“Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, because Joseph had made the Israelites swear a solemn oath, saying, ‘God will certainly come to your aid; then you must take my bones with you from this place.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)
This morning we are going to wrap up Exodus 13. Tomorrow, Lord willing, we will jump into one of the most exciting, but also most challenging, parts of the story we have yet encountered. Verse 19 here isn’t the last verse in the chapter, but it is essentially an editorial note, so I saved it for the end. This one of those notes we find in the Scriptures that seem a bit random and really don’t help to advance the story at all. In spite of that, though, I think there are two quick things worth noting here. Let’s talk about each of them briefly today and that’ll be that.
“The Israelites traveled from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand able-bodied men on foot, besides their families. A mixed crowd also went up with them, along with a huge number of livestock, both flocks and herds. The people baked the dough they had brought out of Egypt into unleavened loaves, since it had no yeast; for when they were driven out of Egypt, they could not delay and had not prepared provisions for themselves. The time that the Israelites lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of 430 years, on that same day, all the Lord’s military divisions went out from the land of Egypt. It was a night of vigil in honor of the Lord, because he would bring them out of the land of Egypt. This same night is in honor of the Lord, a night vigil for all the Israelites throughout their generations.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
I’m sure we’ve talked about this before, but there are some places in the Scriptures that leave you wondering a bit exactly why they were included. They don’t appear to tell us anything of particular applicational worth. They just give details that we don’t really feel like we need. What is the point of these places? Why would God include them? Can we just skip them without missing much? Today, let’s see about answering some of these questions and more as we talk through what’s happening in these verses, potpourri style.
“When Pharaoh heard about this, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in the land of Midian, and sat down by a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came to draw water and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. Then some shepherds arrived and drove them away, but Moses came to their rescue and watered their flock. When they returned to their father Reuel, he asked, ‘Why have you come back so quickly today?’ They answered, ‘An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.’ ‘So where is he?’ he asked his daughters? ‘Why then did you leave the man behind? Invite him to eat dinner.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)
When you hear something described as putrid, your first instinct is probably not going to be to go over and take a big whiff. Unless you are an adolescent boy, in which case, yes, that may very well be your first instinct. Putrid things don’t tend to smell very good. How ironic it is, then, that the word “potpourri,” which typically is used for a mixture of dried bits of flowers and other odds and ends that have been perfumed to provide a pleasing fragrance to a room is a transliteration of a French word that literally means, ‘the putrid pot.” When I tell you that today’s post is going to be a bit of a potpourri of things, though, I don’t have that in mind at all, and I promise it won’t smell. I’m thinking rather of potpourri in the Jeopardy sense of a mixture of all sorts of different things, a meaning which, interestingly, also comes from the same French word that originally referred to a Spanish stew that could include a whole fridge full of odds and ends. That’s a long introduction to tell you that today we are going to look at a number of different things in these verses that aren’t necessarily connected, but which are all interesting in their own right, and will help you get a better sense of what is happening here in a passage that usually gets overlooked on our way to the more exciting third chapter of Exodus. Let’s dive right in.
The Nexus 