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Exodus 1–3

My attempt at transcending scholarship is simply a literary critic’s final reliance upon her or his own sense of a text, or what I have called the necessity of misreading. No critic, whatever her or his moldiness or skepticism, can evade a Nietzschean will to power over a text, because interpretation is at last nothing else.1

—Harold Bloom, American literary critic

A passion; to make the text mine.

Better, by assumption, maybe by impertinence, to make it—ours.

—D. B.

Oral culture is “verbomotor.” Exclusively oral peoples are utterly unaware of anything like a neutral world. Primeval chaos is never far distant, nor is death. Everything they are familiar with is committed, noisy, and passionate for good or ill. . . .

And [that is] why sounds in general and words in particular are felt as powerful and dynamic actions to which a practical, canny response of action is required in return . . . .

Given the essential dynamism of a sound world as it issues reports of the spirit world—in thunder, flood, wind and voice—one can understand why the word of God . . . is a word of power. The Hebrew sense is paradigmatic. “My word, is it not like fire, a hammer that shatters the rocks?” (Jer 23:29).2

—David Toolan, SJ

So we begin; or more to the point of Exodus, so we continue. Or (closer to the “orality” of the people and Moses, and before the written word became a final arbiter of what events will live on, and what recede)—so we too go forth.

The contradiction will be damocleian sharp, and humiliating to boot. The thunders broke, and Yahweh spoke. One writes of this, but at second or third—or thousandth—remove. It is by no means guaranteed to the author that the thunders broke—on him; or that Yahweh spoke—to him.

The commentator remains safely sequestered in words, words, like a cocoon dreaming of birth—or perhaps like an academic in the famous groves, dreaming of whatever such eminences dream of. Tenure? A crown of laurel?

The text in sum, invites a woeful deconstruction of bombarding realities. So, one thinks ruefully, is the soul deconstructed in the act of writing—a task looked on (and so rightly) as the original artful dodge.

At least let the investigator keep a measure of good sense, walk humbly, conscious of ironies, hearing to his own discomfiture (and benefit), the sound of divine laughter.

Intemperate mirth? It well may be. And this, knowing that the rollicking One, as far as is known, never wrote a word—indeed is known famously and obscurely (but tellingly to our purpose), as Pure Act.

“I don’t know, I’m not sure” . . . the would-be equivalent of a confession. Confess it then; woe to the scrivener, perpetually outside the action.

exodus 1

At the bravura of our narrator we are in awe, and rightly. His scope and bias are intact, even in conveying the mental confabulations and schemes of omnipotent pharaoh.

Much has been made of the identity of this notorious Egyptian regent. Was he Seti I or Meneptha or Rameses II? According to Exodus 12:40, the exile in Egypt lasted for 430 years. So we are face to face with a dynasty, or even with several of these.

But the above details are ignored by our author. The pharaoh is presented as a stereotype, a stone face on a frieze, an automaton going about his wicked, fussy, ultimately bootless works and pomps.

Before us is a particular, perhaps unique form of historical writing. Biased beyond doubt, it dwells compassionately on those left out of the imperial records, those of little or no account. In social upheaval and discomfiture of the mighty, “Those” become “These.”

What then of the ruler, the pharaoh? Let him be irretrievably put down. Let him be not so much as named or pointed out from (one might think) a succession of his likes—before, during, since.

How the mighty are deflated before our eyes—and again and again how the lowly, the victims, are exalted! The names of two midwives, on whom depends all the future, are carefully recorded; shortly they will confound Pharaoh Anonymous I and his edicts.

To our author, the imperial one is an “emperor of ice cream.” A veritable sun god in the eyes of his votaries melts before our eyes, is reduced, all but dismissed, a type, a cliché.

And in contrast, the invincible dignity, the saving arrogance of the underdog. We are being told, and this from the start of enforced bondage, that the mighty are in fact moral clones, their methods predictably awful. They make war. They are boundless in greed and appetite. They waste human lives in forced labor and the lash. Slaves, and a slave culture, is their perverse intent.

Patience. Wait and see. There are always “buts,” a buttressing counter weight pressing against awful events and their agents. The weight will fall and bring the mighty down.

“He who acquires a slave, acquires a master.”

—Talmud

Problems arise, even for pharaohs—perhaps especially for such. Let them create a system judged impermeable against chance and fate. On the drawing board of counselors, planners, diplomats, generals, millionaires, the system has no seams, no cracks. It is huckstered and put in place.

But . . . but—a question: how maintain that status quo, plausible, mighty as it stands?

Eccolo,3 all in secret—but perceived by wise slaves (indeed by them brought to pass!)—there comes a night of resolve, a sea change under the moon. Roles are slowly, ever so subtly reversed. There dawns on the slaves, the truth of their lives; we are in bondage.

Then a second insight, equally valuable, equally dangerous; this woeful condition of ours need not be.

And what of those invincibles, the masters, overseers, owners? Time passes, in the palace fear grows, and a dark uncertainty. Fear of the victims. A muttering is heard, by a few, then by many. The slaves forge a code language.

Action, reaction. To keep the multitudes in check, law and order must stiffen. Public “examples” must be created, spectacles of punishment, the taws descending, prisons, starvations, executions. Slaves, See and learn!

Nothing avails.

Then, on to a draconian “solution.” They breed like magpies, these slaves. Law must strike at the source, the wellspring of life. Kill the newly born.

In view of the above royal rake’s progress, from lesser crime to greater, why, asks our scribe, why identify by name this or that oppressor? Each is a stranger to wisdom or compassion. Each is unfit for rule.

Who then shall be judged worthy of emulation and praise? The word of God looks elsewhere than the throne. To a coven of lowly Hebrew women. And we are instructed.

This affair of naming, misnaming, naming aright, withholding a name. A small matter on the face of it; but to the Bible, clearly of first import. The power is primordial; naming reality is the first task assigned the first human:

When the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the fields and the birds of the air, be brought them to the man to see what he would name them.

For that which the man would call each of them would be its name.

The man named all the cattle, all the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field . . .

—Gen 2:19

The word of God names things aright. More: according to that word, those who are literate in the word, know that a like task is handed over. To ourselves.

Let us (the scribes) be careful to name reality aright, honoring the instruction of Genesis.

The exiled midwives are named. Thus their lives, the risks they enter on, the compassion of their hands—these are underscored. Note is taken, and honor paid a noble resistance.

Pause then, pay tribute, as does the text. Salute their courage; courage too is commended to us. May they strengthen our resolve, as we too face the ‘law of the land’, that famous artificer of—misnaming.

Scrutinize, ponder, then name aright.

Let us call on the holy women for intercession. Life in America being a parlous middle passage, between Scylla and Charybdis; “Lying” to the left of us, “Masking” to the right.

Another point, and a capital one. Since the dawn of Genesis, and passim in Exodus, our astonishing chronicler hesitates not at all to convey the mind of God. Thus sayeth Yahweh!—a genius puts words in the mouth of the holy One—decree, denunciation, blame, accusation, fury. And now and again, praise of this or that favorite.

And how rarely is heard a word of love . . .

Under a magisterial hand, Yahweh emerges in the text, wild of eye, brutal of arm, vastly ranging as to influence and act. And beyond predicting. A god befitting a tribe of untamed nomads. A nomad god.

The eye of the scribe rests on the Eye, so to speak. And a ready wit is close to hand. Quite a genius, and how daring!

As to the pharaoh, uneasy lies the head. This eminence must be ever vigilant, lest his drudges slip the tether. In the present instance, the danger is manifest—an explosion of births among the slaves.

On the face of it, one would think a burgeoning populace would be of advantage to the owners. More producers, consumers, workers, weapons bearers, hoplites!

True, but another possibility lurks. Males, born in ever larger numbers, become troublesome, erupt; and this especially if a war break out—an ever present possibility in the empire.

Thus goes the “worst case” scenario, an imperial nightmare, an enemy at the gates. And within, insurrection. And then? Slaves exulting, slaves suddenly transformed to former slaves, havocking, avenging, breaking free.

In sum, exodus!

Rhetoric to the contrary, the boundaries of empire are thin and vulnerable. Troubled colonies abroad, resentment at home, a queasy economy, envy in the air.

Slaves? Of course, these are the fundament and capstone of empire. The pharaonic projects are grandiose, and require massive labor. But strict control above all, in works and numbers.

Interesting is the implied comment “from below,” on the machinations of the Olympians. The narrator is a friend of the slaves; indeed he descends from them.

And this friend of the enslaved knows the mind of the slave master as well.

It could hardly be sensible to relay to drudges the troubled ruminations of the pharaoh and the palace claque. Even less sensible to announce an imminent, awful decree.

No, keep them in ignorance. Is harsh duress about to descend, and if so, what form will it take? Uncertainty regarding personal and social fate is a prime ingredient of bondage.

So the palace to-fro and its conclusions are communicated solely to a few. A decree is formulated, it reaches only those in charge.

And what of those immediately affected, the slaves? Do they sense an atmosphere grown charged, ominous? All to the good.

Thus early on, in our story the attitude of great prophets vis-à-vis tyrants, is at work. An image of the pharaoh emerges. It diminishes before our eyes. Hardly omnipotent, as claimed. Quite the opposite: a chronic worrier and schemer, small-minded, heartless.

Preposterous even. Under the astringent eye of the chronicler, his power is unmasked, then derided.

How wonderfully unsubdued he is, our historian, as though in a quiet voice admonishing his people; be unsubdued!

From his hand emerges a properly religious history, which is to say, a history favoring, cherishing the victims. Implying—and at times strongly stating—that there exists another Power, in face of which the machinations of the pharaohs are both futile and foolish.

It is only when one wishes the impossible that one remembers God. To obtain that which is possible, one turns to those like himself.4

—Lev Shestov, Russian philosopher

According to the author of Exodus, these are the dynamics of imperial power. First (as suggested before), the system absolutely requires slaves. The enslavement must be absolute. Its ingredients: harsh, degrading labor, enforced ignorance and passivity. And finally, (male) births must be limited.

(The Herods, it would seem, have a long ancestry. On occasion, their prospering too demands the killing of the newborn).

“Who can withstand the beast?” (Rev 13:4). The political and military systems imply omnipotence and immortality. Shows of force abound, public humiliation, trials and executions. Unmistakable examples!

Further, as goes without saying—the “system” lies beyond critique by its victims—let alone beyond challenge. Tight lips make for safe, unutterably wretched lives.

Politically correct images are also crucial, images of invincible power. Historians, poets, architects, visual artists are enlisted, in service of The Invincible Image—judicious, recondite creations, colossal totems, temples and shrines, victory arches, steles and their inscriptions. Thus artists and artisans, chroniclers and poets, magians of hand and eye produce works and pomps of deification.

With regard to slaves and forced laborers, the images serve another end: they forge the chains anew. They deepen, even spiritualize, the enslavement. Are multitudes stripped of dignity and status? Yes. Will their progeny exist in a like predicament, forever and ever? Yes. Such is simply the will of whatever god.

The idolatrous images tower over; the slaves grow numb and hopeless. Now slavery becomes a sublimely simple and seamless matter: the will of the gods. Injustice has reached from heaven to earth. Validated.

Is the imperial system unjust? Metaphysically so. For its gods are unjust.

The images, we note, are static and yet superhuman. They infer a definition of time. For the enslaved, time is a stalemate. And for those in command, the images imply conquest over time. The pharaoh is immortal, son of the sun god. His symbols? The great pyramid, brobdingnagian, grand and mysterious in its perfection. And the sphinx, stonewalling, saying nothing. Knowing as she does, everything.

This word in sum for the slaves; “You are who you are—and you shall be who you are.” This is the iron law announced by the images.

Our tale opens; half a millennium of enslavement has passed. Is this not proof of the perdurance of the slave superstate? The system surpasses time and aborts change.

The word of God must go counter. Thus one commentator writes (undoubtedly in reference to the Hebrew Bible):

The Bible is not a work of art in the same sense as a poem. It is not meant primarily to make an intellectual demand in memorable language—or like Greek myth to tell an absorbing story, or like Greek tragedy to purge us by pity and terror. It aims to move us to justice and mercy. It is active art, to which people trust their conduct; moral art, which (rightly or wrongly), designates some form of violence as necessary for the conduct of ethical social life.5

—Catherine Madsen, American writer and editor

Slaves must face squarely the hard truth of their condition. Drumming it in; this is the first subversive act of the “peoples’ history,” the story of Exodus. “No getting used to injustice, no coming to terms with it.” Thus the counter to the law of images.

The second act is more daring, more dangerous. It announces in plain terms that the imperial images are in reality, a clutch of illusions.

Subversion, deflation. The truth goes counter; rumors start. The pharaohs are mortal like ourselves. So is the regime mortal. It will flourish for a while and flaunts its greatness. But it will decline and fall. If not in our lifetime, then after.

Believe it. Help it happen! The system is subject to a law that governs all mortal enterprises—a law of transience and death.

Thus the pharaonic images are summoned to judgment, condemned as deceitful and destructive. Slaves, note the imperative. The images must be exorcised, banished from the slave community.

And a second imperative. The images must be replaced. Summon other images, stories, lives, possibilities, anodynes, strengths. These two above all; first, the image of a God other than the gods of the overlord. Then, an image of the truly human, those who are neither slaves nor slavemasters. Those who walk free.

A liberating God, and liberated humans. That is it! An image of the God of the ancestors, who intervened on behalf of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Of a God who, though people be guilty of moral setback and sin, never abandoned his own, took their part, reproved, chastened, stood with, walked beside.

The counter-image, drawn from a common wellspring of story recounted and worship enacted—these lighten the burden of life at the bottom.

Someone lifts the yoke! The purport of the redeeming images is irresistible, a liberating God and a command; Freedom Now!

And—a Moses.

Thus, despite a seeming dead end of exile and bondage, despite the mindless might of the overlords, the overbearing law of the land—powerless as you are, a clutch of slaves seemingly void of recourse—nonetheless believe. Your salvation nears.

Someone. Whisper the name. Moses.

exodus 2

At hand, a savior? It is all but ludicrous, a mirage in the night. Lately a decree has been issued, commanding the death of male infants. Death, upon this sole offense: having been born.

But the decree, as things turn, has gone too far. The comatose, the near hopeless, awaken to a rage that had been all but quenched. Resist, let us resist!

Women ponder: Shall we undo the murderous decree, shall we commit the “crime” of safe birth and rescuing? Such works will be hard and perilous.

Nonetheless a few midwives conspire. Two among them are singled out, Shiphrah and Pua.

Their profession is noble, and honored as such: to assist new life into the world. What part then shall they, the abettors of life, have in killing?

Purpose holds firm. They disobey. New life! They answer secret summonses, go on with their work.

The pharaoh hears of it, hails them in for an accounting: Why have they not followed orders? Because they “fear God,” is the author’s gloss on their holy disobedience.

Their response is a simple equivocation; delicious.

The

Hebrew women

are not

the Egyptian women.

These

are robust

and

give birth

before

the

midwife arrives. (Exod 1:19)

The pharaoh is omnipotent, omniscient, or so it is said. But lo! he is suddenly, strangely helpless. His hands drop. He neither prosecutes nor imprisons nor kills the malfeasants. He dare not; they are held in high esteem among the slaves. How shall he counter their hedging?

He and his decree are stalemated. He shifts tactics, issues a general order. It sounds much like a confession of defeat.

Now hear this, a command “to all his people”; they are obliged, on discovery, to cast newborn Hebrew males in the Nile.

Birth and death, contention—then a kind of rebirth; valiant midwives, infants snatched from death. Through holy disobedience the law of the land is thwarted. The good news passes like a wildfire!

The image of the midwives bespeaks a modest, irrefutable strength. Their acts are a summons, a contamination: Arise!

Their example beckons others, into uncharted danger, chance-taking. And above all, lifting of the spirit!

The great moment nears: the birth of a people, prefigured, imminent, in the protected birth of infants.

In the protected birth of a national hero and savior.

So momentous an event comes only through pain and reversal. The hero must be literally snatched from death.

The ingenuity and courage of women! Some few, as we have noted, are named; the midwives, together with Miriam, sister of the infant. (Of her, along with brother Aaron, much will be heard later). And mother Jocabed, who launched the newborn in his craft among the reeds.

And surely another subversive detail—the daughter of the pharaoh is drawn into the web of mercy. Subversive mercy has reached far and high, into the palace itself.

The genealogy of the future prophet is short, instructively so. No remote ancestry is traced, the parents only are named. The father of Moses: Amram. The mother: Jochebed (Exod 6:20).

The omissions are heavy with implication. Let this story be concentrated, sharp, close. A few names only. Read them, commit them to memory; these few will shape an astonishing future.

A further irony, and what a credential! The name of the child is conferred by the pharaoh’s own daughter. He is called Moses, perhaps, it is suggested, as an Egyptian cover.

And we marvel. In the land of oppression, all unwitting, a Hebraism is adroitly conferred; which is to say, a name that infers a vocation. Not “the one drawn from the water,” as the putative mother would have it—but “the one drawing water.” An ironic reference, one ventures, to the tasks of a slave people, “hewers of wood, drawers of water.”

Legends parallel to the saving of infant Moses were current in other cultures and times. Romulus and Remus, Cyrus, and most ancient of all, Sargon, were drawn out of mortal danger in infancy.

So is Jesus to be drawn, and barely.

Turn and turnabout. Infant Moses is snatched from the Nile, his mother is hired as nurse; everything dovetails wonderfully. And when the child is weaned, Jocabed gives him back to the pharaoh’s daughter, who proceeds to raise him as her own son.

The arrangement is satisfactory, one thinks, for all concerned. The king’s daughter, as far as can be known, is childless; now she has a son, to all appearances a native child graced with an Egyptian name.

And Jocabed can also rejoice. What safer haven for an endangered son than the arms of the king’s daughter?

The story races along. Moses reaches adulthood, draws closer to his daunting vocation: savior of his people. Passed over in silence are the years of childhood. In view of what is to come, these do not signify.

Yet we long to know more. What of the education of young Moses? Who were his mentors? What studies did he undertake? Did an Egyptian education alienate him from his own?

And what was the impact of these years on the events he would initiate under God, this progenitor, lawgiver, mystic, instructor of his people? What resources gathered in the soul of a survivor, what courage to initiate and command, what singleness of mind, what self understanding—such qualities as would fit him to counter the pharaoh?

And what virtues would enable him to endure the desert years to come, the squabbling people, the encounters, face to face, with The One Who Is?

Of all this, our story tells nothing. The child, the youth might be a typically favored Egyptian scion, taking emoluments and luxuries for granted, blindsided by fortune.

The orality of a people offers a clue. The text is all movement, abruptness. “Speed to the point, the climax; get on with it,” is the motto of Exodus. The text is racing, energetic, even antic.

Prepare to be astonished, set off kilter. Read as you run. Do not be troubled if this or that matter (of intense interest to yourself!) is ignored. Focus on a storyteller without peer. Enter his mind and intent, read between the lines. And give him large credit. He knows something you do not; he invites you to ponder.

Thus the story forms from within. Whatever is included is worthy of probing and pondering; move with its implications, hints, analogies. Give the author time and space. Following where so sure a guide leads, you will come to know (to a degree!) who this Moses is, what motive impels him.

The start of the great tale is an infant’s outcry amid the reeds of the Nile, a voice that, one day, will shake the world.

A helpless infant, not abandoned, is greatly loved, protected by high and low. To become—only give him time—the liberator.

Helpless? Infant? A greater than the pharaoh, a greater than a dynasty of pharaohs, is here.

In the Acts of the Apostles, Stephen, the Deacon, reviewing sacred history in presence of the Sanhedrin, says only that Moses “was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7:22).

Some would even have it that our emerging hero is a native Egyptian. The snatching from the Nile is seen as a common type of “hero story.” A more or less fictive savior, larger than life, is saved, surrounded by loving care, and flourishes.

What ironies are captured in a few narrative phrases! In the shadow of the destroyer, a savior approaches his hour. His will be a salvation story, a momentous beginning, comparable in its way to the first week of creation.

And the grand choreography of the exodus begins with—a murder. The fires of liberation are kindled by an evil deed. The savior is also of the race of Cain, no mistaking it.

The episode is laconically set down, tellingly so. The hero must undertake a kind of personal exodus, crucial, a first step, a larger second, a third still more momentous—and so on.

This for simple start: Moses

“went to visit his kinsmen.”

Went from where? From a palace, one thinks; or at least from a place of secure comfort, if not luxury.

And what meets his eye, as he issues, perhaps for the first time, in public? Misery, forced labor, the inhuman decrees of the pharaoh in bitter play. A lash, his people bowed to the earth in humiliation.

Young Moses has been favored, privileged and apart, he has suffered nothing of duress and wounding. An innocent abroad. Then, as our author would have us know, a brutal sight met his eyes.

Education? One lesson, and he knew. His world exploded. Now he could say, and rue and rejoice at the knowledge, “These are my people.”

And a judgment fell like a hammer blow: “Those are not my people.” Inescapable; if a larger world is to be embraced, a former life must be rejected.

Time too is changed. The imperial system, that immutable form of the future, is shaken.

Assurance has been seemingly invincible. Moses child, Moses youth. He is, always will be, well fed and housed, esteemed. The palace was a nursery, not a school. Or if a school, its curriculum aimed at the stalemating of moral maturity.

Done with all that, and no returning. Choose. You have been chosen.

Verse 11 and following

One day, we are told, the youth walked out. And shortly, reality struck. He witnessed the corvée, the abuse. Overmastered with fury, he stepped over a boundary:

He saw

an Egyptian

striking a Hebrew,

one

of his own kin.

And

he raised

a weapon,

and

killed. (Exod 2:11–12)

He killed the decree as well, as it fell on “his brothers.” The decree fell on himself: he, the exempted, a Hebrew graced (or cursed) with an Egyptian name. Prospering, silent, a corvée of silence. Silence—the “forced labor” imposed on him.

Isolated, at distance from “my brothers.” Then he killed. He killed the decree as well, and its sway over his life. He killed, and

“buried (the corpse) in the sand” (Exod 2:12).

And what of the mother and father, how do they fare, what shame is theirs, as Moses leaves for parts unknown, a fugitive? What of the pharaoh’s daughter, upon whom must fall the onus of his crime and the anger of her father?

Nothing of these grievous matters, not a word. The story is single-minded. The hero is the point, very nearly the only point. Parents, putative mother, no matter how tight the bonds, these are minor players in the Saga of the Hero.

Moses recoils from the scene of death. And the story follows close. He becomes for a time a wanderer, a killer known to the authorities, a Cain with a price on his head.

Thus the inauspicious beginning, make of it what we will:

He saw

an Egyptian

striking a Hebrew,

one

of his own

kinsmen. (Exod 2:11)

Still, granted the provocation—what to make of the murderous start? What good can come of this?

After Moses, the grand saga of patriarchs continues. Other personages appear. And violence, betrayal, envy, greed, murder—these are the dark motif, the anti-shekinah over all.

THE LAND OF THE FRANKS

It was at the worst crossroads of my journey;

on one path, venomous flames licking up from the abyss;

on the other, the shunned regions

where nausea swelled within me

at everything people praised and practiced.

I derided their gods, and they mine . . .

Then a fabulous call summoned me . . . of the unrecognized and hounded-out…

How often of late, when I had already gained ground

struggling in my gloomy homeland

and not yet certain of victory

a whisper has lent me new strength . . .6

—Stefan George, German poet

Exiled, young Moses must bide awhile. An exile in Egypt, now he is a forced exile in Midian, a land of strangers not far from fabled Mount Sinai.

Finally a light breaks; the somber prelude yields to a pastoral dawn. The outcast discovers a lover and spouse, Sepphora. She bears him a son, Gersam.

A wife and son, both Midians, outsiders—how will these be received among his own?

But who are his own? Are we not subtly being told—salvation will come through a radical outsider?

Every hero must depart from home. The furious breakthrough of young Moses, together with the distance he must travel—far from privilege—this renunciation is a harsh measure indeed.

Cannily, the storyteller places the departure against another measure—his return, the worth of an appointed task, gradually revealed.

Reaching so ideally high, adhering so adamantly to noble principles and what he called “purity of means,” Gandhi failed to achieve all he hoped for India. But the passion of his life was the legacy he left to his country and to the world, inspiring millions with the grandeur of his dream and some few disciples with an ardent love of suffering on their own painfully narrow road to martyrdom. In Gandhi’s passion lies the key to his inner temple of pain . . .

And through the multifaceted prism of his passion, Gandhi’s tragic weakness is revealed as the other side of his singular strength, helping to account for his final failure to win that for which he worked hardest and suffered most.7

—Stanley Wolpert, American historian

A law is promulgated; it bears a double edge. It favors (and opposes) a spirit whom adversity will harden to Damascene.

And the law touches all. Ourselves.

We, and our near ruin, must be measured against young Moses. Our ruin? The Fall; our near incapacity that is, to overcome slavery, to shake off bondage. To walk away from the realm of Necessity, whose regent is a pharaoh, keeper of slaves. The one who, if his realm is to prosper, must ensure that the slaves be kept slaves.

He has death in mind. For sake of his system, he would have us destroyed—if not in infancy, later. But destroyed. Dignity, compassion, care for one another, obliterated. A sense of God, of providence, of civility and mutuality, all defeated.

Do we dwellers in Egypt seek an “improved” a “better” system, a “reformed,” a system of mitigated enslavement, lesser wars?

If the search is legitimate, if it makes sense, if the reform of Egypt can be thought to succeed—then the exodus is proven redundant.

But the search for an “improved empire” is witless, and bound to fail. That “better system” cannot be summoned. There are no stories in our Bible to tell of such an event, to justify the effort. A mirage. Take note, American liberals, American Catholics, theologians, and “just war” phantasists.

In an ancient empire, a prophet receives his commission from on high. In the order of “things to be done,” a fearsome emphasis, doubled, rests on the negative.

One named Jeremiah is commanded

to pluck up

and

to break down;

to destroy

and

to overthrow.

The NO! to things as they are is harsh, uncompromising, radical. Go to the roots. Not a word of reform, accommodation, gradualism or the like.

Then (but only then), after the fierce preliminary toppling, can a YES! be uttered in good faith.

Something new, structures in favor of “widows and orphans and strangers at the gate.” A new will, from the ground up. The task is abruptly stated, compressed. Now the same Jeremiah is commanded

to build

and to plant. (Jer 1:10)

In our Christian testament do the dead tell stories—those whom Jesus must raise before they can utter a word?

To our ears, on the page of the gospel, they say never a word.

And with Moses, we are in predawn. Is it too early to raise the question, what stories the dead might tell?

Ask it anyway. You have a clue in the Exodus account. The equivalent dead, the race of slaves, against all odds will rise from death and tell their story.

Are we not then to embrace, and be embraced by, another tremendous Overcoming, those wounds that tell of death overcome—the wounds of resurrection?

In April 1990, Fr. Michael Lapsley was the target of a letter bomb from South Africa. A friend writes of the scene in hospital a few days after the blast:

The one to whom we had come to minister, was ministering to us. I saw Christ there. . . . Christ in pain. Christ with his hands blown off. Christ speaking to us through bleeding lips. Christ with one eye . . .

Yes, I saw Christ lying in that bed, and I felt Christ minister to me. It was one of the most extraordinary spiritual experiences of my life.

I saw not one sign of bitterness or hatred . . . I stood and could but watch and listen as this Christian drama took the form of human flesh—scarred, burnt, dismembered human flesh in the form of a friend, pastor, fellow priest and comrade.8

—Michael Worsnip, May 7, 1990

Before us stands young Moses, husband and father. Also, dare we forget (though to all appearances his god forgets), a murderer—probably with a price on his head.

Twice exiled—but no slave!—he is granted a vision of the God. And in that place and time a vocation is appointed.

Suddenly, and with no warning—but how could we be warned?—there is a God. Since the start of our story and the long enslavement in Egypt, we have heard little or nothing of this deity. What evidence we were given was sparse indeed; a series of disguises-in-action, deeds of a peculiar providence, hinted at through a veil of human interventions. A distant God, prescient, watching, biding time.

Was evidence secretly accreting, an unwonted act of compassion, an eye resting on the human scene with unwonted kindness? We ponder the merciful midwives, the kindness of pharaoh’s daughter—a hint of someone “other,” gentle, compassionate, courageous, feminine in fact.

The hero was lifted from the waters. The saving gesture, a slight insult to the scheme of empire—then out and out, like an expanding ripple in the Nile. An ever so gentle whisper of waters. The innuendo seemed to be: cast aside differences of status, religion, gender. Let a human sense arise, let arms succor the vulnerable and victimized. Slave or free, Hebrew or Egyptian, let hearts respond to a child’s wail. Save me!

And the saving act is presented as simply—human. Shiphrah, Puah, Amram, Jochebed and the daughter of Pharaoh, how astonishing they are! They create on the instant, for a lorn infant, a future.

They vindicate their humanity (and our own). In a contamination of mercy, they judge and convict the implacable “other,” the pharaoh, his inhumane system, the bureaucrats and slave masters.

Of those midwives it was said only that they “feared God.” This, the author avers—and surely with an eye toward us—is enough. Or ought to be.

The women “feared God.” It is their sole credential. It is also thus far, the sole explicit “reference beyond” in our story.

To the intent of our author, it suffices.

What connection is drawn by these women, between saving infants and fearing God? Were they granted early on, an intuition to be uttered centuries later, by One who surely knew—to the effect that

God

of the living,

not

the

dead? (Matt 22:32)

Verses 23–24

Now at length, lightning has struck. The divine intrudes, unmistakably. First, with a surge of pity for the enslaved,

The Israelites groaned and cried out because of their slavery. As their cry for release went up to God, he heard their groaning and was mindful of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob . . . (Exod 2:23)

exodus 3

Verse 1 and following

Now, on to the savior. Moses is to be dealt with (surely in more senses than one!).

Fire, and a Voice. No shocking epiphany here. Nor by any means a bodily appearance (that will wait—Jesus). Here the divine intrudes through the lowly things of this world. A flora becomes the nest of glory: a bush, inflamed, unconsumed.

And an altogether extraordinary exchange is recorded, remarkable for omissions as well as substance. This God, this transcendent remembering One, is also the forgetting One.

With regard to memories retained or set aside, the deity must be thought—selective. And, perhaps, above all, surprising.

Let us confess; we seek in the deity a consistency, a logic tighter than our own. And this, it seems, is a first error, perhaps a capital one. The god will reveal himself, witting or not, as a somewhat mixed blessing; malevolent at times, and avenging. In seeming whim he will choose and reject, embrace and cast aside.

And more, and worse; given time and occasion, he will create (or allow to be created in his name), a system of inside players and outsiders, victims.

As concerns young Moses and the corpse he has buried in the sand—the desert winds scour and level all. It is as though the deed were not. And the memory of the god is blank as an unmarked grave. Forgiveness, or default?

Did not the God’s favorite strike down an Egyptian bully? Good riddance, is the implication. The hero, granted a fresh start, walks free.

The murder in Egypt is as if it were not. It is done with, no word of consequence. The Egyptian was no brother, he was an enemy, an oppressor of the helpless. Good riddance!

The god descends in a fiery epiphany. Moses must put aside his sandals. Unshod, he is cleansed in the flame, a new being.

On reflection, the sequence marks an extraordinary reversal; the logical ordering of crucial matters is reversed.

The first matter at hand is the task, the vocation. Then the self-revelation, the self-naming of the God. A voice, as yet unidentified, speaks. We have read of it before, recounted in the third person, that “hearing” from above (Exod 2:24–25).

The passage trails off, incomplete:

heard

their groaning

and was mindful

of his covenant

with Abraham,

Isaac

and Jacob.

He saw

the Israelites

and

knew . . .

Knew what? What the god knew, one concludes, the author in all probability knew. And like the god, preferred to keep the secret.

Now, direct, piercing, the voice is heard; authoritative, loud and clear;

have heard

the plaints

of my people . . .

It is

you

who

are appointed

lead

them

forth. (Exod 3:7, 10)

The charge is onerous, overwhelming. And for the first time, the ineffable “I” announces an identity.

Who might this “I” be? By what authority is Moses “sent”? Various traditions coalesce here, we are told. (One almost thought; various special interests collide!)

The pivot of what follows is a question; who speaks for the deity, who names the unnamable? Shall it be the priests? (We recall that the father-in-law Jethro is a priest, a nice detail dropped gently in the text.)

According to the priests, Abram was favored with knowledge of the Name, “El-Shaddai, God the Almighty.” But the Yahwists hold fast to another name, hearkening back to a time before the deluge; simply, “the Lord” (Gen 4:26).

And now (to the Elohists and their witness Moses), in the unconsumed flame yet another name is spoken—“Yahweh.” And an unimpeachable credential is adduced:

. . . the God

of Abraham,

of Isaac

and Jacob . . .

This

is the Name

I shall bear

forever,

in which

all

generations

shall

name

Me. (Exod 3:15)

Access and distance both, the mystery. And controversy unending. Is the god here naming the god, is the god refusing to name the god?

A circle opens, a circle closes. Consent, one thinks, and refusal. In Exodus we undergo the first of a multitude of shocking surprises, issuing from the great Surpriser, the primal Shocker. This—you shall know Me, and in effect you shall know nothing of Me.

Those who claim a definitive naming here, a scene of close access (verging on control?)—let them beware. If they think to hold in possession the “medicine” of the god, to bend this one to their will, presumption will lead to great suffering. This God is no idol to be turned and turned about, disempowered, in service of custom or self-interest.

And likewise, let those beware who claim a refusal to name. They too will pay, in ignorance and confusion of mind. The evidence is plain, and hardly in their favor; the midrash, the underscored import of the Name, as though signed, sealed and delivered into the keeping of Moses—these stand against them:

This

is the Name

will

bear

forever. (Exod 3:15)

One matter stands beyond doubt—Moses is entrusted with a message, and a mandate as well. Will he also bear new news, an ineffable Name? The uncertainty will hoist generations on a petard; a dilemma, an “either-or,” a “yes” and a “no.”

We are to keep pronouncing, invoking the Name—and we know so little of the One who bears the Name. The God is in the world, and apart from the world. The God dwells in the fiery bush—and the God is neither fire nor bush. The Name rests on the tongue of Moses—and the One so named seals the mouth of the one who would speak it—reduces him to a stammer, a groan, tears.

It is all here in embryo—choice and consequence. And the timing is everything. Long after the revelation, the story is set down; the vast panorama of grandeur and shame and risk, the exodus, the story of the powerless who arise, arise—first like a spasm of Samson in chains, then in a mighty convergence of power assumed. Yes, we go from here!

It is written down centuries later, the luster and fame. Inevitably the tale has been colored, altered, tinged and tendentious with ideology. The memory is owned, the story told, by the rulers of imperial Jerusalem.

Shibboleths prevail. One after another, the awful kings of the chosen tribe mount the throne, seize on the God for their own, lay claim to an improbable ancestry of valor and virtue in Saul and David and Solomon.

Then the prophets appear and speak. Shakers of thrones, doubters, naysayers, they lay a corrective hand on the scroll. But for them, it would have only this to record; the exodus as seen centuries later by the kings of Judah and Jerusalem.

Which is to say, the era of beginnings is set down in an era of pretension, economic enslavement, war—of social, economic, yes religious systems, akin to those of imperial Egypt or Babylon.

Of crucial note, this—the author of Genesis and Exodus wrote toward the last years of Solomon, whose reign ended around 922 CE. And one wonders—does our literary genius stand in a kind of shamed collusion with the assimilationists, the kings of Israel?

After the aborted revolution of the Maccabees, three generations of clan wars achieved only this—creation of an apish imperium.

After that debacle, our text takes its final form.

If that were all, why open the scroll? Or why indeed compose it?

One ventures—by way of warning and sane prospect, both. In hope of other, better things to come. Other, far different consequences. Almost one thinks, a different species of humans walking our tormented world. The great prophets.

Who will salvage—something. Will prepare a way (as Christians believe)—for Someone.

Meantime, a salutary warning. In the centuries from Exodus through Judges and Kings, a violent leadership begets a double phenomenon: a war god in its own image, and a succession of ethical clones. The latter bear arms, kill wantonly, die in battle. Multitudes pay heavily for royal follies, in forced taxation, poverty, generational hatreds.

And today, at the turn of another millennium?

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