In this study, we are considering the theme of exile and return across the Christian Scriptures. We will start at the beginning of the promise of to Abram that he would be the father of a great nation, a nation that would receive land in the Levant. This promise serves as the backdrop for the identity-defining event of the Exodus.
Covenant and Expectation
The text of Genesis has frolicked along with some ambiguity, describing major events — Creation, Sin in the Garden, Cain and Abel, Flood, etc. — in an almost mythic way. Punctuated by genealogies, these events appear timeless and spaceless. As the narrative resumes from the receding flood waters of Noah and his children, a recognizable world fades into being. The Tower of Babel stands in Mesopotamia, shining like a ziggurat, among a people who had come together to challenge the divine and lost.
Then, the text zooms in a little more, settling on a small family journeying north from Sumerian Ur — perhaps the site of the Tower itself. Ur, at the time of departure, was a city settled at the mouth of the Euphrates river where it emptied into the Persian Gulf. The family led their flocks from that urban center and followed the river to Harran, settling in this land between the two rivers. This site would serve as the crossroads between civilizations in Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and the Levant. The location must have been attractive as the family had intended to journey all the way to Canaan. Here, in Harran, the family’s leader died leaving his son (Abram), daughter-in-law (Sarai), and his nephew (Lot). There were certainly others as well (as hinted at later in Genesis), but these are the characters we get to interact with for now.
Abram and the others were content to stay in Harran. Whatever had inspired Abram’s father and Lot’s uncle to journey to Canaan, such intentions were now forgotten memories. One day, Abram, perhaps while wandering among his flocks, or relaxing in the shade of some tree during the intense heat of summer, heard the voice of ‘the Lord’ — the English substitute for the name of God, Yahweh. The message is probably not pleasant, but burdensome: ‘Go from your country! Leave your kin! Depart from your father’s house! And go to a land I will show you.'((Gen 12.1)) There is no mention about any previous interactions, or even some previous interaction with Abram’s father. Contrast this with Noah who ‘walked with God’.((Gen 6.9)) A new character is introduced with God giving him a command, and that new character’s obedience. There is no laughing when God promises to make the barren couple — Abram and Sarai — into a ‘great nation’, nor is there haggling over the destination, as will happen later as multi-dimensional individual rises from the text. ‘I will bless those who bless you, curse those who dishonor you. All the families of the earth will be blessed in you.’
The travail of collecting the herds, of summoning all to pack their tents, abandon any permanent structures, and collect all their belongings. They managed and began the slow journey, west then south into Canaan, stopping by a great oak near Shechem. ‘I will give this land to your offspring,’ Abram was told, and he built an altar there before continuing to the hill country beyond.
The reader is led to expect to follow Abram and his family in their transhumant wanderings, interacting with locals, having children, and watching a nation be born. Perhaps they are given some time for adapting to their new land — Genesis isn’t usually concerned with tracking time between events — but the next paragraph introduces an unanticipated problem in the very land which God has just directed their steps: ‘Now, there was a famine in the land, so Abram went to Egypt to sojourn there.((Gen12.10))
Departure from this promised land on account of famine, so Abram drags his family there: an exile in Egypt, though one brought on by natural causes rather than any disobedience on Abram’s part as will become a theme later. Abram receives much in Egypt from the pharaoh, though is soon sent away for trickery. We needn’t dwell to long on the Egyptian sojourn, except to see its foreshadowing the next exile.
Back in the land that God had promised Abram, Abram has a son — though not by his wife but the servant of his wife. God clarifies that Sarai will be the mother of this great nation, and makes a covenant (i.e., a treaty or agreement) with Abram.
‘Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but Abraham, for I have made you the father of a many of nations…I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.’
Genesis 17.4-8
The newly rechristened Abraham (and Sarah) are required to keep their side of the covenant as well: all the males in their household must be circumcised. And then, Sarah gives birth to Isaac.
First Exile
God renews the covenant (i.e., his promise to Abraham and his children, and reminds them of their duties as well) with Isaac and Jacob, whom he renames Israel. This Israel has twelve sons, and one of the youngest, Joseph, is sold as a slave to persons in Egypt. Joseph, through honesty, hard work, and a knack for dream interpretation, arrives as a senior official in Egypt when his family seeks sanctuary during another famine. The land of Egypt provides well for the flocks of Israel’s family, though Israel himself was concerned about departing from Canaan. It was this land which would serve as an everlasting possession, not that of Egypt. It, too, was this land which belonged to God…
Arriving at its southern point near Beersheba, Israel constructs an altar, perhaps bidding God adieu. The last night in the promised land, but his dreams are interrupted by a vision:
“Jacob, Jacob.” And Jacob answered, “Here I am.” Then God said, “I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation. I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.”
Genesis 46.2-4
God would remain with this chosen family, even when they were not present in the land. When Israel/Jacob died, seventeen years later, he was buried by Joseph and his brothers in Canaan, alongside those of his father and grandfather. The account of Genesis concludes with Joseph’s dying speech to his children and grandchildren:
Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.”
Genesis 50.24-5
Joseph’s body is prepared for burial after the Egyptian elite style. His bones, however, would be carried into the wanderings by Moses((See Ex13.19)) and finally interred at Shechem ‘in the piece of land that Jacob bought'((Jo 24.32)).
The transfer of Jacob’s and Joseph’s bodily remains had nothing to do with an afterlife, as is sometimes reflected in later Christian thought (i.e., burial/presence close to sacred sites might convey certain spiritual properties), but their presence in the Land. An imperfect analogy might be obtained when thinking of Egyptian beliefs at the time which required the body of the deceased to be present within boundaries of Egypt in order to receive the promised future life. Dying in a foreign land (even if the borders themselves are difficult to define…) and having one’s body forever abroad remained a horrifying fear for those who might go abroad for diplomatic, mercantile, or political purposes.
The bodies of the descendants of Abraham belonged in the land God had promised them, and not in a land perceived as less sanctified by God’s presence. A land where the voice of God went unheeded and forgotten, and where opposing gods held a separate physical dominion. Even though God himself promised to accompany Jacob and his children into Egypt, this new location was not God’s home — he was, in a sense, on holiday. He didn’t really belong there. Nor, apparently, did his people as revealed in the opening chapter of Genesis’ quite popular sequel.
The sharp transition between Genesis 50 and Exodus 1 is jarring. Transitions are severely underappreciated as the victim of any cliffhanger is well-aware. Reading through these delimiters (whether artificial as in Biblical chapters/verses, or intentional as the modern novel or an anthology as the books of the Bible) can provide insights into differences in tone, pace, and authorial intention. The sequel of any thriller must once again drown the previously celebrating hero into another tragedy — ideally worse than the first — and find untied threads with which craft a new garment.
Thus, Exodus proves a brilliant sequel: the voluntary exile from the promised land has become involuntary; the elite have become slaves; the blessings have become curses; and the hope and dreams of the Land have faded. How many years must they have cried for help! Calls for rescue from their current sufferings. God, however, has a wider view: ‘God heard the groanings of the people of Israel, and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.'((Ex 2.24))
God repeats this larger context in his calling of Moses as the rescuer of the people:
“I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”
Exodus 3.7-8
Let start on a less obvious point: the language of going ‘down to Egypt’ and ‘up to the Land’ as though God himself were dwelling in Canaan. His ‘tour’ had come to an end and his people had not returned with him. The descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel were not where they belonged — they needed to be brought home. They were in exile, and needed to be restored.
First Return
Through Moses and his brother Aaron, God puts on quite the display — rivers running with blood, darkness, frogs, and so forth. At its climax, he leads them through the sea and out of the land of slavery and exile. The story is well told, and an entertaining read (though, at times, repetitive), yet were all of these special effects necessary? Why so showy? Surely God could have carried them out with a quiet whisper? Certainly, but the event was to capture the headlines. An event so spectacular that generations forward could recall this day as that in which God had saved his people out of exile. How often God himself uses it to gain instant clout: ‘I am the God who brought you out of Egypt…’. The memory of the story circulates in the Psalms, and the annual practice of Passover celebrated around the world to this very day. It is a powerful story — a defining narrative. Through the fireworks and the crossing the sea out of Egypt, the Israelites become the out-of-exile people: a people bound and destined for a Land.
The relationship with God is not that of a recklessly-doting parent. Instead, he set up a contract with the people with conditions for obedience and disobedience. We will cover this next…