Lyrics · Exodus
Exodus, Definitive Edition
Exodus 1:1-40:38
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Lyrics transcribed from this recording. Word-for-word review is pending.
Named in this songPharaohMosesEgyptJoshuaSinai
About the passage
Exodus 1: A growing people and a king who cannot stop them
Exodus opens by letting the names of Jacob's household give way to a population large enough to alarm a new king. Pharaoh treats Israel's multiplication as a military and political threat, then discovers that forced labor does not produce the result he wants. His policy escalates from taskmasters to a private order for Hebrew sons to be killed at birth, but Shiphrah and Puah refuse him because they fear God. Their resistance does not end the danger. Pharaoh responds by widening responsibility for the killing to all his people and ordering newborn sons cast into the river. The chapter therefore begins with continuity from Genesis and ends with a public death decree, while the people he is trying to suppress continue to multiply.
Study Exodus 1 in depthExodus 2: The child drawn from the water becomes a fugitive
Moses enters Exodus through a chain of preservation that repeatedly turns Pharaoh's policy against itself. His mother places him in a waterproofed ark among the reeds, his sister watches, and Pharaoh's daughter recognizes exactly what kind of child she has found and saves him anyway. The result is almost comic in its reversal: Moses' own mother is paid from the royal household to nurse the Hebrew boy marked by royal decree. Adulthood is rougher. Moses kills an Egyptian who is beating a Hebrew, discovers that the act is known, and flees when Pharaoh seeks his life. In Midian he again intervenes for people being pushed aside, builds a household, and still calls himself a stranger. The chapter closes with Israel groaning, and God hearing, remembering, seeing, and attending before Moses knows he will be sent.
Study Exodus 2 in depthExodus 3: A name, a presence, and a commission
A burning bush draws Moses aside, but the strange fire is only the threshold. The ground becomes holy because God is present, and the voice identifies itself with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob before turning directly to Israel's suffering. God has seen, heard, and known the oppression, and Moses is sent into that answer. His first question is about himself; the reply is "I will be with thee." His next question concerns the name he is to carry, and the answer joins "I AM" to the ancestral covenant rather than replacing it. Moses is then told to gather Israel's elders, approach Pharaoh, and ask for a wilderness sacrifice. Resistance is announced in advance, as are the wonders, the eventual release, and the valuables Israel will carry away. The commission arrives with both opposition and outcome already in view.
Study Exodus 3 in depth


