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Exodus is the English name of the second book of the Bible, the Old Testament, the Torah and the Hexateuch. This title from the main event described in its pages, the Exodus from Egypt. The Greek word Εξοδος means "journey out" and the Latin:Exodus is merely a romanization thereof. The Hebrew title, Shemot, comes from the opening phrase, "Now these are the names...". The story continues with the Journey to Sinai. A majority of the Treaty at Sinai is contained in Exodus.
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Artificial Division
In some ways, it is an artifice to call Exodus a "book." To call it a book suggests that Exodus is a document by itself, that it circulated by itself before being incorporated in the Hebrew Scriptures. The opening verse connects the narrative of chapter one directly to the events recorded in Genesis 50. What is more the Levitical regulations that are the subject of the closing chapters of Exodus continue without interruption in the Book of Leviticus that follows. In other words, there is no great significance to be attached to the division of the books into these parts "Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus," etc.; it is a largely artificial division based on the very practical consideration of how much material could be placed on a single scroll. The Pentateuch (which means "the five volume book") or the Torah is really, in most respects, a single large volume. Exodus, at most, is a subdivision.
Paradigmatic
As a portion of the Hexateuch, Exodus is a most important portion. We are inclined to think, and rightly, that Genesis is the foundation of the entire Bible and of the history of salvation contained in it. That first book begins with the Creation Story, Man's fall into sin, and God's promise of redemption. It tells the story of God's way of salvation as it begins to take place in his selection of a man and his family to bear the seed from which the Redeemer would come and his making a covenant with that man and his descendants. Along the way the book demonstrates the abysmal condition into which sin had brought human beings and the power of faith in God to transform sinners into saints. In other words, the fundamental, the basic motifs of biblical revelation are heard first in Genesis.
But, think of what comes in Exodus. We have the account of the Lord's deliverance of his people from bondage in Egypt, the exodus that gives the book its name. That exodus, of course, is the supreme Old Testament account of the saving acts of God or, as someone else has put it, "the paradigmatic salvation event of ancient Israel." [1] Everything that follows "including the work of Jesus Christ" is going to be seen as the fulfillment of the pattern of salvation by God's grace and power that is revealed in the exodus of Israel from Egypt. It is here that we first encounter the idea of salvation by redemption, and redemption by the death of a substitute. One commentator on Exodus dedicates his commentary to "all who share in the greater EXODUS from the world of sin brought about by our Lord Jesus Christ." [2]
In Exodus we also have the giving of the law, according to which the moral situation of human life is defined in the rest of the Bible. It was to fulfill the law on behalf of his people that Christ came into the world. Also we have the institution of the Passover (the celebration of which, the night of his betrayal, revealed Christ as the true Passover lamb), the priesthood (of which Christ is the perfect and eternal fulfillment), and the first great prophet, Moses, the promise of whose office the Lord Jesus would himself finally fulfill. These events and these institutions would dominate the thought of Israel ever after and provide the intellectual and spiritual background for the revelation of Christ when he appeared. What is more, in the history of these events and the establishment of these institutions we are given more of a revelation of the nature and character of God and of his saving grace than anything that we have so far read in Genesis. It is not for nothing that one scholar has called the Book of Exodus "the center of the Old Testament." [3]
Now, all of that, to be sure, is only an elaboration of what we have already been taught in Genesis. Passover is new but sacrifice is not. The law is given in a formal and thorough way in Exodus but it existed before Sinai. Exodus continues the story that began in Genesis. It fulfills the promise of earlier developments in the history of God's covenant. The first two Hebrew words of the book are translated in English "These are the names" is the Hebrew title of the book. That is typical. "Genesis," "Exodus," "Leviticus," and the like are true titles, that is, they reflect what someone thought was the theme of the book. They did not exist until the LXX, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, was prepared 200 years before Christ. The translators gave these titles to the books. In the Hebrew Bible, however, the name of the book is simply the opening word or words. The title of the book of Genesis, for example, is the Hebrew word with which the book begins, "In the beginning," just one word in Hebrew and the name of Exodus, similarly, is "These are the names..." just two words in Hebrew. What is more, the first six words of Exodus 1:1 are an exact duplication of Genesis 46:8: "These are the names of the sons of Israel..." What the narrator is emphasizing by beginning his book in this way is the continuity between the history of Jacob's sons, narrated in the previous chapters, the later chapters of Genesis, and the history of the people and nation of Israel who descended from them.
Outline
The first half of Exodus is narrative, part of the Historical Prologue from the Book of the Law. The second half of the book is the first half of the Treaty at Sinai.
- Narrative
- Law (with narrative interludes)