Remember that thing about the main characters (heroes, sometimes) of the Bible often being so human it hurts just to hear about them? And how that tends to fly in the face of the weird theory that the Bible was written by the people (or their descendants) who "star" in it so that they'll gain something from it?
Yeah, that really starts to pick up here in Exodus. In Genesis, we had flip-flopping, faithless, gutless and/or shameful behaviour on an individual level, because that's the level that, by and large, Genesis worked on. Now that we're in Exodus and we've zoomed out to a more corporate, societal level, we start to get a handle on just how old that axiom about mob mentality ("to determine the overall intelligence of a large group of people, take the IQ of the stupidest people in that group and divide by the number of people present") might be.
Israel was in Egypt for more than four centuries. The text puts it at exactly 430 years. Now, granted, the first chunk of those years were pretty good - safe in the shadow of Joseph's influence, likely even after he died. Israel had its own little region of Egypt and they had loads of stuff.
However, it'd be pretty hard to argue that the latter chunk (and likely the larger of the two as well) would have been pretty crappy. What was their own little province became a ghetto, what influence they had had vanished, and they were now a slave race, right within the Egyptians' own borders. They were treated accordingly, as it seems.
So God - the God that they've clearly remembered and clung to a faith in for the past few centuries, rescues them in spectacular and terrible fashion ("Safe? Who said anything about safe? Of course He's not safe...") and has now led them into Egypt.
And Israel, to their credit, has noticed. They, immediately, apparently, establish a practice that will remain in place for thousands of years (a trip to Israel or any orthodox Jewish community today will show little boxes on hands and foreheads - this is why those are there - they've been doing this since whatever-thousand-BC when Exodus happened... mind=blown). They establish a practice for sacrificing the firstborn of all of their livestock, and extra to make up for the redemption of their own firstborn, in recognition of the passing over of God on that horrible night.
They clearly get it, at least at first.
But then something happens - things get difficult. And it all changes, instantly.
The extent of the fairweather faith of Israel becomes shockingly obvious to we, who so naturally believe to the utmost even in times of great trial and tribulation...
A reasonable facsimile of any decent sarcasm meter after that last sentence.
All kidding aside, and with full disclosure that none of us are much better, really, it is almost funny how quickly they swivel from genuinely, penitently grateful and worshipful to being A) out and out liars and B) incredible ingrates.
Granted, "what? There weren't enough graves in Egypt so you brought us out here?" (14:11) is hilarious, and that person would probably have gotten some high fives if they'd been invented yet...
This would also work...
...but to actually try and sell Moses on the notion that they always said they loved Egypt and never wanted to leave (14:12)... Astounding. So the now-adopted word from the sons of Israel is that they'd much rather die under the whip of their Egyptian taskmaster, enslaved and exploited, then as free people (this is all based on the assumption that God has instantly utterly abandoned them, of course, after fighting to free them for however long it actually took...).
Not the general role model for the immediately post-slavery Israelites...
But God's not giving up, and basically says "shut up and let Me handle this." (Which is what I like to think an accurate, regular-people-speak translation of "The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent" would be...)
The Red Sea opens, Israel goes through, the Red Sea closes and Pharaoh's 600-strong crack chariot squad is no more.
And that's the end of that chapter.
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