The Exodus from Egypt

Exodus tells how, after a series of plagues and the first Passover, Israel leaves Egypt under Moses and crosses the sea, in which Pharaoh’s pursuing army is drowned. The rest of the Bible looks back to this event constantly.

Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh with the demand that Israel be allowed to go into the wilderness to hold a feast to its God. Pharaoh refused and made the labour heavier: the brick-makers were now to find their own straw and deliver the same number of bricks (Exodus 5:1–9).

Exodus then tells of nine blows on Egypt: the river turned to blood, frogs, lice, flies, a disease of livestock, boils, hail, locusts and three days of darkness (Exodus 7:14–10:29). The land of Goshen, where the Israelites lived, is said to have been spared (Exodus 8:22) (Exodus 9:26). After each blow, the text says, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened and he would not let the people go (Exodus 7:22; 8:15, 19, 32; 9:7, 12, 35; 10:20, 27).

Before the tenth blow every Israelite household was told to kill a lamb on the fourteenth day of the first month, to mark its doorposts and lintel with the blood, and to eat the meat roasted, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, dressed for a journey (Exodus 12:1–11). At midnight, Exodus says, the firstborn of Egypt died, and the marked houses were passed over (Exodus 12:12–13) (Exodus 12:29–30). Pharaoh sent the people away that same night (Exodus 12:31–33). The meal was to be repeated every year as a memorial, the Passover (Exodus 12:14) (Exodus 12:24–27).

The Israelites set out from Rameses, generally identified with Pi-Ramesses in the eastern Delta. Exodus counts about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children and a “mixed multitude” (Exodus 12:37–38). Pharaoh changed his mind and pursued them with his chariots to the edge of the sea (Exodus 14:5–9). There, the account says, Moses stretched out his hand, a strong east wind drove the sea back all night, and Israel crossed on dry ground; when the Egyptians followed, the water returned and covered them (Exodus 14:21–29). Moses and the people sang a song of victory, and Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, led the women with tambourines and dancing (Exodus 15:1–21).

The rest of the Bible returns to this event constantly. The Ten Commandments begin with it: “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 20:2). Luke presents the Last Supper as a Passover meal (Luke 22:14–20), and Paul writes that “Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7).

How this is dated

Traditional date. From later tradition or from internal biblical chronology, with no outside anchor.

No Egyptian text or monument that mentions the exodus is known. The only account is the biblical one, and both the date of the event and how far it can be treated as history are disputed. Those who hold to a historical exodus defend one of two dates.

The first takes the figure in Kings literally: Solomon began the temple in his fourth year, “in the four hundred and eightieth year” after Israel came out of Egypt (1 Kings 6:1). With Solomon’s fourth year at about 966 BC this gives about 1446 BC, and Jephthah’s “three hundred years” of Israelite settlement east of the Jordan is cited in support (Judges 11:26). See Bryant G. Wood, “The Rise and Fall of the 13th-Century Exodus-Conquest Theory”, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48 (2005), pp. 475–489.

The second starts from the store city Raamses (Exodus 1:11) and identifies it with Pi-Ramesses, the residence that Ramesses II (reigned about 1279–1213 BC) built in the eastern Delta and that excavation has located at Qantir. It reads the 480 years as twelve generations reckoned at forty years each, and puts the exodus about 1270–1260 BC. See Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (2003), and James K. Hoffmeier, “What Is the Biblical Date for the Exodus? A Response to Bryant Wood”, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 50 (2007), pp. 225–247. Advocates of the earlier date answer that the name Raamses in Exodus is a later updating of an older place name.

Either date must leave Israel in or near Canaan by about 1208 BC, when the stele of Merneptah lists it beside Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam (Merneptah Stele lines 26–28). Many historians and archaeologists doubt that an exodus on the scale the text describes took place. They hold that the narrative cannot be confirmed for either century and that Israel took shape largely within Canaan: see Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed (2001), and William G. Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? (2003). The timeline places the event at the earlier date and shows both.

The Exodus from Egypt

How this is dated

Primary sources

Scripture

The Merneptah Stele (Israel Stela)

In context

Grows out of

Leads to

Along the threads