Category Archives: Old Testament

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Is God or an angel speaking in Exodus 3:2-6?

The angel of the LORD appears to Jacob in a dream (Gen 31:11), calls to Abraham from heaven (22:11, 15), and appears directly to Hagar (16:7-11; though calling to her from heaven in 21:17). Here he appears to Moses in a flaming bush (Exod 3:2), yet Moses apparently sees only the bush burning, not an angel, until God speaks to him from the bush (3:3-4).

This is not the last occasion on which the angel of the Lord will act. The angel of God acts to protect Israel, moving the cloud to obstruct the pursuing army, in 14:19. In some passages, the angel speaks as if God, as apparently here (3:2-4; cf. Gen 16:10; 21:17-18; 22:11-12, 15-17; 31:11-13; Judg 2:1), whether as God’s agent (cf. Gen 22:16?) or because God’s name was in him (Exod 23:20-21). Some who saw the Lord’s angel also feared that they had seen God (Judg 6:22; 13:21-22; cf. Gen 32:30).

In any case, there should not be too much surprise at this point that the one speaking to Moses is the God of his ancestors (Exod 3:6) whose stories occupy much of our current Book of Genesis. Yet Moses hides his face lest he gaze on the LORD (3:6); he knows that no one can see God’s face (besides references above, see Exod 33:20). Moses’s fear here is quite different from his eagerness to see God’s glory in Exod 33:18, a request that the Lord grants albeit without showing Moses his face (33:20, 23; despite the idiom in Exod 33:11; Deut 34:10).

(For other posts on Exodus, see http://www.craigkeener.org/category/old-testament/exodus/.)

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Meeting the holy God—Exodus 3:1-5

God sometimes meets us in the ordinary events of our lives, but calls us into his extraordinary plan for our lives. God met Moses in something as mundane as a bush, but quickly revealed to him that God himself is not mundane. God is holy, and wholly other.

In Exodus 3, God draws Moses’s intense curiosity with a burning bush that is not consumed. Moses turns aside to see “this great sight” (Exod 3:3)—this Hebrew term for the “sight” next appears in Exodus at 24:17, where the Israelites see the LORD’s glory “like a devouring fire” on the top of this mountain. God could reveal himself to his people as a devouring fire (Deut 4:24; 9:3). As Exod 3:3 describes what Moses saw, the beginning of verse 4 describes what God saw: when YHWH saw that Moses turned aside to see, then God called to him from inside the bush.

“Moses! Moses!” the Lord calls (Exod 3:4). The doubling of Moses’s name evoking God’s earlier poignant revelations to Abraham and Jacob (Gen 22:11; 46:2). Moses answers the same way his ancestors had: “Behold, I,” usually translated, “Here I am” (3:4). The response might be equivalent today to something like, “Yes, Sir. I’m here, listening up!”

“Don’t come closer,” God warned. Instead, Moses was told, “Take your shoes off your feet, because you’re standing on holy ground” (Exod 3:5). Later, God’s people could not come near God’s presence on the mountain (19:12-13, 21-25); likewise, only priests could enter the sanctuary and almost no one could enter the holiest place in the tabernacle (Lev 16:2; Heb 9:7). (God expelled Adam and Eve from Eden after they sinned; likewise, he would expel Israel from the land holy to him when they sinned, Lev 18:8; 20:22.)

God is holy and must be approached with reverence. There were appropriate times to have one’s shoes on (Exod 12:11), but not on holy ground (Josh 5:15), just as God’s people should not profane an altar by using tools on it (Exod 20:25). (Removing sandals could also be used for mourning, Ezek 24:17, 23, just as hiding one’s face [Exod 3:6] could, 2 Sam 15:30; Esth 6:12.) This was a conventional, cultural way of revealing respect. Christians in other cultures today may reveal our respect in other ways than taking off our shoes in church (especially if we have not washed our feet in awhile). The principle, however, remains. God is holy, and must be approached with our best signs of respect.

(For other posts on Exodus, see http://www.craigkeener.org/category/old-testament/exodus/.)

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God has not forgotten them—Exodus 2:23-25

When our lives become more comfortable, it’s easy to forget the hardship faced by others, whether through persecution, hunger, injustice or other needs. But God does not forget.

Moses’s life became peaceful in Midian (2:16-22), despite the scars his heart undoubtedly carried from the past. His people, however, continued to suffer in Egypt, a matter that the author’s inspired perspective directs us to in Exod 2:23-25. Just as Joseph’s exaltation in Genesis 41 did not relieve him of God’s plan to protect Joseph’s entire family (Gen 42—50), Moses’s new life has not caused God to forget God’s plan for Moses’s people.

Moses adopted his new way of life, but back in Egypt, even Pharaoh’s death did not relieve the Israelites. Pharaoh’s policy of repression remained in place for his successor. After all, oppressors who profit economically from oppression do not like to give it up. Probably the policy of directly killing male infants did not endure for many years, but if it did it may have raised a generation with less strength than ever to seek freedom by means of revolt. (Still, Israel has many men in Num 11:21. Because Israelite men could marry multiple wives and could continue to procreate into old age, children would continue being born. Since Pharaoh found the free work force profitable, and such a force required continuing free labor, Pharaoh presumably would have lifted the ban on male babies once the fear of Israel’s strength subsided.)

In any case, the Israelites’ suffering was deep. We are not told how much they had been crying to God before; it seems unlikely that their worship of other deities or deity images started only after they left Egypt (cf. Exod 32:4). The narrator does not even specify here that it was to God that their cry arose (cf. similar language of the Philistines in 1 Sam 5:10, 12; cf. Israelites in 1 Sam 4:13), although presumably many of them did (cf. Judg 3:9, 15; 6:6-7; 10:10). Samuel, however, later explains that the Lord heard when Israel cried out to him (1 Sam 12:8), just as they did in the time of Deborah (12:10).

God did not ignore his people’s suffering. He “heard” their groaning (2:24; 6:5) and “saw” them (2:25), and “remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (2:24). Here we are invited back to the narratives of God’s dealings with the patriarchs in Gen 12—35; God had not forgotten his people, and the promised time to liberate them from bondage, with many possessions (Gen 15:13-14), had come. May we have the wisdom to cry out to the Lord in times of hardship—and even in times when we are not suffering. We need the Lord, and the sooner that we recognize that, the sooner our cries will reach his ears.

Like Moses, our lives go on. After enduring hardship, we may need a time of recovery before having to face it again. But God does not forget the sufferings of others, and in the end, neither dare we. Remember Proverbs 24:11-12: “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?” (NIV).

(For other posts on Exodus, see http://www.craigkeener.org/category/old-testament/exodus/.)

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Settling in a new land—Exodus 2:16-22

When I travel to speak in various parts of the world, my hosts show me great hospitality. I miss my wife and kids, but otherwise life is pretty comfortable, apart from long flights. But that’s not always the case with people who relocate to new lands to live. My wife and children came to the United States from Africa so we could be together as a family, but when my wife was first an international student in France, she was sometimes destitute. At times when her scholarship was delayed, she subsisted on bread and water. (Part of her experience as an international student appears in a chapter of our book, Impossible Love.) Shared faith gave her a church family away from home, but life can be hard for immigrants, temporary or long-term, having to find homes in new cultures.

When Moses came to Midian, he rescued some young women from shepherds who were asserting their superior strength over them (Exod 2:16-17). But that left Moses without friends among the shepherds—and apparently without any other local friends either. Moses had nowhere to go and needed to be attached to some household, so he may have been disappointed when the young women he had helped left without inviting him home for a meal. Their failure was a breach of Middle Eastern hospitality, as their father quickly pointed out (2:20). A meal together established a covenant relationship, and Moses remained with Jethro, who gave him his daughter in marriage (2:21) perhaps something like how Jacob received not only a place to stay but eventually also a wife (or two) in Haran. Abram also broke bread with a priest of God Most High (Gen 14:18-20), and Joseph also married a priest’s daughter (her father’s office appears every time that Asenath is mentioned; Gen 41:45, 50; 46:20).

Also like Joseph (Gen 41:52), Moses gives one of his sons (Gershom) a name that signifies being a stranger in a foreign land (Exod 2:22). (One might also suggest that “Gershom” could play on how the shepherds “drove away” the daughters; cf. ygarshum in 2:17 with gershom in 2:22. But there seems no possible connection there except the sound.) Moses had grown up as a third-culture child, fully welcome in neither Hebrew nor Egyptian culture. Now he was again an outsider in Midianite culture. His previous background, however, helped prepare him for this status; those not fully attached to any culture are sometimes those best able to adapt to other cultures. His disadvantage in one setting has become his advantage in adjusting to another setting.

(For other posts on Exodus, see http://www.craigkeener.org/category/old-testament/exodus/.)

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Moses as a refugee—Exodus 2:15-17

Moses may have thought that killing an Egyptian oppressor was an act of justice, but the Egyptian overlords have different ideas. Once word about his action leaks, the attempted hero must flee for his life, soon becoming a fugitive in Midian from political repression.

Moses has reason to fear Pharaoh (Exod 2:14; cf. 14:10), though fearing God matters more (1:17, 21; 14:13; cf. 3:6; 9:30). Pharaoh wants to kill Moses just as Moses had killed an Egyptian (2:15). Now Moses has to flee for his life (2:15), abandoning any semblance of privilege and virtually all connections with both Egyptians and Hebrews. Undoubtedly his action shamed his adoptive family, but survival would now be his first concern. Moses’s ancestor Jacob had had to flee both his brother (Gen 27:43; 35:1) and his uncle (31:20-22, 27); but Moses’s flight from Pharaoh especially prefigures the flight of all Israel from Pharaoh a generation later (Exod 14:5). In contrast to Joseph, who went from being a pastoral nomad to being vizier over Egypt, Moses goes from being a high-status member of the Egyptian nobility to being a pastoral nomad.

Moses thus sits by a well in Midian, both a useful place to quench thirst and a normal place for meeting local people. Those who come to the well include the priest of Midian’s daughters. (The priest is apparently called both Reuel, as in 2:18 and some other passages, and Jethro, as at other times in Exodus. Alternatively, the term translated “father-in-law” in these passages might mean simply “male in-law,” allowing for a grandfather or brother-in-law who also held or shared the priestly office at different times.)

That these daughters come to draw water might not be unusual, but Moses might recall the story about himself being drawn from the water, an event commemorated even in his name (2:10). He might also recall stories about his ancestors. The servant whom Abraham sent to find a bride for Isaac found her at a well, where she graciously watered his camels (Gen 24:13-21). Jacob met Rachel at a well, when she was coming to water her father’s flock at the well’s watering troughs (29:9-11). Now Moses also acts gallantly, like his ancestor Jacob. Jacob rolled away a large stone and watered the flock Rachel had brought (Gen 29:10). Moses rescued the women here from bullying shepherds and watered their flock (Exod 2:17).

Moses acts like Jacob here, but also like himself: he had already demonstrated his hatred of oppression by killing the Egyptian in 2:12. That the text does not specify violent action on Moses’s part here might suggest that it proved unnecessary; standing up for the women may have been enough to make the bullying shepherds back down and wait their turn. (Moses did know how to try to resolve matters nonviolently; cf. 2:13.)

Yet like Pharaoh’s cupbearer temporarily forgetting Joseph, the young women leave their benefactor Moses at the well, apparently with no reward for his action—until their father intervenes (see 2:18-20, in the next lesson).

(For other posts on Exodus, see http://www.craigkeener.org/category/old-testament/exodus/.)

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The Hebrews were sinners too—Exodus 2:13-14

In Exod 2:11-12, Moses killed an Egyptian who was striking one of Moses’s own people. He meant to act for justice. Unfortunately, however, injustice was not limited to the Egyptians. In The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn confessed his dismay at his discovery that it was not only his oppressors who did evil. “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Sometimes the oppressed share the same values as the oppressors. It was not only Egyptians who were striking Hebrews; the next day Moses encountered two Hebrews struggling and asked the wicked one, “Why do you ‘strike’ your neighbor?” (Exod 2:13, using the same Hebrew term as in 2:11-12). Far from being united against common oppressors, God’s own people were fighting among themselves. (For historical analogies of how devastating this can be, one may think of how European and Arab slave-traders and colonialists encouraged and exploited intertribal conflicts in Africa. European colonialists did the same in the Middle East. Many centuries ago, divisions among Christians also weakened traditionally Christian Mediterranean cultures in the face of their Islamic conquerors.)

Exodus does not inform us why the “wicked one” (Exod 2:13) was striking the other; perhaps he was a Hebrew overseer, but he may simply have been angry. The wicked, however, are not always dissuaded from actions if they lack fear of punishment. The aggressor demands, “Who made you a ruler or judge over us?” Asking who appointed him a ruler may be equivalent to asking whether he was appointed as one of their task masters (the same Hebrew term appears in Exod 1:11). Ironically, Moses would someday appoint leaders and judges over Israel (Exod 18:21, 25; Num 25:5; Deut 1:16).

Questioning Moses’s authority over them, the aggressor reveals that he knows Moses’s crime against an Egyptian (2:14). Thus we read not only of disunity, but also of likely betrayal; not only of Hebrew infighting, but also of one’s willingness to appeal to Egyptian rulers to get one’s own way. Moses may have expected his people to welcome him as a deliverer; some without faith preferred their present arrangements.

(For other posts on Exodus, see http://www.craigkeener.org/category/old-testament/exodus/.)

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Standing for Justice—Exodus 2:11-14

Nobody’s perfect, but sometimes one side really is right and another is wrong. The civil rights reformers were not perfect (see the marvelous movie Selma: https://www.amazon.com/Selma-David-Oyelowo/dp/B00NMF8SEK), but they were right that racial oppression was wrong. In that setting, whites who wanted to stand for justice needed to join the “black side.” The British, French and Americans were far from perfect, but Hitler’s genocidal activity was pure evil (see https://www.visionvideo.com/dvd/21624D/hitler-the-rise-of-evil). Fighting for justice in such circumstances could be standing for the “Jewish side.” When North Korea tortures and imprisons detractors, or ISIS or other religious vigilantes in Central or South Asia kill Christians or other religious minorities, these acts are evil. In our narrative, God was clearly on the side of the slaves. They were far from perfect, but they were unjustly oppressed—and they were God’s people.

Probably no one would have taken note when Moses went to visit his fellow Israelites; probably no one would by spying on this person of status despite his ethnic affiliation. Moses witnesses his people’s difficult “burdens” (Exod 2:11), a term describing their work as an enslaved people (in the OT found only in Exodus; see also 1:11; 5:4-5), burdens from which the Lord their God would ultimately deliver them (6:6-7).

But seeing an Egyptian “striking” a Hebrew, he “struck” the Egyptian (the same Hebrew term, often applied to killing). Moses intended the lethal outcome of his blow; he first made sure that no one was looking before he killed the Egyptian (Exod 2:12). The law of Moses later required the penalty of death for deliberately striking someone lethally (21:12), but Moses may have been saving the life of the Israelite being beaten. Certainly later Jewish interpreters and biblical voices understood Moses as acting for justice (cf. Acts 7:24-25). Moses identified with his enslaved people more than with his own privilege (cf. Heb 11:24-26).

Moses hid the corpse in the sand (Exod 2:12). (A contrast with Moses’s mother positively hiding him is possible but unlikely, since the narrator employs a different Hebrew term.) Moses did not expect to get caught, and trusted that his fellow Israelites would appreciate his action and not circulate it. But even if the Hebrew he rescued appreciated the action and was the only witness, questions about his own escape from beating might well lead to him recounting the story, and word about the action of this privileged Hebrew would quickly spread (see 2:14).

Although Moses’s action may prefigure his future role as deliverer, the difference between his failure as a small-scale deliverer here and his future success as an agent of God’s deliverance is clear. It’s not enough even to be right about our calling or destiny: we need to depend on the Lord to get us there. It’s important to stand for justice, but it’s ultimately the Lord who grants success. It is difficult to even quantify the vast chasm between Moses’s act of avenging and hopefully rescuing one Hebrew and the plagues that would later force Pharaoh to release Israel. It is the difference between the arm of flesh and the arm of the Lord.

(For other posts on Exodus, see http://www.craigkeener.org/category/old-testament/exodus/.)

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Moses as a third-culture kid—Exodus 2:7-10

Did Moses know that he was a Hebrew? Contrary to some of the movies we see (including my beloved Prince of Egypt!), he presumably did. In many periods in Egypt’s history, Asians could serve in the Egyptian court. Disloyalty to Egypt, however, would be harshly punished. A Hebrew less than fully assimilated in Egyptian culture and too Egyptian to be trusted by many of his fellow Hebrews, Moses was like what we call today a “third culture kid” (like many children of immigrants, refugees, missionaries, diplomats or other cross-cultural settings, and sometimes like children in bicultural homes). (Midianites who met him viewed him as Egyptian, Exod 2:19.)

In some cultures a child can identify with multiple cultures, but Moses grew up in a setting of prejudice where his Hebrew identity would have counted as a liability. So Moses grew up as a Hebrew, but also in Egyptian culture. This experience continued until he grew up (Exod 2:11).

Miriam interceded for Moses when she saw the compassion of Pharaoh’s daughter, offering to secure a Hebrew wetnurse for the child (Exod 2:7). The period of nursing might take two years, and the nurse needed to be one who could provide milk for the child—in this case, Moses’s own mother, who now got paid to nurse her own baby (2:8-9).

Although Moses’s mother was able to nurse him, once he was weaned she had to return him to Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted Moses as her own son. The new mother also named him “Moses,” commemorating her finding him and drawing him from the water (2:10). “Moses” is not an unusual component of an Egyptian name, but Pharaoh’s daughter may have used a wordplay on the Hebrew words for drawing him out of the water because the child was a Hebrew. (Although the Hebrews lived in close proximity, in Goshen, in state servitude but living in their own mud-brick homes, she may have had to consult with Hebrew servants or others to find the right wordplay.) The providential irony here is that under Moses’s leadership God would someday deliver all his people through water.

Moses thus grew up in privilege, yet was also aware that he was Hebrew. Moses belonged to two cultures, but an event would soon force him to choose one at the expense of the other—in the short term costing him both (Exod 2:11-15).

(For other posts on Exodus, see http://www.craigkeener.org/category/old-testament/exodus/.)

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Where was God when tragedy happened?—Exodus 1:22

Sometimes in the midst of history, injustice seems to prevail. In light of a longer view, and especially an eternal view, however, justice will win out. This becomes evident over the span of a generation in the ensuing context of our present passage.

Before Pharaoh decided to oppress Israelites, they multiplied and became very strong (Exod 1:7). This was why the king decided to enslave them to begin with (1:8-11). But as he afflicted them, they multiplied still more (1:12)! So the king’s next strategy was to kill newborn Israelite males secretly, leaving any possible blame in the event of discovery on the Hebrew midwives (1:15-16). Yet this strategem, too, failed (1:17-19), and the refrain continues: the people multiplied and became very strong (1:20).

Finally Pharaoh now decides to take action more directly. The Hebrew midwives had not killed Israelite babies at birth, so Pharaoh ordered his own people to kill newborn Israelite males (1:22). (Aaron was three years older than Moses, and would not be among the children affected by the king’s decree; see 7:7.)

Ironically and unknown to Pharaoh, however, his own daughter would undermine his decree out of compassion for a Hebrew baby (2:6-10)—Israel’s future deliverer. God does not always prevent tragedy—but he does ensure his plan for the future of his people and for ultimate justice.

Indeed, Exodus resounds with the recognition that God, while not always stopping human wickedness, does not look the other way: Consider how God would return against the next generation of Egyptians what Pharaoh had done. Pharaoh drowned Israel’s babies in the Nile (1:22); the first plague would turn the Nile to blood (7:20). Pharaoh drowned Israel’s babies in the Nile (1:22); the last plague would strike Egypt’s firstborn children (12:29). Pharaoh drowned Israel’s babies in the Nile (1:22); God would drown Egypt’s army in a sea of reeds (14:28). Though long delayed, justice would come. As we often say in the African-American church, “God doesn’t always come when you want Him to, but He’s always right on time.”

(For other posts on Exodus, see http://www.craigkeener.org/category/old-testament/exodus/.)

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Is lying ever right?—Exodus 1:19-21

In the 2013 film, Return to the Hiding Place (https://www.christianbook.com/return-to-the-hiding-place/pd/241338?event=ESRCG), Eusi, a Jewish cantor staying with the Ten Booms, argues that saving a life is far more important than telling the truth. An ethical debate ensues; one of Corrie’s sisters insists that lying is always wrong. The issue is, of course, a very live one for Eusi: he is a secret refugee in the Ten Booms’ home, and telling truth to the Nazis would mean his death and that of other Jewish fugitives.

Is lying ever right? Very rarely, but in the present passage the Hebrew midwives lied to protect their lives, and God blessed their ruse designed to protect the Hebrew babies (as discussed in the previous lesson). As the previous study noted, God blessed the midwives for protecting the Hebrew babies, defying Pharaoh’s order. That God blesses midwives despite their lie might seem strange to some modern readers, but that may say more about how we have read some biblical principles too narrowly and ignored examples of extreme situations in some biblical narratives.

That people of truth should not lie is an important biblical principle (Prov 6:17, 19; 8:7; 10:18; 12:17, 19, 22; 14:5, 25; 17:7; 19:5, 9; 21:28; 24:28; 25:18; 26:19, 28; 30:8). Lies for personal gain (19:22; 20:17; 21:6) or what we would wrongly think is for God’s glory are always wrong (cf. Rom 3:7-8).

But lying to protect spies during some war circumstances was right. God had commanded warfare against Canaan (on which see http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-canaanites-part-i-limiting-factors/; http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-canaanites-part-ii-switching-sides/; http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-canaanites-part-iii-gods-ideal/), and Rahab was right to side with God’s people against her own and to give refuge to Israelite spies (Josh 2:4-5). After Absalom’s treacherous and deceptive revolt against King David, David’s allies were right to lie as spies or to hide and protect spies (2 Sam 16:16-19; 17:7-13, 20)

One also cannot blame Michal for lying even to her own father to save David’s life (1 Sam 19:14; 20:28-29) or her own (19:17). Saul was perpetrating great evil, and giving David more time to make good his escape was the right thing to do. That Michal showed loyalty to her husband over her own father could make some sense (cf. Gen 2:24), but what makes it definitively right here, whether Michal already understood this or not, is that David rather than Saul was God’s current chosen instrument. In his plan to take life unjustly, Saul forfeited his right to the truth. In a similar way, Bonhoeffer was right to insist that lying to the Nazi regime was acting truthfully before God, because the Nazis forfeited their right to the truth.

God sometimes handed people over to deadly deception because they did not merit truth (1 Kgs 22:22-23; 2 Thess 2:10-12). But did God himself ever endorse human deception? He barely ever does so, but there are exceptions. In some cases God allowed partial truth that could be construed as deceptive regarding real intentions. God gives Samuel a cover for his actions (1 Sam 16:2-3) that do not reflect his real mission; if Saul knew that Samuel were really going to Bethlehem to anoint a new king, Saul would try to kill Samuel (for meddling in politics!) Although Jesus does not lie in John 7:6-10, his carefully chosen words may mislead his brothers: he goes to a festival secretly after telling his brothers that he could not go with them.

But a more explicit case is 2 Kings 8:10: Elisha instructs Hazael to inform Ben-Hadad, king of Aram, that he would recover—when in fact Elisha knew that he would surely die, and tells Hazael as much. Prophets usually had to tell the truth even at the risk of their own lives, but sometimes wicked tyrants so forfeit their right to truth that subverting them is an act of truth and justice. In the biblical world, it could seen as playing the game of cunning and winning. I could not play that game even in dangerous circumstances, lacking the requisite skills. But where it is a matter of life and death, God can sometimes grant people cleverness and the upper hand.

That observation brings us back to Exodus, which took place in a culture that valued such cunning. Pharaoh thought he was dealing cleverly with the Hebrews to keep them from multiplying (Exod 1:10). Instead, he is outwitted by the Hebrew midwives, at least in the first round (1:19). They could not prevent Pharaoh’s subsequent actions against other newborns, but they could protect at least the infants they were responsible for.

By the end of the chapter, Pharaoh seems to have the upper hand. But later in the narrative, when (a different) Pharaoh is willing to let the Israelites go worship in the wilderness, he wants to hold their animals hostage to guarantee their return. He is being clever. Moses, who knows that they will not return, insists that they must take their animals for sacrifice, and they won’t know until they reach their destination which animals they will need. Pharaoh knows that Moses is playing with him, and Moses knows that Pharaoh knows this; but it is a game of wit and power, and it becomes increasingly clear, as God continues to act, that Moses has the upper hand, and Pharaoh’s pretense of power is collapsing before YHWH.

Is lying ever right? Almost all the positive biblical examples reflect cases of protecting life, the deceiver’s or someone else’s. Most are also lies to those who have acted against the truth in such a way as to forfeit their right to truth. Scripture seems clear that if lying protects innocent fugitives from aggressors, it is the far more ethical course to lie than to betray those fugitives merely to recount the full truth to their enemies.

The Hebrew term for truth, emeth, involves especially integrity, genuineness, and faithfulness; faithfulness protects lives, not betrays them. These examples do not justify falsehood and dishonesty in our basic, everyday dealings with others; the normal biblical principle, reiterated in Proverbs, is valuing truth. But in some circumstances, truth and integrity require subverting a regime of falsehood. In Return to the Hiding Place, Eusi, joined by Corrie Ten Boom, was right.