Exodus

What This Book Is

The rescue at the centre of the Old Testament: a people in slavery, a God who hears them, and a departure that becomes the defining story of Israel.

Overview

Exodus opens four hundred years after Genesis ended. The family that went down to Egypt has become a nation, and a new king who does not remember Joseph has put them to forced labour. The first thing the book tells us about God is that he heard their groaning and remembered his covenant.

The rescue comes through an unlikely man. Moses is born under a death sentence, raised in the palace of the people oppressing his own, and then spends forty years herding sheep in the desert after killing a man. God meets him at a burning bush, gives him a name to carry back, and sends him to the most powerful ruler in the world with a demand.

What follows is a contest. Ten plagues dismantle Egypt's gods one at a time, and the last of them is answered by blood on a doorframe and a meal eaten in haste. Israel walks out, the sea opens, and the army that pursued them does not return.

Then the book does something people often miss. More than a third of it is about a tent. After Sinai and the commandments and the golden calf, chapter after chapter describes the construction of a portable sanctuary, in detail, twice. The point of all that carpentry is the last verse: the glory of God fills it.

The rescue was never only about getting out of Egypt. It was about God coming to live in the middle of his people.

Structure

• Chapters 1 to 6: Slavery and a callForced labour, a baby in a basket, a burning bush, and a reluctant man sent back.
• Chapters 7 to 15: The rescueTen plagues, the Passover, and a sea that opens and closes.
• Chapters 16 to 24: The mountainBread from heaven, water from rock, and a covenant made at Sinai.
• Chapters 25 to 40: The tentInstructions, a golden calf, forgiveness, and a sanctuary God fills.

Themes

Why It Matters

Exodus gives the Bible its central picture of salvation. Every later act of God gets described in its language: rescue from slavery, a lamb, blood, a sea crossed, a covenant made. The prophets appeal to it, the psalms sing it, and the New Testament reaches for it constantly. When Jesus eats a Passover meal the night before he dies, he is standing inside this book. It also introduces God by name and by character, and the description he gives of himself in chapter 34 gets quoted throughout the rest of Scripture.

How to Read It

• Read chapters 1 to 15 as one movement. The rescue is the heart of the book and the pattern for everything after it.
• Do not skip the tabernacle chapters. Skim them if you must, but notice what all that detail is building toward.
• Read chapter 34, where God describes his own character. Then watch how often the rest of the Bible quotes it.
• Notice how quickly the rescued people forget. The golden calf comes weeks after the sea.

Key Verse

Did You Know?

• The Passover described here is still kept by Jewish families every year, and it is the meal Jesus was eating at the last supper.
• About a third of Exodus is taken up with the design and building of the tabernacle.
• God's self description in Exodus 34:6-7 is quoted or echoed more than a dozen times in the rest of the Old Testament.

Where to Start Reading

Related in the Field Guide