Exodus: a going forth
“You shall strike the rock and water shall come out of it, that the people may drink,” God tells Moses in a striking passage in Exodus. Exodus is the second book of the Torah, the second book of Moses, as it is sometimes called. Exodus is its Greek title from the Septuagint. Its Hebrew title is Shemot – Names. It is the scriptural classic about the idea of journeying and as such complements The Odyssey of Homer. Both are about the journey of learning through suffering and reflection, we might say, which have to do with the understanding of our humanity in relation to the intellectual structure of reality either in the form of the Greek cosmos or the Hebrew creation.
The idea of the exodus is taken up by Christians and Muslims alike and relates to the larger philosophical and ethical quest for wisdom. As such the concept of exodus speaks directly to us as a School and to all of you as learners, those who have embarked on the quest for understanding. Exodus, as a book, however, confronts us with the disorders of our humanity. We are really a whole lot of complainers! On the one hand, never being satisfied (like Mick Jagger’s ‘Can’t Get No Satisfaction’!) signals a yearning for something more than the material and quotidian realities of our lives. On the other hand, it signals a presumption and a pretension about ourselves, namely our hubris or pride in which we think we are entitled to, well, everything. It extends to the idea that God owes us and thus that God is accountable to us. It is exactly the reverse of the teaching of both The Odyssey and Exodus.
Exodus means going forth in the sense of a departure. The Odyssey is about the homecoming of the Greek heroes after the battle of Troy; the journey back to where they are from and, in that sense, where they belong in the order of things. The exodus in the Hebrew Scriptures is literally the account of the people of Israel being delivered from slavery to the Egyptians. It marks the entire journey in the wilderness that is about learning what that liberation properly means. It is, literally, a going forth from slavery but, morally, the exodus extends to a going forth out of sin, out of ourselves in our preoccupations and obsessions, our selfish pride which is blind to God and to one another. And, intellectually, like The Odyssey, the exodus is the going forth out of ignorance and into the understanding of the will of God expressed concretely in the Law, especially the Ten Commandments. Unlike The Odyssey, it is not so much about a place such as the polis, the Greek city-state, but about the Word of God written which defines the journey. But it means that the exodus as freedom from slavery, from sin, and from ignorance, is fundamentally a freedom to a principle; in short, to God as the ethical, spiritual and intellectual principle of reality.
This week marked the end of Black Heritage month. I am reminded of how powerful the resonance of Exodus is for the history and culture of the Afro-American experience as expressed in its spiritual songs and music. W.E.B Dubois in his great classic, The Souls of Black Folks, structures his moving argument about the challenges that black Americans faced after the American Civil War with lines from the ‘sorrowing songs’, spiritual songs which reflect their yearnings, hopes, and reflections on their sufferings. One great spiritual is “Go down Moses” with its moving refrain, “let my people go,” connecting the deliverance of the ancient Hebrews to the yearnings for deliverance of the slave cultures of the Americas.
The passage from Exodus 17. 1-7 captures the dynamic of the whole book. The people of Israel, delivered from slavery in Egypt, then complain to Moses against God about being in the wilderness even to the point of suggesting that it would have been better to be back in Egypt! Moses calls attention to the spiritual problem and contradiction of putting God to the test, of making God accountable to us as if we were in the place of God, as if we were God and the whole of reality subject to us and to our control and manipulation. Like The Odyssey, it is a profound forgetfulness of the structure of reality of which we are, inescapably, a part. This testing and contention against God are expressed in the names Massah and Meribah which become proverbial for the idea of human complaining and murmuring, the idea of putting God to the test. It is the background story to the Temptations of Christ – turning stones into bread, having power and domination, and worshipping ourselves, all a kind of diabolical perversion of the truth and goodness of God and creation.
But the Exodus story also teaches us profoundly that God’s will is greater than human presumption and our sense of entitlement. It does so by a strong reminder of God as the author of creation, whose creation reflects the ultimate goodness of God in his care for his creation. It is deliberately paradoxical but in such a way as to highlight the power and goodness of God. Moses is bidden to strike the rock on Horeb and out comes water for the people to drink. One of the strong lessons of Genesis and Exodus is the idea that God provides for us. God even “provides himself for the sacrifice,” as Abraham will learn; a theme which in the Christian understanding underlies the sacrifice of Christ.
Exodus is about learning through suffering and part of that learning is a disciplining of our wills and appetites, our desires and longings so as to grasp the freedom and dignity of our humanity as found in God and our life with God. It is found through the quest for wisdom and in the realization that we are more than our immediate interests and desires.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy