A Theology of Justice in Exodus by Nathan Bills;

Author:Nathan Bills;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press

Chapter 4

Summoned to Justice: Exodus 15–24

Israel celebrates on the other side of the sea after witnessing YHWH’s mighty judgment on the Egyptian oppressor. They can now be on their way, launched by a powerful exhibition of YHWH’s justice. The liberated people’s journey has the ultimate destination of the land of promise (3:8, 17), but YHWH has already informed Moses that the route includes a rendezvous at the mountain where they will serve God (3:12). At the sacred mountain Israel will start to fulfill the second part of YHWH’s command to Pharaoh: “Send the people out so that they may worship-serve (ʿbd) me” (e.g., 7:16; 8:1; 9:1 [emphasis added]).1 In other words, Israel’s exodus remains incomplete apart from the entrance into YHWH’s service at the mountain. But even more to the point, the definitive (paradigmatic) demonstration of YHWH’s justice in Exodus includes Israel’s entrance into worship-service at Sinai just as much as the exit from the Egyptian taskmaster. Hence, a theology of the justice of Exodus needs to reckon with how Israel’s journey to and sojourn at Sinai thicken its exposition.

The covenantal law collection in Exodus 20–23 is an obvious text to examine in order to analyze the contours of Israel’s understanding of justice.2 Yet their march to the mountain (chs. 15–18) is not inconsequential for their development as YHWH’s just community. Just as Moses experiences conflict that challenges him to mature in justice (2:11–22) before the call of God at the bush (səneh), so too does the freshly liberated community have growing pains related to justice on the way to their Mount Sinai (sînay) encounter. The wilderness trek functions as a period of counter-formation; it is a time for Israel, whose habitus bears the stamp of Pharaoh’s “diseased” order, to be inductively initiated into life defined by YHWH’s justice. Israel’s wilderness trials ready them to respond to YHWH’s summons to their vocation of creational justice upon their arrival at the mountain. YHWH’s opening address at Sinai (19:4–6) highlights Israel’s election in a way that adds essential texture to the relationship between the people’s privilege and responsibility in YHWH’s creational agenda. The law collection further fills out how Israel is to embody YHWH’s creational justice in the shadow of their exodus experience. In short, Israel learns both in their journey to and their stay at Sinai what it means to behave as the exodus-shaped people of YHWH, liberated from (and never to return to) the injustice of Pharaoh. In the following—again employing the thematic lenses of creation and pedagogy—I consider how the wilderness journey, the initial Sinai summons (19:4–6), and the law collection contribute to Exodus’s theology of justice, especially as it is related to the poor.

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