The Atonement Part 2: The Exodus Motif

Doc Ryan and Matt continue a series on Atonement. We’re probably all familiar with the story of the Exodus where God calls Moses to stand up to Pharoah in order to set the Hebrews free. There were 10 plagues and each of these plagues was a judgement on an Egyptian god. Essentially, it’s a cosmic battle here. Here is what God says about the 10th plague… Exodus 12:1-13 12 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. Sea Crossing (Exodus 15) It wasn’t called the "Red" Sea It was the Greeks who started calling it the Red Sea. When the LXX gets translated, The Egyptians not only didn’t refer to it as the Red Sea, but they referred to all big bodies of water as “the great green.” Yam Suph means sea of reeds. The earlier meaning of the word suph, if you go back further into the Middle Kingdom in Egypt, suph meant the end, or the extremity, or the border, or the edge, sort of the extreme part. So in that context, it would have meant something like the sea at the end, the end sea or the border sea. The Reed Sea is the sort of Egyptian equivalent, in the Middle Kingdom—you see this in the Pyramid Texts—is the River Styx. It’s the body of water you have to cross after death to get to the place of your abode. In the Egyptian mind, when you see some sort of border with water on it, you should be thinking about entering into a realm of chaos and death (outside of the camp) so, if you can get past this watery body, this Sea of Reeds, then you’ll get to the other side, and you’ll have this shadowy existence in the presence of the Egyptian gods.the Pyramid Texts are burial texts, with spells and invocations to help get the spirits and the gods to guide the ka, the soul of the departed person, through the Sea of Reeds to the other side, safely. if you don’t, you become one of the mkhay-u. The mkhay-u are the drowned ones, is what that literally means. These are people who get tangled in the reeds and get pulled down into the Sea of Reeds and sort of lose their identity and become the drowned ones. They’re the damned for Egyptians. the Hebrews were ones who were guided through to the other side were guided through safely to the other side to go and dwell with their God in the promised land. When we talk about Passover (Communion), and passing from death to life, that’s not an allegorical thing. What they’re telling us in the Song of the Sea is the people who were there who experienced this the first time had the experience of passing through death, passing through the realm of death and being brought through safely to the other side, to new life, by Yahweh the God of Israel. And that’s the experience we’re sharing in when we celebrate Passover Passover: Deut 16:1-7, 2 Chron 30:13-20 2 Key things: Exodus is rescue from death and deliverance from slavery It’s a judgement on the Powers We don’t see any debt or sin language involved here God is purchasing a people (releasing them from slavery) and calling them His sons and daughters, but not a purchase as a legal metaphor. Passover sacrifices were a community meal (think communion) to celebrate being rescued and the defeat of the oppressive powers over God’s people Since the Exodus was Jesus’ primary motif for communicating His crucifixion, we need to put this as a primary metaphor when we think about the cross and its effects.