A Lenten Bible Study: Genesis to Jesus Lesson Seven: From Egypt to Sinai

Here is the seventh lesson in the Saint Paul Center for Catholic Biblical Theology's Lenten Scripture study, Genesis to Jesus. Follow along, and by the end of Lent, you'll understand the importance of Easter in light of God's plan for our salvation. Sign up to receive new video lessons [here] and buy related study materials.
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When we ended the last lesson, the descendants of the twelve sons of Israel were enslaved in Egypt. In this lesson, we will see how their enslavement to Pharaoh ends. More importantly, we will see how the Lord delivers Israel from spiritual bondage in the Exodus, while he brings judgment on Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt. Now we move out of the Book of Genesis and into the Book of Exodus.

We learned in the Book of Genesis that salvation history is the story of God’s family. In that family, Adam was created to be the first-born son of creation. Adam falls, failing in his duties as first-born son, husband, king, and priest. But God doesn’t abandon humanity because of Adam’s sin. Instead, the Lord puts in motion a plan to pursue his unfaithful children and restore them to blessing through Abraham.

The Book of Exodus takes the story of salvation history one step further. It recounts how God’s covenant family becomes a nation. It still parallels, however, the overarching story in Genesis. In Exodus, God calls Abraham’s descendants, the nation of Israel, to be his “first-born” among the nations [see Exodus 4:22]. And just as God’s first-born son, Adam, fell into sin, so does Israel. His first-born among the nations falls and fails in its calling. But God, ever the good Father, continues his plan to raise the Israelites from sin to righteous and holiness.

Let’s quickly review how get from Abraham to the nation of Israel. Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac, in turn, was the father of Jacob, who was renamed Israel. Israel then has twelve sons. These twelve sons became the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. Eventually, these twelve tribes became slaves in Egypt. This takes us to the next stage of salvation history.

So far, we’ve seen how God’s family has grown from a marriage, to a household, and then to a tribe. In this lesson, we will look at how God establishes his covenant with a nation, Israel, through Moses. In Genesis 15, God told Abram that his descendants would become slaves. But eventually the Lord would deliver them from bondage and bring them back to the Promised Land. In Exodus 1:8-14, we see the first part of that promise fulfilled – a pharaoh who does not know Joseph feels threatened by the Hebrew people and enslaves them.

Miserable and oppressed, the descendants of Israel cry out to God for help. Exodus 2:23-25 tell us that: 23 “A long time passed, during which the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their bondage and cried out, and from their bondage their cry for help went up to God. 24 God heard their moaning and God was mindful of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 25 God saw the sons of Israel, and God knew their condition.”

The rest of the Book of Exodus recounts what God does after hearing their cry – how he honors his covenant promise to deliver his people so they can return to the Promised Land. His honoring of that promise begins with the birth of Moses. Exodus 1:15-22 testifies that Pharaoh, fearing how quickly the Hebrew population was growing, ordered the death of all newborn Hebrew boys. This must have been a horrific event. But one mother, Jochebed, hides her infant son until he is three months old. Then she places him in a basket in the reeds at the edge of the Nile River, and has his older sister Miriam watch him and see what happens.

What happens is that Pharaoh’s daughter discovers him – “Moses” means to “draw out” – and Pharaoh’s daughter allows Miriam, who is still nearby, to find a nurse for him. The nurse that Miriam finds, of course, is the infant’s mother. When Moses is weaned, Pharaoh’s daughter takes him as her own son and raises him.

Then one day, years later when Moses is grown, something happens that changes the course of his life. Exodus 2:11-16 tells us:

11 “On one occasion, after Moses had grown up, when he had gone out to his kinsmen and witnessed their forced labor, he saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, one of his own kinsmen. 12 Looking about and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out again, and now two Hebrews were fighting! So he asked the culprit, “Why are you striking your companion?” 14 But he replied, “Who has appointed you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses became afraid and thought, “The affair must certainly be known.” 15 When Pharaoh heard of the affair, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to the land of Midian. There he sat down by a well. 16 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock.”

Eventually, Moses marries one of those daughters, and becomes a shepherd in the land Midian. The murder of the Egyptian task master was one turning point in Moses’ life. Another comes in Exodus chapter 3:

1 “Meanwhile Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading the flock beyond the wilderness, he came to the mountain of God, Horeb. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him as fire flaming out of a bush. When he looked, although the bush was on fire, it was not being consumed. 3 So Moses decided, “I must turn aside to look at this remarkable sight. Why does the bush not burn up?” 4 When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called out to him from the bush: Moses! Moses! He answered, “Here I am.” 5 God said: Do not come near! Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. 6 I am the God of your father, he continued, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

7 “But the Lord said: I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry against their taskmasters, so I know well what they are suffering. 8 Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them up from that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Hivites and the Jebusites.”

Notice in Exodus 3:6 that God says, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham…” But then he gets more specific. He’s not just the God of Abraham, but also, “the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” Why? Because there were others, including Moses’ own in-laws the Midianites, who were descendants of Abraham, but not completely of the lineage of Moses. God was specific so that Moses would know that this was the God who had made covenant promises to Moses’ forefathers. God then tells Moses his plan in verses 9-20. Moses is to ask Pharaoh to let Israel go on a three-day journey into the wilderness so that the people can worship and make sacrifices to the Lord.

And notice: A three-day journey is all he is to ask for, nothing more. But God forewarns Moses that Pharaoh will refuse. When that happens, God promises to bring judgment on the Egyptians, lead the Israelites out of bondage, and bring them into the promised land. But before Moses sets off, God also tells him that Israel is his “first-born son” [Exodus 4:22] among the nations. God was indicating that while Israel was God’s first-born son, the other nations, including Egypt, were younger siblings. As the first-born son, Israel’s role was to be that of a covenant mediator in God’s worldwide family, the role model for the sibling nations to follow. Dr. Scott Hahn observes in his book, A Father Who Keeps Hs Promises, “God was saying in effect, ‘Israel is my first-born son. Egypt you are potentially my child, but only if you let your older brother go to worship me so that you will learn how to serve me by watching him.’ God’s plan was to raise up Israel as a royal priest to serve the other nations if only the nations would cooperate.”

Israel’s place as God’s “first-born son” explains why later, when Pharaoh refuses to let them go, the Lord takes Pharaoh’s first-born son. It was a way of making the punishment fit the crime. Before considering that punishment, however, it is important to note that God wants the Israelites to go out into the wilderness to offer sacrifices. More specifically, he wants them to sacrifice animals such as cattle, sheep, and goats.

Why does he want the Israelites to go into the wilderness? And why make these sacrifices in the first place? Moses gives us the answer in Exodus 8:25-27. He says that those sacrifices would be an abomination to the Egyptians, and that the Israelites would be stoned for attempting to make them. Offerings of cattle, sheep, and goats, would be considered abominations to Israel’s oppressors because God was calling the Israelites to sacrifice the very animals the Egyptians worshipped as gods.

Slaying a sheep or a goat inside Egypt would be like sacrificing a cow in Hindu India today. It would scandalize, shock, and outrage the Egyptians. They wouldn’t permit it to continue. The Israelites would be killed before they could complete the sacrifices. Therefore, it was imperative that they go out into wilderness to do this. But why is it so important that they make these sacrifices at all?

The answer is that God didn’t want to just lead his people out of physical bondage; he wanted to lead them out of spiritual bondage. During the centuries they lived in Egypt, the Israelites had adopted the religious practices of the natives. They were worshipping idols, the Egyptian gods, and God had to break them of that idolatry. God says this explicitly through the prophet Ezekiel:

6 “That day I swore to bring them out of the land of Egypt to the land I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, a jewel among all lands. 7 Then I said to them: Throw away, each of you, the detestable things that held your eyes; do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt: I am the Lord, your God.”

8 “But they rebelled and refused to listen to me; none of them threw away the detestable things that held their eyes, nor did they abandon the idols of Egypt. Then I considered pouring out my fury and spending my anger against them there in the land of Egypt. 9 I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be desecrated in the eyes of the nations among whom they were: in the eyes of the nations I had made myself known to them, to bring them out of the land of Egypt.”

God also makes his intent clear in Exodus 7:16, when he tells Moses to tell Pharaoh on his behalf “Let my people go that they may serve me in the wilderness” [Exodus 7:16]. “Serve” is the key word in this passage, because in Hebrew, the verb refers not only to “work” but to “worship.” The point is that God wants Israel to serve him instead of serving the false gods of Egypt. And he is willing to go to great lengths to make that happen.

Just how far God is willing to go becomes evident when Pharaoh refuses his request. God’s response? The ten plagues. We must understand that, these aren’t just ten random plagues God thought up on the spot. According to both Exodus 12:12 and Numbers 33:3-4, each, in their own way, symbolizes judgment on the gods of Egypt. For example, the first plague, where God turns the waters of the Nile into blood, demonstrated his victory over the Egyptian god Hapi, who governed the Nile. The second plague, the plague of frogs, mocked the frog goddess Heket. The fifth plague, where God destroys the cattle, executed judgment on the bull gods Apis and Hathor. And the ninth plague, when God covers Egypt with the plague of darkness for three days, defeated the sun god Ra.

It is important to note that up to this point the Israelites haven’t been directly affected by the actions God takes to discipline Pharaoh. Based on several passages in Exodus, there is ample reason to think God spares the people and the animals living in the land Goshen from the first nine plagues. Goshen is where the Israelites lived.

Regardless, even after nine devastating plagues, Pharaoh still refuses to let the Israelites, God’s first-born son among the nations, go. Because of this, God says that he will send his angel of death to slay the first-born sons in Egypt, and the first-born of all livestock [see Exodus 11:1, 4-9]. And the Israelites won’t be spared simply for being Israelites. If they want their first-born sons to survive, they have to choose to do something. They have to obey God and preform the Passover sacrifice, which God outlines for Moses in Exodus 12:1-14.

Instructions for the Passover Sacrifice

Essentially, what they have to do is: Sacrifice an unblemished lamb; Spread its blood over their doorposts; and Eat the lamb as part of a sacred meal. If they follow these directions, the angel of death will “pass over” their houses, sparing the first born. In Exodus 12:28-36, God carries out his judgment, and when it is over, Pharaoh concedes. The Israelites can go.

Once he has them out of Egypt, God leads his people through the desert, appearing to them as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He also leads them safely through the midst of the sea in Exodus 14 when he parts the waters for the Israelites, and then drowns the Egyptian soldiers that Pharaoh sent out once he began to regret his decision.

At this point, everything should be looking up for the Israelites. Moses has led them out of bondage, through the sea, and now they are on their way to the Promised Land. The Israelites are happy for about three days. Then they start to complain. Three days after the miracle of the parting of the sea, the Israelites complain that they are thirsty. Then they complain that they are hungry. God responds to their complaint about thirst by turning bitter water into good water at Marah. He answers their complaints about hunger by sending down miraculous bread from heaven – Manna – to feed them.

Then the Israelites again complain that there is no water. God responds this time by giving them water that miraculously flows from a rock. In 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, St. Paul explains that all of these events foreshadow the New Covenant in Jesus Christ:

6 “I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, 2 and all of them were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 All ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was the Christ. 5 Yet God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert. 6 These things happened as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil things, as they did.

The Israelites received a type of baptism as they were protected by the cloud and passed through the sea. They were fed with bread from heaven – a foreshadowing of the true bread from heaven, Jesus, which we receive in the Eucharist. But despite the blessings they received, the Israelites did not trust. Nor did they remain faithful. They didn’t believe that God would provide for their needs. In fact, no matter how much proof God gave them that he would take care of them, they still refused to trust, and eventually broke faith with him.

Let’s look at how that happened. After about six weeks of leading his people through the desert, the Lord brings them to Mt. Sinai. There, he announces his plan to all the Israelites. He promises to make them a “holy nation” and a “kingdom of priests,” his chosen people among all the nations of the world. But he does attach a requirement to that promise. They must obey his voice and keep his covenant [Exodus 19:5]. And what is God’s covenant? It’s primarily the Ten Commandments that are given to Israel through Moses. He also gives Moses the Book of the Covenant – civil laws that tell them how to deal with different criminal actions, such as murder, violence, and theft.

After these laws are given to Israel, a sacred ceremony is held to bind God and his chosen people together in a covenant relationship. Exodus 24:3-8 tells us:

3 When Moses came to the people and related all the words and ordinances of the Lord, they all answered with one voice, “We will do everything that the Lord has told us.” 4 Moses then wrote down all the words of the Lord and, rising early in the morning, he built at the foot of the mountain an altar and twelve sacred pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 Then, having sent young men of the Israelites to offer burnt offerings and sacrifice young bulls as communion offerings to the Lord, 6 Moses took half of the blood and put it in large bowls; the other half he splashed on the altar. 7 Taking the book of the covenant, he read it aloud to the people, who answered, “All that the Lord has said, we will hear and do.” 8 Then he took the blood and splashed it on the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you according to all these words.”

As discussed in the previous lesson, this kind of ceremony can seem strange to our contemporary minds. But the Israelites knew exactly what it meant. They knew that if they broke the covenant, they would bring the curses of the covenant upon themselves. The blood of the sacrificial animals symbolized those curses. In effect, by participating in this ceremony, the Israelites were saying, “If we break this covenant, let us become like these slaughtered animals.” Put simply, the penalty for breaking the covenant is death. It’s important also to note that the ceremony doesn’t end with the sacrifice. It ends with a meal. In Exodus 24:9-11 it says:

9 “Moses then went up with Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel, 10 and they beheld the God of Israel. Under his feet there appeared to be sapphire tilework, as clear as the sky itself. 11 Yet he did not lay a hand on these chosen Israelites. They saw God, and they ate and drank.”

This meal reveals that at this point, Israel is a royal kingdom of priests who can eat in the very presence of God. After the meal, Moses ascends Mt. Sinai where he fasts for forty days and forty nights. During his time on the mountain, God gives him a vision of the Tent of Worship the Israelites are to construct. This Tent will serve as a moveable dwelling place for God’s presence on earth. The ancient Israelites understood that what Moses saw in his vision was the heavenly sanctuary. In other words, the earthly Tent and yet to be built Temple were to be copies of the heavenly sanctuary, where God is adored by all the angels and saints. It is written in Hebrews 8:5

5 “They worship in a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary, as Moses was warned when he was about to erect the tabernacle. For he says, “See that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”

Centuries later, the prophet Isaiah has a vision of this same heavenly sanctuary. Isaiah 6:1-3 states: 1“In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple. 2 Seraphim were stationed above; each of them had six wings: with two they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they hovered. 3 One cried out to the other: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts! All the earth is filled with his glory!”

Later still, after the death of Christ, St. John the Apostle is given a vision of the heavenly Temple. He records the fullest description of this Temple in Revelation 21 and 22.

God’s Purpose in Liberating the Israelites

Through this entire series of events we learn something important. In the giving of the law, the ceremony of the covenant, and Moses’ vision of the heavenly blueprints for the Tent of Worship, we learn that God’s purpose in bringing the Israelites out of Egypt was threefold. First, he wanted to teach Israel his law, to instruct them on how to live righteous and holy lives. Second, he wanted to bring Israel into his presence through worship. And third, he wanted to dwell with them in communion as a family.

While Moses is up on the mountaintop – praying, fasting, and getting visions of heavenly blueprints – what are the Israelites doing down below? Are they waiting patiently, praying for Moses and trusting that God will honor his covenant? Unfortunately, no. In fact, they’re doing just the opposite.

While Moses is up on the mountain, the people lose all hope that he will ever return. They decide that God has abandoned them and go right back to their idolatrous habits they picked up in Egypt. They demand that Moses’ brother Aaron make them a golden calf, the image of the Egyptian god Apis, the bull god. The fact they choose to make this particular idol shows us that their doing more than just reverting back to the gods of Egypt. They’re succumbing to the three major temptations used by the devil since the beginning of time to pull people away from God – money, sex, and power.

The fact that the idol is made of gold represents Israel surrendering to the idol of wealth. The fact that the idol is Apis, a fertility god, hints that sexual immorality is involved in their betrayal of God. This is made explicit in the last part of Exodus 32:6, where we hear that the Israelites, “rose up to play.” “Rose up to play” is actually a euphemism for fornication. And again, the choice of Apis tells us that the worship of false power was involved in the Israelites’ sin. Besides being a god of fertility, the bull-god was also the god of the first-borns, and represented virility, power, and strength. In other words, by worshiping it, Israel was falsely giving Apis credit for their deliverance from Egypt. As we will see later, this was not a very good idea.

It is sometimes easy to get frustrated with the Israelites. Especially given our vantage point thousands of years later. Why didn’t they obey God’s commands, in light of all that God had done for them? Of course, we do the same thing the Israelites did, don’t we? No matter how many times God rescues us, we turn back to our false gods. Thankfully, God is as patient with us as he was with the Israelites. But as we will learn in the next lesson, while God loves us deeply, disobedience has consequences. But as we will also learn, those consequences are there for our spiritual benefit.