Exodus of Israel

This article describes the mythical event of Hebrews leaving Egypt as described in the Book of Exodus. For the book itself, see Exodus.

Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt by David Roberts (1830).

The Exodus (Greek ex out of, outward and hodos a road or a way) is the abrupt embarkation of the people of Israel from Egypt. It is one of the key epochal events in the history of the nation of Israel.

The Biblical Narrative

The Book of Exodus is the the only complete source claiming to detail this event, but for various reasons a historical reconstruction based upon this is problematic, for reasons given below.

Background Based on Biblical Account

Centuries earlier, Jacob had led his vast extended family into Egypt, eventually settling in the province of Goshen. The number of years is either 215 years ("short Sojourn)" or 430 years ("long Sojourn"). Jacob had done this at the invitation of his son Joseph, whom he had thought dead but who, as it happened, had risen from being a common prisoner to senior prison trustee and eventually viceroy of Egypt. The story of Joseph, and especially his viceroyship and the circumstances under which he entered into it, is told here.

The Pharaoh who welcomed Joseph may have been Sesostris I, the second ruler of the Twelfth Dynasty, Soon, however, two other Pharaohs, who were considerably harder of heart, succeeded to the throne, and some believe were: Sesostris III and his immediate successor Amenemhet III. These two (or perhaps the latter of the two) set in motion a chain of events that led to the founding of one nation and a disaster for the other.

The Mass Puericide

Sesostris III probably began the oppression after observing the phenomenal growth rate of the Hebrew population. Tellingly, the Bible says that the Pharaoh was worried that the Israelites might ally themselves with Egypt's enemies in war. (This would be entirely consistent with the Exodus taking place toward the end of the Twelfth or Thirteenth Dynasty and the beginning of the Hyksos period.)

The Bible further names two cities that the Israelites built for the Egyptians: Pithom and Ramesses. Some have speculated from these names that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was a Ramesside king, usually Ramesses II. But the notion that the city of Ramesses is actually named for a king named Ramesses is without even secular historical warrant.

In any event, so the Bible says, the Israelites multiplied more than ever. That's when Sesostris (or Amenemhet) raised the stakes. He ordered the two senior Hebrew midwives to make sure to kill all newborn boys, but to let newborn girls live. This is the first recorded instance of a governmental policy to use abortion or infanticide to accomplish genocide.

The midwives did not openly defy Pharaoh's order. They simply didn't carry it out as he asked. They excused their behaviour by saying that Hebrew women were often far advanced in parturition before the midwives even arrived to assist them. Pharaoh's response was as drastic as it was draconian: he ordered his soldiers to throw every boy-child into the Nile River.

The Birth of Moses

Moses was born at about this time, the son of Amram and Jochebed. Amram, a Levite and the son of Kohath, one of Levi's three named descendants in the preceding generation, already had two children by Jochebed: a daugher, Miriam, and a son, Aaron. Moses' birth presented an immediate problem: how to conceal him from the king's soldiers?

Jochebed solved the problem in a unique manner: she built a basket for the baby, coated the basket with pitch, placed Moses into it, and set it floating down the Nile. In this, Moses' journey recalled the voyage of Noah's Ark.

Eventually, Moses' little ark drifted into the waters outside the Royal residence of the Pharaoh's daughter. She herself was infertile, and saw Moses as a substitute for the child she could never have. She gave the child the name Moses, which literally means drawn out in Egyptian and Hebrew.

The name of this daughter of Pharaoh was probably Sobekneferu. In this connection, one must remember that female members of the royal family were always described in terms of their relationship to Pharaoh, e.g. "Pharaon's Wife" or "Pharaoh's Sister" or, as in this case, "Pharaoh's Daughter."

Moses in Exile

Sobekneferu (if it was she) had intended raising Moses as a prince of Egypt. Some authorities have suggested that Moses appears in the Twelfth Dynasty king lists as Amenemhet IV.

But Moses identified not with the royal family but instead with his own people. Soon an incident occurred that required Moses to make a choice: he witnessed an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew. Moses looked this way and that, and then killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand.

News like that travels fast. Two days later, Moses caught two Hebrews fighting and tried to settle the quarrel. The man at fault challenged Moses, saying,

Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? Exodus 2:14 (KJV)

Moses fled immediately. His exile had begun. He was forty years old at the time, according to the testimony, centuries later, of Stephen before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.

Moses Finds a Wife

Moses eventually came to the country of the Midianites. There he fought against some shepherds who were harassing a number of women who were trying to water their own sheep. This won him the attention and favor of Jethro, the father of these women. Eventually, Moses married the eldest of Jethro's daughters, Zipporah. Here the Book of Exodus records that he sired one son, Gershom.

The Bible makes no attempt to identify these shepherds. Nor does Flavius Josephus.. The historical warrant for the popular supposition that these shepherds were Amalekites is therefore lacking. However, the Amalekites were known to be shepherds--and, more to the point, the Hyksos, which some identify with the Amalekites, were known as the "Shepherd Kings." If these shepherds with whom Moses clashed were Amalekites, then this could have been the first hostile encounter that an Egyptian-trained man had with the race that conquered all of Egypt shortly after the Exodus and held it until the reign of King Saul.

God Recruits Moses

Nearly forty more years passed, during which the original Pharaoh (presumably Amenemhet III) died and another Pharaoh (presumably Neferhotep I) reigned in his stead. Now God called to Moses, speaking from out of a bush that burned without being consumed. God made multiple signs to Moses to convince him to deliver a message to Pharaoh, and then to lead the Israelites out of Egypt when the time came. Because Moses pleaded that he was not a good speaker, God declared that his brother Aaron would assist him.

Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three, when the two men went before Pharaoh.

The First Message

Moses and Aaron initially came in peace to Pharaoh, and asked his leave to lead the Israelites into the desert for a three-day period. Pharaoh indignantly refused, and then issued an order that the Israelites would have to gather their own straw to make bricks, and still make the same quota of bricks. This caused the Israelites to look on Moses with extreme disfavour. This was probably the lowest point ever in Moses' life.

But this was all part of God's plan--for God intended to demonstrate His Power in a manner that no one then alive would forget.

The Ten Plagues

Main Article: Egyptian plagues

Because Pharaoh would not accede his wishes, Moses began issuing a series of threats of supernatural disaster, which the Pharaoh dismissed. Each of these disasters, called plagues, was a direct strike at part of the Egyptian religious system and everything the Egyptians held sacred.

The Evacuation and Despoliation

The death of the first-born of man and beast among the Egyptians, including Pharaoh's own son, finally broke Pharaoh's will. He gave his assent for the Israelites to leave, and even encouraged his people to bribe the Israelites to leave with whatever jewels or precious metals the Israelites cared to carry with them. This was the "despoliation" of the Egyptians.

The Bible says that the "sojourn" of the children of Israel lasted 430 years. When those 430 years began is a difficult question, with some saying that it began with the entry of Jacob into Egypt, and others saying that it actually began with Abraham's entry into Canaan.

The Red Sea Crossing

Main Article: Red Sea crossing

But after Pharaoh let the Israelites leave, he changed his mind. Now he set after them, with his entire army, and determined to overtake them and wipe them out. But what actually happened is that Pharaoh was wiped out, along with his entire army.

Traditionally, this occurred at the northermnost tip of the Gulf of Suez, the western arm of the Red Sea--though some have since suggested that the crossing actually occurred at the Gulf of Aqaba to the east.

No archaeologist has ever found the remains of Neferhotep I. Furthermore, Neferhotep did not have a son to succeed him, but rather a brother, Sobekhotep IV. Shortly after Sobekhotep IV came to the throne, the Hyksos entered Egypt. However, it should be noted that many Royal burials of the Second Intermediate Period, along with many temples, are known to have been looted by the Hyksos following several bitter campaigns fought against the 16th and 17th Theban Dynasties. In addition the 13th Dynasty itself was already weakened due to a rise in the power of provincial and noble families, and it was common for succession during the Second Intermediate Period not to follow the Hereditary Principle.

Physical evidence of the Exodus

No Egyptian texts of any kind, either Royal inscriptions, which may be interpreted as propagandistic, though they generally do record the general theme of events, mention any events that link conclusively to the Exodus story. More significantly, no administrative documents point to it either, which are unconcerned with issues of a propaganda, being intended as purely internal documents for administrative purposes. No mention on either is made of a large amount of labourers being lost, nor of military manpower or equipment loss in subsequent pursuit.

In 2003, amateur diver Peter Elmer claimed to have discovered coral-encrusted chariot wheels and other chariot parts submerged in the Gulf of Aqaba, the eastern offshoot of the great body of water called the Red Sea today.. This is not, however, conclusive, as no physical artefacts from this alleged find have ever been seen by professional archaeologists, nor recovered for professional analysis, recording and conservation. Photographs presented as evidence are inconclusive, and appear to show some coral formations common in the Gulf of Aqaba area and a modern metallic object. No other evidence has been presented. In addition, given the claim that these events occurred during the 13th Dynasty, the Egyptian army would not be deploying chariots, which do not appear in Egypt until the Hyksos period, and are not deployed by Egyptian forces until the end of that period. The amateur himself claims to have spoken to an SCA official who stated the parts to be 18th Dynasty, from the New Kingdom.

In addition, the Biblical narrative indicates that the Israelites made their crossing far too soon for them to have successfully crossed the entire Sinai desert and peninsula to reach the Gulf of Aqaba. More likely, the Israelites crossed the Gulf of Suez--and the destruction of Neferhotep's army was so complete that not a single artifact was left. The Bible does, of course, say that not a single man was left of that army. However, this does not explain that lack of administrative documents in Egyptian records concerning either the loss or sourcing of replacement labour and military manpower and military equipment.

The revised chronology of David Down and John Ashton strongly suggests that the beginning of the Intermediate Period is the best time for the Exodus. By this scheme, the Hyksos overran Egypt when conditions could not have been more favourable to invaders: a country first devastated by multiple meterological, agricultural, and epidemiological disasters is suddenly deprived of its leader and its entire army in a single battle. This view, however, is not accepted by most Egyptologists.

Chronological Placement of the Exodus

James Ussher, in The Annals of the World, placed the Exodus at 1491 BC. His primary assumptions consisted of:

1. Accepting 562 BC as the death of Nebuchadnezzar II.
2. A direct reckoning of the dates-of-accession of the Kings of the Divided Kingdoms Northern and Southern.
3. The Bible's explicit statement that Solomon broke ground on the Temple of Jerusalem exactly 479 years after the Exodus.

Today Ussher's original date is sharply contested. The three contenders for the date of the Exodus are:

1. 1491 BC (Ussher)
2. 1445-1446 BC ("The Early Date")
3. 1290 BC ("The Late Date")

Virtually all of the arguments for the Late Date rest solely on arguments from conventional Egyptian chronology, however. The Early Date is much better supported from Scripture, which specifically requires four hundred eighty years between the Exodus and the groundbreaking of the Temple built by Solomon. Several archaeologists have looked for battle-damage and other evidence for the Early Date in and around Jericho, Ai, and Hazor, and have found it.

The date preferred by Edwin R. Thiele (labeled "Early Date" above) is only forty-five years later than Ussher's. Thiele's sole warrant for favoring his date over Ussher's is his attempt to reconcile the king lists of the Divided Kingdoms Northern and Southern with the chronology of the Assyrians. (For a detailed discussion, and a synoptic table showing the differing results for those king lists, see here.) Thiele, like Ussher, relies on the Temple groundbreaking interval described above to assign his date for the Exodus.

The Pharaoh of the Oppression, as stated above, was likely Sesostris III, a Twelfth Dynasty king. James Ussher initially supposed that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was not Ramesses II, but another Ramesses whom he mistakenly assumed ruled directly before Ramesses II and for the same number of years. Future scholars accepted Seti I and Ramesses II as the Pharaohs of the Oppression and Exodus, respectively, for decades. Recently, some scholars tried to make a case for other pairings of the Pharaohs of the Oppression and Exodus in the Eighteenth Dynasty rather than the Nineteenth. These included:

1. Thutmose III and Amenhotep II
2. Thutmose I and Thutmose III. These scholars also identified Pharaoh's daughter as Hatshepsut, the first woman ever to rule as Pharaoh in her own right.

Still other scholars have attempted to identify Moses with Amenhotep IV, also known as Akhenaten, the "heretical Pharaoh" who attempted to force a monolatic (a form of monotheism) belief system upon Egypt. This view has no archaeological merit. Following the collapse of the Amarna regime, monotheism disappeared from the archaeological record until the early-mid first millennium BC.

The Exodus in Popular Culture

The Exodus has been the subject of many motion picture and television projects over the last fifty years. Most of these projects contain extra-Biblical interpolations for which no Scriptural or archaeological warrant exists. For example, Scripture clearly says that when Moses killed the Egyptian taskmaster, he did so in secret and did not want that fact known--because he was not prepared to face the consequences. (Not every deed of a recognized hero and leader of the Hebrew people was a good or wise deed.) The various motion-picture projects that have treated this story have shown Moses behaving negligently or even recklessly in the killing of the Egyptian, and left out entirely the context in which Moses found out that his deed was no longer secret.

More to the point, most of these projects have assumed that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was either Ramesses II or his son Merenptah. This supposition is based either on Late Date chronology.

The "No Exodus" View

Many Egyptologists dispute that an Exodus, as described in the Biblical text, actually occurred. Various theories regard it either as an exaggerated folktale, remembering the colonial struggle between the Egyptians and the Mittanians, and later the Hittites, for control of Syria-Palestine, and the captives both sides took from the local population, or perhaps of the Hyksos, a West Semitic people who entered Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, and forcibly expelled by Ahmose I at the founding of the New Kingdom.

the reasoning for such views is the lack of archaeological and textual evidence for the use of foreign labour on the truly massive scale depicted in the Biblical text, and the lack of evidence concerning it's sudden departure and ensuring conflict on the Red Sea, as well as the fantastical events that ensued.

Textual Evidence

The only Egyptian texts concerning the expulsion of a large number of Semitic people, subsequently "hounded" by Egyptian forces are the expulsion of the Hyksos circa 1580BC. These people were, like the Egyptians, polytheistic. After being expelled from Egypt their remnants were believed to have fled to Sharuhen near modern Gaza, where they were subsequently besieged.

No administrative papyri refer to an exodus of labourers, nor mentions seeking replacements. Whilst royal inscriptions may overlook such an embarrassment, administrative papyri had no such restrictions.

The loss of an army and equipment is likewise not mentioned, nor attempts to secure replacement labour and equipment. Such a large loss would need large scale efforts to import and harvest timber and metal for replacement weapons, and recruitment of manpower resources to replace those killed.

Archaeological Record

Second Intermediate Period Semitic presence in Egypt is limited to Hyksos sites such as Avaris, whereas the Exodus claims the captives served Egyptian Pharaohs. However the large scale deployment of such people is not attested in the archaeological record. A Semitic presence can be detected in certain New Kingdom sites and records, but not in a systematic manner of a huge scale, such as the exodus would suggest. In either case however, there is no evidence of a monotheistic belief amongst this population.

Chronological Issues

Evidence of monotheistic belief in the Levant does not surface until the equivalent of the Egyptian Third Intermediate Period, which again does not correspond with the belief that the exodus of the abrahamic people from Egypt took place prior to this.

In addition the theories postulating a date prior to the New Kingdom for the exodus still claim that the Egyptian army deployed chariots, which the Egyptians did not use until the end of the Second Intermediate Period.

Fantastical Acts

The Red Sea, though narrow, is an extension of the Rift Valley system, and is for the most part a deep sea. Even the Gulf of Suez, by far the shallowest geographic area of the Red Sea still is 200m deep in places. By contrast the Dover Strait is no more than 50m deep. Thus the idea of such waters being fordable by a people on foot and carrying goods is implausible, featuring wet sand, and sheer rock and sharp coral escarpments. The same reasons would likewise prevent the Egyptian army from being able to follow, especially with wheeled vehicles and horses, assuming a time period in which such equipment and animals were used.

See Also

• Joseph
• Moses
• Passover
• Biblical chronology
• Biblical chronology dispute
• Anno Mundi
• Date of the Exodus