.\u201d
\n15.c. \u05d1\u05b7\u05bc\u05d3\u05b8\u05bc\u05e8\u05b6 \u201cwith the epidemic, plague, pestilence.\u201d I read the def art here as giving the sense of \u201cepidemic par excellence, the epidemic of epidemics.\u201d
\n15.d. Special waw with \u05db\u05d7\u05d3 \u201cefface, destroy,\u201d in this context.
\n16.a. \u05d5\u05d0\u05d5\u05dc\u05dd \u201cand indeed, but indeed,\u201d an adverb with an adversative sense, qualifying the sweeping assertion of v 15.
\n16.b. Piel \u05e1\u05e4\u05e8 \u201cto declare over and over, recount again and again.\u201d
\n17.a. \u05dc\u05d1\u05dc\u05ea\u05d9 \u201cin order not to.\u2026\u201d
\n18.a. Lit., \u201cwhich has not been (\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4) as like it in Egypt.\u201d
\n19.a. Lit., \u201cin the field,\u201d that is, \u201cout-of-doors.\u201d
\n19.b. \u05d9\u05de\u05e6\u05d0 \u201cfound.\u201d
\n19.c. Lit., \u201cnot gathered homewards.\u201d
\n20.a. \u201cThe one respecting the word of Yahweh from (= among) the servants of Pharaoh.\u201d
\n21.a. Lit., \u201cAnd the one who did not set his mind toward [SamPent \u201cupon\u201d] the word of Yahweh.\u201d
\n22.a. \u05db\u05dc\u05be\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d1 \u05d4\u05e9\u05c2\u05d3\u05d4 \u201cevery growth, herb of the field.\u201d
\n23.a. LXX reads \u03c7\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c1\u03b1 \u201chand.\u201d
\n23.b. \u05e0\u05ea\u05df \u201cgave.\u201d
\n23.c. Lit., \u201cfire was going earthwards.\u201d
\n23.d. Hiph \u05de\u05d8\u05e8 \u201crain,\u201d plus special waw.
\n24.a. SamPent \u05d4\u05d1\u05e8\u05d3 and LXX \u1f21 \u03c7\u03ac\u03bb\u03b1\u03b6\u03b1 read \u201cthe hail.\u201d
\n24.b. \u05d5\u05d0\u05e9\u05c1 \u05de\u05ea\u05dc\u05e7\u05d7\u05ea \u201cand fire seizing or snatching at itself,\u201d a graphic description of the play of lightning bolts seeking ground.
\n24.c. Lit., \u201cin the whole land of Egypt.\u201d SamPent \u05d1\u05de\u05e6\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd and LXX \u1f10\u03bd \u0391\u1f30\u03b3\u03cd\u03c0\u03c4\u1ff3 have only \u201cin Egypt.\u201d
\n25.a. Lit., \u201cevery tree of the field.\u201d
\n27.a. \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7 \u201csend\u201d with special waw in this context.
\n27.b. \u05d7\u05d8\u05d0\u05ea\u05d9 \u201cI have missed the why, gone wrong, sinned,\u201d though \u201csinned\u201d is probably an over-translation in this instance.
\n28.a. LXX adds \u03bf\u1fe6 \u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u1f10\u03bc\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201ctherefore for me\u201d here; cf. 8:4, 24.
\n28.b. Lit., \u201cand surely from being thunderclaps of God and hail,\u201d to which LXX adds \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c0\u1fe6\u03c1 \u201cand fire.\u201d
\n28.c. \u05d5\u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7\u05d4 \u201cI will send\u201d is a cohortative indicating determination; cf. GKC \u00a7 48cde. SamPent has simply \u05d5\u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7.
\n28.d. The verb \u05d9\u05e1\u05e3 \u201cadd\u201d ends with paragogic nun, indicating \u201cmarked emphasis\u201d (GKC, \u00a7 47m) so, lit, \u201cand certainly you will not add to standing, delaying (\u05e2\u05de\u05d3).\u201d
\n29.a. \u05d0\u05e4\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1 \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05db\u05e4\u05d9 \u201cI will spread out my palms,\u201d one of several OT idioms four prayer.
\n29.b. \u05d7\u05d3\u05dc \u201cstop\u201d with paragogic nun; see n.28.d.
\n29.c. Lit., \u201cwill be (\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4) no more.\u201d LXX adds \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f41 \u1f51\u03b5\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2 \u201cand the heavy rain\u201d following \u201cthe hail\u201d in this verse; cf. MT v 33.
\n30.a. This emphasis is shown by the separating accent z\u0101q\u0113p\u0304 magnum on \u05d9\u05d3\u05e2 \u201cknow.\u201d
\n30.b. \u05de\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9 \u201cfrom the Presence of.\u2026\u201d
\n31.a. Vv 31\u201332, a parenthetic note about the damage sustained by the growing crops and avoided by those still germinating, are perhaps displaced in their present location, and might better be read following v 25.
\n31.b. 3rd pers fem. sg \u05e0\u05db\u05d4 \u201cbeat\u201d connected to each of the two subjs separately: \u201c\u2026 flax was \u2026 barley was.\u2026\u201d
\n31.c. \u201cTo the ground\u201d is added for clarity. \u05e0\u05db\u05d4 means \u201cstrike, smite down,\u201d etc.
\n31.d. \u05d2\u05d1\u05e2\u05dc \u201cbud\u201d occurs only here in the OT; the text literally says \u201cthe barley fresh [making grain] and the flax bud.\u201d
\n32.a. \u05d0\u05e4\u05d9\u05dc\u05ea is a fem. pl. adj meaning \u201cconcealed, in the dark,\u201d and so, perhaps, not yet showing above ground.
\n33.a. \u05de\u05e2\u05dd \u05e4\u05e8\u05e2\u05d4 \u201cfrom with Pharaoh.\u201d
\n33.b. The single verb for both clauses is \u05d5\u05d9\u05e6\u05d0 \u201cwent out\u201d; \u201cdeparted\u201d is added above for clarity.
\n33.c. Special waw in context.
\n33.d. SamPent and LXX have \u201cthe rain.\u201d
\n33.e. Niph \u05e0\u05ea\u05da \u201cwas not poured out earthward.\u201d
\n34.a. Lit., \u201che added to sinning,\u201d in consequence of the cessation of the hail and lightning, as the special waw with \u05d9\u05e1\u05e3 \u201cadd\u201d shows.
\n34.b. Lit., \u201che and his servants.\u201d
\n35.a. Cf. 7:13, 22; and 8:15.
\n35.b. \u05d1\u05d9\u05d3 \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4 \u201cby Moses\u2019 hand, power.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe account of the seventh of the mighty acts in the proof-of-Presence sequence is the longest of the mighty-act accounts, and of them all, the composite that is most awkwardly assembled. It begins with a somewhat typical instruction of Yahweh to Moses (v 13), but moves then to what has often been taken to be an explanation of the entire mighty act sequence (vv 14\u201316), includes the report of a special provision for those Egyptians who have come to have reverence for Yahweh\u2019s word (vv 19\u201321), and, quite clearly out of sequence, a parenthetic explanation of why some crops were destroyed by the hail while others were not (vv 31\u201332).
\nNot surprisingly, the length and patchwork appearance of this sequence have led to an array of opinion among source critics. Noth, who doubts the presence of Elohistic material in the mighty-act narratives (69\u201370), assigns the account mostly to the Yahwist, with some incomplete sentences from P: vv 22, 23a\u03b1, and 35 (80). B. Anderson (\u201cAnalytical Outline of the Pentateuch,\u201d in Noth\u2019s Pentateuchal Traditions, 268) assigns the account entirely to the Yahwist. Fohrer (\u00dcberlieferung 70, 124) finds nothing here from the Priestly source, but assigns vv 22\u201323a\u03b2, 24a (N.B., typographical error on p. 70), 25b, and 35 to the Elohist. Others ascribe the section to all three of these sources (Hyatt [117]: J, vv 13, 17\u201321; JE, vv 27\u201335; EJ, vv 22\u201326; P, vv 14\u201316); to the three sources plus a redactor (so Beer [12, 53\u201354]; J2, vv 13, 14\u201316, 17\u201318, 19\u201321R, 23\u03b2\u201324, 26, 27 [deleting \u201cand Aaron\u201d]\u201330, 31\u201332R, 33, 34; E, vv 22\u201323a\u03b1, 25, 35a; P, v 35bR); or to the three sources plus \u201cglosses\u201d (Childs [131, 141\u201342, 158\u201359]: J, vv 13, 17\u201318, 23b, 24b, 25b, 26\u201330, 33\u201334; E, vv 22\u201323a, 25a, 35a; JE, v 24a; P, v 35b; \u201cAdditions\u201d: vv 14\u201316, 19\u201321, 31\u201332).
\nThe fact that there is so wide a divergence of opinion in the source-division of the seventh of the mighty-act accounts underscores both its somewhat patchy appearance and also the fragility of an over-precise assignment of verses and verse-fragments to specific sources without strong evidence for doing so. Once again, the single absolute certainty is the compilation at hand in the received text, beyond which, in the case of the obvious composite, it is possible to look with any assurance only in broad and general ways.
\nSuch a broad look at the section in hand reveals that the dominant source, the one governing the shape of the pericope, is J. Into J\u2019s account, additional material has been inserted, probably from P, and from a source or sources concerned with explanatory annotation. There is no clear evidence establishing the presence of E, and the presence of P is only slightly more assured. The most that can be said with any degree of assurance is that this longest of the mighty-act narratives is a compilation built on a foundational account from the Yahwist, expanded more than once by explanatory additions from later hands, one of which (vv 31\u201332) has been inserted awkwardly into the sequence at the wrong spot. This clumsiness may suggest a later disruption of a sequence originally as smooth at least as the other compilations among the mighty-act accounts. Without question, this composite, like the others, is governed in its form by the availability of varying traditions brought together in the service of a single purpose (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 7:14\u201325).
\nComment
\n13\u201316 The reference to \u201cMoses taking a position\u201d from which his interception of Pharaoh will be guaranteed and the opening words of the message he is to deliver to Pharaoh are very close to parts of 7:15\u201316 and 8:16, both of which also may be assigned to the Yahwist. What follows this, however, is unique in the mighty-act accounts, however it is understood, whether as an explanation of the number of the mighty acts (Childs, 158), as \u201can apology for all of the plagues\u201d (Hyatt, 118), or as an announcement of a terrible intensification of the force and effect of the mighty acts leading up to the last of them affecting the Egyptians, the death of their first-born and the deliverance at the sea (cf. Cassuto, 115\u201316).
\nThe translations generally (rsv, neb, jb, rv) render v 15 as a conditional statement, giving the sense of what Yahweh could do or could have done had he chosen to, and leading to the rationale as to why he did not so do. There is in the text, however, no suggestion of conditionality. None of the usual terms or circumlocutions of conditional expression are present (cf. GKC, \u00b6 106p, \u00b6 112ff-mm, \u00b6 159a-k), nor is there anything in the wider context of the account to suggest a conditional sense.
\nYahweh is depicted instructing Moses to report to Pharaoh (in a speech begun with an authenticating messenger-formula) not what he could have done or might do, but what he is doing and is about to do (cf. kjv). This sense is made plain not only by the absence of any conditional terms and syntax, but by the emphatic \u201cnow\u201d (\u05d1\u05e4\u05e2\u05dd \u05d4\u05d6\u05d0\u05ea) of v 14 and by the \u201cindeed now\u201d (\u05db\u05d9 \u05e2\u05ea\u05d4) of v 15, as well as by the assertion in v 17 that Pharaoh continues to tyrannize the sons of Israel and persists in his refusal to obey Yahweh\u2019s command.
\nVerses 14\u201316, as they stand now in the composite account of the seventh mighty act, are directed forward, first of all to the mighty act immediately at hand, and second, to the cumulative impact of the concluding mighty acts, especially the terrible darkness, the death of the first born, and the decisive victory at the sea. In this seventh mighty act, for the first time Egyptian lives are lost; in the eighth mighty act, the last remnants of life-sustaining food are destroyed; in the ninth mighty act, the very source of light and life in Egypt, the sun-god Kephri-Re-Atum (see ANET3, 12\u201314), is overpowered; and in the tenth mighty act, any ordered future that Egypt might have is cut off in the death of the first born. Thus Yahweh tells Moses to say most appropriately to Pharaoh that he is now sending his \u201cwhole arsenal of blows\u201d and now loosing his \u201cpower\u201d to strike Pharaoh and his people with \u201cthe epidemic,\u201d the ultimate raining of blows so complete that Pharaoh will be effaced from the earth. In the context of the mighty acts that follow and bring the proof-of-Presence sequence to a conclusion, that is exactly what comes to pass.
\nAll this is to the end, still, that Pharaoh, his court, and his people may know by experience both that Yahweh Is, and that Yahweh is incomparable in the whole earth (v 15; cf. Labuschagne, Incomparability of Yahweh, 74\u201376). At this point, however, a new element is introduced. Not only is Israel to have proof of Yahweh\u2019s Presence in the mighty acts, and not only are Pharaoh and the Egyptians to come to know therefrom that he really is; Pharaoh is by Yahweh \u201ccaused to stand firm\u201d (hiphil of \u05e2\u05de\u05d3), both sustained and kept stubborn, and shown (hiphil of \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4) Yahweh\u2019s strength that as a result Yahweh\u2019s name (= Yahweh\u2019s Presence) \u201cwill be declared over and over again\u201d (piel of \u05e1\u05e4\u05e8) throughout the whole earth.
\n17\u201319 The context for this awesome pronouncement, as for the devastating seventh mighty act that follows it (and the still more dreadful mighty acts following the seventh) is provided by the important linking verse, 17. Pharaoh continues still to lord it over (hithpael of \u05e1\u05dc\u05dc) Yahweh\u2019s people, that is, to tyrannize them, and to refuse to send them out of Egypt. And though we know why this is so, even if Pharaoh does not, it nonetheless makes the mighty acts that follow an inevitability.
\nThe \u201cdownpour of very heavy hail\u201d (vv 18, 24) mixed with lightning licking back and forth onto the earth (vv 23, 24) and rain (v 33) does not yield itself to the kind of meteorological explanation Hort (ZAW 70 [1958] 48\u201349) and Knight (73\u201374) provide. The point of the repeated descriptions of the storm, which may suggest layers in the composite, is not its naturalness but its unnaturalness as a supernatural phenomenon. No earthly hailstorm could ever be like this. The recurring thunderclaps (vv 23, 28, 29, 33, 34, \u05e7\u05dc\u05d4 \u201cvoices\u201d; cf. Ps 29), the lightning darting back and forth (vv 23, 24, \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cfire\u201d; cf. Ps 18 and Thomas, VT 3 [1953] 210, 214\u201315), and the severity of the storm (vv 18\u201319, 23\u201326) all suggest the advent of Yahweh in theophany (cf. Durham, \u201cPsalms,\u201d BBC 4:202\u20133) and thus the Presence of Yahweh in a more dramatic and intense coming than anywhere in the mighty-act sequence to this point.
\nB. Couroyer has argued (RB 67 [1960] 42\u201346) convincingly that the phrase in v 18 referring to the day of the \u201cfoundation\u201d or \u201cbeginning\u201d of Egypt is Egyptian in origin, on the basis of its recurrence in Egyptian texts of all periods and its usage in the OT in reference to the founding of a nation only here. Normally in the OT, the verb \u05d9\u05e1\u05d3 and its derivatives refer to the foundation of a building of some kind, especially the Temple of Yahweh (Isa 44:28; 1 Kgs. 5:31 [17]). The phrase in v 24, \u201cfrom that time it [Egypt] was being [or \u201cbecoming,\u201d \u05d4\u05d9\u05ea\u05d4] a people,\u201d Couroyer holds (46\u201348) to be an equivalent expression, not attested so far (as of 1960) in Egyptian texts, and referring to that ancient time when the nation was founded and the people and the government were organized.
\nThe warning of Yahweh to Pharaoh that he and his people should take precautions to protect both themselves and their livestock from the death-dealing hail is without parallel in the entire proof-of-Presence sequence. It stands as a further indication of the fatal seriousness of the last four mighty-act accounts and is a further confirmation of the context of the awesome pronouncement of vv 14\u201315, described above. For the first time, a mighty act is to bring not just annoyance, not just physical reverse, but death\u2014and so Yahweh gives a warning.
\n20\u201326 The report of this warning and the news that some members of Pharaoh\u2019s court take it seriously, while some do not, serve both to intensify the gathering suspense of the narrative and to indicate a further weakening of any possible human basis Pharaoh could have for further resistance.
\nNo account of Moses\u2019 actual confrontation of Pharaoh with the warning of vv 13\u201319 is given, though the presence of such a report in any original sequence seems a safe assumption. The composite at hand moves directly from the end of the warning to the reaction of the members of Pharaoh\u2019s court who were privy to whatever Pharaoh learned, and to the command of Yahweh to Moses to bring on the fierce storm of terrible hail by thrusting out his hand \u201cagainst\u201d \u05e2\u05dc the heavens. What Moses thrusts forth, according to MT, is his \u201cstaff\u201d (v 23); LXX reads \u201chand\u201d here, as in v 22. This variation is not substantial enough to suggest an insertion from the Elohist, as Hyatt (119) does. The storm that follows this action is of supernatural intensity and dimension, as noted above, not only in its combination of thunder and the continual play of lightning with a battering (\u05e0\u05db\u05d4) heavy hail, but also in the exclusion of Goshen. Even the trees were shattered, a statement again reminiscent of the language of theophanic advent (cf. Ps 29:5, 9), so of course any unprotected crops were destroyed utterly.
\n31\u201332 The technical explanatory note specifying the crops that were leveled and those that escaped would logically fall within, or following, the statement contained in what is now v 25.
\n27\u201330 As in the accounts of the second (8:4[8]) and fourth (8:21[25]) mighty acts, so here Pharaoh summons Moses (and Aaron), this time for the first time admitting to culpability on his part and his people\u2019s part. Given the context, it is probably too much to have Pharaoh confessing sin. \u05d7\u05d8\u05d0 should be taken in its more general sense, \u201cto miss the mark, go wrong,\u201d and \u05e8\u05e9\u05c1\u05e2\u05d9\u05dd as a reference to \u201cguilt,\u201d even \u201ccriminal wrong,\u201d rather than to \u201cevil.\u201d Pharaoh is admitting to mistake, and even unfairness, but he must not be thought to be coming to abject repentance and pious belief. As the continuation of the narrative shows, his remorse is short-lived and is no more than another ruse to get relief.
\nOnce more (as in 8:4, 24 [8, 28], Pharaoh requests prayer and promises to send Israel (\u201cyou\u201d in v 28 is masculine plural) out. Moses (there is no mention of Aaron beyond the \u05d5\u05dc\u05d0\u05d4\u05e8\u05df, \u201cand (to) Aaron\u201d of v 27) promises to pray, and he predicts an end to the storm so that Pharaoh may know at first hand that the world is Yahweh\u2019s. He also expresses an understandable skepticism about any real reverence for Yahweh on the part of Pharaoh or his court.
\n33\u201335 Thus again Moses prays for an end to a mighty act, an end that comes immediately. Rain is mentioned for the first time as a part of the terrible storm of the seventh mighty act, yet another indication of layers in the account.
\nOnce more also Pharaoh, relieved of the oppression of Yahweh\u2019s mighty act, added to his accumulation of wrongness. He \u201csteeled his mind\u201d (hiphil \u05db\u05d1\u05d3), as did his courtiers, excluding perhaps\u2014the account is not specific\u2014those who had saved their livestock by respecting Yahweh\u2019s word (v 20). As before, Pharaoh\u2019s mind remained unchanged, and immediately following this astounding, almost unbelievable assertion, we are given a reminder as to how this could be: Yahweh has predicted this intractability; we recall, of course, that Yahweh is behind it.
\nExplanation
\nThe new element in the account of the seventh of Yahweh\u2019s mighty acts in proof of his Presence, an element that turns not only this act but the ones following it toward the conclusion of the mighty acts in Egypt, is death among the Egyptians. The terrible hailstorm deals death as well as destruction and discomfort, and so it points forward to the three additional life-threatening mighty acts in Egypt, as well as to the terrible rout at the sea.
\nThis new element is dramatically highlighted by the new intensity of Yahweh\u2019s warning, by the provision of instructions of safety for the members of Pharaoh\u2019s court who have respect for Yahweh\u2019s word, by the supernatural and theophanic dimensions of the terrible storm, by the dreadful devastation of the storm itself, and by Pharaoh\u2019s admission of culpability in himself and in the members of his council. Each of these highlighting motifs, each in its own way also unique in the mighty-act sequence to this point, is directly related to what may be called first death in Egypt in the intensification of Yahweh\u2019s proof.
\nWith this awesome intensification, Pharaoh admits more clearly than ever that Yahweh Is, and even that Yahweh Is right, but he does not admit Yahweh\u2019s command to his list of things to do. Even though he has himself promised to send Israel out, fulfilling Yahweh\u2019s prediction of 3:19\u201320 and reversing his own declaration of 5:2, and despite the fearful theophanic hailstorm, he goes back on his word and remains as firm in his disobedience as ever. We know that there can be but one explanation of such unbelievable, even inhuman, resistance.
\nThus the seventh mighty act sets things in motion for the end of the proof-of-Presence sequence. From this point forward, events can move in only one terrible direction. We have passed the point of return. And the compilers of the Book of Exodus leave us with a haunting question: if Pharaoh can admit Yahweh Is, and still be stubborn, how about the Israelites?
\nThe Eighth Mighty Act (10:1\u201320)
\nBibliography
\nAndersen, F. I., and D. N. Freedman. Hosea. ab 24. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980. Childs, B. S. \u201cA Study of the Formula, \u2018Until this Day.\u2019 \u201d JBL 82 (1963) 279\u201392. Dhorme, E. L\u2019emploi m\u00e9taphorique de noms de parties du corps en H\u00e9breu et en Akkadien. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1923. Hort, G. \u201cThe Plagues of Egypt, II.\u201d ZAW 70 (1958) 48\u201359. Weiss, R. \u201cA Note on \u05d0\u05ea\u05b8\u05d4\u05bc in Ex 10, 11.\u201d ZAW 76 (1964) 188.
\nTranslation
\n1 Next, Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cGo to Pharaoh\u2014because I have made heavy and dull both his mind and the minds of the members of his court, to the end that I be taken seriously through these signs of mine right in their own territory, 2 and to the end that you may recount again and again in the hearing of your son and your grandson that I amused myself aggravating the Egyptians, and that I set my signs against them in order that you may know by experience that I am Yahweh.\u201d
\n3 So Moses came, and Aaron, to Pharaoh. They said to him, \u201cThus says Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, \u2018Just how long will you resist being submissive in my Presence? Send out my people, so that they may worship me, 4 for should you refuse to send out my people, look out: I will bring a locust-swarm against your territory tomorrow. 5 This swarm will blanket the surface of the earth, and the earth will no longer be visible; it will eat up the scraps of the crops left to you from the hailstorm, and all the sprouts beginning to grow again on the trees out in the open. 6 The locusts will fill your houses and the houses of all the members of your court and the houses of all the Egyptians. It will be like nothing your fathers or your fathers\u2019 fathers have seen any time in their lives.\u2019 \u201d Then he turned, and left Pharaoh\u2019s presence.
\n7 Immediately,Pharaoh\u2019s courtiers asked him, \u201cJust how long is this impasse to bring ruin upon us? Send out the men, so that they can worship Yahweh their god. Have you still not seen that Egypt is destroyed?\u201d 8 Quickly then, Moses was brought back, and Aaron, to Pharaoh, who said to them, \u201cGo along, worship Yahweh your god. Exactly who will be going?\u201d 9 Moses replied, \u201cWith our young men and with our old men, we will go; with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds we will go, for we are committed to a pilgrimage-worship of Yahweh.\u201d 10 But he responded, \u201c \u2018Yahweh\u2019 will indeed be with you when I send out you and your toddlers\u2014look here, you are up to no good! 11 No, indeed! The able-bodied men may go and worship \u2018Yahweh,\u2019 for that is what you claim to be seeking!\u201d Then he threw them out from Pharaoh\u2019s presence.
\n12 So Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cThrust out your hand against the land of Egypt to bring the locust-swarm: it will fly up against the land of Egypt and eat up every crop of the land, everything the hail left alive.\u201d 13 Moses thus thrust forth his staff against the land of Egypt, and Yahweh directed an easterly wind onto the land all that day and all night. When the morning came, the easterly wind had blown up the locust-swarm. 14 This swarm flew up against the whole land of Egypt, and then alighted right to the very borders of the country. Such a very heavy swarm of locusts had never been before, and was never to come again; 15 indeed it blanketed the surface of the whole earth, so that the earth was stripped bare, and ate up all the vegetation of the earth and all the fruit of the trees that had survived the hail. No green sprig was left, either on a tree or of the field-crops, in the whole of the land of Egypt.
\n16 As quickly as possible, Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron, then said, \u201cI have wronged Yahweh your god and you. 17 Now tolerate, please, my guilt, just this once, and pray to Yahweh your god that he may remove from upon me only this death.\u201d
\n18 Thus Moses went out of Pharaoh\u2019s presence and prayed to Yahweh. 19 Yahweh in turn diverted a very strong sea wind, which stirred up the locust swarm and blew it into the Sea of Reeds. Not one locust remained, within any of the borders of Egypt. 20 Yahweh once more made Pharaoh\u2019s mind obstinate, however, and he did not send out the sons of Israel.
\nNotes
\n1.a. This emphasis is made clear by the use of the independent personal pronoun \u05d0\u05e0\u05d9 \u201cI\u201d in addition to the 1st pers hiph form of \u05db\u05d1\u05d3 \u201cmake heavy and dull.\u201d
\n1.b. The verb is \u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05ea \u201cput, fix, appoint, set,\u201d and the form is qal pass ptcp plus the 1st com sg pronom suff (cf. Jer 31:21), lit., \u201cthe establishment, authentication of me.\u201d Note that LXX reads differently, \u201cso that these signs may happen in sequence to them.\u201d
\n1.c. \u05d0\u05ea\u05ea\u05d9 \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4, lit., \u201cthese my signs.\u201d \u201cThrough\u201d is added on the basis of the context, for clarity.
\n1.d. \u05d1\u05e7\u05e8\u05d1\u05d5 \u201cin his midst,\u201d read as a pl. by LXX, Syr., Tg. Onq., and Tg. Ps.-J..
\n2.a. The person of the verb is sg in Heb., an indication that Moses alone is addressed as the beginner of the tradition of recounting.
\n2.b. Piel \u05e1\u05e4\u05e8 \u201crecount,\u201d here suggesting iteration. LXX has \u03b4\u03b9\u03b7\u03b3\u03ae\u03c3\u03b7\u03c3\u03b8\u03b5 \u201cdescribe in detail.\u201d
\n2.c. Hithp of \u05e2\u05dc\u05dc implying self-diversion, occupying oneself, and with the prep \u05d1\u05b0\u05bc \u201cin, with\u201d following, doing so with or even against someone or something else. Cf. Num 22:29; 1 Sam 31:4; Jer 38:19; Judg 19:25.
\n2.d. The prep, again, is \u05d1\u05b0\u05bc \u201cin, with\u201d and this clause too is governed by the particle \u05d0\u05b6\u05ea\u05be, indicating that this assertion also is to be a part of the account Moses is to repeat to the generations following. The syntactical emphasis is on \u201cmy signs,\u201d which comes first in the clause.
\n2.e. SamPent adds \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05db\u05e1 \u201cyour God\u201d and a lengthy summary.
\n3.a. The sg form of the verb and the position of Aaron\u2019s name in the sentence suggest that here, as elsewhere, Aaron is a later insertion into the narrative.
\n3.b. \u201cUntil when?,\u201d in this context expressed with growing impatience.
\n3.c. Lit., \u201cUntil when will you refuse to be bowed down from my face (\u05de\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9)?\u201d
\n4.a. Lit., \u201cBehold me causing to come tomorrow.\u2026\u201d
\n4.b. LXX adds \u03c4\u03b1\u03cd\u03c4\u03b7\u03bd \u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u1f65\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd \u201cat this hour.\u201d
\n5.a. Lit., \u201cit.\u201d \u201cThis swarm\u201d is added for clarity.
\n5.b. Here and in v 15 below, the expression is \u201ccover, conceal the eye of the earth.\u201d Cf. BDB, 744\u201345 \u00a7 4.
\n5.c. Lit., \u201cAnd one will not be able to see the earth.\u201d
\n5.d. SamPent reads \u05db\u05dc \u05e2\u05e9\u05d1 \u05d4\u05d0\u05e8\u05e5 \u05e0\u05d0\u05ea \u05db\u05dc \u05e4\u05e8\u05d9 \u05d4\u05e2\u05e5 \u201cevery plant of the earth and the fruit of every tree.\u2026\u201d
\n5.e. See above, n. 9:19.a.
\n6.a. Lit., \u201cThey will not have seen, your fathers and the fathers of your fathers from the day of their being upon the land to this day.\u201d On \u05e2\u05d3 \u05d4\u05d9\u05e8\u05dd \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4 \u201cto this day\u201d see Childs, JBL 82 [1963] 280\u201381.
\n6.b. This verb and the one following are sg in MT, a further indication of the extraneous nature of the Aaron-references in vv 3, 8, and perhaps in 16. Syr. gives the pl. form to both verbs here.
\n7.a. Special waw in this context.
\n7.b. Lit., \u201cUntil when is it to be, this.\u201d \u05d6\u05b6\u05d4 \u201cthis\u201d refers to the continuing and mounting frustration between Moses, reporting Yahweh\u2019s commands and threats, and Pharaoh, resisting, seeming to give in, then resisting with greater vigor still. The conflict leads only to more suffering for Egypt, and so can be termed an impasse.
\n7.c. \u05de\u05d5\u05e7\u05e9\u05bc\u05c1 \u201cruin\u201d a noun derived from \u05d9\u05e7\u05e9\u05bc\u05c1 \u201cset a trap, arrange a lure to destruction,\u201d refers here to the decimation of Egypt and its people the impasse is bringing.
\n7.d. \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05d4\u05d0\u05e0\u05e9\u05bc\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd \u201cthe men\u201d is to be taken in this context as referring to the able-bodied men, the husbands and fathers who will not leave their wives and children except temporarily. Cf., e.g., Gen 3:6; Lev 21:7; Judg 13:6; 1 Sam 25:19.
\n7.e. Lower case is used with \u201cgod\u201d when the Egyptians speak of Yahweh, whom they do not worship.
\n7.f. \u05d4\u05d8\u05e8\u05dd \u05ea\u05d3\u05e2 \u201cDo you yet not know by experience \u2026?\u201d
\n8.a. See n. 7.a.
\n8.b. See n. 3.a.
\n8.c. \u05de\u05d9 \u05d5\u05de\u05d9 \u201cwho, and who?\u201d i.e., \u201cidentify precisely the ones to go.\u201d
\n9.a. Lit., \u201cfor Yahweh\u2019s pilgrimage-worship is for us (\u05dc\u05e0\u05d5).\u201d
\n9.b. \u05d7\u05d2\u05be\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cpilgrimage-worship of Yahweh\u201d occurs only 3 other times in the OT (Lev 23:39; Judg 21:19; Hos 9:5), and in every instance refers to an occasion of worship, a religious festival, involving pilgrimage to an appointed place. Cf. also \u05d7\u05d2 \u05dc\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cpilgrimage-worship to Yahweh,\u201d Exod 13:6.
\n10.a. \u201cYahweh\u201d is set off by quotation marks to indicate the sarcasm and irony of Pharaoh\u2019s reply, which in Hebrew is a play on the verb \u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cbe\u201d and the tetragrammaton derived from it. Pharaoh says, \u201cthe \u2018being one,\u2019 yes, will be with you (\u05d9\u05d4\u05d9 \u05db\u05df \u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u05e2\u05de\u05db\u05dd) when I send out\u201d: one prospect, in a word, is as unlikely as the other.
\n10.b. \u05d8\u05e3 is related to \u05d8\u05e4\u05e3 \u201ctake quick little steps, toddle along,\u201d and refers here as elsewhere to small children.
\n10.c. \u201cFor evil [mischief, wrong \u05e8\u05e2\u05d4] is before your face.\u201d
\n11.a. The SamPent reads \u05dc\u05db\u05df \u201cfor yes, therefore,\u201d instead of \u05dc\u05d0 \u05db\u05df \u201cno, yes,\u201d or \u201cno, indeed.\u201d \u05dc\u05d0 \u05db\u05df occurs 19 X in the OT (see Weil, 53:436), and every case, as here, communicates an emphatic negative. MT is surely right.
\n11.b. \u05d0\u05b9\u05ea\u05d4\u05bc \u201cthat, it\u201d refers here to Pharaoh\u2019s interpretation of what Moses appears to be requesting (permitted by his concession in this verse), as opposed to what he clearly believes Moses really has in mind (v 10); so \u201cclaim to be seeking,\u201d above, for the piel ptcp \u05de\u05b0\u05d1\u05b7\u05e7\u05b0\u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd. Cf. GKC \u00b6 135p, and note also the different view of Weiss (ZAW 76 [1964] 188), who argues that \u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05ea\u05d7 \u201cfor that\u201d should be read \u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05ea \u05d4\u05f3 \u201cfor Yahweh\u201d with \u05d4\u05f3 understood as an abbreviation of the tetragrammaton, a proposal both unlikely and unnecessary.
\n11.c. SamPent, LXX, Syr. read \u201cthey.\u201d
\n12.a. \u05d1\u05d0\u05e8\u05d1\u05d4 lit. means \u201cwith, in, by, through the locust-swarm.\u201d BDB (91, in a special note) suggests \u201cwith,\u201d \u201cthe locusts being conceived as implicit in Moses\u2019 hand,\u201d and proposes the substitution of \u05dc for \u05d1, to give \u201cfor, to, in the direction of, with reference to the locust-swarm.\u201d While the usage is unusual, however, the text need not be emended (cf. also Barth\u00e9lemy, et al., Preliminary and Interim Report, 102) to give a sensible translation. \u201cIn, through\u201d in such a context would signify \u201cbring.\u201d
\n12.b. SamPent \u05d5\u05d0\u05ea \u05db\u05dc \u05e4\u05e8\u05d9 \u05d4\u05e2\u05e5 and LXX \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1 \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u03c1\u03c0\u1f78\u03bd \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03be\u1f7a\u03bb\u03c9\u03bd add \u201cand the fruit of every tree.\u2026\u201d
\n13.a. SamPent and some minuscule codices of LXX read \u201chand\u201d here, as we should expect on the basis of v 12.
\n13.b. LXX has \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03bf\u1f50\u03c1\u03bd\u03cc\u03bd \u201ctowards the heaven\u201d instead of \u201cagainst \u2026 Egypt.\u201d
\n13.c. As BDB (870) notes, this could mean the fierce and hot desert wind, the \u201csirocco.\u201d
\n13.d. \u05e0\u05e9\u05c2\u05d0 \u201craise up, carry, lift, take away.\u201d
\n14.a. Lit., \u201cIn every boundary, territory of Egypt.\u201d
\n15.a. Reading \u05d5\u05b7\u05d4\u05b5\u05bc\u05d4\u05b8\u05e9\u05b5\u05c2\u05e3 from \u05d7\u05e9\u05c2\u05e3 \u201cstrip off, make bare,\u201d for \u05d5\u05b7\u05d4\u05b6\u05bc\u05d7\u05b0\u05e9\u05b7\u05c1\u05da\u05b0 from \u05d7\u05e9\u05c1\u05da \u201cbe dark, grow dark.\u201d Only one real consonantal change is required for this emendation, the substitution of final \u05e4\u200d for the similar final \u05db\u200d. Though a niph form of \u05d7\u05e9\u05c2\u05e3 is not attested in MT, such a reading better fits into the context. Reading the text as it stands gives \u201cso that the earth grew dark,\u201d i.e., from its blanket of locusts. LXX reads \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f10\u03c6\u03b8\u03ac\u03c1\u03b7 \u201cand it was ruined.\u201d
\n15.b. Lit., \u201cthat the hail left remaining.\u201d
\n16.a. \u05de\u05d4\u05e8 \u201chasten\u201d plus special waw in this context.
\n17.a. The full idiom, as in Num 6:26, would be \u05e0\u05e9\u05c2\u05d0 \u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u201clift up face\u201d with regard to Pharaoh\u2019s guilt, a sign of favor in spite of short-coming (see Dhorme, L\u2019emploi m\u00e9taphorique, 46\u201349). Here, in a compression of the idiom, Pharaoh asks that his wrong or guilt be lifted up, i.e., disregarded just this time. \u201cTolerate\u201d is masc. sg in MT, pl. in SamPent and LXX.
\n18.a. \u201cHe.\u201d Moses is obviously intended, and his name, added here for clarity, is included by LXX, Syr., and some Vg mss (so Cavensis and Sixto-Clementina).
\n18.b. LXX has \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03bd \u201cGod.\u201d
\n19.a. \u05e8\u05d5\u05d7\u05be\u05d9\u05dd \u201csea wind\u201d could of course be \u201cwesterly wind.\u201d Cf. Hort\u2019s translation (ZAW 70 [1958] 51), \u201cnorth wind.\u201d
\n19.b. As in v 13 (see n. 13.d above), the verb is \u05e0\u05e9\u05c2\u05d0 \u201craise up.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe narrative of the devastating swarm of locusts, though it is but three verses shorter than the long composite immediately preceding it, is much less awkwardly put together. This narrative appears to have come for the most part from a single source, generally agreed by the commentators to be J. Noth (82), for example, finds J in the \u201cforefront,\u201d with \u201cfragments of a P variant\u201d here and there (vv 12, 13a\u03b1, 20), and Anderson (in Noth\u2019s Pentateuchal Traditions, 268) assigns the account solely to J. Rylaarsdam (\u201cExodus,\u201d IB 1:907) finds \u201cbits of E\u201d (vv 12\u201313a, 20) inserted into J, and Hyatt (121\u201322), E (vv 12\u201313a, 14a, 15b, 20) and a Deuteronomic redaction (vv 1b\u20132) grafted into the \u201cbasic source,\u201d J. Beer (55) assigned vv 12, 13a\u03b1, 14a\u03b1, and 15a to E, the rest to J2, but Beer\u2019s das \u00fcbrige includes vv 24\u201326, 28\u201329 (see also Beer, 57\u201358), a division followed also by Fohrer (\u00dcberlieferung, 65, n. 17, 70\u201372). Beer and Fohrer take this view on the theory that J knew nothing of a darkness-plague and that 10:17 indicates J\u2019s understanding that the terrible swarm of locusts was the last in the sequence of Yahweh\u2019s mighty acts.
\nOnce again, however, the composite sequence of the mighty acts must be considered of first importance, both because that is the sequence in hand, on whose existence and shape we do not therefore need to speculate, and also because that sequence has its own purposeful form. Whatever the Yahwist may or may not have included in his narrative of the mighty acts and however many inconsistencies and non sequiturs there may be in the sequence before us, we have the latter in the received text in its canonical form. The Yahwist\u2019s narrative we have only in pieces, and at that only in some of its pieces, and those in obvious disarray.
\nThe form of this eighth of the mighty-act accounts is dictated, as is the form of each of the others, by the same proof-of-Presence motif that is the key signature of the entire mighty-act sequence (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 7:14\u201325). Any discrepancies it may contain are not of such significance as to disrupt an overarching and inexorable movement. There is a dramatic intensification in the narrative of the mighty acts with the first loss of Egyptian life to the shattering hailstorm, and a rush forward from that seventh mighty act through this one, and the ninth, to the last of them involving the Egyptians, the death of the firstborn and the deliverance of Israel at the sea.
\nEven if 10:24\u201326, 28\u201329 belonged originally to the Yahwist\u2019s account of this eighth mighty act, as Beer and Fohrer hold, these verses nevertheless belong now, quite clearly, to the composite account of the ninth mighty act 10:1\u201320 is thus best taken as an inclusive unit, set off by the same beginning and ending devices as all the other mighty-act accounts.
\nComment
\nThe eighth of the mighty acts, like the one that precedes it and the two that follow it, is life-threatening to the Egyptians. As the seventh mighty act brought death to those who took no shelter before the onslaught of the shattering hailstorm and threatened death by the destruction of the growing crops, so this one complements and then confirms the threat of death by the destruction of every remaining scrap of the battered but still growing crops.
\n1\u20132 Thus again at the very outset of the narrative, there is set an explanation of what is taking place. Yahweh quite emphatically takes responsibility for Pharaoh\u2019s otherwise incredible stubbornness and once again (as in 9:14\u201316) gives his reason for doing so. He wants his existence to be plain to Pharaoh and his court, literally to \u201cauthenticate\u201d himself by means of the mighty acts and in the last place where they might expect him to be with any power\u2014in their very midst. Yet Yahweh has a higher objective still\u2014the proof of his existence to Israel, both the Israel at hand and the Israel yet to be. Again, as throughout the proof-of-Presence sequence, there is a difference in the intended effect of the mighty act upon the Egyptians, who are to be brought to the point where they will take Yahweh and his demands seriously, in their own territory, and upon the Israelites, who are to know by experience that he is all that he claims to be down all the generations. Of special interest is the pointed emphasis upon Moses as the one who is to begin the practice of recounting (2d person singular piel imperfect \u05e1\u05e4\u05e8) the firsthand report of Yahweh\u2019s self-proof in his treatment of the Egyptians, a recounting to be carried from generation to generation to bring Israel experiential knowledge of Yahweh as reality. At its simplest level, this assertion lies at the root of the tradition connecting Moses with the narrative of the Book of Exodus. At a far more profound level, it is an assertion encapsulating the process of oral transmission that is at the foundation of the entire Bible, one of a series of important glimpses at the generation of the testimony of faith through the reporting and the accumulation of eyewitness accounts.
\n3\u20136 As in 9:17, Moses\u2019 exasperation with Pharaoh\u2019s vacillations is suggested, this time more keenly than ever (see nn. 3.b, 3.c). As in each mighty-act account in which Pharaoh is actually confronted (whether the confrontation is commanded only, or carried out, or both), Yahweh\u2019s command is given, and the consequences for disobeying that command are set forth. The consequences, this time, are a locust-swarm of supernatural density and a resultant destruction of every last remaining prospect of food for the future of Egypt. This awful swarm and its dreadful effect are described in vivid detail, and much is made of the fact that nothing in any way comparable to such a visitation has ever occurred before. This is a point insufficiently noted by such interpreters as Hort (ZAW 70 [1958] 49\u201350), who attempt a naturalistic explanation even of the \u201cmass invasion\u201d of the locusts. The narrative of the eighth of the mighty acts goes to considerable lengths to deny the very possibility of any naturalistic explanation, even one of quite extraordinary dimensions (vv 5\u20136, 7, 12\u201315), noting indeed (v 14) that such a visitation of locusts not only never had been, but was never to be again. This locustswarm is not a mere nuisance, as the abundance of frogs was, or a painful inconvenience, as the swarm of flying insects was, but a life-endangering disaster that makes the starvation of the Egyptian people a terrible probability.
\n7\u20139 His prediction made, Moses turns abruptly and leaves Pharaoh and his courtiers to ponder it, as they do immediately and with some anxiety, a further indication of the seriousness of this blow, for in no previous instance have Pharaoh\u2019s advisers acted so. The passion of the courtiers\u2019 appeal to Pharaoh has a note of accusation in it, an implication that his resistance is creating the impasse and bringing on the ruin of Egypt, and more than a hint that he has not counted the cost of his pride. Their plea to Pharaoh, \u201cSend out the men [\u05d4\u05d0\u05e0\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd],\u201d is best taken to mean the adult males (cf. 23:17, 34:23), and not just Moses and Aaron (as Greenberg, e.g., suggests, 163\u2013164).
\nUnder the pressure of his advisers, Pharaoh thus summons Moses to return to the court. Aaron is, here as elsewhere, a later insertion into the narrative. For the first time, Pharaoh gives in to Yahweh\u2019s command, but with a suspicion couched in both a question and a qualification (vv 8, 11). \u05de\u05d9 \u05d5\u05de\u05d9, asks Pharaoh, \u201cWho and who\u201d are to undertake this religious journey? Moses\u2019 reply is direct and uncompromising: everybody is going, and they will take with them their property\u2014\u201cwith our flocks and with our herds.\u201d The point of this language and of Moses\u2019 necessarily inflexible position, is that the worship Yahweh has commanded cannot be qualified in any manner. All Israel must make the pilgrimage and share the experience of the worship of Yahweh, young and old, male and female alike. They are to give themselves to this experience fully, without any distraction posed by anyone or anything left behind. The pilgrimage-worship is to be total, not token, in dimension. Hosea (5:6) picks up this language and gives it a sardonic twist: the total pilgrimage of the harlot-Israel of his time will fail, because Yahweh will have drawn away (\u05d7\u05dc\u05e5) from them (cf. Andersen-Freedman, Hosea, ab 24 [Garden City, NY: Double-day, 1980] 394). Such an idiomatic understanding of the phrase \u201cflocks and herds\u201d is helpful also to the understanding of the shortage of food experienced by Israel in the wilderness a short time later.
\n10\u201311 Moses\u2019 firmness serves, however, to confirm Pharaoh\u2019s suspicions, in actuality quite accurate ones, that the \u201cpilgrimage\u201d is really a flight. Thus does he rail out, in a sarcastic and quite clever word-play on the meaning of the tetragrammaton, \u201c \u2018Yahweh\u2019 will indeed be with you when I fall for such a request as that!\u201d Not yet has Pharaoh come to believe that any \u201cOne who always Is\u201d can at last get the best of him, a point which this arrogant play on the name Yahweh makes with brilliant deftness. Thus Moses is accused of \u201cno good, mischief\u201d (\u05e8\u05e2\u05d4), told that the most that is to be conceded is that the able-bodied men may go to worship \u201cYahweh,\u201d and thrown out. The suspicion Pharaoh already has is confirmed by the unusual nature of Moses\u2019 request, that all people and property go on the sort of pilgrimage worship generally required only of men (23:17)\u2014though the attribution of such detailed knowledge to an Egyptian Pharaoh is one of many special touches underscoring the theological nature of the narrative sections of the Book of Exodus.
\n12\u201315 Since Pharaoh\u2019s limited concession amounts to yet another refusal, Yahweh commands a Moses, whom we can imagine to have been eagerly ready, to bring on the locust-swarm. Again the severity of the effect of this mighty act is stressed, first in prediction, then in description. Yahweh\u2019s action is described not as creating the locust-swarm, either from dust or any other substance at hand, but rather he sends a strong easterly wind which rounds up the locusts in a day and a night and blows them across into Egypt from the Sinai peninsula. They cover the land of Egypt from border to border. No mention is made of Goshen, but the locust swarm would pose no threat to the people of Israel, who are shortly to be gone in any case. Again the incredible extent of the locust-swarm is stressed, and their life-threatening decimation of the living food supply is described in detail.
\n16\u201317 The fearful peril into which Egypt is plunged by such a situation is further dramatized by Pharaoh\u2019s immediate response. \u201cAs quickly as possible,\u201d he summons Moses (Aaron is, as everywhere else, a later insertion into the narrative), and admits that he has \u201cwronged\u201d(\u05d7\u05d8\u05d0) both Moses\u2019 God Yahweh and Moses himself. We are left to assume what this wrong is, in specific terms, but vv 10\u201311 leave us with the impression that the \u201cwrong\u201d was Pharaoh\u2019s angry suspicion of Moses\u2019 motives and his peremptory ejection of Moses from his presence. Pharaoh is thus represented as asking, in the idiom of the priestly blessing of Num 6:26, that his \u201cguilt\u201d (\u05d7\u05d8\u05d0\u05ea\u05d9) be \u201clifted up, raised,\u201d and not held against him, thus \u201ctolerated.\u201d His tone here, by contrast to his earlier arrogant fury, is conciliatory, and almost pleading: \u201cplease \u2026 this once \u2026 pray \u2026 only.\u201d
\nPharaoh indeed has not been in such straits before. Not even had the terrible destruction of the hailstorm, the mighty act that took the first Egyptian lives, stirred in him such panic, for once ended, the hailstorm left hope amidst destruction in the living men, animals, and crops. These locusts, however, were systematically and thoroughly cutting off Egypt\u2019s future. The only word for it is Pharaoh\u2019s chilling description: \u05d4\u05de\u05d5\u05ea \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4 \u201cthis death,\u201d a still further echo of the frightening prospect brought by the worst of the mighty acts to this point.
\n18\u201320 Once more, then, Moses prays to Yahweh, and once more Yahweh answers his prayer for the relief of Egypt. The locust swarm is removed as it was collected and brought, by the movement of a wind, described this time as \u05e8\u05d5\u05d7\u05be\u05d9\u05dd \u05d7\u05d6\u05e7 \u05de\u05d0\u05d3 \u201ca very strong sea wind.\u201d
\n\u05e8\u05d5\u05d7\u05be\u05d9\u05dd is often translated \u201cwest wind,\u201d because of the orientation of the land of Israel to the Mediterranean Sea to the west. As the sea is not to the west of Egypt, however, the more literal translation above is preferable. The locust swarm is blown by this wind into the \u05d9\u05dd \u05e1\u05d5\u05e3 \u201cSea of Reeds,\u201d the sea which Israel is later to cross in exodus from Egypt, and the miraculous nature of the mighty act is emphasized by the pointed statement that every single locust was removed from the whole territory of Egypt.
\nYahweh\u2019s proof of his Presence in Egypt was not yet at an end, however. And so once again, he made Pharaoh obstinate-minded: even after the removal of the locust swarm, Pharaoh proved intractable yet again.
\nExplanation
\nFrom the terrible theophanic hailstorm in which Egyptian lives are first taken, this eighth mighty-act narrative moves forward with the supernatural locust swarm to a set of circumstances in which all Egyptian lives are threatened. The pace of events appears to have quickened; the seriousness of the proving deeds has intensified. Pharaoh and his advisers have lost some of their cocky arrogance; the patience of both Moses and his God, Yahweh, is clearly wearing thin. The whole impression is of an accelerating rush toward some awful resolution to the impasse, a resolution that will at last mean freedom for the Israelites but terrible consequences for Pharaoh and his Egyptians.
\nThe tenor of the proof-of-Presence sequence has moved from contest to increasingly difficult defeat to death, and now, to a prospect of extermination by starvation. The resistance of Pharaoh has moved from proud and resolute leadership to courageous perseverance to petulant stubbornness to a kind of sick denial to an obstinancy beyond any human explanation. Israel, we may only presume, must witness all this with a steadily growing reverence for a God whose claim of Presence has been cumulatively established.
\nThere is a gripping sense of increasing desperation on the part of all the protagonists, except for Yahweh alone. He quite plainly knows what he is about, and we ourselves are drawn ever more surely and swiftly, along with Israel, into a sharing of some part, at least of that knowledge.
\nAbove all, there is in this composite in its context a sense of growing urgency. Pharaoh\u2019s attitude and that of the members of his court, alongside the increased severity of the mighty acts, make it plain that we have moved beyond the point of return. And at both the beginning and end of this section (vv 1\u20132 and 20), we are told quite explicitly who is in charge of these events, and why.
\nThe Ninth Mighty Act (10:21\u201329)
\nBibliography
\nFrankfort, H. Ancient Egyptian Religion. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1961. Halevi, Z\u2019ev ben Shimon. Kabbalah and Exodus. Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications, 1980. Hort, G. \u201cThe Plagues of Egypt,\u201d II. ZAW 70 (1958) 48\u201359. Labuschagne, C. J. \u201cThe Emphasizing Particle Gam and Its Connotations.\u201d Studia Biblica et Semitica. Wageningen: H. Veenman and Sons, 1966. R\u00fcger, H. P. \u201cZum Text von Sir 40:10 und Ex 10:21.\u201d ZAW 82 (1970) 103\u20139.
\nTranslation
\n21 Next, Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cThrust out your hand against the heavens, and there will be darkness upon the land of Egypt, a darkness so thick people will have to feel their way around.\u201d 22 Thus Moses thrust out his hand against the heavens, and immediately there was eerie darkness in the whole land of Egypt, three days in duration. 23 No man could see his neighbor, and no man could dispel the darkness for three days. All the sons of Israel, however, had light in their dwelling-places.
\n24 So Pharaoh summoned Moses, then said, \u201cGo ahead\u2014worship Yahweh. Just leave behind your flocks and your herds; even your toddlers may go along with you.\u201d 25 Moses replied, however, \u201cYou must also make it possible for us to make sacrifices and offerings to Yahweh our God. 26 Even our livestock is to go with us; not a hoof is to remain here, for from our own possessions we must take the means of the worship of Yahweh our God, and we have no way of knowing what is to be the means of our worship of Yahweh until we come there.\u201d
\n27 At that very moment, Yahweh made Pharaoh\u2019s mind obstinate, and he did not consent to their going out. 28 Indeed, Pharaoh said to him, \u201cGet out! Be sure for your own good that you never again look upon my face, for on the day you see my face, you will die!\u201d 29 Moses retorted, \u201cWhatever you say\u2014I will not again see your face!\u201d
\nNotes
\n21.a. \u05d5\u05d9\u05de\u05e9\u05c1 \u05d7\u05e9\u05c1\u05da, lit., \u201cand darkness will cause to grope,\u201d read above as \u201ca darkness \u2026 way around\u201d for clarity. The verb \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05e9\u05c1 is used also of Laban feeling about in Jacob\u2019s tents (Gen 31:34) and groping through Jacob\u2019s packed-up goods (Gen 31:37) in search of his missing Teraphim, and of the blind \u201cfeeling around anxiously\u201d (Deut 28:29).
\n22.a. Special waw in this context.
\n22.b. \u05d7\u05e9\u05c1\u05d3 \u05d0\u05e4\u05dc\u05d4 is \u201cdarkness of calamity,\u201d quite lit., the darkness of a supernatural gloom or danger. LXX adds \u03b8\u03cd\u03b5\u03bb\u03bb\u03b1 \u201cstorm, squall,\u201d to give \u201cdarkness, a storm upon.\u2026\u201d
\n23.a. Lit., \u201cno man could stand up, rise up, from under it\u201d; no man could counteract its effect.
\n24.a. LXX and Vg add \u201cand Aaron.\u201d SamPent has \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05de\u05e9\u05d4 \u05d5\u05d0\u05d4\u05e8\u05df \u201cto Moses and to Aaron.\u201d
\n24.b. LXX, Syr. add \u201cyour God.\u201d
\n25.a. LXX, Vg read \u201cyou are to give us\u201d; see Comment.
\n26.a. \u05de\u05de\u05e0\u05d5 \u201cfrom it,\u201d in reference to the livestock, the Israelites\u2019 own property, and \u201cwealth.\u201d Moses\u2019 point is consistent with the requirements of worship specified throughout the OT: the sacrifice or offering must be costly to the worshiper, must be his own gift.
\n26.b. \u05dc\u05e2\u05d1\u05d3 \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cto serve Yahweh,\u201d is employed consistently through the mighty act sequence in this sense.
\n26.c. Emphatic usage, expressed by the independent pers pronoun plus the 1st com pl. form of the verb \u05d9\u05d3\u05e2 \u201cknow by experience.\u201d
\n26.d. Lit., \u201cwe do not know.\u201d
\n27.a. Special waw plus piel of \u05d7\u05d6\u05e7 \u201cmake obstinate.\u201d
\n28.a. Lit., \u201cGet from upon me!\u201d
\n28.b. L reads \u05d0\u05b6\u05dc \u201ctoward,\u201d thus \u201cguard yourself toward you adding to see my face.\u201d But mss published by Kennicott, de Rossi, and Ginsburg read \u05d0\u05b7\u05dc \u201cnot,\u201d thus \u201cguard yourself that you not add \u2026\u201d which is the more probable reading.
\n29.a. Special waw plus \u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201csay\u201d in this context.
\n29.b. \u05db\u05da \u05d3\u05d1\u05e8\u05ea \u201cThus, yes, you have spoken.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe abrupt beginning and the strange sequence of this ninth of the mightyact accounts have led commentators to the opinion that it is an incomplete composite, even an amalgam, including material that belongs to a separate mighty-act narrative altogether. The account opens with Yahweh\u2019s command to Moses to bring on the terrible darkness, without the usual confrontation, command, and warning of Pharaoh. Indeed, the first part of 10:21 is nearly identical in wording (only the sign of the definite object, \u05d0\u05ea, is missing before \u05d9\u05d3\u05da \u201cyour hand\u201d here) to the first part of 9:22, which is the tenth verse of the narrative of the eighth mighty-act account.
\nFurther, this account moves from the command and arrival of the terrible darkness (vv 21\u201323) to negotiations so unsuccessful that Pharaoh breaks them off utterly and forever, on pain of death to Moses (vv 24\u201329). Missing is the usual verbal relenting of Pharaoh, heretofore withdrawn with the hardening of his mind. Indeed, Yahweh hardens Pharaoh\u2019s mind as the negotiations are in progress, and the inevitable result is furious and total impasse and an irreconcilable break between the two primary negotiators, Pharaoh and Moses.
\nAs noted already (cf. Form\/Structure\/Setting on 10:1\u201320) some critics attempt to. explain this unusual sequence by relocating parts of this account. Fohrer (\u00dcberlieferung, 63, 70), e.g., assigns vv 24\u201326, 28\u201329 to J\u2019s account of the eighth mighty act, as does Hyatt (125\u201326), on the view that J produced no narrative of a mighty act involving darkness. Both Fohrer and Hyatt follow the lead of Beer (55\u201358), and all three assign vv 21\u201323 and 27 to E, who alone, by their view, preserved an account of a mighty act that brought darkness. Noth (83\u201384), on the other hand, finds \u201celements of a short P version in 10:21 f., 27\u201d into which the J material has been amalgamated.
\nAdditional difficulties are posed by the specific notation (vv 22\u201323) that the terrible darkness is to last for three days; by the ambiguity of the time of Pharaoh\u2019s summons of Moses (v 24), whether it was during the darkness or following it; and by the implication of 11:7\u20138 that, even after the unconditional finality of 10:27\u201329, Moses is once again facing Pharaoh (see below). Greenberg, who does not follow a source-documentary approach, even proposes (Understanding Exodus, 165\u201392) the reading of 10:21\u201329; 11:4\u20138, then 11:1\u20133 and 11:9\u201310 in sequence, according to an elaborate theory by which \u201cthe substance of the plagues\u201d is contained in \u201ctwo sets of three plagues each,\u201d \u201ccapped\u201d by the climactic death of the firstborn of Egypt.
\nThe possibilities are many, of course, and are limited finally only by the extent to which their speculation reaches. The more complicated and apparently disjointed the sequence, however, the more we must remind ourselves of the integrity of the text in its canonical form. These compilations cannot have been made arbitrarily, with no thought to the point and impression they would present. They are deliberate, and they are what we have in hand from a time far closer to the events and a living theological interpretation of them than any speculation about them and any rearrangement of them can possibly be. Once again, it is important that we begin and end with what we have in certainty, and we must remember that however valuable speculation is about what these texts may once have been, we are not to lose sight of their impact and meaning as they stand, in the canonical form of the received text.
\nThe unusual sequence of this account of the ninth mighty act is dictated by its content. The terrible darkness, despite the fact that it causes no death and is of prescribed duration, is presented as the most fearful and ominous of the mighty acts in the sequence to this point. The proof-of-Presence sequence rushes forward with quickened pace from the seventh mighty act to its terrible climax, and with this ninth mighty act, at least in the compilation before us, the usual protocols are dispensed with entirely. The warnings to Pharaoh have had no effect heretofore; this time, there is no warning. The terrible darkness falls suddenly, with paralyzing density. In the context of all that has happened, and in view of the fact that the Israelites have light still, there can be no doubt about the nature of the darkness and its source.
\nThus Pharaoh summons Moses yet again, makes a \u201cfinal\u201d offer, is rejected, and, once more made obstinate by Yahweh, erupts in a violent fury. Moses responds in kind and stalks out. Human negotiation is brought to an abrupt end. Yahweh must become the prime mover, and this he does. From this point forward, Moses recedes even further from the center of the narrative.
\nThe form of the ninth mighty-act account thus is an accurate reflection of the agitation and the penultimate crisis it presents. It is a compilation to this very end, and this is a fact the search for its sources must not be allowed to obscure.
\nComment
\n21\u201323 The darkness that Yahweh brings upon the signal of Moses\u2019 thrustout hand must be understood as entirely supernatural if the point and the position of the ninth of the mighty acts are to be appreciated. This is not a khamsin, even of such extraordinary dimension and effect as the one imagined by Hort (ZAW 70 [1958] 52\u201354), nor is there any basis in the narrative for describing what occurs here as an eclipse of the sun (Knight, 79\u201380).
\nThis darkness is inexplicable, comparable to nothing the Egyptians or the Israelites have ever before known, so thick as to suggest palpability, and \u201ceerie,\u201d heavy with impending calamity, \u05d5\u05d9\u05de\u05e9\u05c1 \u05d7\u05e9\u05c1\u05da\u05b7 has been variously translated as darkness that could be \u201cfelt\u201d or \u201ctouched.\u201d H. P. R\u00fcger has reviewed (ZAW 82 [1970] 108\u20139) a series of suggested emendations, and proposed from the occurrence of \u05ea\u05de\u05d5\u05e9 in Sir 40:10 and cognate usage in Mishnaic Hebrew and Arabic that \u05d5\u05d9\u05de\u05d3 \u05d7\u05e9\u05c1\u05da in v 21 should here be considered a \u201cdoublet\u201d with \u05d5\u05d9\u05d4\u05d9 \u05d7\u05e9\u05c1\u05da in v 22b, and read \u201cand darkness will arrive\u201d following \u201cstick out your hand that darkness.\u2026\u201d As R\u00fcger proposes, \u201cdarkness\u201d is the subject of the verb \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cgrope,\u201d but as that verb is pointed in MT as a 3d person masculine singular hiphil imperfect, the text quite literally says \u201cand darkness will cause groping,\u201d that is, the darkness will be so thick as to require people to feel their way about.
\nThis darkness is \u05d7\u05e9\u05c1\u05da\u05be\u05d0\u05e4\u05dc\u05d4 \u201ceerie darkness,\u201d the darkness of calamity, quite probably divine calamity. Most of the occurrences of \u05d0\u05e4\u05dc\u05d4 refer to the unnatural and fearsome darkness of the Day of Yahweh (cf. Isa 8:22; Joel 2:1; Zeph 1:15; see also Deut 28:29; Amos 5:20; Isa 58:10; 59:9). It is unquestionably a supernatural darkness, thus all the more terrible and frightening. No man could see the person next to him, and no man could do anything to cancel or ward off the thick darkness. Only the sons of Israel had any light at all, and that in their \u05de\u05d5\u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05d5\u05ea \u201cdwelling places,\u201d probably to be taken, as Hyatt (127) suggests, as their very houses.
\n24 Faced with so obvious and frightening an act of the God of the \u201cHebrews,\u201d Pharaoh commands the presence of Moses. His fullest capitulation, the release of all but the Israelite livestock without restriction as to the place or the duration of their pilgrimage, can be understood only in the context of a mighty act far worse than anything that has happened before. This calamitous darkness is precisely that, for it has shut out the sun\u2019s rays, Egypt\u2019s chief source of creative life (cf. Frankfort, Egyptian Religion, 14\u201322). Chap. 17 of The book of the Dead includes these words (ANET3, 4):
\n\u201cI am he among the gods who cannot be repulsed.\u201d
\nWho is he? He is Atum, who is in his sun disc.
\n(Another Version: He is Re, when he arises on the eastern horizon of heaven.)
\nCommenting on these lines, translator John A. Wilson (ANET3, 4, n. 9) has written, \u201cThe eternally rising sun cannot be destroyed.\u201d So all Egyptians believed, above all the supposedly divine Pharaoh. But when for three days the eternally rising sun made no appearance, and that in the aftermath of the killing hail and the decimating locusts, fear was as thick as the darkness, and Pharaoh had to act. Thus were given the sudden call for Moses and the order of release which held back only livestock. Pharaoh is depicted attempting to hold onto one last fragment of pride, and even an earnest of the return of the \u201cHebrews\u201d from their pilgrimage-worship.
\n25\u201326 Moses, however, has tasted triumph, and in any case he cannot leave behind the property from which the Israelites must take their expressions of worship. Labuschagne\u2019s translation (Studia, 202) of \u05d5\u05d2\u05dd \u2026 \u05d2\u05dd in this sequence to mean that Moses is asking Pharaoh for animals for the sacrifices of the pilgrimage-worship in addition to the release of Israelites\u2019 own livestock is unacceptable. So also is the subjunctive circumlocution of Hyatt (127). \u201cMake it possible for us\u201d is literally \u201cgive into our hands\u201d in terms of granting authority over (cf. Judg 9:19; Deut 24:1\u20134) and thus, here, making possible the Israelites\u2019 worship by sacrifice in the release to them of their own animals.
\nThis point is all the more important in view of Moses\u2019 argument that the means of their worship must come from their own possessions, a requirement to be made more specific upon their arrival at the place of pilgrimage, as opposed to animals they might locate and pick up, somehow, along the way. Such sacrifices would be no sacrifices, because they would cost the sons of Israel nothing.
\n27\u201328 Pharaoh\u2019s own response to this reasonable request, which would nevertheless be suspected by a skeptical and misunderstanding foreigner, is not given. Immediately, we are told, Yahweh made Pharaoh\u2019s mind once more obstinate to the release of the \u201cHebrews,\u201d and he flew into an uncontrollable rage. This rage, like Pharaoh\u2019s intransigence following earlier promises he had made, and like the frightening and supernatural darkness, can only be from Yahweh. No other explanation is possible under the circumstances.
\n29 Moses takes Pharaoh at his word. In a response tinged with the irony of the knowledge that Pharaoh himself may very well yet ask for him to come back, Moses responds to Pharaoh\u2019s command of banishment, \u201cJust as you say!\u201d
\nExplanation
\nThe point of this ninth of the mighty-act accounts is made in part by the location of the account, in part by the serious calamity of unbroken darkness in a land so accustomed to and dependent upon the sun as Egypt, and in part by the altogether supernatural aspect of the eerie darkness that cannot be dispelled yet does not somehow afflict the sons of Israel in their dwelling places. Following upon the supernatural hailstorm that beats the standing crops into pulp and the supernatural locust swarm that devours what is left to sprout and grow, this darkness blocking out the sun is an awesome threat of total and final extinction. The Kabbalists, for all their allegorical excesses, interpreted the ninth mighty act accurately when they described it as \u201cthe curtailment of the Hokhmah or the life force\u201d (Halevi, Kabbalah and Exodus, 73).
\nThis point is reinforced by the unusual form of the narrative setting it forth, a form that disregards the usual sequence and presents an account tumbling over itself with urgency and alarm. What has been taken by some critics as evidence of patchy editorial work and an inconsistent text may be in fact an entirely deliberate attempt to present the high tension of the continuing confrontations of Moses and Pharaoh coming to climax in frustrating impasse and failure.
\nStill further reinforcement is provided by the language of the account, which describes the darkness as impenetrably thick and completely resistant to the Egyptians\u2019 light and as retreating before the Israelites\u2019 light. It is language used in an array of passages to refer to the supernatural judgment darkness of the Day of Yahweh. Insufficient emphasis has been placed on this language and upon the darkness as entirely unnatural and related to the move of Yahweh toward a settlement of the issue of the freedom of the Israelites in the climactic mighty act of the proof of this Presence in Egypt.
\nIndeed, the complete breakdown of the negotiations between Moses and Pharaoh needs to be seen as the intended catalyst to the tenth and final mighty act in Egypt. For the first time, Yahweh moves to make Pharaoh obstinate during the negotiations. Heretofore he has made Pharaoh stubborn after he has agreed to Moses\u2019 demands, after Yahweh\u2019s mighty action has ceased and before Moses can leave with the sons of Israel. This time, Yahweh causes Pharaoh to turn obstinate during the negotiations themselves, to grow angry, and to banish Moses on pain of death. No further human mediation is possible. Moses\u2019 attempts on Israel\u2019s behalf have failed utterly because of Yahweh\u2019s own intrusions into Pharaoh\u2019s decision-making. Now Moses cannot even attempt further negotiations. The Israelites are not only no nearer freedom, they are farther from it than ever.
\nThere is no longer any place to turn, no longer anyone to whom petition can be made, no longer anyone to do the turning and the petitioning. As happens so often in the biblical narrative, every human endeavor stands exhausted, and every apparent alternative has been used without success. What is left? What can even God do? The dream of freedom lies smashed. Yahweh\u2019s deliverer may have difficulty delivering even himself. All Yahweh\u2019s promises remain unfulfilled. He has proved his Presence, but to what avail? The expectations of the Israelites have been brought to nothing.
\nThe moment is like that of the scattering and the confusion of Babel, like the moment of the command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Moriah, like the moment of the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 b.c., and like the moment of the death of Jesus on the cross. Nothing more can be done, clearly. Yet the promises are promises of God, so how can nothing more be done?
\nIn this stark contradiction, the point of this special section is to be seen, and we are made ready for what is to come.
\nThe Tenth Mighty Act Anticipated (11:1\u201310)
\nBibliography
\nCoats, G. W. \u201cDespoiling the Egyptians.\u201d VT 18 (1968) 450\u201357. Durham, J. I. The Senses Touch, Taste, and Smell in Old Testament Religion. Unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1963. Fensham, F. C. \u201cThe Dog in Ex. XI 7.\u201d VT 16 (1966) 504\u20137. Morgenstern, J. \u201cThe Despoiling of the Egyptians.\u201d JBL 68 (1949) 1\u201328. Thomas, D. W. \u201cKELEBH \u2018Dog\u2019: Its Origin and Some Usages of It in the Old Testament.\u201d VT 10 (1960) 410\u201327.
\nTranslation
\n1 Next, Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cOne final stroke of judgment will I bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt: after that, he will send you out from there without any restrictions. In fact, he will throw you out of Egypt. 2 Speak promptly, instruct the people to ask, each man and woman of their neighbors, articles of silver and gold.\u201d 3 Then Yahweh gave the people credibility in the opinion of the Egyptians. The man Moses also was very great in the land of Egypt, in the opinion of the members of Pharaoh\u2019s court and in the opinion of the people.
\n4 So Moses said, \u201cThus says Yahweh, \u2018Around the middle of the night, I will go out into the midst of the Egyptians. 5 All the firstborn of the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, the occupant of the royal throne, to the firstborn of the servant-girl who grinds with the hand-mill, and all the first-born of the cattle as well. 6 There will be a great cry of anguish through the whole land of Egypt, unlike any that has ever been heard or that is ever to be heard again. 7 As regards the sons of Israel, however, not even a dog shall show malice towards either man or beast, so that you may know without question that Yahweh has separated Israel from the Egyptians.\u2019 8 And all these members of your court will flock to me and prostrate themselves in homage before me, saying, \u2018Go out, you and all the people who follow after you.\u2019 Then will I indeed go out.\u201d With that, Moses went out from Pharaoh\u2019s presence burning with anger.
\n9 Then Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cPharaoh will pay no attention to you: my purpose b is that my wondrous deeds may be many in the land of Egypt.\u201d 10 So Moses and Aaron did all these wondrous deeds in Pharaoh\u2019s presence, and Yahweh made Pharaoh\u2019s heart obstinate, and he did not send out the sons of Israel from his land.
\nNotes
\n1.a. \u05d0\u05d7\u05d3 \u2026 \u05e2\u05d5\u05d3 \u201cyet one, still one\u201d; the context suggests \u201cone final.\u201d
\n1.b. \u05e0\u05d2\u05e2 \u201cstroke\u201d occurs 77X in the OT, 62X in reference to the \u201ctouch-mark of skin-disease\u201d (see above, n. 4:6.d.) regarded as the result of Yahweh\u2019s judgment, and 15x in reference to various kinds of \u201ctouching\u201d in judgment. The term is used only here in reference to any of the mighty acts, and in this context suggests something more than the general word \u201cplague.\u201d See Durham, Touch, Taste, and Smell, 30\u201347.
\n1.c. \u05db\u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7\u05d5 \u05db\u05dc\u05d4 \u201cas for his sending, it is complete.\u201d LXX reads \u05db\u05dc\u05d4 with \u05d2\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1 \u05d9\u05d2\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1 \u201che will throw you out\u201d: \u03c3\u1f7a\u03bd \u03c0\u03b1\u03bd\u03c0\u1f76 \u1f10\u03ba\u03b2\u03b1\u03bb\u03b5\u03b9\u03bc \u1f50\u03bc\u03b1\u03c2 \u1f10\u03ba\u03b2\u03bf\u03bb\u1fc7 \u201cwith everything he will throw you out.\u201d \u05db\u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7\u05d5, the Masoretic tradition of L notes, occurs only here in the OT, and the unusual syntax of the verse has led to a variety of interpretations, ancient and modern (cf. neb; Morgenstern, JBL 68 [1949] 1\u20135). The clear point of the narrative, however, is a complete exodus; heretofore Pharaoh has been willing to permit only a partial going out, sans family or sans cattle. Yahweh now announces an exodus without limitations, exactly what the tenth mighty act brings about.
\n1.d. The emphasis is indicated by the use of the inf abs with the piel of \u05d2\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cdrive out,\u201d by itself a verb indicating violent action. See BDB, 176.
\n2.a. Lit., \u201cPray speak into the ears of the people.\u201d Moses is to be sure the people understand what is clearly a strange request.
\n2.b. In 3:22 and 12:35, \u05e9\u05c2\u05de\u05dc\u05ea \u201cgarments\u201d is added to \u201carticles of silver and gold,\u201d and LXX and SamPent include \u201cgarments\u201d here.
\n3.a. SamPent begins the verse with a 1st pers verb and has Yahweh giving an extended summary of his tenth mighty act.
\n3.b. \u05d7\u05df \u201cgrace, favor,\u201d here an attractiveness or trustworthiness that renders the Egyptians willing to part with their valuables.
\n3.c. Both SamPent and LXX add \u201cso they gave what was requested.\u201d
\n5.a. \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8 \u05d0\u05d7\u05e8 \u201cwho is behind\u201d the pair of stones of a grinding-mill (cf. ANEP, 46, no. 149). The servant-girl grinding grain for bread represents the opposite pole of human existence from the Pharaoh, enthroned in power. Note \u201cThe Instruction of the Vizier Ptah-Hotep,\u201d 11. 50\u201365 (ANET3, 412).
\n5.b. Domesticated animals, thus personal property, are in view here. SamPent \u05e2\u05d3 \u05d1\u05db\u05d5\u05e8 \u05db\u05dc \u05d1\u05d4\u05de\u05d4 and LXX \u1f14\u03c9\u03c2 \u03c0\u03c1\u03c9\u03c4\u03bf\u03c4\u03cc\u03ba\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c0\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u1f78\u03c2 \u03ba\u03c4\u1f74\u03bd\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 read \u201cright up to the firstborn of all the cattle.\u201d
\n6.a. See Ps 9:13[12]; Isa 5:7; Job 27:9; 1 Sam 4:14; and BDB, 858.
\n6.b. \u05db\u05b8\u05bc\u05de\u05b9\u05d4\u05d5\u05bc, lit., \u201cthe like of him,\u201d masc. sg pronom suff \u05e6\u05e2\u05e7\u05d4 \u201ccry of anguish\u201d is a fem. noun, and the two verbs in this sequence are fern sg SamPent and some Masoretic notes (see Cassuto, 133) read \u05db\u05b7\u05bc\u05de\u05d5\u05b9\u05d4\u05b8 for this reason, but the change is unnecessary. The reference is to the cry of anguish but also to the whole context prompting it, so the use of the broader masc. suff.
\n6.c. The text reads lit. \u201cthe like of it has not been [niph pf of \u05d4\u05d9\u05d4] and the like of it will not cause to add [increase, hiph impf. of \u05d9\u05e1\u05e3].\u201d
\n7.a. A dog (or a man, Josh 10:21) \u201csharpening his tongue\u201d describes an attitude of malice and opposition much like the expressions \u201che curled his lip\u201d and \u201che bared his teeth.\u201d There is no support for the view of Fensham (VT 16 [1966] 505\u20137) that the expression is a curse involving the licking of the blood and the flesh of a vanquished enemy.
\n7.b. \u05d1\u05d4\u05de\u05d4 \u201cbeast\u201d is used here in its collective sense (BDB, 96) to represent the other end of the gamut of Israelite life, \u201cfrom man all the way to beast.\u201d
\n7.c. This emphasis is indicated not only by the use of \u05d9\u05d3\u05e2 \u201cknow,\u201d but also by the addition of nun paragogicum (see GKC \u00a7 47m). SamPent and LXX make it sg, without the nun. MT\u2019s pl. suggests these words are addressed to Pharaoh and his court.
\n7.d. SamPent has \u05d9\u05e4\u05dc\u05d0 \u201che worked a wonder\u201d instead of \u05d9\u05e4\u05dc\u05d4 \u201che separated,\u201d thus \u201cYahweh has worked a wonder between the Egyptians and Israel.\u201d
\n8.a. MT has \u201che.\u201d Moses is clearly the antecedent of this pronoun; thus his name is addict above for clarity.
\n9.a. \u05dc\u05de\u05e2\u05df \u201cin order that, so that.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThis section, like the one before it, is a composite. Three sources are represented, two of them announcing the final and most devastating blow in the sequence of mighty acts in Egypt. Once again, the disjointedness of the pericope must not be allowed to obscure the reason for its presentation in the form before us. The purpose of this section is twofold: the introduction of the tenth mighty act and the instruction for the despoiling of Israel\u2019s Egyptian neighbors, anticipated in 3:21\u201322. The arrangement of this section must be seen not only as dictated by the flow of the narrative to follow, but also by the complex interweaving of the narratives of the tenth mighty act and the exodus from Egypt with the cultic and narrative material dealing with Passover.
\nThe proposed rearrangements of this material (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 10:1\u201320, 21\u201329), interesting enough as studies of the content and sequence of some of the sources reflected in the Book of Exodus, almost invariably serve to deflect attention from the more important matter at hand: an understanding of the text in its composite form.
\nSource critics have generally divided Exod 11 into three sections, each from a different source: vv 1\u20133 are assigned to E, vv 4\u20138 to J, vv 9\u201310 to P (Beer, 12, 58; Fohrer assigns v 1 to E, vv 2\u20133 to his \u201cnomadic\u201d source, \u00dcberlieferung 60\u201362, 72\u201373, 81\u201385, 124; Hyatt, 129; Childs, 131). These divisions are obvious ones, but the content of the three sections is less clearly complementary than in the previous mighty-act composites.
\nIndeed, each section within this composite has its own and separate purpose. This fact, along with the movement into the foreground of the action of Yahweh and the insertion into the larger narrative of the specification of the sacral commemoration of the exodus from Egypt, has made necessary an alteration of the form of the mighty-act narrative that has been followed generally up to this point.
\nThe first section (vv 1\u20133) thus deals primarily with the \u201cdespoiling theme,\u201d a variation on the theme of the triumph of Yahweh over Egypt and Egypt\u2019s gods. The mention of the tenth mighty act here (v 1) is necessary as the basis for the despoiling story and the exodus, without which the despoiling could not occur. The second section (vv 4\u20138) deals primarily with the tenth mighty act and its result. The address of these verses at first seems ambiguous. The obvious address of the instructions of v 2 to Israel and the plural verb (\u201cso that you may know\u201d) of v 7 have led some interpreters (Noth, 94) to think of Moses as speaking here to Israel as well. Vv 7\u20138 make clear, however, that Pharaoh is being addressed, by the contrast of the fate of the Israelites with that of the Egyptians, by the reference to the members of Pharaoh\u2019s court, and by the report of Moses\u2019 angry departure from Pharaoh\u2019s presence. The third section (vv 9\u201310) is a kind of summary review, as before, indicating by the hardening of the heart motif the reason for the array of mighty acts and for their failure to this point, and anticipating the movement of Yahweh into prominence.
\nTogether, these three sections provide a skillful transition from the first nine mighty-act accounts, in which Moses (with the addition of \u201cand Aaron\u201d) is presented as Yahweh\u2019s prophetic messenger, to the account of the allimportant tenth mighty act, in which Yahweh acts for himself. Indeed, from this point forward, Yahweh is increasingly in the foreground, and Moses is increasingly in the background until the rebellion of Israel and its aftermath, in chaps. 32\u201334.
\nFurther, Exod 11 sums up as it looks forward (compare v 1 with vv 9\u201310), and provides the necessary foundation for the Priestly material on Passover given immediately in chap. 12. The unity of this sequence is thus provided above all by its location between the preparatory first nine mighty acts and the climactic tenth mighty act and the exodus which that act makes possible. The number of the mighty acts in the separate sequences of the sources, their order, and their emphasis are not questions to be addressed to the composite that presents them as ten, in a succession of rising disaster and with the single emphasis of the proof of Yahweh\u2019s powerful Presence. What is most important about Exod 11 is its suggestion as a whole, and not its confusion in parts.
\nComment
\n1 The reference to \u201cyet another\u201d or \u201cone final\u201d blow against the Egyptians, one Yahweh himself is to bring and one that will prompt Pharaoh to compel Israel by force to leave Egypt, has been anticipated in the narrative of Exodus at 3:19\u201320 and 6:1. When, in the sequence of the mighty acts, Pharaoh has shown any willingness to compromise, he has done so each time with restrictions wholly unacceptable to Yahweh and therefore to Moses. This time, Yahweh declares, there will be no restrictions, and Pharaoh will be so eager to be rid of the Israelites that he will literally drive them out of the country. In an intriguing juxtaposition of themes, however, the narrative of chap. 11 makes plain that Pharaoh\u2019s new reasonableness is divinely wrought. When he has begun to come around prematurely, Yahweh has stiffened his resolve (v 10); now Yahweh will cause him to send Israel forth urgently, not only with all that is rightly theirs, but with some Egyptian valuables as well.
\n2 Thus the Israelites are to be instructed to ask of their neighbors, both male and female, articles of silver and gold. The use of \u05e8\u05b5\u05e2\u05b7 \u201cfriend, companion, neighbor\u201d does not imply that the Israelites are no longer living separately from the Egyptians, as Noth (93) suggests. Nor does the general term \u05db\u05dc\u05d9 \u201carticle, vessel, object\u201d suggest jewelry, as both rsv and neb propose. The object of the request the Israelites are to make is a further humbling of Pharaoh and the gods who are supposed to be looking after his people and his country. Not just jewelry, but any objects of value, prized possessions of silver and gold, and, according to 3:22 and 12:35, even clothing would do.
\n3 Yahweh, in a further display of his complete control over the situation, will lead the Egyptians, who have wanted to be rid of the Israelites, to have favor towards them now, just as Pharaoh, who has wanted to keep them in Egypt, will come to want them gone. Yahweh, granting the Israelites \u05d7\u05df \u201cgrace, favor\u201d in the Egyptians\u2019 eyes, would make them credible, thus persons to be trusted with precious possessions. Given the consistent OT picture of antipathy towards the Israelites by the Egyptians, even in the days of Joseph\u2019s ascendancy (Gen 43:32; 46:34), this gift of credibility is all the more miraculous.
\n2\u20133 The theft of the Egyptians\u2019 valuables by the Israelites has been the occasion of an amusing array of theories and excuses. Childs (175\u201377) handily summarizes the apologetical arguments from Hellenistic times forward, arguments still pressed with only minor variations. Daube (Exodus Pattern, 55\u201372), for example, justifies this taking of Egyptian valuables as the payment (\u201cfitting out\u201d) due a released slave; Knight (82\u201383) considers it a payment (\u201cconscience money\u201d) in part for the Israelites\u2019 labor on Egyptian building projects across many years; Coats (VT 18 [1968] 453\u201357) thinks of the despoiling as a deception (\u05e9\u05c1\u05d0\u05dc \u201cask\u201d of v 2 = borrow with expectation of return) linked to a tradition of exodus by stealth, now obscured; Morgenstern (JBL 68 [1949] 1\u20135, 17\u201328), beginning with an alteration of the text of v 1 suggested first by M. van Hoonacker and followed by neb, concluded that the \u201cdespoiling\u201d was incidental to a deception which required that the Israelite women go forth to a festal dance arrayed as brides in finery that included \u201csomething borrowed.\u201d
\nThese excuses and theories, however ingenious, are unnecessary. Each of the four occurrences of the \u201cdespoiling\u201d narrative in the OT (Exod 3:19\u201322; 11:2\u20133; 12:35\u201336; Ps 105:36\u201338) makes plain that the Egyptians give their precious possessions to the Israelites gladly, because of Yahweh\u2019s intervention. There is no hint of any deception, any \u201cborrowing\u201d with even an implied promise of a return of the borrowed items. \u05e9\u05c1\u05d0\u05dc \u201cask\u201d alone does not suggest such a meaning (cf. BDB, 981). The Israelites \u201cask,\u201d and the Egyptians, in a kind of trance of affection and trust caused by Yahweh, freely give. The Egyptians thus are \u201cpicked clean\u201d (3:22 and 12:36) by Israel as a result of yet another action by Yahweh in behalf of his people, demonstrating the power of his Presence. For the narrators who composed these texts, this act of Yahweh, as an act of Yahweh, needed no further justification, only proclamation.
\nThe mention of Yahweh\u2019s gift of credibility to Israel prompts a summary comment on the esteem in which Moses is now held throughout Egypt by the people both high and low. The phrase \u201cthe man Moses,\u201d used in a similar though even broader accolade in Num 12:3, appears to present Moses with an aura of awe.
\n4 The prediction of the tenth of the mighty acts is made abruptly, without the usual introductory address to Moses or the usual account of Moses\u2019 movement to intercept Pharaoh. This abruptness creates an ambiguity of context that is resolved only by vv 7\u20138 and suggests the excision for some reason of the beginning of the narrative. Various attempts have been made to reconstruct this beginning, either by the assumption that 11:4\u20138 is a continuation of the narrative of 10:21\u201329 or by the provision of some other introductory section. Morgenstern, following H. Holzinger, suggested (JBL 68 [1949] 19\u201321), the relocation at this point of 4:22\u201323. That passage, however, is better left in its present location, in which it serves a quite definite function (see Comment on 4:22\u201323). The probability is that the original introduction to 11:4\u20138 was omitted on purpose in the combination of the array of themes now surrounding the tenth mighty act.
\n5 The more immediate agency of Yahweh in the terrible events at hand is emphasized by the assertion \u201cI will go out into the midst of the Egyptians.\u201d The full range of the Egyptian populace is to be affected by this going out, and this fact is dramatized by the juxtaposition of the highest in the land, Pharaoh on his royal throne, with the lowest in the land, the servant-girl pulverizing grain with two stones, as by the addition of stock-animals, thus including any who have property but no children.
\n6 The cry of anguish sent up by this decimation will be unique, just as the disaster will be unique. This language is reminiscent of 9:18, 24, in reference to the \u201cvery heavy hail,\u201d and of 10:6, 14, in reference to the \u201clocust-swarm.\u201d The hailstorm was unparalleled in the history of Egypt as a nation; the locust-swarm was unparalleled in the experience of the Egyptians to the third generation back, and would never come in such density again; the death of the firstborn would bring a cry of anguish throughout Egypt that had never been and would never be matched. These comments intensify the final mighty acts, the last of them most of all.
\n7 Against such a tragic backdrop, the Israelites will remain unharmed and undisturbed. Not even the empty snarl of a dog will interrupt the quiet of the Israelite settlement, while among the Egyptians the air will be torn by the piercing cries of lament. Again there is a graphic contrast. As Winton Thomas demonstrated (VT 10 [1960] 415\u201317, 426\u201327), \u05db\u05dc\u05d1 \u201cdog,\u201d in the vox populi of Israel, is a \u201cvile and contemptible animal,\u201d \u201cdespised and generally wretched.\u201d The malice of a dog would therefore be occasion for little alarm, yet not even that shall come against Israel, while the Egyptians are suffering the loss of their future. Among the Egyptians is an unparalleled wail of anguish; among the Israelites, silence. All this is to the end that the Egyptians may know the power of Yahweh and where his favor rests.
\n8 This separation will be so clear and its terrible implication so unmistakable that the members of Pharaoh\u2019s council will come to Moses in homage and plead with him to leave and to take all his people with him. It is a terrible prediction, delivered as a triumphant challenge. Thus bowed to and begged, says Moses, \u201cI will indeed go out.\u201d No response of Pharaoh is recorded. Instead, the narrator gives the impression of an angry Moses stalking out, leaving an awed Pharaoh in stunned silence.
\n9\u201310 The concluding paragraph of this chapter is generally assigned to P, and so is taken by Noth (94\u201397) to go with the section on Passover that follows. These two verses belong here, however, as the important summary of the foregoing sequence of mighty acts, the explanation of why they did not achieve their purpose, and the justification of what now is about to come.
\nExplanation
\nExod 11 is above all a preparatory transition, from the cumulative proof-of-Presence sequence in Egypt to its climactic end. To this point, Moses (sometimes with Aaron added) has served as Yahweh\u2019s prophetic spokesman and as the agent of Yahweh\u2019s wonders. As we have been told all along, however, and as we are told again now (vv 9\u201310), Yahweh has himself blocked any success his efforts through Moses might have achieved. He is ready now to step onto the scene himself. Moses makes the announcement and gives the instructions, nothing more.
\nWhat is to come upon Pharaoh and his land now, Yahweh himself will bring. Any resistance the Egyptians might yet have will be cancelled by Yahweh\u2019s gift of credibility or favor to Israel. Then Egypt\u2019s firstborn will die, and Pharaoh and all who advise him will want the Israelites and Moses to be gone.
\nThe transition is not only suggested by prediction, instruction, and retrospect, it is dramatized by these implicit and explicit pairings: an unrestricted exodus with Pharaoh\u2019s earlier restrictive proposals; an expulsion of the Israelites from Egypt with an earlier refusal to let them go; a giving of valuable possessions to a people heretofore treated only as cheap labor; a striking of every Egyptian household, from highest to lowest, with Israel unharmed; the agonizing cry of loss throughout Egypt with the silence of security among the Israelites in Goshen; and complete esteem for Moses in contrast to an earlier treatment of rejection.
\nWith the end of this transitional composite, the way has been prepared for the tenth of the mighty acts, for the exodus it will make possible, and for the Passover celebration by which Israel is to be taught to remember them both.
\nYahweh\u2019s Passover (12:1\u201313)
\nBibliography
\nAlter, R. The art of Biblical Narrative. New York: Basic Books, 1981. Beer, G. \u201cMiscellen. 2. Die Bitterkr\u00e4uter beim Paschafest.\u201d ZAW 31 (1911) 152\u201353. \u2014\u2014\u2014. Pesachim (Ostern): Text, \u00dcbersetzung und Ekl\u00e4rung. Giessen: A. T\u00f6pelmann, 1912. Haag, H. Vom alten zum neuen Pascha. SBS 49. Stuttgart: Verlag Kath. Bibelwerk, 1971. Keel, O. \u201cErw\u00e4gungen zum Sitz im Leben des vormosaischen Pascha und zur Etymologie von \u05e4\u05b6\u05bc\u05e1\u05b8\u05d7.\u201d ZAW 84 (1972) 414\u201334. Laaf, P. Die Pascha-Feier Israels. Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1970. McKay, J. W. \u201cThe Date of Passover and Its Significance.\u201d ZAW 84 (1972) 435\u201347. Oesterley, W. O. E. The Sacred Dance. New York: Macmillan, 1923. Pedersen, J. \u201cPassahfest und Passahlegende.\u201d ZAW 52 (1934) 161\u201375. Segal, J. B. The Hebrew Passover from the Earliest Times to a.d. 70. London: Oxford University Press, 1970. Seters, J. van. \u201cThe Place of the Yahwist in the History of Passover and Massot.\u201d ZAW 95 (1983) 167\u201382. Vaux, R. de. Ancient Israel, Vol. 1: Social Institutions. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965. \u2014\u2014\u2014. Studies in Old Testament Sacrifice. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1964.
\nTranslation
\n1 Next, Yahweh said this to Moses and to Aaron, in the land of Egypt: 2 \u201cThis month is to be for you the lead month. It is for you the first of the year\u2019s months. 3 Speak to the entire congregation of Israel to say that on the tenth of this month they shall take for themselves, each man, as a head of a family, an animal of the flock\u2014one flock-animal per household. 4 If the household is too small for a flock-animal, the family-head and his neighbor nearest to his household shall take together, in accord with the number of their two households, each as much as his family can eat: so shall you apportion the flock-animal.
\n5 \u201cThe flock-animal you take shall be the best, a yearling male. You shall take it from either the lambs or the goats. 6 It shall remain in your special care until the fourteenth day of this month; then all the assembly of the congregation of Israel shall slaughter it in the evening before dark. 7 They shall take some of the blood, and smear it upon the two doorposts and the lintel they support, thus marking the houses in which they shall eat the animal chosen and kept.
\n8 \u201cThey shall eat the flesh, roasted over fire, during that night, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread cakes and bitter herbs. 9 You are not to eat any of it raw or soaked or boiled in water, but roasted over fire\u2014its head along with its legs and its entrails. 10 You shall leave none of it until morning: any remnant of it you shall burn before morning in the fire.
\n11 \u201cIn this way you shall eat it: dressed for travel, your sandals on your feet, your walking-stick in your hand. Further, you shall eat it anxiously. It is Yahweh\u2019s Passover. 12 I will pass through the land of Egypt in that night, and I will strike a fatal blow against all the firstborn of the land of Egypt, the firstborn of mankind and cattle alike. Against all the gods of Egypt, I will bring judgments. I am Yahweh.
\n13 \u201cThe blood is to be for your protection, a sign upon the houses where you are; I will see the blood, and I will pass over you. There will be no smiting of destruction against you when I strike my fatal blow against the land of Egypt.\u201d
\nNotes
\n1.a. \u05dc\u05d0\u05de\u05e8. the Hebrew idiom is lit. \u201csaid \u2026 to say.\u201d
\n2.a. \u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05c1 \u05d7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd \u201chead\u201d or \u201cfirst\u201d of the \u201cnew moons,\u201d i.e., lunar months.
\n3.a. SamPent, LXX, Vg, Syr., Tg. Neofiti I (D\u00e9aut, 82) add \u201cthe sons of.\u201d
\n3.b. \u05dc\u05d1\u05d9\u05ea \u05d0\u05d1\u05ea, lit., \u201caccording to the fathers\u2019 family,\u201d i.e., per household with a male in charge, as the further qualification of \u05e9\u05c2\u05d4 \u05dc\u05d1\u05d9\u05ea \u201cone flock-animal per household\u201d and v 4 show.
\n3.c. \u05e9\u05c2\u05d4 includes any flock-animal, here either a lamb or a kid, as v 5 makes clear. Cf. BDB, 961.
\n4.a. MT has \u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u201che\u201d; the family head is clearly intended, and so substituted above.
\n4.b. SamPent reads \u201cnumbers.\u201d
\n4.c. \u05d1\u05de\u05db\u05e1\u05ea \u05e0\u05e4\u05e9\u05c2\u05ea \u201caccording to the counting of persons.\u201d
\n5.a. \u05ea\u05de\u05dd \u201csound, whole,\u201d not crippled or marred in any way and so of less value.
\n5.b. SamPent has \u05d4\u05db\u05e9\u05c2\u05d1\u05d9\u05dd, the transposed form of MT\u2019s \u05d4\u05db\u05d1\u05e9\u05c2\u05d9\u05dd \u201cthe lambs.\u201d
\n6.a. \u05e2\u05d3\u05ea \u201ccongregation,\u201d is lacking in Vg and the fragmentary texts from the Cairo Geniza. See also n. 3.a above.
\n6.b. \u05d1\u05d9\u05d5 \u05d4\u05e2\u05e8\u05d1\u05d9\u05dd \u201cbetween the pair of evenings,\u201d either the evening before and the evening of the fourteenth day, or the \u201cpair\u201d suggested by sunset and then dark. Note Exod 30:8. Cf. BDB, 788, and GKC, \u00a7 88m.
\n7.a. \u201cThey support\u201d is added for clarity, on the basis of the probable meaning of \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05e7\u05d5\u05e3, the \u201croof\u201d of the door and its casing. Cf. BDB, 1054.
\n7.b. \u05e2\u05dc \u201cupon\u201d the house.
\n7.c. \u05d0\u05ea\u05d5 \u201cit,\u201d referring to the flock-animal, is the dir obj of \u201ceat\u201d in MT.
\n9.a. \u05e7\u05e8\u05d1\u05d5 \u201cits inward parts,\u201d internal organs, viscera.
\n10.a. LXX here adds \u039a\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f78\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe1\u03bd \u03bf\u1f50 \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03c4\u03c1\u1f30\u03c8\u03b5\u03c4\u03b5 \u1f00\u03c0\u02bc \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe1 \u201cand you shall not break a bone of it.\u201d
\n11.a. \u05de\u05ea\u05e0\u05d9\u05db\u05dd \u05d7\u05d2\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cyour loins girded,\u201d i.e., \u201cyour skirts hitched up,\u201d to make rapid and strenuous movement possible. See BDB, 291, 608.
\n11.b. \u05de\u05e7\u05dc, a different word for \u201cstaff\u2019 or \u201cbranch\u201d or \u201crod\u201d (BDB, 596), no doubt deliberately chosen to avoid any confusion with the \u05de\u05d8\u05d4 of Moses and Aaron, Exod 4:20, 7:19, 14:16, though note also Hos 4:12. SamPent reads \u201cwalking-sticks.\u201d
\n11.c. \u05d7\u05e4\u05d6\u05d5\u05df \u201canxiously\u201d suggests urgent hurry, action with alarm. Cf. the usage of the verb form, \u05d7\u05e4\u05d6, in 2 Sam 4:4; 2 Kgs 7:15; Ps 116:11.
\n12.a. The verb is \u05e0\u05db\u05d4 \u201cstrike,\u201d used some 75x in the OT of Yahweh\u2019s \u201csmiting\u201d in judgment, always with violent, and sometimes, as here, fatal results. See Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 68\u201378.
\n13.a. \u05dc\u05db\u05dd \u201cfor you,\u201d i.e., for the Israelites\u2019 benefit.
\n13.b. \u05e0\u05d2\u05e3 \u05dc\u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05d7\u05d9\u05ea \u201csmiting of destruction\u201d: the noun \u05e0\u05d2\u05e3 refers in the OT only to Yahweh\u2019s \u201chitting\u201d or \u201csmiting,\u201d always, as here, with disastrous effect. See Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 65\u201368.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThis section, like the two that follow it, constitutes an intrusion into the narrative of the tenth mighty act. The account of the final proof of Yahweh\u2019s Presence in Egypt has been expanded by a series of instructions related to cultic requirements designed to commemorate that proof and the freedom it purchased. The first such series has to do with the annual keeping of Yahweh\u2019s Passover (vv 1\u201313, the section at hand); the second has to do with the annual feast of unleavened bread (vv 14\u201320); the third relates the symbols of Yahweh\u2019s Passover more directly to the narrative of the tenth mighty act (vv 21\u201328). Implicit throughout the instructions is the important justification for the consecration of the firstborn.
\nQuite understandably, such a complex assemblage of diverse though related material has led to an equally diverse set of opinions concerning the sources whence these instructions are derived. The section before us, for example, has been assigned to P (e.g., Beer, 60\u201361, who includes v 14, and who considers vv 21\u201327 a parallel version from J1 and RD; and Noth, 94\u201396). Childs (184\u201385), on the other hand, has \u201ctentatively\u201d proposed assigning vv 2\u201323 to J, though without setting forth satisfactory reasons for doing so (Childs, 191\u201394; cf. van Seters, ZAW 95 [1983] 172\u201375). Others (e.g., Fohrer, \u00dcberlieferung, 87\u201389) propose the admixture of yet other source material (N, Fohrer\u2019s \u201cnomadic\u201d source), or dismiss altogether the source documentary approach in favor of a theory of compilation reflecting the chronological \u201cevolution\u201d of the Passover ritual (Segal, Hebrew Passover, 42\u201377).
\nThough Segal goes too far in his dismissal of the source documents, his emphasis on the greater importance of the composite that stands in the MT of Exod 12 is a correct one. The assignment of portions of the text to subsources is a speculation, even when it is a well-informed one. The text at hand is always a certainty, and has been brought to its canonical form for specific theological and cultic reasons, even though they may no longer be recoverable. Attempts to determine the correct source-criticism of a pericope may be suggestive of these reasons, and therefore quite helpful, but these attempts must not be permitted to obscure the form and the thrust of the pericope as a whole.
\nExod 12:1\u201313 may most reasonably be assigned to P, as also may the section following, vv 14\u201320. This opinion is based on the content of the two sections and the manner in which they sharply interrupt the narrative into which they have been set. The principle by which they have been set into place is illustrated more obviously by the large parallel insertions of Exod 25\u201331 and 35\u201340. It is the principle by which cultic requirements are set into the narrative that justifies them, by which ritual expectations are rooted in the story that explains them. What strikes us as disunified, a patch-work, must be seen in terms of the purpose suggested in the compilation before us, rather than in terms of our own expectation of a logical and coherent sequence. As Robert Alter (Art, 133) has so aptly put it, \u201cThe confused textual patchwork that scholarship has often found \u2026 may prove upon further scrutiny to be purposeful pattern.\u201d
\nExod 12 is the result of such a pattern. Read in its context, this chapter both interrupts (vv 1\u201328) and continues (vv 29\u201342) the narrative without which the requirement of Yahweh\u2019s Passover and the feast of unleavened bread would be arbitrary and puzzling, and as provincial as their probable origin (see Comment on vv 8\u201310, 15, below). The form of the chapter is thus determined largely by the sections it inserts into the narrative. The form of vv 1\u201313 is determined by specifications essential to the celebration of Yahweh\u2019s Passover.
\nComment
\n2 The reference to the Passover month as the \u201clead month,\u201d \u201cthe first of the year\u2019s months\u201d is best understood as a double entendre. On the one hand, the statement may be connected with an annual calendar, but on the other hand, it is surely an affirmation of the theological importance of Yahweh\u2019s Passover. There is here, quite significantly, no mention of the name of a specific month, as there is in 23:15 and 34:18, e.g., in connection with the feast of unleavened bread, and in Deut 16:1, in connection with Passover itself. The elaborate discussions of the calendar of pre-exilic and post-exilic times (e.g., de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 178\u201379; Cassuto, 136\u201337) cannot be applied to this text except as it is considered in relation to these other more specific references.
\nThe more important emphasis of this verse therefore is its insistence upon Yahweh\u2019s Passover as a commemoration of Israel\u2019s beginning as a people freed by Yahweh. The Passover month is the \u201chead\u201d of the months not primarily as the first month of the year in a calendar, either a \u201ccivil\u201d calendar or a \u201creligious\u201d calendar, but because it is the month during which the Israelites remembered and so actualized their redemption. Its association with the spring of the year may originally have come from the nomadic context in which the Passover appears to be rooted. J. W. McKay (ZAW 84 [1972] 438\u201346) has argued that no precise date for the celebration, beyond \u201cthe spring month,\u201d was fixed prior to the exilic and post-exilic periods, at which time the night of the fourteenth Nisan was pinpointed because it was the eve of the spring equinox in the Babylonian calendar adopted by the Priestly circle.
\n3\u20136 The general specification \u201cflock-animal,\u201d a deliberate attempt to provide a broad source for the Passover sacrifice, must not be obscured by the specific translation \u201clamb\u201d (e.g., rsv), as v 5 makes clear. Two considerations are of utmost importance in the selection of this animal. One is that the animal be apportioned among a group of people large enough to consume it entirely, or as nearly so as possible (cf. v 10). The other is that the animal selected be the best the worshipers could afford, an animal selected with care and guarded (\u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e8) conscientiously from the moment of its selection on the tenth day until the moment of its slaughter on the fourteenth. That slaughter was to take place between sunset and dark, and it marked the beginning of the Passover.
\n7\u201310 Some of the blood of this sacrifice was to be smeared upon the entry-way, the door-frame, of the houses of the Israelite worshipers, thus marking them as Israelite. The animal\u2019s flesh, thoroughly cooked by roasting, was to be eaten entirely by the worshipers, along with unleavened cakes and bitter herbs. Any remnant of the animal, along with its inedible parts, had to be burned with fire before the morning of the next day.
\nAll these specifications, none of which has any obvious connection with the exodus itself, and only one of which, the apotropaic use of the blood, has any link to the tenth mighty act, have suggested to commentators the mingling of an ancient ceremony with a new context. So Beer (Pesachim, 9\u201340) and de Vaux (Studies, 2\u201312), among many (more recently, Laaf, Haag, Keel), have argued that the ritual described in Exod 12 suggests a nomadic or semi-nomadic milieu, in which fertility of the flocks and the availability of suitable grazing are of uppermost concern. With the new start brought by the exodus, the old ceremony, now given a new set of meanings, became symbolic of that new start.
\nThus the sacrificial flock-animal became a gift of gratitude and a catalyst of family communion instead of an offering of pacification. Its blood became a mark of protection instead of an apotropaic charm. The unleavened bread cakes and bitter herbs eaten with the sacrifice became reminders of haste and the suffering of bondage instead of symbols of purity and protection against demonic spirits (Beer, ZAW 31 [1911] 152\u201353). Even so, features of the earlier ceremony remained, with no apparent new meaning: the roasting of the flock-animal whole, and the eating or burning of it before the next morning.
\n11\u201312 This new significance for the ancient feast was then further enhanced in practice by the specification of the manner in which the flockanimal was to be eaten. Those consuming the meat were not to be in the relaxed dress of home, but in traveling attire; not at ease around a table, but with walking-stick in hand; not in calm security, but in haste, with anxiety. And finally, the reason for the new meaning: the meal is \u201cYahweh\u2019s Passover\u201d; it is to be taken in the night of his passing through the land of Egypt to strike the fatal blow that is the tenth of the mighty acts, the death of Egypt\u2019s firstborn. This blow is specified as a defeat of all the gods of Egypt, and the instructions for it are ended with the autokerygmatic declaration found so often in the Holiness Code of Lev 17\u201326 and the Book of Ezekiel: \u201cI am Yahweh,\u201d \u201cI am the One Who Always Is\u201d (see Comment on 6:1\u201313).
\n13 Appended to the end of these instructions for Yahweh\u2019s Passover is an explanation of the significance, in this new context, of the smearing of the blood of the sacrificial animal. This explanation is another indication of the reapplication of the old symbolism, and perhaps seemed necessary to the Priestly redactor because of the uniqueness of the blood ritual described in the instruction of v 7. There is no further reference to such a ritual anywhere in the OT, and only one other ritual even resembling this one is mentioned in the OT: in the ceremony of atonement for the Temple, described in Ezek 45:18\u201320, the priest puts (\u05e0\u05ea\u05df) the blood of a bull-calf, on the doorpost of the Temple and on the doorpost of the inner court gate.
\nThe explanation indicates that the blood is a protective sign: Yahweh, upon seeing it, will \u201cpass over\u201d the Israelites and so spare them from the fatal blow he is about to strike against Egypt. The verb \u201cpass over\u201d is \u05e4\u05e1\u05d7, and it is this explanation of the purpose of that blood that gives the ritual of commemoration its name, \u05e4\u05b6\u05bc\u05e1\u05b8\u05d7 \u201cPassover.\u201d Various attempts have been made to assign a meaning to this noun by etymology. These attempts are surveyed by Segal and Laaf, and none of them has proved satisfactory. The most familiar of them, that \u05e4\u05e1\u05d7 means \u201climp, hobble, hop,\u201d has been connected both with a limping dance performed in connection with the \u05e4\u05e1\u05d7 ritual (Oesterley, Sacred Dance, 50\u201351; Pedersen, ZAW 52 [1934] 167) and also with the leaping of a destroyer-demon in the \u201cpre-Mosaic\u201d \u05e4\u05e1\u05d7 ritual (Keel, ZAW 84 [1972] 428\u201334).
\nIn fact, it is not possible to establish any convincing connection of \u05e4\u05e1\u05d7 with a verb root that provides a clue to the ritual it describes, given only the OT references we have. The best clue we have may be the verse at hand, which uses \u05e4\u05e1\u05d7 to describe Yahweh sparing by \u201cpassing over\u201d the houses of the Israelites marked with sacrificial blood. The name \u05e4\u05e1\u05d7 \u201cPassover,\u201d used of the ritual and of the sacrificial animal, may simply be taken from the verb describing Yahweh\u2019s protection of his own people, whom he is about to deliver, in a separation similar to that mentioned in the fourth, fifth, seventh and ninth of the mighty acts. Isa 31:5, which employs \u05e4\u05e1\u05d7 in such a sense, may well be a reflection of exodus-Passover traditions.
\nExplanation
\nExod 12:1\u201313 is an intrusion into the narrative of the tenth mighty act, the death of the firstborn of Egypt. The Priestly redactors who set it here did so because of their need to establish the authority of the ritual commemorating the exodus-deliverance the tenth mighty act effected. This is virtually a standard procedure of the Priestly redactors, nowhere practiced more obviously than in the Book of Exodus.
\nThe purpose of this section can be seen in its location as well as in its content. Yahweh\u2019s \u201cpassing over\u201d of Israel occurs as a further proof of his powerful Presence in the land of Egypt. The instructions for \u201cYahweh\u2019s Passover\u201d therefore must be given in the context of the events they are to call to mind. Discussions of the historicity of this material (e.g., Hyatt, 144\u201346) are beside the point as well as necessarily inconclusive. What we have before us is theological narrative, attested as such as it is expanded by the specification of interpretative and actualizing acts of ritual worship. Though a history certainly lies behind the narrative, and for that matter the ritual as well, it is history as a point of departure for a theological confession that imparts to the history a transcendent meaning it could not otherwise have.
\nThe authority for both the narrative and the ritual, indeed the reason for both, is stated by the simple assertion at the end of this section, just before the appendix explaining the significance of the blood and perhaps the name \u201cPassover\u201d: \u201cI am Yahweh.\u201d That is what the exodus and the Passover worship commemorating it are about.
\nYahweh\u2019s \u201cReminder\u201d: Unleavened Bread (12:14\u201320)
\nBibliography
\nAckroyd, P. R. \u201cThe Meaning of Hebrew DOR Considered.\u201d JSS 13 (1968) 3\u201310. Kraus, H.-J. \u201cZur Geschichte des Passah-Massot-Festes im Allen Testament.\u201d EvT 18 (1958) 47\u201367. Kutsch, E. \u201cErw\u00e4gungen zur Geschichte der Passafeier und des Massotfestes.\u201d ZTK 55 (1958) 1\u201336. McEvenue, S. E. The Narrative Style of the Priestly Writer. AnBib 50. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1971. May, H. G. \u201cThe Relation of the Passover to the Festival of Unleavened Cakes.\u201d JBL 55 (1936) 65\u201382. Neuberg, F. J. \u201cAn Unrecognised Meaning of Hebrew DOR.\u201d JNES 9 (1950) 215\u201317. Vaux, R. de. Ancient Israel, Vol. 1: Social Institutions, Vol. 2: Religious Institutions. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965. Welch, A. C. \u201cOn the Method of Celebrating Passover.\u201d ZAW 45 (1927) 24\u201329.
\nTranslation
\n14 \u201cThis day is to be for you a day for remembering. You are to observe it, a day sacred to Yahweh, generation after generation: you shall observe it as a requirement forever. 15 For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread cakes. In fact, on the first of those days, you shall remove all leaven from your houses, because anyone who eats anything leavened, from the first day through the seventh day, that person is to be excluded from Israel.
\n16 \u201cOn the first day you are to gather for special worship, and on the seventh day as well. All work is to cease on those days. Only what is to be eaten by any person, that alone may have any work from you. 17 You are to keep the festival of unleavened bread cakes, because on this very day I brought you in great numbers out of the land of Egypt. You are to keep this day, further, generation after generation, a requirement forever.
\n18 \u201cOn the fourteenth day of the lead month, in the evening, you shall eat unleavened bread cakes, and you shall eat them until the twenty-first day of that month, in the evening. 19 Seven days, leaven is not to be found in your houses, because anyone eating anything leavened will be excluded then and there from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a newcorner? or a native in the land. 20 You shall eat nothing leavened. In all your dwelling-places, you shall eat unleavened bread cakes.\u201d
\nNotes
\n14.a. \u05dc\u05d6\u05db\u05e8\u05d5\u05df \u201cfor remembering\u201d has the significance here of an anniversary, but still more, suggests the cultic emphasis upon the exodus deliverance as a present-tense event, an event of continuing effectiveness. See further Schottroff, \u201cGedenken,\u201d 314\u201317, or Childs, Memory and Tradition, 66\u201370.
\n14.b. As a \u05d7\u05d2 \u201creligious festival\u201d or \u201cpilgrim-feast\u201d; BDB, 290\u201391.
\n14.c. \u05d7\u05e7 here is a \u201csacred statute,\u201d a perpetual requirement of members of Israel\u2019s community in faith.
\n15.a. \u05d0\u05da \u201cin fact\u201d is an emphatic and demonstrative adverb. Cf. BDB, 36.
\n15.b. MT reads simply \u05e9\u05c2\u05d0\u05e8 \u201cleaven\u201d; \u201call\u201d is added above as plainly intended in the context following \u05d0\u05da \u201cin fact,\u201d for clarity.
\n15.c. \u05e2\u05d3 \u201cuntil, up to,\u201d here obviously means \u201cthrough\u201d; so vv 15 and 19. BDB, 723\u201325.
\n16.a. \u05de\u05e7\u05e8\u05d0\u05be\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1, lit., a \u201choly calling-together,\u201d so BDB, 896: \u201cterm. techn. in P for religious gathering on Sabbath and certain sacred days.\u201d
\n16.b. MT repeats \u05de\u05e7\u05e8\u05d0\u05be\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u201choly calling-together.\u201d
\n16.c. \u05dc\u05d0\u05be\u05d9\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d4 \u201cis not to be done.\u201d
\n16.d. LXX has instead \u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03b7\u03b8\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u201cis to be done,\u201d i.e., is essential.
\n17.a. MT reads simply \u05d4\u05de\u05e6\u05d5\u05ea \u201cthe unleavened bread cakes.\u201d SamPent has \u05d4\u05de\u05e6\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cthe commandment\u201d; LXX \u03c4\u03ae\u03bd \u1f10\u03c4\u03bf\u03bb\u1f74\u03bd \u03c4\u03b1\u03cd\u03c4\u03b7\u03bd \u201cthis commandment.\u201d
\n17.b. LXX has \u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03c4\u03b5 \u201cdo\u201d again.
\n18.a. See n. 12:2.a.
\n18.b. \u201cAnd you shall eat them\u201d is added for clarity.
\n19.a. MT has \u05d4\u05e0\u05e4\u05e9 \u05d4\u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u201cthat person\u201d here, as in v 15.
\n19.b. \u05d2\u05e8 \u201cnewcorner?\u201d is a temporary resident, even a \u201ctourist,\u201d or one who has newly come to the community and is without family claims. Cf. BDB, 158.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThese verses are a continuation of the Priestly instructions that have been inserted into the narrative of the tenth mighty act following the first account (a prediction) of the events the instructions are designed to call to mind and so to faith. As to style, they are typical of a priestly manner of presentation that may be called both precise and repetitious (McEvenue, Narrative Style, 1\u201322). As to form, they show that tendentious quality that is usually the result of P\u2019s attempts to set forth instructions and regulations in a narrative framework. Since ritual concerns are the primary matter, the narrative never has any real chance and almost always sounds wooden, unreal. This kind of narrative form is dictated by the context into which the material is set, not by the material itself. The form, of necessity, is an artificial medium for the content it transmits.
\nIn the present text of Exodus, vv 14\u201320 are of a piece with vv 1\u201313, the whole bound together as a series of instructions having to do with the keeping of Yahweh\u2019s Passover. In fact, the very different nature and origin of the instructions recorded in these verses makes clear that two separate sets of instructions, representing two originally separate sets of ritual, have here been brought together in a sequence linked by a verse (14) that refers both to Passover Day and the first day of seven days of eating unleavened bread cakes. This verse has, in consequence, been taken both with the first set of instructions (jb) and also with the second set of instructions (neb). In fact, it belongs to and links them both.
\nComment
\n14 \u201cThis day\u201d refers in general terms, in the broader context of chap. 12, to the day of exodus brought about by the tenth mighty act, the death of Egypt\u2019s firstborn. Set here, in this link-verse, the phrase refers to both the Passover evening and the first day of the seven-day period of the eating of unleavened bread cakes, since the two overlap (cf. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 181\u201382). The day is a day for \u201cactualizing,\u201d or making contemporary the event of the exodus deliverance. It was set aside by Yahweh as a holy day, the keeping of which was to be required of Israel generation after generation (\u05dc\u05d3\u05e8\u05ea\u05d9\u05db\u05dd), or even, as Neuberg (JNES 9 [1950] 215\u201317) and Ackroyd (JSS 13 [1968] 3\u201310) have argued, from one liturgical community to the next.
\n15 One means of such \u201cactualization\u201d was Yahweh\u2019s Passover; another was the eating, across a seven-day period, of unleavened bread cakes. Both the symbolism and the duration of Passover as an evening meal to be taken by families in anxious preparation for departure are consonant with the narrative into which the instructions for the ritual are set. A seven-day festival of unleavened bread cakes will not fit the context of such a narrative, however. Quite clearly, a ritual observance from another context has here been placed by the Priestly redactors into a narrative sequence where it is an illogical element. The question is, why?
\nThis question has been answered in a diverse variety of ways, as comparison of the positions taken by such authors as Welch, May, Segal, Kraus, and Kutsch makes plain. They argue, for example, that (1) Exod 12:1\u201328 and 13:1\u201316 link three duplicate sets of laws, including one from the Northern Kingdom and one from the Southern Kingdom, all connected with \u201cYahweh\u2019s dealings with Israel at the Exodus\u201d (Welch, ZAW 45 [1927] 27\u201329); (2) the festival of unleavened bread cakes was the earlier of the two ritual commemorations\u2014the exodus was remembered in pre-exilic Israel by the sacrifice and redemption of the first born as \u201can occasional ceremony,\u201d and Exod 12:1\u201328 belongs wholly to P, is postexilic, and perhaps composed with the diaspora in view (May, JBL 55 [1936] 65\u201374); (3) \u201cthe Pesah\u0325 and the Mas\u0325s\u0325oth festival\u201d were from the beginning \u201ca single festival,\u201d \u201cPesah\u0325\u201d opening the week brought to conclusion by \u201cMa\u1e63\u1e63oth,\u201d a week beginning and ending with a \u201choly convocation\u201d at the local sanctuary (Segal, Hebrew Passover, 174\u201380); (4) the festival of unleavened bread cakes and the \u201carchaic Passover practices\u201d were combined in pre-exilic Israel and linked to both the exodus and the crossing of the Jordan in worship at the sanctuary at Gilgal, so Josh 5:1\u201312 (Kraus, EvT 18 [1958] 65\u201367); and (5) the festival of unleavened bread cakes and Passover were joined for the first time during the exile, from which period also Josh 5:10\u201312 dates, thus providing no support for the view of Kraus (Kutsch, ZTK 55 [1958] 34\u201335).
\nAll of these suggestions, along with most of the variations upon them, begin with the same basic information. That they end with such divergent explanations indicates the difficulty of finding a satisfactory reason for the assemblage of this material as a continuous narrative. A look at the material against the context within which it was brought together suggests that this sequence has been produced for liturgical purposes, not for narrative purposes. The fact that liturgical material has been set into a narrative frame must not be allowed to set us onto a wrong path. What we have here is a briefer example of what we have in Exod 25\u201331 and 35\u201340, also liturgical material that cannot belong to the narrative sequence into which it has been set.
\nJust as Passover has connections with a flock-animal sacrifice predating it, so also the ritual eating of unleavened bread cakes was first practiced in a setting having nothing to do with the exodus and the tenth mighty act. Eating unleavened bread cakes with the Passover meal is one thing, but a seven-day observance is something else altogether. The \u201cfestival\u201d of unleavened bread cakes is rooted, in all likelihood, in an agricultural celebration connected with grain harvesting, specifically the beginning of the grain harvest (cf. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 490\u201391). As such a festival fell of necessity into the same time-period as Passover, the two were combined at some point between the settlement of Israel in Canaan and the exile into Babylon. Thus the impressive features of two ancient religious observances, one nomadic and one agricultural, were redefined and united in the development of the ritual symbolizing Israel\u2019s beginning as a people chosen by Yahweh.
\n15, 19\u201320 The prohibition against \u201cleaven\u201d has to do with the purity of the newly ground grain, whether offered to Yahweh or eaten in his Presence in expression of gratitude. There may also be undertones of suspicion of the process of fermentation that leaven promotes, though the avoidance of leaven at the Passover meal was connected as well with the need for haste in the preparations for departure (v 39). The penalty for the violation of this restriction, exclusion from the community of Israel, suggests a level of jeopardy far more serious than a need for haste in the preparation of a meal.
\n16\u201318 The liturgical provisions of the combination festival described in Exod 12:1\u201320 specify a special day of worship at the beginning and at the end of the festival period. On these two days, no work but that involved in the necessary preparation of food could be done. The two days serve to bracket a seven-day sequence whose sole purpose, according to Exod 12, was the commemoration of the tenth mighty act and the exodus it brought about. Whatever the origin of what Came to be Passover and the festival of unleavened bread cakes, the two occasions of worship came to be joined together as commemorative of the greatest departure of Israel\u2019s history. Their celebration was expanded, finally to a seven-day festival begun and ended with a day devoted as exclusively to worship as was the Sabbath itself. Just when the combination was made, we can only speculate; de Vaux (Ancient Israel, 488\u201393) argues for the time of Josiah. Following that junction, there occurred the expansion of what had been two separate occasions of worship into two days, and over the course of time, into seven days of worship. The presentation here of the expanded event, identified so specifically with the exodus from Egypt (vv 14 and 17), is a reflection of the celebration in its most fully evolved OT form.
\nExplanation
\nNowhere else in the OT is the festival of unleavened bread cakes so closely connected with the exodus deliverance as here in Exod 12. The same can be said of course for Passover, and the connection is quite deliberately effected by the insertion into a narrative sequence of two sets of liturgical specification. The point of the connection, and the reason for the insertion, is the provision of authoritative and didactic means of bringing the exodus deliverance into the experience of the Israel of the generations beyond settlement and the unified monarchy.
\nThe liturgical specifications governing the festival of unleavened bread cakes, particularly in their somewhat repetitive sequence in Exod 12:14\u201320, seem more than a little fossilized in an existence all their own. Thus these verses are set here and connected by statement (vv 14 and 17) as by context with the all-important event that the worship they specify is supposed to bring to mind. They are therefore not only an indicator of the importance of the exodus to Israel\u2019s faith, but also an object-lesson in the interrelation of theological narrative and liturgical requirement.
\nIsrael\u2019s Protection (12:21\u201328)
\nBibliography
\nCrowfoot, G. M., and L. Baldensperger. \u201cHyssop.\u201d PEQ 63 (1931) 89\u201398. Gray, G. B. Sacrifice in the Old Testament. New York: KTAV, 1971. Honeyman, A.M. \u201cHebrew \u05e1\u05b7\u05e3 \u2018Basin, Goblet.\u2019 \u201d JTS 37 (1936) 56\u201359. Lohfink, N. Das Hauptgebot. AnBib 20. Rome: Instituto Biblico e Pontificio, 1963. Loza, J. \u201cLes Cat\u00e9ch\u00e8ses \u00c9tiologiques dans l\u2019Ancien Testament.\u201d RB 78 (1971) 481\u2013500. Meyer, E. Die Israeliten und Ihre Nachbarstamme. Halle, 1906. Noth, M. \u201cDie Vergegenw\u00e4rtigung des Alten Testaments in der Verk\u00fcndigung.\u201d EvT 12 (1952\/1953) 6\u201317. ET in Essays on Old Testament Hermeneutics. C. Westermann, ed. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1963. 76\u201388. Seters, J. van. \u201cThe Place of the Yahwist in the History of Passover and Massot.\u201d ZAW 95 (1983) 167\u201382. Soggin, J. A. \u201cKult\u00e4tiologische Sagen und Katechese im Hexateuch.\u201d VT 10 (1960) 341\u201347. Trumbull, H. C. The Threshold Covenant. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1896.
\nTranslation
\n21 So Moses called together all the elders of Israel, and said to them, \u201cSeparate and take for yourselves flock-animals by family-divisions; then slaughter the Passover animal. 22 Take a bundle of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin; then smear the upper beam over the door and the two side-posts of the door with the blood that is in the basin. Not one of you is to go out the door of his house until morning. 23 Yahweh will move through to level a blow at the Egyptians, and he will see the blood upon the upper beam and the two side-posts of the door, and Yahweh will pass over the door and will not permit the destroyer to come in to your houses to level a blow.
\n24 \u201cYou are to abide by this command, as a requirement of you and of your sons in perpetuity. 25 When, in due course, you enter the land that Yahweh will give to you, just as he promised, there too you shall abide by this obligation. 26 When your sons say to you, \u2018What is this obligation to which you are committed?,\u2019 27 then you shall say, \u2018It is the Passover sacrifice to Yahweh, recalling that he passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when he leveled his blow at the Egyptians and protected our houses.\u2019 \u201d
\n28 So the people bowed down and worshiped. Then the sons of Israel dispersed and did just as Yahweh had commanded Moses and Aaron\u2014indeed, they did.
\nNotes
\n21.a. \u05e7\u05e8\u05d0 \u201ccall together\u201d has the sense of \u201csummon\u201d in this context (BDB, 895\u201396).
\n21.b. LXX and Vg add \u201cof the sons of\u201d (\u03c5\u1f30\u1ff6\u03bd, filiorum).
\n21.c. The verb \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05da \u201cseparate\u201d signifies the drawing or \u201ccutting-out\u201d of the animal selected from the flock as a whole.
\n21.d. Syr. reads b\u02d3ql sbw \u201cquickly choose.\u201d
\n21.e. See n. 6:14.c.
\n22.a. \u05e1\u05e3 \u201cbasin\u201d has also been understood as the threshold or doorsill, perhaps carved out to provide a shallow container for the blood of the Passover animal. LXX may have understood it so: \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u1f70 \u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u03b8\u03cd\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd \u201cbeside the door.\u201d Rylaarsdam (\u201cExodus,\u201d IB 1:923) follows such a reading, given an elaborate rationale by Trumbull (see Threshold Covenant, esp. 203\u201312). Note BDB, 706. Syr. reads \u201cin the blood of the sheep\u201d instead.
\n22.b. The verb is hiph pf \u05e0\u05d2\u05e2 \u201ctouch\u201d; in this context, in reference to the spreading of the blood with a hyssop-bundle, it describes an application, a daubing, a smearing, a spattering.
\n22.c. SamPent has \u05d0\u05dc for MT \u05dc\u05d0.
\n23.a. See n. 7:27.b.
\n25.a. Special waw with perfect \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e8 \u201ckeep, abide by.\u201d
\n25.b. \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3\u05d4 \u201cobligation\u201d refers to the heavy and oppressive labor of the Egyptian bondage in Exod 1:14; 2:23; 5:9, 11; 6:6, 9; etc. Here, in a clever rhetorical contrast, it refers to Israel\u2019s service in the worship of Yahweh, an obligation of a very different sort. SamPent adds here \u05d1\u05db\u05b0\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4 \u201cin this month.\u201d
\n27.a. \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8 \u201cthat\u201d; \u201crecalling\u201d is added from the context (note vv 14\u201317) for clarity.
\n27.b. \u05e0\u05e2\u05dc \u201cprotect\u201d refers also, and frequently, to the \u201csnatching forth,\u201d the rescue of Israel from Pharaoh\u2019s slavery.
\n28.a. \u05d4\u05dc\u05da \u201cdisperse\u201d plus special waw here provides the second bracket of the pair begun by the \u201ccalled together\u201d of v 21.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe mixture of narrative and liturgical material characteristic of the account of the tenth mighty act is continued in this section, but with a difference. Here the events that have been predicted (chap. 11) are actually set in motion as steps are taken to protect Israel from the impending terrible devastation. The narrative of Moses\u2019 instructions is interrupted, however, by an interpretation of the blood ritual for the generations yet to come (vv 24\u201327a), then concluded twice (vv 27b and 28). Still further complexity is introduced by the differences between the instructions Moses gives here and those given to him for transmission in vv 1\u201320.
\nThe usual resolution of these problems has been achieved by source analysis. Vv 21\u201323 and the final sentence of v 27 have been assigned to J (Noth, 97\u201398; Hyatt, 131, 136\u201337); vv 24\u201327a to a Deuteronomic redactor (Hyatt, 137; Childs, 184) and a supplementer (Noth, 97, because of the singular pronominal suffix \u201cyou\u201d in v 24b); and v 28 to P (Noth, 97; Hyatt, 137; Childs, 184). In such an explanation, v 27b is the conclusion to the J account of vv 21\u201323, and v 28 is the conclusion to the P account of vv 1\u201320. The inserted material of vv 24\u201327a has generally been assigned to the Deuteronomic circle, or at least to an editor influenced by the Deuteronomic style and vocabulary. Lohfink, however, has isolated a series of words and phrases (Hauptgebot, 121\u201322) with which he argues convincingly that these verses are \u201cnicht-deuteronomisch.\u201d Van Seters (ZAW 95 [1983] 172\u201375) has assigned the whole of 12:1\u201328 to P.
\nAs so often in Exodus, the composite of the text at hand needs to be seen in its wholeness, possessing an integrity all its own quite apart from the integrity of the sources that make it up. As Childs has written (199\u2013200), there is \u201can inner coherence in the present structure\u201d of the sequence. This narrative does not purport to be a transmission by Moses to the people of Israel of the liturgical instructions of Yahweh to Moses on the Passover and the festival of unleavened bread cakes. The subject here is the protection of Israel from the decimation of the tenth mighty act. That protection in itself becomes a medium of memory and celebration for future generations, a fact attested by the command that it be kept as a requirement in perpetuity.
\nOnce again, narrative has become the framework for liturgical material, in part as that material has itself been given at least a semi-narrative form. The form of this section has been dictated by this combination, and the section has been delimited by the assembly (v 21) and dispersal (v 28) of the Israelites, instructed through their elders, then sent to follow those instructions as the tenth mighty act gets under way. The inconsistencies in the narrative\u2014for example, the elders called and the people dispersed, or the people bowing for worship without having previously been mentioned in the sequence\u2014are inevitable in a composite and of little consequence to the point of the narrative, which is Israel\u2019s protection against the powerful force Yahweh is about to unleash.
\nComment
\n21 Moses\u2019 instruction to the elders that they \u201cseparate\u201d a flock-animal from the animals available is consonant with the instructions of Exod 12:3\u20135, though the emphasis differs. Here it is on allocation of the animals by family branches rather than on assembling a group large enough to consume the roasted carcass. In the former sequence, preparedness for the impending departure is the point. Here, protection from the terrible force about to be unleashed is in view: thus there is concern that each family of each clan of each tribe be accounted for and protected.
\n22\u201323 Hyssop here, as in the ritual for the lustration of a leper who has been healed (Lev 14:1\u20139), is a means of smearing the blood of a sacrificial victim. The additional references of Num 19:1\u201310 and Ps 51:9[7] imply that hyssop had a special role in ceremonies of cleansing, but the OT references are too sparse in both their number and their information to afford either a clear picture of the exact significance or a clear identification of the plant being mentioned. Crowfoot and Baldensperger contended (PEQ 63 [1931] 89\u201391) that it was \u201cza\u02d3tar,\u201d a marjoram (Origanum Maru, L.), and functioned as an aspergillum which also slowed the clotting of the blood of the Passover ritual, largely on the basis of their observation of the use of this plant by the Samaritans in their Passover worship (in April, 1930).
\nThe reference to \u201cthe blood that is in the basin\u201d into which the bundle of hyssop is to be dipped seems to suggest a longer narrative of instruction, one that may have made clear just what kind of basin was to be used and where it was to be placed. As the text now stands, this \u05e1\u05e3 could be either a basin or some other movable container, or even a part of the threshold or sill of a doorway, an ambiguity that has given rise to the theory that the blood in \u201ca hollow place\u201d in the threshold was an invitation to Yahweh to \u201ccovenant cross\u201d as an \u201chonored guest\u201d of the family within (Trumbull, Threshold Covenant, 203\u201312). A. M. Honeyman has argued (JTS 37 [1936] 59), though unconvincingly, that \u05e1\u05e3 can never mean \u201cbasin\u201d but can only signify \u201cthreshold, sill\u201d in Exod 12:22.
\nThere is really very little basis for such speculation about the blood in the basin, wherever it was located, but the significance of the blood smeared upon the lintel and the side-posts of the door is clearly protective. No one was to leave the house during the night of Passover, and within the house, each Israelite was protected, apparently by Yahweh himself, who would see the blood and bar entry to the destroyer making rounds at his command (cf. v 13). This \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05d7\u05d9\u05ea \u201cdestroyer\u201d has been variously held to be a death angel acting in Yahweh\u2019s service (cf. 2 Sam 24:15\u201317; 2 Kgs 19:32\u201337), a kind of extension of Yahweh himself, or a primitive demon either opposed or replaced by Yahweh (Meyer, Israeliten, 38; Gressmann, Mose und seine Zeit, 104; Gray, Sacrifice, 364\u201365). Once again, the information in the OT is too sketchy for any detailed conclusions, but the repeated assertion that the blow to come is to be leveled by Yahweh and the clear statement of this verse that Yahweh \u201cwill not permit\u201d the destroyer to enter the Israelite houses suggests that in the composite at hand the destroyer was considered Yahweh\u2019s emissary.
\n24\u201327 The instruction that the Israelites are to \u201cabide by this command \u2026 in perpetuity\u201d would seem, by its location, to apply to the ritual of Israel\u2019s protection involving the Passover blood. In such a case, the smearing of the blood would be continued year after year, beyond any need for the protection it symbolized, as a means of confession to successive generations. In fact, the wording of the response to the inquiry of the children concerning the meaning of this worship (v 27a) gives the instruction a wider application, to the tenth mighty act as a whole. The statement \u201cIt is the Passover sacrifice\u201d brings to mind both Israel protected and Egypt smitten.
\nThe didactic language of these verses is not Deuteronomistic, as Lohfink (Hauptgebot, 116\u201319) has correctly maintained. It belongs rather to an instructional, catechetical style that the Deuteronomists inherited and brought to a level of application all their own. The same technique was inherited by the \u201cwisdom\u201d teachers and brought to the very different kind of application apparent in Proverbs. Martin Noth (EvT 12 [1952\/53] 9\u201310) has named this technique aptly\u2014Vergegenw\u00e4rtigung, \u201crepresentation\u201d or \u201cactualization.\u201d Quite simply, it amounts to an attempt to make the past present, to teach through a repetition that aims to create experience rather than simply transmit information. The brilliant use of the technique by the Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic theologians has prompted too often the assignment of any passage appearing to employ it, as here, to one of those circles. To do so, however, in a passage such as Exod 12:26\u201327a, is surely a mistake, not least because it suggests so late a date for material that must obviously have been extant and in active use much earlier. J. A. Soggin (VT 10 [1960] 341\u201347) has discussed these verses and others as cultic catechism, and J. Loza (RB 78 [1971] 481\u201387, 491\u201399) has analyzed the same passages in detail as etiological catechism paralleled in the treaties of Esarhaddon and in the Sfire stelae, \u201cdeeply rooted in a living tradition, probably a cultic one\u201d (496).
\nIn both vv 25 and 26, \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3\u05d4, the noun that frequently describes (see n. 12:25.b.) the difficult labor of Egyptian bondage, is used in reference to Israel\u2019s worshipful service of Yahweh in the \u201cobligation\u201d of Passover. This clever rhetorical touch makes graphic the difference between what is done in slavery by force and what is done in freedom by commitment.
\n28 Thus provided with a means of protecting themselves from the decimation about to fall, the people of Israel bow in worship. Then, according to the sequence of the composite describing the signs of protection, they scatter to follow the instructions they have received, in this reference all of the instructions regarding Passover.
\nExplanation
\nIn a variation of the theme of Yahweh\u2019s separation of his people from the damage of the harmful and fearful mighty acts, the account of the final and most devastating of those mighty acts includes a means of the protection of the families of Israel. This composite is approached altogether too literally by those who argue that the protection of the Israelite households by the sign of the blood of the Passover victim introduces an element of inconsistency (so Fohrer, \u00dcberlieferung, 79\u201386, who assigns these verses to his Nomadic source). Yahweh is to move through Egypt, not just parts of Egypt, and the point of the protective sign as of the mighty act itself is the proof of Yahweh\u2019s powerful Presence.
\nOnce again, we are given liturgical material intrusive to the narrative sequence into which it has been placed. But it has been placed there as a means of dramatizing that narrative, as a means of contemporizing it, and as a means of turning it into a confession of faith. Yahweh, proving his Presence to his people, was about to provide freedom for them by a mighty blow from which he was solicitous to give them protection. Yahweh present, freeing, protecting is the subject of the larger narrative and liturgical composite designed above all to make, to sustain, and to continue a confessional assertion. This section is devoted primarily to Yahweh\u2019s protection.
\nThe Tenth Mighty Act (12:29\u201336)
\nBibliography
\nBrichto, H. C. The Problem of \u201cCurse\u201d in the Hebrew Bible. JBL MS 12. Philadelphia: Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, 1963. Coats, G. \u201cDespoiling the Egyptians.\u201d VT 18 (1968) 450\u201357. Morgenstern, J. \u201cThe Despoiling of the Egyptians.\u201d JBL 68 (1949) 1\u201328.
\nTranslation
\n29 Thus it was that in the middle of the night Yahweh struck a fatal blow against all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, the occupant of the royal throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner in jail, and all the firstborn of the cattle. 30 Pharaoh rose urgently in the night, he and all the members of his court and all the Egyptians. There was a great cry of anguish throughout Egypt, for there was no family where there was no one dead.
\n31 Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron in the night, then said, \u201cGet going! Go out from the midst of my people, not just you, but the sons of Israel as well! Go along and worship Yahweh in accord with your demand! 32 Take your flocks and even your herds, just as you have demanded, only go! And you, bless even me.\u201d
\n33 The Egyptians, meanwhile, pressed the people to hurry their going out from the land\u2014for they said, \u201cAll of us will be dead.\u201d 34 So the people took up their dough before it could rise; their breadboards were wrapped up in their coats and carried upon their backs. 35 The Israelites also did as Moses had instructed: they asked of the Egyptians articles of silver, articles of gold, and garments, 36 and Yahweh gave the people credibility in the opinion of the Egyptians, so that they gave these things. In this manner, they picked the Egyptians clean.
\nNotes
\n29.a. Cf. 11:5. Here, as there, the text has \u201cPharaoh the one sitting upon his throne,\u201d a phrase that clearly refers to the zenith of power and position in the land.
\n29.b. \u05d1\u05d1\u05d9\u05ea \u05d4\u05d1\u05d5\u05e8 \u201cin the house of the pit,\u201d signifying a place of confinement, a prison or even a dungeon (BDB, 92).
\n30.a. Special waw in this context.
\n30.b. \u201cHe\u201d is lacking in LXX and Vg.
\n30.c. LXX has \u1f10\u03bd \u03c0\u03ac\u03c3\u1fc3 \u03b3\u1fc7 \u0391\u1f30\u03b3\u03cd\u03c0\u03c4\u1ff3 \u201cin all the land of Egypt.\u201d
\n30.d. \u05d1\u05d9\u05ea \u201chouse.\u201d
\n31.a. MT has \u201che.\u201d \u201cPharaoh\u201d is clearly intended, and is added above for clarity. LXX, Syr., Vg Editio Clementina include the word \u201cPharaoh.\u201d
\n31.b. LXX adds \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2 \u201cto them.\u201d
\n31.c. The impv. form of \u05e7\u05d5\u05dd, meaning \u201crise up to go\u201d (cf. BDB, 878).
\n31.d. On this use of \u05d2\u05dd \u2026 \u05d2\u05dd \u201cnot just \u2026 but \u2026 as well\u201d in vv 31\u201332, see Labuschagne, Studia, 199\u2013203.
\n31.e. Impv \u05d4\u05dc\u05da. This series of three verbs depicting going, \u05e7\u05d5\u05dd \u201cget going,\u201d \u05d9\u05e6\u05d0 \u201cgo out,\u201d and \u05d4\u05dc\u05da \u201cgo along,\u201d all impvs, gives a graphic sense of Pharaoh\u2019s rising panic and urgency.
\n31.f. Piel inf constr of \u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u201cspeak.\u201d
\n32.a. See n. 31.e.
\n34.a. \u05d7\u05de\u05e5 \u201cbe sour, leavened,\u201d (BDB, 329); the dough was not given time to ferment.
\n34.b. Or \u201cshoulders\u201d (BDB, 1014). This is probably no more than a description of their mode of transporting the dough from which the bread of the next meals would be made. Cassuto\u2019s (146) theory that the wrapping and carrying of the dough against the body was an attempt to hasten its rising is unlikely, as v 39 makes clear.
\n35.a. See n. 11:2.b.
\n36.a. See n. 11:3.b.
\n36.b. Special waw.
\n36.c. See n. 3:22.d.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe actual arrival of the tenth of the mighty acts is described succinctly in a composite usually assigned to J (vv 29\u201334, the death of Egypt\u2019s firstborn) and E (vv 35\u201336, the \u201cdespoiling\u201d of the Egyptians). Amidst the complexity of all the liturgical material that has been added to the narrative of this climactic and determinative mighty act, the account itself seems almost too brief. This brevity may, however, be a deliberate feature of the larger composite presented by Exodus. The entire sequence of the mighty acts leans towards this conclusive proof of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Anticipated even before the beginning of the mighty-act sequence, in 3:20\u201322 and in 4:21\u201323, and insinuated throughout the sequence in the hardening-of-the-heart motif, this final mighty act is effectively recounted in so stark and brief a form.
\nThe assignment of vv 35\u201336 to E is based on little more than the theory that E is the tetrateuchal source for the \u201cdespoiling\u201d tradition. There has been much speculation about the incorporation of ancient traditions into J, and even the \u201cpreliterary fusion of traditions incorporated without concern for tensions into J\u201d (Coats, VT 18 [1968] 450). In fact there is no decisive evidence for the assignment of the \u201cdespoiling\u201d accounts to one source, excluding any others. It is for this reason that Exod 12:35\u201336 is assigned both to E (Driver, 99\u2013100; Hyatt, 137\u201338; Childs, \u201cmay be,\u201d 184), and to J (Beer, \u201cJ1\u201d 68; Morgenstern, JBL 68 [1949] 27; Noth, 98\u201399; Coats, VT 18 [1968] 450\u201351).
\nThe form of the section at hand is set by the need to bring together three motifs, each of which declares conclusively the powerful Presence of Yahweh in Egypt, and the utter capitulation of Pharaoh. The first of these is the arrival of the predicted tenth mighty act (vv 29\u201330); the second is the urgent order of Pharaoh that Moses and his people leave, on their terms, but as quickly as possible (vv 31\u201332); the third is the equal urgency of the Egyptians to be rid of the Israelites, to which an etiology of the use of unleavened bread at Passover and the despoiling story have been logically attached. The original context of these various narratives is indeterminate. Their impact, in the tight combination of this pericope, is dramatic.
\nComment
\n29\u201330 The announcement of the death of Egypt\u2019s firstborn differs in the expression of the range of its effect from the prediction of 11:5. The \u201cservant-girl who grinds with the hand-mill\u201d is replaced here by someone even farther down the social scale from Pharaoh exalted on his throne, \u201cthe prisoner in jail.\u201d There is a contrast also between a Pharaoh who knew nothing of Yahweh at the first encounter with Moses (5:2) and who now rises urgently in the middle of the night, along with his court, because of the powerful action of Yahweh throughout the land of Egypt. The \u201cgreat cry of anguish\u201d described in 11:6 as unprecedented and unrepeatable is even more chilling here by virtue of the terrible assertion that every Egyptian family was touched by death.
\n31\u201332 The summons of Moses and Aaron by Pharaoh under these catastrophic circumstances is not to be considered evidence of a separate tradition because 10:28\u201329 represent Moses\u2019 \u201cfinal\u201d audience with Pharaoh. The summons here is all the more dramatic a representation of Pharaoh\u2019s complete defeat by virtue of that earlier reference. At the end of the ninth mighty act, Pharaoh is still resistant, even though he is so under Yahweh\u2019s influence; in the awful aftermath of the tenth mighty act, Pharaoh\u2019s resistance is gone. He reverses his own order and summons Moses to come to him. When Moses arrives (Aaron here as elsewhere in Exodus is an addition to the narrative), Pharaoh blurts out a series of three imperatives, each a different verb for \u201cgo,\u201d and beginning with Moses, he orders every Israelite and everything Israelite out of Egypt. \u201cGet up, get out, go on,\u201d he says, \u201ctake along and go on!\u201d \u201cYou get out; and not you alone, but the Israelites as well; go along and worship Yahweh, and take flocks and herds alike; just go, Go, GO!\u201d This series of five imperative verbs, three meaning \u201cgo\u201d (\u05d4\u05dc\u05da is used twice) and one meaning \u201ctake,\u201d coupled with five usages of the emphatic particle \u05d2\u05dd \u201calso\u201d (cf. Labuschagne, Studia 195\u2013202), marvelously depicts a Pharaoh whose reserve of pride is gone, who must do everything necessary to have done with Moses and Israel and the Yahweh who wants them for his own. As Yahweh has said, the time would come when Pharaoh would \u201cdrive\u201d or \u201churl\u201d them out (3:20 and 6:1). That time had now arrived.
\nThis convincing sequence is then brilliantly capped by the ultimate capitulation of the Pharaoh who had claimed ignorance of Yahweh, then had sought to match Yahweh\u2019s mighty deeds, and then had withdrawn his promises nearly as soon as they were made. Pharaoh at last asks Moses and Aaron for the blessing of Yahweh. The verb, this time, is not an imperative. Pharaoh is quite beyond any resistance, and his request is that the terrible curse that has fallen be effective no longer (cf. Brichto, \u201cCurse,\u201d 10). Yahweh has proved his Presence and his power, and there is no need further to stiffen Pharaoh\u2019s resolve. The exodus, so long awaited, will be delayed no longer.
\n33 Pharaoh\u2019s order that Moses and his people leave Egypt is paralleled by the pressure upon Israel of Pharaoh\u2019s people. They \u201cmake strong, urge\u201d the people to hurry their departure, and they do so because this final mighty act is of them all the most threatening to life. The three mighty acts preceding this one each threatened the Egyptians with the fear of death (see Comment on 10:14\u201316) but this final blow brought death itself into every Egyptian family (v 30), and the Egyptians quite reasonably felt that if these Israelites were restrained any longer, no Egyptian would be left alive.
\n34 The point thus graphically made that nothing remains to hold them back any longer, the people of Israel, already forewarned (11:1, 12:11\u201312), are prepared to set off immediately. They have only to scoop up the dough laid out for the next day\u2019s bread, pack the bowls or boards in which or onto which it had been left, take up their other goods, and leave. The word \u05d1\u05b8\u05bc\u05e6\u05b5\u05e7 \u201cdough\u201d is a cognate of \u05d1\u05e6\u05e7, a verb that means \u201cswell.\u201d The dough for a day\u2019s bread was mixed and allowed to stand before it was baked, so that it could \u201cleaven,\u201d that is, rise from the yeast in a pinch of the previous day\u2019s bread (Ross, \u201cBread,\u201d IDB 1:462). In this instance, apparently, the dough was prepared and left to rise through the night, a process that was interrupted when the dough had to be disturbed for the abrupt departure. The mixing boards, or bowls, presumably with the dough on or in them still, were wrapped and carried in readiness for the next meal, whenever and wherever it might be, but the dough, so disturbed, would not rise, and so would have to be eaten unleavened, as bread that did not rise (see 12:39).
\nThis narrative about the dough thus effectively presents two points: (1) that when the moment of release finally comes, the people of Israel leave Egypt in a great hurry; (2) that the eating of unleavened bread in the worship of Passover had its origin in this hasty departure and forever symbolized it in a manner arresting even to children.
\n35\u201336 The taking by the Israelites of their Egyptian oppressors\u2019 valuables, anticipated in Exod 3:19\u201322 and 11:2\u20133, is here reported without elaboration. This \u201cdespoiling\u201d is made possible by Yahweh\u2019s gift of grace to Israel, an aura of credibility which made the Egyptians trust them and want to give them articles of silver, gold, and clothing. That the Egyptians could so be \u201cpicked clean\u201d is another testimony of Yahweh\u2019s triumph over Pharaoh and all his gods and wizards.
\nExplanation
\nThis brief account of the tenth of the mighty acts of Yahweh in Egypt brings together a series of themes introduced here and there within a sequence that had actually begun in the promise of the proof of Presence made to Moses in Exod 3. Yahweh has proved himself in Egypt to Israel, to the Egyptian populace, to the royal wizards and courtiers, and finally to the powerful Pharaoh himself. He has pressed that proof beyond the boundaries a human resistance would have set, by hardening Pharaoh\u2019s resolve. He has taught Pharaoh, who claimed never to have heard of him, that he is present, and powerfully so, to such an extent that Pharaoh comes at last to ask Yahweh\u2019s blessing as a means of curbing any further reach of the disaster that threatened Egypt\u2019s future through the death of the next generation.
\nEvery Egyptian is affected and threatened by this last of the final acts. So Pharaoh, his resolve no longer strengthened by Yahweh, surrenders, commands Moses to get out, with all Israel and with all things Israelite. The Egyptians urge departure upon the people of Israel. Thus the slaves and prisoners are not only set free but driven out, as Yahweh had predicted, laden with the gifts of an Egyptian populace glad to be rid of them, at whatever price. With a deft recapitulation of major themes, proof of Presence, defeat of Pharaoh and his gods, the cancellation of the bondage by those who had opposed it, the complete humiliation of Pharaoh and his people, the actual beginning of the move toward exodus has at long last been reached. This compact section, ringing with a staccato rhythm of commands and bustling with a departure upon the instant, brings to a close the longest single section in the entire Book of Exodus, the section proving the claim of the special name \u201cYahweh.\u201d
\nThe Exodus from Egypt (12:37\u201350)
\nBibliography
\nAlt, A. \u201cDie Deltaresidenz der Ramessiden.\u201d Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. 3. Munich: C. H. Beck\u2019sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1959. 176\u201385. Davies, G. I. \u201cThe Wilderness Itineraries and the Composition of the Pentateuch.\u201d VT 33 (1983) 1\u201313. Dussaud, R. Les origines canan\u00e9ennes du sacrifice Israelite. 2d ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1941. Helck, W. \u201cT kw und die Ramses-Stadt.\u201d VT 15 (1965) 35\u201348. Laaf, P. Die Pascha-Feier Israels. Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1970. Lucas, A. \u201cThe Number of Israelites at the Exodus.\u201d PEQ 75 (1944) 164\u201368. Mendenhall, G. E. \u201cThe Census Lists of Numbers 1 and 26.\u201d JBL 77 (1958) 52\u201366. Noth, M. \u201cThe \u2018Re-presentation\u2019 of the Old Testament in Proclamation.\u201d Essays on Old Testament Hermeneutics. Ed. C. Westermann. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1963. 76\u201388. Redford, D. B. \u201cExodus I 11.\u201d VT 13 (1963) 401\u201318. Scheiber, A. \u201c \u2018Ihr Sollt Kein Bein dran Zerbrechen.\u2019 \u201d VT 13 (1963) 95\u201397.
\nTranslation
\n37 So the sons of Israel set out from Rameses towards Succoth, some six hundred thousand able-bodied men, not counting women and children. 38 A large and motley group went along with them as well, and flocks and herds, a great number of domestic animals. 39 At their first stop, they baked the dough which they had brought from Egypt into round, flat, unleavened bread-cakes\u2014it had not risen, because they were pushed out of Egypt and had no chance to linger; indeed they had packed no food for themselves.
\n40 The period of the residence of the sons of Israel, in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. 41 Indeed, it was at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, on the very last day, that they came out, all Yahweh\u2019s hosts, from the land of Egypt. 42 It was a night of keepings for Yahweh, to bring them out from the land of Egypt\u2014so it is, this night for Yahweh, a night of keepings for all the sons of Israel, generation after generation.
\n43 Therefore Yahweh said to Moses and to Aaron, \u201cThis is the requirement of the Passover: anyone outside the covenant shall not eat it. 44 Any man\u2019s slave, bought and paid for, when you have circumcised him, may then eat it. 45 A transient or a hired hand is not to eat it. 46 In one house, it is to be eaten; you are not to take any of the meat outside the home, and you are not to break any bone in it. 47 The entire congregation of Israel is to keep this requirement. 48 And when an outsider is visiting with you and he wants to do Passover for Yahweh, when every male of his family is circumcised, then he may come near to do it. He is like one of the land\u2019s own. But no one uncircumcised is to eat it. 49 There is a single law for the native-born and for the outsider come to visit in your midst.\u201d
\n50 And all the sons of Israel did as Yahweh commanded Moses and Aaron\u2014indeed, they did. 51 And in that very day Yahweh brought the sons of Israel out from Egypt together with their hosts.
\nNotes
\n37.a. \u05db\u05b0\u05bc\u200d used \u201cquantitatively \u2026 = about\u201d (BDB, 453).
\n37.b. \u05e8\u05d2\u05dc\u05d9 \u05d4\u05d2\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd refers to \u201cstrong men on foot,\u201d here the protecting, fighting force of Israel; cf. BDB, 150, 920.
\n37.c. See Cassuto, 125.
\n38.a. LXX, Vg insert \u201cand.\u201d
\n39.a. Special waw in this context, and in relation to vv 33\u201334.
\n39.b. \u05e2\u05d2\u05ea \u05de\u05e6\u05d5\u05ea: the addition of \u05e6\u05d2\u05ea \u201cdisc, round cake\u201d to \u05de\u05e6\u05d5\u05ea \u201cunleavened bread cake\u201d suggests a flat cake instead of the loaf or pone, the \u201crisen\u201d cake the Israelites had intended to prepare.
\n39.c. See nn. 12:34.a, b.
\n40.a. SamPent \u05d0\u05d1\u05ea\u05dd and LXX \u03bf\u03b9 \u03c0\u03b1\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03b5\u03c2 \u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd add here \u201cand their fathers.\u201d
\n40.b. SamPent adds \u05d1\u05d0\u05e8\u05e5 \u05db\u05e0\u05e2\u05da \u05d5\u05d1\u05d0\u05e8\u05e5 \u05de\u05e6\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cin the land of Canaan and in the land of Egypt,\u201d as does LXX, but in reverse order.
\n41.a. \u05d1\u05e2\u05e6\u05e7\u05bc \u05d4\u05d9\u05d5\u05dd \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4 lit. means \u201cin that very same day\u201d (BDB, 783); the reference here is clearly the end of the Egyptian sojourn and the day of exodus.
\n42.a. MT has the constr \u05dc\u05b5\u05d9\u05dc \u201cnight of\u201d at the beginning of v 42; SamPent has the abs \u05dc\u05d9\u05dc\u05d4 \u201cnight\u201d at the end of v 41. LXX omits \u201cnight\u201d altogether.
\n42.b. \u201cA night\u201d is added here for clarity; \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cwatchings,\u201d vigils,\u201d is rendered \u201ckeepings\u201d in its two occurrences in this verse to signify the fulfillment of commitments first by Yahweh and then by Israel in succession.
\n43.a. See n. 12:14.c.
\n43.b. \u05db\u05dc\u05be\u05d1\u05df\u05be\u05e0\u05db\u05e8 \u201cevery foreign son\u201d here clearly refers to anyone, whatever his land, who is not a member of the covenant community of Israel.
\n44.a. \u05de\u05e7\u05e0\u05ea\u05be\u05db\u05e1\u05e3 \u201ca purchase of money.\u201d SamPent has \u05db\u05e1\u05e4\u05d5 \u201cof his money.\u201d
\n46.a. Or perhaps even \u201cin a single family,\u201d \u05d1\u05d1\u05d9\u05ea \u05d0\u05d7\u05d3.
\n46.b. \u05de\u05df\u05be\u05d4\u05d1\u05e9\u05c2\u05e8 \u201cfrom the flesh.\u201d
\n47.a. LXX and Vg add \u201cof the sons of\u201d (\u03c5\u1f30\u1ff6\u03bd, filiorum).
\n47.b. \u05d9\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5 \u05d0\u05ea\u05d5 \u201cdo it\u201d; \u201crequirement\u201d is added here (see v 43) for clarity.
\n48.a. \u05dc\u05d5, lit., \u201cbelonging to him.\u201d
\n48.b. \u05d1\u05d0\u05d6\u05e8\u05d7 \u05d4\u05d0\u05e8\u05e5 \u201cas a native of the land.\u201d
\n50.a. \u201cAll\u201d is not in LXX or the Cairo Geniza fragment of Exodus.
\n51.a. \u05e2\u05dc here is taken in its sense of \u201caddition to\u201d (BDB, 755), and \u201chosts\u201d may be understood broadly in reference to the great number of Israelites (as in v 41), and more specifically, in reference to the Israelite families now at last accompanying the able-bodied men. The more specific reference to tribal organization may also be present (see n. 6:26.a).
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe kernel of this section is the account of Israel\u2019s movement of exodus, the first leg of the actual journey toward freedom. That account, set forth in vv 37\u201339, has been assigned generally to J, though Davies (VT 33 [1983] 5\u201313) has argued that 12:37 is dependent upon Num 33 and is the insertion of \u201ca redactor in the Deuteronomistic tradition.\u201d Following this narrative, there is a kind of reflective miscellany, vv 40\u201351, dealing successively with the chronological extent of the period of Israel\u2019s stay in Egypt (vv 40\u201341), the commitments called forth from Israel because Yahweh had kept his commitments (v 41), additional details concerning who is to have a part in keeping those commitments (vv 43\u201349), and reporting Israel\u2019s first obedience to Yahweh\u2019s requirements (v 50), and, again, the exodus itself, this time as effected by Yahweh (v 51). This miscellany, which in its present location seems almost to be both musing and additional requirements prompted by the final arrival of the exodus so long awaited, is usually assigned to P (so Beer, 68\u201371; Anderson, in Noth, Pentateuchal Traditions, 269; Hyatt, 139\u201341) though sometimes to layers of tradition within the Priestly source (Laaf, Pascha-Feier, 10\u201315).
\nSome commentators (e.g., Hyatt, 137, 140; Childs, 184) reckon vv 40\u201351 to be the continuation, along with v 28, of a Priestly narrative of the tenth mighty act, Passover, and exodus begun in 12:1\u201320. In such a view, the P narrative has been broken up for distribution at appropriate points in a composite of narrative and liturgical material connected with the tenth mighty act, Passover, and exodus.
\nAs always, however, the resultant composite is more important than speculation, however informative, about the way the narrative came together. Here, as throughout Exodus, we have a narrative framework into which has been inserted important theological confession and liturgical instruction designed to re-present or contemporize a foundational experience in Israel\u2019s faith (cf. Noth, OT Hermeneutics, 80\u201382). In an entirely logical sequence, the first reference to the actual movement of exodus prompts reminiscence about the stay in Egypt, an assertion that Yahweh kept his promises right on schedule, and some instructions about who is and who is not to take part in the continuation of the event through its ritual celebration.
\nComment
\n37 The specification of the direction of the exodus journey \u201cfrom Rameses in the direction of Succoth\u201d was no doubt intended to locate the movement of the first stage of Israel\u2019s journey from the Egyptian Delta. Unfortunately, the note no longer serves its original purpose, because of the uncertainty in identifying the two places mentioned. Alt (Kleine Schriften 3:176\u201385) summarized the data available up to 1954, and more recently Herrmann (Israel in Egypt, 23\u201328) and Hyatt (59\u201360) have reviewed the location of Delta placenames mentioned in the OT, but any precise plotting of the route of Israel in exodus remains impossible.
\nThe Hebrew transcription of the Egyptian name Pr-R\u02d3m\u015b\u015bw differs in this verse, in Gen 47:11, and in Num 33:3, 5 from Exod 1:11. Here and in Genesis and Numbers it is \u05e8\u05b7\u05e2\u05b0\u05de\u05b0\u05e1\u05b5\u05e1. In 1:11, it is \u05e8\u05b7\u05e2\u05b7\u05de\u05b0\u05e1\u05b5\u05e1. This variation is probably indicative of differences in the oral transmission of place-names in an unfamiliar language. The full name of the city, according to Herrmann (Israel in Egypt, 27) was \u201cHouse of Ramesses, beloved of Amun, great in victorious might.\u201d Alt argued (Kleine Schriften 3:181\u201385) that the name may have represented a large capital city area in the nineteenth dynasty, a view followed by Herrmann (26\u201327). Redford has argued (VT 13 [1963] 412\u201318) that the OT references to \u05e8\u05e2\u05de\u05e1\u05e1 \u201cRameses\u201d are all from P, indicate a transcription from Greek, not Egyptian, and are therefore a late addition to the exodus tradition. He is opposed in this view by Helck (VT 15 [1965] 41\u201348).
\nSuccoth has been connected with the Pithom of 1:11, with a region, and with Tell el-Maskhuta in the Wadi Tumilat (see the summary of Hyatt, 59\u201360, and cf. Helck, VT 15 [1965] 35\u201340). Certainty remains elusive, but there is little reason to doubt that this note originally marked a specific route now lost to us, a route to the east and out of Egypt by the most direct possible path.
\nThe number of \u201cable-bodied men\u201d leaving Egypt also presents difficulty, not least in the number six hundred thousand, as so many able-bodied men would suggest a total company of two (Knight, 94) to three (Beer, 68\u201369) million. As so vast a company cannot fit what we know even of the biblical context of the narratives of Genesis and Exodus (Lucas, PEQ 75 [1944] 164\u201368), a series of explanations of the figure has been offered. Mendenhall (JBL 77 [1958] 60\u201366), for example, refining a suggestion made by W. M. Flinders Petrie in 1906, has argued from the comparable references in Num 1 and 26 that the word \u05d0\u05dc\u05e3 should be read not as the number \u201cthousand,\u201d but as the designation of a tribal subsection determined by the size of a given tribe. This use of the term was not understood in post-exilic times, in which the military units were defined according to a monarchical pattern as comprised of units of one thousand. The older understanding of \u05d0\u05dc\u05e3, according to Mendenhall, would give a translation here of around five thousand ablebodied men (not 2500, as Knight, 94, says). Beer (69), to cite another example, proposed that the number \u201cabout six hundred thousand\u201d was arrived at by Gematria, the equivalence of the letters of the phrase \u05d1\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d9\u05e9\u05c2\u05e8\u05d0\u05dc \u201csons of Israel\u201d with their numerical equivalents. Such an equation yields the number 603,551, remarkably close to the 603,550 of Num 1:46, and even the 601,730 of Num 26:51 and the \u201cabout\u201d 600,000 here.
\nNeither of these suggestions is entirely convincing, in part because they are such obvious attempts to reduce what is clearly a straightforward number to a manageable size. Other approaches attempt to take the number as it stands, either as an outright exaggeration (Hyatt, 139) or as an accurate representation of the number of Israelite fighting men at the time of the composition of J (cf. G. H. Davies, 117). These latter interpretations are preferable.
\n38 The tradition of a \u201cmotley group\u201d accompanying the Israelites in their exodus may well be an accurate reflection of a process referred to also in the narratives of conquest and settlement (e.g., Josh 9:3\u201321 and 24:14\u201328). That there were many who became Israelite by theological rather than biological descendancy is many times referred to in the OT and is the occasion for such requirements as those set forth in vv 43\u201349 of this composite.
\n39 V 39 is the conclusion to the narrative of the dough disturbed before it could rise (vv 33\u201334) and the end of an etiology for the use of unleavened bread in the worship of Passover. The departure from Egypt had come so abruptly that the only food at hand at the Israelites\u2019 first stop, still in Egyptian territory, was the dough they had scooped up on their way out. This they baked, unrisen, into flat cakes.
\n40\u201342 The account of the actual departure, so long awaited and so dramatically prepared for, provides an appropriate place for an appendix on the time spent in Egypt. The figure given here for that stay, four hundred and thirty years, is at variance with the figures given in other passages (four generations, Gen 15:16; four hundred years, Gen 15:13), and thus it too has been the subject of considerable interpretation. Cassuto (85\u201387) has an elaborate theory based on units derived from a sexagesimal system that connects v 40 to the ages of Levi, Kohath, and Amram in Exod 6:16, 18, and 20. He arrives at the correct total, but by a method that seems dictated by the answer. Other explanations pose the need for a long period, a generation of a hundred years, or even apply the four hundred and thirty years to the period in Egypt and Canaan from Abraham\u2019s arrival there (a solution applied by the reading of the SamPent and LXX; see n. 40.b). No explanation thus far advanced, however, gives a satisfactory accounting of the number four hundred and thirty. It may have been exaggerated for the same reason as the number given in v 37, or even because of the inflated number there.
\nWhat is more to the point is that Yahweh kept his promise, precisely on schedule on the very last night of the long period of the sojourn in Egypt, to bring out his \u201chosts,\u201d his \u201corganized divisions\u201d (see above, n. 6:26.a.). \u201cHosts\u201d very probably has a double meaning: in general, the great number of Israelites fulfilling Yahweh\u2019s promise of progeny to the fathers; specifically, the organization of the Israelites into a traveling\u2014and fighting\u2014force. The \u201cvery last day\u201d is the end of the long period, the four generations. Yahweh made that night a \u201ckeepings\u201d (\u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05de\u05bb\u05bc\u05e8\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd) night\u2014a night when he kept his promises of release and protection and freedom and movement of his multiplied people toward the land he had promised them. In response, the Israelites were to make that night a \u201ckeepings\u201d night for Yahweh, a night when they would keep their promises of remembrance, generation following generation. The juxtaposition of the two occurrences of \u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05de\u05bb\u05bc\u05e8\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd \u201ckeepings\u201d (a word occurring nowhere else in the OT), once in reference to Yahweh\u2019s keeping and once in reference to Israel\u2019s keeping, is a brilliant rhetorical touch.
\n43\u201349 The reference to requirements to be kept at Passover, in the context of Israel\u2019s going forth into a world of many peoples and accompanied by a \u201cmotley group\u201d at that, provides a natural location for the important specification that only members of the covenant community are eligible for Passover worship. The criterion for this membership is circumcision. Slaves bought and paid for, that is, owned outright and without question, must be circumcised before they can keep Passover. Those passing through, even those engaged for temporary work, are not to keep Passover. An outsider may be allowed to keep Passover only if he and his entire family are circumcised, that is, admitted to the covenant community. One rule applies to all: circumcision.
\nFurther, the meal of remembrance is to be eaten inside, in the one house selected for a gathering of smaller families (Exod 12:4). None of the meat is to be taken outside, where someone uncircumcised would have access to it. No bone of the sacrificial animal is to be broken, to ensure that the meat will remain inside, in the one house set apart for the worship of remembrance (so Dussaud, Les origines, 211), and perhaps as a symbol of the unity of the family worshiping (Noth, 101) and even of the covenant community. Scheiber (VT 13 [1963] 95\u201397), commenting on collections of unbroken animal bones discovered in excavations at Qumran, has called this verse, along with Num 9:12, \u201cpre-Mosaic instructions,\u201d the significance of which is apotropaic. He cites Jub. 49:13 as an interpretation of this practice, and notes that it was observed by a wide and intercontinental array of \u201cprimitive peoples.\u201d
\n50\u201351 The appendices of Passover requirements, in themselves repetitive, are summed up with a typical Priestly assertion of obedience and a further reference to Yahweh\u2019s bringing-out right on time.
\nExplanation
\nThe exodus itself, long awaited by Israel, much postponed by Pharaoh, and carefully prepared by Yahweh, is the point of this section. The pericope functions as a kind of conclusion to the longest narrative complex within the Book of Exodus, a complex begun with the account of the call of Moses in chaps. 3 and 4 and anticipated by the conditions of bondage and suffering described in chaps. 1 and 2. Though much liturgical material has encrusted this narrative in its present form, both before and after the report of the exodus itself, the narrative, which is after all the stimulus for the commemorative liturgy, shines through still, and even with an enhanced lustre.
\nThe numbers (of able-bodied men departing, of years spent in Egypt) and the requirements (circumcision, the separation of the Passover ritual as private worship) are an enhancement of a great event, an event made concrete by the mention of a point of departure and a specific route. The emphasis upon Yahweh\u2019s own timetable for this event, read in the light of the precision of the abrupt departure on the very last night of such a lengthy residence and against the backdrop of Yahweh\u2019s hardening of Pharaoh\u2019s heart, suggests the transcendent effectiveness of the event, which becomes exodus for every believing Israelite of whatever generation.
\nWhat gives a literary appearance of hodge-podge dimensions, a narrative onto which has been loaded a miscellany of cultic requirements, then, has a somewhat different theological appearance as the testimony of a night of keepings by Yahweh, to be made real to successive generations by the specification of a night of keepings for Yahweh. What Yahweh did in Egypt he did for all Israel, in every generation. That each generation might know that, the confession of what he did is here extended by the requirement of what they are to do, once yearly, on a night that is different from all other nights.
\nThe Ritual Testimony of the Exodus (13:1\u201316)
\nBibliography
\nBrekelmans, C. \u201cDie sogenannten deuteronomischen Elemente in Gen.-Num. Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte des Deuteronomiums.\u201d Volume du Congr\u00e8s: Gen\u00e8ve. VTSup 15. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965. 90\u201396. Caloz, M. \u201cExode, XIII, 3\u201316 et son rapport au Deut\u00e9ronome.\u201d RB 75 (1968) 5\u201362, plus two appendices. Lohfink, N. Das Hauptgebot. AnBib 20. Rome: Instituto Biblico e Pontificio, 1963. Loza, J. \u201cLes cat\u00e9ch\u00e8ses \u00e9tiologiques dans l\u2019Ancien Testament.\u201d RB 78 (1971) 481\u2013500. Muilenburg, J. \u201cForm Criticism and Beyond.\u201d JBL 88 (1969) 1\u201318. Seters, J. van. \u201cThe Place of the Yahwist in the History of Passover and Massot.\u201d ZAW 95 (1983) 167\u201382. Skehan, P. W., and J. T. Milik. Qumran Grotte 4: II (4Q128\u20134Q157). Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1977. Soggin, J. A. \u201cKult\u00e4tiologische Sagen und Katechese im Hexateuch.\u201d VT 10 (1960) 341\u201347. Speiser, E. A. \u201c\u0162W\u0162P\u0162.\u201d JQR 48 (1957\u201358) 208\u201317. Vaux, R. de. Ancient Israel, Vol. 1: Social Institutions. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965.
\nTranslation
\n1 Then Yahweh spoke to Moses as follows: 2 \u201cSet apart for me all firstborn. Every life that opens the womb among the sons of Israel, whether human or animal, is mine.\u201d
\n3 So Moses said to the people, \u201cKeep in mind this day in which you went out from Egypt, from the non-status of slaves, because by strength of power Yahweh brought you out thence. Nothing leavened is to be eaten. 4 The day you are going out is in the month of the green grain. 5 It is necessary, when Yahweh brings you into the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, the land that he promised by oath to your fathers to give to you, a land gushing with milk and honey, that you worship in this manner in this month: 6 seven days you are to eat unleavened bread cakes, and on the seventh day there is to be special worship to Yahweh. 7 Unleavened bread cakes are to be eaten for seven days, and no leaven is to be seen in your possession. Leaven is not to be seen in your possession anywhere within your borders. 8 You shall explain to your son on that day as follows: \u2018This is because of what Yahweh did for me in my coming out of Egypt.\u2019 9 And it is to be for you a sign upon your hand and a reminder between your eyes, in order that the instruction of Yahweh may be in your speech, because with a strong power Yahweh has brought you forth from Egypt. 10 So you are to keep this requirement at its scheduled time year after year.
\n11 \u201cIt is necessary, when Yahweh brings you into the land of the Canaanites, in accord with his promise by oath to you and to your fathers, and gives it to you, 12 that you commit to Yahweh every life that opens the womb. Every firstborn animal that belongs to you, all the males, go to Yahweh. 13 Every firstborn he-ass you shall replace with an animal from the flock; if you do not replace it, then you are to break its neck. Every firstborn human among your sons you must replace. 14 It is necessary, when your son asks you, in due course, \u2018What is this?\u2019 that you say to him, \u2018With a strong power, Yahweh brought us out from Egypt, from the non-status of slaves. 15 For when Pharaoh was stubborn-minded about sending us forth, then Yahweh killed all the firstborn of the land of Egypt, from human firstborn to the firstborn of the domesticated animals. For that reason, I am sacrificing to Yahweh all the males that open the womb, except all my firstborn sons, whom I am replacing.\u2019 16 And it is to be for a sign upon your hand and for bands between your eyes that with a strong power Yahweh brought us out from Egypt.\u201d
\nNotes
\n2.a. \u05e4\u05d8\u05e8 \u05db\u05dc\u05be\u05e8\u05d7\u05dd \u201cthat which opens every womb.\u201d
\n3.a. LXX, Syr., SamPent add \u201cfrom the land of.\u201d
\n3.b. \u05d1\u05d7\u05d6\u05e7 \u05d9\u05d3 \u201cby strength of power\u201d (cf. BDB, 390).
\n4.a. SamPent concludes v 3 with \u05d4\u05d9\u05d5\u05dd \u201cthe day,\u201d and begins this sentence with \u05d0\u05ea\u05dd \u05d9\u05e6\u05d0\u05d9\u05dd \u201cyou are going out.\u201d
\n4.b. \u05d0\u05d1\u05d9\u05d1 \u201cgreen grain,\u201d from \u05d0\u05d1\u05d1, is descriptive of the fresh green barley forming heads of grain. See 9:31\u201332 and BDB, 1.
\n5.a. \u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cbe\u201d plus special waw.
\n5.b. SamPent, LXX, Tg. Ps.-J. add \u201cyour God.\u201d
\n5.c. SamPent adds \u05d5\u05d4\u05e4\u05e8\u05d6\u05d9 \u05d5\u05d4\u05d2\u05e8\u05d2\u05e9\u05d9 \u201cand the Perizzites and the Girgashites\u201d as does LXX, though in reverse order. 4Q128 verso (DJD VI, 51, 11.54\u201355) has \u201cthe Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, the Girgashites.\u201d Cf. Exod 3:17.
\n5.d. MT has only \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8 \u201cthat\u201d; \u201cthe land\u201d clearly intended, is added above for clarity.
\n5.e. BDB, 989.
\n5.f. \u05d5\u05e2\u05d1\u05d3\u05ea \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05d4\u05e2\u05d1\u05d3\u05d4 \u05d4\u05d6\u05d0\u05ea \u201cand you serve this service\u201d; cf. BDB, 712\u201313, 715.
\n6.a. SamPent and LXX read \u201csix.\u201d
\n6.b. See n.10:9.b.
\n7.a. \u05dc\u05da \u201cto you\u201d; note BDB, 512\u201313.
\n7.b. LXX has \u1f14\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u201cis to belong\u201d instead of \u05d9\u05b5\u05e8\u05b8\u05d0\u05b6\u05d4 \u201cto be seen.\u201d
\n7.c. \u05d5\u05dc\u05d0\u05be\u05d9\u05e8\u05d0\u05d4 \u05dc\u05da \u05e9\u05c2\u05d0\u05e8 \u201cleaven is not to be seen in your possession\u201d is lacking in Syr.
\n9.a. SamPent reads \u05d9\u05d3\u05d9\u05da \u201cyour hands\u201d and begins the verse \u05d5\u05d4\u05d9\u05d5 \u201cand they are.\u201d
\n9.b. Or \u201cmouth\u201d (BDB, 804\u20135).
\n10.a. See n.12:15.b.
\n11.a. SamPent and LXX add \u201cyour God\u201d (\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05da, \u1f41 \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 \u03c3\u03bf\u03c5).
\n12.a. The verb, hiph of \u05e2\u05d1\u05e8, has the sense \u201cto cause something to pass to,\u201d in this case into Yahweh\u2019s possession and use. Driver (108) speculates a connection with the practice of child-sacrifice by Israel\u2019s neighbors; note 2 Kgs 16:3; Ezek 20:31.
\n12.b. \u05d5\u05db\u05dc\u05be\u05e4\u05d8\u05e8 \u05e9\u05c1\u05d2\u05e8 \u201cand every offspring that opens.\u201d Cassuto (153) takes \u05e9\u05c1\u05d2\u05e8 \u201coffspring\u201d here to refer to the \u05e8\u05d7\u05dd \u201cwomb\u201d of animals. Cf. BDB, \u05e9\u05c1\u05d2\u05e8, 993. The meaning is clear, even if \u05e9\u05c1\u05d2\u05e8 is taken to mean \u201canimal offspring.\u201d
\n12.c. \u05dc\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cto Yahweh\u201d; LXX, Tg. Onk., Vg insert \u201cset aside, consecrate.\u201d
\n13.a. LXX \u03bc\u03ae\u03c4\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd and Tg. Ps.-J. add \u201cwomb,\u201d and Syr. has bwkr\u02be dkr\u02be pth\u02be rh\u02bem\u02be \u201cfirstborn male opening the womb.\u201d MT has simply \u05d5\u05db\u05dc\u05be\u05e4\u05d8\u05e8 \u05d7\u05de\u05e8 \u201cand every he-ass that opens.\u201d
\n13.b. \u05e4\u05d3\u05d4 \u201cbuy\u201d or \u201cransom\u201d at a price or by a substitute agreed upon.
\n14.a. MT has \u05d5\u05b0\u05d4\u05b8\u05d9\u05b8\u05d4 \u05db\u05b4\u05bc\u05d9 (special waw) \u201cit is necessary when\u201d; Syr. and the Cairo Geniza fragment have simply \u201cand when.\u201d
\n15.a. The Qumran text adds \u05d0\u05d3\u05dd \u05d1\u05d1\u05e0\u05d9 \u201chuman sons.\u201d
\n16.a. SamPent has \u05d5\u05d4\u05d9\u05d5 \u201cand they are,\u201d as in v 9 above.
\n16.b. \u05d8\u05d5\u05d8\u05e4\u05ea \u201cbands\u201d functions here as \u05d6\u05db\u05e8\u05d5\u05df \u201creminder\u201d does in v. 9. We may misunderstand the significance of the word, on the basis of the later literal use of it to refer to the phylactery. See Speiser, JQR 48 (1957\/58) 208\u20139.
\n16.c. SamPent, LXX read \u201cyou.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe stimulus for this section is the narrative of the sparing of the firstborn of Israel in the decimation of the tenth mighty act upon Egypt. That connection then logically becomes a basis for the inclusion of further instructions, somewhat differently phrased, regarding the ritual commemoration of the exodus. The layers in the section (vv 1\u20132; 3\u20134; 6\u201310; 11\u201316) are obvious. Yet there is also a single purpose for this collection of material, the ritual commemoration of the exodus, as a means of making it an experience real to the generations to come.
\nQuite apart from the subjects dealt with here, there are obvious stylistic differences, on the basis of which, in recent years, vv 1\u20132 have been assigned to P and vv 3\u201316 to D or a Deuteronomic redactor (Rylaarsdam, \u201cExodus,\u201d IB 1:923\u201328; Fohrer, \u00dcberlieferung, 86\u201387; Hyatt, 141\u201344; Childs, 184). There are, however, departures from such an attribution: Noth (101) contended that the entire section is deuteronomistic; Clements (78) assigns the entire section to J (cf. van Seters, ZAW 95 [1983] 175\u201376, who assigns 13:3\u201316 to a \u201cpost-Deuteronomic and exilic\u201d J); Loza (RB 78 [1971] 481\u201383, 487\u201388) has singled out the catechetical element of vv 8, 9, 14, and 16 as indicative of the relation of some of this material to a north Levitical provenance, perhaps at the sanctuaries of Shechem and Gilgal.
\nThe most elaborate analysis of the verses usually connected in some way with deuteronomic or deuteronomistic circles, vv 3\u201316, has been made by Mass\u00e9o Caloz. Following the three criteria set forth by Brekelmans (Volume du Congr\u00e8s, 93\u201396) for the separation of predeuteronomic texts from texts truly deuteronomic or deuteronomistic, Caloz (RB 75 [1968] 8\u201323) makes a careful study of the vocabulary of vv 3\u201316 and concludes that the largest number of words in recurring use is \u201cpre-dtr\u201d: 16 words used a total of 59 times. The words singled out in his analysis are then sought (23\u201343) in other pentateuchal sources; E P, J, Eissfeldt\u2019s Laienquelle, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History. A further comparison of the formula-phrases of Exod 13:3\u201316 with the formula-phrases of Deuteronomy (43\u201354), and a comparison of what is said in these verses with what is said elsewhere in the OT on the subject of unleavened bread cakes and the requirement of the firstborn (55\u201361), lead Caloz to the conclusion that Exod 13:3\u201316 is predeuteronomic, to be placed before the Josianic reform (62), and perhaps can be linked to the \u201cmore ancient traditions, J and E.\u201d
\nAs noted above (Comment on 12:24\u201327), the didactic language of such passages belongs to a style inherited not only by the Deuteronomists, but by other oral-literary circles as well. Caloz is undoubtedly correct in his basic conclusion, as also are Lohfink, Soggin, and Loza. The evidence of what James Muilenburg (JBL 88 [1969] 1\u201318) called \u201crhetorical criticism,\u201d essentially what these scholars, in varying ways, have been doing, must lead us to less provincial conclusions about the sources of both the vocabulary and the traditions that make up the rich tapestry that is the OT.
\nWhat binds this section together is not vocabulary or style, but the need to provide a ritual testimony to the divine rescue that is the exodus. That single theme is the nucleus around which are gathered here two sections (vv 1\u20132, 11\u201316) on the requirement of the firstborn, and perhaps two (note the change from singular verbs in vv 3\u20134 to plural verbs in vv 5\u201310) on unleavened bread. Into these sections have been threaded the motifs of the ritual calendar (vv 4, 5, 10), possession of the land promised by oath (vv 5, 11), instruction in the faith of the generations yet to come (vv 8\u201310, 14\u201315), substitutionary sacrifice (vv 13\u201315), and actualizing symbol (vv 9, 16). And all of this, far from the miscellany it has sometimes been held to be, is drawn together by a single intention: to make the parents\u2019 exodus also the children\u2019s exodus.
\nComment
\n1\u20132 The view of Childs (202\u20134) that 13:1\u20132 serves as a \u201csuperscription\u201d to vv 3\u201316, one \u201cpatterned after 12:1\u201320,\u201d is not entirely convincing, not least because vv 1\u20132 refer not at all to the concern of the first eight of the fourteen verses that follow. That concern, the eating of unleavened bread cakes in commemoration of the tenth mighty act and the exodus made possible by it, has been given extensive attention in the composite of Exodus already (12:14\u201320, 33\u201334, 39). The concern of vv 11\u201316 is new in the sequence of the composite, and so it is the subject of v 2. The reason for the strange order is the redactor\u2019s desire to bring together a variety of ritual devices rooted in a common purpose: the actualization of the exodus-deliverance. The listing of these devices is begun both in a reference to their divine authority (they are instructions of Yahweh, passed along by Moses) and by the introduction of the motif of the dedication of the firstborn of Israel, saved by Yahweh from the decimation of the tenth plague. The parallels between vv 3\u201310 and 11\u201316, instructively listed by Childs (203), are testimony to the single purpose of this sequence rather than an indication that vv 1\u20132 are \u201ca heading\u201d to all that follows.
\n3 The motif of remembering begins both of the sections of Exodus devoted to the preparation and eating of unleavened bread cakes (see 12:14 and n.12:14.a.). Whatever they may become in the better times ahead, the people of Israel are never to forget what they were. Their plight in Egypt is described graphically as \u05d1\u05d9\u05ea \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3\u05d9\u05dd, literally, \u201chouse of slaves,\u201d read above \u201cthe non-status of slaves\u201d (cf. BDB, 713). Their rescue from that plight, they must recall, was made possible only by the strength of Yahweh\u2019s power, attested by the whole range of the proof-of-Presence sequence of the ten mighty acts.
\n4\u20135 The time of the exodus, referred to in a neat double entendre in 12:2 (see above) as \u201cthe lead month,\u201d is here set in \u201cthe month of the green grain,\u201d the first month in the Canaanite calendar, \u05d0\u05d1\u05d9\u05d1 \u201cAbib\u201d (de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 183\u201384). The place of the future celebration of the exodus is set by a reference to the promise of land to the fathers, a promise now about to be fulfilled and so mentioned here as a confessional link with both the past and the future. The peoples listed are peoples with whom the Israelites had to reckon repeatedly in conquest and settlement. There are many such lists in the OT, and the peoples listed vary from passage to passage and even in version to version (see n.5.c above). The authority for the future celebration is the command of Yahweh himself, \u05d5\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cand it shall be,\u201d \u201cit is necessary.\u2026\u201d
\n6\u201310 The differences between the instructions given here and those given in Exod 12:14\u201320 are not substantial: seven days of eating unleavened bread cakes are mentioned in both passages; the special worship of the first day is not mentioned here; the perpetual nature of the observance is mentioned in both passages, and its significance is linked to the exodus experience, though only here is a catechetical explanation given and only here are reminding symbols mentioned. The strict prohibition of leaven is made very clear in both passages, though a penalty for being found with leaven is given only in the former passage.
\n9, 16 The references to reminding symbols, \u201ca sign\u201d \u05d0\u05d5\u05ea and \u201ca reminder\u201d \u05d6\u05db\u05e8\u05d5\u05df (v 9), and \u201ca sign\u201d and \u201cbands\u201d \u05d8\u05d5\u05d8\u05e4\u05d5\u05ea (v 16) are ambiguous. Deut 6:8\u20139 and 11:18\u201320 can much more easily be taken in literal reference to the small containers of key verses and the leather bands used by orthodox Jews at their devotions even in our own time. Hyatt (143\u201344) thinks the references of vv 9 and 16 are \u201cto be taken figuratively.\u201d Speiser has argued (JQR 48 [1957\u201358] 210) that the three OT references to \u05d8\u05d5\u05d8\u05e4\u05ea should be pointed as singulars, \u05d8\u05d5\u05b9\u05d8\u05b6\u05e4\u05b6\u05ea instead of plurals, \u05d8\u05d5\u05b9\u05d8\u05b8\u05e4\u05b9\u05ea, as in MT, and he has speculated (211\u201317) an etymology that would connect \u05d8\u05d5\u05b9\u05d8\u05b6\u05e4\u05b6\u05ea with protective symbols. Speiser insisted upon the \u201cstrictly hypothetical character\u201d (216) of his proposal, but the gist of his argument too is that the references at hand are metaphorical and not to be taken, as they came to be in Judaism, to indicate physical symbols. The antecedent of the \u201cit\u201d at the beginning of both vv 9 and 16 remains unclear, but the instruction concerning the unleavened bread cakes and the instruction concerning the firstborn are probably what is to serve as the \u201csign,\u201d the \u201creminder,\u201d and the \u201cbands.\u201d Indeed the substitution of \u201cbands\u201d in v 16 for \u201creminder\u201d in v 9 may serve not as a movement away from metaphor to a symbol, but as an extension of the metaphor by reference to some physical object, just as a strong person may be referred to as \u201ca brick\u201d or \u201ca rock.\u201d
\n11\u201313 Much as the sacrifice of the Passover flock-animal is given an etiology in the meal commanded on the eve of the departure from Egypt, and as the eating of the unleavened bread cakes is given an etiology in the experience of hasty departure in exodus, so the requirement of the dedication of Israel\u2019s firstborn is given an etiology in the tenth mighty act that made exodus a possibility. This paragraph is introduced (v 11) as is the requirement of the eating of unleavened bread cakes (v 5), though more compactly. Along with v 2, v 12 specifies that all firstborn, \u201cevery life that opens the womb,\u201d of man or of animal, belongs to Yahweh. As this requirement is first stated, it appears to be without exception. Conditions are therefore introduced, first of all excepting female offspring, and second of all allowing substitutions, both for the he-ass and for the human males. Both these exceptions are apparently for practical reasons; there is no firm OT evidence (see Lev 11:1\u20138) that the he-ass was considered unclean\u2014it was a valuable burden carrier (note Exod 9:3). The animal could be \u201cransomed, replaced\u201d (\u05e4\u05d3\u05d4) by a flock-animal, or it could be destroyed (not sacrificed). The firstborn human male was to be replaced, but at what cost this text does no say (nor does Exod 34:20).
\n14\u201315 This instruction too is justified in catechetical fashion and as founded on the experience of exodus-deliverance. Yahweh\u2019s decimation of all of the firstborn of Egypt, prompted by Pharaoh\u2019s stubborn-mindedness, necessitated the sparing of all of the firstborn of Israel, who, having thus been saved by him, belong to him. Thus each Israelite livestock-owner and father must offer to Yahweh or replace every firstborn male. The antiquity of such a custom, even in relation to human sacrifice, has prompted considerable comment, but speculation is rife, and fact is elusive. The practice is probably older than the exodus and much wider than Israel\u2019s commitment to it, just as a spring lambing festival may lie behind Passover (see Comment on 12:8\u201310), and just as a grain-harvesting festival may lie behind the eating of unleavened bread cakes over a seven-day period (see Comment on 12:15). What is of primary importance to an understanding of Exodus, however, is the use to which the ritual involving the firstborn of animal and man have been put in the exodus composite.
\nExplanation
\nThis section, for all its apparent multiplicity, has finally a single point, the actualization to the generations yet to come of the experience of the exodus. The medium of this actualization is ritual, founded in various dimensions of the exodus experience itself and made authoritative as Yahweh\u2019s own command. Part of what Yahweh had promised the fathers\u2014the multiplication of progeny\u2014had been fulfilled before the exodus; indeed, that fulfillment had made necessary the exodus. The further part of that promise\u2014the wide and spacious land \u201cgushing\u201d with milk and honey\u2014was now about to be fulfilled. That further promise is itself cleverly brought to mind by the stipulation of these rituals of actualization as necessary when the Israelites shall come into that promised land.
\nThus are requirements of recollection set\u2014specified acts at a specified time, rituals carefully controlled, rituals for which even the explanations are givens. The impression is present, at least, that the questions to be raised by the generations to come are set questions, as they indeed are in the celebration of Passover to this day. All that is set forth here is to the single end that those who are to come may know the exodus, by taste and by feel, by cost and by result, as an experience of their own as equally as an experience of their fathers. And so they await the time, then taste the bread and give Yahweh his due, explain it all to the ones who must remember to those after them, and thus experience the freedom to glorify Yahweh in service that is their heritage.
\nPART TWO
\nISRAEL IN THE WILDERNESS
\n(13:17\u201318:27)
\nThe Route of the Exodus (13:17\u201314:4)
\nBibliography
\nAharoni, Y. The Land of the Bible. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967. Albright, W. F. \u201cBaal-Zephon.\u201d Festschrift Alfred Bertholet. T\u00fcbingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1950. 1\u201314. Batto, B. F. \u201cThe Reed Sea: Requiescat in Pace.\u201d JBL 102 (1983) 27\u201335. Cazelles, H. \u201cLes localisations de L\u2019Exode et la cr\u00edtique litt\u00e9raire.\u201d RB 62 (1955) 321\u201364. Davies, G. I. \u201cThe Wilderness Itineraries and the Composition of the Pentateuch.\u201d VT 33 (1983) 1\u201313. Eissfeldt, O. Baal Zaphon, Zeus Kasios und der Durchzug der Israeliten durchs Meer. Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1932. Gardiner, A. H. \u201cThe Ancient Military Road Between Egypt and Palestine.\u201d JEA 6 (1920) 99\u2013116. Haran, M. \u201cThe Exodus.\u201d IDBSup, 304\u201310. Krahmalkov, C. R. \u201cA Critique of Professor Goedicke\u2019s Exodus Theories.\u201d BARev 7 (1981) 51\u201354. Kuntz, J. K. The Self-Revelation of God. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967. Muilenburg, J. \u201cThe Linguistic and Rhetorical Usage of the Particle \u05db\u05b4\u05bc\u05d9 in the OT.\u201d HUCA 32 (1961) 135\u201360. Noth, M. \u201cDer Schauplatz des Meereswunders.\u201d Festschrift Otto Eissfeldt. Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1947. 181\u201390. Rabenau, K. von. \u201cDie beiden Erz\u00e4hlungen vom Schilfmeerwunder in Exod. 13:17\u201314:31.\u201d Theologische Versuche, vol. 1. P. Watzel and G. Schille, eds. Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1966. 9\u201329. Shanks, H. \u201cThe Exodus and the Crossing of the Red Sea, According to Hans Goedicke.\u201d BARev 7 (1981) 42\u201350. Terrien, S. The Elusive Presence. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978. Volz, P. \u201cGrunds\u00e4tzliches zur elohistischen Frage.\u201d Der Elohist als Erz\u00e4hler. Giessen: Verlag von Alfred T\u00f6pelmann, 1933. 1\u2013142. Wolff, H. W. \u201cZur Thematik der elohistischen Fragmente im Pentateuch.\u201d EvT 29 (1969) 59\u201372. ET: Interpretation 26 (1972) 158\u201373.
\nTranslation
\n17 Now when Pharaoh sent the people out, God did not guide them by the route of the land of the Philistines, in spite of the directness of that way, for God said, \u201cThe people may well change their minds, if they encounter fighting, and turn back toward Egypt.\u201d 18 So God turned the people toward the wilderness via the \u201csea of rushes.\u201d The sons of Israel went up from the land of Egypt ready for battle.
\n19 Moses also took with him Joseph\u2019s bones, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel swear unconditionally, saying, \u201cGod will come to you, without a doubt\u2014then you are to bring up my bones from here with you.\u201d
\n20 Thus they set out from Succoth and made camp at Etham, on the outskirts of the wilderness. 21 Yahweh preceded them in the daytime in a column of cloud to guide them on the route, and in the nighttime in a column of fire to give them light; thus they could travel day and night. 22 He did not take away from in front of the people the column of cloud in the daytime or the column of fire in the nighttime.
\n14:1 Then, Yahweh spoke to Moses as follows: 2 \u201cSpeak to the sons of Israel so that they turn back and make camp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal Zephon. You are to make camp opposite it, on the edge of the sea. 3 Pharaoh will conclude that the sons of Israel are turning one way and then another in confusion in the land, that the wilderness has blocked their exodus. 4 Then I will make Pharaoh\u2019s mind obstinate; he will come chasing after them, and I will win myself glory over Pharaoh and all his force, so that the Egyptians will know by experience that I am Yahweh.\u201d So they did as Yahweh instructed.
\nNotes
\n17.a. \u05db\u05d9 \u05e7\u05e8\u05d5\u05d1 \u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 followed by \u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05de\u05e8, lit., \u201cfor near it [was], for he said.\u2026\u201d \u05db\u05d9 \u2026 \u05db\u05d9 here has an adversative sense; see BDB, 474, and Muilenburg, HUCA 32 (1961) 135\u201339, 159\u201360.
\n17.b. \u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u05e4\u05df \u201cfor he said, Lest\u201d is an idiom, \u201cimplying always that some precaution has been taken to avert the dreaded contingency\u201d (BDB, 814). Niph of \u05e0\u05d7\u05dd \u201cchange their minds\u201d means lit. \u201cto sorrow oneself,\u201d and so \u201cto rue\u201d something: BDB, 636\u201337.
\n17.c. \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4 \u201csee,\u201d here as experience: BDB, 307.
\n18.a. LXX has \u03c0\u03ad\u03bc\u03c0\u03c4\u03b7 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03b5\u1f70 \u201cin the fifth generation.\u201d Cassuto (156) argues from the Arabic usage of a similar word that \u05d7\u05b2\u05de\u05bb\u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd means \u201cin proper military formation.\u201d Cf. BDB 331\u201332, and also 301, for the suggestion that \u05d7\u05b2\u05de\u05bb\u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd may be a qal pass ptcp of \u05d7\u05d5\u05e9\u05c1, and so mean \u201chastening.\u201d
\n19.a. Special waw.
\n19.b. MT has \u201che\u201d; \u201cJoseph\u201d is the clear antecedent of this pronoun, and so is added above for clarity. SamPent and some LXX mss make this addition.
\n19.c. hiph inf abs of \u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05e2 \u201cswear.\u201d
\n19.d. LXX has \u03ba\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 = Yahweh.
\n19.e. Qal inf abs of \u05e4\u05e7\u05d3 \u201ccome to.\u201d
\n21.a. LXX has \u1f44 \u0398\u03b5\u1f78\u03c2 \u201cGod.\u201d
\n21.b. MT has \u05dc\u05dc\u05db\u05ea \u201cfor going.\u201d
\n22.a. \u05d9\u05de\u05d9\u05e9\u05c1 \u201ctake away\u201d can also be read with the column of cloud and the column of fire as subj, but in the context, Yahweh is the more logical choice. Cf. the references listed in the masora magna of L (Weil, 363, no. 3293). SamPent has \u05d9\u05de\u05d5\u05e9\u05c1, qal impf. instead of MT\u2019s hiph impf..
\n1.a. This verse is the same as 13:1.
\n2.a. LXX has \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f10\u03c0\u03b1\u03cd\u03bb\u03b5\u03c9\u03c2 \u201cthe unwalled village\u201d (Liddell-Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 611). BHS wonders whether this is the Greek equivalent of the \u05d7\u05e6\u05e8\u05d5\u05ea \u201cHazeroth\u201d of 11:35; 33:17, 18; and Deut 1:1.
\n3.a. \u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201che will say,\u201d with special waw, cf. BDB, 55\u201356.
\n3.b. LXX reads \u1f10\u03c1\u03b5\u1fd6 \u03c6\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03c9 \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03bb\u03b1\u1ff7 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u039f\u1f31 \u03c5\u1f31\u03bf\u1f76 \u0399\u03c3\u03c1\u03b1\u03b7\u03bb \u201cPharaoh will say to his people, \u2018The sons of Israel.\u2019 \u201d
\n3.c. \u05e1\u05d2\u05e8 \u05e2\u05dc\u05d9\u05d4\u05dd \u201chas shut in upon them.\u201d
\n4.a. \u05d5\u05d9\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5\u05be\u05db\u05df \u201cso they did thus.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThis section, a composite of information from at least two, and perhaps three, tetrateuchal sources, has as a major concern Israel\u2019s route in exodus as planned and revealed by Yahweh. The division of these verses into sourcestrata has been done on the basis of the shift in the use of the names \u201cElohim\u201d (vv 17\u201319) and \u201cYahweh\u201d (vv 20\u201322; 14:1\u20134), the reference to Joseph\u2019s desire to have his bones returned to the promised land (v 19; cf. Gen 50:24\u201325), the difference in the reasons given for the route to be followed (13:17\u201318 vis-\u00e0-vis 14:1\u20133), and the introduction of the guiding columns of cloud and fire (13:20\u201322).
\nThe presence of J (13:20\u201322) and P (14:1\u20134) has been a matter of general agreement for many years, though note the view of Davies (VT 33 [1983] 5\u201313) that 13:20 and other itinerary-notices are the insertions of a Deuteronomistic redactor. The presence of E (13:17\u201319, according to Beer, 74; Hyatt, 147) has been disputed since the work of Volz and has generally been reckoned to remain in Genesis and Exodus in very fragmentary form. Some scholars have reassigned verses to earlier Ur-sources (so Fohrer [\u00dcberlieferung, 98\u201399, 124\u201325] gives 14:1\u20133 to his nomadic source, N, and 14:4 to a supplememtal hand), but others (Noth, 104\u20136; Childs, 218\u201321; and especially von Rabenau, Theologische Versuche, 9\u201314) have argued even more persuasively that P is very much present.
\nThe combination of varied material dealing with the route of the exodus in the section at hand is not to be doubted. The theories about the original provenance of that material are necessarily highly subjective, and finally give only a limited illumination to the meaning of the text in its canonical form. As intriguing as speculation may be about the E that once was (Wolff, EvT 29 [1969] 59\u201372), Rendtorff (\u00dcberlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem 1\u201328, 147\u201373) has performed a service in pointing out the topheaviness of the structure that has been erected on the theory of the source-documentary hypothesis, and we must always accord the text in its redacted form an integrity of its own.
\nThus the present section may be seen as an assemblage of tradition about a route for the exodus so apparently eccentric as to have had necessarily some purpose beyond a mere departure from Egyptian territory. That purpose is suggested in this composite, both by the recurring insistence that God\/ Yahweh laid out the route and guided the Israelites in it, and also by the anticipation of what is to come in the autokerygmatic assertion of 14:4, so reminiscent of the \u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cthat I am Yahweh\u201d sentences in the Book of Ezekiel. The form of this section is thus set by two interlocked themes: the route of the exodus and the guidance of Israel in that route by Yahweh. These two themes, in turn, provide an introduction to the motifs of deliverance and glorification that are the interest of the next three sections to come.
\nComment
\n17 The use in this verse of the piel of \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7 in reference to Pharaoh\u2019s \u201csending,\u201d literally, \u201churling, driving\u201d the people of Israel forth from his battered land, is an important rhetorical connection with Exod 3:20, where the same verb is used, also in the piel stem, in Yahweh\u2019s prediction to Moses of the proof-of-Presence sequence. As Yahweh has said, no human force could bend the proud king of the proudest kingdom. Under the power of Yahweh\u2019s hand, however, Pharaoh has become an enthusiastic participant in the exodus, not only permitting but demanding, even forcing it.
\nThat some historical event lies at the root of this narrative seems a certainty; yet despite many ingenious attempts to find extrabiblical reference to even one of the events mentioned in the exodus sequence, no convincing equivalence has thus far been established. The most recent such attempt, that of Hans Goedicke (Shanks, BAR 7 [1981] 42\u201350; Krahmalkov, BAR 7 [1981] 51\u201354), involves redating even the century of the exodus, to \u201cthe early morning hours of a spring day in 1477 b.c.\u201d (Shanks, 42). Previous attempts have set the time of the exodus at various periods in three separate centuries (fifteenth, fourteenth and thirteenth centuries b.c.) and have placed the route of the exodus at various locations across 250 miles, north to south.
\nThe single most convincing biblical testimony to the historical rootage of the exodus experience is the formative and extensive influence of exodus faith upon the theology of the OT. Second only to that massive testimony, however, is the preoccupation of this composite with the route the people of Israel took to the border of Egypt at the edge of the wilderness. This route is given for a theological reason, as is nearly all the information in Exodus, or for that matter in the OT and even in the Bible itself. But it is too erratic a route to have been invented, and the continuing debate about its exact location has given too little attention to the assertion that God\/ Yahweh determined the route as a ruse by which he might get further glory at Pharaoh\u2019s expense\u2014a point made explicit by the summary statement of 14:1\u20134, the latest layer in the composite in its present form.
\nThe major difficulty in plotting the route of the exodus lies not in the lack of information supplied in Exodus, but in our ignorance of the identification and correct location of the places listed in Exod 13:17\u201318, 20; and 14:2. Of the many attempts to fix these sites, none has produced more than speculative success, as the summaries of Eissfeldt, Cazelles, Aharoni, and Haran show. The best we can do, with any assurance, is to plot the general directions of Israel\u2019s departure. This uncertainty about the geography of the exodus is not, however, an obstacle of major dimensions to our understanding of the narrative of the exodus, the point of which is theology, and not geography.
\n18 One key to the understanding of this theology is the assertion that Elohim \u201cGod\u201d guided (\u05e0\u05d7\u05d4) them. A deliberate contrast is made between the direct and therefore logical route east, \u201cthe route of the land of the Philistines\u201d and the way in which Yahweh instead led Israel, a route in the direction of the wilderness via the \u05d9\u05dd\u05be\u05e1\u05d5\u05e3 \u201csea of rushes.\u201d The reason given for this longer route is that the more direct path would probably lead to conflict that could prove so discouraging to Israel that they might turn back to Egypt. This reason can be documented from Egyptian records from the time of Seti I and Rameses II (Aharoni, The Land, 41\u201349). There was a wellfortified military road on the direct route from the Egyptian Delta into Canaan (Gardiner, JEA 6 [1920] 99\u2013116), and though it is referred to in v 17 by its later name, \u201cthe route \u2026 of the Philistines,\u201d this is certainly the route Elohim guides Israel to avoid.
\nThe turn toward the wilderness by way of the \u201csea of rushes\u201d is a turn to another easterly, or even a southeasterly, direction. This \u201csea of rushes\u201d has traditionally been read as \u201cRed Sea\u201d under the influence of LXX and Vg and because of the proximity of the Red Sea to the most popular location of Sinai. B. F. Batto has argued (JBL 102 [1983] 30\u201335) that the traditional identification is a correct one, exactly what \u201cP consciously intended.\u201d This \u201csea\u201d has not, however, been identified with any certainty, though virtually every body of water and marshland between and including the Mediterranean and the Red Sea has been proposed in the scholarly discussion. The more circuitous route specified in vv 17\u201318 avoided the certainty of conflict offered by the fortified Via Maris, but afforded still the danger of some unknown opposition. The Israelites go forth therefore in fighting formation, that is, with the armed men in the vanguard, their more vulnerable dependents in the protection of their lead.
\n19 The report that Moses kept Israel\u2019s oath to Joseph by bringing Joseph\u2019s bones out of Egypt with Israel in exodus is virtually a verbatim repetition of the account of Joseph\u2019s requirement of the oath in Gen 50:25. Its location here is a somewhat arbitrary interruption of the narrative of the route of the exodus. Even so, the report serves the double function of fulfilling the expectation raised by Gen 50:25 and of asserting yet again that Elohim has made possible the exodus of Israel.
\n20\u201322 Succoth (see Comment on 12:37) and Etham (Cazelles, RB 62 [1955] 354\u201360) remain uncertainties, in spite of continuing attempts at location. That they were \u201con the outskirts of the wilderness\u201d implies, at least, the east-southeasterly direction of v 18. The Israelites were headed out of Egypt by as direct as possible a route which would not offer an armed resistance. They were guided in this choice by Yahweh\u2019s own Presence, symbolized by the theophanic fire (Kuntz, Self-Revelation of God, 96\u2013100; Terrien, Elusive Presence, 109\u201312, 149\u201351), seen as a column of cloud in daylight and as a column of fire at night. What Moses had experienced at the thornbush aflame but unconsumed (3:2\u20133) Israel now experienced in exodus. Both experiences stand as an augury of what is to come in the great theophany of Exod 19\u201320. The assertion that Yahweh did not remove these symbols of his guiding Presence is an indication of his continuing nearness to Israel from the time of the mighty acts to the rebellion of the golden calf. This motif of Yahweh\u2019s guiding Presence in the wilderness is, like the notice about Joseph\u2019s bones, an interruption of the narrative account of the route of the exodus. Unlike that interruption, however, this one is essential to the narrative: Israel cannot head into the dangerous expanse of the wilderness, as Yahweh is directing, without Yahweh\u2019s guidance.
\n14:1\u20132 This reference to the special guidance of Yahweh is followed immediately in the present composite by an account of a further and still more eccentric change of route by Yahweh. Moses is instructed to have Israel turn yet again, apparently back toward Egyptian territory, and to pitch camp for the third time since their departure (Succoth, 12:37, 39; Etham, 13:20), at a site in front of Pi-hahiroth and Baal Zephon, between Migdol and \u201cthe sea.\u201d Indeed, their camp is to be \u201con the edge of the sea.\u201d The purpose of so precise a location, one that provides no less than four points of reference, not only suggests a historical base for the exodus route described in this narrative, but also implies that the directions so specified are important for an understanding of the narrative. Once again, our vision of the picture set forth with such precision is clouded by an inability to identify with any assurance the places listed. Noth\u2019s argument (Festschrift Otto Eissfeldt, 181\u201390) that the information of these verses is too late to be of any value is not convincing, since P could have had little reason to invent what is apparently a meandering route.
\nOur difficulty lies not in the uncertainty of the names, but in our uncertainty about the locations to which they refer. Cazelles (RB 62 [1955] 350\u201352) wonders whether \u201cPi-hahiroth\u201d should be understood as the \u201cmouth (?) of Hir\u00f4t,\u201d as a river or a canal. \u201cMigdol\u201d as a name for more than one Egyptian fortified town is attested in Egyptian sources (Gardiner, JEA 6 [1920] 103\u20136). \u201cBaal Zephon,\u201d generally located in the vicinity of Lake Sirbonis (though see Albright, Festschrift A. Bertholet, 1\u201314, for a different view), is described by Eissfeldt (Baal Zaphon, 48\u201371) and Hermann (Israel in Egypt, 59\u201363) chiefly on the basis of classical texts as an ideal spot for the events of Exod 14. Yet all of this information, interesting though it is, gives us no more specific a location than Exodus does.
\n3 The best clue we have to the route of Israel\u2019s exodus from Egypt has to do finally not with its location, but with its purpose. The route from the Egyptian Delta to the border of the wilderness was plain enough to the editor who brought together Exod 13:17\u201318, 20\u201322; and 14:1\u20132. That editor included precise details of location because they made his point more clearly, just as the redactor who set the superscription to the Book of Amos intended to fix the date of his collection by reference to a memorable earthquake we can no longer remember. But the compiler of this pericope has made even plainer the purpose that his geographical information, lost on us, was intended to illustrate. Yahweh guided his people away from the shortest and most logical route and into an eccentric series of turns designed to depict confusion, first of all because of an intention to trick and then to defeat Pharaoh, and second, because he was not ready in any case to take his people on to the land he had promised them.
\n4 This purpose, and indeed the entire route-of-exodus composite, is thus handily summed up by \u05d9\u05d3\u05e2 \u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cknow that I am Yahweh.\u201d Yahweh\u2019s intention in the meandering route of Israel is to \u201cwin glory,\u201d literally, \u201cbe made an honored one\u201d by Pharaoh\u2019s defeat, so that the Egyptians will know at first hand that Yahweh is indeed what and who he has claimed to be.
\nExplanation
\nThe first section of the second major division of Exodus thus functions as a kind of pr\u00e9cis to the division as a whole. Everything that occurs in Exod 13:17\u201318:27 wins Yahweh glory in one way or another: the victory at the sea most of all, of course; but also the provision for Israel in the wilderness; the defeat of Israel\u2019s enemies, the Amalekites; and the guidance toward Sinai and into a divinely founded system of principles for life in covenant together with Yahweh.
\nThe fundamental point of this section is that Yahweh guides Israel in exodus. His guidance is plain and continual. He sets a puzzling route no man would have thought of, to confuse Pharaoh by an appearance of confusion and to win further and final glory for himself at Pharaoh\u2019s expense. Once more, Pharaoh and his Egyptians are to become a medium for a theological message. Yahweh\u2019s guidance must be seen not primarily as guidance from something, but instead as guidance toward something. In this section, it is guidance not toward Sinai or any other place of desert rendezvous but toward a final great moment of victory over Pharaoh, toward the greatest of all the self-proving mighty acts. In the sections following that great victory, it is guidance toward the place of Yahweh\u2019s great giving of himself to all of Israel.
\nYahweh\u2019s first intention was to give the appearance that Israel, fearful of the main road, then fearful of the wilderness, was starting first one way and then another, not knowing where to turn and so a ready prey for recapture or destruction. Yahweh\u2019s second intention was to lure the Egyptians into a trap, first by making Pharaoh\u2019s mind obstinate once again, and then by defeating Pharaoh and his forces, who were certain to come down in vengeance upon an apparently helpless and muddled Israel.
\nThe Pursuit of Pharaoh (14:5\u201320)
\nBibliography
\nAp-Thomas, D. R. \u201cAll the King\u2019s Horses?\u201d Proclamation and Presence. Ed. J. I. Durham and J. R. Porter. New corr. ed. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1983. 135\u201351. Coats, G. W. Rebellion in the Wilderness. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1968. DeVries, S. J. \u201cThe Origin of the Murmuring Tradition.\u201d JBL 87 (1968) 51\u201358. Speiser, E. A. \u201cAn Angelic \u2018Curse\u2019: Exodus 14:20.\u201d Oriental and Biblical Studies. Ed. J. J. Finkelstein and M. Greenberg. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967. 108\u201312. Also JAOS 80 (1960) 198\u2013200. Yadin, Y. The art of Warfare in Biblical Lands. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963.
\nTranslation
\n5 Now when it was reported to the king of Egypt that the people had fled, Pharaoh and the members of his court had a change of heart toward the people, and they said, \u201cWhat is this we have done, that we have sent Israel forth from enslavement to us?\u201d 6 Then he hooked up his chariot and arrayed his forces with him: 7 he took six hundred crack chariots, then all the Egyptian chariots, each one with its own commander.
\n8 Thus Yahweh made obstinate the mind of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, so that he chased after the sons of Israel; but the sons of Israel went out disregarding Pharaoh\u2019s attitude. 9 The Egyptians chased after them, then caught up with them settled for the night by the sea\u2014all the horses and chariotry of Pharaoh, his riders, his infantry, by Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal Zephon.
\n10 As Pharaoh made his approach, the sons of Israel looked up, and there were the Egyptians, bearing down upon them! They were scared witless, and they cried out, the sons of Israel, to Yahweh. 11 They said to Moses, \u201cIs there some shortage of graves in Egypt that you have carried us away to die in the wilderness? What is this you have done to us in bringing us forth from Egypt? 12 Is this pursuit not the very thing we spoke to you about in Egypt, when we said, \u2018Stop bothering us, and let us slave for the Egyptians, for it is better for us to be slaves to the Egyptians than for us to die in the wilderness!\u2019 \u201d
\n13 But Moses replied to the people, \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid\u2014stand your ground, and see Yahweh\u2019s salvation, that he will do for you this day: as for the Egyptians whom you see here now, you will not see them again, not ever. 14 Yahweh will do battle on your behalf; you need only to keep quiet.\u201d
\n15 Then Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cWhat are you crying out to me for? Speak to the sons of Israel, that they should get on with their journey. 16 You raise up your staff, and thrust out your hand over the sea and cleave it apart, that the sons of Israel may come through the middle of the sea on dry ground. 17 As for me, just watch me making the Egyptians\u2019 minds obstinate, so that they will come after them, enabling me to win myself glory over Pharaoh and over all his infantry, over his chariotry and over his riders. 18 Thus the Egyptians will know by experience that I am Yahweh, in my winning glory for myself over Pharaoh and over his chariotry and over his riders.\u201d
\n19 Next, the attendant of God set out, the one who goes in front of the company of Israel; this time, he went behind them, and the pillar of cloud set out from in front of them to stand in readiness behind them. 20 Indeed, it came between the company of the Egyptians and the company of Israel: there was the cloud and the darkness\u2014there was no other light in the night. So neither force drew near to the other, the whole night through.
\nNotes
\n5.a. LXX adds \u03c4\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2 \u03c5\u1f31\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2 \u201cthe sons of.\u201d
\n6.a. \u05e2\u05de\u05d5 \u05dc\u05e7\u05d7 \u201chis people he took\u201d; on \u05e2\u05dd \u201cpeople\u201d as a fighting force or band, see BDB, 766.
\n7.a. Qal pass ptcp of \u05d1\u05d7\u05e8 \u201cchoose,\u201d select.\u201d
\n8.a. \u05d1\u05d9\u05d3 \u05e8\u05de\u05d4 \u201cwith a high hand\u201d; cf. Num 15:30; 33:3.
\n9.a. \u05d7\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cencamp, settle at\u201d; \u201cfor the night\u201d is added in this context.
\n9.b. \u05e8\u05db\u05d1 \u201cchariot\u201d: see BDB, 939, and cf. v 23. BHS notes that the text here may be corrupt on the basis of the reading of v 23.
\n9.c. See Ap-Thomas (Proclamation and Presence, 135\u201351) for an extensive review of \u05e4\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1 \u201crider,\u201d and the proposal that the original and specific meaning of the word is \u201cmare.\u201d
\n9.d. \u05d7\u05d9\u05dc \u201carmy, strength, force\u201d can hardly mean anything else in this context.
\n9.e. See n. 14:2.a.
\n10.a. hiph of \u05e7\u05e8\u05d1 \u201cdraw near\u201d: see BDB, 898.
\n10.b. SamPent adds \u05d5\u05d9\u05e8\u05d0\u05d5 \u201cand they saw.\u201d
\n10.c. \u05d5\u05d4\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cand behold.\u201d
\n10.d. \u05e0\u05e1\u05e2 \u201cpull up, set out on a journey, march (BDB, 652) after them.\u201d LXX, Syr., Tg. Onk., Tg. Ps.-J. have a pl. ptcp. Vg omits the word altogether.
\n10.e. \u201cThey were very frightened,\u201d \u05d5\u05d9\u05d9\u05e8\u05d0\u05d5 \u05de\u05d0\u05d3.
\n12.a. Since the imminent arrival of Pharaoh and his force is the clear cause of the Israelites\u2019 distress, \u201cpursuit\u201d is added above for clarity.
\n13.a. \u05d4\u05d9\u05d5\u05dd \u201cthis day,\u201d again.
\n15.a. Syr. begins this verse with \u201cThen Moses cried out to Yahweh,\u201d thus resolving the non sequitur of the verse as it stands in MT. Such an insertion, however, may not be necessary. See Comment below.
\n17.a. Lit., \u201cAnd I, behold me making obstinate.\u2026\u201d
\n17.b. Lit., \u201cAnd I will win myself glory.\u201d
\n18.a. LXX and SamPent read \u201call the Egyptians\u201d (\u03c0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03b5\u03c2 \u03bf\u1f31 \u0391\u1f30\u03b3\u03cd\u03c0\u03c4\u03b9\u03bf\u03b9, \u05db\u05dc \u05de\u05e6\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd).
\n19.a. \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05da \u201cmessenger, minister,\u201d from \u05dc\u05d0\u05da. The usual \u201cangel\u201d is a somewhat misleading translation, because of the context surrounding it after centuries of Christian art.
\n19.b. \u05de\u05d7\u05e0\u05d4 \u201ccompany\u201d could also suggest \u201cencampment\u201d in this sequence.
\n19.c. Special waw.
\n19.d. \u05e2\u05de\u05d3 \u201cstand,\u201d see BDB, 763\u201365.
\n20.a. MT has \u05d5\u05d9\u05d4\u05d9 \u05d4\u05e2\u05e0\u05df \u05d5\u05d4\u05d7\u05e9\u05c1\u05da \u05d5\u05d9\u05d0\u05e8 \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05d4\u05dc\u05d9\u05dc\u05d4 \u201cand there was the cloud and the darkness, and it illumined the night.\u201d I have attempted to take the text as it stands\u2014the only light the night had was the opaque light of the cloud, the guide not for the night but for the day. LXX has a different reading, \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f10\u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf \u03c3\u03ba\u03cc\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03b3\u03bd\u03cc\u03c6\u03bf\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03b4\u03b9\u1fc6\u03bb\u03b8\u03b5\u03bd \u1f21 \u03bd\u03cd\u03be \u201cand there was gloom and darkness, and the night passed.\u201d Cassuto (167) understands the reference to light as indicating that the pillar of fire was on the Israelites\u2019 side of the cloud and the darkness, a speculation with no support in the text. jps emends the verb to \u05d0\u05e8\u05e8 \u201ccast a spell,\u201d and reads \u201cthe cloud with the darkness \u2026 cast a spell upon the night.\u2026\u201d So also Speiser, Oriental and Biblical Studies 108\u201312. See further in Comment below.
\n20.b. Lit., \u05d6\u05d4 \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05d6\u05d4 \u201cthis one to that one.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThat this section dealing with Pharaoh\u2019s pursuit of Israel is a composite of narrative drawn from at least two sources has been generally argued for many years. Most literary critics, indeed, have found three sources here. The major point of disagreement has been the identification of the sources. A minor point of difference has been the allocation of the various strat, in the composite to the sources identified within it. Some scholars (so Beer, 76\u201377, and Noth, 104\u20136, 111\u201320) believe that J, E and P are each represented. Others (so Fohrer, \u00dcberlieferung, 98\u2013109) would eliminate P in favor of other possibilities (Fohrer: N), and there is disagreement about just what, if anything, is to be assigned to E. Few sections in Exodus have been divided into as many fragments as this one (cf. Beer, 12, and the detailed and conflicting summaries of Noth, 104\u20136, and Childs, 218\u201321).
\nUpon careful analysis, some of the reasons for this fragmentation, turning upon non sequitur, vocabulary, and the appearance of motifs held to be characteristic, begin to look not only very subjective, but also somewhat arbitrary. This, indeed, accounts for the considerable differences in source analysis from critic to critic. The evidence for any precise analysis is too ambiguous. The most we can say with any assurance is that the section is a composite, one of the more carefully molded composites in Exodus, and that an exact division of this material into its constituent layers is impossible, given only the information we have in the OT. Too much of the source criticism of such composites is done by a search for differences, some real, some imagined. Not enough attention is given to the thematic unity that brings the undoubted literary diversity together.
\nExod 14:5\u201320 is bound together by the theme, Pharaoh\u2019s pursuit of Israel. This pursuit is represented primarily as set up by Yahweh, just as the resistance of Pharaoh to the persuasion of the mighty acts is set up by Yahweh. Indeed the pursuit by Pharaoh is as much a part of Yahweh\u2019s plan as were those mighty acts and the proof-of-Presence lesson taught by them. The route of Israel in exodus is determined by this plan, as is Pharaoh\u2019s otherwise inexplicable change of heart and his pursuit, so totally unexpected by the people of Israel. Israel\u2019s alarm and anxious protest set up an occasion for the obviously didactic interpretation of what is about to follow\u2014the final and greatest of all the lessons to be taught Israel at the Egyptians\u2019 expense.
\nWithin the composite, three major and related subjects are presented: (1) the change of mind by Pharaoh, accounted for by Yahweh\u2019s injection of a further dose of obstinacy, and the ensuing pursuit of Israel (vv 5\u20139); (2) Israel\u2019s alarmed protest at such an unimagined and frightening turn of events, and the assurances of both Yahweh and Moses that all will be well (vv 10\u201318); and (3) the interposition of Yahweh\u2019s guarding protection for his people (vv 19\u201320). Though any precise division of these three subsections into the sources from which they are drawn is not possible, this general guide may be suggested: vv 5\u20137 are from JE; vv 8\u20139, P; vv 10\u201314, JE; vv 15\u201318, P; and vv 19\u201320, JE. A more exact division is not possible, and even this general allocation must be kept secondary to the more important composite impression of the text in its final form.
\nComment
\n5\u20139 The assumption that a narrative of a secret flight from Egypt is reflected in the reference to the report to Pharaoh of Israel\u2019s exodus and his \u201cchange of heart\u201d is without any foundation in the text. The reaction of Pharaoh and the members of his cabinet to the result of what they have permitted in the panic of catastrophe is entirely logical. Fear and the shock of grief are now replaced by practical considerations. An important source of cheap labor is rapidly getting beyond reach. Perhaps even anger is implicit in the response of Pharaoh and his court to a flight that cannot be any surprise to them. Knowing something will come and actually experiencing it are quite different to us, and this important difference is skillfully represented by this narrative. That such is the case in this sequence is made clear by the interpretation presented in the report of Yahweh\u2019s part in Pharaoh\u2019s change of heart. Once again, Yahweh turns Pharaoh\u2019s mind towards obstinacy. The Israelites, by contrast, are leaving the land with no regard for what is going on in Pharaoh\u2019s mind. Their departure \u201cwith a high hand\u201d is not to be considered an act of defiance (so Knight, 101), but an act of assurance. As vv 10\u201312 show, the Israelites thought themselves beyond Pharaoh\u2019s interest and reach.
\nHis mind changed by Yahweh, however, Pharaoh plunges into a headlong pursuit of the people he had not only released but had driven out. He harnesses his own chariot, and takes \u201chis people with him.\u201d V 7 makes plain that the \u201cpeople\u201d he took were his fighting force; that verse is not a doublet, as some critics have maintained; it is rather a description of the organization of the pursuit force. Pharaoh surrounded himself with his \u201cselect\u201d or \u201ccrack\u201d charioteers, those who could be counted on to hold formation and obey orders (cf. Yadin\u2019s account of the battle of Kadesh on the Orontes, Art of Warfare, 103\u201310). This vanguard force was then supported by a larger random force, each chariot of which was manned by three charioteers, one of whom was \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d9\u05e9\u05c1 \u201ccommander\u201d whose title is derived from the word for \u201cthree, third.\u201d This arrangement is amply depicted in Egyptian wall paintings and reliefs from the period of the exodus (Yadin, 86\u201390, 104\u20135, 239). The implication is that the select chariots were under a direct chain of command from Pharaoh and that the larger chariot force operated independently, each unit under its own commander. These details about the size and efficient organization of Pharaoh\u2019s force are a further means of adding both to the despair of Israel\u2019s virtually defenseless plight and also to the luster of the victory Yahweh is to win for them. They are details reinforced by the report that the Egyptians located exactly the Israelite encampment (note 14:2, 9), and by the addition to the description of Pharaoh\u2019s force of both riders and footsoldiers.
\n10\u201312 The reaction of Israel to the appearance of so formidable a force is understandable in view of their apparent assumption that they were rid of Pharaoh (v 8) and the entirely reasonable judgment that they have no chance of defending themselves (vv 11\u201312) against such a massive onslaught. They are frightened into a panic, and they cry out to Yahweh and protest to Moses. What they said to Yahweh (as also what Moses said to Yahweh, v 15) is not recorded, but their protest to Moses is both poignant and humorous, and an anticipation of the murmuring and rebellion motif to come in the narratives of the wilderness journeys, in both Exodus and Numbers (cf. Coats, Rebellion, 21\u201343; De Vries, JBL 87 [1968] 51\u201358). The reference by the protesting Israelites to their fear of such a pursuit and of death in the wilderness when Moses arrived in Egypt with a proposal of exodus is only generally reflected, if indeed it is reflected at all, in Exod 5:20\u201321. It is, however, a logical reply to such a proposal, before the sequence of the mighty acts of Yahweh in Egypt. Following that sequence, and after the exodus itself has been under way for three days, the sudden appearance of Pharaoh and his force is as surprising as it is appalling, and the three questions fired at Moses are a graphic representation of the Israelites\u2019 panic and distress.
\n13\u201314 Moses\u2019 reply to the complaint of Israel is unruffled. He ignores their sarcastic attack on his leadership and their justification of themselves by blaming him. He commands them to set aside the fear demoralizing them, to stand firm where they are, and to witness Yahweh\u2019s imminent salvation. They have seen the Egyptians pursuing and feared greatly: they are now to see Yahweh\u2019s deliverance and believe with an equal intensity. This contrast is deftly made by the declaration that the Egyptians whom they see, and who are the cause of their great fear, they will soon \u201cadd to seeing\u201d no more, forever\u2014an ominous anticipation of the medium of the victory to come. Seeing, then not seeing; not seeing, then seeing are to be, furthermore, the extent of their activity. Yahweh is going to do their fighting (an anticipation of Exod 15:3). In addition to watching, they have only to keep quiet. The victory will be gained wholly by Yahweh, for the reason that is stated explicitly in v 18. Israel\u2019s quietude suggests not only nonintervention but also the sanctity of Yahweh-war as a religious and confessional event.
\n15 Yahweh\u2019s inquiry to Moses is a non sequitur to the narrative preceding it, as no cry of Moses to Yahweh has been reported in MT. The inclusion by Syr. of the report that such a cry was made is probably an attempt to resolve this problem, but since the cry itself is not recorded, the attempt is not convincing. We may imagine a protest of Moses to Yahweh following the people\u2019s attack on him (vv 11\u201312), but such a protest would need logically to fall before Moses\u2019 reply in vv 13\u201314, and that in turn would create difficulty with the sequence of vv 15\u201318. The inquiry of v 15 is best left in its present location and assumed to be a response to a complaint of Moses that is now lost. What follows the inquiry, Yahweh\u2019s instruction to Moses, and through Moses, to Israel, fits the sequence perfectly.
\n16\u201318 Israel, then, is to continue the exodus. To make that possible, Moses is to raise his staff and thrust out his hand over the sea, which will then split apart, enabling Israel to cross the sea on \u05d9\u05d1\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4 \u201cdry ground\u201d or \u201csolid ground\u201d (cf. Jonah 1:13; 2:11; where the term means \u201cshore,\u201d as opposed to \u201csea\u201d). Yahweh, then, will make all the pursuing Egyptians as obstinate as he has made their Pharaoh, so that they will continue their pursuit. Next, he will \u201cwin glory,\u201d \u201chonor,\u201d even \u201creputation\u201d for himself by the defeat of Pharaoh and his entire force. The purpose of this victory is Yahweh\u2019s proof-of-his-Presence, and so the defeat of the Egyptians at the sea is consonant in intention with their defeat in Egypt. The route of Israel and the minds of Pharaoh and his force will have been guided toward such an end.
\n19\u201320 The location of Israel (v 2) and of Egypt (v 9) in approximately the same place at the same time, presumably when darkness is hampering the movement of both, poses the need of a separation of some sort. This separation is provided by God\u2019s guiding messenger, \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05da \u05d4\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd \u201cattendant of God,\u201d who moves from a position before the people to one behind them, and by the guiding pillar of cloud, the symbol by day (Exod 13:21\u201322) of Yahweh\u2019s leadership, which also takes up a place between Israel and the Egyptians. This \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05da \u201cattendant\u201d has not before been mentioned in the narrative of Exodus (though cf. 32:34); \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05da \u05d4\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd has generally been thought to be E\u2019s term for the symbol of God\u2019s guidance of Israel.
\nThe pillar of cloud, however, is the symbol of Yahweh\u2019s guidance of Israel not by night but by day. Here, that same pillar of cloud, in the company of God\u2019s attendant (\u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05da), is moved in the nighttime to a position behind Israel. To what end? The answer to this inquiry is given by the assertion of v 20. The pillar of cloud came between the company of Israel and that of the Egyptians to obscure their view of, and therefore their access to, each other. \u201cThere was the cloud and the darkness\u201d; the pillar of fire, which normally provided light at night, was absent. The pillar of cloud, which only added to the obscurity of the darkness, \u201cwas the light\u201d for that night. The statement is a deliberate contrast: the day\u2019s guide takes the place of the night\u2019s light. In this composite, the \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05da stands guard, and the guiding cloud for the day becomes a blocking cloud in the night. The closing statement of v 20 affirms such a reading: through the entire night, neither side came near to the other.
\nExplanation
\nJust as Israel is guided in an eccentric route to a place precisely located, so also are Pharaoh and his magnificently disciplined fighting force guided to the very same place. Yahweh directed Israel to the edge of the sea, and he made obstinate the mind of Pharaoh so that he would pursue Israel there. As Yahweh made provision for Israel to cross the sea blocking the way of exodus, so also he made obstinate the minds of Pharaoh\u2019s force, so that they would attempt the otherwise unthinkable maneuver of pursuing a company on foot through the middle of a sea, however strangely it may have opened itself. In a final testimony of Yahweh\u2019s orchestration of the entire affair, the two forces are miraculously partitioned off from one another, until Yahweh is ready to fight Israel\u2019s fight in the place of his choosing, on his schedule, in the open light of day where the defeat and its making can clearly be seen by all.
\nThe point of the pursuit by Pharaoh is the further and final mighty act of Yahweh for Israel and against their Egyptian oppressors. This composite presents that point by the dramatic arrangement of three scenes: Pharaoh\u2019s change of mind and his powerful pursuit; Israel\u2019s frightened reaction and Yahweh\u2019s response; and the postponement through the night of the moment of deliverance by miraculous means.
\nNot only is Israel thus prepared for deliverance to come at the sea; by such a testimony, the Israel of the generations to come is also prepared for an array of deliverances from an array of oppressors.
\nYahweh\u2019s Deliverance at the Sea (14:21\u201331)
\nBibliography
\nEakin, F. E., Jr. \u201cThe Reed Sea and Baalism.\u201d JBL 86 (1967) 378\u201384. Gross, H. \u201cDer Glaube an Mose nach Exodus (4.14.19).\u201d Wort-Gebot-Glaube. Ed. J. J. Stamm, E. Jenni, H. J. Stoebe. Z\u00fcrich: Zwingli Verlag, 1970. 57\u201365. Hay, L. S. \u201cWhat Really Happened at the Sea of Reeds?\u201d JBL 83 (1964) 397\u2013403. Kuntz, J. K. The Self-Revelation of God. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967. Mann, T. W. Divine Presence and Guidance in Israelite Traditions: The Typology of Exaltation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Muilenburg, J. The Way of Israel. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962. Robinson, T. H. \u201cDer Durchzug durch das Rote Meer.\u201d ZAW 51 (1933) 170\u201373.
\nTranslation
\n21 When Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, Yahweh manipulated the sea with a gale from the east all through the night, so that he changed the sea into solid ground: the waters were cleaved apart. 22 The sons of Israel then went through the middle of the sea on dry ground\u2014the waters were to them as a wall to their right and to their left. 23 The Egyptians pursued, going after them, all the horses of Pharaoh, his chariotry, and his riders, right into the middle of the sea. 24 So it was, when daylight came, that Yahweh looked down towards the Egyptian force from a pillar of fire and cloud, and he threw the Egyptian force into complete disarray. 25 He misguided their chariots\u2019 wheels, so that they were very difficult to drive. Thus the Egyptians said, \u201cLet us take flight from the presence of Israel, because Yahweh is fighting for them against Egypt.\u201d
\n26 Next, Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cStretch forth your hand over the sea, then the waters will rush back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariotry, upon their riders.\u201d 27 Moses once again stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea rushed back, as morning brightened, to its proper place. The Egyptians, taking flight, met it head-on. Thus Yahweh scattered the Egyptians in the middle of the sea. 28 As the waters rushed back, they covered the chariotry and the riders belonging to the entire force of Pharaoh that had gone after Israel into the sea. Not even one of them was left. 29 The sons of Israel, by contrast, walked on dry ground through the middle of the sea, the waters to them were as a wall to their right and to their left.
\n30 Thus did Yahweh rescue Israel that day from the power of the Egyptians. Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the edge of the sea, 31 and Israel saw the great power that Yahweh unleashed against the Egyptians. So the people were in awe of Yahweh\u2014and in consequence, they put their trust in Yahweh and in Moses, his servant.
\nNotes
\n21.a. Hiph impf. \u05d4\u05dc\u05da \u201ccause to go, lead, guide, channel.\u201d
\n21.b. \u05d1\u05e8\u05d5\u05d7 \u05e7\u05d3\u05d9\u05dd \u05e2\u05d6\u05d4 \u201cby a strong east wind.\u201d
\n21.c. The verb is \u05e9\u05c2\u05d5\u05dd \u201cput, set, establish, appoint.\u201d
\n24.a. \u05d1\u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e8\u05ea \u05d4\u05d1\u05e7\u05e8 \u201cin the morning watch,\u201d here taken as the period when the morning became light enough for Israel and the Egyptians to see.
\n24.b. SamPent and LXX have \u201cupon\u201d (\u05e2\u05dc, \u1f10\u03c0\u1f76).
\n24.c. The prep is \u05d1 \u201cin.\u201d Cassuto (169) translates it \u201cthrough.\u201d Other translators move the phrase back in the sentence to Yahweh (so rsv). The syntax of MT is better left as it is, however, and \u201ca pillar of fire and cloud\u201d taken here as elsewhere as a theophanic symbol of Yahweh\u2019s guiding and protecting Presence.
\n24.d. \u05d4\u05de\u05dd \u201cmake a noise, cause confusion, disturb, discomfit noisily\u201d: cf. BDB, 243. There is implicit in this verb a confusion aided by distracting noise.
\n25.a. \u05e1\u05d5\u05e8 \u201cturn aside, push from the way, path.\u201d See BDB, 693\u201394. LXX has \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03ad\u03b4\u03b7\u03c3\u03b5\u03bd, a reading paralleled by Syr. and SamPent \u05d0\u05e1\u05e8 and meaning \u201cbind, imprison, bog down.\u201d
\n25.b. L has no soph pasuq at the end of v 25, but as there is a \u05e4 before v 26 and as other texts have soph pasuq, its absence is best regarded an error.
\n26.a. The verb is \u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05d1 \u201cturn back, return,\u201d translated \u201crush back\u201d in this context; cf. BDB, 996\u20131000.
\n27.a. Special waw in this context.
\n27.b. \u05dc\u05e4\u05e0\u05d5\u05ea \u05d1\u05e7\u05e8 the \u201cturning, approach, arrival, facing of morning\u201d; cf. BDB, 815.
\n27.c. \u05dc\u05d0\u05d9\u05ea\u05e0\u05d5 \u201cto its steady flow, its permanent, usual place.\u201d BDB, 450\u201351.
\n27.d. Instead of \u05e0\u05d5\u05e1 \u201ctake flight,\u201d SamPent has \u05e0\u05e1\u05e2 \u201cmoving forward.\u201d
\n27.e. \u05e0\u05e2\u05e8 \u201cshake, shake loose, off.\u201d BDB (654) cites the usage in Ps 109:23 as \u201csim. of perishing helplessly.\u201d
\n28.a. MT has \u201cthem,\u201d but the antecedent is clearly Israel, thus the reading above.
\n29.a. See n. 25.b. above; there is a similar omission here.
\n30.a. \u05d9\u05d3 lit., \u201chand,\u201d also means \u201cstrength, power,\u201d even \u201cpossession\u201d; cf. BDB, 388\u201391. The use of this noun in reference to the Egyptians here and to Yahweh in the next verse provides a neat rhetorical contrast.
\n31.a. \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d4, lit., \u201cmade, did, performed.\u201d
\n31.b. LXX reads \u03c4\u1ff7 \u0398\u03b5\u1ff7 \u201cin God.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe narrative account of Yahweh\u2019s deliverance of Israel at the sea is, like the preparatory accounts preceding it in 13:17\u201314:4 and 14:5\u201320, a composite. That such is the case, given the pivotal importance of the deliverance at the sea, is not surprising. That the narrative is not more complex than it is, and that it appears to contain material for the most part from only two sources is surprising, for the same reason. Though fragments of this pericope have sometimes been assigned to E (so Noth, 117; Childs, 220, v 25a), for the most part this section is given to J and to P (see contra, Beer, 12, 76\u201378), with P dominating in a fairly close interweaving of the two sources.
\nThe governing factor in this sequence is of course Yahweh\u2019s rescue, which comes in two parts. The first of these is the entrapment of the Egyptian force in the midst of a miraculously divided sea into which the Egyptians are lured by a fleeing Israel and driven (14:8, 17) by Yahweh. The second is the overwhelming of that same force by the sea rushing back to its customary place. Both these miraculous manipulations of the waters of the sea are effected by Yahweh following a signal Moses has been instructed to give. There is a dramatic build-up of the peril of Israel and the loss of the Egyptians through repeated reference to the units and the extent of the Egyptian force (vv 23, 25, 26, 28), and the play on what Israel is to see and not to see (14:13) is echoed in vv 30\u201331.
\nAs always, the composite as a whole must be considered of greater importance for an understanding of the meaning of the text than the separate strata that make it up. Despite a seam here and there, the impression left by this section is single: Yahweh, proving his Presence still, rescues his people and decimates a powerful and well-organized Egyptian force with no exertion of effort by Israel.
\nComment
\n21\u201322 Moses\u2019 first act of stretching out his hand over the sea is the execution of the command of Yahweh reported in 14:16. As the text makes plain, however, it is Yahweh, not Moses, who works the wonder. Calling up a strong wind (see above, n. 10:13.c and Comment), Yahweh cleaves apart the waters of the sea into two parts, leaving \u201csolid ground\u201d where water had been. This wind blew all through the night, and when there was sufficient light to make movement possible (cf. 14:9, 16, 20), Israel continued the journey of exodus by way of this opening through a barrier that had appeared impassable (14:1\u20134, 9\u201312).
\n23 The Egyptians, their judgment blunted by Yahweh\u2019s infliction upon them of a further wave of obstinacy (14:17\u201318), follow headlong with all their armament into this most unlikely place. The clear impression in the contrast between a large and disciplined strike force strategically arrayed and a path strangely opened into ground always covered before with seawater is that the Egyptians are acting without reason. So, of course, they are, by divine cause, and the effect of their madness is heightened by the repetition of their ranks: Pharaoh, horses, chariots, riders\u2014they all went.
\n24\u201325 No sooner are they in the trap than Yahweh moves to keep them there, confusing them and causing the wheels of their chariots to go awry. Just how this confusion and misguiding was brought about, the text does not suggest. The arguments that the reference to \u201ca pillar of fire and cloud\u201d suggests a fearsome thunderstorm (Cassuto, 169\u201370), a volcanic eruption (cf. Robinson, ZAW 51 [1933] 171\u201372), a theophany (Hyatt, 154) or even Sinai traditions (Kuntz, Self-Revelation, 82\u201385, 185\u201387) are unconvincing. Also wide of the mark is the theory of Hay (JBL 83 [1964] 397\u2013403) that the account of Yahweh\u2019s defeat of the Egyptians is a \u201cfanciful\u201d and \u201caugmented\u201d version of an \u201cextraordinary\u201d victory achieved by a clever choice of terrain and a strategic deployment of sure-shot Hebrew archers. The \u201cpillar of fire and cloud\u201d in these verses, as elsewhere in Exodus, are symbolic of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, and the narrative composite leaves not the smallest doubt about Yahweh\u2019s achievement of the victory over Pharaoh and his forces. The answer to the question \u201cWhat Really Happened at the Sea of Reeds?\u201d (Hay, JBL 83 [1964] 397) is even less recoverable than the location of the Sea, and in any case only marginally relevant to the theological point of these verses, a point made repeatedly, throughout Exod 13:17\u201315:21: this event is set up, managed, and brought to its dramatic conclusion by Yahweh, to an end clearly stated four times (14:4, 13\u201314, 17\u201318, 30\u201331) in this chapter alone. Even the Egyptians are reported to have taken the point (v 25).
\n26\u201328 Yahweh\u2019s further instruction to Moses seals the fate of the entrapped Egyptians. The waters diverted from their normal place are loosed to return to their usual channels. Too late, the Egyptians, stopped in their headlong pursuit, come to their senses and attempt to fall back. They meet (\u05e7\u05e8\u05d0) the sea, rushing to return to its proper place, and are overwhelmed, to a man. So Yahweh scattered (\u05e0\u05e2\u05e8) the force so awesome in its ordered pursuit, buffeting them about in a fool\u2019s trap in the midst of the sea, where no rational force would have ventured.
\n29 Yet the route so fatal to the Egyptians was a route of deliverance for Israel. They walked as on dry ground, with the waters standing aside for them, a wall to their right and a wall to their left. This language is not conducive to the attempts at naturalistic accounting often pressed upon these verses (cf. JBL Hay 83 [1964] 397\u201398; Eakin, JBL 86 [1967] 380\u201381; the review of de Vaux, Early History, 382\u201383). It is the language, rather, of confession. This victory, like the victories in Egypt, is declared to be Yahweh\u2019s victory, Yahweh\u2019s alone. What we may make of that is our problem. The compositor who set these lines together was speaking from faith and attempting both to address faith and to stimulate faith (cf. Muilenburg, Way of Israel, 48\u201354). Every tradition employed and virtually every word used are to that end.
\n30\u201331 The entire narrative of Exod 13:17\u201314:29 is thus summarized by the two final verses of Exod 14: Yahweh rescued Israel that day from the power of the Egyptians. The manner of his doing it is incidental to the fact that Yahweh is the one who made the rescue. Not tides, not storms, not bad planning, not tactical error, not bad luck, or good luck, but Yahweh. This repeated declaration of the narrative is made still again in this resounding summary. Yahweh did it, and what is more, Israel saw (\u05e8\u05d0\u05d4) him do it. They saw the bodies of the Egyptians, washed up onto the edge of the sea. They saw Yahweh\u2019s great power (\u05d4\u05d9\u05d3 \u05d4\u05d2\u05d3\u05dc\u05d4) performed against the Egyptian force. And the inevitable result of it all was reverential awe\u2014of Yahweh, and even of his servant Moses.
\nOn this latter point\u2014the presentation of Moses as Yahweh\u2019s servant to be trusted\u2014H. Gross (Wort-Gebot-Glaube, 57\u201365) has argued from the occurrences of the hiphil of \u05d0\u05de\u05df in Exod 4, 14, and 19 that a special \u201cdouble-predication,\u201d \u201cServant-God,\u201d can be seen here, is reflected elsewhere in the OT (e.g., 2 Chr 20:20) and comes to full fruit in such NT texts as Heb 8:5, John 5:46 and Phil 2:6. While Gross may press his theme a bit far, there can be little doubt that the vindication of Moses as an authority is an important part of the message of this verse. It is, however, a secondary point, not only in importance, given the repeated references in this chapter to Yahweh as the prime mover in the victory at the sea and this single reference to Moses as a figure inspiring confidence, but also in terms of what T. W. Mann (Divine Presence, 130\u201339) has called \u201cthe exaltation theme.\u201d The exaltation of Moses here is entirely dependent upon the prior exaltation of Yahweh, who has called Moses and given him both authority and special powers. This is true, moreover, throughout Exodus. Indeed, as we shall see in the murmurings in the wilderness and especially in the rebellion of the golden calf, Israel\u2019s confidence in Moses dissipates along with their confidence in Yahweh. And whenever confidence in Moses increases, as here and at Sinai, it is because of an action of Yahweh.
\nExplanation
\nThe point of this section, as also of the one following it, is the glorification of Yahweh for his deliverance of Israel from the final and most serious threat posed by Pharaoh and his people. This glorification is prepared for with a fugal layering, as the narratives of guidance and pursuit, protection and a double entrapment follow one another with a rising intensity. The exhilaration of exodus is followed by the terrible disappointment of freedom lost between the pursuing Egyptians and the impassable sea. Then, from a chaos of recrimination and the certainty of impending death, Yahweh snatches his people forth, turning the very means of their entrapment into the medium of the Egyptians\u2019 entrapment and death.
\nFrom the start of the exodus, it becomes clear, Yahweh has orchestrated the entire sequence. He has so guided Israel as to avoid the inevitable but certainly lesser resistance of the coastal road, all the while tempting the Egyptians by an erratic and apparently self-defeating route into a pursuit he both suggests to them and impels them to. When Israel then is presented with a terrifying prospect of conflict and defeat more terrible than anything they could have imagined in the fortified coastal road, and with an advancing force so awesome in array as to make undeniably plain the total hopelessness of any resistance on their part, Yahweh moves. First of all, he reassures and protects them. Second, he manipulates the waters that permit Israel\u2019s escape and become the means of the Egyptians\u2019 destruction. Then he forces the Egyptians into the trap\u2014there can be no other explanation for their irrational behavior. And finally he scatters the Egyptians in the midst of the sea they thought had Israel entrapped, even as Israel crosses through the barrier dry-shod.
\nThe whole affair is such an amazement to all\u2014all, that is, save Yahweh who planned it, that the narrative account of it is ended with an awed assertion of what Israel saw that day (cf. Exod 19:4a) and a pointed announcement of their awed belief, in Yahweh first, then in Moses his servant. Events so unexpected, so impossible, left no other choice of interpretation. Yahweh had rescued his people, as he had promised. He must be praised.
\nThe Victory Hymn of Moses and Miriam (15:1\u201321)
\nBibliography
\nAlbright, W. F. The Archaeology of Palestine. London: Penguin Books, 1954. Bauer, H. \u201cDie Gottheiten von Ras Schamra.\u201d ZAW 51 (1933) 81\u2013101. Bender, A. \u201cDas Lied Exodus 15.\u201d ZAW 23 (1903) 1\u201348. Clements, R. E. God and Temple. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965. Clifford, R. J. The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and the Old Testament. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972. Cross, F. M., Jr. \u201cThe Song of the Sea and Canaanite Myth.\u201d Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. 112\u201344. \u2014\u2014\u2014 and D. N. Freedman. \u201cThe Song of Miriam.\u201d Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry. SBLDS 21. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975. 45\u201365. Dhorme, E. L\u2019emploi m\u00e9taphorique des noms de parties du corps en h\u00e9breu et en akkadien. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1963. Durham, J. I. The Senses Touch, Taste, and Smell in Old Testament Religion. Unpublished thesis, University of Oxford, 1963. Freedman, D. N. \u201cEarly Israelite Poetry and Historical Considerations.\u201d Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1980. 167\u201378. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cStrophe and Meter in Exodus 15.\u201d Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy. 187\u2013227. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cThe Song of the Sea.\u201d Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy. 179\u201386. Gaster, T. H. \u201cNotes on \u2018The Song of the Sea\u2019 (Exodus XV).\u201d ExpTim 48 (1936\u201337) 45. Good, E. M. \u201cExodus XV 2.\u201d VT 20 (1970) 358\u201359. Haupt, P. \u201cMoses\u2019 Song of Triumph.\u201d AJSL 20 (1904) 149\u201372. Humbert, P. \u201c \u2018Q\u00e2n\u00e2\u2019 en H\u00e9breu Biblique.\u201d Festschrift Alfred Bertholet. T\u00fcbingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1950. 259\u201366. Irwin, W. A. \u201cWhere Shall Wisdom Be Found?\u201d JBL 80 (1961) 133\u201342. K\u00f6hler, L. \u201cKleinigkeiten.\u201d ZAW 52 (1934) 160. Labuschagne, C. J. The Incomparability of Yahweh in the Old Testament. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966. Loewenstamm, S. E. \u201c \u2018The Lord Is My Strength and My Glory.\u2019 \u201d VT 19 (1969) 464\u201370. Lohfink, N. \u201cThe Song of Victory at the Red Sea.\u201d The Christian Meaning of the Old Testament. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1968. 67\u201386. Lys, D. N\u00e8ph\u00e8sh: histoire de l\u2019\u00e2me dans la revelation d\u2019Isra\u00ebl. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959. Mowinckel, S. \u201cDie vermeintliche \u2018Passahlegende\u2019 Ex. 1\u201315.\u201d ST 5 (1952) 66. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cDrive and\/or Ride in the OT\u201d VT 12 (1962) 278\u201399. \u2014\u2014\u2014. Psalmenstudien II. Das Thronbesteigungsfest Jahw\u00e4s und der Ursprung der Eschatologie. Amsterdam: Verlag P. Schippers, 1961. \u2014\u2014\u2014. The Psalms in Israel\u2019s Worship. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962. Muilenburg, J. \u201cA Liturgy on the Triumphs of Yahweh.\u201d Studia Biblica et Semitica. Wageningen: H. Veenman & Zonen, 1966. 233\u201351. O\u2019Connor, M. Hebrew Verse Structure. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1980. Parker, S. B. \u201cExodus XV 2 Again.\u201d VT 21 (1971) 373\u201379. Pedersen, J. Israel: Its Life and Culture III\u2013IV. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1959. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cPassahfest und Passahlegende.\u201d ZAW 52 (1934) 161\u201375. Reymond, P. L\u2019Eau, sa Vie, et sa Signification dans L\u2019Ancien Testament. VTSup 6. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1958. Rozelaar, M. \u201cThe Song of the Sea.\u201d VT 2 (1952) 221\u201328. Schmidt, H. \u201cDas Meerlied. Ex. 15:2\u201319.\u201d ZAW 49 (1937) 59\u201366. Sendrey, A. Music in Ancient Israel. New York: Philosophical Library, 1969. Stadelmann, L. I. J. The Hebrew Conception of the World. AnBib 39. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1970. Strauss, H. \u201cDas Meerlied des Mose\u2014ein \u2018Siegeslied\u2019 Israels?\u201d ZAW 97 (1985) 103\u20139. Talmon, S. \u201cA Case of Abbreviation Resulting in Double Readings.\u201d VT 4 (1954) 206\u20138. Tromp, N. J. Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Nehher World in the Old Testament. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1969. Watts, J. D. W. \u201cThe Song of the Sea\u2014Ex. XV.\u201d VT 7 (1957) 371\u201380. Wifall, W. \u201cThe Sea of Reeds as Sheol.\u201d ZAW 92 (1980) 325\u201332.
\nTranslation
\n1 At that time, Moses and the sons of Israel sang this song to Yahweh, in these words:
\n\u201cI will sing to Yahweh,
\nfor he has risen proudly:
\nhorse and chariot alike
\nhe has cast into the sea!
\n2 My might and song of praise is Yah:
\nhe is salvation for me.
\nSuch is my God,
\nand I will compliment him\u2014
\nthe God of my fathers,
\nand I will raise him with praise!
\n3 Yahweh is a warrior!
\nYahweh is his name!
\n4 Pharaoh\u2019s chariots and his whole force
\nhe threw into the sea.
\nThe elite among his commanders
\nare sunk down in the \u2018sea of rushes.\u2019
\n5 Ancient deeps covered them over\u2014
\nthey went down into the depths like stone.
\n6 Your right hand, Yahweh\u2014
\nmagnificent in strength!
\nYour right hand, Yahweh\u2014
\nshattering the enemy!
\n7 And in the multiplication of your majesty
\nyou throw down those who rise against you\u2014
\nYou send out your burning anger,
\nit gobbles them up as a bundle of dry straw!
\n8 And in the wind of your anger
\nthe waters were piled in a heap,
\nthe currents stood waiting in a stack,
\nthe ancient deeps grew solid in the heart of the sea.
\n9 The enemy said,
\n\u2018I will chase after,
\nI will catch,
\nI will share the plunder,
\nmy battle-lust will sate itself
\nI will rid my sword of victims,
\nmy power will possess them by force!\u2019
\n10 You blew with your wind\u2014
\nthe sea covered them over!
\nthey sank like lead in the wide waters!
\n11 Who is like you among the gods, Yahweh?
\nWho is like you,
\nmagnificent in holiness,
\nawesome in praiseworthy deeds,
\ndoing the extraordinary?
\n12 You thrust out your right hand,
\nthe earth gulped them down.
\n13 You have guided in your love unchanging
\nthis people you have redeemed as kinsmen,
\nYou have lede them in your might
\nto the dwelling-place of your holiness.
\n14 The peoples have heard\u2014they are worried.
\nAnguish has gripped those who live in Philistia.
\n15 Now the chieftains of Edom are terrified;
\nthe leaders of Moab, trembling has gripped them;
\nall who live in Canaan are faint with weakness.
\n16 Terror and dread have fallen over them\u2014
\nagainst the greatness of your arm,
\nthey are struck dumb as stone.
\nTill your people pass by, Yahweh,
\ntill this people you have created pass by.
\n17 You will bring them,
\nand you will establish them,
\non the mountain that belongs to you,
\nthe place fixed for your dwelling
\nthat you made, Yahweh\u2014
\na holy sanctuary, Lord,
\nyour hands have made it firm.
\n18 Yahweh reigns forever and without interruption.\u201d
\n19 When Pharaoh\u2019s horses along with his chariotry and his cavalry came into the sea, Yahweh turned back upon them the waters of the sea, while the sons of Israel walked on dry land through the middle of the sea. 20 Then Miriam (\u201cFat One\u201d or \u201cLoved One\u201d) the prophetess, Aaron\u2019s sister, took up in her hand the hand-drum, and all the women went along after her, with hand-drums and dancing. 21 Thus did Miriam sing to them:
\n\u201cSing to Yahweh,
\nfor he has risen proudly:
\nhorse and chariot alike
\nhe has cast into the sea!\u201d
\nNotes
\n1.a. LXX has \u03c4\u1ff7 \u0398\u03b5\u1ff7 \u201cto God.\u201d
\n1.b. \u05d5\u05d9\u05d0\u05de\u05e8\u05d5 \u05dc\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201cand they said to say.\u201d
\n1.c. Cohortative form, showing determination.
\n1.d. \u05d2\u05d0\u05d4 \u05d2\u05d0\u05d4 \u201che has risen risingly,\u201d that is \u201cproudly\u201d; Yahweh has risen to the occasion, vindicating himself and bringing honor to himself by his victory. SamPent reads instead \u05d2\u05d5\u05d9 \u05d2\u05d0\u05d4 \u201ca people has risen.\u201d
\n1.e. \u05e1\u05d5\u05e1 \u05d5\u05e8\u05db\u05d1\u05d5 \u201chorse and his chariot\u201d; \u201crider\u201d here would be an anachronism, according to Mowinckel (VT 12 [1962] 278\u201389).
\n2.a. \u05d6\u05de\u05e8\u05ea is a song in praise of God; \u05d6\u05de\u05e8 refers to the creation of music in worshipful praise. See BDB, 274; Loewenstamm, VT 19 (1969) 464\u201368. SamPent and Vg have \u201cmy song of praise\u201d; LXX reads \u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03c0\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03ae\u03c2 \u201ccovering, protection.\u201d
\n2.b. LXX omits \u201cYah.\u201d
\n2.c. \u05d6\u05d4 \u201csuch\u201d; cf. BDB, 260\u201362.
\n2.d. \u05e0\u05d6\u05d4 is to \u201cbeautify, adorn,\u201d even \u201cdecorate with praise.\u201d Cf. BDB, 627. LXX and Vg have \u201cI will glorify him\u201d (\u03b4\u03bf\u03be\u03ac\u03c3\u03c9 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03cc\u03bd, glorificabo eum).
\n2.e. Polel \u05e8\u05d5\u05dd \u201clift up, exalt,\u201d in this context, by praising confession: BDB, 926\u201327.
\n3.a. SamPent \u05d2\u05d1\u05d5\u05e8 and Syr. have \u201ca mighty hero\u201d; LXX has \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03c4\u03c1\u03af\u03b2\u03c9\u03bd \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03ad\u03bc\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u201ccrushing wars\u201d instead of \u201cman of war.\u201d
\n4.a. \u05d9\u05e8\u05d4 \u201cthrow, shoot\u201d; cf. \u05e8\u05de\u05d4 \u201ccast, shoot\u201d in v 1.
\n4.b. These \u201cselect commanders\u201d are the best of Pharaoh\u2019s officer corps. See Comment on 14:6\u20137.
\n5.a. \u05ea\u05d4\u05de\u05ea \u201cancient deeps\u201d suggests more than \u201cwaves\u201d or \u201cfloods\u201d; cf. Pss 77:17; 78:15; 106:9; 135:6; Isa 63:13. LXX has \u1f10\u03ba\u03ac\u03bb\u03c5\u03c8\u03b5\u03bd \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u03cd\u03c2 \u201che [i.e., Yahweh] covered them\u201d with the ancient deeps.
\n7.a. \u05e7\u05b7\u05e9\u05c1 from \u05e7\u05e9\u05c1\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cgather stubble\u201d and perhaps even \u201cbe old, dried out\u201d: BDB 905.
\n8.a. \u05d0\u05e4\u05d9\u05da lit. means \u201cyour nostrils.\u201d It is a derivative, however, of the verb \u05d0\u05e0\u05e3, used exclusively in the OT of the \u201csnorting anger, violent rage\u201d of God. \u05d0\u05e3 refers to God\u2019s anger 177X in the OT, according to BDB (60). See further Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 298\u2013307; Dhorme, L\u2019emploi m\u00e9taphonque, 80\u201383.
\n8.b. \u05e0\u05d6\u05dc\u05d9\u05dd from \u05e0\u05d6\u05dc \u201cflow, trickle, run, stream\u201d; this pl. ptcp suggests moving, flowing currents within the sea. Cf. BDB, 633.
\n8.c. \u05e0\u05e6\u05d1 means \u201ctake a stand, a position, a station,\u201d even \u201cstand at attention\u201d for a specific purpose. Cf. BDB, 662.
\n8.d. \u05db\u05de\u05d5\u05be\u05e0\u05d3 \u201cas a heap, rising hill\u201d: BDB, 622.
\n9.a. \u05e0\u05e4\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9 \u201cmy soul\u201d; on \u05e0\u05e4\u05e9\u05c1 as the \u201cseat of the appetites,\u201d see BDB, 660 \u00a7 5, and cf. also Lys, Nephesh, 149\u201350.
\n9.b. Lit., \u201cI will make empty my sword.\u201d The sense is not \u201cdraw\u201d by emptying the scabbard (so BDB, 938 \u00a7 3), but to clear the sword, by vigorous use, of enemies before it. Thus, giving the context of the usage here, \u201crid \u2026 victims.\u201d Cf. LXX \u1f00\u03bd\u03b5\u03bb\u1ff6 \u201cI will destroy.\u201d
\n9.c. See n. 14:30.a.
\n9.d. \u05d9\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1, BDB 439 \u00a7 1: \u201ctake possession of, esp. by force.\u201d
\n10.a. \u05d0\u05d3\u05d9\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd from \u05d0\u05d3\u05e8 \u201cwide, great, high, noble, magnificent, majestic\u201d; see BDB, 12.
\n11.a. Cf. BDB, 239\u201340.
\n13.a. See n. 6:6.d.
\n16.a. On \u05e7\u05e0\u05d4 as \u201ccreate,\u201d as opposed to the more usual \u201cacquire, purchase,\u201d see Humbert, Festschrift A. Bertholet, 259\u201366, and cf. Deut 32:6; Ps 139:13; Prov 8:22.
\n17.a. Syr. reads \u201cyour holy sanctuary.\u201d
\n17.b. SamPent and Cairo Geniza read \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cYahweh\u201d instead of \u05d0\u05d3\u05e0\u05d9 \u201cLord\u201d here.
\n17.c. Syr. reads tgnjhj b\u02bejdjk \u201cbuilt by your hands.\u201d
\n18.a. \u05d5\u05e2\u05d3 \u201cwithout interruption\u201d stresses perpetuity, continuousness: BDB, 723.
\n20.a. See Ross (\u201cMiriam,\u201d IDB 3:402), who proposes also \u201cone who loves or is loved by Yahweh,\u201d and \u201cthe wished for child\u201d; and cf. Bauer (ZAW 51 [1933] 87, n. 2) who argues for \u201cWunschkind\u201d on the basis of a similar sounding Arabic word, \u2018mar\u0101m.\u2019
\n20.b. The \u05ea\u05e3 is a small hand-drum, and not a tambourine, which is a sort of hand-drum plus percussive metal discs. The latter instrument developed much beyond OT times. Cf. Sendrey, Music, 372\u201375.
\n21.a. \u05e2\u05e0\u05d4 here could also indicate that Miriam \u201cresponded to\u201d or \u201canswered\u201d the movement of the women to follow her with her invitation to them to sing.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThis magnificent poem has been much analyzed, dissected, scanned, and compared with an array of supposed precedent and counterpart works. It has been variously attributed and dated, and forced into a wide variety of forms and Sitze im Leben. There have been attempts to determine some parts of it as early and some parts as late, and to describe therefrom an evolution of both its form and its content. None of these attempts has been entirely successful. The best of them have amounted to no more than helpful suggestions, while the worst of them have been fiction bordering fantasy.
\nFour categories of questions are of primary importance: the form of the poem, the date of the poem, the Sitz of the poem, and the source (or sources) of the poem. Difficulties encountered in attempts to deal with these questions have sometimes posed a fifth direction of basic inquiry: is this a single poem, or two or three or even more poems?
\nThe very range of suggestion about the form of this victory poem is an indication of its composite, eclectic nature. A number of scholars, for example, have called this poem a hymn (so Pedersen, Israel III\u2013IV, 737; Fohrer, 112\u201313; Lohfink, Christian Meaning, 72\u201381; Rozelaar, VT 2 [1952] 225\u201328; Watts, VT 7 [1957] 371\u201380: \u201cThis amphictyonic hymn\u201d); others, a victory song (Cross, Canaanite Myth, 121\u201323; Freedman, Pottery, Poetry and Prophecy, 187\u201395), \u201can Ode of Triumph\u201d (Cassuto, 173) or a \u201cliturgy\u201d (Muilenburg, Studia, 233\u201351). Still other scholars have considered it a combination of forms: so, for example, Schmidt (ZAW 49 [1937] 59\u201366), who connected v 1 with v 21 and described the poem as a song of thanksgiving intertwined with a hymn of praise, the former sung by a soloist and antiphonal choirs, the latter by the responding congregation; or Beer (80\u201384), who described it as a combination of hymnic lines and lines in ballad-style creating a \u201cPassahkantate\u201d; or Noth (123\u201326), who thought it a \u201csolo hymn\u201d with which \u201celements of the thanksgiving form\u201d have been combined.
\nSuch theories, and variations of them, have been much multiplied in the study of Exod 15:1\u201321. The chief conclusion to be drawn from them is that this poem cannot be made to fit a single form. It is not comparable to any one psalm, or song or hymn, or liturgy known to us anywhere else in the OT or in ANE literature. It is, in Gunkel\u2019s terminology, a poem of mixed type. Nor should this be in the least surprising to us in what is so clearly a pi\u00e8ce d\u2019occasion. This is a poem stimulated by an exceptional moment in Israel\u2019s history, propelled forward by a continuation of the benefit of that moment viewed with believers\u2019 faith, and expanded, in time, to include the testimony of additional events seen as continuous by Israel. Its form is inevitably eclectic.
\nAn almost equally wide range of theory has been advanced with regard to the date of the poem, though in general a tendency towards a late dating, characteristic of the first decades of the twentieth century, has been reversed as we have learned more about the Hebrew language in its historical setting. Thus the argument of Adolf Bender (ZAW 23 [1903] 46\u201348) that an artificial antiquing and terms showing the influence of Aramaic set the poem in the postexilic period around 450 b.c., or the argument of Paul Haupt (AJSL 20 [1904] 150\u201358) that the poem, though showing no evidence of \u201cAramaism,\u201d should be considered \u201ca post-Exilic liturgical hymn for the Passover,\u201d dated around 350 b.c., have been superseded (though note the suggestion of Strauss, ZAW 97 [1985] 103\u20139, that the poem may have an application to a postexilic context).
\nThe contention more recently is for an earlier date. Cross (Canaanite Myth 121\u201325) has posited a date in the tenth century b.c. for the conversion of the poem from an oral work into a written work, and a date \u201cin the late twelfth or early eleventh century b.c.\u201d for its composition. Freedman (Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy, 176\u201378) has suggested a twelfth-century date for the composition of the poem. Any precise dating is of course impossible, given the evidence available, but there is little reason to deny at least echoes of contemporaneity to the poem, and no avoiding the obvious conclusion that with the passage of time the poem was expanded to incorporate new events important to Israel\u2019s faith, related to conquest and settlement.
\nThe Sitz im Leben of the poem, despite occasional reference to certain popular or balladic qualities, has by and large been viewed as a Sitz im Kult. This suggestion is all but necessitated by the poem itself and affirmed by its prose introduction and conclusion. A frequent suggestion of cultic connection has linked the poem of Exod 15 to the celebration of Passover. Pedersen even argued that the whole sequence of Exod 1\u201315 is to be understood as a narrative celebration dictated by the Passover feast, intended to historicize Yahweh\u2019s struggle against and victory over the opposing power of Pharaoh, and at the same time \u201cthe great battle at the beginning of time,\u201d when Yahweh \u201ccreated an ordered world from chaos and slew the chaosdragon\u201d (ZAW 52 [1934] 161\u201375). Exod 15, in Pedersen\u2019s view, is a great summary \u201chymn of triumph\u201d that is \u201centirely a hymn to the royal temple and its God\u201d (Israel III\u2013IV, 728\u2013737). Though Pedersen\u2019s theory has stimulated wide comment, it has not gained wide acceptance, in the main because Pedersen was able to present so little in the way of concrete support for his view (cf. Mowinckel, ST 5 [1952] 66\u201388; Noth, Pentateuchal Traditions, 66\u201371).
\nThe connection of Exod 15 with Passover worship has been made with some frequency (so Beer, 80\u201384; Hyatt, 162), and the poem has been linked also to such high cultic celebrations as Mowinckel\u2019s Enthronement Festival (cf. Das Thronbesteigungsfest Jahw\u00e4s, 111\u201312; The Psalms in Israel\u2019s Worship 2:247) and the \u201cautumnal festival\u201d or the New Year Festival variously proposed (cf. Muilenburg, Studia, 236\u201337). The most that is to be said with any firm assurance, however, is that the setting of the poem was Israel\u2019s corporate worship. And the likelihood is that the poem was used on a regular basis, throughout the cultic year, not just at Passover or at some other holy occasion. The deliverance the poem celebrates is far too basic to Israel\u2019s faith and far too pervasive in OT theology for so splendid an account of it to have had so restricted a usage.
\nSpeculation about whether the poem originated with Miriam or with Moses is futile. The repetition of Miriam\u2019s invitation to praise in v 21 as the first two couplets of the song sung by Moses and the people of Israel in v 1 demonstrates only that the point of departure of the poem is Yahweh\u2019s great delivering victory at the sea. The immediacy of that confession and much else within the poem makes plausible the suggestion that the beginning point of the poem was the event itself. The narrative of the poem, which as Childs (244) quite correctly says has received too little attention, suggests in addition the growth of the poem in its use across a number of years. Most telling of all, is the conclusion that no other point and place of origin for the original poem, of which of course the present text is a much expanded and overlaid version, makes as much sense. V 19, an obvious summary and transition verse, appears logically to be from the hand of P, probably at the level of the editorial compilation of Exodus. V 20 is sometimes attributed to the Yahwist (so Beer, 84: \u201cJ1\u201d; and Hyatt, 169), but as Noth (121\u201323) has shown, there is no good reason for doing so.
\nThe poetic form of 15:1b\u201318 and the couplet of v 21 is too obvious to be denied. There is a vigorous rhythm in these lines that even translation does not obscure, so much so that Exod 15 has become a standard example of early Israelite poetry. A precise analysis of this poem, or for that matter any other OT poem, remains difficult because of the considerable disagreement and confusion about the bases of Hebrew poetic form. The application of the quantitative meters of classical poetry and the qualitative meters of English and European poetry to the poetry of the OT has created more problems than it has solved, in the main because Hebrew poetry cannot be made, without alteration, to fit the patterns such application would impose upon it. Despite many attempts, most notably by Julius Ley, Karl Budde, Gustav Bickell, Hubert Grimme, and especially Eduard Sievers, no workable set of metrical patterns for the poetry of the OT has thus far been proposed.
\nMore recent work on Hebrew poetic form has recognized a freer approach to rhythmic structure, and has measured this structure by counting syllables, generally the accented syllables only, though more rarely all the syllables (so, for example, Freedman, Pottery, Poetry and Prophecy, 179\u201386). If sufficient account is taken of the variation in (as well as the purpose of) the Masoretic systems of accentuation, this technique provides at least a basis of measure, albeit one that is somewhat flawed. Its use has involved, in the analysis of Exod 15 (and frequently with other poems as well), a shift from the theory of longer units (four beat stichoi: cf. Cassuto, \u201crhythm \u2026 mainly quaternary,\u201d 173; and Noth, 123) to a theory of shorter units (two beat stichoi: of. Muilenburg, Studia, 238, and Cross, Canaanite Myth, 125\u201331).
\nMore recently still, a complete rejection of metrical patterns vis-\u00e0-vis OT poetry has been suggested, and the recurring patterns in Hebrew verse have been described as the result of \u201ca system of syntactic constraints\u201d (O\u2019Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, 64\u201378). A somewhat broader theory, and one more clearly suggested by the flexible variety of OT verse, is the theory of Benjamin Hrushovski (\u201cProsody, Hebrew,\u201d EncJud 1200\u20131201) that the rhythm of biblical Hebrew verse is \u201csemantic-syntactic-accentual,\u201d \u201cbasically a free rhythm, i.e., a rhythm based on a cluster of changing principles.\u201d
\nThe translation above is an attempt at representing the poetry of Exod 15 from such a base of flexibility. Short stichoi and longer stichoi are used in English to suggest both the staccato and the more fluid rhythms of the original, as these rhythms are dictated by syntax, by the presence of accents, and by rhetorical considerations. There is here no attempt to set forth any system of versification, as too much attempted systemization has blunted, rather than sensitized, our feel for the poetry of the OT. The attempt rather has been to feel the rhythm of Exod 15:1b\u201318 and 21, in terms of a brilliant commingling of sense and sound, and to suggest that feeling in the translation as much as possible. The basic units, even in the longer lines, are short, and the mood of the poem is one of ecstatic excitement.
\nAs is implied several times above, this poem is a composite of at least two (vv 1b\u201312 and vv 13\u201318) and perhaps three (dividing vv 13\u201318 into 13a, 14\u201316 and 13b, 17\u201318) poems, the first and oldest of them itself a development of the couplet now given twice in Exod 15, in v 1 and in v 21. The subject matter and the form of the poem give some support for such a division. At last, however, this suggestion of the evolution of Exod 15 is necessarily subjective, and must not be allowed to obscure the composite form in the text before us, for the composite has an implication all its own.
\nComment
\n1 The song of praise for Yahweh\u2019s victory is addressed to Yahweh, as the hymns of praise and thanksgiving always are in OT worship. Yahweh is both the subject and the object of this psalm; the hymn is about him and to him, both here and in the similar usage of Judg 5:3 (contra Freedman, Pottery, Poetry and Prophecy, 199). The motif of the praise is stated generally: Yahweh has \u201cindeed risen\u201d to the crisis, to his people\u2019s urgent and apparently hopeless cause. This general statement is then given specific definition: Yahweh has cast horse and chariot alike into the sea. As Mowinckel has shown (VT 12 [1962] 281\u201385), the \u201chorse\u201d here is the span-horse; the \u201cchariot,\u201d literally the \u201criding-apparatus\u201d (participle of \u05e8\u05db\u05d1 \u201cdrive, ride\u201d); and the phrase \u201chorses and chariots\u201d is the \u201cstanding OT phrase characterizing human military forces as against God\u2019s.\u2026\u201d
\nThe subject and object of his song thus set, and his theme thus stated and defined, the poet proceeds to address his theme from a variety of perspectives: his own confession of faith (vv 2\u20133); a narrative of the victory with allusions to Yahweh\u2019s prior victory over the cosmic chaos-waters (vv 4\u20138); the enemy\u2019s arrogant claim (v 9); Yahweh\u2019s incomparable deeds and person (vv 10\u201312); and Yahweh\u2019s guidance of his people (v 13) through their enemies (vv 14\u201316) to the place of their rest because of his rule (vv 17\u201318).
\n2 \u05d6\u05b4\u05de\u05b0\u05e8\u05b8\u05ea \u201csong of praise\u201d has been questioned as a non sequitur with \u201cmy might\u201d since ancient times, as the variant readings of some of the versions show (LXX \u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03c0\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03ae\u03c2 \u201cprotection\u201d; so Vg MS Ottobonianus). Gaster (ExpTim 48 [1936\u201337] 45), Freedman (Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy, 200) and Parker (VT 21 [1971] 373\u201379) argue for \u05d6\u05b4\u05de\u05b0\u05e8\u05b8\u05d4 \u201cfortress,\u201d \u201cprotection,\u201d by posing a different root \u05d6\u05de\u05e8 (cf. HALAT 263, III *\u05d6\u05de\u05e8 and \u05d6\u05b4\u05de\u05b0\u05e8\u05b8\u05d4). Loewenstamm (VT 19 [1969] 464\u201368) and Good (VT 20 [1970] 358\u201359) argue for \u201cpraise in song\u201d = \u201cglory\u201d and hendiadys, here \u201cmy singing about strength.\u201d The evidence for posing a root meaning \u201cprotection\u201d or \u201cfortress\u201d is not convincing, and the recurrence of the exact phrase in Ps 118:14 and in Isa 12:2 makes unlikely the addition of \u05d9 to \u05d6\u05b4\u05de\u05b0\u05e8\u05b8\u05ea as proposed by Cross-Freedman (Studies, 55) and Talmon (VT 4 [1954] 206\u20138).
\n\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cYah,\u201d once regarded as an early form of the tetragrammaton (cf. BDB, 219) is now generally considered a later form than \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cYahweh\u201d (de Vaux, Early History, 339). Its occurrence here has been cited as evidence of an alteration or even a later insertion of this verse into the poem (Freedman, Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy, 200). V 2 does break the sequence of content between v 1 and vv 3\u201310, the confessional narrative of Yahweh\u2019s defeat of his enemies, but it also serves as a memorable summary of faith and the rationale of the poet for the song about to follow. If it is an addition, it is a functional one, with its declaration that Yahweh is \u201csalvation\u201d and the God of the fathers, eminently worthy of being lifted on praise.
\n3 There follows a descriptive celebration of Yahweh as victorious deliverer. He is \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9\u05c1 \u05de\u05dc\u05d7\u05de\u05d4, a \u201cman of battle,\u201d a \u201cwarrior,\u201d an undoubtedly authentic epithet the translators of LXX found too embarrassing to keep (and so altered it: \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03c4\u03c1\u03af\u03b2\u03c9\u03bd \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03ad\u03bc\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u201ccrushes wars,\u201d a reading out of place in this context). The declaration that his name is Yahweh must be understood in the full sense of the confession the tetragrammaton is (see Comment on 3:13\u201322), and it is at least possible that this declaration here suggested the rhetoric of \u201cthe God of my fathers\u201d of (the inserted?) v 2.
\n4\u20137 Pharaoh\u2019s entire force offered no threat to such a God. He threw them into the sea, along with their \u201celite commanders,\u201d the officers on whom Pharaoh depended for correct judgments in the heat of battle. They were all inundated by the \u05ea\u05b0\u05bc\u05d4\u05b9\u05de\u05b9\u05ea \u201cancient deeps,\u201d the great primordial ocean waters held in restless impotence by Yahweh save when, as here, he turns them to his purposes (see Tromp, Primitive Conceptions, 59\u201361; Reymond, L\u2019Eau, 167\u201376; 182\u201394). Yahweh\u2019s strong right hand, an OT metaphor for the divine power (cf. Dhorme, L\u2019emploi m\u00e9taphorique, 144\u201347), has shattered the enemy\u2019s pursuing attack, and he has magnified his highness (\u05d2\u05b8\u05bc\u05d0\u05d5\u05b9\u05df, derivative of \u05d2\u05d0\u05d4, the verb employed in v 1b of the poem; see n. 15:1.d.) by his defeat of those who have risen up (\u05e7\u05d5\u05dd) against him.
\n8 The wind that has moved the sea waters out of their channel (cf. 14:21) is described as the wind of Yahweh\u2019s anger (literally, his \u201cnostrils\u201d; cf. Dhorme, L\u2019emploi m\u00e9taphorique, 81: \u201c\u2026 \u05d0\u05e3 et \u05d0\u05e4\u05d9\u05dd deviendront synonymes de col\u00e8re.\u201d). There is here a subtle but important shift from \u201cwaters\u201d (\u05de\u05d9\u05dd) and \u201ccurrents\u201d (\u05e0\u05d6\u05dc\u05d9\u05dd), neither of which refers to the primordial waters of chaos (cf. Tromp, Primitive Conceptions, 64\u201365; Reymond, L\u2019Eau, 70, 178) to \u201cancient deeps,\u201d \u05ea\u05d4\u05de\u05ea. The implication, at the very least, is that the visible waters in their everyday flow were thrust aside to make way for the temporary release of the devastating rebellion-waters from their subterranean prison. Then, these same waters, the very symbol of disorder in motion, are \u201cmade solid,\u201d \u201cstilled\u201d in the middle of the sea (cf. Reymond 69, and n.3).
\n9 Against this kind of authority, which upon command can stop still the sweeping instability of the primeval deep, requiring it to stand by with \u201cwaters\u201d and \u201ccurrents\u201d till needed, Pharaoh\u2019s opposition is held up to ridicule. The device of this ridicule is a series of staccato claims, put into the enemy\u2019s mouth, set forth in a rapid succession of phrases very difficult to represent adequately in English:
\nI will chase after
\nI will catch
\nI will share the plunder
\nIt will sate itself, my battle lust (\u201csoul\u201d)
\nI will empty (= \u201crid of victims\u201d) my sword
\nI will possess them by force, my power (\u201chand\u201d)
\n10 These claims are arrogant and presumptuous\u2014and futile. Yahweh had but to blow with his wind, and they were all covered, sunk down like lead in the collected waters.
\n11 Yahweh is thus extolled as incomparable among the \u05d0\u05dc\u05d9\u05dd \u201cgods,\u201d any and all beings for whom divinity is claimed. There is simply none like him, none even approaching an equality with him (cf. Pss 82:6 and 89:7\u20138; Durham, \u201cPsalms,\u201d BBC 4 [Nashville: Broadman, 1971] 341, 353\u201354). He is magnificent in the holiness that sets him apart from all others. Labuschagne (Incomparability, 79\u201380) would emend \u05d1\u05b7\u05bc\u05e7\u05b9\u05bc\u05d3\u05b6\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cin holiness\u201d here to \u05d1\u05b7\u05bc\u05e7\u05b0\u05bc\u05d3\u05b9\u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd, following LXX\u2019s \u1f10\u03bd \u1f01\u03b3\u03af\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2, and read \u201cthe proven powerful among the holy ones!\u201d This rendering is without sufficient support, however, and in any case unnecessary. Following the rhetorical question \u201cWho is like \u2026?\u201d (cf. Labuschagne, 16\u201323), a series of three aspects of Yahweh\u2019s incomparability is raised in a further rhetorical question: his magnificent holiness, his praiseworthy deeds, and his extraordinary accomplishments.
\n12 This incomparability is summed up by a return to the event that inspired the poem, and in a line that rounds off the first part of the poem, the part dealing with Yahweh\u2019s victory at the sea. He thrust forth his right hand, and the earth swallowed them. Some scholars (so Tromp, Primitive Conceptions, 25\u201326; Dahood, Psalms III, ab 17A [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971] 353\u201354; cf. Ps 71:20: \u05d5\u05de\u05ea\u05d4\u05de\u05d5\u05ea \u05d4\u05d0\u05e8\u05e5 \u201cand from the depths of the earth\u201d) consider \u201cearth\u201d here to be the equivalent of \u201cnether world.\u201d Compare the view of Wifall (ZAW 92 [1980] 325\u201332) that the \u201csea of reeds\u201d is based on Egyptian symbolism, the Shi-Hor, equivalent to the Hebrew \u201cSheol\u201d as a place of death.
\n13 V 13 begins the second part of the composite poem of Exod 15, or, if the poem is a composite of three poems, it introduces the two that follow. Its first couplet refers to the guidance through the wilderness of the people Yahweh has claimed as his own. Its second couplet refers to Yahweh\u2019s leading of that same people to the place where his holiness dwells. While this latter reference is ambiguous enough to include either Sinai or Zion or even both at once, v 17 makes Zion the more probable choice, the more so if v 13 serves, as I am suggesting, as an introduction to parts two (vv 14\u201316) and three (vv 17\u201318) of the composite poem.
\n14\u201316 The first of these two motifs, guidance through the wilderness into the promised land, is represented by a graphic catalog of the fright of the peoples Israel came to encounter in the journey. The incompleteness of the list and the inclusion in it of \u05e4\u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05ea \u201cPhilistia\u201d are not to be taken as precise indications of the date of this part of the poem, though the poem from v 13 to the end does not preserve the vigorous and terse rhythmic feel of the first twelve verses. My suggestion is that parts two and three were composed later than part one, at a time when \u201cdwellers in Philistia\u201d was a familiar phrase. But that leaves unanswered, of course, the question of just how much earlier part one may have been composed.
\nThe fear of the inhabitants of the areas en route to and within Canaan is a familiar device of the narratives of conquest and settlement (Num 22:2\u20136; Josh 2:8\u201311), and it is used effectively here. The peoples worry, are gripped by anguish, are terrified, seized with trembling, grow faint with the weakness of fear, and are altogether overcome with terror and dread before Yahweh\u2019s relentless march with his people: it is an effective description of the growing paralysis of fear. Before the great power of Yahweh\u2019s arm they are literally petrified with fright: \u201cstruck dumb as stone.\u201d This condition persists until Yahweh\u2019s people pass by, the people arrestingly described as those whom Yahweh has created (\u05e7\u05e0\u05d4). As Schmidt (\u201c\u05e7\u05e0\u05d4 erwerben,\u201d THAT 2:650\u201359) and others have shown, this verb, which occurs more than eighty times in the OT, most often refers to acquiring by effort or payment, as through commercial transaction of some kind. K\u00f6hler (ZAW 52 [1934] 160) referred to acquisition by work and difficulty, even by pain and suffering, citing Gen 31:18 as a clear example. Humbert (Festschrift A. Bertholet, 259\u201366) has shown, however, that in nine OT passages, six of which are \u201chymnic and cultic\u201d (Exod 15:16; Deut 32:6; Pss 74:2; 78:54; 139:13; and Prov 8:22), \u05e7\u05e0\u05d4 means \u201ccreate\u201d (cf. Stadelmann, Hebrew Conception, 6). Irwin\u2019s argument (JBL 80 [1961] 135\u201336, 142) that \u05e7\u05e0\u05d4 means not \u201ccreate,\u201d in the sense of \u201cform,\u201d but \u201cbeget,\u201d \u201cbecome parent of,\u201d affirms the sense in which \u05e7\u05e0\u05d4 is translated above (cf. Moses \u2018rhetorical question in Num 11:12, where the verbs \u05d4\u05e8\u05d4 \u201cconceive\u201d and \u05d9\u05dc\u05d3 \u201cgive birth to\u201d are employed). Yahweh is celebrated as seeing through a dangerous passage the people whom he has made his own people\u2014he had \u201ccreated\u201d them, \u201cconceived\u201d them, they are Israel, whom he calls \u201cmy son, my firstborn\u201d (see Exod 4:22).
\n17\u201318 The conclusion of the composite poem of Exod 15 is a terse summary of the end of the exodus. Behind the exodus lies Yahweh\u2019s promise to the fathers of progeny and land. The fulfillment of the first part of that promise necessitated the exodus, and the exodus in turn necessitated the keeping of the second part of that promise. V 17, anticipated by v 13b (see above), refers to what came, in time at least, to be seen as an important goal of the exodus, the settlement of Yahweh in the midst of his special people, themselves settled in the land he both promised and provided. The \u201cmountain\u201d that belongs to Yahweh, to which he \u201cwill bring\u201d his people, and around which he \u201cwill establish\u201d them, is Mount Zion, the new Sinai. The undoubted rootage of the phrase, \u201cthe mountain that belongs to you,\u201d in Canaanite theology (Clifford, Cosmic Mountain, 131\u201341), does not guarantee that this reference is earlier than the construction of Solomon\u2019s temple and the rise of the Zion theology (see Albright, Archaeology, 233), or that it must originally have \u201cmeant the hill country of Canaan\u201d and the sanctuary, \u201cprobably,\u201d at Gilgal (Clifford, Cosmic Mountain, 139).
\nWhatever the time of origin of the phrase, its usage in v 17 is certainly a reference to Zion, as the \u201choly sanctuary\u201d is a reference to the great temple in Jerusalem (Clements, God and Temple, 52\u201355), and as Yahweh\u2019s permanent reign is a reference to the theology of divine sovereignty that became so important in Jerusalem. It is at least a reasonable assumption that this part of the poem of Exod 15, and in all probability the part preceding it, were added to the older hymn of victory at the sea at a time when the sovereignty of Yahweh, his residence upon Zion, and the fright of Israel\u2019s enemies as his enemies were important confessional themes. The reference to Yahweh\u2019s continuing and uninterruptable rule must certainly be understood in context with Pss 47, 93, 96\u201399 (see Durham, \u201cPsalms,\u201d BBC 4: 265\u201368).
\n19\u201321 The fact that the composite poem of Exod 15 ends with two brief sections moving the confessional tradition forward beyond the deliverance at the sea to the wilderness journeys after Sinai, to conquest, settlement, and then to the cult of Yahweh\u2019s sovereign Presence in Jerusalem necessitates this transitional summary, probably from the Priestly compiler (cf. the language of 14:29). It is a summary that brings us back to the narrative at hand and so prepares us for the notice in prose of Miriam\u2019s song of victory, followed by the song itself. As indicated already, this song, apart from the change in the form of the opening verb (\u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05d9\u05e8\u05d5\u05bc \u201csing!,\u201d a 2d person plural command, instead of \u05d0\u05b8\u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05d9\u05e8\u05b8\u05d4 \u201cI will sing,\u201d a 1st person singular assertion) is identical with the song sung by Moses and Israel. There is obviously no basis for the contention that Miriam\u2019s song of v 21 antedates by many years the version of it given to Moses and Israel in v 1. Either version could be contemporary with the event; neither version has to be. Miriam is mentioned in Exodus only in these two verses, and she is called first \u201cthe prophetess,\u201d and then, in what may well be an addition (cf. Noth, 122) to the text, \u201cAaron\u2019s sister.\u201d
\nExplanation
\nThe composite poem of Exod 15:1b\u201318 may be understood best as the end result of a cumulative hymnic development produced by many occasions of confessional worship re-presenting Yahweh\u2019s greatest deliverance of his people and the further acts of provision necessitated by that deliverance. The oldest elements of the composite may certainly be dated, insofar as basic narrative and perhaps also rhetorical terms are concerned, very close to the time of the event itself. Later elements are to be connected both with the expansion of the accounts of the events at the sea and with the celebration of the further deliverances and victories of conquest, settlement, and the rise of the theology of Yahweh\u2019s sovereign Presence in Jerusalem-Zion.
\nThe poem as it stands in the text of Exodus thus has neither poetic unity nor chronological unity. The unity it does display is theological. Given the complexity of its tapestry of important themes, its overall emphasis is surprisingly singular: praise of the incomparable Yahweh whose saving Presence rescues, protects and establishes his people. This point is suggested by the exultant couplet which now begins and ends this section of Exodus, and its persistence is emphasized by the reference to the patriarchal fathers at the beginning of the poem and by the reference to the temple of Yahweh and the sovereignty of Yahweh celebrated there at the end of the poem.
\nThus the victory hymn of Moses and Miriam is far more than merely a hymn of Yahweh\u2019s victory over Pharaoh and his Egyptians in the sea. Its point of departure is that, without question. But the poem of Exod 15 is more a celebration of Yahweh than a celebration of one of his great victories. Indeed, it is more a celebration of Yahweh and the kind of God he is than a celebration of all that Yahweh had done at the sea and would do beyond it, in the wilderness, in Canaan, and in Jerusalem. The poem of Exod 15 celebrates Yahweh present with his people and doing for them as no other god anywhere and at any time can be present to do. As such, it is a kind of summary of the theological base of the whole of the Book of Exodus.
\nYahweh\u2019s Provision for Israel in the Wilderness: Water (15:22\u201327)
\nBibliography
\nAharoni, Y. The Land of the Bible. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967. Coats, G. W. Rebellion in the Wilderness. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1968. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cThe Wilderness Itinerary.\u201d CBQ 34 (1972) 135\u201352. Cross, F. M. \u201cThe Priestly Work.\u201d Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. 295\u2013325. Davies, G. I. \u201cThe Wilderness Itineraries: A Comparative Study.\u201d TynB 25 (1974) 46\u201381. Greenberg, M. \u201c\u05e0\u05e1\u05d4 in Exodus 20:20 and the Purpose of the Sinaitic Theophany.\u201d JBL 79 (1960) 273\u201376. Hempel, J. \u201c \u2018Ich bin der Herr, dein Arzt.\u2019 \u201d TLZ 82 (1957) 809\u201326. Long, B. O. The Problem of Etiological Narrative in the Old Testament. BZAW 108. Berlin: Verlag Alfred T\u00f6pelmann, 1968. Porter, J. R. \u201cThe Role of Kadesh-Barnea in the Narrative of the Exodus.\u201d JTS 44 (1943) 139\u201343. de Vries, S. J. \u201cThe Origin of the Murmuring Tradition.\u201d JBL 87 (1968) 51\u201358. Walsh, J. T. \u201cFrom Egypt to Moab. A Source-Critical Analysis of the Wilderness Itinerary.\u201d CBQ 39 (1977) 20\u201333.
\nTranslation
\n22 Then Moses pressed Israel on from the \u201csea of rushes,\u201d so that they went out into the wilderness of Shur (\u201cWall\u201d). They traveled for three days in the wilderness without finding water. 23 Then they came to Marah (\u201cBitter-Place\u201d) where they were unable to drink water because of its bitterness: indeed, that is the reason its name is called Marah. 24 So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, \u201cWhat are we to drink?\u201d 25 He called out to Yahweh for help, whereupon Yahweh directed him to a tree: when he cast it into the water, the water became potable. At that very spot, he established for them a requirement and a divine guidance, and there he put them on trial; 26 thus he said, \u201cIf you will pay careful attention to the voice of Yahweh your God, and do the right thing according to his standard, and be obedient to his commandments, and meet all his requirements, all the diseases that I put upon the Egyptians I will not put upon you: for I am Yahweh your healer.\u201d
\n27 Next they came to Elim (\u201cGreat Trees\u201d), a place of twelve springs of water and seventy date-palms. They pitched camp there, beside the waters.
\nNotes
\n22.a. Hiphil \u05e0\u05e1\u05e2, meaning \u201ccause to pull out, set forth\u201d; cf. the qal ptcp usage in 14:10, and see n. 14:10.d. above.
\n22.b. SamPent and LXX have \u201cand he brought him (them) out\u201d (\u05d5\u05d9\u05d5\u05e6\u05d0\u05d4\u05d5, \u1f24\u03b3\u03b1\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2).
\n22.c. \u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05bc\u05e8 \u201cShur\u201d is usually understood to be derived from a root meaning \u201cbecome raised, excited\u201d (so BDB, 1004) in reference to a \u201cwall\u201d of fortifications mentioned in Egyptian literature at least from the middle of the twentieth century b.c. (see Aharoni, Land 130\u201331, 178\u201381). It is possible, however, that \u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05bc\u05e8 might be derived from a root meaning \u201ctraveling\u201d or even one meaning \u201cwatching\u201d (BDB, 1003), and so be the \u201cwilderness of travelers\u201d or the \u201cwilderness of watchfulness.\u201d
\n23.a. Lit., \u201cand they were not able to drink water from Marah.\u201d
\n23.b. LXX has Moses naming the place \u039c\u03b5\u03c1\u03c1\u03b1 \u201cMarah\u201d because of the bitter waters. Such a reading is possible, even with the MT of BHS.
\n24.a. The verb is \u05dc\u05d5\u05bc\u05df. It is used only of the \u201cmurmuring\u201d or \u201cgrumbling\u201d of Israel against their leaders, primarily in the period of Moses\u2019 leadership between Egypt and Canaan in Exod 15, 16, and 17, and in Num 14, 16, 17. The one additional context is Joshua\u2019s wars of conquest, Josh 9:18; Ps 59:16 appears to refer to the \u201croving, prowling, scavenging\u201d of wild dogs, another meaning of \u05dc\u05d5\u05df: see BDB 533\u201334. Cf. Coats, Rebellion, 21\u201328. SamPent reads \u05d5\u05d9\u05dc\u05df hiph instead of MT\u2019s \u05d5\u05b7\u05d9\u05b4\u05bc\u05dc\u05b9\u05bc\u05e0\u05d5\u05bc, a niph.
\n25.a. SamPent, LXX, Vg and Syr. add \u201cMoses.\u201d
\n25.b. LXX, Syr., Tg. Ps.-J., Vg, SamPent all read \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4 \u201ccaused him to see,\u201d instead of MT\u2019s \u05d9\u05e8\u05d4 \u201cdirected him.\u201d
\n25.c. \u05e9\u05b8\u05c1\u05dd, \u201cplaced early in sentence for emph\u201d: BDB, 1027.
\n25.d. The context makes clear that the antecedent of this pronoun is Yahweh.
\n25.e. \u05dc\u05d5 \u201cfor him,\u201d i.e., Israel, so \u201cthem\u201d above, for clarity.
\n25.f. \u05d7\u05e7 is a prescribed, required, preset obligation or due. See BDB, 349, and n. 5:14.b. above.
\n25.g. \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05e4\u05d8 here refers to the divinely guided judgment or case-decision that gave direction to life in covenant with Yahweh, as in Exod 18:19\u201326. Note \u05e9\u05c1\u05e4\u05d8 in vv 22 and 26.
\n26.a. \u05d0\u05dd\u05be\u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05d5\u05e2 \u05ea\u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e2 \u201cif you will listen listeningly\u201d; cf. Exod. 19:5.
\n26.b. \u05d1\u05e2\u05d9\u05e0\u05d9\u05d5 \u201cin his eyes.\u201d
\n26.c. Hiph \u05d0\u05d6\u05df \u201ccause to hear, listen.\u201d
\n26.d. \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e8 \u201cguard, keep, observe,\u201d even \u201cfollow.\u201d See BDB, 1036\u201337.
\n27.a. \u05d5\u05e9\u05c1\u05dd, lit., \u201cand there.\u201d SamPent reads \u05d5\u05d1\u05d0\u05d9\u05dc\u05d9\u05dd \u201cand in Elim\u201d instead of \u05d5\u05e9\u05c1\u05dd, as does Tg. MS 27031 (cf. D\u00e9aut, 131).
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThis brief account of the continuation of Israel\u2019s journey after the victory at the sea is at least a composite of motifs. Quite probably, it is also a composite of source material. The motif of Israel\u2019s need for sustenance has been combined with the motifs of Yahweh\u2019s provision for his people\u2019s need. The motif of Israel\u2019s complaint, or murmuring, has been set alongside the motif of Yahweh\u2019s requirement of his people.
\nThe tendency of the source critics has been to assign different motifs to different sources, or at least to different layers in the same source. So Driver (141\u201344), for example, assigned these verses to E (22\u201325, 27) and R (26); Beer (84\u201387), to J1 (22a\u201325a, 27) and RD (25b\u201326); Noth (127\u201329), to P (22a\u03b1, 27), J (22\u03b2b\u201325a) and \u201ca deuteronomistic supplement\u201d (25b, 26); and Hyatt (171\u201373), to P (22a), J (22b\u201325a) and RD (25b\u201326). This amount of variance suggests the ambiguity of the evidence for source analysis. There is not here enough stylistic or thematic data to make precision in the division of this section a firm possibility. The awkwardness of the sequence (the use of \u201che\u201d as subject four times in v 25, twice in reference to Moses, twice in reference to Yahweh, each time without qualification; the introduction of the testing motif, v 25, followed by a Deuteronomistic-style conditional promise and the somewhat out-of-place reference to Yahweh the healer, v 26) clearly suggest a composite of sources, but provide too little information for exact attribution.
\nThe question of form must once again be focused upon the composite rather than upon its parts. While typical source interests are certainly present, and perhaps also etiological (Coats, Rebellion, 47\u201353; Long, Etiological Narrative, 10\u201312) interests, the primary function of the pericope is to present the narrative of the continuation of Israel\u2019s journey toward Yahweh\u2019s goal, and to move that narrative forward by reference to Israel\u2019s continuing and growing complaint (see the anticipation of this motif at Exod 5:20\u201323, 14:10\u201318; note also de Vries, JBL 87 [1968] 51\u201352) and Yahweh\u2019s continuing and fuller provision. The form of the section is thus determined more by the purpose of the composite than by the pieces that make it up. That purpose is not etiology or the highlighting of the murmuring motif. It is the glorification of Yahweh who provides for his people, whatever and wherever their need, Yahweh who is eminently deserving of service and loyalty.
\nComment
\n22 The route of the continuation of Israel\u2019s journey in exodus beyond the barrier of the \u201csea of rushes\u201d is no more clear to us than their route through and from the Nile Delta. Once again, the narrators have gone to some lengths (vv 22, 23, 27, cf. also Num 33) to make the direction of the journey clear to us, but places and landmarks that were clear to them are clear to us no longer. Several identifications of Marah and Elim have been attempted (cf. Hyatt, 172\u201373), but not one of them is convincing. The location of Sinai, equally uncertain, is of course a determining factor. If the traditional view is followed, we must pose a route east, then south from the delta; if Sinai is located at Kadesh (Porter, JTS 44 [1943] 139\u201343) or in Edom (Seir), a direction more nearly due east is likely. This question remains unanswered not only because of the uncertainty surrounding the geography of the places mentioned, but also because, as the studies of Coats (CBQ 34 [1972] 135\u201352), Davies (TynB 25 [1974] 46\u201381), Walsh (CBQ 39 [1977] 20\u201333) and Cross (Canaanite Myth, 301\u201321) have shown, there are at least two, and perhaps three travel sequences that give evidence in themselves of some independence from the tetrateuchal sources generally posed. Attempts to unravel and plot these sequences have been unsuccessful because of literary problems as well as because of the lack of geographical information.
\n23 The first difficulty encountered by Israel beyond the sea is introduced almost immediately: after three days of travel into the wilderness, Moses and his charges had found no water. Water is of course a matter of life and death, nowhere more so than in the dehydrating heat of the desert. The anxiety of the people would of course have been mounting by the hour, and the false relief brought by arrival at a place where there was water unfit to drink would have sharpened that anxiety dramatically. Whatever etiological quality may be present in the narrative of the polluted water of Marah, the \u201cbitter-place,\u201d it is far less important (cf. Long, Etiological Narrative, 12) to the narrative in its present form than the tragedy apparently unfolding: Israel, miraculously freed and rescued, is now about to perish in the desert for want of water.
\n24\u201325 The grumbling of the people against Moses is no surprise, both because of the anticipation of the motif and also because of the terrible circumstances of their plight. Their complaint here serves as the trigger of Yahweh\u2019s provision of a solution to their problem. Moses called on Yahweh for help, and Yahweh guided him to a tree, a kind of wood, \u05e2\u05e5, that could be used to purify the water. Whether the tree is to be thought of as purifying the water by a chemical reaction, or as a symbol, such as the staff of Moses, of the active power of Yahweh at hand, the text does not make plain. That Yahweh is the source of the miracle of the changed water, there can be no doubt, as the next lines, including a statement of Yahweh, indicate.
\nThe very spot at which their panic of thirst is changed to the contentment of provision becomes the appropriate place for the establishment of expectation and the offering of option. This same sequence is repeated, though on a much larger and more dramatic scale, at Sinai: there the place of Advent in theophany becomes the place of relationship in covenant. So here, as there, Yahweh puts his people to a kind of try-out, or test (\u05e0\u05e1\u05d4). He gives them here an option authenticated by what he has done with the water, as by what had happened to the Egyptians from the fifth of the mighty acts forward. He gives them at Sinai an experience of his Presence at first hand, so that they might have reverence for him (20:20; cf. Greenberg, JBL 79 [1960] 273\u201376).
\n26 The substance of the option Yahweh offers is set forth in terms of obedience and judgment\u2014the standard accompaniments of OT covenantmaking, indeed of covenant-making in the ANE. They are to take his requirement and his guidance seriously, pay close and committed attention to his voice, adopt his standard as the measure of what is right, obey his commands and meet his requirements. He will then spare them the harm of the diseases he heaped upon the Egyptians: he then will not put these diseases upon Israel. This statement of the positive response to the positive side of the option implies the negative response to the negative side, punishment for disobedience. But the positive side is emphasized further by the use of the self-proclamatory formula, \u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cfor I am Yahweh\u201d with \u05e8\u05e4\u05d0\u05da \u201cyour healer\u201d in the place of \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05da \u201cyour God.\u201d Stoebe (\u201c\u05e8\u05e4\u05d0 heilen,\u201d THAT 2:809) calls this a \u201chymnic\u201d usage, and Hempel (TLZ 82 [1957] 809\u201326) has written a sweeping survey on OT medicine and on Yahweh as the one who strikes dead and heals, considered alongside an array of parallels from the ancient world in which he suggests (823) a series of possibilities for the translation of v 26, ranging from dein Arzt \u201cyour doctor\u201d as a technical term to der dich heilende \u201cthe one who heals you\u201d as a broad generalization.
\nThe phrase in which \u05e8\u05e4\u05d0\u05da is used may, however, suggest more still. The \u201cdiseases of Egypt\u201d refer to the mighty acts by which Yahweh made himself known to Israel and to the Egyptians in Egypt. The protection of an obedient Israel from those same diseases is to be a means by which Yahweh is now to make himself known to Israel in the wilderness and beyond. The self-proclamatory phrase \u05d0\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05da \u201cI am Yahweh your God,\u201d a basic confession of Yahweh\u2019s special nature and special relationship thus becomes, with the replacement of \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05da \u201cyour God\u201d by \u05e8\u05e4\u05d0\u05da \u201cyour healer,\u201d a confession also of special blessing upon those in right relationship with him. The assertion does have a Deuteronomistic ring to it, as scholars have often noted. But its covenantal overtones may be louder even than its Deuteronomistic ones.
\n27 The crisis past and the option posed, no report of any response is given, appropriately enough in a passage anticipating the great presentation of much the same options, albeit in markedly different form, in Exod 19\u201324. The people now move on to the pleasant oasis of Elim, a place of abundant waters and date-palms, and there they camp in welcome respite before the most difficult part of the journey they have undertaken. Elim can be located no more certainly than Marah, but the presence of such oases in the wilderness is well established.
\nExplanation
\nYahweh thus provides for the needs of his people: by purifying polluted water, by guiding them through wasteland to an oasis overflowing with both water and fruit. That is the essential point of this section: Yahweh\u2019s provision for his people. Set off against that point, as a means of making it all the more obvious, are the motifs of the people\u2019s grumbling in their difficulty, the people\u2019s obligation, set for them by the Yahweh who also rescues and provides for them, and the confession of Yahweh as healer, both protecting and healing his people from disease.
\nThe composite is built on a sequence of contrasts. The first and governing contrast is Israel\u2019s need met by Yahweh\u2019s provision. Related to that contrast are these further pairs of opposites: the total lack of water at the beginning of the pericope opposed by the oasis of twelve springs at its end; the bitter water of Marah opposed by the sweet water that Yahweh\u2019s guidance (and miracle?) makes of that nonpotable resource; the people\u2019s grumbling opposed by Yahweh\u2019s provident care of them; their protection and healing opposed by the Egyptians\u2019 affliction and illness; and life according to their own disordered whim opposed by Yahweh\u2019s ordered standard.
\nThe multiplied effect of these pairings is of course the spotlighting of Yahweh\u2019s guiding provision for the people whom he has singled out to special purpose. And this first array of provision in the wilderness is an anticipation of much more, and much greater provision yet to come.
\nThe Grumbling of Israel against Yahweh (16:1\u201312)
\nBibliography
\nAharoni, Y. \u201cKadesh-Barnea and Mount Sinai.\u201d God\u2019s Wilderness: Discoveries in Sinai. B. Rothenberg, Y. Aharoni and A. Hashimshoni. New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1962. 115\u201370. Coppens, J. \u201cLes traditions relatives \u00e0 la manne dans Exode xvi.\u201d Estudios Eclesi\u00e1sticos 34 (1960) 473\u201389. Galbiati, E. La Struttura letteraria dell\u2019 Esodo. Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 1956. Malina, B. J. The Palestinian Manna Tradition. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968.
\nTranslation
\n1 Next they journeyed forth from Elim and came, the whole company of the sons of Israel, to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month of their exodus from the land of Egypt. 2 There, the whole company of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and against Aaron in the wilderness. 3 The sons of Israel said to them, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t somebody give us dead into the hand of Yahweh in the land of Egypt, where we had a settled life with plenty of meat, where we ate bread till we were stuffed? Now you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole crowd by starvation!\u201d
\n4 So Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cJust watch me rain down upon them bread from the heavens\u2014the people are to go out and pick up one day\u2019s provision daily; by that requirement, I will put them to a trial: will they walk according to my instruction, or not? 5 On the sixth day, when they process what they have brought in, they will find that it is twice as much as they have gathered day by day.\u201d 6 Then Moses and Aaron said to all the sons of Israel, \u201cAt evening you will know by experience that Yahweh has brought you forth from the land of Egypt, 7 and at morning you will see Yahweh\u2019s glory, in his response to your grumbling against Yahweh. What are we, that you have grumbled against us?\u201d 8 So Moses said, \u201cWhen Yahweh gives you in the evening flesh to eat, and bread in the morning until you are stuffed, in Yahweh\u2019s response to your grumbling which you have grumbled against him, what have we to do with that? Not against us are your grumblings, but against Yahweh.\u201d
\n9 Then Moses said to Aaron, \u201cSay to the whole company of the sons of Israel, \u2018Approach the Presence of Yahweh, because he has heard your grumblings,\u2019 \u201d 10 While Aaron was speaking to the whole company of the sons of Israel, they turned toward the wilderness, and there the glory of Yahweh appeared in a cloud. 11 At that moment, Yahweh spoke to Moses, and said, 12 \u201cI have heard the grumblings of the sons of Israel\u2014say to them now, \u2018Between dusk and dawn, you are to eat meat, and in the morning you are to be stuffed with bread; then you will know by experience that I am Yahweh your God.\u2019 \u201d
\nNotes
\n1.a. The etymology of \u05e1\u05d9\u05df \u201cSin\u201d and \u05e1\u05b4\u05d9\u05e0\u05b7\u05d9 \u201cSinai\u201d is not known. The two terms are clearly related, and as Aharoni (God\u2019s Wilderness, 143) has pointed out, the OT uses no less than five names for parts or all the wilderness of the Sinai peninsula: Zin, Paran, Shur, Sin and Sinai. None of the various attempts to apply these names to specific areas of the Sinai peninsula has been entirely successful, not only because of a lack of specific information, but also because some of these names are used interchangangeably in the OT.
\n2.a. See n. 15:24.a. The verb \u05dc\u05d5\u05df as written here is hiph, \u201ccaused grumbling.\u201d The Masoretes have vocalized it, however, as niph impf, and it is so read above: lit., the significance is \u201cgrumbled themselves.\u201d
\n3.a. \u05d1\u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05ea\u05e0\u05d5 \u201cin our dwelling, remaining.\u201d
\n3.b. \u05e2\u05dc\u05be\u05e1\u05d9\u05e8 \u05d4\u05d1\u05e9\u05c2\u05e8 \u201cupon the pots of flesh.\u201d
\n3.c. \u05db\u05d9 \u201cfor, because.\u201d
\n4.a. \u05dc\u05de\u05dc\u05df, lit., \u201cto the intent, in order that.\u201d
\n4.b. \u05d1\u05ea\u05d5\u05e8\u05ea\u05d9 \u201cto my instruction.\u201d
\n6.a. LXX adds \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03b3\u03c9\u03b3\u1f74\u03bd \u201ccompany, congregation.\u201d
\n7.a. \u05d1\u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e2\u05d5, lit., \u201cin his hearing.\u201d
\n8.a. \u05dc\u05e9\u05c2\u05d1\u05e2 \u201cfor sating, stuffing.\u201d
\n8.b. LXX has \u03ba\u03b1\u03b8\u0342 \u1f21\u03bc\u1ff6\u03bd \u201cagainst us.\u201d
\n8.c. The phrase \u05d5\u05e0\u05d7\u05e0\u05d5 \u05de\u05d4 is the one rendered \u201cwhat are we?\u201d in v 7. It is varied in translation here because of the context. The meaning of either rendering is the same.
\n8.d. LXX has \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u1f70 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cagainst God.\u201d
\n9.a. LXX has \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cof God.\u201d
\n11.a. Special waw in context.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe question of the form of this section must be considered against the form of the whole of Exod 16, which is a composite drawn together to present material having to do with Yahweh\u2019s provision for his people. Nourishment for the body is provided, in the manna and the quails, and nourishment for the spirit, in the sabbath-rest. This chapter has to be considered alongside Num 11, to which it is parallel in some ways, against which it is different in some ways, and by which it appears to some degree presupposed. A variety of source- and form-critical analyses of the chapter have been made, chiefly on the grounds of linguistic-stylistic and, especially, sequential considerations.
\nFar the majority of source critics have assigned most of Exod 16 and most of vv 1\u201312 to the Priestly source, in part on linguistic grounds and in part by comparison with Num 11, which is generally reckoned to be a JE compilation. The most notable exception to this majority view is Wilhelm Rudolph (\u201cElohist,\u201d 34\u201336), who argues that the \u201cfoundation\u201d (Grundstock) of the chapter is not P, but J. Generally, vv 4\u20135 of the first twelve verses of Exod 16 have been assigned to J, and the remainder of the verses to P (so Beer, 87\u201388; Noth, 131\u201334; Hyatt, 173; Childs, 274\u201376).
\nThere is, however, an apparent illogicality of sequence in these twelve verses that the source-critical theories have failed to clarify; this illogicality is presented by the repetition of much of vv 6\u20138 by vv 9\u201312, especially in the revelation of Yahweh in a theophanic appearance to Moses, Aaron, and Israel (vv 10\u201312) of information Moses had already given the people (v 8) along with the prediction of the theophany (vv 6\u20137). Galbiati (La Struttura 164\u201375), Coppens (Estudios Eclesi\u00e1sticos 34 [1960] 473\u201389) and Malina (Manna Tradition, 1\u201320) have attempted to set aside source-analysis as an inadequate means of resolving the difficulty, and to provide instead a kind of structural analysis. Malina, for example, posits a synthesis of four narratives in Exodus: a \u201cMoses, Aaron, and the whole congregation\u201d narrative (vv 1\u20132, 3c, 6\u20137, 9\u201310), a \u201cMoses and the children of Israel\u201d narrative (vv 3ab, 11\u201315, 16b\u201317a, 21, 31, 35a), a \u201cMoses and they\u201d narrative (vv 4ab\u03b1, 5, 16a, 17b, 18\u201320, 22\u201327, 28\u201330, 35b), and a \u201cMoses and Aaron\u201d narrative (vv 32\u201334), plus \u201cglosses\u201d (vv 4b\u03b2, 8, 16a\u03b1, 28, 36). The unity of Exod 16, then, is brought about according to a chronological purpose, set by \u201ca Priestly redactor\u201d whose primary interest was \u201cthe Sabbath theophany and the Sabbath rest.\u201d Childs (276\u201380) has argued that neither a confusion of the order of the sources in compilation nor the imposition of a preset pattern by the redactor afford an adequate explanation of the sequence of Exod 16. His theory, rather, is that \u201ca traditional sequence,\u201d reflected also in Num 14 and 16, makes this sequence understandable. What becomes the governing and important factor in Exod 16 is not logical transition, but the linking, in this order, of murmuring, disputation, theophany, and divine instruction through Moses to Israel.
\nWhile each of these approaches sheds some light on the clearly difficult order of Exod 16, vv 1\u201312 in particular, none of them is entirely satisfactory, not least because they appear a bit too clever, imposing upon the text about as much as they take from it. Two considerations need to be kept firmly in mind: one, that our sense of logic in the organization of a biblical passage may well discover difficulty where none was present to the ancient redactor and his reader; and two, what remains most important, not least because it is all we have with certainty, is the compilation of the text in hand, supposed illogicality and all. Childs takes this quite seriously, and so has given us the most sensitive approach, but his \u201ctraditional sequence\u201d may also be an imposition which would come as a surprise to the authors\/editors of Exod 16 and Num 14 and 16. A more convincing place for such a pattern to have occurred, surely, would have been Num 11, the chapter most closely parallel to this one, but one in which Childs does not find his \u201ctraditional sequence.\u201d
\nMy view therefore is that Exod 16:1\u201312 functions as an introduction to the account of Yahweh\u2019s provision for his people of needed food. Its structure is dictated by its purpose, which is to prepare the reader for the more important Presence-demonstrating provision to follow. It is a composite that leans forward, that functions primarily as an anticipation of what is to come. It does this, moreover, by a didactic multiplication of two preparatory themes: Israel\u2019s grumbling and Yahweh\u2019s authoritative statement of his response to their complaint. Into the combination of these themes have been worked the themes of Israel\u2019s obedience or disobedience under pressure (v 4), the keeping of the sabbath (v 5), and the authority of Moses (and Aaron) (vv 7\u20138), but the important emphasis of the two preparatory themes governs this sequence, even to the point of a didactic repetition which introduces the problems of non sequitur that have so troubled the literary critics. As in so many instances in the compiled narrative literature of the OT, purpose takes precedence over logic, and emphasis overrides considerations of sequence.
\nComment
\n1 The report of the movement of \u201cthe whole company of the sons of Israel\u201d from the pleasant oasis of Elim into the wilderness of Sin is, like other such references in the narrative of Exodus, an attempt to locate and plot the route of Israel in exodus from Egypt to Sinai, and eventually from Sinai to Canaan. The most extensive such attempt, of course, is Num 33, which lists more than forty places of encampment and \u201csetting-forth.\u201d These attempts no longer serve their intended purpose, however, for two reasons at least: one, most of the places listed can no longer be identified; and two, the various references, when brought together, present a conflicting sequence of information. The best interpretation we can manage, with any confidence, is a general plotting of vicinity or area for the movement of Israel in exodus, and even that is fraught with some ambiguity because of the uncertainty with which even the most important of all the places, Sinai, can be located.
\nYohanan Aharoni (God\u2019s Wilderness 117\u201370), who surveyed the Sinai peninsula along with colleagues from the Hebrew University and Israel\u2019s Department of Antiquities in 1956\u20131957, wrote an extensive and convincing discussion of the problems posed by the places mentioned. He concluded that while Kadesh-Barnea (which can be accurately located) was an important center of Israelite life during the wilderness period, and perhaps the Israelites\u2019 first major destination in exodus, one of the mountains in the range at the southern end of the Sinai peninsula is almost certainly the Sinai\/Horeb of Exodus. Aharoni holds (165\u201370) that Paran was the original name for the whole of the Sinai peninsula; that \u201cSinai\u201d is mentioned in the OT only in reference to the exodus and Yahweh\u2019s revelation of his Presence to Israel; that the location of Sinai\/Horeb in the southern part of the peninsula is at least as old as the period of the united monarchy of Israel; and that the varied and sometimes apparently conflicting information about Israel\u2019s wilderness travels must be understood as the result of an attempt to combine into a single route the traditions of the separate travels of a number of tribal groups. The overlapping areas, the separate but synonymous designations of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, may thus be seen to represent accurate memories that were never intended to be taken as a single route, and the major points of gathering for \u201cthe whole company of the sons of Israel\u201d may be said to be at least four: the Red Sea, Kadesh-Barnea, Sinai\/Horeb, and a ford of the Jordan River just north of the Dead Sea. Of these sites, only one can thus far be located with complete certainty: Kadesh-Barnea.
\nThe notice that a month and a half has elapsed since the departure from Egypt comes as a bit of a surprise, since the only previous notice of the passage of time since the exodus, at 15:22, mentions three days. Here, just six verses farther along in the composite, a month and a half has slipped by. This measure of time has to do, in all probability, with the Priestly circle\u2019s liturgical calendar. It functions here, however, as an anticipation of what follows.
\n2\u20133 Israel has settled into a routine. The newness of freedom has worn off, and the hardship of wilderness life has set in, and so the people complain against their leaders. Coats (Rebellion, 21\u201328) has made an analysis of the occurrences in the OT of verb or noun forms of \u05dc\u05d5\u05df \u201cgrumble\u201d followed by the preposition \u05e2\u05dc \u201cagainst\u201d and has concluded that this combination, which occurs seven times in five verses (2, 7, 8, 9, 12) of this pericope, is both characteristic of \u201cthe murmuring motif\u201d and always involves \u201ca well-defined event.\u201d The \u201cevent\u201d in this instance, as Coats (87\u201390) quite correctly points out, is not one that has been, but one that is about to occur. The exaggerated report of \u201cplenty of meat\u201d and \u201cbread till we were stuffed\u201d in Egypt provides a dramatic anticipation of \u201cthe coming miracle of meat and bread.\u201d It also combines the two gifts of food which appear to have been reported earlier in separate traditions of provision.
\nThis point can be taken a step further still. The hungry complaint of the absence of food in the wilderness, heightened by an all-too-human exaggeration of the diet in Egypt, and reported with an almost humorous irony (\u201csettled life,\u201d \u201cplenty of meat,\u201d \u201cbread till we were stuffed\u201d) is revealingly parallel to the panicky complaint of 14:11\u201312 that graves were in good supply in Egypt, verses that also serve to anticipate a miraculous intervention of Yahweh (see Comment above). There is another parallel in the elaborate description of the delicacies of an Egyptian menu in the complaint against manna in Num 11:4\u20136. That passage too is oriented toward the miracle to come, the provision of abundant meat by the flocks of quail.
\nIn each of these three instances, a complaint stated with an excess that approaches humor is an anticipation of miraculous provision by Yahweh. Here and in Exod 14, the complaint is directed against Moses (with Aaron added here). In Num 11, no direct address is made, though Moses of course must hear the complaint. In each instance, however, the complaint functions ultimately as a complaint against Yahweh and a wish that the exodus from Egypt had never been made, even to the extent that it might have been prevented by an early death in Egypt (cf. Coats, Rebellion, 88\u201389). As such, all these complaints anticipate not only Yahweh\u2019s miraculous and Presence-proving reactions to them, but also Israel\u2019s tendency toward the incredible denial that culminates in the orgy of the golden calf. This anticipatory tendency, as noted above, governs this entire section, overriding considerations of logical sequence.
\n4\u20135 Thus the complaint of Israel is followed by a word of Yahweh to Moses that anticipates the provision of the manna, the disobedience of some of the people, and the hallowing of the sabbath as a special day of worship and rest. The manna is referred to as \u05dc\u05d7\u05dd \u201cbread.\u201d That the reference is to the manna, and not to food in general, including even meat (so Cassuto, 192\u201393), is made clear by the further reference to a daily gathering, for six days, and in the morning of each day (vv 5, 7, 8, 12). Not only are the Israelites to gather the miracle-bread daily in the morning for six days of the week, they are to pick up only a day\u2019s supply on any given day, including the sixth day. Yahweh who provides the bread will provide also for the need of the day of non-harvest. They are to collect no more on the sixth day; what they gather on that day will turn out to be two days\u2019 supply when it is prepared for consumption. This assertion, alongside the statement of the miraculous expansion or reduction of the miracle-bread to the quantity of one omer in v 18, suggests an additional dimension of divine provision that is absent from the report of double-harvesting on the sixth day in the Priestly narrative of v 22.
\n6\u20138 Moses and Aaron and then Moses alone are next described responding to the complaining Israelites with much the same answer. Yahweh will bring at evening an experience that will prove his Presence in the exodus from Egypt, and in the morning, an experience of his \u05db\u05b8\u05bc\u05d1\u05d5\u05b9\u05d3, his \u201cglory\u201d = his Presence. These revelations will be his response to Israel\u2019s grumblings, identified as grumblings against Yahweh, despite their address. The evening experience is then specified as the provision of meat, the morning revelation as the provision of bread in abundance, and the direction of the grumbling of Israel is stated more pointedly still to be toward Yahweh.
\n9\u201312 When this point is made for the third time in a row, it is made in the most authoritative manner possible: by a theophany, in the midst of which Yahweh himself reports that he has received Israel\u2019s grumblings. Aaron is instructed by Moses to instruct the people to come near to Yahweh\u2019s Presence (\u201cface\u201d). Just how they are to do this is not said: at this point, before the arrival at Sinai, there is no ark, and no mention of the pillar of cloud or the pillar of fire has been made. In response to Aaron\u2019s instruction, indeed while he is speaking still, the people turn to face the wilderness. Just what wilderness they face, we are not told, but the fact that Yahweh appears to them there \u05d1\u05e2\u05e0\u05df \u201cin a cloud\u201d at least implies the wilderness of Sinai, the place of the greatest theophany.
\nAt the moment of the theophany, Yahweh reports to Moses that he has heard Israel\u2019s grumblings, and he gives Moses a message for them. They are to have meat between dusk and dawn and bread in the morning. And the result of it all will be an experiential knowledge that Yahweh is their God. The use in v 12 of the autokerygmatic formula \u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05db\u05dd \u201cthat I am Yahweh your God\u201d (see Comment on 6:2\u201313 and 12:12) is a pointed assertion of the movement of the entire provision-in-the-wilderness sequence. Like the mighty-act sequence in Egypt, the deliverance at the sea, and the guidance sequence, so also the provision sequence is to the end that Israel should come to know, on the basis of a firsthand experience, that Yahweh is God, and moreover, that he is Israel\u2019s God.
\nAll questions of the logical sequence of this preparatory section have to be set aside as secondary to this major purpose of the composite. So also questions of the interlocking of the sabbath theme, the obedience\/disobedience theme, and even the separation of the manna and meat traditions, each of which is an important motif in its own right, must be considered of lesser importance than the sum of the parts they present together. Not even the question of whether this whole narrative might fit better into the post-Sinai narrative (so Hyatt, 174) or the question of how Israel could possibly have doubts at this point about Yahweh\u2019s involvement with them or his intention to provide and care for them, must be allowed to fragment the impression of the composite as it stands. Israel\u2019s grumbling, not unlike Pharaoh\u2019s recalcitrance, becomes a foil for Yahweh\u2019s display of his provident Presence. And the repetition within this sequence, so often viewed as distraction and a basis for breaking it up, may better be seen as didactic, the multiplication for emphasis of an important preparatory point.
\nExplanation
\nWhat can be taken as a somewhat fragmented and disordered sequence, one characterized by a confusing gathering of themes and by non sequiturs, may better be seen as a deliberate sequence, designed to open the reader to several events to come, all of which are to a single end. The grumbling of the whole company of Israel, complaining against Moses, five times referred to in the section, and three times identified as grumbling against Yahweh, becomes the basis for his miracles of provision which demonstrate his Presence. The instructions regarding the use of the provision of food, both as regards the daily gathering of the foodstuff and also as regards the keeping of one day in seven as a special day, anticipate the gifts Yahweh\u2019s Presence brings as well as the response Yahweh\u2019s Presence invites. And the theophany in the direction of the (deeper) wilderness, with its declaration through Moses to Israel, is an anticipation of the great theophanic experience to come, with its accompanying revelation.
\nIsrael\u2019s grumbling thus becomes occasion for a response of Yahweh that gives further proof of his Presence. But the report of the grumbling and the anticipation of Yahweh\u2019s response points both to and beyond the provision of food to the provision of Yahweh\u2019s supreme revelation of himself in the entire OT.
\nYahweh\u2019s Provision for Israel in the Wilderness: Food (16:13\u201336)
\nBibliography
\nBodenheimer, F. S. \u201cThe Manna of Sinai.\u201d BA 10 (1947) 2\u20136. Also BAR 1:76\u201380. Coppens, J. \u201cLes traditions relatives \u00e0 la manne dans Exode xvi.\u201d Estudios Eclesi\u00e1sticos 34 (1960) 473\u201389. DeGuglielmo, A. \u201cWhat Was the Manna?\u201d CBQ 2 (1940) 112\u201329. Feliks, J. \u201cWachtel.\u201d BHH. Gu\u00f6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966. Col. 2123. Galbiati, E. La Struttura Letteraria del\u2019 Esodo. Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 1956. Gray, J. \u201cThe Desert Sojourn of the Hebrews and the Sinai-Horeb Tradition.\u201d VT 4 (1954) 148\u201354. Heising, A. \u201cExegese und Theologie der Alt-und Neutestamentlichen Speisewunder.\u201d ZKT 86 (1964) 80\u201396. Jacob, B. Das Zweite Buch der Torah. Unpublished MS, assembled posthumously in 1945, available on microfilm in the Library of Congress, and in photocopy at the University of Chicago. Malina, B. J. The Palestinian Manna Tradition. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968. Noth, M. The Old Testament World. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1966.
\nTranslation
\n13 That very evening, therefore, the quails flew up and blanketed the camp. And in the morning, there was a dewfall all around the camp. 14 When the dewfall evaporated, however, just look: all over the surface of the wilderness were thin flakes, as thin as a layer of frost upon the earth. 15 Then the sons of Israel saw it, and they said, each man to his neighbor, \u201cWhat is it?\u201d For they did not know what it was. So Moses said to them, \u201cIt is the food that Yahweh has given to you to eat. 16 This is the instruction Yahweh gave\u2014\u2018Pick up of it, each man, what you need for food; you are to take an omer per person, by the count of the persons a man has in his tent.\u2019 \u201d
\n17 Thus did the sons of Israel; they picked it up, some a lot and some a little. 18 Then when they measured it by the omer, the one who took a lot had none too much, and the one who took a little had no shortage. Each had taken only what he needed for food. 19 Moses said to them, \u201cNo man is to leave any of what he has picked up until the next morning.\u201d 20 Some paid no attention to Moses, and they kept some until morning: it became wormy and vile-smelling. So Moses was furious with them.
\n21 They picked it up morning after morning, each man what he needed for food. When the sun heated it, it melted away. 22 On the sixth day, they picked up double the food, two omers per person, and all the chief men of the company came to report this to Moses. 23 He said to them, \u201cThis is what Yahweh specified: \u2018The sabbath-keeping of the sabbath holy to Yahweh is tomorrow: what you are going to bake, bake; what you are going to boil, boil. All that is left, put aside for yourselves to keep until the morning.\u2019 \u201d 24 So they put it aside until morning, just as Moses instructed, and it did not develop a vile smell, nor was there a worm in it.
\n25 Then Moses said, \u201cEat this today, for this day is the sabbath of Yahweh\u2014today, you will not find it on the ground. 26 Six days you are to pick it up, then on the seventh day, a sabbath, there will not be any to pick up.\u201d 27 Yet on the seventh day, some of the people went out to pick it up\u2014of course, they found none. 28 Thus Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cHow long will you be lax about keeping my commands and my instructions? 29 Take note that Yahweh has given you the sabbath: therefore he gives you on the sixth day two days\u2019 food! Stay, each man of you, in your own spot! Do not go out from your place, any man of you, on the seventh day!\u201d 30 So the people ceased attempting to gather on the seventh day.
\n31 The family of Israel came to call it by the name \u201cmanna.\u201d It resembled the seed of the coriander plant, was white, and had a taste like flat honeycakes, 32 Moses said, \u201cThis is the instruction Yahweh gave: \u2018An omer-measure is to be kept for your descendants, so that they may see the food that I gave you to eat in the wilderness when I brought you out from the land of Egypt.\u2019 \u201d 33 Moses also said to Aaron, \u201cTake a single jar, and put into it an omer-measure of manna and set it down in Yahweh\u2019s Presence to be kept for your descendants.\u201d 34 Just as Yahweh instructed Moses, Aaron set the jar in front of the Testimony to be kept. 35 The sons of Israel are the manna for forty years, until they came into habitable land; they are the manna, until they came to the border of the land of Canaan.
\n36 The omer, it should be noted, is a tenth of an ephah.
\nNotes
\n13.a. \u05d5\u05d9\u05d4\u05d9 \u05d1\u05e2\u05e8\u05d1 \u201cand thus it was in the evening.\u201d
\n13.b. \u05e2\u05dc\u05d4 refers to the sudden appearance of the quails as from nowhere; they suddenly \u201cflew up,\u201d as quails do, but this time in vast numbers.
\n14.a. LXX has \u1f61\u03c3\u03b5\u1f76 \u03ba\u03cc\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd \u03bb\u03b5\u03c5\u03ba\u03cc\u03bd \u1f61\u03c3\u03b5\u1f76 \u03c0\u03ac\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 \u201clike coriander, white as frost.\u201d Cf. 16:31.
\n15.a. \u05de\u05b8\u05df \u05d4\u05d5\u05bc\u05d0 \u201cwhat is it?\u201d This question and the statement following it are sometimes given as an explanation of the term \u201cmanna.\u201d So Cassuto, 196.
\n16.a. \u05d4\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u201cword, word of command\u201d (BDB, 182) becomes \u201cinstruction\u201d in this context.
\n16.b. \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9\u05c1 \u05dc\u05e4\u05d9 \u05d0\u05db\u05dc\u05d5 \u201ca man according to his eating,\u201d i.e., according to the daily requirement, without storing any.
\n16.c. I.e., the persons for whom he has responsibility, his \u201chouse.\u201d
\n18.a. \u05d1\u05e2\u05de\u05e8 \u201cby the omer\u201d; the term is used only in this chapter of the OT, and as a quantitative measure amounting to about 2.3 liters. See Sellers, \u201cWeights and Measures,\u201d IDB 4:835 \u00a7 h; and BDB, 771.
\n18.b. No matter how much or how little each man gathered, his harvest was miraculously equated with his need, an omer per person; \u201conly\u201d is thus added above for clarity.
\n19.a. \u05de\u05de\u05e0\u05d5, lit., \u201cleave from it.\u201d
\n19.b. The following morning is clearly intended, and so \u201cnext.\u201d
\n23.a. LXX (except B), Syr., Vg, Tg. Ps.-J. read \u201cMoses\u201d here. LXX has \u03ba\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 = \u201cYahweh.\u201d
\n23.b. I.e., all that has been prepared, by baking or by boiling, but not eaten. No allowance is made for manna in its raw, or unprepared form.
\n23.c. The morning of the next day, the sabbath.
\n26.a. \u05dc\u05d0 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4\u05be\u05d1\u05d5 lit., \u201cthere will not be in it.\u201d
\n27.a. Special waw.
\n28.a. \u05de\u05d0\u05e0\u05ea\u05dd lit. means \u201cyou refuse\u201d; BDB, 549, suggests also \u201cbe distasteful, slothful.\u201d The sense above is clearly negligence; disregard as opposed to a willful rebellion, so \u201clax.\u201d
\n29.a. \u05e8\u05d0\u05d5 \u201csee, consider,\u201d as BDB notes, 907, \u201cnearly = \u05d4\u05b4\u05e0\u05b5\u05bc\u05d4.\u201d
\n29.b. LXX adds \u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u1f21\u03bc\u03ad\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd \u03c4\u03b1\u03cd\u03c4\u03b7\u03bd this day.
\n29.c. SamPent, LXXF, Ethiopic have \u05d4\u05e9\u05d1\u05ea \u201cthe sabbath day.\u201d
\n31.a. \u05d1\u05d9\u05ea \u201chouse,\u201d read \u05d1\u05e0\u05d9 \u201csons\u201d by LXX, Syr., some Tg. mss (see Sperber 1:117).
\n31.b. \u05e7\u05e8\u05d0, with special waw.
\n32.a. LXX has \u03ba\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u201cwhen Yahweh (lit., the Lord).\u201d
\n33.a. LXX, Tg. Ps.-J. (text 27031, D\u00e9aut, 139) read \u03c3\u03c4\u03ac\u03bc\u03bd\u03bf\u03bd \u03c7\u03c1\u03c5\u03c3\u03bf\u1fe6\u03bd \u201cgolden jar.\u201d
\n33.b. LXX has \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cGod\u2019s.\u201d
\n34.a. The text has \u201cit,\u201d but the jar of manna is the clear antecedent of the pronoun, and so \u201cthe jar\u201d is added above.
\n34.b. \u05e2\u05d3\u05ea refers to the Testimony of the Ten Commandments engraved on stone tablets, a symbol of Yahweh\u2019s guiding Presence. See BDB, 730. LXX adds \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cof God\u201d after \u201cTestimony.\u201d
\n36.a. This phrase is added to make clear the intrusive nature of this explanatory note, a probable addition of a later hand.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nAs I have noted already (Form\/Structure\/Setting on 16:1\u201312), Exod 16 is a composite governed by a \u201cprovision\u201d motif: Yahweh provides for his people nourishment for the body in the manna and the quails, and nourishment for the spirit in the sabbath-rest. Vv 1\u201312 function as an introduction to these provision-narratives by means of two anticipatory themes: Israel\u2019s grumbling and Yahweh\u2019s own response to Israel\u2019s complaints.
\nThe difficulty of any analysis of the sources making up Exod 16 is shown by the divergence of approach from one school of critics to another, especially in the assignment of the bulk of the chapter to both P (the view of the majority of the source critics) and J (so Rudolph, \u201cElohist\u201d; 34\u201336). This difficulty has led, in turn, to a series of proposals moving beyond source analysis to a kind of structural analysis designed to solve the tangle of sequential problems presented by the chapter (so Jacob, Zweite Buch, 647\u201350; Galbiati, La Struttura, 164\u201375; Coppens, Estudios Eclesi\u00e1sticos 34 [1960] 473\u201389; Malina, Manna Tradition, 10\u201320; see above on 16:1\u201312). Childs (276\u201380) has suggested \u201ca traditional sequence,\u201d reflected also in Num 14 and 16, as the factor governing the form of Exod 16.
\nDespite some helpful suggestions, none of these approaches offers an acceptable explanation of the form and the sequence of Exod 16, in part because they operate from assumptions of logical development that may well have been absent from the mind of the ancient redactor and his readers. Our most important clue to an understanding of the form of Exod 16 is not Exod 16 as it might have been but Exod 16 as it is. The form of this chapter is dictated not by a dominating source to which other accounts are supplemental, but by a theme: provision demonstrating Presence. That theme, anticipated by vv 1\u201312, overrides the sources that present it and any alignment of those sources logical by our Western canons precisely because its theological importance far outweighs considerations of style and sequence. For this same reason, indeed, instructions are repeated, the question of the name \u201cmanna\u201d is dealt with twice, the provision of food proving the Presence is three times inter-twined with the provision of the day of rest celebrating the Presence, a symbol of Presence yet to be invented, the \u201cTestimony,\u201d is introduced, and even several qualifying and time-bridging notes are lovingly added.
\nThe assignment of most of 16:13\u201336 to P (so Beer, 87\u201390; Noth, 131\u201333; Hyatt, 16\u201317; Childs, 275) with J material interspersed and redactor\u2019s comments and a gloss added is the usual source-critical analysis, but any such analysis must not be permitted to obscure the impact of a chapter that is far more in compilation than the sum of its supposed component parts.
\nComment
\n13\u201314 The anticipation of meat in the evening and bread in the morning raised in vv 8 and 12 is satisfied immediately by this narrative of Yahweh\u2019s provision for his grumbling people, and according to a pattern strikingly similar to the prediction-fulfillment sequence of the mighty acts in Egypt, designed also to prove Yahweh\u2019s claim of powerful and effective Presence. The very evening of the promise delivered by Yahweh through Moses and Aaron, the quails arrive and the manna falls.
\nNaturalistic explanations of the quails and the manna abound. The quails are held to be flocks migrating from their winter habitat in Africa, coming to the ground exhausted from their flight (Gray, VT 4 [1954] 148\u201349; McCullough, \u201cQuail,\u201d IDB 3:973, who cites Aristotle and Tristram; Feliks, BHH, col. 2123). The manna is described as the \u201cliquid honeydew excretion\u201d of a number of insects in \u201cdry deserts and steppes\u201d (Bodenheimer, BA 10 [1947] 6; cf. DeGuglielmo, CBQ 2 [1940] 119\u201321). While it is entirely possible that such natural phenomena provide a point of departure for the provision narratives, however, the acts of provision are described in Exod 16; Num 11; and Ps 78:23\u201329 as entirely unnatural, the miraculous actions of a God who proves his Presence by providing for his people\u2019s need. The preface to these narratives in vv 1\u201312 is alone enough to establish their theological intention, but the narratives themselves underscore that intention repeatedly.
\nThe quails are mentioned less in their arrival than in the anticipation of that arrival in vv 8 and 12. After a brief report that they \u201cflew up\u201d and covered the camp (cf. the much fuller account of Num 11:31\u201335), the narrative moves on to a detailed and repetitive account of the manna, which in turn provides opportunity for an account of the sacred nature of the sabbath day. The connection of the arrival of the manna along with the dewfall (see Noth, OT World, 31) further links the manna to the morning and is one of several attempts to describe the manna: it was in \u201cthin flakes\u201d and gave the appearance of a coat of frost, a statement reinforced by the note in v 31 that it was white.
\n15\u201316 The Israelites did not know what the strange frostlike material was, so they asked \u05de\u05b8\u05df \u05d4\u05d5\u05bc\u05d0 \u201cwhat is it?\u201d\u2014a question which then serves as a folk-etymology for the name \u201cmanna,\u201d in the vernacular, \u201cwhazit?\u201d Moses explains that the strange substance is the food (\u05dc\u05d7\u05dd) of Yahweh\u2019s provision, and that Yahweh has specified that no one is to collect more of it than is needed for a day\u2019s food, a quantity set at one omer, about two and one-third liters or two quarts, by dry measure, for each member of a given household.
\n17\u201318 This specification, however, is miraculously governed, in two ways. No matter how much or how little the men collected, they found themselves when they came to prepare and eat the manna with precisely the amount needed and allowed for the day\u2019s food. The amount collected was always the amount specified.
\n19\u201321 The second control on the collection of the manna was inherent: the manna had to be eaten the day it was picked up; otherwise it became wormy and putrid. It had to be picked up in the morning before the sun warmed it enough to melt it.
\n22\u201324 Both these restrictive measures, miraculously set (cf. Heising, ZKT 86 [1964] 80\u201381), could be miraculously removed, a removal necessitated by the need to keep the sabbath holy to Yahweh. On the sixth day, the collection amounted to two omers per person. This statement in v 22 must be read in the light of the statement of v 5 that the collection of the sixth day was double that of each of the other days. Once again, the control of the amount collected is miraculous (cf. Malina, Manna Tradition, 17), but on the sixth day the amount allowed was doubled to provide a quantity of food sufficient also for the sabbath, when there would be no collection. This expansion of the amount alarmed the people\u2019s leaders, who were concerned that the one-omer limit was being passed. Moses allayed their fears with the explanation that Yahweh intended and allowed it to be so. They were to prepare it, whether by baking or boiling, and then keep the leftovers to eat on the sabbath. The second control was also miraculously waived: the manna kept over on the sixth day did not spoil.
\n25\u201330 The extra collection of the sixth day, and Moses\u2019 explanation of it to the anxious chief men gives place to a more detailed account of the provision of Yahweh\u2019s sabbath. There is no manna to collect on that day, and those who go out to collect it despite Moses\u2019 instruction and assurance of course find none. Their disobedience gives rise to a complaint of Yahweh about laxity in the keeping of his commands. Yahweh\u2019s sabbath is his gift to Israel; he provides them on the sixth day with two days\u2019 supply of manna, to allow for the seventh day, and so each one is commanded not to stir forth from his place on the seventh day. This time, the instruction is heeded.
\nHere again, the patterns of belief-disbelief and obedience-disobedience recurrent in the mighty act sequence and indeed in the narrative sequence of the entire Book of Exodus stand out in bold relief. Yahweh proves his Presence by a miraculous provision for a people who then fail to believe and who disregard his clear instruction. Yahweh provides for physical needs each day, only to have some of his people attempt to hoard for the next day. Yahweh provides for the spiritual growth of his people by setting one day apart as special, only to have some lose the benefit by ignoring the day. All this is of course both anticipation and reflection of what is to come in the most important and incredible narrative of them all, in chaps. 19\u201320, 32\u201334. Heising (ZKT 86 [1964] 83\u201384) links these contrasts to \u201cthe religious intention of J\u201d and to \u201cthe basic intention of P\u2019s salvation-teaching method.\u201d But a larger concept still is clearly operative, one that informs and undergirds not only the individual source accounts, but also the compilation of those accounts into the Book of Exodus.
\n31 A second time, the manna, designated as so-named by the children of Israel, is described\u2014this time a bit more fully than in v 14. There it is said to have been in the form of thin flakes and to have looked like frost. Here it is said to be white, to look like the seed of the coriander plant (\u201csmall, globular, grayish, aromatic seed with ridges,\u201d Trever, \u201cCoriander Seed,\u201d IDB 1:681), and to have a taste like that of flat (and therefore crisp?) honeycakes. Zohary (\u201cFlora,\u201d IDB 2:289) notes that the likeness of the Coriandrum sativum to the manna has to do only with \u201cthe size and shape of the seeds.\u201d
\n32\u201334 A further instruction of Yahweh establishes a further miraculous suspension of the prohibitions concerning manna. One omer, a day\u2019s ration for one person, was to be collected and put into a jar as a witness to future generations of Yahweh\u2019s provision for his people in the wilderness. This omer could be kept without deterioration, and not only its container but also its location is specified. This location, as critics have frequently pointed out, is anachronistically specified here. \u201cThe Testimony\u201d in front of which the jar containing the manna is to be placed is The Testimony of the tables of the Ten Words, or the Ark of the Covenant containing these tables of the Commandments (BDB, 730), and of course, neither tables nor Commandments nor Ark nor Covenant have made an appearance in the Exodus narrative to this point. Neither, for that matter, apart from this passage, has the institution of the Sabbath holy to Yahweh.
\nThese references are set here however for an important theological purpose which overrides considerations of logical and chronological sequence. Yahweh has proved his Presence in his provision for a complaining and disobedient people. That proof, miraculously wrought, must be made plain to the descendants of Israel who have yet to face the struggle of belief. They should share the story of their fathers and also the important evidences of their faith. Thus is the manna to be kept, one omer of it, one day\u2019s supply for one person. It is to be put into a jar and located in a spot before an object anyone reading this passage would know full well. The redactor who made the compilation of Exod 16 was aware of this and was more interested in the proof and its transmission to the generations than in preserving a chronological and consistent sequence.
\n35\u201336 Two final notes round out the provision narratives. The first indicates that the manna was at least a part of the Israelite diet until they came to the promised land of Canaan. The second, an unconnected \u201cfootnote\u201d or gloss, specifies, as an afterthought the redactor considered important, that an omer is the equivalent of one-tenth of an ephah. Since the ephah, the basic OT measure of solids, is equal to about one-half bushel, an omer would be equal to slightly more than two quarts (Sellers, \u201cWeights and Measures,\u201d IDB 4:834\u201335). These quantities are rough estimates, since as de Vaux (Ancient Israel, 199\u2013203) has pointed out, our knowledge of ancient Hebrew terms of measurement has too many blank spots. The note of v 36 is an attempt to prevent just such a blank spot, in ancient times.
\nExplanation
\nYahweh\u2019s provision for his people is the obvious point of the compilation of Exod 16; and emphasis of that point overrides considerations of logical and chronological sequence in the introductory and theme-setting prologue of vv 1\u201312 and in the narrative development of these themes in vv 13\u201336. Further, the redactors of this sequence have gone to great lengths, to stress the comprehensive nature of Yahweh\u2019s provision. It is provision in the morning, in the manna, and provision in the evening, in the quails. It is provision for the need for reflection and the strengthening of the spirit, in the sabbath, but that provision is not allowed to set aside the provision of food: the quantity of manna allowed is doubled on the day before the sabbath. It is even provision for the duration of the wilderness experience, for we are expressly told that the Israelites were provided manna until they reached the border of the land promised them, that land described elsewhere as \u201cflowing with milk and honey,\u201d where therefore manna would not be needed.
\nThis array of miraculous provision answers more than physical and even spiritual needs. It proves Yahweh\u2019s Presence, just as had the mighty acts in Egypt, the deliverance at the Sea, the water miracles, and the guidance through the wilderness. Yahweh is seen as provident, and as compassionately so: he provides for more than the barest needs of subsistence, and he is tolerant of laxity and carelessness concerning his instructions. Yahweh\u2019s providence extends also to the descendants of Israel yet to be born: he specified that they be given the opportunity of seeing for themselves how he has provided for their fathers in the barren wilderness.
\nOver against Yahweh\u2019s provision and kindness, however, there is set the contrasting attitude of the Israelites. They grumble and complain; dissatisfied with what they are given, they are always wanting something different or something more; they are disregardful of the instructions given by Yahweh who has freed and is guiding and providing for them; and sometimes they even do the opposite of what they are told.
\nThus the pattern is set, and it is increasingly and repeatedly demonstrated. Yahweh is present\u2014powerfully, effectively, beneficently, and convincingly present. But the people of Israel, the recipients of so much of Yahweh\u2019s care and the people to whom Yahweh even gives himself are unaccountably insensitive, indifferent, disobedient, and finally overtly rebellious. Exodus is a history of theological relationship written with an incredible tension hovering, the tension of a loving provident God giving himself to a chosen people whose ways reject him. The narratives of Israel in the wilderness are thus a part of an accumulating preparation for the quite unbelievable story of Israel at Sinai.
\nIsrael\u2019s Testing of Yahweh and Moses (17:1\u20137)
\nBibliography
\nFritz, V. Israel in der W\u00fcste. Traditionsgeschichte Untersuchung der W\u00fcsten\u00fcberlieferung des Jahwisten. Marburg: N. G. Elwert Verlag, 1970. Gemser, B. \u201cThe R\u0131\u0302b- or Controversy-Pattern in Hebrew Mentality.\u201d Wisdom in Israel and the Ancient Near East. VTSup 3. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955. 120\u201337. Gunneweg, A. H. J. Leviten und Priester. FRLANT 89. G\u00f6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965. Lehming, S. \u201cMassa und Meriba.\u201d ZAW 73 (1961) 71\u201377. W\u00fcrthwein, E. \u201cDer Ursprung der prophetischen Gerichtsrede.\u201d ZTK 48\u201349 (1951\u20131952) 1\u201316.
\nTranslation
\n1 Next, they journeyed forth, the whole company of the sons of Israel, from the wilderness of Sin, setting out as Yahweh directed, They pitched camp at Rephidim (\u201cplaces of spreading out\u201d?), where there was no water for the people to drink. 2 So it was that the people became dissatisfied with Moses, and said \u201cGive us water, so that we may drink,!\u201d But Moses answered them, \u201cWhy are you so dissatisfied with me? Why are you putting Yahweh on trial?\u201d 3 Still the people were parched for water there, so the people grumbled against Moses, and said, \u201cWhat is this? You have brought us up from Egypt to kill us, along with our sons and our stock, of thirst?\u201d
\n4 Moses then called out to Yahweh for help, saying, \u201cWhat am I to do with these people? A little more, and they will be stoning me to death!\u201d 5 So Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cMove along in front of the people, and take with you some of the elders of Israel: take in your hand the staff with which you struck the river Nile, and go along, 6 When you see me standing in front of you, there on a rock in Horeb, then strike the rock, and water will flow forth from it, so that the people can drink.\u201d So Moses did exactly that, as the elders of Israel looked on.
\n7 For that reason, he called the name of the place \u201cMassah (Testing) and Meribah (Dissatisfaction),\u201d on account of the dissatisfaction of the sons of Israel and on account of their putting Yahweh to the test, asking, \u201cIs Yahweh present with us, or not?\u201d
\nNotes
\n1.a. \u05e2\u05dc\u05be\u05e4\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4, lit., \u201caccording to the mouth, word of Yahweh.\u201d
\n2.a. This verb, impv. pl. in MT, is sg in LXX, Syr., Tg. Ps.-J., Vg, SamPent.
\n3.a. \u05d0\u05ea\u05d9 \u201cme\u201d is read \u201cus\u201d by LXX, Syr., Vg, Tg. Ps.-J..
\n6.a. \u05d4\u05e0\u05e0\u05d9 \u05e2\u05de\u05d3 lit., \u201cBehold me standing.\u201d
\n6.b. \u05dc\u05e2\u05d9\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d6\u05e7\u05e0\u05d9 \u201cbefore the eyes of the elders.\u201d LXX adds \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03c5\u1f31\u1ff6\u03bd \u201cthe sons of\u201d after \u201celders.\u201d
\n7.a. Special waw.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe composite nature of this section is obvious, with its successive references to the continuation of Israel\u2019s route in the wilderness, to a new problem of water supply, to yet another complaint-crisis, and to the two symbolic place-names Massah and Meribah. The literary critics in general have assigned most of this material to J or to E, with the opening geographical note mentioning the wilderness of Sin and Rephidim going to P. So Noth (137\u201340), for example, assigns v lab\u03b1 to P; v 1b\u03b2, v 3 to E; and vv 2, 4\u20137 to J. Hyatt (179\u201382) poses a combination of two etiological stories and gets v 1a, P; vv 1b\u20133 and 7, JE; and vv 4\u20136, E. There are exceptions to this general pattern, however. Rudolph (\u201cElohist,\u201d 32\u201333, 36\u201339, 275), by an involved fragmenting, attributes most of the section to J. Fritz (Israel in der W\u00fcste, 10\u201312, 48\u201354) proposed P as the determinative source, one supplemented in this section by J.
\nOther critics make the obvious comparison of this section with Num 20:2\u201313, and argue that this material should be analyzed by means of traditions bound to place-name etiology. So Coats (Rebellion, 53\u201382), for example, connects Exod 17:1\u20137 primarily with J; Num 20:1\u201313 primarily with P; and argues that the Meribah reference is fundamental to the Exodus passage, that the Massah reference is a secondary addition (from Dtr), and that three levels are involved in the growth of the narrative: a Meribah-\u05e8\u05d9\u05d1 wordplay, \u201ca miraculous aid\u201d in the wilderness layer, and \u201cthe murmuring motif.\u201d All of this, in turn, was joined to a Massah-spring tradition, probably in the Deuteronomistic redaction (62\u201363, 70\u201371). Childs (306\u20137), on the other hand, sees in the Meribah narrative the reflection of his oral \u201cPattern I\u201d (258)\u2014need, complaint, intercession, miraculous meeting of need\u2014and proposes that the etiology of \u201cMeribah\u201d was an expansion of \u201cthe primary tradition\u201d reflected in this pattern.
\nThis multiplicity of opinion about the makeup of Exod 17:1\u20137 makes clear that the shifts and currents present in this section render any universally acceptable source or tradition analysis an impossibility. The evidence is too ambiguous; the points of departure are too elusive. Wherever and whenever the Meribah theme originated, its occurrence in this passage, as elsewhere in the OT (cf. Num 20:13; Deut 33:8; Pss 95:8; 106:32\u201333), recalls an experience of Israel\u2019s putting Yahweh, and sometimes Moses, to a test of patience. In an interesting variation of this theme, Yahweh tests Israel\u2019s faith and loyalty (cf. Ps 81:8 [7]). The testing of Yahweh on the wilderness trek to Sinai is the lodestone of this pericope. To this motif are drawn a variety of memories of such testing, from a variety of the layers of Israel\u2019s experience. The end product, viewed from a literary or even a traditio-analytical perspective, can only give an impression of fragmentation. But seen in the focus of its purpose, Israel\u2019s doubting of what should be undoubtable, this section shows a remarkable oneness, admirably summed up in the question of Moses that closes it (v 7).
\nComment
\n1 The note of the continuation of the wilderness journey from Sin to the camp of Rephidim is, like all such references, an attempt to locate the exodus journeying (see Comment on 15:22; 16:1), but one that no longer succeeds because of our ignorance of the location of the places named. Exod 19:1\u20132 and Num 33:15 make Rephidim the last stop before Sinai, and the reference to \u201ca rock in Horeb\u201d in v 6 gives some confirmation to this proximity, but the difficulty of locating Sinai limits the usefulness of this information. The location of the camp at Rephidim, a place where there was no water, no doubt meant that no oasis was within traveling distance of the previous campsite, in the right direction. The obvious reason for the inclusion of such a detail in a theologically oriented narrative, however, is that it becomes the basis for a further miracle of provision demonstrating Yahweh\u2019s powerful Presence.
\n2 This time, though, the proof of the Presence is further dramatized by Israel\u2019s doubt of Moses and therefore of Yahweh as well. The motif is a familiar one by this point in the narrative of Exodus, both because of the frequency of its recurrence and because it functions as a dramatic foil for a conclusive proof that Yahweh really is present, and effectively so. Israel thus becomes dissatisfied (\u05e8\u05d9\u05d1) with Moses\u2019 leadership and demands that he provide them water to drink. The answer of Moses to the people\u2019s fault-finding makes the essential connection and describes the protest for what it is: their dissatisfaction with Moses is an attack on Yahweh.
\nThe key term for this attack in the section at hand is \u05e8\u05d9\u05d1 \u201cstrive, contend, be dissatisfied or find fault with,\u201d a verb from which the noun \u05e8\u05d9\u05d1 \u201cdispute, case taken to court\u201d and the name \u05de\u05e8\u05d9\u05d1\u05d4 \u201cMeribah\u201d (\u201cDissatisfaction-place\u201d) are derived. A primary usage of \u05e8\u05d9\u05d1 in the OT has to do with formal legal proceedings, as Exod 23:2\u20133, 6 or Deut 25:1 show. The studies of K\u00f6hler (Deuterojesaja: Stilkritisch Untersucht, BZAW 37 [Giessen: A. T\u00f6pelmann, 1923] 110\u201320), Begrich (Studien zu Deuterojesaja, BWANT 25 [Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1938] 18\u201331), W\u00fcrthwein (ZTK 48\u201349 [1951\u201352] 1\u201316), and Gemser (Wisdom in Israel, 120\u201337) have surveyed the legal sense of the \u05e8\u05d9\u05d1-family of terms, but they have established also a usage that refers to an informal and prelegal accusation and quarrel (cf. Begrich, 29\u201331) and even to what Gemser (127\u201328, 136\u201337) calls \u201ca frame of mind.\u201d In vv 2 and 7 of this section, \u05e8\u05d9\u05d1 functions in this prelegal sense, to describe not a formal \u201csuit\u201d against Yahweh, but a complaint, a general protest of dissatisfaction (\u201coutside the legal sphere, to fix blame [\u2018Vorw\u00fcrfe machen\u2019],\u201d W\u00fcrthwein, 4, n. 1).
\n3\u20136 A second reference to the people\u2019s reaction to the dry campsite, perhaps a reflection of another narrative source, uses the verb \u05dc\u05d5\u05bc\u05df \u201cgrumble\u201d (see n. 15:24.a. above), and states the protest in the sarcastic-rhetorical style of 14:11\u201312 and 16:2\u20133 (see above). Parched with thirst, the people wonder to Moses\u2019 face why he has brought them forth from Egypt to die of thirst, along with their progeny and their livestock. Coats (Rebellion 89\u201390) suggests that here, as in other passages belonging to what he calls \u201cthe murmuring motif,\u201d the real problem is the exodus itself, with the lack of water (or food) serving as no more than a setting for a protest that Egypt has been left at all. This seems to me to be beyond what these narratives suggest, but there can be no doubt that more is involved in the general dissatisfaction of Israel than water and food, as important as these necessities of life are.
\nWe must remember that the composite before us has a theological purpose, and that narrative details of incidents along the way have been included to that end. That point is made dramatically by what follows next. As usual under such circumstances, Moses cries out to Yahweh for help, his cry tinged with the fear that the people may be about to turn on him in violence. The point is that with Moses\u2019 authority under question, so also is Yahweh\u2019s. Thus it is Yahweh who must provide the solution, and it is Yahweh who does so provide. Moses is instructed to move in front of the people, not away from them, but out where they can see him; and to take with him some of the elders, the wise and trustworthy leaders, as well as the staff with which he struck the river Nile in the first of the mighty acts in Egypt (7:17, 20; cf. also 8:12\u201313 [16\u201317]). He is then to go along until he sees a rock Yahweh will designate by \u201cstanding\u201d upon it. He is to strike that rock with the staff, and that blow will bring water gushing forth to quench the people\u2019s thirst.
\nNothing is said of the nature of Yahweh\u2019s guiding appearance to Moses; as with the theophany of Exod 3:1\u20136, apparently only Moses saw it. This appearance is important, however, both for Moses and for the solution to the people\u2019s (and therefore Moses\u2019) plight: it is the telling proof of Yahweh\u2019s Presence which results, once more, in provision for his complaining people. The naturalistic explanations of the water as coming from a spring that flows beneath \u201ca thin layer of rock\u201d (so Cassuto, 202\u20133) are as misplaced as the attempts at a \u201clogical\u201d accounting for the manna and the quails (see Comment on 16:13\u201324). The whole point of and reason for this narrative is Yahweh\u2019s miraculous provision for his people, by supplying water where there was none, from the unlikeliest of all spots, a rock. A specific rock is clearly intended, as the reference to Yahweh standing upon it suggests, rather than \u201cthe rocky mass in general\u201d (Driver, 157), and Moses follows his instructions to the letter, watched by the elders who can report the miracle without prejudice.
\n7 The point of this narrative is underscored by its summary conclusion: Moses names the place \u201cTesting and Dissatisfaction,\u201d a name that reverses the sequence of the events, since the dissatisfied people put Yahweh (and Moses) to the test by their complaining, a complaining which posed the unbelievable question, \u201cIs Yahweh present with us, or not?\u201d The scandal of this question of course is that their release and their freedom, their rescue at the sea, their guidance through and sustenance in the wilderness, and their very presence at Rephidim all answered such an inquiry in pointed and unmistakable events. The only unbelievable aspect of the narrative is that the Israelites could possibly ask such a question at such a time, and on the basis of so flimsy a provocation. The question anticipates the terrible doubt of Exod 32, even as it poses, with stark economy, the real basis of the grumbling and contending narratives and the proof-of-Presence narratives preceding them: is Yahweh\u2019s claim really demonstrated; is his Presence really proven?
\nThe addition in this summary verse of the name \u05de\u05e1\u05d4 \u201cMassah\u201d may be, as Noth (139) and Coats (Rebellion, 55\u201358, 62\u201371) propose, an addition to the Meribah narrative of a portion of another spring story. If so or if not, the effect of the inclusion of Massah in the name Moses assigns to the miraculous spring is an emphasis upon the unbelievable \u201ctrying\u201d of a Yahweh who has proven his power and his Presence over and over again. The combination appears also in Deut 33:8 and Ps 95:8, and with similar effect. The theory of Lehming (ZAW 73 [1961] 76\u201377) that Massah refers originally not to a place at all but to the \u201ctesting\u201d of Yahweh\u2019s \u201cpious one\u201d (\u201cden du in Versuchung versucht hast\u201d) in Deut 33:8 and that it came by a misunderstanding to be regarded as a place name in Exod 17:7 and other passages is not sustained by the evidence (cf. Gunneweg, Leviten und Priester, 41\u201343). Both Massah and Meribah are clearly presented in this passage and elsewhere as place names connected with the testing and complaining traditions.
\nExplanation
\nOnce more, then, Yahweh provides for the need of his people, this time for the physical need of water. Once more, when a need arises, the Israelites do not wait for it to be met; indeed they do not even assume that it can be met. Rather they attack Yahweh and put him on trial by attacking Moses, to put him on trial. Their thirst, of course, was real. But infinitely more real was the powerful Presence of Yahweh in their midst. The lesser reality they embraced; the more important reality they ignored and doubted: so once more, he dealt with the lesser reality by a demonstration of the greater, underlying reality.
\nAll this is presented not only as a composite of the proof of the Presence in the wilderness by Yahweh\u2019s meeting of his people\u2019s need; it serves also as an accumulating anticipation of the even greater proof to come, followed, not preceded, by an even greater disbelief. The composite sections of the whole that is the Book of Exodus thus have to be understood not only as self-contained units with an integrity of their own, outweighing the separate directions of the sources that have been used to make them up; they must be seen also as working parts of the larger structure of Exodus, and as part of an inexorable movement to a proof of Yahweh\u2019s Presence and a rebellion born of doubt. Such perspectives go a long way toward setting the theological frame and contributing the basic theological rhetoric for the whole OT.
\nIsrael\u2019s First Battle: Amalek (17:8\u201316)
\nBibliography
\nChilds, B. S. Memory and Tradition in Israel. SBT 37. London: SCM Press, 1962. Gradwohl, R. \u201cZum Verst\u00e4ndnis von Ex. 17:15f.\u201d VT 12 (1962) 491\u201394. Gr\u00f8nbaek, J. H. \u201cJuda und Amalek. \u00dcberlieferungsgeschichtliche Erw\u00e4gungen zu Exodus 17, 8\u201316.\u201d ST 18 (1964) 26\u201345. M\u00f6lenbrink, K. \u201cJosua im Pentateuch.\u201d ZAW 59 (1942\u201343) 14\u201358. Schmid, H. Mose: \u00dcberlieferung und Geschichte. BZAW 110. Berlin: Alfred T\u00f6pelmann, 1968. Seebass, H. Mose und Aaron, Sinai und Gottesberg. Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1962.
\nTranslation
\n8 It was also in Rephidim that Amalek (\u201cTrouble-maker\u201d?) came and joined battle with Israel. 9 Then Moses said to Joshua (\u201cYahweh is deliverance\u201d), \u201cSelect for us men, then go out, join battle with Amalek: tomorrow, I will station myself upon the brow of the hill, with the staff of God in my hand.\u201d 10 Joshua did just as Moses instructed him, joining battle with Amalek. Moses, Aaron, and Hur (\u201cChild\u201d?) went up to the brow of the hill. 11 And when Moses lifted up his hand, Israel was stronger; but when he dropped his hand, then Amalek was stronger. 12 The hands of Moses grew heavy, and so they took a rock and placed it under him, that he might sit down upon it, and Aaron and Hur, one on either side of him, supported his hands. Thus did his hands hold steady until sundown, 13 and consequently, Joshua disabled Amalek and his people with the sword-blade,
\n14 There Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cWrite this as a reminder in the book, and drum it into Joshua\u2019s ears: \u2018I will utterly efface the recollection of Amalek beneath the heavens!\u2019 \u201d 15 Then Moses built an altar, and named it \u201cYahweh is my standard.\u201d 16 Indeed, he said, \u201cBecause a hand has been against Yah\u2019s throne, there will be battle between Yahweh and Amalek, from one generation to another.\u201d
\nNotes
\n8.a. Special waw at the beginning plus \u05d1\u05e8\u05e4\u05d9\u05d3\u05dd \u201cin Rephidim\u201d at the end of the verse.
\n9.a. LXX \u03c3\u03b5\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u1ff7 and Syr. read \u201cfor yourself.\u201d
\n9.b. LXX \u1f04\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03b1\u03c2 \u03b4\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf\u03cd\u03c2 \u201cstrong men, men of ability.\u201d
\n10.a. \u05ea\u05d5\u05bc\u05e8 \u201cHur,\u201d according to Noth (Personennamen, 221), is \u201cprobably a pet name.\u201d It might, however, be related to \u05ea\u05d5\u05e8 \u201cbe white, grow pale\u201d and mean \u201cWhite One\u201d (see BDB, 301) or even to \u05ea\u05e8\u05e8 and refer to the Horite or Human people, who originally appear to have been cave dwellers (see BDB, 359\u201360, and Speiser, \u201cHorite,\u201d IDB 2:645).
\n11.a. SamPent reads \u05d9\u05d3\u05d9 \u201chands\u201d here, in agreement with v 12.
\n11.b. \u05d9\u05e0\u05d9\u05d7 \u05d9\u05d3\u05d5 \u201che caused his hand to rest.\u201d
\n12.a. MT is more graphic still: \u05d5\u05d9\u05d4\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d3\u05d9\u05d5 \u05d0\u05de\u05d5\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cand thus his hands were firmness.\u201d SamPent, LXX, Tg. Onk., Tg. Ps.-J., Syr. read the verb as pl., instead of MT\u2019s more general \u05d5\u05d9\u05d4\u05d9.
\n13.a. SamPent adds \u05d5\u05d9\u05db\u05dd \u201cand struck them.\u201d
\n13.b. \u05dc\u05e4\u05d9\u05be\u05d7\u05e8\u05d1 \u201cby the sword\u2019s mouth.\u201d
\n14.a. \u05d5\u05e9\u05c2\u05d9\u05dd \u201cand fix, establish, set.\u201d
\n15.a. LXX adds \u03ba\u03c5\u03c1\u03af\u1ff3 \u201cto Yahweh.\u201d
\n16.a. Syr. reads \u05d4\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cbehold,\u201d instead of \u05db\u05d9 \u201cbecause.\u201d
\n16.b. MT is difficult: \u05db\u05b4\u05bc\u05d9\u05be\u05d9\u05b8\u05d3 \u05e2\u05b7\u05dc\u05be\u05db\u05b5\u05bc\u05e1 \u05d9\u05b8\u05d4\u05bc \u201cbecause a hand has been against (the throne?) of Yah.\u201d \u201cThrone\u201d requires \u05db\u05b4\u05bc\u05e1\u05b5\u05bc\u05d0 or \u05db\u05b4\u05bc\u05e1\u05b5\u05bc\u05d4. The alternate possibility, followed by rsv, is \u05e2\u05b7\u05dc\u05be\u05e0\u05b5\u05e1 \u05d9\u05b8\u05d4\u05bc \u05db\u05b4\u05bc\u05d9\u05be\u05d9\u05b8\u05d3 \u201cbecause a hand has been against the flag of Yah.\u201d \u201cThrone\u201d is preferred above, since MT must be emended in any case and since no special flag of Yahweh is known elsewhere in the OT. The Versions generally lean toward \u201cthrone\u201d; so SamPent, Syr., Vg LXX has \u1f10\u03bd \u03c7\u03b5\u03b9\u03c1\u1f76 \u03ba\u03c1\u03c5\u03c6\u03b1\u03af\u1fb3 \u201cwith a secret hand,\u201d used in reference to Yahweh\u2019s waging war on Amalek. Tg. MS 27031 (D\u00e9aut, 145) paraphrases elaborately: \u201cHe said, \u2018Because the Word of Yahweh has sworn by the throne of his Glory that by his Word he will right against the entire house of Amalek, he will wipe them out for the three generations: this present generation, the generation of the Messiah, and the generation of the world to come.\u2019 \u201d The Preliminary and Interim Report on the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, ed. Barth\u00e9lemy (Pentateuch, 110), citing its \u201cFactor 8\u201d (\u201cMisunderstanding of linguistic data\u201d) reads \u201c(for a hand) \u2039has been raised\u203a against the throne of the Lord: (\u2039therefore there is\u203a war between the Load and Amalek).\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThis narrative of Israel\u2019s first battle, a conflict with the Amalekites, the descendants of Esau (Gen 36:12, 15\u201316), appears to serve both as a justification for a continuing enmity and as a further testimony of Yahweh\u2019s care for his people, this time by a miraculous enhancement of their fighting ability, clearly linked to his Presence on the field of conflict. The compact and sequential development of the narrative suggests that it is a unity, and the literary critics have generally agreed that it is so, without clear consensus about the hand from which it comes. So Beer (92) gives the section mostly to his J1 (v 14: RD); Hyatt (183) prefers E, but also assigns v 14 to \u201ca Deuteronomic redactor\u201d; Davies (145) assigns the entire section \u201cprobably\u201d to E; Noth (141), just as tentatively, attributes it to J (though note his Pentateuchal Traditions, 120, n. 343), remarking however that it \u201cbelongs to the old narrative material\u201d; and Childs (313), also commenting that the \u201cbasic story \u2026 gives the impression of being ancient,\u201d assigns the section to no specific source.
\nCertainly the chief reason for assignment to E, the appearance of \u05de\u05d8\u05d4 \u05d4\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd \u201cthe staff of Elohim\u201d in v 9, is inconclusive, not least because no further reference to the staff is made. Similarly, the evidence for the supposed antiquity of the narrative is too speculative to permit its attribution to any old narrative source, though a logical suggestion might be the Book of the Wars of Yahweh mentioned in Num 21:14. That this battle with the Amalekites is one of the earliest of the \u201cWars of Yahweh\u201d after the defeat of the Egyptians at the Sea is suggested both by its occurrence in the Exodus narrative at this point, and also by the persistence of the Amalekite-Israelite enmity throughout the OT (see Landes, \u201cAmalek,\u201d IDB 1:101\u20132).
\nThe primary function of this section in its present location is the demonstration of yet another proof and benefit of Yahweh\u2019s Presence with Israel. The occasion for the demonstration this time is an attack from the outside instead of an internal complaint. The result, however, is once again an undeniably supernatural intervention of Yahweh. The leader of the military force, Joshua, is given instructions by Moses, the religious-civil leader whose guidance is always from God. The staff of Elohim, the appearance of a symbolic cultic blessing in the lifting of Moses\u2019 hands, and the recording of what seems to be a divine curse in perpetuity all have as their primary aim in this context the demonstration of the important theological point that Yahweh is present, when the need arises, to right alongside and even on behalf of his people.
\nThus Joshua, in his first appearance in the OT, is not properly introduced. Neither is Hur, the son of Caleb. And the enmity between Jacob and Esau, carried on in the bitter animosity between the Israelites and the Amalekites, is not given an appropriate explanation. No reason is given for Amalek\u2019s attack, and no consequences of the battle are described beyond the essential reference to Amalek\u2019s defeat. Everything about the encounter takes second place to its primary point, Yahweh\u2019s intervention for Israel, and that point thus dictates the form this section takes.
\nComment
\n8 The reference to Rephidim as the location for the battle with the Amalekites has sometimes been regarded as \u201cout of place\u201d (Noth, 141) and \u201cdependent on v 1\u201d (Hyatt, 183), in part because of the connection of the Amalekites with Kadesh in Gen 14:7 and with the Negeb in general in Num 13:29 and 1 Sam 15:7 and 27:8 and in part because of the placement of Rephidim by the sequence of the narrative of Exodus in proximity to Sinai. None of this information is conclusive, however, and since both Sinai and Rephidim cannot be located, and since the Amalekites appear to have been a nomadic group who roamed Sinai and the Arabah north of Ezion-Geber as well as the Negeb (cf. Landes, \u201cAmalek,\u201d IDB 1:101 \u00a7 2; Gr\u00f8nbaek, ST 18 [1964] 26\u201329), there is no reason that they could not have turned up on Israel\u2019s route toward Sinai, wherever it lay. The conflict may even have been connected with Israel\u2019s discovery and use of water in a difficult area where none was known before. After a long history of conflict, the Amalekites are said finally to have been dealt a concluding blow in Hezekiah\u2019s time (1 Chr 4:34\u201343), but as Hyatt (183) points out, their antagonism may be preserved even in the Book of Esther in the designation of the villainous Haman as an Agagite (Esth 3:1), after the most infamous of the Amalekite kings (1 Sam 15). As Gr\u00f8nbaek (29\u201331, 42\u201345) has suggested, traditio-historical analysis of this pericope against the other OT references to the Amalekites may reveal the expansion of earlier traditions to accommodate later ones.
\n9 The attack of Amalek prompts Moses to give instructions that appear to be the result of another cry for help to Yahweh, though such an exchange is missing from the narrative. Joshua is mentioned without elaboration as a military commander clearly subject to Moses\u2019 command; note Beer\u2019s (92) somewhat Prussian designations:Joshua is \u201cDer eigentliche Heerf\u00fchrer,\u201d Moses \u201cder Oberfeldherr.\u201d Joshua is clearly understood in this narrative as the younger assistant of Moses and as the military leader he came to be (cf. Exod 32:17). He is presented here as someone we should know already, a fact that may lend further support to the suggestion that this narrative may have come from the collection of Yahweh war-narratives known as the Book of the Wars of Yahweh.
\nM\u00f6lenbrink has made a detailed analysis of the references to Joshua in the Pentateuch in comparison to the Book of Joshua and has posed a Josuarezension (20\u201324) that has inserted Joshua into the Pentateuchal narrative. The oldest stratum of this recension, he holds (ZAW 59 [1942\u201343] 56\u201358), lies in the story (Sage) of the Amalekite war in Exod 17:8\u201316 and in the Joshuarecension of Num 13\u201314. This would account for the abrupt introduction of Joshua in some passages outside the Book of Joshua, but it is not sustained by others, in which Joshua is an essential figure (see, for example, Exod 33:11 and Num 11:26\u201330). The abrupt introduction of Joshua in the passage at hand and in other passages as well may suggest that Joshua\u2019s early training as Moses\u2019 assistant was too well known to make details necessary, rather than that the Joshua references are secondary (see Good, \u201cJoshua Son of Nun,\u201d IDB 2:995\u201396).
\nMoses\u2019 instruction to Joshua to \u201cpick out\u201d (\u05d1\u05d7\u05e8) men reflects the selection of a fighting elite (a motif taken to an almost humorous extreme in Judg 7) from the larger group of Israel. By the time Joshua is ready and moves out with his force, \u201ctomorrow,\u201d Moses will take a position overlooking the field of battle, and he will be equipped with \u201cthe staff of Elohim.\u201d This reference to the staff that is an authenticating symbol of Yahweh\u2019s powerful Presence (see Comment on 4:2\u20134; 7:16\u201317; and Explanation on 7:8\u201313), despite the fact that the staff is not mentioned again in this section, is an indicator of the motif of the narrative: what is about to take place is firmly and surely under Yahweh\u2019s control.
\n10 Joshua carries out his instructions, presumably on the schedule Moses has set, and Moses proceeds to his position, accompanied by both Aaron and Hur. Hur, the son of Caleb and Ephrath and the grandfather of the famous artisan Bezalel (1 Chr 2:19\u201320), is mentioned along with Aaron as an assistant to Moses also in Exod 24:14. There is probably more to the Aaron-Hur partnership in relation to Moses than we can now recover from the text of the OT. Seebass (Mose und Aaron, 25\u201328) has made the imaginative though undemonstrable proposal that the primary form of the tradition preserved in this narrative involved only Hur and that originally the battle with the Amalekites was fought by Aaron and Hur, who were replaced in the expansion of the tradition by Moses and Joshua.
\n11\u201313 The reason for Moses\u2019 position on the brow of the hill can be seen in what he does during the battle. Moses lifted his hands, in symbol of the power of Yahweh upon the fighting men of Israel, surely, but in some miraculous way Moses\u2019 upraised hands became also conductors of that power. As long as he held his hands up, Israel prevailed in the right; but when in weariness Moses allowed his hands to drop, the Amalekites prevailed. Noth (142) and Hyatt (184) speak of magic, and Childs (315) aptly cites the parallel of Balaam\u2019s involvement in blessing, and cursing Israel and Moab (Num 22\u201324). In fact, the text does not make clear what Moses did, apart from raising his hands, with or without the staff of Elohim (cf. the comment of Schmid, Mose, 63). But about Yahweh\u2019s consequential involvement in the battle, an involvement closely linked to Moses\u2019 raised or lowered hands, there can be no doubt. When Moses through weariness could hold his hands up no longer, Aaron and Hur provided him a rock for a seat and held his hands up for him. His hands were then \u201cfirmness itself,\u201d right through the daylight fighting hours, and as a direct result, Joshua was able to cripple the Amalekite attack.
\n14 As a result of this Amalekite attack, and no doubt as well because of the ancient antipathy of Jacob and Esau and the continuing conflict between Israel and Amalek (cf. Gr\u00f8nbaek, ST 18 [1964] 31\u201342), Yahweh required Moses to record in \u201cthe book\u201d a promise to destroy Amalek completely that has the effect of a curse. This writing is to serve as a \u201cProtokoll\u201d (Schottroff, \u201cGedenken\u201d 305) or a \u201cmemorandum\u201d (Childs, Memory, 66), but as more still: the writing of a blessing or a curse in the ANE was believed to add to its effectiveness. \u201cThe book\u201d in which this writing was to take place is made definite by the article, and apparently a specific book (not, as Cassuto, 206, proposes, an inscription on the altar Moses built) is in view. What this book was we can only guess, but once more the Book of the Wars of Yahweh seems a likely possibility. Since Joshua is in charge of the fighting force, this promissory curse must be \u201cfixed, set,\u201d that is, \u201cdrummed into\u201d his ears.
\n15 Moses\u2019 construction and naming of an altar apparently commemorating the victory, Yahweh\u2019s part in it, and the promissory curse may shed some light also on the relation of Moses\u2019 uplifted hands to Yahweh\u2019s power strengthening the Israelite forces. Moses named the altar, in commemoration of the defeat of the Amalekites, \u201cYahweh is my standard.\u201d \u05e0\u05b5\u05e1 can mean \u201csignal\u201d as well as \u201censign, flag, banner,\u201d and BDB (651) renders the word \u201cstandard, as rallying-point\u201d in this verse. In Ps 60:6, \u05e0\u05e1 refers to a flag to which those who revere God can flee for their lives. Ps 74:4 refers to the Babylonian troops setting their own \u201csigns\u201d (\u05d0\u05ea\u05d5\u05ea) as \u201csigns\u201d in Yahweh\u2019s Temple as they destroyed it. The Temple was furnished with \u201csigns\u201d or \u201cstandards\u201d of Yahweh\u2019s Presence and power. The Ark, the Golden Altar and Lampstand, the Table of the Bread of the Presence all were Yahweh\u2019s signs of his Presence in Israel\u2019s midst. Moses\u2019 hands raised aloft on the hill above the Israelite-Amalekite battle may also have served as such a sign, and one emanating power even as they did (e.g., 2 Sam 6:6\u201315). The sight of Moses so blessing Israel and judging Amalek would symbolize Yahweh, by whom all blessing and all cursing were believed to be empowered; thus the altar was named not \u201cMoses is my standard,\u201d or \u201cThe staff of Elohim is my standard,\u201d but \u201cYahweh is my standard.\u201d
\n16 Such an interpretation may be borne out by the explanation of Moses, though v 16 is complicated by what appears to be a corrupt text at its crucial point. As noted above (n. 16.b.), the reading \u05db\u05b4\u05bc\u05e1\u05b5\u05bc\u05d0 \u05d9\u05b8\u05d4\u05bc \u201cthrone of Yah\u201d is preferable to the other possibilities, in part because it requires less textual emendation and in part because it better fits the context. The Amalekites have raised a hand against Yahweh\u2019s sovereignty, symbolized repeatedly in the OT by reference to his \u05db\u05e1\u05d0\/\u05db\u05e1\u05d4 \u201cthrone\u201d (see BDB, 490 \u00a7 1b, 491 \u00a7 3b), but not against a flag or banner of Yahweh, never mentioned in the OT at all.
\nMoses\u2019 explanatory statement thus becomes a justification for the promissory curse of v 14, repeated as an assertion in v 16. The battle between Yahweh and Amalek will continue across the generations because the Amalekites have raised a hand against Yahweh\u2019s throne, that is, they have challenged his sovereignty by attacking his people. The \u201chand\u201d of v 16 is thus not a \u201cVotivhand\u201d on the flagpole of God (Gradwohl, VT 12 [1962] 494), guaranteeing the war against Amalek down through the generations; the statement of Moses, in agreement with Yahweh\u2019s promissory curse in v 14, refers to a war with Amalek to which Yahweh commits himself, not Israel. The \u201chand\u201d is the power of Amalek in collision course with Yahweh\u2019s purpose in his people; and the \u05db\u05d9 \u201cbecause\u201d clause of this verse functions as the justifying explanation of what Yahweh will do to Amalek in result. Schmid (Mose, 63\u201364) even suggests the combining of \u201cthe hand on Yahweh\u2019s throne\u201d in v 16 with the \u201cstone seat\u201d in v 12 and the altar-name \u201cYahweh is my ensign\u201d in v 15 with the \u201cstaff of Elohim\u201d in v 9 as conscious efforts of the narrator to incorporate into the Yahwistic tradition elements originally foreign to it. Such a theory imposes more upon the text than it will sustain, but Schmid\u2019s emphasis upon Yahweh as the key figure in the narration is entirely, correct.
\nExplanation
\nDespite the introduction of special people (Joshua and Hur), special objects (the book containing Yahweh\u2019s promissory curse, and the named altar) and special themes (Moses\u2019 uplifted hands, Yahweh\u2019s continual and eventual war with Amalek, and Yahweh\u2019s throne), the central figure in this section is Yahweh, and its central action is his further provision for his people by empowering them to defeat the Amalekites. This point is made at the outset of the narrative by the introduction of Joshua, whose name, significantly, means \u201cYahweh is deliverance.\u201d (This fact may help to account for the abrupt presentation of Joshua here.) The same point is made at the end of the narrative by the specific assertion that Yahweh, not Israel, will do battle with Amalek from generation to generation.
\nIn between these two assertions, Yahweh is the deliverer. The staff symbolizing his power introduces the sign of Moses\u2019 uplifted hands, through which Yahweh\u2019s power flows to defeat the Amalekites by a miraculous strengthening of Israel. The divine source of this strength is emphasized by its loss when Moses lowers his hands, and so diverges from the instructions Yahweh has evidently given him. Then it is Yahweh who makes the promissory curse against Amalek, and Yahweh who requires Moses to record this curse in \u201cthe book\u201d and to fix it in the consciousness of Joshua, the military leader whose name means \u201cYahweh is deliverance.\u201d And all of this, Moses summarizes by building an altar which he names \u201cYahweh is my standard.\u201d
\nOnce more Yahweh has provided for his people. Once more he has promised to continue that provision. And once more Yahweh\u2019s Presence has been proven, to Israel and to Israel\u2019s enemies.
\nThe Rendezvous with Jethro (18:1\u201312)
\nBibliography
\nAlbright, W. F. \u201cJethro, Hobab and Reuel in Early Hebrew Tradition.\u201d CBQ 25 (1963) 1\u201311. Audet, J. P. \u201cEsquisse historique du genre litt\u00e9raire de la \u2018b\u00e9n\u00e9diction\u2019 juive et de l\u2019\u2018eucharistie\u2019 chr\u00e9tienne.\u201d RB 65 (1958) 371\u201399. Bernhardt, K. H. Gott und Bild. Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1956. Brekelmans, C. H. W. \u201cExodus XVIII and the Origins of Yahwism in Israel.\u201d OTS 10 (1954) 215\u201344. Buber, M. Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958. Cody, A. \u201cExodus 18, 12: Jethro Accepts a Covenant with the Israelites.\u201d Bib; 49 (1968) 153\u201366. Fensham, F. C. \u201cDid a Treaty Between the Israelites and the Kenites Exist?\u201d BASOR 175 (1964) 51\u201354. Gray, G. B. Sacrifice in the Old Testament. New York: KTAV, 1971. Gunneweg, A. H. J. \u201cMose in Midian.\u201d ZTK 61 (1964) 1\u20139. Knierim, R. \u201cExodus 18 und die Neuordnung der Mosaischen Gerichtsbarkeit.\u201d ZAW 73 (1961) 146\u201371. McKenzie, J. L. \u201cThe Elders in the Old Testament.\u201d Bib 48 (1959) 522\u201340. Meek, T. J. Hebrew Origins. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960. Rowley, H. H. From Joseph to Joshua. London: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 1950. Stevenson, W. B. \u201cHebrew \u02d3Olah and Zebach Sacrifices.\u201d Festschrift Alfred Bertholet. T\u00fcbingen: C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1950, 488\u201397. Towner, W. S. \u201c \u2018Blessed Be YHWH\u2019 and \u2018Blessed Art Thou, YHWH\u2019: the Modulation of a Biblical Formula.\u201d CBQ 30 (1968) 386\u201399. Vaux, R. de. \u201cSur l\u2019origine k\u00e9nite ou madianite du Yahvisme.\u201d Eretzisrael 9. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1969. 28\u201332.
\nTranslation
\n1 Now Jethro, priest of Midian, father-in-law of Moses, heard about all that God had done for Moses and his people, Israel\u2014that Yahweh had brought Israel forth from Egypt. 2 Jethro, father-in-law of Moses, had taken in Zipporah, Moses\u2019 wife, after he had sent her back, 3 along with her two sons. The name of one of these boys was Gershom, because Moses said \u201cA stranger have I been in a land foreign to me.\u201d 4 The name of the other was Eliezer (\u201cMy God is help\u201d), because he said, \u201cThe God of my father was my help; thus he rescued me from Pharaoh\u2019s sword.\u201d
\n5 So Jethro, father-in-law ofMoses, came with Moses\u2019 sons and his wife to Moses in the wilderness where he was camped, there at the mountain of God. 6 He said to Moses, \u201cI, your father-in-law Jethro, have come to you along with your wife, and her two sons with her.\u201d 7 Thus Moses went forth to meet his father-in-law, and he bowed low and kissed him. Then they inquired, each of the other, how things were, and went into the tent.
\n8 There, Moses recounted to his father-in-law all that Yahweh had done to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians on behalf of Israel, all the wearying difficulties they had come upon in the journey, and how Yahweh had rescued them every time. 9 Jethro was overjoyed at all the good things Yahweh had done for Israel, that he had rescued them from the power of the Egyptians. 10 So Jethro said, \u201cBlessed be Yahweh, who has rescued you from the power of the Egyptians and from the power of Pharaoh, who has rescued the people from the domination of the power of the Egyptians. 11 Now I know for certain that Yahweh is greater than all the gods, for in this thing they have acted rebelliously against them.\u201d 12 Then Jethro, father-in-law of Moses, received a whole burnt offering and sacrifices to God, and Aaron came along with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with the father-in-law of Moses in God\u2019s Presence.
\nNotes
\n1.a. LXX and the Cairo Geniza text read \u201cYahweh.\u201d
\n2.a. \u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05dc\u05bc\u05d5\u05bc\u05d7\u05b6\u05d9\u05d4\u05b8 is a noun derived from the piel of \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7 \u201csend away, dismiss,\u201d even \u201cdivorce.\u201d With the 3d fem. sg suff here, it refers to Moses sending Zipporah back to Midian at the beginning of the final and most dangerous leg of his return to Egypt. See Comment on 4:20. The other two OT occurrences of \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d5\u05d7\u05d9\u05dd, at 1 Kgs 9:16 and Mic 1:14, suggest here the translation \u201cafter her parting [from Moses], after he had sent her back.\u201d
\n3.a. \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8 \u05e9\u05c1\u05dd \u05d4\u05d0\u05d7\u05d3, more lit., \u201cconcerning whom the name of the one.\u2026\u201d
\n3.b. \u201cStranger, new-corner there\u201d; on this popular etymology see n. 2:22.c. and Comment.
\n3.c. \u201cMoses\u201d is plainly the subject of \u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201che said,\u201d and so is added above for clarity.
\n4.a. \u201cBecause he said\u201d is not repeated in MT.
\n4.b. \u05d0\u05b8\u05d1\u05b4\u05d9 \u201cfather,\u201d sg here as also in 3:6; see Comment there.
\n4.c. \u05d1\u05bc\u05e2\u05d6\u05e8\u05d9, lit., \u201cbeing my help\u201d; the \u05d1 is the so-called \u05d1 essentiae: GKC \u00b6 119i.
\n5.a. MT has \u05d1\u05e0\u05d9\u05d5 \u201chis sons\u201d; Moses is, however, clearly the antecedent of \u201chis.\u201d
\n6.a. LXX, Syr. read this sequence as a 3d-pers report, \u201cIt was said to Moses,\u201d necessitating also the substitution of \u201cLook, behold\u201d for MT\u2019s \u05d0\u05e0\u05d9 \u201cI.\u201d These changes appear to be an attempt to get around the difficulty posed by Jethro\u2019s identification of himself to Moses, followed by the verb \u05d5\u05d9\u05e6\u05d0 \u201cthus he went forth\u201d at the beginning of v 7. Cassuto (215) deals with this problem another way, by assuming the statement to be a message of Jethro sent from the \u201cgateway of the camp \u2026 through one of the guards.\u201d The MT may, however, be read as it stands, without alteration and without such assumptions. It makes perfect sense for Jethro to present himself to Moses with such formality.
\n6.b. GKC \u00b6 116d: \u201cThe period of time indicated by a participle active \u2026 must be inferred from the particular context.\u201d See also \u00b6 116o.
\n7.a. SamPent has Jethro bowing before Moses.
\n7.b. \u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d5\u05dd \u201cas to welfare.\u201d
\n8.a. \u201cAnd how \u2026 every time\u201d: special waw in this context.
\n10.a. This clause is transposed by some translators to v 11: so rsv, neb. It is omitted altogether by LXX, but kept in the place in which MT has it by other translators: so Vg, jb, JPS. SamPent is identical with MT. The difficulty of v 11 does not provide justification for the deletion of the phrase, however, which makes sense where it stands. Cassuto (216) proposes, perhaps rightly, that the phrase was added, along with the threefold use of \u05e0\u05e6\u05dc \u201crescue\u201d for emphasis.
\n10.b. \u05de\u05ea\u05d7\u05ea \u201cfrom under, beneath.\u201d
\n11.a. The final clause of the verse is difficult and sometimes regarded obscure, perhaps correctly so. The attempt above is to translate it more or less as it stands, reading \u201cthe gods\u201d as the antecedent of \u201cthey\u201d and \u201cIsrael\u201d as the antecedent of \u201cthem,\u201d to give the sense that the gods of Egypt, acting as they have against Israel, have been rebelling toward Yahweh, who has in turn proven his superiority by defeating them. This interpretation is of course based on context more than upon the text of the clause. BHS assumes a gap in the text.
\n12.a. \u05d5\u05b7\u05d9\u05b4\u05bc\u05e7\u05b7\u05bc\u05d7 from \u05dc\u05e7\u05d7 \u201ctake, select, get,\u201d here read as \u201creceive,\u201d in reference to Jethro as the leader of worship who receives the gifts directed to God and presides at their offering. Cf. BDB, 543 \u00a7 f; and Cody, Bib 49 (1968) 159\u201361. Vg has obtulit \u201coffered.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe nuclear theme of the whole of Exod 18 is the integration of the traditions of the Sarah\/Isaac\/Jacob\/Joseph side of Abraham\u2019s family with those of the Keturah\/Midian side. Moses, the descendant of the Sarah-Isaac side, becomes the divinely chosen medium of connection with Jethro, the descendant of the Keturah-Midian side. Moses, bereft of his family in Egypt by his flight from the justice of Pharaoh, has found a family in Midian. By one of those remarkable connections so recurrent in the Bible, however, Moses\u2019 new family is, in a quite literal sense, just another branch of his old family. And Moses becomes the guide and the bridge-person who links the two parts of the family separated since Abraham\u2019s day (Gen 25:1\u20136).
\nThe central figure of Exod 18 is thus Moses\u2019 father-in-law, Jethro, who is presented by the narrative as (1) the caretaker of Moses\u2019 wife and two sons during Moses\u2019 absence in Egypt, (2) the glad recipient of the report of Yahweh\u2019s deliverance of Israel, (3) the confessor of Yahweh\u2019s supremacy among all gods, (4) the sacerdotal leader of all present, including even Moses and Aaron, and (5) Moses\u2019 counselor in the application to Israel of Yahweh\u2019s guidance for living in Covenant.
\nThis collection of motifs around a single and dominant figure gives Exod 18 a kind of unity lacking in most of the narratives of Exodus, or, for that matter, most of the tetrateuch. The commentators have generally accounted for this by assigning Exod 18 to a single source, E (so Beer, 94\u201395; Hyatt, 186; Noth, 146), or to E with a few notes inserted from J (so Driver, 161\u201367; Davies, 147; Knight, 125). Childs (322\u201326) is certainly on a right path, however, in his suggestion that the study of the traditions interwoven in this chapter is of more help than an analysis of sources and suppositional pre-sources.
\nThese traditions, at least as they have been perceived and interpreted, have been the subject of widely divergent theories: (1) the \u201cKenite\u201d theory of the origin of faith in Yahweh in Israel, which holds that Moses and thus Israel learned about Yahweh from the Midianites, represented particularly by their priest, Jethro (Rowley, Joseph to Joshua, 148\u201361); (2) the theory that Yahweh is new to Jethro, that having been persuaded by the account of Moses, he makes his own confession of faith in Yahweh (cf. Gunneweg, ZTK 61 [1964] 1\u20139; Meek, Hebrew Origins, 93\u201396; Buber, Moses, 94\u201398); (3) the theory that the Israelites and the Midianites, variously connected with the Kenites (as a subtribe; see Bernhardt, Gott und Bild, 127, n. 1), had a common faith and entered into a mutually beneficial covenant, a historical event reflected in Exod 18 (Brekelmans, OTS 10 [1954] 215\u201322; Fensham, BASOR 175 [1964] 51\u201354; Cody, Bib 49 [1968] 153\u201366); and (4) the theory that the traditions that surface in Exod 18 are very ancient, have to do with both Midianite and Israelite beginnings (de Vaux, Eretz-Israel 9:28\u201334, and Early History, 330\u201338), and may be more thematic than historical (Knierim, ZAW 73 [1961] 146\u201357).
\nThere is not enough evidence in Exod 18 and in the OT as a whole, for that matter, to confirm or to disprove in detail any of these theories. The best one can make of them involves a sifting that retains, as suggestive, the more reasonable (or less deniable) features of the proposals they make. The notion of a Kenite-Midianite origin for Israel\u2019s Yahwism, for example, now seems far too much a theory made of incompatible straws, as does the even more imaginative theory of Jethro\u2019s \u201cconversion.\u201d A historical Midianite-Israelite covenant-treaty, though certainly not beyond possibility, cannot be sustained from the biblical text. And the ancient themes imbedded in Exod 18 are just as difficult to dig out with any certainty as are the ancient source layers.
\nOnce more, it is far better to take more seriously what we have in hand, the Exod 18 of the received text, than what we can only imagine, the process preceding the canonical forms of the text. And what we have at hand displays a literary and thematic unity virtually unparalleled in the narrative chapters of the Book of Exodus. However this end product began, it functions now as the conclusion of a division in the family of father Abraham, prefigured with the expulsion into nomadism of Cain (Gen 4:10\u201316), begun with Abraham\u2019s dismissal to the east of the sons of Keturah (Gen 25:1\u20136), confirmed in Abraham\u2019s shameful expulsion of his Egyptian wife Hagar and her son Ishmael (Gen 21:8\u201321), and symbolized most dramatically in the conflict between Jacob and Esau (Gen 25:19\u201334; 27:1\u201345; 28:6\u20139; 32:3\u20136; 33:1\u201320).
\nCain went to dwell \u201ceast of Eden, in the land of wandering\u201d (Gen 4:16) while Seth, the son in Adam\u2019s own likeness, his very image (Gen 5:3), remained with his father (Gen 4:25, 5:1\u20136). Ishmael came to live in the wilderness of Paran (see Comment on 16:1), and married a wife from Egypt (Gen 21:21), while Isaac remained with his father and married a wife from the ancestral home to the east, in Mesopotamia (Gen 24:1\u201310). There is reference to only one further meeting of the two half-brothers\u2014at their father Abraham\u2019s burial in the cave of Machpelah (Gen 25:9). After that, Isaac and Ishmael dwelled each in his own lands (Gen 25:11\u201318). Keturah\u2019s sons were sent \u201ceasterly, to the land of the east,\u201d while Rebekah\u2019s son Isaac remained with Abraham (Gen 25:6). Jacob, having returned to the ancestral home for his wives (Gen 28:1\u20135), refused despite his promise to follow his brother Esau to Seir (Edom), south and east of the Dead Sea, settling rather at Succoth, then Shechem, then Bethel (Gen 33:12\u201318; 35:5\u201315). The one further reference to the two brothers in the same passage is a notice that they could not dwell together (Gen 36:6\u20138).
\nThe medium of the reunion of the family thus torn apart and separated across many generations is Moses, whose presence in Egypt was the result of yet another outburst of family strife (Gen 37), and who is separated from one side of the family by violence and from the other side by the call of Yahweh. The symbol of the Cain\/Keturah\/Ishmael\/Esau side of the family in the chapter of the reunion is of course Jethro; and the symbol of the Seth\/Sarah\/Isaac\/Jacob side is Aaron, accompanied by \u201call the elders of Israel.\u201d Moses, the medium of reunion, belongs to both sides, just as each side comes to belong to the other. For this reason, perhaps, Moses is not mentioned alongside Jethro, Aaron, and the elders in the communion meal of Exod 18:12.
\nIn the light of the importance of this reunion in Exod 18, the question posed by its location may best be considered. As has often been pointed out, Exod 18 is set at the encampment at the mountain of God before Israel has arrived there (18:5 vis-\u00e0-vis 19:1, 2), and Moses is at trouble to apply and interpret God\u2019s prescriptions and instructions for living in the covenant before they have been given and before the covenant has been offered and then made. Sequential discrepancies of this magnitude cannot have been overlooked by the compilers of Exodus, of course, so some reason must be sought for the location of this chapter just before Exod 19 instead of after chap. 24, when the covenant has been solemnized, or after chap. 34, when the covenant has been renewed and Israel is preparing to leave Sinai, or at some later point in the narrative sequence, at the oasis at Kadesh, or even in Canaan itself. There had to be a reason for the placement of the narrative of this chapter so obviously out of sequence, a reason overriding considerations of logical or chronological order.
\nThe reason was perhaps a thematic one. The compilers of Exodus were for a number of very good reasons eager to have \u201cone\u201d Israel before the momentous events at Sinai. The family that was to be so much fragmented in national schism and an array of captivities, that was often to be divided in matters of belief and commitment (as the messenger-speeches of the prophets are alone sufficient to show), simply had to be one for the advent of Yahweh\u2019s presence and the gift of his covenant. Thus does the reunion precede the preparation for the great theophany of Exod 19. In the compilers\u2019 view, this reunion was quite possibly the most important preparation of all.
\nBoth the form and the location of Exod 18 are thus set by the theme of reunion, to which Jethro is the central and determinative figure. Vv 1\u201312 describe the moment and the solemnization of that reunion. Vv 13\u201327 describe its logical aftermath, a kind of proof that occurs after no other reunion in the OT except the one following Israel\u2019s first disobedience, in Exod 34. The fact that Moses \u201callowed his father-in-law\u201d to return to his own region (v 27) after the events described in Exod 18 has no bearing on the reunion motif, both because it belongs to a later part of the narrative sequence and also because the reunion is far more a theme important to the theological concept of the compilers of Exodus than an event in history.
\nComment
\n1 Jethro is the name given to Moses\u2019 father-in-law most often in Exodus, though a variety of names assigned to him in the OT present a somewhat confused picture that cannot be resolved satisfactorily (see Comment on 2:16). Albright\u2019s theory (CBQ 25 [1963] 4\u20139) that the Reuel of Exod 2:18 is the \u201cclan name of Hobab\u201d (Num 10:29), that Jethro was Moses\u2019 father-in-law and that Hobab was his son-in-law and a (Judg 1:16, 4:11) Kenite (= member of a metalworking group of Midianites) cannot be sustained. Both the Kenite-Midianite connection, argued with such assurance for many years, and also the varied attempts to harmonize Jethro-Hobab-Reuel must now be regarded as uncertain. The statement, \u201c\u2014\u2014 heard what \u2014\u2014 had done\u201d is a much-used narrative introduction in the OT and does not therefore imply either an occasion or a messenger for a report.
\n2\u20134 The note that Jethro had cared for Zipporah and her sons \u201cher parting\u201d from Moses is consistent with 4:18\u201320. The inconsistent note is introduced by 4:24\u201326, a passage that mentions only one son, Gershom, and presents a full measure of complexity on its own (see above). The name Gershom, \u201cStranger There,\u201d as noted already (Comment on 2:22), is best understood as a reference to Moses\u2019 life in Egypt, not in Midian, in which he has found a home. Eliezer, \u201cMy God is help,\u201d is explained by Moses in a manner supporting such an interpretation, because it too, even after so much of Yahweh\u2019s help beyond Egypt, nevertheless refers also to the rescue from Pharaoh. Here, as in 3:6 and 15:2, Moses refers pointedly to \u201cthe God of my father\u201d \u05d0\u05d1\u05d9, a connection of his faith in the wilderness with the faith of his family in Egypt (see Comment on 3:6), and an additional allusion to the reunion about to take place.
\n5\u20137 \u201cThe mountain of God\u201d at which Moses and Israel are camped and to which Jethro comes with Moses\u2019 wife and sons is Sinai\/Horeb, as the use of the same phrase at 3:1; 4:27; and 24:13 makes clear. Whatever the time of Jethro\u2019s rendezvous, the place quite appropriately is the mountain of the supreme revelation of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. If indeed this meeting took place after the theophany of chap. 19 and the covenant-making of chap. 24 (see Form\/Structure\/Setting) some more direct reference to those momentous events might be expected here.
\nNoth (146\u201347) takes the view that the name \u201cJethro\u201d was added to an original \u201cfather-in-law of Moses,\u201d the only designation in vv 13\u201327, to give the \u201cperiphrastic description\u201d of vv 2, 5, 6, and 12. While this is a possibility, this expanded and formal description in the verses describing the reunion may be the quite deliberate device of the narrator\/compiler, whose purpose is to leave no ambiguity about Jethro\u2019s crucial presence and role. The deference shown Jethro by Moses is completely in keeping with such an interpretation, as also with the leading part played by Jethro throughout the chapter. The formal and public greeting completed, the two men move into the privacy of Moses\u2019 tent, where the recital of Yahweh\u2019s mighty acts takes place.
\n8\u201310 This recital is summarized concisely, with careful reference to the purpose of these mighty acts: Moses recounted what Yahweh had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians on behalf of Israel; he related the \u201cwearying difficulties\u201d of the journey as a means of pointing out how Yahweh had rescued Israel every time. Moses\u2019 summary is a proof-of-Presence summary, a confession of Yahweh\u2019s powerful protection of and provision for Israel. Jethro\u2019s joyous response to this recital echoes it with the same pattern, though appropriately in reverse: he rejoices at the good Yahweh has done for Israel in his rescue of them from the Egyptians\u2019 power, and he declares a blessing upon Yahweh, who had rescued Israel \u201cfrom the power of the Egyptians,\u201d a general reference to Israel\u2019s dependent sojourn in a foreign land, \u201cfrom the power of Pharaoh,\u201d perhaps a reference to the slave-labor of the building projects of the nineteenth dynasty, and \u201cfrom the domination of the power of the Egyptians,\u201d perhaps a reference to the persecution that intensified when the question of departing the delta to worship Yahweh was raised. This threefold recital is for emphasis, as Cassuto (216) says, but it is much more a repetition of Moses\u2019 confession, a kind of mirror-image of the declaration of the proof of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Towner (CBQ 30 [1968] 386\u201390) has studied the \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u05d1\u05e8\u05d5\u05da \u201cblessed be Yahweh\u201d formula and concluded, rightly so, that it is used \u201cnot as prayer but as a kerygmatic utterance\u201d (389), intended \u201cto express joy in God\u2019s gracious acts and to proclaim those acts to the world\u201d (387; cf. also Audet, RB [1958] 376\u201381).
\n11 Jethro\u2019s further confession moves from a repetition of Moses\u2019 summary to an assertion of his own. He declares his own faith on the basis of his own experience. What Moses has told him, coupled with what he knew already, leads him to conclude on his own (\u05e2\u05ea\u05d4 \u05d9\u05d3\u05e2\u05ea\u05d9 \u201cnow I know\u201d) that \u201cYahweh is greater than all gods.\u201d The assumption implicit in this statement is that Jethro believes, as he has believed, that Yahweh is a God among gods. He has believed indeed, that Yahweh is greater than the others. Now he has confirmation that in that belief he was right. The second half of v 11, so difficult that it has usually been regarded as incomplete, may give confirmation to this interpretation, despite its obvious difficulty. Jethro\u2019s confession of the superiority of Yahweh may be taken as justified by Jethro by reference to what Yahweh has done to the gods of Egypt, who have acted rebelliously in regard to Yahweh by working against his people Israel (\u05e2\u05dc\u05d9\u05d4\u05dd \u201cagainst them\u201d). This reading must be made against the backdrop of such references to the gods of Egypt as 12:12, 15:11, and to \u201cother gods\u201d in general in 20:3, and with the incompleteness of the latter part of v 11 clearly acknowledged. Its merit, even so, is that it takes the verse as it stands in MT.
\n12 Following his confession, Jethro presided at a sacrifice, then took part in a communion meal involving Aaron and the elders of Israel as the representatives of Israel. \u05d5\u05d9\u05e7\u05d7 refers to Jethro\u2019s \u201creceiving\u201d or \u201caccepting\u201d the whole burnt offering and the sacrifices, but as the presiding leader of worship and not in token of his acceptance of a covenant (Cody, Bib 49 [1968] 159\u201361) or treaty (Fensham, BASOR 175 [1964] 53\u201354). As in the various orders for sacrifices and offerings in Lev 1\u20133, Jethro, as presiding priest, receives the gifts that are brought. The details of his preparation and offering of these gifts are of course unnecessary to this narrative, and may simply be assumed. The \u05e2\u05dc\u05d4 \u201cwhole burnt offering\u201d is appropriately listed first; the \u05d6\u05d1\u05d7\u05d9\u05dd \u201csacrifices,\u201d as offerings partly burned on the altar and partly eaten by the worshipers (Gray, Sacrifice 5\u20136; de Vaux, Ancient Israel 2:415\u201318) are mentioned second. V 12 thus presents an appropriate summary sequence of this narrative. It is entirely unnecessary to assume, as Cody (Bib 49 [1968] 162\u201365) does, that the \u05e2\u05dc\u05d4 is a later addition to this text through a priestly \u201ctendency to retouch.\u201d As Stevenson (Festschrift A. Bertholet, 488\u201389) has shown, the differing character of these two kinds of sacrifice \u201cled to their frequent association in one ceremonial and made the two words together a fitting expression for sacrifice in general.\u201d Such is the case, for example, in 10:25.
\nThis narrative is not to be considered an attempt to insert priestly interests into the text of Exodus, but as an entirely plausible summary account of a very special occasion of reunion, solemnized with the kind of actions in worship that every Israelite would have known. Indeed, we may need to think less of an original narrative expanded by later special interests than of a narrative drawn to present as effectively as possible a deliberate theme or set of themes. The presence of Aaron, to cite a further example, is better thought of in this way than as a later addition to the narrative (so Cody, Bib 49 [1968] 163; Noth raises the question, then assigns this verse \u201cto the oldest material\u201d [Pentateuchal Traditions, 178\u201380]). Aaron and \u201call the elders of Israel\u201d are a further means of depicting a very special occasion.
\nThe elders are the representative extension of the whole people of Israel (cf. McKenzie, Bib 48 [1959] 522\u201323). In this narrative of reunion, it is important to stress that they all were there. Aaron accompanies them as their leader (cf. McKenzie, 524\u201325), since he is, like them, one to whom some of Moses\u2019 authority has been delegated. Moses remains the bridge-person, one already belonging to Israel and to Midian. So it is then that the \u05dc\u05d7\u05dd \u201cbread\u201d or \u201cfood\u201d of the communion meal is eaten in God\u2019s Presence by Aaron and all the elders of Israel on the one side, and no doubt by Jethro, who has received, prepared, and offered it, on the other side. While we may assume the presence also of Moses, already a member of both branches of this family of Abraham, it is Jethro, Aaron, and the elders who are the essential parties of the reunion.
\nExplanation
\nThe conclusion to generations of division is thus the governing motif of this important section of Exodus. The narrative of Jethro\u2019s meeting with Moses may well have belonged originally to a later point in the story of Moses and Israel, after the revelation of Yahweh\u2019s commands and the making of the covenant. The importance of the reunion of the two parts of Abraham\u2019s family before the revelation to Israel at Sinai has, however, overshadowed the importance of this narrative in its proper sequence. Thus the compilers of Exodus have relocated at this point all the material having to do with the visit by and the meeting with Jethro, even the account of his counsel to Moses about the administration of Yahweh\u2019s instructions for living, logically out of place before Exod 19\u201324.
\nThe question of those parts of Abraham\u2019s family that belonged to the Jacob side but were not involved in the Egyptian sojourn and the exodus experience is not in view here, as it is not in most of the OT. That important reunion, recounted in Josh 23 and 24, is the conclusion to a separation that involves no animosity, though it too, like this one, has a theological point that overrides historical narrative.
\nRepeatedly in Exodus and in the OT, Israel is described as one Israel. \u201cThe sons of Israel,\u201d \u201call Israel,\u201d and other such phrases abound. In the later confessions of the exodus experience, the rescue from Egypt is described, in faith, as an experience in which all Israel and every Israelite shared (so Deut 6:20\u201325, to name just one important example). Consistent with this longing for a theological oneness that may well never have been more than a fervent hope, the compilers of Exodus used 18:1\u201312 to bring back together, immediately before the momentous Sinai revelation and covenant, the two major parts of Abraham\u2019s family, which had been separated by strife and greed and jealousy. Moses, as the forerunner who became a member of both halves of the family, was the agent of the reunion. Jethro was the symbol of the nomadic desert side, Aaron and all the elders were the symbol of the settled farming side. And the reunion was an ideal attained by Israel only in faith, and even there, no doubt, only by the greatest of Israel\u2019s prophets and teachers.
\nThe Beginning of Israel\u2019s Legal System (18:13\u201327)
\nBibliography
\nGunneweg, A. H. J. \u201cMose in Midian.\u201d ZTK 61 (1964) 1\u20139. Hauret, C. \u201cMo\u00efse \u00e9tatil pr\u00eatre?\u201d Bib 40 (1959) 509\u201321. Hentschke, R. Satzung und Setzender: Eine Beitrag zur israelitischen Rechsterminologie. BWANT 83. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1963. Herrmann, S. \u201cMose.\u201d EvT 28 (1968) 301\u201328. Knierim, R. \u201cExodus 18 und die Neuordung der Mos\u00e4ischen Gerichtsbarkeit.\u201d ZAW 73 (1961) 146\u201371. Muilenburg, J. \u201cThe Linguistic and Rhetorical Usages of the Particle \u05db\u05d9 in the Old Testament.\u201d HUCA 32 (1961) 135\u201360.
\nTranslation
\n13 The very next day, as Moses sat to decide cases for the people and the people stood waiting for Moses from the morning until the evening, 14 Moses\u2019 father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, and so said, \u201cWhat is this business you are doing for the people? For what purpose are you sitting by yourself, with all the people standing in line before you from morning until evening?\u201d 15 So Moses replied to his father-in-law, \u201cThe reason is that the people come to me to make inquiry of God. 16 When they have a problem, they come to me and I make a decision between a man and his neighbor, so that I may make understandable the requirements of God and his instructions.\u201d
\n17 Then Moses\u2019 father-in-law said to him, \u201cIt is not good, the procedure you are following. 18You will exhaust yourself completely, both you yourself and this people along with you, because this work is more than you can carry: you are not able to do it by yourself. 19Pay attention to me now: I will give you counsel, and God will be with you. You be for the people an advocate before God, and you bring the problems to God. 20You make the requirements and the instructions clear to them, and make understandable to them the manner in which they are to live and how they are to conduct themseves, 21 You also look carefully among all the people for men of ability, ones who have reverence for God, men of firmness, ones who hate a dishonest profit, and establish them as leaders over thousands, leaders over hundreds, leaders over fifties, and leaders over tens, 22that they may decide cases for the people on a continuing basis.Every complex problem they shall bring to you, and every routine problem they shall deal with. Thus will things be lighter for you: they will carry the load with you. 23If you follow this procedure, as God charges you to do, then you will be able to stand up under the pressure, and all this people as well will go to their own place satisfied.\u201d
\n24 So Moses followed the counsel of his father-in-law; indeed he followed it to the letter. 25 Moses selected men of ability from the whole of Israel, then set them in charge over the people, leaders over thousands, leaders over hundreds, leaders over fifties, and leaders over tens. 26 They decided cases for the people on a continuing basis: the difficult problem, they brought straight to Moses; every routine problem, they dealt with.
\n27 Thus Moses took leave of his father-in-law, who then went on his way to his own land.
\nNotes
\n13.a. \u05d5\u05d9\u05d4\u05d9 \u05de\u05de\u05d7\u05e8\u05ea \u201cand so it was, from the following day.\u201d The intention is to indicate the day immediately following the reunion and its celebration and to establish this narration as connected with, even as made possible by, that one.
\n13.b. \u05d5\u05d9\u05e9\u05c1\u05d1 \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4 \u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05e4\u05d8: \u201cMoses sat to judge\u201d is a bit too formal a rendering, since Moses here is helping the people apply to their lives the principles laid down by Yahweh\u2019s covenant expectation. Cf. BDB, 1047.
\n14.a. \u05d4\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4 \u201cthis matter, affair, thing, action\u201d: BDB, 183, IV.
\n14.b. \u05de\u05d3\u05d5\u05e2 \u201cwherefore, on what account, \u2026 i.e., from what motive?\u201d (BDB, 396).
\n14.c. Niph ptcp of \u05e0\u05e6\u05d1: \u201cposition oneself, take a stand,\u201d followed by \u05e2\u05dc \u201cupon\u201d with the person or place of the position. Cf. BDB, 662.
\n15.a. Moses\u2019 reply is introduced by \u05db\u05d9 \u201cfor\u201d in the special deictic sense defined and illustrated by Muilenburg, HUCA 32 [1961] 135\u201336, 142\u201344.
\n16.a. \u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u201cproblem, matter, word,\u201d seen in vv 14, 16, 17, 18, and 19 in this passage in a wide range of its meanings.
\n16.b. Hiph of \u05d9\u05d3\u05e2 \u201ccause to know, declare,\u201d even \u201cexplain.\u201d Cf. BDB, 394\u201395.
\n16.c. \u05d7\u05e7 \u201crequirement\u201d; see n. 15:25.f; and cf. Hentschke, Satzung und Setzender, 28\u201332.
\n17.a. \u05d4\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8 \u05d0\u05ea\u05d4 \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d4, lit., \u201cthis business that you are doing.\u201d
\n18.a. See n. 16.a.
\n19.a. The independent pers pronoun is added to the pronoun of the verb for emphasis.
\n19.b. \u05de\u05d5\u05dc \u05d4\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd \u2026 \u05d4\u05d9\u05d4, lit., \u201cbe \u2026 in front of God,\u201d as the people\u2019s representative. See BDB, 557.
\n19.c. LXX, Syr., Tg. Ps.-J. read \u201ctheir problems.\u201d
\n20.a. LXX adds \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cof God.\u201d
\n20.b. SamPent reads simply \u05d4\u05ea\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4 \u201cthe instruction\u201d; LXX has \u201chis law.\u201d
\n20.c. Hiph \u05d6\u05d4\u05e8, \u201cexplain, instruct, give light, even warn\u201d: BDB, 264.
\n20.d. Lit., \u201cthe way in which they are to walk.\u201d
\n20.e. Lit., \u201cthe work, doing, which they are to do.\u201d
\n21.a. See n. 19.a.
\n21.b. The verb is \u05d7\u05d6\u05d4 \u201csee, perceive,\u201d with discernment or even with a prophet\u2019s vision. See BDB, 302, and HALAT, 289, which would add \u05dc\u05da \u201cto you\u201d (as do LXX and SamPent) and read \u201csich auslesen.\u201d The addition is unnecessary, and perhaps even a distortion, but\u201cchoose,\u201d especially with perception, is the idea intended.
\n22.a. \u05d1\u05db\u05dc\u05be\u05e2\u05ea \u201cin every time.\u201d
\n22.b. \u05d4\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u05d4\u05d2\u05d3\u05dc \u201cthe big matter.\u201d
\n22.c. \u05d4\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u05d4\u05e7\u05d8\u05df \u201cthe small matter.\u201d
\n22.d. \u05d9\u05e9\u05c1\u05e4\u05d8\u05d5\u05be\u05d4\u05dd \u201cthey shall decide, judge.\u201d
\n23.a. \u05e2\u05de\u05d3 \u201ctake a stand, stand firm, stand up to, hold one\u2019s own,\u201d read in this context \u201cstand up under the pressure.\u201d Cf. BDB, 763\u201364.
\n23.b. \u05d1\u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d5\u05dd \u201cwith welfare, completeness,\u201d that is, with their conflicts resolved.
\n24.a. Lit., \u201cand thus [special waw] he did everything he said.\u201d
\n25.a. \u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd \u201cheads, choice leaders, chieftains.\u201d
\n26.a. Emphatic usage, indicated by nun paragogicum. Cf. GKC, \u00b6 47m.
\n27.a. \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7 \u201clet go, free,\u201d BDB 1019 \u00a7 3.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThis section is intimately bound up with the section preceding it, and the form of chap. 18 as a whole as well as with reference to its two major parts has been discussed on Form\/Structure\/Setting on 18:1\u201312. Vv 13\u201327 follow the important reunion described in vv 1\u20132 as both a logical next step and a conclusion and also, as I have noted above, as a kind of validating proof that the reconciliation and rejoining of the two parts of Abraham\u2019s family, separated for so long a time, has actually taken place.
\nA still closer focus on this closing part of chap. 18 reveals, however, that it is directly linked to the origins of the system by which the requirements and instructions of Yahweh\u2019s covenant were made both accessible to the ordinary Israelite and also applicable to the maze of problems that inevitably arise in the adjustment of day-to-day existence to a prescribed norm of any kind. Scholars have commented at length and often quite helpfully on three aspects of this subject: (1) the role of Moses, as both historical and etiologically prototypical (Hauret, Bib 40 [1959] 516\u201321); (2) the related subject of the origin and development of the structure of Israel\u2019s legal system (Knierim, ZAW 73 [1961] 146\u201371); and (3) the priority and interrelationship of Midianite and Sinai traditions and their connection with the evolution of the tetrateuch, and with Exodus in particular (Gunneweg, ZTK 61 [1964] 1\u20139, and, taking an opposing view, Herrmann, EvT 28 [1968] 324\u201328).
\nWhile it is of course impossible to fix with any certainty the origin of the traditions reflected in the narrative of Exod 18:13\u201327, the view of Knierim (ZAW 73 [1961] 155\u201371), based to a considerable degree on 2 Chr 19:5\u201311, that they are linked to juridical reforms under Jehoshaphat does not take seriously enough earlier and more important layers in this account (cf. the review of Childs, 324\u201326). Gressmann (Mose und seine Zeit, 174\u201375) many years ago argued for a historical base for these verses, and while the exact dimensions of that base remain beyond reach, Gressmann\u2019s general argument is correct. The attempt of Beyerlin (Sinaitic Traditions, 145\u201351) to connect 18:13\u201327 with Kadesh and argue that the \u201cadministration of justice in the Yahwistic community\u201d and the decalogue as \u201cthe basic law of the Sinaitic covenant\u201d \u201cprobably originated\u201d there after an extended pilgrimage to Sinai has won no general support and is in any case unnecessary. No convincing reasons have yet been set forth, despite a number of attempts, for the separation of Israel\u2019s beginnings from Sinai, or for the divorce of Sinai traditions from the exodus traditions (cf. Durham, \u201cCredo, Ancient Israelite,\u201d IDBSup, 197\u201399).
\nIn the absence of such reasons, the OT\u2019s insistent connection of Moses and Israel and Israelite beginnings with Sinai must be taken seriously, at the least on the theological ground from which this insistence emerges. Far too much of the important reason for what Israel is to become and to do\u2014Yahweh\u2019s Presence in the midst of the people\u2014is lost otherwise. In the sequence at hand, what is being presented is not a separation of civil administration of justice from a cultic administration (see Knierim, ZAW 73 [1961] 157\u201371), but a quite deliberate attempt to link all law, significantly described here as \u201crequirements and instructions\u201d of God (v 16), to the God with whom the law began, whose Presence in covenant relationship makes it desirable and from whom alone therefore any accurate application of it must come. Whatever additional justifications of Israel\u2019s covenant law and its interpretation may have been grafted onto the Sinai narrative (and on this point Knierim\u2019s work is quite instructive), we must not lose sight of the foundational Sinai layer which gives rise to all the later possibilities and so determines the form of Exod 18:13\u201327.
\nComment
\n13 The day immediately following the day of the reunion was a day, perhaps the regular day repeated periodically or as necessary, when Moses took his position to receive and to help all who were having difficulty of any kind in the application of the terms of God\u2019s covenant to the exigencies of day-to-day living. As noted already (Form\/Structure\/Setting on 18:1\u201312), the location of this narrative demanded by a logical sequence would be after Exod 24 at the earliest. The need, however, to have the desert family of Abraham reunited with the farming and village family of Abraham before the advent of the Presence at Sinai has overriden considerations of logical sequence. The problem of logistics faced by Moses and the people of Israel in this process becomes the point of departure for two motifs: (1) the counsel of Jethro, and (2) the beginning of Israel\u2019s legal system.
\n14\u201316 Having seen that Moses was rendering a great service to the people, but that the press of people needing to see him kept the people waiting and Moses at work throughout the day, Jethro asks Moses for an explanation, particularly as to why Moses is attempting so essential but demanding a task alone. Moses\u2019 reply, that the people come to him \u201cto make inquiry (\u05d3\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1) of God,\u201d is his explanation of why he has undertaken the work alone. The people who come are those who have some question, individually or along with those with whom they have some dispute, about what God has required of them for life in the covenant. God is the origin of the requirements and instructions, so God must give the explanatory application of them, and Moses is the medium of access by whom the people may approach God with problems of this kind. Since \u201cthe requirements of God and his instructions\u201d are what Moses must \u201cmake understandable\u201d to the people, God is the authority of each explanation and may need to be consulted. Until this point, no one but Moses has had the privilege of such consultation.
\n17\u201320 The response of Jethro to Moses\u2019 explanation is practical: Moses is wearing out both himself and the people, who must wait long hours before they can see him; but the response is also clearly perceptive of the source from which the counsel comes. Jethro tells Moses that he will be unable alone to bear the weight of the work he has undertaken. He then proceeds to give advice that he represents as no less derived from God than the explanations Moses has been giving the people regarding their difficulties: the counsel, Jethro will give, but it is God who will be with Moses if he follows that counsel.
\nThe counsel falls into two parts, both of which leave no doubt that God is the source and the center of what Jethro advocates. Moses, first of all, is to remain the representative of the people to God: the requirements and instructions are God\u2019s, as are the people who are in covenant with him. It is thus only fitting that the problems God\u2019s people have bringing their lives into conformity with God\u2019s expectations should be brought to God\u2014and brought by Moses whom God has called to be Israel\u2019s leader. The words of Jethro emphasize this role of Moses, with the double stress on you twice in v 19 and once in v 21. Moses is then to make God\u2019s expectations clear to the people of Israel, and help them to understand the application of these expectations to their daily living, to the question of how they are to conduct themselves.
\n21\u201322 The second part of Jethro\u2019s counsel involves the delegation by Moses of some responsibility in the matter of hearing the people\u2019s problems. The source of the counsel the people are to receive of course remains God, and the authority of the guidance they are to receive is also God, for just as any word given to the people by Moses shall have come from God, so also any word given to them by those whom Moses chooses shall have come from the same source. Jethro thus specifies that Moses\u2019 selection of helpers is to be made with great care (almost with reliance upon a visionary perception, \u05d7\u05d6\u05d4) from the whole of Israel, and is to include only men who are able, firm, and honest and \u201cwho have reverence for God.\u201d The men thus chosen are then to be made leaders over divisions of people, specified on a numerical basis but with no further criteria, and they are to serve on a continuing basis as those to whom the people may bring their less complex problems of interpretation of the covenantal directions. When the more difficult problems come up, these leaders are to bring them to Moses for guidance, a guidance for which Moses, as the people\u2019s representative, could consult Yahweh.
\nKnierim (ZAW 73 [1961] 168\u201371) may be correct that the division of Israel to companies of \u201cthousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens\u201d has a military derivation (cf. Noth, 150). He (162\u201367) may even be correct in the theory that there is a connection between Exod 18:13\u201327 and Jehoshaphat\u2019s \u201cmilitary judges\u201d described in 2 Chr 19:5\u201311. The numerical divisions, in such a case, would amount to an anachronistic attempt to suggest how the leaders selected by Moses functioned in relation to \u201call Israel.\u201d And the linkage with Jehoshaphat\u2019s organization would be forward from Exod 18 by way of precedent rather than backward to it by way of etiology. There is no firm evidence, however, that there is in this passage any \u201cdivision between sacral and \u2018civic\u2019 justice\u201d such as Noth (150) and Knierim (163\u201367) suggest.
\nIndeed, there is no division of civil from sacred, or profane from holy, in Israel\u2019s thought about and practice of laws of any kind. In Israel as elsewhere in the ANE, all laws were the gift of deity, and obedience of them, finally, amounted to obedience of God or gods. The requirements and instructions Moses\u2019 chosen helpers are to promulgate are thus no more \u201csecular\u201d and no less divinely drawn and monitored than are those Moses himself promulgates. Their authority, equally, is God, as is their requirement and their interpretation, whether they are applied by Moses or by the leaders Jethro proposes. The origin and the provenance of the requirements and instructions that are the concern of Exod 18:13\u201327 are not under question. The only point at issue is how Moses is to manage the interpretation of these requirements and instructions to so large a number of people. As Hentschke (Satzung und Setzender, 30\u201331) has noted, the terms \u05d7\u05e7 \u201crequirement\u201d and \u05ea\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4 \u201cinstruction\u201d are \u201ctechnical terms\u201d for the information gained from the consultation of God concerning matters of right behavior, and as synonymous in meaning with \u05d3\u05e8\u05da \u201cway\u201d and \u05de\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d4 \u201cwork\u201d in v 20, they are not the language one would expect in the description of \u201ccivil law,\u201d but are typical of \u201cthe deuteronomic sermon.\u201d
\nThe reason for this is that the requirements and instructions of both Moses and his chosen leaders are one in source, one in authority, one in direction, one in provenance. Their one difference, as specified in vv 22 and 26, is that the problems the leaders are to deal with are \u201croutine\u201d (\u05e7\u05d8\u05df \u201csmall,\u201d vv 22 and 26); those Moses is to take are \u201ccomplex\u201d (\u05d2\u05d3\u05dc \u201cbig,\u201d v 22) or \u201cdifficult\u201d (\u05e7\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4 \u201chard,\u201d v 26). The further specification that the people come to Moses \u201cto make inquiry of God\u201d (v 15) and that Moses is to \u201cbring the problems to God\u201d (v 19) at least suggests that the difference between the cases handled by the leaders and those handled by Moses is the difference between the situation for which there was some precedent and the situation that was unique. A recurring problem could be met by another application of an interpretation determined and employed already. The essential need in such a case would be for a leader wise enough to know the precedents and understand their application and honest enough to apply them without prejudice. A new problem would demand special wisdom and experience, and in all likelihood, the consultation of God, by holy oracle or by some other means, in order to determine the application of covenant principle to a situation not previously faced. In sum, the difference is the distinction between case-law for which there is precedent and the new case for which the correct application of apodictic principle must be determined.
\nIf this proposal is even remotely appropriate to Exod 18, one might argue that here, even if in somewhat overlaid form, is one of the oldest traditions in the OT of how Israel\u2019s legal system began. One would in this case need also to propose that every Israelite law was ideally conceived as beginning in Yahweh, and that the question of covenantal obedience always took precedence, ideally, over all other legal obligations.
\n23 Jethro completes his counsel to Moses not only with the assurance that the procedure he advises will bring much-needed relief to both Moses and the people, but also with the remarkable assertion that God charges (or \u201ccommands, orders,\u201d \u05e6\u05d5\u05d4) Moses to follow it. This assertion shows Jethro to be far more than simply the respected patriarch he is ordinarily made out to be. He is functioning toward Moses much as he is telling Moses he should function toward the people of Israel. It is not an assertion likely to have been assigned to Jethro at some later time. It belongs to the original layer of tradition in Exod 18 and is another confirmation of the importance of the reunion of the two sides of the one family of Abraham.
\n24\u201327 Moses\u2019 response to Jethro\u2019s counsel is a further indication of its significance and its originality. He follows it to the letter, and it works just as Jethro predicted that it would. After an unspecified time, Moses and Jethro part, Jethro to return \u201cto his own land.\u201d This reference, which in the present sequence of Exodus has Jethro going just before the great Sinai Revelation, may well be a reflection of the original location of the narrative of Jethro\u2019s counsel to Moses regarding God\u2019s requirements and instructions. It has been brought to its present location in Exodus by compilers eager to set the reunion narrative before the events at Sinai for theological reasons, which always take precedence over considerations of narrative sequence. Quite possibly, the reunion narrative of vv 1\u201312 and the narrative of Jethro\u2019s counsel may originally have belonged to the Exodus sequence at two different points, the reunion coming before the Sinai advent and covenant, and the counsel of Jethro after it.
\nExplanation
\nExod 18 thus might be called a \u201cJethro-compilation,\u201d consisting as it does of the two principal Jethro-narratives of the OT, one describing the important reunion in which Jethro represents the desert-nomad side of Abraham\u2019s family, the other describing the beginning of Israel\u2019s legal system. The essential point of the second of these two narratives is that Israel\u2019s covenant law has its source in God. He gives it, he provides its authority, and to him therefore Israel must turn to have it interpreted and applied at any point of potential misunderstanding.
\nMoses is an intermediary in this process, and he is instructed to select with great care men who can assist him in this work, a task too heavy for any one man. But the source of information about God\u2019s requirements and instructions remains God who issued the requirements and instructions. On this point, there is never any uncertainty in Exodus, or for that matter in the OT.
\nThis narrative makes clear that Israel\u2019s legal system begins where the covenant law begins, in God. God gives the requirements and instructions, and then clarifies and applies them as the need arises. Moses, the principal original figure intermediary to this process, must be joined, for practical reasons, by those who can extend his work. Their responsibility is the reapplication (and no doubt also the collection) of interpretations of God\u2019s requirements and instructions given already. And in such a manner, the system of casuistic application of apodictic law given by God may well have been begun. At the very least, the narrative of Exod 18:13\u201327 is the best picture we have in the OT of how the system worked and a clear designation of God as the authority of both the law and its interpretation.<\/p>\n
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