But for all the carry-over from Genesis 50 to Exodus 1, there are some fairly significant shifts that happen in these chapters that mark Exodus as an entirely different entity than Genesis.
"Zooming out" is a pun I couldn't resist, but it also just fits with what's going on at the very beginning of the book. In Genesis, one main, overarching theme could be described as God's relationship with people: Adam, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob...
Exodus seems to be setting itself up, in a very clever way, as a story of God's relationship with a people: the people of Israel. By starting the book with a recap of the basic genealogy of Jacob, the author draws a direct line, without actually tracing direct lines, as it were, from the individual God-human relationships of Genesis to the corporate God-human relationship that will become the theme of... well, the rest of the Bible, really.
It also presents a nice "a ha!" moment by growing the phrase "the people of Israel" out of Jacob's other name. It's neat to see it happen, and I've never really appreciated it as much as I have this time around. I'd read Genesis start-to-finish a few times, but it's always been a self-contained thing. The transition from one book to the next definitely highlights this narrative translation in a cool way.
The other thing that just occurred to me is that we also get a real corporatization of the designation "Hebrew", and although it's not the first time it's been used (it shows up a few times in Genesis), it's the first time it's really striking me, in context.
The Hebrew word "hebrew" means "one from beyond", which is obvious in Egypt, since we just saw them arrive as a family into the Pharaoh's land, but on further reflection has always been true. Abraham was a stranger pretty much everywhere he went, and Isaac and Jacob's stories are equally punctuated with dislocation and general foreign-ness as well. It's interesting to consider "being an outsider" as an integral identification of the people of Israel. It casts new light on Jacob's use of the word "sojourn" to describe his life, and maybe points to a much larger... point... as well.
The mind reels at the implications, actually, of God's chosen people being defined by their foreignness (and when we consider the name Hebrew in the context of the importance of name meanings in the Old Testament, it seems natural that this is at least partially correct) - consider their various sojourns: the wilderness, exile, captivity in Babylon, the diaspora after the fall of Jerusalem and the conquest of Palestine in 70 AD by Rome... Getting a bit beyond the scope of Exodus 1-3, but very, very cool...
The next thing we learn here is that the new Pharaoh is A) paranoid and aggressive; and B) not terribly bright when it comes to psychology and choosing his patsies.
The man wants babies dead is essentially the fact that proves point A, and the way he first thinks to go about this proves point B. Although people from Arizona can take some solace in the evidence that overreactive terror of foreigners and immigrants is obviously not limited to their crazy state... So that's something.
So Pharaoh decides that the Hebrews should be killed off, starting immediately with the next generation. Who does he ask to do this? Midwives. Women whose entire vocation is helping mothers and newborns. Women whose entire role is the preservation of life. Not only that, but he asks Hebrew midwives to kill the babies.
Luckily for everyone involved (except, I suppose, Pharaoh), the midwives prove that Pharaoh's plan is just so crazy that IT'S COMPLETELY CRAZY, and it fails miserably. Not only that, but it furnishes the midwives with the opportunity to spin themselves a little cultural folklore about the incredible hardcore-ness of Hebrew women.
It's only at the end of the chapter that Pharaoh clues in that he's maybe more likely to find some baby-killing psychopaths if he extends the announcement beyond health care professionals of the same race as the genocide's targets, and tells everybody to kill Hebrew baby boys.
Then along comes Moses, who is lucky enough to be born after his incredibly clever older sister.
Moses gets right down to business reinforcing the fact that Biblical heroes (and they don't get much bigger than Moses, folks) are not always necessarily what you'd call stellar people...
And before you leap to his defense with cries of "standing up for his people" and "the 99%", consider that the Bible goes out of its way to show that his murder of the Egyptian was not in the heat of the moment, but was a pre-meditated thing.
This is not a case of self defense on the part of somebody else, this is a case of "is anybody watching? Good. I'ma kill this mofo..." (or something similar, I assume).
The next thing we learn here is that the new Pharaoh is A) paranoid and aggressive; and B) not terribly bright when it comes to psychology and choosing his patsies.
The man wants babies dead is essentially the fact that proves point A, and the way he first thinks to go about this proves point B. Although people from Arizona can take some solace in the evidence that overreactive terror of foreigners and immigrants is obviously not limited to their crazy state... So that's something.
So Pharaoh decides that the Hebrews should be killed off, starting immediately with the next generation. Who does he ask to do this? Midwives. Women whose entire vocation is helping mothers and newborns. Women whose entire role is the preservation of life. Not only that, but he asks Hebrew midwives to kill the babies.
Luckily for everyone involved (except, I suppose, Pharaoh), the midwives prove that Pharaoh's plan is just so crazy that IT'S COMPLETELY CRAZY, and it fails miserably. Not only that, but it furnishes the midwives with the opportunity to spin themselves a little cultural folklore about the incredible hardcore-ness of Hebrew women.
It's only at the end of the chapter that Pharaoh clues in that he's maybe more likely to find some baby-killing psychopaths if he extends the announcement beyond health care professionals of the same race as the genocide's targets, and tells everybody to kill Hebrew baby boys.
Then along comes Moses, who is lucky enough to be born after his incredibly clever older sister.
Moses gets right down to business reinforcing the fact that Biblical heroes (and they don't get much bigger than Moses, folks) are not always necessarily what you'd call stellar people...
And before you leap to his defense with cries of "standing up for his people" and "the 99%", consider that the Bible goes out of its way to show that his murder of the Egyptian was not in the heat of the moment, but was a pre-meditated thing.
12 So he looked this way and that, and when he saw there was no one around, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
This is not a case of self defense on the part of somebody else, this is a case of "is anybody watching? Good. I'ma kill this mofo..." (or something similar, I assume).
Out in the wilderness, after fleeing because people found out that he'd killed the guy, despite his attempts at secrecy, we get another indication that things work differently in Exodus than they did in Genesis.
Quick! How many kids did Moses have? No idea? Me neither. I'd forgotten (or possibly never knew) that he even had one, but there he is, right in chapter 2, verse 22. Gershom (with another "sojourn" reference, to boot).
And that's it. One verse, and then it's done. No prophecy, no God coming down and naming the kid, no re-assertion of the Abrahamic covenant through lineage, nothing.
This... this isn't Kansas anymore... (he's not even marrying a cousin in this story. What? Too soon?)
Quick! How many kids did Moses have? No idea? Me neither. I'd forgotten (or possibly never knew) that he even had one, but there he is, right in chapter 2, verse 22. Gershom (with another "sojourn" reference, to boot).
And that's it. One verse, and then it's done. No prophecy, no God coming down and naming the kid, no re-assertion of the Abrahamic covenant through lineage, nothing.
This... this isn't Kansas anymore... (he's not even marrying a cousin in this story. What? Too soon?)
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