Exodus 13-15 We begin in these chapters to see why the Torah is sometimes called "The Law" as the rules/statutes/instructions for daily life and religious observance begin to be recorded in the context of the great narrative of freedom.
Notice, too, the repeated references to the "Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites" and to the "land flowing with milk and honey" (13:5)
Redemption of every first-born male related to the acts of the Passover.
Reference in summary fashion (13:17ff) to what will be narrated more fully in the subsequent chapters.
Notice the keeping of the promise to take the bones of Joseph back to the land of promise (13:19).
Then the Israelites finally leave! And Pharaoh asks "What have we done, letting Israel leave our service?" I guess the building was at a standstill and the scut-work jobs weren't getting done. (14:5)
And in 14:10ff we see the Israelites begin their pattern of complaining: "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in this wilderness?" Freedom wasn't what it was advertised to be…Moses, a great leader, says in 14:13: "Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the LORD will accomplish for you today."
Some of our best Easter songs are about this Exodus deliverance. "Come ye faithful, raise the strain" has a voice about Moses who "led them with unmoistened foot through the Red Sea waters." For Christians, the Great Vigil of Easter is organized around the twin climaxes of the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and the deliverance of humanity from the shackles of sin by the death and resurrection of Jesus. And the second deliverance is understood in terms of the first.
Chapter 15 has some of the oldest poetry in the entire Bible.
Psalm 21 Note how this psalm continues the theme of God giving (in this case, the king) one's heart's desire. (21:2 and 20:4). Psalm 21 is a kind of coronation psalm.
Matthew 22 We are in Holy Week. Jesus continues to teach via parables. Most of these parables are about what happens at the end--of time? of life? of an era?, about judgement.
What's with the man who got into the wedding banquet without the proper clothes? Scholars have had lots of different ideas over the centuries. (Matt. 22:12-14) What does it mean that many are called but few are chosen? Is that like a big casting call for a movie?
22:15ff is a reprise on the tax question. Previously, the question was about the temple tax; this time it is about taxes to Caesar. Interestingly, here Jesus has to ask for a coin. He's not carrying money, not carrying an image into the Temple ( which is forbidden by the Law), not in an obvious way sold out to the imperial powers of Rome as perhaps the temple is in some un-acknowledged ways.
22:23ff The first biblical "shaggy dog" story, about the woman who is widowed seven times… The scholars who pose the question to push the idea of resurrection to absurdity ask "Whose wife of the seven will she be?" Jesus does not answer their question directly. He simply starts out: "YOU are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God." Jesus doesn't play their game. He talks about the resurrection as being about life in the presence of the "God of the living."
22:34ff Question about the Greatest Commandment. I'd forgotten that Jesus made this response according to Matthew, in Holy Week.
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