Key Verses: Exodus 1-2

Key Questions


1. Why is it meaningful to consider the title of the book (Exodus x Shemot) as we think about the nature of the book of Exodus itself?

2. What kind of a world is the world in the first chapters of Exodus and how similar is it to our world today? 

3. Where is God and where are “His people” in the introduction of the book of Exodus? How do the women depicted in the first two chapters of Exodus provide insights into possible answers to this question.

4. How does the author use irony and reversal in the scene of Pharaoh’s daughter saving Moses? How does this moment move the story forward?


5. What can be learned of Moses in these early chapters? What do you make of his seeming identity crisis and act of resistance?

Theological Insights


“The book of Exodus moves from slavery to worship, from Israel’s bondage to Pharaoh to its bonding to Yahweh. More particularly, the book moves from the enforced construction of buildings for Pharaoh to the glad and obedient offering of the people for a building for the worship of God. Exodus advances from an oppressive situation in which God’s presence is hardly noted in the text to God’s filling the scene at the completion of the tabernacle.” Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus (Interpretation), 1.

“The English name of the second book of the Bible is ‘Exodus,’ a term that comes to us, via the Latin, as an abbreviation of the Greek title exodos aigyptou (‘Road out from Egypt’). This title focuses the reader’s attention on the narrative in the first fourteen chapters of the book, which tell the story of Israelites departing from Egypt. The remaining thirty-six chapters of the book recount the journey to Sinai and then the revelation there of the covenant and its stipulations; and they conclude with a description of a tabernacle and an account of its construction. The Hebrew title of the book follows ancient Semitic practice of naming a work by its opening words, in this case ‘And these are the names’, which is usually shortened to Names. This title, which refers to the ‘names’ of the sons of Jacob whose descendants are now in Egypt, conveys the connection of Exodus with the preceding biblical book, Genesis, which ends with the story of their descent to Egypt. In so doing, it indicates that Exodus is part of the larger literary unit known as the Torah, or Pentateuch.” Carol Meyers, Exodus (NCBC), 1.

“Oppression in any of its forms means death. This was the experience of the Jewish people in Egypt, a country that became a symbol of deprivation and exploitation as well as of sin, which is the ultimate cause of injustice. Set over against this experience was the experience of the exodus: liberation brings life. God liberates because God is the God of life. The messianic proclamation of Jesus Christ is likewise focused on liberation. The theme thus runs through the entire Bible and reveals to us a God who loves life; life is God’s will for all beings. To believe in Yahweh, the God who liberates, and to maintain that Jesus, “the author of life” (Acts 3:15), is the Son of God, is to be a friend of life.” Gustavo Gutierrez, The God of Life, 18.