Last time in this series, we looked at God’s relationship with Abraham, which Genesis reveals to be rather narrow: the relationship and the blessings that come with it are for Abraham and his kin after him. And this relationship is not grounded on any moral or ethical behaviours, but by faith as enacted through the performative act of circumcision. Today we switch focus to the story of Moses, which will reveal some differences in the people’s evolving relationship with God.
To fill in some missing pieces of the story, Genesis ends with Abraham’s great grandsons fleeing to Egypt to escape a famine in Canaan. The book of Exodus then picks up several generations later, and Abraham’s descendants (now known as the Hebrews) have become large in number but are now enslaved, having at some point ceased to be guests in Egypt and become slaves there instead. (While the historicity of these claims cannot be determined, we do know that there were large numbers of Semitic slaves in Egypt during the late New Kingdom prior to the Bronze Age Collapse, which seems to be the time period the story envisions.) Moses is born to a Hebrew family, but through his mother’s scheming, is raised as a prince in the royal household. When he is grown up, he intervenes in a dispute on behalf of some Hebrews and must flee. Moses ends up settling in Midian, a region in the Northwest part of the Arabian peninsula, just across the sea from Egypt (Exodus 2).
While tending his flock on Mount Horeb, Moses sees a shocking sight: a bush that is burning but not being consumed by the flames. God speaks to Moses from the fire: “‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. … I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.”
God then gives Moses the vocation of freeing the Hebrews, and reveals to him the divine name, YHWH, which Exodus 3 interprets as meaning something like “I am who I am” (3.14-15). Later, in 6.3, YHWH specifies that while he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he had not revealed his name to them, so they worshiped him instead as El-Shaddai. The introduction of the divine name here at Mount Horeb is fascinating, since the earliest evidence we have for a divinity by that name comes from that same mountainous region of the Northwestern Arabian desert.
At any rate, Moses goes to Egypt, and after much back and forth between YHWH and Moses and Moses and Pharaoh, ultimately the Hebrews are able to flee Egypt in the aftermath of deadly plagues (the effects of which the Hebrews are spared by the performative act of smearing lamb’s blood on the lintels of their homes (Exodus 12). The miracle of the plagues is followed by further signs of power: the parting of the Red Sea, God’s leading them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, turning salt water into fresh water, and the gift of manna to eat in the desert. When Moses tells his father-in-law Jethro of all this back in Midian, Jethro exclaims: “Now I know that YHWH is greater than all gods, because he delivered the people from the Egyptians, when they dealt arrogantly with them” (18.11).
Moses leads the Hebrews to Mount Sinai (perhaps another name for Mount Horeb, or perhaps a region in the Sinai peninsula), where he encounters YHWH at the summit in a scene shrouded with mystery and terror:
Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because YHWH had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently. As the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses would speak and God would answer him in thunder. When YHWH descended upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain, YHWH summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. Then YHWH said to Moses, ‘Go down and warn the people not to break through to YHWH to look; otherwise many of them will perish. Even the priests who approach YHWH must consecrate themselves or YHWH will break out against them.’ (19.18-22)
During this encounter, YHWH gives Moses the Ten Commandments of the Law (which are later supplemented to the 613 commandments contained in the Torah). The first of these reads: “I am YHWH your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me” (20.2-3). Upon accepting the Law, a covenant is sealed through the sprinkling of the people with blood: “See the blood of the covenant that YHWH has made with you in accordance with all these words” (24.8).
The story goes on from there, but this is enough of a summary to allow us to see the kind of relationship that exists between God and Moses (and the Hebrews under his leadership). From the earliest parts of this story, there’s a shift from what we saw with Abraham. While at the start, we were still dealing with one-to-one interactions between God and Moses, there’s already a greater formality than we saw in Genesis. Where Abraham chatted with God without knowing it, Moses’ first encounter with YHWH is in a mysterious fire, and he’s immediately commanded to take off his shoes in recognition of the holiness — set-apartness — of God. (By contrast, the concept of holiness is not found in Genesis at all.) This only increases when the Hebrews encounter God at Sinai: Here the whole mountain is shrouded in cloud and thunder and the people are told that if they even try to get a peek, they will die! The easy intimacy of God’s relationship with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is gone, replaced by awe, fear, and trembling.
Such awe is sensible in light of the tremendous acts of power YHWH demonstrates in freeing the Hebrews. This is a god who is not afraid to get his hands dirty or flex his muscles. (Indeed, those same earliest records of a god by this name in this part of the world associate him with youthful military might, raiding, and plundering. The more mature characteristics of wisdom, compassion, and justice are not associated with YHWH until he becomes assimilated with the Canaanite god El.)
And where the original covenant with Abraham had no stipulations other than the performative covenant-making act of circumcision, this renewed covenant requires the Hebrews to comply with, if we take the Torah at face value, 613 commandments outlining expectations for moral, ethical, ritual, and liturgical behaviours, upon which the blessings of the covenant — that is, the continued inheritance of the land of Canaan — are contingent.
If we think back to Integral theory’s shorthand classifications of religious, culture, and political systems, we find with Moses the transition from the ‘magenta’ magical, kin-spirits stage, which is best-suited to meeting the needs of a small kin-group, to the ‘red’, mythical-literal, power-gods stage. This describes systems marked by a confrontational (rather than syncretistic) polytheism, with one nation’s strength being connected to the strength of their god(s), and law codes to better govern larger and more complex communities than simple kin groups. Along with this comes a religious system marked by formal and complicated liturgical rites and calendars.
For those of us today, this shift in relationship from Abraham to Moses feels a bit ambivalent. But I think that’s because we let the intimacy of Abraham’s relationship with God blind us to its parochialism: As far as our story has it, this is not an offer God gives to anyone else. ‘The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’ is not just the God they believed in, but a God who looks out for them, and, really, them alone. The concerns of that covenant are based on personal gain (even if there is some stipulation that through their personal gain, Abraham’s descendants will bless the whole world). But now we have a covenant big enough for not just a family but a whole nation, and which is marked by a way of life intended to benefit the whole community.
This basic perspective lasts for quite a long time in the Bible — really until the political crises of the rising threat of the new Mesopotamian Empires in the 7th C BCE inspire the prophetic critique — but that isn’t to say there aren’t changes in the details along the way. Next time, we’ll look at how God related to the people under the leadership of the judges, before shifting our attention next week to the kingdoms.
Matthew Root 