Exodus is the story of the Jewish Prophet (Moses) leading a very large group of Jewish people out of the Kingdom of Egypt.
If that's what you think the book of Exodus is about then congratulations you know one third of the entire thing. Because there are two thirds of this book taken up by completely different information that has nothing to do with the grand Exodus story.
Now that wouldn't be a problem if the remainder of the book had information that was worth reading.
The second third of This Book is Full of Priestly information. That is details and practices that were mainly meant to be read by the priest and other religious people who are conducting ceremonies and local ritual. It's full of information on what types of spices to use during a sacrifice. Where to build altars, what to use those offers for, what prayers to be said and maybe some other bits of general information too.
You also get the Ten Commandments (''twice'' one of which contains 11 Commandments) and other Commandments that were never committed into the Ten Commandments.
And all this stuff though not horribly entertaining is at least interesting to read. Especially if you're trying to better understand the religion that these books are trying to promote.
But then you get the last third of the book. It's all about the Ark of the Covenant. Oh how I loathe this horrible Gotty looking box.
Multiple pages are dedicated to the exact measurements of the Box, how it's to be painted and how much gold is to be in planted on to it. And the best part about all this is. We get this information twice! And it's almost the exact same information repeated two times over.
It's a slug to read. This would also fall under the umbrella of Priestly information. This is stuff that the basic person doesn't really need to know. But given that the books here you can read about it all you like.
It becomes all the more pointless when in later books they'll tell you not to build images of God or to build temples in his name. So the construction of his box become something of a conflict.
Oh heck, we don't need to go to future books to see the irony of this story. Right after the Ark of the Covenant is explain to us we move on to the idols made of gold story. Where it's explicitly communicated to us that building any gods in the image of gold is a heinous and unforgivable thing to do.
You just spent 5 Pages explicitly telling us to build the world's ugliest ashtray using an amount of gold that I can't believe anyone would have and then you move immediately on to telling us that building things out of gold is immoral. And I'm inclined to agree with the ladder. We don't need a gold box!
So is Exodus worth reading? Well maybe. It's a foundation to understanding the Jewish faith and by extend all other things associated with it. But you might also be better off just watching 'The Ten Commandments' or that 'Prince of Egypt' movie If you're looking for The Exodus story done in an entertaining matter. Because unfortunately it's not really the focus of the Exodus book itself.
Perhaps the best thing to get out of this book besides the Exodus story itself is the weird symbolism that God used to be represented by. We're a long way from the god sitting up on a throne with a Long White Beard and a sense of admiration and awe.
This is a story in the age of ''Yahweh'' the grand volcano God who Reigns down Vengeance and Smites those who dare speak against him.
Heck, he tells Moses and a group of his followers to not only kill some of the people following them because of their heinous attitude towards the golden Idols. But to kill a load of people already living in the ''Promised Lands''. These are the Midianites who in the biblical stories were expressed as a different group of people from traditional Judeans or Israelis. All these people are looked upon differently back in the day but we know now that they're all practically the same tribe or if not exactly linked they're all cousins to one another. So to slaughter one is kind of like slaughtering your own family. God is indeed a vengeful deity.
And before I forget half the story of Exodus is just the story of the great plagues Inflicted on Egypt.
I just feel sorry for the Egyptians. They didn't do anything wrong, the god of Moses apparently screwed around with the Egyptian kings heart and made it impossible for him to Grant Moses any of his wishes. Also the only reason the Egyptians were growing weary of Jewish population is because of their immense growth*. But all of this becomes suspect in its own story because God had them go down to Egypt in the first place to live a good life. So once again God comes off as the only real villain in the whole darn story. You can call that Blasphemous all you want, go read the book as it's written. God doesn't care about being the good guy. He just wants people to do his bidding. Which that's just the way it is. Zeus wasn't really a good guy, Odin wasn't either. The old gods are a bunch of Harden dictators.
*Population so large that the Egyptian king wouldn't be able to keep them in his country even with the power of Gods. But much like so many other records from the old days the numbers have been greatly exaggerated.
In this case they're pretty much fictitious as the Jews never had any massive settlement in Old Egypt. At least not in the way the Exodus story proclaims. Egypt was most likely used as the aggressor because for a short window of time** they did control the land of Palestine. And if you're going to make a story involving your people escaping danger you might as well Escape it from the biggest and most powerful men in the land.
** 350 years is a small amount of time in the context of a 3000 year long country. Arguably even longer than that but I'm going up until the Roman Conquest.
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