Exodus 12:33-51

Welcome back, everybody, as we finish out the week and as we continue to move through
the book of Exodus in the 12th chapter today,
starting with verse 13.
You might remember that yesterday they were –
the people of Israel,
the Passover had happened, the plague of the death of the firstborn falls on Egypt,
and the people are sent away.
They urged them to go.
And so we pick up that story today, verse 33,
“The Egyptians urged the people to hasten
their departure from the land,
for they said, ‘We shall all be dead.’
So the people took their dough before it was leavened,
and with their kneading bowls wrapped
up in their cloths on their shoulders,
the Israelites had done as Moses told them.
They had asked the Egyptians for jewelry of silver and gold and clothing,
and the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians,
so that they let them have what they asked,
and so they plundered
the Egyptians.” We can stop there, Michael.
So this is kind of what we had mentioned earlier,
this business about not only are the people
going to escape from Egypt,
but they’re going to go with significant material blessing
as well, that the Egyptians are in such a rush to get the people moving that they actually give them jewels,
they give them gold,
they give them precious things to hasten them along.
Their fear is the longer Israelites stays,
the worse it’s going to be for Egypt.
This has proven true throughout the plagues,
and now moved by that kind of fear,
they decide that there’s nothing they have that isn’t worth getting rid of the Israelites.
And this is an important word that we end with, Michael.
And so they plundered the Egyptians,
because I don’t want to overdo this because we’ve
mentioned it many times,
but it does tie into that
conquering,
that war language that we’ve
made a point of recognizing throughout the story so far.
I don’t want to belabor this,
but I think it’s worth pointing out,
Clint, that here in verse 33,
it’s the Egyptians.
It’s not Pharaoh.
It’s not the officials.
Those are characters we’ve had a lot of in the story thus far.
Here it’s the Egyptians,
the people, the common people, the nation.
There’s a kind of unified voice happening here,
Clint, to say that at this point,
we’re pulling back for just a moment.
Pharaoh’s going to reappear in the story,
but we’re pulling back for just a moment to
see that this is – it is a mass departure,
and it is being sought and pushed along by
the entire nation of Egypt.
The conquering has been so complete,
it is to have touched every life in Egypt.
It’s painting a picture that leaves no room,
Clint, for really any question about the thorough
goings of this departure.
Yeah.
I mean, as we’ve seen toward the end of this plague narrative,
Egypt is utterly defeated.
I think that’s 100 percent in this story.
So we’ll continue here.
Verse 37,
“The Israelites journeyed from Ramses to Succoth about six hundred thousand
men on foot besides children.
A mixed crowd also went with them,
and livestock in great numbers, flocks and herds.
They baked on leavened cakes of the dough they had brought from Egypt.
It was not leavened because they were driven out of Egypt and could not wait,
nor had they prepared any provision for themselves.”
This is an interesting passage.
The Scripture,
we’ve already seen it.
Well, we read over it in a couple of instances,
but there’s already been mention of this
idea of unleavened and don’t wait for the yeast to work in the dough.
So,
in the current celebration of the Seder meal, the Passover meal,
they use unleavened bread.
Many times in the Jewish calendar,
there are festivals that involve unleavened bread as
a remembrance of the Passover.
What’s interesting here is,
and again, this may be one of those situations in which we
have two different sources from which this material is drawn,
but they had not prepared
any provisions.
About a chapter or so ago,
they were told to make provisions,
and we were told that
they did what Aaron and Moses had told them to do.
So, it’s not exactly clear what this means,
or if maybe they hadn’t listened, or if
there’s just two different ways of looking at it, but regardless,
the idea here is that they’re so rushed,
they’re so grateful,
they’re such a hurry to leave Egypt that they don’t have
time to make bread dough,
that they eat unleavened bread.
And this becomes a pretty important symbol of the Passover.
Yeah, I think there are two things in this section worth raising,
Clint.
You named the first one,
the hurriedness of this effort that they’re moving quickly.
The second, I would just point out, 600,000 men.
That’s men not counting women and children.
The text literally says, “Besides children.”
And then you’ve got the flocks and herds.
The point is that this is a massive number.
When we were told that the people of Israel have flourished,
we now see that it has been in just huge,
huge amounts.
And so, yeah,
a huge crowd,
and they’re moving quickly.
Those are kind of the core themes in this paragraph here.
And I’m not sure we’ll make a decision on this probably next week,
but in the early
part of chapter 13,
there’s a whole festival of unleavened bread.
In fact, they eat it for seven days,
and it’s all a remembrance.
I don’t know that we’ll go into that,
but just to make sure that you get the connection,
that this continues to be a really important part of the story.
Then we’ll finish here from verse 40.
The time the Israelites had lived in Egypt was 430 years.
At the end of 430 years,
on the very day,
all the companies of the Lord went out from
the land of Egypt.
That was, for the Lord, a night of vigil to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
The same night is a vigil to be kept for the Lord by all the Israelites throughout all
their generations.
So, what’s really interesting about this part of the story,
I think, Michael, is that there’s clearly someone looking both backwards and forwards.
There is this moment in the story that is told about the actual event,
but it is told
from looking back by someone who has celebrated these festivals.
Typically, the author is thought to be Moses.
If that’s the case,
if you want to hold to that idea,
then Moses is anticipating a time
in which these things will be kept.
But what’s interesting, I think, is it gives the story an interesting flavor, because along
with the history,
there’s some sort of forecasting that is done,
and both of those things are happening at once.
So, the same night, and it will be done by the Israelites throughout all their generations,
and then again, we get these descriptions of a festival that they’re going to keep,
and the Passover that’s going to be celebrated.
So, there is both a looking back and a looking past the event that I think gives this a kind
of narrative uniqueness.
Well, and the vigil, we have that language here,
the vigil is to be kept for the Lord.
What is the vigil for?
What is the purpose?
The purpose is to remember that the Lord is God, right?
That we’ve been told that already,
that there’s a kind of claiming that has happened in God’s
deliverance of the people,
and there is a reminder of that.
The vigil is for the purpose of passing down this tradition and this history,
and so there’s a sense in which this rescue effort is leading to a particular practice,
a habit of worship.
I mean, we might not think of it in that language,
but what’s happening here is an institution
of a thing that the people are called to do each and every year as a way of pointing them
back to God.
It’s a way of them being reminded of the deliverance that God brought,
the fact that God was faithful,
right?
And then also to remind the people that in their every day,
they should trust upon the
one who was faithful to carry them out in this extraordinary day.
So there’s a kind of people-making,
God-defining relationship concretizing that’s happening
here, Clint, and I just think Christians are removed from that,
maybe by some of our cultural practice,
but there is in the,
even the Christian narrative,
a sense in which we have been claimed
and called by God,
and we see in this,
I think, a loose kind of mirroring of our own
sense of what it means to be those who keep Sabbath for the sake of the one who’s called
us as his own.
Yeah, we have some remnants of it,
I think, Michael, maybe in a season like Lent or a
celebration of Maundy Thursday,
Good Friday, the idea that we use some of those days to
help us reframe and refocus and remember the story,
but we certainly have less of that
than I think the Jewish calendar.
Sort of, let’s finish out the chapter here as we finish out the week.
Verse 43, “Lord said to Moses,
‘Aaron, this is the ordinance for Passover.
No foreigner shall eat of it.
Any slave who has been purchased may eat of it after he’s been circumcised.
No bound or hired servant may eat of it.
It shall be eaten in one house.
You shall not take any of the animal outside the house.
You shall not break any of the bones.
The whole congregation of Israel will celebrate it.
If an alien resides with you and wants to celebrate the Passover to the Lord,
all his males must be circumcised.
Then he may draw near and celebrate and be regarded as a native of the land.
No uncircumcised person shall eat of it.
There shall be one law for the native and the alien who resides among you.
All the Israelites did as the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron.
That very day, the Lord brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt,
company by company.”
Again, I think this gives us an insight that we’re doing two things here.
We’re anticipating celebration of the Passover.
We’re already beginning to get some rules about who can eat it and who can’t eat it,
which may seem ironic in a festival designed in celebration of the people being set free.
The idea that there’s now going to be separation between the insiders and the outsiders depending
on if they’re circumcised or if they’re not,
other aspects as well.
But there is a kind of holiness attributed to this event that is protected by the legal
code.
And we’re going to get a chance in Exodus to see lots of instances of this.
This might be really the first glimpse we’ve seen of it.
I’m trying to remember it.
I think it may be.
But a lot more of this kind of stuff is coming as the Israelites begin to pay very particular
attention to how to protect these events and these moments from being deluded or being disrespected.
And I don’t know that this is—there’s a lot here in terms of devotional material, Michael,
but it’s sort of an interesting end cap to the story.
The day this week,
Clint, you were out,
I mentioned the talk about how there’s some
priestly emphasis throughout this story.
I would argue that we’re seeing that today,
this idea that there’s a priestly code of
who’s in, who’s out, what is pure,
what isn’t.
I just want to make clear here this idea of the circumcised is in it,
the animal not breaking
bones.
I mean, all of this has themes that we’re going to find later in books like Leviticus
about particular ways in which one can and should practice.
But the thing I really wanted to point out that I think is really interesting is verse
48 here, “He shall be regarded as a native of the land,” which is interesting because remember,
these people have no land,
right?
They just went out into the wilderness to worship.
They’ve not in any way claimed in new spaces their own.
So this is tipping us off to the fact that this is doing that forward looking as well
as telling the story.
It’s letting us know there will be a time in which there is a land.
There will be a time in which the people are going to be asking questions about who should do this ritual,
who shouldn’t.
Those are things that this text is teaching amidst the story itself.
As modern folks, that’s not our bent.
We like to keep our past and our teachings separate,
and we like to sort of keep a boundary
between them, but not so much an ancient text.
The story is the lesson,
and the lesson is the story,
and that’s what’s happening here.
And I do think there is sort of one profound aspect of this,
Michael, in verse 49.
There shall be one law for the native and for the alien who resides among you.
In other words, what that is saying is that when you are living as a nation,
there is not going to be division.
There will be a law.
There will be a code of conduct,
and it will apply to everyone equally.
The slave, the alien,
they will be expected to live as the people of the land,
as the Israelites.
But the Israelites,
on the flip side,
will not be able to impose different laws for their
own benefit on the alien or the stranger.
And when you think of this group coming out of slavery,
when you think of the abuse they’ve
suffered, when you think of the oppression that they have lived through at the hands of the Pharaoh,
this is an amazing statement.
There will be one law,
and it will cover everyone.
There will not be subdivisions,
and people will not be subject to different kinds of treatment.
There will be an expectation of all according to the law.
And I think that that is really deep considering the experience these people are leaving behind
as they leave Egypt.
Yeah, I think that’s a really helpful comment,
Clint. There’s a sense in which the people are even now beginning to name for us the ways that
this experience should shape and change the reality of what will be.
That there’s been an experience that has come from this subjection,
that’s come from this oppression.
And from that,
they look ahead and they make this daring claim that we should seek to be
a just society, that under the hand of the one who delivers us, God,
should be a people
that rules with a fair hand.
And we know, Clint, that that appears in a text like this and is very difficult to work
out and practice if you read the rest of the Old Testament, right?
But it’s worth slowing down and seeing ideals when they work their way up,
when we can look
at a thing and say that this is the heart,
this is the spirit of what was found.
I think that’s a really helpful thing to point out.
Yeah, and to some extent,
the rest of the story becomes the people trying to live into
that and live up to that.
And we will have many opportunities to talk about this,
but a pastor once said,
“You can take the people out of Egypt,
but it’s hard to get Egypt out of the people.”
And that will be in some ways a truth that hangs over the rest of the story.
So thanks for joining us today.
If you can be with us next week,
we’d love to have you back as we continue through and
as we begin to look at the transition,
the people are out of Egypt,
sort of, but Egypt is not yet done with them,
nor is the Pharaoh done with them.
So there’s a little bit of adventure left,
and then we’ll move on.