Introductions, while seldom thrilling, are necessary. This is the introduction to a series of essays that cover the origin of the Israelite nation and conclude with a discussion of the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments are usually misunderstood and have often been abused by ignorant people. That problem largely stems from taking them out of context. We are not going to make that mistake. And we are not going to make anachronistic assumptions about their universal application in the present.
This series is not a review of history. There is a kind of "history" in it, of course. But much more than that, it is a story about God and faith. For Christians and Jews this is our story; the story of the formation of the nation of Israel, our ancestors in faith. More importantly, this is the story about God, seeking to redeem his creation and re-establish the covenant with the children of Abraham, his chosen people, not for their sake, but for the sake of the world.
The events we will discuss took place 3400 years ago. They are embellished in myth and shrouded in mystery, sifted and filtered through oral traditions and then written by many redactors. Some of the story is likely "true" in the literal sense, while much of it is clearly mythic saga. Regardless, for believers this story abounds in theological truth and is as relevant today as it was then.
Let me give you a very brief introduction to the Book of Exodus so that, when I plop us down at the beginning of Chapter 15, you won't be totally lost.
The Hebrew people who would come to be known as Israelites were in Egypt about 400 years. After the death of Joseph, they remained in Egypt and grew large in numbers. But they were slaves to Pharaoh, and were severely oppressed. Our story begins when Pharaoh decreed that all newborn Israelite boys must be drowned in the Nile.
After his birth, Moses, born to Levitical parents, was hidden by his mother for three months, and then placed into the Nile in a papyrus basket, where the daughter of Pharaoh found him. Rather than killing the baby, Pharaoh's daughter decided to keep him. Ironically, Moses' own mother was called to nurse and raise the child, returning him to Pharaoh's daughter when he was grown.
As a young man, after killing an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew, Moses fled Egypt for Midian. There he married Zipporah, daughter of the priest Reuel. Meanwhile, the oppression continued in Egypt. God heard the cries of the people, and remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
At Mt. Horab, God appeared to Moses in a burning bush, telling Moses that he intended to deliver his people from bondage in Egypt; and that he was sending Moses to bring them out of Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey.
Moses, reluctant to go, finally agreed after God allowed his brother, Aaron, to go with him to be Moses' spokesman. Once in Egypt, through Moses God confronted Pharaoh with a series of devastating plagues, each based on God's demand that Pharaoh "let my people go." The tenth and final plague was that death would sweep through the land and kill every first-born child, mirroring what Pharaoh had decreed when Moses' mother had hidden Moses as a baby.
To protect the first-born of the Israelites, the Lord instructed them to slaughter a lamb and spread its blood on the doorposts and lintels of their houses, and that death would "pass over" the households where the blood was spread. This they did. This is the origin of Passover.
Pharaoh finally agreed to let them go, and to take their cattle with them. Pharaoh instructed the Egyptians to give them gold and jewelry and to be rid of them. They also took with them unleavened bread to eat, for they left in haste. This became ritualized into the Passover observance as the Feast of Unleavened bread.
God then led them out of Egypt, guided by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, so that they might travel swiftly. When they had gone as far as the Red Sea, Pharaoh changed his mind about letting them go, and led his army after them.
As the Egyptians closed in, the Israelites were scared witless, but Moses held firm in faith. At the last minute God gave Moses the power to use his staff to divide the sea. The entire Israelite nation then walked safely on dry ground through the sea; but, as they pursued them, the Egyptian chariots and soldiers bogged down in the mud of the sea bed.
Moses then commanded the sea to return to normal and the Egyptian army drowned. Chapter 14 ends: "Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses."
Chapter 15 begins with a long prayer of thanksgiving spoken by Moses, a song to God for the deliverance of the Israelites from Pharaoh. It begins, "I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. The LORD is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him."
The praise did not last. A few verses later the Bible reads "Then Moses ordered Israel to set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter. That is why it was called Marah. And the people complained against Moses, saying, "What shall we drink?"
So when the people complained to him, Moses complained to God. "He cried out to the LORD; and the LORD showed him a piece of wood; he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet."
And it was there and then that God began his training of this rag tag bunch which was to be God's own chosen people: "There the LORD made for them a statute and an ordinance and there he put them to the test. He said, 'If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the LORD who heals you.'"
So here we see a developing relationship between the Israelites and God. God provides salvation which leads to thanksgiving and worship by the people. The Bible says the thanksgiving lasted only three days. But the number of days aren't what's important. What's important is that the thanksgiving lasted only until the next crisis.
To us the Israelites seem terribly insensitive to the grace from God that they have just received. They have been safely led out of Egypt and the oppression they endured. They have been saved from Pharaoh's army; and they have been given water to drink in the desert. God's grace abounds; but their thanksgiving is short lived.
What we need to acknowledge is that we are the same way. People, including us, always complain about the next thing. That has not changed.
For example, we may worry about a deadly disease we might have. And we pray and pray and make bargains with God. We make all sorts of commitments we have every intention of keeping: maybe including going to Church or Synagogue regularly, studying the Bible, treating people better, appreciating the simple things of life. We may not blatantly bargain with God, but that is often not far back in our minds, which God, of course, knows. Seldom do we say, "Thy will be done" and mean it.
Then we find out we don't have that disease; or, that we do, but that we can be healed. And, in a month,or maybe a year, we look up and notice that we are back to the same old routine. We have done some of the things we promised for a while; but then there were other priorities. There are lots of other examples I could cite. But I don't think we need more examples. You and I live them.
We forget the truth of the saying that "God cures every disease except the last one." We are too busy thinking that this one is the last one; and too busy worrying about how to get God to keep it from being so. True thanksgiving has nothing to do with bargaining with God. We'll discuss that a bit more as we go along in this series because it is at the heart of our relationship with God.
Next time we will look at key elements of what God expects from the people. Then, with that context, we will look at the next series of complaints. It is here, in the complaints and God's responses to them that we shall see a pattern which will develop in the relationship between God and his chosen people. It is out of the pattern of this relationship that the Ten Commandments will be born.
God bless.
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