The exodus story, beginning in Egypt, cresting at Sinai, and culminating with the entry into Canaan, has tremendous importance for Biblical faith. The foundational event in the history of that faith was the deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt, especially the rescue at yam suf, the Reed Sea. On this event, above all, is based the belief in a God who is active in history. That saving event, in turn, became the basis for God's claim to obedience at Mount Sinai (Exodus 20: 1-2):
God spoke all these words, saying, "I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me…"
From sources other than the Bible, however, we know very little about the exodus. It left no trace in Egyptian accounts. We cannot identify the places on the route, including Mount Sinai. On the other hand, we do know several things that are consistent with the Biblical report:
1. It was regular practice, in times of famine during the second millennium BC, for Semitic shepherds to move to Egypt.
2. The Exodus stories portraying the Midianites fit what we know about the latter from Egyptian texts and archaeology.
3. Archaeology demonstrates a surge of settlements in Transjordan (the area of Biblical Moab) during the 13th century BC, followed by a surge in Cisjordan (the central mountain range west of the Jordan River). This fits the Biblical account of an entry from the east into the Promised Land.
4. There is also a more general consideration: If we hold the Exodus account to be pure fabrication, how then can we explain the enormous importance of the wilderness tradition in the First Testament?
1. The Sojourn in Egypt
The Bible traces the presence of the Israelites in Egypt to a famine in Canaan. Jacob's sons went there for relief. The king of Egypt settled them in the land of Goshen.
Egyptian documents mention this type of thing. The so-called Vienna fragment from the Tomb of Harmhab (1322-1295) has a scene showing Egyptian officials bowing to their superior, Harmhab, who instructs them on what to do with a group of Asiatics whose town has been attacked and destroyed. According to James Breasted's Ancient Records of Egypt, the description shows the Asiatics to be fugitives from the unstable conditions that were rife in Canaan at the time of the Amarna letters. Above the scene are these eight lines:
[Words missing] Asiatics; others have been placed in their abodes [Words missing] they have been destroyed, and their town laid waste, and fire has been thrown [Words missing] they have come to entreat the Great in Strength to send his mighty sword before [Words missing]. Their countries are starving, they live like goats of the mountain, [their] children [Words missing] saying: "A few of the Asiatics, who knew not how they should live, have come [begg]ing [a home in the domain] of Pharaoh - Life, prosperity, health! - after the manner of your fathers' fathers since the beginning, under [Words missing]. Now, the Pharaoh - Life, prosperity, health! - gives them into your hand, to protect their borders." (My italics. – SL)
From the 13th century BC, we find a further example. It comes from a group of letters that served as models for Egyptian schoolboys:
"[We] have finished letting the Bedouin tribes of Edom pass the Fortress [of] Mer-ne-Ptah Hotep-hir-Maat – Life, prosperity, health! – which is (in) Tjeku, to the pools of Per-Atum … to keep them alive and to keep their cattle alive, through the great ka of Pharaoh…."
The attraction of Egypt in times of famine was due to the regular flooding of the Nile, which provided both water and fresh soil (silt), making the river's basin a breadbasket. The economic security was not absolute, as we know from the seven lean years in Joseph's interpretation of Pharaoh's dream, but it was certainly firmer than in Canaan. The crucial fact here is that Lake Victoria, the Nile's main source, gets 50 inches of rain (ca. 1300 mm.) on average per year. In the Holy Land, by contrast, average annual rainfall varies from about 35 inches in the north to an inch in the Negev; much of this water is lost, moreover, because the hills are steep. The contrast, as the ancients saw it, appears in Deuteronomy 11: 10-12.
For the land, where you go in to possess it, isn't as the land of Egypt, that you came out from, where you sowed your seed, and watered it with your foot, as a garden of herbs; but the land, where you go over to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water of the rain of the sky, a land which Yahweh your God cares for: the eyes of Yahweh your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year even to the end of the year.
We are told in Genesis that Jacob and his family settled in an area called Goshen, "the best of the land of Egypt" (Genesis 45:10, 47:6), "in the land of Ramses" (Genesis 47:11), where one could eat "the fat of the land," including the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic that the wandering Israelites later longed for (Numbers 11:5). Goshen could also sustain extensive herds (Genesis 45:10, 46:34, 47:3–4; Exodus 12:38). Even pharaoh's flocks were pastured there (Genesis 47:6). According to Baruch Halpern, conditions in the Wadi Tumilat area, which is not so marshy as the lower Delta, show all these traits.
This area can qualify as the "land of Ramses," and we know where the city of Ramses was. It was built in the 13th century BC on the site of the old Hyksos capital, Avaris, at a place today called Tel ed-Dab'a. Avaris/Ramses stood 17 miles north of Wadi Tumilat. Goshen, on this view, would have been the area between Wadi Tumilat and Ramses.
But if the Israelite slaves lived in the delta, what do we do about the fact that during much of the 2nd millennium BC, the pharaoh lived 350 miles south of the delta at Thebes. This doesn't seem to jibe with the Biblical account, which has Moses and Aaron shuttling between Pharaoh and the slaves. Or was there a time when the pharaoh did live in the delta?
Indeed, the pharaoh lived in the delta twice during the second millennium: once in the time of the Hyksos, who had their capital at Avaris, and again when Ramesses II rebuilt Avaris as his capital, naming it after himself. The Israelites were the workers: "They built storage cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Ramses (Exodus 1:11)" The location of Pithom is controversial, but, as said, we know where Ramses was. Its construction under Ramesses II (1279-1213 BC) fits well with two other factors that enable us to date the exodus in the late 13th century:
1. The kingdoms of Edom and Moab have a role in the exodus account. Archaeological evidence puts the founding of both at the end of the 13th century or later.
2. As mentioned, around 1200 BC there was a surge of settlement in the central highlands of Canaan. We shall discuss this below.
On these considerations, then, Ramesses II would have been the pharaoh of the oppression. We possess in fact an Egyptian document, known as Leiden Papyrus 348. In it an official of the pharaoh instructs a foreman to "distribute grain rations to the soldiers and to the 'Apiru who transport stones to the great pylon of Rames[s]es." The word 'Apiru ("Habiru" or "Hapiru" in cuneiform sources) is tantalizingly close in sound to the word "Hebrew." Nahum Sarna comments:
These people are referred to in more than 200 West Semitic inscriptions. The 'Apiru or Habiru are generally regarded as a kind of renegade, foreign population; one scholar has called them "uprooted migrants," people who "lived for awhile as foreigners in another country." Sometimes they are identified as mercenaries. If the term "'Apiru" is indeed related to "Hebrew," then Hebrews—or, more accurately, proto-Hebrews—may well have been part of the Egyptian corvée, or forced labor crew, who built Ramesses' capital in the 13th century B.C.E., just as the Bible says. The term "Apiru" clearly referred to people of low social status; it is a derogatory term. In the Book of Exodus, "Hebrews" is not used by the Israelites in reference to themselves, but by foreigners speaking of the Israelites (see, for example, Exodus 1:16, 2:6), and by the narrator in the context of Egyptians vis-à-vis the Israelites (for example, Exodus 1:19, 2:7, 3:18, 5:3, etc.). We should not conclude that all 'Apiru became Hebrews; but, if the etymological equation is correct, it would seem likely that some 'Apiru were among the workers at Pithom and Raamses and perhaps through them the name 'Ibrîm (Hebrews) began to be applied to this people as an ethnic term.
One other factor should be named in connection with the timing of the exodus. The end of the reign of Ramesses II coincides with a vast decline of Egyptian power in Canaan, leading to a total withdrawal by 1150 BC. This was a period of famine and upheaval throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, when hungry peoples were on the move, bringing down city after city, from Mycenae in Greece through Asia Minor to the very borders of Egypt. The Israelite exodus may be seen in the context of the general chaos enveloping the region from 1250 in Greece until 1150 in Canaan.
2. The Midianites
The Exodus account shows a friendly relationship between Moses and the Midianites. This could not be a late invention, because Midian is Israel's enemy by the time we get to Numbers 22, when the wandering Israelites arrive in the steppes of Moab. (See, for example Numbers 25: 16-17 .) In the next period, that of the Judges, we hear that the Midianites raided Israelite harvests for seven years, until Yahweh empowered Gideon. No scribe after Gideon's time would have invented stories favorable to the Midianites, presenting their leader as Moses' mentor.
In the account of Exodus 2:11 - 3:1, Moses fled to Midian after killing an Egyptian. Here he married Zipporah, the daughter of a Midianite priest who appears in the Bible under two names: Reuel and Jethro. While tending his father-in-law's flock, he was called by Yahweh (Exodus 3: 1-4):
Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness, and came to God’s mountain, to Horeb. The angel of Yahweh appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. Moses said, “I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.”
When Yahweh saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the midst of the bush, and said, “Moses! Moses!”
He said, “Here I am.”
This event is located "at the back of the wilderness" (akhar hamidbar), near God's mountain, identified as Horeb. (In other passages it is called Sinai.) To this mountain, during the exodus, Moses was to lead the Israelites, and here Yahweh would make his covenant with them, including the Ten Commandments. Since Byzantine times, the mountain has been located west of the Red Sea, but it could have been on the east in Midian's heartland. (Midianite pottery has been found mainly east of the Arava and the Red Sea, although it also appears at Timna on the Arava's western side).
The Midianites were apparently the first people to worship Yahweh. In Exodus 18, Jethro initiates sacrifice to Yahweh, and Aaron joins him. Jethro then teaches Moses how to organize the polity. His son Hobab guides the people through the wilderness (Numbers 10:29-33).
What is more, from the Midianite period at Timna we find the remains of a tent shrine. This brings to mind the Tent of Meeting where Yahweh regularly encountered Moses. No graven images were found in the Midianite shrine, except one: in its holy of holies was a copper snake not five inches long. It brings to mind the bronze snake made by Moses at Punon (Feinan in today's Jordan), an area of ancient copper mines where Midianite pottery was also found. Worshipers brought offerings to Moses' bronze snake at the temple in Jerusalem until the 8th century B.C., when Hezekiah finally tore the thing down (2 Kings 18:4 ).
Thus the distribution of Midianite painted pottery, from its production center(s) in northern Arabia (Midian) to a wide range of settlements in the Negeb [Negev – SL], the Arabah [Arava], and beyond, fits rather nicely the locale and routes of a people [the Midianites – SL] known for their metalsmithing and caravaneering. The floruit of this distinctive pottery is precisely the era in which most biblical historians (quite independently of this ceramic evidence, which has only recently come to light) would date the Israelite Exodus from Egypt, their sojourn through Midian and Transjordan, and their settlement in Canaan in the late thirteenth and twelfth centuries BCE. Stager 1998)
The Midianites were a nomadic group within a socio-economic class known as shasu in Egyptian documents. The proto-Israelites, no doubt, were also lumped with the shasu. (The root of the word, in Egyptian, may mean to wander or plunder.) These shasu were Beduin-like shepherds and raiders, first mentioned as living in what is today southern Jordan, though they later spread. The Egyptians considered them a threat and a nuisance. A document of Pharaoh Amenhotep III (14th century BC), and another of Ramesses II (13th century), refer to something that can be variously translated as "the land of the Yahweh-nomads" or "the shashu land of Yahweh." Nearby in the same document the land of Seir is mentioned. This was the mountain range in today's southern Jordan, prime sashu territory, which in the 13th century BC became organized as the Kingdom of Edom. Some archaic poems in the Bible refer to Yahweh as coming from Seir/Edom:
When you, Yahweh, went forth from Seir,
When you marched forth from the plateaus of Edom,
Earth shook,
Heaven poured,
Clouds poured water;
Mountains quaked;
Before Yahweh, Lord of Sinai,
Before Yahweh, God of Israel.
(Judges 5.4-5; see also Deuteronomy 33:2.)
The "land of Yahweh nomads" or "sashu land of Yahweh" - in the vicinity of Seir - must have been Midian or a part thereof. We can't be sure, of course, that the name Yahweh in 14th and 13th century documents refers to a deity; it could have meant a place or a human being. But the location in Midian, where we know (from the Bible) that Yahweh was worshiped before Moses, supports the connection with Yahweh the God.
3. Settlement in the highlands of Canaan
After the Egyptians expelled the Hyksos (around 1550 BC), the number of cities and villages in the highlands of Canaan dwindled from 248 to 29. (We know this from archaeological surveys.) However, beginning in the late 13th century BCE (on the threshold of a period that scholars call Iron Age I), there is at first a wave of new settlement east of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, followed by a surge of settlement on the west side, where the number jumps back up to 254. The vast majority of these settlements were small, crude and unfortified. Often they were located in places that are uncongenial to farming. Very broadly speaking, this fits the biblical picture of Israelites settling in the land. Archaeologists argue the question as to whether the people in these settlements were all Israelites, or whether they were yet Israelites, or whether they all arrived together from across the Jordan as the Book of Joshua would have us believe. There is a consensus, though, that the 254 settlements included the Israelites or proto-Israelites.
Here is the view of A. F. Rainey:
The Egyptian records reveal that the Shasu pastoralists were becoming more numerous and troublesome during the thirteenth century BCE. The archaeological surveys in the central hill country indicate that the Iron I settlements initially sprang up in marginal areas where pastoralists could graze their flocks and engage in dry farming. Later they spread westward, cleared the forests and began building agricultural terraces. Nowadays there is no compelling reason to doubt the general trend of the Biblical tradition that those pastoralists were mainly immigrants from Transjordan.
Yet some of these new settlers may have come from within Canaan itself. In the 13th century BCE, the Egyptians strengthened their hold on the lowlands. They took power from local notables and put it in the hands of Egyptian officials, imposing new laws on everyone, including the nomadic, freedom-loving Shasu. To escape the central authority, some of the Shasu probably shrank back into the hill country where they could be free.
The change in Egyptian administration was accompanied by economic exploitation, which consisted mainly in the transfer of grain to Egyptian hands. Archaeologists find that the Canaanite towns at this time were unfortified: apparently, Egypt forbade them to build walls, in order to prevent rebellion. Nevertheless, when famine struck in the late 13th century, revolts took place.
The son and successor of Ramesses II, Merneptah, recorded sending grain by ship to rescue the land of Hatti (namely, the Hittite Empire in Asia Minor). The effort failed and Hatti fell before hordes of roving, hungry peoples. On his western border, Merneptah fought off attacks by an alliance of Libyans and Sea Peoples, who had left their Aegean homelands in quest of food. A poem on a victory stele, dated to about 1205 BC, celebrates his victory over a number of Canaanite city-states as well as a people called Israel:
The princes, prostrated, say 'Shalom';
None raises his head among the Nine Bows.
Now that Tehenu (Libya) has come to ruin, Hatti (the Hittite realm) is pacified;
Canaan has been plundered into every sort of woe.
Ashkelon has been overcome, Gezer has been captured,
Yeno'am was made non-existent;
Israel was laid waste, his seed is not.
Hurru has become a widow because of Egypt.
All lands have united themselves in peace,
anyone who was restless, he has been subdued.
Here is the first mention of Israel outside the Bible (proclaiming its annihilation!). An Egyptian sign placed beside the name indicates a people or tribe, not a city like Ashkelon, Gezer or Yeno'am.
By 1205, then, the exodus had taken place.
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