A few people who have taken up my challenge to read Exodus have been sharing with me how they are finding it - and being really honest, which is exactly what I would hope.  I sense that at least some of then are reading it differently from me, choosing to take larger chunks at a time, which inevitably means a very different experience.  Neither approach is 'better', neither is 'correct', each is valid and brings its own challenges and rewards.  What I notice on a slow, close reading, making notes as I go, is inevitably different from someone else reading larger chunks in a more fluid manner.  This is why it is good to be able to discuss with others what they have noted, why community Bible reading without agenda is something I am keen to encourage longer term within the Gathering Place.  For now though, it's good to hear a few voices sharing their thoughts on what they've read and how they have responded.

Exodus is a book full of violence and cruelty; it is a book in which genocide is justified in the name of God, let alone of religion... and, as one person who is sharing this exercise observed, "it could put you off religion for life."  It could indeed.  This person went on to share with me how they managed to make sense of the inclusion of such material in the canon... that this is a reflection looking back and seeking to make meaning of events by a later generation... that some of it is not literally true or at least cannot be proven...  Such responses are far from novel nor are they heretical: they are well established within Biblical scholarship, even if not not often mentioned in preaching.  The person went on to make links between the understanding of the ancient Hebrews and some of the violence and cruelty justifed on religious grounds in our own time... neither excuses the other, neither accords with the idea of a gospel of peace, but the similarities were evident.  If you weren't a person of faith, any faith, what would you make of it?  It really could put you off religion for life.

These are good questions, good things to ponder and struggle with... hopefully whether we stroll or hurtle through Exodus we will find things worth pondering.  And hopefully, if my hunch is correct, there will be times when parts of the text become a 'mirror' in which we glimpse something of ourselves.

Much, but not all, of Exodus 3 and 4 is really well known stuff - the burning bush, the long conversation with God during which Moses makes his various excuses, God gets coss and Moses agrees to go with Aaron as his his spokes-person.  But a closer read does reveal some less familiar words and one downright bewildering paragraph that it seems no-one really has a clue what it means!

Favour and Plundering

Hidden away in the midst of Moses' conversation with God, as part of the response to "who will I say has sent me" comes this:

'I will bring this people into such favour with the Egyptians that, when you go, you will not go empty-handed; each woman shall ask her neighbour and any woman living in the neighbour’s house for jewellery of silver and of gold, and clothing, and you shall put them on your sons and on your daughters; and so you shall plunder the Egyptians.’

This makes me pretty uncomfortable to say the least.  And I'm not convinced it's what happened either - the Hebrew people, far from finding favour, became linked with the dreadful calamities that befell the Egyptians.  Any giving of bounty to them as they left would be not the result of favour but of a desire to be rid of this pestilence.

More than that, though, I am uncomfortable with the idea of currying favour as a vehicle to exploit or rob.  Sorry, God, but I don't like this bit.  What about love your neighbour as yourself...

No Guarantees

When Moses and God have their long conversation, Moses is worried that people won't believe him or take him seriously.  When God gives Moses the three, decidedly bizarre, signs (staff to snake, leprous hand, water to blood), he is told that if the people don't beleive the words they "may believe the signs".  Not they 'will' but they 'may'... Moses is not given a guarantee that the people will believe, even though in the overall conversation God is saying "this will happen and you are the one to do it".

Interesting to ponder the place of free will within an overarching trajectory chosen by God. 

A reminder, were one needed, that the task of the preacher, missionary, evangelist, whoever is not to achieve x, y, or z, but rather to be faithful to what they understand God to have called and commissioned them to do.  Even Jesus had people who walked away after they heard what he had to say...

What the....?

So this is the bit that is totally puzzling, that looks to me like a random fragment that has been inserted and I haven't a scooby what it means or why it's here...  I've included the paragraph that immediately precedes it, to give such context as there is...

And the Lord said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord: Israel is my firstborn son. I said to you, ‘Let my son go that he may worship me.’ But you refused to let him go; now I will kill your firstborn son.” ’

 On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord met him and tried to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched Moses’ feet with it, and said, ‘Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!’ So he let him alone. It was then she said, ‘A bridegroom of blood by circumcision.’

The final words of God to Moses are troubling in thier own right - why, oh why, would God decide to harden pharaoh's heart? (I recall an essay title for a Biblical studies course on Exodus that rang along the lines "God plays with pharaoh like a puppet, discuss"  - it certainly appears thus if you read some parts of the Exodus narrative).  The threat/promise to kill pharaoh's first-born son, however horrendous we find it, possibly forms the context for what comes next... or at least how we hear/read it.

This paragraph illustrates the ambiguity of using lots of pronouns, and Bible translators make interpretive choices not always present in the original.  Whilst the NRSV names Moses, the original Hebrew uses the pronoun 'his'.

So we have something along the lines of God met [somebody] and tried to kill [somebody] but Zipporah* circumcised her son** and touched [somebody's] feet with the foreskin, saying '[somebody is] a bridegroom of blood to me'.

Confused?  I certainly was!  Bewildered as to the purpose of this paragraph?  I am!  By the wonder that is Wikipedia, you can read a bit more about  it here, should you wish to.

A couple of notes...

* I am fascinated that Zipporah is named clearly here when no-one else is.

** We don't know which son (she had two) this was or why the circumcision was undertaken only at this point, never mind quite what it signified.

I am utterly bewildered by the idea that en route to Egypt God decided, seemingly capriciously, to kill either Moses or one of his sons... Huh? (less polite expressions are available!)

What do we do with bits of the Bible like this?  Do we quietly ignore them (tempting).  Do we agonise over interpretation, forcing them to fit our own theological niceties (convenient, if requiring mental gymnastics).  Do we note them, allow them to puzzle us but not lose too much sleep over it (probably my default!).  Or something else... (what do/would you do?)

This short passage is just plain weird, some others are highly disturbing.  Perhaps what spotting this afresh today has done, is to remind me, and anyone who has read this far, that the Bible is a complex and confusing collection of texts, and that sometimes it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense!

The first couple of chapters of Exodus are pretty familiar stuff, the scene-setting for what is to follow, so it's easy either to skip over them thinking we know all there is to know. What follows isn't a nice tidy theological reflection or a sermonette, it's just some thoughts on the things that struck me, either afresh or for the first time, as I slowly read these opening words.

They might side with our enemies

What worried the Pharaoh in place at the start of this story was not just that the Hebrew people were prolific (the original 70 descendants of Jacob have multiplied considerably!) but that if it came to war, these foreigners might side with the enemy rather than with Egypt.

I couldn't help but think of the media-fuelled fear about migrants entering the UK from Eastern Europe, and about Syrian refugees entering Europe... if we let them in then they might/will... and we might not like the consequences.

At the start of the story, there is no sense that the Hebrews are unhappy in Egypt, it is only when the Pharaoh's paranoia turns to hatred, and hatred to oppression, and oppression to attempted genocide, that things begin to go wrong.

It made me wonder just what it is that people fear in those they perceive as 'other' that has the potential to lead to such extreme responses.

Non-violent Subversion

The story of the Hebrew midwives and their quiet disobedience to the edict to kill baby boys is as profound as it is comedic.  Did Pharaoh really believe that the Hebrew women were physiologically different from their Egyptian counterparts and so gave birth before the midwives arrived?  Did they, perhaps, exploit his ignorance and prejudice?

Recent commemorations of the horrendous actions undertaken by Nazis towards those they perceived as 'other' serve as a reminder that otherwise intelligent people can believe nonsense about those they perceive as 'other'.  So perhaps Pharaoh serves for us as a 'type' of the ignorant bigot who makes sweeping statements about the physical attributes of people of other races.  And if so, do the midwives somehow exploit or subvert that?

Girl Power!

Nothing new here, but a reminder of the vital role of women, named and unnamed, in the sweep of Scripture.  The midwives who refused to obey the comand of Pharaoh; the mother who hid her boy-child for as long as she could, the unnamed Princess who defied her father's edict by adopting the Hebrew 'orphan'...

The Importance of Names

In many cultures, to this day, naming a child is hugely significant, with the choice being concerned not with it being 'pretty' or 'strong' but that it expresses something of the parents' hopes for their child.  In our society we have, for the most part, lost any sense of connectedness to the names we choose, with even familial patterns disappearing in favour of 'fashionable' and/or 'exotic' (other culture) and/or 'made up' names.

Moses' name, given to him by the Princess ensured that he never forgot his origins, drawn out of the water, out of the place where Pharaoh had decreed he should die (once the midwives had failed to comply, the Egyptians were instructed to throw Hebrew boys into the Nile, where they would drown).  No matter what life brought him, no matter how much he aclimatised to court life, he was contantly reminded of who he was, where his life began.

And his son, Gershon, whose name means "I have been an alien residing in a foreign land" (snappy, huh?) would never forget his origins either.  A mixed race child (his mother a Midianite) born into a race of resident aliens living in a land where they had become despised.  A sense of rootlessness from the day of his birth, a constant reminder of his own origins.

I'm not suggesting we should give children names that are burdensome or overly profound in meaning, but in this naming we catch a sense of the significance of names, of words.  What I call you, what you call me, carries more weight than either of us might realise...

In part we are back to Pharaoh and Hitler and media-fuelled paranoia, that words form and shape our world sublty or otherwise.  But perhaps we are also invited to think about the names we give things, the metaphors we employ to describe events and so on - do they inspire hope or fear, love or hate; do they encourage or discourage...

"God took Notice"

The closing sentences of today's reading is the first overt hint of the Hebrews crying out to God.  Moses is safely living far away in Midian, is married and has a family.  Back in Egypt, nothing has changed, the oppressive regime continues and the people cry out to God.

"God looked upon the Israelites and God took notice of them."

God could, I suppose, have looked, shrugged the divine shoulders and ignored what was happening.  But we are told that God took notice.

Nothing changed straight away, indeed it would be "forty years", or a very long time, until there would be any evidence that God had taken notice.  Many people would have died waiting.  Others would have questioned or doubted.

When we look around at the world of which we are part, when the plight of the poorest and most vulnerable troubles us, when we recoil from the words and actions of others, when our own prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling, perhaps we need to be reminded of this too:  God looks upon all creation, and God takes notice.

Today is Ash Wednesday, so I could, quite reasonably, have waited until tomorrow to start my Lenten challenge of reading may way through Exodus and Numbers (total 76 chapters) but actually I was eager to get started, so I began today.

I am deliberately choosing to read using the online tool Oremus Bible Browser where you can choose to hide both verse numbers and section headings, restoring the text more or less to its original form (chapters, verses, and especially section headings, are a much, much later addition designed to make publication and referencing easier).  The advantage of this approach is that I won't be steered into someone else's mindset about where breaks in the narrative occur... though by choosing to accept chapter breaks to manage the chunks I read, that is, to a degree, unavoidable.

I'm sure most readers know the etymology of the names of the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch or Torah) but just in case anyone has forgotten, it's worth a quick reminder...

Genesis = beginnings or origins and echoes the opening words "In the beginning"

Exodus = road/way out or departure, expressing the focus of this book as the departure from Egypt.

Leviticus = the book of the Levites, and contains the priestly codes and laws of the emergent nation

Numbers = well, numbers!  It refers to the lists of data which open this book.  Why this one is in plain English and the others carry eahcoes of the Septuagine Greek I have no idea!  Apparently it's Hebrew name is be-Midbah which means 'In the wilderness' and is a far better name in my opinion!

Deuteronomy = second law, which explains why so much of it seems to repeat earlier material, albeit slightly differently.

Setting aside all the theories of Yawist, Elohist, Deuteronomist and Priestly traditions, all woven (and readily discernible) into these ancient texts, we  have some complex, confusing, sometimes contradictory material with which to engage as we ponder the stories of some very ordinary humans and their relationship with God. 

I am hoping that my 'way out' Lenten reading will give me things to ponder and maybe my thoughts will spark your own.

So, welcome to this forty day (or thereabouts) meander through part of the Old Testament!

Once upon a time, Shrove Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, was a day on which people ate up all the perishable, rich food in their larders before the beginning of the penitential season of Lent.

How times have changed! Nowadays if you want to, your can buy in ready made pancakes/crepes with all manner of lucious fillings, or you can by batter mixes in packets (just add egg and milk - a dear way to buy flour!) or pots where you add water and shake.

Yesterday soneome treated me to home made pancakes for tea - with ice-cream, banana and butterscotch sauce... they were very, very yummy.  Today I used up the last of the batter to make two more pancakes, which I ate with banana and maple syrup... and tasty they were too.

It's a funny day, liturgically, as for most of us its spiritual origins are long lost.  Instead of clearing our fridges and cupboards of luxuries, we buy in extra ingredients.  Instead of penitence, we party. 

Perhaps though, as we hover on the brink between 'ordinary time' (however brief it may be in any given year) and 'Lent' it is good to pause, if only briefly, to decide how the next six weeks will be spent.

This year, my plan is to read through Exodus (40 chapters) and Numbers (36 chapters) and to reflect, briefly each day on what I have (re-)discovered.  Two chapters a day, with time off on Sundays, is not a huge ask.  And I am excited to see what it will bring to me, so much so that I've actually grown a little impatient the last few days... So tomorrow the journey will begin!

For now, though, Shrove Tuesday is a great excuse for a little self-indulgence!