Microbounce Megabounce Difference

Miracles and mysteries

Miracles, mysteries and inexplicable steps
reading the first chapters of Exodus

L 'Exodus presents itself immediately as a very different book from Genesis . While the first seems like a biblical text anthology consists of a series of micro-stories with several players, the second narrative has the ambition to be a single novella (or short novel , Think of it as want), all focused on companies Moses. But I believe that no editor has the slightest good sense today would consider the Exodus publishable as is. Meanwhile, it is hard to identify the literary genre to insert it into a necklace ( Fantasy hazard a historical epic to Valerio Massimo Manfredi?). Moreover, since the early chapters, we find inconsistencies undermining internal consistency narrative universe created by the author. For one thing: If the Chapter 1 Pharaoh orders the ' slaughter of all newborn Jewish males and the only Moses is saved by a miracle (see previous post ), How can the Chapter 2 Moses was grown up to find himself to intervene on behalf of many other Jewish men of his peers , killing the Egyptian taskmaster who forces them to forced labor? Even more inconsistent is to find out a little further, that Moses was a male brother, Aaron : but as the mother did not have to hide himself or deposit it in a cradle on the Nile to avoid being killed? Well, mystery.

However, after having killed the overseer , Moses flees for several years in Palestine, where he married Zipporah and has a son (Gershom). Seems destined to exile forever, but God chooses to do so in Egypt back to lead his people to liberation . To make themselves known and get him, the Lord appears to Moses with a series of miracles that seem almost conjuring tricks: the first about giving voice to a bush burning without being consumed , then gives him a stick that into a snake (and vice versa), then appear and disappear from the signs of leprosy his hand and finally blood becomes a bit 'of water of the Nile paid on dry land.

" But introducing myself to the Israelites, I have to say that God sends me? "-asked Moses." You answer is the God who is called I Am . "Understandable that Moses not be the subject of much credibility, more so because, by his own admission, is so and clumsy in speech . addition to the repertoire of miracles that can replicate before the Jews, then, the Lord tells him to rely on a skilled spokesman: "There is your brother Aaron the Levite ? He can speak well, people will pay attention to your name. I will be with you, and they will believe .

It all seems defined once and for all. But at this point is just the imponderable: Moses with the family sets out for Egypt, where a night - and I quote - "The Lord addresses Moses and wants to die . Why, what's the point? Why? Mystery. At this point, however, intervenes wife Zipporah, in a truculent , disturbing and completely incomprehensible to us readers : with a sharp stone cuts the foreskin of her son, and that affects the sex of Moses saying, "You to me are a husband of blood!" . It seems a kind of ritual with a lot of magic formula. Obviously it is the right one: "Then the Lord spared the life of Moses" . Why? Mystery. I close the book rather upset.