Full Text for Exodus- Volume 25 - Why did we start with Chapter 3 instead of with the story of Moses' birth and how he was raised in the court of Pharaoh? (Video)

ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK EXODUS DR. DAVID ADAMS #25 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Why did we start with Chapter 3 instead of with the story of Moses' birth and how he was raised in the court of Pharaoh? >> That's a good question, Eric. It actually can't be answered directly from looking at this text. To answer the question, we have to look at this text in the context of the book as a whole or especially in the context of the first part of the book as a whole. To understand the function of an individual text within a narrative whole, one needs to ask what the function of this text is. That is to say: What function does it perform within the main narrative of the whole? We mentioned previously that the book of Exodus falls into two main parts, Chapters 1 to 14 and Chapters 16 to 40 with Chapter 15 serving as a bridge between the two. Now, if we break the first part of this down in Chapters 1 to 15 and ask "What function do Chapters 1 and 2 perform and what function does Chapter 3 perform in the drama, the narrative ark of the first part of the book?" we can get at this by asking two questions. First we can ask the question simply: What happens in the text? And secondly the question: What's the relation of this action, that is the relation of what happens in this text, to what happens in the surrounding text? Let's look at the answers to those questions. In Chapters 1 and 2 we get Moses introduced as a character. Moses is, as you already know, one of the central protagonists in the story. And also in these chapters we set the context for what's to happen later by introducing the situation that the Hebrews are in. Remember when we ended the book of Genesis, the Hebrews weren't slaves in Egypt. They were actually honored guests of Pharaoh and his court. The situation has changed from the end of Genesis to the beginning of Exodus. And that change is spelled out for us so that we have a proper understanding of what in dramatic literature is sometimes called the ***mezasa to use the French phrase. Basically the setting of the scene. And one encounters that French phrase from time to time in the commentary so I thought I would throw it out for you. The other thing that we learned is how Moses comes to leave Egypt and be in the desert with the Midianites and with the family of Jethro so that the story can begin, you know, at that point. So what we have in Chapters 1 and 2 is basically all context setting or scene setting. It introduces the characters, sets the stage. Gives us the situation in which the story is going to unfold by bringing us up to date about what's happened in the intervening several hundred years. In Chapter 3 then God appears to Moses and gives Moses some instructions. He sends him back to Egypt on a mission to deliver the Hebrews. Well, that's what happens. Now, what can we see from this -- well, from this we can see that Chapters 1 and 2 are, as we've said, context setting and that Chapter 3 really initiates the primary narrative ark. If the primary narrative ark is the story of how God redeems Israel, that story starts when God calls Moses and sends Moses on the mission to redeem Israel. So we begin with Chapter 3 because in a sense, Chapter 3 is really where the book of Exodus begins. It's where at least the story really begins. Now, that doesn't mean that Chapters 1 and 2 are irrelevant. They are background information. But it's important background information. We couldn't tell the story without knowing who Moses was. We couldn't tell the story without knowing that Israel had gone from being honored guests in Egypt to being slaves in Egypt. And so it's important information. It's just that we have a limited amount of time in this class. We can't stop and look at every text. And so we're going to pick some highlights along the way. And we're going to begin with Chapter 3 as the first really important text because that's where the story of redemption in the book of Exodus really begins, on the mountain of Sinai with Moses and the encounter with Yahweh there. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***