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Exodus 15-18

Introduction

This lesson covers from the celebration after Israel crosses the Red Sea, to when God defeats the Amalekites with Joshua leading the army. Again, please refer to these resources as well: this commentary, the NETS Bible, and this LXX Interlinear.

Exo. 15

The bulk of this chapter is the celebration song the people of Israel sing in praise of the mighty God who delivered them. Hebrew poetry tends to be in the form of couplets, where a statement is made and then repeated in different words, rather than the vowel rhyming we’re accustomed to in English. At least for the time being, Israel is truly worshiping God from the heart.

This is one, but not the only, way to worship God. In both Testaments, it’s clear that God wants to be in a parent-child relationship with us, and that true worship is when our daily lives reflect that relationship. As it says in Isaiah 29:13, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” And as Jesus put it in Mat. 15:11, “It’s not what goes into us that defiles us, it’s what comes out.” In the same way, it’s not what we do outwardly that is true worship, but where that worship is coming from. If our hearts are not in it, and we don’t live like God matters, it’s just empty words and hollow tunes.

This brings up a growing problem in Christian worship: The “worship team” or church leadership imposes its will and taste in music on the congregation. But how can we join our hearts in worship if the music is grating, or the lyrics are shallow, or the tune is nearly impossible for the average non-musician to sing? When I was much younger, I thought that only luddites would forbid the use of instruments in worship, but maybe they were on to something. How many of our worship songs would be singable without instruments? Don’t get me wrong though; even Miriam and all the women had tamborines in this passage, and they all not only sang but also danced. But I think the modern church has made participation in worship nearly impossible. Somewhere between “Bringing In The Sheaves” and “Draw Me Close” is worship singing that truly honors God and what God has done and will do, rather than what we say we will do or how God makes us feel.

Now back to the text, where Moses’ sister Miriam, who is called a prophet, leads the women in worship. She is no less a prophet than any man would be, and she isn’t the only such woman in scripture. We need to remember why it is that God has put emphasis on first-born males and not females: It’s a reminder that Pharaoh tried to murder them (and later that Herod would murder them). Still, through most of history, it’s been mostly baby girls who were killed. Even today in some eastern cultures, girls are aborted at a much higher rate than boys. This is what societies do, not what God does or approves.

After the celebrations, Moses leads the people into the wilderness, but after three days of walking they find no water. So the fickle and faithless Israelites do what they do best: whine and grumble against Moses. Even so, they get what they demand: a miracle from God through Moses, which God uses to remind them who he is. They seem to need a lot of reminders. This illustrates God’s patience and reluctance to punish.

Exo. 16

Shockingly, they get to the next area of wilderness and start complaining again, saying they’d have been better off to die in Egypt, where at least they had pots of meat and all the bread they wanted.

So God says, “Fine, I’ll rain down bread from the sky, but I’m going to test their sincerity in following my rules!” So he tells them to gather the bread for six days but not the seventh, which means that on the sixth they must gather twice as much. Moses points out to the people that it isn’t him and Aaron they’re complaining against, it’s God.

Then God has Moses tell Aaron to assemble the people and tell them that God will give them meat in the evening and bread in the morning, to show them once again that he’s God and they’re not. As promised, he sends a flock of quail for meat, and the next morning the ground is covered in something they decide to call “what’s this?”, which is where the word manna comes from. They collect just what they need for the number of people in their home, which is a good reminder that what God does with one person is not always what he does with another. Moses also tells them not to try and save any for the next day, but of course many of them don’t listen, and the next day the manna has become worm-ridden and smelly.

The next test comes on the sixth day, when they’re told to gather twice as much and it would not go bad the next day. But some people go out the seventh day to gather more anyway, and of course none is found. This is the first use of the word sabbath meaning rest. Like circumcision, it predates the actual Levitical law, so some take this to mean it is a rule for Gentiles as well. But again, this is for the nation of Israel; it is not given as a command to all nations. There is no evidence that the whole world ever knew to make every seventh day holy to God.

As a reminder for coming generations, God tells Moses to have Aaron collect a jar full of manna to be preserved. This manna would be the “bread” of Israel throughout the full 40 years of their wandering. Constable states that since caravans passed through the areas of wandering, the people of Israel certainly traded with them and so had other food during that time, but manna was their staple nonetheless.

Exo. 17

God has Israel move on, and again they come to a place where there is no potable water, so again they take it out on Moses. So God has Moses take the elders to a certain rock, and Moses is told to strike the rock with his staff, which causes water to flow out. It’s as much a miracle that this stopped the grumbling again for the time being, as that water came from a rock.

As if they needed another reason to whine, in verse 8 we see that Israel is attacked by the army of Amalek. But God has another lesson to teach them. They muster an army, and during the battle Moses is going to stand on a hilltop with his staff in his hand. This is where we first meet Joshua, and notice that the Greek name for Joshua is Iesous— exactly the same as the name of Jesus in the New Testament.

Moses is accompanied on the hilltop by Aaron and someone named Hur, while Joshua leads the army. As long as Moses holds up his hands, presumably to hold up the staff, Israel prevails in the battle, but the tide turns every time he lowers them. So to deal with fatigue, they have Moses sit on a rock while the other two hold up his hands. Clearly it is God winning the battle, even though people are actually fighting it.

So God tells Moses to write this down as another memorial, and have Joshua memorize it, because God would remain the enemy of the Amalekites and eventually wipe out the memory of them from the earth. It will also remind them that the battles they win as a nation are not won by them, and that God will only enable them to win as long as they walk in his ways. We should note also that Moses wrote words, since liberal critics claim writing hadn’t been invented yet.

Exo. 18

After this, Moses’ father-in-law Jethro hears about all this, so he comes to see him and brings along Moses’ wife and sons, and Moses gets them up to date on all that has happened. Then Jethro praises God and accepts that this God is the one above all others.

The next day, Moses sits down to judge the disputes that had arisen among the Israelites, as was his habit. But Jethro sees how inefficient and exhausting this is, so he advises Moses to only deal directly with issues concerning direct commands from God and the toughest legal cases, but appoint people of high character and wisdom to handle the day-to-day disputes among them. Moses takes his advice and delegates judging authority to them by tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands. A rough equivalent would be how the US deals with legal issues on city, county, state, and federal levels. Though Israel as yet had not been given a detailed law code, they certainly were familiar with such things.

In the next lesson, we’ll move on to the beginnings of that law. But to end this lesson, take a look at Constable’s notes on this chapter for some uncanny details comparing Jethro and Melchizedek (p. 165-66).