NOTES for Exo 6:1-30

The story told in the book of Exodus is only part of the overall story of salvation. Behind the specific task of rescue from slavery, a broader task comes into view: the creation of a people who worship the one God, know God, and serve God. This mystery is revealed to Moses in the words: "I will be your God; I will enter into a union (covenant) with you".

The dialogue between God and human beings, described in Holy Scripture, does not stop at what has been achieved, but continually sets new and more serious goals. Thus the history of a family passes into the history of a clan, then of a people, then of the whole world. The final goal of this development is inexpressible; it can only be described figuratively in human language: unity with God, knowledge of God, the Kingdom of God... It can be seen behind every particular manifestation of salvation, whether an answer to prayer, deliverance from danger, or the miracle of God's presence among people.

Moses' demand that the people be released "three days' journey into the wilderness" brought only a smirk from Pharaoh: who is this Yahweh, that I should listen to Him? In such a situation the only way out became God's direct intervention in events. It came soon after Moses returned to Egypt. God appears to Moses, for the second time after Sinai, and reveals His name to him, the name Yahweh. The situation begins to resemble what took shape in ancient times, in the days of the fathers, or, as we usually call them, the patriarchs.

Back then God also first revealed Himself to one of them, made or renewed a covenant with him, and then, after a second appearance, began to act by intervening directly in the events taking place. The same thing happens with Moses: first God appears to him and gives him a commission that Moses will have to carry out; then, when Moses has arrived on the scene, God reveals Himself to him again in order to say that He, God, is beginning to act. This logic is fully understandable and is explained by the very essence of God's providence. In the fallen world God always acts according to the situation.

He, of course, has His own plan, but He has to take into account the free will and choices of those who are not participating in the fulfillment of His plan. After all, in order to accomplish His plan, God has to act not only in His own great world, but also in the worlds separated from it, the worlds of those who do not acknowledge His authority and do not want to submit to His will.

He must act in such a way that those who do not want to know Him and do not acknowledge His will are left, as people say, with what is their own, so that their right to a godless existence is not violated. In the fallen world, God has to act in such a way as to leave room in it for those who do not know Him and do not want to know Him. Meanwhile, people who do not know God inevitably produce chaos in their world separated from God, a chaos they themselves usually cannot understand.

God cannot simply put an end to it; more precisely, He can, but then the will of those who produced the chaos would be violated. Therefore God acts with precision, opening a path for those who follow His will. He acts in a specific place and at a specific moment in time, opening opportunities for His people to fulfill His will in an equally specific way, the way He has shown them. In this way God prepares the fallen world for return, for its transformation into the Kingdom, which sooner or later it will become in any case.

It is no surprise that the first failure discouraged the people, who expected immediate results from Moses' intervention and received only additional problems (Ex 5:22-23). Against this background, Moses' own bewilderment looks more strange, since it would seem that God had warned him that the Exodus would be anything but simple or quick (Ex 3:18-20). And then, in response to this bewilderment, God tells Moses something very important about His relationship with His people (Ex 6:2-8).

On the one hand, God reveals to Moses His new name, the name Yahweh (traditionally rendered in the Synodal Translation by the epithet "the Lord"), while emphasizing that He had not revealed Himself to the "fathers" by this name (Ex 6:3); on the other hand, He tells Moses about the new, special, and trusting relationship that from now on will bind Him to the descendants of Jacob (Ex 6:6-8).

Clearly, this is about the Covenant, the union between God and the people, which presupposes a new quality of relationship. The new name points to the same thing: in antiquity, a change of name was usually connected with a serious inner change in the one whose name was changed. Of course, God does not change as a human being does, but His relationship with His people can change. And here we have just such a change, one that is very important for understanding all the later history of the Jewish people: from now on, after the Covenant is concluded, there is no room in the people's life for chance or arbitrariness; everything that happens to them will be determined by their relationship with God and will depend on that relationship.

Of course, this does not mean that God's people will never have problems again, but the dreary hopelessness that marked the last decades of life in Egypt will indeed never return. And if so, there can be no failure in dealing with Pharaoh. All that is needed is time, and not much time at all compared with the hard decades already lived through. But only someone for whom the covenant is an unconditional reality can understand this. Even to Moses himself this reality was not revealed at once. It is no surprise that to everyone else the situation looked hopeless (Ex 6:9). And then God begins to act.