Exodus 14
- Pharaoh decides to pursue the people and overtake them encamped by the
Sea. “As Pharaoh drew near, the Children
of Israel lifted up their eyes: . . . They were exceedingly afraid. And the
Children of Israel cried out to YHWH” (14:10). The people start blaming
Moses for putting them in this predicament (14:11). “What have you done to us? Why did you make
us leave Egypt? We said, ‘Leave us alone! Let us be slaves to the Egyptians.
It’s better to be a slave in Egypt than a corpse in the wilderness!’”
(14:11-12)
Moses tries to
comfort them, telling them not to be afraid: “YHWH will make war for you, and you—be still!” (14:14) YHWH, in turn tells Moses that
they should march forward and that he should hold high his staff so that the
waters will split (14:16). “[A]ll Egypt
will see my glory and know that I am the Lord!” (14:18)
“[T]he angel
[messenger] of God, who had been leading the people of Israel, moved to the
rear of the camp” (14:19). A column of cloud is both before and behind
them. “The cloud settled between the
Egyptian and Israelite camps. As darkness fell, the cloud turned to fire,
lighting up the night” (14:20).
On 14:10-20
– Ancient commentators made a great deal out of the line, “Why do you cry to
me?” Even though there is no actual cry, all the “Fathers” point to the fact
that God hears the cries of the heart
(Origen and Jerome), Basil thinks God also hears the cry of the blood of those
who are just and the silent longings of man (Cassiodorus).
Then Moses
stretches his hand out again and “YHWH caused the sea to go back with a fierce
east wind all night, [splitting the waters and making] the sea into firm-ground”
(14:21). The chariots follow, but they
“drive with heaviness” (14:25). The
Egyptian camp becomes panicked; Moses stretches out his hand and the “waters
returned and covered all the chariots and charioteers—the entire army of
Pharaoh. Of all the Egyptians who had chased the Israelites into the sea, not a
single one survived” (14:28).
“When the
people of Israel saw the mighty power that the Lord had unleashed against the
Egyptians, they were filled with awe before him. They put their faith in the
Lord and in his servant Moses” (14:31).
The Epistle of Barnabas
16 – On the Temple: He turns to discussion of the Temple,
and he claims he “will show how mistaken these
miserable folk were in pinning their hopes to the building itself, as if
that were the home of God, instead of to God their own Creator” (178). He thinks there was little difference between
the Jews and the “heathen in the way they ascribed Divine holiness to their
Temple” (178). The prophet Isaiah himself wrote of the silliness of trying to
house God in any kind of building.
And citing the
Book of Enoch, he writes “it will come to
pass in the last days that the Lord will deliver up to destruction the sheep of
the pasture, with their sheepfold and their watch-tower” (178, citing Enoch
89:56).
Is it possible
for there to be a temple of God at all, he asks? He thinks so, but “it [must]
be built in the Name of the Lord; for
in the days before we believed in God, our
hearts were a rotten, shaky abode, and a temple only too truly built with
hands, since by our persistent opposition to God we had made them into a
chamber of idolatry and a home for demons” (178).
The Temple can
be built through faith. “When we were
granted remission of our sins, and came to put our hopes in His Name, we were
made new men, created all over again from the beginning; and as a consequence
of that, God is at this moment actually dwelling within us in that poor
habitation of ours. How so? Why, in the message of His Faith, and in the call
of His promise; in the wisdom of His statutes, and the precepts of His teaching;
in His own very Presence inwardly inspiring us, and dwelling within us; in His
unlocking of the temple doors of our lips, and His gift to us of repentance. It
is by these ways that He admits us, the bondsmen of mortality, into the Temple
that is immortal. For when a man is earnestly bent on salvation, his eyes
are not on his fellow- man, but on the One who is dwelling in that person and
speaking through him; and his is full of wonder that never till now has he
heard such words from Him, nor known the desire of hearing them. This is what
the building up of a spiritual temple to the Lord means” (179).
17 – The writer says that he hopes he has “omitted nothing that
bears directly upon our salvation” (179). He worries that if he should start to
try and speak of the present age, we would never understand “for such things
are veiled in the language of parable” (179). So he says this will be enough.
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