The importance of this story for Israel is impossible to overstate; that it was God who brought them out of slavery in Egypt was absolutely foundational to Israel’s national identity. In fact, this story is crucial for us to understand how Israel understood itself.

Three things from this story would shape Israel’s character: oppression, liberation and exclusion. Firstly, Israel was an oppressed people. Hundreds of years of slavery had understandably forged a kind of persecution-complex amongst the Hebrews, which they would never really shed. As a fledgling nation in an unfriendly world, they had every cause to be scared. Bigger and badder bullies than Egypt lurked at their borders; feeling small and vulnerable would be inevitable. But the Israelite sense of oppression goes deeper than just feeling intimidated; the Egyptian experience would come to characterise their religious complaint. Israel, once exiled and subject to foreign rule, would long for a Messiah who could once again ‘release the oppressed’ and spread Jewish faith by decree. The problem, of course, with oppression is that it often breeds clones. Israel would itself become the oppressor and have to face the prophets' wrath.

Secondly, Israel was a liberated people. The whole of Israel’s religious society was built on the fact that God had set them free from a severe oppression and that they owed him their allegiance. Although the account of this liberation is stomach-churning – the death of every Egyptian firstborn at the hand of the Lord – it marks out Israel as favoured by God, and this is crucial to their self-understanding. Throughout the Old Testament, the steadfast belief that they are God’s chosen people will define Israel’s actions – both good and bad – within their world.

Thirdly, and as a result of these, we sense the very exclusive nature of Israel’s national and religious life. No-one can observe the Passover festival unless they have been circumcised (12:43-9). Israel is told how to save themselves from the final plague, but no Egyptian is given this information. As the story of Israel progresses, its exclusive character will become a recurring theme in every aspect of life. This exclusivity is crucial in preserving its different religious expression in a profoundly pagan culture. But it too carries with it all kind of problems which the movement called Christianity would, at least initially, seek to address.

This story, then, is a helpful window into understanding some of the reasons why Israel thought and acted the way it did. But for us, as non-Israelite 21st century Christians, reading this passage can be extremely difficult as it raises lots of gut-wrenching questions. On the one hand we have the very exciting story of the liberation of the Hebrews by mighty acts of God. But on the other we have scores of innocent Egyptians assaulted and finally murdered by a God we claim loves the whole world. What are we to do with it?

This is not the last time that our reading of the Old Testament will face us with questions like this (and it may not be the first, either!) It is the ongoing problem we encounter of understanding in what way we are to understand these pre-Jesus texts as Scripture. Are we to simply accept that if the editor of Exodus believed that God committed an ethnically motivated slaughter then we should believe it too? What about Jesus’ words to love your enemies? Are we to pray for those who persecute us so that God can say ‘well done’ and then annihilate them? I don’t think so.

The function of Scripture is to ground us in a story. We are not free agents floating through space-time with no history; we are ‘in Christ’ and that means we are part of this ancient plot-line. But Scripture isn’t static – like an Encyclopaedia where we go to find straightforward answers – it’s ‘living and active’. So in order to understand it properly we have to get into its flow (that’s why we’re reading the whole thing!) It’s like surfing on a giant wave: the crest of the wave is the climax of the experience, but that doesn’t mean the early swell was irrelevant or wrong, just that it gets left behind when the new and better thing appears. So the New Testament is the crest and Jesus is the climax, but we couldn’t get there without the Old Testament and the swelling story of Israel.

That's one way of looking at it, anyway.

If we look back then at this early Exodus story – putting on our New Testament glasses to help us re-read it – we find that our God is the Liberator. In Jesus, he calls us up out of a land of slavery (to all kinds of stuff) to a place where we are free to worship him ‘in spirit and in truth’. And our liberation is not just on an individual level, it is first and foremost as humankind, united in Christ, saved from demise. We find a God who will not stand oppression (by anybody) and demands release. And we find a community whose new exclusivity is that of faithfulness to their God in the face of competing offers. A community that loves and serves passionately, holding out the message of salvation to Jew, Egyptian & European alike.

Questions for reflection:

1. What oppression do you see around you, both locally and globally, on individuals and groups of people?

2. What might it mean for these situations to say that 'God is our Liberator'?

3. What forms might this liberation take, and how might you join with God in achieving this salvation for the oppressed?