Week 3 Exodus
By January 16th – two days ago – I knew I was falling behind. You don’t have to be much of a mathematician to know that if a) you need to read 100 chapters in January, and that if b) you’ve only read 36 by the 16th then you aren’t exactly in good shape.
So I wasn’t surprised when I did a mid-month check-up. I spent too much time on Jacob’s trek from Shechem in thirty-five. Ditto for thirty-six – who can afford to spend a day on Esau’s family-tree?
My solution wasn’t a real good one but I did it: on Sunday I read Genesis 37-50.
Fourteen chapters is a lot to absorb in a day. But if I had to read fourteen all at once then Genesis 37-50 was a Lucky 14. It’s the story of Joseph, one of the great long stories in the bible and one of my favourites.
And finishing Genesis yesterday helped me get back on track.
I read Exodus 1-3 today. It’s a pretty sobering story.
The Egyptian state was unsettled by the rapid growth of the Hebrews so they turned them into slaves as an indirect means of population reduction. Then they legislated abortion/infanticide-at-birth. When babies kept being born, follow-up laws required that boys were to be drowned.
When you brutalize and grind down and use up and exploit and end other peoples’ lives then something is going to happen. I read Exodus last January and I know that something awesomely destructively terrible is going to happen in Egypt.