Today’s Scripture Reading (October
19, 2015): Deuteronomy 2
There is a
theory that Israel’s original Exodus out of Egypt was not the single event that
is told by the biblical account of Moses, but rather it was a progressive one.
The idea is that for decades before the time of Moses, the children of Israel
had been leaking out of Egypt - escaping from the tyranny that they had
experienced under the Pharaoh’s of Egypt to live as foreigners in the lands
just to north, including the land of Canaan – the land that God had promised to
Israel. In the theory, these escapees still identified as Israel, they listened
with interest to any stories that were told by the travellers of the day – and they
told their own. Especially they told a story of a God who had promised that one
day they would come into their own land, a God who had sent Joseph – one of
their number – to Egypt to help escape a famine. They told of Joseph’s rise in
the Egyptian government and of the great things that he had accomplished because
of the hand of God that rested on him. And they wondered about this new man
named Moses – who also seemed to have the hand of God resting on him – and about
the importance that he might bring to their former nation.
And it is
likely that, at first, the stories were received as being quaint relics and
legends of a nation that never quite made it. They were slaves after all, and
while a few might leak out, as these strange storytellers had, it was unlikely
that the slaves of Egypt would ever escape the grasp of the Pharaoh en masse.
But then
they escaped. The unimaginable became a reality, the great slave rebellion had
taken place and Israel (as well as a number of other slave nationalities) had
left Egypt. Now they wandered the desert to the south. But the other reality
was that this race of slaves never made a move toward the civilization in the
north. They had become nomads. They didn’t live in cities and towns, living behind
great walls as the civilized people did. They eked their survival out of the
sand of the desert, living in moving communities. The great educators of the
day probably explained this phenomenon as a result of their years of living as
slaves. They were the street people who no longer wanted to depend on anyone
for their life – they would put up with a lack of conveniences in the desert as
long as it meant that they were free.
Then, one
day, the story was told of this wandering communities move toward the North.
And once again the story began to circulate as told by the foreigners who lived
in their midst – the ones who had leaked out of Egypt. Stories of this nation
as a nation who God had promised the land that was now occupied by other people
groups. The exiles probably began to tell the stories hesitantly, not wishing
to earn the disdain of the culture in which they had made a home – but tell the
stories they did. Maybe it wasn’t their land but rather the land of their
neighbors. But as the stories were told, the listeners couldn’t help but wonder
if it might have be their land that was promised to these people.
The result
of the stories was fear. Just as God told Israel, they began to really hear the
stories – and they found themselves in fear and anguish because of them. Maybe
the time had come for the God Israel to allow his people to rise up and attempt
to take the civilized land of the north. Maybe the wanderers had grown tired of
wandering. Maybe the slaves who had triumphed in their rebellion against Egypt
were now coming to rebel against them. Maybe the end was near. Maybe God was
finally coming. Maybe …
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading:
Deuteronomy 3
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