The Book of Exodus/Shemoth – שמות

[First posted in 2012; time to repost after 7 years!  This is the  Introduction from Pentateuch & Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz, a publication of the Soncino Press. Reformatted for post.]

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NAME.  The Second Book of Moses was originally called ‘the Book of the Going out of Egypt.’ At an early date, however, it came to be known as ve-eleh shemoth from its opening phrase, ‘ And these are the names’.  Its current designation in Western countries is Exodus—from the Greek term exodos.  ‘The Departure’ (of the children of Israel out of Egypt), a name applied to it in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of Scripture.

CONTENTS. The Book of Exodus is the natural continuation of Genesis.  Genesis describes the lives of the Fathers of the Hebrew People; Exodus tells the beginning of the People itself.  

• It records Israel’s enslavement in Egypt, It describes the institution of the Passover, and the deliverance from the House of Bondage.  
• the Covenant at Mount Sinai, 
• and the organization of Public Worship It recounts the murmurings and backslidings of Israel, that was to make Israel into ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’.  as well as the Divine guidance and instruction vouchsafed to it; the apostasy of the Golden Calf, as well as the supreme Revelation that followed it—the revelation of the Divine Being  as a ‘God,  merciful and gracious,  long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth;  keeping mercy unto the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin’ and that will by no means clear the guilty’. 

IMPORTANCE. 

Nearly all the foundations on which Jewish life is built—

• the Ten Commandments, 
• the historic Festivals, 
• the leading principles of civil law—

—are contained in the Book of Exodus.  And the importance of this Book is not confined to Israel.  

In its epic account of Israel’s redemption from slavery, mankind learned

• that God is a God of Freedom; 
• that even as in Egypt He espoused the cause of brick-making slaves against the royal tyrant, Providence ever exalts righteousness and freedom, and humbles iniquity and oppression.  

And the Ten Commandments,

• spoken at Sinai, 
• form the Magna Charta of religion and morality,
•  linking them for the first time, and for all time, indissoluble union.

DIVISIONS.  The Book may be divided into five parts.  

• The first part (chaps I-XV) relates the story of the Oppression and Redemption.  
• The Second part (chaps. XVI-XIV) describes the journey to Sinai, and embodies the Decalogue and the civil laws and judgments that were to have such a profound influence on human society.  
• Then follow, in chaps. XXV-XXXI, the directions for the building of the Sanctuary. 
• Chaps XXXII-XXXIV detail Israel’s apostasy in connection with the Golden Calf; 
• and chaps. XXXV-XL describe the construction of the Sanctuary, 

—-and thus prepare the way for the Third Book of Moses, the Book of Leviticus.