Some Thoughts on an Exodus Theme

June 9^th, 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: 

1.    What is being “hardened” when the Bible speaks of the “heart”?

2.    What does it mean for the heart to be “hardened”?
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…

 

 

Do Righteousness

 

The Hebrew word TSEDAQAH (צְדָקָה ) is most often translated into English as “righteousness”.  It occurs 157 times in the Hebrew Bible.  Western Christians are often taught that the words righteous or righteousness have to do with our “right standing with G-d” (in fact, that is very phrase that was used when we were taught the concept in our Baptist church long ago). 

 

But to Jesus and His Jewish audience, TSEDAQAH means so much more than our own personal place with the G-d of the universe.  This is from the Jewish website Chabad:

Do not give charity.  Charity means being nice. It means the other guy doesn’t deserve it and you don’t have to give it, because you have what belongs to you and he has what belongs to him. And nevertheless, you give anyways.

But Jews don’t give charity.  Jews give tzedakah. And tzedakah means setting things right.  Tzedakah means the money was never really yours, that you’re just the treasurer and the money was put in your trust to be disbursed for good things, both for you and for others when they will have a need. 

Tzedakah is something you receive every day, because the One Above has no obligations towards you, yet He provides you constantly with all that you need.  And since the One Above mirrors all that you do below, you feel a need to give more than you are required to give, so that He will give you more than you deserve to get.”

TSEDAQAH is more than our standing with G-d, though it is related.  Hear an ancient Rabbi, Yeshua Ben Yoseph of Galilee:

Be careful not to practise your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.  If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.  So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by others.  Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.  But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.  Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

TSEDAQAH is not about "being", but rather it's about doing.  DO righteousness.  It is one of the ways we put the world to right.

Doing Righteousness

"Do the Right Thing" is a 1989 film by Spike Lee which explores simmering racial tension between blacks and the white operators of an Italian pizzeria in a Brooklyn neighborhood.  Whatever elements the plot elevates, it's the title we're grabbing here.  Because doing the right thing is precisely what is meant by TSEDAQAH (צְדָקָה).

 

TSEDAQAH  is the Hebrew noun commonly translated as “righteousness”.  It’s possible that you have already heard of the word.  Like SHALOM (שָׁלוֹם), CHESED (חֵסֵד), and other Hebrew words, it is one that Western Christians might toss into a conversation when they wish to sound educated.  In combination with its masculine form TSEDEQ (צֶדֶק), which also gets translated as “righteousness”, it appears nearly 300 times in the Hebrew Text.

Among its occurrences is its first and arguably most significant one in Genesis 15:6:

“Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as RIGHTEOUSNESS.”

Another favorite Messianic prophetic reference is the word’s final use in the Hebrew Bible, in Malachi 4:2:

“But for you who revere my name, the sun of RIGHTEOUSNESS will rise with healing in its rays.  And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.”

Like all Hebrew words, its meaning is more complicated than a simple one-for-one correlation with our English word “righteousness”.  For example, translators occasionally render it as “justice”, “just”, or “right”.  In Psalm 35:27, many translations have it as “vindication”:

“May those who delight in my VINDICATION shout for joy and gladness; may they always say, “The Lord be exalted, who delights in the well-being of his servant.”

By the time of Jesus in the Second Temple era – the so-called “intertestamental period” between the completion of the Jewish Canon and the beginning of the Christian one – the word had taken on an even more significant meaning.  Taking their cue from Daniel 4:27, Rabbinic sages began to use TSEDAQAH to mean “charity”.  Here’s the verse:

“Therefore, Your Majesty, be pleased to accept my advice: Renounce your sins by DOING WHAT IS RIGHT, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed.  It may be that then your prosperity will continue.”

 

The sages equated “being kind to the oppressed” (CHANAN) with “doing what is right” (TSEDAQAH).  This notion is expounded upon in Second Temple writings such as Ben Sira and Tobit.  And the concept is carried forward into the Talmud, which comprises the written record of Jewish oral teaching. 

For observant Jews, doing TSEDAQAH (charity) is the supreme command (MITSVAH).  The sages say:

“Tzedakah and acts of kindness are the equivalent of all the mitzvot of the Torah” – Jerusalem Talmud, Pe’ah 1:1.

“Greater is tzedakah than all the sacrifices” – Talmud, Sukkah 49b.

“If only the people who lived in the generation of the Flood and the people of Sodom had given tzedakah, they would not have perished” – Midrash Zutta, Song of Songs 1.

“Great is tzedakah, for since the day that the world was created until this day the world stands upon tzedakah” – Midrash Tanna d’Vei Eliyahu Zutta 1.

At the time of Jesus, then, TSEDAQAH did not simply mean “righteousness” in the sense of being morally correct and justified.  It also incorporated into that meaning the idea of doing charity toward the less fortunate, not just as a good idea, but rather as a supreme command from the LORD.  How would a Torah-observant Jew such as Jesus the Messiah regard this idea?  Well, we have hints if we read the New Testament with Hebraic eyes.

“Be careful not to PRACTICE YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS in front of others to be seen by them.  If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.  So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others.  Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.  But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.  Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Matthew 6:1-4

Orthodox Jewish interpreters today say that Jews do not believe in charity.  In fact, there is not a Hebrew word that translates to our English charity.  Instead, they say that Jews believe in doing the right thing, which is TSEDAQAH.  The giving of TSEDAQAH is rooted in the organismic understanding that when there is a need expressed within the organization that we are part of, and we have the means to satisfy that need, it is our sacred duty to do so.  TSEDAQAH is the socio-spiritual mechanism whereby each part bears responsibility for the well-being of the whole.  (Does anyone else hear echoes of St. Paul’s discussion of the Church as an organismic body?)

TSEDAQAH means righteousness.  Doing TSEDAQAH is simply doing the right thing.  And when you have an abundance of something, the right thing is to share it with someone who does not have an abundance.  As Jesus teaches us in St. Luke’s gospel:

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”