Part A: The Units of Exodus

Stage 1: The Seam Between the Two Books

Start with the seam every reader notices. At the end of chapter 24 Moses walks into the cloud and stays there forty days and forty nights. In the next verse YHWH begins to speak, and what he dictates is a list of supplies: gold, silver and bronze; blue, purple and crimson yarn; linen, goats’ hair, skins, acacia wood, oil, spices, stones. Then come the words “let them make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell in their midst” (25:8). The word “sanctuary” has been heard once before, in the Song at the sea: “the sanctuary, Adonai, that your hands have established” (15:17). Now it is commanded, and for the next six chapters nothing else is spoken of. This is where the second book begins.

Now look back from the seam. The law that begins at 21:1 runs to 23:19, closing with the festivals and the kid in its mother’s milk. At 23:20 the voice changes. It stops legislating and starts promising: “Behold, I send a messenger before you.” First a messenger, a journey and a land; then the covenant ceremony at the foot of the mountain; then the climb. The unit runs from the promise of the messenger to Moses alone inside the cloud, 23:20–24:18. Its place in the book will come up in Part B, and its own shape in Part C.

So the second book begins at 25:1, with the covenant unit just before it. What lies before the covenant? The first book has two seams of its own, and we begin with the one nearer the start.

Stage 2: Egypt, from the First Names to the Departure

The first seam is the sea. “And it was, when Pharaoh sent the people out” (13:17) begins a stretch that ends with Miriam’s song (15:21), and the very next verse is “Moses made Israel journey from the Sea of Reeds” (15:22). Before the sea is Egypt; after it is the wilderness. The other seam is the change from story to law at 21:1. Take Egypt first.

The book opens with a list of names: “Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each man and his house” (1:1). The sons are named and the family counted, seventy souls. In chapter 6 a second list appears, “these are the heads of their fathers’ houses” (6:14). It runs through Reuben and Simeon to Levi and down to Aaron and Moses, and it ends with a summary: “This is Aaron and Moses, to whom YHWH said, Bring out the children of Israel from the land of Egypt” (6:26). With names at the start and names at 6:14, the two lists hold a stretch of text between them.

That stretch, though, is two units, not one. The break comes at 4:18–19. Jethro gives Moses leave to return to his brothers with the words “go in peace,” and in the next verse YHWH tells him to go: “return to Egypt, for all the men who sought your life are dead.” The first unit is the making of Moses, from the names of his people to his permission to leave Midian: 1:1–4:18. The second is his return, with Aaron at his side, through Pharaoh’s first refusal and the people’s refusal to listen, to the list of names that ends with his own: 4:19–6:28.

Notice what the author has just done. The bookends, names at 1:1 and names at 6:14, do not enclose one unit. They enclose two. A single case proves nothing yet, but it alerts the reader to a possible pattern: that units may come in pairs, and that the two units of a pair may stand next to each other. The author does not mark a pair with bookends again. If the pattern is real, the next pairs will have to be recognized by what they contain, and we will watch for them as we go.¹

At 6:29 the text starts over. “I am YHWH; speak to Pharaoh,” YHWH says, and Moses answers in almost the words he used at 6:12: “I am of uncircumcised lips; how will Pharaoh listen to me?” The repetition is a restart, and what it starts is the signs. This unit has bookends of its own. Before the first sign: “Moses and Aaron did as YHWH commanded them; so they did” (7:6). After the last: “Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh” (11:10). Between them stand the staff that becomes a serpent, nine signs, and the announcement of a tenth: 6:29–11:10. The tenth is announced here but not carried out here. The death of the firstborn belongs to the next unit, where it cannot be separated from the Passover and the leaving.

That next unit opens with a fresh address: “YHWH said to Moses and to Aaron in the land of Egypt” (12:1). It is held together from inside by a phrase found three times in Exodus, all of them here: “on this very day,” בעצם היום הזה (12:17, 12:41, 12:51). It ends with the sign on the hand and between the eyes (13:16). The next verse is the departure, and the sea.

The sea itself is one more unit, 13:17–15:21. It begins with the people being sent out and ends where the journeying begins, and a small detail confirms its edges. Its first verse worries that the people may “see war” and turn back to Egypt (13:17). In the song near its end, YHWH is “a man of war” (15:3).

Stage 3: Statute and Ordinance, the Wilderness, the Mountain and the Law

After the sea come three travel notices, close together:

• “Moses made Israel journey from the Sea of Reeds, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur” (15:22).
• “They journeyed from Elim, and the whole congregation of the children of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin” (16:1).
• “The whole congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin … and camped at Rephidim” (17:1).

Each notice is followed at once by a complaint: no water, no bread, no water. The author gives all three the same shape: they set out, they arrived, the people complained. That makes three stretches with one pattern, and so one unit: 15:22–17:16, ending with the battle against Amalek and the oath “from generation to generation.” At its head is a sentence that will come back shortly. At Marah, “there he set for them a statute and an ordinance” (15:25).

The next unit begins not with a departure but with an arrival. “Jethro heard … and came to Moses in the wilderness where he was camped, at the mountain of the deity” (18:1, 5). Everything in the unit happens at that mountain:

• the camp at Sinai
• Moses going up
• the people made ready
• the thunder and the horn
• YHWH coming down
• the ten words
• the law of the altar that closes chapter 20

The unit is 18:1 to the end of chapter 20. In the Hebrew numbering I use, that is 20:22; some editions count one verse more. On either side of the ten words stand Jethro’s advice about appointing judges and the people’s fear at the end of chapter 20, and they can look like stray material. They are not. They belong to the same design, and the unit’s own commentary will show how.

Then the law. “These are the ordinances that you shall set before them” (21:1) opens a collection that runs to 22:16. Nearly all of it is cast as cases, “when a man …,” “if …,” and nearly all of it concerns injury and property: the slave, the killer, the quarrel, the goring ox, the open pit, the fire in the field, goods left for safekeeping, the borrowed animal, the girl seduced. At 22:17 the sound changes: “A sorceress you shall not let live.” There is no “if” and no “when,” only a command. What follows, to 23:19, speaks mostly in commands and prohibitions. It covers the stranger, the widow and the orphan, the poor borrower, the judge, the seventh year, the seventh day and the three festivals, and it ends with the kid in its mother’s milk. That gives two units of law, 21:1–22:16 and 22:17–23:19, and the line between them is one you can hear.

Here the pattern suggested by the first pair of names can be tested. The wilderness unit has at its head “there he set for them a statute and an ordinance” (שם שם לו חק ומשפט, 15:25). The first unit of law opens “these are the ordinances” (ואלה המשפטים, 21:1). The two openings do not make Units 6 and 8 a pair. If units pair with their neighbours, the pairs here are 6 with 7 and 8 with 9, and what the matching openings show is that those two pairs stand in line, the head of one answering the head of the other. The pattern holds.

The sentence at Marah does more than head a unit. “There he set for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he tested them” (15:25). Statute and ordinance, חק ומשפט, are the subject of all four units after the sea. In the wilderness unit the words come straight back: “if you will listen to the voice of YHWH your deity … and keep all his statutes” (15:26). Over the manna YHWH tests the people, “whether they will walk in my teaching or not” (16:4), and asks, “how long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my teachings?” (16:28). At the mountain Jethro finds Moses judging the people and “making known the statutes of the deity and his teachings” (18:16), and advises him to “warn them of the statutes and the teachings” (18:20). Then the ten words are given. The two units of law are the ordinances themselves. They open “these are the ordinances” (21:1), and before they close the judge is told, “you shall not turn aside the judgment of your poor in his suit” (23:6). The Egypt units tell of an order breaking down. These four tell of an order being set up, and Marah is where it begins.

Stage 4: The Plan of the Dwelling

The instructions for the dwelling run from 25:1 to 31:17. They fall into four units, and each one is marked in its own way.

The first, 25:1–27:21, has bookends. It opens “speak to the children of Israel, that they take me an offering” (25:2) and closes “you shall command the children of Israel, that they take to you pure olive oil” (27:20). Inside are:

• the ark, the table and the lampstand
• the curtains, the tent, the frames and the bars
• the veil and the screen
• the altar and the court

Three times along the way Moses is reminded that he is working from something he has already seen: what was “shown you on the mountain” (25:40; 26:30; 27:8). The last verse of the unit is the first in Exodus to use the name the rest of the book will use for the structure: the tent of meeting, אהל מועד (27:21).

The second, 28:1–43, turns from the building to the garments of those who will serve in it: “you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother” (28:2). It too has bookends. It begins with holy garments “for glory and for beauty” (28:2) and ends with the sons’ garments “for glory and for beauty” (28:40), and “to serve me as priests” stands at both ends (28:1–4; 28:41). Between them come the ephod and the breastpiece, the robe and the gold plate.

The third, 29:1–37, opens “this is the thing you shall do to them, to consecrate them” (29:1). It closes with the altar: “seven days you shall make atonement for the altar and consecrate it, and the altar shall be most holy; whatever touches the altar shall be holy” (29:37). Between them come the washing, clothing and anointing of the priests, the bull and the two rams, the portions, and the seven days.

The fourth, 29:38–31:17, opens “and this is what you shall do on the altar” (29:38): the daily offering, morning and evening. Its opening matches the opening of the third, “and this is the thing that you shall do to them” (29:1): after two units of things to be made come two units of things to be done. And the altar made most holy in the last verse of the third unit is the subject of the first verse of the fourth. The fourth unit then supplies what the first three left out:

• the incense altar
• the silver of the census
• the basin
• the anointing oil and the incense
• the naming of Bezalel and Oholiab

It ends with the Sabbath: “between me and the children of Israel it is a sign for ever” (31:17).

Stage 5: The Calf

At 31:18 the instructions stop. “And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony.” What follows is story again. Its scenes are the calf, the broken tablets, the sons of Levi, Moses pleading, the tent pitched outside the camp, the cleft in the rock, the second tablets and the shining face. It runs to 34:35, where Moses puts the veil back over his face. At 35:1 “Moses assembled the whole congregation,” and the building begins.

The calf unit, 31:18–34:35, stands between the plan and the building the way the sea stood between Egypt and the wilderness, and the way the covenant stood between the first book and the second. These three, Units 5, 10 and 15, belong to no pair. They will be the starting point of Part B.

Stage 6: The Building

The building, 35:1–40:38, also falls into four units, though not the same four as the plan.

The first, 35:1–36:7, is the collection. It opens with the Sabbath: “six days work shall be done, but the seventh day shall be holy to you” (35:2). Then it repeats the list of materials that opened the plan. The people bring their gifts, the women spin, and the chiefs bring the stones. Bezalel and Oholiab are named again (35:30–34). The unit ends with a problem builders rarely have. The craftsmen come to Moses to say the people are bringing too much, and word goes through the camp that no one is to bring any more: “the material was enough for all the work, and too much” (36:7). Notice where the Sabbath stands. It closes the plan (31:12–17) and opens the building (35:1–3), one on each side of the calf.

The second, 36:8–38:20, is the making. “All the wise-hearted among those who did the work made the dwelling” (36:8). The unit goes through what they made: the dwelling, the ark, the table, the lampstand, the two altars, the basin and the court, down to the court’s pegs (38:20). The order of making is not the order of instruction. In the plan the ark came first and the dwelling second; here the dwelling is made first and the ark after it. One more fact about this unit belongs on record now, because it is a fact about the text and not a reading of it: from 36:8 to 38:20 neither YHWH nor Elohim is named. It is the only unit in Exodus of which this is true.

The third, 38:21–39:31, opens “these are the accounts of the dwelling” (38:21) and has two parts. The first reckons the metals: the gold, the silver of the census and the bronze. The second makes the priests’ garments, each item closing “as YHWH commanded Moses.” The silver deserves a moment, because the author expects his reader to check the sums. The census counted 603,550 men at half a shekel each, which comes to 301,775 shekels. The text gives the total as a hundred talents and 1,775 shekels (38:25). At three thousand shekels to the talent, that is the same figure. The text then spends the hundred talents on the hundred sockets, a talent to a socket, and the leftover 1,775 shekels on hooks and bands (38:27–28). The account balances to the shekel. The round sum goes into the foundations, and the remainder into the fittings.

These accounts answer the collection that opened the building. There the people were asked for “gold, silver and bronze” (35:5). Every man “who waved a wave-offering of gold” brought it (35:22), and everyone “who raised an offering of silver and bronze” brought that (35:24). Here the same metals come back in the same order, now counted: “the gold of the wave-offering” (38:24), the silver (38:25), “the bronze of the wave-offering” (38:29). (The silver counted here is the census silver, half a shekel a head, not a freewill gift.) Bezalel and Oholiab, named at the end of the collection (35:30–34), are named again at the head of the accounts (38:22–23). The first unit of the building tells what came in; the third tells how much came in, and where it went. As in the wilderness and the law, where the opening of the second pair answered the opening of the first (21:1 answering 15:25), the two pairs of the building stand in line, the head of the second answering the head of the first.

The fourth, 39:32–40:38, has bookends again. It opens “all the work of the dwelling of the tent of meeting was finished” (39:32) and closes “Moses finished the work” (40:33). Between them the finished pieces are brought to Moses, YHWH tells him where each one goes, and he sets each in its place, so that the pieces are listed three times over. When the bookends close, the cloud covers the tent, the glory of YHWH fills the dwelling, and Moses cannot go in. The book ends with the cloud by day and the fire by night over the dwelling “in all their journeys” (40:38).