Tag Archives: Exodus 13-15

Daily Bible Study

January 22, 2024 Bible Study — Passover is Evidence That Exodus Happened

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 13-15.

As I have been reading Exodus this year, from time to time I look something up regarding the events described in it.  Almost every time, at least one of the results I get says that the events described in Exodus never really happened.  The account given here about the origin of Passover makes that hard for me to believe.  Passover contains such explicit references to the events surrounding the Israelites leaving Egypt that I have trouble understanding how it could ever come to be if the Exodus story was just made up.  Passover commemorates what God did for the Israelites.  In order for the story of Exodus to be made up, Passover would need to exist independently of it and then evolve as it began to be included.  You could not invent a ritual like Passover at the same time you made up the story because everyone would know that the events it “commemorates” did not happen.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

January 22, 2023 Bible Study — Don’t Forget What God Has Done For Us

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 13-15.

My thoughts about today’s passage are scattered.  My first thought was similar to my thoughts about yesterday’s passage: the importance of communicating to the next generation the ways in which God has demonstrated His power and His love for us.  The point of the Passover celebration was to remind the Israelites about how God had saved them from captivity through His mighty power, and to communicate that to the next generation.  Then I came to the song which Moses and the Israelites sang after they crossed the Red Sea (or the Sea of Reeds, since the correct translation of the Hebrew is ambiguous).  There they praise God for rescuing them from Pharaoh’s mighty army.  The song reflects that Pharaoh and his army thought that they could strike down the Israelites with impunity, but that God acted to protect them.  Finally, we have the Israelites complaining about the absence of drinkable water at Marah, despite having experienced God’s power to save and care for them twice just before this.  This last reflects on our human nature to forget how God has cared for us in the past in the face of our latest struggle.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

January 22, 2022 Bible Study — When Trouble Comes, Remember What God Did The Last Time Trouble Came

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 13-15.

When the Israelites left Egypt, it seems to me that they expected the Egyptians to pursue them.  The passage tells us that they left Egypt ready for battle and that they traveled both day and night.  Nevertheless, when Pharaoh’s army overtook them, they were terrified and angry with Moses.  They accused Moses of leading them into the desert to die.  They did this despite the great signs which God had done to get Pharaoh to allow them to leave in the first place.  Then after Pharaoh’s army was destroyed in the sea, the sea which they had crossed on dry land, they praised God for their rescue.  Yet a short time later when the springs at Marah were undrinkable, they grumbled about not having anything to drink.  This sets a pattern which they followed the entire time they were in the wilderness.  How often do we do something similar in our lives?  We cry out to God because of our troubles, He rescues us in ways we could never have foreseen, yet a short time later we are once again afraid that our troubles are too big for God to handle?

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

January 22, 2021 Bible Study If We Do What Is Right In God’s Eyes, He Will Not Bring Upon Us The Ills Which Others Have Experienced

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 13-15.

I am not sure where I am going to go with today’s blog.  The first thing which struck me was toward the end of the passage when God told the people of Israel, “If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, …, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians,…”  In the context one could easily conclude that the diseases mentioned are those from among the ten plagues.  However, I do not believe that is the case.  When one looks at the history of disease one quickly sees that when people begin to gather in cities disease becomes much more common place than when people live a more rural existence.  Interestingly, while population density plays a role in the spread of many of those diseases, most of them also spread as a result of human behavior.  So, if we do what is right in God’s eyes, we will be less likely to experience disease…and if we all, as a society, do what is right in God’s eyes, we will not experience those diseases at all.  This applies to all types of social ills,  The higher the percentage of people in a society who do what is right in God’s eyes, the fewer social ills the people of that society will experience.  The best part about this is that if we, individually, do what is right in God’s eyes, we ourselves will be less likely to experience the negative impact of many social ills.

NOTE: My title today is an oversimplification

Daily Bible Study

January 22, 2020 Bible Study — God Reiterates, “No Child Sacrifice”

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 13-15.

As I read Moses’ instructions to the Children of Israel concerning the dedication of firstborn male offspring to God I am reminded of Abraham’s offering of Isaac.  Both accounts address the issue of child sacrifice and dedicating children to God.  The Abraham/Isaac account addresses the idea that we can be dedicated to God and can dedicate our children to God without sacrificing our children.  This passage tells us that not only can we dedicate ourselves and our children to God without sacrificing our children, but that God commands us not to sacrifice our children.  Thus, sacrificing our children goes directly counter to being dedicated to God.  

The passage describes how the Israelites left Egypt in a roundabout, indirect fashion.  Many people over the years have attempted to determine what path they followed.  Unfortunately, we do not actually know to what actual location many of the place names listed in the Book of Exodus refer.  For that matter, we do not really know the date of Exodus, although this site makes a case I find compelling for 1446 BC.  The important point of all of this being that later when the Israelites spend 40 years in the wilderness we do not know with any precision where that wilderness was.

Daily Bible Study

January 22, 2019 Bible Study — When God Does Not Lead Us On the Direct Path There Is a Reason

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 13-15.

The beginning of today’s passage contains an explanation of why the Israelites practice regarding child sacrifice differed from those they lived among in the land they settled.  We know from later biblical accounts and from archaeological records that the people whom the later Israelites lived among offered some of their children as sacrifices to their gods.  I am not positive on this, but I believe that they sacrificed their first born sons.  This is one of several passages which make clear that the Israelites were not to do the same.  Here Moses tells them that they are to dedicate the first born male to God, both of their children and their livestock.  They were given the option of buying back a first born donkey, but they were required to buyback their firstborn sons.   Moses mentions just once that they have the option of buying back the first born donkey, but repeats the requirement to buy back first born sons.  This is one of several places where it is made clear that God forbids the sacrifice of children.

When the Israelites left Egypt Moses did not lead them by a direct route towards the Promised Land.  In fact, he led them by a circuitous route which made it seem to anyone tracking them that they were lost.  This served two purposes.  First, the Israelites were not prepared to face the battles which they would have faced on the most direct route. Second, it enticed Pharaoh to pursue them.  A study of Egyptian history, and even the Exodus account, suggests that the Pharaoh was likely to pursue the Israelites sooner or later.  Politically, allowing the Israelites to depart made him look weak.  Economically, their departure weakened the Egyptian economy, which weakened the Pharaoh. Personally, their departure would have felt like he had been defeated.  All of these factors made Pharaoh’s pursuit of the departing Israelites inevitable. By appearing lost, the Israelites drew Pharaoh’s pursuit after them while they were in a position to deal him a devastating defeat.  And once again, God’s power was demonstrated, both to the Egyptians and to the people of Israel.

Daily Bible Study

January 22, 2018 Bible Study — The Beginning of the Transformation of Israel From a Group of Tribes to a Nation

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 13-15.

    The beginning of this passage Moses instructs the children of Israel to celebrate the Passover every year. In addition, he directs them that the first born male, both human and animal must be dedicated to God. Each first born must be presented to the Lord in remembrance of what God did for Israel in rescuing them from the Egyptians. These two ceremonies remind us of the importance of religious ceremony. Religious ceremony, properly conducted, reminds us of what God has done for us in the past. It can also serve to renew our commitment to serving God. This is an important lesson for me, because I was raised, not intentionally, with a bias against ceremony. I will add that while ceremony is important sometimes the ceremony becomes the object of worship rather than turning our attention and focus to God.

    The Israelites left Egypt like an army ready for battle. Then God had Moses lead them on an indirect route, one which made it seem like they did not know where they were going.

On a side note: I suspect that part of the reason Pharaoh gathered his army and set out to re-enslave the Israelites was because he feared them setting up as a bandit nation right on his border (the other, probably primary, part was hubris, thinking the plagues were done and would not resume if he did so).

The Israelites were cocky and full of themselves. God engineered the pursuit by the Egyptian army in order to remind them that they needed to depend on Him. There was a second purpose to it as well. Their complete unreadiness and panic when confronted by Pharaoh’s army made the Israelites aware of their need to accept discipline and training. It was not sufficient to have numbers. They needed to learn how to work and fight together. They saw that the threat was not just to their fighting men, but to their families and loved ones as well. There is actually a third reason for this pursuit. The loss of the best of Pharaoh’s army meant that the Egyptians would not be a threat to the Israelites for a generation or more after this, giving them time to become not just a people but a nation.

Daily Bible Study

January 22, 2017 Bible Study — Do We Recognize Divine Intervention?

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 13-15.

    When the Israelites left Egypt they were not yet ready to face those between them and the Promised Land, let alone face those who occupied the Promised Land. So, God had Moses lead them around the area between Egypt and the Red Sea (today we would consider this area as part of Egypt, but in that day because it was mostly uninhabited, it was considered no man’s land). Receiving reports indicating they were doing this, Pharaoh decided either that he could retrieve his slave labor force, or that they were a threat. As a result, he led his army out after them (probably just his elite forces he had at ready to put down riots and to deal with bandits). When the Israelites saw Pharaoh’s army, they panicked. This was despite the mighty miracles they had just witnessed (a theme which continues through out Exodus).

    When the Israelites panicked, Moses calmed them. This is a key lesson for us. We will not be ready to follow God’s lead out of a bad situation if we are panicking. Two separate things happened next. First, God intervened so as to delay the Egyptian army. Then while the Egyptians were figuring out how to deal with the unexpected obstacle (whatever the cloud of smoke and pillar of fire was, it must have been something the Egyptians considered to be natural), God parted the Red Sea, allowing the Israelites to escape through it. This also must have been viewed by the Egyptians as a natural occurrence, otherwise they would not have been so eager to pursue the Israelites across it.

     Through all of this, the Egyptians saw natural events while the Israelites saw Divine intervention. I was not going here as I started to write this. I was about to wrap up my thoughts on how important it is for us to not panic, to trust that God will act to rescue us from our difficulties (or otherwise use them to bring glory to His Name and bless us), when it struck me how the two sides here saw things so differently. Despite, having a realization that there was Divine intervention when their chariots got stuck in the mud of the Red Sea bed, I suspect that the Egyptians ended up seeing it as all just natural events. Do we have the ability to see how God’s Divine hand has used what are otherwise natural events to bring His plan to fruition?

Daily Bible Study

January 22, 2016 Bible Study

This year I switched from using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible reading to the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net”. I have now done this long enough to say that I am glad I made the change. I am firmly convinced that the One Year Bible Online is a great way to read through the Bible in a year. It breaks the parts of the Bible which can be a struggle to read into manageable portions. However, I think that the Daily Bible Reading Schedule I am using now is a better format for doing a daily Bible study.

DSCN8081

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 13-15.

    The people of Israel were told that the first born males (human and livestock) belonged to the Lord. They were to sacrifice the livestock (with the option to buy back donkey colts) and buy back their firstborn sons. Part of this is the idea of presenting the first of whatever we produce to God. This idea is given more depth later when the law describes first fruit sacrifices. The idea also goes back to the Cain and Abel story, where God looked favorably on Abel because he sacrificed from the firstborn of his flock. However, there is another point made here that is worth emphasis. They were required to buyback their firstborn sons. They were forbidden from sacrificing their sons. This prohibition was not an after thought, or a concession to human sentimentality. This prohibition was something which set the Israelites apart from the people around them. We know that throughout history almost every other people offered their children as sacrifices to their gods upon certain conditions (some peoples did so more routinely than others).

DSCN8084

    When the Israelites left Egypt, God led them on a roundabout path because they were not prepared to face battle (as we see later in this passage). Further, no sooner had the Israelites left Egypt than the Pharaoh once more changed his mind about letting them go. Pharaoh gathered his armies and set out in pursuit. When Pharaoh overtook the Israelites they proved God correct, they were not ready, or willing, to fact battle. However, they were trapped and had no choice, until God provided them with an escape. By doing this God accomplished three purposes. First he forced the Egyptians to accept the departure of the Israelites by destroying the elites of their army. Second, God showed the Israelites that they were NOT an army prepared for battle. And third, God showed the Israelites that He could rescue them when all seemed lost.