A Celebration of Liberation

This year, the Jewish people celebrate their iconic festival, Passover or Pesach, from sundown on 22 April to sundown on 29 April in the land and to sundown on 30 April in the diaspora. The Passover celebrates the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Whether or not one believes that the event occurred just as is described in Exodus or that Exodus greatly embellishes the story to make it seem much larger than it was or that it is a mythic tale that has no basis in history, what cannot be denied is the central role that the Exodus had and has in the life of the Israelites then, the life of the nation of Israel that followed them, and the lives of Jews today. The celebration of Passover this year takes on an added significance in light of the current genocide of the Palestinian people by the Zionist state. 

A Matter of Terminology

Before I proceed, some readers may wonder about my terminology ‘Zionist state’. Over the past months I have struggled with what to name the Zionist state. In earlier posts I wavered between calling it ‘the nation of Israel’ or ‘the current nation of Israel’ and ‘Israel’. However, it has become increasingly clear, to me at least, that using the name ‘Israel’ in connection with this nation prejudices people – Jewish, Muslim and Christian – to connect it with the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. Since, in my view, there is no legitimate connection between this nation and the Old Testament people of Yahweh, referred to as ‘Israel’, using the term ‘Israel’ in connection with the modern state only confuses the issue. However, the terminology ‘Zionist entity’, often used by those who reject this nation’s right to exist, seemed too extreme for me. 

Hence, I have used the phrase ‘Zionist state’. The first word delinks this nation from the Old Testament people of Yahweh. The second word allows this state the right to exist in the same way as the other states that currently exist have a right to exist. Just as the former Soviet Union split into 15 independent states and the former East Germany and West Germany unified to form the current state of Germany, so also I do not consider any state to have any inalienable right to exist since its existence depends on the people.

I also wish to distinguish the Zionist state from the Israeli citizens, most of whom are being duped and misled by their government, though, as I will argue, are still complicit in the actions of the government, and from Jews everywhere, many of whom are facing increased anti-Jewish sentiment in light of the actions of the Zionist state. Those who know me well know what I am going to say. But for clarity and in service of being explicit about it in a context where I could be misquoted, let me assert that every human, without exception, deserves to be treated with dignity and without the threat of violence against them.

The Context for the Exodus

Anyway, I was talking about this year’s Passover being more significant than usual. The significance resides in the varying interpretations of the event of the Exodus and its relevance for the lives of the Jewish people today. And in the middle of this, there are varying interpretations from Christian perspectives that highlight not only the fact that, against the oft repeated claim that the scriptures are perspicacious, the scriptures are undeniably and irreducibly equivocal, but also that Christian support or opposition for what is being done by the Zionist state depends, at least in part, on how we interpret the central event of the Hebrew scriptures.

In order to interpret the celebration of the Passover and the Exodus event it memorializes, we need to set everything in proper context. However, rather than start where Exodus starts, I wish to go further back to the last few chapters of Genesis. This is like those who support the Palestinians refusing to accept a history that begins on 7 October 2023 with the Hamas attack from Gaza, but rather insisting on placing that horrid event in its proper context of over a century long occupation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by the British Empire from 1917 to 1948 and the Israeli state ever since.

I wish to begin in Genesis 47.20-21, where we read, “So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. All the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them, and the land became Pharaoh’s. As for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other.” Earlier, Joseph himself had been sold as a slave by his brothers, eventually coming into the service of Potiphar. He had had the experience of being a slave. When he was powerless in the face of his ten brothers he had been at the receiving end of injustice. And in Genesis 47, when he was at the zenith of his power, we read that he had no qualms about dispossessing the people of Egypt and enslaving them under Pharaoh. But this is not the first instance of slavery that we encounter in the bible. That dubious honor belongs to Abram, the progenitor of the Abrahamic faiths, for we are told in Genesis 16 that his wife, Sarai, had an Egyptian slave, Hagar. 

Of course, prior to this we have the episode where Noah cursed Canaan and his descendants to be slaves, though we do not have an actual reference to any slave. Hence, the first three instances of slavery that are mentioned in the bible involve the ancestors of the Israelites as slaveholders (Abram), slave traffickers (Joseph’s brothers), or slave makers (Joseph). And incidentally, in both cases that involve non-Semitic people, those who were enslaved were Egyptians. And in the case of Joseph’s brothers, they trafficked one of their own. 

This is the proper context within which we are to read the account of Exodus, for Exodus was never intended to be a standalone document but was set up to follow Genesis. Genesis 48-50 serve as the denouement of the book, with all the multiple endings, much like the multiple endings of Return of the King. However, the climax is chapter 47, which sets up a cliffhanger, with the Egyptians being enslaved to Pharaoh through the work of Abraham’s great-grandson, Joseph. The reader, who has hopefully been following the unfolding story of Abraham and his descendants, is expected to ask, “Was this what Yahweh meant when he said he would bless all nations through Abraham and his descendants, namely, that they would be enslaved by the Israelites?”

Context and the Purposes of Yahweh

So when we reach Exodus and read about the enslavement of the Israelites, what are we to make of it? We could read it as though this was the start of the story, just as the Zionist state and its Western supporters push us to think that the history of Palestinian struggle in the land began on 7 October 2023 when Hamas attacked the Zionist state. Or we could recognize that Exodus is the second scroll of the narrative and realize that what is happening here probably has its roots in the earlier scroll. 

Before we go ahead it pays to observe that an atomized view of the bible and the history it narrates will almost invariably lead to a false understanding of the narrative and a falsification of the purposes for which the narrative was given to us. In this particular context, thinking that the story starts with Exodus rather than with Genesis will lead to a falsification of the purposes for which Yahweh gave Exodus to us. Similarly, believing that the struggle of the Palestinians is due to the events of 7 October 2023 rather than at least a century earlier, will lead to a falsification of the purposes for which Yahweh allowed that horror to happen. 

The Pharaoh of Exodus

As the narrative of Exodus unfolds, the Israelites have been enslaved by the Egyptian Pharaoh. The narrative does not give us a specific reason for this enslavement. We only read, “Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” (Exodus 1.8) What in the world does this mean? Quite obviously, after four centuries, which is the period between the end of Genesis and the start of Exodus, there would have been no one living who actually knew Joseph. So the text is clearly not making that ridiculous claim. 

According to one source, “The implication is that previous Pharaohs respected Joseph’s role in saving their nation” (italics added). However, this all too positive interpretation can scarcely be supported. We must ask, “What might be the reason for which the present Pharaoh did not respect Joseph?” Could it be that this Pharaoh realized that his people had not been saved by Joseph, but enslaved by him? Could this be the reason for which he did not respect Joseph? Could it be that there was a regime change from a dynasty that did not mind the enslavement of the Egyptians to one that took offense at their enslavement?

The Plagues of Exodus

The Exodus narrative continues, after introducing Moses and describing his encounter with Yahweh at the burning bush, to describe the battle between the gods of Egypt and Yahweh, through their agents, Pharaoh and Moses respectively. In this to and fro, Yahweh shows himself to be more powerful than the gods of Egypt. The plagues scale in intensity and then begin to distinguish between the Egyptians and the Israelites. Finally, we get to the tenth plague – the death of Egypt’s firstborn children. The tenth plague is particularly troublesome. For the first nine we can perhaps explain away Yahweh’s actions because, harsh though most of them were, at least they did not involve the death of anyone. Yet, with the tenth plague, we have explicit statements that Yahweh was going to kill Egypt’s firstborn children, not even sparing the firstborn among the animals. Why was Yahweh targeting the firstborn of Egypt? And was this not both excessive and unjust since the Egyptian civilians surely were innocent?

Back in chapter 4, when Yahweh was giving Moses instructions on what to do when he returned to Egypt, Yahweh said, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says Yahweh: Israel is my firstborn son. I said to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.” But you refused to let him go; now I will kill your firstborn son.’” (Exodus 4.21-23) Later we read, “Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, ‘Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel: Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness.’” (Exodus 5.1) Is this just an instance where the narrator dropped the ball or did Moses and Aaron forget the part about firstborns? Actually, they could not give the message as related to them in chapter 4 because Pharaoh had then not refused to let the Israelites to leave. Hence, we see that, just before the tenth plague, Moses, while in Pharaoh’s presence says, “Thus says Yahweh, ‘About midnight I will go out through Egypt. Every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the firstborn of the female slave who is behind the handmill and all the firstborn of the livestock. Then there will be a loud cry throughout the whole land of Egypt, such as has never been or will ever be again.” (Exodus 11.4-6) Hence, Pharaoh was warned about the grave consequences that continued refusal to allow the Israelites to leave would entail for him and the people of Egypt. Yet, later in v. 10 we read, “Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but Yahweh hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his land.”

A Case of Mistranslation

Here, a small diversion is essential. When we read the phrase, “Yahweh hardened Pharaoh’s heart,” it is easy to conclude that Pharaoh wanted to let the people go but that Yahweh forced him to be stubborn. This is unfortunate and stems from what I believe is an instance in which a certain theological position, namely Calvinism, has overwhelmed the understanding of the word in a few cases. The word used here is ḥāzaq, which appears 290 times in the Hebrew scriptures. However, as the lexicon entry indicates, it is only in the context of the sparring with Pharaoh, with one exception in Joshua 11.20, that the word is translated as ‘to harden’. In most occurrences, however, ḥāzaq is translated with ‘to be strong’ or ‘to strengthen’. There is absolutely no reason to translate it in the context of the conflict with Pharaoh as ‘to harden’ because ‘to strengthen’ works perfectly well. What that would say is that Pharaoh wanted to continue oppressing the Israelites. However, the plagues caused him to waver in his determination to oppress the Israelites. Hence, Yahweh ‘strengthened’ him so that he would still have the fortitude to do what he actually wanted to do. 

In other words, when we first read about Pharaoh ‘strengthening’ his own heart (Exodus 7.13, 22; 8.15, 19, 32; 9.7, 35) we understand that he was able to encourage himself to stay the course of oppression that he wanted to be on. There was no reason for him to ‘harden’ his heart because that would actually mean nothing from his perspective. However, when we read that Yahweh ‘strengthened’ Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 9.12; 10.20, 27; 11.10; 14.4, 8) the most natural understanding would be that, with the increasing intensity and severity of the later plagues, Pharaoh was losing courage and would have done something against his convictions were it not for Yahweh’s help.

Erasing the Unbiblical Line

So now we have an Exodus narrative in which the Pharaoh could only think of the Israelites in terms of oppressing them. That does sound quite familiar today, doesn’t it? We know of political leaders in the past and, unfortunately, in the present, who can only think of exploiting and oppressing certain people groups. 

It is important here to observe that we cannot go behind the text to determine the veracity of what it claims about Pharaoh. Quite obviously no Egyptian record would ever make any statement that portrays their ruler in such a poor light. And we only have the biblical account to go by in terms of Pharaoh’s words and attitude. All we can say is that the narrative portrays this Pharaoh as someone who was determined not to treat the Israelites humanely. And the punishment for this, according to the text, was death of the firstborn.

However, the text is clear that it is not only Pharaoh who will be affected. Rather, all the Egyptians were going to bear the brunt of the final plague. What? But what about Article 51.1 of Protocol I additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which states, “The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations”? When Exodus portrays the events of the plagues, it is clear that the battle is between Yahweh and the gods of Egypt. 

However, the bible recognizes one thing that the Geneva convention articles seem to forget. Armies are representatives of the people. In other words, the bible is clear that the common people are as complicit in the actions of the armies of their nations as are the soldiers themselves. The bible knows of no distinction between military and civilian populations. In fact, I assert that it is this convenient and fictitious distinction that has been introduced by the deceptions of the Geneva conventions that have lulled those we call civilians into a stupor that enables them to ignore the atrocities their armies commit in their names. 

In the worldview of the bible, everyone is a combatant because there is always the possibility of dissent. Yes, it may cost you your life, as it did for many of the prophets in the Old Testament who were killed by the then reigning kings and for many of Jesus’ first disciples who were killed by the Roman empire. The prophets and the first disciples tell us one truth that we Christians, ever since the Constantinian apostasy, have done our best to forget. The option to dissent always exists. However, when we draw a line separating the military from civilians, we encourage the civilians to think that they can dissociate themselves from the actions taken by the military. And this the bible will not allow. 

Just as all of Israel was to be a kingdom of priests and the Church is said to be a kingdom of priests, so also the bible understands that every citizen is responsible for the actions of their government. This is the grounds on which Christians have protested government action in the past. If it were possible to wash our hands off the atrocities committed by our governments, then it would be pointless for Christians to protest as citizens of any country because they would not be implicated. It is precisely because we are implicated that we protest and hope that our governments would not continue with their unjust policies and practices.

What I am saying is that the Egyptians, by not protesting the Pharaoh’s exploitation and oppression of the Israelites, became complicit in those unjust policies as much as if they had been in Pharaoh’s army or cabinet. Hence, Yahweh’s decision to kill the firstborn constitutes a targeted military operation to give evidence for Yahweh’s ability to target all and only a certain kind of Egyptian combatant, namely, the firstborn.

Yahweh’s Patience with Egyptian Complicity

I see some still protesting Yahweh’s decision to kill the Egyptian firstborn. Let us consider what the Egyptians had done. The Egyptians citizens had remained silent as the Israelites were enslaved, exploited, and oppressed. When the Egyptian taskmasters whipped the living daylights out of the Israelites, the rest of the Egyptian populace remained silent. We hear that Pharaoh ordered the killing of all male Israelite babies. This policy is reprehensible in itself since it involved the killing of infants. However, this policy, which allowed female babies to live, would eventually ensure the decimation of the Israelites and the forced sexual exploitation of the Israelite women since they would not have had, in that patriarchal culture, any males to provide for them. 

Despite this, the Egyptian citizens remained silent. These are the people Yahweh was targeting. He was targeting those who, with their silence, supported infanticide, genocide, and female sexual exploitation. When many of us today decry the genocidal actions of the Zionist state, supported by the silence of the citizens of that state, what do we say about the citizens of Egypt in Exodus, who allowed the same kind of atrocities to be committed against the Israelites? The Egyptians who remained silent were guilty of Cain’s sin. They allowed their fellow humans to be killed without even protesting. 

For more than two decades now, I have been an unwavering objector to any kind of violent action. Quite obviously, then, the parts of the biblical narrative that present divine violence have been particularly troubling to me. In the context of the Exodus, I am uncomfortable with the divine violence that the plagues, especially the tenth plague, portray. How do I make sense of it? Was Yahweh not able to find another way of dealing with the enslavement of the Israelites by the Egyptians? 

I think the preceding nine plagues, with their increasing intensity and severity, were Yahweh’s attempt to deal with the situation through other means. Actually, the attempt began with the rod that turned into a snake. When Aaron’s rod ate up the rods of the Egyptian diviners, it was a sign that Pharaoh should have listened to. This would have been a completely nonviolent campaign. The nine plagues that follow authenticated Yahweh’s resolve to deliver the Israelites. From the fourth plague onward, Yahweh even showed that he was able to afflict only the Egyptians and spare the Israelites. In other words, Pharaoh received ten opportunities to change his mind before the tenth plague. The tenth plague was in response to the failure of the preceding ten attempts at convincing Pharaoh that Yahweh would not remain silent in the face of Egyptian injustice. In other words, when we fault Yahweh for the violence of the tenth plague, we can do it only by forgetting that Pharaoh and the Egyptians, who were affected by all the plagues, chose not to listen to ten previous warnings. To isolate the tenth plague, horrendous as it is, from the rest of the narrative is to falsify the narrative, much like the Zionist state hopes to convince us that the conflict began on 7 October 2023.

Mind you, while I can understand the violence of the tenth plague in its narratival context, I still find it particularly unsettling. But perhaps it is there precisely because, by unsettling me, it will be able to teach me something crucially important that Yahweh intends me to learn. 

Lessons from Deuteronomy

Indeed, as we move forward in the Torah, we come to Deuteronomy, where, in five instances, Yahweh through Moses instructs the Israelites to remember they were slaves in Egypt. Why did Yahweh want the Israelites to remember such a sordid past? What would they gain by remembering such horror? Let us consider each of the five instances in Deuteronomy.

In Deuteronomy 5.15 we read, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore Yahweh your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” So the reason for remembering is about keeping the Sabbath. Strange? Absolutely not! For in the preceding three verses we read, “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as Yahweh your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you” (italics mine). While in Egypt they did not have a day of rest. It would have been natural for them to insist that their slaves and the resident aliens would still have to work on all seven days. However, the remembrance of their slavery in Egypt was to serve as the motivator for them to allow everyone, including their animals, to rest on the Sabbath. The memory of their enslavement in Egypt was no longer to serve as a way of dismemberment of other humans and animals, but as a way of ‘rememberment’ of all life in their midst.

The second instance is in Deuteronomy 15.15, where we read, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God redeemed you; for this reason I lay this command upon you today.” What command is Yahweh referring to? Once again, in the preceding verses we read, “If a member of your community, whether a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and works for you six years, in the seventh year you shall set that person free. And when you send a male slave out from you a free person, you shall not send him out empty-handed. Provide for him liberally out of your flock, your threshing floor, and your winepress, thus giving to him some of the bounty with which Yahweh your God has blessed you.” I will deal with the issue of slavery in the bible in another post. However, here the point is clear. The deprivation that was forced on them during the Egyptian enslavement was not to inform how they treat their slaves. When a Hebrew slave entered their service, it was not for an indefinite period. And when they left their service, they were to be given more than enough to start a life on their own. The remembrance of miserliness of Egyptian slavery was to serve not as a way of dismembering the future life of the slave so he would be enslaved again, but as a way of re-membering him so he could avoid being enslaved again.

In Deuteronomy 16.12 we read,  “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and diligently observe these statutes.” Again, we must ask, “Which statutes?” There, in the context of celebrating the festival of Shavuot, we read, “Rejoice before Yahweh your God—you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, the Levites resident in your towns, as well as the strangers, the orphans, and the widows who are among you—at the place that Yahweh your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.” Shavuot was supposed to be a time of joy during which the slaves and strangers were to be enabled to rejoice. The slaves here may or may not have been Hebrew slaves. Nevertheless, they, along with the strangers, who were certainly not Israelites, were to join in the rejoicing that surrounded Shavuot. In other words, at least for one day in the year, the collective rejoicing was to remove all grounds of separation between different people groups. The remembrance of the dismemberment of humanity that the Egyptian enslavement represented was to serve as the grounds for reconstruction of a unified humanity that rejoices together.

As we continue, we come to Deuteronomy 24.18 and 22, where we read, “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and Yahweh your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this” and “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this.” Why does Yahweh have to remind the Israelites about this twice in the space of five verses? Must be something really important. In vv. 17, and 19-21 we read, “You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge.” and “When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that Yahweh your God may bless you in all your undertakings. When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.” Justice, in the form of clothing and giving grain, oil (from the olives) and wine (from the grapes), which were essential to life in the Levant, was supposed to be guaranteed to the weakest members of society, namely the widows, the orphans, and the aliens. The Israelites were commanded to ensure the basic needs of everyone were taken care of. They were not to facilitate the destruction of the lives of the most vulnerable but were to actively ensure the reconstruction of their lives.

Re-Membering the World

What we have seen from our excursus into Deuteronomy is that the remembrance of the trauma of being slaves in Egypt was to serve as a motivating factor not to ensure that the Israelites would never be enslaved again, but rather to ensure that they never became the people who do what the Egyptians did. The remembrance of the Exodus was, therefore, the iconic way by which the Israelites were expected to break the cycle of dehumanization, exploitation, and oppression.

The memory of their slavery in Egypt was to serve as a way of enabling them to empathize with others, especially the weakest members of society – the orphans, the widows, and the aliens. The memory of the trauma of slavery was not so that they could recall it in order to justify oppression of others simply on the grounds that they had once been oppressed. Rather, the memory of their slavery in Egypt was to serve as a catalyst for generating a society that would never participate in or perpetrate such atrocities. 

The current Zionist state, however, has weaponized the memory of the Shoah to justify their mistreatment of the Palestinian people, involving actions of ethnic cleansing, cold-blooded murder, and genocide. In other words, the current Zionist state demonstrates that it cannot be considered the true heirs of the name ‘Israel’ for they have actually not forgotten the lessons of Deuteronomy, but have actively used the command to remember as a way of subverting its teachings by dehumanizing others. In other words, the Zionist state, and those who support it, are those who have rejected the message of the Exodus, which includes the liberation of and justice for all people, precisely because the remembrance of that deliverance from trauma was supposed to ensure the discontinuation of dismembering practices and a restoration of re-membering practices for all.

Can you imagine what a world we would have if the people of Yahweh actively heeded the five commands from Deuteronomy that we have looked at? When they called to mind any past trauma it would lead them to decide that they would never support any action that caused trauma to anyone else. When they remembered how they were dehumanized and brutalized in the past, they would determine that they would always treat everyone in humane and sensitive ways. It would truly lead to the healing of the world. And because of this I am confident that the celebration of Passover, which includes the remembrance of past trauma, is specially designed to overturn the dismemberment of the world and put into effect its ‘rememberment’.