Category: Lessons

Key Verses: Exodus 35-40 Key Questions
 Theological Insights
 “the completed Tabernacle is erected on New Year’s day, as Exodus 40:7 records. This underscores the idea that a new era in the life of the people...

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Key Verses: Exodus 32 Key Questions
 Theological Insights
 “While the core of this incident starkly portrays human weakness and sin, our gaze must not rest solely on shame. Notice where God is in the story....

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Key Verses: Exodus 32 Key Questions
 Theological Insights
 “Hebrew ‘egel is a young ox or bull… Throughout the Near East the bull was a symbol of lordship, leadership, strength, vital energy, and fertility. As such,...

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Key Verses: Exodus 24-31 Key Questions
 Theological Insights
 “[the presence of God] beyond Sinai, is to be accomplished by constructing a dwelling place for God… assuring God’s accessibility to the community. Virtually all of the...

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Key Verses: Exodus 21-23 Key Questions
 Theological Insights
 “These chapters, containing the first body of Torah legislation, have become known in English as the ‘Book of the Covenant,’ Hebrew sefer ha-berit. This name is based...

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Key Verses: Exodus 19-20 Key Questions
 Theological Insights
 “Equality is the holy grail of revolutionary politics. It has often been sought, but never achieved. The two best-known attempts have been equality of wealth (through communism...

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Key Verses: Exodus 16-18 Key Questions
 Theological Insights
 “Two rules govern the manna economy: limiting the daily collection to ‘an omer a head’ (Exod 16:16)—as much as a person can eat in a day—and refraining...

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Key Verses: Exodus 13-15 Key Questions
 Theological Insights
 “The triggering move that sets off this final and definitive burst of wonder, God’s salvation act, unprecedented and unsurpassable, is a meal, an ordinary meal, a meat...

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Key Verses: Exodus 11-12 Key Questions
 Theological Insights
 “A newly liberated people will create practices and institutions that are in tune with their new status. In the case of passover, however, liturgy precedes the liberative...

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Key Verses: Exodus 7-10 Key Questions
 Theological Insights
 “The present narrative is a sophisticated and symmetric literary structure with a patterns of three groups each comprising three plagues. The climactic tenth plague possesses a character...

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Key Verses: Exodus 5-6 Key Questions
 Theological Insights
 “Perhaps nowhere is Pharaoh’s hardness of heart demonstrated more clearly than in the first words he utters in the Exodus narrative: ‘Who is the Lord?’ In time,...

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Key Verses: Exodus 3-4 Key Questions
 Theological Insights
 “Moses also experiences a challenge to his way of approaching and knowing the world. His encounter at the burning bush calls into question not only the reliability...

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