02/02/10

Exodus 18-20

In chapter 18, Moses' father-in-law Jethro, having heard of all that God had done in freeing the Israelites from captivity in Egypt, came to him in the desert with Moses' wife and sons. Moses went out and greeted him and told him all that had happened, and how the Lord had saved them. Jethro acknowledged that the Lord "is greater than all other gods" and offered a burnt offering. Aaron and the other elders came and ate with Moses and Jethro in the presence of God.

After watching Moses sit and act as a judge the following day, Jethro asked him what he was doing. Moses told him that the people came to Moses to seek God's will, and settle disputes. Jethro suggested that he was going to wear himself out, and that he should instead teach the people God's decrees and laws, and select capable men who fear God and make them officials over smaller groups of the people. The other officials cound handle the simple cases, and Moses would handle only the difficult ones. So he that that and put capable men of Israel over "thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens." Then Jethro returned to his own country.

In chapter 19, in the third month after the exodus from Egypt, Israel camped in the desert at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Moses "went up to God" and God called to him from the mountain and told him what to say to the people. He was to remind them of what they had seen and how God brought them out of Egypt, "carried...on eagles' wings" and that if they would obey him fully and keep his covenent, they would be, of all the nations, God's "treasured possession....a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." Moses told the people, who said that they would do everything that the Lord has said. Moses then took their answer back to God.

The LORD told Moses to consecrate the people for the next two days, to have them wash there clothes and abstain from sexual relations, to stay away from the mountain and not to touch the foot of it on penalty of death and prepare for the third day. When the third day came, there was a thick cloud over the mountain, and thunder and lightning, and a very loud trumpet blast. And Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God at the foot of the mountain. Moses spoke and God answered. He descended to the top of Mount Sinai, and called Moses to the top to meet him. God told him to warn the people that they must not force their way through, and the even the priests must consecrate themselves. Moses told God that the people could not come up on Sinai because of the previous warnings, but God told him to go and bring Aaron up with him.

And, in chapter 20, Moses went up Sinai and God gave him the Ten Commandments. When the people saw the lightning the smoke on the mountain, and heard the thunder and the trumpet, they trembled with fear. They stayed away and told Moses to speak to them, for fear of dying if God did. Moses told them that "the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning." Them God told Moses to tell the Israelites not to make any idols, not to make "gods of silver or gods of gold." He told them to make an altar of earth and sacrifice their burnt offerings and fellowship offerings.

Thoughts, questions, issues

• There is no mention of Zipporah or Moses' sons from the time of the circumcision at the inn on Moses' journey back to Egypt (Ex 4:24-26) until chapter 18. They were traveling with him on his journey, but are never mentioned during the plagues or the exodus from Egypt. Now they arrive with Jethro, which would seem to indicate that they either never went all the way back to Egypt with him, or were sent back to Midian before the exodus. Clearly, they were sent back to Midian - what's not clear is when.
• On the third day, God appeared to the people on Sinai. And on the third day, Jesus rose from the dead, and appeared to the people. "Prepare yourselves for the third day" sounds as if it ought to be a verse from one of the Gospels, but here it is, in Exodus 19.
• In 19:8, the people of Israel clearly accept the covenant which God has offered them. At this time, it has not yet been made clear what, exactly, is going to be required on their part. Yes, they need to obey God "fully" but they did not know what the orders would be. They accepted anyway. So they had some faith, even if it was an uneven and fearful faith. (How much faith is required to follow God after the demonstrations they had received is, of course, a mitigating consideration when tempted to get too effusive with praise for their acceptance of the covenant.)
• The Ten Commandments:
  
  1. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.
  2. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.
  3. You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
  4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
  5. Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
  6. You shall not murder.
  7. You shall not commit adultery.
  8. You shall not steal.
  9. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
  10. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
  (Ex 20:1-17)
  
  The Ten Commandments appear again, in the same order with only minor textual differences, in Dt 5:6-21.
• The fear of God, the fear of anything, helps as a motivating factor. But it's not a great long-term motivation. To really change long-term, behavior has to be motivated by a desire, or longing, or love. Fear is a great motivator short-term, but not for making fundamental changes.
• As we see with the Israelites over and over and over again.

Psalm 2

Thoughts, questions, issues

• I guarantee that it won't be the last time I say this, but there are some pieces of scripture that I cannot hear or read without the music starting up in my head. Reading the second psalm starts Handel's Messiah. "Let us break their bonds asunder." "...against the Lord, and against his anointed..." "The Lord shall have them in derision..." "Thou shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel..."
• And, from the general obliviousness department, how have I never noticed verse 12? "Kiss the Son...blessed are all they that put their trust in him."
• And there's verse 7 - "The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee." I've heard that passage in the Messiah a hundred times, and never stopped to think about where it came from, or to realize that it's an Old Testament verse, dating to hundreds of years before the birth of Christ.
• And yes, I recognize that this is self-referential on David's part. But, just like the passage in Exodus ("prepare for the third day") it works on more than one level. If David was talking about himself, we still read it and hear the name of Jesus.
• So the kings of the earth set themselves up, and take counsel together, and plan and plot against the people of God and their anointed ruler. And the Lord, sitting in heaven, laughs at them. "Man proposes, God disposes."
• And there's a warning there, in verses 9-12. The Lord reigns, and what he wants destroyed will be destroyed, so the wise thing to do is to serve him with fear and rejoice with tremblings.

1/27/10

Exodus 1-4

Exodus, chapter one, continues the story of the Hebrews in Egypt, right from where Genesis left off. The descendants of Jacob/Israel are prospering in Egypt. Eventually, Joseph and his brothers and that whole generation dies, "but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them." The Pharoah also died, and a king came to power in Egypt who didn't know Joseph, didn't remember what he had done to save Egypt, and saw the Israelites as a threat to the Egyptians. So he had slave masters put over the Hebrews, and they were used for forced labor. "But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly."

Still seeing a threat, the king of Egypt, called the Hebrew midwives (Shiphrah and Puah) and told them that if a boy was being delivered, they were to kill it, and only let the girls live. The midwives "feared God" and did not do what the king instructed. When he asked them why, they told him that the Hebrew women were different than Egyptian women and had their babies before the midwives arrived. And God propered them and gave them families because of what they had done. The Pharoah, though, ordered all of his people that male Hebrew babies should be thrown in to the Nile.

In chapter two, a Levite woman gives birth to a son. She hid him, but when he reached three months, she could hide him no longer. She put him in a basket coated with tar and pitch and put it into the reeds along the bank of the Nile, with his sister watching at a distance to see what would happen to him. The basket was found by Pharoah's daughter, who had gone to the river to bathe, and she felt sorry for him. His sister asked Pharoah's daughter if she would like to fetch one of the Hebrew women to nurse him, and when she said yes, the boy's sister fetched his mother. Pharoah's daughter paid the woman to nurse the baby, and when he was older, she got him back and named him Moses.

When Moses was grown, he saw an Egyptian guard abusing a Hebrew. Looking about him, he killed the guard and buried him in the sand. The next day, seeing two Hebrews fighting, he asked one "why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?" The man asked, in return, if he were going to kill him like he did the Egyptian. Moses feared for his life, and fled to Midian before Pharoah could kill him.

In Midian, he aided the seven daughters of a priest of Midian in drawing water from a well for their father's flock. When he heard what Moses has done, he invited him in to his home. Moses stayed and took the man's daughter Zipporah as a wife, with whom he had a son, Gershom. During his time in Midian, Pharoah died but the slavery of the Israelites continued. God heard their groaning and remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.

In chapter three, Moses is tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro on the far side of the desert when he sees a bush burning without being consumed on Horeb ("the mountain of God"). As he approached, God spoke to him from within the bush. God told him to remove his sandals and not to come any closer, as it was holy ground. He then told Moses that he was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Moses hid his face. God told him that he had seen "the misery of my people in Egypt" and "heard them crying out because of their slave drivers." Moses wanted to know who he should say had sent him, and GOD replied, "I AM THAT I AM." So he was sending Moses to Pharoah to bring the the people of Israel out of Egypt. Moses resisted, offering excuses and reasons, to all of which God said "I will be with you."

In chapter four God offers Moses signs. First, he has him throw his staff to the ground, and turns it in to a serpent. He then told Moses to put his hand inside his cloak. When he withdrew it, it was white and leprous. He repeated the process and saw it back to normal. Moses continued to resist, saying that "I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue." When Moses asked God to send someone else, "the LORD's anger burned against Moses." Despite that, he acquiesced and chose Moses' brother Aaron to assist him.

Moses went back to his father-in-law Jethro and told him that we was going to go back to Egypt to see whether any of his people were still alive. Jethro told him to go and wished him well. Moses took his wife and sons and put them on a donkey and traveled to Egypt.

On the way, at an inn, the Lord "met him and sought to kill him." But Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off her son's foreskin and tossed it at Moses' feet, saying, "surely, a bloody husband art thou to me." Then he let them go.

The LORD then went to Aaron and commanded him to meet Moses in the desert. So he went and met Moses on Mt. Sinai in Horeb, the "mountain of God" where Moses had earlier seen the burning bush. Moses told Aaron all that the Lord had said, and what their mission was. And they went and gathered together all of the elders of Israel. Aaron spoke and showed them all the signs that GOD had said, and the people believe, and worshipped GOD.

Thoughts, questions, issues

• Exodus is the second book in the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, the Torah. It follows the stories of the patriarchs from Genesis, which ended with Israel in Egypt. When Exodus opens, Israel is not longer a welcome visitor, but a captive people. Exodus is the story of how they are delivered from bondage in Egypt.
• I'm not sure what to make of the midwives. On the one hand, the king is concerned that the Israelis outnumber the Egyptians. On the other, there are two midwives for the Israelis, and they are named in the text. Are they meant to represent a large number of midwives? What is the significance, if any, of the names?
• In chapter 2, the man with the daughters is called Reuel. In chapter 3, the same man, unless I'm badly mis-reading something, is called Jethro.
• When GOD called Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, he went up to the mountain, bound his son, and raised the blade before God stopped him. When GOD called Moses to lead the Israelis out of Egypt, Moses begged him to find someone else. And even after seeing three miraculous signs, he still wants more.
• God names himself "I AM THAT I AM." One of the issues in philosophical debates is whether the universe requires a creator, a first cause, an uncaused cause. Logically, there is not effect without a cause, and everything we see is an effect. What is the cause?
  
  "I AM THAT I AM" (or "I AM WHO I AM" [NIV]) can certainly be read as a claim to being that uncaused cause.
• One thing that is unclear in this story is how, or how well, Moses and Aaron knew one another. We don't know at what age Moses went to live in the palace, whether Aaron was older or younger, how it was that Aaron wasn't killed during the Pharoah's purging of male Hebrew babies or whether there was any interaction between Moses living in Pharoah's house and Aaron living (presumably) in Hebrew slave quarters.
• I like the imagery of God "stretch[ing] out my hand over Egypt."
  
• Ex 4:24-26, the story of the meeting and conflict at the inn, and the circumcision of Moses' son(s), is one of those that I really have no context for. I don't understand who "the LORD" is, in this context, because surely, if the LORD had tried to kill Moses, well, Moses would have been killed. Nor is there any reason which strikes me as plausible for GOD to attempt to kill Moses who was on a mission which GOD had just given him. I can't see any reason that Zipporah would react by cutting of her son's foreskin. I don't understand why she calls him a "bloody husband" (though I can't help but wonder if that's the etymology of that particular piece of Bristish slang.) In short, it's a two-verse story that I find myself completely unequipped to deal with, which is probably why I quickly forgot it the last time I read the book.

Proverbs 16:1-16

So many of the lessons in the book of Proverbs use, at least figuratively, the idea of wealth, riches, gold and silver and jewels, as things that people want. And as rewards for good behavior. 16:16 is a verse in which that idea is used to make wisdom itself even more desirable.

How much better is it to get wisdom than gold; and to get understanding rather to be chosen than silver!