Women of the Word

Exodus 15:22 – 16:26

             Having successfully escaped from the Egyptian army, Moses and the Israelites start their journey to the land that God has promised them.  So far, in this story, four things have happened to the Hebrews:

1.      Deliverance from slavery and exile

2.      Grace – their redemption is out of God’s pure grace

3.      Claim – God claims them for His own

4.      Law – a “precept and rule of life.”  This fourth item is a later, but important, insertion mirroring part of the ten commandments: “obey the Lord your God . . . listen to his commands and keep all his statutes.” (15:26)

The journey throughout Exodus is going to be one of ongoing testing and teaching.  The testing starts immediately when the Israelites, after traveling for three days without fresh water arrive at Marah, a way station in the wilderness, and find the water too bitter to drink.  They cry to Moses; he cries to the Lord; the Lord shows Moses a way to sweeten the water, and the first crisis is solved.  Temporarily satisfied, they arrive at Elim, described poetically as a place of 12 springs and 70 palm trees (12 being a magic number and 70 a multiple of the number of completeness).

            Alas, the Israelites’ serendipity is short-lived.  After leaving Elim, they find themselves deep in the wilderness of Sin (Syn) with their rations depleted.  They complain to Moses and Aaron (who is brought back into the story by the P writer) that it would have been better to have died in Egypt where, at least, they had “fleshpots and plenty of bread to eat!  But you have brought us out into this wilderness to . . . starve to death.” (16:4) 

            Moses tells Aaron to gather the whole community, saying, “Come into the presence of the Lord, for he has heeded your complaints.”  While Aaron is speaking, the Lord appears before the assembly in a cloud (throughout Exodus, God will appear to the Hebrew people as a form of light, either a cloud or a pillar of fire).  Moses tells the Israelites that God will send them quail (flesh) in the evening and manna (bread) in the morning.  Everyone is to gather a specified amount and only enough to feed each household for one day.  Moses warns them not to hoard any of the food overnight (some do not heed him and find their leftovers inedible and crawling with vermin).  On the sixth day, each person is suddenly able to gather twice as much food as previously.  Moses explains that the Lord has decreed the seventh day as a day of rest, “a sabbath holy to the Lord.”  On that night, the leftover food remains fresh and edible, and, also, there is no food for them to gather outside the next morning.  Moses tells them: “For six days you may gather it, but on the seventh day, the sabbath, there will be none.” (16:26)  [This is the first time the word “Sabbath” is used in the Bible; like the manna, the Sabbath is a gift.]

            Several themes will run throughout the Israelites’ wanderings in the wilderness:

1.      Grumbling:  they whine a lot

2.      Danger: they face threats from outsiders

3.      Self-government:  they make some tentative starts in this direction

Interspersed with the Exodus story is our own story of how do we as humans live to be worthy of being called God’s people.  Today we live in what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls a world of “cheap grace.”  The popularity of reality television reflects this outlook: rather than work together in community toward a common goal for a higher good, each participant tries to seize the prize for him (her)self with complete disregard for anyone else involved.  Ultimately, the winner is feted, and, theoretically, all is forgiven. 

A second discussion involved the theme of the journey.  The early Celtic churches in England and Ireland (established long before the Roman Catholic missionaries landed) loved to go on pilgrimages.  Their mode of sea transport was most likely a small hide-covered boat, described by Herodotus as “round like a shield,” called a coracle.  Not efficient for long-distance travel, it suited the philosophy of the pilgrims who felt that the point of the pilgrimage was the journey not the destination.

A final thought, returning to Exodus and the journey in the wilderness, is that all of the world’s major monotheistic religions were forged in the desert.

Submitted by Karilyn Jaap