The book of Exodus

At a glance

Chapters

40

Author

Traditionally Moses

Written

Final form likely sixth century BC, from older traditions

Written for

A people defining itself by having been slaves

Themes

rescue, covenant, presence, law

What it is about

Everybody knows the first half: a baby in a basket, a burning bush, ten plagues, a sea that opens. It is the most cinematic sequence in the Bible and it is over by chapter 15.

What follows surprises every first-time reader. The people are free for about three days before they start complaining, and the rest of the book is law, covenant and a tabernacle described twice in exhaustive detail — the specification, and then the construction, both in full. Modern readers find those chapters unreadable. Ancient readers understood them as the point: God moving in.

In the middle of it sits chapter 32, where the people build a golden calf while Moses is still up the mountain collecting the instructions. The book is honest about how quickly the rescue was forgotten, and it does not resolve that tension so much as build a structure around it.

Where to start

Chapter 3, at the bush. Chapters 1 and 2 are setup you can absorb from context, and chapter 3 is where the book states its terms.

The chapters worth knowing

• Exodus 3 — The burning bush, and the name given in answer to a question that had not quite been asked.
• Exodus 14 — The sea, which is the scene everybody pictures when they hear the word Exodus.
• Exodus 32 — The golden calf, built while Moses was still collecting the instructions against it.

What people get wrong about it

That it ends at the Red Sea. The escape is a quarter of the book; the remaining three quarters are about what a freed people is supposed to become, which is the harder and less filmable half.

From this book

• Bible verses about restTen passages on rest and sabbath from the World English Bible, with notes — including why rest is commanded rather than earned, and who the fourth commandment protects.

Questions