Archives: Moses

Liberation of the Mind

Liberation of the Mind

The great moment of national liberation, the event upon which the whole of Israelite history depends is the Exodus from Egypt. Yet preparations for this nation-changing event are introduced in the Torah by the seemingly inconsequential announcement to Moses that “this month will be to you the first of the months.”

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The Fourth Plague

The Fourth Plague

According to medieval Jewish bible commentators, the fourth plague suffered by the Egyptians was an invasion of destructive herds of wild animals. Yet Christian, and indeed many modern Jewish translations , believe the plague was an inundation of flies. The disagreement between the two opinions of the plague’s nature is highlighted in the Midrash.

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Korach’s Rebellion: A Case Study

Korach’s Rebellion: A Case Study

The story of Korach’s rebellion offers an interesting insight into the responsibilities that accompany leadership and privilege

The story is simple. Moses had appointed his brother Aaron as High Priest. He did so at God’s command but nobody, other than Moses knows this; to everyone else it looks like a classic case of nepotism. Moses’s cousin Korach leads a rebellion, reasoning that if there are privileges to be handed out in the family they should just as easily be given to him as to Aaron. Joining with various other malcontents he demands a share in the priesthood. Continue reading

Why Biblical Words Matter

The final section of Exodus begins with a tally of the materials used in the construction of the Tabernacle, an enterprise which has been described in detail during the previous fourteen chapters, over one third of the book. The chapter is introduced with the words ‘these are the accounts of the Tabernacle…’

The English word ‘account’ has a dual meaning, it can refer either to a tale or to a statement about finance. The Hebrew word that is translated here as ‘account’ has many more meanings. Coming from the verbal root pkd it is one of those multi-purpose words that can be used in different ways that often seem to be unrelated, or very loosely so at best. Continue reading

Evidence of Deliberate Literary Structure in the Book of Exodus

There is a clear literary structure to the Book of Exodus. It runs far deeper than just the bare outline of the tale, opening with the enslaved Israelites being forced to build pyramids for Pharaoh and ending with them liberated, voluntarily constructing a tabernacle for God. The details of the plot, and the very choice of vocabulary itself indicates a deliberate contrast between the first and second halves of the book. Continue reading

We will do, but do we hear?

How could the Israelites have made the Golden Calf? They had just witnessed the most awe-inspiring, mind boggling miracles- the ten plagues, the splitting of the Red Sea and to cap it all God’s revelation to them on Mount Sinai. And yet here they were only a few weeks later making a golden calf and proclaiming: “these are your gods Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.”

Many explanations have been put forward. Moses had been up the mountain for longer than they expected, so they assumed he was dead and sought a substitute for his leadership. Alternatively, the calf was made by the foreigners in their midst- they blamed the foreigners in those days too. Or they were so subsumed in their slave mentality that they could not deal with the idea of an unknown invisible deity; they needed a concrete representation. Continue reading

What Moses Can’t Teach Us About Leadership

We live in a world diminished by the absence of clear, effective, ethical leadership. Brexit, populism, fake news, the upsurge of the far right; these are all symptoms of, at best, weak and ineffectual leadership, at worst of a political class that is wilfully perverse and deceitful.

The opening chapters of Exodus are in part about leadership, about the call Moses receives to lead his people out of slavery, his response to that summons and his growth as a leader. Moses of course has one great advantage; he has God on his side. The advantage is not just that God is his religious source of inspiration giving him the confidence to succeed. God is actually, there, by his side, commanding him, telling him what to say, telling him in unmistakable words that whatever action he is about to do perform will have the desired effect. Continue reading

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