Bible Commentaries
Exodus

I

INTRODUCTORY STUDIES: THE GEOGRAPHY OF EXODUS

Focus in your minds the geography of Egypt and the Sinaitic Peninsula. Those who have the Rand-McNally Bible Atlas can study the history and geography together. If you were in a balloon over Egypt twenty miles in the air, you would see what looks like a green ribbon in the desert, which represents the Nile and its narrow boundaries, all of Egypt that has ever been good. Out of 115,000 square miles in Egypt only 9,600 are habitable, and only about 5,600 are made up of arable land.

The lower part of Egypt is called the Delta, from the Greek letter which answers to our "D", caused by the division of the Nile into several mouths. All of that Delta country is very rich from alluvial deposits made by the overflows of the Nile. The part on the east near the Arabian Peninsula was Goshen, where the children of Israel settled. The ancient capital, Memphis, was situated above the first fork, a famous city. Later, the capital was shifted to Thebes.

Soon after the dispersion of the nations at the Tower of Babel, the sons of Ham occupied Egypt, the country given to them. Without the Nile there would be no Egypt. It is only a short distance from either bank to an impassable desert. Ancient history has to do with Egypt from the city of Thebes to the mouth of the Nile. It knows nothing of upper Egypt. The White Nile rises in the heart of Central Africa, only recently discovered by Livingstone, Stanley, and others. Just now a railroad runs up the Nile to Khartourn, and from there to the heart of Africa. From Cape Town, the most southern point of Africa, a road starts and runs up. In a short time that road will be completed, and Northern and Southern Africa will be united by rail. That was the great project of Cecil Rhodes, the Cape-to-Cairo railroad. The present capital of Egypt is Cairo.

The first important event in this ancient history is the building of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. We know very little about the building of these pyramids, but they go back long before the time of Abraham, nearly to Nimrod. This pyramid is the most imposing structure of its kind in the world. It has a great square base, going up in terraces, so that a man standing on one stone can just reach the one above him. There are people there who hire out to pull visitors up from one stone to another. The pyramids constituted one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and constitute one of the wonders of the world to this day. They were supposed to be built as tombs, based upon the fact that the first time history became acquainted with them, there were in them the mummies of distinguished kings. From one of these great pyramids has been brought the very Pharaoh who received Joseph, and it is said in unwrapping that mummy they found a grain of wheat that had somehow got into the linen, and that when that grain of wheat was planted it grew.

That building is said to be "oriented," because it was built exactly with the-compass and with reference to the east. If you ever join the Masons they will tell you a good deal about that. There is a hole in the pyramid, and once every two or three thousand years a star gets to a position in which it shines right down that hole to the very bottom. This indicates that those ancient peoples were marvelously well acquainted with astronomy. They could not have calculated the revolution of the heavenly bodies in such vast cycles of time and built with reference to it, if they had not been.

This Great Pyramid must have been built by slave labor only, and at a great cost of life; all other structures of Egypt are of the same kind, very massive in style, with very little architectural beauty. Near the pyramids is another wonder of the world, the Sphinx, a winged lion with a man’s head. That has been largely covered with sand in the thousands of years of time, but a considerable part of it shows above the ground now.

Who built these pyramids nobody knows. You can only get glimpses of that far-off time from certain inscriptions, the deciphering of which is only a learned guess. There has been a vast deal discovered in modern times in the way of archeology bearing upon Bible history. Inscriptions have been deciphered, the names of kings and dynasties discovered, showing that the oldest nation in history is Egypt, and that it had a high grade of civilization of its kind.

Two other things are necessary before taking up another feature of the discussion. One of these old kings fell upon a new project, now being utilized on the western plains of the United States to provide storage for the surplus of water during the overflows. He had an immense excavation made, incredibly great, and canals dug that led from the Nile to that immense reservoir, and when the overflow would come it would be filled with water. Then he had canals cut connecting the different branches, or mouths, of the Nile, traversing all the country for the purpose of irrigation. It was done by slave labor. In order to get the water out of the reservoir, they used big pumps worked by hand, having an endless chain with buckets upon it which worked like an undershot wheel. The ancient Egyptians had a wonderful knowledge of mathematics in all its departments. If you want to read a thrilling book that will give you some idea of the degree of knowledge attained by the ancient Egyptians, read Tom Moore’s Epicurean, concerning an Anthenian youth who went to Egypt and was initiated into all the mysteries of the knowledge that they had there. It is written as a novel, but it is very true to nature. When I was a student of ancient history I had to read that book. G. M. Ebers has several books on ancient Egypt.

The character of the country is generally the same now as it was when the Tower of Babel was built. There are no changes, not even a railroad can change it. At one time the Egyptian empire extended through the Arabian Peninsula as far as the Holy Land and to the Euphrates. That was its greatest extent. A great many of the manners and customs of the Egyptians are indicated in the book of Genesis, which tells us how Joseph got there and how he was brought in touch with the people.

In the time of Moses there existed a fact not brought out until recently, viz.: a wall extended across the isthmus from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. That wall explains why Moses, instead of going the middle way to the Holy Land, turned and went south, turning the upper end of that wall. All along it were towers held by the regular army of Egypt. The children of Israel wandered for thirty-eight years in the Wilderness; thirty-eight years of silence with only a few stations given in one of the books of the Pentateuch. The peninsula of Sinai is a plain of white sand. The northern part is called the wilderness of Paran in the Old Testament, "the great and terrible wilderness." Another part of the peninsula of Arabia is called the Negeb, or "South Country." In that country Isaac and Abraham, with their herds, dwelt. And there is Kadesh-barnea, the nearest point that the Israelites reached in going that way to the Promised Land. Another prominent feature of that country is the Arabah, the supposed ancient bed of the Jordan River, which rises away up in Lebanon, comes down and flows into the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is so much lower than the Mediterranean, the Mediterranean would flow into it if a canal were cut between them. It is the deepest hole in the ground we know anything about. From the Dead Sea to a little arm of the Red Sea is that broad ravine, called the Arabah. At a point on the Arabah, near Mount Hor, the elevation is 500 feet above the Dead Sea, and from Mount Hor south it slopes the other way. It has been reasonably conjectured that originally the Jordan River entered into this lower sea, and this ravine is nothing but a continuation of the valley of the Jordan. But it is now filled up, so that it is far above the Dead Sea.

Now let us get all the wildernesses in our minds. From the end of that wall is a narrow strip along the beach of the Red Sea, the way Moses came down. It is called "The Wilderness of Sin," the upper part, the "Wilderness of Etham." Near the upper part of the arm of the Red Sea is the "Wilderness of Zin." So there are five of these wildernesses, via.: Sin, Zin, Etham, Shur, and Paran.

Notice the mountain ranges. Moses passed between a mountain range and the sea, coming down by a beach. In the lower part, the mountains get very high, and it is called the Sinaitic Peninsula. Near Mount Sinai is a level plain about 2,200 yards long, upon which the children of Israel camped. The mountain rises precipitously out of the plain so that one can step right up to it and touch it. It rises to an immense height, and looking down from the top one could see the tents of the Israelites spread out like snowflakes. You ought to familiarize yourself with the Sinaitic Peninsula before Moses got there, its mountains, deserts, and inhabitants; the Amalekites lived there. Moses fought a battle with them before he reached Mount Sinai, and two others before he reached Kadesh-barnea. They were the ancient Canaanitish people and the bitter foes of the Israelites, and were doomed by the curse of Moses to utter extinction. Still they were not destroyed until the time of Saul and David.

Look at this valley, the Arabah. In the east are a mountain range and Mount Seir. Seir was the father of the Horitee, or "cave-dwellers." Today are marvelous caves in that section hollowed out from a time beyond the memory of man. These Horites were overcome by the descendants of Esau, and then Esau occupied that country. Hence all this country is called Edom, clear to where it touches Moab. You will find many references to Edom; it means "red." The mountains were of red granite. The descendants of Esau were unfriendly to the descendants of Jacob and refused to allow them to pass through their country to the Promised Land. So they had to go south and cross the desert. That place Kadesh-barnea, of which so much is said in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, was their last stopping place before they reached the borders of the Promised Land. When they returned to Kadesh-barnea they had wandered thirty-eight years. There is a book on Kadesh-barnea, by H. Clay Trumbull, in which he tells where the true Kadesh-barnea is; the commentaries had previously put it in an entirely different place. Dr. Sampey, of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, was so much impressed with the book that when he went to the Holy Land he went to Kadesh-barnea, and he says that the place is Just as represented in Trumbull’s book. All of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, except Just a little, takes place in that country. The Israelites stopped at Mount Sinai, having reached it in two months. They received the Law, built the tabernacle and the Levitical order of worship was prescribed. Mount Sinai has much to do with the history of the people. Stanley’s Jewish Church, in three volumes, is very fine on the Sinaitic history and peninsula. So, study it with Kadesh-barnea. Exodus commences in the land of Goshen. Moses, the author of the Pentateuch, lived not so very long after the time of Job. I believe that Moses wrote the book of Job. When he fled into the wilderness he touched the Job country.

QUESTIONS
1. What countries have to do with Exodus?

2. Give a balloon view of Egypt.

3. How large, how much habitable, and how much arable?

4. What is the lower part of Egypt called and why?

5. What of its fertility and why?

6. Where did the children of Israel settle?

7. What were the capitals and where?

8. Who first settled Egypt and when?

9. With what part does ancient history have to do?

10 What were the boundaries of Egypt?

11. Where is the Blue Nile? The White Nile?

12. What modern improvement in this section?

13. What was the Cecil Rhodes project?

14. What was the first important event in this ancient history?

15. What was the date of pyramid building?

16. What was the purpose of these buildings and the evidence?

17. How do they rank with the other buildings of the world?

18. What is meant by "oriented" as referring to the Pyramid of Cheops?

19. What singular thing indicates their acquaintance with astronomy?

20. How were these pyramids built?

21. What other wonder of the world are near these pyramids?

22. Who built these pyramids?

23. What was our means of information of this time?

24. What of the antiquity of Egypt and its civilization?

25. How did they utilize the surplus water from the overflow of the Nile?

26. What science did they develop above others of their day?

27. What book on the knowledge of the Egyptians commended?

28. What of the character of the country now?

29. What was its greatest extent?

30. What book of the Bible tells us much of the manners and customs of the Egyptians?

31. Why did not Moses go the short way to the Holy Land?

32. What the nature of the Sinaitic plain?

33. What is the Arabah?

34. How many and what wildernesses in this peninsula?

35. Who were the inhabitants here and when destroyed?

36. Who were the Horites and who overcame them?

37. What was the attitude of the descendants of Esau toward Israel and why?

38. What book on Kadesh-bamea commended?

39. What one on the Sinatic history and peninsula?

40. Where does Exodus begin?

41. What patriarch was almost contemporary with Moses?

42. Where did Moses go when he fled from Egypt?

II

INTRODUCTORY STUDIES: MATERIAL FOR A HISTORY OF MOSES

We come now to consider the material for the history of Moses, the author of the Pentateuch. We have studied Genesis, but we did not come to the times of Moses himself as we do now.

The first question is: Where shall the student find the material for making up the life of Moses? The first main answer is, the biblical material. That is all that is very reliable. Second, Jewish writings, not biblical, e. g., Josephus, Philo, and others. Very little from Philo is authentic, and many of the things by Josephus are conjectures. Third, books on Moses. We will mention only four: Moses, His Life and Times, by Rawlinson. Any student is able to buy this book. The second volume of Edersheim’s Bible History, written by a truly evangelical man, one of the greatest of the English scholars, a member of the Church of England. It contains less poison than almost any other book on the Old Testament that you can buy. Every preacher ought to have it. With less favor, I mention Volume I of Stanley’s Jewish Church, which touches on the life of Moses. Volume II of Geikie’s "Hours with the Bible" I commend with less favor than Stanley. Study those four books besides the commentaries; they are all in any large library. If you study just one of them, it will be of immense help to you. If I were studying this as a student for the first time, without any very broad general information, I would avoid reading too many books. We must consider the Bible as the chief material and the only truly reliable source. All of the biblical materials, except a few points, can be found in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Acts 7, where the address of Stephen throws some very important additional light on the life of Moses; also Hebrews 11:23, comniencing: "By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents." This gives us the great mass of the biblical material. Psalm 90, by superscription and internal evidence, is declared to be a psalm of Moses. There are many references to Moses in the psalms. All through the Old Testament many additional items are to be found. One of our important questions will be: Where is the last historical reference to the ark that Moses constructed? We learn from Samuel that the ark was carried into the Holy Land by Joshua, captured by the Philistines and brought disaster on them. In David’s time it was brought to Jerusalem. When Solomon built the Temple the same ark was found and opened and we are told what was in it. What became of the tabernacle that enclosed the ark? When the ark was taken out of the tabernacle the tent still remained and worship was still conducted there. There is no more reference to its existence after the building of the Temple. What became of the tables of stone on which Moses wrote the Commandments? The last reference is in I Kings, viz.: that they were found in the ark when it was opened. I do not know what became of them. What became of that brazen serpent that Moses made? We learn from 2 Kings that in the time of Hezekiah the people commenced to worship that brazen serpent; that Hezekiah broke it into pieces, saying, "It is only a piece of brass." These are additional items concerning the things that Moses made.

We learn in Exodus that Moses had two sons, Gershom and Eliezer. What became of the descendants of Moses? In Judges 28:30-31, according to the Septuagint, which is conceded to be the true rendering, we find that Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, went with the Danites when they left the place assigned to them by the Almighty and conquered a place in the northern part of the Holy Land, and there lived with them and became a priest of their idolatrous worship. We are always sad when the grandson of a great religious character goes over to the enemy. It has always made me very sad that the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, the hero of the Protestants in the Thirty Years’ War, was captured by the Catholics and trained to be a Catholic, though her father had devoted his life and the power of his nation to throwing off the yoke of Roman Catholicism. We learn in the book of Chronicles that other grandsons of Moses were appointed in the service of the tabernacle and one of them was made the treasurer. So only one grandson went astray.

In the New Testament we strike new light again, entirely apart from Acts 7 and Hebrews II. In Matthew 17, and corresponding passages in Mark and Luke, Moses himself cornea on the scene with Elijah and Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, and talks with Jesus concerning his death which soon was to take place at Jerusalem. P. C. Headley, who can hardly be called a historian, rather a great rhetorician, scrapes the star dust when he comes to consider Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration. Metaphorically he claps his hands and cries, "At last Moses is in the Promised Land." That is a very valuable item of history. In 2 Timothy 3:8, we get the very names of the Egyptian priests who withstood Moses in the conflict described in Exodus: "And even as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses." In 2 Corinthians 3 additional light is given on the shining of the face of Moses from Mount Sinai, and the reason that induced him to put his veil over his face. In the book of Jude we strike an item entirely new, not recorded anywhere in the Old Testament. When Moses died, and God buried him, and no man knew the place of his sepulcher, it says that the devil tried to get possession of his body, and that Michael, the archangel, came down and saved the body of Moses from the grasp of the devil. In Revelation 15:2-3, we find something that has not yet taken place, but which will take place: "And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire." That refers to the pillar of fire shining upon the water at the Red Sea. "And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb." That shows that the song that Moses wrote on the deliverance of the Israelites became not only a memorial poem on earth, but was transferred to the hymnbooks of heaven, and will be one of the songs of the redeemed when we get to glory. What a high honor that a man here on earth should compose one of the hymns we will sing when we get to heaven!

Moses wrote the Pentateuch, the original of which was placed in the ark of the covenant. How long did that original last and what became of it? If we turn to 2 Kings we find that before the day of Josiah a mandate had gone forth to destroy all the Old Testament records so that the people would be left without a book of religion. In looking over the rubbish a man found the book of Moses, and it became the basis of a great reformation. We learn that when the exiles returned from their Babylonian captivity Ezra brought back with him a copy of this book of Moses, and that he was a learned scribe in it.

When I was a young preacher I determined to study the lives of four persons as I never studied and never expect to study any other subjects, viz.: (1) The life of Abraham; and I have read practically everything that was ever written in the English language about him. (2) Moses, and I have studied critically every passage in the Bible in the light of the best commentaries. Horace Rowe, who afterward became a Baptist preacher, once said, after hearing me preach a series of sermons on Moses, "I may be ignorant of many things about my own father, about Sam Houston, and even about myself, but I sure do know about Moses." (3) I studied the life of our Lord, Gospel by Gospel, and then harmonically. (4) Paul – and I have been studying him about forty years. You may rest assured that gathering up the historic or traditional material that bears upon the life of a man who has left his impress not only on time as Moses did, but, as I have told you, furnished part of the literature of heaven, is a great occupation for the mind.

Having looked at the sources of the material, we want to get before our minds certain questions: What was the religious condition of the Israelites in the time of Moses? Rawlinson says that they had no new revelations from God, but they could look back to the revelations that had been made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. I think I could prove that a revelation had been made to Moses (but he made the mistake of supposing that the people would understand what he knew), viz.: the fact that they were to be delivered by him, the deliverance itself though all believed in from the past prophecies. Their religion certainly had the following things all the time in Egypt: They kept up the rite of circumcision, which is proved from Exodus and Joshua. If they circumcised their children, which was a religious rite and obligation, there is light enough to believe that they still were religious. They kept up the offering of sacrifices; for one of the requests made of Pharaoh was that they might be allowed to go three days’ journey to offer sacrifices, according to their laws. Another thing they had was the sabbath; for it is found in Exodus in the marching out of Egypt that they were commanded to gather twice as much manna for the sabbath as they did for any other day; and when the Ten Commandments were given, "Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy," is recorded. But there is a still stronger eivdence found in the naming of their children. Hebrew names all had a meaning. They might miss the mark, but the names represent some faith of their own hearts. Still more important is the testimony which cannot be overlooked (unless you deny the Bible, and therefore I am not inclined to agree with commentators and most writers that the Israelites in Egypt had little spiritual light), viz.: By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents, because they saw he was a goodly child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment. The king’s commandment was that every male child should be put to death. They had faith, based on the religious life of the past; but how did Moses get his faith? "By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter." All these passages seem to me to everlastingly refute those conjectures made by commentators, based upon mere silence. You cannot build a house on silence. I imagine that the faith of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph kept up in its purity in many warm Hebrew hearts throughout all the years in Egypt; and I feel sure that God had revealed, either to Moses himself or to the parents of Moses, that he was the particular person to deliver that people. When Moses commenced to speak to them he did not talk as though it were a new thing. He refers to the past and appeals to what he knows to be their faith.

We may now contrast the religion of the Israelites in Egypt with the religion of the Egyptians themselves. In order to understand the religion of the Egyptians we must consider that the Hyksos, or shepherd kings, descendants of Shem, took possession of and held Egypt a long time. My own opinion coincides with the opinion expressed by Rawlinson that the "king who knew not Joseph" and threw the Israelites into bondage was the one who overpowered the shepherd kings who had received the Israelites. The most cultivated Egyptians believed in one God, but they taught the manifestation of that God under various forms of polytheism, and most of the people stopped with idolatry. The ancient Egyptians formulated a belief in immortality, and their -Book of the Dead is one of the most remarkable books upon the future life in all ancient literature. Under the forms of God, they worshiped the Nile, crocodiles, beetles, cats, and many other animals. I spent three wonderful nights (snow was fourteen inches deep) in a tent while in the army, studying Tom Moore’s Epicurean, giving the initiation of an Athenian youth into the mysteries of the Egyptian religion.

Now I will tell you about their schools and literature. At Heliopolis was a university. Rawlinson says it stood for what Oxford in England stands today. Their writing consisted of hieroglyphic pictures. Much of this writing may be seen now. There was another kind of writing by symbols. For instance, a circle was used to signify a certain thing. I tell you these things that you may understand that passage in Acts which says: "Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." He went to their schools and passed through their athletic education. They played ball – not football, for even the girls played. They confined it mainly to throwing the ball. The Egyptian boy had his body trained in their gymnasiums. They had music, poetry, and arithmetic. You will know that Moses must have studied somewhere when you read his matchless poetry. When we say that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, we mean as a member of the royal family he received the highest education in the most civilized nation in the then known world. The Egyptians invented our figures, the Arabic notation. Nobody could have built those pyramids, canals and reservoirs who had not been educated. But one has to be an expert in that pictorial writing to distinguish between a hawk and a goose.

QUESTIONS
1. Where may the student find the material for the history of Moses?

2. What of the biblical?

3. The Jewish?

4. The non-Jewish?

5. What psalm did he write?

6. Where is the last reference to the ark of the covenant?

7. What became of the tabernacle?

8. Of the tables of stone?

9. Of the brazen serpent?

10. How many sons had Moses and what were their names?

11. What became of the descendants of Moses?

12. What example of this in profane history?

13. What were the names of the Egyptian priests who withstood Moses? The proof?

14. What new light from Jude?

15. What signal honor was conferred upon Moses by Jehovah?

16. Of what books is he the author?

17. What four biblical characters are worthy of a lifetime study?

18. What was the religious condition of the Israelites in the time of Moses?

19. Did they receive any revelation between the death of Joseph and the return of Moses from the burning bush? If so, what?

20. What were the evidences of their religious conditions in Egypt?

21. What of the religion of the Egyptians?

22. What of their literature?

23. Where was its seat?

24. What is meant by the statement that "Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians"?