Some Thoughts on an Exodus Theme
June 9th, 2025
Exodus, the second book in the Hebrew Bible, is the most significant book in the entire Bible. Hyperbole? Maybe. But it’s not wrong.
The late Jonathan Sacks, who was the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, writes: “The book of Exodus is the West’s meta-narrative of hope.” Metanarrative. It’s an interesting word. According to the people who write dictionaries, a metanarrative is a narrative about a narrative.
Tim Mackie and Jon Collins, the Bible founders, say it this way:
Most followers of Jesus are familiar with three foundational biblical stories: the story of Jesus in the gospels, the creation story in Genesis, and the Exodus story. These narratives are referred to throughout the whole Bible, but the Exodus story is the most referenced story. Why is this narrative in Exodus so important? In this episode, Jon and Tim start a new series on the narrative theme of Exodus, what we’re calling the “Exodus Way,” showing how this story shapes the Bible’s whole view of reality.
in the story of Exodus we find the grand, overarching theme of the entire Bible, in three beats:
DELIVERANCE FROM SLAVERY – A WILDERNESS JOURNEY – THE PROMISED LAND
It’s also the plot of both “The Prince of Egypt” and “The Ten Commandments”, to name two films that tell the story.
If you know what you’re looking for, these three beats show up over-and-over-and-over again throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Exodus is THE framework for understanding the Bible’s grand story. One might argue that if you do not know Exodus, you do not know the Bible. Can I take it one step farther? We are living in an Exodus-shaped reality whose three beats are being worked out according to God’s grand plan.
This small article is not the place to work out that argument, so I will leave it hanging as a bold assertion. Perhaps someone will take this up in a book or three. But the grand goldmine of the Exodus story also offers rich veins off the main shaft which yield rich ore for those who know how to mine it. That tortured metaphor is a bit of a tryhard. Let me put this another way with a term you probably know: leitmotif. Although originating in opera and tied to music, a leitmotif represents a recurring theme, of which there are several in the Exodus narrative. For instance, the staff of Moses or the plagues.
I wish to take up one of the Bible’s leitmotifs that has its origin in Exodus: the hard heart.
Is the Math mathing?
The expression “hard heart” occurs 19 times in the story, 18 of them for Pharaoh’s heart and once for the heart of the Egyptian people. (For what it’s worth, it occurs 12 times in the 1980s classic song by Quarterflash…and she didn’t even sing it on repeat until the end, before the fade out.) So what does the expression mean?
Like the takeout lunch delivered to the set of “The View”, there is a lot to unpack here. What does it mean to “harden” a heart? When the Bible speaks of the “heart”, does it just mean the muscley organ that pumps our blood, or is something else in view? How does the heart get hardened? Or to put it another way, is it an act of free will, or is it the will of an all-powerful Deity? Could it be both? How do other authors of Biblical text return to the motif?
We’re going to unpack this phrase by addressing three central questions:
3. And who does the hardening?
We will answer these questions over the next few posts (hopefully three, but no promises). And in exploring the answers, we might find some precious gems of insight that have been there the whole time, but hidden from view. (Not hidden from The View; they would have devoured anything edible by now.)
And now for something completely different (though not really; we’re still speaking of hardened hearts)
In English, a hard heart is an idiomatic way of saying “no feelings” (which is what the Quartflash song tells us; thank you, Rindy Ross!). Because it is so prevalent an idiom, we English speakers cannot help but read the ancient Biblical Text with spectacles on. A suggestion might serve us here: take the spectacles off.
Be ready to read the familiar Text in fresh ways, understanding that dilligent and faithful translators are doing their best to render an ancient language into accessible and sensible words for us. But...
They may not mean what we have always thought they meant…
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