Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Exodus, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
God’s Identity and Power
Redemption and Deliverance
The Covenant
Mediators and the Priesthood
Summary
Analysis
Israelites must not spread false reports, or side with the majority in lawsuits in ways which pervert justice. They also must not be partial to the poor in a lawsuit. If one sees their neighbor’s ox or donkey going astray, they should bring it back. Even if one sees an enemy’s donkey struggling under a burden, they should set the animal free. It’s wrong to accept bribes, or to oppress resident foreigners, for “you know the heart of an alien.”
This chapter’s laws continue to emphasize justice, requiring Israelites to deal with disputes, enemies, and foreigners in ways that reflect God’s compassionate character. Again, Israelites are called to remember that they know what it’s like to be an “alien” living in a foreign land, so they shouldn’t oppress foreigners, either.
Themes
After six years of sowing the land, the land should be allowed to lie fallow in the seventh; then the poor and wild animals may eat from the land. The people should spend six days doing their work, then resting on the seventh. The sabbath day allows their livestock, the slaves, and resident aliens to be refreshed.
Just as the Israelites’ week is based on a pattern of work followed by rest (six workdays followed by the Sabbath), their agricultural practices should follow a similar pattern. Both weekly and seven-year patterns are opportunities to be compassionate to those who especially need food or rest.
Themes
Three times a year, there should be festivals to God—the festival of unleavened bread in the month of Abib, the festival of harvest, and the festival of ingathering. At these three annual festivals, all Israelite males must appear before God.
The feast of unleavened bread refers to the Passover. Two additional festivals are introduced: the spring harvest festival, or Shavuot, and the fall ingathering festival, or Sukkot, which celebrates the gathering up of that which has grown in the fields.
Themes
God promises to send an angel before the people to guide them to the promised land. If the people listen carefully and obey God’s voice, God will oppose their enemies. When the angel brings the people to the Amorites, the Hittites, and the rest of the tribes of Canaan, and God destroys these peoples, the Israelites must not adopt their religious practices. They must worship the LORD their God instead, and he will bless them and cause their enemies to be driven out before them. The Israelites will then increase and possess the promised land. The borders of the land will go “from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates.”
As elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, the “angel” might refer to God himself—in any case, the people must obey the angel as if he were God. These commands look ahead to Israel’s eventual conquest of the promised land of Canaan. Perhaps the most important is that the Israelites must not take on the religious beliefs of the people currently living in Canaan. Adopting these would destroy Israel’s distinctiveness as a people. Doing so would also be a failure to acknowledge God as the very one who led the Israelites into the promised land. The “sea of the Philistines” is the Mediterranean Sea, and the “wilderness” refers to the desert south of Israel.
Themes
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