Remembering the Exodus in the Wake of Catastrophe

Ronald Hendel

The Babylonian conquests of Judah in 597 and 586 BCE and the accompanying
waves of mass exile caused a fundamental change in the collective memory
of ancient Israel. As we can see in the exilic writings and in exilic / postexilic
updatings of older biblical texts, what once was a relatively triumphal national
narrative had turned to tragedy. A supplement to Isa 6 provides a powerful
evocation of this situation:
‫שאו ערים מאין יושב‬ 11 The cities lay waste without inhabitants,
‫ובתים מאין אדם‬ and the houses are without people,
‫והאדמה תשאה שממה׃‬ and the land is a desolate waste.
‫ורחק יהוה את־האדם‬ 12 YHWH will make the people distant,
‫ורבה העזובה בקרב הארץ׃‬ and the abandoned places many
in the midst of the earth.
(Isa 6:11–12)

The poetic rhetoric of this text is illuminating and worth unpacking. In the
opening triplet, the subject, ‫“( ערים מאין יושב‬cities without inhabitants”) is
paralleled by its constituent units, ‫“( בתים מאין אדם‬houses without people”).
The focus narrows, as if in a cinematic close-up, from the cities to the individual
houses and from the general (“inhabitants”) to the specific (“people”). The
phrase ‫“( מאין אדם‬without people”) has a tragic resonance, as if it were a
total destruction like the Flood. In the third line of the triplet, the text pivots
from destroyed culture to destroyed nature: ‫“( האדמה תשאה שממה‬the
land is a desolate waste”). The wordplay of ‫ אדם‬and ‫“( האדמה‬human” and
“land, soil”), which are in chiastic parallel, has a strong resonance, recalling
the primal link between human and soil (cf. the Garden of Eden story).1 The
absence of ‫ אדם‬is reinforced by the desolation of ‫האדמה‬. This progression
is enclosed by the repetition of the initial verb ‫“( שאו‬lay waste”, applied to
cities and houses) in ‫“( תשאה שממה‬is a desolate waste”, applied to the
land), binding together the devastation of nature and culture.
The following couplet turns the focus to the cause of destruction and the
locale of the people, and then back to the destroyed homeland. The initial
verb, ‫[“( ורחק‬he] will distance”), is in the future tense, which marks the text
as a prophetic oracle. This rhetorical distancing of the action sets the stage for the
identification of the agent behind the devastation: “YHWH will make the people
1
See, e.g., HENDEL, “Leitwort Style”, 99, 104–105.

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330 Ronald Hendel

distant”. That the agent is God – and not an earthly army – lifts the description
to a metaphysical level, revealing the events as a consequence of the divine will.
The object of YHWH’s action, ‫“( האדם‬the people”), extends the Leitwort
sequence of ‫ אדם‬and ‫האדמה‬. It here revives the old motif of the exile of
humans from the homeland (cf. again the Eden story) in the wake of the
Babylonian exile. In the last line, the focus turns back from the periphery to
Judah, which is now characterized as the ‫“( קרב הארץ‬the middle of the earth”).
But in this central place there is only an abundance of ‫“( העזובה‬the abandoned
places” or simply “the abandonment”). The homeland is an abandoned haunt.
The rhetoric of these verses raises the condition of exile to what Robert Alter
calls a “second power of signification”.2 Destruction and exile are portrayed
as quasi-mythic events, as culture and nature are emptied out, and YHWH exiles
humans from the earth’s centre. After catastrophe, Judah is redescribed as a
Godforsaken wasteland. This portrait of the metaphysics of exile informs
many responses to this catastrophe in the Hebrew Bible, including revisions
of the cultural memory of the Exodus.
Such collective trauma creates a need to re-examine and update the inherited
contents of cultural memory. Judging from the pre-exilic writings of Hosea, Amos
and others, the Exodus was a central narrative in Israel’s cultural memory.3 When
cultural conditions change radically, cultural memory will also inevitably change.
In this respect, a culture’s memory of the past is to some degree an “invented”
tradition, since in changed circumstances a group must revise its heritage to make
it relevant for the present. Correspondingly, the group must forget – or delib-
erately contest – aspects that are irrelevant or antithetical to present conditions.
The revision of cultural memory in times of crisis is a strategy for survival. As
in a natural ecology, if their cultural niche changes, a group’s survival mechanisms
must adapt or the group will die. The fate of “culture death” occurred for other
polities that were conquered by the Babylonians, for example the Philistines.4
The resilience of a culture is tied to its cultural memory: the past must change
so that the group can survive the vicissitudes of the present. Revision of cultural
memory in the wake of catastrophe has characteristic narratological and socio-
logical features: (1) fluidity of details, as the past is repurposed; and (2) different
memories for different groups, as expounded by authoritative interpreters.
First, in the work of remaking the past to suit the exigencies of the present,
narrative details can be surprisingly fluid. Wholly new events, themes and
relationships can be invented and made prominent. Some prior details will be
brought in the foreground while others are suppressed or forgotten. We will
see below such innovations in the revisions of the Exodus: for example Ezekiel

2
ALTER, Art, 182: “the language of poetry in this and most other biblical prophecies …
tends to lift the utterances to a second power of signification, aligning statements that are
addressed to a concrete historical situation with an archetypal horizon”.
3
See HENDEL, “Exodus”, 87–97.
4
See STAGER, “Biblical Philistines”, 375–384.

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 Remembering the Exodus 331

imports Israelite idolatry into Egypt in order to make the Exodus a tragic model,
while Second Isaiah foregrounds the way through the sea in order to make the
Exodus a purely redemptive model. A supplemental editor in Genesis adds
details to the story of Abraham in order to make the Exodus an esoteric prophecy,
exposing YHWH’s plan in the longue durée. There is a wide range of possible
variations in the narrative repurposing of the past.
Second, different groups invent different memories as the past is repurposed.
The clash of what we may call “counter-memories” is a constant in social
discourse, since sub-groups will inevitably have conflicting interests. In periods
of crisis, such clashes intensify as groups mobilize the past differently. The
question of which group “owns” the past gives rise to new conflicts of repre-
sentation. In the wake of the Babylonian exile, the exodus was revised differently
by different groups and authoritative interpreters. As we will see, Ezekiel uses
his revised exodus to denounce his exilic community and to prophesy an
ambivalent future, while Second Isaiah mobilizes the exodus as a model for
future utopia, feeding hope to his audience in desperate times. Since both
were prophets – with the social charisma that comes with this office – their
reformulations of the exodus memory had authoritative status, whether to the
delight or consternation of their exilic audience.
As Dalit Rom-Shiloni has recently emphasized, the Judeans in exile and
those who remained in Judah clashed over many issues, including that of who
was the “true” Israel.5 Each group mobilized the past differently to assert its
primacy. In Ezekiel’s and Second Isaiah’s different representations of the exodus
and its future entailments, we see divisions within the exilic communities. These
different revisions of cultural memory – both within and without Judah –
planted the seeds for further conflicts of cultural identity in the Persian and
Hellenistic periods. Crisis inevitably yields revisions of cultural ethos and
boundaries, creating the conditions for new cultural syntheses and, at times,
sectarianism. Both occur in the wake of this catastrophe.
In the following I will address three texts – Ezek 20:1–44, Isa 43:16–21 and
Gen 15 – that revise and repurpose the exodus in the exilic / postexilic period
in distinctive ways. Each reimagines the exodus as part of an attempt to make
sense of things, to clarify the causal nexus that shapes the present. I will argue
that each refashions the exodus as a theodicy, that is, a way to explain God’s
justice in history. In a situation when the present seems chaotic, these refor-
mulated cultural memories provide a model to overcome aporia, to provide an
intelligible model for thought and action when the old models seem to be broken.
But the revised models also establish a sense of continuity. The revised
exodus is still recognizably the exodus, but is a richer version with altered details
and ramifications. It is a new and improved (ein verbesserter) exodus. The
revision of cultural memory blunts the perception that anything has truly
changed, since it is, after all, the same story, propagated by authoritative
5
ROM-SHILONI, Exclusive Inclusivity.

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332 Ronald Hendel

interpreters and celebrated by the same rituals. The refashioning of the past
masks the fact that the present has changed; it smooths over the rough spots
and breaks that crisis has caused.
These three texts, I will argue, reimagine and repurpose the exodus in order
to construct three different kinds of theodicy, which I characterize as tragic,
comic and esoteric.6 These revisions of the exodus provide new conceptual
and affective models for the exilic and postexilic communities. Eventually, in
the literary crystallization of the books of the Pentateuch and Prophets, these
new memories of the exodus rejoin the older pre-exilic textual versions,
yielding a dialectic of competing and equivocal exodus memories.

1. Ezekiel 20: Tragic Theodicy

Ezekiel is the strangest of the prophets, and chapter 20 is perhaps the most
disturbing chapter in the book. In it the prophet refashions the exodus story into
a dark and tragic archetype of the present disaster, in which YHWH’s purpose
and Israel’s guilt are exposed as clashing forces in history. The chapter arguably
has a layered compositional history, with 20:1–31 as the original composition,
framed by the elders’ inquiry to Ezekiel (with a possible secondary expansion
in vv. 27–29). This original layer refashions Israel during the exodus and
wilderness generations as sinful rebels, providing a tragic mirror for the current
sinful generation. The second half of the prophetic discourse, vv. 32–44, extends
the exodus legacy into a future equivocal restoration. As Walther Zimmerli
and others have argued, the second half is probably a later expansion, in line
with the shift of prophetic perspective in the book from critique to restoration,
presumably in the wake of the second wave of exile and the destruction of
Jerusalem in 586 BCE.7 Since the language and tropes in both sections are
distinctively Ezekielian, it is attractive to see the same hand in both parts. For
the sake of simplicity – and with a measure of interpretative charity – I will
attribute both parts to Ezekiel. At the very least, their strangeness coheres
with the distinctive prophetic imagination that we call Ezekiel.
Ezekiel invokes the exodus in response to YHWH’s prophetic command,
‫“( את־תועבת אבותם הודיעם‬Inform them of the abominations of their fathers”,
Ezek 20:4). The exodus is the paradigm of Israel’s current abominations. This
is a dramatic shift from the expected resonance of the exodus. Ezekiel seems
to be taking considerable liberty in his refashioning of the exodus as a story
of Israel’s transgressions toward YHWH rather than their deliverance by
YHWH. As Moshe Greenberg comments: “Ezekiel projects current sin back to
the origins of the people. As he portrays it, throughout Israel’s life in its land

6
These terms are indirectly derived from RICOEUR, Symbolism.
7
ZIMMERLI, Ezekiel 1, 404–406; and recently ROM-SHILONI, “Facing Destruction”,
194–202.

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 Remembering the Exodus 333

its cult was perverted, idolatrous, an affront to YHWH. His contemporaries

only carry on the corrupt practices of their ancestors.” 8 In his refashioning of
the past, Ezekiel “read the past as a mirror of the present”.9 Ezekiel’s revision
of the exodus is a paradigmatic case of the reinvention of cultural memory.
Ezekiel recalls how, on the day that YHWH announced his plan to deliver
Israel from Egypt (using language from Exod 6), YHWH commanded Israel to
stop worshiping Egyptian gods. This detail is not known in the Pentateuch or
any other biblical text:
‫ואמר אלהם‬ And I said to them,
‫איש שקוצי עיניו השליכו‬ “Cast away the abominations of your eyes,
‫ובגלולי מצרים אל־תטמאו‬ and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt;
‫אני יהוה אלהיכם׃‬ I am YHWH your God.
‫וימרו־בי‬ But they rebelled against me
‫ולא אבו לשמע אלי‬ and were not willing to heed me.
‫איש את־ שקוצי עיניהם‬ No man cast away
‫לא השליכו‬ the abominations of their eyes,
‫ואת־גלולי מצרים לא עזבו‬ and they did not abandon the idols of Egypt”.
(Ezek 20:7–8)

As a consequence of this ancestral sin, Ezekiel says, YHWH determined to destroy

Israel in the land of Egypt, venting his wrath on Israel instead of (in the older
version of the story) Egypt. YHWH’s enemy in Egypt is Israel. The Egyptian
bondage is forgotten, strategically so, since the current situation concerns
YHWH’s wrath regarding Israel. Egypt provides the backdrop and the props
(Egyptian gods and idols) for a refashioned memory of Israel’s original sin.
In this tragic theodicy, YHWH restrains his wrath, not for Israel’s sake –
since Israel is irredeemably guilty – but for the sake of YHWH’s name.
‫ואמר לשפך חמתי עליהם‬ I planned to pour out my wrath upon them
‫לכלות אפי בהם‬ to accomplish my anger against them
‫בתוך ארץ מצרים׃‬ in the midst of the land of Egypt.
‫ואעש למען שמי‬ But I acted for the sake of my name,
‫לבלתי החל לעיני‬ so that it should not be profaned in the eyes
‫הגוים אשר־המה בתוכם‬ of the nations in whose midst they were,
‫אשר נודעתי‬ in whose sight I had made myself known
‫אליהם לעיניהם‬ to them [viz. Israel]
‫להוציאם מארץ מצרים׃‬ to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
(Ezek 20:8–9)

YHWH’s plan of wrath was circumvented by his own honour (literally his
name), which would suffer if he did not fulfil his promise to bring Israel out
of Egypt. Honour is a publicly ascribed quality – hence the reference to the
witnessing of the other nations – that defines an individual’s worth. Although

8
GREENBERG, Ezekiel 1–20, 385.
9
GREENBERG, “Notes”, 37.

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334 Ronald Hendel

the principle of justice would require that YHWH destroy Israel in Egypt, the
principle of YHWH’s honour prevents it. YHWH delivers Israel despite the fact
that Israel does not merit it. He does this not because of compassion for Is-
rael, but simply from self-interest. God’s actions in the exodus derived from
his sense of honour, and had nothing to do with Israel’s (lack of) merit. Had
God acted for Israel’s sake, he would have destroyed them.10
This theodicy of the exodus applies to the current situation, with the same
phraseology: ‫בדרך אבותיכם אתם נטמאים ואחרי שקוציהם אתם זנים‬
(“you defile yourselves in the way of your fathers, and after your abomina-
tions you whore”, Ezek 20:30). The exile in Babylon is a recapitulation of the
exile in Egypt. Israel continues to sin, and in response YHWH exiles them, but
for the sake of his name he does not destroy them. They deserve destruction,
but YHWH’s honour forbids it.
In the second part of the text, Ezekiel announces an equivocal restoration,
based on the same theodicy of Israel’s guilt and YHWH’s honour. In this future
exodus, YHWH swears: ‫חי־אני נאם אדני יהוה אם־לא ביד חזקה ובזרוע‬
‫“( נטויה ובחמה שפוכה אמלוך עליכם‬As I live, declares my lord YHWH,
surely with a strong hand and an outstretched arm and with poured-out wrath I
will rule over you”, Ezek 20:33). This declaration invokes the language of the
exodus (“with a strong hand and an outstretched arm”),11 but strikingly adds a
third divine quality, “with poured-out wrath”. YHWH’s mighty wrath is now
redirected at Israel, not Egypt. YHWH’s rule over Israel will be coloured by his
wrath. The enemy of the divine warrior is Israel. This is a theodicy, a justification
of God’s actions in history as just. But God’s justice is, in a sense, antithetical
to Israel’s merit. With an angry God to rule over them, Israel will be perpetually
reminded of their worthlessness: ‫וזכרתם־שם את־דרכיכם ואת כל־עלילותיכם‬
‫“( אשר נטמאתם בם ונקטתם בפניכם בכל־רעותיכם אשר עשיתם׃‬You will
remember there your ways and all your deeds by which you defiled yourselves,
and you will loathe yourselves for all of your evil deeds which you have done”,
Ezek 20:43). Israel’s future cultural memory is wrapped in collective self-loathing.
This is a grim restoration, based on Ezekiel’s tragic theodicy, which he derives
from his radically revised memory of the exodus. It is close enough to the general
contours of the exodus tradition to gain traction, since in the older version the
Golden Calf and other stories of rebellion come in the wake of the exodus.
But by collapsing the narratives of rebellion into the setting of Egyptian
bondage, Ezekiel turns the valence of the exodus story upside-down. Because
of Israel’s sins, they do not deserve redemption and deliverance. Israel is
irredeemable in the past and the present. But YHWH’s justice is not ours. He
acts for the sake of his own name, which transcends Israel’s goodness or evil.
10
On these issues, see SCHWARTZ, “View”, 43–67.
11
On the use of Priestly and Deuteronomistic language in this text, see LEVITT KOHN,
“Mighty Hand”, 159–168.

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 Remembering the Exodus 335

The outcome is exile, wrath and ultimately a future restoration coloured by

self-loathing. Through Ezekiel’s tragic theodicy of the exodus, the punishment
of Egypt is transmuted into a different kind of plague – as if conjured by
Camus or Kafka – as Israel’s exile and restoration are plagued by God’s
poured-out wrath and Israel’s irrevocable guilt.

2. Isaiah 43: Comic Theodicy

By “comic theodicy” I mean an explanation of God’s justice that has a happy

ending, in contrast with the tragic complications of Ezekiel’s theodicy. For Second
Isaiah, the catastrophe of destruction and exile was sufficiently weighty – indeed,
superabundant – to cancel out Israel’s previous transgressions. The prophet
announces this in YHWH’s proclamation at the beginning of this section of Isaiah:
‫“( נרצה עונה כי לקחה מיד יהוה כפלים בכל־חטאתיה‬Her punishment [for
iniquity] is accepted, for she has received from YHWH’s hand double for all
her sins”, Isa 40:2). Unlike Ezekiel’s theodicy, Second Isaiah perceives the
calculus of sin and punishment as cancelling out. YHWH’s justice has been
wholly accomplished, and the people now have a clean slate. The ‫“( עצה‬plan”)
of YHWH – a leitmotif in First and Second Isaiah12 – can begin anew.
The “new exodus” is a repeated motif in Second Isaiah, evoking an imminent
return from exilic bondage and a joyful restoration in the promised land.13 It
is a recursion of the narrative plot of the first exodus, but with Babylonian
exile as Egyptian house of bondage. Notably, the future defeat of Babylon is
effortless – no plagues, no defeat of enemy troops. The new exodus is envisioned
as a supernatural journey through a transformed nature to a golden age in Zion,
where “eternal joy shall be upon their heads … and sorrow and sighing flee”
(Isa 51:11 = 35:10). This is the happy ending of Second Isaiah’s theodicy.
God’s justice yields utopia.
The cultural memory of the exodus is refashioned according to Second
Isaiah’s distinctive vision. The most extended treatment of the relationship
between the old and new exodus is in Isa 43:16–21:14
‫כה אמר יהוה‬ 16 Thus says YHWH,
‫הנותן בים דרך‬ who sets a way in the sea,
‫ובמים עזים נתיבה׃‬ a path in the mighty waters,
‫המוציא רכב־וסוס‬ 17 who brings out chariot and horse,
‫חיל ועזוז‬ army and warrior;

12
Isa 5:19; 14:24–27; 28:29; 40:13–14; 46:9–11; see WERNER, Studien, 11–129.
13
See, e.g., ANDERSON, “Exodus Typology”, 177–195.
14
On this text, see recently PAUL, Isaiah 40–66, 215–218; MACCHI, “Choses”, 225–241.
(I demur from the latter’s argument that this text is a late interpretive supplement, a relecture
tardive, but this does not materially affect my discussion.)

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336 Ronald Hendel

‫יחדו ישכבו בל־יקומו‬ together they lie down, they cannot rise,
‫דעכו כפשתה כבו׃‬ they are extinguished, quenched like a wick.
‫אל־תזכרו ראשנות‬ 18 “Do not remember the former things,
‫וקדמניות אל־תתבננו׃‬ or consider the things of old.
‫הנני עשה חדשה‬ 19 Behold, I am about to do a new thing;
‫עתה תצמח הלוא תדעוה‬ now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
‫אף אשים במדבר דרך‬ Surely I will make a way in the wilderness,
‫בישמון ]נתיבות[׃‬ [paths] in the desert.
‫תכבדני חית השדה‬ 20 The wild animals will honour me,
‫תנים ובנות יענה‬ the jackals and the ostriches;
‫כי־נתתי במדבר מים‬ for I will set water in the wilderness,
‫נהרות בישימן‬ rivers in the desert,
‫להשקות עמי בחירי׃‬ to give drink to my chosen people,
‫עם־זו יצרתי לי‬ 21 the people whom I formed for myself,
‫תהלתי יספרו‬ they will recount my praise.”

This poetic unit has two different sections, distinguished by two voices. Verses
16–17 are in the prophet’s voice, and vv. 18–21 are in YHWH’s voice, quoted
by the prophet. Let us unpack how these two sections juxtapose the concepts
of the old and new exodus.
In the first section, the prophet introduces YHWH in the expected oracular
formula, “Thus says YHWH”. He then expands this introduction with three poetic
lines (each a bicolon), describing YHWH’s agency in the exodus. However, by
the use of attributive participles – ‫“( הנותן‬the one who sets”) and ‫המוציא‬
(“the one who brings”) – the time of YHWH’s actions is not limited to the past,
but is durative or ongoing. These references to the exodus draw on the language
of the Song of the Sea (Exod 15). As commentators have observed, the phrase
‫“( רכב־וסוס‬chariot and horse”) is an inverted echo of ‫“( סוס ורכבו‬horse and
its rider”) in Exod 15:1, and the disposition of the defeated army evokes the
repeated description of the destroyed enemy in Exod 15:4–10. The intertextual
activation of Exod 15 resumes in the last line of the poem, where the
phrase ‫“( עם־זו יצרתי‬people whom I formed / created”) echoes ‫“( עם־זו קנית‬the
people whom you acquired / created”) in Exod 15:16, with the same construction
and archaic relative pronoun. The evocation of the exodus is patent.
But the memory of the exodus is subtly transmuted into a potential for a
future exodus. Since YHWH is “the one who does this”, he can surely do it
again. And since the defeated enemy is not explicitly marked as Egyptian, the
identity of the enemy is potentially open. Into this deliberate blank one may
insert any enemy, such as the Babylonians. By indirection and the use of durative
forms for YHWH’s actions, the prophet refashions the exodus as a paradigmatic
event that can potentially be repeated in the present or future. The exodus can
be plural and imminent. By deliberately de-temporalizing YHWH’s agency in
the exodus, the past becomes a template for the desired future.
Having set the stage for YHWH’s oracle by activating and subtly recasting
the memory of the exodus, the second part of the text is YHWH’s announcement

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 Remembering the Exodus 337

of the new exodus. With dramatic irony, YHWH commands Israel to forget the
past, which the prophet has just deliberately invoked. The forgotten past is a
foil to the new future, which is presented as a new beginning. The dialectic of
memory and forgetting is striking:
‫אל־תזכרו ראשנות‬ 18 “Do not remember the former things,
‫וקדמניות אל־תתבננו׃‬ or consider the things of old.
‫הנני עשה חדשה‬ 19 Behold, I am about to do a new thing;
‫עתה תצמח הלוא תדעוה‬ now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

A command to forget something is always odd, since it logically calls to memory

the thing that is to be forgotten.15 (Compare the command to forget the memory of
Amalek in Exod 17:14.) By this rhetoric of memory, the prophetic oracle
seemingly blots out the past and inscribes the future in its place. But the invoked
past bleeds through, like a palimpsest, creating a double writing in which
the past and future are mutually represented. The command ‫אל־תזכרו ראשנות‬
(“do not remember the former things”, an immediate, punctual prohibition) is
impossible to accomplish, yet it marks the dramatic change that is about to
occur. This contrast between past and future is further signalled when YHWH
says, “Behold, I am about to do a new thing”. Moreover, it has already started:
‫“( עתה תצמח הלוא תדעוה‬now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”).
The focus of the audience is redirected to the new divine acts. A caesura
has occurred in Israel’s destiny. The former exodus is erased and overwritten
by the new exodus. This is a transformation of memory, in which the past is
transmuted into a new present / future. The cultural memory of the exodus
is dramatically revised into a new exodus, whose signs are suddenly discernible.
The details of the new exodus are presented – incompletely and suggestively –
in the remainder of the oracle in vv. 19b–21. Several striking contrasts between
the new and old exodus are deliberately drawn. In v. 16, YHWH makes a way
in the water, activating the memory of the Re(e)d Sea: ‫ ובמים עזים‬/ ‫בים דרך‬
‫“( נתיבה‬who makes a way in the sea, / a path in the mighty waters”). In the
new exodus, the locale shifts from sea to desert. YHWH will make a way in the
wilderness: [‫ בישמון ]נתיבות‬/ ‫“( במדבר דרך‬a way in the wilderness, / [paths]
in the desert”). The past is not forgotten, but relocated to the Syrian desert.
A contrast is also drawn between the destroyed Egyptian army in v. 17,
who are inert and dead (“together they lie down, they cannot rise”), and the wild
animals in the new exodus, who actively praise YHWH: “The wild animals will
honour me, / the jackals and the ostriches”. The cultural enemies who have
been destroyed are replaced with transformed nature, in which wild animals
sing God’s praises. It is striking that there is no battle or defeated army in this
new exodus. The defeat of the human enemy is erased and overwritten with
joyful animal spectators. The catastrophic events of human culture are replaced

15
On this dynamic in Second Isaiah, see LEVIN, “Days”, 105–124.

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338 Ronald Hendel

by idyllic nature. This is another point where the forgotten past is revised into
an ideal future.
The oracle of the new exodus ends with another twist on the language of old
and new. The old exodus, in which YHWH made ‫“( בים דרך‬a way in the sea”) and
the new one, for which he is making ‫“( במדבר דרך‬a way in the wilderness”) are
fused into a new spatial synthesis, in which Y HWH creates water in the
wilderness: ‫ נהרות בישימן‬/ ‫“( כי־נתתי במדבר מים‬for I will set water in
the wilderness, / rivers in the desert”). This new waterway in the desert is, at
least in part, what makes the wild animals praise God. The water is to refresh
Israel in the desert, as YHWH proclaims them, once again, to be his chosen
people. These people – whose description activates again the Song of the Sea:
‫“( עם־זו יצרתי לי‬the people whom I formed for myself”) – will sing praises
to God in the joyful future, as they did after the first exodus.
In the prophetic-poetic language of Isa 43:16–21, the cultural memory of
the exodus is evoked, forgotten and refashioned into an imminent redemption.
The “former things” are turned into a perceptible “new thing” and catastrophe
recedes. The new exodus is incomparable, a perfect new memory to replace
the old one. In this comic theodicy, God’s justice is wholly redemptive, and the
catastrophe of destruction of exile wholly cancelled. The dark days are over.
Even nature rejoices in the spring of the new exodus. The imminent change will
yield a new people, who will sing poems in God’s praise celebrating the new
exodus, not unlike this prophetic oracle. This text aims to reshape the exiles’
present in the light of a radically revised exodus, setting a new frame around
Israel’s self-consciousness and imagined destiny.

3. Genesis 15: The Exodus as Esoteric Theodicy

Genesis 15 refashions the exodus in a different way from Ezekiel or Second

Isaiah. It builds a theodicy into the pentateuchal text itself and fills in the
outlines of God’s plan that culminates in the exodus and return. This is not a
new exodus, but a supplementation of the old one, in which open questions
about God’s justice are resolved. In particular, the text addresses the problem
of the long duration of Israel’s foreign bondage and exile. The solution involves
the calculus of God’s judgment in responding to the “sin of the Amorites”.
The text also presents a number of other details that explicate – at times in
esoteric fashion – the secrets of God’s long-term plan for Israel.
The date of the text is not entirely clear, but the preponderance of evidence
indicates an exilic or postexilic setting.16 The text quotes or draws upon Priestly,
Elohistic and Deuteronomic language and topoi, and there may be some traces
16
See, recently, SKA, “Groundwork”, 67–81; SCHMID, Genesis, 158–171; RÖMER, “Abraham”,
91–101; LEVIN, “Jahwe”, 80–102.

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 Remembering the Exodus 339

of Late Biblical Hebrew.17 The language, however, is mostly classical. If, as it

seems, the text is exilic or early postexilic, then the issues of God’s justice in
the long-term plan of the exodus and return may respond to anxieties in the era
of the writer. The explication of God’s justice in the longue durée of the exodus
primarily responds to exegetical questions, but may also reflect or resolve the
problem of God’s justice in the wake of catastrophe.
The revision of the cultural memory in Gen 15 builds on the concept of
Abraham as a prophet, found in Gen 20:7 (E or non-P). But there Abraham’s
role as prophet was defined as intercessory: ‫כי־נביא הוא ויתפלל בעדך וחיה‬
(“for he is a prophet: he will pray on your behalf so that you live”). In Gen 15,
Abraham’s vocation as a prophet is closer to Ezekiel’s. He performs, at God’s
request, symbolic acts that God then interprets. The symbolic acts are fairly
opaque or esoteric, hence it takes a divine interpreter to decode them.
The elaborate foreshadowing and explication of the exodus occur in the
second half of the chapter, Gen 15:7–21. The exodus theme is subtly announced,
by intertextual allusion, in God’s self-description: ‫אני יהוה אשר הוצאתיך‬
‫“( מאור כשדים‬I am YHWH, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans”:
Gen 15:7). This self-identification echoes the beginning of the Ten Command-
ments: ‫“( אנכי יהוה אלהיך אשר הוצאתיך מארץ מצרים‬I am YHWH, your
God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt”: Exod 20:2 = Deut 5:6). This
diction is sufficiently distinctive to activate the intertext. But in Gen 15 the
exodus formula is revised, in a sense back-dated, when “the land of Egypt” is
replaced by “Ur of the Chaldeans”. In the allusive texture of Gen 15:7,
YHWH’s deliverance of Abraham from Mesopotamia is implicitly conflated with
his deliverance of Israel from Egypt. By this allusion, YHWH’s plan for the
exodus is intimated already in Abraham’s time. The idea of God’s long-term
plan is subtly planted here, to be developed more robustly in the performance
and interpretation of Abraham’s symbolic prophetic actions.
In response to Abraham’s question, ‫“( במה אדע‬how will I know?), YHWH
gives instructions for a strange ritual, which he then deciphers with an emphatic
injunction, ‫“( ידע תדע‬know certainly”, Gen 15:13). The components of the
ritual are a three-year-old calf, a three-year-old goat, a three-year-old ram and
two birds (probably two types of pigeon). These are all normal sacrificial
animals. Abraham cuts the three land animals in two, sets them opposite each

17
The hints of late or post-classical language are: (1) the absence of ‫ ויהי‬in the opening
formula (cf. Gen 20:1, which has ‫ ;ויהי‬and Esth 2:1; 3:1; 7:1, which lacks it); and (2) clause-
initial we-qatal (‫ והאמן‬in v. 6) as a non-converted past tense; see JOOSTEN, “Diachronic
Aspects”, 226–227. The Priestly language consists in ‫ רכש‬and ‫אור כשדים‬. The boundary of
the Euphrates River is arguably deuteronomistic (cf. Deut 1:7; 11:24; Josh 1:4), as are some
other details, perhaps including the divine title ‫ אדני יהוה‬which, in prose, is found elsewhere
only in Deuteronomistic texts (but is common in the prophets). The addition of the onomapoetic
triad ‫“( את הקיני ואת הקנזי ואת הקדמני‬the Kenites, the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites”)
to the list of seven nations also seems a baroque – and relatively late – touch.

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340 Ronald Hendel

other, and sets the two birds side by side. Then Abraham drives away birds of
prey that are attracted by the carcasses. At the moment of sundown, Abraham falls
asleep and ‫“( אימה חשכה גדלה‬great dark dread”) falls upon him. (The verb
‫“[ נפל‬fall”] occurs twice in this double falling.) This is an odd and disturbing
scene. It is not a conventional ritual sacrifice, since Abraham does not burn or
cook the animals at an altar.
This scene is a complicated symbolic performance, followed by a dream theo-
phany in which YHWH explains the oracular meaning of the action. In the
theophany, YHWH predicts the Egyptian bondage and the exodus, with particular
attention to their duration:
‫ידע תדע כי־גר יהיה זרעך‬ Know certainly that your seed will be strangers
‫בארץ לא להם‬ in a land that is not theirs;
‫ועבדום וענו אתם‬ and they will enslave them and oppress them
‫ארבע מאות שנה‬ for four hundred years ….
‫ודור רביעי ישובו הנה‬ In the fourth generation they will return here,
‫כי לא־שלם עון האמרי‬ for the sin of the Amorites is not complete
‫עד־הנה׃‬ until then.
(Gen 15:13–16)

Although the correspondence between YHWH’s prophecy and the symbolic

actions is not explicit, many commentators agree that the four rows of animal
parts are a numerical symbol for the four hundred years and the four genera-
tions.18 This symbolic script is enacted by cutting the animals, which is a
symbolic performance of “cutting a covenant”, as the text intimates in its later
statement: ‫“( ביום ההוא כרת יהוה את־אברם ברית‬on that day YHWH cut a
covenant with Abraham”, Gen 15:18). The performance of this covenant
cryptically represents YHWH’s plan.
In his speech, YHWH reveals that the timespan of the Egyptian bondage
and exodus is coordinated with ‫“( עון האמרי‬the sin of the Amorites”). We
are not told what this sin is, but it seems to accumulate over time and then fall
due.19 This obscure detail seems to respond to a question of theodicy – why did
YHWH allow the Israelites to be enslaved for so long? Why did he delay the
deliverance? The accumulating sin of the Amorites is the answer. Although
the content of this sin is not revealed, it seems to suffice that there is an answer.
Hence the past – and perhaps by extension the present – of Israel is rendered
intelligible. YHWH’s plan is the large-scale frame of Israel’s destiny, even though
we are given only glimpses into it.
A final symbolic action occurs when YHWH completes his utterance. Two
strange objects appear and move: ‫והנה תנור עשן ולפיד אש אשר עבר בין‬
18
E.g., ZAKOVITCH, “And You Shall Tell”, 59–60. The fullest treatment of symbolism
in this scene is JACOB, Genesis, 404–406.
19
The accumulation of sin is here modelled on the accumulation of debt; see ANDERSON,
Sin, 85–89.

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 Remembering the Exodus 341

‫“( הגזרים האלה‬And behold, a smoking oven and a fiery torch passed between
these pieces”, Gen 15:17). This scene is not deciphered and remains enigmatic.
Most commentators see here visual symbols of YHWH’s theophanic fire and
smoke at Mount Sinai, which includes the metaphor of a smoking oven: ‫והר‬
‫סיני עשן כלו מפני אשר ירד עליו יהוה באש ויעל עשנו כעשן הכבשן‬
(“Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke, for YHWH had descended upon it in
fire, and the smoke ascended like the smoke of an oven”, Exod 19:18). This
correspondence is attractive in the context of this covenant scene. However,
since the smoking oven and fiery torch are two different objects, I am inclined
to think that the correspondence is to the pillar of smoke and the pillar of
cloud that are YHWH’s vehicles for guiding the Israelites from Egypt and in
the wilderness (Exod 13:21–22, etc.). But there is not a great difference here.
The smoking oven and fiery torch are “objective correlatives” of YHWH’s
presence. Their movement through the parts enacts the covenant between
YHWH and Abraham, perhaps obliquely prophesying the movement of Israel
out of Egyptian bondage and to the promised land.
One detail in the baroque symbolism of this episode remains opaque. What
is the significance – if any – of Abraham’s warding off the birds of prey? The
threat of this moment seems palpable: ‫וירד העיט על־הפגרים וישב אתם אברם‬
(“the birds of prey descended on the corpses, and Abram drove them away”,
Gen 15:7). My guess is that Abraham, who is portrayed as a prophet throughout
this chapter, here anticipates the prophet Moses, who is called by YHWH to
deliver Israel from Egypt. The birds of prey would correspond to the future
enemy, the brutal Egyptians who seek to devour the corpses of Israel. In any
case, ‫“( העיט‬the bird[s] of prey”) are unclean animals, in contrast to the sheep,
goat, ram and pigeons, which are all clean animals. Some sort of moral opposition
seems to be signalled here. But the meaning is obscure. This is an esoteric
symbolic performance, whose deeper meanings YHWH only partially reveals.
Genesis 15 enacts a prophetic foreshadowing and partial exegesis of the exodus.
As a mode of foreshadowing, these events are perhaps necessarily obscure.20
Abraham is a prophet in a complicated mode, similar in some respects to
Ezekiel, whose odd symbolic actions and visions are often explicated by
YHWH, but details remain unexplained. This is a late or post-classical portrait
of a prophet, replete with baroque and esoteric symbolism. The general thrust of
this performative prophecy of the exodus is to announce that it is part of YHWH’s
long-term plan and covenant, and that anxieties about the justice of this plan
can be allayed. The patriarchal covenant now explicitly includes the exodus.
Abraham’s prophetic acts obscurely elucidate the future destiny of Israel.
Despite catastrophes to come, YHWH’s hand is behind events, even if that hand
seems hidden or beyond our understanding.
20
As Jean-Pierre Sonnet observes (private communication), the symbolic acts may be
“deliberately veiled in order not to anticipate details still to be narratively revealed in Exodus”.

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342 Ronald Hendel

4. Conclusions
As Heraclitus might say, one can never step into the Re(e)d Sea twice. The water
is always changing, and even one’s foot is microscopically altered. Similarly,
the cultural memory of the exodus flows and changes in the Hebrew Bible. Each
version makes different claims about the details and meanings of the past, and
each makes different claims about reality and religion in the present and future.
The crisis of the Babylonian conquest and exile was a major caesura in Israelite
history, and is likewise a caesura in the life of the exodus in biblical memory.
As we have seen, the exodus is reimagined differently in Ezek 20, Isa 43 and
Gen 15 in order to promote different types of theodicy, which I have called
tragic, comic and esoteric. In Ezekiel, the exodus provides a model of Israel’s
perpetual guilt, which is in conflict with YHWH’s maintenance of his divine
honour. The new exodus will occur despite Israel’s irreparable guilt, and will
entail Israel’s future self-loathing. Here Ezekiel, in effect, invents apocalypticism
and a distinctively Jewish (or perhaps Judeo-Christian) sense of guilt. The old
exodus entails a future exodus, but Israel does not deserve it. In Ezekiel’s theodicy,
God is just, but an ethical divide separates the moral God from his immoral
people. This is a tragic theodicy, in that the positive outcome – God’s justice in
the world – leaves Israel riven with guilt. The future resolution of catastrophe
is still, in some respects, catastrophic.
In Second Isaiah, the exodus is reimagined as a comic theodicy, in that the
outcome of God’s justice is a purely happy ending: the telos of the new exodus
is a return to Zion crowned with eternal joy. This “future memory” of a new
exodus, like Ezekiel’s, plants the seeds of apocalypticism, but in a utopian mode.
As a vision of a perfect restoration, this model will prove more durable during
the postexilic period. In Second Isaiah the new exodus is simultaneously a
new Creation, entailing YHWH’s defeat of chaos at the dawn of the new era.
The paradise of primeval times will return: in Hermann Gunkel’s formula, Urzeit
wird Endzeit.21 Even death will be swallowed up forever. This is a very different
vision of the new exodus from Ezekiel’s ambivalent revision. The recursion
of a comic theodicy is guilt-free.
This is why Second Isaiah’s new exodus becomes more determinative in
the rise of apocalypticism during the Second Temple period. Since the actual
restoration in Zion was not perfect, the utopian new exodus / new Creation
had to be projected into another future. Whereas Ezekiel’s ambivalent new
exodus accommodated an imperfect reality, Second Isaiah’s could not. The lack
of fit between a comic theodicy and a flawed reality required its projection
forward. The imperfection of the postexilic reality necessitated the invention
of a more permanent eschaton, deferring the comic model of God’s justice.

21
GUNKEL, Schöpfung, 370: “In der Endzeit wird sich wiederholen, was in der Urzeit
gewesen ist”.

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 Remembering the Exodus 343

Genesis 15 is a prophecy and theodicy of a different kind, since it reimagines

the exodus as part of a more distant past than the exodus itself. This revision
reformulates God’s long-term plan, announced in the symbolic drama of
Abraham the prophet. Like Ezekiel, Abraham is commanded to perform strange
acts, whose esoteric meanings are then explained by God. In this case, Abraham
engages in a strange covenant ceremony, whose meanings are partially revealed
by YHWH in a dream theophany. But the meanings are not wholly divulged.
This baroque prophecy of the exodus clarifies that God’s promises to Abraham
will be fulfilled – after a precise time – in the exodus and return. The reason
for the long captivity is obscurely detailed as the “sin of the Amorites”, the
content of which seems less important than the fact of a rationale. In other
words, God’s justice is assured, but contingencies entail a long duration until
completion of the divine plan.
Although the prophecy of the exodus in Gen 15 provides a framework for
Israel’s past destiny, it is possible that this esoteric theodicy has implications
for Israel’s future destiny as well. If, as it seems, this chapter is a postexilic
supplement to Genesis, the provision of a firm foundation for the past may
suggest that God’s plan for the future is also fixed. The details of the ongoing
theodicy may be obscure or esoteric, as it was in the time of the ancestors.
But the esoteric theodicy in Gen 15 encourages more speculation.
In these three exilic / postexilic revisions of the exodus, we see how authoritative
interpreters reconstituted Israel’s cultural memory in the wake of catastrophe.
In radically changed circumstances, in conditions of collective trauma, a group’s
consciousness of the past must change in order for it to adapt and survive.
When the causal nexus that explains the past and the present breaks down, it
must be repaired. This is what Ezekiel and Second Isaiah achieve through
their reconfigurations of the exodus as a tragic and comic theodicy. In a different
way, Gen 15 introduces clarity – and a countervailing sense of esoteric obscurity
– into the nexus of the past, which may spill over into the present and future.
Each of these texts remembers the constitutive past differently in order to
provide a cogent model of God’s justice in the world. These counter-memories
trace different theodicies – tragic, comic and esoteric – in their prophetic
reimaginings of Israel’s past. Each is a distinctive revision of the cultural
memory of the exodus, which brings the past into new configurations with the
present and future. In key respects, these revisions – particularly Ezekiel’s
and Second Isaiah’s – are incommensurate. Yet in the end these different
versions yield a complicated dialectic in the intertextual space of the Hebrew
Bible, in which comic, tragic and esoteric memories of the exodus mingle,
clash and recombine.

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344 Ronald Hendel

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WERNER, W., Studien zur alttestamentlichen Vorstellung vom Plan Jahwes (BZAW 173),
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