A New Genesis Means a New Exodus
But if it is a new Genesis it is also a new Exodus. For years, when reading
Exodus, I confess that I used to misjudge what Moses says repeatedly to
Pharaoh: Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the desert. I
used to think this was just an excuse: we want to go home to our promised
land, but let’s just tell Pharaoh that we want to worship our God and that we
can’t do it in his land, surrounded by his gods.
But the whole logic of the book of Exodus, and indeed of the Pentateuch as a
whole, forbids that interpretation. If you read Exodus at a run you will easily
arrive at Mount Sinai in chapter 20; up to that point it’s a page-turner, one
dramatic incident after another, but then suddenly the pace seems to
slacken as we get miscellaneous rules and regulations, though not (to be
honest) very many of them yet.
Don’t stop there; forge ahead; because the whole narrative is indeed moving
swiftly forward to the aim and object of the whole thing, which is the
restoration of creation itself, the purpose for which God called Abraham and
his family in the first place, the purpose through which heaven and earth will
be joined together once more, only now in dramatic symbol and onward
pointing sign. The giving of Torah itself is just a preparation; what matters is
the Tabernacle.
The Tabernacle is the microcosmos, the little world, the heaven-and-earth
place, the mysterious, untameable, moving tent – or perhaps it is the world
that moves, while the tent stays still? – in which the living God will come to
dwell, to tabernacle, in the midst of his people, in the pillar of cloud by day
and fire by night. The whole of the book of Exodus is itself moving towards
this moment, in chapter 40, when the Tent is set up, constructed and
decorated with the highest human artistry, which itself is part of the point,
and the Divine Glory comes to dwell in it, so that even Moses couldn’t enter
the Tent because of that glorious presence. Exodus 40 answers to Genesis 1
and 2: creation is renewed, heaven and earth are held together, the world
itself is halted from its slide back towards chaos, and the people of God, tent-
makers and tent-keepers and pilgrims wherever the glory-filled Tent will lead
them, are to live the dangerous and challenging life of the people in whose
midst there dwells, in strange humble sovereignty, the promise and hope
for