Exodus

Exodus, book of the Old Testament. The second book of the Bible, it was named Exodus because it relates the departure of the Israelites from Egypt and their wanderings through the desert up to Mount Sinai. The Jews, who know each of the books comprising the Pentateuch by the first significant word of the Hebrew text, call it Shemot (“names”).

Exodus records the events between the death in Egypt of Joseph, the favorite son of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob, and the erection by the Israelites of the Tabernacle at Sinai. The first 15 chapters tell of the oppression of the Israelites by the Egyptians after Joseph's death, of the birth and preservation of Moses from slaughter, of God's selection of Moses to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, of the ten plagues inflicted on the Egyptians, and of God's deliverance of the Israelites both from the land of Egypt and from the Egyptian army at the Red Sea (or the “sea of reeds,” sometimes identified as a shallow body lying north of the Red Sea, perhaps Lake Timsāḩ).

The major events that occur in the rest of Exodus (chapters 16-40) occur at Sinai, where the Israelites have set up camp after wandering for several months in the wilderness (chapters 16-18). These events are the offering and making of a covenant between God and the Israelites (19:3-24:18), including the reciting by Moses of the Ten Commandments, or Decalogue, which are the terms of the covenant (20:1-17); the breaking and renewing of the covenant (chapters 32-34); and the building of the Tabernacle (chapters 35-40), into which are placed various sacred furnishings, among them the ark of the covenant.

The deliverance from Egyptian slavery has been of central significance to Judaism and to the Jewish people, who have commemorated it annually since its occurrence. Even more than the exodus, however, the making of the covenant between God and the Israelites at Sinai has been a uniquely decisive event in the growth of Judaism and in the history of the Jews, for nearly all subsequent Jewish religious and civil life and law have been based on attempts to observe and obey the words “be to me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation” (19:6) spoken by God at Sinai.

Exodus, traditionally ascribed to Moses, is believed by most modern scholars to have been compiled in its present form by members of the priesthood around 550 bc. Certain parts of the book (for example, chapters 25-31), in which God describes to Moses the manner in which the Tabernacle and its furnishings are to be built, and the dress and ritual of the priests, are thought to date from earlier times. The section containing the code of religious and civil ordinances (20:23-23:33) is of even greater antiquity and may possibly have originated in pre-Mosaic times.