Feb 10th

Exodus 1-18

The question “Who is God?” is one of the most impossible questions to answer, as almost every person has a unique response. Even in Scripture, various portraits of God are painted, and sometimes seem contradictory. Exodus 1-18 seems to paint God as an all-powerful, all-knowing, and carefully calculated being. He is powerful for the miracles he performs, such as the 10 Plagues and the parting of the Red Sea. He is all-knowing because everytime he sends Moses and Aaron to deliver a message to the Pharaoh, he knows that the Pharaoh still won’t let the Israelites leave. Finally, he is calculated because he intentionally hardens the heart of the Pharaoh after each plague, so that he can truly prove his power and instill in the Egyptians a Fear of God. Those that fear God tend to be rewarded in Exodus 1-18, as the Israelites’ fear of God exempts them from the plagues. Additionally, Moses’s mother’s fear of God enables her baby to be saved, as Moses is rescued from the Nile. 

In Exodus 3, God reveals himself to Moses, naming himself “Yahweh” or “I am who I am”. He is everything and He is everywhere; He is all. In Exodus, God is presented as the “God of our Fathers”. In this way of thinking about Him, “God is presented in the plane of You and I, not on the plane of the spatial” (Ratzinger 123). He is a God of mankind, and thus He is manifested in every human being. As Ratzinger puts it, “He is not anywhere in particular; He is to be found at any place where man is and where man lets himself be found by him” (123). This version of God is seen through the burning bush, as He reveals Himself to Moses and to the Israelites to save his people. He comes down when He is needed and enters into a personal relationship with His people in order to save them from the Egyptians.