[This article is part of a doctoral dissertation entitled, Dramatic Ironies and Illusions in the Book of Exodus: A Profile of a Nation’s Identity, Responsibility, and Destiny, written by Sinaite ELZ@SK6.]
Spiritual values are those that pertain to the soul, having holy, divine, sacred, and immaterial worth. They are of priceless importance that transcends the test of time. The promises of God to Israel’s ancestors forged the nation’s faith that leaned toward ceremonial or liturgical expression. Moses lived to see the provisional fulfillment of the two out of three promises. The spiritual values in the book of Exodus constitute the promises of God to Israel through Abraham and Moses and their commitment to the God who delivered them from bondage.
Promises of the Ancestral God of Israel.
God promised to bless Abram and his descendants as well as all those who blessed them, to curse any who cursed them and to make Abram’s people a channel of blessing to all mankind. God changed his ame to Abraham, meaning “father of a multitude” because his seed shall be as numerous as the stars and shall be nations and kings. The promise was expanded by stating that the seed would be afflicted fonr 400 years and afterwards shall possess Canaan, the Promised Land. Circumcision was a symbol of God’s everlasting covenant with the Hebrews as a people. God’s promises to Abraham were passed on to Moses and the Hebrews in Egyptas Abraham’s descendants. In Exodus, God promised to be with Moses in Egypt for him to accomplish his mission as deliverer: “And he said, Certainly, I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain”(Exodus 3:12).
He had promised to be with the Israelites in the wilderness to train them as his own, separate from all the people on earth: “And he said, my presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest” (Exodus 33:14)
In the faith of ancientIsrael, the guidance out ofEgyptwas inseparably connected with the guidance into the Promised Land. When Abraham went toCanaan, God appeared to him and said: “Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him” (Genesis 12:7).
This promise was reaffirmed to Isaac and Jacob, and was renewed in the time of Moses. Hence,Canaanis known as the Promised Land. The Hebrew religion found expression in faith in God who makes promises and guides into the future. This “nomadic faith” that Buber (1991) describes as having a different accent from that of the religions of sedentary peoples of the Fertile Crescent, in which the cult was bound to sacred places, worships “the God of the fathers,” who guides the ancestors into new places as wanderers and adventurers. They ventured in faith, as did Abraham who migrated from Mesopotamia, and they trusted their mobile God to lead them into the future, toward the realization of the divine promises. The people’s historical pilgrimage provided the background of Exodus. God in heaven saw the trouble of Israel when they were in Egypt so He delivered them. When the Israelites committed idolatry, God threatened to destroy them and make a great nation out of the children of Moses. God had promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that he would make of their children a great nation. This promise could have been fulfilled through Moses, who was a son of Jacob. But God had also promised that their King would come through the tribe of Judah, and Moses was of the tribe of Levi. If God destroyed the rest of the people of Israel, His promise to Judah could not be fulfilled. Hence, his words were to test Moses and he was pleased to see Moses’ faith.
A Mother’s Faith.
Jochebed, the mother of Moses, was given the task by the Egyptian princess to nurse and train Moses. This is an amazing choice because she was a willing mother, contrary to those who look upon the responsibilities of motherhood as a burden. She looked upon her duty as her highest privilege. No gladder time ever came in her life history than this time when she realized that to her was given the matchless privilege of mothering and training her own child. She entered upon her task with an eagerness born out of a motherly love, and with the faith so strong to see it work through. By faith, Moses was hidden, by faith, Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. So she was rewarded by the raising up of a great life that fathered a nation and one of the supreme makers of history.
The Commitment of Moses.
For 40 years, Moses’ life demanded a remarkable exercise of patience and contentment with his humble office. When God commissioned him to deliver his people from the Pharaoh’s hand, although he was at first reluctant, he at length accepted the appointment, and returned to Egypt to undertake the mission. Having full knowledge of the desert, he knows that it contains no sufficient provision for such a great host, yet he trusted and obeyed his God.
Self-denial and the patriotism of Moses shone remarkably when God threatened to destroy the nation and to raise up a better people from the seed of Moses. God’s proposal was not taken advantage of by Moses, even if it would have brought much distinction to his family. Instead he interceded for the people until their ancient position and promises were restored (Exodus 32). It is evident that Moses knows fully well how he and the Hebrews stand before God based on their election as God’s chosen people. This strengthened his resolve to bring back the glory of the status and promises made by God to their ancestors. God’s word “put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for “The place whereon thou standest is holy ground” implies a call for Moses to come barefoot in the presence of God as an honest declaration of his utter dependence upon him. In his nomadic world, Moses would have fashioned his own sandals – self-made or more broadly, man-made. Standing in the realm of his own creation limited his capabilities. To step out of his sandals, the ones that he produced enabled Moses to experience the full majesty and might of God’s creative possibilities. Moses modeled man’s inadequacy in facing life’s impossibilities 40 years long and a wilderness wide: an unyielding king, an army in hot pursuit, an ocean as an obstacle to escape, a long desert journey with a million to feed. He had come to terms with a God whose capability is infinitely larger than man at his best. His commitment to the will of God made him give up human arrogance in exchange for rich possibilities and provisions.
Moses is being called to “step” into a new realm of possibility-into a quality of life he cannot produce his own. He is directed to take a step of faith into “holy ground” – the turf that has come under the touch of the divine, and cannot be produced by human actions. So God was inviting Moses to commit to the fundamental fact of every human life: in order to stand up with God, one must come to him on the terms of his holiness, not one’s own.
The Commitment of the Levites.
As Moses came down from the mountain after being with the Lord for 40 days and 40 nights, he saw the Israelites worshipping the gold bull. He felt the same way as God did about the sin of idolatry. He crushed the idol into powder, threw the gold dust on water and made Israel drink it as if they were drinking their own sin. He broke the tables of stone bearing the Decalogue, for the people had already broken the covenant. Furthermore, he acted on God’s command to kill those who had rejected the word of God. The men of Levi obeyed the command and slew three thousand of the guilty on that day. Moses and the Levites’ commitment to their sacred covenant with God prepared them for their great work of caring for the tabernacle.
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