Today’s Passage: An Overview of the Whole Book
You are about to walk through the second book of the Bible, and it opens on a people in trouble. The family that went down into Egypt has grown into a nation, and a king who never knew them has bent their backs under slavery. Into that misery a baby is born, and his mother sets him afloat on the river, and he is drawn up out of the water and given the name Moses. He grows, he flees, he keeps sheep in the wilderness, and one ordinary day a bush burns without burning up, and the LORD speaks His own name to him from the fire. What follows is a contest no king could win: plagues fall on Egypt, a lamb is killed and its blood is brushed on the doorframes, and death itself passes over the houses that are covered. The sea opens a dry road for a freed people and closes over the army behind them. Then the whole nation is led to a mountain, where God gives them His covenant and His law, and by the last page He has come down to live among them in a tent of His own design, His glory settling over the camp.
As you read, hold this: The God who made a promise comes down to keep it, and to dwell with His people.
The Hebrew name of the book is taken from its opening line. שְׁמוֹת (shemot), pronounced sheh-MOHT. Strong’s H8034, from shem, meaning “name.” It means simply “names,” because the book begins, “These are the names of the sons of Israel.” Later translators called it Exodus, a word that means “the way out” or “departure,” and both names are telling the truth at once. The book begins with the names of the family that went down to Egypt, and it becomes the story of the way out. Its center is a name God gives to Moses at the bush, a name no one had heard spoken so plainly before.
"God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”" Exodus 3:14 (BSB)
And the promise the book is driving toward is spoken in words a family would understand, the words of a covenant that binds a God to a people.
"I will take you as My own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians." Exodus 6:7 (BSB)
The world of the book
Moses is the man Scripture names as the writer of this book, and Jesus Himself speaks of Moses writing about Him.
"If you had believed Moses, you would believe Me, because he wrote about Me." John 5:46 (BSB)
Roughly four hundred years lie between the last page of Genesis and the first page of Exodus. Genesis ended with a small family settled safely in Egypt and Joseph laid in a coffin, still holding onto a promise that God would one day bring them home. Exodus opens long after that generation has died, when the family has become a multitude and the welcome has turned into a whip. The story moves across three landscapes: Egypt, where the people are enslaved and the plagues fall; Midian, the far country where Moses tends sheep and meets God at the bush; and Sinai, the mountain in the wilderness where the covenant is given and the tabernacle is raised. Through all of it runs one great theme. The God who once made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob now rolls up His sleeve and acts to keep them, redeeming a people for Himself and coming down to dwell in their midst.
The map
- Exodus 1–18. Bondage and deliverance: Israel enslaved under Pharaoh, Moses called at the burning bush, the plagues and the Passover, the sea opened and then closed, and the long journey out toward the mountain of God.
- Exodus 19–24. The covenant at Sinai: the Ten Commandments and the law given from the mountain, and the covenant sealed in blood before all the people.
- Exodus 25–40. The tabernacle: God’s careful instructions for the tent of His presence, the golden-calf failure and the mercy that meets it, and the glory of the LORD filling the tabernacle as the book comes to its close.
This first stretch of our walk is Exodus 1–4, the cry from Egypt and the man called at the bush. The rest is the road ahead of us. You are welcome to read more than one chapter when you sit down; only keep them in their order.
The verses the book stands on
The book turns on a name, spoken out of the fire to a man with no argument left.
"God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”" Exodus 3:14 (BSB)
And it turns on a rescue, promised before a single plague has fallen.
"Therefore tell the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment." Exodus 6:6 (BSB)
When the rescue is finished and the people stand on the far shore of the sea, the song they sing names the God who saved them.
"The LORD is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him." Exodus 15:2 (BSB)
There is a lamb at the heart of this book, and its blood on the doorframe turns death away.
"The blood on the houses where you are staying will be a sign; when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No plague will fall on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt." Exodus 12:13 (BSB)
That lamb points past itself. Paul takes up the picture and tells us who the true Passover was all along, and the way out of Egypt becomes a picture of the greater rescue that is ours in Him.
"Get rid of the old leaven, that you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed." 1 Corinthians 5:7 (BSB)
The God who heard a cry in Egypt is the same God who came down at last in the flesh to bring His people out, and that is why we start here.