The book of Exodus is very dear to me. When I think about the book of Exodus I think of at least three things.

The first, Exodus reminds me of my past. It was in the book of Exodus that I found my home for several years during graduate school as I tried to understand how the book depicted God’s relationship to the world and humans in its pages. My work then was interested in philosophical questions. It was focused on how the God-human relationship took place and what it conveyed about a possible philosophy of the Hebrew Bible. But this was many winters ago. Today, as I sit in my home here in Walla Walla writing these words, I am grateful for the opportunity to open this book again, in this season of life, and to allow the text to speak again and again about a God deeply interested in people, in bodies, in what is done to people and bodies, and about a God who works to liberate people then and now from those who do harm to people and bodies. This leads me to the second thing I think about when I think about the book of Exodus.

The book of Exodus also reminds me of liberation. It speaks of the plight of a foreign people in a foreign land who end up being oppressed by the powers of the time and used as slaves for the larger goals of Empire and its subjects. In response to His covenant promises and these practices and insensibilities, God re-appears in the book of Exodus—after being seemingly absent since the ending of the book of Genesis—with a liberating word: Let my people go. But the word that comes to the reader in the book of Exodus is not simply an ancient word to a people long deceased. This is a word that undoes the power structures of the world then, throughout history, and even now. The book of Exodus inspired biblical authors (see how Amos mentions other “exoduses” God had worked in history beyond Israel in Amos 9:7) and many subsequent movements in history aimed toward the liberation of people who were oppressed, marginalized, and de-humanized by the powers of the time. From Egypt to North America, from Haiti to South America, the word contained in this book moved people toward new visions, promises and actions in times of distress and chaos. In the context of North American history, Joel S. Baden in “The Book of Exodus: a Biography” writes that “Exodus provided the conceptual framework for the struggle for equality in America from its founding to the present… abolitionists and civil rights activists have turned over and over again to Exodus—not only reaffirming its centrality but renewing its relevance in each successive era” (184-185).

The book of Exodus carries a subversive word. It should come as no surprise, then, to notice how the Gospel writers do not deprive the reader of echoes to the narrative of Exodus as they outline the birth, life, and death of Jesus—the one who would inaugurate a greater Liberation and Exodus. From the flight in and out of Egypt to the baptism “in the waters,” from the journey into the desert where Jesus, like Israel, would be tempted and would learn to depend fully on God for life and provision to the veil of the tabernacle being torn at Jesus’ death. These are but a few of the many echoes of the Exodus that are hidden within the Gospels. The liberating word of God moves. It moves from the Exodus, through the prophets, into the Gospels, and even now. It is in thinking of the Gospels that I turn to the third thing the book of Exodus reminds me of.

The book of Exodus reminds me of Divine presence. John opens his Gospel informing the reader that the Word became flesh and “tabernacled” or “pitched a tent” with us. These words would not carry much weight if the book of Exodus did not anticipate the original story of how God comes to His people to the point of dwelling with them, and remaining with them in the tabernacle. Exodus is the precedent for the Divine movement toward humans in need of deliverance that only later we see embodied in Jesus. But Exodus does not only establish precedents, the book also follows precedents. Exodus is the story of how the same God who hovered over the waters of the deep chaos before the creation of the world continues to move over new chaotic environments to bring about the possibility of life again, and again. In creation, in Egypt and in the desert God—be it by cloud or a pillar of fire—hovers over His people and leads them toward a blessing and a life that is only possible within the certainty of Divine presence. If the book of Exodus was just about the liberation of the people it would have ended in the 15th chapter with a song of liberation. But the narrative moves forward twenty-five additional chapters to highlight the desire of God not only to liberate the people from bondage, but to be with the people as their God.

These are a few things the book of Exodus reminds me of, and it is to this book that we turn our attention to in this new Adult Sabbath School Lesson (written by my former Andrews University professor, Dr. Jiri Moskala).


My goals for this study guide are not bold. My desire here is to simply provide additional questions and a few quotations that might stimulate deeper discussions relating to the content of the lesson and the book of Exodus itself. While these two things might seem simple, they come from a place of deep intention. Questions and words from other authors are meaningful ways in which we can all experience the charity of learning in community. While questions open up new ways of seeing what is in front of us in these texts, reading insights from others helps us to listen to the voices of those who have looked at these texts before us. To see anew and to listen. It is toward this practice of charity and interpretation in community that I have prepared this study guide.

It is my prayer that this new lesson and study guide (along with the Good Word discussions) might inspire us to remove the sandals from our feet so that we might move toward the holy ground of the spaces and the bodies that the God of the Exodus moves toward even today. The apostle Paul reminds us of the didactic nature of the events of the Exodus in 1 Corinthians 10—along with its relation to their time and our time—by writing: “these things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the end of the ages have come.”

And here we still are, at the end of the ages, in the desert of history, surrounded by voices crying for liberation, awaiting a new word and the providential presence of the God of the Exodus.

As we turn to the Word, may we find them.

Tiago Arrais
Walla Walla, Washington

Spring, 2025.