“And when your children ask you”

There is something prophetically audacious about the Exodus story. Nor is this the only prophetically audacious story in the Old Testament. Just think of David and Goliath, Joshua and Jericho, and Jonah and Nineveh. The message is the same in all of them: God is mightier! God is mightier than Pharaoh. God is mightier than Jericho. God is mightier than Goliath. And God is mightier than Jonah could even imagine.

What do I mean by prophetic audacity? Firstly, there is the sheer scale of the events described in these stories. Exodus tells of millions leaving Egypt (Ex 12:37), Goliath is impossibly large (1 Sam 17:4), Jericho seemed impenetrable (Josh 6:1), and Nineveh was a vast and wicked city (Jonah 1:1). And God’s instruments in such work? A stammerer with a staff, a boy, some wind instruments, and a reluctant prophet.

I mean prophetic, in part, because these accounts are not just about God’s work in the past, but more about looking forward to future fulfillment and future hope. Nephi captures the essence of the kind of hope inspired by the prophetic audacity of the Exodus story:

And it came to pass that I spake unto my brethren, saying: Let us go up again unto Jerusalem, and let us be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord; for behold he is mightier than all the earth, then why not mightier than Laban and his fifty, yea, or even than his tens of thousands? Therefore let us go up; let us be strong like unto Moses; for he truly spake unto the waters of the Red Sea and they divided hither and thither, and our fathers came through, out of captivity, on dry ground, and the armies of Pharaoh did follow and were drowned in the waters of the Red Sea. Now behold ye know that this is true. (1 Nephi 4:1-3)

When believers find themselves in extremis, pushed to their limits, to the edge of reason and beyond, it is often the hope found in the stories of prophetic audacity that carries them through, sustaining the life of faith. But for that sustenance to persist, the stories need to remain present and real. This real presence is maintained through ritual and narrative.

There has been scholarly debate over the priority of ancient Jewish narrative and ritual.[1] What we find in the book of Exodus is the two woven together and reinforcing each other. But they are woven together in such a way that scholars have been able to detect the seams. One indicator of a narrative seam in the book of Exodus is a shift in genre. This happens several times, as in Exodus 15, which incorporates a long and beautiful Hebrew poem that describes the Exodus in distinct and compelling ways (Exodus 15:1-18).[2]

In the case of Exodus 12, the genre shift is from narrative to law. But it is not a complete shift; rather, it is a weaving of narrative and law, as a comparison with Deuteronomy 16:1-8 shows. Thematically, the chapter introduces ritual instruction into the narrative in a way that almost breaks the fourth wall. This is no longer a simple narration of the Exodus story, nor is it the kind of strict presentation of Jewish law and ritual that we find later in the Pentateuch. It is as though the narrator is looking beyond Moses and Aaron, and even beyond the “the whole congregation of Israel” (Exodus 12:3), to the author’s own community and their posterity (Exodus 12:24-25). But even to say “author” is problematic, because scholars see this chapter developing over time rather than being the product of a single author. But we can imagine an editor like Mormon, who is writing long after the events he narrates.

The chapter begins with the Lord telling Moses and Aaron that the Exodus from Egypt is an event of such significance that it resets time (Exodus 12:2). The month of the Exodus is to become the first month and each month was simply numbered after that, as a constant reminder of their redemption (e.g. Exodus 16:1). This chapter thus re-introduces the idea of sacred time first found in creation. The year will now be marked by liturgical celebrations linked to the salvation history of Israel, beginning with the Exodus. Elsewhere in the Pentateuch, we are told that the Exodus is commemorated by the Feast of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Deuteronomy 16:1-8; Leviticus 23:5-6). But here is the origin story, a story that will be recalled at the annual celebration of the Passover and Unleavened Bread festivals and reinforced by these festivals being embodied and reenacted. This chapter weaves together story and ritual to create the earliest memories of the “congregation of Israel.”

Story and ritual are also reinforced by memory and remembering. And generational remembering is promoted through a culture of questions. And those questions produced a culture of answers that give reasons for the hope of Israel. This culture of questions is enacted in Exodus 12 where it says, “And when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this observance?’ you shall say, ‘It is the passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses’” (Ex. 12:26-27 NRSV). This is no longer a direct narrative or an indirect narrative, but imagined future narratives. Now we understand more of what was meant in the previous verse, which states, “You shall observe this rite as a perpetual ordinance for you and your children” (Exodus 12:24). The ordinance is establishing inter-generational links through recursive liturgical practices.

The culture of answers and the integrity of narrative and ritual are exemplified in Exodus 12, but also elsewhere. Consider, for example, Deuteronomy 26:5–8, where the narrative of the Exodus is woven into a different liturgical setting, the bringing of the first fruits of the harvest to the temple:

Then you shall declare before the Lord your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, subjecting us to harsh labor. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. (Deuteronomy 26:5-9 NIV)

The Jewish liturgical year reinforced the memory of narratives of prophetic audacity that gave the community hope and resilience.

Prophetic audacity is similarly kept alive in the Christian tradition through narrative and ritual. And it is this context that we tell the most prophetically audacious story of all—the story of the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This story is our Good News, and it describes another once-and-future event, like Passover and the Exodus. For Latter-day Saints, this Good News, this gospel (3 Nephi 27:13-16), is the reason we give for the hope that is within us.

Notes

[1] See chapter 3 of Joel S. Baden, The Book of Exodus: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2019).

[2] The chapter is more complex, as noted in the recent commentary by Cambridge scholar Graham Davies: “The section unusually includes two songs, one much longer than the other, each celebrating Israel’s deliverance from the Egyptians (vv. 1b-18, 21b) and each with its own short narrative introduction (vv. 1a, 20-21a). In addition, a brief conclusion (v. 19) has been added to the first song.” Graham I. Davies, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Exodus 1-18, in Two Volumes. Volume 2: Commentary on Exodus 11-18. London: T & T Clark, 2020: 287.