Israel is You

Exodus 12

Welcome to the Daily Bible Chapter. My name is James Leroy Wilson and I invite you to join me as we discover new insights and new perspectives from a very old book.

EXODUS 12

I’m reading Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

Up to this point, I’ve seen no reason to read anything in the Bible as history, but I did a brief search to see if the cities of Ramses and Succoth were indeed ancient cities so I could get an idea of the distance the Israelites traveled in this story. Apparently it’s 120 miles.

Then it gets confusing. Earlier in the Bible we were told the Israelites had settled in the Goshen area of Egypt, but they also fled to Succoth, which was in Goshen. Yet verse 51 says the LORD brought them out of Egypt.

So were there parts of Goshen, including Succoth, that weren’t in Egypt, beyond Pharaoh’s borders? Maybe the detail is unimportant.

Aside from that, four things strike out to me:

1. The LORD has very specific commands in the procedures for a feast or holiday, the “ordinance of the passover.” I don’t recall the LORD being this meticulous before, except in telling Noah how to build the ark in Genesis.
2. The LORD follows through on his threat as with the…