I AM WHO I AM

Exodus 1 - 14

Moses: fleeing Egypt

This section features the well known story, documented by the film Prince of Egypt, where Moses frees the enslaved Israelites from Egypt. Bullrushes - rescued by the Egyptians princess - burning bush - seven plagues – rescue – waters.

Following Joseph becoming the Don in Egypt, his family settles and the Israelites establish themselves as a people in the land of the Pharaohs. The people grow and become numerous to the point where the Egyptians forget about the legacy of Joseph and, intimidated by their numbers, decide the best thing to do is enslave them lest they rise up. Exodus picks up where the rulers have decided to put to death every Hebrew boy born.

The boy with no identity

Moses is a pleasingly disenfranchised character, rootless and multicultural. We are told very little about his mother and sister and nothing of his father Amram. He is given up in the reeds, rescued by the Egyptian princess but cunningly returned to his mother who the princess assumes is just a Hebrew nurse (2:9). Moses is then returned to the princess once nursed. How does he feel?

He knows he is Hebrew though as he is moved by the enslavery, murdering an Egyptian guard in defence of an Israelite. However, he is rejected by the Israelites and the Egyptians who are both nonplussed but this act. Thus, rejected by his home land, he flees.

However, in the reader’s mind, he is quickly establishing himself as a bit of a hero and a Charlie big potatoes as he carries out further vigilante justice defending a bevy of Midian beauties from some marauding shepherds down by the well. In turn he wins the lady Zipporah’s heart, has a baby, and sets up a rather idyllic lifestyle tending to the flocks. So, the man Moses is a hero for all the ages, a frontiersman, an ubermensch driven by his own ethics and sense of justice.

But God is not dead, and won’t let his ubermensch lie low for long. Much like the Tower of Babylon, God is not going to let his charges sit around inventing their own morality out of the godless vacuum of multi-culturalism. The Israelites need a hero and cry out to God for help and Moses is the one. (2:24)

Humility

Moses’ stock continues to rise, setting the ladies hearts all aflutter by furthering his romantic credentials with a highly impressive display of humility. God appears in the burning bush saying he needs him to go and save his people and Moses is all, ‘me?’ ‘Me?’ ‘Surely not.’

‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ (3:11)

Zen moments

The burning bush scene is the first time in the bible when God reveals a very Buddhist side to himself, baffling Moses with the utterance; “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”(3:14)

He goes on to say:

'This is my name forever,
the name you shall call me
from generation to generation.’(3:15)

So God is I and I is God. Can I go as far to suggest, I come from God, or God comes from me. Am ‘I’ God? Is everything ‘I’ see, do, think, say, believe, like, taste God? Yes. I am Moses, I am you, I am me, I am God. You come from God, we are all connected.

Taken to school

God then teaches Moses to be a Jedi in the wilderness, and Moses teams up with Brother Aaron who is also a master of the dark arts and a wiz with the old staff and they head to Egypt to rescue the people. Aaron actually pulls off all the stunts during the plaguing of the Egyptians. He’s the one who actually waves the stick. Moses is just the messenger telling Aaron to do what God tells Moses. (‘The Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.7:1)The plagues of blood, frogs, gnats, flies, livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, death on the first born, all work together to reduce Egypt to ruins. However, all the time the tension grows between all parties. Pharaoh gets angry, the Israelites get treated worse, and Moses gets tested, but God keeps going.

Political intrigue: the spectre of Marx

Ah, yes, but politics is complicated. The Israelites have lived in this way for 430 years (12:40) and are actually not all that unhappy about the perceived ‘slavery.’ It is gradually revealed that Moses’ campaign to take everyone to live in the wilderness eating milk and honey is not wholly supported by the people who are kept pretty well as long as they stack their daily quota of bricks(5:18). Pharaoh is well cheesed off when he hears about Moses’ liberation movement and raises the workload for the Israelites, who are in turn cheesed off with Moses.

'5:20 When (the Israelite Overseers) left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them, 21 and they said, “May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.’

You see, the Israelites have become victims of commodity fetishism. They are so wrapped up in the capitalist mode of production their bodies are merely units of work that cannot be valued outside of this system. They find Moses’ idea of going and hanging out in the desert for the sake of spiritual salvation foolish. They believe in getting up in the morning, going to work, doing a good job, going home to their families, and getting on with it again tomorrow, and the day after that, ad infinitum. You never know, they may become Israelite overseers one day. They are brainwashed, as you would be, and really can’t see any value in some proletariat uprising. What is freedom, they ask? But they don’t really ask. Ah. God is freedom.

Ending

We know how it ends up. God’s persistence pays, Moses gets his way, leads them all to ‘freedom’ and the Egyptians are all crushed in the sea. However, en route, the Israelites learn how to eat meat (12:8 ‘Roasted over a fire… Do not eat the meat raw or boiled,) and Passover in remembrance of the night God kills off the Egyptian babies, and we also learn the meaning of circumcision.

4:24 ‘At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met Moses and was about to kill him. 25 But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. 26 So the LORD let him alone.’

Lesson
The freest man will save us