1. The primary element of the nation's consciousness was always the sense of having been redeemed and delivered at the Exodus. This was the operation of Jehovah that “created” the people. If He who calls Himself “Jehovah” declares His identity with the God of Abraham and Isaac, it was under the name Jehovah that He performed His great act of salvation, and this act both gave the people existence, and stamped indelibly on their consciousness that Jehovah was their God and made them in thankfulness avow themselves His people. The conceptions “God” and “people” are correlative-Jehovah is Israel's God from the land of Egypt (Hos_12:9; Hos_13:4). The two principles just referred to and the fact are entirely practical.
No one doubts that the history in the Book of Exodus is the history of a deliverance. The most superficial reader would say that the subject of it is the redemption of a people out of slavery. The Church has adopted this view of it so completely that we do not break the ordinary course of our reading on Palm Sunday and Easter Day. The chapters respecting the plagues which were sent to Pharaoh, respecting the Passover and the passage of the Red Sea, are our lessons on the Passion and the Resurrection. The Law of Redemption (so the Church teaches) is asserted in the Old Testament facts; is evolved and fulfilled in the facts of the New. We are not taught to look upon one as belonging to an earthly, the other to a spiritual economy, the one as merely a figure of the other. The Jewish Redemption is nothing except as it has a spiritual foundation. The Christian Redemption is nothing if its results do not affect the earth. Neither is figurative; both are substantial.2 [Note: F. D. Maurice, The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, 154.]
2. Three vital facts sum up the real meaning of this thrilling experience. These were that the people were free, that Jehovah had freed them, and that this freedom was gained under the leadership of Moses. The first of these facts affected the later history of Israel. It gave them a sense of independence and a hatred of tyranny, which flamed out again and again in opposition to foreign rule and the exercise of arbitrary power at home. It raised up leaders who, inspired by the backward look at this stirring event, revived the people and called them to battle for their ancient liberty. The second fact made Jehovah the national God in a peculiar sense, and rooted their liberties in the sacred soil of religion. Henceforth the champions of Israel's freedom were men of God. The third fact put Moses at the head of affairs, gave him the complete confidence of the freed people, and thus granted him the opportunity of creating a nation inspired with his own lofty ideals.
Fundamental to the whole history of Israel is the idea of redemption. The words of Moses to his baffled people at the Red Sea would be a fit motto for the whole Bible: “Stand still and see the salvation of Jehovah” (Exo_14:13). The world is sunk in sin, and needs salvation. That is the great and ever-present fact of human life which the early chapters of Genesis resolutely face and with which they boldly grapple. The sin is sometimes hideous, as in Sodom; but, hideous or not, it is always there, provoking God not only to anger but also to redemptive thoughts. For were there no redemption, the Divine purpose in creating man would be wholly frustrated, and that must not be. Out of all mankind, a special people is elected to be the object of His special care. This is the fact; but it is not till the Exile that the reason of it is clearly felt-that Israel's privilege is meant to benefit and bless the world. It is not felt by the prophetic writers of the Hexateuch. The wider destiny of Israel's religion is indeed suggested more than once, and is implicit in its very nature, but it is not a burning fact-at once an inspiration and a consolation-as it was to Deutero-Isaiah. It is the privilege rather than the duties of election that interest the prophetic writers of the Hexateuch. They are proud of Israel's uniqueness and isolation, so obvious in the immunity she enjoyed during the plagues of Egypt, so startling as to appeal to the eyes of an unprejudiced stranger. But within the elect nation stand elect men, through whom the Divine work is to be begun and continued. The religious genius of Israel as a people must be acknowledged when we look at the heroes whom she admires, for they are men after God's own heart: men of deep and ready faith like Abraham, whose faith God counted for righteousness; men of purity like Joseph, who could not “do this great wickedness and sin against God”; men of stern justice like Moses; men who could plead with God in prayer and prevail; men who would give up their dearest at God's command; men of sensitive conscience, who felt that of the least of God's mercies they were unworthy; men who could endure as seeing the Unseen.1 [Note: J. E. McFadyen, The Messages of the Bible, iv. 77.]
