ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK EXODUS DR. DAVID ADAMS #24 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. *** >> Thanks for that answer. Let me ask another question, if I may. Like I mentioned back when we began, I always find it easier to study if I know what kinds of things the professor is likely to emphasize. As we read through the text that you have chosen, what kinds of things should we be looking for? >> Well, that's a very important question. And one of the reasons that it is an important question is that one of the most important things that we have to learn when we learn to do exegesis is we have to learn what kinds of questions to ask. If we don't learn to ask the right questions, we won't be able to get the right answers. And so that's what we're going to focus on as we move through the text that we look at, what kinds of questions we need to ask of the text and then how to get the right answers to those questions. Generally speaking, those questions fall into four groups. The first group will deal with context. And so we'll be asking questions about what is the role of this text in the broader narrative and questions like: What is the literary function of this text? What does it do? What does it contribute to the unfolding story in the book of Exodus? And finally, we'll not only ask about the literary function in its context, but also its theological function. You know, what ideas or -- how does God use this passage to unfold the message of his redeeming work? And what it means for Israel to be the people of God in the book of Exodus. The second group of questions we might describe as being literary issues. So we'll ask questions like: What kind of genre is this text? Is it dialogue? Is it narrative? Is it poetry? And what are the implications of that? We'll also look at structure. Structure is particularly important in narrative because narratives unfold and develop and build to a climax and usually that has something to do with where the emphasis is in the text. And that emphasis in the text generally tells us what the important thing is that we need to be aware of. Finally, another literary issue that we'll pay a great deal of attention to is the history of interpretation. And the reason that we have to pay attention to that is every commentary you read about the book of Exodus is going to deal one way or another with how historical criticism has treated this text and whether it has divided the text up into minor groups or whether it is treated as a unity. And we'll need to be aware of those issues and also learn how to respond to them. So we'll talk about some of those kinds of things as we go along the way. Then of course, we'll also pay special attention to theological issues that arise in the text. One thing that we always want to look for is: What is the main theological emphasis? There may be many, you know, theological points or many things that we could say about a text theologically. But we always want to be aware of the hierarchy of ideas or concepts in the text. What's the most important point that God is trying to make in this text? And then how do the other subsidiary or secondary points relate to that central point in the text? So we'll also look at, you know, what are those secondary points. And how do they relate. Then we'll sometimes as appropriate look at key theological language. What are some of the words in the text that are particularly important? This is a little more difficult to do, frankly, when we're just looking at a text on the basis of English than we are in Hebrew because it's a little more difficult to get at the theological vocabulary if you can't actually look at the vocabulary. And translations are sometimes adequate and sometimes they are not. And we will talk about some of these. And especially the keyword kesid in the second part of the book that was already mentioned. And finally, as Christians, as we were talking about in a former question, we read the Old Testament with Christ as the hermeneutical key for understanding it. And so we're always going to be asking christological questions about the text. What does this text teach us about Christ and his work? And how do we apply this text? How do we preach this text by preaching Christ in the text? And how do we do it appropriately without just kind of allegorizing or importing material that's not actually there? Finally, we'll from time to time also talk about the implications of the text for today and how we apply that in preaching and teaching and talking about the Christian life today. So we will talk about the relationship between some of these texts and doctrine. I don't teach systematic theology and don't pretend to be a systematician. But there is a great deal of doctrine in the book of Exodus one way or another. So we'll highlight some of those. We won't be able to talk in depth about all of them. But we will touch upon many of the most important ones as we go along. We'll also talk about the implications for church practice. For example, what does what God teaches Israel in the book of Exodus about worship tell us about the way the church should worship today, if anything? Those are kind of questions that we'll answer. And finally, we will look at how we preach a text and how we move from just understanding the text intellectually to proclaiming the text. And that will come up. Again, not in the same way with every text. But as we move through. Now, I mentioned that literary issues would be important for us. And perhaps this is a good point to just take a moment to talk about the literary structure of the book of Exodus as a whole before we begin to move into the individual passages. Because we really do need to understand the way that theology is expressed in narrative text differently than the way it's expressed in let's say a Pauline epistle. Understanding a narrative text depends upon things like understanding the role of characters and the way that character development occurs in the text. It means looking at and understanding conflict and how conflict is resolved in the narrative. It means examining event, you know, what happens, and dialogue and summary passages that sort of emphasize important elements in the text. And finally, we need to learn to relate the individual texts, the smaller units to the larger units. Again, to see how they work in context. That's all part of theology expressed in a narrative. Meaning in these narrative texts is often communicated as a character is revealed, changes and events shape the life of a character. And the way those changes take place are often important theologically. One obvious example of that from the book of Genesis is the character development, shall we say, that takes place in the person of Joseph in the Joseph narrative. It's a key element in that passage. In the book of Exodus, frankly, the main character who develops in the course of the narrative is Yahweh. And God is the central character whose development captures our attention most directly in these texts. We'll also look at defining events. How the crises in the text are resolved and how that helps to communicate the theological message of the text. There are a few places where there are direct statements, particularly in dialogue. For example, in Exodus 34 when God describes himself to Moses. That's a direct expression of the theological idea. And those are often important. They frequently happen in dialogue and also occasionally in summary statements. And finally, again, sort of the theological application of context. Sometimes meaning is communicated not so much through an individual event as the way events are put together into a sequence to reveal something. We'll see that happens in the book of Exodus in a very important way between Chapter 24 and Chapter 34. And we'll talk about that later in the text when we get there. Well, the book of Exodus as a whole breaks itself down into two major parts: Chapters 1 to 14 -- really 1 to 15 Verse 12 to be precise. And then the latter half of Chapter 15 through Chapter 40. I like to refer to the first part of the book of Exodus as the drama of redemption. And let's look at what we might call the narrative ark of this part of the book and just see just to get an overview of how it develops. This begins with the call of Moses in Exodus 3. It begins to develop in the conflict that arises between Yahweh and the gods of Egypt. And that conflict is carried out on the stage of human events as Moses confronts Pharaoh in the series of confrontations that finally build into the plague narratives and are resolved in the Passover. The Passover kind of marks the transition from the building up of the tension to the resolving of the tension. And that carries on through Chapter 14 at the destruction of the Egyptian army and the victory of Yahweh, the ultimate victory of Yahweh over his enemies at Yam Suph. And finally, that's -- that ark kind of comes to an end, it lands, if you will, in the summary section that we get in the poem in Exodus 15, especially Verses 1 to 12 where the story is retold in poetic form and celebrated as Verse 11 concludes the section by saying, "Who is like Yahweh among the gods?" And the answer is no one. And we can see that from all the things that have happened in the first 14 chapters of the book. In terms of dramatic tension, if we were to look at a chart of the tension as it unfolds in the book of Exodus, it would start off fairly low. The first two chapters are basically introductory material. Then we would get a little rise in the dramatic tension. We get to Chapter 3 and the first encounter between Moses and Yahweh. And then the tension would continue to go up just a little bit as Yahweh sends Moses out and he has the first encounter with Pharaoh. And then it would be another peak when Moses goes back to talk to Yahweh after his first attempt to get Pharaoh to let his people go didn't succeed. Pharaoh rejected it. After that discussion in Exodus 6, there's a steady climb in the tension through Chapters 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 until we come to the Passover in Chapter 12. So we get a steady increase in the dramatic tension. And there in the Passover, in the destruction of the first born of Egypt and the coming out of the people of Israel, we get sort of a release of tension and the story sort of relaxes then. And we -- we think that we should come to a point where we get one of those "and they all lived happily ever after" kind of endings. But this is not that kind of story. This is more like one of those horror movies where the bad guy gets killed at the end and everybody relaxes and all of a sudden the bad guy jumps up again and they have to kill him all over again because he wasn't really dead. He was only knocked unconscious or something like that. In the same way after the Hebrews leave Egypt, there's a falloff in the dramatic tension. And then another big spike that reaches its ultimate conclusion as Pharaoh's army rushes out and tries to capture the Hebrews again and they are destroyed in the crossing of Yam Suph. And that final peak of the tension in the story brings the first part of the book to a climax. The second part of the book is completely different. And we'll see this as we go through. It begins with the second part of that poem in Chapter 15 beginning with Verse 13 where a new theme is introduced, the theme of Yahweh leading his people by way of his kesid, his mercy, his grace. This word doesn't occur in the first part of the book at all. And the idea comes into the story for the first time here in Chapter 15 Verse 13. And when they leave the shore of the sea, a few things happen. We sort of have a "getting to know you phase" as Yahweh and his people start to settle down and live together and the people grumble. So there's a little rising tension there in the course of the journey to Mount Sinai. The next major event is the coming to Mount Sinai, the appearance of Yahweh, the giving of the Ten Commandments. And this section kind of comes to an end with the making of the covenant in Chapter 24. As the narrative ark continues, we get provisions for worship in Chapters 25 to 31 and then the crisis of the golden calf in Chapters 32, 33 and 34. And this crisis of the golden calf is really the central dramatic crisis in the second part of the book. After it's resolved in Chapter 34, then we kind of cruise to the end of the book. We really are sort of in the danumua or falling action. And God regives the instructions about the rebuilding of the tabernacle all over again. And we end with the completion of the tabernacle in Chapter 40. So the narrative ark that begins in Chapter 15 Verse 13 continues and comes to an end there. So again, in terms of dramatic tension, the second part of the book looks quite a bit different from the first part. We begin, you know, maybe sort of about halfway up on the scale or not quite halfway up on the scale of dramatic tension. And again, we have a little bit of rising tension but not very much over Chapters 16, 17, 18. We get a peak at Chapter 19 and 20 with the giving of the torah and the Ten Commandments. That's a big high point in the book. But then the tension falls off dramatically after that in Chapters 21 to 23, the part of the book we call the Book of the Covenant. Frankly, from a narrative perspective, it's pretty boring. Don't equate boring with unimportant, however. It's important material. It's just not narrative -- it's not very exciting from the perspective of narrative. But that comes to a screeching halt in Chapter 24 when we get another major peak as the people then agree to the covenant with Yahweh and the elders and Moses go up on the mountain and see God face to face and dine with him there. It's a major high point in the second part of the book. Then again, we get -- we have a quick falloff to a low level as we move through the instructions for building the tabernacle. From the perspective of narrative and dramatic tension, it's boring stuff. That doesn't mean it's theologically unimportant. It just means that it doesn't have a lot of dramatic tension. That's why when most people read the book, they kind of flip through that stuff rather quickly. Because there's an intuitive sense that there's not a lot of narrative tension there. Again, don't make the mistake of making -- thinking that lack of narrative intention means unimportant. It's important material. But then we come to what is the ultimate crisis in the second half of the book, the apostasy of Israel with the golden calf in Chapters 32 and how Yahweh responds to that in Chapters 33 and 34. This is the major crisis in the book. And we'll examine this in detail as we look at those texts. After that, again, the tension falls off to a pretty low level. Basically God repeats his instructions about the tabernacle so it's, if anything, even less dramatic than before because we've already heard it once. And then we get another spike at the end of Chapter 40. I've chosen the text that I have for this book for a good reason. If you look at that sort of chart of the dramatic tension, the texts that we're looking at are all points where the dramatic tension rises and is high in the text because those are all key points in the story. So the text that we're going to look at in Chapter 3, Chapter 6, Chapter 12, 19 and 20 and 24, 32 to 34 and then finally Chapter 40 are chosen very carefully because they reflect key points in the development of the narrative. And so we will look at them in detail. So I guess we might as well turn now to the first of those texts in Exodus Chapter 3. *** 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. ***