ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK EXODUS DR. DAVID ADAMS #45 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. *** >> The giving of the Ten Commandments have always seemed to me to be the highlight of the whole book of Exodus or at least the highlight after the crossing of the Red Sea. Is this in literary terms the climax of the book? >> I think, Nick, to answer this question, what we need to do is go back and talk about the narrative ark of the second half of the book. We talked a lot about the narrative ark of the first half of the book and we've mentioned it in the second half. But I think there's a little more that we can observe here. First let's review the basics that we talked about before and look at the structure of the second half of the book. Remember we said it begins with really the second half of the poem that we looked at in our last session. And then it continues with the journey to Mount Sinai, the receiving of the torah, the establishing of the covenant, the giving of the provisions for worship the golden calf crisis and finally, the repetition of the instructions about worship and the completion of the tabernacle at the end. And when we were talking about dramatic tension before we started looking at the text here in Exodus, we noted that the high points in the text were the giving of the torah in Chapters 19 and 20, as you mentioned. But also the formation of the covenant in Chapter 24 where the covenant ceremony is completed. And the golden calf, the whole section from Chapters 32 to 34. And then finally, the tabernacle itself in Chapter 40. Now, I think that the real climax of the book is the golden calf episode. And I'll explain a little more why I think that as we look at that text when we get there. But it's useful to note -- but part of that is understanding the way that the text has changed in the second part of the book. And I think we can get at that by looking at some key elements in the story. First let's ask ourself: Who is the protagonist in the main -- in the first part of the story? Who is the main positive character? And I think we would recognize that it's probably Yahweh. Yahweh is the protagonist and Moses sort of secondarily as Yahweh's instrument there in the first part of the story. Who is the antagonist in the first part of the story? Well, the conflict is between Yahweh and Moses and Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt. So Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt would be the antagonist in the first part of the story. And what's the nature of the conflict in the first part of the story? Well, it's the drama of redemption. It's the account of whether or not Moses will be able to deliver Israel with God's power out of Egypt. But now let's look at the second part of the story. How does the protagonist change? Well, Yahweh is still the main protagonist. The story is really primarily about who Yahweh is and what he does. So there's no real change there. Who is the antagonist in the second part of the story? Well, it's not Pharaoh anymore. Pharaoh isn't even mentioned again in the second half of the story. It's not even the Egyptians as a whole or even the gods of Egypt because they are really not mentioned in the second half of the story, either. So who is the antagonist in Chapters 16 to 40? The answer is the antagonists are the ***banae Israel, the sons of Israel. Israel is the opponent of Yahweh in a sense. He's the one with whom the conflict rises in the second half of the story. And what's the nature of the conflict? Well, it's the nature about the relationship. The conflict is about the relationship that arises between Yahweh and his people. So we get them grumbling right away in Chapter 16. And we get problems talked about in Chapters 17 and 18 and where their food is going to come from and what they are going to have to drink and all of those topics begin to emerge. And the tension is between Yahweh and what his people expect of him now that he's saved them. And this builds throughout the story and comes to a climax then in the central conflict between Yahweh and his people in the second half of the book. And that's the golden calf episode. And so from that perspective, again, we can see that the golden calf episode sort of is the capstone of the conflict between Yahweh and Israel, which is a very different storyline from the first part of the book. Another interesting feature that plays into this is the changing role of Moses. In the first part of the book Moses is the messenger of God. He's the instrument that God sends down to Egypt to represent him, to bring Israel out of Egypt. But in the second half of the book, the role of Moses begins to change and change dramatically. This is signaled by a discussion that takes place between Moses and Jethro in Chapter 18. There in 18 Verses 19 to 20 you will remember the story. Moses is kind of overwhelmed with all the work because he's sort of acting as judge for all the problems for all the people and resolving their problems. And so Jethro comes. And he advises Moses to get some elders to help him there. Because as Jethro advises Moses, he needs to focus on something else. And this is what Jethro says. He says, "You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God. And you shall warn them about the statutes and laws and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do." And this is a very different role for Moses here than it is in the first part of the book. Moses began as messenger and in a sense prophet and leader. And now he changes. He's now become the judge who'll determine what justice is for the people. But more importantly, he becomes the intermediary that God uses to give his law. So he becomes Moses the lawgiver, which is no part of his role in the first part of the book. And more importantly still, once we get to Chapter 32 to 34, Moses takes on a priestly role as intercessor. He even offers himself as a kind of atoning sacrifice for the sins of the people when he says to God, you know, "Destroy me but don't turn your people away." So increasingly in the second half of the book, we see Moses becoming what we might describe as a type of Christ who teaches the people what God's will is. And even becomes a priest for them, an intercessor for them. And even in the end, an atoning sacrifice for them. Although, Moses doesn't literally have to become one. He at least points to the fact that the Messiah would be suffering servant and atoning sacrifice for the sins of the people. So Moses' role develops dramatically in the second part of the book. We're just at the beginning of that here when we get to Exodus 19 and 20. Moses is becoming the lawgiver. He's becoming the one who'll warn the people about the statutes and the laws and make them know the way they must walk and what they must do as Jethro says. But he hasn't yet fully developed as a character as he will in the second part of the book. He hasn't yet become the priestly intercessor and the -- at least proposed atoning sacrifice for the sins of the people. So all of this indicates to me that as dramatic and important as the Ten Commandments are and as much as we like to focus on them when we read the book of Exodus, they are not really the central crux issue in the second part of the book. There's a lot of the story to be developed yet. And we won't see all of it until we get there in Chapters 32 to 34. *** 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. ***