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Stuart: Bad servitude or Good servitude



(1) Theology of Exodus: Salvation, Freedom from Bondage
“I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment” (Exod 6:6). So-called liberation theology often misunderstands Exodus.[1] The book is not about liberation in general or about political and religious freedom in particular, but about deliverance from bad servitude to good servitude. The Israelites served (ʾābad) Pharaoh but were called by God to serve (again, ʾābad) him instead.[2]

It was not a question of needing freedom from being under the control of a national leader; it was a question of a good, divine national (and universal) leader rescuing his chosen people from a bad, human national leader. The threat of bondage to a hostile great power is one of the curses of the Old Testament. Once the Israelites arrived at Sinai, they were reminded of the horrors of servitude to those who would oppress them if they failed to keep Yahweh’s covenant.[3] The generation that followed the exodus likewise faced the prospect that disobedience to the rules graciously and protectively revealed in the divine covenant would lead to oppression under enemies who would conquer and enslave the chosen nation.[4]

In the New Covenant, bondage to the greatest power, sin, and its consequence, death, constitutes the “last enemy.”[5] But this is not merely a New Covenant concept. Sin is whatever offends God, and sin is an enslaver. But this slavery can be escaped—not by skill or cunning but by changing masters from sin to God.[6] This comes about not by human initiative but by God’s gift, to which humans can only respond.[7] In Exodus, likewise, freedom from bondage is accomplished only by God. The Israelites are portrayed as having no chance whatever to save themselves. God must make the demands (“Let my people go!”); the people on their own, with or without Moses, would never have dared even asked. Moreover, God makes those demands through his chosen representative Moses so that the people cannot take credit for having thought up the idea themselves. Not only so, but when the people were reconfronted with the possibility of being opposed by the Egyptians, they became afraid. Indeed, later in the wilderness, when the going became hard, some of them actually rationalized their way to thinking that they were better off in Egypt than free from it.[8] 

People need both a Savior and a Lord. They cannot do without either. Exodus reveals God as for Israel and for all who will join Israel, as many did upon seeing his mighty acts unleashed against the Egyptian oppressors. [9]






[1] Liberation theology often misunderstands many other things as well, including the basics of objective biblical interpretation, but it especially fails exegetically when it tries to suggest that the book of Exodus—exemplaristically—provides a template of sorts for justifying violence in the name of political deliverance.

[2] See comments on 4:23ff. Since ʾābad can mean both “serve” and “worship,” it is always challenging for the translator to render the nuance(s) appropriately in any given context. I would love to have been able to write “serve/worship” instead of one or the other at many, many points in my Exodus translation draft for the hcsb.

[3] E.g., Lev 26:16–17, 32, 34, 36–38, 41.

[4] E.g., Deut 28:25, 31, 38, 48, 68.

[5] 1 Cor 15:26

[6] So Paul’s comprehensive teaching in Rom 6:11, 13, 17, 20–22; 7:25.

[7] E.g., Rom 5:6; 8:3.
[8] Num 11.

[9] Exod 12:38. For Moses, Elijah, and Jesus to describe Jesus’ work on the cross as his exodus (τὴν ἔξοδον αὐτοῦ, Luke 9:31, unfortunately translated as “departure” in the niv) is yet one more way in the nt that Jesus is identified as God. Yahweh accomplished the exodus in the ot; Jesus, the exodus in the nt.[9]

[10] Stuart, D. K. (2006). Exodus (Vol. 2, p. 36). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

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